The nations of the free New World have produced but seven sovereigns; all have been deposed. Some were ridiculous and cruel, but Haiti’s third and last monarchical attempt was the most ludicrous and probably the bloodiest of them all. This drama of strangely mingled comedy and tragedy was directed by an equally paradoxical man, Faustin Soulouque.

Between the glamorous galleons of the sixteenth century and the flashing fighter planes of the 1940’s—which were the Mexican commercial and military introductions to the Far East—came the less brilliant but more permanent diplomatic orientation toward the Far East on the part of Mexico during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Students of the Mission History of colonial Spanish America are aware of the importance played by the Apostolic Colleges in the expansion and development of the Indian mission field. The labors of the Fernandinos, Zacatecans and Queretarans, for example, have been heralded in the chronicles of the Colleges, in the extant documents pertaining to the respective mission fields, and in the histories, both Spanish and English, which describe the endeavors of the friars in behalf of Christianity and civilization on the frontier.

Between 1683 and 1814, seven of these Colleges were founded in New Spain alone: Santa Cruz, Querétaro; Cristo Crucificado, Guatemala; Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Zacatecas; San Fernando, Mexico City; San Francisco, Pachuca; San José, Orizaba; and Nuestra Señora de Zapopan, Guadalajara. Querétaro, Zacatecas and San Fernando are the best-known to American students, because of their influence on the Borderlands from Texas to California. San Fernando was responsible for the great development between 1769 and 1833 in the entire territory of Alta California, and in the southern portion between 1833 and 1853. Studies on this mission field are numerous and detailed, but there is a gap which should be filled with a study on the College itself. For such a study, we are dependent on the official documents of the regime, once—before the confiscation period in Mexican history—very numerous. Though various students have declared that most of the documents have been lost, the present writer may announce, with confidence, that while certain ones evidently have been lost, a great body of them does still exist; and from these it is possible to study various aspects of the College’s life. San Fernando has been chosen for study in this article, both because it was the mother house of the California missions, and because a considerable number of pertinent documents have been brought to light in recent years.

The Subject which has been assigned to me by the Academy of American Franciscan History as my contribution to the homage being rendered to this illustrious son of Mallorca, would require a very lengthy paper if it were to be treated with the amplitude which it deserves. But the restricted limits of a conference such as this, as well as the multiple pastoral duties of my episcopal office, impose upon me a brevity which will reduce this study to a few brush-strokes which, though modest, indicate the relation between Fray Junípero Serra and his fatherland.

Today, on the Western Coast of the peninsula of Yucatán stand centuries-old Spanish fortifications, the most remarkable example of military architecture in the Western Hemisphere. Abandoned monuments to that titanic colonial adventure of the New World, which came to an end more than two hundred years ago, they guard the port and little town of Campeche, which now lies like some half-forgotten legend beside the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Positivism in educational thought in 1867 was the rational expression of a liberating philosophy which had been operating upon the Mexican scene from the turn of the century. Under the aegis of liberalism educational theory had moved slowly forward, but application had lagged far behind. This situation was not an unnatural consequence of the chaotic conditions which obtained after the achievement of independence. Independence had brought political freedom, but the masses, economically and culturally, had gained little.

As early as 1823 educators had clamored for popular education, and although public education was given some consideration during succeeding administrations, hopes of realizing changes in education were lost within the maelstrom of social and political intrigues. The control of education was thus left in the hands of individuals, many of whom were not fit to be teachers, or to the Church, whose attention to education was greatly lessened by the growing Church-State question.

Over the Sea of Odysseus and of Columbus with sunrise-gilded sails, a ship with a saint aboard voyaged toward America. He was an island saint, with the compass of his heart pointing north, his vision directed toward the America which on the planisphere was still depicted as surrounded by seamonsters and dotted with Indian cities where men lived in misery, naked in a Paradise wherein the wolf of Gubbio had taken refuge.

A foreign reader of the North American press inevitably receives the impression that the majority of our feminine citizens are breadwinners if not actual career women, and that the much-noted independence and aggression of the American woman is, in a large measure, based on this fact—that she is economically self-sufficient or could be so if it should become necessary through a marriage wrecked by death or divorce, or desirable for any other reason. A glance at the statistics, however, immediately proves that a maximum of no more than 14 percent of our women are constantly employed outside the home, though it must be granted that a larger proportion has worked before marriage and presumably could do so again. In any case, the total in no wise approaches that which might be deduced from the amount of attention that the American working woman receives in the press and films which, supposedly, reflect the American scene.

Amado nervo’s affection for religious themes is projected so frequently and so intimately in all his work that literary critics have constantly classified him among the number of the mystical poets—those privileged beings who aspired to union with God through love, and who expressed their sublime thoughts in poetic form.

Padre Junípero Serra, O.FM., Apostle of California and candidate for sainthood, is a many-sided personality. His reputation for sanctity alone has caused one of the greatest research projects in Spanish mission history in this century. His activity as an empire-builder and administrator is a fascinating theme for many writers. Best known as an apostolic missionary among the Indians, he was also a penetrating professor and a much-sought preacher. It would be impossible, even in a more extended paper, to consider every facet of the personality and all the interests of the apostolate—ranging from mail routes to mission methods—of this remarkable, dynamic man. His writings include the whole gamut of existence from rocks to the Holy Trinity. He moved as easily on the frontier as in the classroom. Though he aspired to high sanctity, he could remain quite human, even indulging in an occasional pleasantry.

