Nationalism - Latin American Independence

LATIN AMERICAN REVOLUTIONS & INDEPENDENCE

Overview of Latin American Revolutions

The viceroys from Spain and Portugal ruled with absolute power in Latin America. Most people had no political rights nor a voice in government. Within the ruling class, colonial-born creoles resented the privileges of European-born peninsulares. Further down the social scale, mixed-ancestry mestizos, Indians, and African slaves wanted to be free of their oppressive masters and to improve their living and working conditions. This situation encouraged successful independence movements across Latin American between 1804 and 1824. The first uprising was in Haiti by African slaves led by ex-slave Toussaint L’Ouverture. The rebels burned the sugar plantations and by 1804 were able to declare their complete independence from France. In Mexico in 1810, a Catholic priest named Miguel Hidalgo led the first revolt against Spanish rule, but his Indian and mestizo followers were defeated. Mexico won independence in 1821 when Mexican creoles sided with the revolutionaries. This encouraged Spain's Central American provinces to declare their independence as the United Provinces of Central America. The impact of the ideas of the American and French Revolutions was particularly strong in South America. Creoles like Simon Bolivar had been influenced by the ideals of equality and liberty. Between 1810 and 1830, he fought and won independence for Gran Colombia (present-day Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama), Bolivia, and Ecuador. Jose de San Martin and Bernardo O'Higgins brought freedom to Peru, Chile, and the United Provinces of La Plata (Argentina and Uruguay). Brazil won its independence in 1822. Unlike the Spanish colonies which had to struggle for their freedom, Brazil was aided by its royal family. The king's son was proclaimed Emperor Pedro I.

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SOCIAL HIERARCHY IN LATIN AMERICA

The class structures of Latin America are determined by the social relationships of basic economic activities. These relationships include property ownership, labor arrangements, forms and sources of income, and patterns of supervision and subordination, among others. In addition, some groups of people may be confined to certain jobs or discriminated against on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, and so on. All of these factors contribute to the formation and characteristics of contemporary social classes. Given the great diversity among Latin American countries, the following discussion should be considered mainly as a portrayal of general regional patterns. The diagram below illustrates the basic social hierarchy of Latin American society during the colonial era.

PENINSULARES

The upper echelons of colonial society were dominated by Spaniards, who held all of the positions of economic privilege and political power. However, a sharp split existed between those born in Europe, "peninsulares," and those born in the Americas, creoles. Although the relationship between these two groups was sometimes friendly, as when peninsular men married into creole families, it could also be antagonistic. Peninsulares sometimes perceived creoles as lazy, mentally deficient, and physically degenerate, whereas creoles often saw peninsulares as avaricious. In the sixteenth century rivalries between European-born and American-born friars for control of the religious orders led to violence that resulted in a formal policy of alternating terms of leadership between creoles and peninsulares. The Spanish crown's preference for European-born Spaniards in government and church posts in the eighteenth century provoked deep resentment among elite creole men, who had come to expect positions of influence. Their resentment helped fuel anti-Iberian sentiment in the colonies before the wars for independence.

CREOLES

Creoles attributed greed to peninsulares because it was far more possible to make a fortune in the Americas than in Europe. Opportunities were present in retail and transatlantic commerce, in gold and silver mining, and in bureaucratic posts that offered opportunities to trade in native goods and exchange influence for favors. In the sixteenth century many peninsulares made their New World fortunes in order to retire in comfort in Spain, but by the eighteenth century, peninsulares were apt to enmesh themselves in the communities of the Americas.

