Most economic historians are probably familiar with Ernest Labrousse's model of the “Crisis of the Old Regime,” although it remains largely unknown to economists, sociologists, and other specialists in the social sciences. Yet Pierre Vilar feels that it is one of Labrousse's most important contributions to the “development of a science of history,” and considers that as an “instrument of analysis,” it can shed light not only on the “old style” crises of Western Europe but also on many essential aspects of the agrarian history of “underdeveloped” countries. We do not mean that contemporary “underdevelopment” and the “economy of the old regime” are one and the same. Rather, our intent is only to emphasize with Vilar that the “historical roles played in most of the world by meteorological abnormalities and agricultural cycles in the recent past have not been subjected to sufficiently methodological and reasoned study.”

Past studies of urban ethnic residential patterns have focused mainly on European immigrant populations of our large, old, northern industrial centers. These studies have shown in general that (1) residential dissimilarity is a pervasive feature of ethnic settlement; (2) residential dissimilarity among ethnic groups, according to various indicators, denotes the social distance among groups; (3) social status differences only partly explain residential differences among ethnic groups; (4) ethnic groups most centralized in urban residential space are most recent in their immigration; and (5) with the exception of the black population, residential segregation and centralization decline with the length of time of the ethnic group's residence in the society.

Sociolinguistics, itself a relatively young field of scholarly endeavor, more and more has been reflecting an interest in Mexican Americans insofar as they, like blacks and American Indians, constitute a distinct linguistic-social group that is grappling with the problems common to poor ethnic minorities in the United States. This paper intends to survey the literature existing to date on the Chicano speech community as viewed from a sociocultural vantage point.

Ideally, the study of the political economy of Afro-Latin America should be part and parcel of that of the political economy of Latin America as a whole. Unfortunately, true to the tendency toward fragmentation and specialization in the human as well as in the physical sciences, that has not generally been the case. The problem has been made worse by the low salience of the nonwhite races in the Americas, due to their low socioeconomic and political status. It is further compounded by the ambiguity and evasiveness of the Latin American racial ideology, especially in its Brazilian form, which leads both local and foreign observers and social scientists to conclude first that there is no racial problem (though such a position is no longer seriously held by scholars) and then that race is irrelevant to the study of the region's political economy.

Sex has been and continues to be one of the most important elements that differentiates the functions performed by members of society, particularly those related to the social division of work. From a strictly biological perspective, the primary difference between men and women lies in the fact that, during specific periods of the life cycle, women direct a considerable part of their energy to the reproduction of the species. Beyond this difference, the physical and intellectual capacities of men and women are relatively similar. Nevertheless, it is a general fact that the levels of male and female participation differ extensively.

The objective of this essay is to suggest an interpretation of the economic behavior of women in three developing economies; this involves an evaluation of the role of the sociodemographic determinants of the female labor supply vis-à-vis the role of the variables that affect the demand for their labor. A comparative study of the female labor force in Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay constitutes the basic source of empirical evidence for this paper; the purpose here is to integrate into a more general framework some of the findings of that study and infer more general propositions regarding the patterns of female employment in structurally heterogeneous economies.

Since the early 1960s there has been increasing interest in Caribbean life and affairs; consequently, the discovery of new sources of materials and centers for research on the region are of particular importance to the growing number of Caribbeanists. The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University in Washington, D.C. is funded by the university and receives additional finances annually from numerous donors; it is a vital part of the university's library system and operates under the supervision of the office of the Vice-President for Academic Affairs. Among the thousands of books, articles, manuscripts, newspapers, photographs, prints, and recordings on the black diaspora are myriad materials on the Caribbean. This Caribbean collection is as extensive and important an investigative tool as many of the better-known repositories in the United States or Canada; but this century-old holding is hardly known. Probably one of the main reasons for this oversight is that Caribbean source material may appear to be outside the academic scope of Howard University; hence, Caribbeanists frequent traditional centers such as the Institute of Jamaica in Kingston and the Bodleian and West India Committee Libraries in Britain.

The history group of CIESU was formed by Juan Rial Roade, Angel M. Cocchi, and Jaime Klaczko, graduates of the History Section of the Instituto José Artigas, the only institution at the university level devoted to teacher training in Uruguay. They are doing research in urban and demographic history, an area of Uruguayan historiography that has not been much studied by social scientists.

Uruguay, once known as the “Switzerland of South America” for its advanced social and economic development, is a country in which it is surprisingly difficult to obtain statistical data, and quantitative demographic sources are little known and even less analyzed. Despite the fact that, at the turn of the century, Uruguay had a stable government and an advanced social system (the “welfare state” created by the administraciones batllistas), only five general population censuses had ever been taken (1852, 1860, 1908, 1963, 1975), and only the last three are reliable. However, these are not the only sources available, and it is necessary to survey other major existing demographic data, whether published or unpublished.

Few events in Latin America have attracted so many journalists as Pope John Paul's visit to Mexico in January 1979. Few have been so poorly reported.

The contradiction is a reflection of coverage of Latin America in general: of the more than one thousand reporters present in Mexico, only a handful, mostly from the Catholic press, had a background in both religious affairs and Latin America. The vast majority did not speak Spanish, knew nothing about Latin America's Catholic Church, and had only a rudimentary understanding of Vatican affairs, which are Byzantinely complex even for the initiated; “color,” therefore, substituted for in-depth reporting. But then journalists are not the only ones ignorant of the Latin American Church. When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee questioned intelligence representatives on the National Security Council about Catholic leaders in Latin America, in regard to the United States' “unpreparedness” for the religious upheaval in Iran, they reportedly could not name a single one.

Freedom of the press has long been considered a critical requirement for the maintenance of democratic government. Most previous writings on the position of the press around the world, however, have argued that restrictions on the press have become generally more numerous in recent years and, hence, press freedom levels have been declining over time. Merrill et al., in their survey of national press systems, note that “recent surveys and studies tend to indicate that in many ways freedom of the press is eroding slowly in a worldwide context. Press laws are proliferating, sanctions of many kinds are growing up to thwart the free workings of the press, and press councils and other groups are moving in to restrict activities of the press.” Survey articles on the state of the press in Africa and in Asia reach the same conclusion for those regions, and a recent report of the prestigious Inter-American Press Association argued that press freedom in the western hemisphere is under greater threat than ever before. Even in some advanced western nations the press has come under attack by governmental officials, as is evident in the United States with both the Nixon administration's antipress activities as well as recent court rulings that limit press coverage of legal proceedings and the secrecy of newsmen's sources and working materials.