bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Mythological Geography of California: Origins, Development, Confirmation and Disappearance
Authors: Mathes W. Michael
Published: July 2006

Heir to Greek and Roman culture, the revelations of Holy Scripture and the great commentaries upon it written by Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and lesser theologians and philosophers of the Middle Ages, the cultured European of the fifteenth century was content that thecorpusof his knowledge was complete, and that within it was all that was necessary for a full understanding of the universe. Nevertheless, this satisfaction was greatly upset by the explorations of Christopher Columbus and his followers during the final decade of the century. The European discovery of extensive lands populated with theretofore unknown peoples, with afloraandfaunatotally distinct from that of Europe, was, in all senses, a New World. In that this New World had not been incorporated into the extensive and well-defined knowledge of Western civilization, it was, therefore, open to any and all concepts conceivable to the imagination; everything was possible, even the very improbable.
Revolution and Recognition: A British Perspective On Isthmian Affairs During the 1920s
Authors: Salisbury Richard V.
Published: July 2006

With the end of the First World War, American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere appeared to be an unquestioned fact of international life. The defeat of Germany, in combination with the wartime weakening of Great Britain and France, had created a situation whereby the major economic and political competitors of the United States were unable, at least in the short-run, to exercise the degree of influence they had enjoyed in the years before 1914. Given the strategic considerations involving the isthmian canal route, the circum-Caribbean region was the area within the Western Hemisphere where the influence of the United States was especially strong, a point born out by the existence of virtual American protectorates in Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Nicaragua. Accordingly, when viewed from an immediate post-World War I perspective, one might have anticipated that the United States would have had relatively little difficulty in maintaining a regional Pax Americana.
Central America and the United States: Overlooked Foreign Policy Objectives
Authors: Leonard Thomas M.
Published: July 2006

Since the fall of Nicaragua's Somoza dynasty in 1979, nearly 900 books dealing with Central America have appeared. They repeat the themes of imperialism, paternalism, and security that traditionally have characterized studies about Central America and its relations with the U.S. The imperialist theme is pursued by Walter LaFeber'sInevitable Revolutionsand Karl Berman'sUnder the Big Stick. They assert that the United States economically exploited and politically controlled Central America in general and Nicaragua in particular. A sense of moral righteousness is found in Tom Buckley'sViolent Neighborsand Richard Alan White's TheMorasswhile the security theme is pursued by John Findling in hisClose Neighbors, Distant Friends. Histories about Central America reinforce these themes. For example, the Dean of the U.S. Central Americanists Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., and Costa Ricans Edelberto Torres-Rivas and Hector Pérez-Brignoli, and Honduran Mario Argueta demonstrate that the American businessmen capitalized upon the ignorance of region's elite for their own economic gain. Despite their diversity, all of these volumes demonstrate that the United States dominated the relationship and criticize it for so doing.
The Liberal Republic and the Failure of Democracy
Authors: Abente Diego
Published: July 2006

Although the study of the liberal republic (1870-1936) could shed considerable light on the overall pattern of political development, this period has remained one of the most under-studied and undervalued of the already under-researched history of Paraguay. In an attempt to fill that lacuna—albeit partially—this article reexamines the available data, discusses new evidence, and reinterprets the period with different theoretical categories. In this manner, it seeks to answer the question of why, in spite of a relatively favorable ideological environment, liberal democracy failed to consolidate and how this failure eventually opened the doors to the authoritarian regime of General Alfredo Stroessner.
Two Revolutions: France 1789 and Mexico 1810
Authors: Rodríguez O. Jaime E.
Published: July 2006

It is sometimes alleged that “history is written by the victors.” Perhaps, it is more accurate to say that “history is written by the rich.” The wealthy nations of the North Atlantic world, which have tended to dominate scholarship in modern times, have molded events in their own image. Thus, when considering the eighteenth century transformations, scholars with “global” vision such as Peter Gay, Jacques Godechot, and R.R. Palmer have interpreted the “Enlightenment” and the “Age of Democratic Revolutions” broadly, including both the experience of the United States and of select Western European nations. Yet these cosmopolitan scholars find no place for Spain or Latin America in their works. Gay describes Spain as the “other side of the eighteenth century,” while both Godechot and Palmer end the age of revolutions in 1799, thus excluding the Spanish and the Spanish American revolutions which occurred in the early nineteenth century.
Waldo Frank's Crusade for Latin American Literature
Authors: Rostagno Irene
Published: July 2006

Waldo Frank, who is now forgotten in Latin America, was once the most frequently read and admired North American author there. Though his work is largely neglected in the U.S., he was at one time the leading North American expert on Latin American writing. His name looms large in tracing the careers of Latin American writers in this country before 1940. Long before Franklin D. Roosevelt launched the Good Neighbor policy, Frank brought back to his countrymen news of Latin American culture.

