It was hardly surprising that the December 1989 US intervention in Panama received strong public support. General Manuel Antonio Noriega had replaced Muammar al Qadaffi and the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the foreign leader the US public most loved to hate. In addition, the Bush administration was quickly able to proclaim its intervention in Panama a virtually unqualified success, confidently asserting that the stated goals of protecting US lives, capturing General Manuel Antonio Noreiga and sending him to the United States for trial, defending the Panama Canal Treaties, and “restoring democracy” to Panama had all been met (Christian Science Monitor, 1990). The US military is involved in helping form the new “Panamanian Public Force” (PPF) to replace General Noriega's Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) and US advisors are working to rebuild the economy.

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.

In December 1983, when Raúl Alfonsín and his Radical party assumed responsibility for Argentina's transition from authoritarian dictatorship to democracy, the economy was mired in deep crisis. Rather than a repetition of the familiar “stop-go” cycles of previous decades, the mid-1980s crisis was more structural in nature, stemming from a perverse logic deeply rooted in contemporary Argentine capitalism. Few Argentines, regardless of ideological persuasion, doubted that major reforms were imperative if the country's post-1930 model of import-substitution industrialization was to avoid total collapse. For Argentina's fledgling democracy, the task at hand could not have been more daunting — to reverse what Alfonsín himself had referred to as “50 years of decadence.”

Americans have been so transfixed by the fall of the Berlin Wall — and subsequently riveted to the Persian Gulf crisis — that they have failed to notice the crumbling of the walls that have segmented Mexico and separated it from the United States. Yet Mexico's opening may be more significant for the United States because of its potential for infusing both economies and reshaping the two societies. Challenging a long tradition of state control and anti—Americanism, Carlos Salinas de Gortari is leading this change, transforming Mexico and US-Mexican relations more profoundly and positively than any president in this century.

Not yet one-third into his term, he has already moved decisively to wrestle control from union bosses and drug traffickers; he has sold off state corporations, de-regulated large sectors of the economy, lowered trade and investment barriers, and began, grudgingly, to democratize. Yet his most daring gamble is his proposal for a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States, and he is ready to sell the idea in both countries.

Mainstream economists blame the poor 1980s economic performance of most Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries on the poor economic policies followed by the region for the past several decades and recommend drastic policy changes including (a) elimination of many subsidies, (b) lowering tariffs and other obstacles to international trade, (c) privatization of many state enterprises, (d) liberalization of capital markets and interest rates, and so on — a policy package designed to lower greatly the government's intervention in the economy. This policy advice has been inspired, at least in part, by the generally accepted failure of the LAC governments to promote stable and fair growth through intervention.

However, in spite of pressures by multilateral and bilateral agencies, most governments find it very difficult to implement these policies, even when policymakers and their advisers fully understand the logic behind the policy recommendations and agree with them.

Does electoral campaigning in Latin America make a difference, and does it merit the attention of scholars? This was at the core of an extensive bibliographic analysis, published nearly two decades ago, which noted the paucity of literature on the subject, extending throughout the Third World and even including Western Europe (Martz, 1971). However, the rising tide of military authoritarianism dramatically reduced the relevance of the question in the region, and students of Latin American politics turned away, understandably, from concerted attention to campaigns, elections, and parties. Only with the reemergence of democratic regimes in recent years has interest turned back toward older emphases (Martz, 1990). Once again, theoretical developments have been colored by the events of the day, reorienting scholarly attention “from the military overthrow of civilian regimes and Latin American authoritarianism toward the prospects and processes of redemocratization” (Malloy, 1987).

The February 1990 elections in Nicaragua were hailed by the popular media and the US administration as signaling the country's rejection of authoritarian rule in favor of Western-style democracy. Most commentators interpreted the results in Nicaragua as part of a worldwide trend triggered by events in Eastern Europe. According to the conventional wisdom, as long as the Sandinistas handed over power, including control of the military and security forces, democracy would flourish in Nicaragua.

While competitive elections may be a necessary condition for democracy, they certainly are not a sufficient one. Throughout history, countless elections have been held, yet relatively few have contributed much of anything to the consolidation of democratic rule. Elections can serve a number of functions other than the public contestation of power. For example, they can be used to legitimize an incumbent regime, diffuse political opposition, or respond to foreign pressure.

