The Vanguard of the Atlantic World: Creating Modernity, Nation, and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century Latin America
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The Vanguard of the Atlantic World: Creating Modernity, Nation, and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century Latin America
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780822376132 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 10/03/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 352 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
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The Vanguard of the Atlantic World
Creating Modernity, Nation, and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century Latin America
By James E. Sanders
Duke University Press
Copyright © 2014 Duke University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-7613-2
CHAPTER 1
Garibaldi, the Garibaldinos, and the Guerra Grande
| Uruguay, 1842–48 |
Giuseppe Garibaldi, "the Hero of Two Worlds," has become the preeminent symbol of the nineteenth-century Atlantic world's struggle for liberty against the old regime. Across the Americas, there are Garibaldi Plazas, Garibaldi Streets, and Garibaldi statues, commemorating a man who nineteenth-century progressives thought best represented their struggles for modernity against an ultramontane Church, kings, aristocrats, and imperial oppression. We will return to Garibaldi the symbol later, but in this chapter we will explore Garibaldi's adventures in the New World, especially in the Banda Oriental, where he fought in Uruguay's international and civil war (the Guerra Grande) of 1839–51. However, of much more interest than Garibaldi himself are the local soldiers who fought under him, the Garibaldinos (who included Italian immigrants to the Banda Oriental and local Orientales, or Uruguayans, including many of African descent). Recovering these soldiers' motivations and mind-sets will begin our journey to understanding the emancipatory potential that subalterns saw in American republicanism for improving their social, political, and economic lives. For the Garibaldinos and other popular soldiers, the war provided an opportunity to rethink the nature of the new nation slowly forming along the Banda Oriental, which would eventually become known as Uruguay. The conflict would also provide an important first moment for challenging traditional notions of the relationship among Europe, the Americas, and modernity.
Uruguay typified the unsettled nature of nation-states in postindependence Latin America. José Gervasio Artigas initiated a revolt against Spanish rule in the province in 1811, and after enjoying an initial military success, he also proposed land redistribution to his rural supporters. However, the region's independence was short-lived, as Brazil invaded in 1816. A decade-long struggle ensued between Argentina and Brazil (both of which claimed the region) and those in Uruguay who wanted independence, which was finally achieved in 1828. Almost immediately, civil war broke out. It raged intermittently throughout the 1830s and 1840s, beginning as a familiar contest for power between two political parties in Uruguay, one side called Colorados (more identified with liberalism and urban Montevideo, and at times being allied with the French and English), the other known as the Blancos (based more in the countryside, and backed by the powerful Argentine caudillo, Juan Manuel de Rosas, who ruled Buenos Aires from 1835–52). The Guerra Grande of 1839–51 involved various American states and European imperial powers, due to Montevideo's geostrategic importance on the Rio de la Plata—which was seen as a gateway to the commerce of the Southern Cone—as well as its role as a contested buffer zone between an emerging Argentina and the Brazilian monarchy. The involvement of Europe caused both the Colorados and Blancos to rethink the relation of Europe and the Americas not just in imperial politics, but also in determining the locus and meaning of modernity. For a time, the Colorados especially developed a discourse presaging, if hesitantly and often contradictorily, many of the tenets of American republican modernity: universalism, abolitionism, republicanism, and the meaning and locus of civilization. In spite of its youth and instability, provincial Uruguay, seen as a pawn in the imperial maneuvers of the European Great Powers, would challenge the Old World's claim to monopolize modernity.
The Hero of Two Worlds
Garibaldi came to Montevideo in 1842 after being exiled from Europe and having fought for the self-proclaimed Republic of Rio Grande in its rebellion against the Brazilian monarchy. While there, he had met his future wife, the Brazilian Aninha Ribeiro da Silva. Also while in Brazil, Garibaldi became acquainted with two central aspects of American republican modernity that he would also encounter in Montevideo: New World republicanism and the Afro-Americans who were often its keenest supporters. During the Battle of Rio Grande he exhorted his men: "Fire, fire! Against the barbarous tyrants, and also against the patricians who are not republicans." He associated the "Brazilian empire" with "imperialists," no doubt thinking of his native land's relations with Austria. Most of the men he fought with were "men of colour," almost all "negro slaves liberated by the Republic" who were "true champions of freedom." Garibaldi's political thought succeeded not in spite of, but rather because of, its relative lack of sophistication; his simple commitment to liberty against tyranny would inspire numerous followers.
