The Alhóndiga of Guanajuato fell to the irregular army of Miguel Hidalgo and Ignacio Allende on September 28, 1810, in one of the most celebrated events in Mexican independence history. With the collapse of the economic and political capital of the Bajío, control over a major province of New Spain was wrenched from traditional authority. The rebellion in Tierradentro, as it was called in the City of Mexico, had been watched nervously for a fortnight by an Establishment sensitized to previous domestic tumultos and to social revolution of the most frightening sort in Haiti. The Hidalgo revolt was quickly and accurately perceived as a major threat to a well ordered way of life. There was, moreover, an acute awareness that the drought years of 1808 and 1809 and the soaring price of maize in 1810 had contributed to volatile social conditions which would surely exacerbate any uprising. Now the worst fears had been realized with the sack of Guanajuato.

The Requerimiento was one of the most striking legal documents of the entire age of European overseas expansion. A long line of publicists and scholars from Bartholomew de Las Casas to Lewis Hanke have discussed, praised and condemned it. The Requerimiento appears to illustrate more clearly than any other single document the combination of high-sounding motives, legal chicanery and brute force that made the Spanish conquest of the Americas possible. In recent years, there has been increasing emphasis upon examining the conquest in terms of the brute force involved and a decreasing emphasis upon the motives and the legalisms which the Spanish employed. As one scholar has said, the Requerimiento was but a “useless legalism,” and, presumably, no longer worthy of serious attention. In addition, scholars have generally agreed that the Requerimiento is thoroughly understood. Following Las Casas, they have asserted that it contained the legal opinion of the thirteenth century canon lawyer known as Hostiensis that infidels had no right to property or political jurisdiction. In medieval terms, that infidels, such as the inhabitants of the Americas, did not possess dominium. In recent years, scholars have asserted that those who defended the Indians against the conquerors, such as Las Casas himself and Francisco Vitoria, drew upon the opinion of Hostiensis' teacher, the canonist-Pope Innocent IV. In this way, the Requerimiento and the related debate about the rights of the Indians has been placed within its proper position within the late medieval canonistic tradition.

The intrusion into the South Sea in the seventeenth century first of Dutch fleets of exploration and trade, and later of English traders and English and French buccaneers, was to make the development of some measures for defence if not a constant preoccupation, at least from time to time a very urgent necessity, and a costly one. The reluctance on the part of the Crown to support and give financial aid to permanent land based defences, the great length of the coastline of the viceroyalty, and above all the overriding concern for the protection of the Peruvian treasure fleet, are clear indications that the provision of defence at sea was to become an issue of the first importance.

FOREIGN investment, mostly from the United States, fueled the rapid growth of the Mexican economy under the regime of Porfirio Díaz. By 1910, foreigners had invested well over a billion dollars in Mexico's railroads, mines, and a variety of other undertakings. At the core of the expansion and development of foreign investment was the connection between foreign entrepreneurs and the native elite. This association, worked out over three decades, greatly affected the economic, political, and social development of the nation.

The relationship between native elite and foreign entrepreneurs was based on three sets of factors. First, the native elite controlled both the government which in Mexico, on all levels, played an important role in the success or failure of any enterprise and, through their ownership of much of the nation's land and mines, the rich natural resources which foreign enterpreneurs sought to develop. Second, the native elite was willing to permit foreigners to develop the nation's resources, to participate in a wide range of economic activities, and to dominate certain sectors of the economy, such as mining. The native elite allowed this, because on one hand, one group within the elite, the cientificos, was ideologically committed to the modernization of the country and saw foreign investment as the quickest and most efficient method to modernize and, on the other hand, the traditional groups within the elite saw foreign investment as a means to increase their own incomes (through bribes, commissions, and the sale of their property) and to preserve their traditional privileges. The only conceivable alternative to the development of the nation's economy through foreign investment would have been through the expansion of direct government participation in the economy, but this would have required (apart from an implausible ideological reorientation towards the discredited conservatism of an earlier era or the exotic doctrines of European socialism) a considerable redistribution of the nation's wealth (through taxation and other means of “forced” savings) to the disadvantage of the elite. The development of Mexico's economy through foreign investment did not disturb the political status quo. Third and finally, foreign entrepreneurs had both the capital and technological know-how to develop the nation's resources, neither of which was present in Mexico.

