For Mexico the years 1861 to 1867, encompassing the United States Civil War and French intervention, were violent, tumultuous years, and Mexico was already exhausted by five decades of revolution, war, civil disorder and banditry. The last years of the 1850's had witnessed the guerra de la reforma, an intense, bitter civil war. Not only was Mexico politically exhausted, she was also economically in bad need of peace to permit regeneration. The war with France, beginning in late 1861, was, however, to continue the economic as well as political strain upon Mexican society. Still, the United States Civil War, for all its tragic course north of the Rio Grande, was apparently to have a beneficial effect upon the Mexican economy in several aspects.

Mexican industrialization, which began during the second half of the nineteenth century, was paralleled by the appearance of an urban labor movement. Industrialization resulted in a sudden concentration of new workers from the countryside in a few urban areas—especially Mexico City. Living conditions for the new city dwellers were generally intolerable and were compounded by chronic economic and political instability. Crowning the laborer's difficulty were the almost impossible working conditions in the new factories. The working class, virtually in self-defense, began to organize. Because the urban labor movement during the last third of the nineteenth century was a prelude to similar and more famous developments during the violent years of the early twentieth century, analysis of its causes, nature, and significance is essential for understanding an important aspect of the Mexican Revolution.

The Papal Donation of 1493 has been the subject of propaganda, diplomatic negotiations, and scholarly debate since at least 1512. Recent studies have been more concerned with the doctrine of freedom of the seas than with detailed examinations of the diplomatic events of the 16th century which pitted the Spanish interpretations of the Donation against the desires and ideas of her European rivals. As a consequence, the nuances of the various mid-sixteenth century diplomatic settlements have passed unnoticed.

In the years prior to the outbreak of the First World War, the Hamburg-American-Lines (HAPAG) steamer Ypiranga gained a special reputation in the Western hemisphere. It was known for transporting several Mexican Presidents into exile, and it became especially famous for its 26th voyage, a trip from Hamburg to Veracruz in the spring of 1914.

Its hold filled with weapons for the Mexican President Huerta, the steamer approached the entrance to the Veracruz harbor on April 21. At that time, its captain had not the slightest idea that on Woodrow Wilson's order American troops had landed to take control of the harbor in order to prevent the weapons his ship carried from reaching the Mexican President.

Julio Roca and the Generation of 1880 are best characterized by their liberalism. Indeed Argentine politics ever since the fall of Juan Manuel de Rosas had adopted an increasing liberal tone. These beliefs included the encouragement of constitutionalism, federalism, freedom, and democracy. The last two points were rather vague; and democracy, especially, was interpreted in a more theoretical than practical way by the aristocracy that remained in charge of political, economic, and social affairs. However, efforts to stress the immigration of workers and capital from Europe, a relatively free trade policy, and public education for all were more clear and determined. On most of these points, the leaders of the nation seemed to agree. But on another point, that of the role of the Roman Catholic Church in Argentine life, there was sharp disagreement. At no time was this more evident than during Roca's first administration, 1880-1886.

In the introduction to his The Jews in the Canary Islands, Lucien Wolf wrote almost a half-century ago that “The work of the… branches of the Holy Office in America has only been made known to us piecemeal… For social data relating to the great body of Marranos the records have not hitherto been studied.” These records of the trial proceedings, called procesos, still constitute a fairly virgin field of social, religious and economic Latin American history in general and specifically for the history of Jews and Judaism.

A few have written articles about Mexican Jews in colonial times after a cursory study of a few documents and several acclaimed texts. It is, therefore, not surprising that the results are superficial and often suffused with errors. The foregoing may be illustrated by statements in an article published in the American Jewish Historical Quarterly. Among the numerous errors that appeared therein are “among 2,281 trials of the Mexican Holy Office, 351 concerned crypto-Jews…” and that “By the end of the seventeenth century, the whole crypto-Jewish community had been destroyed.”

