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“Honor Moderno”: The Significance of Honor in Fin-de-Siècle Argentina

2004; Duke University Press; Volume: 84; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-84-3-475

1527-1900

Sandra Gayol,

Anthropological Studies and Insights

Recent years have produced a steady stream of conference papers, congresses, books, and academic reviews on the subject of honor. This outpouring indicates a rebirth of interest in the topic and, at the same time, bears witness to the reconsideration of certain theoretical precepts.1 In Argentine historiography, however, honor has rarely been the direct object of systematic consideration; rather, it emerges as an unexpected by-product in studies dealing with the family, especially those focused on the late colonial period.2 This "invisibility" of honor, and the silence of postcolonial historiography on the subject, derives from the association of honor with colonial criollo culture (honor de los criollos).3 Since the nineteenth century, massive immigration, demographic growth, family transformations, and urbanization (all distinctive of "modern" Argentina) have allegedly delivered "the coup de grace to the tyranny of honor" in the Río de la Plata.4 Most Argentine historians apparently agree with Norbert Elias that the rise of a "bureaucratic ethos" during the nineteenth century supplanted the ethics of honor. This commercial bourgeois ethos, they argue, diminished the importance of honor among the upper classes.5Similarly, Peter Stearns notes that in the new bourgeois society of the American West, honor became an archaic remnant.6 Applying this assertion to Argentina, however, would amount to denying the historical reality of accused murderer Bonifacio Albornoz, a 27-year-old Spanish shop assistant who, in 1908, concludes his deposition by declaring, "I would like to call on every sensible and honorable husband and ask them to step into my ignominious shoes and answer frankly: What would they do! I am sure they would reply: Honor above all! Justice shall be done."7The sexual dimension of honor evidenced in Bonifacio's declaration coexisted with dimensions that referenced courage and sangfroid, physical strength, honesty in the business world, and respect for personal pledges.8 This multiplicity of meanings pervades lower-class discourses on male honor, which are remarkably similar to those circulating among journalists, military officers, lawyers, and scholars. Honor was defended by challenging someone to combat by "throwing down the gauntlet" and arranging a duel by means of the parties' seconds.9 In Argentina, dueling between legislative representatives and municipal officers was deemed an obligation—an imperative—as a means to settle political rivalries and appointments to public offices.10 For either private or public reasons, individuals from a variety of social, geographical, and professional backgrounds resorted to honor in order to pass judgements on an array of different issues.Honor continued to hold significance into the late nineteenth century, and its shifting meanings and class associations prompted spirited public debate. The discourse of public intellectuals (especially "men versed in law"—lawyers, judges, jurists, and law students) offers one window of analysis onto the reasons, terms, and implications of this debate. Although this focus does not exhaust the possible sources, it reflects discussions that took place concerning the place and role of honor in modern Argentina. My material is drawn from statements made by political and intellectual elites—the driving forces of modernity—who disseminated new ideas such as positivism. Therefore, they are representative examples from a larger field of discourse. The heterogeneous meanings and uses of honor created a problem for intellectuals and policy makers who sought to reinstate hierarchies and social codes within a context of dramatic social change. As traditional criteria for social classification were challenged and as novel sources of social status emerged, honor gained salience both as a social practice and as an issue. It is at the forefront of public discussion concerning the definition of virtuous behavior, the basis of social status, and the values and attitudes that constitute merit. Thus, honor is a window onto the values and social hierarchies of Porteño society.Intellectuals acknowledged honor as more than a remnant inherited from traditional society that was incompatible with modern Argentina. Instead, it was held up as a respected and respectable value, something to be kept in full force and effect. Nevertheless, its multiple meanings were problematic for those who endeavored to define, naturalize, and legitimate its role in a modern society. In their revamped formulation, honor would rest on conscience rather than reputation and would reflect a single moral order that would guide everyone's behavior—elite and plebeian alike. Thus, by the end of the nineteenth century honor was widely equated