What I get from this book is a hypothesis that the Latin American Republic in the 19th century was a regional experiment in which the fragmented and contrasting imaginations of what republican government, sovereign authority, and democracy should look like created a continually bellicose political environment. The constant strive for popular embodiment in national government then led to the continual underdevelopment of Latin American economies due to constant warfare either between citizens of the same country or through transnational warfare. I also see Hilda Sabato as arguing that this obsession over sovereignty and republicanism, mixed with the checks and balances created through local militias and armies rather than through judicial means, was part of Latin American republican idealism in the 19th century, even if the historiography tends to paint it as a warmongering region that was never able to come to terms with itself. I tend to agree, as I find it interesting that it can be argued that Latin American republics in the 19th century were too democratic (in the Greek "strength of the common people" sense) for economic stability that would have helped Latin America to compete during the Industrial Revolution. These "economic successes" under dictatorships would set a precedent, which would then be used by various military regimes in Latin America in the middle of the 20th century. It is interesting to observe the relationship between democracy and economics in Latin American history.
That being said, it would have helped if Sabato embedded an economic analysis within the book because, in my opinion, the political instability in the 19th century created a crushing debt across the region, opening up the avenue for dictators to come in for the sake of political and economic stability, the most salient example being Porfirio Diaz. As a corollary of political instability, economic instability also opened the avenues for foreign capitalists to come in and secure market dominance and to exploit the region for cheap labor, thus exacerbating the difference in economic power between the colonial powers and these new republics.
I agree with you Rafael. I thought it was odd that Sabato did not bring up economic changes during the 19th century in Latin America. She was too focused on the ideas of republicanism that she left out the fact that economics does play a role in how history pans out over time. I believe that she did not mention it because the economic legacy of 19th century Latin American history does not come into full effect until the next century. If Sabato did brought up economics, this book would had been longer or had a different premise all together.
Question: what would it look like if she put an economic analysis about what political elites were trying to accomplish economically alongside this political one? How might it shape not just the overall story about success of failure but also the story about how elites related to everyone else?
I have many questions about how the book would look like with an economic analysis embedded within it, especially since I feel that people tend to have a political purview based upon a mixture of political idealism and personal and communal incentivization. I thought of my comment upon reading that in the 1840s, countries like Venezuela and Peru attempted to have militias that were similar to Roman legions during the Republic in which propertied citizens would make up the militias because they could afford to equip themselves. She mentions that this differed from most other republics, and the proposal to limit militia enrollment according to those who could afford to equip themselves had very limited success. My assumption was that there just wasn't a large enough propertied class in either country for this to work considering the military requirements for the time. Unfortunately, she does not further contextualize that example. This is one of many examples in the book where an economic analysis, even one that just demonstrates that macroeconomic situation of the country at the time, would have helped to further her narrative.
Also, what I wonder now that you have asked this question is: if Sabato wrote this book as broadly as she did because of the commonalities between these republics politically, were their economic situations not as similar as they were different? I know that Intro to Latin America classes present 19th century Latin America as a region that is relatively uniform across the board in terms of macroeconomic indicators.
Hilda Sabato's book is about a history of ideas. The ideas that were present is about how republicanism came out from the Napoleonic Wars in the first decade of the nineteenth century and redrew the map of Latin America over the course of the next three decades. Sabato presented this history as a time of great experimentation in the continent which has been presented as the cause of Latin America's alleged inability to have stable political governments. However, what Sabato says that all republics are messy. However, Latin American states were more radical in their attempts to bring republicanism in their respective countries, far more so than in the United States during this time period. In short, Sabato presented a new interpretation of this history that tries to shatter what everyone thinks of Latin American states: they are prone to political instability and have always been.
I agree that Sabato has altered my perception of Latin American republics by arguing that many of the peculiarities we may blame for their instability were intentional experiments with how to organize a republic around the sovereignty of a unified "people". My problem with the work is that while it may be a history of ideas it is not as meaty as I may have preferred. The author is quick to claim specific examples as broadly true and forgoes areas where a deep dive could be rewarding. As someone with a political science background I would have liked to see more examination of national constitutions and the theory underpinning them. I would also like a deeper discussion of the process of constitutional change which permitted a change from majority vote winners to more proportional representation.
Kurt- I agree with you, there are different concepts and perspectives missing in her analysis that would contribute to a more well-rounded understanding of this time period. I think she also could have delved more into the economics side of things, analyzing the ways in which the elite were benefitting monetarily by hoarding so much power and looking into the economic factors that shaped those countries.
Hilda Sabato's “Republics of the New World: The Revolutionary Political Experiment in the 19 Century Latin America” was an unique perspective in viewing the nineteenth-century republics of the Western Hemisphere and specifically the Latin American Republics. The overview and the thought of how republican governments formed in the Americas and then conversely how they struggled adapting due to various factors such as the lack of communal sense that government was supposed to provide. The presentation on shortcomings i found easier to understand what was happening rather then if the book presented the Republics as failures. One problem that I found with this reading however was its lack of citing primary sources. The majority if not all of the sources cited are from within the last 30 years. I filled the slightly undermines some of Sabato's arguments. I understand the author's purpose was to follow the lives of ordinary citizens rather than the wives of those who history has deemed more important by societal standards. However the argument about community could have been strengthened. For example when Sabato talks about the Catholic Church and the diverse group of people who joined it's religious orders. It would have been useful to have some statistics that the church would have kept of the various people at different parishes and monasteries in the region. That primary source could’ve been used to prove the point that people in these minorities chose the church over government. Also when speaking of revolutions it would have been helpful to have execution records or records of arms distribution. These numbers could have given a more refined idea of participation or accuracy of reports. I'm eager to discuss this in class to hear everybody else's thoughts on this book.
Stephen, I found this was hardest part of reading this book--I'm much more used to micro views of history, of the extreme zoom-in on a specific place and moment--and I struggled with remembering that her purpose was to provide the big overview of similarities and connections, with minor forays into how specific questions were answered by the different nations. I wanted to see more specifics and more examples, but alas, that was not her purpose or her method, which I found frustrating.
I agree with both of you in concerns to the perspective of the book. It was such an interesting transition going from Recreating Africa in which there were so many individuals stories that made up the author's arguments, whereas here Sabato was attempting to generalize the Republican experiment throughout the region, and thus limited the number of specific examples. I am not going to lie, I wondered multiple times whether this was a history book, or whether it would be considered political science, or a political history book that was too large in scope to give the narrowly focused examples that History students are accustomed to. The methodology and writing were very different from what we have been reading in prior weeks, but it is also fair to say that none of the prior books tackled a subject as large as this one.
I think her purpose was not to analyze primary sources, but rather to reflect on how we understand "republican" government in this place and time, mostly by reinterpreting or adding onto previous historical understandings. I agree that it was a big change from looking at some of the specific cases that we saw in the last couple books. I also found several moments in the book, like the one you mentioned about the Catholic Church, where I would have loved a deeper look into primary sources to understand that concept better. But I felt she did a good job overall of acknowledging those limitations of the scope of her own work and where more study needs to be done.
Hello Jen, Rafael, and Katie, First off I would like to thank all three of you for respond to my post. Jen: I think you and I our on the same page that some empirical would be nice and help strengthen the author's argument. Maybe a follow up book is in order looking at the statistics and going a bit more in depth? Rafael: I agree that this book does take a big step towards being political science. Hopefully more books are written on the this topic that look into the specific aspects Sabato brought up. Sabato's idea is very interesting and i would enjoy getting into the details that hopefully prove her point. Katie: I agree with you that she did do a good job. To her defense she did leave the names of some newspapers that could be found if someone really wanted to go and find what she was talking about.
