The historiography of the Nicaraguan workers' movement suffers from two basic problems: an extreme paucity and dispersion of primary sources and a tendency to compensate with analytic frameworks for what is lacking in substance. The triumph of a revolutionary movement in 1979, genuinely interested in allowing the Nicaraguan people to become ‘dueños de su historia’, has stimulated the search for primary source materials and has awakened the interest of historians in the trajectory of class struggle in Nicaragua. However, if at this moment, we do not confront fundamental methodological problems this new search for the past will offer precious little illumination on the problems of class development and conflict in contemporary Nicaragua.

The meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the American Republics in Rio de Janeiro in 1942 was both the end of the series of inter-American meetings called in order to formulate an ‘American attitude’ toward the events in Europe and also the formalization of the war-time co-operation which followed. But, at another level, it was a clash of the foreign policies of Brazil, Chile, Argentina and the United States which both typified and shaped inter- American relations well into the 1950s. This discussion, which is largely based on United States goveernment documents, examines the inter-meshings of these foreign policies at the Rio meeting and the immediate aftermath of that conference.

This article explores the relation between transatlantic immigration and wealth accumulation in late colonial Mexico City, the chief destination for transatlantic emigrants from Spain. In contrast to the prevalent focus in the literature on networks and transatlantic ties, I argue that economic mobility and thus entry into the upper classes of colonial society depended on the social background of immigrants in their home regions in the peninsula. Human capital rather than social capital was the key determinant explaining why certain regional groups, notably the Basques, succeeded economically as merchants and miners, challenging traditional notions of networks and interconnectedness in Atlantic history and beyond. The findings are grounded in quantitative datasets of Spanish immigrants, overcoming both the biases of anecdotal sources and the methodological intricacy of disentangling the causal relationship between wealth accumulation and social ties.

Even at first glance, one can see remarkable similarities in the topography, geography and patterns of land use of the west coast republics of South America and of the states of Australia which stretch along that continent's eastern and southeastern shores. Not only are the latitudinal parameters comparable, but similarities in climate and patterns of agriculture abound. The resemblances are particularly defined as we consider the geographical extravagance of Chile and compare it alone to the eastern edge of Australia.

The subject of this study is the controversial territorial claim concerning British Honduras or Belize,1 a coastal strip some 174 miles long and about 70 miles broad at its widest point, lying on the eastern seaboard of Central America between 15° 54' and 18° 29' north latitude, and 88° II' (or, including the offshore islands, 87° 28') and 89° 13½' west longitude. 2 Its area of 8,867 square miles is roughly equal to that of Wales or twice the size of Jamaica. It is the second smallest political division on the American continent, being slightly larger than El Salvador, the smallest Latin American State.3 It is bounded on the north and north-west by Mexico, the boundary following the Hondo river; on the south and west by Guatemala, the southern boundary being the Sarstoon river; and on the east by the Carribbean Sea.4

On 7 November 1961, a crucial date in modern Ecuadorian political history, Dr José María Velasco Ibarra, constitutional President of the Republic of Ecuador, was deposed from his high office and sought refuge in the Mexican Embassy. The apparent stability that had characterized the country's political life since 1948 was shattered. The pattern of politics since November 1961 is similar in many respects to that which occurred in the decades between the two World Wars. Coups d'état, dictatorships and military juntas are political phenomena common to both periods. The military intervention which to Velasco's dewnfall in 1961 re-established a convention which had been dormant since 1947.

Does political science advance or do fashions merely change? There can be no doubt that this past decade has seen a major change in the ways in which the nature of military rule in Latin America has been examined. To a large extent, this has been due to changes in the nature of Latin American governments themselves and, more particularly, to the emergence of the long term military-bureaucratic (sometimes called bureaucratic-authotitarian) government.

Inspired by recent critical pedagogic and social movement theory, this article explores the cultural production of social movements in Chile at the beginning of the twentieth century. Questioning the belief that the Estado docente was the sole mechanism of social democratisation, it explores the pedagogic proposals developed by workers and their associations during what is referred to as the period of the ‘Social Question’. The article concludes by analyzing the factors which led to the demise of these alternative pedagogic experiments.

Recent explanations of the crisis in Uruguay have tended to focus either on the inadequacies of economic policy in the 1950s, or on the financial and moral implications of the social legislation of Uruguay. This article puts forward an alternative interpretation of the crisis, finding the fundamental causes of it in the manner in which modernizing forces were reconciled to traditional structures in the early decades of this century. The first section discusses the nature of the economic crisis, its immediate causes and some of its political repercussions. The second analyses Uruguay's reputation for political and social modernity. The third suggests the origins of the crisis in the policies of José Batlle y Ordóñez and the consequences they have had. The sections, therefore, broadly correspond to three different perspectives on the crisis–the first economic, the second political, the third historical.

The article addresses the history of the ‘Estatuto del Peón’ (peons’ statute or rural workers’ code), one of the most emblematic measures of the so-called ‘first Peronism’. It tries to weigh the importance of this legendary Peronist act for the actors directly involved and in particular to calibrate the magnitude of the Statute's impact on the everyday life and working conditions of Argentina's rural workers. I analyse in detail how the decree was conceived and the novelties it brought in terms of rights and regulations for rural workers. It also uses trial records to explore the implementation of the Statute and its concrete effects, in terms of both working conditions and the juridical protections offered to rural peons.