Beginning in the latter years of the sixteenth century, and continuing through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Jesuit missionaries made a great pioneering thrust northward along the western coast of Mexico. In this area of Sinaloa-Sonora they met with many fierce and uncultured groups of natives, and frequently they were forced into temporary retreat at the cost of some of their very able men. But their advance was not brought to a permanent halt except by the command of the king which brought to an end all Jesuit activities throughout the Spanish domains.

Peru had two fathers of independence, José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar, and a part-time midwife in Thomas Cochrane the tenth Earl of Dundonald. Antonio José de Sucre, another important midwife, came on to the Peruvian scene after Cochrane had left for that reason is not dealt with in this article. Since the destinies of Peru and Chile were so closely entwined as embryonic nations, one would expect that the wars of independence might have created a mutuality of interest. The purpose here is to study this relationship and its contextual association with the animosity between the lesser known Cochrane and the famous San Martin.

If by opportunity we mean “a favorable juncture of circumstances” then the picture which emerges is not exactly propitious. The Latin American Conference held this year in Los Angeles reflected the concern about the post World War II decline of interest in Latin America and the prevailing indifference of students, the public, and many academic institutions toward Latin America, past and present. Contributing to this general apathy were both the general cultural orientation of the United States and Latin America toward Europe, and the general shift of American emphasis after 1945 to “crisis areas” which reduced Latin America to a minor position since it appeared to be neither threatened nor threatening in the polarized world. (In this respect, Castro remains our greatest benefactor.) Furthermore, the more obvious availability of funds, both public and private, for studies of these “crisis areas” tended to confirm the seeming unimportance of Latin America. The failure to attract the needed personnel, recognition, and support, coupled with the dissipation of current resources for the study of Latin America in the United States have, with few exceptions, prevented Latin American programs from developing momentum and visibility.

Defining, for the purposes of this paper, modern Latin American history as the period following 1830, and the Bolivarian nations as Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Peru, the spectrum of research opportunities is very broad. As is well known, the modern period is the step-child, in respect to historical interest and production, of the colonial, in most of Latin America. In the Bolivarian nations, this tendency is made worse by the exaggerated devotion of historians there to the independence struggle, notably in Colombia and Venezuela.

There is no egoism or special virtue in the fact that all of us on this program have numerous research possibilities to suggest. The plain truth is that the field of Latin American history bulges with first-class topics for historical writing. In this respect I am sure that we Latin Americanists are more fortunate than colleagues in some other historical fields where, it is my impression, there is a good deal of trampling of each other’s grapes. But historical research is not the contemplation of ideas, no matter how promising they may be, and in Latin America the investigator confronts notorious difficulties in obtaining orderly source materials. Therefore, before turning to some of the research possibilities, I should touch briefly on several underlying assumptions. The first is that the investigators working on these topics shall be qualified linguistically, technically, and intellectually to accomplish their work in Latin America and in the United States. Unhappily, this has not always been the case in this underdeveloped field. Second, for all of these topics I estimate that there exists a sufficiency of source materials, although in some cases that assumption has not been fully tested in the field. (This is the point at which field research in Latin America takes on a more colorful aspect than research, let’s say, in the British Museum.) Finally, an investigator engaged in research in Latin America must have, or quickly develop, a hunter’s ability to move rapidly yet sure-footedly after his quarry, tracking down private and even public archives which, at the outset of his adventure in research, may be completely unknown to him.

My dear friend, Father Carrocera, to whom the history of Venezuela and especially the history of the Franciscan Order in that country owes so much, had the happy idea of uniting in one article all that is known up to now, thanks in great part to the investigations of Father Carrocera himself, concerning the history of San Francisco in Caracas which, during almost three centuries as the center of the Franciscan Province of the Holy Cross of Hispaniola and Caracas, powerfully influenced the spiritual and cultural life of Venezuela. The church and friary of San Francisco not only are the best colonial monuments in Caracas but they are also witnesses of the most notable happenings and events of the republican period. In San Francisco of Caracas Bolivar received on October 14, 1814, the title of Liberator and in this church his remains were displayed in 1842 after they had been returned from San Pedro Alejandrino. The convent served until very recent times as the home of the University of Venezuela and at this moment it is the distinguished Palace of the Academies.