Well, I would say it's not political science because it doesn't exactly start from normative assumptions about what republicanism is and then discuss variation and divergences, but rather starts from the assumption that all these places were engaging with something they understood as republicanism but that had no set meaning and that it then developed meaning as part of a historical process. That is, she's much more interested in how concepts and ideologies develop historically than she is in evaluating those concepts/ideologies in and of themselves. Of course, there is a fair amount of overlap.
As an American Studies person, I think I sometimes take for granted how novel the American experiment was at the time. Sabado’s book helps raise all the questions of what it means to be a republic and the different questions the framers could have asked. In light of current politics, I find her assertion that public voice as a key piece of the republic political experiment a great reminder that we have an obligation in a republic to engage in discourse about the issues. Sabado highlights the press as one key piece of the machinery, with newspapers an especially strong component. But she also takes the time to highlight the “modern” coffeehouses and salons as key, also. The idea that “public opinion” being one authentically representing the view of the public was a new idea, which in itself feels so foreign (although I do see how perhaps some authoritarians may have dictated what the public opinion was). The third piece of public engagement that she cites is the public mobilization of the people—the physical engagement of people in public spaces to demonstrate and to protest. When we look at the images of the National Mall during the protests of the 1960s, we can see people in the reflection pool and filling the mall everywhere there weren’t buildings. Contemporary protests show protestors penned into smaller areas using barricades so as not to “disrupt”—which seems like the point of the protest. Sabado points out that the newspapers were no longer for elites because the “space for public initiative, collective discussion, and group action expanded and gave room to the expression of different interests and opinions” (153). Perhaps it is the space for a diversity of opinions where current American culture needs to reconsider priorities. This macro-view of the importance of public opinion in the creation and maintenance of republics gave me an important reminder of our civic responsibility to engage in the political process. (Sorry I’m missing the discussion)
I am not an American Studies student, but I agree that Sabato’s book shines a light on the development of the U.S. as well as Latin America (Second Amendment, anyone?). Her take on public opinion somehow needing to be unitary and representative of the people writ large is interesting, and I agree, it’s a concept that it’s hard to wrap my head around. In essence, she seems to be arguing that 19th century political participants believed that public opinion can be better understood as public consensus, and it’s hard to make sense of how that is going to work in any meaningful way given that a hetergeneous society is certainly going to consist of individuals with different backgrounds and priorities.
That said, I’m going to follow you on your tangent, as I’m interested by what you’re saying about public mobilization in the contemporary US, and how we see it playing out, but I’m not sure that I agree with your categorization/comparison between “then” and “now.” First, I do think there’s a distinction between permitted (as in a permit to peaceably assemble under the first amendment is granted) public mobilization (be it on the National Mall in the 1960s or 2017 and I would posit that 2017 looked very much like the 1960s in terms of crowd spilling out everywhere) and civil disobedience (which by definition is extra-legal and doesn’t seek permits such as, for example, the spontaneous airport protests in January of 2017). I’m not sure that your categorization takes the distinction between public mobilization versus extra-legal protest into account as we certainly see many examples of contemporary protests that are not penned into small areas (e.g., BLM protests blocking traffic, the Occupy movement spilling out of Zuccotti Park, etc.). Given that, I’m not sure what lessons we can draw from the public mobilizations of 19th century Spanish America other than that we need to be careful in how we think about subcategories of public mobilization then or now, although I agree that one purpose of protest is disruption/civil disobedience.
Sabato’s description of the political history of Latin America, writ large, was a useful description of some of the forces at work in 19th century Latin America and I agree with Stephen that it sets the table for an interesting class discussion. I was intrigued by her thesis that in these 19th century early republics, the armed citizen served as protector of the republican governments against despotism and corruption and that therefore armed revolution was a feature of these republican systems, not a flaw. In particular, I thought she provided an illuminating discussion of the divide between the positive connotations of armed, militia-led revolution as protection against despotism/tyranny versus the negative connotation of armed revolt seeking additional social demands/rights (in other words, it’s cool to take down potential despots, but not to revolt in search of more equitable social structures). I would have liked her to explore some examples of varying government responses to allow us to evaluate her evidence (like Stephen, I was frustrated by the general lack of citation to/discussion of primary sources — in particular, her discussion of the growing freedom of the press seemed to cry out for analysis of all the contemporaneous press’s take on three of her categories — elections, public mobilizations/associations, and armed revolution against political corruption/despotism).
That said, although she is clear that her book does not and cannot cover every aspect of 19th century Latin America (See 205 “No doubt other dimensions of social life may help understand that history, but I argue that politics itself may offer some clues that are not reducible to any other instance”), I thought her analysis was weakened by some obvious categories it left out. In addition to Rafael’s point that economic realities shaped the 19th century politics (and also I would like to know how these political structures mediated the shift from mercantilism to capitalism), I thought she fell short in the discussion of the end of the militia era where she failed to discuss the technological “improvements” in weaponry that made an armed citizenry protecting against despotism largely beside the point. But most egregious to me, as it seemed directly related to the political realm, was her failure to discuss the existence or lack thereof of an independent judiciary in mediating the development of these early republics. In particular, a strong judiciary would have served as a referee for the due process portion of contested elections, and potentially obviated the need for armed revolution as a protection against corruption/despotism. Similarly, a strong judiciary would have been tasked with protecting the civil rights necessary for establishment of a strong public sphere. Her book left me curious about the state of the judiciary in 19th century Spanish America, and wondering what the Constitutional provisions were for an independent judiciary as well as what efforts were made to build public trust in the judiciary. (Sorry, I obviously can’t take off my lawyer hat completely.)
Sabato focuses her argument on politics because it is in this realm that the idea of "the people" was created, and this concept was essential to understanding the changes worldwide during the 19th century. Part of the turmoil that took place in many new American republics was over defining who the people were, how their votes were counted (and if they were counted accurately), and how to secure the support of the people. This, in a way, was a form of stability.
In attempting to stick to Republic governments supported by the people, conflict arose. I was interested to read that in some new republics, the official army was not granted suffrage because they were not considered to have self-determination. Looking through a 21st century lens, it seems inevitable that conflict would arise from these attempts to have a government supported totally by the people. However, I think Sabato makes a good point that what we consider "order" now -- peaceful and predictable succession of power -- may not have been considered order in the same way in the 19th century (p. 189). They had just thrown off the rule of "stable" monarchy. Yes, there were clear conflicts and instability in the new republics of Latin America. But some things remained constant, including the settled social structure that allowed only limited mobility.
What stuck out a lot to me was the sort of central theme that the power of the people played throughout the book. It makes sense that most of the political story throughout Latin America does depend largely on the opinion of the public even though it seems to be in a much different way that we think of it in the United States. Sabato seems to laying out the idea that most of the turmoil and chaos that consistently remains throughout the 19th century can be traced back to how much power is given to the people. As I see it, these republics trusted this power to the people which is evidenced by the increasing expansion of people allowed to participate in politics and vote. However, with the creation and growth in influence of the different political clubs, it seems like specific groups with their own interest were able to exploit the system for their own gain by focusing their power as a representative of public opinion. Ultimately, it seems these groups clash with rivalries as the own base of support often shifts based on current events and other factors of influence such as the newpapers and written media described in chapter 4.
