A significant but largely overlooked phenomenon in twentieth-century Latin America has been the extended dominance of a single region over an entire nation. To one degree or another this type of regionalism has existed in several countries, including revolutionary Mexico, with the rise of the North and the Sonora Dynasty, and Brazil, with the control of national politics by the São Paulo-Minas Gerais axis from the 1890’s to 1930, followed by the rise of Rio Grande do Sul. In the following pages I will examine this type of regionalism as it occurred in Venezuela, in the form of Táchiran dominance over the government and armed forces for the first forty-five years of this century. My purpose is to explain how the men of one small agricultural state could maintain such long-term mastery over the country, what sort of reaction this “hegemony” produced, what the limits of regional control were, and, finally, when Táchiran rule definitively ended.

September, 1975 marks the 200th anniversary of the formal opening of the Monte de Piedad, one of the oldest continuously operating social welfare institutions in America. Conceived and endowed by Pedro Romero de Terreros, Count of Regla, the Monte de Piedad represented only one facet, albeit the most important, of the philanthropic contributions of this wealthy miner, merchant and landowner. His benefactions ranged from the small to the grand—the construction of an altar in the church of San Fernando to the gifting of a battleship to the Spanish navy.

Scholars have paid considerable attention to the famous goodwill mission of Dwight Whitney Morrow to Mexico in 1927, but have written almost nothing about the conditions which necessitated it. An in-depth study of Morrow’s predecessor, James Rockwell Sheffield, whose ambassadorship (1924–27) featured a deterioration in Mexican-American relations, has yet to be published. During Sheffield’s tenure the administration of Plutarco Elías Calles made the strongest attempt to that time to implement the revolutionary program of “Mexico for the Mexicans” embodied in the Constitution of 1917. Especially alarming to Americans was legislation aimed at limiting foreign land-holding and severely restricting the privileges of foreign petroleum interests. These laws precipitated a prolonged diplomatic correspondence and generated considerable ill-will. This correspondence reached a complete impasse by the spring of 1926 since neither side was willing to compromise its position. The re-emergence of the perennial church-state conflict as well as Mexican opposition to American policies in Nicaragua further convulsed relations.

American intervention in Mexico during 1916 produced a series of crises which carried the two countries to the brink of total war. Though full-scale confrontation was narrowly averted, United States-Mexican relations suffered in following decades because of the friction produced during that period. American historians have frequently treated the events of that year with blatant defense of President Woodrow Wilson or, at worst, a judgement that hostilities arose because of unfortunate misunderstandings between national leaders. In this age when some scholars have reoriented their thinking about Wilson’s World War I policy, it seems both fair and necessary to reexamine his Mexican program.

There is neither lake nor river in Columbus, New Mexico, now nor was there on March 9, 1916, when it was raided by Mexican bandits. The muddied waters are those of history as the events that took place over 59 years ago are almost as cloudy today as the day they occurred. Many questions about the raid remain unanswered: Was Pancho Villa at Columbus? If so, did he enter the town? How many Mexicans took part in the raid? However, the question that has concerned the amateur and professional historian of Mexico, the United States, and Germany is why did the raid take place? What was the greater importance of the raid? Most of these questions cannot be adequately answered without an examination of the political and military career of Francisco Villa, the recent and contemporary American viewpoint of Villa, and some salient events that preceded March 9, 1916.

The Rebellion of Paraguay (1721–1735) reveals much about imperial administration in eighteenth century Spanish South America. It demonstrates the contradictions built into an imperial structure in which a variety of people and groups with conflicting vested interests tried to influence policy. In the case of Paraguay, this situation contributed directly to rebellion. Although it sprang immediately from local economic grievances, the Rebellion was also caused by a jurisdictional dispute over who should direct the affairs of Paraguay, the audiencia of Charcas or viceroy of Peru. It thus raised the question of whom local inhabitants should obey when their superiors disagreed.

Despite the fact that the conquest of Spanish America had been primarily a military undertaking, during two centuries of Hapsburg rule the army played a secondary role, with real power and authority being vested in a pervasive civil bureaucracy. The armed groups of adelantados who had initially conquered Peru lacked the objectives and organizational structure of true militaries. Fighters rather than soldiers, their social positions defined more through the possession of encomiendas than by military functions, they cannot be ragarded as constituting a true army. In 1615, Viceroy Montesclaros informed the Crown that in any other area these soldados would be regarded as dangerous vagabonds who posed a threat to public safety.

Historians studying the Church in Latin American have recently been receiving excellent assistance from political scientists and sociologists such as Ivan Vallier and François Houtart, and now the present author, Thomas C. Bruneau. There certainly is a place for sociology in the study of the Catholic Church. Bruneau’s theses concerning Church development in Brazil are, therefore, vitally interesting to professional historians of this country.