One of the central problems of Spanish missionary activity in the New World was the translation of Christian concepts into native languages. The following document, housed in Rome’s Jesuit archives (ARSI), highlights both the concern and the controversy surrounding this issue in the audiencia of New Granada (modern-day Colombia). On 25 August 1606, audiencia president Juan de Borja issued a decree requiring all members of New Granada’s clergy to provide religious instruction in the Chibcha language. The recent arrival of a small group of Jesuits had intensified a long-standing debate over how best to explain the mysteries of the Christian faith in early-colonial New Granada. Almost three decades earlier, in 1580, the oidor Pedro de Zorrillo, complained to the Council of the Indies that the natives of New Granada were as ignorant (in spiritual matters) now as they had been before the conquest. This ignorance, according to Zorrillo, was the result of the recalcitrance of local priests, most of whom stubbornly refused to learn native languages. Few priests spoke Chibcha and therefore taught the doctrina in Spanish or in some cases, Latin, which the Indians simply repeated like parrots, “como papagayos.”

The Full Realization that the brave Admiral of the Ocean Sea had discovered not a new route to India and the fabled wealth of Cipango and Cathay but an otro mundo, another world, soon became inescapable. Here was another world, with all the implications of the term, inhabited by human beings gathered in various groupings, with varying degrees of development, yet none beyond the stone and precious metals stage, none with a fully integrated system of writing, none beyond the stage of human sacrifices in their religious practices. On what grounds had the crown of Spain a right to disturb the existing conditions? The problem presented was new to a Christian world just awakening from the long and troubled slumber of the Middle Ages. The norms developed by Western Europe in its relations with Islam and the Near East did not seem to apply to the peoples of the otro mundo, or New World.

Woodrow Wilson seldom wavered in his determination to guide the Mexican Revolution along a course acceptable to the United States. From the beginning, he insisted upon the creation of a stable, constitutional, and representative government which could reform social and economic inequities and would provide a hospitable environment for American economic interests. The possibility of involvement in World War I, however, weakened the president's bargaining power with Mexico and reduced his ability to pursue his goals effectively. As Wilson learned to his regret, blatant interference tended to heighten Yankeephobic Mexican nationalism and to create a circumstance which Germany might exploit to her advantage. This problem became critical early in 1917, when the German question profoundly influenced the American government's response to the new Mexican Constitution. Historians hitherto have neglected this relationship, even though it provides an intriguing insight into United States policy toward the government of First Chief Venustiano Carranza.

Fray Toribio Motolinía, one of the famous Twelve Franciscans who arrived in Mexico in 1524 to lay the foundations for the systematic evangelization of the country, was also the author of the first known historical treatises on pre-Hispanic Mexico and on the origins of the Hispanic period. Time has only confirmed the ancient conviction that these writings constitute the principal source of our knowledge of those events. “ Curioso investigador de tiempos y verdades ” and “ hombre que por ninguna cosa dijera sino la mera verdad,” as Mendieta writes of him. Nevertheless it should not be forgotten that Motolinía was first of all a missionary and a man of action; we know that he wrote under obedience or through curiosity, in haste, and in those brief intervals that freedom from other more urgent duties permitted him, and that he was very conscious of the limitations of his literary work and not at all anxious that it be made public. In view of the decision and confidence with which he acted on other occasions during his life, the modesty which he manifested regarding his own writings is surprising. Perhaps he was convinced that he was only “ moderadamente letrado ” (moderately learned) as Sahagún categorizes him. This might help to explain the fact that his more extensive writings either have remained in embryo or have been hurriedly sketched or have not received the exposure that their importance warranted. For the same reasons-and not because of any supposed official suppression, which in Motolinía's case has never been proven—none of the Motolinía works of ethnohistoric character were ever printed until the 19th century.

In the study of colonial history the ability to discover the voice of the people is often hindered by the fact that most extant sources are archival, written by those who held power. In some instances mediated sources have survived which can be read as colonialist text, or can be read subversively, from the perspective of the colonized. Such is the case surrounding the events which began in May 1865 when a traditional Yucatecan religious festival was held in the Maya village of Xaibe, near Corozal in the Northern District of Belize (known at that time as British Honduras). The newly appointed British magistrate laid criminal charges against those celebrants who had engaged in the alleged cruelties of the vaquería or bullfights held in conjunction with the fiesta. In June, nearly four hundred residents of the District, “Persons of mixed Spanish and Indian descent and Indians,” petitioned the House of Assembly demanding redress from a magistrate who had, “systematically harassed and oppressed the people … prevented them from disposing of their commodities before the hours of service on Sunday mornings … and has endeavoured and partly succeeded in putting a stop to the festivities of one of their most sacred and cherished festivals.” The petition was rejected and colonial authorities challenged its authenticity, the integrity and character of the signatories, and the “alien” culture it represented.