Since the days of the Spanish conquest, Peru has been a predominantly Indian nation; today nearly half of the population is culturally Indian. Scholars and government officials for centuries have recognized the vital importance of integrating this human mass into the national life. Despite repeated efforts to alter the situation, however, the Indian population remains isolated economically, politically, and educationally.

Belice, or British Honduras, has been the subject of dispute throughout its history. Although the Spanish claim to the Caribbean and Central America was clear in theory, the British distinguished between title by discovery and title by occupation. In their eyes this jungle terrain along the shores of the Caribbean Sea was “ res nullius ”—uninhabited territory, i.e., not occupied by Europeans—and hence subject to seizure by anyone who chose to effectively populate it. Spanish settlements in neighboring portions of Central America, in the British view, conveyed only dubious title to this area. Moreover, the original settlers of the town of Belize were freebooters who were not accustomed to paying heed to Spanish claims.

The purpose of this article is to briefly describe the background and content of a philosophical work from 17th-century Peru: the logic of Juan de Espinoza Medrano, “ el Lunarejo ” (1632?- 1688), published in Rome in 1688. It is hoped that the examination of this writing, which is similar to other philosophical treatises of the period, will show that colonial philosophy in Latin America attained a respectable technical level and that many criticisms often made of it must be reconsidered.

The achievements of ancient Mayan civilization in the fields of astronomy, architecture, sculpture, and mathematics have been well documented. Recent research has found that in many respects Mayan culture attained heights originally thought to be nonexistent among the Amerindian populations of the New World prior to the coming of the Europeans. To have reached such cultural levels there must have been established a rather solid economic base which afforded an economic surplus, for a people merely surviving at subsistence levels have little time to appropriate to tasks other than those of seeking sustenance. The purpose of this paper will be to explore, in most elementary fashion, the bases of the economic organization of the Maya; i. e., to attempt to answer how the Maya resolved the four fundamental economic problems any society has to face: (1) the problem of the allocation of resources—what to produce given a relatively scarce resource base; (2) the problem of the organization of production, essentially a technological and administrative issue; (3) the problem of the distribution of production—how factors are recompensed for their productive services; (4) the savings and investment problem—what provision is made for future production. Emphasis should be placed on the rudimentary nature of the essay, because apparently little is known and / or has been written on the economics of Mayan civilization in very specific terms. Those who have studied the Maya have generally been anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, who have shown more interest in social and political culture, art forms, and religion than in economics. Therefore, what appears below is, more than anything else, a hodge-podge of pieces culled from multi-sources and threaded loosely together.

An opinion often expressed by historians of Mexico and Latin America is that the age of Don Porfirio's Mexico was one in which the philosophy of positivism, wherther Comtean or Spencerian, was the dominant and official ideology of the day. In contrast to this viewpoint, an important supposition of this essay is that the intellectual history of the Porfiriato can only become intelligible if and when other ideas, concepts, and philosophies are distinguished from positivism. In addition, an accurate description of the role of ideas necessitates that some attention be focused upon the function of ideas in society. Thus a concern of this essay, apart from differentiating ideas, is that of suggesting the interrelationship of ideas to certain political and socio-economic groups during the Porfiriato. To do this properly will first require a statement about the social structure of Mexico between 1876 and 1911.

Northeast Brazil had traditionally maintained two functionally separate but structurally related Catholic Churches: on the coast, usually in the state capitals, the “ official church ” has been manned and officiated by a well-trained bureaucratic hierarchy; and in the hinterlands, the backlanders have often practiced a variety of “ folk Catholicism.” In a social and economic context, the Brazilian Northeast can also be divided into the “ far Northeast” of Gilberto Freyre and Jorge Amado, the world of opulent sugar and cacao planters on the one hand, and on the other the Northeast of drought, poverty, hunger, and superstition described by Rachel de Queiroz and Graciliano Ramos. In this divergent Northeast, religion has played an important role in the lives of the backlanders, and often priests, both the practitioners of the folk Catholicism and the ordained of the official church have managed to influence the politics of the region.

