LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

The following abbreviations have been used for works which occur repeatedly in the bibliographical essays:

1. AESC Annales: Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations

2. CHLA Cambridge History of Latin America

3. HAHR Hispanic American Historical Review

4. HM Historia Mexicana

5. JGSWGL Jahrbuch für Geschicbte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas

6. JLAS Journal of ha tin American Studies

7. LARR Latin American Research Review

MEXICO: RESTORED REPUBLIC AND PORFIRIATO, 1867 - 1910

In 1958 Daniel Cosio Villegas, one of Mexico's greatest historians whose special field was the history of Mexico from 1867 to 1910, stated that, quite apart from the period of the Restored Republic (1867—76), nearly 2,000 books and pamphlets had been written on the Porfirian period (1876-1910) alone. Yet, with a number of significant exceptions, the most important works on this period of Mexican history have appeared since the 1950s. The secondary literature on the period 1867-1910, and especially on the Porfiriato, is assessed in Daniel Cosio Villegas, 'El Porfiriato: su historiografia o arte historico', in Extremos de América (Mexico, 1949), 113-82; John Womack, Jr, 'Mexican political historiography, 195 9-1969', in Investigaciones contemporáneas sobre historia de Mexico (Mexico and Austin, Texas, 1971); Enrique Florescano, Elpodery la luchapor elpoder en la historiografia mexicana (Mexico, 1980); and Thomas Benjamin and Marcial Ocasio-Melendez, 'Organizing the memory of modern Mexico: Porfirian historiography in perspective, 1880S-1980S', HAHR, 64/2 (1984), 323-64.

A traveller arriving in the Río de la Plata region in the 1870s would have been struck first by the width of the estuary and then, on entering the port of Buenos Aires, by the lowness and simplicity of the buildings. Travelling inland, he would have been stunned by the vast expanses of flat, treeless land, the pampas, stretching away as far as the eye could see, where the overwhelming sense of solitude was only interrupted by the sight of a herd of cattle, or by the sudden appearance of an ostrich or some other example of the local fauna. At that time, the most important commercial activity was carried on in a coastal strip along the estuary of the Río de la Plata and the Paraná, and along the southern course of the river Uruguay in its navigable reaches. The shortage of wood, in addition to the huge distances, was an obstacle to the establishment of permanent settlements inland: prospective settlers were obliged to transport building materials from distant ports or urban areas. Apart from the Paraná, a section of the Uruguay, and the Río Negro, which was in territory still occupied by the Indians, the rivers of Argentina were not navigable, and railways were only just beginning to be built. Moreover, Indians still occupied what was called the ‘desert’, not far beyond the populated areas of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe provinces, and Indian raids were common. Apart from the provincial capitals, administrative centres which dated from colonial times, there was no extensive network of towns in the interior, and the rural population was sparse.

General trends

During the period from independence until the middle of the nineteenth century – in general a period of economic stagnation, or only modest economic growth – the population of Latin America as a whole grew at a rate of about one per cent per annum. This was in line with the rate of growth of the more developed European countries but less than that of the United States. It was also lower than the rate of growth during the late colonial period, a rate which had been expected to continue or even to accelerate after independence. In Mesoamerica and the Andes, where subsistence agriculture predominated and where the population was predominantly Indian, population growth was slow, hindered by conditions which can only be described as Malthusian. For example, after 1825 the population of the central states of Mexico grew at annual compounded rates which varied between 0.4 and 1 per cent; the northeastern states of Veracruz and Chiapas experienced somewhat higher rates of population growth; the population of the north-west and Yucatán decreased consistently until the 1870s. The regions of Latin America suitable for the cultivation of staples in demand in the industrializing European countries witnessed somewhat more dynamic demographic growth. Although the population there was generally sparse, it tended to increase faster. For example, the expansion in cattle raising was responsible for populating the pampas of the River Plate area. The rural population of the province of Buenos Aires – excluding the capital – increased at a staggering annual rate of 4.2 per cent between 1836 and 1855.

During the period from 1880 to 1930, although the population of the region remained overwhelmingly rural, urban workers became a significant force in the national life of most Latin American countries. The specific form of Latin America's incorporation in the world economy, however, meant that the urban labour movements which emerged in the region were different in important respects from those of Europe or North America.

