This volume is another valuable research tool in the growing list of bibliographies compiled and published by the Latin American Center at UCLA. Designed to supplement and update Ludwig Lauerhass’ Communism in Latin America. A Bibliography. The Post-War Years (1945-1960) (reviewed in BAHR, May 1963), it goes well beyond that pioneer effort both in the number of entries and in the range of its sources. It contains more than two thousand items in twenty-two languages. For the most part these materials are readily available in major university libraries.
Although it virtually ignores such likely sources as the World Marxist Review and Peking Review, this select bibliography is nonetheless excellent for the student of contemporary Latin American politics. For the historian, however, the uneven distribution of entries, chronologically and by country, leaves much to be desired. More than 85 percent of all items date from the 1960s. About half of these deal with Cuba and constitute perhaps the most complete political bibliography yet published on the Cuban revolution. In contrast, only 140 of the entries were published between 1900 and 1945. This reflects the tremendous upsurge of interest in Latin American Communism of the past decade, as well as the ephemeral and frequently clandestine nature of many communist publications in earlier years.
But even though the coverage was dictated in large part by the source materials, much more could have been done to redress the balance. Although there exist dozens of Latin American Communist party newspapers and theoretical journals, the bibliography lists only seven—four Cuban, two Chilean, and one Uruguayan. Moreover, there is no mention of such indispensable international communist sources as the Comintern’s International Press Correspondence or its successor under the Cominform, For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy! Students probing the history of the communist movement in Latin America before World War II have been given a few leads, but they will still have to assemble their own bibliography.
