Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Slavery and Beyond: The African Impact on Latin America and the Caribbean

1996; Duke University Press; Volume: 76; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-76.2.410

1527-1900

Peter Blanchard,

Colonialism, slavery, and trade

I HAHR I MAY including the May 1993 autogolpe in Guatemala.Dunkerley fails to perceive the importance of the internal struggle then under way among various national economic interests, the repositioning of sectors of the military and business community, or the mobilization of nongovernmental organizations.As a result, he tends to overemphasize international factors in both precipitating and resolving the crisis.In addition, Dunkerley's judgment that the human rights ombudsman was a core catalyst for change is an overstatement; it does little to explain the failure of Ramiro de Le6n Carpio's administration to contribute more to Guatemala's democratization.In this case, as well as those of EI Salvador and Nicaragua, the author tends to exaggerate the roles of the United Nations and the Organization of American States in conflict resolution and peacemaking.Finally, to describe former Costa Rican preSident Oscar Arias as "emphatically a U.S. friend" ignores the difficulties Arias had with the Reagan and Bush administrations, including his struggles to persuade them to support the Esquipulas process.Such defects do not, however, gainsay that this brief survey is better founded, more savvy, and more feliCitously written than most of its type.