I never thought I’d be sitting here talking to all of you, but I do want to thank you and tell you how honored I am that you have given me this award. It was completely unexpected, and I still think I’m going to wake up one day and find it was all a dream.

Not such a dream was being told I’d have to prepare an “address”—something editors rarely have to do. We are more at ease sitting in a comfortable chair reading manuscripts, or writing soothing letters to our authors who sometimes get very frazzled with all the complicated things that are involved in scholarly publishing. So I thought I’d just say a few words, certainly not an address, about what it is like to be an editor at a university press, since I fear some people think all we do is take authors out to lunch or to dinner at expensive restaurants. And we do, of course, do that too, and it is something I shall miss as I venture into retirement.

In 1650, a Nahua noble named don Martín Cerón y Alvarado set down his last wishes in a codicil. Eminent but now elderly and frail, don Martin had served many times as governor of the central Mexican altepetl (ethnic state) of Xochimilco. Located by the lakes to the south of Mexico City, Xochimilco was a prominent and populous polity, renowned for its bountiful wetland agriculture. Such was its size and economic vitality that Spanish authorities, under King Philip II, decided to award it superior municipal status as a city—one of just four such designations in the basin of Mexico. In keeping with his position as the dynastic ruler of a prestigious alteped, don Martin was a lord of the highest social rank. He could trace his exalted lineage back to Acamapichtli, the Mexica forebear of the Aztec emperor Moteuhcçoma Xocoyotzin. By 1650, though, don Martin was the last of his kind. No person in Xochimilco would again hold his honorific title, tlatoani (dynastic ruler). His codicil and an earlier will and testament, both written in Nahuatl, marked the passing of an era.

On July 20, 1740, King Philip V of Spain was given paperwork regarding a dispute over the adjudication of a notarial office in Panama City and, as usual, he was expected to make a decision. The king also had in hand recommendations from the Cámara of the Consejo de Indias. The king would have handled the case in a relatively straightforward manner, but for one fact—the two notaries involved in the public bid were of African descent.

This article is a study of the controversial role of Portuguese military orders in Brazil, starting from that nation’s independence in 1822 and continuing through the nineteenth century, under both the first Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro I, and his son, Dom Pedro II. The debates around the presence of the orders, whose mission was rooted in both Portuguese colonial power and the authority of the Holy See, on Brazilian soil are important because they shed light on the process and nature of the growth of that nation’s independence. The government’s struggle to maintain the orders in Brazil, in spite of ongoing criticism, and only with the exertion of great diplomatic effort, demonstrates how necessary they were to the functioning of the state. The orders constituted an important source of income, yes, but they were valuable even more as ways of granting honor and prestige. Their presence allowed Dom Pedro I to unite the empire of Brazil by decorating local elites, thus securing their services and loyalty.

During the nine months prior to the writing of this report to the Guadalajara See, the parishioners of Santa Maria del Oro had presented a series of demands for money in the priest’s possession. Some 400 pesos had been gained from the forced sale of their lay brotherhood’s property, and they wanted the money so they could buy back the land. By August 1857, however, the parishioners’ attempts at legitimate reclamation, through both ecclesiastical and civil channels, had ended in disappointment. Rumors had long circulated that these Indian parishioners were allied with a prominent gang leader in the region, Manuel Lozada. Thus it likely came as little surprise when Martinez found himself huddled in his church in late September as Lozada’s gang ringed the town, accompanied by the town’s prominent Indians, and demanded that the priest and the local magistrate come out and surrender. Martinez was rescued only by the intervention of state troops, who scattered Lozada’s gang and allowed the priest to flee.