Cuando Herbert Eugene Bolton, en 1932, enunció su tesis sobre la integración histórica de los países americanos despertó gran conmoción entre los historiadores sobre la validez de su tesis. Lo que propuso, simplemente, era que existían raíces comunes en todos los países americanos y que éstos necesitaban un estudio integrado para comprender los puntos complejos de dicha historia y darle una perspectiva continental. No cabe duda que a partir de 1932 varios historiadores han corregido ciertos aspectos de su tesis, pero a la vez, sigue íntegra como base para empezar un estudio económico y social de la ganadería americana. El problema con la tesis de Bolton aparece durante el período después de la independencia de los varios países y a la vez con la unión continua del Canadá con el Imperio Británico. He aquí donde muchos historiadores lo critican sin considerar que casi todos los países tomaron sus inspiraciones intelectuales de Europa y también de los Estados Unidos.

The post-World War II period in Latin America, as elsewhere, has been marked by the presence of two somewhat contradictory phenomena in the field of armaments. On the one hand, most of the countries have continued their long-standing tradition of devoting a substantial portion of their national budgets to the military and have expanded their arsenals of weapons and stocks of military equipment. On the other hand, several governments have suggested various arms control measures for the Latin American countries. The aim of some of these suggestions has been a reduction in the level of armaments, equipment, and force size; the aim of other suggestions has been more modest—to freeze armaments and forces at existing levels; and the aim of still other suggestions has been to ban nuclear weapons from the region.

From 1912 until the late 1920s Argentina faced an agrarian social and economic crisis of proportions unprecedented in the republic's history. Trapped between unstable prices and the exactions of landlords, thousands of tenant farmers organized, went on strike, and at times sabotaged agricultural production. This unrest swept across the cereal belt, a 160,000,000-acre zone of extremely fertile soil in the provinces of Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, Córdoba, and Buenos Aires, and in the national territory of La Pampa. After 1919, rural unrest acquired new complexity when tens of thousands of landless workers employed by the tenant farmers began strike movements of their own. The purpose of the present article is to analyze the origins and characteristics of this rural upheaval and then to examine the responses to it formulated by the republic's national political leaders.

Early in 1938, Brazil signed a treaty with Bolivia that would open part of the apparently oil-rich Chaco region to Brazilian exploitation. Up to that time, Brazil's growing but still negligible national effort to find oil within her own territory had proved fruitless; the treaty, however, seemed to guarantee it a supply of oil not controlled by the great international petroleum companies, an important proviso during the nationalistic Vargas administration. Yet Brazil failed to pursue the prospect opened by the treaty until the 1950s, and then its attempts to implement it were defeated by internal economic nationalism. This essay deals with Brazil's abortive efforts in the 1950s to frame and implement a policy for developing its oil concessions in Bolivia. The incident is an isolated example of the difficult international relations which prevail in Latin America.

A worldwide scheduled air transportation system for passengers, cargo, and mail has been created since World War II. In its global scope it is almost unique; the International Air Transport Association's only prototype is the Universal Postal Union, which for over a century has been the intergovernment vehicle for arranging the expeditious, reliable interchange of foreign mails between nations. Somewhat comparable to IATA in purpose but much more limited geographically, are such arrangements as those which provide for the transfer of electric power across the border between the United States and Canada, the coordination of highway, waterway, and railway traffic respectively in Europe, and the international telephone, cable, and radio services. The general public does not know—and has little need to know—what has gone on behind the scenes to create these facilities which in essence are large international public utility systems. A typical person's impressions would probably reflect his nationality. An American would probably assume that the individual components of such a utility system were privately owned and operated for commercial profit (except for the Postal Service). A European would tend to assume that electric power companies, railroads, airlines, telecommunications companies, and the Postal Service would all be owned by some government. Each would be substantially correct in his own context.

The appraisal of development projects is often complicated by the fact that they rarely occur in isolation. In Latin America, the effectiveness of public housing programs and the reactions of the people involved are, as a rule, bound up with the whole complex of heterogeneous developments we call “urbanization.” And when public housing reaches the villages, it typically goes hand in hand with agrarian reform. This is generally the case in Venezuela, where large public housing schemes have been in operation since 1958.

