With the collapse of the Soviet Union, restrictions on archives in Russia have diminished markedly. Some of the repositories have potential interest for Latin Americanists, including the Comintern Archive. This research note discusses the objectives of the archive and the types of material it contains. A list of the major collections relevant to Latin America is followed by comments on how to use the archive and websites that will facilitate research in Russia. Also provided are bibliographic references to academic studies on Latin America based on Comintern materials.

The phase evolution of reactive radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtered Cr0.28Zr0.10O0.61 coatings has been studied by in situ synchrotron X-ray diffraction during annealing under air atmosphere and vacuum. The annealing in vacuum shows t-ZrO2 formation starting at ∼750–800 °C, followed by decomposition of the α-Cr2O3 structure in conjunction with bcc-Cr formation, starting at ∼950 °C. The resulting coating after annealing to 1140 °C is a mixture of t-ZrO2, m-ZrO2, and bcc-Cr. The air-annealed sample shows t-ZrO2 formation starting at ∼750 °C. The resulting coating after annealing to 975 °C is a mixture of t-ZrO2 and α-Cr2O3 (with dissolved Zr). The microstructure coarsened slightly during annealing, but the mechanical properties are maintained, with no detectable bcc-Cr formation. A larger t-ZrO2 fraction compared with α-Cr2O3 is observed in the vacuum-annealed coating compared with the air-annealed coating at 975 °C. The results indicate that the studied pseudo-binary oxide is more stable in air atmosphere than in vacuum.

This essay reviews the following works:

Vida, pasión y muerte del jesuita Rutilio Grande. By Rodolfo Cardenal. San Salvador: UCA Editores, 2016. Pp. 564. $12.00 paperback. ISBN: 9789996110283.

Poets and Prophets of the Resistance: Intellectuals and the Origins of El Salvador’s Civil War. By Joaquín M. Chávez New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xii + 336. $74.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780199315512.

The Salvador Option: The United States in El Salvador, 1977–1992. By Russell Crandall. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xv + 690. $39.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781316500644.

Assassination of a Saint: The Plot to Murder Óscar Romero and the Quest to Bring His Killers to Justice. By Matt Eisenbrandt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 219. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780520286801.

El Salvador: Historia contemporánea, 1808–2010. Edited by Carlos Gregorio López Bernal. San Salvador: Editorial Universitaria, 2015. Pp. 424. ISBN: 9789992327869.

A Radical Faith: The Assassination of Sister Maura. By Eileen Markey. New York: Nation Books, 2016. Pp. 1 + 307. $26.99 hardcover. ISBN: 9781568585734.

Priest under Fire: Padre David Rodríguez, the Catholic Church, and El Salvador’s Revolutionary Movement. By Peter M. Sánchez Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2015. Pp. xvi + 308. $44.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780813061191.

Liberation through Reconciliation: Jon Sobrino’s Christological Spirituality. By O. Ernesto Valiente. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015. Pp. 289. $35.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780823268870.

This study challenges the widely held belief that the peasant rebellion of 1932, and the massive military response to it, marked the demise of Indian ethnic identity. Working from documents that have become available only recently, we demonstrate that the Indian population was not decimated by the military repression. The percentage of Indians in the population remained steady and in some regions even increased. We show that the bedrock of Indian identity, the cofradías and the communities, survived the repression as well. We propose that these survivals are due, ironically, in part to the military. Despite their willingness to employ violence on a colossal level, military leaders believed that order in the countryside was to be achieved through reform as well as repression. The military's reformist ideology and reform programme worked to defend individual Indians and Indian communities from ladinos anxious to avenge their losses in the uprising.