Bolívar and Latin American Identity
As a response to questions about the nature of America and its inhabitants written during a period of social and political transformation, "The Jamaica Letter" provided Simón Bolívar with an opportunity to explore and to create Latin American identity. An analysis of the letter shows how he constructed and portrayed this identity both deliberately and accidentally. Bolívar's treatment of the indigenous people of Latin America is particularly interesting to observe as we attempt to deconstruct his notion of who is American. Not surprisingly, considering both his goals and the period in which he was writing, he presents the indigenous people in a contradictory manner. On one hand they are American, because he defines Americans as people who were born in America, and he talks about them as such; at the same time, however, they are something other, and certain passages of his letter show that he considers them separately.
Most blatantly, we see Bolívar's attempt to amalgamate the Spanish-American (both criollo and mestizo) and indigenous populations in order to create the idea of an American people. In the opening of the letter he states that the Spanish have tortured America "from the time of her discovery until the present." This denunciation of the Conquista, the process which created Bolívar himself as well as the rest of the Spanish-Americans and the social structure they inhabit, is a political move to identify them with the indigenous. As he goes through census estimates and population descriptions of various Latin American countries, he talks about everyone as American, without distinction. He employs the same identification of Spanish-American and indigenous in his discussion of the atrocities committed to the indigenous people; although it is clear that he is referring specifically to the indigenous people, he only calls them American, or else uses neutral terms such as "inhabitants," "people," and "souls." As he talks about their torture, he states that "the Spaniards spare nothing that might enable them to subdue those who have had the misfortune of being born on this soil, which appears to be destined to flow with the blood of its offspring." By using the words "born on this soil," Bolívar allies the Spanish-Americans to the wrong-doing that the indigenous have suffered at the hand of the Spaniards.
In a society distinguished by an intricate system of castes, this unification of indigenous, criollo, and mestizo is obviously a political decision. There are two major reasons why Bolívar's cause would benefit from such a move. First, Bolívar has much more ammunition against the Spanish if he can incorporate the wrongs they committed on the indigenous into his attack; second, in his fight for independence from the Spanish, he needs to define who is this person that he believes should be the free possessor of America. Bolívar's decision is to define these "Americans" as people born on American soil. Significantly, at this time in Latin America, the Spaniards who had been born in Spain had more rights than the people born in America, even if they were criollo. Bolívar explicitly declaims these laws in his letter, saying that they "favor, almost exclusively, the natives of the country who are of Spanish extraction. Thus, by an outright violation of the laws and the existing agreements, those born in America have been despoiled of their constitutional rights as embodied in the code." Therefore we see that Bolívar's definition of who is American was not only a deliberate, political move, but was furthermore directly prompted by the laws that Spain imposed on Latin America at the time.
As we look deeper into Bolívar's letter, we realize that his conception of "Americaness" is more complex than a simple prerequisite of being born on American soil. When he discusses the misfortune experienced by people of Venezuela, whom we would consider to be indigenous, he says:
A few women, children, and old men are all that remain. Most of the men have perished rather than be slaves; those who survive continue to fight furiously on the fields and in the inland towns, until they expire or hurl into the sea those who, insatiable in their thirst for blood and crimes, rival those first monsters who wiped out America's primitive race.
Bolívar's mention of a "primitive race," distinct from the "Americans" that he has been discussing, and exterminated by the early conquistadors, demonstrates that his conception of indigenous differs from our own. We would consider the subjects of his discussion--the few women, children, and old men who remain and the many men who have perished fighting--to belong to the same indigenous group that the first Spaniards encountered and (at least to some degree) conquered. Bolívar, however, conceives of them as something different and new: American. Although this distinction could be another political maneuver, the fact that he barely mentions it and neglects to elaborate on it or use it to support his argument could mean that his conception of who is American is more than political. On a fundamental level, he well may not consider the people who pre-existed the Spanish invasion to be American, while believing their direct descendants to be. Alternatively, of course, it could be political; he does not want the primitive people with the bad reputation in Europe to be considered American, but their present-day descendants need to be, and his mention of the exterminated primitive race is his attempt to reconcile the two. Whatever the case, his conception of "American" versus "pre-Hispanic inhabitants" seems contradictory to me; I am not sure whether my sense of contradiction results from being presented with a system of categorization that is different from my own, or results from a real contradiction within Bolívar with respect to the way in which he conceives of indigenous people. Although I do not dismiss the possibility of the former, there is evidence of the latter that deserves to be entertained.
