The new Latin American politics strains the comprehension of both policy-maker and historian. In a region notorious for its instability this polities combines a bewildering variety of trends: powerful government action, economic nationalism, mass participation, and labor and agrar ian reform. One should not be surprised that students of the new politics have sought to interpret it by tracing the emergence of new social classes in the hope that these classes will explain the development of the new politics and facilitate both analysis of its present condition and project toward its future. This interpretation has gained influence. But influence does not always indicate real ability to explain. Sometimes it results from fashion or simplicity of application. Certainly the time has come to look carefully at social-class explanations and at the relationship between class and polities in twentieth-century Latin America.

It is best to begin with a summary statement of most commonly shared views about the emergence of new social classes. The process began in the 1870s and 1880s when strong governments overcame the dissensions which had divided the nations since Independence. This was the era of the Porfirian peace in Mexico, the victory of Buenos Aires over the Argentine provinces, and Guzmán Blanco’s domination in Venezuela. The stability produced by such governments as these coincided with a renewed foreign economic interest in Latin America. Industrialized Europe and the United States needed raw materials—traditional Latin American exports like sugar, coffee, and hides, as well as new ones such as base metals, meat, wheat, and later petroleum. To produce these materials substantial foreign capital was invested, frequently tied to direct foreign ownership. To move these materials to the ports railroads were built, again under foreign ownership. In the resultant prosperity, cities were modernized and grew rapidly, attracting immigration to southern South America and internal migration everywhere.

In the new cities, which now had modern public utilities, electricity, and tramways, new industry developed, partly the processing of exports and partly the manufacture of consumer goods. A new urban labor class formed and also a new middle class, made up of the new industrialists, the professionals who serviced the new activities, public employees, university professors, and a variety of small businessmen. Most analysts agree that these trends occurred in this manner, but they disagree on the makeup of the new middle class and the extent of its cohesion. Some analysts prefer to use other terminology, but in essence they concede that this new middle class had enough in common to act in its own interest, as did the new urban working class.

There is little disagreement in defining the interest of the middle and working classes. Both wanted more education and more industrialization. Both saw the benefits of economic nationalism; both wanted more public building and infrastructure; and both recognized that control of government was the way to accomplish these aims. To secure the political support of labor in the increasingly important elections, the middle class sponsored pension, wage, and union legislation.

The process which began in the 1870s and 1880s produced, in the view of this interpretation, its first political victories for the new social classes around World War I. The process was speeded by both world wars and by the economic nationalism and industrialization resulting from the Great Depression. It has rapidly accelerated in the years of tremendous urban growth since World War II.1

At this point students of class evolution begin to disagree. One group of analysts in Latin America and the United States, regarding labor as the key class, expect the process to move out into the country-side among rural workers, peasants, and Indians. Because the interests of middle and working groups are increasingly inimical, however, this group predicts a resulting series of lower-class revolutions. A second group expects the lower classes to bring about a new alliance between themselves and the middle class. A third group, which sees the middle class as the determinants, recognizes the possibility that the process has created a Frankenstein’s monster for this class. They believe, however, that the middle class can continue to guide the nations toward progressive maturity, if it remains pragmatic, gives labor its decent due, and has a little luck and outside assistance—for example, from the Alliance for Progress.2

This brief summary should make clear the attractions of this middle- and working-class analysis of twentieth-century Latin American politics. Such an analysis combines economic, social, political, and even intellectual and ideological history to explain what has happened and to suggest several versions of what is going to happen in the future. Nevertheless, this analysis presents problems. To begin with, it applies to Latin America an explanation of what happened in nineteenth-century Europe under the effects of industrialization. Are the two eases actually parallel?3

Several circumstances suggest that they may not be. For one thing, in the non-European world outside of Latin America the politics of economic nationalism and powerful government are evident, and it is doubtful that they can be explained on the basis of middle classworking class coalitions. For another thing, ever since World War II, Latin American economists have been denying the similarity of European and Latin American industrialization. Historical pasts, social structures, and resources were different; also industry developed first elsewhere. For these reasons, they argue, Latin America has been peripheral to world industrial centers, producing raw materials for these centers.4 As a result, Latin America has never been able to develop the capital to finance a fully industrial economy. Urbanization has not resulted from industrial growth, and reduced markets have limited consumer goods industries. Even though the process of tying Latin America to the industrial world has gone on for eighty years, its results are far different from what happened in Europe.