When barbados became the fourth English-speaking Caribbean country to achieve its constitutional independence, in November 1966, one of its prime responsibilities was to assume defense of the new state. How Barbados approached this problem of defense planning and policy-making in its first 22 years of nationhood (1966-1988) will be the focus of this study. No previous study devoted exclusively to this subject has been published in all this time, a most surprising omission.

Barbados defense policy may be divided into three phases which correspond, roughly, with the periods during which its two major parties — the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) and the Barbados Labor Party (BLP) — have alternated in power.

In the political debate which swirls around “democratization” Guatemala must be counted. The policies of its first civilian government since the 1960s, now completing its term, have been important for the success of regional peace. Yet a new wave of violence surrounds the preparation for elections and is testing the government's fragile accomplishments. Underlying such phenomena is Guatemala's struggle to discover what democracy really means in the Latin context where elected officials often serve as a façade for ongoing military control.The contest extends the debate beyond bourgeois and popular conceptions of democracy, especially when Guatemala's civilian-military government is characterized as a “permanent counter-insurgency state” (see Anderson and Simon, 1987; exchange of letters in The Nation, 1989; Guatemalan Church in Exile, 1989). Such a portrayal effectively reduces the nation's democratic manifestations to a charade.

Among the Many Changes initiated in the Soviet Union, President Gorbachev has not left untouched its policy towards the Third World. By the end of 1986, he had outlined a position radically different from that of his predecessors.

What characteristics distinguish this new face which Moscow intends to turn to the less developed countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America?

In the first place, the Soviet Union places strong emphasis on avoiding any more direct military obligations, such as those assumed in Angola, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and others in the past. The Soviet leadership has concluded that those obligations of “international solidarity,” far from representing gains and successes for the Kremlin, have represented a double loss.

The most remarkable development in Latin America during the economically “lost decade” of the 1980s is the regionwide process of redemocratization. Close to 90% of the people of the region are ruled by civilian governments. The flowering of democratic, pluralistic, and participatory systems is still a noble aspiration, but it is radically different from the bleak political landscape of the 1960s and 1970s, when military governments prevailed. Nor is the appurtenance of civilian government equal to democracy. There is a large variety of civilian-military coalitions possible in a democratic setting.

Nowhere on the crisis-ridden latin continent were hopes raised as high as they were in Peru with the 1985 election of Alan Garcia. Nowhere were hopes dashed as dramatically by the onset of an economic, social, and political crisis of unprecedented severity. There is no single explanation for the dismal performance of the APRA government. Indeed, the APRA's performance in power was in keeping with Peru's age-old paradox: an extremely poor record of social reform despite the longterm presence of a strong reformist party. This raises the question of why reform is so difficult to implement in Peru, and why APRA, in particular, proved so inept once in power. While external conditions were largely responsible for Peru's decade-long economic crisis, yet they were far less important than domestic political factors in explaining the APRA's disastrous performance.

This article will argue that general agreement between Cuba and the Soviet Union on their foreign policy toward Latin America is likely over the long run, despite (a) Fidel Castro's condemnation of perestroika and glasnost, and (b) his obvious attempt to embarrass Soviet Secretary-General Mikhail Gorbachev during the latter's state visit to Cuba in April 1989. Serious obstacles — such as differences over Cuban domestic policy and Castro's personal ambitions — remain to be overcome, but foreign policy disagreements between the two countries are likely to prove less intractable than is frequently assumed.

This article will start with (1) an overview of Cuban Latin American foreign policy since the 1970s; then proceed to (2) an interpretation of Soviet “new thinking;” and finally (3) argue that this particular interpretation of “new thinking” is consistent with, and not contradictory to, Castro's foreign policy.

Fully two and a half years before its advent, the year 1992 is progressively assuming an aura which is simultaneously hopeful and threatening, the end of one era and the beginning of another. The attitude which any individual country, or any group of countries adopts towards 1992 will, of course, be largely dependent upon the perspectives from which the events scheduled to take place in 1992 are viewed by the particular country or countries. Therefore it is apposite, if not essential, for those of us in the Caribbean to understand fully the meaning and implications of 1992 and, armed with such understanding, to fashion appropriate responses to the challenges which 1992 will present throughout the rest of this century and into the next.

