This is not the first time we meet; neither is it the first opportunity I have had of coming to this Academy and to such a pleasant ambiente. I find it very welcoming because it is at the same time American and Franciscan, two things which, at first, may seem to contradict each other. When talking of Franciscanism we immediately think, of course, of the simple life, the contact with nature. We think of Italy, with its fields and cities, its mountains where the Lord appeared, covered with wings, to strike the Seraphic Father with the wounds which made possible humanity’s redemption—Italy, with its crystalline rivers which, together with the winds in the oak trees, are the only orchestra that accompanies the silence of the hermitages.

Within recent years there has been increasing interest in those aspects of Spanish American history which represent a growing political consciousness among the inhabitants of those lands especially during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Perhaps nowhere can the growth of this sentiment be studied with greater ease than in the religious orders. By their development, the religious orders, the Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, and Mercedarians, came to consist almost exclusively of criollos (descendants of Europeans born in America) and Chapetones (friars born in Europe, in particular in Spain): the two groups which were to be the leaders of the two contending parties in the wars of independence. The ultimate estrangement of these two groups developed during the colonial period in the course of which the rising creole desire to manage their own affairs encountered increasing opposition from the Spanish Crown. The encounters were not always peaceful. The participants, on both sides, in good faith held to their principles with a deep conviction of which the incidental vehemence is perhaps the clearest proof. Neither side yielded readily. This is true also of the friars.

THE CENTENARY OF THE BIRTH of Doña Emilia Pardo-Bazán has brought a revival of scholarly interest in a great writer who played a significant part in the intellectual and religious life of her age. She was one of Spain’s most enlightened representatives of Neo-Catholicism and Christian Socialism.

Land ho!” rang out in the stillness of that fateful dawn in October, 1492, when a New World was discovered. After months of suspense the approaches to a land whose existence was unknown had been reached. It was not India, nor fabled Cipango and Cathay. It was, as Columbus said after his third voyage, Otro Mundo, another world, risen out of the unknown to confound an astonished world, where an era was closing and a new one opening. It lay athwart the route to the desired goal, a vast land mass, peopled by many men of varying cultures, who emerged in their seemingly guileless nakedness to confuse the theologians and learned men of the Renaissance.

Los bandidos de rio frio, the famous Mexican “costumbrista” novel set in the decades prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, has been considered the outstanding production of its author, Manuel Payno y Flores (1810–1894). Critics of Spanish American literature frequently have dissected the work for merits and defects primarily from a literary standpoint, although many of them have called attention to its unusual sociological-historical elements. Professor J. R. Spell has ranked it, along with other novels of Payno, the best social presentation of Mexico through a fiction medium since Francisco J. Lizardi’s El Periquillo Sarniento, while Antonio Castro Leal has stated that “the spectacle is so rich and varied that it may well be said that the novel is the painting of an entire epoch.”

Latin americanists have in recent years become increasingly concerned with constructing the basis for a unified history of Latin America. Frequently this enterprise leads them to contemplate the even larger design of a history of the Americas. While the New World may still be, in Hegel’s words, “a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of old Europe,” it is now recognized as having an independent heritage; its history is no longer experienced as “only an echo of the Old World.”

A POPULAR RADIO SERIES a dozen years ago, dealing broadly with the important area that is the subject of my talk tonight, was called (borrowing its title from Shakespeare) “Brave New World.” Braver still, in the modern sense, is the commentator who tries in a brief talk like this to deal with even one phase of the vast area, of some eight million square miles, and constituting about one-fifth of the world’s inhabited continents, that lies South of the continental United States. But I am what is called in Spanish an “Old Christian” in these matters, which may be roughly interpreted as the opposite of a “Johnny-Come-Lately,” as our own phrase has it. I have been a student of this area for nearly fifty years, a teacher of one of its languages, Spanish, and of the literature and other written materials published in that language, for more than forty years. During the past four years I have spent my summer vacations on educational missions that took me to all of the American republics except two—Bolivia and Paraguay. In some instances I have made two or three visits to individual countries during that period, supplementing a number of earlier trips, the first of which was in 1916. So I must be as “brave” as the fascinating and to us tremendously important complex of nations that make up the New World outside of the United States and Canada, which for want of a really accurate term we call Latin America.

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENTS of the Mexican Revolution was the Constitutional Convention that met at Querétaro from December, 1916, to February, 1917. To a Mexico that had been racked since 1910 by the forces of revolution, counterrevolution, and defection, the Constituent Congress called into session by Venustiano Carranza was the fulfillment of numerous promises that had been made in various declarations and decrees issued since the promulgation of the Plan de Guadalupe.

The story of fray pedro de aguado, O.F.M., and his work is not a happy one. He was a humble friar who had spent the best years of his life in the New Kingdom of Granada preaching to the Indians. He had also taken the pains of gathering material for the writing of a history of the area with which he was acquainted. Back in Spain in 1576 as a representative of his province, Aguado completed the writing, went through the endless protocols, submitted his work for the examination of cosmographers, and secured due licenses to print—only to see his books fail to appear for one reason or another. And as years went by and publication was not forthcoming, Fray Pedro, who apparently had given up hope, died in an unknown place at an unknown date. Spanish bibliographers thereafter were meticulous enough to include his name in their lists of authors. Aguado was even copied by other historians who were lucky or curious enough to look for and find the manuscripts. But apart from these bibliographers and historians, mice and moths became the ones to profit most from the perusal of the accounts that the friar had so carefully compiled.

While the panama congress of 1826 might be termed a failure relevant to its lack of immediate accomplishments, it nevertheless played an important role in the development of inter-American relations. Moreover, the Panama Congress polemic provided a sounding board for ideas and trends manifested in the evolution of the Latin American policy of the United States. Further, the action of the Adams Administration and subsequent approval by Congress represented the first concrete attempt of this country to participate in the formation of an American continental system.