These objections are reinforced by the difficulties that present-day politics pose for class analysis. Castro’s revolution was expected to produce lower-class revolutions elsewhere by imitation, but it has not done so. Belief in an influential, class-conscious, industrial work force is deflated when statistics put industrial labor at no more than ten or fifteen percent of the population, even in more advanced countries. Factory workers are a still smaller part. Expectations of proletarian solidarity are further weakened by anthropological studies which indicate that the members of the new urban lower class, rather than being a political tinder box, have rural values of dependence and a little political awareness.5

Analysts who explain Latin American politics in terms of the middle classes have equally serious difficulties in accounting for what is going on. To be sure, the middle classes are growing. Using data from around 1950—the figures should be higher today—John P. Gillin estimated that “for Latin America as a whole, the middle strata constitute just under 20 percent of the national society (exclusive of Indians).”6 Argentina usually is considered to have the largest middle class, somewhere from 35 to 40 percent of the population. But it must be remembered that these are only estimates based on types of employment by which sociologists define “middle class.” The statistics do not prove that the people so employed recognize common class interests or operate together in politics.7 Also analysts are embarrassed by the variety of political patterns in those countries where the middle class is presumed to be dominant, from Chilean Christian Democracy, which combines religion with social welfare concepts, to military governments in Brazil, Peru, and Argentina.

One may explain these military governments on the grounds that the new middle class has become frightened at the danger of a lower-class takeover and turned for protection to the military, whose social origins are now middle class. But the difficulties which the military governments are facing suggest that the middle classes are far from united in support or opposition. Recently observers have gone so far as to urge members of the Latin American middle class to settle down and work together.8 In short, neither the cohesion within the middle and lower classes nor the alliance between these two classes has developed in the manner predicted. One must conclude that this kind of class analysis does not satisfactorily explain present Latin American politics.

If that is the case today, when the process is supposedly well advanced, it is also questionable that the new classes had as much political influence earlier in the century as many have assumed. Examination of a sample case will strengthen this conclusion. The election of José Batlle y Ordóñez in 1911 to a second term as president of Uruguay has been considered the first clearcut example in Latin America of the political domination of the new classes. What happened in Uruguay did not necessarily determine the course of events elsewhere. But if it is possible to explain what happened in Uruguay by a different kind of analysis, then obviously this kind of analysis deserves to be tested in other Latin American countries.

In 1903, Batlle had been narrowly elected president of Uruguay by the legislature. His victory over the opposition Nationalists in the Civil War of 1904 removed the greatest threat which the Colorado Party had faced since assuming power in 1865 and made him the Colorado hero. Batlle quickly solidified his control with general elections. In these his loyal lieutenants ran all the interior departments, and voting was public, so that only those who were not afraid of the consequences took part. The result was a Colorado landslide, over 60 percent of the 45,000 votes cast, and overwhelming Colorado majorities in the legislature. Battle could practice the one-party government which he preached. Although the constitution denied a president immediate réélection, he would be able to pick his successor.9

With the political situation secure and both party and government in safe hands, Battle could now introduce long-planned reforms: the end of the death penalty, anti-church divorce legislation, police neutrality in strikes, an eight-hour day, and measures to control the operations of foreign enterprises. These daring reforms antagonized what were then called the conservative classes—the term middle classes was mfrequently used—banking, commercial, and industrial circles, both Uruguayan and foreign, whose economic importance everyone recognized. When it came time to choose a successor, Battle avoided anyone who could be expected to continue his program of innovations. Instead he selected a non-politician, Claudio Williman, his Minister of Government and ex-rector of the university. Williman had stood by Battle in the War of 1904 and shared his one-party government views. But as attorney for the British railroads, Williman was highly acceptable to the conservative classes, and not entirely sympathetic with Battle’s innovating views. In 1907, to the relief of the conservative classes and the Nationalists, Battle left for Europe, where he could avoid conflicts with the new president. He was careful, however, to leave the Colorado Party organization in the hands of his admirers, who were already planning to bring him back in 1911 for an unprecedented second term.

