Some twenty-five kilometers from Huancayo, Peru, nestled in the Jauja Valley, in unbelievable tranquillity, there exists a center of learning: the library of more than twenty thousand volumes in the Convent of Ocopa. This Franciscan monastery now opens the doors of its wealth of printed resources to scholars and researchers, both men and women, from far and near. During a visit of only two days, the author consulted with the librarian, Father Julián Heras, O.F.M., took photographs of the library, examined briefly certain volumes, and photographed title pages, colophons, engravings, and any particular items of interest in the more valuable works. What follows is an attempt to describe the printed resources for research in a library that has been called by Raúl Porras Barrenechea “una biblioteca de insigne sabiduría.”

In the past, Iberian bibliography attracted only limited interest in Poland. In his extensive (33 vols.) Bibliografia Polska (1872–1939), Karol Estreicher included a good number of the Iberian titles that existed in Poland through the end of the nineteenth century; some useful cross-references may also be found in Gabriel Korbut's Literatura Polska (1929–31). Representative collections of old Spanish prints (already indexed), along with contemporary Polish translations of Iberian and Latin American works, are located at the National Library in Warsaw, and at the university libraries in Cracow and Warsaw.

In 1961 twenty latin american countries signed a document which committed them “to reform tax laws, demanding more from those who have most, to punish tax evasion severely, and to redistribute the national income in order to benefit those who are most in need while, at the same time, promoting savings and investment and reinvestment of capital.” Both before and since this declaration a great deal of research on taxation has been carried out in Latin America, and even more has been said about the “need” for tax “reform.”

In recent years there has been an upsurge in what has come to be called “quantitative history.” Despite the enthusiasm for this approach, however, some of its critics have validly claimed that its payoffs have all too often failed to live up to its promises of new and more accurate findings. Perhaps a central reason for this criticism is that although the quantitative historian may have been sufficiently thorough in collecting his data, he has often failed to apply to them the sensitive techniques of modern data analysis. Rather, he has continued to rely on more traditional methods of description such as means and percentages. As a result, quantitative works are often long on tables and short on analysis.

Util y amena ha sido la lectura del trabajo de Jorge E. Hardoy y Carmen Aranovich, “Escalas y funciones urbanas de América Hispánica hacia 1600, Un ensayo metodológico.” Un valioso y sugestivo intento de mensurar el origen de la historia urbana del continente, por lo menos en cuanto a una caracterización de magnitudes y un delineamiento de las más importantes funciones del fenómeno urbano en América.

“If you gotta ask, man, you ain't never gonna know,” satchmo Armstrong once said when someone asked him, “What is jazz?” Such an answer might also fit the question, “What is the state of our knowledge of what to do about illiteracy and ignorance in Latin America.” But the question has been asked in serious company accustomed to thoughtful answers—answers that guide and energize. So we will try to examine what is speculated, what is known, what is being investigated, and what we need to know most in order to establish contact with that vast terra incognita in Latin America comprising the illiterate and the unlearned.