Slatta HI 216 Online Intro Lectures 1-4

Pre-History and Colonial Problems

Human habitation in Latin America probably goes back at least 12,000 to 15,000 years. Over the millenia creative, adaptive humans found ways to live and even prosper under a wide range of natural conditions. Tainos (Arawaks) learned to harvest the natural riches of the Caribbean islands. Caribs and others inhabited the the Amazonian rainforests and later, using long canoes, migrated to many Caribbean Islands--often displacing Tainos. With its varied climates and soils, Latin America produced an abundance of food. Squash was probably the first food crop domesticated by Pre-Columbian Indians. Precursors of the Inca domesticated highly specialized food crops, including the all-important potato, to grow high in the Andes Mountains. Researchers have found precursors to maize (corn) along the Gulf of Mexico in what is now the Mexican state of Tabasco that dates back 6,000 years (5100 BCE). Later varieties of corn would become the staff of live for the Maya and other Mesoamericans. Pre-Columbian Mexicans apparently also cultivated sunflower seeds 4000 years ago and cotton (about 2500 BCE). Indians also domesticated a variety of beans, cacao (for chocolate!), peanuts, tobacco, tomatoes, and many other foods indigenous to the Americas.
The large number of impressive pre-Columbian archaeologial sites attests to the imagination, organization, and energy of these first inhabitants of the Americas. The central Mexican site of Tenochtitlan, built by the warlike Aztecs, flourished from its founding about 1325 until its conquest and destruction by Henan Cortez and his Spanish soldiers in 1521. Click here to view a map of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in Central Mexico.
Tikal (pictured at the left), reined for centuries as among the most impressive, properous Mayan cities. Located in northeastern Guatemala, the city's inhabitants established extensive trade networks and sophisticated agricultural production. The city's quick, mysterious decline and abandonment about 850 CE continues to confound scholars. Did intercity wars ravage the ares? Did they abuse the environment and thus kill off food production? Did a natural disaster strike? Scholars continue to search for an explanation.
Pre-Columbian inhabitants lacked large, sturdy beasts of burden, like oxen or horses. For that reason, they had not bothered with the wheel, present only on a child's toy. Andean Indians had domesticated a number of animals, including the llama. Capable of carrying moderate loads, the llama remains a useful work animal on the rugged trails of Andean South America. Spanish introduction of horses, cattle, sheep, and many other plants and animals would produce tremendous social and economic changes in Latin America.
The epic voyages Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) and the subsequent conquest of this New World by the Spanish and Portuguese and other colonial powers wrought tremendous change. Columbus recorded in his diary and in subsequent letters his impressions of that fateful day-- October 12, 1492-- and after-- the first meeting between Europeans and those he called "Indians" (thinking that he had reached the East Indies, the spice islands). Read Columbus's observations, using the link above, and note his ethnocentric observations about the Caribbean islands and their people.
As evidenced in the writings of Columbus and others, Spaniards arrived in the New World laden with the ethnocentrism and sense of superiority typical of conquistadors and colonizers. Some native practices, however, gave the Spaniards ample reason to feel justified in their conquest of these strange, new lands. Natives in the Caribbean dressed immodestly. To the Spaniards, their nudity gave proof of depravity. The Aztecs practiced ritual human sacrifice. Wielding sharp, black obsidian knives, Aztec priests, atop grand pyramids, cut out the hearts of victims to appease their gods. The illustration at the right comes from an Aztec codex, a sacred book kept in the temple. Scribes painted the ritual calendar, divination, ceremonies, and speculations on the gods and the universe on these codices. They used a combination of pictography, ideograms, and phonetic symbols to record their culture on deerskin or agave-fibre paper. Only a small fraction of these escaped destruction by the zealous Spaniards. Surviving speciments are given names, such as the Codex Borbonicus, Codex Borgia, Codex Fejérváry-Mayer, and Codex Cospi.
More deadly than sword cuts, epidemic diseases to which American Indians had no immunities, decimated the population of first the Caribbean and later continental Latin America. Millions of Indians died of mass epidemics of smallpox, measles, typhus, influenza, yellow fever, dysentary, malaria, and other diseases. Promiscuous sailors also touched off a worldwide epidemic of venereal disease. Spaniards and Portuguese imposed new institutions to control and extract wealth from their newly established colonies. Gradually, a distinct Spanish cultural stamp appeared throughout Spanish America: language, religion, urban geography, political and economic organization all took on a Spanish flavor.
Take a few minutes to read about the legacies of the Mexican and Peruvian Conquests. Explore the PBS site about the Spanish Conquistadors Specifically, read the twin essays on the following pages about the Legacy of the Mexican Conquest by Hernan Cortes and the Legacy of the Conquest of Peru by Francisco Pizarro. Consider the terribles costs to native peoples of the Spanish conquest. Can you see any benefits (positives) to Spain's establishing rule over the Aztecs and Incas?
The conquistadors quickly subjugated the indigenous population and forced them into slavery or other forms of forced labor. Spaniards justified Indian slavery using an ingenius legal sophistry called the Requerimiento. Authored in 1514 under the authority of King Charles I of Spain, conquistadors read this document to Indians of the new world. It briefly explains Spain's assertion of its legal and moral right to rule over the inhabitants of Latin America. It also provides a rationale for a "just war." Legalistic Spaniards devised this doctrine so that you could declare a "just war" and thus "legally" enslave Indians who refused to agree with all the statements of the requerimiento [abridged portion below]. Notice the dire warning in the last paragraph to those who do not submit. Of course, not knowing Spanish, most Indians had no idea what the reading meant but found themselves enslaved nonetheless.
On behalf of the king and the queen, subjugators of barbarous peoples, we, their servants, notify and make known to you as best we are able, that God, Our Lord, living and eternal, created the heavens and the earth, and a man and a woman, of whom you and we and all other people of the world were, and are, the descendants. Because of the great numbers of people who have come from the union of these two in the five thousand year, which have run their course since the world was created, it became necessary that some should go in one direction and that others should go in another. Thus they became divided into many kingdoms and many provinces, since they could not all remain or sustain themselves in one place.
Of all these people God, Our Lord, chose one, who was called Saint Peter, to be the lord and the one who was to be superior to all the other people of the world, whom all should obey. He was to be the head of the entire human race, wherever men might exist. God gave him the world for his kingdom and jurisdiction. God also permitted him to be and establish himself in any other part of the world to judge and govern all peoples, whether Christian, Moors, Jew, Gentiles, or those of any other sects and beliefs that there might be. He was called the Pope.
One of the past Popes who succeeded Saint Peter, as Lord of the Earth gave these islands and mainlands of the Ocean Sea [the Atlantic Ocean] to the said King and Queen and to their successors, with everything that there is in them, as is set forth in certain documents which were drawn up regarding this donation in the manner described, which you may see if you so desire.
In consequence, Their Highnesses are Kings and Lords of these islands and mainland by virtue of said donation. Certain other isles and almost all [the native peoples] to whom this summons has been read have accepted Their Highnesses as such Kings and Lords, and have served, and serve, them as their subjects as they should, and must, do, with good will and without offering any resistance. You are constrained and obliged to do the same as they.
