Both developed and developing countries have experienced increasing state intervention in the social welfare arena. In most countries of the world, the state has sponsored some social welfare programs, especially programs of social security. Despite their prevalence, little is known about their political nature, especially in the developing countries. Yet, the study of the political aspects of social security, especially the who, the what, and the how, would at once reveal important patterns of state-society relations.

In literary terms, the new novel did not emerge until 1976 in Guatemala, which represented a ten-to-fifteen-year lag behind most of the other Latin American countries. Since 1976, however, four Guatemalan novels have been published that merit consideration in the same rank with Hijo de hombre (1960), La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962), Gestos (1963), Rayuela (1963), La casa verde (1966), Cien años de soledad (1967), and Tres tristes tigres (1967). The explanation for the earlier paucity of high-quality, structurally and linguistically experimental novels is simple. The blatant violation of human rights by the autocratic governments of Carlos Castillo Armas (1954-57) and his successors has led to the exodus of the best-known authors and the self-censorship or silence of others. In this political climate, the birth of a Guatemalan literary generation of 1954 was almost completely aborted. With the exception of some new works published abroad by Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899-1974) and Mario Monteforte Toledo (b. 1911), Guatemala's two most important twentieth-century novelists, the novels published between 1954 and 1975 were generally undistinguished, as is suggested by the annotated bibliography accompanying this essay.

The Study of Political Leadership is Important for an Understanding of any society. Political leaders participate in, or influence the making of, decisions that allocate resources within and among social units. These acts of choice constitute the major component of the governing process. It seems obvious, then, that an understanding of any social order rests fundamentally on a systematic grasp of the background attributes, careers, value and issue orientations, behaviors and environmental context of political leaders.

The role of the dissertation as part of academic preparation is generally accepted and unquestioned. The dissertation is intended to initiate students into serious research in their chosen field. However, what happens to the research, once completed, is another question. Apparently very few have addressed this question, and their findings are not consistent. McPhie, in a study of dissertations completed in social studies education, measured the dissemination of dissertations via library circulation. He concluded that: “These data on library circulation, even when viewed with caution, would seem to indicate a rather meager use of some potentially valuable findings.” He also found that nearly two-thirds had not published even one article from their dissertations. In a more recent study of Ph.D. dissertations in sociology, Yoels found a similar picture. He concluded, after analyzing citations to Ph.D. dissertations in the two most frequently cited journals in sociology, that “the likelihood that dissertations will be widely disseminated appears to be slim.” However, in a recent and more complete study, Hanson found that dissertations are more widely used than is indicated in the above studies. He concludes that: “When one broadens the definition of dissemination to include the media of books, monographs, chapters, presented papers, journal articles (including those not appearing in the two major journals), research bulletins, and miscellaneous forms during the professional life of the Ph.D. sociologist, a picture of more extensive transmission of dissertation results emerge. A conservative estimate would be that findings from a substantial majority of dissertations are disseminated through various media at some point in time.”

Desde al año 1971 estamos organizando lo que actualmente se llama el Archivo del Fuero Agrario. Esta institución fue conocida antes con el nombre de Centro de Documentación Agraria y ahora, de manera resumida, se le dice simplemente Archivo Agrario. Desde el año mencionado un grupo de investigadores científicos sociales e historiadores percibieron que con el proceso de Reforma Agraria (Decreto Ley 17716) en las haciendas que iban siendo expropiadas quedaban un conjunto de documentos que debían ser centralizados en un local. Fue de esta manera como se empezó a reunir los documentos de empresas agrícolas o ganaderas. De esto han pasado ya seis años y se puede decir que ya hay un importante archivo que facilita la comprensión del mundo rural peruano desde el interior de las unidades de producción. Esto es algo así como penetrar dentro de un organismo y comprender, desde su interior, el funcionamiento de sus distintos sistemas. El Archivo Agrario es un caso único en América Latina y en el mundo. Hay casos particulares de documentos muy similar a los que tenemos en el archivo que han sido utilizados por investigadores sociales, pero en ninguna parte hay concentrado el volumen del material documental del tipo al que nos estamos refiriendo. Esto es lo que tenemos ya construido. Y no solamente se trata de un repositorio de documentos sino que se trata de algo más que ello. Se está creando un centro donde colaboramos en orientar las investigaciones históricas agrarias y donde los que trabajamos ahí hacemos historia del mundo rural. Estamos creando una institución donde también hay organizados mapoteca, hemeroteca, fototeca, todo ello del ambiente rural peruano.

In this paper I present the views of a Latin American sociologist, partly trained in the United States, on Latin American Studies in this country. This is not a research paper but a frank and open presentation of my impressions, however opinionated. The aim is to stimulate reflection and debate, not to appease or to compromise. Implicit in all this are the following beliefs: (a) The training of Latin Americanists in the United States today is generally poor; (b) much of the research on Latin America carried out in the United States today is second-rate; (c) this situation can be improved; and, most important, (d) it is to Latin America's advantage, and not to its disadvantage, that such improvement take place.

“Woman has always been for man the ‘other,‘ his opposite and complement.”

Scholars of Latin America Have Recently Concerned Themselves With socially-oriented studies—not merely of structures, institutions, or groups, but about the individuals who comprise those entities. Despite analyses of political and military elites, students, peasants, blacks, and immigrants, little scholarly work has been undertaken on man's “other,” the female. Only now are studies on the largest single sub-grouping in society beginning to appear, and these are primarily the work of women scholars. The undertaking is rife with problems, not the least of which is the lack of any comprehensive guide to sources or research directions. Few major subjects suffer such a lack of core bibliography, methodological apparati, or thematic models as does the subject of the female. In an attempt to redress the balance and to encourage the study of man's “opposite and complement,” I present here an essay dealing with research directions and a core of works on the female in Ibero-America.

There are few examples in the history of Latin American studies of such generally accepted “facts” that were so contradicted by subsequent events as the association of democratic politics with industrial economies. Lipset's (1960) simple comparative study of Latin American nations in which he found a striking positive correlation between the degree of economic development and the extent of democracy in the late 1950s has been upset. The military coup d'état that abolished democracy in Brazil in 1964 turned out to be not a unique event, but the first of a series of military takeovers throughout the most industrialized nations of South America: Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. For this reason, the study of the demise of electoral politics in Brazil acquires a new significance. And for this reason also, analysts are inclined to attempt explanations in terms of structural causes common to all capitalist nations on the periphery. The purpose of this paper is to examine one set of such explanations: those in which economic conditions play the major role.

The pulperos were the largest group of small, independent entrepreneurial storekeepers officially categorized and supervised in Spanish America during the colonial period and the nineteenth century. There are no studies of them. There were other small storekeepers, such as owners of bakeries or fish stores, who were far fewer in number, or artisan storekeepers, who occasionally were many in number but who were craft oriented rather than purely business oriented. What follows is a preliminary report. A final analysis and presentation must await an intensive, long-term study of the pulperos and bodegueros in Caracas, Medellín, or Buenos Aires, as circumstances permit, that will not be completed for several years.