bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Race, Colonial Exploitation and West Indian Immigration in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico, 1800-1850
Authors: Chinea Jorge L.
Published: July 2006

“Unlike some Latin American mainland societies which still contain large numbers of indigenous peoples,” Jorge Duany observed, “Caribbean societies are immigrant societies almost from the moment of their conception.” Médéric-Louis-Élie Moreau de Saint- Méry likened the latter to “shapeless mixtures subject to diverse influences.” Their population, Dawn I. Marshall reminds us, “is to a large extent the result of immigration—from initial settlement, forced immigration during slavery, indentured immigration, to the present outward movement to metropolitan countries.” Throughout their history, David Lowenthal noted, limited resources and opportunities kept West Indian societies in a constant state of flux, impelling continuous transfers of people, technology, and institutions within the area. Despite the frequency and importance of these population movements, the bulk of scholarship on American migration history has traditionally concentrated on areas favored by European settlement. Moreover, the overwhelming quantity of research on immigration to the United States, Canada, Argentina, and Brazil has tended to overshadow the study of similar processes in other American regions. Due to its historical association with the arrival of involuntary settlers, migratory currents in the Caribbean have been too narrowly identified with bondage, penal labor and indentured workers. Nowhere is the imbalance more conspicuous than in the study of trans-Caribbean migratory streams during slavery. Discussions on pre-1838 population shifts have centered largely on inter-island slave trading and the exodus prompted by Franco-Haitian revolutionary activity in the Caribbean. The parallel legacy of motion hinted by Neville N.A.T. Hall's “maritime” maroons and Julius S. Scott's “masterless” migrants has attracted noticeably less attention.
Gunboat Diplomacy's Last Fling in the New World: The British Seizure of San Quintin, April 1911
Authors: Taylor Lawrence D.
Published: July 2006

In considering acts of military intervention by foreign powers which occurred in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution, one is apt to think of the years 1914, 1916 and 1919, when U.S. forces invaded or occupied portions of Mexican territory. There was, however, one case of intervention of this sort during the revolution in which U.S. military personnel were not involved–the landing of a small party of British marines belonging to the H.M.S. “Shearwater” at the port of San Quintín on the northwest coast of the Baja Californian peninsula in April 1911.

The British landing at San Quintm constituted a vestige or remnant of "gunboat diplomacy", an aspect of English foreign policy that had originated in the age of Palmerston and which reflected the unrivaled naval supremacy enjoyed by Great Britain during the period extending from the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 to the end of the Second World War. The episode represented, in a rather overt way, the hard-nosed attitude characteristic of British foreign policy at that time with regards to Latin America in general and other so-called "backward" regions of the globe.
Fray Juan De Zumárraga–His Social Contributions
Authors: Magner James A.
Published: July 2006

To Understand the conquest of Mexico, one must recognize the various human factors and the variety of motives that entered into the titanic struggle for mastery of the land. In the letters of Cortés to the Emperor Charles V, the whole gamut of ambitions—personal, national, grossly material and highly spiritual—are revealed. There can be no doubt that Cortés and the Spaniards with him were moved in the first place by a spirit of personal adventure and a desire to better their fortunes. As the panorama of the Aztec Empire opened itself before his eyes, the dream of expanding the Spanish domains came to Cortés as a justifying cause for his forward movement, so that escape or retreat appeared as treachery to his King. At the same time, as a product of the Spanish crusading era, he beheld himself in the rôle of a spiritual hero bringing the doctrine of Christian Redemption to heathen tribes sunk in idolatry and human sacrifice.
Bishop Marroquin–Zumárraga’s Gift to Central America
Authors: Lamadrid Lázaro
Published: July 2006

In the History of the Central American hierarchy there is no personality so highly praised and so little disputed as that of Don Francisco Marroquín, the first Bishop of Guatemala. His good sense, activity and zeal for the conversion of the natives, and his interest in the culture, moral welfare and progress of the incipient province rest upon solid bases in the reports and eulogies of documents and historians, although, strangely enough, he has never been the subject of a full-length biography.

No less praiseworthy was his moderate position as to the very serious problem which confronted Spain, and which she herself posed for consideration and decision, from the very beginnings of the colonization and pacification of the New World—namely, the problem of what treatment should be accorded to the natives.
The First Shipping Constructed in New Spain
Authors: Gardiner C. Harvey
Published: July 2006