Frank went to South America when he was almost forty. The youthful dreams of Frank and his fellow pre-World War I writers and artists to make their country a fit place for cultural renaissance that would change society had waned with the onset of the twenties.1 But they had not completely vanished. Disgruntled by the climate of "normalcy" prevailing in America after World War I, he turned to Latin America. He started out in the Southwest. The remnants of Mexican culture he found in Arizona and New Mexico enticed him to venture further into the Hispanic world. In 1921 he traveled extensively in Spain and in 1929 spent six months exploring Latin America.
Oro Blanco: Cotton, Technology, and Family Labor in Nineteenth-Century Argentina
Authors: Guy Donna J.
Published: July 2006

Cotton growing and textile production in the northern regions of newly independent Argentina, as in many other parts of Latin America still relatively unaffected by the industrial revolution, were linked to the gender division of labor and the type of landholdings found in agrarian societies. As early as 1970 Ester Boserup pointed out the divergent roles that women and children would play in societies based upon extensive properties farmed or ranched by slave or hired help as compared with smaller, more intensive farms and ranches. She, like many others, however, presumed that wage labor, large scale agriculture, and ranching dominated the Latin American landscape, and she emphasized the role of women compared to other family members in rural production.
The Battle Over Private Education in Peru, 1968-1980: An Aspect of the Internal Struggle in the Catholic Church
Authors: Klaiber Jeffrey L.
Published: July 2006

The Peruvian educational reform law of 1972, promulgated by the military regime of General Juan Velasco Alvarado, was considered at the time one of the best to date in the history of Latin America. With the dismantling of many of the reform laws of the “First Phase” (1968-75) of the revolution during the “Second Phase” (1975-80), and the nearly total repudiation of the entire military period by the democratically elected government of Fernando Belaúnde Terry (1980-85), there was no change more regretted than the undoing of the educational reform. One of the main reasons for the reform's setback was the intense opposition it aroused among private upper-class schools which resented the social aspects of the law. Half of these schools were church-run. But contrary to what has happened in other Latin American countries, the battle in Peru was not between an authoritarian laicist state and the Roman Catholic Church. The real forces that lined up against each other in Peru were, on the one hand, the government, the official church and progressive groups within the church, which in the wake of Vatican II and the bishop's conference of Medellín not only came out in support of the law but even participated directly in composing it, and on the other hand, the powerful cluster of upper-class religious and lay schools which represented the traditional and rightest groups in the church. The educational reform, therefore, was the occasion for a clash among Catholics themselves. At the same time it forced the church to make a fundamental choice: between continuing its uncritical support for upper-class religious education or openly siding with the many state-supported church schools for the middle and lower classes, especially in cases of conflict between the two systems.
The Harding Administration and Mexico: Diplomacy by Economic Persuasion
Authors: Beelen George D.
Published: July 2006

During the decade beginning in 1910 the economic involvement of the United States in Mexico increased while diplomatic relations deteriorated. Between 1911 and 1920 United States' imports from Mexico increased from $57,000,000 to $179,000,000 and exports from $61,000,000 to $208,000,000. Much of this economic growth related to petroleum and to land where investments in each of these areas increased phenomenally. The new Mexican Constitution of 1917, however, forecast trouble for foreign investors, especially those who depended upon Mexico's unreplenishable subsoil resources. Concessionaires who mined the subsoil appeared to hold their title only at the will of the state. Additionally, the right of foreigners to hold property in Mexico was often restricted. Land on the shores or borders of Mexico, for example, could not be owned by foreigners. Such provisions were designed to limit the economic subservience of Mexico to the United States. Like other Latin Americans, the Mexicans wanted economic self-sufficiency. They resented the fact that their economy was tied to the fluctuating world demand for staple raw materials and that they were caught in an American vise which squeezed both their imports and their exports.
Confrontation and Reconciliation: Mexicans and Spaniards During the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920
Authors: Richmond Douglas W.
Published: July 2006

When King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía of Spain completed a 1978 tour of Mexico, the occasion was naturally marked by sentimental rhetoric. President José Lóopez Portillo launched an official reconciliation when he visited Madrid the year before. Underlying the whole exercise, however, was a deep psychological resistance on the part of most Mexicans. The King attempted to emphasize to Mexicans the Spanish aspect of their heritage, but the history of Mexican-Spanish relations during the Revolution underlines the history of ethnic hostility between both groups during the first decades of the twentieth century. As in 1917, the Mexican government in 1978 decided that economic gains far outweighed whipping up popular resentment against the Spaniards.
The Revolutionary Festival in Mexico: November 20 Celebrations in the 1920s and 1930s
Authors: Lorey David E.
Published: July 2006

The most important public ritual to arise from the experience of Mexico's Revolution of 1910 came to be held on November 20—“Revolution Day.” The date commemorates Francisco I. Madero's famous call to arms: on November 20 all towns in Mexico were to rise up against the 34-year rule of Porfirio Díaz. Although Madero was forced to take action before the appointed date and the Revolution got off to a premature start, November 20 has generally been accepted as the inception of the violent phase of the revolutionary struggle.
Battleground Women:Soldaderasand Female Soldiers in the Mexican Revolution
Authors: Fuentes Andrés Reséndez
Published: July 2006

Revolution and women did not mix well, at least in the eyes of most leaders of the insurrection that swept Mexico in 1910-17. Moreover, common wisdom suggested that armies were no place for the “gentler sex” and hence the two kinds of women that did accompany men to the battleground–female soldiers and soldaderas–were generally regarded as marginal to the fighting and extraordinary, or strange, in character.

