One of the most striking features of the study of colonial urbanism and urbanization in Spanish America is the extent to which emphasis has been placed upon the sixteenth-century phase of urban foundations. In many recent works authors have presented details of the formal and functional characteristics of these primary foundations, as well as of the several interrelated processes of Indian resettlement, population change, and the spread of European culture. Though it has been estimated that more than 300 towns were founded in Spanish America between 1492 and 1600, relatively little attention has yet been paid to the changing spatial system of urban centres during the 300 years or more of colonial rule.

Even at first glance, one can see remarkable similarities in the topography, geography and patterns of land use of the west coast republics of South America and of the states of Australia which stretch along that continent's eastern and southeastern shores. Not only are the latitudinal parameters comparable, but similarities in climate and patterns of agriculture abound. The resemblances are particularly defined as we consider the geographical extravagance of Chile and compare it alone to the eastern edge of Australia.

In August 1933 a bitter revolutionary struggle reached its climax in Havana. Pressure from the United States during mediations conducted by American Ambassador Sumner Welles, a general strike and a military coup combined to topple the government of Gerardo Machado. National tensions made acute during the machadato and contradictions generated in the anti-Machado struggle converged in the newly constituted administration of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes.

The meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the American Republics in Rio de Janeiro in 1942 was both the end of the series of inter-American meetings called in order to formulate an ‘American attitude’ toward the events in Europe and also the formalization of the war-time co-operation which followed. But, at another level, it was a clash of the foreign policies of Brazil, Chile, Argentina and the United States which both typified and shaped inter- American relations well into the 1950s. This discussion, which is largely based on United States goveernment documents, examines the inter-meshings of these foreign policies at the Rio meeting and the immediate aftermath of that conference.

Lying at the heart of the problem in analyzing Colombian violence is the relative poverty of conceptual frameworks not only for dealing with violence but with the institutions and processes and traditions which form the social environment of the society. In the following pages I shall argue that a dialectic between violence and patron-client relations offers a useful analytical framework. The first part will deal with the historical dynamics of Colombian politics. In part two, patron-client politics will be looked at in a small town setting.

Colombia has long been described as dominated by an oligarchy or elite that tightly controls the principal means of political influence and the avenues of social mobility. For example, in his recent study of Colombian political development, Robert Dix observes that ‘… the posts of leadership, the key decisions, and the principal social, economic, cultural and political resources of the society remain in elite hands’. Harry Kantor argues even more intensely that while Colombia has greatly changed since World War II, the traditional oligarchy clings to its power, illiteracy remains a major problem, transportation is still poor, and the eastern two-thirds of the nation's territory remains undeveloped '. At the same time, the resolution of these development problems, an unavoidable responsibility of contemporary Colombian governments, has illuminated rather than obscured observation of elite dominance over Colombian society.

During the past decade, agrarian reform emerged as a panacea for the problems of Latin America, with a popularity which transcended political and cultural divisions. This apparent accord vanished, however, in the many meanings given to the term and the divergent policies claiming to implement its principles. In Chile where the hacienda system, with its large estates (latijundios) and satellite dwarf holdings (minifundios) has defined for three centuries the rural economic, political and social structure, agrarian reform has been endorsed by successive governments of very different political persuasions and viewed as the key both to rural revolution and its prevention.