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1. The Caribbean Security Scenario at the Dawn of the 21st Century: Continuity, Change, Challenge

Author:
Ivelaw L. Griffith
Publication Date:
09-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
The two epigraphs — one by a noted scholar and erstwhile policyactor and the other by a respected policymaker with intellectual acumen — capture core elements of the twin realities of continuity and change that define the security scenario of the contemporary Caribbean. Proximity, vulnerability, and instability are not new features of the Caribbean or of Caribbean-United States dynamics; they represent some of the continuity from times past. However, they assume special character because of the terrorism tragedy that has “cast a pall across the whole hemisphere,” to quote Barbados Prime Minister Arthur.
Topic:
Security and Terrorism
Political Geography:
United States, Latin America, Caribbean, and North America

2. A Review of European Perceptions of Cuba

Author:
Joaquín Roy
Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
The commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Cuban Republic on May 20, 2002, provided an opportunity to review not only the survival of the Cuban regime, but also the whole history of the Cuban nation. 2 This event coincided with the historic visit of former President Jimmy Carter to Havana 3 and the reiteration of the unwillingness of the United States to terminate its embargo of Cuba, as expressed by President George W. Bush in an unprecedented speech in Washington and on a trip to Miami. 4 At the same time, friction has increased between Cuba and some influential Latin American countries, as in the special case of Mexico. The tension generated in the aftermath of the vote taken by the United Nations Commission for Human Rights in Geneva in April 2002, which criticized Cuba's human rights practices, revealed a definite crack in the comfortable linkage previously enjoyed by Castro with most countries of the hemisphere (with the notable exception of the United States). On October 23, 2002, when the European Parliament (EP) approved the award of the Sakharov Prize to Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá for his record in the defense of human rights and especially for his leadership in the “Varela Project,” the overall panorama of the relations of the European Union (EU) with Cuba acquired a new look, signifying the confirmation of a long pattern of the EU's perceptions of and policy toward Cuba. 5 Cuba's decision to allow Payá to travel to Strasbourg to receive the award was taken simultaneously with the EU's announcement of the opening of a delegation in Cuba, while Castro surprisingly declared that Cuba would reapply to become a member of the Africa, Caribbean, Pacific (ACP) Cotonou Convention. It is time, therefore, for a historical review and a consideration of the most salient aspects of European-Cuban relations and some of the pending issues.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
Europe, Cuba, and Caribbean

3. The New Cuban Immigration in Context

Author:
Max J Castro
Publication Date:
10-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
Cuban migration to the United States predates Fidel Castro's revolution by more than a century. As historian Félix Masud-Piloto writes, “The Cuban presence in Florida dates back to the 1830s when Cuban cigar manufacturers, trying to avoid high U.S. tariffs, relocated their operations in Key West.” 1 The wars of independence brought a substantial cohort of exiles. In the 1880s, the Cuban community of Key West would spawn a second Cuban immigrant community based on tobacco manufacture: Ybor City in Tampa, Florida. New York City, Philadelphia, and New Orleans also had significant Cuban emigré populations in the late nineteenth century.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and Migration
Political Geography:
United States, New York, Cuba, Latin America, Caribbean, and Florida

4. The Dominican Republic's 2000 Presidential Election: The U.S. Role in Supporting the Process

Author:
Kevin Michael O'Reilly
Publication Date:
04-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
Dominicans elected Rafael Hipólito Mejía Domínguez their president on May 16, 2000. He took office on August 16, 2000. Mejía, the candidate of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Dominicano — PRD), won 1,593,231 votes or 49.87 percent of the ballots cast in an essentially three-way race with Danilo Medina of the Party of Dominican Liberation (Partido de la Liberación Dominicana — PLD) and former President Joaquín Balaguer of the Social Christian Reformist Party (Partido Reformista Social Cristiano — PRSC). Medina won 24.94 percent of the vote (796,923) to finish second, with Balaguer only fractions of a percentage point behind, at 24.60 percent (785,926). Turnout, at just over 76 percent, was high by historical standards. Although two shooting deaths marred the campaign's closing days, relatively little violence accompanied the voting compared to previous Dominican elections. Since 1994, Dominican electoral law had called for a runoff between the top two vote winners if no candidate passed the 50-percent-plus-one mark, but Medina conceded on May 17, after Balaguer acknowledged that he could not deliver the entire PRSC vote to the PLD in a second round of voting. Balaguer announced, “For the good of the country, we waive our right to participate in a second round.” The country's Central Electoral Board (Junta Central Electoral — JCE) certified Mejía's victory on May 18, 2000.
Topic:
Government, Human Rights, and International Law
Political Geography:
United States, Latin America, and Caribbean

