A WAR OF WORDS: MANUEL MONTÚFAR, ALEJANDRO MARURE, AND THE POLITICS OF HISTORY IN GUATEMALA TIMOTHY HAWKINS n 1832, Manuel Montúfar y Coronado published Memorias para la historia de la Revolución de Centro América (Memoirs concerning the history of the Central American Revolution), popularly known as the Memorias de Jalapa due to its place of publication. This was the first work to attempt to analyze the creation of the new nation of Central America. A year later, Dr. Mariano Gálvez, the reformist governor of Guatemala, commissioned another history, envisioned as an analysis of the struggle for independence and the early nation-building process. Gálvez entrusted the latter commission to a young scholar and government official, Dr. Alejandro Marure, and in order to complement and support this study, the Guatemalan government simultaneously released official documents pertaining to the postindependence period in a publication entitled Documentos para la historia de las revoluciones de Centro-América (Documents for the history of the Central American revolutions).1 Ostensibly, Marure’s Bosquejo histórico de las revoluciones de Centroamérica, desde 1811 hasta 1834 (Historical sketch of the Central American revolutions from 1811 to 1834) and the Documentos would together serve “to fix the truth of the deeds of the Revolution.”2 The early 1830s was a time of intense social, political, and economic experimentation within Guatemala that followed an even more turbulent first decade of independence. Here, as in the rest of Latin America, the precipitous end of 300 years of colonial status produced a wide variety of strategies and
I
Timothy Hawkins is an assistant professor of history at Indiana State University. 1
Miriam Wiliford, “Las luces y la civilización: The Social Reforms of Mariano Gálvez,” in Applied Enlightenment: Nineteenth Century Liberalism, 1830–1839 (New Orleans, La., 1972), 38–39. See also Lorenzo Montúfar’s prologue to Alejandro Marure, Bosquejo histórico de las revoluciones de Centroamérica, desde 1811 hasta 1834 (Guatemala, 1960), 29–31. 2
Quoted in Wiliford, “Las luces,” 39.
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blueprints for rapid national development. In such an atmosphere a preoccupation with the immediate past among nation builders intent on ensuring a better future for their country might appear premature. Yet, it was the logical culmination of an emerging political and ideological dispute within the Creole (Americans of European descent) governing class over the organization and identity of the new Central America, a country created out of the former Kingdom of Guatemala and encompassing the states of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.3 During the initial debate over the future of the region after the collapse of Spanish rule in 1821, the traditional Guatemalan landowning and merchant elite used its tremendous influence to push the colony toward annexation by the Mexican empire of Agustín Iturbide. The collapse of this enterprise by 1823, however, discredited this local nobility and allowed a younger, more radical element to play a greater role in the political and economic life of what would become the Central American Federation. As the fight for power between these groups heated up during the mid-1820s, two overtly incompatible political philosophies began to emerge that would dominate regional politics for more than half a century. The established Guatemalan elite and their traditionalist allies from across the social spectrum became known as the Conservatives—serviles (sycophants) to their opponents—and were united in favor of moderate change, the retention of colonial institutions, the preservation of a hierarchical and corporate social order, and a centralized political structure, rooted in the former colonial, now national, capital of Guatemala City. On the other side of the political divide were the Liberals, or fiebres (hotheads). This group drew its strength from the heretofore disenfranchised urban middle classes, professionals, and provincial elites and promoted a complete break with the Spanish colonial legacy through the incorporation of progressive Western innovations and institutions; an emphasis on Enlightenment values such as individual rights, liberty, and equality; and the establishment of a federal system of government with all states operating as equals. Although independence was achieved peacefully, the growing political polarization in Central 3 The most important secondary sources for this period include R. L. Woodward, “Economic and Social Origins of the Guatemalan Political Parties (1773–1823),” Hispanic American Historical Review (hereinafter HAHR) 45 (1965): 544–66; Mario Rodríguez, The Cádiz Experiment in Central America (Berkeley, Calif., 1978); Miles Wortman, Government and Society in Central America, 1680–1840 (New York, 1982); and J. C. Pinto Soria, Centroamérica, de la colonia al Estado nacional (1800–1840) (Guatemala, 1983).