Montevideo was the bastion of the Colorado Party, led by Fructuoso Rivera, which had been at war since 1839 with the Blanco Party, led by Manuel Oribe. Garibaldi's arrival coincided with a massive military defeat of the Colorados at the Battle of Arroyo Grande, and Oribe's forces soon besieged the city, expecting an easy victory. Due to his exploits in Brazil, Montevideo welcomed "José" Garibaldi (he had learned Spanish while imprisoned in Argentina) as a "warrior for the future" who fought for "the dogma of liberty." He was made a colonel and achieved notoriety among his enemies and a reputation for bravery among his friends—first at sea, fighting against Rosas's blockading navy, for which the Colorados awarded him special recognition and prizes. Montevideo feted Garibaldi and his soldiers (the first of several such public celebrations they would enjoy) for their bravery in the battle of el Cerro. Garibaldi served Montevideo by commanding its small navy on the Rio de la Plata and its tributaries and by organizing the Italian immigrants of the city into the Italian Legion. His fame spread among the Blancos and Argentines, who cursed him as the "savage Garibaldi," a bloodthirsty pirate with no ideals (an opinion shared by many of the British diplomatic and naval officials in Montevideo).
His most successful military accomplishment began with his command of a naval expedition up the Uruguay River into the country's interior in 1845 and 1846. After seizing several of the enemy's littoral fortifications, Garibaldi tried to establish a permanent presence in the country's north. Argentine forces laid siege to his base in Salto, and when Garibaldi tried to break the siege, the enemy engaged him in the hamlet of San Antonio. The Battle of San Antonio (or Salto) became legend, with stories that Garibaldi and the Italian Legion of about two hundred men, without cavalry support, defeated a force of over 1,900 (inflated from the initial reports of one thousand adversaries). The battle lasted more than seven hours, with Garibaldi losing thirty men to the enemy's reputed two hundred to three hundred. Newspapers gave detailed accounts of the battle, including maps of troop positions and movements. Garibaldi was immediately promoted to the rank of general, and homages to the battle quickly appeared. General Melchor Pacheco y Obes praised Garibaldi and his troops, proclaiming that the victory had taught "the slaves of the tyrant of Buenos Aires what men who fight for liberty can achieve." The Colorados rewarded Garibaldi and his men with parades and honors, in addition to offering them various prizes. However, Garibaldi declared he deserved no promotion and asked that any recompense go to the wounded soldiers or the families of the fallen, who did receive a double pension (his own family lived in considerable poverty in Montevideo). After the battle, Garibaldi claimed that "I would not trade my name of 'Italian Legionnaire' for all the gold in the world."
For what was Garibaldi fighting? He had the opportunity for many material rewards. The Colorados offered him a seat in the Assembly of Notables. In 1845 and 1847, the president gave him command of all forces defending Montevideo, although he did not serve for long either time, in part due to his inability to navigate the internecine Colorado factions. At various times he could have claimed prizes for his services, yet he generally turned down all such offers. Renown was another matter, and by the end of his career on the Rio de la Plata, Garibaldi was already on his way to becoming a legend, with newspapers advertising his portrait for sale. Garibaldi claimed he fought for a "pueblo that fate had placed at the mercy of a tyrant." Bartolomé Mitre, who would become president of Argentina, met Garibaldi while in exile in Montevideo. He remembered being inspired by Garibaldi's aura, and although he thought sentiments more than ideas motivated Garibaldi, Mitre still described him as a "passionate republican" who thought "new revolutions" would be needed across South America to solve the problems those nations confronted (revolution would become a key trope of American republican modernity). Whatever the messy realities were on the ground (and for many elites the war was more about caudillos' competition for power and control of international trade than any idealistic concerns), for Garibaldi and many others in the Atlantic world, the Montevideanos' struggle became a battle between tyranny and besieged liberty and independence. Yet how was the contest understood by the men and women who actually fought in the battles and suffered the siege's privations? What did liberty and independence mean for them?
