Caribbean Review

CA?,BBCAN
Summer 1979
Vol. VIII, No. 3
Two Dollars

The Caribbean in the Year 2000
Cuba's Struggle for Third World Leadership, The Trouble with
Latin America, Discovering a New Panamanian Author

a *

* -

H Certificate

slIn

SCarbbean-

Latin American

Studies

College of Arts and Sciences
Florida International University
* Over 55 Caribbean and Latin
American related courses offered
from ten departments in the College
of Arts and Sciences.
* Certificate requirements include:
successful completion of five
Caribbean and/or Latin American
related courses and one independent
study/research project, from at least
three departments; demonstration
of related language proficiency in

Spanish, Portuguese, or French.
* Certificate program is open to both
degree and non-degree seeking
students.
* Expanded University support through
special "Program of Distinction"
status awarded to Caribbean-Latin
American Studies.
* Expanded Library holdings in
Caribbean-Latin American materials.
* Periodic campus visits from
distinguished scholars in Caribbean
and Latin American studies.

Caribbean-Latin American Studies Faculty
Ricardo Arias, Philosophy and Religion James A. Mau, Sociology
Ken I. Boodhoo, International Relations Florentin Maurrasse, Physical Sciences
Judson M. DeCew, Political Science Ramon G. Mendoza, Modern Languages
Luis Escovar, Psychology Raul Moncarz, Economics
Robert Farrell, Education Pedro J. Montiel, Economics
Robert Grosse, International Business Mark B. Rosenberg, Political Science
John Jensen, Modern Languages Reinaldo Sanchez, Modern Languages
Barry B. Levine, Sociology Mark D. Szuchman, History
Anthony P Maingot, Sociology Maida Watson-Breslin, Modern Languages

For further
information,
contact:

Mark Rosenberg
Caribbean-Latin American Studies Council
Florida International University
Tamiami Trail, Miami, Florida 33199

CAJPBBeAN

SUMMER 1979 Vol. VIII, No. 3 Two Dollars

Editor
Barry B. Levine

Associate Editor
Pedro J. Montiel
Contributing Editors
Ricardo Arias
Ken I. Boodhoo
Jerry Brown
Judson M. DeCew
Robert E. Grosse
Herbert L. Hiller
Antonio Jorge
Gordon K. Lewis
Anthony P. Maingot
James A. Mau
Florentin Maurrasse
Raul Moncarz
Mark B. Rosenberg
MarkD.Szuchman
William T Vickers
Gregory B. Wolfe

Art Director
Juan Urquiola
Assistant to the Editor
Lucy Gonzalez
Bibliographer
Marian Goslinga
Sales and Marketing
Walter H. Hill
Publishing Consultants
Andrew R. Banks
Eileen Marcus
Advertising Consultants
Joe GuzmAn
Rosa Santiago

Caribbean Review, a quarterly journal dedicated
to the Caribbean, Latin America, and their emig-
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In this issue

page 4

page8

page 24

page 40

The Caribbean in the Year 2000
Growth without development?
Development without growth?
Aaron Segal

Cuba's Struggle for
Third World Leadership
Focus on the Movement of Nonaligned Nations
H. Michael Erisman

The Trouble with Latin America
The underdevelopment of political intelligence
Jean-F jr,n.:.i :, Revel
Translated by Roger Kaplan

The US and Central America
The growing crisis and American interests
Thomas W. Walker

What the Sandinistas Want
Not a new Cuba, but a new Nicaragua
Sergio Ramirez

Jamaica's Political Leaders
Michael Manley and Edward Seaga
Interviewed by Richard S. Hillman

The End of Paradise
On the development of Negril
Brian J. Hudson

Big Rage and Big Romance
Discovering a new Panamanian writer
By lan I. Smart

A Manual for Manuel
Reviewing Cortazar's new book
By Gerald Guinness

One Way or Another
Reviewing the Cuban movie
By Dennis West

Recent Books
An informative listing of books about the Caribbean,
Latin America, and their emigrant groups
Marian Goslinga

NEW FROM KTO PRESS

The Catalogue
of the
West India
Reference Library
Being the
National Library
of Jamaica
A photo-offset reproduction of the more
than 120,000 catalogue cards of the West
India Reference Library. The CATALOGUE
represents one of the most important
bibliographic guides to Caribbeana, past
and present, ever published.

Publication schedule:
Author/title and subject sections (including
serials)
6 vols. cloth $550.00 Available Fall 1979
Prints, photographs, other published maps, and
manuscripts
To be published during 1980.
Price to be announced.

"The West India Reference Library is the most
important collection of Caribbeana.... It is for-
tunate that the publication of the catalogue is
making this information available to libraries
and readers all over the world."
-Jean Blackwell Hutson
Chief, The Schomburg Center for Research in
Black Culture, New York Public Library
"The West India Reference Library contains one
of the best collections of rare books, docu-
ments, maps, newspapers and manuscripts
found in the Caribbean. Here is not only the
history of an island but of a region. The cata-
logue will be of invaluable use to the Carib-
beanist."
-Thomas Mathews
Professor and former Director, Institute of
Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico
"The West India Reference Library is an out-
standing bibliographical resource. Although less
complete on recent titles, its colonial holdings
are almost unrivalled in the Caribbean. Pub-
lishing the listings of the library will be a great
aid to scholars."
-Robert I. Rotberg
Professor of Political Science and History,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

k(Q press
A U.S. Division of Kraus-Thomson Organization Limited
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2/CA-fBBEAN t VIEW

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Letters from Readers

What More do You Want
Dear Colleagues:
The article in the spring 1979 issue of Caribbean Review,
"Cuba's Pending Energy Crisis," by Alfred Padula is
misleading. The article offers no factual information on
Cuban energy consumption since 1960 by source or by
use. Since Cuba has strictly limited private transport (i.e.,
private cars do not jam the island) its energy consumption
patterns are strikingly different than those of other
Caribbean islands.
Moreover, no data is presented on the relationships in
Cuba between energy consumption and economic
growth. Since energy in Cuba is primarily used for
production and not personal consumption, conservation
plays an important role. The ability of the Cuban economy
to grow more rapidly than it increases energy
consumption is perhaps greater than in any other
Caribbean island.
Nor is there any reference to the Cuban experience with
solar energy, gasahol (gasoline and alcohol mixtures
using sugar cane), bioenergy, wind, or other alternate
technologies. Cuba has the natural resources and the
technological capability to take advantage of these
low-cost technologies. Similarly, no mention is made of
the terms on which the Soviets are building nuclear power
plants, the costs and sources of fuel and the extent of
Cuban participation in the projects. This is the first
commercial nuclear facility in the Caribbean (Puerto Rico
has a research reactor), and it cannot simply be dismissed
in one paragraph.
Finally, if the Soviet Union provides Cuba with oil at a
preferential price, is that worse than other Caribbean
islands that pay OPEC prices that they cannot afford?
Given Cuba's natural resources, scientific and
technological skills, and energy demands what are the
realistic alternatives? Cuba's policy of limiting private
consumption, encouraging industrial conservation,
exploring alternative technologies, opting for nuclear
power, and importing cut-price oil from a reliable source is
one that can compare favorably with any other in the
Caribbean.

Julio Sanchez
Baltimore, Maryland

Alfred Padula replies
Mr. Sanchez's letter misses the central theme of my article,
i.e., that Cuba a) has an energy shortage which is likely to
get worse, and b) that its almost total dependency on the
USSR for energy supplies undoubtedly influences its
foreign policy. The article did not intend a statistical
analysis of Cuban energy use, nor did it pretend to contrast
Cuba's energy consumption patterns with those of other
Caribbean nations. If Mr. Sanchez has data on either of

these issues, Iwould be interested in receiving it.
In regard to his allegations of the efficiencies of energy
use in Cuba today, I would make three points. First,
there has as yet been no important increase in sugar
production, the backbone of the Cuban economy, despite
its almost complete mechanization by the revolution.
Second, a close reading of Bohemia (Mr. Sanchez ought to
get a subscription) suggests that Cuban conservation
efforts, especially in industry, have not been particularly
successful. Third, that while the reduced amount of energy
available for private consumption may recommend
itself to Mr. Sanchez, it is hardly attractive to the Cuban
populace which is struggling to get more of those
refrigerators, fans and other energy consuming
appliances which Mr. Sanchez apparently deplores.
The cost of this denial strategy has been high; the lack
of consumer incentives is a major factor in the low level of
worker productivity which has been-for two
decades-the bane of the Cuban economy.
In the third paragraph of his letter, Mr. Sanchez says that
Cuba has the "technological capability" to explore various
alternate energy schemes, but in the next paragraph he
seems to say that Cuba has no such skills. I would agree
with the latter conclusion. Other than the burning of sugar
cane waste, and the use, in years past, of some gasahol,
there is no evidence that Cuba has developed any
significant alternate energy technologies or programs.
The possibilities are there. A half-centuryago, in the late
1920s, the French scientist Georges Claude, inventor of
the neon light tube, carried out experiments in Cuba's
Matanzas Bay which demonstrated the potential for
energy generation inherent in the temperature differences
between various levels of tropical sea water. These
speculations did not lead to any concrete program.
For Cuba, as for the rest of the world, the shift away from
petroleum is going to require more than revolutionary
enthusiasm and wishful thinking. It is going to be a long,
hard, and very expensive process....

Kudos Continue: CASE Citation
Caribbean Review has been awarded a citation from the
Council for the Advancement and Support of Education
acknowledging that it is among the top twenty university
magazines in the country.

On The Cover
An acrylic on canvas, "Entre y Tomara Cafe," by Humberto
Calzada, appears on our cover courtesy of De Armas Gallery.
Havana born Calzada has had one man shows in Washington's
Euroart Gallery and the Coabey Gallery in San Juan.
Calzada received an honorable mention at the University of
Miami's Fifth Annual Exhibition of Cuban Paintings and
participated in shows at the University's Lowe Art Museum and
the Museum of Contemporary Latin Art in Washington.
Some of his works are in the permanent collections
of the Southeast Banking Group and the Fidelity National
Bank of Miami.

CAflBE AN P*V 1/3

The Caribbean

in the Year 2000

By AARON SEGAL

Distressing trends indicate the more
than 30 million present inhabitants of
the Caribbean are heading pell-mell
towards a future in which there will be
either economic growth or social jus-
tice, but not both together. Scattered
among 22 political entities extending
from the Bahamas in the north, the
length of the archipelago to Trinidad
and Tobago in the south, and including
the mainland societies of Belize,
Guyana, Suriname, and French
Guyana, the multiethnic and culturally
heterogeneous peoples of the
Caribbean share deeply held goals
concerning economic growth;
economic, social, and environmental
equity; and political economic, and
cultural independence. Fundamental
constraints of demography, natural
resources, levels of technology, geog-
raphic size and location, and other
variables impede attainment of these
goals. The tradeoffs among desired
goals are often acute. Choices exist but
they are limited. No tradeoffs seem
more painful, no choices less felicitous,
than those prevailing between eco-
nomic growth and social justice.
Rapid economic growth remains the
public goal of every Caribbean gov-
ernment. As indicated in Table I since
1960 real output of goods and services
has kept substantially ahead of popula-
tion increases only in Barbados, the
Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and
a few of the smaller territories.
Elsewhere although net emigration has
kept annual population increase at 2%
or less, the economic pie has not ex-
panded, and total output has stag-
nated. Since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war,
energy crisis, and world recession,
most Caribbean economies have
ceased to grow and several have de-
clined in real terms.
Data on income distribution in the
Caribbean tends to be partial, fragmen-
4/CAfBBEAN EVIE

-w^

S -,.
*-~ --- 'sigg -
` '^L~

-~ U

tary, and sometimes suspect. Sharp
differences along racial, ethnic, and
class lines are pronounced in many
countries if inadequately documented.
Rather than income another measure
of social justice and welfare is provided
in Table II on life expectancy 1960-
1975. Although again the data are prob-
lematical, a clear contrast emerges be-
tween changes in economic growth
and life expectancy during the same
period. The most striking im-
provements in life expectancy have
been achieved in Cuba, Guyana, and
the Dominican Republic, although in
the first two countries real output of

goods and services has barely
matched population increase since
1960.
The conceptual and practical prob-
lem of reconciling "more and better,"
economic growth and income and wel-
fare distribution, plagues all countries,
rich and poor. The oil-exporting Irans
and Nigerias are notorious for high
growth rates in the face of persistent
and growing absolute and relative pov-
erty. Less known are the cases of
Burma, Sri Lanka, and other "devel-
opment without growth" societies in
which redistribution has taken prece-
dence over growth. Cuba, Guyana, and

--~_ .. .... _

_ - =

Jamaica are the first Caribbean gov-
ernments to formally endorse the view
that if everyone cannot be rich then it is
better for everyone to be poor. The
governments of Barbados, the
Bahamas, the Dominican Republic
and Puerto Rico defend a "trickle-
down" theory of rapid economic
growth generating the resources to re-
distribute on behalf of the poor.
The agonizing and worsening prob-
lem of chronic Caribbean unemploy-
ment is at the heart of the growth ver-
sus development debate. Except in
Cuba where underemployment is sub-
sidized alongside a large standing

army, Caribbean societies are wracked
by large-scale open and disguised un-
employment, often estimated at
20-30% of the active labor force, and
concentrated among persons of both
sexes ages 15 to 30. This unemploy-
ment is fueled by the extension of pri-
mary and secondary education to both
sexes, populations which are 50% or
more under 20 years of age, de-
pendency ratios which have 3 persons
outside the labor force for everyone
person employed (2-1 ratios prevail in
Europe and North America), and stark
differences in personal standards of
living.

CAIBBEAN EVIEW/5

There are four main explanations of
Caribbean unemployment each of
which leads to divergent policies. The
wage theory of unemployment, argued
by West Indian economist W. Arthur
Lewis and others, maintains that gov-
ernment trade union collusion has
driven skilled and unskilled wages well
above the market price of labor. The
result is that those who work are rela-
tively well paid at the expense of those
who can find no work at prevailing
wages. This explanation leads to
policies to restrict wages and collective
bargaining in order to bring down the
real cost of labor. Ironically it has been
employed only in Cuba where a strict
rationing of goods and services com-
bines with low and uniform wages to
spread work. However W. Arthur Lewis
would have wages and prices set as
much as possible by competitive mar-
kets, thus ending the government-
trade union interdependence that has
characterized many West Indian
policies, and perhaps driven up wages
by a third at the cost of jobs.
The technology explanation of un-
employment asserts that imported
capital-intensive technologies repre-
sent inappropriate uses of Caribbean
resources. Since the capital investment
needed to create a new job is from SUS
15,000 to $30,000 in Puerto Rico,
Trinidad and Tobago, and the Domini-
can Republic this explanation has a
prima facie attractiveness, especially
for the agricultural sector where food
imports grow while smallholders
abandon their farms. The policy rec-
ommendation would be a technology
transfer screening process to limit
capital-intensive imports to be com-
bined with vigorous support, perhaps
on a regional or sub-regional basis, of
labor-intensive technologies. Some of
the problems involved in such a policy
include the export quality control and

marketing demands of many Carib-
bean industries which may require
standard technologies, the lack of off-
the-shelf labor-intensive technologies,
and the extremely weak Caribbean re-
search and development capabilities.
The political explanation of unem-
ployment maintains that it is the pro-
duct of neo-colonial exploitation by
multi-national corporations of de-
pendent societies. Hence political
mobilization is seen as the policy re-
sponse to nationalize foreign and local
private holdings, to institute labor-
intensive agricultural and industrial
practices, and to put the population to
work, Cuban or Chinese style. Political
mobilization produces full employ-
ment in Cuba although at very low
levels of productivity. Political mobiliza-
tion in Guyana and Jamaica through
National Youth Service and other proj-
ects for the unemployed has yet to
make a significant dent in their num-
bers.
The demographic explanation stres-
ses that in many Caribbean societies
fertility and infant mortality have rapidly
fallen (Trinidad, Puerto Rico), but that
absolute population growth at 2-3% a
year will continue for another genera-
tion because of the youthful age distri-

bution of the population, early age of
childbearing, and other factors. This
means that the absolute number of
young people of both sexes entering
the labor market will continue to be
substantially greater than the economy
can absorb, even with rapid growth
rates and capital investment. The pol-
icy recommendation stemming from
the demographic explanation of un-
employment emphasizes permanent
emigration, preferably of the unskilled
young. Between 1950 and 1972, 3
million persons, or 10% of the total
population of the Caribbean, left the
area permanently for North America
and Western Europe (see Map I). The
demographic explanation argues that a
similar number will need to leave dur-
ing the next 20 years, although this is
not legally possible under present
foreign immigration laws, nor is there
any way with this policy of preventing
the most able and best educated from
emigrating, or from making those who
stay behind even more dependent.
Next to unemployment, inequities in
the distribution of private consumption
cause the most concern. The fact is
that throughout the Caribbean,
nouveau-riche upper middle class
groups have used social mobility to

achieve North American or Western
European standards of living. These
groups speak the metropolitan lan-
guage and the local dialect, often work
for or with multi-national corporations,
and conspicuously consume imported
goods and services unavailable to the
majority of their fellow-citizens. Al-
though there is wide-spread rhetoric
about the need to reduce exaggerated
private consumption levels, this first-
generation nouveau-riche clings to its
cars, houses, and TVs, compares its
situation unfavorably with that of its
kinsmen who have emigrated, and no
matter how radical shows little desire to
live at a Caribbean rather than a North
American standard of living. As a result
economies are plagued with balance of
payments problems aggravated by
consumer imports, short-term private
debts, and woefully inadequate local
capital and savings.

Private Consumption
Cuba, Jamaica, and Guyana have di-
rectly attacked private consumption.
The implicit assumption of their
policies is that it is better for everyone
to be poor than for some to be rich
while the majority are poor. Bans on the
imports of certain consumer goods,

TABLE I
Caribbean Population Mid-1976, GNP at Market Prices (1976), GNP Per Capita (1976), and
Average Annual Growth Rates (1960-1976 and 1970-76).

GNP at market prices Growth Rates (%)
Population 1976
Country Mid-1976 Amount Per GNP per capital
(000) (US$ capital Population (real)
millions) (US$) 1960-76 1970-76 1960-76 1970-76
Antigua 71 50 700 1.7 1.3 -0.2 -4.8
Bahamas 211 700 3,310 3.9 3.8 0.6 -4.7
Barbados 247 400 1,620 0.4 0.6 5.1 1.8
Belize 129 100 790 2.4 1.1 2.7 4.6
Bermuda 54 440 8,290 1.2 0.6 4.2 2.2
Cuba 9,464 7,720 820 1.9 1.7 1.1 -0.5
Dominica 77 30 370 1.7 1.9 -0.3 -5.7
Dominican Republic 4,835 3,820 790 2.9 2.9 3.5 5.7
French Guiana 58 100 1,820 3.8 2.9 2.8 0.0
Guadeloupe 323 770 2,380 1.0 0.4 3.9 1.6
Guyana 793 460 570 2.2 1.8 1.7 1.9
Grenada 110 50 410 1.1 3.0 1.9 -4.3
Haiti 4,668 1,020 220 1.6 1.7 -0.1 2.1
Jamaica 2,072 2,390 1,150 1.7 1.8 2.5 -0.5
Martinique 321 1,070 3,340 0.8 0.0 7.1 8.6
Netherlands Antilles 246 430 1,750 1.5 1.7 -0.2 0.5
Puerto Rico 3,210 7,400 2,310 1.8 2.8 3.9 0.0
St. Kitts-Nevis 49 30 640 1.0 0.9 0.9 2.2
St. Lucia 112 60 540 1.5 2.0 2.8 -0.9
St. Vincent 106 30 330 1.2 2.8 0.2 -3.8
Suriname 430 580 1,360 2.9 2.6 2.9 -0.6
Trinidad & Tobago 1,098 2,400 2,190 1.5 1.1 1.6 -1.2
Virgin Islands (US) 96 490 5,080 7.8 3.8 9.3 1.8
United States 215,142 1,694,900 7,880 1.1 0.8 2.4 1.7
Source: World Bank Atlas 1978, p. 20-22

6/CARBBEAN IFEIEW

especially private cars, highly progres-
sive income taxes, sharp restrictions on
the private sector, and other measures
are being used to curb private con-
sumption. There is no evidence that the
forced savings which accompany
these measures are being efficiently
invested. Instead public sector enter-
prises and social services are being
subsidized while the upwardly mobile
groups emigrate or sulk.
Puerto Rico, Haiti, the Dominican
Republic, Barbados, the Bahamas, and
the French and Netherlands Antilles
have encouraged private consump-
tion. These countries rely on public and
private transfers of capital and current
account revenue to enable some of
their people to live at North American
or Western European rather than
Caribbean consumption levels. Since
most of these transfers are for current
consumption rather than investment
they reinforce cultural, political, eco-
nomic, and technological depen-
dence, without contributing much to
economic growth.
The consumption of public goods
and services is also inequitable in
much of the Caribbean, but here
smallness of size is often an advantage.
The capital needed for an island-wide
road network, universal primary educa-
tion, public health, or other measures is
not massive, except in Haiti. Cuba has
invested heavily in public goods and
services available on a comprehensive
basis to the entire population. The re-
sult is something close to equality of
opportunity, although it is not egalitar-
ian. Puerto Rico and the French and
Dutch Antilles have also substantially
improved the availability of public
goods and services. Equality of oppor-
tunity for education, health, roads,
potable water, and other public goods
represents a feasible goal for much of
the Caribbean. The problem is the lack
of a productive base to support the
costs of quality public goods and ser-
vices, and the corresponding needs for
permanent subsidies, whether from the
US, the USSR, France, or elsewhere.
Environmental equity is a relatively
recent Caribbean concern. These trop-
ical volcanic rocks are fragile eco-
systems subject to extreme stress from
high human population densities (see
Map 11), petroleum and petrochemical
refining and transport, open-pit mining
(bauxite, copper, nickel), nuclear en-
ergy, tourism, and the automobile.
Continued onpage 45.

TABLE 11
Caribbean Life Expectancy at Birth (years)

1960 1970 1975
Bahamas 62.6 65.7 66.7
Barbados 62.7 67.6 69.1
Cuba 61.8 69.2 69.8
Dominican Republic 49.3 52.2 57.8
Guadeloupe 61.5 67.4 69.4
Haiti 43.2 47.7 50.0
Jamaica 64.6 67.8 69.5
Martinique 61.5 67.4 69.4
Puerto Rico 68.6 71.0 72.1
Trinidad and Tobago 64.2 66.1 69.5
Guyana 59.3 65.2 67.9
Suriname 58.7 63.6 65.5

Source: World Atlas of the Child, World Bank, Washington, 1979, p. 30-31.

Map I Source: Aaron Segal, ed., Population Policies in the Caribbean, D.C. Heath, 1975.

COLUMBIA .- .... i -
', .

Map II Source: Aaron Segal, Ed., Population Policies in the Caribbean, D.C. Heath, 1975.
CA TBBEAN ITV1ev/7

I -

Cuba's Struggle

for Third World

Leadership
By H. Michael Erisman

On September 3-7, 1979, heads of
state from all over the world will gather
in Havana, Cuba for an unprecedented
event the first summit conference
held in the Western Hemisphere by the
Movement of Nonaligned Nations. At
that meeting, assuming the tradition of
honoring the leader of the host state
with its top office is followed, the
Nonaligned Movement will name Fidel
Castro to serve as its head until the next
summit, which will probably not take
place until 1982.
Havana was designated the site for
the 1979 conference in an attempt by
the Movement, whose constituency
8/CAIBBEAN MTVIEW

has always been primarily Afro/Asian
countries, to encourage the recent
trend toward broader Latin American
participation in its activities and as a
symbolic gesture acknowledging the
island's pioneer status as the first and
indeed the only charter member from
the hemisphere. If, however, Cuba's ul-
timate goal is substantive rather than
just titular authority, the Havana meet-
ing takes on greater significance since
it can then be seen as the culmination
of a long Cuban campaign to establish
itself as the major leader of the Third
World bloc.
In recent years Havana has been in-

creasingly active in Third World affairs,
the most graphic example being its
heavy military involvement in Africa.
Cuban officials see the 1979 summit as
an opportunity for Cuba to become the
main architect of a revamped, rejuve-
nated Nonaligned Movement.
Havana's rise to prominence and its
leadership ambitions have not been
well-received by all Third World states.
Anti-Cuban sentiment has been devel-
oping over a long period of time. It
received considerable international
publicity in July 1978 at the Ministerial
Conference of the Movement of
Nonaligned Nations held in Belgrade.
Ghana, Morocco, Somalia, and
Senegal accused Havana of aggres-
sion in Africa and insisted that it with-
draw its troops. Somalia and Egypt, ar-
guing that Cuba's African forces are in
effect Soviet surrogates, went further
by demanding that the 1979 summit
be moved from Havana and threatened
otherwise to boycott it. None of these
attacks, however, can begin to match
those of the People's Republic of
China, who though not a member of
the Nonaligned Movement has over
the years emerged in Third World cir-
cles as Cuba's most intransigent op-
ponent. While some nonaligned states
seek only to limit the spread of Hava-
na's influence within the Movement,
Peking would prefer to see it expelled
altogether.
Castro hopes to transform the
Nonaligned Movement from its present
status as a diffused, politically cumber-
some body with little capability to
shape international events into a
streamlined vehicle operating as a un-
ified radical force committed to solidar-
ity with the Soviet-led socialist bloc.
Such a development would represent a
shift in the global power equation
which would clearly improve the
USSR's position vis-a-vis the United
States and the People's Republic of
China.

