This book is a major study of one of the most serious problems of the Church in Latin America today, the shortage of priests, by the Secretary General of the Latin-American College of Louvain University. Ten years have been devoted to research, and this effort is reflected in the extensive bibliography, numerous statistical tables, and the wide range of facts contained in the text. In a word, this study is a notable effort to understand and explain the lack of priests in an area which is traditionally looked upon as Catholic.

The Spanish American Empire in its last half century of existence experienced an economic resurgence in oceanic shipping and inter-change with Europe. That prosperity, prompted by the reforms of the enlightened Bourbon monarch, Charles III, produced an unexpected result. Non-Spanish immigrants appeared in ever increasing numbers in Spain's American colonies. That immigration, almost always illegal, had always occurred in the colonial era in spite of the many barriers erected to exclude foreigners. Now, searching for economic opportunities, these immigrants participated in the economic revitalization of Spanish America.

For the most part these newcomers posed no threat to the state; and often by virtue of their commercial expertise or skilled labor, were a boon to Spanish American economic life. Unofficially, imperial officials were well aware of this. The major concern, regardless of official statements, was that immigrants profess the Catholic faith. Many of the newcomers soon acquired families in the New World, pursued their own ends, and quietly melded into Spanish American society. Certainly that proved to be the case in the Rio de la Plata. In this vast region, until the creation of the Viceroyalty in 1776, Spanish authority had been loose and the small foreign presence was generally tolerated or just ignored.

The Mission, so fundamental in the transformation of colonial Hispanic America, has been characterized as the “kingpin” in Spain’s New World frontier system. The culminating stage in the evolution of the mission system, as well as the final fling of Spain’s “aggressive-defensive” in America, is to be found in Alta California. For the missionary sons of St. Francis, the achievements of their Fernandinos on our present Southwest Pacific slope constituted a fitting installment in a long series of “spiritual and temporal conquests.” During the sixty-five years between 1769 and 1834, over 80,000 Indians appear to have been baptized by the Franciscans in California. These savages were not only converted to Christianity, but also, in greater or lesser degree, habituated to Christian practices and morality, civilized, agriculturalized, industrialized and Hispanicized. This despite the fact that the California natives were described as a heterogeneous lot of culturally destitute, peripheral peoples, among the most backward and abject of American red men. For the Franciscans, the Gospel and whatsoever might be necessary thereto must be taught to every human creature. The distinguished lineage of mission methods in California may be traced back to the Sierra Gorda and southern Texas, to the plains of Paraguay and the jungles of Brazil, and—still further—to the labors of missionary monks among the rude barbarians of early medieval Europe.

There was a race on, in 1914, to cross Uspallata Pass over the Andes—which would get across first, an automobile or an airplane? Man’s feet had worn trails across the high mountains, but neither of these two vehicles had ever crossed the dizzy heights of this Pass. Both were comparatively new means of transportation, and both faced great hazards in this undertaking. For the auto there was only an old, winding, dirt road; for the airplane there were the formidable, twenty-three-thousand-foot-high snow-capped mountains with their treacherous wind currents. It seemed as if Nature had had a prevision of these new inventions, and, to guard her inviolability, had thrown up insuperable physical barriers. The mountains hampered and impeded communication between various South American countries, and particularly between Chile and Argentina the Andes formed a tantalizing barricade. The ranges were like an ocean separating the two countries, and the same spirit which spurs man on to see what is over the horizon, or around the next bend in the road, would not let him rest until he had flown himself over the Andes.

IN 1578 the Spanish Ambassador in London protested against English outrages “beyond the line.” Queen Elizabeth replied

The Nearness of Cuba to the United States, lying as it does a scant ninety miles from the coast of Florida, has always provided a strong reason for American preoccupation with the “Pearl of the Antilles.” This geographic proximity has been a source of political consideration and concern for over a century. The historical roots of the western hemisphere, with Columbus’ landings in the Caribbean, the Spanish, English, and French colonization and imperialism, and our own interest, expressed most notably in the Monroe Doctrine, have kept Cuba central in our thoughts. Our continued interest during the twentieth century, following the removal of Spanish control from the island at the turn of the century, has intensified through the years, partly because its sugar has been important to our economy, and partly because the island has become politically unfriendly in the past decade.

