The tasaciones de tributos compiled between 1548 and 1554 under the supervision of Alonso López de Cerrato have long been recognized as the most important tribute documentation extant for mid sixteenth-century Central America, being of particular interest to all those whose inquiries have focussed on various aspects of the economy and demography of regions stretching from Chiapas and Yucatán in the north to Honduras and Nicaragua in the south. For the purpose of this paper, we wish to concentrate simply on one spatial component of the Libro de tasaciones forming part of the celebrated legajo 128, a rich set of documents housed in the Archivo General de Indias in the section of the archive classified as the Audiencia de Guatemala: that spatial component referred to by contemporary Spanish officials as “los términos y jurisdictión de la ciudad de Santiago de Guatemala,” that is, the territory which in early colonial times fell under the administrative authority of the city of Santiago.

Abraham Lowenthal in characterizing the Peruvian military government of General Juan Velasco Alvarado cautioned that the regime was not a “typical caudillo” venture but rather an essentially “institutional” effort. His caveat is certainly justified when one considers that Peru was dominated until recent decades by such modern era military chieftains as Luis M. Sánchez Cerro, Oscar R. Benavides, and Manuel A. Odría. Yet when General Odría seized control of Peru on October 27, 1948, the Peruvian army was striving desperately for increased professionalism. In order to retain the army's support, the caudillo was thus compelled to enact institutional reforms that made the officer class more conscious of its modernizing mission and, ironically, far less tolerant of Odría's personalism. This study will analyze the military policies of the Odría regime in order to explain the changing outlook of the Peruvian armed forces during the caudillo's eight year rule.

When the cottage textile industries in 18th century England were moved to urban factories, women and children also left their private existence and moved into public work in the mills. The situation was similar in Mexico and Colombia when their factories started to produce cloth, but after an urban labor force developed, men replaced women in the plants. In developed nations, women still dominate the textile work force, especially when products compete on a world market. Few studies have attempted to analyze the difference historically as the labor force divides into sexual roles, either in advanced or underdeveloped nations. Although Ester Boserup's study of third world women indicates that this transition occurs (in one direction) when mechanization advances to replace manual or simple tasks, lately her conclusions have been questioned as technologically advanced industries such as computers have hired women rather than men to assemble instruments. The textile industry has often been viewed as a force in the beginning of industrialization and can illustrate how women are used as a transition element as they first move from private home activities into public roles in the factories and then as plants become more capitalintensive, they are again returned to their private space. At first their willingness to accept low wages in the mills left the men performing agricultural labor. As promotion of industrialization brought an urban labor force into existence, a variety of social and economic pressures removed them from participation in production of goods. Their reserve labor remained available for other functions as the need arose.

A number of first-rate scholarly studies in recent years have considerably enhanced our understanding of the troubled, sometimes tumultuous, relationship between the state and the Mexican Church in the century stretching from the reign of Charles III (1759-1788) to the era of Benito Juárez (1855-1876). Nancy Farriss, for example, has detailed the Bourbon drive to exert royal authority over the conduct and activities of the powerful and influential clergy and the latter's claim to exemption from that authority. Farriss, Karl Schmitt, and James Breedlove have demonstrated the connection between the state ecclesiastical reforms and the clergy's decisive role in the Mexican independence movement culminating in 1821. Ann Staples has ably ventured an overview of Church-state relations in the crucial but long-neglected early independence period of the first federal republic, 1824-1835. Michael Costeloe, Asunción Lavrin, Jan Bazant, Brian Hamnet, and Robert Knowlton have examined some of the Church's key economic activities and the impact of state reforms upon each. State policy toward the Church in the northern Mexican borderlands has received the attention of C. Alan Hutchinson, Manuel P. Servín, David J. Weber, John L. Kessell, Lawrence and Lucia Kinnaird, and others. Together with earlier works, these studies have documented a drama which began with the absolutistinspired reforms by the Crown, which regarded ecclesiastical privilege and power as incompatible with its own interests, and ended violently with the political and economic power of the Church and its clergy severely reduced and subordinated to the secular state.

The Island of Grenada has had an interesting and turbulent history. Its early years were largely under the French, but it was captured by the English in 1763. It was taken back by the French in 1779 but then permanently ceded to England by the Treaty of Versailles in 1783. The census of 1771 showed a population of 1,661 whites, 415 free colored, and 26,211 slaves—largely associated with the raising of sugar. In 1793 the French and the British were again at war, and in 1795 the French republic made a strong attempt to regain Grenada by capitalizing on the strong antagonism which had built up between the French and British settlers on the island. Although the French forces under Victor Hughes could not actually capture the island, the local French planters, slaves and colored planters revolted against the British under the leadership of a colored planter, Julian Fedon, who has since become something of a folk hero in Grenada. In March 1795, Fedon and his followers invaded the old town of Grenville, killing a number of British and capturing others. The band of revolutionaries then retreated to Fedon's plantation where they subsequently entrenched themselves on a nearby mountain with their prisoners. They were dislodged by the British in June 1796 with considerable loss of life. Fedon escaped, but many of his followers lost both their lives and had their property confiscated.