‘El hombre más puro de la raza’. This opinion of the Chilean poetess Gabriela Mistral sums up the general feelings of all critics and historians who have studied Martí's life: both as a Cuban patriot and as a sincere human being Martí evokes admiration from all sides. The same cannot be said, however, about his copious writings – twenty-seven volumes in the latest edition (Editorial Nacional de Cuba) — which have led to many differences of interpretation: for some he is the embodiment of Marxist philosophy, while others have shown how little his views have in common with orthodox Socialism. Within Cuba itself, political leaders as diverse in their ideals as Carlos Prío, Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro have all claimed to be putting into practice the philosophy of Martí.

The term ‘populism’ has been used to describe many of the popular movements that have appeared in Latin America in recent decades. It is an ‘imprecise term’, to use the words of Professor Skidmore, and the large number of definitions available, indicates how imprecise the term, in fact, has become. Definitions of a universal nature are of limited use, for populism seems to vary according to geographical region: the North American populist differs from the Russian populist, who differs from the African populist, who differs from the Latin American populist, and so on. Even when dealing with the specific area of Latin America there is no consistency. Writers disagree on whether Latin American populists are Left- or Right- Wing, anti- or pro-status quo, reformists or opportunists, rigid or flexible with regard to ideology.

Historians of the age of revolution have often pointed out the contradictions inherent in the preservation of slavery within political structures self-defined as liberal. In Latin America many a nineteenth-century apologist stymied the question by citing the countervailing inviolability of property rights as justification for the continued bondage of slaves to their masters; but what, then, explains the discriminatory treatment of free blacks and mulattoes under nominally liberal regimes? Within free society no such ideological impasse can be identified, yet an analogous, if informal, subordination of the rights of the free colored is amply documented. And the analogy may be extended to include the free poor, regardless of color. At this point matters of race and class overlap, raising important questions about social relations and policies that cannot be answered by reference to formal ideology alone.

The problem of how institutions have affected economic and social development has occupied much of the attention of social scientists. An area now beginning to attract the attention of students of development is the role of interest groups. However, little work has been done on the influence of interest groups during the nineteenth century, a period in which the developmental progress of nations now considered to be economically and socially ‘mature’ began to differ markedly from those still struggling to achieve such maturity. This paper will examine the ways in which interest groups, principally business interest groups, affected the development of Brazil during the nineteenth century.