Consequently it is difficult to disentangle and then evaluate the impact of industrialization per se from social infrastructure development in the towns, or agrarian reform per se from social infrastructure development in the villages. The Guayana region of Venezuela is one of the few areas where a production-oriented project and a social welfare project have operated discretely, but within a uniform socioeconomic context.

The long-term revenue and balance of payments policies of the Central American Common Market (CACM) countries are (1) to achieve harmonization of their tax structures and improve tax administration; and (2) to establish a Central American Monetary Union capable of (a) assisting member countries suffering from temporary balance of payments disequilibria; (b) operating as a Federal Reserve Banktype system; and (c) serving as a clearinghouse for intra-CACM as well as external payments. These policies have been receiving considerable study. On 25 February 1964 the central banks of the five CACM countries signed in San Salvador an Agreement for the Establishment of a Central American Monetary Union. The foregoing policies were enunciated at a meeting of the Central American presidents in San José, Costa Rica, on 19 March 1963, when they agreed “to establish a monetary union and a common policy in fiscal, economic and social matters, within the framework of the Economic Integration Program.” A Central American Monetary Council was created by the Agreement. The Council comprises the presidents of the five central banks of the CACM countries.

En aquella remota época, cuando la mayor parte de España estaba en poder de los árabes, cuando bajo el yugo de los sarracenos innumerables fieles cristianos sufrían en tierras moras amarguísima esclavitud, con grave peligro para la salvación de sus almas y seguridad de sus vidas, la Augusta Reina de los Cielos, atenta a tan graves males, ocurrió en su infinita caridad para redimir a los cautivos.

Como el célebre San Agustín, famoso Obispo de Hipona, autor de las Confesiones, en sus fecundos Soliloquios, el bienaventurado Pedro Nolasco, cuyo corazón estaba lleno de piedad, meditaba en los medios a escoger para librar a los cristianos cautivos o disminuir las penas de su cautividad. Y se consagró de tal manera, que la Santísima Virgen, apareciéndosele, expresóle que tanto Ella como su unigénito Hijo, aceptaban se fundase una orden de religiosos que se encargara de la liberación de los cautivos cristianos del poder otomano simbolizado por la Media Luna y guiado por los principios de Mahoma.

El 24 de octubre de 1970 el doctor Norman E. BarLang, quien recibió el premio Nobel de la Paz por su labor para mejorar las cosechas de trigo, advirtió en una conferencia de prensa en la ciudad de México que “la actitud irreal del mundo hacia el desmedido crecimiento de la población mundial es el mayor problema que encaramos en la actualidad”

Esa actitud irreal que señala el Dr. BarLang es la que prevalece en nuestra América, especialmente en Guatemala y el resto de Centroamérica. Aparentemente existen tres grandes posturas ideológicas en lo que se relaciona a la situación demográfica en Centroamérica:

A. Los grupos de extrema izquierda minimizan el problema con posturas simplistas e irracionales. Para ellos no hay ningún problema poblacional real ya que éste ha sido creado artificialmente por el “imperialismo norteamericano” para producir un pánico general que nos lleve a implementar métodos de control de natalidad y, siguiendo la lógica de estos grupos, a la subsiguiente despoblación de Centroamérica.

To compare race relations is even harder than to compare systems of slavery. However variously slavery may be defined, it is at least systematized—that is, slave trading, labor, provisioning, punishment, rebellion, and manumission are viewed as clear-cut categories, often formally codified and self-consciously compared with conditions elsewhere.

In race relations none of this is true. Race itself may refer to anything from a linguistic community to a genealogically isolated population, and contexts shift through time as well as across cultures. In the narrower sense, races, as distinct from ethnic elements, are not even groups; individual behavior and self-images are not congruent with external identifications. Relationships considered “racial” may be limited to certain public or legal institutions in one society, but in another may include psychological responses in most realms of life. In short, race relations can be compared only in the context of entire social systems.

