The first part of this essay reviews some of the strengths and weaknesses in the current state of social history of Latin American cities. Specifically, it tries to create an awareness that quantitative urban studies need not be, and should not be, limited to aggregate data for sources. Unfortunately, many of the nascent quantitative studies of postindependence Latin American cities achieve their figures through published materials, principally demographic and commercial censuses. However, manuscript census returns, notarial records, judicial assessments, and other primary documentation can also provide the base from which we can observe frequencies both of personal vital records and of popular quotidian behavior; moving, marrying, going to school, buying or selling goods or property, and so on.

Sex has been and continues to be one of the most important elements that differentiates the functions performed by members of society, particularly those related to the social division of work. From a strictly biological perspective, the primary difference between men and women lies in the fact that, during specific periods of the life cycle, women direct a considerable part of their energy to the reproduction of the species. Beyond this difference, the physical and intellectual capacities of men and women are relatively similar. Nevertheless, it is a general fact that the levels of male and female participation differ extensively.

Literature on the latin american university is largely of a polemical and speculative nature, generally devoid of empirical grounding and theoretical significance. Research, in the sense of a systematic quest to enhance our powers to understand, predict, and control relationships among variables, is of recent origin. Parker (1964), in a review of over two hundred U.S. doctoral dissertations written on Latin American education, noted that few studies were concerned with university reform or the influence of universities on social, economic, and political improvement. Lipset (1966, p. 153), in a general survey of literature on university students in underdeveloped countries, observed that the influence of university studies, patterns of recruitment, modes of teaching on intellectual, professional, political and cultural standards and aspirations or the assimilation of students into the various spheres of adult activity is still terra incognita.

The purpose of this paper is to review the evolution of public policy toward the favelas of Rio de Janeiro since 1972–73. I choose these years because they are the ones at which available published accounts on the topic cease. One of my objectives is to re-actualize existing information on that subject. At the same time, I wish to bring forth some considerations on the relationships between civil society, especially its most deprived classes, and the particular form of authoritarian state now dominant in Brazil.

Twenty years ago the first publications began to appear in Argentina of a loosely confederated group of writers, leftist in political persuasion, who took strident exception in culture to both the old oligarchic tradition and to the parvenu peronista establishment. During the years of the peronista government, the writers and intellectuals who supported Perón had been successful in imposing their own persuasions on the universities and publishing media at the expense of the old guard, represented by the literary supplements, Sur, the Academia Argentina de Letras, and the Jockey Club. The young leftists born around 1920 had been snubbed by the old-time writers and persecuted by the peronista regime. Their emergence as a loosely unified assertion of leftist political and cultural values, supported by a similar affirmation in postwar Europe, is a major literary phenomenon in mid-century Argentia.

The information for this study was obtained from volumes 773 and 774 of Obras Públicas en General, in the Archivo del Antiguo Ayuntamiento de México. These documents contain a complete register of the architectural activities undertaken as public works or private homes from 1780 to 1805. It was hoped that a thorough study of the Obras Públicas en General would provide interesting data for the urban history of Mexico City and, more specifically, for the history of art and architecture in the federal capital.

This work will sketch some methodogical and theoretical guidelines for studying the historical process by which national states were formed in Latin America. It is a suggested method for studying this process, not a rigorous interpretation of it. Such an interpretation would be difficult without first having studied in depth the experiences of several nations from which to infer and generalize a pattern of historical development. Studies of this sort have been undertaken recently, so I will confine myself here to a discussion of certain conceptual elements and a research strategy that may prove useful in the work that lies ahead. Several hypotheses on the process of state formation will be advanced to illustrate the perspective from which I propose to undertake its study.

The “energy crisis” has often been advanced as the most important explanation of many Latin American nations' economic and political behavior during the 1960s and 1970s. Low oil prices led Venezuela to join in founding OPEC in 1960 and to take an active role in reaching its decisions. The fear of an oil embargo in 1973–74 forced Brazil to shift to a pro-Arab foreign policy. The increased oil prices of the past decade permitted, but did not ensure, rapid growth of Latin American oil producers, and are associated with massive increases in foreign borrowing and the search for new energy sources by both oil consuming and producing nations. The expenditure of increasing shares of national income on energy production and distribution influences life styles by leaving fewer resources for other activities, and will continue to do so at least until substitutes for current energy sources become available at attractive prices.

It has been traditional to treat the life and art of Julián del Casal and José Martí as antithetical statements.