IT can be readily understood that before any study can be made regarding the truth of the statement concerning conditions in Peru in the Noticias secretas a detailed examination should first be completed of the Voyage to South America, also written by Ulloa. All of the information contained in the Noticias was gathered while on this trip and such an examination should yield valuable clues concerning the places visited by the two scientists, the people with whom they spoke and the length of time spent in each region. In this way, the student should be able to form an opinion concerning how much of the material in the Noticias is first hand and how much was gathered either from other people by word of mouth or from written reports found in the archives of the various governmental agencies. At the same time, such an examination should yield a list of informants, who are known to have given information to the Spanish travellers.

THE Spanish overseas empire was not won in a fit of absent-mindedness nor was it developed in a mood of salutary neglect. It was won with a conscience as well as with a sword.

Some disagreement has recently been expressed as to whether the ideas of Francisco de Vitoria, prima professor of theology at the University of Salamanca at the time of his death in 1546, exercised any appreciable influence on the actual development of events and ideas in the New World. One thing is beyond contention. Vitoria’s thought had a decisive impact on the Philippines. The ideological controversy precipitated by the conquest of the archipelago often assumed the character of a creative commentary on the lectures of that great Dominican theologian.

IN their essays on the congregation of Indians in New Spain, Lesley Byrd Simpson and Howard F. Cline advanced information on the general characteristics and legal bases of this royal policy. Essentially, the kings of Spain wanted to gather the Indians into towns for purposes of religious training and in order to facilitate fiscal and political administration. According to Simpson and Cline, the application of these laws in New Spain toward the latter part of the sixteenth century was largely ineffective and, apparently, the congregation program affected only a small portion of the native population. One of the main reasons for this partial failure was the fact that the Indians already had villages, and it was very difficult for them to move to newly established locations. The documentation of these socio-political processes is avowedly incomplete; investigators have not gone beyond 1606 and have not examined the intrinsic land tenure implications. Except for a case history presented by Cline in 1955, other social aspects of this policy have hardly been studied.

IT is often said that the French Revolution and the ideas of the philosophers of the eighteenth century were of great influence in Latin America and that they constituted the intellectual motivation of its movements toward independence.

This idea is presented in the majority of elementary history books. It is worthy of note that in the national hymn of the Republic of Honduras, one of the stanzas lauds the work of the Convention and mentions Danton.

However, some years ago a French historian, Marius André, published a rather short essay, La fin de l’Empire Espagnol des Indes, in which he attempted to demonstrate that the independence of Spanish America was achieved by a group of conservatives who were frightened by the rebellion of Riego in Spain and who had no desire at any time to take the French Revolution as a model.

Nowhere in the western hemisphere is the wealth of monumental architecture of the period of colonization still extant as great as it is in Mexico. Spanish in its derivation, transplanted at first almost bodily from the mother country and modified only in certain details by indigenous labor and by the exigencies of distance and circumstances, it remained for two centuries essentially and romantically Spanish.

WASHINGTON IRVING put together The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus too hurriedly for it to be as accurate and original as historians would like it to be. He was even inclined on occasion, perhaps to compensate for the impossibility of doing exhaustive research, to “let his imagination go completely,” reconstructing colorful scenes not only from what existing records clearly indicated had happened, but from what a knowledge of the era of discovery led him to believe might have happened. And he heightened diction, tone, and characterization to the point of inviting criticism. Nevertheless nineteenth-century historians did not laugh Columbus off. And Stanley Williams’s verdict that instances where Irving consciously invents facts or distorts what in his time was considered to be the evidence are “relatively rare” seems sound. In spite of its faults, the book proved, apparently, to be usable until more detailed studies of the subject appeared.

