Discovering the Americas: The Evolution of Canadian Foreign Policy Towards Latin America

Graeme S. Mount is a history professor at Laurentian University and the
author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable Kingdom.

Despite the title, Rochlin has dealt largely with Canadian relations
with the 20 Latin American republics (excluding Puerto Rico) since 1968,
during the years when Trudeau, Clark, and Mulroney, respectively, held
the prime minister’s office. He summarizes the period before 1945 in
25 pages and that from 1945 to 1968 in 37 pages. For the period since
1968, Rochlin’s work is more thorough—drawn from books, scholarly
articles, newspapers, and the External Affairs files ( Record Group 25)
at the National Archives of Canada.

By themselves, the insights gained from the RG 25 materials would
justify purchase of the book: the hostility of the Canadian Trade
Commissioner in Guatemala to the widely admired President Jacobo Arbenz,
victim of a 1954 CIA-sponsored coup; early dislike of Fidel Castro on
the part of the Canadian ambassador and others in the Department of
External Affairs; the Pearson government’s anger that Castro would use
Gander airport “to transport Cuban military personnel to revolutionary
adventures in Algeria”; the disclosure that, during the Diefenbaker
era, the Canadian embassy in Havana supplied intelligence to the U.S.
government.

Interpretations are balanced, and many of the subjects Rochlin
discusses are predictable: Canada and the Organization of American
States, Canada and Cuba, NAFTA, Canada and Central America, Canada as a
Cold War ally of the United States, Canadian aid and business south of
the Rio Grande. A handy appendix provides statistics on Canada’s trade
and aid with the 20 republics since 1945. Rochlin reports that
Trudeau’s legacy in Latin America fell short of his initial rhetoric.
He regrets the extent to which the Department of External Affairs relied
on the U.S. embassy in Managua and conservative elements in the Roman
Catholic Church for information on Sandinista Nicaragua.

For years to come, this will be an essential reference work for
scholars of Canadian-Latin American relations.