Editor's Foreword

Welcome to the first issue of Volume 38 published under the aegis of the new editorial team at the University of Texas at Austin. After almost twenty years at the University of New Mexico, LARR has returned to the original seat where it began almost forty years ago in 1964. For the University of Texas at Austin, it is both an honor and a privilege that the LASA Council awarded us the opportunity to take on the responsibility of editing and publishing LARR over the next five years. Since January 2002, we have been busy preparing for this issue from our new offices in the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies.

Those familiar and comfortable with the bright pastel colors distinguishing each volume of the LARR of old will find the new cover a dramatic change, but we very much hope that you will enjoy the new livery, and that you will take pleasure in receiving a unique cover image on each issue. The image of each volume will reflect a theme (this year it is People of the Americas), and each individual issue will feature a different image on that theme that will also appear on the LARR Home Page.

We have, however, retained some links to the past. By picking out a single color for the cover titles—this year it will be gold—we will maintain a different color on the spine that makes for easy recognition of year and volume as LARR spills across our bookshelves. For the first two or three years at least, we will be drawing primarily upon some of the treasures at UT-Austin's Benson Latin American Collection that we are privileged to access. We unashamedly admit to a desire to begin LARR's tenure at the University with a dramatic splash, and we hope that you share our excitement, not just about the cover design, but also about deeper initiatives that we hope to bring to LARR. Above all, the aim is to maintain and extend LARR's reputation in publishing scholarship of the highest quality, and also to exercise leadership in the production of knowledge in both creative and innovative ways.

LASA and the new editors owe a great debt to the former University of New Mexico editorial team, and especially to former editor Dr. Gilbert Merkx and Associate Editor Dr. Karen Remmer (now both at Duke University). Thanks in large part to their long-term dedication, professionalism, unstinting efforts, and high standards, LARR has a deserved reputation as the foremost academic journal in the field of Latin American studies. Naturally, our aim is to ensure that this does not change.

The new editorial team comprises myself, Peter M. Ward (Sociology and the LBJ School of Public Affairs) as Executive Editor; Associate Editors: Jonathan C. Brown (History), Henry Dietz (Government), Naomi Lindstrom (Spanish and Portuguese), and Kurt Weyland (Government). Henry Dietz has kindly agreed to take the lead in editing our book review essays. This group of editors offers both a wide country coverage of Latin America, as well as interdisciplinary breadth and depth. Moreover, the University of Texas at Austin is well served by having some 130 Latinamericanist faculty, many of whom have specialist expertise in the areas of intellectual enquiry that LARR represents.

As is often the case with a change of team and venue, particularly after a long tenure at another institution, several significant changes are planned, and the purpose of this Foreword is to briefly outline those principal areas of change in the short and medium terms. Not all issues will have an Editor's Foreword, and even where they do, the editorial voice is just as likely to be that of one of my Associate Editor colleagues as my own. Readers are encouraged to visit the new LARR Home Page at http://larr.lanic.utexas.edu/ for further details about the new editorial team, about the changes that we propose to make, as well as revised guidelines concerning submission of manuscripts, invitations to Book...