As of 1997, the United States faces an unprecedented degree of security, stability, and economic prosperity in its relations with Latin America. Never before have US strategic interests in Latin America been as well-protected or have its prospects seemed, at least on the surface, so promising. Yet while the US strategic interests are in better shape — militarily, politically, and economically — this decade than at any time since the end of the Second World War, some problems remain. Over the long run, there is also the risk that old problems, which today seem to have ebbed away, will return. Thus, the positive tone of any contemporary assessment must be tempered with an awareness of remaining areas of concern as well as of possible future crises.

The United States, during the past several years, has squandered a heaven-sent opportunity to cement its already deep economic relations with Latin America. There is no certainty that the neglect will be altered in the near term.

A series of transformations made the 1990s an ideal time to consolidate improved economic relations with Latin America. The end of the Cold War meant that US dealings with Latin America could be based on mutual realities in the Hemisphere rather than be shaped through the one-way prism of East-West confrontation. There was a profound paradigm shift that swept just about all the countries of the Hemisphere, away from protectionism and toward open markets as the path to economic growth.

There has always been a certain attitude in Washington having to do with Latin America. It is that Latin America is not quite a grown-up place and, therefore, is worthy of intense US interest only when the region, or part of it, falls into a crisis that crosses paths with one of the US hot-button issues of the moment: drugs, immigration, human rights, communism (until recently) and, farther back, fascism. In other words, Latin America has been worthy of attention only when the United States decided to “do good” (e.g., human rights crusades), incorporate the region into efforts at solving US domestic problems (e.g., drugs), or needed firm support from the region in some international effort (e.g., the Cold War and World War II).

Now that the nations of the Americas have emerged from the trauma of the debt debâcle of the 1980s and are well on their way to overcoming the effects of the Mexican financial crisis of 1994, it is useful to examine more closely the instruments that brought the region through this turbulent period. During this time, in which Latin America had neither direction nor resources, the policies were incubated that propelled a prodigious transformation in the economies and governance, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) matured into a major resource for the American nations.

Faced with rapid changes in the global system, most Caribbean countries may seem to be doing everything right. The English-speaking Caribbean countries, in particular, have been exemplary in their practice of democracy and political stability. Others, such as Suriname and Haiti, are nurturing new democratic regimes. Economically, the region has followed the neoliberal reform rule book and implemented policies mandated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. They have trimmed fiscal deficits, privatized state-owned commercial enterprises that were losing money, and liberalized their trading regimes. These measures have been implemented either by reform-minded governments or governments which have seen no alternative. Only Cuba continues to labor under a discredited, ideological model that does not encourage democracy, while its economy mirrors some version of “á la carte capitalism” in the face of an accelerated US embargo.

When Commodore David Porter resigned from the US Navy to accept the post of commander-in-chief of Mexico’s nascent naval forces, he began a tradition of US involvement with Latin American armed forces that has endured to the present day. Porter’s decision was supported by President John Quincy Adams, who hoped that it would both strengthen the US influence in Mexico and act as a curb on possible Mexican efforts to seize Cuba, a prize which the president coveted himself (for details, see Long, 1970). These objectives signaled another enduring heritage: efforts by the United States to use ties with Latin American military institutions to promote agendas that were frequently unrelated to, or even at variance with, national interests in Latin America. This would be especially true whenever the United States perceived itself as competing with other nations for influence in the region. In 1826, the rival was Great Britain; in this century, it was first Germany and then the Soviet Union, but, in all cases, the bottom line was the same: a determination to make Washington’s influence paramount.