Why are the patterns of race relations in Latin America and Anglo-America today so different, particularly those between ‘Blacks’ and ‘Whites’? Is the explanation to be found, primarily, in the differences between the previously existing ‘systems of slavery’? Ever since Frank Tannenbaum, in 1947, made his famous statement on the ‘benign’ nature of ‘Latin American slavery’ as opposed to the ‘harsh’ nature of that in North America, these two issues have triggered a most lively debate, largely historical in nature but attracting representatives of other disciplines as well.1

Many of the essential early qualities of the Cuban Revolution emanated from the experience of armed struggle. In the Sierra Maestra microcosmic features of the socialist order acquired their earliest expression, assumed recognizable form, and established the foundations upon which the radical transformation of Cuban society would proceed. The exigencies of armed struggle created a new consciousness and at once proletarianized bourgeois revolutionaries and militarized civilian combatants. The guerrilla war conferred on the revolutionary order a powerful legacy of struggle which, in its earliest forms, expressed itself most compellingly in the Rebel Army.

During the first decades of the present century, in that area of eastern Cuba which lies beyond a boundary formed by the Rio Cabreras in the north and the Rio Jobabo in the south, a unique social transformation took place which is of particular interest and importance. More than simply a transition from the traditional to the modern, Oriente's society underwent revolutionary change as a result not only of foreign influence but also of foreign control and design calculated to produce both modernization and ‘Americanization’. As it became increasingly apparent that these twin objectives could not be easily accomplished, a third consideration, economic, advantage, quickly emerged and rose to a position of dominance. Capital accumulation and the profit motive catalyzed a process of change produced by the reaction of two dissimilar cultures: one comparatively inert and native, the other highly dynamic and foreign, to produce sugar and a mutated society. Perhaps all societies which were once heavily engaged in sugar culture have developed mutations in some sense of the word, but in Oriente's case the term is particularly apt.

For most of the Latin American countries the five years between 1885 and 1890 were a period of rapid economic expansion. European investors sank their money there as the trade of the area increased. To take one example, imports to Britain from Argentina expanded from under a million pounds in 1880 to over four million in 1890, while British exports to Argentina grew from two and a half million to eight and a half million pounds.1 Exports of Chilean nitrate rose from 275,000 tons in 1880 to 1,000,000 tons in 1890, as foreign capitalists invested heavily in the newly-conquered northern territories of Chile.2 Most Latin American countries borrowed increasing amounts of capital on the London market as their trade grew rapidly, and the boom only came to an end with the Baring crisis of 1890.

The so-called Brazilian economic ‘miracle’ has provoked a heated debate on the distribution between different socio-economic groups of the benefits and costs incurred in rapid income growth. This debate has clarified several empirical issues, notably the marked concentration of the personal income distribution and its significant deterioration in the 1960s.