This year, 1992, marks the quincentenary or quincentennial of the first voyage of Columbus to the Western Hemisphere. In 1990, as Chair of the Mexican Studies Committee of the Conference on Latin American History, I invited two of the leading scholars on Mexico during the colonial period– Professor Jacques Lafaye (Universite de Paris IV) and Professor James Lockhart (UCLA)–to help set the debate for the upcoming anniversary by delivering a 20 minute summary of the role of Spain in the history of colonial Mexico at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in San Francisco. The following essays are the result of that discussion held on December 29, 1990 in San Francisco.

The history of Cuba from the 1860s to 1898 has been written largely from the revolutionary, independentista perspective. It is a perspective that has been appealing to U.S. and Cuban historians alike, but it may well be a perspective that has distorted the Cuban political experience and made it more difficult to understand the Cuban reality. That this perspective is alive and well can be seen in recent publications which give short shrift to the Cuban Autonomist movement, a movement that was essentially Cuban and whose leadership came from the largely urban, professional elite that rejected both annexation and independence.

With the end of the First World War, American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere appeared to be an unquestioned fact of international life. The defeat of Germany, in combination with the wartime weakening of Great Britain and France, had created a situation whereby the major economic and political competitors of the United States were unable, at least in the short-run, to exercise the degree of influence they had enjoyed in the years before 1914. Given the strategic considerations involving the isthmian canal route, the circum-Caribbean region was the area within the Western Hemisphere where the influence of the United States was especially strong, a point born out by the existence of virtual American protectorates in Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Nicaragua. Accordingly, when viewed from an immediate post-World War I perspective, one might have anticipated that the United States would have had relatively little difficulty in maintaining a regional Pax Americana.

Agriculture was at the center of the Poblano indigenous communal economy, and therefore, successful harvests were the motor of the community's survival. The struggle to retain land by Indians was a fundamental part of their quest to retain a viable community, but for some, an equally important task was to maintain control of water rights. The central place of sufficient water resources for the well-being of the collectivity was often expressed when village elders complained that its loss led to migration of substantial numbers to more vital economic regions. As such, the defense of water resources had a more important place in the survival mechanisms of indigenous groups than usually accorded it by scholars.

The celebration of the centennial of the Brazilian Republic (1889-1989) was marked by a few events of academic or civic nature and no enthusiasm whatsoever. It has been observed that the bicentennial of the French Revolution aroused more interest in the people of Brazil. The reasons for this are not difficult to understand. Two seem to have particular relevance. First, is the recent memory of a military regime (1964-1985) in the minds of the people. The proclamation of the Republic on 15 November 1889 is generally held to be the making of the Brazilian military; it would be somewhat embarrassing to celebrate the actions of yesterday's enemies.

The second reason relates to the disappointment felt among the populace with the New Republic—the name given to the civilian government inaugurated in 1985. The New Republic rode in on the crest of huge mass demonstrations, the most impressive ever to take place in the country. These people called for the end of military rule and the direct election of a civilian president. In 1985 a civilian president took over, although not chosen by direct election, and a constituent assembly drafted a new constitution. Freedom of the press was restored and the people lived in great hope that a new era had finally dawned for the nation. Four years later, in 1989, a new constitution was in effect, and the fundamental precepts of a democratic system—the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary branches of government; a free press; multiple political parties; and a politicized populace—were all in place.

The transition from slave to free labor in the Americas involved many and varied forms of internal labor and land adjustments which affected slaves, landless farmers, and large scale producers in rural areas. Unlike Haiti and the United States South, the Brazilian process of emancipation was gradual and did not involve violent structural ruptures with the past. The Land Law of 1850, the Law of the Free Womb of 1871 and the 1885 Sexagenarian Law marked fundamental phases in an ongoing process of state participation in the organization of the free labor market, which culminated in Abolition on 13 May 1888, and the onset of the Republic on 15 November of the following year. Current analyses of the late nineteenth century emphasize continuity and define the state as its own agent, embarking on a course of conservative modernization which unfolded during the process of transition from the liberalism of a nineteenth-century empire to the interventionist Republic which was ushered in, in 1889. The planter class, joined with emerging but weak Brazilian industrial and financial sectors and upheld by the military, contributed to an Estado Oligárquico, in Marcelo Carmagnani's terminology, linked by coffee production into the world economy as a flourishing dependent peripheral economy. But the process, which until recently was associated with the coffee export sector and its relation to urbanization and industrialization, has now taken on broader dimensions. A developed domestic economy, composed of a complex and sophisticated internal food supply network, operated alongside the export economy throughout the nineteenth century. Although unstudied from the political perspective of small-scale food producers who were displaced by the coffee economy, the broader issue of food provision could not be dissociated from conservative modernization, the basic issues of which would be carried forth during the course of the First Republic in the form of “Ruralismo.”

