A review of the popular and even scholarly literature dealing with the Catholic Church in Latin America during the last decade will leave the reader confused. The books, articles, and media coverage in comparison with each other are ambiguous and at times contradictory. If on the one hand the Church is described as the fastest-changing institution on the continent, there is on the other hand ample proof put forth that the institution is stagnant and in many cases apparently bankrupt. While some students point to the emergence of militant clergy groups such as the Golconda movement in Colombia or Priests of the Third World in Argentina, others as easily argue that these movements are beyond the institution and without significance in the larger society. And for every time the Church is shown siding with the poor and oppressed, two instances are held up in which words are not followed by action.

In the literature on Latin America, any increase in the number of people attending schools is usually considered economically and socially beneficial and a sign of progress. Any increase in the population attending universities is viewed as an especially important change and bound to help economic development. Rarely will any person or group argue that an increase in the number of university students is a drag on the economy and socially pernicious.

Yet this is precisely the position taken by a small group within Brazil's Ministério de Educação e Cultura (MEC). Playing the role of a loyal but disgusted opposition, the Instituto Nacional de Estudes Pedagógicos (INEP) continuously attacked the educational policies of the federal and state governments during the 1950s, especially those relating to higher education.

In today's international monetary system, a country's stock of international reserves plays a critical role in determining the nature and the extent to which it can successfully pursue policies to promote growth, development, and stability. If its reserves are insufficient, the country will generally have to sacrifice some internal economic goals, instituting policies which tend to deflate the domestic economy and to discourage international trade. Excessive reserves, on the other hand, may impart an inflationary bias on the economy; and at the same time, superfluous reserves may be a costly way of tying up national wealth, especially for poorer nations. Since the “right” amount of reserves will differ from one nation to another, it is important to understand those factors which determine the amount of reserves which a country is willing and able to hold at a particular time.

For many years the vague notion has circulated that the United States and Mexico were on the verge of war in 1927. Howard Cline (1965: 209) cited unspecified “Mexican sources” as purportedly revealing that Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and Ambassador James R. Sheffield in Mexico City were “purposely trying to provoke some Mexican act that could be used as a pretext for American intervention.” Former Mexican President Emilio Portes Gil (1964: 396) went further and insisted that American warships had actually mobilized for intervention, only to be thwarted by an “imperturbable” President Calles. These and other such assertions have never been thoroughly analyzed on the basis of available American diplomatic and military records. This article attempts to demonstrate that intervention was highly unlikely. Moreover, circumstantial evidence and logic combine to suggest that the administration of Calvin Coolidge never seriously considered such a move and that rumors of intervention were founded more upon Mexican suspicion and mistrust than upon realities in Washington.

Spanish American fiction, from its earliest moments, has emphasized the whore as a reflection of society and the basic drives of human beings. José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi's protagonists associate with numerous prostitutes, and one of them, Don Catrín de la Fachenda, works in a whorehouse. Other nineteenth century whores include the sentimental one in Eugenio Cambaceres's Música Sentimental (1884) and the idealistic one in Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera's El Conspirador (1892).

Twentieth century Spanish American fiction is replete with man-eaters like Gallegos's Doña Bárbara, Rivera's Zoraida, Rojas González's Angustias, and with promiscuous types like the oddly named Pura, the sensual dancer of El Embrujo de Sevilla (1922). The prostitute as protagonist, however, enters the century through Augusto D'Halmar's Juana Lucero (1902) and Federico Gamboa's now classic Santa (1903). A poor, seduced, and abandoned country girl, Santa becomes first a high- and then a low-class prostitute in brothels and bordellos.

The Argentines, especially the artists, have long tilted at that psychological phantom of any pluralistic society, the cultural identity crisis. The jousting of civilization with barbarism in Sarmiento's Facundo and of civilized barbarity with barbarous civility in Martín Fierro wove a tangled maze into Argentine consciousness. Was the “true Argentine” the outward-looking porteño of Buenos Aires or the introverted gaucho of the Pampas? Should the Argentines send out feelers toward European culture or roots into the indigenous heritage? Because of such cosmic soul-searching, the labyrinthine images of Julio Cortázar's Rayuelo fit naturally into his hero Oliveira's hopscotching toward “home,” first in Paris, then in Argentina. But the Argentines, like the Chileans and Venezuelans, have not generally had a lot to say about the central theme of the Mexican and Andean artists of the twentieth century, the interaction of European and Indian identities.