The goal of “health for all by the year 2000” was endorsed by member nations of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) at the International Conference on Primary Health Care, held at Alma Ata, U.S.S.R., in September 1978. The goal of attaining total health care coverage of the population had been agreed upon by the Ministers of Health of the Americas at their III Special Meeting in 1972. Meeting again in 1977, the ministers took stock of the region's accomplishments and remaining shortcomings in preparation for the Alma Ata conference. They concluded that their institutional health care systems, which bear the major responsibility for providing total coverage, had not yet attained this goal; among the reasons mentioned were institutional rigidities that made it difficult to determine and respond to unattended needs for health care, and the financial inaccessibility to large population groups of the institutions providing health services. These problems were compounded by a “significant increase in the cost of medical care … which reduces the resources available for providing universal coverage.”

Hoping to stimulate undergraduate as well as graduate students of the University of Houston and residents of the city to consider critically and constructively our country's relations with Latin America—their knowledge seemed to be limited to a tiny bag of clichés relative to Fidel Castro, military dictatorships, ownership of the Panama Canal, Mexican braceros, etc.—Harvey L. Johnson, professor of Spanish and Portuguese and acting director of Latin American Studies at the University of Houston, arranged a one-day conference on 19 March 1966 that featured two lectures and discussions led by members of the faculty plus a luncheon address, “The Epic Poem of Latin America” by Rafael Squirru, Argentine poet and critic and director of the Cultural Division of the Pan American Union. At a general meeting, the coordinator of the program raised the question about founding a council of Latin American studies for the southwest. Wholehearted support was manifest. In November of the same year, a three-day conference, sponsored by Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, and coordinated by Richard A. Johnson, its director of Interdisciplinary Area Programs, focused on the subject “The Confluence of the Cultures of the Americas.” Among the speakers were the Honorable Fulton Freeman, United States ambassador to Mexico; Luther H. Evans, director of International Collections at Columbia University; several distinguished professors from various Mexican universities; and Howard F. Cline, director of the Hispanic Foundation. At the close of the conference an informal meeting was convened, with Richard A. Johnson serving as chairman, for the purpose of considering the desirability of establishing in Texas a regional association of Latin American studies. A motion to create it carried, but in the general discussion regarding the implementation of the proposal it was decided to await the outcome of the final decision to be reached at the conference scheduled for April 1967, at the University of Houston. Although the organization was postponed, the group recognized, nevertheless, the need to have a committee appointed to draft a constitution and bylaws prior to the meeting in Houston.

Recent years have witnessed a massive resurgence of interest in the question of socially determined sex roles. Investigators, both rigorous and popular-essayistic, have inquired into the ways in which society regulates which attitudes and behaviors are appropriate to men and which to women. There have been widespread expressions of dissatisfaction with the excessive constraints inherent in the traditional female role, along with numerous proposals for affording women greater freedom. The consideration of this set of related issues might most accurately be described as the critical questioning of sex roles, but it is generally referred to as feminism.

The history group of CIESU was formed by Juan Rial Roade, Angel M. Cocchi, and Jaime Klaczko, graduates of the History Section of the Instituto José Artigas, the only institution at the university level devoted to teacher training in Uruguay. They are doing research in urban and demographic history, an area of Uruguayan historiography that has not been much studied by social scientists.

During the last decade, there has been a great debate on the social role and political function of the social sciences. This debate has brought into focus certain types of research that had not been considered valid before, each with its respective theoretical framework. As I see them, the most interesting and productive of these new perspectives for the social sciences in Latin America today are (1) modesty in research, (2) primacy of the qualitative, (3) autonomous development of theoretical models, (4) interdisciplinary research, and (5) broader acceptance of individual action and commitment as validating elements for research. None of these is strictly new: on the contrary, some of them (e.g., 5) are cyclical and have quite respectable ancestors; some have been presented by other colleagues, and myself, in many places and at many times. Nevertheless, they are worthy of repetition in view of their considerable implications for research policy and social action.

In the past, Iberian bibliography attracted only limited interest in Poland. In his extensive (33 vols.) Bibliografia Polska (1872–1939), Karol Estreicher included a good number of the Iberian titles that existed in Poland through the end of the nineteenth century; some useful cross-references may also be found in Gabriel Korbut's Literatura Polska (1929–31). Representative collections of old Spanish prints (already indexed), along with contemporary Polish translations of Iberian and Latin American works, are located at the National Library in Warsaw, and at the university libraries in Cracow and Warsaw.

Uruguay, once known as the “Switzerland of South America” for its advanced social and economic development, is a country in which it is surprisingly difficult to obtain statistical data, and quantitative demographic sources are little known and even less analyzed. Despite the fact that, at the turn of the century, Uruguay had a stable government and an advanced social system (the “welfare state” created by the administraciones batllistas), only five general population censuses had ever been taken (1852, 1860, 1908, 1963, 1975), and only the last three are reliable. However, these are not the only sources available, and it is necessary to survey other major existing demographic data, whether published or unpublished.