The economy, the bourgeoisie and the state

Most Latin American countries served in the international economic order as exporters of primary products and importers of manufactured goods; until well into the twentieth century industry played a relatively minor role in the economies of the region. Not only were most Latin American economies fundamentally dependent on decisions made elsewhere and subject to the sometimes violent fluctuations of the world market, but the labour force was often highly segmented. Those employed in the export sector sometimes lived in considerable isolation from other workers, although they generally had the advantage of relatively greater bargaining power. When the carpenters or even textile workers went on strike in Buenos Aires or São Paulo or Santiago the effects might be serious, but were scarcely comparable to the repercussions of a disruption in the export economy. If the railway workers failed to bring Argentine wheat or Brazilian coffee or Chilean nitrate to the ports, and if these commodities were not quickly loaded onto the ships which were to take them to European or North American markets, serious crisis almost immediately threatened the respective national economies.

Introduction

Any attempt to treat the rural history of such a large and varied area as that embraced by the term Spanish America must first make clear the conceptual difficulties and the limitations imposed by uneven research. One approach has been to divide the entire area by elevation into lowland and highland or by zones of plantations and haciendas. This permits a broad and useful distinction between the sugar-producing, former slave regions such as the Antilles and the classic hacienda-dominated landscape of central Mexico or the Ecuadorian highlands. But the usefulness of this scheme disintegrates as one attempts to squeeze additional regions into it. The Cuautla depression in the Mexican state of Morelos, or Salta in Argentina, for example, both had many of the features of plantation life, such as capital intensive sugar centrales and a modern national market, but their labour force was drawn mainly from the smallholder Indian peasantry.

Another typology can be drawn along vegetative lines, that is, to examine rural society in terms of the crop it produces. To the extent that coffee or tobacco or sugar do in fact produce certain common or general requirements this scheme is useful, but only up to a certain point. The coffee plantations of Cundinamarca led to a very different society from that found among the independent smallholder coffee growers of Caldas or Costa Rica. And while it is true that the classic hacienda built on the high culture remnants of Mesoamerica and the Andean highlands shared several features, there are wide ethnic and cultural differences among both landowners and village workers.

The periodization of Latin American economic history around ‘external shocks’ has been increasingly rejected in recent years. Yet if we wish to explore – as an open question – the role of the international economy in the economic development of Latin America, the First World War and the World Depression enclose a significant period. It bridges the gap between the first major ‘external shock’ of the twentieth century and the final breakdown of the export-led growth mechanism of the ‘Golden Age’ whose starting point had been around 1870. The period also represents the key years in the changeover from one hegemony to another: Britain's decline as a major economic power was hastened by the war (when Germany was eliminated) and the United States was thrust into the role of Latin America's major investment and trade partner.

Nevertheless, generalizations about Latin America as a whole, dangerous at the best of times, are particularly difficult in such a period of transition. Change occurs at different rates in different countries and perceptions vary: in some countries the ‘Golden Age’ clearly continues until 1929; in others fundamental changes occur between 1914 and 1929 and the period is aptly characterized the ‘Great Delay’; and in others the roots of change were there well before 1914.

In this chapter we first describe the major characteristics of the changing world economy between the First World War and the World Depression. Then we explore the impact of these changes on the Latin American economies. The conclusion attempts an evaluation of the extent of change and the long-term significance of the period.

Anglo-American rivalries after independence

The newly independent Latin American nations found themselves in 1830 in a world of international rivalries and power politics. The European powers, especially Britain which had played at times a decisive part in the struggle for Latin American independence, continued to play a significant political as well as economic role in Latin America until well into the twentieth century. After independence the British showed special concern for Brazil, the Río de la Plata region, Chile, Central America and Mexico. To a lesser degree the French demonstrated an interest in the Río de la Plata and Mexico. And the Caribbean remained a European-dominated lake with Spain, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark holding the many islands as colonies.

Between 1830 and 1890 European powers on numerous occasions directly intervened in the hemisphere with varying degrees of military force. Some of these interventions were directed at maintaining influence by aiding friendly Latin American countries in their rivalries with hostile neighbours as well as protecting their own nationals when they were ill used by Latin American governments. These elements were combined in the various British and French interventions in the Río de la Plata between 1836 and 1850, two of which, the French blockade of Buenos Aires in 1836 and the joint British–French blockade in 1845, lasted over two and a half years. The Argentinian dictator, Juan Manuel de Rosas, who was hostile towards both foreign interests and the neighbouring states of Uruguay and Brazil, was the main cause of these interventions.

