Perhaps nowhere else has the popular mentality been so taken with the idea of the market mechanism and automatic adjustment as in the United States. It is rather incrediblealthough admittedly something of a monument to the model itself—that in spite of two hundred years of Polanyi-type protective reactions to the market system—unions, cartels, counter-cyclical fiscal policy—Americans continue to be held in the grasp of this anachronistic ideology. The “typical American,” from migrant worker to President, may be aware of the fact that we do not live in a market economy, but he believes that something approaching perfect competition lurks unseen behind all activity as a guiding force and is therefore relevant, or that this is a system toward which we ought legitimately to be moving.

At the beginning of this study of military dictatorship and the political role of the intellectuals in Latin America, Florestan Fernandes (1970: 1) makes the following statement: “The idea that Latin America is a region in which the coups d'état are a political routine has become a commonplace.” Without doubt, such an opinion is justified and also explains—at least to a certain extent—the wealth of “routine” verdicts on the function of the military in Latin America. A contradiction, however, seems evident at this point: while the number of publications on the political and social position of the armed forces is rapidly increasing (McAlister, 1966; Rouquié, 1969), there is an evident lack of comprehensive analyses that go beyond detailed description, and which explain in a reliable and sound manner the phenomenon of the cyclically increasing militarization of politics. It cannot be overlooked that research on the role of the military in Latin America is in a really critical situation which calls for a reexamination of the facts according to new criteria.

In democratic, integrated political systems characterized by a sharing of fundamental social values and “primitive beliefs” among the population, elections serve a salutary purpose. They not only reaffirm the commitment and involvement of the citizen to the prevailing political system by the ritual act of voting participation, but simultaneously legitimize the means and processes by which political values are authoritatively allocated (Milnor, 1969: 1-2). Elections and voting “draw attention to common social ties and to the importance and apparent reasonableness of accepting the public policies that are adopted (Edelman, 1964: 3). For these reasons, elections serve to integrate the citizen into the polity.

In their identification with Latin America, major foreign powers-including Japan—have always considered the Central American region-the zone of present-day Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica—of secondary or lesser significance. For more than three centuries Spain attached marginal importance to this area and during the last 150 years, the five states there have played minor, though occasionally dramatic, roles in U.S. relations with Latin America. For Japan, until quite recently, the region has rarely fostered more than the single interest of trade, and that with stuttering results.

Because of its potential as a canal route, Nicaragua first drew Japanese attention to the area, attention that entered the historical record in such roundabout fashion that it raised more questions than it supplied answers.

Recent research on U.S. diplomacy in Latin America has indicated the prominent role of the State Department in gaining for American airlines a major share of interamerican aviation in the mid-1920s. The department's campaign to “de-Germanize” commercial aviation in the western hemisphere immediately prior to and during World War II has also drawn the attention of historians (McCann, 1968; Newton, 1965; Conn, 1960; Burden, 1943). Yet little analysis has been directed to U.S. policy in the late 1920s and early 1930s, crucial years for the shift of power away from European-supported commercial airlines in Latin America to Pan American Airways.

The Latin American military is a complex institution in a complex society. It probably has always been, but in the past the dynamics acting upon the change versus order equation have allowed new structural relationships to be worked out over extended periods of time, relatively free from ideological passions and exogenous influences. That time has passed. Probably in no other region of the world are military establishments undergoing the degree of institutional selfexamination and mission redefinition as are the armies of Latin America today. They have neither the development-oriented self-confidence of the armies of the “new” nations, nor the threat-oriented Weltanschauung of the military in the established countries. Previously acceptable roles—as moderators in the political process or guarantors of their own image of the country's traditions—are under examination not only in the society at large but in the heart of the military institutions.

In 1874, a group of Frenchmen in revolt against the academic rules of their profession was dubbed “Impressionist”; this attempt at destruction by ridicule failed when the painters turned the intended insult into an honored label. The inflated value put upon their work since has not diminished the honor of the title. Another type of blowing up has had the opposite effect: Anarchism, whose modern emergence was contemporary with Impressionism, has pejorative connotations today. Too often, it is used as a synonym for “anarchy,” and we have been encouraged to think of it as merely a revolutionary creed like communism with, if anything, more nihilistic and destructive overtones. In the empty dialogue of political denunciation, the epithet “anarchist” has become the countercharge to the accusation “fascist,” without the protagonists having much idea what either term means. The height of absurdity was reached when long-suffering Polish workmen were described as “anarchists” by their socialist masters after the economic crisis of Christmas 1970.

One of the fundamental difficulties in the study of Latin American politics by North American scholars has been the attempt to apply the political experience of the United States (and, to a lesser extent, that of the developed countries of Europe and Asia) to that region. In attempting to interpret Latin America’s political patterns and understand her political difficulties, emphasis has been placed historically on such visible features as the instability of national governments, the lack of adequate party systems, the dysfunctional role of the military, inadequate constitutions, hierarchic social structures and a variety of deficiencies in the region’s political culture. In proceeding along these lines, analysts have been working from the implicit, although I believe unconscious, assumption that the Latin American nation-state constitutes a large, geographically dispersed polity. Until recently there has been very little effort to even study the political processes of the Latin American city, much less attempt to understand national politics in light of the region’s peculiar urban culture.

