Long before the Spanish conquest, mines in south-central Michoacán were worked to provide native people with copper for tools and ornaments. (See map.) After the Conquest Spaniards went after gold and silver but left copper mining to the Indians. However, Indians were eventually divested of control of this resource as they were of so many others. Evolution of the pattern of copper mine ownership and the securing of a labor force are the topics of this paper, particularly as they are illustrated in the case of the Crown's mine, San Bartolomé Inguarán.

Readers of John Womack's monumental Zapata and the Mexican Revolution are familiar with the names of the great Morelos sugar plantations whose drive for modernization in the late nineteenth century eventually pushed desperate peasants to revolt. Many of these haciendas bore names of Indian villages long since destroyed by indigenous population decline and the hacendados' thirst for land: Cuahuixtla, Chinameca, Zacatepec, Atlacomulco, Cocoyoc; others had religious appellations testifying to the piety or ecclesiastical status of their founders: Santa Inés, Santa Clara, San Vicente; an occasional hacienda, such as Casasano, even carried the name of its founder. Yet one hacienda that figures prominently in Womack's account bore the curious designation Hospital. Though considerably smaller than many of its neighbors, Hospital emerges from Womack's narrative as perhaps the most villainous of all Morelos latifundia. To the land-starved villagers of Anenecuilco, its owner scornfully suggested that they “farm in a flowerpot,” and Hospital became a principal target of zapatista revenge.

These brief remarks on the Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas, Licenciate Alonso de Zorita, and the Franciscan Order in sixteenth-century Mexico should not be interpreted as characteristic of either the century or the colonial period as a whole. Church and state generally complemented each other, but the origins “of the longenduring conflict between clerical and anticlerical forces” in Mexico and the Borderlands “reach into earliest colonial times.” An example is the jurisdictional dispute between Archbishop Juan Pérez de la Serna and Viceroy Diego Carrillo de Mendoza y Pimental in the 1620s. Another is the long and bitter conflict between Franciscan missionaries and Spanish governors in seventeenth-century New Mexico. Nevertheless, cooperation between representatives of Church and State in New Spain is apparent even before the arrival of the saintly “Twelve Apostles” headed by Fray Martín de Valencia in 1524.

The history of the encomienda is an oft' told tale, although certain questions about the institution still provoke debate. Even the Paraguayan encomienda has received conscientious scholarly attention, most of which concentrates on the Habsburg period rather than the eighteenth century, when the institution had been eliminated in many areas.

But in eighteenth century Paraguay the encomienda was still an important institution. Members of the provincial elite placed great value on its possession. Since high position in the province was synonymous with encomendero status, membership in the encomendero class was exceedingly important. The crown's decision to abolish the system in the 1770s had important consequences for the future of Paraguay. In the short run it meant a gain for royal interests; in the long run it spelled disaster for the Spanish crown.

On September 27, 1821, Mexico achieved its de facto independence from Spain when Agustín de Iturbide led his 16,000-man “Trigarante” Army into Ciudad México, thus culminating the revolution inaugurated by Father Miguel Hidalgo y Castillo in 1810. In December 1822, the United States gave official diplomatic recognition to Mexico, followed shortly thereafter by Great Britain in 1823. Despite such action on the part of the United States government, however, no official minister was dispatched to Mexico until May 1825. Based upon the circumstances of this delay and upon conditions in Mexico, when a United States minister did arrive in Ciudad México to meet with Mexican officials, the stage was set for a significant confrontation which would determine the tenor of Mexican-United States relations until the twentieth century. This was the confrontation between Joel R. Poinsett and Lucas Alamán.