III.1.6 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 832583
In the early 1930s, José Vasconcelos was well known throughout Latin America for his ideas on Hispano-American culture, ideas that overtly challenged Anglo objectives. Throughout this text and in other writings, he expresses his interest in preserving Hispanic culture. Vasconcelos seeks the vindication of figures such as Mexican ideologue Lucas Alamán (1792–1853), who was vilified for his cultural conservatism but was an early opponent of both American imperialism and the Monroe Doctrine. Nevertheless, the text also reveals Vasconcelos’s own cultural conservatism, for he argues that the continent should be closely dependent on Catholicism and Spanish cultural values that are, according to him, the cornerstones of an American culture independent from that of the United States. Moreover, the fiercely Catholic statesman freely attacks the personality of—and some of the liberal political and social reforms implemented by—Benito Juárez (1806–1872), Mexico’s first native-born president. Indeed, despite the author’s antagonism, these “Leyes de Reforma” eventually reduced the stronghold of the Roman Catholic Church over Mexican politics. Originally published in Chile [José Vasconcelos, “Hispanoamericanismo y Panamericanismo,” Bolivarismo y Monroísmo: Temas Iberoamericanos (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Ercilla, 1934)], this translation is based on the book’s third edition [(Santiago de Chile, Ediciones Ercilla, 1937), 9–21].
By Bolívar-ism we mean the Hispanic-American ideal of creating a federation that includes every country with a Spanish culture. By Monroe-ism we mean the Anglo-Saxon ideal of using Pan Americanism to bring the twenty Hispanic nations into the Empire of the North.
[Simón] Bolívar proposed the creation of an inter-Hispanic-American organization at the Congress of Panama. His ideas, however, were not very well defined, since he allowed a representation of delegates to the Congress from North America, and there was even some talk of a vague union “between all the countries with republican governments” as a counterweight to the Holy Alliance, the refuge of monarchists. Race was not a significant factor at the time when England was replacing Spain in terms of paternal influence. A community based on language excited no enthusiasm, possibly because the threat was not yet apparent; English had not yet become the language of global conquest. And, finally, the religious problem had not yet arisen, because all new countries, in their constitutions, had guaranteed a position of privilege for the Catholic Church. Nobody foresaw the influx of Protestant missionaries, who sowed the seeds of discord among Christians when they invaded our countries, despite the fact that there are so many countries in Asia and Africa that would benefit from any aspect of Christianity.
Nobody at that time clearly understood the problems that were being created by a liberation movement that, in fact, was not entirely of our doing; it was also the result of the crisis in Europe and of the defeat of Spain both at home on the Iberian peninsula and in the Americas, where the denouement was helped along by patriot armies and British ships; not to mention the High Command of the Empire itself that had become our bitter enemy. On the Hispanic side, the confusion could not have been greater; whereas the British and North American response was clear and perfect. First of all, [Prime Minister George] Canning prohibited Spain from interfering in the New World so that, since we had no merchant navy of our own, all trade was ipso facto to be carried by the British fleet. [John Quincy] Adams immediately snatched the prize from [Prime Minister George] Canning by announcing the concept of “America for the Americans”—though it was clearly understood that the Americans were divided into groups of younger brothers under the exclusive care of an older brother who would serve as regent.
I do not know what Bolívar thought of Canning’s doctrine. To my knowledge, there appears to be no record of his disapproval, or even a sense of the risks involved in avoiding the expression of any specific objection to it. The fact is that nobody else possessed Bolívar’s ability to envision the partial destiny of our countries. What I do think has been satisfactorily established, but is not very well known, is that it was Lucas Alamán, from Mexico, who dealt the first blow to the Monroe Doctrine. . . . Ninety percent of my readers are going to say, “What are you talking about?” And they are right. I myself am an educated Mexican, yet I only came to understand who Alamán really was in my later years as a result of much independent thought. Prior to that I, and most of my fellow Mexicans, considered Alamán to be a reactionary, almost a traitor, and an enemy of our people. No wonder the Juárez school and the Pan American school have been poisoning people’s minds throughout this long period of darkness and explicit or tacit betrayal.
But let us not get ahead of ourselves. Let us not judge; let us lay out the facts in all their unvarnished, brutal, shameful nakedness.