Three theoretical assumptions in liberal sociology long ruled historical study of the Mexican Revolution: mass action is consensual, intentional, and redistributive; collective violence measures structural transformation; and nationalism aggregates interests in a limited division of labour. In plain words, movement of ‘the people’ is movement by ‘the people’ for ‘the people’; the bloodier the struggle, the deeper the difference between ways of life before and after the struggle; and familiarity breeds solidarity. The most influential scholars of the subject also made two radical suppositions about Mexico in particular. First, the most significant fact in the country in 1910 was the struggle between the upper and lower classes. Second, the conflict was about to explode. And on these premises respectable research and analysis framed a pro-revolutionary story of the rise of the downtrodden: the Revolution began over a political issue, the succession to Porfirio Díaz, but masses of people in all regions quickly involved themselves in a struggle beyond politics for sweeping economic and social reforms. Enormous material destruction throughout the country, the ruination of business, and total defiance of the United States were necessary for the popular struggle to triumph, as it did. And through the struggle the champions of ‘the people’ became the revolutionary leaders. Economic and social conditions improved in accordance with revolutionary policies, so that the new society took shape within a framework of official revolutionary institutions. The struggle ended in 1917, the year of the revolutionary constitution. The new revolutionary state enjoyed as much legitimacy and strength as its spokesmen said it did.

DEMOGRAPHIC AND SOCIAL CHANGE

At the time of the declaration of the Republic in 1889, Brazil was a country with a low population density, and there were vast areas in the north and the west which were virtually empty or only sparsely populated. Although these generalizations remain true for the entire period of the First Republic (1889–1930), there was nevertheless considerable demographic growth. Between 1890 and 1920 the population almost doubled, increasing from 14.3 million to 27.0 million. This was due to a process of natural growth, combined with mass European immigration in the centre-south. However, the age structure displays a feature characteristic of underdeveloped countries: a very broad base tapering sharply to a narrow peak, the result of high birth rate, coupled with high rates of general and especially infant mortality. The under twenties constituted 51 per cent and 56 per cent of the population in 1890 and 1920 respectively. The forty to fifty age group was almost three times larger than that of the over sixties in 1890, and over three times larger in 1920. The over sixties represented 4.7 per cent and 4 per cent of the population in these years. Estimates for the period between 1920 and 1940 suggest an average life expectancy of only 36-7 years; for the 1900–20 period it was even lower.

In the centre-south where immigration played a major role in population growth and in the development of social stratification, Sāo Paulo was the state which absorbed the majority of the immigrants: 51.9 per cent of the 304,054 immigrants who entered the country between 1888 and 1890, 64.9 per cent of the 1,129,315 in the period from 1891 to 1900, and 58.3 per cent of the 1,469,095 in the period from 1901 to 1920.

THE RESTORED REPUBLIC, 1867–76

The aftermath of war

The Liberals who came to power in 1855, 34 years after Mexico's independence from Spain, had hoped to give Mexico the productivity and stability of its northern neighbour, the United States. Having seen their country lose almost half of its territory to the United States in the recent Mexican–American War (1846–8), they feared that without a measure of both economic growth and political stability the very existence of Mexico as an independent nation–state would be in jeopardy. Their programme envisaged the replacement of what they considered the unsteady pillars of the old order – the church, the army, the regional caciques, the communal villages – with a ‘modern foundation’. True to their programme they proceeded first in a series of reform laws and then in the constitution of 1857 to weaken the position of the church. Catholicism ceased to be the official religion of the state. Ecclesiastic courts lost much of their jurisdiction. Marriages could be effected through a civil ceremony. The clergy could now be tried in civil courts. Church lands were put up for sale. The army too was stripped of many of its former prerogatives. Like the church, it lost its judicial privileges. Officers could now be tried in civil courts. For the first time in Mexico's history its head of state and cabinet were, by and large, civilians. In addition many of the once omnipotent caciques, the mainstay of the ousted Conservative regime, who for so long had ruled their local strongholds with virtually complete autonomy, were forced to yield power to new Liberal appointees.

