La integración se ha iniciado como proceso económico, y más por sectores de la economía que por la economía en general; pero tiende a convertirse en un proceso global porque la economía no es un factor aislado de la sociedad, sino que se vincula a la educación, la técnica, las estructuras políticas, el ordenamiento jurídico. La integración por la economía puede ser el primer eslabón de una cadena multidimensional; pero puede desde luego concebírsele y querérsele con un propósito restringido, en términos pura y simplemente económicos.

Cuando se pone por obra la integración económica en los tratados se ha querido a veces despolitizarla, y por eso se ha enfatizado en las negociaciones, los comunicados y los discursos que se trata de algo puramente económico y que por consiguiente se deja de lado lo político.

Mr. Tad Szulc, a highly perceptive and knowledgeable New York Times correspondent and certainly an “old Latin American hand” wrote very wisely: “One of the first rules a reporter needs to learn in Latin America is that he must never be swayed by reason or logic in trying to gauge future events. This precept should apply as well to the contemporary historian or to the foreign-policy maker observing the Latin American scene, who must realize that neither short- nor long-range predictions are possible and that in all wisdom none should be attempted. The scene is too crowded, the actors move too fast, propelled by visible and invisible forces of formidable magnitude.” Having uttered this warning, Mr. Szulc proceeded to violate it and make some sage observations about the “tomorrow” of Latin America.

A loan is considered a purely financial transaction that alters the composition of particular portfolios while leaving the aggregate stock of assets unchanged. Because such a transaction does not of itself generate new production, its dollar value is excluded from the calculation of GNP. It is probably for this reason that the economic significance of lending programs for stabilization purposes has been largely neglected. The transfer payment is similar to the loan in that neither enters the income stream directly, yet the former is considered to have a substantial economic effect.

In a development context external financing is thought to be a significant variable for increasing an economy's growth rate. The success of these loans in generating growth is usually measured by comparing the actual growth rate with some desired standard growth rate.

Planning is often analogous to weather in that everyone discusses it but little is really done. Such, at least, is the case in Guatemala where individuals, groups, and the government espouse a need for development planning in eloquent terms but produce few positive results. In Guatemala, however, it is increasingly recognized that planning can be a logical and relatively scientific method of improving resource utilization. The purpose of this paper is to appraise a few general aspects of development planning in Guatemala and to characterize its organizational structure and the political constraints imposed upon the process.

Governments are assuming a more dominant role in development, particularly in the less advanced areas. Public opinion has generally supported this trend by criticizing development programs or blaming the lack of development on the government.

“Tan desperdigada anda la obra de cultura por nuestra América, y tan inepta es la organización y distribución bibliográfica en nuestros países, que acaso para muchos lectores de la Revista Iberoamericana el nombre de José Antonio Ramos (1885-1946) sea poco menos que desconocido. Mas a los ojos del escasísimo número de intelectuales familiarizados con su obra polifacética y saturada de fuerte aliento renovador, el homenaje que hoy rendimos a este enérgico luchador desaparecido está plenamente justificado. José Antonio Ramos es uno de los escritores más intensos y a la vez más desconocidos de la América ibera en la hora actual, y urge propagar su obra y divulgar su mensaje”.

El comentario anterior justifica el homenaje que le rindió la Revista Iberoamericana a Ramos en su número 24 y con motivo de la muerte del escritor. Sin embargo, la figura de Ramos no ha sido lo suficientemente valorizada y su obra lo suficientemente divulgada, ni siquiera en Cuba.

The Brazilian Negroes must be viewed in the context of Brazilian history and civilization and of the forces of social change operating throughout Brazilian society. In this article I intend to point out some of the historical factors that significantly influence the social mobility, or lack of it, of Brazilian Negroes, to analyze the present status of Negroes in Brazilian society, and to suggest some possible ways of dealing with this largely ignored, but very serious, racial situation that contains the seeds of a potential social crisis.

After the discovery of Brazil by Pedro Alvares Cabral in 1500, the Portuguese exploited its coastal territories for more than fifty years with little help other than that of the enslaved Indians.

The International Coffee Agreement (1962) culminated a long search for a comprehensive coffee price support scheme. From the late 1920s to the early 1940s Brazil had unilaterally supported coffee prices by storing and burning huge quantities of coffee. Brazil's efforts to gain multilateral price support during this period were in vain. In the mid-1950s, when it again became apparent that coffee production would soon exceed demand at any price satisfactory to producers, Brazil renewed the search for multilateral market support. Her efforts met with partial success in October 1957 when seven Latin American coffee growing nations signed the Mexico Agreement. Market support was gradually expanded in a series of annual agreements until representatives of countries accounting for over 90 percent of the world's production and consumption agreed to the five-year International Coffee Agreement (1962). This agreement was followed by another five-year pact, the International Coffee Agreement of 1968.

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento is little known in the United States, but he is one of Latin America's greatest men. Man of letters, educator, revolutionary, statesman, there was little in which Sarmiento did not excel. One writer has described him as “the most powerful brain America has produced,” and another has said that “America has not produced another man like him nor does Europe have in its history a personage who resembles him.” Sarmiento is the author of Facundo, one of the outstanding works in Latin American literature; he was the founder of public education in South America (he is often described as “the Horace Mann of South America”); and he was president of Argentina during the period of national unification (which has led one writer to call him, “The Abraham Lincoln of Argentina”).

Had the military not ousted President Fernando Belaúnde Terry and substituted their rule for constitutional processes, 1969 would have been an election year in Peru. According to Belaúnde, the probable winner of those elections would have been Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, the perennial candidate of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA). Therefore, to paraphrase the comment attributed to Mark Twain on arising from his sickbed and reading his obituary in the local newspaper, announcements of Apra's demise are somewhat premature.

Few political movements in Latin America have enjoyed a comparable fame, and none has matched that of the apristas in having contributed a nonpersonalistic genre to the family of Latin America political parties.