This will be a short account of the origin, growth, and death of the great parliament of Castile, the Cortes. That sounds a bit dramatic, but there’s nothing to be done about it, for the history of the Cortes of Castile has the elements of a proper tragedy: the self-destruction of a nation by pride, parochialism, and arrogance. One of my colleagues, now deceased, used to account for the aberrations of Spanish collective behavior by ascribing them to “Spanish individualism.” I can only guess that what he had in mind was that Spaniards, when they act in groups, act differently from the rest of us—in which he was certainly correct. Now, when group actions become consistent, formalized, and ritualistic, I call that pattern of conduct an institution, regardless of whether or not someone has taken the trouble to codify it. Institutions, then, have their origin and their being in the minds of men acting collectively.

CIVIL congregation of the Indians in New Spain was one phase of the continuing program which Spanish colonial officials had been conducting since earliest days in the New World to civilize and Christianize American native groups by urbanizing them. Application of this doctrine to New Spain as a whole in the years which began in the seventeenth century has been discussed elsewhere. Here the purpose is to fit the general procedures to a specific case by describing in detail the congregation process as it affected San Pedro Yolox, a small center of Chinantec Indian hamlets in the Sierra de Juarez, lying in the modern Mexican state of Oaxaca.

Magellan’s abortive attempts to introduce baptism among the natives of the island of Cebu during the month of April of 1521 and the more successful efforts of the Spanish missionaries to preach the Gospel following the arrival of the Legazpi-Urdaneta expedition at Cebu on February 13, 1565 occurred during the initial and the culminating chapters respectively of the “spiritual conquest” of those native peoples of America and the Far East who were to enter the orbit of Spanish culture. During April of 1521, as Magellan was transforming himself into a lay missionary, Hernán Cortés was making the final preparations for the siege of Tenochtitlán. Its successful issue on August 13, 1521 laid the foundation not only of the Spanish Empire in the New World, but also it provided the Spaniards with the base of operations from which eventually they could extend their power to the Philippines. It was Cortés’ conquest of the Aztec Confederation in 1521 which enabled the Catholic missionaries of Spain to undertake one of the most extensive expansions in the history of the Christian Church. In 1565 the Spanish Church for its Philippine enterprise was able to draw upon a vast storehouse of missionary experience acquired in both North and South America. Magellan’s apostolic labors, ill-starred and brief though they were, exemplify many of the permanent features of the Spanish missionary enterprise. The Magellan episode also illustrates how his successors after 1565 did in fact profit from the Circumnavigator’s errors of judgment and tactics.

AT the accession of Isabella in 1474 the Church in Castile lay prostrate for the most part before the will of the papacy. Greater and lesser benefices were controlled from Rome, foreigners were commonly appointed to the highest dignities, and tribunals of justice were rendered impotent by interminable appeals to Rome. No less were the Castilian nobles accustomed to usurping royal authority in the civil and political branches of government. Castile was a patchwork of private jurisdictions and privileges of which Isabella was no more than a titular sovereign.

The island of Trinidad was discovered by Columbus on the third voyage in 1498. One of the largest and most fertile of the West Indian islands, for many years it remained on the fringe of European activity in the Caribbean area and on the coasts of Venezuela and Guiana. A Spanish settlement was founded there in 1532, but apparently it disintegrated within a short time. Toward the end of the sixteenth century Berrio and Raleigh fought for possession of the island, but chiefly as a convenient base for their rival search for El Dorado, or Manoa, the Golden Man and the mythical city of gold. Throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries explorers, corsairs, and contraband traders, Spanish, French, English, and Dutch, passed near its shores, and many of them may well have paused there to refresh themselves and to make necessary repairs to their vessels. But the records are scanty and we know little of such events or of the settlements that existed from time to time.

THE esteemed and controversial figure of that famous citizen of Seville, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, has been, and continues to be, studied by many authors. Some are those who are attracted by the eminence of Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of “the new heaven and earth,” and devote years of work to formulating opinions on the Columbian historical sources. They include J. B. Muñoz, Fernández de Navarrette, Washington Irving, Thacher, Lollis, Harrisse, González de la Rosa, Vignaud, and many others. The three last-named scholars, however, in their studies have casf suspicion on one of the principal sources of Las Casas, and one of the notable historical works on Columbus: the Historia de la Vida y Hechos del Almirante Don Cristóbal Colón, written by his son Fernando. They say it was not written by Fernando Colón but is a forgery. Some even insinuate that several of the less credible sections of that Historia were introduced by Fr. Las Casas. It seems to me that such a hypothesis is not justified by creditable reason.

