Fluent Essays

History Homework N A T I O N A L I S M 8 F or nations to be united internally, they have to know who they are; they need a clear and positive sense of national identity. Four centuries of Latin American transculturation— the cre- ative pro cess of cultural give and take— had given rise to a multitude of differences in speech, in customs, in attitudes. Intertwined with the pro cess of transculturation, the pro cess of race mixing had created national populations that were also distinctive. During the colonial period, Eu ro pe an rulers had assigned American difference a negative meaning— an essentially “po liti cal” act. Then independence- minded Creoles reversed that attitude in their nativist rhetoric of 1810– 25 (“Americanos, you are the true sons of the soil!”), again as a power move, a matter of politics. But nativism faded after the Spanish and Portuguese were expelled, except when occasional foreign intervention revived it. The new nationalism that 2 33 09_BBF_28305_ch08_232-265.indd 233 13/06/16 11:07 AM C H A P T E R 8 | N A T I O N A L I S M 2 3 4 swept the region in the 1900s was another wave of the earlier nativist spirit, now with a strong economic agenda. Who were the new nationalists, and what were they after? The nationalists very often were urban, middle- class people, recent immigrants or of racially mixed heritage. They had benefited less than landowners from the export boom. They rarely could travel to Eu rope or the United States, rarely could afford to import all the Progress they wanted. Neo co lo nial elites had created glass bubbles of Eu ro pe an culture in Latin American countries, but middle- class nationalists, too numerous to fit inside those bubbles, committed themselves to a larger, more ambitious, and above all, more inclusive vision of change. The nationalists would shatter the neo co lo nial bubbles, breathe Latin American air, and feel pride when young factories made it smoky, because industrialization was the practical goal they most desired. Unlike the neo co lo nial elites, they would also feel comfortable in Latin American skins. Nationalism fostered collective self- respect by positively reinterpreting the meaning of Latin American racial and cultural difference. The nationalists declared psychological in de- pen dence from Eu rope. No longer slaves to Eu ro pe an fashion, Latin Americans would create styles of their own, especially in painting, music, dance, and literature. True, they would still watch Hollywood movies and listen to US jazz, but they also would teach Paris to tango and New York to rumba. Nationalism’s wide appeal— reaching far beyond its “core con- stituency” of middle- class urban people— gave it a special power. Four centuries of colonial and then neo co lo nial exploitation had left a bitter, divisive legacy in Latin America. In de pen dence in the 1820s had created the outlines of countries, but not cohesive national soci- eties. Neo co lo nial ism, with its official racism and its railroads con- necting exportable resources to seaports, but not connecting major cities to each other, had done little to advance national integration. The nationalists’ simple truths— that everybody belonged, that the benefits of Progress should be shared, and that industrial devel- opment should be the priority— offered an important principle of cohesion. Nationalist critiques of imperialism also provided a clear, external focus for resentment— foreign intervention, both military 09_BBF_28305_ch08_232-265.indd 234 13/06/16 11:07 AM 2 35 and monetary. And a shared enemy is po liti cally useful. Like all rhetoric, nationalist rhetoric sometimes rang hollow, and nationalism had its dark side, too, as we shall see. Yet, nationalists who rejected the premise of white superiority and directed practical attention to long- neglected matters of public welfare clearly had a new and ex- citing po liti cal message. Nationalism attracted the ardent support of people across the social spectrum— something that liberalism had never really done. No wonder the advent of nationalism marks a clear watershed in the history of the region. Latin American nationalism celebrates the unique— a par tic u- lar historical experience, a par tic u lar culture. This ethnic nationalism is more like the German or French variety than like US national- ism, which tends to focus on a set of shared po liti cal ground rules and ideals. The US version is sometimes called civic nationalism. Conse- quently, signs of ethnic identity— folk costume, for example, or tradi- tional foods— take on a nationalist importance in Latin America that they lack in the United States. In addition, ethnic nationalism tends to emphasize the idea of