Cuba's Emergence in Third
World/Nonaligned
Movement Politics
Despite the close economic/military
ties which it has established with Rus-
sia, Cuba considers itself part of the
Third World bloc and has always been
active in its affairs. Havana's present
high visibility in Third World politics re-
volving around its troops in Africa rep-
resents the contemporary expression

of a role that over the past 20 years has
gone through four distinct stages of
development: Consolidation of the
Revolution (1959-1961), Hemispheric
Fidelismo (1962-1968), Incipient
Globalism (1969-1974), and Mature
Globalism (1975 onward).
The Consolidation of the Revolution
Phase, 1959-1961: At first Castro's
government, like most new revolution-
ary regimes, was mainly concerned
with internal matters. It therefore was
not inclined to take the initiative in
international affairs, but preferred to
pursue a more cautious strategy
responding to other nation's moves,
particularly to the anti-Cuban crusade
unleashed by Washington. Though
forced by circumstances into a basi-
cally defensive posture, the Cubans
began as the Revolution became more
radical to lay the philosophical founda-
tion for an activist foreign policy. Cen-
tral to this process was their commit-
ment to the Marxist/Leninist concept
of proletarian internationalism, which
stresses the obligation to help one's
ideological/political brethren in other
countries. During 1959-1961 Havana
took some modest steps to put this
idea into practice by extending limited
aid to guerrillas operating in Haiti and
the Dominican Republic and by provid-
ing a haven for radical exiles.
The Hemispheric Fidelismo
Phase, 1962-1968: By 1962 it was
apparent that the Revolution would
survive. Cuba moved to establish its
credentials as the leading exponent of
radical social change and nonaligned
politics in the Western Hemisphere. As
its relations with other Latin American
governments (except Mexico) deteri-
orated Havana's foreign policy took on
increasingly strident ideological over-
tones; its friends and enemies were de-
fined almost solely on the basis of their
adherence to its political philosophy. Its
potential allies within the hemisphere
were thus limited to Fidelista groups
and its role in the region was to facilitate
their insurgencies. Cuba had aban-
doned its reactive strategy in favor of
revolutionary internationalism involv-
ing a systematic program of providing
arms, money, training facilities, and ad-
visors to left-wing guerrillas, especially
those operating in Venezuela, Colom-
bia, and Guatemala.
Eventually Cuba went beyond ex-
tending material/personnel support
and tried to orchestrate the activities of
Latin rebels. Cuba convened the

Tricontinental Conference in January
1966 to generate an effective revolu-
tionary international. In August 1967,
Fidel founded the Organization of Latin
American Solidarity (OLAS) to coordi-
nate guerrilla campaigns throughout
the continent.
But these efforts failed. Neither the
Tricontinental nor OLAS lived up to ex-
pectations. The Fidelista guerrilla or-
ganizations in Venezuela, Guatemala,
Colombia, and Bolivia, were smashed
or rendered impotent. Indeed as the
1960s neared their end, it was right-

The Chinese have been
Havana's most vitriolic foe,
seeking to drive it from the
Nonaligned Movement and
isolate it from most
developing nations.

wing elements led by the military which
had emerged more firmly entrenched
at the end of the decade than at the
beginning.
The Incipient Globalism Phase,
1969-1974: One might have ex-
pected, given the failure of Hemis-
pheric Fidelismo, that the Cubans
would abandon their aspirations and
retreat into isolation. Instead they did
exactly the opposite: they stepped up
their diplomatic activity, attempting to
recoup their setbacks in Latin America
and become recognized as a power in
Third World/Nonaligned Movement
affairs. To demonstrate Havana's
commitment to these foreign policy
concerns, Castro, whose previous
sojourns abroad had been pretty much
limited to Russia and Eastern Europe,
began to travel widely in Africa, Asia,
and Latin America. During these
travels Fidel projected more an image
of a statesman than of a gun-toting
guerrilla.
Castro's more discreet style reflected
the fact that Cuba's foreign policy now
contained larger elements of prag-
matism geared to establishing cordial
relations with as many Third World
states as possible. Gone was its previ-
ous tendency to limit its political
partners to zealous ideological fellow-
travellers. It began to define its friends
in more ecumenical terms which

stressed a government's nationalistic,
anti-imperialistic sentiments. In Latin
America it promoted cooperation with
countries which it considered "pro-
gressive," which meant regimes which
even though not "revolutionary" were
strongly committed to liberal
socioeconomic reform and especially
to policies which were independent
from, if not hostile, to US interests.
Within the Nonaligned Movement it
condemned sectarian, partisan bicker-
ing and emphasized the need for unity,
focusing on global economic issues as
the catalyst for such solidarity.
The Mature Globalism Phase, 1975
onward: In November 1975 Cuba (with
Russian logistical support) stunned the
world by dispatching to Angola the first
elements of a combat force which
would ultimately number approxi-
mately 20,000. Cuba backed the
Popular Movement for the Liberation
of Angola (MPLA) in its successful
attempt to defeat its Western-backed
opponents. Then during January-
March 1978 (again with Soviet assist-
ance) Cuba backed Lt. Col. Mengistu
Haile Mariam's new socialist govern-
ment in Ethiopia against the threat by
Somalia to seize the country's Ogaden
Desert region. Having failed to mediate
a settlement, Castro eventually sent a
17,000-man contingent which was in-
strumental in crushing the Somalian
invasion. Beyond these two high-
visibility involvements, Havana also es-
tablished rather extensive military aid
programs, which included advisory/
training personnel as well as equip-
ment, to numerous African states and
to the black guerrilla movements fight-
ing in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South
Africa.
These military activities were com-
plemented by a strong offensive on the
diplomatic front. Not only was Castro
travelling extensively abroad, but more
Third World leaders were coming to
Havana for state visits and high-level
consultations. A review of the Cuban
press reveals that in 1974 only three
Third World heads of state, no Third
World foreign ministers, and a single
Third World national liberation move-
ment leader visited the island. But over
the next few years these figures rose
steadily. In 1978, thirteen leaders made
such visits. This hospitality paid politi-
cal dividends; it established Havana's
reputation as an international center,
provided opportunities to showcase
the country's development, and above

CARBBEAN FrVIEW/9

all, guaranteed a constant dialogue
with the Third World. In essence,
Havana from 1975 onward has been
pursuing an ambitious, sometimes
daring, global campaign to confirm its
credentials for and to stake a solid
claim to a major leadership role in
Third World/Nonaligned Movement af-
fairs. Not surprisingly, the reaction from
its peers has been mixed.
On the one hand there are the radi-
cals who wholeheartedly support Cu-
ba's stands on Third World issues and
believe that Fidel should be first in line
to succeed Marshal Tito as the preemi-
nent figure in the Nonaligned Move-
ment. The fact that Havana was
unanimously selected as the site for the
1979 Nonaligned Summit indicates
that this faction's strength is indeed
considerable.
There are, on the other hand, those
within the Movement (including Tito)
who want to keep Havana's influence to
a minimum because they fear that its
ties with Moscow are too strong and
could result in it taking the organization
down a Soviet-designated rather than
an independent path if given too much
authority. To these governments that
would be totally unacceptable because
they feel that Russia has expansionist
tendencies which must be countered in
order to preserve peace and their own

independence. Their basic aim, says
New York Times reporter David
Andelman, is "to try to insulate the
developing world from the East-West
conflict and to seek its own balance,
by leaning against the East bloc
headed by the Soviet Union, which is
seen by many as more aggressive than
the West." This faction was quite vocal
in its opposition to Cuba's foreign
policies at the 1978 Nonaligned meet-
ing in Belgrade and has continued its
criticism since then.
But it is the Chinese who have been
Havana's most vitriolic foe, seeking to
drive it from the Nonaligned Movement
and hopefully isolate it completely from
most developing nations. Experts such
as O.E. Clubb and Donald Klein have
indicated that Peking believes that by
doing this it will destroy one of Mos-
cow's main links with the Third World,
thereby seriously undermining Russia's
international influence. For them, Chi-
na's anti-Cubanism is a manifestation
and an extension of its anti-Sovietism.
The Cubans, motivated by both
pragmatic considerations and ideolog-
ical convictions regarding the necessity
for solidarity between the Nonaligned
Movement and the socialist bloc, ad-
mittedly do function as the USSR's
main advocate and defender in Third
World circles, but they view Peking's

hostility as something more than mere
anti-Sovietism. Rather, they feel that the
PRC is an imperialist power which
seeks to dominate the developing na-
tions and as such is trying to weaken
the Movement as much as possible by
forcing out countries such as Cuba
which can provide strong, independent
leadership. Such behavior, they charge,
places China in a de facto alliance with
US/Western neocolonialists who share
its hegemonic impulses.

The Imperialist Enemy
Controversy

The Nonaligned Movement has always
been committed to a strong anti-
imperialist stance. Any nation or indi-
vidual hoping to rise to leadership
within it must first establish impeccable
anti-imperialistic credentials. The prob-
lem confronting the Movement is to
decide exactly whom to label im-
perialistic who is to be opposed?
This controversy stands at the center of
the Sino/Cuban dispute. Indeed it is
the fountainhead from which almost all
other issues flow.
China's tool to identify the Third
World's enemies is its Theory of Two
Imperialisms, which essentially
contends that America's capitalist

Cuba's President Fidel Castro with Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley during Castro's visit to Jamaica in 1977.
1O/CAIBBEAN REVIEW

AIM-

imperialism and Russia's social
imperialism represent the main threats
to world peace. These superpowers, it
says, both pursue hegemonic foreign
policies and therefore must be equally
condemned. As such, the Nonaligned
Movement must be anti-US and anti-
Soviet.
The Cubans, of course, totally reject
this hypothesis, charging that it ignores
historical facts and is simply a ruse
concocted by the PRC to lure
nonaligned states into its paranoic
crusade against Moscow. They main-
tain that the Soviet Union has always
vigorously supported anti-imperialist
movements and that the very existence
of a strong Russia counterbalancing
and deterring the West was a major
factor in creating the conditions which
allowed those struggles to succeed.
They declare that this policy remains
operative today, as evidenced by the
fact that the Zimbabwian, Palestinian,
and Namibian 'iberaiuc.r forces all use
arms supplied by the Kremlin.
Inherent within the imperialist foe
issue is another question what type
of relations should the Nonaligned
Movement establish with the world's
other major political blocs? In replying,
the Chinese and the Cubans begin with
two very different perceptions of a
trifurcated international system and
end in almost total disagreement over
the Movement's proper role in it.
The PRC has revised the traditional
three worlds concept and now groups
countries as follows: two superim-
perialist powers, the USSR and the US,
form the First World; the remaining
modernized capitalist states (e.g.,
Western Germany, England, Canada,
Japan) and the Eastern European
socialist nations fall into the Second
World category; and the Third World
encompasses the developing coun-
tries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
To protect itself against the superim-
perialists, the Third World must,
according to Peking, be pragmatic and
unite with the Second World against
the First, incorporating into this strat-
egy a Machiavellian alliance of conven-
ience with the United States against
Moscow. Once the Soviet Union, which
poses the most immediate threat to the
developing nations, has been thwarted,
they can then turn their energies to
dealing with the US.
Havana, adhering to the conven-
tional three worlds model, believes that
the developing nations (the Third

World) should recognize the Soviet-led
socialist bloc (the Second World) as
their natural ally against the neoim-
perialist machinations of the United
States and its capitalist cohorts (the
First World). Cuba supports in principle
the Nonaligned Movement's demand
for an end to the division of the world
into hostile armed camps. However, it
thinks that the indiscriminate anti-
superpowerism which Peking es-
pouses as an inseparable corollary to
anti-blocism is absurd because it is
based on the erroneous assumption
that massive strength will almost al-

According to Peking,
Havana, though not a
formal party to the Warsaw
Pact, nevertheless is an ally
of the USSR.

ways be used for hegemonic purposes.
The Cubans are certain that capitalist
states are inherently expansionistic
while socialist countries, because they
are dedicated to egalitarian distributive
justice and progressive internation-
alism, constitute bulwarks against such
chauvinism. Consequently they feel
that the Third World should cooperate
with the Second in forming an anti-
imperialist front against the First. They
are convinced that without Moscow's
deterrent power at their disposal, the
developing nations run a grave risk of
being overwhelmed and resubjugated
by Western neocolonialism.

The Defining Nonalignment
Debate

The imperialist foe controversy has led
to an even broader Sino/Cuban battle
over qualifications for membership in
the Nonaligned Movement. The most
fundamental criterion participants
must satisfy is that they be nonaligned
- the question is how to define that
term. The answers proposed by Peking
and Havana each have a twofold pur-
pose; first, to prevent the other from
acquiring any significant influence in
Third World affairs; and second and
most important, to deliniate precisely
the Movement's essential nature and its
proper role on the international scene.

China, along with others such as
Yugoslavia, supports the basic defini-
tion established at the 1955 Bandung
Conference where it was decided that
any country which is not "a member of
a multilateral military alliance con-
cluded in the context of great power
conflicts" would be considered
nonaligned. However, it interprets this
statement somewhat broadly, saying it
means that nonaligned nations must
not only shun formal alliances with the
superpowers, but also must not be-
come actively involved in carrying out
their military policies. While recogniz-
ing that it may be necessary to possess
such other attributes as being
non-European, economically under-
developed, and opposed to col-
onialism/imperialism to be admitted to
the Movement, the PRC nevertheless
wants the determination as to whether
a state is nonaligned to be based solely
on its military relationships. This con-
ception is totally non-doctrinal; it does
not require that a government espouse
any particular ideology in order to be
deemed nonaligned. Those holding
this view expect the Movement to be
highly eclectic, accepting as members
Third World countries with socio/polit-
ical/economic systems ranging from
the most conservative feudal monar-
chies to the most radical Marx-
ist/Leninist regimes.
According to Peking, Havana,
though not a formal party to the War-
saw Pact, nevertheless is for all practi-
cal purposes an ally of the USSR and
recently has graphically illustrated this
fact by serving as the instrument for
Soviet military expansionism in Africa.
This theory holds that the roots of
Havana's African policy are to be found
in the Kremlin the Russians hand
down the marching orders and Fidel,
realizing that the island's economy
would collapse without Soviet aid, has
little choice but to obey. As such Hava-
na's military presence in Africa is in
reality a Soviet military presence. The
conclusion toward which this logic
points is unmistakable the Castro
government is not nonaligned and
therefore does not deserve to be in the
Movement.
Cuba, assuming an unorthodox
stance which has generated heated
debate, seeks to broaden significantly
the traditional definition of nonalign-
ment by injecting various political fac-
tors into the equation. Specifically, it
wants the Movement to state un-
CAIBBEAN FEVIEW/11

equivocably its basic objectives (e.g.,
eradication of US/Western imperialism
and neocolonialism), to formulate a
clear political program to achieve them
(e.g., cooperation with the Soviet bloc),
and to regard only those countries
which wholeheartedly subscribe to
these policies it uses the term "pro-
gressive" to describe such states to
be nonaligned and thus eligible for
admission. This position was alluded to
by Castro in a speech to the 4th
Nonaligned Summit Conference at Al-
giers in 1973 and was developed more
fully three years later at the 5th Summit
by then Cuban Deputy Prime Minister
Carlos Rafael Rodriguez. It was, how-
ever, at the now famous July 1978
Ministerial Conference of the
Nonaligned Movement held in Bel-
grade that the Cubans defended their
views most forcefully, arguing that to
achieve a higher degree of unity and
hence greater international leverage
the organization must require all its par-
ticipants to support strongly its political
action program and must recognize
that such loyalty rather than mere mili-
tary nonalignment has to be the
paramount consideration when estab-
lishing its composition.
Operating on this politicized concep-
tion of membership criteria, the Cu-
bans maintain that regardless of their
close ties with the USSR, they are un-
questionably nonaligned because their
foreign policy has sought to further the
Movement's goals on the world scene.
They have stood at the forefront in the
battle against Western imperialism and
neocolonialism, taking risks and mak-
ing sacrifices to aid other Third World
peoples in their national liberation
struggles.
The one major unanswered question
arising from Cuba's demand for politi-
cal consensus in the Nonaligned
Movement is how to achieve it. It can-
not be attained simply by screening
new applicants more carefully because
the number of potential recruits is
relatively miniscule; most Third World
nations have already joined. Con-
sequently it will have to be shaped from
within. But what about those estab-
lished members who are nonconform-
ists, who for one reason or another re-
fuse to support fully the association's
program? Stated bluntly, the Cubans
endorse the idea that non-progressive
states be expelled. They obviously ex-
pect that such a retrenchment will
transform the Movement from the fac-
12/CArBBEAN REVIEW

tionalized, cumbersome, and thereby
often paralyzed body which it is today
into a streamlined group which, by pre-
senting a strong united front to its an-
tagonists and being able to mobilize
quickly its participants' pooled power,
will become a potent political force in
world affairs.
Havana regards the Chinese as
pariahs who should not be admitted
not only because it thinks that they
have repeatedly demonstrated by their
international behavior their unwilling-
ness to support the organization's core
principles and program, but more im-

Havana regards the
Chinese as pariahs who
should not be admitted
because they have become
a direct threat to
developing nations.

portantly because they have actually
become a direct threat to developing
nations. The danger, says Cuba, stems
from the fact that the PRC's leadership
has been infected by the chauvinistic
Confucian tradition of Sino-centrism.
In the past this nationalistic arrogance,
epitomized in the conception of China
as the Middle Kingdom while all
foreigners were looked upon as un-
civilized barbarians, led the Chinese to
attempt to subjugate their Asian
neighbors. But today, warns Havana,
their horizons have dramatically wide-
ned; now "Their sole objective is a ruth-
less drive for world domination" and
since the Third World is a prime target,
they are desperately trying to prevent
the emergence of strong, progressive
leadership within its ranks. Peking's
crusade against them is presented by
the Cubans as proof that they are a
serious obstacle to China's hegemonic
ambitions.

Probing The Future

Regardless of the controversy which
has swirled around the "Cuban Ques-
tion," it seems unlikely that the anti-
Havana campaign spearheaded by
Peking will receive widespread support
in nonaligned circles. A major reason
for this is that the surrogate thesis,

which seeks to discredit the Cubans by
presenting their armed forces in Africa
as agents of great power imperialism,
has not generated much favorable
response in such circles. There is
considerable sympathy within the
OAU/Third World bloc for Cuba's as-
sertion that it is fulfilling its international
obligations by furnishing military as-
sistance to progressive African gov-
ernments who either need it to defend
themselves against external attacks or
who will throw their thereby increased
weight behind African liberation
movements and facilitate Havana's ef-
forts to do likewise by allowing it to use
their territory to train and/or funnel
supplies to the insurgents.
By rejecting, as their voting behavior
in various international forums dem-
onstrates they have, the idea that
Havana is operating as a Soviet puppet
in Africa, a majority of the developing
nations have repudiated the Maoists'
Theory of Two Imperialisms and con-
tinue to subscribe to the traditional no-
tion that it is the First World headed by
the United States which alone consti-
tutes the imperialist enemy. Within this
context Havana's close ties with the
Kremlin and its contention that Third
World countries should cooperate
closely with the Soviet-led socialist bloc
(i.e., the Second World), drawing upon
its strength for help in pursuing their
national liberation efforts more effec-
tively and protecting themselves
against the West's incessant neocolo-
nial intrigues, are not perceived by
most nonaligned states as inconsistent
with the Movement's core principles.
These policies have elicited responses
ranging mainly from benign tolerance
to enthusiastic concurrence.
This basically positive reaction to
Cuba's stands on the pivotal surrogate
and imperialist enemy questions
means, at a minimum, that most of its
colleagues in the Nonaligned Move-
ment consider it a member in good
standing. But in a larger sense it has
been clear from the very beginning that
Havana had been unsuccessfully chal-
lenged on these issues, particularly by
the Chinese, for the express purpose of
demolishing its leadership credentials.
Consequently it is quite conceivable
that Havana will indeed acquire sub-
stantive leadership power in the
Nonaligned Movement.
H. Michael Erisman teaches Political Science
at Mercyhurst College, Pennsylvania.
Artwork on page 8 by Eleanor Porter Bonner

I

The

Trouble

with

Latin

America
By JEAN-FRAN(OIS REVEL
Translated by Roger Kaplan

Latin America is generally included
among the "developing" regions of
the world. The term is an awkward
one because, first of all, it suggests
that a country's or a region's prob-
lems are primarily economic in
nature, and second, it fails to distin-
guish among countries and even
entire continents with enormous dif-
ferences in their standards of living
and their economic systems. Not that
the all-embracing nature of such
concepts as the "Third World" or "un-
derdevelopment" has gone com-
pletely uncriticized. The Third World is
now usually subdivided into zones
and categories, so that at least Upper
Volta and Brazil do not carry the same
tags. Lately, too, we have witnessed
the creation of a special category of
super-rich "underdeveloped" nations
- the oil-exporting countries. And.
the purely economic definition of un-
derdevelopment has also come under
criticism. Gunnar Myrdal, in particular,
in his monumental Asian Drama: An
Inquiry into the Poverty of the Mbrld,
has analyzed certain non-economic
causes of underdevelopment -
rooted in the cultures of elites and
masses alike and denounced the
taboos that have led experts, espe-

cially the ones working for interna-
tional organizations, to ignore such
factors. Today, the myths of the Third
World are beginning to undergo criti-
cism at the hands of some of the very
people who created and spread them.
Every traveler and every reasonably
careful reader of the literature on the
subject knows very well that it is im-
possible to explain in identical terms
the phenomenon of underdevelop-
ment in Africa, in Asia, and in Latin
America. And the same holds for de-
velopment, too. The past several
years have witnessed the takeoff of
South Korea, Malaysia, the Philip-
pines, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore,
and, to a lesser degree, Thailand and
Indonesia; some of these countries
are becoming redoubtable competi-
tors of the old industrial nations.
Moreover, this economic and
technological takeoff has been ac-
complished in spite of the dictatorial
or authoritarian form of the political
regimes in these countries, and in
spite of the double "imperialism" of
Japan and the United States. On the
other hand, similar results have not
been obtained under the dictatorial
regime of mainland China, whose
economic and technological stagna-

CAR1BBEAN rEIeviE/13

tion and even regression and low
standard of living have been noted by
Mao's successors, contradicting the
earlier golden propaganda which
sympathizers all over the world ac-
cepted and repeated blindly.
The issue of economic underde-
velopment in Communist countries is
pertinent in this context because Latin
America contains a Communist soci-
ety: Cuba. Of course, information on
Cuba is as difficult to obtain as for
any other Communist country, but it
is not altogether impossible. The ob-
stacles have been mental in-
teriorized censorship, whether willful
or unconscious, which for fifteen
years provided Castro with the sort of
immunity from analysis and criticism
that Stalin had benefited from previ-
ously. Despite the accumulation of
lies, though, it is not impossible to
gauge Cuba's situation, both eco-
nomic and political, in comparison
with that of other Latin American
countries.
Economic underdevelopment in a
given place can have many causes: a
basic lack of natural resources; clima-
tic or demographic handicaps; the
unwillingness of a culture to acquire
production techniques; colonial
exploitation; the disasters provoked by
certain agrarian reforms that destroy
the traditional agricultural fabric while
slowing productivity; linguistic and tri-
bal divisions; an inability to organize
the necessary administrative infra-
structure or, on the contrary, a prolif-
eration of bureaucracies; and so forth.
Examining the regions currently clas-
sified as underdeveloped, one notes
that each case suggests a different
explanation, and, moreover, that the
presence of one or more of the
enumerated ills has not inhibited
many countries around the world
from developing quite nicely. This
proves that no single identified cause
of underdevelopment is, of itself, re-
sponsible. And even taken together,
the various factors have their
antidotes. I would almost say that
underdevelopment is a natural
phenomenon, and that the problem
of development consists in discover-
ing the antidote.

Political Backwardness
What about Latin America? In Latin
America, underdevelopment is not
due, principally, to insurmountable

economic obstacles, or to overbear-
ing population pressures, or to any
pronounced cultural gap. I would say
rather that Latin American backward-
ness has causes that are essentially
political.
I expect to hear right away: "But of
course! Agreed! The cause is im-
perialism!" Well, no. I am speaking of
perfectly indigenous, internal political
causes: the permanent self-
destruction of Latin American
societies which has allowed "im-
perialism" to have its corrosive effect

Like the US, Latin America
is a projection of Europe.
But of the "other" Europe:
not the "good" Europe of
democracy, human rights,
and social cohesiveness,
but the "bad" Europe of
coups d'etat and civil wars,
of military adventurers and
demagogic chieftains, of
corruption and injustice, of
pseudo-revolutions and
bloody repression.

on societies that are already de-
cadent.
Let us examine the possible causes
of Latin America's present-day under-
development. The old Spanish or Por-
tuguese colonialism can no longer be
seriously adduced as a cause. Colo-
nial ties with Europe were severed at
the beginning of the 19th century (in
Cuba, at the end of the century). If
such antique colonial status were still
influential, the United States ought to
be underdeveloped today, not to
speak of Australia, South Africa, and
Canada.
A second cause might be scarcity
of natural resources, aggravated by
demographic and climatic handicaps.
This hypothesis does not stand up to
scrutiny, either. From the Rio Grande
to Tierra del Fuego, Latin America
knows every climate. Taken as a
whole, it is not overpopulated, which
is not to say there is a shortage of
manpower. As for natural resources,

in agriculture and forestry as v.ell as
in mineral and energy sources, Latin
America is vastly superior to Western
Europe.
A third cause the one unanim-
ously agreed upon by the Latin Amer-
icans themselves is supposed to
be imperialism, the continuation of
colonialism. In other words, the
wealth of the rich nations is said to be
due to the "plundering" of the Third
World, first by colonialism pure and
simple, then by neo-imperialism. To
counter the first part of this charge,
one need only note that the two
European powers with the oldest,
largest, and in many ways the richest
colonial empires, and those which
held on to their empires the longest,
happen to be the two countries of
Western Europe which did not
participate, or participated only
half-heartedly and belatedly, in the
industrial takeoff: Spain and Portugal.
By contrast, Germany, with no signifi-
cant colonial empire, had become, by
the end of the 19th century, the indus-
trial engine of Europe, surpassing
even Great Britain and definitely sur-
passing France which, in spite of its
immense colonial empire (or because
of it?), remained, until 1940, relatively
stagnant from an industrial point of
view and largely attached to a
traditional peasant economy. France's
decisive industrial growth took place
after the loss of its colonies; the stan-
dard of living in France rose as much
between 1950 and 1970 as it had
risen during the hundred and fifty
preceding years.
On the other hand, for a long time
the economic level and potential
strength of certain Latin American
countries had nothing to fear from a
comparison with the Old World or
even with North America. At the end
of the 19th century, Argentina had a
per-capita income comparable to
Germany's; on the eve of World War
'11, it was equal to Great Britain's. (This
does not mean that social justice pre-
vailed there, but neither did it prevail
in Great Britain. Development and in-
equality are two distinct problems.) In
1945, Argentina emerged as a world
leader in food exports; its GNP was
equal to half of all Latin America's.
The large Italian emigration to Argen-
tina, lasting seventy-five years, proves
that for the poor of Europe's under-
developed regions, this country was
as attractive as the United States.

14/CAI?BBEAN rEVIEW

I

Therefore, one can say that today's
Argentina, with its record of economic
failure and political disintegration, be-
came an underdeveloped country.
And even then it is only relatively un-
derdeveloped, and only by compari-
son with its past, and with North
America.

Heterogeneous Latin
America
Indeed, one must never forget how
heterogeneous Latin America is. In
1970, Chile was a prosperous country
compared with Bolivia. Between a
Peruvian and a Venezuelan or even a
poor Mexican, there is a greater aver-
age income disparity than between
the latter two and a Spaniard in the
lowest income bracket. Furthermore,
one must single out those countries
where a high proportion of Indians
have presented, and continue to pre-
sent, the classic problem of traditional
mentalities and techniques con-
fronted with modern economic and
political forms. In Argentina this prob-
lem has not presented itself, any
more than it has in Uruguay, two
countries that have nevertheless re-
gressed in a particularly spectacular
fashion on both the economic and
the cultural level.
In fact, even in those countries with
large Indian populations, it is the
people of European or predominantly

European extraction who make up
the leading class, leaving their mark
on politics, the economy, the military,
culture, and manners. This is also the
case in countries such as Cuba,
where part of the population is of Af-
rican extraction. (An exception is the
former British Guyana, a
Communist-inclined dictatorship in
which the Africans dominate the In-
dians.) Latin America is thus not an
ex-colony like India, Algeria, or An-
gola but is rather like North America,
a region shaped by colonists who
have become independent of their
home countries, not by natives who
have expelled the colonists. Like the
US, it is a projection of Europe. But of
the "other" Europe: not the "good"
Europe of democracy, human rights,
and social cohesiveness, but the
"bad" Europe of coups d'etat and civil
wars, of military adventurers and
demagogic chieftains, of corruption
and injustice, of pseudo-revolutions
and bloody repression.
This is why it seems to me that the
comparative underdevelopment of
Latin America comes not from eco-
nomic problems but from an inability
to govern. After the phony Bolivian
elections and the coup d'etat of July
1978, General Pereda declared,
"Bolivia's problems stem from its un-
derdevelopment." I should say exactly
the opposite, and not only with refer-
ence to Bolivia: the underdevelop-

ment of Latin America stems from its
problems, from its problem, which is
essentially a problem of the self-
poisoning of the political culture.
What is more, self-poisoning here is
synonymous with self-satisfaction.
The Latin American elites have car-
ried to an extreme a defect that is
fatal to a society no less than to an
individual: namely, the notion that
everything bad that happens is never
the fault of oneself, but always the
fault of others.
From this stems the use and abuse
of "imperialism." There exist two im-
perialisms: the real thing and the fan-
tasy. The latter reinforces the former.
For the fantasy that consists in blam-
ing one's own mistakes on foreign
imperialism prevents one from cor-
recting those mistakes, enfeebling
one and thereby leaving one more
vulnerable to the real imperialism.
One hundred years ago, Sweden was
a much poorer country than most of
the countries of Latin America; its
population was equal to half the small
population of contemporary Bolivia.
Would Sweden have become one of
the ten strongest economic powers in
the world and the second or third
(after the U.S. and Switzerland) in
percapita income if it had spent a
century merely condemning the
"imperialism" of the powers that were
crushing it: Great Britain, Germany,
and Russia?

