Latin America comprises the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking areas of the Western Hemisphere--Mexico, most of Central and South America, and part of the West Indies. It is generally believed that humans first came to the Americas from Asia when a land connection existed between Siberia and Alaska; when they came is less certain, but archaeological findings indicate that humans may have been present as far back as 30,000 years ago. For thousands of years the Americas were sparsely inhabited by nomadic hunters and seed gatherers. The gradual development of cultivated plants, however, had made fairly high population densities possible in some regions by the end of the 15th century, when European colonization began. INDIAN CIVILIZATIONS Three highly developed Indian cultures have attracted modern attention. These cultures are the \TAztec\t of central Mexico; the \TMaya\t, who have lived since their origins until today in \TYucatan\t, southern \TMexico\t, and \TGuatemala\t; and the \LInca\ls of the Andean Highlands and coastal \TPeru\t. Mesoamerican Civilization The cultures of the Maya and the Aztecs are known as Middle American, or Mesoamerican, civilizations. Plants were being cultivated in \TMesoamerica\t at least as early as 7000 BC, although foraging and hunting were still the most important sources of food. By 3500 BC the population lived much of the year in a permanent location, and in the period 1500-900 BC a village agricultural economy was fully developed. The \TOlmec\t culture of the southern Veracruz gulf coast is thought to have been the center from which the main Mesoamerican cultural patterns diffused. The Maya culture, which dates from around 1200 BC, seems to have been of Olmec origin. Most of the Mayan monumental architecture, which includes pyramids and magnificently carved stelae and slabs, dates from the period AD 300-900. The Maya were responsible for great intellectual achievements, including a system of writing and a precise calendar based on a high level of mathematics. The impressive Mayan sites were all ceremonial centers; scholars have deduced that the priesthood stood at the top of each local hierarchy. The largest center, \TTikal\t, reached its peak around 600-800. The Mayan centers showed no continuous settlement and were not true cities. Mayan political structure, methods of food production, and tools were typical of less advanced societies. The exact extent of lands held by the Maya at their height is not known, but the Maya had constant contact, either cultural or commercial, with the central and coastal Mexican civilizations. Mayan civilization began to decline suddenly about 900; by 1000 much of the Yucatan was dominated by the \TToltec\t. Today, however, the Mayan population is still readily identifiable, unlike the peoples who made up the Aztec state or the Inca empire at the time of Spanish conquest--probably because the Mayan lands were of less interest to the Spaniards. In addition to the Olmec culture, the city of \TTeotihuacan\t, which flourished AD 350-650 in central Mexico, also influenced Mesoamerican civilization. The city, which became the center of a large empire, may have had a peak population of more than 150,000. Teotihuacan itself collapsed around 650. Its culture remained important, however, until its disintegration three centuries later, after a series of invasions by nomadic peoples from the north. One northern nomadic group was the Mexica, or Meshica, later known as the Aztec. In 1325 they settled on a small island in Lake Texcoco that became the second great urban center of Mesoamerica, \TTenochtitlan\t. A series of alliances gave the Aztecs essential control of the central valley of Mexico by the 1420s. In the following years, Tenochtitlan grew from a small city-state into the center of a great empire, extending as far as present-day \TEl Salvador\t and Guatemala. \TMontezuma II\t, elected in 1502, was the Aztec emperor-god who was in power when the Spanish, under Hernan \Tcortes\t, arrived in 1519. The Spanish found in the Aztec domains an advanced civilization with an active commerce and a vast accumulation of wealth. The military aristocrats, the priests, and the merchants held the most power, exerting authority over the freemen, who in turn ruled the landless bondsmen and slaves. For three centuries after the Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlan, the area of Aztec domination remained the focus for the Spanish occupation of America. Andean Civilizations When the Spanish arrived in the New World, the irrigated valleys of coastal Peru had supported agriculture for about 6,000 years. Their inhabitants had been producing finely woven cotton textiles since about 2500 BC. The most extensive