A principios de este año, en Arica, Chile, se reunió un grupo de intelectuales para discutir sus puntos de vista sobre la manera de estimular un mayor intercambio cultural —mediante ideas, libros, películas, individuos— entre los países de las Americas. Inevitablemente, también se trajo a colación el reverso de la moneda: la supuesta influencia perniciosa de los medios de difusión en masa, tales como la televisión y las películas, la cual se censuró severamente, y con ello el “imperialismo cultural” de los Estados Unidos.

Amounting number of studies have shown striking relationships between mass communication development and various economic, political and social aspects of national growth. Although these studies generally have been based on available data from countries throughout the world, similar relationships also can be found within regional groups of countries. Among the twenty Latin American countries, we find newspaper circulation per capita correlated .89 with urbanization, .82 with literacy, .80 with per capital income, and a negative .88 with percentage of population employed in agriculture.

Such studies, of course, do not establish causal relations. Is mass communication merely a reflection of other more basic factors of development such as urbanization and industrialization, literacy and political participation? Or does mass communication play a functional role in the development process: can the communication of facts and opinions through the mass media actually influence people to move to the cities, take up new skills, learn to read and write, and become involved in politics?

As nações americanas, provenientes de origens européias diversas cujas diferentes culturas e tradições imprimiram marcas profundas nos seus respectivos destinos no nôvo mundo não deixaram entretanto de sofrer experiências comuns que, por sua vez, conferiram certas analogias às sociedades que, no hemisfério, se formaram. Negá-lo tornaria impossível á compreensão da história dos povos americanos que têm mesmo consistido, em linhas gerais, num conflito mais ou menos intenso entre o passado europeu e a experiência americana.

Uns, como os colonos anglo-americanos, regeitando, ao se deslo carem para o Nôvo Mundo, certas formas institucionais da Europa, embora retendo outras, entregaram-se mais confiantes e mais livres ao nôvo destino. Já os latino-americanos, pelas condições em que se processou a colonização, permaneceram mais atados às suas origens européias. E quanto mais fortes foram êsses laços, mais dramática foi a gestação das novas sociedades, como no caso hispano-americano.

One of cuba's most important works of prose fiction, Loveira's Generales y doctores, after more than four decades of neglect, has at last had a second edition. It is a work of tremendous social significance, which today needs re-evaluation. But such re-evaluation had best be done outside Cuba. In that unhappy isle, critics now tend to interpret Loveira as an “anti-imperialist” or as a strange kind of “pre-communist.” Roberto Branly's review of the new edition of the work in Pueblo y cultura (No. 14 [1963], pp. 19-23) is illustrated with photographs which convey the idea of a work hostile to the United States: the battleship Maine, the author of the Piatt Amendment, a picture entitled “Generales y doctores en plena faena … el General Wood y sus secretarios del Despacho”.

The Cauca Valley in southwest Colombia offers a good closeup view of social change, the power struggle at the grass roots, and rural and urban problems in a country whose size and strategic location make her future a matter of special concern to those who seek to avoid violent solutions to Latin America's social problems.

Colombia would seem to have better prospects for evolutionary development than several Latin American countries with less enlightened leadership and fewer democratic traditions. But Colombia's ruling groups face formidable, sometimes seemingly insoluble economic and social problems. The economy has been wobbly for years, buffeted by fiscal crises, foreign exchange shortages, quickening inflation, and urban unemployment. Also, Colombia has suffered more than any other country in this hemisphere from a species of internal war referred to locally as the violencia.

Cuando hace unos veinticinco o treinta años, el estudioso interesado en investigar el quehacer creativo de los músicos latinoamericanos buscaba información en publicaciones musicales del Nuevo y el Viejo continentes, sólo tres nombres surgían como los auténticos representantes de la composición musical seria: el prolífico compositor brasileño Heitor Villa-Lobos, el maestro argentino Juan José Castro y Carlos Chávez, figura cimera de la música mexicana. Si se rebuscaba un poco más en los escritos que sobre la música latinoamericana aparecían de vez en cuando, también se mencionaba, aunque con menos frecuencia a los cubanos Amadeo Roldan y García Caturla, al mexicano Silvestre Revueltas (los tres desaparecidos prematuramente alrededor del año 40), a los brasileños Francisco Mignone y Mozart Camargo Guarnieri, a los chilenos Pedro Humberto Allende y Domingo Santa Cruz, al colombiano Guillermo Uribe-Holguín y a dos o tres compositores más de la América del Sur.

La urgencia de reformas que se desprende de las necesidades actuales de Hispanoamérica nos obliga a analizar las transformaciones que ya tuvieron lugar al respecto, puesto que pueden servirnos como directrices para el futuro. Del desenvolvimiento general de las vicisitudes que les acompañaban se puede, además, como decía Cervantes, sacar “algún ejemplo provechoso”.

De los varios países hispanoamericanos que emprendieron reformas, México es el único donde la revolución del siglo xx ha constituido el mayor intento de mejoramiento de vida de las masas. Aunque sus resultados no son finales, la palabra “revolución”, ha perdido en el suelo mexicano su sentido original. Se ha convertido en un sinónimo de progreso social y sobre todo, agrario.

Emphasis today is on the political and economic factors in social change in undeveloped countries. This approach, combined with the wholehearted acceptance of the role of the middle class as a psychological leavening agent in such countries, tends to obscure the presence of other factors. Especially are there other categories of human beings who are responding to the forces put into play by world changes and by the increasing pressures exerted upon the social systems of which they are a part. Recently, some of these groups have been given more notice, such as students, intellectuals, labor union members, etc. Another such important category is the servant class which for the most part has been ignored and yet which appears significant, even though not as a political group, in terms of both the effects it has on changes being attempted in social organizations and on the personality development of nationals in such countries.

El derecho laboral latinoamericano ha sido repetidamente criticado por su falta de aplicación efectiva. La crítica proviene primordialmente de estudiosos norteamericanos interesados en la problemática social de los países al sur del Río Grande. Robert Alexander, por ejemplo, se refiere a este tópico diciendo que para muchos observadores las leyes laborales y sociales de la América Latina existen sólo en los textos legales pero no son adecuadamente implementadas. En forma más precisa otros autores como Burnett, Morris y Tannenbaum han puesto también de relieve la existencia de serios fallos en la aplicación del derecho del trabajo latinoamericano.

Lo curioso es, sin embargo, que este tema es casi totalmente ignorado por los autores latinoamericanos, los cuales dedican largas y sesudas páginas a la discusión de teorías jurídicas y problemas doctrinales, pero no se hacen cargo de esta deficiencia práctica.

During the first half of the present century, about one million Mexicans were involved in a singular instance of large scale entry into the United States. Arriving just before the influx of foreigners abated sharply, they provide an example of recent immigration. In contrast to the experience of other groups entering one or more generations before, Mexican settlement occurred during the drastic changes caused by rapid economic growth and depression, by two world wars and the nation's reorganization for modern living. Nor did the newcomers from the South follow the traditional pattern of residence and occupation. Instead of locating in the densely urban and industrial Northeast of the United States, they flowed into rural areas in the Southwest, working in agriculture, railroad construction and related activities. Except for Canadian immigrants, the Mexicans were the only major immigrant group having relatively easy access to the home country by an overland route. Lastly, their distinctively Latin American culture has added novelty to history of immigration to the United States.