History terms in The Americas

The "opening" of Brazil's military regime begun by President Geisel in 1974: a slow, controlled liberalisation that led through the Amnesty Law of 1979 to civilian rule in 1985.

The legal right of an Indigenous people to land and waters they held under their own laws before colonisation, recognised by Canadian courts from the Calder case of 1973 and, as native title, by Australian law in the Mabo decision of 1992 and the Native Title Act 1993.

The agreement of the American states in March 1945 that an attack on any one of them would be treated as an attack on all; it led to the Rio Pact of 1947.

The agreement of the American states in July 1940 that European colonies in the Americas could not be transferred to another non-American power.

Barack Obama's health reform law of 23 March 2010, which required most people to have health insurance, expanded Medicaid, created subsidised insurance markets and banned refusals for existing illnesses.

The US law of May 1933 that paid farmers to reduce production in order to raise farm prices. The Supreme Court struck down its tax in 1936, and a new act followed in 1938.

A US-led programme of aid and reform for Latin America launched by Kennedy in 1961 and set out in the Charter of Punta del Este, aiming at growth, social reform and democracy as an alternative to revolution.

The many New Deal agencies known by their initials, such as the CCC, WPA, TVA and NRA.

The main national organisation of immediate abolitionists in the USA, founded in 1833 by William Lloyd Garrison and others; it used newspapers, lecturers and petitions to demand an end to slavery.

The US army sent to Europe in 1917–1918 under General John J. Pershing.

The US law of 26 July 1990 that banned discrimination against disabled people in employment and public life and required public buildings and transport to be accessible.

The political belief that the state and all compulsory government should be abolished. Around 1880–1920 it was strong among immigrant workers in Argentina, the USA and Mexico, and some anarchists used violence.

The belief, widespread in Britain and the USA around 1900, that English-speaking peoples were racially superior and destined to spread their institutions across the world.

A US organisation founded in 1898 that opposed the annexation of the Philippines and other overseas territories as a betrayal of American principles of self-government.

The party founded by Francisco Madero in 1909 to oppose Díaz's re-election, under the slogan "Effective suffrage, no re-election". It nominated Madero for president in 1910.

Opposition to the power and influence of the clergy and the Church in politics, education and public life. In revolutionary Mexico it was written into the Constitution of 1917 and enforced most strongly by Calles.

The American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, a populist and anti-imperialist party founded in 1924 by Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre that became one of Peru's main parties.

"Chosen women": girls selected by the Inca state to weave fine cloth and brew chicha in state enclosures, serve the Sun, or be given in marriage to nobles and kurakas.

The army raised by José de San Martín at Mendoza (1814–1817) that crossed the Andes in 1817 to liberate Chile and later took Lima.

Televised Senate hearings of April–June 1954 into McCarthy's conflict with the US Army, which turned public opinion against him and led to his censure by the Senate in December 1954.

The "arrangements" of 21 June 1929, mediated by US Ambassador Dwight Morrow, by which the Mexican government and the Catholic bishops ended the Cristero War. The laws stayed in force but were applied less harshly, and public worship resumed.

The education article of the Mexican Constitution of 1917, which made public education secular and barred churches and clergy from running primary schools. An amendment of 1934 introduced "socialist education".

The article of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 that made the nation the original owner of land, water and subsoil resources such as oil, allowed land to be granted to villages and limited foreign and Church ownership of property.

The labour article of the Mexican Constitution of 1917, which established an eight-hour day, a minimum wage, the right to organise and strike, protections for women and children and arbitration boards.

The article of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 that denied churches legal personality, required priests to register, allowed states to limit their number and barred them from voting or criticising the government.

The first constitution of the United States (ratified 1781), which created a weak Congress without power to tax or regulate trade; replaced by the Constitution in 1789.

A strike by asbestos miners in Quebec in 1949 against American-owned companies, broken by Duplessis's police, which united unions, reform-minded Catholics and intellectuals against his government.

A contract by which the Spanish crown licensed a foreign merchant, company or state to supply enslaved Africans to its American colonies; held by Portuguese contractors (1595–1640) and later by the French and, from 1713, the British South Sea Company.

The name critics gave to Booker T. Washington's speech in Atlanta on 18 September 1895, in which he accepted social segregation in return for economic opportunity and education for African Americans.

An advanced Canadian-designed jet interceptor whose development was cancelled by the Diefenbaker government on 20 February 1959 because of its cost.

An Andean kin community whose members claim a common ancestor, hold land together and exchange labour; the basic unit of Andean society.

Andean reciprocal labour between households: help given now and returned in kind later.

The legendary homeland of the Mexica, used by Chicano activists from 1969 as a name for the south-western United States as the homeland of the Chicano people.

A member of the armed expeditions from São Paulo in colonial Brazil that explored the interior, captured Indigenous people as slaves and searched for gold in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

A small group of poor Catholics who met to read the Bible and discuss their lives and communities, encouraged by liberation theology in Latin America from the late 1960s.

The programme of José Batlle y Ordóñez in Uruguay (president 1903–1907 and 1911–1915): a democratic welfare state with labour laws, state enterprises, secular education and limits on presidential power.

A series of seventeenth-century wars in which the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, armed by Dutch and English traders, fought French-allied Indigenous nations for control of the fur trade; they destroyed the Wendat (Huron) confederacy in 1649.

Theodore Roosevelt's approach to foreign policy: calm negotiation backed by the open threat of military, especially naval, force, above all in the Caribbean.

Quebec's Charter of the French Language (26 August 1977), which made French the only official language of Quebec and required French in commerce, work and, for most immigrants' children, schooling.

The Canadian law of 1985 that ended the Indian Act’s rule taking status away from First Nations women who married men without status, and restored status to those who had lost it.

The electoral system created under Pinochet's 1980 Constitution in which each district elected two members, so that a bloc with one-third of the vote could win half the seats; it protected the right in Chile until its abolition in 2015.

A decentralised movement against police violence and racism towards Black people, begun as a hashtag in July 2013 by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi; it led the mass protests of 2020.

A revolutionary Black nationalist party founded in Oakland, California, in October 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, known for armed patrols to watch the police and for community programmes such as free breakfasts for children.

A list of people to be refused employment because of their political views or associations, such as the Hollywood blacklist of suspected communists in the late 1940s and 1950s.

The violent conflict in Kansas Territory from 1854 to 1859 between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers over whether Kansas would become a slave state or a free state.

A Quebec sovereigntist party in the Canadian federal Parliament, founded in 1990–1991 by Lucien Bouchard after the failure of the Meech Lake Accord; it was the Official Opposition from 1993 to 1997.

The days of rioting and destruction in Bogotá, Colombia, that followed the assassination of the Liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán on 9 April 1948, during the conference that founded the OAS.

Laws passed by the US Congress in 1982 and 1984 restricting and then banning US military aid to the Contras in Nicaragua.

Hugo Chávez's political project in Venezuela from 1999, named after Simón Bolívar: a new constitution, oil-funded social programmes, state control of the economy and the concentration of power in the presidency.

About 15,000–20,000 First World War veterans who camped in Washington in 1932 to demand early payment of a promised bonus. The army drove them out on 28 July 1932.

The slave states that stayed in the Union during the US Civil War: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, joined by West Virginia in 1863.

The destruction of 342 chests of East India Company tea in Boston harbour by colonists on 16 December 1773, in protest against the Tea Act.

Reforms by the Spanish Bourbon kings, above all Charles III (1759–1788), to increase royal control and revenue in the Americas through intendants, new taxes, monopolies and appointments of peninsulares.

The agreement between the USA and Mexico, begun in 1942, under which Mexican workers were contracted for farm and railway work in the USA; it lasted until 1964.

The Brazilian army force of about 25,000 troops that fought in Italy in 1944–1945.

The policy of pushing a dangerous situation to the edge of war in order to force an opponent to back down, associated with John Foster Dulles.

The programme agreed in December 1939 under which Canada trained aircrew from Britain and the Commonwealth for the Second World War.

The British law of 29 March 1867 that created the Dominion of Canada from 1 July 1867 as a federation of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, with a strong central parliament and provincial legislatures.

Agreements of August 1923 between Mexico and the USA under which Mexico accepted that Article 27 would not be applied retroactively to oil rights acquired before 1917 and agreed to compensate US landowners, in return for US recognition of Obregón.

Guillermo O'Donnell's term for the military regimes of the 1960s and 1970s in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, ruled by the armed forces as institutions with technocrats, which excluded the organised working class in order to restore economic growth.

The US Supreme Court ruling of 12 December 2000 that stopped the recount of votes in Florida by five votes to four, giving George W. Bush the presidency.

Buying shares with a small down payment and a loan from a broker for the rest. When prices fall, brokers demand more money, forcing investors who cannot pay to sell.

A local political boss who controls a town or district through patronage, family networks and force and acts as the link between villages and higher authorities, especially in Mexico, Latin America and Spain, where the system was called caciquismo.

"Coffee with milk": the arrangement in Brazil's Old Republic (1889–1930) by which the elites of São Paulo (coffee) and Minas Gerais (dairy) usually alternated the presidency.

The decree of June 1926 by President Calles that enforced the anticlerical articles of the Constitution with criminal penalties, including registration of priests and a ban on clerical dress in public. It led the bishops to suspend public worship and helped spark the Cristero War.

The 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015) to governments, churches and other institutions on child welfare, education, language, health, justice and commemoration.

The contributory public pension for Canadian workers created in 1965; Quebec runs its own parallel Quebec Pension Plan.

The agreement signed in January 1988 that removed most tariffs between Canada and the USA from 1 January 1989; it was the main issue of the 1988 Canadian election and was extended into NAFTA in 1994.

The part of Canada's Constitution Act, 1982 that protects fundamental freedoms and democratic, legal, equality and language rights, and allows courts to strike down laws that break them.

The private railway, chartered in 1881 with large government grants of money and land, that linked eastern Canada to British Columbia; the last spike was driven on 7 November 1885.

An Afro-Brazilian religion, centred in Bahia, that combines West African, especially Yoruba, worship of spirits (orixás) with elements of Catholicism.

An Inca ceremony in which children were sacrificed, often on mountain summits, at great state occasions or in times of crisis.

The agreement of 17 April 1492 between Columbus and the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, granting him the titles of admiral and governor of any lands he found and a tenth of the profits.

The resolution of the Tenth Inter-American Conference (March 1954) declaring that control of any American state by the international communist movement would threaten all; it was aimed at Guatemala.

A Chilean army delegation that travelled through the provinces in October 1973 and executed nearly a hundred political prisoners without trial.

An insulting name used by white Southern Democrats for Northerners who moved to the South during Reconstruction, implying that they came only to profit from the region's defeat.

The House of Trade, founded in Seville in 1503, which licensed, taxed and controlled all Spanish trade and shipping with the Americas.

An anarcho-syndicalist workers' organisation founded in Mexico City in 1912. In February 1915 it allied with Carranza and supplied the Red Battalions in return for support for unions; Carranza suppressed it after the 1916 general strike.

The rule of the US Neutrality Act of November 1939 that countries at war could buy US arms if they paid cash and carried them in their own ships.