Lucas Alamán was the Minister of Foreign Relations in the first cabinet appointed by a man who had given himself the eccentric name of “Guadalupe Victoria.” He called himself Guadalupe in honor of the Patron Saint of Mexico, the Virgin of Guadalupe; and Victoria in honor of the victory of the independence movement. [In fact] the independence movement in Mexico had been defeated and the rebels executed, but it was then consummated by a very strange coup d’état that, had it not led to the establishment of our nation, would have been universally condemned as an act of “vile, unmitigated treason.” What happened was that one fine day the last Viceroy, [Juan] O’Donojú, following orders from I don’t know which [Masonic] lodge, called on [Augustín de] Iturbide, who commanded royalist forces and who had distinguished himself for his hatred of the insurgents. Between them, these two proclaimed Mexican independence, created a flag, and, to give the conspiracy an image of national unity, invited the old guerrilla warrior Don Vicente Guerrero to join their ranks. O’Donojú immediately stepped aside and Iturbide proclaimed himself Emperor. Shortly thereafter his support evaporated, which led to the rise of several caudillos and subsequent leadership disputes. About 1833, however, a man of clear conscience emerged from among the staff of one of these bewildered chieftains; his name was Alamán. The first thing Alamán did to reestablish Mexico’s relations with the outside world was to resume the process that had been interrupted in Panama by convening the Congress of Tacubaya. This Congress is not mentioned in the elementary history that is taught in Latin American schools, despite the fact that it was attended by representatives from every Iberian-American country and avoided the purely romantic ideas proposed in Panama, arriving instead at highly innovative and transcendental decisions. This was doubtless its downfall, because after that Monroe-ism politely took note of our words but cruelly interfered with our deeds.
The Congress of Tacubaya established what was most important for the future of Iberian-America, but those very initiatives were doomed before the meeting was over. The most important accomplishment ever achieved by any of our statesmen was the Latin American Customs League that Alamán got approved by the Congress of Tacubaya. It was unanimously signed by the delegates in spite of opposition from the North American Minister and its State Department, which was presided over at that time by the famous [John Quincy] Adams, a worthy rival for Alamán. Adams was in turn represented by the famous [Joel Roberts] Poinsett, who had traveled extensively throughout the Americas, learning about our misfortunes and our local conditions. As a result, he was aware that Latin American caudillos were opposed to unification, preferring the divisions that allowed them greater control over their fiefdoms. In spite of these pressures, Alamán was able to take advantage of the influence that Mexico then wielded as the most powerful and educated country in the Hispanic family of nations. It therefore became necessary to destroy Alamán. Adams sent his delegate to accomplish that mission by opposing the resolutions adopted by the Congress.
It was unfair, claimed the delegate, to leave the United States out of the economic consortium created by the Latin American Customs League. The United States was, after all, also a “republic.” But this Bolivarian argument carried no weight with Alamán. Adams [who was instrumental in shaping the Monroe Doctrine as Monroe’s Secretary of State] insisted that, while the Monroe Doctrine prevented Europeans from sharing in the wealth of the Americas, it benefited American countries and that the United States should therefore be a member of the League. But Alamán felt no sense of obligation to Monroe-ism. He was not a member of the generation that allied itself with England to vanquish Spain. Alamán believed in the race, the language, and the religious community of the Americas. In short, Alamán provided Bolívar-ism with the content it lacked and fearlessly dismissed Monroe-ism. Alamán was the first to introduce Hispanic-Americanism in clear, well-defined opposition to the hybrid ambitions of Pan Americanism.
Alamán managed to convince the delegates from Spanish-American countries who, without exception, voted in favor of his plan. Alamán succeeded at the Congress thanks to the clarity of his arguments. But Adams, though beaten, was not prepared to give up. Poinsett, who represented Adams, then set about organizing a campaign in Mexico among the lodges devoted to the Anglo-Saxon ritual [from York and Scotland]. Were these lodges perhaps opposed to the ones that had helped achieve independence?
The fact is that Poinsett’s lodges overthrew the government that Alamán served. The first “liberal” revolution was successful, and Alamán not only lost his position in the government, he was also marginalized from the decision-making process and lost the support of his fellow citizens. He was persecuted by the government and slandered by pro-Monroe propaganda.
Pan Americanism thus chalked up its first Mexican victory. Hispanic-Americanism fell from grace along with Alamán and, in spite of a few more or less sincere attempts to revive it, the movement remained dormant for the rest of the century.
. . .
