During the last national election in Peru, one of the candidates charged that the Indians probably lived better under the Inca rulers. Rather than being political hyperbole, this observation points up the stark reality which is the root cause of Peru's economic and social problems. With a relatively thin middle class, Peru's population of about 11.6 million is largely polarized into a small elite, whose wealth is conspicuous even by Latin American standards, and the larger proportion of the population living in the high sierra or in the slums surrounding each coastal city, which barely manages to exist under conditions of abject poverty. This skewed distribution of wealth and income, long apparent even to the most casual observer, has been confirmed by a recent study which indicates that the top 10 per cent of the spending units receive 60 per cent of the disposable income, and 8,760 spending units, representing only .25 per cent of the total, receive 35 per cent of the income.

Una filosofía es una expresión autónoma del espíritu, resultado de la eterna inquietud del hombre —nunca del todo desilusionado por sus fracasos— por ponerse en claro sobre el sentido de su vida y del universo a que pertenece. Así considerada, la obra de cualquier filósofo puede sufrir el examen de su valor intrínseco, como esfuerzo hacia la verdad, en cuyo caso se ejercita sobre ella una valoraciónteórica. Pero la filosofía es a la vez una parte de la aventura del hombre en el tiempo, y va signada por las limitaciones temporales de aquél. Nunca se da en el vacío, sino amalgamada con todos los elementos propios de la vida del hombre en un instante de la historia. Cuando se examina una filosofía según su función en una época, una comunidad o una cultura, lo que se intenta no es ya una valoración teórica, sino una interpretación histórica.

The writer will attempt to draw attention to major like and unlike elements in the cultural patterns of Brazil and the United States, with an eye to mutual understanding. Obviously, this constitutes a task of considerable magnitude, and much reflection was required in order to decide which of the many possibilities should receive attention. Finally, it was decided to center on the following four aspects of the general subject: (1) the diversity of patterns of living in the United States, and the even greater diversity of ways of life in Brazil; (2) the higher degree of social differentiation in the United States, in comparison with contemporary Brazil; (3) the similarities and differences in patterns of living which result from the class structures found in the respective societies; and (4) the effects upon general social and cultural patterns of the institutions which have played the most important roles in producing the distinguishing characteristics of each of the societies: in the case of Brazil, the great patriarchial family or kinship unit, and in the case of the United States, the public school.

Within the past decade a perennial and intriguing problem concerning Canadian foreign relations has gained new prominence. Can the government of Canada as empowered under Heading VI (Section 91) of the British North America Act (1867) conclude contractual relations with foreign states when the terms of such contractual relations can be given legal implementation only by legislation of the provinces in areas reserved to them under heading VI (sections 92 and 93) ? Or more precisely, since certain classes of legislative subjects are specifically reserved to the provinces, can the individual province then engage in “foreign relations” vis-á-vis those reserved subjects?

With the signing of the Franco-Quebec Agreements of 15 September 1967, which provided for increased cultural, scientific, and technological cooperation between France and Quebec, and the developments leading up to and flowing from this Accord, the problem of the role and extent of provincial powers in regard to foreign relationships again came to the fore.

Central America has always seemed to me a particularly fruitful object of study, of economic and particularly monetary affairs, because of the existence of six countries of not too different size and economic structure. This situation provides an opportunity for assessing the workings of certain economic principles.

In economic terms, the countries of Central America are very small units. For such units, economics can provide a few analytical propositions that seem prima facie plausible. One is that such economies need not indefinitely specialize in exports of primary products, but if they diversity and industrialize their economies, it must be for export. Industrialization for the domestic market is unlikely to permit sufficient economies of scale. In this regard, the Central American countries have industrialized much less than the small republics in the Far East, and accordingly have not enjoyed as rapid a rate of economic growth.

University students in Venezuela constitute about ten percent of the corresponding age group (calculated from Universidad Central de Venezuela 1970: 19, Table 5), and leadership of the country's economic and social development is increasingly in the hands of university-trained professionals. University enrollment has quadrupled since 1958, and young professionals who have graduated over the past fifteen years already represent a majority among university graduates in Venezuela. Research on students and elites, however, in Venezuela as elsewhere in Latin America, has concentrated on their divergent political attitudes while paying scant attention to the transformation of university students into members of the elite.

This paper reports on an exploratory survey of student and elite attitudes toward higher education and professional employment in Venezuela. Our findings provide some insight on the extent to which employment of high-level manpower is influenced by modern, achievement-oriented criteria, as compared with traditional, ascriptive criteria.

Are Latin American presidents at greater risk for removal in remittance-dependent countries? Departing from the debate about whether remittances produce democratic or autocratic outcomes, this article asks whether remittances contribute to presidential removals, which are an important characteristic of Latin American democracies since the Third Wave. It uses questions about supporting a military coup under high corruption and crime scenarios to gauge remittance recipients’ support for early removal of a president. It finds that remittances create a constituency that tolerates military coups. Using data from Martínez (2021), the analysis also shows that remittances increase the risk of removal for presidents who face a greater number of scandals; but remittances do not pose this threat under poor economic performance.

