Leaving aside the obvious self-interest of the various proponents (although one is tempted to speculate whether President Bordaberry argues on behalf of his country or his own ranching interests), their conclusion follows logically on much of the analysis which has focused on the causes of Uruguay's stagnation. Since the mid-1950s, the growth of the economy has barely kept pace with the small population increase of 1.2 percent per annum.

During the years 1917-1918 Mexico stood at the crossroads between revolutionary nationalism and foreign control. Nevertheless, much of the diplomacy of this wartime period and the variety of foreign threats to the regime of Venustiano Carranza remain obscure. Only very recently have scholars (Glaser, 1971; Machado and Judge, 1971; Trow, 1971; Tulchin, 1971; Smith, 1972; Meyer, 1968) realized the extent of the American movement for armed intervention in Mexico in 1919. But the more subtle strategy to guide the Mexican government's policy through economic pressure has received little attention. Likewise, the anti-Carrancista policy of the British Foreign Office has been ignored (see Fabela, 1958-1959; López de Roux, 1965; Zorrilla, 1965; Smith, 1969, 1972; Meyer, 1968). If one focuses less on the possibilities of overt military intervention and more on the economic issues of monetary exchange, food, loans, and oil, the years 1917-1918 (usually quickly sandwiched between the Pershing incursion and the 1919 interventionist movement) acquire major significance.

Many authors (for example, Ostrogorski, 1964; Michels, 1962: 175 ff.; Weber, 1946: 101 ff.; Duverger, 1967: 182-197; Schlesinger, 1965: 766-767, 1967: 268; Seligman, 1967: 315; Stinchombe, 1965: 153; McKenzie, 1963: 581-591; Epstein, 1967: 167-233, 289-314) have noted that contemporary political parties are predominantly electoral organizations engaged in public office-seeking and dominated by elected officials. While American parties have always been characterized by office-seeking, this phenomenon was not intially characteristic of socialist, labor, or communist parties which endeavored to create a working-class subculture and to whom public office-seeking was only one of several activities. In many such parties, however, office-seeking has come to dominate or even replace a previously wide range of activities.

The policies developed to face the critical housing problems in Chile by the last formally democratic administrations (Alesandri, 1958-1964; Frei, 1964-1970; Allende, 1970-1973), and their relative failures, constitute an important experience to be carefully considered by the underdeveloped world. First, it confirms the existence of the almost insuperable material as well as structural constraints inherent within a conventional treatment of the housing problem in societies of dependentmonopoly capitalism undergoing an intense period of urbanization. Second, the Chilean experience permits us to understand the complexity of social and political actions rooted in the unsatisfied demands for a plot of land or a house in metropolitan areas, with the upwelling of conflictive processes that may be beyond the usual mechanisms of governmental control.

Developing a line of thought from an earlier essay (Morse, 1973: II, 11-55), this paper examines some points of departure for a comparative analysis of urbanization in Latin America and the United States during the nineteenth century. Two assumptions guide the inquiry: first, that the “external dependency” thesis so frequently invoked to explain Latin American urban development easily leads to dogmatism; second, that geoeconomic factors must be perceived as interacting with those of the sociopolitical order.

To set broad guidelines for our effort we might construe the economic and institutional development of the United States and Latin America along the lines of two tensions or counterpoints.

United States. Here the North and West with their commercial agriculture, trading energies, and industrialization faced the commercially and financially dependent South, its socioeconomic organization conditioned by the plantation system, slavery, and export agriculture.

For the uninitiated the subject of moral reform appears to be a topic best suited for examining the traditional view of the Latin American woman: that of a female preoccupied with sin and salvation and with no interest in the world outside the home or increased rights for her sex. Closer investigation reveals, however, that moral reform movements often have indicated women's active presence and concern about the direction of a nation's social policies and customs. (Addams, 1912: 160-195; Davis, 1973; Smith-Rosenberg, 1971: 381-385, 562-564). Involvement in moral reform activities often but not always has meant that a woman considered herself a feminist and believed that the goals of these two movements were inextricably linked together. In order to explore these two hypotheses, this essay will focus on Paulina Luisi (1875-1950), an Uruguayan doctor whose lifelong dedication to moral reform and feminism earned her an international reputation as a fighter for one sexual moral standard and women's rights (Mapons, 1950; Scarone, 1937: 284-289). Examining her extensive writings and many projects provides an excellent insight into two movements which claimed the loyalty of numerous women activists, both bourgeois and socialist, in Latin America, Europe, and the United States (Addams, 1912; Chataway, 1962; Lloyd, 1971; Luisi, 1948). Given the Latin American context and the time period, Luisi can be seen as a major figure in the international feminist and moral reform movements.

