Recognizing that the traditional five-state subregion of Central America departed from European colonialism as a federated entity, Ralph Lee Woodward subtitled his seminal history of Central America 'A Nation Divided.“ In his view, ”the social and economic history of the isthmus suggests that its peoples share considerably in their problems and circumstances, even though their political experience has been diverse. But it is also clear that their social and economic unity has been limited by their political disunity“ (Woodward 1985, vii). Following a period of colonial tutelage equal to that of Hispanic Central America, the Commonwealth Caribbean or English-speaking Caribbean also began to edge away from colonization as a federation of ten nations: Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts–Nevis–Anguilla, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Montserrat. Applying Woodward's criteria, these former British colonies in the West Indies appear to have an even stronger claim than Hispanic Central America to substantial past and future national integration. According to Jamaican-American historian Franklin Knight and theorist Gordon Lewis, this subregion demonstrates more cultural and physical commonalities than differences (Knight 1978, x–xi; G. Lewis 1983). Despite the frictions induced by negotiations for independence, substantial regional integration of the nation-states of the English-speaking Caribbean was achieved during the late 1960s and early 1970s. These efforts atrophied in the years prior to 1987, however, because of internal divisions and external pressures.

Two differing views of the economy of contemporary Cuba continue to coexist. One portrays it as dynamic, largely unaffected by inflation, providing full employment for its citizens, diversified, and the unquestioned leader within Latin America in real economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s. The logical conclusion to be drawn from this view is that the Cuban economic model and its implementation in the island have been a success and that other developing countries in Latin America and elsewhere would do well to emulate the Cuban paradigm.

The encounter between Atahualpa and the Spaniards in Cajamarca Plaza on 16 November 1532 provided the dramatic moment that has been highlighted in narratives of the conquest of Peru by generations of historians, from Francisco de Jerez and Titu Cusi Yupanqui to William Prescott. More recently, James Lockhart's highly influential Spanish Peru (1968) and its companion, The Men of Cajamarca (1972), have defined the striking encounter at Cajamarca as the starting point for understanding the conquest history of Peru. Edward Said and Peter Hulme, however, have suggested that within the genre of conquest narrative the conflict among different versions of the same event mainly revolves around the issue of where the story should start. If so, readers are impelled to take the designated beginning of the history of Spanish Peru—the events at Cajamarca—as not merely a dramatic framing device for telling history but as a choice implying an ideological understanding of the Spanish role in Peru. In recent American historiography, this choice of beginning with the events at Cajamarca has become a means of telling a classic tale of upward social mobility for Spaniards, one that starts with the capture of treasure at Cajamarca.

Mexican politics has long been regarded as a closed system, with policy-making dominated by the reigning president and his circle and presidential succession (with all its possibilities for change of course) managed by an only slightly larger “Revolutionary Family” of top figures in the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). So intertwined are the Mexican state and the dominant party that scholars and opposition leaders alike have begun to speak of the “PRI state.” E. E. Schattschneider observed that in the U.S. system, 90 percent of the population never has access to the “pressure system” that directs policy choice. The percentage of the excluded is undoubtedly even larger in Mexico because the system is more decidedly “closed.” Yet in both countries, policy innovation is not uncommon. Marked changes of course have occurred at times, and opposition forces external to the system have occasionally managed to block presidential decisions and force reevaluation and sometimes painful adjustments. This article will examine the “agrarian question” in Mexico and will argue that its persistence and the ways in which it has been framed have constrained policymakers while encouraging and sustaining the development of an independent peasant movement during the 1970s and 1980s.

Since the mid-1970s, tens of thousands of persons in three out of the five Central American countries have revolted against their governments or fought to repress such rebellions. These conflicts have cost more than a quarter of a million lives and created more than two million internal and external refugees. In 1979 a bloody insurrection toppled Nicaragua's Somoza regime. El Salvador's crippling civil war has escalated and reescalated but remains stalemated. In Guatemala since 1980, brutal counterinsurgency warfare, pro-regime terror, and political reform have failed to eliminate a resurgent guerrilla rebellion. Yet while these countries have rent themselves with political violence, their neighbors Honduras and Costa Rica have in general remained politically peaceful.

On 10 October 1988, President Miguel de la Madrid authorized loading of the first of two reactor units at the Laguna Verde nuclear power plant, on the Mexican gulf coast above the port of Veracruz. De la Madrid's decision to move ahead with Laguna Verde, Mexico's first foray into commercial nuclear energy production, came as no surprise. What was extraordinary was that it proved to be one of the most controversial policy actions of his sexenio. Culminating twenty years of planning and development, the Laguna Verde project, which had been emblematic of Mexico's technical progress and promise at its outset, had turned into a political albatross.