with a universal and natural moral order. However, some definitions continued to attach certain qualifications to "honorable standing" that only the traditional elites possessed. Older concepts of honor could be volatile, flexible, or negotiable, but this "honor moderno" was a duty whose values were stable and unaffected by the course of time.11 It was a community asset that, once lost, could not be regained—but it was also a trait that only a few could claim in disputes over hierarchy and social primacy.In late-nineteenth-century discourses and practices, honor was not a value restricted to the elites; at least a priori, men and women from any social standing could claim or possess it. Inherent to human nature, as a "basic need of the civilized and learned man" and a value that conveyed dignity, self-esteem, and personal respect, honor was an expected and desirable trait in a multilayered society.12 This contrasts with the colonial period, when elites denied the lower classes the possibility of feeling, claiming, and expecting honor.13 Similarly, Porfirian elites in late nineteenth-century Mexico adhered to a class-delimited concept of honor. In contrast, Porteño elites neither disputed the popular classes' aspirations to honor nor questioned the concept of honor more generally.14 In fact, criticism gave way to the need to redefine its meaning and to prioritize and impose a particular concept of honor.Some authors rejected the possibility of defining honor, since "it is an indifferent thing, an idol, a chimera, . . . impossible to determine, just like the ideas of taste and beauty."15 Most Argentine intellectuals, however, felt an urgent need to determine its meaning in order to eradicate "wrong ideas about honor."16 Where did they feel these errors lay?The first fault that Argentine "men of law" found in popular understandings of honor concerned the customary methods used to defend it. The defense of honor was too intimate an affair to be entrusted to a third party. Therefore, it was usually regained through personal confrontation; not involving the authorities in matters of disputed honor was, precisely, "a matter of honor." Ultimately decided in hand-to-hand combat that tested physical strength and mastery of weapons, the ritualized defense of honor seemed to sway between "the rites of violence and the kingdom of tragedy."17 Combat turned to deadly force only after certain preliminaries; drawing the knife or the gun was not the first step. Individuals "had a history": they had met, argued, and avoided each other. Occasionally they met again to have another argument, to come to blows (irse de manos), to choose an "appropriate isolated location," to retort, to share "matched" weapons and, finally, to use them. Firearms, swords, and knives were only used to defend honor after the parties had exhausted all these preliminary strategies.18Nevertheless, both the state and the press referred to these disputes as materializing "out of nothing, for the sole excuse of testing daggers."19 Much was made of the scenes provoked by protagonists, who were always described as overcome by fits of anger, their faces covered in blood, with an enraged gaze—the very picture of savagery. This precarious vision of popular violence was nurtured by the perception of the city as chaotic, as a precarious domain that defied police control. Intellectuals and elites wished to disassociate themselves from this picture of barbarous bloodshed.During the last decades of the nineteenth century, public officials denounced the wave of criminal violence that was invading Buenos Aires.20 In public rhetoric, this crime wave was induced by the arrival of foreigners and the social dislocations that resulted (Argentina was experiencing the highest population growth rate in the world), the emerging labor unions, and anarchist and socialist influences.21 The violent defense of honor added to this image of a city badly shaken by bloody crimes.The ritual defense of honor—its "request for redress," angry arguments, insults, injuries, and even deaths—was deemed inconsistent with material progress and indicative of the limits of modernity in the capital city.22Civilization was a term more widely used than modernity: although the former term carried several meanings, it was most commonly defined as a set of behaviors determined by reason and self-control.23 Intellectuals felt the defense of honor reflected an "unsystematic passion" and thus represented the antithesis of modernity—the product of man in his natural condition untempered by reason.But which man? It was with the lower classes in mind that intellectuals framed their objections to violence and adopted steps to repress it. And they regarded some of those who partook in the ritualized defense of honor as criminals. However, others (in the eyes of the elite) could and should be redeemed. Included in the reformable were those criollos who misguidedly proclaimed the legendary "cult of courage." This, according to most intellectuals, was a degrading