Perhaps the most fateful occurrence in Columbus' unlucky career as Governor of Española was the collapse of the governmental arrangements established by him in April 1494. The actual events which led to, and immediately followed, this episode have been shrouded in doubt and confusion from that time to this. The accepted version, repeated by one historian after another since the early 16th century, is however, plain enough: it is to the effect that Columbus, prior to sailing from Española in April to search out the Mainland, appointed a Council of Regency to govern the infant colony until his return. After a wearisome and almost fatal voyage, he returned to Isabela in the following September to find that two of the leading members of the settlement, Pedro Margarit, his military commander, and Fray Boyl, one of the Council and the ecclesiastical head of the settlement, had treacherously deserted and returned to Spain.

The foundation of cities and the articulation of urban networks are a persistent theme in the history of colonial Spanish America. As administrative-social service centers and as foci of trade and, sometimes, manufacturing, cities were the meeting ground of the policies of the metropolis and the concerns of its subjects, the local creoles, castas, and Indians. This mediating position has influenced the kinds of questions asked about cities by Latin American urban historians. Those who, with this author, believe that the city's administrative function was paramount, consider the following questions most useful in determining the role of urban centers within the Spanish empire: was city government merely the agent of the Crown, was it the spokesman of a local oligarchy, or did it permit some degree of popular participation? Was the operation of municipal government characterized by co-operation or by conflict? What was the relative importance of formal institutions created by the Crown, such as the cabildo and the real acuerdo, and informal institutions, such as the family and the client system, in the conduct of city business?

Historians have long grappled with the problem of defining the precise nature of eighteenth-century Mexican society. Not only was the confused tangle of racial types which resulted from the three centuries of miscegenation vitally important in establishing social status, but special corporations further divided the population into privileged groups and jurisdictions. Society was split into three general categories: ethnic whites, criollo (American-born) and gachupín (European-born); Indians; and finally the castas (castes) who belonged to the many racial permutations.

The accession of Hipólito Yrigoyen to the office of President of Argentina on 12 October, 1916, was the long-awaited climax to a quest for political power that had begun 25 years earlier with the founding of the Unión Cívica Radical. Since 1891 the UCR or Radical Party, as it is usually called, had been condemned to the status of an opposition party, its leaders waiting impatiently for their chance to uproot completely what they deemed to be the corruption and mismanagement of the régimen, their pejorative term for the conservative establishment that had dominated Argentine political life for decades.

The economic policies that have been implemented in Peru since 1968 by the military government have been the object of considerable attention. By contrast, evaluation of Peruvian economic policy in the preceding two decades has received rather limited attention. It is our objective in this article to put into perspective the export bias of important elements of Peruvian economic policy in the period following World War II and to outline some of the consequences of that bias.

At a general level this paper is concerned with the problem of anthropological interpretation of kinship and its significance in peasant communities. In specific terms I describe and discusss a striking difference in interpretation by two observers, Forman and myself, with regard to the form and significance of kinship relations in two communities on the North East Brazilian littoral. The disparity between our conclusions brings up basic questions of a methodological and epistemological kind in much the same way as do Red- field and Lewis's findings in Tepoztlan.

One of the most striking features of recent writing on comparative politics, especially the debate on underdevelopment, is the contribution made by Latin American theorists. Living in societies so strongly characterized by a culture of dependency, they have energetically developed and refined the theory of dependency. Directly experiencing the impact of imperialism and imperialism, they have carefully scrutinized and reassessed theories of imperialist control, and have explored the mechanisms of class interest, seeking to understand how such interests are maintained and expressed through the state apparatus, in policy making, the role of the bureaucracy, the armed forces, in cultural control and in the whole fabric of internal and external power relations.