In 1968 Henry Kissinger wrote: “A mature conception of our interests in the world … would deal with two fundamental questions: What is it in our interest to prevent? What should we seek to accomplish?” (Kissinger, 1974: 92) Whatever its general relevance, that passage is an apt description of the lens through which American policymakers have contemplated the phenomenon of political change in the Third World. Those are the first questions they tend to ask.

The rationale for this particular concept of foreign policy tasks has its roots (1) in the complexities of an increasingly interdependent world in which world politics have become truly global for the first time in human history, and (2) in the deep antagonisms embedded in the US/Soviet relationship. Because nuclear realities .have placed a cap on the way in which the two superpowers confront and contend with one another, conflict between them tends to get pushed to the periphery and to take place in indirect ways.

In 1970, Dr. Salvador Allende, presidential candidate of the Unidad Popular coalition, won a plurality — but not a majority — of votes from the Chilean electorate. Consequently, and in accord with Chilean electoral laws and constitution, the Chilean Congress was called upon to vote for the president, and it selected Dr. Allende as the country's new president. Soon thereafter a wave of opposition to his administration developed among business and middle-class sectors: Rightist political movements and parties, entrepreneurial associations, some white-collar unions, as well as groups representing both commercial interests and those of small business. Eventually this opposition determined that “the government of Allende was incompatible with the survival of freedom and private enterprise in Chile, (and) that the only way to avoid their extinction was to overthrow the government” (Cauce, 1984).

One of the most difficult and frustrating challenges to US foreign policy in the post-World War II period has been coping with third world revolutions, particularly those in the Caribbean Basin. Whether the revolution has been in Cuba, Nicaragua, or Grenada, relations with the US have always deteriorated, and the revolutionary governments have moved closer to the Soviet bloc and toward a Communist political model. Both the deteriorating relationship and the increasingly belligerent posture of the US have conformed to a regular pattern; so too have the interpretations of the causes and consequences of the confrontation.

US government officials and a few policy analysts tend to view the hostile attitudes and policies of the revolutionary governments as the cause of the problem.

By Mid-1986, The Contadora Group's search for a negotiated peace in Central America had reached a seemingly insurmountable impasse. Negotiations were deadlocked over the issues of arms limitations, democratization, and US support for the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries (contrarevolucionarios or contras). The United States and its closest Central American allies - Costa Rica, Honduras and El Salvador - demanded that Nicaragua reduce the size of its armed forces and install a democratic political system before they would end support for the contras Nicaragua's Sandinistas, in turn, refused to disarm until the United States and its Central American neighbors halted their support for the contras, they also rejected all proposals for direct negotiations with the contras.

On March 15,1987, Brazil celebrated the second anniversary of the Nova República, the popular term for the new civilian government headed by José Sarney. While commemoration of the return to more open, competitive politics after 21 years of authoritarian rule is certainly cause for justifiable national pride, a worsening economic crisis combined with escalating domestic social and political conflict leave many Brazilians deeply worried about the future of their incipient democracy.

By conventional standards, Brazil has joined the ranks of fullfledged political democracies. Nevertheless, a more stringent view would hold that Brazil has really only entered into a new, more complex phase of political transition in which genuine democracy has yet to become firmly established. The new civilian government must now address fundamental issues of social justice and more balanced, equitable economic growth than was realized under authoritarian rule.

“Being in Sugar is like collecting Confederate currency”. This assessment, offered by anthropologist Sidney Mintz (1985), is shared by many sugar industry observers, insiders, and, increasingly, by many Caribbean officials. King sugar, instrumental in shaping the diverse political, economic, and social histories of the Caribbean since colonial times, confronts a seemingly intractable crisis: a severe, and sustained, disequilibrium between global demand and supply which makes export of sugar very unattractive. Except in those cases where preferential arrangements exist between producers and consumers-the Lomé Convention, the US sugar quota system, and the Soviet guaranteed purchase of Cuban sugar-world prices for sugar are at a record low, well below production costs.

