Capitalism is profoundly conditioned by the types of landed property and agrarian classes it confronts in its development, thereby determining fundamental features of the historically specific “social formation” that emerges in a given capitalist country. Such a social formation is not merely split into the constituent classes unique to the capitalist mode of production, but also incorporates, as Marx wrote of Western European capitalism, “strata of society which, though belonging to the antiquated mode of production, continue to exist side by side with it in gradual decay” (1967, vol. 1, p. 765). Or, as Joseph Schumpeter—certainly no Marxist—put it: “Any theory of class structure, in dealing with a given historical period, must include prior class structures among its data; … any theory of classes and class formation must explain the fact that classes coexisting at any given time bear the marks of different centuries on their brow” (1955, p. 111). Every concrete social class, therefore, is also an historical class, not a mere social category or analytic abstraction, and its existence depends on the particular history of the society of which it is a decisive constituent; and in that history, the protracted presence of agrarian elements has often been critical.

One of the most characteristic features of political processes in Latin America is the military seizure of power. The phenomenon is extremely complex and a complete understanding of it, if that is ever reached, will have to take into account a variety of causal factors operating over different periods of time, and interacting in various ways. Where a problem is this complex, one is well advised to approach it through a variety of methods, and this has indeed occurred. Some of the standard methods are: 1. To contrast Latin American experience as a whole with that of other areas-the United States, or Western Europe, or Africa-in order to isolate putative causal factors present in Latin American history and tradition but not found elsewhere; 2. To contrast the experience of different Latin American countries, identifying those more prone to military assumptions of power and trying to determine what socioeconomic or other variables correlate with a high propensity to military coups; 3. To examine changes over time in the incidence of coups, in the history of all of the Latin American countries, of a single country, or of a limited group of them, to try to discover the changes in other dimensions associated with changes in the relative frequency of coups; 4. To examine the motives of military officers who stage coups, either as stated by them or as imputed to them by knowledgeable observers.

In 1943 there appeared in Mexico City the first book in Spanish on the story of philosophy in Mexico written from a nonscholastic or lay standpoint. Its title is, simply, Historia de la filosofía en México, the author being Samuel Ramos (1897-1959) of Zitácuaro, Michoacán, a philosophy professor at the National University of Mexico. The pioneering work is tentative and modest in content but firm and ambitious in intent. It opens and closes with the same fixed idea in mind: To encourage Mexican thinkers to develop their own philosophy by integrating European philosophy with their national spirit; that is, by nationalizing philosophy itself. Put negatively and more effectively, the whole point of the author's endeavor is to get Mexican intellectuals out of the traditional habit of imitating the philosophies of others by inviting them to think henceforth on their own two feet about the fundamental problems of Mexico herself.

En el presente trabajo expondremos la formalización de una hipótesis teórica acerca de las causas del voto de izquierda. El propósito es fundamentalmente rebatir el presupuesto de unicausalidad en la explicación del radicalismo político. Además, las hipótesis formuladas han sido de tipo sustantivo y por tanto, intentamos básicamente ilustrarlas más que generalizar los resultados obtenidos.

Generally speaking, all nations have stereotyped images of other nations. These are frequently inaccurate, yet they form the basis upon which people “feel for or against other nations, interpret their behavior as villainous or good, judge their actions, and judge what they themselves as a nation should do in relation to the others. It follows, of course, that if the images are false, the resulting course of action can hardly ever be adequate.” As noted in an image study by UNESCO: “If the peoples of the world are to learn to live together in peace they need to know one another better. As matters stand, each of us has oversimplified, stereotyped concepts of other peoples. These concepts are usually erroneous, out of date and, all too frequently, negative in character. Clearly this is not material with which to build mutual understanding and tolerance.”

Scholars of developing nations recognize the importance of education in the socialization process that takes place in every culture. While some students have examined the impact of education on the masses, fewer, especially for Latin America, have examined the impact of education on the political leadership. Mexico, one of the most frequently studied countries in Latin America, has never been the subject of a study that examines its university system as an institution for both socialization and recruitment of political leaders. Nevertheless, it is an ideal country for investigation because the majority of its high-level office-holders have university degrees from a single institution, the National University of Mexico.