When people speak of the Spanish conquest of America, they generally mention the outstanding figures, either heroic or odious, like Pizarro, Alvarado, Cortés, Benalcázar, Nuño de Guzmán, De Soto, Cabeza de Vaca, etc., but they forget those other figures, whose names in many cases have not even come down to us, who played just as important parts as the better-known leaders and who were the veritable “motors” of the conquest—and even more of the colonization: the royal scribes, the judges, the oidores, in a word, the letrados or men of the law. This statement is neither exaggerated nor one-sided. The letrados were the organizers of the Spanish empire, the empire that was able to sustain itself for three and a half centuries—or four up to the loss of the Antilles. There today in Santiago de Cuba a monument stands on San Juan Hill, near those of the mambi and of the American soldier, which is inscribed to the Spaniard as a ”homage to the defender of the last Spanish territory in America (1492-1898).“

GENERAL William Miller had played a leading role in the independence of Peru and Bolivia from Spain, working with the chief leaders of the independence movement, and had held civil posts of distinction as president of Puno and president of Potosí. Bad health, however, caused by the many wounds suffered in the wars, had made it advisable that he return to England for treatment. But, unlike so many other foreign legionnaires, Miller's role in the history of Peru did not end with independence.

It has become a well-established fact that agricultural and mineral production underwent marked increase during the eighteenth century in Latin America. An expanding European market, regular and abundant maritime transportation, the lowering of taxes, the reduction of prices of crown monopolies, and the granting of government loans to industry were all factors which, in varying degree, stimulated increased production. Less well known, however, is the fact that in some areas production failed to rise above an unimpressive level despite these favorable conditions and official encouragement. The Central American mining industry, for example, experienced no noticeable change in productivity during the last half of the eighteenth century, although trade increased in volume, stimulative legislation was implemented, and penetrating suggestions—reflecting rays of the Enlightenment— were offered by miners and government officials.

Beginning in the latter years of the sixteenth century, and continuing through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Jesuit missionaries made a great pioneering thrust northward along the western coast of Mexico. In this area of Sinaloa-Sonora they met with many fierce and uncultured groups of natives, and frequently they were forced into temporary retreat at the cost of some of their very able men. But their advance was not brought to a permanent halt except by the command of the king which brought to an end all Jesuit activities throughout the Spanish domains.

Peru had two fathers of independence, José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar, and a part-time midwife in Thomas Cochrane the tenth Earl of Dundonald. Antonio José de Sucre, another important midwife, came on to the Peruvian scene after Cochrane had left for that reason is not dealt with in this article. Since the destinies of Peru and Chile were so closely entwined as embryonic nations, one would expect that the wars of independence might have created a mutuality of interest. The purpose here is to study this relationship and its contextual association with the animosity between the lesser known Cochrane and the famous San Martin.

At the closing years of the nineteenth century the Philippine Islands became a territorial part of the United States. For this “imperialist” domination of another people, the latter government, being based on the principle of popular sovereignty, had to find a justification. It found reason in the contention that it was helping the Filipino people achieve their independence from the despotism of Spanish rule; after that, the United States Government felt obliged to provide a stable government in the islands in place of the former colonial government. For the benefit of the American people, most of whom had only then heard of the Philippines, scores of articles were written on this Far Eastern country. In line with the government's position—that of posing as the “ savior ” of an oppressed people—and influenced by the revolutionary propaganda which had characterized the period of struggle for independence, these writers tended to paint a more or less dark picture of the Philippine Archipelago as it stood in the last century of Spanish colonization. What really was the state of the Philippines in the nineteenth century has remained a question of great interest and undiminished historical importance. Another Philippine affair was met with equal interest in this country: the friar-problem.