CArBBEAN Eview/15

Caudillismo and Corruption

One need not deny the existence of
imperialism, especially as this is a
universal historical phenomenon,
known long before capitalism and
perhaps even more substantial, now-
adays, in the Communist bloc than in
the capitalist one. But it is pathologi-
cal to use the same abstract term to
describe the occupation of one coun-
try by a foreign army and the estab-
lishment in another of a powdered
milk factory, simply because the latter
happens to be built, in part or in
whole, with the help of foreign in-
vestments. When I lived in Mexico in
the early 1950s, the major supplier of
telephone equipment was the
Swedish company, Eriksson. Was that
a case of "Swedish imperialism"? Was
Sweden preventing Mexico from
building its own telephones? Were
Mexican entrepreneurs unable to
enter the international market? Was
Mexico unable to create competent
technicians? The answer to all these
questions is no. But the wealthy class
in Mexico preferred to invest in real
estate and land speculation rather
than in industry; the young Mexican
bourgeois preferred to study law,
which allowed them to become
"licenciados" and "politicos," rather
than science and technology (the op-
posite occurred in Japan, with well-
known results); the politicians and the
bureaucrats preferred to blackmail
foreign companies by demanding
percentages or envelopes at every
step of their operations, rather than
undertaking such operations them-
selves; and the most "anti-imperialist"
Mexican President, Luis Echeverria
(1970-76), was not in the least reluc-
tant to enrich himself through corrup-
tion.
What is responsible for this mixture
of caudillismo and corruption? The
Eriksson company? The CIA? Is it not
rather in a solid Latin American tradi-
tion? The countries of the Third World
cannot demand economic aid, credit,
investments, technological transfers,
and complain about imperialism
when they obtain them, and then
again when they are withdrawn! What
is known as economic imperialism
has never been anything but eco-
nomic activity itself, the distribution of
capital, goods, and innovations. Con-
tributions from abroad can be factors
of strength or of weakness, depend-

ing on how they are used in the place
in question. Multinationals, like al-
cohol, are neutral; it is not wine which
is responsible for alcoholism, but the
drunkard. In one country a multina-
tional will build a factory to produce
goods, in another it will buy politi-
cians to sell them; it depends on the
country, not on the multinational,
which has no preconceptions. Nor will
assassinating five Fiat executives in
four years, as happened in Argentina,
reduce economic dependence. On
the contrary, terrorism is as underde-

Latin American
backwardness has causes
that are essentially
political... perfectly
indigenous, internal
political causes: the
permanent self-destruction
of Latin American societies
which has allowed
"imperialism" to have its
corrosive effect on
societies that are already
decadent.

veloped as it is underdeveloping.
Proof? The current human and capital
impoverishment of one of the most
industrialized regions of Spain and
Europe: the Basque country.
In his illuminating commentaries
on the recent tragedies of Latin
America, Francois Bourricaud has
demonstrated the emptiness of the
concept of "dependence," which
nevertheless seems to be the sole
explanatory factor haunting the Latin
American mind. In fact, dependence
always has a double meaning, and a
double face. Without Middle Eastern
oil and Chilean copper, the industri-
alized countries would not have
become rich; but were it not for their
industrial development, the reserves
of the producing countries would be
worth nothing.
Moreover, as became apparent in
the wake of the oil boycott and crisis
of 1973, Europe and Japan are in-
comparably more "dependent" on
foreign supplies of energy and raw

materials than is Latin America. In
fact, Latin America is in a less disad-
vantageous position than Japan: it
can train electricians, whereas Japan
cannot create petroleum in its subsoil.
In the 1960's, Mexico maintained a
growth rate comparable to Japan's
(6% per cent per annum as late as
1969); if its economy has
subsequently fallen apart, it is not
because of the energy crisis, since,
already an oil producer, Mexico has
found new and abundant under-
ground reserves during the 1970's.
And Mexico's oil is not being "robbed"
by foreign countries; it has been na-
tionalized since 1937. Yet in human
and social terms Mexico is still under-
developed.
Similarly, Peru's recent shipwreck
and tragic famine are due principally
to the unforgivable and prolonged er-
rors made by the "progressive" sol-
diers who seized power in 1968. And
in Chile, according to the French
socialist Alain Touraine, "one cannot
separate the coup d'etat [by Pinochet]
from the crisis within the popular-
unity movement of Allende and its in-
ability to sustain a coherent economic
policy."

Human Failure
This sort of diagnosis is never heard
in Latin America. Except for Carlos
Rangel's great book, Del buen saluaje
al buen revolucionario (published in
English under the title, The Latin
Americans, 1977), which treats Latin
American history as the history of a
failure, and a failure with human
causes, Latin American civilization
may be the first ever to avoid self-
criticism entirely. Octavio Paz, the
Mexican poet, said upon returning to
his country in 1971, "I am returning
because I heard the word self-
criticism..." He may have heard the
word, but I doubt he saw the thing.
Only recently his compatriot, the phi-
losopher Leopoldo Zea, professor of
the Colegio de Mexico, published in
the Spanish daily El Pais an article
called "Latin America, Another Side
of Imperialism." In this stereotyped
piece, Zea explains that (1) formerly,
the protection of dictatorships in
South America was evidence of Yan-
kee imperialism; (2) today, the strug-
gle of Washington against these same
dictatorships is evidence of Yankee
neo-imperialism. Naturally, Zea ne-

16/CARIBBEAN Peview

I_ I __ _ __ ___

glects to mention that a large number
of today's dictatorships were born as
reactions to Castroite and Guevarist
terrorism, and he scornfully dismisses
any reformist solutions or that relative
degree of respect for human rights
which might assure a bit of happiness
and prosperity for the masses, as is
the case in Venezuela.
It is not that Latin Americans are
not inclined to be self-deprecating.
But self-deprecation is not self-
criticism. The former comes from
hating oneself, the latter from

self-respect; the former leads only to
inertia, the latter to progress and
improvement.
In practical terms it is impossible
that all the evils facing a collectivity of
19 countries, with 320 million people,
in an area of 12% million square
miles, with land and mineral re-
sources among the richest on earth,
should be always and only the fault of
others. So long as this insanity
prevails, Latin America will remain
underdeveloped, sick with the under-
development which is at once the

most curable and the most incurable:
the underdevelopment of political in-
telligence.
Jean-Frangois Revel, the distinguished
French political theorist, is the author of,
among other books, The Totalitarian Temp-
tation and Without Marx or Jesus. The
present essay appeared in French in the
Autumn 1978 number of the French journal
Commentaire. It was translated by Roger
Kaplan and published in English in the Feb-
ruary 1979 issue of Commentary. Reprinted
from Commentary, by permission; copyright
@ 1979 by the American Jewish Committee.
Artwork on page 13: "Campiha Cubana" an oil
on masonite painting by Rene Portocarrero.

La Universidad Internacional de la

Florida Trae el Mundo a Miami Y Lleva

Miami al Mundo

Centro de Estudios Multilingues y

Multiculturales

conjuntamente con

Facultad de Artes y Ciencias
Facultad de Educacfon
Facultad de Tecnologia

Facultad de Administracfon y Servicios Publicos
Facultadde Negocios y Ciencias Organizacionales
Facultad de Admmistraci6n Hoteleray Gastron6mica

Con programs academics y actividades comunitarias y de servicio piiblico en
las areas de:
Estudios Internacionales Cursos en Miami Dade, New World Center y
Educacion Bilingie ahora...
Estudios de Idiomas Centro Bancario Internacional
Programs de Ingl6s como Segundo Idioma Consorcio Educacional con Miami Dade y
Entrenamiento para maestros, desarrollo y Broward Community College
evaluacion de nuevos programs y Cursos bilingiues en Miami Dade Community
materials College, New World Center-
Investigaciones en areas multilingies y Un Simposio de Teatro Latinoamericanoen
multiculturales cooperation con Miami-Dade y en otros
Estudios sobre el Caribe y Latinoamerica paises...
Programs Bilingiie y Tri-etnico. Maestria en Administraci6n de Negocios en
Actividades Transculturales Venezuela
Maestria en Administraci6n Ptiblica en Meiico
Conferencias para Maestros en Honduras y Peru:
. -_ -. :Programiasde Tecnologiaen las Bahamai-'-

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MIAMI...UN ESLABONCON EL RESTO DEL MUNDO, CON LA
COMUNIDAD Y CONEL EXTRANJERO.

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CARIBBEAN rEVIEW/17

I I

The US and

Central America

By THOMAS W. WALKER

America's apparent definition of
interests-and certainly its strategies
for achieving them-are outdated,
short-sighted and fundamentally
flawed. At present, US goals in the third
world in general and in Central
America in particular are short-termed,
reactive, and excessively concerned
with stability and, hence, the mainte-
nance of an elite-dominated status
quo. These policies pose a grave threat
to long-range US interests by contribut-
ing to the continuation of socially-
unjust systems and thereby increasing
the probability of civil and regional con-
flict and stimulating an ever-growing
feeling of anti-Americanism among
the peoples of the region. Ultimately,
the protection of US interests in Central
America will depend on the degree to
which America succeeds in making its
policies coincide rather than conflict
with the real developmental interests of
the mass of the Central American
people.

US Interests
US interests in the area can be divided
into three categories: economic, politi-
cal or geopolitical and social. Though
not wholly negligible, American eco-
nomic ties with Central America are far
from vital. Few, if any, of the primary
products produced in the region are
not also readily available from other
sources. In the agricultural realm, Cen-
tral America exports commodities
such as coffee, cotton, sugar, bananas
and beef in stiff market competition
with much of the third world. The re-
gion's known mineral resources are not
particularly remarkable, although it is
possible that its long coast lines and
patches of mountains may prove to
have greater oil and mineral resources
than is currently suspected. In addition,
the US is interested in Central America
as a market, albeit fairly minor, for
18/CAIBBEAN review

i I.

I, I
I~. I.

~ ~ z t !

'' ,+,' -
--fAE.La~cf -I- .-V .* *
:,-

SUS-made, technology and
* I, -- A. "- "

reverse.
iAmerican political-or geopoliti-
I I. .. ... . . .

US-made products, technology and
services. Finally, there is some, though
relatively little, direct US investment in
the region. All in all, the US is much
more important economically to the
Central American "Republics" than the
reverse.
American political-or geopoliti-
cal-interests in the region are perhaps
a bit more important than the eco-
nomic ones. In the first place, since
Central America is so close, the US is
logically concerned with its security
and would not like to have hostile gov-
ernments come to power in the area. It
is also an American interest to see to it
that free passage through the Panama
Canal be maintained. And logically the
US must be concerned with the main-
tenance of peace in the region-
although, as 1 will explain below, this
should not be held as an absolute
value.

1 - r .--

"-* .,* -" .t --[- I

.1

t- i
-I '. "" -*L I
'.'. i. ?"..---.." I I *
. ..:

,: ,.K

Finally, although it may not be ap-
parent at first glance, it is very much in
kmerican self interest to promote real
luman development in Central
kmerica. The protection of American
economic and geopolitical interests in
he future will depend heavily on suc-
ess in encouraging the emergence of
nore just societies in the region. And, it
s now abundantly clear that the pro-
notion of human development will re-
uire something more than simply
ending so-called "humanitarian" aid
o elite-dominated governments.

3ood Intentions, Bad
results

)f course, neither this list of interests
or the interrelationship which I just
described is particularly novel. After all,
early two decades ago, the Americans

',^i

involved in the creation of the Alliance
for Progress saw the pragmatic impor-
tance of pushing human development.
While there was an obvious element of
altruism in the fostering of the Alliance,
it was also motivated, at least in part, by
plain and simple self interest. With the
then recent victory of Fidel Castro,
Latin America appeared to have en-
tered some sort of an "eleventh hour."
Given the Cold War mood of the times,
US decision makers felt an urgent need
to guide Latin America's ruling elites
into acceptance of reform in order to
avoid "communist" revolution.
The Alliance proved to be a failure.
Nevertheless, although we know by
hindsight that many of its tactics were
ill-conceived, their flaws were much
less apparent at the time. Many good,
sincere people worked very hard to
promote the Alliance. To them, it ap-
peared logical that, given the example
of Cuba, the elites of Latin America
would see the importance of enacting
and carrying out reforms in land te-
nure, taxation, education, etc., which
would ultimately lead to income redis-
tribution. Foreign investment would be
encouraged in order to speed industri-
alization and modernization which, in
turn, would produce the growth in
gross national product needed to fi-
nance these reforms. Given these as-
sumptions, it seemed reasonable to
provide Latin American governments
with a counter-insurgency capability to
insure a period of stability in which the
nations involved could make the transi-
tion from underdevelopment to devel-
opmental "takeoff." Latin American
economies would grow, income would
be distributed through government
policy and "trickle-down" and liberal
democracy, resting on sound eco-
nomic and social foundations, would
flourish.
Unfortunately, these assumptions

were flawed by fundamental political
and economic misconceptions. In the
first place they ignored the most basic
principle of politics: that benefits flow to
groups in society in direct proportion to
their ability to demonstrate or exercise
power. Quite simply, providing Latin
America's elite-dominated govern-
ments with sophisticated counter-
insurgency capability made them
immune to the coercive power of the
mass of the people. Before long, the
dominant classes came to the obvious
conclusion that there was really no
need to make the distributive sacrifices
called for by the Alliance since popular
demands could simply be suppressed.
The Ch6 Guevaras, the Yon Sosas and
The Carlos Marighelas of the continent
were efficiently dispatched as were all
populist governments which showed
signs of threatening the status quo.
Soon, ultra-conservative military dic-
tatorships became the rule rather than
the exception throughout the
continent.
The second fundamental miscon-
ception involved the assumption that
the US model of economic develop-
ment could be applied successfully in
Latin America. Such a misconception
failed to realize that the distinct social,
economic and political characteristics
of Latin America make what is loosely
called "capitalism" work very differently
there than it does in the US.
"Capitalism" in the US coexists with
relatively high levels of social justice
precisely because it is dependent on
the mass of the American people as
consumers. The whole economic sys-
tem would collapse if the common
man were exploited to the extent that
he could no longer consume at rela-
tively high levels. This is not true of
Latin America where the so-called
"capitalist" economies are externally-
oriented. Generally speaking, the

middle and upper classes derive their
incomes directly or indirectly from ex-
port or from the local MNC-dominated
production of items which they, not the
masses, consume. The common man
is vital to this type of economy not as a
consumer but rather as a cheap and
easily-exploitable source of labor.
Therefore, there is little or no economic
incentive for the elite dominated gov-
ernments of Latin America to make the
sacrifices necessary to improve the
condition of the majority of the people.
Nor, for that matter, does this system
produce much "trickle down." Indeed,
dependent "capitalism" normally
works to concentrate income and
property. In agriculture, for instance, as
land becomes increasingly valuable for
the production of export products, the
illiterate peasant who normally holds
land by tradition ratherthan formal title,
often finds himself hood-winked,
bought out or pushed out by the large
hacendado or the managers of na-
tional or international agrobusiness. In
addition, since much land which was
formerly used for the production of
low-priced domestic staples is now
being employed to produce export
products, the common man faces
rapidly rising food costs due to scarcity
and/or the relatively expensive impor-
tation of such products.
Income concentration is also taking
place in the cities. Much, if not most, of
the import substitution going on there
is being carried out by MNCs. The latter
normally use capital intensive rather
than labor intensive technology-thus
minimizing the potential spread of
benefits through wages. In addition,
they now raise more than four-fifths of
their capital locally thus drying up
scarce national capital which might
otherwise be available to local entre-
preneurs. And finally, they tend to
"shop" among countries for the best
CAIBBEAN PEVIEW/19

investment climate" as business firms
have long been accustomed to do
among the states in the US. This
phenomenon is carried to its logical
extreme in the particularly vulnerable
mini-states of Central America where
some of the governments have set up
"free industrial zones" in order to attract
foreign enterprise. The elites, of course,
benefit in payoffs, bribes and employ-
ment for the educated few while the
advantages to the nation as a whole
and the trickle-down to the masses are
minimal.

The Five Countries

Central America is a particularly dra-
matic case of well-intentioned policies
and programs gone tragically awry.
Currently, none of the five countries of
Central America is enjoying what could
reasonably be called balanced devel-
opment. Costa Rica, with her civilian,
meticulously-democratic traditions,
might appear at first glance to be an
exception. However, one well-informed
observer, Charles Denton, recently
noted that even the liberal democratic
governments which have ruled that
country for the last three decades have
done little either to solve her growing
social problems or to defend her once
unique, relatively egalitarian society
against the distortions that are cur-
rently being caused by increased con-
tact with the outside world. Signifi-
cantly, he observes in Costa Rica the
now familiar "seemingly unbreakable
cycle" in which "...certain sectors of
the society consume large amounts of
foreign exchange by purchasing
commodity imports; this requires in-
creases in the yield of nonstaple cash
crops for export; land that could be
used to grow food for the populace is
instead being used to generate foreign
exchange to pay for imports...Using
1964 as a base, food prices in the met-
ropolitan area rose from 116.00 in 1971
to 145.55 at the end of 1973."
Costa Rica's problems fade into in-
significance when compared with
those of her four northern neighbors,
Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and
Nicaragua. There, middle and upper-
class resistance to popular demands
for social justice have led to mounting
manifestations of mass discontent
which, in turn, have been met by in-
creasingly brutal repression by the
armed forces and pro-government ter-
rorist and para-military organizations.
20/CAPBBEAN VIEW

For instance, in Guatemala during the
last quarter century the middle sectors
and remnants of the old landed aristoc-
racy have stubbornly resisted pressures
for social change. Immediately after
the successful CIA-sponsored
counter-revolution of 1954, the agra-
rian reform program which had
threatened the United Fruit Company
was dismantled and protections and
support for the working classes were
withdrawn. In the 1960s inevitable
peasant unrest and guerrilla activities
were put down by the armed forces in

All in all, the US is much
more important
economically to the
Central American
"Republics" than the
reverse.

bloody operations which, in some
cases, involved the massacre of entire
villages. This was followed in the early
part of the current decade by death-
squad assassinations of thousands of
reformist leaders in the urban areas.
Finally, after a short poriferan calm in
the mid-1970s renewed peasant unrest
and guerrilla activities are being an-
swered once again by more peasant
massacres and political assassinations.
In El Salvador the situation is even
bleaker. In that tiny country with its mis-
erable and teaming population, the
same small landed aristocracy which
originally stole the peasants' land in the
19th century and later massacred them
by tens of thousands in the 1930s, con-
tinues to this day to run El Salvador for
its own selfish ends. Even the mildest
proposals for agrarian reform are au-
tomatically labeled "communist." The
military governments use brutal re-
pression not only against peasants and
labor but now against an increasingly
alarmed church hierarchy which has
come to defend the masses. The
elections which the dictators hold
periodically do little to legitimize a fun-
damentally unjust and morally bank-
rupt system.
In Honduras, a traditionally more re-
laxed form of military dictatorship now
appears to be hardening to fit the
model which holds sway in the three

countries with which Honduras shares
borders. Due perhaps to the fact that
that country faces neither the over
population of El Salvador nor the
socio-ethnic divisions of Guatemala,
political battle lines have not been
drawn as tightly in Honduras as in her
northern neighbors. Indeed, the mili-
tary dictatorships which have
traditionally ruled the country, though
never really reformist, have often tried
to balance elite and popular interests
allowing, and at times even encourag-
ing labor and peasant organizations.
For instance, during the second presi-
dency of Oswaldo L6pez Arellano
(1973-75) the government actually
proposed and appeared intent on im-
plementing an agrarian reform law.
However, as it turned out, L6pez was
overthrown in the wake of a bribery
scandal and his successor Juan Al-
berto Melgar Castro, while paying lip
service to peasant problems, proved
unwilling to implement L6pez's reform
program in any significant way. In Au-
gust of 1978, Melgar himself was over-
thrown by right-wing elements in the
military and replaced by Policarpio Paz
Garcia, the former Honduran delegate
to the 1977 meeting of the Latin Amer-
ican Anti-Communist Confederation in
Paraguay. Paz is unlikely to be an inspir-
ing social reformer.
The case of Nicaragua is tragic al-
most beyond words. There, the
Somoza family has ruled the country in
behalf of itself and a small economic
elite for over four decades. Throughout
this period, the cornerstone of Somoza
power has been a thoroughly-corrupt,
fiercely loyal, US trained and equipped
personal army, the Nicaraguan Na-
tional Guard. Nevertheless, for long
periods of time, the Somozas chose to
rule by craft rather than coercion. They
placed high priority on the cultivation
of US "friendship" and the cooptation
of domestic elites. There was even a
period of facade "democracy" and en-
lightened developmentalism under
Luis Somoza in the late 1950s and early
1960s during which many of the lofty
programs of The Alliance for Progress,
including agrarian reform, found their
way into Nicaraguan law. Few of them,
least of all the agrarian reform, were
ever seriously implemented.
In the 1970s, however, Anastasio
Somoza Debayle has strayed from the
family tradition of moderation and
balancing. Increasingly greedy, intem-
porate and brutal, Somoza has now

alienated virtually every group in
Nicaraguan society with the notable
exception of the Nicaraguan National
Guard, which, like Somoza, is now
fighting for its very existence.
With the possible exception of Costa
Rica, Central America is in a state of
gathering crisis. The developmentalist
formulae which the US helped design
as part of the Alliance for Progress al-
most a generation ago have not
worked as expected. Economic growth
has neither "trickled down" nor been
distributed in any significant way by
local governments. Given the
external-orientation of Central Ameri-
ca's economies together with the
counter-insurgency capabilities of local
elite-dominated governments, the rul-
ing classes have little political or eco-
nomic motivation to engage in social
reform or redistribution. Faced with a
worsening situation and having abso-
lutely no options within the system, the
lower classes are turning, quite natu-
rally, to violence. It is extremely unlikely
that, under current circumstances,
popular demands will be answered with
genuine reform. Unless they are, how-
ever, it is probable that violence will
mount and ultimately result in civil, and
perhaps regional warfare.

Options for the US

The growing crisis in Central America
is fraught with danger for US interests.
Ironically, however, this situation is
largely of America's own making. After
all, the US provided the counterin-
surgency capabilities which today
insulate the ruling elite from popular
pressure. Military aid to some countries
has recently been reduced or termi-
nated but the Frankenstein's monsters
already created are alive and out of
control.

Providing Latin America's
elite-dominated
governments with
sophisticated
counterinsurgency
capability has made them
immune to the coercive
power of the mass of the
people.

It is time that the US re-evaluate its
posture vis-a-vis Latin America in gen-
eral and Central America in particular.
The Carter Administration's human
rights campaign is a small step in the
right direction; but, by itself, it is very
inadequate. Unless accompanied by
more basic policy changes it simply
puts the US in the rather dishonest po-
sition of piously bemoaning rights vio-
lations which are inevitable under the
elite-dominated systems which it has
nurtured and-with cosmetic
modifications-seems intent on main-
taining.
The case of Nicaragua illustrates the
defects of American foreign policy in
this hemisphere. In that country, al-
though the US has talked of human
rights, its basic concern seems to have
been with encouraging modifications
in, rather than the abolishment of an
elite-dominated system which does
daily violence to the Nicaraguan
people's right to distributive justice.
Events and policies during the little
over two years since Jimmy Carter took
office can best be understood by divid-
ing the whole period into three seg-
ments: 1) the year which elapsed from
the Inauguration of Jimmy Carter in
January 1977 to the assassination of

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Pedro Joaquin Chamorro in January of
1978; 2) the next eight months, cul-
minating in the civilian uprisings of
September, 1978, and 3) the following
five months which led on February 8,
1979, to the US "reassessment" of its
relationships with Nicaragua. During
the first period, the Administration's
major goal seems to have been to re-
form Somoza in order that the
traditional relationship between Wash-
ington and the dynasty could be con-
tinued. In the second, although there
were some inconsistencies, it appears
overall that the US came to realize that
Somoza was unsalvagable and there-
fore began hesitantly considering
status quo-oriented alternatives. So
timid and unimaginative was American
policy-making in these months that the
US actually proposed to the opposition
that they patiently bide their time until

the dictator held the next of his periodic
"elections." That, of course, only
served to dismay and enrage most
Nicaraguans. Since September the
search for "Somocismo without
Somoza" has been accelerated, first
through the OAS "mediation" effort
and finally, when that failed, by all but
completely severing diplomatic rela-
tions. Throughout this whole process
the popular solution which would of
necessity include FSLN participation in
the post-Somoza government has
been steadfastly eschewed.
The US is suffering, and will continue
to suffer foreign policy setbacks as long
as it views "stability" as a primary objec-
tive. In a world of rapid change it is
unwise, to say the least, to cling stub-
bornly to the status quo. But that is
precisely what the US is doing in Latin
America. There is no doubt that the US

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is capable of making abrupt and
sweeping changes in foreign policy
when such changes are seen to be in
the American interest. Richard Nixon's
opening to China and Henry Kiss-
inger's flip-flop in Southern Africa are
cases in point.
The same type of bold initiative is
now urgently needed in Latin America.
Let us consider the following sugges-
tions:
1. That the US begin using the re-
sources at its command (it is simply
nonsense to argue that "our hands are
tied") to pressure the current govern-
ments of Latin America to respect the
rights of their citizens to distributive
justice. Basic changes in land tenure,
taxation, education, and the manage-
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2. That the US reduce, if not com-

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pletely terminate its military programs
in the area and encourage allies such
as Israel to cease selling arms to local
dictators. The ruling classes must no
longer be insulated from the justified
demands and pressures of the im-
poverished majority.
3. That the US adopt a more realistic
and flexible attitude toward insurgency.
Armed revolt, in some cases, may be
the only option open to the masses.
Social revolution, itself, may be inevita-
ble and, indeed, desirable. In such
cases, the US will best defend its inter-
ests by gracefully and intelligently ac-
cepting justified revolution rather than
stubbornly opposing it as it has in
Nicaragua. The US has much less to
fear from revolutionary change than
many people would think. On the Cen-
tral American Isthmus, it is inconceiv-
able that even revolutionary

governments would find it in their
interest to be gratuitously hostile to the
US. Given North American geographic
proximity, Central American govern-
ments would undoubtedly prefer to
maintain close economic ties with the
US if at all possible.
4. That the US normalize relations
with Cuba as quickly as possible. The
language of the Cold War has been al-
lowed to linger on in Latin America far
beyond its function. Treating Cuba as
an international outlaw is no longer in
the American interest and it is certainly
not reflective of reality. It helps keep
alive the myth, often used by dictators
such as Somoza, that the struggle with
communism is the paramount issue in
Latin America. This same myth, as it
circulates among US politicians and
the American public, makes it all but
impossible for any administration in

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Washington to deal flexibly and intelli-
gently with popular insurrectionary
movements such as the Sandinistas in
Nicaragua.
The policy changes outlined may, at
first glance, seem radical. But in reality
they are conservative for they involve
fewer long-term risks to American
interests than the policies which are
now pursued by the US. America is
courting disaster when it clings to a
morally-bankrupt status quo in a world
of rapid change.

Thomas W Walker teaches Political Science at
Ohio University. This article grows out of one
commissioned by the US State Department for
presentation at its conference on "Central
America: US Policy Interests and Concerns,"
March 19, 1979.
Map on page 18 courtesy of Rubini Antiques
Maps, Miami, Florida.

