In the 1530’s, as Mexico and then Peru began sending eastward the treasure which would so profoundly affect European life, the town of Guayaquil was established on the coast of present-day Ecuador. During the next three centuries Guayaquil developed into a society fundamentally different from and even antithetical to those of the great highland capitals. Agriculture, industry, and commerce, rather than mining, became the mainstays of Guayaquil’s economy. The decline of indigenous population on the coast and an influx of free Negroes from the north rendered an egalitarian and racially mixed people of low social differentiation. Cacao grown on the coastal lowlands provided the thrust for a wide range of trade and manufacturing activities. Yet tensions between location on a main imperial trade route and the stifling commercial control of nearby Lima resolved into a rough-and-tumble political system which thrived on contraband and autonomy. By the early nineteenth century Guayaquil had achieved a large measure of independence from Spain, and it played an important role in the liberation movements of western South America. After sketching the early development of the city, we will examine in some detail the system of labor and production in Guayaquil during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Then the city’s precocious autonomy within the colonial system will be discussed, prior to a concluding assessment of the social outcomes of Guayaquil’s development by the time of Independence.

The secularization of the Franciscan missions is one of the most controversial problems which historians of Mexican California are called upon to interpret. This essay is an addition to the story of the secularization process in California in the hope that it will render it more complete by illuminating the mind of one of its chief protagonists, Fray Narciso Durán, the Spanish Franciscan friar who held the offices of president and commissary-prefect of the missions during the secularization controversies.

For centuries the only roads in Guatemala were no more than trails—slippery and muddy during rainy seasons, dry and dusty during dry seasons, and always treacherous. Travelers who ventured outside the few cities and towns usually walked or rode horses or mules. Freight traveled similarly, on the backs of pack animals or on the backs of men. Consequently, communications were at a minimum; Guatemalans and other Central Americans were isolated. And if they had little communication among themselves, they had less with foreigners. The few ports touched occasionally by foreign ships offered little in the way of trade because of the difficulty of transportation to and from the interior. Under conditions such as these it is no wonder that prosperity was limited and that progress was slow.

When the old Palacio de Gobierno was demolished in 1938, a mass of papers and volumes were discovered and saved. They turned out to be the heart of the colonial archive of the Lima Tribunal of the Consulado (or Merchant’s Guild) and represented a substantial portion of the colonial Hacienda, or treasury, papers of Lima as well. An archive, the Archivo Histórico de Comercio y Hacienda, was created (and opened in 1944) for the express purpose of housing these documents and its first director, Frederico Schwab, was entrusted with the organization and cataloguing of this valuable collection. Schwab and Luis Felipe Muro Arias’ Catàlogo de la Sección Colonial del Archivo Histórico del Ministerio de Hacienda was published in Lima in 1944 and listed all of the major documentation held by the new archive relative to the colonial affairs of the Consulado and the Real Hacienda. A few years later Robert Sidney Smith, another scholar to reach and work this rich depisitory in its early years, transcribed the original index to the archive created by the Consulado to house its papers in the late eighteenth century. This work, El Indice del Archivo del Tribunal del Consulado de Lima, appeared in 1948 with an excellent preface to the history of the collection by Schwab and a valuable introduction to the Lima Consulado prepared by Smith himself. Since then, scholars such as the Peruvian Manuel Moreyra y Paz-Soldan and the Frenchwoman Marie Helmer have been able to take advantage of this great collection because of the pioneering work of Schwab, Smith, and their colleagues. The archive has since lost its autonomy and is now incorporated into the Archivo Nacional, which was a logical step in centralization since both archives are located in the Palacio de Justicia in Lima.

Church-State relations in nineteenth century Chile remained relatively calm when compared with tempestuous events occuring in Mexico during the War of the Reform. While tempers flared in both nations when the rights of the Church in a secular society were discussed, the problem was resolved in Chile without bloodshed or violence. The question of the economic power of the Church had already been settled by 1830, as the financial genius of the new Republic, Manuel Rengifo, urged that all lands that had been confiscated by Bernardo O’Higgins in 1824 be returned to the original owners. Despite a well-intentioned belief that Church ownership of land was smothering the economic development of the new nation, the expropriation of these lands failed to produce any dramatic change. While the Treasury received 226, 442 pesos for the sale and rental of these lands, the government was forced to spend 181,297 pesos from 1824 to 1830 in order to finance religious affairs and pay the congregations for the expropriation of their lands. After the Conservative victory at Lircay in 1830 the lands were returned to the Church, providing considerable relief for the heavily burdened state treasury. The minor importance of Church property to the Chilean economy was symbolized by the relative ease of the confiscation and return of the lands, while similar attempts in Mexico unleashed civil war.

Educational facilities in nineteenth-century New Granada were woefully inadequate. School systems were unable to accommodate more than a small percentage of the population, and the existing curricula were largely speculative or theoretical rather than empirical or pragmatic in nature. These deficiencies were openly recognized by many contemporary observers. Nevertheless, it appears that political animosities, conflicting educational philosophies, and financial difficulties hampered any attempt to improve the situation, as the experience of Doctor Lorenzo María Lleras and the Colegio del Espíritu Santo clearly illustrates.

On September 20, 1835, borderland chieftains and their followers in Rio Grande do Sul, known as Farrapos or Ragamuffins, toppled the provincial government in Pôrto Alegre. By November 1836 the Farrapos had established a republican government in the small town of Piratini in the southwest hills of the province; for close to ten years they would withstand the power of the Brazilian Empire in their bid for independence. At the outset, when the rebels had captured the initiative, they were reluctant to use slaves in the Ragamuffin army. Aware of internal security problems and the sanctity of private propetry, the leadership expressed fear of arming and training Afro-Brazilians. But as the maddening horse-war dragged on, the newly created Republic of Rio Grande do Sul became eager for men who might be counted as white. By the end of the Ragamuffin War, slaves were the backbone of the rebel army.