History Department

History 307 - Latin America – October 20, 2003

Nation-Building in Latin America

 

I.                  1824 – The Wars of Liberation End

A.      The Battle of Ayachuco – the Last Battle

B.      Spanish Empire in ruins – roads, schools, businesses, legal system, government, all wrecked

C.       Large bands of heavily armed men still at large

D.      The Task Ahead: Constructing the Republics

 

II.               1825-1870: the Age of the Caudillos

 A.      “Caudillo” - warlord; private army; charismatic personality; sometimes Radical (Francia in Paraguay); sometimes Conservative (Rosas in Argentina); sometimes build strong central governments (“Unitarians, Centralists”); sometimes defend “states rights” (Federalists); Andrew Jackson as US-style “Caudillo” - war hero; “man-of-the-people;” authoritarian ways

B.      Origins? (1) Medieval Spanish warlord tradition;  (2) Conquistadors as heroes; (3) Special status of military in Spanish Empire by 1700s (“fuero militar” – own courts, special privileges); (4) Liberators (Bolivar as first “Caudillo”?);  (5) Chaos after exhausting wars of liberation

C.      1825 - 1870s - stable gov’ts slowly emerge, but constant return of military “strongmen” (Caudillos)

 

III.           Case Study: Argentina

 

A.     1808 - local elites organize in Buenes Aires, first to fight British raiders; then to support King Fernando (ousted by Napoleon)

 

B.      1810 – Junta of local citizens seizes power

 

C.      1816 - Junta declares INDEPENDENCE; SAN MARTIN is Argentine “Liberator”

 

D.     1820s – Defining “Argentina” geographically – long struggle over borders:

·          Upper Peru (Bolivia) secedes from Argentina

·          Uruguay secedes;

à 1825-8,  1^st Cisplatine War 

à 1843-51, 2^nd Cisplatine War (wars with Brazil over Uruguay;  Uruguay is         

Argentine satellite, but independent)

·          Secession of Paraguay

1.       Uruguay’s De Francia as Radical Caudillo; rejects Argentine rule

à 1864-69 - Brutal Paraguayan War (Arg., Brazil attack Paraguay)

 

E.      Civil War at home:

1.       Triple “divisions:”

·          Buenos Aires (“portenos”) v. regional Caudillos; 

·          Unitarians (strong central gov’t) v. Federalists (states-rights)

·          Culture wars:  city (Buenos Aires) v. “backwoods” gauchos

2.      Juan Manuel de Rosas (1829-52) - archetype of the Caudillo

·          charismatic warlord

·          Rallies gauchos, rural people against big city Unitarians

·          1835: seizes power - attacks Unitarians; intellectuals; creates “Mazorca” (secret police)

·          1852, overthrown

·          Rosas - a brutal, backwoods tyrant - or - a popular defender of local rights?

3.  Conservative “Respectable classes” return to power

·          B. Mitre (1861-8)

·          D. Sarmiento (1868-74)

·          lesson learned:  the “poor people” are dangerous and not to be trusted;  any reform must be entrusted to the educated elite; “civilization” will only come when L.A. can be like Europe

 

 

from: Estaban Echeverria, The Slaughterhouse (1838)

 

[note:  Echeverria, born in Argentina in 1805, was one of Latin America’s great story-tellers.  He was shocked with Juan Manuel de Rosas and his gauchos shot his way into power in 1835.  Rosas ruled for seventeen years, and skillfully played on the hatred and envy that had grown up between the city folk in Buenos Aires and the rural gauchos.  Rosas posed as the friend of the poor, and roused up the poor  and gauchos to attack the upper classes, intellectuals, and advocates of a strong central government (the “Unitarians”).  Rosas’s followers called themselves “federalists” and defenders of “states rights,” but much more than constitutional issues were involved.  Class hatreds, envy, fear, and demagogery translated political rivals into massacres.  Upper-class intellectuals like Echeverria were “liberals” in a sense;  they wanted Argentina to be a modern and prosperous country.  But they also deeply feared the ‘lower classes’ who all too often supported Caudillos like Rosos.   The Slaugherhouse is a short-story that shows what a pro-Rosas mob does to an upper-class “Unitarian.”]

             Rain poured down on the city.  The roads were swamped . . . the city was covered by a muddy slime . . . In the churches, preachers thundered and made the pulpit creak under the blows of their fists.  This is the day of judgment!  . . . Alas you poor sinners!  Alas you evil and godless Unitarians!

            The wretched old woman left church breathless, overwhelmed, convinced that the Unitarians were responsible for all the world’s evils . . .

            Because of the floods, the city slaughterhouse did not see a single head of cattle for two weeks, but . . . on the sixteenth day of the meat crisis . . . a herd of fifty fat steers swam across the Burgos pass on the way to the slaughterhouse . . .