This research note is based on data collected from nineteenth-century manuscript census returns for San Antonio, Texas. It is part of a larger project to study the urban family history of four Southwestern towns: Los Angeles, California; Tucson, Arizona; Sante Fe, New Mexico; and San Antonio, Texas. Founded as Spanish pueblos, they were the largest Mexican settlements in the borderlands before the Anglo-American conquest, and they developed into important trading and commercial centers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moreover, these towns have become important urban magnets for the Spanish-speaking people of the Southwest. Since World War II the barrios of Los Angeles and San Antonio have been especially influential in the cultural and political development of the Chicano movement, yet little is known about the early social history of these ethnic enclaves.

Few events in Latin America have attracted so many journalists as Pope John Paul's visit to Mexico in January 1979. Few have been so poorly reported.

The contradiction is a reflection of coverage of Latin America in general: of the more than one thousand reporters present in Mexico, only a handful, mostly from the Catholic press, had a background in both religious affairs and Latin America. The vast majority did not speak Spanish, knew nothing about Latin America's Catholic Church, and had only a rudimentary understanding of Vatican affairs, which are Byzantinely complex even for the initiated; “color,” therefore, substituted for in-depth reporting. But then journalists are not the only ones ignorant of the Latin American Church. When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee questioned intelligence representatives on the National Security Council about Catholic leaders in Latin America, in regard to the United States' “unpreparedness” for the religious upheaval in Iran, they reportedly could not name a single one.

The Institute of International Studies (IIS) of the University of Chile was founded in 1966 by professor Claudio Véliz, with the cooperation of the Royal Institute of International Affairs of London. The IIS has been affected by the changes that have occurred in both the domestic and international contexts, but, despite some temporary crises, the Institute has been able to maintain the generally high level of scholarship and objectivity that typically characterized it. Today, the IIS is a research and teaching center in the field of international relations, covering the political, juridical, economic, social and historical dimensions.

Freedom of the press has long been considered a critical requirement for the maintenance of democratic government. Most previous writings on the position of the press around the world, however, have argued that restrictions on the press have become generally more numerous in recent years and, hence, press freedom levels have been declining over time. Merrill et al., in their survey of national press systems, note that “recent surveys and studies tend to indicate that in many ways freedom of the press is eroding slowly in a worldwide context. Press laws are proliferating, sanctions of many kinds are growing up to thwart the free workings of the press, and press councils and other groups are moving in to restrict activities of the press.” Survey articles on the state of the press in Africa and in Asia reach the same conclusion for those regions, and a recent report of the prestigious Inter-American Press Association argued that press freedom in the western hemisphere is under greater threat than ever before. Even in some advanced western nations the press has come under attack by governmental officials, as is evident in the United States with both the Nixon administration's antipress activities as well as recent court rulings that limit press coverage of legal proceedings and the secrecy of newsmen's sources and working materials.

El PEHESA es un programa asociado al Centro de Investigaciones Sociales sobre el Estado y la Administración y que tiene por finalidad impulsar los estudios de historia social y económica. Está integrado por nueve historiadores, tres de los cuales son investigadores de planta del CISEA. Son objetivos del PEHESA estimular investigaciones originales tanto de la Argentina como los estudios comparativos de los países de América Latina. En este sentido no sólo contribuye con sus propios proyectos en marcha, sino también, propicia el intercambio y colaboración con otros investigadores u otros centros académicos que desean realizar estudios en este campo. El PEHESA pretende asegurar la continuidad de las actividades mediante seminarios, reuniones y conferencias sobre temas de esta especialidad, a los que también son invitados investigadores de otras instituciones u organismos. Asimismo ha proyectado la realización de cursos y seminarios para graduados que no han tenido la oportunidad de llevar a cabo este tipo de actividad en otros ámbitos universitarios y científicos. Asimismo es de fundamental interés para el programa mantener vinculaciones con instituciones y personas dedicadas a los estudios sociales en general y a los problemas históricos en especial, tanto del país como del exterior, a fin de mantener un intercambio rico y vivaz, indispensable para desarrollar todas las inquietudes intelectuales y crear vínculos sólidos y permanentes.

La Villa de San Felipe de Austria de Oruro, hoy ciudad de Oruro, situada en el altiplano boliviano, fue el segundo centro minero de plata en el Alto Perú. Fundada oficialmente en 1606 tuvo su apogeo en ese mismo siglo XVII, acompanando a Potosí en la crisis minera del siglo siguiente. En 1781 ocurrió en ella una sangrienta rebelión en la cual estuvieron involucrados importantes mineros y comerciantes de la villa. Entonces vivían en ella 8,000 criollos y 50 españoles mientras que en el siglo anterior debe de haber alcanzado la cifra de 40,000 habitantes.