Manuel González Prada: Peruvian Judge of Spain

Abstract

It is no exaggeration to say that in the mind of a large number of Spanish American intellectuals during the nineteenth century Spain symbolized the origin of many of the cultural, social, and political ills which afflicted the Iberian New World. And this in spite of the admitted influence of the advocates of Spain and the defenders of her official policies, neither of whom have ever been lacking in Spanish America. From the earliest stages of the Conquest the criollo (Spanish American Creole) and mestizo were treated as the inferiors of the native-born Span-iards, or peninsulares, and felt themselves to be different from the Iberian conquistador. In the course of time this feeling of social separatism deepened. In addition to the Indian and Creole uprisings against the peninsulares, which persisted sporadically throughout the Colonial period and frequently were motivated more by political convenience than by ideological differences, another type of rebellion developed during the latter part of the eighteenth and the early years of the nineteenth centuries. And it was the latter—promoted in its intellectual aspects by such figures as Rodríguez, Miranda, Nariño, and Bello—in which were established the ideological bases of the liberation carried out by San Martín, Bolívar, and the Mexican patriots.