The Latin American studies association vs. the United States: The verdict of history

Abstract

The collapse of the Soviet Union has been accompanied by critical commentaries on what are called sins of Sovietology. Critics have focused not so much on the failure of specialists to predict the breakup of the empire that Stalin built as on their alleged inability to understand the very nature of communist regimes.[1] By the same token, Nicaragua's repudiation of the Sandinistas in the 1990 election and the approaching demise of Fidel Castro's thirty-five- year-old dictatorship (a Latin American record) over Cuba call for analysis of what Latin Americanists have said about the two regimes in the Western hemisphere most like--and for most of their life closely allied to--those that once made up the Soviet bloc.[2] How well did Latin Americanists diagnose the nature of Marxism-Leninism when it showed up at their doorstep speaking Spanish, quoting Jose Marti and Ruben Dario?[3] An exhaustive study of the judgments that Latin Americanists have rendered on Cuba and Nicaragua during the last two decades, even if restricted to the leading journals and bestselling textbooks, would fill a rather lengthy book and is beyond the scope of this essay.[4] I shall instead consider the resolutions, reports, and other official declarations or statements of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), the leading organization of Latin Americanists in the United States, if not the world. Since LASA's resolutions are adopted only after ratification by the entire membership, those on Cuba and Nicaragua should reflect what a large body of Latin Americanists have thought about these countries through the years. LASA, which was founded in 1966, has over 3,000 individual and about 80 institutional members. Every 18 months it holds an international congress that attracts about 2,000 participants. Members receive the Latin American Research Review (LARR), a scholarly journal, and the LASA Forum (formerly the LASA Newsletter), a quarterly publication of announcements, reports, analyses, and opinion. LASA's resolutions, task force reports, and related documents, whose contents will be analyzed in these pages, appear in the latter. LASA is governed by a nine-member executive council consisting of six elected representatives, an elected vice-president (who automatically succeeds to the presidency), the president, and the immediate past president. With the council's consent, the president makes appointments to task forces charged with specific missions. Two of the oldest, each more than twenty years old, are the Task Force on Scholarly Relations with Cuba and the Task Fore on Human Rights and Academic Freedom. More recent is the Task