Economic progress of the late nineteenth century afforded the upper class of Colombian society the opportunities to pursue new business goals and to improve its standard of living. Exports of coffee, steam navigation on the Magdalena River, the fitful building of railways, growth of urban populations, and the heightened tempo of foreign and domestic commerce all converged to the economic and social benefit of Colombia's landed and educated elite. Economic progress supported not only new elite professions in commerce and engineering but also traditional pursuits in medicine, law, and notably literature. In fact, nineteenth century Colombia witnessed a proliferation of cultural affectation which, because it was so divorced from reality, may be described as “the genteel tradition.”

For three centuries the Church in colonial Spanish America was the primary cultural institution affecting the lives of all Spain's overseas subjects. Education, charity, art, architecture, all the humane arts had been the legacy of the Church as well as its greatest gift to the New World, the Christianization of the Indians. In all these pursuits the Church was ably and dutifully supported by the Crown. Concurrently, clerics of all ranks and occupations were tied closely to the civil authority by the Royal Patronage.

The achievements of the orders of the Church were out of proportion to their numbers. Franciscans, Dominicans, Mercedarians, then Jesuits and others all left their mark on Spanish America and often expanded the empire through missionary activities. Paraguay, an isolated province in the Río de la Plata, was a striking example of the successful toil of various orders. However, in 1767 by command of the regalist Carlos III, the Jesuits were expelled from this region (and the entire empire) and at the turn of the century there remained but three orders in the province, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Mercedarians. Of the three the Franciscans were the most important in the colonial era. Ever since the 1530's, this order was concerned with the conversion and welfare of the Indians. Reductions of the Guaraní were established by the Franciscans long before those of the better known Jesuits. Among the great figures of the Franciscan first century in Paraguay were Fray Martín Ignacio de Loyola and especially fray Luis de Bolaños, the “Apostle of Paraguay.”

ONE of the principal reasons for the promulgation of the Constitution of Cádiz was the desire of Spanish liberals to answer the complaints of dissenters in overseas colonies and thereby suppress the budding independence movements. This policy met with more success in Yucatán than in most other Spanish colonies. The Yucatecans took advantage of the constitutional reforms to implement a number of economic changes. As long as these changes were in operation, Yucatán was safe from the fervor of the independence movement. To be sure, Yucatán was not completely immune to the appeal of revolutionary propaganda. There was a hard core minority which agitated to disrupt the constitutional system in order to win independence, but this group never gained much popular support. Events outside Yucatán, coupled with the potential threat of crown interference in the economic structure which the Yucatecans were striving to build, led a group of moderates in the Provincial Deputation, an administrative body provided for by the constitution, to declare Yucatán's independence from Spain. Moreover, the motivation for this declaration foreshadowed the factional strife which beset Mexico throughout the nineteenth century.

The course taken by Fidel Castro's revolution brought it into early conflict with certain of the principles that were most deeply engraved in the Charter of the Organization of American States. Political organization of the member states “… on the basis of the effective exercise of representative democracy” and strict adherence to the non-intervention commitment were proclaimed as cardinal elements of the inter-American structure that had been created since World War II. Even though such noble ideals were not by any means fully realized by all the members, Castro's early sponsorship of interventionist activities and the moves he quickly made toward creation of a dictatorship—some said an increasingly communistic one—seemed to mark a new and more virulent challenge to the convivencia interatnericana than it had previously encountered. Whatever his reasons—and they will be long disputed—Castro had by 1961 brought his revolution gradually but decisively into dependence upon and, in effect, alliance with the Soviet Union, and that seemed to many to constitute precisely the kind of challenge the inter-American system had been designed to meet.

