Through much of the history of the Americas, political life took place in two spheres: the colonial realm, in which a complex population of Indians, Africans, and Iberians interacted within the civic framework of European institutions; and the extra-colonial realm, in which largely indigenous populations beyond the reach of imperial authority maintained separate political systems. Encounters across this divide were sometimes peaceful and symbiotic, but at other times violent. Many historical discussions of interethnic conflict presume a general and persistent difference in power between these two groups. On Mexico's northern frontier of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, the relative advantage enjoyed by colonial versus extra-colonial peoples shifted radically depending on the moment and place of encounter. This article proposes that differences in topography and ecology, often between places not far removed in absolute distance, produced inversions in the relative power enjoyed by indigenous and settler populations. The cultivation of maize was common to the refuge zones of settlers and northern Indians alike: unassimilated Indian bands concealed and protected their crops in difficult-to-find mountain valleys; settler communities, both Spanish and Indian, protected crops close to their respective concentrations of population and militiamen. Both colonial and extra-colonial peoples subsisted on cattle, and the demand for vast pasture spaces produced inevitable conflict. Thus, the geography of the north produced areas of security and vulnerability for all parties.

Because of the power of film, movies with historical themes affect public perceptions of the past more deeply than do scholarly reconstructions. Film makers and historians search for meaning in separate ways, but their quests can converge. Examples of different approaches to similar destinations are found in a newer film and older historical views of Catholic missions in South America. Released in 1986, The Mission, directed by Roland Joffé with a screenplay by Robert Bolt, displays paternalistic attitudes like those of an earlier generation of North American academic historians. The film's voice is a white European distortion of Native American reality. This essay will examine that voice, offer alternative explanations of historical events, and suggest a research agenda for future study of the Guarani missions of Paraguay, often mentioned in surveys but seldom studied by North American historians.

The end of World War I marked the beginning of a new era in European migration to Brazil. The immigrants that had poured into the “país do futuro” (country of the future) now came at only a trickle and the number of entries fell by over fifty percent between 1913 and 1914 and by another sixty percent the year after. In 1918 fewer than 20,000 immigrants entered Brazil, a low that would not again be approached until 1936. Even so, between 1918 and 1919 the number of arrivals to Brazil's ports almost doubled, and in 1920 almost doubled again, reaching 69,000.

Post-war immigrants to Brazil differed in many ways from the pre-war group, both in national origin and in their views of success and opportunity. Although Portuguese, Italians, Spanish, and German immigrants continued to predominate, between 1924 and 1934 East European immigration to Brazil increased almost ten times to more than 93,000, representing about 8.5 percent of the total. Most of the East Europeans who migrated to Brazil in the quarter century after World War I were those fleeing the upheavals created by the establishment of the state of Poland. At the same time quotas and other forms of restriction in the U.S., Argentina, and Canada increasingly led potential migrants to look towards Brazil. The frequently destitute East Europeans rarely enjoyed the support of their often powerless governments, a factor that made such immigrants attractive to Brazil's large landowners. In 1927, a contract between the Polish Government and Brazil's Secretary of Agriculture for the transportation of 2,000 Polish families was partially based on the belief that the mixing of “docile” East Europeans with more “volatile” Southern Europeans would “go a long way to obviate any labor trouble that might otherwise occur.” Whatever positive attributes the East Europeans might have presented to Brazilian elites in terms of “dividing and conquering,” the Lithuanian government complained that the condition of its 20,000 immigrants was “so pitiable … that (we) might be forced to repatriate them.”

YUCATAN has been a relatively autonomous part of Mexico. The civilized northern tip of the peninsula, centering around the city of Mérida, has been a kind of socio-political island equidistant by water from Veracruz, New Orleans, Havana, and Belize, British Honduras. South and east of this civilized area extends Indian territory which has remained quite primitive, quite isolated from the north, and in rather close contact with British Honduras further to the south. In the colonial epoch Yucatan was brought under Spanish dominion with considerable difficulty; only the crudest forms of surveillance could be maintained over Indians of the peninsula. With independence the limitations of the central government's control remained distressingly apparent. Whenever the government in Mexico City fell on hard times, as it frequently did, Yucatan as a whole tended toward autonomy. At such times the provincial government at Mérida gained freedom from federal restraint but lost federal support, and in consequence usually lost control over the Indians of southern Yucatan.

THE Mexican Revolution was almost two and a half years old when General Victoriano Huerta captured the presidential chair. The chaotic period between November, 1910 and February, 1913 witnessed an ever-increasing militarization of the country which just a few years earlier had prided itself as the most stable republic and lucrative investment field in Latin America. When the military campaigns of the anti-Díaz movement began to assume serious proportions early in 1911, the government in Mexico City set out to increase at once the size and efficiency of the federal army and the rurales. Although Díaz efforts were for naught, the preparations themselves augured ominously for the immediate future. When the rebel general Pascual Orozco captured Ciudad Juárez in May of 1911, the die was cast. A small but effective revolutionary army, adept at guerrilla warfare, had humbled a professional fighting force schooled in the nineteenth-century German tradition.