Female soldiers received much notice in the press and arts during the revolution and in its aftermath. They were portrayed as fearless women dressed in men's garb flaunting cartridge belts across the chest and a Mauser rifle on one shoulder. But they were invariably shown in the guise of curiosities, aberrations brought about by the revolution. Soldaderas received their share of attention too. They were depicted as loyal, self-sacrificing companions to the soldiers or, in less sympathetic renderings, as enslaved camp followers: “the loyalty of the soldier's wife is more akin to that of a dog to its master than to that of an intelligent woman to her mate.” But even laudatory journalistic accounts,corridos, and novels did not concede soldaderas a prominent role in the revolutionary process, much less in the success of the military campaigns.
(Hapsburg) Law and (Bourbon) Order: State Authority, Popular Unrest, and the Criminal Justice System in Bourbon Mexico City
Authors: Scardaville Michael C.
Published: July 2006

The relative absence of riots in colonial Mexico City is an intriguing phenomenon which has attracted the recent attention of scholars interested in questions of social stability and conflict. While the Mexican countryside experienced over 130 rebellions in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the cities by comparison remained calm. The most cogent explanation of urban lower class passivity during the late colonial period has been formulated by Eric Van Young, who suggests that a number of short- and long-term social and economic forces converged to keep the cities, most notably Mexico City, relatively quiet during the wars for independence. Among those he noted were the existence of urban social service and food-distribution institutions, the presence of security forces, an atomized and fluid social order, the lack of traditional communal rights to defend, and weak organizational means to focus discontent.
Theater of Power: Writing and Representing the Auto de Fe in Colonial Mexico
Authors: Cañeque Alejandro
Published: July 2006

On the morning of November 19, 1659, the Inquisitors of the Tribunal of the Holy Office in the City of Mexico celebrated Mass. Then, the prisoners were fed and lined up for the procession of the auto de fe that was to be celebrated that day. The procession of the familiares (officers of the Inquisition) and those to be reconciled or relaxed went by some streets, and the Tribunal of the Inquisition by others. The parade of gentlemen, including more than 500 individuals on horseback, was comprised of the nobility, the knights of the military orders, the Consulate, the University, the Cathedral Chapter, the municipal authorities, the Audiencia, and, finally, the Tribunal of the Holy Inquisition with the viceroy riding in their midst.
Beyond the Obraje: Handicraft Production in Quito Toward the End of the Colonial Period
Authors: de Moreno Christiana Borchart
Published: July 2006

Theobrajesof the Sierra and the plantations of the Coast are the poles around which, in different eras, the economy of theAudienciaof Quito seems to revolve. Woolen cloth and cacao are the two products that allowed this territory to participate in regional and international commercial circuits, and have attracted the most attention from historians in the last two decades.

In a region lacking large mining centers,encomenderoswere from early times compelled to develop activities that would allow them to move in the Andean colonial sphere, which was dominated by the “Rich Hill” of Potosí, the actual force behind the formation of this great interregional market, as Carlos Sempat Assadourian has demonstrated. The inter-Andean corridor and its plateaus, suitable for the raising of sheep and a source of ready Indian labor, facilitated the development of the obrajes that were set up in Indian communities, on private haciendas, and in urban areas.
“An Immoral Speculation:” Indian Forced Labor on the Haciendas of Venezuela's Sur Del Lago Zuliano, 1880-1936
Authors: Linder Peter S.
Published: July 2006

On 15 August 1880, the Venezuelan military governor of the Venezuelan Territorio Federal de la Guajira complained to the president of the state of Zulia that a woman from the town of Sinamaica had recently taken a young Indian woman to Maracaibo for a visit. She then sold the girl to the owner of an hacienda south of Lake Maracaibo. The girl turned out to be the niece of a powerful leader of the Uriana lineage or clan of the Guayú, or Guajiro Indians, known to Creoles as “Jullachipar” or “Juya Chipara.” He threatened to attack nearby Venezuelan settlements unless she was returned. State authorities undertook an urgent search for the girl. She eventually reappeared on an hacienda near Encontrados, south of Lake Maracaibo. She was returned to her family. The man who purchased her was jailed in Maracaibo, as was her abductor, but the ultimate disposition of the case remains obscure.
Cárdenas and the Caste War that Wasn’t: State Power and Indigenismo in Post-Revolutionary Yucatán
Authors: Fallaw Ben W.
Published: July 2006