A soldier killed, wounded, captured or missing in war; casualty figures are therefore higher than figures for deaths.

A political and military strongman who holds power through personal loyalty, patronage and armed force more than through institutions, as many nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American leaders did; Franco took Caudillo as his title in Spain.

The US intelligence agency created by the National Security Act of 1947, responsible for gathering intelligence abroad and, from 1948, for covert operations.

One of the imaginary lines radiating from the Coricancha in Cuzco that linked more than 300 shrines (huacas), each cared for by a particular kin group.

The crisis of September 1922 when Britain asked the dominions to send troops against Turkey; Canada's refusal to commit automatically showed its new independence in foreign policy.

A package of constitutional reforms agreed in August 1992, including a distinct society clause, Senate reform and Indigenous self-government, rejected in a national referendum on 26 October 1992.

A relay runner who carried messages and khipus between stations on the Inca roads.

Constitutional arrangements by which each branch of government can limit the others, such as a presidential veto or a legislature’s power to confirm judges.

Chilean economists, many trained at the University of Chicago, who ran economic policy under Pinochet from 1975 and introduced free-market reforms: cuts in spending, privatisation, free trade and private pensions.

The ideology of the Chicano movement: pride in Mexican and Indigenous heritage and a demand for Chicano self-determination in education, culture and politics.

The anti-Vietnam War march of 20,000–30,000 Mexican Americans in East Los Angeles on 29 August 1970, broken up by police; the journalist Rubén Salazar was killed that day.

Maize beer brewed in the Andes, central to Inca feasts, rituals and the hospitality the state offered to workers.

A society led by a hereditary chief who controls several villages, with ranked families but no full state bureaucracy; e.g. Cahokia.

The US law of 6 May 1882 that suspended the immigration of Chinese labourers and barred Chinese immigrants from citizenship; it was extended in 1892, made permanent in 1902 and repealed in 1943.

Freeze-dried potato made by exposing potatoes to frost at night and sun by day in the Andes; it could be stored for years.

A member of the group of technocratic advisers around Porfirio Díaz from the 1890s, led by the finance minister José Yves Limantour, who believed in government by experts and in positivist ideas of order and progress.

Adult education classes designed by Septima Clark and run by the Highlander Folk School and later the SCLC, which taught Black southerners to read and write so that they could pass voter registration tests.

An independent state made up of a city and the surrounding farmland and villages it controls, with its own ruler and institutions. Classic Maya kingdoms and the altepetl of central Mexico were city-states.

A New Deal programme (1933–1942) that employed young unmarried men in camps on conservation work such as tree planting, flood control and parks.

The senior woman of a Haudenosaunee clan lineage, who held the title of its sachem, chose and could remove him, and spoke for the women of the clan.

The Canadian law of 2000, passed after the Supreme Court's Reference re Secession of Quebec (1998), that lets the House of Commons decide whether a referendum question on secession and its majority are clear.

A State Department memorandum written by J. Reuben Clark in 1928 and published in 1930, which argued that the Monroe Doctrine did not justify US intervention in Latin America.

A vote in the US Senate to end a debate and so defeat a filibuster; in 1964 it required two-thirds of senators present.

The National Peasant Confederation, created in 1938 under Cárdenas to unite peasant and ejido organisations as the peasant sector of the ruling party.

A Canadian democratic socialist party founded in Calgary in 1932 by farmers, labour groups and intellectuals, whose Regina Manifesto (1933) called for public ownership and planning.

The Nahuatl name ("pestilence") for the devastating epidemics that struck the Indigenous population of New Spain in 1545–1548 and 1576–1580; their exact cause is still debated.

Four British laws of 1774, called the Intolerable Acts by colonists, that closed the port of Boston and tightened royal control of Massachusetts after the Boston Tea Party.

A line of enslaved people chained or tied together and marched overland by slave traders, for example from Virginia to the markets of the Deep South.

A system in which states agree that aggression against one is a concern of all and that all will act together, by sanctions or force, to stop an aggressor; the central principle of the League of Nations.

The forced labour draft of Spanish Peru, reorganised by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo between 1569 and 1581 from the Inca mita, which required highland communities to send one-seventh of their adult men each year to the mines of Potosí and Huancavelica; abolished in 1812.

The Soviet-led economic organisation of communist states, founded in 1949; Cuba joined in 1972.

The Spanish decree of 1778 that opened trade between more ports of Spain and Spanish America, still within the empire; it mainly benefited merchants in Spain.

The US government propaganda agency of 1917–1919, led by George Creel, which promoted support for the First World War.

Cuba's ruling and only legal party, founded in October 1965 from the merger of Castro's movement with the old communists and other revolutionary groups.

A War on Poverty programme (1964) that funded local agencies run with the "maximum feasible participation" of poor people; it clashed with city governments and was cut back by Congress.

The interpretation of Canadian Confederation as a pact between the provinces, or between English and French Canadians, which the federal government could not change without their consent.

Argentina's National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, created by Alfonsín in December 1983; its report Nunca Más (1984) documented 8,961 people who disappeared under the military regime.

The alliance of Chilean centre and left parties, led by the Christian Democrats and Socialists, that won the 1988 plebiscite against Pinochet and governed Chile from 1990 to 2010.

The coalition of conservatives, anti-Yrigoyen Radicals and independent socialists that governed Argentina from 1932 to 1943 through electoral fraud.

The Haudenosaunee ceremony in which the League mourned dead sachems and installed their successors, renewing the League itself.

A union of independent communities or states that act together for some purposes, such as defence, while keeping their own governments; e.g. the Haudenosaunee League and Tlaxcala.

The US labour federation formed in 1935–1938 under John L. Lewis to organise whole industries, such as steel and cars, including unskilled, Black and immigrant workers.

The first inter-American conference (1826), called by Bolívar to form a league of the new Spanish American republics; its treaty was ratified only by Gran Colombia.

The military campaigns of 1878–1885, led by Julio Argentino Roca, in which Argentina conquered the Indigenous peoples of the southern Pampas and Patagonia and opened their land to large estates.

The political conflict in Canada over compulsory overseas service, which divided English Canada from French Canada.

The informal alliance of Republicans and Southern Democrats in the US Congress, from the late 1930s to the 1960s, that blocked many liberal reforms, including Kennedy's health and education bills.

The party formed on 7 December 2003 by the merger of the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party; it governed under Stephen Harper from 2006 to 2015.

A Spanish royal decree of 1804 that forced Church institutions in the Americas to call in their loans and pass the money to the crown, hurting creole landowners, especially in New Spain.

The code of 1943 that brought together the labour laws of the Vargas era in Brazil: working hours, holidays, minimum wage, labour courts and state-recognised unions.

The constitution of Mexico proclaimed at Querétaro on 5 February 1917, still in force. Its articles on land (27), labour (123), education (3) and the Church (130) made it one of the most radical constitutions of its time.

The first Spanish constitution (1812), written by the Cortes at Cádiz, which declared the sovereignty of the nation and limited the king’s power, but excluded people of African descent from citizenship.

The revolutionary coalition led by Venustiano Carranza from 1913, first against Huerta and then against Villa and Zapata, whose leaders included the Sonoran generals Obregón and Calles. It won the war of the factions in 1915.

Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Panama, which from 1983 worked for a negotiated peace in Central America without outside intervention.

The US strategy, from 1947, of preventing the spread of Soviet power and communism beyond the areas where they already existed, through economic aid, alliances, military strength and covert action.

The army of the United States created by the Continental Congress in June 1775 and commanded by George Washington during the War of Independence.

The assembly of delegates from the American colonies that met from 1774, raised the Continental Army, declared independence in 1776 and governed the United States until 1781.

The armed groups, funded and directed largely by the CIA, that fought the Sandinista government of Nicaragua from 1981 to 1990.

The meeting of revolutionary generals in October–November 1914, after Huerta's fall, that tried to form a government. Dominated by Villa and Zapata's supporters, it adopted the Plan of Ayala; Carranza rejected it, starting the war of the factions.

The Argentine policy of 1991–2001 that fixed one peso to one US dollar by law; it ended hyperinflation but collapsed in the crisis of December 2001.

Lester Pearson's approach to the provinces in the 1960s: negotiated shared programmes, with the right for a province, above all Quebec, to opt out and run its own with federal compensation.

A Northern Democrat who opposed the US Civil War and called for a negotiated peace with the Confederacy; the name came from a poisonous snake.

The rising of workers and students in the Argentine city of Córdoba in May 1969 against the military government of Onganía, which marked the beginning of mass resistance to the regime.

The system of rural political control in Brazil's Old Republic, in which local landowners and bosses (coronéis) delivered the votes of their dependants to state governments in return for patronage and local power.

A system in which the state organises society into officially recognised groups by occupation or function, each represented through one organisation that bargains with the government. In Mexico it was built into the ruling party in 1938.

Compulsory unpaid labour owed to the state, such as work on roads; revived by the US occupation authorities in Haiti after 1915.

The cotton-growing region of the US Deep South, from South Carolina to Texas, where most enslaved people lived and worked by 1860.

The youth culture of the 1960s and early 1970s in the United States and elsewhere that rejected mainstream values of work, consumption, sexual restraint and conformity.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposal of February 1937 to appoint up to six extra Supreme Court justices, which Congress rejected as an attack on the independence of the courts.

Secret activity by a government to influence events in another country while hiding its own role, such as propaganda, funding parties, sabotage, arming rebels and organising coups.

The principal wife of the Sapa Inca, usually his full sister, who had her own lands and religious duties and influence over the succession.

The gap between what the US government said about the Vietnam War and what the public believed, which widened as official claims of progress were contradicted by events.

The process by which enslaved Africans of many origins, and their descendants, created new cultures, languages and religions in the Americas by combining African, European and Indigenous elements.

A person of Spanish descent born in the Americas; criollos owned much of the land and wealth of Spanish America but were largely excluded from the highest offices, which went to peninsulares.

A Catholic rebel in the Cristero War of 1926–1929, named after the cry "¡Viva Cristo Rey!" ("Long live Christ the King!"). Most Cristeros were peasants and ranchers of west-central Mexico.

The armed rising of 1926–1929 by Catholic peasants and townspeople in west-central Mexico against the anticlerical laws of President Calles. It ended with the arreglos of June 1929.

A set of constitutional amendments proposed in December 1860 that would have extended the 36°30′ line to the Pacific, protecting slavery south of it, and guaranteed slavery permanently; Republicans rejected it.

The Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers, the main labour federation of the 1920s, founded in 1918 and led by Luis Morones. It supported Obregón and Calles in return for official favour and lost influence after 1928.

A credit system in the post-war US South in which merchants or landlords supplied goods in return for a legal claim on the farmer's future crop; high interest and low prices kept many sharecroppers in debt.

The Confederation of Mexican Workers, founded in February 1936 under Vicente Lombardo Toledano with Cárdenas's support. It became the labour sector of the ruling party in 1938.

The destruction of the structures and practices that allow a group to continue as a group, such as its land, institutions, languages and spiritual practices; the Truth and Reconciliation Commission used the term for Canada's residential schools policy.