The years of stable peace after 1904 were prosperous. Livestock and foreign trade reached new heights; annual budget surpluses made governing easy. Williman provided what everyone wanted public works, greatly expanded primary education, and improved administration. In this way he showed himself as sympathetic to new ideas as most educated Uruguayans of his day. Unlike Battle, however Williman was careful not to push so far as to arouse strong opposition.

In particular, Williman distrusted Uruguay’s anarchist-led labor unions. His police harassed radicals, and his government broke the railroad strike of 1908, the major labor disturbance of his administration. This anti-union policy greatly disturbed the editor of Battle's own newspaper El Día, Domingo Arena, who had instructions to support Williman in everything. Battle, then in Europe, was under no illusions about what would happen if the Batllistas broke with Williman to support labor. As he reminded Arena: “Ideas in favor of protection of the working classes are far from generalized among us. Besides, the power of the president is almost insuperable.” Later he repeated this advice: “Except for you, me, and a few others, nobody in the country gets heated up over these questions.”10

Just as Batlle knew that it would be fantastic to attempt a return to power as a labor candidate, so also he realized that his economic nationalism was unpopular with business. In a letter to his confidants, he urged the necessity of stopping the gold outflow caused by the operations of foreign companies. “It is necessary to react against the ideas reigning in Montevideo,” he said. “The thinking and calculating elements of our city, those who make public opinion in money matters . . . have been the businessmen, the representatives of European houses, whose products they sell. The newspapers have depended on them, . . . and the lawyers to whom they give their business have also lived off them.”11

When the presidential campaign began in 1910, Battle’s chances were excellent. His organization remained in control of the Colorado Party, and Williman gave no indication of wanting to challenge it and so complicate his government’s problems. Though the Nationalists bitterly opposed Battle’s return, they were divided between revolution and electoral opposition. The conservative classes did not relish Battle’s return. But even more they feared a Nationalist revolution against his return, realizing that revolution might be disastrous for the nation’s prosperity. They formed a Peace League for political improvement through “peaceful and orderly evolution.”12 Subscription lists were available for signing at the Stock Exchange, Chamber of Commerce, Manufacturers Association, the Rural Association, and the Center of Retail Storekeepers. These groups, the prototypes of modern interest groups, warned potential Nationalist revolutionaries not to count on any assistance from them.

Revolution presented the only threat to Battle’s candidacy, for even an unsuccessful uprising might produce a movement to substitute for Batlle a candidate who could bring peace. To counteract this threat, the Colorado leaders mounted a campaign throughout the country which would demonstrate that their candidate was too strong to be stopped by a revolution. They called for “a great movement of opinion in which members of all parties and all social classes would participate.” Colorado youth responded: “Batlle synthesizes our program .. . . Batlle is good and he is strong. Therefore he is necessary.”13 The campaign leaders, however, were unable to form a businessmen’s committee for their candidate ; business was antirevolution, not pro-Batlle.

A few individuals called on class-conscious labor to support Batlle, but the anarchist union leaders refused. They met and passed a resolution: “The workers will not vote.. . . We do not combat a specific person or government; we shall always be against the government, whatever its political color.. . .”14 Baffle’s campaign leaders made no effort to enlist labor support. They had the votes already; their need was to calm the opposition, rather than arousing fears of radicalism. Instead, they worked hard to present the image of a new and mature Batlle, who would return from Europe ready to conciliate the Nationalists and cease dividing Uruguay with startling projects. During Battle's first administration José Enrique Rodó, the country’s most famous essayist, had opposed the president’s war and religious policies. Now, however, Rodó was enlisted in the “mature” Batlle campaign, and he told readers of the official campaign newspaper that “absence and time have interposed their regenerative influence.”15

