...Dario Moreno Explaining the Reagan Years in Central America: A World System Perspective . By Brown Jeremy M. . Lanham : University Press of America , 1995 . Bibliography. Index, xi, 300 pp. Cloth , $49.00 . Paper , $29.50 . Copyright 1997 by Duke University Press 1997...

...Dario Moreno In the Name of Democracy: U.S. Policy Toward Latin America in the Reagan Years . By Carothers Thomas . Berkeley : University of California Press , 1991 . Notes. Bibliography. Index . xii , 309 pp. Cloth . $30.00 . Copyright 1993 by Duke University Press 1993...

...Daniel Masterson Although this is a work of broad perspective, Bermúdez fails to properly place Reagan’s Central American policy in the context of his overall relations with Latin America. While this is a significant flaw, it does not fundamentally detract from what is unquestionably a most...

...Robert Pastor Reagan versus the Sandinistas: The Undeclared War on Nicaragua . Edited by Walker Thomas W. . Boulder : Westview Press , 1987 . Notes. Tables. figures. Index . Pp. xiv , 337 . Cloth . $30.00 . Iran-Contra Affair: Report of the Congressional Committees...

... Elsewhere: Human Rights and US Cold War Policy toward Argentina (2013), is the best bilateral study we have of US policy toward a South American country during the Jimmy Carter administration. This new book primarily focuses on US relations with Nicaragua during the Ronald Reagan administration. Readers may...

... The title of William M. LeoGrande’s latest book could read otherwise, for it is mostly a study of “Central America in the United States,” of Washington’s formulation and execution of policy towards Central America, and not the other way around. Furthermore, it deals mostly with the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan...

... focus on periods—from World War I to the Great Depression, the years immediately following World War II, the Alliance for Progress experiment, and the Reagan era—when U.S. administrations professed to be seeking to promote democracy. The second section features U. S. campaigns to promote one or another...

... their control over Nicaragua, but that they still refused to come to grips with the question of an enforceable solution. In Washington, the administration’s determination to rid Nicaragua of the Sandinistas contributed to its rejection of any solution short of that objective. Bagley suggests that Reagan’s only...

... administration’s emphasis on human rights was very important. Boeker, who was Carter’s ambassador to Bolivia, concurs. With regard to the Reagan human rights record, the Latin American leaders are less decisive. Boeker himself draws a distinction between the first two Reagan years, when Latin American policy...

... with each other. They have little in common beyond their concern with Central America in the 1980s. Dario Moreno’s book is a chronicle of the Carter and Reagan policies toward Central America and has little to say about internal Central American development. It pays virtually no attention...

... in this volume a superb combination of knowledge and evaluation that reveals a great deal about the recent past as it explains the present and offers a window on the future. Then Howard Wiarda examines the Reagan to Bush transition. President Bush recruited a team of foreign policy practitioners who made...

... Nicaragua. Thousands went there to work, to live in the war zones as witnesses, or just to briefly experience revolutionary Nicaragua. Many of these individuals became important activists. Peace gives a year-by-year description of both the Reagan administration contra policies and the ACWC responses. He...

..., Oscar Zamora; El camino militar electoral de la administración Reagan para El Salvador versus la negociación política, by Carole Schwartz and Bheny Cuenca; La política latinamericana de la administración Reagan: Del diseño armonioso a las primeras dificultades, by Luis Maira; La crisis en centroamérica...

... of a United States that, in arrogance and ignorance, prides itself on its anticolonial tradition. As LaFeber mentions, in 1975 two-thirds of North Americans polled did not even know who owned the canal. After an outstanding discussion of the treaty negotiations under Carter, LaFeber analyzes the Reagan...

... Latin American adviser on the National Security Council, not surprisingly has few criticisms of Carter’s policies. Margaret Daly Hayes concludes that by 1986, “Nicaragua appeared to be the only crisis with which the Reagan team had not been able to cope adequately” (p. 127). That must be news to, among...

... as a crucible of circum-Caribbean politics and economic development; a geostrategic area that President Ronald Reagan has belatedly recognized. Because of discriminatory United States quota restrictions upon foreign-grown sugar cane, and manufactured-goods’ tariffs, a nation like the Dominican Republic...

... Both the Reagan and Bush administrations, according to this book, used the so-called War on Drugs as a cover to aid the U.S.-backed Contras in their efforts to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Moreover, the authors assert that both administrations utilized the help of known drug...

... are openly critical of the Sandinista government or supportive of Reagan administration policy. The book’s claim of having transcended an ideological perspective is, thus, disingenuous. There are two essays by Jiri and Virginia Valenta and Arturo Cruz, Sr. on the Leninist character of the FSLN...

...William Richardson The title of this book is slightly misleading in that the text deals primarily only with United States policy toward Latin America during the 1970s and early 1980s. Even then, its focus is on the Carter and Reagan presidencies, with a more limited discussion of the Latin...

... to the Reagan administration’s effort to undermine the Sandinistas by showing how historical myths were channeled through the techniques of contemporary advertising. He sees the goals of historical myths and those of advertising as similar, even though advertising is a much more consciously produced process...