Cuando Herbert Eugene Bolton, en 1932, enunció su tesis sobre la integración histórica de los países americanos despertó gran conmoción entre los historiadores sobre la validez de su tesis. Lo que propuso, simplemente, era que existían raíces comunes en todos los países americanos y que éstos necesitaban un estudio integrado para comprender los puntos complejos de dicha historia y darle una perspectiva continental. No cabe duda que a partir de 1932 varios historiadores han corregido ciertos aspectos de su tesis, pero a la vez, sigue íntegra como base para empezar un estudio económico y social de la ganadería americana. El problema con la tesis de Bolton aparece durante el período después de la independencia de los varios países y a la vez con la unión continua del Canadá con el Imperio Británico. He aquí donde muchos historiadores lo critican sin considerar que casi todos los países tomaron sus inspiraciones intelectuales de Europa y también de los Estados Unidos.

Early in 1938, Brazil signed a treaty with Bolivia that would open part of the apparently oil-rich Chaco region to Brazilian exploitation. Up to that time, Brazil's growing but still negligible national effort to find oil within her own territory had proved fruitless; the treaty, however, seemed to guarantee it a supply of oil not controlled by the great international petroleum companies, an important proviso during the nationalistic Vargas administration. Yet Brazil failed to pursue the prospect opened by the treaty until the 1950s, and then its attempts to implement it were defeated by internal economic nationalism. This essay deals with Brazil's abortive efforts in the 1950s to frame and implement a policy for developing its oil concessions in Bolivia. The incident is an isolated example of the difficult international relations which prevail in Latin America.

The long-term revenue and balance of payments policies of the Central American Common Market (CACM) countries are (1) to achieve harmonization of their tax structures and improve tax administration; and (2) to establish a Central American Monetary Union capable of (a) assisting member countries suffering from temporary balance of payments disequilibria; (b) operating as a Federal Reserve Banktype system; and (c) serving as a clearinghouse for intra-CACM as well as external payments. These policies have been receiving considerable study. On 25 February 1964 the central banks of the five CACM countries signed in San Salvador an Agreement for the Establishment of a Central American Monetary Union. The foregoing policies were enunciated at a meeting of the Central American presidents in San José, Costa Rica, on 19 March 1963, when they agreed “to establish a monetary union and a common policy in fiscal, economic and social matters, within the framework of the Economic Integration Program.” A Central American Monetary Council was created by the Agreement. The Council comprises the presidents of the five central banks of the CACM countries.

El 24 de octubre de 1970 el doctor Norman E. BarLang, quien recibió el premio Nobel de la Paz por su labor para mejorar las cosechas de trigo, advirtió en una conferencia de prensa en la ciudad de México que “la actitud irreal del mundo hacia el desmedido crecimiento de la población mundial es el mayor problema que encaramos en la actualidad”

Esa actitud irreal que señala el Dr. BarLang es la que prevalece en nuestra América, especialmente en Guatemala y el resto de Centroamérica. Aparentemente existen tres grandes posturas ideológicas en lo que se relaciona a la situación demográfica en Centroamérica:

A. Los grupos de extrema izquierda minimizan el problema con posturas simplistas e irracionales. Para ellos no hay ningún problema poblacional real ya que éste ha sido creado artificialmente por el “imperialismo norteamericano” para producir un pánico general que nos lleve a implementar métodos de control de natalidad y, siguiendo la lógica de estos grupos, a la subsiguiente despoblación de Centroamérica.

The founding of the Argentine National Observatory and much of its later development were the results of unusual inter-American cooperation. In 1870 the noted American astronomer Benjamin Apthorp Gould had realized his dream of inaugurating a major observatory in Argentina in order to extend to the Southern Hemisphere the kind of detailed examination of the stars already undertaken by the great observatories of the Northern Hemisphere. After a few false starts Gould was able to begin work in Córdoba thanks to the enthusiasm of President Domingo F. Sarmiento and the wholehearted support of his minister of public instruction, Nicolás Avellaneda. The Argentine government appropriated funds for the construction of an observatory and the purchase of a modest but adequate inventory of instruments.

Within the past decade a perennial and intriguing problem concerning Canadian foreign relations has gained new prominence. Can the government of Canada as empowered under Heading VI (Section 91) of the British North America Act (1867) conclude contractual relations with foreign states when the terms of such contractual relations can be given legal implementation only by legislation of the provinces in areas reserved to them under heading VI (sections 92 and 93) ? Or more precisely, since certain classes of legislative subjects are specifically reserved to the provinces, can the individual province then engage in “foreign relations” vis-á-vis those reserved subjects?

With the signing of the Franco-Quebec Agreements of 15 September 1967, which provided for increased cultural, scientific, and technological cooperation between France and Quebec, and the developments leading up to and flowing from this Accord, the problem of the role and extent of provincial powers in regard to foreign relationships again came to the fore.

Holy Week in San Pedro, Colombia, a small town near the bustling city of Cali, begins with a procession that commemorates Jesus’ triumphal march into Jerusalem. The week climaxes on Holy Friday with processions and rites which act out Christ's crucifixion and death. The remaining days of Saturday and Sunday, days that ostensibly glorify Christ's victory over death, evoke little enthusiasm; only the priest and a few hard-core faithful trudge through the rites necessary to terminate the week.

The events which lead to the agony of Christ (his march into Jerusalem and the Last Supper), most of all the agony itself (the struggle up Calvary), are the events that the townspeople celebrate.

João Capistrano de Abreu changed the course of Brazilian historiography. Unlike previous historians who had oriented their studies toward colonial history as an expression of Brazil's connections with European culture, he pointed to the socioeconomic and psychological aspects of the evolution of the Brazilian interior as the most significant part of Brazilian history. By reinterpreting familiar sources and uncovering new material, he reconstructed the Brazilian colonial experience from a totally original point of view. Dating from the publication of his two major works, Os Caminhos Amigos e o Povoamento do Brasil (1889) and Capítulos de História Colonial (1907), the perspectives of historiography in Brazil have altered, and historians have reoriented their studies to emphasize the development of Brazil as an independent nation rather than as an appendage of Portugal.

The church in Brazil suffers many but by no means all of the ills usually ascribed to Catholicism in Spanish American countries. Concern over these problems has grown throughout the Catholic world, as well it might. One-third of the world's Roman Catholics live in the southern part of the Western Hemisphere. According to many churchmen a state of spiritual bankruptcy confronts the church in most of these countries. Basically it is a matter of the irrelevance of a system still rooted in hierarchic and paternalistic spiritual guardianship among people in transitional societies whose goals are modern, affluent egalitarianism. In simpler terms, more and more people in Latin America learn about widespread wealth among others, and fewer and fewer believe that their own disadvantages are preordained and can be changed for the better only in the next world—as the church has long taught.