Emotionally expressive interdependence in Latin America: Triangulating through a comparison of three cultural zones.

<i>Cultural Capital</i>: Reflections from a Latin Americanist

Latin American and World Histories: Old and New Approaches to the Pluribus and the Unum

Review: <i>Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars</i>, by Michele Greet

미·중 경쟁이 중남미 경제에 미치는 영향과 시사점(An Effect of US-China Rivalry on Latin America and Its Implication)

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Framing Latina/o Immigration, Education, and Activism

Nelson A. Rockefeller’s Office of Inter-American Affairs (1940-1946) and Record Group 229

Contemporary research on self-construal indicates that people define and perceive themselves either as independent or interdependent. Self-construal scales have become the most common method to quantitatively measure both types of self-construal across the United States, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Multidimensional measures of the self tend to be more accurate in defining the self than earlier dichotomous scales. In general, European Americans and Latin Americans perceived themselves as independent and East and Southeast Asians as interdependent. In the current study, undergraduate European American, East Asian American, Southeast Asian American, and Latin American students from San Jose State University were asked to complete the latest self-construal scale. This study attempted to replicate multidimensional self-construal findings on American, East Asian American, Southeast Asian American, and Latinx American samples holding acculturation constant. The results showed significant differences in harmony and self-reliance between Asian Americans and European and Latin Americans and found no significant differences between Latin Americans and European Americans. Future directions are discussed.

