In this paper I present the views of a Latin American sociologist, partly trained in the United States, on Latin American Studies in this country. This is not a research paper but a frank and open presentation of my impressions, however opinionated. The aim is to stimulate reflection and debate, not to appease or to compromise. Implicit in all this are the following beliefs: (a) The training of Latin Americanists in the United States today is generally poor; (b) much of the research on Latin America carried out in the United States today is second-rate; (c) this situation can be improved; and, most important, (d) it is to Latin America's advantage, and not to its disadvantage, that such improvement take place.

“Woman has always been for man the ‘other,‘ his opposite and complement.”

Scholars of Latin America Have Recently Concerned Themselves With socially-oriented studies—not merely of structures, institutions, or groups, but about the individuals who comprise those entities. Despite analyses of political and military elites, students, peasants, blacks, and immigrants, little scholarly work has been undertaken on man's “other,” the female. Only now are studies on the largest single sub-grouping in society beginning to appear, and these are primarily the work of women scholars. The undertaking is rife with problems, not the least of which is the lack of any comprehensive guide to sources or research directions. Few major subjects suffer such a lack of core bibliography, methodological apparati, or thematic models as does the subject of the female. In an attempt to redress the balance and to encourage the study of man's “opposite and complement,” I present here an essay dealing with research directions and a core of works on the female in Ibero-America.

There are few examples in the history of Latin American studies of such generally accepted “facts” that were so contradicted by subsequent events as the association of democratic politics with industrial economies. Lipset's (1960) simple comparative study of Latin American nations in which he found a striking positive correlation between the degree of economic development and the extent of democracy in the late 1950s has been upset. The military coup d'état that abolished democracy in Brazil in 1964 turned out to be not a unique event, but the first of a series of military takeovers throughout the most industrialized nations of South America: Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. For this reason, the study of the demise of electoral politics in Brazil acquires a new significance. And for this reason also, analysts are inclined to attempt explanations in terms of structural causes common to all capitalist nations on the periphery. The purpose of this paper is to examine one set of such explanations: those in which economic conditions play the major role.

The pulperos were the largest group of small, independent entrepreneurial storekeepers officially categorized and supervised in Spanish America during the colonial period and the nineteenth century. There are no studies of them. There were other small storekeepers, such as owners of bakeries or fish stores, who were far fewer in number, or artisan storekeepers, who occasionally were many in number but who were craft oriented rather than purely business oriented. What follows is a preliminary report. A final analysis and presentation must await an intensive, long-term study of the pulperos and bodegueros in Caracas, Medellín, or Buenos Aires, as circumstances permit, that will not be completed for several years.

Canadian Association of Latin American Studies Annual meeting Mexico City, Mexico May 24-27, 1971

In 1968, I was offered the opportunity to prepare a brief survey of resources and prospects for quantitative research in Latin American history by the ad hoc committee on quantitative data of the American historical association. I was at first charged with treatment of the whole period 1500-1960, but the willingness of John TePaske to undertake a lion's share of the task ended in limiting my responsibility to ‘only’ the 19th and 20th centuries. The results of that survey, as indeed those of professor TePaske's work, are available in the collection of papers edited by Val R. Lorwin and Jacob price, the dimensions of the past. In the notes which follow I will try to avoid repeating any of the presentation in that work and will instead try to build a bridge between that effort of five years ago and developments in this field of research in the past few years.

AFSSAL was created in June 1978 for “the promotion of research in the social sciences on Latin America, the establishment of a link between public and private research organizations and social scientists who work on Latin America, and the representation of those organizations and researchers with regard to national and international institutions.” The creation of AFSSAL responded to the need of many researchers and academics in France who work at centers whose primary focus is not Latin America. Before 1978 there was no permanent structure for discussion and debate; neither was there a medium that would allow for the circulation of interdisciplinary information on research on Latin America undertaken in France. There was an obvious need to be able to examine together the possibilities for promoting interest in Latin America and developing the means available to social science researchers dedicated to the study of that region.

More than ten years have passed since the publication of Dependencia y desarrollo en América Latina, thus providing a fitting opportunity to assess the impact of dependency theory after a decade of fiery debates and hopeful explorations. Cardoso and Faletto's book had an immediate and decisive influence, not only on the reading public but—perhaps more importantly—on the collective effort to define the issues and themes around which a new view of Latin America was to be built, based on the recognition of the central role of dependency in the shaping of Latin American realities.

Without exception, all studies of Caribbean industrial relations and the attendant conflicts have either been descriptive historical accounts of the emergence of labor movements and trade union parties or institutional analyses of the systems of collective bargaining developed in the postwar period. While these studies have been important in documenting industrial relations practices and the political dimension of Caribbean trade unionism, they lack both a rigorous comparative frame as well as a commitment to the measuring and testing of explanatory propositions. As a result, relevant behavioral data in this field remain crude, unanalyzed, and largely uncollected. Although the traditional emphases on historical, political, and institutional perspectives are desirable and important, particularly in view of the major social and political changes that both shaped and were influenced by the labor movement in the region, other perspectives are now necessary in coming to grips with the difficult task of comprehending and explaining patterns and variations in the relations between labor and capital in the Caribbean. These perspectives can only evolve through self-conscious attempts at both theory building and comparative analysis of quantitative data. This study represents a modest step in this direction that poses rather than answers some basic conceptual and theoretical questions, in view of the limits of the available data.

In the Last Decade Scholars Have Undertaken a Reappraisal of Brazil's colonial experience conjunctly with Portugal's pioneering endeavors in imperial expansion and persistent occupation. Sequentially these dual facets have encouraged an appreciation of research materials in Portugal for the study of Brazilian history. Portugal's vast archives, excellent museums, and numerous libraries are abundant in historical manuscripts and printed works as are the various town halls, monasteries, private homes, and Misericordias, most of which remain insufficiently utilized by foreign scholars. Increased fellowship funds and more cosmopolitan academic attitudes have facilitated accessibility to geographically widespread collections, the benefits of which are immeasurable.