Although it is of importance for any understanding of the Peronist regime as a whole, little is known in detail about the social character of the popular support upon which the regime was based. This state of affairs is not as paradoxical as it might at first seem. In part it is a reflection of the fact that the continued political importance of the Peronist movement has meant that until recently the debate over Peronism has been polemical in nature and that opportunities for dispassionate analysis have been correspondingly restricted. For example, to apologists for Peronism, the popular support that it enjoyed is evidence merely that it represented a profound revolution in social and economic priorities which was fully understood and appreciated by the people themselves. To its detractors it is evidence of little more than the manipulation of the ignorant, corruption of the venal, and coercion of the educated. To both groups it has been a premise for further argument rather than an object worthy of study in its own right.

During the past twenty years, the United States has been involved in three cases of armed intervention in Latin America: Guatemala in 1954, Cuba in 1961, and the Dominican Republic in 1965. In addition, there was the naval blockade and possibility of intervention in Cuba in 1962 during the missile crisis. Each of these episodes occurred in the Caribbean region (defined as including those areas either in or adjacent to the Caribbean Sea). There were no similar armed interventions elsewhere in Latin America during this period, and in fact, all of the incidents of United States armed intervention in the Twentieth Century have taken place in the Caribbean area. Therefore, in its actions in Latin America, the United States appears to distinguish between the Caribbean area and the rest of the continent. The Caribbean is treated as a special region where military intervention is apparently more justifiable than elsewhere in Latin America. Only in the area outside the Caribbean has Washington found it possible to abide by its inter-American treaty commitments to nonintervention.

Historically, for the now economically developed countries, a strong positive correlation has normally existed between rising real output and employment levels. Among today's lessdeveloped countries (LDC's) even high growth rates can, and frequently do, fail to generate a concomitant rapid rate of employment expansion. Indeed, so acute is the failure of labor absorption to grow in step with rising incomes that a recent International Labour Organization (I.L.O.) report on Colombia (1970: 47) maintains “development strategy will become very largely employment strategy.”

The unemployment problem is in part due to the rapid population growth rates and even more rapid urban growth rates experienced by most LDC's in the postwar period, and in part it stems from the nature of their development processes (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 1972: 35).

Export-import merchants played a central role in the industrialization of Brazil. Many of the Brazilian Empire's noted entrepreneurs began as merchants, including the Barão de Mauá, perhaps the most famous of all, and the noted Bahian industrialist-philanthropist, Luís Tarquínio. Individual merchants served as cadres and furnished capital for early industrialization in both Bahia (Almeida, 1951: 14) and São Paulo (Dean, 1969: 19-33). That export-import merchants would play a prominent role in Brazilian development, particularly during the Empire, was logical. As intermediaries in an economy largely devoted to exporting and importing, merchants occupied a central position in the Empire's economic structure. Brazil's merchant elite was also a natural vehicle for modernizing influences from abroad because of its international trade connections and its cosmopolitan membership. For new enterprises, merchants were one of the few sources of capital and virtually the only source of business expertise.

Several years ago, in a general essay on Dominican politics, I wrote a few pages about the political role of the Dominican Armed Forces. I argued that “the history of the past few years in the Dominican Republic may best be viewed as a constant struggle among changing alliances, not in terms of confrontation between civilian authority and the military establishment” (Lowenthal, 1969: 40). I suggested that “far from being a professional institution dedicated to certain principles that impel its occasional entry into politics, the Dominican Armed Forces have never had any significant function beyond politics, except for plunder” (Lowenthal, 1969: 40). Painting a picture of constant struggle within the Dominican Armed Forces, for power and a chance at the spoils, I played down the importance, for understanding the political role of Dominican military officers, of institutional and ideological considerations.