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Understanding Central American Politics

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DEMOCRACY IN COSTA RICA. By AMERINGERCHARLES D. (New York: Praeger, 1982. Pp. 138. $19.95.)
POLITICS IN CENTRAL AMERICA: GUATEMALA, EL SALVADOR, HONDURAS, AND NICARAGUA. By ANDERSONTHOMAS P. (New York: Praeger, 1982. Pp. 221. $23.95.)
THE WAR OF THE DISPOSSESSED: HONDURAS AND EL SALVADOR, 1969. By ANDERSONTHOMAS P. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981. Pp. 203. $16.50.)

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

J. Mark Ruhl
J. Mark Ruhl*
Affiliation:
Dickinson College
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Abstract

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Type
Review Essays
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , 1984 , pp. 143 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 by Latin American Research Review

Footnotes

*

The author would like to thank Mark Rosenberg of Florida International University and William LeoGrande of American University for their comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

References

Notes

1. An excellent guide to the literature on Central American history and politics available before 1976 is found in Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., Central America: A Nation Divided (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 278–321.

2. None of the books selected for review here is a case study of Nicaragua. The many new works on Nicaragua will be discussed in a separate LARR review essay. One analysis of Nicaragua that exhibits many of the strengths but few of the weaknesses of the works discussed here is John A. Booth, The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982). A valuable earlier study is Richard Millett, Guardians of the Dynasty (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1977).

3. Several large gaps in the Central American literature remain to be filled. For example, no thorough English-language analysis of Honduras has been made since William S. Stokes, Honduras: A Case Study in Government (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1950). At least two forthcoming books will attempt to close this gap: James A. Morris, Honduras: Caudillo Politics and Praetorian Rulers (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press) and Honduras: A Country Study, edited by James D. Rudolph (Washington, D.C.: American University). A useful recent book published in Honduras is Leticia Salomón, Militarismo y reformismo en Honduras (Tegucigalpa: Editorial Guaymuras, 1982). Guatemalan politics also remains an underresearched area. See Thomas and Marjorie Melville, Guatemala: The Politics of Land Ownership (New York: Free Press, 1971) for a valuable, but dated, account. A new book by Jonathan L. Fried et al. (editors), Guatemala in Rebellion: Unfinished History (New York: Grove Press, 1983), has just been published. Some definitions of Central America include Panama and Belize as parts of the region. An important new study is Steve C. Ropp, Panamanian Politics: From Guarded Nation to National Guard (New York: Praeger, 1982).

4. Alfred Stepan, The State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). See also Robert H. Dix, Colombia: The Political Dimensions of Change (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967); and Evelyne Huber Stephens, The Politics of Workers' Participation: The Peruvian Approach in Comparative Perspective (New York: Academic Press, 1980). A model study from outside the literature on Latin American politics is Politics and Public Policy in Kenya and Tanzania, edited by Joel D. Barkan and John J. Okumu (New York: Praeger, 1979). The reviewer's attempt to practice some of what he preaches is found in J. Mark Ruhl, “The Influence of Agrarian Structure on Political Stability in Honduras,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 26, no. 1 (Feb. 1984):33–68.

5. See Edelberto Torres Rivas, Interpretación del desarrollo social centroamericano (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1971); also, Ciro F. S. Cardoso and Hector Pérez Brignoli, Centroamérica y la economía occidental, 1520–1930 (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Universidad de Costa Rica, 1978). Woodward's study is noted above. See also Mario Monteforte Toledo, Centro América: subdesarrollo y dependencia (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1972).

6. See Theda Skocpol's States and Social Revolutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979) for a good bibliography on the vast theoretical literature on comparative revolution and political instability.

7. See Guillermo A. O'Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics (Berkeley, Calif.: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1973); and The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, edited by David Collier (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).

8. Thomas P. Anderson, Matanza: El Salvador's Communist Revolt of 1932 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971).

9. See William H. Durham, Scarcity and Survival in Central America: The Ecological Origins of the Soccer War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979); and La guerra inútil: análisis socio-económico del conflicto entre Honduras y El Salvador, edited by Marco Virgilio Carias and Daniel Slutzky (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1971). There are also a number of studies on the Central American Common Market, a regional economic arrangement that was damaged by the war. See Economic Integration in Central America, edited by William R. Cline and Enrique Delgado (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1978); and Daniel Camacho et al., El fracaso social de la integración centroamericana (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1979).

10. Charles D. Ameringer, Don Pepe: A Political Biography of José Figueres of Costa Rica (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979).

11. See Samuel Stone, La dinastía de los conquistadores: la crisis del poder en la Costa Rica contemporánea (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1975); and Mitchell A. Seligson, Peasants of Costa Rica and the Development of Agrarian Capitalism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980).

12. For example, Jacobo Schifter, La fase oculta de la guerra civil en Costa Rica (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1979); José Luis Vega Carballo, “Etapas y procesos de la evolución socio-política de Costa Rica,” Estudios Sociales Centroamericanos 1 (Jan.–Apr. 1972):45–72; Lowell Gudmundson, Estratificación socioracial y economía de Costa Rica, 1700–1850 (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Universidad Estatal a Distancia, 1978); and Mark B. Rosenberg, Las luchas por el seguro social en Costa Rica (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Costa Rica, 1980).

13. See Mario Posas, Luchas del movimiento obrero hondureño (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1981); and Victor Meza, Historia del movimiento obrero hondureño (Tegucigalpa: Editorial Guaymuras, 1980). For an update on the status of the banana enclaves, consult Daniel Slutzky and Esther Alonso, Empresas transnacionales y agricultura: el caso del enclave bananero en Honduras (Tegucigalpa: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras, 1982).

14. Useful prior works on El Salvador include David Browning, El Salvador: Landscape and Society (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1971); and Alistair White, El Salvador (London: Ernest Benn, 1973).

15. See John D. Martz and Enrique A. Baloyra, Electoral Mobilization and Public Opinion: The Venezuelan Campaign of 1973 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1976).

16. An excellent source for articles on Central America that often place their subjects within broader comparative and theoretical contexts is the journal Estudios Sociales Centroamericanos, published in Costa Rica by the Confederación Universitaria Centroamericana.