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An exhibition of original
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Photography, FI.U.
Fully-illustrated catalog with a
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Head of Hispanic
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Visual Arts Gallery
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CAIBBEAN 1.V16W/23

By Sergio Ramirez

Not a new Cuba,

but a new Nicaragua

After nearly a half century of dark dominion over Nicaragua, the
Somoza dictatorship has entered its final agony. The popular uprising
that reached a dramatic peak in September, 1978, in conjunction with
the ongoing and effective actions of the Sandinista National Libera-
tion Front, have placed the dictatorship in a fatally defensive and
irreversibly damaging posture.
The Somoza regime's isolation from almost every representative
social group within the country, the splintering of the now bankrupt
national economy, and the growing international isolation of the dic-
tatorship are factors inexorably compelling the crisis and stimulating
a viable national alternative-the armed struggle and political pro-
gram of theSandinista National Liberation Front, which aims at the
formation of a government of national reconstruction to include all
democratic forces.

The American Role

The death throes are taking longer than they otherwise might, be-
cause the United States Government, which created the dictatorship
in 1933, continues to prop it up, and apparently intends to prolong its
agony until an alternative suitable to United States interests is found.
Furthermore, the National Guard, also a United States creation, be-
lieving that Somoza's recent difficulties with Washington are only
temporary, has opted to remain loyal to the dictatorship.
For those Nicaraguans pledged to democratic change at any cost,
it is only a matter of time: The United States can go on propping up
the dictatorship's corpse until it rots in their arms, but change will
come despite the chronic blindness of the North American Govern-
ment. Despite all efforts by Somocismo and the United States to
alienate the National Guard members from their own homeland by
imbuing them with a foreign perspective, the National Guard will split
its ranks, and many honest Guardsmen will come over to the side of
the people.
Once the dictatorship is overthrown and any chance of its ever
returning is swept away, we will begin the task of constructing a pro-
visional government of national reconstruction; a truly democratic
government vigilant of the interests of its people, of national
sovereignty and of our national resources; a government desirous of
lifting our country from its prostration before filibusterism, foreign
occupation, and the dictatorship; a government desirous of making

A lawyer and political scientist by
profession, Sergio Ramirez, 36, is also an
educator, historian, and novelist. During
recent years in exile from his native
Nicaragua, he taught at the National
University of Costa Rica, became head of
the Federation of Central American
Universities and founded EDUCA, the
Central American Universities publishing
house. Late in 1977, he and a small group
of Nicaraguan businessmen,
professionals and clergymen-later
known as "The Group of
Twelve "-denounced the Somoza regime,
called for its overthrow, and insisted that
the Sandinista Front of National
Liberation (FSLN) be includedin any
post-Somoza government. Since 1977,
"The Twelve" have become unofficial
spokesmen for the FSLN. Ramirez
himself has been named a member of the
"provisional government council,"
formed in the event that Somoza is
defeated.
While the essay which follows reflects
anger and frustration overpast US
treatment of Nicaragua, it also expresses
the desire of "The Twelve" and the FSLN
to establish a friendly relationship with the
United States once the Somoza system
has been destroyed. It attempts to dispell
any fear that the armed rebellion in
Nicaragua and the FSLN are dangerous
to US interests. It asks, above all, thatthe
Carter Administration cease interfering in
Nicaragua in behalf of the status quo
and, in Ramirez's words, "respect our
right to freedom and justice, a right which
we have won with our blood."
The document was written in April,
1979, and comes to CR through the
offices of Maryknoll Missioner, Father
Miguel d'Escoto.

CABBEAN Pe1IEW/25

The death throes are taking longer
than they otherwise might,
because the United States Government,
which created the dictatorship in 1933,
continues to prop it up.

our small country worthy of respect, and, above all, desirous
That these profound changes we envision, underwritten by
T- our people with their blood in the streets and in the moun-
Stains, not make us victims of United States hostility. Despite
so many years of humiliation and impositions, the Nicara-
guan people will not allow resentment to prevent the
Attainment of their goal: Mutual understanding and respect
1 t 'between the United States and the legitimate government,
once formed. Instead of buttressing his regime until its emits
-.- its last corrupt and bloody gasp, it would be simpler and less
/ shameful for the United States Government to abandon
Somoza immediately to his fate.
That the regime is bloody is demonstrated not in the ele-
vated assertions of its opponents, but as documented in the
report of the Organization of American States Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights.' Almost 80 pages in length,
S this report proves, through eyewitness accounts and tes-
timony, that in the months of September and October of
S1978, one of the most barbarous genocides in the recorded
I- history of Latin America was committed in Nicaragua.
Nonetheless, it has been filed in the useless archival grottoes
of the Organization of American States' Washington offices,
despite all the oozing blood, pain and horrors contained in its
pages...
L- We, the Group of the Twelve, have spoken with the presi-
dents of Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Mexico, and Ven-
ezuela, as well as with governmental representatives of the
Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Barbados, and found all
those countries prepared to see sanctions merited by the
,r Imassive human rights abuses detailed in the report applied
to the Somoza regime.2 And the report itself went further-it
-.. stated in its conclusions that the Nicaraguan case did not call
f- or the taking of corrective measures, or the implementation
of punitive measures against National Guard officials, patrol
leaders or civilian authorities, but demanded instead an im-
Smediate and total systemic change in Nicaragua...

: From Walker to Somoza
y M .The Nicaraguan people are not anti-imperialist by reason of
rhetorical assimilation. Throughout our history, we have
tasted the bitter fruit of intervention on our soil, since the
times of Commodore Vanderbilt, the patriarch of modern
Capitalism who sharpened his claws on our territory with his
mid-nineteenth century Transit Access Company, the first
United States business interest to turn our saddest misfor-
tunes into a dream of empire expansion-to become the
owners of a territory through which a transisthmian canal
Wide World Photos
26/CAIBBEAN REVIEW

Despite so many years of humiliation and impositions,
the Nicaraguan people will not allow resentment
to prevent the attainment of their goal:
Mutual understanding and respect between the United States
and the legitimate government, once formed.

route could be opened. And they also exacted payment from
us for William Walker's3 slave-holding dreams, pledged to ex-
tend the political shadow of the United States South into the
land of promise that Nicaragua was for expansionism's
forced march, now as then victims of manifest destiny robed
in mourning. Beneath the robes, the iron claws of conquest
that were shown us, and upon them we were impaled once
again in 1912 and yet again in 1926 by means of the Marine
occupations, a total ferocity to extinguish our nationality and '
place us under the sovereign control of Brown Bros. and Co.
and beneath the banners of Morgan Trust Co.
But we resisted. Commodore Vanderbilt's brigantines rot-
ted in the waters of the San Juan River, and William Walker's
filibusterers discarded their dreams of conquest when con-
fronted by the victorious thrust of the soldiers of Central
America. Walker was the first United States president im-
posed on us Nicaraguans. Anastasio Somoza is certain to be
the last.
And the United States military occupation provoked a true -.
war of national liberation in Nicaragua in 1927, a war in which
a fistful of peasants, artisans, and miners struggled to reclaim ""
their country's sovereignty, to affirm the nationality placed in
danger of extinction by intervention. But the war waged by .
General Sandino, despite the treason that put an end to his
achievements, also taught Nicaraguans that if they were to
have a future they had to struggle to attain it. The war of Gen-
eral Sandino did not end with his assassination in 1934. The
genuine national alternative, the people's choice, the San-
dinista alternative, was not truncated with Sandino's death. It
was then that it sprouted roots, for burying Sandino was like
burying a seed, in the words of our national poet, Ernesto
Cardenal.
The people gathered strength, gathered love, bore up
under a half century of tyranny, and therefore they alone are
now able to load their arms with the essential components of
the future. All else is the past. Somocismo is entering the
realm of the past, with all its baggage of death. And that mag-
ical formula of historical parallel,4 maintained by the United
States as the most archaic form of intervention in Nicaraguan
affairs, is now also fading into the past. Even now, the miracle j I
workers of the State Department may believe that the old
magic formula will work again: If not the Liberals,5 then the
Conservatives. That is to say, substitute the past with the past, .
or with its predecessors. A war to the death against the future,
against the youth of the nation who have assumed the re-
sponsibility of leading their people from prostration to dignity
and freedom. .i... .
Continued on page 49.
Wide World Photos
CARBBEAN ~eVIEW/27

INTERVIEW

JAMAICJ

POLLETAD

LEADERS

by Richard S. Hillman
Since the People's National Party (PNP) won electoral
majorities in 1972 and again in 1976, Prime Minister
Michael Manley has been attempting to achieve
development objectives in Jamaica through programs of
democratic socialism. Like other Third MUrld leaders, Man-
ley has articulated a strong desire for autonomy and inde-
pendence in political as well as economic affairs. His
rhetoric includes an obvious resentment of what he terms
the "dependency syndrome" and he calls for a "new interna-
tional economic order" (NIEO). His independent foreign pol-
icy has included friendship with Fidel Castro.
The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), which held parliamen-
tary majorities from independence in 1962 until 1972, con-
tinues to articulate the voice of the Opposition. Although
severely reduced in numbers of elected representatives, the

JLP is now led by Edward Seaga, a
staunch advocate of capitalist eco-
nomics, strong ties with the US, and
vocal opposition to socialism. The
press is undoubtedly free In fact, the
B Gleaner has been extremely critical
of the current administration. And,
the absence of a caudillo military tradition is in
dramatic contrast to many other Third VWrld na-
tions. There has never been a golpe de estado in
Jamaica.
Under these conditions Jamaica has
become symbolic of a Third Wbrld nation
attempting to undergo rapid social and economic
development within the context of political democ-
racy. The Jamaican experience could be understood
as an alternative to the kind of authoritarian directed
change which promotes rapid economic growth atthe
expense of individual liberty.
It is apparent in Jamaica that development creates
new problems as solutions to old problems are sought
Emigration of the middle-classes, flight of capital, the Green
Bay Massacre, failure of JAVAMEX, the Terra Nova murders
and unprecedented austerity measures imposed by a new
IMF agreement have disheartened many people. Recently
there have been demands for electoral reform, charges of
corruption in government, and gasoline price protests.
Although very few Jamaicans deny that fundamental
change is necessary for the amelioration of social and eco-
nomic inequities, the method required to bring about such
change has been the subject of intense political conflict. The
"right" has accused the PNP of going too far toward a "com-
munist" solution. The "left" has accused the JLP of "im-
perialist stoogism" and the PNP of being "fashionable
phonies." Dr Trevor Monroe, a political scientist at the Univer-
sity of the MWst Indies, leader of the Worker's Liberation
League (WLL), and founder in January 1979 of the Mbrker's
Party of Jamaica (WPJ) has argued in no uncertain terms
that what is needed in Jamaica is the kind of "radical sys-
tem change" that the Manley government is unwilling to ini-
tiate Disillusionment in the center is characterized by the
contentions that the economy is being "mismanaged" and
programs to develop Jamaica have been more symbolic
than real.
What are the positions of the political leadership within
this essentially two-party parliamentarian democracy
which have produced such a variety of responses and per-

28/CAifBBEAN REVIEW

The image of Michael Manley as an idealist
whose vision obscures administrative imperatives
and the image of Edward Seaga as a pragmatist
whose expertise precludes political charisma
are obvious over-simplifications.

spectives? The following are excerpts from conversations I
had with the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposi-
tion. The interview with Prime Minister Manley took place
on April 12, 1978; that with Edward Seaga, on February 7,
1978. Although rarely, if ever, is unanimity achieved (even
within the PNP or JLP) regarding the programs and policies
most suitable for the attainment of Jamaica's needs and as-
pirations, examination of the opposing voices of Michael
Manley and Edward Seaga is essential to understanding the
general political dialectic in contemporary Jamaica.
The two political leaders are articulate and well-educated
individuals. Both have studied politics and economics:
Manley at the London School of Economics and Seaga at
Harvard University. Both men impressed me as possessing a
real working knowledge of the processes of power.
It was apparent during our interview that Seaga was
eager to present his views. Upon my arrival in his private
New Kingston office, one ofseveral secretaries pushed a but-
ton under her desk which unlocked the glass door to the
front office through which I entered and passed several indi-
viduals who appeared to be bodyguards. Seaga was ready
to commence our interview ten minutes early. The inner of-
fice was decorated with a combination of glass and antique
furniture and was impeccably neat. On the walls hung sev-
eral framed photographs of the Seaga family. His Syrian
background, his wife's African ancestry, and their children
appear in these photos as a testimony to the traditional
Jamaican national motto: "Out of many, one people." V sat
on a comfortable sofa behind a glass-topped table on which
at least twenty Newsweekmagazines were stacked next to a
Harvard ashtray.
Approaching the Prime Minister was somewhat more
complicated. After two years of correspondence and several
postponements, I was finally able to speak with Michael
Manley. After passing the guards at the front gate, I pro-
ceeded several hundred yards to Jamaica House where the
guard at the front entrance seated me in a lobby. Shortly
thereafter, one of the Prime Minister's assistants showed me
to a meeting room where I assumed the interview would
take place The room was luxuriously decorated with chairs
and sofas. On the walls were Jamaican and African
sculptures and paintings and near the entrance were two
framed photographs: one showed Prime Minister Manley
with Premier Fidel Castro; the other showed Prime Minister
and Mrs. Manley, the first black first-lady in Jamaica, with
President and Mrs. Carter After a few minutes I was asked to
proceed upstairs to the Prime Minister's personal working of-
fice where the interview was conducted.

In order to facilitate comparison and contrast of the com-
peting political ideas articulated by Jamaica's principal
political leaders, the interview excerpts are juxtaposed in
thematic groupings. Manley's penchant for eloquent and
lengthy monologues stands in dramatic contrast to Seaga's
direct and precise responses. But, the popular image of
Michael Manley as an idealist whose vision obscures ad-
ministrative imperatives and the image of Edward Seaga as
a pragmatist whose expertise precludes political charisma
are obvious over-simplifications

The 1976 Election

The 1976 election results show a profound reduction in JLP
support. The PNP now outnumber the JLP in the House of
Representatives by 47 to 13. Ithad been rumored that the JLP
deliberately made little effort to win so as to be disassociated
with PNP responsibility for economic disaster I asked the
Leaderof the Opposition if this were true
Seaga:
Absolutely not. The Labour Party's campaign was a total ef-
fort. I myself visited over one hundred rural towns. We spent
much money and were committed to a victory at the polls.
But, the election was manipulated and fraudulent. It was a
rigged election! This the JLP has documented.
My first question to the Prime Minister derived from
Seaga's accusation. I asked Manley to comment on the con-
tention that the last general election was fraudulent.
Manley:
The facts are as follows: There is one small flaw in the
Jamaican electoral system which can have the effect that if a
party is overwhelmingly strong in a particular locality in which
there is a polling booth and is sufficiently either dishonest
from the center or dishonestly served from the periphery, it
can do a certain amount of manipulating of the votes in that
particular box. And it does seem that some fiddling of that
sort went on. Two of the districts concerned were Labour
Party districts, one is called Tivoli Gardens, the other is called
Rema. There is no question that representatives of the
Labour Party used their overwhelming strength to totally ex-
clude the PNP from a few polling booths in those two areas
and without question did a little ballot-stuffing.
There were a couple of places where the PNP had the same
sort of overwhelming strength, coupled with a great sort of
communal hostility where it seems quite clear that the same
sort of thing took place and one of those places is called Ar-
nett Gardens and the other is called Payne Avenue. The total
effect of all of this on both sides probably added up to maybe

CAP BBEAN IIE6W/29

"The bulk of the private-sector

30/CAltBBEAN P EIEW

E, ..',
-"'
i^ ..-

l^W -' ''~bk

that is in Jamaica now
has made up its mind
to fight it out here." Manley

two or three hundred votes in a situation where the PNP pol-
Sled 420 thousand votes and the JLP 320 thousand votes. And
I would think you probably are talking about two or three
hundred votes either way. In both cases the results on the
particular outcome were completely non-existent, because,
Seaga was himself the beneficiary of one set of fiddling but
he would have won by so far anyway that it probably made his
majority look one or two hundred bigger than it would have
looked and we had two candidates that would have been af-
fected and both of them were winning by so much that there
really is no issue. You know, again it's a matter of how much
they would have won by anyway. The suggestion that this was
true across Jamaica is a lie of such proportions that it almost
beggars description.
It is very interesting that just before the election the opinion
poll that was conducted by this fellow, Carl Stone, who uses
very scientific methods, hit the result as a 56/44 popular vote
spread. Well, we did 57/43 and believe me the few votes in
those two places did not make the difference between the 56
and 57 percent. Because numerically they couldn't. What re-
ally took place was this: when the election was over Seaga
recognized that he had been massively beaten, and was
S shattered but he's resilient and ruthless, and he soon discov-
Sered that he was in very, very serious trouble.
f With all the people who had contributed unprecedented
'i sums of money, they spent money in that election as if it were
going out of style. Nothing has ever been seen like it in
; . Jamaican history. He had his famous rent-a-crowd technique
-|-y where he had about three or four thousand people that he
yi-' could pay every day, seven days a week, that he could
transport all over Jamaica where he could have these crowds
S just to listen to him.
He had promised so hard and high that he was going to de-
liver my quote/unquote "communist" neck to the establish-
ment that he really discovered that he was in very serious
trouble when he took such a throbbing. What's more con-
venient than to then embark on a major story charging fraud?

Party Ideologies
The JLP budget of 1969 taxed corporation profits as part of a
program to enhance Jamaican control of the economy.
Seaga was then JLP Prime Minister Hugh Shearer's Minister
of Finance and deserves credit for Tivoli Gardens and the
w w terfront development. I asked Seaga why it is generally
believed that the JLP is the "capitalist/middleclass" party.
Seaga:
WideWorld Photos To say that the Labour Party is conservative is PNP prop-

"To say that the Labour Party is conservative is PNP propaganda.
There has been more social reform
under the JLP than under PNP governments:
the national insurance scheme, schools,
Tivoli and the Waterfront developments." Seaga

agenda. There has been more social reform under the JLP
than under PNP governments, the national insurance
scheme, schools, Tivoli and the Waterfront developments.
You really ought to read closely the 1976 Party Manifesto.
Both parties have traditionally been different sides of the
same coin. The Labour Party has always stood for and
brought about economic reform. What is happening today is
that the PNP has within itself a radical group. There has been
considerable reaction against radicalization of what has been
a traditionally middle-class party and against state own-
ership! The PNP is breaking apart the split within ranks is,
in part, caused by constituency pressure loss of jobs, etc.
Actually the moderates in the PNP outnumber the radicals by
seven to one. But the radical element in the PNP want to dis-
place blame for the devastation of the country to the IMF to
the oil crisis, to international economics. I must give credit for
the renegotiated bauxite levies. But, the primary issue today is
government mismanagement.
I asked Manley the following questions: "Has the PNP be-
come factionalized? Is there a difficulty in defining a singu-
lar meaning of Democratic Socialism and how it could be
implemented in reality?"
Manley:
I think that there is a certain truth in this. There is no question
that when we did the work in 1973 and 1974 to try to develop
a model which could be reduced to writing and be the basis
of education, discussion and guidance, you know provide the
framework, there was very widespread participation at all
levels of the party and it was done in a very democratic way.
But as soon as it was reduced to writing and proclaimed in
November 1974 within months it became clear that it was
being very differently interpreted in three directions.
One group of people were interpreting it as nothing more
than a crude Christian gospel revisited. It is really not quite all
that we meant, we did mean a bit more than that! And then
there was another group who were taking a very sort of purist
socialist, not a communist, but a sort of purist socialist view,
that socialism can only mean no ownership of means of
production. It got very puristic. And because of that you had,
first of all, an interpretive problem. What the devil do we
mean? And then, of course, more troublesomely, flowing
from that, what are the correct tactics to be followed?
And this did create very real difficulties throughout '75, '76
and '77 in spite of which we won an election in spite of
which we somehow governed the country and throughout
which we worked very, very hard to try to get people to exter-
nalize and express what were the interpretive problems that
Continued on page 53. Wide World Photos
CABIBBEAN FEVIEW/31

The End of Paradise

What Kind of Development for Negril?
By Brian J. Hudson

Negril is a Jamaican national resource
which only recently has been exploited
on a significant scale. Like some other
resources such as soils and forests,
Negril can be exploited intensively for
maximum yields in the short term or
managed to produce sustained yields
indefinitely. Just as the soils of many
formerly fertile areas of the world have
become exhausted or totally removed
by exploitation without thought to the
future, so are many tourist areas being
ruined by thoughtless exploitation.
There can be little doubt that Negril's
success, even at times when other
Jamaican resorts experience decline,
can be largely attributed to its unique
physical and social environment. It at-
tracts visitors who seek relaxation in a
naturally beautiful place which allows
them ready contact with the people of
the country. This is in sharp contrast
with the very artificial tourist ghettoes in
other parts of Jamaica which often
seem to be designed to isolate the
32/CAl?BBEAN PEVIW

tourist from the beauty and life of the
island.
It is the special quality of Negril
which is now being marketed by its
promoters. The brochure, 'Negril,
Jamaica' produced for the Negril Area
Land Authority by the Urban Develop-
ment Corporation and the Jamaica
Tourist Board, makes this perfectly
clear. It is the natural beauty of the place
which is emphasized: "Negril is beauty.
It is the contrast between the wide
tranquil bays of the beachlands and the
wild tropical beauty of the West End,
where lush and vibrant vegetation grow
almost to the verge of craggy limestone
cliffs honeycombed by the timeless ac-
tion of the sea and laced by coral for-
mations..."
The brochure describes in detail
Negril's natural sights and sounds, re-
ferring to the sea coves, natural vegeta-
tion, wild birds and marine life. It makes
a virtue out of the absence or scarcity of
many of the features and amenities
commonly associated with more de-

veloped resorts: "Getting to Booby Cay
can be fun. There is no landing jetty, so
you have to wade to shore from your
boat or swim from the mainland ...;
"rustic thatch roof cottages that have
no electricity. The visitor's night is
lighted by a kerosene lamp on which is
inscribed Home Sweet Home;" "Tele-
phones ... are not allowed to intrude
too loudly ... people don't miss their
radios and television sets," etc., etc.
The vacation activities mentioned in
the brochure are in keeping with the
peaceful natural setting so vividly de-
scribed: walking, strolling, jogging,
swimming, snorkelling, scuba-diving,
sailing, fishing, water-skiing, but, above
all, relaxing in and enjoying the natural
sights and sounds of a tropical island.
"Watching the sun set might, in itself,
be the high point of your stay in Negril;"
"... the only sound you hear is the sea
lapping on the shore and birds warbling
in the thick vegetation."
If these natural attributes of Negril

are the basis for its success as a tourist
resort, the implications for develop-
ment are obvious. To conserve the
unique environment of Negril so that it
remains a productive tourist resource
for many years to come will require
strict and careful management. Devel-
opment must be of a kind, in locations,
and at a level of intensity which does
not destroy or seriously detract from
the natural beauty and relaxing atmo-
sphere of the place. It is not just a ques-
tion of architectural and urban design
or landscaping, important though
these are. In terms of numbers of
tourists and quantity of facilities pro-
vided there is a saturation level beyond
which the environmental quality will
deteriorate to the detriment of the
tourist industry.
So far, however, plans for Negril's
development have not been of a kind,
which even if strictly implemented,
could possibly conserve the qualities
on which the resort's continued suc-
cess depends. Of particular concern is
the fact that practically the entire 15
mile or so stretch of coast between
Green Island and Negril Lighthouse is
zoned 'Hotel Resort' or 'Resort Resi-
dential.' Even with a few gaps or "win-
dows" of open space such as those
proposed by the Urban Development
Corporation, the complete develop-
ment of the coast in accordance with
such zoning would utterly destroy the
natural beauty of Negril's seaside. Re-
sort development would predominate.
Nature would be largely confined to a
few small enclaves.
Insistence on low density, low rise
development would do little to avoid
this. It would only mean that we would
have a 15 mile long low density resort
town of low buildings with a suburban
character instead of an equally elon-
gated resort development where high
rise buildings might punctuate or even
dominate the skyline. The American
vacationer, on whom the Jamaican
tourist industry mainly depends, does
not have to leave the US for either the
low density suburban type of coastal
resort or for the type of seaside devel-
opment characterized by multi-storied
hotels and apartments. For what Negril
can offer at present, however, the
tourist has to come to Jamaica.
Unfortunately, Negril's attractions,
like those of other Jamaican resort
areas, are being rapidly destroyed,
largely by the very tourist industry
which depends upon them. Here the

destruction of vegetation and wildlife,
including the depredation of coral
reefs, the defacement of the landscape
by advertisement boardings, badly de-
signed and badly sited buildings and
other structures, pollution, including
noise pollution, are among the many
forms of environmental degradation
which threaten to undermine the very
foundation on which the Jamaica
tourist industry is built.
For example, the tourist brochure's
invitation to go "walking along the tow-
ering cliffs of West End Negril, watch-
ing the water ebb and flow into the

The complete development
of the coast would utterly
destroy the natural beauty
of Negril's seaside. Resort
development would
predominate. Nature would
be confined to a few small
enclaves.

caves" is becoming increasingly un-
realistic. The proliferation of cliff-top
vacation cottages and other tourist
oriented developments and the erec-
tion of boundary walls and fences have
restricted the exercise of this pursuit
considerably. Moreover, its enjoyment
has been much diminished by the con-
version of this area of "wild tropical
beauty" into a sprawling coastal resort
settlement. The entire stretch of this
remarkably beautiful coastline from
Negril village to the lighthouse is zoned
for resort development. An important
element of Negril's natural setting and
an outstanding part of Jamaica's heri-
tage of natural beauty is being spoiled,
while the coastline is being made in-
creasingly inaccessible by uncon-
trolled resort development.
The only way in which Negril can be
developed as a resort without destroy-
ing the main resource on which the
area's tourist industry is built is to limit
development to a few carefully selected
sites while keeping intact the natural
and agricultural landscape forming the
incomparable setting which makes the
area so attractive.
A fifteen mile urban sprawl along the
coast interrupted by a few open spaces
should not be the planners' goal. In-

stead, every effort should be made to
create a small number of attractive,
well-planned resort villages in an un-
spoiled rural setting of landscape
beauty. In this way productive use can
be made of a valuable resource without
depleting it. Here it is relevant to men-
tion the promoter of Canadian tourism
who used to say, "I like selling scenery
because at the end you still have it."
This is possible only when the re-
source, the scenery or whatever, is
managed wisely to produce sustained
yields. Otherwise, careless exploitation
of environmental resources for tourism
will lead to their destruction. Such a
course would turn what might have
been a non-wasting resource into a
vanishing asset.
Negril should be tended like a con-
tinuously productive garden, not
exploited to exhaustion like a mine or
quarry.

Brian J. Hudson teaches Geography at the
University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica.
Photo on page 32 is an aerial view of Long Bay,
Negril. (Urban Development Corporation pho-
tograph by J.S. Tyndale-Biscoe.)

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INTENSIVE ENGLISH
CERTIFICATION
PROGRAM FOR
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Cost: $700.00 for total instruction
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plus books, materials, room
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(305) 552-2277 Mrs. SanSoucl
(305) 552-2874 Miss Weltz
(305) 552-2563 Dr. Staczek
(305) 552-2851 Dr. Aid

CAIBBEAN EVTIEW/33

F

Big

Rage

&

Big

Romance
lan I. Smart

Cuentos del Negro Cubena.
Cubena (Carlos Guillermo Wilson). Editorial Landivar
(Guatemala), 1977. 94 pp. $3.50.
Pensamientos del Negro Cubena.
Cubena (Carlos Guillermo Wilson).
Los Angeles, 1977.48 pp. $2.50.