Although he refrains from calling them indigenous and veils them under the label of American, Bolívar does, on some level, make a general distinction between the indigenous and the Spanish-Americans. The contradiction that we discussed in the last paragraph is a symptom of this discrepancy, which either occurs between his political and personal conceptions, or within himself, between personal conceptions in opposition to each other. His letter shows evidence of two distinct discourses between the indigenous and the Spanish-Americans. For example, on page 34 he states, "Americans today, and perhaps to a greater extent than ever before, who live within the Spanish system occupy a position in society no better than that of serfs destined for labor, or at best they have no more status than that of mere consumers." Two pages later, on the other hand, he says that:
The Americans have risen rapidly without previous knowledge of, and what is more regrettable, without previous experience in public affairs, to enact upon the world stage the eminent roles of legislator, magistrate, minister of the treasury, diplomat, general, and every position of authority, supreme or subordinate, that comprises the hierarchy of a fully organized state.
Most explicitly, the first sentence refers to the positions that Americans kept and continue to keep under Spanish rule and the second to the positions they have filled in the areas which have seceded. However, while the first sentence clearly includes the reality of the indigenous people, the second does not. The "Americans" that were suddenly allowed to step up to roles of authority were not all of those who Bolívar defines as Americans; they were only the criollos and some of the mestizos. The indigenous remained outside of such positions of leadership in the fight for independence from Spain. Bolívar neglects to mention this distinction between his "Americans." We see the same omission from his discussion of the juntas; he says that they are "of the people," and yet he talks about their Christian character.
Later in his letter, as he talks about New Grenada and Venezuela, Bolívar presents us with a more explicit contradiction. He says, "The Indians living there can be civilized, and our territorial possessions could be increased with the acquisition of the Goajira Peninsula. This nation should be called Colombia as a just and grateful tribute to the discoverer of our hemisphere." First of all, the juxtaposition of "Indians" with "our" is revealing evidence to Bolívar's acceptance of an us-them dichotomy between Spanish-Americans and Native Americans. Furthermore, the glorification of Columbus as the "discoverer" of "our hemisphere" shows that the us that Bolívar refers to does not include the indigenous who were already there. Of course, this exclusion on the indigenous fits in with Bolívar's idea, discussed earlier, that the indigenous no longer exist in America, having been exterminated by the conquistadors and replaced with Americans. Yet, in the sentence above, he uses the word "Indian" and talks about how they can be civilized.
Bolívar only once states explicitly who is included in the "us" to who he so often refers. He says:
...We scarcely retain a vestige of what was; we are, moreover, neither Indian nor European, but a species midway between the legitimate proprietors of this country and the Spanish usurpers. In short, though Americans by birth we derive our rights from Europe, and we have to assert these rights against the rights of the natives, and at the same time we must defend ourselves against the invaders.
Here, Bolívar equates American with mestizo; other sections of the letter, however, prove that this definition does not hold up. Earlier in the letter he speaks of Americans as everyone born on American soil. Elsewhere he mentions Indians and talks about Americans as those who acquired independence from Spain and enjoyed the resulting positions of authority.
The Jamaica Letter presents a slew of contradictory discourses on what it means to be American. The discrepancies between the discourses are not surprising, considering that identity is constructed by political, psychological, and social forces of which we only have limited understanding. Bolívar's notions about who is American are no more contradictory than our own today.
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