The persistent desire to find the Northwest Passage and its resultant route to India and the Spice Islands soon led the Spanish conquerors of Mexico and Central America to look to the north as the new field of their activity. Their achievements to the south had already convinced them that the realization of their great hope could not lie in that direction. Additional motives which attracted their attention northward, beyond their already enormous possessions, were their natural quest for imperial expansion, the acquisition of still more resources, and the spiritual salvation of the inhabitants of those unclaimed regions.

The news of the discovery of gold in Minas Gerais at the threshold of the eighteenth century spread like wildfire. Inebriated with the wealth which many thought would be perpetual, Brazil lived hours of rare exultation. “…those Mines,” wrote a former governor-general of Baía at the beginning of the eighteenth century, “are said to be so permanent that it will not be possible to exhaust them as long as the World lasts….” As early as 1697 the governor of Rio could write that the Caeté mines “extend in such a fashion along the foot of a mountain that miners are led to believe that [the extraction of] gold in that locality will be of great duration….” In the absence of more precise information, fantastic rumors became current. The new mining fields were of such dimensions, another contemporary affirmed, that they spread over the vast Brazilian hinterland. In 1709 the Overseas Council (Conselho Ultramarino) was willing to believe that the mines were the richest that had ever been discovered; the Council was certain that they would provoke the jealousy of foreign nations. After so many years of futile search Portugal had at length found another Potosí in the “most expansive heart of that world Emporium,” in that “resplendent diamond” of the finest quality which was Brazil.

Among the Hispanic-American States, Venezuela has not been notable for achievement in the field of education measured in terms of popular literacy. Venezuelans are, indeed, the first to recognize and to deplore a lack of such achievement. The writer is convinced, however, that no country of Hispanic-America can present a more interesting or exceptional list of educators, whether philosophers and critics, educational statesmen and administrators, or class-room teachers are proposed. Such outstanding figures as Simón Rodríguez, the radical reformer of the revolutionary era, sometimes called the “Rousseau of Hispanic-America”, or Andrés Bello, philosopher and teacher, or the Liberator himself, who might well be called the Jefferson of Hispanic-America in the field of educational statesmanship, are generally recognized.

The best example of the effect produced by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas’ theoretical writings concerning the just title Spain held to America occurred in Peru during the rule of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, wise law-giver, energetic administrator, and greatest viceroy Spain ever sent to Peru, who laid the basis for Spanish rule there during the years 1569–1582. Before his coming, Peru had had a most turbulent and bloody history, and Toledo arrived with one great aim—to establish without question in this territory the position of the King of Spain. One of his earliest acts was to execute the Inca, Lord Tupac Amaru, the Indian leader who refused to accept Spanish rule. Presently, with a view to establishing Spain’s juridical title to Peru, he undertook an extensive historical investigation which attempted to demonstrate the unjust nature of the Inca regime and thus demolish the doctrines of Las Casas.

To the English-speaking world the conquest of Mexico was the achievement of Hernán Cortés, thanks largely to the entertaining account by William Hickling Prescott. The brilliance of the Cortesian exploits, plus Prescott’s popularity, have combined to cause this historical distortion by overshadowing the fact that there were many conquests of Mexico, just as there were, and are, “many Mexicos.” Hernán Cortés merely began the subjugation of Mexico by his victory over the Nahua Confederacy. Some later conquests were more difficult, more expensive in lives and mgney, and far more time-consuming than that of Cortés, but they lack their Prescotts.

In the terrible flames of World War II, the Good Neighbor policy, as conceived by its architect, Sumner Welles, and promulgated by its popularizer, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, met the supreme test of “blood, sweat and tears.” Tried in the crucible of worldwide conflict, inter-American friendship met the challenge of totalitarian Nazi-Fascism triumphantly. As our Good Neighbors themselves often proclaimed in the course of the last five years, “Las Américas unidas, unidas vencerán.” “The united Americas will find victory in their united front.”

To emphasize the contribution of the other American Republics and Canada to our recent victory is a simple act of justice. The historical record discloses that, almost immediately after the Japanese sneak-attack at Pearl Harbor, the tiny Republic of Costa Rica, democratic to the core, hours before the Congress of the United States of America swung into action, had declared war upon the warlords of Tokyo. Although only Canada and the United States of Brazil actually despatched complete army divisions to fight on the battlefields of Europe, the other peoples in this Hemisphere, in overwhelming numbers, sympathized effectively with our cause, while their Governments, one by one, broke diplomatic relations with the Axis powers. In a most critical hour for the peoples of the Western Hemisphere, the spiritual unity of the American Republics and Canada established itself as a precious, sacred reality. Our enemies were regarded as the enemies of America; our friends the faithful allies of humanity, liberty and democracy.