Es liegt in der Natur der Gesittung, daß sie vorwärts schreitet ohne darum da zu erlöschen, wo sie zuerst entstanden war. Ihre fortschreitende Bewegung von Ost nach West, von Asien nach Europa, beweist nichts gegen diese Behauptung. Eine helle Lichtflamme behält ihren Glanz, auch wenn sie einen größeren Raum erleuchtet.1 The progressive, even revolutionary nature of Humboldt's thinking accounts for its sustained influence over time. Nowadays, science historians worldwide attest to the actuality of his pioneering views on nature and human-induced climate change, as well as on the viability of political and economic systems on both sides of the Atlantic. In the twenty-first century, discussions as to what Humboldt meant and still means have acquired a global character and look likely to continue gaining in significance. In this Special Number, we aim to provide a reappraisal of Humboldt's work which highlights a scientific practice that, through collaboration with other disciplines, engages with contemporary discussion and – with an inclusive and egalitarian outlook – does not shy away from acknowledging the links between science and wider structures of political and cultural power. In contrast to other essay compilations on Humboldt that have appeared in recent years, many of which mainly follow a retrospective approach,2 this volume seeks to explain his actuality, that is, his status as a thinker who is continually invoked as being synonymous with both scientific progress and humanistic change. Our aim is to go beyond Humboldt himself. He was unquestionably an original thinker, but he was also someone who took contemporary discussions to a higher level, and whose collaboration with other scientists triggered new discoveries. His fame – and his qualities as a thinker – also need to be assessed in relation to his worldwide legion of followers. Hence, we will explore how Humboldt's ideas have been expanded, furthered, and appropriated over the past centuries, examining a variety of scenarios, countries, and epochs to highlight the challenges posed by his thought and the manifold ways in which his validity has been defended. Our focus on the global reception of Humboldt's work identifies and unpicks key questions. What is lost and gained when applying this great thinker's thoughts to new problems and new audiences? How can we determine whether readings of his work remain accurate despite changes in time and place? Where do we draw the line between a creative reading, an appropriation, and mere instrumentalisation? And, finally, how coherent and unambiguous are Humboldt's works themselves? This volume is not designed merely as a standalone collection of articles. It is equally conceived within the larger framework of the major shift and expansion that Humboldtian studies have undergone in recent decades. Until the 1970s, Humboldt's oeuvre was traditionally limited to the domain of the ‘hard’ natural sciences, as well as of philosophy and history (written largely from a strictly national perspective) and its reception was mostly limited to his American travel. The work of pioneering specialists such as Marianne Oeste de Bopp,3 Juan Ortega y Medina,4 Edmundo O'Gorman,5 Kurt-R. Biermann,6 Hanno Beck7 and Charles Minguet8, to mention just a handful, exercised a pervasive influence among several generations of Humboldt scholars in both Europe and the Americas. Their work went hand-in-hand with a substantial editorial effort, as the works of Alexander von Humboldt were revisited in new editions and translations. Such developments led to a reappraisal of Humboldt's role in shaping the intellectual and scientific life of the United States, Latin America, and Europe. These reappraisals of Humboldt have flourished in the last thirty years, as reflected in the scientific and editorial work undertaken by academics who, based both in Europe and the Americas, represent a variety of disciplines. Among many others, these include Jaime Labastida,9 Nicolaas Rupke,10 Michael Zeuske,11 Sandra Rebok,12 Ottmar Ette,13 Oliver Lubrich,14 and Laura Dassow Walls.15 In parallel with the extensive scholarship on Humboldt produced within universities and institutes of higher education, Humboldt's name is also commonly cited in the realm of European public culture.16 Nowadays, the most recent scholarship on the great scientist and thinker continues to be inseparable from major translation, publication, and digitalisation projects, many of them multilingual, including his complete travelogues (Potsdam),17 his vast collection of essays and articles (Berne),18 his complete writings on the Viceroyalty of New Granada (Bogotá),19 and a new translation of canonical works such as Kosmos (Mexico).20 These recent and ongoing endeavours constitute invaluable new tools for researchers; this Special Number both contributes to and benefits from them. It brings together an international and inter-disciplinary group of scholars so that early-career researchers can present their findings alongside established Humboldt scholars. Thus, here, we unfold the issue of Humboldt's actuality, combining perspectives from the fields of literature (Adrián Herrera Fuentes); history (Michael Zeuske, Sandra Rebok, and Andrea Acle-Kreysing); science, with a particular emphasis on ecology (Michael Strobl and Daniel Grana-Behrens); and metabiographical studies (Nicolaas Rupke). Each of these contributions reflects the interests of different national and transnational academic traditions, underlining subjects that are relevant to current social, ecological, and political debates. The articles in this volume can be read as an assemblage of possibilities concerning how to measure Humboldt's actuality from a contemporary perspective. The whole enables a two-fold discussion: firstly, it opens up perspectives on the advantages (and disadvantages) of specific methods of research, as different disciplines and approaches are brought into play. Secondly, it calls to attention the pitfalls – and promises – of reception on Humboldt. While citations from Humboldt are often used to validate claims of faithfulness to the ‘original’, the fact is that all researchers and commentators are caught in networks of transmission and interpretation. As the pioneering study by Rupke (2005) in relation to Germany has shown, a parade of different ‘Humboldts’ has been brought to life and celebrated over the past 200 years, each tailored to conform to specific settings and claims. Therefore, we argue, objectivity – however relative – should be measured less in terms of faithfulness to the ‘original’, but more in terms of a heightened awareness of the ‘lens’ through which Humboldt is considered. This involves, on the part of the researcher, a willingness to acknowledge that his or her views are often inscribed within one – or multiple – scholarly traditions and national discourses, sometimes complementary, sometimes not. It was Humboldt's ability to synthesise an extraordinary interplay of influences and inputs that gave a universal quality to his oeuvre. An initial challenge is posed by the works of Humboldt himself. In the second article