Ideally, the study of the political economy of Afro-Latin America should be part and parcel of that of the political economy of Latin America as a whole. Unfortunately, true to the tendency toward fragmentation and specialization in the human as well as in the physical sciences, that has not generally been the case. The problem has been made worse by the low salience of the nonwhite races in the Americas, due to their low socioeconomic and political status. It is further compounded by the ambiguity and evasiveness of the Latin American racial ideology, especially in its Brazilian form, which leads both local and foreign observers and social scientists to conclude first that there is no racial problem (though such a position is no longer seriously held by scholars) and then that race is irrelevant to the study of the region's political economy.

The creation of the Andean Pact in 1968 was accompanied by a chorus of enthusiastic official pronouncements and renewed scholarly interest in Latin American integration. In ensuing years, each new accomplishment and each new crisis in the Andean Pact has brought waves of official commentary and academic analyses.

With the publication in 1973 of Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics, Guillermo O'Donnell initiated a new phase in the debate over the relationship between social change and politics in Latin America. In contrast to most of the political development literature of the 1950s and 1960s, O'Donnell argued that social and economic modernization in the context of delayed development is more likely to lead to authoritarianism than democracy. His analysis focused on the emergence of military regimes in Argentina and Brazil in the middle 1960s—regimes that he labeled “bureaucratic-authoritarian” to distinguish them from oligarchical and populist forms of authoritarian rule found in less modernized countries. O'Donnell's suggestion that an “elective affinity” exists between higher levels of modernization and the rise of bureaucratic-authoritarianism in South America anticipated the military takeovers of the 1970s in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina. The timeliness of his argument, together with its broad theoretical implications, stimulated considerable discussion, which culminated in the recent publication of a volume devoted to the exploration of themes raised by O'Donnell.

Among archaeologists concerned with the study of cultural regularities in the evolution of the early civilizations, few general hypotheses have stirred such controversy as that which postulates a causal link between the phenomenon of irrigation agriculture and the origins of the state. Adumbrated initially by Karl Wittfogel in the 1920s and stated by him most completely in Oriental Despotism (1957), the hydraulic theory has been subject to much discussion and to varying fates in recent literature and research history. Although Wittfogel's original formulation was based chiefly on Old World data, the theory has had major impact on research and interpretation in the New. The first large-scale use of the approach in American archaeology followed World War II, when the Institute of Andean Research sponsored the Viru Valley Project in North Coastal Peru (Bennett, 1948; Willey, 1953). In recent years American archaeology has become concerned with questions of process beyond the limits of simple historical reconstruction (Binford and Binford, 1968). Concepts derived from systems theory (Flannery, 1968a; Hole and Heizer, 1969) are increasingly invoked to explain the cause-and-effect feedback mechanisms involved in the evolution of culture. Concomitantly, a virtual explosion of data has occurred concerning the chronology, size, and sociological and demographic matrix of New World irrigation systems. Thus, both investigative techniques and theoretical frameworks have undergone considerable recent modification and the body of relevant data is large and growing. While some might consider the hydraulic agriculture hypothesis a dead issue, such is not the case. Changes in the total conceptual context of any theory, and new evidence both pro and con, necessitate reevaluation of the theory.

La latinoamericanística, una de las más jóvenes ramas de la ciencia soviética, tiene raíces que se remontan hacia un pasado lejano. En Rusia el interés hacia América Latina acrecentó especialmente a principios del siglo XIX. La guerra por la independencia de 1810-1826 inspiró una profunda compasión de la opinión pública rusa progresista. En tiempos prerevolucionarios unas expediciones rusas visitaron los países de América Latina. Pero solamente después de la Gran Revolución Socialista de Octubre, que fue un momento crítico en las relaciones con las estados latinoamericanos, se comenzó el estudio sistemático de los problemas de los países del continente.

“Statistics are the poetry of Latin America” was Frank Tannenbaum's discreet version of “there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.” This is a widespread enough view, even now, when numbers are fashionable, and a fair number of my colleagues suggest any series will do to illustrate their well-conceived articles. A few skeptics refuse to go in for misplaced fashion. A Mexican economist, working in the statistics in the boondocks, said he was told to apply a correction coefficient to his numbers, to make them consistent with his boss's earlier reports. He quit, and became an essayist. An Argentine economist said that when his division head wanted to show growth, the investigators were sent to big firms; slumps were reported by surveying the output of small firms.