The Caste War that devastated Yucatán in the middle of the nineteenth century cast a long shadow across ethnic relations and politics in the state decades after its effective end. During the Mexican Revolution and the subsequent period of national reconstruction, revolutionary politicians invoked the Caste War as a precursor to the Revolution and as justification for post-Revolutionary projects, in particular indigenismo. The state’s indigenist policy advocated, in the words of Alan Knight, the “emancipation and integration of Mexico’s exploited Indian groups.” To this end, it offered indigenous people education, legal support, even land; however, these “modernizing” policies also destroyed or appropriated much of their culture and subordinated them to the state. The legacy of the Caste War shaped such indigenist projects in Yucatán from the Revolution to (at least) the 1930s, but its influence was strongest during Cardenas’ visit to Yucatán in August of 1937. The president not only reinterpreted the Caste War to justify land reform and a broad indigenist project; he attempted to mobilize the Yucatecan peasantry along class and ethnic lines and threatened recalcitrant landlords with another caste war should they oppose him. Once armed, however, peasant soldiers turned their rifles not against the landowners but against each other. This essays explores how the Caste War’s legacy shaped the development and deployment of indigenist projects in Yucatán from the Revolution to the late 1930s, focusing on Cárdenas’ aborted mobilization. Along the way, it will consider the impact and efficacy of state-sponsored indigenismo. Above all, it seeks to understand why state efforts to champion the cause of the Maya failed to unify the rural poor of Yucatán under the banner of Cardenismo.
Financing Health Care in the Viceroyalty of Peru: The Hospitals of Lima in the Late Colonial Period
Authors: Cahill David
Published: July 2006

Perceptions of provision for health care in colonial Spanish America are invariably influenced by commonplaces familiar from the comparative history of pre-modern medicine. There is a danger that the reproduction of facile a priori judgements–such as lack of adequate provision, institutional underfunding, deficient nutrition, insanitary conditions, concomitant high mortality rates, and “Dickensian” institutions functioning as workhouses and death-traps for the poor–will distort our understanding of Spanish American health-care systems, such clichés being all too often simplistic, anachronistic, or culturally purblind. Moreover, the whole system, such as it was, may at first sight appear to have depended largely upon the desultory charity of some religious orders and a few pious individuals, with the royal exchequer occasionally rescuing financially-straitened institutions from the brink of bankruptcy and foreclosure. Like most such formulations, there is enough truth to this simplistic scenario for it to be a plausible enough portrait of health care not only in colonial Spanish America but in early modern Spain itself; indeed, of any pre-modern system of health provision. Some of these pejorative impressions–e.g., lack of adequate provision, underfunding–are hardy perennials that even today retain their currency in the wealthiest of welfare states, and are writ especially large in Third World countries. Then as now, such strictures, well-founded or not, are but part of the picture, and overlook considerable institutional achievements in making the best of available resources. Much of this criticism is of course susceptible to quantitative analysis, though statistical data on colonial health care are difficult to come by. As in so many spheres of colonial Spanish America, such figures as are available cluster in the second half of the eighteenth century, a product of the insatiable appetite of Bourbon ministers and bureaucrats for a quantitative dimension to policy-making.
Kill All the Lawyers!: Lawyers and the Independence Movement in New Granada, 1809-1820
Authors: Uribe Victor M.
Published: July 2006

Simón Bolívar, soon to become an icon of Latin American independence, wrote a celebrated document, dated from Kingston, his place of temporary exile, on September 6, 1815. Bolívar's document, later known as the Jamaica Letter, made prophesies for Latin America's future, appraised its contemporary political conditions, and justified the region's current rebellions against the Spanish crown. Chief among the justifications for rebellion was the exclusion of American-born Spaniards, or creoles, from administration, government, and politics. Wrote Bolívar:

We were cut off and, as it were, virtually removed from the world in relation to the science of government and administration of the state. We were never viceroys or governors, save in the rarest instances; seldom archbishops and bishops; diplomats never; as military men, only subordinates; as nobles, without royal privileges. In brief, we were neither magistrates nor financiers.
Argentina Under Mitre: Porteño Liberalism in the 1860s
Authors: Rock David
Published: July 2006

A historian, soldier, diplomat, journalist, poet, translator, and politician, Bartolomé Mitre (1821-1906) stood out among the most renowned figures of late nineteenth century Latin America. “He is a full handsome man,” declared one of his many European admirers in 1861, “of very eloquent appearance with a fine forehead and thoughtful face. He is a poet and a scholar, and looks altogether too refined and gentlemanly to be mixed up with the dirty doings of second-rate politicians.” Forty years later, Carlos Pellegrini, a former president of Argentina and one of Mitre's leading political opponents, described him as “the most powerful caudillo of our time” who possessed “an aura of personal valor that he imposed on the multitude.” To an American hagiographer writing in the 1940s, Mitre was a “poet in action,” and a “heart in unison with his time and his country.… In the unification of his country, Mitre displayed the astuteness of a Cavour and the ardency of a Garibaldi.”
Populist Anxiety: Race and Social Change in the Thought of Romulo Gallegos
Authors: Yarrington Doug
Published: July 2006

