In order to have avoided the criticism of most writers priding themselves on their progressive and modern spirit, the Catholic Church in the nineteenth-century Hispanic world would have had to accept religious toleration, would have had to surrender much of its material goods, and would have had to reconcile itself to secularism by relinquishing influence in the temporal order. Various circumstances, many of them arising as much from social conditions as from theological viewpoints, caused the Church first in nineteenth-century Spain and somewhat later in Spanish America to set itself resolutely and militantly against these three desiderata of its liberal critics.

In the early 1620s, D. Luis de Sousa, a former governor-general of Brazil, complained to the Crown about the inhabitants of Pernambuco and their unreliability as witnesses in matters affecting the Albuquerque Coelho family. The colony’s population, he charged, “consists of relatives, friends, followers, and dependents of Duarte de Albuquerque [the fourth donatário or lord-proprietor] and justice officials nominated by him; and because of their land grants and the quitrents they pay to him, they are all his subjects.”

Fray Toribio Motolinía, one of the famous Twelve Franciscans who arrived in Mexico in 1524 to lay the foundations for the systematic evangelization of the country, was also the author of the first known historical treatises on pre-Hispanic Mexico and on the origins of the Hispanic period. Time has only confirmed the ancient conviction that these writings constitute the principal source of our knowledge of those events. “ Curioso investigador de tiempos y verdades ” and “ hombre que por ninguna cosa dijera sino la mera verdad,” as Mendieta writes of him. Nevertheless it should not be forgotten that Motolinía was first of all a missionary and a man of action; we know that he wrote under obedience or through curiosity, in haste, and in those brief intervals that freedom from other more urgent duties permitted him, and that he was very conscious of the limitations of his literary work and not at all anxious that it be made public. In view of the decision and confidence with which he acted on other occasions during his life, the modesty which he manifested regarding his own writings is surprising. Perhaps he was convinced that he was only “ moderadamente letrado ” (moderately learned) as Sahagún categorizes him. This might help to explain the fact that his more extensive writings either have remained in embryo or have been hurriedly sketched or have not received the exposure that their importance warranted. For the same reasons-and not because of any supposed official suppression, which in Motolinía's case has never been proven—none of the Motolinía works of ethnohistoric character were ever printed until the 19th century.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, when Mexico was beginning a slowly drawn-out process of industrialization and urbanization, the seemingly quiet countryside was experiencing agrarian unrest of proportions unprecedented in the nation's history. Trapped between increasing population on diminished ejidal and pueblo landholdings and ever-growing estates and demands of large property owners, Mexican campesinos in three states—eastern Morelos, southeastern Mexico, and northwestern Puebla— sought relief by means of insurrection. Because these agrarian uprisings during the last third of the nineteenth century were a prelude to similar and more famous occurrences during the fateful epoch 1910-1917, their causes, nature, and significance are essential for understanding an important aspect of the Mexican Revolution.

In the era of the Mexican Revolution, research opportunities on the sub-national level are numerous and varied, although not completely untested. In recent monographs and dissertations, historians have examined the revolution in a few states, leading regional figures, the workings of national reform commissions in selected localities and hinted at the conflict of provincial interests that provoked violence in the name of opposition to national programs. Each of these themes needs further, more systematic evaluation. Still wanting are studies of local demographic changes and concomitant political and economic adjustments accompanying the revolution, of the appropriation of state and local administration, and of the local issues that confused reform programs such as land reapportionment and educational missions. Professor James W. Wilkie has made important national studies of efforts to implement revolutionary programs and to evaluate statistically the church-state question. Both of these themes should be assayed through case studies of states or somewhat larger regions. But rather than cataloging research possibilities, this paper concentrates on one sub-national topic: the state governors.

The 1842-1844 diplomatic mission of General Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera is generally assumed to have had as its major purpose the extradition of his personal and political enemy, General José María Obando. Obando had been a rebel leader in the War of the Supremos, the New Granadan civil war of 1839-1842, and the victorious administration in Bogotá (the ministeriales) had also charged him with complicity in the 1830 assassination of Marshal Antonio José de Sucre. During the diplomatic mission a large portion of Mosquera's time and effort was indeed spent in attempting to obtain Obando's extradition and to discredit him in various ways. This study, however, will be concerned primarily with the original objectives of the mission—those relating to New Granada's role in the regional diplomacy of western South America.