The most impressive critical appraisal of this young
Panamanian's work comes from the pen of one of the elder
statesmen in the field of Afro-Hispanic-American literature.
The prominent Ecuadorian literary figure, Adalberto Ortiz,
author of Juyungo (1942), the first of the important black
novels emanating from Spanish America, has said in an
unpublished review: "In his Short Stories by Cubena the
Black, in other words stories told by the author himself,
Cubena adds a new note to Afro-Hispanic-American narra-
tive: a kind of black tremendismo." Ortiz's words underscore
what seems to be the most fundamental trait of Cubena's
prose writings, for tremendismo, as the name implies, is a
literary overindulgence in the horrendous, engaged in for
definite artistic ends by certain 20th century Spanish
novelists, of whom Jose Camila Cela is perhaps the best
known. Cubena's short stories are indeed a most artistic
expression of intense outrage. However, in his poems -
which he calls Pensamientos (Reflections) which ap-
peared in print just a few months after the short stories, the

bitter recrimination and outrage give way to the tender ex-
pression of romantic sentiments.
From Venemous Brevity to Intense Beauty
Cubena's choice of genres is particularly apt. The Cuentos
(Short Stories) is his first published work. This genre requires
the efficient concentration of power, the constant struggle to
maintain that fragile balance between intensity and brevity.
Cubena's poems (Pensamientos), with few exceptions are
also models of intensity and brevity. It is evident to all of us
who know Cubena that his personality is shaped precisely by
this dynamic dialogue between the forces of brevity and
those of intensity.
His prose has the bare factual flavor of a newspaper report,
creating an air of authorial detachment with its strongly
objective and realistic tone. However, this tone is deceptive; it
is merely an artistic device for giving full vent to the immense
outrage that wells up in Cubena as he looks deeply at the
world around him. His stories are not meant to faithfully
document the horrors of this world, but to be expressions of
the disgust that these horrors evoke. "Coal and Milk" and
"The Family" would make very little sense unless viewed
more as metaphor than as fact.
Cubena further adds to the newspaper-report flavor of his
prose, by giving a truncated quality to his narrative through
the use of the ellipsis. His aim seems to be simply to state the
essential facts with a steady, stacatto rhythm. To this end his
paragraphs are normally quite short, many consisting of one
line. They are like mini explosions preluding the final gigantic
explosion of the last paragraph. The following is one of the
paragraphs from: "Coal and Milk":

34/CAIBBEAN REVIEW

"When the ceremony in Santa Ana Plaza is over, curses and
sobs fill up the most wretched of the shacks. Every Sunday,
every Wednesday ..." This quote is immediately preceded in
the original text by a six-line paragraph dealing with the
deplorable institution of an additional Wednesday drawing of
the pernicious National Lottery. The ellipsis at the end of the
paragraph quoted above proclaims the author's deliberate
decision to be brief. In fact, he proceeds directly to a new
point, having said all that he needs and cares to say about the
Wednesday drawings.
Cubena's poems are cryptic, many of them expressing a
barbed note of protest. "Demencia" (Lunacy) for example
reads:
What is lunacy? Lunacy is:
A small Portuguese mouse
fancying himself
in control of
THREE
AFRICAN
ELEPHANTS
And what is super lunacy?
Measly Portugal
taking control of
GUINEAM-BISSAU
MOZAMBIQUE
ANGOLA
The political satire is excellent in that it focuses accurately on
real absurdity. Much of the sickening venom of the short
stories is absent, but there remains the same carefully chosen
frugality of expression. With the poem "Definition," relatively

simple, structural innovations combine with brevity to create
a particularly impressive poetic statement.
What is a
1 2
N
E
9 NEGRO 3
R
0
6

In Yankeeland
or in Panama?

A time bomb

tic tac tic tac tic tac

tik tak tik tak tik tak

TIC TAC TIC TAC TIC TAC ...

In "Claudine," one of the love poems, the tone is com-
pletely different as the intensity and brevity are put to the
service of romantic tenderness.
S61o quiero vivir I only want to live
s6lo quiero amar I only want to love
pero sufrir but suffering
es mi inmenso mar. is my boundless sea.
Reminiscent of the "Haiku" and the epigrams made popular

CARBBEAN IVIFW/35

The themes chosen by Cubena illustrate,
for the most part, the more sordid aspects
of man's inhumanity to man,
or more precisely of the white man's
inhumanity to man.
For, a deeply entrenched, systematic racism is the cause
of most of the misery in Cubena's fictional universe.

by the vanguard poets of the twenties, "Claudine" achieves a
profound expression of beauty through the starkest of ex-
pressions, the most frugal use of words.
In a good poem, especially in the short poems that Cubena
prefers, every line has to be charged with poetic intensity.
Every line has to be a "punch line." In a short story, the
reduction of spatio-temporal elements necessitates a strong
ending, a punch line. Cubena's short stories show true mas-
tery of the punch line device. Even in his poems this flair for
the suspenseful organization of material manifests itself quite
impressively. The poem, "Oath" is the best example of such a
technique:

I am no criminal
neither black nor mulatto boy child
do I wish to beget
I am no criminal
neither black nor mulatto girl child
am I going to procreate
I am no criminal
no half Indian boy or girl child either
I am no criminal.
Wretched albino
Who are you going to hate?

With his voice hoarse and heavy with irony, the poet speaks
his condemnation of certain racial attitudes. However, this
irony hinges on the knowledge that the poetic persona who
so proudly proclaims his supposed racial purity and pul-
chritude is really just a "Wretched albino," the most odious of
all, at the very base of the pyramidal social order. So the full
sense of the poem cannot be grasped or even guessed at
without the final couplet.
Cubena's short stories end with an explosive flash that
abruptly elucidates the full sense of the proceeding narrative.
In "Coal and Milk," the opening work, a poor black woman
seems to find a way out of her debasing indigence. Much to
the suspicious disapproval of her meddlesome, gossip-
mongering neighbors, she acquires two dogs. After six
pages, heavy with the menace of impending disaster, the
reader is with one swift and brutal stroke made aware of the
full nauseating truth: "When Coal and Milk returned to the
shack, well before the others awoke, the mother of the ragged
little brats would force the dogs to vomit so that she could
provide food for the family." It will be difficult to find, in any
literature, a more consumately disgusting image. With this
punch line Cubena induces in the reader a retching reaction
that parallels the dogs' action of "vomitar." The brutal im-

36/CAIBBEAN IVIEW

pression that it leaves on the reader's sensibility will not be
easily effaced.
The punch line of "Morgue," another story of the collec-
tion, almost outdoes that of "Coal and Milk" in its violation of
the reader's sensibilities. The two stories have quite similar
structures showing the author's eminently successful use of
a suspense that withholds the ultimate explanation until the
absolutely final line. Throughout the story strong sentiments
of indignation are aroused in the reader as he is made to
witness the viciously and patently unjust working of "Canal
Zone Justice." The Indian protagonist and his black compan-
ion are but two more victims of this infernal machine that "...
took possession of the poor Indian's body and soul, 'in per-
petuity,' just as it had already done with Panama's
sovereignty." In the very last paragraph Cubena fully reveals
the depths of degradation to which the Indian had sunk, and
for which he has been given an extremely cruel and absurdly
inappropriate punishment: "One night they caught him
red-handed he used to sexually molest the corpses with
their glassy blue gaze."
In "The Degenerate Woman," the last lines fully explain the
thread of mystery woven into the eight pages of narrative. The
explanation hinges on the main female character's perverse
preference for her white homosexual lover in the face of her
interracial, heterosexual relationship with a black virologist,
physician, and general "super-negro." (The virologist is
incidentally Cubena's namesake and is obviously his alter
ego as well.) The very last lines indirectly but unmistakably
reveal Genevieve's for this is her name lesbianism: "Two
naked bodies, inebriated and burning with erotic passion,
locked in a volcanic embrace, and two women's tongues
stroke two of those organs that so bewitch men."
Not all stories are structured for suspense in so perfect a
fashion. In "The Brothel," "Honeymoon," "The Family," and
to some extent, in "The Party," the last lines are not the sole
key to the full meaning of the respective plots. Nevertheless,
they are strong emotional charges, restating with intensity the
main message of the story. "The Family," for example, pre-
sents the sad history of a mother who finds a macabre solu-
tion to the desperate daily problem of physical survival for
herself and her six fatherless children. She opts for an early
reunion with "Olodumare and the other cheerfull ancestors
in the Kingdom of the Dead." The extremely cynical and
totally disrespectful reaction of the racist society to this
tragedy is artfully expressed in these final lines of the story:
"On the second from the last page of the morning papers one
Tuesday, the first of April, there appeared the following bold
headlines: MORE BLACKS DIE, THIS TIME AT HOME AND

I

Miraculously, however, in the third section
of the book hate turns to love ...
True to the romantic tradition,
love redeems the misery of his universe;
love holds out some hope.

NOT IN A BARROOM BRAWL."
From Despairing Rage to Hopeful Romance
The themes chosen by Cubena illustrate, for the most part,
the more sordid aspects of man's inhumanity to man, or
more precisely of the white man's inhumanity to man. For, a
deeply entrenched, systematic racism is the cause of most of
the misery in Cubena's fictional universe. The short stories
could be divided into three categories.
To the first category belongs those that present odd or
psychologically abnormal human behavior. Such behavior
results from the pressures exerted on the individual by a racist
society. The abnormality of the little black boy of "The Flour
Boy," who at night in bed compulsively covers himself with
flour, could be placed in this class. "The Whorehouse," and
"The Party," similarly, present patterns of behavior that can be
classified as only moderately deviant. A second group of
stories deals with human behavior that most reasonable
people would unhesitatingly consider deviant and abomina-
ble. Almost everyone would instinctively repudiate the moth-
er's act in "Coal and Milk," considering it disgustingly aber-
rant. In "The Third Illusion," and in "The Degenerate
Woman," homosexuality which is still deemed morally
reprehensible by many people is the central theme.
In fact, Cubena skillfully elicits the reader's contempt for
racism by associating racist values with a preference for
"perversion." Genevieve, "The Degenerate Woman" is a case
in point. In the case of "The Third Illusion," Nelson, the
protagonist is accosted by a band of little boys in the street
and has the following exchange with them:
"-Thief.
"-But I'm not black.
-Pothead.
-But I'm not black.
-Faggot.
-But I'm not black".
In the "African Grannie," a faithful old black servant sacrifices
her own reputation and her liberty to preserve the supposed
honor of her elitist white master's family. However, the white
master is himself an "impotent faggot," whose wantonly
adulterous wife murders him during a sordid quarrel. Al-
though the Indian in "Morgue" is punished as a criminal, his
behavior belongs more appropriately to this second group.
Pathological, aberrant, disgusting, and contemptible be-
havior is not always criminal. In the third group of stories
however, the criminal element is introduced. "Honeymoon,"
for example presents the case of a white father so incensed
with racial hatred that he would rather murder his daughter

than see her married to a man who is apparently white but of
questionable racial background. In "Carnival Tuesday," three
white Yankee men brutally rape and murder a thirteen-year-
old black girl. These three villains are clearly meant to be
up-to-date versions of the perennial ugly American that has
always made his odious presence felt in Panama, and on the
Canal Zone in particular. They are named symbolically
Richard Nixon, Edgar Hoover, and John Mitchell, and are all
members of the "Social Club of the Masked Men of Kalifor-
nia, Kalabama and Killinois." The same Canal theme recurs
in the poems, and especially in "Gatun" in which a similarly
effective play on words established a clear association be-
tween the KKK and the US presence in Panama. The poem
employs a simple but impressive formal device; it reads:

We don't want

KKK
roo
icl
naa

no hamburger
nor imperialist $
Teddy the thief
we want JUSTICE

Gatun, as the poet explains in a note is "an important lake
in the Panama Canal." Sam Wallace the protagonist of "The
Fireman" has dedicated his life to exterminating "uppity"
black people. The ritual suicide and sacrificial slaughter of
"The Family," have been already discussed, as has the sordid
murder in "The African Grannie."
Cubena peoples the fictional world of his short stories
mostly with abnormal beings in varying stages of moral,
psychological and even physical decadence. An overview of
the structure of his book of poems indicates some degree of
consistency with the view of the world presented in the Cuen-
tos (Short Stories.) The Pensamientos are divided into three
parts, the first two of which are "Las Americas" (The
Americas), and "Africa." These two parts account for thirty-
seven of the book's forty-six pages and the titles clearly
announce the author's continuing concern with socio-
economic issues, and of course, with interracial relations.
Furthermore the section entitled "The Americas" has the
following quote from Montesquieu as an epigraph "Injustice
done to just one is a threat to all." More pertinently the epig-

CAfBBEAN PCVI E/37

Cubena's first novel, Chombo,
should be going to press this year.
Its tenor will determine whether the note of hope
through romance sounded in the final pages
is really a harbinger of a new Cubena,
chastened by the torment and rising above it,
or whether it was the final
flicker of a now definitively dead optimism.

raph of "Africa," taken from Vladimir Hertzog and quoted in
English, reads as follows:

If we lose our capacity to be
outraged when we see others
submitted to atrocities
then we lose our right to call
ourselves civilized human beings.

A poem like "lratus" from the section "The Americas"
confirms Cubena's black rage. The title also bespeaks a
touch of erudition for iratus is Latin for angry. It begins: "My
first cry in this life/was a protest against injustice." He con-
tinues to berate the Panamanian system for depriving him of
his citizenship, reducing him to the undignified and status of
chombo (roughly the Panamanian equivalent of "nigger").
The poet continues: "and in Yankeeland/I get citizenship and
dignity/what irony." So indirectly the United States is
poetically indicted. The poem ends on a note of heavy-
handed sarcasm: "AND THEY COMPLAIN ABOUT
SOVEREIGNTY?"
In these two sections of the book Cubena's rage errupts in
short poems that are like mini volcanoes. "Cabanga Af-
ricana" (African Nostalgia, the word "Cabanga" is a popular
Panamanian word of African origin which the poet translates
as nostalgia) is but another example:

You snatched me from my
DEAR AFRICA
with a deluge of lashes
for a handful of coins
and now a strange culture
is my sad reality.
Miserable culprit
an embrace of death
is what I long to give you.

Miraculously, however, in the third section of the book hate
turns to love. As if aware of this sudden shift and the logical
consistency it implies, Cubena seems to excuse himself with
this quote from Dryden (appearing in a Spanish translation)
which he uses as the epigraph: "Love is the noblest weakness
of the spirit." This short section is an intimate and extremely
38/CAI?BBEAN PEVIeW

lyrical account of the poet's real life experiences. Many of the
muses who appear here are recognizable, even by name, to
those of us who know Cubena. The poet's erotic adventures
transcend racial boundaries as the titles of the poems affirm:
"My Argentine Woman," "My Puerto Rican Woman," "My
Chicana," "My Jamaican Woman," "Indian Enchantress,"
"Pretty Mulatto Woman," to mention some. True to the
romantic tradition, love redeems the misery of his universe;
love holds out some hope.
Afro-Latin-American literature will have as many facets
and modes as there are Afro-Latin-American authors.
Cubena, a Panamanian-born resident of Los Angeles,
California, has created a literature that is a rich mirror of many
influences. The extreme tremendismo of his prose bears an
obvious relationship to naturalism and its many offshoots.
There also appears to be some influence of the Jean Paul
Sartre type of existentialist narrative with its gratuitous preoc-
cupation with nausea. The virulent social protest of a Jorge
Icaza could also be a possible source of influence. In a story
like "The African Grannie," Cubena appears to be influenced
by the stylistic experimentation of the contemporary novel in
Latin America and elsewhere. In Cubena's poetry there are
many echoes of the various brands of poesia negrista (Black
poetry) with their stress on social protest themes, and their
extensive formal experimentation. The love poems are very
similar to the epigrammatic poems made popular by the
so-called "new" Latin-American poets of the vanguard
epoch.
Black rage turned suddenly to romance, what began with a
bang seemed to peter out to a whimper. However, the final
soft tone is unequal to the stridency that predominates in the
total work. Cubena's first novel, Chombo, should be going to
press this year. Its tenor will determine whether the note of
hope through romance sounded in the final pages is really a
harbinger of a new Cubena, chastened by the torment and
rising above it, or whether it was the final flicker of a now
definitively dead optimism. Time will tell, but the evidence
strongly suggests that tremendismo will prevail. Black
Latin-American literature has always existed in its oral form;
in its written form it has come of age only in this century.
Cubena's tremendismo is just one of its many manifesta-
tions.

lan I. Smart teaches Spanish at Howard University, Washington.
Artwork by Eleanor Porter Bonner.

,QUE LE HA PASADO A SU ESPANOL?
Que poco a poco se le ha ido arruinando. Es la inevitable influencia del
ingles. Las conversaciones en singles, la prensa en singles, la television
en ingles. Es natural que su espahol se empobrezca.

iDEFIENDALO!

"DOMINE SU LENGUAJE"
es un metodo organizado en
5 volumenes de
autoaprendizaje, que lo
conduce de una manera
eficaz al dominio prActico
del espafol.

* La comunicaci6n escrita
* Ortografia modern
* La comunicaci6n oral
* Vocabulario culto
* Vocabulario superior

Simple...
PrActica...
Necesaria.

RECORTE Y ENVIE HOY
MISMO EL CUPON QUE
APARECE A SU DERECHA
DIRED, INC.
RO. Box 343721
Coral Gables
Florida 33134

SEGUNDA EDICION
Usted puede adquirir hoy mismo
S esta practice series de
j Fautoa rendizae
"DO NE SU LENGUAJE"
por s6lo

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Si usted no esta completamente
satisfecho con su compra, se le devolverd
su importe dentro de un pJazo de 30 dias
Recorte este cup6n pr la line de punLos
DIREC, INC. E Incluyo cheque o giro postal
P.O. Box 343721 CR
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Florida 33134
Llene s6lo una de las dos.
VISA (BankAmericardi MASTER CHARGE
Cta. No. Cta. No.
INSTRUCCIONES PARA EL ENVIO: tUSE LETRA DE IMPRENTA, POR FAVOR)

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CArIBBEAN PEVIEW/39

A

Manual>

for

Manuel
By GERALD GUINNESS

A Manual for Manuel. Julio Cortazar
(trans. by Gregory Rabassa). 389 pp.
Pantheon, 1978.

The Manual of the title is a collage, or
scrap-book, of miscellaneous material
-snatches of interior monologue,
conversations, word games, lists of
comic abbreviations, newspaper clip-
pings, etc.-compiled by a group of
Latin-American exiles living in Paris for
the baby son of two of the group, Man-
uel, so as to give him an idea when he
grows older of what it was like to live in
the bad old 1970s. The member of the
group who actually does the compiling
is a shadowy figure called only "the one
I told you" (presumably he is a stand-in
for the author himself) and by the end
of the novel we know a great deal about
his views on life and aesthetics, views
which assimilate him-perhaps too
closely for comfort, at times-to the
garrulous Morrell of Rayuela fame.
The other main characters, Marcos and
Andr6s, represent two opposed
philosophies of revolution. Using a reli-
gious terminology, Marcos believes in a
revolution by works and Andr6s in a
revolution by faith, a hard-liner and a
soft-liner respectively.
40/CAIBBEAN rVIEW

Marcos is leader ot a terrorist cell
called the "Screwery," (a good enough
way of rendering the "la Joda" of the
original although an English
monosyllable might have rendered
Cortazar's intention even more graphi-
cally.) This "Screwery" exists to put the
fear of Marx into bourgeois society and
it does so by indulging in a variety of
subversive activities, ranging from the
substitution of butts for cigarettes in
seemingly unopened packets to the
kidnapping of a high-ranking Latin-
American intelligence agent for ran-
som. Although the "Screwery" includes
several women, their role is a passive
one and entirely confined to bed and

kitchen. (Both at the beginning and at
the end of the novel we see them mak-
ing sandwiches.) Latin-American radi-
cals, it seems, prefer their barricades to
be manned.
At the other end of the revolutionary
spectrum from Marcos is Andres, an
Argentinian who listens to Stock-
hausen and jazz and agonizes about
literary form. His scepticism about the
aims and methods of the "Screwery"
isolates him from other members of
the group and finally scares off his mis-
tress Ludmilla, who promptly transfers
her carnal affections to Marcos ex-
tremism as usual proves to be the best
aphrodisiac. Ideologically Andres oc-
cupies a position half-way between the
dedication to violence characterized by
the "Screwery" and the cool Cartesian
detachment of his other girl-friend, a
French girl called Francine. When he
finds he cannot make up his mind be-
tween these two women and the prin-
ciples they represent he recklessly de-
cides to throw in his lot with the ter-
rorists, by now esconced in a hideaway
house with their abducted diplomat,
and so draws down on their heads the
members of a counter-terrorist group
acting in connivance with the French
police. Marcos gets killed in the shoot-
out and Andr6s is left to point the
moral. From now on, he says, it must
be bothjazzand revolution, cultureand
politics, Eros and Thanatos. The order
of priorities "might be that way or the
reverse but it will be both things, al-
ways.
Andr6s gets the lion's share of our
sympathy in this novel since what he
stands for is the humanization of
politics. It is not merely the authori-
tarianism congenital to successful rev-
olutionary regimes that troubles him
but also the grey puritanism that takes
over once the new leaders are in power.
How to combine revolutionary politics
with sexuality, with Stockhausen, with
levity, with sheer zaniness (figured here
by an eccentric called Lonstein who is
growing a giant mushroom in his bed-
room)? To achieve this synthesis,
Andres argues, it will be necessary to
make "a new definition of man" and
build bridges by means of art between
this new man and our unregenerate old
man. But until this can be done men
like himself (and, one imagines, his
creator) must continue to live in a kind
of limbo between two worlds, as
though "perched on top of a pointed
roof."

( lk

The politics in this book are interest-
ing but also distressing for any reader
with democratic-socialist convictions.
How keen these Latin-American radi-
cals are to plot mayhem and bring the
roof down about our heads! A modern
nation like France is no paradise, but
neither is it a Paraguay; the treatment
needed to shock one patient to life
might kill the other patient off. Nor
does Andre's optimism, that with the
"new man" in controlnext time every-
thing will turn out just wonderfully, cut
much ice. The writing has been on the
wall for some years now and what it
says is that revolutions invariably end
up with men like Marcos assuming
godlike powers, and men like Andres
or Lonstein confined to prison or suf-
fering rehabilitation in mental hospi-
tals. Cortazar's perennial youthfulness
(looking at his photograph it is impos-
sible to believe that he was born in
1914), and his penchant for the com-
pany of young Turks, are really a little
hard to bear at times. One just wishes
that he would begin to grow old like
everybody else.
But there is another sense in which
the novel is intended as a manual for
revolution and this sense has to do with
literature. The organization of the book
as a sort of scrap-book is no doubt Cor-
tazar's way of undermining the author-
ity of the traditional "novelist" who lords
it over his material, making it dance to
his will like a puppet-master. Such a
procedure smells too much of the au-
thoritarianism that Andres's "different
definition of man" is intended to
undermine. By contrast, what Cortazar
intends his non-authoritarian novel to
be like is suggested by his image of the
lamp set in a garden to attract insects:
"a naked single light, and then the
other elements begin to come, the
scattered pieces, the shreds" until the
current is switched off and the novel is
complete. That way all the variants of
reality contained in the novel-the sub-
jective (interior monologues), the ob-
jective (debates in the "Screwery"), the
planned (such plot as there is), and the
adventitious (the newspaper clippings
of contemporary actuality incorpora-
ted into the text)-all assume a kind of
parallel autonomy where no one ele-
ment swamps the others. For Cortazar,
a novel intended for the "new" reader is
a novel which just happens. It serves as
a catalyst for feelings and ideas which
are "in the air," and the unstructured
nature of the work allows the reader

abundant freedom to shuffle these
elements about and interpret them as
and how he will.
It is curious, however, that a book
which is designed to kill off the author-
ial presence should have the author's
personality writ large over every page.
When either Andres or "the one I told
you" talks, one inevitably hears Cor-
tazar's voice. Even in descriptions of
objective events, like the attack on the
hideaway, a distorting screen of
"consciousness"-a character's (that
is, Cortazar's) consciousness-
interposes itself between the event and

Cortazar's perennial
youthfulness, and his
penchant for the company
of young Turks, are really a
little hard to bear. One
wishes he would begin to
grow old like everybody
else.

the reader. Nothing is ever allowed to
speak for itself. Ironically, it is traditional
novels like Anna Karenina or Vr and
Peace which give the impression of au-
thorlessness, with the creator being
swallowed up by-or disappearing
behind-his creation. These are also
the truly "open" novels of the Western
tradition, where no two readings or re-
readings ever reveal the same book.
In short, Cortazar's theory of the new
novel reads better than do the novels
which exemplify it. A Manual is really

rather a dull book and at its worst,
maddenly self-indulgent. How soon
one wearies of all those jokes and word
games! Of all that sex in over-heated
attics! Of all that self-congratulatory
exile groupiness! What is worse, a
heavy cloud ofdeja vu hangs over long
stretches of the book, much of it read-
ing like Rayuela reheated and served
up again for radical consumption. For
example, Andres talking over Ludmil-
la's head often gives an uncanny sense
of Oliveira talking over La Maga's head
in Rayuela. This spectacle of the bril-
liant intellectual building up his ego by
explaining life and literature to his sexy
but not overly bright mistress is as ob-
jectionable the second time round as it
was the first; had I been in Ludmilla's
shoes I would have taken them off and
thrown them, together with my
sandwich-making equipment, at
Andres's head.
The Dr. Jekell of those brilliant short
stories is thus the Mr. Hyde of an un-
satisfactory novel like A Manual for
Manuel. Solace is at hand, however, for
the disappointed reader in the excep-
tional quality of Gregory Rabassa's bril-
liant translation. Not only does Rabassa
make the novel read like a book origi-
nally written in English but in certain
respects he has even improved upon
the original. Some of his word plays are
sharper than their original versions in
the Spanish, as when he translates
"florencia naitingueil" as "florence-
galen-night" or as in the obscene
verses at the bottom of page 56 which
modesty forbids me to transcribe. The
English language, after all, is an un-
equalled vehicle for puns and smut.
Gerald Guinness teaches English at the Uni-
versity of Puerto Rico, Roi Piedras
Artwork on page 40 by Eleanor Porter Bonner.

Dept. F.A.
300 North Zeeb Road
Ann Arbor, MI 48106
U.S.A.

Dept. F.A.
18 Bedford Row
London, WC1R 4EJ
England

CAIBBEAN PEVIEW/41

CArBBEAN PEVIEW

is Available in

MICROFORM
,, FOR INFORMATION
_- ) WRITE:
... Y.' University Microfilms
International

One Way or

Another

(De Cierta Manera)

by Dennis West

One Way or Another
(De cierta manera)
Directed by Sara G6mez Yera.
Adapted to the screen by Sara G6mez
Yera and Tomas GonzAlez P6rez. As-
sistant Directors: Rigoberto L6pez and
Daniel Diaz Torres.
Photography by Luis Garcia. Edit-
ing by Ivan Arocha.
Music by Sergio Vitier. Songs by
Sara Gonzalez.
Featuring Mario Balmaseda,
Yolanda Cuellar, Mario Limonta, and
the Amateur Folklore Group, "Kum-
baye."
Produced in 1974 by the Instituto
Cubano del Arte e Industria
Cinematograficos (ICAIC), the Cuban
Film Institute. Spanish language with
English subtitles. Black and white, 78
minutes.
US Distribution by Tricontinental
Film Center.

