III. Southern South America

Abstract

There is no egoism or special virtue in the fact that all of us on this program have numerous research possibilities to suggest. The plain truth is that the field of Latin American history bulges with first-class topics for historical writing. In this respect I am sure that we Latin Americanists are more fortunate than colleagues in some other historical fields where, it is my impression, there is a good deal of trampling of each other’s grapes. But historical research is not the contemplation of ideas, no matter how promising they may be, and in Latin America the investigator confronts notorious difficulties in obtaining orderly source materials. Therefore, before turning to some of the research possibilities, I should touch briefly on several underlying assumptions. The first is that the investigators working on these topics shall be qualified linguistically, technically, and intellectually to accomplish their work in Latin America and in the United States. Unhappily, this has not always been the case in this underdeveloped field. Second, for all of these topics I estimate that there exists a sufficiency of source materials, although in some cases that assumption has not been fully tested in the field. (This is the point at which field research in Latin America takes on a more colorful aspect than research, let’s say, in the British Museum.) Finally, an investigator engaged in research in Latin America must have, or quickly develop, a hunter’s ability to move rapidly yet sure-footedly after his quarry, tracking down private and even public archives which, at the outset of his adventure in research, may be completely unknown to him.