Book Reviews and Notices : Latin America: Continent in Crisis. BY RAY JOSEPHS. (New York: Random House. 1948. Pp. 503. $4.50.)

• Date: 01 December 1949
• Published date: 01 December 1949
• Author: Willard F. Barber
• DOI: 10.1177/106591294900200438
• Subject Matter: Articles

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Latin America: Continent in Crisis. BY RAY JOSEPHS. (New York: Ran-
dom House. 1948. Pp. 503. $4.50.)
A
more accurate title for this timely volume would be South Amer-
’
ica and Cuba, for it deals only with the Southern American countries
and Cuba, omitting Haiti, the Dominican Republic (except for three
paragraphs), Panama, Mexico, and the Central American republics.
The treatment of the subject is a country-by-country analysis some-
what resembling a diary. The accent throughout is on those political
aspects of the countries’ activities which can be discerned by a short-
time visitor. The programs and make,up of the leading political parties
are analyzed, such as APRA (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Ameri-
cana) of Peru, AD (Acci6n Democratica) of Venezuela, the Authentic
Revolutionary Party (Autenticos) of Cuba, and the MNR (Movimiento
Nacionalista Revolucionario) of Bolivia. Mr. Josephs, in journalistic
style, is wont to rely rather heavily on personalities and their charac-
terizations in order to make his points. This seems particularly to be the
case with respect to GonzAles Videla, the President of Chile, and Presi-
dent Per6n and ex-Finance Minister Miranda of Argentina. The idiosyn-
cracies of North American ambassadors and of cultural and press at-
tach6s also come in for a bit of attention, not all of it favorable.
The author has a number of comments to make regarding possible
industrialization in the Latin American countries: &dquo;down there it means
a jump from colonial serfdom to the atomic age.&dquo; He came to the con-
clusion that, as factories are usually small and productive efficiency in
many cases low, the path to industrialization is going to be a long and
thorny one. Another factor diminishing the likelihood of large-scale in-
dustrialization along the mass production lines of Pittsburgh and Detroit
is the tendency among South American businessmen to divide their ener-
gies among a number of interests rather than to focus on one...