Although social scientists usually do not speak in terms of laws, they believe they are at least able to make valid empirical generalizations. In studies of Mexican migration to the United States, for example, generalizations drawn from the research literature abound. Thus the problem is not that generalizations are lacking but that they are frequently inconsistent and contradictory. Often such inferences are simply invalid because they are based less on evidence than on the investigator's own preconceptions. As a result, the field of Mexican migration studies has been plagued by a fragmented debate that seems to go on and on without resolution.

Not since the heyday of foreign tax missions in the 1960s has tax reform been discussed as intensively in Latin America. During the 1980s, major tax reforms took place in Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina, and Colombia, and somewhat similar reforms occurred in the previous decade in Chile and Uruguay. Moreover, tax reform seems to be climbing higher on the policy agenda in countries as diverse as Guatemala, Venezuela, Paraguay, and Peru.

Most of the critical commentary on Nicaraguan poet Rubén Dario has been called forth and shaped by his being a seminal pan-Latin American and an international literary figure. Less known is the fact that for more than a century, Darío has been the focus of a much contested discourse concerning national cultural identity within Nicaragua itself. Comprehending this more limited and focused discourse requires carefully analyzing the changing cultural-political constructions that Darío's fellow Nicaraguans have placed upon his life and work, and especially the role of ideology in those constructs. Such analysis can also offer insight into the role of focal Latin American cultural figures in the negotiation of national cultural identity, especially during periods of dramatic political transformation, crisis, and reconstruction like the Somoza era (1936–1979) and the Sandinista Revolution (1961–1989).

After a decade of debt crisis and severe economic decline, countries throughout Latin America are seeking radical new treatments for their economic ills. Under pressure from internal political actors, international lending and aid agencies, or some combination of these, many Latin American countries are turning to outward-looking development strategies to stabilize their balance of payments and revitalize economic growth. Serving as the centerpiece for the new strategies is the promotion of “nontraditional” exports.

The proximate cause of democratic breakdown in Argentina has invariably been a military coup. In overthrowing civilian governments, however, the armed forces have not acted in a vacuum. Before the 1966 and 1976 coups, military officers made sure that key landowner, business, and labor leaders would support or at least accept military intervention. The importance that the Argentine military places on civilian opinion raises the question of the conditions under which civilian leaders might become more likely to oppose a coup. One promising development would be for these elites to channel their political demands increasingly through political parties. By investing resources in party activity and becoming more habituated to pressing demands through party channels, Argentine socioeconomic elites would gain a larger stake in the survival of the electoral and legislative institutions that parties require to be effective. This article will analyze the relationship between one such elite, the Peronist union leadership, and one of Argentina's main political parties, the Peronist Partido Justicialista (PJ).

Looking back over patterns of economic adjustment and structural reform in Latin America since the debt crisis began in 1982, two broad trends stand out. The first is the dramatic fluctuation in macroeconomic policy between the orthodox programs traditionally advocated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the more interventionist or “heterodox” strategies that marked the policy environment after 1985 (Sheahan 1989). Although the orthodox-heterodox policy cycle is hardly new to the region and in fact has characterized the policy-making experience over the entire postwar era (Kaufman 1990), the 1980s represented the intensification of this cycle, especially in the extremity to which each set of policies was applied. The second trend follows from the first: the inability of states to follow through coherently on any given policy course (Fishlow 1989). While some exceptions to this trend can be cited (Chile, for example), the Latin American pattern has generally been one of failed adjustments and changed courses.

In 1970, as part of a comprehensive program of institutionalization, new economic policies were introduced in Cuba emphasizing more extensive use of material incentives, wage differentials, and piece rates to stimulate productivity. Those policies raised the incomes of Cuban workers and created new demands for a better diet and more consumer goods. Yet problems in the state-run domestic food sector made it difficult for Cubans to secure the higher standard of living promised by their increased salaries and wages. In May 1980, the mercados libres campesinos (MLCs) were introduced as part of a strategy aimed at harnessing the productive capacities of the peasant sector to help satisfy the resulting pent-up demand. The MLCs provided sites where agricultural producers (free peasants, cooperativists, workers on state enterprises, and owners of small plots and gardens) could sell their surplus production directly to consumers. The law governing the MLCs contained several significant restrictions, but the markets were “free” in regard to prices and quantities sold.

“In the last two or three years, … a group of Mexicans …, supported and advised by the private banks, has stolen more money from our country than the empires that have exploited us since the beginning of history…. They've robbed us …, but they will not rob us again.” With these words, President López Portillo nationalized Mexico's private banks and imposed controls on foreign exchange. Many of those attending this State of the Union address on 1 September 1982 stood to applaud, while the president cried and one banker fainted. Mexico's chief of state continued, “The revolution will speed up; the state will no longer be intimidated by pressure groups.”

