As this revolution within the church – first Roman Catholic and then the larger Catholic and Protestant Churches – was taking place, politicians and governments were moving forward with their own plans for Latin America. At this time, our President, John F. Kennedy, brought the American sponsored Alliance for Progress into being. The Alliance for Progress was established in light of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, with the intent of preventing further revolutions. It took place during the Cold War with Russia. It existed from 1961–69. This alliance was created to promote democratic reform and assist with development within the individual countries in South and Central America. The center left Social Democratic and Christian Democratic parties were chosen, by the United States, to be Latin America's partners with North America. The Alliance was seen by us, in North America, as a way of helping our neighbors to the south – of bringing them to a higher socioeconomic level. This alliance was considered, by Leonardo Boff, to bring in an, ‘euphoria of developmentalism’ which actually further brought ‘exploitation and marginalization’ to the laborers and members of the working class. As Penny Lernoux wrote in, Cry of the People, ‘…the stated goals were to promote development and contain communism, and few then realized the ambiguities contained in that statement. Only later was it learned that development, as practiced, benefited the rich at the expense of the poor, and that containment of communism was often simplistically equated with protecting an unjust and unchristian status quo’ (Lernoux 1982: 284).