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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
In his 1884 address to the National Assembly, President Justo Rufino Barrios gave a glowing report of a polity fired by the torch of Liberal progress. “When I see the movement and the animation in everything and everywhere, in our streets, in our plazas, in our roads and in our ports, I cannot repress a feeling of vanity.” He extolled not only commerce and new technology, but model prisons, a disciplined professional army, and “a school in the most miserable town and in the most hidden corner.” This is a world of flowing capital, technological linkages, and the ceaseless penetration of enlightenment into every corner of the Republic, where before there had been only a “dark mansion of apathy, of immobility, of stagnation and silence,” and where now we (Guatemalans) “can say that we have–if not everything–almost everything.” The Utopian rhetoric masked a rather different and sorry reality. Still, to paraphrase Benedict Anderson, the succession of possessive plurals in Barrios' speech–our streets, our plazas, our roads–assured the listener of a solid sociological and political entity that can only be Guatemala. Surely Barrios spoke from the solid foundations of a Liberal nationalist certainty?
The author would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for generous doctoral and post-doctoral fellowship assistance during the research and writing of this paper. Also, thanks are due to the wonderful staff of the Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica, to Arely Mendoza of the Biblioteca César Brañas, and to Louise Palmer of Yale University, all for special bibliographical assistance.
1 Mensaje que el Presidente de la República de Guatemala, Justo Rufino Barrios, dirije a la Asamblea Nacional Legislativa, 1 de marzo, 1884 (Guatemala: Tipografía de “El Progreso,” 1884), pp. 20–22.
2 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso Editions, 1983), p. 35.Google Scholar
3 The main biographies are Rubio, Casimiro D., Biografía del General Justo Rufino Barrios (Guatemala: n.p., 1935)Google Scholar; Díaz, Victor Miguel, Barrios ante la posteridad (Guatemala: Folletín del Diario de Centro-América, 1935)Google Scholar; Burgess, Paul, Justo Rufino Barrios: A Biography (Dorance and Co., 1926).Google Scholar
4 García Laguardia, Jorge Mario, La Reforma Liberal en Guatemala, vida política y orden constitucional (Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria de Guatemala, 1985)Google Scholar; McCreery, David, Desarrollo económico y política nacional, el Ministerio de Fomento de Guatemala, 1871–1885, trans. Webre, Stephen (Guatemala: CIRMA, 1981).Google Scholar Two studies that assume concrete results (though without a great deal of hard evidence to support the assumption) in the realm of political culture, both on educational reform, are Orellana, Carlos González, Historia de la educación en Guatemala (Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria, 1980);Google Scholar and Jesús, Amurrio G., El positivismo en Guatemala (Guatemala: Imprenta Universitaria, 1970).Google Scholar
5 McCreery, David, “’An Odious Feudalism’: Mandamiento Labor and Commercial Agriculture in Guatemala, 1858–1920”, Latin American Perpectives, 13:1 (1986), 110,Google Scholar and passim; also see McCreery, David, “State Power, Indigenous Communities and Land in Nineteenth-Century Guatemala,” in Smith, Carol, ed., Guatemalan Indian Communities and the State: 1540–1988 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), pp. 96–115 Google Scholar; and Carmack, Robert, “State and Community in Nineteenth Century Guatemala,” in Ibid., pp. 116–36.Google Scholar
6 Dunkerley, James, Power in the Isthmus: a Political History of Modern Central America (London: Verso Editions, 1988), p. 30.Google Scholar
7 Smith, Carol, “Origins of the National Question in Guatemala: a Hypothesis,” in Smith, , ed., Guatemalan Indians and the State, pp. 73–95.Google Scholar
8 See, for example, Karnes, Thomas, The Failure of Union: Central America, 1824–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), pp. 155–65,Google Scholar who points to the Guatemalan desires for control of the revenues from a Nicaraguan canal that appeared to be imminent, and also to the dishonesty and megalomania of Barrios.