5. Protecting the Environment While Opening Markets in the Americas

Author:
William Krist
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
Market Access Negotiations are a major element of the efforts to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by 2020. If successful, these negotiations will remove all tariff and nontariff barriers to trade among the 34 participating countries on all nonagricultural products, including forest and mining products, fish, and manufactured goods.
Topic:
Development, Environment, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, South America, Latin America, Central America, Caribbean, and North America

6. The Dominican Diaspora Revisited: Dominicans and Dominican-Americans in a New Century

Author:
Max J. Castro and Thomas D. Boswell
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
The economy has been growing rapidly in recent years. Democracy is increasingly consolidated. The rate of birth has dropped significantly, and the level of education has risen.
Topic:
Human Rights and Migration
Political Geography:
United States, Latin America, and Caribbean

7. Free Trade, Smart Borders, and Homeland Security: U.S.-Caribbean Cooperation in a New Era of Vulnerability

Author:
Stephen Flynn and Anthony Bryan
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
In the hours following the collapse of the World Trade Center twin towers on September 11, 2001, the United States applied a tourniquet to the transportation arteries that feed its national economy. The first campaign in the war to protect the U.S. homeland turned out to be an embargo on its own economy. Given the uncertainty surrounding the attacks, freezing its transport networks first and asking questions later was probably appropriate. But then came the hard part—how to resume global trade and travel after U.S. citizens' confidence in the security of their nation had been rocked to core? In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the United States, front-line agencies like the U.S. Customs Service, Coast Guard, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Department of Agriculture, and Border Patrol were being called upon to open U.S. borders and seaports once again to legitimate trade and travel. At the same time, they were tasked with exercising increased vigilance in detecting and intercepting would-be terrorists or the means of terrorism, including weapons of mass destruction that might be smuggled in a vehicle, train, truck, or maritime container. Just how the United States arrives at the appropriate balance—between openness to facilitate legitimate commerce and exercising sufficient controls to stem transnational threats to public safety and security—is one of the most critical public policy challenges confronting U.S.-Caribbean relations.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and Caribbean

8. Caribbean Tourism: Igniting the Engines of Sustainable Growth

Author:
Anthony T. Bryan
Publication Date:
11-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
Tourism drives economic growth in ways that make it one of the best engines for job creation and development for poor countries that possess natural beauty and relevant infrastructure. The industry is highly labor intensive and encourages entrepreneurship. Under its ambit, property owners, restaurants, and local suppliers of goods and services, among others, develop the habits of risk taking without which no economy can realize its full potential. Tourism holds out the prospect of a better life for those stakeholders who make money from it. Not unlike trade, it improves an economy's competitiveness. Trade does so because it stimulates local suppliers to match the quality and variety of imported goods. Tourism does so because returning travelers to a destination demand the goods and services they have seen in other countries (Elliott 2001).
Topic:
Development, Environment, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Latin America, and Caribbean

9. Protest and Collaboration: Transnational Civil Society Networks and the Politics of Summitry and Free Trade in the Americas

Author:
Patricio Korzeniewicz and William C. Smith
Publication Date:
09-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
This paper examines the politics of hemispheric integration exemplified by the Summits of the Americas held in Miami (1994), Santiago (1998), and Quebec (2001) and the negotiations over the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Our basic premise is that political and institutional arrangements articulating state, society, and economy in Latin America are currently in the midst of a process of reconfiguration unleashed by the acceleration of globalization and attendant crises of state-centered development strategies. More specifically, we believe the Americas are witnessing the emergence of an ensemble of new social and political actors, among the most salient of which are new social movements and civil society organizations (CSOs), organized in networks operating at the domestic, regional, and global levels.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, America, South America, Latin America, Central America, Caribbean, North America, and Miami

10. Preferential Treatment in Trade: Is There Any Room Left in the Americas?

Author:
Fernando Masi
Publication Date:
08-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
This paper evaluates the costs and benefits of changes brought by the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) on special and differential treatment (S); shows how these changes affected the new regional integration processes in the American continent; and examines whether this issue is still a priority of developing countries' agendas. Large concessions offered by developing countries in exchange for access to markets automatically led to “trade graduation.” Thus, S has lost its former significance among developing countries. Moreover, nonreciprocal treatment was retained for least developed countries, which do not even enjoy this type of treatment under the so-called “new trade-related issues” of services, investment, and intellectual property rights.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, America, South America, Latin America, Central America, Caribbean, and North America