In spring 1939 Sonoran ranchers shared with one another the latest mockery of Mexico's president, whom they ridiculed as trompa chula—a reference to his fat lips. It came in the form of a poem:

Siervo de los rusos, patrón de extranjeros,
que a los mexicanos has dejado en cueros
como una consecuencia de tu obstinación
que es madre y señora de tu entendimiento.
Por que es muy difícil que pueda un jumento
aceptar alguna rectificatión.

Confórmate, hermano, con volver a Uruapán,
piensa que a los brutos de cierto los matan,
y si has de hacer algo en nuestro favor,
una cosa puedes de qué estar ufano
córtale las uñas a tu ilustre hermano,
Lombardo Toledano.

The political legacy of Lázaro Cárdenas is marked by a striking paradox. On the one hand, Cárdenas as president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940 presided over the most radical phase of the Mexican Revolution or what some historians call the “Second Revolution.” He was instrumental in organizing industrial workers and peasants at the national level and incorporating both groups into the reorganized government party, the Partido de la Revolutión Mexicana (PRM), that had as its declared purpose the establishment of a “workers' democracy” in Mexico. Under his leadership the government supported the demands of industrial workers for higher wages and improved working conditions, greatly expanded the distribution of land to the peasantry, established new welfare programs, nationalized the railroad and petroleum industries and inaugurated a program of socialist education in the public schools. The prestige of Cárdenas as the foremost leader of the radical phase of the Revolution was enhanced by the fact that he, unlike many of his contemporaries, never attempted to use political office for personal financial gain; he was not a rich man when he completed his term of office as president. At the time of his death in 1970, Cárdenas was eulogized as “the greatest figure produced by the Revolution… an authentic revolutionary who aspired to the greatness of his country, not personal aggrandizement.” On the other hand, Cárdenas was the architect of the corporatist system of interest representation, including labor, peasant and business organizations, that provided the institutional framework of what Crane Brinton has called the “Thermidor,” i.e., the conservative reaction to the radical phase of the revolutionary process, that began in Mexico in approximately 1940. The institutions developed by Cárdenas were utilized by his successors to curtail the very reforms, such as agrarian and labor reform and socialist education, that had been central to his reform program. Moreover Cárdenas facilitated the transition to a more conservative era by naming as his successor Manuel Ávila Camacho, who was known to favor a moderation of the reform process, rather than Francisco Múgica, the preferred candidate of the radicals in the government. In short, Cárdenas played a decisive role both in presiding over the radical phase of the Revolution and in launching and shaping the relatively conservative post-1940 era. The paradox of the political legacy of Cárdenas is that though the seemingly radical reforms he carried out had a lasting impact upon Mexican politics, the impact was predominantly conservative rather than radical. This essay will endeavor to explain the paradoxical political legacy of Lázaro Cárdenas by focusing upon his ideology, the institutional reforms he carried out while president, and the impact of those reforms after 1940.

Although he lacked express authority to do so Federico Larrañaga used official funds to create, and then sustain, a newspaper in Panamá. He was then the Peruvian Consul General and his journal, named El Canal de Panamá in honor of the then-current effort of De Lessups and his company to open a route across the Isthmus, first appeared in early 1881 and continued to be published under his management until April 1883. Originally designed to be a tri-weekly, published in three languages (Spanish, English, and French), it offered, first in a tri-weekly form and then later in weekly and daily versions, a vigorous rivalry to the long-established Panama Star and Herald, at that time basically an English-language daily with a Spanish section.

An analysis of Peronism constitutes an obligatory point of departure of any study of Argentina’s history since 1945. The advancement of the popular masses toward the Plaza de Mayo on 17 October 1945, clamoring for their new leader (the Colonel Juan Domingo Perón) inaugurated a new era for this nation. For some, especially for those who marched on that day, it represented the beginning of a period of hope. For others, those who looked with stupor at the crowds “invading” the city, this was the start of a decade of undemocratic practices and populist pseudo-fascist reforms. Perón’s rise to the presidency in 1946 would find the majority of the Argentine intelligentsia in the ranks of the opposition. The intellectuals were particularly worried by the emergence of this political movement which, in their eyes, was a combination of a local incarnation of European fascism and the ‘barbaric’ regime of the caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas. In 1956, the writer Ezequiel Martínez Estrada summarized the horror that this march signified for the “decent people.” He declared it the threat of a “San Bartolomé del Barrio Norte” (an affluent neighborhood in Buenos Aires) and characterized the Peronists as “those sinister demons of the plains which Sarmiento described in El Facundo.” In his description Perón was depicted as a local Franco, a Mussolini or a Hitler. Only those intellectuals who defended different versions of local nationalism joined the enterprise of the colonel-turned-popular-politician and put their hopes in him.

