Changes in the volume of new loans issued by the developing countries in Latin America have had a significant impact on the foreign exchange value of their currencies, and on most of their domestic macroeconomic variables. During the 1972-82 decade, the annual increase in external debt of many of these countries exceeded the interest payments on this debt. The result was a net cash inflow derived from the sale of new loans abroad. Consequently, at the time, no real economic cost was associated with this increase in external debt. After 1982 this situation changed. The annual increase in external debt diminished to the point where it was less than the scheduled interest payments. At that point Latin American borrowers began to experience a net cash outflow on their debt account. Thus, in order to generate the foreign exchange needed to pay even part of these scheduled interest charges, the economy had to undergo a costly adjustment process.

There has been no official population census of Cuba since the decennial count of 1953. The Castro government, which came to power in January 1959, has not seen fit to continue census-taking on decennial basis, which would have regularly called for an enumeration in 1963. Until 1958 Cuban government agencies, including the National Bank and the National Economic Council, published annual estimates, intending presumably to adjust them in accordance with what would have been a census in 1963. The revolutionary government has continued annual estimates, but until recently, made no official announcement of them. In 1967, for the first time, the year-by-year estimates became available in official statistical publications.

Much interest has been associated with the population trends by students of Cuba because of a number of factors which presumably would affect them, notably the extraordinary emigration from the island. There have been attempts to arrive at estimates independently.

Since 1930 the military has overthrown the Government of Argentina four times: in 1930, when General Uriburu overthrew the constitutional government of Hipólito Irigoyen; in 1943, when General Ramírez overthrew Ramón Castillo and initiated a confused series of events which led ultimately to the accession to the presidency of Juan Perón in 1946; in September, 1955, when officers of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force combined their forces to oust Perón himself; and in March, 1962, when a small group of officers staged a coup which deposed Arturo Frondizi, the first elected president to follow Perón.

In recent years, a considerable amount of scholarly research has been devoted to the analysis of public enterprise in Latin America. The number of individuals actively engaged in research and their output of materials has increased since the mid-1970s. Partially as a result of this heightened interest, several conferences have been organized to deal with public enterprises, and increasingly detailed information has been made available by governments. Most of this information still receives an extremely limited circulation and is therefore unavailable to the majority of scholars.

Economic development—defined by growth of GNP per capita—among the poor countries of the world during the last 25 years has been higher than in almost any other period in mankind's history. Although this growth might have not been as high as that expected by some policy makers, the 1950-1975 period shows an overall improvement over the recent past. In spite of this apparent surge in growth, many policy makers and social scientists have shown disappointment and dismay at some characteristics of the recent increases in GNP (Morawetz, 1977).

Emerging from the voting pattern of the Brazilian congressional elections of October 7, 1962, is a reassuring pattern of political growth and responsible participation by the Brazilian electorate.

Congressional elections demand a regional approach. North Americans perhaps understand this better than most people. A great deal of caution is used before establishing a national trend of events in the United States by using, for example, the Arkansas returns. Similarly, to claim that New York speaks for the nation is dangerous.

The same caution should also be used in Brazil. The tight race for the governorship of Pernambuco tells the story of almost equally-balanced forces in that state. The Sao Paulo returns may provide some positive indicators of the 1965 presidential race. Rio Grande do Sul demonstrated the basically-conservative nature of the electorate in that area. In contrast, the state returns in Guanabara seem to present an example of complete political irresponsibility and immaturity.

Much of economic planning in Latin America has been oriented toward promoting industrialization. These plans have generally given a major role to government, and no doubt there is a significant role that the public sector can and must play in capital mobilization as well as in performing other functions. In most countries, the infrastructural needs alone are enormous and constitute a major challenge for the still rudimentary machinery of public administration and the generally weak fiscal systems.

Clearly, however, a very large portion of the capital requirements of industrialization has been supplied by the private sector—with important assistance from foreign enterprises, to be sure, but with the domestic private sectors supplying most of the financing needed to maintain what has been, in most countries, a relatively high rate of industrial development. The focus of this paper is on the mechanism by which this capital has been mobilized by the private sector and on the changes that appear to occur in that mechanism during the process of industrialization.

The 1891 civil war that led to the downfall of President José Manuel Balmaceda is without doubt one of the most visible episodes of Chilean history. Already the subject of a voluminous bibliography by 1894 (Echeverría y Reyes, 1894), the “revolution's” importance to historians of Chile actually increased over time as a new generation of scholars came to view it not merely as a discrete event of limited intrinsic interest but as an important key to understanding Chile's subsequent political and economic development. In retrospect, the conflict came to be seen as a “crucial watershed” in Chilean history (Blakemore, 1974: 243), marking the replacement of a presidential system—1833-1891—notable in nineteenth-century Latin America for political stability, by a parliamentary system—1891-1924—notorious for political and monetary disorder.

Since its “depenalization” in 1993, the U.S. dollar has become possibly a more significant component of Cuba's money supply than the old peso. What are the alternatives? The euro seems inappropriate, given the inevitability of eventual normalization of relations with the United States. More advantageous would be to restore the Cuban peso, though this would involve unifying the bifurcated economic structure and the dual monetary and exchange rate systems. The Cuban government has yet to announce its plans. This study argues that an appropriate mix of exchange rate, monetary, fiscal, and income or wage and salary policies should support a rehabilitation of the Cuban peso.