race— often, the idea of racial purity. German Nazism of the 1930s offers an extremely unpleasant example. Latin American nationalism, on the other hand, emphasizes mixed- race, mestizo identities. The racial optimists of the neo co lo nial 1890s, persuaded by doctrines of “scientific racism” emanating from Eu rope and the United States, believed that national populations could— and should— be whitened over time, through immigration and intermarriage. And these were the optimists! The racial pessimists claimed that race mixing inevitably caused degeneration. Thus people of color who made up the Latin American majority were to be excluded or, at best, phased out from the neo co lo nial vision of the future. In contrast, Latin American nationalists celebrated the mixing of indigenous, Eu ro pe an, and African genes. Each country’s unique physical type, argued some nationalists, was an adaptation to its en- vironment. Back in neo co lo nial 1902, Euclides da Cunha had called Brazil’s mixed- race backlanders “the bedrock” of Brazilian nationality and had begun to question their supposed inferiority. A generation later, in the 1930s, the idea of inferior races was dying a well- deserved death in Latin America— officially, if not in racist hearts— and mestizo C H A P T E R 8 | N A T I O N A L I S M 09_BBF_28305_ch08_232-265.indd 235 13/06/16 11:07 AM C H A P T E R 8 | N A T I O N A L I S M 2 36 nationalism had made the difference. For example, the Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén celebrated two metaphorical grandfathers, the slave and the conquistador, in his poem “Ballad of the Two Grandfathers” (1935). The poet imagined these two contrasting ancestors as shadows that only he could see, always at his side: With his bone-tipped lance, his wooden drum with rawhide head —my black grandfather. With his ruffled collar, his grey and warlike armor —my white grandfather. The poet claimed both ancestors and did not identify with one more than the other. He imagined his black grandfather’s bare feet and “stony-muscled torso.” He imagined his white ancestor’s “pupils of Antarctic glass.” The white one was certainly colder, more remote. But the shadows of both ancestors were the poet’s allies. Neither could be his enemy, because both were a part of him. Therefore, race mixing had resolved the historical antagonism between white and black, at least partially and subjectively, in the person of the poet. As a metaphor for his mixed descent, the two grandfathers of Guillén’s poem defined his racial identity in a positive way. In a larger sense, metaphors of race mixing provided a positive myth of descent for Cuba as a mestizo (or mulatto) nation. Guillén’s poetry had a musicality that was intended to echo percus- sive African rhythms, and some poems phonetically imitated black Cuban speech. These choices signaled a profound rejection of the Eurocentric aesthetic typical of earlier periods of Latin American history. And Guillén, while he became the most acclaimed exponent of Afro- Cuban poetry, was hardly unique. Instead, he was part of a much broader literary and artistic current that also included the Négritude movement of the French Ca rib be an. Furthermore, a string of fine contemporary novelists— Cuba’s Alejo Carpentier, Peru’s Ciro Alegría, and Guatemala’s Miguel Ángel Asturias— used African and indigenous themes to put their countries on the literary 09_BBF_28305_ch08_232-265.indd 236 13/06/16 11:07 AM 2 37 map. Not only did these nationalist authors deny the premise of Eu ro pe an racial superiority but they raised the idea of race mixing to a special position of patriotic honor. And they did so even as Hitler’s Nazis were successfully promoting the doctrine of white supremacy in Eu rope. W H I T E N I N G I N T H R E E G E N E R AT I O N S . Redemption of Ham, by Modesto Brocos y Gomez. This 1895 Brazilian canvas illustrates the outmoded neo co lo nial idea that Eu ro pe an immigrant blood would “whiten” Latin American populations. Three generations— a black grandmother, a mulatta mother, and her white child— are intended to show the whitening that resulted from the women’s finding lighter- skinned partners. The father of the child, a Portuguese immigrant, is seated to one side. Nationalist thinking on race did away with the official goal of whitening and made African and indigenous roots a point of pride. Courtesy of Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro/Wikimedia Commons. C H A P T E R 8 | N A T I O N A L I S M 09_BBF_28305_ch08_232-265.indd 237 13/06/16 11:07 AM C H A P T E R 8 | N A T I O N A L I S M 2 3 8 B R O W N P R I D E . The Coffee Grower (1934) by the internationally recognized Brazilian paint er Cândido Portinari is