Social insurance entitlements represent one of the more controversial aspects of social sector development in Latin America. The most comprehensive critique of social security views the system's coverage and organization as a reflection of the region's social stratification (Mesa-Lago 1978). According to this view, power groups in public administration, private industry, and labor unions exercise control over the organization and financing of sickness, invalidity, and pension funds, and they seek to restrict benefits to their respective memberships. The noninsured lack market power and political organization because of their low levels of human resources development and lack of social cohesion. Mesa-Lago's critique may be more justified for the lower-income than for the higher-income countries in Latin America, however, at least regarding medical care, which is the system's largest single entitlement program in most Latin American countries.

This article will examine the development of labor unrest in Argentina between 1887 and 1907. Because official statistics were not compiled until after 1907, new data on strikes have been generated for the earlier period through a detailed reading of newspapers. These data provide information on the occupational and geographical distribution of strikes, their timing, and the kinds of demands made by strikers. The new data also provide helpful insights into the nature of labor organizations and the causes of labor unrest. Most important, these data indicate that changes in the organization of the workplace were a significant factor in altering the composition of demand for labor and in generating labor unrest. Finally, they show that the organization of the workplace also accounted for significant differences in the forms of action and organization adopted by various sectors of the labor force. Hence insofar as the position of different groups of workers in the labor market was itself shaped by the nature of the labor process and workplace relations, the transformation of these spheres constitutes an important analytical point of departure for explaining the central features of the emerging labor movement.

Looking back over patterns of economic adjustment and structural reform in Latin America since the debt crisis began in 1982, two broad trends stand out. The first is the dramatic fluctuation in macroeconomic policy between the orthodox programs traditionally advocated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the more interventionist or “heterodox” strategies that marked the policy environment after 1985 (Sheahan 1989). Although the orthodox-heterodox policy cycle is hardly new to the region and in fact has characterized the policy-making experience over the entire postwar era (Kaufman 1990), the 1980s represented the intensification of this cycle, especially in the extremity to which each set of policies was applied. The second trend follows from the first: the inability of states to follow through coherently on any given policy course (Fishlow 1989). While some exceptions to this trend can be cited (Chile, for example), the Latin American pattern has generally been one of failed adjustments and changed courses.

By 1920 the state of São Paulo boasted the largest coffee economy in the world and was leading Brazil's transition from export expansion to industrialization and “dependent development.” The state was well on the way to becoming a showcase of socioeconomic development in Latin America. This essay explores the role played by the São Paulo coffee elite in the politics of this development process, particularly with respect to the demise of the regime known as the Old Republic in the Revolution of 1930.

For most of the past decade, Central America has been wracked by revolution, counterrevolution, military repression, and massive dislocation that have affected the lives of millions of people. Yet despite these dramatic events, little anthropological research has been directed toward Central America in the 1980s. Analysis of the contents of seven major cultural anthropology journals from 1980 to 1986 shows no increased attention to the area over a previous period, 1970 to 1976. Research published in the 1980s has been emphatically non-policy-based, even when fieldwork was conducted in the midst of crisis. This research report will analyze the underrepresentation of Central America in anthropology journals and possible reasons for it. I will suggest that the reticence of anthropology as a discipline to legitimate policy-based research in Central America stems from a tendency that has characterized the field since its beginnings: studying communities as isolated, timeless cultures that are unaffected by regional, national, and international events taking place outside their borders. This bias causes practitioners who wish to advance their careers to turn their backs on what may be considered controversial policy analysis and write instead about subjects endorsed by the discipline.