Writing in 1904, the Chilean intellectual Nicolás Palacios bitterly complained that his fellow-countrymen inhabiting the southern frontier provinces were “orphans” in their own land. The simile was appropriate. Since the 1870's, the government, through its land policy, systematically and deliberately had excluded Chile's wage-labor class from property ownership in the frontier. As a direct result, many Chilean laborers fell to peonage while European immigrants and wealthy Chileans acquired ownership of much of the public domain. Shortly before World War I, social and political pressures in Chile forced the government to end this discriminatory policy and to begin distributing the remainder of the public domain to nativeborn settlers.

When I began this extended period of research into the history of nineteenth-century Peru, I was burdened with the ideas drawn from the writings of Bernard Moses and Desdedives du Dezert. In the main, they seem to think that by the end of the 18th century, the Church in Peru had grown stagnant and formalistic, forgetful of the heritage of Santo Toribio, San Martín, San Solano, or Santa Rosa.

The Latin Americans watched with fascination and concern as the dramatic events of November of 1903 progressed in the Isthmus of Panama. There, early in that eventful month, the interests of Panamanian patriots who long had sought the independence of their region from Colombia and of the United States which wanted to begin the construction of a vitally needed inter-ocean canal coincided. The Panamanians declared their independence on November 3, and the presence of United States forces to prevent the suppression of that revolution by Colombia assured its success. On November 6, Secretary of State John Hay ordered the United States consul in Panama to enter into relations with the new government, thereby extending to it de facto recognition. De jure recognition followed on November 13, when Panama's representative to the United States, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, was received officially in Washington. Five days later, Hay and Bunau-Varilla signed the treaty which gave to the United States the use, occupation, and control of a zone of land ten miles wide, extending across the isthmus from Colon to Panama City. In effect, Panama ceded sovereignty over that zone. The United States, for its part, guaranteed the independence of Panama, paid the sum of $10,000,000 to the new government, and promised an annual subsidy of $250,000.

While historians have shown unusual agreement in their critical assessment of the results of Philander Knox's Central American policy, they have frequently disagreed on the reasons for this failure, as well as on the goals of the Secretary of State. An examination of one of Knox's loan projects — the Guatemalan refunding scheme — throws light on these two issues. The record of this futile four-year attempt to reorganize the country's financial structure reveals a State Department approach relying eventually on the use of coercive diplomatic methods. These techniques were resourceful, but ineffectual, and contributed to an unproductive and acrimonious diversion with the British Foreign Office. The negotiations suggest that the Secretary and other Department officers sought goals broader in nature than national economic or strategic interest. The extent of their objectives may have contributed to the unsatisfactory outcome of the case.

After the coup d'etat which established the Estado Nôvo, Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas gradually destroyed two organizations that had helped to create the excited atmosphere in which the events of November 10, 1937 occurred: the Brazilian branch of the German National Socialist Party (NSDAP) and the Ação Integralista Brasileira. Vargas eliminated the first because it was a threat to Brazilian security and sovereignty, the second because it was a danger to his regime. Though apparently Vargas was never serious in his flirtation with the greenshirted Integralistas, he did welcome their support of his government until he consolidated control. Integralista sympathy for and possible connection with Nazi Germany precluded Getúlio's allying himself with the greenshirts but not from using them. He attacked the Nazi Party because it tended to preserve German nationalism among German immigrants and hindered their Brazilianization.

The notarial archive of the Mexican city of Puebla de los Angeles, virtually complete from 1540 on, is a treasure-house of information about social and economic life in the early colony. Many of its earliest documents are, however, in deplorable physical condition, unindexed and chronologically unorganized, which makes them extremely difficult and time-consuming to consult. In order to remedy this condition and make the archive more accessible to scholars both in Mexico and elsewhere, I have indexed and extracted from microfilm the substance of over 1,600 documents executed between 1540 and 1555. These will probably appear in a two-volume collection published by the Editorial Jus in Mexico City. The documents make fascinating reading. There are wills, dowries, contracts, law-suits, partnerships, promissory notes, rentals, powers of attorney, as well as bills of sale itemizing every imaginable kind of property from real estate to livestock to produce to general merchandise.

Although virtually unstudied, the introduction of the philosophy of positivism into Chile acted as a catalyst upon the development of that country during the decade before the War of the Pacific. Scholars have given appropriate attention to the influence of positivism as it became significant in other Latin American countries during the eighteen-seventies, and Leopold Zea has discussed the importance of that philosophic system in Chile during the years which followed the west coast conflict of 1879-1883. However, despite the ever increasing number of articles and monographs dealing with positivism, the historians of Latin America have ignored the philosophy's growth in the Republic of Chile before the war and the effect of that growth upon the ideologies already extant in the Pacific coast nation.

