The administration of Warren G. Harding found itself facing the issue of Central American Union when it assumed office in March, 1921. Central Americans had debated combination since independence, and the question came to the fore periodically, resulting in numerous attempts to reunite the isthmus. But the previous proposals had all faltered when governments favoring confederation were overthrown. The issue was periodically revived whenever renewed coups returned pro-union regimes to power in several of the countries. In this way the debate continued throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, ebbing and flowing with the frequent revolutions, coups, and counter coups that constituted Central American politics.

Because of the role of the Catholic Church in the history of Spanish America, no thorough or genuine appreciation of the independence era is possible without an understanding of the situation of the episcopacy which is at the center of religious life and growth.

Since the time of Columbus, relations between Church and State in Spanish America became so identified that by 1800 we can speak of one entity, a State-Church, rather than two distinct entities as we find in the separation of Church and State in North America. This point cannot be over emphasized, and it should be understood that it was not the Church which dominated the State, but rather the State which dominated the Church. It was the State, ultimately the king of Spain, which determined when and where a monastery was to be erected. It was the State which sent over missionaries to the New World. It was the State which even decided upon the erection of a new diocese and the nomination of a new bishop.

Because of its geographical separation from other Spanish colonies and the rigid mercantilistic policy of its mother country, Alta California was completely isolated from outside influence during its first sixteen years as a Spanish province. Gradually, however, as a result of the explorations of Captain James Cook (1728-1779), foreign vessels began to appear in the area. When the fur trade started flourishing in the Pacific Northwest, European and American ships as well as overland expeditions were attracted further south to the ports and population centers of California.

Henry Clay of Kentucky first offered his American System as a plan to guide the growth of the United States during the period of awakening nationalism that followed the Peace of Ghent in 1815. When asked just before his death in 1852 to make up a list of his most important public services for use by some friends who were having a medal struck to commemorate his career, Clay prepared a list of fourteen items which included the American System with the date, 1824. Thus, at the end of his long career, the Kentuckian identified this phrase with his most famous speech in support of the protective tariff. It may then seem surprising that his first recorded use of the term came on May 10, 1820, in a speech supporting recognition of the emerging nations of Spanish America. Clay’s use of “American System” in these two apparently different areas of discussion has led to two separate connotations for the phrase. The two meanings call for careful discrimination. Equally important, however, is the significant connection between them in the thought of Henry Clay.

When the Mountain Men began their invasion of the Rockies n the 1820's, the tiny village of Taos, in New Mexico, took its place alongside Fort Vancouver and St. Louis as one of their three favorite “jumping-off points” in the search for beaver pelts. Spanish exploration of the area that now comprises the Southwestern United States had antedated that of the Anglo-American by over 250 years, but it was not until the arrival of the latter group that large-scale fur trapping took place. In the mountains and high plateaus of Colorado and New Mexico and in the beaver-rich valleys and tributaries of the Arkansas, Rio Grande, Green, Colorado, Gila, Sacramento and San Joaquin, the Anglo extracted great wealth where the Spaniard had seen only an unpromising wilderness. Although the Spaniard carried on a lively trade in deerskins and buffalo hides in the Southwest, there is little evidence of a significant trade in fine furs during the period of 1540 to 1821.

The Lautaro lodges of revolutionary South America had their roots in Spain and England where creole patriots dreamed and plotted the overthrow of Spanish colonial power. The name was that of an Indian chief of the Araucanians of Chile, immortalized by the poet, Alonzo de Ercilla y Zúñiga. There is general agreement among Latin American historians that the Lautaro lodges played a significant role in the struggle for independence. Still debated is whether or not they were masonic or merely resembled the Freemasons in organization and principles.

Following more than three decades of conservative dictatorship in Mexico Porfirio Díaz was overthrown by the idealistic Francisco Madero in 1911. Madero was impractical and disorganized and the unrest, which had characterized the last years under Díaz, continued throughout the brief presidency of his successor. In February 1913 a rising under Félix Díaz, nephew of the old dictator, led to civil war within the capital. The fall of Madero was assured when General Victoriano Huerta, who commanded the government forces, switched sides and implemented the arrest of the President. A pact between Félix Díaz and Huerta led to the provisional presidency of Huerta with Díaz lurking in the background as potential candidate for the permanent presidency.

The above-quoted letter, along with a score of other letters from the Reverend A. L. Blackford, as well as from other Presbyterian missionaries in Brazil, throw a new light on the so-called Religious Question of the 1870's.

