Introduction

The United States Discovers Panama: The Writings of Soldiers, Scholars, Scientists, and Scoundrels, 1850–1905. Edited by Michael LaRosa and Germán R. Mejía. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004. Pp. 336. $65.00 cloth.) How Wall Street Created a Nation: J.P. Morgan, Teddy Roosevelt, and the Panama Canal. By Ovidio Diaz Espino. (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2001. Pp. 320. $16.00 cloth.) Emperors in the Jungle: The Hidden History of the U.S. in Panama. John Lindsay-Poland. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Pp.256. $69.95 cloth.) The U.S. Catholic Press on Central America: From Cold War Anticommunism to Social Justice. By Edward T. Brett. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. Pp. 265. $22.00 paper.) Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala. By Victoria Sanford. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Pp. 352. $35.00 cloth.) Hidden Powers in post-conflict Guatemala: Illegal Armed Groups and the Forces Behind Them. By Susan C. Peacock and Adriana Beltrán. (Washington, DC: Washington Office on Latin America, 2004. Pp. 97. $2.00 paper.) Ajuste hacia la paz: La política económica y la reconstrucción de posguerra en El Salvador. By James K. Boyce, et al. (México, D.F.: Plaza y Valdés, 1999. Pp. 409. $11.00 paper.) From the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine onward, Washington's view of Latin America has been refracted through the prism of U.S. national interest. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, competition with the Great Powers of Europe shaped how the United States thought about the Western Hemisphere. Since the mid-twentieth century, the Cold War, then the drug war, and now the war [End Page 403] on terrorism, have distorted Washington's vision of Latin America in general and nearby Central America in particular. This collection of books, each in its own way, speaks to the issue of how the United States has seen its Central American neighbors, and the impact Washington's policy has had on them. The consistent message, whether from Harper's Weekly articles published in the 1850s or the Pentagon's efforts to create a Counter-Drug Center in Panama in the late 1990s, is that Central America has been an arena for U.S. action in furtherance of its own national interest, regardless of the will or interests of Central Americans. Not surprisingly, Washington's worst policy failures have come about when Central Americans proved to be less pliant and more resilient than Washington anticipated. U.S. interest in the region dates to the mid-nineteenth century and early ideas about the need for an inter-oceanic canal to link the eastern seaboard with newly acquired western territories. LaRosa and Mejía's collection of essays are drawn from Harpers Weekly and The Atlantic Monthly between 1850 and 1905 and focus on Panama and alternative inter-oceanic routes in Nicaragua and Mexico. The essays offer a nineteenth-century view of how U.S. writers saw the region and portrayed it to the reading public at home. Most are travelogues, chronicling the writers' adventures in territory they regarded as exotic, forbidding (because of tropical diseases), and populated by people who (when they merited any attention at all) were seen as racially inferior and uncivilized. The region deserved the attention of readers in the U.S. because of its value as a transit point; its people were superfluous. The essays begin with accounts of the Panama Railroad, which preceded the canal and, for almost half a century was the preferred route between east and west. The next group of articles recounts the debate over alternative routes—from the Chiriqui Lagoon to San Carlos Bay, through the Darien jungle along the Colombia-Panamanian border, through Nicaragua via the San Juan River and Lake Nicaragua, and—by far the most entertaining– across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico, with locomotives pulling the boats across dry land on rails. The...

