Reviews
The Undermining of the Sandinista Revolution by Gary Prevost and Harry E. Vanden (eds.), Macmillan Press, 1997, 240 pp., $39.95 (Cloth). Violeta Chamorro was elected president of Nicaragua in...
...Job creation comes overwhelmingly at the lower end of the scale and locals are underrepresented in management positions...
...In the only chapter which deals with the popular response to the rollbacks, Pierre M. La Ram6e and Erica G. Polakoff describe the transformation of the Sandinista mass organizations...
...This collection examines what remained of the Sandinista project after six years of Chamorro's rule...
...Several attempts have been made to present a united front to foreign entities-one example being the attempt by the 34-member Caribbean Tourist Organization to collect uniform port charges on cruise ships...
...The Chamorro government took office pledging to roll back many of these changes...
...Economic stagnation was the biggest problem Chamorro faced, and several chapters overlap considerably on this topic: the overview by Gary Prevost, the examination of the political process by Harry Vanden, Richard StahlerSholk's account of structural adjustment policies and Cynthia Chavez Metoyer's analysis of its impact on women...
...The Sandinista revolution pursued national independence, state leadership of a mixed economy, social benefits for the country's poor majority and democratic empowerment of the population through mass organizations and guarantees of a wide variety of rights...
...The government cut back in health, education and state employment, privatized stateowned enterprises (where workers were able to preserve their positions in some firms by buying a share of the capital), attacked agrarian reform by returning properties to prerevolutionary owners and strangling credit, and encouraged foreign investment in a freetrade zone...
...Interviews with leaders make clear that the struggle to assert an independent role and provide for mass participation in a hostile political environment is daunting, Vol XXXI, No 3 Nov/DEc 1997 47 Vol XXXI, No 3 Nov/DEc 1997 47REVIEWS but that activists maintain a firm commitment to social justice...
...If governments do not act responsibly, Caribbean peoples in tourist-dependent countries will soon become, as the calypsonian sang, "like an alien in we own land...
...But the sledding is rough due to the involvement of the local elites in primary and secondary roles and to the competition that exists between islands...
...In cultural terms, resorts create what the tourists want to see rather than presenting authentic artistic creations...
...Patullo, for some reason, fails to add that almost all Caribbean beaches have problems with oil spills due to the fact that supertankers regularly criss-cross the area...
...As StahlerSholk shows, "structural adjustment" mainly meant reducing government spending in a (mostly futile) battle to contain inflation, without any real structural changes to reactivate production...
...Violeta Chamorro was elected president of Nicaragua in 1990, defeating the Sandinistas who had ruled since 1979...
...The new government can be expected to exacerbate the Chamorro government's policies, promoting accumulation of private capital and attacking unions, agrarian reform and other institutions through which the Sandinista government sought redistribution to the poor majority...
...Buffeted by the U.S.-financed Contra war, the Sandinistas left the economy in bad shape...
...Few still dispute that the vacation industry has become a permanent feature of the Caribbean or that it contributes hard currency for local economies...
...Several authors show that some of Chamorro's policies were anticipated by the Sandinista regime itself...
...The book was evidently completed before the 1996 election, and though several authors refer to Arnoldo Alemin as the likely victor, they do not satisfactorily account for the right-wing ascent which his election represented...
...Successive chapters look at the history of tourism, the interaction of resorts with local economies, planning (or the lack of it), employment, the tourists themselves, the cruise-ship component and the airlines and finally the influence on local culture...
...Local craftsman do the same...
...The industry, however, has reached a point where host nations have to take control before more environmental, social and cultural destruction occurs...
...The text is liberally sprinkled with revealing quotes from industry leaders, government officials and critics of the industry...
...Moreover, the industry often serves as a cover for the drug trade...
...To the Sandinista leadership, these organizations were vehicles to defend the revolution more than channels to express the popular will...
...As a SCUBA diver, I can attest to the often irreversible damage already done to Caribbean reefs...
...In five chapters, six authors examine Chamorro's economic policies, the domestic and international pressures which produced them, their impact on various segments of the population, and the efforts of the formerly government-sponsored Sandinista mass organizations to find a meaningful autonomous role...
...Cruise companies now tend to buy private islands rather than dock at local ports...
...They are unsparing of the Sandinistas' economic austerity program which betrayed their commitment to the poor, their exploitation of their positions of privilege and their vanguardist positions which denied real autonomy to the mass organizations...
...Like StahlerSholk, the authors put their topic in an international context, relating events in Nicaragua to issues of participatory socialist democracy and recent transformations of social movements in Latin America...
...Jack Hammond Last Resorts: The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean By Polly Patullo, Foreward by Michael Manley, a Latin American Bureau book, distributed by Monthly Review Press, 1996, 220 pp., $19 (paper...
...The book, unfortunately, focuses mostly upon the English-speaking Caribbean, with less attention given to Hispanic or Francophone areas...
...Patullo examines the industry in detail...
...The poor suffered: 50.3% of the population fell below the poverty line in 1993 and unemployment and underemployment reached 53.6% by 1994...
...Furthermore, employment is seasonal and usually dead-end...
...The book contains its quota of digs at Cuba, though it never explains the real reason behind the recent development of tourism there...
...The Chamorro government failed to reactivate it...
...The author correctly notes that not just foreign corporations prey on the islands, but local entrepreneurs (most notably Butch Stewart of the Sandals chain) have jumped on the bandwagon as well...
...Increasingly, Caribbean nations have been taking note of the industry's downside...
...While unemployment and impoverishment were foreseeable consequences of the government's policies, these did not even succeed on their own terms...
...Stahler-Sholk's chapter is the most valuable, examining Nicaragua's domestic economic policies and its relations with international financial institutions vis a vis the hemispheric dominance of neoliberalism...
...The trend toward all-inclusive hotels and playgrounds, for example, means few linkages with local economies...
...The threat to use an alternate port of call or build a resort elsewhere is real...
...This excellent book asks whether Caribbean tourism is the future engine of growth in the area, or whether is it the engine of shortterm cash and long-term disaster...
...And this does not just mean that local entrepreneurs grab a greater share of the business...
...The assessment comes across decidedly negative...
...The main argument now concerns who controls it and how it develops...
Vol. 31 • November 1997 • No. 3
