Nativism has proved an enduring theme in the history of the New World. Successive waves of immigration have brought groups of diverse cultural and ethnic origins into intimate contact within the nations of the Americas. The bitter fruit of such contact has frequently been nativism, which here refers to a social movement that seeks to purge elements considered alien to a culture.

Nativist movements have usually been directed against latecomers who pose a threat to established groups. In 1798, for example, the Federalist administration of the United States attempted to use popular hostility toward French and Irish immigrants as a weapon against Jefferson's Republican party, which tended to attract new arrivals from Europe. The Alien Acts limited the political activities of immigrants and marked the foreign-born as potential subversives. The Sedition Act was designed to suppress criticism of the administration and indirectly challenged the liberal ideas of the French Revolution.

The highly visible change which took place in Argentina during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries fascinated contemporary observers of the republic. The millions of immigrants, the formation of a large urban middle class, and the growth of the great metropolis of Buenos Aires all seemed to indicate that Argentina rapidly was emerging as a modern, developed nation. Equally impressive to foreign observers was Argentina's apparently booming economy, which was based on a flourishing export trade. With only brief interruptions, exports, nearly entirely composed of agricultural and cattle products, had risen from 22 million gold pesos in 1862 to 519 million in 1913. To produce the exports, total area under cultivation rose from 580,000 hectares in 1872 to 24.1 million in 1913.

In all the confusion of nineteenth century political conflict in Latin America, clearly defined doctrinal issues and policy disagreements . are often hard to detect. The clearest—it is generally agreed—had to do with religious matters. The specific content of debate might vary with time and place, but everywhere in Latin America a fundamental question was posed: i.e., to what extent the Roman Catholic Church should continue to enjoy the status it had acquired during the colonial period, when it held a religious monopoly, a vast amount of wealth, extensive influence in the field of education, and much more besides. Few Latin American leaders opposed all innovation on the ecclesiastical front, and even fewer wished a total transformation; but there was ample room for controversy, with "liberals" normally seeking more rapid and fundamental changes than "conservatives" were prepared to accept.

Edgardo Mercado Jarrín, 1964

“What is the principal objective of the national census?” the uniformed colonels asked. From groups of primary and secondary school-teachers assembled for orientation purposes in preparation for Peru's first complete census in decades, that question evoked a number of reasoned responses during the weeks prior to census day, Sunday, June 4,1972.

Despite numerous biographies, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna remains one of the most enigmatic characters to have emerged in nineteenth century Latin America. Often dismissed by his many detractors as an unprincipled opportunist in the worst military caudillo tradition, he nevertheless dominated the turbulent and often chaotic Mexican political scene in the thirty years between independence and the Reform. His life has naturally been subjected to close scrutiny by both his contemporaries and more recent historians but his genius for political manouevre and equivocation have left many episodes in his career obscure and subject to doubt. Perhaps nowhere is this more the case than in his first presidency from 1833-1834 and in particular in his relations with his vice-president Gomez Farias' administration. This article seeks to examine his activities and ambitions in these years, and to suggest reasons, which hitherto have been overlooked or at least not given sufficient attention by his biographers, why he chose to betray and destroy the liberals' first attempt at reform.

Located at the extreme periphery of the Spanish Empire, Paraguay suffered from its political role as a buffer state against the rival Portuguese colony of Brazil and the hostile Indian nations. Accordingly, during the late colonial period, extended tours of military duty contributed to the province's severe labor shortage. But of even greater consequence were the combined effects of Paraguay's monocrop economy and its economic dependency within the Imperial commercial capitalist system. Best described as a chain-like structure officially beginning in Spain and extending to the remote province via Panama, Lima, and Buenos Aires, this system served to depress Paraguay's economy and appropriate a great portion of its wealth, leaving the majority of the people in dire poverty.

Both the career and personality of Floriano Peixoto, Brazil's socalled “Iron Marshal,” have long been subjects of controversy and conflicting appraisal. In command of the nation from 1891 to 1894, Floriano proved a strong ruler whom few contemporaries regarded.with dispassion or disinterest. During his life time and for some years afterwards, Floriano Peixoto remained the focus of fierce emotions, until the actual man and his achievements were lost in a haze of adulation, condemnation, and facile stereotyping.

