This article analyses the role of the public sector in providing social insurance and assistance to the elderly in Argentina between the late nineteenth century and the present day. It assesses the extent to which this involvement embodied clear-cut development paradigms or was driven by political pressures. Between the 1940s and 1970s the public sector enjoyed a monopoly of insurance and assistance provision, with the private and voluntary sectors largely excluded. These monopolies failed to provide satisfactory levels of a welfare and proved financially unsustainable. By the 1980s a gradual process of pluralisation had begun, which culminated with the partial privatisation of social insurance in 1994.

Whilst much illuminating research has been conducted into early British diplomatic and commercial activity in the River Plate, few scholars have yet focused upon the lives of individual settlers in any detail. The present article moves some way towards redressing this imbalance through the study of the Gibsons, a prominent Argentine-Scottish family with pioneering interests in commerce and sheep breeding. The analysis gives special weight to letters exchanged by the brothers Robert and George Gibson during the late 1830s, casting light upon the incomers' perspective of political turbulence as dissident forces fought to depose the dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas.

As the rebels of Guinea-Bissau fought for independence from Portugal, Cuban military instructors stood by their side and Cuban doctors treated their wounds. Joining the rebellion in 1966, and remaining through the war's end in 1974, this was the longest Cuban intervention in Africa before the despatch of troops to Angola in November 1975. It was also the most successful. As the Guinean paper Nõ Pintcha declared, ‘The Cubans' solidarity was decisive for our struggle’. Cuba's contribution to Guinea-Bissau's war of independence is an important and revealing example of Cuban policy in Africa.

During his five years as chief US policy-maker towards Puerto Rico, Ernest Gruening strove to create a model – based on the anti-imperialist principles he had outlined in the 1920s – for a reformist policy which the United States could pursue towards the rest of Latin America. The initial support of Franklin Roosevelt allowed Gruening to position his Puerto Rican programme as one of the three ideological alternatives present in the early stages of the Good Neighbour Policy. The collapse of Gruening's scheme provided US policymakers with an early illustration of the difficulty of imposing reform with insufficient local support.

This article examines the role of the Protestant Moravian Church in the politicisation of Miskitu ethnic identity, and on the mobilisation of the Miskitu against the Sandinistas during the 1980s. It argues that changes in the institution of the Church during the 1960s and 70s, as a result of state policy, socio-economic context and internal conflicts within Miskitu society, led to Moravianism becoming a cultural marker of Miskitu ethnicity. At the same time, the encounter with and appropriation of the pastoral tactics of a Catholic priest resulted in a radicalisation of Miskitu Moravian pastors on indigenous issues. When the Miskitu came to mobilise against the Sandinistas, the Moravian Church was the expressive vehicle and the institutional means through which the mobilisation took place. The article reveals how politicised ethnic identities find their expression in religious institutions.

This article examines the demise of the Grenadian People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) in the summer of 1983 and the internal power struggle that destroyed the PRG in October that year, culminating in the execution of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. A detailed analysis of events and interactions between Grenada, Barbados and the United States in the week prior to the crisis period of 19–25 October is provided. I conclude that this pre-crisis period established the foundations for, and direction of, subsequent decision-making and explains why a military intervention solution was chosen and subsequently occurred only five days after Bishop's death.

The collapse of Cuba's import-intensive sugar economy in the 1990s is analysed in the context of the disintegration of COMECON and of the USSR. Salient features of post-revolutionary cane farming are contrasted with those of the 1950s. Falling production in the 1990s, and the main institutional responses to it, are compared with those of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The analysis is illustrated with primary data collected in fieldwork carried out in 1994 and before. The complexities of current ‘technical regression’ from more to less import-intensive agricultural practices are outlined and the impact of acute national investment constraints upon the recovery prospects of the sugar economy are appraised.

When Cuban MiGs blasted two civilian planes out of the sky over the Straits of Florida on February 24 1996, they also destroyed any chance of improved relations between Cuba and the United States as long as Fidel Castro remains in power. In Washington, outrage over the shoot-down resurrected the Helms-Burton bill, the most punitive legislation on Cuba since the early 1960s. On 12 March, President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law as the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996. In addition to assorted sanctions aimed at foreigners doing business in Cuba, the most consequential provision incorporates the US economic embargo into law. Heretofore, the embargo was based on presidential executive orders; it could be tightened or loosened at the president's discretion as conditions warranted. Under Helms-Burton, no president can lift or even relax the embargo until Fidel Castro and the existing Cuban regime fall from power. At a time when Cuba's domestic social and economic system is changing at break-neck speed, Washington's 35-year-old policy of hostility has just been chiselled in stone.