15 There are 65 records of invasive and exotic diseases recorded in the United States (http://www.invasive.org). Soybean rust (Phakopsora pachyrhizi) is one of those records. This paper provides a brief history of the geographic distribution of rust, overwintering establishment, surveillance and research activities, and potential hosts other than soybean and kudzu. Geographic Distribution. Soybean rust occurred throughout much of the Eastern Hemisphere for more than 100 years (Sinclair and Hartman 1995) before it was confirmed in Hawaii in 1994 (Kilgore and Heu 1994) (Fig. 1). The explosion of rust in the Western Hemisphere occurred soon after the report in Hawaii and included countries in Africa and South America (Miles et al. 2003). Soybean rust was reported in the continental United States in Louisiana in the fall of 2004 (Schneider et al. 2005). A team of first responders organized by APHIS searched for soybean rust in Louisiana and other locations (Fig. 2). Since that initial report, rust was reported in 15 other states (http://www. sbrusa.net/) including Illinois in 2006 (Hartman et al. 2007). The first report of the disease on another host in the United States was on kudzu in Quincy, FL, in 2004 (Harmon et al. 2005). The introduction of the rust fungus into the continental United States may have been facilitated by Hurricane Ivan, which hit the U.S. mainland in September 2004 (http://www.ceal.psu.edu/ivan04.htm). Overwintering. The primary overwintering site of the fungus in the continental United States is Florida and other southern states, where the fungus survives the winter on kudzu, which remains green below the frost line (http://www.sbrusa.net/). Rust has been reported on kudzu in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia, and on volunteer soybean in Texas preceding the 2007 planting of soybean. Although the scenario for upcoming growing season (2007) has yet to occur, there has been an increase in overwintering sites compared with previous years (Fig. 3). This will likely increase the fungal spore load and lead to increased spread of rust on soybean in the 2007 season. Surveillance and Research Activities. Since the introduction of soybean rust in the continental United States, there has been an increase of surveillance and research activities. Before soybean rust hit the continental United States, a review in 2003 outlined the importance of the disease and evaluated the risk of rust to the U.S. soybean crop (Miles et al. 2003). The main focus since 2004 has been sentinel and spore trapping networks, research programs (fungicides, resistance, detection technologies, forecasting and modeling, host range studies and pathogen biology), and information exchange including activities supported by the American Phytopathological Society, which organized two National Soybean Rust Symposia in 2005 and 2006. Hosts. A number of research areas could be summarized, but one interesting area that pertains to the “invasiveness” of P. pachyrhizi is the additional hosts that it may infect. There are many legumes that have not, at least to my knowledge, had any contact with P. pachyrhizi because the fungus only was found in the Eastern Hemisphere until the last decade. The fungus infects more than 95 species of plants from more than 42 genera including soybean and related Glycine species (Ono et al. 1992). Besides kudzu, there are a number of other legumes on which the pathogen may overwinter in the southern United States, as well as in the Caribbean Basin, Mexico, and Central America. A recent study in the United States reported the fungus on leaves of Phaseolus coccineus (scarlet runner bean), P. lunatus (lima bean), and P. vulgaris (kidney bean) had rust lesions when grown adjacent to a rust-infected soybean field in Quincy, FL) (Lynch et al. 2006). Further research indicates that another nine species may be hosts, with two of these species representing new genera, Glycyrrhiza and Teramnus (unpublished data). At this point in time it is not Soybean Rust—A Prime Example

An inventory of parasitoids and parasites of fall armyworm (FAW), Spodoptera frugiperda (J. E. Smith), was conducted using references describing parasitized FAW eggs, larvae, pupae and adults collected from different crops or habitats throughout the Americas and the Caribbean Basin. The crops and countries where these parasites were reported occurring in the Americas is also inventoried. Maize was the crop where the FAW was more frequently collected followed by rice. Overall, Chelonus insularis (Cresson) had the broadest natural distribution in the Americas. For the North American region C. insulares, Chelonus sp., and Euplectrus platyhypenae (Howard) were the most relevant parasitoids. In Central America, C. insularis was the most prevalent parasitoid, and in the South American region the most prevalent parasites were Archytas incertus (Macq.), A. marmoratus (Tns.), C. insularis, and Meteorus laphygmae (Viereck). Diapetimorpha introita (Cresson) is the most important pupal parasitoid of FAW occurring mainly in North America. An acugutturid, Noctuidonema guyanense (Remillet & Silvain), is the most important ectoparasitic nematode attacking adults of FAW and other noctuid moths in South and Southeastern US, and Mexico in North America, Caribbean Basin, Central America, and Northern South America.