Overall, I'm left wondering more about what the larger consequences might have been for those who were opposing the development of this system along the way. I think Sabato does a good job of outlining most everything involved with this story and perhaps there was not much opposition to speak of as it was a system that favored those who could just jump in and manipulate it for their own gain. Although that's probably me being a little vague as there is obviously a lot going on here once again thanks to the very heavy weight an individual actually seems to have at this time.
Hello Nick, You bring up and interesting question with "What the the larger consequences might have been for those who were opposing the development of this system along the way?". It is slightly brought up on the chapter with revolutions. After reading my classmates comments on my blog post i believe i may have slightly missed the point of the book in how it was trying to articulate the idea of how Latin American Republics have gotten to their political development today. I however still wish their was more empirical evidence for the points made in this book.
Nick-- do you mean opposition to the system (liberal republicanism) or opposition to the government? Of course, there was a lot of the latter. As for the former, there were always conservatives, but they participated in the republican system. I think you raise a really really important point about the room there might have been in the system as it worked out for a wide variety of positions to be articulated-- even those that were, in theory, antithetical to liberalism (see my comments on my own work). Is this because the state was weak or because the system was constructed a certain way? (Or was the system created a certain way because the state was weak?....)
Ahem... I categorically denounce the idea of republics as efficient or beneficial forms of governance/democracy. They are at best a concession from elite authority to some modicum of working class control, and at worst an oligarchical elite circle of corporatist shills pretending at democracy. I also reject outright Sabato's assertion that "19th century politics was not exclusively an elite affair... implicated larger sectors of the population in politically significant forms or organization and action." First off way more farmers and working class people died for that "participation" than any elite capitalist, regardless of how vulnerable they may have been to popular revolt, agricultural and working class people bleed their republics into existence the plutocrats did not. Secondly, logic would dictate that if these previously thought to be forgotten proletarians of democratic participation got anything like what was best for them, "direct democracy did not prosper" wouldn't be a quote from this book.
That aside, I thought this was a great book for someone who has so little working knowledge on the region under analysis for the semester. Sabato offers a concise and objective analysis on the formation of the various forms of republics in "Spanish America." While I could reiterate the details of what was a very oddly configured book (footnotes at the end of each chapter, it was like the book wanted a conscientious reader to get a paper cut) I will instead focus on what was perhaps the biggest realization for me. Within all the text concerning militias, popular opinion, sovereignty, unitary, federated, and confederated republics and their perspective formations I realized how racist the US interpretation of Latin American geopolitics has been. Considering the US had Shay's Rebellion (1786), the Whiskey Rebellion (1794), Fries Rebellion (1800), the Baltimore Rebellion/Riot (1812), and Dorr's Rebellion all before the Civil War, which was in my humble opinion was started by an extreme radical (compliment) and his interracial band of revolutionaries, the history of the formation of the US republic is no less chaotic (and in some cases much less liberatory) than that of Latin America's many stories of republic formation. This overt racism towards the southern half of this hemisphere is not knew to me, nor the persistent racialization of working class people in popular tropes. What was new, is seeing the many parallels that make the already known racist narrative not only racist, but largely a series of lies not doubt predicated on the liberal notion of "American Exceptionalism" and it older and more conservative progenitor "Manifest Destiny." Although some important topics such as the economy were completely left out, the book offers a quick introduction to the political formations of the region that I am sure will aid in the chronological procession of the course analysis.
Because there is no EDIT option i am editing via a reply. As it pertains to my first paragraph: the distinction between the level of participation between working class and farmers to that of the elites is a bit romanticized/neglected by Sabato's. While I am no expert of the region, the brief overview of the regions rebellions/transformations which formed these republics involved blood, something the rich never give, unless it leads to immortality capitalist vampires.
I agree completely with the lackadaisical approach to bottom-up methodology, especially with the quote you used: "19th century politics was not exclusively an elite affair... implicated larger sectors of the population in politically significant forms or organization and action." I'm not convinced of her argument in that regard, but again, like you, appreciate the overview of the region and find commonalities in U.S. experiences. Good thinking on that, by the way: the downplaying of Latin American republican experimentation in the larger context of the Western hemisphere definitely was meant to bolster the U.S. perspective more. Can't say I'm surprised, though.
So, Jason, I think your point about the overall assumptions about Latin American history is crucial, and in many are ways Sabato's main point. On the question of wide-spread participation. Here's what we know from the last 15 or so years of historiography (that she is drawing on, and that, to be transparent, includes my own work): a wide variety of people DID participate in republican processes and did get invested in them in all kinds of ways. And I would argue strongly that they ALSO shaped the way they turned out. This doesn't mean at all that things turned out better for them, or that the republican systems in Latin America were particularly conducive to popular input (although in some ways they were because of the larger franchise). It just means that our assumptions about two things are likely wrong: 1) historians and others assumed for years that poor people (indigenous people, peasants, workers) were so beaten down in Latin America that they had pretty much no political engagement; and 2) liberalism was an all-powerful juggernaut that unequivocally and completely crushed those same people. In my own research, what I find is that by engaging with the policies and practices of liberal republicanism, indigenous people in southern Mexico were able to shape and shift their meaning on the ground and in some cases significantly limit things like loss of autonomy and loss of land that we have long assumed to have been the automatic results of liberal policy. The extent to which and the ways in which local folks could do this varied a LOT across Latin America, and were very situational-- I do a comparison in which one group is relatively successful (in Oaxaca) and another is ultimately not (Yucatan). I don't think Sabato quite captures this, because she's so focussed on broad points about politics and doesn't pay a whole lot of attention to what was at stake economically for the people in question, and she doesn't have a lot of say about what it meant practically that people participated in politics.
I guess my question is similar to one we've asked before. Can we seriously engage with the way that actual people dealt with what they were presented with (liberalism, slavery, conquest) and recognize both their agency and their (usually pretty limited, but not always) power while also focussing on the negative/harmful nature of much of the larger forces at play (colonialism, liberalism, slavery) and the enormous power imbalance they present?
As an example of what Sabato might miss by leaving out economics, from my work: In Oaxaca, indigenous people adopted the language and many of the practices of liberal republicanism while in many ways grafting them onto older traditional governance forms. Because the elite was more or less utterly dependent on indigenous production (of both food and cochineal, the red dye that was Oaxaca's main export), elites did not have the power to force a more "real" adoption of the new policies and in many ways didn't want to. Indigenous people retained much of their autonomy and most of their land for pretty much the whole century. In Yucatan, non-indigenous people were a larger portion of the population and saw opportunities to move into the countryside to introduce new kinds of production, and they were less amenable to the same kinds of attempts to shape the practical meanings of liberal policy, ultimately pushing indigenous people into an enormous rebellion (the "Caste War).
Jason-- does she every actually say that the fact that people were "implicated" in politics means that people "got anything like what was best for them"? I'm not sure that she takes a stand on this one way or another.
Professor- I think in the chapter on the militia, and its later incarnation of the National Guard, Sabato is suggesting that the farmers and working class of these regions were able to bypass the strictures of hierarchy that would have limited their participation within the republican constructs developing during the periods where armed militia played n active role in these political evolution's. However, that at the end of this period of erratic construction these agricultural and working class based militias were folded into the direct jurisdiction of state, although not always centralized, the development of these institutions of force within the liberal constructs of republicanism which is both capitalist and class based still leave these poor and working class members of the society with nothing but their labor to bargain with, and no direct control over the functions or directives of institutional authority. In short, while Sabato never definitively claims that anyone got everything they wanted, the very result of this sociopolitical evolution being republicanism means that definitionally there are still those who will be left with not getting anything like what was best for them. While it is not the same thing, it still rings of the serf who fights for his Lord in that the serf neither decides on the terms for which there is fighting, nor on the reward for living. This is why I find both democratic republics, and the ideology of liberalism, to be concessionary in their application as it pertains to the lives of everyday people.