Consequently, as we best may, we beseech and demand that you understand fully this that we have said to you and ponder it, so that you may understand and deliberate upon I for a just and fair period and that you accept the Church and Superior Organization of the whole world and recognize the Supreme Pontiff, called the Pope, and that in his name, you acknowledged the King and Queen, as the lords and superior authorities of these islands and mainlands by virtue of the said donation.
If you do not do this, however, or resort maliciously to delay, we warn you that, with the aid of God, we will enter your land against you with force and will make war in every place and by every means we can and are able, and we will then subject you to the yoke and authority of the Church and Their Highnesses. We will take you and your wives and children and make them slaves, and as such we will sell them, and will dispose of you and them as Their Highnesses order. And we will take your property and will do to you all the harm and evil we can, as is done to vassals who will not obey their lord or who do not wish to accept him, or who resist and defy him. We avow that the deaths and harm which you will receive thereby will be your own blame, and not that of Their Highnesses, nor ours, nor of the gentlemen who come with us.
Spanish and Portuguese conquerors quickly enslaved Native Americans but also imported Africans as slaves. Portuguese Pero de Magalahaes, described the goal of Europeans who came to Brazil during the 1500s. He recorded his observations in his "History of the Province of Santa Cruz, which we commonly call Brazil" (1576). His descriptions combine acute social observation and European ethnocentrism, making it difficult to establish what he saw and what he projected and assumed. These excerpts come from an English translation by John B. Stetson, Jr., reprinted in a limited edition of 250 copies by the Cortes Society of New York, 1922. Initially, brazilwood, prized for its briliant red dye, provided a major export from Brazil. Sugar, cotton, and other plantation crops, tended by African slaves, quickly became much more lucrative. And like conquistadors everywhere, the Portuguese expended great energy in search of gold. The first thing they [Portuguese] try to obtain is slaves to work the farms; and any one who succeeds in obtaining two pairs or a half-dozen of them (although he may not have another earthly possession) has the means to sustain his family in a respectable way; for one [slave] fishes for him, another hunts for him, and the rest cultivate and till his fields, and consequently there is no expense for the maintenance of his slaves or of his household. From this, one may infer how very extensive are the estates of those who own two hundred or three hundred slaves, for there are many colonists who have that number and more (p. 41).
Abuse of Indians by conquistadores and encomenderos prompted some--mainly priests-- to protest their actions. In 1511, Friar Antonio de Montesinos delivered a blistering warning to the encomenderos of Hispañola (now Dominican Republic). Notice his dire warning of damnation in the final paragraph.
In order to make your sins against the Indians known to you I have come up on this pulpit, I who am a voice of Christ crying in the wilderness of this island, and therefore it behooves you to listen, not with careless attention, but with all your heart and senses, so that you may hear it; for this is going to be the strangest voice that ever you heard, the harshest and hardest and most awful and most dangerous that ever you expected to hear.
This voice says that you are in mortal sin, that you live and die in it, for the cruelty and tyranny you use in dealing with these innocent people. Tell me, by what right or justice do you keep this Indians in such a cruel and horrible servitude? On what authority have you waged a detestable war against these people, who dwelt quietly and peacefully on their own land?
Why do you keep them so oppressed and weary, not giving them enough to eat nor taking care of them in their illness? For with the excessive work you demand of them they fall ill and die, or rather you kill them with your desire to extract and acquire gold every day. And what care do you take that they should be instructed in religion? Are these not men? Have they not rational souls? Are you not bound to love them as you love yourselves? Be certain that, in such a state as this, you can no more be saved than the Moors or Turks.
Others, notably Father Bartolomé de las Casas (1474-1566, shown at right) would also defend Indians against Spanish abuses. In one of his many writings, "A Brief Report on the Destruction of the Indians" (1542) he harshly judged the motives and actions of the Spaniards in the New World. "The reason why the Christians have killed and destroyed such an infinite number of souls is that they have been moved by their wish for gold and their desire to enrich themselves in a very short time." He spent his life working to protect the rights of Indians against abuse, thereby earning his title "Defender of the Indians."
Over time, colonial society became more complex as races mixed and new races emerged. Spanish and Indian parents yielded the mestizo. Europeans also mixed with some of the nine million African slaves forcibly brought to Latin America creating mulattoes. Over time a clear social hierarchy emerged with whites (peninsular Spaniards and criollos born in the New World) at the top. Mestizos occupied an inferior position compared with whites and often faced the stigma of illegtimacy. Legally and socially all castas (non-whites) stood at the bottom of the social ladder. Thus racial and social stratification put everyone in his or her assigned place during the colonial era.
Spaniards, acting from ancient Roman practice, quickly established cities throughout Latin America. Lima, Peru became rich and populous owing to its monopoly over trade to the western coast of South America. Much of the wealth passing through Lima originated in the great silver mines of the Andes--the mines that made Potosí, Bolivia, a sixteenth-century boomtown. Historian Lewis Hanke colorfully described social life in Potosí during the mining boom (The Imperial City of Potosí: An Unwritten Chapter in the History of Spanish America, The Hague, Netherlands, 1956). At one time, in th early part of the seventeenth century, there were some 700 or 800 professional gamblers in the city and 120 prostitutes, among them the redoubtable courtesan Doña Clara, whose wealth and beauty, the chroniclers assure us, were unrivalled. The most extravagant woman in Potosí, she was able to fill her home with the luxuries of Europe and the Orient, for her salon was frequented by the richest miners, who competed enthusiastically for her favors. Vagabonds abounded, and royal officials indignantly reported that there ne'er -do-wells did nothing but dress extravagantly and eat and drink to excess. So high were the stakes that one Juan Fernández dared to start a revoution in 1583, by which he hoped to make himself king of Potosí. He and his brothers planned to seize the city, and "despite the fact that he was a married man, Fernández selected a widow, María Alvarez, to share the throne of his kingdom-to-be." The government learned of this plot and captured Fernández before his revolution could erupt, but this was not the last time that the wealth of Potosí engendered a fever of boundless hope and all-consuming desire among the bold spirits atttracted to that cold and windy city. A thick volume could be compiled on the plots that were hatched. Ah, well, urban life has always generated social diversity. Note the varieties of social class and ethnicity that developed in Lima, Peru, in your online reading. Finally, other European colonial powers added their cultures, languages, and bloodlines to the Latin American mix. The French occupied several Caribbean islands, including the western part of the island of Hispaniola that would become Haiti after independence. The British likewise acquired New World real estate, including British Honduras (now Belize), Jamaica, and some of the Virigin Islands. The Dutch too, whose Caribbean architecture you see in the photo, occupied three islands off the Venezuelan coast: Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. Even Denmark held some Caribbean colonies until the United States purchased them in 1917 and made them the US Virgin Islands.

