The publication of a handsome facsimile edition of the Cortés Codex in the National Library at Vienna makes it peculiarly appropriate to raise again the long-disputed question why the volume was prepared and what the circumstances were that brought it to the Imperial Library at Vienna. The story of how the codex came to the attention of scholars is well known. In preparing his History of America, William Robertson hunted for Cortés' first letter in Spain without success. He then thought that since Charles V was in the Germanies when the letter arrived in Spain, it might have been forwarded to him and thereafter deposited in the Hapsburg Imperial Library in Vienna. Through the good offices of Sir Robert Murray, then British ambassador at the imperial court, permission was obtained from Empress Maria Theresa for a search not merely for the letter but also for any papers of interest for the History of America. The search did not bring to light the lost first letter but did uncover the Cortés Codex, and in it the letter of the city council of Veracruz written at the same time as Cortés' first letter. The codex contains also a copy of the fifth carta de relatión of Cortés, unknown until then but now known to exist in other manuscript versions. Since Robertson's day, the Cortés Codex has been consulted continually. It has served as the basis for verifying the texts of those relaciones for which there are other copies, and is the sole source for the letter of the city council of Veracruz, which is usually published as the first carta de relatión.

The desire to see a restoration of full corporate privilege for their estate encouraged a group of New Granada’s clergymen to support the attempt of leading Creole families to replace the political predominance of the Spanish peninsulares. This political revolution contained both traditionalist and radical aspects. Most clerics strongly opposed the policies of Charles IV’s ministers, and singled out for especial criticism the favourite, Godoy. A particular cause of resentment in New Granada, as elsewhere in Spanish America, was the Consolidación de Vales Reales legislated on 28 November and 26 December 1804. Grievances extended generally to the metropolitan government’s fiscal policies, for a large measure of taxation fell upon the clergy. As in New Spain the defence of the fuero eclesiástico provided a rallying cry.

Although the natives made a crude kind of coarse woolens prior to the time of the Conquest, the manufacturing of woolen goods did not begin in New Spain until the early fifteen forties. At that time the first viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, laid the base of this industry in the new colony. Mendoza considered such an enterprise essential to lasting prosperity. He imported the merino, or fine wool, breed of sheep from Castile, and did everything possible to foster their growth. The viceroy had wide powers over local administration, and all matters pertaining to wool manufacturing were under his jurisdiction. Legislation regarding wool mills emanated from the crown; it was reissued by the viceroy; and its immediate execution was a cabildo function.

Licenses to establish textile mills could be granted only by the King through the mediation of the viceroy and audiencia. “None shall be founded in any way, nor for any cause, nor in any place, without my express license, or that of the viceroys …”

The list of memorable European musicians working in New Granada begins with a chance arrival at Cartagena in 1537—Juan Pérez Materano. Dispatched from Spain with a royal appointment to head the music in a Mexican or Central American cathedral, he landed first at Cartagena. In a letter to Charles V dated October 7, 1537, the Cartagena civil officials laud his voice and bearing: these have proved so agreeable during his stopover that they have prevailed upon him to stay and to become chantre of the already functioning Cartagena cathedral, rather than continuing to Yucatán. Arriving between first and second bishops of Cartagena, Pérez Materano found a wooden cathedral but with a “very imposing and good” coro dominated by an elegant choirbook stand. By the time this primitive cathedral was burned in February of 1552, he was already teaching or was soon to teach Juan de Castellanos, the imitator of Ercilla. Castellanos in his long poem on the foundation of New Granada calls Pérez Materano a “Josquin dez Prez” in theoretical knowledge.

Scholarly, as well as popular, literature focused on the interaction of the Catholic Church and the Mexican Revolution of 1910 has frequently advanced the contention that the Revolution had “Protestant overtones.” The vagueness of the accusation and its ambiguous implications have thus far eluded clarification. Some of these accusations, particularly those made in the 1920's when memories of the Cristero Revolt were fresh, represent the opinions of the Revolution's detractors and thus their comments have often been dismissed as mudslinging. However, writers of the 1960's in more dispassionate terms have also alluded to this theme. Jean Meyer, for example, includes as a part of his explanation of Cristero dissatisfaction the incompatible juxtaposition of the traditional Roman Catholic Cristero and the Protestant attitude adopted by the revolutionaries. Few investigations have explored the extent or role of non-Catholic religious institutions in Mexico during the revolutionary era. Despite these accusations, systematic research on Protestants has been overshadowed by investigations of Catholics to such an extent that the accuracy and seriousness of accusations of “Protestant overtones” cannot be evaluated.

