Sublime

A testament to the idealism and the talents of the Jesuits of Latin America were the ‘Reductions’ (reducciones) they established in Paraguay, Argentina and southern Brazil: these were autonomous Indian communities, with townships, schools, churches, libraries, public arts and native industries; from 1609 to 1768, many of these Reductions together c

Problems and successions

The story of internment in the Greater United States does not end with Hawaiian martial law or the Aleuts’ relocation. Though the episode is barely known, the United States interned Japanese in the Philippines, too. Roosevelt signed the infamous Executive Order 9906, calling for the internment of Japanese in the U.S. West, in February 1942, after m

Manuel Quezon complained, too. Even though few adult Filipinos spoke English fluently by the time the Philippines became a commonwealth and Quezon became its president, the looming presence of English in the schools and government had blocked local languages from taking root. The result was, after hundreds of years of colonial rule (counting Spain)

As for President Johnson, he can perhaps be forgiven for not answering Bhupendra's query personally. On October 3, 1965, the president was at a ceremony at the Statue of Liberty, signing the Immigration Act of 1965. Technically an amendment to the 1952 act, it was underplayed by nearly everyone, including its supporters. "This bill that we wil

Puerto Rico was still poorer than any state in the union and poorer than Mexico—hence the stream of migrants to the mainland—but it was doing better than nearly all its Caribbean neighbors. In 1954, Life, which had labeled the island an “unsolvable problem” just eleven years earlier, described it as “one of the few spots on the globe that all Ameri

While Eisenhower wrestled with the bookkeeping, MacArthur settled in. He’d met his second wife, Jean, on the trip over. His only son, Arthur MacArthur IV, was born in Manila, with Manuel Quezon as the godfather. MacArthur took up residence in the penthouse of the Parsons-designed Manila Hotel. He became a fixture of Manila society, even receiving a

Quezon gave Douglas MacArthur half a million dollars from the Philippine treasury—a reward for services rendered. MacArthur, as an officer in the U.S. military, was forbidden to accept it, but he did anyway. Quezon and MacArthur set off for Australia, with Romulo trailing after them.

In the South China Sea or near Japan, the Portuguese were much more cautious. Here they found a niche as long-distance traders, convenient middlemen for a Ming Empire that disliked overseas activity by its own subjects and refused direct commercial relations with Japan.