of this volume ‘Contemplation and Empathy: On the Joy of Nature (‘Naturgenuss’) and Feeling for Nature (‘Naturgefühl’) in Alexander von Humboldt's Approach to Science’, Adrián Herrera Fuentes traces a link between Humboldt's early works such as Ansichten der Natur (1808; Nördlingen 1986) and his magnum opus, Kosmos (1845–62; Berlin 2014). Herrera Fuentes claims that, for Humboldt, science was ‘the bridge between the contemplative and the instrumental’ while also maintaining an aesthetic and pleasurable dimension. Through the sense of sight, Humboldtian science fostered a relationship between spiritual pleasure, the emotions, and scientific work. In doing so, Herrera Fuentes contends, Humboldt implicitly challenged the idea that science could be understood only as a means to purely pragmatic and profit-oriented ends. Finally, this article brings to the fore the importance of a contextual reading, not only by reconstructing Humboldt's ideas through time, but by ascertaining how he implicitly entered into a dialogue with the previous generation of Enlightenment thinkers in Germany. The pervasive influence that Humboldt has exercised upon the intellectual and cultural elites of the New World is the subject of the next set of articles. In the last two centuries, these elites have often invoked the figure of an almost mythical Humboldt in order to validate their own political agendas. Hence the need to substitute the legendary Humboldt for the real one, the one whose scientific research was inescapably embedded in power relations, as well as constrained by the practicalities of life and travel. In the third article, ‘Humboldt in Venezuela and Cuba: The “Second Slavery”’, Michael Zeuske casts a critical eye on Humboldt's famous stance against slavery. His focus is on the time that Humboldt and his companion Aimé Bonpland spent in Venezuela (1799/1800), as well as on the few months they spent in Cuba between 1800/1 and 1804. There, they encountered so-called ‘second slavery’, which was then the most modern and technologically advanced stage of this exploitative system, controlled by an elite composed of slave-owners and slave-traders (negreros in Spanish). In practical terms, this meant that many of Humboldt's most useful social contacts, the ones capable of facilitating his travels and research, belonged to this elite. Yet the fact that Humboldt's host in Havana was a thriving negrero, Juan Luis de la Cuesta, is rarely mentioned in Cuban scholarship on the scientist, which often tends towards hagiography. Zeuske reconstructs Humboldt's stay at De la Cuesta's house, showing that this enabled Humboldt to witness, at first hand, what the slave trade entailed, including the arrival of vessels crammed with enslaved adults and children who would be later sold at public auctions. Zeuske's method – a micro-historical reconstruction of the movements and acquaintances made by Humboldt in Latin America – sheds light on the dilemmas faced by Humboldt in reality. On the one hand, he was part of the solution, as shown by his straightforward condemnation of slavery in a later work, the Essai Politique sur lʼÎle de Cuba (Paris 1826); on the other, he was part of the problem, insofar as it was among Cuba's wealthy and cultured slave-owning elite that he found not only hospitality but also the power and influence that was translated into means for advancing his own research. From the 1810s onwards, as most of the Spanish colonies in the Americas became independent nations, the balance of power in the region changed dramatically. The demise of Spain as a colonial power opened the door to the rapid expansion of European (mainly British) and North American economic and political interests in the region. In the fourth article, ‘Humboldt and the American West: Defending or Defeating the "Manifest Destiny"?’, Sandra Rebok examines the appropriation of Humboldt's prestige to support the territorial expansion of the US, allegedly justified by the country's ‘exceptionalism’. Aided by correspondence and press articles, Rebok reconstructs Humboldt's visit to the US in mid-1804, stressing the friendship he established with President Thomas Jefferson as well as his overall admiration for the new nation. Humboldt, as Rebok states, praised the young democracy and was impressed by the active role its government played in the promotion of scientific knowledge. In 1804, he undoubtedly favoured the republican Jefferson over the Spanish Crown or even Napoleon, who had just declared himself Emperor. Rebok suggests that, in 1846, Humboldt might have entertained doubts about the US President James Polk, who, full of expansionist fervour, decided that year to invade Mexico, a country to which Humboldt had strong ties. It seems that Humboldt, despite his general admiration for US political and economic values (except for slavery in its southern states), refused to openly express his views on the ensuing Mexican-American War (1846/8) as it might have required him to play the role of judge in the conflict. Rebok nevertheless concludes that US expansionism was at odds with his ‘moral convictions’. Ultimately, the question raised by Rebok is not whether science can be neutral, but rather whether it can be ethical. After all, as the complex relationship established between Humboldt (the real one and the mythical one) and the US political and cultural elites shows, scientific practice – as knowledge is applied and resources are distributed – has an inescapably political dimension. The complicated relationship between ‘race’ and cultural difference is examined in the fifth article, ‘Bulwark against Racism? Humboldt's Influence on the Racial Notions of German Writers in Mexico (1920s–1940s)’ by Andrea Acle-Kreysing. Writers such as Alfons Goldschmidt and B. Traven represented a first wave of politically committed travellers which extended to a second wave composed of refugees from fascism, such as Egon Erwin Kisch, Ludwig Renn, and Gustav Regler. In this article, the author emphasises the intricacies of reception, noting that the appraisal of Humboldt was coloured by political ideology and national discourses. As a starting point, Acle-Kreysing recounts how Humboldt's appreciation for the indigenous peoples of the Americas, an illustration of his belief in the essential unity of humankind, was re-purposed by anti-fascist exiles as a weapon in their own struggle against the racist tenets of National Socialism – which was also present in Mexico's German colony. Acle-Kreysing takes a polemical approach to demonstrate that Humboldt's legacy was not free of ambiguity, and therefore the implementation of his anti-racist ideals was not as self-evident as these exiles claimed. It was one thing to affirm the abstract equality of all peoples, and another to consider non-Europeans as intellectual peers. Significantly, Acle-Kreysing seeks to vindicate the figure of Goldschmidt who, putting himself under the symbolic patronage of Humboldt, became an outspoken critic of Nazi racial thinking as well as of the alleged superiority of European civilisation. This article contributes to a strand of scholarship that