Foreigners and Slaves
The army that defended Montevideo had two unusual components in a purported national struggle, foreigners and people of African descent—neither of whom most elites considered national citizens. Most of the Foreign Volunteers (as foreigners they enjoyed protection from conscription, so they were volunteers) were Italian, French, or Basque. Some toiled as small farmers, some as laborers, and many as artisans; most were not wealthy, of course. Montevideo was truly an international city in 1843, with 11,431 natives outnumbered by 19,758 resident foreigners (5,324 French, 4,205 Italians, 3,406 Spanish, 2,553 Argentines, 1,344 Africans, 659 Portuguese, 606 English, with a smattering of residents from other locales around the globe). Between 1843 and 1851, at least 148 members of the Italian Legion died while enlisted. This was a significant casualty rate, considering that in 1843 there were just 4,205 Italian men, women, and children in Montevideo.
Why did thousands of foreigners enlist and risk their lives? Eloquent rhetoric asserted that a "spirit of liberty" inspired them. Or they fought for "liberty and civilization." In 1843, during a public festival, the Italian Legion marched and sang that they fought for "liberty" and against "despotic power" and "tyranny." The slogans chanted during two demonstrations of the volunteer troops and local residents provide a small window into their ideology: the crowd shouted "vivas" to "the Republic," to "Liberty," to "all the friends of liberty," to "Colonel Garibaldi," and to "French volunteers," but they booed "mueras" to "tyranny," to "Rosas," and to "Oribe." In a letter to a newspaper, "some resident foreigners" argued they would fight not out of an interest in local politics per se, but because "we are brothers in this struggle of principles and civilization ...wherever Liberty begs for martyrs and calls for defenders." They compared their local struggles to those of the French during the Revolution and the July Days (The French Revolution of 1830), as well as to movements in Italy and Poland. Much like Garibaldi, the soldiers fought for what may have been vague notions of liberty and independence, at once local (as we will see below) and connected to a sense of international movements that shared the same fraternal principles.
Did the soldiers value republicanism as one such principle? Coronel Mancini of the Italian Legion claimed that he and his comrades fought with "republican hearts," which—given that he was speaking to the French Volunteers, some of whom were monarchists—reveals the tensions carried from Europe about what liberty would really mean. The commander of the French Volunteers ended his message to his troops by shouting: "Long live the King!" However, many of the common French soldiers may have held more republican commitments, since during demonstrations they tended to carry symbols of "the French Republic" and sing the Marseillaise (which was banned in France at the time). In 1844 these republican sentiments became more evident, and the French government ordered its subjects to cease fighting in Montevideo. The soldiers of the Legión de Voluntarios signed letters of nationalization and reformed as units of the National Guard. The Legión de Voluntarios' officers and soldiers renounced "the protection as Frenchmen the flag of France offers. Therefore, we ask to be placed under the banner of the Republic as citizens." As is so often the case, it appears that the soldiers' values were much more liberal and republican than those of their officers, and the subalterns much more willing to give up the valuable protection of the French flag to commit themselves to their new nation.
Of course, the volunteers not only thought themselves part of an international movement but also paid close attention to local and personal politics. More mundane motivations for enlisting included the potential loss of their property or even their lives to Rosas's forces, a constant rumor given Rosas's xenophobic rhetoric. Certainly, the chance to obtain booty from the enemy encouraged some, as did promised prizes from the Montevideano government. The Colorados also proposed that foreign volunteers be given land and cattle as thanks after the war. During the war, those serving the state at times did not have to pay rent on houses or farms, or the government paid their rent for them; they were exempted from certain taxes as well. After the battle of San Antonio, the state promised double pensions to members of the Italian Legion. Others soldiers demanded citizenship in return for their service. Indeed, by the end of the war, many of the foreign legionnaires "called themselves Orientales" (as Uruguay was also known as the Banda Oriental). As demands for citizenship and assertions of national identity suggest, I argue that the discursive and the materialistic are not in conflict but equated by the soldiers. "A militiaman" claimed he fought for his "political convictions" and the cause of "liberty," and against the threat of conquest by "foreign barbarity." Although he served because it was "the most sacred duty of the citizen," he also thought the troops deserved medals of honor and that they should be exempted from certain taxes and duties. The volunteers did fight for liberty and republicanism, but these were not the abstract and individual rights imagined by classical liberalism; instead, they signified a broader change in society and their own conditions. This conflation of liberty, republicanism, and social change is most evident with Afro-Uruguayans.
