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Mechanics, Sao Paulo Oct.1974, with T.W. Lambe, M. Rocha, A. Mayer, B.A. Kantey, and A. Muir Wood as special guests and personalities from abroad. Moreover, participation in the Buenos Aires Panamerican Conference was very great, including one generał report and 34 papers. Further participation in International Conferences has included, principally, the 2nd International Conference on Engineering Geology, Sao Paulo Aug. 1974, the 3rd International Conference on Rock Mechanics, Denver Sept.1974, the 12th International Congress of Large Dams, Mexico 1976, the 2nd International Conference on Statistics and Probability applied in Civil Engineering, Stuttgart Sept. 1975, among others.

Locally there was in Sao Paulo a Seminar on Shield Tunnelling, April 1975, sponsored by the Metro, two Seminars sponsored by the postgraduate program COPPE-Univ. of Rio de Janeiro, on Finite Element Methods applied to Soil Engineering (Sept. 1974) and Field Instrumentation in Soil and Foundation Engineering (Nov.l975), and also the First Brazilian Congress of Engineering Geology,

Rio de Janeiro Aug. 1976.

Present planning is for the 6th Brazilian Congress to be held in Rio de Janeiro, July 1978, alongside with a Symposium of the ISRM on Rock Mechanics for Dam Foundations.

The Society is working at revising and complementing existing Standards and Codes on testing and foundation design.

It distributes automatically to all its members the issues of the Revista Latino-americana de Geotecnia, Caracas, and of the Portuguese journal Geotecnia, Lisbon.

It worked as the principal contributor in the preparation of the Portuguese terms for the revised Geotechnical Vocabulary.

2.3 Ecuador The Society has been very active and has submitted the following list of activities in reply to our query:

(a)    I Equatorian Symposium on Geotechnique: zoning for the City of Guayaquil, Oct. 1974.

(b)    II Equatorian Conference on Soil Mechanics and I Conference on Geotechnique, Aug. 1975. Drs. 0. Moretto of Argentina,

E. Juarez Badillo of Mexico, J.W. Hilf of the U.S.A., and myself (Brasil) had the honour to attend this very successful conference as special foreign guest lecturers. (c) Seminar on Seismic Risk

in Ecuador, Oct.1976.    (d) Equatorian

Seminar on soils of the Tropical-Andes, being held in Guayaquil, July 1977.

The Society has published 10 issues of the Equatorian Bulletin of Geotechnique, and a Geotechnical Vocabulary (Parts I, II, III, Sept.1976) including terms in use in Ecuador together with their English and Portuguese equivalents.

2.4    Chile No special communication was received concerning activities of the Chilean Society.

2.5    Colombia No special communication was received from Colombia. Through personal contacts it is known that there is considerable activity in embankment dam engineering, reported principally through the ICOLD.

2.6    Peru No special communication was received from Peru. As mentioned in the report of the Vice-President for North America, intense activity has started in preparation for the 6th Panamerican Conference, considerable correspondence having been exchanged already regarding choice of topics. Very laudably the Principal topics of interest are centering on problems of regional importance, such as tropical soils, soil mechanics applied to mining, and seismic and soil dynamics.

The election of Peru for the seat of Conference and of Professor F. Martinez of Chile as the incoming Vice-President met with unanimous support, with the intent and expectation that the sister Societies of the Adean Region will thereby receive the awaited and well-deserved boost.

2.7    Venezuela No formal reply was received from Venezuela. It is well-known however, that there is very intense Professional activity, and the South American Region owes much to the Society's consistent efforts through sponsorship of the common journal and filing Secretariat.

A very well attended and successful Seminar on Embankment Dams was held in Sept.1976 (5th Seminar on Soil Mechanics). Professor R. Marsal, and myself, had the privilege to participate among the special foreign guest lecturers.

The Society has continued to publish its own journal, the Boletin, of which to my knowledge Numbers 39 (March 1974) through 44 (Dec.1976) have been distributed.

3. Important finał comment.

Regarding Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering in our Region I herewith take the liberty to express my personal concern on two important factors that have appeared, and may expand, in detriment to the real needs of the profession. Firstly there is the rapid advance of big organiza-tions and compartmentalization, coupled with absurdly rapid job turn-overs, as a result of which few young geotechnicians are getting the opportunity for contact with the entire problem and, principally, for the closing of the cycle of experience by seeing the performance of the very structures for which they conducted the investigations and design. Secondly, there is the disproportionate advance of Office and Computer soil mechanics

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