This essay deals with the study of Latin American politics in the United States. The basic question asked is: “Where do we go from here if we take seriously that body of thought loosely and somewhat misleadingly known as dependency theory?” It argues that even though the literature is at times incomplete, confusing, and contradictory, the issues to which it directs us warrant our most serious attention.

Within the past few years, the study of Latin American politics has been increasingly influenced by a theoretical perspective that the outcome of World War II temporarily relegated to the “dustbin of history.” This perspective is the corporate one, long associated with the political perversions of Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and a handful of postwar continental regimes such as Spain and Portugal which were considered by most observers to be political backwaters.

In the study of agrarian politics in general and the history of rural Colombia in particular, four broad, interrelated perspectives are relevant to the understanding of rural politics: peasants and rebellion, the interaction of local and national politics, patron-client relations, and regionalism. Principal issues and trends within each of these areas are explored here, and an effort is made to generate specific questions for historical investigation. The present state of research on rural history and politics in Colombia is also surveyed, and observations are advanced on how new research orientations originating in these perspectives may contribute to our understanding of social and political developments in Colombia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

If an observer from outer space had landed his UFO at any meeting of Latin Americanists during the last few years, he would have had to agree with the structural anthropologists. He would have said that at these meetings, versions of the same myth are constantly repeated: dependency and development, exploitation and wealth, backwardness and sophisticated technology, unemployment and extreme concentration of income. Somewhat wearily, our creature from space would have commented: “The brains of these beings appear to limit their images and thoughts to binary opposites.” Returning to the debate on the meaning of analyses of dependency gives one the sensation of entering a discussion in which imagination is bound by preestablished models. Nevertheless, as though I were one of the “founding fathers” of dependency, I endorse the ceremonial consumption of the theme. How to escape from this uncomfortable position?

As you know, we have an institution called the sexenio when everything changes.

And we're here now for six years. You know how we all come in and get thrown out at the sexenio.

If someone has a chief who is capable and has the prospects for a good future, then that person will probably think, “Perhaps I can go with him at the sexenio”; and it happens in reverse, too, if someone has a chief who is not particularly capable but who has influential friends, some will want to follow him. There are a lot of changes and it affects our program, especially when people stop working to pursue their futures.

Two recent events originating outside Latin America have had powerful negative effects on the growth process under way in most countries of the region. These were the OPEC oil crisis of October 1973 and the ensuing economic decline in the industrial world in 1974 and 1975—the worst international recession since World War II. If the trends represented by these events continue, they threaten to render unmanageable the acute short-term problems they have imposed on countries that were already in difficulty, such as Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Moreover, emergency measures undertaken by several governments have tended to distract attention from long-term pressures that are inexorably building up in the region and may even aggravate these pressures before they are recognized as requiring a concerted regional response.

It is a well known, oft stated fact that Latin American periodicals, particularly of the nineteenth century, contain a wealth of untapped documentation for the historian and literary critic. This is especially true for Cuba, where a protracted colonial period with years of tight censorship, repression, and revolutionary turmoil made the publication of lengthy works unfulfilled dreams thwarted by “la Señora Censura” or a highly underdeveloped publishing industry. Magazines and newspapers were frequently the only outlets for the expression of ideas on politics, economics, education, philosophy, religion, literature, science, music, and art, or for the publication of creative works in prose and poetry. Consequently, the examination of nineteenth-century Cuban periodicals yields an unusually rich view of the history and culture of the island; indeed, in some periods these publications, frequently ephemeral, offer the only major source of comprehensive information and documentation.

Due to the interest in the Latin American short story generated by writers such as Borges, Cortázar, García Márquez, Fuentes, and many others, there is a need for more information on the development of this genre in Latin America and compilations of the information already available. Good sources of material on both authors and stories are often short story anthologies. There are a number of anthologies that deal with various themes, periods, authors, countries, and stories, and offer teacher, student, or aficionado a kaleidoscopic view of the cuento in Latin America.

They say it is impossible to re-create a poem in another language, and perhaps it is. It is also irresistible.

Translators may attempt the impossible because they want to share their enjoyment or because they need versions for teaching or because they like word games-translation is as much fun as DoubleCrostics. My own reason is the challenge of the irresistible; I am like the mountain climber who says, “Because it's there.” And in fact, mountain climbing and poetic translation have some points in common. The translator and the climber may find smooth stretches on their rough paths, and they both struggle upward, but at the goal the similarity disappears, for the climber may succeed absolutely. There are no absolute successes in translation, which John Ciardi calls the art of failure. On the other hand, the translator will never find himself in the anticlimactic position of having climbed Mount Everest. He always has more worlds to attempt to conquer, and his old worlds to improve.