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America caused the early stages of nation building to be characterized by extreme and bitter factionalism. This trend eventually led to three years of violent civil war (1826–29) between the Conservative-dominated federal government, based in and backed by Guatemala, and a coalition of Liberal state governments led by El Salvador. Although the Liberals won a decisive military victory in this conflict, their political control over both Guatemala and the federation remained tenuous. Thus, in 1832 when an exiled member of the defeated Conservative government, Manuel Montúfar y Coronado, published his history, he opened a new front in the ideological struggle between the two sides. While the Memorias was not a particularly controversial interpretation if removed from the heated political environment of the times, the political persuasion of its author—and thus the work itself—served as a direct challenge to the Liberal identity that the Gálvez administration had begun to foster in Guatemala. Therefore, to legitimize Liberal rule and encourage patriotic unity behind the Liberal cause, Gálvez sought an alternate history that would take control of the nation’s past by creating a Liberal-oriented national myth. By providing Marure with complete access to government archives, encouraging the distribution of the Bosquejo histórico around the state, and publishing documentary corroboration for its assertions, Gálvez encouraged the political manipulation of history in the hope that it would justify the Liberal agenda and at the same time discredit his Conservative opponents. The extent to which the Latin American nation builders valued history as an important tool in the construction and legitimization of independent states cannot be overestimated. For most national historians of the nineteenth century, the Independence Period offered an unparalleled opportunity to address the birth of their respective nations from the perspective of a dramatic, turbulent, and heroic transformation from colony to nation-state. In Mexico, chroniclers such as Fray Servando Teresa de Mier and Carlos María Bustamante created founding fathers out of the defeated rebels Miguel Hidalgo and José María Morelos. Similarly, in the South American republics the great liberators José de San Martín, Simón Bolívar, and Bernardo O’Higgins became national icons through the independence histories of Benjamín Vicuña MacKenna, Miguel Luis Amunátegui, Bartolomé Mitre, and others. Because of these writings, events such as Hidalgo’s initial call to arms, the Grito de Dolores, San Martín’s march across the Andes to liberate Chile in 1817, and Bolívar’s reconquest of Venezuela, the 1813 Campaña Admirable, assumed legendary status and demonstrated the power and potential of national and popular unity to the citizens of these new nations. And, as the
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title of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s classic work on independence-era Argentina, Civilization and Barbarism: The Life of Juan Facundo Quiroga (popularly known as Facundo), demonstrates, these accounts were more than just histories of the transition from colony to nation. They were often instrumental in the promotion, projection, and development of a sense of national identity (albeit one constructed almost exclusively by westernized, Creole elites) among the newly liberated populations of Latin America.4 Although Central American elites would have to wait until 1832 for the first historical analysis of their own independence, they recognized the practical uses of historical inquiry as much as their counterparts to the north and the south. For a generation raised and educated during the Enlightenment, history served as an agent of civilization. It brought order to the past, clarified the present, and by providing a variety of examples of past behavior, allowed individuals to choose the optimal path for their future. In addition to improving individual lives, history also smoothed the way for general political, scientific, and technological modernization. As Marure argued, history makes us compatriots to all the heroes of the world, citizens of all nations, men of all centuries . . . By studying the annals of the world, the genius, the customs, the religion of each people, the differences in their respective institutions and the errors or the wisdom of their legislation, we will know which should be the basis for good government. . . . [History] presents to us the scale of human knowledge; the successive gradations through which men have passed before elevating themselves to perfection; discoveries that have served as a bane to their different systems; the methods that have been employed in order to accelerate their advances; the genius that has given impulse to their progress.5
4
Sarmiento’s impact on Argentine national identity is discussed in Tulio Halperín Donghi et al., eds., Sarmiento: Author of a Nation (Berkeley, Calif., 1994). The Chilean context is addressed by Gertrude Matyoka Yeager in Barros Arana’s Historia Jeneral de Chile: Politics, History, and National Identity (Fort Worth, Tex., 1981). For Peru, see Mark Thurner, From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Postcolonial Nationmaking in Andean Peru (Durham, N.C., 1997). For a comprehensive analysis of the first national histories of Mexico and South America, see D. A. Brading, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State 1492–1867 (Cambridge, Mass., 1991). 5
Quoted in Jack Ray Thomas, Biographical Dictionary of Latin American Historians and History (Westport, Conn., 1984), 21.
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In underdeveloped Central America rapid progress was viewed as a particular Liberal concern. By offering blueprints for national development and case studies for the implementation of political, social, and economic innovations, history could work as a guide for the region’s entry into the modern age. Equally important, history served as a means of national advertisement and promotion. Chafing under the effects of three centuries of colonial isolation, Central American Liberals hoped that the publication and distribution of national histories would entice foreign developers and immigrants to take advantage of the region’s resources and potential. This attitude is most obvious in a work that Marure undertook later in life entitled Memoria histórica sobre el canal de Nicaragua (A historical account of the Nicaraguan canal) on the viability of an interoceanic canal through the isthmus. Thus, as a means to further individual welfare, scientific modernization, and links with the West, the study of history soon became an integral part of the Liberal reform program.6 These important benefits aside, Gálvez made the decision to give official sponsorship to Marure’s Bosquejo histórico because he understood the fundamental value of history as a political weapon. At the time, the concept of the historian as political partisan was common throughout Latin America.7 Perhaps the best examples of this tendency are the aforementioned Sarmiento, who later served as president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, and Lucas Alamán, a leading Mexican intellectual and statesman who held ministerial positions in a number of conservative administrations during the 1830s and 1840s before writing his influential five-volume Historia de Méjico. As welleducated, well-traveled members of elite society, such men often played major roles in the independence movements of their respective countries and served at all levels of government during the nation-building process that followed liberation from Spain. The practice of history offered them an unsurpassed opportunity to justify past actions, promote old allies, excoriate opponents, and influence present and future generations for political advantage. While the use of history in the Latin American nation-building process could be interpreted as a constructive form of political manipulation of the
6
Ibid., 24. More detail on the Gálvez/Marure program can be obtained from Héctor Humberto Samayoa Guevara, La ensenanza de la historia en Guatemala, desde 1832 hasta 1852 (Guatemala, 1959). 7
See E. Bradford Burns, The Poverty of Progress: Latin America in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley, Calif., 1983), 35–50; also Thomas, Biographical Dictionary, 3–10.