Twenty years have passed since the
founding of the Instituto Cubano del
Arte e Industria Cinematograficos
(ICAIC). Although critics have dis-
missed much of their output as prop-
agandistic, the Institute's productions
have become widely recognized for
their artistry as well. Critics have
acclaimed, for example, the insightful
portrayal of a middle-class intellectual
caught up in a tide of revolution in
Tomas Guitierrez Alea's Memories of
Underdevelopment (1968). Director
Sara G6mez's only feature film, One
fy or Another (1974), continues this
line of sensitive examination of
human beings swept along by revolu-
tionary change.
One My or Another ranks as one
of the outstanding Cuban films of the
1970s. It stresses no dogmatic revolu-
tionary message; instead, it meshes

true-to-life, struggling characters with
innovative techniques and structure to
explore the obstacles to revolutionary
transformation of society. Sara
G6mez demonstrates a heartfelt,
non-paternalistic, direct approach to
problems-such as the conse-
quences of being black and
female,-consequences that she her-
self had experienced personally and
deeply. She shot the black-and-white
film in 16 mm to encourage spon-
taneity and allow the players center
stage. Performances ring fresh and
natural; particularly noteworthy is lead
actor Mario Balmaseda's finely drawn
characterization. Sara G6mez died as
the film neared completion, and
Cuban cinema lost one of its most
promising talents.
The film's two protagonists are
young lovers still learning about each
other's background and deepening
their relationship. Mario, a mulatto
worker in a bus assembly plant, and
Yolanda, a lighter schoolmistress of
bourgeois background, are examined
amidst their attempts to jettison
traditional, inherited values. Yolanda is
unaccustomed to the problems of
student discipline and motivation that
plague the elementary school where
she is assigned and, in a criticism
session with fellow teachers, shows
herself unable to accept constructive
suggestions. Mario, who grew up in a
shantytown, struggles to free himself
from a code of conduct based on
old-fashioned, macho camaraderie.
He finally rejects that code by publicly
denouncing his socio, Humberto, for
skipping work in favor of a love tryst.
Mario goes further than Yolanda in
making over his value system; but the
film's final sequence stresses an on-
going and difficult process. As we
watch the two lovers (in a lengthy,

42/CAIBBEAN KVIEW

high-angle long shot) arguing incon-
clusively in the streets of a newly
constructed district, the symbolism
becomes evident: revolution can
more easily destroy old slum neigh-
borhoods and construct new build-
ings than it can mold revolutionary
consciousnesses in adults.
The filmmakers dilute the romantic
interest by consistently placing the
lovers in contexts that showcase be-
lievable, complex people confronting
the everyday problems of economic
and social change. When Mario and
Yolanda court, we are not entranced
by two individuals making love.
Rather, social implications keep in-
truding. One sequence begins bucol-
ically with the lovers, alone in the
country, talking about themselves; but
then voice-over commentary and
intercut footage interrupt to survey in
documentary fashion that same set-
ting when it was a shantytown where
Mario had lived. In an elegant restau-
rant Mario starts when a flambe dish
is ignited behind him, a subtle re-
minder that blacks did not enter such
establishments before the Revolution.
When Yolanda visits Mario's home as
a dinner guest, the dialogue revolves
around the workaday challenge of
putting beans on the table.
One of the most successful tech-
niques of One Way or Another is the
economical presentation of the class
backgrounds of the characters via
montage sequences which, accom-
panied by voice-over, afford capsule
characterizations. For instance, when
boxing referee-composer-singer Guil-
lermo Diaz appears, still photos of
him and of newspaper clippings
about his life are combined with the
re-enactment of a dramatic moment
when he accidentally killed a rival.
Viewers thus evaluate his past before

Revolution can more easily
destroy old slum
neighborhoods and
construct new buildings
than it can mold
revolutionary
consciousnesses.

fixing him in the present time of the
story.

New Aesthetic Norms

In the first twenty years of its exis-
tence, ICAIC, through wide-ranging
experimentation, has achieved nota-
ble success in the creation of new
aesthetic norms. In One Way or
Another, Sara G6mez enlists many of
the commonplace practices and con-
ventions of mainstream commercial
cinema but then limits and subverts
them. The result is neither
mainstream cinema nor radical film,
but rather a self-conscious hybrid
which effectively stimulates the critical
faculties of the viewer.
The film's narrative thrust is that of
any entertaining love story: the obsta-
cles to union confronting romanti-
cally-entangled protagonists. The
principal actor and actress have been
selected for these roles, at least in
part, according to canons of the star
system: physical attractiveness and
sex appeal. Following Hollywood
traditions, Luis Garcia's cinematog-
raphy features an abundance of
medium and close shots permitting
viewers to know and enjoy the attrac-

tive faces of the principals. Yolanda's
stance as an independent woman
evidences little social and political
understanding and recalls the indi-
vidualistic attitudes and values of the
bourgeois heroines of Twentieth
Century-Fox's recent women's pic-
tures. Musical motifs occasionally
highlight lighthearted moments, as
when Yolanda teases Mario about his
Abaku6 mentality and the two skip
down the path. We enjoy a cute,
"pillow-talk" interlude: Yolanda, dres-
sed in baby-doll pajamas, imitates
Mario's macho way of walking in pub-
lic as he watches from the bed.
One Way or Another relies on the
self-propelling logic of narrative much
as mainstream cinema does. For in-
stance, the opening sequence (the
workers' council where Mario de-
nounces his pal) implies that much of
the rest of the film will be dedicated to
the expected, retrospective narration
of how the characters reached such a
climactic moment. However, Sara
G6mez assaults the primacy and
cohesion of narrative by activating
Brechtian principles, promoting a
consciousness of the medium (film
revealed as film) and interrupting the
flow of the narration.
A wide range of devices de-
dramatizes the material and shatters
the spectator's enthrallment. Docu-
mentary footage and accompanying
voice-over explanation supply explicit
analysis of the marginal subcultures
that thrived in the slum areas of pre-
revolutionary Havana. The voice-over
commentator serves as an official
Historian-Sociologist of the Revolu-
tion by furnishing statistical data on
the marginal population as well as
pronouncements concerning revolu-
tionary programs for the eradication
of poverty. Images of squalor and
CARBBEAN r1EIEW/43

underemployment are capped by un-
forgettable footage from Argentine
Fernando Birri's documentary, Tire
die: children race across a railroad
trestle while begging coins from
passengers in a moving train. Yolanda
appears in interview fashion address-
ing the camera in order to compare
her educational background with the
inferior school where she teaches. In
an aside, we hear Yolanda warn of in-
sufficient educational opportunities
for adolescent girls while we watch a
crowd violently react to a provoca-
tively clad young woman dancing in
the streets. Some interruptions in the
narrative doubly assault the realist
tradition by blatantly underlining the
film's own construction: an insert title
asks "Who is Guillermo?" when this
character appears and voice-over re-
fers to him as a "real person" (i.e., not
a professional actor) in the movie.
One Way or Another looks at the
grassroots workings of an on-going
social revolution, a rough-edged pro-
cess which often proves painful for
the individuals involved, even though
they might support its goals. In One
Way or Another, the first problem is
who will teach pedagogy to the
teachers? Yolanda's actions in the
classroom and during criticism ses-
sions effectively illustrate the difficul-
ties of escaping one's privileged
background. The teacher berates her
uncooperative student, Lazaro, and
admonishes him to be thankful that
the Revolution furnishes his books
and pencils; she does so without pos-
sessing any understanding of his
miserable home life. Lazaro provides
an illustrative example of a severely
underprivileged student confronting
the educational system. After Yolanda
ejects Lazaro from her class, a team
of professionals investigates all as-
pects of his background; and a
committee of concerned citizens and
educators considers his case. Finally,
he is reincorporated into school.
Yolanda's role in this process remains
unspecified, which implies that the
system functions in spite of flawed
personnel.
A wrecking ball smashing old walls
appears with the opening credits to
herald the film's governing metaphor:
the destruction of the old (mentalities
and slums) and the construction of
the new (revolutionary consciousness
and housing). Voice-over at the
beginning of the film tells of new
44/CAI?BBEAN PIVIEW

neighborhoods constructed for the
inhabitants of Las Yaguas, which was
a predominantly black shantytown
and a stronghold of the Afro-Cuban
sects. Travelling shots through the
newly built residential zones glimpse
signs-such as goats grazing in
yards-of the persistence of the old
ways within an orderly arrangement of
paved streets and sidewalks.

The Voice-over Narrator
Much of the task of analyzing margi-
nality falls to the voice-over narrator.

The rough edges of the
revolutionary process never
disappear.

Given voice-over's blatant powers of
manipulation, many documentary
filmmakers consider it the most prob-
lematic resource of their art. A defect
of the English-language version of
One Way or Another is the narrator's
tone. The voice becomes a self-
assured omniscience controlling facts
and statistics and speaking pa-
tronizingly of the marginalized popula-
tion; all of which serves to remind us
that the Revolution, while guarantee-
ing basic material necessities such as
food and housing, nevertheless
exacts, in return, the demise of a sub-
culture. An insert title boldly
proclaims: "With the triumph of the
Revolution, all marginal sectors of the
population were integrated in
society"-like it or not. The necessity
of this exchange-basic material
needs, disappearance of subcul-
ture-represents the film's underlying
premise, which, naturally, coincides
with the social strategy of the Revolu-
tion. Criticism and analysis flow from
this premise rather than question it.
When Mario mentions to Yolanda
that he once aspired to become a
niriigo, the conversation is sus-
pended to allow a parenthetical exam-
ination of the roots of Cuban
machismo. Although the male
chauvinism of Andalusians receives
limited attention, the thrust of the in-
vestigation of the origins of
machismo centers on the Abakua
Secret Society, an exclusively male,
religious-mutualist organization

founded in the early nineteenth cen-
tury. Actuality footage reveals the ritu-
als of purification and sacrifice that
constitute the initiation ceremony;
thus the film encourages criticism of
the Abakua Society of publicly expos-
ing shocking sights generally forbid-
den to the uninitiated. Images of a
snake tied around a man's waist, and
of the castration and beheading of a
billy goat indelibly capture the anti-
rational nature of the rites while
voice-over describes the misogynous
myths imported from West African
patriarchal culture. The film emphati-
cally links the beliefs and values of
the Abakua Society to the social
phenomena of machismo and mar-
ginalism, but there is an inexplicable
reluctance to explore the relation of
Mario's mother to Afro-Cuban reli-
gion. She is briefly seen performing
ceremonies before the altar of an
Afro-Cuban sect, but we are never
provided with a rationale for her reli-
gious beliefs and participation.
While One Way or Another clearly
shares the didactic impulse common
to most Cuban films, Sara G6mez
never pulls the reins too tight. The
rough edges of the revolutionary
process never disappear. We hear the
voice-of-the-Revolution narrator an-
nounce work opportunities for all, but
we also witness a meeting where a
mother of eleven suggests to Yolanda
that her son's disruptive behavior
might be related to the mother's
5 a.m.-11 p.m. work-housework
routine. Mario, after finally abandon-
ing his adherence to outmoded
macho solidarity, is so driven by
doubt that he seeks out friends and
relatives to weigh their opinions of his
actions. In one lengthy sequence, the
camera surveys beer-drinking fellow
workers informally evaluating the
conduct of Humberto and Mario; a
gamut of opinions is expressed. This
debate spilled into Cuban daily life
when the film was released. Sara
G6mez's substantial achievement is
the convincing depiction of deeply
human and troubled characters who
are traveling the difficult and uneven
road to social revolution. Though the
end of the road is announced as
being in sight, each day's journey is
rough going. Sara G6mez keeps us
debating why.

Dennis West teaches Hispanic Film, Literature,
and Culture at Indiana University.

I -

The Caribbean in the Year 2000
Continued from page 7.

Support for environmental causes is
limited but growing. Bermuda has
banned private cars and other islands
are considering similar but less drastic
steps. Everyone prefers fewer numbers
of easy-spending culturally oriented
tourists rather than the sun and sand
747 hordes. Soil and beach erosion are
grave problems in Barbados and Haiti
and becoming serious elsewhere.
The knowledge base does not yet
exist to determine what is ecologically
sound development in the Caribbean.
Clearly some of the countries are
already overpopulated or close to it
(Barbados, Haiti, Puerto Rico). North
American ratios of 1 private car per
every two persons would turn Carib-
bean societies into giant polluted park-
ing lots. Capital-intensive petroleum
industries jeopardize non-renewable
marine resources while creating few
jobs. Ironically, Cuba with its planned
nuclear reactor, open-pit nickel mining,
and other activities has been the least
concerned about environmental eq-
uity, a lack of concern shared by desti-
tute Haiti, and affluent Bahamas.
The desire to reduce dependency
ranks next to equity as a goal in the
Caribbean. Since inequity is often seen
as a function of dependency, these
goals and policy proposals are often
linked, not always realistically. What-
ever the measures utilized, these 22
societies are among the most de-
pendent in the world. Their open
economies consist of 30 per cent or
more of foreign trade, often tied to a
single country, and two or three com-
modities. Their educational systems,
languages, media, and values are de-
rived from those of non-Caribbean
states, reinforced by the 3.2 million
Caribbean diaspora which exports val-
ues to the islands in myriad ways. Their
technology is almost entirely imported
and their own few scientists are at work
in fragmented and isolated units,
sometimes on problems of primary
interest outside the region.

Dependence

Politically and militarily many Carib-
bean governments are incapable of
self-defense, and some need to be pro-

tected by foreigners from their own
people. The Caribbean imports almost
all its weapons, its senior military of-
ficers are mostly trained abroad, and its
politicians have been labeled as
"mimic men" quick to imitate the latest
metropolitan fashions. While the na-
ture and extent of dependency varies
over time and from society to society it

Cuba, Guyana, and
Jamaica are the first
Caribbean governments to
endorse the view that if
everyone cannot be rich
then it is better for
everyone to be poor.

is a constant and poorly tolerated fea-
ture of all Caribbean countries. Policies
advocated to reduce dependency in-
clude diversification of exports and ex-
port markets, regional or sub-regional
import substitution and initiation of re-
search and development capabilities,
and political and cultural populism to
generate broad political participation,
and a shift towards local languages,
dialects, and values. These policies
were perhaps most thoroughly com-
bined during the 1958-1972 regime of
Haitian President Francois Duvalier, Sr.,
although the price of Haitian political,
economic, and cultural isolation was
economic regression and political rep-
ression. Regional and sub-regional
movements in the Commonwealth
Caribbean and elsewhere have yet to
reduce national dependency signifi-
cantly, but they have brought about
new and extensive exchanges of ideas,
goods, and services (the pervasive
unemployment problem has been a
severe impediment to movement of
persons). Cuba has changed its com-
prehensive dependence on the US for a
strikingly different but still fundamen-
tally dependent relation with the USSR,
one that imposes few cultural and
political demands but comes with a
ponderous ideological and economic
load.

How compatible are the goals of
rapid economic growth, full employ-
ment, redistribution of public and
private consumption, environmental
protection, and reduced dependency?
How are these goals individually and
collectively subject to the constraints of
demography, natural resources,
technology, geography and other
variables? What are the present and
foreseeable future tradeoffs?
Rapid economic growth has been
pursued in the Caribbean by strategies
of industrialization for export, tourism,
foreign private and public investment,
and de jure and de facto preferential
relations with non-Caribbean states.
These strategies remain capital inten-
sive and therefore probably incapable
of generating full employment. Rapid
growth has trickled down to personal
income poorly, but in Puerto Rico and
elsewhere it has done better at making
public goods and services widely avail-
able. It has damaged the environment,
although there is little evidence that this
has resulted in many jobs or much
growth. Finally, it has perpetuated de-
pendence, although the achievement
of rapid growth can be used to pursue
leverage within dependence.
Full employment goals have been
pursued in the Caribbean at the ex-
pense of economic growth and per-
sonal consumption. The heightened
political mobilization used to attack
unemployment has also reduced de-
pendency while raising the level of
internal political coercion. Full em-
ployment is highly compatible with en-
vironmental protection, but nowhere
yet have large-scale public works
projects been directed at these goals.
Instead the unemployed have been
mostly engaged in inefficient labor-
intensive agriculture. The problem of
reconciling rapid growth with employ-
ment generation is perhaps the most
urgent and difficult Caribbean task.
Equity through the redistribution of
public and private consumption has
been achieved in Cuba and is on its way
in Guyana and Jamaica. It has had a
deleterious effect on economic growth,
investment, savings, and productivity
and a mixed effect on dependence. It
has served to legitimate local dialects
and customs of low-income groups
and brought the mass and elite cul-
tures closer together, e.g., dance
groups in Cuba and Jamaica, use of
dialect in the media. However these
transfers in the name of equity some-
CAIBBEAN EVIEW/45

I .--1 I I II

times have a less than self-help charac-
ter and involve new forms of external
dependence.
Environmental equity is a modest
but compatible Caribbean cause. It
emphasizes protection of beaches,
marine resources, minerals, and cul-
tural values. It involves sacrificing some
economic growth if beach land is made
unavailable for foreign or local private
ownership, or opposing certain min-

eral or petroleum investments, but
these are usually marginal to national
economies. The development of
marine and land public parks and re-
serves can also expand public goods
and services and be consistent with
labor-intensive activities. The sharpest
environmental versus growth conflict
occur over existing bauxite and nickel
mines, and public ownership as in
Cuba and Guyana may serve to worsen

The Planning

Le Series

Universidad de Puerto Rico
Apartado X, U.P.R., Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico 00931
Telefono: (809) 765-1924 Cable: UPRED

THE CITY OF MAN:
The Duke of Buen Consejo
Leopold Kohr
$4.35 pbk.
This book offers a unique approach to slum rehabilitation and other urban
planning problems. Dr. Kohr believes, with Schumacher, that the "Small is
Beautiful" concept is a valid one and writes with uncommon wit and sense
about reducing our solutions to present urban problems to a manageable size.
The author is a writer and professor of economics and political science. He has
taught at Rutgers, the University of Puerto Rico, the University of Swansea
(Wales), the University of Aberystwyth (Wales), and has written many books
and contributed articles to reviews and journals.

FUTUROS ALTERNATIVES
Everett Reimer, ed.
$3.50 pbk.
Dr. Reimer's major concerns are the evolving of a truly just and equal society
for all citizens and a rational system of education. He is keenly aware of the
precariousness of any long-range planning in a rapidly changing society but
hopes to both anticipate and possibly even influence the future with his alter-
nate models for social planning on a national level. The author has been a con-
sultant to the US Atomic Energy Commission, the Director of Personnel of the
US Office of Price Administration, the Director of the Washington Office of the
University of Syracuse, Secretary of the Committee on Human Resources of the
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and an adviser on Social Development for the
Alliance for Progress. At present he is a consultant to the Department of Educa-
tion of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING
AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE CARIBBEAN
Charles A. Frankenhoff et al.
$4.00 pbk.
All aspects of environmental planning in the Caribbean are examined in this
book which is the result of a workshop held under the auspices of the Graduate
School of Planning of the University of Puerto Rico. Panelists tried to define
common Caribbean environmental problems which are caused by the special
conditions of the area and also to delineate the need for and the role of environ-
mental planning as an essential component of development planning and policy
in the region. The authors are all professors or visiting professors at the Univer-
sity of Puerto Rico's Graduate School of Planning.

46/CAIBBEAN EvIEW

these conflicts as foreign exchange
earnings take precedence over all else.
The reduction of dependency is al-
most certainly incompatible with the
goal of rapid economic growth. The
Caribbean, even with subregional or
regional organization, simply lacks the
markets, technologies, and natural
resources to substantially reduce its
dependence. It could do so only by
completely abandoning North Ameri-
can standards of living and reducing
external trade to 25% or less of national
and sub-regional economies. A more
viable strategy is to diversify de-
pendency by developing alternate ex-
ports and markets, increasing cultural
and educational exchanges with
neighbors, and making a major com-
mitment to indigenous technological
institutions.
Growth, the reduction of de-
pendency, and equity are mutually
interdependent in a complex web of
multiple causation. Rapid growth in
principle makes it easier to redistribute
public and private consumption, to
generate employment, and even to
bargain the terms of dependence. It
has not done so in practice, except to a
limited extent. Improved equity should
in principle enlarge markets through
broader purchasing power and
encourage growth and jobs while
reducing dependence. It has not done
so in practice. Nor have anti-
dependency policies.

Constraints on
Development

The constraints on Caribbean devel-
opment goals are real and rigid. The
most important is demography. Twenty
years or more will be needed before
fertility and mortality can come close to
equilibrium at 1% or less annual in-
creases in population, when population
age pyramids will be less youthful. Dur-
ing the next 20 years most Caribbean
states will have to legally or illegally
export people permanently or else face
deteriorating standards of living and, in
Haiti, even starvation.
During the next 20 years most major
Caribbean natural resources, limited as
they are, will be exploited. All arable
land except in the mainland states will
be cultivated (there has been no uncul-
tivated arable land in Barbados since
1800), and mineral deposits will be fully
worked. Beaches and marine re-

I I

sources will need careful protection if
they are not to be overwhelmed. Yields
on food and export crops will need to
expand dramatically in the absence of
local research institutes and extension
systems. The 1500-1980 epoch of nat-
ural resource-based Caribbean export
economies will be largely over by 2000
except for tourism and scientific
agriculture.
The most valuable geographic as-
sets of the Caribbean are its fragmenta-
tion and location between North and
South America, and accessibility to
North Africa and Western Europe. Al-
though its military importance is no
longer a major factor, the Caribbean
constitutes a communications, financ-
ial, and transshipment crossroads for
its powerful neighbors. It is in this direc-
tion that its future economic develop-
ment probably lies, although through
the prolongation of the dependency

that so plagues its past and present.
Given the pace of communications
technology and its ability to move
money and services, the Caribbean
may be bypassed by the ITT's and
IBM's, especially if its incentives are not
greater than those available elsewhere.
The wooing of the multinational corpo-

Equity through the
redistribution of public and
private consumption ...
has had a deleterious effect
on economic growth,
investment, savings, and
productivity and a mixed
effect on dependence.

rations will offer a certain prosperity
through dependency to a few of the
islands, e.g., Bahamas, Caymans,
Antigua, perhaps Barbados.
Elsewhere the constraints and the
goals indicate a continued preference
for equity and reduced dependence
over growth. Cuba, Guyana, and
Jamaica have opted for equity and may
be joined by others. It is conceivable
that they will over time move towards a
Yugoslav position of permitting small-
scale private enterprise and labor
emigration within a partially decentral-
ized economy. It is difficult to see how
they can achieve even modest above-
population increase rates of economic
growth without some liberalization. Yet
poor but equal with a political class
sharing austerity may be the only for-
mula viable in the Caribbean to deflect
dependency.

cAIBBEAN PEVIEW/47

The rapid growth states such as the
Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and
Trinidad will move towards growth
tempered by modest redistribution
strategies. These strategies may em-
phasize diversified export promotion,
including increased public sector in-
volvement, encouragement of agricul-
tural and local industry, intermediate
technologies to increase jobs, and bet-
ter quality and quantity of such public
goods as education and health. The
problem is that these societies lack the
productive base to sustain broad-
based welfare services. The results are
massive external transfers to subsidize
these services, and better services
which further motivate young people to
emigrate since their aspirations cannot
be met at home. Political indepen-
dence for the French or Netherlands
Antilles, Puerto Rico, or the still-
dependent West Indian islands will not
alter the profound imbalance between
local economies, subsidized public
services, and aspirations and opportu-
nities for the young. Emigration has
become a way of life throughout the
Caribbean, especially where growth is
outrunning equity.
This informed guess then is for a
Caribbean in the year 2000 with 20 or

more political entities, all of them inde-
pendent in name except the French
Antilles and Puerto Rico. Total popula-
tion will be close to 40 million, plus
nearly 10 million additional persons of
Caribbean origin (island-and diaspora-
born) living abroad.
Birth rates will have fallen to 20/1000
or less except in Haiti and the smaller
islands, and population increase will be
close to one percent per annum, and
even lower where emigration con-
tinues. The economically growing
countries will have one-third to one-
half of their populations living at US
1980 standards of living, the rest of their
populations at US 1940 or lower levels.
The equity countries will have a major-
ity of their populations living at US 1950
levels. Unemployment will persist in the
growth countries, mitigated by emigra-
tion, and underemployment in the
equity-oriented states. Massive
transfers of capital, public and private,
will still be required to operate essential
and social welfare services, except in
Trinidad, which will continue to use its
oil wealth to export capital.
The equity states will be open to
foreign tourism and private investment
on Yugoslav-like terms, and they will

both export culture to and import cul-
ture from North America, e.g., records,
dance groups, films, TV. The growth
states will be substantially more de-
pendent culturally on North America
and perhaps less internally creative.
Their more affluent citizens will be free
to travel abroad while in the equity
states foreign trips will be awarded as
political prizes.
Relations between the growth and
the equity states will be extensive but
strained. Regionalism will make only
modest advances. The Caribbean in
the year 2000 will be mainly a prolon-
gation of trends begun in the 1960s.
The failure to reconcile growth and de-
velopment will not be unique to the
Caribbean only perhaps more
visible there than anywhere else on our
shrinking planet.

Aaron Segal is the co-author of The Traveler's
Africa, and author of two books and numerous
articles on the Caribbean. He is with the
National Science Foundation in Washington.

Artwork by Jules Pascin from Jules Pascin's
Caribbean Sketchbook, published by the
University of Texas Press, 1964.

F i\ XLIII INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF AMERICANISTS

VANCOUVER, CANADA
August 10th 17th, 1979

Hosts:
The University of British Columbia
Simon Fraser University

The International Congress of Americanists
provides a forum for the review of research on the
evolution and interrelationships of cultures in the
Americas. It is broadly interdisciplinary; the main
contributions have usually come out of the
Humanities and Social Sciences. The Congress first
met in France over 100 years ago. It initially
represented a very European fascination with the
origin and cultural evolution of man in the
Americas, but has long since incorporated other
perspectives. The Vancouver Congress program will
accommodate comparative studies in the Americas
as well as presentation on socio-economic
developmental issues.
Sponsoring Organizations:
* Canadian Association of Latin American Studies
* Canadian Ethnology Association
* Canadian Archaeological Association
* Canadian Anthropological and Sociological
Association
Canadian Association of Hispanists

The following symposia are planned:
* Andean rural development
* Applied linguistics (Quechua)
* New archaeological evidence from the eastern
Andean slopes
Highland-lowland Andean interaction spheres
The indigenous novel
SCoca
Amazonian colonization and development
Early prehistoric contacts between
northeastern Asia and North America
New directions in Meso-American archaeology
Mexican history
Afro-american History
Colonial latifundia
West Indies ethnohistory
Marketplace exchange-systems
Mexican agricultural systems
Urbanization
Northwest coast cultures
Indian land and political life World Council
of Indigenous Peoples
All correspondence including abstracts and papers
should be directed to:
Dr. Alfred H. Siemens Telephone (604) 228-3441
XLIII International Congress of Americanists
Department of Geography
The University of British Columbia
Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1W5

48/CAIBBEAN 1~eIEW

I

Walker was the first United States president
imposed on us Nicaraguans.
Anastasio Somoza is certain to be the last.

What the Sandinistas Want
Continued from page 27.

This long lasting United States intervention in Nicaragua
not only resulted in the disappearance of all forms of civilian
political participation, but it also placed all political participa-
tion in the hands of the dictatorship. It established the
Somoza family and gave it absolute power. It allowed the
Somoza family to enrich itself lewdly, to seize ownership of
the land, to build monopolies, to take ownership of industry,
banking, insurance, transportation, food production, even of
the salt and blood trade; it stimulated the Somoza family to
transform the occupation army of the National Guard into a
praetorian guard as well. And the United States has blessed
the coups d'etat, the electoral frauds, the political pacts, the
corruption of the Constitution and of the laws.

