Educational facilities in nineteenth-century New Granada were woefully inadequate. School systems were unable to accommodate more than a small percentage of the population, and the existing curricula were largely speculative or theoretical rather than empirical or pragmatic in nature. These deficiencies were openly recognized by many contemporary observers. Nevertheless, it appears that political animosities, conflicting educational philosophies, and financial difficulties hampered any attempt to improve the situation, as the experience of Doctor Lorenzo María Lleras and the Colegio del Espíritu Santo clearly illustrates.

The debate over the granting of petroleum concessions to foreign enterprise was one of the most significant areas of contact between the United States and Colombia after World War I. The official United States response to the plight of American interests involved in the development of the Barco concession exemplifies the nature of United States Latin American policy in the transition from the Coolidge to the Hoover administration. State Department actions in the Barco instance underline the growing awareness in American circles of the need to fashion a policy which would protect American enterprise as well as the principle of foreign investment against nationalist sentiment in Latin America.

Venustiano Carranza occupied a place of conspicuous importance in Mexican history. He achieved ascendancy in the crusade against Victoriano Huerta in 1913 and maintained it against all challengers until the spring of 1920. During this time he also resisted efforts by the United States to influence the course of events and undertook to reconstruct Mexico after years of devastation and turmoil. Yet in spite of his prominence, surprisingly few scholars have attempted a sustained or systematic examination of his role in the Mexican Revolution. No altogether satisfactory biography exists. He has appeared as a principal protagonist in several studies of factional disputes and diplomatic controversies during the Constitutionalist period, but often such accounts have projected an opaque, contradictory image of him. He has seemed either larger than life or lifeless and has been portrayed alternatively as a selfness champion of progressive reform or as a self-serving traditionalist who stood against the forces of meaningful change.

Of all the issues raised by the Mexican Revolution, none has stimulated artistic creativity more than that of the Indian, his past, his culture and his exclusion from the mainstream of national life. At the same time, no artistic form provides so thorough a treatment of these issues as the indigenista novel.

While the Revolution was not launched by Indians, nor were their interests initially central to it, as it developed their problems became a natural and important issue in the reorganization of Mexican society. As one writer observes: “in attempting to organize Mexican society, the mestizo revolutionary has had no other choice but to take into consideration the indigenous factor, so that although the Revolution was not the work of the Indian, in certain ways it has been for his benefit.”2

On September 20, 1835, borderland chieftains and their followers in Rio Grande do Sul, known as Farrapos or Ragamuffins, toppled the provincial government in Pôrto Alegre. By November 1836 the Farrapos had established a republican government in the small town of Piratini in the southwest hills of the province; for close to ten years they would withstand the power of the Brazilian Empire in their bid for independence. At the outset, when the rebels had captured the initiative, they were reluctant to use slaves in the Ragamuffin army. Aware of internal security problems and the sanctity of private propetry, the leadership expressed fear of arming and training Afro-Brazilians. But as the maddening horse-war dragged on, the newly created Republic of Rio Grande do Sul became eager for men who might be counted as white. By the end of the Ragamuffin War, slaves were the backbone of the rebel army.

Late in April, 1917, students of Preparatory Studies in Montevideo, Uruguay, declared a strike against the authorities of their school and organized a public demonstration on the steps of the Faculty of Law of the University. Thus a decade of calm in the university student movement of Uruguay was abruptly shattered by students who were in the last years of secondary education preparing for entry into the University. In a brief but violent struggle with police, troops, and firemen the angry young men of Preparatory Studies kindled a new spirit of protest and rebellion that would soon spread to the University and awaken the dormant student movement.

It has traditionally been argued that Free Trade and its principal oracle, Jean Courcelle Seneuil have adversely affected Chile’s economic development. Such diverse individuals as Aníbal Pinto Santa Cruz, Julio César Jobet, Andre Gunder Frank, and Francisco Encina have asserted that the introduction of Economic Liberalism destroyed Chile. Before Courcelle Seneuil, they claimed, Chile enjoyed the possibility of becoming an industrial nation. The advent of Free Trade, however, knocked down the barriers behind which the nascent industries had prospered. Chile’s factories, unable to compete, withered away, reducing the nation to a raw material producer; an economic colony for the industrial powers of Europe and the United States.

Although several Colombians of varying prominence had suggested the possibility of an imminent Isthmian revolt, it seems that the events of and immediately after November 3, 1903, took most of their countrymen by surprise. Certainly there is no evidence of significant prior planning for such a contingency. The achievement of Panamanian independence was followed, in turn, by a Colombian failure to establish a consistent and coherent policy designed either to regain the lost province or to implement terms by which the loss could be made more acceptable. This is not to say that Colombians, officially and unofficially, did nothing in response to the Panamanian separatist movement. Yet what is impressive is not what happened, but what did not happen: There was no sustained military movement against the Isthmus, no break in diplomatic relations with the United States, no serious reprisals against Americans and Isthmians, or their property, in Colombia, and no vigorous protest against the incumbent Colombian political leadership. Panama was apparently not a major issue even during the Presidential campaign and election of 1904. The lack of preparation alluded to above was surely a factor in determining this limited response, but it was a small factor and offers, at best, an incomplete explanation. In fact, the mildness of the Colombian reaction was the product of the unique interaction of domestic and international, contemporary and historical conditions which this article seeks to illuminate.

The urban orientation of Spanish immigrants into the New World has been a well-argued thesis among historians of colonial Latin America. Reinforcing the settlers’ proclivities toward urban life was a concerted policy of the Spanish crown which encouraged the founding of towns and cities as part of the conquest and subsequent settlement. For the conquerors of the fifteenth century and for the settlers who followed them throughout the era of Spanish imperial domination, the cosmopolitan qualities of the Renaissance instilled the attitude that urbanidad (city life) meant organized living under established political, social and religious institutions. Towns and cities were centers of order and direction for civilized life in contrast to the presumed disorder and lack of style offered by rural life.