On April 12 1939, from his place of exile in San Antonio, Texas, José de Jesús Manríquez y Zárate, first bishop of Huejutla, Mexico, wrote a pastoral letter to his priests and people, exhorting them to work for the cause of Juan Diego’s beatification. This was the first effective step in the process of canonizing the indigenous peasant who in 1531 is said to have experienced the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The story of these apparitions has been the subject of intense controversy, especially with regard to their historical reality and the existence of Juan Diego.

Is love a modern invention? This question is perhaps not quite as ludicrous as it might appear. For nearly three decades scholars have been exploring whether contemporary ideas about love are in fact as ancient as we might believe. As a result of these investigations, some historians have concluded that our current attitudes towards love date from no earlier than the seventeenth century. This opinion was expressed most forcefully by Lawrence Stone in his 1977 The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800. In this path-breaking study Stone argued that recognizably modern ideas about marriage did not emerge in England until the seventeenth century. Only then did what he called “companionate marriage” develop. “Companionate marriage,” as described by Stone, was characterized by certain distinguishing features.

Fundamental to the establishment of Spanish colonial power in America was the formation of a system of laws and the invention or extension of institutions needed to implement them. In Peru, a more systematic imposition of Spanish regulation began in the 1540s with the introduction of the New Laws (1542), which were directed to the west coast of South America in 1543 by the first appointed Viceroy, the ill-fated peninsular noble, the caballero (gentleman) Blasco Nuñez Vela.

In 1876, the Revolution of Tuxtepec raged in the Mexican countryside, producing more war dead for families to mourn. The timely arrival of General Manuel González on the battlefield at the hacienda of Tecoac (Tlaxcala) forced Federal Army General Ignacio Alatorre to surrender to the rebels on November 16. Without an army, President Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada went into exile and the forces of General Porfirio Díaz entered Mexico City unopposed. Widespread melancholia continued through December. The journalist “Juvenal” (Enrique Chávarri) wrote about the gloomy outlook in the capital, where no serenades or social gatherings rang in the new year. Instead of patronizing restaurants, people flocked to churches to pray for a better year.