Amazonia is once again the nouvelle vague. Object of intense but ephemeral attention at the turn of the century and intermittently thereafter, the region now confronts a concerted and multipronged program for its de facto integration into the nation.

A special issue of Desenvolvimento & Conjuntura in March 1967, devoted to Amazonia, editorialized: “O atual interêsse pela Amazônia resulta de duas cadeias causais, de grande profundidade, e que são; primeiro, a consciência nacional da necessidade de acelerar o desenvolvimento de todo o territorio nacional, visando à terminação dos desniveis econômicos; e, segundo a compreensão que temos atualmente de fatôres de âmbito internacional. Estamos cônscios de que chegamos a era do desenvolvimento regional.”

Scholarly interest in student political behavior has grown markedly in recent years. Among those who have done research and written on Latin American students a good deal of effort has gone into attempts to develop some generalizations about bases of student activism. A major objective of these efforts has been to try and explain why students become politically active and what differentiates the politically active from the inactive students. Several hypotheses have been advanced in this research attempting to explain high degrees of student political involvement by relating it to factors in the students’ backgrounds or environment. Some of the hypotheses which stand out in the literature have been selected for analysis here. They will be examined in relation to data gathered during recent research on university students in Guatemala.

During the past twelve years almost half a million Cubans have sought refuge in Miami. Among them were over 14,000 unaccompanied children between 6 and 18 years of age. This article tells for the first time the story of how the children's exodus began. It covers the period between the middle of November 1960, when we first became aware of the need, and 1 February 1961, when I met with the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare to brief him on the plight of the unaccompanied children among the refugees. Two days later, President Kennedy announced a government aid program for Cuban refugees which included money for the care of unaccompanied children, “the most troubled group among the refugee population.”

About 4:30 p.m. on 26 December 1960, Pan American World Airways Flight 422 from Havana touched down at Miami International Airport. There were few passengers, if any, on that flight who did not experience a real sense of relief as they descended from the airplane. Events in Cuba were rapidly moving toward a climax and those who could were joining the increasing exodus to Miami.

The founding of the Argentine National Observatory and much of its later development were the results of unusual inter-American cooperation. In 1870 the noted American astronomer Benjamin Apthorp Gould had realized his dream of inaugurating a major observatory in Argentina in order to extend to the Southern Hemisphere the kind of detailed examination of the stars already undertaken by the great observatories of the Northern Hemisphere. After a few false starts Gould was able to begin work in Córdoba thanks to the enthusiasm of President Domingo F. Sarmiento and the wholehearted support of his minister of public instruction, Nicolás Avellaneda. The Argentine government appropriated funds for the construction of an observatory and the purchase of a modest but adequate inventory of instruments.

Within the past decade a perennial and intriguing problem concerning Canadian foreign relations has gained new prominence. Can the government of Canada as empowered under Heading VI (Section 91) of the British North America Act (1867) conclude contractual relations with foreign states when the terms of such contractual relations can be given legal implementation only by legislation of the provinces in areas reserved to them under heading VI (sections 92 and 93) ? Or more precisely, since certain classes of legislative subjects are specifically reserved to the provinces, can the individual province then engage in “foreign relations” vis-á-vis those reserved subjects?

With the signing of the Franco-Quebec Agreements of 15 September 1967, which provided for increased cultural, scientific, and technological cooperation between France and Quebec, and the developments leading up to and flowing from this Accord, the problem of the role and extent of provincial powers in regard to foreign relationships again came to the fore.

Paraguay has a relatively open (for Latin America) class structure, a strong national consciousness, a two-party political system, and mass involvement in national politics, all of which are features that some writers believe should be associated with representative democracy of the North American type. In Paraguay, however, these features are associated with, and in fact reinforce, a political system which for most of the past century has consisted of a series of conservative and unstable dictatorships.

It will be suggested in this paper that this association is made possible by the development of certain kinds of interpersonal relationships which have been called “dyadic contracts” since they bind two individuals in either patron-client relationships or colleague relationships. They take various institutionalized forms in many peasant societies that lack corporate descent groups, having been described for Italy, Spain, and the Philippines, as well as Latin America.