Plunging Petroleum Prices have elevated Mexico into the position of de facto leadership of Latin American, and perhaps of other, debtor nations in their negotiations with international creditors. Once regarded as a model debtor, Mexico has emerged as forceful spokesman for debt relief. Although Mexican authorities often couch their statements concerning foreign debt repayments in conciliatory, and even contradictory, terms, the underlying fact is that Mexico's demand for some debt relief is tantamount to an unspoken repudiation of a portion of its $96 billion foreign debt. If Mexico, the world's second largest debtor, succeeds in wresting debt relief from its lenders, then it must be recognized that debtor-creditor relationships have undergone a fundamental change: political realities, not contract law, ultimately determine how debt is to be repaid, if at all. Mexico, more by circumstance than by choice, has led debtors and creditors alike into a brave new world.

When James Baker, US Secretary of the Treasury, took the rostrum at the IMF-World Bank annual meeting in Seoul, in October 1985, and told 9,000 delegates from 149 countries that the debt crisis could only be solved by an even closer cooperation of all parties concerned, more money from commercial banks, an enhanced role for the World Bank, and more growth in the developing world, everybody sighed with relief.

The Baker declaration was significant as it had taken three years of muddling through crises for the Reagan Administration to recognize the debt crisis for what it is: a long term economic and political barrier to development that is slowly strangling world economic growth.

Few Countries In The World, and certainly none in this hemisphere, could lay more claims to the title “original heroic land” than Haiti. If, indeed, such things mattered in this world, Haitians could rightfully note that, at a time when the dominant secular and religious ideologies defined the African as subhuman and thus “naturally enslavable,” Haitians challenged and defeated the supreme advocates of those doctrines, and their heroism became the stimulus for other liberation attempts.

Not much after independence in 1804, Haitians opened their ports and hearts to all those battling slavery and oppression. Many benefitted from this daring act. Defeated and abandoned by many around him, Simón Bolívar turned to Haiti and they, not once, but twice, acted to help, true to their vows. Quite correctly did Bolívar write Petión that the liberation of America was only one of the debts owed Haiti.

Dependency Theory has become a major paradigm for understanding Latin American politics. Based on the premises that the study of politics must begin with analysis of underlying socio-economic structures, and that these structures cannot be understood without considering a country's role in the world economy, dependency theory provides a cogent analytical framework that has been upheld in numerous empirical studies. The model of politics presented by dependency theorists is a bleak one: because economic dependence polarizes society between a small class of wealthy elites and a large mass of impoverished workers and peasants, politics in dependent societies is reduced, essentially, to class struggle between these highly mismatched forces. Except under unusual circumstances, authoritarianism is the inevitable result.

Is Socialism a means to eliminate or reduce dependency and its alleged concomitants? According to a number of authors, including those of the most influential recent approaches to the study of Latin American politics and development, it is. Indeed, for most of these authors socialism is the only desirable or acceptable way to address the problems of dependent capitalism. For them, capitalism is inherently exploitative and repressive; socialism is the only desirable or acceptable path to a more autonomous, egalitarian, free and just society (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979: ix-xxiv, 209-216).

As some of the foregoing implies, and as is obvious to anyone familiar with the literature, for many authors the truth or falsity of this view is not a matter amenable to resolution by anything so mundane as reference to historical experience. For such analysts, this view is true by definition. The analyst using this perspective first “assumes” it to be true and then “demonstrates” that it is true by citing data that support it (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979: x).

On 25 November 1985 the Republic of Suriname celebrated ten years of independent statehood. That decade witnessed a number of unexpected and quite extraordinary events in the former Dutch colony. Since the last free parliamentary elections in 1977, the country has endured: a military coup d'etat (1980) the arbitrary arrest and detainment of leaders of the “old” political parties (1980); the nullification of its constitution and civil rights (1980) and the imposition of a “state of emergency” (1982); the appointment by the military high command of five civilian cabinets (1981,1982,1983,1984, and 1985); a foreign and domestic policy that has swung erratically between far left and center; a cordial relationship with Cuba unceremoniously broken by Suriname following the US-led invasion of Grenada; the tragic and colossally stupid murder of 15 (possibly more) prominent Surinamers opposed to the revolution (1982); the suspension of more than US$1.5 billion dollars of Dutch foreign aid (1982); seven alleged counter-coups, one of which supposedly enjoyed the support of the CIA and several American mercenaries (1980-1984); deteriorating relations with the Netherlands, to the point where there is no ambassador in the Hague; a rather visionary attempt to dismantle the ethnic structure of pre-revo party politics by creating “one national party;” a cozy relationship with Libya under the guise of “cultural exchange;” and the rapid deterioration of a once booming economy. Now in 1986, in the midst of a dialogue with the “old” political parties, there is robust talk of a return to civilian government.

