In 1972 James Lockhart summarized for LARR the state of social history research on colonial Latin America and proposed far-reaching methodological innovations. The time is ripe for another assessment if only because of the prolific ongoing research. But this very luxuriance hinders an overview of the whole field. Let me therefore focus on Spanish American urban society, with its stratification and elite circulation. Where Lockhart's article led into his message, mine reviews the outcome of his and other research strategies; it also concentrates on English-language publications and excludes theory and methods not directly related to this area.

“In the last two or three years, … a group of Mexicans …, supported and advised by the private banks, has stolen more money from our country than the empires that have exploited us since the beginning of history…. They've robbed us …, but they will not rob us again.” With these words, President López Portillo nationalized Mexico's private banks and imposed controls on foreign exchange. Many of those attending this State of the Union address on 1 September 1982 stood to applaud, while the president cried and one banker fainted. Mexico's chief of state continued, “The revolution will speed up; the state will no longer be intimidated by pressure groups.”

The African influence on Latin American Spanish is undisputed, and yet the field of Afro-Hispanic linguistics is hampered by the lack of widespread Hispanic creole dialects, or even areas of widespread Afro-Hispanic language usage. A few tiny dialect pockets continue to exist, however, such as the palenquero dialect of Palenque de San Basilio in northern Colombia, and the special dialect of the negros congos of Panama's Caribbean coast; until the first decades of the twentieth century, a partially creolized Bozal Spanish (spoken by African slaves who had learned Spanish as a second language, and only imperfectly) was still to be found in Cuba as well as vestigially in Puerto Rico and perhaps the Dominican Republic. Given the geographical inaccessibility of many areas of Latin America containing large African populations, it is possible that additional traces of vestigial Afro-Hispanic language may still be found or may have recently disappeared.

During the early 1960s, when U.S.-Cuban relations reached their nadir and threatened to embroil this planet in the ultimate superpower showdown, a prophetic cartoon appeared in one of the then-popular U.S. feature magazines. It showed a bearded, fatigue-clad newscaster seated at the microphone in the Radio Cuba studios, telling his audience, “And now for the baseball scores from the hated imperialistic Yankee mainland.” The cartoonist had no way of knowing that a quarter of a century later, his whimsical sketch would exemplify the controversy over alleged U.S. cultural penetration of Latin America through its own mass media, in some cases transcending even political barriers. The purpose of this study is to examine what role, if any, the Latin American printed mass media are playing in the intrusion of foreign cultures.

A recent diagnosis of the health of Latin American studies in the United States reveals that Bolivia is among the forgotten or ignored countries. U.S. scholarship on Mexico, Brazil, and Peru vastly outranks research on Bolivia. Following the Bolivian Revolution of 1952, U.S. universities turned out a host of dissertations and books on Bolivia, but since that time, the U.S. community of Bolivianists has declined. Yet anthropological and historical research on this southern Andean country seems to be flourishing. Although some political scientists attracted to problems and prospects for reform created by the Revolution have turned their attention elsewhere, Bolivia still fascinates scholars interested in the deeper currents of historical change and the remarkable resilience of rural Andean peoples in their struggle to preserve their cultural integrity.

The Mexican automobile manufacturing industry experienced rapid sociopolitical change in the 1960s and 1970s as workers in several firms overthrew entrenched labor leaders and instituted democratic forms of union governance. These reform movements sought increased participation by the rank and file in union affairs and heightened worker control over different aspects of the production process. For many workers, democratic unionism promised increased leadership responsiveness in resolving workplace conflicts and more effective representation of worker interests in a changing industrial environment. Specific measures of democratic unionism included the election of key union officers and their accountability to members, regularly held general assemblies, an enhanced role for the general assembly in internal decision making, procedural safeguards of workers' union rights, and opportunities for the emergence of identifiable and relatively stable internal opposition factions. By 1975 workers in five of the seven major terminal firms (those manufacturing vehicles) had won control over the selection of union leaders and other phases of internal union decision making.