There could scarcely be an event of the magnitude of the Spanish discovery and conquest of a brand new world without its giving rise to a whole inundation of literature about the New World. For one thing, it really was a new world. Every detail reported about America had the same exotic appeal for the Spaniard of the day that an eye-witness account of life on another planet would have for us. Another reason for the great interest of the Spaniard in the happenings in America was his taste for greatness, for heroic deeds, a taste which he had developed and nurtured through the novels of chivalry so popular with all classes in Spain. It would be interesting to know to what extent the novels of chivalry influenced the psychology of the Spanish explorers and conquerors. Many of the feats accomplished in the New World bear comparison with feats described in the novels, and many of the chronicles and documents describing the conquest reveal attitudes and even turns of expression such as were often found in the novels of chivalry.

YUCATAN has been a relatively autonomous part of Mexico. The civilized northern tip of the peninsula, centering around the city of Mérida, has been a kind of socio-political island equidistant by water from Veracruz, New Orleans, Havana, and Belize, British Honduras. South and east of this civilized area extends Indian territory which has remained quite primitive, quite isolated from the north, and in rather close contact with British Honduras further to the south. In the colonial epoch Yucatan was brought under Spanish dominion with considerable difficulty; only the crudest forms of surveillance could be maintained over Indians of the peninsula. With independence the limitations of the central government's control remained distressingly apparent. Whenever the government in Mexico City fell on hard times, as it frequently did, Yucatan as a whole tended toward autonomy. At such times the provincial government at Mérida gained freedom from federal restraint but lost federal support, and in consequence usually lost control over the Indians of southern Yucatan.

Art work throughout almost the entire history of the Church has been primarily didactic. Man was taught through the arts of sculpture, painting, mosaic, and stained glass, all that he should know of the creation of the world, the dogmas of religion, the virtues, the hero-saints, and during the middle ages especially, the range of the sciences, the arts and crafts. Thus, in the latter half of the eighteenth century when the Franciscans came to the remote outposts in California, they brought with them the pictures and statues by which the simple and ignorant Indian might learn, through his eyes, much of what he was to know of his new faith. “Through the medium of art the highest conceptions of theologian and scholar penetrated to some extent the minds of even the humblest of the people.”

Although Florida was in the hands of the Spaniards for over three centuries there are hardly any remains of Spanish buildings. Original Spanish architecture has vanished from Florida; a basic link to Florida's fascinating history has been destroyed. Florida was in the hands of the Spanish from its discovery in 1513 until 1763, when Spain gave the province to England at the end of the Seven Years' War, known in America as the French and Indian War. Spain regained Florida in 1783 at the time of the Treaty of Paris which terminated the American War of Independence. The period from 1783 to 1821 is called in Florida history the second Spanish period and gave way to the American territorial period when Florida became part of the American union. The second Spanish period is quite distinct from the first Spanish period of Florida history (1513-1763). While the first period represents true Spanish Florida, the second era is more of an afterthought. Many foreigners, mostly English and United States citizens, were residing in Florida. It hardly can be called a Spanish Florida per se. Architectural remains from this pseudo-Spanish period are extremely scarce. The best preserved piece is the Catholic cathedral at St. Augustine, parts of which date back to the second Spanish period. But this church fares poorly if put next to the magnificent old cathedrals in Spanish America.

There is no doubt that manuscripts proceeding from or referring to Ibero-America which are preserved in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress constitute an interesting collection for the historian of the Hispanic world. This collection was begun in the second half of the nineteenth century when the library started to receive writings, documents, correspondence, and diverse papers relating to the past history of these northern regions and of other countries south of the frontiers of the United States. It was the moment when the North American collectors and antiquarians began to frequent the auctions of papers and books, when individuals and universities began to make their collections of material from which historians could procure documentation for their writings. The Library of Congress did not stay on the fringe of this movement, and some outstanding examples of documentation began to arrive in this depository, so much so that in 1900 the head of the Manuscript Division sent to the Congress of Americanists meeting in Paris a catalogue of the fifteen items relating to Mexico to be found under his care.

