This address to the Seminar discussed the social and cultural aspects of dwellings in urban life in Mexico City during the early nineteenth century. The studies were based on information obtained from the national census of 1811. After a brief review of the census papers, the following were offered as the major obstacles to interpreting the information contained:

Although the study of international relations is among the oldest fields of Latin American history, historians have not fully exploited the diplomatic archives of that region. No doubt the main obstacle has been the restrictive policies of the Latin American chancelleries, which have tended to view all diplomatic correspondence as inherently sensitive, particularly since boundary disputes have survived in many cases until the present moment. For this and other reasons, the study of Latin American foreign relations has lagged far behind that of Europe and the United States. Among Latin Americans, ex-ambassadors seem more prolific than professional historians in the field of diplomatic history; their works vary tremendously in quality, from the valuable studies of Cardozo (1961) and Herrera (1908-1927, 1930) to a host of mediocre treatments. European and North American historians have tended to focus on diplomatic contacts with the Great Powers, whose archives are more easily accessible, and to see Latin American foreign relations from the vantage point of the Great Powers. Such products include the classic works of Manchester (1933) and Robertson (1939) and the more recent studies of Burns (1966) and Wood (1966). Some works dealing with inter-American relations—e.g., Tulchin (1971) and Wood (1961, 1966)—define their topics so as to use no Latin American archival materials at all; others, such as Parks (1935) define their topics more broadly but still use United States or British archives exclusively.

After more than a decade of experience, Venezuela's policy planning establishment has come to demand increasingly high levels of performance from its staffs in response to the increasing complexity of the planning tasks proposed. The need to plan for the effects of changing demographic characteristics and to cope with the widespread consequences for the dynamics of family patterns and social interaction that these changes imply, for example, has forced the development planner to search for new tools of analysis which will allow him to gauge accurately the impact of various policy alternatives.

The Mexican collection of the International Institute of Social History is substantially smaller than that of Argentina or Brazil. Of this, the collection of periodicals constitutes the principal part. This latter collection (Sections A and B) covers the period ±1880-1940. Although many items represent only a single or limited number of issues of a given publication, the total amount of information is considerable. The pre-revolution period is represented by only a restricted number of literary and positivist magazines, besides a few copies of workers' magazines from Mexico City, Orizaba, and Monterrey. The more important part of the collection, however, is formed by the periodicals of local chapters of the Casa del Obrero Mundial from the years 1912-18, such as Ariete, Redención Obrera, Revolución Social, El Sindicalista, and Tribuna Roja. In addition, there is some material relating to the I.W. W., the C.R.O.M., and the later C.T.M.

Our purpose is to evaluate the impact of the economic and social policies of Chile's military junta on the well-being of the majority of chilenos, especially those of the lowest income level. The exercise consists of a simple comparison of income and expenditure levels between those of the last months of the Unidad Popular (UP) government and those of October 1974. We have chosen the 1968–69 average as a basis of comparison for two reasons. First, in practical terms, the Dirección de Estadística y Censos (DEC) conducted a survey on consumption expenditures for different income groups for that period, and it is the most recent one available. Second, in the days prior to the coup there was general agreement among economists, both in the government and in the opposition, that the average standards of living were equivalent to those of 1968–69. In effect, according to the Taller de Coyuntura, real wages during the first eight months of 1973 were 98.8 percent of their levels in January 1970. Since this index of real wages is based on January 1970, and our basis of comparison is 1968–69, we can assert that in the last months of the Unidad Popular government (January-August 1973) real wages were at least equal to, if not higher than, those of 1968–69. We should emphasize that the Taller de Coyuntura was a vocal stronghold of forces opposed to the government of Salvador Allende. In addition, a comparison of the Consumers' Price Index, published by the Banco Central de Chile, indicates that real wages increased between 1970 and July 1973. A somewhat more favorable picture would have come out of studies conducted at the now defunct Instituto de Economía Política y Planificación (Facultad de Economía Política, Universidad de Chile), which indicated that between July and August 1973, real wages were back to their September 1970 level. The gains of the first two years of the Unidad Popular—especially for the lowest income groups—had been lost due to government mistakes and as a result of the sabotage and destabilization campaigns that started 5 September 1970 and culminated with the bloody coup of 11 September 1973. Hence even though we are using 1968–69 as a proxy, we are actually comparing real income in October 1974 with that of the final months of the government of the Unidad Popular.

The information for this lecture was obtained from the Mexican censuses of 1895, 1900, and 1910. This period in Mexican history was marked by the dictatorship of General Porfírio Díaz and by accelerated economic growth.

This selected bibliography attempts to supply future students of the life and work of Helder Câmara with an indication of the main sources of information about the man and his ideas. While the amount of published material is large, it is not yet overwhelming. As Schilling remarks: “Bibliographical material about Helder Camara is plentiful, but it is very scattered, since it is mainly found in newspapers and magazines of the whole world. As a true social militant, Helder Camara never loses a chance to speak or to write, to pass on his message. Consequently hardly a day passes without the newspapers of Brazil, Latin America or the world giving some news of him, a declaration, an interview, an account of one of his conferences. Our bishop is News” (Helder Camara [Montevideo, Uruguay: Ediciones La Marcha, 1970]).

Preservation of written testimony is essential to the writing of history. Yet, in Latin America, historical documents, though copiously produced, have been sadly neglected and too often destroyed. What remains, then, assumes inestimable value for all historians—humanists or social scientists—for only on its basis can this hemisphere's past be reconstructed. A knowledge of the exact location and condition of material is necessary for the formulation of a reasonable historical research project; it is obviously essential to the research itself.

This research proposed to define how property was distributed in the national capital throughout the 1800s, to evaluate the importance of the concentration of property in the hands of a landed elite, and to describe the social groups which benefited from landownership. Also proposed was an analysis of the impact and changes produced by the decline of one landowning group and its replacement by another in the physical, economic, and social structure of the city.

The information for this study was obtained from volumes 773 and 774 of Obras Públicas en General, in the Archivo del Antiguo Ayuntamiento de México. These documents contain a complete register of the architectural activities undertaken as public works or private homes from 1780 to 1805. It was hoped that a thorough study of the Obras Públicas en General would provide interesting data for the urban history of Mexico City and, more specifically, for the history of art and architecture in the federal capital.

One of the most pervasive phenomena in the modern political world is authoritarianism—regimes characterized by “limited pluralism,” identifiably and analytically distinct from democratic or totalitarian types of rule. Well over a third of the contemporary nation-states, mostly in the developing regions, fall into the authoritarian category—and this fact alone would seem to call for intensive research. Nevertheless, despite the obvious importance of the problem, we know relatively little about the origins, dynamics, and stability (or instability) of such regimes. There is a particularly urgent need for empirical research to test, refine, and amplify hypotheses that now exist.