José Vasconcelos, whose lawyer’s degree entitles him to the designation “Licenciado,” but who more commonly is referred to respectfully as “El Maestro Vasconcelos,” has suffered in recent years a political eclipse which has deprived him of the publicity enjoyed by less distinguished Latin Americans who have kept themselves more attuned to political changes. The writer of this article does not share Vasconcelos’ political or religious creeds, but he cannot help recognizing in him one of the noblest expressions of Latin-American thought. His vast culture and universal philosophy is free from the parochialism which is the curse of much Latin-American culture. This eulogy by one of a different persuasion is intended to counteract the oblivion into which a hostile partisan spirit would relegate him.

In these days of speeding ships that cross the ocean in a few days, of streamlined trains and automobiles that rush from city to city in a few hours, of flashing planes that span the continent almost in a matter of minutes, it may seem strange to sketch the life of a man whose reputation for sanctity is matched only by his fame as a long-distance walker, a foot-traveler par excellence.

As a Part of the Centennial celebration of the death of José de San Martín, the year 1950 was designated by the Congress of Argentina as the “Year of San Martin.” Article 2 of Law 13,661 reads as follows: “From the first day of January until the thirty-first of December of the year 1950, all official documents of national, provincial and municipal authorities; the titles and diplomas granted by institutions of learning of all ranks and jurisdictions, be they of the State or incorporated; diplomatic dispatches and the notations and colophons of books, periodicals, dailies, reviews and every other class of publications whether they be official or private, national or foreign, shall be preceded by the denomination of ‘Year of the Liberator General San Martin’ to indicate the year 1950.”

José Francisco de San Martín is best known as the military genius on whose successes was founded the political independence of Argentina, Chile and Peru. In writing the account of his life, biographers have used such titles as “Captain of the Andes” and “Saint of the Sword.” Born of Spanish parents on the Argentinian frontier at Yapeyu, February 25, 1778, he accompanied them to Spain at the age of seven and was educated for a military career. Joining the Spanish army, he fought in Africa and defended the mother country against Republican France, England, Portugal and Napoleon Bonaparte.

The Library of Congress commemorates this year the 150th anniversary of its establishment by act of the Congress of the United States, and to celebrate this important event in its history has decided to sponsor, with the cooperation of the Institute of Brazilian Studies of Vanderbilt University, an International Colloquium on Luso-Brazilian Studies. This meeting is designed to bring together in Washington, October 18–21, distinguished specialists in various aspects of Luso-Brazilian culture, not only from Brazil, Portugal and the United States, but also from other countries.

When the Editors of THE AMERICAS invited me to write an article for this issue of their journal and thus join with them in honoring the International Colloquium on Luso-Brazilian Studies, it occurred to me to say something about Salvador Correia de Sá e Benavides. Could anything be more appropriate for such an occasion, I thought, than to touch upon the activities of a man whose life was intimately connected with Portugal, Brazil and Angola? Surely no other figure out of the common past of the Portuguese-speaking countries more nearly symbolizes their basic unities and, to a certain extent even today, their interdependence. The pages that follow will not directly bring this out, because my purpose was simply to present the facts that have been available to me. But the reader will be in a position to draw his own conclusions, and these, I believe, will bear out what I have suggested above.

Thank you for the privilege of living an hour among the historians of Saint Francis and among his American children. And thank you for the superlative honor you have awarded me.

When the world of a sudden hardens and turns into a kind of fierce mythology, instead of the consummate humanity that God wished, the Franciscan genius, which is above all a spiritual genius, spreads out, thickens, and intensifies, even as do cosmic forces. A great anxiety falls over us and doubles the meaning of our terrestrial mission.

The cord that we wear around our waist should remind us day by day, especially in time of strife, that our mission surrounds us and clings to us in the same way.

Without Doubt one of the buildings of greatest historical merit in the capital of Mexico is the ancient Church of San Francisco. There, shortly after arriving at the Aztec metropolis, the “Twelve Apostles of Mexico,” Fray Martín de Valencia and his companions established their home. These saintly men through their superhuman missionary activity converted that church into a fervent center of religion and culture. Adjoining the large church, they built the famous college of arts and trades destined especially for the Indian youths, which was directed by that great missionary, Fray Pedro de Gante. From that church and its convent the missionaries set forth to extend their activities southward to Peru, and northward to New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas. With reason, therefore, this ancient sanctuary of San Francisco may be considered the cradle of Christian Mexico, as well as the mother church of the Franciscans in the Americas.