a confident and powerful figure in no need of whitening. Like many nationalists, Portinari artistically celebrated the dignity of the working class. São Paulo Museum of Art. 09_BBF_28305_ch08_232-265.indd 238 13/06/16 11:07 AM N A T I O N A L I S T S T A K E P O W E R 2 39 NAT IONA L IS T S TA K E P OW ER You might guess where the nationalist eruption started— a country where neo co lo nial ism had done its worst, where nationalism drew energy from repeated foreign invasions, where people of mixed race were now the majority, a country that had already elected a president with no Eu ro pe an blood— Mexico. The centennial of Hidalgo’s 1810 rebellion saw the outbreak of the twentieth century’s first great social revolution, the Mexican Revolution (with a capital R). By 1910, Porfirio Díaz had dominated Mexico for thirty- four years, and he was getting old. Reformers backed the presidential can- didacy of Francisco Madero, a slim gentleman from northern Mexico. Madero wanted only for Díaz to share more power among the Mexican elite, but the dictator refused. Madero’s appeal broadened when Díaz jailed and then exiled him. Now Madero got radical. He talked of returning lands unfairly taken from indigenous communities. Among many others, people of an indigenous community called Anenecuilco had lost land to encroaching sugar plantations during the years of neo co lo nial Progress. A leader of Anenecuilco, one Emiliano Zapata, allied his own uprising with Madero’s national movement. Zapata’s image— broad sombrero and black mustache, cartridge belts across his chest, riding a white stallion— became an icon of the Mexican Revolution. But Emiliano Zapata represents only one of many local leaders of rebellions that broke out all over Mexico. Unable or unwill- ing to fight them, Díaz left for Pa ri sian exile in 1911. Suddenly, Mexico was full of “revolutionaries” with vastly differ- ing backgrounds and goals. They had agreed only on the need to oust Díaz. Who would rule now? Madero tried first but failed. He was re- moved by a general— with an approving nod from the US ambassador to Mexico— and assassinated in 1913. Years of upheaval followed in 1914– 20, as various forces fought it out, their armies crisscrossing the Mexican countryside with women and children in tow. New weapons of the World War I era, especially machine guns, added their staccato music to the dance of death. In the northern state of Chihuahua, and then nationally, Pancho Villa built an army of former cowboys, min- ers, railroad workers, and oil field roustabouts very different from the 09_BBF_28305_ch08_232-265.indd 239 13/06/16 11:07 AM C H A P T E R 8 | N A T I O N A L I S M 2 4 0 peasant guerrillas of southern movements like Zapata’s. A third move- ment, better- connected, more urban and middle- class, finally gained the upper hand and drafted a new, revolutionary constitution in 1917. These so- called Constitutionalists, fairly typical of the nationalist core constituency throughout Latin America, may be called the winners of the Mexican Revolution. Their po liti cal heirs controlled the destiny of Mexico for the rest of the 1900s. The Constitution of 1917, still Mexico’s constitution, showed strong nationalist inspiration. Article 27 reclaimed for the nation all mineral rights, for instance, to oil, then in the hands of foreign com- panies. It also paved the way for villages to recover common lands (called ejidos) and for great estates to be subdivided and distributed to landless peasants. In principle, Article 123 instituted farsighted pro- tections (although practice would vary) such as wage and hour laws, pensions and social benefits, the right to unionize and strike. The new constitution also sharply limited the privileges of foreigners and, as a legacy of earlier Mexican radicals, curbed the rights of the Catholic Church. The Mexican church now lost the rest of its once- vast wealth. It could no longer own real estate at all. Its clergy, their numbers now limited by law, could not wear ecclesiastical clothing on the street nor teach primary school. Anticlerical attitudes exemplify the revolution- aries’ commitment to destroy traditions associated with old patterns of cultural hegemony. Leaders who emerged from the Constitutional- ist movement strengthened their rule in the 1920s. They did away with both Zapata and Villa, crushed Mexico’s last renegade caudillos, and fought off a challenge from armed Catholic traditionalists in the countryside. (These devout counterrevolutionary peasants were called Cristeros from their habit of shouting “Long live Christ the King!”) Finally, the Constitutionalists created a one- party system that would last, in various permutations, until the late twentieth century. This party was first called National, then Mexican, and finally Institutional. But for seven de cades it remained a Revolutionary Party. Its official heroes were Madero, Zapata, and Villa, its official rhetoric full of revolutionary and nationalist images. Despite incal- culable destruction and horrendous loss of life (a million people died), the Revolution had been a profoundly formative national experience. 