of the pre-Inca coastal states, the \TChimu\t kingdom, had developed in these valleys; it was probably consolidated in the first half of the 14th century AD. The Incas, who were established in the valley of \TCuzco\t after about 1250, began more extensive conquests in the early 15th century. They conquered the Chimu in the 1460s. Their northward expansion was still in progress when the Spanish, under the leadership of Francisco \TPizarro\t, appeared in northern Peru and, in 1532, captured the Inca king \TAtahualpa\t, along with a fortune in gold. The Inca empire then extended along the spine of the \TAndes\t from the River Maule in south central \TChile\t to the northern border of present-day \TEcuador\t. At the top of the governmental hierarchy was an Inca ethnic elite in Cuzco, with a god-king at the pinnacle. By elaborate terracing and irrigation, the Inca cultivated the mountainsides; they also erected amazing mountain citadels, including \TMachu Picchu\t. COLONIAL ERA The occupation of present-day Latin America and much of the western United States by the Spanish and Portuguese began in 1492 with the landing of Christopher \TColumbus\t on \TSan Salvador Island\t in the Bahamas. He left a small group of settlers on the island of \THispaniola\t, and the following year he returned with a larger colonizing expedition. Columbus's first voyage was part of an effort by the Spanish kingdom of Castile to establish a sea route to the Indies in competition with the Portuguese. The Portuguese expedition of Pedro \TCabral\t landed at the easternmost bulge of \TBrazil\t in 1500, and trading posts were soon established. The entire hemisphere became known as America once the European cosmographers became aware that a "new world" indeed existed. They used the name on their maps in honor of the Italian navigator Amerigo \TVespucci\t, who mapped out the area in 1499-1501. The Treaty of \TTordesillas\t (1494) had divided the world into Spanish and Portuguese halves for purposes of colonization. Vespucci, in the service of the Portuguese, determined that any lands south of the Brazilian bulge would lie in the Spanish half. Therefore, further exploration to the south was carried out by navigators working for Spain, one of whom, Ferdinand \TMagellan\t, passed (1520) through the straits now bearing his name to reach the Pacific Ocean. Portuguese Colonization The Portuguese did not set up permanent colonies until 1532. Two permanent settlements, Sao Vicente (near present-day \TSao Paulo\t) and \TRecife\t, were established, and in 1549 the Portuguese crown sent a governor general to establish a capital at Sao Salvador, now \TSalvador\t, or Bahia. The Portuguese confined their settlements to the coastal area. Expeditions, known as bandeiras, however, helped establish Portugal's claim to lands lying far to the west of the line defined by the Treaty of Tordesillas. The bandeiras of the first half of the 17th century were generally forays in search of Indian slaves. Increasingly, however, these expeditions went in search of precious metals. At the end of the 17th century, after the discovery of gold fields in the present state of Minas Gerais, the first massive migration of Portuguese to America began. The capital of Brazil was moved (1763) from Bahia south to \TRio de Janeiro\t, reflecting the southward shift of population and economic activity. The first steps toward centralization of the Portuguese government along the coast were taken to expel French Huguenots who had established (1555) a colony at the site of present-day Rio de Janeiro. A more serious threat to Portugal's control over Brazil was mounted by the Dutch during the years 1580-1640, when Portugal was ruled by Spanish monarchs. The Dutch, in an effort to control the production of sugar as well as its processing and marketing in Europe, occupied the productive Portuguese sugar lands around Recife from 1630 to 1654. To the north of Brazil, the French, Dutch, and British all succeeded in establishing small colonies--\TFrench Guiana\t, Dutch Guiana (now \TSuriname\t), and British Guiana (now \TGuyana\t). Thus, in its formative years the Portuguese colonization in America faced external threats. Spain, on the other hand, was able to establish control without serious interruptions from other European powers. The Spanish in the Caribbean The first focus of the Spanish occupation of America was the second largest island of the Caribbean, \THispaniola\t, which was fairly densely populated by \TArawak\t tribes. The labor demands placed on them by the Spanish search for gold and their total lack of resistance to European diseases all but wiped out the Arawaks on Hispaniola. This rapid decline in the native labor source sent the Spaniards to \TCuba\t, \TJamaica\t, the \TBahama Islands\t, and \TPuerto Rico\t, where the native labor forces were also quickly depleted. In addition, the Spanish soon exhausted the meager gold deposits of Cuba, the largest of the Caribbean islands. The role of Hispaniola and its capital city of \TSanto Domingo\t in the conquest and colonization of continental Latin America was twofold. First, expeditions were organized and financed there. From Hispaniola and Cuba came most of the officers and men who made up the exploring expeditions to northern South America, \TPanama\t, Central America, Mexico, and much of what is today the United States. Second, the broad outline of the Spanish-American administrative structure was first established on Hispaniola. An early settler's revolt against Columbus in Santo Domingo made it clear that Spaniards in America had no intention of being salaried employees or tenant farmers. They wanted wealth and control. The principal administrative instrument established to satisfy their demands was an adaptation of the old Spanish institution of the \Tencomienda\t--in essence, the allotment of a number of Indians to each settler. As encomendero, the Spaniard was entitled to both personal services and tribute from Indians; in return he assumed responsibility for Christianizing them. The encomienda system assumed great importance on the mainland, where the high civilizations from Mexico to Peru were long accustomed to forced labor and the payment of tribute to local chiefs, who in turn made payments to the imperial hierarchy. Once the Spaniards had exhausted the native Arawak labor supply on the islands, they began to import African slaves. The large-scale importation of African slaves for field labor did not become economically feasible, however, until plantation agriculture developed sufficiently to produce a substantial export crop of sugar during the late 17th century. This happened first in the smaller islands of the lesser \TAntilles\t, settled by the British and French, and in Jamaica, invaded by the British in 1655. In the western third of Hispaniola (later \THaiti\t), the French gradually built the most productive plantation export economy in colonial America, based on black slave labor. In addition to the encomienda, a second important institution for the Spanish occupation of America was the villa, or city. The city was administered by a cabildo, or council, consisting first of elected and later of both elected and appointed members. The cabildo evolved into an important mechanism of local government. Although it declined in importance when Spain centralized control of its colonies, the cabildo, as a focus of local self-government, became a rallying point for the 19th-century nationalist movement. In the Caribbean, the city of Santo Domingo also served as the major regional administrative center. Its significance faded only when the human and mineral wealth of central Mexico and the Inca empire became evident. Spanish Expansion Conquests on the mainland brought the Spanish into close contact for the first time with America's high civilizations and their extraordinary mineral wealth. The conquest of Mexico began in 1519 with Cortes's capture of the Aztec king Montezuma II at Tenochtitlan. Pizarro's capture of the Inca emperor Atahualpa in 1532 led to the Inca ruler's execution and the Spanish occupation of Cuzco. In the next decades the Spaniards pushed into the areas of Chile, \TParaguay\t, and \TColombia\t. Expeditions also went north into what is now the United States. Relatively small bodies of Spanish \Tconquistadors\t were able to conquer the Incas, Aztecs, and other Indian peoples quickly, for a variety of reasons. Three factors, however, seem fundamental. First, the Europeans arrived with advanced technology and domesticated animals--both of which the indigenous population found awesome. The Indians were particularly terrified to see warriors mounted on horseback. Secondly, the Spaniards brought new diseases against which the native peoples had no immunity. Third, the Aztec and Inca political structures were highly stratified, with a small and virtually impermeable group at the top of each. It was relatively easy for the conquistadors to substitute themselves at the pinnacle. The Spanish crown spent the next 150 years establishing its own authority through an administrative structure with overlapping powers. This structure consisted of personal representatives such as viceroys and captains-general and a series of juntas ranging from the town cabildo through the \Laudiencia\ls (royal courts of justice). The original viceroyalties were those of \TNew Spain\t (1535) and Peru (1544), the former comprising all the territory north of Panama, the latter, all the territory from