19/09/21, 00:19 Republicanism in Latin America - Bibliography - Political, Independence, Indians, and Monarchy - JRank Articles

8 minute read

Republicanism in Latin America

Bibliography
Republicanism advocates a government headed by commoners rather than a hereditary monarchy. It is
similar to democracy in that it favors a representative form of government that receives its legitimacy from
the people it rules, but democracy in theory also champions political, social, and economic equality. All of
the Latin American countries (as well as the United States) are established as republics, while in the
Caribbean some former colonies retain the British and Dutch monarchs as their heads of state.
Republicanism no longer has the rhetorical appeal that it did two centuries ago, but related key constitutional
issues relevant to the concept of republicanism, including the division of governmental power, political
participation, distribution of wealth, and extension of civil and social rights, continue to be important.

During the colonial period, hereditary absolute monarchies in Europe ruled over Latin America. In the
nineteenth century, growing resentment at centralized control designed to benefit Europe and leave people in
the colonies with little economic or political power led many patriots in Latin America to reject monarchy in
favor of a republican system. Republican rhetoric was sometimes more of an opportunistic positioning to
remove the entrenched Habsburg and Bourbon rule, which brought little benefit to the colonies, rather than
serious commitment to the ideology itself. Conservative leaders, particularly those associated with the
Catholic Church and the military, believed that a strongly centralized system was necessary to retain order in
the newly founded independent republics. Some conservatives advocated the retention of a monarchy as a
way to prevent social disintegration.

Republicanism in Latin America is often, though somewhat mistakenly, associated with movements for
independence from Iberian colonial control during the early nineteenth century. Political independence
brought few significant changes to the region's social, economic, and cultural structures. Often the new
governments were as authoritarian as, if not more so than, the absolute monarchies they replaced. One
concrete republican change that did come with independence was the abolition of titles of nobility and fueros
(privileges extended to members of the church and military). But while a flourishing of liberal ideals brought
an end to formal racial discrimination, it did not necessarily end the institution of slavery nor result in an
extension of rights to women, Indians, or peasants.

Although women were active participants in the struggles for independence, they still remained legally
subjugated to male control. They could not vote or hold public office and could not work or enter into legal
contracts without a husband's or father's approval. Without the crown's paternalistic protection, Indians found
themselves to be worse off under new republican regimes as creole elites preyed on their communal
landholdings, further narrowing the base of landholders. Republicanism witnessed the continued dominance
of elite, aristocratic values—with few economic or social advances for subalterns. This resulted in a long
struggle by Africans, Indians, women, and other marginalized populations for full and equal participation in
affairs of the new republics.

The history of Haiti, Mexico, and Brazil underscores the difference between independence and
republicanism in Latin America. In Haiti, Jean Jacques Dessalines and Henri Christophe briefly set
themselves up as monarchs after gaining independence from France. In Mexico, Agustín de Iturbide was a
royal general who combined forces with creole leaders in a conservative declaration of independence to free
Mexico from a liberal-controlled Spanish government. For a brief period of time after independence in 1821,
Iturbide ruled Mexico as an emperor (Agustín I) in a constitutional monarchy; it was not until 1824 that
Mexico became a republic. In the 1860s, Mexico once again returned to a monarchy when the French
imposed archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Habsburg as king after occupying the country. In 1867, Mexico
once again became a republic after the liberal leader Benito Juárez defeated the French occupying forces and
executed Maximilian.

The gap between independence and republicanism is even more dramatic in the case of Brazil. In 1808,
Napoleon's occupation of Portugal had driven King João VI's royal court from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro. In
https://science.jrank.org/pages/8051/Republicanism-in-Latin-America.html 1/3
19/09/21, 00:19 Republicanism in Latin America - Bibliography - Political, Independence, Indians, and Monarchy - JRank Articles

1821, João returned to Lisbon, leaving his son Dom Pedro as regent of Brazil. When Portugal attempted to
curtail Brazilian autonomy, Pedro refused to comply. In his famous September 1822 fico, he declared that he
would stay in Brazil—bringing a bloodless independence to the colony. Nevertheless, under Pedro I and his
successor Pedro II Brazil remained a monarchy, although they ruled in a rather enlightened manner. In 1889,
the military overthrew the monarchy, finally bringing a republican form of government to Brazil.

According to Thomas Millington, the persistence of monarchic rule in Brazil undermined a commitment to
republicanism in Latin America. Specifically, he argues that Simón Bolívar's refusal to challenge the
monarchy in Brazil, something that was within his reach, translated into a wider failure to challenge
European influences in the New World—including authoritarianism and elitism. This allowed Bolívar to
replicate authoritarian aspects of the Brazilian system, including the goals of order and progress, in the
Spanish-American republics. In a sense, Millington contends, the new republics lacked a functioning civil
society that provided the consensus necessary for a functioning republican system. Ironically, the Brazilian
monarchy implemented a more liberal and "enlightened" system than that existing in the Spanish republics.

