The Teacher of Latin-American History in the United States finds himself seriously handicapped by the lack of impartial and fair textbooks on this increasingly important subject. Most of the authors, either through lack of contact with the sources of information and original documents, or just because the trends begun by the “New American School of History” mentioned by Charles F. Lummis some fifty years ago, have not yet reached them, still cling tenaciously to the errors of the “Black Legend.” Their pet source still is the now much discredited and entirely unreliable Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas. They still take their cues from his much translated Brevísima Historia de la Destrucción de las Indias. Seldom do they even mention any of the many saintly bishops and missionaries who opposed him in the great debate of the early colonial times.

One of the perplexing problems in the history of the Mexican War has been the account of a body of deserters from the American army which called itself the San Patricio Battalion. Many of these deserters were being tried and executed or severely punished as the troops of General Scott pushed into the heart of Mexico’s capital. The account of the desertion of the San Patricios has been the subject of much debate, a great deal of it bitter, between historians with either a Catholic or Protestant point of view. Many Protestant writers have been prone to use this event as an illustration of placing faith above patriotism, the desertions being laid at the door of the Mexican clergy who are charged with actively attempting to entice Catholic soldiers among the American forces, largely recent German and Irish immigrants, to leave the army of a Protestant power bent on the destruction of a Catholic nation and on the spoliation of the temples of the Catholic faith. Catholic writers have been quick to issue a full denial of such charges. To date most of the charges and countercharges concerning the San Patricio Battalion have been based almost exclusively on secondary evidence. The essential truth of the matter would appear to be obtainable only from the actual records of the deserters in the files of the United States Army. It is on these records that this article is based.

Last summer, during a vacation in Mexico City, I received a letter from Father Wyse inviting me to speak at this Annual Convocation of the Academy of American Franciscan History. The invitation did me great honor, and in view of the many courtesies extended to me by the Academy since its founding more than seven years ago, including election to corresponding membership, I also regarded it as a command. It gives me pleasure and satisfaction to participate once more in the academic exercises of the Academy and to renew association with old friends and comrades in the field of Franciscan studies. To Father Wyse, Father Wheeler and their associates I offer congratulations for their splendid contributions to historical scholarship relating to the Americas and best wishes for continued success in the enterprise to which they are dedicated.

Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, the internationally known Chilean poetess who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945, was born at Vicuña in the province of Coquimbo on April 6, 1889, the daughter of Gerónimo Godoy, a school teacher and minor poet, and Petronila Alcayaga. When Lucila was only three years of age her father abandoned her mother; yet she apparently remembered him with deep filial affection and did not forget the following verses he had written for her:

It was not until the 1870’s, in the waning years of the Empire, that São Paulo’s rise to unquestioned pre-eminence in Brazil caused it to question seriously the existing framework of government. But in the span of nearly four centuries between 1500 and 1870, there were instances of friction between São Paulo and the central government which provided at least a tradition of Paulista dissatisfaction with its allegedly subordinate position in the Brazilian nation. Most of the early rebellious tendencies of São Paulo were no different from those of the other regions of Brazil, thus not warranting particular attention. Prior to 1870, however, there were two occasions involving Paulista actions against the central government which merit consideration for special reasons. They were peculiar to São Paulo, differentiating it from the other regions, and they were of significance in foreshadowing the later pattern of Paulista tendencies toward secession.

The Bravery and Daring of the Portuguese is evident in the history of the discovery, exploration and colonization of Brazil. Many of them sold everything they possessed and then set off across the ocean with their “household and family,” facing storms and the assaults of pirates, and were often shipwrecked or eaten by the cannibalistic Indians on the shores where they expected to be safe.

Linguistic Science, like history, ethnology and epigraphy, is deeply indebted to the Franciscan missionaries who worked among the Maya Indians of Yucatan. About 1566 Fray Diego de Landa, later Bishop of Yucatan, not only wrote an ethnological treatise perhaps unique in the history of that science, but, as an outstanding contemporary epigrapher recently wrote: “Landa’s description of the calendar and his illustrations of day and month signs supplied a firm foundation on which to reconstruct Maya hieroglyphic writing; it is as close to a Rosetta Stone as we are ever likely to get.” Further development of our investigation of the Maya glyphs will in all probability be closely linked with our knowledge of the language.

The room was rude and probably a little damp, because of the altitude and the prodigious rains sustained on the sierra, but it was also substantial, thick-walled in adobe and floored with the great rough bricks universally used in the period. Heavy, hand-hewn beams supported the weight of the sloping roof, made snug by countless overlapping tiles. The gloom of the rude chamber was candle-spotted, revealing, if dimly, its meagre but heavy furnishings; and a hearth fire must have contributed additional brightening, since it was nearing the very coldest season in the highlands, November. It was November 12 and approaching midnight in the Year of Grace, 1651.

Although it has not attempted such large undertakings as general histories of Central America, the twentieth century has been more productive than the previous one and has also surpassed it in quality. It opens with the Historia de la Medicina en Guatemala by Francisco Asturias (1902), based on documents existing in the Archives of the Faculty of Medicine.

From the very start, the School of San Francisco had close to one thousand students. Some were the children of the Spanish conquerors, but most were sons of Indian nobles. They received elementary instruction in religion and in the rudiments of learning. Later on came Latin and music. Vocational classes for adults, organized after a few years, turned out excellent artists and craftsmen, sculptors and stonecutters, painters and engravers, carpenters, tailors, shoemakers. A children’s hospital was operated in connection with the school.