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past, an essential ingredient in the building of a unifying national myth in countries with no clear identity and many social divisions, the trend could also be destructive. To the long-term detriment of the historiographic tradition in Central America, the political appropriation of history early in the national period forced its first historians into the uncomfortable space between serious scholarship and political propaganda and served only to intensify political and social divisions. Upon its publication, Montúfar’s Memorias de Jalapa immediately became the guiding light, in the words of the historian William Griffith, for those “responsible elements of the population [who] were forced to endure a period of domination by a fanatical and power-mad minority of innovators whose intemperate program of change threatened to destroy the institutional structure of society.”8 For Liberals, on the other hand, Marure’s Bosquejo histórico underscored the “struggle between the enlightened advocates of change and the obscurantist defenders of an archaic order; between the democratic proponents of federation and the aristocratic perpetrators of centralism.”9 Even though both these historians shared a moderate, Enlightenment-based political philosophy, Marure became the champion of the “Liberal” version of Central American independence and ultimately the primary source for generations of historians of the period. The “Conservative” Montúfar, however, was dismissed as a reactionary for his alternative perspective on the formative years of the Central American Federation and all but forgotten following the Liberal Reform of the 1870s. An analysis of the process whereby these historians became political partisans will thus illuminate a defining characteristic of nineteenth-century Central America: the development of a historical tradition steeped in ideological extremism. Manuel Montúfar y Coronado was born on 26 June 1791, into the most rarified level of the Central American Creole elite, a Guatemalan-based oligarchy known as the Family.10 Led by the marqués de Aycinena, who was the only
8
William J. Griffith, “The Historiography of Central America since 1830,” HAHR 40 (November 1960): 550. 9
Ibid., 550.
10
Biographical information cited in Thomas, Biographical Dictionary, 255–56; Ernesto Chinchilla Aguilar, prologue to Manuel Montúfar, Memorias para la historia de la Revolución de Centro América (Memorias de Jalapa), (Guatemala, 1963), 1:5–14; José Arzú, introduction to Manuel Montúfar, Memorias para la historia de la Revolución de Centro América (Memorias de Jalapa), 1:15–27. See also Edgar Juan Aparicio y Aparicio, “Los Montúfar,” Anales de la Academia de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala 56 (1982), 303–19.
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titled aristocrat in the Kingdom of Guatemala, this clan had developed an unchallenged monopoly over local political, economic, and social power by the end of the colonial period. Despite his illustrious pedigree, however, details of his early years remain elusive. Montúfar was a widely read and intellectually precocious youth who taught himself Latin, French, and English. A highly talented writer as well, he first achieved renown as an editor and contributor to a progressive newspaper, El editor constitucional, thereby forming part of the group of radical, pro-independence partisans known as the cacos (thieves) that also included Pedro Molina, José María Castilla, and José Francisco Barrundia, all future Liberal partisans.11 Following independence in 1821, Montúfar served in a wide variety of political roles at the state and federal level, from secretary of government to minister of war. During these years he also found time to help publish a newspaper, El indicador. In 1825 he won a seat in the Guatemalan Constituent Assembly, served as its president, and contributed to the drafting of the state’s first constitution. During the first years of the Central American Federation, however, as political lines between the Liberal fiebres and Conservative serviles sharpened, those who found themselves in the ill-defined moderate center, such as Montúfar, were forced to choose sides. In the 1826 showdown between the Liberals and President Manuel José Arce, which precipitated the Civil War, Montúfar allied with the president and quickly became one of his closest advisors, in addition to serving as the governor of the rebellious western province of Quetzaltenango. As a colonel in the Guatemalan cavalry and Arce’s second-in-command during the first invasion of El Salvador, he also assumed a military role in the war. In 1829 Montúfar was captured by Liberal forces while leading an attack on San Salvador. Exiled along with the other leading Conservatives, he spent the rest of his life in Mexico, dying there on 18 May 1844. From the Liberal perspective, by the time of his exile Montúfar had solidly and unequivocally established his Conservative record as a result of his links with the Guatemalan aristocracy, his break with the cacos, his high profile in Arce’s failed presidency, and his armed opposition to the Liberals in the Civil War. The appearance of the Memorias de Jalapa only two years after his exile seemed in this context a petty and biased attempt to rewrite the past and 11
For a revealing glimpse into Montúfar’s life and his relationship with the cacos, see Arturo Taracena Arriola, “Juicio politico sobre Manuel Montúfar y Coronado: Un esbozo biográfico atribuido a Pedro Molina,” Mesoamérica 28 (December 1994): 337–46. The split between Montúfar and his former friends was so bitter that many branded him a traitor.
