Pamela Barnett
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Introduction to José Martí's “Nuestra América” By Pamela Barnett From The Politics of Letters: José Martí’s Revolutionary Discourse Thesis for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toronto, 2006 References to Martí’s work are from Obras completas. 27 vols. La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1975. Scroll down for a bibliography of works cited. You can read more about Martí in The Politics of Letters: José Martí’s Revolutionary Discourse. Doctoral Thesis, University of Toronto, 2006. By the 1880s, Cuba and Puerto Rico were the last remaining colonies of Spain’s vast empire in America. Most of its American possessions had made the transition from colony to independent republic by the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Spain ruled its distant colonies for more than three centuries, subordinating their local welfare to its imperial interests with policies to control government, centralize administration, impose and collect taxes, enforce metropolitan commercial monopolies, regulate agrarian and mineral production, limit manufacturing and restrict trade for the benefit of the royal coffers. Local authority was exercised on behalf of the crown through a colonial administration restricted almost entirely to peninsulares. Their distance from Spain and the slowness of communication and travel meant that viceroys, the crown’s direct representatives and chief colonial administrators, enjoyed some degree of autonomy; however, colonial policies and institutions ensured that the colonies did not control their economies and had little or no say in their government. Restrictions on economic development and trade, greatly favouring the crown, undermined the economic interests of the local elites, among them the hacendados and urban merchants. Their earnings were greatly constrained by the crown’s despotic policies, but they were generally conservative in their outlook, disposed to cooperate with the metropolis and enjoyed many gains under colonialism. The elite sectors included wealthy criollos; they were barred from positions of official importance because they were not born in Spain, and their access to political power was generally limited to municipal government, the cabildo. To this political experience, however, they were able to add military experience when the Bourbon reforms allowed the creation of creole army units and the expansion of creole militias, both headed by creole officers, to defend the colonies from foreign invasion and local unrest. Eventually, resentment fuelled by burdensome taxes and the despotic nature of colonial rule began to affect sectors of the elite, particularly a significant minority of wealthy criollos, who “during the last decades of the eighteenth century . . . were successful, confident, and assertive” (Kinsbruner 35). Their increasing concern for their political and economic interests, growing creole self-awareness, and emerging nationalism heightened their fervor for independence. Since burdensome taxes fell even more heavily upon the indigenous poor, who were further burdened by systems of forced labour such as the mita, economic dissatisfaction was not confined to sectors of the criollo elite. The late colonial period saw serious popular uprisings such as the 1780 revolt, predominantly native, led by Tupac Amaru (José Gabriel Condorcanqui Noguera) in Peru, and the 1781 revolt by creoles and mestizos, who took the name comuneros, in Nueva Granada (Colombia). When Joseph Bonaparte ascended the Spanish throne in 1808, following Napoleon’s invasion of Spain and the forced abdications of the Spanish monarchs, Charles IV and his son Ferdinand VII, the colonies did not to recognize the authority of Joseph Bonaparte and entered a period of self-rule, governing themselves in the name of Ferdinand. In 1809 rebellions erupted in Chuquisaca and La Paz, both in Alto Perú (Bolivia), as well as in Quito and Bogotá. They failed but other major revolts followed. In 1810 creole patriots established autonomous governments in Venezuela, Nueva Granada, Argentina and Chile, and the priest Miguel Hidalgo led a popular revolt in Mexico. When Ferdinand was restored to the Spanish throne in 1814, the colonies were by then accustomed to governing themselves, determined to protect reforms they had implemented, unwilling to undergo the reimposition of despotic rule, and a significant number of independentistas were prepared to fight for their official independence. Though most of the 1810 revolts were unsuccessful, they culminated in the independence wars and Spain’s defeat at Ayacucho in 1824. The years of the independence wars caused the financial ruin of many members of the upper creole classes and meant personal and economic sacrifices from all sectors. Led mostly by wealthy criollos, the independence movement was fuelled by the desire among the privileged classes to reform commerce and trade, but the armies of the independence movement also depended on all sectors of the popular classes for whom, given the social and economic conditions that had already led to popular uprisings, the need for social and economic reform was clear. “The creoles had to mobilize blacks, Indians and castes,” writes John Lynch; “manumission was offered in return for service in the revolutionary armies. . . . San Martín declared that ‘the best infantry soldier we have is the black and the mulato.’ . . . There was a price to be paid for freedom of this kind: blacks, being in the infantry, suffered the heaviest casualtiesf” (221). Nevertheless, following the catastrophic wars that ended the power of imperial rulers and established a national ruling class, the political and economic rewards of the early decades of nationhood accrued to the surviving and new elites it had elevated to power and who, although they represented less than 5% of the population, “tended to confuse their own well-being and desires with those of the nation at large” (Burns and Charlip 84). Their economic and social policies proved their conservative mindset. Most of the new republics ventured into international commerce with Europe, exporting the raw products demanded by European markets, and importing manufactured goods along with European values and ideas. They determined their economic priorities in response to foreign market demand, limiting their focus to the local industry and infrastructure required to produce agrarian and mineral materials, transport them to the ports of exit, and export them to Europe. The nature of their ventures into international commerce also made the new republics economically subservient to the United Kingdom, which replaced Spain’s economic hegemony over the new nations. While they continued to be linked to Spain through history and tradition, the ruling elites were dependent on France and the rest of Europe for cultural inspiration, intellectual ideas and economic policies. Trade expansion and economic growth after independence greatly enriched the ruling elites, affording them extravagant lifestyles in Europe and America, but the majority of the population did not share in those benefits and as the port cities grew, the rural areas became increasingly marginalized and rural poverty increased. Intellectuals like Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and Argentina’s Generation of 1837, “whose ideas and actions reached far beyond the Argentine frontiers to shape much of the thinking of modern Latin America,” subscribed to an ideology of progress that regarded problems of development as a struggle between “civilization” and “barbarism” and “advocated European immigration as the best means to ‘save’ their country” (Burns and Charlip 108). Mesmerized by the rapid expansion of industrialization in the United States, many viewed that nation as a model for Spanish America’s economic development. The United States had emerged as the world’s major industrialized nation. Its rapid industrial growth gave rise to the concentration of capital and the giant corporations that were replacing small manufacturers. The enormous wealth of the rich industrialists contrasted with the increasing poverty of poorly paid workers and deplorable working conditions. Along with the wealth that accrued to powerful industrialists came political power and influence in all sectors of government, assuring them of concessions, subsidies and policies favourable to corporate interests that aligned with the interests of a nation intent on asserting control and influence over the Western Hemisphere. The United States was determined to secure preferential access to raw materials exported to Europe by the new Spanish-speaking republics, and to acquire expanded markets in the region for the surfeit of manufactured goods produced by its accelerated industrial growth. It sought hemispheric trade agreements favourable to corporate interests in the United States to restrict trade between the new republics and Europe, supplant the United Kingdom’s economic domination, and institutionalize the hegemony of the United States in the region. It looked toward its southern neighbours with a covetous eye. Bibliography Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1983 Barnett, Pamela. The Politics of Letters: José Martí’s Revolutionary Discourse. Doctoral Thesis, University of Toronto: 2006. Burns, E. Bradford and Julie A Charlip. Latin America. A Concise Interpretive History. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: University of California, Los Angeles, 2002. Foner, Philip S. Our America by José Martí. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977. Kinsbruner, Jay. The Spanish-American Independence Movement. Hinsdale, Illinois: Dryden Press, 1973. Martí, José. Obras completas. 27 vols. La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1975. Pérez , Jr., Louis A. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution. New York: Oxford U. P., 1988. Portuondo, José Antonio. José Martí.  Crítico literario. Washington: Unión Panamericana, 1953. Ramos, Julio. Divergent Modernities. Culture and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. Trans. John D. Blanco. Durham: Duke U. P., 1996.) Toledo Sande, Cesto de llamas. Biografía de José Martí. (My Translation,  Basket of Flames: A Biography of José Martí.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2000). Vitier, Cintio. “Los discursos de Martí” Anuario Martiano 1, 1969: 293-318.

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Copyright 2006 Pamela Rubina Elizabeth Barnett