At the end of the eighteenth century, Guanajuato was one of the richest and most cultured provincial cities in New Spain. Mining had for years been a source of wealth, and the provincial aristocracy of Guanajuato could easily compete both in culture and in gracious living with the upper classes of viceregal Mexico. The Alamán family belonged to that upper circle of Guanajuato. They were wealthy and, on their maternal side, their ancestry sprang from the better houses of Castile. When, in 1792, the first male child was born to the family, he was christened in the best aristocratic tradition, for he was baptized Lucas Ignacio José Joaquín Pedro de Alcantara Juan Bautista Francisco de Paula Alamán.

Carlos Martínez de Irujo y Tacón was first secretary of the Spanish Embassy in London, when he received a promotion and transfer as minister plenipotentiary of the Spanish legation in Philadelphia, replacing the chargé d'affaires, José Jáudenes y Nebot, who returned to Spain for a new assignment. Carlos Martínez de Irujo arrived in Philadelphia in the summer of 1796 and assumed his duties. Soon after arrival, the diplomat met, and apparently was captivated by, Sally McKean, the vivacious sixteen-year old daughter of Pennsylvania's chief justice and one of the state's most respected citizens—Thomas McKean. Two years later the couple married at St. Augustine Parochial Church in Philadelphia. Sally McKean, being from an influential American family, along with her own charm, grace, intelligence and beauty, contributed greatly to the success of her husband's mission in the United States. In 1802, as a result of his diplomatic services in Philadelphia, Martínez de Irujo received the Spanish aristocratic title of Marquis of Casa Irujo, with his Philadelphia-born wife becoming the first Marquise of Casa Irujo. He served as Spanish minister in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., until 1808, when he was reassigned to Spain, accompanied by his wife and their six year old son. This Spanish diplomat culminated a brilliant professional career when he was named Secretary of State in 1819.

Padre Junípero Serra, O.FM., Apostle of California and candidate for sainthood, is a many-sided personality. His reputation for sanctity alone has caused one of the greatest research projects in Spanish mission history in this century. His activity as an empire-builder and administrator is a fascinating theme for many writers. Best known as an apostolic missionary among the Indians, he was also a penetrating professor and a much-sought preacher. It would be impossible, even in a more extended paper, to consider every facet of the personality and all the interests of the apostolate—ranging from mail routes to mission methods—of this remarkable, dynamic man. His writings include the whole gamut of existence from rocks to the Holy Trinity. He moved as easily on the frontier as in the classroom. Though he aspired to high sanctity, he could remain quite human, even indulging in an occasional pleasantry.

Lorenzo Barbosa had a big problem with his daughter Josefa. In June 1821, in Buenos Aires, young Josefa Barbosa was in love with Pascual Cruz. What bothered Lorenzo was that Pascual was a mulatto, while the Barbosa family was white. When the couple asked his permission to marry, Lorenzo vehemently opposed the union and withheld his consent. He was acting within his rights, since minor children (men and women younger than 25 and 23 respectively) were required by law to obtain parental permission to marry. To bolster his case, Lorenzo invoked the power of a colonial law issued in 1778, known as the Royal Pragmatic on marriage, which gave parents the right to block their children's marriages to “unequal partners.” Even though Buenos Aires had broken away from Spain in 1810, most colonial laws regarding family life, including the pragmatic, continued in force into the national period. But just as in colonial times, children retained the right to challenge parental opposition in court. If they chose to do so, the resulting case was known as a disenso.