IN 1578 the Spanish Ambassador in London protested against English outrages “beyond the line.” Queen Elizabeth replied

CENTRAL America owes its independence from Spain to a curiously inter-connected chain of events and people. The Captaincy-General of Guatemala, as it was known in the beginning of the nineteenth century, effected its transition from a colonial to a free status with a minimum of bloodshed. Also, its freedom was gained with atleast a semblance of legality rather than by a resort to violence. The key link in the chain of events and people that led to this outcome was a relatively unknown and discredited (in the eyes of Spanish official-dom) veteran officer of the Spanish Army named Gabino Gainza. By his attitude in a time of emergency, Gainza prevented violent measures from being taken to insure independence, and at the same time prevented similar measures from being taken that might have kept Central America loyal to Spain. Gainza is not an heroic figure, but Central America owes him a lasting debt of gratitude for not having tried to be one.

IT is well-known that the Franciscans had a very considerable influence on the history of America. From the days of the conquest up to the present time, their labors have been outstanding in the sphere of American spiritual life by their extensiveness, their intensity, and their brilliance. In the missionary field, Franciscan activity was particularly conspicuous. Up to the end of the sixteenth century, the Franciscan missions were almost as numerous as those of all the rest of the religious orders together; Franciscan primacy was maintained in the seventeenth century, and from 1767 onwards nearly all the missions among the pagans, both in North and South America, remained in their hands, once the Society of Jesus had been suppressed.

In the average Spanish American colonial town, there was demonstrated a greater solicitude for public works and social welfare than was typical in the English settlements of North America. On the local level, two institutions were mainly responsible for Spanish welfare projects in the New World, the Church and the cabildo, or town council. In spite of the much commented upon lack of harmony between the Church and higher institutions of civil administration, a surprising rapport existed between Church and cabildo in providing for the welfare of town inhabitants.

IN Latin America of the present day there still survive, to a greater or lesser extent, some vestiges of the non-material cultural traits of its Indian forbears. In the so-called “Indianistic” nations (those which still contain a high percentage of their total populations which has been identified as Indian) such as Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, modern-day reflections of pre-Columbian culture, including concepts of land tenure, are of extreme importance. In other Latin American nations, where there are sizeable Indian (“ethnic” or “cultural”) populations, and where these Indians still maintain their own segregated communities, such as Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and Chile, aboriginal patterns of tenure, somewhat modified by the centuries, are still evident.

MOST colonial territories were claimed or acquired by the symbolical ritual of taking possession. Nevertheless, this ritual ceremony is a subject that has been largely neglected in the historical literature of our nation. Few people, aside from historians, realize or know what an act of possession or sovereignty is. Even among these, there are those who simply overlook or ignore the historical importance and significance of the ceremony by which explorers and colonizers laid claim to territory in the New World. Yet there were extremely few boundary disputes and even colonial wars which did not retrace their antecedents to the performance of an act of sovereignty by some explorer of the rival colonial powers of Spain, England, and France.

The Franciscan Province of the Holy Cross was the first major administrative unit organized by the Franciscans, or by any religious, in the Americas. Begun at the relatively early date of 1505, this province faced the task of aiding in the establishment of the Church in a new world inhabited by only several thousand Europeans and hundreds of thousands of other people so completely unknown that the Europeans could not even call them by their proper name.

FATHER Omer Englebert is a distinguished author, known for his works in several languages. In his choice of themes he has shown versatility of interest and a knowledge that is almost encyclopedic. But when he chose Padre Junípero Serra for his latest book, the several years of preparation that he spent were not enough to save the book from many errors. A great number nowadays are asking for a definitive life of Padre Serra. It is regrettable that even such an accomplished writer failed to write it.

TO all Mexico’s visitors, as to the United States’ beverage industry, “Tehuacán” is a trade-mark, a synonym for superlative mineral water. This product of some dozen bottling works at Tehuacán is justly regarded as the traveler’s health insurance in the tropics; it is, for its excellence, purchased in trainload lots by American brewers and soft-drink manufacturers. To sufferers from some exceedingly painful physical disorders the same word spells the relief obtainable from the “water cure” they take there. In pursuit of health, rest, and a superb climate for both, thousands from many nations annually make their way to the little spa “city” they find glistening in the highland sun against that masterpiece of natural sculpture, the Cerro Colorado, the advance line of Puebla’s mountain rampart against the deep tropics. Such are the facts that have realized Tehuacán’s modern fame and, thereby, prosperity.