Meanwhile Batlle was forced to remain in Europe because Williman feared that his return would expose Williman’s own political weakness. In absentia Batlle generally cooperated with the campaign of “maturity,” although he distrusted the Peace League and privately restated his one-party government position. Thus he allowed a correspondent from the conservative newspaper El Siglo to come away from an interview saying that Batlle recognized no urgent agrarian problem in Uruguay or a labor problem as serious as that in Europe. His own program was skilfully phrased. If read carefully it indicated that he planned in 1911 to begin where he had left off in 1907. But it was also general enough to seem conciliatory to those who wanted no more innovations.16

The increasing certainty of Battle’s victory goaded the Nationalist revolutionary wing into action. In October 1910, they grasped at promises of support from dissident army and Colorado factions and revolted. But Colorado supporters stood firm; and moderate Nationalists refused to join in. Unable to assemble a real army, the revolutionaries were soon asking Williman for peace. The abortive uprising assured Battle’s election, for it demonstrated the solid support which the Colorado party enjoyed in the government and army and among its own members. Likewise it proved that there was no widespread support for revolution—thanks in part to the mature” Batlle campaign.

The moderate Nationalists who had refused to revolt recognized that their party now was so badly divided that it would make a dismal electoral showing. They set out to reunite the party by abstaining in the elections, along with the recent revolutionaries. Nationalist abstention created a small crisis. To allow non-Colorados a voice in the legislature, Williman proposed that eleven distinguished members of the conservative classes be given legislative seats. These men met and by a majority vote declined the offer, for they were unwilling to be window dressing for Batlle. After all this maneuvering the election itself was an anticlimax. Even without an opposition to excite interest, the Colorados turned out a bigger vote than they had in 1905. In March 1911, Battle was unanimously elected by the legislature to a second term as president of the Republic.

The new president quickly shattered the “mature” image which his campaigners had fabricated. He restated his belief in one-party government and his abhorrence for coalition politics. He pushed through a group of reforms—labor and old age pension projects, state-owned banking and business enterprises, and the economic development of the interior. And he tried to lay the basis for a progressive land tax. Battle’s central problem was how to maintain the continuity of this program in the absence of strong class support for it. His solution was ingenious—a plural executive, which would prevent a strong president from overthrowing the system. Unfortunately the very strangeness of the plural executive provided an issue which all of Batlle’s opponents could use to attack him. Since Batlle’s time controversy over this issue has acted both as a unifying and dividing factor in Uruguay.

Batlle’s second election was very different from the clearcut victory of a middle class-lower class coalition conforming to the model offered by the class analysts. Classes played a part in the political process, so that their interests could not be neglected by those involved in the election or by later researchers, but in this case political control worked on class. Battle owed his election to effective organization all over the nation by his subordinates, to the support of Colorados who considered him their hero, and to a skillful political campaign.

Against their will, the conservative classes were obliged by the situation facing them to accept Batlle. Class conscious labor was a negligible, even a negative factor in his victory. Batlle returned to power as Colorado leader, not as representative of a class coalition. His greatest single stroke in assuring his reelection was his enormously shrewd choice of Williman as his successor. Williman was strong enough to stand up to the opposition, yet loyal to his own party’s leader.

If Batlle’s second election cannot be described as a new class victory without distorting events, can other so-called first victories of the new classes—the elections of Hipólito Yrigoyen and Arturo Alessandri—be so explained?17 The type of analysis used in this article suggests even more general questions than this. We have argued that the cohesion and coalitions postulated by the class-analysis model are not now in operation. Examination of a crucial episode of the past, Batlle’s second election, suggests that they were not then in operation. The difficulty in squaring the model with events calls for reconsideration of the relationships between politics and class in all Latin America during the twentieth century.

