Any examination of the Cuban involvement in Africa should take into consideration the political conditions surrounding such involvement. Only by analyzing the objectives and motivations of those involved, while disregarding any arguments in justification, can one adequately demonstrate the complexity of the relations between Cuba and its African allies. An analysis of Cuba's assessment of its own political and ideological function in Africa or of the objectives of the Soviet Union in Africa is not as important as an examination of the African expectations arising from Cuban military and development aid.

Obscured amid the headline issues of illegal aliens, drug smuggling, and the Mexican petroleum bonanza, yet another controversy is nascent in U.S.-Mexican relations the dispute over common groundwaters underlying the frontier zone. This dispute, with roots in the recent salinity accords of 1973, emerges as the latest phase in the long history of water resource controversies exacerbating problems between the two nations.

Until recently, the history of U.S.-Mexican water relations had been one of preoccupation with the capture and distribution of shared surface waters. The present dispute thus marks a distinctive evolution in bilateral relations. Moreover, just as the groundwater issue is new, it also points to the complexity of the transboundary ecology and the special problems of interdependence. Only since World War II, for instance, have the full implications of the area's groundwater hydrology been appreciated with respect to such matters as quality, distribution, and movement.

In the period following Brazil's 1964 military coup, many historians turned their attention to the Vargas years, especially the 1930s. For one thing, the period had not been thoroughly examined. For another, factors common to both “revolutions” intrigued them: interplay among civilians and military officers in the respective golpes; repression of dissent and the use of nationalistic propaganda; concern over Brazil's place in the international order; social mobilization to neutralize class conflict and promote growth; tension between liberalism and corporatism; and efforts to promote national integration. Many of the historical actors, as well, were the same.

Twenty minutes by jet or fifteen hours by bus northwest of Bogotá lies the department of Antioquia, with its capital, Medellín, second largest of Colombia's cities. Although the Andes serve as divider and incubator of a diversity oí patrias chicas, each with characteristic accent, folklore, and regional identity, the country of the Antioqueño, or paisa, remains one of the most distinctive. Unlike Colombians from other regions, the Antioqueño has typically been stereotyped as the alien. Whether he has been reviled as a Jew, lauded as a “New Breed,” portrayed as a Basque, a Swiss, a Yankee, or a Protestant, writers have used ethnic interpretations which minimize the Latin, the Catholic, and even the Colombian image of the paisa (Lipset, 1967:27,28).