As a Part of the Centennial celebration of the death of José de San Martín, the year 1950 was designated by the Congress of Argentina as the “Year of San Martin.” Article 2 of Law 13,661 reads as follows: “From the first day of January until the thirty-first of December of the year 1950, all official documents of national, provincial and municipal authorities; the titles and diplomas granted by institutions of learning of all ranks and jurisdictions, be they of the State or incorporated; diplomatic dispatches and the notations and colophons of books, periodicals, dailies, reviews and every other class of publications whether they be official or private, national or foreign, shall be preceded by the denomination of ‘Year of the Liberator General San Martin’ to indicate the year 1950.”

José Francisco de San Martín is best known as the military genius on whose successes was founded the political independence of Argentina, Chile and Peru. In writing the account of his life, biographers have used such titles as “Captain of the Andes” and “Saint of the Sword.” Born of Spanish parents on the Argentinian frontier at Yapeyu, February 25, 1778, he accompanied them to Spain at the age of seven and was educated for a military career. Joining the Spanish army, he fought in Africa and defended the mother country against Republican France, England, Portugal and Napoleon Bonaparte.

This curated collection of The Americas explores revolution and revolutionary movements in Latin American history from the colonial period to the present. This theme embraces events and processes contributing to the courses, outcomes, and reactions to both moments conventionally labeled “revolutions” in Latin American history, such as large-scale events like the Mexican Revolution, and more disparate efforts to secure—or resist—sociopolitical change.

Of all Woodrow Wilson's foreign policies, none is more deserving of criticism than his non-recognition policy. This policy, initiated by the President within a week after his accession to office on March 4, 1913, in response to the news of violent revolutionary disturbances in Mexico and Nicaragua, was primarily predicated on Wilson's assumption that the best way to prevent the recurrence of revolutions in Caribbean nations would be to warn all would-be revolutionists that they could expect no political or financial support from the United States. Ultimately he hoped that he could end the threat of revolution and induce all Latin American nations to abide by constitutional and democratic forms of government.

Women played a significant but, until recently, largely overlooked role in the complex and destructive civil war known as the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. A number of women trained and educated in the vocational and normal schools and molded by the incipient feminist movement of the Porfirian era actively sought involvement in the struggle during its various phases. A much larger number of women of the rural and urban lower classes found themselves caught up in the struggle and had no choice but to become actively involved, especially in the military aspects of the Revolution. Still others, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and including women of every class, were among the victims and casualties of that conflict. Lastly, women of primarily but not exclusively middle and upperclass origins who strongly identified with the Catholic Church became active and bitter enemies of the decidedly anti-clerical leadership of the Revolution.

The Mexican Revolution was predominantly a Northern movement. In part this was a logical continuation of what had occurred during the Díaz regime, namely, the rapid development of the northern tier of Mexican states. But in large measure the rise to prominence of leaders such as Francisco Madero, Pascual Orozco, Francisco Villa, Venustiano Carranza, Alvaro Obregón, and Pablo González reflected the advantage they enjoyed over revolutionaries in other parts of Mexico—access to the American border. Arms and ammunition could be imported, loot to pay for these munitions could be exported, United States territory could be used as a base of operations, and the United States provided a sanctuary for the members of defeated factions. Moreover, since the majority of the population along the border were of Mexican extraction, they inevitably became caught up in the factional struggle, as, for that matter, did many of the Anglos, either out of sympathy or because the Revolution became a lucrative business. Yet despite the extent to which the Revolution spilled over into the United States, we still have but a sketchy knowledge of this phenomenon. Precisely how did Mexican juntas function, how were munitions acquired, how was recruiting conducted, and how was revolutionary activity financed? To understand this critical aspect of the Revolution we need much more work along the lines of David N. Johnson's admirable study of Maderista activities in San Antonio in 1910–1911.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, when Mexico was beginning a slowly drawn-out process of industrialization and urbanization, the seemingly quiet countryside was experiencing agrarian unrest of proportions unprecedented in the nation's history. Trapped between increasing population on diminished ejidal and pueblo landholdings and ever-growing estates and demands of large property owners, Mexican campesinos in three states—eastern Morelos, southeastern Mexico, and northwestern Puebla— sought relief by means of insurrection. Because these agrarian uprisings during the last third of the nineteenth century were a prelude to similar and more famous occurrences during the fateful epoch 1910-1917, their causes, nature, and significance are essential for understanding an important aspect of the Mexican Revolution.

