In describing the impact of haciendas on Indian communities of Meso-America and Andean America, historians generally have emphasized the hacendado's unrelenting appropriation of land and labor from native settlements, which were forced constantly to retreat in the face of this pressure. This view can be represented by James Lockhart's description of hacienda expansion. He saw the great estate as an ‘essentially unitary social institution [that] maintained constant its function as intermediary between growing Spanish towns and receding Indian villages. It evolved along two simple lines — constant rise in legal ownership of land and change in the balance of the labor force, as permanent workers increased and temporary workers decreased.1 As the hacienda expanded outward from the cities, said Lockhart, it gradually engaged the Indians in acculturative processes that made the great estate ‘the most powerful instrument of hispanization in Spanish-American culture’.2

Among students of Latin America, the existence of sizable Indian communities within the region has provoked a lively debate about the relationship between ethnicity and social class. Such communities have failed to become part of class society, it is often said, because they retain those customs and traditions which arose under colonialism, because in some sense they remain encapsulated to this day within the feudal social order. A few experts even claim that these customs have themselves become the primary agent of economic and political exploitation in various rural areas.1 According to this view, native people have accepted more or less passively a culture which was designed for them by Spanish missionaries and administrators, a culture which emphasized ethnic difference at the expense of class solidarity.2 In contrast to these ideas, contemporary events provide us with many indications that such people did not simply resign themselves to the fate which colonial authorities elected for them, Of primary importance, native uprisings and rebellions, messianic movements and religious heresies occurred in Latin America with astonishing frequency throughout the centuries which preceded Independence. By analyzing these movements, then, and particularly the convictions which moved their participants to action, we may formulate a more coherent view of Spanish colonialism — a view which also helps us to understand the question of ethnicity among Indians today.

Charles IV's rule over the Spanish empire has often been decried as neglectful and reactionary. In a recent article, however, I argued that such descriptions were not accurate, maintaining that the early years of the reign pushed forward many institutional innovations and showed a marked concern for colonial affairs. This is not to say, of course, that the death of Charles III produced no change; but the critical facts were that economic policy-making continued to be based on the colonial compact and that the crown remained as committed to providing economic benefits to Spanish agriculture and manufacturing as to securing relief for the Peninsular treasury.1 Although 1788–9 may properly be characterized as a moment of truth for Spain, one which brought to the surface conflicting interests and ideologies, the Peninsula's transformation by the Bourbon Reforms was not so deep nor the government's circumstances so dire as to upset the political balance.

The nineteenth century was a critical period in the evolution of Puerto Rican society, as the following citation from Fernández Méndez eloquently indicates: The century of Salvador Brau [the noted Puerto Rican social historian] is the century of the forging on Puerto Rican soil of a native bourgeoisie of planters – padres de agrego or señores de ingenio— born in a movement of cultural transformation which converted the preponderant subsistence economy of the eighteenth century into an active agrarian capitalism of sugar and coffee plantations. This system of plantations in the realm of the Spanish Antilles was in its epoch the revolutionary equivalent of the manufacturing system which transformed life in European society in innumerable ways during the nineteenth century.1

Crime reflects social values, for it indicates what is viewed as abnormal or deviant behavior (and conversely what is acceptable behavior), and the degree to which that behavior is abhorrent to society in general. In addition to reflecting general values, crime as it involves one racial, sexual or social group can shed light on the attitude of the ruling elite toward a specific group, and the social position of that group within a larger context. Lastly, crime reflects class and power relations by allowing us to study the relationship of the criminal to the victim and their relationship to the legal mechanism. The study of crime as a valid field for historical research has been well explored by European historians but, within the field of Latin American history, it is relatively new.1 It is, nevertheless, an area deserving of study in our attempt to understand more fully colonial Spanish society.

Latin Americanists have become increasingly intrigued with questions concerning rural labour and oppression. In recent publications, traditional interpretations of peonage, labour contracting, wage labour and other topics have been questioned by historians with access to new documentary materials. Peru has been the setting for much of this discussion because of the important changes which occurred during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the unusual opportunity to understand them since the creation of the Archivo del Fuero Agrario.1

For much of the twentieth century the Peruvian working-class has been limited in size and divided between different groups with divergent political objectives. Successive Peruvian governments have been able to capitalize on these features in their attempts to control the working-class, directly regulating workers' organizations or playing off one group against another. Yet, despite these limits and divisions, workers have on several occasions staged general strikes and pressured governments into taking account of their demands. Consequently, the political development of sectors of the working-class at the local level has been closely affected by political processes at the national level.

Consensus politics delayed the achievement of Mexican independence. The numerically small, but variegated elites, regrouped in a common stand against Hidalgo's revolutionary movement in 1810. Themselves fragmented, mutually antagonistic on central issues, they sank their differencesfor the duration of the counter-revolutionary struggle. This re-forged unity proved, needless to say, temporary. A tactical alliance concealed far-reaching divisions: ultimately, the removal of the revolutionary challenge created a new set of circumstances.

The ground covered by recent studies on Brazil between 1930 and 1945 has fallen into two main schools of interest: one has concentrated on the political history of this period; the other on the background to Brazilian industrialization. With the exception of coffee and rice, Brazilian agriculture has remained relatively neglected as an area of research. Yet the importance of Brazilian agriculture both as a source for domestic consumption requirements and also as an export earner has constantly been presented as the explanation for the political evolution of Brazil in these years and the concomitant increased interest shown in the development of Brazilian manufacturing industries. This paper will concentrate on the Brazilian agricultural sector and will consider the nature of Vargas's agricultural autarquias — that is, the semi-autonomous administrative units Vargas established to supervise and direct the activities of selected areas of the economy and of society. It is hoped that, in so doing, it will contribute to a deeper understanding of how Getúlio Vargas governed Brazil between 1930 and 1945.