A travelling team of teachers, doctors, agricultural experts and artists sent by Mexico's Secretariat of Public Education from 1923 to train rural teachers and improve village life.

The US law of 1887 that divided reservation land into individual family plots and sold the "surplus" to settlers, aiming to turn Indigenous people into individual farmers; it cost them about two-thirds of their land by 1934.

Separation of races that exists in practice without a law requiring it, for example because of housing patterns, lending practices or income.

Separation of races required by law, as under the Jim Crow laws of the southern United States.

The crisis that began when Mexico announced in August 1982 that it could not pay its foreign debts; lending to Latin America stopped and most countries had to cut spending and accept IMF conditions.

A system in which workers were bound to an employer, usually a large estate, by debts for advances of wages or goods that they could never repay.

The "Tragic Ten Days" of 9–19 February 1913, when an army revolt in Mexico City led to fighting in the city centre and ended with General Victoriano Huerta's seizure of power and the murder of President Madero.

Guatemala's agrarian reform law of 17 June 1952, under President Árbenz, which expropriated uncultivated land on large estates, including much United Fruit land, and gave it to peasant families.

The argument, developed by Latin American scholars from the 1950s, that exporting primary products to industrial countries kept Latin America economically subordinate, because profits flowed abroad, local industry stayed weak and economies were exposed to world prices.

Chile's secret police from 1974 to 1977, led by Manuel Contreras, which carried out torture, disappearances and murders at home and abroad; it was replaced by the CNI.

The mass campaign in Brazil in 1984 for the direct election of the president, which failed in Congress but helped bring the military regime to an end.

The name for the campaign of state terror by the Argentine military regime of 1976–1983 against people it accused of subversion, using abduction, secret detention, torture and murder.

A person abducted by state agents, held in secret and usually killed while the authorities denied holding them; the method was used by several Latin American military regimes.

Removing the right to vote from a group. In the US South after 1890 it was done without naming race, through poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and white primaries, backed by violence.

The revolutionary army of the north led by Pancho Villa from 1913, the largest of the revolution, which moved by railway and destroyed Huerta's army at Zacatecas in 1914 before its defeat by Obregón in 1915.

The States’ Rights Democratic Party, formed by southern Democrats who left the party in 1948 in protest at President Truman’s support for civil rights; its candidate, Strom Thurmond, won four southern states.

The US law of July 2010 that tightened the regulation of banks and financial markets after the 2008 crisis and created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The foreign policy of President Taft and Secretary of State Knox (1909–1913), which used US loans and investment, backed by the government, to gain influence and stability in Latin America and East Asia.

A self-governing country of the British Empire, such as Canada or Australia, which ran its own internal affairs while sharing the British Crown; until the 1920s its foreign policy was set in London.

The belief, stated by Eisenhower in April 1954, that if one country fell to communism its neighbours would follow, like a row of falling dominoes.

The Argentine law of June 1987 that presumed that officers below the senior ranks had acted under orders and could not be prosecuted for crimes of the dictatorship; it was annulled in 2003.

The drought-stricken southern Great Plains of the USA in the 1930s, where over-ploughed soil blew away in huge dust storms and hundreds of thousands of families abandoned their farms.

A Maya hieroglyphic title that named a royal dynasty and its kingdom, used by Classic kings to identify their city.

A grant by the Spanish crown to a colonist of the tribute and labour of a group of Indigenous people, in return for their protection and Christian instruction; it was a grant of people, not land.

A resident of a country at war who is a citizen of an enemy state, or who was born there; enemy aliens were registered and many interned in Canada and the USA.

Three US laws of 1870–1871 that made it a federal crime to use force or intimidation to stop citizens voting and let the president use the army against groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

The US federal agency created by Nixon in December 1970 to set and enforce national standards on air and water pollution, waste and chemicals.

The armed wing of a Trotskyist party in Argentina, active from 1970 until its destruction in 1976–1977, which waged urban guerrilla war and a rural campaign in Tucumán.

The Mexican fighter squadron that flew combat missions with US forces in the Philippines in 1945.

The US law of June 1917 that made it a crime to interfere with the armed forces or the draft; used to prosecute opponents of the war.

The peace agreement signed by the five Central American presidents on 7 August 1987, based on the plan of Óscar Arias, providing for ceasefires, amnesties, an end to support for rebels and free elections.

The authoritarian regime of Getúlio Vargas in Brazil from 1937 to 1945, which centralised power and promoted state-led industrialisation.

A large cattle or sheep ranch in Argentina or Uruguay; its owners, the estancieros, formed the landowning elite of the export economy.

The pseudo-scientific movement, popular from about 1900 to 1940, that claimed society could be improved by encouraging the "fit" to have children and preventing the "unfit"; it led to forced sterilisation laws and influenced immigration restriction.

The group of senior advisers who met with President Kennedy to decide the US response during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.

Roosevelt's order of June 1941 banning racial discrimination in US defence industries and government, issued after A. Philip Randolph threatened a march on Washington.

The claimed right of the US president to keep confidential communications secret from Congress and the courts. In United States v. Nixon (1974) the Supreme Court ruled that it is not absolute.

A policy of extending a state's territory, power or influence beyond its existing borders, by annexation, protectorates, trade control or military bases.

Economic growth driven by selling one or a few primary products, such as wheat, beef, coffee or nitrates, to foreign markets; in the Americas of 1870–1929 it was usually financed by foreign capital and depended on world prices.

The taking of private property by the state for public use, usually with compensation. Mexico's expropriation of the foreign oil companies on 18 March 1938 is the best-known example in Latin America.

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation, an Indigenous movement that rose in Chiapas, Mexico, on 1 January 1994 and after twelve days of fighting campaigned for Indigenous rights and autonomy.

A strategy of avoiding decisive battles and wearing down a stronger enemy by delay, raids and attrition, named after the Roman general Fabius Maximus.

The US agency set up in 1941 to investigate discrimination in defence industries.

Colombia's largest guerrilla movement, a Marxist peasant army formed in 1964–1966, which signed a peace agreement with the government in 2016 and became a political party.

The US agency created by the Banking Act of 1933 to insure bank deposits, which ended most bank runs.

The WPA programme set up in 1935 to employ artists, writers, actors and musicians on public cultural projects.

The central banking system of the USA, created in 1913, made up of twelve regional banks and a board in Washington, which manages interest rates and the money supply.

A system in which sovereignty is divided between a central government and regional governments (states or provinces), each with its own powers.

Supporters of the US Constitution and a stronger national government in 1787–1788, opposed by Anti-Federalists; later the party of Hamilton and John Adams.

Armed raids into British North America in 1866–1871 by the Fenians, Irish American veterans of the US Civil War who hoped to put pressure on Britain over Ireland; they strengthened the case for Canadian Confederation.

The amendment to the US Constitution, ratified in 1870, that forbade the federal government or any state to deny the vote because of race, colour or previous condition of servitude.

A private armed expedition launched from the USA to seize territory in Latin America without government authority, as William Walker’s in Nicaragua (1855–1857); also the adventurer who led one.

One of Franklin D. Roosevelt's informal radio talks to the American people, beginning on 12 March 1933 with an explanation of the banking crisis.

An electoral system in which each constituency elects the one candidate with the most votes; it rewards regionally concentrated parties and punishes parties whose vote is spread evenly.

The system of armed convoys that carried silver and other goods between Spain and its American colonies from the sixteenth century, sailing from ports such as Veracruz and Portobelo.

The coalition of guerrilla groups that fought El Salvador's government from 1980 until the UN-brokered peace accords of 1992, after which it became a political party.

The theory, associated with Che Guevara and Régis Debray, that a small rural guerrilla group could create the conditions for revolution by its own example.

The phrase for freed people's hope of land after emancipation, from Sherman's Field Order No. 15 (1865), which set aside confiscated coastal land in plots of up to 40 acres; President Johnson returned most of it to its former owners.

The belief, central to the Republican Party before the US Civil War, that free men should be able to work for themselves and rise in society, and that slavery degraded work and blocked opportunity.

A US political party formed in 1848 to oppose the spread of slavery into the western territories, under the slogan "Free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men"; it merged into the Republican Party in the 1850s.

A law declaring that children born to enslaved mothers after a certain date were free, so that slavery would end gradually; passed in Chile (1811), the Río de la Plata (1813) and Gran Colombia (1821).

Journeys in 1961, organised by CORE and continued by SNCC, in which Black and white activists rode interstate buses through the South together to test Supreme Court rulings against segregated buses and terminals.

The 1964 campaign in which COFO brought hundreds of mostly white northern students to Mississippi to register Black voters and teach in freedom schools; three activists were murdered in June.

Stephen Douglas's argument in 1858 that settlers could keep slavery out of a territory, despite the Dred Scott decision, by refusing to pass the local laws needed to protect it.

A Mexican women's organisation founded in 1935 that claimed about 50,000 members and campaigned for women's suffrage, land for women and protection for working women.

A meat-freezing or chilling plant in Argentina or Uruguay; from 1882 frigoríficos, mostly British- and later US-owned, allowed beef to be exported to Europe.

An underground Quebec separatist and Marxist group that carried out a campaign of bombings from 1963 and kidnapped James Cross and Pierre Laporte in October 1970.

The US law of 1850 that made federal officials responsible for returning people who had escaped from slavery, denied them a jury trial and penalised anyone who helped them.

The Argentine law of December 1986 that set a short deadline for new prosecutions for crimes of the dictatorship; it was annulled in 2003.

A rule of the US House of Representatives from 1836 to 1844 that tabled all anti-slavery petitions without discussion.

A way of organising plantation labour in which enslaved workers were divided into groups by strength and made to work together under the whip of a driver, used especially on sugar plantations.

The informal understanding of 1907–1908 in which Japan agreed to stop issuing passports to labourers going to the USA, in return for an end to the segregation of Japanese pupils in San Francisco.

Drawing the boundaries of electoral districts to give one party an advantage, for example by concentrating the other party's voters in a few districts.

The US law of June 1944 that gave veterans loans for homes and businesses and paid for their education.

The period in the USA from the 1870s to about 1900, named after a novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner (1873), marked by rapid industrial growth, great fortunes, political corruption and poverty.

A monetary system in which a currency can be exchanged for a fixed amount of gold. In the Depression it forced countries losing gold to raise interest rates and cut spending, spreading deflation.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's policy towards Latin America from 1933, which renounced armed intervention and sought cooperation through trade agreements and inter-American conferences.

A federal tax on most goods and services in Canada introduced by Brian Mulroney on 1 January 1991 at 7 per cent; Harper cut it to 5 per cent by 2008.

The defection in Ottawa in September 1945 of the Soviet cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko, whose documents exposed a Soviet spy network in Canada and helped begin the Cold War in North America.

The republic created by Bolívar in 1819 from the Viceroyalty of New Granada (modern Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama), which broke up in 1830–1831.

"Great Darkness": the name critics gave to Maurice Duplessis's rule of Quebec (1944–1959), with its Church-run social services, hostility to unions and political patronage; many historians now see the label as exaggerated.