Panama south. Peru was later reduced by the creation of separate viceroyalties of \TNew Granada\t (1717) and La Plata (1776). In addition to the civil administration, Franciscan, Augustinian, and Dominican missionaries were responsible for the Christianizing process. Some missionaries attempted to pacify the Indians by congregating them in reducciones, or reservations, the most notable of which were maintained by the Jesuits in Paraguay. The Jesuits also established themselves as the educators of the sons of the provincial landed aristocrats and urban merchants. The Jesuits, however, were seen as a threat to the centralized Spanish state, which, particularly after 1750, preferred to work through the hierarchy of the secular clergy (those ordained for parish service). The crown sent its top administrators directly from Spain, and they frequently came into conflict with the criollos (\TCreoles\t, or Spaniards born in America). An economic depression in America, the lack of technology for effective deep-vein mining, the degeneration of the Habsburg line of Spanish rulers, and the increasing incursion of other European powers into the Caribbean trade lanes gave the regional Creole groups increasing opportunities to intrude themselves into high administrative positions. Bourbon Reforms When the Spanish Habsburg dynasty died out in 1700, it was replaced by that of the Bourbons, who hoped to set up a more efficient administrative structure. The impact on Spanish America was not fully felt until the 1760s, when \TCharles III\t sent Jose de Galvez (1720-87) to New Spain as visitador (visitor general). The aims of the Galvez reorganization were to replace all Creoles with new administrators, to increase revenues to Spain by reforming the tax structure and opening up intercolonial commerce, to protect frontiers in California and along the Gulf of Mexico from foreign incursions, and to expel the Jesuits on the grounds that they had effectively become a state within a state. A number of such changes, known as the Bourbon Reforms, were put into effect throughout Spanish America in the 1770s. They produced greater revenue in bullion for Spain by revitalizing the colonial administrative system, centralizing tax collection, increasing production in the silver mines, and granting royal monopolies, particularly of tobacco. In addition, expeditions against the Indians to the north opened up new areas for future expansion, and more effective defenses provided security against other European powers. The Bourbon Reforms, however, helped create many problems in Spanish America. For example, they drained many rural areas of the coins essential to local trade. Monopolies wiped out tobacco cultivation in all but a few designated centers. Local production of textiles and other manufactured goods was also hurt by increased imports from Spain. The exaction of surpluses and the loss of the better administrative positions hurt the prestige, and often the income, of many upper-class Creoles. This loss of long-held privileges was one factor leading such groups to urge a revolt against Spain when the occupation (1807-08) of the Iberian Peninsula by Napoleon I gave them their political opportunity. They could take encouragement from the example of Haiti, which had thrown off French rule to become (1804) the second independent nation (after the United States) in the Western Hemisphere. WARS FOR INDEPENDENCE The leaders of the independence movements in the areas of present-day \TArgentina\t, \TVenezuela\t, Colombia, and Chile were people of means--usually merchants or landowners. In Mexico, however, where a populist mass uprising took place, the two most important leaders were the parish priests Miguel \THidalgo y Costilla\t and Jose Maria \TMorelos y Pavon\t, both of whom felt they had been unjustly treated by the Spanish. Mexico Hidalgo led an Indian uprising in 1810 that sacked the city of Guanajuato before heading toward Mexico City under the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe. At the same time, Morelos conducted a brilliant guerrilla campaign in the south, calling for a new government and the redistribution of wealth. Both of these priests were eventually captured and executed, Hidalgo in 1811 and Morelos in 1815, but large property owners remained in mortal fear of the Mexican masses thereafter. The final declaration of independence in Mexico was made in 1821 by the Creole army officer Agustin de \TIturbide\t, who ruled briefly as Emperor Agustin I. He had fought against the popular insurgents, and his regime represented the interests of the traditional colonial Creole class, now unfettered by royal laws. It offered nothing to the mass of the population. South America The first armed efforts to defeat the Spanish in South America were organized in \TBuenos Aires\t, seat of the viceroyalty of La Plata, and in \TCaracas\t, seat of a captaincy general. Both were centers of a newly emerging export economy largely in the hands of Spaniards in Venezuela and Creoles in Buenos Aires. Both armies suffered initial defeat at the hands of the Spanish, but their leaders were not captured. In the south, the revolutionary forces reorganized under the Argentinian Jose de \TSan Martin\t, who, with the Chilean general Bernardo O'HIGGINS, led an attack from Mendoza across the Andes to the central valley of Chile. After the final defeat of the Spanish forces there in 1818, San Martin moved on to Peru by sea; the Spanish forces continued to hold the interior valleys. In the north, Simon \TBolivar\t had massed an army in the Venezuelan interior and crossed the Andes to defeat the surprised Spanish forces in the Colombian highlands of Boyaca in 1819. Bolivar returned to Venezuela, where he was chosen president of the new Republic of Gran Colombia (present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama) in 1821. With a large army, Bolivar proceeded south to Peru. After defeating the Spanish on a mountainside near Quito in 1822, Bolivar met with San Martin in Guayaquil. San Martin, who had formally declared Peru independent, then retired from public life, leaving the campaign to Bolivar and his principal lieutenant, Antonio Jose de \TSucre\t. The merchants and landowners of Lima considered Bolivar more a troublemaking foreigner than a liberator. They wanted their pre-1750 authority reestablished and resented the separate treatment of Upper Peru (\TBolivia\t). In 1826, Bolivar returned to his capital, \TBogota\t, but, with his ideal of a single continental state shattered by the strong regionalism that had emerged from a 15-year war, he was unable to keep the nation of Gran Colombia intact. NATIONAL PERIOD The independent nations of continental Latin America came into being within the large administrative units organized during Spanish and Portuguese rule. Spanish-American Regionalism During a relatively short period in the early 19th century, many areas threw off Spanish rule. In the viceroyalty of Peru, Chile became independent in 1818 and Peru in 1821. In the latter year, New Spain was transformed into Mexico and New Granada into Gran Colombia. Of the La Plata regions, Paraguay became independent in 1813, Argentina in 1816, Bolivia in 1825, and \TUruguay\t, after prolonged conflict with first Argentina and later Brazil, in 1828. The overwhelming problem for most of the former Spanish territories was to establish authority over the various regions within their boundaries. Mexico quickly lost control of Guatemala, El Salvador, \TCosta Rica\t, \THonduras\t, and \TNicaragua\t, which banded together in the \TCentral American Federation\t (1825-38) and then became separate states. The \TTexas Revolution\t and the \TMexican War\t (1846-48) resulted in Mexico ceding Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico to the United States. Like greater Mexico, Gran Colombia also disintegrated. The secession (1830) of Venezuela and Ecuador spelled the end of Bolivar's dream. Panama also became independent (1903) of Colombia during the controversy over construction of the \TPanama Canal\t. The frontier areas of the new nations were sparsely populated, and national boundaries remained so vague that international problems ensued. Between 1879 and 1884, Chile fought against both Peru and Bolivia in the so-called War of the Pacific (see \TPacific, War of the\t). The aftermath of this war was the \TTacna-Arica Dispute\t, which dragged on until 1929. Paraguay lost most of its male population in the devastating War of the Triple Alliance (1865-70; see \TTriple Alliance, War of the\t) against Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. It recovered, however, to defeat Bolivia in the \TChaco War\t of 1932-35. In some instances boundary disputes between Latin American countries still remain unresolved. The early-19th-century dream of huge independent nations was largely unfulfilled in Spanish America; regional disputes displaced it. Brazil Portuguese America, on the other hand, was able to maintain its territorial unity despite regional variations. In 1822, Brazil became an independent empire under \TPedro I\t. When the empire was overthrown in 1889, and a republican government established, the states organized regional political parties. Although each party expressed local economic interests, these interests did not diverge greatly from region to region. Brazil's economy had been developed on the basis of slave labor and was confined to a relatively narrow coastal strip. The economy of the entire