The nineteenth century represented an era of declining influence for the Catholic church in Mexico, and no aspect of that trend created broader repercussions than the eclipse of the clergy's traditional role in higher education. Before the midcentury civil wars the conciliar seminaries graduated nearly as many laymen as did the public colegios, the majority of which in any case employed priests on their faculties. The seminaries, consequently, forged a vital link between the church and civil society, a link which potentially enhanced the political and social influence of the episcopate.

WE know little in the United States about the man who, as Spain's Ambassador in 1898, dared to call President McKinley “a low politician catering to the rabble.” The purpose of this article is to shed light on Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, his views, and his hitherto unstudied role as Spain's envoy during the critical period leading up to the Spanish-American War.

The first striking characteristic about our subject is his very name, being French instead of Spanish. The genealogy of the Dupuy de Lôme family originated in France in the sixteenth century. There is record of a Jean Dupuy fighting against the Turks in one of the Crusades. The Spanish branch had, up to the nineteenth century, used only the Dupuy part of the surname. Then, as evidence of his great admiration of his French uncle, the designer of France's first cruiser, Dupuy chose to reestablish the full French surname by adding the de Lôme.

The statue of the Christ of the Andes commemorates the termination of a sixty-year boundary controversy that on several occasions brought Argentina and Chile to the brink of war. The dispute amicably resolved by King Edward VII of England in 1902 grew out of the Treaty of 1881, in which the two nations agreed for the first time on the boundaries in Patagonia, and in the Straits of Magellan and Tierra del Fuego, that we take for granted today. The dispute that preceded the Treaty of 1881 was long and bitter. For although Patagonia and the adjacent areas were without question possessions of the Spanish crown, official neglect throughout the colonial period had denied to either successor state a clear title over them based on uti possidetis.

On December 1, 1920, General Álvaro Obregón of Sonora became President of Mexico. During the previous May, his supporters had staged a popular coup d'etat which paved the way for his constitutional election. Mexico was then in the throes of revolutionary ferment, and the instability which had accompanied Obregón's ascendancy to Executive Office also threatened to attend his demise. Obregón thus sought to achieve political and social reforms which would strengthen his regime and allow for a peaceful Presidential succession in 1924. As the major institution of coercion during a time of revolutionary violence, the Army had emerged as the most important political institution in Mexico. Although part of a broader political effort which included labor, agrarian and administrative reforms, Obregón's military reconstruction can be viewed as the important keystone in his attempt to consolidate control of Mexico. Obregón’s military reforms sought to insure, first, Army loyalty to the office of President, and, second, military effectiveness when the Army would be called upon to defend the Federal Government. His reforms grew out of the Agua Prieta movement of May 1920, and continued throughout his own administration. As President, Obregón gave intensive attention to military affairs and his military reforms were the most significant achievement of his broadly based effort to consolidate the Mexican Revolution.

As trade between Spain and her American colonies declined in the seventeenth century, interprovincial commerce increased. This change within the Spanish Empire and some of its multiple implications have only recently been recognized and given scholarly attention. Consequently, little information is available on the part colonial municipal governments played in the imperial economic realignment. A case in point is the role of the Santiago cabildo in regard to the export trade which tied Chile's Central Valley, the region administered by that city council, to the Peruvian market economy. Although various studies provide supportive data on this subject, a close scrutiny of the council minutes, focused on policies that regulated outbound commerce and the production from which it flowed, can more clearly delineate the extent of creole initiative and cabildo participation in policy formulation and enforcement. A correlative theme pursued through this appraisal of the records concerns the socio-economic attitudes of the upper levels of society in the last century of Hapsburg rule.

The Teatro Colón of Buenos Aires stands as one of the few truly great opera houses of the world. Completed in 1908 after two decades of intermittent disasters which threatened to leave it a crumbling ruin before it ever opened, it remains unsurpassed as a building for the presentation of operas on a grand scale in an elegant setting. With one of the largest auditoriums of the world's opera houses, it combines splendid acoustics and a stunning exterior. Over 3,500 spectators can be easily accommodated in a seating arrangement which could make room for more were the chairs in parts of the house not so commodious nor so generously spaced. Nearly all the most renowned singers of the twentieth century have performed there and deemed it a signal honor.

