The Kissinger Commission on Population and Development in Central America

To help shape United States policy toward Central America, a National Bipartisan Commission was appointed in 1983 by President Reagan. The 12member Commission, chaired by former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, submitted its Report in January 1984. The Report, a document of some 130 pages organized in eight chapters, focuses on an examination of Central American security issues and proposes a political and economic strategy both to deal with the present crisis in the region and to promote long-term economic progress and social reform. The Commission's recommendations (which, predictably, have become the object of heated political controversy in the United States) are set out against a wide-ranging if often cursory examination of Central America's troubled political, economic, and social history, and an analysis of the region's present ills. The excerpts reproduced below (from Chapters 2 through 5) reflect primarily this diagnostic aspect of the Commission's work. The selections are mainly from passages in which the Report discusses demographic aspects of Central American development, or issues strongly affected by the rapid population increase that the region has been experiencing in recent decades. The one specific recommendation of the Report on population policy was continuation of the population and family planning programs currently supported by the [US] Agency for International Development (p. 78)

Commission · Political science · Population · Sociology · Demography · Income, Poverty, and Inequality · Law · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare

• Politics, Population, and Family Planning in Guatemala

  Brent Metz•Human Organization•2001

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• The Delayed Contraceptive Revolution in Guatemala

  Roberto Santiso-Galvez, Jane T Bertrand•Human Organization•2004

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