The editors have performed a valuable service in providing us with this book which supersedes previous country-by-country Latin American politics texts. The work’s value lies in the individual country chapters, forming about eighty percent of the book, most of them very good indeed. While the concluding chapter is generally sensible and contains some interesting observations, the general introductory chapters are rambling, painfully repetitive, especially with respect to imprecise concepts of “tradition” and “corporatism,” and sometimes unconsciously ethnocentric.
Haiti has been dropped from, and Puerto Rico added to, the usual roster of Latin American states, which is certainly arguable. Totally unhelpful to the reader, however, is another innovation: the apparently random sequence in which the country chapters are presented.
Several chapters are especially good: on Brazil Kenneth Erickson writes clearly about the major questions, striking a nice balance between description and theory; James Malloy has a very fine analysis of Bolivian politics; David Scott Palmer is good on Peru, although his mastery of the material is occasionally marred by a staccato style and a tendency to lapse into political science jargon. The first half of the chapter by Samuel and Arturo Valenzuela, historical in nature, goes far beyond what one would expect in a text of this kind, constituting a serious contribution to the writing of Chilean history. These authors stress the role of Bulnes, the achievement of autonomy by the state sector, economic causality, and the role of the Conservatives in the expansion of the suffrage, but the analytical half of the chapter is not of the same quality. It is a pleasure again to read Philip B. Taylor who combines shrewdness and commitment with good writing; the last days of Uruguayan democracy he characterizes as “a tyranny of all by all.” There are excellent short treatments of Nicaragua by Thomas Walker, Guatemala by Jerry Weaver, Panama by Steve Ropp, and El Salvador by Ronald McDonald, all of which combine a sense of proportion, clear exposition, and an understanding that one must explain and not simply describe. On Argentina, Peter Snow is likewise well-informed and judicious, although breaking no new ground.
Chapters less outstanding than these, although also good, are those by James Morris on Honduras, where solid knowledge is marred by unclear writing; Charles Denton on Costa Rica, good except in explaining the basis for Costa Rica’s singularity; and John Martz on Ecuador, where the chapter contains virtually everything of relevance (although I missed any account of the effect of the Andean Pact in promoting industry in the sierra) but which conveys to the student no sense of what is important and what is not. On Puerto Rico, Henry Wells gives a solid performance.
Chapters that are mildly disappointing are Harvey Kline on Cuba, where an inordinate amount of space is devoted to Fidel Castro’s early life and various inaccurate comparisons are made between Cuba and the rest of Latin America, and on Colombia, where the writing is equally cloudy and no serious attempt is made to explain Colombian distinctiveness. In his conclusions on Colombia, Professor Kline manages to call three or four quite different possible lines of development “likely.” On the Dominican Republic, Howard Wiarda’s position is clear and straightforward, but he tends to work aprioristically, deriving specific characteristics from his general approach to Latin America—saying, for example, that Dominican parties are thoroughly personalist, without trying to reconcile that statement with the fact that the PRD could continue to flourish after the caudillo who founded it had walked out. Riordan Roett and Ampara Menéndez Carrión turn in a lackluster performance on Paraguay, even including Francisco Solano López in their generalization that “whenever an authoritarian ruler exercised power . . . the nation has prospered,” (p. 128) and apparently accepting at face value Paraguay’s notorious educational statistics.
Seriously disappointing is Iêda Siqueira Wiarda on Venezuela, where attempts at explanation are circular and generalizations about the country’s political life inaccurate. On Mexico, Evelyn Stevens starts off well but, perhaps because of deadline pressures, soon becomes chaotic. She makes factual errors and her accounts of Mexican income distribution are muddled, but the main weakness of her chapter is that it conveys the impression of a unified elite orchestrating a smoothly running authoritarian system, which oversimplifies a complex reality to the extent of falsifying it.
The editors should nevertheless be commended for making the heroic efforts that an undertaking of this kind requires, and for selecting what is on the whole a very able set of contributors. I will assign the book, or the bulk of it, to my own students.