A History of Catholicism in Brazil could well be divided into the pre- and post-Jacksonian eras. Jackson de Figueiredo, fiery Catholic journalist of the 1920's who serves as the point of reference, performed the feat of almost single-handedly wrenching the Brazilian Church from the position of static equilibrium in which it long lay suspended. This statis had its roots in the restrictive regalism of the Portuguese and Brazilian Empires and in the Republican disestablishment which followed in 1890.

Caught up since 1890 with organizational and financial problems of survival, the Brazilian Church had drawn ever closer to Rome. Under the auspices of the papacy, the hierarchy recruited foreign clergy to staff its underorganized church and encouraged new orders to set up branches in Brazil. In 1905 Pope Leo XIII appointed Archbishop Joaquim Arcoverde of Rio the first Cardinal of Brazil and of Latin America. He created new dioceses in Brazil and appointed Rome-trained bishops to fill them. The utilization of Rome's financial and personnel resources in the postdisestablishment period considerably shored up the Church qua organization in Brazil.

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda epitomizes in many ways, both personally and intellectually, the cosmopolitanism of Spanish political thought in the sixteenth century. Educated in Italy, disciple of Pomponazzi, translator of Aristotle, chronicler of the Emperor and mentor of his son Philip, Sepúlveda is best known—and often misunderstood as the defender of the more unsavory aspects of the Spanish conquest and colonization in America—for his bitter controversy with Bartolomé de las Casas. To that debate Sepúlveda brought a humanist's training and outlook anchored in his devotion to Aristotle, but strongly tempered by his attachment to Saint Augustine. It is the purpose of this paper to examine Sepúlveda's ideas on the nature of the American natives, particularly the question of whether the Indians are natural slaves. Considerations of space, of course, rule out the possibility of undertaking here a detailed scrutiny of the foundations upon which those ideas rest. It can be said, however, that they are typically Renaissance views, a blend of traditions characteristic of the composite nature of the age's intellectual milieu.

The historian often confronts contradictory sources. The inconsistencies are frequently synthesized into an account satisfying the historian's world view. Sometimes the points of agreement and disagreement are systematically examined. The chronicles of the conquest of New Spain provide the opportunity to engage in this latter process of collation. The sources under consideration in this essay are the chronicles of Francisco López de Gómara, Hernán Cortés, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Francisco de Aguilar, and Andrés de Tapia. The first three men write for specific objectives; the latter two do not.

Cortés addressed his letters to the king of Spain seeking to legitimize his precarious position vis-à-vis the governor of Cuba, from whom he was seeking autonomy. For this reason, the captain's actions appear in the most favorable light.

In 1966 José Alcina Franch published preliminary descriptions of a remarkable group of 29 Zapotec colonial calendars in the Archives of the Indies. As colonial material on Zapotec calendars has been nearly non-existent, this find is very important. Alcina Franch illustrated some folios and discussed the solar tropical year which Calendar 21 provides. He noted the provisional nature of his findings, and indicated that fuller publication would follow after further study. So far as the writer is aware this more definitive publication has not appeared.

Using techniques and approaches he developed in the course of a long and detailed comparative study of ancient and colonial Mesoamerican chronologies and calendars now nearly completed, the writer will extract further information from the material partially published by Alcina Franch.3 His data, even in their incomplete form, can be made to yield several significant results under such analysis, especially when the Zapotec is related to what is known about Mixtec calendrics. In the early stages the two cultures were nearly undifferentiated, and in ancient and colonial days shared a common tonalpohualli.

The year of 1786 was one of famine and disease in New Spain. The effects of the unseasonable frost which had destroyed the corn crop in August of the previous year were felt especially in Mexico City. Hungry peasants and Indians flocked to the capital where they encountered masses of unemployed artisans. Prices of basic commodities soared; epidemic disease plagued the population, particularly among the poor; and crime increased. Social unrest and desperation rose to a peak, causing government and church authorities to enact a series of emergency measures designed to aid the indigent and punish grain speculators.

Scholars are increasingly using biographical data to study political elites in an attempt to penetrate the mysteries of the decision-making process. Determining why and how decisions are made is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks to attempt for not only do decision-makers intentionally obfuscate the process but often do not understand it themselves. Unable to penetrate the minds of the participants or to observe directly decisions being made, scholars often turn to studying the decision-makers (elites) themselves by identifying who they are. Biographical data are used because they form at least part of the definition of an individual; they are relatively easy to obtain; they can be coded and put in machine-readable form; and they lend themselves to statistical analysis. On this basis, the scholar can at least describe an elite group, infer why decisions were made, and suggest who future elites might be (assuming that the recruitment system is based on these variables and does not significantly alter in the future).

