Before I begin, I want to thank the Conference on Latin American History[CLAH] and the Distinguished Service Award Committee for giving me thissignal honor. This organization has always been important to me, and it'sreally nice to know tiiat it thinks I've been important to it.

The last talk I gave to CLAH was in Atlanta five years ago. I told the storyof one man, Santiago de Liniers, and his good and bad fortune. Just as forLiniers, luck has played a huge role in my life.

Between 1842 and 1848, a violent conflict erupted on the banks of the SãoFrancisco River in nordieastern Brazil. Militão Plácido de França Antunesand his faction declared war on the family of Captain Bernardo JoséGuerreiro. Both families were based in the river town of Pilão Arcado, butthe fighting spread to the nearby town of Sento-Sé, and by 1848 violence hadengulfed the entire region from Barra to Juazeiro (see Figures 1 and 2).Bands of armed men loyal to Militão roamed the streets and attacked thehouseholds of people they considered to be on the side of the Guerreiros.Many people were killed, and others fled the region altogether. The violenceended only after Militão's faction killed Guerreiro's last adult son onAugust 1, 1848. Although a family feud in the backlands was not unusual,this fight resonated with coastal lawmakers who, in Brazil's Second Empire,had been looking toward conquering the west and consolidating their own vastterritory. The reports of wrenching violence in the backlands, unchecked bythe rule of law, represented the deepest fears of the coastal elite and madethe need to conquer the Brazilian interior even more urgent.

Argentina, and Buenos Aires in particular, was a preferred South Americandestination for great numbers of European immigrants who crossed theAtlantic beginning in the late nineteenth century in search of newopportunities. Most Latin American governments, from the early days of theirnations' independence, sought to attract European workers. These newlyfounded countries considered immigration an essential element for creating asociety that would become economically, politically, and socially modern.They hoped to attract mainly foreigners from Northern Europe, among them theBritish, whom they considered to have superior labor skills and to beaccustomed to the habits of order and work the new nation required.

During the late 1920s, the Mexican government under President Plutarco ElíasCalles (1924-1928) confronted multiple challenges to state consolidation.These included plots by political rivals, foreign relations crises, andseveral popular revolts. The longest-lasting and most destabilizing of thesewas the Cristero War, which persisted from 1926 until 1929, with sporadicuprisings into the early 1930s. Despite these challenges, Calles and hishandpicked successors not only remained in power at the beginning of the1930s, but also launched the single-party political system that would endurein Mexico until the end of the twentieth century.