Since Mexico now seems to be the key nation in Latin America in the implementation of President Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, it becomes even more pressing that we in the United States understand the nature of the Mexican social order. As a point of departure for this effort, one might well begin by considering the basis for contemporary industrial and political development of Mexico as formulated in the years 1934-1940 under Mexico's New Deal of Lázaro Cárdenas. Sanford Mosk noted, “… what went on during the time of Cárdenas has had an indirect effect on the subsequent industrial development.” Or, as the United States Tariff Commission claimed, the reorientation of Mexico's economic and social policy has been an important part of her political life since 1910. The new program was given impetus by the Constitution of 1917, which contained important provisions for agrarian reform and for the protection of labor. Yet, aggressive implementation of the new policy began under president Lazaro Cardenas with the inauguration of the Six-Year Plan in 1934.

In 1814, Alexander von Humboldt, the great traveller and explorer of the Americas, drew attention to an unusual feature of the movement for independence in the Viceroyalty of New Granada: the establishment of printing presses and newspapers followed rather than preceded the outbreak of war. Humboldt was struck by the contrast New Granada's war of independence offered with the two more famous political revolutions of the age. A great proliferation of printed pamphlets and periodicals had preceded the outbreak of revolution in both the Thirteen Colonies and France. How curious, Humboldt commented, to find the process reversed in Spanish America. Humboldt is not alone in viewing the newspaper as the expected harbinger of change in the age of Atlantic revolution. While the precise role played by the printed word in the French and American revolutions remains a subject of debate, many historians acknowledge the importance of print in creating a climate conducive to revolutionary challenge. Were newspapers and the press really latecomers to the revolution in the Viceroyalty of New Granada, as Humboldt suggests? What does this tell us about late colonial New Granada? How, in the absence of a developed press, did information, revolutionary or otherwise, circulate within the viceroyalty? Moreover, what means were available to either the Spanish crown or the American insurgents to create and manipulate news and opinion? What, indeed, does it mean to speak of the spread of news in a society such as late colonial New Granada? This article seeks to address these questions.

The re-election of Gerardo Machado in 1928 promised to augur the continuity of the political quiescence that had characterized the President's first administration (1925-1928). By 1927, the Cuban chief executive had forged a coalition among the national political sectors, binding the Liberal, Conservative, and Popular parties to his candidacy for re-election. Through the appropriate application of patronage and coercion, the President had imposed a political consensus dissolving partisan autonomy, traditionally the source of anti-re-electionist violence. Cooperativismo, as the arrangement became known, conferred on parties outside the circumference of power the prerogatives, perquisites, and government posts inherent in the past only during national incumbency.

Highlighting the Wars of Independence in Latin America are the personalities and exploits of the great patriot leaders who took up arms in the cause of freedom. Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín are known throughout the world, for they were outstanding liberators whose efforts were crowned with success. But there were other leaders in the Spanish colonies who are almost equally deserving of fame for their contributions to the revolution, and among such men was José Gervasio Artigas, leader of the rebels in the Banda Oriental. His biography is a story of adherence to ideals and tenacity of purpose in the face of dismaying opposition. Chroniclers of his life, however, are not in agreement as to his possible faults and virtues. As one observer has aptly said, “Perhaps never did the memory of a man meet with more honor in his own country and with less favor without it.”

The rebellion of 1932 in El Salvador is commonly described in the context of communism and the leadship role of the Communist Party of El Salvador (PCS). Relying on previously unavailable archive materials from Russia and El Salvador, the present article demonstrates that the PCS played a limited role in the rebellion. Factional infighting and a strategy that collided with social realities in western El Salvador combined to inhibit PCS influence among western peasants. The evidence suggests that Indian communities were at the forefront of the rebellion, as an extention of their long history of political mobilization.

In her study of early cinema and modernity in Latin America, Ana López wrote: “Latin American modernity has been a global, intertextual experience, addressing impulses and models from abroad, in which every nation and region created, and creates, its own ways of playing with and at modernity.” Early Uruguayan cinema exemplifies this interaction of global phenomena with local realities and thus provides an instructive window onto some of the ways Latin Americans were “playing with and at modernity” in the early twentieth century. During that era, Uruguay emerged as Latin America’s first welfare state and a model of progressive reform in the region. The complexities of that transition are reflected in so-called cine de beneficencia (beneficent cinema), film made by and for social assistance organizations for fundraising and propaganda purposes. Film historian José Carlos Álvarez identifies beneficent cinema as “something that we think was purely Uruguayan, and specific to this era.”

