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CF 3333 Clash of Cultures

Covey: Notes on Revolutionary Movements in Latin America (18 October 2005)

Important Enlightenment philosophers included Locke, as well as the French writers Montesquieu (1689-1755) and Voltaire (1694-1778).

Locke attacked the concept of divine right that justified absolute monarchy, advancing the idea of constitutional government in which sovereignty rests in the people rather than the state or its rulers. This premise of contractual government was articulated in the 1690 work Second Treatise of Civil Government, which held that civil societies formed when people appointed rulers to help to advance and safeguard their common interests. Individuals continued to have rights to life, liberty, and property, and could replace rulers who failed to protect these.

Montesquieu advocated a balance of power between a monarchy, an aristocracy, and the people, arguing that if absolute power was vested in any one group it would be abused (a monarchy would become tyranny, aristocracy would lead to oligarchy, and popular government would lead to anarchy). The American governmental structure balances power between the presidency, the Senate, and the House of Representatives in a way that reflects these ideas.

Voltaire championed individual liberty and attacked institutions that he considered intolerant and oppressive, including the French monarchy and the Catholic Church. He fought against censorship and the oppression of religious minorities.

Enlightenment thinkers (philosophes) promoted the idea of political and legal equality, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was the most noteworthy advocate of the idea that all people—and not just the nobility—should enjoy equal legal rights. His work The Social Contract (1762) saw popular sovereignty as ideal.

So, the Enlightenment promoted freedom, equality, and popular sovereignty. These were ideas that drove the revolutionary movements of the Americas. Revolution swept through the colonial holdings of Britain (America), France (Haiti), Spain (Central and South America), and Portugal (Brazil) in the final decades of the eighteenth century and the first years of the nineteenth. Most students will have a good background in the American Revolution, so we will focus on other revolutionary movements in the New World, which drew on the American and French (1789) revolutions.

Haiti

The revolutionary movement in Haiti was the only successful slave revolt in history. The island of Hispaniola had originally been colonized by Spain, but was divided between the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo and the French colony of Saint-Domingue. The French colony was the richest European colony in the Caribbean, producing sugar, coffee, and cotton and accounting for nearly one-third of France’s foreign trade. In 1790, the year after the French Revolution, the population of the colony comprised 40,000 white French settlers, 30,000 free persons of color (gens de couleur), and 500,000 black slaves, most of them born in Africa. White settlers oversaw plantations that were run by slave labor, while gens de couleur tended to farm small plots of land. The plantation system was harsh, and many slaves escaped to the mountains. They were called maroons, and they set up their own communities outside colonial society. The American and French revolutions had an impact on Saint-Domingue (500 gens de couleur were sent to fight on the American side in the Revolutionary War). After the French Revolution there was conflict between the whites and the gens de couleur over political and legal rights.

In 1791 a Vodou priest named Boukman organized a slave revolt in which 12,000 slaves rose up and began killing whites, burning their homes and destroying plantations. Within a few weeks there were more than 100,000 slaves supporting the uprising, and they received support from the maroon communities. European troops intervened in the conflict in 1792 and 1793. Boukman was killed early in the fighting, but the slaves were led against the settlers, the gens de couleur, and the European armies by François-Dominique Toussaint (1744-1803), who called himself Louverture. Toussaint was a freed slave who built an army and played the European powers against each other. His army had 20,000 members in 1797 and in 1801 he supported a constitution that gave equality and citizenship to all residents of Saint-Domingue. France sent 40,000 troops to the colony in 1802 and arrested Toussaint who died of maltreatment in a French jail the next year. The generals who succeeded Toussaint were able to defeat the French, and in 1803 they declared their independence, founding Haiti in 1804 as the second independent republic in the western hemisphere.

Brazil

The first rumblings of revolution in Brazil came in 1789, the year of the French Revolution. José Joaquim da Silva Xavier (known popularly as "Tiradentes," or Tooth-Puller) led a rebellion in that year, and was defeated and executed by the autorities.

In 1807, Charles IV of Spain allowed Napoleon to pass through Spanish territory to invade Portugal, sending the Portuguese ruler (Dom João) fleeing to Brazil with 15,000 nobles, officials, and members of his court. Brazil became the seat of the Portuguese empire, and the ruler and his entourage were welcomed by the colonists at first. Dom João passed a number of laws unfavorable to Brazilian colonists and established Brazil as an adminsitrative equal to Portugal. After the French withdrew from Portugal there was considerable unrest, and the Portuguese parliament (the Cortes) attempted to repeal the reforms and force Brazil back into a subordinate status. Dom João returned to Portugal in 1821, leaving his son Dom Pedro as regent in Brazil. The Cortes demanded that Pedro return to Portugal, but he chose to stay, forming a ministry led by José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva. In 1822, Dom Pedro declared Brazil’s independence and was installed as its first emperor in December of that year. Portugal recognized Brazil’s independence in 1825.

Mexico

Revolution in Spain’s American holdings was encouraged by the colonial social system. Peninsulares (colonial officials from Spain) governed the colonies, although all colonial areas had powerful and wealthy populations of criollos (individuals of Spanish ancestry born in the colonies). Below the criollos were mestizos, native populations, and African slaves. In 1800 there were about 30,000 peninsulares in the Americas, 3.5 million criollos, and 10 million or so members of the lower classes. Like wealthy colonial landowners in Britain’s American colonies, the criollos resented the imposition of government from Spain, and they were inspired by the American and French revolutions, although their desire was to replace the peninsulares and govern themselves.