A provision in some southern US state constitutions after 1890 that exempted men from literacy tests or poll taxes if their ancestors had voted before 1867, which in practice meant whites only; struck down in Guinn v. United States (1915).

A wave of Protestant revivals in the British American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s that encouraged personal religious choice and challenged established clergy.

The oral constitution of the Haudenosaunee League, which set out the council of 50 sachems, its procedures and the powers of the clan mothers.

The severe recession in the USA (December 2007 to June 2009) and much of the world that followed the financial crisis of 2008; US unemployment reached 10 per cent in October 2009.

Lyndon Johnson's programme of domestic reform (1964–1968), covering the War on Poverty, Medicare and Medicaid, federal aid to education, civil and voting rights, immigration reform, housing, the environment and the arts.

Miguel Hidalgo’s call to revolt in the town of Dolores on 16 September 1810, which began the Mexican war of independence.

The resolution passed by the US Congress on 7 August 1964, after a disputed naval clash, authorising President Johnson to use armed force in Southeast Asia without a declaration of war.

The legal right of a person under arrest to be brought before a judge, who decides whether the detention is lawful; suspending it lets a government hold people without charge or trial.

A large landed estate in Spanish America producing crops and livestock, worked by resident labourers who were often bound by debt.

A fishing treaty of 1923 between Canada and the USA, the first treaty Canada signed without a British co-signature.

The flowering of African American literature, music and art centred on Harlem in New York in the 1920s, associated with Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay and Alain Locke's The New Negro (1925).

The US tariff law signed by Herbert Hoover on 17 June 1930 that raised duties on thousands of imported goods. Other countries retaliated, and world trade shrank further.

The treaty of 18 November 1903 that gave the USA a canal zone across Panama in perpetuity for 10 million dollars and an annual payment.

A federal programme, begun in 1965, that gives pre-school education, meals and health care to children from low-income families.

The US law of 1862 that offered 160 acres of western public land to settlers who lived on and farmed it for five years, speeding white settlement of land taken from Native American nations.

Herbert Hoover's proposal of June 1931 to suspend payments of war debts and reparations for one year, in an attempt to stop the collapse of German and Austrian banks.

A shanty town built by homeless people on the edge of a US city in the early 1930s, named in mockery of President Hoover.

Combining many firms at the same stage of production in one industry, as Rockefeller did by buying up rival oil refiners, to reduce competition and control prices.

A committee of the US House of Representatives (1938–1975) that investigated alleged communist and other subversive activity, most famously in the Hollywood film industry from 1947.

In the Andes, any sacred place, object or being, such as a mountain, spring, stone, shrine or ancestor's mummy.

An English trading company chartered on 2 May 1670 with a monopoly of the fur trade in the lands draining into Hudson Bay.

The special session of the US Congress from 9 March to 16 June 1933 in which Roosevelt's first major New Deal laws were passed.

The agreement of April 1941 between Canada and the USA to coordinate war production and trade.

The Quebec government's electricity company, which took over the province's private power companies in 1962–1963 and became a symbol of the Quiet Revolution and of francophone economic power.

An Indigenous protest movement begun in Canada in late 2012 by four women in Saskatchewan against federal laws that weakened environmental protection and treaty rights; it used round dances, blockades and social media.

The US law that set national-origins quotas of 2 per cent of each nationality's foreign-born population in 1890, sharply limiting immigration from southern and eastern Europe and barring immigration from Asia.

The US law of 1986 that gave legal status to about 2.7 million undocumented immigrants who had lived in the country since 1982 and introduced penalties for employers who hired undocumented workers.

In the USA, the process by which the House of Representatives charges a federal official, including the president, with serious misconduct; the Senate then holds a trial, and a two-thirds majority is needed to remove the official.

The conference of Britain and the dominions held in Ottawa in July–August 1932, which agreed lower tariffs on trade within the British Empire (imperial preference).

A system of lower tariffs on trade between Britain and the countries of its Empire and Commonwealth than on trade with other countries, extended in 1932.

The body of British and dominion leaders set up in 1917 to direct the war effort of the British Empire, which gave the dominions a voice in imperial policy.

The Canadian law of 1876 that made status First Nations people wards of the federal government, controlled by Indian agents; later amendments banned ceremonies, restricted movement and made residential schooling compulsory.

The US law of June 1934 that ended the division of reservations into individual plots, returned some land to tribes and encouraged tribal self-government.

The US law of 1975 that allowed tribes to take over and run federally funded services such as schools, health care and police on their own lands.

The ideology and policy, strong in Mexico after the revolution, that valued Indigenous cultures and history as central to national identity while aiming to integrate Indigenous peoples into a Spanish-speaking mestizo national culture.

The Cuban National Institute of Agrarian Reform, created by the land reform law of May 1959, which took over expropriated land and much of the economy in the first years of the revolution.

Supreme Court rulings from 1901 that the US Constitution did not fully apply in 'unincorporated' territories such as Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

A Brazilian fascist-style movement founded by Plínio Salgado in 1932, with green shirts and the slogan 'God, Fatherland and Family'. It was banned under the Estado Novo.

A salaried royal official sent to run a province's taxes, justice and administration on the king's behalf, first in seventeenth-century France and, from 1764, in Spanish America, where most intendants were peninsulares.

A regional development bank founded in 1959 to lend for economic and social projects in Latin America; it was an early US response to Latin American demands for aid.

The OAS military force created in May 1965, under a Brazilian commander, which brought the US troops in the Dominican Republic under an inter-American command alongside Latin American contingents and gave the occupation multilateral cover.

The commission of Canada, India and Poland set up by the Geneva Accords of 1954 to supervise the ceasefires in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

The US law of 1887 that required railway rates to be "reasonable and just" and created the Interstate Commerce Commission, the first federal regulatory agency.

An official appointed by Brazil's federal government to run a state in place of its elected governor, used by Vargas after 1930 to centralise power.

The Sun god of the Incas, from whom the Sapa Inca claimed descent; worshipped above all at the Coricancha temple in Cuzco.

The term used for the US policy of 1970–1973 of cutting off credit and blocking international loans to Allende's Chile while continuing aid to its armed forces.

One of the US senators who in 1919–1920 opposed the Treaty of Versailles in any form because they rejected membership of the League of Nations.

A policy of avoiding political and military commitments to other states, especially alliances and international security organisations.

"Supreme Chief of the Revolution", the title given to Plutarco Elías Calles when he dominated Mexican politics from behind three presidents between 1928 and 1934.

A district official in Porfirian Mexico, appointed by the state governor, who controlled local elections, police, conscription and land disputes. Jefes políticos were among the most resented officials of the Díaz regime.

Johnson's statement in May 1965, during the intervention in the Dominican Republic, that the American nations would not permit the establishment of another communist government in the Western Hemisphere.

The court in London that was Canada's final court of appeal until 1949. In 1937 it ruled most of Bennett's New Deal laws unconstitutional.

19 June, the anniversary of the day in 1865 when Union troops announced in Galveston, Texas, that all enslaved people there were free; a US federal holiday since 2021.

A governing council formed in a crisis; in 1808–1810 juntas in Spain and Spanish America claimed to rule in the name of the captive Ferdinand VII.

Pierre Trudeau's slogan from 1968 for a Canada built on individual rights, equality of opportunity and social justice.

"Holy lord": the title of a Classic Maya king, who was both ruler and the chief link between his city and its gods.

The commission appointed by President Johnson in 1967 to explain the urban riots, whose report of 1968 blamed white racism, segregation and poverty and warned that the nation was moving toward two separate and unequal societies.

The economic theory of John Maynard Keynes that governments should increase spending and run deficits during a slump to make up for the lack of private demand.

An Andean record made of knotted cords whose colours, positions and knots recorded numbers and categories such as census counts, tribute and storehouse contents; kept by specialists called khipukamayuq.

An anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic US political party of the mid-1850s, officially the American Party, which briefly attracted many former Whigs before splitting over slavery.

The US Supreme Court decision of December 1944 that upheld the wartime exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast.

A local lord in the Andes. Under the Incas, kurakas kept their positions and organised their communities' labour service in return for gifts and status.

A Mexican American political party founded in Texas in 1970 by José Ángel Gutiérrez, which won local elections in towns with Mexican American majorities in the early 1970s.

A gift of public land from a government, especially to a railway company in return for building a line; the company sold the land to settlers to raise capital.

In Guaraní belief, an earthly paradise that could be reached by dancing, fasting and journeying; the inspiration for religious migrations recorded after 1500.

The programme of expansion promoted in the 1890s by Henry Cabot Lodge, Theodore Roosevelt and their allies: a big navy, overseas bases, an isthmian canal and the annexation of Hawaii.

The first Spanish code for the treatment of Indigenous people in the Americas, issued on 27 December 1512; it regulated the encomienda (housing, food, religious teaching, limits on punishment and on the work of pregnant women) but did not abolish it.

A pro-slavery constitution written for Kansas in 1857 by a convention elected in a vote that free-state settlers boycotted; President Buchanan backed it, Stephen Douglas opposed it, and Kansas voters rejected it in 1858.

"The Golden Law" of 13 May 1888, signed by Princess Isabel, which abolished slavery in Brazil without compensation to owners or support for the about 700,000 people it freed.

The US programme begun in March 1941 under which the USA supplied war materials to Britain, the Soviet Union and other Allies with repayment deferred or waived.

A central bank that lends to banks in a crisis so that runs by depositors do not force sound banks to close.

The forcible recruitment of men, usually from the poorest groups, into the Mexican federal army, used under Díaz and on a much larger scale by Huerta in 1913–1914.

The Mexican liberal law of 1856 that ordered the sale of land held by corporations, including the Church and village communities. It was meant to create small farmers but allowed speculators and haciendas to acquire village land.

A movement in the Latin American Catholic Church from the late 1960s that read the gospel as a call to free the poor from unjust social and economic structures and to give them a "preferential option".

A government bond sold to the US public to finance the First World War.

A small US anti-slavery political party that ran James Birney for president in 1840 and 1844; most of its members joined the Free Soil Party in 1848.

"Purity of blood": a Spanish requirement of descent from Old Christians, used first to exclude people of Jewish and Muslim descent and in the Americas to rank people by Spanish descent.

A cattle-herder of the plains (llanos) of the Orinoco basin; the llaneros fought for the royalists under Boves in 1814 and for independence under Páez from 1818.

The fourteen conditions proposed by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge in 1919 for US ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, above all that the USA accepted no obligation under Article X without the approval of Congress.

The basic Mapuche social unit, a patrilineal kin group under a head (lonko) that held land and acted together.

A writing system that combines signs for whole words with signs for syllables, such as Maya hieroglyphic writing.

The Maya calendar that counted days from a fixed starting point equivalent to 3114 BCE, allowing events to be dated precisely over thousands of years.

The 8,000-word cable sent from Moscow by the US diplomat George Kennan in February 1946, arguing that Soviet leaders saw the West as hostile and would expand wherever they met no firm resistance.

A long dwelling of poles and bark shared by several related families of one matrilineage, the typical house of the Haudenosaunee.

The 1980s in Latin America, when the debt crisis, austerity and inflation left income per head lower at the end of the decade than at its start.

