Unlike the Latin American policies of his predecessors, that of Woodrow Wilson was an unusual compound of ideals and realities. Wilson himself provided the first ingredient by repudiating the “Big Stick ”diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt and the “Dollar Diplomacy ”of William Howard Taft and promising instead hemispheric friendship based upon mutual respect. Wilson proposed that the United States encourage its neighbors to become strong constitutional and democratic states and then join with it to form a confraternity for peace which the world could see and imitate. As a means to this goal, Wilson formulated a Pan American Pact to provide mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity. Although this pact was to founder upon the rock of Chilean national self-interest, its promise of a hemispheric partnership was an important step towards true Pan-Americanism.

When Dr. José Ingenieros died in late October, 1925, the New York Times published a brief notice of his passing. The obituary mentioned that the “noted Argentine alienist [psychiatrist] and writer ”had attended the Pan-American Scientific Congress held at Washington, D. C. in 1915. But it stressed his recent advocacy of the slogan “Latin America for the Latin Americans ”and his suggestion that the Pan American Union be replaced by a Latin American Union, which would be free of the influence of “foreign imperialism ”and North American “money lenders.”

The conquest of the Argentine pampas, with its well-known effects on Argentine expansion and on the political career of General Julio A. Roca, had a religious accompaniment which gave it some of the aspects of a crusade. Missionary priests went along with the military expedition and followed it up in order to convert and settle the Indians whose wanderings were forcibly suppressed by the operation of the army.

Efforts to Christianize the area had extended over two centuries, with only limited success.

The metropolis made full and very exacting regulations for everything that referred to the obtaining and control of precious metals and stones. Even in the first days of Spanish colonial expansion in America, the regulations contained in capitulations and instructions were innumerable. Later on, laws, royal cedulas, ordinances, and other juridical norms ordained in a detailed manner the requisites to which all had to submit who proposed to exploit the deposits of precious metals or the pearl fisheries. They regulated the manner in which they were to be established, the work of the Indians in them, and, above all, the control of production and the participation of the crown in the benefit obtained.

In the course of the residencia of the Second Audiencia of Mexico, Licenciado Vasco de Quiroga was charged with having overburdened the Indians of Mexico City with the work of constructing his hospital-town of Santa Fe near the city. The official charge (cargo XXVI), as formulated by Francisco de Loaysa, judge of residencia, has been published twice, together with some of the questions that Quiroga drew up for his witnesses in answer to the charge, the answers of the witnesses, and the final decision of the judge, which absolved Quiroga of any guilt in the matter. But the source of the charge, as well as Quiroga’s personal reply to it, have remained unpublished.