Padres de la Patria' and the Ancestral Past

Commemorations of Independence in Nineteenth-Century Spanish America

Bibliographic Data

ID3396915
AuthorsRebecca Earle (0000-0003-3430-4240, University of Warwick, corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume34
Issue4
Pages775-805
Publication date2002-11-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Latin American Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-216X • E-ISSN: 1469-767X
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0022216x02006557
OpenAlexW2167052220
LanguageEN
Citations received16

This article examines the civic festivals held in nineteenth-century Spanish America to commemorate independence from Spain. Through such festivals political leaders hoped, in Hobsbawm's words, 'to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past'. But when did the 'past' begin? If in nineteenth-century France the French Revolution was the time of history, in Spanish America there was no consensus on when history began. The debates about national origins embedded within the nineteenth-century civic festival not only suggest how political elites viewed their Patrias but also shed light on the position of indigenous culture (usually separated hygienically from indigenous peoples themselves) within the developing national histories of post-independence Spanish America

Art · Economic history · Ethnology · Humanities · Independence (probability theory · Indigenous · Indigenous culture · Political science · Politics · Repetition (rhetorical device · History · Law · Philippine History and Culture · Philosophy

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