Beyond imagined communities : reading and writing the nation in nineteenth-century Latin America 9780801878527, 0801878527, 9780801878534, 0801878535

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John Charles Chasteen

altogether. Costa Rica and, on a larger scale, Argentina, more or less follow

this pattern. Given the pervasive importance of indigenous genes in Latin American populations, of course, total erasure was rarely an option, al

though partial erasure was frequent. Together, the chapters by Castro

Klarén and Verdesio illustrate the range of possibilities. Finally, Beatriz González-Stephan draws attention to additional mecha nisms whereby national elites advanced their projects of nation building in the second half of the nineteenth century, creating carefully styled national pavilions for the period's numerous "universal expositions" and publishing

voluminous and richly illustrated literary histories to represent new national cultures. Expositions offer an especially rich vein of study, both because of their frequency in the closing decades of the century and because their na

tional pavilions were so explicitly representations of the nation-represen tations prepared with a heightened awareness of the European "gaze," that

imagined audience so devastatingly influential in the collective mind of nineteenth-century Latin American elites. Neither ruins nor expositions are outside the limits of Imagined Com

munities, but they do not figure in its account of the emergence of Latin American nationalism. In going beyond what Anderson says about Latin America, the critics were often drawing on, or at least echoing, elements of

his overall interpretation. In confirming that the production and circulation of print defined a national consciousness in important ways, the critics

showed why Anderson has been more persuasive, overall, in critical than in historical studies of nineteenth-century Latin America.

Together, the contributions bring the nineteenth-century Latin American

enterprise of reading and writing the nation into clearer focus by indicating the value and limitations of Benedict Anderson's interpretation for our cur

rent understanding of that enterprise. Anyone formerly tempted to cite Imagined Communities for an authoritative description of the origins of

Latin American national identities will hopefully now banish the thought. On the other hand, anyone inspired by the book's call to explore the imag inative and emotive dimensions of modern nationalism can benefit from the

new trails blazed by our contributors. The influence of manuscript (rather

than print) in the late colonial period; the vital formative experience of the wars of independence themselves; the competition of other imagined com munities, such as warring political parties; the enduring hegemonic sway

of an elitist "lettered city"; the intersection of imagined with immediate, face-to-face communities; the "foundational fictions" embodied in roman

François-Xavier Guerra

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ity. The first printing press and the first newspaper of Caracas date only from 1808, the very same year in which the crisis of the Spanish monarchy be

gan. How then and how rapidly-did the consciousness of a new national "we" develop? Was the resulting imagined community Caracas or Venezuela? And the case of Chile is even more challenging to Anderson's

assertions. There the first press and first newspaper did not begin to operate

until 1812, when a local junta had already assumed power. In other places, where newspapers had existed for a longer period, nei

ther their content nor their circulation matches the description given in

Imagined Communities. The most important part of those papers was not the local news, where that figured at all. These were erudite periodicals de

voted to literature, geography, science, and technology. In some respects, as with matters of local patriotism or geographic description of the "kingdom" or "province," they dealt with identity much more directly than did the lo cal news trivia mentioned by Anderson. Almost nowhere do they seem to have been profitable business ventures. To the contrary, many of them folded precisely because of economic difficulties associated with the narrowness

of the reading public. That happened, for example, to both El Papel Per

iódico de Santa Fé de Bogotá and to El Mercurio Peruano.4 Only in New

Spain, in the years immediately preceding the crisis of 1808 does one be gin to find real newspapers (even in some regional cities such as Veracruz)

that correspond, at least in part, to Anderson's description. But this is too late for such publications to have generated a sense of national identity be

fore the impending crisis of the monarchy erupted in 1808. The real explo

sion of the press in the Spanish-speaking world occurred precisely during that crisis.

I do not mean to imply that local and regional identities did not exist in Spanish America by the late eighteenth century, only that periodical publi cations and the expansion of the print market did not create those identities

and that they were not yet national in character. There were, in fact, a num ber of different sorts of overlapping territorial identities in the late colonial

period, many of them mutually incompatible. Nestled inside one another

like a set of Russian dolls were the jurisdictions of pueblos, then of princi pal cities (sometimes called provincias), and then, in some places, the ter

4. On the economic difficulties faced by these publications, see Jean Pierre Clé ment, El Mercurio Peruano, 1790-1795 (Frankfurt/Madrid: Vervuert-Iberoamericana,

1997); Renán Silva, Prensa y revolución a finales del Siglo XVIII (Bogotá: Banco de la República, 1988).

