Although none of the artisan or small merchant groups in colonial Buenos Aires ever achieved complete legal sanction for a guild organization, the silversmiths were more successful than any other group in creating and sustaining an officially endorsed, self-regulating, corporate structure. This structure was not created and implemented systematically. It was evolved slowly and pragmatically as a response to the changing milieu in which the silversmiths worked.

The so-called Brazilian economic ‘miracle’ has provoked a heated debate on the distribution between different socio-economic groups of the benefits and costs incurred in rapid income growth. This debate has clarified several empirical issues, notably the marked concentration of the personal income distribution and its significant deterioration in the 1960s.

Most recent literature on military government is extremely skeptical of the possibility of effective military reformism. This scepticism, encouraged by various behavioural hypotheses, has been further strengthened by a number of cross-sectional analyses, which seem to show that most military governments are unstable, conservative, and indifferent at economic management.1 The military government in Peru, therefore, appears to be something of an exception. Its first President, General Velasco, stayed in office for nearly seven years, and his successor, General Morales Bermúdez, has promised that the nature of the regime will not be drastically changed. Even more important, the Government claims to have carried out a comprehensive set of agrarian, industrial and social reforms that were aimed at bringing Peru out of its former underdevelopment. Moreover, the Government has claimed to have achieved all this during a seven-year period in which the conventional criteria of economic success – a substantial growth in real income per capita, a moderate rate of inflation and a reasonably stable exchange rate – also appear to have been met.

During the first decades of the present century, in that area of eastern Cuba which lies beyond a boundary formed by the Rio Cabreras in the north and the Rio Jobabo in the south, a unique social transformation took place which is of particular interest and importance. More than simply a transition from the traditional to the modern, Oriente's society underwent revolutionary change as a result not only of foreign influence but also of foreign control and design calculated to produce both modernization and ‘Americanization’. As it became increasingly apparent that these twin objectives could not be easily accomplished, a third consideration, economic, advantage, quickly emerged and rose to a position of dominance. Capital accumulation and the profit motive catalyzed a process of change produced by the reaction of two dissimilar cultures: one comparatively inert and native, the other highly dynamic and foreign, to produce sugar and a mutated society. Perhaps all societies which were once heavily engaged in sugar culture have developed mutations in some sense of the word, but in Oriente's case the term is particularly apt.

Many of the essential early qualities of the Cuban Revolution emanated from the experience of armed struggle. In the Sierra Maestra microcosmic features of the socialist order acquired their earliest expression, assumed recognizable form, and established the foundations upon which the radical transformation of Cuban society would proceed. The exigencies of armed struggle created a new consciousness and at once proletarianized bourgeois revolutionaries and militarized civilian combatants. The guerrilla war conferred on the revolutionary order a powerful legacy of struggle which, in its earliest forms, expressed itself most compellingly in the Rebel Army.

Any attempt to define the changes in the Peruvian political economy that have taken place since 1968 1 must be made in terms of the relationship between the state and domestic capital on the one hand and foreign capital on the other, and must offer an explanation of the way in which this military- controlled state has tended to replace the former and establish a new relationship with the latter. In particular, the confrontation between the government and foreign capital, and the significance of internal ownership reforms cannot be understood without reference to the development of Peruvian capitalism before 1968.

The ‘Peronist Left’ has become one of the chief actors in the often violent drama of Argentine politics today. It is the object of this article to place the events of the more recent past, at least since the return of Peronism to power in 1973, within the framework of the development of the ‘Peronist Left’ since the fall of Perón in 1955. Obviously the article makes no claim to be a comprehensive treatment of the subject. Such a treatment could only be part of a much more extensive study of the Argentine working class and the Peronist movement. In particular, the article concentrates on an analysis of the political ideology of the different currents that have made up the ‘Peronist Left’ since 1955, whilst recognizing that this ideology must ultimately be seen in the far wider context of the social and economic development of Argentine society. The first part will highlight the main features of this Left in the 1955–73 period and analyze the main currents within it. In the second part of the paper the events of the last two to three years will be looked at within this context.

For most of the Latin American countries the five years between 1885 and 1890 were a period of rapid economic expansion. European investors sank their money there as the trade of the area increased. To take one example, imports to Britain from Argentina expanded from under a million pounds in 1880 to over four million in 1890, while British exports to Argentina grew from two and a half million to eight and a half million pounds.1 Exports of Chilean nitrate rose from 275,000 tons in 1880 to 1,000,000 tons in 1890, as foreign capitalists invested heavily in the newly-conquered northern territories of Chile.2 Most Latin American countries borrowed increasing amounts of capital on the London market as their trade grew rapidly, and the boom only came to an end with the Baring crisis of 1890.

One of the clearest trends in Latin American government during the past decade has been the establishment of military dictatorships in many South American countries, some of them long-term. Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay have all had this experience. In efforts to explain this phenomenon, many scholars have delved into the political history of civil-military relations in Latin American society since 1930. A recent penchant for contemporary history, promoted in part by the availability of funds for policy-oriented research, has stimulated this concern. In the process, however, the deeper historical roots of the institutional development of the Latin American military have been neglected.1

In May 1917, the United States Navy dispatched a South Atlantic patrol squadron to Brazil under the command of Admiral William B. Caperton, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet. Caperton, who soon saw his mission as more diplomatic than military, became the United States' best-known representative in South America and worked closely with civilian diplomats to maximize United States influence in the area. His two-year tour of duty from 1917 to 1919, therefore, constitutes a little-known case study in the attempted use of naval forces for diplomatic purposes, and in the development of some aspects of United States policy in South America.

From 1919 to 1942, Peruvian foreign policy focused on two interrelated issues: the resolution of Peru's territorial disputes with Chile, Colombia and Ecuador, and the reconciliation of an expanding and deepening relationship with the United States government. The two issues were entwined since the Peruvian government and people, for part of the period, expected the support and assistance of the United States government in resolving the three territorial issues. Partially in an attempt to respond to these expectations, the United States government was aggressively and extensively involved, albeit sometimes in a manner contrary to Peruvian desires, in the resolution of all three disputes. On the whole, United States foreign policy seldom equaled Peruvian expectations throughout the period, and its failure to do so precipitated or accelerated the growth of major new tenets in Peruvian foreign policy.

Why are the patterns of race relations in Latin America and Anglo-America today so different, particularly those between ‘Blacks’ and ‘Whites’? Is the explanation to be found, primarily, in the differences between the previously existing ‘systems of slavery’? Ever since Frank Tannenbaum, in 1947, made his famous statement on the ‘benign’ nature of ‘Latin American slavery’ as opposed to the ‘harsh’ nature of that in North America, these two issues have triggered a most lively debate, largely historical in nature but attracting representatives of other disciplines as well.1

In the rhetoric of United States foreign relations, the countries of Latin America occupy a very special place. They are ‘our sister republics’, ‘the Good Neighbours’, fellow members of a unique international system, and so on. The reality, not surprisingly, is different. Because of the vast disparity of power between the United States and Latin America, relations between them are inherently delicate and subject to strains. The issue of ‘intervention’ by the United States in the internal and external affairs of the Latin American countries is ever present, whether it is a matter of marines being sent into a small Caribbean republic or of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ‘destabilizing’ a major South American government.