Is it fair to say that while they certainly didn't get what was best for them (I don't anyone would say that), they might have, in some ways and in some instances, gotten better than what was worst for them? That is, that the nature of the system (which was based on popular participation in theory and thus introduced some institutions that allowed for it, even if the elite really didn't think the actual people were up to it) opened up cracks into which some people were able to stick their feet to their advantage, even though it didn't threaten the system itself (although it may have undermined it)? I don't disagree that liberal republicanism is concessionary, I just think that if we are going to understand how it actually played out we need to see how everyone engaged it and what exactly they did and didn't get out of it. [To go back to my work for a second, one thing I argue is that because there were so many local and regional and ethnic understandings of what liberalism actually was, based on people's ability to shape it to their needs in crucial ways, when the state tried to impose a more strict and orthodox version of liberalism later in the century they met concerted resistance and that is many ways the sources of instability...]
For everyone who is dissatisfied with the format of the book, it probably makes sense to say this that what she is doing is trying to capture the main elements of a sea change in the historiography on the nineteenth century in the past quarter-century or so. Her analysis rests on a vast amount of deep historical work that folks have been doing in terms of reinterpreting the republican era and the nature of Latin American republicanism. She probably could have captured that better with more examples. But this is more of a historical/historiographical essay than it is a monograph.
Things to think about as you read for next week that I think you've all nicely captured here: --what do we make of the implicit comparison with the United States that comes out of looking at Latin America's nineteenth century? --how is a narrative about "the way Latin America is" already developing in the nineteenth century among Latin American elites and how does it come out of both ideology and actual lived experience?
I was repeatedly struck by the commonalities and differences with political systems I am already familiar with and how Latin America evolved different forms or traditions when beginning from a common position. When the idea of political works is introduced the footnote mentions that violent protest was a common, organized response to a negative result for a party. This was contextualized as part of the shift towards party organization which was felt to represent particular interests rather than the whole of "the people". This appeared to me as a contrast within the US political system in which peaceful transitions of power and calls for reconciliation between the parties have been the, not uninterrupted, norm. This difference then ties in to a common point in US and Latin American political history where parties were not considered a good thing to have and constitutions were written for a majority winner system which does not recognize the existence of parties. This history diverged when, according to Sabato, Latin America reacted to the consolidation of political parties as permanent fixtures by adopting electoral systems that have more in common with those of Europe. The US has persisted in an insistence that parties are not a major part of the structure of governmental organization. This fiction has led to the big tent parties and all the peculiarities they bring with them, including parties experiencing internal pressure towards ideological purity more strongly than any external pressure from third parties. In this comparison I find that Latin American politics better reflects the diversity of a population's political views and is, as the author argues, in many way more democratic.
Great observation Kurt! The Force is strong with you. Also, I couldn't agree more. I think that both the similarities and differences between the US and Latin America's sociopolitical evolution's are a major part of what Sabato is trying to present in the book. I think this is an important point since from the US perspective the narrative has largely presented the US as more democratic and advanced which justifies the paternalistic and far too often violent interference by the US in Latin America. Sabato wrecks that narrative. But again, a really great observation and articulation of that point.
Yes, great observations. What gets really interesting is when we get to talking about how people in BOTH places start telling stories about what the difference is between the two places/systems and why that matters. (See next week...)
What I really liked about Sabato’s take on 19th-century Latin American government is the ways in which republicanism became pervasive and diverse throughout different regions. In particular, the idea of each citizen being seen as an integral part of the country, and by extension, they were granted a broad range of political rights. Despite this radical take on citizenship and authority, there was still not a lot of social mobility at this time. This led to a static class system, with elites hoarding power and resources which would contribute to the inevitable destabilization of the government and its constituents. Like some of my classmates, I did find issues with the formatting and citing of the book. It left much to be desired and did not allow us to properly assess the sources being used.
Yes-- that contrast between (if we agree) "more democracy" and less social mobility is really interesting-- it also raises all sorts of questions about what larger economic issues underlay the social structure, that she doesn't get into. Is there no social mobility in part because there is no basic change in the economic structure? And why, given (as we know from Cromwell), we DO see a shift in trade patterns toward freer international trade? (Also see Rafael's comment above.)
Hello again. I want to comment about another book that I read about the topic of Latin American republics. The book is titled "Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of American Revolutions" by Caitlin Fitz. This book is about how the United States and Americans saw the age of independence in Latin America. There were toasts that were given in the name of Simon Bolivar and their were children who were named after the revolutionary general (pg. 127). However, the celebrations are short-lived. As Latin America were becoming sovereign states, the United States had to wrestle with the impact of these events. The big thing was that the United States, especially in the South were increasing uncomfortable about how Latin American politicians where in some countries had racial equality and blacks in high positions in the government and military. It was one of the reasons that the United States did not attend the Panama Congress after a nasty debate in Congress in 1826 (pg. 201-239). This passage revealed how the debate of US-Latin American relations where heavily influenced by the question of slavery in the United States.
This brief section that I wrote in the previous paragraph shows that the book is about politcal history. However, the book by Fitz was more detailed than Sabato had in her book. It would had been better to read Fitz's book to learn more about this topic of Latin American republics. However, the book by Fitz focused on how the United States viewed the revolutions in Latin America. Sabato, on the other hand focused on Latin America but it was too general for myself. Fitz provided examples that back up her thesis. It is one of the history books that I read that really enjoyed and I hope everyone is able to have the chance to read it.
It was interesting to see through Sabato's "Republic's of the New World," how Latin American elites fought to gain control of power in what she calls "the political experiment of the new Latin American governments." I don't have anything against the book per se (I really enjoyed reading it) but I do have some comments, with a XXI-century perspective, on that experiment. I think that the "liberal promise" has failed miserably; whereas, the elite's initial intent, the "experiment" has been a success. My takes are based solely on The Republic of Colombia.
It seems like the aforementioned country never left that state of trial and error. Political violence has never ceased in Colombia. Dozens and dozens of social leaders and also candidates from alternative political current, are killed monthly by ultra-right militias (para-military groups.) These groups, along with the state's armed forces, have been engaged in an almost seventy-year war against "irregulars," or guerrillas if you will. Intimidation at the ballot box is still common. Denouncements of "fraud," manipulation, censorship etc. are common to hear from our ruling class. I know it must feel like I am doing a summary of the book but it is that country's state in the twenty-first century. All of this, alongside very low voting numbers from the population, tells us that Colombia has not been able to move away from that culture of fear and violence and it is a matter of the some and the few (instead of the many and the few.)
In what the experiment was successful was in solidifying the elite into the new ruling class' hold in power. They are not risking their lives, or their son's or daughters', for the sake of the nation like they used to do in the early republic--now they have the rest of the people doing it for them. Also, hey are not killing each other anymore thus consolidating them even further.
