Mexico's Foreign Policy of 1990 was marked by an acceleration of trends that began a few years ago, producing a pattern of relationships that would have been almost unimaginable only a decade ago. On the one hand, its most obvious characteristic — begun during the de la Madrid sexenio and heightened during Salinas's first year in office — was that economic recovery became the focal point of government strategy: i.e., there was an “economization” of foreign policy. On the other hand, and reflecting the weight given to economic issues, the movement toward integration with the United States — a trend already apparent in the previous administration — picked up speed and acted as a direct complement of the development strategy. This move became more concrete as preliminary talks got under way preparatory to signing a joint free trade treaty.

At the end of 1986, when Contadora and its Support Group reduced their presence in Central America, their member countries decided to create a permanent organism for consultation and agreement, thus re-orienting and extending their working agenda, which had originally been limited to the issues of Central American policy and, in the economic area (through the Cartagena Group), to the problem of external debt. Several factors prompted them to take this course. First, all had found the experiment in concertación policymaking to be valuable and were reluctant to lose the experience and momentum acquired over the years. Second, it was apparent that changing circumstances had altered their position in resolving the Central America crisis, so that the Contadora and Support Groups found themselves playing only a secondary role in the negotiations and becoming increasingly marginalized. Furthermore, some countries felt that the excessive emphasis on the Central American problem had circumscribed the ability of the Group to focus on other issues which, as tensions eased in Central America, were gaining priority on the foreign policy agendas of their respective governments.

Argentines Fervently hoped that the transition from authoritarianism to democracy would reverse decades of economic decline and return their country to the path of modernization. Raúl Alfonsín and his Radical party assumed office in December 1983 confident of reconciling democratization with rapid development and social justice. This optimism was soon shattered, the victim of a succession of failed stabilization plans. Finally, a catastrophic economic collapse led to a convincing victory by Peronist Carlos Menem in the May 1989 presidential contest.

Carlos Menem assumed the presidency on 8 July 1989 in the midst of raging hyperinflation: from August 1988 through July 1989, consumer prices had risen 3,610% and wholesale prices had skyrocketed 5,062%. Menem responded with neoliberal, “free-market” reforms designed to restructure radically the beleaguered Argentine economy along the lines of the so-called “Washington Consensus.”

Eleven years after the start of an insurgent war, Peru's military appears no closer to defeating the two insurgencies that have plagued the country since 1980. The promise of greater political stability and a reduced role for the military in politics, which the the return to civilian rule held out, have largely been dashed. The war has meant a new active role for the military in politics which, under emergency decrees, directly rules over half of the country and maintains an influential voice in national policymaking. Under the previous two elected governments and the current Fujimori administration, the military institution has largely designed and implemented counter-insurgency strategy, leaving civilian policymakers aside in the decision-making process. What is more important, military officials have remained largely unaccountable for their decisions due to the lack of any civilian oversight capacity or alternative strategies. More than a decade after the start of the war, civilians have yet to devise methods that can increase military accountability.

The Issue of the Distribution of income is once again emerging as a critical component in the debates regarding Latin America's development path in the 1990s and as a factor underlying the proposed Enterprise of the Americas Initiative (EAI). I will argue that the degree of income inequality in the Latin American societies will prove to be an obvious, if unnoticed, obstacle to social progress which will affect the operation and outcome of the Initiative. In this essay, I review some of the hypotheses and recent findings from the research on income distribution. I shall contrast the conditions of the growth decades of the 1960s and 1970s with the “lost” decade of the 1980s. What have we learned, and what have we avoided learning during these years? How many of the initial conditions which the Alliance for Progress aimed at remedying 30 years ago are still with us?