09_BBF_28305_ch08_232-265.indd 240 13/06/16 11:07 AM N A T I O N A L I S T S T A K E P O W E R 2 41 T H E H I S T O RY O F M E X I C O . Two partial views of the great Diego Rivera mural in Mexicos National Palace. © 2016 Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./Artist Rights Society. Photo: Bridgeman Images. 09_BBF_28305_ch08_232-265.indd 241 13/06/16 11:07 AM C H A P T E R 8 | N A T I O N A L I S M 2 42 It had created powerful new loyalties and would loom on the imagina- tive landscape of Mexican politics for generations. Two US interven- tions during the years of fighting— a punitive invasion against Villa, who had raided a town in New Mexico, and a US occupation of the port of Veracruz— only added nationalist luster to the Revolution. The new government also brought some material benefits to the impoverished rural majority. A road- building program lessened their isolation, and some land was distributed— though not nearly enough for everyone. Major initiatives in public education began to reduce the country’s 80 percent illiteracy rate. The Mexican minister of education in the 1920s was José Vasconcelos, one of the hemi sphere’s leading cultural nationalists, who celebrated the triumph of what he called (colorfully, but confusingly) the Cosmic Race, meaning mestizos. The great Mexican paint ers Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, who married in 1929, illustrate Mexico’s revolutionary nationalism. Diego Rivera was huge, ugly, magnetic, and brilliant. He was a muralist, a public paint er whose works covered walls and ceilings. He painted like a tornado for days straight, eating, even sleeping on the scaf- fold. Rivera’s crowded murals depict, above all, Mexico’s indigenous heritage. He worked from 1923 to 1928 painting Vasconcelos’s Min- istry of Public Education with scenes of open- air schools and indig- enous peasants dividing land won by the Revolution. In 1929– 30, he painted Mexico’s National Palace (built by heirs of the conquerors!) with images of Aztec Tenochtitlan’s colorful bustle, images that show the Spanish conquest as a greedy, hypocritical bloodbath. In Rivera’s mural, Cortés, resembling a troll, looks on as the conquerors slaugh- ter, enslave, and count gold. Rivera’s nationalist message is vivid— and likely to remain so: he painted al fresco, on wet plaster, so that his murals became part of the walls themselves. Frida Kahlo, by contrast, painted small self- portraits, one after another. She painted especially while bedridden. Surviving polio as a girl, she had a horrible traffic accident that led to dozens of surger- ies. Her body, like Aleijadinho’s in colonial Brazil, was literally dis- integrating while she created. Her paintings explore a private world of pain, but also humor and fantasy. “I paint my own reality,” she said. Eu ro pe an surrealists began to admire her in the late 1930s, but 09_BBF_28305_ch08_232-265.indd 242 13/06/16 11:07 AM N A T I O N A L I S T S T A K E P O W E R 2 43 recognition elsewhere, including Mexico, came later. Frida expressed her nationalism in personal ways— fancy traditional hairstyles, pre- Columbian jewelry, and the folk Tehuana dress of southern Mexico (floor- length, to conceal her leg withered by polio). She especially en- joyed wearing these clothes in the United States, where Diego painted in the 1930s. Frida loved Mexican folk art, like the papier- mâché skeletons that decorate Day of the Dead celebrations. The nationalism of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo was widely shared in Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s. Everything national had become fashionable— folk music (corridos) and dance ( jarabes), tradi- tional dishes (tamales and moles), old- style street theater (carpas), and artisan objects (like Frida’s papier- mâché skeletons). Mexican movies featuring musically macho charros like Jorge Negrete, a Mexican version of the US singing cowboy, now competed with Holly- wood. The nationalism of many Mexican revolutionaries had Marxist overtones. Diego and Frida, for example, joined the Communist Party and offered their home to the exiled Rus sian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, who lived with them for several months. Far away, in Argentina and Uruguay, nationalism showed