Since 1976 profound changes have occurred in Brazilian national society, changes that have implications for the tribal populations in Brazil as well as for those conducting anthropological and linguistic research among these populations. Many of these changes can be linked to the government policy of abertura (opening). This policy was begun implicitly under the regime of Ernesto Geisel (1974-79) and has been continued more explicitly by the current President, João Baptista de Oliveira Figueiredo, who is scheduled to remain in office until 1985. Perhaps equally as important at the infrastructural level have been the global economic changes that were largely linked to earlier increases in oil prices. These steep increases have severely shaken the Brazilian economy, causing annual inflation rates in 1980, 1981, and 1982 of approximately 100 percent.

Todo genuino movimiento literario, todo amanecer, toda ruptura, ha tenido indefectiblemente su primera exteriorización en las hojas provocativas de una revista. La revista descubre, polemiza; el escritor de revistas anticipa, es el guerrillero madrugado, el pionero que zampa terrenos intactos. La revista es vitrina y es cartel. El libro ya es en cierto modo un ataúd, quizás más duradero y más perfecto, pero menos jugoso y vital.

State corporatist representation of organized labor interests has been an enduring characteristic of modern Latin American politics, transcending differences in national ideologies and political regimes. In recent years, much attention has been devoted to analyzing various corporatist experiments that have emerged in the region and elsewhere. As a result, it is now possible to distinguish among corporatist systems that are state or societal, Ibero-Catholic, traditional, or modern “rationalist,” inclusionary or exclusionary, bifrontal or segmental; and analysts have moved on to “disaggregate” the structure of corporatism in a variety of political contexts.

No issue in Mexican politics received more attention in selecting the 1982 presidential candidate than the role of the technocrat. The technocrat's influence on the Mexican state has had widespread consequences, such as changing political recruitment patterns, altering the socialization of political leaders, shifting career channels essential to advancement within the political system, and most significantly, causing adjustments in the stability of the political system. Crucial to any discussion of the changing role played by the technocrat in Mexican politics is a clear understanding of the term technocrat. This essay therefore will discuss conceptualizations of the technocrat, attempt a working definition of the term in the Mexican context, provide empirical evidence as to the presence of technocrats in Mexican politics, and suggest possible consequences for the political system.

Una de las cuestiones interesantes de las guerras de liberación y las revoluciones sociales del Tercer Mundo es que las luchas por profundas transformaciones sociales e, incluso, por un horizonte socialista, no tienen como fuerza principal a un partido proletario ni a organizaciones donde la clase obrera constituye el componente principal. El protagonista fundamental de estos movimientos es, antes bien, un complejo conjunto de clases y grupos populares—artesanos, campesinos, semiproletarios, jóvenes, pobres de la ciudad y del campo—donde la clase obrera no es un componente mayoritario. Este perfil social propio de las revoluciones y guerras de liberación del Tercer Mundo obedece en definitiva al modo en que el capitalismo se desarrolló en estos países, articulándose a formas no capitalistas de producción y circulación, subordinándolas pero sin eliminarlas plenamente.

This article represents an attempt to understand the changes that have taken place in the traditional vision of colonial society in New Spain as shaped by past historiography, drawing on works published between 1970 and 1981. This essay was not conceived as a bibliographic summary that would examine themes, review hypotheses, and evaluate the sources used by different authors. Instead, my analysis will give greater importance to the topics that have captured the attention of scholars than to their published works, it will emphasize the scientific community rather than particular scholars, and it will focus more on those themes that in my view characterize the social processes of New Spain than on the central themes of current historiography.

Professor Carmagnani's essay consists of two parts. In the first three-quarters of the essay, he rapidly reviews historical writing on colonial Mexico from about 1970 until 1981, identifying major topics, tendencies, and prospects for the future. In the second part of the essay, Carmagnani turns to some of what he believes to be the shortcomings of this decade or more of writing, especially what he views as its failure to establish a new periodization for the Mexican colonial centuries. In discussing this “inertia” in the new generation of social historians, he proposes a periodization that he believes more accurately “fits” the general findings of this recent historical corpus.

Professor Carmagnani has identified major themes and tendencies that have characterized recent studies on the social history of colonial Mexico. He correctly observes that historians have paid closer attention to the connections between population and resources, to the differences among regions, and to the internal development of Indian society. Moreover, he explains how advances in demography, economic history, and ethnohistory have all contributed toward a continued shift in emphasis away from political or “institutional” perspectives.

The outpouring of colonial Mexican social history that marked the 1970s had its origins in the previous decade. As Marcello Carmagnani's article points out, historians had come to appreciate the limits of institutional approaches to this field of inquiry. Contributions in demographic history, economic history, and ethnohistory strongly indicated that the dynamics of colonial life were other than had been identified to date and that even periodization and the eras of transition in the colonial period—let alone the reasons behind the transitions—might be different if measured by other standards.