Not since the heyday of foreign tax missions in the 1960s has tax reform been discussed as intensively in Latin America. During the 1980s, major tax reforms took place in Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina, and Colombia, and somewhat similar reforms occurred in the previous decade in Chile and Uruguay. Moreover, tax reform seems to be climbing higher on the policy agenda in countries as diverse as Guatemala, Venezuela, Paraguay, and Peru.

The proximate cause of democratic breakdown in Argentina has invariably been a military coup. In overthrowing civilian governments, however, the armed forces have not acted in a vacuum. Before the 1966 and 1976 coups, military officers made sure that key landowner, business, and labor leaders would support or at least accept military intervention. The importance that the Argentine military places on civilian opinion raises the question of the conditions under which civilian leaders might become more likely to oppose a coup. One promising development would be for these elites to channel their political demands increasingly through political parties. By investing resources in party activity and becoming more habituated to pressing demands through party channels, Argentine socioeconomic elites would gain a larger stake in the survival of the electoral and legislative institutions that parties require to be effective. This article will analyze the relationship between one such elite, the Peronist union leadership, and one of Argentina's main political parties, the Peronist Partido Justicialista (PJ).

“In the last two or three years, … a group of Mexicans …, supported and advised by the private banks, has stolen more money from our country than the empires that have exploited us since the beginning of history…. They've robbed us …, but they will not rob us again.” With these words, President López Portillo nationalized Mexico's private banks and imposed controls on foreign exchange. Many of those attending this State of the Union address on 1 September 1982 stood to applaud, while the president cried and one banker fainted. Mexico's chief of state continued, “The revolution will speed up; the state will no longer be intimidated by pressure groups.”

They arrived first in July 1898 in scattered numbers, in the company of an army of conquest, and subsequently in successive waves during the military occupation. By the time U.S. military rule over Cuba came to an end in May 1902, no less than a score of Protestant denominations had inaugurated evangelical activities in Cuba, including Northern and Southern Baptists, Southern Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, the Disciples of Christ, Quakers, Pentecostalists, and Congregationalists. In fact, so many missionaries arrived in Cuba at one time that denominational competition quickly got out of hand. In February 1902, an interdenominational conference convened in Cienfuegos to impose order on the U.S. evangelical enterprise. The resulting comity plan established spheres of influence for the principal Protestant denominations in Cuba: Northern and Southern Baptists divided the island between them, with Northern Baptists in the two eastern provinces and Southern Baptists assigned to the four western ones; Quakers and Methodists divided eastern Cuba between them; Presbyterians and Congregationalists located their missions in the western zones; and Episcopalians concentrated in Matanzas and Santiago de Cuba.

For scholars writing a history of a “developing” country, access to pertinent unpublished personal and official sources is so limited that some prominent historical figures are inadequately represented. Juan Silvano Godoi of Paraguay is no exception. Because of the inaccessibility of primary sources, publications on Paraguayan history have devoted little coverage to this major figure. To help fill this gap, the Special Collections Department of the University Library at the University of California, Riverside, has compiled an annotated list of Godoi's personal collection. The Godoi collection represents a crucial period of Paraguayan history, and to understand its importance, researchers must become aware of some of his activities between 1870 and 1926.