Palm lethal decline phytoplasmas are an important group of plant pathogens that cause death in a variety of palm species throughout the Caribbean basin and the southeastern United States. The 16SrIV-D phytoplasma was introduced to the state of Florida, United States; it has since caused severe economic losses to the green industries of Florida and is threating natural ecosystems because of its ability to infect the native palm Sabal palmetto. In this study, the genetic variability of the 16SrIV-D phytoplasma was assessed over a 10-year period to determine if multiple introductions had occurred or if natural mutations were occurring. Furthermore, the genetic variability of the palm lethal decline phytoplasma group (16SrIV) was assessed with a multiple locus analysis using the 16S ribosomal RNA gene, the 16S-23S intergenic spacer region, and secA and groEL genes. Overall, no variability of the 16SrIV-D phytoplasma was documented in Florida over a 10-year period. The multilocus analysis showed support for three distinct species of the phytoplasma in the Caribbean basin that infect palms and further support that the 16SrIV-C from Tanzania is not closely related. Furthermore, 16SrIV-B and 16SrIV-D were found to be the same phytoplasma based on 100% identity between the two based on intergenic spacer region, secA, and groEL analysis. This study represents the first robust, multilocus analysis of palm-infecting phytoplasmas from the Caribbean and sheds light on the phylogeny and evolution of the group.

Received for publication 21 Sept. 1999. Accepted for publication 18 Feb. 2000. Florida Agricultural Experiment Station Journal Series No. R-07072. This research was supported in part by the Florida Foundation Seed Service. The cost of publishing this paper was defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. Under postal regulations, this paper therefore must be hereby marked advertisement solely to indicate this fact. Associate Professor, Plant Breeding and Genetics. Biological Scientist. Extension Agent. Research Plant Pathologist. To whom reprint requests should be addressed. Bean rust, incited by the fungus Uromyces appendiculatus (Pers.) Unger var. appendiculatus [formerly U. phaseoli (Ruben) Wint.] is a common disease of Phaseolus vulgaris L. It has the potential to cause serious crop losses, and is particularly troublesome in warm, humid production regions such as Florida (Stavely, 1999a, 1999b; Stavely and Pastor-Corrales, 1989). Currently, the Florida snap bean industry is valued at over $100 million annually, and generally relies on just over a half-dozen cultivars. The major source of rust resistance in these popular cultivars is the Ur-4 gene (Kelly et al., 1996), previously identified in ‘Early Gallatin’ as Up-2 (Christ and Groth, 1982). Unfortunately, this gene is not completely effective against the races that now infect snap beans in Florida, and growers must routinely apply fungicides to control bean rust and a number of other foliar diseases. In the past few years, 90 of the estimated 150 worldwide bean rust races have been identified and are curated at Beltsville, Md. (Stavely, 1998a, 1999b). To date, 11 dominant resistant genes have been identified to control these pathogenic races. They confer various host plant resistance reactions, including immunity, hypersensitivity, and/or reduced uredina size (Stavely, 1998a). The Ur-4 gene confers a hypersensitve type resistance, with necrotic lesions of 0.3–1.0 mm in diameter, to 30 of these races (Stavely, 1998a). Another gene, the dominant Ur-11 allele, confers hypersensitive or reduced uredinium (≤0.3 mm) type resistance to 89 of these races (Stavely, 1998a). The Ur-11 gene was previously identified as Ur-3 and later found to be linked in repulsion phase with the Ur-3 locus (Stavely, 1998b). The Ur-11 allele is not protective against Race 108 from Honduras (= H951, Steadman, pers. comm.), but Ur-4 is effective. When combined, the Ur-4 and Ur-11 genes concurrently provide either immunity, chlorotic or necrotic hypersensitive, or tiny uredinium resistance to all of the 90 races, with duplicate resistance to 29 of these races (Stavely, 1998b). Given the dynamic epidemiology of bean rust, more races will likley arise in the United States, Central America, and the Caribbean basin. A prudent strategy for the management of this disease is the deployment of different genes that confer resistance to a wide array of races, thereby diversifing the genetic basis of resistance. The primary objective of this breeding effort was to generate broad-spectrum bean rust resistance in subtropically adapted, fresh market, snap bean germplasm. To accomplish this objective, the Ur-11 gene was introgressed into snap bean germplasm with existing resistance based on the Ur-4 gene. Additional emphasis was placed on the retention of resistance to bean common mosaic virus as conferred by the I gene (Drijfhout, 1978 ) and presently deployed in many of the important cultivars grown in Florida. These breeding lines are intended for use as a combined source of rust resistance based on Ur-11 and Ur-4 genes.

