Now available in paperback are the valuable papers of the so-called Scottsdale Conference of 1963 sponsored by the SSRC-ACLS Joint Committee on Latin American Studies. Organized by John J. Johnson for the purpose of examining the process of change in Latin America, the conference produced this volume containing nine papers. Eight are by such well-known Latin Americanists as Richard Adams, Frank Bonilla, Gilbert Chase, Fred Ellison, Lyle McAlister, Kalman Silvert, Paul Strassmann, and Charles Wagley, and one by the British sociologist, R. P. Dore, on “Latin America and Japan Compared.”
Johnson’s introductory comments underline those established factors of diversity and tension, rural and urban, industrialization and nationalism. Five of the papers deal with frequently cited if not well understood elements on the contemporary political scene. Wagley contrasts “the peasant” of a Guatemalan Indian community with his counterpart from an Amazonas mestizo settlement and from this contrast projects a broad view of peasant life in all of Latin America. Adams reviews the complex varieties of rural laborers and underlines the thesis of change in the Latin American countryside but without suggesting the direction and purpose of this change. McAlister analyzes the military with particular attention to its relation to the modernization process and its social responsibility. Strassmann studies the businessman’s mentality and places a large share of the blame for Latin American stagnation on the security-oriented industrial community. Bonilla stresses the failure of the cities and the politicians to understand Latin America’s most rapidly growing social group, the urban worker, and emphasizes this element’s strategic role in any process of change.
Ellison turns his attention to the frequently neglected intellectuals and writers, who have gained both self-confidence and self-doubts since World War II, and attempts to explain this group’s increasingly leftist and extremist political orientation. Chase continues these themes in his study of the artist, by relating artistic trends to ideological attitudes and particularly to nationalism and by examining the implications of state patronage of the arts. Silvert sees the university student as a traditionalist rather than as a truly modernizing element, largely because of a privileged position as part of the elite. The final overview is given from the vantage point of an outsider in Dore’s provocative examination of the differences between Latin American and Japanese specialists. In contrasting the two areas, he suggests that cultural separatism and early industrialization may explain why Japan’s experience with political stability and nationalism has been so different from that of Latin America. The range of views and interpretations afforded in this uniquely well-focused series of papers places it near the top of required readings for any serious student of Latin America.
