During the 1960s, social scientists optimistically predicated a significant role for Roman Catholicism in the promotion of social reform throughout Latin America. But political developments during the 1970s, notably in Chile and Brazil, implicitly challenged that view and the theoretical foundations on which it rested. Not surprisingly, one recent and knowledgeable reassessment of the Church's role contends that Catholicism—for reasons that went unaccentuated in earlier scholarship—is both institutionally and ideologically incapable of legitimating and implementing reforms basic to a new egalitarian order.

The Renaissance of Interest in Spanish Louisiana Over the Past Ten Years owes much to the acquisition of important document collections by such universities as Loyola in New Orleans, Northwestern of Louisiana, Tulane and Memphis State. Graduate students and scholars who lacked sufficient funds for research in Europe now find adequate materials in the United States.

As all good social scientists know, to analyze a problem properly one needs hard data, the harder the better. The United States government thinks so too, and is a prolific producer and consumer of statistics. If one wishes to do research on the military expenditures of the Latin American countries, for example, one has available not one but at least four sets of statistics complied by or for the federal government.

At this point, however, difficulties emerge: these sets of statistics not only are not identical, but often differ so drastically that they lead to diametrically opposed conclusions.

It has become rather common to say that the economic importance of Latin America for the United States has declined sharply, mainly owing to the fact that the region's relative position in the external trade of the United States has deteriorated progressively. While the figures do indeed reveal that the region now plays a lesser role in U.S. foreign commerce than it did some decades ago, it would be grossly misleading to assume that the overall economic importance of Latin America for the United States and other core powers also has declined. Economic relations between the Latin American periphery and the United States should not be analyzed merely in quantitative terms, on a bilateral basis, and only at certain points in time. It is necessary to shift attention to the structural level, to verify, for example, whether this decrease in the Latin American share of world trade necessarily implies a breakdown of the bonds that have existed historically between core and periphery economies.

The 1970s were particularly fruitful for the field of Puerto Rican historiography. A number of works were published, not only on the Island but abroad, which showed the trend of current and future research. New topics were being dealt with from a variety of updated viewpoints and methodologies, and previously studied problems were revised in the light of newly available sources, as was the case, for example, with slavery. Various factors have contributed notably to this situation: the assiduous exchange of ideas among Puerto Rican, Latin American, North American, and European researchers, a process which, although slow, has served to involve Puerto Rico in recent historiographical trends; the involvement of the Island in international affairs; the opening of new collections of valuable historical materials; the institutionalization at the university level of graduate study in the field of history; and, in general, a greater emphasis on Puerto Rican cultural identity.

The North Central Council of Latin Americanists grew out of the Wisconsin Council of Latin Americanists which was formed during the 1966–67 year by scholars from various colleges and universities in Wisconsin. A group of nine met originally on 25 March 1966 at Stevens Point, Wisconsin to determine whether there was enough interest on their campuses to warrant drafting plans for a statewide association. This group, plus other Latin Americanists from the state, met again at Wisconsin State University—Whitewater on 16 December 1966. They formed an executive committee and charged it with drafting a charter for the new organization; they also set the first general meeting for Spring 1967 at Wisconsin State University—Platteville.

One of the most characteristic features of political processes in Latin America is the military seizure of power. The phenomenon is extremely complex and a complete understanding of it, if that is ever reached, will have to take into account a variety of causal factors operating over different periods of time, and interacting in various ways. Where a problem is this complex, one is well advised to approach it through a variety of methods, and this has indeed occurred. Some of the standard methods are: 1. To contrast Latin American experience as a whole with that of other areas-the United States, or Western Europe, or Africa-in order to isolate putative causal factors present in Latin American history and tradition but not found elsewhere; 2. To contrast the experience of different Latin American countries, identifying those more prone to military assumptions of power and trying to determine what socioeconomic or other variables correlate with a high propensity to military coups; 3. To examine changes over time in the incidence of coups, in the history of all of the Latin American countries, of a single country, or of a limited group of them, to try to discover the changes in other dimensions associated with changes in the relative frequency of coups; 4. To examine the motives of military officers who stage coups, either as stated by them or as imputed to them by knowledgeable observers.

One of the curious features of recent Latin American politics has been the closeness of the results of presidential elections. As shown by tables 1 and 2, the median gap between the two principal contenders in presidential elections taking place around 1970 was 4.93 percent, compared to 15.39 percent in elections taking place around 1950. Over half of the 1970 elections resulted in a smaller winning margin than the smallest such margin around 1950.

Mucho se ha escrito y especulado sobre las culturas negras de América. Y cuando pensamos en ellas en abstracto, casi siempre acuden a la mente las mismas imágenes: dioses africanos, sistemas esotéricos de adivinación, collares de colores, medicina mágica, fieles en estado de trance. Esto se debe, en primer lugar, a que éstos han sido y siguen siendo elementos importantes del patrimonio cultural de numerosos grupos negros de nuestro continente. Se debe también a que, gracias a la paciente labor de investigadores tales como Roger Bastide, Fernando Ortiz, Lydia Cabrera, Alfred Metraux y otros, hoy poseemos una riquísima—aunque no exhaustiva—información acerca de la cultura de muchos de esos grupos. Existe, sin embargo, otro mundo negro casi totalmente inexplorado. En éste, el recuerdo del Africa no se advierte a flor de piel y las raíces de su tradición oral y de sus prácticas religiosas son, al menos en ciertos aspectos formales, más europeas que africanas.