A colonist who remained loyal to the British crown during the American War of Independence; tens of thousands left the United States, many for Nova Scotia and Quebec.

The investigation of the loyalty of US federal employees ordered by Truman in March 1947 (Executive Order 9835); millions were screened and those judged disloyal could be dismissed.

A minimum prison term that a judge must impose for a particular crime, whatever the circumstances; the US Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 set them for drug offences.

The nineteenth-century belief that Americans were destined by God to expand across North America, later used to justify overseas expansion.

The Spanish ships that sailed between Acapulco in New Spain and Manila in the Philippines from 1565 to 1815, carrying American silver to Asia and Chinese silk and porcelain back.

The crisis that followed Manitoba's decision in 1890 to end public funding for Catholic schools and French as an official language; it was settled by the Laurier–Greenway compromise of 1896.

The approach to Latin America set out by Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Mann in March 1964, which put economic growth, US investment and anti-communism ahead of opposition to military coups.

The freeing of an enslaved person by their owner, by will, by deed or by purchase.

The very high rate of imprisonment in the United States from the 1980s, which fell disproportionately on Black and Hispanic men and which critics such as Michelle Alexander describe as a new system of racial control.

The US doctrine, announced by John Foster Dulles in January 1954, of deterring attack by threatening an overwhelming, possibly nuclear, response at a time and place of US choosing.

The period 1928–1934 in Mexico, when former president Plutarco Elías Calles, the Jefe Máximo, held real power behind Presidents Portes Gil, Ortiz Rubio and Rodríguez.

The practice of making public accusations of disloyalty or subversion with little or no evidence, named after Senator Joseph McCarthy; also the wider anti-communist campaign in the USA in the late 1940s and 1950s.

The US health care programme for people on low incomes, created in 1965 and run jointly by the federal government and the states; the Affordable Care Act of 2010 expanded it.

The US federal health insurance programme for people aged 65 and over, created by the Social Security Amendments signed by Lyndon Johnson on 30 July 1965.

Canada's universal public health insurance, built from provincial plans that the federal government helped fund under the Medical Care Act of 1966 (in effect from 1 July 1968).

The constitutional agreement of 1987 between Mulroney and the ten premiers that would have recognised Quebec as a "distinct society"; it failed in June 1990 when Manitoba and Newfoundland did not ratify it.

An economic theory and policy of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries holding that a state grows strong by building up wealth through trade surpluses, and that colonies exist to supply raw materials and markets for the mother country.

Racial and cultural mixing between Indigenous, European and African peoples, celebrated by Latin American nationalists such as José Vasconcelos as the basis of national identity.

In Spanish America, a person of mixed Spanish and Indigenous descent.

A people of mixed Indigenous and European, mainly French, descent who formed a distinct community in the fur-trading regions of the Great Lakes and later the Red River in North America.

The war of 1846–1848 between the United States and Mexico, ended by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which Mexico lost California and the Southwest to the USA.

A state that is not a great power but has enough influence to shape international affairs through alliances, diplomacy and international organisations; Canada's self-image in the Cold War.

The Canadian law of August 1917 that introduced conscription for overseas service.

Andean communal work for the benefit of the whole community, such as cleaning canals, rewarded with food and drink.

A government whose party holds fewer than half the seats in the legislature, so it depends on other parties to pass laws and survive confidence votes. Pearson, Clark, Martin and Harper (2006–2011) led minority governments in Canada.

A party formed in 1964 by civil rights activists, open to all races, which challenged the all-white official Mississippi delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.

The agreement of 1820 that admitted Missouri to the USA as a slave state and Maine as a free state, and banned slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36°30′.

The Inca system of labour service by which every household owed turns of work on state and religious lands, in weaving, building, carrying and the army.

The Inca policy of resettling whole communities: loyal settlers were moved into newly conquered or rebellious areas and rebellious peoples moved away from their homelands.

The change from a mainly rural, agricultural and locally organised society to an urban, industrial and nationally organised one, with stronger states, mass education and new technology; the term describes change without implying it was always beneficial.

The US declaration of 1823 that the Americas were closed to new European colonisation and that European interference in the hemisphere would be treated as unfriendly to the USA.

The agreement signed at the Pan-American Conference in Montevideo in December 1933, which defined statehood and declared that no state had the right to intervene in another's affairs.

The organisation formed in December 1955 to run the Montgomery bus boycott, with Martin Luther King Jr. as its president.

A left-wing Peronist guerrilla organisation in Argentina, formed in 1970, which killed former president Aramburu and was destroyed in the Dirty War after 1976.

Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy, which claimed to rest on moral principles such as support for constitutional democracy and refusal to recognise governments that seized power by force.

A raid by the Haudenosaunee and other north-eastern peoples to take captives who would replace dead members of a family, by adoption or ritual execution.

An American investigative journalist of the Progressive Era, such as Ida Tarbell or Upton Sinclair, who exposed corruption and abuses; the name was given by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.

In colonial usage, a person of mixed European and African descent; a term of the sistema de castas, now generally considered offensive in English.

"Joint rule": government of the Postclassic Maya city of Mayapán (c. 1220–1440s) by a council of the heads of noble lineages.

A policy that recognises and supports the cultures of all of a society's ethnic groups instead of expecting them to assimilate; Canada adopted it in 1971 ("multiculturalism within a bilingual framework") and Australia made it official policy after the Galbally Report of 1978.

The movement of Mexican artists, led by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, who from 1921 painted large murals on public buildings presenting the revolution, Indigenous heritage and popular struggles as the nation's story.

A Black American religious and political organisation, led from 1934 by Elijah Muhammad, that taught Black separation from white society, self-reliance and self-defence. Malcolm X was its leading preacher until 1964.

A state whose government claims to rule a single nation or people within fixed borders, with a central government able to tax, defend and govern the whole territory.

Pierre Trudeau's energy policy of October 1980, which sought Canadian ownership of the oil industry, low domestic prices and a larger federal share of oil revenue; it angered Alberta and fed Western alienation.

The US law of June 1933 that set up the National Recovery Administration to agree codes on prices, wages and hours with each industry, gave workers the right to organise and created the Public Works Administration. The Supreme Court struck it down in 1935.

The economic programme of John A. Macdonald's Conservative government in Canada from 1879: protective tariffs, a transcontinental railway and settlement of the West.

The Canadian law of June 1940 that introduced conscription for home defence.

The ideology of Latin American military regimes, developed in Brazil and spread through US and regional training, that treated internal communist subversion as the main threat to the nation and justified military rule.

Hostility to immigrants in the name of protecting the "native" population, which in the USA meant white Protestants of north-west European descent; it led to exclusion laws and immigration quotas.

Rights that people are said to possess by nature, such as life and liberty, rather than by grant of a government; an idea central to the Enlightenment and the revolutions of 1776 and 1789.

Aristotle's theory that some people are by nature fitted to be ruled by others; used by Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda to justify the conquest of Indigenous peoples.

The belief that a nation's power and prosperity depend on a large, modern navy and the bases needed to support it, associated in the USA with Alfred Thayer Mahan.

English laws, notably of 1651 and 1660, requiring colonial trade to be carried in English ships and certain colonial goods, such as sugar and tobacco, to be shipped only to England.

The South Carolina law passed after the Stono Rebellion that banned enslaved people from assembling, growing their own food, earning money or learning to write, and tightened the control of owners.

US laws of 1935, 1936, 1937 and 1939 that restricted arms sales, loans and travel connected with countries at war, in order to keep the USA out of foreign wars.

The programmes and reforms of Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration from 1933 to 1939, aimed at relief for the unemployed, recovery of the economy and reform of the economic system.

The alliance of urban workers, unions, Catholic and Jewish voters, white Southerners, farmers, African Americans in the North and liberals that made the Democrats the majority party in the USA from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Canada's social democratic party, founded in 1961 from the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the labour movement; it supported Pearson's and Trudeau's minority governments in return for social reforms.

Richard Nixon's policy of returning power and federal money to the states and cities, above all through revenue sharing (1972), which gave them federal funds with few conditions.

John F. Kennedy's domestic programme (1961–1963): economic stimulus, aid to depressed areas, a higher minimum wage, plans for health care for the elderly and federal aid to education, civil rights and the space programme. Much of it passed only under Johnson.

Laws issued by Charles I of Spain on 20 November 1542 that banned the enslavement of Indigenous people and ordered that encomiendas should lapse on their holders' deaths; the inheritance clause was revoked in 1545.

Eisenhower's defence policy, set out in NSC 162/2 (1953), which relied on nuclear deterrence, alliances and covert action rather than large conventional forces, in order to limit spending.

A Latin American feminist movement against femicide and violence against women, begun with a mass march in Buenos Aires on 3 June 2015.

The African American civil rights organisation founded by W. E. B. Du Bois and others in 1905 to demand full civil and political rights; its members helped found the NAACP in 1909.

The amendment to the US Constitution, ratified in August 1920, that prohibited denying the vote on account of sex.

Nixon's statement of 1969 that the United States would keep its treaty commitments and nuclear protection but expected its allies to provide the troops for their own defence.

The joint US–Canadian command for the air defence of North America, agreed in 1957 and formalised in May 1958.

The agreement between the USA, Canada and Mexico that removed most tariffs between them, in force from 1 January 1994; it was replaced by the USMCA (CUSMA in Canada) on 1 July 2020.

The military alliance founded in April 1949 by the United States, Canada and ten Western European states, whose members agreed that an armed attack on one would be treated as an attack on all.

The armed resistance of Métis and some Cree in the Saskatchewan valley in 1885, led by Louis Riel, which Canadian troops crushed; Riel was hanged for treason on 16 November 1885.

A US law of 1787 that organised the territory north-west of the Ohio River, provided for new states equal to the original ones and banned slavery there.

Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which lets Parliament or a provincial legislature override certain Charter rights for renewable five-year periods.

A secret US National Security Council paper of April 1950 that called for a large build-up of US military power to contain the Soviet Union worldwide; the Korean War made it policy.

The doctrine, set out by John C. Calhoun, that a US state could declare a federal law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it; it rested on the theory that the Union was a compact among sovereign states.

One of the treaties signed between the Crown and First Nations of western and northern Canada from 1871, which gave the government title to vast areas in return for reserves, payments and promises of help.

A US Senate committee (1934–1936) that investigated the role of bankers and arms makers in US entry into the First World War and encouraged the Neutrality Acts.

A set of African-derived spiritual and healing practices in the British Caribbean, feared by colonial authorities and banned in Jamaica after Tacky's Revolt of 1760.

The policy, set out in the Official Languages Act (1969) and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982), that English and French have equal status in Canada's federal institutions.

The Canadian law of 1969 that made English and French the official languages of the federal government and gave Canadians the right to federal services in either.

The agreement of August 1940 between Canada and the USA that created a Permanent Joint Board on Defence.

A 78-day stand-off in Quebec in 1990 between Mohawks blocking the extension of a golf course onto land including a burial ground and the Quebec police and later the Canadian army.

Brazil's first republic, from the overthrow of the empire in 1889 to the revolution of 1930: a federal system dominated by the elites of the largest states, with a vote limited to literate men.

