Increasingly, historians of and in the Latin American countries are turning to quantitative data and analysis. TePaske (1972, 1975), Smith (1973), and McGreevey (1972, 1974) comment on work that has been and is being done and on problems inherent in quantification. The problems that students face as quantifiers of the past may be summarized under the rubrics: (1) sources, (2) methodology, (3) training, and (4) financing. It is with the first of these that this article is concerned, especially with sources for quantifying the nineteenth century after independence, a period neglected almost as much as the seventeenth century used to be, at least insofar as the smaller countries are concerned, except for their politics and personages.

Economic development in Latin America has been explained largely in terms of the Economic Commission for Latin America school (ECLA) dominated by Raúl Prebisch. According to this school, “outward orientation” of the periphery, was the key characteristic of Latin America before 1930. The growth pattern was determined by the fortunes of the export sector (including the terms of trade) and its linkages with the developed Center. Since 1930, the massive import substitution policies undertaken by the periphery has led to a new phase of “inward orientation” where the strategic role of promoting growth has been played by the linkage-rich industry. Both growth and inflation have been explained in terms of the institutionalist “structuralist” school which has emphasized bottlenecks related to the land tenure system, market imperfections and deficiencies (both domestic and external), and to a lesser degree to the savings patterns of people (where the demonstration effect, income distribution and the taxation system play pivotal roles).

Desde la creación de la carrera de sociología en 1956, los sociológos—y especialistas afines—han mostrado una particular preferencia por hacer el balance de su propia obra. Siguiendo esa tradición, el Instituto de Sociología de la Universidad de Belgrano se propuso analizar todos los trabajos publicados por los miembros de cuatro de los principales centros de investigación en ciencias sociales de la Argentina: el Instituto de Sociología de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, el Centro de Investigaciones Sociales del Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, el Departamento de Sociología de la Fundación Bariloche y el Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias Sociales (CICSO). El equipo, bajo la dirección de Ruth Sautu, esta compuesta por Silvia Blitzer, Emma Galtieri, Ana M. García y Laura Villarruel.

In the open-air markets of Northeast Brazil, folk poets still sell the stories in verse called folhetos or literatura de cordel, which came to Brazil from Portugal almost five centuries ago. Until only about a hundred years ago, most cordel stories found in the Northeast originated either in Portugal or Rio de Janeiro. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, however, Northeastern poets began publishing large numbers of booklets with a distinctly regional flavor. These authors would then suspend their verses along strings for display in local marketplaces, chanting one or another story out loud in an effort to attract potential customers. Although the tales were known to rich and poor alike, the great majority of the poet's customers were always associated with subsistence agriculture. These persons, who were often illiterate, might choose a story on the basis of the poet's oral presentation or an appealing cover illustration. They would then take home their purchases to a friend or relative who would read aloud the tale for the group.

When One Examines the Research and Writing on Spanish Colonial Alabama, 1780-1813, it is possible to conclude that this area has received the least emphasis of all Spanish Borderlands. This is unfortunate because there are tens of thousands of original sources extant. As the director of a University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa research project, which began in 1966, Holmes collected some 20,000 pages of documents from Sevilla and Simancas on microfilm. The so-called “Holmes Collection” has been copied for several libraries in the Southeast, including Alabama, Auburn, Florida, West Florida and Tulane universities. A brief description of the twenty-nine reels appears in Coker and Holmes (1971).