Foundation of US Policy
And, when the trumpets of redemption sound for President
Carter's human rights policy, what happens?
The United States cannot undo its ties to the dictatorship,
cannot escape its embrace. Or, it does not wish to. Ergo, it
prefers to stand at the side ofSomocismo in a confrontation

with the Nicaraguan people. It prefers to isolate itself with
Somocismo in opposition to all sectors of the country, busi-
nessmen, shopkeepers, farmers, professionals, students,
workers, peasants. Because there is only one choice to be
made in Nicaragua: Protect Somoza, under wraps or openly,
hide his crimes and dispense favors to him; or, leave the fu-
ture of Nicaragua in the hands of the people of Nicaragua,
allow them to be masters of their own destiny, the only form
of non-intervention in Nicaraguan affairs that there is. All
other is intervention.
With the most candid or artful paternalism, the United
States alleges that it cannot permit the existence of a power
vacuum in Nicaragua, that is it obliged to participate in the
selection of the political alternative to Somocismo in
Nicaragua, in the event it can no longer sustain Somocismo
in power. This was the central thesis with which the mediation
process was carried out at the end of last year, and if the
mediation process6 was a resounding failure for United
States foreign policy, this was due precisely to the deep-
seated distrust of the Nicaraguan people. It was difficult to be-

CAIFBBEAN FEVIEW/49

I I_

Protect Somoza, hide his crimes and
dispense favors to him;
or, leave the future of Nicaragua
in the hands of the people of Nicaragua,
allow them to be masters
of their own destiny.

lieve that the United States, who for half a century has made
possible the existence of a criminal and immoral regime,
would suddenly facilitate a democratic regime respectful of
the rights of Nicaraguans. From an intervention of this sort,
the people of Nicaragua, based on their experience, could
only expect another tyranny, a new form of oppression, dis-
guised or blatant, aSomocismo without Somoza. They could
not hope for anything else; it is impossible to ask for the trust
of an abused and oppressed people. For this reason, the only
gesture of goodwill the Nicaraguan people can hope for from
the United States Government is a decision not to intervene.
That it actually abstain from intervening. This would be the
only way of guaranteeing us a transition to a democratic re-
gime, the overthrow of the dictatorship and the opportunity
we have never been afforded to build a new Nicaragua. Not a
new Cuba, but a new Nicaragua.
A terrible fear apparently exists in the State Depart-
ment...of a "communist regime"...which would endanger
hemispheric security, which would move against the security
of the United States and drift towards an international political
bloc hostile to the United States. In the name of all these old
bugaboos the United States chooses to detain a process of
change in Nicaragua, a process that offers the only form of
guaranteeing the human rights of Nicaraguans; not only the

rights to life, but the right to a dignified life; the right to food, to
health, to education, to culture; rights that have been denied
them during a half century of inhumanSomocismo.
But perhaps the real fear is less of having a hostile regime
in Central America, than of not having a servile regime. Yet to
think that a new, democratic government in Nicaragua might
be hostile to the United States is a perverse fantasy. To think
that a new and truly representative Nicaraguan government
is going to insist on dignified relations with the more powerful
countries, relations based on mutual respect, without pater-
nalism and debasing forms of interventionism and servility, to
think this way is, indeed, to think correctly: Never again will
Nicaragua have an Adolfo Diaz, Emiliano Chamorro, Jos6
Maria Moncada, Anastasio Somoza, in power. Never will it
negotiate its sovereignty. And there should be no cause for
alarm on the part of North Americans over this prospect.
Nor does the United States have any reason to fear mas-
sive expropriations of its holdings in Nicaragua. United States
economic interests in Nicaragua are secondary to Somoza's
own and the US rate of investment in Nicaragua is the lowest
in Central America. Somoza owns 23% of all arable land in
the country, and his companies provide approximately 35%
of all goods and services in Nicaragua. These being ill-gotten
gains, acquired through illegal or violent seizures, frauds, tax

Wide World Photos

50/CARBBEAN P eIEW

To think that a new, democratic government
in Nicaragua might be hostile
to the United States is a perverse fantasy.
To think that a new and truly
representative Nicaraguan government is
going to insist on dignified relations
with the more powerful countries
...is to think correctly.

evasion, deceit, it is only logical that a new, democratic gov-
ernment expropriate all those holdings to constitute with
them a public sector capable of generating jobs. The profits
from this sector might be used for schools, hospitals, recrea-
tional centers; a public business sector to be developed paral-
lel to a private business sector.
Nobody in Nicaragua denies that, in the future, the country
will need domestic capital formation, a program of foreign
investment, and orderly transfer of technology. Nicaragua is
not going to step outside its geopolitical context or renounce
its borders. We aspire only to dignity, integrity, and interna-
tional respect.
The United States should learn not to fear the ghosts of its
past mistakes, for they are the only ghosts capable of waylay-
ing the new relations that will necessarily arise between a
weak country, such as our own, and a powerful country such
as the US. Change will take place in Nicaragua, whether the
United States wants it or not, and the best thing would be for
the United States Government to ready itself to accept this
change, to ready itself for relations with a country devoid of
Somoza orSomocismo, corruption, crime, electoral frauds;
a country that neither kneels or cedes itself, nor acts in a ser-
vile manner.

New Times
And the best way to prepare for those new times is to accept
certain facts that will come into play in the new relationship.
Because failure to see such truths will mean deviating from
reality and unwisely repeating the errors of the past, a course
that can only inflict great hardships on the relationship:
1)Sandinismo is the political current representing the major-
ity interests of the Nicaraguan people. The Nicaraguan
people are not Sandinistas only by reason of their engage-
ment in a war against Somocismo. They are Sandinistas
because Sandinismo incarnates our national values:
Independence, sovereignty, justice, true democracy.
2) The Sandinista National Liberation Front is a serious and
responsible political and military force. It is leading the
struggle against the dictatorship and is prepared to back a
coherent political resolution when the dictatorship is over-
thrown. The organic and programmatic unity of the FSLN, is
the best guarantee of this alternative.
3) This immediate and concrete alternative consists in form-
ing a Government of National Reconstruction, in which all
democratic forces of the country should take part and which
will struggle against the dictatorship. This government,
which will be of a provisional nature, will have at its head, the

CAI?BBEAN IEVIEW/51

~

National Patriotic Front, a coalition of democratic parties,
unions, and professional associations; and it will be able to
rely on the effective participation of all other political coali-
tions and forces in Nicaragua: The Broad Opposition Front
and others. The Group of Twelve, which is part of the Patriotic
Front, will play a relevant part in organizing the provisional
government.
4) The Government of National Reconstruction will carry out
the Patriotic Front's program for implementing all the steps
necessary in the transition to a democratic state of social jus-
tice. This government will de-Somozasize the Army and re-
organize it along professional and democratic lines; it will
struggle to regain the confidence of all sectors of the country;
to stimulate investments; to create sources of work, to impel
agrarian reform, beginning with the lands expropriated from
Somoza; and to secure advances in the fields of education,
health, housing, and orderly economic development.
5) There can be no peace in Nicaragua without the San-
dinista Front. Only the Sandinista Front can guarantee the
peace, order and tranquility necessary to the formation of a
new, democratic government. Any attempt to bring about a
coup d'etat or a negotiated transition, or scheming with con-
stitutional reforms, in other words, any changes that change
nothing, will only aggravate the war conditions in the country
and keep it on a self-destructive path.
Here is an opportunity to adopt a non-hostile attitude to-
wards real change in Nicaragua. In the recent past, the United
States has persevered in its hostility towards political changes
and has clung to the ghosts of the past. Now is the time to
give a poor, weak country a chance at building its own future,
of deciding its own fate. This will perhaps be a singular oppor-
tunity because the future of democracy in Latin America may
well be decided in Nicaragua; the future of true, popular par-
ticipation in social change.
"If the North American people had not lost sight of justice
and of the elemental rights of humanity," General Sandino
said to journalist Carleton Beals in 1928, from his headquar-

ters in San Rafael del Norte, "it would not so easily forget its
own past, in which a fistful of ragged soldiers marched
through the snow, leaving bloody tracks in their wake, and
went on to win freedom and independence. Had their con-
sciences not been hardened by material gains, Americans
would not so easily forget that a nation, sooner or later, how-
ever weak it might be, will obtain its freedom, and that each
abuse of power hastens the destruction of the one ordering
it."
More than the United States Government, whose interests
are so often other than those of the United States people, we
Nicaraguans hope to find the North American people on our
side in this critical moment of our history. The people of the
United States should stand with us at this historical juncture,
and press their Government, the Government of President
Carter, to treat us justly. To respect our right to freedom and
justice, a right we have won with our blood.

Notes
1. The Situation of Human Rights in Nicaragua, (Washing-
ton, D.C.: OAS, 1978).
2. June 17,1979, The Andean Pact Group of Nations (Ven-
ezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia) granted
belligerent status to the Sandinistas inferring on them a de-
gree of legitimacy in international circles.
3. William Walker was an American Soldier of Fortune who
seized Nicaragua in the mid-19th Century and ruled for a
while as self proclaimed "President."
4. The "historic parallel" is a term used by Nicaraguans to
describe the essentially 19th Centure elite, two-party system
which has dominated their country for over 150 years.
5. The Somozas are "Liberals."
6. During the period from October, 1978 to February, 1979,
the US tried unsuccessfully to "resolve" the Nicaraguan crisis
by attempting to mediate an agreement between Somoza
and conservative segments of the opposition.
W. LN4 1

From left to right, Alfonso Rebelo, Sergio Ramirez
52/CAI?BBEAN I-OEEW

Interviewing Jamaica's Political Leaders
Continued from page 31.

were bugging them. I suppose that some stages of it have
been traumatic for the country because it has rather created
an impression of uncertainty within the majority party -
which has an effect, not a good effect.
A tremendous amount of discussion has actually taken
place and a lot of conceptual refinement has taken place and
I think we really now have a model which we see very clearly.
First of all it is a "commanding height" theory where the state
ought to be the owner, except for extraordinary circum-
stances where you might have to be the controller like in
bauxite. With our constitution we can't afford to be the owner
of the whole aluminum industry. The foreign exchange that
we'd be paying out of this country over the years to pay for it
would bankrupt us for the rest of this century! Under our con-
stitution there is nothing you could do except pay some kind
of market value for those enormous aluminum plants. We
looked at that and said this is for the birds. There is just no way
you can do a classical nationalization. What you can do is a
lot of other things and I think we have done some quite bril-
liant things, actually, in thinking our way through to the asser-
tion of sovereignty over our "commanding height" bauxite
without getting into a ridiculous mess. So there is the "com-
manding height" theory.
We then have the "social control" theory on the basis
that you want a substantial private sector to do a lot of the
production of goods and services, but it must be in a context
of social control politically determined, whether by price
mechanisms, by allocation of investment resources, what-
ever. Thirdly, as an element of your private sector, you want a
powerful cooperative sector and you want to try and move
toward cooperative forms particularly in agriculture. And,
fourthly, the rounding-out element is the concept of industrial
democracy and worker participation through which we in-
tend to change the production relations in the economic pro-
cess itself.
And by those four means, we think we've "squared-the-
circle" and created a viable conceptual framework that the
ideologue really can identify with. And can now address him-
self to by saying what are the strategies for hastening
worker participation? The pragmatist will say, all right, 1 buy

Who speaks

for the

Caribbean?

w -. a 1

the worker participation ... You find the people who are more
left-wing and ideological busily now trying to work out com-
munity projects, the self-reliance theory, pioneer farms,
cooperative structures. The more pragmatic guys are busy-
ing themselves trying to see if we can get the administration
working more efficiently. Still other guys feel or want the pri-
vate sector of the traditional kind to get confidence and start
to expand and produce again. And they address that. Every-
body is really pulling rather well together! But you have to go
through a tough, wrenching thought process to get to that
point.

A Crisis in Confidence
It has been suggested that party-politics in Jamaica is not re-
sponsive to mass needs. I asked Seaga what, in his opinion,
"is the extent and cause ofdisaffection?"
Seaga:
The major problem in Jamaica today is confidence. There is
no confidence. There have now been five consecutive years
of negative growth. Of course the "trickle-down" theory or
"bootstrap" theories have failed to stimulate agriculture, they
couldn't absorb labor. But, Manley's ideas are not new. This is
the classical equation of Marxian analysis: allocate resources
with no dependence on demand. Now Manley. proposes
change through economic chaos rather than violent revolu-
tion. The problem is that expectations have been excited
through mis-direction and resources have been devastated
through mismanagement. The Jamaican people do not have
the temperament, nor does the country have the resources,
for socialism. Jamaica is not amenable to socialism. There-
fore, Manley's design to create a confrontation and show
that the system doesn't work so that it can be replaced is
ill-conceived.
I asked Manley to comment on the alleged "crisis in con-
fidence"
Manley:
I have no doubt there has been an element of that. I don't be-
lieve that it is going to prove true any longer that investment
will not take place for psychological reasons. I think that the

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CAIBBEAN PEVIEW/53

biggest problem that you are going to have in moving the
economy is foreign exchange, because that is so tight that it
becomes the first determinant of what is possible in many
areas, because there are such a lot of areas in which you can-
not, in fact, get expansion without importing something.
There is very little in the Jamaican economy up to this point
that is completely self-sufficient. God knows we're working
on it. Very, very few countries are like America which is mas-
sively self-contained.
So foreign exchange is going to be a critical issue. And I
think that it is really in the field of providing the foreign ex-
change during these critical couple of years that are going to
come that is going to determine both how much public-
sector expansion takes place and also how much private-
sector expansion takes place.
You ask me this question last year, I would feel that the an-
swer- last year that the private-sector still was probably in
a great state of uncertainty and this, that and the other. A lot of
the private-sector who were in that state have now migrated
and they are not here any longer. And it is my belief that the
bulk of the private-sector that is in Jamaica now has made up
its mind to fight it out here, in the sense, you know, to make it
here not to have to pursue this American myth.

Crime and Violence

Recent demonstrations, such as the public protest against
increases in the price of gasoline in January 1979, have
given credibility to the notion that there is a high potential
for violence in Jamaican society. Some analysts have con-
cluded that crimes are orchestrated and politically moti-
vated rather than apolitical expressions of frustration and
alienation. I asked both the Leader of the Opposition and the
Prime Minister to comment on gang warfare and political vi-
olence in Jamaica.
Seaga:
I believe that these crimes are perpetrated by a subversive
movement that is somehow connected with Cuba and the
radicals in Jamaica.
The Prime Minister's response was quite different.
Manley:
This goes way back to the whole of the tribalization which has
been a problem in Jamaican politics. What is in the social
climate of Jamaica and its interaction with the political pro-
cess that made Jamaica develop a two-party system which is
rather atypical in Third World terms, although not very atypi-
cal in Caribbean terms. And why it took that intense institu-
tional form to the point where it's almost like a form of
tribalism.
You are not here dealing with a cultural continuity of a pure
kind as in, say, Africa, where the colonial intervention is of the
briefest of interregna, where the fundamental factors of the
tribal structure, for example, were very little affected by col-
onialism, certainly in political terms, and where it therefore
becomes very easy for Nyrere, for instance, to develop not
only a theory, but to operationalize a theory about a one-party
state and see the state as an extension of the extended family.
One can understand why their pattern had tended to evolve
that way and why in other cases they've had such terrible bit-
terness where the politics becomes involved in tribalism of
the pure genuine African kind, and has led, sometimes to
bloodshed and all these other tragedies.
54/CAlBBEAN rP1viE

In our case, you're talking about the massive assault
through the system of slavery on all the cultural values and
systems. So there must have been a very substantial break-
down of structures. Their replacement with a sort of
Westminster model, you know, talking and teaching, and all
this, very quickly reflected in your sort of Baptist Church
routines and so on all of which I suppose through the years
built up a climate in which it was just assumed by people that
politics took the form of something like a Westminster
model. I don't think people thought about this analytically at
all. I think the only model of which they were really aware of
against this destruction of indigenous cultural impulse -
would be the Westminster model as brought by imperialism.
Why would it now develop such powerful tribal overtones so
quickly? I suspect that there you are dealing with the absence
of social cohesiveness because of the nature of colonialism,
all the enormous displacement of the psyche and of all the
institutional relationships of a naturally evolving culture and
society all this is totally eroded by colonialism leaving
people adrift with nothing to believe in; no basis for social
cohesiveness.
I think that when the political parties emerged in 1938 and
1943 that there was probably suddenly a focus for loyalty of a
sort that was desperately needed. Because the truth of the
matter is the loyalties are absolutely phenomenal! Party
loyalties in Jamaica are tangible things that you can eat. You
talk about bankable assurances, I mean a party can abso-
lutely betray everything imaginable, make the most horrend-
ous errors and have that bedrock that is not something that
just comes out every four years like a Democrat maybe in the
States. It is a palpable thing, it has to do with the living of a
man morning, noon and night. He will eat, and breathe it -
Sundays and right through the week. That must be because
it's answering some deeply felt need for a focus of loyalty ex-
pressed in group terms. His is a very great strength from one
point of view because I think it has given to the Jamaican
political process a sort of bedrock stability, a predictability, if I
may use the term, which has served the country well in the
many ways. It has its negative side in that it means that
politics in Jamaica can very quickly deteriorate into tribal
squabbling where you're not really competing for anything
except just to say that your party is in power. This has always
been a tendency against which we have struggled in the PNP
but which the Labour Party just accepts as a fact of life. They
just accept that that is the nature of the political process -
and that's very convenient because that delivers to their big
supporters in the establishment a reliable voting base which
really stays in there out of tribal loyalty assisted by a bit of
trade union action by the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union
(B.I.TU.).

The Future
The Prime Minister has called for a Third Wbrld conscious-
ness and a kind of Marshall Plan for development of a "new
international economic order" (NIEO). At the same time
some observers have suggested that even with great recep-
tivity and support on the part of the developed world, the
magnitude of Third MWrld problems are too great and there-
fore the gap between rich and poor will widen. Meanwhile,
the Opposition has projected economic disaster and has
brought up the issue of human rights. I asked Seaga "what
hope is there for Jamaica?"

Seaga:
Manley is perceived with wry amusement by Jamaicans a
man solving world problems and his own backyard is a mess!
He gets carried away with his own promises! Many people
don't like having something put over on them, however, and
with adequate electoral reform will not stand for it anymore!
They also believe Manley is pulling the wool over interna-
tional eyes. He is eloquent and articulate, thus, the developed
world is very receptive due to its dim view of ability in the Third
World. But, Manley is characteristically unrealistic. The PNP is
not practical. It is simplistic and illogical. The country is like a
guinea pig for experimentation. Jamaica, instead of becom-
ing independent under these experiments, is now less inde-
pendent than ever we are now totally dependent! Now we
are told that the NIEO is a new ray of hope. The oil trace on
our northcoast has become a matter of life or death. NIEO
derives from the Second Development Decade of the U.N. Its
targets were fourfold: M.N.C.'s was one, the others escape me
at the moment. There is nothing innovative in Manley's for-
mulation. He seems to be saying: refinance our debt and let
us do what we want. We want money, but no strings. There
must be some compensatory mechanism, but not political
decisions for economic results. Certainly there is a problem
in decreasing prices for primary versus finished products.
But, when demand is contrived, it becomes necessary to
control the people.
This could mean the dissolution of Jamaican parliamenta-
rian democracy. Also, there has been Cuban influence
through the back door: from Cuba to Guyana to Jamaica.
The indications of this dissolution by design are: first,
Cuba is always projected in a positive and never in a negative
way. Second, the Home Guard now has 10,000 plus men -
more than the Jamaica Defense Force and the Jamaica
Constabulary Force together. These men are recruited and
trained by Cubans. Therefore, the Home Guard is a political
arm. Third, Community Councils are really spy organizations.
The dissent and disaffection following the election confirms
and substantiates the Labour Party platform. We were de-
prived of many seats, if not possibly a victory, by a bogus
election. The JLP may be faced (in 1981), and will undoubt-
edly regain the government if there is a fair election, with a
deterioration and level of dissent allowing for very few op-
tions. This country needs proper direction and management
of the economy. The people want more stability and man-
agement for change without chaos less radicalization. The
question for the future, unless Jamaica falls into the Haitian
model, will be how to rebuild. The NIEO and all other
panacea/overnight solutions are absurd. The gap will take
many years to narrow. I'm neither optimistic nor pessimistic
at this point, but I am realistic and intent upon telling my ver-
sion of what is happening here to Jamaica and to the world.
One of the difficulties the Manley administration faces de-
rives from the intangible nature of initial developmental
change Detractors have called for data on objective condi-
tions. Social attitudes and changing visions are not as sig-
nificant to most people as economic realities, per capital in-
come and employment statistics. Manley responded by in-
dicating that the attitudes and visions "can lay the founda-
tion of the future!"
Manley:
The real transformation has to be a psychological and politi-
cal transformation first. Of that I have no doubt whatsoever!
And we have paid a certain economic price for embarking

upon that road of transformation. But I think that we've made
a lot of progress and I'll tell you some interesting things!
Talking about economic statistics: The Labour Party from
1962 to 1972 pursued classic neo-colonialist policy of total
genuflection to the forces of world imperialism. They offered
the United States bases at a time when, I don't think America
has ever recovered from the shock that they were offered a
base in 1962! Damn it, everyone else was screaming for
people to get out of bases. There was an absolute prostration
of the whole country to the bauxite multinational corpora-
tions: just come and take the bauxite almost for nothing. I
don't know what bordello in New Orleans would have been
more prostrate ... you know? more prostrate! ha, ha...
Ha, ha ... you know Jamaica is full of charm. Jamaicans
are a very sophisticated people. It's not some grimy little dive!
If Jamaica's going to be a prostitute, I think ... That was done
with the invitation to foreign capital; all the little fly-by-night
firms were invited to come here and exploit the local labor on
the grounds that it would put people to work. There was a
massive inflow of capital from 1962 to '72 which supported a
wild standard of living of champagne, caviar, and Cadil-
lacs! And unemployment rose from 12 to 24% in the ten
years! That is the dominant statistic. And illiteracy didn't
move an inch, and the secondary school system not an inch,
and the primary school system not an inch nothing hap-
pened! Except the caviar...
The factories just put a few thousand people to work.
Now, we have come in and, with all the errors, we have re-
ally tried some structural things. We've done tremendous
work in land reform so far, put thousands of people on to the
land over 30 thousand right now in a little country of this
size have gone on the land in the last four years. Granted we
have had the tragedy of a 14% slippage in real GNP oc-
casioned by oil prices, plus flight of capital. A total cut-off of
capital inflow and, so-help-me-God, we have not seen un-
employment go from 24 to 48% or from 24 to 36%. We have
actually held unemployment. It has not gotten worse! In
many ways it is a startling comparison that under the
"genuflection" strategy, the foreign capital strategy of '62 to
'72, unemployment moved up by 12% during a period of
massive capital inflow. And we, with no capital inflow and a
negative growth, have held unemployment, at least not to get
worse. Before the thing really got bad in '76 we had actually
got the 24% down to 21% in the first three years. But since
then it has begun to slip back up and now is holding at 24.
These statements clearly illustrate the contrasting politi-
cal styles and substance of the two mostpowerful politicians
in Jamaica today. They serve to demonstrate irreconcilable
positions in a political culture which has generated reggae
incantations such as "Tribal lr" and "Bur Babylon," but
which has also made a tradition of alternating power be-
tween two political parties. The conversations poignantly
highlight the problematic emergence of a Third MWrld con-
ception of Jamaican sovereignty at a time when intera-
tional interdependence is increasingly necessary for eco-
nomic survival. The next general election scheduled at the
end of the current five-year term in 1981 should be an in-
teresting one Some Jamaicans have predicted the
"bloodiest battle ever in Jamaican history." The international
community will be watching closely.
Richard S. Hillman teaches Political Science at St. John Fisher College,
New York. He is married to a Jamaican and is conducting research on
Caribbean politics.
CAIBBEAN 'VIEW/55

Recent Books

by Marian Goslinga

Anthropology and Sociology
ADAPTATION OF MIGRANTS FROM THE
CARIBBEAN IN THE EUROPEAN AND
AMERICAN METROPOLIS. Humphrey E.
Lamur and John D. Speckman, eds. Instituut
voor Antropologie Niet-Westerse Sociologie,
Universiteit van Amsterdam (Amsterdam,
Netherlands), 1978. Nfl. 25.00.

CARIBBEAN EDGE: THE COMING OF
MODERN TIMES TO ISOLATED PEOPLE
AND WILDLIFE. Bobbs-Merrill, 1979. $11.95.

THE CHICANO EXPERIENCE. Stanley A. West
and June Macklin. Westview Press, 1979.
$19.50.

COLONIAL IMMIGRANTS IN A BRITISH CITY: A
CLASS ANALYSIS. John Rex and Sally
Tomlinson. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979.
$25.25. A study of West Indians in Great
Britain.

LA CRISIS DE LAJUSTICIA. Alberto Bermudez.
Editorial Revista Colombiana (Bogota,
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LA CRISIS DE LOS VALORES EN COLOMBIA.
Jos6 Francisco SocarrBs. Ediciones Tercer
Mundo (Bogota, Colombia), 1978. 107 p.
$70.00.

DESTINO LA METROPOLI: UN MODELO
GENERAL DE LAS MIGRACIONES
INTERNAL EN AMERICA LATINA. Ramiro
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Canal Ramirez Antares (Bogota, Colombia),
1978. 238 p. $18.00.

DOMINACION RELIGIOSA Y HEGEMONIA
POLITICAL: EL CASO DE COLOMBIA. Luis
Alberto Alfonso. Punto de Lanza (Bogota,
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liberation theology as it applies to Colombia.

LA EDUCATION EN VENEZUELA: VOZ DE
ALERTA. Angel Rosenblat. 2d ed. Monte Avila
Editores (Caracas, Venezuela), 1978. 221 p.
Bs. 18.00.

LA EDUCATION SUPERIOR DE COLOMBIA EN
LA PERSPECTIVE MUNDIAL Y
LATINOAMERICANA. Augusto Franco
ArbelBez, Carlos Tiinnermann Blenheim.
Fundaci6n Para La Educaci6n Superior
(Call, Colombia), 1978. 503 p.

56/CArBBEAN REVIEW

EVANGELIZACION Y COMUNICACION SOCIAL
EN AMERICA LATINA. Depto. de
Comunicaci6n Social, DECOS, CELAM.
Ediciones Paulinas (Bogota, Colombia),
1979. 104 p. $80.00.

FANTASMAS DE DOS MUNDOS. Arturo Uslar
Pietri. Editorial Seix Barral (Madrid, Spain),
1979. An exploration of Latin America's
cultural heritage by a Venezuelan author.

FROM PALE TO PAMPA: THE JEWISH
IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE IN BUENOS
AIRES. Eugene Sofer. Holmes & Meier, 1979.
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FRONTIERS OF THEOLOGY IN LATIN
AMERICA. Rosino Gibellini. Tr. from the Italian
by John Drury. Orbis Books, 1979. 321 p.
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HISPANIC FOLK MUSIC OF NEW MEXICO AND
THE SOUTHWEST A SELF-PORTRAIT OF
THE PEOPLE. John D. Robb. University of
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IMIGRACION, EMIGRACION Y CIUDADANIA.
Reece B. Bothwell, 2d ed. University of Puerto
Rico Press, 1979. $1.85. A study of Puerto
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IMMIGRATION AND PUBLIC POLICY:
HUMAN AND ECONOMIC DILEMMAS OF
THE ALIEN ISSUE. David T Garza and Marta
Cehelsky, eds. Westview Press, 1979. $19.50.

INDIOS E INMIGRANTES. Glayds Adamson and
Marcelo Pich6n Rivuera. Galerna (Buenos
Aires, Argentina), 1979. 183 p. $14.75. A
history of European immigration to
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MEXICAN EMIGRATION TO THE UNITED
STATES, 1897-1931: SOCIO-ECONOMIC
PATTERNS. Lawrence Cardoso. University of
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MISSION TO LATIN AMERICA: THE SUCCESS
AND FAILURES OF A
TWENTIETH-CENTURY CRUSADE. Gerald
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UN MODELO ALTERNATIVE DE EDUCATION
BASICA: RADIO SANTA MARIA. Robert
White. Unesco, 1978.132 p. Adult education
by radio in the Dominican Republic.

LOS MUISCAS: ORGANIZATION SOCIAL Y
REGIMEN POLITICO. Jose Rozo Gauta.
Fondo Editorial Suramerica (Bogota,
Colombia), 1978. 216 p. Sociological essay
on a Colombian Indian tribe.

NATUURBESCHERMING OP DE
NEDERLANDSE ANTILLEN. Ingvar
Kristensen. Stichting Nationale Parken
Nederlandse Antillen (Curacao), 1978. A
treatise on environmental protection in the
Netherlands Antilles.

