The cutting and shipment of wood is one of the oldest and most important aspects of Brazilian trade with Portugal. The rich red dye produced from the tree called pau brasil or Brazil wood was esteemed so highly that at first it outweighed in importance all other products of the colony. Most historians agree that the very name of Brazil is derived from this wood. Guarded as a royal monopoly throughout the colonial period, the wood trade ranked with the sugar, tobacco and gold of Brazil as one of the principal sources of revenue of the Portuguese crown. When woods for building were added to the exportation of pau brasil, the trade assumed a new importance, for these woods furnished the mother country with the sinews both of war and commerce, providing the hulls and masts of countless vessels that defended and brought together the distant domains of the Portuguese empire.

On April 12 1939, from his place of exile in San Antonio, Texas, José de Jesús Manríquez y Zárate, first bishop of Huejutla, Mexico, wrote a pastoral letter to his priests and people, exhorting them to work for the cause of Juan Diego’s beatification. This was the first effective step in the process of canonizing the indigenous peasant who in 1531 is said to have experienced the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The story of these apparitions has been the subject of intense controversy, especially with regard to their historical reality and the existence of Juan Diego.

One day, a young romance writer who has lost his place to urban expansion in Buenos Aires overhears this intimate conversation coming from another bedroom in an all-women's residence hall. An “invisible houseguest” in Madame Bazan's pensionado for middle-class women of all ages, Mauricio Ridel works on finishing a happy ending for his latest serialized novel. During the writing process, however, he finds himself distracted by the sounds and rhythms of the house, his focus carried away to the conversations in the house on fashion, family life and female emancipation. Careful not to indicate his presence in any way (for he has agreed to respect the privacy of the women who live there), Ridel listens in to the conversations between female residents from the comfort of his assigned room. Believing themselves removed from male listeners, the female characters of Juana Manuela Gorriti's Oasis en la vida (1888) openly discuss their concerns and desires in the security of enclosed spaces. The dialogic sequence that begins this essay demonstrates the relief that a group of unnamed women experience when removing their uncomfortable clothing. They complain about the weight and needless complexity of their fashions and even flesh out a conspiracy theory concerning a few of those crazy designers. As the women contemplate the changes that tomorrow's fashions will inevitably bring, their soft, sweet voices appear punctuated by the incongruous thud of tossed garments.

Essential to the study of the Mesta in New Spain is the publication of the text of its constitution, not too available in Spanish, in English dress. This document throws new light on the relation of government to the pastoral industry, up to the present a sadly neglected aspect of Spanish colonial history. The importance of the problem is evident in view of the wealth and extent of the sheep and cattle business, and its relationship to the whole economy of New World colonization. Any adequate study of the grazing industry in New Spain would be impossible without some knowledge of the Mesta constitution of 1537, the basic instrument which regulated this industry until 1574; in the latter year the constitution was changed by the addition of numerous amendments which indicate considerable growth in the pastoral industry. Unfortunately, the minutes of the semiannual meetings of the Mesta have not been uncovered, if indeed they exist at all. Such documents would provide a picture of the grazing industry in operation and would be useful in a more complete investigation of the subject.

In the mid-sixteenth century the peninsula of Yucatán, with the remnants of its ancient Maya glories sleeping in the bush, had little to attract corsairs or contraband traders. When, after nearly twenty years of struggle, the Spaniards finally overcame the resistance of the stubborn Maya in the 1540’s, French intruders had already made many profitable voyages to the Antilles and extended their activities to the coast of Tierra Firme. More than another decade was to pass before they Cast a speculative eye on the possibilities of this later acquisition of the Spanish Crown.

The general framework of the provisional chapter appears to rest upon discussion of the expansion of European Christianity in the New World, of factors which influenced the course of this religious expansion, and of the influence which, in its turn, the Christian religion exercised on the new society. The emphasis of the entire discussion falls, therefore, upon Christianity, and the religious heritages of the Indians and Negroes are noticed only as providing elements absorbed by a syncretism with Christianity.

At a time when Positivism and “the scientific method” are still—with some notable exceptions—the great shibboleths of North American education on all levels and in almost every department of the curriculum, including the “humanities,” it is particularly enlightening to learn of (if not by) the experiences of a neighboring nation where Positivism was for several decades the official political philosophy of a dictatorial régime and, by government decree, the universally taught philosophy of education.

In 1850, after four terms in the United States Congress as a Whig from the Dayton, Ohio district, Robert Cumming Schenck decided not to run for reelection. Despondent over the recent death of his wife, Schenck yearned for a restful stay in a warmer clime. Consequently, he applied for a diplomatic post, the customary reward for loyal party service. President Millard Fillmore, a fellow Whig, obliged Schenck with an appointment as Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to Brazil. A railroad promoter, land speculator and politician, Schenck had few formal qualifications for diplomatic service other than the confidence of Secretary of State Daniel Webster and a fluent command of the French language. These were, however, more substantial assets than most nineteenth century American diplomats could boast, and to them Schenck added a brisk, businesslike manner, immense energy and a certain gruff charm.

I SHOULD like to ask you gentlemen to allow me, in the very beginning, to set limits to my task. The most imposing of these limitations are my own. It would be unbecoming of me to make a tacit profession of authority on the Enlightenment in English America by discoursing on the subject. I have, moreover, never made a frontal assault on the broad field of theology in the Latin world, for I regard the subject as universal, well-known to historical theologists, and when known for Europe generally predictable for America. There is also a relation between the Enlightenment in Spain and the Enlightenment in America, but what happens in America cannot be absolutely foretold by what happens in Spain. I shall therefore treat Spain, when I treat it at all, as only a back-drop for the American scene.

Scholars are in substantial agreement that Latin American constitutionalism leaves much to be desired.

First, there is the wide gap between constitutional formulations and actual political practice. No one would contend that any constitution, Latin American or otherwise, corresponds exactly to reality. There are provisions in the United States Constitution which are no better observed than are those of the Latin American documents. Even so, there can be little doubt that the gulf between theory and reality is far wider in much of Latin America than it is in many other parts of the world. Though many provisions of other constitutions do not correspond to actual political practice, Latin American stipulations on significant principles of government are often so much at variance with reality as to be totally misleading for the description of their political systems. Professor Martin C. Needler puts it quite bluntly:

Simón Bolívar has sometimes been called “The George Washington of South America.” Certainly his achievements are so well known as to deserve the apt appelation “El Libertador” by which he is known by many of the neighbors of the United States of America south of the border.

One of the most important propaganda influences in Bolívar's success was the achievement of a good press in nations sympathetic to his cause. He was quite reticent to see the United States in a dominant role in the future regarding the areas he was trying to free from Spanish rule. Because he believed that Britain was “ruler of the world” during this period of world history, he was particularly interested that favorable images of him should appear in the British press.

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.