Not everyone gracefully accepted Spanish colonial rule. You will read a protest letter written by
Spanish kings operated under the theory of mercantilism, well explained and criticized by Adam Smith in "The Wealth of Nations", published in 1776. Smith's forceful call for economic liberalism (free trade, wage labor, private property) would strongly influence independent Latin American leaders during the nineteenth century.
Some of the best English writers upon commerce set out with observing, that the wealth of a country consists, not in its gold and silver only, but in its lands, houses, and consumable goods of all different kinds. In the course of their reasoning, however, the lands, houses, and consumable goods seem to slip out of their memory, and the strain of their argument frequently supposes that all wealth consists in gold and silver, and that to multiply those metals is the great object of national industry and commerce. The two principles being established, however, that wealth consisted in gold and silver, and that those metals could be brought into a country which had no mines only by the balance of trade, or by exporting to a greater value than it imported; it necessarily became the great object of political economy to diminish as much as possible the importation of foreign goods for home consumption, and to increase as much as possible the exportation of the produce of domestic industry. Its two great engines for enriching the country, therefore, were restraints upon importation, and encouragements to exportation....
BY restraining, either by high duties, or by absolute prohibitions, the importation of such goods from foreign countries as can be produced at home, the monopoly of the home market is more or less secured to the domestic industry employed in producing them. Thus the prohibition of importing either live cattle or salt provisions from foreign countries secures to the grazers of Great Britain the monopoly of the home market for butcher's meat. The high duties upon the importation of grain, which in times of moderate plenty amount to a prohibition, give a like advantage to the growers of that commodity. The prohibition of the importation of foreign woollens is equally favorable to the woollen manufacturers. The silk manufacture, though altogether employed upon foreign materials, has lately obtained the same advantage. The linen manufacture has not yet obtained it, but is making great strides towards it. Many other sorts of manufacturers have, in the same manner, obtained in Great Britain, either altogether, or very nearly a monopoly against their countrymen....That this monopoly of the home-market frequently gives great encouragement to that particular species of industry which enjoys it, and frequently turns towards that employment a greater share of both the labor and stock of the society than would otherwise have gone to it, cannot be doubted. But whether it tends either to increase the general industry of the society, or to give it the most advantageous direction, is not, perhaps, altogether so evident....
THOUGH the encouragement of exportation, and the discouragement of importation, are the two great engines by which the mercantile system proposes to enrich every country, yet with regard to some particular commodities, it seems to follow an opposite plan: to discourage exportation and to encourage importation. Its ultimate object, however, it pretends, is always the same, to enrich the country by an advantageous balance of trade. It discourages the exportation of the materials of manufacture, and of the instruments of trade, in order to give our own workmen an advantage, and to enable them to undersell those of other nations in all foreign markets; and by restraining, in this manner, the exportation of a few commodities, of no great price, it proposes to occasion a much greater and more valuable exportation of others. It encourages the importation of the materials of manufacture, in order that our own people may be enabled to work them up more cheaply, and thereby prevent a greater and more valuable importation of the manufactured commodities.... Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident, that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it. But in the mercantile system, the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce. . . .
The importation of gold and silver is not the principal much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade. Between whatever places foreign trade is carried on, they all of them derive two distinct benefits from it. It carries out that surplus part of the produce of their land and labor for which there is no demand among them, and brings back in return for it something else for which there is a demand. It gives a value to their superfluities by exchanging them for something else, which may satisfy a part of their wants, and increase their enjoyments. By means of it, the narrowness of the home market does not hinder the division of labor in any particular branch of art or manufacture from being carried to the highest perfection. By opening a more extensive market for whatever part of the produce of their labor may exceed the home consumption, it encourages them to improve its productive powers and to augment its annual produce to the utmost, and thereby to increase the real revenue and wealth of the society. Clinging to the outmoded practices of mercantilism contributed to Spain's sharp decline compared with nations such as Great Britain. Not surprisingly, merchants, planters, and others in Latin America would also find reason to dislike Spain's mercantilism and other economic policies. Economic discontent, especially among creoles, provided one important motive for seeking independence from Spain.

