For Mexico the years 1861 to 1867, encompassing the United States Civil War and French intervention, were violent, tumultuous years, and Mexico was already exhausted by five decades of revolution, war, civil disorder and banditry. The last years of the 1850's had witnessed the guerra de la reforma, an intense, bitter civil war. Not only was Mexico politically exhausted, she was also economically in bad need of peace to permit regeneration. The war with France, beginning in late 1861, was, however, to continue the economic as well as political strain upon Mexican society. Still, the United States Civil War, for all its tragic course north of the Rio Grande, was apparently to have a beneficial effect upon the Mexican economy in several aspects.

Belice, or British Honduras, has been the subject of dispute throughout its history. Although the Spanish claim to the Caribbean and Central America was clear in theory, the British distinguished between title by discovery and title by occupation. In their eyes this jungle terrain along the shores of the Caribbean Sea was “ res nullius ”—uninhabited territory, i.e., not occupied by Europeans—and hence subject to seizure by anyone who chose to effectively populate it. Spanish settlements in neighboring portions of Central America, in the British view, conveyed only dubious title to this area. Moreover, the original settlers of the town of Belize were freebooters who were not accustomed to paying heed to Spanish claims.

The purpose of this article is to briefly describe the background and content of a philosophical work from 17th-century Peru: the logic of Juan de Espinoza Medrano, “ el Lunarejo ” (1632?- 1688), published in Rome in 1688. It is hoped that the examination of this writing, which is similar to other philosophical treatises of the period, will show that colonial philosophy in Latin America attained a respectable technical level and that many criticisms often made of it must be reconsidered.

Frequently, commentators on political developments in various small Central American nations describe the political participation of the military as if it were an unchanging and ineluctable force that had conditioned public life from time immemorial. Unfortunately, such a perspective not only distorts historical reality but makes it extremely difficult to offer accurate interpretations of current events. While it seems fundamentally correct to assert that Latin American military institutions differ from such organizations in other less developed areas in that they were forged in the crucible of 19th rather than 20th century events, such a generalization cannot apply to every Hispanic nation. A more adequate representation of reality might be that there are essentially two types of Latin American military establishments which relate in quite different ways to their respective political systems. First, there is that class of military organization where institutional identities were fairly well established by the early 20th century and, secondly, there are those which bear a closer affinity to military establishments in the new nations. Here, there has been a very late process of institutional consolidation which makes the behavioral patterns of these institutions particularly volatile.

A surprisingly frank letter from Francisco I. Madero, political figurehead of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, to New York publisher William Randolph Hearst casts new light on the difficult question of when Madero finally opted for revolution to topple the 35-year dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911).

The letter was dated April 25, 1911, when Madero was with insurrectionary troops fighting at Ciudad Juárez. It contained Madero's responses to some written questions on his role in the Revolution submitted by Hearst through Sonunerfield, an American consular official in Mexico. Madero's answers were to form the basis for a news story in the Hearst newspapers.