Alberdi fue el más grande y sutil ironista de la literatura argentina. Sus críticos lo han estudiado como político, internacionalista y sociólogo. Ninguno advirtió la inmensa ironía que lo distingue entre sus compatriotas. La ironía, esa burla fina, disimulada, tan difícil de alcanzar cuando no se posee un talento especial, sólo se encuentra, en la literatura argentina, en escritores muy posteriores y, salvo raras excepiones, no logra la espontaneidad, la gracia y la hondura que fluyen del espíritu de Alberdi. Esta ironía es propia de los hombres solitarios, a menudo tristes, que contemplan el mundo con desdén porque descubren sus debilidades, sus ridiculeces, y, por tanto, terminan por despreciarlo.

Por una coincidencia afortunada para ese vínculo, firme y tenue a la vez, hecho de la substancia del aire y de la duración de un tiempo sin fragmentos, que suele establecerse entre el lector y el autor no conocido personalmente, empiezo a escribir estas notas al alño cabal, día y mes exactos, de haberse extinguido la vida espiritualmente rica y laboriosa del profesor Inman.

Lo llamo profesor, no exactamente porque hubiera ejercido la cátedra, sino en el sentido de aquella relación filial que la palabra posee con la idea mayor de maestro, relación, por cierto, nada frecuente hoy en las rutinas académicas. Maestro, pues, de formas antiguas, totalidad edificante, entrega de la inteligencia y el corazón a causas nobles y a discípulos contados más allá de la lista de clase.

In recent years, working cooperatively through the Council of Central American Universities and working vigorously, too, as independent universities, the five national universities of Central America have been carrying through a tremendous program of academic reform.

Five major movements in Central American higher education have worked toward the elimination or reduction of the traditional isolation of the virtually independent professional schools of which the universities have been composed. These are:

1. 1. The creation of university cities in which the various divisions are brought together physically.

2. 2. The creation of general studies programs of a year or more into which all entering university students are placed.

3. 3. The development of departments in the basic disciplines which serve the pre-professional general studies program and also tend to offer for all of the professional schools in the university the courses in these basic subjects needed in professional curricula.

4. 4. The strong interest that is arising in post-graduate studies, especially of a regionally planned type.

5. 5. The growing concomitant interest in research with a view that it, like the training of many kinds of professionals, is necessary for the social, economic, and industrial development of Central America.

A moderna fase, iniciada no século XV, de contactos de europeus com regióes tropicais — contactos que têm importado na maior ou na menor europeização dessas regiões — permite-nos considerar êsse fenômeno em têrmos nao só de Historia Social e de Antropologia Cultural como de Sociología de Historia ou de Sociologia da Cultura. Em qualquer dessas especialidades, é assunto, ésse, de importancia máxima para a interpretacáo e a compreensáo do Homem Situado: assunto já de Antropologia Filosófica. Em têrmos, quer da primeira, quer de qualquer outra dessas especialidades — principalmente em têrmos, sociológicos ou antropo-filosóficos — já nos é permitido empregar a expressáo “eurotropical” para caracterizar, globalmente, ésse tipo de contactos interregionais, interraciais e interculturais.

Sociolinguistic studies in Latin America generally deal with situations in which one of the official languages is in contact with an American Indian language, one of the major languages of immigration (German, Italian, Japanese), or one of the creole languages or dialects spoken in the Caribbean area. Except for the latter case, such studies have usually emphasized such processes as acculturation or assimilation, internal migrations, or social mobility.

A somewhat neglected research area is that of the coexistence of Spanish and Portuguese along the borders which Brazil shares with a number of Spanish-speaking nations. Just as it is an oversimplification to lump Brazil and its neighbors into a vaguely homogeneous “Latin” America, so also it would appear very risky to rely on the obvious linguistic similarities to generalize about communication between the two major speech communities.

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?

Colombia is a country of paradoxes. Because of the high culture of its ruling classes, Bogotá is called the “Athens of Latin America,” yet over one-third of the population is illiterate. The country is unusually well-endowed with natural resources, has a relatively large land area and a population of 15.6 million, but the per capita income is only the eighth highest in Latin America. Colombia is relatively underpopulated, with the same population as the Netherlands and 35 times its area, but there are millions of landless campesinos. Living in Bogotá, and walking the paths of the wealthy, it is difficult for a foreigner (and also for many Bogotanians) to believe that most Colombians are desperately poor. This is because Bogotá and the other main cities are like islands in a sea of poverty.

El campo ha sido y es el centro de interés de la narrativa uruguaya y seguirá siéndolo mientras la capital no complete su absorción y la narrativa se circunscriba al tema urbano, fenómeno difícil de predecir, dada la importancia geopolítica del campo en la vida uruguaya. En esta área importante de genuina creación cabe colocar desde las novelas de Acevedo Díaz, con excepción de Brenda de tema urbano, algunas novelas de Carlos Reyles: Beba, El terruño, y El gaucho florido, porque Reyles fue escritor urbano en La raza de Caín, hasta las novelas y cuentos de nuestros últimos narradores.