9 Woodward, Ralph Lee, Central America: A Nation Divided (2nd ed.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 270, 283.Google Scholar
10 I refer the reader to two excellent efforts to sort out this extraordinary history of factionalism, localism, and class struggle: Soria, Julio Pinto, Centroamérica, de la colonia al estado nacional (1800–1840) (Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria de Guatemala, 1986)Google Scholar; and Wortmann, Miles, Government and Society in Central America, 1680–1840 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).Google Scholar
11 Carranza, , Justo Rufino Barrios, p. 4 Google Scholar; Julio Pinto Soria, personal communication.
12 Karnes, , Failure of Union, p. 149.Google Scholar
13 Ingersoll, H.M.B., “The War of the Mountains: a Study of Reactionary Peasant Insurgency in Guatemala, 1837–1873” (Ph.D. diss., George Washington University, 1972), pp. 285–331;Google Scholar San Marcos was one of the strongholds of each Liberal effort.
14 Carranza, , Justo Rufino Barrios, pp. 17–18.Google Scholar
15 The complete, two month run of the paper has been published as José Luís, Reyes M., comp., Origen y destino de El Malacate del año 1871 (Guatemala: Editorial ’José de Pineda Ibarra’, 1971).Google Scholar
16 Thompson, Nora B., Delfino Sanchez: A Guatemalan Statesman (Ardmore, PA: Nora B. Thompson, 1977), p. 17.Google Scholar
17 Between 1873 and 1885, Sanchez occupied the posts of Minister of Public Works, Minister of Public Instruction, Extraordinary Envoy to Mexico, Vice President of the Constitutional Assembly, and President of the Constitutional Committee; Soto, later installed as President of Honduras, acted as Barrios’ “pointman” during the early years of the more controversial reforms, co-sponsoring most laws in his capacity as Minister of Public Instruction, Foreign Relations, Interior, Justice, and Ecclesiastical Affairs. See: Thompson, , Sanchez, p. 9 Google Scholar; and García Laguardia, Jorge Mario, ed., El pensamiento liberal de Guatemala: antologia (San José: EDUCA, 1977), p. 111.Google Scholar
18 García Laguardia, La reforma liberal, passim.
19 “Discurso pronunciado el 15 de setiembre de 1884 en el Teatro Nacional de Guatemala por el Lic. Miguel A. Urrutia,” Diario de Centro-América, September 16, 1884, p. 1.
20 “Ley Orgánica de Instrucción Pública” (1875), reprinted in Rubio, , Biografía del General Justo Rufino Barrios, p. 256 Google Scholar; and for the 1882 revision of the law, see Orellana, González, Historia de la educación en Guatemala, pp. 298–99.Google Scholar
21 Hernández, Roberto E., “Public Education and University Reforms in Guatemala, 1831–1920” (Ph.D. diss., University of Miami, 1977), pp. 70–72 Google Scholar on the Pavon Law of 1852, and pp. 110–31 on the diminution of public intellectual activity following the repossession of the University by the Catholic Church in 1855.
22 Montúfar, Lorenzo, Reseña histórica de Centro-América, 7 vols. (Guatemala: Tipografía de “El Progreso” y Tipografía “La Union,” 1878–1887), 1, dedicatoria.Google Scholar
23 Montúfar, , Reseña histórica, 1, iv.Google Scholar
24 And perhaps for a certain notion that this shared fate is so obvious it need not be shown to be manifest in the text-after all, he himself had floated freely across borders, occupying senior political and civil posts in three of the isthmus’ Republics during his carreer.
25 Montúfar, , Reseña histórica, 4, 11.Google Scholar
26 Montúfar, , Reseña histórica, 7, i–v.Google Scholar
27 Anderson, , Imagined Communities, pp. 30–31.Google Scholar
28 Barrios granted the Diario de Centro-América free use of the telegraph and postal services; Diario de Centro-América, August 6, 1880, p. 1; and February 1, 1881, p. 1.
29 Prospecto del Diario de Centro-América, undated single sheet (probably distributed in the final weeks of July, 1880) [emphasis mine].
30 Prospecto [emphasis mine].
31 While this paper was certainly read by far more Guatemalans than literati of the other capitals, the main point is the identifications and sense of shared space that it created inside Guatemala.
32 Lainfiesta, Francisco, Mis memorias (Guatemala: Academia de Geografía e Historia, 1980), especially pp. 318–27,Google Scholar for his rather self-serving portrait of his “loyal opposition” to the Unionist effort of 1885.
33 Personal communication by the staff of the Hemeroteca Nacional in Guatemala.
34 Burgess, , Justo Rufino Barrios, pp. 212–13.Google Scholar
35 A recent compilation of the dispatches and reviews of the Mexican Minister to the United States during the Civil War years reveals that Mexican Liberals tended to interpret the war as a struggle between liberalism and reaction even as it was being waged; Schoonover, Thomas, ed., A Mexican View of America in the 1860s: a Foreign Diplomat Describes the Civil War and Reconstruction (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1991).Google Scholar
36 “Reunificación de Italia,” El Progreso, July 29, 1877, 1–3.