The postmaterialist thesis has spurred a large body of literature and debates, yet postmaterialism has not been studied among political elites. Empirical studies of the legislatures and legislators of Latin American nations in general and Puerto Rico in particular, moreover, are sorely lacking. This article examines postmaterialist values among Puerto Rican legislators. It finds that Puerto Rican legislators have high levels of postmaterialism and that they order the components of the postmaterialism scale in ways similar to those of the mass publics of other countries, including those of Latin America. More important, the postmaterialist scale proves of little use in explaining the positions legislators take on a host of issues, many of which are closely associated with postmaterialism. An alternative explanation is that the scale really measures attachment to democratic norms.

The following description and analysis of the role of the military in the Peruvian political system and its development from independence to the most recent military supplanting of a civilian government in 1968 should serve a twofold purpose: first, to provide information necessary to the understanding of Peruvian political development; and second, to manifest the claims and demands of a politically relevant (institutional) interest group and its manner of satisfying them. During the course of this article, it should become evident to the reader that it would be impossible to offer even the most general history of Peruvian political development without giving considerable attention to the role of both military personalities and the military as an institution.

It is the author's contention that the evolution of the Peruvian military's political role may be divided into nine phases, each with significance for the country's political system.

Brazil has been a classic example of plantation society. In recent years, however, a new Brazil has been emerging in a process vividly described by Charles Wagley as "the Brazilian Revolution", by which the old society has been transformed as new groups have gradually risen from industry, commerce, the professions, and the bureaucracy, until the overall Brazilian society no longer bears the stamp of plantation society.

In this paper an attempt will be made to show how the plantation developed into the organizing force of Brazilian society throughout the Colonial and Empire periods by extending its form and control patterns to the larger society which surrounded it. By the end of the nineteenth century, due to a series of crises, economic, social, and political, the classic plantation system underwent modifications which, if they had gone unchecked, would have strengthened it more than ever.

The impact on Latin American economies stemming from recent developments of the primary product markets is analyzed in this article. Brief comments are also offered on the political stands these countries have adopted or are considering adopting as a result of the ongoing dialogue taking place at both the academic and political levels on the new international economic order.

Rather than pursue the traditional route of first reviewing major problems that primary product trade has imposed on economic development efforts and then recounting alternative control schemes adopted in primary trade, this article focuses primarily on the degree to which Latin America is dependent on primary products as a source of foreign exchange earnings, and second on the influence, relative to other developing countries (LDCs), that primary products have had on foreign earnings, export instability, and terms of trade.

During the dictatorship of Dr. Francia, 1814-1840, few foreigners were permitted to enter Paraguay, and a small number of chiefly Brazilian merchants, restricted to the entrepôts of Ytapúa and Pilar, alone had an impact upon the nation and its development. The few foreigners who blundered into Paraguay uninvited were forced to remain.

While invalid voting is often treated as protest behavior in an electoral context, its association with actual political protests has not yet been empirically demonstrated. The relative scarcity of research on the topic is likely due to the hybrid nature of invalid voting as a both formal and informal political gesture. The novel availability of event-based data for public protests in Latin America allows for testing whether their occurrence is connected with changes in spoiled and blank ballots. Using an appropriate dynamic regression model covering variations in the 148 intervals between Latin American legislative elections in the 1979–2021 period, this study finds a strong connection between the emergence of antigovernment protests and surges in invalid voting (and vice versa). This relationship still holds at parity of economic conditions and it is reinforced by a lack of alternation in the party of power. Conversely, the appearance of workers’ strikes appears to work as a substitute for this behavior, which is also chosen by voters when democracy deteriorates, while corruption has no independent impact on invalid voting. Overall this work’s findings promise to send the research agenda on invalid voting in a new direction, previously unexplored because of an absence of fitting data.

In environmental politics, social movements play a crucial role, promoting participatory rights and confronting injustice, inequality, and the interests of the powerful. This article examines an underexplored topic in the literature on social movements, especially in Latin America: the use of litigation to force decisionmakers to comply with participatory formats, specifically in the course of opposition to hydroelectric dams. These projects often are destructive to the local environment and communities. This study examines four cases of environmental litigation that halted dam construction in Brazil and Chile, singling out causal pathways for successful collective action. It focuses on two dimensions of movement success: the implementation of participatory formats and the resulting cancellation of dam projects. In line with the joint effect model of social movement theory, the cross-case comparison of legal disputes shows that pursuing legal strategies in parallel to broad social mobilization and the support of institutional allies, can lead to successful outcomes.

What are the medium-term prospects for the Nicaraguan economy where, by medium term, we refer to the year 2000? The difficult task of fortune telling is made enormously more complicated by the political economy that was established in the country by the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) after the 1979 revolution in which they, with the aid of diverse social factions, overthrew the government of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. After more than a decade, the FSLN then handed over power, in mid-1990, to a coalition of opposition parties (the Union Nacional Opositora or UNO) headed by Violeta Chamorro. The 1990 election brought the first peaceful transfer of power in Nicaraguan history but, perhaps, represented more an abdication by the beleaguered Sandinistas than it did a sea change in the balance of class conflict.

Since the end of World War II, nations have been characterized according to membership in various international power blocs, the Western World being used for capitalist countries and the Iron Curtain for socialist ones. Within these categories countries are also characterized according to level of economic (and sometimes political) development. The capitalist world recognizes two types of nations, the developed and the underdeveloped. In contrast, the socialist world presents a single development model characterized by centralized planning and homogeneous development.