This study explores some of the changes currently taking place in the USSR and the possible impact of changing Soviet foreign policy on Latin America. The article begins with an analysis of the possible effects of the attempts to separate Party and State on foreign policy and on the interpretation and observance of the so-called internationalist obligations of the Soviet Union towards Latin America. It goes on to investigate the possible impact of perestroika on the internal relations of COMECON countries and any weakening in the commitment of its members to political and social changes in the Latin American republics. These changes are looked at particularly, though not uniquely, with reference to Cuba and Nicaragua. Some predictions are also made as to the possible future moves the USSR might make to strengthen and improve its relations with the largest countries in the region such as Brazil and Argentina.

As the world capitalist system developed during the nineteenth century non-slave labour became a commodity that circulated around the globe and contributed to capital accumulation in metropolitan centres. The best examples are the emigration of millions of Asian indentured servants and European labourers to areas of European colonisation. Asians replaced emancipated African slaves on plantations in the Caribbean and South America, supplemented a declining slave population in Cuba, built railways in California, worked in mines in South Africa, laboured on sugarcane plantations in Mauritius and Fiji, and served on plantations in southeast Asia. Italian immigrants also replaced African slaves on coffee estates in Brazil, worked with Spaniards in the seasonal wheat harvest in Argentina, and, along with other Europeans, entered the growing labour market in the United States. From the perspective of capital, these workers were a cheap alternative to local wage labour and, as foreigners without the rights of citizens, they could be subjected to harsher methods of social control.1

The purpose of this article is to examine the evolution, between 1840 and 1914, of the freight rates for bulk cargoes and general cargoes, in the trades between South American ports in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Peru, and European ports in the United Kingdom/Continent range. The article does not deal with the transport of passengers nor the exports of refrigerated foodstuffs from South America. The basic data on the freight rates charged for some of the main exports and imports in those trades are shown in Graphs i a/b (p. 24). The Appendix includes information about the methodology and the sources used for the preparation of the freight series. The freight rates quoted in the text are nominal or ‘market’ prices in decimal pounds.1

Between 1900 and 1914, Argentina experienced the period of greatest growth of its railway network (see Fig. 1). During this time its total length was increased by about 12,000 miles, thus improving on the increase achieved during the railway boom of the 1880s. As before, the new peak was associated with a massive inflow of foreign capital which reached record levels: about 2,000 million gold pesos, against 800 millions during the 1880s. Furthermore, the new railway constructions were mainly made after 1907 and located in the pampas (see Tables 1 and 2). This rapid growth has been explained by many authors mainly as a global consequence of the so-called Mitre law (national law 5315), sanctioned in 1907, which standardised railway legislation in a way that favoured foreign investors, giving rise to an investment boom, especially among the British groups settled in the pampas.1

The cry for land is, without any doubt, the loudest, the most dramatic and the most desperate sound in Guatemala.’ So wrote the Guatemalan bishops in 1988. In their country's long history, the bishops stated, only one president – Jacobo Arbenz – had addressed the issue of land reform.1 Inaugurated in 1951, Arbenz presided over the most successful agrarian reform in the history of Central America. The reports of the US embassy bear testimony to the fact that within eighteen months land was distributed to 100,000 peasant families, amid little violence and without adversely affecting production.2 Praise for initiating the reform does not belong, however, solely to Arbenz. As his wife observed, ‘Alone, he could not have done it’. Praise should also be given to the Communist party of Guatemala, whose leaders were Arbenz's closest personal and political friends.3

The Paraguayan liberal republic, spanning from the end of the War of the Triple Alliance until the end of the Chaco War, is one of the most under-researched and probably one of the most undervalued periods of Paraguayan history and has only recently elicited some scholarly interest.1 During this period capital accumulation developed exclusively in the private domain, economic policies were informed by laissez–faire doctrines, and the political arena embodied, if mostly theoretically, the liberal principles of public contestation and elite competition. Those basic and distinctive traits, and in that particular combination, are found in no other period of Paraguayan history. It therefore makes conceptual sense to speak of the liberal republic as a distinct period in Paraguayan history.

