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.

For more than three centuries in the territories dependent upon the Spanish crown, the shields of bishops or of religious orders dominated the façade of the universities and of the institutions of learning; during that same period, the title pages of books of any scientific merit almost invariably carried the name of a tonsured author; architectural monuments of every class proclaimed the patronage of prelates or the protection of saints recognizing thereby their origin and purpose; schools, colleges and institutions of letters of every kind flourished in the shadow of the parishes and of the monasteries; music and theatrical functions confessed their origin in sacred ceremonies; the prirlting presses began their function under the auspices of ecclesiastics and their entire production during those centuries bears this seal. In short, the names of the university professors and of the teachers in the other educational institutions form an almost unending list of dignitaries, either of the secular clergy or of the regular, so that any summary of the outstanding figures of the intellectual life of that period shows a tremendous percentage of individuals who wore the clerical garb. It is an axiom, indeed, that the Church was in Spanish America the active patron of culture and the sponsor of knowledge almost from the day following that of the discovery. Today, fortunately, such a statement is again commonly accepted, although it was not an easy task to reach this agreement.

One of the most popular and enduring legends in the Andean city of Quito recounts the vivid tale of a young Indian named Francisco Cantuña, the son of a powerful Inca captain, who lived and died in the sixteenth century. Maimed and horribly disfigured when the Inca general Rumiñahui burned the city of Quito, Cantuña was present when the general hid the treasure of Atahualpa before the arrival of the conquering Spaniards. In the aftermath of occupation, the young Cantuña was adopted by a benevolent Spaniard who taught him to read, write, and live a good Christian life. In return, Cantuña rewarded the Spaniard, as well as several local churches and chapels, with large sums of gold, which he secretly melted down from Atahualpa's hidden treasure. News of Cantuna's beneficence prompted all manner of speculation and suspicion among the local populace, to the extent that he was called before a tribunal to account for his mysterious wealth. In order to preserve the secret of the Inca treasure, Cantuña testified that he had acquired his riches by signing a pact with the devil. On this point, the earliest published version of the legend affirms that his testimony was a deliberate lie intended to quiet the gullible authorities, because Cantuna “was in reality a good Christian” who was very devoted to a local image of the Dolorosa (Virgin of Sorrows).

Founded in 1947 by a Catholic priest, Acción Cultural Popular (ACPO) was a pioneer in radio education. Offering a radio station (Radio Sutatenza), study manuals, and a newspaper, ACPO provided basic education and encouraged campesinos to seek personal development and to “vivir mejor”--to live better. From 1947 to 1994, it attracted over four million subscribers and became a model in 13 Latin American countries. In this article I show how ACPO's approach to rural development and communication style evolved between 1960 and 1980. As a consequence of technological, economic, and cultural developments, Radio Sutatenza, a station with a more or less captive audience of illiterate peasants, changed as it was forced to respond to rural Colombians’ shifting aspirations and competition from commercial radio. While the organization's founding principles remained constant throughout this period, its articulation of what it meant to “live better” changed over time, reflecting the struggles of a religious organization to remain relevant in a rapidly changing world. While ACPO saw itself as the bearer of modernity, it was often confronted by independent processes of change already occurring in rural communities.

In 1975, Richard Graham asked me to give a paper on Mexican women at the Southwestern Social Science Association meeting. Surely, he asked me only because he thought that as a woman I would know something about women—I am sure that was my only qualification in his mind. Thankfully, he also asked Dawn Keremitsis, who had done work on Mexican women workers. Fortunately, I had included in my 1973 dissertation a chapter on women's vocational education. I wrote my entire dissertation on José Vasconcelos's educational crusade in a state of shock at the race and class biases I encountered in the documents. In the case of women, my outrage soared, propelled by my second-wave-feminist conviction that women had to be liberated from the slavery of the home. So I had written a dogmatic chapter and paper on how revolutionary educators wanted to remove women from the workforce, restore them to domesticity, train them to work in small, badly paid, home-based industries, and subordinate them to men and motherhood. Middle-class women prescribed class practices of motherhood and domesticity as if, I argued, women of the subaltern classes knew nothing of homemaking and mothering.

