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).

In the Great Struggle for the Mastery of the North American Continent during the second half of the eighteenth century, the major European powers—Britain, France, and Spain—confronted each other on the lower Mississippi and along the Florida frontier. The fate of both East and West Florida was determined by this titanic struggle. Britain emerged from the Seven Years' War as the mightiest nation on earth. Her fleet had captured Havana, and to redeem this valuable port Spain agreed to cede the Floridas.

El Instituto Ibero-Americano de Berlín fue fundado en el año 1930 como centro de enlace científico y cultural, con miras a fomentar la continuación de la expansión socioeconómica de Alemania hacia los países latinoamericanos e ibéricos. Incentiva primordial para este propósito fue la adquisición de una vasta biblioteca particular y un archivo de documentos históricos por intermedio del Ministerio Prusiano de Artes, Ciencias, y Educación Popular. Propietario de esta biblioteca y del archivo fue el argentino Ernesto Quesada (1858-1934). Las partes más antiguas del Fondo, recolectadas por su padre Vicente G. Quesada (1830-1913) a partir de mediados del siglo XIX, pudieron ser completadas y ampliadas constantemente por él mismo. La colección, que en total abarcó unos ochenta y dos mil volúmenes y legajos,1 constituye aún hoy en día, a pesar de las pérdidas sufridas a finales de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, una excelente base documental para investigaciones sobre la historia moderna de la Argentina. Las monografías, revistas y diarios de la antigua Biblioteca Quesada hace muchos años pudieron ser integrados en su totalidad a los fondos bibliotecarios temáticamente clasificados del Instituto Ibero-Americano y, sin haber sufrido mayores pérdidas durante los años de guerra, fue posible conservarlos hasta la fecha. En cambio, aquellas partes del Archivo Quesada que hacia fines de la guerra fueron depositadas en la hacienda Hohenlandin cerca de Angermünde (hoy RDA) fueron presa de la destrucción.2 Para poder precisar más ciertamente la importancia del Fondo Quesada para el historiador, se describirán brevemente en este aporte primero, la biografía de los dos Quesada, y segundo, las existencias que aún se conservan del Archivo Quesada, y las consistentes en diarios de la Argentina y sus países vecinos.

Throughout most of the fifties and sixties many latin american governments adopted Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) as their principal method to achieve economic growth and socio-economic modernization. By the opening of the Seventies, however, there is considerable doubt about ISI's success in solving the region's development problems. In many countries the possibilities for further import-substitution had disappeared. Industrial growth had slowed, job opportunities in industry for Latin America's rapidly growing urban population were scarce, income distribution had in many countries either remained unchanged or had become more concentrated than in the early post-World War II years, and most industrial goods produced within the region were priced so high that export possibilities were severely limited.

Why Should Anyone be Interested in the Spanish Borderlands of the southeastern United States during the last years of the Spanish occupation, and what has occurred that makes the area of more than passing interest at the present time ? First, this area of Spain's New World colonial empire was unique. And second, the availability of a significant amount of new source material has given rise to a healthy increase in scholarly interest and productivity during the past decade.

In May 1975, Alfredo Barrera Vásquez, noted scholar of the Mayan language and culture, was meeting with a group of graduate students; suddenly he looked at his watch and said: “In a few minutes I must go to the dictionary.”

Only then did I become aware of a project that, after six years of intensive work, would result in one of the most valuable contributions to the field of Mayan linguistics in the twentieth century. Each weekday at four p.m., a group of highly talented specialists met in a small building in Mérida to labor on the dictionary. The team worked with a sense of dedication and purpose, and those of us fortunate enough to visit the project became filled with a feeling of excitement. The resulting publication, issued in January 1980, was the Diccionario Maya Cordemex: Maya-Español, Español-Maya (Mérida, Yucatán: Ediciones Cordemex, 1980). It is not the first dictionary of the Mayan language, but is in many ways the culmination of all previous studies relating to the subject.

This Paper Analyzes Family and Kinship Patterns in Latin America Among distinct socio-economic groups in urban and rural settings. The literature on which the analysis rests is also critically examined. Much of the focus is on those aspects of the material which deal with extended family (parentesco) relations and with fictive kinship (compadrazgo) ties; less attention is given to studies and components of the nuclear family. The central theme developed in the essay is that familial ties and the institution of fictive kinship are not breaking down under the impact of modernization, despite theories and interpretations of urbanization and industrialization which maintain that the opposite is true. Our position and findings on his matter are summarized in the conclusion.