The subject of identity is both important and timely. In the last twenty years we ourselves have been so involved in the processes of alienation, myth-making and image-making that the recent concentration of thinking on the subject of “identity” is easily recognized as only one more facet to the same problem. The term “identity” appears in the title of several recent books on Latin America. The general themes of our two papers—religious movements and students—are currently very much in the fore when the subject of identity is discussed.

At first, the prospect of relating these two papers under the single theme “A Search for Identity” appeared to me unpromising; but as I began to extend my modest reading about identity, I became increasingly intrigued. I thought to myself: “Should I really take my courage in my hands and talk about identity with all the abstractions and the pitfalls that abstractions bring?” While trying to make up my mind, a day dream flashed before me.

Among Latin American nations, Cuba has had a prominent tradition of student involvement in politics. Although University of Havana students supported the independence movement from Spain, organized political activism began only in the 1920's. Influenced by the reformist ideas emanating from the Córdoba Reform Movement and from the Mexican and Russian Revolutions, the Cuban students began searching for answers to the island's many problems. Cuba's severe economic crisis of 1920 brought economic chaos and social misery to the island, accelerated the desire for change, and led to a questioning of the existing order of society. Close supervision of Cuban affairs by the United States, the failure of the old generation emerging out of the War for Independence to implement needed social, political, and economic reforms, and the desire for a modern and autonomous university all combined to produce a brewing student revolution.

Sectarian religious groups in Brazil, not of Afro-Brazilian origin, have been formed primarily in the backlands of the Northeast. There they have flourished during two approximate time periods, 1815 to 1840 and 1870 to the present. This paper will examine the religious groups of the Brazilian backlands as social phenomena.

The locale of the sects, the backlands sertão, is both a geographical and cultural subregion of the Northeast. The latter area is generally defined as comprising the states of Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Sergipe, Alagôas, and northern Bahia. Geographically the sertão is an area subject to recurrent drought, lying back of fertile coastal plains from Salvador in Bahia to Natal in Rio Grande do Norte, touching the coast in Ceará, and again retreating inland in Piauí.

On a beaucoup étudié Dieu, autant pour en approfondir la nature que pour en nier l'existence. Par contre, bien peu de chercheurs ont daigné explorer l'essence du démon. C'est sans doute parce que l'idée de Dieu semble douée d'une vertu tranquillisante, tandis que le concept du diable évoque je ne sais quoi d'insolite et d’ “anxiogène” au regard de la conscience.

Pourtant les notions de Satan et de Dieu sont complémentaires, parfois même solidaires. L'une s'oppose à l'autre comme I'antithèse à la thèse, l'anti-matière à la matière, le pôle négatif au pôle positif, l'imperfection du contingent à la perfection de l'intelligible. S'il est impossible de penser à un être tout puissant sans postuler une limitation éventuelle de cette puissance, il est tout aussi impensable d'imaginer un déchaînement de forces diaboliques sans évoquer un pouvoir inhibiteur antagoniste susceptible de freiner l'action de cet agent maléfique.

Spiritism is well on the way to becoming the most national of the religions practiced in Brazil. Yet apart from Christian clergymen, social scientists, and of course Spiritists themselves, few educated people pay much attention to its rapid and wide spread. Although they must see the sensational picture stories frequently appearing in magazines and on screens, they fail to realize that Brazil has become the acknowledged capital of the spiritualistic world in the West. At most they may know that Brazil's most famous mediums get invitations to travel abroad North of the equator and in the Far East a ready coterie awaits these mediums whose best-selling psychographed works find foreign publishers. Spiritist journals, however, play on news of their travels to work up nationalist pride in Brazil as “Heart of the World, Homeland of the Gospel.” That self-regarding expression is the title of a popular national history psychographed (dictated by the Spirit of a deceased person to a medium who writes it down in trance) in 1938. Since then Brazilian Spiritism has grown hugely in national ardor and in numbers.