The Redman, the Negro, and the white man were the three colors in the human palette of Nueva Granada. With these and their derivatives time has worked, during the course of four centuries, to create every possible mixture, blend, and shade of mankind, every human color possible without the addition of the yellow element from Asia. But the more important blendings were those of the white and Indian to form the great mestizo group of the highlands and of the white and Negro to produce the mulattoes who share the hot, sultry lowlands with the more pure-blooded descendants of the Africans. In the twentieth century the immigration of a few hundred Japanese, who settled in the Cauca Valley, has added the last of the major human types to the population of Colombia.

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.

Desde Que en 1906 publicó en Madrid su libro Los negros brujos, Fernando Ortiz —tenía entonces veinticinco años— ha venido dedicándose, con toda la claridad de su mente, al estudio y a la divulgación de cuestiones sociológicas relacionadas principalmente con los negros. Con esa obra, inició él en Cuba el estudio científico del negro, por lo cual es el verdadero descubridor de los aportes del negro al proceso cubano de integración cultural, y el precursor del afrocubanismo. En tales estudios sólo le antecedió, en la América latina, Nina Rodríguez, del Brasil, y desde que el gran etnólogo falleció, Fernando Ortiz es el decano de los afronegrólogos del Continente suramericano.

Prominent among nineteenth century Argentine politicians, Carlos Pellegrini is best remembered today as the harassed chief executive who inherited the mantle of Miguel Juárez Celman and the challenges of the terrible depression following the “Revolution of ’90.” He is likewise recalled as the ardent defender of Argentina's obligations to its foreign creditors at a time when European investors were being blamed for most of the ills besetting his country. Less well known, however, are his views on the subject of national unity and his untiring efforts, primarily in the Argentine Congress, to sell his countrymen on the dream of a unified Argentina devoid of exaggerated local and provincial loyalties.

El Cuadro de la literatura peruana en 1964 y dentro del primer semestre de 1965 es singularmente sugestivo, aun sin considerar un magnífico éxito literario que fue la novela laureada La ciudad y los perros de Mario Vargas Llosa, editada a fines de 1963 y proclamada un buen suceso dentro de todo el ámbito hispánico y aun en los sectores europeos a donde alcanza la difusión de sus versiones.

Algunas de las obras reseñadas constituyen, coincidentemente, culminaciones de trayectorias representativas, tanto en la poesía y en la narrativa, como en el ensayo. No cabe duda, que al igual que en otros países hispanoamericanos, adviene una etapa de madurez creadora, doble expresión de un aliento americano en la temática y un horizonte universal en la estructura de las obras.

This study is a modest attempt to examine some general aspects of nationalism in the Argentine context. It should be mentioned at the start that there is no comprehensive definition for nationalism and in this connection it may be useful to explore some of the various ways in which the term is employed.

Professor Toynbee defines nationalism as “a state of mind in which we give our paramount political loyalty to one fraction of the human race—to the particular tribe of which we happen to be tribesmen.” Professor Ebenstein describes nationalism since the French Revolution as “one of the driving forces of domestic, imperial, and international politics.” From his observation of Western countries, Myrdal prefers to view nationalism in terms of “an irrational force, driving … [western countries] to more disruptive policies internationally than are in their own long-term interests.”

Le discours dont nous reproduisons le texte ci-dessous a été prononcé le 26 avril 1956 au symposium organise par le Département des Affaires culturelle de l'Union Panaméricaine á San-Juan de Porto Rico. II nous a semblé qu'il contenait, en plus de son excellence littéraire, es données historiques authentiques et qu'il exprimait des aspirations humaines de valeur permanente. Nous avons pensé qu'il était opportun, et nécessaire, de garder ees valeurs presentes á l'esprit á l'époque troublée ou nous vivons; que dans un monde qui, a tort ou á raison, attache de plus en plus d'importance aux données quantiíatives, et cela souvent au dépens de l'humain, le caractére profondement humaniste de cette allocution viendrait rafraichir l'esprit et la mémoire du lecteur et lui rappeler que, quand tout aura été dit et qu'auront été conquises les frontiéres extremes de la connaissance, ce qui concernera encore et toujours les hommes ce sera l'Homme.

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”.

Sao vários os geógrafos e cientistas sociais modernos para quem o determinismo geográfico não explicaria as atitudes econômicas, religiosas, políticas dos grupos humanos: conseqüência de complexa simbiose entre o habitat e as estruturas sociais. Essa orientação sociológica, antropológica, ecológica é, de modo mais específico que a dêsses geógrafos e cientistas sociais a de Gilberto Freyre, quando, v.g., referindo-se as questões concernentes à projetada reforma agrária, no Brasil, chama a atenáão para o fato de que, em país tropical como êste, constituí a monocultura latifundiária “urna verdadeira perversão do seu destino natural” (o “agrário diversificado”), devendo, a política social a ser seguida nesses países reduzir ao mínimo “as sub-áreas, puramente rurais, de monocultura” (outrora latifundiárias) e estender “sôbre essas sub-áreas atividades e populações, que de rurais passassem a urbanas” (ou melhor, de “lavouras imperiais” passassem a ser, “tanto quanto ecolõgicamente possível”, áreas de produção diversificada e de atividades mistas como as agro-pastoris). Se a técnica, —acrescenta Gilberto Freyre,— permite maior produtividade, cabe à “estrutura sócio-econômica medir o teor das necessidades humanas”.