Grenada: Whose Freedom? By Fitz- roy Ambursley and James Dunkerley. Latin America Bureau, 129 pp. l2.95 (paper). It is no secret that last autumn’s coup in Grenada has had repercussions be- yond its immediate impact. Due in part to the tremendous confusion surround- ing the coup, a problem exacerbated by incoherent media coverage, but princi- ply to an inability of many on “the left” to perceive the severe factionali- zation within the New Jewel party, clear analyses of the ouster and death of Maurice Bishop have not exactly been forthcoming. Grenada: Whose Freedom? is one of the excellent reports published by the London-based Latin America Bureau (LAB), an independent, non-profit re- search and consultation office founded in 1977. This book is a comprehensive guide to the NJM’s rise to prominence, the social programs it was able to ac- complish as the dominant group within the People’s Revolutionary Government and to how it foundered in administra- tive and ideological breakdown. Bernard Coard advocated strict ad- herence to “Marxism-Leninism,” and established the Organization of Revo- lutionary Education and Liberation (OREL) to help steer the NJM toward what has been described as Soviet- style communism. In fact, OREL was the dynamic behind many of the NJM’s successful social programs, but it also instigated inflexibilities toward freedom of the press, political detainments and elections. The extent to which its rhe- toric had permeated party doctrine can be seen in the minutes of the Central Committee meeting in which Bishop refused joint leadership with Coard (here included as an appendix). Bishop held the people and the gov- ernment together, but this study also looks at his disciplinary and directional weaknesses, the course of the NJM after his death and international shuffl- ings around the invasion. LAB publications are available from: I Amwell Street, London ECIR IUL, England. The Poverty Brokers: The IMF and Latin America, Martin Honeywell, ed. Latin America Bureau, 136 pp. l3.25 (paper). This collection of essays by British and Canadian economists provides an instructive overview of the IMF’s func- tionings, its membership hierarchy, policy-making procedures, the history of the current crisis and how the fund has allowed the crisis to mushroom. over the last 15 years. Case studies look at how the fund deals with changing modes of govern- ment: it operated against Michael Man- ley’s PNP government, General Velas- co’s peculiar military experiment in Peru and Allende’s Popular Unity, and accommodated all of their respective successor regimes. It also funded So- moza in his last days, then demanded repayment from the Sandinistas. In closing, the study considers recom- mendations to alleviate the stress on Latin American nations, maintain li- quidity, allow Third World nations more access to the powerful inner sanc- tions of the “Group of Five,” as the largest lending nations are known, and keep the banks accountable. Frontier on the Rio Grande: A Politi- cal Geography of Development and Social Deprivation, by John W. House. Oxford University Press, 277 pp. $32.50 (cloth). The U.S.-Mexican border is a re- gion of superlatives. The contrasting social and economic conditions are the sharpest across an international bound- ary. The border sees the greatest trans- national flow of people anywhere in the world; and undocumented immigrants entering the United States from Mexico constitute what is perhaps the largest illegal migration in history. This fascinating survey examines the extreme social and economic pov- erty of the “border culture,” changing perceptions of that culture in both na- tions and trends in the manipulation of documented and illegal migration. House’s study is a timely one, given the increasing numbers of Central American refugees seeking entry to this country and the Reagan Adminis- tration’s recent attempts to curb immi- gration. Panama Odyssey, by William B. Jor- den. University of Texas Press, 725 pp. $24.50 (cloth). William Jorden was a correspondent for The New York Times before em- barking on a diplomatic career that led to the U.S. ambassadorship to Panama. Judging from his account of the Pana- ma Canal negotiations and treaty, he would also make a great spy-novelist. Jorden savors every moment of the deliberations in dubious detail–did he really down vodkas in all those high- level meetings-yet his analysis is curiously uneven. In discussing riots at the Canal Zone high school, Jorden expresses contempt for flagrant displays of “inflated pa- triotism” and sympathy for the Pana- manian students and their tradition of dissent. Yet he takes at face value CIA reports that trouble had been expected for months, since Castro had been funding subversives throughout the re- gion. But Jorden’s memoir is exten- sive, and offers a very readable ac- count of State Department posturings throughout the treaty negotiations. I . . . Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, by Rigoberta Menchti, Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, ed. Verso Books (Schocken Books dist.), 251 pp. $8.95 (paper). Rigoberta Menchti is a 23-year-old Quiche woman, a member of one of the largest of Guatemala’s 22 ethnic groups. This book traces her life from the coffee estates-where she picked 30 pounds of coffee a day at age eight and watched two brothers starve to death- to her family’s meagre holdings in a Quiche village, where her father launched the battle that she continues against the state and large landowners. Two things in particular stand out in Menchi’s narrative. The first is the shocking bluntness with which she de- scribes the murders of her parents and brother, which belies the numbing scars left on a woman who has always expected death in its cruellest forms. The second is how a young woman so isolated by her Quich6 heritage, and so marginalized by poverty and discrimi- nation, could emerge to lead unified, indigenous communities in their stand against a fiercely repressive state. Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, the Vene- zuelan-born anthropologist, has done an excellent job in editing Menchti’s eloquent and courageous testimony.