seeks to emphasise how Humboldt – and, by extension, his followers – need to be read in the context of a reciprocal exchange of ‘knowledges’ and scholarly traditions between Europe and the Americas.21 Another way of measuring Humboldt's actuality is to revisit his research methodology, as well as the impact of his findings within the realm of the natural sciences. In the sixth article of this volume, ‘Alexander von Humboldt's Climatological Writings’, Michael Strobl sets himself the task of reconstructing Humboldt's climatological thinking. This topic, far from being the subject of a single work by Humboldt, is scattered across several of his writings and essays, many of which have recently been newly re-published.22 Strobl exposes how Humboldt's innovative research on isothermal lines allowed him to debunk the traditional climate anthropologies of the Enlightenment, which posited, among other things, the inferiority of the New World's inhabitants on the basis of climatic determinism. By sponsoring scientific theories such as monogenism (the common origin of humanity) and affirming that all people could acclimatise to different weathers, Humboldt made clear political statements. Strobl asks to what extent Humboldt transformed, redirected, and corrected the then current knowledge on climatology and to what extent these results anticipated contemporary discussions on climate change. In the seventh article of this Special Number, ‘“Big Data” and Alexander von Humboldt's Approach to Science’, by painstakingly reconstructing the number of scientific instruments deployed by Humboldt, as well as the areas of knowledge covered by his massive collection of observations (which nowadays we would call data), Daniel Grana-Behrens shows how the Prussian scholar was able not only to move across different disciplines, but to connect apparently insignificant details to major global results. He examines how the scientist dealt with the monumental task of linking and combining seemingly unrelated information in a navigable manner. Grana-Behrens is convinced that the systematic way in which Humboldt collected and stored his data, seen as ‘the basis of empirical science to describe cross-connections’, strongly anticipated modern methods of research. Nonetheless, the difference between Humboldt and today's ‘Big Data’, as this author concludes, is that the latter not only describes but also predicts and seeks to manipulate these cross-connections. Yet, in both cases, as Grana-Behrens aptly reminds us, data cannot be regarded as being ‘raw knowledge’ as such. Data only makes sense in relation to a cultural context, and its transformation into actual ‘ideas’ involves a deliberate act of interpretation. In 2019, the celebration of Humboldt's 250th birthday marked a new peak in the output of Humboldt-themed writings and conferences. Roughly speaking, it marked the crystallisation of yet another ‘Humboldt’, one that prefigured today's post-colonial and globalised world, as well as modern eco-criticism. In other words, a Humboldt who was able to prophesy the shape of our contemporary times. This can be illustrated by a colloquium recently organised by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and funded by the German government, which presented Humboldt as ‘an international networker, a pioneer of climate research, a science communicator, and a marketing genius’ as well as ‘a political maverick’ who was ‘open to the viewpoints of other countries and peoples’.23 Yet the commemorative events also paved the way for deeper discussion of the real and imaginary Humboldt, thus a tension between sacralising and desacralising tendencies emerged. Such preoccupations are the subject of the final contribution to this Special Number, Nicolaas Rupke's article ‘Humboldt and Metabiography’, which can be read as a continuation of his ground-breaking monograph (2005), which showed how contingent upon time and place the reception of his works has been. In this text, Rupke shows how, in today's Germany, Alexander von Humboldt has served the purpose of conveying a desired idea of ‘Germanness’ in times when Germany, at the political and economic head of the European Union, strives for an identity that is more European than German, more continental than national, and decidedly multi-ethnic rather than exclusively ‘white’. Moreover, opening the door to future research topics, Rupke reflects on Humboldt's ‘non-German’ avatars and insists upon the need for reading him in the context of other cultural memories, beyond Germany. What picture of Humboldt emerges from this collection of articles? It is one that acknowledges the uniqueness of his thought, and yet refuses to see him as an exceptional individual, unconstrained by his context. He was indeed a harsh critic of colonialism, racism, and slavery in his lifetime, but it is also undeniable that Humboldt profited from the privileges of his nationality and his aristocratic background. There is, therefore, a need to read Humboldt in relation to the asymmetries of power – political and economic, but also cultural – which (still) exist between Europe and (Latin) America and between the so-called developed and developing countries (or the so-called Global North and South). And there is a need to acknowledge that these asymmetries, however unwittingly, often worked in Humboldt's favour, and opened countless doors for him.24 This gave him an advantage over other contemporary scientists when it came to establishing a new discourse on Nature and the Americas. Writing in French – the lingua franca of his age – from Paris, one of the of modern science, Humboldt and even the contributions of scientists in the of citations and his work, as has of the Humboldt could not but with the for the of while his ideas found reception among both and elites – often through and scientists he was with of both intellectual and Thus, in the of a universal scientist and he was not only by but by the means to follow by his vast and, that had by the patronage of both the Prussian and the which brought to his of final the idea that Humboldt's towards other prefigured an His was more than the of details and the It was also a specific way of to terms with difference – as by or Ottmar has that Humboldt's intellectual and was to between in at a first might only In doing Humboldt for an with the aim of his to between their own and that of This enabled him to qualities more still to common not only in past such as Europe and but also between such as and that, Humboldt went beyond and made of that a of an of An does not merely with within a what would be were or in and links for the of global or we are that Humboldt cannot provide with the for the different ecological, economic, and political raised in this volume, our contributions are based on the fact that his can to our globalised and age and, to the role of science in shaping today's Nonetheless, Nicolaas this an question – which is not free of – concerning our own reception of this German author and are we for an The to this volume to have found a and one – even he does not with the Humboldt they to enabled and by

