In Review
From Gunboats to Diplomacy: New U.S. Policies for Latin America edited by Richard Newfarmer. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 250 pp. $25.00 (cloth); $11.95 (paper). Published in the spring...
...The authors' views may already be familiar...
...Two theoretical overviews lead into ten country case studies, then three essays on recent developments in the policy field...
...Rebellion in the Veins: Political Struggle in Bolivia 1952-1982 by James Dunkerley...
...19.95 (cloth...
...In 1981, the Center for the Study of the Americas (CENSA), a non-profit organization devoted to the study of Latin America and the Caribbean, sponsored a discussion to address U.S...
...10.00 (paper...
...St.Martin's Press, 228 pp...
...Most people know Bolivia as a cocaine center, the site of Che Guevara's death and a paradigm of political instability...
...The text follows in a useful manner...
...The authors are 16 well-known experts in the field, several of whom were active in foreign policy during the Carter Administration, and in this collection they challenge the findings of the Kissinger Commission at every level...
...Almost a year after the U.S...
...The essays are written by CENSA staff members David Landes, Patricia Flynn and Roger Burbach (the last two are also former NACLA staff) and by five academics based at universities in California and the Northeast...
...The Politics of Intervention: The United States in Central America edited by Roger Burbach and Patricia Flynn...
...Published in the spring of this year, this collection of essays came as a response to the Kissinger Commission report...
...The authors also provide interesting insights into the Grenadian domestic setting and the dissolution of the People's Revolutionary Government in this valuable study...
...The fact that the British government itself extended export credit to Plessey, the firm contracted for electronic control tower apparatus at Point Salines airport, but was not consulted by Reagan on its alleged military specifications, for example, has altered British perceptions of the 'mutual trust and cooperation" of the Reagan/Thatcher alliance...
...Grenada: Revolution and Invasion by Anthony Payne, Paul Sutton and Tony Thorndike...
...Nonetheless, this book should help illuminate the debate on foreign policy alternatives...
...The machinations of U.S...
...invasion of Grenada, a volume of literature on that nation and the bizzare events of its recent history is beginning to appear-with most of the new material by British writers...
...Dunkerley states that beside certain academic specialists, only Trotskyists, who claim a large constituency there, identify strongly with the Bolivian experience-a fact that would seem only to enhance its obscurity...
...The material on Britain's role, or perhaps missing role, is of particular interest...
...Verso Editions (distributed by Schocken Books), 373 pp...
...Monthly Review Press/Center for the Study of the Americas, 250 pp...
...corporate interests are closely scrutinized in this informative addition to policy studies...
...According to Dunkerley, only two English-language books currently in print offer in-depth studies of Bolivia's 1952 revolution, and even Spanish texts have generally overlooked it...
...The ideas engendered in that conference form the basis of this collection...
...The extensive footnotes bespeak the copious research that went into this volume...
...9.50 (paper...
...The authors of Grenada are British academics specializing in international politics, and the emphasis of their study lies on the involvement and response of the international community in recent Grenadian history...
...The introduction opens, appropriately enough, with Kissinger's infamous 1969 remark to the Chilean foreign minister--'What happens in the South is of no importance . . . "then proceeds to dissect Reagan's bellicose and misguided policies...
...interests in Central America...
...The authors have taken the useful step of looking at motives behind the Administration's blatantly wrongheaded policies in the region...
...But now Dunkerley has produced a very detailed and readable history of Bolivia over the 30 years since the 1952 revolution...
...The rugged isolation of Bolivia's geography mirrors a recent trend in political discourse on Latin America that has managed to reduce that nation, a center of considerable power in both pre-Columbian and colonial eras, to something of a nonentity...
Vol. 18 • September 1984 • No. 5
