This issue is the first for which the editorial team at the University of Florida, which formally assumed management of the HAHR in July of last year, is fully responsible. The February issue would normally have been the first, but it was wholly dedicated to the ten-year index and was largely the work of Elizabeth Gard, a fitting culmination of her five years of outstanding service as copy editor on the previous team at the University of New Mexico. When the Board of Editors, before the transfer took place, voted to use the February 1986 issue for such a purpose, I had strong reservations on numerous grounds of principle, but on mere practical grounds, my Florida colleagues and I have not ceased to feel gratitude for the additional leeway this gave us in producing our own first issue.
We are equally grateful to the entire New Mexico team—of John J. Johnson, Managing Editor; Peter Bakewell, Associate Editor; Ed Lieuwen, Book Review Editor; as well as Beth Gard—for offering every possible help in the transition, and for handing over the journal in the finest working order. To be sure, receiving it in such good shape is also a disadvantage, in that it becomes that much harder to find things to improve, and simply to maintain the same standards will be an awesome task. We pledge, however, to do everything humanly possible to meet these challenges. Naturally, we are counting on the invaluable assistance of the Board of Editors and Advisory Editors and, even more fundamentally, of the whole community of scholars dedicated to the history of Hispanic America.
I should perhaps point out that the present issue incorporates a few minor changes in editorial style that are incorporated into the revised “Instructions to Authors” printed on pp. 452-454. The unusually large number of book reviews and notices as compared to articles is not, however, a portent of things to come under the new management. We do have hopes of expanding book review coverage, particularly of works published in Latin America, but the seeming imbalance in this issue results primarily from the fact that no reviews at all appeared either in the February or index number or (for somewhat different reasons) in the November 1985 issue. Hence a substantial backlog of reviews has accumulated, not all of which have even yet been printed. Even so, the next issue will embody a more conventional balance of articles and reviews. It will also appear without a separate section of book notices, as we propose in the future to eliminate the distinction between “reviews” and “notices,” keeping only the distinction in length of comment as between works of lesser or greater interest.
