Creole And Independence In Latin America
Why did the Creole lead the fight or independence in Latin America you may ask, the answer is they led the fight to protect themselves from the other social groups like the Indians below them who hated the Creoles and to protect their economic and political interests from the Peninsulares who were controlling their trade preventing them from obtaining political and economic power.
In 1808 France invaded Spain and ended the protection that Creoles relied upon to protect themselves and estate from the lower class who were not happy with European occupation. As Historian Leslie Bethell wrote in his 1987 piece The Independence of Latin America, he wrote “Traditionally the elite looked to Spanish to defend them… when the monarchy collapsed in
1808, the Creoles could not allow the political vacuum to remain unfilled, their lives and property unprotected. They had to move quickly to anticipate popular rebellion, convinced that if they did not seize the opportunity, more dangerous forces would do so.” In this quotation Bethell is saying that the Creoles that feared that if they did not start a rebellion, someone else will start a revolution against spain and the Creoles. Their fear came light in Father Miguel Hidalgo, a Creole priest who preached to Indians and Mestizos, according to Grito de Dolore, Father Hidalgo said “My children: a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it? Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen three hundred years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once… Will you defend your religion and your rights as true patriots?... Death to bad government! Death to peninsulares?” Hidalgo said this on September 16th 1810 in from the pulpit of his church and soon led about 600 followers who were mainly Natives and Mestizos to reclaim the land taken from them by the Spanish, marking the start of the revolution. Hidalgo's revolution struck fear into the hearts of many Creoles who started their own revolutions and rallied the people to take control of the anger in hopes of preventing it from being channelled against them.
Before the Latin American revolutions, the Spanish forced the Creoles to sell all of their raw materials to Spanish merchants for astronomically low prices and then buy the finished products from spain for astronomically high prices. Juan Pablo Viscardo, a Creole born in Peru, discussed to these economic problems in his letter to Europe called An Open Letter to America, in it he wrote “We in America re perhaps the first to be forced by our own government to sell our products at artificially low prices and buy what we need at artificially high prices… And Because the official monopoly on transatlantic trade would naturally lead us to produce more in America, the government has been careful to pace limitation on what we can legally produce.” In this his is talking about the forced trade with spain and the laws forcing Creoles to buy certain goods from Spain that they would normally produce themselves. The Spanish did not only prevent Creoles from protecting their economic interest, they also limited Creoles in politics, As Howard Wiarda and Harvey Kline wrote in their piece Latin American Politics and Development, published in 2011, “One of the main sources of independence sentiment was the growing rivalry between creoles and peninsulares… the peninsular monopolized all administrative positions… many Creoles began to think of doing away with the inconvenience of Spanish colonialism and move toward independence.” They are saying that the Creoles were unhappy with the little representation they got in government, for example Creole, Juan Pablo Viscardo, wrote “Spain could have left us the administration of our own affairs, one would think Americanos, being those most concerned by the affairs of America, logically ought to fill public offices of their own country for the benefit of all concerned. But that has been far from the case.”
In 1808 France invaded Spain and ended the protection that Creoles relied upon to protect themselves and estate from the lower class who were not happy with European occupation. As Historian Leslie Bethell wrote in his 1987 piece The Independence of Latin America, he wrote “Traditionally the elite looked to Spanish to defend them… when the monarchy collapsed in
1808, the Creoles could not allow the political vacuum to remain unfilled, their lives and property unprotected. They had to move quickly to anticipate popular rebellion, convinced that if they did not seize the opportunity, more dangerous forces would do so.” In this quotation Bethell is saying that the Creoles that feared that if they did not start a rebellion, someone else will start a revolution against spain and the Creoles. Their fear came light in Father Miguel Hidalgo, a Creole priest who preached to Indians and Mestizos, according to Grito de Dolore, Father Hidalgo said “My children: a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it? Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen three hundred years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once… Will you defend your religion and your rights as true patriots?... Death to bad government! Death to peninsulares?” Hidalgo said this on September 16th 1810 in from the pulpit of his church and soon led about 600 followers who were mainly Natives and Mestizos to reclaim the land taken from them by the Spanish, marking the start of the revolution. Hidalgo's revolution struck fear into the hearts of many Creoles who started their own revolutions and rallied the people to take control of the anger in hopes of preventing it from being channelled against them.
Before the Latin American revolutions, the Spanish forced the Creoles to sell all of their raw materials to Spanish merchants for astronomically low prices and then buy the finished products from spain for astronomically high prices. Juan Pablo Viscardo, a Creole born in Peru, discussed to these economic problems in his letter to Europe called An Open Letter to America, in it he wrote “We in America re perhaps the first to be forced by our own government to sell our products at artificially low prices and buy what we need at artificially high prices… And Because the official monopoly on transatlantic trade would naturally lead us to produce more in America, the government has been careful to pace limitation on what we can legally produce.” In this his is talking about the forced trade with spain and the laws forcing Creoles to buy certain goods from Spain that they would normally produce themselves. The Spanish did not only prevent Creoles from protecting their economic interest, they also limited Creoles in politics, As Howard Wiarda and Harvey Kline wrote in their piece Latin American Politics and Development, published in 2011, “One of the main sources of independence sentiment was the growing rivalry between creoles and peninsulares… the peninsular monopolized all administrative positions… many Creoles began to think of doing away with the inconvenience of Spanish colonialism and move toward independence.” They are saying that the Creoles were unhappy with the little representation they got in government, for example Creole, Juan Pablo Viscardo, wrote “Spain could have left us the administration of our own affairs, one would think Americanos, being those most concerned by the affairs of America, logically ought to fill public offices of their own country for the benefit of all concerned. But that has been far from the case.”