a different face. In this most urbanized, literate, and middle- class part of Latin America, the core constituency of nationalism was stronger than in Mexico. So the nationalists of Argentina and Uruguay were able to take over without a revolution. Uruguay, in par tic u lar, soon had one of the most progressive governments in the world. During the 1800s, Uruguay had been just another war- torn minirepublic battered by more powerful neighbors. Its po liti cal struggles were entangled with those of neighboring Argentina. Then Uruguay’s economic growth during the post-1880 export boom paral- leled Argentina’s phenomenal per for mance. As in Argentina, Uruguay’s delirious prosperity was controlled through managed elections. The country’s great nationalist reformer José Batlle y Ordóñez began as a tough, traditional politician. Batlle used his first presidency (1903– 7) mostly to vanquish po liti cal rivals. But having established broad support in the heavily immigrant middle and working classes of Montevideo, he used his second term (1911– 15) to launch the reform movement known simply by his name: Batllismo. 09_BBF_28305_ch08_232-265.indd 243 13/06/16 11:07 AM C H A P T E R 8 | N A T I O N A L I S M 2 4 4 Batllismo was not about race or cultural uniqueness. It was more a civic and economic nationalism. Batllismo meant concerted state action against “foreign economic imperialism.” It brought an unpre ce dented level of government involvement to the Uruguayan economy: tariffs to protect local businesses; government monopoly over public utilities, including the formerly British- owned railways and the port of Montevideo; government own ership of tourist hotels and meat- packing plants; and lots of state- owned banks to spread credit around. In accord with Batlle’s determination that “modern industry must not be allowed to destroy human beings,” Uruguay became the hemi sphere’s first welfare state, complete with a mini- mum wage, regulated working conditions, accident insurance, paid holidays, and retirement benefits. Public education, a matter of spe- cial pride in Uruguay since the 1870s, received further support, and the university was opened to women. Batllismo transformed Uruguay forever, but the reforms depended, at least in part, on prosperous times to fund its ambitious social programs. In addition, this was an urban movement that left rural Uruguay virtually untouched. Batllismo was also aggressively anticlerical, making Uruguayan society among the most secular in the hemi sphere. Traditional Catholic Holy Week, formerly a somber time of religious pro cessions, became Tourism Week in modern Uruguay. To eliminate caudillo rule once and for all, Batlle even tried to abolish the one- man presidency in favor of an executive council. Ironically, many saw Batlle himself as a caudillo— but a “civil caudillo,” unlike the military caudillos of the 1800s. Across the Río de la Plata, in Argentina, another “civil caudi- llo” representing urban interests overthrew the country’s landowning oligarchy by means of (believe it or not) an election in 1916. “The revo- lution of the ballot box,” they called it. Hipólito Yrigoyen, the winner of that election, led an essentially middle- class reform party with con- siderable working- class support, the Radical Civic Union. When the Radicals won the election of 1916, jubilant crowds pulled Yrigoyen’s carriage through the streets of Buenos Aires while flowers rained from balconies. 09_BBF_28305_ch08_232-265.indd 244 13/06/16 11:07 AM N A T I O N A L I S T S T A K E P O W E R 2 45 The Radicals quickly entrenched themselves, creating the first truly mass- based po liti cal party in the history of Latin America. Not by any means above engaging in patronage politics, the Radical Civic Union distributed plenty of pensions and public employment to its supporters. Meanwhile, the reforms it enacted were less impressive than Uruguay’s. The Radicals talked economic nationalism, but the role of foreign capital in Argentina did not diminish. Yrigoyen’s one significant act of economic nationalism was the creation of a govern- ment agency to supervise oil production. Still, Yrigoyen’s presidency marked an important change, not so much because of what he did, but because of what he represented. Poorly dressed and lacking in social graces, Yrigoyen was a man of the people. He hated the elegant elite of Buenos Aires, and they hated him back. Yrigoyen framed politics in moral terms, as a kind of civic reli- gion. He never married and lived a reclusive life of legendary frugality in a simple dwelling that his enemies called the presidential “burrow.” A famous anecdote exemplifies his disdain for the trappings of power. A friend, it is