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torment his victorious opponents. In fact, the Memorias was not an apologia for the Conservative cause but rather an attempt to come to terms with the political polarization that threatened the future of the federation. A passionate supporter of Central American independence, a constitutionalist and political moderate, an enlightened intellectual, and a keen observer of his society, Manuel Montúfar suddenly found himself a persona non grata in the nation he helped build. Using his own career and experiences as evidence, he wrote the Memorias at least in part as a warning to his countrymen, an act that earned him the undying enmity of the Liberals. The Memorias de Jalapa opens with a preface, an advertencia del autor, in which Montúfar sets out his particular perspective on the value and viability of writing contemporary history. Though he considers himself impartial, he acknowledges his limitations as a historian in exile, resulting from his lack of direct access to sources, and attacks the concept of historical objectivity as an unattainable ideal for any historian. In this case Montúfar recognizes that for his memoir to have historical value he needs to be overt in his willingness to criticize both sides of the political debate. Removed from the partisan battlefields of his native land, he has now had the time to reflect on the forces that caused his exile: [D]uring a time of civil discord no impartial man can be found . . . and this is because while the actors live it is impossible to get them to agree with the judgment of their fellow men, especially when their own intentions are examined. If historians divide themselves by system or party when judging the deeds of a thousand years ago, it cannot be strange that while the actors are alive they write apologies, calumnies, and under this pretext accusations, injuries, and diatribes. . . . An exact and truthful history can never please those who provided the materials that form its argument; but the truth should never be sacrificed to hatred or flattery. The Memorias will not please any of the parties among which the Republic of Central America is divided, and this is its only merit.12
The interest Montúfar takes in the process of political polarization pervades every part of his memoirs. He begins his historical analysis of the period in 1820 with the division of criollo society between Pedro Molina’s radical, pro-independence cacos (thieves) and the Honduran José del Valle’s more moderate bacos (drunks) and emphasizes the deep tension and hostil-
12
Montúfar, Memorias, 1:30.
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ity that resulted in the divisive, yet evocative, political labels that only imperfectly characterized the two groups. Valle’s party won the first elections under the restored Spanish Constitution of 1812 by “calling itself the popular party, for it took as a pretext and a goal to combat the aristocracy, or what from that point was called the spirit of the Family [Montúfar’s italics].”13 Neither group was technically popular, for both drew their primary support from the upperclass Creoles and Spaniards. Nevertheless, it had been the radical cacos’ temporary alliance with the oligarchy that gave Valle the opportunity to employ the term aristocracy or Family as a pejorative, a development that particularly irks Montúfar. The growing trend toward political polarization in Central America was inflamed by the failed annexation to Mexico (1821–23). Promoted by the Aycinena oligarchy, the enterprise found support from a wide range of leading figures, including Mariano Gálvez and José del Valle. However, Montúfar and the more fervent pro-independence cacos remained in opposition. When the Mexican Empire collapsed, its supporters found themselves temporarily discredited and the task of political reorganization was assumed by Molina’s radicals, who dominated the provisional government that was organized in July 1823. Describing the fierce debates within the assembly over the constitution and nature of the new Central American nation, Montúfar relates how the struggle for political power destroyed old alliances, forged new ones, and stereotyped the resulting parties so much that compromise, tolerance, and constructive, nonpartisan policies became all but impossible: The fiebres held the majority in the beginning; the serviles, through the conversion of many deputies, dominated the remaining sessions to the close of the assembly. Imperialists, Mexicanists, and anti-independence exaltados transformed themselves into frenetic, accusatory fiebres and enemies of those who had always been republicans and absolute supporters of independence; and the latter for their part accused the fiebres of demagoguery, disorganization, and anarchism. The adoption of this [federal] form of government branded the parties and divided them even more between federalists and centralists. The most intimate friendships ceased to exist, and new ones were formed through the bond of political opinion.14
13
Ibid., 61.
14
Ibid., 82.
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While one’s background, regional identity, economic status, and position on independence and annexation to Mexico could tell a great deal about political persuasion, with the promulgation of the Constitution of 1824 political classification was effectively determined by the issue of federalism. Liberals argued from a strong states’ rights position, taking the view that a decentralized system would be more progressive, more considerate of local and individual liberties, and more of a defense against the powerful interests of the Guatemalan oligarchy, which they saw as intrinsically reactionary, power hungry, and anticonstitutional. While there were undoubtedly some members of the Family who longed for a return to colonialism, Montúfar was only one of many fervent constitutionalists and centralists among the Guatemalan elite who held legitimate concerns about the viability of a federal form of government. Convinced that the new constitution of the Central American Federation “would have seemed a code of anarchy even to a society of angels or passionless men,” due to its framers’ excessive idealism and dependence on foreign inspiration, Montúfar argued that the federal system it set up would be incapable of solving the problems of divisiveness, regionalism, and appeals to emotion so characteristic of national politics.15 In his account, however, he does not ignore the great achievements of this first constitutional assembly: With the decree of July 1, 1823, the foundation of a popular, representative form of government was established; legal equality, separation of powers, and unlimited freedom of the press; religious tolerance established through private worship; the abolition of slavery and the manumission of slaves; liberal immigration laws; commercial tariffs and mercantilist franchises to strengthen and protect them; the regulation of national finance; the designation of federal income and the separation of that of the states; experimentation with a poll tax and a just foreign loan; the Nicaraguan canal project; open and formal diplomatic relations with the European nations and many of those of America; the initiative for the American Congress in Panama; setting the foundations for the establishment of public credit and arranging many of the branches of the administration under the provisional government and the Constitution; all this resulted from the first experience of the Central Americans in the difficult enterprise of constituting a nation and giving it laws.16
15
Ibid., 97.
