The Moment of Truth has come for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The US Congress will have to stop talking and vote to accept or reject the agreement negotiated among Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The disagreement on NAFTA in the United States is about free trade with Mexico, not with Canada. A US-Canada free trade agreement (FTA) already exists.

This controversy over NAFTA has been fierce in the United States, much more so than in Mexico. This comparison speaks volumes about changing attitudes. It was almost unthinkable a decade ago that Mexico would so drastically alter its traditional position of maintaining economic and political distance from the United States. This change would not have been possible but for la decena trágica, the years of the 1980s. Beyond that, Mexico has more at stake in a free trade agreement. It has the smaller economy (about 1/27th that of the United States) so that changes, for better or worse, are magnified.

Democracy has been better to the Venezuelan Church than many of its leaders or militants thought possible as they witnessed its rebirth in the early days of 1958. Despite the hierarchy's role in stimulating and legitimating opposition to the Pérez Jiménez regime, and its effusive praise of democracy as a system (Conferencia Episcopal Venezolana, 1958), private fears were great. After all, the years of military rule had been good times for the Church—Catholic institutions (particularly in education) had prospered, and their leaders responded with broad support for the military regime until shortly before the end (Colmenares Diaz, 1961).

The Church's traditional attitude towards democracy had been a mix of suspicion of majoritarian principles of rule and specific rejection of what it saw as democracy's embodiment in Venezuela in Acción Democrática (Levine, 1973: 38-42, 62-93). This party's policies were seen as secularizing, socialistic, and anti-Catholic, and bitter memories of clashes with Acción Democrática governments in the late 1940s remained vivid.

Suspecting that his electoral campaign had received contributions from the Cali drug cartel, the U.S. government considered Colombian president Ernesto Samper (1994–98) an enemy in the drug war. U.S. antidrug policy accordingly targeted not just illicit crop cultivation, traffickers, and money laundering but also the democratically elected president himself. In many ways, U.S. policy became obsessed with bringing down Samper, an “explicit narcotization” that had severe consequences for the two countries' relationship. This case study analyzes the often complex interactions between dominant and subordinate states, especially when the dominant state's involvement in the subordinate state is driven by domestic political concerns.

This article aims to assess how democracy affects social welfare by analyzing Uruguay and Paraguay, one country with a vibrant democratic history and a progressive political landscape, the other with a generally authoritarian past and a conservative dominant party. The article maintains that welfare systems in these countries have been critically shaped by the impact of democracy, or by its absence, and by the strategies adopted by major social and political actors, especially parties; these strategies have been determined, in turn, by parties' ideologies and by the workings of electoral competition. The article also emphasizes that the impact of democracy on social welfare is critically mediated by the role of previous welfare legacies, the presence of welfare constituencies defending acquired rights and privileges, and social and economic variables, such as overall wealth levels, the formal or informal nature of labor markets, and the political organization of domestic economies.

This article explores how Argentina and Chile put aside a century-long rivalry to form a dynamic regional partnership in the years after 1984. Their experience suggests that interstate behavior is more complex than many theories admit. Cooperation increased during and after the Cold War, with severe and moderate debt burdens, between economic liberalizers and statists, and under authoritarian and democratic regimes. This study uses institutional analysis to argue that executives were the indispensable actors who combined institutionally focused incentives and the ability to forge cooperative agreements. Previous attempts between Argentina and Chile, as well as elsewhere on the continent, failed when weak executives in one or both countries could not sustain cooperation over domestic opposition. Two crucial points are Alfonsín's and Pinochet̂s foundation-building agreements in 1984–85 and Menem's and Aylwin's deepening institutionalization of the relationship in 1990–91.

Since 2005, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) has become a predominant party in the Bolivian party system. Despite its origin as a small, indigenous, and peasant-based party, the MAS has achieved an electoral performance unprecedented in Bolivian political history. What accounts for its electoral rise? Unlike available explanations based on sociostructural, institutional, or contextual factors, this article argues that ideological location decisions served as a signaling device that allowed the MAS to differentiate itself from its competitors. In so doing, the party managed to transcend the border of ethnic and regional cleavages, appealing to a broader electorate, which contributed decisively to its electoral success. Using data from public opinion surveys and based on statistical models, this article shows that ideology was pivotal in Bolivians’ decisions to vote for the MAS, particularly during the early period of its electoral takeoff.

