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[Antonio de Montesinos shouts against slavery / Wikimeda]

— 1492 Columbus lands on Guanahani, which he renames San Salvador.

— 1493 Papal Bulls of Donation give Portugal and Spain rights in the “New World.”

— 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas divides the “New World” between Spain and Portugal.

— 1502 First Africans arrive as slaves in Haiti.

— 1508 Papal bull Universalis Ecclesiae gives control of the Spanish colonial church to the Spanish crown.

— 1511 Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos denounces the enslavement of indigenous people.

— 1513 First Catholic diocese is founded in Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola.

— 1514 Bartolomé de las Casas begins his defense of the indigenous peoples.

— 1521 Hernán Cortés conquers the Aztecs and renames Tenochtitlán Mexico City.

— 1524 First Franciscan missionaries come to Mexico.

— 1531 Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin sees a vision of the Virgin Mary near Villa de Guadalupe.

— 1532 Conquest of Peru begins.

— 1537 Papal bull Sublimus Dei declares the Indians to be fully human.

— 1542 De las Casas completes A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies.

— 1551 First Council of Lima organizes the Catholic Church in Latin America.

— 1570 Inquisition begins in Peru.

— 1609 First Jesuit mission is established in Paraguay.

— 1617 Famed mystic and Dominican tertiary Rosa de Lima dies.

— 1619 English settlers bring African slaves to Virginia.

— 1620 Diocese of Buenos Aires founded.

— 1654 Pedro Claver y Corberó, Spanish Jesuit missionary to Colombia, dies. He may have baptized 300,000 slaves.

— 1693 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a Mexican nun, defends a woman’s right to study.

— 1767 Jesuits are expelled from Spanish colonies.

— 1780 Inca leader Túpac Amaru leads an unsuccessful revolt in Peru.

— 1789 Spain opens colonies to all slave traders.

— 1804 Haiti wins independence from France.

— 1810–1824 Spanish colonies revolt and become independent from Spain.

— 1818 James “Diego” Thomson arrives in Buenos Aires.

— 1822 Brazil wins independence from Portugal.

— 1823 US proclaims Monroe Doctrine.

— 1824 Guatemala is first Latin American nation to outlaw slavery.

— 1845 US annexes Republic of Texas. 

— 1846–1848 Mexican-American war is fought, reducing Mexico’s territory to the region south of the Rio Grande.

— 1858 Latin American Pontifical College opens in Rome.

— 1888 Brazil abolishes slavery, the final Latin American nation to do so.

— 1890 Pan-American Union is founded (later becoming the Organization of American States).

— 1898 The US takes Puerto Rico and the Philippines in the Spanish-American War.

— 1899 Latin American Plenary Council meets in Rome.

— 1909 Pentecostal revivals begin in Chile.

— 1910 Swedish Pentecostals bring Pentecostalism to Brazil.

— 1913 Committee for Cooperation in Latin America unifies Protestant mission agencies and churches.

— 1914 Panama Canal opens.

— 1926–1929 Government anticlerical policies in Mexico result in the Cristero Rebellion.

— 1929 At the Havana Congress, Protestant denominations speak in favor of “Latinizing” indigenous churches.

— 1946 US Army opens the School of the Americas in Panama to train counterinsurgents. The SOA will be expelled from Latin America in 1984.

— 1949 Latin American Evangelical Conference is held.

— 1956 Five evangelical missionaries are murdered in Ecuador.

— 1959 Cuban Revolution installs Fidel Castro.

— 1962–1965 Vatican II convenes. Chicano movement develops Latino theologies.

— 1967 Argentine revolutionary “Che” Guevara is executed.

— 1968 Latin American Council of Bishops meets in Medellín, Colombia. Paulo Freire publishes Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

— 1969–1972 Jesuit priests spread the Catholic Charismatic movement in Brazil.

— 1971 Gustavo Gutiérrez publishes A Theology of Liberation.

— 1973 Augusto Pinochet assumes power in Chile.

— 1978 John Paul II becomes pope.

— 1979 Sandinista government comes to power in Nicaragua.

— 1980 Salvadoran civil war begins; Archbishop Óscar Romero is assassinated while saying Mass.

— 2013 Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, is selected as first Latin American pope, Pope Francis. 

By the editors

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