A single bill that changes many different laws at once; Canadian governments, especially Harper's, used them to pass large budget and policy changes with limited debate.

The protest of June 1935 in which unemployed men from Canada's relief camps rode freight trains east to demand work and wages; it was stopped at Regina, where a riot broke out on 1 July 1935.

The US policy, set out in John Hay's notes of 1899 and 1900, that all powers should have equal access to trade in China and respect its territorial integrity; more broadly, a US preference for economic access over formal colonies.

The US naval task force, with fuel and arms, prepared in 1964 to support the Brazilian military's coup against Goulart if it met resistance; it was not needed.

The secret network of cooperation, formalised in 1975, between the intelligence services of South American military regimes to track, kidnap and kill political opponents across borders.

The US plan for the invasion of the Japanese home islands in 1945–1946, made unnecessary by Japan's surrender.

The CIA campaign against Castro's Cuba authorised in November 1961, including sabotage, propaganda and plots to assassinate Castro.

The CIA operation of 1953–1954 that overthrew President Jacobo Árbenz of Guatemala, using an exile force under Carlos Castillo Armas, propaganda radio and air attacks.

The regional organisation of the American states founded at Bogotá in 1948; its charter promised non-intervention, but in the Cold War it was also used to support US anti-communist policy. Canada joined in 1990.

The elected assemblies at municipal, provincial and national level created by Cuba's 1976 Constitution, in which candidates were selected through processes controlled by the Communist Party.

The Canadian political scandal of 1873 in which John A. Macdonald's Conservatives were shown to have taken election funds from Hugh Allan, who had been promised the contract for the Pacific railway; Macdonald resigned.

The agreement of 18 February 1913, signed in the US embassy in Mexico City with the support of Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, by which Victoriano Huerta and Félix Díaz agreed to overthrow President Madero.

The organisation of the American republics in Washington (1910–1948), grown from the Commercial Bureau set up in 1890 to promote trade and cooperation; critics saw it as a tool of US influence.

A meeting of the independent states of the Americas, held regularly from 1889–1890 onwards, to discuss trade, arbitration and, later, security in the hemisphere.

The two treaties signed by Carter and Omar Torrijos on 7 September 1977, which transferred the Panama Canal to Panama on 31 December 1999 and guaranteed its neutrality.

A royal lineage of Cuzco descended from a dead Inca ruler, which kept his mummy, palaces and estates and acted as a political faction.

A financial crisis in the USA that began a severe depression lasting until about 1897, with mass unemployment, bank failures and strikes.

A system of inheritance in which women inherit from their mothers and men from their fathers, as in Andean societies.

In Spanish America, a free person of African and European or mixed descent; pardos formed a large part of the population of Venezuela and fought on both sides in the wars of independence.

The Quebec party founded by René Lévesque in 1968 to achieve sovereignty for Quebec; it governed Quebec from 1976 and held the referendums of 1980 and 1995.

The radical opposition party led by Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón, whose 1906 programme demanded no re-election, an eight-hour day, a minimum wage, land restitution and secular education. Its leaders later moved towards anarchism.

A lasting change in which groups of voters move from one party to another. In the USA from the 1960s, white Southern conservatives moved to the Republicans while African Americans and liberals became firmly Democratic.

The transfer of Canada's constitution from the control of the British Parliament to Canada, completed by the Constitution Act, 1982, which also added the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The systematic electoral fraud used by Argentina's conservative governments in the 1930s, which they justified as necessary to keep the Radicals out of power.

The use of lightly armed international forces, with the consent of the parties to a conflict, to supervise a ceasefire or separate opposing forces; pioneered by the UN in the Suez Crisis of 1956.

Petróleos Mexicanos, the state oil company created on 7 June 1938 to run the industry after the expropriation of the foreign oil companies.

The US law of 1883 that began a federal civil service recruited by competitive examination instead of party patronage.

A Spaniard born in Spain (on the Iberian Peninsula) living in the Americas; peninsulares held most of the highest offices in colonial government and the Church.

A secret US Defense Department history of the Vietnam War, leaked by Daniel Ellsberg and published in 1971, which showed that successive administrations had misled the public.

Laws passed by Northern US states from the 1840s that protected people accused of being fugitive slaves, for example by guaranteeing jury trials or forbidding state officials to help capture them.

The US welfare reform law signed by Bill Clinton on 22 August 1996, which ended the federal entitlement to cash welfare (AFDC) and replaced it with time-limited, work-based assistance run by the states (TANF).

The ruling of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on 18 October 1929 that women were "persons" under the British North America Act and so could be appointed to the Canadian Senate.

The war of 1899–1902 in which the USA defeated the First Philippine Republic and imposed colonial rule on the Philippines.

The wave of left-wing governments elected in Latin America from 1998, including those of Chávez, Lula, the Kirchners, Morales and Correa.

The manifesto of April 1920 by which the Sonoran generals led by Álvaro Obregón rebelled against President Carranza, who was killed in May 1920.

Emiliano Zapata's programme of November 1911, which rejected Madero and demanded the return of village lands, the expropriation of one-third of hacienda land with compensation and the confiscation of the property of enemies of the revolution.

Venustiano Carranza's manifesto of 26 March 1913, which refused to recognise Huerta and named Carranza First Chief of the Constitutionalist Army, with the aim of restoring constitutional government.

Iturbide and Guerrero’s programme for Mexican independence (24 February 1821), based on three guarantees: the Catholic religion, independence and union of all inhabitants.

Francisco Madero's manifesto, dated 5 October 1910, which declared the 1910 election void, named Madero provisional president and called for an armed rising on 20 November 1910. It promised a review of illegal land seizures.

The National Revolutionary Party, founded by Calles in March 1929 to unite the revolutionary generals and regional parties in one organisation. It became the PRM in 1938 and the PRI in 1946, which governed Mexico until 2000.

A US programme of technical assistance to developing countries announced by Truman in January 1949; its sums for Latin America were small compared with the Marshall Plan.

The movement of political opinion away from the centre towards two opposed groups; it can mean that parties disagree more on policy, or that their supporters dislike and distrust each other more.

A party organisation in an American city, led by a "boss", that won elections by giving immigrants and poor voters jobs and favours in return for their votes, and was often corrupt.

The worship of many gods.

An alliance of liberal, socialist and communist parties against fascism and conservatism in the 1930s, such as those that won elections in Spain and France in 1936 and in Chile in 1938.

The coalition of Socialists, Communists and smaller left-wing parties that elected Salvador Allende president of Chile in 1970.

The US political party founded in 1892 by farmers' organisations to challenge railways, banks and monopolies; its Omaha Platform called for railway nationalisation, an income tax and free coinage of silver.

The period of Porfirio Díaz's rule in Mexico, 1876–1911, including the González presidency of 1880–1884 that Díaz controlled. It combined stability and rapid foreign-led economic growth with dictatorship and growing inequality.

A philosophy developed by Auguste Comte holding that society can be studied scientifically and progresses through fixed stages. In Porfirian Mexico it justified strong government by experts to impose order so that economic progress could take place.

The campaign in the USA in 1915–1916 to strengthen the army and navy in case of war, which led to the National Defense Act and Naval Act of 1916.

The Party of the Mexican Revolution, the name Cárdenas gave the ruling party in March 1938, organised in four sectors: peasant, labour, popular and military. It was renamed the PRI in 1946.

The name the Argentine military regime of 1976–1983 gave to its rule and programme.

A British royal decree of October 1763 that banned colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains in order to keep peace with Indigenous nations.

The reform movement of about 1900–1920 in the USA (with parallels in Canada) that used government regulation, expert administration and democratic reforms against monopoly, corruption, poverty and unsafe work.

A legal ban on making, selling and transporting alcoholic drinks; in the USA it was imposed nationally by the Eighteenth Amendment from 1920 to 1933, and most Canadian provinces had wartime bans.

The formal ending of a session of Parliament by the Governor General on the prime minister's advice, suspending its sittings; Harper's prorogation of December 2008 avoided a confidence vote he expected to lose.

The US Army expedition of about 10,000 troops under General John J. Pershing sent into northern Mexico from March 1916 to February 1917 to capture Pancho Villa after his raid on Columbus, New Mexico. It failed to catch him.

The Inca road network, roughly 30,000–40,000 km long, with rest houses (tambos) and storehouses about a day's walk apart, used by the state and the army.

An Inca state storehouse, a small stone building on a dry hillside used to keep food, cloth, weapons and tools for the army, officials, feasts and famine relief.

A policy in which a central bank creates money to buy large amounts of government bonds and other assets, in order to push down long-term interest rates; the US Federal Reserve used it from late 2008.

The name Kennedy gave to the US naval blockade of Cuba announced on 22 October 1962, chosen because a blockade is an act of war under international law.

A British law of 1774 that gave Quebec a government without an elected assembly, protected the Catholic Church and French civil law, and extended Quebec’s borders into the Ohio valley.

The Andean language ("runa simi", the people's language) that the Incas spread as the language of government; still spoken by millions today.

The rapid reform of Quebec's government, economy and society under Jean Lesage's Liberal government (1960–1966), in which the provincial state replaced the Catholic Church in education and welfare and francophones took more control of the economy.

A community of people who escaped from slavery in Brazil, such as Palmares.

The royal fifth: the share of all gold and silver mined in the Spanish and Portuguese Americas that was owed to the crown.

The idea, associated with Gilberto Freyre and long official in Brazil, that racial mixing had produced a society without racism; Afro-Brazilian activists called it a myth that hid discrimination.

The policy of the Reagan administration from the mid-1980s of supporting anti-communist rebels fighting Soviet-backed governments, as in Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Angola.

The economic policies of Ronald Reagan (1981–1989): large cuts in income tax, cuts in domestic spending with higher defence spending, deregulation, and support for tight money to defeat inflation.

The US law of 1934 that allowed the president to negotiate tariff reductions of up to half with other countries in return for similar cuts.

The exchange of goods or labour based on mutual obligation, as when households help one another and the help is later returned.

The 1854 agreement allowing free trade in natural products between British North America and the USA, which the USA ended in 1866; its loss encouraged Canadian Confederation.

The Spanish policy in Cuba from 1896 of forcing rural people into guarded towns and camps to cut the rebels off from support; it caused mass deaths from hunger and disease.

The centuries-long Christian conquest of Muslim-ruled Iberia, completed by the fall of Granada on 2 January 1492; it gave Spain a tradition of crusade and of conquest rewarded with land and titles.

US laws of 1867 that placed ten former Confederate states under military rule until they adopted new constitutions with Black male suffrage and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment.

A US federal agency created in January 1932 under Hoover to lend money to banks, railways, insurance companies and later states. Roosevelt kept and expanded it.

Units of urban workers from the Casa del Obrero Mundial who fought for Carranza's Constitutionalists against Villa and Zapata in 1915.

Citizens Plus, the reply of the Indian Association of Alberta to the 1969 White Paper, presented in June 1970, which argued that First Nations people had the rights of all citizens plus their treaty rights.

The militant Native American movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, inspired partly by Black Power, which used occupations and direct action to demand treaty rights and self-determination.