The contest between monarchy and representative institutions had a unique outcome in the Netherlands in the sixteenth century as a result of several factors. The most obvious of these is the fact that their rulers had inherited a royal title in Castile and Aragon. The financial and administrative institutions of the modern state which the monarchs attempted to introduce into their possessions in the Low Countries were therefore bound to be regarded as foreign importations. They conflicted with the representative institutions which had grown up in the Netherlands as elsewhere in Europe during the Middle Ages. The chief of these, the Estates-General, continued to flourish in the Low Countries long after they had entered upon hopeless decline in France and Spain. Moreover, the wealth of the Low Countries, industrially, commercially, and financially the most advanced region of sixteenth-century Europe, made them an attractive target for the Hapsburg bureaucracy, harried as it was by the gargantuan task of financing the wars of Charles V and Philip II.

THE history of Ideas is still terra incognita on our map of the Latin American world. We are aware of certain European influences on the Hispanic American people, such as the Spanish mystics, Rousseau and the French romanticists, or Comte and his school of thought. But few comprehensive studies of Latin American thought exist. Not even the impact of Spanish philosophy has been fully evaluated. Although we know that the representative thinkers of the generation of 1898, Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset, Luis de Zulueta and others were widely read, we know little of their effect on the writings of Alfonso Reyes, B. Sanin Cano, Francisco Romero and Jose Carlos Mariategui, to mention only some outstanding examples. Yet Unamuno was deeply interested in Latin American problems and his comments on Bolivar, Sarmiento and Latin American literature command our attention. Many critics recognize this significant relationship. Rafael Heliodoro Valle, for instance, remarks: “No cabe duda de que Unamuno ha sido el escritor espanol que mas curiosidad intelectual ha tenido hacia nosotros.”

The evangelization of the Chilean natives, which was always a motive of special interest to the kings of Spain, received new impetus in the last years of the Austrian dynasty. By the royal decree of May 11, 1697, Charles II ordained the formation of a council for the missions of Chile and the establishment of a college in that country to educate the sons of the caciques of Arauco. Don Tomás Marín de Poveda, the governor, had the responsibility of putting into execution the commands of the monarch. He established the council and from its meetings resulted the foundation in Chilian of a college for natives.

WITH the death of Herbert E. Bolton in December, 1953, we close the circle of an important epoch in inter-American cultural relations. We come to the end of a period that, in the United States, had its beginning about the middle of the 1890’s and which eventually culminated with the Good Neighbor Policy and the close collaboration of the American nations during the Second World War.

Twentieth-Century historians accept the fact that history can no longer be viewed merely as past politics; it must now embrace all aspects of national life and thought—total history. In the study of a colonial empire, the social scientist must seek his sources not only in the colony but also in the mother country. The enumeration and analysis of American themes in the literature of imagination of eighteenth-century Spain can open new panoramas to the student of history since these themes reflect the ideas of the peninsular Spaniard and might help explain the reactions which they caused in the colonies.

The Spanish Empire in America was thoroughly different in development from the Spanish possessions in Europe. Naples, Sicily, and the Netherlands were European states with populations of cultural background at least equal to the Spanish, with the same religion, with systems of law recognized as of equal merit, and with governmental institutions the monarch was sworn to uphold. There could be no massive penetration of such states by Spanish population and customs. Indeed, during the reign of Charles V, his subjects could not be certain where the empire had its seat; so that the anger of the Spanish at Charles’ Flemish favorites arose more from their fear of colonial status than from annoyance at the painfully generous gifts made from their pockets. It was only in the reign of Philip II that the center of one Hapsburg empire was firmly set in Spain.

During the course of the eighteenth century two savants of Anglo-Saxon parentage reached something close to renown in the River Plate area, which then comprised what is actually Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Uruguay. These men were Isaac Newton and Benjamin Franklin.

