On April 8,1626, a violent confrontation took place between the president and one of the oidores of the audiencia of Santo Domingo. According to a letter from oidor Alonso de Cereceda, President Diego de Acuña had called three of the magistrates and the fiscal of the audiencia to his residence in order to question them in private about their response to a message from Acuña's wife, doña Ana de Acuña, instructing them to release a prisoner. When Cereceda suggested that doña Ana's involvement in official business was undermining the tribunal's authority, Acuña flew into a rage and physically assaulted the oidor, punching him in the body and face and knocking his chair to the ground. After the other two oidores and the fiscal pulled the two men apart, Acuña called some of the presidio soldiers into the chamber to guard the letrado officials with drawn swords. Cereceda claimed that while these other witnesses were present, Acuña “attacked me two or three more times, throwing punches at me and putting his hand to my beard for greater injury.” He was then escorted home by the sargento mayor of the presidio, while the other officials remained to calm the president. Following this altercation, Cereceda stopped attending the court's audiencia publica and acuerdo sessions in person, sending his votes with the audiencia scribes instead, until Acuña finally had him placed under arrest.

On July 26, 1880, Benedito, the most notorious quilombola, or maroon, in São Mateus, the northern region of Espírito Santo province, Brazil, disappeared from the public prison in a flamboyant escape. After his drunken guards fell asleep, Benedito placed a cleaning bucket on top of his cot and employed it as a stepping-stone in tandem with a rope made from his bedsheet to scale the back wall enclosing the cell. He leapt to the other side, opened the back door, and slipped out noiselessly. Rendering the situation even more preposterous to those who discovered him gone were the handcuffs that lay on the floor smeared with sheep fat, which he had used to slip his hands out without forcing the locks.

Alfredo Méndez Medina, writing from Belgium in January 1911, was possessed by the idea that Mexico's social and economic organization required radical change. Méndez Medina, a Mexican Jesuit priest and developing labor activist, had spent just a few years in Europe, sent by his superiors to learn the techniques, strategies, and ideology of Catholic social action. What he saw and experienced there helped shape his vision for Mexico and guided his work upon his return in late 1912. In Europe, the young Méndez Medina observed firsthand the Catholic unions, ministries, and propagandists of L'Action Populaire, an influential French social Catholic institution founded by Gustave Desbuquois, S.J. (1869-1959) in Reims. In a few brief notes, Méndez Medina wrote that Desbuquois's earthy, no-nonsense way of speaking to ordinary workers, and his profound spirituality, had impressed him deeply. To Méndez Medina, Desbuquois appeared to link seamlessly his religious faith, his social commitments, his sense of duty, and his politics.

Paul Vanderwood, Professor Emeritus of History at San Diego State University, died in San Diego onOctober 10, 2011, at the age of 82. A distinguished and innovative historian of modern Mexico, Vanderwood authored or co-authored several books, mostly dealing with the political, social, and cultural history of Mexico between about 1860 and the mid-twentieth century. The four works for which he is best known are Disorder and Progress (1982), The Power of God Against the Guns ofGovernment (1998), Juan Soldado (2004), and Satan's Playground (2010), and they are discussed extensively in this interview.