Charles L. Stansifer

Application of the Tobar Doctrine to Central America

The American republics, for the sake of their own reputation and credit—if not for other humanitarian and altruistic considerations —“ought to intervene indirectly in the internal dissensions of the continent. Such intervention might consist, at the least, in the denial of recognition to de facto governments springing from revolution against the constitutional order.” Carlos Tobar, ex-foreign minister of Ecuador and the author of these views, thus expressed his concern over the problem of political instability in early twentieth-century Latin America. Constant revolutions and civil warfare he considered the curse of the region and the principal barrier to economic and social progress. His remedy was to put the combined diplomatic weight of all American nations against revolutionary governments, believing that such intervention would remove new, unconstitutional governments from power, and that, eventually, dissatisfied political factions in Latin America would give up their customary resort to violence. This pre-Wilsonian doctrine of legitimacy—known as the Tobar Doctrine—elicited little favorable response from Latin America’s leaders, already wary of any precept which could be used as justification for foreign interference in internal matters. Because Tobar’s anti-revolutionary entreaty ran directly counter to Latin American thought, it appeared headed for oblivion, except for a desperate situation in Central America in the first years of the twentieth century.

Landscapes of Struggle: Politics, Society, and Community in El Salvador: Lauria-Santiago, Aldo, and Leigh Binford, eds.: Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 296 pp., Publication Date: July 2004

On page 2 of Landscapes of Struggle, the editors state: “El Salvador is Latin America’s least researched nation-state.” As a historian of Central America, I could not agree more. The editors lament the conditions that have led to this neglect: the invisibility of the nation’s indigenous peoples, absence of a strong tradition of higher education, and the country’s authoritarian and military legacy. Nevertheless, in the opening historiographical review and in introductions to the three sections, the editors succeed admirably in identifying and evaluating what studies-most of which concentrate on the national level-are available. The book looks beyond the existing corpus of literature dealing with national and international politics and focuses sharply on the local level. Instead of presidents and military figures, the dramatis personae of the thirteen chapters are workers, peasants, clerics, women, communities, and a variety of local and international development agencies. Among the contributors are three historians, five anthropologists, two political scientists, and one sociologist. The editors and contributors are to be congratulated for putting together some highly instructive, challenging studies of El Salvador and for suggesting new avenues of research. ’ h o chapters provide rather surprisingly positive interpretations of the Salvadoran military. The first covers politics and patronage during the military dictatorship of Maximiliano Herniindez Martfnez, and the second explains how generals courted labor unions in the 1944-1972 period. Three studies treat land tenure and reform. One reviews the privatization of indigenous land in Izalco in the late nineteenth century, another covers the effects of land reform and cooperativism on a rural community from the 1940s to the 1990s, and the third documents agitation for land reform in the mid-1990s. One study evaluates a middle-class craftsmen’s association. Personal interviews are successfully used in several chapters: to provide details of the successful politicization by priests of a rural community in Morazin province, depopulation and resettlement of Tenancingo, the unusual cooperation between the Fh4I.N and the government in the community of Segundo Montes, and the disenchantment of rural women with nongovernmental organizations. Personal experiences “in a small, primarily indigenous village” illuminate problems of ethnic identity in one chapter. Another study, using testimonial literature, exposes the high degree of post-civil war violence and police corruption. The last chapter is another expos6

Capturing the Revolution: The United States, Central America, and Nicaragua, 1961–1972: Gambone, Michael D.: Westport: Praeger Publishers, 288 pp., Publication Date: July 2001

/<i<Jf mid Rt.ve/rv examines the ways in which cai-ly Americans used “rough music,” sornetirnes called “skimmington” or “charivari,” to cnforcc community standards through vigiIiinte action. The editors, William Pencak and Matthew Dennis, professors of history at I’cnn State University and the University of Oregon, respectively. and Simon P. Newman, a senior lecturer in history and the director of the Andrew Hook Centre for American StudICS at the llniversity of Glasgow, have assembled ten outstanding essays that deal with a d j c c t with which most historians have only

Educando a Costa Rica: Alfabetizacion popular, formacion docente y genero (1880-1950) (review)

ever present esmog that hangs over the valley. While one might wish for an elaboration of how daily life establishes an espacio cultural (cultural space), in which the chinamperos create and recreate a continuing presence, Cristiani and her colleagues have provided local inhabitants and distant readers a rich account of a people whose storied past infuses their continuing efforts to keep the megalopolis at bay while tapping into its energies to support a livelihood in the twenty-first century.