José Carlos Mariátegui devoted the most productive years of his short life (1894–1930) to analyzing contemporary Peru. Because of this emphasis, a substantial portion of the research conducted in the past thirty years has addressed his political and social thought. More recent investigations, however, have sought to document the significance of his aesthetic ideas, an appropriate development in light of Mariátegui's extensive writings on literature and the visual arts. For example, the periodical Amauta, which appeared under his editorship twenty-nine times between September 1926 and March 1930, was primarily a magazine of the arts and intellectual life, notwithstanding its political agenda and indigenista orientation. Also, Mariátegui's detailed essay on Peruvian literature, “El proceso de la literatura,” is the most extensive of the Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana (1928). In addition, between 1924 and 1930, the widely read Lima weeklies Variedades and Mundial regularly published his critical articles on national and international topics, including a large number of pieces on literature and the arts. Recent inquiries into Mariátegui's literary thought have addressed such issues as his modern concept of literary realism, the relationship between his artistic concerns and a Marxism that has been repeatedly characterized as “open,” and the role of aesthetic issues in his social agenda for Peru. This research has established Mariátegui's importance in the arts, not as a creative writer (although he did write poetry, plays, and short stories in his youth) but as one of Latin America's first practicing literary critics.

The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas is internationally known as a major repository of primary source material on colonial and nineteenth-century Mexico. Specialists may also be aware of its collections of historical documents on the Río de la Plata and Central America. The best-known manuscripts were acquired before 1940 and have been described in widely distributed published guides.

Scholars and journalists have devoted considerable attention to analyzing the three military rebellions that rocked Argentine democracy in 1987 and 1988 (Boron 1987; Fontana 1988; López 1988; Stepan 1988). In addition to considering whether these revolts threatened the stability of the new political regime, academic and political interpretations have pointed to another issue stemming from the revolts: the emergence of a new generation of army officers with political goals and ideological values that differ from those prevailing in the upper levels of the Argentine military hierarchy. According to some observers, the experiences of middle-ranking officers during the last authoritarian regime produced a breach within the army that led, in the extreme view, to “two opposing armies.” This argument asserts that the Argentine Army currently appears divided between the high command (“oficiales superiores” made up of colonels and generals) and middle-ranking officers, who encompass “subalternos” (lieutenants and captains) and “jefes” (majors and lieutenant colonels). The split seems to have stemmed from differing political goals and ideological affiliations. The question, however, has remained speculative rather than being subjected to analytical research.

They arrived first in July 1898 in scattered numbers, in the company of an army of conquest, and subsequently in successive waves during the military occupation. By the time U.S. military rule over Cuba came to an end in May 1902, no less than a score of Protestant denominations had inaugurated evangelical activities in Cuba, including Northern and Southern Baptists, Southern Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, the Disciples of Christ, Quakers, Pentecostalists, and Congregationalists. In fact, so many missionaries arrived in Cuba at one time that denominational competition quickly got out of hand. In February 1902, an interdenominational conference convened in Cienfuegos to impose order on the U.S. evangelical enterprise. The resulting comity plan established spheres of influence for the principal Protestant denominations in Cuba: Northern and Southern Baptists divided the island between them, with Northern Baptists in the two eastern provinces and Southern Baptists assigned to the four western ones; Quakers and Methodists divided eastern Cuba between them; Presbyterians and Congregationalists located their missions in the western zones; and Episcopalians concentrated in Matanzas and Santiago de Cuba.