The historiography of the nineteenth-century political process in latin America is in trouble. With the burgeoning of Latin American history as a professional activity, historians are increasingly “moving beyond” past politics to study social and economic themes. The traditional treatments of the nineteenth century, dedicated to glorifying or debunking heroic leaders, to perpetuating old partisan and ideological struggles, or even to presenting in a more detached way a minutely-detailed political narrative, have lost their allure. It is true, to the obvious consternation of the editors of the Handbook of Latin American Studies, that items in the traditional mold still abound. In Mexico, for example, the celebration of the centennial and sesquicentennial of the two heroic ages of liberalism, the Revolution for Independence and the Reforma, gave great impetus to political writing. Analogous historiographical stimulants can be found in other countries, sometimes where the heroism of the anniversaries is less clear. Yet the value of even the best of such work is increasingly called into question by professional historians.

The Institute of International Studies (IIS) of the University of Chile was founded in 1966 by professor Claudio Véliz, with the cooperation of the Royal Institute of International Affairs of London. The IIS has been affected by the changes that have occurred in both the domestic and international contexts, but, despite some temporary crises, the Institute has been able to maintain the generally high level of scholarship and objectivity that typically characterized it. Today, the IIS is a research and teaching center in the field of international relations, covering the political, juridical, economic, social and historical dimensions.

In Brazil, perhaps more than in any other Latin American nation, popular music has traditionally been a potent cultural force. It is probable, as P. M. Bardi, director of São Paulo's Museum of Art, has suggested, that “of all the arts, [music] is closest to the Brazilians' modes of feeling and expression.” Even such erudite composers as Carlos Gomes (1836–96), Alberto Nepomuceno (1864–1920), Camargo Guarnieri (1907–), Gilberto Mendes (1922–) and, above all, Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959), often found their inspiration in Brazilian folklore and the everyday lives of common people.

This series of fifty-two bilingual radio programs in Spanish and English was developed for the Flagstaff Centennial and the Arizona Bicentennial celebrations. The programs, which were broadcast over KCLS, Flagstaff, during 1976, present and discuss the music of Latin America in terms of history, musical variety, growth and development, cultural meaning, comparisons with the North American experience, and pure enjoyment. They are about three parts music to one part discussion; explore folk, popular, concert, and religious music; and also include programs on children's songs and Christmas music.

All too frequently, national associations pay scant heed to professional activity below the university level, seeming to forget that schools and colleges are the foundation for their future success. Aware of this, the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) appointed its first committee on teaching Latin American studies on all levels in 1973. The committee, working closely with the steering committee of the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs, (CLASP), sought some means of building bridges of mutual help and understanding between teachers and professors of Latin American studies. In these efforts, two specific needs and one rather obvious fact became apparent. The needs were for some means of updating and improving the quality of teacher training for those teaching Latin American content and for the development of instructional materials that met the high standards of both Latin American scholars and professional educators. The obvious fact was that the average Latin Americanist had little understanding of the current school classroom and the problems confronting and opportunities available to the classroom teacher. To compound these, it was clear that the study of Latin America as a world culture area was diminishing. Such conditions, once recognized, cried out for action on the part of LASA/CLASP.

The dependency perspective has become a major thrust, both in bourgeois and Marxist conceptions of development and underdevelopment in Latin America, but the distinctions between the two interpretations have been blurred. No unified theory of dependency yet exists, but a variety of theoretical tendencies tends to cluster in the literature on dependency. The discussion that follows differentiates between the bourgeois and Marxist interpretations by focusing on some fundamental weaknesses of dependency theory that emanate among those who utilize a Marxist analysis. In particular, there is concern that dependency theories ignore social classes and class conflict or that these theories tend to present mechanical schemes in which external rather than internal aspects are determinant. Further, it is argued that dependency theories are nationalist in ideology and advocate autonomous capitalist development rather than offering solutions or strategies for the transition from capitalism to socialism.

Research in social mobility in postcolonial Argentina has not benefitted from the sweeping changes in methodology and content found in histories of other periods and areas. The question of social mobility receives close attention in these studies partly because it offers such a variety of research opportunities and is measurable in several forms. Usually, the laboratory for these recent studies is the city—the place with the greatest opportunities for self-improvement. Since the nineteenth century, the city has become the locus of concentration for countless native and foreign migrants. With the appropriate data, urban social historians have investigated their spatial and economic dimensions of mobility. In addition, one of the bases of social change most often studied is the shifting within the occupational structure. The ties between occupation and social ranking are intimate. “Thus,” writes Michael Katz, “to trace the movements of a man from occupation to occupation is, to a considerable extent, to trace his vertical movement within social space; the sum of those movements determines the patterns and rate of social mobility, the degree of openness, within a society.”