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.

The concept of dependency, Platt asserts, is “scarcely sustainable” because its historical foundation is unconvincing. “Students of chrono-politics (history),” he implies, find unacceptable the notion that “development and expansion” of Western Europe's economy dominated and conditioned that of Latin America since the conquest. The fact that Dos Santos' definition of dependency denies the presence of autonomous development in Latin America is “critical.” Economic autonomy, according to Platt, is the leitmotif of Latin America's evolution, certainly to the close of the nineteenth century, when there “finally awoke metropolitan interest in the neglected periphery.”

This essay deals with the study of Latin American politics in the United States. The basic question asked is: “Where do we go from here if we take seriously that body of thought loosely and somewhat misleadingly known as dependency theory?” It argues that even though the literature is at times incomplete, confusing, and contradictory, the issues to which it directs us warrant our most serious attention.