THE UNITED STATES AND LATIN AMERICA: AMBIVALENT TIES

Abstract

Stephen G. Rabe. Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. ix + 237 pp. Barbara Stallings. Banker to the Third World: U.S. Portfolio Investment in Latin America, 1900-1986. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. xvii + 434 pp. Richard E. Feinberg and Ricardo Ffrench-Davis, eds. Development and External Debt in Latin America: Bases for a New Consensus. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. vii + 281 pp. These three books deal with the close, but ambivalent linkages between the United States and Latin America. The Latin American states have been extremely dependent on U.S. foreign assistance, investment and trade, but they have also resented U.S. interference and intervention. From the U.S. perspective, Latin America has commonly been low on the scale of priorities in foreign policy-making. However, during "crisis" periods the United States has attached great importance to the region in strategic-security, and sometimes in economic, terms. Tensions have resulted from conflicting perceptions, with the United States often viewing Latin American problems in cold war terms, and the Latin Americans highlighting their economic development problems. The ambivalent linkages are transnational (involving private actors) as well as inter-governmental. U.S. private banks have been heavily involved in lending to Latin America, but the cyclical pattern of their loans has contributed to periodic tensions. Furthermore, U.S. governments have normally preferred to leave their economic relations with Latin America to private enterprise, while Latin Americans have often stressed the need for government involvement.