Uruguay, once known as the “Switzerland of South America” for its advanced social and economic development, is a country in which it is surprisingly difficult to obtain statistical data, and quantitative demographic sources are little known and even less analyzed. Despite the fact that, at the turn of the century, Uruguay had a stable government and an advanced social system (the “welfare state” created by the administraciones batllistas), only five general population censuses had ever been taken (1852, 1860, 1908, 1963, 1975), and only the last three are reliable. However, these are not the only sources available, and it is necessary to survey other major existing demographic data, whether published or unpublished.

Una de las causas de fondo de las situaciones de extrema pobreza es la falta de empleos que permitan obtener ingresos adecuados a las necesidades mínimas. ¿Cómo pueden formularse políticas de empleo que permitan abrir oportunidades efectivas y duraderas para los grupos más pobres y que al mismo tiempo signifiquen una contribución al desarrollo nacional? En este documento se elabora un enfoque para la formulación de políticas de empleo en economías heterogéneas, es decir, economías en las que prevalecen serias rigideces estructurales, como falta de movilidad de los recursos, escasa difusión de las tecnologías, desigual distribución del ingreso y de la riqueza.

A diferencia de los enfoques ortodoxos, que suponen que a través de políticas económicas globales y uniformes se pueden corregir esas rigideces, en este estudio se recomienda una identificación de los grandes grupos y sectores sociales, de acuerdo a la forma en que se insertan en el sistema económico y a sus vinculaciones con los sectores más modernos. Las políticas tendientes a aumentar el empleo deben, en consecuencia, ser selectivas de acuerdo a las características de esos grupos. Con todo, deben estar integradas a una estrategia coherente de desarrollo a largo plazo que persiga el crecimiento con disminución de la desigualdad.

In the last several years an increasing number of political scientists have turned to Latin America as their principal area interest. Many of these academicians have been trained in the various sub-disciplines of political science and turn to Latin America as a meaningful laboratory for the study of specific political groups or processes.

The number of works concerning Mexican history is vast and continues to grow. However, research in the area is complicated by the fact that there are many older works in the field that have been forgotten; they are scattered throughout Mexico, other parts of Latin America, Europe, and the United States. These writings often were published in very small numbers, are now out of print and hard to locate, and thus their existence may escape the scholar's notice. This is unfortunate, for they sometimes contain valuable information.

Unlike other Latin American countries, the particular mode of dependent capitalist development that has occurred in Argentina has led to the emergence of a relatively large industrial bourgeoisie. Indeed, industrialists in Argentina have constituted an extremely important pressure group, in a society where the state has not been able to control the development and activities of societal organizations. Entrepreneurial organizations both of a general type, such as chambers of commerce and industry, and of a more specialized nature, such as trade associations, began to arise autonomously by the turn of the century. The events of the Perón years were particularly important in giving impetus to entrepreneurial organization. By the early 1950s, with the passage of the Law of Professional Associations of Employers, which granted them special legitimacy and importance, such entrepreneurial organizations became the most important means by which entrepreneurs attempted to influence government policy.

Peru has a durable tradition of peasant rebellion, most recently described by José Matos Mar (1967) and Oscar Cornblit (1970), which dates far back to the eighteenth century movements led by Juan Santos Atahuallpa and José Gabriel Túpac Amaru. Twentieth century guerrilla leaders have tried to identify with this tradition by echoing their predecessors' concern for the Indians' right to work their own land and to be free from exploitation. They have named their fronts for Túpac Amaru, Pumacahua, Pachacutec, and other native revolutionaries of an earlier era, and they have proposed fundamental changes in Peruvian society, notably agrarian reform, in a conscious effort to complete a struggle that has gone on for more than two centuries to secure land and dignity for campesinos.

It is a well known, oft stated fact that Latin American periodicals, particularly of the nineteenth century, contain a wealth of untapped documentation for the historian and literary critic. This is especially true for Cuba, where a protracted colonial period with years of tight censorship, repression, and revolutionary turmoil made the publication of lengthy works unfulfilled dreams thwarted by “la Señora Censura” or a highly underdeveloped publishing industry. Magazines and newspapers were frequently the only outlets for the expression of ideas on politics, economics, education, philosophy, religion, literature, science, music, and art, or for the publication of creative works in prose and poetry. Consequently, the examination of nineteenth-century Cuban periodicals yields an unusually rich view of the history and culture of the island; indeed, in some periods these publications, frequently ephemeral, offer the only major source of comprehensive information and documentation.

One cannot help but ask, “Are international businesses, like the fabled Don Quixote, making dragons of windmills?” We have seen a great rise in international business investment. We have also seen a corresponding rise in business attempts to prevent an awareness by local nations of this increased foreign investment. The general feeling is that increased awareness will lead to greater resentment. The question, however, has not been directly asked: What happens to the evaluation of foreign firms in a specific setting in Latin America as the rate of foreign investment climbs and is more keenly perceived? In an attempt to determine if we are realistically assessing the situation in Latin America, a study was conducted in four Central American countries: El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. These countries were selected because they have been among the rapidly developing countries of Latin America since the formation of the Central American Common Market (CACM) in the early 1960s, receiving considerable foreign investment.

This essay reviews and analyzes recent north american writing on united States-Latin American relations, particularly on the Alliance for Progress. It does not attempt to summarize or evaluate the Alliance's history as such, nor does it deal with Latin American perspectives on the Alliance (or more generally on inter-American relations), though I hope to treat these subjects in future works. What this article does instead is to analyze the dwindling North American literature on the Alliance for Progress, as a means of illuminating the state of scholarship in this country on United States-Latin American relations. I shall draw on available writings to illustrate my major theme, which is that United States analysts of inter-American relations tend to adopt either of two alternative perspectives. These perspectives, which I will call “liberal” and “radical” (using both words without quote marks hereafter), differ sharply in their sets of assumptions about the nature of United States-Latin American relations and, more generally, about politics in America, North and South. Each perspective provides insights for interpreting the Alliance and for explaining other aspects of inter-American relations; neither, by itself, seems to me satisfactory. In the final section of this essay, I shall attempt to sketch out a complementary “bureaucratic politics” perspective, one that is usually missing from both liberal and radical accounts, and suggest that this third perspective may be useful for analyzing United States policy toward Latin America.

La presente contribución es sólo una aproximación al tema propuesto. Suma de problemas más que respuestas. Catálogo de líneas posibles de investigación de un tema que adquiere, a veces, por motivos ajenos al interés científico, particular trascendencia. En la misma, se dan por supuestos, los elementos constitutivos básicos al igual que los aspectos meramente épocales, brindando los retazos multicolores de un cajón de sastre, sólo unidos entre si por un vertebral hilo conductor, la percepción de quien dedicara gran parte de su labor investigativa al período en análisis.