Much of the focus of, indeed much of the impetus for, the current discussion of science and technology policy for the Latin American industrial sector has involved comparisons of foreign and domestic ownership. While such traditional concerns as the quantity of repatriated profits and interference in domestic politics (in the case of foreign firms) continue to be important, much of the recent literature is on comparative financial performance, growth, technology, and the interrelationships among these elements. The following conclusion is ubiquitous: Domestic enterprises, due largely to “technological” shortcomings, are simply unable to compete with the foreign firms and are therefore restricted both to secondary positions within individual product markets and to the less profitable sectors.

I regret the lack of time for annotating the more important entries in this bibliography. In lieu of annotation, little need be said: scholars who are knowledgeable will require no guidance; the uninitiated can plunge in and begin using it. Yet a few comments are offered for what they are worth. Comercio Exterior, the monthly publication of Banco de México de Comercio Exterior, is by far the leading journal publishing literature on science and technology in developing countries with, naturally, an emphasis on Latin America. The Department of Scientific Affairs, Organization of American States is the second most prolific source, with El Trimestre Económico perhaps the third most important publishing vehicle. World Development, a relatively new journal, has been coming on strong in the last several years.

Frederick P. Bowser has observed that: “Literature is perhaps as precise a way as any other to determine the attitudes held by racial groups toward each other, but for Spanish America very little systematic investigation has been done in this regard.” This field of investigation now is somewhat better off than the handful of items he mentioned would suggest. Most of this research has been carried out in the last ten years as an increasing number of scholars are realizing that blacks have participated integrally throughout the literary history of Spanish America, both as characters and as authors, and that unlimited possibilities exist for research on black themes in Spanish American literature in general and on Afro-Spanish American literary expression in particular.

The military coup that put an end to the government of Salvador Allende terminated a socialist experiment that drew considerable world attention. It also marked the demise of one of the most durable liberal democracies. Deviating sharply from the prevalent Third World pattern of political instability, Chile was able to establish a viable constitutional system by the middle of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, the dominant feature of Chilean politics became its political system composed of strong party organizations spanning the ideological spectrum. This was unique in Latin America. Though parties have been banned by the ruling military junta, and the parties of the left have been subject to violent repression, there is little doubt that Chilean party politics will continue to draw the attention of political analysts. The study of the evolution of political patterns in a Third World country, which are strikingly similar to those of France and Italy, should contribute to our understanding of phenomena such as political participation, the historicity of party alternatives, and the social bases of party politics in polarized societies. Furthermore, a thorough understanding of the Chilean party system before the coup will help to clarify the conditions that led to the breakdown, and, more importantly, the prospects for party politics in the future.

With this ringing affirmation, Julien Bryan concluded Americans All, his first documentary about Latin America produced under the auspices of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CI-AA) as part of the U.S. government's effort to foster hemispheric solidarity. By 1945 he had completed twenty-two more, including four on Latin America as a region; five on Chile; three each about Peru, Bolivia, and Uruguay; and one each concerning Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, and Paraguay. The CI-AA distributed the films to thousands of U.S. schools, clubs, and organizations during the war. After the conflict was over, they continued to be the standard educational films about Latin America until, by the 1960s, damage or obsolescence forced most prints out of circulation. For the historian, however, “obsolescence” is not an undesirable quality, and a careful screening suggests that these thirty-year old documentaries contain an extraordinary visual record of Spanish South America and provide insight into inter-American relations. The purpose here is to assess the value of Bryan's twenty-three films as historical evidence, based on an analysis of the narration and photography and taking into account the special nature of film as a source material.

Mientras que la población de la Europa Occidental en el proceso de su historia étnica comenzó el paso de las nacionalidades (o sea pueblos) a las naciones, en el lejano e incógnito continente, todavía no descubierto, tuvo lugar un complicado proceso de formación de nacionalidades. Y una de las nacionalidades más numerosas y poderosas que se formaba en el continente era la de los quechuas a los cuales con frecuencia se ha aplicado el término no muy adecuado de “incas.”

Scholars working in the area of contemporary Cuban literature are frequently asked about the current state of literary affairs on the island. The novel in particular, with the exception of a handful of resounding yet politically controversial successes, is rarely mentioned. Only one novelist of merit, Edmundo Desnoes, has fully embraced the revolution and achieved some measure of success in serving it without greatly compromising his aesthetic standards. How he has achieved this and why he is unique are questions that deserve exploration.

One of the curious features of recent Latin American politics has been the closeness of the results of presidential elections. As shown by tables 1 and 2, the median gap between the two principal contenders in presidential elections taking place around 1970 was 4.93 percent, compared to 15.39 percent in elections taking place around 1950. Over half of the 1970 elections resulted in a smaller winning margin than the smallest such margin around 1950.