I am certainly not the first traveler in Latin America struck by the diversity of its countries. The cliche has it that so many distinct entities were set up between 1810 and 1825 merely because the peoples of the continent could not comprehend Bolivar's admonitions that strength lies in unity. Whatever the validity of Bolivar's dream for South America, it is quite obvious why there are some twenty countries there instead of one or two, as is the case with the North American part of the liemisphere. Practically everything is a dividing factor south of the Rio Grande: geography and the configuration of the land, the ethnic composition of the populations, the historical antagonisms, the economic jealousies.