Estimation of sex based on postcranial elements in European American and Latin American populations

Charles W. Bergquist (1942–2020)

Tracking the Cold War in Latin America William Michael Schmidli (bio) Hal Brands . Latin America's Cold War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010. 385 pp. Figures, notes and index. $29.95. Stephen G. Rabe . The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. xxxvii + 247 pp. Chronology, notes, recommendations for further reading and research, and index. $19.95. In an influential 2003 survey of recent scholarship on U.S.-Latin American relations, Max Paul Friedman asserted that, after decades of intellectual jostling with advocates of the orthodox or nationalist position, revisionist scholars had come to dominate the field. "It is now unusual" Friedman wrote, "to come across a work of history that strongly argues the merit of U.S. policies in the region or claims these have been designed principally to protect and promote freedom and democracy."1 Yet if revisionist scholarship still revolved around the "tragic idiom" first articulated by William Appleman Williams, Friedman continued, the field was nonetheless in the midst of a dynamic evolution. Reflecting broader trends in U.S. foreign relations scholarship, studies of U.S.-Latin American relations increasingly incorporated multinational (and multilingual) research and revealed a willingness to consider non-U.S. perspectives and an emphasis on Latin American agency. As a result, "their findings question some conventional wisdom about U.S. power," Friedman concluded, "including elements of the revisionist synthesis that depicted the United States as a regional hegemon, a 'core' nation to the Latin American 'periphery,' or—to take any one of the familiar images—a puppetmaster pulling the strings of puppet leaders, a central planet orbited by satellites, or the manipulator of client states."2 Nine years later, Hal Brands' Latin America's Cold War reveals just how far scholarship on U.S.-Latin American relations has moved in the direction anticipated by Friedman. The breadth of Brands' research is impressive: forty archives in thirteen countries—including ten Latin American nations. The scope of Latin America's Cold War is equally ambitious: Brands describes his book as the first "multiarchival, international" history to assess the entire Cold War era in Latin America. Both "multinational and multilayered," Latin America's [End Page 332] Cold War "deals seriously with all sides of the diplomatic and transnational struggles that occurred during this period," Brands writes, and it weaves diverse perspectives "from the highest echelons of superpower diplomacy to the everyday negotiation of social and political relationships—into an understanding of how the global, the regional, and the local interacted in shaping Latin America's Cold War" (p. 2). As a result, Latin America's Cold War offers a sharp corrective to revisionist studies that situate the projection of U.S. political, economic, and military power into Latin America at the heart of the conflict. The U.S. effort to prevent communist inroads in the hemisphere, Brands contends, was just one facet in a "series of overlapping conflicts" that buffeted Latin America during the Cold War era, including longstanding social, political, and economic struggles and the ideological impact of decolonization and the emergence of the Third World (p. 7). Far from exerting unchallenged hemispheric hegemony, he continues, U.S. Cold War policymakers struggled to contain the initiatives of their Soviet and Cuban counterparts in Latin America in a competition for influence marked by "substantial symmetry" (p. 262). Moreover, even U.S. success in shaping Latin American allies was decidedly limited; not only were the region's "shrewder statesmen as likely to manipulate as to be manipulated by the United States," Brands writes, but U.S. Cold War initiatives had a limited impact on anticommunist Latin American policymakers and military leaders, who needed "no coaching on the dangers of internal violence and upheaval" (pp. 257, 81). With its emphasis on Latin American agency and sensitivity to the many players and layers that shaped the Cold War in Latin America, Brands' book stands as a model of international history. But does Latin America's Cold War go too far in decentering the role of the United States? In striving for balance, nuance, and complexity, does Brands assign too much agency to Latin America relative to the enormous power...