The interim years between the two world wars in Peru witnessed a proliferation of original ideas among Peruvian leftists on the relationship between religion and revolutionary change as a result of their efforts to re-examine national realities and bring about a radical change in Peruvian society. Young social thinkers and protesters such as José Carlos Mariátegui, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, Luís Valcárcel and others felt that the new Peru must incorporate and synthesize the best elements of Peru's past and present with the best ideas emanating from revolutionary Russia and Mexico. In their quest to construct a program of action for a revolutionary Peru, the generation of the twenties and thirties realized the necessity of going beyond the literary liberalism of the grand master of Peruvian anti-clericalism, Manual González Prada. They endeavored to propose a new, positive program which would neither discard nor neglect such an integral part of national life as the Roman Catholicism of the majority of Peruvians. Even more, they consciously explored ways by which the popular Catholicism of the Peruvian lower classes might be converted into a source of energy for the coming revolution.

In the 1837-1839 rebellion in Guatemala Rafael Carrera, an illiterate mestizo swineherd, led his impromptu army of indigenous peasants to victory over Liberal government forces of Mariano Galvez. The rebellion was a popular insurrection in some respects, with Carrera and his followers fighting to restore religious and social customs that were being threatened by Liberal legislation. Encouraged by his parish priestadvisors and adored by his followers, Carrera had reached a stage of selfimportance which made him feel personally responsible for delivering the Guatemalan people from the Galvez regime. After three years of fighting, the rebels ousted the Liberals from office, and established a government administered by the clero-aristocratic oligarchy, but dominated by Carrera.

The re-election of Gerardo Machado in 1928 promised to augur the continuity of the political quiescence that had characterized the President's first administration (1925-1928). By 1927, the Cuban chief executive had forged a coalition among the national political sectors, binding the Liberal, Conservative, and Popular parties to his candidacy for re-election. Through the appropriate application of patronage and coercion, the President had imposed a political consensus dissolving partisan autonomy, traditionally the source of anti-re-electionist violence. Cooperativismo, as the arrangement became known, conferred on parties outside the circumference of power the prerogatives, perquisites, and government posts inherent in the past only during national incumbency.

For the last several decades, scholars concerned with America's foreign relations have paid increasing attention to public opinion, to national images, to the ties between domestic politics and international events. And because contemporary American diplomacy seems entangled in webs of mass behavior, the same wisdom has been applied to earlier times to investigate the way foreign policy has sometimes been an extension of passions and forces from the country's street corners, kitchen tables, and church pews. In this regard, great attention has lately been paid to American stereotypes of the Orient, as sages attempt to find in age-old popular attitudes the reasons for enduring problems of statecraft. Inasmuch as public interest shifts from one area of crisis to the next with each morning's headlines, it should be useful to examine, for areas other than the Far East, how the methods and goals of American diplomacy have been influenced or shaped, sometimes thwarted or transformed, by a kind of people's diplomacy growing out of the limited knowledge and unrestrained emotions of the man in the street.

Students of the hemispheric system have generally neglected the era of World War I, probably because no major inter-American conferences were held between 1910 and 1923. Yet the disparate reactions to the European conflict represented a crisis of “continental solidarity”; World War I gave rise to a potentially important challenge to United States leadership and helped shape future patterns of hemispheric relations. The war called forth two rival blocs—United States-Brazil and Mexico-Argentina. These blocs differed over more than war policy. Their rivalry reflected an inter-American power struggle, each side invoking “continental solidarity” to gain support from other American nations. The impact of World War I upon the inter-American system and, in particular, the Argentine attempt to convene a Latin American congress need fuller examination.

The first years of independence in Bolivia, as in all of the nations born of the Latin American wars of independence, were times of significant and often accelerated political, social and economic change. The republic created in 1825 in what was known in colonial times as Upper Peru participated fully in this important transformation. During the administration of Bolivia's first president, Antonio José de Sucre, (1825-1828) a program of ecclesiastical reform, educational and social innovation, and economic reorganization of far-reaching implications was undertaken. Upper Peru's chronic poverty, the concentration on silver mining and subsistence agriculture, excessive military expenses, hostility from neighboring countries, and the unbridled political ambitions of the military and civilians resulted in the failure of most of the reforms which might have radically altered the course of Bolivian history.