The essays collected in this volume are a series of attempts by Latin American intellectuals to rethink the state and society from the perspective that began to emerge as Latin American countries started to move toward democratic forms of government in the late 1970s. The volume is part of a series sponsored jointly by the United Nations University and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, which is coordinated by Pablo González Casanova. It purports to go beyond the debates on the “bureaucratic authoritarian” state by incorporating the thinking on the state that was provoked by the evolution of the Nicaraguan Revolution and by the generalized trend toward democracy. Published in April 1990, it does not reflect changes in Eastern Europe.
The volume, consisting of twenty-three essays, combines theoretical chapters covering the region as a whole and more empirically oriented studies of national cases. The range of cases is impressive, spanning every region of Latin America and the Caribbean. There are country essays on Argentina (Adolfo Gilly), Uruguay, Brazil (Vánia Bambirra), Paraguay, Chile (Hugo Zemelman), Bolivia, Peru (Julio Cotler), Ecuador, Venezuela (Heinz Sonntag), Colombia, Panama, Mexico (Arnaldo Córboba), and Cuba. There are also two essays focusing on an entire region: Central America and the Caribbean. One must commend the decision to include the Caribbean nations. The effort, however, is more broad than systematic. These are interpretative essays by writers who are “engaged” with the politics of their countries. As such they provide somewhat of an insider’s view, which serves as a useful complement to the more detached and at times “objectivist” writing by U.S. academics. But little documentation or original research is to be found; only secondary sources are cited. There is no clear rationale for the time span covered by each essay. Sweeping historical overviews of events since the beginning of the twentieth century are provided for some cases (Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean), but not for others. The cutoff dates present another problem. For example, the essay on Uruguay ends in 1973; on Argentina there is barely a page beyond the 1976 coup. Indeed, the essays in general are attempts to digest the 1960s and 1970s, with very little on the 1980s. For a volume published in 1990 that presents itself as an attempt to rethink history from the perspective of current democratic changes, it is odd that there is practically nothing on the “new democracies” of the region.
The theoretical essays seek to explore various dimensions of the Latin American state by considering the “national question” (Octavio Ianni), the insertion of Latin American countries in the world economy (Jorge Graciarena), the state’s constitutional and juridical dimension (Marcos Kaplan), the national security ideology (Luis Maira), regime types (Gustavo Ernesto Emmerich), and the foreign debt (Samuel Lichtensztejn), The editor provides a couple of introductory essays. The theoretical essays are broad-ranging and fairly abstract. Theories are illustrated with cases, but systematic efforts at comparative analysis are sparse. One is left with doubts about the wisdom of combining general theory and case studies while avoiding the more fruitful level of comparative analysis. The theories presented would have been better tested with comparisons among a small set of carefully selected cases.
In general, the volume tries to do too much. The theory is too abstract, and the country chapters attempt to synthesize very long periods. These criticisms notwithstanding, the volume deserves to be read as a testimony of current rethinking on the state and democracy by mostly leftist Latin American intellectuals.
