3.3: The 18th Century in Latin America

 

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The 18th century in Latin America was marked by nonconformism in the face of monarchical rule, particularly against the reforms of “enlightened despotism” carried out by the Bourbon kings, which reinforced the Spanish commercial monopoly, tightened tax collection, and limited access to administrative posts for Americans. In addition, the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment, which reached universities, literary academies, and economic societies, fostered ideals contrary to the Monarchy and an eagerness for more democratic structures and free trade.

A community member in protest (1781).

Winds of Change

In the 18th century, Spain and Portugal were no longer the rich empires they once were. Both kingdoms had substantial debts to bankers from other European countries, which impacted their domestic and foreign policies. In addition, despotic government, population growth, and the influence of liberal ideas caused great social instability. For their part, the Iberian colonies in the New World generated immense wealth, which increased the power of the Creole elite (descendants of peninsular Spaniards), who purchased government posts as if they were merchandise. Smuggling and piracy became common practices that English merchants exercised with great skill. Faced with these colonial tensions, rebellions by indigenous people, slaves and mixed race or mulatto peasants abounded, who made up 85% of the population. Among the protests of mixed-race “comuneros”, the most famous are those in Asunción (Paraguay) in 1731 and those in Socorro (Colombia) in 1781, who violently revolted against new taxes and economic restrictions. Also in 1780, there was an immense indigenous uprising that spread to areas of Peru, Bolivia and northern Argentina. The leader of this rebellion, which gathered an army of 60,000 indigenous people, was José Gabriel Condorcanqui, who proclaimed himself the new Inca monarch with the title of Túpac Amaru II, and with the motto: “Peasant: the boss will no longer eat from your poverty”. In all these cases, Spanish repression was relentless, subjecting the rebels to bloody torture. In Haiti (1791), there was also a slave rebellion—there were more than 70,000—which culminated, not without great violence and repression by France, Spain and England, in the independence of the island (including what is now the Dominican Republic). There were also many disagreements among the Creole elite, and liberal ideas were flourishing in the colonies despite imperial repression. The reforms of Carlos III de Borbón in the Spanish dominions, which aimed to strengthen peninsular authority, sparked significant dissent among the Creoles, who now faced higher taxes and reduced participation in the government. The Jesuits, expelled from America in 1767, carried out an open opposition to the absolutist regime in exile. In addition, by the end of the 18th century, America had recognized scientists, restless intellectuals, and internationally renowned liberal journals, such as the Havana Gazette (1790-1804) and the Peruvian Mercury (1791-1795). By 1794, Bogota's Antonio Nariño had translated and published the Declaration of the Rights of Man into Spanish, and Francisco de Miranda (1750-1816) from Venezuela had participated in the French Revolution and in the War of Independence of the United States, then traveling through Europe in search of weapons, money and support for American independence. In 1796, the illustrious Simón Rodríguez (1769-1854) was responsible for the education of the liberator Simón Bolívar (1783-1830), the richest orphan in Venezuela. Rodríguez showed him the hard lives of the thousand slaves who worked for the Bolívar family, took him to discover the Venezuelan countryside, and infused him with subversive ideas: “schools must be opened to ordinary people with mixed blood”; “boys and girls must study together. First, because in this way men learn to respect women, and second, because women learn not to be afraid of men”; “equality, freedom, fraternity is the ideal of good government” (Rumazo González 1980:147).

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Creole Aesthetics: European Sources, American Themes

 

“Let us all come together under the banners of freedom. Justice fights for us.” —Francisco de Miranda (1750-1816), in Proclamation to the Peoples of the Colombian Continent, alias Hispanic America (1801).

“Juntémonos todos bajo los estandartes de la libertad. La justicia combate por nosotros”.           –Francisco de Miranda (1750-1816), en Proclamación a los pueblos del continente colombiano, alias Hispanoamérica (1801).

Since the 18th century, the emancipatory and rationalist ideas of the Enlightenment, as well as the didactic formalism of European neoclassicism, have also developed in Hispanic America, particularly among the cultured elite, comprising peninsulars and creoles. Many Spanish-American writers were interested in promoting a present and a future in keeping with Enlightenment ideals. In this sense, they continued to emphasize the ethical capacity of art, a concern that was also a hallmark of neoclassicism. But his writing was also inspired by Romanticism to represent the emotions of rebellion and fervor in the struggles for independence, so it is often inaccurate to apply the classification of European aesthetic schools to the Americas without modification. The Spanish-American artistic and literary production of the Emancipation era is a mixture or alternation between neoclassicism and romanticism, between enlightened reason and nationalist passion, with distinctive contents depending on the region. At the same time, the Spanish-American intellectual elite of that era generally considered European ideas and fashions, particularly those prevalent in France and England, to be the most refined and advanced, and they had to be learned, imitated, or adapted. Many Creoles with wealthy family members traveled to Europe, and there they sought inspiration to build their nations, returning to govern or to teach, to publish or to found new companies in America. This was the case of one of the most influential intellectuals of the early 19th century in Latin America, and one of Simón Bolívar's teachers, the poet and philologist Andrés Bello (Venezuela, 1781-Chile, 1865). In 1810, he was sent to London by the revolutionary forces to raise funds and establish political contacts in favor of the independence cause, and he stayed in the British capital until 1829, when he was invited by the Chilean government to establish the new educational system, remaining in Santiago until his death. During his time in London, he became familiar with the works of Romanticism, and later he lucidly commented on the main elements of this new aesthetic movement. Although he opposed romantic emotional extremes, he also distanced himself from the strict rules of neoclassicism, recognizing the importance of freedom in politics and literature and rejecting “the chains with which the poet was imprisoned in the name of Aristotle and Horacio” (speech at the University of Chile, 1843). Bello published one of his most famous poems, “The Allocution to Poetry” (1823), in London, which is considered a declaration of cultural independence for Latin America. The speaker invites poetry to leave Europe, a continent marked by corruption and authoritarianism, and come to live in America, where pristine nature and the high ideals of freedom still prevail, creating heroes comparable to those of European antiquity. The style of this silva (a form cultivated in ancient Rome and later in the Italian Renaissance) is clearly neoclassical, characterized by its balance, clarity, and didactic tone. However, the content is related to the romantic tendency to idealize geography and patriotism, and is a vehement defense of American dignity, which some European intellectuals had classified as inherently inferior. The following passage reflects this aesthetic difference:

Oh who with you, kind Poesia, will take me from Cauca to the shores, and the soft breath breathing gave me the ever-fresh spring [.] and from the distant drum to my ears would come the sound of the loving yaraví! (v. 169-88)

Oh quién contigo, amable Poesía, del Cauca a las orillas me llevara, y el blando aliento respirar me diera de la siempre lozana primavera [. . . ] y del lejano tambo a mis oídos viniera el son del yaraví amoroso! (v. 169-88)

Observe the feeling of nostalgia for this South American river (Cauca), the idealization of its climate (always spring), the personification of the season (a young woman breathing), and the evocation of typical and exotic elements such as the drum and the yaraví (of Incan origin). All this responds to a romantic sensibility, despite the fact that Bello's training had been purely neoclassical.

Even less conventional is the Peruvian Mariano Melgar (1791-1815), who had indigenous blood. Following didactic neoclassicism, he writes fables in verse, such as “The Quarryman and the Donkey” (“El cantero y el asno”), but his message is more social than moral, more passionate than rational: he draws a parallel between the abused donkey and the indigenous one exploited by the colonial regime. This is what the furious ass says:

“you always have us badly eaten under the burden, and so do you demand verve? And with a whip and stick you intend to drive us? And do you still blame us for being stupid when you're the reason?” [...] An Indian, if he could, wouldn't he say the same thing? (v. 22-40)

«nos tienes mal comidos siempre bajo la carga, ¿y exiges así brío? ¿y con azote y palo pretendes conducirnos? ¿y aún nos culpas de lerdos estando en ti el motivo?» […] Un indio, si pudiera, ¿no dijera lo mismo? (v. 22-40)

The poem expresses outrage and irony because here the donkey, who can at least speak, is better off than the silenced indigenous. More than a didactic fable, the text can very well be read as a romantic defense of the exploited. In his search for new forms, Melgar—who in his short life was a priest, a revolutionary soldier, and died on the battlefield against the Spanish—wrote poems based on Yaraví, a lyrical and romantic genre of Quechua origin.

These brief examples illustrate how European aesthetic movements, such as Neoclassicism and Romanticism, take on distinct forms and paths in Latin America, shaped by their unique sociocultural environment. The poetry of these creoles and mixed-race people responded to a reality that was, in many ways, different from that of Europe, and in many ways, it also fully participated in Western culture.

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Miguel Mateo Maldonado y Cabrera (1695—1768) was a renowned Mexican painter. His series “castes” represents the hierarchy of social classes based on the race of the parents. Thus, for example, Criollos were born to Spanish parents and were at the top of the social pyramid. Someone born to a Spanish father and an indigenous mother was called “mixed race” and had a lower social status. Even further down were the mulattos, a mixture of Spanish and African. Then below were the Zambos, a mixture of indigenous and African, and so on. This painting depicts a mixed-race girl, more closely tied to her indigenous mother than to her Spanish father, whose face is not shown, suggesting that their relationship was often a secret or out of wedlock. The sobriety of the neoclassical style is evident, among other things, in the geometric balance of the figures and a certain serenity in the faces. At the same time, there are baroque elements in the density of women's clothing and in the complexity of the looks. A romantic element of emancipation inspires the entire series, which functions as a protest against extreme social stratification based on bloodline rather than personal merit. “Of Spanish and Indian, mixed race”, Miguel Cabrera, 1763. Emilio J. Rodríguez Posada, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Fuentes

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• Beautiful, Andres. “Allocution to Poetry”. American Library Magazine, 1 (London 1823).
• Blanco Aguinaga, Carlos, et al. Social history of Spanish literature. Akal, 2000.
• Davies, Catherine, ed. The Companion to Hispanic Studies. Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Frank, Jean. History of Spanish-American literature. Barcelona: Ariel, 1983.
• Melgar, Mariano. “The Stonemason and the Donkey”. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_cantero_y_el_asno.
• Rumazo Gonzalez, Alfonso. Ideology of Simón Rodríguez. Caracas: Centaur, 1980.
• Winn, Peter. Americas: The Changing Face of Latin America and the Caribbean. 4th ^ed. Berkeley: U of California, 2005.