16
Ibid., 98–99.
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Montúfar favored a strong, centralized government for Central America, primarily to combat the centrifugal nature of society and politics that threatened to pull the new nation apart at the seams. However, as a child of the Enlightenment, he recognized as well as his Liberal, federalist opponents the importance of individual and economic freedoms, constitutionalism, and modernization. In the actions of some of the leading nation builders at the time, most notably José Francisco Cordova, Montúfar saw the outlines of a movement that attempted to strike a similar balance between the hardening Liberal and Conservative positions, one that wanted moderation and order, prepared, gradual, and non-alarming innovations: [these moderados] hoped that before the new was created all of the old would not be destroyed. They hoped that, while the new laws took effect and won respect by establishing interests and customs and the old laws were rendered useless, the moral authority of religion would not be broken in the interest of destroying abuses. . . . They did not advocate either persecutions, or outrages, humiliating memories, or exclusive ones at any time after the organization of the independent nation.17
The first national elections under the Constitution of 1824 and the irregular victory of Arce in the race for president quickly dashed any hopes that the political parties would retreat from their intense competition, however. Although elected with considerable Liberal support, Arce was in fact a moderate who found it difficult to promote radical Liberal reforms and therefore began to turn to the Guatemalan Conservatives for advice and assistance. Despite the new president’s readiness to act as a moderator between the two parties, neither side, according to Montúfar, was willing to compromise. In fact, Montúfar suggests that Arce’s efforts to reach out to both parties only exacerbated their mutual hostility, thereby precipitating the descent into civil war in 1826. The president, striving for impartiality in public affairs, spoke to each party the language of their interests in private. This position was as delicate as it was false, because one can only walk a certain distance with each foot in diverging paths; in general, Arce had a difficult task in managing the exaltados and the moderados.
17
Manuel Montúfar,“Recuerdos y anécdotas,” in Memorias para la historia de Centro America por un guatemalteco (Jalapa, Mexico, 1832 and 1837), 51–52.
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. . . The exaltados abandoned him, because they wanted to possess and dominate him exclusively, and because the parties operated according to the principle that “he who is not my friend is my enemy . . .”18
Following a detailed military account of the Civil War, a conflict presented as an anticonstitutional assault on federal powers in favor of state sovereignty, Montúfar turns again to his primary theme, the evils of factionalism, in his review of the postwar reconstruction. As the all-powerful leader of the Liberal cause and the man best positioned to restrain the vindictiveness, rancor, and self-interest of the conquering army, Francisco Morazán comes under intense criticism in the Memorias. Montúfar regards Morazán as a leader of great potential, noting that the Honduran general had a rare opportunity to rebuild the federation on a stronger foundation in 1829 with the active assistance of both parties. Instead, Montúfar writes that the conqueror displayed the worst signs of partisanship by filling the provisional Liberal administration with corrupt, self-serving followers who had cultivated an intense hatred of Conservatives and were intent on creating a government of vengeance. By allowing the sack of Guatemala City, Morazán unleashed those who “believe in taking revenge on those guilty of oppressing the country by impoverishing it; proving therefore that they did not take up arms either for liberty or for the law, but rather in order to destroy all its riches, all its fortunes.”19 Through his reputation and supreme military command Morazán managed to stabilize the political situation in Central America for a short time, although, as Montúfar points out, even his election as president in 1830 failed to provide a solution to the federalist/centralist controversy or bring unity to political life: The deeply-felt sentiment concerning the insufficiency of the political institutions began to be an object of discussion . . . The military victory had put an end to the war, but regional and local hatreds could not be extinguished as long as the States which triumphed over Guatemala and the Guatemalans who helped defeat their own countrymen remained unsatisfied, and those who resisted the invasion but were subjugated remained unpersuaded.20 18
Montúfar, Memorias, 1:105.
19
Montúfar, Memorias, 2:202.
20
Ibid., 278.
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With the states victorious in the efforts to establish sovereignty within the federal system, the federation as it had been organized in 1824 ceased to be viable. Despite his belief that Central America, out of all the former Spanish colonies, offered the fewest obstacles to “the establishment of a free, economical, and moderate political organization,” Montúfar makes a powerful argument in the Memorias that the potential of independence had been compromised by a poorly directed revolution and a weak constitution, whose framers had become too concerned with partisan conflicts to promote the national interests.21 In a blanket condemnation of the nation-building process throughout Latin America, he writes: It is a calamity common to all the Hispanic-American republics that the congresses which come and go are not considered representative of the nation but rather of the party which dominates them. . . . Our assemblies are frequently preoccupied with repealing whatever their predecessors had accomplished. . . . The omnipotence of the congresses is the primary cause of the evils which afflict the Spanish republics, for the tyranny of the legislature alternates with the tyranny of the military during turbulent times. The political constitutions have not been founded on customs or traditions, but on general theories accepted without examination and by the force of the prevailing interests of the moment.22
From Montúfar’s perspective, the inability of the Liberals to move beyond partisan politics threatened the long-term survival of the Central American Federation. With remarkable foresight, six years prior to the rise of Rafael Carrera and the Revolt of the Mountain, which marked the beginning of the end of the federal experiment, he writes: The results of the manner in which Central America ended its Civil War have not produced any advantage except the temporary suspension of hostilities that sooner or later will be renewed. The victors believed themselves secure with the expulsion and impoverishment of all who could oppose them; but they can’t protect themselves from each other; they don’t consider the opinion of the people of the State of Guatemala, who, say what you may, find themselves in a violent situation, recognize what they have lost, and do not see the happiness which they have been promised. The personal well being of the public official
21
Ibid., 282.