At first glance U.S. policy towards Latin America between 1958 and 1968 appears to have been a failure. Initiatives intended to promote democracy and economic development, and to insulate the hemisphere from the ideological and military struggles of the global Cold War, reaped only authoritarian regimes, uneven and sluggish economic growth, and political debates over the global systems of capitalism and communism that distracted attention from the unique and pressing problems of Latin America. A closer examination of the U.S.-Latin American relationship, however, reveals that the policies pursued by Washington succeeded in an unlikely arena, in the nation that seemed to matter most to U.S. policymakers. That nation was Venezuela, which emerged from generations of tyranny in 1958 only to become the focal point first for a right wing counterrevolutionary insurgency sponsored by the Dominican Republic, and then for a leftist guerrilla war that involved the competing ideologies of Cuba, the Soviet Union, and China. From 1958 onward U.S. policymakers identified Venezuela as a crucial bulwark against right-wing and left-wing extremism and as an ideal partner in the creation of a modernized, prosperous, and pro-U.S. Latin America. Venezuelan moderates, meanwhile, dexterously manipulated U.S. support to realize these goals and to eliminate the existential threats posed by domestic and foreign extremists. The study of the Washington-Caracas partnership from 1958 to 1968 illuminates the ways in which U.S. and Latin American policymakers could, under certain circumstances, solve the most vexing political, ideological, and military problems besetting the hemisphere through an innovative blend of democratic, diplomatic, and coercive means.

<p>Tropical cyclones are one of the most important causes of disasters in Central America. Using historical (1970–2010) tracks of cyclones in the Caribbean and Pacific basin, we identify critical path locations where these low-pressure systems cause the highest number of floods in a set of 88 precipitation stations in the region. Results show that tropical cyclones from the Caribbean and Pacific basin produce a large number of indirect impacts on the Pacific slope of the Central American isthmus. Although the direct impact of a tropical cyclone usually results in devastation in the affected region, the indirect effects are more common and sometimes equally severe. In fact, the storm does not need to be an intense hurricane to cause considerable impacts and damage. The location of even a lower intensity storm in critical positions of the oceanic basin can result in destructive indirect impacts in Central America. The identification of critical positions can be used for emergency agencies in the region to issue alerts of possible flooding and catastrophic events.</p>

This chapter examines the political economy dynamics of Haiti and Panama after the 1994 and 1989 interventions, and the role of drug trafficking and money laundering in those dynamics. No other countries in the Caribbean Basin — with the exception of Mexico — have been more closely linked to the United States and have had more impact on US hemispheric policy than Panama and Haiti. The United States has intervened militarily in both countries several times during the twentieth century.’ Moreover, issues such as immigration, drug production and trafficking, and money laundering, so important to US domestic politics, have been at the forefront of US relations with both countries.

