Problems in Latin American History

Latin America Revolutions

Except for the glaring exception of Brazil, the Latin American revolutions established republics from Mexico to Argentina, although the new governments were never particularly liberal or democratic. They certainly did not grant equal citizenship to, much less social and economic equality, while women, slaves, servants, and indigenous peoples mostly remained under traditional patriarchal controls. Some revolutionaries like Jose Morelos in Mexico and Batista Campos in Brazil did demand a more liberal or radical social order in which the racial caste system had been abolished, but in most parts of Latin America this has not really occurred yet. Morelos did not intend to abolish the class system or even the economic power of whites, but he did call for the end of slavery, the elimination of titles of nobility and equal education for all. In the early-19th Century, such ideals as equality of citizenship regardless of color counted as "quite modern economic, social, and political prescriptions."[footnoteRef:1] Brazil became independent on paper at least in 1822, but still under the rule of Emperor Pedro I rather than a republican political system. It did not abolish slavery or the monarchy until 1889, and hardly any popular revolutionary movement existed there. Whites controlled all the important offices of the bureaucracy, military and Catholic Church -- which at the time of course was the only church allowed in Latin America. Batista Campos, a radical Catholic priest in Belem, called for a new social and political order that went beyond the old colonial system and led a popular revolt in 1823. Even though the Portuguese authorities imprisoned him many times, he survived long enough to participate in the revolt against Dom Pedro in 1831.[footnoteRef:2] [1: Enrique Krause, "The Vision of Father Morelos" in James A. Wood and John Charles Chasteen (eds), Problems in Latin American History: Sources and Methods, 3rd Edition (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), p. 7.] [2: John Charles Chasteen, "The Brazilian Path to Independence" in Wood and Chasteen, p. 15.]

Even those slaves who fought for the revolution rarely received their freedom after the war, while the new governments never even considered equal voting and citizenship rights for women. Half of General Jose de San Martin's army consisted of slaves "recruited from Buenos Aires and the provinces of Western Argentina," often offered as substitutes by upper class whites reluctant to share the burdens of military service.[footnoteRef:3] They fought in every battle to liberate Peru, Chile and Ecuador from the Spanish in 1816-23, and only a handful returned home, but usually not to the freedom that they had been promised. Some Argentine historians even commented anonymously that the whites were eager to put blacks in the forefront of battle in hopes of reducing the Afro-Argentine population, which is quite minimal today. Women also had no real role in political life after the revolutions, and the new governments assumed that their primary role would continue to be wives and mothers. Upper class women had a duty to "nurture republican virtues in members of their families,," inspire the troops in battle and donate their jewelry to the cause, but almost no women actually participated in the fighting.[footnoteRef:4] They did not receive voting or citizenship rights after independence and republican authorities were "hesitant to interfere with a male citizen's patriarchal rights."[footnoteRef:5] For the overwhelming majority of the population of Latin America, including lower class whites, women, slaves, Africans and indigenous peoples, the wars meant a change of masters rather than equal rights and citizenship. Gender and racial caste systems did not disappear and may even have been strengthened, and those who had always been at the bottom of the social and economic pyramid remained there. Indeed, in most cases their descendants today are still there. [3: G. Reid Andrews, "Argentina's Black Legions" in Wood and Chasteen, p. 13.] [4: Sarah C. Chambers, What Independence Meant for Women" in Wood and Chasteen, p.20.] [5: Chambers, p. 23.]