22
Ibid., 288–89.
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does not correspond to the well being of the people; these are the ones who resent the evils of war and the poverty inherent in their means of subsistence. The people can eat neither theories nor beautiful principles; they remember other times, they cry for them, and when they see a banner of opposition being raised they run to it hoping it will bring back to them what they have lost.23
In the end, searching for an alternative to such a dire fate, Montúfar proposes to the Liberal-dominated government of Central America that the competing parties unify according to their many shared interests, for no administration composed exclusively of one of the two parties can be national, nor cease to be vengeful and persecutory; at the individual level just, equitable, and generous sentiments can be found; but the group fosters exclusivity and exclusive sentiments cannot be national nor produce the peace and order sought by all. . . . In order to remain in power, those who at present dominate the republic need to reform the laws, be truthfully tolerant, and not pretend that what has never endured in any country is in fact eternal—that is, a party that, by democratic means, hopes to exclusively govern a nation full of diverse opinions and interests. . . . This would truly be the triumph of reason over passion.24
Yet, the nature of the political struggle in Guatemala caused the Gálvez administration to view Montúfar’s Memorias as a direct challenge to its legitimacy rather than an insightful analysis of the destructiveness of partisan politics. In response Gálvez made a Liberal-oriented history of the Independence Period a priority of his government. Although the resulting Bosquejo histórico by Alejandro Marure did not in fact help solidify Liberal rule in Central America, by carrying the political battle with the Conservatives deep into the realm of history it did contribute to the long-term discrediting of the Conservative cause in general and Montúfar in particular. While Marure lacked the prestige of familial ties to the Guatemalan nobility, he nevertheless was born into an upper-class Creole household of Guatemala City on 28 February 1806.25 The son of a prominent intellectual 23
Ibid., 293.
24
Ibid., 296–97, 299.
25
Thomas, Biographical Dictionary, 241–43; Ernesto Chinchilla Aguilar, prologue to Bosquejo histórico de las revoluciones de Centroamérica, desde 1811 hasta 1834, by Alejandro Marure,
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and victim of the independence struggle, Marure was a dedicated student and scholar who received a degree in philosophy from the Seminario Conciliar and who studied law at the Universidad de San Carlos. Following independence he entered government service at the Ministry of Foreign Relations and served under José Francisco Córdova, before resigning at the outbreak of the Civil War. A Liberal supporter, Marure was elected to the National Assembly in 1831 and, a year later, was made chair of universal history at the Academia de Estudios of Guatemala City. Increasingly involved in the implementation of liberal reforms under the Gálvez administration, he received the commission to write the Bosquejo histórico in 1834 and saw the first edition come out three years later. With the fall of the federation in 1839, Marure moderated his political beliefs and became a close advisor to the popular caudillo and president of Guatemala, Rafael Carrera, serving on his Council of State until 1849. Primarily a scholar, however, he continued to publish numerous historical and legal treatises on Guatemala that earned him recognition as “the loftiest practitioner of the Guatemalan historiographical tradition” and “the most sublime representative of the cultural atmosphere in Guatemala during the first years of the republic.”26 The challenge of the Memorias de Jalapa animates the Bosquejo histórico from beginning to end. Marure prefaces his history with an indirect response to Montúfar’s introduction in which he contradicts the assertion that contemporary histories are invariably full of prejudice and therefore unreliable. While recognizing the effects of political partisanship on daily life and noting its impact on his own career, Marure remains convinced of his own objectivity and by extension that of his Bosquejo. Unlike other efforts, which he refrains from naming, this work bases its impartiality on its close ties to the major figures and documents of the period: As long as the interests and passions that have produced the revolution still remain strong, it would be far too presumptuous and rash of me not to write with circumspection. . . . I have not proposed for myself any other goal in undertaking this work than that of forming a methodical and fastidious extract of a multitude of documents compiled after much expense and energy, and (Guatemala, 1960), 1:5–23; R. L. Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 1821–1871 (Athens, 1993), 186–88; see also Joanne Weaver, “Liberal Historian or Conservative Thinker? Alejandro Marure and Guatemalan History, 1821–1851” (master’s thesis, Tulane University, 1975). 26
Chinchilla Aguilar, prologue to Bosquejo histórico, 1:5, 22.