What have we in mind when we speak of “Latin America”? The designation is frequently employed but it seems to convey a variety of notions and the vagueness and inaccuracy with which it is associated have generated a confusion which if persisted in may prove dangerous. Many persons appear to believe that “Latin America” designates a region extending from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn in which all or nearly all the inhabitants are “Latins” (whatever that means) who speak Spanish and whose customs are substantially alike. Some persons have advanced beyond that grotesque misconception to the point of realizing that there are some differences among the “Latin Americans”, that not all of them speak Spanish, and that statements true of one part of the region are not true of other parts. But that is about as far as many of our citizens advance, and even those who have arrived at a realization that “Latin America” is not a single homogeneous place seem to retain the notion that nevertheless “Latin America” can be dealt with without regarding the differences, some of them profound, that distinguish, let us say, Ecuador from Argentina or Guatemala from Venezuela.

If the “Good Neighbor Policy” were a fact rather than a political slogan or at best a pious wish, the life, work, and death of one of the great thinkers, writers, and teachers of the Western Hemisphere could hardly have passed almost without being noticed in the Anglo-Saxon part of the American continent. On March 6th of this year died in Mexico City Antonio Caso, mourned by Mexico and her Ibero-American sister republics as well as by three generations of students who in their minds and hearts bear indelibly the moral stamina which they received in the classes taught by their beloved maestro in the Escuela Preparatoria and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma of Mexico. José Vasconcelos, in his funeral oration, recognized in his departed compatriot “the most eloquent voice of Mexican philosophy, that voice which kindled in human minds the love for truth and beauty”, and then recalled in this personal apostrophe the great scholarly and human qualities of Antonio Caso: “You were,” he said, “a despiser of everything vile and wicked; you were disdainful of money, and you turned your back on power…. With your great gifts you might have gained materially comfortable positions of influence. Many times Fortuna knocked at your door, but you refused to open because you had decided to remain loyal to your vocation as a thinker. … Meanwhile, your conscience stayed wide awake, sensitive to noble actions and sublime ideas…. Those who follow your leadership recognized in your balanced mind the marks of the classicist; in your sensitivity, those of the romanticist; in the integrity of your conduct, those of the gentleman. Maestro completo: wherever there is a school, there is your fatherland. Mexicano universal: through you our nation occupies a distinguished place in contemporary thought.”

“We see generals of thirty, poet-swordsmen spending themselves equally on their battles and their verses,” the Peruvian García Calderón wrote of revolutionary, nineteenth-century Cuba, “indomitable guerrillas, orators brimming with tropical eloquence, passionate pilgrims roaming the Americas to proclaim the miseries of Spanish domination.” Those revolutionary years that burn like an ember in the long history of Cuba glow with equal brilliance in the Cuban literary chronicle. Juan J. Remos y Rubio, indeed, in the three-volume History of Cuban Literature under review, lays such stress upon these years as to make them dim all that came before and all that has come after.

Spain and Portugal during the eighteenth century made two attempts to establish official boundaries between their possessions in America. Through the treaties of 1750 and 1777 joint commissions were appointed by these powers to procede with the task of determining lines of demarcation, in the Amazon region as well as in other parts of the South American domain. Neither of these two undertakings was successful. In spite of the preliminary treaties, the expeditions, the explorations, the reports, and the maps that had been made, the commissioners of Spain and Portugal could never agree upon a common boundary satisfactory to their conflicting claims. At the close of the century, therefore, the problem of the Amazon boundaries, which had so long remained a point of contention between the two Iberian nations, was still unsolved.

The Oliveira Lima collection of 40,000 volumes at The Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C, known as the Lima Library and directed by an expert in Brazilian history, Dr. Manoel Cardozo, considers as one of its most cherished treasures an autograph letter written by John Maurice, Count of Nassau, to his panegyrist, Barlaeus. It is written in the Dutch language in what is supposed to be Latin script, but the use of several gothic characters betrays the author’s German origin.

When, on November sixteenth last, the newspapers announced the awarding of the Nobel Prize for literature to a Chilean poetess, Gabriela Mistral, the news came as a surprise to many Americans, who, although they considered themselves well read, had never heard her name.