Literature on the Guatemalan Civil War has debated whether or not state violence was triggered by rebel activities. Did the government respond to each insurrection caused by the rebels, or did it blindly target regions where antigovernment antipathy and movements had historically prevailed? Because state violence was extensive during the civil war period, the dynamism of the war could have been the reason for its occurrence. Relying on the threat-response model of state violence, this article argues that human rights violations occurred when the government perceived a rebel threat that would have seriously degraded its capability in future counterinsurgencies. The article employs propensity score matching to address the problem of confounding in empirical analysis, and reveals that rebel attacks, particularly those targeting security apparatus and resulting in human injury, increased the likelihood of state violence in the Guatemalan Civil War.

In the past decade or so the international relations of Latin America—for many years the subject of legalistic, institutional, polemical, or purely descriptive analyses—has been investigated on a much more sophisticated basis. Dependencia has emerged as a major organizing concept in much of the literature, and “bureaucratic politics” has provided a focus for some of the work emanating from North American scholars on U.S. Latin American policies. There are a number of other frameworks as well. Welcome as the wealth of new studies is, they nevertheless present us for the first time with a problem of assessing the utility of various theoretical approaches or at least with the challenge of relating them to one another in a meaningful fashion.

The Cuban revolution has profoundly shaken the economic and political foundation traditional in most of the 20 Latin American republics. The demand by the rest of Latin America for Cuban type reforms has also required a reappraisal of U. S.-Latin American relations, which with the breaking off of diplomatic intercourse between Cuba and the U. S., January 4, 1961, have reached their lowest point since the initiation in the mid 1930's of the Good Neighbor Policy by President Roosevelt. Furthermore, the spread of the Cuban revolution, with its ideals and aspirations for the fulfilment of the age-old political, social, and economic aspirations of the downtrodden masses, is now an imminent threat for the remaining undemocratic Latin American governments. There is no denying the fact that most Latin American countries are still run by an oligarchy of landlords and the military.

Hasta los críticos más ardientes de la Unión Soviética han de admitir que las realizaciones de ese inmenso conglomerado de repúblicas en el campo de la educación pública han sido impresionantes en las últimas generaciones. Lo certifican los hechos y las cifras disponibles tanto en fuentes soviéticas como en las occidentales, al extremo de que la abundancia de datos numéricos al respecto hace más bien pensar en un exceso de “kremlinólogos”.

Por ese motivo fue con gran placer que acepté la invitación de J. Gvishiani, vicepresidente del Comité Estatal de la URSS … para la Coordinación de la Investigación Científica, en el marco del intercambio cultural norteamericano-soviético, para tomar conocimiento directo de la labor que realizan en Moscú diversas ramas de la Academia de Ciencias, particularmente el Instituto de América Latina. Habituado a estudiar in situ los problemas interamericanos —materia a la que vengo dedicando desde hace varios años mi más fervoroso empeño— traté de aprovechar al máximo la experiencia que se me brindaba.

The per capita availability of fisheries products in El Salvador is about 3.3 pounds per annum. The level, while low, is not out of the ordinary for tropical America. Seafood in particular, but animal protein in all forms, is little consumed by the great bulk of the population. It is the better endowed economic classes and the fishermen who account for most of the consumption of fisheries products. Other groups, chiefly urban, regard fish and crustaceans as luxuries, ordering or serving them mainly during religious and other festive occasions.

This article will argue that general agreement between Cuba and the Soviet Union on their foreign policy toward Latin America is likely over the long run, despite (a) Fidel Castro's condemnation of perestroika and glasnost, and (b) his obvious attempt to embarrass Soviet Secretary-General Mikhail Gorbachev during the latter's state visit to Cuba in April 1989. Serious obstacles — such as differences over Cuban domestic policy and Castro's personal ambitions — remain to be overcome, but foreign policy disagreements between the two countries are likely to prove less intractable than is frequently assumed.

This article will start with (1) an overview of Cuban Latin American foreign policy since the 1970s; then proceed to (2) an interpretation of Soviet “new thinking;” and finally (3) argue that this particular interpretation of “new thinking” is consistent with, and not contradictory to, Castro's foreign policy.

Negotiating a treaty between two sovereign nations is no simple matter. Even when there is consensus that a new accord is long overdue, a solution acceptable to both governments and their most vocal constituencies is most elusive and often difficult to conclude within a reasonable period of time. This is especially true when there is strong popular opinion aroused on both sides. Discussions usually drag on, and while diplomats publicly agree that “progress is being made,” there are significant political and economic benefits unrealized by either or both countries involved in the negotiation proceedings (Lopez Guevara, 1976).

The present treaty negotiations between the Republic of Panama and the United States of America is a case in point. That Panamanian public opinion is aroused on the Canal issue is indicated by the 1964 Canal Zone border incidents in which twenty-one Panamanians and three Americans died and by subsequent demonstrations.