habit, bequeathed by Spain, which had been reproduced and intensified within the immensity of the Argentine pampa.24 It was also described as the "worship of personal courage in order to become criollo; with the medieval (chivalric) and religious (Christian) restraints—which used to temper and contain it—now lost, honor becomes a social power of indisputable violence." Synonymous with arrogance and a manifestation of "sheer boasting and bullying," intellectuals hoped the modernizing influence of immigration would help put an end to the cult of courage.25 Unfortunately, many newcomers did not reject the cult of courage but rather "play[ed] here the role of Moreiras [and] imitate[d] the classic compadrada, in its most antisocial and pernicious aspects. The Andalucian grace of colonial times is sometimes debased and transformed into coarse insults, and Castilian self-respect into cowardly knife thrusts."26Disrupters of order, exhibitionists who scorned the value of honor and abused its practice—these criminals, native or foreign, had to be punished by state justice. However, among those who could and should be led back to the right path, we find the honest "common man," inclined toward unmanageable fits of rage when his honor is attacked. Thus, Carlos Octavio Bunge, the son of German immigrants, writer, lawyer, federal judge, and specialist in criminal law, believed thatIn order to correct the common man's faulty notion of "formal honor" that emerged from this corrupt and superficial appropriation of traditional values and behaviors, and in order to repress his instincts, policy makers suggested three remedies: work, education, and public justice. Positivist intellectuals and journalists underlined the morally regenerating effects of work and insisted on its ability to inculcate the proper feeling and quality of honor.28 However, while work "honors and moralizes," it did not always stem the impulse to aggression. This ultimate objective was to be jointly accomplished by teachers and judges. Called "lay apostles of education," teachers had the duty to instill honor in their pupils so that they might properly defend their dignity and that of the republic.29 In Nuestra Patria, a text written for elementary teacher-training courses, Carlos Octavio Bunge asserts that "the circumstances where honor justifies the use of force and violence are few, and even they do not demand it." In an attempt to talk a young man out of engaging in a confrontation, the author insisted that honor "has lost its former military connotation" and that a man could only defend it through judicial proceedings.30For writers like Bunge, honor was both an acknowledged right of citizens and a common good protected by the state. Offenses against honor were (and still are) covered in the Criminal Code under the title of libel and slander, with sentences ranging from one month to three years of imprisonment.31 The formal justice system of the consolidating nation-state thus claimed jurisdiction over the defense of honor and denied individuals the right to defend it privately. It is difficult to know how often people resorted to courts to resolve accusations of slander; most of the cases found in police and judicial records were the result of the police discovering the parties arranging the private defense of honor. The insistence—both in speech and practice—on the state's jurisdiction in matters of honor suggests that state justice had not been the disputing parties' first choice.In affirming its authority, the state asserted its monopoly on the punishment of offenses to honor and proposed jail sentences and fines as alternatives to revenge. Whoever defended his honor individually and was subsequently discovered by the police was subject to a judicial process for the crimes of brawling (riña) or "injuries" (heridas), with penalties exceeding those applied to "offenses against honor." For judges, "crimes against honor" became increasingly associated with female sexuality and male honesty.32 The defense of honor by means of the duelo criollo, associated with brawling or injuries, became an offense against the people, public order, and state justice. Popular confrontations in the name of honor, which the protagonists themselves called duels, challenged the validity of the "duel among gentlemen" as a class marker.Intellectuals denounced the popular duel for contributing to the wave of violence, "altering the public order," and challenging state authority. At the same time that dueling was criminalized, however, the systematic practice of the "duel among gentlemen" appeared in Argentina.33 The blood shed by the lower classes was the antithesis of the reasoned challenge of gentlemen, a functional opposition that filled the need for socially differentiating practices. As Dr. Eliseo Correa stated, "[F]or the time being it is impossible to eradicate the duel; it must be sustained with the formalities granted by ancient laws that, to a certain extent, legitimate it, providing the characteristics of a