FROM INDEPENDENCE TO MODERNIZATION Osvaldo Jordan-Ramos September 1, 2009
REVOLUTION FROM BELOW Tupac Amaru Rebellion (Peru) Comunero Revolt in New Granada (present- day Colombia) Hidalgo and Morelos (Mexico). ELITE (CREOLE-LED) REVOLUTION Venezuelan War of Independence Argentinean War of Independence. CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION Mexican and Peruvian Independence.
THE BOLIVARIAN DREAM In 1821, Simon Bolivar proclaimed the First Republic of Colombia or Gran Colombia (Venezuela, New Granada and Ecuador). In Guayaquil (1822), San Martin and Bolivar never agreed on a common political project. Between , Bolivar ensured the independence of Peru and Upper Peru (Bolivia). During the next five years, he struggled to turn Gran Colombia into a functioning republic, and called for the Congress of Panama.
THE BOLIVARIAN DREAM After escaping a plot for his assassination, a disillusioned Bolivar died in Santa Marta (nowadays Caribbean Colombia). He coined the common expression: “I have plowed in the sea”. The figure of Bolivar has symbolized Latin American unity and independence. None before had Bolivarianism become as politically explosive as with the current Bolivarian Revolution of Hugo Chavez ( ).
AN AGE OF REVOLUTION Post-Independence Civil Wars tear apart The Americas during the XIX century. This is the age of caudillos – strong men who control particular regions. Juan Manuel de Rosas (Argentina), Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna (Mexico), and Jose Antonio Paez (Venezuela).
CHALLENGES CONFRONTING THE NEW REPUBLICS Creating a functional constitutional order. Conservative vs. Liberal constitutions. Unifying the new states and imagining the new nations. War debts and creating national economies. Incorporating the territories that were never conquered – Far West, Mosquitia, Amazonia. Establishing the new national borders with the neighboring countries.
AN IDEOLOGIAL RIFT IN THE AMERICAS CONSERVATISM - Maintaining the existing colonial order (ancien regime), including the large estates (=latifundia) of the Landed Elite (ARISTOCRACY), the Catholic Church, and the Spanish Crown. LIBERALISM - Transforming existing society towards free trade, republican government, and technological innovation (BOURGEOISIE)
THE NEW LIBERAL REPUBLICS In the 1850s, Liberal regimes took over power in most of Latin America. Benito Juarez (Mexico) and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (Argentina). The Liberal political project was based on the following tenets: - Private Property. -Free Trade, Foreign Investment, and Export Economy (coffee, sugar, beef, metals). These policies were based on the Theory of Comparative Advantage, but resulted in monoculture and enclave economies.
THE NEW LIBERAL REPUBLICS -Technological Innovation. Steamboats, Railroad, Telecommunications, Industrialization. -Anglophilia. -Anticlericalism. -Public Education. -Republicanism (=Representative Government). The masses were not yet prepared for governing (limited franchise).
DOMINGO FAUSTINO SARMIENTO “I am an intermediary between two different worlds. I began to be a man between the Spanish colony that had not yet concluded and the Republic that was not yet organized; between sail navigation and steamboats that already started. My ideas partake with those two environments. I am the only one still left screaming: “Die the Spanish”. I belong to the old revolutionaries of independence, and I travel with the theory from those times and the North American practice, against what is left of the old colony” (Merrimac Diaries).