The British mathematician and philosopher was held in high esteem between the years 1730 and 1780. His popularity was due, in part at least, to the Jesuit professor of mathematics in Córdoba, who had formerly been Newton’s favorite student: the physician Thomas Falkner.

COLONIZATION of the Negro somewhere beyond the territorial limits of the United States had an irresistible appeal to many nineteenth-century Americans anxious to steer a middle course between abolitionist and pro-slavery extremists. Though united in believing the colored man to be an intruder impossible to assimilate into the predominant Anglo-Saxon culture, colonizationists could never agree on the methods or the agencies of removal, nor on the site for the new Negro homeland. Thomas Jefferson suggested the Louisiana Purchase; others spoke of Florida, Texas, the trans-Mississippi West. As the frontier pressed forward, Canada became a more favored spot, and Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies. The American Colonization Society, a national philanthropic body with auxiliaries north and south, sent some twelve thousand Negroes to their protege state of Liberia on the west coast of Africa.

This survey of Latin American archivology is for the year 1954, together with some information regarding 1953, which was not included in “Latin American Archivology, 1951–1953” (see below).

The outstanding feature of this period is the attention which is being given throughout Latin America to the improvement of the housing of the archives, which has been a great problem for many years. During 1954 Ecuador and the Dominican Republic dedicated and occupied new buildings especially constructed for their archives, which embody all features necessary for adequate services. In Guatemala construction of a new building was continued. Projects and plans for appropriate buildings were considered in Haiti and Mexico. Extensive remodeling and improvements were effected in Brazil and Paraguay. These activities have served to place the archives in a much better position to carry on the tasks appropriate to these important cultural centers.

Consideration was also given to equipping the new buildings as well as some of the old ones with photographic laboratories, including microfilm and photostat, and with equipment for lamination and binding. Some concrete results were accomplished in these matters, but mostly it was projects under consideration, awaiting funds for the execution.

Prior to 1914 the most notable agricultural organization in Mexico was the Mexican Agricultural Society (Sociedad Agricola Mexicana), founded at a large convention of farmers and stockmen in Mexico City, on September 26, 1879. During the greater part of this period, Mexico was enjoying sufficient political stability, with Porfirio Díaz as President, to make possible the maintenance of such an association. Destined to become a powerful institution, it aimed “to promote the improvement and aggrandizement of agriculture in the country, and to defend its legitimate interests.” It was intended to benefit both stockmen and farmers who tilled the soil.

The civil conflict within Mexico, 1910 to 1911, brought an active intervention from the United States. It was an interference that both elicited a sharp diplomatic exchange, and tested the neutrality statutes of the United States for clarity and sincerity. Among the members of the Taft Cabinet, there was disagreement on the interpretation of these statutes. The state governments, at best, gave official approval to the confused federal policy. American citizens along the Mexican border boldly assisted the revolutionary government of Francisco Madero, while ignoring the neutrality statutes of the United States. The purpose of this paper is to present the various interpretations of neutrality that arose in the State Department’s “Instructions” to its officers, the official correspondence between Cabinet officers, and the formal replies to the protesting Mexican government.

Anyone interested in early New World historians recognizes the difficulties encountered in reconstructing the lives of those scholars who, in the midst of wars or in the peace of convents, or even enjoying the fruits of an office in Spain, wrote books about the events in the New World. Many of these scholars were conscious that they were writing about tremendous happenings in the history of mankind and, weighed down by such responsibility, took little care in leaving any traces about their own lives. They were writing works of history, not autobiography. Investigators into this early New World history have been obliged to rely on conjectures concerning the personal life of these authors when the archives produced no documentation or when their patience has been exhausted before the enormous task of classifying millions of pages written by the indifferent hand of the salaried copyist or by the pen of authors or partakers in the colonizing activities in America.

RESIDENT James Monroe’s message of December 2, 1823 to the United States Congress was greeted with a national acclaim and approval seldom accorded the pronouncements of the American chief executive. The statement of foreign policy—since become known as the Monroe Doctrine—embodied in this message met with almost unanimous praise. “It would indeed be difficult,” noted Addington, the British chargé in Washington, “in a country composed of elements so various, and liable on all subjects to opinions so conflicting, to find more perfect unanimity than has been displayed on every side on this particular point.”