En este escrito se pretende examinar, en la medida que el espacio disponible lo permita, la situación de la agricultura mexicana y las perspectivas de su desarrollo, que afortunadamente ya se ha iniciado con resultados alentadores, no obstante la presencia y la subsistencia obstinada de importantes problemas, cuya solución llevará tiempo, tal y como se ha necesitado un lapso, que parece demasiado largo, para obtener los primeros resultados de la reestructuración agraria, iniciada en 1917, al reconstituirse la convivencia mexicana, con una nueva filosofía en la cual se aunan la decisión para romper las trabas que estorbaban al progreso agrícola, con el firme propósito de conferir una función social indudable a la nueva productividad, basada forzosamente en renovadas formas de tenencia de la tierra.

La tierra, como factor geográfico y objeto de ocupación y de apropiación por parte del hombre, ha ejercido una influencia muy grande en las sociedades humanas. En un principio, marcó las rutas seguidas por las bandas trashumantes de seres humanos que peregrinaban con el propósito de hallar una región propicia dentro de la cual pudiesen subsistir, porque esas bandas seguían generalmente los rumbos más accesibles y que, a la vez, les ofrecían los alimentos necesarios.

En la época de la economía recolectora la tierra es, para los incipientes grupos sociales, simplemente una zona dentro de la cual se mueven constantemente en busca del diario sustento; pero desde entonces empieza a perfilarse el territorio del Estado, porque defienden esa zona de incursiones extrañas. Cada grupo trata de conservar aquella en que subsiste recogiendo los frutos silvestres, aprovechándose del agro y de los animales adecuados para satisfacer sus necesidades como algo exclusivo. Esas primeras luchas van estableciendo el habitat de las diversas hordas, si bien de límites móviles e imprecisos.

The Spanish consulado — or Catalan consolat de mar — emerged from the medieval economy of Mediterranean towns. From a simple maritime court, its prototype in thirteenth-century Valencia, the Consulado evolved into a permanent tribunal with appellate as well as original jurisdiction in mercantile disputes. Ultimately, the consular court constituted one of three divisions of the guild merchant. The matrícula, or guild membership, comprised resident merchants who met various qualifications of age, property, and vocation. In annual assemblies the guildsment elected the judges of their court, usually a prior and two consuls. The prior and consuls were at once judges, active merchants, and members ex-officio of an executive council or junta. This governing body represented the merchant class in negotiating with other groups, especially public officials. It administered customs and taxes, enforced trade regulations, carried out public works projects, and in many other ways intervened in the economic life of the community.

In that remarkable little book, so deftly argued and so elegantly phrased, which he wrote about anthropologists and coincidentally Peasant Society and Culture, Robert Redfield made more than one wise observation, but one was both a promise and a suggestion. Noting that peasant society in one sense consists of two connecting halves, he remarks that “we may be able to see a sort of link or hinge between the local life of a peasant community and the state or feudal system of which it is a part.”

The recognition and disclosure of connections in the extended relations of indigenous peoples — especially those who comprise major elements of modern states — is surely one way in which anthropologists, from the peculiar advantage of their ethnographic tradition, can contribute something of method and point of view to the study of large, compound societies and cultures.

La política, siendo en esencia el arte de gobernar, es inseparable de cualquier régimen; la encontramos en la quietud de los despotismos orientales y en el tumulto de las modernas democracias. Consiguientemente, el político aparece en todos los pueblos y en todos los tiempos.

Ya el venerable Aristóteles decía que el hombre es “un animal político”, en el sentido de que nace con irresistible tendencia a vivir en sociedad, a organizarse en ciudades (polis), para cuya existencia es indispensable alguna clase de gobierno.

Las ideas corrientes acerca de la política y los políticos, son profundamente erradas. Se cree que son algo abominable que debe desaparecer, sin comprender su necesidad imprescindible.

The most widely-professed fact in the field of Latin American politics is unquestionably the dominant role of the president. The task facing Latin Americanists is not the defense of this theme but the elaboration of it. One of the most confining factors — so often lamented at conferences where these matters are discussed — is the lack of information in depth concerning all of the revelancies of power structure. This is particularly evident in appraising cultural factors although it must be admitted that much excellent work is now being done. A very challenging problem in the area of comparative government is involved, a problem admitting of some of the methodological uneasiness associated with that branch of political inquiry. Obviously, in the study of Latin American politics one may proceed with greater assurance with the “variations on a theme” technique than would be possible in many other areas; however, some disillusionment and appreciable inaccuracies lie in wait if one submits to this temptation too extensively.

Latin-American education today bears more resemblance to its ineffective past than to the great and good plans which its educators have regularly got incorporated into law. For two generations all the southern republics have passed constitutional provisions guaranteeing free and compulsory education. Haiti has carried such a provision in its legal code since 1871, yet today 92 per cent of its people are illiterate.

The percentage figure ranges somewhat lower for the other countries, but the basic situation remains the same. As H. W. Spiegel reported in The Brazilian Economy: “At present no more than one-third of Brazil's child population attends school. Schools, including the elementary, are overcrowded. Teachers are scarce. Education opportunities for higher training are poor and expensive. During 1940 to 1944, seventyeight per cent of the immigrants were literate; in 1940 only thirty-two per cent of the native Brazilians were literate.”

Nous sommes fiers de notre élite intellectuelle. Nous apprécions ses connaissances littéraires, artistiques, techniques. Nous tirons legitime vanité de ses productions intellectuelles.

Il a été donné plus d'une fois de dresser le bilan de nos productions intellectuelles. II y a, par exemple, d'Ulrick Divivier la BibliographieGenérale et Méthodique D'Haiti (2 volumes, Port-au-Prince, Imprimerie de l'Etat, 1941, 315 et 411 pages), des Anthologies de Poésie et de Prose Haitiennes et l'important travail de Max Bissainthe Dictionnaire de la Bibliographie Haitienne (The Scarecrow Press, Washington D. C, 1052 pages, 1951) qui constituent des homages éloquents á notre intelligenzia, durante les 150 ans et plus d'Indépendance.

Conozco pocos estudios sobre lo que contenían las librerías o bibliotecas durante la colonia y será de no poco interés, para los que escriben sobre la historia de Charcas, el conocer algunos catálogos completos de tales repositorios. Por el momento, doy cuenta de dos de ellos.