ABSTRACT
As the twentieth century nears its final decade, the forces which have shaped the entire post-war era appear at long last to be in definitive decline. The loss of international status has been both relative and absolute, and over the years a new rhetoric has come into existence to explain the current state of affairs. Korea, once a ward of American charity, has become a major industrial power in its own right, expanding its hold on some of the most competitive Western markets. During the 1960s, the dominant themes of public discourse in Latin America were the allegedly "unequal terms of exchange" of goods and services or the supposed machinations of the "transnational corporations." Some Latin American political leaders have gone considerably further than this, demanding not merely debt relief or debt forgiveness, but the massive transfer of new resources. Like most Latin American governments, one regime after another in Peru has come to power committed to "affordable housing."
