ABSTRACT
The study of the international relations (IR) of Latin America and the Caribbean involves several academic complexities. The sustained escalation in the quantity and quality of scholarship by Latin American and Caribbean researchers was particularly notable. The Latin American-Caribbean field of study is an intricate one, requiring analytic attention on various levels. Most academic analysts of Latin American-Caribbean IR today are simultaneously members of academic disciplines and part of two multidisciplinary enterprises—the study of IR in general and of Latin America and the Caribbean in particular. The concept of the region has long been evident in both the study and practice of IR—first simply as regional elements in world affairs and more recently as subsystems of the international system. The IR context of "area studies" falls within this regional arena. Marxism and Leninism dismissed both realism and liberalism, arguing that the functioning of the international system was understood in economic and social terms.