THE PALM AND THE PLEIDADES. S.
Hugh-Jones. Cambridge University Press,
1979. Social life and customs among South
American Indians.

PRAXIS DE LOS PADRES DE AMERICA LATINA:
DOCUMENTS DE LAS CONFERENCIAS
EPISCOPALES DE MEDELLIN A PUEBLA,
1968-1978. Jose Marins, Teolide M. Trevisan,
Carolee Chanona. Ediciones Paulinas
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PSICOLOGIA Y CLASSES SOCIALES EN
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GEPE (Bogota, Colombia), 1978. $20.00
(vol. 1).

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF JAMAICA. Joseph
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Reprint of the 1934 ed.

RACE AND CLASS IN THE SOUTHWEST A
THEORY OF RACIAL INEQUALITY Mario
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SANTOS OF PUERTO RICO AND THE
AMERICAS. Florencio Garcia Cisneros.
Trans. by Roberta West. Blaine Ethridge
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English.

SEEDS OF DISCORD: NEW MEXICO IN THE
AFTERMATH OF THE AMERICAN
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1979. $14.95.

URBANIZATION AND URBAN GROWTH IN THE
CARIBBEAN. M. Cross. Cambridge
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Biography

ACERCAMIENTO A NUINEZ. Ramiro de la
Espriella. Ediciones Tercer Mundo (Bogota,
Colombia), 1978. 122 p.

ALFONSO LOPEZ MICHELSEN: UN EXAMEN
CRITIC DE SU PENSAMIENTO Y DE SU
OBRA DE GOBIERNO. Hernando G6mez
Buendia. Ediciones Tercer Mundo (Bogota,
Colombia), 1978. 367 p.

CONVERSACIONES CON JUAN DOMINGO
PERON. Enrique Pavon Pereyra.
Colihue-Hachette (Buenos Aires, Argentina),
1978. 222 p. $18.75.

HOMBRES DE LETRAS Y GRANDES
HOMBRES DE CUNDINAMARCA. Roberto
Velandia. Cooperativa Nacional de Artes
Graficas (Bogota, Colombia), 1978. 175 p.
$20.00.

LAS MUJERES DE LOS DICTADORES. Carmen
Llorca. Hyspamerica Ediciones (Madrid,
Spain), 1978.359 p. $19.50. About Argentina.

EL OBISPO TROPEZO TRES VEZES. Miguel
Zapata Restrepo. Editorial Bedout (Medellin,
Colombia), 1978. 588 p. Biography of a
Colombian bishop active in political and
social affairs.

OSPINA SUPO ESPERAR. Jaime Sanin
Echeverri. Editorial Andes -.:.e.:.j
Colombia), 1978. 267 p. Biography of
Colombia ex-president Mariano Ospina
Perez.

PAEZ: FUNDADOR DEL ESTADO
VENEZOLANO. Alirio G6mez Pic6n.
Ediciones Tercer Mundo (Bogota,
Colombia), 1978. 452 p. $650.00.

PANCHO VILLA: LA VERDADERA HISTORIC.
Ettore Pietri. Escritores Mexicanos Unidos,
1978. 253 p. $3.00.

SAN MARTIN: PROHOMBRE DE AMERICA. Luis
Arena. V Leru (Buenos Aires, Argentina),
1978. 159 p. $14.25.

Description and Travel
DISCOVERING VENEZUELA: A GUIDEBOOK.
Janice Bauman et al. Hippocrene Books,
1979. $12.00.

THE DUTCH CARIBBEAN: FOTO'S UIT
SURNAME EN DE NEDERLANDSE
ANTILLEN. Gerard van Waterloo, Willem
Diepraam. De Arbeiderspers (Amsterdam,
Netherlands), 1979.

EVERYBODY'S VIRGIN ISLANDS. James E.
Moore. Lippincott, 1979. $7.95.

LATIN AMERICA 1978. Grace Ferrara. Facts on
File, 1979. $17.50.

MARACAIBO 180'. Issac Chocr6n. Centro de
Bellas Artes (Maracaibo, Venezuela), 1978. ca
200 p. Bsl90.00.

DE NEDERLANDSE ANTILLEN. Henk H. van
Dalen, Gerard C. de Groot. Bosch & Keuning
(Baarn, Netherlands), 1979. Nf129.50. Text in
Dutch, English and Spanish.

A PORTRAIT OF PUERTO RICO. Louise C.
Smailoff. A.S. Barnes, 1979. $14.50.

Economics
ACTUALIDAD Y PERSPECTIVES DE LA
ECONOMIC DOMINICANA, 1970-1980.
Santiago Santana. Editorial Alfa Omega
(Santo Domingo), 1978. 231 p.

AMERICA LATINA: ECONOMIC Y
COOPERATIVISMO. Luiz Claudio Marinho et
al. Intercoop (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 1978.
112 p. $5.00.

AMERICA LATINA Y LA ECONOMIC MUNDIAL.
J. Donges et al. Editorial del Instituto (Buenos
Aires, Argentina), 1979. 360 p.

BARRERAS DEL HAMBRE: COMENTARIOS
SOBRE ECONOMIC CAMPESINA. Luis
Guillermo VelezTrujillo. Fondo Editorial ANIF
(Bogota, Colombia), 1978. 224 p. Economic
conditions in Colombia.

CHOCO: EXPLOTACION DE MINAS Y
MINEROS. Olga Ines Moncada Roa. Libreria
y Editorial America Latina (Bogota,
Colombia), 1979. 118 p.

LAS COMUNIDADES TRIBALES INDIGENAS
PRECOLOMBIANAS: ENSAYOS
MARXISTAS SOBRE LA SOCIEDAD
COLOMBIANA. Hernan Sepulveda Pino.
Ediciones Los Comuneros (Bogota,
Colombia), 1978. 124 p.

CORPORATE TAXATION IN THE
NETHERLANDS ANTILLES. A.A. Amador,
FD. Leo. Kluwer (Deventer, Netherlands),
1979. Nfl. 31.20. English translation of the
original Dutch text.

DESARROLLO DE LA AGRICULTURE EN
COLOMBIA. Salom6n Kalmanovitz. Editorial
La Carreta (Bogota, Colombia), 1978. 360 p.

DESTRUCTION Y RESISTENCIA CAMPESINA:
EL CASO DEL LITORAL PACIFICO. Michael
Taussig. Punta de Lanza (Bogota, Colombia),
1978. 142 p.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: ITS MAIN ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT PROBLEMS. World Bank.
1978. 468 p.English and Spanish.

LA ECONOMIC COLOMBIANA EN EL SIGLO
XIX. Anibal Galindo. ANIF-COLCULTURA
(Bogota, Colombia), 1978. 290 p. $17.00.

ENJUICIAMIENTO A LA POLITICAL AGRARIA Y
CAFETERA. Hernan Perez Zapata.
Asociaci6n Colombiana de Ingenieros
Agr6nomos, 1978. 185 p. $100.00.

ENSAYOS DE INTERPRETATION DE LA
ECONOMIC COLOMBIANA. Jose Antonio
Bejarano. Editorial La Carreta (Bogota,
Colombia), 1978. 272 p. $6.00.

FOREIGN IMMIGRANTS IN EARLY BOURBON
MEXICO, 1700-1760. C.P Nunn. Cambridge
University Press, 1979.

Sit

gw

IN SEARCH OF THE JAGUAR: GROWTH AND
PARADOX IN VENEZUELA. Stan Steiner.
Times Books, 1979. $10.00.

LA INMIGRACION DE BRACEROS
AZUCAREROS EN LA REPUBLICAN
DOMINICANA, 1900-1930. Jos& del Castillo.
Centro Dominicano de Investigaciones
Antropologicas, Universidad Aut6noma de
Santo Domingo, 1978. 78 p.

INVERSIONES EXTRANJERAS EN
COLOMBIA. Superintendencia de
Sociedades (Bogota, Colombia), 1978. 261
p. $530.00

MARGINALIDAD Y POBREZA. Asociaci6n
Nacional de Instituciones Financieras.
Ediciones Sol y Luna (Bogota, Colombia),
1978. 190 p. Essays presented at a
conference held in March, 1978.

EL MOVIMIENTO OBRERO DE AMERICA
LATINA, 1850-1918. Julio Godio. Ediciones
Universidades Sim6n Bolivar, Medellin, y
Libre de Pereira (Colombia), 1978. 307 p.

UN NUEVO MODELO DE DESARROLLO
VENEZOLANO. Gumersindo Rodriguez.
Ediciones Corpoconsult (Caracas,
Venezuela), 1979.

PEASANTS AND POVERTY. Mats Lundahl. St.
Martin's Press, 1979. $27.50. About Haiti.

POLITICAL ECONOMIC EXTERNA DE
COLOMBIA 1978. Eduardo Wiesner Duran.
Asociaci6n Bancaria de Colombia, 1978.349
p. $28.00.

POLITICAL MONETARIA Y CAMBIARIA EN
COLOMBIA. Eduardo Wiesner Duran.
Asociaci6n Bancaria de Colombia, 1978.242
p. $20.00.

POLITICAL Y ECONOMIC: LA DISTRIBUTION
DEL INGRESO EN AMERICA LATINA. Oscar
Muioz, ed. El Cid (Buenos Aires, Argentina),
1978. 280 p. $13.40.

POLITICAL Y ESTRATEGIAS DEL
DESARROLLO ECONOMIC Y SOCIAL
COLOMBIANO EN UN MUNDO
CAMBIANTE. Sociedad Colombiana de
Economistas, 1978. 283 p. Prepared for the
6th National Congress of Economists, held in
Call, Dec. 6-9, 1977.

RESULTADOS DE UNA POLITICAL DE
DESARROLLO: MEMORIAL DEL MINISTRY
DE DESARROLLO ECONOMIC. Diego
Moreno Jaramillo. Gr6ficas Gloria (Bogota,
Colombia), 1978. 321 p.

TAX-HOLIDAY EN VRIJE ZONE-FACILITEITEN
E Metry. Drukkerij Scherpenheuvel
(Curacao). 1979. NAfl. 17.50. A discussion of
the tax laws in the Netherlands Antilles.

TENENCIA DE LA TIERRA EN EL LITORAL
CENTRAL DE VENEZUELA. Ermilia
Troconis de Veracoechea. Universidad Sim6n
Bolivar (Caracas, Venezuela), 1979. 185 p. A
history of land ownership since 1567.
CA1?BBEAN PEIvEW/57

LOS TRABAJADORES PUERTORRIQUENOS Y
EL PARTIDO SOCIALIST, 1932 A 1940.
Blanca Silvestrini de Pacheco. University of
Puerto Rico Press, 1979.

History and Archaeology

AMERICA: UNA EQUIVOCACION. Enrique
Caballero. Editorial Hispana (Bogota,
Colombia), 1978. 314 p. $320.00. Historical
essays about Latin America.

ANCIENT PANAMA: CHIEFS IN SEARCH OF
POWER. Mary W Helms. University of Texas
Press, 1979. $16.95.

ARQUITECTURA EN SAN JUAN DE PUERTO
RICO, SIGLO XIX. Maria D. Castro de Davila.
University of Puerto Rico Press, 1979.

THE BAY OF PIGS: THE UNTOLD STORY. Peter
Wyden. Simon & Schuster, 1979. 441 p.
$11.95.

BLACK REBELS ON THE SPANISH MAIN.
Faulner A. Watts. Blyden Press, 1979. $7.50.

ELEMENTS PARA LA HISTORIC DE LA
EDUCATION EN COLOMBIA EN EL SIGLO
XX. Ivon Lebot. Depto. Administrative
Nacional de Estadistica (Bogota, Colombia),
1978. 202 p.

FRENCH EXPERIENCE IN MEXICO, 1821 TO
1861: A HISTORY OF CONSTANT
MISUNDERSTANDING. Nancy N. Barker.
University of North Carolina Press, 1979.
$18.00.

LA GEOGRAFIA SECRET DE AMERICA
ANTES DE COLON. Jacques de Mahieu.
Hachette (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 1978.
182 p. $18.75.

LA GUERRA DE LOS MIL DIAS. Jose Yunis. C.
Valencia (Bogota, Colombia), 1978. 324 p.
$350.00. A history of the revolution of
1899-1903 in Colombia.

HISTORIC DE COLOMBIA-SIGLO XX. Jose
Escorcia. Editorial Presencia (Bogota,
Colombia), 1978. 198 p. $4.50.

MONOGRAF1AS DE ANTIOQUIA. Heriberto
Zapata Cuencar. Copiyepes (Medellin,
Colombia), 1978. 320 p. $12.00.

PADILLA. Jose M. de Mier. Academia
Colombiana de Historia, 1978. 123 p. A
history of the conspiration of Sept., 1828,
against Bolivar.

REVOLUTION DE LOS COMUNEROS. Ramiro
Gomez R. Editorial M.A. G6mez
(Bucaramanga, Colombia), 1978. 141 p. A
new look at an interesting period in
Colombia's history.

SONSON EN EL SIGLO XX: BIOGRAFIA DE
UNA CIUDAD. Juan Botero Restrepo.
Ediciones Centro de Historia de Sons6n
(Argentina), 1978. 2 vols.

58/CABBEAN REVIEW

TEMAS HISTORICOS. Horacio Rodriguez Plata.
Ediciones Fondo Cultural Cafetero (Medellin,
Colombia), 1978. 356 p.

THE WEST INDIES. James Montgomery.
Garland Publishing, 1979. $36.00. Reprint of
the 1810 ed.

Language and Literature
ANTOLOGIA POETICA HISPANOAMERICANA.
Oscar Abel Ligaluppi, ed. Fondo Editorial
Bonaerense (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 1978.
583 p. $17.50.

THE BLACK PROTAGONIST IN THE CUBAN
NOVEL. Pedro Barreda. University of
Massachusetts Press, 1979. $12.50.

CUENTOS: TALES FROM THE SPANISH
SOUTHWEST Jose Griego, trans. Museum
of New Mexico Press, 1979. $6.95.

FOLK LITERATURE OF THE GE INDIANS.
Johannes Wilbert, Latin American Center,
University of California (Los Angeles), 1979.

FROM TRINIDAD: AN ANTHOLOGY OF EARLY
WEST INDIAN WRITING. Reinhard W.
Sander, ed. Holmes & Meier, 1978. $25.00.

FUEGOS CRUZADOS. Adelia Vieyra. Casa Pardo
(Buenos Aires, Argentina), 1978. 184 p.
$12.00. Historical novel about San Martin and
Bolivar.

LAS MEMORIES DE MAMA BLANCA. Teresa de
Parra. Monte Avila (Caracas, Venezuela),
1978. 184 p. Bs10.00. Venezuelan novel.

MIL PALABRA POKO USA. DUIZEND
VREEMDE WOORDEN. Paul Brenneker.
Montero (Curacao), 1978. Nafl 17.50.
Papiamento dictionary.

LOS VIAJES DE MIGUEL VICENTE
PATACAUENTE. Orlando Araujo. Ediciones
Centauro (Caracas, Venezuela), 1979. Short
stories by a Venezuelan author.

THE WEST INDIAN LANGUAGE ISSUE IN
BRITISH SCHOOLS: CHALLENGES AND
RESPONSES. Viv Edwards. Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1979.

Politics and Government
APORTES AL SISTEMA JUDICIAL
COLOMBIANO. Hilario Jose Ariza G6mez.
Editorial Kelly (Bogota, Colombia), 1978.187
p. $8.50.

ASI PIENSA LA CLASE EMERGENTE. Carlos
Ayala Jimenez, et al. Sociedad de Integraci6n
Liberal (Bogota, Colombia), 1978. 227 p.

EL CAMINO DE LA DEMOCRACIA. Emilio E.
Massera. El Cid (Buenos Aires, Argentina),
1979. 151 p. $14.00. The author was part of
the military junta which overthrew the
government of Isabel Peron in March, 1976.

EL CARIBE: MAR INTERIOR DE LAS
AMERICAS. Carlos A. Ayala Jimenez. Libreria
Juridicas Wilches (Bogota, Colombia), 1978.
279 p.

CODIGOS PENALES LATINOAMERICANOS.
Ricardo Levene, Eugenio Raul Zaffaroni. La
Ley (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 1978. 715 p.
$42.00. Includes the codes for Argentina,
Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, and
Cuba.

LA CONSTITUTION DE 1949:
ANTECEDENTES Y PROYECCIONES.
Oscar Aguilar Bulgarelli. 5th ed. Editorial
Costa Rica, 1978. About Costa Rica.

LA CONSTITUYENTE: ITINERARIO DE UNA
PROPUESTA. Jaime Betancur Cuartas, ed.
TercerMundo (Bogota, Colombia), 1978.500
p. A treatise on Colombian law.

CONTROL Y DECONTROL DEL PODER. Pedro
Miguel Pareles. Monte Avila (Caracas,
Venezuela), 1979. World Politics with a focus
on Venezuela.

CUBA HOJE: 20 ANOS DE REVOLUCAO. Jorge
Escosteguy. Alfa Omega (Sao Paulo, Brazil),
1978. 177 p. $10.00.

LA DEMOCRACIA PETROLERA: DE ROMULO
BETANCOURTA CARLOSANDRES PEREZ.
Carlos Ramirez Faria. El Cid (Buenos Aires,
Argentina), 1978. 355 p. $8.00.

DICTATORS NEVER DIE: NICARAGUA AND
THE SOMOZA DYNASTY. Eduardo Crawley.
St. Martin's Press, 1979. $14.50.

LA ESTRUCTURA DEL PODER EN COLOMBIA.
Roberto Gerlein Echeverria. Ediciones Tercer
Mundo (Bogota, Colombia), 1978. 170 p.
$130.00.

FROM DESSALINES TO DUVALIER. D. Nicholls.
Cambridge University Press, 1979.

ILLUSIONS OF CONFLICT:
ANGLO-AMERICAN DIPLOMACY TOWARD
LATIN AMERICA, 1865-1896. Joseph Smith.
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979. $16.95.

INSTITUCIONES POLITICAL DE COLOMBIA.
E. Santa. Editorial Temis (Bogota, Colombia),
1978. 191 p. $260.00.

LA IZQUIERDA Y EL FUTURE DOMINICANO.
Franklin J. Franco. Ediciones UPA (Santo
Domingo), 1978. 137 p.

LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND
DEVELOPMENT Howard Wiarda, Harvey E
Kline. Houghton Miflin, 1979. $13.95.

LEGISLATION AGRARIA COLOMBIANA:
LEYES, DECRETOS, RESOLUCIONES,
JURISPRUDENCIA Y DOCTRINE. Adolfo
Triana Antoryeza. Editorial Presencia
(Bogota, Colombia), 1978. 993 p. $40.00.

LA LUCHA POR EL PODER EN 1978:
PLANTEAMIENTOS DE LOS CANDIDATES
Y RESULTADOS ELECTORALES. Ivan
Botero-Paramo, ed. Causa Comun (Bogota,
Colombia), 1978. 219 p. $250.00 Politics in
Colombia.

MIS PADECIMIENTOS I MI CONDUCT
PUBLIC Y OTROS DOCUMENTS.
Francisco Soto. Academia Colombiana de
Historia, 1978.191 p. An eye-witness account
of political events in Colombia during the first
half of the 19th century.

EL PARO POPULAR DEL 14 DE SEPTIEMBRE
DE 1977. Oscar Delgado, ed. Editorial Latina
(Bogota, Colombia), 1978. 217 p.

THE PHYSICAL, POLITICAL AND
INTERNATIONAL VALUE OF THE PANAMA
CANAL. William H. Taft. Institute of Economic
and Political World Strategic Studies
(Albuquerque, N.M.), 1979. $31.50.

LA POLITICAL DE LOS COMUNISTAS
COLOMBIANOS. Manuel Romeros, Yira
Castro. Ediciones Suramerica (Bogota,
Colombia), 1978. 162 p.

POLITICAL ATTITUDES IN VENEZUELA.
Enrique Baloyra, John D. Martz. University of
Texas Press, 1979. $19.95.

POLITICS OF COMPROMISE: COALITION
GOVERNMENT IN COLOMBIA: R. Albert
Berry, et al., eds. Transaction Books, 1979.
$29.95; $7.95 paper.

EL PROCESS HISTORIC DE LA DIPLOMACIA
Y LA VIGENCIA SE SUS PRINCIOS. Felix
Lavinia, Horacio Baldomir. Fundaci6n de
Cultura Universitaria (Montevideo, Uraguay),
1978. 261 p. $15.00.

RUPTURA HISTORICA. Octavio Gall6n Restrepo.
Ediciones Tercer Mundo (Bogota,
Colombia), 1978. 218 p. A treatise on
contemporary politics in Colombia.

SISTEMA FEDERAL PARA SALIR DEL ATRASO.
Federico Echavarria Olarte. Bogota,
Colombia, 1978. 112 p. About Colombia.

EL TERRIBLE FANTASMA DE CARMONA. Jos6
Emilio Castellanos. Editorial Ateneo de
Caracas, 1979. New insights into the murder
of the Venezuelan politician.

LAVENEDEMOCRACIA. Alicia Freilich de Segal.
Monte Avila Editores (Caracas, Venezuela),
1978. 255 p. Bs.18.00.

VENEZUELA Y EL CARIBE: PRESENCIA
CAMBIANTE. Demetrio Boersner. Monte
Avila Editores (Caracas, Venezuela), 1978.
142 p. Bs.12.00.

Reference
CATALOGUE OF THE WEST INDIA
REFERENCE LIBRARY, BEING THE
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF JAMAICA. Robert A.
Hill, ed. KTO Press, 1979. 10 vols. $750.00.

CONTRIBUTION A LA BIBLIOGRAFIA DEL
FOLCLOR COLOMBIANO. Jorge Morales
G6mez. Centro Don Bosco (Bogota,
Colombia), 1978. 130 p.

GUIDE TO NONPRINT MATERIALS FOR LATIN
AMERICAN STUDIES. Martin H. Sable.
Blaine Ethridge Books, 1979. 152 p. $15.00.

HISTORIOGRAFIA RIOPLATENSE. Institute
Bibliografico "Antonio Zinny." Buenos Aires,
1978. 245 p. $20.00.

ITALIAN IMMIGRANTS ABROAD: A
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE ITALIAN
EXPERIENCE OUTSIDE ITALY IN EUROPE,
THE AMERICAS, AUSTRALIA, AND
AFRICA. Vittorio Briani. Blaine Ethridge
Books, 1979. $25.00.

PERSONALITIES CARIBBEAN: THE
INTERNATIONAL GUIDE OF WHO'S WHO
IN THE WEST INDIES, BAHAMAS,
BERMUDA. 6th ed., 1977-78. Personalities,
Ltd. (Kingston, Jamaica), 1978. 1064 p.
$50.00.

SCHOLAR'S GUIDE TO WASHINGTON, D.C.
FOR LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN
STUDIES. Michael Grow. Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1979. 432 p. $19.95; $7.95
paper.

A SELECTED AND ANNOTATED
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CHICANO STUDIES.
Charles M. Tatum. 2nd ed. Society of Spanish
and Spanish-American Studies, University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, 1979. $9.90.

Marian Goslinga is the International Environ-
mental and Urban Affairs Librarian at Florida
International University.

CAI?BBEAN PrVIE
-- Florida International University
Tamiami Trail, Miami, Florida 33199

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-----

The Institute of International Relations
University of the West Indies
St.Augustine, '-inidad, W.I.
announces the publication (March 1979) of
Contemporary
International Relations
of the Caribbean
edited by Basil A. Ince
This timely volume treats topics of increasing importance
in the region. All sixteen articles have been written by
nationals of the region, thus presenting an unofficial but
authoritative \iew of the thoughts of Caribbean scholars
on international issues. Some of the issues treated uae:
Nationalization of multinationals; the Economic
Development of the Region; Non-alignment;The Racial
Factor in Caribbean Foreign Policy; The Caribbean and
Latin America and the Caribbean and the Third World.
Order from: Institute of International Relations
University of the West Indies
St. Augustine Trinidad, W.I.
Price (prepaid) US$17.00 plus US$2.50 for postage.

Revista/Review

Interamericana
ISSN 0360-7917

Multidisciplinary Bilingual (Spanish-English)
Quarterly of Interamerican Interest

Now entering its 9th year of publication, with articles
for both the general reader and the specialist in Puerto
Rican, Caribbean and Latin American affairs.

Articles on linguistics, literature, history, education,
anthropology, political affairs and economics. Plus
poetry, short stories and book reviews.

Special themes have included Education in Puerto
Rico, U.S. Foreign Policy in Latin America, Socio-
linguistics and Bilingualism, Race Relations in the
Americas, Population, Women in Latin America,
Caribbean Literature, the Bicentennial and the
Caribbean, Modernization in the Caribbean,
Caribbean Dictators. Cuba in the 20th Century . etc.

Forthcoming issues include Tainos, Migration,
Religion. Women Poets, and others.

Authors have included such recognized authorities as
Margaret Mead, Erich Fromm, Eric Williams, Magnus
Morner, Joshua Fishman, J.L. Dillard, Aurelio Ti6,
Washington Llorens. Bernard Lowy. Selden Rodman,
Herbert J. Muller, Eugene Wigner, T. Dale Stewart,
John Bartlow Martin, Henry Wells, George Lamming,
Piri Thomas, and others.
PuhlishedFour Times A Year Institutions:$16.00peryear
Spring, Summer, Falland Winter Individuals:$10.00/yr:$16.00/2yrs.
Inter American University Press
G.P.O. Box 3255, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936

60/CAI?BBEAN FEVIEW

J~l~a M LUI)
from FIU's International Affairs Center
The University's School of I-:, :,lr :,r Manage-
ment has entered into an agreement to provide a
broad range of consultative services to the Island
Government of Aruba. Under terms of the agree-
ment faculty members of the School of Hospitality
Management will work with the Ministry of Education
to strengthen the Aruban training program in Hospi-
tality Management.
At the request of the Universidad Simon Bolivar
(Caracas, Venezuela), Florida International Univer-
sity is preparing the terms of a bilateral agreement. It
is proposed that the two universities exchange
selected resources in order to complement and
enhance their own programs in the areas of training,
research, and education.
International Affairs Center
Florida International University
Tamiami Trail Miami, Florida 33199
(305) 552-2846

Now in a second, revised edition ....

BERMUDIAN POLITICS
IN TRANSITION
Frank E. Manning
Bermudian Politics in Transition explores the process that
has given unprecedented strength to Bermuda's black
political opposition and critically weakened the white-
controlled power structure of Britain's oldest and wealthiest
colony. Based on survey research as well as intensive
fieldwork over a ten-year period, the book deals with the
politics of race as dramatically seen in voting patterns and
popular ideologies. Major findings and analysis are related
to the outbursts of mass violence that have punctuated the
past two decades, setting forth a theory of how racial
politics are understood and manipulated in an island society
where distinctive local traditions encounter the cultural
values of North America, the nationalist aspirations of the
Caribbean, and the economic realities of tourism and inter-
national finance.
Hamilton, Bermuda; Island Press.
248 pages. $6.95.
Frank E. Manning is Associate Professor and Head of
Anthropology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He
has done social research in Bermuda, Barbados, and
Antigua, and is author of Black Clubs in Bermuda.
All orders should be made directly to Baxter's
Bookshops, P.O. Box 1009, Hamilton,Bermuda.
Individuals should send remittance of U.S.
$6.95. or equivalent in foreign currency.
Delivery in three weeks.
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Mail with remittance: Baxter's Bookshops
P.O. Box 1009
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	Front Cover
	Table of Contents
	Front Matter
	Main
	Back Cover

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0	html_echo_mainwriter.add_style_references	Adding style references to HTML
0	html_echo_mainwriter.add_text_to_page	Reading the text from the file and echoing back to the output stream
83	html_echo_mainwriter.add_text_to_page	Finished reading and writing the file