Archive Report
Archive Report
Turmoil in the Caribbean Basin
Central American Revolutions and Violence
More than two decades after the rise of Fidel Castro, the Caribbean basin, that great are of Spanish-speaking countries and polyglot islands to the south, is still a source of deep concern to American foreign policy makers. While a stunning series of events in faraway places — the seizure of Americans as hostages in Iran, for example, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan — have diverted attention, sweeping and often violent social and political changes have been taking place much closer to home.
Not since the Mexican Revolution of 1910 has ferment in the Caribbean basin presented so prolonged and direct a challenge to American strategic, political and economic interests. For a while in the 1960s, Fidel ...