Joaquim Nabuco (1849-1910) is known to most students of Brazilian history as an abolitionist, a member of the Second Reign's Liberal opposition and, perhaps, as the first Brazilian ambassador to the United States. Some of us, however, note that Nabuco was also an important spokesman for the monarchist reaction against the early Republic and an outstanding historian and apologist for the Monarchy. He thus suggests something of both the range, contradictions, and limits of elite political thought in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

This presentation will attempt to go beyond the commonplace solution to the apparent contradiction in Nabuco—his liberal monarchism—to suggest the nature of his socio-political assumptions as they evolved from his more radical youth to his rather conservative maturity. It will also attempt, as an integral part of this, to identify Nabuco's role in clarifying and promoting elite conservative social thought through the use and interpretation of Brazil's national history.

This discussion takes its historical cue from a piece of recent urban folk wisdom in Brazil, one claiming that children born outside wedlock historically have enjoyed equal inheritance rights with their legitimate half-siblings. This notion attained wide circulation in the final years of the great debate over divorce that ended in 1976. As the defenders of the status quo, opponents of divorce usually failed to point out that Brazilian succession law had historically distinguished not just between individuals of legitimate and illegitimate birth but also among those of illegitimate birth. Of course, most Brazilians, like most North Americans, remained unaware of the vast differences prevailing between their two legal systems of inheritance. They usually assumed that the legal precept contained in the Statute of Merton (1235) still served as a rule of thumb for the Anglo-American experience: “Once a bastard, always a bastard.” On the other hand, what appealed to Brazilians' sense of fairness was the flexibility their national system of succession offered. The notion that inheritance rights should be restricted to those of legitimate birth was one they proudly rejected. In leaving the door open to the possibility that civil law could equip those born to unmarried parents with the potential for equal inheritance rights with legitimate heirs, Brazil's system of succession provided that so-called bastardy could be converted into legitimacy.

Latin American maritime history is virtually an unexplored subject among English-speaking scholars. Opportunities for research abound since practically every Latin American nation has had an intimate affair with the water; for some it has been sweet and for others salt. One can find a maritime topic which complements his or her interest in almost any Latin American country or any era.

Even land-locked Paraguay has been profoundly influenced by its maritime environment. It has fought two major wars since independence and the outcomes of both were influenced by the exploitation of the extensive river systems. During the War of the Triple Alliance, Paraguay lost control of the rivers, the only efficient means of transportation, early in the contest. As a result, Paraguay's enemies held the initiative and could find a haven under the guns of their fleet if the battle went poorly on land. Conversely, during the early stages of the Chaco War, Paraguay's control of the rivers gave it a significant logistical advantage over its enemy, Bolivia. Paraguay had to bring its supplies up the Paraguay River and its tributaries; on the other hand, Bolivia had to bring its supplies up the west slopes of the Andes and then down the other side.

The study of the first decade of the Republic permits one to reflect on the numerous myths that permeate Brazil's history. These myths have served to reduce social conflict and to provide ideological foundations for the holders of power. In particular, examination of the 1890s challenges the commonly accepted notion of the peaceful character of the Brazilian historical process and the myth of consensus. The roots of these traditions, according to Henry Keith, date from the viceregal period. But the republicans were particularly active in reinforcing it by exalting the bloodless character of the change of regime in 1889. “Revolution without blood” the politicians Martim Francisco Ribeiro de Andrada of São Paulo and Karl von Koseritz of Rio Grande do Sul would say. The Correio Mercantil of Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul agreed; the country had witnessed a “marvelous political change that Brazil brought about instantaneously without shedding a drop of blood, without firing a single bullet.”

In 1893, the penitent known as Antônio Conselheiro convinced several thousand devout followers to join with him in creating a religious community at Canudos in the Bahian sertão. It grew precipitously, attracting pilgrims from every part of the region, some from places more than two hundred kilometers distant. Within two years it had become the second largest urban center (after the capital, Salvador) in Bahia, Brazil's second most populous state. As soon as the effect on the traditional labor system began to be felt by landowners, pressure was applied to state officials, who in 1896 agreed to take action to dismantle the settlement. This would prove arduous, but after four bloody military campaigns, Canudos was destroyed by the Brazilian army in 1897. The so-called “rebellion” left an indelible legacy on late nineteenth-century Brazil. Taken to be a symbol of the clash between urban rationality and rural “backwardness,” Canudos was celebrated as a pivotal national victory for “progress” and “civilization.”