violations, military coups, painful redemocratization processes, and economic implosion. Although part of the American family of nations in the Western Hemisphere, there is almost nothing written about Suriname as a modern country. There are some ethnographies, some histories of ex-slave rebellions, and passing references to the atrocities of colonial plantation systems. After that, the dark clouds of obscurity close over a fascinating if beleaguered close American cousin, one whose history as an independent nation has much to say to the strife-ridden trouble spots of the 1990s--Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Liberia, and Nicaragua.

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