The well-drained, fluvio-volcanic outwash plain of the Pacific coast of Central America, stretching from the Mexican border to the Gulf of Nicoya, has undergone remarkable change in recent years. Malarial control, highway and port construction, and the initiative of governments and private land-owners, have made this the most active zone of agricultural development in Central America. Large-scale mechanized cotton farms and livestock ranches have been eating rapidly into the dry tropical forest that until recently covered most of this coastal apron at the foot of the 700-mile long Central American volcanic chain, producing important new sources of employment and foreign exchange earnings. Acreage in sugar cane and essential oil grasses (citronella and lemon grass) also has been expanding, and the booming shrimp export trade has added yet another fillup to the economies of these pocket-sized countries so long plagued with coffee or banana monoculture.

This paper discusses the Cuban stand in the socialist controversy on material versus moral incentives, placing emphasis on the role of economic, political, and ideological factors. The controversy is of fundamental importance for Marxist- Leninist theory, as well as for the implementation of such theory in socialist countries. Actually, the reference to “incentives” conveys the impression of a narrower scope than the controversy has been in reality. Internally, the type of incentives chosen affects crucial economic areas such as the method of planning, the allocation of resources, the distribution system, the use of money, the organization of the enterprise, and even the criteria for appointing managers. In the political sphere, the incentive decision affects political control, mass mobilization, people's participation in the decision-making process, and the degree of consensus.

An article written for my forthcoming book on Trinidad and Tobago argues that the events of 1969-1970 in Trinidad should be seen as a result of a process of delegitimization—both personal and systematic—and that the public declaration by Trinidad and Tobago's prime minister of his intention to resign as political leader of the governing party was an attempt to arrest that process. My argument is that the attempt failed, and that by December 1973,

On November 29, 1947 the United Nations General Assembly, by a vote of 33 in favor, 13 opposed, and 10 abstentions, adopted its fateful resolution recommending the division of Palestine between the Jews and Arabs. In that vote and the debates preceding and following it, the major substantive contributions were made by Latin America. When the partition resolution threatened to flounder on the rocks of United States-Soviet disagreement, Pedro Zuloaga of Venezuela suggested the formation of a subcommittee to resolve these differences. The group did so under the chairmanship of Jorge García Granados of Guatemala. During the entire second Assembly, he and Prof. Enrique Rodriguez Fabregat of Uruguay made the most stirring appeals for Jewish statehood. As president of the Assembly, Brazil's Oswaldo Aranha ruled that the partition recommendation had to be voted on first, before any proposals for delay.

For many years the vague notion has circulated that the United States and Mexico were on the verge of war in 1927. Howard Cline (1965: 209) cited unspecified “Mexican sources” as purportedly revealing that Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and Ambassador James R. Sheffield in Mexico City were “purposely trying to provoke some Mexican act that could be used as a pretext for American intervention.” Former Mexican President Emilio Portes Gil (1964: 396) went further and insisted that American warships had actually mobilized for intervention, only to be thwarted by an “imperturbable” President Calles. These and other such assertions have never been thoroughly analyzed on the basis of available American diplomatic and military records. This article attempts to demonstrate that intervention was highly unlikely. Moreover, circumstantial evidence and logic combine to suggest that the administration of Calvin Coolidge never seriously considered such a move and that rumors of intervention were founded more upon Mexican suspicion and mistrust than upon realities in Washington.

This essay explores the possibility that Latin America may deploy new strategic options in its relations with Washington at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It starts by evaluating what have been the five major foreign policy models of the region with regard to Washington since the end of the Cold War. It proceeds by evaluating the recent dynamics of Latin American insertion into world affairs. Then it introduces three new alternatives for handling U.S. Latin American relations in the coming years. It concludes by pointing out the importance of understanding the scope of the hemispheric challenges for both the region and Washington.

