During the 1890s, the young Brazilian republic suffered from almost constant political and economic turbulence. Various civilian and military groups contended for power, while rapidly rising prices aggravated urban unrest. At the same time, increasing numbers of European immigrants entered Brazil, and, as in other Latin American countries, became a source of controversy (see Solberg, 1970). Some immigrants, such as Italian or Spanish anarchists, were themselves radical, and some opposition to immigrants came from conservative elements of Brazilian society. But the most vehement anti-immigrant outbursts of the inflation-ridden 1890s issued from radical nationalist sectors. The Portuguese, members of the largest foreign colony in Rio de Janeiro, became targets for virulent attacks by a little-known group who styled themselves Jacobinos. Both the ultranationalistic Jacobinos and the Portuguese, or Galegos, as they were scornfully termed, viewed each other as the most dangerous enemy they faced. After examining some aspects of Portuguese immigration to Brazil and the origins of Lusophobia, this article will focus on Jacobino criticisms and activities, which can best be understood within the specific economic and political context of the 1890s.

The military coup of October 3, 1968 appears to have inaugurated a new era in Peruvian sociopolitical life. Unlike earlier “revolutions,” the current one is neither a simple military intervention to give the traditional civilian system a breathing space nor is it the action of a traditional caudillo in alliance with the oligarchy. Rather, the Peruvian Revolution is a fundamental attempt to effect major structural changes in the sociopolitical economic order.

In the six years of Revolutionary government, many changes have been made. The semi-feudal power of the traditional coastal agricultural oligarchy has been broken and partially channeled into the modern industrial economy with its attendant influence. The means to this end was, of course, the agrarian reform which turned the large, productive coastal haciendas into generally economically successful producers' cooperatives. Similar results have been obtained in the industrial, mining, and fishing reforms.

In the historiography of the philosophy of Mexican history and culture one of the begging questions has been the genesis of Samuel Ramos' book El perfil del hombre y la cultura en México (1934). Did this work, which shifted Mexican problems from a physical base to a psychological plane (Villegas, 1960: 135-136), spring full-blown or was it a reflection of attitudes shared by other intellectuals who defined a movement in the history of ideas? Ramos is usually credited as the initiator of national self-analysis (Diccionario Porrúa, 1971, 1723), and indeed he helped perpetuate the myth of his seminal role in the philosophical and characterological study of the Mexican (Ramos, 1943: 153). Moreover, Ramos stated that his work was the first to treat the “psychology of the Mexican” (see Castro, 1951: 36), yet this very theme was anticipated by Antonio Caso in 1925 (1925a).

Colombia remains one of a very small group of countries in Latin America which retain competitive, liberal-democratic political institutions at this writing. Indeed, Colombia's civil government, recognizing a modicum of individual liberties and conducting periodic elections, has been shattered on relatively few occasions since the mid-nineteenth century, a record equalled or surpassed by few other Latin American countries. The Colombian political system is still dominated by the two traditional political parties (Liberal and Conservative) which arose in Colombia and elsewhere in the region in the nineteenth century. In almost every other country they have long since passed into oblivion or insignificance. This continued dominance by the traditional parties is commonly attributed to their successful mobilization of mass support, especially among the peasantry. The Colombian parties (unlike their counterparts elsewhere) early moved beyond being mere elite factions by using traditional authority relationships, clientelistic exchanges and ideological appeals to develop durable bases of mass support.

The unemployment problem in Colombia was recently discussed by Geithman and Landers (1973) in this journal. They argue that one of the fundamental causes of unemployment is a “higher capital-labor ratio” than would otherwise exist, according to factor endowments and the structure of final demand. This is attributed to the dependency of less developed countries (LDCs) on capital from advanced countries (ACs), with laborsaving characteristics suitable for the latter (Geithman and Landers, 1973: 317). Their excessive capital intensity thesis is based on Bruton's cross-sectional statistical study (1967), which made a number of simplified assumptions which should be examined in some detail.

Since Bruton and Geithman and Landers use the production function in their analysis, it is necessary to briefly discuss its most important characteristics. The quantities of capital (K), labor (L), and other inputs required by the industrial sector or the entire economy to achieve various levels of output (Q), can be viewed as a generalized production function.

The Zudak paper (1976) restates in the Colombian context, without adding much that is new, some of the difficulties inherent in defining for practical applications the capital, labor, and output variables. He decides that the output-to-capital ratio in the case of Colombia is about .6 rather than .5 as suggested by Geithman and Landers in an earlier article in this journal (1973). Zudak concludes that the Colombian unemployment problem might best be managed by (1) improving the operation of the labor market, which Geithman-Landers advocated earlier, and (2) reducing the length of the work week. The latter suggestion, he apparently argues, is preferable to other possible policy responses to the employment situation recommended by Geithman-Landers. These consist primarily of (a) the development of additional labor-using production processes in the modern sector to expand the range of technical substitutability in that sector; (b) an active policy of income redistributton in the direction of greater equality in order to spur the demand for traditional sector output and dampen the demand for modern sector goods; and (c) a serious move toward land redistribution and reform as one available means of loosening the country's capital constraint.