During one of the most brutal wars in modern times the combined forces of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay fought against and almost annihilated the Paraguayan nation. From 1865 to 1870 Paraguayans earned the world’s respect for their resistance to overwhelming invading forces, yet they endured hideous oppressions under a tryannical government. Although the United States then had little interest in Paraguay or direct involvement in the war and its issues, some valuable articles, including jewelry and money, deposited for safe-keeping in the United States legation in Asunción during the hostilities opened a lingering controversy that plagued the two countries’ relations for more than a half-century.

The Newly independent government of Mexico became concerned in 1821 about the lack of progress made by the Franciscans in preparing the California mission Indians to take their place in the new nation. The government feared that Upper California might well be lost to the encroachments of the Russians or the Americans if it were not settled by a thriving community of Mexican citizens able to exploit its great natural resources. Influenced by the new egalitarian and humanitarian concepts of the day, the authorities felt that the mission Indians were more like serfs than citizens. Unimpressed by the arguments of the experienced Franciscan Fathers that the Indians would either revert to their wild life in the hills or be enslaved by the white settlers if they were prematurely released from the missions, the government decided to instigate a series of experiments, reminiscent of those made in the days of Father Bartolomé de las Casas, to see what actually would happen. A program was begun involving extensive research in the culture and civilization of the California Indians.

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.

Although Mexico City was the foremost cultural center in North America before 1800, the musical history of this capital has been strangely neglected. Not until 1946, when Lota M. Spell published a pioneer article on music in the Conquest century, was a first attempt made at bringing the viceregal music to international attention. Four years later Francisco Curt Lange translated her article into Spanish. In 1952 Jesús Bal y Gay handsomely edited what he hoped would be but the first in a series to match Monumentos de la Música Española. As unique source for the transcriptions of Mexican colonial chefs-d’oeuvres in this luxurious 235-page volume, Bal y Gay availed himself of a filmed codex. In April, 1961 Roger Wagner recorded approximately half of the Bal y Gay volume—including Juan de Lienas’ splendid Missa super fa re ut fa sol la (the identical cantus firmus used in Morales’s Missa cortilla and in Masses by Melchor Robledo and Ginés de Boluda), Francisco López [y] Capillas’ Magnificat secundi toni, Hernando Franco’s Peccantem me quotidie, Memento met Deus, and the Spanish Masses transcribed by Bal y Gay because they were in the source codex.

Paraguay after the War of the Triple Alliance was in a state of political and economic shock. Governmental institutions were shattered, their functions practically ceased, and the very basis of political life had to be reconstituted. Fertile fields lay uncultivated, livestock had all but disappeared, buildings were in ruins, orange groves were untended, and the remnant population survived on the bare edge of subsistence. Land titles, never very clear, became further tangled in a welter of conflicting claims. Well might a Buenos Aires editor observe: “The future of Paraguay is so dark that none can read it.”

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 names of most of the 21 California missions as they appear in the founding reports and on the title pages of the parochial books of baptisms, deaths, and marriages are not the same as the names by which they are known at present; names have been shortened for convenience, and changes have been made as the result of changed conditions, especially in the spelling and accentuation. At the time that the names were written and during the sixty-five years of the existence of the missions, there was no uniformity in spelling or punctuation. This problem of uniformity did not arise until after the publication of A. Bello’s Gramática in 1847.

Victoriano Huerta was one of the most prominent figures during the early years of the Mexican revolution. Despite his later prominence, little has been written about Huerta's early career. Huerta has usually been pictured as an ignorant and alcoholic semi-barbarian whose behavior as president reflected his lack of culture and education. Huerta's early military career reveals that although he was a heavy drinker, he was by no means uneducated. He was, in fact, one of the best educated Mexican officers of his day. In addition, Huerta was one of the best field generals that Mexico has produced. This article will trace Huerta’s career until the beginning of the revolution, at which point his career becomes common knowledge.

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.