noble and gentlemanly action; it is a thousand times preferable under these conditions than if performed arbitrarily, thus degenerating into mere street fighting, as occurs among certain class of people, always greedy for these kind of shows."34Law had to reflect class differences. The Criminal Code regarded the duel as a "special offense," "sui generis," and it carried considerably more lenient penalties than brawling or "injuries." The aim was to regulate, rather than eliminate, the practice of dueling implicitly accepted among elites.35 For the acts of "common and uneducated" men, the exemplary and corrective action of public justice was necessary and unquestionable. For "duels between gentlemen," however, the reasoning was exactly the opposite: little could be done by law, since "while honor is conceived as it is currently understood, dueling shall be a necessary and unavoidable consequence."36 Increasing the penalties, in this case, would be useless, since "the severity of the law will find a palliative in the same persons charged with administering it, who will try to elude [the laws] or seek extenuating circumstances for the honorable man."37The second, more subtle, error that intellectuals cited in popular concepts of honor occurred prior to the hand-to-hand confrontation, yet affected the very meaning of honor.Writing about the psychology of dueling, Eduardo Wilde celebrated the idea that "men are so crazy they put their honor anywhere."38 This malleability with regard to honor was questioned by the recently graduated lawyer Molla Villanueva, who stressed that "there is no single person who does not have his own particular notion of honor."39 It is precisely this multiplicity of definitions invoked by opposing social actors—definitions that simultaneously depended on the interlocutor and the context—that came to be regarded as the source of both a "corrupted sense of honor" and the essential reason why men fight on the battlefield.40 The ductility and polysemy of honor was interpreted by intellectuals and men versed in law as making it vague and unmanageable; most of them believed it was necessary to delimit and redefine honor. "The words and actions that affect the intimacy of individuals," as the Criminal Code stated, must not be confused, as one lawyer said, with "frivolous issues that do not affect in the least the intimacy of our lives or the real status of our dignity."41The seemingly pointless violence of one episode that appears in the court record becomes meaningful in this context. After an evening of drinks and card playing at a local bar, one of the players brought the gathering to an abrupt end by murdering one of his companions. One witness testified, "[The victim] said around 9 that he was leaving, paid what he owed, and was on his way out." The accused asked him to stay, but the victim was determined to leave. At that point, the accused stabbed him fatally with his knife.42 Construed in its most absolute immediacy, the interaction and outcome appear irrational as well as illegal. But the attitudes of both the victim and the accused, the inflection of their voices, the argument over the validity of a play, and the exchange of challenges to male dignity, implied that much more than a glass of wine was at stake in the game. The winner gained reputation, a better social position, and more power, and was thus entitled to argue over the right of priority. By leaving, the victim was breaking the unspoken rules of the game, provoking the verbal exchange and the ensuing competition over honor.43 This interaction must be understood in a larger social context of reputation, face, relative social status, and enduring relationships. The judge, meanwhile, believed that the offense had been committed "for an insignificant cause, because of the victim's failure to consent to the request not to abandon the friendly game."44"Insignificant causes" were ones that did not affect the "reputation, credit, or interest" of the injured party, as stated by section 180 of the 1887 Criminal Code. An individual's social respect and standing could not be determined by his own discretion or by "trivialities." The matters to be reviewed, in short, were the values and the attitudes that affected a person's public appreciation, respect, and social esteem, and their effect on social mobility.Probity, virtue, and honesty were set forth as a synonymous and interchangeable with honor. This trilogy enlightened an individual's moral self, guided his actions, and gained him public esteem; they emerged solely from an "irreproachable conduct" observed throughout a man's life. This "upright life," to quote another expression of the period, made special reference to the keeping of personal pledges, truthfulness, the fulfillment of business commitments, and respect for family harmony. Although these values blended with honor, however, their violation did not necessarily offend it.Epithets such as "thief" and "swindler" may perhaps explain this apparent paradox. Although the