The liberal heritage in an era of ideological consensus

Political and social ideas in Latin America have been affected by two obvious though frequently unappreciated facts that distinguish the region from other parts of the ‘non-Western’, ‘developing’, or ‘third’ world with which it has often been compared. First, the culture of Latin America's governing and intellectual elites is integrally Western, that is, it has emerged within the broader confines of Western European culture, modified of course by the special characteristics Spain and Portugal imparted to their former colonies. Second, the nations of Latin America, with the exception of Cuba, gained their political independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

It is now common to refer to nineteenth-century Latin America as ‘neo-colonial’, which suggests a situation of economic and cultural dependence for nations that were politically independent. The implication is that independence was formal and superficial and that dependence was the deeper and more significant experience of the region. It is clear that the elites of ninteenth-century Latin America were tied to, even dependent on, Europe, and that their economic interests within the international capitalist system formed part of that tie. It is also clear that the bond with Europe was strengthened after 1870, with the burgeoning of the Latin American export economies. Less clear is that the circumstance of early political independence can be regarded as a superficial element in Latin American culture. On the contrary, the ideologies, political programmes and social theories of the nineteenth century, while intellectually ‘European’, were nonetheless distinctive and authentically ‘Latin American’, in part because they emerged in politically independent nations.

PARAGUAY UNDER ALLIED OCCUPATION

On New Year's Day 1869 foreign troops occupied Asunción, the capital of Paraguay. The almost deserted city was given over to pillage as the soldiers – mainly Brazilians, with a few Argentine and Uruguayan contingents – searched for booty and women. The Allies had been at war with Paraguay for over four years, and now, at last, the exhausted little nation's defences had finally collapsed. Even so, the war was not yet over. Paraguay's president, Marshal Francisco Solano Lopez, continued to fight from makeshift headquarters deep in the forests to the north, his dwindling army maintained only by the conscription of young boys aged between ten and fourteen. Not until 1 March 1870 was he finally cornered at Cerro Corá, near the Brazilian border, and killed.

In the meantime the Allies had set up a puppet government in Asunción. A triumvirate, appointed from anti-López elements, declared the Marshal to be an outlaw and confiscated all his property. The new government also promised to hold elections during the coming year for a constitutional convention which would form the basis for the establishment of a democratic state, after more than half a century of dictatorship under, successively, Dr José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia (1814–40), who after independence had largely sealed the country off from the outside world; Carlos Antonio López (1840–62), who had ended Paraguay's isolation and begun a process of economic and military modernization; and Francisco Solano Lopez (1862–70), whose dreams of a South American empire had together with the territorial ambitions of Paraguay's neighbours, Argentina and Brazil, led to the disastrous war.

As Chile entered the 1870s the Republic could look back on 40 years of virtually uninterrupted constitutional stability – unique in Spanish America – and the evolution of a functioning multi-party system in politics. She could also look back on the growth of a modest but promising economy, based on the export of primary products from land and mine. Her population had doubled since Independence, from one to two million by 1875; her foreign trade, dominated from 1830 to 1870 by copper exports, had grown apace, providing adequate revenue for successive governments to initiate transport improvements, notably railways, develop educational programmes, provide urban amenities – and preserve law and order. In foreign affairs, Chile had not only maintained her independence but in the 1830s had also prevented the combined attempt of Peru and Bolivia to assert hegemony on the Pacific coast of South America.

The country's capacity to attain these objectives undoubtedly owed a good deal to the constitutional system created by Diego Portales (1793–1837), backed by a remarkably homogeneous landed aristocracy and based upon the authoritarian, centralizing constitution of 1833. That constitution, coldly realistic, recognized what Chile was rather than what it might aspire to be: it appreciated what Portales called ‘the weight of the night’, the sheer traditionalism of three hundred years of colonial control, during which the basic lineaments of society had been drawn, and accepted that independence from Spain was indeed a fundamental political act, but had virtually no economic or social content. For the society of Chile was essentially rural: a white aristocracy of land ruled the national life in all its branches while an illiterate peasantry, largely mestizo, obeyed.

‘Hayti is not a civilized country’, observed the provisional president Boisrond Canal in 1902 when discussing with the British Minister in Port-au-Prince a case of police brutality towards a British subject. Canal was speaking as a member of the educated, francophile, mulatto elite, who generally despised the great mass of black citizens whose customs they regarded as barbarous and primitive.

Haiti, which had become the first independent country of Latin America in 1804, was from the outset plagued by deep social and political divisions. While Haitians of all colours saw their defeat of the French colonists as a vindication of the African race, tensions between blacks and mulattos frequently manifested themselves in the new nation. The majority of blacks were descendants of the 450,000 slaves of the colonial period while the mulatto families mostly went back to the small but significant group of affranchis or free coloureds. With independence, some of the former slaves had managed to secure small properties, particularly in the north, either as a result of grants or sales of land by the government or by squatting on vacant lands, but the general effect of the early land reforms had been to strengthen the position of the mulattos as the principal landowners of the country.