On September 26, 1786, Don Francisco de Miranda, adventurer and patriot, secured a passport from the Austrian Minister in Constantinople which enabled him to continue his “grand tour” to Russia. The nature of Miranda’s subsequent visit, and the extent to which his reception at the court of Catherine II influenced Spanish and Russian policy, assumes significance in the light of events on the North American continent immediately preceding and during his stay in Russia.

The History of nineteenth-century Mexico presents a strange succession of violent changes, political and social upheavals, bitter struggles among rival factions whose aims and ideals were often ill-defined and illusory. The infant republic found that the gaining of its independence was only the beginning of its troubles. The bane of personalism was never to abandon the Mexican political stage, and the ambitions of individuals, to a large extent, were to guide the destinies of the entire nation. José María Roa Bárcena, whose life embraced the last three quarters of the century, was one of the most prominent figures of those troubled times. A man of action, integrity of character, and no small intellectual gifts, he entered resolutely into the struggle between liberals and conservatives, leaving the stamp of his personality on the history of the period.

The Mission, so fundamental in the transformation of colonial Hispanic America, has been characterized as the “kingpin” in Spain’s New World frontier system. The culminating stage in the evolution of the mission system, as well as the final fling of Spain’s “aggressive-defensive” in America, is to be found in Alta California. For the missionary sons of St. Francis, the achievements of their Fernandinos on our present Southwest Pacific slope constituted a fitting installment in a long series of “spiritual and temporal conquests.” During the sixty-five years between 1769 and 1834, over 80,000 Indians appear to have been baptized by the Franciscans in California. These savages were not only converted to Christianity, but also, in greater or lesser degree, habituated to Christian practices and morality, civilized, agriculturalized, industrialized and Hispanicized. This despite the fact that the California natives were described as a heterogeneous lot of culturally destitute, peripheral peoples, among the most backward and abject of American red men. For the Franciscans, the Gospel and whatsoever might be necessary thereto must be taught to every human creature. The distinguished lineage of mission methods in California may be traced back to the Sierra Gorda and southern Texas, to the plains of Paraguay and the jungles of Brazil, and—still further—to the labors of missionary monks among the rude barbarians of early medieval Europe.

The Southern Portion of the United States is greatly indebted to the Franciscan friars who planted there the seed of what was, in the course of time, to become the mighty tree of Christian culture that flourishes in the land today. Fray Juan de Zumárraga, first Bishop and Archbishop of Mexico, was instrumental in bringing Franciscans to New Spain from where, as pioneers, they were to take Christian culture and religion to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

Zumárraga was born in Durango, Province of Vizcaya, Spain, near the close of 1468 or the beginning of 1469. He was the son of Juan López de Zumárraga and Teresa de Lares, both of noble lineage.

John Lloyd Stephens was a remarkable man in his day and probably would have been remarkable at any time in American history. Lawyer, politician, traveler, author, diplomat and entrepreneur, he made his contribution to American life. Because of the heritage which he left, now as the centenary of his death approaches, the presses of two leading American universities have enriched their list of titles with books relating to Stephens. Rutgers University Press, located in Stephens’ native state, has brought out a new edition of Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, & Yucatan (New Brunswick, 1949. 2 vols., Pp. xx, 346; xiv, 340. Illus., map.) under the able editorship of Richard L. Predmore. In the West, the University of Oklahoma Press has offered to the reading public Maya Explorer: John Lloyd Stephens and the Lost Cities of Central America and Yucatan (Norman, 1948. Pp. xviii, 324., illus.), a delightful biography by Victor Wolfgang von Hagen.

It is a Great Honor for one who lives in the Wild West to be asked to speak in the cultured capital of our country, for California is remote. In fact, it came into history as “the most outlandish place in the World,” and in some quarters so it is still regarded. A wealthy Italian Duchess, in the seventeenth century, told her Father Confessor that she wished to endow a mission for the heathen. Being asked where she wished it established, she replied, “In the most outlandish place in all the world.” The Jesuits consulted their geography and concluded that the most outlandish place in all the world was California, and there the mission was founded. Father Kino had a long correspondence with the same Duchess, and for their letters the Huntington Library, a few years ago, paid $18,000. Bigger sums have been paid for letters written to a lady, but seldom for letters written to a lady by a Jesuit priest.

The cutting and shipment of wood is one of the oldest and most important aspects of Brazilian trade with Portugal. The rich red dye produced from the tree called pau brasil or Brazil wood was esteemed so highly that at first it outweighed in importance all other products of the colony. Most historians agree that the very name of Brazil is derived from this wood. Guarded as a royal monopoly throughout the colonial period, the wood trade ranked with the sugar, tobacco and gold of Brazil as one of the principal sources of revenue of the Portuguese crown. When woods for building were added to the exportation of pau brasil, the trade assumed a new importance, for these woods furnished the mother country with the sinews both of war and commerce, providing the hulls and masts of countless vessels that defended and brought together the distant domains of the Portuguese empire.

Veracity, Cupidity and Amity were important factors in the dispute between the United States and Venezuela over the guano on little Aves Island. Less than a mile long and only a few hundred yards wide, the islet caused a war of words out of all proportion to its size. The United States wanted to protect its citizens in their right to gather the residue of bird droppings on that bit of land in the tropic Caribbean which apparently belonged to nobody, while Venezuela considered the same mite of oceanic desert, which is located some three hundred miles north of Margarita Island, as a part of its patrimony inherited from Spain.