THE GENESIS OF REPUBLICANISM IN 19th CENTURY HISPANO-AMERICA. Part 3.

By J.R.Monroy

The evolution of the ideas about Republicanism in Hispano-America in the earlier 19th century was an utopia rather than a real political experience to be considered seriously. Firstly in my opinion, there are three centuries of colonialism impeded to create positive conditions to create an intellectual class of american thinkers with clear ideas to influence the overall society.

The intelectual limitation of the rulers during the years of the foundation of the Republic (1810-1823), was a crude legacy of the colonialism to control the minds of the creole- elites, through the Catholic catechism, with a few exception of the clergy i.e. Frey Camilo Henriques (1769-1827), a rebel patriot who was a fervent supporter of the Independence of Chile in 1811, founded the first newspaper entitled "Aurora de Chile, printed by himself once a week promoting ideas of the French - Revolution. However, I can say, that unfortunately the radical idea to create a liberal Republic in the first decades of the 19 century, was an impossible task to succeed because of society at that time was dominated by a majority of conformism rather than discomfort against a system- structure dominated by rich groups of landholders and merchants with commercial links with European powers.

However, in a political process of wars against the colonial power of the 19 century, a group of elites of the liberators, all of them proprietary of land and with financial influences in the new established governments propitiated reforms to the colonial Spanish system of education, one of them was Manuel de Salas, an idealist and philanthropic educator who wrote and propicies educational ideas to transform the Spanish colonial scholastic system with the creation of a liberal academy and teaching. Salas's educational propositions were not considered seriously and his constructive vision to transform a colonial system into a more advanced education failed to create conditions for an industrial, artisan and commercial society. His progressive ideas were forgotten until 1842, when a first generation of liberal-intellectual emerged to play political roles and to generate a progressive intelectual movement to re-think the conceptualise a political role of the State.

The reality was that at the beginning and mid 19 century, the Hispano-American society was a in a slow process of a social symbiosis of the indigenous population with the European groups from the Iberian Peninsula. The arrival of the Afro-slaves will contribute with its own culture and social values to transform many countries, i.e. the Caribbean and America Meridional as a unique and new type of society. This massive two centuries of migration from Africa to Colonial America is a social and cultural phenomena, which is different in many aspects to similar process of European colonialism in other region of the world.

How will this complex human laboratory of races survive until the 21st century? Why is the Hispano-American society-even in the 21st century-reflecting its social contradiction marked of race antagonism and prejudice of the supremacy of the white race? This creed of superiority of the creole and the ruling elites over natives and the afro-population was transposed by an historical legacy that the owners of the productive -lands which were received in heritage or by the Caudillos wars in Argentina, Paraguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile or Mexico, etc., the principle was to preserve the status-quo to maintain the social, economic and cultural privileges of a dominant class rather than to create a democracy ruled by liberal principles. The next chapter in the history of the Republic in Hispano America (1850-1890), is characterised by the fratricide wars between Conservatives and Liberals, a unique episode of bloodshed which divided the entire society until recently in many countries in Latin America and even in the Caribbean. To be continued.

(c) Copyright 2019 by J.R.Monroy. All rights reserved JRM Publications.