During the eighteenth century Haiti (Saint Domingue) had been the world's leading producer of sugar, but the fragmentation of the great estates together with the destruction wrought in the revolutionary years led to a dramatic decline in sugar production. Coffee in fact became independent Haiti's main export crop.

Introduction

By the time the great romantic writer Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811–88) became president of Argentina in 1868 irresistible changes were sweeping over Latin America which were reflected in each of the arts, though above all in literature. Most works produced at that time still seem romantic to modern eyes, but perceptible differences were emerging, how much or how soon depending largely on the city or region in which they originated. Some of the changes arose from purely internal factors, but the period around 1870 also saw the beginning of the intensification of the international division of labour and the more complete integration of the Latin American economies, including many regions of the interior, into the world economic system. The population of Latin America doubled during the second half of the nineteenth century, and the process of urbanization quickened: by 1900 Buenos Aires had one million inhabitants, Rio de Janeiro three-quarters of a million, Mexico City more than half a million, and a number of other cities, including São Paulo – which in 1850 had only 15,000 – were over a quarter of a million in size. By 1930 in some of the fastest growing cities 30 to 50 per cent of the population were European immigrants, mostly Italian and Spanish, or children of European immigrants. If the period 1830–70 had been mainly one of introspection and internal frustration, particularly in Spanish America, the period from 1870–1914 saw the continent looking outwards again, though an extra dimension of disillusionment, for peoples already sobered by decades of internal strife, was added when Latin American nations began to wage large-scale wars on one another, as in the Paraguayan War (1864–70) and War of the Pacific (1879–83).

Introduction

The attainment of a modern society founded upon a developed economy has been an enduring objective in Latin America, exercising the minds of pensadores and policymakers intermittently since the revolutions for independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The promotion of manufacturing activities was regarded as central to the realization of that objective. Various views as to the most appropriate means of stimulating industrial expansion prevailed: options included direct state aid for manufacturing and a more generalized encouragement of economic growth that would promote individual initiative in the industrial sector alongside investment in other activities. Frequent contemporary recourse to the word industria (often employed in a context where modern usage would require the expression ‘industrialization’) is evidence of the importance attached to it and possibly the perception of a failure to develop a manufacturing base – at least during the period before 1930.

It used to be argued by historians of Latin America that industrialization only became feasible after the depression of the 1930s, that is, after a period of profound economic crisis in the central, industrialized capitalist economies. The world economic crisis and associated reduction in international trade had a profound impact upon the foreign trade sector of the republics and undermined a peculiar socio-institutional order committed to a political economy rooted in economic internationalism. Principally associated with authors writing from a dependency perspective, the view was advanced that adverse externally induced dislocation facilitated industrialization in Latin America. The collapse of the inport–export complex removed an anti-industry bias in Latin American societies as the political dominance of a landed and commercial oligarchy was challenged by a rising industrial bourgeoisie and (in a few cases) an incipient urban industrial proletariat.

The articulate inhabitants of the Republics of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela in the half century from 1880 to 1930 – their second half-century of independent existence – usually expressed themselves rather more cautiously on the subject of progress than their contemporaries in more fortunate parts of the world: ‘In the political life of all peoples progress is slow’, wrote the leaders of the dissident wing of Colombian conservatism in 1896, ‘as with the tides – to follow the thought of a well-known English writer [Arthur Hugh Clough] – the waves alternately advance and fall back, but the land conquered is always greater than the land lost; there is a constant advance.’ To another Colombian conservative, Miguel Antonio Caro, the advance was never clear to the participants: ‘The progress of ideas is mysteriously mixed into human history. The conflict of principles is interwoven with the struggles of parties, and fighting in one band or another, through individual or collective interest, men serve or oppose the cause of civilization, frequently without any aim or consciousness of doing so.’

Armed conflict in this part of the world, endemic in the nineteenth century, persisted into the early years of the twentieth century. The Colombian ‘War of the Thousand Days’ ended in 1902 with the treaties of Neerlandia and Wisconsin, in which the liberal Generals Rafael Uribe Uribe and Benjamin Herrera respectively admitted defeat in a future banana-growing centre and on board a US warship. Sporadic uprisings in Venezuela persisted for some years after the defeat of the last major armed revolt, the Revolución Libertadora of 1903.