Any time a political system has to induct a formerly excluded group into the political process, there is apt to be some uncertainty about what the consequences will be. This has been true in the United States on several occasions. When the Nineteenth Amendment was under discussion, there was considerable interest in what effect the feminine vote would have. When Southern blacks began to vote in large numbers in the 1960s, politicians and scholars wondered what the consequences would be. In 1971, with the ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, the impact of the youth vote is being debated, even though we have twenty years of sophisticated behavioral research to guide our speculation.

In the United States, the political process is basically stable and institutionalized. But many countries are not so fortunate, particularly those that are moving rapidly from a traditional to a modern style.

In recent years the problem of the external indebtedness of non-oil-exporting countries has gained significant weight in public discussion. With the quadrupling of oil prices since the end of 1973, a rapid increase in the borrowing of LDCs has occurred. The standard of living in these countries is extremely low to begin with; any further room for downward adjustment to offset higher cost of oil imports through a slowing down of economy is simply an unacceptable possibility. Moreover, any further economic restraint on the already slower pace of development would be politically unpopular for the leaders in developing countries. Consequently, many LDCs have resorted to increasing external borrowings to pay for the oil bill, as well as to maintain a minimum rate of economic growth. The total external public debt of these countries is now estimated at around $200 billion (U.S. Senate, 1977: 51). This paper examines the debt servicing experience of Brazil. Lately, Brazil has been the center of attention because it owes some $25-$30 billion to foreign creditors. Its debt servicing burden for 1977 would be approximately $5.3 billion, or 40% of an estimated $12 billion in export earnings.

In geographic studies of modernization, attention has tended to focus on the processes of urbanization and the characteristics of urban areas rather than on rural areas. The latter have been included in macro-scale studies such as those of Gould and Soja in Africa investigating the spatial diffusion of modernization. In their studies of change in the Pacific, Brookfield (1973) and his associates also worked in rural communities, concentrating on the micro-scale. In research dealing with change in rural Latin America, emphasis has been on colonization studies and ruralurban migration, (Parsons, 1973; Preston, 1974; Stouse, 1971) but study of the effects of urbanization on change within a traditional rural areas has been neglected. Further, there have been few attempts in research on modernization to integrate macro and micro studies or to work at an intermediate scale.

As nações americanas, provenientes de origens européias diversas cujas diferentes culturas e tradições imprimiram marcas profundas nos seus respectivos destinos no nôvo mundo não deixaram entretanto de sofrer experiências comuns que, por sua vez, conferiram certas analogias às sociedades que, no hemisfério, se formaram. Negá-lo tornaria impossível á compreensão da história dos povos americanos que têm mesmo consistido, em linhas gerais, num conflito mais ou menos intenso entre o passado europeu e a experiência americana.

Uns, como os colonos anglo-americanos, regeitando, ao se deslo carem para o Nôvo Mundo, certas formas institucionais da Europa, embora retendo outras, entregaram-se mais confiantes e mais livres ao nôvo destino. Já os latino-americanos, pelas condições em que se processou a colonização, permaneceram mais atados às suas origens européias. E quanto mais fortes foram êsses laços, mais dramática foi a gestação das novas sociedades, como no caso hispano-americano.

Alberdi fue el más grande y sutil ironista de la literatura argentina. Sus críticos lo han estudiado como político, internacionalista y sociólogo. Ninguno advirtió la inmensa ironía que lo distingue entre sus compatriotas. La ironía, esa burla fina, disimulada, tan difícil de alcanzar cuando no se posee un talento especial, sólo se encuentra, en la literatura argentina, en escritores muy posteriores y, salvo raras excepiones, no logra la espontaneidad, la gracia y la hondura que fluyen del espíritu de Alberdi. Esta ironía es propia de los hombres solitarios, a menudo tristes, que contemplan el mundo con desdén porque descubren sus debilidades, sus ridiculeces, y, por tanto, terminan por despreciarlo.

