A partir de la segunda mitad del siglo XIX se inició en la Argentina un proceso de crecimiento y diversificación económica y social que hizo posible para los hombres del ‘80 proyectar un orden de liberación y progreso. En efecto, la tarea de modernización tuvo sus primeras manifestaciones en torno a los años cincuenta, pero fue en los tiempos de la Argentina Moderna cuando se pudo dar forma definitiva al modelo agroexportador y su inserción al mercado mundial. La inversión de capitales extranjeros, la eliminación del “desierto” para obtener tierras económicamente productivas y la formación de un mercado de trabajo, a partir del disciplinamiento de la mano de obra nativa y el arribo de gentes de otras latitudes, fueron los aportes indispensables para poder concretarlo. Quedaba pendiente para el Estado de reciente organización-gracias al marco legal que concretaba la Constitución-un complejo desafío, el de “construir la nación.” El crecimiento económico estuvo acompañado por la consolidación del régimen político oligárquico de los “notables” que entendieron el ejercicio de la política como una facultad exclusiva de los que disponían de la riqueza, la educación y el prestigio social.

The last fifteen years have witnessed a growing amount of historical scholarship offering sound evidence that slavery and postemancipation racial attitudes in Brazil were not as benign as some historians have suggested. These writings have demonstrated that racial and class prejudice existed both during and after slavery. Comparatively little attention, however, has been devoted to specific studies of free Afro-Brazilians in the years immediately following the passage of the Golden Law in May, 1888. Such studies are required to better understand the problems involved in the integration of blacks and mulattoes into modern Brazilian society.

Scholarly, as well as popular, literature focused on the interaction of the Catholic Church and the Mexican Revolution of 1910 has frequently advanced the contention that the Revolution had “Protestant overtones.” The vagueness of the accusation and its ambiguous implications have thus far eluded clarification. Some of these accusations, particularly those made in the 1920's when memories of the Cristero Revolt were fresh, represent the opinions of the Revolution's detractors and thus their comments have often been dismissed as mudslinging. However, writers of the 1960's in more dispassionate terms have also alluded to this theme. Jean Meyer, for example, includes as a part of his explanation of Cristero dissatisfaction the incompatible juxtaposition of the traditional Roman Catholic Cristero and the Protestant attitude adopted by the revolutionaries. Few investigations have explored the extent or role of non-Catholic religious institutions in Mexico during the revolutionary era. Despite these accusations, systematic research on Protestants has been overshadowed by investigations of Catholics to such an extent that the accuracy and seriousness of accusations of “Protestant overtones” cannot be evaluated.

The Island of Grenada has had an interesting and turbulent history. Its early years were largely under the French, but it was captured by the English in 1763. It was taken back by the French in 1779 but then permanently ceded to England by the Treaty of Versailles in 1783. The census of 1771 showed a population of 1,661 whites, 415 free colored, and 26,211 slaves—largely associated with the raising of sugar. In 1793 the French and the British were again at war, and in 1795 the French republic made a strong attempt to regain Grenada by capitalizing on the strong antagonism which had built up between the French and British settlers on the island. Although the French forces under Victor Hughes could not actually capture the island, the local French planters, slaves and colored planters revolted against the British under the leadership of a colored planter, Julian Fedon, who has since become something of a folk hero in Grenada. In March 1795, Fedon and his followers invaded the old town of Grenville, killing a number of British and capturing others. The band of revolutionaries then retreated to Fedon's plantation where they subsequently entrenched themselves on a nearby mountain with their prisoners. They were dislodged by the British in June 1796 with considerable loss of life. Fedon escaped, but many of his followers lost both their lives and had their property confiscated.

When the portuguese began their great expansion in the fifteenth century, it was not surprising that the Franciscan friars would enter into the work. They had in the past evidenced a more than cursory interest in North Africa and the lands beyond. Indeed their first martyrdoms occurred in Morocco in the second decade of the thirteenth century. In the following years, they had regular establishments there. That their activity in North Africa was not entirely concentrated on the Mediterranean coast is shown by the treatise Libro del conoscimiento de todos los regnos y tierras by an anonymous fourteenth-century Castilian Franciscan. In the work the Atlantic coast to Sierra Leone is adequately described as perhaps also are the Azores. Although the friars working in North Africa before 1415 were Spanish or at least attached to Spanish provinces, it is not unlikely that Portuguese friars also labored there when the former union and the still close relationship of the Franciscans on the peninsula is considered.

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 in Doña 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.

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 …”

On 11 September 1941, U..S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt took to the airwaves to warn his country that “Hitler's advance guards” were readying “footholds, bridgeheads in the New World, to be used as soon as he has gained control of the oceans.” The most recent sign that the Nazis were coming, the president told his rapt national audience, was the discovery of “secret airlanding fields in Colombia, within easy range of the Panama Canal.”

