ABSTRACT
Latin America has long been one of the world's most exciting "living laboratories" of economic, social, and political change. Historically it has been a hotbed of conflict between democracy and authoritarianism; mercantilism, capitalism, and socialism; First and Third World perceptions; change and continuity; the traditional and the modern. It is both the common trends and the differences among the countries that make Latin America such a fertile laboratory for studying comparative economic, social, and political change. Economic development has given rise to widespread social changes in all the countries. Latin America has gone from 70 percent rural to 70 percent urban, from 70 percent illiterate to 70 percent literate; life expectancy is up from sixty to seventy years; and per capita income has significantly increased. Most of Latin America made an impressive transition to electoral democracy during the 1980s, when the region's economies were in severe recession and plagued by foreign debt.
