Yvon Grenier

Foreign assistance and the market‐place of peacemaking: Lessons from El Salvador

The overall success of the Salvadorean transition suggests two working hypotheses that might prove useful for the analysis of other countries. First, it suggests that political transition and democratization could be analysed as a political market‐place, where all kinds of resources are traded. With Chapultepec, no political actor won or lost: everyone went home with something. Exchanging resources of violence against other resources is arguably the pivotal type of ‘trade’ in peacebuilding. Second, it shows that resourceful external players can greatly facilitate peacebuilding and democratic transition by providing the extra resources (economic and political) needed to make trades possible.

Perceptions of Cuba, Canadians and American Policies in Comparative Perspective

Perceptions of Cuba offers what the author calls a “constructivist” analysis of Canadian and US foreign policy toward Cuba. An associate professor of political science at McMaster University, Wylie’s areas of specialization are Canadian and American foreign policy, Latin American and Caribbean politics with an emphasis on Cuba, and international relations. The research for this short book “first began in the late 1990s” as she was completing her PhD at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (p. x). She conducted “thirty-five confidential interviews of Cuban, American, and Canadian policy makers and other influential individuals in Washington, D.C., Ottawa, and Havana” (p. x). “In Havana,” she writes with a touch of ingenuousness, “American and Canadian diplomats often reside in the same neighbourhoods, use the same grocery stores, and frequent the same restaurants, yet they told me very different stories about life in Havana and politics and society in Cuba” (p. ix). Americans tend to castigate Castro (unfairly, according to Wylie), unlike Canadians, whose “perceptions” are presented as generally balanced and fair. As she aptly underlines, American and Canadian have the same goal: the democratization and liberalization of Cuba (not all Canadian advocates of ever-warmer relations with Cuba like to recall that). And yet, they have “very different means to that end” (p. 16). For more than fifty years, the US has imposed economic sanctions on the island, a policy that most other countries in the world, including Canada, have categorically opposed. Additionally, Americans “place the Cuban government on their list of sponsors of terrorism” and “insinuate that the Cubans are developing biological weapons and misleading the global effort to combat terrorism” (p.94). Canadians (again, like most other countries) “are highly skeptical of all these charges,” maintaining a policy of “constructive engagement” with the Castro government and collaborating with Cubans on biotechnology programs. How could smart people (who fancy the same groceries and restaurants. . .) harbour such different “perceptions” of the same reality? Wylie’s explanation, which she presents as original, can be summarized as follows: 1) foreign policy is primarily shaped by “perceptions” rather than interest; 2) a country’s “identity” is the crucible of those perceptions; and most importantly, concerning her case studies, 3) “American exceptionalism made Cuba the polar opposite of the United States, while Canada’s self-image as a good international citizen and as ‘not American’ has allowed the country to engage with the Cuban government” (summary). After some throat clearing on how identities are “constructed,” the whole argument rests on largely unsubstantiated assumptions on the seamless “self-image” of two large and complex

Cambio de piel: disposiciones y posiciones políticas de Carlos Fuentes

Este articulo tiene como proposito presentar una serie de reflexiones sobre la evolucion del pensamiento politico de Carlos Fuentes. Se plantea que la liberalizacion de su pensamiento politico durante las ultimas decadas se realizo a traves, o con el auxilio de, una reflexion sobre el arte. Es plausible suponer que Fuentes aprendio a extender al ambito politico los valores pluralistas y liberales de los que se ocupaba en su teoria y practica artisticas.

Challenging the Dominant Paradigm

The cumulative message of two decades of writing on internal wars in Central America is that they were the direct and inexorable result of two phenomena: An historical situation of social injustice. The oligarchies’ resistance to change.

Revolution within the Revolution

The crisis in the Communist Party — or more precisely, the crisis of the communist movement — deserves the honour of going first in our discussion for two reasons: (1) because of its seniority in the business of internal war and radical change in El Salvador, and (2) because of its unparalleled contribution to the formation of the insurgents’ ideology.

The Catholic Church, Social Change and Insurrection

Observers agree that the Catholic Church has played a pivotal role in the recent political development of El Salvador.1 More specifically, what is now known as the ‘Popular Church’ is widely viewed as a force, if not the force, behind the political mobilisation of the poor to support the insurgents’ agenda. Thanks to radical priests and theology students, hitherto apathetic and conservative peasants and urban poor learned to identify the ‘structural sin’ of capitalism and started to yearn for a politico-religious version of the ‘promised land’.2 Alain Besancon once made the distinction that Moses and Saint John ‘knew that they believed’, while Marx and Lenin ‘believed that they knew’.3 By blurring this distinction — radical Christians know that they believe and believe that they know — the ‘Christianisation’ of the revolution conceivably produced an explosive mixture.

The University Vanguard

Latin American universities have been highly politicised throughout their history, and their political activism has often had a significant impact on the polity as a whole. For instance most if not all the guerrilla movements of the 1960s and 1970s in Latin America were born in universities (As mentioned earlier, Gabriel Zaid coined the term ‘university guerrillas’). Nevertheless, relatively little has been written on the subject since the 1960s.1

From Causes to ‘Causers’

According to Michael Radu, ‘one of the most amazing things about the abundant bibliography on Latin America’s revolutionary traditions and movements is the almost total absence of a serious analysis of the revolutionaries themselves’.1 This is a striking assertion. The muse of revolution has always animated philosophers and social scientists. Most insurgents are talkative and inclined to make their wisdom available to the widest possible public. Indeed there is no shortage of books and pamphlets devoted to radical insurgencies in Latin America.

Vers la « libération universitaire du peuple salvadorien »: l'Université Centro-Américaine dans la transition polilique au El Salvador

ABSTRACT This essay will attempt to portray the political orientation of the Central American University “Jose Simeon Canas” (UCA), and to explore a general proposition concerning the political role of universities in a context of political transition. The case is made that this orientation could be explained by mo factors: 1) by the universitys dispositions toward politics and political participation, and 2) by the nature of the universitys socio-economic and political environment. This effort provides a betrer understanding of recent political development in El Salvador, and highlights a broader question, i.e. the role the intelligentsia has played in Central Americas political transition.