VOL. IX, NO. 13
MAY 3, 1968

Senior Students Attend Latin American Program
"The Alliance for Progress is irrelevant. The problems we should be dealing with are political and spiritual, not economic. The program was very effective in its early years; now there is no idealism at all. We support dictatorships as easily as democracies."

This was one of the major themes of Miss Georgie Anne Geyer's talk on "Latin America Which Way?" Her speech to the Senior Class during homeroom and first period on April 19 was part of a preliminary "run-through" for a program to be taped by Channel 11.

A foreign correspondent for The Chicago Daily News and 1967 recipient of the Overseas Press Club award for best reporting on Latin America, Miss Geyer has interviewed Fidel Castro several times and spent days in the mountains with Guatemalan guerrillas.
 Asked about the value of AFS student exchange programs, such as Maine has, in improving relations with our southern neighbors, Miss Geyer replied that they were helpful, but added, "The Peace Corps is more valuable. Living at the same economic level with the people shows them what Americans are really like. They are an irritant to traditional Latin American society."

A panel of seniors, Dan Brinkman, Antoinette Doroskin, Jim Genellie, and Jean Spindler, quizzed the correspondent on stage following her speech. She later said of them, "I think they were excellent and very well-prepared. They obviously knew a lot about their subject."