The Religious Question or Masonic Question, as all students of Brazilian history well know, was the incident which began in December of 1872, when Bishop Dom Frei Vital M. Gonçalves de Oliveira, of the Diocese of Olinda, Pernambuco (who later on was joined by Bishop Dom Antonio de Macedo Costa, of the Diocese of Pará), ordered all Catholics who were Masons to be expelled from the Catholic fraternal organizations known as confrarias. The confrarias, which were dominated by Masonic elements, refused to expel the Masons from their midst. The Bishop, in return, interdicted all of the recalcitrant confrarias and their churches in the Diocese. The confrarias appealed to the Crown demanding that the Bishop be restrained by the Imperial Power of Patronage, as under the law of the land—as interpreted by the Crown—the Bishop was not entitled to take such a measure. The Papal Encyclicals, which the Bishop was using as his guide, had never been approved by the Crown and as such, were not legally enforceable in Brazil. The Imperial Patronage of the Church, which had been inherited from the Portuguese kings, was very jealously guarded by the Emperor.

The Spanish political crisis of 1808 and the subsequent convening of the Cortes at Cádiz two years later helped crystallize certain political and philosophical concepts held by a number of “enlightened ”persons on both sides of the Atlantic. Their inherent faith in reason and progress made these delegates at Cádiz turn to a new instrument of government with confidence. In the end, however, strong vested interests thwarted the work of this liberal Cortes. This study examines the struggles, frustrations, triumphs, and failures of one influential and outspoken American in the Cortes at Cádiz, José Mejía Lequerica (1775-1813), who brought many ideas of the Enlightenment and of the French Constitution of 1791 to the new Spanish Constitution.

An affinity for urban living has frequently been cited as one of the peculiar characteristics or long standing traditions of the Spanish people. Whether one accepts the existence of medieval Iberian cities as a heritage from the Roman municipium or as a necessary defensive establishment against the attacks of the Moors, it is evident that town life was flourishing in the Middle Ages. Municipal governments were formed to administer the communities, and as new towns were captured or created, the old models of organization were carried with the expanding frontier. In Castile the local councils were called concejos or cabildos and until the fourteenth century were often elective, representative institutions with increasing influence and power. But from the reign of Alfonso XI (1312-1350) their strength began to wane as the Castilian kings attempted to control their domains by appointing local officials and dispatching royal agents to work with them. By the sixteenth century the success of the centralizing methods was evident, for the municipal councils had become virtually the tools of the Castilian Crown.

The 1936 Hull-Alfaro treaty, which fulfilled New Deal pledges to Panama, represented also the impact of Panamanian nationalism. For thirty years following the 1903 isthmian revolution, Panama remained a subject of American Canal policy. In 1921, for instance, the Panamanian government hurried troops to the Costa Rican boundary in order to compel a favorable decision in a long-standing border dispute. The Department of State, however, had decided that Panamanian military action against Costa Rica was unjustifiable. Arguing that hostilities between Panama and Costa Rica endangered Canal security, a warning was sent to Panama City, followed by the cruiser Sacramento. This act of “gunboat diplomacy” was castigated throughout Panama, but the Panamanian government withdrew its troops. Similarly, Panamanians voiced charges of economic domination, even exploitation, by arguing that the Canal failed to satisfy the republic's commercial aspirations. In 1903, Panamanians had welcomed military intervention by the United States on the grounds that it would be followed by technological intrusion capable of building the canal. By the late 1920's, however, it was obvious to many Panamanian critics that the profits of the isthmian waterway were returned to the United States. The American government strictly limited the operation of Panamanian merchants inside the Canal Zone. Moreover, the more desirable positions in Zone employment, the so-called “gold roll” jobs, were invariably meted out to Americans. Those Panamanians who found employment in the Zone were usually grouped with imported West Indian Negroes on the “silver roll,” a term referring to unskilled positions. Racial antagonism between West Indians and Panamanians resulted from economic competition.

The International slave trade which developed between the African slave depots and Spanish America during the sixteenth century has been the subject of several significant studies. These indicate in considerable detail the origins of the slave trade, the sources from which Negro slaves were obtained, and the historical development of the commerce within the Spanish imperial system. There emerges a broad view of the flow of human merchandize, in generally increasing volume, across the Atlantic and of the increasing refinement of its regulation. Other studies of mining, agricultural and pastoral occupations, the encomienda, and the urban guild system reveal the utilization of the Negro slaves as a labor force in New Spain. The distribution of the slaves among the various occupations resulted in a dispersion which makes classification by type of work or location tenuous. This combination of a unified pattern of international trade and a disparate utilization of the slaves suggests an area of fruitful investigation. That area is the domestic trade by which the slaves arriving at the ports of New Spain ultimately reached the consumers who used their labor.

