Latin Americanists commonly stress the traditional cultural and philosophical differences between the region they study and the United States. A frequent contention holds that such historical contrasts persist to the present. For example, Howard J. Wiarda asserts, “Latin America … remains paternalistic, hierarchical, authoritarian, Catholic, corporate, personalist, and elitist to its core.” In contrast, the United States is presumably more egalitarian, Protestant, and impersonal than her southern-hemispheric neighbors.

From mid-1980 to the present, Uruguay has experienced greater political change than during the previous seven years. This essay examines the salient political event that separates the two periods: the national plebiscite of November 1980. Its relevance, the causal conditions that might account for its unexpected results, and its probable short-range consequences will be explored. The argument assumes a general familiarity with Uruguayan politics of the last two decades, and particularly during the period 1974-80. It is also assumed that the Uruguayan political system of the last two decades fits O'Donnell's bureaucratic-authoritarian model, with the caveat that because of specific economic conditions, a feature of that model known as the “deepening” of the economy is not applicable to Uruguay, as has also been argued with respect to the case of Chile.

This paper presents a tentative explanation of the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution using a “micro-political” model of political profit, governmental efficiency, and political stability applied to data on the history of Somoza's fall. The revolution is explained as the outcome of a loss of stability by a government that attempted to control a greater share of the resources of the nation than its capabilities to persuade and coerce the population would allow. The initial results of the model, though preliminary, permit us to raise some important questions about the future of Nicaragua's political economy.

In April 1970, the Hispanic Foundation of the Library of Congress and Yale University, in conjunction with the Ford Foundation, sponsored in Washington an international symposium on Cuban research materials. The Cuban Revolution had attracted the attention of an international scholarly community and, quite suddenly, a new and vast corpus of literature had come into existence. By 1970 this prodigious enterprise showed no sign of coming to an end; on the contrary, it gave every indication of expanding. In 1970 the Center for International Studies at the University of Pittsburgh launched Cuban Studies Newsletter, a publication that the editors described as “designed to provide comprehensive and timely communication among those interested in Cuban studies.” The development of Cuban study centers in Europe and the United States further served to stimulate interest in Cuba. The moment was propitious, then, for an international symposium to review the state of research collections and library holdings on Cuba. Some fifteen participants, mainly scholars with research interests in Cuba and librarians and bibliographers with specializations in the Caribbean and Latin America, presented a variety of papers dealing with various aspects of library and archival collections possessing materials on Cuba.

THE TASK OF DRAWING TOGETHER USEFUL OBSERVATIONS ABOUT RESEARCH on problems of education in Latin America is at once an attractive and a disagreeable task. It is attractive because the kind of effort exemplified by this publication seems to imply increased attention to the need for research. It is disagreeable because of the obvious paucity of research, lack of a dynamic role for research in the educational process, disjointed and unrelated effort in the research that does exist, and misunderstanding of the nature of research and its function in a social field. The views expressed here are critical of research—its goals, its conduct, and the mechanisms for integrating it into educational development; but, hopefully, the observations made can be of use to enhance the research potential in this important sphere of activity.

The Resort to Violence by University Students Has Become A Common occurrence not only in developing countries but also in the more industrialized ones. Voluminous recent literature on the general subject of violence has not greatly expanded our understanding of this important problem. Similarly, literature on student movements is increasing but analyses of student violence per se are still scarce. We know less about the causes of student violence than we do about the scope and intensity of the phenomenon, yet why, when, how, and under what conditions people resort to violence are still unresolved questions. Partial answers are in, although to what effect remains to be seen.

although at times quite thin, there does appear to be a common thread of agreement running through most of the classic and contemporary literature on theories of revolution—this being the simple proposition that the majority of the participants engaging in such activity are dissatisfied, discontented, and often disaffected individuals. If we can think of “revolution” for the moment in its most general terms—to subsume under such a conceptual label both the simplest manifestation of civil disorder to the most grandiose occurrence of what might be called basic social change—then, it seems, we are in a position to illustrate the emergence of this basic proposition throughout the literature.

Con mucho retraso he leído en mi exilio en Alemania la nota publicada en Latin American Research Review (11, núm. 3 [1976]) titulada “Estudio crítico sobre el libro de Osvaldo Bayer.” No es mi costumbre responder a críticas o comentarios donde se traten mis obras. Creo que no le corresponde al autor salir en defensa de su producción. Salvo el caso en que se tergiversen citas, se escondan datos, se ignoren documentos y se ataque directamente a la persona del escritor lanzando veladas acusaciones de tipo político como ocurre en el artículo publicado en esta revista.