We will now, however, take a closer look at a man who, perhaps unknowingly, was the embodiment of Pan Americanism even before this movement got around to articulating its goals at congressional and institutional forums. He is widely considered to be the key figure in Mexican history and is also the distinguished role model for quite a few “Latin Americas” across the continent. A bust of this man sits in a place of honor in the Pan American temple in Washington, and his likeness is everywhere in his native land where, by law, his statue must be erected in every public plaza. I am referring to Benito Juárez. No one ever achieved more widespread notoriety. No one did more damage to Mexico nor caused greater confusion in the Americas. The Aztec ax reappeared in his hands to consummate the useless sacrifice of Maximilian. There is nonetheless a persistent chorus of praise that insists on proclaiming his greatness.
Juárez stood at the heart of an epic saga in which Mexico’s soul was adrift and sinking, in spite of the glitzy trappings of victory in which the country had managed to wrap itself. According to the official version of history, France, the imperialist power, and Austria, a country of noble ancestry—with the Pope’s involvement behind the scenes—conspired with Mexican traitors to steal Mexico’s liberty and assets. Whereupon Benito Juárez, a humble but tenacious Indian, took command of the country and led its people to a grand finale of justice and the rule of law. To this day, this is still the Pan American version of events, and four or five generations of Mexicans have been raised to believe it. If it were not for Mexico’s current disastrous situation, many Mexicans might never have begun to see things differently. Let us raise this torch of understanding that was so difficult to light.
We should now devote a few words to the myth of Juárez. . . .
Let us take a deeper look at the double leitmotif of life in the New World. Ever since gaining our independence from Spain we have been engaged in a lengthy, brutal conflict that we hint at with references to betrayal, deception, or ingenuousness. Hispanic-Americanism and Pan Americanism; Bolívar-ism and Monroe-ism. The conflict has driven countries in the New World to lash out at each other and tear each other apart.
Prior to Juárez and shortly after the fall of Alamán’s Mexico, we were forced to endure one of those characters thrown up by the forces of evil that are swept along by murky causes somehow destined for success. I am referring to the dastardly [Antonio López de] Santa Ana who, with his ferocious tyranny, his cruel megalomania, and his lust for cockfighting, was the despair of a nation that was still in the throes of consolidation. The people’s anguish was such that entire provinces, like Texas, welcomed a new conqueror that liberated them from the outlaws who governed them! We should remember the case of [Lorenzo de] Zavala, the first Pan American associated with [Sam] Houston in the Texas Independence movement and his bilingual conspiracy on behalf of Monroe-ism to conquer Texas. The result was the gutting of Mexican-Spanish culture in Texas and the relegation of non-Anglo-Saxon customs to the working classes. New Mexico, on the other hand, though also absorbed, did not yield to Pan Americanism. Its population, which was more united and patriotic, came to an agreement with the invader and set its own conditions: respect for the language, respect for the Catholic religion; no Methodist missions that neo-Mexicans were forced to join. They wanted nothing to do with Pan Americanism and demanded respect for their essential Hispanic heritage, even in defeat.
. . .
Let us ignore these islands in the continental tide and focus on Mexico, which is the model and the harbinger for the Monroe Doctrine’s goals for the rest of the continent. Santa Ana destroyed Mexico. To us, he is like [Juan Manuel Ortiz de] Rosas in Argentina, and like [José Gaspar Rodríguez de] Francia in Paraguay. Like them, he represented a pseudo-nationalism based entirely on arrogance, with no revitalizing spiritual content. Santa Ana cost us half our territory and, what is even worse, he cost us our Reform.
In Argentina, Rosas was not only responsible for a long delay in the country’s progress; he also interrupted the influence of foreign, Pan American, pro-Monroe trends that were being developed with no apparent apprehensions by men as eminently capable as [Domingo Faustino] Sarmiento. The unfavorable interpretation of Spain’s colonizing role in the Americas that sought to justify shedding Spanish influence, actually finds in Sarmiento a standard bearer that this movement does not deserve. The same movement promoted the meddling influence of the Monroe Doctrine, although in Argentina’s case it was still the Canning Doctrine. In other words, British intervention in Argentine life through capital investment and an anti-Spanish attitude since they were unable to accomplish their goals by force after being defeated by the patriots under the leadership of [Viceroy Santiago de] Liniers.
. . .
For more details on Pan American history the reader is encouraged to consult the masterly works by Mexico’s Carlos Pereyra1 who, though never thanked for his efforts, has done more to vindicate Spanish influence in the Americas than all the Institutes financed by official grants. He has also done more than many statesmen to awaken our Hispanic-American sense of identity. We would especially recommend his Breve Historia de Hispanoamérica [Brief History of Hispanic America], which portrays the Monroe Doctrine as a snake wrapped around the lethargic body of our continent. Making no claim whatsoever to a learned command of history, we confine ourselves to extracting well-known, elementary facts and reviewing conclusions that seem alarming and that therefore might stimulate the kind of action required to save us.