Amid the mixed emotions with which Cortés prepared A% to enter the Mexican capital in early November, 1519, was the gnawing fear that his military position therein would be an untenable one. Even the most courageous and least professional military man among the invaders must have realized that a Spanish force of fewer than five hundred men, far within the interior of a hostile and strange land, literally had entered a lion’s den as it marched into the populous island-city of Tenochtitlán via the narrow and ever so vulnerable causeway that stretched some seven miles between it and the mainland. So it was that even as his courage and curiosity took him into Tenochtitlán, his military mind and his sense of responsibility for the welfare of his men led Cortés to seek a means whereby the Spaniards could dominate the waters of Lake Texcoco and the lacustrine communities, including Tenochtitlán itself. Only after the Spaniards had become masters of the adjacent countryside—in this instance the waters and shores of a lake—could they know that inner satisfaction and quiet confidence that comes from a sincere sense of physical security. Only when the Spaniards had established their mastery over the lake area could it be said that the initiative so important to continuance of the conquest rested in their hands. With his infantry, his cavalry and his artillery momentarily stalled in the insular setting in which they found themselves, Cortés needed to create a new military force which, when thrown into the balance, would tip the scales once again in favor of the Spaniards.
Colonial Art of Quito
Authors: Sanz Benjamín Gento
Published: July 2006

The name of the Dominican friar, Padre José María Vargas, is well-known in the literary and artistic centres of Ecuador, and especially in its capital, the ancient city of “San Francisco de Quito”. The work which we here consider is not the first that has come from his facile pen, prolific in production and classic in style. In 1941 he published the interesting survey entitled: La Cultura del Quito Colonial wherein the author, with abundant information and calm investigation, places before the eyes of the reader the Old Quito of Colonial days, that Quito which, despite its secondary political importance during the Spanish regime, was a centre of intellectual and especially of artistic culture of the first order. Its culture was not dammed up within the confines of the city, but rather, like one of these quiet and peaceful little rivers of tranquil waters that fructify far-off lands, it overflowed into the cities of the viceroyalties of New Granada and Peru. For such was the city of San Francisco de Quito: an enormous workshop where the plastic arts were widely cultivated and where colonial artists, both the famous and the nameless, gave themselves up entirely to the pursuit of their art.
The Franciscan Provinces of South America
Authors: Habig Marion A.
Published: July 2006

Known by various names, this Franciscan Province at one time comprised the territory of all the states in the vast basin of the Rio de la Plata and its great tributaries: the Rio de la Plata and Tucumán colonies (present Argentina), Paraguay, and Uruguay—and in the beginning also the southernmost part of Brazil.

Though it was the last of the Franciscan Provinces to be established in Spanish South America during colonial times, it was founded as the independent Custody of Paraguay-Plata as early as 1538. In 1565 another Custody, that of St. George of Tucumán, was founded by Franciscans of the Peruvian Province (see The Americas, II, 83–90). These two Custodies were united into one in 1575, but separated again into two in 1597, both remaining dependent on the Province in Peru. Fifteen years later, the General Chapter held in Rome on July 12, 1612, once more joined the two Custodies to form the Province of Rio de la Plata.
Venerable Antonio Margil de Jestls, O.F.M.: Friar of the Winged Feet, 1657–1726
Authors: Murray Paul V.
Published: July 2006

In these days of speeding ships that cross the ocean in a few days, of streamlined trains and automobiles that rush from city to city in a few hours, of flashing planes that span the continent almost in a matter of minutes, it may seem strange to sketch the life of a man whose reputation for sanctity is matched only by his fame as a long-distance walker, a foot-traveler par excellence.
Don Fray Juan De Zumárraga Pioneer of European Culture in America
Authors: Carreño Alberto Maria
Published: July 2006

The Southern Portion of the United States is greatly indebted to the Franciscan friars who planted there the seed of what was, in the course of time, to become the mighty tree of Christian culture that flourishes in the land today. Fray Juan de Zumárraga, first Bishop and Archbishop of Mexico, was instrumental in bringing Franciscans to New Spain from where, as pioneers, they were to take Christian culture and religion to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

Zumárraga was born in Durango, Province of Vizcaya, Spain, near the close of 1468 or the beginning of 1469. He was the son of Juan López de Zumárraga and Teresa de Lares, both of noble lineage.
The Terra Australis–A Franciscan Quest
Authors: Kelly Celsus
Published: July 2006

The Story of the Franciscan friars who sailed with the Mendaña (1567) and Quirós (1605) expeditions from Callao, Port of Lima in Peru, in search of the Unknown Southland, finds a place in the vast missionary enterprise of the Spanish Friars of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: as maritime expeditions they form important links in the chain of discoveries that eventually led to the finding of Australia; as religious enterprises they are part of the world-wide missionary apostolate of the Franciscan Order of that period.
An Ohio Argonaut’s Observations on the Church in Nicaragua
Authors: Marshall Schuyler O.
Published: July 2006

President Polk’s message to Congress on December 5, 1848, informed that body—and thus the country—that the reports “of the abundance of gold” in California, though “of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief,” had been “corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service.” The President’s message touched off the gold mania in the East. There were, of course, by this time thousands in the “diggings,” but they were mostly from California or Oregon.

