ABSTRACT
The structural dimensions of inequality and poverty in the societies need to be redressed by interventionist strategies of intelligently designed land reforms. The poor economic performance of the Central American and Caribbean countries reflects the instability and recession characterizing all Latin American countries in the early 1980s. Foreign investment patterns have followed a similar line until recently, when American investors, already predominant in Central America, increased their resort hotel and extractive industry investments in the Commonwealth Caribbean. In the 1970s, all countries in the Caribbean Basin reflected the problems and performance of small, oil-importing, open economies facing unstable world markets. The economic recovery of the Caribbean and Central American economies will depend upon a revitalization of US economic growth and world trade. In the English Caribbean, political institutions allow a greater voice to labor unions and urban working-and middle-class constituencies.
