In this issue of larr we publish a symposium of three interconnected Articles on the developing subject of the social history of Latin America in the colonial period.

The three papers originated with a session of the 1968 annual meeting of the American Historical Association. At that meeting, Professors Frederick P. Bowser and Karen Spalding presented papers, Professor James Lockhart gave a commentary, and the Editor was chairman. The three authors* negative reaction to the conventional wording of the session title, together with other historiographical positions they held in common, made them aware that a new movement in social and ethnic history was taking shape in the colonial Spanish American field. The three colonialists and the Editor of LARR therefore began to plan the joint publication in LARR of articles which would take formal cognizance of the movement and make its scattered members more aware of the issues in the field and of the activities of other scholars engaged in related research.

The impressive contribution of population history to our understanding of the past has generated extraordinary interest in new demographic methods and old population figures. Most research in the field of late colonial Latin American demography, aside from the studies of Cook and Borah and a few others, has been aimed rather modestly at enhancing our understanding of the population dynamics of a village or small community. This book may indicate a new trend: the attempt to establish the population structure of a large region by bringing together population reports for hundreds of parishes. Lombardi argues that through the development of a broad demographic context, analysis of the history of Venezuelan population can be most economically realized and the findings of micro-level studies properly interpreted.

Our purpose is to evaluate the impact of the economic and social policies of Chile's military junta on the well-being of the majority of chilenos, especially those of the lowest income level. The exercise consists of a simple comparison of income and expenditure levels between those of the last months of the Unidad Popular (UP) government and those of October 1974. We have chosen the 1968–69 average as a basis of comparison for two reasons. First, in practical terms, the Dirección de Estadística y Censos (DEC) conducted a survey on consumption expenditures for different income groups for that period, and it is the most recent one available. Second, in the days prior to the coup there was general agreement among economists, both in the government and in the opposition, that the average standards of living were equivalent to those of 1968–69. In effect, according to the Taller de Coyuntura, real wages during the first eight months of 1973 were 98.8 percent of their levels in January 1970. Since this index of real wages is based on January 1970, and our basis of comparison is 1968–69, we can assert that in the last months of the Unidad Popular government (January-August 1973) real wages were at least equal to, if not higher than, those of 1968–69. We should emphasize that the Taller de Coyuntura was a vocal stronghold of forces opposed to the government of Salvador Allende. In addition, a comparison of the Consumers' Price Index, published by the Banco Central de Chile, indicates that real wages increased between 1970 and July 1973. A somewhat more favorable picture would have come out of studies conducted at the now defunct Instituto de Economía Política y Planificación (Facultad de Economía Política, Universidad de Chile), which indicated that between July and August 1973, real wages were back to their September 1970 level. The gains of the first two years of the Unidad Popular—especially for the lowest income groups—had been lost due to government mistakes and as a result of the sabotage and destabilization campaigns that started 5 September 1970 and culminated with the bloody coup of 11 September 1973. Hence even though we are using 1968–69 as a proxy, we are actually comparing real income in October 1974 with that of the final months of the government of the Unidad Popular.

Government agencies in many countries are prolific publishers of information in a surprising variety of fields, reflecting their myriad activities, their economic and political interests, and the needs and interests of their constituents. Reports of agencies, transcriptions of congressional hearings, and agricultural extension bulletins are well-known examples, but government agencies as sources of reference materials—publications in a format designed to be consulted for specific pieces of information, rather than to be read from start to finish—are often overlooked.

They say it is impossible to re-create a poem in another language, and perhaps it is. It is also irresistible.

Translators may attempt the impossible because they want to share their enjoyment or because they need versions for teaching or because they like word games-translation is as much fun as DoubleCrostics. My own reason is the challenge of the irresistible; I am like the mountain climber who says, “Because it's there.” And in fact, mountain climbing and poetic translation have some points in common. The translator and the climber may find smooth stretches on their rough paths, and they both struggle upward, but at the goal the similarity disappears, for the climber may succeed absolutely. There are no absolute successes in translation, which John Ciardi calls the art of failure. On the other hand, the translator will never find himself in the anticlimactic position of having climbed Mount Everest. He always has more worlds to attempt to conquer, and his old worlds to improve.

On 7 December 1897, on the outskirts of Havana in San Pedro, a small party of Cuban rebels led by Lieutenant General Antonio Maceo y Grajales was ambushed by a Spanish patrol. General Maceo was killed; at his side, Panchito Gómez Toro, son of the Cuban Commander-in-Chief Máximo Gómez, also died. The surviving Cuban soldiers buried the two bodies in a secret grave to protect them from desecration by the Spanish forces. Several days later in Havana, the Spanish commander-in-chief, General Valeriano Weyler, learned of Maceo's death and celebrated. Weyler, whose cruelties had earned him the enduring title of “the butcher,” gathered his officers and supporters around him; they feasted, drank, and prematurely toasted Spanish victory. They could not imagine that the rebels would continue to fight once they had lost the superhuman figure of Maceo.

Two factors have been instrumental in drawing scientists and scholars to northwestern Peru: oil resources and the climatic phenomena known as El Niño. During the past seventy-five years many aspects of the geology, paleontology, geography, climate, botany, zoology, and archaeology of the region north of the Sechura Desert have become well known. Due to the attention that scientists and the Peruvian government have paid to this area, the departments of Piura and Tumbes are scientifically the best known regions of Peru.

The scholar examining nineteenth-century Central American (here defined as including Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica) foreign relations, particularly foreign trade relations, constantly finds quite positive statements regarding British, French, and United States economic power in Central America. These often allege political domination of the individual nations through foreign economic influences. Invariably such claims are based either upon “common knowledge,” without supportive data, or upon data of a highly selective, unsystematic, or arbitrary nature. Confronted with the choice of accepting or challenging these allegations, the scholar may choose the previous “general wisdom,” “create” his own “wisdom,” or institute as systematic a study of foreign economic trade and navigation ties as existing data sources permit. For the scholar wishing to undertake a detailed study, this essay will describe the location, abundance, reliability, and accuracy of data relative to nineteenth-century Central American trade and navigation as encountered in sources from Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, the United States, Great Britain, France, Hamburg (until 1873), Bremen, the German Empire (beginning about 1880), Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium. While the following discussion focuses upon the use of United States and European archives and the statistical and commercial serials for gathering data on Central American trade and maritime activity, obviously many of these same sources, archives, or serials possess identical data for most other Latin American countries or regions.