Although one recent influential textbook on Latin America has characterized the decades immediately following the achievement of independence as “the long wait,” in Mexico at least, these years were marked by an intense political and ideological conflict which defined the direction of its future (Halperín Donghi, 1969: 134-206). The most perceptive student of the epoch, Edmundo O'Gorman (1960) traces within the confused welter of pronunciamientos and manifestos two great forces: the search for a providential leader and the desire for some form of democratic populism. An analysis of ideology cannot be separated from a consideration of society. The presidential power created by Benito Juárez and perpetuated by Porfirio Díaz operated outside the strict legal confines of the Constitution. At the same time, the failure of classic liberalism to express popular aspirations retarded social reform for over half a century. Without the sanction of theory, few such demands could be translated into law.

Ruy Barbosa, the Brazilian lawyer and legal scholar, statesman, educational reformer, journalist, politician, and spokesman for a liberal tradition, is again in the news. Lionized during a career which spanned the late Empire and early Republic, deified as a cultural monument since his death in 1923, Ruy and his once secure historical reputation are now under assault. That Barbosa could be criticized at all is shocking, especially to an older generation for whom the repeated homage to his memory in countless books, in the press, and on the hustings formed a cultural constant in their youth and helped to set their world view. For others, mostly younger Brazilians, the image of a remote, rather pedantic, and above all irrelevant Ruy has been redrawn, if not refurbished, in light of a new historical perspective.

The reform of Venezuelan land tenure dates from the overthrow of Perez Jiménez in 1958. Acción Democrática, which assumed power after the elections of that year, had already promulgated an Agrarian Reform Law during its short-lived interlude between military governments, 1946-1948. In 1959, it continued its previous policy of subdividing public lands through the agency of the Instituto Agrario Nacional (IAN), established by the earlier law. But the full-scale reform began with the new “Ley de Reforma Agraria” in March 1960. It permits expropriation of lands which are not being adequately used, with the object of replacing the “latifundio system by a just system of property, land tenure and production, based on the equitable distribution of the farmlands, the proper organisation of credit, and the provision of full-scale assistance” (Instituto Agrario Nacional, 1969).

The “Tenentes” or “lieutenants” were an important factor in Brazilian politics between 1922 and the end of the government of President Castelo Branco early in 1967. They had an active and occasionally decisive role in most major political events for almost half a century. The emergence of the Tenentes in the 1920s was part of a broader movement of discontent with the Old Republic, a relatively loose confederation of states dominated by rural landed interests and the politicians associated with them. Subsequently, the Tenentes played a key part in overthrowing the Old Republic in the Revolution of 1930.

Getúlio Vargas came to power in the 1930 Revolution and stayed in the presidency for fifteen years. As provisional chief executive for more than three years, he suppressed a serious revolt against his authority by the state of Sao Paulo between July and October of 1932, and summoned the assembly that wrote the Constitution of 1934 and chose him to be the first president under it.

The movement toward regional integration is one of the more important features of international economic relations between developing nations during the past decade, and none has been more ambitious in the developing world than the attempt of the five countries of Central America to band together in the Central American Common Market (CACM). The CACM was a dominant force in Central American economic development throughout the decade of the 1960s, and sufficient data are now available to make preliminary judgments about the effects of economic integration upon the intra- and extraregional trade patterns of the isthmus.

The model used in the ensuing analysis is similar to the one postulated by Savage and Deutsch (1960) and Goodman (1963: 197), and is a useful step in preliminary analysis of flow data such as trade flows among countries. The model does not seek to explain such flows, but rather to adjust them or remove the effect of the trade-size factor.