It is Probable that no country outside the borders of the United States has, during the past half century, been more widely and more inaccurately presented by our American writers, than the Republic of Mexico. An examination of this surfeit of material and the multiplicity of its authors’ approaches to their topic discovers our Catholic neighborland to have long proved both an irresistible lure and an enigma to the professional producers of run-of-the-mill travel volumes as well as to the more popular (i.e., lighter-weight) theorists on economics and sociology. Their enthusiastic, even florid rhetoric has been ceaselessly inspired by the color and drama of Mexico; but otherwise their persistent output rarely gives much evidence of a clear understanding of Mexican attitudes or ideals and so, of competence to fathom the true significance of this nation’s turbulent history. Since the past cannot be overlooked in any safe estimate of the future, this is a regrettable fact that could prove most detrimental to that much-desired inter-American accord which has already cost the American taxpayer some millions of dollars. There are two easily understood reasons for such lack of insight on the part of so many of our writers; this has already served to rouse the resentment and disrespect of the Mexican reader of the American press while also resulting in a sincere acceptance by Anglo-Americans of a decidedly strange mixture of misinformation and absurdly ill advised opinion for “the truth about Mexico.”

After the Failure of the Atondo-Kino attempt (1683–1685) to found permanent Christian missions among the Indians of the rock-ribbed peninsula called Lower California, the project lapsed for over a decade. Then a missionary who was to achieve historical fame, Juan María Salvatierra, was sent as official Visitor to the north Sonoran establishments where Eusebio Francisco Kino was working successfully and pushing the frontier of New Spain across the international boundary north to what is now Tucson in Arizona. As Kino and Salvatierra jogged on horseback over mission trails during the early months of 1691, the former was able to impart to Salvatierra a spark of his enthusiasm for the conversion of the Indians of Lower California. The spark fell amidst ready tinder which took fire. From that time on an unquenchable desire to convert the Indians of California took hold of Salvatierra. Though other duties intervened (Salvatierra was made rector at Guadalajara, then master of novices at Tepotzotlán), he never gave up the idea of founding permanent missions in the cactus-ridden peninsula. For years the holy man prodded viceroys in Mexico and Jesuit generals in Rome. Finally, through a fortunate combination of circumstances both in New Spain and in Rome, secular and ecclesiastical authorities became willing to allow the Black Robe to carry out his idea provided there would be no burden put upon the royal fisc and provided he would take full charge of the soldiers and seamen necessary to implement the founding of a permanent establishment on the peninsula. The happy turn of events came in 1696. Salvatierra with Kino and Juan de Ugarte as treasurer would beg money to finance the expedition, Kino would cross the gulf with Salvatierra, and the first permanent mission in California would be founded. The last minute Kino was detained and Francisco María Picólo, Tarahumar missionary, was designated. But the ardent Salvatierra could not wait. In a small boat with sixteen men, three of them Christian Indians, the missionary put off from the port of Yaqui on October 10, 1697. After dangers and adventures the party set foot on California soil five days later.

To one who studies the career of Fray Isidro Félix de Espinosa, the strangest fact of all lies in finding that so little was known of him for a century and a half after his death. When Don José Beristain y Souza finally issued his Biblioteca Hispano Americana Setentrional in 1819, all his knowledge of Fray Isidro was summed up in these few lines:

Espinosa (Fr. Isidro Félix)—Native of the city of Querétaro, of the Province of S. Peter and S. Paul of Michoacán, of the Order of S. Francis. Preacher, missionary apostolic, guardian, and chronicler of the College de Propaganda Fide of the Holy Cross of Querétaro; censor of books for the Tribunal of the Inquisition. He was as tireless in his preaching of the Divine Word as he was in perpetuating the apostolic deeds of his brethren; and due to that fact was worthy of being termed “the Julius Caesar of the Gospel in New Spain.” For, like that Roman, he fought by day (though better battles) and wrote by night.

The Apostolic Colleges of Spanish America, as is well known, were spiritual powerhouses which provided learned, zealous and dynamic missionaries, who not only evangelized the pagan Indians on the periphery of Christianity but also renewed the faith and morals of the professed Christians in populous cities and far-flung haciendas. These missionaries were recruited principally from the provinces in Spain, though a number of American-born friars became members. It was but natural that in the course of time these colleges came to possess great archives and valuable libraries. The correspondence of the missionaries out in the conversiones, of bishops and government officials, the official books of the college, such as the Acta of the discretory, the reception and profession of novices, the account books, the affiliation and disaffiliation of members, the records of benefactors, all, after a century or two, comprised bulky archival material. Just as naturally, in the course of time, large libraries developed. Home missionaries needed access to general and particular knowledge without the constant necessity of leaving their colleges to obtain it. The missionaries in the Indian fields had to rely almost exclusively upon the college or mother house to supply them with the books they needed in fields where printing was unknown and reading was confined almost to the circle of missionaries.

Hipólito da Costa would probably be quite content (perhaps even a little surprised) at being feted as the father of the Brazilian press and probably he would not demand the additional title of political philosopher. But, in the fashion of his age, he discoursed at length on politics, and the pages of the Correio Braziliense which he edited show the ideas on governmental theory of a particular, early nineteenth-century liberal, a Portuguese influenced by the English liberalism which seems so far from radical today as to be almost blatantly conservative.

