The phenomenon of peasant revolt in the Andean area of South America has been both sustained and violent from Spanish colonial times to the present. The revolt of Túpac Amaru II, who led a rebellion against Spanish colonialism near Cuzco in 1780, has been the best-known incidence of this phenomenon, although the southern highlands region, sometimes known as the mancha india (“Indian stain”), was the center of numerous local revolts during the period 1860–1920, and the focus of several peasant land invasions during the two decades 1950–70.

The purpose of this paper is to review the evolution of public policy toward the favelas of Rio de Janeiro since 1972–73. I choose these years because they are the ones at which available published accounts on the topic cease. One of my objectives is to re-actualize existing information on that subject. At the same time, I wish to bring forth some considerations on the relationships between civil society, especially its most deprived classes, and the particular form of authoritarian state now dominant in Brazil.

Dependencia theory is in vogue among social scientists throughout the world. Having originated in Latin America in the early 1960s, it was widely embraced both there and in parts of Europe and Africa by the end of the decade. In the 1970s, North Americans joined the flood of scholars attempting to grapple with the problems of underdevelopment in the so-called Third World from a perspective explicitly rejecting traditional theories of development. With this new stream of researchers came new tools and new approaches to the study of peripheral societies, tools and approaches intended to complement those previously used within the dependencia tradition.

Throughout the world, the Catholic Church has been in ferment since the Second Vatican Council. In Latin America, traditionally a Catholic region, the application of the council's ideas has stimulated dramatic changes in the outlook and practices of Church groups. These changes are particularly visible in the development of a new language for describing and evaluating temporal action (“the world”), and in the emergence of novel perspectives on the Church's proper relation to “the world.” What is the import of such changes for the student of politics?

During the last few years, interest in overall economic growth as the best measure and object of development has increasingly given way to a preoccupation with the distribution of income and thus with how the benefits of economic growth are shared. Within this general concern is a specific preoccupation with the poorest families in less-developed countries, who may remain in dire poverty despite significant increases in income per head or other measures of development.

This essay is devoted to a critique of the interpretation of the present Brazilian regime given in a recent work by Philippe Schmitter, an interpretation that is organized around the themes of “Bonapartism” and “restoration/Portugalization” (Schmitter 1973). The basic problem treated by means of these concepts is that of the relation between the state and social classes in Brazil. Our argument will be that Schmitter's usage rips these concepts out of their original historical context and attempts to utilize them in a context in which they do not really fit. They are therefore only of limited use for understanding the nature of the post-1964 regime, and in fact their application can easily lead us to lose sight of what is specifically new in the political economy of Brazil today. Having made our criticisms, we will advance a number of alternative hypotheses about how that regime's relation to the fundamental classes of Brazilian society should be understood.

Despite calls to improve and systematize research on political participation in Latin America more than a decade ago (Kling 1964, Flores Olea 1967), the burgeoning literature on the subject has yet to achieve full recognition. Thus certain contradictory and incomplete traditional images still linger in the scholarly literature (Booth and Seligson 1978a). These treatments vary dramatically and almost bewilderingly: while one suggests that Latin Americans are becoming increasingly politically mobilized, two others hold that mass participation is very low and that most political activity is restricted to socioeconomic elites. Other images portray mass political participation as irrational and dwell upon political violence. Such familiar notions have often intertwined. For example, a common picture depicts most Latin Americans, and especially peasants, as politically passive and quiescent until provoked, when they may burst violently into the political arena (for example, see Forman 1971, Singelmann 1975, Handelman 1975b, Moreno 1970). Similarly Wiarda (1974, pp. 4–5) discusses how the image of mobilization often combines with that of violence, producing the notion that the rising political awareness and participation of Latin Americans leads inexorably to ever greater levels of conflict (e.g., Schmitt and Burks 1963, Hadley 1958, Petras and Zeitlin 1968, Petras 1968).

The past eleven years have been extremely fruitful for Chilean specialists. Various scholars have formulated theories to explain Chile's political, social, and economic development; new monographs as well as doctoral dissertations have provided grist for the generalist's mill; and studies on mining—particularly the nitrate sector—agriculture, the role of labor, and more detailed political surveys have been published. Increasingly, one notes a tendency to undertake projects that will investigate twentieth-century topics. This essay reviews some of the recent contributions to Chile's already rich historiography and attempts to include material from other disciplines as well as history. It will not, however, discuss the Allende period, whose massive and still growing literature requires separate treatment. Those interested in this topic might profitably consult the recent work of Arturo and Samuel Valenzuela, “Visions of Chile” (LARR 10, no. 3 [1975]:155–75).

The arena of Brazilian literary criticism during the 1950s was one of heated polemics and angry debates between the “old” and the “new” critics. In many ways, this protracted encounter involved a clash of world views as much as of concepts of literature and criticism. For one thing, the opponents of the nova crítica had a wholly different cast of mind from the new critics. Whether they utilized the reigning impressionistic or sociological approaches to literature and criticism, or whether they were merely dilettantes who dabbled in letters at their leisure, they all tended to view literature in other than a literary framework. To the new critics, this orientation was the same thing as saying that literature was only a satellite responding to the gravitational pull of other forms of knowledge—history, sociology, or psychology, for example. Its main function, therefore, was to illuminate the style of an epoch or the personality of the author, even that of the critic himself. Such a concept of literature was totally unacceptable to the new critics, who insisted on regarding literature in its own right, as a separate but equal planet in the universe of the intellect. Further, the new and the old critics locked horns over the measure of importance that subjective considerations should be allotted in literary criticism. The former wished to minimize them dramatically, maintaining that criticism was a rational, objective discipline; while the latter objected strenuously to such minimization, holding that criticism was primarily an exercise of the critic's creative imagination. The debate over subjective and objective attitudes in literary study is part of the broader issue of the relative merits of the modern, scientific mode of thought and the traditional, personalist mode that had characterized Brazilian literary criticism.

