At the time of independence, CARICOM states found themselves extremely dependent upon the international economy, in part a legacy from the economic structure developed during their colonial period and in part due to the small size of their economies. Similar to most third world countries at the time, these economies relied heavily on one or two mineral and/or agricultural export commodities for foreign exchange, government revenue and employment. Furthermore, the prices of these commodities were subject to the vagaries of the international market, making the market for their exports unstable to an untenable degree for these vulnerable price-takers. This highly dependent state also exhibited many other well-known characteristics of underdevelopment, such as low levels of human resource development, savings and investment, technological capacity, and foreign exchange earnings.

Pronouncements by the Reagan Administration not withstanding, the oft repeated accusation that Nicaragua is but a Soviet or Cuban pawn does not appear consistent with a closer examination of the facts (see NACLA, 1985). Beginning with the original 1969 FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) Program, the Sandinista leadership which now rules Nicaragua has steadfastly maintained its nonaligned orientation. In fact, since coming to power, the Sandinistas have not only become active members of the Nonaligned Movement, but have also used their ties with the Nonaligned to explain their policies and to garner much needed international support for their actions. In the process, they appear to have taken full advantage of policy options created by the development of the Nonaligned Movement and only recently available to Latin American nations.

The United States Government, over the past several years, has endeavored to utilize its abundance of agricultural commodities for the promotion of economic development in certain foreign locales. The disposal of surplus food and fiber products purportedly serves the dual purpose of alleviation of domestic over-production and assistance to underdeveloped countries engaged in a struggle for economic advancement. The two programs which attempt an integration of surplus disposal with foreign economic assistance are Section 402 of the Mutual Security Act and the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act (PL 480).

This Article Assesses the impact of the Cuban military on strategic, diplomatic and political relationships in southern Africa. It does not deal with why Cuba and its Soviet benefactor have interested themselves in the region, nor does it discuss Soviet influence on Cuban foreign policy. The aspects covered here include: (1) how Cuba and Angola fit into the complex pattern of regional relations in southern Africa; (2) an outline of the region's main territorial actors and guerrilla movements, along with a brief history of Cuban involvement in the area; (3) the response of South Africa to this foreign spoiler of its regional hegemony, (4) regional cooperation in southern Africa insofar as it is a response to South Africa's militancy in the face of international communism as represented in the region by Cuba; and (5) Cuba's effect upon the economy and polity of Angola and Mozambique.

Of all the generalizations about Chile, those dealing with geography are the most accurate. Geographical facts have given shape and character to Chilean life and Chilean problems. Nature gave the heart of Chile patches of excellent soil and a climate kind to man. But this central valley is isolated, bounded on the north by desert, the east by towering mountains, the west by a cold and tempestuous ocean, and the south by the end of the world. Ownership of the land has been the keystone of Chilean history, and the fertile land is in the core region of the nation. There, in Mediterranean Chile, live three-quarters of the nation's population, there resides the political power in a unitary republic in which the president appoints provincial governors and there are no provincial assemblies, there are owned and managed the enterprises of north and south.

To what extent can presidents exert gatekeeping power in opposition-led legislatures? Drawing on a study of roll rates in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, where presidents lack legislative majorities and often face a legislature controlled by the opposition, this article argues that gatekeeping power is divided among multiple actors. It finds that presidents exert weak gatekeeping power over the agenda. While presidents and their parties are rarely defeated in votes related to presidential initiatives, they generally create stable, informal coalitions with opposition parties to pass their bills. Moreover, the agenda-setting power of the president and the president’s party is weaker with bills that originate in the legislative branch, where the party is occasionally rolled on legislative initiatives and during the amendment stage if it is not also the median party.

This research note takes advantage of a novel dataset to analyze legislators’ behavior in Uruguay’s Parliament. Comparing the positions of legislators based on floor speeches and roll-call voting, it discusses the relationship between discourse and voting among individual legislators and parties. The dataset contains more than 57,000 speeches from more than 1,000 Uruguayan legislators between 1985 and 2015 and its related R package. The study estimates the parties’ policy positions on the basis of two data sources, roll-call votes and floor speeches, and then compares both results. Contrary to expectations, no clear association appears between the two scaling methods, demonstrating that vote and legislative speech may reflect the behavior of individual legislators with potentially conflicting goals. Strategic calculations or party discipline may be plausible explanations for the divergent results obtained from text and roll-call scaling methods.