The resistance of the Métis of Red River in 1869–1870, led by Louis Riel, to Canada's takeover of Rupert's Land; it led to the Manitoba Act of 1870.

The wave of fear of communism and radicalism in the USA in 1919–1920, marked by raids, mass arrests and deportations of suspected radicals.

Armed white Democratic groups in South Carolina, and later North Carolina, that used violence and intimidation against Black voters and Republicans, notably in the election of 1876.

The wave of racial violence in more than two dozen US cities in 1919, in which white mobs attacked African Americans.

White Southern Democrats who regained control of Southern state governments from the Republicans between 1869 and 1877, claiming to have "redeemed" the South.

An economic system in which goods are collected by a central authority, such as a ruler or temple, and then handed out again to workers, officials or people in need.

The refusal of banks and government agencies to lend money for homes in areas marked as risky because Black people lived there, based on maps drawn by federal housing agencies from the 1930s. It kept Black Americans out of home ownership and white suburbs.

A planned town into which Spanish authorities forced scattered Indigenous settlements to move, to make tribute collection, labour drafts and religious teaching easier; carried out on a large scale by Viceroy Toledo in Peru.

A Western Canadian populist conservative party founded in 1987 and led by Preston Manning; it won 52 seats in 1993, became the Canadian Alliance in 2000 and merged into the Conservative Party in 2003.

A manifesto published in 1948 by Quebec artists led by Paul-Émile Borduas, attacking the Catholic Church's control of Quebec culture and calling for freedom of thought and expression.

Camps run by Canada's Department of National Defence from 1932 to 1936, where single unemployed men worked on public projects for board, lodging and 20 cents a day.

The political movement of conservative evangelical Christians in the USA, organised from 1979 by groups such as Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, which became a core part of the Republican coalition.

In New Spain from the 1550s, a rotating labour draft that required Indigenous communities to send a share of their men to work for short periods for Spanish employers at fixed wages.

In Spanish colonial law, the legal community of Spaniards, governed separately from the republic of Indians.

In Spanish colonial law, the separate legal community of Indigenous people, with their own town councils and nobles, who paid tribute and were in principle protected from Spanish settlers.

The belief that a state should be governed by elected representatives of its citizens rather than a hereditary monarch, and that its survival depends on the civic virtue of those citizens.

A Spanish legal document of 1513 read to Indigenous peoples before an attack, demanding that they accept the authority of the pope and the Spanish crown and declaring war and enslavement lawful if they refused.

An area of land set aside by the US government (a reserve in Canada) for an Indigenous nation, usually far smaller than its former territory, where its people were confined and controlled by federal agents.

A boarding school for Indigenous children in Canada, funded by the federal government and run by churches from the 1880s to 1996, designed to separate children from their families, languages and cultures.

A system in which ministers must have the support of a majority in the elected assembly; granted to Nova Scotia and the Province of Canada in 1848 and to most Australian colonies and New Zealand in 1855–1857.

The period of Mexican history from the defeat of Maximilian in 1867 to Porfirio Díaz's seizure of power in 1876, under Benito Juárez and Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada.

The episode of 1935 when the Canadian government disowned its League delegate Walter Riddell's proposal to add oil to sanctions against Italy.

The mutual defence treaty signed by the American republics on 2 September 1947, under which an armed attack on one American state was to be treated as an attack on all.

A trade treaty of 1 May 1933 in which Britain guaranteed a quota for Argentine chilled beef and Argentina gave concessions to British goods and companies.

A peasant self-defence patrol in the Peruvian Andes; from the late 1980s many communities formed rondas, often armed by the army, to resist the Shining Path.

Theodore Roosevelt's addition of 1904 to the Monroe Doctrine, claiming a US right to act as an 'international police power' in Latin American states that failed to keep order or pay their debts.

The sharp economic downturn of 1937–1938 in the USA, which followed cuts in federal spending and tighter credit.

A fictional figure used in US wartime propaganda to represent women working in war industries.

The Royal Commission on Dominion–Provincial Relations, appointed in Canada in 1937, which reported in 1940 that Ottawa should take over unemployment relief and support the poorer provinces.

The Canadian royal commission (1963–1969) that investigated relations between English and French Canadians and recommended equal status for the two languages, leading to the Official Languages Act.

Herbert Hoover's phrase for the American tradition of self-reliance, in which individuals, families, charities and local communities, not the federal government, were responsible for their own welfare.

The mounted rural police force of nineteenth-century Mexico, expanded under Díaz to keep order in the countryside. It became a symbol of the regime's repression, although it was smaller and less effective than its reputation.

One of the 50 hereditary chiefs of the Haudenosaunee League council, chosen from a lineage by its clan mother.

The Argentine electoral law of 1912 that made voting secret, compulsory and universal for adult male citizens, ending the oligarchy's control of elections.

The Nicaraguan revolutionary movement, founded in 1961 and named after Augusto Sandino, that overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 and governed Nicaragua until 1990.

An Afro-Cuban religion that combines Yoruba worship of spirits (orishas) with Catholic saints.

The ruler of the Inca state ("unique Inca"), regarded as the son of the Sun god Inti.

An insulting name used by white Southern Democrats for white Southerners who supported the Republican Party during Reconstruction.

The US Army school that trained Latin American soldiers and police, in the Panama Canal Zone from 1946 and at Fort Benning, Georgia, from 1984; renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in 2001.

The competition between the Democratic and Whig parties in the USA from about 1834 to 1854; because both needed votes in the North and the South, they tended to keep slavery out of national politics.

The wave of fear of communist subversion in the United States from the late 1940s to the late 1950s, marked by loyalty investigations, congressional hearings, blacklists and prosecutions; also called McCarthyism.

The clause of the US Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that banned discrimination against disabled people in programmes receiving federal money; disabled activists' sit-ins in 1977 forced the government to enforce it.

Loyalty to the interests of one's own region above those of the nation; in the USA before 1861, the growing tendency to see politics as a contest between North and South.

The US agency created in 1934 to regulate the stock market and the sale of shares.

The practice of living in one place all year round, usually based on farming. Semi-sedentary farmers move their villages every few years or decades.

The US law of May 1918 that made it a crime to use 'disloyal' language about the government, the flag or the armed forces.

The US law of May 1917 that introduced conscription for the First World War.

The seizure of extra-constitutional powers by an elected leader, who closes the legislature or suspends the constitution, as Alberto Fujimori did in Peru on 5 April 1992.

The week of January 1919 in which the army and armed civilian groups crushed a general strike in Buenos Aires, killing hundreds of people.

The division of government into separate legislative, executive and judicial branches so that no one person or body holds all power.

A community centre in a poor urban district, staffed by middle-class reformers who lived there, offering classes, childcare and help to immigrants and campaigning for social laws.

A global war (1756–1763) in which Britain and Prussia fought France, Austria, Russia and Spain; in North America it ended French rule on the mainland and left Britain with a large debt.

Huey Long's movement of 1934 that proposed to limit large fortunes and guarantee every family a home, an income, pensions and education.

An armed uprising of indebted farmers in Massachusetts in 1786–1787 that convinced many American leaders that the Articles of Confederation were too weak.

The US law of 1890 that made combinations "in restraint of trade" and attempts at monopoly illegal; weakly enforced until the 1900s.

A Maoist guerrilla party founded by Abimael Guzmán in Ayacucho, Peru, which waged a "people's war" from 1980 and was responsible for more than half the deaths in Peru's internal conflict.

A Catholic, nationalist and anti-communist mass movement founded in Mexico in 1937 (the National Synarchist Union), strong among rural people in west-central Mexico and opposed to Cárdenas's reforms.

The ranking of people of mixed descent in eighteenth-century Spanish America into named categories according to their Spanish, Indigenous and African ancestry.

The programme adopted by the PNR in 1933 for the presidency of 1934–1940, promising land reform, labour rights, state direction of the economy and socialist education. Cárdenas used it as the basis of his reforms.

A body of colonial law defining the status of enslaved people and the powers of their owners, such as the Barbados Slave Code (1661) and the French Code Noir (1685).

A group of armed local white men who rode at night in the US South to stop enslaved people travelling, meeting or escaping without permission.

The name used by opponents of slavery for the slaveholding elite, which they believed controlled the US federal government and threatened the liberties of white Northerners.

A movement based on the monetary ideas of C. H. Douglas that promised a monthly dividend to every citizen; under William Aberhart it won power in Alberta in 1935.

A Protestant reform movement in the USA and Canada around 1880–1930 that applied Christian ethics to social problems such as poverty, alcohol and poor working conditions.

The US law of 14 August 1935 that created federal old-age pensions, state-run unemployment insurance and aid for dependent children and the disabled. It excluded agricultural and domestic workers.

A woman who travelled with a Mexican army during the revolution, providing food, nursing and supplies and sometimes fighting. The name "Adelita", from a famous corrido, became a romantic symbol of these women.

Groups of colonial artisans, merchants and lawyers formed in 1765 to resist the Stamp Act and later British measures, through protests, boycotts and intimidation of royal officials.

A British joint-stock company founded in 1711 that held the asiento to supply enslaved Africans to Spanish America from 1713.

The Republican effort, from Nixon's campaign of 1968, to win white Southern voters who had left the Democrats over civil rights, through appeals on crime, busing, states' rights and patriotism.

The Parti Québécois's proposal that Quebec become a sovereign state while keeping an economic association, including a common currency, with Canada; the subject of the 1980 referendum.

The Inca custom by which a dead ruler's palaces, lands and servants stayed with his mummy and lineage, so that each new ruler had to acquire new lands of his own.

The practice of giving government jobs to supporters of the winning party, from the saying "to the victor belong the spoils".

Theodore Roosevelt's domestic programme of 1901–1909: fair treatment for business, labour and consumers through regulation of corporations, consumer protection and conservation.

The combination of a stagnant economy, with low growth and high unemployment, and high inflation, as in the USA and Canada in the 1970s. It undermined the Keynesian policies of the post-war years.

A British law of 1765 that taxed printed papers in the American colonies; the first direct tax laid on them by Parliament, repealed in 1766 after colonial resistance.

A way of funding a state by collecting basic goods such as food and cloth, or the labour to produce them, and paying officials and workers in kind; used of the Inca state.

The British law of 1931 that gave the dominions full legal independence in their own affairs, including foreign policy.

An upright carved stone slab. Maya stelae showed rulers and recorded their reigns in dated hieroglyphic texts.

Protests that began after a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York, on 28 June 1969, often seen as the start of the gay liberation movement.

A home loan to a borrower with a poor credit record, usually at a higher interest rate. Defaults on subprime mortgages in the USA from 2006 set off the financial crisis of 2008.

The share of the US sugar market reserved for Cuban sugar at preferential prices under the Reciprocity Treaty of 1934; the United States cut it in July 1960.

The theory that economic growth comes mainly from encouraging work, saving and investment through lower taxes and lighter regulation; critics call it "trickle-down economics".

A private company authorised under Mexican laws of 1883 and 1894 to survey supposedly vacant public land (terrenos baldíos) and keep up to a third of it as payment. Survey companies helped transfer village land to large owners.