Analysts have already begun this reconsideration. They realize that middle class-lower class coalitions are not functioning as expected, and they are disappointed at the slow, irregular rise of living standards in Latin America. For these frustrations they blame the middle class, accusing it of favoring the aristocracy and of neglecting reform. According to these analysts, the middle class came to power with the support of the lower class, only to desert their allies, adopt upper class values, and resist any significant change. These critics emphasize the failure of the new politics, but cannot seem to explain its successes. Beyond that, their analysis closely approaches the reformist middle-class views which they criticize, for they are satisfied with the reformist position that the new politics emerged as a response to new classes and, like the reformists, they postulate only one pattern of middle-class political action.18

This points up one evident need. Writers are addicted to cautious qualifying phrases such as “the middle classes are amorphous” or “we are talking about middle strata not a middle class.” Very little has been done, though, to distinguish the component groups of the middle class and the extent to which these component groups share or dispute political values. For example, in the United States bank employees are considered members of the middle class and difficult to unionize, while in Latin America they are among the most militant unionists. To the extent that their employment determines their polities they are at odds with other middle-class groups. We must define interest groups and establish the importance of membership in such groups for determining political values. Until this is done the only thing that we can confidently say about the Latin American middle class is who does not belong to it.

In addition, we need to distinguish between the polemical and interpretive value of analyzing Latin American polities as a struggle between traditional and new classes. Landowners are generally regarded as traditionalists, but they were directly involved in the new economics of raw material exports which began in the late nineteenth century. Rural associations sprang up before unions; modern land-owners have shown themselves quite able to operate as an interest group.19 Enthusiasm for economic development is probably as great today among the upper classes as in other sectors of society.

The ties between social origins and ideology are not foreordained. Even if we can demonstrate that Latin American military officers have middle-class backgrounds or that political leaders belong overwhelmingly to the upper and middle classes, we have not proved an invariable connection. The social origins of practicing Latin American politicians in any party are not very different; their programs and appeals are. If one compared members of Castro’s and Batista’s governments as to social background, one would probably be surprised at the sharply different ideological positions of the two. Fidel Castro himself, whatever his personal history, is the lawyer son of a land-owner.

Finally, one of the central insights of those who have analyzed peasant revolutions elsewhere is the political unawareness of the lower class. In Latin America, however, political unawareness, both urban and rural, appears further up in the social scale. An expanding bureaucracy is frequently cited as a response to middle-class growth. But even more it is the means of obtaining support from those who are otherwise politically indifferent.

These points can be put as three propositions. First, political unawareness, recognized as widespread among the lower classes, actually extends upward into what is usually considered the middle class. Second, primary identification with a limited component group, rather than with a broad class, makes for intense concern only with political issues which have direct personal effect. Third, ideological values are not tightly related to class.

These propositions argue for a very different relationship between politics and class than that posited by any of the contending schools of class analysis. Objections to class analysis of politics are scarcely new. Historians have always been skeptical of such analysis because they recognize that politics—the way men struggle to achieve and maintain power and use government to solve community problems— necessarily influences human life. Especially in twentieth-century Latin America the social structure is characterized by political unawareness, narrow concerns, and ideological values not tightly tied to class. Because of the problems presented by the great changes in this area, powerful government has grown ahead of politically conscious new classes.

This interpretation assigns vital importance to the means of creating political support, which might be taken largely for granted if one could assume strong cohesive classes. In Latin America’s recent history political organization has probably been the single most underestimated causal factor. The growth of railroads and then roads, the increasing integration of populations, rising literacy, radio, the funds at the disposition of governments, and political parties facing widespread political unawareness—all these factors have made political organization and the political use of government tremendously important in building support and channeling opinions. The political clubs which one sees even in the smallest places, the continuing campaigning, even after elections, are ways of building support; so are the political use of government, patronage, and the support of unions as an implement of political leaders.

Leadership has always been difficult for class analysis to categorize. Those who stress such analysis still tend to set up models in which leaders fundamentally respond to class interests. While these observers recognize the leader’s visibility, they limit his action to bringing out latent class tendencies or, at most, to organizing class coalitions. In practice, however, leadership is very different. Even in the Communist world, where Marxism was not prepared for it, men such as Lenin, Stalin, and Mao created systems and exercised enormous influence. One wing of the Latin American revolutionary left has even reversed this process and now seeks new Castros.20 All over twentieth-century Latin America leaders have come to power in as different ways as military coups, elections, and revolutions and have moved their countries in new directions. Without Batlle and the Uruguayan political tradition it is impossible to explain why Uruguay, whose social structure and economic activities are similar to those of Argentina, has had such a different history. Those who try to explain why Cuba went Communist may consider the Cuban social structure and the history of Cuban-American relations, but Castro is still the crucial element in any explanation.