In July, 1502, the fleet which Dom Manuel I had dispatched following Cabral's discovery of Brazil returned to Lisbon with news of Portugal's New World possession. The findings were incorporated into an official report and geographical observations were placed on the sea charts of the day, including the famous Cantino map of September, 1502. The three vessels in this expedition had sailed along the Brazilian coast for over a thousand miles, exploring and charting the major landfalls, from the northeastern tip around Cape Calcanhar to at least as far south as Cape Frio at 23° S. Lat. But no products of any great commerćial wealth which could compare with the riches being obtained in the Orient had been discovered, and the dispatch of further royal expeditions to Brazil seemingly was not justified. There were, however, private parties in Portugal who showed an interest in the slight commercial possibilities that were offered by this new land. The leader of this group was Fernão de Loronha, a wealthy merchant with a family business in Lisbon and sufficient capital to outfit several ships a year in overseas ventures. Moreover, Loronha had a first-hand acquaintance with this new land. He had been the overall commander of the fleet of 1501-1502 which had just returned from Brazil. There was one item of value in Brazil which particularly attracted Loronha. This was the dyewood trees growing in great abundance there. A large market for this commodity existed in northern Europe, for the dye extracted from the wood of the Asian variety of this tree had been a staple in the finishing of fine cloths produced by the weavers of Bruges, Liége, and other cities in the Low Countries since the twelfth century.

Scholars are in substantial agreement that Latin American constitutionalism leaves much to be desired.

First, there is the wide gap between constitutional formulations and actual political practice. No one would contend that any constitution, Latin American or otherwise, corresponds exactly to reality. There are provisions in the United States Constitution which are no better observed than are those of the Latin American documents. Even so, there can be little doubt that the gulf between theory and reality is far wider in much of Latin America than it is in many other parts of the world. Though many provisions of other constitutions do not correspond to actual political practice, Latin American stipulations on significant principles of government are often so much at variance with reality as to be totally misleading for the description of their political systems. Professor Martin C. Needler puts it quite bluntly:

In November of 1898, Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, lashed out at the expansionists and denied most emphatically that there was “justification for our enforced conquest and annexation ”of the “semi-nude people ”of Puerto Rico, living in a state of “peonage.” At large, the American trade union movement appears to have been caught up in the movement for Cuban independence—both political and economic. Puerto Rico, however, was a different matter. The trade union leadership had shown no special awareness of the island or of conditions prevailing there and, following the American occupation, adopted a strongly anti-imperialist stand. Yet, in February of 1901, the American Federationist (edited by Gompers) warmly applauded the Louisville conventions decision “. . .to organize the 15,000 skilled workers of the island of Puerto Rico on the unshakable basis of the trade union.” By the summer of 1902, trade union opinion had largely reversed itself and fraternal ties between the American Federation of Labor and the Federación Libre of Puerto Rico had been irrevocably forged.

The distinction between privateering and piracy was blurring badly by the spring of 1819. The Spanish American revolutionaries, like their Anglo-American counterparts of four decades earlier, lacked a naval force able to challenge Spain's power while it was still en route to her vast American domains. Consequently it was only a question of time before the struggling republics hit upon the happy expedient of issuing letters of marque that authorized independent captains to war against Spain in their cause and under their auspices.

Leonard Wood Served as military governor of Cuba from December, 1899 to May, 1902. As the instrument of United States policy in Cuba, Wood’s administration provides an excellent example of the American touch in meeting the troublesome question of imperialism. This subject of exercising power over other people, as much debated today as it was at the turn of the century, was fully appreciated in its ramifications by those who formulated the Cuban policy of the United States: Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt, Secretary of War Elihu Root, Senator Orville H. Platt and General Leonard Wood. Having gone to war with Spain on the basis of the Joint Resolution of April 20, 1898, with the famous fourth clause inserted by Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado, that Cuba would be left to the Cubans once the island was pacified, the United States refused to acquire Cuba at the Paris peace conference of December, 1898. The United States was pledged to give Cuba her freedom, but opinions divided over the time needed to pacify the island and ensure future stability. Hopefully, by tracing the actions of the military government with regard to schools, courts, the economy, government and the Platt Amendment, it may be seen that General Wood, far from being a bureaucratic proconsul in khaki, attempted to prepare Cubans for managing their own affairs.

The Historia de España y de la civilización española by Don Rafael Altamira was published nearly 70 years ago in Barcelona (June, 1899) by Juan Gili. In character it is a manual, as the author himself admits in the prologue to the first edition: