Historians from the United States have studied the Latin American military using two principal approaches: in broad, topical studies dealing with the socio-political role of the military, i.e. armies, from colonial times to the present and in monographic works dealing thematically with the political role of the military in a specific country during a specific time. Neither approach boasts a defintive work. Certainly not the former, for the role of the Latin American military is simply too big to be dealt with between the covers of a single volume; nor the latter, because of the necessary exclusivism inherent in dealing with one nation-one period. A third approach, the multinational treatment of the military in Latin America during a fixed period exists, but to date few such works are in print.

On the morning of October 13, 1641, a Spanish shopkeeper by the name of Juan Agudo died quite suddenly in the silvermining community of San Joseph del Parral in northern Mexico. His death must not have been altogether unexpected, however, for in a will drawn up only three weeks before he had described himself as “andando en pie aun que con alguna falta de salud.” According to the provisions of that will, executed without delay, Agudo, a bachelor and a devout Catholic, was buried in the parish church in Parral amidst ceremonies that were to cost his estate well over 500 pesos.

In the course of the long struggle between Mexican conservatives and liberals, the issue of the fate of the church was the first preoccupation of both parties. The Liberal president, Don Benito Juárez, had cut the Gordian knot by seizing the church's landed wealth. Thereafter, from 1859 to 1867, Mexico's conservatives bent their efforts to the repeal of Juárez's Reform Laws. Liberals staked their future upon their maintenance.

In April 1864, before quitting Europe for Mexico, Maximilian and his consort, Empress Charlotte, had visited Rome. That visit excited a great deal of speculation in the diplomatic world because it was thought that Maximilian might attempt to lay the foundation for a concordat through personal negotiation. Instead, the new sovereign merely asked the Pope to send a nuncio to Mexico to open negotiations as soon as possible. He had also taken the occasion to establish a Mexican Legation at the Vatican and to name Ignacio Aguilar as his envoy at that court.

One of the most important issues that confronted the colonial powers in the New World was the problem of European-Indian relations. Upon this pivotal point hinged such fundamental questions as political sovereignty, the moral responsibilities of Christian states towards aboriginal inhabitants and, on a less elevated level, the economic rights of the Europeans to the wealth and labor of the Indians. All colonial nations in the western hemisphere grappled with the problem introducing, modifying, and ultimately substituting a variety of institutions to regulate European-Indian contacts.

The Consolidation (secularization of the pious funds of church organizations) of 1804 cannot be viewed as an isolated historical phenomenon but rather must be examined in the light of a long hallowed tradition of enmity on the part of the Spanish crown to the church's economic power, and, more immediate to the 1804 decree, as part of the Bourbon policy of regalism. Legislation aimed at controlling the sale of the holdings of the church has many precedents in Spanish legal history. In 1523 the Cortes of Valladolid asked the king, Don Carlos and his mother, the queen, Doña Juana,

When Brazilian troops occupied Asunción on January 1, 1869, the worst war in South American history appeared to be nearing its end. This was a conflict caused by power politics, boundary disputes, and traditional animosities in the Plata basin. In a very real sense, the Paraguayan War was a climactic event in the evolution of nationalism in all of the four countries involved. A fortuitous combination of circumstances found Brazil and Argentina supporting the same party in Uruguay; although still intensely suspicious of each other's intentions, they had come to realize that an independent Uruguay was essential for the maintenance of peace between them. Argentina and Brazil had long sustained territorial disputes with Paraguay; indeed, if their desires had been satisfied, Paraguay would have been reduced to the territory she now has between the Paraná and Paraguay rivers.

Those who defend America's entry into the First World War often call attention to the ultimate German threat to the security of the Western Hemisphere. Through his political and economic activities in the years before the War, Kaiser Wilhelm II allegedly endangered the independence of Latin American states, and especially, the dominant position America enjoyed in the Caribbean. Hard evidence to support this position, however, is rarely presented, and with good reason, for after the celebrated Venezuelan incident of 1902-03, German-American relations in Latin America decline in saliency. Yet, during the crucial decade before the onset of World War One, Germans and Americans met one another in the hemisphere in a variety of places and under a variety of circumstances. An analysis of these relatively obscure contacts will help answer two questions: Did Germany menace American interests in the area, and, more importantly, did Americans believe that she did?

The nineteenth century witnessed the first major change in astronomy since the birth of the science in antiquity. With the exception, in the eighteenth century, of William Herschel's great work in the course of which he speculated on the origin, composition and shape of the universe itself, man's concern with the heavens had been limited to plotting and cataloguing the positions and the movements of the stars and planets. The entire history of astronomy had consisted of more and more accurate observations of the solar system and the stars within our own galaxy, although only the haziest notions of the shape and size of that “island universe” were entertained by thoughtful astronomers.

During the seventeenth century in Spain's colonial empire, there were two “Great Conspiracies” and the arrests resulting from the discovery of each of these conspiracies in the vice-royalties of Peru and New Spain culminated in an auto de fé. Only these two autos, out of almost 250 held in Spain's colonies, bore the title “El Auto Grande.” The first with this title was held in Lima, Peru, on January 23, 1639, and the second in Mexico City on April 11, 1649. Practically all those penanced in both autos were Jews. Of the sixty-one Jews in the Lima auto, one deceased went to the stake in effigy with ten living prisoners. Many of those whose lives were spared and who were “reconciled” were sentenced to serve as oarsmen without pay on the Spanish galleys plying between Spain and the New World. Their periods of servitude varied between three and ten years. There is no record of any galley oarsman ever being released alive at the termination of his sentence.

Within recent years, Spanish American historical studies have gained in depth and understanding. One area which has witnessed relatively little progress, however, is the clergy. While European scholars have been busy in the investigation of many aspects of the life and work of the clergy, Latin Americanists have done little or nothing. It is a pleasure to be able to present a study on the pastors of the Lima archdiocese in an effort to help fill an evident need.

Fernando Cortés lived twenty-five years after his first, perhaps only, enterprise of grand design and gigantic proportion, the conquest of the Aztec Confederacy. In those remaining years, his were a multitude of endeavors; many, an outgrowth of his brilliantly successful triumph over the Aztecs, and most, dependent—for funds, materiél, and manpower—upon his great estate, a huge enterprise in itself.

Located in central and southern México, the estate comprised numerous, populous encomiendas, extensive landholdings, mines, Indian and Negro slaves and various commercial establishments. It was known as the Marquesado de Cortés after 1529 and in 1535 was constituted, with royal authorization, a mayorazgo, or entailed estate. Following Cortés’ death in 1547, it became the property of his legitimate son and designated heir, Don Martín.

One of the consequences of the Buenos Aires revolution in May of 1810 was the eventual independence of Paraguay and the rise to power of Doctor José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia. But before analysing the events of the Independence Movement in the isolated province of Paraguay it is necessary to consider both the conditions in that region in the last decade of colonial rule and the activities of Doctor Francia in the same period.

At the end of the eighteenth century, the economic position of the church in New Spain appeared to be secure and prosperous. Although the crown had restricted many of the financial and legal prerogatives of the church in the second half of this century, it had not restricted the basic right of the church to hold property or invest its money in mortgages or loans to lay citizens or to the government. On the contrary, in order to solve its own financial problems, the crown had increasingly relied upon loans from corporations such as the Tribunales de Minería, Consulado, and the church itself. The Minería and Consulado had provided the bulk of such loans after 1780, but these corporations had, in turn, sought loans from ecclesiastical institutions in order to fulfill their promises to the crown. Nunneries in New Spain had made considerable contributions to these loans which appeared as safe investments for these communities. Otherwise, the increasing political and financial entanglements of the mother country in Europe at the end of the century did not mean much for the nunneries. Professions continued to take place, a few new convents were founded prior to 1810, and up to 1805 loans and pious funds continued to be raised and invested in the traditional manner.

As it has been suggested in a previous article, by the middle of the 1830's, the Mexican government had started to put into effect a policy of stricter control over the sources of income of the Church and, at the same time, it had started to tap clerical resources with demands for loans, both forced and voluntary. In addition, Liberal politicians had put forward plans to restrict the political and economic power of the Church, not to mention its more subtle influence on areas such as education. These restrictive policies were embodied in the laws decreed by Vicente Gómez Farías during his ephemeral administration. Although the majority of these laws were later revoked, the ideological challenge of the Liberals remained alive, awaiting more propitious times. In the interim, the Conservative régimes which ruled the country from 1835 to 1855 had to face some of the most difficult political and economic crises experienced by Mexico up to that time. In trying to solve them, the Conservatives, although friendly to the Church, continued attempting to exert some form of control over clerical property, and continued to regard the Church as a source of possible funds.

From 1903 to 1911, Chihuahua was dominated by the Terrazas-Creel clan. For the patriarch of the clan, Luis Terrazas, the great latifundist and cattle baron, it was a prosperous time. He occupied the office of governor for the first fifteen months of the period and then retired, turning it over to his son-in law, Enrique C. Creel, who served first as interim and then as constitutional governor until the eve of the Madero revolt in 1910.

The effects of porfirismo filtered down to Chihuahuans through the clan. It dispensed offices, lucrative contracts, and concessions through Creel’s científico connections in Mexico City. It monopolized the state legislative offices—only twenty-seven persons sat in the legislature from 1903 to 1911 with the clan names of Terrazas, Creel, and Cuilty occurring in every session.

It is well known that the initial task of interpreting the Monroe Doctrine as a functional policy in international relations fell largely on John Quincy Adams. Somewhat ironically, the noncolonization principle in Monroe's famed Annual Message of 1823 for which Adams, then Secretary of State, was most responsible, received relatively little attention in the 1820's. Leaders in the United States and Spanish America alike were more concerned with the meaning of the other main principle involved in the Message—nonintervention. What were the practical implications of Monroe's warning that the United States would consider intervention by a European power in the affairs of any independent American nation “ as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States ” ? John Quincy Adams laid the groundwork for an answer to this question in July, 1824, when Colombia, alarmed by rumors of French interference in the wars for independence, sought a treaty of alliance. The President and Congress, Adams replied, would take the necessary action to support nonintervention if a crisis arose, but there would be no alliance. In fact, he added, it would be necessary for the United States to have an understanding with certain European powers whose principles and interests also supported nonintervention before any action could be taken or any alliance completed to uphold it. The position taken by the Secretary of State cooled enthusiasm for the Monroe Doctrine, but Spanish American leaders did not accept this rebuff in 1824 as final.

The subject of a commerical treaty quickly emerged after the United States recognition of the independence of Mexico in 1822. To negotiate this treaty Joel Roberts Poinsett was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Mexico. Since Mexico had modeled its constitution after that of the United States, Henry Clay, Secretary of State, instructed Poinsett to make himself available to explain the practical operation and advantages of our system to Mexico. Inherent in our constitution and system was freedom of religion, establishment of which in our relations with Mexico constituted an objective of Poinsett's mission. Clay incorporated into Poinsett's instructions those which his predecessor, John Quincy Adams, on May 27, 1823, addressed to Richard Clough Anderson, Jr., Minister Plenipotentiary to Colombia. Adams had emphasized the importance of inserting the principle of religious liberty in the commercial treaty with Colombia. Liberty of conscience and of religious freedom were among the usual objects of a commercial treaty. He expostulated that “civil, political, commercial, and religious liberty, are but various modifications of one great principle founded in the inalienable rights of human nature, and before the universal application of which the colonial domination of Europe over the American hemisphere, has fallen, and is crumbling into dust.”

During the century between 1765 and 1865, the double impact of the industrial and agricultural revolutions brought profound change to rural society in Europe and North America. In England, the enclosure movement and the innovations associated with “ high farming ” culminated in the destruction of the English peasantry and the growth of a productive rural capitalism that underlay Victorian industrial development. On the continent new crop rotations and improved animals increased output while political revolution resulted in drastic changes in European agrarian structure and in the lives of lord and peasant. In North America (and in such regions as Australia and New Zealand) wholly new rural societies were created as population grew and rail and steam began to put these peripheral zones within reach of the industrial world.

The two letters included in this note date from 1832. Their interest and importance derive from a number of circumstances. In the first place, they were written by one Francis Baylies while on a special mission for the United States Government in Argentina to negotiate the settlement of a fisheries controversy growing out of the seizure of an American vessel in the Falkland Islands, to which Argentina laid claim. Baylies had no particular qualification or fitness for such a diplomatic mission, except insofar as he came from Massachusetts, and thus had an interest in shipping. He was a Federalist politician and former congressman from southern Massachusetts between 1821-1827. In the disintegration of Federalism which then occurred, Baylies found temporary and strange refuge in the camp of Andrew Jackson, whom he helped to win the Presidency in 1828. The appointment to this mission was Jackson’s somewhat anomalous reward for Baylies’ political services, in the fashion of the time. On March 8, 1832, Baylies, with his wife and young daughter, left Boston on the United States sloop-of-war, the Peacock, for South America. In less than a year, by February 12, 1833, he was back in Taunton, Massachusetts, his home town, his mission incomplete and unsuccessful. Britain’s occupation of the Falkland Islands in 1833 may, however, have disposed of the issue.

The day after the successful ouster of Spanish authority in the viceregal capital of the Río de la Plata, on May 26, 1810, the revolutionary Junta in Buenos Aires sent a series of circulars to the governors and cabildos of the provinces formerly subjected to its leadership. These circulars announced the revolution, its aims and purposes, and made it quite clear that the new authorities in Buenos Aires expected to remain in control over the entire immense region. Most of the provinces responded in the affirmative, but royalists in the Banda Oriental and in Alto Perú declared themselves enemies of the revolution and prepared to resist it. In Paraguay, the situation was sufficiently ambiguous that the Junta decided to send Colonel José de Espínola, former military chief of Paraguay's northern frontier and now a partisan of the revolution, to Asunción to state the “ Porteño ” case. He brought with him formal letters from the Junta to the cabildo of Asunción and the Spanish governor, Bernardo de Velasco y Huidbro.