Continuty and change in Latin America

In 1959 the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council established a Joint Committee on Latin American Studies whose basic goals were to improve communica tions among those interested in research relating to Latin Amer ica, to consider ways in which the development of such research might be furthered, and to administer a program of grants for field research.

The Committee, aided financially by the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation, and the Council on Higher Education in the American Republicsy has moved steadily toward the achieve ment of its purposes. Individual research grants have been pro vided for seventy-five scholars working in many different branches of the humanities and social serences and associated with fifty-eight different institutions throughout the United States. The Commit tee has, further, acted inapadvisory capacity in planning the 1961 conference on the Status of Latin American Studies in the United States, co-sponsored by the University of California at Los Angeles and the Council on Higher Education in the American Republics. The Joint Committee also provided, fundsao help meet the ex penses of both the First Inter-American Conference on Musicology (Library of Congress, 1963) and a meeting on Portuguese language development in relation to Brazilian area studies (University of Texas, 1964). Together with the Hispanic Foundation of the Li brary of Congress, the Joint Committee sponsored a conference of historians, which laid the basis for a "Guide to Historical Liter ature on Latin America" now being prepared with the financial assistance of the Ford Foundation.