If an observer from outer space had landed his UFO at any meeting of Latin Americanists during the last few years, he would have had to agree with the structural anthropologists. He would have said that at these meetings, versions of the same myth are constantly repeated: dependency and development, exploitation and wealth, backwardness and sophisticated technology, unemployment and extreme concentration of income. Somewhat wearily, our creature from space would have commented: “The brains of these beings appear to limit their images and thoughts to binary opposites.” Returning to the debate on the meaning of analyses of dependency gives one the sensation of entering a discussion in which imagination is bound by preestablished models. Nevertheless, as though I were one of the “founding fathers” of dependency, I endorse the ceremonial consumption of the theme. How to escape from this uncomfortable position?

Two recent events originating outside Latin America have had powerful negative effects on the growth process under way in most countries of the region. These were the OPEC oil crisis of October 1973 and the ensuing economic decline in the industrial world in 1974 and 1975—the worst international recession since World War II. If the trends represented by these events continue, they threaten to render unmanageable the acute short-term problems they have imposed on countries that were already in difficulty, such as Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Moreover, emergency measures undertaken by several governments have tended to distract attention from long-term pressures that are inexorably building up in the region and may even aggravate these pressures before they are recognized as requiring a concerted regional response.

Much of the focus of, indeed much of the impetus for, the current discussion of science and technology policy for the Latin American industrial sector has involved comparisons of foreign and domestic ownership. While such traditional concerns as the quantity of repatriated profits and interference in domestic politics (in the case of foreign firms) continue to be important, much of the recent literature is on comparative financial performance, growth, technology, and the interrelationships among these elements. The following conclusion is ubiquitous: Domestic enterprises, due largely to “technological” shortcomings, are simply unable to compete with the foreign firms and are therefore restricted both to secondary positions within individual product markets and to the less profitable sectors.

I regret the lack of time for annotating the more important entries in this bibliography. In lieu of annotation, little need be said: scholars who are knowledgeable will require no guidance; the uninitiated can plunge in and begin using it. Yet a few comments are offered for what they are worth. Comercio Exterior, the monthly publication of Banco de México de Comercio Exterior, is by far the leading journal publishing literature on science and technology in developing countries with, naturally, an emphasis on Latin America. The Department of Scientific Affairs, Organization of American States is the second most prolific source, with El Trimestre Económico perhaps the third most important publishing vehicle. World Development, a relatively new journal, has been coming on strong in the last several years.

With this ringing affirmation, Julien Bryan concluded Americans All, his first documentary about Latin America produced under the auspices of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CI-AA) as part of the U.S. government's effort to foster hemispheric solidarity. By 1945 he had completed twenty-two more, including four on Latin America as a region; five on Chile; three each about Peru, Bolivia, and Uruguay; and one each concerning Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, and Paraguay. The CI-AA distributed the films to thousands of U.S. schools, clubs, and organizations during the war. After the conflict was over, they continued to be the standard educational films about Latin America until, by the 1960s, damage or obsolescence forced most prints out of circulation. For the historian, however, “obsolescence” is not an undesirable quality, and a careful screening suggests that these thirty-year old documentaries contain an extraordinary visual record of Spanish South America and provide insight into inter-American relations. The purpose here is to assess the value of Bryan's twenty-three films as historical evidence, based on an analysis of the narration and photography and taking into account the special nature of film as a source material.

Scholars working in the area of contemporary Cuban literature are frequently asked about the current state of literary affairs on the island. The novel in particular, with the exception of a handful of resounding yet politically controversial successes, is rarely mentioned. Only one novelist of merit, Edmundo Desnoes, has fully embraced the revolution and achieved some measure of success in serving it without greatly compromising his aesthetic standards. How he has achieved this and why he is unique are questions that deserve exploration.

The most politically sensitive question in studies of economic growth is: What is the optimal relationship for the distribution of income and wealth to economic growth? The rich often diversify their assets, and thus it is not easy to know the total wealth of an individual, or the distribution of wealth for a nation. For this reason, the analysis presented here for Argentina from 1914 to 1969 makes only brief reference to the influence of the distribution of wealth and focuses instead on the relationship between income distribution and economic growth. Income distribution in other nations also is discussed in order to evaluate the possibility of utilizing their experience to judge the Argentine case. The relationship between increases in workers' and entrepreneurs' income and those in investment is also examined, for an economy will grow only if investment takes place. Moreover, because funds spent on private consumption cannot be invested and much past economic analysis has studied the relationship between changes in income and in consumption, this relationship must be considered in the Argentine case. We will look at several categories of income, taking into account the effects of inflation and of ownership of selected categories of wealth.

One cannot help but ask, “Are international businesses, like the fabled Don Quixote, making dragons of windmills?” We have seen a great rise in international business investment. We have also seen a corresponding rise in business attempts to prevent an awareness by local nations of this increased foreign investment. The general feeling is that increased awareness will lead to greater resentment. The question, however, has not been directly asked: What happens to the evaluation of foreign firms in a specific setting in Latin America as the rate of foreign investment climbs and is more keenly perceived? In an attempt to determine if we are realistically assessing the situation in Latin America, a study was conducted in four Central American countries: El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. These countries were selected because they have been among the rapidly developing countries of Latin America since the formation of the Central American Common Market (CACM) in the early 1960s, receiving considerable foreign investment.

Library cooperation on regional and statewide levels has helped to expand significantly the collections of individual research libraries through cooperative purchasing policies, cataloging networks, union lists, interlibrary loan services and other means. However, access to the contents of these materials is also essential if this vast body of information is to be utilized fully. Books on specific topics can be found with relative ease by searching library subject catalogs, printed bibliographies, and specialized data bases. On the other hand, the wealth of information that appears regularly in periodical literature is all but lost unless it is adequately indexed.

El 1° de abril de 1967 comienza a funcionar el Departamento de Sociología de la Fundación Bariloche, creado sobre la base de un grupo de trabajo en Sociología. En 1974 se transforma en Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, con el ingreso de un grupo de trabajo en Ciencia Política. En sus inicios el Departamento contó con tres investigadores de planta. Actualmente su número es de once. Computando el número de estudiantes realizando trabajo de posgrado, se llega a veinticuatro miembros académicos en el Departamento. Siete miembros no académicos cumplen funciones de apoyo técnico-administrativo.