In Bogotá, the response was pandemonium. U.S. ambassador Spruille Braden, astonished that “the President has gone out on a limb with this statement,” sent his staff scrambling across German-owned farms and rice fields to try to produce evidence for the assertion ex post facto. Colombian President Eduardo Santos scoffed at Roosevelt's claim, telling Braden, “in the final analysis all of Colombia is a great potential airport.” A resentful Colombian Senate voted unanimously that no such airfields existed (that Colombia had fulfilled its responsibility to defend against the Axis menace). In Washington, Secretary of State Cordell Hull was forced to call in Colombia's Ambassador Gabriel Turbay to express “the very deep regret of the President, of myself and of our Government” for the “unintentional reference.”

In May 1866, almost twenty years after the outbreak of the Maya rebellion of 1847, the juez de paz of Tekax in the Puuc or Sierra region of southern Yucatán recorded the testimony of a Maya peasant by the name of Herculano Balam. Herculano, along with his father and his cousin, had been picked up by local authorities for questioning following a lengthy absence from their home village of Cantamayec in the district of Sotuta. The three prisoners had been detained because they were suspected of being spies sent by the Maya rebels of Chan Santa Cruz to persuade local Maya to join them in their continuing struggle against the creole government of Yucatán. Herculano’s statement does not shed much light on whether or not he and his companions were, in fact, “spies.” Nonetheless, his testimony is extremely important for it contains rare evidence of contact between the Maya rebels of Chan Santa Cruz, the pacíficos del sur, and the peasants of central Yucatán. At the same time, Herculano’s travels provoke interesting questions about the interaction between peasants and guerrillas, and the relationship of individuals to communities, which lead us, in turn, to the nature of peasant politics in the aftermath of the rebellion.

Until the unsuccessful British invasion of Argentina in 1806-1807, Buenos Aires had been, for the non-Spanish peoples of the world, a mysterious, strange, unknown city, thousands of miles across the ocean. Except for a shipwrecked sailor or two, few Englishmen had had the opportunity of seeing that old colonial city prior to that time. Due to Spain's monopolistic trade policies with respect to her American possessions, trade with the New World, and even the right to reside there, except for a relatively brief period under Charles V, had been reserved for the subjects of the Spanish Crown.

The desire to see a restoration of full corporate privilege for their estate encouraged a group of New Granada’s clergymen to support the attempt of leading Creole families to replace the political predominance of the Spanish peninsulares. This political revolution contained both traditionalist and radical aspects. Most clerics strongly opposed the policies of Charles IV’s ministers, and singled out for especial criticism the favourite, Godoy. A particular cause of resentment in New Granada, as elsewhere in Spanish America, was the Consolidación de Vales Reales legislated on 28 November and 26 December 1804. Grievances extended generally to the metropolitan government’s fiscal policies, for a large measure of taxation fell upon the clergy. As in New Spain the defence of the fuero eclesiástico provided a rallying cry.

The publication of a handsome facsimile edition of the Cortés Codex in the National Library at Vienna makes it peculiarly appropriate to raise again the long-disputed question why the volume was prepared and what the circumstances were that brought it to the Imperial Library at Vienna. The story of how the codex came to the attention of scholars is well known. In preparing his History of America, William Robertson hunted for Cortés' first letter in Spain without success. He then thought that since Charles V was in the Germanies when the letter arrived in Spain, it might have been forwarded to him and thereafter deposited in the Hapsburg Imperial Library in Vienna. Through the good offices of Sir Robert Murray, then British ambassador at the imperial court, permission was obtained from Empress Maria Theresa for a search not merely for the letter but also for any papers of interest for the History of America. The search did not bring to light the lost first letter but did uncover the Cortés Codex, and in it the letter of the city council of Veracruz written at the same time as Cortés' first letter. The codex contains also a copy of the fifth carta de relatión of Cortés, unknown until then but now known to exist in other manuscript versions. Since Robertson's day, the Cortés Codex has been consulted continually. It has served as the basis for verifying the texts of those relaciones for which there are other copies, and is the sole source for the letter of the city council of Veracruz, which is usually published as the first carta de relatión.

The pursuit of economic and political progress engaged many of the Salvadoran elite during the last decades of the nineteenth century. The intellectuals were no less energetic in the chase. Travelers to El Salvador at the turn of the century commented favorably on the progress they perceived. Marie Robinson Wright, who visited the country in 1893, wrote euphorically of “modern improvement,” “progress,” and “development.” “Salvador flourishes,” she rhapsodized, “a glorious example of good discipline and government.” Percy F. Martin wrote in 1911 a long, sober account of his visit. He concluded, “The present condition of her civilization, of her arts and her commerce is eminently encouraging.” He also characterized the Salvadorans as “the most developed and most intellectual” of the Central Americans. These assessments inferred that the progress El Salvador demonstrated drew on North Atlantic models, and to the degree the Salvadorans adopted those models they were judged favorably by foreigners.

This article analyzes an individual, a context, and an experience. The individual is the photographer and filmmaker Paul Strand, widely recognized and occasionally criticized as one of the great modernist photographers of the twentieth century. The context is Mexico from 1932-34. In these years, Strand worked in Mexico amidst state-led efforts to construct a “new” national culture following the social upheavals and military conflicts associated with the Mexican Revolution. The experience was Strand’s effort to create a visual record of Mexico documenting what he thought of as its unique character, while furthering its “revolutionary” transformation through photography and filmmaking.