In the early 1970s, Wayne Cornelius asked, “Are the migrant masses revolutionary? Definitely not, at least in Latin America and many other parts of the developing world.” These words summarized an emerging revisionist view of the political character of Latin America's new urban poor. Careful empirical research had proved wrong previous scholars and observers who had expected the new migrant populations in Latin America's cities to become sources of support for revolutionary political movements. A new picture of the inhabitants of Latin America's burgeoning shantytowns came into focus, showing these populations to be either passive or loyally engaged in the surrounding political system. According to this picture, squatters held considerable hope for individual advancement, forged clientelistic ties with government officials, and showed few signs of joining radicalized, class-conscious social movements.

The subject of Central American migration encompasses a broad range of experiences that challenge traditional approaches to migration studies. Past interpretations of migration have tended to be based on mutually exclusive typologies or to focus on certain dimensions of migration while excluding others. Thus migration could be internal or international, cyclical, temporary, or permanent, voluntary or involuntary, economically or politically motivated (the latter issue often treated in a separate literature on refugees and exiles), motivated by “push” factors in the country of origin or “pull” factors in the receiving country, or the result of individual decisions or underlying structural conditions.

The Brazilian defense industry has become the country's most dynamic high-tech industry. This article will examine and analyze its remarkable growth and development. In the first section, the matrix of motivations behind the establishment of the Brazilian defense industry will be discussed. The second section will review its growth and strategic directions, and the third will elaborate on the industry's export drive, especially its major markets and products. The following sections will discuss the catalytic role of the Brazilian government in the defense industry, the industry's tripod strategy, and major barriers to further growth and development.

Until the 1970s, Paraguay's eastern frontier was known primarily for its vast virgin forests and its domination by semifeudal enterprises engaged in extracting yerba maté and timber. After the 1970s, however, the extension of transportation networks, construction of the massive binational Itaipú hydroelectric works, and the release of state lands for private purchase paved the way for large-scale in-migration, settlement, and transformation of the region into a zone for commercial agriculture. In less than two decades, the rapid expansion of soybean production into this area has catapulted Paraguay into the ranks of the world's major exporters of soybeans.

The majority of the working classes are divided into various factions that display a host of views and attitudes. As E. P. Thompson has portrayed the concept of class, it is at best not a permanent structure or category but something that emerges from time to time when workers band together for one reason or another. The complexity of this phenomenon has been compounded by the growth of various sectors of the working class, adding to its heterogeneity and amorphousness. Marx himself perceived that capitalism had “converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science into its paid wage labourers.”

All numbers on the makeup of Peru's republican population are wrong, the one point on which historians can agree. Peruvian governments had neither the capacity nor the will to mount thorough surveys of their scattered and elusive Andean subjects. Between the late viceregal census of 1791 (reporting a population of 1,076,000) and the first modern effort of 1876 (yielding a count of 2,699,000) lies a century of demographic no man's land, despite partial surveys claimed for 1812, 1836, 1850, and 1862. Unfortunately, historians cannot fly back in time and redo the head counts missed or mismanaged by successive governments, although this miracle has seemingly been worked for the older Incan and conquest periods.1 The best scholars can attempt at this point is to untangle the confusions of existing census documents and bring new evidence to bear on their strengths and weaknesses.

One of the most urgent issues in contemporary Latin America is the popular struggle against rural poverty. Because Latin American states have failed to alleviate rural impoverishment, the poor have undertaken to solve their own problems. One fruitful way of improving their conditions has proved to be forming grass-roots peasant organizations outside state auspices. This approach, however, can bear fruit only under a democratic regime or in states that provide some political space in which peasants can act without being crushed.

Scholars and journalists have devoted considerable attention to analyzing the three military rebellions that rocked Argentine democracy in 1987 and 1988 (Boron 1987; Fontana 1988; López 1988; Stepan 1988). In addition to considering whether these revolts threatened the stability of the new political regime, academic and political interpretations have pointed to another issue stemming from the revolts: the emergence of a new generation of army officers with political goals and ideological values that differ from those prevailing in the upper levels of the Argentine military hierarchy. According to some observers, the experiences of middle-ranking officers during the last authoritarian regime produced a breach within the army that led, in the extreme view, to “two opposing armies.” This argument asserts that the Argentine Army currently appears divided between the high command (“oficiales superiores” made up of colonels and generals) and middle-ranking officers, who encompass “subalternos” (lieutenants and captains) and “jefes” (majors and lieutenant colonels). The split seems to have stemmed from differing political goals and ideological affiliations. The question, however, has remained speculative rather than being subjected to analytical research.

The Mexican government recently proposed as a medium-term objective that the minimum rate of economic growth should be twice the rate of population growth (Mexico, Presidencia de la República 1988). This proposal may indicate a renewed interest in Mexico in linking demographic variables to the economic and development issues of the country. In proposing such a target, the Mexican government seems to be suggesting that its long-term development plans will hinge on criteria that depart radically from those recently used to assess the performance of these plans. The proposal seems particularly revealing because it came from President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who is an economist himself.