When the second (1993) edition of this encyclopedia was assembled, space was at a premium and information on sf written in Latin America was much scarcer on the ground. Two decades later, when page limits are no longer an issue and the serious study of Latin American sf has moved well beyond its infancy, the first priority was to provide updated, extended, and/or new entries for each country or group of countries listed above, in order to represent the diversity of Latin America and of the sf produced there. As Mauricio-José Schwarz wrote in the 1993 encyclopedia, "although there is a certain overall Latin-American identity, it is not always easy to generalize. Argentina, Cuba and Mexico, for instance, have such widely different histories, geographies, political systems and inhabitants that sometimes the Spanish language (and some universal aspirations) are the only common ground shared by their literature; in the case of Portuguese-speaking Brazil there is also the language barrier." At the same time, the nations of Latin America share linguistic ties, Iberian colonial pasts, and – with exceptions – histories of recurring political unrest. They have also tended to be on the periphery of global politics, economics, and scientific research, and faced the external pressures and influences that such a position entails. Such commonalities have often led anthologists, editors, and critics in Latin America and elsewhere to publish and study Latin American sf on a regional level as well as in national contexts.