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.

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.

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.