With two exceptions, the 12 contributions in this collection were presented as papers at a weeklong conference in San José, Costa Rica, in 1991 under the joint sponsorship of the State University of New York at Albany and the University of Costa Rica. Half the conference participants were from SUNY Albany and half from Central America, the latter representing Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras.
The book is divided into three sections: “Perspectives on Central American Development and Change,” “Themes in the Restructuring of the Political Economy,” and “Recovery or Relapse: Reflections on Central America in the New World Order.” Section 1 contains the editors’ collective introduction to the volume, followed by a paper by José Vega Carballo arguing that Costa Rica survived the disastrous economic decline of the 1980s with its democratic institutions intact because it had developed an open, flexible, participatory democracy. For many readers, this may be the most interesting paper in the collection.
The seven papers in section 2 include five of the six U.S. contributions. Topics include labor markets, past U.S. agrarian policy and its implications for Central America, a critique of Honduran agrarian policies of the 1970s and 1980s, industrial democracy, cooperativism in Central America, multinational enterprise and direct investment, and political integration. The three offerings that constitute section 3 are all by Central Americans; two of them place the region’s economies in global context. The final paper in the volume discusses the prospects for Central American economic integration.
The volume does not hold together well. The Central American participants tend to focus on the region’s problems and, in some cases, on the social effects of structural adjustment. As one would expect, they view Central America’s past economic history and future options as influenced by outside forces largely beyond their control, and they see some of the warts on neoliberal economic policy. In contrast, the U.S. participants, some of whom appear not to be well informed about Central America, discuss models developed outside the region that might be adapted for use there, and generally take a noncritical approach to structural adjustment. The inclusion of participants from other Central American countries, especially Nicaragua, could have brought additional contrasting views to the collection.
Readers of this volume will gain a perspective on the contrast between U.S. and Central American opinion on the costs and benefits of structural adjustment for the region. For the Central American specialist, certain articles, such as Vega Carballo’s on the survival of Costa Rican democracy, Noe Pino’s on Honduran agrarian policy, and the more regionally focused papers in section 3, are of potential interest.