Most of the Argonauts traveled to California by the various overland trails, but many, especially from the East, went by sea. In 1849 almost all those who traveled by ship either went “round the Horn” or by water to Panama, across the isthmus, and then again by ship to California. In 1849 apparently only one group of gold seekers chose to cross Central America at Nicaragua rather than Panama. The next year, however, as reports came back of the various disadvantages of the all-water route and of the Panama crossing, more and more of the Argonauts turned to Nicaragua.
The United States and the Brazilian Naval Revolt, 1893–1894
Authors: McCloskey Michael B.
Published: July 2006

The fall of the monarchy in 1889 left Brazil in a state of confusion and disorder. The republicans seemed to lack a coherent political program; the new régime as a consequence, was forced to contend with dissension within its own ranks. Extreme ideas of “states’ rights” and the vagaries of impractical political dreamers diverted attention from a monarchist opposition which, however small, was at least united on a specific aim. The army was mainly responsible for the existence of the new republic; the army proceeded, therefore, to take charge and attempt to introduce unity after its own fashion.
The Franciscan Provinces of South America
Authors: Habig Marion A.
Published: July 2006

Hardly had the Spaniards established themselves in Peru, when they founded a settlement also in Upper Peru or Charcas, the present Bolivia. Los Charcas, the name of an Indian tribe, was given not only to the first town, but also to the entire province which in 1825 became an independent republic named for the “Liberator,” Simón Bolívar.

As early as 1538, Diego de Rojas, sent out by the governor of Peru, founded a colony at Charcas. He also was the first to enter Tucumán, or northern Argentina, in 1543. Charcas is the present capital of Bolivia, and since Independence it has been known as Sucre. In colonial times the town was known also as Chuquisaca and as La Plata, which latter should not be confused with the La Plata colony, south of Paraguay, the present Argentina.
The First History of Latin American Art
Authors: Smith Robert C.
Published: July 2006

Students of Latin American art of the colonial period will agree that this book, which deals with the development of architecture in Spanish America during the sixteenth century, is the most important analysis of the subject that has yet been made. Prepared with the assistance of the Spanish government and the cooperation of private investigators and government agencies in Latin America, this book is the first of a series of volumes which, it is to be hoped, will eventually present the whole history of Hispanic American art. It brings together for the first time a mass of factual information taken from source material of the period concerning the earliest monuments of Spanish building from Mexico to BoliVia and interprets it in the light of Spanish architecture of the time with a knowledge and an attention to detail never before applied on such a scale. Almost without exception every building mentioned is fully illustrated, plans of the more important are provided, together with diagrams of variant architectural details such as moldings, bases and arches, and whenever possible contemporary architect’s drawings from the Archivo de Indias in Seville are submitted as well. Although a good deal of this material had previously been published in one form or another, there is much that had not been, especially in the chapters devoted to South America. The work therefore goes beyond the mere compilation of facts already recorded and presents a whole series of new monuments on the basis of original investigation.
A Franciscan Fighter for South American Independence: Fray Luis Beltran
Authors: Hoffmann Fritz L.
Published: July 2006

THE SPANISH AMERICAN WARS for independence abounded in events of which novels are born. Among them is the heroic and herculean crossing of the southern Andes by the Argentine general, José de San Martín, and his army to crush Spanish rule in Chile. San Martín’s preparations in Mendoza on the eastern side of the Andes in present Argentina, in which almost insurmountable obstacles had to be overcome, merit in themselves much more attention than they have received from historians.
Teaching Latin-American Philosophy
Authors: Berndtson Arthur
Published: July 2006

THERE ARE SEVERAL motives for giving a course in Latin-American philosophy. Of these, the most immediately practical in intent, and the one which directly led to the formation of the course at the University of Missouri, was a desire to furnish a relevant course in philosophy for the use of students in Spanish, history and the Latin-American studies area. This factor has turned out to be of secondary importance at Missouri, since only a small part of the students who take the course are from the fields named. The value of this motive will necessarily vary from campus to campus, and it may well be of considerable magnitude in many situations.
American Civilization Abroad: Fifty Years in Puerto Rico
Authors: Métraux Guy S.
Published: July 2006

The Expansion of the United States into Spanish areas following the Spanish-American War was a test of the vigor of American society in winning over groups that were essentially alien to it. With the annexation of territories such as Puerto Rico, the American way of life was, for the first time, operating on a culturally alien soil and was thus given the opportunity to show its capacity of being exported and adopted by a people who, as a group, were part of another cultural tradition. Puerto Rico has been for the last fifty years a small stage on which a culture drama was being played. American principles were introduced there together with American attitudes. Some patterns were imposed by American military and civilian authorities—often prompted by Puerto Ricans; others were imitated by the Puerto Ricans themselves. What was the climate of opinion that permitted this transfer, what were the methods employed to achieve it, and to what extent was it successful? These are the questions that come to the mind of the historian who studies Puerto Rico today.
The Soul of Spain
Authors: Rubio David
Published: July 2006

Few Americans had any insight into the critical part that Spain had played and still continues to play in the development of the modern world, through the fact that Spain endeavored to transpose the dying medieval culture into a modern key; witness Loyola’s Society of Jesus.