In mid-1985, the US Embassy in Caracas stated that “Venezuela appears to have successfully coped with its financial crisis” (US Embassy, 1985). In January 1986, the Wall Street Journal announced that

The Policy of “Responsible Pragmatism,” initiated in 1974 by President Ernesto Geisel, ended Brazil's automatic alignment with the United States and sought out non-ideological ties with Third World and socialist countries instead. This change in policy led Brazil to recognize both the People's Republic of China (in 1974) and the Republic of Angola (in 1975) as well as to improve links with other socialist nations. Resumption of relations with Cuba, however, was rejected by the military regime on grounds that the socialist island did not offer either the energy resources or substantial markets needed by Brazil, two considerations which had gone far to ease the concern of military hardliners over ideological issues.

In the late seventies and early eighties the Mexican economy was in a crisis situation. This crisis, however, did not manifest itself until August 1982 when the Mexican government sent shock waves through the international financial community by declaring a temporary moratorium on external debt payments. Six years earlier, during the waning months of the Echeverría administration, a similar financial and economic crisis had taken place amid rumors of an impending military coup. These adverse economic developments - and their challenge to the country's long-term political and social stability - stand in stark contrast to the so-called “miracle years” of the late fifties and sixties. During these years M éxico enjoyed high rates of economic growth coupled with annual rates of inflation (below 5%) which were the envy of the developing world.

This paper will argue that, on closer examination, the rapid economic growth of this period was achieved as a result of economic and financial policies which, by exacerbating existing structural weaknesses endemic to the Mexican economy, paved the way for the crises of 1976 and 1982.

The Continuing Latin American Debt crisis and the huge United States trade deficit inevitably mean that trade politics are on the rise again in the hemisphere. In 1986, on the eve of the proposed new GATT (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs) round, President Reagan announced a duty on Canadian lumber, which, coupled with a Canadian duty against US corn less than a month later, derailed the broad bilateral free trade negotiations begun in 1985. The US and Brazil continued to argue the merits of a Brazilian market reserve law in microcomputers and software; and Mexico concluded its first bilateral trade pact with the US in decades during 1985, desperately embracing trade liberalization with the same zeal that made it the US model for “solving the debt crisis” in 1984.

Important changes occurred in El Salvador between the parley of government and guerrilla representatives at La Palma (15 October 1984) and the exchange of kidnapped government officials for imprisoned and wounded guerrillas (24 October 1985). During that year Salvadoran politics entered into the endgame of a political transition that may yet culminate in a democratic consolidation. Reaching the endgame stage of the transition hinged on the outcome of the March 1985 election, which gave the Christian Democratic administration of José Napoleón Duarte a clear majority in the Legislative Assembly and control of most municipal governments. The election completed the process of investing formal-legal power in a government committed to democratization. Equally important, it strengthened the credibility and legitimacy of that government, both domestically and abroad. However, that third consecutive electoral victory by the Christian Democrats did not, of itself, guarantee the consolidation of a democratic regime. The election simply created a more favorable climate in which the Partido Demócrata Cristiano (PDC) and others could do so, but formidable political obstacles still remain.

Socio-Economic or General Cultural Similarities between Brazil and the rest of Latin America would seem sufficient to support similarities of interests and close cooperative relationships. Yet Brazil's Lusophone culture, the immensity of the country, the geographical distance of much of its population from Spanish American population centers, and middle and upper class fascination for things American or European led instead to a sense of separateness and distinctness which impeded serious Brazilian selfidentification, beyond rhetoric, as a Latin American nation despite its geographical location. Thus the question of how Brazil should relate to the rest of Latin America has been a topic of domestic and continental debate, with increasingly practical consequences as the South American development process continues. The recent shift toward more intense, collaborative relations, in particular, invites analysis of current trends and speculation on possible outcomes.

Since the beginning of the 1980s, a number of South American nations have undergone the transition from military to civilian/electoral forms of government. From any viewpoint, the magnitude of this transition has been impressive. By early 1987, several countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay) had successfully weathered the change, leaving only Chile and Paraguay under dictatorships, while Colombia and Venezuela had been able to maintain civilian rule throughout the period. Nevertheless, such a changeover has not been easy in any of the nations where it has taken place. The reasons for both the transition and the problems incurred have been idiosyncratic in each instance.