Migration continues to play a prominent role in the development of the Caribbean microstates. Dennnis Conway and Corrine Glesne analyze the impact of remittances on societal development and land use in St. Vincent. While other research has suggested that remittances have largely failed to induce needed sociostructural change in the agrarian sector, Connway and Glesne contend that each Caribbean nation is likely to experience different consequences from remittances owing to variations in island size and in sociopolitical structures. In the process of doccumenting the positive contributions of remittances to the people of St. Vincent, the authors also provide us with an insightful look at current conditions on the island.
Jack Child describes the highly nationalistic tone of Argentine geopolitical thinking and addresses the potential ramifications of the same on Argentine behavior toward Antarctica. Child argues that the prevailing assumption that international cooperation for the exploration and scientific study of Antarctica will continue indefinitely may prove to be inaccurate as we approach the critical year of 1991 when the Antarctic treaty is open for review. The still unreesolved Malvinas/Falklands question, the ArgentineeChilean dispute over the Beagle Channel and the historic Argentine-Brazilian rivalry could yet prompt the Argentine leadership to forcefully assert the nation's claims to sovereignty over a large porrtion of Antarctica. Such an endeavor would serve as the' 'national project" long advocated by many Argentinians as essential to reversing the nation's declining world prestige. P> In a second geopolitical study, Tim Hudson and Millard Burr trace the history of Honduran claims to the Sapodilla Cays in the Gulf of Honduras. Allthough historically of relatively minor consequence, the claims have been pressed vigorously since the eve of Belizean independence in late 1980 and threaten now to disrupt the delicate and complex efforts to settle the longstanding Belize-Guatemala controversy.
Three papers analyze aspects of the agricultural development of Latin America. Robert Kent conntrasts patterns of beekeeping in three Peruvian reegions: the costa, or Pacific coastal lowlands, the sierra, or Andean highlands, and the selva alta or eastern Amazonian uplands. Significant differences in management practices, honey yields, and the soocioeconomic attributes of the beekeepers themselves are found between regions. An understanding of these regional variations provides, in turn, the basis for recommendations for a national apiculture deevelopment policy which may also prove to be of value to other Latin American nations.
Joshua Dickinson argues that much of the pioneer settlement of the humid tropics has resulted in only ephemeral increases in agricultural production achieved at the expense of severe environmental degradation. This limited success is attributable in large measure to the failure of the colonists to adopt agricultural production strategies and models consistent with limitations imposed by local environnmental life zones. Settlement of frontier lands is not the solution to underdevelopment in the home reegions and should be undertaken only on a spontaaneous, incremental basis in the most favorable life zones.
Carl Johannessen describes the distribution as well as the medicinal and ceremonial uses of blackkboned and black-meated chickens in Mexico and Guatemala. He finds that reliance upon the melannotic birds is greatest among the indigeneous peoples whose language is of Mayan derivation and also that many of the uses of the black chickens among these peoples are similar to the uses among the [end p. 1] Chinese. This leads him to argue for the likelihood of early and significant contact between the Orient and Middle American Mayans.
Sonny Dawsey presents the spatial patterns of personal and property crime in Brazil. Dawsey's finding of a correlation between incidents of propperty crime and level of personal income leads him to conclude that increased property crime rates may accompany the improved levels of living associated with Third World urban economic development.
Three of the papers address the potential contriibutions of geographers as consultants in Latin America. Joseph Scarpaci analyzes the implications of the 1984 Kissinger Commission Report for both consulting and academic geographers. Steven Driever traces the history of the United States transsnational corporations (TNCs) in Latin America and demonstrates that those TNCs which complement local businesses and which cooperate with Latin American governments are still welcome in much of the region. Driever shows further how TNCs are inherently concerned with such geographical connsiderations as environmental management, market analysis, and portfolio planning.
We are honored that this Yearbook contains conntributions from two of the most eminent Latin Amerricanist geographers of this century. Rafael Pico draws upon more than 50 years of experience as a consulting geographer to more than twenty interrnational and national organizations in the Caribbean and mainland Latin America and some twenty years as first chairman of the Puerto Rican Planning Board and as president of the Government Development Bank of Puerto Rico to illustrate the value of the holistic geographic perspective to both short- and long-term development projects. Pico presents, as a case study, his experiences as a consultant to the reconstruction of Cuzco, Peru, following the cataastrophic earthquake of May 1950.
Raymond Crist has also spent more than 50 years studying Latin America. Recognized by Robert West (1980) as the individual who "has probably traveled more widely in Latin America than any other North American geographer," and as the American scholar who has directed more Ph.D. disssertations on Latin America than any other geographer (Bushong 1984), Crist is eminently qualified to write on the continuing marginalization of the masses of small Latin American farmers. His connclusion that "the world's leaders must somehow be made aware of the necessity to invest in farm peoople" would do much, if followed, to place devellopment on a secure, long-term footing throughout the region.
I am grateful for the assistance of A. Richard Longwell who served throughout most of the deevelopment period of this volume as chairman of the CLAG publications committee. I also acknowledge the assistance of Lydia Pulsipher, immediate past editor of the Yearbook, who succeeded Professor Longwell as chairman of the publications committtee. I am grateful to the readers who assisted me in selection of the papers: Professor Longwell of Westtem Illinois University, Professor Charles M. Nissly of the University of New Orleans, and Professor William V. Davidson of Louisiana State University. I am further indebted to Professor Davidson and to Linda McQueen and the Louisiana State University Department of Geography and Anthropology pubblishing and design group, Geoscience Publications, for the technical editing and printing of the 1986 CLAG Yearbook.
REFERENCES CITED
Bushong, A. D. 1984. Latin America as laboratory: Seventy-five years of doctoral research on Latin America by geographers in the United States. Latin America: Case studies, 227-33, ed. R. G. Boehm and S. Visser. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall Hunt.
West, R. C. 1980. A Berkeley perspective on the study of Latin American geography in the United States and Canada. Studying Latin America: Esssays in honor of Preston E. James, 169, ed. D. J. Robinson. Syracuse, NY: Department of Geeography Dellplain Latin American Studies, 4. [end p. 2]