After reviewing progress in Latin America's economic stabilization and international competitiveness in the last two decades, this essay discusses the current post–Washington Consensus “social democratic convergence” agenda, which aims to sharpen market efficiency, improve the quality of democratic governance, and advance equity goals by attacking the social deficit. Two illustrative examples, at opposite ends of the development spectrum, are Nicaragua's pro-CAFTA agenda and Chile's Chile Compete program. More generally, pluralistic democracy can hamper progress by giving veto powers to recalcitrant vested interests; but enlightened political leadership can make gains by combining carefully crafted coalitions, international support, popular pressures, and an attractive ideological message.

In December 1942, the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina announced, in a radio address, that the Netherlands was revising its relationship with its colonies, employing the famous words: “Relying on one’s own strength, with the will to support each other” [Steunend op eigen kracht, metde wil elkander bij te staan] (Schenk and spaan, 1945: 56). Some 52 years later, her granddaughter, Queen Beatrix, returned to this theme in a televised speech delivered to mark the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Charter of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, when she referred to relations betweenThe Netherlands and its Caribbean partners as one of “a genuine relationship and mutual commitment” (een echte verwantschap en onderlinge betrokkenheid). This Charter, signed in 1954, had been drawn up to establish that henceforth the Kingdom of the Netherlands would be comprised of three equal partners: the Netherlands itself, Suriname, and the Netherlands Antilles. Back in 1954, when it was signed, the Charter was widely viewed as constituting a first, major step towards eventual independence for the Dutch partners in the Caribbean. Nor could anyone have foreseen that, 40 years later, only Suriname would have achieved independence, while the islands of the Netherlands Antilles were renouncing that option and expressing a desire to remain Dutch.

On July 2, 1967, Mexican voters elected representatives to the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the national legislature. By law the Chamber is completely renewed every three years, and members cannot succeed themselves. Throughout the country, the elections took place smoothly and without serious disturbances. The State of Yucatán, remote and isolated from the major political and economic centers of the country, quietly participated following an election campaign that was reserved and orderly.

Presidents rely on their trusted advisers to collect, analyze, coordinate, and present information in a timely fashion. However, Latin American presidents often fail to form majority governments and must use cabinet appointments to secure legislative coalitions to pursue their policies. This article suggests that presidents strategically redesign their executive offices to address the ministry drift. Presidents who can transform the organizations attached to their executive office have additional tools to monitor their ministers’ flexibility. The article argues that the greater the number of ministers in the cabinet from parties different from the president’s, the greater the transformations to the presidential office. Using time-series analysis, hypotheses are tested with an original dataset of organizational changes to the presidential center in Colombia, 1967–2015. The findings indicate that the percentage of ministers from other parties is a good predictor of the transformations undertaken in the executive office of the president.

This article introduces the concept of international clientelism and discusses how this diplomatic tool was employed by Venezuela under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro as a means to get political support from several Latin American and Caribbean countries. We operationalize the concept and apply it to assess Venezuelan practices put forth in the region. We argue that the reach of Caracas’s diplomatic strategy is broader and deeper than that of simple vote-buying tactics, as it implies the promotion of structural rather than contingent ties, shielding the country against unfavorable moves in international fora. An empirical test using data for all LAC countries for the years 1999–2015 confirms that clientelistic linkages produced political support for Venezuela at the United Nations General Assembly while also moving its partners away from the United States in that institution.

Why does the ability of political leaders to control the bureaucracy vary? With strong meritocratic recruitment and tenure protections, Brazil appears an ideal case for successful bureaucratic resistance against political control. However, our analysis reveals how Bolsonaro overcame initial resistance by recalibrating strategies, ultimately dominating many key sectors of the bureaucracy. Drawing on over 100 interviews with public officials, we find that strategies of political control and bureaucratic resistance unfold in a dynamic, yet often predictable, pattern based on leaders' previous experiences and their ability to learn, adjust, and tighten their grip on the instruments of the state. The Bolsonaro administration transformed the regulatory framework and targeted individual state employees, reducing arenas of contestation and inducing public sector workers to remain silent, implementing the president’s policy preferences. We examine these control strategies in environmental agencies, their replication, and potential long-term consequences.