On the windswept heights near the Bolivian mining camp of Catavi on December 21, 1942, in the center of a rocky lunar landscape which dwarfs man but enlarges his passions, a mass of Indian and mestizo tin miners and their families, some 8,000 strong, trudged stubbornly down a road toward an emplacement of 700 Bolivian Army troops and Carabineros watching them through the sights of machine guns, rifles and a trench mortar. Women and children marching in front, they came from the nearby mines of Llallagua and Siglo XX to support the striking Catavi workers. The newcomers were unarmed and carried a red banner in their front ranks.

No Revolution worthy of the name has stopped at its national borders. For good and for evil revolution is exportable. Numerous studies have been made of the international and even the global results of such modern upheavals as the English, American, French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions. Although several treatises have been published on the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804, and its creation of the first Negro republic and second independent nation in the New World, there has appeared no full-scale survey of its foreign significance. Inescapably, many histories of the Dominican Republic indicate the pervasive postrevolutionary relations of Haiti and her eastern neighbor on Hispaniola. Dominican life has been moulded in every sense by reactions to Haitian events, particularly the Haitian attempt to assimilate that republic and several eastward migrations of Haitian people. Otherwise, studies of the Haitian uprising have been limited to internal changes or the extensive diplomatic relations of the Black Republic.

William Howard Taft was a central participant at the birth of American imperialism. He won praises for his work with the Philippine Islands, first as head of the commission created to restore the Islands to a peaceful state, then as the first civil governor. He gave up this office to become Secretary of War under President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905. In his position in the Cabinet Taft had direct or indirect oversight over most of America's scattered empire.

By March, 1909, when Taft succeeded Roosevelt in the Presidency, the constitution of the American empire had largely been formulated, even if strictly speaking, it had not been formalized. Civil governments had been set up in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippine Islands. The “insular cases” of 1901 had defined the limits of claims of the dependent peoples upon the Constitution of the United States; the new possessions were neither foreign nor domestic, and thus even though the Constitution did not follow the flag, tariffs might. The only armed resistance to American control—in the Philippines—had long since ended. It was then to the surprise and dismay of President Taft that tiny Puerto Rico immediately presented a hostile challenge to his new administration, the constitutional rebellion known as the appropriation crisis of 1909.

Through the decades, historians who have dealt with the Mexican Reform either directly or in passing have formulated a series of generalizations which have come to be accepted as giving an accurate analysis of the movement. The tenor of their writings is that insofar as the economic program of the Liberals was concerned, more harm than good was done. According to the historians, the Reformers generally failed in their attempt to restructure the nation into one of small property owners by making available to the people the real estate held formerly by civil and ecclesiastical corporations. The properties disamortized in 1856 and then nationalized or confiscated in 1859 got into the hands of hacendados and land speculators or enriched corrupt politicians and military commanders. Indian communities were despoiled of their communal lands. The Church continued secretly to control a great portion of the property through simulated sales in which devout Catholics opposed to the Reform bought the properties of the Church and held the real estate until times became more settled and the ecclesiastical authorities could reclaim the patrimony. The common man derived little benefit from the forced redistribution of property; rather the wealthy landowners became wealthier. In political terms, the historians have considered the Reform as much more successful because the Liberals emerged victorious after twelve years marked by civil war and foreign intervention in Mexican affairs, and by their triumph broke the power of the conservative forces which would never again control the destiny of the nation. These historians have never offered much in the way of concrete proof to support their widely accepted and often repeated generalizations.

The man of the Revolution disputed the very nature of Mexico with the Roman Catholic. The revolutionary, whether Callista or Cardenista, believed that the church had had a pernicious influence on the history of Mexico. He claimed that Mexico could not become a modern nation until the government had eradicated all the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic, on the other hand, was convinced that his religion was the basis of Mexico's nationality. Above all, the Catholic believed that Mexico needed a system of order. He was convinced that his faith had brought order and peace to Mexico in the colonial period, and as the faith declined, Mexico degenerated into anarchy.

The Mexica people, nomads forced southward by the bellicose Chichimecas of the north in the early fourteenth century, received revelation from their principal deity, Huitzilopochtli, which would terminate their wanderings. Appearing in dreams to the priest Cuauhtloquetzqui, Huitzilopochtli stated that on the spot where the heart of his slain nephew, Copil, was thrown, there would grow a great nopal cactus where an eagle would make his nest and dry his wings in the morning sun. This site he further stated would be named Tenochtitlan, place of the nopal, and there the people were to build a great city from which they would become the masters of the surrounding regions. The announcement of this revelation was made by Cuauhtloquetzqui, and, locating the great nopal on an island in the center of the Lake of Texcoco, a temple to Huitzilopochtli was constructed on the site in the year 1325.