The list of memorable European musicians working in New Granada begins with a chance arrival at Cartagena in 1537—Juan Pérez Materano. Dispatched from Spain with a royal appointment to head the music in a Mexican or Central American cathedral, he landed first at Cartagena. In a letter to Charles V dated October 7, 1537, the Cartagena civil officials laud his voice and bearing: these have proved so agreeable during his stopover that they have prevailed upon him to stay and to become chantre of the already functioning Cartagena cathedral, rather than continuing to Yucatán. Arriving between first and second bishops of Cartagena, Pérez Materano found a wooden cathedral but with a “very imposing and good” coro dominated by an elegant choirbook stand. By the time this primitive cathedral was burned in February of 1552, he was already teaching or was soon to teach Juan de Castellanos, the imitator of Ercilla. Castellanos in his long poem on the foundation of New Granada calls Pérez Materano a “Josquin dez Prez” in theoretical knowledge.

People here don't care two straws about Central America, or Mosquitia or the Bay Islands or the Honduras boundary,” complained British Foreign Secretary Lord Clarendon to Prime Minister Lord Palmerston in December 1857, “all they wish for is freedom of interoceanic communication and this they believe can be achieved without a quarrel with the U.S.” Clarendon's bitter remark reflected his government's enduring frustration in arranging British holdings in Central America in accord with the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850. That diplomatic landmark was to have commenced an unprecedented era of Anglo-American cooperation in Central America that would finally fulfill the ancient dream of rapid interoceanic transit through the isthmus. The treaty prohibited colonization or fortification of Central America by either side and provided Anglo-American protection for a U.S. company's canalbuilding venture in Nicaragua. But the unfortunate document had yet to bring about the desired ends. No canal had materialized and the “Central American Question” would not go away. In vain the British government had tried to extricate itself from its embarassingly forward position in Central America. In the meantime, a wave of U.S. filibusters, urged on by the bold words and permissive attitude of their government, threatened to trample underfoot the treaty's prohibitions against foreign colonization. By the end of 1857, the Clayton-Bulwer treaty was in imminent danger of U.S. abrogation, and Palmerston and his cabinet had nearly despaired of ever exiting the isthmian quagmire with British honor intact, without at the same time opening the gates for the “most disageeable” Yankees.

Recent ethnohistorical trends point to a renewed interest in the complex interplay of beliefs and ritual practices that gave rise to multiple expressions of religiosity in different temporal and spatial settings of colonial America. Religion provides a rich thematic matrix for exploring the boundaries of alterité between Amerindian and European actors and figures centrally, as well, in the internal development of different cultural and ethnic identities. Cosmology, understood as those systems of belief that bind individuals to their communities and to the wider universe, informs different peoples' concepts of time and their sense of history. The Maya of Yucatán, for example, integrated both linear and cyclical notions of time into their cosmic order in ways that rendered sensible their rhythms of accommodation and resistance to foreign domination. Moreover, cultural constructions of the past rely heavily on myths that fuse spiritual beliefs with ethnic claims to the land, as observed in the intricate connections between syncretic religion and the survival of ethnic polities in colonial Oaxaca. Ethnic rationalizations of space, it has been argued, underwrote particular aesthetic and cognitive approaches to spatial and temporal “mapping” which, in turn, brought a religious dimension to the notion of territoriality.

The chances of an eighteenth-century merchant's business correspondence surviving to the present are remote, but it is even less likely that an editor could persuade publishers today to issue a five-volume collection of such material. Apart from its sheer massiveness —5,600 documents and nearly 4,000 pages of text—there are several reasons that make the appearance of Negócios colonials an event of unusual significance. First, it represents a major addition to the scant literature available concerning the activities of Portuguese merchants during the first imperial centuries; second, it is by far the most extensive and diversified published collection of mercantile papers pertaining to the colonial era of the New World; and thirdly, since the papers relate to the activities of a prominent Lisbon merchant during most of Brazil's Golden Age (1695-1760), they make it possible for the first time to comprehend many of the strategies and difficulties that arose in the conduct of trade between Portugal and her most important colony during that aureate era.

The status of Catholicism in Guatemala is truly deplorable,” remarked one Vatican diplomat as he gathered information about the Catholic Church in Guatemala in the 1920s. Its sorry condition, another papal representative contended, originated from the Liberal reform of the 1870s.

