On January 14, 1954, Bahians gathered in the city of Salvador, in Brazil's northeastern state of Bahia, for the Lavagem do Bonfim, the annual ritual washing of the Church of Bonfim and its front patio and steps that was for them a highlight of the Festival of the Senhor do Bonfim. The archbishop of Salvador, Augusto Álvaro da Silva, had recendy banned the syncretic ritual, primarily because it combined elements of popular Catholicism and an important ritual obligation to Oxalá, a principal deity or “saint” in the religious practice of Candomblé, an African Brazilian religion that grew out of West and West Central African antecedents. The water for the lavagem, for instance, was ceremonially prepared and transported in vases during a procession by African Bahian mães-de-santo (priestesses) and filhos-de-santo (initiates) of Candomblé, known together as “baianas” and dressed entirely in white.

On September 28, 1927, the central atrium of the Museo Etnográfico on Buenos Aires's Calle Moreno was crowded with people. More than 100 men and women were in attendance, from Universidad de Buenos Aires rector Ricardo Rojas to Argentine president Marcelo T. de Alvear, wrapped in heavy jackets against the spring chill to participate in the inauguration of the museum's new building. Previously housed in “the gloomy catacombs” of an administrative basement, the Museo Etnográfico had now relocated to an airy, Baroque-style building two blocks south of the city's central Plaza de Mayo. In his inaugural speech on that chilly September morning, museum director Salvador Debenedetti proclaimed that the Museo Etnográfico, until then a predominandy academic museum, was undergoing a powerful transformation: it was becoming a public museum. Debenedetti proclaimed that the museum's new incarnation would be a place “of tranquility and of meditation, which will move the spirit of the people and lead them from epoch to epoch, from region to region, from culture to culture.” He described the museum's public visitors, or “the people,” as active participants in the institution's openly nation-building agenda, and celebrated their participation as a “patriotic conjunction, inspired by die desire for scientific progress, the love of truth, [and] the desire to know better and penetrate in its essence the thought of our native ancestors in the land of América.”

Appreciated among Latin Americanists in the United States and highly regarded in Chile, Arnold (“Arnie”) Bauer taught history at the University of California at Davis from 1970 to 2005, and was director of the University of California's Education Abroad Program in Santiago, Chile, for five years between 1994 and 2005. Well-known for his engaging writing style, Bauer reflects broad interests in his publications: agrarian history (Chilean Rural Society: From the Spanish Conquest to 1930 [1975]), the Catholic Church and society (as editor, La iglesia en la economía de América Latina, siglos XIX-XIX [1986]), and material culture (Goods, Power, History: Latin America's Material Culture [2001]). He has also written an academic mystery regarding a sixteenth-century Mexican codex, The Search for the Codex Cardona (2009). His coming-of-age memoir (Time's Shadow: Remembering a Family Farm in Kansas [2012]) describes his childhood and was recently named one of the top five books of 2012 by The Atlantic. He has also written some 50 articles and book chapters and more than 60 book reviews.

In the Mendel Collection at the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, is an unpublished diary of over 400 pages written by a Spanish soldier during his voyage from Spain to New Spain, and his return voyage to the Iberian Peninsula, between May 30, 1821, and May 17, 1822. The document is titled Apuntaciones que en su viaje a ultramar ha tomado el oficial de infantería Modesto de la Torre (Notes Written by Infantry Officer Modesto de la Torre During His Voyage Overseas). Lieutenant De la Torre was part of the delegation that accompanied General Juan O'Donojú when he assumed the position of captain-general and chief policy officer of New Spain, the highest-ranking office in Spain's overseas territories, following the reinstatement of die Constitution of Cádiz in 1820. The diary discusses a wide variety of topics, including the defeat of the Royalist army at Puerto Cabello (Carabobo, Venezuela) and the subsequent exodus of loyalist officers and troops to Havana. The diary also presents portraits of the people, cities, villages, towns, and flora and fauna that the lieutenant saw during his journey.