Currently, Western Europe is experiencing a novel type of Marxism. The Communist movement is no longer viewed by most observers as a cohesive monolith waiting for directions from the East, and communism in Italy, France, and Spain has shown an increasing level of autonomy and national resourcefulness. Indeed, the “Eurocommunism” of Santiago Carrillo (head of the Spanish Communist party) is frequently attacked by his Soviet comrades in Party Congress and press alike. In that this new European communism pays a great deal of attention to specific national conditions, the importance of autonomy, and flexible strategies to win support, it is not always understood by orthodox Communists or ardent anti-Marxists. The latter group is convinced that all Communists are the same and will show their true color once in power, while the former is greatly concerned that their once revolutionary parties will evolve into revisionist Social Democratic groupings far afield from Lenin's prototypical Bolshevik party. Neither, then, is happy with this innovative approach to Western European Marxist-Leninist praxis.

Geopolitics as an approach to politico-military matters was of considerable significance up to the end of World War II, when it declined in respectability and prestige due to its association with Nazi theories of world conquest. As a result, very few strategic or military writings in the United States or Western Europe since World War II have been called “geopolitical,” even though they might include many of the concepts subsumed under the pre-1945 term. But, interestingly enough, the concept is alive and well in Latin America, especially in those Southern Cone countries (Brazil, Argentina, and Chile) where the most prolific thinking and writing on geopolitics has taken place in the last thirty years.

Spoken on the high Andean plains of Peru and Bolivia from Lake Titicaca to the salt flats south of Lake Poopó, and in northern Chile, Aymara is the most widespread member of the Jaqi language family whose sole other remnants, spoken in Yauyos, department of Lima, Peru, are the nearly extinct Kawki and the still vigorous Jaqaru. Aymara is estimated to have over a million and a half speakers in Bolivia, roughly 350,000 in Peru, and an unspecified number in Chile, bringing the total to nearly two million.

Both developed and developing countries have experienced increasing state intervention in the social welfare arena. In most countries of the world, the state has sponsored some social welfare programs, especially programs of social security. Despite their prevalence, little is known about their political nature, especially in the developing countries. Yet, the study of the political aspects of social security, especially the who, the what, and the how, would at once reveal important patterns of state-society relations.

The first part of this essay reviews some of the strengths and weaknesses in the current state of social history of Latin American cities. Specifically, it tries to create an awareness that quantitative urban studies need not be, and should not be, limited to aggregate data for sources. Unfortunately, many of the nascent quantitative studies of postindependence Latin American cities achieve their figures through published materials, principally demographic and commercial censuses. However, manuscript census returns, notarial records, judicial assessments, and other primary documentation can also provide the base from which we can observe frequencies both of personal vital records and of popular quotidian behavior; moving, marrying, going to school, buying or selling goods or property, and so on.

Durante el mes de septiembre de 1976, se visitaron diferentes personas e instituciones que en forma directa o indirecta realizan o están en disponibilidad de realizar, programas de investigación o acción en relación con la mujer. De estas visitas se presenta a continuación una lista por países con el nombre de la persona, la institución a que pertenece, la actividad que realiza o está en capacidad de realizar, y su dirección. Esta lista de ninguna manera es exhaustiva y representa sólo los contactos obtenidos en un corto viaje.

In analyzing the historical development of Meso- and Andean-American society, historians have stressed the hacienda's destructive impact on native settlements, which, once broken down, became disposed to the adoption of Spanish traits. This view focuses primarily on the hacendado's acquisition of Indian land and labor and the resultant destruction, partial or complete, of traditional Indian forms of cultivation, trade, and ultimately social relationships. To the extent that the hacendado forced communal Indians to resettle in newly opened lands, cultivate European crops, and engage in European trade, he encouraged the Indians to abandon their traditional rituals and adopt readily available Spanish patterns as replacements.

The study of Latin American labor history is at a crossroads. It is now an established field, with a growing body of scholars and research and opportunities for major advances. At the same time, it is in danger of isolating itself from promising intellectual and methodological currents and confining itself to institutional chronologies and ideological controversies. To avert this danger and take advantage of these opportunities, Latin American labor history must both become more fully the history of labor and transcend the limitations of that definition.

A general assumption of the modernization literature is that urbanized nations constitute more socially mobilized and therefore potentially demanding political environments (Thompson, p. 477; Deutsch, p. 498). The expansion of urban centers indicates the breakdown of traditional peasant society and the natural static political order that it represents. Consequently, Huntington (pp. 53–55) and others argue that nations undergoing the process of urbanization will tend to become more violent and politically unstable unless the new demands ultimately created by rural to urban migration are satisfied in the socioeconomic sphere or managed by capable political institutions.

Until recently, the Córdoba Reform of 1918 was the symbolic landmark in twentieth-century Latin American higher education. Achieving a pioneering victory in Argentina, the Reform soon became influential throughout much of the region, and university autonomy from government emerged as its most cherished legacy. Despite frequent violations, the principle of autonomy often promoted a substantial degree of university self-rule and even sanctuary for free expression. In 1968—fifty years after the Reform's genesis—the Mexican government's brutal repression of university students seemed to symbolize a secular change. Many observers feel that events of the last decade have reduced autonomy to little more than a cherished memory. Autonomy has indeed suffered a tragic fate in Cuba, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile, among the more important nations. But what about Mexico? This article argues that the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) remains substantially autonomous. This is, admittedly, a relative statement; no public university is completely independent of government control. However, UNAM seems to enjoy considerable self-rule and is notably autonomous in cross-national perspective.