U.S. policy toward Mexico has been influenced by a “drug war” frame that has left little rhetorical and operational room for creative multisectoral strategies to stem the violence and address its causes. This article proposes conflict analysis, a lens for viewing conflict that brings into focus a multilevel, integrative diagnosis of the violence in Mexico and supports recent evolutions in Plan Mérida toward a more holistic peacebuilding approach.

The evolution of national universities in Latin America is closely related to major political and social changes. The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) is no exception. As elsewhere in Latin America, we are witnessing in Mexico the transition from a preindustrial, agricultural society to an urbanized industrialized nation. The deep transformations are reflected in the transformation of the elitist universities of the turn of the century, strictly oriented toward the liberal professions, into a new type of university whose character remains as yet undefined (Trow, 1970).

In June 1977, Argentine army forces in Entre Rios, Corrientes, and Missiones went on alert; while across the Rio Uruguay, Brazilian garrisons throughout Rio Grande do Sul readied themselves. The nerve center at Santa Maria vibrated with activity and even friendly military observers were warned away.

Some months previously the book El Espacio Argentino by Pablo R. Sanz had been published in Argentina outlining various hypotheses of how a war with Brazil might be conducted (Sanz, 1976: 335-351). The book had been circulated through the Brazilian general staff. Although it carried nothing new for the intelligence services, its publication was taken as an indication of Argentine attitudes.

Drug Abuse and Attempts to Control the flow of illicit narcotics have come to pervade US relations with the Third World in recent years. The drug issue carries substantial potential for conflict and mutual recrimination between North and South. The main dmg-consuming countries are rich and industrialized; the main drug-producing countries are poor and predominantly agricultural. The drug trade generates a transfer of resources from North to South and has gained a powerful economic foothold in some Third World countries. Producing countries and consuming countries blame each other for the accelerating drug traffic and advocate, respectively, demand-side and supply-side solutions. US programs to control drug cultivation and production overseas often impinge on nationalist sensitivities. Moreover, political elites in some Third World countries view anti-drug crusades as imposing significant economic and social costs as well as creating new and formidable political challenges.

For the uninitiated the subject of moral reform appears to be a topic best suited for examining the traditional view of the Latin American woman: that of a female preoccupied with sin and salvation and with no interest in the world outside the home or increased rights for her sex. Closer investigation reveals, however, that moral reform movements often have indicated women's active presence and concern about the direction of a nation's social policies and customs. (Addams, 1912: 160-195; Davis, 1973; Smith-Rosenberg, 1971: 381-385, 562-564). Involvement in moral reform activities often but not always has meant that a woman considered herself a feminist and believed that the goals of these two movements were inextricably linked together. In order to explore these two hypotheses, this essay will focus on Paulina Luisi (1875-1950), an Uruguayan doctor whose lifelong dedication to moral reform and feminism earned her an international reputation as a fighter for one sexual moral standard and women's rights (Mapons, 1950; Scarone, 1937: 284-289). Examining her extensive writings and many projects provides an excellent insight into two movements which claimed the loyalty of numerous women activists, both bourgeois and socialist, in Latin America, Europe, and the United States (Addams, 1912; Chataway, 1962; Lloyd, 1971; Luisi, 1948). Given the Latin American context and the time period, Luisi can be seen as a major figure in the international feminist and moral reform movements.

Although decentralization is probably the institutional reform most frequently proposed for Third World countries, it has proven to be an elusive topic for both practitioners and analysts of development. Studies of centralization and decentralization are overwhelmingly descriptive, formalistic, or episodic. This article attempts to improve our understanding of how macro-political factors affect the adoption and implementation of decentralization policies in Latin America.

Since mid-1989, remarkable political and economic changes have occurred in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Although the countries differ with regard to the scope, speed, and sequence of these changes, in the economic arena the objective is, in all cases, to abandon traditional central planning and replace it with a market economy. An integral component of these efforts to establish markets is the reform of foreign economic relations and greater involvement in the world economy.

While a tide of political and economic change has swept the East, Cuba has adamantly held on to a one-party political system and to orthodox central planning.