“So, just how did you get interested in Latin America anyway?” Latin Americanists who don't have a recognizably Spanish or Portuguese surname are routinely asked this question by acquaintances, distant relatives, recently hired colleagues, and even by that most dreaded of airline passengers, the garrulous fool in the next seat. I don't have a convenient response—I can't claim to be the daughter of missionaries (my last name is a dead giveaway on that account), nor of diplomats or corporative executives posted to São Paulo when I was a young girl. I did have two great aunts from Minsk who took a boat to “America” and ended up in Buenos Aires, but that's a rather slim biographical reed on which to rest my decision to become a Latin Americanist.

Indian policy in Brazil, as in many countries, was and is a confused mixture of religion, humanitarianism, and greed. Almost every kind of system has been tried: open barter during the early years, undisguised slavery until 1570, lay administrators until 1624, missionary tutelage in some form from 1624 to 1759, with intermittent relapses into lay administration, secularization after 1755, with lay directors until 1798; military administration under civil judges until the end of the empire, and finally in 1910 the establishment of the Indian Service under General Rondón.

It is a Great Honor for one who lives in the Wild West to be asked to speak in the cultured capital of our country, for California is remote. In fact, it came into history as “the most outlandish place in the World,” and in some quarters so it is still regarded. A wealthy Italian Duchess, in the seventeenth century, told her Father Confessor that she wished to endow a mission for the heathen. Being asked where she wished it established, she replied, “In the most outlandish place in all the world.” The Jesuits consulted their geography and concluded that the most outlandish place in all the world was California, and there the mission was founded. Father Kino had a long correspondence with the same Duchess, and for their letters the Huntington Library, a few years ago, paid $18,000. Bigger sums have been paid for letters written to a lady, but seldom for letters written to a lady by a Jesuit priest.

The franciscan custody, or Minor Province, of Rio Verde in Mexico occupied a comparatively small section of that large country. It lay between the present cities of San Luis Potosí and Tampico. We can say that its boomerang-shaped territory made up part of the southeastern part of the modern state of San Luis Potosí and extended northward to the southwestern section of the modern state of Tamaulipas, and possibly into the southernmost tip of the state of Nuevo León. Missionary endeavor soon encompassed this section of New Spain to the north of Mexico City. With a sort of holy emulation the Franciscan provinces vied with one another in staking claims—spiritual claims—to large sections of the “land of the Chichimecs” or marauding pagan Indians to the north of Aztec domination. The new section of which we will speak in this paper is called “Rio Verde” from a tributary river of the same name, which flows into the Río Panuco and thence to the Atlantic. It was called “verde” either because of its dark color, due to depth, or because of the green verdure along its banks.

Since it was the Franciscan Province of San Pedro y San Pablo of Michoacán that began the work of evangelizing Rio Verde and continued it throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it is necessary to review in a few brief sentences the early history of this Franciscan province.

During the three centuries of the colonial period, Franciscan friars devoted themselves to the Christianization and civilization of the natives and the spiritual care of settlers in all the regions now comprising the nine Spanish American Republics of South America, in the Portuguese American Republic of Brazil, and even in the Guianas; and though the various units of the Franciscan Order suffered considerable reverses during the wars for independence and subsequent disorders of the nineteenth century, the sons of St. Francis are today in all these countries with the exception of Venezuela and the Guianas.

The genesis for this special issue on "Words and Deeds" was a panel discussion held in conjunction with the January 1997 joint meeting of the Conference on Latin American History and the American Historical Association in New York City. Participants Richard Boyer, Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, Kimberly Hanger, and Jane Landers presented the papers included in this volume. The essays all flowed together so nicely and initiated such a lively exchange among panelists and the audience that the editors of The Americas asked us to prepare them for publication, incorporating some of the commentary offered at the session. What you read in the following pages is a result of that process, although we still think it rather ironic that a journal produced by the Academy of American Franciscan History should want to include articles with so many off-color words and references to sexual conduct and violence!

The fact that these essays generated such interest as conference papers and appear in this special issue of The Americas confirms the value cultural historians are placing on the study of insults, conflicts, and other confrontational behavior to reconstruct societal norms and worldviews and assess challenges to them. What constituted an insult or defined anti-social behavior reveals much about what the community considered each person's position in it; resistance to one's assigned role and identity or objection to someone else misconstruing this identity unmasked a sense of injustice that community members, especially its leaders, had to rectify in order to maintain social order.

Hispanic Florida was characterized by one truth: it was a failure, from whatever angle you look at its history. Spain's efforts in Florida were unsuccessful. She pursued a policy of bankruptcy with regard to that land. In 1763 she readily turned Florida over to the English to get back Havana. Today's Cuban capital was worth the whole of Florida. When she came back in 1783 new ideas could not stem the tide of failure of Spain's first period and a half century later she again gave up Florida, this time to the United States.