The study of Latin America in Japan prior to World War II was centered on the issue of migration, but as an area study field it is a product of Japan's economic expansion and relations with Latin America in the postwar period. After the war, a new wave of Japanese migration to Latin America was soon followed by the first government-sponsored team of social scientists who studied the living conditions of immigrants in Brazil. But the principal boost to the field was provided by the phenomenal economic growth experienced by Japan and the rapid development of trade, investment, and economic cooperation with Latin America. In 1958 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs took the initiative of establishing, with corporate support, the Latin American Society of Japan, whose main objectives were to gather and disseminate economic information on the region and to publish economic and business reports. As has been typical in other countries, economic ties were soon followed by an increase in university activity. In 1964, the first true area study program on Latin America was established at Sophia University; in the same year the first Japanese association of social scientists (mostly economists) working on Latin America was founded; and in the following year a Japanese association of Brazilian studies was organized. In 1967, the Research Institute for Brazilian Culture was organized at the Kyoto University of Foreign Studies, and the Institute of Developing Economies (which had begun its operations ten years previously as the Institute of Asian Economies) expanded its coverage to promote economic cooperation and trade with Latin America.

Recent criticism of modern Mexican art has generally ascribed the expressionistic quality of Orozco's oeuvre to international stylistic influences such as German expressionism, postimpressionism and fauvism. These international stylistic affinities are equated with the universal or modern aspect of the mural movement in contrast to its local, Mexican, iconographic and stylistic aspect.

The Organization of American States has published a series of eight volumes (paperback) which survey Latin American for 1970. Topics covered are: Situación Demográfica, Situación Económica, Situación Social, Situación Cultural, and Suplemento. Guillermo N. Fuentes was responsible for the preparation of these extensive collections of statistics. For information about these editions write to: General Secretary, Organization of American States, Washington, D.C. 20006.

As practiced contemporaneously in most of Latin America, political democracy is more accurately elite governance, with many of the thornier authoritarian trappings cloaked behind an often transparent facade of “popular suffrage” and “parliamentary government.” Democracy, as a normative basis for the “good life,” is difficult to describe and conceptualize, especially when one assumes that the democratic prototype is to be discovered somewhere within that caldron of slippery political variables known as the Anglo-American model. I do not assume in this report that the nations of Latin America should be trying to move in the direction of the Anglo-American model (assuming we can describe, more or less generically, the constituent parts of that model). Nevertheless, I would be remiss in not stating the general outlines of what I understand political democracy to mean as related to the quinquennial survey of scholarly images to be reported herein.

To think of Nicolás Guillén is to be immediately reminded of two observations. The first by José Martí, who, quite aptly argued:

I Congreso Venezolano De Historia Caracas, Venezuela June 27-July 3, 1971

The first Venuezuelan history congress was held under the auspices of the Academia Nacional de Historia of Venezuela. The following works were presented:

J. Ignacio Rubio Mañé, México, Orangibación de las Instituciones del Virreinato de la Nueva España;

Mario Germán Romero, Colombia, El Cpildo de Caracas y la Iglesia;

Preservation of written testimony is essential to the writing of history. Yet, in Latin America, historical documents, though copiously produced, have been sadly neglected and too often destroyed. What remains, then, assumes inestimable value for all historians—humanists or social scientists—for only on its basis can this hemisphere's past be reconstructed. A knowledge of the exact location and condition of material is necessary for the formulation of a reasonable historical research project; it is obviously essential to the research itself.

Freedom of the press has long been considered a critical requirement for the maintenance of democratic government. Most previous writings on the position of the press around the world, however, have argued that restrictions on the press have become generally more numerous in recent years and, hence, press freedom levels have been declining over time. Merrill et al., in their survey of national press systems, note that “recent surveys and studies tend to indicate that in many ways freedom of the press is eroding slowly in a worldwide context. Press laws are proliferating, sanctions of many kinds are growing up to thwart the free workings of the press, and press councils and other groups are moving in to restrict activities of the press.” Survey articles on the state of the press in Africa and in Asia reach the same conclusion for those regions, and a recent report of the prestigious Inter-American Press Association argued that press freedom in the western hemisphere is under greater threat than ever before. Even in some advanced western nations the press has come under attack by governmental officials, as is evident in the United States with both the Nixon administration's antipress activities as well as recent court rulings that limit press coverage of legal proceedings and the secrecy of newsmen's sources and working materials.

Despite calls to improve and systematize research on political participation in Latin America more than a decade ago (Kling 1964, Flores Olea 1967), the burgeoning literature on the subject has yet to achieve full recognition. Thus certain contradictory and incomplete traditional images still linger in the scholarly literature (Booth and Seligson 1978a). These treatments vary dramatically and almost bewilderingly: while one suggests that Latin Americans are becoming increasingly politically mobilized, two others hold that mass participation is very low and that most political activity is restricted to socioeconomic elites. Other images portray mass political participation as irrational and dwell upon political violence. Such familiar notions have often intertwined. For example, a common picture depicts most Latin Americans, and especially peasants, as politically passive and quiescent until provoked, when they may burst violently into the political arena (for example, see Forman 1971, Singelmann 1975, Handelman 1975b, Moreno 1970). Similarly Wiarda (1974, pp. 4–5) discusses how the image of mobilization often combines with that of violence, producing the notion that the rising political awareness and participation of Latin Americans leads inexorably to ever greater levels of conflict (e.g., Schmitt and Burks 1963, Hadley 1958, Petras and Zeitlin 1968, Petras 1968).