As recently as 1960, edwin lieuwen observed that “on the general subject of militarism in Latin America no important books have yet appeared,” (Arms and Politics in Latin America, N.Y., 1960:279) a judgment that has never been seriously disputed. This is not to say that before that year the political role of the Latin American armed forces went unnoticed by historians and social scientists. On the contrary both the scholarly and popular literature dealing with the area abounds with references to militarism. From a scholarly point of view, however, the bulk of this production is unsatisfying.

When I first undertook the task of compiling information on ecological research in Middle America it seemed best to concentrate on one facet of this many-faceted science. After some time and reflection, however, I concluded that a greater service would be performed for the reader by an overview of most of the subject area encompassed by ecology. I have attempted to present this overview in the pages that follow.

The reader is warned that depth has been sacrificed for breadth and that no attempt to review all the literature has been made. To do so would require far more space than is available. Therefore it is certain that some readers will find missing what they may consider to be a specially important or interesting paper. To them I offer apology.

The questions of whether inflation is harmful or helpful or indifferent to economic growth, whether the elimination of inflation should come before or after a high rate of economic growth has been achieved, and the whole issue of what are the roots of the Latin American inflations, have preoccupied at one time or another almost every economist who has worked in the region. More than any other economic problem, inflation has aroused strong passions in otherwise reflective and technocratically inclined economists, and has compelled many to partake in what almost amounted to an ideological controversy. This experience has, on the one hand, had the effect of forcing economists to reexamine some of the basic value judgments that have been implicit in their analytical work, while, on the other hand, it has often obscured the basic analytical strand that each was following.

Twenty-five years ago folklore scholarship in latin america was the result of the efforts of a handful of professionals and the contributions of a body of devoted amateurs, who operated independently and in isolation from one another. Today the changing picture of Latin American folklore research makes a review of the field highly appropriate. Outwardly there has been an increasing frequency and variety of publication, but more significant is a basic concern with a definition of folklore that will satisfy Latin American scholars. Accompanying this concern with a philosophy of folklore scholarship is an increasing emphasis upon methodology and the organization of folklore studies. Financial support for folklore investigation is more likely to be forthcoming now than a generation ago, although unfortunately there are exceptions.

Clearly the winds of change sweep over latin america today. everyhing one observes, reads, and hears about this vast culture area points to vital (often radical) social, cultural, and economic transformations which are resulting in new ways of life for these millions of Americans whose ways of life derive from Spanish, Portuguese, American Indian, and African sources. Changes in customary patterns of thought and behavior are taking place more slowly in some countries than others, and even within a nation some areas respond much more quickly to innovative efforts than do others.

War and revolution are the cataclysmic events of our age which affect man and society more profoundly than any other human phenomenon. In Russia and China war brought revolution. Today, in an age of competitive ideologies and competitive nuclear armament, men fear that revolution will lead to war.

The global conflicts that have wracked Eurasia in this century have not touched Latin America directly. The only international conflict of roughly comparable intensity was the Chaco War (1932–1936) in which hostilities were confined to two small powers, Bolivia and Paraguay. Bolivia's defeat was part of a train of events that lead directly to the Revolution of 1952.

Squatter settlements have formed around large cities throughout the world, mushrooming particularly since the end of World War II. In an excellent preview to a forthcoming book, Turner (1966) has discussed some common features among squatter settlements in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. Morse (1965a) has also referred to squatter communities and to general characteristics of Latin American urbanization in an article in this journal. Without repeating the work of Turner and Morse I would like to present a preliminary survey of Latin American squatter settlements with a model of their formation, growth, and social development that contradicts many views held by planners, politicians, newspapermen, and much of the general population, including many residents of the settlements themselves.

Several writers have referred to various local names given to squatter communities: colonies proletarias in Mexico, barriadas brujas in Panama, ranchos in Venezuela, barriadas in Peru, callampas in Chile, cantegriles in Uruguay, favelas in Brazil, and, in other places, marginal areas, clandestine urbanizations, barrios of invasion, parachutists, phantom towns, etc. There are no general works on the subject, but some good descriptions of local conditions do exist. The major sources used are listed by country in note 2. Not many sources are available and, unfortunately, several appear only in mimeographed form. The reports point out that squatter populations consist mainly of low income families but all of the authors distinguish between squatter settlements and other types of lower class housing in tenements, alleys (callejones), shack yards tcoralones, jacales), and rented slum buildings. They agree, sometimes to their own surprise, that it is difficult to describe squatter settlements as slums. The differentiation of squatter settlements from inner-city slums is, in fact, one of the first breaks from the widely shared mythology about them. (See, for example, Patch, 1961; Mangin, 1965.) The purpose in noting this mythology is not merely to set up a straw man for the paper. A review of the “Chaos, Crisis, Revolution and Wither Now Latin America” literature, or, of most governmental, United Nations, or AID reports, or, of most newspapers and magazines in Latin America will show that it is the predominant position on squatter settlements.

On may 7, 1966, a representative group of scholars who were invited to Washington, D.C. for a meeting sponsored by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies (of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council) and the Hispanic Foundation of the Library of Congress, formed the Latin American Studies Association. The members of the Latin American Research Review Board, representing the institutions contributing to the support of the Review, were among the scholars invited to this meeting. When, on May 12 it was incorporated under the laws of the District of Columbia with a “perpetual” term, the new Association became a legal entity, a tax-exempt, non-profit professional body created by scholarly area specialists to meet their particular and growing needs.

German scholarly concern with Latin America has a long and interesting tradition that began before Alexander von Humboldt's famous journey to Latin America at the beginning of the 19th century.

Well-known research in entomology, for example, was carried out by Maria Sybilla Merian, who was active in 1699 in Surinam. Similarly, a long and protracted cooperation exists between German and Latin American mining research on the major mining centers of the colonial Latin American world: the Bolivian highlands and Mexico. Alexander von Humboldt was able to build directly on these established and generally accepted contacts, especially in Mexico, where he found old college friends from Freiberg (Saxony) in decisive positions in Mexican mining affairs.

Latin america has suddenly become important to an increasing number of Canada's universities and colleges. Only three years ago the situation was not at all promising as D. B. L. Hamlin and Gilíes Lalande showed in their reports to the Canadian Universities Foundation, but a more favorable climate for developing programs in this area has emerged as the federal government, the Canada Council, university administrators, and individual faculty members have taken an interest in Latin America.

Research covered in this issue includes research being carried out by institutions on the eastern seaboard of the U.S. It also includes general coverage of broad research programs of organizations such as CIDA, PIIP, etc. The next issue will cover research on Latin America being carried out at institutions in the mid-western part of the U.S. and in the northern half of Latin America. Coverage of research on Latin American topics being carried out in Europe is reported in Boletín Informativo sobre Estudios Latinoamericanos en Europa, a journal edited by Professor H. Hoetink, under the auspices of the Centro de Estudios y Documentación Latinoamericanos. A new journal, Informationsdienst der Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Deutschen Lateinamerika–Institute, second issue published in April, 1966, covers research on Latin America being carried out by German institutions. It is edited by Georg Thomas at Koln, Germany.