END Pre-Columbian and Colonial Era
Independence and its Causes

[Flag of Haiti] The latter half of the eighteenth century was an era of revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. First the upstart British colonists of North America broke away from Great Britain. In 1789 the bloody French Revolution broke out in the name of "liberty, equality, fraternity." Latin America's first independence movement arose in France's Caribbean colony of Haiti (Saint Domingue). There slaves, led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, revolted against their masters on August 22, 1791. After more than a decade of intense fighting, Haiti declared its independence in 1804.
When revolution broke out in France in 1789, it was almost inevitable that the French overseas colonies would also experience some type of upheaval. In the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), the colony's value to France for its sugar exports further complicated things. In this confused arena François Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture (1743-1803) took control of the revolution. Born a slave, he was afforded the opportunity by his master to become educated. At first he supported the monarchy, but gradually assumed a more republican stance. Toussaint was unwavering in his pursuit of the abolition of slavery. Here Toussaint warns the Directory (the executive committee which ran the French government) against any attempt to reimpose slavery. Successful in thwarting Paris's desires, he would not be so lucky later. In 1800 Napoleon Bonaparte attempted to reimpose slavery. Toussaint resisted, was captured and brought to France where he died three years later. Napoleon's troops, even though assisted by other European forces, could not subjugate the island. Toussaint's words appear below:
I shall never hesitate between the safety of San Domingo and my personal happiness; but I have nothing to fear. It is to the solicitude of the French Government that I have confided my children.... I would tremble with horror if it was into the hands of the colonists that I had sent them as hostages; but even if it were so, let them know that in punishing them for the fidelity of their father, they would only add one degree more to their barbarism, without any hope of ever making me fail in my duty.... Blind as they are! They cannot see how this odious conduct on their part can become the signal of new disasters and irreparable misfortunes, and that far from making them regain what in their eyes liberty for all has made them lose, they expose themselves to a total ruin and the colony to its inevitable destruction. Do they think that men who have been able to enjoy the blessing of liberty will calmly see it snatched away? They supported their chains only so long as they did not know any condition of life more happy than that of slavery. But to-day when they have left it, if they had a thousand lives they would sacrifice them all rather than be forced into slavery again. But no, the same hand which has broken our chains will not enslave us anew. France will not revoke her principles, she will not withdraw from us the greatest of her benefits. She will protect us against all our enemies; she will not permit her sublime morality to be perverted, those principles which do her most honour to be destroyed, her most beautiful achievement to be degraded. But if, to re-establish slavery in San Domingo, this was done, then I declare to you it would be to attempt the impossible: we have known how to face dangers to obtain our liberty, we shall know how to brave death to maintain it.
I renew the oath that I have made, to cease to live before gratitude dies in my heart, before I cease to be faithful to France and to my duty, before the god of liberty is profaned and sullied by the liberticides, before they can snatch from my hands that sword, those arms, which France confided to me for the defence of its rights and those of humanity, for the triumph of liberty and equality.
The "Declaration Of The Rights Of Man And Citizen" [slightly abridged] authored during the French Revolution well captures some of the essential Enlightenment beliefs that motivated independence leaders in many countries.

The National Assembly recognizes and declares, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and citizen.

Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be based only upon the common good.
The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
Liberty consists in the power to do anything that does not injure others; accordingly, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those that assure to the other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights. These limits can be determined only by law.
The law can forbid only such actions as are injurious to society. Nothing can be forbidden that is not forbidden by the law, and no one can be constrained to do that which it does not decree.
Law is the expression of the general will. All citizens have the right to take part personally, or by their representatives, in its enactment. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes.
No man can be accused, arrested, or detained, except in the cases determined by the law and according to the forms which it has prescribed. Those who call for, expedite, execute, or cause to be executed arbitrary orders should be punished; but every citizen summoned or seized by virtue of the law ought to obey instantly ....
The law ought to establish only punishments that are strictly and obviously necessary, and no one should be punished except by virtue of a law established and promulgated prior to the offence and legally applied.
Every man being presumed innocent until he has been declared guilty, if it is judged indispensable to arrest him, all severity that may not be necessary to secure his person ought to be severely suppressed by law.
No one should be disturbed on account of his opinions, even religious, provided their manifestation does not trouble the public order as established by law.
The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man; every citizen can then speak, write, and print freely, save for the responsibility for the abuse of this liberty in the cases determined by law.
The guarantee of the rights of man and citizen necessitates a public force; this force is then instituted for the advantage of all and not for the particular use of those to whom it is entrusted.
For the maintenance of the public force and for the expenses of administration a general tax is indispensable; it should be equally apportioned among all the citizens according to their means.
All citizens have the right to ascertain, by themselves or through their representatives, the necessary amount of public taxation, to consent to it freely, to follow the use of it, and to determine the quota, the assessment, the collection, and the duration of it.
Any society in which the guarantee of the rights is not assured, or the separation of powers not determined, has no constitution.
Property being a sacred and inviolable right, no one can be deprived of it, unless a legally established public necessity evidently requires it, under the condition of a just and prior indemnity.