Penal Code considered these frequently uttered epithets as potentially libelous or slanderous, judicial practice did not seriously endeavor to restrict their use. Judges tended dismiss accusations of slander in the context of "conversations or gossip" that were "not expressed seriously" and "not meant to bring about important consequences." They also usually dismissed slander cases that involved accusations of "thief," "swindler," or "exploiter," owing to the absence of concrete or imputed facts. More tangible accusations were also dismissed when there was insufficient evidence of any will to offend.45 These judgments were controversial. Nevertheless, judicial efforts to determine the circumstances, identify the subject, and uncover the intentions behind slanderous utterances demonstrate a desire to limit the sway of accusations against honor and to delegitimize the defense of honor against such attacks.General comments made in a casual environment and immediately followed by the denial of any intention to offend were considered empty; they formed part of the "most futile and sometimes hideous reasons [for revenge], exceeding, under these circumstances, the limits of morals and law."46 They exhibited, according to criminologist Carlos Octavio Bunge, "the hypersensitive sense of honor" that, together with arrogance, represented not "essential qualities of honor, but of false honor."47The transparency that defined honor was thus deprived of legitimacy. In a rapidly growing city of immigrants such as Buenos Aires, social relationships often lacked historical depth. Assessing honor according to values and behaviors that unfolded over time required a mutual and detailed knowledge of social actors that was not always possible. In a city of recent acquaintances, strangers, and foreigners, the customs of self-presentation and of public interaction were translated into transparent styles of dress, gestures, and phrases. Within this context, bodies talked and conveyed social meaning. Ways of dressing, demonstrations of physical strength, and public displays of skills and abilities were essential to social standing and reputation. Failure to act according to such standards, or failure to respond swiftly to offenses, might be construed as a lack of honor or a lack of the ability to defend it.48 These immediate and transparent responses to offenses against honor, which were crucial for the most economically and politically vulnerable, were considered illegal both in discourse and law. As Dr. Ramón Oliver put it, "[I]t is a conventional and arbitrary code that punishes the look, the gesture, the monosyllable."49Judicial representatives deemed the use of honor for social climbing capricious. Thus, not only did they challenge the multiple meanings of honor in the courts, but also its use as a system of classification. As a marker of social status, honor became, as one writer noted, "the object of class struggle; each [class] will shape its own image [of honor], bearing in mind that 'place,' and will try to act on it providing a new definition in line with the possibilities it offers."50 The recurrent debates concerning courage (particularly intense on certain critical occasions, such as the Mitrista revolution in 1874 or the strikes of the late nineteenth century) provide a clear example of struggles over the meanings and uses of honor. In its most ordinary meaning, courage was expressed through the body, which was set in motion to face danger. The absence of fear, even fear of death, was a virtue that individuals showed when confronting the opponent in battle.Juan Gil and Teodoro Segovia proved that they possessed this virtue. Both store owners in the district of Flores, theyGil's death in a duel brought this story to an end.Eduardo Wilde would not have hesitated to regard Gil and Segovia as courageous men.52 Wilde asserts, "Courage, in its most genuine sense, is an essentially active feeling. It is that psychic movement through which we confront a corporal danger, getting to know it."53 But while Wilde believed courage was centered on the body, his friend Miguel Cané disagreed.54 Cané considered courage to be a rational act centered upon intelligence and based on the freedom of choice, even if "it proves nothing and does not legitimate any act of life."55The issue under discussion lies precisely here. In line with the other members of the Generación del '80, Wilde rejected the use of courage as a means of social ascent. More than courage in itself—which as an expression of physical and muscular strength formed part of the hegemonic model of masculinity— the debate centered on its validity as a means of social climbing.56 In this sense, courage had no bearing on social hierarchies. Perhaps because it was attributed principally to soldiers (thus bearing on both personal and national honor and glory) or because its expression was fortuitous, it was mocked by some intellectuals, such Carlos Octavio Bunge in his novel Brave Man!57 In that novel, Bunge resolves the confrontation