If by opportunity we mean “a favorable juncture of circumstances” then the picture which emerges is not exactly propitious. The Latin American Conference held this year in Los Angeles reflected the concern about the post World War II decline of interest in Latin America and the prevailing indifference of students, the public, and many academic institutions toward Latin America, past and present. Contributing to this general apathy were both the general cultural orientation of the United States and Latin America toward Europe, and the general shift of American emphasis after 1945 to “crisis areas” which reduced Latin America to a minor position since it appeared to be neither threatened nor threatening in the polarized world. (In this respect, Castro remains our greatest benefactor.) Furthermore, the more obvious availability of funds, both public and private, for studies of these “crisis areas” tended to confirm the seeming unimportance of Latin America. The failure to attract the needed personnel, recognition, and support, coupled with the dissipation of current resources for the study of Latin America in the United States have, with few exceptions, prevented Latin American programs from developing momentum and visibility.

Writers have long claimed that Costa Rica has achieved standards of popular, constitutional government unusual for Latin America. A few recent commentators have attempted to modify the unstinted praise which others have been prone to lavish upon Costa Rican political institutions and processes.

To evaluate properly the assumption that Costa Rica is somehow more “democratic” than her neighbors, there must be examination of a number of elements of Costa Rican political life—that is, press and public expression, individual rights, political parties, roles of judicial and legislative bodies, role of the military, and the like. Some studies have touched upon a few of these elements. Scholarship has yet to cover all of them. The present paper will confine itself to a further aspect of Costa Rican political life—that is, the presidential history of the country. By what means and under what circumstances have presidents secured and left office? How many have been long-term dictators? What have been the backgrounds and characteristics of leading Costa Rican presidents? How many have come from the military profession, and how many from civilian life?

José del Valle (1776-1834) distinguished himself as a royal servant, as a scholar, and as a leader of the Federation of Central America. Loyal to the crown until the last minute, he gracefully accepted independence (September 15, 1821), and his political agility put him in a position that allowed him to help write the declaration that made the Kingdom of Guatemala free. He immediately became a member of the provisional government and then provided leadership until Mexico annexed Central America (January 5, 1822). After the annexation, the town council of Tegucigalpa elected him to the constituent congress of the Mexican Empire.

Defining, for the purposes of this paper, modern Latin American history as the period following 1830, and the Bolivarian nations as Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Peru, the spectrum of research opportunities is very broad. As is well known, the modern period is the step-child, in respect to historical interest and production, of the colonial, in most of Latin America. In the Bolivarian nations, this tendency is made worse by the exaggerated devotion of historians there to the independence struggle, notably in Colombia and Venezuela.

There is no egoism or special virtue in the fact that all of us on this program have numerous research possibilities to suggest. The plain truth is that the field of Latin American history bulges with first-class topics for historical writing. In this respect I am sure that we Latin Americanists are more fortunate than colleagues in some other historical fields where, it is my impression, there is a good deal of trampling of each other’s grapes. But historical research is not the contemplation of ideas, no matter how promising they may be, and in Latin America the investigator confronts notorious difficulties in obtaining orderly source materials. Therefore, before turning to some of the research possibilities, I should touch briefly on several underlying assumptions. The first is that the investigators working on these topics shall be qualified linguistically, technically, and intellectually to accomplish their work in Latin America and in the United States. Unhappily, this has not always been the case in this underdeveloped field. Second, for all of these topics I estimate that there exists a sufficiency of source materials, although in some cases that assumption has not been fully tested in the field. (This is the point at which field research in Latin America takes on a more colorful aspect than research, let’s say, in the British Museum.) Finally, an investigator engaged in research in Latin America must have, or quickly develop, a hunter’s ability to move rapidly yet sure-footedly after his quarry, tracking down private and even public archives which, at the outset of his adventure in research, may be completely unknown to him.

In 1540 Hernán Cortés arrived in Spain to continue his fruitless efforts to clear up the matter of his estate in the New World and his position in the eyes of the Spanish monarch. His activities in Spain along with the ill-fated voyage of Antonio de Ulloa up the coast of California in 1539 caused some drain on his financial resources. The many and varied business activities of Cortés, however, supplied him with income during the remainder of his life and set the stage for legal action over his estate.