Recent violence, civil war, revolution, and economic crises have focused attention on Central America. Analyses of these crises vary widely. Class struggle, Soviet or U.S. imperialism, geopolitical balance of power, the energy crisis, and the general malaise of the West all contribute to the turmoil on the isthmus. Yet the bitter political and economic realities of contemporary Central America are deeply rooted in the past. The present conflicts are neither recent in origin nor conducive to short-term military, economic, or political solutions. This article offers a historical interpretation of modern Central America as an explanation of the current crises. The hypothesis of this overview is that the current crises all represent the inevitable collapse of political, economic, and cultural structures erected in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to serve the interests of the elites who commanded the Liberal Reforms or Revolutions of that era, but that fail to meet the demands of the societies they created.

Haitians have been migrating to the United States in significant numbers since the rise to power of Francois Duvalier over a quarter century ago. A few who have been able to meet the strict eligibility criteria of U. S. immigration law have entered as legal immigrants. Perhaps as many as 300,000 others have entered illegally, or have overstayed the terms of their temporary visas. A diverse population composed of professionals and businessmen, students and shopkeepers, journalists, small land holders, and illiterate peasants, it is impossible to capture their individual reasons for leaving Haiti and coming to the United States in a single all-inclusive phrase.

Haiti is the poorest country in this hemisphere. Nearly all who leave to come to the United States are aware that they are trading malnutrition, negligible educational opportunities, and a subsistence standard of living for the greater opportunities afforded by life in America.

The violence in Central America has displaced an unprecedented number of people in the area. While the majority of the approximately two million displaced individuals remain within their native countries, hundreds of thousands have fled to neighboring countries and to the U.S. where they create serious economic and political problems for the host governments. This article explores Mexico's policies toward the estimated 250,000 Central Americans who are seeking protection from the violence of their homelands.

There is considerable controversy over whether these individuals are political refugees. The 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees defines refugees as those individuals who “due to a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion have left their country of origin.” The convention's emphasis on individuals singled out for political persecution would seem to disqualify many of the Central Americans fleeing generalized conditions of violence.

On October 21,1983, an ominous two-column news story ran on page A12 of the New York Times. Datelined the previous day from Brasilia, the item off the Associated Press wire, noted that Brazilian President João Baptista Figueiredo had responded to a national congressional defeat of a government-supported austerity package by issuing a decree to replace the rejected legislation. President Figueiredo had also invoked emergency measures just before the vote, calling on police to enforce a ban on public gatherings in the Brazilian capital.

Facing a $90 billion foreign debt and a world financial community insistent on forcing down a 200% inflation rate as a condition for the release of billions of dollars in international loans, the Brazilian government apparently saw little alternative to ruling by decree once again, and backing its decisions by force. Over 19 years of military rule, unpopular policies have often been imposed on Brazilians in just this fashion.