During the 1980s, the major security themes that Caribbean scholars studied were geopolitics, militarization, intervention, and instability. The interface between domestic and international politics led to linkages among some of these themes and their domestic, regional, and international dimensions. For example, the militarization of Grenada in the 1980s was predicated on the need to defend the Grenadian revolution against foreign intervention and local counterrevolution. Ironically, the same buildup created the climate that led to the self-destruction of the revolution and presented the United States with a golden opportunity to intervene. In doing so, the United States succeeded in fulfilling a preexisting geopolitical aim of its own. Elsewhere in the region, militarization and concerns about stability in Dominica, Barbados, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines raised security concerns within the Eastern Caribbean, where several countries created the Regional Security System (RSS) in 1982 to bolster subregional security and became willing accomplices of intervention when the United States intervened in Grenada a year later.

The ethnic question has been central to the historical process of nation-state building or “nationalization” in Mexico (Adams 1967). To a significant degree, this process has been a criollo and a mestizo project (Aguirre Beltrán 1976; compare Anderson 1983, 1988). Accordingly, indígena identity has been imposed on the non-criollo and non-mestizo population by the Mexican state, with the identification process historically displaying arbitrariness and inconsistency across a range of biological identifiers (especially phenotype) or cultural identifiers (especially language) or both (Marino Flores 1967). Following colonial precedents and in step with the evolving structure of political economy and society, the process of ethnic identification in postcolonial Mexico associated Hispanicity (via white skin color or Spanish descent or Spanish language) with the more valued locations higher in the ethno-class hierarchy and indígena identity with the lower, less-valued locations. In postrevolutionary Mexico, thanks to the contribution of anthropologist Manuel Gamio, the concept of mestizaje was stripped of biological content and culturized.

A major question confronting analysts of Latin American labor concerns the relationships among unions, the state, and foreign powers. Some social scientists have argued that the relative autonomy of unions affects the strength of democracy in a given country (see Weffort 1978; Hall and Garcia 1989; Epstein 1989; Cohen 1989; Collier and Collier 1991). They have also asserted that Latin America's ability to control its own destiny has been shaped in part by the influence of foreign powers (particularly the United States) over social institutions like unions (Bergquist 1986; Buchanan 1991; Spalding 1992–1993). An evolving branch of labor studies that now offers a unifying perspective for examining this complex set of relationships is the perspective of labor internationalism.

Until a few years ago, Venezuelans and their historians held black and white notions about the regimes that had governed the country after it became a centralized state in the early twentieth century. As Venezuelan historian Santiago Gerardo Suárez pointed out, “The victor writes history.” And indeed, most portrayals of Venezuelan rulers after 1908 were strongly colored by the roles played by leading members of the political parties that emerged triumphant in 1958 when the modern democratic period was ushered in (Suárez 1965, 20). In fact, the most influential works were written by important politicians and others closely tied to political organizations.

This research note investigates class tension between rural women in the context of a grassroots women's development project in the village of Guadalupe in the Mexican state of Querétaro. These tensions affected the cooperative's internal dynamics, economic choices, and inevitably its lack of success. My study found these class tensions to be gendered in that they were manifestations of patriarchy as well as dependent capitalism.

The recent return of peace to El Salvador is providing increasingly favorable conditions for scholarly research. This encouraging climate will help Salvadoran and guest researchers make up for years of difficult and repressive conditions. Some researchers may begin by examining contemporary questions related to the recent revolutionary process, but historical research should also be greatly facilitated. Entrepreneurial searches for archival materials on the period preceding the mid-twentieth century can be surprisingly successful when one combines a national outlook with careful regional probing. This research note will provide a guide to archival and other historical materials available in the United States and El Salvador and will place these sources in the context of major questions left unanswered by the historiography covering 1700 to 1940.