What I get from this book is a hypothesis that the Latin American Republic in the 19th century was a regional experiment in which the fragmented and contrasting imaginations of what republican government, sovereign authority, and democracy should look like created a continually bellicose political environment. The constant strive for popular embodiment in national government then led to the continual underdevelopment of Latin American economies due to constant warfare either between citizens of the same country or through transnational warfare. I also see Hilda Sabato as arguing that this obsession over sovereignty and republicanism, mixed with the checks and balances created through local militias and armies rather than through judicial means, was part of Latin American republican idealism in the 19th century, even if the historiography tends to paint it as a warmongering region that was never able to come to terms with itself. I tend to agree, as I find it interesting that it can be argued that Latin American republics in the 19th century were too democratic (in the Greek "strength of the common people" sense) for economic stability that would have helped Latin America to compete during the Industrial Revolution. These "economic successes" under dictatorships would set a precedent, which would then be used by various military regimes in Latin America in the middle of the 20th century. It is interesting to observe the relationship between democracy and economics in Latin American history.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, it would have helped if Sabato embedded an economic analysis within the book because, in my opinion, the political instability in the 19th century created a crushing debt across the region, opening up the avenue for dictators to come in for the sake of political and economic stability, the most salient example being Porfirio Diaz. As a corollary of political instability, economic instability also opened the avenues for foreign capitalists to come in and secure market dominance and to exploit the region for cheap labor, thus exacerbating the difference in economic power between the colonial powers and these new republics.
I agree with you Rafael. I thought it was odd that Sabato did not bring up economic changes during the 19th century in Latin America. She was too focused on the ideas of republicanism that she left out the fact that economics does play a role in how history pans out over time. I believe that she did not mention it because the economic legacy of 19th century Latin American history does not come into full effect until the next century. If Sabato did brought up economics, this book would had been longer or had a different premise all together.
DeleteQuestion: what would it look like if she put an economic analysis about what political elites were trying to accomplish economically alongside this political one? How might it shape not just the overall story about success of failure but also the story about how elites related to everyone else?
DeleteHi Professor,
DeleteI have many questions about how the book would look like with an economic analysis embedded within it, especially since I feel that people tend to have a political purview based upon a mixture of political idealism and personal and communal incentivization. I thought of my comment upon reading that in the 1840s, countries like Venezuela and Peru attempted to have militias that were similar to Roman legions during the Republic in which propertied citizens would make up the militias because they could afford to equip themselves. She mentions that this differed from most other republics, and the proposal to limit militia enrollment according to those who could afford to equip themselves had very limited success. My assumption was that there just wasn't a large enough propertied class in either country for this to work considering the military requirements for the time. Unfortunately, she does not further contextualize that example. This is one of many examples in the book where an economic analysis, even one that just demonstrates that macroeconomic situation of the country at the time, would have helped to further her narrative.
Also, what I wonder now that you have asked this question is: if Sabato wrote this book as broadly as she did because of the commonalities between these republics politically, were their economic situations not as similar as they were different? I know that Intro to Latin America classes present 19th century Latin America as a region that is relatively uniform across the board in terms of macroeconomic indicators.
Hilda Sabato's book is about a history of ideas. The ideas that were present is about how republicanism came out from the Napoleonic Wars in the first decade of the nineteenth century and redrew the map of Latin America over the course of the next three decades. Sabato presented this history as a time of great experimentation in the continent which has been presented as the cause of Latin America's alleged inability to have stable political governments. However, what Sabato says that all republics are messy. However, Latin American states were more radical in their attempts to bring republicanism in their respective countries, far more so than in the United States during this time period. In short, Sabato presented a new interpretation of this history that tries to shatter what everyone thinks of Latin American states: they are prone to political instability and have always been.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Sabato has altered my perception of Latin American republics by arguing that many of the peculiarities we may blame for their instability were intentional experiments with how to organize a republic around the sovereignty of a unified "people". My problem with the work is that while it may be a history of ideas it is not as meaty as I may have preferred. The author is quick to claim specific examples as broadly true and forgoes areas where a deep dive could be rewarding. As someone with a political science background I would have liked to see more examination of national constitutions and the theory underpinning them. I would also like a deeper discussion of the process of constitutional change which permitted a change from majority vote winners to more proportional representation.
DeleteKurt- I agree with you, there are different concepts and perspectives missing in her analysis that would contribute to a more well-rounded understanding of this time period. I think she also could have delved more into the economics side of things, analyzing the ways in which the elite were benefitting monetarily by hoarding so much power and looking into the economic factors that shaped those countries.
DeleteHilda Sabato's “Republics of the New World: The Revolutionary Political Experiment in the 19 Century Latin America” was an unique perspective in viewing the nineteenth-century republics of the Western Hemisphere and specifically the Latin American Republics. The overview and the thought of how republican governments formed in the Americas and then conversely how they struggled adapting due to various factors such as the lack of communal sense that government was supposed to provide. The presentation on shortcomings i found easier to understand what was happening rather then if the book presented the Republics as failures. One problem that I found with this reading however was its lack of citing primary sources. The majority if not all of the sources cited are from within the last 30 years. I filled the slightly undermines some of Sabato's arguments. I understand the author's purpose was to follow the lives of ordinary citizens rather than the wives of those who history has deemed more important by societal standards. However the argument about community could have been strengthened. For example when Sabato talks about the Catholic Church and the diverse group of people who joined it's religious orders. It would have been useful to have some statistics that the church would have kept of the various people at different parishes and monasteries in the region. That primary source could’ve been used to prove the point that people in these minorities chose the church over government. Also when speaking of revolutions it would have been helpful to have execution records or records of arms distribution. These numbers could have given a more refined idea of participation or accuracy of reports. I'm eager to discuss this in class to hear everybody else's thoughts on this book.
ReplyDeleteStephen, I found this was hardest part of reading this book--I'm much more used to micro views of history, of the extreme zoom-in on a specific place and moment--and I struggled with remembering that her purpose was to provide the big overview of similarities and connections, with minor forays into how specific questions were answered by the different nations. I wanted to see more specifics and more examples, but alas, that was not her purpose or her method, which I found frustrating.
DeleteHi Stephen and Jen,
DeleteI agree with both of you in concerns to the perspective of the book. It was such an interesting transition going from Recreating Africa in which there were so many individuals stories that made up the author's arguments, whereas here Sabato was attempting to generalize the Republican experiment throughout the region, and thus limited the number of specific examples. I am not going to lie, I wondered multiple times whether this was a history book, or whether it would be considered political science, or a political history book that was too large in scope to give the narrowly focused examples that History students are accustomed to. The methodology and writing were very different from what we have been reading in prior weeks, but it is also fair to say that none of the prior books tackled a subject as large as this one.
I think her purpose was not to analyze primary sources, but rather to reflect on how we understand "republican" government in this place and time, mostly by reinterpreting or adding onto previous historical understandings. I agree that it was a big change from looking at some of the specific cases that we saw in the last couple books. I also found several moments in the book, like the one you mentioned about the Catholic Church, where I would have loved a deeper look into primary sources to understand that concept better. But I felt she did a good job overall of acknowledging those limitations of the scope of her own work and where more study needs to be done.
DeleteHello Jen, Rafael, and Katie,
DeleteFirst off I would like to thank all three of you for respond to my post.
Jen: I think you and I our on the same page that some empirical would be nice and help strengthen the author's argument. Maybe a follow up book is in order looking at the statistics and going a bit more in depth?
Rafael: I agree that this book does take a big step towards being political science. Hopefully more books are written on the this topic that look into the specific aspects Sabato brought up. Sabato's idea is very interesting and i would enjoy getting into the details that hopefully prove her point.
Katie: I agree with you that she did do a good job. To her defense she did leave the names of some newspapers that could be found if someone really wanted to go and find what she was talking about.
