Fighting Napoleon in Totonicapan

Abstract

Fighting Napoleon in Totonicapan1 Timothy HawkinsiD Introduction Following the collapse of the Spanish monarchy in 1808 the Kingdom of Guatemala faced a political challenge without precedent in its history. Perhaps surprisingly, considering the unprecedented nature and consequences of Napoleon's intervention into Spanish politics, the colonial system survived the shock of the Bayonne coup that brought down the Bourbons. On the far side of the Atlantic, a captain general and audiencia remained in place to sustain the sovereignty of the deposed Fernando VII across the length of the Central American isthmus. At the provincial level, a secondary tier of crown-appointed governors personified Spanish authority over fifteen distinct and largely autonomous jurisdictions. Finally, at the local level a variety of authorities continued to oversee the colonial population within both municipal and district boundaries as they had done for the past three centuries. Yet, after 1808 this traditional political framework had to adapt quickly to a new threat. In short order some of the most minor figures in the colonial bureaucracy found themselves a part of the first line of defenses designed to protect the Spanish possessions from Napoleon. By 1810 a rational fear of the threat posed by the French emperor had combined with rumor, gossip, propaganda, and genuine intelligence to convince senior Spanish officials that the danger of a French invasion of the colonies was both legitimate and imminent. Ultimately, local officials there became critical links in what would become a long, rapidly evolving, and occasionally awkward administrative chain stretching from Spain to the Americas, for these bureaucrats were expected to block an anticipated first-wave assault on the Spanish colonies by French emissaries, spies, and provocateurs. While direct communication between loyalist Spain and the Americas fanned some of these concerns, by 1810 the person most responsible for defining and shaping the colonial response to Napoleon was the Spanish ambassador to the United States, Luís de Onís. This article will assess the impact of the Onís warnings on Spanish America by tracing them through the Spanish colonial bureaucracy. Here, the alcaldía mayor of Totonicapán, a province in the western highlands of the Kingdom of Guatemala, will serve as a case study of the nature of the administrative responses during the imperial crisis. [End Page 490] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Representation of the Alcaldía Mayor of Totonicapán, ca. 1810. The Setting At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the one-million inhabitants of the Kingdom of Guatemala found themselves living in the backwaters of the Spanish empire.2 While technically subordinate to the viceregal authorities in Mexico City, the isthmus remained largely self-governing during the colonial period. At the same time, a complicated internal geography also diluted the effectiveness of those appointed to lead the bureaucracy from Guatemala City. Most of the kingdom's settlements evolved in relative isolation from each other, and these "sovereign villages" tended to concentrate power at the local level.3 Even the imperial drive toward political centralization that dominated the Bourbon Reforms of the late eighteenth century produced more political fragmentation—or at least confusion—than had heretofore existed in the colony. As a result, it is somewhat misleading to use the term reino (kingdom) of Guatemala as it implies a degree of political uniformity that simply did not exist at the time. Such as it was, kingdom-wide authority was vested in two supreme institutions: the captaincy general and the audiencia.4 At an administrative level, the colony was subdivided into multiple jurisdictions. The political, economic, and demographic heartland, which included the territory [End Page 491] that later coalesced into the nation of Guatemala, embraced eight alcaldías mayores and two corregimientos, while four intendencias (Ciudad Real, Comayagua, Nicaragua, and San Salvador) and one gobierno militar (Costa Rica) made up the rest of the kingdom.5 Each of these administrative units preserved significant regional autonomy from Guatemala City and retained its own network of provincial and local authorities. The broad geographic, socio-economic, and political features of late-colonial Central America were all represented to an extreme degree within the alcaldía mayor of Totonicapán.6 At the...