In the study of agrarian politics in general and the history of rural Colombia in particular, four broad, interrelated perspectives are relevant to the understanding of rural politics: peasants and rebellion, the interaction of local and national politics, patron-client relations, and regionalism. Principal issues and trends within each of these areas are explored here, and an effort is made to generate specific questions for historical investigation. The present state of research on rural history and politics in Colombia is also surveyed, and observations are advanced on how new research orientations originating in these perspectives may contribute to our understanding of social and political developments in Colombia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

James Wilkie's The Mexican Revolution: Federal Expenditure and Social Change Since 1910 is an industrious attempt to get beneath the conventional wisdom about the changes wrought by the Mexican Revolution. The author's careful compilation of budgetary data should sharply challenge the longstanding and widespread assumptions that: (a) useful historical material from Latin America does not exist in statistical form, and (b) even if it did exist, the mystical qualities of Latin culture defy all efforts at measurement. Wilkie has shown that—with luck, perseverence, and imagination—data can be found. One hopes that his example will encourage other students of the area to seek out similar data and reap further intellectual benefits from quantitative analysis: hypothesis-testing, measurement of trends, and rigorous comparison.

As the Secretary of State looks out over the Potomac River, pondering reports from his embassies to the south, the fundamental question: “What is it?” comes to him again and again. Is a new regime in a Latin American country controlled by “agrarian reformers,” “moderate socialists,” “malleable leftists,” “Christian Democrats,” “safe militarists,” or—others?

For one who lacks the knowledge, as well as the wish, to challenge Andrew Pearse's account of the facts of the Latin American rural scene, the only useful form of comment is to raise questions and perhaps thereby to express some minor doubts concerning the inference he makes from the facts. It might be most useful to start from the end opposite Pearse's. He has looked at the evidence, crystallized the diversity of the changes he sees into a discrete set of trends, illustrated them with illuminating and convincing details, and tentatively forecast their implications. Instead, let us start at the other end with a question that rests on a clear value premise, and ask whether the trends Pearse indicates are “for the better” or “for the worse.” I would choose the question: “what chances are there of a substantial and sustained increase in agricultural production?”

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.