Spain gave to her colonies in the New World her language, religion, civic institutions, her system of education, her social customs, her chivalric sense of honor and her mystic fervor. Spain gave her body and soul to the New World.

It is, therefore, in my humble opinion, of paramount importance to know the soul of Spain in order to comprehend and understand the Spanish American people. To that purpose—to better understand the spiritual and cultural background of Spanish America by studying the “Soul” of Spain—this work is dedicated.—THE AUTHOR

.

At the close of the eighteenth century Nicholas Masson de Morvilliers raised a hubbub in Europe by asking these two questions in the Encyclopédie Méthodique: “Mais que doit-on a I’Espagne? Et depuis deux siecles, depuis quatre, depuis six, qu’a-t-elle fait pour l’Europe?”

At the end of a century of positivistic philosophy and at the beginning of the industrial era this was a very logical question. It is true that Spain did not invent the locomotive, the telegraph, the telephone nor the modern frigidaire; but in the realm of human and eternal values could a more idiotic question have been asked? The metaphysics of Suarez, the international law of Victoria, the great theologians of the Council of Trent, Cano and Soto, had no value whatsoever for this Positivistic century; nor did the fact that Spain had produced one of the most human and original theatres with Lope de Vega, Calderón, Tirso de Molina and Alarcón; the greatest novel in the modern sense of the word, Don Quijote;the most profound satirist of all Europe, Quevedo; the outstanding moralist of the seventeenth century, Lorenzo Gracian; and above all these a school of mystics in Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross, Fray Luis de León and Juan de los Angeles, which has never been equaled. Even if Mr. Masson de Morvilliers could not see the importance of these contributions it is difficult to comprehend how he could ignore the transcendental fact that Spain had broken the columns of Hercules and had spread Mediterranean culture through the countries lying on the other side of the Atlantic and on the remotest shores of the Pacific.
La Avellaneda’s Sab and the Political Situation in Cuba
Authors: Kelly Edith L.
Published: July 2006

The novel Sab by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda may be considered one of the outstanding products of her early Cuban environment. The work was begun in 1836 or earlier (while the author was traveling with her family to Spain), completed by 1838, and first published in 1841. In order to prepare the way for a favorable reception of the novel in her native land, as well as on the continent, la Avellaneda submitted the first ten chapters in 1839 to a “compatriota” residing in Sevilla:
The Franciscan Provinces of Spanish North America
Authors: Habig Marion A.
Published: July 2006

The same year (1565) in which the territory north of the Holy Gospel Province was made a separate Province, the Central American countries were separated from the Yucatan Province and organized into a new Province, that of the Most Holy Name. Ten years later, the latter was further divided, and the province of St. George was erected including Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Honduras, which was made a Custody of St. George Province in 1587, was subsequently reunited with the Guatemala Province.
A Mexican Personalist: Antonio Caso (1883–1946)
Authors: Reinhardt Kurt F.
Published: July 2006

If the “Good Neighbor Policy” were a fact rather than a political slogan or at best a pious wish, the life, work, and death of one of the great thinkers, writers, and teachers of the Western Hemisphere could hardly have passed almost without being noticed in the Anglo-Saxon part of the American continent. On March 6th of this year died in Mexico City Antonio Caso, mourned by Mexico and her Ibero-American sister republics as well as by three generations of students who in their minds and hearts bear indelibly the moral stamina which they received in the classes taught by their beloved maestro in the Escuela Preparatoria and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma of Mexico. José Vasconcelos, in his funeral oration, recognized in his departed compatriot “the most eloquent voice of Mexican philosophy, that voice which kindled in human minds the love for truth and beauty”, and then recalled in this personal apostrophe the great scholarly and human qualities of Antonio Caso: “You were,” he said, “a despiser of everything vile and wicked; you were disdainful of money, and you turned your back on power…. With your great gifts you might have gained materially comfortable positions of influence. Many times Fortuna knocked at your door, but you refused to open because you had decided to remain loyal to your vocation as a thinker. … Meanwhile, your conscience stayed wide awake, sensitive to noble actions and sublime ideas…. Those who follow your leadership recognized in your balanced mind the marks of the classicist; in your sensitivity, those of the romanticist; in the integrity of your conduct, those of the gentleman. Maestro completo: wherever there is a school, there is your fatherland. Mexicano universal: through you our nation occupies a distinguished place in contemporary thought.”
The Background of Brazilian History
Authors: Greenlee William B.
Published: July 2006