Political traditions like those of Uruguay and Colombia, which permit new political doctrines to rationalize deep and old emotions, are unusual in Latin America. It is more common, however, to find the conscious building of traditions, the use of modern myths to break through political unawareness and to force all classes to recognize that an irreversible “political great change” has occurred. These devices are an important part of the political process. The effective use of the Epic Revolution in Mexico, Perón’s apotheosis of the 18th of October, Castro’s 26th of July movement, all are modern myths designed to produce acceptance and enthusiasm.

Great changes which affect the whole people, such as inflation, internal migration, and urbanization, are striking in contemporary Latin America. Although they create problems, some of these suggest their own solutions. Thus huge urban agglomerations forcefully demonstrate the inadequacy of municipal services and schools. Most perceived problems, for example, inflation or land tenure, inspire a variety of proposed solutions; and both the perception of problems and their solutions are deeply influenced by world conditions and by ideologies developed abroad.21

It is tempting to believe that each class has “appropriate” responses to problems and that the adoption of a particular solution always indicates the political domination of a particular class or class cluster—for example, that expropriation of foreign utilities is an infallible sign of middle-class political domination. In this instance, however, expropriation is generally applauded, being by now part of what Voltaire called the Spirit of the Age. To be sure, some interest groups maintain distinctive positions. Thus landowners resist programs which would raise agricultural production by land redistribution, although they respond very differently to programs which would accomplish this through incentives to their own group. At the other extreme, programs and ideas not previously in vogue or identified with specific interest groups become possible, reasonable, or even inevitable when sponsored by someone in a position to carry them through. Above all, when ideology combines an appealing solution to a problem with the justification for achieving or extending political power, it becomes a potent force.

To sum up, this article argues for an approach which recognizes the limits of class influences and the importance of political influences in Latin America’s recent past. Without pretending to be exhaustive or to engage in model-making, it has found such influences in organization, government operations, leadership, modern myths, and ideology. More broadly, the article argues that political history is a process in which class plays a part, rather than the mirror reflection of economic and social history. Such an approach is less simple than the relegating of political history to its usual superficial role. With all its complexities, however, this interpretation of politics has one great recommendation. It does not have to be forced upon historical events. Instead it emerges logically from Latin America’s recent past.

1

Research interest in Latin America’s middle classes was spurred by Materiales para el estudio de la clase media en la América Latina, studies—varying from empirical to impressionistic—by 27 contributors on all the Latin American nations except Peru and Guatemala, published in six mimeographed volumes by the Pan American Union, Oficina de Ciencias Sociales (Washington, 1950-1951) under the editorship of Theo R. Crevenna. The impact of John J. Johnson’s important Political Change in Latin America: The Emergence of the Middle Sectors (Stanford, 1958), can be seen by its four reprints from 1961 to 1965. The most general study of labor, Robert J. Alexander, Organized Labor in Latin America (New York, 1965), accepts the middle class-working class coalition concept. An unambiguous Marxist explanation is Julio César Jobet, Ensayo crítico del desarrollo económico-social de Chile (Santiago de Chile, 1955). The sociological literature is surveyed by Sugiyama Iutaka, “Social Stratification Research in Latin America,” Latin American Research Review, I (Fall 1965), 7-34.

2

See Irving Louis Horowitz, Revolution in Brazil: Politics and Society in a Developing Nation (New York, 1964), 223; Toreuato S. Di Tella, El sistema político argentino y la clase obrera (Buenos Aires, 1964), 118-121; and Richard N. Adams, “Social Change in Guatemala and U. S. Policy” in Richard N. Adams et al., Social Change in Latin America Today: Its Implications for United States Policy (New York, 1960), 276.

3

Difficulties with European explanations applied outside Europe in turn raise questions about how well these explanations describe what happened in Europe. Eor example, see W. F. Wertheim, “Religion, Bureaucracy, and Economic Growth,” in Transactions of the Fifth World Congress of Sociology, III, 85.