The Spanish colonial system of the Habsburgs had declined sharply and steadily over the years. In 1700 a new French dynasty, the Bourbons, took over the Spanish throne and sought to reinvigorate the colonial economy. They faced a formidable task. Mining revenues had declined as high grade ores disappeared. Smuggling and piracy cut into royal revenues. Colonial officials often purchased their offices and worked to recoup their investments as quickly as possible. Abuses of Indian laborers and of African slaves abounded. Even the native-born white elite, the criollos or creoles, faced discrimination at the hands of grasping peninsular Spaniards. What did the empire look like? Here's a map of the political divisions of Spanish American empire in 1797. The sentiment for Latin American independence grew steadily with the abuses of the colonial system. Trying to centralize colonial governance and increase colonial revenues, the Bourbons instituted a wide-ranging series of "Reforms." The Bourbon Kings sent new, powerful officials to Latin America. These intendants tried to increase tax revenues, enhance military defenses, promote trade, and bring improved technology to mining and agriculture. Fearing the power and wealth of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuit religious order), the Bourbons expelled them from the New World. Note the actual impact of these actions on Spanish America as you read about them. Despite the strenuous efforts of the Inquisition, books and ideas of the European Enlightenment spread to Latin America. You should also examine the important impact that these new ideas exerted on educated creoles in the New World.
We find ample evidence of discontent among all social classes during the late eighteenth century. Rural and urban workers faced dismal conditions. The German geographer Alexander von Humboldt left a stark record of conditions in Mexican obrajes or textile factories toward the end of the eighteenth century (Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, English edition, 1822-23 in 4 volumes). On visiting these workshops, a traveller is disagreeably struck, not only with the great imperfection of the technical process in the preparation for dyeing, but in the particular manner also with the unhealthiness of the situation, and the bad treatment to which the workmen are explosed. Free men, Indians, and people of colour, are confounded with criminals distributed by justice among the manufactories, in order to be compelled to work. All appear half naked, covered with rags, meagre, and deformed. Every workshop resembles a dark prison. The doors, which are double, remain constantly shut, and the workmen are not permitted to quit the house. Those who are married are only allowed to see their families on Sunday. All are unmercifully flogged, if they commit the smallest trespass on the order established in the manufactory. We have difficulty in conceiving how the proprietors of the obrajes can act in this manner with free man, as well as how the Indian workman can submit to the same treatment with the galley slaves.
In 1781 a multi-class revolt of "Comuneros" outside Bogotá, Colombia sparked the following demands. Note that the demands speak to the complaints of many social classes: Indians, mulattoes, and creoles. The new tax on tobacco shall be completely abolished. . . . The total annual tribute of the Indians shall be only four pesos, and that of mulattoes subject to tribute shall be two pesos. The curates shall not collect from the Indians any fee for the administration of holy oils, burials, and weddings, nor shall they complel them to serve as mayordomos at their saints' festivals. . . . The alcabala [sales tax], henceforth and forever, shall be two per cent of all fruits, goods, cattle, and articles of every kind when sold or exchanged. . . . In filling offices of the first, second, and third classes, natives of America shall be privileged and preferrred over Europeans, who daily manifest their antipathy toward us. . . .
[Flag of Venezuela] Creoles took the lead in moving Spanish America toward independence. From Francisco Miranda and Simón Bolívar in Venzuela to Father Miguel Hidalgo and José María Morles in Mexico to José de San Martín in Argentina, able leaders arose to lead the independence forces. In a famous "Letter from Jamaica," written in 1815, Simón Bolívar (1783-1830) vehemently expressed the depth of patriot rejection of Spanish dominion. Spain had reconquered many of the colonies by that year, but Bolívar and other patriots would fight on to victory. The hatred that the Peninsula has inspired in us is greater than the ocean between us. It would be easier to have the two continents meet than to reconcile the spirits of the two countries. The habit of obedience, a community of interest, of understanding, of religion; mutual goodwill; a tender regard for the birthplace and good name of our forefathers; in short, all that gave rise to our hopes, came to us from Spain. As a result there was born a principle of affinity that seemed eternal, nothwithstanding the misbehavior of our rulers which weakened that sympathy, or rather, that bond enforced by the domination of their rule. At present the contrarary attitude persists: we are threatend with the fear of death, dishonor, and every harm; there is nothing we have not suffered at the hands of that unnatural step-mother--Spain. The veil has been torn asunder. We have already seen the light, and it is not our desire to be thrust back into darknesss. Then chains have been broken; we have been freed, and now our enemies seek to enslave us anew. For this reason America fights desperately, and seldom has desperation failedl to achieve victory.
The savage fighting raged on from the initial declarations of independence in 1810 until the final battle of Ayacucho in 1824. Finally freed of the Spanish yoke, the new creole leaders faced an equally difficult problem--how to govern their newly independent republics.

