Even if the narrative is ornate, elegant, and copious of words
Even if persons, places, and times are conveniently displayed
Even if the shape of towns and the site and order of battles are fully described
Even if the mind of the reader is artfully attracted to the material
If the truth is missing it can never be called history.

The historical writings of Garcilaso Inca de la Vega (1539-1616) have evoked varying responses since they appeared. Consideration of his work has concerned its historical value rather less than it has examined Garcilaso's literary style, indigenist perspective, ambicultural dilemma, and irrepressible imagination. In turn most of this commentary has concentrated on Garcilaso's account of Inca history and customs as embodied in the Comentarios reales. Garcilaso's integrated, coherent, and circumstantial account was long regarded as the orthodox version of Inca matters, if only because it so congenially mirrored European ideas of what historical writing should be all about. Of late, however, it has come under fire as it becomes increasingly apparent that the weight of archeological, ethno-historical, and cultural evidence fails to sustain Garcilaso's projection of imperial status, utopian social norms, and quasi-Christian habits to the very beginnings of the Inca polity.

Scholarly studies of the Mexican revolutionary period seldom have approached the subject from the standpoint of how this momentous struggle was actually waged by its combatants. While considerable investigation has rendered valuable insights into leading personalities and movements of the time, no comparable effort has been made to unravel the myriad military complexities and paradoxes of one of the major wars waged on the North American continent.

A case in point concerns the foreign soldiers who fought side by side with Mexican troops in the rebel armies. Such military personnel are commonly referred to in modern-day parlance as mercenaries, a term indicating “paid soldiers in the service of a foreign country.” However, not all foreigners who served in the Revolution were professional soldiers for hire, nor did all have previous military experience. Such words and phrases as soldiers of fortune or adventurers, in vogue during the period, more clearly define the status of these combatants as “men fighting for pay or love of adventure under the flag of any country.” Be that as it may, all of the terms given above are basically synonymous and can be used interchangeably to refer to the foreign volunteers who joined the various armed factions contending for supremacy in Mexico.

The Spanish Crown established montepíos throughout the Empire after 1763, first in Spain and then in the overseas possessions. These agencies provided an excellent vehicle for shaping and implementing royal marriage policy in America. The institutions functioned as monitoring units and also provided penalties and incentives motivating bureaucrats to conform to the king's will when contemplating marriage. The montes became a central part of the process through which the king attempted to regulate his servants' marriages.

The king intended these agencies, funded by a combination of royal and membership contributions, to provide modest pensions for survivors of deceased officials. In Madrid, Mexico City, and Lima, the Crown founded autonomous institutions known as Montepíos de Ministros for senior officials and Montepíos de Oficinas for subordinates. Lesser capitals received only one office for all ranks. All the montepíos, however, were important not only as sources of pensions but also as a means of enhancing royal control over marriage in the bureaucracy.

If banditry and mysticism represents one classic formula summarizing the historical reality of the Brazilian Northeast, its companion image is one of devastating droughts and concomitant migrations out from the parched backlands to regional capitals like Recife and Salvador and on to the great national metropolises of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Reports of drought in the Northeast appear from the times of early settlement; succeeding centuries witnessed repeated dry periods. While some of these proved relatively moderate in intensity, others, sparing only the lush coastal strip, assailed the entire region and reigned for several seasons. Of this latter type, none provoked greater suffering than the so-called Grande Séca which embraced the winters from 1877-1879, devastating the cotton and cattle complexes, the mainstays of the backlands' economy, and setting in motion an enormous migratory stream which ranged from the Amazon rubber lands to those of the booming coffee culture in the Southeast. Moreover, with the outbreak of epidemic diseases, it generated a mortality estimated as exceeding two hundred thousand persons. By this measure, then, the Grande Séca stands as “the most costly natural disaster in the history of the Western Hemisphere.”

The long-traditional view of the Roman Catholic Church in Spanish America as a monolithic, wealthy, and all powerful institution has been gradually modified by successive studies over the last thirty years. From these examinations emerges the picture of a complex institution characterized by diversity, and internal conflict. New research continues to enlarge and clarify understanding of the Church's role as an institution of the Spanish empire.

What follows will, in highlighting the colonial Church's relationship to the Spanish crown, add to this view of it as a complex and diverse institution. An examination of crown policy with regard to Church finance in the sixteenth century shows that the episcopal hierarchy of the Mexican colonial Church had a subordinate relationship to the crown in the era of the Counter Reformation. Rather than a strong Church influencing the crown, what emerges is the portrait of a relatively weak, dependent institution, supported by the king. The secular church hierarchy had only enough power to carry out its function and serve as a counterpoint to the religious orders, not enough to achieve financial independence on its own. The basis for this relationship lies in the patrimonial nature of Castilian government and its dominant position over the Church hierarchy because of the Patronato Real.