The Centro Paraguayo de Estudios Sociológicos (CPES), founded 17 March 1964 in Asunción, is a private institution dedicated to research and teaching. Initiative for the creation of the center came from a group of university professors who felt it was necessary to incorporate new theories and methods into Paraguayan scientific work. On 11 February 1971, Executive Decree No. 24.354 gave the center legal existence, with administration by a committee of directors and an assembly of founding members, and executive responsibility resting with a general director.

Nettie Lee Benson can be said to be without an equal and truly in a class by herself. She and the collection which today bears her name are widely known. Admired and respected as a builder and administrator of a collection that has become a standard by which others are judged, she is known not only as a librarian but as a teacher, an unfailing source of information about Latin American library materials, and a scholar of the history of Mexico.

Educated classes in India have long been accustomed to talk of the “common problems” of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In the past, they have been content to rely almost exclusively on popular books in the English language published in Britain and the United States for information concerning those regions. Of the three continents with a sense of common identity, Latin America is physically the farthest from India and also the area that has afforded least direct contact. While these factors contributed to an attitude towards Latin America that was friendly and devoid of negative sentiments, they also resulted in a much slower awakening among the educated and elite groups of the desirability of initiating rigorous programs of study and research on contemporary Latin American institutions and developments. It was only a decade ago that a modest effort in this direction was begun in the School of International Studies of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India. The program is now attracting somewhat greater interest from students, researchers, and agencies than was anticipated by the few enthusiasts who launched it ten years ago without any prospect of financial support from educational authorities and funding agencies.

After a decade of revolution, Cuba is more than an open question to be answered, an experiment to be observed. It has become an exciting research topic which appeals to social scientists throughout the world. Yet several problems have obstructed the scholar in his research on Cuba and its revolution. Primarily, travel limitations have forced him to gather his material mainly from secondary sources (or from primary sources whose objectivity is questionable) rather than from direct observation. Even when travel barriers are overcome, free movement and inquiry are not always possible. The government's screening of visitors to Cuba introduces another problem, i.e., the ideological bias of the outsider has often been a distorting factor in the search for truth. In a sizeable number of cases, articles and books on Cuba written by the visitor or observer are frustrating: either the author has been limited in his information and therefore does not present a total picture of the subject in question, or he is biased either in favor of or against the socialist regime of the island, and has allowed this to interfere with an accurate presentation of the facts.

Although the history of Latin American studies in New England is long and luminous, from Prescott to Haring, Morison, and numerous more recent lights, the nucleus for the organization of the New England Council was not formed until 1969. The organization of NECLAS was related both to the mushrooming growth of Latin American studies at New England colleges and universities and nationwide during the 1960s, and to the emergence of the larger private and state universities in the region as relatively new and major centers of research and teaching on Latin American affairs.

Since the late 1950's interest in Latin American university student politics has increased in this country. Such concern has mainly focused on the contemporary importance of Latin American university student movements. Detailed and sophisticated socio-political analyses have been rendered, with the end in mind, though not always, of explaining the political socialization of Latin American university students, i.e., what makes a student a radical or a conservative. Frequently, the exegetes of Latin American university student politics have made references to the problem of historical origins. In that connection, reference has been made to the University Reform Movement, in particular, to the Córdoba events of June 1918.