Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The  aim of this article  is to put in context two medical reports from New Spain written in 1689 regarding the use of indigenous temascal baths. The study highlights the importance of the documents,  transcribed and  published for the first time, in order to make and in-depth analysis concerning the history of medicine and public health of the old regime. Similarly, it seeks to show the relevance of such materials in the historical  approach to medical practice and  knowledge of the  late sixteenth century.  The  heritage and beliefs about the benefits and ways of using water and the particular and peculiar relationships of indigenous peoples with this natural element and the physical spaces where the baths were performed are discussed. Moreover,  it shows how the healing value of these methods was reevaluated by seventeenth-century western medicine.

During the festivities of the virgin of Guadalupe in 1795, a group of criollos garnished a balcony in Mexico City in order to discredit the cathedral's canon, Mariano  Beristain.  The reason for this quarrel was the recent homage paid by Beristain to Spain's ministers' chief, Manuel  Godoy, who had been  accused of insulting religion and devotion to the virgin. The complaints filed with the Inquisition against  Beristain  afford the  possibility of observing some of informal channels of expression at a time when there was a tightening of the control over the press. Moreover, these complaints illustrate the fierce dispute over control of public opinion in Mexico City at the end of the eighteenth century.

This a discussion of Mexico's and Brazil's diplomatic relations among themselves, during the formative period of national states, stressing the difficulties faced by the different government systems that were adopted by these two countries. In this context, the author carries out an analysis of the imagery that diplomats started to elaborate about the observed nation. Both the optical quality and adjustment of the lens with which they look at each other, and the play between checks and  balances within which both Mexico and Brazil interact with each other, in function of their respective geopolitical areas, is discussed. As a central counterpoint, there is a focusing of the role  played by the United States as an emerging world power in the transactions between both countries, which originated a tripartite set of vested interests that lasts up to the  present. Similarly, other variables affecting contacts among these two nations still retain their importance, since these contacts find their roots in the first half of the nineteenth century.

This paper is on the borderline between three different domains but with shared  features: intellectual history (Darnton and  La Capra), the literary essay (Praz and Steiner), and the history of reading (Chartier). It aims at describing a decisive phase in the sentimental education of Alfonso Reyes, Antonio Caso, and Pedro Hernriquez Ureña, who, during this period (1906-1909), lived under the influence of the Greek classic writers and of the interpretations that nineteenth-century philosophers and writers made  about them. Each chapter in this story narrates a key episode in the characters' friendship, locating it in its immediate setting and construing it as part of the world of the book and literature. 

This essay explores the  development of press and civic associations in Zacatecas during the years 1821 to 1845. Both vehicles had a strong link and helped to emerge local public spaces. After an open and dynamic beginning, in which they helped to expand republican political culture, and also created expectations among  lower classes to  citizenship, they  were closed down  by elites.  This  closing happened  principally as an  elite reaction against the popular revolt that occurred in Sombrerete at the beginning of 1829, and it lasted until 1845.

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This paper focuses on late eighteenth-century Toluca as an example in order to account for changes in olfactory perception as an aspect of the process of civilization. A number of examples derived from notary documents illustrate the institutional steps taken in the urbanization of Toluca in the late eighteenth century. Although it is important to consider the role of state initiatives and scientific arguments in triggering such a change, the case of Manuel Lechuga y Diego de Ortiz shows two characteristic aspects of the  social response facing sanitary reforms. The  first refers to the legal issues involved, the tradition of “good administration” (buen  gobierno), whose  attribution is to dictate laws geared toward common wellbeing. Hence Ortiz's phrasing of his argument regarding the injustice done to his zahurdas, since the best laws of the  kingdom were those  that were passed  after the pleas of cities' procurators were taken into account, men knowledgeable of everyday reality, “given that  those in power cannot guess the particular situation and individual  circumstances pertaining to each country  and trade”.  The  second  aspect involves the change of customs and perceptions, as well as the slow rate at which the health and urbanization measures that were enforced more strictly from the government were incorporated to everyday life, beginning at the period of Bourbon reforms.