37 For example, “Dos discursos del Señor de Bismarck,” addressing questions relating to the Kulturkampf, , in El Progreso, July 4, 1875, 1–2.Google Scholar
38 Pflanze, Otto, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, 3 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 2, 180.Google Scholar
39 Mosk, Sanford A., “Economía cafetalera de Guatemala durante el período 1850–1918,” in Economia de Guatemala, ¡750–1940: antología de lecturas y materiales, ed. Muñoz, Jorge Luján (Guatemala: USAC, 1980), pp. 356–57.Google Scholar
40 Cambranes, Julio Castellanos, El imperialismo alemán en Guatemala: el tratado de comercio de 1887 (Guatemala: IIES-USAC, 1977), pp. 30–32, 75–76,Google Scholar and passim; see also Schoonover, Thomas, “Germany in Central America, 1820s to 1929: an Overview,” Jahrbuch fur Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas, no. 25 (1988), 43–47.Google Scholar
41 Montúfar, Lorenzo, “Discurso pronunciado el 15 de setiembre de 1877, LVI aniversario de la independencia de Centro-América, en el Palacio del Gobierno de Guatemala,” Discursos del Doctor Lorenzo Montúfar (repr.; Guatemala: Ministerio de Instrucción Pública, 1923),Google Scholar prol. de Rafael Montúfar, pp. 200–05.
42 Montúfar, , “Discurso pronunciado en el Palacio Nacional de Guatemala el 15 de septiembre de 1875,” Discursos, pp. 215–16.Google Scholar
43 González, N.A., “La Unión,” El Diario de Centro-América, March 6, 1885, p. 1 Google Scholar; probably apprised of the imminent declaration of Barrios, González, and Alberto Meneos, the paper’s principal writers, had carried on a Unionist barrage throughout most of January of 1885: Meneos extolling the figure and ideals of Morazán (“La Democracia,” January 16, 1), and decrying localist myopia (“El Localismo,” January 21, 1); González appealing to the artisans to prove their patriotic metals on some unspecified future battlefield (“La clase obrera,” January 28, 1).
44 Smith, , “Origins of the National Question,” pp. 83–90.Google Scholar
45 For a more detailed exploration of what Guatemalan liberals referred to as “the civilization of the Indian,” and its relationship to the national question as a whole, and Unionism in particular, see my “A Liberal Discipline: Inventing Nations in Guatemala and Costa Rica, 1870–1900” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1990), pp. 174–202.
46 Montúfar, , Reseña histórica de C entro-América, 2, 211, 421Google Scholar; and III, vi-vii.
47 See, for example, “La civilización de los indios,” El Progreso, September 27, 1874; and “La educación de los indios,” El Progreso, September 10, 1876, 2–3.
48 1880 Censo General, cited in Ministerio de Fomento-Dirección General de Estadística, Censo de la población de la República (Agosto, 1921) (Guatemala: Talleres de Gutenberg, 1924), pp. viii–ix; McCreery, , Desarrollo económico, p. 124 n.l.Google Scholar
49 “Editorial,” Diario de Centro-América, October 4, 1884, p. 1.
50 Vela, David, “Don Francisco Lainfiesta,” Introduction to Francisco Lainfiesta, Apuntamientos para la Historia de Guatemala [1886] (Guatemala: Editorial José de Pineda Ibarra, 1975), p. 18;Google Scholar Aycinena and Echeverría were two important conservative oligarchs of the mid nineteenth-century.
51 Indeed, in a ceremony of some symbolic significance, the presidents of both Honduras and El Salvador had come to Guatemala City for the independence celebrations of 1884; Diario de Centro-América, September 16, 1884.
52 Diario de Centro-América, July 26, 1884, p. 1.
53 The main newspaper of this struggle reproduced in 1920 a public address which justified Union in the following terms: “United by the feelings of blood that is one in our veins; by identical customs and religious creeds; by the sonorous tie of language; … by one elevated destiny that must be fulfilled: Union imposes itself. … Let us unite all the dispersed energies of the Isthmus in favor of our ideals.” “Discurso de Eduardo Mayorga,” El Unionista, January 15, 1920, 5.