Among the nations of the New World, Mexico is probably the country in which the Franciscans worked most intensively. Having been the first missionaries to arrive in Mexico, they covered most of its territory and worked with numerous native groups: Nahuas, Otomies, Mazahuas, Huastecas, Totonacas, Tarascans, Mayas. Their intense missionary activity is evident in the many indigenous languages the Franciscans learned, the grammars and vocabularies they wrote, the numerous Biblical texts they translated, and the catechisms they wrote with ideographical techniques quite alien to the European mind. This activity left an indelible mark in Mexico, a mark still alive in popular traditions, monumental constructions, popular devotions, and folk art. Without a doubt, in spite of the continuous growth of the Spanish and Mestizo populations during colonial times, the favorite concern of Franciscan pastoral activity was the indigenous population. Thus, Franciscan schools and colleges, hospitals, and publications were addressed to it. For their part, the native population showed the same preference for the Franciscans. To the eyes of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, Franciscans and natives appeared as an inseparable body, an association not always welcomed by the Spanish Crown. In fact, since the middle of the sixteenth century bishops and royal officials tried to separate them, assigning secular priests in the native towns and limiting the ecclesiastical authority of the friars.

This essay is in large part inspired by Fr. Antonine Tibesar OFM, whom I had the privilege to meet in 1982 just after I returned from my doctoral research sojourn in Bolivia. Fr. Antonine was for many years the director of the Academy of Franciscan History when that institution had its beautiful campus in Potomac, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. I had corresponded with Fr. Antonine earlier and during my visit enjoyed discussing with him the many facets of Franciscan missions in Latin America. He proudly showed me the large collection of books in the academy library. What impressed me about both Fr. Antonine and the friars I had met in Bolivia during my research was their selflessness and willingness to help a budding scholar—one who at that point had little of scholarship to show. These characteristics got me thinking about the Franciscans and their worldviews and how those must have affected the missions. Although I was determined to write mainly about the indigenous population on the missions (after all, they constituted the vast majority of the mission population and were the ones most profoundly affected by the mission experience), I realized that it was important not to ignore the missionaries. Though few in number—most missions had just one or perhaps two friars—it was their desires for the native population and the overall goals and local organization of the missions they founded that profoundly shaped the human settlements they supervised.

Two years in a row (1885 and 1886) Señora Teresa, a native and resident of Oaxaca de Juárez, pleaded with the court to prosecute her daughter's suitors. The first time, after seeing Primitiva chatting with Juan in the street and finding his love letter in her home, she grew apprehensive. She hurried to court when Primitiva disappeared that evening to accuse the young man of seducing and abducting her 13 year old daughter. Police officers apprehended the young couple and the judge listened to their testimonies. Primitiva swore that she was 16 years old and had run away to her aunt's home because she feared her mother's wrath at discovering the love missive. She further stated that she had in fact broken up with Juan some weeks earlier and that they had never engaged in sexual relations. The following year, Primitiva eloped with a different suitor and her mother surfaced in the historical record once more. This time she indicated that she saw her daughter conversing with Francisco in her home's doorway and after he spirited her naïve daughter away, he returned the next day to taunt her husband, boasting that “he took Primitiva because he was a man.” In both cases, Primitiva's mother demanded swift justice. She asked the judge to prosecute her daughter's seducers to the full extent of the law, arguing that Primitiva lacked the maturity to choose her mate wisely. Assenting to the indignant mother's wishes, judges ordered police officers to pick up both young men to face charges of rapto (abduction by seduction) in municipal court. In the first case, the judge dropped the suit for lack of merit. In the latter case, the judge sided with Señora Teresa's minor daughter, in effect emancipating her from parental authority by allowing her to begin family life with her second suitor, Francisco.

Thus Did the wife of the first Spanish Minister to Mexico describe, in October, 1840, the reception given a letter written by José María Gutiérrez Estrada and published in pamphlet form together with an essay which amplified and clarified his position. The letter, addressed to President Anastasio Bustamante, carried the date August 25, 1840, whereas the pamphlet did not appear until October 18, 1840. The letter pointed to the necessity for a convention to seek a remedy for Mexico’s problems. The remedy advocated by Gutiérrez Estrada in the essay which amplified his position, and which caused such a sensation— was a constitutional monarchy.

In the autumn of 1509 the explorer Alonso de Ojeda landed on the northern coast of South America, near where is today the city of Cartagena, and claimed the region in the name of Spain. As some of the natives appeared inclined to question the acquisitive proclivities of the Crown, Ojeda had read to them the principal articles of the Christian faith, hoping to demonstrate the benign nature of his invasion. Apparently feeling that his obligation to the Church was not yet fulfilled, he then informed the local residents “ especially of the supreme jurisdiction of the pope ” and required that they embrace the Catholic religion. Ojeda barely escaped with his life.

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.

The Figure of Fray Juan de Zumárraga, the first Bishop and Archbishop of Mexico and one of the first prelates of Spanish America, is outstanding for the great zeal he displayed in the defense of the natives of New Spain. It is our purpose here to study, in the light of the documents that are extant, the part^played by the great Archbishop as protector and defender of the helpless natives. With this purpose in view, we shall treat: firstly, of the origin and extent of the powers granted in general to the Protectors of the Indians; secondly, of the first powers that were given to Zumárraga as Protector of Indians, of the manner in which he exercised them, as also of the subsequent limitation of these powers; and thirdly, of the definite recall of these powers. We shall conclude with an appreciation of the work of the first Archbishop of Mexico as Protector of the Indians.