The problems associated with drug abuse in the United States have received considerable attention in recent years. By the mid-1970s, approximately 500,000 Americans were addicted to heroin, while at least 15 million were regular or casual users of marijuana. None of this heroin originates domestically, and only a small percentage of the marijuana, and this of low potency, is home-grown. Consequently, the question of source has become cardinal to most analyses of drug use and abuse in the United States.

Mexico has long been the primary source of high potency marijuana for the American market. Despite the recent influx from Jamaica and Colombia, Mexico still supplies an estimated 70% of the annual American consumption, or some 10 million pounds. More importantly, Mexico is currently the source of 70% to 80% of the heroin on the U.S. market, an alarming 6-8 ton annual figure. Furthermore, Mexico is both a primary transshipment route for cocaine, an increasingly popular drug originating in South America, and the source of vast quantities of psychotropic substances.

Guyana has become the second “socialist” republic in the Western Hemisphere after Cuba. The history of how this occurred is an almost classic example of the futility of inept intervention by outside great powers. Prime Minister Forbes Burnham, brought to office in 1965 by Anglo-American intervention that ousted Marxist Cheddi Jagan from power, has turned Guyana from a safe U.S. client committed to a capitalistic economic model into a strident anti-American bastion on the South American mainland, with a politicoeconomic system in theory and increasingly in practice inspired by Marxism-Leninism. The Burnham regime has nationalized all significant foreign firms, declared itself a cooperative socialist republic, and has forged close collaborative links with Cuba, the People's Republic of China, and such left-oriented African countries as Tanzania, Guinea, Angola, and Mozambique.

Seldom can one turn to the news without encountering disclosures exposing the magnitude and nature of United States covert operations designed to influence the disposition of political affairs in a number of countries. As usual, Latin America has come in for its share of clandestine attention, with Chile being the most publicized recent example. This certainly should not surprise anyone with even a superficial knowledge of Latin American history. Latin American countries, however, have themselves not been free of responsibility for domestic manipulation in the United States. Although their endeavors have not dramatically altered the course of hemispheric history, they on occasion have produced significant diplomatic gains. One such occasion took place in 1877 and 1878 when Mexico, under Porfirio Díaz, sponsored covert activities in the United States designed to evoke public support and thus to secure the much needed formal recognition.

The peasant is one of the least understood and most abused actors on the modern political stage. He is maligned for his political passivity and distrust of national political movements. Yet, most of the great twentieth-century revolutions in the Third World have, according to most scholars, been peasant based (Landsberger, 1973: ix; Wolf, 1969). In Latin America the peasant was once pictured as the archetypical parochial who was more suited for siestas under his sombrero than serious political activity. Stereotypes aside, the region has been no exception to the growing tendency of peasants to become involved in major revolutionary processes.