Numerous weevil species are serious pests on agricultural crops in the Caribbean basin and the USA. These pests include native and exotic weevil (Coleoptera: Curculionoidea) species. Among them, some weevil species are easy to identify, and others need training and expertise in taxonomy in order to identify them properly. Commodity-based identification and training tools are extremely important and critical. For example, the citrus root weevil, Diaprepes abbreviatus (L.) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) was established in the US nearly 50 yr ago, and costs millions of dollars annually in control attempts in Florida alone. Other species such as the red palm weevil, Rhynchophorus ferrugineus (Olivier) (Coleoptera: Dryophthoridae); the South American palm weevil, Rhynchophorus palmarum (L.) (Coleoptera: Dryophthoridae); and the Jamaican weevil, Exophthalmus vittatus L. (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), are potential threats to fruits, vegetables, and ornamental crops. Adults of these weevils display various coloration, and patterns of red, blue, black, green, yellow, orange, and white. Some species have more than 2 color forms; male and female weevils may show major variations in their morphological characters. Regulatory agencies at the local, regional, and international levels are strengthening collaboration on offshore mitigation of these pests. Strict enforcement of regulatory guidelines and procedures is being adopted at the ports of entry into the US. Indeed, training on the identification and screening of these species, and other potential crop pests, is critically important for food security in the region. Training and capacity building to design, develop, and deploy keys, tools, and resources are major components of successful implementation of digital identification tools. The team at the Center for Biological Control is part of the digital resource consortium building tools on invasive beetles on economically important crops. To build capacity in digital insect identification, we have not only modified the contents of graduate and undergraduate insect systematics curriculum, but also have trained numerous students in these new skills.

Abstract. Saharan dust was observed over the Caribbean basin during the summer 2007 NASA Tropical Composition, Cloud, and Climate Coupling (TC4) field experiment. Airborne Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL) and satellite observations from MODIS suggest a barrier to dust transport across Central America into the eastern Pacific. We use the NASA GEOS-5 atmospheric transport model with online aerosol tracers to perform simulations of the TC4 time period in order to understand the nature of this barrier. Our simulations are driven by the Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) meteorological analyses. Compared to observations from MODIS and CALIOP, GEOS-5 reproduces the observed location and magnitude of observed dust events, but our baseline simulation does not develop as strong a barrier to dust transport across Central America as observations suggest. Analysis of the dust transport dynamics and loss processes suggest that while both mechanisms play a role in defining the dust transport barrier, loss processes by wet removal of dust are about twice as important as transport. Sensitivity analyses with our model showed that the dust barrier would not exist without convective scavenging over the Caribbean. The best agreement between our model and the observations was obtained when dust wet removal was parameterized to be more aggressive, treating the dust as we do hydrophilic aerosols.

Perspectives on <i>The Soviet Union and the Horn of Africa during the Cold War</i>

In June 2020, the tropical Atlantic and the Caribbean Basin were affected by a series of African dust outbreaks unprecedented in size and intensity. These events, informally named “Godzilla,” coincided with CALIMA, a large field campaign, offering a rare opportunity to assess the impact of African dust on air quality in the Greater Caribbean Basin. Network measurements of respirable particles (i.e., PM 10 and PM 2.5 ) showed that dust significantly degraded regional air quality and increased the risk to public health in the Caribbean, the southern United States, northern South America, and Central America. CALIMA examined the meteorological context of Godzilla dust events over North Africa and how these conditions might relate to the greatly increased dust emissions and enhanced transport to the Americas. Godzilla was linked to strong pressure anomalies over West Africa, resulting in a large-scale geostrophic wind anomaly at 700 hPa over North Africa. We used surface-based and columnar measurements to test the performance of two frequently used aerosol forecast models: the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) and Weather Research and Forecasting Model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) models. The models showed some skills but differed substantially between their forecasts, suggesting large uncertainties in these forecasts that are critical for issuing early warnings of health-threatening dust events. Our results demonstrate the value of an integrated approach in characterizing the spatial and temporal variability of African dust transport and assessing its impact on regional air quality. Future studies are needed to improve models and to track the long-term changes in dust transport from Africa under a changing climate.