END Independence Era
Political Thought of Simón Bolívar

Fighting against the Spanish for independence had been a long, frustrating, exhausting, and costly effort. Winning independence was difficult, but creating a new nation proved equally challenging. The creole elite that had led the independence movement agreed on only one point. THEY, the "gente decente," (better people) should rule--not the illiterature, colored masses. But what form of government should replace the old colonial system? How should the economy function? These and other thorny questions faced the creole elites during the difficult decade of the 1820s.
Simón Bolívar (1783-1830, shown at left) labored mightly to resolve the political dilemmas of Latin America. He called together a Congress in Panama in 1826 to try to get the new republics to cooperate. He failed. Indeed, he would survive assassination attempts only to be hounded into exile four years later. He died in Santa Marta, Colombia, too ill to leave the continent he fought to free. Louis Peru de Lacroix, a French member of Bolivar's staff, described the Liberator in his diary that he kept during their stay at Bucaramanga in 1828, only two years before his death. The ideas of the Liberator are like his imagination: full of fire, original, and new. They lend considerable sparkle to his conversation, and make it extremely varied. . . . He knows all the good French writers and evaluates them competently. He has some general knowledge of Italian and English literature and is very well versed in that of Spain. . . . He is a lover of truth, heroism, and honor and of the public interest and morality. He detests and scorns all that is opposed to these lofty and noble sentiments. . . .
The General-in-Chief, Simón José Antonio Bolívar, will be forty-five years old on July 24 of this year [1828], but he appears older, and many judge him to be fifty. He is slim and of medium height; his arms, thighs, and legs are lean. He has a long head, wide between the temples, and a sharply pointed chin. A large, round, prominent forehead is furrowed with wrinkles that are very noticeable when his face is in repose, or in moments of bad humor and anger. His hair is crisp, bristly, quite abundant, and partly gray. His eyes have lost the brightness of youth but preserve the luster of genius. They are deep-set, neither small nor large; the eyebrows are thick, separated, slightly arched, and are grayer than the hair on his head. The nose is aquiline and well formed. He has prominent cheekbones, with hollows beneath. His mouth is rather large, and the lower lip protrudes; he has white teeth and an agreeable smile. . . . His tanned complexion darkens when he is in a bad humor, and his whole appearance changes; the wrinkles on his forehead and temples stand out much more prominently; the eyes become smaller and narrower; the lower lip protrudes considerably, and the mouth turns ugly. In fine, one sees a completely different countenance: a frowning face that reveals sorrows, sad reflections, and sombre ideas. But when he is happy all this disappears, his face lights up, his mouth smiles, and the spirit of the Liberator shines over his countenance.
His Excellency is clean-shaven at present. . . . The Liberator has energy; he is capable of making a firm decision and sticking to it. His ideas are never commonplace--always large, lofty, and original. His manners are affable, having the tone of Europeans of high society. He displays a republican simplicity and modesty, but he has the pride of a noble and elevated soul, the dignity of his rank, and the amour propre that comes from consciousness of worth and leads men to great actions. Glory is his ambition, and his glory consists in having liberated ten million persons and founded three republics. He has an enterprising spirit, combined with great activity, quickness of speech, an infinite fertility in ideas, and the constancy necessary for the realization of his projects.
Bolívar summarized his suggestions for forming new national governments in an important speech to the Congress of Angostura (Colombia), delivered on February 15, 1819. Notice his call for a strong central government more like the British parliamentary system than the federal approach of the United States. [Slatta comments appear in brackets.]
We have been ruled more by deceit than by force, and we have been degraded more by vice than by superstition. Slavery is the daughter of darkness: an ignorant people is a blind instrument of its own destruction. Ambition and intrigue abuses the credulity and experience of men lacking all political, economic, and civic knowledge; they adopt pure illusion as reality; they take license for liberty, treachery for patriotism, and vengeance for justice. If a people, perverted by their training, succeed in achieving their liberty, they will soon lose it, for it would be of no avail to endeavor to explain to them that happiness consists in the practice of virtue; that the rule of law is more powerful than the rule of tyrants, because, as the laws are more inflexible, every one should submit to their beneficent austerity; that proper morals, and not force, are the bases of law; and that to practice justice is to practice liberty.
Although those people [North Americans], so lacking in many respects, are unique in the history of mankind, it is a marvel, I repeat, that so weak and complicated a government as the federal system has managed to govern them in the difficult and trying circumstances of their past. [Notice the Liberator's obvious distaste for North Americans and their "weak and complicated" government.] But, regardless of the effectiveness of this form of government with respect to North America, I must say that it has never for a moment entered my mind to compare the position and character of two states as dissimilar as the English-American and the Spanish-American. Would it not be most difficult to apply to Spain the English system of political, civil, and religious liberty: Hence, it would be even more difficult to adapt to Venezuela the laws of North America.
Nothing in our fundamental laws would have to be altered were we to adopt a legislative power similar to that held by the British Parliament. Like the North Americans, we have divided national representation into two chambers: that of Representatives and the Senate. The first is very wisely constituted. It enjoys all its proper functions, and it requires no essential revision, because the Constitution, in creating it, gave it the form and powers which the people deemed necessary in order that they might be legally and properly represented. If the Senate were hereditary rather than elective, it would, in my opinion, be the basis, the tie, the very soul of our republic. [Bolívar's distrust of the rule of the non-white masses comes through clearly here. By making the Senate an inherited position, the creole elite minority could maintain its powerful over time.] In political storms this body would arrest the thunderbolts of the government and would repel any violent popular reaction. Devoted to the government because of a natural interest in its own preservation, a hereditary senate would always oppose any attempt on the part of the people to infringe upon the jurisdiction and authority of their magistrates. . .The creation of a hereditary senate would in no way be a violation of political equality. I do not solicit the establishment of a nobility, for as a celebrated republican has said, that would simultaneously destroy equality and liberty. What I propose is an office for which the candidates must prepare themselves, an office that demands great knowledge and the ability to acquire such knowledge. All should not be left to chance and the outcome of elections. The people are more easily deceived than is Nature perfected by art; and although these senators, it is true, would not be bred in an environment that is all virtue, it is equally true that they would be raised in an atmosphere of enlightened education. [The educated creole minority would help tutor and guide the uneducated masses, too easily swayed by emotion or lack of knowledge.] The hereditary senate will also serve as a counterweight to both government and people; and as a neutral power it will weaken the mutual attacks of these two eternally rival powers.
The British executive power possesses all the authority properly appertaining to a sovereign, but he is surrounded by a triple line of dams, barriers, and stockades. He is the head of government, but his ministers and subordinates rely more upon law than upon his authority, as they are personally responsible; and not even decrees of royal authority can exempt them from this responsibility. The executive is commander in chief of the army and navy; he makes peace and declares war; but Parliament annually determines what sums are to be paid to these military forces. While the courts and judges are dependent on the executive power, the laws originate in and are made by Parliament. Give Venezuela such an executive power in the person of a president chosen by the people or their representatives, and you will have taken a great step toward national happiness. No matter what citizen occupies this office, he will be aided by the Constitution, and therein being authorized to do good, he can do no harm, because his ministers will cooperate with him only insofar as he abides by the law. If he attempts to infringe upon the law, his own ministers will desert him, thereby isolating him from the Republic, and they will even bring charges against him in the Senate. The ministers, being responsible for any transgressions committed, will actually govern, since they must account for their actions. [Notice that, although he suggests a very strong executive, Bolívar does believe in checks and balances.]
A republican magistrate is an individual set apart from society, charged with checking the impulse of the people toward license and the propensity of judges and administrators toward abuse of the laws. He is directly subject to the legislative body, the senate, and the people: he is the one man who resists the combined pressure of the opinions, interests, and passions of the social state and who, as Carnot states, does little more than struggle constantly with the urge to dominate and the desire to escape domination. This weakness can only be corrected by a strongly rooted force. It should be strongly proportioned to meet the resistance which the executive must expect from the legislature, from the judiciary, and from the people of a republic.
Unless the executive has easy access to all the administrative resources, fixed by a just distribution of powers, he inevitably becomes a nonentity or abuses his authority. By this I mean that the result will be the death of the government, whose heirs are anarchy, usurpation, and tyranny. . . Therefore, let the entire system of government be strengthened, and let the balance of power be drawn up in such a manner that it will be permanent and incapable of decay because of its own tenuity. Precisely because no form of government is so weak as the democratic, its framework must be firmer, and its institutions must be studied to determine their degree of stability...unless this is done, we will have to reckon with an ungovernable, tumultuous, and anarchic society, not with a social order where happiness, peace, and justice prevail.
Unfortunately, history would unfold in Latin America much as Bolívar warned in his last paragraph above, as many forces destroyed any chance of democractic, stable governments in the newly independent Latin American nations. Just as not everyone agreed with Bolívar, not everyone agreed with one another. Broadly speaking the creoles divided between liberal and conservative elites.
Conservatives wanted only elite self-rule and freedom from Spain. Beyond that they did not envision major changes from the "rules of the game" under the colonial system. Conservatives generally believed in a strong executive-- a monarch or a president for life. They distrusted the masses and gave no thought to granting the unpropertied and uneducated political power or legal equalty. Conservatives believed in a natural hierarchy in which the rich and powerful enjoyed special legal priviledges (fueros) not given to commoners. Thus military officers, clergy, merchants, and other wealthy groups would enjoy special priviledges. Conservatives also believed in the continued power, property, and influence of the Roman Catholic Church. They tended to believe in monopoly economics, with key sectors controlled by the few. In sum, conservatives pretty much wanted the old colonial order to continue but without Spain. Bernardo O'Higgins in Chile is a good example of a conservative politician.
Gerald E. Fitzgerald [Introduction to The Political Thought of Bolívar: Selected Writings The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972, pp. 6-9] well summarized some of the Liberator's main political positions. To Bolívar, republicanism linked with responsibility was the absolute minimum to be sought. He would laud the advantages of a republican system, and, unlike San Martín or Iturbide, he would reject completely the idea of imposign a monarchy on the pretext of establishing public order. . . . Instead of a closed aristocracy of birth, Bolívar supported an open aristocracy of merit. Perhaps "meritocracy" would best describe his proposed leadership of the state.