To understand the setting of the discovery and of the early voyages to Brazil we must go back to some of the circumstances which preceded, and review the conditions in Europe at that time. The discoveries of the Portuguese navigators mark an epoch in world history. Had Columbus not persuaded the Spaniards to finance his voyage to the Spice Islands by a western route, the Portuguese might easily have claimed the discovery of both North and South America within a decade following Columbus’ landfall. Both continents would probably have been visited in 1500 when Gaspar Corte-Real reached Newfoundland and Pedro Alvares Cabral, Brazil. The former voyage was but a continuation of others westward over the Atlantic and the latter was only an incident in the Voyages to India. Furthermore, the delusion of reaching Asia would have been avoided. The exploration of the Americas would then have been carried on in an orderly manner with the realization that a new world had been found. However, the Portuguese are not best known for their voyages to America, but for the first accurate knowledge of both the West and East coasts of Africa, of the Indian Ocean and of the Spice Islands. They continued these voyages even farther, up the coast of China, and in 1542 they were the first Europeans to set foot in Japan. These achievements, of which any nation might justly be proud, were made by a country which then numbered between one and two million people.
New Mexico as a Historical Laboratory of the Good Neighbor Policy: With Special Reference to the Hispano-American Cultural Contribution
Authors: Espinosa J. Manuel
Published: July 2006

Much has been written about New Mexico, but few of those who have described its unique heritage and character have fully understood its true spirit and appreciated what it represents as a part of the present-day United States.

New Mexico has a personality all of its own. Three cultural groups have been most important in forming the American way of life to be found there: the Pueblo Indians, who were the first permanent settlers of the region; the Spanish, who made it a part of Western civilization; and the Anglo-Americans, who have brought it into the current of modern American life. Today, New Mexico is neither Indian, nor Spanish, nor Anglo, but a harmonious combination of all three; and in the persistance and, generally speaking, local appreciation of the permanent values of each of the dominant cultural heritages, it has been for the past one hundred years a significant laboratory of the Good-Neighbor Policy. I speak as one whose ancestors were among the pioneers of both the Anglo and Hispano-American frontiers of settlement who, advancing from northeast and southwest, met and joined hands in what is now the state of New Mexico during the first half of the nineteenth century.
Early Diplomatic Relations Between Mexico and the Far East
Authors: Gardiner Clinton Harvey
Published: July 2006

Between the glamorous galleons of the sixteenth century and the flashing fighter planes of the 1940’s—which were the Mexican commercial and military introductions to the Far East—came the less brilliant but more permanent diplomatic orientation toward the Far East on the part of Mexico during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
Forgotten Bastions Along the Spanish Main: Campeche
Authors: Winning Jean Bassford von
Published: July 2006

Today, on the Western Coast of the peninsula of Yucatán stand centuries-old Spanish fortifications, the most remarkable example of military architecture in the Western Hemisphere. Abandoned monuments to that titanic colonial adventure of the New World, which came to an end more than two hundred years ago, they guard the port and little town of Campeche, which now lies like some half-forgotten legend beside the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The Understanding of other Cultures: Latin America
Authors: Doyle Henry Grattan
Published: July 2006

A POPULAR RADIO SERIES a dozen years ago, dealing broadly with the important
area that is the subject of my talk tonight, was called (borrowing its title
from Shakespeare) “Brave New World.” Braver still, in the modern sense, is
the commentator who tries in a brief talk like this to deal with even one
phase of the vast area, of some eight million square miles, and constituting
about one-fifth of the world’s inhabited continents, that lies South of the
continental United States. But I am what is called in Spanish an “Old
Christian” in these matters, which may be roughly interpreted as the
opposite of a “Johnny-Come-Lately,” as our own phrase has it. I have been a
student of this area for nearly fifty years, a teacher of one of its
languages, Spanish, and of the literature and other written materials
published in that language, for more than forty years. During the past four
years I have spent my summer vacations on educational missions that took me
to all of the American republics except two—Bolivia and Paraguay. In some
instances I have made two or three visits to individual countries during
that period, supplementing a number of earlier trips, the first of which was
in 1916. So I must be as “brave” as the fascinating and to us tremendously
important complex of nations that make up the New World outside of the
United States and Canada, which for want of a really accurate term we call
Latin America.
Anticlericalism in the Mexican Constitutional Convention of
1916–1917
Authors: Niemeyer E. V.
Published: July 2006

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENTS of the Mexican Revolution was the
Constitutional Convention that met at Querétaro from December, 1916, to
February, 1917. To a Mexico that had been racked since 1910 by the forces of
revolution, counterrevolution, and defection, the Constituent Congress
called into session by Venustiano Carranza was the fulfillment of numerous
promises that had been made in various declarations and decrees issued since
the promulgation of the Plan de Guadalupe.
Spain’s Investment in New Mexico Under the Hapsburgs
Authors: Bloom Lansing S.
Published: July 2006

It is not an easy matter to disentangle the motives lying back of any great enterprise such as the Spanish conquest and colonization in the Americas. The idea has been very generally held, even among historians, that the Spaniards were universally obsessed with a lust for gold, and however much or little other motives may have entered in, that this lust for gold was the motive above all others which inspired them to feats with few if any parallels in all history for courage and endurance and achievement. “Tell your master,” Cortés is reported to have said to the emissaries of Moctezuma, “that we Spaniards have a fever in our blood which can be cooled only by gold.”