Frequently, commentators on political developments in various small Central American nations describe the political participation of the military as if it were an unchanging and ineluctable force that had conditioned public life from time immemorial. Unfortunately, such a perspective not only distorts historical reality but makes it extremely difficult to offer accurate interpretations of current events. While it seems fundamentally correct to assert that Latin American military institutions differ from such organizations in other less developed areas in that they were forged in the crucible of 19th rather than 20th century events, such a generalization cannot apply to every Hispanic nation. A more adequate representation of reality might be that there are essentially two types of Latin American military establishments which relate in quite different ways to their respective political systems. First, there is that class of military organization where institutional identities were fairly well established by the early 20th century and, secondly, there are those which bear a closer affinity to military establishments in the new nations. Here, there has been a very late process of institutional consolidation which makes the behavioral patterns of these institutions particularly volatile.

In the autumn of 1509 the explorer Alonso de Ojeda landed on the northern coast of South America, near where is today the city of Cartagena, and claimed the region in the name of Spain. As some of the natives appeared inclined to question the acquisitive proclivities of the Crown, Ojeda had read to them the principal articles of the Christian faith, hoping to demonstrate the benign nature of his invasion. Apparently feeling that his obligation to the Church was not yet fulfilled, he then informed the local residents “ especially of the supreme jurisdiction of the pope ” and required that they embrace the Catholic religion. Ojeda barely escaped with his life.

The multifaceted character of economic growth in Latin America has several distinctive qualities. Research is now uncovering some basic features of different stages and areas in industrialization. In Latin America, where personalism assumes a more significant role than in the system oriented Anglo-America, the lives of individuals can be quite decisive in the functioning of society. Francisco Javier Cisneros played several highly meaningful roles, all of which are important not only for the legacy left by his agitated, dynamic and dramatic life, but also because his experiences illustrate a not uncommon pattern of economic development in Latin America.

A surprisingly frank letter from Francisco I. Madero, political figurehead of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, to New York publisher William Randolph Hearst casts new light on the difficult question of when Madero finally opted for revolution to topple the 35-year dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911).

The letter was dated April 25, 1911, when Madero was with insurrectionary troops fighting at Ciudad Juárez. It contained Madero's responses to some written questions on his role in the Revolution submitted by Hearst through Sonunerfield, an American consular official in Mexico. Madero's answers were to form the basis for a news story in the Hearst newspapers.

Although the Panama Railroad Company had operated commissaries in the nineteenth century, not until the United States had begun canal construction in 1904 did pressure increase for supplies and services. In 1905 Canal Zone Governor Charles Magoon reported that two salary increases had been granted to meet rising food costs on the isthmus. On each occasion, however, the salary increment was offset by the Panamanian merchants who had raised commodity prices. Laborers purportedly slipped into the jungle in search of food. In July, 1905, Governor Magoon and Chief Engineer of the canal project, John F. Stevens, agreed to establish a commissary system to distribute food at cost to the canal labor force totalling approximately 17,000 men. Apparently reacting to the jungle environment and to greedy Panamanian merchants, the United States government turned to the commissary operation. With time's passing, the commissaries blossomed “from a pork and beans beginning to silk stocking maturity.” By the late 1940's, the casual visitor wondered if he had stumbled upon a typical United States Department store in the tropics. Many Panamanians were deeply angered by this business activity, believing that their country's economy had been crushed and their right to live and expand denied. Some Panamanians charged that an international crime had been committed by the United States against the small nation. The Republic's merchants contended that most of the commissary trade actually belonged to them.

After the first American doctoral dissertation related to Luso-Brazilian studies was completed in 1892, the output of dissertations in that area of scholarship grew slowly and unsteadily. In contrast, graduate student interest in Luso-Brazilian studies increased greatly during the twenty years after 1950. Students in British universities also contributed an increasing number of studies during the latter period (Table I). Unfortunately, few compilations of this accelerating scholarly production have been available to scholars interested in Luso-Brazilian studies.