My interest in land reform started very early. In fact, my first executive appointment in the Government of Puerto Rico was in 1941, even before I left academic life, when I became a member of the first Board of Directors of the Land Authority of Puerto Rico, thus participating from the start in the land reform program of Puerto Rico. Back in 1940 when the present Government of Puerto Rico headed by Luis Muñoz Marín, our present Governor but at that time President of the Senate, took over the reins of government one of the first bills approved by our legislature was for a land tenure reform program in Puerto Rico.

O papel da familia extensa patriarcal é largamente conhecido através os estudos históricos e sociológicos da civilização brasileña anterior á presente fase de intensa urbanização e desenvolvimento econômico. Os cronistas, historiadores, demógrafos, os cientistas naturais ou simples viajantes que visitaram o país desde o período colonial deixaram-nos informes e observações sobre aquele tipo de familia. Foi, porém, Gilberto Freyre quem dedicou urna atenção especial a instituição, analisando-a desde os seus primordios até os mais ayancados estágios da sua decadencia na obra cíclica que a mesma consagrou e que se representa de modo específico nas monografías Casa Grande e Senzala, referente ao período da completa predominancia da plantation agucareira e do apogeu do patriarcalismo rural, Sobrados e Mocambos, relativa a época da diversificagáo da sociedade colonial com o crescimento e ascengáo política e social das populações urbanas, e, por último, Ordem e Progresso, a análisis das mudangas ligadas a desintegração do sistema escravagista desde a Lei do Ventre Livre aos primordios da República de 1889. Freyre e outros chamaran atengáo para a influência desse padráo fundamental sobre outros tipos de familia ainda existentes na sociedade brasileira.

In those days in the French Quarter of New Orleans there were among others men who were giants among the nation's creative great and some who would become giants or nearly so, men like Sherwood Anderson and Oliver LaFarge and the poet John McClure and Lyle Saxon and Roark Bradford whose delightful genius had not yet had its due. And, briefly, William Faulkner. All of them are dead now.

But in those days they were not dead, and some of them kept the Quarter very much alive with their pranks and penchants and their predilection for a sort of Bohemianism that seemed natural and even proper there and then. For the most part they commanded the admiration of the neophytes, we who were very young reporters or hopeless scribblers and others not yet ready to have a try at the one or the other but only students who prowled the Quarter in search of some famed face and maybe an introduction and a word or two.

With an area of 83,000 square miles and a population of 600,000, British Guiana is one of the smallest countries on the South American continent. Its political importance is out of all proportion to its size or economic performance for the single reason that the People's Progressive Party (PPP), which won a clear majority in the Legislative Assembly elections of 1961, is completely dominated by a group of Communists.

British Guiana is still a colony under a governor who is a British civil servant nominated by the Colonial Office in London and who controls law and order, defense, and external affairs—the effective levers of command. The local government can thus be said to be in office but not in power, its range of action being extremely limited.

For the leaders and people of every new state of Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, independence has brought about a dramatic awakening with respect to the conceptualization of their position in world affairs. The loosening of ties with the metropolis, which had been the primary aim of the struggle for independence, suddenly appears in a double perspective. On the one hand, it contains the threat of distintegration of the established social and economic order and, on the other hand, it opens prospects for new bonds and opportunities. After decades or centuries of predominantly bilateral relationships between colony and metropolis, historical links are confronted with the pressures resulting from geographic proximity .The diversification of foreign contacts is a phenomenon of the very recent past. The leaders and inhabitants of Ghana and the Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Niger, Trinidad and Venezuela, or Guyana and Brazil are only now realizing the full impact of their relationship as neighbours.

Herman Kahn said recently that Canada is a regional power without a region. Canada is something of a sport, a nuisance to those who like their political geography neat—rather like Australia or Albania. There are arguments for attaching us to various regions or groups of states. If there is one region, however, to which Canada does not naturally belong it is the so-called Western Hemisphere. Although the Rio Treaty somewhat presumptuously included Canada and Greenland in the area to the defence of which Argentina would rush, we are for purposes of election to the Security Council attached to Western Europe. The Western Hemisphere, as I understand it, begins in the east end of London, includes most of England, all of Ireland, and then goes westward into Siberia. The term has acquired a certain geopolitical significance because it has been a handy way to describe the unnatural but historical relationship between the United States and Latin America.