Political historians have traditionally portrayed the emergence of republican ideologies at the end of the
eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries as a revolution in political culture. Popular participation
in government replaced a hereditary monarchy allied with clergy and military interests. Social historians,
however, have demonstrated just how exclusive citizenship rights were, as creole elites consolidated
economic and political power in their hands. Economically, independence represented a transfer of wealth
from peninsular to creole elites. Politically, the republican constitutions established legal equality but
provided for little change in power relations. Without a broadening of suffrage, a very small elite continued
to rule over the rest of the population. Even with representative government, there was not more participation
in power. Ideologically, republicanism drew on positivist ideologies with its emphasis on liberty, order, and
progress. The dissolution of central authority with the elimination of the European crown left nothing in its
place, leading to struggles to determine who had the right to rule.

Deep social, economic, and geographic divisions also led to political instability following independence.
Large and diverse countries divided physically, culturally, ethnically, and
linguistically, in which people who
lived in one area had little to do with those in another area, led to relatively small groups of powerful men
using force to assert their will. Small, individual factions with differences in values and ideals fought for
control, resulting in rapid changes in power and the appearance of extreme political instability. Stable
centralized governments did not emerge until perceived national interests surmounted the economic interests
of regional leaders.

Peter Guardino, Mark Thurner, Charles Walker, and others have stressed the importance of examining these
transitions to republican forms of government from a peasant perspective. Walker, for example, examines the
critical and often unacknowledged role the indigenous peasantry played in battles for independence. Far from
employing mindless mob actions, these dissidents engaged in thoughtful political and legal actions and
cultivated coalitions with sympathetic outsiders. Rather than being passive or disengaged, Indians were
active agents who "imagined" an alternative vision of the nation that conflicted with that of the dominant
culture. Walker criticizes historians who "have far too often accepted contemporary views that deemed
Indians incapable of political consciousness and indifferent to the battles over the state." Rather, he sees
indigenous peoples as "key to understanding the turbulent transition from colony to republic" (p. 2).

While voicing republican rhetoric, creole elites feared a militant and mobilized indigenous population.
Walker argues that despite significant indigenous participation in independence movements, elites
intentionally denied them citizenship rights, with the result that republican rule did little to improve their lot
in life. Guardino challenges histories of Mexico's transition to a republican government told from the point of
view of the palace, instead stressing the critical role peasants played in this process. Historians are also
gaining an increasing appreciation for the previously understudied role that subalterns played in shaping
emerging state structures, a role that was significant despite their marginalization within elite
conceptualizations of those state structures.

As these examples illustrate, although theoretically informed by liberal ideologies that favored equality
under the law, Latin American republicanism did not lead to universal citizenship by any means. Despite
variations in constitutions throughout the hemisphere, almost all created exclusionary systems that limited
political participation based on literacy, property, gender, and sometimes religious beliefs. Even though

https://science.jrank.org/pages/8051/Republicanism-in-Latin-America.html 2/3
19/09/21, 00:19 Republicanism in Latin America - Bibliography - Political, Independence, Indians, and Monarchy - JRank Articles

property and religious restrictions were generally relaxed during the nineteenth century, it was not until well
into the twentieth century that some countries extended suffrage to women and Indians (who had generally
been targeted with literacy restrictions). Thurner plays off this imagery in his book From Two Republics to
One Divided. Colonial administration deliberately divided society into two "republics": one for Spaniards
and another for Indians. Creole elites terminated this bipartite division in the independent republics, but the
goal was to abolish separate ethnic identities through assimilation of Indians into a mestizo culture rather
than respecting or preserving indigenous peoples' unique traditions. As Thurner notes, these colonial
divisions "were more fictional and juridical than they were actual," but "these imagined constructs had real
historical consequences" (p. 6). They resulted in wide gaps between the liberal ideals of universal citizenship
and the cold reality of highly exclusionary republican governments.

The history of Latin America since independence can be written as a story of subalterns fighting for full
citizenship rights that republicanism had promised but never delivered. Women, Africans, Indians, peasants,
and others subverted the language of elite rhetoric in order to demand popular sovereignty, political rights,
and active citizenship so that they would also have a say in how the government was structured.
Theoretically, elections form the base of a republic, as they express the will of the populace. The gap
between theory and reality reveals the failure of republican systems in Latin America, but it is a failure
slowly being overturned thanks to the efforts of those originally excluded from the political system. Ongoing
political activism on the part of Indians, blacks, women, and the poor demonstrates that the republican ideal
is still being realized for many.

See also Anticolonialism: Latin America; Authoritarianism: Latin America; Pluralism; Populism: Latin
America.

Marc Becker

Additional topics
Republicanism - Republic - Roman Republicanism, Medieval Republicanism, Renaissance Italian
Republicanism, English Republicanism, Modern Republicanism, Bibliography
Republicanism in Latin America - Bibliography
Other Free Encyclopedias

Science EncyclopediaScience & Philosophy: Reason to Retrovirus

Search content...
Search

Copyright © 2021 Web Solutions LLC.

and its Licensors
All Rights Reserved

Terms of Use

Share this article

https://science.jrank.org/pages/8051/Republicanism-in-Latin-America.html 3/3