Best
Stephen Dalina
Well, I would say it's not political science because it doesn't exactly start from normative assumptions about what republicanism is and then discuss variation and divergences, but rather starts from the assumption that all these places were engaging with something they understood as republicanism but that had no set meaning and that it then developed meaning as part of a historical process. That is, she's much more interested in how concepts and ideologies develop historically than she is in evaluating those concepts/ideologies in and of themselves. Of course, there is a fair amount of overlap.
DeleteHilda Sabado, Republics of the New World
ReplyDeleteAs an American Studies person, I think I sometimes take for granted how novel the American experiment was at the time. Sabado’s book helps raise all the questions of what it means to be a republic and the different questions the framers could have asked. In light of current politics, I find her assertion that public voice as a key piece of the republic political experiment a great reminder that we have an obligation in a republic to engage in discourse about the issues. Sabado highlights the press as one key piece of the machinery, with newspapers an especially strong component. But she also takes the time to highlight the “modern” coffeehouses and salons as key, also. The idea that “public opinion” being one authentically representing the view of the public was a new idea, which in itself feels so foreign (although I do see how perhaps some authoritarians may have dictated what the public opinion was). The third piece of public engagement that she cites is the public mobilization of the people—the physical engagement of people in public spaces to demonstrate and to protest. When we look at the images of the National Mall during the protests of the 1960s, we can see people in the reflection pool and filling the mall everywhere there weren’t buildings. Contemporary protests show protestors penned into smaller areas using barricades so as not to “disrupt”—which seems like the point of the protest.
Sabado points out that the newspapers were no longer for elites because the “space for public initiative, collective discussion, and group action expanded and gave room to the expression of different interests and opinions” (153). Perhaps it is the space for a diversity of opinions where current American culture needs to reconsider priorities. This macro-view of the importance of public opinion in the creation and maintenance of republics gave me an important reminder of our civic responsibility to engage in the political process.
(Sorry I’m missing the discussion)
I am not an American Studies student, but I agree that Sabato’s book shines a light on the development of the U.S. as well as Latin America (Second Amendment, anyone?). Her take on public opinion somehow needing to be unitary and representative of the people writ large is interesting, and I agree, it’s a concept that it’s hard to wrap my head around. In essence, she seems to be arguing that 19th century political participants believed that public opinion can be better understood as public consensus, and it’s hard to make sense of how that is going to work in any meaningful way given that a hetergeneous society is certainly going to consist of individuals with different backgrounds and priorities.
DeleteThat said, I’m going to follow you on your tangent, as I’m interested by what you’re saying about public mobilization in the contemporary US, and how we see it playing out, but I’m not sure that I agree with your categorization/comparison between “then” and “now.” First, I do think there’s a distinction between permitted (as in a permit to peaceably assemble under the first amendment is granted) public mobilization (be it on the National Mall in the 1960s or 2017 and I would posit that 2017 looked very much like the 1960s in terms of crowd spilling out everywhere) and civil disobedience (which by definition is extra-legal and doesn’t seek permits such as, for example, the spontaneous airport protests in January of 2017). I’m not sure that your categorization takes the distinction between public mobilization versus extra-legal protest into account as we certainly see many examples of contemporary protests that are not penned into small areas (e.g., BLM protests blocking traffic, the Occupy movement spilling out of Zuccotti Park, etc.). Given that, I’m not sure what lessons we can draw from the public mobilizations of 19th century Spanish America other than that we need to be careful in how we think about subcategories of public mobilization then or now, although I agree that one purpose of protest is disruption/civil disobedience.
Sabato’s description of the political history of Latin America, writ large, was a useful description of some of the forces at work in 19th century Latin America and I agree with Stephen that it sets the table for an interesting class discussion. I was intrigued by her thesis that in these 19th century early republics, the armed citizen served as protector of the republican governments against despotism and corruption and that therefore armed revolution was a feature of these republican systems, not a flaw. In particular, I thought she provided an illuminating discussion of the divide between the positive connotations of armed, militia-led revolution as protection against despotism/tyranny versus the negative connotation of armed revolt seeking additional social demands/rights (in other words, it’s cool to take down potential despots, but not to revolt in search of more equitable social structures). I would have liked her to explore some examples of varying government responses to allow us to evaluate her evidence (like Stephen, I was frustrated by the general lack of citation to/discussion of primary sources — in particular, her discussion of the growing freedom of the press seemed to cry out for analysis of all the contemporaneous press’s take on three of her categories — elections, public mobilizations/associations, and armed revolution against political corruption/despotism).
ReplyDeleteThat said, although she is clear that her book does not and cannot cover every aspect of 19th century Latin America (See 205 “No doubt other dimensions of social life may help understand that history, but I argue that politics itself may offer some clues that are not reducible to any other instance”), I thought her analysis was weakened by some obvious categories it left out. In addition to Rafael’s point that economic realities shaped the 19th century politics (and also I would like to know how these political structures mediated the shift from mercantilism to capitalism), I thought she fell short in the discussion of the end of the militia era where she failed to discuss the technological “improvements” in weaponry that made an armed citizenry protecting against despotism largely beside the point. But most egregious to me, as it seemed directly related to the political realm, was her failure to discuss the existence or lack thereof of an independent judiciary in mediating the development of these early republics. In particular, a strong judiciary would have served as a referee for the due process portion of contested elections, and potentially obviated the need for armed revolution as a protection against corruption/despotism. Similarly, a strong judiciary would have been tasked with protecting the civil rights necessary for establishment of a strong public sphere. Her book left me curious about the state of the judiciary in 19th century Spanish America, and wondering what the Constitutional provisions were for an independent judiciary as well as what efforts were made to build public trust in the judiciary. (Sorry, I obviously can’t take off my lawyer hat completely.)
Sabato focuses her argument on politics because it is in this realm that the idea of "the people" was created, and this concept was essential to understanding the changes worldwide during the 19th century. Part of the turmoil that took place in many new American republics was over defining who the people were, how their votes were counted (and if they were counted accurately), and how to secure the support of the people. This, in a way, was a form of stability.
ReplyDeleteIn attempting to stick to Republic governments supported by the people, conflict arose. I was interested to read that in some new republics, the official army was not granted suffrage because they were not considered to have self-determination. Looking through a 21st century lens, it seems inevitable that conflict would arise from these attempts to have a government supported totally by the people. However, I think Sabato makes a good point that what we consider "order" now -- peaceful and predictable succession of power -- may not have been considered order in the same way in the 19th century (p. 189). They had just thrown off the rule of "stable" monarchy. Yes, there were clear conflicts and instability in the new republics of Latin America. But some things remained constant, including the settled social structure that allowed only limited mobility.
What stuck out a lot to me was the sort of central theme that the power of the people played throughout the book. It makes sense that most of the political story throughout Latin America does depend largely on the opinion of the public even though it seems to be in a much different way that we think of it in the United States. Sabato seems to laying out the idea that most of the turmoil and chaos that consistently remains throughout the 19th century can be traced back to how much power is given to the people. As I see it, these republics trusted this power to the people which is evidenced by the increasing expansion of people allowed to participate in politics and vote. However, with the creation and growth in influence of the different political clubs, it seems like specific groups with their own interest were able to exploit the system for their own gain by focusing their power as a representative of public opinion. Ultimately, it seems these groups clash with rivalries as the own base of support often shifts based on current events and other factors of influence such as the newpapers and written media described in chapter 4.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I'm left wondering more about what the larger consequences might have been for those who were opposing the development of this system along the way. I think Sabato does a good job of outlining most everything involved with this story and perhaps there was not much opposition to speak of as it was a system that favored those who could just jump in and manipulate it for their own gain. Although that's probably me being a little vague as there is obviously a lot going on here once again thanks to the very heavy weight an individual actually seems to have at this time.