Located at the extreme periphery of the Spanish Empire, Paraguay suffered from its political role as a buffer state against the rival Portuguese colony of Brazil and the hostile Indian nations. Accordingly, during the late colonial period, extended tours of military duty contributed to the province's severe labor shortage. But of even greater consequence were the combined effects of Paraguay's monocrop economy and its economic dependency within the Imperial commercial capitalist system. Best described as a chain-like structure officially beginning in Spain and extending to the remote province via Panama, Lima, and Buenos Aires, this system served to depress Paraguay's economy and appropriate a great portion of its wealth, leaving the majority of the people in dire poverty.

Samuel J. Prescod's path into Barbados' House of Assembly is singular in the island's history. The first Afro-Barbadian to sit on the island's highest elective body, he became its first representative from Bridgetown, the most populous and colorful constituency in Barbados. Most significantly, Prescod's electoral victory on June 6, 1843 symbolized the primary triumph of genuine freedom for the Barbadian working class, an accomplishment the Colonial Office was unable to implement in the island's community for almost thirty years through forced imperial legislation.

The story of fray pedro de aguado, O.F.M., and his work is not a happy one. He was a humble friar who had spent the best years of his life in the New Kingdom of Granada preaching to the Indians. He had also taken the pains of gathering material for the writing of a history of the area with which he was acquainted. Back in Spain in 1576 as a representative of his province, Aguado completed the writing, went through the endless protocols, submitted his work for the examination of cosmographers, and secured due licenses to print—only to see his books fail to appear for one reason or another. And as years went by and publication was not forthcoming, Fray Pedro, who apparently had given up hope, died in an unknown place at an unknown date. Spanish bibliographers thereafter were meticulous enough to include his name in their lists of authors. Aguado was even copied by other historians who were lucky or curious enough to look for and find the manuscripts. But apart from these bibliographers and historians, mice and moths became the ones to profit most from the perusal of the accounts that the friar had so carefully compiled.

As part of its religious, social and political mission, personnel of Mexico's Holy Office of the Inquisition were organized into a brotherhood, the Cofradía de San Pedro Martir, patron saint of the Inquisition. Although the Inquisition had functioned in New Spain from 1522, the brotherhood was not formally established until 1656. San Pedro Martir differed in many respects from other urban and rural confraternities in the viceroyalty. An outgrowth of Cruce-signati in the medieval inquisition, the Cofradía founded by Pope Innocent IV in 1252 after the murder of Inquisitor Peter Martir of Verona, came to Spain in the late fifteenth century. In the Iberian peninsula “Colegios de Familiares” formed and later developed into Cofradías whose membership was drawn from the Familiatura, a body of non-salaried Inquisition police known as Familiares.

Conventional wisdom holds that two sharp breaks occurred historically in Mexican church-state relations: the first during the Reforma (1857-1861), and the second during the Revolution (1910-1920). These breaks reflected growing estrangement and hostility between secular and ecclesiastical authorities, culminating finally, with the Constitution of 1917, in the most anti-clerical and even anti-religious legislation ever enacted in the hemisphere. This paper has no quarrel with the above interpretation as far as it goes. What I will argue here is that, despite these very real changes, certain basic continuities have persisted in the conceptualization of the relationship between Church and State. Moreover, a number of specific quarrels and modes of government response have roots that extend well into the colonial period. Anti-monasticism has some precedent in the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, and the nationalization of Church property in 1859 and again in 1917, in the royal Consolidation of 1804.

This article is divided into two parts. The first deals with Alcedo and his collaborators; the second treats his correspondence with the Scottish historian, William Robertson.

When Antonio de Alcedo y Bexerano published his valuable five-volume Diccionario geográfico-histórico de … América … (Madrid: 1786-1789), he was painfully aware that, given its magnitude, it inevitably contained errors and omissions. To remedy these deficiencies in a revised edition that he planned to bring out later but never did, he requested in his prologue that readers inform him about mistakes and shortcomings they might detect. Exactly how many heeded his call, we do not know; but prominent among those who offered assistance and whose correspondence has been found were three: two expatriated Spanish American Jesuits, the Mexican, Agustín Pablo de Castro, and the Argentinian, Francisco Javier Iturri, and the former Spanish governor and commander-general of Guayana, Colonel Manuel Centurión. Only the letters of Castro and Centurión to Alcedo are published here. Those of Iturri, one of which has already appeared, will be published later.