Since Mexico declared its independence from Spanish rule, the country has experienced two extended periods of political stability that are atypical of Latin American societies. The first, known as the Porfiriato, extended from 1875 to 1910. The second, which was heralded by the Revolution of 1910 and consolidated in the 1920s, still holds sway in the last decade of the twentieth century. The weaknesses of the Porfiriato have been analyzed amply, thanks in great part to the hindsight provided by the revolution that ended the era. Until recently, however, most works on twentieth-century Mexico have focused on the exceptional stability of the postrevolutionary regime. This approach has left largely unresearched (Knight 1989) or merely labeled as “crises” (Needier 1987) the recurrent episodes of union insurgency, popular protest, electoral opposition, and other signs of pressure for political change that have punctuated Mexican history since the Revolution. Consequently, analysts who have recently undertaken the arduous task of diagnosing at what points this imposing edifice might “give” have been unable to benefit from insights of work carried out in previous decades.

Scholars generally agree that after 1810 the Mexican economy, shattered by destruction of property and flight of population and capital during the long wars for independence, entered a severe depression. It has usually been assumed that this depression persisted well beyond mid-century, exacerbated by political instability, banditry, and intermittent civil warfare. This assumption was given shape and substance by John Coatsworth's influential 1978 article, which presented a picture of not merely miserable but deteriorating economic conditions for at least a half-century after 1810. Coatsworth calculated that per capita and total income fell until “sometime after 1860” and that a solid recovery was delayed until after 1880.

A large and influential body of work has been published on the recent transformation of Mexican agriculture, focusing on how the growth of linkages to the international economy has reallocated Mexico's land and labor resources in a way that threatens the survival of peasant forms of food production. Curiously, the working assumptions of this corpus have remained largely unchallenged in the academic literature. The thrust of this approach is well captured in an article published in LARR by David Barkin and Billie DeWalt a few years ago. These authors were seeking to explain the origins of Mexico's “food crisis” and made a series of recommendations for tackling the problem. Although many of Barkin and DeWalt's observations are irrefutable, the framework of their analysis begs a number of questions, and elements within it are mutually inconsistent. Their work merits close attention nonetheless because, unlike much of the literature on the “food crisis,” it goes beyond analysis of the problem to make fairly explicit policy recommendations. Because their recommendations are so out of line with the present thrust of Mexican policy, it is instructive to return to their article. Their contribution exemplifies a paradigm that, in rejecting trade liberalization, fails to lend itself to constructive criticism of the policies now being vigorously pursued in Mexico. In challenging Barkin and DeWalt's analytical framework and policy recommendations (from a standpoint that is sympathetic toward trade liberalization), this research note is intended to provoke a lively debate about new ways to conceptualize Mexican food issues.

They arrived first in July 1898 in scattered numbers, in the company of an army of conquest, and subsequently in successive waves during the military occupation. By the time U.S. military rule over Cuba came to an end in May 1902, no less than a score of Protestant denominations had inaugurated evangelical activities in Cuba, including Northern and Southern Baptists, Southern Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, the Disciples of Christ, Quakers, Pentecostalists, and Congregationalists. In fact, so many missionaries arrived in Cuba at one time that denominational competition quickly got out of hand. In February 1902, an interdenominational conference convened in Cienfuegos to impose order on the U.S. evangelical enterprise. The resulting comity plan established spheres of influence for the principal Protestant denominations in Cuba: Northern and Southern Baptists divided the island between them, with Northern Baptists in the two eastern provinces and Southern Baptists assigned to the four western ones; Quakers and Methodists divided eastern Cuba between them; Presbyterians and Congregationalists located their missions in the western zones; and Episcopalians concentrated in Matanzas and Santiago de Cuba.

The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas is internationally known as a major repository of primary source material on colonial and nineteenth-century Mexico. Specialists may also be aware of its collections of historical documents on the Río de la Plata and Central America. The best-known manuscripts were acquired before 1940 and have been described in widely distributed published guides.

For scholars writing a history of a “developing” country, access to pertinent unpublished personal and official sources is so limited that some prominent historical figures are inadequately represented. Juan Silvano Godoi of Paraguay is no exception. Because of the inaccessibility of primary sources, publications on Paraguayan history have devoted little coverage to this major figure. To help fill this gap, the Special Collections Department of the University Library at the University of California, Riverside, has compiled an annotated list of Godoi's personal collection. The Godoi collection represents a crucial period of Paraguayan history, and to understand its importance, researchers must become aware of some of his activities between 1870 and 1926.