The revolution of 1904 was the major political disturbance in Paraguay for thirty years after the revolt of 1873-1874 which succeeded in driving the Liberals from power. Although not formally organized as a political party until 1887, young Liberals succeeded in gaining a brief, precarious ascendancy in postwar Paraguay. They dominated the Constituent Assembly when it met in 1870 to draft a constitution. This assembly elected Juan Bautista Rivarola, the surviving member of the postwar Triumvirate, as provisional president. But the young Liberals distrusted Rivarola and the conservatives, whose acknowledged leader was Cándido Bareiro, a nephew of Francisco Solano López who had served the dictator as a diplomat in Europe. The Liberals executed the first postwar political coup in Paraguay when they succeeded in substituting Facundo Machaín in place of Rivarola for a few hours until Bareiro directed a conservative coup that restored Rivarola as President of Paraguay. Bareiro expected to be elected president in the 1870 elections but Rivarola's position as provisional president gave him the advantage and he won the election.

IN the 1840s Chile witnessed the ascendancy of a group of young liberal intellectuals and politicians who were determined to alter their nation politically, economically and socially. They wanted first to curb the conservative-dominated government that had directed the country from 1830 on, and, additionally, they hoped to create the kind of liberal democracy which they believed the wars for independence had promised but conservative governments had refused to implement. They also hoped to strengthen the economy by changing landholding patterns and increasing the wages of both rural and urban workers. Finally, they wanted to eliminate the most glaring social evils of their day, thereby making a better life available for all Chileans.

IF, as has been suggested, a country without a foreign policy is a happy country, then the United States must have reached the peak of its felicity between the Civil War and the turn of the century. Of all the Secretaries of State in that otherwise obscure progression from William Seward to John Hay only one has managed to escape oblivion and capture the imagination of diplomatic historians. That exception is James G. Blaine. Secretary of State on two separate occasions and under three different presidents, Blaine brought to his office not only his personal dynamism but also an apparently well thought-out conception of foreign affairs. Unlike his contemporaries, who seemed content merely to react to events, Blaine appeared to have a policy. The genesis of that policy has been a source of controversy ever since.

One Mexican historian has described the post-war years of Benito Juárez' Administration (1867-72) in Mexico and that of his successor, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada (1872-76) as “a dictatorship without peace or progress.” The nation suffered from a breakdown in public order and morality; misery, anarchy and banditry were widespread. Indian uprisings occurred in Yucatán, Chiapas, Durango, Chihuahua, Nuevo León and Coahuila. Insurrections against the government of Juárez broke out in Tamaulipas, Puebla, Sinaloa, Jalisco, Guerrero; and conflicts between candidates for the government in Aguascalientes, Guanajuato and San Luis Potosi destroyed the public order. The causes of this breakdown in commonweal may be attributed to the long history of civil war in Mexico, the inadequacy of governmental institutions and lack of respect for a Constitution (1857) which incorporated many injustices within its Liberal framework. An important cause of recurring revolt was the presidential ambition of Juárez and his conflicts with Congress and the Supreme Court. His suspension of the Constitutional guarantees, by decree of January 17, 1870, and his dictatorial use of extraordinary powers brought much resentment; and, in the election of 1870, the Constitutional Party (Liberal) supported Porifirio Díaz against Juárez. Through a “reform” of the electoral law, Benito Juárez was able to gain a plurality. He was only exceeded in his autocratic use of power by his successor, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada who vigorously enforced the Reform Laws that made of the anti-Church program a Lerdist kulturkampf. It was during a year of Juárez' Administration that Brevet Major General William S. Rosecrans served as Envoy Extraordinary & Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to Mexico. Officially he held this post from July 27, 1968 to June 26, 1869. The American Minister spoke bluntly in criticism of the Juárez Administration, and of Lerdo de Tejada who was then President of the Supreme Court, a position equivalent to the Vice-presidency.