New Left Review I/175, May-June 1989

Carlos M. Vilas

Revolutionary Unevenness in Central America

James Dunkerley’s Power in the Isthmus ranks together with recent books by Weeks and Bulmer-Thomas as one of the best English-language works on Central America. [*] Power in the Isthmus, Verso, London 1988, £29.95 hbk., £11.95 (spring 1989) pbk. He presents a broad, successful and systematic analysis of a huge bibliography, especially of materials published in the region, and aptly combines the regional with the national dimensions, the recurrent with the particular. When one faces a book of seven hundred pages, it is very difficult to concur with all its propositions. But I should say that I am in general agreement with Dunkerley’s focus and analysis, apart from some differences in interpretation inevitable among colleagues with different backgrounds and familiarity with the same theme. For example, there are points at which a laudable emphasis on the endogeous leads him to neglect the direct action and moulding power of the exogenous factors (above all, the various types of intervention by the us government). Dunkerley has convincingly dismantled the image of Central America as a defenceless mass, perfectly malleable by such forces as us ambassadors, the Marines, and international bankers. This is indeed more a caricature than an analysis, and Dunkerley fully demonstrates in a chapter on Honduras that the same is true of the common perception of ‘banana republics’. Sometimes, however, one has the impression that the author is throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and the general argument is not always clear with regard to the strategic interests of the usa in the region. This slant is perhaps due to the scant attention paid to the external articulation of Central America to the international system, and to the perceptions of this which exist among policy-makers in Washington. Undoubtedly this aspect is beyond the scope of Dunkerley’s excellent study, but it would have helped the reader to understand the concerns of the United States in a region which means very little to it in economic terms, and whose strategic importance is not what it might have been fifty to seventy years ago.

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