said, asked for a personal souvenir. Yrigoyen gestured vaguely toward a cardboard box overflowing with medals and honors. “Help yourself,” he replied. Ordinary Argentines could visit the president to ask for some humble bit of patronage. Yrigoyen cared little about Eu rope and also maintained an Argentine diplomatic tradition of resisting US hemi- spheric initiatives. During World War I, despite US pressure, he insisted on Argentine neutrality. The greatest stain on his record is his violent repression of or ga nized labor during the “Tragic Week” of 1919 and the strike of Patagonian sheep herders in 1921. Yrigoyen was succeeded by another member of the Radical Civic Union, but he returned to the presidency himself in 1928, now senile, hardly fit to steer Argentina through the turbulent 1930s. Although he soon lost popularity and had to leave office, all Buenos Aires turned out for Yrigoyen’s funeral a few years later. Batlle and Yrigoyen were individual leaders of towering impor- tance, not generals on horse back, but caudillos nevertheless. Nationalist politics was mass politics that often focused on such leaders. Another 09_BBF_28305_ch08_232-265.indd 245 13/06/16 11:07 AM C H A P T E R 8 | N A T I O N A L I S M 2 4 6 was Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, who led Peruvian nationalists mostly from exile. Haya de la Torre was first exiled from Peru in 1920 for lead- ing student protests against Peru’s pro- US dictator. In Mexico, whose revolution strongly impressed him, the young radical intellectual founded an international party, the Pop u lar American Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), as a kind of collective self- defense against economic imperialism in Latin America. Haya de la Torre preferred the term Indo- America, to highlight the region’s indigenous roots, exactly the way Mexican muralists such as Rivera did. This nationalist empha- sis on indigenous roots is called indigenismo. Another young Peru- vian intellectual of the 1920s, José Carlos Mariátegui, imagined an indigenous socialism combining Inca models with Marxist theory. But Peru, when compared to Mexico, remained more ethnically split: the highlands heavily indigenous, the coast more black and white. Conse- quently, indigenismo was less successful as a unifying force in Peru. APRA did not go far as an international party. Still, by threat- ening to make indigenismo more than theory or fiction, the move- ment had a powerful impact on Peru. APRA terrified conservatives. The party’s mass rallies filled the streets with poor and middle- class people who roared their contempt of the oligarchy, their fury at impe- rialism, and their loyalty to the “Maximum Leader,” Haya de la Torre. In 1932, APRA revolted after “losing” a managed election. The army crushed the uprising with mass executions, and APRA was banned from Peruvian politics. But the popularity of the outlawed party and its perpetually exiled leader only increased as years passed. Ciro Alegría, a fervent, high- ranking APRA militant, was one of the many nationalists who had to flee Peru. While living in Chile, he began to write fiction inspired by indigenismo. Peruvian novel- ists had explored indigenismo for de cades, since the time of Clorinda Matto de Turner. Still, it is appropriate that the greatest indigenista novel, Alegría’s Wide and Alien Is the World (1941), emerged from the ranks of APRA. Writers like Alegría defended indigenous people, but the main practical goal of indigenismo was changing its subjects to fit the wider world. Perhaps it is not so odd that Alegría wrote his book for a New York publishing contest. He won and became one of the 09_BBF_28305_ch08_232-265.indd 246 13/06/16 11:07 AM N A T I O N A L I S T S T A K E P O W E R 2 47 INDIGENISMO. The Indian Mayor of Chincheros (1925) by José Sabogal, Peru’s principal indigenista paint er, shows a community leader holding his staff of office in an idealization of traditional indigenous life. José Sabogal, The Indian Mayor of Chincheros: Varayoc, 1925, Museo de Arte de Lima. 09_BBF_28305_ch08_232-265.indd 247 13/06/16 11:07 AM C H A P T E R 8 | N A T I O N A L I S M 2 4 8 best- known of the many Latin American writers cultivating non- European roots in the 1930s and 1940s. Nationalists did not take power everywhere in Latin America, but nationalism showed its po liti cal potency even where it did not rule. In many countries conservatives managed to co- opt national- ist influences or hold them in check. That was the case in Colombia, where nationalists tried to outflank traditional rural patron- client networks by unionizing urban workers and appealing directly to their self- interest. The conservatives’ hold on Colombia was too …