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François-Xavier Guerra

paid particular attention to their unequal treatment from the government of the central monarchy, especially from bossy regency authorities in Spanish

America. These were the "tyrants" against which they rose up, and not just in general, but very specifically by name: the Peruvian viceroy Abascal, the

president of Charcas, Nieto, and, the Creole general Goyeneche, for exam ple. In Mexico, they excoriated the viceroy Venegas and, above all, the re

gency's general Calleja. These defenders of the regency, on the other hand,

employed principally the language of loyalty to the king, inseparable from loyalty to his representatives, castigating the rebels' supposed abandonment of the mother country in time of need and condemning the revolt as illegit imate in religious as well as political terms.

The two sides adopted similar communications policies, with offensive and defensive aspects. Offensively, each side elaborated and disseminated writings that justified its cause and discredited the cause of its adversaries. To

advance this purpose, each side smuggled its propaganda to its partisans in the territory controlled by its adversaries, hoping to receive in return a kind of intelligence that can fairly be called espionage. Defensively, each side tried to impede similar operations by the enemy. To do so, it exercised surveillance

over the flow of correspondence into its own territory, conducting checks of ports, mail carriers, roads, and inns, following the movements of suspicious

persons, limiting travel (sometimes by requiring internal passports), moni toring cafés and other gathering places, and trying to identify the authors of seditious communications by analyzing their handwriting. 37 Each considered

the other's propaganda extremely dangerous and misleading. The media used in the propaganda war were diverse, indeed. Publication, in the traditional sense of "public information" provided by the authorities

(through criers, official gazettes, broadsheets, and so forth) had a central role. The pro-junta leader, Juan José de Castelli, in his propaganda cam

paign aimed at the cabildos of Peru, denounced the published misinforma tion of "the Gazettes of the [pro-Regency] Government of Lima, its Procla mations and Manifestos," while at the same

time declaring: "Fellow

Citizens, you can be free as soon as you decide to be, the plans of the Gov ernment [of Buenos Aires] are well laid out in its public papers; its frater

nity, equity, and justice cannot be denied; it will be free and will protect all who desire freedom."38 On the other side, Viceroy Abascal described his

37. See, for example, AGI, Diversos 1, 1807 (1810), ramo 2, doc. 2. 38. "Manifesto que dirige a los Pueblos interiores de Virreynato del Perú el Excmo.

Señor Don Juan José de Castelli, Representante del Superior Gobierno de la Capital del

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Tulio Halperín Donghi

of the urban population of Buenos Aires surprised foreign visitors, it was vital for the new regime to reach the much larger numbers of those still il literate. In this respect it was to prove more imitative than creative. It sim ply turned to new uses the instruments developed for that purpose by the

old regime. It commanded the parish priests to read editorials of the Gac eta from the pulpit and to display in their comments the proper enthusiasm for the recently won freedom if they wished to avoid the punishments the revolutionary regime reserved for its enemies.

But this provided only a spoken extension of the written word. The old regime had inculcated its political messages by symbol and action, and the new regime did the same. It began by taking over the religious and civic cer

emonies from the annual celebration of the city's patron saint to the proclamation of a new monarch-long enjoyed by the urban populace, that endured no shortage of fireworks, greased-pole climbing competitions, or coins thrown to festive crowds in the years after 1810. When using images and symbols, the Revolution was, of course, ready

to innovate, as well, and here its predicament became clear. These images and symbols fortified the popular view of a continental revolution within

reach of Buenos Aires, a city whose proclaimed invincibility was suppos edly founded on historical precedent. So, when the revolution celebrated its

first anniversary with the inauguration of a commemorative pyramid erected in the main square (named Victory Plaza in memory of 1807), the four sides of the modest monument were decorated with verses about "the exploits and victories of the courageous troops of this immortal city." One year later, dur

ing the public celebrations that followed the discovery and prompt execu tion of the conspirators led by Alzaga, the revolution represented its notional pre-Hispanic roots in the figure of four boys "who sang dressed in Indian garb" and in the names of two indigenous heroes, Tupac Amaru and Man goré (a legendary local cacique from conquest times), with which it bap tized two artillery pieces. The revolutionary leadership obviously sensed the

overconfidence of the "immortal city," but it could not afford to encourage a more realistic tone because its war aimed at the total destruction of Span ish power in South America. Therefore, when defeats and stalemates began to accumulate, the urban populace found an easy explanation for them: the pusillanimity, or perhaps even the treacherousness, of the revolutionary

leadership. These suspicions were soon justified when, against what every body had expected in 1810, Fernando was restored to the Spanish throne

and made clear that he did not look kindly on those ho, while ruling in his

name, had proclaimed themselves leaders of nations (even if, mixing cau