Bolívar felt that the realities of international politics required that the Spanish-American states form a whole. This was of course in contradiction to the Spanish imperial tradition which treated Spanish America as several kingdoms held together, in theory, only by allegiance to the King of Spain, but also, in fact, by the Spanish imperial bureaucracy. Historically, it made sense for the Spanish-American countries to develop independently. Yet Bolívar was aware that any such development would weaken their collective independence.

The best exposition of Bolívar's own ideas on the organization of the state is perhaps the draft constitution that he prepared at the request of the Bolivians. He proposed a unitary state, with a life-president, and a system of indirect election of some officials, based possibly on the decimal representation of the French Constitution of the years VIII and X. A moral power is to be exercised by the censors. They are to oversee the operation of the school system, the behavior of individuals, the protection of the constituion, and the rights of the people. In effect, there is a tricameral system in the legislature, with tribunes, senators, and censors having differing legislative responsibilities. The life-president, proposed in the Angostura Discourse, again appears in the draft constition. Here, however, his powers are extremely limited. He can appoint only a few officials, but among these is his successor, who must be approved by the congress. The judiciary is to be chosen by the senate from triple lists proposed by the electoral college, except for the supreme court, which is chosen by the censors from a triple list prepared by the senate. The "democratic Caesarism" of the life-presient is what is usually recalled of the Bolivarian constitution.

As with all great men, it was difficult for his contemporaries to evaluate Bolívar's contributions to their political history. Time has allowed a proper assessment of Bolívar's by Latin Americans. Today, he is revered as the Liberator of five Andean nations, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, and Bolivia. In other Latin American nations, respect for his achievements in the military and political spheres transcends national boundaries. Nor is Bolívar simply a historical datum without relevance to the world today. His struggle for independence in his part of the world has been repeated in other areas as well.

END Bolívar

Mexico: Liberals versus Conservatives

Mexico faced its own vexing nation-building troubles. In his "Plan of Iguala" (24 Feburary 1821), a turncoat creole, Agustín de Iturbide well summarized the conservative ideology and program in Mexico. Iturbide initially fought in the royalist army against the patriot (independence) forces. Then in January 1821, seeing the handwriting on the wall, he secretly met with patriot commander Vicente Guerrero to find a "means of working together for the welfare of the kingdom." He enunciated three guarantees that his conservatism deemed fundamental: (1) immediate independence from Spain, (2) equality for Spaniards and Creoles, and (3) the supremacy of Roman Catholicism and a ban on all other religions. The latter issue, the role of religion in Mexican society, would bedevil the nation for the next century, generating much bloodshed.

The Plan of Iguala (Feb. 24, 1821) declared that the new Mexican empire would be founded on the following principles:

The Roman Catholic Apostalic religion, without toleration of any other.
The absolute independence of this kingdom.
Monarchical government, tempered by a constitution that is congenial with the country.
Ferdinand VII, and if necessary those of his dynasty or of another now reigning, shall be the emperor, so that we may have a ready monarch and thus prevent pernicious acts of ambition.
There shall be a junta [small ruling group], pending the meeting of a Cortes [larger legislature] to put this plan into effect.
This junta shall call itself the Governing Junta and shall be made up of members already proposed to the Viceroy.
It shall govern by virtue of the oath it has given to the King [Ferdinand] until he appears in Mexico to receive it personally, at which time all previous commandments shall be suspended.
If Ferdinand VII decides not to come to Mexico, the Junta or the Regents shall govern in the name of the nation, until it is detremined who should be the crowned head.
This government shall be upheld by the Army of the Three Guarantees. . . .
12. All its inhabitants, with no distintion between them save their merit and vritue, are citizens qualified to choose any occupation whatever.
13. Their persons and properties shall be respected and protected.
14. The property and privileges of the secular and regular clergy shall be perserved.
15. All government departments and all public employess shall remain as they are today. The only employees who shall be removed are those who oppose this plan. . . .

Conservatives had wrested leadership of Mexican independence from the liberals. They hoped to draft Spanish King Ferdinand VII to come to rule in Mexico, or, failing, that to find another European prince to serve as their monarch. Failing in both these initiatives, they named the pompous, opportunistic Iturbide as their emperor. He "ruled" from May 1822 until February 1823, but neither his personality nor his ideas found widespread support. Army officers ousted him and dumped the monarchy in favor of a new republic. In the 1860s, Mexico would once more face a conservative-sponsored monarch, Maximilian of Austria, with even more tragic results.