CASTAS / MESTIZOS

Members of the intermediate racial groups were called "castes" or, in Spanish, castas. They included the offspring of black and white parents, called mulattoes; of white and Indian parents, called mestizo; and of black and Indian parents, to whom no single term was ever applied. The mestizos, mulattoes, and black Indians also intermingled and produced descendants of even greater racial mixture—part Indian, part Spanish, part black. No distinctive name was ever applied to these offspring; they were usually called simply castas. For the first 150 years of Spanish colonial rule the number of castas was relatively small, and racially mixed offspring were usually absorbed into the Spanish, Indian, or black groups. During this time only a handful were categorized as castas, and these were usually divided into either mestizos or mulattoes. About the middle of the seventeenth century, these groups began to develop an identity of their own. Instead of merely being people who lacked either the tribal affiliation of native peoples or the social prerogatives of Spaniards, they came increasingly to constitute groups in their own right. Women of these intermediate groups were more often employed than their Spanish counterparts, whereas the men were apt to be artisans, but journeymen rather than masters. Racially mixed people were officially banned from positions of influence in colonial society. They could not sit on town councils, serve as notaries, or become members of the more exclusive artisan guilds such as the goldsmiths. They were barred from the priesthood and from the universities. Those designated as mestizos were exempt from the tribute payment owed by their Indian relatives, but no such exemption was granted mulattoes; even when freed, they were subject to the traditional payments of conquered peoples to their rulers. The dramatic growth of the castas in the eighteenth century was an increase in sheer numbers of castas as well as a proliferation in the number of racial categories. From the simple divisions of mestizo and mulatto emerged categories such as the castizo, an intermediate position between Spaniard and mestizo, and morisco, the equivalent between mulatto and Spaniard. And the steady rise of intermarriages among the racially mixed population itself produced an enormous range of physical types, in turn generating a number of novel, often fanciful names for the sheer physical variety apparent for the first time in large numbers during the eighteenth century.

INDIANS

The Indians were a conquered people, and many of the earliest social distinctions regarding them, such as the payment of tribute, stemmed from their initial relationship to the Crown as conquered subjects. Spanish rulers exempted indigenous elites from payment of tribute and granted them the honorific "Don," characteristic of the Spanish lesser nobility. But whereas such titles and exemptions from tribute were hereditary among Spaniards, these titles were held only by Indians who were incumbents. Because the offices they held were rarely hereditary—instead they were passed among members of the community, often by elections—the exemptions from tribute were rarely permanent. Indigenous communities in the New World were overwhelmingly agricultural. Indians farmed land, either their own or that of Spaniards. Some resided in communities near Spanish settlements, others were forcibly removed and "congregated" near such settlements. In some regions Indians engaged in fishing or hunting. In the urban areas of the Americas, Indians were more apt to be construction workers (e.g., bricklayers, stonemasons), day laborers, or vendors of agricultural products. In the mining regions of Central and South America. Spaniards used Indians to mine the gold and especially the silver found in regions located away from major population centers. Spaniards uprooted Indians, temporarily or permanently, and relocated them in communities near the mines. Slaves were rarely employed in the mines, and never in large numbers. Mining was the labor of Indians.

SLAVES

In the early years of the Spanish Conquest a great number of Indians were captured and enslaved on the Caribbean islands and nearby landfalls. Slavery was blamed by many for the devastation of indigenous communities, and the practice was outlawed by the New Laws of 1542, though natives who fought the Spaniards in frontier regions were often enslaved as late as the seventeenth century. Following the devastation of native peoples in the Caribbean, blacks were introduced as slave labor. The largest number of black slaves arrived in the Spanish colonies between 1550 and 1650, corresponding with growth in the cultivation of sugar in Spanish America. But with the surpassing success of sugar production in seventeenth-century Brazil, the Spanish American industry shrank substantially, along with the number of imported slaves. In the nineteenth century, both the number of imported slaves of African origin and the sugar industry were revived in the Spanish Caribbean. But on the mainland, the numbers of imported slaves fell off sharply after 1650. In addition to the slaves in sugar-growing regions, there were a small number of slaves in the entourages of the wealthy and powerful in Spanish American capitals. These slaves were often pages, working in the urban homes of the well-to-do. Between the middle of the seventeenth century and the end of the next century, the slaves of African origin disappeared as a readily identifiable social group in Spanish America. In some cities the African presence persisted into the nineteenth century. In the last years of Spanish rule, approximately one-third of the population of Buenos Aires was considered black, but by the end of the nineteenth century the percentage of Afro-Argentines had dropped to 2 percent. Nevertheless, their integration into the racially mixed population was central to the transformation of Spanish New World society in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.