The Mexican of today is proud of his Indian descent, and the heavy discount which he places on what the Spaniard has done for him is typified, for example, in the imposing statue to Cuauctemoc which was given one of the points of greatest prominence on the stately Paseo of Mexico City. One of the large bronze tablets on the base of that statue portrays Cortés and his captains putting the Aztec princes to the torture, roasting their feet to compel them to reveal their hidden treasure; and at that statue today centers the national Fiesta de la Raza.
A Good Neighbor Policy of the XVI Century: The Spanish Missionaries
Authors: Rubio David
Published: July 2006

I Dedicate this article to the so-called Indigenists and Apristas, who, perhaps with very good intentions, preach the return to Indian primitivism. They advocate this, in the first place, without ever having lived the life of the Indian and secondly, with complete forgetfulness that the only thing that made men of the Indians was the doctrine of the gospel of Christ and that the only ones who understood the Indians were the Catholic missionaries.

I also want to emphasize the long and special preparation the missionaries underwent before attempting the conversion of millions of Indians, a fact which has not been stressed sufficiently in the works dedicated to this subject.
Our Debt to the Franciscan Missionaries of New Mexico
Authors: Espinosa J. Manuel
Published: July 2006

It is especially fitting that the Academy of American Franciscan History is being formally inaugurated this month, for in this same month of April, three hundred and thirty-five years ago, the Franciscan Commissary General of the Indies, by authority of the General of the Franciscan Order, instructed Fray Juan de Torquemada to prepare an official history of the Franciscan province of New Spain, the first to be published, in words that may well be repeated here. He wrote: “Considering how just and desirable it is that the memory of saintly men, who by their heroic deeds honored our Holy Religion, … be preserved for all time … :We are of the opinion that in our own times it is desirable to prepare chronicles that make known these deeds … And having investigated with special care the persons in this province of ours of talent, learning, virtue, and the other qualifications necessary for such an important and arduous undertaking, we have agreed that your reverence, who has all of these qualifications, be entrusted and charged … with bringing to light the many unknown facts of importance that are worthy of being recorded and known by everyone. And thus, by these presents, we request, and if necessary so order, that your reverence undertake to gather all of the reports and writings … that may be found, for the preparation of new chronicles of all the provinces, verifying anew the facts in each case, and inquiring into, or tracing and checking, the specific and general matters of importance … which in that and the other provinces of New Spain may be verified and written up, your reverence preparing all in good literary style and in historical form…
The Encomienda in Latin-American History: A Reappraisal
Authors: Lacas M. M.
Published: July 2006

The Teacher of Latin-American History in the United States finds himself seriously handicapped by the lack of impartial and fair textbooks on this increasingly important subject. Most of the authors, either through lack of contact with the sources of information and original documents, or just because the trends begun by the “New American School of History” mentioned by Charles F. Lummis some fifty years ago, have not yet reached them, still cling tenaciously to the errors of the “Black Legend.” Their pet source still is the now much discredited and entirely unreliable Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas. They still take their cues from his much translated Brevísima Historia de la Destrucción de las Indias. Seldom do they even mention any of the many saintly bishops and missionaries who opposed him in the great debate of the early colonial times.
John Lloyd Stephens and His American Book
Authors: Hill Roscoe R.
Published: July 2006

John Lloyd Stephens was a remarkable man in his day and probably would have been remarkable at any time in American history. Lawyer, politician, traveler, author, diplomat and entrepreneur, he made his contribution to American life. Because of the heritage which he left, now as the centenary of his death approaches, the presses of two leading American universities have enriched their list of titles with books relating to Stephens. Rutgers University Press, located in Stephens’ native state, has brought out a new edition of Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, & Yucatan (New Brunswick, 1949. 2 vols., Pp. xx, 346; xiv, 340. Illus., map.) under the able editorship of Richard L. Predmore. In the West, the University of Oklahoma Press has offered to the reading public Maya Explorer: John Lloyd Stephens and the Lost Cities of Central America and Yucatan (Norman, 1948. Pp. xviii, 324., illus.), a delightful biography by Victor Wolfgang von Hagen.
Spanish Medieval Institutions in Overseas Administration: The Prevalence of Medieval Concepts
Authors: Castañeda Carlos E.
Published: July 2006

Land ho!” rang out in the stillness of that fateful dawn in October, 1492, when a New World was discovered. After months of suspense the approachestoa land whose existence was unknown had been reached. It was not India, nor fabled Cipango and Cathay. It was, as Columbus said after his third voyage,Otro Mundo, another world, risen out of the unknown to confound an astonished world, where an era was closing and a new one opening. It lay athwart the route to the desired goal, a vast land mass, peopled by many men of varying cultures, who emerged in their seemingly guileless nakedness to confuse the theologians and learned men of the Renaissance.
The Influence of Travel Books on Early American Hispanism
Authors: Stimson Frederick S.
Published: July 2006

