On a warm December day in 1897 the political leadership of Minas Gerais converged on the small hamlet of Belo Horizonte to inaugurate a new capital for Brazil's most populous state. Foreshadowing the construction of Brasília six decades later, politicians and planners had transformed a rustic village of some 8,000 inhabitants into an enormous construction project. As with Brasília, those who promoted the move saw the new capital as a symbol and a catalyst. This planned city would symbolize the modernizing forces that were transforming Brazil and Minas Gerais at the turn of the century. More important, the rationally designed political center would also serve as a catalyst in the economic growth and integration of the state. In short, a modern, planned city would provide Minas Gerais with the dynamic economic and political capital that it so badly needed.

People here don't care two straws about Central America, or Mosquitia or the Bay Islands or the Honduras boundary,” complained British Foreign Secretary Lord Clarendon to Prime Minister Lord Palmerston in December 1857, “all they wish for is freedom of interoceanic communication and this they believe can be achieved without a quarrel with the U.S.” Clarendon's bitter remark reflected his government's enduring frustration in arranging British holdings in Central America in accord with the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850. That diplomatic landmark was to have commenced an unprecedented era of Anglo-American cooperation in Central America that would finally fulfill the ancient dream of rapid interoceanic transit through the isthmus. The treaty prohibited colonization or fortification of Central America by either side and provided Anglo-American protection for a U.S. company's canalbuilding venture in Nicaragua. But the unfortunate document had yet to bring about the desired ends. No canal had materialized and the “Central American Question” would not go away. In vain the British government had tried to extricate itself from its embarassingly forward position in Central America. In the meantime, a wave of U.S. filibusters, urged on by the bold words and permissive attitude of their government, threatened to trample underfoot the treaty's prohibitions against foreign colonization. By the end of 1857, the Clayton-Bulwer treaty was in imminent danger of U.S. abrogation, and Palmerston and his cabinet had nearly despaired of ever exiting the isthmian quagmire with British honor intact, without at the same time opening the gates for the “most disageeable” Yankees.

In the study of Latin America's economic history, discussion of the role of the export sector in promoting development has entered a provocative new stage. Recently, advances in the understanding of export economies have questioned the view that export orientation is the principal cause of underdevelopment and dependence. New studies have demonstrated the impact of export growth on the increasingly efficient use of domestic factors of production improvement of transportation networks, urban and industrial diversification, and active state intervention accompanied by the rising political influence of middle and labor sectors. Yet despite the perceived importance of domestic and foreign credit during the heyday of export-led growth, and the often underestimated but crucial native struggle to control and direct Latin American financial structures, few of those works have analyzed the crucial links between the economic structure and native financial development.

The fall of Nicaraguan strongman Anastasio Somoza in July 1979 contributed to the publication of an abundance of literature on United States-Central American relations and, like the literature before it, focused largely upon the crisis at hand. Two historical surveys appeared. Walter LaFeber's Inevitable Revolutions: The United States and Central America represented a revisionist approach, charging that United States economic imperialism is responsible for the present crisis. John Finding's Close Neighbors, Distant Friends: United States-Central American Relations is a straightforward account describing Washington's response to various crisis. Still an analysis of the literature is absent. In an effort to address that issue, this article examines the literature on United States-Central American relations in the twentieth century and concludes that the United States acted on behalf of its own security interests, whether or not the threat of foreign intervention had been real or imagined. In effect, the United States maintained the status quo and failed to deal with the structural problems responsible for the contemporary crisis.