The fundamental reason we know so little of this remarkable woman who enjoys such a great popularity in the Spanish-speaking world, not only for her words but for her deeds, is because the limited number of her poems which have been translated into English, by heavy hands, for the most part, allow hardly a glimmer of the real Mistral to shine through them. Of course, all translation of poetry is difficult but that of Gabriela extremely so because of her unique selection of words. She has created a plant that does not grow on English soil.

It remains, in the study we are pursuing, to cite those Catholic Mexicans whose literary contributions during the Díaz era were made almost exclusively in prose. Among these, too, several survived the overthrow of Porfirio Díaz and continued to write and publish during the turbulent years that followed. But in keeping with the time-limit set for our study only such works of theirs will be considered as were written and published before the year 1910.

At a time when Positivism and “the scientific method” are still—with some notable exceptions—the great shibboleths of North American education on all levels and in almost every department of the curriculum, including the “humanities,” it is particularly enlightening to learn of (if not by) the experiences of a neighboring nation where Positivism was for several decades the official political philosophy of a dictatorial régime and, by government decree, the universally taught philosophy of education.

No one who is entitled to speak with authority has ever questioned the well-known story that relates how in his hour of affliction, on landing at Palos, Christopher Columbus was befriended by the Franciscans of the friary of Santa María de la Rábida; how a Franciscan encouraged him to present his maritime project at the Spanish court; how, when all hope of royal support vanished, the Franciscan guardian of La Rábida intervened and thus made possible the voyage that resulted in the discovery of America. While this much of the story has always been accepted as properly established, students of American history have long been in disagreement and partly also in ignorance concerning certain details that bear importantly on the friendship that existed between the Genoese navigator and the sons of Saint Francis.

It is Sunday morning in Mexico, and the bells of the great cathedral ring out over the teeming life of the Zócalo, over the flat, irregular rooftops, over the colonial palaces, and through all the vast and interminable ganglia of the ancient city.

“Listen!” says my old friend Rubén, “The bells are the voice of Mexico. Even though you will go away, you will never forget them. Their music will always be in your soul.”

Rubén is a Zapotec Indian boy from the state of Oaxaca, the son of a poor tailor, who is studying medicine at the National University. When he has completed his courses, he will return to his native tierra to work among his people. Deeply imbued with the culture of his country, he is proud of his heritage and his blood.

In a preceding article we have tried to draw a provisional list of the diarios describing the voyages of exploration and the life of the pioneers of Upper California during the period covering the years 1769 to 1784. We should now like to introduce two new documents which have hitherto been unknown. They bring to a fitting completion the list of Crespi’s diarios, first by adding a sensational new item; and, secondly, by giving us a new transcript of the five diarios up to 1772, which is decidedly superior to the copy of Palou-Figueroa, either in manuscript or in the México and San Francisco editions. Furthermore, as a result of this discovery, we can infallibly re-assemble the complete text of Serra’s original Diario, which has been missing until today.

The Fourth General Assembly of the Pan American Institute of Geography and History met in Caracas at the invitation of the Venezuelan Government on August 2 5 to September 1, 1946. Caracas is an interesting city for a meeting and the Venezuelan Government was a gracious host. The arrangements had been in charge of an organizing committee, headed by Dr. Cristóbal Mendoza as chairman and Sr. José Nucete Sardi as general secretary. The Liceo Andrés Bello, a modern and well appointed industrial school, afforded most commodious quarters for the meetings.

Although their writings belong more properly to science than to belles-lettres, five Catholic scholars deserve a place in our study. Rafael Angel de la Peña was born in Mexico City in 1837 and died there in 1906. He received his elementary schooling and first lessons in the humanities from his father and his elder brother. At the age of twelve he entered the Seminario Conciliar in his native city where he completed his humanistic training and then, with the consent of the proper authorities who probably hoped to direct him into the priesthood, he followed the regular courses in the various disciplines of theology and in both laws, ecclesiastical and civil. It was obviously an unusual expression of confidence in the young man’s virtue as well as ability when, immediately upon his graduation, the Seminary authorities engaged him to teach theology and philosophy. In 1860 the National University of Mexico, whose prescribed examinations he passed with marked success, conferred on him the academic degree in both philosophy and theology; and the highest honor, that of doctor, was about to be conferred when by decree of the civil government the university ceased to function.