coast depended upon agricultural exports. Thus, each region supported the free-trade policies of the dominant world power, Britain. No national political organization emerged until the 1930s. The Caribbean Spain maintained Cuba and Puerto Rico as colonies until a Cuban revolt culminated in the independence of the island after the \TSpanish-American War\t of 1898. Puerto Rico then came under control of the United States. Haiti, the first nation of Latin America to establish firm independence, was also the first independent black nation in the modern world. Internal political control, however, passed back and forth between mulatto and black factions. The \TDominican Republic\t emerged from Haitian domination in 1844 but was occupied by the Spanish again during the U.S. Civil War and later was almost annexed by the United States. The rest of the Caribbean remained in European political control and continued to be dominated by a plantation sugar economy. The older island colonies remained overwhelmingly black after the slave trade and slavery were abolished early in the 19th century. In the newer sugar colonies, such as Trinidad (see \TTrinidad and Tobago\t), the large-scale introduction of East Indian indentured labor in the late 19th century resulted in racially divided populations. Political and Socioeconomic Development During the first half century of independence, the Latin American nations suffered from the debilitating effects of the long independence struggle, a lack of recognized political legitimacy at the national level, and localized economic development. These factors, along with local control of militia units, resulted in a diffusion of political power. Traditional Creole governments found it difficult to maintain control without the support of a national military leader, or \Tcaudillo\t, often of \Tmestizo\t (mixed European and American Indian) origin. In Mexico, Antonio Lopez de \TSanta Anna\t emerged five times to provide the needed central authority; Venezuela's government called on Jose Antonio \TPaez\t to maintain control. Conservative political ideology was increasingly challenged by liberals, generally urban Creoles, who enjoyed an upsurge of influence in the mid-19th century. Liberal attacks helped to remove the Roman Catholic church from its traditional status in most Latin American nations by the end of the century. Countering liberal trends in the latter half of the century, some caudillos postponed elections until economic development could be consolidated. Mexico's Porfirio \TDiaz\t is a major example. Some former liberals, most notably Antonio \TGuzman Blanco\t in Venezuela, adopted a similar expediency. In the last quarter of the 19th century the center of population in South America moved from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast. The economic boom generated by agricultural and processed exports to Europe increased the demand for labor in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. A massive European migration from Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Germany resulted. The new immigrants settled in major cities, and by the time of World War I, a strong majority of the population of Buenos Aires was foreign born. At about the same time, many nations began to build up their professional military forces to help elected civilian governments maintain control of the state. The professionalized army offered an attractive career to the children of immigrants. The strengthened armies, with their monopoly of modern weaponry, and the improvement in national transportation systems helped make the rise of a new type of caudillo possible. The new officer class needed only a major crisis to assert its power and replace a political system that it considered inefficient. That crisis was offered by the worldwide Depression of the 1930s. In Brazil, Getulio \TVargas\t instituted a form of state corporatism, Estado Nova, which relied on military support. In Argentina a series of army coups brought the rise of Juan \TPeron\t, whose first regime (1946-55), despite its considerable popular support, was a thinly disguised military dictatorship. Such dictators sought the support of urban labor rather than the support of the Indian and mestizo peasantry. Before the 1950s, only in Mexico had the peasants played a crucial political role and won substantial redistribution of the land. With the victory of the Western democracies and the \TUSSR\t over the fascist regimes in Europe during World War II, many Latin American governments came under attack for persistent inequalities. The success of Fidel \TCastro\t's revolution (1959) in Cuba, which soon joined the Communist bloc of nations, increased the pressure for social and economic reform. At