The Puebla meeting of the Latin American bishops in early 1979 capped a decade of far-reaching and surprising change in the Catholic Church. A new, local-level unit—the “ecclesial base community” or CEB—has given Catholicism a vitality in society it has not known for centuries. At the same time, the Church has achieved an unprecedented integration as an institution nationally and regionally, in Latin America as a whole. It has found itself, through an unexpected historical dynamic, increasingly committed to the cause of the poor in deed as well as word, And it has been thrust into political confrontations with state authority throughout the region with an intensity and scope unmatched since the nineteenth century.

Perón and the Peronista party and movement have been interesting from at least two crucially important perspectives: first, Perón's ability to keep Argentina hostage for three decades in his roles as twice-elected “lider,” as exiled “caudillo,” and president once more (I say “hostage” in the sense that he remained the pivotal political force in all the crucial coalition bargains struck among the major power contenders since 1943); second, his ability to forge an intellectual and political clientele that spanned several generations and encompassed various, but unique, ideological views. Perón had the leadership capability not only of touching many people but also of striking a common political resonance among vastly differing sets of values.

The fall of Salvador Allende's government on September 11, 1973, has given rise to debates over many issues, such as the role of the United States in bringing about the conditions that led to a military coup, the feasibility of a peaceful road toward socialism, and the existence or nonexistence of a democratic and national bourgeoisie in Chile (Valenzuela and Valenzuela, 1975). One issue remains relatively unexplored, however, namely, how much was the Soviet Union willing to aid the Popular Unity (UP) government in its quest for autonomy from the United States? This quest for autonomy was a paramount foreign policy goal because the basic program of Allende's coalition government, approved by the Communist, Socialist, Radical, Social Democratic, Movement for Unitary Popular Action, and Independent Popular Action parties, stated that the basic cause of Chile's poverty and inflation was their intimate economic ties with the United States. The resulting dependence brought about the underdevelopment of Chile and prevented the Chilean bourgeoisie from being truly nationalistic. These dependent ties with the United States would have to be broken for Chile to be capable of autonomous development.

In the early morning hours of July 27, 1974, the military government of Peru employed riot police to seize control of the country's principal daily newspapers. The government announced that the newspapers were being transferred to independent organizations representative of broad sectors of Peruvian society. Peru's “Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces,” which came to power in 1968, had already surprised students of the Latin American military with a series of radical measures which included an extensive land reform, the expropriation of a number of foreign companies, reorganization of the financial sector, and the creation of a system of worker control for industry. Now President Juan Velasco Alvarado presented the press takeover as an integral part of a fundamental reordering of the existing society along progressive nationalist lines.

In a recent reinterpretation of political change in Peru between independence and World War I, Berg and Weaver (1978) suggest that the rise of guano export beginning in the 1840s led to important changes in socioeconomic relations within the country. In consequence, a centralized and powerful state emerged which asserted its authority over the formerly dominant provincial elites. On this point, Berg and Weaver's analysis is not inconsistent with existing literature on the period (Basadre, 1963; Pike, 1967; Bonilla, 1974). But their argument that by retaining control over guano export the state acquired the financial resources with which to establish its independence from newly emerging urban elites does not seem completely valid.