Suffragio e rappresentanza nel Perú dell'800

Recent studies shed light on the local political struggles that enveloped Latin America in the half-century following independence. The role of the Cortes of Cádiz of 1810 – 14 in this revolutionary break remains less well known. The Cortes is said to have fostered a legislative, federalist tradition in some places and to have implanted a strongly executive, centralist pattern in others. In Peru, late to commit to independence, convention has it that executive preponderance was established quickly, and power-sharing between the center and the provinces was swept aside in the formation of a violently centralized state. Gabriella Chiaramonti challenges this convention in the first of two promised volumes that examine electoral representation as it emerged in late colonial Peru and prefigured the socio-legal structure of the later republic. She demonstrates convincingly that the Cortes was far more instrumental in fostering a federalist political culture in Peru — and Spanish America in general — than has been recognized. She views the process of political creation through the “more silent but no less relevant” lens of Peru’s gradual incorporation of the principles, language, and practices of an electoral system, despite the encumbrances of military rule from independence until 1872.In the first two of three long, copiously documented chapters, Chiaramonti reviews the political philosophies that circulated at Cádiz and analyzes their repercussions for the “cultural itinerary” of sovereignty. Colonial delegates responded skeptically to Spanish claims that the Cortes was the repository of sovereignty in the absence of the monarch. For Spain, the stakes of this arrogation were high: no less than the survival of the monarchy and the empire. She follows another “itinerary” in the parallel claims made in Peru’s provinces and municipalities, as questions of representation were debated at both ends of the imperial arc. The Cortes gave great weight to the tradition of shared sovereignty, an idea grounded in natural law philosophy that had been set aside by the upstart claims of rationalist Bourbon absolutism. If the Cortes formally accepted the principle of shared sovereignty, the American delegates could be certain that the American possessions had parity with the peninsular kingdoms, with fueros and other privileges, and that none of them would be treated as colonies.The first order of business that occupied the Cádiz delegates was to decide who would be represented, and on what basis — no mean task. Chiaramonti argues that the issues of voter eligibility and representation inevitably became paramount in determining the fate of the American empire. Applied in New Spain, Peru, Cuba, Guatemala, Yucatán, and parts of the viceroyalty of New Granada, the Cádiz charter deeply influenced the norms and practices that defined the citizen-elector and outlined the process by which political representation would be legitimized. Yet confusion reigned. The Spanish parliamentarians had little feel for the power struggles in the colonies. In defining citizenship, they prioritized the political needs of the peninsular juntas over those of colonial creoles. They overlooked colonial juridical distinctions between inhabitants, vecinos, subjects, and citizens, they equated partidos with pueblos (cabildos were renamed ayuntamientos constitucionales), and they gave power in a bilevel electoral system to nonexistent municipalities. Regalist, creole, and indigenous interests in the colonies maneuvered to control these rulings. Meanwhile, the liberal Spanish version of “sovereignty” aimed to uphold the parliamentary dominance of Madrid and to forge a bond with the colonial creoles, in whose hands legislative power eventually would accumulate in Lima. The consequences shortly became clear in Peru. All subjects of African descent, enslaved or not, were denied citizenship, while that of indigenous subjects depended on residential status. Upon this substrate of diffuse ideas and practices, Chiaramonti argues, rested the creation of the new independent republic in Peru.In the third chapter, the author examines the Lima elite’s response to the Cádiz rules. From the republican decrees of San Martín through the adoption of a compromise constitution in 1860, abundant legislation amplified the Cádiz ambiguities and spawned an electoral dynamics that inadvertently made bedfellows of the communities and the caudillos. Chiaramonti looks closely at the famed duo of presidents Agustín Gamarra (1829 – 33 and 1839 – 41) and Ramón Castilla (1845 – 51 and 1855 – 63). She notes that community support for Gamarra around Cuzco was tempered by reservations about his centralist, Inca state revival tendencies. Indigenous communities favored Castilla only so long as his reforms reinforced local power and increased the numbers of local offices. In heavily indigenous areas, residents elided distinctions between vecino and citizen by rooting suffrage in the colonial concept of the sovereignty of the “republic,” a conception all provincial elites found useful. Chiaramonti thus marshalls strong evidence that the electoral system established in Peru was not merely a product of the wishful thinking of a small, misunderstood liberal elite. Rather, it reflected the needs of a conservative, hierarchical society whose elites intended to keep it that way — just short of a monarchy — without disturbing the social peace any more than was necessary.The author offers a noteworthy aside on a new “Black Legend.” It took shape, she notes, when intellectual optimism declined in the decades after Latin American independence. Intellectuals then labeled the new regimes “immature” compared to western Europe and thus unable to carry out the grand political transformation of the liberal era. Later historians claimed for themselves this self-fulfilling rationale, contributing to the myth of Latin American isolation from the great Western political debates on the subjects of representative citizenship and suffrage. She is upbeat, however, noting that despite the current glare of the difficult transitions to democracy, renewed scholarly interest in the Hispanic revolutions and political citizenship has opened the way for new historiographies.This study deftly weaves virtually all previous work and much archival material on late eighteenth-and early-nineteenth-century Peru into a skillful analysis of the country’s electoral history. It is a wide-ranging, comparative study of an emergent political culture in the critical decades surrounding Latin American independence. Rather than count votes or analyze election results, Chiaramonti presents something at once grander and more multifaceted. By drawing out the legal and political foundations of provincial electoral maneuvering, and assessing how well provincial leaders grasped the distribution of power, she joins the growing list of scholars whose work has deepened our understanding of the wider cultural meaning of the creation of a republic in Peru. It is unfortunate that this work will not be translated into English. Well written — despite its overweight chapters and occasional long digressions — and rigorously researched and organized, it enhances impressively our understanding of the crumbling of the Spanish Empire and the awakening of a deeply authoritarian Andean republic to replace it

Art · Aside · Colonialism · Constitution · Convention · Economic history · Federalist · Humanities · Independence (probability theory) · Latin Americans · Legislature · Political science · Politics · Popular sovereignty · Sovereignty · State (computer science) · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Historical Studies in Latin America · History · Law · Politics and Society in Latin America