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

The aim of this article is to describe the coexistence between humans and equids in Mexico City in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The research identifies several issues that arose from sharing urban space, as well as the solutions proposed by the police authorities through edicts of good governance. The findings revealed that, in order for humans and equids to cohabit, surveillance and regulatory measures governing daily life were required. Furthermore, although dominated by humans and regarded as inferior beings, equines influenced history, as the functioning of the city depended on considering their needs and including them in urban planning.

Review of Cristina Sacristán, El ruido y el velo. Perder los derechos civiles en el México liberal. El caso Raigosa, 1872-1879 (México: Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora/Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2024) 357 pp.

This article explores the professional practice of the first female attorney in Mexico City during the final decade of the 19th century. The study reveals that María Sandoval served as a defense attorney in jury trials for criminal law for at least five years (1896-1901). It inquiries whether the sex of the litigant and social prejudices related to women’s legal practice posed obstacles to her professional development. An extensive review and meticulous study of the 19th-century press was necessary to identify and reconstruct the earliest indications of the criminal cases she handled in her role as defense attorney.

Review of Kathleen M. McIntyre, Protestantismo y formación del Estado en Oaxaca después de la Revolución (Oaxaca: Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca/Casa Unida de Publicaciones, 2023), 304 pp.

Presentación del número especial (mayo de 2025) de Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México.

This article analyzes the controversy that emerged in late March 2019 in various Spanish and Mexican media outlets following a letter sent by Mexico's president Andrés Manuel López Obrador to King Felipe VI of Spain. In the letter, López Obrador invited both governments to jointly reflect on the actions of the Conquest and to offer an apology to Mexican Indigenous groups. The objective is to examine the reactions to this proposal and, through them, the prevailing narratives and images of the conquest of Mexico. The main conclusion is that new academic interpretations of the 16th-century Conquest have yet to reach broader society, which continues to uphold nationalist tropes that underpin contemporary collective identities in both countries. As a result, proposing alternative interpretations generates significant discomfort. The article thus invites reflection on the uses of the past in contemporary societies and the challenges faced by both Spanish and Mexican societies in confronting their colonial past and shared Hispanic heritage.

Review of Tomás Pérez Vejo, México, la nación doliente. Imágenes profanas para una historia sagrada (Mexico: Secretaría de Cultura/Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia/Grano de Sal, 2024), 376 pp.

By the 17th century, the Spaniards in Manila had continued expanding both southward (Ternate in 1606) and northward (Hermosa in 1626). This expansion, however, stopped due to the prevalent Moro aggression in the different provinces of the archipelago. Hence, in 1635, Felipe IV sent Sebastián Hurtado de Corcuera, as the new governor of the Philippine islands. With him were different soldiers from New Spain. In the islands, he was faced immediately with the most concerning problem —its military and the insufficiency of soldiers. This paper argues that Corcuera’s reforms treated the native soldiers with decency and honor to fully utilize them for the interest of the Spanish Crown —both in keeping order and conquest. Hence, they developed a mutualistic relationship where both benefitted from each other. This paper elaborates on the military problems which caused Corcuera to turn to the native for military recruitment. Further, it shows the relationship established between the governor and the indigenous soldiers who fought in his military campaigns in Mindanao and in the defense of Manila against Chinese insurrections. In writing this paper, I greatly utilized The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, by Blair and Robertson while other secondary sources such as the works of Mawson were used as well.

The aim of this article is to examine a particular case of homicide that occurred in the south-central colony of Nuevo Santander, New Spain. In July 1768, the lieutenant of inferior justice of the town of Dulce Nombre de Jesús de Escandón arrested, imprisoned and filed an ordinary criminal case against Felipe Nerio for the death of José de Torres. The crime was facilitated because those involved lived in the same neighborhood and worked at the Indian mission, adjacent to the Spanish town. Subsequently, the provincial governor referred the substantiated case to the Real Audiencia [Royal Court] of Mexico. The civil prosecutor reviewed the criminal case because it was a court case and issued a sentence, thus the event was documented. The case study is based on a judicial file from the 18th century. I analyze the case through the sociocultural history of the administration of justice and I contribute to the knowledge of the interpersonal conflicts of people in rural areas, their behaviors and the imaginaries of the residents of Nuevo Santander.

Current historiography takes for granted that some 20 000 people populated the Colony of Nuevo Santander between 1748 and 1768, but this figure seems implausible, as we show. Our study of the demographic tendencies is based on the register of inhabitants and the baptismal records in the neighboring areas (gobernaciones) of Nuevo León, Coahuila and the villa of Saltillo, the largest colonial settlement in the region at that time. The cohorts of people displaced from the modern-day El Bajío area of Mexico, located along the migratory routes that led to the northeastern part of New Spain were not large either. The analysis of parish records in Santander, the capital of the new colony, and of the censuses available from the 1750-1768 period reveals a highly unstable population subject to seasonal migrations. The high birth rate reflected in those documents was due to the arrival of young couples who rarely remained in the region for long. We conclude that those pendular movements explain why most of the settlers of Nuevo Santander came from nearby regions, people who before the creation of the new colony sent their cattle to pasture in the humid lands of the Seno Mexicano.