The persistence of certain migratory movements has engendered a growing interest in their historical process. In the case of Mexico City, some recent studies have called attention to the existence of structures and historical trends which help explain contemporary migration (Bataillon, 1972).

A study of the history of migrations makes possible precise observations on the mass population movements produced by great social changes. These changes, in turn, can be studied through an analysis of their effects. Historical analysis will certainly focus on migration as a phenomenon that affects social groups, because the documents—generally indirect—that record these movements throw more light on their causes than on individual motivations. This paper only points to some ways in which these movements might be analyzed, using as sources the municipal padrones (population registers) and censuses of the nineteenth century, which include information on places of origin. (A complete list of the padrones of Mexico City in the nineteenth century is given in Aguirre and Sánchez de Tagle, 1972.)

A somewhat neglected though thoroughly promising area for the analysis of changing women's roles lies in the matter of health and health care systems within any society. This is nowhere more the case than in the instance of contemporary Cuban health care and the part that women in that society play in the health care systems as deflners of health care problems, recipients of care, and as those who deliver care to others. Both women's roles and health care in contemporary Cuba have dramatically altered over the past decade, thus yielding doubly rich insights, which reciprocally illuminate both issues.

Literature on U.S. influence in the Organization of American States reveals a marked diversity of views. Some authors consider that U.S. influence is absolute or very nearly so; others hold that it is relative; still others think it is minimal.

In the nearly-absolute school, former Guatemalan President Arévalo (1961: 126) says that the United States “always wins” in the OAS. The Ecuadorian writer Benjamín Cardón (1965: 29) says that the OAS “receives orders and complies with them, with the appearance of discussion, and the appearance of votes that satisfy pro-forma the hypocritical quakerism of the masters.” This view might be summed up by a comment attributed to a Latin American delegate to one Inter-American Conference: “If the United States wanted to badly enough, it could have a resolution passed declaring two and two are five ” (New York Times, March 8, 1954).

A marked improvement has occurred since 1968 in Havana's relations with Moscow and the traditional Communist parties of Latin America. Previously, however, from approximately 1966-1968 Fidel Castro's actions and words came perilously close to precipitating a formal split between his regime and the pro-Soviet parties of the hemisphere. At one time, sporadic criticisms of standard Communist party revolutionary strategy and tactics escalated in frequency and gravity. An ideological offensive advanced as Castro flaunted an independent Marxist line in both domestic and international affairs. Havana proceeded to exacerbate growing tensions in the uneasy alliance between guerrilla movements and Communist parties in several Latin American countries.

Attempts to establish the factors prompting these actions have to date focused on Cuban reactions to developments in the Venezuelan revolutionary movement during 1964-1966.

There has been much discussion of the role of the church in social change in Latin America (Considine, 1964; D'Antonio and Pike, 1964; Haddox, 1965; Houtart and Pin, 1965; Jimenez, 1967; Lalive, 1968; Silvert, 1967; Willems, 1967). Recent arguments contrast a view that the church is integral and innovative in the development process (Vallier, 1970) with the view that the church is reactive and survival oriented, thus incapable of playing a leadership role in the process of social change (Mutchler, 1971). Both of these arguments specify the church as an instrumental force, interacting with other bureaucracies both internal and external to the country, in the process of development. The incursion of non-Catholic churches into Latin America is seen as important in influencing the established church as an actor in the change process, as well as serving as an initiator—or retarder—of change.

From early colonial times to the end of the nineteenth century, urban life in Brazil centered in half a dozen coastal enclaves, each containing an area of export-oriented agriculture, focused on a single dominant port city. Three such capitals topped the urban hierarchy—Salvador (Bahia), Rio de Janeiro, and Recife (Pernambuco; see Figure 1). All arose on an economic base of sugar plantations, producing for an international market; Rio added gold exports in the eighteenth century and coffee in the nineteenth. Until just before independence, the Portuguese colonial capital at Salvador held first rank in size, political importance, and commercial wealth. Rio de Janeiro, seat of the central government after 1763, became the national metropolis under the Empire (1822-1889) and the Old Republic (1889-1930); its hegemony was challenged only in the twentieth century by the rise of industrial São Paulo (Conniff et al., 1971; Cowell, 1973).

It has been noted (Tanner, 1970: 23) that

And so it is in analyzing the women's movement in Latin America that one cannot tolerate any “disabilities” of women on the basis of sex, without a deep feeling of antagonism with the culture which creates them.

As de observes, “Latin countries… keep women in subjection less by the rigor of the laws than by the severity of custom.” Upon examination, one finds that Latin American culture is by nature deeply rooted in sexism and male chauvinism and is maintained by institutions such as the church and the patriarchal governments.