When the Venezuelan dictator, Juan Vincente Gómez, died on 17 December 1935, after ruling Venezuela with an iron fist for 27 years, an outburst of popular unrest and nationalistic fervour was unleashed against the foreign oil companies operating on Venezuelan soil. The dominant oil interests in Venezuela at the time were Royal Dutch Shell, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and the Gulf Oil Company. There were several smaller companies such as British Controlled Oilfields, a British state-owned company with a network of Venezuelan affiliates, and the Socony Vacuum Company, a New York-based company which was a significant latecomer. It was the first three aforementioned companies, however, that constituted the Big Three.1 The oil companies were associated in the popular mind with the odious Gómez dictatorship and partly for this reason became the object of the people's wrath. Yet there were also practical economic and social reasons for the popular feeling against the companies. The latter paid low wages, provided miserable housing and social amenities for their workers and discriminated against Venezuelans in their employment practices.2 For more than a year after the dictator's death Venezuela was in the throes of popular unrest.

This article discusses the distinct historical phases in the development of the Nicaraguan Atlantic Coast region as the essential background to an analysis of the process of autonomy currently unfolding there. It identifies three main periods: English colonial rule; enclave economy when US companies were involved in a number of extractive enterprises; and, finally, control by the Sandinistas who came to power in 1979 after the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship.

The Atlantic Coast has been a forgotten area of study. Only recently, because of the Miskito Indian question, has the academic world and the public at large taken more interest. The tendency nevertheless has been to focus on the treatment of the Miskito population (and especially its temporary relocation from its traditional lands) not only as the most important issue, but as the only issue. While the Miskitos have been a proper cause for concern the Miskito question is only a small aspect of a complex set of social, political, economic and ethnic relations existing on the Atlantic Coast. The Miskitos are but one of six ethnic groups living on the Atlantic Coast.

In recent years there has been significant improvement in terms of the quantity and quality of empirical studies on Latin American urban labour markets.1 The relative degree of ignorance concerning the market for domestic service is therefore particularly notorious. Some important gaps in the current state of our knowledge are the determinants of long-term trends and of short and medium-term fluctuations in this market, the relationship between domestic service and female rural–urban migration, and that between domestic service and the aggregate labour market.

Introduction: Puerto Rican scholars have recently undertaken the task of re-interpreting the populist political project of the Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) during the decade of the 1940s. The new studies on this subject have focused on the class basis of the PPD's leadership, the class interests articulated in the policies adopted by the PPD government, and the structural context within which this party came to power and implemented its programme.

During the 1950s and 1960s Puerto Rico's industrial transformation was accompanied by social stability and relatively peaceful labour relations, which were essential for a development programme dependent upon foreign investments. The state took a central role in this process, as it guided economic activity and mobilised vital human and material resources. However, by the late 1960s profound changes in the island's political economy threatened this state-guided development programme. This essay traces the history of Puerto Rican economic change and the relationship between industrial transformation and the state's capacity to manage the operation of the economy, particularly industrial relations up to the late 1970s. Four features of this process will be examined: (1) labour relations during the early phase of industrialisation; (2) the changes in the economy resulting from the expansion of capital-intensive industrial sectors; (3) the impact of these changes on the state's capacity to manage the political economy, particularly its fiscal policy; and (4) how these changes altered the nature of state-labour relations.

On 15 March 1945 Juan José Arévalo became president of Guatemala. His inauguration marked the beginning of an unprecedented democratic parenthesis – ‘spring in the land of eternal tyranny ’1 – a spring that ended abruptly with the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954.

Arévalo was an anti-communist, a nationalist, and a reformer. He was an anti-communist who believed that individual communists should not be persecuted unless they violated the law. He was a nationalist who accepted that Guatemala was in the US sphere of influence. He was a reformer who eschewed radical change.