History Hunters International

At approximately seven minutes after the morning hour of ten, in full view of the coast of Iberia, General Diego de Alvear y Ponce de Leon and his 16 year old son Carlos Alvear, if they did not see, certainly heard the horrific explosion that took the Spanish frigate Mercedes to the bottom and left the two Alvear men aboard the Spanish frigate Medea the only surviving members of their family. October 5th 1804 would be a day that Carlos Alvear would remember every day for the remainder of his life on Earth. The young Alvear adopted his mother’s name and subsequently went by Carlos Maria Alvear. On October 11th, 1824, during a crucial period in the history of the Latin American Revolt against Spanish rule, General Carlos Maria Alvear, as Minister Plenipotentiary for the Republic of Buenos Aires, interviewed James Monroe, President of the United States. Carlos Maria Alvear’s brief record of this interview offers one of the few sources available regarding how a Latin American politician understood the Monroe Doctrine.

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