There are at least two reasons for United States and Latin American historians to bring their work together in a comparative thesis, the first being the need to maximize control of generalizations, and the second being the need to write the history of the social process by which a single world community has been developing since the sixteenth century. Recently, considerable progress with the first task has been made in the study of slavery and race relations, but little progress can yet be reported with the second.

One result of the work on slavery and race relations ought to warn and encourage us. Without entering here into a discussion of the specific points of view advanced by Frank Tannenbaum, Marvin Harris, Sidney Mintz, Stanley Elkins, Gilberto Freyre, Herbert Klein, and so many others, it could be demonstrated that the comparisons of slavery in the United States, South America, and the Caribbean have so far proven enormously important in clarifying issues and stimulating new research and yet have failed to yield some of the most sought-after generalizations.

“This period [1928-1934] between the murder of Obregón and the election of Lázaro Cárdenas is most perplexing,” wrote one of the most perceptive foreign observers of the Mexican scene some years ago. “If it were possible to discover what had taken hold of the leadership of Mexico in those debased and clouded years, it would illumine much of Mexican history.”

What are the reasons for perplexity? Basically, they are two: that the events of this period do not seem to fit the generally accepted view that the history of Mexico from 1910 to the present day forms one grand panorama of historical evolution called the Mexican Revolution, and that the only explanation that has been offered of why they do not seems inherently improbable. The view that the Mexican Revolution is a coherent whole we owe principally to the Mexicans themselves and to sociologists who see revolutions in general and the “Great Revolutions” in particular as social rather than political events.

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.

One of the most dramatic political-economic changes over the last 15 years has been the shift in patterns of international finance. At the beginning of the 1980s, a select group of prosperous Third World nations had privileged access to an enormous volume of commercial bank credit. They could also attract fairly important levels of direct investment. For all practical purposes, finance was no longer a binding constraint on the development strategies of this group of countries. Although poorer developing nations could not rely on private credit or investment, many of them had access to substantial amounts of funds via bilateral donors and the multilateral institutions.

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.

Following the broad pattern of the nineteenth century, Venezuelan government in the 1900's continued to serve as the personal preserve of caudillos. A shift in regional emphasis had been registered in 1899 when Cipriano Castro descended from the Andean southwest and marched to Caracas and the presidency. Less than a decade later, afflicted with collapsing health induced by extreme moral dissolution, simultaneously victimized by his principal lieutenant, Castro left Venezuela. Remaining in exile until his death sixteen years later, he saw power fall into the hands of his former colleague from the mountains of Táchira, Juan Vicente Gómez.

The essay by Murillo, Shrank, and Luna constitutes a much-needed and welcome wake-up call for those of us who study Latin America—and for political scientists more generally. The authors make a plea for “a rigorous, comparative, and empirically grounded” study of Latin American political economy. I fully agree with their diagnosis of this field and their recommendations. I also praise the authors for defining political economy broadly—rather than narrowly, through a focus on research methods. They understand political economy to encompass all the economic, social, and political factors that are either contextual conditions or consequences of major macroeconomic transformations. Thus the authors lay out an important research agenda for the study of Latin American political economy that includes not only issues of economic development and inequality, but also patterns of democratic politics, state capacities, the rule of law, identity politics, and international linkages, among others. For the authors, the major political and economic transformations that the region has undergone since the start of the twentyfirst century—in its postneoliberal era—cry out for a contextualized research agenda and, I would add, open a host of opportunities for theoretical and conceptual innovation.

Uruguay's stable, institutionalized party system has undergone substantial changes in recent years, both from the increasing electoral strength of the left and from changes made to the electoral system in 1996. Analyzing the debut of that new system in the 1999 national and 2000 municipal elections, this article concludes that Uruguay is moving from what was a fairly evenly divided three-party system to one in which the longstanding traditional parties will confront, as a bloc, the stronger left. The electoral analysis shows that the bloc dynamic took over whenever elections were close between the left and one of the traditional parties.