THERE ARE SEVERAL motives for giving a course in Latin-American philosophy. Of these, the most immediately practical in intent, and the one which directly led to the formation of the course at the University of Missouri, was a desire to furnish a relevant course in philosophy for the use of students in Spanish, history and the Latin-American studies area. This factor has turned out to be of secondary importance at Missouri, since only a small part of the students who take the course are from the fields named. The value of this motive will necessarily vary from campus to campus, and it may well be of considerable magnitude in many situations.

NACIMIENTO IS THE NAME given in Spain and Spanish America to the plastic representation of the Nativity of Christ at Yuletide. These Nacimientos are of very ancient origin; they go back, in fact, to the days of St. Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century. In December, 1223, St. Francis, who had just obtained from Pope Honorius III the approval of the Order he had founded, left his abode and set out for the Monastery of Monte Colombo, where, shortly after his arrival, we are told that he addressed his friend, Giovanni Vellita, in the following manner:

I am desirous of celebrating with thee the feast of the Nativity of our Lord in a special and hitherto unusual way. Go, therefore, to the cavern that is near this monastery and set up therein a manger full of hay, having taken with thee an ox and an ass, which thou wilt place close by, as they were in Bethlehem that blessed night, for I wish to recall with due solemnity the coming of the Son of God into this world, and to see with my own eyes how poor and miserable He appeared, and all for the love of us men.

SPAIN AND THE SPANISH conquerors still are, too often, the scapegoats of too many would-be historians. The Spaniards, according to them, were the grasping, greedy, bloody and cruel destroyers of the wonderful Indian civilizations. They murdered or enslaved the mild, long-suffering Indians, practically decimating them in all the countries of Latin America. This, of course, will not stop the same authors from telling us a little later, in their well-informed books, that Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, etc., suffer from indianismo and are predominantly peopled by Indians. The “Black Legend,” while tottering under the blows of writers like Bandelier, Lummis, Bolton, Simpson and others—who, knowing Spanish, were able to consult primary sources—still fascinates the textbook writers of the time. They seldom can find a good word for anything Spanish—agriculture, industry, commerce, culture, religion—while every flaw in the Spanish system is played up for the scandal of the weak and the joy of the wicked.

IN 1630 FRAY ALONSO DE BENAVIDES, the former superior of the Franciscan missions in New Mexico, returned to Spain and wrote for Philip IV a report on the activities of the missionaries of his custodia. In this report is found one of the most interesting accounts in the whole history of the missionary Church in America. It is the strange story of the miraculous conversion of the Jumano Indians and of other tribes in the Southwest of the United States by a Spanish nun, Sor María de Jesús de Agreda. In 1622 Fray Alonso de Benavides had come to the missions of New Mexico with a large group of Franciscans. Being their superior, he assigned them to various missions. One of the group, Fray Juan de Salas, he sent to work among the Indians of Isleta near present-day Albuquerque.

IT WAS NOT UNTIL 1651 that the first history of the Franciscans in Peru appeared. Its author complained even then of the lack of contemporary accounts of events and of the paucity of conventual archives; an unknown chronicler who is there referred to had died without leaving any record behind. Fray Fernando Rodriguez Tena, to whom the Archives of San Francisco of Lima are indebted for their present organization, has left copious examples of his activity as a historian in the second half of the eighteenth century; it is, however, hardly possible to discover anything new relating to the origins of the Franciscans in Peru in the long and repetitious writings of this indefatigable copyist and compiler, whose real merit is still difficult to assess.