            “It’s a miracle!” everyone exclaimed.  “Long live the Federalists!”

            The slaughterhouse offered a lively, picturesque spectacle even though it did reflect all that was horribly ugly, filthy, and deformed in the poor people who lived around it . . . the whole slaughterhouse was grotesque . . . two hundred people walked about on the muddy, blood-drenched floor . . . most prominent among them was the butcher, knife in hand, arms bare, chest exposed, long hair disheveled, clothes and hands and face smeared with blood.  At his back . . . romped a gang of children . . . Nearby, two women were dragging along the entrails of an animal.  A mulatto woman carrying a heap of entrails slipped in a pool of blood and fell lengthwise under her coveted booty.  Farther on, huddled together in a long line, four hundred women unwound heaps of intestines . . . boys

. . . banged one another with inflated cow bladders …

             Suddenly a mass of bloody lungs would fall on somebody’s head . . .

            Suddenly, the raucous voice of the butcher was heard: “Look!  Here comes a Unitarian!” . . .

            “Look, you can tell by his fancy clothes . . .”

            “Kill him!  Kill him!”

            This Unitarian was a man about twenty-five years old, elegant, debonair, well-dressed . . . the mob swarmed around the young man . . . [one thug] grabbed him by the tie, another pulled him down to the ground and one . . . put a butcher’s knife to his throat . . .

            “Cut his throat!”

            “Death to the Unitarians!”

            . . . the mob stretched the young man out on a table . . . and began to tear off his clothes . . . then a torrent of blood began to spout, bubbling from the young man’s nose and mouth . . . all the people acted as if they were shocked . . .

            “Well,” one said, “too bad about him . . . we were just having fun.

  

from: Domingo Sarmiento, Facundo - or - Civilization and Barbarism: Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants (1845).

 

[note:  Sarmiento was born in Argentina in 1811.  He came from a middle class family, went to school, and became a writer and journalist.  Part of him was a “reformer” and he was desperate to see Argentina modernize.  But part of him was also deeply conservative.  He was shocked by Rosas’s ability to mobilize the “common people” and like most conservatives he became convinced that ordinary people are incapable of anything good.  He does not wonder WHY the poor were so hostile to the upper classes;  instead, he assumes that the lower orders are crude and brutal and impossible    If Argentina were to progress, Sarmiento was sure, an “enlightened elite” would have to lead the nation in the direction of Europe and away from gauchos, Indians, and the poor. Sarmiento’s Facundo focuses on one of Rosas’s notorious lieutenants, Juan Facundo Quiroga.  Sarmiento would later become president of Argentina.]

 

            [Out on the Pampas] moral progress . . . is not only neglected, but impossible.  . . .   Barbarism is the norm . . . The women on the pampas look after the house, get the meals, shear the sheep, milk the cows, and perform all the domestic chores . . . the boys . . . ride as soon as they can walk . . . these “gauchos” are Spanish only in their language . . . Their habit of triumphing over resistance, of constantly showing superiority to nature . . . prodigiously develops among them an intense sense of their individual power.  . . . These “gauchos” have an intense hatred of any kind of beauty, refinement, manners and education . . . they only thing they admire is bloodshed and violence . . . their wild society turns everyone in it into a barbarian . . .

            As for Facundo, he was not unusually cruel or bloodthirsty, as least as far as barbarians go.  He was a rather moderate barbarian, actually, ignorant, unable to control his emotions or primitive impulses.  Once his animalistic urges were aroused, he couldn’t be stopped.  Still, he was no fool, but was cunning in a brutal sort of way.  He might shoot one person, and whip another, but rarely for just sport . . . yes, he tortures people but not at random; he only makes it a point to torture a town’s better people.  He is brutal to women because he doesn’t know any better.  He humiliates anyone with an education, anyone with any civilized tastes because he thinks they look down on him.  He made a good right-hand for Rosas.  How else could Rosas have controlled the city of Buenos Aires?  How could Rosas, as crude, as brutal as he was, every win respect from intelligent, civilized, city people?  He couldn’t.  And so he had to use terror, he had to use thugs like Facundo. . .

            Facundo, in order to control Buenos Aires . . . would do absolutely anything . . . He hated any and all laws, he hated judges, he hated any kind of organized or just society . . . he really was the very type of the savage barbarian from the Pampas . . . He was an animal, a wild animal . . . Once, in a rage, he kicked out a man’s brains . . .  another time, he hacked off a woman’s ears . . . he even split his own son’s head open with an ax . . . Ignorant, he was cunning though . . . he substituted terror for patriotism . . . ignorant and crude, he could also be amazingly gullible, and was fascinated by the occult . . . As for the lower classes, well, they thought Facundo was their man, indeed, many acted as if Facundo were a kind of “god”.