A Research Note: The Narrative of Spanish-American Independence and the Kingdom of Guatemala

Abstract

A RESEARCH NOTE: THE NARRATIVE OF SPANISH-AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE AND THE KINGDOM OF GUATEMALA1 Timothy Hawkins Department of History, Indiana State University 7 junio 18112 . . . [El Ayuntamiento] protesta estar dispuesto en unión de VE [el capitán general José de Bustamante] a combatir hasta el último trance todo sistema de subversión, no perdonar fatiga por conservar la unidad, y tranquilo sosiego, coadyuvar en todo por su parte a la prosperidad y aumentos de esta republica, y por ultimo defender la patria, aunque para ello fuese preciso arrancarnos del seno de la naturaleza, de nuestros hijos, y de todo cuanto más amamos en este mundo. . . . The Ayuntamiento proclaims its desire to fight to the last breath alongside Your Excellency [Captain General José de Bustamante] against all means of subversion, to never tolerate fatigue in the preservation of unity and peaceful tranquility, to contribute everything it can toward the prosperity and growth of this Republic, and finally to defend the homeland, though this might cause us to be torn from the bosom of nature, from our children, and from all that we most love in this world. The ability of anniversaries to concentrate the often fragmented attention of the public on the past is widely recognized, though it is a power perhaps most appreciated by historians. These milestones (be they annual, sesquicentennial, centennial, or millennial) allow individuals, communities , and nations to take time to remember and reflect upon significant historic events and, perhaps, celebrate the durability of specific achievements . On one hand, an important anniversary might encourage people to recommit to long-held values and beliefs; at the same time, it might also enable them to reconsider, revise, and correct their well-worn assumptions to accommodate new discoveries and interpretations. This decade marks the bicentennial of Spanish America’s wars of independence , a period which is popularly identified and understood as the crucible of the new nations of the region. However, students and scholars familiar with more than three decades of research on the transition from colony to nation in post-Spanish America have been able to draw upon ample evidence that the celebrations currently underway in honor of these struggles for independence are commemorating legends with little basis in C 2013 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 83 The Latin Americanist, Septemeber 2013 fact. While this might come as no surprise to those whose understanding of the modern nation-state is informed by the concept of the imagined community, which by definition requires the power of myth to build consensus around a new political formulation, the writing of history has long informed the nation-building process by legitimizing specific political narratives . Yet, history, unlike legend, is not static; its practitioners encourage constant reflection and require revisions to established narratives when the weight of evidence demands it. Rather than marking the birth of nations, new scholarship suggests that the early nineteenth century witnessed only the breakdown of the political bonds between Spain and its American colonies. In most areas the economic, cultural, and social legacies of the colonial period persisted well beyond the achievement of political independence. The nations that did finally emerge across modern Latin America took decades to consolidate and often required multiple ‘births’ before a popular consensus coalesced around a new political community. If current scholarship in fact implies a more complicated and nuanced history of the transition from colony to nation than has been portrayed, what anniversary, if any, should the region commemorate now? What happens when national myths no longer have historical support?3 In this essay I wish to draw attention to the pervasive and persistent dissonance between academic and popular understanding of this critical period. Despite renewed interest in the political emancipation of Spanish America and recent trends indicating a welcome shift in perspective from a focus on independence to that of imperial crisis, the popular narrative of independence has not yet come to reflect the new scholarship. To illustrate the degree to which traditional narratives have tended to mislead rather than illuminate the process of colonial separation from Spain, I also wish to highlight another long-term deficiency of the historiography : the frequent absence of Central...