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which, after a few more years, would perhaps have been impossible to recover. And I declare that I have not undertaken it without first striving to rid myself of all affectations of friendship or hostility toward specific individuals. . . . Furthermore . . . my personal situation during the oscillations of the revolution and my relationships with many of the individuals who have served at the upper levels of the parties, have placed me at the level of events and within reach of the causes and interests that have produced them: I refer, then, to events which I have seen without actually taking part in them, and I speak of people whom I have dealt with intimately, or whom I have observed very closely. These circumstances give my narrative a degree of certainty superior to that which others, whose pens are vividly affected by the spirit of partisanship, can hope to achieve.27
The central theme of Marure’s monumental work is the inevitability of the Liberal cause, which he describes as a great wave of freedom and liberty that began to flow south from the United States into Hispanic America after the American Revolution. Sustained and amplified by the French Revolution, this movement crossed into Central America only to be met by the forces of repression and superstition.28 Suppressed for a time by the despotic laws of Spain, these liberal ideas were sustained by men such as Marure’s martyred father until the oppressed colonies won their independence. Liberalism then guided the early nation builders in the creation of the Central American Federation, a work that remained under attack by the forces of tyranny until the Liberal victory in the Civil War. The fluidity of the political attachments that characterized the first years of independence proved difficult for Marure to reconcile with his thesis as he described the formation of what would become the Liberal and Conservative parties. According to Marure, a major factor in the survival and propagation of liberalism was the development of a free press following the restoration of the Cádiz Constitution in 1820. He specifically cites Molina’s El editor constitucional as the newspaper where “the eloquent language of patriotism was spoken without disguise, the rights of Americans were defended, and the vices of the previous administration were criticized.”29 Yet at the same time he specifically ignores the role Montúfar played as an active member of the
27
Marure, Bosquejo histórico, 1:34–35.
28
Ibid., 41–46.
29
Ibid., 58.
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pro-independence cacos who united behind this paper. Although some members of the aristocracy, including Montúfar, preferred complete independence for Central America, Marure focuses on the fact that some of the Family’s most prominent spokesmen advocated separation from Spain in order to join with Mexico as a way to marginalize them all as imperialists. The “true patriots,” on the other hand, were those who promoted independence because they hoped to raise upon its foundation an entirely new social structure, create a government according to modern principles, remove outdated errors, and search out the stale marks and vain distinctions which formed the patrimony that Spain left us in exchange for our riches. Who wanted to restrict the abusive privileges of the clergy and wrest from them the ill-fated power they held over the multitude? Who proposed to remove the people from their humiliating servitude in which they have been maintained by their oppressors, give them influence, and elevate them to the same level as those who had subjugated them? In a word, those who hoped to establish a democratic government under the auspices of equality.30
Marure’s goal was not to promote the positive or appealing side of the Conservatives, or even acknowledge an alternative viewpoint. It was to establish, within the confines of documented history, the preeminence of the Liberal cause in the formation of a sovereign, independent, and modern Central America. To this end, Marure minimized the role of the moderados in the writing of the Constitution of 1824 and presented the Conservatives solely as obstacles to national development: The Liberals, distinguished subsequently by the labels fiebres or Anarchists, because of the passion with which they gave their opinions and promoted their reforms, were comprised, for the most part, of those who had been opposed to the union with Mexico, though there were some who were not; the Moderates, who were more generally known as the serviles and the Aristocrats, comprised the noble families and almost all who had become addicted to the imperial system; that is to say, most of the peninsular Spaniards, the military and civilian officials, the clergy, and the most ignorant members of the population. This group was enlarged by certain republican capitalists who feared the growth of the provinces and hoped to retain for the metropolis its traditional influence and prestige. Dissimulation and hypocrisy characterized this party.31 30
Ibid., 71.
31
Ibid., 122–23.
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In this manner Marure played upon all the prejudices of the colonial period to vilify and isolate the Conservatives. By associating them with Spanish officials, mercantilists, superstitious clergy and peasants, and privileged aristocrats, while reserving for the Liberals the support of the supposed enlightened, progressive, reformist “majority,” he allowed his historical scholarship to become a political weapon. The construction of such obviously partisan characterizations of the two parties in place of a more complex and historically accurate assessment of goals, ideology, and support belies Marure’s claim that he could write impartial contemporary history. Perhaps the most striking characteristic of Marure’s account of the process of political factionalism and the resulting Civil War is the manner in which he places Montúfar at the center of events. Although he acknowledges the general issues that led to the military confrontation between the Liberals and Conservatives, he personalizes the war to the degree that it appears as a dispute between Mariano Gálvez and José Francisco Córdova, on the one hand, and Montúfar and José Francisco Barrundia, on the other. Gálvez and Córdova are presented as the distinguished representatives of the competing political interests. Montúfar and Barrundia are those who “without showing their faces or presenting themselves in the arena worked quietly and accumulated secretly the combustibles that produced the 1826 explosion.”32 With respect to Montúfar, he continues: [A] man of great talents, and a delicate, clean, and intriguing touch, Montúfar is cultured and amiable; but a certain reserve and timidity, which does not inspire confidence about his sincerity, can also be noted. . . . Montúfar has always pertained to the anti-popular party and is one of the most bitter aristocrats; as a result he has never done anything other than work according to his own beliefs and among his own compatriots, all of whom are connected to the Family, of which he is a prominent member. During his present adversity, Montúfar has discovered a malicious and implacable spirit; he has forgotten the considerations owed by a man to his native land, regardless of his situation in life; and he has supported himself by writing from the refuge of a neighboring and rival state in order to dishonor his country and, perhaps, revive old and unjust pretensions.33
32
Ibid., 223.
33
Ibid., 224.