4

Raúl Prebisch’s by now classic statement of the argument that the terms of trade favor the center over the periphery appeared in United Nations, Department of Economic Affairs, The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems (New York, 1950), and has occasioned an active debate among economists. For current thinking by Latin American economists on this problem see United Nations, Economic Commission for Latin America, The Economic Development of Latin America in the Post War Period (New York, 1964). The inapplicability of European models to explaining Latin American development is one of the unifying themes in the two symposia edited by Claudio Véliz, Obstacles to Change in Latin America (London, 1965) and The Politics of Conformity in Latin America (London, 1967).

5

Frank Bonilla, “The Industrial Worker,” in John J. Johnson (ed.), Continuity and Change in Latin America (Stanford, 1964), 186-205.

6

John P. Gillin, “Some Signposts for Policy,” in Richard N. Adams et al., Social Change, 25.

7

The uncertainties of the quantitative analysis of Latin American social structure are evident in Gino Germani, Política y sociedad en una época de transición: de la sociedad tradicional a la sociedad de masas (Buenos Aires, 1965), 163-169. Another uncertainty in quantitative analysis is that the preferred sociological model greatly alters the percentage estimate of classes. For Uruguay, see Carlos Rama, Las clases sociales en el Uruguay; estructura-morfología (Montevideo, 1960), 105-108.

8

For example, Charles Wagley ends “The Dilemma of the Latin American Middle Classes,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, XXVII (May, 1964) 10: “The Latin American middle class must actively promote a social and economic revolution in its own image or face a left-wing revolution that may well liquidate it. Cuba has done just this in the last three years. The middle class can no longer depend upon military police force to bring about temporary stability.”

9

Battle’s first presidency is described in Milton I. Vaneer José Batlle „ Ordóñez of Uruguay: The Creator of His Times, 1902-1907 (Cambridge, 1963).

10

Batlle to Domingo Arena, April 17 and May 11, 1908, Batlle Archive, Batlle Pacheco family, Montevideo.

11

Batlle to Domingo Arena and Pedro Manini Ríos, January 29, 1908, Batlle Archive.

12

“La Liga de la Paz,” El Siglo, April 21, 1910.

13

“La cuestión presidencial,” El Día, May 24, 1910; Héctor Miranda, “Batlle,” El Día, May 27, 1910.

14

Carlos M. Rama, “Batlle y el movimiento obrero y social,” in Jorge Batlle (ed.) Batlle, su obra y su vida (Montevideo, 1956), 46.

15

“De José Enrique Rodó,” El País, June 1, 1910.

16

“Batlle y sus obras,” El Siglo, July 31, 1910; “La respuesta del Sr. Batlle a la Convención Colorada,” El Día, September 28, 1910.

17

The beginnings of a reappraisal of Yrigoyen’s election can be seen in Ezequiel Gallo (H.) and Silvia Sigal, “La formación de los partidos políticos contemporáneos: La U.C.R. (1890-191,6),” in Torcuato S. Di Telia et al., Argentina, sociedad de masas (Buenos Aires, 1965), 124-176.

18

See Claudio Véliz (ed.), Obstacles to Change in Latin America (London, 1965), 2; Juan José Sebrelli, Buenos Aires, vida cotidiana y alienación (Buenos Aires, 1965); and Rex Hopper, “Research on Latin America in Sociology,” in Charles Wagley (ed.), Social Science Research on Latin America; Report and Papers (New York, 1964).

19

Warren Dean has emphasized the adaptive ability of São Paulo coffee growers in “The Planter as Entrepreneur: The Case of São Paulo,” HAHR, XLVI (May 1966), 138-152.

20

James O’Connor, “Stalemate in Latin America,” Studies on the Left, IV (Fall 1964), 26.

21

See Albert O. Hirschman, Journeys Toward Progress: Studies of Economic Policy-Making in Latin America (New York, 1965), 219.

Author notes

*

The author is Associate Professor of History at Brandeis University. This article is a revised version of a paper read December 29, 1966 at the American Historical Association meeting in New York.