The Republic of Colombia was the first Latin American nation to which the United States extended a formal act of recognition in 1822. This country was also the first of these new republics with which the United States negotiated a treaty of friendship, commerce, and navigation. The importance of incorporating the principle of religious liberty in our first commercial treaty with Latin America was revealed in the emphasis that John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, placed on it in his initial instructions to Richard Clough Anderson, Jr., Minister Plenipotentiary to Colombia. Religious liberty was one of the specific articles stipulated by Adams for insertion in the prospective commercial treaty.

In mid-November of 1889, elements of the armed forces stationed in Rio de Janeiro formally overthrew the Brazilian monarchy. Analyses of these events always include the discontent of the army as one of the major factors in the downfall of the empire, along with the disillusionment of the planters following the abolition of slavery without compensation, the gradual acceptance of the inevitability of a republic by Brazil's political elite, and the “religious question,” that is, the conflict between secularism and ultramontanism in the 1870's. Many of the older studies of these events, such as Oliveira Vianna's, stress the armed forces as the major factor in the downfall of the empire; however, several more recent works, for example, that of José Maria Bello, relegate the officers to a far less important role. In this article, both these views will be considered, and then the composition and activities of the Brazilian armed forces will be examined in greater detail.

The destructive results of the Chaco War have left an indelible mark on Bolivia and Paraguay. This essay has been undertaken to explore the body of diplomatic material regarding the efforts both to prevent and to halt this useless blood-letting, for it is felt that such an essay would be helpful to any person studying the Chaco dispute in the future. It should be made clear, however, that this is not a definitive bibliography, for it has been limited both to material the author believes would be most useful and to material that can be studied in the United States. Since this essay is concerned mainly with diplomatic aspects, it generally has avoided comment on material dealing specifically with the military phases of the dispute. Such material has been discussed, however, when it also contained information relating to diplomatic matters. The military consideration of the Chaco War deserves a bibliography of its own, for there is a continually growing body of material concerning this subject.

Most diverse are the evaluations of the Chibchas and their civilization and even the descriptions of that civilization. Steward and Faron, for example, call it “The Greatest Chiefdom” of South America, while Kroeber calls it a “realm,” Oberg calls it a “Feudal Type State” and others use the word “Kingdoms.” At any rate, a review of some evaluations will illustrate the confusion about the stature of the Chibchas among the aborigines of the New World and at the same time serve as an introduction to their civilization.

The relatively small degree of racial discrimination against the Negro in Latin America generally has been traced by North American historians to Spanish acceptance of the African Negro as a human being, not perpetually destined for slavery nor inferior to other races. In contrast to the status of the Negro slave in colonial North America, Spanish laws and attitudes are thought to have provided in colonial Spanish America a climate of opinion which promoted miscegenation and afforded the slave a variety of legal avenues to freedom. In support of this explanation of reduced racial discimination, notarial records of manumission from the colonial period and the thirteenth-century legal code, Las siete partidas , are prominently displayed as evidence of the Spaniards' belief in “equality among men” and the transformation of the principle of equality into practice.

A social revolution must concern itself immediately with the past, since it is a basic conviction of the revolutionist that the moribund and corrupt order which causes society's distress makes impossible the kind of future that he sees as desirable and necessary. Old institutions, structures, and habits of thought must be abolished or severely modified, and persons who direct or personify those vestiges must change, step aside, or be removed from positions of power and influence.

Religious institutions and beliefs present a peculiarly complicated problem to a social revolution. Invariably associated with traditional ways, they are often too deeply rooted in the national mentality and sentiment to admit of any easy or rapid modification. Obliteration, even if though to be the desirable solution, is usually recognized as impossible; and to change mass attitudes by persuasion alone, is at best a long and uncertain process.

On June 26, 1861, Juan A. Quintero, special agent for the Confederate States of America, sat in the palace in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, listening to Governor Santiago Vidaurri relate a familiar but nevertheless surprising story. He had long been searching for some method whereby he could effectively resist the federal government, Vidaurri began, and now he hoped that he had found it. Initially he had thought that a Republic of Sierra Madre might be the solution, and many observers on both sides of the Rio Grande felt that this was the course he would pursue. But, for various reasons, that had been discarded. The new Confederacy presented a different alternative—one that he believed might be feasible. Would Southern President Jefferson Davis agree to annex the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León and Coahuila? Thus began a relationship that endured for over three years and did not end until the powerful caudillo fell from power.