Novelist and statesman Rómulo Gallegos (1884-1969) played a key role in the emergence of Venezuelan populism, first by inscribing the populist rationale for change in a series of novels—most famously inDoña Bárbara(1929)—and later by lending his prestige to Acción Democrática (AD), the nation’s most successful populist party. A founding member of AD, Gallegos supported the coup that brought the party to power in 1945 and became the party’s standard bearer in 1947, winning Venezuela’s first presidential election based on universal suffrage and direct voting. As president, he advanced AD’s reform agenda for almost a year before the military removed him from office and imposed a reactionary dictatorship. Forced into exile, Gallegos returned to his homeland when the dictatorship fell in 1958 and spent his remaining years as a revered elder statesman and acclaimed cultural figure.
Literary Contributions of Catholics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico: Part Two: The Díaz Regime (1867–1910)
Authors: Steck Francis Borgia
Published: July 2006

Having dealt with the poetry which Catholics contributed to Mexican literature during the Díaz era, we now turn our attention to their literary contributions in the field of prose composition. As in the case of poetry, much of this literary prose appeared originally in the periodicals of the day and, unfortunately, much of it is still there, comparatively little having been assembled and brought out in book form. In this respect the prose writers have received smaller recognition from posterity than the poets, owing perhaps to the fact that the Mexican by tradition and temperament prefers verse to prose, finds greater delight in the measured magic of a song than in the less appealing beauties of an essay, a discourse, or even a novel.

Whatever the reason may be, we must examine the periodicals of the time before we can form an adequate estimate of contributions to literary prose. The part that Catholics played in the realm of periodical literature will, therefore, occupy our attention before we marshal the writers themselves and their productions in prose.
Salvador De Ocampo, A Mexican Sculptor
Authors: Berlin Heinrich
Published: July 2006

The Historian of Art in colonial Mexico can find his way fairly well in the field of painting, since the signatures of painters appear on the pictures; in the field of architecture a growing body of published documents makes it possible to become familiar with the personalities of the architects. In regard to sculpture, however, there is practically no information available. We know hardly the names of any of the men who carved the church fronts and furniture, or who made the hundreds of gilded altarpieces that we admire in Mexican churches—those altarpieces whose loss one so much deplores on entering a nave decorated with modern trash. Yet sculpture is in many ways the most distinguished, the most characteristic, and the most interesting of the Mexican arts. It is imperative to push forward the investigation of colonial sculpture, not only in terms of general concepts, but also by defining the character of individual sculptors, their development, their tastes and capacities, and the influences which they felt and in turn transmitted.
Facets of Mexican Thought: José Vasconcelos (1871-….)
Authors: Reinhardt Kurt F.
Published: July 2006

Modern Ibero-American thought is generally neither distinguished by originality nor by systematic integrity. The Mexican philosophers Antonio Caso and José Vasconcelos, both to-day well advanced in years, are two notable exceptions to this rule. Both are systematic thinkers as well as prolific writers, and Vasconcelos combines with a synthetic view of life and civilization a vigorous originality of expression, two gifts which in their conjunction make it quite understandable that he is regarded by many of the intellectual leaders of Latin America as one of the most representative exponents of Ibero-American ideas in general and of Mexican philosophic thought in particular. A comprehensive monograph, dealing with the life and work of José Vasconcelos is being published this autumn by Dr. Oswaldo Robles, Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Mexico and Academic Rector of the Latin-American Military University in Mexico City. The writings of Vasconcelos comprise more than twenty volumes of works on metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics; a History of Philosophy; a History of Mexico; essays, biographies, and tragedies; and an extensive autobiography in four volumes. The author of this imposing oeuvre is at present Director of the National Library of Mexico and engaged in carrying through important reforms in that venerable institution.
Fray Junípero Serra and Spain
Authors: Hervás Juan
Published: July 2006

The Subject which has been assigned to me by the Academy of American Franciscan History as my contribution to the homage being rendered to this illustrious son of Mallorca, would require a very lengthy paper if it were to be treated with the amplitude which it deserves. But the restricted limits of a conference such as this, as well as the multiple pastoral duties of my episcopal office, impose upon me a brevity which will reduce this study to a few brush-strokes which, though modest, indicate the relation between Fray Junípero Serra and his fatherland.
Woolen Manufacture in Sixteenth-Century New Spain
Authors: Dusenberry William H.
Published: July 2006

Although the natives made a crude kind of coarse woolens prior to the time of the Conquest, the manufacturing of woolen goods did not begin in New Spain until the early fifteen forties. At that time the first viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, laid the base of this industry in the new colony. Mendoza considered such an enterprise essential to lasting prosperity. He imported the merino, or fine wool, breed of sheep from Castile, and did everything possible to foster their growth. The viceroy had wide powers over local administration, and all matters pertaining to wool manufacturing were under his jurisdiction. Legislation regarding wool mills emanated from the crown; it was reissued by the viceroy; and its immediate execution was a cabildo function.

