This remarkable statement, issued by the Lima Inquisition, suggests the extent to which Portuguese and their descendants had penetrated the Peruvian commercial system during the six-decade union of the Spanish and Portuguese Crowns. Spanish concern over the presence of Portuguese merchants in the viceroyalty extended to the royal bureaucracy and Lima Consulado. For example, one important government functionary writing to the King in 1619 assessed the situation as follows: “These Portuguese … in the Provinces of Peru are many of them rich, powerful, and very intelligent in all aspects of commerce. They maintain communication with many other Portuguese retail and wholesale merchants who reside in the stated realms. …” The Consulado issued numerous complaints against Portuguese merchants and often agitated for their expulsion on the grounds that they increasingly dominated trade to the detriment of Spaniards. By 1639, the majority of Portuguese merchants had been expelled from Lima and from many other parts of the viceroyalty thanks to a rapid and far-reaching expurgation by the Inquisition. Indeed, Spanish merchant monopolists and their government-sanctioned trading association, the Consulado, acted in concert with the Lima Inquisition to harass and eventually to oust their Portuguest competitors. The establishment of Portuguese merchants in Peru and their subsequent purge by the Holy Office comprise a crucial chapter in the business history of imperial Spain.

There were many kinds of money in use in New Spain from the time of the conquest to the opening of the mint in Mexico City in 1537. Some was Spanish; other was Indian and dated back centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards. After the conquest, Spanish coins were the official media of exchange, but there were very few in New Spain.

Once the mint was in operation, Spanish coins became the first legal tender in the New World—begun 256 years before the first authorized coin was struck at Philadelphia. Furthermore, these “Mexican” coins served as a medium of exchange the world over. The real circulated freely in the Orient; many specimens bear “chop-marks” indicating the official validation of each individual bank through which they passed.

In fact, the Spanish real became the standard of the currency of the United States and circulated with official sanction until 1857. One real was equal to twelve and one-half cents and was called a bit. A quarter of a dollar or twenty-five cents was equal to two bits, hence the present day expression.

By 1860, racism had taken its toll on the psyche of thousands of free blacks. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, the South's demands for the extension of slavery and the re-opening of the African slave trade, the Dred Scott decision of 1857 and the denial of suffrage, the right to hold public office, the right to be a juror, policeman or judge convinced thousands of free blacks to seek dignity away from the country's shores. Liberia, which had attracted Afro-Americans since the 1820's, was too far away and considered unhealthy for expatriates. But Haiti, jewel of the Caribbean, was near and most importantly, she beckoned to her northern brothers to come south.

In 1859 Fabre Geffrard, military hero of the wars with the Dominican Republic, overthrew the despotic regime of Emperor Faustin I and formed a republican form of government with himself as president for life. Haiti needed to be developed. President Geffrard looked to America's black agriculturists to replace the thousands of Haitians killed in the nation's wars and revolutions.

Paraguay, by the mid-nineteenth century, was alone among the South American nations in its policy of internal development and economic autonomy. Exemplifying this were the many independent efforts at modernizing the country and its economy, including the building of a railway, telegraph system, and perhaps most importantly, an iron foundry. Although many foreign advisers were hired for these projects, ultimate control and direction rested in the hands of the Paraguayans themselves.

Elsewhere throughout the continent a new British-dominated neocolonial order had taken firm root. Britain's diplomatic ventures at this time centered on the formation of alliances with such American metropolises as Lima and Buenos Aires. These compacts were built upon mutual interests in reconstructing the splintered Viceroyalties into viable political units under basically British hegemony. “The nail is driven,” wrote Foreign Secretary Canning in 1824, “Spanish America is free, and if we do not mismanage our affairs sadly, she is English.”

The centuries-old Spanish folk heritage of our Southwest, and its many faceted and enduring influence on the cultural life of the region, has been written about from various rims of observation. This article describes the pioneer studies of Aurelio M. Espinosa on Spanish folklore in the Southwest, with special emphasis on northern New Mexico. Although he made important contributions to the study of Spanish folklore of southern Colorado, Arizona, and California, and to that of Spain, Mexico, and other parts of Spanish America as well, he devoted most of his research and field work to the upper half of New Mexico which is the richest field of Spanish folklore in the Southwest.

In viewing the cultural history of New Mexico, Espinosa reminded his readers that its first century as a Spanish colony, the 17th, was the second great century of Spain's Golden Age of arts and letters. With the vigor of Spain's sense of mission in those centuries, her Golden Age radiated to all parts of Spanish America via Mexico City, Lima, and the other principal colonial capitals. At the same time, from the bookshelf and the store of knowledge of the humble missionary, and the folklore of the Spanish settlers, passed down from generation to generation, the spirit of the Golden Age was reflected on the most remote settled frontiers.

For several years the life and times of Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán has occupied my scholarly interests. On two occasions I have carried out extended periods of research in Spanish archives. In the notary archive of Valladolid I spent three weeks in a fruitless search for Guzmán's will. I reluctantly concluded that the document was not where it ought to be and accepted the likelihood that it would never be found—if indeed it was extant. I was therefore astonised to see the will advertised in 1973 as an item for sale in Catalogue No. 490 of the firm of Hellmut Schumann AG (Zürich, Switzerland). The asking price was an astronomical 11,000 Swiss Francs for eighteen folios. At that time the equivalent value in U. S. dollars was nearly $4,000.00.