The 1920s remain a relatively neglected period in Brazilian historiography despite a recent boom in the study of contemporary Brazilian history and despite the intrinsic importance of that era.1 The post-war years constituted a watershed in the evolution of Brazilian culture, for example, as poets, novelists, artists and other pensants rejected further imitation of foreign models.2 The effervescence in the cultural sphere found ample resonance in political life; indeed, during the 1920s republican institutions were perhaps more seriously questioned than at any time since the early 1890s. The establishment of the Communist Party (1922) and the phenomenon of tenentismo were the most obvious manifestations of the erosion of the national consensus.3 The absence of an extensive body of scholarly literature on these subjects notwithstanding, their general configuration is at least familiar. One neglected field of inquiry, however, is foreign policy, the subject of this article. The aim of this exploratory probe is not to survey Brazil's diplomatic relations during the period; rather, the central analytical focus here is on the linkage between elite images and foreign policy strategy, the underlying premise being that policy decisions depend upon how policy-makers view their external environment.4

On 1 April 1980, Brazil concluded sixteen years of military-dominated government. While political scientists have taken the lead in examining the origins and methods of the regime in terms of civil-military relations, the role of the military in society, and what might be called military politics, historians have lagged behind in providing analysis from an institutional perspective.1 While the Revolution of 1964 might have occurred even if Brazil had never entered World War II, the Brazilian army's involvement in that conflict and its readjustments to the post-war situation gave shape and substance to that revolution.

In Argentina during World War II the US stepped outside the limits of the Good Neighbor policy proclaimed by the Roosevelt administration in 1933 and attempted to overthrow the government of a major Latin American power.1 Between 1941 and 1945 Argentina was not only treated differently from the rest of Latin America by the United States, but was also singled out for harsher treatment than other neutrals, despite its large material contribution to the Allied cause. In 1944 Washington was readier to compromise with Franco's Spain, a country whose Axis connections were notorious, than it was to seek a settlement with the government in Buenos Aires.2 The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of US interference in Argentine affairs after Pearl Harbor and the reasons for US hostility to the rise of Perón following the military coup of June 1943.

The main concern of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) in recent years has been to lead and supervise the implementation of the resolutions adopted at its First Congress in 1975. Those resolutions cover a broad range of political, social, and economic issues, so that a full account of the Party's work over the past 5 years would require a complete survey of Cuba's domestic and foreign policies during that period.1 The very breadth of the PCC's work agenda in the latter half of the 1970s indicates how much the role of the Party in Cuba has evolved over the past decade;2 such responsibilities demonstrate a continuation of the process of strengthening the Party begun in the early 1970s.

By the time Evita* died on 26 July 1952, she had become the source of two widely contradictory myths coexisting side by side as if their subject were two different persons. In one, she was the beloved saint who had sacrificed her life for the poor; in the other, the ambitious parvenue who used her power to satisfy her insatiable thirst for revenge.

Does political science advance or do fashions merely change? There can be no doubt that this past decade has seen a major change in the ways in which the nature of military rule in Latin America has been examined. To a large extent, this has been due to changes in the nature of Latin American governments themselves and, more particularly, to the emergence of the long term military-bureaucratic (sometimes called bureaucratic-authotitarian) government.

…the record would seem to suggest that Latin American political studies have more often than not been unimaginative in concept and pedestrian in approach. A certain healthy eclecticism has been diluted by a Pavlovian tendency to respond to passing fads within the discipline. Political scientists committed to Latin American studies have in recent years rushed to follow the the comparative pack. They have distinctly been trend-followers rather than trend-setters.

The initial interest in womens studies arose in the sixties from a desire to rectify the fact that women, whether as actors or subjects, had been ignored in the evolution of knowledge. It soon became clear, however, that this had been more than a fault of omission for, because of lack of information, women had often been misunderstood and misrepresented. Several modernisation studies, for example, have concentrated on interviewing men and yet produced generalisations about levels of modernisation for the population as a whole. Joseph Kahi in The Measurement of Modernism made numerous statements about modernisation in Brazil and Mexico and its relationship to institutions in society, but his 1,300 interviews were all with men.1 The few studies which do include women show that they lag behind men in educational achievement and social mobility.2 This suggests that had Kahi included women in his samples his results might have been rather different.

The facts are by now sufficiently clear for it to be common ground in any discussion of late nineteenth-century imperialism that the British State was disinclined to interfere on behalf of British capitalists with Latin American interests when these were threatened by local firms or States. Equally it is clear that British capitalists did not invest in Argentina in the belief that, by so doing, they were actively assisting the foreign policy of the British State. The State provided no grounds for this belief and no inducement to invest, and had it done so it is unlikely that the capitalists concerned – a pretty liberal bunch by and large – would have responded to any greater extent than they felt was consistent with their economic advantage. Again, there were not, in Britain, territorially ambitious militarists and aristocrats with their sights set on the South American republics. This element was quite adequately catered for in the Empire. In short, the models of imperialism favoured by Hobson, Schumpeter, and other conspiracy theorists, however appropriate they may be in particular cases, cannot be generalized and have very little relevance to Argentina.

Historians generally recognize that the writing of contemporary history is an exercise of some delicacy. Narrating the contests of the Christian sects at the time of Constantine, Edward Gibbon remarks that ‘the fierce and partial writers of the times, ascribing all virtue to themselves and all guilt to their adversaries, have painted the battle of the angels and the daemons. Our calmer reason,’ he goes on, ‘will reject such pure and perfect monsters of vice and sanctity.’