Licenses to establish textile mills could be granted only by the King through the mediation of the viceroy and audiencia. “None shall be founded in any way, nor for any cause, nor in any place, without my express license, or that of the viceroys …”
The Educational Activities of Fray Alonso de la Vera Cruz in Sixteenth Century Mexico
Authors: Blethen John F.
Published: July 2006

The Little Pueblo of Tiripetío lies at the foot of a mountain near Morelia in the state of Michoacán. Its Indian name means “place of gold”, but the adobe houses with their straw roofs plus a general appearance of shabbiness belie such a title. Tiripetío, however, was not always a ghost town. In the sixteenth century it pulsed with life and activity. The life of the place centered about a convent of Augustinian friars, with its adjoining church, hospital and school. The name Vera Cruz is closely linked with this convent and school as with many other educational activities in sixteenth century Mexico. But like Tiripetío itself, which marked the scene of his early labours, the name of Alonso de la Vera Cruz has fallen into obscurity and today counts little, even with historians of his own Order. The recent work of Oswaldo Robles, a translation of one of Vera Cruz’s philosophic treatises, the Physica Speculano, (vd. The Americas, October 1944, under article: “Fray Alonso de la Vera Cruz and the Beginnings of Philosophic Speculation in the Americas”.) is truly a step in the right direction. It can only be hoped that the relatively settled political set-up in Mexico will open the way for a more thorough search for historical data on outstanding figures like Alonso de la Vera Cruz. The present article attempts, from the sources now at hand, to synthesize the many and varied activities in the field of education in which Vera Cruz engaged and to give an interpretation of the influence he exerted in the field of learning and in the development of the philosophic thought of his day in Mexico.
Requena and the Japurá: Some Eighteenth Century Watercolors of the Amazon and Other Rivers
Authors: Smith Robert C.
Published: July 2006

Spain and Portugal during the eighteenth century made two attempts to establish official boundaries between their possessions in America. Through the treaties of 1750 and 1777 joint commissions were appointed by these powers to procede with the task of determining lines of demarcation, in the Amazon region as well as in other parts of the South American domain. Neither of these two undertakings was successful. In spite of the preliminary treaties, the expeditions, the explorations, the reports, and the maps that had been made, the commissioners of Spain and Portugal could never agree upon a common boundary satisfactory to their conflicting claims. At the close of the century, therefore, the problem of the Amazon boundaries, which had so long remained a point of contention between the two Iberian nations, was still unsolved.
Pigments Used by the Mission Indians of California
Authors: Webb Edith
Published: July 2006

The old mission buildings of California will, so long as a vestige of them remains, furnish inspiration for writers of fiction and history, poetry and song. For there were built into their very walls stories that can never be completely told; stories that can only be guessed at. And so the subject is ever new, never ending.

Over twenty years ago the writer began a serious study of the old establishments as of the mission day period, feeling that there was need of a better, fuller understanding of them and of the part they had played in the early history of our State. There has been too much of romantic, fanciful, even prejudiced writing and too little that is sanely historical.
Literary Contributions of Catholics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico: Part Two: The Díaz Regime (1867–1910)
Authors: Steck Francis Borgia
Published: July 2006

Whereas proper classification presents no difficulty in the case of Peón y Contreras, who was primarily a poet, it is not so apparent in which group of writers one should place José María Roa Bárcena. That he was a poet of real merit is recognized, for instance, by González Peña, who treats of him in the chapter on poetry. In the present study, following the plan originally adopted, he will be considered now only as a poet and later in the study be given attention as a prose writer.

José María Roa Bárcena was born in 1827 in Jalapa, State of Veracruz, and he breathed his last in 1908 in Mexico City at the ripe old age of eighty-one. Thus his devotion to letters was yielding fruit long before the collapse of the Second Empire and continued to do so during the transition period and most of the Díaz era that followed. In this respect he ranks with the two bishops, Pagaza and Montes de Oca, whose contributions to Mexican literature will be dealt with presently. To the vigilant care with which his deeply religious parents watched over his childhood and early youth and also to the beneficent influence of a private tutor who combined learning with piety must be ascribed the fact that throughout his long life José María not only clung tenaciously to the Catholic faith but also exemplified in his private life and fearlessly upheld in his writings the religious and social principles which this faith stood for.
Francisco de Miranda in Russia
Authors: Baylen Joseph O. , Woodward Dorothy
Published: July 2006

