Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
social contract, and consent of the governed, as developed by the
French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, did not resonate among the
imperial ministers.
These revolutionary ideas did make their way to Latin America,
however. The topics of John Locke, Isaac Newton, René Descartes,
Voltaire, and Rousseau were illegally imported through colonial ports.
Members of the elite, bureaucrats, and clergymen became familiar with
the complete philosophy. Elite education proliferated in the early 18th
century with the establishment of numerous universities in the major
cities of the Americas. The older school in Córdoba was joined by the
University of Chuquisaca (Bolivia) in 1725 and the University of San
Felipe in Santiago de Chile in 1758. Mainly, these universities taught
law and religious philosophy to prepare elite youth for careers in the
lower levels of the bureaucracy and the church. The white colonists
responded to these educational opportunities with alacrity. Further-
more, these universities disseminated the ideas of the Enlightenment
without the imperial filter. But truth be told, these ideas came late to
Latin America—in the 1790s.
When they did arrive, the youth of the elite immediately familiarized
themselves with the tenets of the Enlightenment. In the emerging region
of the Río de la Plata, the merchant's Creole son Manuel Belgrano, later
a militia officer, read the new books from his study in Buenos Aires.
Mariano Moreno, graduate of the University of Chuquisaca and a young
Creole bureaucrat, who was to become part of the first Creole govern-
ment in Buenos Aires, edited an edition of Rousseau's
SocialContract
“for
the instruction of young Americans” (Lynch 1987, 28).
Perhaps intellectual sentiments of greater power than the ideas of
the Enlightenment or the American Revolution were those concern-
ing simple identity. More Creoles began to identify themselves as
Americans than as transplanted Europeans. The Bourbon reforms had
increased the tax burden on the colonists without ending the corrup-
tion of the Spanish-born officials, which only heightened American
nationalism. After all, the demographic trend favored the Americans
even among the elite. White Americans outnumbered Spaniards in the
colonies 20 to one, if not by more. Even so, Spaniards were immigrat-
ing to the American colonies in the 18th century in record numbers,
taking up lucrative posts in the import-export houses and moving
into professional and artisan positions. They especially were filling the
bureaucratic positions now being denied to the “Americans.” Creoles
increasingly felt the sharp barbs of Spanish arrogance.