Early in the year 1776 the Franciscan missionary college of San Fernando at Mexico addressed the Spanish throne with a report on “ the felicitous new discoveries (above the anciently conquered part of California) made between 1769 and the present year 1776, and contained between 30° 26′ and 57° 18′ north latitude.” In claiming His Majesty’s attention, the College felt itself justified by the importance of “ the missions founded under its charge in this space of over five hundred leagues of the South Sea coasts,” and by the fact that “its Religious have been in all the Expeditions by sea and land, everywhere observing all so much as they have judged conducive to the Service of both Majesties, and to the good of the countless unhappy Heathens who inhabit those remote regions of the North.”

Indian policy in Brazil, as in many countries, was and is a confused mixture of religion, humanitarianism, and greed. Almost every kind of system has been tried: open barter during the early years, undisguised slavery until 1570, lay administrators until 1624, missionary tutelage in some form from 1624 to 1759, with intermittent relapses into lay administration, secularization after 1755, with lay directors until 1798; military administration under civil judges until the end of the empire, and finally in 1910 the establishment of the Indian Service under General Rondón.

What makes a man—or the public memory of a man—into a a legend? The Western world has always had legendary heroes, men who in life waged vigorous campaigns against terrifying odds, and who, in death, bear reputations burnished and embellished and gloriously expanded by the stories their admirers tell. Dietrich of Berne, Frederick Barbarossa, Alexander of Macedon, Charlemagne, the Cid, Russia’s Prince Igor, Cordoba’s Great Captain, and others, live on in legend centuries after their physical lives ended. The stories of these heroes are told in sagas, epics, and lays, in ballads and folksongs, romances and myths. There are also heroes more newly-made. Their stories are broadcast through the media of twentieth-century communication: popular biographies, historical fiction, diplomatic telegrams, reports of senatorial committees, newspaper accounts, magazine articles, motion pictures. Mexico provided the pre-eminent legendary hero of modern times: Pancho Villa.

All Americans know that much of our coffee comes from Brazil. Most have heard of marvelous Rio de Janeiro, one of the beauty k queens of the earth—a city compressed between ocean and granite hills with dazzling white beaches, mosaic sidewalks, scores of night clubs, merry-making sambas, and a lavish Carnival. Quite a number have read of its awesome new capital Brasília, a fabulous creation of glass and concrete built in the middle of nowhere. Some are aware that it is a vast country, our largest and most powerful Latin American neighbor, with huge natural resources and a mushrooming growth in population: its high-grade iron ore reserves are among the richest in the world; its population is estimated to be 80,000,000, the major portion distributed along the Atlantic seaboard. Brazil, the fourth largest country in the world, occupies approximately one-half of South America, with a surface of 3,287,195 square miles, much of it unexplored, and has borders with all the countries of that continent excepting Ecuador and Chile.

The delegate from Tabasco definitely believed that the destiny of Mexico was at stake. At President Carranza’s behest an assembly had convened at Querétaro charged with the duty of drafting a constitution which would embody the ideals of the Revolutionary element. Although he was still a young man in his early thirties, the delegate, Francisco Múgica, was a former military commander and governor of Tabasco, and he now occupied the strategic post of chairman of the Committee on Constitutional Reform whose task was to recommend the necessary modifications of the proposed constitution. It was December 13, 1916, and the committee’s report on a key article of the future constitution was being discussed. Múgica, the chief spokesman for the radical majority at the convention, rose to defend his views. The discussion of this particular article, he declared, was “the most solemn moment of the revolution. [No other moment] has been so great, so important, so solemn. … [The issue is] nothing less than that of the future of the nation, the future of our young people. …” The article which prompted Múgica’s dramatic remarks engendered one of the longest and most heated debates of the convention, and in the ensuing two decades it formed the basis of an important area of conflict between the Mexican government and the Catholic Church. This was Article 3 which deals with education.

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.

Within the last decades considerable material has been written about Jews before the Mexican Inquisition. All of the studies mention in passing the most famous trial of a Jew before the Inquisition of Bishop Juan de Zumárraga (1536-1543), but no scholar has published a detailed analysis of this proceso of Francisco Millán. The paleography of the document is difficult and the pagination runs to some one hundred folios; however, it is worth the effort to examine this trial in order to obtain a vivid first-hand picture of Mexican Judaism of the 1530’s. The format of this analysis and commentary will follow the organization of the original trial record.