On September 26, 1786, Don Francisco de Miranda, adventurer and patriot, secured a passport from the Austrian Minister in Constantinople which enabled him to continue his “grand tour” to Russia. The nature of Miranda’s subsequent visit, and the extent to which his reception at the court of Catherine II influenced Spanish and Russian policy, assumes significance in the light of events on the North American continent immediately preceding and during his stay in Russia.
A Russian Visit to the Spanish Franciscans in California, 1836
Authors: Schanzer George O.
Published: July 2006

The History of the Early contacts between the Russians and the Spanish-speaking people in this hemisphere remains to be written. A few of these meetings are common knowledge. Miranda’s visit to the Russia of Catherine the Great has been treated frequently; Concepción de Argüello’s tragic love for the Russian Rezanov became a traditional theme. Obviously, in California, where the two civilizations met, contacts were numerous. With very few exceptions they were reported as incidents of friction. Bancroft’s History of California (XIX, Chapters 4, 14 and 28) and Engelhardt’s The Missions and Missionaries of California convey the impression that the Russians were aware of the military weakness of the Spanish outposts and that the Spanish, later Mexican, leaders were generally apprehensive of the designs of their neighbors to the North. On the other hand, the friendly reception accorded by the Spanish Franciscans to Rezanov’s companion, Langsdorff, and the latter’s favorable comments on the friars’ achievements are known. Another instance of peaceful relations whose record somewhat belies the concept of an early nineteenth-century “cold war” on the Pacific coast is almost unknown.
Faustin Soulouque, Emperor of Haiti His Character and His Reign
Authors: Baur John E.
Published: July 2006

The nations of the free New World have produced but seven sovereigns; all have been deposed. Some were ridiculous and cruel, but Haiti’s third and last monarchical attempt was the most ludicrous and probably the bloodiest of them all. This drama of strangely mingled comedy and tragedy was directed by an equally paradoxical man, Faustin Soulouque.
Working Women of Mexico
Authors: Royer Fanchón
Published: July 2006

A foreign reader of the North American press inevitably receives the impression that the majority of our feminine citizens are breadwinners if not actual career women, and that the much-noted independence and aggression of the American woman is, in a large measure, based on this fact—that she is economically self-sufficient or could be so if it should become necessary through a marriage wrecked by death or divorce, or desirable for any other reason. A glance at the statistics, however, immediately proves that a maximum of no more than 14 percent of our women are constantly employed outside the home, though it must be granted that a larger proportion has worked before marriage and presumably could do so again. In any case, the total in no wise approaches that which might be deduced from the amount of attention that the American working woman receives in the press and films which, supposedly, reflect the American scene.
Amado Nervo: His Mysticism and Franciscan Influence
Authors: Molina Roderick A.
Published: July 2006

Amado nervo’s affection for religious themes is projected so frequently and so intimately in all his work that literary critics have constantly classified him among the number of the mystical poets—those privileged beings who aspired to union with God through love, and who expressed their sublime thoughts in poetic form.
Congressional Reaction in the United States to the Panama Congress of 1826
Authors: Sanders Ralph
Published: July 2006

While the panama congress of 1826 might be termed a failure relevant to its lack of immediate accomplishments, it nevertheless played an important role in the development of inter-American relations. Moreover, the Panama Congress polemic provided a sounding board for ideas and trends manifested in the evolution of the Latin American policy of the United States. Further, the action of the Adams Administration and subsequent approval by Congress represented the first concrete attempt of this country to participate in the formation of an American continental system.
Franciscan Education in French North America
Authors: Barth Pius J.
Published: July 2006

The Franciscan Order was the first large agency to concern itself with the Christianization and civilization of North America. Its personnel sought to change the culture patterns, the institutions, and the ideology of the native aboriginal social order not merely by erecting chapels and churches but also by an educational policy that was vitally interested in improving the quality of individual living and implementing the ideals of a Christian democratic society.
The Franciscan Provinces of South America
Authors: Habig Marion A.
Published: July 2006

During the three centuries of the colonial period, Franciscan friars devoted themselves to the Christianization and civilization of the natives and the spiritual care of settlers in all the regions now comprising the nine Spanish American Republics of South America, in the Portuguese American Republic of Brazil, and even in the Guianas; and though the various units of the Franciscan Order suffered considerable reverses during the wars for independence and subsequent disorders of the nineteenth century, the sons of St. Francis are today in all these countries with the exception of Venezuela and the Guianas.
An Autograph Letter of John Maurice of Nassau, Governor of the Dutch Colony in Brazil (1636–1644)
Authors: Van der Veldt James
Published: July 2006

The Oliveira Lima collection of 40,000 volumes at The Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C, known as the Lima Library and directed by an expert in Brazilian history, Dr. Manoel Cardozo, considers as one of its most cherished treasures an autograph letter written by John Maurice, Count of Nassau, to his panegyrist, Barlaeus. It is written in the Dutch language in what is supposed to be Latin script, but the use of several gothic characters betrays the author’s German origin.
Christopher Columbus and the Franciscans
Authors: Steck Francis Borgia
Published: July 2006