In a famous account of his travels, titled El destino de un continente, the Argentine writer Manuel Ugarte describes his somewhat disconcerting encounter with the Cuban ex-president Jos Miguel Gmez while traveling through Latin America during the 1920s. Ugarte, a committed advocate of panhispanismo—the idea that Spanish America was and should be unified by its shared Spanish heritage, especially in light of the threat from Anglo- Saxon culture—had come to Cuba to give a series of lectures. Shortly after one of his presentations, the Argentine was introduced to Gmez, who took Ugarte to task for his criticism of Cuba's close relationship to the United States. You reproach us, Gmez said, for not defending our legacy of Spanish civilization, but what have all of you [Latin Americans] done to encourage us, to support us, to make us feel that we are not alone? Taken aback and made suddenly self-conscious by the accusation, Ugarte concluded that the Cuban was admonishing him for failing to uphold the very principles he was espousing in his lectures. It seemed as if, through the voice of her representative, all Cuba was saying, It is not we who broke the link; it was you who broke it in allowing it to be cut. After some time and much thought, Ugarte came to the realization that Cuba was not alone responsible for the Cuban situation. Some responsibility was also borne by Latin America. Through his encounter with Gmez, Ugarte was forced to recognize the limitations of framing what he referred to as the Cuban situation exclusively in the context of a cultural war between the United States and Spain. Indeed, the expresident's challenge inspired him to reconsider Cuba's nineteenth-century struggles with both Spanish colonialism and U.S. imperialism in a distinctly inter-Latin American context.

A significant segment of the Argentine intelligentsia experienced the Revolution of September 1955, which overthrew General Juan Domingo Perón, as a moment of liberation. With some exceptions, such as Arturo Jauretche and Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz among others, the cultural politics of Peronism had not managed to gain many followers in the course of its ten-year experiment. During the two consecutive Perón governments (1946-1955) the often implicit, and occasionally explicit, opposition between intellectuals and Peronism only intensified. I contend that an analysis of this opposition is indispensable for understanding the redrawing of crucial definitions within the intellectual field at that time. Due to its profound social and cultural impact, the experience of Peronism compelled Argentine intellectuals, whether or not it was their original intention, to enter the political arena, not so much because their interests shifted from culture to politics, but rather because they came to conceive the cultural world as political.

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.

Participation of women in the Cristero rebellion, the Catholic uprising against the anti-clerical revolutionary government of Mexico, has largely been ignored by historians. A fresh reading of the documents, and more important, conversations with the principal women in the movement, reveal that the traditional role of women in the church gave way to changed behavior in the 1920s. Not only were Catholic women of a traditionally oriented society capable of assuming leadership in a violent enterprise, but they were equally capable of falling back into their conservative patterns once the crisis had ended. Nevertheless, the vital role women played in the church-state conflict prepared them for the emerging role of women in the twentieth century.

This article analyzes an individual, a context, and an experience. The individual is the photographer and filmmaker Paul Strand, widely recognized and occasionally criticized as one of the great modernist photographers of the twentieth century. The context is Mexico from 1932-34. In these years, Strand worked in Mexico amidst state-led efforts to construct a “new” national culture following the social upheavals and military conflicts associated with the Mexican Revolution. The experience was Strand’s effort to create a visual record of Mexico documenting what he thought of as its unique character, while furthering its “revolutionary” transformation through photography and filmmaking.

In recent years, most historians have abandoned the idea that the revolutions that shook the Atlantic world between 1776 and 1848 were the work of a single social class. A number of studies on the social composition of the groups that ignited and propelled the different revolutionary processes demonstrate the diversity of conditions and social backgrounds of the revolutionaries. However, this revisionism is posing new questions as to why these contingencies in Europe and the Americas decided to mobilize, to construct new liberal national states, and how they carried it out.

Spain is a good sample case for this historiographical inquiry. At present, few historians accept the idea that the series of upheavals that brought about a new liberal state during the 19th century resulted from the exclusive pressure of a national bourgeoisie. Recent scholarship has revisited the classic bourgeois revolution paradigm by presenting liberalism as an ideology that captivated the imagination of Spaniards of a variety of social ranks, with special impact among urban middle and popular groups. But if Spanish scholars are providing better explanations regarding who embraced liberal ideas and facilitated their spread, the answers for the “why” and “how” this process occurred are, in my opinion, less convincing.

When Harold Palmer Davis published his Black Democracy in 1928, after twelve years of study and of residence in Haiti, he wrote of Toussaint L’Ouverture that it would be impossible to form any true estimate of Toussaint’s character, because of the great mass of material that had been written about him from widely divergent and conflicting viewpoints.