Jonathan Hartlyn - United States and Latin America in the 1990s

This volume represents a collaborative project of the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO)-Programa Chile, the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina (UNC), and the Duke-UNC Program in Latin American Studies. Nearly all of its chapters were first presented for critical comment at a conference on inter-American relations, cosponsored by these three institutions and held in Chapel Hill in April 1990. Now, several revisions later, we believe that they represent a comprehensive analysis of U.S.Latin American relations in the 1990s.

The principal funding for this project was provided by the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, whose president, Smith Bagley, and executive director, Thomas Lambeth, were instrumental in initiating our interest in a collaborative effort. Indeed, at a luncheon in Paraguay in 1986 Smith Bagley suggested to one of the editors that we needed to begin preparing then to understand the forces that would shape inter-American relations outside the cold war framework that dominated everyones thinking at the time. Bagley also gently suggested that U.S. and Latin American specialists should consider working together on such a project, a suggestion we took seriously, as the following chapters indicate.

Although it is only with Tom Lambeths and Smith Bagleys assistance that the Chapel Hill conference became a reality, we gratefully acknowledge the receipt of additional financial support from the provost, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Curriculum of Peace, War, and Defense, and the Institute for Research in Social Scienceall of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Partial funding for this project from the Ford Foundation is also gratefully acknowledged. The foundations support to the International Relations and Security Studies Area of FLACSO-Chile has facilitated the development of an intellectual and research capability enabling collaborative research with U.S. academic institutions on topics such as the future of hemispheric relations.

This volume represents the work of many more people than the editors and the authors of the individual chapters. Several colleagues from Duke and UNC, and others, including Manuel Alcntara, Heraldo Muoz, Patricia Pessar, Carlos Rico, and Gustavo Vega, helped focus the discourse and challenge the authors to rethink their positions on a variety of issues. Constructive comments by the anonymous reviewers for the University of North Carolina Press were very helpful. We are also indebted to the professional staff of the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina, especially to Josie McNeil and Sharon Mujica, who not only handled the million-and-one details of an international conference but also made it look effortless. Several UNC graduate students helped with various aspects of the conference and the manuscripts that resulted from it, but we are especially indebted to Pamela Erwin, who struggled mightily to generate a master bibliography and produce a manuscript in a single coherent style, and to Eduardo Feldman, whose job it was to track down errant citations.

Finally, we wish to express our appreciation for the assistance of David Perry of the University of North Carolina Press, who has been the ideal editor: supportive, helpful, and unwilling to accept even the most imaginative excuses.