No one who is entitled to speak with authority has ever questioned the well-known story that relates how in his hour of affliction, on landing at Palos, Christopher Columbus was befriended by the Franciscans of the friary of Santa María de la Rábida; how a Franciscan encouraged him to present his maritime project at the Spanish court; how, when all hope of royal support vanished, the Franciscan guardian of La Rábida intervened and thus made possible the voyage that resulted in the discovery of America. While this much of the story has always been accepted as properly established, students of American history have long been in disagreement and partly also in ignorance concerning certain details that bear importantly on the friendship that existed between the Genoese navigator and the sons of Saint Francis.
An Analysis of the Program of the Mexican Liberal Party, 1906
Authors: Cumberland Charles C.
Published: July 2006

The Mexican nation has been incessantly plagued with revolutionary plans since the “grito of demoralization” by Guerrero in 1829. The word “plagued” is used advisedly, for very few of the revolutionary plans were more than expressions of personalismo, the bane of Latin-American politics. The immense majority of these so-called “programs” have had very little in the way of social and economic reforms embodied in them, either by word or implication; for the most part they have been political rather than socio-economic in character.

Early in the twentieth century, however, a small group developed one of the few socio-economic programs to be found in Mexican history. On July 1, 1906, while the Diaz government was still firmly entrenched, Ricardo Flores Magón and his little group of followers, almost unnoticed by the majority of the Mexicans, published a program of reform which at the time was one of the most sweeping ever outlined in Mexico. Announced as the philosophy of the Mexican Liberal Party, in it were all the elements of a vast socio-economic plan for the Mexican nation, with only a small part of the program dealing with political change. The Liberals well realized that curing only the political sore would not heal the sick nation.
Ordinances of the Mesta in New Spain, 1537
Authors: Dusenberry William H.
Published: July 2006

Essential to the study of the Mesta in New Spain is the publication of the text of its constitution, not too available in Spanish, in English dress. This document throws new light on the relation of government to the pastoral industry, up to the present a sadly neglected aspect of Spanish colonial history. The importance of the problem is evident in view of the wealth and extent of the sheep and cattle business, and its relationship to the whole economy of New World colonization. Any adequate study of the grazing industry in New Spain would be impossible without some knowledge of the Mesta constitution of 1537, the basic instrument which regulated this industry until 1574; in the latter year the constitution was changed by the addition of numerous amendments which indicate considerable growth in the pastoral industry. Unfortunately, the minutes of the semiannual meetings of the Mesta have not been uncovered, if indeed they exist at all. Such documents would provide a picture of the grazing industry in operation and would be useful in a more complete investigation of the subject.
Valentin de Foronda’s Memoir on the United States of North America, 1804
Authors: de Onís José
Published: July 2006

In the Rich Collection of the New York Public Library there is a manuscript, Apuntes ligeros sobre los Estados Unidos de la América Septentrional, in which a Spanish diplomat and author, Valentín de Foronda, gives his impressions about the United States of America.

We cannot say with certainty what the history of this manuscript is, but from the few scattered facts which we have we can come to certain conclusions. At the time when it was written, in 1804, there must have been more than one copy. The perfection of the manuscript and the fact that ft is not in Foronda’s handwriting, tends to indicate that it was recopied several times. It is probable that there were at least three sets of copies. The original he must have kept for himself. One, in all likelihood was given to his immediate superior, who at that time was Casa Irujo. A third set might have been sent to the Spanish Minister of State. It is my belief that the manuscript that has come down to us is the one he gave to the Ambassador Casa Irujo. The reason on which I base this, is that twenty years later, long after Foronda and Casa Irujo had died, Mrs. Casa Irujo became a personal friend of Obadiah Rich, the bibliographer, and used to be a frequent guest at his house in Madrid. Rich obtained the manuscript about this time and it is very probable that he got it from her. Where the other hypothetical copies are would be difficult to say. The set sent to the Spanish Minister of State must be buried in some Spanish archive. The other one which he kept for himself was more than likely confiscated by the Spanish authorities, along with his other papers, and was probably destroyed during Foronda’s trial of 1814.
Gabriela Mistral
Authors: Bates Margaret J.
Published: July 2006

When, on November sixteenth last, the newspapers announced the awarding of the Nobel Prize for literature to a Chilean poetess, Gabriela Mistral, the news came as a surprise to many Americans, who, although they considered themselves well read, had never heard her name.

The fundamental reason we know so little of this remarkable woman who enjoys such a great popularity in the Spanish-speaking world, not only for her words but for her deeds, is because the limited number of her poems which have been translated into English, by heavy hands, for the most part, allow hardly a glimmer of the real Mistral to shine through them. Of course, all translation of poetry is difficult but that of Gabriela extremely so because of her unique selection of words. She has created a plant that does not grow on English soil.