An increasing amount of research has been undertaken in the last decade on the power structure of the Empire of Brazil (1822–89). In common with similar work on the rest of Latin America, many of the studies on Brazil have adopted the concept of the elite for their theoretical framework. And, as elite studies must do if they are to be more than speculative, several of the works have drawn on prosopography, or collective biography, to support the interpretations of the power structure that they advance. If the results have not, in general, been entirely satisfactory, this is largely due to the limitations in the prosopographical materials used. Since the materials have not easily lent themselves to a proper quantitative approach, they have been used selectively in the form of examples, the validity and relevance of which must always be suspect.

As you know, we have an institution called the sexenio when everything changes.

And we're here now for six years. You know how we all come in and get thrown out at the sexenio.

If someone has a chief who is capable and has the prospects for a good future, then that person will probably think, “Perhaps I can go with him at the sexenio”; and it happens in reverse, too, if someone has a chief who is not particularly capable but who has influential friends, some will want to follow him. There are a lot of changes and it affects our program, especially when people stop working to pursue their futures.

There has been a great deal of interest recently in problems of computation in developing countries. The Jerusalem Conference on Information Technology held in Israel in 1971 (see Bibliography Key, Jerusalem) was dedicated wholly to the topic, and since then the Rio Symposium on Computer Education for Developing Countries (see Rio), and the IBI-ICC Conference on Informatics in Government (see Florence), both held in 1972, have dealt directly with these problems. Latin America has been intent on benefiting from the application of computer technology to development, but the advent of the technology has not always met with the success that was expected. However, the lack of policy that brought about the random introduction of computers into a country, often sacrificing other equipment or services also critical to its development, is now giving way to more rational procedures. A number of countries (Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico) are presently engaged in detailed studies of their systems and those of other developing nations in order to learn from their experiences. This article is an attempt to aid that research effort by providing an annotated bibliography and other sources of information on computation in the region.

The silver anniversary of the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies (RMCLAS) provides a good opportunity for an assessment of that organization. Much of the following analysis focuses upon annual meetings since they are the major activity of the organizational membership. Programs and minutes of past meetings as well as organizational newsletters and correspondence were examined for patterns in the areas of program participation (numbers, institutional affiliation, academic discipline, and sex of participants), topics favored (as concerns discipline and theme), the general political orientation of the organization, openness to participation from the outside, and organizational publications; an attempt is also made to provide some appreciation for the subjective side of the organization's life.

When Kalman Silvert died of a heart attack, Latin Americanist scholarship lost its greatest protagonist; American scholars lost one of the most active opponents of intellectual technocracy, and, thereby, the American public lost an important proponent of democracy; the Ford Foundation lost a guiding figure in international social science planning; his family and friends lost an individual of inestimable and irreplaceable personal worth; and Kal, himself, lost the opportunity to pursue his own course toward the development of a humanistic politics for the Western world. In the fall of 1976, Kal and Frieda Silvert were to have taken up residence in Mexico, to continue to work for the Ford Foundation, but in a new direction and with much more time for him to dedicate to the problems that interested him the most. Leaving some part of his task undone was inevitable; it is difficult to imagine anyone being able to achieve the goals that Kal set for himself.

Theories on the relationship between religion and social change over the past decade have received significant new empirical inputs from developments in Latin America where religious symbols and institutions have undergone some dramatic alterations under the influence of various modernization processes. Sociologists and anthropologists in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe stressed the basically conservative effect of religion on society, and concluded that religious institutions are normally obstacles to change as a result of their traditionalistic orientation and association with established social structures. However, there is a growing uneasiness with the conclusions of these major theorists (Spencer, Malinowski, Durkheim, Marx, Weber) in the light of developments in major religions in some areas of the Third World, particularly Roman Catholicism in Latin America. Popular reporting as well as recent scholarly research have noted significant shifts to the left in parts of the Latin American Church, exemplified by strong episcopal condemnations of social injustice, growing political activism of militant clergy groups, and the emergence of new pastoral and social programs aimed at religious and societal reform. The conclusion in much of this literature is that the Church is undergoing a major transformation and this new phenomenon will provide a powerful stimulus for social change throughout the continent.

The Brazilian government's plans to build the Transamazon Highway from the Atlantic coast to the Peruvian border and to settle thousands of landless peasants along it created intense debate before the project's precipitous beginning. Critics of the road “that went from nowhere to no place” denounced it as economic folly, while champions of “national integration” saw it as a crucial step toward the economic and geopolitical unification essential to Brazil's realization of its “great nation” potential and toward alleviating some of its land-tenure concentration (Tamer 1970, Pereira 1971).