Historians from the United States have studied the Latin American military using two principal approaches: in broad, topical studies dealing with the socio-political role of the military, i.e. armies, from colonial times to the present and in monographic works dealing thematically with the political role of the military in a specific country during a specific time. Neither approach boasts a defintive work. Certainly not the former, for the role of the Latin American military is simply too big to be dealt with between the covers of a single volume; nor the latter, because of the necessary exclusivism inherent in dealing with one nation-one period. A third approach, the multinational treatment of the military in Latin America during a fixed period exists, but to date few such works are in print.

The nineteenth century witnessed the first major change in astronomy since the birth of the science in antiquity. With the exception, in the eighteenth century, of William Herschel's great work in the course of which he speculated on the origin, composition and shape of the universe itself, man's concern with the heavens had been limited to plotting and cataloguing the positions and the movements of the stars and planets. The entire history of astronomy had consisted of more and more accurate observations of the solar system and the stars within our own galaxy, although only the haziest notions of the shape and size of that “island universe” were entertained by thoughtful astronomers.

During the seventeenth century in Spain's colonial empire, there were two “Great Conspiracies” and the arrests resulting from the discovery of each of these conspiracies in the vice-royalties of Peru and New Spain culminated in an auto de fé. Only these two autos, out of almost 250 held in Spain's colonies, bore the title “El Auto Grande.” The first with this title was held in Lima, Peru, on January 23, 1639, and the second in Mexico City on April 11, 1649. Practically all those penanced in both autos were Jews. Of the sixty-one Jews in the Lima auto, one deceased went to the stake in effigy with ten living prisoners. Many of those whose lives were spared and who were “reconciled” were sentenced to serve as oarsmen without pay on the Spanish galleys plying between Spain and the New World. Their periods of servitude varied between three and ten years. There is no record of any galley oarsman ever being released alive at the termination of his sentence.

From 1903 to 1911, Chihuahua was dominated by the Terrazas-Creel clan. For the patriarch of the clan, Luis Terrazas, the great latifundist and cattle baron, it was a prosperous time. He occupied the office of governor for the first fifteen months of the period and then retired, turning it over to his son-in law, Enrique C. Creel, who served first as interim and then as constitutional governor until the eve of the Madero revolt in 1910.

The effects of porfirismo filtered down to Chihuahuans through the clan. It dispensed offices, lucrative contracts, and concessions through Creel’s científico connections in Mexico City. It monopolized the state legislative offices—only twenty-seven persons sat in the legislature from 1903 to 1911 with the clan names of Terrazas, Creel, and Cuilty occurring in every session.

The two letters included in this note date from 1832. Their interest and importance derive from a number of circumstances. In the first place, they were written by one Francis Baylies while on a special mission for the United States Government in Argentina to negotiate the settlement of a fisheries controversy growing out of the seizure of an American vessel in the Falkland Islands, to which Argentina laid claim. Baylies had no particular qualification or fitness for such a diplomatic mission, except insofar as he came from Massachusetts, and thus had an interest in shipping. He was a Federalist politician and former congressman from southern Massachusetts between 1821-1827. In the disintegration of Federalism which then occurred, Baylies found temporary and strange refuge in the camp of Andrew Jackson, whom he helped to win the Presidency in 1828. The appointment to this mission was Jackson’s somewhat anomalous reward for Baylies’ political services, in the fashion of the time. On March 8, 1832, Baylies, with his wife and young daughter, left Boston on the United States sloop-of-war, the Peacock, for South America. In less than a year, by February 12, 1833, he was back in Taunton, Massachusetts, his home town, his mission incomplete and unsuccessful. Britain’s occupation of the Falkland Islands in 1833 may, however, have disposed of the issue.