Juárez is the main hero of Pan Americanism. He represents the Anglo-Saxon idea in the Hispanic mind. He was not actually Hispanic other than as a result of the influence of his environment. He had no European blood in his veins. He owed his education to a mestizo priest and did his schooling at the seminary in Oaxaca, a thoroughly Spanish institution. Pan Americanism appealed to his subconscious anger as an Indian who could never forgive the Spanish. When Juárez took a wife, the instinct of racial purity that began with Malinche—the call of the flesh—prompted him to marry a woman of Iberian descent who was almost white. . . . And his program implicitly endorsed entrusting the country’s soul to Pan Americanism. Perhaps, deep within themselves, men like Juárez had no clear concept of what they were doing when they said, as he did, “Let us replace the backward Catholicism of Spain with the modern Protestantism of the North Americans.” They were the playthings of a political force whose power they did not understand, and there is no basis for the love expressed for [Sebastián] Lerdo de Tejada, Juárez, and [Melchor] Ocampo. They were unaware of the shadowy side of the whirlwind that swept them along. Because of them, and in spite of them, the country paid the price for having allowed a foreign ambassador—the obscure Poinsett—to deprive Mexican politics of the only able statesman produced by our people in the early days of our national existence. No country produces dozens of people like Alamán, endowed with the genius required to save them. And it is demonstrably true that countries are most successful when they commit to being governed by their best and brightest. Disaster awaits countries that, on the other hand, exclude capable men from government and replace them with Napoleonic types or common shysters. The reformers—the group that Juárez brought with him—were simply no good. . . . Not sure exactly what they were doing, Juárez and his group advocated accepting the Monroe Doctrine; the conservatives, meanwhile, supported by a selfish clergy and fueled by desperation, tried to resist the moral invasion of an enemy that had already devoured half our territory. The conservatives lost due to their characteristic, incorrigible contempt for the interests of the masses and because the liberals yielded unconditionally to the “Yankees” in their desire to win. In fact Mexico was, in mid-century, a battleground between two imperial ideas: the Latin idea and the Anglo-Saxon idea; Catholicism and Protestantism. Alamán versus Adams, although the men themselves were no longer involved. But the memory, the doctrine, and Alamán’s Zollverein [united customs initiative] were an inspiration for the pro-Mexico movement that did not find what it was seeking in either of the other alternatives. The liberals, who had no national doctrine of their own, were resigned to borrowing one, adopting the models proposed by Washington, Canning, Franklin, and even Adams, the father of Pan Americanism. Juárez was defeated, with no way out, in the northern town near El Paso that now bears his name: an obscure border village that today’s Pan Americans have converted into a gambling den. . . .
Unfortunately, we Mexican expatriates have always ended up in the United States. Once there, we lose our moral independence and sometimes our Mexican point of view. Among the more clear-headed and honest there is a genuine desire to introduce the kind of freedom we remember from the days when democracy was a functioning reality in the United States. The fact is that moral conquest travels ahead of material invasions, and northern statesmen no longer have to make any great effort to impose their politics on the South, since they already have the misguided support of refugees who will control the country tomorrow. Juárez had been in New Orleans and now waited in El Paso.
As soon as the United States recovered from the Civil War, its first order of international business was to demand that France withdraw the military contingent the French had sent to Mexico to support Maximilian. France decided to abandon its Mexican adventure rather than cause a rift with the United States on the eve of the conflict with Germany (this was during the campaigns of the seventies), and Napoleon III ordered the evacuation of his troops. . . .
This move was exactly what Washington wanted; instead of recognizing the de facto government once the meddlesome French troops had been withdrawn, the United States took advantage of the situation to send Juárez in again, well provided with all manner of resources. Once Juárez had taken command of the government, his policies showed him to be a grateful man and, furthermore, one who was completely ensnared in the nets of the country’s traditional enemy.
. . .
1
Carlos Pereyra (1871–1942), who lived in Spain for many years, wrote countless works and was the director of the Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo Institute, where he published the Revista de Indias. His main books are: La obra de España en América, La conquista de las rutas oceánicas, La huella de los conquistadores, Historia de la América española, Breve historia de América, Hernán Cortés y la epopeya de Anáhuac, Francisco Pizarro, and El Mito Monroe en encendida defensa de la hispanidad.