Fray Antonio Linaz De Jesús Maria had left his native Mallorca to spend fifteen years in the Franciscan Province of Michoacán. At the end of this time, in the year 1679, he was elected Custodio to take part in the General Chapter which was to be held in Toledo in 1682.

When he left for Spain, he carried with him the idea of returning to the missions of the New World, bringing with him other missionaries who would penetrate especially into the region of the “Cerro Gordo”; he presented his project in Madrid to the General Commissioner, Fray Miguel de Avegonzar and begged for authorization to encourage missionary vocations in Spain. Meanwhile, the time arrived for holding the Chapter which he had come to attend. Having obtained the permission, he preached in Mallorca, in Barcelona and in Lerida, and returned to Villa Coronada where he met Fray Joseph Ximénez Samaniego, General of the Order, who afterwards died Bishop of Placencia. Fray Antonio Linaz talked at length with the Superior; he made him see the needs, of both a spiritual and a temporal nature, of the aborigines which could be met and taken care of by obtaining provisionally the authorization to gather together twelve religious who would dedicate themselves to such a noble task, though a definite decision in the case was postponed.

In 1898 Bernard Moses, professor of history at the University of California, published the first of the series of volumes which contributed in a preeminent degree to the inception of a new era of Hispanic-American historical studies in the United States. Six years later appeared Edward Gaylord Bourne’s Spain in America, 1450–1580, which enjoyed a wider circulation and probably exerted a more immediate influence in English-speaking historical circles than Moses’ pioneer work. Bourne’s career was cut short by death in 1908, and one can only speculate on what might have been his influence on the development of Hispanic-American studies in the United States. Moses, however, lived on until 1930, active to the last in turning out the succession of volumes which have earned for him a distinguished place among the Anglo-American pioneers of the new era of Hispanic-American historiography. His scholarship, it is true, rested content with the utilization of the printed sources of his field, but these were abundant and Moses used them exhaustively and with discernment. The interest he stimulated sent his disciples on their highly rewarding researches in archives and manuscript depositories.

No Chapter in Brazilian history has received more attention or is better known in all its details than the story of the “Inconfidência Mineira.” Nor has any theme been the subject of more partisan study or greater disagreement.

Innumerable documents pertaining to the topic have long been known and studied, discussed and published, both in Brazil and Portugal. These range from the correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and José Joaquim da Maia, to the work known as “The Last Moments of Tiradentes, by the friar who assisted him as confessor,” attributed to Frei Raimundo de Penaforte. In Brazil alone we may refer to the seven volumes of the “Autos de Devassas da Inconfidência” in the Arquivo Público; the two large volumes of the Manuscript Division of the Biblioteca Nacional; the documents in the Historical Section of the Arquivo Público, and those in the Arquivo Público of Minas Gerais. There are many published documents to be found scattered throughout journals and reviews, such as the documents edited by Melo Morais in Brasil Histórico, by Barão Homem de Melo in the Revista do Instituto Histórico Brasileiro, by Melo de Moares Filho in the Arquivo do Distrito Federal, and many others. Many eminent historians, from Joaquim Norberto de Sousa e Silva to Lúcio José dos Santos, have given to the matter their most careful attention.

In Addition to being Head of the civil government in his capacity as governor, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces as captain general, the Spanish viceroy was also ecclesiastical patron in the colony. In this capacity he held the title of vice-patrono.

The Recent sweeping innovations in the Organization of American States and the provisions of the Treaty of Mutual Assistance constitute in certain respects a return to the political concepts of Bolívar’s Americanism. Through the present study of these early ideas as they existed in Chile we hope to show that the modern Pan-American movement had its origin in the early nineteenth-century ideals of Hispanic-American solidarity.

In 1910 the Franciscan Fathers of St. Michaels, Arizona, published An Ethnologic Dictionary of the Navaho Language which presented a first-hand ethnographic account of the Navaho. In the preparation of this work, native assistants and headmen were always insistent upon choosing informants among men “who knew their stuff” and ignoring the rank and file. In addition to following these native leads, the Franciscans followed the practice of many anthropologists of those days, of presenting facts without attempting their analysis. No doubt, a knowledge of the way of life, the customs, industries, religious beliefs and social organization of the Navaho would assist the men in missionizing the tribe. The work has served and still does serve this purpose.

Anthropology, however, has made great strides since those early days. In recent years especially, there has been a marked tendency to join up with psychology in an effort to interpret anthropological facts. A recent example of this tendency is afforded by two very important studies by Clyde Kluckhohn and Dorothea Leighton. The volumes are part of a series of monographs written under the auspices of the Indian Education Research Project and “undertaken jointly by the Committee of Human Development of the University of Chicago and the United States Office of Indian Affairs” (LK, p. vii).