Schooling is thought to be of great importance in Latin America and elsewhere in the developing world. The World Bank (1980, 1981), Colclough (1982), Psacharopoulos (1981, 1983), and others emphasize strongly the critical role of schooling in increasing productivity, equalizing income distribution, improving health and nutrition, reducing fertility and in pursuing other objectives.

In part because of such emphasis, there have been considerable and increasing resources devoted to schooling in recent decades in Latin America and in other developing regions. There also have been numerous studies that attempt to evaluate what determines investment in schooling and what are the private and social rates of return to schooling. The latter group of studies generally finds that such returns are fairly high, suggesting that expanding schooling indeed should be a high priority activity.

Since the Late 1960s, due to détente and rising nationalism in Latin America, the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries have succeeded in expanding diplomatic relations with most countries in the Western Hemisphere (Blasier, 1984; Fichet, 1981). For an increasing number of Third World nations, the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) countries of Eastern Europe have become a source of trade, credits, technical assistance and political support. Hence, many Third World countries view CMEA agreements as a means of strengthening their negotiating position vis-á-vis the United States and other developed countries. In turn, the CMEA countries have stepped up their commercial activity irrespective of the nature of the governments of the recipient countries. In the case of Latin America, CMEA ability to provide such funding is restrained by their own economic limitations, by geographical distance and by the shortage of foreign exchange. These factors discourage risky commitments in a region that is peripheral to essential security concerns of the CMEA countries.

On 27 June 1990, President Bush launched the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative as a part of his longstanding interest in encouraging democracy and economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean. Impressed by political and economic events in Latin America, he felt a new approach was needed to help advance prosperity throughout the region.

Recent events in the Western Hemisphere are part of a worldwide phenomenon. The past 18 months have witnessed enormous economic and political change.

These changes are almost universally positive and, not least, are being achieved peacefully. Indicative of these changes is the assertion by Charles William Maynes that in the future “economists will be more important than geopoliticians [and] diplomats more critical than warriors” (Maynes, 1990). There is a fresh, dynamic attitude around the world that views change optimistically, not fearfully.

This Essay examines Soviet uses of economic trade for political and diplomatic purposes in Latin America. Recent events in Central America and the Caribbean have generated a great number of analyses of Soviet goals and tactics in the Western Hemisphere (Duncan, 1984; Leiken, 1984; Rothenberg, 1984; Varas, 1984; Valenta, 1982). Direct Soviet military aid to Nicaragua, and to Grenada prior to the U.S. invasion in 1983, has suggested a more forward Soviet role in the region. On the other hand, Soviet arms shipments to Latin America, excepting those to Cuba, are a relatively recent response to revolutionary developments that may prove to be ephemeral, or which may encounter stiff U.S. resistance. Given geopolitical realities of the area, the Soviet military option certainly is less viable in Latin America than elsewhere in the developing world. In contrast, trade and aid – and Soviet aid is given chiefly in the form of trade credits – are a long-established, politically safe tactical alternative.

The production of inequality has been one of the most enduring features of Latin American economic and social systems, and one in which the institutional structure has perhaps exhibited the greatest consistency over time. In a very real sense, inequality is what the Mexican Revolution was all about, as was the Bolivian Revolution of the early 1950s. So, too, with the rise, in the middle decades of this century, of assorted populist political parties and movements. By the 1960s, participatory development had become almost a Zeitgeist, and distributional concerns had ostensibly come to suffuse many of the development programs launched during that first United Nations Development Decade, including the Alliance for Progress. It is relevant to recall that, quite early in the postwar flowering of development studies, Viner (1952) had suggested that the chief aim (and test) of development should be the reduction of mass poverty.