Cynthia Hamilton

Chair Director: African and African American Studies

University of Rhode Island
E-Mail: cha6734u@uri.edu

64 R@ce & Class

The historical policy of US-Caribbean Basin relations was summed up by then-candidate Reagan's advisory committee in 1979, the year of the Grenadian and Nicaraguan revolutions. The Heritage Foundation and the Committee of Santa Fe wrote:

The collapse of the U.S. presence in the Caribbean has endangered America's global power projection. Ever since 1898 America's worldwide reach has rested on a quiescent Caribbean and a supportive South America. The Caribbean, once an American lake, is becoming a Socialist sea.'

The United States can only restore its credibility by taking im- mediate action. The first steps must be frankly punitive... 3

This was no mere lament for a more dominant past which the Monroe Doctrine had assured for the US. Rather, the Heritage Foundation's report announced the renewal of a more aggressively militarist solution to America's decline. in influence. In 1979 two states, Nicaragua and Grenada, proclaimed their intention to break away from the tradition of dependency and establish socialist-oriented governments to forge new economic paths. In Nicaragua, this marked the end of the decades old struggle against the tyranny of the Somoza dynasty, which had ruled the country at the behest of the US since the Marine occupation of 1926 to 1933. In Grenada, the New Jewel Movement, under the leader- ship of Maurice Bishop, took over in a bloodless coup, ousting Eric Gairy whose list of accomplishments included establishing relations with the dictatorships of Pinochet in Chile and South Korea and calling for UN investigations of UFOs.

Reagan took his oath of office with plans to resecure America's 'backyard': Central America and the Caribbean. Before looking in detail at the manifestations of US policy during the Reagan years, it is necessary to identify its Republican precursor, the Nixon administration. It is difficult to single out any particular period or administration because gunboat and dollar diplomacy have been mainstays of US foreign policy in the Caribbean Basin region. However, the defeat of the US in Vietnam ushered in what would be a long period of economic problems in the country as each administration attempted to prop up an economy based on the military-industrial complex. The economic problems were, in part, a result of the loss of Third World markets due not only to an increase in political tensions, but also because Japan and western Europe had risen as formidable competitors at home and abroad. The Nixon administration responded with the New Economic Policy, suspending the convertibility of the dollar into gold and turning to the use of protectionist policies in defense of US capital.

To dispose of the military surplus which had accumulated, the Nixon administration doubled the budget of the Military Assistance Program