Novelist and statesman Rómulo Gallegos (1884-1969) played a key role in the emergence of Venezuelan populism, first by inscribing the populist rationale for change in a series of novels—most famously in Doña Bárbara (1929)—and later by lending his prestige to Acción Democrática (AD), the nation’s most successful populist party. A founding member of AD, Gallegos supported the coup that brought the party to power in 1945 and became the party’s standard bearer in 1947, winning Venezuela’s first presidential election based on universal suffrage and direct voting. As president, he advanced AD’s reform agenda for almost a year before the military removed him from office and imposed a reactionary dictatorship. Forced into exile, Gallegos returned to his homeland when the dictatorship fell in 1958 and spent his remaining years as a revered elder statesman and acclaimed cultural figure.

The 1824 Chumash uprising against three Franciscan missions in the central section of the California chain—Santa Inés, La Purísima Concepción, and Santa Bárbara—was the largest organized revolt in the history of the Alta California missions. The Chumash burned most of the Santa Inés mission complex. At La Purísima, they drove out the mission guard and one of the two priests in residence. The mission was not forcibly retaken by the Mexican army for almost a month. At Santa Bárbara, the Chumash disarmed the soldiers stationed at the mission and sent them back to the presidio. After an inconclusive battle against troops who were sent out against them from the presidio, most of the rebels retired to the interior, where they set up their own community. The revolt was finally brought to an end when a military expedition led by Pablo de la Portilla negotiated the return of this group to the Santa Bárbara Mission. The role of the Prefect of the Missions, Father Vicente í, in bringing the revolt to an end by persuading this group to return to the Santa Bárbara Mission has long been recognized. Antonio María Osio, most likely relying on what he had been told by his brother-in-law, Governor Luis Argüello, stated in 1851, “They [the Chumash] had decided not to return to the missions and expressed the low regard in which they generally held the inhabitants of California. Yet, at the same time, they revered Reverend Father Vicente í for his many virtues. Only he had the necessary power of persuasion to calm the Indians’ fears.” In 1885, as he described the negotiations between the Mexican military and the Chumash, Theodore S. Hittell wrote, “Communications were opened and a conference held; the two missionaries, Father President Vicente í and Father Antonio Ripoll of Santa Bárbara, acted as negotiators; and the result was that the Indians submitted unconditionally; were pardoned, and the fugitive neophytes marched back to their respective missions.” We offer here a translation of a letter which í wrote to the Bishop of Sonora, Bernardo Martínez Ocejo, a few months after these events. The document provides an excellent first-hand account of the conclusion of the revolt. It also offers a close view of the growing fear and anxiety the missionaries were experiencing in the early years of Mexican independence. As a context for the letter, let us briefly summarize the Chumash revolt.

Recent ethnohistorical trends point to a renewed interest in the complex interplay of beliefs and ritual practices that gave rise to multiple expressions of religiosity in different temporal and spatial settings of colonial America. Religion provides a rich thematic matrix for exploring the boundaries of alterité between Amerindian and European actors and figures centrally, as well, in the internal development of different cultural and ethnic identities. Cosmology, understood as those systems of belief that bind individuals to their communities and to the wider universe, informs different peoples' concepts of time and their sense of history. The Maya of Yucatán, for example, integrated both linear and cyclical notions of time into their cosmic order in ways that rendered sensible their rhythms of accommodation and resistance to foreign domination. Moreover, cultural constructions of the past rely heavily on myths that fuse spiritual beliefs with ethnic claims to the land, as observed in the intricate connections between syncretic religion and the survival of ethnic polities in colonial Oaxaca. Ethnic rationalizations of space, it has been argued, underwrote particular aesthetic and cognitive approaches to spatial and temporal “mapping” which, in turn, brought a religious dimension to the notion of territoriality.

Until the unsuccessful British invasion of Argentina in 1806-1807, Buenos Aires had been, for the non-Spanish peoples of the world, a mysterious, strange, unknown city, thousands of miles across the ocean. Except for a shipwrecked sailor or two, few Englishmen had had the opportunity of seeing that old colonial city prior to that time. Due to Spain's monopolistic trade policies with respect to her American possessions, trade with the New World, and even the right to reside there, except for a relatively brief period under Charles V, had been reserved for the subjects of the Spanish Crown.