A History of Latinx Immigrant Activism

This study investigated emotion transmission among peers during middle childhood. Participants included 202 children (111 males; race: 58% African American, 20% European American, 16% Mixed race, 1% Asian American, and 5% Other; ethnicity: 23% Latino(a) and 77% Not Latino(a); Mincome =$42,183, SDincome =$43,889; Mage =9.49; English-speaking; from urban and suburban areas of a mid-Atlantic state in the United States). Groups of four same-sex children interacted in round-robin dyads in 5-min tasks during 2015-2017. Emotions (happy, sad, angry, anxious, and neutral) were coded and represented as percentages of 30-s intervals. Analyses assessed whether children's emotion expression in one interval predicted change in partners' emotion expression in the next interval. Findings suggested: (a) escalation of positive and negative emotion [children's positive (negative) emotion predicts an increase in partners' positive (negative) emotion], and (b) de-escalation of positive and negative emotion (children's neutral emotion predicts a decrease in partners' positive or negative emotion). Importantly, de-escalation involved children's display of neutral emotion and not oppositely valenced emotion.

Something Beautiful and Powerful: Politics, Art, and Bread and Puppet Theater

Democratic Culture and Governance is a collection of essays by prominent Latin American social scientists who were brought together by UNESCO to discuss issues of democracy at a conference held in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1990. The organization of this conference in Latin America was a recognition of the significance of the region for the debate about the theory and practice of democratization and democratic governance. The contributors include Manuel A. Garretón, Francois Bourricaud, Torcuato Di Tella, Norbert Lechner, Michel Maffesoli, Helio Jaguaribe, Mario Dos Santos, Osvaldo Sunkel, Ariel Davrieux, Enrique Leff, Dante Caputo, Jorge Sabato, Raúl Bernal-Meza, and Luis Albala-Bertrand. The articles by these prominent Latin Americanists address three main topics: issues of transition processes, economic conditions and the dilemmas of democratic governance, and democratization in the context of international restructuring. The collection provides a sense of some of the most troubling issues affecting democracy in Latin America, especially how prominent social scientists view these problems. The articles, however, lack depth. They are short pieces that look like conference commentaries rather than carefully-thought-out scholarly articles. In this sense, the book is useful as a documentation of the relevant issues discussed at the Montevideo conference, but it cannot be viewed as a significant contribution to the academic literature on democratization processes in Latin America.Social Democracy in Latin America should be welcomed by students of comparative politics and social democracy. Outstanding social scientists from Latin America and Europe provide informative and insightful analyses of the relationship between European and Latin American social democracy. The essays can be divided into two categories. One set of articles focuses on the analysis of the social democratic experience in Europe and its relevance for Latin America; the second set examines the experiences, possibilities, and limitations of social democracy in Latin America. Contributors to the book are Tilman Evers, Kenneth Hermele, Paul Cammack, Manuel Alcántara Sáez, Pablo González Casanova, Marcelo Cavarozzi, Alex Fernández Jilberto, Luis Gómez Calcaño, Julio Cotler, Augustin Cueva, Jaime Tamayo, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Alain Touraine.The articles by Evers, Hermele, Cammack, and Alcántara Sáez address two main topics: the social democratic experience in Germany, Sweden, England, and Spain and the nature of the relationship between the European social democratic governments and parties and their Latin American counterparts. A major theme examined in these chapters is whether economic or political motivations accounted for the increasing interest of European social democrats in Latin America. The chapters concentrating on Latin America address more general themes, as in the chapter on the Left in South America by Cavarozzi, or concentrate on country or regional studies, including those of Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Central America, and Mexico.The last two chapters address questions about the challenges of social democracy in Latin America. Cardoso examines the tension between the role of the market and that of the state in the allocation of resources and the redistribution of income. In Latin America, under the present conditions of external debt and inflation, the trend has been to privatize. But while privatization in great proportion is, according to Cardoso, unacceptable, social democrats must carefully evaluate how Latin American economies can open up. The final essay, by Touraine, discusses social democracy as a political project, the various meanings of social democracy, and possible ways out of the present situation at a time when the room for positive solutions is narrow. Overall, the essays are rich in information and provide a critical outlook on the social democratic experiences in Europe and Latin America.