The following pages examine the relationship between the transactions that constitute systems of patronage and clientage and politics as it operated in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais in the mid-1960s. The objective will be to show how the asymmetrical exchanges of patronage and the political-electoral system served to articulate local communities with the institutional systems of the larger society.

The data and analysis will be presented through an examination of the activities of individuals in two small municίpio communities in the Zona da Mata of the State of Minas Gerais during the critical election campaign for governor in the year 1965. By examining some of the activities of a local doctor and a lawyer involved in politics, we shall be able to make explicit the transactional process by means of which segments of local communities in the region were articulated, through the political-electoral process, to the state and national level institutions of Brazilian society.

During the latter part of the nineteenth century, three historians, Diego Barros Arana, Benjamin Vicuña Mackenna, and Miguel Luis Amunategui, came to epitomize a new sophistication which historical scholarship had attained in Chile. Taken together, the three men represent an important departure from previous romantic liberal historiography in that they were able to link Chile's past to its present without recourse to polemical rhetoric. More significantly, perhaps, these three scholars believed that history could serve socially useful functions. Much of their effort, consequently, was directed to making Clio a vital force for national development.

There is no area of investigation in the field of Latin American studies which has attracted more research in recent years than has the dependency theory. Countless words have been written and much academic “blood” has been spilled in the debate over the strengths and weaknesses of interpreting Latin American society, polity, economy, and culture within the framework of the dependency theory. While there is still much heat generated by those who hold differing opinions on the dependency perspective, serious research is proceeding in a number of areas in an attempt to document the ways in which and the extent to which Latin American nations are dependent on forces beyond their control. This paper attempts to further that research by focusing on agrarian public policy in Costa Rica.

During the dictatorship of Dr. Francia, 1814-1840, few foreigners were permitted to enter Paraguay, and a small number of chiefly Brazilian merchants, restricted to the entrepôts of Ytapúa and Pilar, alone had an impact upon the nation and its development. The few foreigners who blundered into Paraguay uninvited were forced to remain.