Elihu Root, Secretary of State from 1905 to 1909 under President Theodore Roosevelt, ranks as one of the most successful secretaries in dealing with Latin America before the coming of the Good Neighbor policy. His approach, the product of a practical statesman in a period of growing reaction to diplomatic adventure, concerned the means rather than the ends of inter-American relations. While the Secretary did not renounce the role of hemispheric policeman proclaimed by President Roosevelt in 1904, he did attempt to stress the benevolent character of America’s Caribbean interests and to sub-ordinate the policing aspect. Root held a special concern for Latin America and labored assiduously to improve relations and to promote the solidarity of the Western Hemisphere. When the Secretary retired in 1909 he bequeathed his successor a legacy of kindly feeling that he had successfully cultivated.

During the first three hundred years of its existence, Brazil had no opportunity to develop its potential natural resources for the benefit of its inhabitants. Portugal, Brazil’s mother country, exploited the colony as a source of wealth for itself and did not administer it for the purpose of creating a sound economic structure for the good of Brazil. Its foreign commerce was a Crown monopoly until 1808. During this colonial period, easily exploited minerals and those crops which would command quick, lucrative profits on the world market, were stressed by Portuguese administrators. Thus, early in its history, the disastrous seeds of monoculture were sown in Brazil. These products were taken to Lisbon, which served as a jobbing center for the Empire, and from there they were distributed by vessel to other countries. Large-scale industry was discouraged by Portugal, and in some instances, actually forbidden. In this, Portugal was following the general colonial policy common to many European nations during that period. Characteristic of the Portuguese attitude was Queen Maria’s order in 1785 for the destruction of all industries and factories in Brazil that were not devoted to the production of sugar; a product from which Portugal at this time derived much of its national income. In return for the lucrative slave crops of sugar and cotton, the colony was forced to buy expensive finished goods from the mother country. The exchange profited Portugal greatly and strangled Brazil economically.

After The Fall of Tenochtitlán in 1521, the focus of Spanish attention was quickly shifted to the peripheral areas of New Spain. One of such areas, variously known in colonial times as Panuco, the Huasteca, or Vitoria Garayana, was conquered by Cortés in late 1522 or early 1523. In the spring of 1523 the Conqueror founded the villa of Santisteban del Puerto on the Panuco River; granted encomiendas to some one hundred Spaniards; and returned to Mexico City. Despite an early challenge by Francisco de Garay, the governor of Jamaica, Pánuco was administered by Cortés or the royal treasury officials of New Spain until May, 1527. At this time the crown appointee, Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán, arrived in the province with the title of Governor of Panuco which he held until the last months of 1533. In the pages that follow, an attempt will be made to present evidence relating to a decade of slaving in Panuco. This will involve the activities of both Cortés and Guzmán, as well as some traditional accounts relating to the topic. The author wishes to state at the outset that he is neither defending nor prosecuting the moral issue of Indian slavery.

When Expelling the Jesuits from his realm in 1767, Charles III of Spain explained this extraordinary measure in only vague and mysterious terms. He said he was “moved by weighty reasons, conscious of his duty to uphold obedience, tranquility and justice among his people, and (was also acting) for other urgent, just, and compelling causes, which he was locking away in his royal breast.” Furthermore, the first part of the report of the committee preparing the expulsion, the Extraordinary Council of Castile, a report which must have contained the motivation, has been missing since at least 1815. The whole history of the expulsion has thus been shrouded in an air of mystery. Historians have not been satisfied with pointing to possible Jesuit implication in the so-called “Hat and Cloak Riots ” of 1766, which caused the Extraordinary Council to be set up to undertake the inquiry that less than a year later produced the royal decision to expel the Jesuits. Instead, they have suggested other explanations according to their gift of imagination and their religio-political orientation. Several theories of “conspiracy ” have been advanced. Either the Freemasons, impious Voltairians or the manteistas, that is, intellectuals of poor background, supposedly resentful of the snobbism of Jesuit education, have been held responsible for such “conspiracies ” against the Jesuits. Important documentation from the Extraordinary Council, which almost compensates for the lost piece, has been easily available since the 1890’s.

“Spain’S greatest [territorial] losses have been to Portugal,” grumbled José de Carvajal y Lancáster in the mid-eighteenth century. Well might Ferdinand VI’s astute minister complain, for, by 1750, the Luso-Brazilians, employing their “indirect methods of conquest “had tripled the extension of Portuguese America beyond that allowed by the Treaty of Tordesillas. Moreover, a Lusitanian contemporary of Carvajal, Luís da Cunha, was counselling the establishment of a Brazilian Pacific sea frontier by advocating the exchange of the Kingdom of the Algarve in Europe for the Kingdom of Chile in the New World—a swap that “would be very convenient for the Castilians, for the security of their [Andalusian] ports.”