Project “Xoc” is an attempt to discover new keys to Maya hieroglyphics, using readily available source material. “Xoc” is the Maya word for “count”; the authors found that counting the progression of days in the Maya calendar forward and backward numerous times led to their first stage of discovery. The Maya use of hieroglyphics in the ceremonial and secular calendars was pointed out by Bishop Diego de Landa in his Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán, written during the 1560's. Landa's book was lost for three hundred years, but in the century since it was rediscovered, other scholars have expanded his findings to the point that the Maya calendar use of hieroglyphics is well understood.

The hieroglyphic text is another matter. Scholars are generally agreed that the codices deal with astronomy and agriculture and that any text, if and when deciphered, would deal with those fields only, rather than in the broad spectrum of Maya life.

Quem examinar as carnadas telúricas que permitiram e determinaram a interdependência internacional, verificará que um dos fatores preponderantes surge como pedra de toque liamizadora das situações opostas: é o desenvolvimento, enfrentando em seus múltiplos aspectos o que não obstante essa pluralidade, congrega-os a todos na fisionomia econômica.

Em tudo há urna fase histórica a presidir os eventos e a isso não foge o tema, cuja oportunidade nasceu com o primeiro homem. Mas quais os períodos sócio-etários que ensejaram e ensejam, ainda hoje, a formação da crista milenar do interêsse, denominador comum de todos os conflitos?

Três são os estágios da humanidade em sua luta por melhores condições de vida: o homem, a sociedade e a comunidade, cada um deles representando urna etapa dura e difícil, atravessada nos séculos com urna tenacidade que sòmente o interôsse, no sentido alto do têrmo, poderia permitir.

Desde el momento mismo de la conquista y establecimiento de los españoles en el Nuevo Mundo ha sido de importancia singular el problema de la aculturación de la población indígena. En la primera mitad del siglo XVI se planteó una amplia discusión doctrinal con profundas consecuencias prácticas, en la que fueron agentes activos centrales las más altas instancias políticas y administrativas del Estado español coetáneo, desde el Consejo de Indias a la persona del propio Monarca, encontrándose en el origen de las más importantes decisiones de orden legislativo adoptadas por la Corona, con sus momentos culminantes en la Junta de Burgos, mandada reunir por Fernando III de Aragón en 1512 para estudiar expresamente la problemática humana e ideológica (en la época esencialmente religiosa) de los indios americanos, y en las Leyes Nuevas de 1542 promulgadas por Carlos V bajo la immediata influencia del “grupo de presión” del que era figura prominente el dominico Bartolomé de las Casas.

The liberal reform programs that developed in Spanish America following independence almost invariably included as one of their major objectives radical changes in the educational system. An outstanding example of this is the educational program proposed by Dr. Mariano Gálvez, Chief-of-State of Guatemala. Protected from foreign problems by virtue of the existence of the Central American Federation and its Liberal leader, Francisco Morazán, Gálvez had seven years (1831–1838) to develop far-reaching reforms. While the lack of Gálvez papers makes discussion and analysis of his domestic reforms difficult, it is possible to assess his role by an analysis of his public speeches, decrees, laws, archival records, and similar materials.

In the United States there is a constant preoccupation with the qualitative aspects of our educational system. This occurs in a nation where over 98 per cent of all children between the ages of seven and fourteen are attending school and where over 95 per cent of all inhabitants are considered literate. Thus, in terms of literacy and level of education, the United States is classified as highly advanced. Not so fortunate are the developing nations of the world.

Latin America, as a major world region, is classified as underdeveloped and shares many of the economic and social misfortunes which plague that sector of the world's populace. Within Latin America there is a wide diversity of educational attainment. Although seven nations may be classified as advanced or moderately advanced, these represent less than one quarter of the region's population. The vast majority are less advantaged and among these are the inhabitants of Guatemala. Less than one quarter of its children between the ages of seven and fourteen attend school; less than 30 per cent over ten years of age are considered literate.