This article analyzes the revolutionary diplomacy of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) through the prism of Nicaraguan and Western European relations during the final decade of the Cold War. It contends that —despite the FSLN's ideological affiliation with Third World national liberation movements, Cuba, and the socialist bloc—the campaign to influence Western European foreign policies was central to the Sandinista government's international strategy. By pushing Western European governments to play a prominent role in Central America's violent Cold War conflicts, the Sandinistas sought to undermine US power in the isthmus and alter the inter-American dynamics that shaped their region's history up to the late 1970s. Furthermore, by building financial ties with Western European countries, the FSLN could avoid complete financial dependency on the Soviet bloc and strengthen Nicaragua's image as a nonaligned state. The Sandinistas’ campaign to challenge US hegemony in Central America through a pragmatic outreach to Western Europe was largely successful, but it came at the cost of implementing domestic reforms that ran counter to their own ambitions. Ultimately, this prompted the FSLN to hold elections in 1990, which resulted in their removal from power.

In the wake of the Second Vatican Council, Mexican traditionalist Catholics mobilized in apparent unity against Catholic “progressivism” and the Left. Yet, they succumbed to their own internecine fights. This article examines the conflicts within Mexico's post-Cristero Right during the 1960s and 70s by tackling the ruptures and realignments surrounding the excommunication of Fr. Joaquín Sáenz Arriaga, a traditionalist Jesuit famed for attacking conciliar reforms and the legitimacy of Paul VI's papacy. I argue that the ensuing debates put into question the apparent coherence of conservatives in the face of social unrest after 1968, highlighting the long-standing entropy of right-wing Catholicism, as traditionalists clashed over matters of orthodoxy, Catholics’ historical relationship with the postrevolutionary state, and the contested memory of the Cristero War, which they used to legitimize their positions and define the terms of their traditionalism. Using anticommunism and anti-Semitism to wage their battles, these traditionalists occupied important spaces in the public sphere, contributed to Mexico's Cold War polarizations, and shaped the Mexican Right's international outlook. Their conflicts attest to the contentious plurality of the Mexican Right during this period, which invites further study to better understand how these actors situated themselves in a rapidly changing world.

The Great Seal of the United States, designed in the early days of the Republic, has on it symbolism whose significance is often overlooked. On one side is an eagle which grasps with one talon a branch and with the other a sheaf of arrows. Above its head are “E Pluribus Unum” and thirteen stars for the original states bound together in one nation. The other side has on it an unfinished pyramid. The foundation bears the number MDCCLXXVI. Above the pyramid is the eye of God flanked by the words “Annuit Coeptis,” namely, “He smiles on the undertakings.” Underneath is the phrase “Novus Ordo Seculorum,” meaning “New Order of the Ages.” Here succinctly is the vision which inspired the founding fathers of the new nation. The thirteen colonies had become one, prepared to face together the exigencies of the future, whether for preservation in self-defense or for cooperation in the arts of peace. Here was an attempt at building something novel in the history of mankind—a new and ordered structure. That structure, as yet incomplete, was based upon the Declaration of Independence, with its best-remembered phrases: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Here is “the American dream.” As “four score and seven years” later Abraham Lincoln even more briefly described it, the new nation was “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” and its success or failure was a test whether “government of the people, by the people, for the people” could “long endure.” To that dream faith in God, in His creative activity, and in His sovereignty was basic.

In 1821, as the Wars of Independence drew to a close, officials of the newly created republic of Gran Colombia passed a national gradual emancipation law. At the center of it was a Free Womb law that declared legally free the children of enslaved women born after the law's promulgation, while bonding these children to their mothers’ masters until the age of 18. Yet, in addition to establishing a term limit on their legalized captivity, the law stipulated conditions for the commerce in Free Womb children, laying the groundwork for what I refer to as the Free Womb trade. This article presents the first detailed exploration of the origins, operations, and limitations of the Free Womb trade in Colombia, particularly at the level of one province: the northwestern Pacific coastal province of Chocó. I argue that the trade created distinctly bounded market geographies of Free Womb children, who were actively, if at times ambiguously, incorporated into Colombia's slave economy. As a general rule, the Free Womb trade placed captive families at the mercy of their masters; yet, as one extraordinary case reveals, the full extent of the local trade's legal power was not entirely secure.

In the years prior to the outbreak of the First World War, the Hamburg-American-Lines (HAPAG) steamer Ypiranga gained a special reputation in the Western hemisphere. It was known for transporting several Mexican Presidents into exile, and it became especially famous for its 26th voyage, a trip from Hamburg to Veracruz in the spring of 1914.

Its hold filled with weapons for the Mexican President Huerta, the steamer approached the entrance to the Veracruz harbor on April 21. At that time, its captain had not the slightest idea that on Woodrow Wilson's order American troops had landed to take control of the harbor in order to prevent the weapons his ship carried from reaching the Mexican President.