The Coup d'Etat that overthrew General Alfredo Stroessner on the second night of February 1989 signaled the beginning of a new era for Paraguayan politics and the close of another chapter of Latin American caudillismo. He was replaced by General Andrés Rodríguez, Paraguay's second most powerful figure, in what was, in effect, a “palace coup.” General Rodríguez startled the nation by issuing a proclamation that called for (a) democratization of Paraguay, (b) full respect for human rights, and (c) restoration of the badly damaged relations with the Catholic Church. The proclamation ushered in a series of events which amazed the populace even more: opposition leaders — once banned and exiled by the Stroessner regime — were embraced and greeted by longtime adversaries; dozens of prominent exiled figures returned to find an enthusiastic atmosphere; political prisoners were freed; while corruption and torture became the subject of national debate as people sought both to uncover, and to bury, the legacy of the Stroessner years.

Within the international politics of the Caribbean Basin attention is only rarely paid to the position of Belize. This neglect is the more remarkable since Belize epitomizes — more precisely than any other territory of the region — the characteristic geopolitical problem of the Caribbean caught, as it were, uneasily between the United States, Latin America and Europe. Yet, despite being threatened by the Guatemalan claim to sovereignty over its territory, which delayed its independence until 1981, Belize has skillfully taken advantage of its British colonial past to carve out for itself a distinctive geopolitical space in Central America and the Caribbean. This has allowed it not only to remain relatively undisturbed by the conflicts which have riven the other states of the Central American isthmus, but also to display a commitment to democratic change strong enough to sustain the electoral defeat — in December 1984 — of a regime which had held power in the country for more than thirty years, as well as the defeat of its successor — in September 1989 — after just one term in office.

Cuba has entered the decade of the 1990s in a state of profound existential crisis. The countries of Eastern Europe, whose economic and political institutions and ideologies were adopted by Cuba, albeit with some modifications, were abandoning those same institutions and ideologies. Cuba's place in the international system had become one of growing isolation: Cuba had become a curiosity from the 1960s rather than the wave of the future, as it once perceived itself. By mid-1990, it appeared almost certain that the generous subsidization of the Cuban economy by the Soviet Union was about to end. Moreover, the Cuban economy was in serious difficulty as a result of some external factors, namely the convertible currency debt crisis and the problems and uncertainties in its relationship with the Soviet Union since 1985, but also as a result of internal institutional incapacities and deformities.

Jaribbean scholars and analysts frequently point out that, despite its predominantly insular nature, it is not geography that accounts for the complexities and division of the Caribbean but, rather, history. Contemporary politics and international relations only confirm this judgment. As a result, and however unwillingly, we have become accustomed to viewing the region through narrow definitions and categories which, even though validated over time, contrast with the region's geographic, historical, political and economic reality.In the process, these limited views have given rise to persistent myths regarding both the region and its future.

Throughout its history, many names have been given to the area: from Antilles to West Indies to Caribbean Basin. The varying colonial contexts, as well as the diverse cultural and political assumptions of the main state actors involved in the area, have ascribed a wide variety of names to the region.

When speaking of the Caribbean, and taking into account the different historical assumptions and perceptions, three distinct definitions generally arise.

In a Nationally televised speech on 5 September 1989, President Bush outlined a comprehensive anti-drug program with both domestic and international dimensions. The objectives of this strategy, which was refined and submitted to the Congress on 25 January 1990, are to reduce the amount of cocaine, marijuana, heroin, and other dangerous drugs estimated to be entering the United States (a) by 15% within 2 years and (b) by 60% within 10 years.

The strategy includes a number of international components which differ greatly from policies of previous years. New to the strategy are provisions which: (1) provide — for the first time — support for limited economic assistance to major cocaineproducing countries; (2) concentrate more on disrupting the activities of the trafficking organizations [i.e. on seizing processing labs, chemicals and assets] and less on disrupting the activities of farmers [i.e., crop eradication]; (3) encourage increased levels of Andean nation military involvement in counter-narcotics operations; and (4) provide for enhanced US military support to host nation counter-narcotics forces.