Students of the famous first contingent of Yankee Hispanists and of North American literature in general, during the national and revolutionary periods, are prone to overlook the pronounced influence of British, American, and French travel books about Spain and Spanish America. The popularity which travel accounts enjoyed in the nineteenth century is attested by a well-known publisher’s observation to the distinguished pioneer explorer of Central America, John L. Stephens, author of the recently reprinted Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas & Yucatan (1841, 1949). On the latter’s query as to what forms of literature Harper Brothers favored, Harper is said to have replied: “Travels sell about the best of anything we get hold of. They don’t always go with a rush, like a novel by a celebrated author, but they sell longer, and in the end, pay better.”
The Development of Latin-American Studies in the United States, 1939–1945
Authors: Hanke Lewis
Published: July 2006

The period 1939–1945 saw an unprecedented expansion of Latin American studies in the United States. This was partly due to the wartime activities of such government agencies as the Department of State and the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, and to the rising interest in the area approach to academic studies. This development would not have been possible, however, without the continuous concern of the foundations, which had helped to organize scholars in the field on a national basis, had stimulated research in relatively neglected fields, and had provided funds for the compilation and publication of certain basic bibliographical tools. Nor would this expansion have been more than a wartime boom had not the scholars and universities of the country been attracted to Hispanic studies since George Ticknor and William H. Prescott first disclosed their importance over a century ago, and to the Latin American field more particularly since 1900. The expansion was based upon solid elements.
The Scholastic Career and Preaching Apostolate of Fray Junipero Serra, O.F.M., S.T.D. (1730–1749)
Authors: Geiger Maynard
Published: July 2006

Fray Francisco Palóu, O.F.M. immortalized himself and his hero when he wrote and published his Relación Histórica de la Vida y Apostólicas Tareas del Venerable Padre Fray Junípero Serra. The intimacy between author and hero through the years 1740 and 1784, began in the latter’s classroom at Palma, Mallorca, and ended at his deathbed in Carmel, California. The friendly association of Serra and Palóu continued undiminished in the pursuit of scholarship, the Franciscan way of life, travel and pioneering, the founding and administration of missions, in correspondence and mútual counsel. The younger man survived. Being author as well as missionary, he followed the impulse to write and to record for posterity the classic story of the founding of a famous mission field and to delineate the heroic deeds of its dominating personality. The Vida was the flowering of a fine, fraternal friendship.
The Church of San Francisco in Mexico City
Authors: Chauvet Fidel de J.
Published: July 2006

Without Doubt one of the buildings of greatest historical merit in the capital of Mexico is the ancient Church of San Francisco. There, shortly after arriving at the Aztec metropolis, the “Twelve Apostles of Mexico,” Fray Martín de Valencia and his companions established their home. These saintly men through their superhuman missionary activity converted that church into a fervent center of religion and culture. Adjoining the large church, they built the famous college of arts and trades destined especially for the Indian youths, which was directed by that great missionary, Fray Pedro de Gante. From that church and its convent the missionaries set forth to extend their activities southward to Peru, and northward to New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas. With reason, therefore, this ancient sanctuary of San Francisco may be considered the cradle of Christian Mexico, as well as the mother church of the Franciscans in the Americas.
The Franciscan University of Celaya
Authors: Barth Pius
Published: July 2006

The founding of the College of St. Francis at Celaya, near Querétaro in Mexico, later to achieve the status of a Royal and Pontifical University, offers an excellent example of the Franciscan Order’s internal conflict between the strict observance of poverty and its willingness to administer higher educational institutions on a permanent basis.
A Venezuelan Educator: Don Feliciano Montenegro Colon
Authors: Watters Mary
Published: July 2006

Among the Hispanic-American States, Venezuela has not been notable for achievement in the field of education measured in terms of popular literacy. Venezuelans are, indeed, the first to recognize and to deplore a lack of such achievement. The writer is convinced, however, that no country of Hispanic-America can present a more interesting or exceptional list of educators, whether philosophers and critics, educational statesmen and administrators, or class-room teachers are proposed. Such outstanding figures as Simón Rodríguez, the radical reformer of the revolutionary era, sometimes called the “Rousseau of Hispanic-America”, or Andrés Bello, philosopher and teacher, or the Liberator himself, who might well be called the Jefferson of Hispanic-America in the field of educational statesmanship, are generally recognized.
Franciscans on the Silver Frontier of Old Mexico
Authors: Powell Philip Wayne
Published: July 2006

To the English-speaking world the conquest of Mexico was the achievement of Hernán Cortés, thanks largely to the entertaining account by William Hickling Prescott. The brilliance of the Cortesian exploits, plus Prescott’s popularity, have combined to cause this historical distortion by overshadowing the fact that there were many conquests of Mexico, just as there were, and are, “many Mexicos.” Hernán Cortés merely began the subjugation of Mexico by his victory over the Nahua Confederacy. Some later conquests were more difficult, more expensive in lives and mgney, and far more time-consuming than that of Cortés, but they lack their Prescotts.
The Fourth General Assembly of the Pan American Institute of Geography and History
Authors: Hill Roscoe R.
Published: July 2006

