Report

FOLLOWING THE FINANCIAL PRESS THE LAST few months one is reminded of Mark Twain's fa- mous rebuttal: "reports of my death are greatly exagger- ated." Third World debt seems to have become an on- again, off-again crisis.

Article

Alfred J. Watkins
"Cautious optimism," IMF/World Bank meetings, September 1984 AS BANKERS AND FINANCE MINISTERS convened in Washington, D.C.
The Mexican Rescue by Joseph Kraft. Group of Thirty, 66 pp.
Jeff Frieden
IDB-funded Piedras Azules cement plant, Comayaga, Honduras LAST YEAR BRAZILIANS WERE FOND OF repeating President Joio Baptista Figueiredo's supposed remarks to a loyal audience. According to the story, Figuereido announced, "When I took of- fice in 1979, Brazil stood at the brink of an abyss.
At Least They're Our Skunks Admittedly, the Shah, Somoza and a few others with whom we have had good relations, have been less than desirable fellows. Actually they may have been skunks.
Cheryl Payer
Skilled craftsmen seeking work, Mexico City A FEW DOZEN COUNTRIES IN THE THIRD World owe hundreds of billions of dollars to the banks of the industrialized world. The failure of several Latin American countries to service their debts punctually threatens to cause a collapse of sev- eral, if not all, of the largest U.
Deirdre Kelly
This tiny island nation in the east- ern Caribbean has some things in common with its now famous neigh- bor, Grenada. Each has a popula- tion of just over 100,000, lush volcan- ic scenery that steals the visitor's breath-and a gravely underdevel- oped economy that places it among the hemisphere's poorest countries.
The Contra War and U.S.
George Black
Report on the Americas editor George Black recently visited six small island states in the Eastern Caribbean. The conclusions of his research will ap- pear in our July/August issue which will look at the evolution of U.