The degree conferred upon me by the University of America with the concurrence of the 24 universities of the Republic of Colombia is a powerful incentive to the work of the Inter-American Development Bank in the field of higher education and research in Latin America. You will forgive me, then, if I take this occasion to mention the role of the Inter-American Bank as the “Bank of the Latin American University,” a role which has placed it in the vanguard of an impressive process of international cooperation for the modernization and decisive expansion of higher education in the Hemisphere. The $55 million it has loaned to 71 institutions in 17 countries bear eloquent testimony to an abiding preoccupation of the Bank in its brief years of existence.

O Brasil ocupa na América Latina urna posição especial, por fôrça de sua formação histórica marcada pelo processo colonizador português e, no plano econômico, pelo potencial de recursos naturais existentes em seu território de 8 milhões e meio de quilômetros quadrados.

A diferenciação do Brasil no conjunto de nações latino-americanas é pouco ressaltada, porque a imagem continental que predomina é a de am conjunto de países caracterizados pelo sub-desenvolvimento.

Os traços de semelhança entre as nações da América Latina são ditados muito mais pelo estágio econômico continental do que pela formação histórica dêsses países, cujo ponto comum é a contemporaneidade de suas etapas coloniais e das lutas que assinalaram a independência nacional de tôdas.

The stability of Latin America rests essentially on the solution of two interrelated problems—population growth and economic development. A further corollary, and an extremely significant one, will be the social distribution of the benefits accruing from economic betterment. Latin America is both the fastest growing world region in population and also the most advanced (in terms of the death rate, literacy, and per capita income) of the underdeveloped regions of the world. It is also the only region of the underdeveloped world that had evolved from political colonial status prior to World War II. This region, therefore, has had the longest history of endeavoring to solve directly many of the problems that plague the 70 per cent of mankind that lives in the underdeveloped countries.

Latin Americanists must be prepared for sudden shifts in the winds of circumstance. Less than ten years ago a gathering of scholars at the Newberry Library in Chicago lamented the lack of support for their disciplines, and drew up an impressive list of tools and monographs needed to advance the field. Presumably the specialists returned to their campuses refreshed by this heady and cathartic experience of thinking adventurously, but they found no change there in the attitudes of their university administrators or the majority of their colleagues, who still believed that Latin America was an area of peripheral value; the professors were not discharged, of course, for they had tenure, but the promise of the early flurry of Latin American area developments that had occurred in the 1940's was not fulfilled.

Entre las figuras mexicanas más discutidas resalta el macho, el superhombre del vulgo. Ha sido preocupación de sicólogos, sociólogos, filósofos, historiadores, poetas y hasta folkloristas. Algunos, como el folklorista Vicente T. Mendoza, lo han explicado como fenómeno causado por el clima, o tendencia heredada por los mexicanos de los andaluces. Por otra parte, muchos otros comentadores le han dado al machismo explicaciones basadas en las teorías de Freud. El machismo —se nos dice— tiene sus orígenes en la Conquista, cuando Hernán Cortés y sus conquistadores llegan a México y violan a las mujeres de los aztecas. De este acto de violencia nace el mestizo, quien odia y envidia al padre español y desprecia a la madre india —en ambos casos como resultado de sus complejos edipales.

During the last national election in Peru, one of the candidates charged that the Indians probably lived better under the Inca rulers. Rather than being political hyperbole, this observation points up the stark reality which is the root cause of Peru's economic and social problems. With a relatively thin middle class, Peru's population of about 11.6 million is largely polarized into a small elite, whose wealth is conspicuous even by Latin American standards, and the larger proportion of the population living in the high sierra or in the slums surrounding each coastal city, which barely manages to exist under conditions of abject poverty. This skewed distribution of wealth and income, long apparent even to the most casual observer, has been confirmed by a recent study which indicates that the top 10 per cent of the spending units receive 60 per cent of the disposable income, and 8,760 spending units, representing only .25 per cent of the total, receive 35 per cent of the income.

The life of Gabriela Mistral, born Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga, was a miraculous journey filled with “a trembling of the soul in a trembling of the flesh.” It took her from a hidden valley in the Chilean Andes, where she was born in 1889, to a regal hall in Stockholm, where she received the Nobel Prize for literature from the hands of King Gustavus V in 1945.

Gabriela related the beginning and the ending of her journey in a few Unes of poetry:

Todas íbamos a ser reinas,
de cuatro reinos sobre el mar:
Rosalía con Efigenia
y Lucila con Soledad.

En el Valle de Elqui, ceñido
de cien montañas o de más,

Y Lucila, que hablaba a río,
a montaña y cañaveral,
en las lunas de la locura
recibió reino de verdad.

Overdadeiro Título dêste artigo — se eu tivesse encontrado esta palavra no dicionário — deveria ser: as “pseudoses” da Lei de Diretrizes e Bases. Tratará, com efeito, embora sumàriamente, de algumas incongruências, suposições e pseudo-implicações desta Lei ou que dela decorrem. Devo dizer, à guiza de preâmbulo, que eu também já me inscreví, princípio, entre os apoiadores da Lei. Mas esta é urna Lei que envelheceu muito depressa. E não me refiro, aqui, à aceleração do rítmo das coisas no Brasil, nos últimos anos, o que, de fato, poderia bastar para explicar que, em apenas quatro anos, a Lei pudesse ter caducado. É o fato de que essa Lei, por assim dizer, já nasceu velha. Ela levou quinze anos para ser feita, desde a promulgação da Constituição de 46, e doze anos no Congresso, a maior parte dos quais “engavetada”.

In 1872, it was estimated that there were 378 foreign language journals published in the United States. Of these, only one was in the Portuguese language. O Novo Mundo, published in New York from 1870 to 1879, was singular among the foreign language press publications in that it was designed not for an immigrant audience but rather for readers in another country. Its purpose was to interpret the United States primarily to Brazilians and secondarily to other Latin Americans. Faithful until its last issue to this end, it also commented on the Brazilian political and social scene.

José Carlos Rodrigues, O Novo Mundo's original owner and only editor, was a remarkable Brazilian in an era when the Empire and the First Republic produced a galaxy of extraordinary public figures. Born in the city of Cantagallo, province of Rio de Janeiro, on July 19, 1844, be was the son of fazendeiros, and attended the Colégio Dom Pedro II in Rio de Janeiro.

Los estudiantes de la Universidad de la Habana, al igual que los de la mayoría de las universidades latinoamericanas, se han caracterizado por su participación en la política nacional. En la etapa independentista, a finales del siglo pasado, la Universidad de la Habana se convirtió en el centro de agitación contra España. El 27 de noviembre de 1871 la colonia ordenó el fusilamiento de ocho estudiantes de medicina acusados de haber profanado la tumba de un militar español. De las filas estudiantiles surgieron los dirigentes de la guerra de independencia. El propio José Martí, a edad muy temprana y siendo aún estudiante, comenzó a luchar por la libertad de su patria. Martí, con su prédica constante, hubo de unir a sus compatriotas conduciéndolos a la guerra emancipadora contra España.