The Island of Grenada has had an interesting and turbulent history. Its early years were largely under the French, but it was captured by the English in 1763. It was taken back by the French in 1779 but then permanently ceded to England by the Treaty of Versailles in 1783. The census of 1771 showed a population of 1,661 whites, 415 free colored, and 26,211 slaves—largely associated with the raising of sugar. In 1793 the French and the British were again at war, and in 1795 the French republic made a strong attempt to regain Grenada by capitalizing on the strong antagonism which had built up between the French and British settlers on the island. Although the French forces under Victor Hughes could not actually capture the island, the local French planters, slaves and colored planters revolted against the British under the leadership of a colored planter, Julian Fedon, who has since become something of a folk hero in Grenada. In March 1795, Fedon and his followers invaded the old town of Grenville, killing a number of British and capturing others. The band of revolutionaries then retreated to Fedon's plantation where they subsequently entrenched themselves on a nearby mountain with their prisoners. They were dislodged by the British in June 1796 with considerable loss of life. Fedon escaped, but many of his followers lost both their lives and had their property confiscated.

This article discusses the role played by the production of sugar and cane liquor (aguardente) in the seventeenth and early eighteenth-century Amazon region. It shows how the development of sugar production had a double significance: sugar plantations had to produce a commodity that could be exported so as to generate revenues for the Royal Treasury, but they also had to produce aguardente for domestic consumption (including by those Indians who worked for the Portuguese). This domestic production provoked distrust on the part of the Crown, since it was believed to threaten sugar production overall. Nevertheless, aguardente production became a central element in the Portuguese dominion of the sertões (or sertão, the hinterland), while continuing to increase the revenues of the royal treasury.

In 1891, Luther H. Gulik, a prominent member of the international leadership of the YMCA of the United States, established the triangle as the YMCA symbol. He saw the triangle as a symbol imbued with Christian beliefs that would become the spearhead of a worldwide missionary movement. About the Triangle, Gulik wrote:

In 1657, the marquis of Villagarcía was appointed as president of the Audiencia of Charcas. Although, he eventually declined the post, his nomination generated an unusual trail of private documents. Using my study of this correspondence as a base, I will discuss how the networks of patronage were built and sustained, how they operated, and how they impacted the global mobility of imperial officials. Patronage networks were indispensable to itinerant officials who relied on their clients, patrons, and brokers to help them govern distant regions by gathering resources and information, and implementing their objectives. Moreover, this particular case gives us a glimpse into the relationship between Villagarcía as husband and his wife, and the private assessments and negotiations surrounding the transatlantic journey.

The battles that peasants waged during the Mexican Revolution translated into a series of agrarian and agricultural institutions, and one of these was the Banco Nacional de Crédito Ejidal, created in 1926. Histories deeply engrained in both the popular imagination of Mexico and scholarly historiography have offered a generic classic narrative of ejidal credit, beginning with Lázaro Cárdenas. He and his cabinet sought to transform the ejido into the engine of agricultural growth for the nation and carried out a sweeping and (in qualified ways) successful land reform, thereby bringing the revolution to the fullest fruition many Mexicans would ever know. It is assumed that ejidal credit peaked during Cárdenas's administration in two major ways: first, it was in this period that ejidal credit societies received the most loans from the Banco Nacional del Crédito Ejidal, and second, it was during the same period that the bank clearly and unanimously embraced social reform goals over orthodox banking goals.

In the summer of 1924, townspeople recount, 14-year-old Manuel Chávez built models of colonial New Mexico mission churches in the dirt outside Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in the village of Peña Blanca. He was staying with the Franciscan friars after expressing his desire to enter the seminary, where he would become the first native New Mexico Hispano to be ordained a Franciscan priest in the centuries since the Spanish colonization. Still a boy, but one who was about to embark on a life-changing path, the small missions he playfully constructed in the dirt and staunchly protected foretold the strategy of rematerialization that would characterize his future: he would become a pioneering Franciscan historian who organized and interpreted the vast collection of Catholic Church documents from the colonial period in New Mexico through the twentieth century. The author of two dozen books and over 600 shorter works, Fray Angélico Chávez (1910–1996) was a visual artist, literary figure, historian, genealogist, translator, and church restorer—one of New Mexico's foremost twentieth-century intellectuals.