On December 13, 1845 the recently founded Santiago newspaper El Artesano Opositor (The Opposition Artisan) published a letter submitted by “twenty artisan friends of Cerda.” The letter related the tragic case of José Agustin Cerda, a young tailor, soldier in the civic militia, and member of an electoral association called the Sociedad de Artesanos de Caupolicán (Caupolicán Artisans Society), who had been arrested on November 12 by the city's military prosecutor on the charge that he was involved in an anti-government “conspiracy.” Claiming innocence, Cerda, according to his companions, denied his involvement in the alleged conspiracy “with noble arrogance.” As a result he was locked in iron shackles in a military prison, causing his legs to swell up and his illness-weakened lungs to struggle for air. A follow-up article in the newspaper announced that Cerda was still being held in that “unjust and inhumane” condition two months later, along with several other city residents who were linked to the electoral associations of the liberal opposition in Santiago. While the outraged authors of the letter to El Artesano Opositor singled out the Cerda case for its malicious effects on their friend, they clearly saw the incident as part of a larger problem: the routine and systematic mistreatment of all artisan militiamen by the conservative governing regime. Not content simply to demand the release of their colleague, the “friends of Cerda” demanded the complete reform of a political system that denigrated the honor, dignity, and patriotism of all the city's artisans. “Understand,” continued the letter in a provocative flourish, “that by attacking the innocent life of Cerda you attack the lives of all the artisans of the Republic.” “We should expect more,” it concluded solemnly, “from the men we elevate with our votes, defend with our blood, and maintain with our sweat and labor.”

The founding of the College of St. Francis at Celaya, near Querétaro in Mexico, later to achieve the status of a Royal and Pontifical University, offers an excellent example of the Franciscan Order’s internal conflict between the strict observance of poverty and its willingness to administer higher educational institutions on a permanent basis.

Although Florida was in the hands of the Spaniards for over three centuries there are hardly any remains of Spanish buildings. Original Spanish architecture has vanished from Florida; a basic link to Florida's fascinating history has been destroyed. Florida was in the hands of the Spanish from its discovery in 1513 until 1763, when Spain gave the province to England at the end of the Seven Years' War, known in America as the French and Indian War. Spain regained Florida in 1783 at the time of the Treaty of Paris which terminated the American War of Independence. The period from 1783 to 1821 is called in Florida history the second Spanish period and gave way to the American territorial period when Florida became part of the American union. The second Spanish period is quite distinct from the first Spanish period of Florida history (1513-1763). While the first period represents true Spanish Florida, the second era is more of an afterthought. Many foreigners, mostly English and United States citizens, were residing in Florida. It hardly can be called a Spanish Florida per se. Architectural remains from this pseudo-Spanish period are extremely scarce. The best preserved piece is the Catholic cathedral at St. Augustine, parts of which date back to the second Spanish period. But this church fares poorly if put next to the magnificent old cathedrals in Spanish America.

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 History of the Early contacts between the Russians and the Spanish-speaking people in this hemisphere remains to be written. A few of these meetings are common knowledge. Miranda’s visit to the Russia of Catherine the Great has been treated frequently; Concepción de Argüello’s tragic love for the Russian Rezanov became a traditional theme. Obviously, in California, where the two civilizations met, contacts were numerous. With very few exceptions they were reported as incidents of friction. Bancroft’s History of California (XIX, Chapters 4, 14 and 28) and Engelhardt’s The Missions and Missionaries of California convey the impression that the Russians were aware of the military weakness of the Spanish outposts and that the Spanish, later Mexican, leaders were generally apprehensive of the designs of their neighbors to the North. On the other hand, the friendly reception accorded by the Spanish Franciscans to Rezanov’s companion, Langsdorff, and the latter’s favorable comments on the friars’ achievements are known. Another instance of peaceful relations whose record somewhat belies the concept of an early nineteenth-century “cold war” on the Pacific coast is almost unknown.

On the 8th of March, 1500, a fleet of thirteen ships and caravels departed from Lisbon under the command of Pedro Alvares Cabral. Two of the caravels were destined for East Africa and the others for Calicut, on the Malabar coast of India, where they were sent to obtain cargoes of spices and other Eastern commodities, to establish friendly relations with its ruler, and to leave a factory for future trade. Vasco da Gama with his fleet had preceded; Cabral followed to reap the reward. The route was carefully selected to secure the safest and best passage to the Cape of Good Hope. The ships of the fleet were clumsy so that the course must be taken with the most favorable winds. They sailed somewhat to the west of south from the Cape Verde Islands and the coast of Brazil was reached, probably for the first time. After remaining here for about a week taking on supplies of water and wood, the main fleet continued to India. Before doing so, possession of this discovery was taken for the Crown, though it was not then known whether it was mainland or an island. A small supply ship was sent back to Lisbon carrying letters for the King, among them one by Pedro Vaz de Caminha telling of the sojourn and describing the natives, and another by the king’s astrologer, Master John. Both of these letters still exist. The date of the arrival of the supply ship in Portugal is not known but it was probably early in July, 1500. The news of the discovery was of great interest to the King and to the Portuguese people, but their chief concern was with the success of the India fleet, and Caminha’s letter reported that little of value was found in the new land during Cabral’s stay. The discovery made by Cabral was considered of sufficient importance, however, to warrant sending a second fleet for further investigation. The King and the cosmographers wished to know whether it was mainland, as they undoubtedly suspected, and if so its extent. If such were the case, they desired to claim the land for Portugal under the Bull of May 4, 1493 and the Treaty of Tordesillas, signed June 4, 1494. If it were an island, the Spice Islands farther to the west might be reached as Columbus had claimed. The merchants were interested in its commercial value particularly for obtaining pearls and dye wood and in its possibilities for the cultivation of sugar cane. In the latter of these Bartolomeo Marchioni, a wealthy Florentine, who had long resided in Lisbon and operated sugar plantations in Madeira and elsewhere, could anticipate profits, if the land were fertile and native labor adequate. The New Christians or converted Jews evidently also saw in this new land the possibility of escape from persecution in Portugal and a chance for wealth from the products which might be found there.

The Teacher of Latin-American History in the United States finds himself seriously handicapped by the lack of impartial and fair textbooks on this increasingly important subject. Most of the authors, either through lack of contact with the sources of information and original documents, or just because the trends begun by the “New American School of History” mentioned by Charles F. Lummis some fifty years ago, have not yet reached them, still cling tenaciously to the errors of the “Black Legend.” Their pet source still is the now much discredited and entirely unreliable Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas. They still take their cues from his much translated Brevísima Historia de la Destrucción de las Indias. Seldom do they even mention any of the many saintly bishops and missionaries who opposed him in the great debate of the early colonial times.

In the summer of 1870, Napoleon III desperately withdrew his troops from the stronghold where they had been staving off Italian patriots from the greatest prize of the drive for unification, the city of Rome. Bismarck’s armies were sweeping west, a thrust which would end in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. This Franco-Prussian War also emptied the Roman Catholic bishops out of St. Peter’s Basilica where they had been meeting since the previous December at the First Vatican Council.

The parents of most of the Council fathers were born in the decades before the French Revolution. The sons grew up during the Age of Metternich when the firemen of Europe, the Concert Powers, tried to stamp out the embers of the Revolution. Many of these men had just been ordained, a few already wore episcopal mitres when most of Europe exploded in 1848. As they assumed leadership in the Church, Garibaldi and Cavour were evicting Pope Pius IX from most of the Papal States.