Managing editor's preface.

The fifteenth volume in the series of MACLAS: Latin American Essays presents a selection of fifteen papers given at the Twenty-second Annual Conference of the Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies held at American and Howard Universities in Washington D.C. on March 30-31, 2001. Eighty-eight members presented papers, organized into twenty-four panels. Ambassador Diego Abente Brun from the Permanent Mission of Paraguay to the Organization of American States, gave the keynote address, in which he traced the efforts of the OAS to foment democracy in Latin America.

The essays in Volume XV range over the Latin American world, touching upon literary figures from Mexico, Argentina, Honduras, Puerto Rico, and the United States; the history of colonialism in Peru and the nuclear politics of Argentina; the politics and economics of Mexico and Cuba; and some modern manifestations (Jamaican Rastafari, Brazalian Condomble) of the influence of African mythology. Several essays treat the relationship of Latin America with other areas: Aleida Rodriguez joins the two Venices of Puerto Rico and Italy; Leona Martin analyzes Ecuadorian travel accounts by nineteenth-century writers from England, Spain and the United States; Eufronio Carreno compares developing economies in Latin America and Asia. In the literature section Amelia Mondragon concentrates upon a single poem by Jose Emilio Pacheco, while Consuelo Hernandez deals with the entire corpus of Hondura's forgotten female poets. In the history section this volume contrasts concentration upon a specific document, Alvaro Kaempfer's analysis of Peru's Declaration of Independence with a long-term political development, David Sheinin's and Beatriz Figallo's study of nuclear politics in Cold-War Argentina. The essays in political science illustrate a similar contrast between development of grass roots democracy in a small community in Mexico (John Stolle-McAllister's prizewinning Street ...