The Fourth General Assembly of the Pan American Institute of Geography and History met in Caracas at the invitation of the Venezuelan Government on August 2 5 to September 1, 1946. Caracas is an interesting city for a meeting and the Venezuelan Government was a gracious host. The arrangements had been in charge of an organizing committee, headed by Dr. Cristóbal Mendoza as chairman and Sr. José Nucete Sardi as general secretary. The Liceo Andrés Bello, a modern and well appointed industrial school, afforded most commodious quarters for the meetings.
Important California Missionary Dates Determined
Authors: Geiger Maynard
Published: July 2006

Lacking in the standard histories of the California missions as well as in several excellent biographical sketches, are long-sought, important vital statistics with regard to two among California’s greatest missionaries, Fray Francisco Palóu, O.F.M., and Fray Fermín Francisco Lasuén, O.F.M., respectively California’s first historian and the California missions’ second regularly appointed presidente. Why the chronological niche of the two missionaries in the facade of California history has stood unfinished is due to peculiar circumstances of recording and the hideout that certain necessary documents have maintained. Other missionaries, less prominent, are often much better outlined in Franciscan chronology.

With regard to Palóu, our interest centers on the exact day and year of his death. Even that of his birth was made known only in 1924 through the combined efforts of the Rev. LeRoy Callahan of the diocesan clergy of Los Angeles, and the Rev. Zephyrin Engelhardt, O.F.M., of Mission Santa Barbara. Father Callahan was in Mallorca doing research work on the early life of Junípero Serra while Father Engelhardt was composing his San Francisco Mission.
Religious Aspects of the Spanish Voyages in the Pacific during the Sixteenth Century and the Early Part of the Seventeenth
Authors: Gschaedler André
Published: July 2006

The Conquest of Mexico was under way when Magellan’s fleet left San Lucar, September 1519, in quest of a western route to the coveted Spice Islands. On May 22, 1607, the two smaller ships of Quirós’ armada put in at Cavite in the Philippines, bringing to a close the last of the great Spanish exploration voyages in the Pacific. By that time the English and the Dutch had entered the ocean. The Sea of the South of which Balboa had taken possession in the name of his sovereigns was not to be an exclusive preserve of Spain any more. Spain was on the defensive in the New World. The great era of Spanish discovery in the Pacific Ocean was not to outlast the climax of Spanish power in the Americas. Quirós never lost his faith in the mission of Spain in the Pacific, but his entreaties, and those of the friars who were ready to accompany him for the spiritual conquest of the Pacific insular world, met with deaf ears. The Spanish authorities were under the impression that Spain had already seized more than she could grasp. In the Pacific the Spaniards were now satisfied with keeping up the Manila Galleon trade, the life line of the Philippines. The task of exploration was taken up by Spain’s competitors the Dutch, the English and the French.
Central America
Authors: Ryan Edwin
Published: July 2006

An Excellent example of the deceptiveness of designations which, like “Latin America,” group under a single name diverse and even mutually hostile regions as though they constituted a unit, is the title of this article. An evidence of the false impression created by the phrase “Central America” is the question not infrequently asked: “Why do not the Central American republics form a federation?” They are close to one another and are so much alike that they ought naturally to combine into a union, as the thirteen British colonies of North America combined.” To ask that question is to betray that one has been misled by name. Though the republics of Central America are close to one another on the map they are not “much alike.” Quite to the reverse. They differ in climate, in soil, in racial composition, in tradition. They are so far from being much alike that every time they have formed a union (and they have tried more than once) the effort has ultimately failed and has usually been followed by wars among themselves which though on a scale comparatively small have been marked by extreme bitterness and ferocity. And though the dream of federation continues to float before the imaginations of some Central Americans there is no indication that the immediate future will behold it transmuted into a reality.
The Reluctant Revolutionist: A Study of the Political Ideas of Hipólito Da Costa (1774–1823)
Authors: Herrick Jane
Published: July 2006

Hipólito da Costa would probably be quite content (perhaps even a little surprised) at being feted as the father of the Brazilian press and probably he would not demand the additional title of political philosopher. But, in the fashion of his age, he discoursed at length on politics, and the pages of the Correio Braziliense which he edited show the ideas on governmental theory of a particular, early nineteenth-century liberal, a Portuguese influenced by the English liberalism which seems so far from radical today as to be almost blatantly conservative.
The Royal Presidio Chapel of San Carlos, Monterey, Capital of Colonial California
Authors: Geiger Maynard
Published: July 2006

It is rare that one finds, in the form of drawings and documents, a study of the architectural evolution of a church in the Spanish borderlands of the United States. Most of the churches were Indian missions, built at first of adobe in a simple, crude form, with thatched roofs. More beautiful buildings arose in a later period of development when Indian converts had increased and after skilled workmen were available to raise them as monuments of beauty on a cheerless frontier.