The franciscan custody, or Minor Province, of Rio Verde in Mexico occupied a comparatively small section of that large country. It lay between the present cities of San Luis Potosí and Tampico. We can say that its boomerang-shaped territory made up part of the southeastern part of the modern state of San Luis Potosí and extended northward to the southwestern section of the modern state of Tamaulipas, and possibly into the southernmost tip of the state of Nuevo León. Missionary endeavor soon encompassed this section of New Spain to the north of Mexico City. With a sort of holy emulation the Franciscan provinces vied with one another in staking claims—spiritual claims—to large sections of the “land of the Chichimecs” or marauding pagan Indians to the north of Aztec domination. The new section of which we will speak in this paper is called “Rio Verde” from a tributary river of the same name, which flows into the Río Panuco and thence to the Atlantic. It was called “verde” either because of its dark color, due to depth, or because of the green verdure along its banks.

Since it was the Franciscan Province of San Pedro y San Pablo of Michoacán that began the work of evangelizing Rio Verde and continued it throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it is necessary to review in a few brief sentences the early history of this Franciscan province.

Anyone teaching a course focused on an alien culture has his hands full—be it economics, sociology, anthropology, political science, geography, language, literature or history. The instructor constantly must ask himself: am I getting it across? That question, of course, is a normal one for any teacher but somehow it seems to appear more frequently and most frighteningly before the individual charged with enlightening some fellow Americans on the subject of some select foreign group. I remember the last time I got into that pattern of thought. That was the time I actually did something about it.

Students of the famous first contingent of Yankee Hispanists and of North American literature in general, during the national and revolutionary periods, are prone to overlook the pronounced influence of British, American, and French travel books about Spain and Spanish America. The popularity which travel accounts enjoyed in the nineteenth century is attested by a well-known publisher’s observation to the distinguished pioneer explorer of Central America, John L. Stephens, author of the recently reprinted Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas & Yucatan (1841, 1949). On the latter’s query as to what forms of literature Harper Brothers favored, Harper is said to have replied: “Travels sell about the best of anything we get hold of. They don’t always go with a rush, like a novel by a celebrated author, but they sell longer, and in the end, pay better.”

La evolución histórica de las teorías sobre libertad y servidumbre del indio americano, que sustentaron los teólogos y juristas españoles del siglo XVI y a las que se trató de ajustar las normas prácticas de la conquista, puede darse hoy por conocida en sus líneas fundamentales. Antes de finalizar el siglo XVI, había sido generalmente aceptado en el terreno doctrinal el derecho del indio a una vida libre, en consonancia con su dignidad humana. Se reconocía, en consecuencia, la radical ilicitud de imponer a los indios cualquier clase de servicio personal que llevase consigo alguna forma de esclavitud. Pero el problema era en la practica muy complejo y ello dio origen a varios y diversos proyectos de solución, encaminados a compaginar la exigencia cristiana de la libertad con las necesidades de tipo social y económico que presentaba la realidad americana de la época. Conocemos un buen número de estos dictámenes o pareceres, emitidos durante el siglo XVI por representantes, ya de las diversas corrientes doctrinales, ya de los intereses económicos creados. A ellos podemos añadir hoy el formulado en 1598 por franciscanos y agustinos de Lima sobre la condición social del indio en las regiones de Tucumán, Paraguay y Rio de la Plata.

THIS ONE-ACT AUTO, El triumpho de la Virgen, comprises most of Book III of Francisco Bramón’s Los sirgueros de la Virgen sin original peccado, a pastoral novel published in Mexico in April, 1620. It was presumably performed immediately following Mass in the chapel of the Virgen de los Remedios in celebration of this patron saint of Mexico City.

It is sad but true that few Mexicans of our day, even erudite ecclesiastics and faithful Catholic lay historians, know very much about the prelates who led their church during the difficult years from the achievement of independence in 1821 to the commencement of the Reform movement in 1854. Perhaps some will mention a Portugal of Michoacán or a Vasquez of Puebla or a Garza y Ballesteros of Mexico. Not many, however, will remember a Franciscan friar whose life and works have almost been forgotten but who certainly deserves to be remembered by his countrymen and co-religionaries. A famous Catholic review, published in the city of Mexico, carried this note in its issue of September 17, 1857:

AS A MAN’S SPEECH MIRRORS HIS THOUGHTS, so do a people’s proverbs reflect dominant attitudes and cultural patterns. Many observers have felt that the enormous store of Spanish proverbs should afford great insight into the Spanish way of life. Yet, to the writer’s knowledge, no one has attempted systematically to demonstrate or to reject this notion. The purpose of this paper is to arrange into an over-all picture certain prevalent attitudes and cultural patterns suggested in Spanish proverbs. The original proverbs supporting these patterns are quoted in footnotes. Examples are suggestive, but no means exhaustive, since in many cases the list would number several hundred items.

Some twenty years after cortés consolidated the Conquest, New Spain experienced its most serious Indian uprising. This was the Mixtón War, which flared up unexpectedly in New Galicia during the rule of Mexico’s first and very celebrated Viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza. The immediate cause of the insurrection was the relapse into paganism of the chieftains of those tribes inhabiting the area surrounding Tlaltenango, situated inconveniently close to Guadalajara. Here the obnoxious rites of the pre-Conquest religions were suddenly re-established, and, before the Imperial Government at Mexico City awakened to the extent of this threat to the general peace, large numbers of tribesmen had been drawn into the dismaying retrogression and commenced violent aggressions against the colonists and the friendly Christian Indians of that section.