Germany's promise of May 1916, after the attack on the ferry Sussex, not to sink merchant ships without warning and without saving the lives of those on board.

Farming that clears land by cutting and burning vegetation, cultivates it for a few years and then leaves it to regrow while new land is cleared.

The blending of elements of different religions or cultures into a new form, such as Indigenous or African beliefs combined with Christianity.

A way of organising plantation labour, used mainly on Lowcountry rice plantations, in which each enslaved worker was given a daily task and the time left after finishing it belonged to the worker.

The agreement of 1906 between the Brazilian states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro to buy and store surplus coffee to hold up world prices, the start of valorisation.

The Quechua name of the Inca state, meaning "the four parts together": four quarters (suyu) that met at Cuzco.

A conservative protest movement in the USA from 2009 that opposed the bank bailouts, the stimulus, the Affordable Care Act and the growth of federal spending, and pushed the Republican Party to the right.

A resolution passed by the US Congress in April 1898 promising that the USA would not annex Cuba after the war with Spain.

The US programme created in 1996 to replace AFDC: block grants to the states for cash assistance with work requirements and a five-year lifetime limit.

Lincoln's plan of December 1863 to readmit a Confederate state once 10 per cent of its 1860 voters swore loyalty to the Union and accepted the abolition of slavery.

Junior army officers in Brazil who rebelled in 1922 and 1924 against the Old Republic and supported the Revolution of 1930, seeking a strong, modernising central state.

A US public corporation created in May 1933 to build dams, control floods, produce cheap electricity and develop the Tennessee Valley.

US policy from 1953 to the 1960s that ended federal recognition of more than 100 Native American tribes and bands, removing their land from trust and their members from federal services, in order to assimilate them.

Perón's foreign and economic policy claiming to stand between capitalism and communism and between the United States and the USSR.

A centrist politics of the 1990s, associated with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, that combined market economics, free trade and balanced budgets with a reformed welfare state.

The amendment to the US Constitution, ratified in December 1865, that abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime.

The clause of the US Constitution of 1787 that counted three-fifths of each state’s enslaved population when allocating seats in the House of Representatives and direct taxes.

A Mapuche war leader chosen by an assembly for a campaign, whose authority ended when the war ended.

British laws of 1767 that taxed colonial imports of glass, paint, paper and tea and used the revenue to pay royal officials in America.

The CIA's political effort in September–October 1970 to persuade the Chilean Congress or President Frei to prevent Allende from taking office by constitutional means.

The secret CIA effort ordered by Nixon in September 1970 to encourage a military coup in Chile before Allende took office; it was hidden even from the US ambassador.

The system that combined chattel slavery in the Americas, the slave trade from Africa, and the laws, institutions and ideas that sustained them, from the early sixteenth to the late nineteenth century.

The agreement of 21 May 1911 between Madero's rebels and the Díaz government under which Díaz resigned and an interim government held elections, while the federal army and most Porfirian officials stayed in place.

The treaty of 1848 that ended the Mexican–American War; Mexico ceded California and New Mexico to the USA for 15 million dollars and accepted the Rio Grande as the Texas border.

The treaty of 3 September 1783 in which Britain recognised the independence of the United States, with borders reaching west to the Mississippi.

The treaty of 10 December 1898 that ended the war between the USA and Spain: Cuba became independent, and Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines were ceded to the USA.

The treaty of 7 June 1494 between Castile and Portugal dividing the non-European world along a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, which gave Portugal Brazil.

The trial in 1985 of nine members of Argentina's former military juntas before a civilian court, in which Videla and Massera were sentenced to life imprisonment.

A conference of revolutionary movements and governments from Africa, Asia and Latin America held in Havana in January 1966, which created an organisation to support armed struggle against imperialism.

A right-wing death squad organised from within Isabel Perón's government by José López Rega, which killed hundreds of left-wing activists in 1973–1976.

The US programme, signed on 3 October 2008, that provided up to 700 billion dollars to stabilise the banks and later the car industry during the financial crisis.

President Truman's declaration of 12 March 1947 that the United States would support "free peoples" resisting subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressure, first applied through aid to Greece and Turkey.

In late nineteenth-century business, a combination of companies in one industry under a single board of trustees, created to limit competition and control prices; the word came to mean any large monopoly.

The commission (2008–2015) created by the residential schools settlement to record survivors’ testimony and the history of the schools; its 2015 report made 94 Calls to Action.

A mass uprising in the Andes of Peru and Upper Peru (1780–1783), led at first by José Gabriel Condorcanqui (Túpac Amaru II), against colonial abuses and Bourbon taxes.

An urban guerrilla movement in Uruguay from the 1960s, known for bank robberies, kidnappings and spectacular raids, which was crushed by the army in 1972.

The amendment to the US Constitution, ratified in January 1964, that banned poll taxes in federal elections.

An informal network of free Black people, white abolitionists and escaped slaves who helped enslaved people flee from the US South to the free states and Canada before 1861.

The farmworkers’ union led by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, formed in 1966 from the National Farm Workers Association and the Filipino Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee.

A US company that grew and shipped bananas and owned large estates, railways and ports in Central America and the Caribbean; it lobbied against Árbenz's land reform in Guatemala.

The unanimous Supreme Court ruling of 24 July 1974 that ordered President Nixon to hand over his tape recordings to the Watergate prosecutor, rejecting his claim of executive privilege.

The mass organisation founded by Marcus Garvey in Jamaica in 1914 and based in Harlem from 1917, which promoted Black pride, Black-owned businesses and Pan-African unity.

The US law of 26 October 2001, passed after the 11 September attacks, that widened the powers of government agencies to carry out surveillance, obtain records and share intelligence.

The principle that new states inherit the administrative boundaries of the colonial units they replace, used by the Spanish American republics after independence.

The debate of 1550–1551 in Valladolid, Spain, between Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda over whether war against and forced rule of Indigenous peoples were just.

The Brazilian policy, begun in 1906, in which governments bought and stored surplus coffee to hold up world prices, paying for it with foreign loans.

A US and British programme that decrypted Soviet intelligence messages of the 1940s; its release in 1995 showed that Soviet espionage in the United States had been extensive.

John Murra's term for the Andean practice of a community controlling lands at different altitudes, like islands, to obtain the products of each zone.

Controlling every stage of production in one company, from raw materials to transport and sale, as Andrew Carnegie did in steel.

The human rights office of the Catholic archdiocese of Santiago, founded by Cardinal Silva Henríquez in 1976, which gave legal and material help to victims of the Pinochet regime and documented abuses.

A ridge in northern France captured by the four divisions of the Canadian Corps in April 1917, later a symbol of Canadian national achievement.

The British claim that Parliament represented all British subjects, including colonists who elected no members, so that it could lawfully tax the colonies.

A Reconstruction bill passed by Congress in July 1864 that required a majority of white men in a Confederate state to swear loyalty before readmission; Lincoln blocked it with a pocket veto.

The US law of 5 July 1935 that guaranteed private-sector workers the right to join unions and bargain collectively, and set up the National Labor Relations Board to enforce it.

The collapse of share prices on the New York Stock Exchange in October 1929, above all on 24 and 29 October, which set off the Great Depression in the USA.

Purple and white shell beads, woven into strings and belts used by the Haudenosaunee and their neighbours to record agreements and support the memory of speakers.

The US agency that coordinated war production in the First World War, setting priorities and allocating materials.

The Canadian law of 1914 that gave the federal government sweeping emergency powers in war; used for internment in both world wars.

The war of 1812–1815 between the United States and Britain, with its Canadian colonists and Indigenous allies, ended by the Treaty of Ghent without territorial change.

The war of 1879–1884 in which Chile defeated Peru and Bolivia and took their nitrate-rich coastal provinces; Bolivia lost its access to the sea.

The war of 1864–1870 in which Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay defeated Paraguay; Paraguay lost a large share of its population, especially adult men.

The US federal campaign against illegal drugs begun under Nixon in 1971 and greatly expanded from the 1980s, with tougher sentences, more policing and a rapid growth in imprisonment.

The anti-poverty programmes launched by Lyndon Johnson in 1964 through the Economic Opportunity Act, including the Job Corps, VISTA, the Community Action Program and Head Start.

The name the George W. Bush administration gave to its campaign after September 2001 against terrorist groups and the states that supported them, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The US law of November 1973, passed over Nixon's veto, requiring the president to consult Congress before sending troops into hostilities and to withdraw them within 60 days without its approval.

Bolívar’s decree of June 1813 threatening death to Spaniards who did not support independence while sparing Americans, to turn a civil war into a national one.

The Canadian law of September 1917 that gave the vote to female relatives of soldiers and removed it from many citizens born in enemy countries.

The economist John Williamson's name (1989) for the free-market policies urged on Latin America by Washington-based institutions: fiscal discipline, privatisation, trade liberalisation and deregulation.

President Woodrow Wilson's policy towards Huerta's Mexico in 1913–1914: refusing recognition and applying pressure without full-scale war, while waiting for Huerta's regime to collapse.

The political scandal that began with a break-in at the Democratic Party's offices in the Watergate building in June 1972 and the White House cover-up that followed, and ended with Richard Nixon's resignation on 9 August 1974.

The belief, strong in the Canadian West, especially Alberta, that federal governments elected mainly by Ontario and Quebec ignore or exploit Western interests.

The rapid expansion of wheat farming and exports on the Canadian Prairies from about 1896 to 1913, driven by rising world prices, cheaper transport, immigration and new varieties such as Marquis wheat.

An armed white paramilitary organisation founded in Louisiana in 1874 that used violence and intimidation to overthrow Republican rule; in September 1874 it briefly seized the state government in New Orleans.

The Canadian government’s proposal of June 1969 to abolish the Indian Act and Indian status and transfer services to the provinces; opposition from First Nations forced its withdrawal in 1971.

A proposal of 1846 to ban slavery in all territory acquired from Mexico; it passed the US House of Representatives but never the Senate, and became the founding principle of the Free Soil and Republican parties.

The general strike in Winnipeg in May–June 1919, broken by the federal government and police.

The largest New Deal relief agency (1935–1943), which employed about 8.5 million people over its life on public works and cultural projects.

In colonial Peru, the status of Indigenous people attached personally to a Spanish master or estate, outside their home community and exempt from the mita.

Men and their families detached from their ayllu to serve the Inca ruler, nobles or temples permanently.

Sensational, often exaggerated newspaper reporting designed to sell copies, associated with the rival New York papers of Hearst and Pulitzer in the 1890s.

In the antebellum US South, a small farmer who owned and worked his own land, mainly with family labour, and owned few or no enslaved people. Yeomen were the majority of white Southerners.

The agrarian movement led by Emiliano Zapata in Morelos and neighbouring states from 1911 to 1919, which fought for the return of village lands and local self-government under the Plan of Ayala and the slogan "Land and Liberty".

A secret German message of January 1917 proposing an alliance with Mexico against the USA, with the promise of lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona; its publication in March 1917 helped bring the USA into the war.

Attacks by US servicemen on young Mexican Americans in Los Angeles in June 1943.