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Montúfar’s response, which came in a publication entitled Recuerdos y anécdotas (Memories and anecdotes), was swift and scathing, but could not undo the damage this negative characterization caused his personal and professional reputation: From the beginning of the revolution, the party that in Guatemala is called Liberal has seen its country only through partisan eyes, to the extent that only those who have dominated and directed the party deserve to be representatives of the nation: all else is considered foreign. . . . As a result, in addition to the Liberals’ view of the nation as a reflection of the party, it has become dogma to them to consider any writings against their supporters or against the representatives of the party as discrediting the nation. . . . This is all nothing more than sectarianism, miserable vulgarity, and the accusations of angry children. . . . One either writes history or one sees the men in the revolutions as always just in the methods which they employed, always conforming like angels to pure and dispassionate principles, and always conscious of their goals—If, however, this were not all true, and if it became necessary to refer to the truth of events and their causes, no one would be able to write the history of their country without being accused of discrediting it; otherwise, one would be obligated to write fairy tales instead of history, creating heroes, giants . . . and divinities.34
If long-term influence is the ultimate judge of success, then Marure decisively won the historical debate with Montúfar, despite the fact that the Liberal-dominated federation that he promoted survived the 1837 publication of the Bosquejo histórico by only two years. During the long Conservative domination of the isthmus that followed the collapse of the union, Central Americans did not develop an alternative historiographical tradition to compete with that established by Gálvez. No heir to Montúfar emerged after the exile’s death in Mexico City in 1844. However, Marure’s defection to the Carrera government and accommodation with the new Conservative regime ensured that the legacy of the Bosquejo histórico would survive his death in 1851. And, when the 1871 Revolution in Guatemala rehabilitated the Liberal cause, its advocates found in Marure both a historical justification for their efforts and a national identity suppressed by three decades of Conservative dictatorship. A new generation of historians simply picked up where Marure left off, summarizing his arguments and reinforcing his con-
34
Montúfar, “Recuerdos y anécdotas,” 16–17.
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clusions about the nature of the nation-building process.35 With the Bosquejo histórico serving as the standard-bearer for a revived Liberal movement that lasted well into the twentieth century, the Memorias de Jalapa was effectively discredited and discarded as a reliable historical source for the first decade of independence. Although Marure and Montúfar were both influenced by the Enlightenment, their historical philosophies were distinct. As an idealist Liberal—at least during the 1830s—Marure believed in a progressive, civilizing, and activist history, in which the historian served primarily as a teacher and moralist. This perspective justified a strident assault, based on long-standing prejudices and divisions, on what was seen by the Liberals as an antiEnlightenment, antireform, anticonstitutional, and antinational Conservative threat to the federation. The high regard with which Marure’s Bosquejo histórico has been held over the last 150 years must be attributed in part to the continuing popularity of these liberal ideals. Montúfar, on the other hand, as a consummate realist, had little faith in the uplifting power of history. He did not even consider himself a historian, stating baldly that “I do not believe that a contemporary can write history . . . even less do I believe that I can write as a historian having belonged to a political party, or while the wounds of the Civil War remain fresh.”36 Instead, he wrote to defend himself against the political passions that sent him into exile, and for posterity, so that future historians might have his perspective when accumulating material for a true history of the times.37 Although the Memorias suffered from a lack of documentary corroboration, it was not designed to be the official or last word on the Independence Period, as Gálvez obviously hoped the Bosquejo would be. Instead, it was the work of a moderately conservative intellectual who contributed much to Central American independence, wrote a personal and credible account of the period, and, as a consequence, presented an alternate path to national development that, because of its rejection of Liberal policies,
35 One can trace the enduring impact of Marure’s interpretation in the following works of the Liberal Reform era: Lorenzo Montúfar, Reseña histórica de Centro-America (Guatemala, 1878–79); Agustín Gómez Carillo, Estudio histórico sobre la América Central (San Salvador, 1884); Rafael Aguirre Cinta, Lecciones de historia general de Guatemala (Guatemala, 1899); Antonio Batres Jáuregui, La America Central ante la historia (Guatemala, 1920); Ramón Salazar, Historia de veintiún años: La independencia de Guatemala, 2d ed. (Guatemala, 1956). 36
Ibid., 5.
37
Ibid., 73.
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quickly disappeared into the storm of partisan recriminations and abuses. In such an atmosphere, history was little more than another political tool. As Montúfar writes: Is it so new for men who have recently managed to dominate their country and dictate laws to its legislature to then attempt the conquest of the country through its history? And is this conquest not easier in Guatemala than in any other civilized nation? Who in my country can defend the supremacy of truth at the present time? Who wants to, is able to, or does not consider it imprudent to write against the nation’s masters and their supporters?38
In the end, as Montúfar suggests, in the struggle for power, influence, and control over national development, the Guatemalan Conservative and Liberal elites chose to exaggerate their differences by politicizing their past. This emphasis on the political and propagandistic value of history during the formative period of national consolidation had tragic consequences for Central America, for it made it more difficult for future generations to surmount partisan perspectives regarding the past, the present, and the future and to create binding national myths. As both progenitors and victims of such polarization, Manuel Montúfar and Alejandro Marure in many respects personify the challenges still facing Central America, an area of uncertain identity that remains divided by region, class, race, and ideology.
38
Ibid., 70–71.