The recent literature dealing with Mexico in the nineteenth century is massive. This motivated us to the task of reviewing the material published since the Third Reunion of Mexican and North American Historians at Oaxtapec in 1969. Initially over 450 titles were identified, dealing with all aspects of the period. Our original intention was to review the literature in Spanish, since that material is already becoming difficult to locate, but our attempt to treat material in only one language became unworkable. We also had planned to organize the essay conceptually rather than chronologically, but too many important studies were left out. So we have reluctantly returned to the traditionally accepted periodization of political history: independence, early republic, reform, and the porfiriato. Limitations of space forced the elimination of sections dealing with local, diplomatic, intellectual, and cultural history.

The history of the Pizarros, conquerors of Peru, is inseparably bound with images of swine. If we are to believe the chronicler Gómara, the Pizarro-pig association began when the illegitimate infant Francisco was abandoned at a church door, where he survived by suckling a sow for several days. Later, according to Gómara, the young Francisco's father recognized his offspring, but only to make him his swineherd. Though the former of these two stories is probably fantasy, the latter should not be rejected out of hand, as will become clear later. But whether true or not, the legend of the swineherd-turned-conquistador has sparked the historian's imagination for centuries.

The broad nature of the task of summarizing the state of our knowledge of the agrarian history of Puerto Rico in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is counterbalanced by the scarcity of literature on the topic. In many cases it has resulted in generalizations and over simplifications that cannot be avoided at this time. This survey is restricted to the commercial agricultural activities—sugar, coffee, and tobacco—since these industries shaped the economic history of the island in the period under consideration. More questions are raised than are answered. As a result, it is hoped that the topical areas touched upon will become objects of future research.

Se ha dado en llamar “novela de la violencia” en la literatura colombiana, a toda aquella producción novelística que refleja la situación sociopolítica de Colombia durante las décadas del cuarenta y del cincuenta. En este período el país se vio envuelto en una serie de luchas internas que afectaron profundamente la situación socioeconómica de Colombia, especialmente en lo que se refiere a la población campesina.

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.

Twenty years ago the first publications began to appear in Argentina of a loosely confederated group of writers, leftist in political persuasion, who took strident exception in culture to both the old oligarchic tradition and to the parvenu peronista establishment. During the years of the peronista government, the writers and intellectuals who supported Perón had been successful in imposing their own persuasions on the universities and publishing media at the expense of the old guard, represented by the literary supplements, Sur, the Academia Argentina de Letras, and the Jockey Club. The young leftists born around 1920 had been snubbed by the old-time writers and persecuted by the peronista regime. Their emergence as a loosely unified assertion of leftist political and cultural values, supported by a similar affirmation in postwar Europe, is a major literary phenomenon in mid-century Argentia.

Some twenty-five kilometers from Huancayo, Peru, nestled in the Jauja Valley, in unbelievable tranquillity, there exists a center of learning: the library of more than twenty thousand volumes in the Convent of Ocopa. This Franciscan monastery now opens the doors of its wealth of printed resources to scholars and researchers, both men and women, from far and near. During a visit of only two days, the author consulted with the librarian, Father Julián Heras, O.F.M., took photographs of the library, examined briefly certain volumes, and photographed title pages, colophons, engravings, and any particular items of interest in the more valuable works. What follows is an attempt to describe the printed resources for research in a library that has been called by Raúl Porras Barrenechea “una biblioteca de insigne sabiduría.”

This series of fifty-two bilingual radio programs in Spanish and English was developed for the Flagstaff Centennial and the Arizona Bicentennial celebrations. The programs, which were broadcast over KCLS, Flagstaff, during 1976, present and discuss the music of Latin America in terms of history, musical variety, growth and development, cultural meaning, comparisons with the North American experience, and pure enjoyment. They are about three parts music to one part discussion; explore folk, popular, concert, and religious music; and also include programs on children's songs and Christmas music.

The silver anniversary of the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies (RMCLAS) provides a good opportunity for an assessment of that organization. Much of the following analysis focuses upon annual meetings since they are the major activity of the organizational membership. Programs and minutes of past meetings as well as organizational newsletters and correspondence were examined for patterns in the areas of program participation (numbers, institutional affiliation, academic discipline, and sex of participants), topics favored (as concerns discipline and theme), the general political orientation of the organization, openness to participation from the outside, and organizational publications; an attempt is also made to provide some appreciation for the subjective side of the organization's life.

The origins of the Southeastern Conference on Latin American Studies (SECOLAS) are similar to those of several regional associations whose histories have previously been summarized in this journal. In an attempt to foster more and better academic courses on Latin America in the United States, the Pan American Union convened a national round table in Washington in April 1952 and, during the ensuing decade, sponsored a series of regional conferences to discuss similar problems and to provide for future cooperation and interchange. One such meeting, held on the campus of Duke University (Durham, North Carolina), 12–13 February 1954, was organized by R. L. Predmore of the host institution, and was called the “Southeastern Regional Round Table on Teaching Problems in the Field of Latin American Studies.” Aníbal Sánchez-Reulet represented the PAU and explained the history and purpose of such regional meetings, which, in other forms, had actually preceeded the Washington round table by as much as thirty-five years.

My task in critiquing James Street's recent article, “The Internal Frontier and Technological Progress in Latin America (LARR 12 no. 3, [1977]), is made doubly difficult because I am in agreement with so much of what he has to say and because he has qualified and strengthened his argument by incorporating in the final version of the essay most of the criticisms I offered on an earlier draft. Our already similar views were brought more into alignment, for instance, by the addition of such statements as the following: ”There is thus an enormous field developing for systematic research in what have been called ‘appropriate’ or ‘intermediate’ technologies“ (p. 50); ”In view of the gravity of the short-term crisis and the distorting pressures of long-term forces that have been described, it is entirely possible, if not probable, that no global strategy will emerge that will alleviate these trends“ (p. 50); ”By its nature an educational process takes time, and the trends described earlier may be moving with such speed that the development problems of Latin America will become increasingly intractable“ (p. 53).

My article, “The Internal Frontier and Technological Progress in Latin America,” seems to have disturbed Richard Clinton deeply, and he raises significant questions regarding social scientists and their obligations. His complaints focus on two distinguishable aspects of my work: my affective state of mind, and the sort of advice I should offer to Latin Americans concerning the solution of their problems.