Hello Nick,
DeleteYou bring up and interesting question with "What the the larger consequences might have been for those who were opposing the development of this system along the way?". It is slightly brought up on the chapter with revolutions. After reading my classmates comments on my blog post i believe i may have slightly missed the point of the book in how it was trying to articulate the idea of how Latin American Republics have gotten to their political development today. I however still wish their was more empirical evidence for the points made in this book.
Nick-- do you mean opposition to the system (liberal republicanism) or opposition to the government? Of course, there was a lot of the latter. As for the former, there were always conservatives, but they participated in the republican system. I think you raise a really really important point about the room there might have been in the system as it worked out for a wide variety of positions to be articulated-- even those that were, in theory, antithetical to liberalism (see my comments on my own work). Is this because the state was weak or because the system was constructed a certain way? (Or was the system created a certain way because the state was weak?....)
DeleteAhem... I categorically denounce the idea of republics as efficient or beneficial forms of governance/democracy. They are at best a concession from elite authority to some modicum of working class control, and at worst an oligarchical elite circle of corporatist shills pretending at democracy. I also reject outright Sabato's assertion that "19th century politics was not exclusively an elite affair... implicated larger sectors of the population in politically significant forms or organization and action." First off way more farmers and working class people died for that "participation" than any elite capitalist, regardless of how vulnerable they may have been to popular revolt, agricultural and working class people bleed their republics into existence the plutocrats did not. Secondly, logic would dictate that if these previously thought to be forgotten proletarians of democratic participation got anything like what was best for them, "direct democracy did not prosper" wouldn't be a quote from this book.
ReplyDeleteThat aside, I thought this was a great book for someone who has so little working knowledge on the region under analysis for the semester. Sabato offers a concise and objective analysis on the formation of the various forms of republics in "Spanish America." While I could reiterate the details of what was a very oddly configured book (footnotes at the end of each chapter, it was like the book wanted a conscientious reader to get a paper cut) I will instead focus on what was perhaps the biggest realization for me. Within all the text concerning militias, popular opinion, sovereignty, unitary, federated, and confederated republics and their perspective formations I realized how racist the US interpretation of Latin American geopolitics has been. Considering the US had Shay's Rebellion (1786), the Whiskey Rebellion (1794), Fries Rebellion (1800), the Baltimore Rebellion/Riot (1812), and Dorr's Rebellion all before the Civil War, which was in my humble opinion was started by an extreme radical (compliment) and his interracial band of revolutionaries, the history of the formation of the US republic is no less chaotic (and in some cases much less liberatory) than that of Latin America's many stories of republic formation. This overt racism towards the southern half of this hemisphere is not knew to me, nor the persistent racialization of working class people in popular tropes. What was new, is seeing the many parallels that make the already known racist narrative not only racist, but largely a series of lies not doubt predicated on the liberal notion of "American Exceptionalism" and it older and more conservative progenitor "Manifest Destiny." Although some important topics such as the economy were completely left out, the book offers a quick introduction to the political formations of the region that I am sure will aid in the chronological procession of the course analysis.
Because there is no EDIT option i am editing via a reply. As it pertains to my first paragraph: the distinction between the level of participation between working class and farmers to that of the elites is a bit romanticized/neglected by Sabato's. While I am no expert of the region, the brief overview of the regions rebellions/transformations which formed these republics involved blood, something the rich never give, unless it leads to immortality capitalist vampires.
DeleteFrom Kyle:
DeleteI agree completely with the lackadaisical approach to bottom-up methodology, especially with the quote you used: "19th century politics was not exclusively an elite affair... implicated larger sectors of the population in politically significant forms or organization and action." I'm not convinced of her argument in that regard, but again, like you, appreciate the overview of the region and find commonalities in U.S. experiences. Good thinking on that, by the way: the downplaying of Latin American republican experimentation in the larger context of the Western hemisphere definitely was meant to bolster the U.S. perspective more. Can't say I'm surprised, though.
So, Jason, I think your point about the overall assumptions about Latin American history is crucial, and in many are ways Sabato's main point. On the question of wide-spread participation. Here's what we know from the last 15 or so years of historiography (that she is drawing on, and that, to be transparent, includes my own work): a wide variety of people DID participate in republican processes and did get invested in them in all kinds of ways. And I would argue strongly that they ALSO shaped the way they turned out. This doesn't mean at all that things turned out better for them, or that the republican systems in Latin America were particularly conducive to popular input (although in some ways they were because of the larger franchise). It just means that our assumptions about two things are likely wrong: 1) historians and others assumed for years that poor people (indigenous people, peasants, workers) were so beaten down in Latin America that they had pretty much no political engagement; and 2) liberalism was an all-powerful juggernaut that unequivocally and completely crushed those same people. In my own research, what I find is that by engaging with the policies and practices of liberal republicanism, indigenous people in southern Mexico were able to shape and shift their meaning on the ground and in some cases significantly limit things like loss of autonomy and loss of land that we have long assumed to have been the automatic results of liberal policy. The extent to which and the ways in which local folks could do this varied a LOT across Latin America, and were very situational-- I do a comparison in which one group is relatively successful (in Oaxaca) and another is ultimately not (Yucatan). I don't think Sabato quite captures this, because she's so focussed on broad points about politics and doesn't pay a whole lot of attention to what was at stake economically for the people in question, and she doesn't have a lot of say about what it meant practically that people participated in politics.
DeleteI guess my question is similar to one we've asked before. Can we seriously engage with the way that actual people dealt with what they were presented with (liberalism, slavery, conquest) and recognize both their agency and their (usually pretty limited, but not always) power while also focussing on the negative/harmful nature of much of the larger forces at play (colonialism, liberalism, slavery) and the enormous power imbalance they present?
For everyone:
DeleteAs an example of what Sabato might miss by leaving out economics, from my work: In Oaxaca, indigenous people adopted the language and many of the practices of liberal republicanism while in many ways grafting them onto older traditional governance forms. Because the elite was more or less utterly dependent on indigenous production (of both food and cochineal, the red dye that was Oaxaca's main export), elites did not have the power to force a more "real" adoption of the new policies and in many ways didn't want to. Indigenous people retained much of their autonomy and most of their land for pretty much the whole century. In Yucatan, non-indigenous people were a larger portion of the population and saw opportunities to move into the countryside to introduce new kinds of production, and they were less amenable to the same kinds of attempts to shape the practical meanings of liberal policy, ultimately pushing indigenous people into an enormous rebellion (the "Caste War).
Jason-- does she every actually say that the fact that people were "implicated" in politics means that people "got anything like what was best for them"? I'm not sure that she takes a stand on this one way or another.
