Collections of essays derived from a conference of assorted specialists, such as the volumes of the Caribbean Conference Series, suffer from several disadvantages. The orientation, style, and general quality of the articles are apt to vary widely. If the writer submits the manuscript of a speech as delivered, it is often too loose and superficial to be of much permanent value, whereas if he reads to his listeners a tightly written analysis, properly supported by detailed evidence, he risks putting them to sleep. Even a first-rate paper dealing with contemporary problems may go out of date even before it appears in print.
The latest volume of the Caribbean Conference Series suffers from all these drawbacks, but it contains enough valuable material to be worth consulting. A few essays are full of informative statistics and other facts: for example, those of José A. Mestre (“Investments”), Maurice J. Mountain (“United States Military Assistance in the Caribbean Area”), and William Sanders (“The Conference System in the Caribbean”). One is based on an interesting but unrealized idea (John T. Smithies, “The New Breed of Businessmen in the Caribbean”); another gives the reader a tantalizing glimpse of a potentially valuable case study (N. E. Surbaugh, “Manufacturing Problems— the Experience of Sears”). Unfortunately some writers have taken refuge in the history of all Latin America or in frothy generalizations.
Overall the collection is heavily weighted (three out of five sections) in favor of economic relations between the United States and the Caribbean. The section on cultural relations is the least valuable of the five, and the concluding section on diplomatic relations is so tame that one would never guess that the Conference had taken place less than nine months after the Dominican intervention of 1965. The only essays which deal much with Castro or the Dominican Republic (Adolph A. Berle, “The Cold War in the Caribbean,” and Virginia Prewett, “A Changing United States Foreign Policy,”) are brief, generalized, and obsolete. Presumably at the last moment, Editor Wilgus added a succinct introduction on the USIA’s operations in the Caribbean. It might have been more to the point if he had ministered in the same fashion to the CIA. These cabalistic initials are entirely missing from the index and, as far as I can tell, from the text.
