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Central America: Political Economy and Sociology

The turmoil in Central America over the past decade has raised a host of questions to which there are no easy answers. How to understand the Sandinista Triumph of 1979, the Contra war, and then the recent Nicaraguan elections, or the guerrilla movements and military repression in El Salvador and Guatemala? Less conspicuous have been Honduras and Costa Rica, generally only figuring in relation to the war in Nicaragua, and Panama seeming only to involve Noriega, drugs and the CIA. Most well-known commentaries on these countries and events, for example Pearce (1982) and McClintock (1985), analyse the role of the USA in its ‘backyard’, although, of course, within the academic literature often more diverse accounts are available. All of the books under review are recent attempts to bring together the more specialist literature for general overviews and to analyse the long-term bases of the recent conflicts. All shun the perspective that the relation-