DeleteProfessor- I think in the chapter on the militia, and its later incarnation of the National Guard, Sabato is suggesting that the farmers and working class of these regions were able to bypass the strictures of hierarchy that would have limited their participation within the republican constructs developing during the periods where armed militia played n active role in these political evolution's. However, that at the end of this period of erratic construction these agricultural and working class based militias were folded into the direct jurisdiction of state, although not always centralized, the development of these institutions of force within the liberal constructs of republicanism which is both capitalist and class based still leave these poor and working class members of the society with nothing but their labor to bargain with, and no direct control over the functions or directives of institutional authority. In short, while Sabato never definitively claims that anyone got everything they wanted, the very result of this sociopolitical evolution being republicanism means that definitionally there are still those who will be left with not getting anything like what was best for them. While it is not the same thing, it still rings of the serf who fights for his Lord in that the serf neither decides on the terms for which there is fighting, nor on the reward for living. This is why I find both democratic republics, and the ideology of liberalism, to be concessionary in their application as it pertains to the lives of everyday people.
DeleteIs it fair to say that while they certainly didn't get what was best for them (I don't anyone would say that), they might have, in some ways and in some instances, gotten better than what was worst for them? That is, that the nature of the system (which was based on popular participation in theory and thus introduced some institutions that allowed for it, even if the elite really didn't think the actual people were up to it) opened up cracks into which some people were able to stick their feet to their advantage, even though it didn't threaten the system itself (although it may have undermined it)? I don't disagree that liberal republicanism is concessionary, I just think that if we are going to understand how it actually played out we need to see how everyone engaged it and what exactly they did and didn't get out of it. [To go back to my work for a second, one thing I argue is that because there were so many local and regional and ethnic understandings of what liberalism actually was, based on people's ability to shape it to their needs in crucial ways, when the state tried to impose a more strict and orthodox version of liberalism later in the century they met concerted resistance and that is many ways the sources of instability...]
DeleteFor everyone who is dissatisfied with the format of the book, it probably makes sense to say this that what she is doing is trying to capture the main elements of a sea change in the historiography on the nineteenth century in the past quarter-century or so. Her analysis rests on a vast amount of deep historical work that folks have been doing in terms of reinterpreting the republican era and the nature of Latin American republicanism. She probably could have captured that better with more examples. But this is more of a historical/historiographical essay than it is a monograph.
ReplyDeleteThings to think about as you read for next week that I think you've all nicely captured here:
ReplyDelete--what do we make of the implicit comparison with the United States that comes out of looking at Latin America's nineteenth century?
--how is a narrative about "the way Latin America is" already developing in the nineteenth century among Latin American elites and how does it come out of both ideology and actual lived experience?
I was repeatedly struck by the commonalities and differences with political systems I am already familiar with and how Latin America evolved different forms or traditions when beginning from a common position. When the idea of political works is introduced the footnote mentions that violent protest was a common, organized response to a negative result for a party. This was contextualized as part of the shift towards party organization which was felt to represent particular interests rather than the whole of "the people". This appeared to me as a contrast within the US political system in which peaceful transitions of power and calls for reconciliation between the parties have been the, not uninterrupted, norm. This difference then ties in to a common point in US and Latin American political history where parties were not considered a good thing to have and constitutions were written for a majority winner system which does not recognize the existence of parties. This history diverged when, according to Sabato, Latin America reacted to the consolidation of political parties as permanent fixtures by adopting electoral systems that have more in common with those of Europe. The US has persisted in an insistence that parties are not a major part of the structure of governmental organization. This fiction has led to the big tent parties and all the peculiarities they bring with them, including parties experiencing internal pressure towards ideological purity more strongly than any external pressure from third parties. In this comparison I find that Latin American politics better reflects the diversity of a population's political views and is, as the author argues, in many way more democratic.
ReplyDeleteGreat observation Kurt! The Force is strong with you. Also, I couldn't agree more. I think that both the similarities and differences between the US and Latin America's sociopolitical evolution's are a major part of what Sabato is trying to present in the book. I think this is an important point since from the US perspective the narrative has largely presented the US as more democratic and advanced which justifies the paternalistic and far too often violent interference by the US in Latin America. Sabato wrecks that narrative. But again, a really great observation and articulation of that point.
DeleteYes, great observations. What gets really interesting is when we get to talking about how people in BOTH places start telling stories about what the difference is between the two places/systems and why that matters. (See next week...)
DeleteWhat I really liked about Sabato’s take on 19th-century Latin American government is the ways in which republicanism became pervasive and diverse throughout different regions. In particular, the idea of each citizen being seen as an integral part of the country, and by extension, they were granted a broad range of political rights. Despite this radical take on citizenship and authority, there was still not a lot of social mobility at this time. This led to a static class system, with elites hoarding power and resources which would contribute to the inevitable destabilization of the government and its constituents. Like some of my classmates, I did find issues with the formatting and citing of the book. It left much to be desired and did not allow us to properly assess the sources being used.
ReplyDeleteYes-- that contrast between (if we agree) "more democracy" and less social mobility is really interesting-- it also raises all sorts of questions about what larger economic issues underlay the social structure, that she doesn't get into. Is there no social mobility in part because there is no basic change in the economic structure? And why, given (as we know from Cromwell), we DO see a shift in trade patterns toward freer international trade? (Also see Rafael's comment above.)
DeleteHello again. I want to comment about another book that I read about the topic of Latin American republics. The book is titled "Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of American Revolutions" by Caitlin Fitz. This book is about how the United States and Americans saw the age of independence in Latin America. There were toasts that were given in the name of Simon Bolivar and their were children who were named after the revolutionary general (pg. 127). However, the celebrations are short-lived. As Latin America were becoming sovereign states, the United States had to wrestle with the impact of these events. The big thing was that the United States, especially in the South were increasing uncomfortable about how Latin American politicians where in some countries had racial equality and blacks in high positions in the government and military. It was one of the reasons that the United States did not attend the Panama Congress after a nasty debate in Congress in 1826 (pg. 201-239). This passage revealed how the debate of US-Latin American relations where heavily influenced by the question of slavery in the United States.
ReplyDeleteThis brief section that I wrote in the previous paragraph shows that the book is about politcal history. However, the book by Fitz was more detailed than Sabato had in her book. It would had been better to read Fitz's book to learn more about this topic of Latin American republics. However, the book by Fitz focused on how the United States viewed the revolutions in Latin America. Sabato, on the other hand focused on Latin America but it was too general for myself. Fitz provided examples that back up her thesis. It is one of the history books that I read that really enjoyed and I hope everyone is able to have the chance to read it.
It was interesting to see through Sabato's "Republic's of the New World," how Latin American elites fought to gain control of power in what she calls "the political experiment of the new Latin American governments." I don't have anything against the book per se (I really enjoyed reading it) but I do have some comments, with a XXI-century perspective, on that experiment. I think that the "liberal promise" has failed miserably; whereas, the elite's initial intent, the "experiment" has been a success. My takes are based solely on The Republic of Colombia.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like the aforementioned country never left that state of trial and error. Political violence has never ceased in Colombia. Dozens and dozens of social leaders and also candidates from alternative political current, are killed monthly by ultra-right militias (para-military groups.) These groups, along with the state's armed forces, have been engaged in an almost seventy-year war against "irregulars," or guerrillas if you will. Intimidation at the ballot box is still common. Denouncements of "fraud," manipulation, censorship etc. are common to hear from our ruling class. I know it must feel like I am doing a summary of the book but it is that country's state in the twenty-first century. All of this, alongside very low voting numbers from the population, tells us that Colombia has not been able to move away from that culture of fear and violence and it is a matter of the some and the few (instead of the many and the few.)
In what the experiment was successful was in solidifying the elite into the new ruling class' hold in power. They are not risking their lives, or their son's or daughters', for the sake of the nation like they used to do in the early republic--now they have the rest of the people doing it for them. Also, hey are not killing each other anymore thus consolidating them even further.