Mexico's Foreign Policy of 1990 was marked by an acceleration of trends that began a few years ago, producing a pattern of relationships that would have been almost unimaginable only a decade ago. On the one hand, its most obvious characteristic — begun during the de la Madrid sexenio and heightened during Salinas's first year in office — was that economic recovery became the focal point of government strategy: i.e., there was an “economization” of foreign policy. On the other hand, and reflecting the weight given to economic issues, the movement toward integration with the United States — a trend already apparent in the previous administration — picked up speed and acted as a direct complement of the development strategy. This move became more concrete as preliminary talks got under way preparatory to signing a joint free trade treaty.

The coming to power of the Bolivian National Revolutionary Movement (Movimento Nacionalista Revolucionario—MNR) marks a major break in Bolivia's continuity of development, a major recasting of her social order. As a result of the 1952 Revolution the political and economic power of the traditional elite, which rested upon its ownership and control of most of the nation's land and natural resources, was substantially eliminated; power passed into the hands of new groups, including an emerging middle class, which was primarily responsible for the 1952 Revolution, and the Indian population, which for the first time acquired a considerable measure of economic independence and the opportunity to participate in national politics.

Using Canada's relations with the Americas as a case study, this article seeks to better understand the link between identity and foreign policy. It argues that there is a gap between the Canadian government's recent efforts to construct a state identity increasingly turned toward the Americas and Canadians' national identity as it is expressed through public opinion. It concludes that the most plausible explanation for this gap probably has to do with Canada's European cultural heritage. The analysis shows that the projection of national identity into foreign policy is a much more complex process than the projection of state identity.

This article examines the nature of the emerging regional economic regime in the Americas and argues that the dominant approach to economic governance is one defined by the assertion of U.S. power in the region and oriented toward distinctively U.S. interests and preferences. This has been clearly evident in the evolution of the Free Trade Area of the Americas but also, with the deceleration and fragmentation of that process during 2002 and 2003, in the growing prioritization of bilateralism. The leverage afforded by the bilateral negotiation of trade agreements acts to situate primary influence in shaping the rules that constitute the regional economic regime, and the primary functions associated with governing in this context, firmly within the agencies of the U.S. state. This essay therefore explores how the hegemonic power of the United States manifests itself in the substance of the hemispheric project and the shape of the economic regime associated with it.

The Redman, the Negro, and the white man were the three colors in the human palette of Nueva Granada. With these and their derivatives time has worked, during the course of four centuries, to create every possible mixture, blend, and shade of mankind, every human color possible without the addition of the yellow element from Asia. But the more important blendings were those of the white and Indian to form the great mestizo group of the highlands and of the white and Negro to produce the mulattoes who share the hot, sultry lowlands with the more pure-blooded descendants of the Africans. In the twentieth century the immigration of a few hundred Japanese, who settled in the Cauca Valley, has added the last of the major human types to the population of Colombia.

Long a region seemingly immune to modernization and relegated to governmental neglect, the Brazilian Amazon has nonetheless frequently been the theme of political rhetoric. While the area has stagnated, Brazilians have continually referred to it as the “Land of Promise.” Now, however, it appears that Amazonia is finally to become a major government beneficiary.

An area comprising 42 percent of Brazil's territory but only about three percent of its population, a land often inaccurately portrayed as both a “Green Hell” and a “Green Paradise,” the Amazon recently has been selected by President Garrastazu Médici as the site of a major development effort. Its colonization and economic development have been assigned priority status within the president's “Plan for National Integration.”

Widespread malnutrition persists in Guatemala despite substantial economic growth since 1960. Indeed, there was a deterioration in the living standards of many (for example, the Indians in the Western highlands) even prior to the destruction caused by the government's pacification campaigns of the early 1980s. Chronic and widespread malnutrition has not been the result of just “natural causes”; to the contrary, it is the intent of this study to document that Guatemala's extraordinarily high level of malnutrition is the result of structural transformations and public policy, as well as demographics.

This argument has been documented best, in a Central American context, by two excellent works on El Salvador. Durham (1979: 21-51) presented a thorough analysis that demonstrates that land scarcity has not been primarily the result of a high rate of population growth (although that certainly contributes) but, instead, of increasing land concentration.