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Americanos: Latin America’s Struggle for Independence

2009; Duke University Press; Volume: 89; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2008-103

1527-1900

Jordana Dym,

Historical Studies in Latin America

This dramatic history brings alive the story of mainland Iberian Americans’ nineteenth-century wars of independence. Pitched perfectly to the undergraduate or generalist audience and presented from the perspective of the “liberators,” including Bolívar, San Martín, and Morelos, John Charles Chasteen tells the story of an “Americano” desire for political independence from Spain and includes sources and additional readings for those interested in digging deeper. Identifying Iberoamericans as “Americanos” is an effective device to bridge race and class divisions, binding the disparate strands of the tale together and facilitating discussion of wars that often passed from one colonial jurisdiction to another via intrepid mountain treks or daring naval voyages.Readers discover this America of Americanos in an introductory chapter with dramatis personae Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland (whose travels let Chasteen discuss key Spanish colonial centers in New Spain, New Granada, and Cuba) and imperial pilgrim Félix de Azara (whose story offers insight into frontier zones of Brazil and Argentina). Introducing three patriot archetypes as well — gaucho leader José Artigas, creole patriot Simón Bolívar, and Brazilian intellectual José Bonifácio Andrade da Silva — this chapter teaches general readers enough about colonial politics, economics, social and ethnic structures, and geography to jump into the main story, which began soon after Humboldt’s travel account reached European readers in 1805.Chasteen’s act two is the presentation of Latin America’s struggles with the failure of revolutionary movements to take hold, despite Francisco Miranda’s efforts in Venezuela and British invasions in the Rio de la Plata. He thus sets the stage for act three, which shows how Napoleon’s invasion of Spain led to autonomist movements that soon abandoned the “mask of Ferdinand” to seek independence. Each chapter moves the story forward in Spain, Portugal, Mexico, and South America. The remove of the Portuguese court to Brazil and subsequent negotiated transition to constitutional monarchy, and the bottom-up war of New Spain’s Hidalgo and Morelos provide counterpoints to the top-down military movements headed by Bolívar and San Martín. Despite the multiple story threads, a carefully constructed chronology clearly presents the trajectory of individual movements, the flaws as well as heroism of key actors, and challenges to the independence forces ranging from royalist locals to imperial armies to interprovincial rivalries. The watershed years 1821 – 22 mark a fitting climax when independence of New Spain, Central America, Venezuela, and Brazil shift the balance in favor of the advocates of independence.The concluding chapters offer a cinematic wrap-up of our heroes’ post-independence careers and early nation-building efforts through the 1830s. Chasteen argues that political revolution was not enough. Without social and economic revolutions that might have provided more social mobility for the “brown and black” majority, instability impaired leaders’ ability to create “cohesive, inclusive nations” or meaningful popular sovereignty (p. 185). While it is surely correct that colonial structures contributed to post-independence instability, some discussion of other factors would have been welcome, including the role of economies devastated by patriotic “loans” to Spain or by war, and the wars’ militarization of many societies.Americanos shares the energetic and compelling storytelling of Chasteen’s deservedly popular Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America. For those who want to make the wars come alive for their students, this excellent companion volume will engage readers in an up-to-date retelling of the story of Spanish and Portuguese America’s founding fathers. Chasteen also makes a serious attempt to identify and credit some founding mothers, who served as couriers, soldiers, inspirations, and even martyrs who lost their lives to the firing squad. Yet the choice to develop coherence by retelling the wars of independence through the eyes of leaders comes at the expense of a more thorough exploration of the many kinds of political experiments under way in the same period. While Bolívar and San Martín come alive, Americanos leaves largely unexplored why anyone followed these men in what seemed a quixotic quest until around 1821. In Mexico, in particular, Chasteen reports “multitudes” swelling the ranks of Hidalgo’s forces, but offers little explanation of the motives, whether economic or political, that kept the movement alive for a decade. Further, the book largely leaves aside any impact that the “Cádiz experiment” in constitutional monarchy had on some regions’ initial attempts to devise political systems blending new ideas of citizenship with respect for traditions, including Catholicism as an official religion. In this book, readers are traveling with the generals, not at home wringing their hands with the fence-sitters. Areas that did not fight for independence but did produce autonomist movements — Central America, which separated from Spain in 1821, and Cuba and Puerto Rico, which did not — are not explored as counterexamples. This is a terrific story of the military struggles, and warmly recommended for those interested in this topic, with the caveat that they will not find in this synthesis the individual and collective voices of the indigenous and pardo soldiers, the city councils anxious not to make the wrong decision, the newspaper articles debating the costs and benefits of free trade, and the voters in the numerous local and national elections convened in this period.