the same time, however, it intensified the fear of left-wing revolution, a fear shared by the powerful United States, which sent troops into the Dominican Republic in 1965, and apparently connived in the overthrow of the popularly elected Salvador \TAllende\t in Chile in 1973. During the 1980s, the United States supported anti-Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua and applied political and economic pressure that helped to bring about free elections, which the Marxist Sandinista regime lost. The United States also invaded \TGrenada\t to oust a Marxist government and dispatched military and economic aid to the government of El Salvador, in spite of continuing human rights abuses, to support its war against Marxist rebels. In 1989, U.S. forces invaded Panama and ousted Gen. Manuel \TNoriega\t, who was taken to the United States to face trial on drug trafficking charges. Contemporary Concerns The nations of Latin America have a strong sense of nationalism. Territorial disputes continue between Ecuador and Peru, and a claim to \TBelize\t by Guatemala has been submitted to a joint commission on border disputes. The principle of national sovereignty also lies behind the displeasure among many Latin American governments with the many interventions by the United States. The desire for economic development has dominated both domestic policies and international relations in Latin America since the 1940s. Governments of both the right and the left have been convinced that international corporations have exploited their resources and that international lending institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have infringed on their sovereignty by demanding economic reforms in exchange for loans. High debt levels continue to hamper development efforts and complicate relations with creditor nations. New governments in several nations are renewing efforts to cooperate with international agencies and privatization of major industries became a growing trend after a period of confrontation and widespread nationalizations. Increasing regional cooperation is another recent phenomenon in Latin America. Mexico and the United States have taken steps toward the creation of a North American free-trade area (with Canada), and President Bush has proposed the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative, a hemispheric free-trade zone that would link North, South, and Central America. Some regional customs unions are already in effect, including the Central American Common Market, the Andean Group, and CARICOM in the Caribbean. The end of the cold war and the evolution of other regional trading blocs such as the \TEuropean Community\t have provoked a substantial reassessment of national interest in many Latin American capitals, making new alignments possible. For example, Brazil and Argentina have agreed to end their race to develop nuclear arms, making possible the lifting of restrictions on the sale of computers and other technology to the region. Continuing problems including high population growth, unequal land distribution, and illegal drug production remain obstacles to the creation of capital-intensive, technologically sophisticated economies in many Latin American countries. The United States is providing technical assistance for the war against drug traffickers, and Peru has adopted measures designed to induce farmers to shift from cocaine to legal crops. Progress has been achieved in Columbia toward ending guerrilla insurgencies, and El Salvador and Guatemala are conducting negotiations to end years of civil war. A marked shift from military rule to democratically elected governments during the late 1980s may make possible a wide range of social and economic programs that will create sustainable growth in the region. John P. Harrison Bibliography: Bethell, Leslie, ed., The Cambridge History of Latin America, 5 vols. (1985-86); Bushnell, D., and Macaulay, N., The Emergence of Latin America in the Nineteenth Century (1987); Crow, J. A., The Epic of Latin America (1980); Falcoff, Mark, et al., The Crisis in Latin America (1984); Lehmann, D., Democracy and Development in Latin America: Economics, Politics, and Religion in the Postwar Period (1990); Lowenthal, A. F., Partners in Conflict: The United States and Latin America (1987); McAlister, Lyle N., Spain and Portugal in the World, 1492-1700 (1984); Rouquie, Alain, The Military and the State in Latin America, trans. by P. E. Sigmund (1987); Sanchez-Albornoz, Nicolas, The Population of Latin America: A History, trans. by W. A. R. Richardson (1974); Skidmore, Thomas E., and Smith, Peter H., Modern Latin America (1984); Wiarda, H., The Democratic Revolution in Latin America: History, Politics, and U.S. Policy (1990).