Close Neighbors, Distant Friends: United States-Central American Relations (review)

234 SAIS REVIEW Close Neighbors, Distant Friends: United States-Central American Relations . John E. Findling. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, Contributions in American History, no. 122, 1987. 240 pp. $S5.00/cloth. Reviewed by Claudia Franco Hijuelos, Ph.D. candidate, SAIS. John E. Findling is clear about his purpose in writing this book: "To tell, in as straightforward a manner as possible, the story of the United States' relations with Central America from the independence period to the present day." He accomplishes this goal by chronologically describing major events and by focusing on the U.S. personalities who conducted relations with Central America as well as on the Central American interlocutors from Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Two hundred years of history are compacted into eight short chapters. The author refers to most of the pertinent literature on the subject, yet seldom does he present thorough argumentation that would lend credence to his interesting conclusions. In his historical overview the author says that the United States' initial interest in Central America sprang from the region's potential as the site of an isthmian route that would join the Pacific Ocean with the Caribbean Sea—an idea that was not pursued until after the Mexican War. By the mid-nineteenth century this route was expected to bring tremendous trade benefits and facilitate the transit of gold seekers to the recently annexed territories in the West. The author goes on to relate that, following a bilateral treaty with Nicaragua in 1849, the United States acquired the right to build and fortify a canal in exchange for protecting Nicaragua against foreign aggression. However, the treaty was superseded the following year by the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, whereby the United States and Great Britain agreed on the limits of each other's competition for regional influence. Both pledged neither to seek exclusive control over a canal in the area nor to exercise any dominion over any part of Central America. Findling's treatment of the next fifty years of U.S. -Central American relations encompasses the filibuster expeditions by private U.S. citizens who aspired to replicate the Texas experience in Central America. The outcome was far from successful. Taking advantage of rivalries among Central American countries and their precarious regimes, filibuster expeditions sought to take control of the government of a Central American country, to request recognition from the United States, and when the time was right, to sue for annexation. The repeated attempts by William Walker, the most notorious among them, ceased at last when he was executed by Honduran government forces. Also highlighted during this period is the growing economic involvement of the United States in Central America, a presence felt in trade (largely consisting of coffee exports and, later, bananas) and investment, while British influence lingered on in the financial sphere. Central America and the United States were certainly distant friends by the beginning of this century, a fact that Findling covers succinctly and with numerous references to other works on specific subjects, using State Department BOOK REVIEWS 235 records to illustrate certain points. For example, Washington's preoccupation with the measures taken by Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, such as agrarian reform , is illustrated with a quote made by a State Department analyst, in what Findling calls "the marvelous language of bureaucrats": "the ascending curve of Communist influence has not even tended to level off, but has inclined upward on an accelerated incline." As Findling moves into the recent past in U.S. -Central American relations, he seems to be writing less confidently. For instance, he calls the Terceristas— one of three factions within the Sandinista movement before the revolution — the "Third-World Tendency," adding a degree of unwarranted imagination to a bad translation. In addition, he classifies the El Salvadoran army as a "client army" of the United States, in the same category as the Contras, thereby ignoring the powerful domestic interests in El Salvador that have a stake in sustaining a powerful indigenous military. Perhaps a more useful way to articulate his point would have been to compare the Salvadoran army, dependent on U.S. aid, with the Guatemalan army, which has proved to be self-sufficient...