This paper discusses the Cuban stand in the socialist controversy on material versus moral incentives, placing emphasis on the role of economic, political, and ideological factors. The controversy is of fundamental importance for Marxist- Leninist theory, as well as for the implementation of such theory in socialist countries. Actually, the reference to “incentives” conveys the impression of a narrower scope than the controversy has been in reality. Internally, the type of incentives chosen affects crucial economic areas such as the method of planning, the allocation of resources, the distribution system, the use of money, the organization of the enterprise, and even the criteria for appointing managers. In the political sphere, the incentive decision affects political control, mass mobilization, people's participation in the decision-making process, and the degree of consensus.

In October of 1968, in what appeared to be the typical and time-honored fashion of Latin American military establishments, the Peruvian Army unseated the constitutionally elected government of Fernando Belaunde Terry. To many in the United States and elsewhere who saw Belaunde as a dedicated reformer in the best tradition of the Alliance for Progress, the golpe represented yet further evidence of the Peruvian military's determination to remain the “watchdog of the oligarchy.” However, the new government, headed by General Juan Velasco Alvarado, declared from the first that, far from being an attempt to defend the oligarchy, their action represented the firm intention of the Peruvian military to carry out the basic reforms that previous civilian governments had been either too weak or too corrupt to effect. Indeed, the new government Velasco promised would be nothing short of nationalist and revolutionary.

The early 1950s mark a turning-point in the history of religious movements among the Japanese minority in Brazil. Various religious groups, particularly certain Buddhist sects and the so-called “new religions” of Japan for the first time undertook active proselytization through organized propaganda and missionary activities. The following are representative types of these religious groups:

1. (1) those which had been transplanted from Japan to Brazil by Japanese immigrants in the period before World War II and immediately after: Honmon Butsuryü Shü (a Buddhist sect), Tenri-kyō, Ōmoto, and ō-no-Ie (all three new religions), and the like;

2. (2) Buddhist sects which began to try to organize their “potential adherents” among the Japanese on the basis of household religious affiliation, regardless of how tenuous or how thoroughly lapsed;

3. (3) those which had grown rapidly in postwar Japan and extended their propagation activities overseas: new religions like Sekai Kyūsei Kyō, P.L. Kyōdan, and so on;

4. (4) those which originated with the Japanese minority in Brazil on the basis of traditional Japanese folk beliefs: Nossa Senhora de Kannon (Our Lady of Kannon, or Sei Kannon Shū HakkokuKannon Dō), Kaminoya Yaoyorozu-kyō, Fudō Myōō, Shinreikyō, and the like;

5. (5) Umbanda, a syncretic fusion of African cults, Catholicism, and ‘ spiritism.

Throughout the 1960s, all these religious movements became increasingly active and gained more and more followers.

Panama is a land of trade. For four and a half centuries, it has been a funnel for exchange between Europe and the west coast of South America and between the Atlantic and the Pacific. This article examines the place of retail trade in the Panamanian economy, with an emphasis as much cultural and social as it is economic.

Political scientists today are deeply engaged in the search for better ways to study the phenomena within their purview and for more insightful characterizations of political processes. Examination of the politically active military in developing countries has not escaped the trend. Yet this remains a segment of the discipline where impressionism and conjecture still are much in vogue. Indeed, the state of the art of analysis of the military role in less-developed areas is discouraging to some (Nordlinger, 1970). Even without taking a glum view, however, there is ample room to hold that more precise and structured studies of the politicomilitary phenomenon are much needed. The approach to the study of the Latin American military suggested here, which has possible applications to other geographic sectors of the underdeveloped world, is not intended to substitute for, but rather to complement forms of analysis that customarily have been followed.

“Popular literature” is a term that appears in serious literary context most often as a means of disparaging the unremitting yokelism of the larger reading public and the cynical but uninspired writers who prey on the pocketbooks of yokeldom. The term may also appear in contexts in which its meaning is altogether different, as in the sober studies carried out by anthropologists and folklorists in which the literary manifestations of folk culture are studied. In the latter instance, the term loses its burden of vague antagonism and assumes a scholarly respectability based on the tested relevance and importance of primitive, preliterate, or peasant societies. In literate societies such as ours, the large area between this popular literature and the real literature of the truly cultured minority is dealt with gingerly, if at all. It is tacitly taken to represent the same kind of mindless consumerism that makes such an innovation as the electric canopener an overnight commercial success.

Any time a political system has to induct a formerly excluded group into the political process, there is apt to be some uncertainty about what the consequences will be. This has been true in the United States on several occasions. When the Nineteenth Amendment was under discussion, there was considerable interest in what effect the feminine vote would have. When Southern blacks began to vote in large numbers in the 1960s, politicians and scholars wondered what the consequences would be. In 1971, with the ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, the impact of the youth vote is being debated, even though we have twenty years of sophisticated behavioral research to guide our speculation.

In the United States, the political process is basically stable and institutionalized. But many countries are not so fortunate, particularly those that are moving rapidly from a traditional to a modern style.

This paper examines the nature of the U.S. Military Assistance Program (MAP) to Latin America and the historical development of the Military Assistance Program in the hemisphere. It further analyzes this program with regard to the two major criticisms levelled at it:

1. (1) that Military Assistance Programs have perpetuated “militarism” in the form of military coups and strong-man military regimes; and

2. (2) that Military Assistance Programs have encouraged large military forces where they are not needed.

Changes in U.S. policy toward Latin America are noted as they affect MAP—i.e., the shift in U.S. policy from one of fostering hemispheric defense to one of promoting internal security and economic development. Finally, an assessment of the impact of this change in U.S. military assistance policy forms the conclusion of this paper.