between José Riera and Perico Peralta in a way that manages to satirize the emptiness upon which "reputation" is founded. Interim rural police chief Perico Peralta, "pale, sickly, short, clean-shaven of face, with a crooked back," and trembling for fear of missing his shot, nonetheless manages to kill bandit José Riera, "whom legend had reputed as unbeatable."58 Perico, who was himself almost killed in this confrontation, "was promoted by the government as a reward for his action."59 Thus, "Perico the Chicken was forever transformed, according to the respectful nickname with which people honor his courage, into el guapo Peralta."60Such meteoric careers, sought by lower-class men and those who wished to gain access to "privileged circles," were encouraged by the power granted to public opinion.The third error in popular notions of honor was that it was rooted in public opinion, "which distributes honor and dishonor as it pleases."61 A wide range of social protagonists appealed to public opinion in order to legitimate their claims to honor. In police reports, court documents, and solicitadas or telegrams published in newspapers, public opinion was considered to include both ones' friends and "the general public."62 Certain social characters sought out the press—a vital instrument for challenging the "informal detractor of other people's honor"—in order to "attest irrefutably to . . . honesty and reputation."63 Newspapers enabled individuals to go beyond "the narrow circle of acquaintances" in order to divulge "one's truth"; together with leaflets, street-corner conversations, parliament, and social clubs, the press constituted a "court of public opinion" that had to be won over in the battle for reputation.Political elites heeded the voices of public opinion and considered them "decisive bases for political legitimacy."64 The creation of a public sphere in Buenos Aires provided a space for mediation between civil society and the state and afforded an arena for political participation by wide sectors of the Porteño population. Nevertheless, the elites' concept of the public sphere was restricted to learned men, who had the right and the power to represent the rest of society.65 Ramón Oliver is very clear: "If the upright man had to act according to the irrational discourse of the crowds, if he had to subject his actions to the criteria of that set of indifferent strangers, whose mercenary opinions, without any forethought, the product of routine or haste, have received the name of public opinion, what is the purpose of reflection, of study, observance of virtues, and a pure and purified life? What shall be the difference, then, between the sage and the common man? What shall be the benefit of abnegation, upright ness, and benevolence?"66 Oliver sets forth two problems: First, who may constitute the court of public opinion that confers honor? In other words, who has the power to insult and offend or defend the reputation of a man? And second, who has the power to contemplate the relationship between conscience and pundonor ("point of honor")?In the discourses analyzed here, honor cannot be conferred by the public opinion of strangers who make their decisions out of self-interest. As affirmed by La Nación:This declaration reflects elite discomfort with the democratization of the insult and the seemingly universal opportunity to challenge or resort to the courts in defense of honor. These transformations also render intelligible the frequently repeated phrase: "Not those who have the will, but those who have the way, may despise."68 The status, privileges, and rights of priority bestowed by honor must not be entrusted to the "unwise design of the crowds" at a time when dramatic social changes had triggered disputes over precedence and the validity of certain criteria for social classification.The public opinion of the masses, common and volatile as it was, was thus not empowered to render judgment on a man's honor. The intelligentsia authorized intellectuals in general, and men versed in law in particular, to define and legislate regarding "true honor"; they made up the "court of public opinion" and dictated the values and behaviors that constituted reputation. In order to be true and fair, honor must dwell in one's conscience and be validated by an exemplary life, substantiated over the course of time. Essentially private and based in individual conscience, this internal honor was still a public affair, since the esteem and social consideration of a person depended on it. It was not a matter of disputing an individual's right to pride but of instituting a new balance between internal and external honor and determining who had the capacity to damage it.69 By this logic, honor is the externalization of moral perfection. Once this interior quality expresses itself through conduct, public esteem and consideration become possible. "The public," however, was not the whole of society:Rumors and public censure were deemed creditable only if uttered by honorable, m