Three particular historical developments linked the emergence and development of the Caribbean network. First, in Latin America Spanish immigration into Cuba was surpassed only by Spanish immigration to Argentina in the early 20th century Second, this network spread at the same time as United States (US) military and economic influence stretched throughout the Caribbean Basin beginning in the 1890s. Third, development of a strong anarchist presence in Cuba facilitated the network's emergence. This chapter examines how anarchists of different nationalities but linked by language, geography and politics developed movements in these specific locales and then functioned as part of regional networks that sometimes overlapped. The Caribbean and Mexican networks allowed anarchists throughout this vast area the ability to communicate, fund and understand their pursuits for anarchist-defined freedom in a comparative context. Keywords:anarchist; Caribbean network; Cuba; Mexican networks; United States (US)

Background: A variety of studies have examined the prevalence of germline mutations in patients undergoing genetic testing for a wide variety of breast cancer predisposition genes. Many of these studies have focused on patients of Northern European descent, leaving variant prevalence and clinical presentations of patients from underrepresented, and often underserved, populations much less well understood. Our study aimed to examine the prevalence of germline mutations among referred patients from Mexico, Central and South America, as well as a comparative population of Hispanic patients from the United States. Methods: We analyzed a de-identified laboratory-based cohort of patients who had received physician-ordered germline multigene panel test results between December 2014 and June 2019. Inclusion criteria for this study were a personal or family history of breast or ovarian cancer, and either (a) an ordering physician based in Mexico, Central America, or South America, or (b) a Hispanic self-reported ethnicity and a US based ordering physician. For this analysis, Mexican patients were combined with Central Americans. Panel size was per physician discretion, and most (&amp;gt;70%) physicians chose large (at least 20 gene) panels of high- and moderate-risk genes including BRCA1, BRCA2, PALB2, CHEK2, ATM, and TP53, among others. Full gene sequencing and deletion/duplication analysis were performed as described previously [PMID: 26207792] and variants were classified using a framework based on the ACMG/AMP guidelines for variant interpretation [PMID: 28492532]. Results: Of the 25,249 participants who met criteria, 18,513 were self-identified Hispanic-Amercians and 6,736 were non-US participants. Of the non-US group, 6,398 were from South America (including 1200 from Chile and 3781 from Brazil) while 273 were from Mexico and 65 from Central America. Pathogenic or Likely Pathogenic variants were uncovered in 14.4% of all participants, with 1864 findings (representing 7.4% of participants) in BRCA1 or BRCA2, and 1769 (7.0% of participants) in other cancer risk genes. Stratified by location, mutation positive rates were highest among Central (26.9%) and South Americans (19.2%), and lowest among the US Hispanics (12.5%). Based on NCCN guidelines, many of these findings would warrant consideration of a change in care for the patient and/or reflex testing of family members. Conclusions: Cancer patients in Mexico, Central, and South America may have less access to germline genetic testing than patients in (for example) the United States, although our study suggests that Latin American patients and their families can benefit from genetic testing at least at the same rate as Hispanic patients in the US. The higher positive rate among Central and South Americans in this study compared to Hispanic-Americans may be due to referral patterns and cost impact, although this question requires further study. The relative VUS rates between populations, mutation rates for specific clinical presentations, and relevant psychosocial issues also need further study to help maximize the utility of germline genetic testing in Latin America. Citation Format: Stephen E Lincoln, Daniel Pineda-Alvarez, Scott T Michalski, Shan Yang, Edward D Esplin. Germline mutation prevalence among US and non-US Hispanic patients undergoing genetic testing for breast and ovarian cancer predisposition [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2019 Dec 10-14; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2020;80(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P6-08-19.

The October 1983 crisis in Grenada left little doubt that the Soviet and Cuban presence had been expanding in the Caribbean basin. But the October crisis did not answer questions regarding the extent of their actual influence there, nor the direction it might take in the future, nor even what the most appropriate U.S. policy responses should be to that influence elsewhere in the region. Therefore, in the wake of the U.S. occupation of Grenada and the evidence it uncovered about the degree of Soviet and Cuban activity there, it is useful to examine the kind of situations that have encouraged the Soviets to expand their presence and/or influence in Latin America. At the same time, it equally is useful to examine the limitations or constraints on such an expanded presence or influence.Clearly, Soviet policy in Latin America has been the product of two conflicting forces or tendencies.