This book makes available, for the first time in English or French, some of the academic studies on Asia and Africa written in recent years by scholars working in Latin America. Many of these scholars have been associated, as professors or graduate students, with the Center of Asian and African Studies of El Colegio de México, a center founded in 1964. Much of their work has been published in Estudios de Asia y África, an academic journal published by El Colegio de México. This work has unfortunately passed mostly unnoticed in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa since scholars in these regions have often not had the time to learn Spanish. The essays of the present volume, represent a variety of disciplines and discuss a variety of topics about different regions and historical periods. Nonetheless, it is clear that, taken as a whole, the essays could only have been written in Latin America, Many of them display both an anti-imperialist identification with the problems of the ethnic minorities and the peoples of the Third World and, at the same time, an objective independence from the nationalist interests and ideologies that sometimes cloud political and social judgments in the countries of Asia and Africa themselves.