A hundred years ago the United States had one of the worst depressions in its history. The disastrous drop in wages, prices, and output threw the mid-1870s into deep gloom and made the Centennial celebrations of 1876 seem to many persons no more than a bad joke. In subsequent years no one found a permanent cure for depressions, but during the late 1870s and 1880s a conviction developed that the Federal government must do more to aid American foreign trade. Thereafter the State Department cooperated increasingly with American business to expand the nation’s influence abroad.

In 1893, the penitent known as Antônio Conselheiro convinced several thousand devout followers to join with him in creating a religious community at Canudos in the Bahian sertão. It grew precipitously, attracting pilgrims from every part of the region, some from places more than two hundred kilometers distant. Within two years it had become the second largest urban center (after the capital, Salvador) in Bahia, Brazil's second most populous state. As soon as the effect on the traditional labor system began to be felt by landowners, pressure was applied to state officials, who in 1896 agreed to take action to dismantle the settlement. This would prove arduous, but after four bloody military campaigns, Canudos was destroyed by the Brazilian army in 1897. The so-called “rebellion” left an indelible legacy on late nineteenth-century Brazil. Taken to be a symbol of the clash between urban rationality and rural “backwardness,” Canudos was celebrated as a pivotal national victory for “progress” and “civilization.”

Veracruz was the most important strategic point in the defenses of New Spain throughout the three centuries of Spanish occupation. It was the only important commercial center which allowed easy access to the interior highlands of the viceroyalty and as such, attracted any potential invader who might wish either to carry out a raid on commerce or to undertake more ambitious conquests. This study will consider some of the major themes involved in the defense of Veracruz in the last three decades before 1810 to see how such a vital position affected military developments and to test a main theme of recent historical research on the period which has established the origins of praetorian-spirited, privilege-hungry soldiers in the period following the Seven Years War.

On the morning of October 13, 1641, a Spanish shopkeeper by the name of Juan Agudo died quite suddenly in the silvermining community of San Joseph del Parral in northern Mexico. His death must not have been altogether unexpected, however, for in a will drawn up only three weeks before he had described himself as “andando en pie aun que con alguna falta de salud.” According to the provisions of that will, executed without delay, Agudo, a bachelor and a devout Catholic, was buried in the parish church in Parral amidst ceremonies that were to cost his estate well over 500 pesos.

Most diverse are the evaluations of the Chibchas and their civilization and even the descriptions of that civilization. Steward and Faron, for example, call it “The Greatest Chiefdom” of South America, while Kroeber calls it a “realm,” Oberg calls it a “Feudal Type State” and others use the word “Kingdoms.” At any rate, a review of some evaluations will illustrate the confusion about the stature of the Chibchas among the aborigines of the New World and at the same time serve as an introduction to their civilization.

In the study of Latin America's economic history, discussion of the role of the export sector in promoting development has entered a provocative new stage. Recently, advances in the understanding of export economies have questioned the view that export orientation is the principal cause of underdevelopment and dependence. New studies have demonstrated the impact of export growth on the increasingly efficient use of domestic factors of production improvement of transportation networks, urban and industrial diversification, and active state intervention accompanied by the rising political influence of middle and labor sectors. Yet despite the perceived importance of domestic and foreign credit during the heyday of export-led growth, and the often underestimated but crucial native struggle to control and direct Latin American financial structures, few of those works have analyzed the crucial links between the economic structure and native financial development.

A new order for the New World was unfolding in the early nineteenth century,or so many in the United States believed. Between 1808 and 1825, all ofPortuguese America and nearly all of Spanish America broke away from Europe,casting off Old World monarchs and inaugurating home-grown governmentsinstead. People throughout the United States looked on with excitement, asthe new order seemed at once to vindicate their own revolution as well asoffer new possibilities for future progress. Free from obsolete Europeanalliances, they hoped, the entire hemisphere could now rally together aroundrepublican government and commercial reciprocity. Statesmen and politicianswere no exception, as men from Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe to JohnQuincy Adams and Henry Clay tried to exclude European influence from thehemisphere while securing new markets for American manufactures andagricultural surplus.