Liberals, in contrast, wanted a signficant break with the past. Fired with enthusiasm for Adam Smith's economic liberalism, they wanted free trade, wage labor (not slavery), and private property. Distrustful of the power of the Roman Catholic Church, liberals wished to strip the Church of its property and redistribute that wealth to individuals who they thought would use it more efficiently and effectively. Liberals believed in equality before the law--an end to the colonial fueros. However, like conservatives, they did not believe the rural masses capable of intelligent self-govenance, so they too would keep politics in the hands of the few. Liberals looked to England for economic guidance and partnership and to France for cultural inspiration. They wished to leave what they considered the backwardness of Spanish colonial values behind. Domingo Sarmiento (1811-88) in Argentina and Benito Júarez (1806-62, shown at right) in Mexico are good examples of liberal leaders.
Mexico's Constitution of 1857 well expressed several liberal priorities. Article 13 asserted that "no one shall be judged according to private laws or special tribunals. No individual or corporation shall have privileged jurisdiction nor receive fees which are not in payment for a public serve as established by law." This article struck down the special rights (fueros) enjoyed during the colonial era by military officers, rich merchants, and the clergy. Article 27: "Private property shall not be taken without the consent of the owner, except for reasons of public utility and by prior indemnification. . . . No civil or ecclesiastical corporation of whatever character, designation, or object, shall have the legal capacity to acquire ownership to, or administer in its own behalf, landed property, except for buildings immeidately and directly related to the services or purposes of said corporations." This article stripped the Roman Catholic Church and all religious orders of any property, beyond their immediate church buildings.
Unfortunately, neither liberals nor conservatives seriously considered one of the region's most pressing problems--the monopolization of land by a very few. A radical Mexican politician named Ponciano Arriaga denounced the land problem during the constitutional convention of 1856-57 (translated by and quoted in Benjamin Keen, editor, Latin American Civilization, Westview Press, 5th ed., 1991, pp. 286-87). One of the most deeply rooted evils of our country--an evil that merits the close attention of legislators when they frame our fundamental law--is the montrous division of landed property. While a few individuals possess immense areas of uncultivated land that could support millions of people, the great majority of Mexicans languish in a terrible poverty and are denied property, homes, and work. Such a people cannot be free, democratic, much less happy, no matter how many constitutions and laws proclaim abstract rights and beautiful but impracticable theories--impracticable by reason of an absurb economic system.
There are Mexican landowners who occupy (if one can give that name to a purely imaginary act) an extent of land greater than the area of some of our soveregn states, greater even than that of one or several European states.
In this vast area, much of which lies idle, deserted, abandoned, awaiting the arms and labor of men, live four or five million Mexicans who know no other industry than agriculture, yet are without land or the means to work it , and who cannot emigrate in the hope of bettering their fortues. They must either vegetate in idleness, turn to banditry, or accept the yoke of a landed monopoist who subjects them to intolerable conditions of life. . . .
How can a hungry, naked, miserable people practice popular government? How can we proclaim the equal rights of men and leave the majority of the nation in conditions worse than those of helots or pariahs? How can we condemn slavery in words, while the lot of most of our fellow citizens is more grievous than that of the black slaves of Cuba or the United States? When will we begin to concern outselves with the fate of the proletraians, the men we call Indians, the laborers and peons of the countryside, who drag the heavy chains of serfdom established not by Spanish laws--which were so often flouted and infringed--but by the arbitrary mandarins of the colonial regime? Would it not be more logical and honest to deny our four milliion poor Mexicans all share in political life and public offices, all electoral rights, and declare them to be things, not persons?
Thus liberals and conservatives avoided some critical issues, but they did not just debate their differences. They formed armies and plunged most of Spanish America into decades of civil war. This bloodshed and destruction stymied the region's political development through the 1860s when liberalism prevailed in most countries. These deep 19th-century divisions --and many unresolved problems -- continue to haunt many Latin American nations today.

END Mexico Factionalism

Problems of New Nations

In addition to the bitter liberal-conservative elite political conflict noted above, Latin America suffered from other maladies in the 19th century. Caudillos, strongmen backed by their private armies, arose to take control of regions and sometimes entire nations. Self-interested, often charismatic, these "men on horseback" ruled by whim and the spoils system. In your next assigned book, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier, you will read in detail about one of the most successful caudillos, Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793-1877). He governed Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, with an iron fist and backed by his dreaded secret assassins (the Mazorca) and his own army, the Red Rangers, from the 1830s until his overthrow in 1852. Caudillos disrputed political evolution, looted provincial and national treasuries, and brought rule by force to many Spanish-American nations. Some, that historian E. Bradford Burns described as "folk caudillos," seemed to at least notice the plight of the rural poor.
Political fragmentation also struck the region. Larger, stronger political units of the colonial viceregal area broke down into smaller, weaker nation states. The Central American Confederation split into half a dozen small countries. "Gran Colombia" became Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. In place of Simón Bolívar's dream of a powerful "United States of Latin America," we find a hodgepodge of small, often conflicting nations. Border disputes, such as that between Peru and Ecuador continue between many of these nations today.
Despite the warning by US President James Monroe (1758-1831, shown at left) in 1823, many foreign nations intervened routinely in Latin America during the 19th century. The Monroe Doctine held little weight among the colonial European powers of the time. Sometimes foreign intervention came about because of liberal-conservative conflicts. A liberal government might repudiate the foreign loans taken out by the preceding conservative regime. Bankers in Europe would entice their governments to send gunboats in to collect on the debt. Mexico suffered the gravest intervention when Louis Napoleon sent 30,000 French troops to occupy the country from 1862 to 1867. Mexico defeated the French near Puebla on May 5th, 1862, but the French eventually prevailed. (Puebla is about 60 miles southeast of Mexico City). Preoccupied with its own great Civil War, the United States was in no condition to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. As with internal political divisions, foreign intervention further disrupted the political evolution of the new Latin American nations.
Economically, most Latin American leaders placed their hopes in the theories of Adam Smith. They hoped that by freely enchanging goods with Euopean nations, they would become prosperous like Europe. Alas, reality turned out very different from theory. Most Latin American nations became economically dependent on just one or a few primary exports. Dependence on this small range of crops and minerals gave rise to boom-bust economies. By "putting all their eggs in one basket," the Latin American liberals created very volatile, vulnerable economies. They also became dependent on just a few markets for their exports, leaving them at the mercy of European importers. Economies developed very unevenly, with modernizing export sectors expanding along side of very traditional subsistence agriculture. Generally economic liberalism produced "trickle up" economies with wealth and land accruing to the elites at the expense of the rural masses.
Finally, along with all the other conflicts bedeveling Latin America, we must add elite-mass conflict. Elites, whether liberal or conservative, worked to enrich themselves at the expense of the rural masses. They controlled economic opportunity by monopolizing landholding and by passing onerous laws. They exploited the rural masses as laborers and as soldiers. This is a major theme of the next section of our course.

END Problems of New Nations