Although Mexico City was the foremost cultural center in North America before 1800, the musical history of this capital has been strangely neglected. Not until 1946, when Lota M. Spell published a pioneer article on music in the Conquest century, was a first attempt made at bringing the viceregal music to international attention. Four years later Francisco Curt Lange translated her article into Spanish. In 1952 Jesús Bal y Gay handsomely edited what he hoped would be but the first in a series to match Monumentos de la Música Española. As unique source for the transcriptions of Mexican colonial chefs-d’oeuvres in this luxurious 235-page volume, Bal y Gay availed himself of a filmed codex. In April, 1961 Roger Wagner recorded approximately half of the Bal y Gay volume—including Juan de Lienas’ splendid Missa super fa re ut fa sol la (the identical cantus firmus used in Morales’s Missa cortilla and in Masses by Melchor Robledo and Ginés de Boluda), Francisco López [y] Capillas’ Magnificat secundi toni, Hernando Franco’s Peccantem me quotidie, Memento met Deus, and the Spanish Masses transcribed by Bal y Gay because they were in the source codex.

Victoriano Huerta was one of the most prominent figures during the early years of the Mexican revolution. Despite his later prominence, little has been written about Huerta's early career. Huerta has usually been pictured as an ignorant and alcoholic semi-barbarian whose behavior as president reflected his lack of culture and education. Huerta's early military career reveals that although he was a heavy drinker, he was by no means uneducated. He was, in fact, one of the best educated Mexican officers of his day. In addition, Huerta was one of the best field generals that Mexico has produced. This article will trace Huerta’s career until the beginning of the revolution, at which point his career becomes common knowledge.

What makes a man—or the public memory of a man—into a a legend? The Western world has always had legendary heroes, men who in life waged vigorous campaigns against terrifying odds, and who, in death, bear reputations burnished and embellished and gloriously expanded by the stories their admirers tell. Dietrich of Berne, Frederick Barbarossa, Alexander of Macedon, Charlemagne, the Cid, Russia’s Prince Igor, Cordoba’s Great Captain, and others, live on in legend centuries after their physical lives ended. The stories of these heroes are told in sagas, epics, and lays, in ballads and folksongs, romances and myths. There are also heroes more newly-made. Their stories are broadcast through the media of twentieth-century communication: popular biographies, historical fiction, diplomatic telegrams, reports of senatorial committees, newspaper accounts, magazine articles, motion pictures. Mexico provided the pre-eminent legendary hero of modern times: Pancho Villa.

The delegate from Tabasco definitely believed that the destiny of Mexico was at stake. At President Carranza’s behest an assembly had convened at Querétaro charged with the duty of drafting a constitution which would embody the ideals of the Revolutionary element. Although he was still a young man in his early thirties, the delegate, Francisco Múgica, was a former military commander and governor of Tabasco, and he now occupied the strategic post of chairman of the Committee on Constitutional Reform whose task was to recommend the necessary modifications of the proposed constitution. It was December 13, 1916, and the committee’s report on a key article of the future constitution was being discussed. Múgica, the chief spokesman for the radical majority at the convention, rose to defend his views. The discussion of this particular article, he declared, was “the most solemn moment of the revolution. [No other moment] has been so great, so important, so solemn. … [The issue is] nothing less than that of the future of the nation, the future of our young people. …” The article which prompted Múgica’s dramatic remarks engendered one of the longest and most heated debates of the convention, and in the ensuing two decades it formed the basis of an important area of conflict between the Mexican government and the Catholic Church. This was Article 3 which deals with education.

Within the last decades considerable material has been written about Jews before the Mexican Inquisition. All of the studies mention in passing the most famous trial of a Jew before the Inquisition of Bishop Juan de Zumárraga (1536-1543), but no scholar has published a detailed analysis of this proceso of Francisco Millán. The paleography of the document is difficult and the pagination runs to some one hundred folios; however, it is worth the effort to examine this trial in order to obtain a vivid first-hand picture of Mexican Judaism of the 1530’s. The format of this analysis and commentary will follow the organization of the original trial record.