This paper is a survey of Maya archaeology of the last ten years. A brief historical examination of the years prior to 1958 is made. There follows an intensive look at fieldwork from 1958 to 1968. An examination is made of the state of the field with respect to research design and analytical techniques along with a consideration of data contributed by collateral fields. On the level of explanation and synthesis, there is an examination of the major problems of Maya culture-history to the solution of which recent research has contributed. The concluding sections summarize the characteristics of recent work and attempt to sketch the critical areas for future investigation. I may have unfairly slighted some investigations and workers because much recent work is still in unpublished form. I have depended not only on preliminary reports and the standard publication sources, but also to some degree on the “bush telegraph” of anthropology in assessing the field. Thus the following can only be regarded as one (albeit active) worker's perception of his own specialty.

Almost without exception, Latin American countries have experienced rapid urbanization during recent decades. The population living in urban areas, mainly that in large cities, has been growing much faster than the rural population. There is, of course, a wide range of variation between different countries. Venezuela's urban population grew during the fifties at a rate ten times that of the rural population while Costa Rica's rates of urban and rural growth were approximately equal. Internal migration accounts for a large part of the increase in the urban population and especially for the difference between urban and rural rates of growth.

Economic development in Latin America has been explained largely in terms of the Economic Commission for Latin America school (ECLA) dominated by Raúl Prebisch. According to this school, “outward orientation” of the periphery, was the key characteristic of Latin America before 1930. The growth pattern was determined by the fortunes of the export sector (including the terms of trade) and its linkages with the developed Center. Since 1930, the massive import substitution policies undertaken by the periphery has led to a new phase of “inward orientation” where the strategic role of promoting growth has been played by the linkage-rich industry. Both growth and inflation have been explained in terms of the institutionalist “structuralist” school which has emphasized bottlenecks related to the land tenure system, market imperfections and deficiencies (both domestic and external), and to a lesser degree to the savings patterns of people (where the demonstration effect, income distribution and the taxation system play pivotal roles).

In this section a sample of interesting cases is provided to illustrate the problems involved when attempting to judge the reliability of Cuban statistics. The paper does not attempt to cover all the existing difficulties nor to offer final answers to some of the intriguing puzzles discussed. Yet the process of describing these statistical abnormalities occasionally clarifies the way in the search for truthful figures. The eight reconstructed tables included in this section do not have to be taken as absolutely reliable, but at least they offer a ten-year perspective (1957-66) of the most credible statistics available. The fact that this section has a negative approach should not lead the reader to the conclusion that all Cuban statistics are purposely misleading. Examples of accurate data are given when dealing with foreign trade, for instance. In some cases of erroneous data, the fault lies with the flaws in the system, including those detailed in the two previous sections. In other cases figures are deliberate misrepresentations. The author's ultimate objectives in this section are to alert the researcher to the frequent difficulties he will encounter when working with Cuban data, and to suggest criteria for selecting the more accurate figures from the Cuban statistical tangle.

Several years ago, students of Latin American politics discovered with some alarm that the subdiscipline of comparative politics had not only been ignoring their scholarly efforts, but the area altogether. At that time the principal focus of discontent was conceptualization. Classification systems, typologies, checklists, functions and isolated concepts about the politics of transition were being derived and applied without reference to and relevance for Latin America. While the terminological estrangement has by no means ended, some reconciliation has subsequently occurred. Recent theoretical works make occasional references to the area. It has become essential for all readers or collections of essays on political development to contain at least one (often the same) article on Latin American politics. Conversely, new research in Latin America has been increasingly sensitive to approaches prevalent in the general comparative politics literature.

After a decade of revolution, Cuba is more than an open question to be answered, an experiment to be observed. It has become an exciting research topic which appeals to social scientists throughout the world. Yet several problems have obstructed the scholar in his research on Cuba and its revolution. Primarily, travel limitations have forced him to gather his material mainly from secondary sources (or from primary sources whose objectivity is questionable) rather than from direct observation. Even when travel barriers are overcome, free movement and inquiry are not always possible. The government's screening of visitors to Cuba introduces another problem, i.e., the ideological bias of the outsider has often been a distorting factor in the search for truth. In a sizeable number of cases, articles and books on Cuba written by the visitor or observer are frustrating: either the author has been limited in his information and therefore does not present a total picture of the subject in question, or he is biased either in favor of or against the socialist regime of the island, and has allowed this to interfere with an accurate presentation of the facts.

In the first part, I will describe briefly the intuitive relevance of Professor Markos Mamalakis' “Theory of Sectoral Clashes” to the Mexican case. In part II, I will briefly comment on aspects of the theory which are relevant to empirical verification. And finally, in part III, I will attempt to derive and test some of the empirical implications of this hypothesis.

The recent burgeoning of interest in agrarian reform throughout Latin American countries (Schaedel, 1965; Smith, 1965) has been accompanied by unprecedented attention on the part of social scientists in Latin America and elsewhere in what is called colonization. This is largely because what often is designated as official colonization (or projects to establish on the land groups of families headed by the operators of small or medium-sized farms) is one of the major measures used in attempts to achieve agrarian reform, and also because what frequently is referred to as spontaneous colonization (or the process by which settlers established new farmsteads for themselves on portions of the public domain) is another. In this article attention is concentrated upon the books, monographs, and articles dealing with colonization and settlement, and particularly those that have been put into circulation during the last decade.

Since 1929 Argentina has undergone a remarkable series of political and economic changes. During the twenties it was a showcase of economic growth based on export expansion, as well as a model of bourgeois democracy in its parliamentary form. Yet that Argentina now lies in the distant past, and nowadays the name Argentina is likely to conjure up military coups and economic stagnation. This transformation deserves more attention than it has yet received. The question, “What went wrong in Argentina?” is as important for students of underdevelopment as is the question, “What went wrong in Germany?” for students of advanced industrialization.

There Have Been Few Scholarly Comparisons of Latin America With other areas of the Third World. As a contribution to such comparative study, the University of California Colloquium attempted to examine links between Brazil and Portugal's African territories of Angola, Guinea and the Cape Verdes, and Mozambique. The objectives were to overlap the traditional area boundaries that separate specialists of Latin America and Africa, to focus on common themes from the perspective of varying social science disciplines, and to reassess and evaluate, first, a series of historical cases of crisis, protest, and resistance and, second, nationalist trends and events in relation to patterns of change and development. The specialized essays were to be analytical and exploratory, raising questions for possible future research.