Historians who have sought to examine the native societies of the Americas, whether before or after the European conquest, have often felt a need to go beyond the traditional bounds of the discipline, loose as they are, in their efforts to comprehend the values and the actions of people whose societies did not conform to the European pattern. In the study of Indian societies, anthropology and history joined early and have continued to collaborate; the very term ethnohistory, which some would consider an unnecessary coining of a new name for social history, is clear evidence of this union. Further evidence, if such be necessary, is provided by the degree to which scholars have drawn upon the approaches and conclusions of both disciplines in their work. While this practice is of long standing, earlier work showed a general tendency to utilize the data and the conclusions of other disciplines, rather than drawing upon the theories and the approaches developed by others in order to reexamine one's own materials. This highly pragmatic approach to the potential contributions of other disciplines is increasingly giving way to deeper collaboration and interchange.

This paper is a survey of Maya archaeology of the last ten years. A brief historical examination of the years prior to 1958 is made. There follows an intensive look at fieldwork from 1958 to 1968. An examination is made of the state of the field with respect to research design and analytical techniques along with a consideration of data contributed by collateral fields. On the level of explanation and synthesis, there is an examination of the major problems of Maya culture-history to the solution of which recent research has contributed. The concluding sections summarize the characteristics of recent work and attempt to sketch the critical areas for future investigation. I may have unfairly slighted some investigations and workers because much recent work is still in unpublished form. I have depended not only on preliminary reports and the standard publication sources, but also to some degree on the “bush telegraph” of anthropology in assessing the field. Thus the following can only be regarded as one (albeit active) worker's perception of his own specialty.

Cada escritor se maneja dentro de peculiares ciclos productivos, cuyo ritmo, duración, intensidad, época de la vida, propician valederas leeciones sobre su intima problematica, tanto personal como social, tanto histórica como estética, tanto ideológica como artistica, por cuanto no responden meramente a su voluntad productiva sino que surgen en la confluencia de sus interiores procesos psiquicos con las situaciones históricas de la cultura en que viven. Por eso nos hablan del tiempo del escritor y del tiempo de la sociedad y solo podemos alcanzar su comprensión si abrazamos conjuntamente a los dos a través de la fusión ideológica que nos entregan los textos.

Dependencia y Desarrollo en América Latina se ha constituido, sin duda alguna, en el análisis de los procesos sociales y políticos latinoamericanos que más impacto ha tenido en los círculos académicos e intelectuales de dicho continente en los ultimos quince años. Asimismo, la versión en inglés publicada en 1979 ha alcanzado una difusión semejante en los Estados Unidos y Canadá, habiéndose transformado en una referencia obligada de todo curso sobre sociedad y política en América Latina.

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.