Francisco de Paula Santander was Simón Bolívar's right arm in the formation of the state of Gran Colombia by the Liberator's own acknowledgement. While Bolívar, the President, was directing the winning of the last battles of the war Santander, the Vice President, was directing the government from Bogotá from 1821 until Bolivar returned from the wars in 1827. Although the control of the government was out of Santander's hands during Bolívar's dictatorship (1827-1830) and the turbulency following Bolívar's death in 1830, Santander took the helm again in October, 1832, as President. If one considers his three-year activity in Congress after his term as President ended in 1837, then, in a sense, Santander's influence in Colombia lasted for almost two decades when he died in 1840. Although much of his public life was concerned with other aspects of the nation, Santander gave considerable attention to the fiscal matters of the country. It was his guidance which helped Colombia through two decades of difficult economic experimentation.

Perhaps the most significant scientific works published about Spanish-America during the entire era 1800–1830 were the botanical and zoological findings of the German scientist, Alexander von Humboldt. He had traveled in the Spanish colonies from 1799 to 1804. Humboldt has been acclaimed as the greatest naturalist that the world had seen since Aristotle and as the foremost man in Europe during his lifetime with the exception of Napoleon. He had taken a scientific education in several German universities and had once held an appointment in Berlin as a mining official for the Prussian government. On his way back to Europe in 1804 at the conclusion of his scientific survey in Spanish-America, he stopped in the United States to visit President Thomas Jefferson who asked him to fix the new boundaries of the United States following the purchase of Louisiana. This side trip probably saved Humboldt’s life because the ship which sailed from South America with his specimens was lost at sea.

Within a framework of overlapping jurisdictions and responsibilities, the city councils (cabildos) were one of the institutions which performed various functions to protect and further public health in the Spanish American Indies. The seventeenth century records of the cabildo in Santiago, Chile, reveal that the councilmen (capitulares) not only conformed to royal law and custom but also employed the scientific knowledge available to them as they struggled against sickness and disease. Their public-spirited endeavors did not, however, preclude the occasional intrusion of selfish motives into the council proceedings. These several characteristics are discernible in the records pertaining to the prevention and control of disease, registry and review of credentials belonging to members of the medical profession, contracts negotiated with physicians, steps to inhibit malpractice, and surveillance of the local apothecary shops and the municipal hospital.

Jesuits arrived in Mexico in 1572. They had come from a Spain unified by an imperial ideology—its prime components a single faith, shared cultural values and traditions, and belief in a royal mystique—allowing, indeed encouraging, expansion of the monarchy overseas. Spanish Jesuits, some of whom articulated adherence to this ideology, by 1580 had established their religious order among the most respected corporations in Mexican society. Through preaching, ministering to the needy, and missionary work, but above all through gaining a near monopoly on secondary education in New Spain, members of the Society of Jesus achieved a position of prestige and influence within all strata of society. In order to understand, therefore, how Jesuits contributed to the maintenance of Mexican ties to Spanish empire, it is first necessary to get some idea of the nature of their system of education, its curriculum, teaching methods, and aims in New Spain.

It is necessary to study the political status of Latin American merchants because we have so long heard that they were largely without franchise during the colonial period. We have been told that the creoles were the landowners, that the peninsulares were the merchants, and that the creoles generally controlled the cabildos. Though several writers have been investigating the merchants for some time now there are still historians who do not recognize the presence of a dynamic, influential group of creole merchants at the end of the colonial period. The Conceptión merchants (those who maintained residence in the town of Concepción) have been singled out for case study, but I am fully convinced that the patterns we see among them will apply also for the Santiago and far-northern merchants. By 1790 the town of Concepción was the capital of Chile's southern intendency, it was as it would demonstrate time and again in later years the capital of the south; and the south was the keystone of early nineteenth-century Chilean political life.

No satisfactory account exists of how Jesuits functioned in Mexican society; nor has any assessment been made of their Jesuits importance to the Spanish crown; nor has anything been written evaluating the extent of the Jesuits' role in molding and maintaining, throughout most of the colonial period Mexican adhesion to Spanish culture, civilization, and political arrangements. Previous writing has, in fact, tended to obfuscate the Order's attitudes and activities in Mexico by stressing special aspects of them, notably missionary activity, and slighting others, particularly formal education—paying little attention to its effects on Mexican society. Moreover, while many specialists in sixteenth-century Mexican history acknowledge that of course Jesuits in New Spain supported the empire, none have explained and substantiated just how they did so. In addition, historians of the same period in Europe, unacquainted with the special situations in Spain and colonial Mexico, would argue from a more general point of view that the assertion that Jesuits may be thought to have contributed at all to loyalty to any monarchy other than the papacy needs strong evidence to support it.

