The 1993 Yearbook of the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers is the first to be published since the Benchmark 1990 volume which marked the twentieth anniversary of the organization. As such, this volume initiates CLAG's third decade of contributions to Latin Americanist geography.

In keeping with past CLAG Yearbooks, this one is an eclectic collection which represents the wide-ranging interests of geographers who research and write on Latin American topics. But, despite its eclecticism, this collection does reflect many of the current research concerns of Latin Americanist geographers as well as ongoing processes of geographical change in the region. Two of the articles (Wesche and Naughton) deal with problems of conservation and national park development at resource frontiers, and Larson and Wiley examine the impacts of military conflict in Central America on migration and resettlement. Teltscher folllows a developing geographical research focus on Latin American women by looking at gender and family status as factors in the relative success of informal vendors in a Quito market. Gade makes a contribution to one of the oldest and strongest themes of Latin Americanist geography, the examination of origins and diffusion (or lack thereof) of cultural traits, in this case, milking of grazing animals. Keeling and Owens reflect on historical process in shaping contemporary geographical patterns: transportation in Northwestern Argentina and political boundaries in the Río de la Plata area. Finally, Arbona and Hunter investigate the relationship of land tenure and water pollution.

The nine papers published in this volume were selected from among 19 submissions, or slightly less than a 50 percent acceptance rate. All papers submitted were blind reviewed by two or three external reviewers and read by the editor. Final decisions on acceptance or rejection were made by the editor.

Without colleagues who are willing to conntribute their time to reviewing and commenting on papers, the process of scholarly peer-reviewing for journals would be impossible. In the case of the present volume, reviewers' comments were generally very specific and detailed, which proved to be a great help both to me as editor and to the authors as they revised their papers. The reviewers were: Daniel D. Arreola, Nancy R. Bain, Thomas D. Boswell, Jack Child, William K. Crowley, James R. Curtis, Philip A. Dennis, John W. DeWitt, William E. Doolittle, Steven L. Driever, Barbara E. Fredrich, Linda Greenow, Ernst Griffin, David Jickling, Richard C. Jones, Phillip Kelly, Robert B. Kent, Gregory Knapp, Kent Matthewson, Tom L. Martinson, Susan E. Place, Marie D. Price, Yvonne Riaño, Roy Ryder, Ronald C. Sheck, Rolf Sternberg, Gerald R. Webster, Robert C. West, Richard W. Wilkie, Barbara J. Williams, Martha A. Works, and Karl Zimmerer.

I would also like to acknowledge the assistance of the Latin American Area Studies Program and the Center for Applied International Development Studies, both at Texas Tech University, for mailing, reproduction and other support. Benita Ramírez and Mary Jane Lumbrera helped with manuscript typing. [end p. 1]