Haiti
Just when I had totally given up
on NACLA as a reliable alter-
native media source, your Haiti
issue [January/February 1994] did
much to restore your credibility
with me. The articles actually con-
tained extensive information about
the U.S. role in that country. I
can’t think of any information that
is more important for you to pub-
lish than what the U.S. govern-
ment and U.S. businesses are
doing in Latin America and the
Caribbean. NACLA has failed
miserably in this respect in the
issues it has published in the
1980s and 1990s. I still go to the
university library here in Seattle
and dig up old NACLA issues
from the 1960s and 1970s. They
are an absolute gold mine of infor-
mation on the evil deeds of the
U.S. government and big business
in Latin America.
In your recent Haiti Report, Kim
Ives’ “The Unmaking of a Presi-
dent” and Barbara Briggs and
Charles Kernaghan’s “The U.S.
Economic Agenda: A Sweatshop
Model of Development” were
especially informative. Although
the latter provided good analysis of
the selfish motives of the U.S.
Agency for International Develop-
ment (U.S.AID), it should have
given more specifics about U.S.
business activities, such as the
names of the companies involved
(remember how you did it in the
1960s and 1970s)?
But overall, you have done an
excellent job showing how U.S.
foreign policy through the CIA, the National Endowment for
Democracy (NED) and U.S.AID
undermine, rather than support
democracy in Haiti.
Judy Tullis
Seattle, WA
Warren Dean
L ong-time NACLA friend, con-
tributor and editorial board
member, historian Warren Dean
died at age 61 on May 21 in Santi-
ago, Chile. Gas from a defective
fuel line asphyxiated Warren in the
small apartment he had rented on
his arrival in Santiago.
A radical thinker and activist
without a paradigm, Warren was
one of the world’s foremost schol-
ars of Brazil’s economic, social
and environmental history. A man
of deep convictions who always
cut his own path, Warren chal-
lenged dependency theory in The
Industrialization of Sdo Paulo
(1969) by detailing the national
genesis of Sdo Paulo’s industrial
growth. His subsequent Rio Claro,
A Brazilian Plantation System
1820-1920 (1976) documented the
role that slaves played in the abo-
lition of Brazilian slavery. In his
late 40s, Warren trained himself as
an environmental historian. He
immersed himself in the study of
plant life, and journeyed through-
out Latin America’s varied wood-
lands and plains to produce Brazil
and the Struggle for Rubber
(1987) and the forthcoming With
Broadax and Firebrand: The
Destruction of the Brazilian
Atlantic Coast Forest.
He was a professor of history at
New York University for 24 years,
and was doing research on his fifth
book when this unnatural disaster
ended his life. A memorial service
will be held on September 16.
Errata Due to an editing error, the city where representatives of the indigenous popu- lation of the Ecuadorean Amazon and executive officers of ARCO International met was misidentified in the newsbrief section of the May/June issue. The meet- ing took place at ARCO headquarters in Dallas, Texas.
The photographs in the May/June issue of a young boy smoking (p. 22) and a funeral for two street children (p. 23) were taken by Nair Benedicto/N Imagens.