The extraordinary demand for luxury clothes in XVIth Century New Spain, especially for silks and velvets, has been well documented. For example, Archbishop Zumárraga, writing to the King, observed that “silks are so common here (in Mexico) that low-class journeymen and servants of both sexes as well as lovers and unmarried girls go about laden with silken capes, tunics, petticoats and mantles. … ”, while the royal accountant Rodrigo de Albornoz, also writing to His Majesty, stated that “tradespeople's wives and prostitutes wear more clothes of silk than a nobleman in Castile.” And although edicts repeatedly prohibited such luxurious dress, these edicts would only be obeyed for a brief time.

Perhaps no event affected the lives of so many people and the history of so many nations as the French Revolution and subsequent roles played by Napoleon Bonapart. There was the Louisiana Purchase and the preliminaries to the War of 1812 in North America. In the Caribbean the Haitian independence movement which was precipitated by events in France set off a chain of events of farreaching consequence. For Spanish America the Napoleonic invasion and occupation of Spain had a catalytic affect for the independence-minded patriots who declared themselves independent “in the name of Spanish Prince Ferdinand.” The invasion of Portugal and the flight of the Court to Brazil set that country reeling on its course toward nationhood. This study begins with the earliest actions in the French colony of Saint Dominigue after the outbreak of the French Revolution.

In June, 1908, Sir Harry Johnston, explorer, historian, diplomat and African colonial administrator, wrote to Theodore Roosevelt expressing a desire to come to the New World. In Johnston’s own words,

What I want to learn is the present condition and possible prospects of the Negro in North America, the West Indies and tropical South America.

This English Lord had written extensively about blacks in Africa, and while his knowledge of racial and historical conditions in the two Americas was hardly profound, his reputation opened doors that might otherwise have been hermetically sealed. Roosevelt’s reply was recognition of this fact:

In the course of its “ nation saving ” in the Caribbean in the first third of this century, the United States government created native constabularies in each of the nations it temporarily occupied. In three countries, these forces—the Garde d'Haiti, the Guardia Nacionál de Nicaragua, and the Guardia Nacional Dominicana—became military Mr. Hydes. Raised, trained, and indoctrinated by American officers to preserve civil government from subversion, the Caribbean constabularies instead served as the backbone of military dictatorships after the Americans sailed away. In Cuba, however, the native constabulary did not become the dominant military power base for uniformed politicians. Instead it was itself subverted by both Cubans and Americans until it lost the institutional stability and professional autonomy which would have made it politically powerful. How this constabulary was reshaped, consciously and unconsciously, is the tale of the rise and the fall of the Cuban Rural Guard.

In the Presbyterian burying ground at George Washington's encampment in Morristown, New Jersey, on April 29, 1780, Roman Catholic burial rites were performed for a distinguished emissary from Cuba. Dr. James Thacher, army surgeon, recorded the obsequies in his Journal thus:

On May 24, 1965, nearly a month after the first U. S. Marines landed in Santo Domingo, an inter-American military force under the command of a Brazilian general took over peacekeeping activities in the Dominican Republic. Although the first Brazilian contingent to arrive comprised only 300 troops, it later reached a total of 1,250, the largest contribution by a single Latin American nation. While Brazil's participation in the Dominican crisis was a clear indication that the independent foreign policy of Quadros and Goulart had been discarded in favor of a realignment once again with the United States, it also signified an abrupt departure from one of the basic tenets of Brazilian foreign policy—nonintervention. The case study of Brazil's role in the Dominican Republic in 1965 which follows provides a unique opportunity to examine the impact of traditional forces and contemporary events on Brazilian foreign policy at a critical juncture in that nation's history.

Woodrow Wilson seldom wavered in his determination to guide the Mexican Revolution along a course acceptable to the United States. From the beginning, he insisted upon the creation of a stable, constitutional, and representative government which could reform social and economic inequities and would provide a hospitable environment for American economic interests. The possibility of involvement in World War I, however, weakened the president's bargaining power with Mexico and reduced his ability to pursue his goals effectively. As Wilson learned to his regret, blatant interference tended to heighten Yankeephobic Mexican nationalism and to create a circumstance which Germany might exploit to her advantage. This problem became critical early in 1917, when the German question profoundly influenced the American government's response to the new Mexican Constitution. Historians hitherto have neglected this relationship, even though it provides an intriguing insight into United States policy toward the government of First Chief Venustiano Carranza.

During the nineteenth century Latin America produced a significant number of thinkers and philosophers who recognized that their countries were failing to keep pace with Western Europe and the United States in material progress, social equality and political stability. Some of these men were primarily abstract thinkers, but many were politically active and exercised considerable influence through their writing. Juan Bautista Alberdi, an Argentine, was a member of the latter group whose ideas are still discussed frequently today.