The present article is concerned (1) with an evaluation of the place of Latin American studies in the economics curriculum on the college or university level and (2) with a review of the principal publications which are available for organized studies in Latin American economics. The correlation of both topics and their combination in one article does not require an elaborate justification for those who are acquainted with the development and growth of new subjects in the college curriculum. Organized studies, i. e., new courses, develop chiefly under the influence of two factors: available teaching personnel and available teaching material. It goes without saying that these factors operate, or should operate, only as manifestations of a more general tendency which assigns to the new subject its rank and place in a systematic order of cultural values.

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.

Students of Latin American art of the colonial period will agree that this book, which deals with the development of architecture in Spanish America during the sixteenth century, is the most important analysis of the subject that has yet been made. Prepared with the assistance of the Spanish government and the cooperation of private investigators and government agencies in Latin America, this book is the first of a series of volumes which, it is to be hoped, will eventually present the whole history of Hispanic American art. It brings together for the first time a mass of factual information taken from source material of the period concerning the earliest monuments of Spanish building from Mexico to BoliVia and interprets it in the light of Spanish architecture of the time with a knowledge and an attention to detail never before applied on such a scale. Almost without exception every building mentioned is fully illustrated, plans of the more important are provided, together with diagrams of variant architectural details such as moldings, bases and arches, and whenever possible contemporary architect’s drawings from the Archivo de Indias in Seville are submitted as well. Although a good deal of this material had previously been published in one form or another, there is much that had not been, especially in the chapters devoted to South America. The work therefore goes beyond the mere compilation of facts already recorded and presents a whole series of new monuments on the basis of original investigation.