Attempts have been made at Latin American regional integration since the late 1950s, but on each occasion, high expectations have met with disappointing failures. In July 1986, however, a new phase began in the history of Latin American integration as Presidents Raúl Alfonsín of Argentina and José Sarney of Brazil signed the Argentina-Brazil Economic Integration Pact (ABEIP).

This article will provide an overview of the changes in household composition in the city of Buenos Aires during the first decades of nation building. The discussion of household structures is based on a detailed analysis of the homes of thirty-five thousand porteños (residents of the city of Buenos Aires). The quantitative data are taken from three relatively complete manuscript census returns for the years 1810, 1827, and 1855. Once certain flaws in these census tracts are taken into account, the tracts represent an ample cross-section of urban Buenos Aires society. The variations found in household structures will be used to advance a theory about an underlying dimension of the durability of caudillo rule in Argentina. The proposed thesis on the relationship between strongman leadership and popular following is also based on interpretations employing classic sociological theory. The tentative conclusions concern the nature of early nineteenth-century political culture and afford opportunities for fresh explanations of the period's caudillismo. The data are thus presented in the hope of broadening the scope of discussion about political leadership in the early stages of nation building in Spanish America.

The Central American Common Market (CACM) was once described as “the most successful example of economic integration in the Third World.” Today the CACM is nearly defunct, a victim of the smoldering crisis that erupted in Central America in 1979 following the second oil shock and the Nicaraguan Revolution. Various arguments may be found in the literature on the economics of the region that purport to explain this collapse.

Mauricio Font's “Coffee Planters, Politics, and Development in Brazil,” raises a number of central issues about the nature of the polity and economy in São Paulo during the critical transition from export-oriented agriculture to domestic-oriented manufacturing. Was the coffee economy fully capitalist? What was the relation between coffee and industrialization? Was there a “sectoral clash” between planters and manufacturers? To what degree did planters control the political parties and the state? In particular, was the state relatively autonomous of the most important economic group?

Professor Carmagnani has identified major themes and tendencies that have characterized recent studies on the social history of colonial Mexico. He correctly observes that historians have paid closer attention to the connections between population and resources, to the differences among regions, and to the internal development of Indian society. Moreover, he explains how advances in demography, economic history, and ethnohistory have all contributed toward a continued shift in emphasis away from political or “institutional” perspectives.

IESCARIBE (Institutes of Economic and Social Research of the Caribbean Basin) is an independent, nonprofit, nonpolitical, and scientific organization. It is engaged in planning and initiating studies useful to the economic development of the Caribbean Basin. The organization stresses applied research with a policy focus.