There are people who are called upon to transform customs and society, but of very few may it be asserted that they have changed the entire world. The remarkable woman, the fifth centenary of whose birth we are celebrating, is one of them.

Daughter of King John II and of Isabel of Portugal, his second wife, she is a warrior par excellence; one might perhaps say that her whole life was a battle in which were intermingled enthusiasms, passion and egoism, and there were also lofty thoughts and high purposes.

In the long story of the Hispanicization of Central America, the civilizing role of the regular clergy plays a major part. The difficulties of their task cannot be overestimated. Laboring in harsh and alien lands, the friars faced the problem of teaching the Christian religion and European concepts of morality to men reared in ancient and powerful religious traditions of their own which permeated every aspect of their daily lives. The conversion and indoctrination of these pagan peoples required unremitting effort, often under conditions of extreme physical hardship and mental anguish. The general history of the heroic labors and achievement of the Religious Orders is well known. But it is not perhaps as widely realized how many active missionaries also found time for study and writing that resulted in a large body of literature covering a wide range of subject matter, from works on the native languages and culture inspired by the urgent needs of the missionary program to erudite theological treatises. This bibliography of the Franciscan writers who flourished in the Yucatan and Guatemala areas during the colonial period has been compiled in the hope that it may shed more light on the scope of the intellectual activities of the missionary religious and be useful as a reference tool for future research.

The Expansion of the United States into Spanish areas following the Spanish-American War was a test of the vigor of American society in winning over groups that were essentially alien to it. With the annexation of territories such as Puerto Rico, the American way of life was, for the first time, operating on a culturally alien soil and was thus given the opportunity to show its capacity of being exported and adopted by a people who, as a group, were part of another cultural tradition. Puerto Rico has been for the last fifty years a small stage on which a culture drama was being played. American principles were introduced there together with American attitudes. Some patterns were imposed by American military and civilian authorities—often prompted by Puerto Ricans; others were imitated by the Puerto Ricans themselves. What was the climate of opinion that permitted this transfer, what were the methods employed to achieve it, and to what extent was it successful? These are the questions that come to the mind of the historian who studies Puerto Rico today.

The historical production of the small states which comprise that picturesque ribbon of land uniting the Americas is quite modest. This situation is the result of various factors, principally the small population and the resulting scarcity of readers. Poverty, too, is a restricting influence. Nevertheless, when everything is taken into consideration, Central American historiography bears favorable comparison with that of other American nations better endowed in population and wealth.

Back in 1916 the world was in the midst of World War I. When I graduated from high school in that year, the United States had not entered the great struggle yet. In the fall of 1917, I, registered in the University of Texas. There was as much, if not more, uneasiness and uncertainty among students as there is today. We were already in the war. No one knew how long it would last, nor when the draft call would come.

With the lightheartedness of youth I chose engineering. In high school I had been good in mathematics, and everybody had said, “You are cut out for an engineer.” Dean T. U. Taylor of the Engineering School agreed, and I made a good record that first year. Engineering students in those days had to take public speaking and the public speaking teacher assured me the first day I came into his class that I would never make a public speaker. Time proved that if Dean Taylor was mistaken in his deduction as to my engineering vocation, the public speaking teacher was only half right.

Students of mexican culture have always been interested in the determined political conservatism of José María Roa Bárcena. He has been so definitely associated with the conservative-classic side of Mexican politics and literary expression that it is as surprising to find elements of romanticism in the writings of Roa Bárcena as it is to find poetry of a classical nature written by Ignacio Ramírez. The fact is that although these two men worked toward opposite goals with astonishing consistency, neither was immune to the influence of the opposing faction. For this reason, both men reflect their times, though Roa did so in a much quieter way than did the flamboyant Ramírez.

Orbis Seraphicus is the title of the impressive Franciscan cosmography projected by Fr. Domenico De Gubernatis da Sospello (d. 1690) for a total of some thirty-five volumes in folio divided into four sections. The programmatic plan of the work, which was submitted to the General Chapter of the Franciscan Order held at Rome in 1688, is known to us as published by the author himself. It has the formidable heading: Idea Orbis Seraphici de tribus Ordinibus a Seraphico Patriarcha S. Francisco institutis, deque illorum progressibus et honoribus per quattuor mundi partes Europam, Asiam, Africam, et Americam, in obsequium Jesu Christi et Ecclesiae Sanctae Romanae, pro defensione atque propagatione fidei catholicae reportatis, a Fr. Dominico De Gubernatis concepta et concinnata; Romae Typographia Comerae Apostolicae, 1688. Copies of the plan are rare, and thus the writer took advantage of the occasion to reproduce it in the prolegomena of the Orbis Seraphicus itself, when it was published at Quaracchi in 1945.

Fray Lorenzo de Bienvenida was among the first and most noted of the founders of the Christian missions of Yucatan, a region whose conversion was almost exclusively entrusted to the Franciscan Order. The work of the friars has been fairly well studied, not only on the basis of the data supplied by the old chronicles, but also by modern research in the documentary sources preserved in the archives of America and Spain. This research has resulted in the publication of many documents and historical studies which contain important information on the Franciscan missions of Yucatan. Analysis of the information offered in these various documents and studies—although it is sometimes conflicting—enables us to reconstruct an acceptable account of the obscure period which coincides with the first decades of Franciscan activity in Yucatan.