It is timely to observe how the end of the Cold War is affecting the world outside Europe, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, where there is a turn toward a positive form of nationalism. During the Cold War, a defensive form of nationalism prevailed in Latin America and the Caribbean, as did a search for a third way between socialism and capitalism. The slump of the 1980s revealed the social and economic shortcomings of defensive nationalism and led to the end of the search for a third way. As a consequence, a new, more positive form of nationalism is emerging that has placed Latin America and the Caribbean at a decisive and unprecedented juncture in its development choices. One path may lead to a prosperous and democratic hemisphere, while the other could result in a slide back into depression and dictatorship.
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References
1.
1. “Farewell Statement to General Assembly” (Press Release, SG/SM/4674 GA/8299, Department of Public Information, United Nations, 16 Dec. 1991).
2.
2. Nathan Gardels, “Two Concepts of Nationalism: An Interview with Isaiah Berlin,”New York Review of Books, 21 Nov. 1991, pp. 19-23.
3.
Isaiah Berlin , “The Bent Twig: On the Rise of Nationalism,”The Crooked Timber of Humanity (originally published in 1972; New York: Knopf, 1991), pp. 238-261.
4.
4. Council and Commission of the European Communities, Treaty on European Union (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications, 1992). The treaty was signed in Maastricht on 7 Feb. 1992.
5.
5. E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 170.
6.
6. The movement toward import substitution was not uniform. There were several latecomers, such as the Central American countries. See United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (hereafter cited as ECLAC), A Collection of Documents on the Economic Relations between the United States and Central America, 1906-1956, U.N. sales no. E.91.II.G.4 (Santiago, Chile: ECLAC, 1991), pp. 176-204.
7.
7. “The Rise and Decline of Development Economics,” in Essays in Trespassing (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 1-24.
8.
8. Albert O. Hirschman, “How the Keynesian Revolution Was Exported from the United States, and Other Comments,” in The Political Power of Economic Ideas: Keynesianism across Nations, ed. Peter A. Hall (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 349.
9.
9. An intellectual biography of Raúl Prebisch has not been published yet. Edgard Dosman and David Pollock are now working on one in Canada. Meanwhile, see their “Raúl Prebisch, 1901-1971: The Continuing Quest” (Paper delivered at a seminar sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank, “Latin American Economic Thought: Past, Present and Future,” Washington, DC, 14-15 Nov. 1991). See also the comments on the Dosman-Pollock paper presented by Hans Singer at the same seminar. In his comments, Singer describes how he was “struck by some of the similarities between Keynes and Prebisch.” Singer's comments, p. 2.
10.
10. This time, the manifesto was Towards a New Trade Policy for Development. See United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, The History of UNCTAD 1964-1984, U.N. sales no. E.85.II.D.6 (New York: United Nations, 1985), pp. 8-10.
11.
11. In effect, “Keynesianism, with its revaluation of the proper roles of the state, the world of business, and the intellectuals (the economists in particular), supplied an attractive `third way' that could compete with the various fascist and Marxist creeds of the time.” Hirschman, “How the Keynesian Revolution,” p. 350.
12.
12. In Latin America, this limit became evident very early in the form of the covert operation that, at a very low cost to the United States, overthrew in 1954 the moderately nationalist- and Communist-supported Arbenz regime in Guatemala. What for many years will remain the definitive work on this episode has appeared recently: Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The United States and the Guatemalan Revolution 1944-1954 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991).
13.
13. ECLAC, “Magnitud de la pobreza en América Latina en los años ochenta,”Estudios e informes de la CEPAL, Aug. 1991, no. 81, U.N. sales no. S.91.II.G.10; idem, La equidad en el panorama social de América Latina durante los años ochenta, LC/G.1686, 31 Oct. 1991; idem, Panorama social de América Latina, LC/G.1688, 31 Oct. 1991.
14.
14. In those years, even the hypothesis that there was “an inherent association between advanced industrialization and bureaucratic authoritarianism in Latin America” was proposed. See David Collier's introduction to the fascinating debate generated by this idea, contained in the collection of papers reproduced in The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, ed. David Collier (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 7.
15.
15. Seymour Martin Lipset, “No Third Way: A Comparative Perspective on the Left,” in The Crisis of Leninism and the Decline of the Left: The Revolutions of 1989, ed. Daniel Chirot (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991), p. 183.
16.
Also, in Ralf Dahrendorf's terms, “Communism has collapsed, social democracy is exhausted.” See his Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (New York: Random House, 1990), p. 77.
17.
17. These three decades have been characterized by Albert O. Hirschman as “les treinte glorieuses” in Latin America. He also found, however, that the “fairly general human trait” of a “reluctance to celebrate or even acknowledge progress while it unfolds before our eyes” has been “particularly marked” in Latin America, with the consequence that there prevailed “a conspiracy of silence about the good news as long as it was still coming.” See “The Political Economy of Latin American Development: Seven Exercises in Retrospection,”Latin American Research Review, 22(3):8 (1987).
18.
18. ECLAC, Preliminary Overview of the Latin American and Caribbean Economy 1991, LC/G.1696, 18 Dec. 1991.
19.
19. Pedro Aspe, Andrés Bianchi, and Domingo Cavallo, Sea Changes in Latin America (Washington, DC: Group of Thirty, 1992).
20.
20. ECLAC, Latin American and Caribbean Trade and Investment Relations with the United States in the Eighties, LC.WAS/12, 23 Sept. 1991.
21.
21. Limitations of space make it impossible to describe these success stories in detail here. Several studies that describe them are available; see ECLAC, La cadena de distribución y la competitividad de las exportaciones latinoamericanas: La exportación de jugo de naranja concentrado y congelado de Brasil, LC/R.844, 29 Dec. 1989; idem, La fruta de Chile, LC/G.1639, 31 July 1990; idem, Cadenas agroexportadoras en Chile: Transformación productiva e integración social, LC/L.637, 24 July 1991; idem, Las exportaciones de manzanas y peras del Alto Valle del Río Negro, Argentina, LC/G.1683, 24 Dec. 1991; idem, Análisis de cadenas agroexportadoras en Guatemala: Transformación productiva y diversificación comercial, LC/R.1112, 30 Dec. 1991; idem, Las exportaciones de confecciones de textiles de Colombia, LC/L.676, 15 Jan. 1992.
22.
22. Isaac Cohen, “Economic Questions,” in The United States and Latin America: Redefining U.S. Purposes in the Post-Cold War Era, ed. G. Pope Atkins (Austin: University of Texas, 1992), pp. 19-34.
23.
23. See Foz de Iguazú Declaration on the Joint Nuclear Policy of Argentina and Brazil, signed on November 28, 1990, circulated as an official document in the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States, CP/INF.3071/90 corr 1, 3 Jan. 1991. See also Eugene Robinson, “S. America Steps Back from Atomic Brink,”Washington Post, 26 Jan. 1992.
24.
24. See Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira, “Brasil: Integración latinoamericana o americana?”América Latina/Internacional (Argentina), 8(30):460-465 (Oct.-Dec. 1991).
25.
25. A brief but illustrative statement about this turn toward a more positive form of nationalism in Mexico is David Ibarra, “Cambio y nacionalismo,”Comercio exterior (Mexico), Jan. 1992, pp. 80-82.
26.
26. ECLAC, Changing Production Patterns and Social Equity: An Integrated Approach, LC/G.1701, 6 Feb. 1992.