Foreign immigrant volunteers were an important part of the Colorado coalition, but of equal importance were Afro-Uruguayans. After the devastating military defeat at Arroyo Grande in 1842, the Colorado government abolished slavery in the Republic (almost), ordering all males fit to serve to take up arms, while women, children, and the aged would have to remain "at the service of their masters" as "pupils." It is easy to view the decree cynically, as a last-ditch effort to survive, especially given the only tentative and circumscribed freedom of forced military service it initially granted, which even commentators at the time recognized as inadequate. However, the measure succeeded in giving the Colorado government a powerful discursive weapon: Montevideo now stood for liberty and humanity, the decree proclaiming in boldface, "THERE ARE NOW NO SLAVES IN ALL OF THE TERRITORY OF THE REPUBLIC." After its proclamation, the crowds in the legislative galleries erupted in "fervent applause." A newspaper celebrated the decree: "Nothing is more urgent than the recognition of the rights that these individuals have from nature, the Constitution, and the enlightened opinion of our century." (Across the Americas, the opinion of the century—in other words, the force of modernity—would demand abolition, a key component of republican reforms.) The paper went on to say that now "free men" would "defend the liberties and independence of the nation." An editorial urged the freedmen to fight, reminding them that it was "the Colorados who have broken your chains." The hopes of the lawmakers and editorialists were not in vain. Even more important than the discursive advantage it provided, the decree succeeded in raising a large army of the previously enslaved, who did fight with great accomplishment for their own freedom.
For the Afro-Uruguayans, this crisis provided an opportunity not only for legal freedom, but also for a more complete inclusion in the new nation. Colorados did not hesitate to emphasize that the former slaves had to earn this status: "Slaves! Now you are free! Fight, you slaves, to become men!" Colorado politicians did not offer freedom alone: they suggested that after the war, the former slaves would be given land and the "pupilage" of their wives and children would also be ended as a reward, so that the soldiers would be "property holders" and "padres de familia." A newspaper noted that the "soldiers of color have paid in blood" for the liberty of themselves, their families, and the Republic; therefore, after the war, they would be "free men" and "citizens." Colorados urged that a state official ensure that women and children be treated as "pupils" and not slaves, so that "our fellow citizens," the freedmen, would see the decree as just and not a farce. The freedmen themselves acted to end pupilage by marrying pupils and then demanding that the state release their wives, due to the "incompatibility of pupilage with the status of wife." Soldiers also demanded their children's release from pupilage. Since these men were vital to Montevideo's survival, the state at times acceded to their demands. Freedmen now had significant bargaining power; negotiation between elites and plebeians would powerfully shape and be shaped by American republican modernity.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ixPrologue 1
Introduction. American Republican Modernity 5
1. Garibaldi, the Garibaldinos, and the Guerra Grande 24
2. "A Pueblo Unfit to Live among Civilized Nations": Conceptions of Modernity after Independence 39
3. The San Patricio Battalion 64
4. Eagles of American Democracy: The Flowering of American Republican Modernity 81
5. Francisco Bilbao and the Atlantic Imagination 136
6. David Peña and Black Liberalism 161
7. The Collapse of American Republican Modernity 176
Conclusion. A "Gift That the New World Has Sent Us" 225
Notes 239
Bibliography 297
Index 331
What People are Saying About This
"Where historians of Latin America have tended to dismiss or overlook the period between the 1840s and the 1870s, James E. Sanders shows that during these years, the continent was a place of remarkable political innovation. Striking at the heart of Eurocentrism, he finds compelling evidence of how supposedly universal ideals, such as liberty, were generated not just in Europe but precisely in places that Eurocentrists have long written off as backwaters of history, places such as Colombia, Haiti, and Mexico."
"The Vanguard of the Atlantic World is a fundamental contribution not only to our understanding of nineteenth-century Latin America, but also to the broader scholarly debate about the origins of modern democratic republicanism. James E. Sanders argues that in the nineteenth century Spanish America was the most democratic region of the world. In so doing, he rejects claims that Latin America has always stood on the margins of democratic culture and modernity, and he speaks directly to current debates about the relationship between capitalism, modernity, and democracy."