Spain’s control over its colonial holdings was weakened by the Napoleonic invasion of Portugal, which turned into an occupation of Spain itself in 1808. Napoleon imprisoned the Spanish ruler Ferdinand VII and tried to install his brother Joseph Bonaparte as the monarch. Peninsulares in Mexico City set up a caretaker government to keep criollos from rebelling. (This happened in Montevideo as well, while criollos set up governing juntas in Santiago, Caracas, Bogotá, La Paz, and Quito.) Colonial elites saw the opportunity to break away from Spain and revolutions began to break out around from 1808-1810. The first rebellions often expressed support of the Spanish king against French rule, but all were aimed at promoting self-rule.

A parish priest named Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla led an important revolt in 1810 in the town of Dolores, calling for the expulsion of the peninsulares, racial equality, and redistribution of land. Hidalgo and his followers promised to die for the Virgin of Guadalupe, and they marched to the mining town of Guanajuato, where he took over the stronghold where the town’s criollo elites had barricaded themselves. The ensuing massacre caused Hidalgo to lose support, and royalist forces defeated his army in 1811, capturing and executing him. The revolutionary cause was taken up by José María Morelos y Pavón, who was defeated and executed in 1815.

Ultimately, Mexican independence came suddenly when Ferdinand VII (who had been reinstated as ruler and nullified liberal legislation passed in his absence) was forced to reinstate the liberal constitution of 1812. Mexican conservatives were afraid of losing their social, economic, and religious privileges, and advocated independence under Agustín de Iturbide, a Royalist officer who had served against Hidalgo. In 1821 Iturbide and Vicente Guerrero put out a plan called the Plan de Iguala, which asserted Mexico to be independent, with Roman Catholicism as its religion and no distinctions to be made between Mexican and European. It also said that Mexico would be a constitutional monarchy under Ferdinand VII, and that he or a Spanish prince would occupy the throne in Mexico City. Iturbide and Guerrero united under their Three Guarantees (independence, union, preservation of Roman Catholicism), and the Spanish general who arrived in 1821 was forced to sign the Treaty of Córdoba, ending New Spain’s (Mexico’s) dependence on Spain. Mexico was established as an empire, with Iturbide as its short-lived first emperor.

Spanish South America

Like other parts of the Americas, Spanish South America saw some early rebellions around the time of the American and French revolutions. One major uprising of native Andeans was led by José Gabriel Thupa Amaru, an Andean leader (kuraka) who claimed descent from the Inca emperors. In 1780 Thupa Amaru II captured and hanged the Spanish corregidor of Cusco for excessive tribute demands, spreading unrest throughout native communities in the highlands. Thupa Amaru II claimed that his rebellion was aimed at rooting out corruption among colonial officials and said he supported the Spanish Crown, but it was Royalist armies that fought him, and he and his family were captured and executed after about seven months. Thupa Amaru II was forced to watch the execution of his son and wife, then had his tongue cut out and was drawn and quartered. The bodies were dismembered and taken to rebellious parts of the Andes and burned.

Ultimately, it was members of the criollo elite who led the successful rebellion against Spain, and the first rebellions began after the French Revolution. There was an unsuccessful revolution in Venezuela in 1806, led by Francisco de Miranda, and the independence movement in Argentina began in 1806, too. As with the Mexican revolution, it was Napoleon’s 1808 invasion of Spain that weakened the colonial system to the point of revolution, and South American independence movements began to take shape between 1808 and 1810. In the north, Simón Bolívar led the independence movement in Venezuela, while José de San Martín led the movement in Argentina.

The independence movements were basically led by criollo elites who wanted more self-determination in their governments. Peru had large populations of peninsulares and a substantial Spanish military presence, and it remained loyal to the Spanish Crown. The independence movements began to move forward in 1814 after Ferdinand VII returned to power in Spain. The colonies did not want to lose the autonomy that they had enjoyed, and the existing friction between peninsulares and criollos turned to outright war and rebellion. Spain sent a large expeditionary force to South America in 1815 to restore order. Bolívar sought the aid of the United States and Britain, who refused to help him he received money and weapons from Haiti.

After several years of conflict, Bolívar decided to attack the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Granada. He led an army of 2,500 men over the Andes mountains, surprising the Spanish army at Boyacá and taking the city of Bogotá. He then established the country of Gran Colombia, a federation that included Quito (Ecuador) and Venezuela, which were still held by the Spanish Crown. A revolution in Spain itself forced the Spanish king to give up on large-scale military investments in the colonies, and after 1820 Bolívar was able to defeat Spanish forces in Venezuela and then Ecuador.

The Southern Cone saw similar processes, with the establishment of local governments after 1808 and a flare-up of revolutionary movements in Chile (Bernardo O’Higgins) and Argentina (San Martín) after 1814. Argentina declared its independence in 1816, and San Martín turned his interests to Peru, which by 1822 was the last South American country to remain in Spanish hands. San Martín met with Bolívar, and ultimately withdrew to allow Bolívar to use his experience and charisma to drive out the last Spanish forces. Bolívar pursued the Spanish army into the highlands, defeating it on December 9, 1824 at the Battle of Ayacucho. The last Spanish resistance in Upper Peru (modern Bolivia) was defeated the following year.

Latin American revolutionary movements were inspired by the American and French revolutions, but lacked the liberal philosophical underpinnings of those revolutions. Instead, Spain and Portugal’s colonies had grown tired of unequal treatment from a weakening imperial heartland, and the Napoleonic invasions gave them the chance to claim more autonomy. The struggle was between criollos and peninsulares, so that it was generally a conflict between colonial elites. Latin American revolutions led to the establishment of empires in some locations, but some became large federations of states (e.g., Gran Colombia, the Río de la Plata polity) that broke down into smaller states soon after independence. Emperors were generally replaced by some form of ruling junta or representative government. However, independence did not generally establish economic or legal equality for the people of new republics.