A Region Enshadowed: Latin America
Ever since its decisive victory in the Mexican-American War, the United States loomed above Latin America as a colossus, an ever present danger that periodically flexed its muscles. As time wore on and American strength grew, so too did the amount it interfered with its southern neighbors.
Mexico and Central America
The main recipient of American influence, the Mexican Republic, would enter into a period of stability and growth after decades of unrest in the Porfiriato, an authoritarian regime headed by General Porfirio Diaz. The Porfiriato would result in great economic growth in Mexico, in addition to a rise in literacy and urbanization. Attempts to attract foreign capital in the last decades of the 1800s would see investors from Korea to Britain tie themselves to the Mexican economy, fueling further growth alongside the rapid expansion of railways in the country. Although the period saw the ruthless suppression of resistance and the concentration of wealth in the hands of an elite, the Porfirato was a welcome change from the conflicts of the past.
Further to the south lay the republic of Guatemala. Under the de facto presidential dictatorship of Justo Rufino Barrios since 1873, the nation had relied on American aid to modernize and improve its military. Alongside strengthening ties with the United States, Barrios would attempt to attract immigrants to work untilled lands (or “untilled lands” in the case of the many plots confiscated from Natives). Although they did not attract the American stock he wanted, Barrios was able to attract several thousand French refugees fleeing the new Social Republic and around 1,000 Circassians. While the French immigrants tended to be well-to-do and were able to establish their own farms, many of the Circassians would become trapped as de facto serfs on coffee plantations.
The most important immigrants in Barrios’ eyes were those who had military experience. Over 800 Royalist soldiers had moved to Guatemala with their families and were hired by the Guatemalans to train the military, including former Marshal Francois Certain de Canrobert. Canrobert was given the position of General in the Army in 1877 and was tasked with professionalizing the Guatemalan officer corps. Thanks to the reforms and equipment efforts, by 1885 the Guatemalan army was the strongest in Central America.
This new army would soon come in handy as war arrived in Central America. On February 28th, 1885, Barrios held a speech in which he declared himself the President of a United Central America after nearly a decade of integration efforts. Rather than the fervent support he had expected, however, Barrios was met with denouncement from El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua as only Honduras stood alongside him. Infuriated, Barrios mobilized the Guatemalan military and became determined to reunite Central America by force.
The ensuing War of Reunification would rage for several years as Guatemala and Honduras struggled to subdue their opponents. After swiftly overrunning El Salvador in 1885, the Guatemalan army soon found itself bogged down in Nicaragua. Despite the superior quality of the Guatemalans, the Nicaraguans withdrew into the mountains and jungles to continue the fight. After several failed campaigns to crush the resistance in 1886, 1887, and 1888, Barrios elected to turn south and subdue Costa Rica before finishing off the Nicaraguans at his leisure. The Guatemalans invaded southward in 1889.
In a shocking turn of events, the 8,000 man Guatemalan army was defeated by 4,000 Costa Ricans at the Battle of Liberia as overconfident and spread out Guatemalan forces were defeated in detail. While the Guatemalan army remained in good condition, the battle would effectively end the war as Barrios, who had elected to command the army in the climactic campaign of the war, was killed trying to rally his soldiers and counterattack. The death of Justo Barrios would see the end of the War of Reunification as an exhausted Guatemala withdrew from the occupied lands and officially made peace.
The War of Reunification would significantly reshape the landscape of Central America. Although the human cost of the war was small, only 40,000 people had died due to it, it left Guatemala and Costa Rica deep in debt, ruined El Salvador economically, and would result in the bankruptcy of Nicaragua in 1890. Only Honduras, who’s contribution was limited to a few hundred men, would manage to survive the war in a good shape. It would also see the destruction of the Guatemalan, Salvadoran, and Nicaraguan regimes.
In Guatemala, the people’s anger with the waste of blood and treasure in four years of war would see a popular revolution overthrow the government, resulting in the recently returned military under General Manuel Barillas cracking down and establishing a military dictatorship. In El Salvador and Nicaragua, the only remaining groups engaged in armed resistance were bands of bandits and/or peasants as the armies had either been defeated or had steadily deserted due to a lack of pay. In the aftermath of the Guatemalan withdrawal, these groups would launch attacks on the oligarchic families that dominated both countries, violently seizing their lands and often killing them. By the time the situation in both countries had calmed down, the old order had quite literally gone up in flames. El Salvador would manage to stabilize into an American-inspired democracy, but Nicaragua would come under the control of brigand-turned warlord Emilio Estefan.
Ecuador
1872 in Ecuador was a peculiar year. Hundreds of French citizens, claiming to be refugees fleeing Socialist oppression, arrived in Guayaquil in July of that year. When questioned about their extremely large baggage train, the French simply responded that they had fled with everything they owned. When asked where all the women and children were, the French responded that they would arrive in a few weeks time. Two weeks later, the French departed for the interior to make a new life for themselves.
Two months later the Cacha Revolt broke out.
Ecuadorian politics in the 1800s were rather static, with two factions that dominated the nation. The Liberals were mercantile and held their power base along the coast while the Conservatives were concentrated in the interior and were mainly landowners. The two struggled over control of Ecuador, but for the Natives living in the highlands the petty squabbles meant very little. Regardless of who was in charge, the diezmo tax and forced labor were constants in Native life, a constant that grew more and more intolerable over the 1860s. The breaking point would come after an encounter with a particularly abusive tribute collector among the people of the town of Cacha. While the collector would live to see another day, the Puruha people dispatched an emissary across the sea after hearing of the rise of a new regime dedicated to helping the downtrodden like them. After several months, he would return alongside several hundred Frenchmen, volunteers who had heard of his people’s plight while in Paris, and thousands of rifles. The next time a collector came to the town of Cacha, the locals killed him and rose in revolt.
The Cacha Revolt officially began on April 4th, 1872 with the murder of a tax collector, word of the event reaching the Ecuadorian government two weeks later. Meanwhile, the Natives, under the leadership of the “King of Cacha” Fernando Daquilema, spread out across Chimborazo Province and overwhelmed Ecuadorian resistance. The government, completely unprepared for a revolt of this magnitude and coordination, was forced out of Chimborazo and several neighboring provinces but were able to halt the rebel advance into the lowlands. As the situation settled into a stalemate, the Ecuadorians attempted to negotiate with the rebels but found their terms too extreme. They launched one final offensive to restore order but failed, resulting in the de facto establishment of the Kingdom of Cacha.
The rebel forces had never wanted to establish an independent state, but rather had wanted the creation of an Ecuador where Natives, whites, and mestizos were treated as equals. With the diplomatic and military impasse, however, they accepted that unless they wanted to face further repression they were effectively independent.
The Kingdom of Cacha, named after the town that had originated the revolt, quickly became a loose federation of Native peoples and mestizos living under their control. Due to his popularity in leading the revolt and to draw support from foreign monarchies, Fernando Daquilema was officially crowned as a king. Despite this, the majority of power lay in the hands of the local communes that met in the city of Ambato twice a year to discuss affairs and to pass laws. This body, known as the Grand Ayllu, was the closest thing Cacha came to a centralized government and theoretically held the authority to raise armies and taxes.
In Ecuador, the loss of the highlands was an unmitigated catastrophe for the ruling Conservatives. As their support faded away with startling rapidity, the Conservative Era came crashing to an end as the Liberals found themselves in ascendance. While the Liberal Era would see civil liberties and educational opportunities expanded, the Liberal determination to reconquer the highlands would see a reckless pace of militarization and an unsustainable amount of foreign arms purchases. The expenditure of this would drag the Ecuadorian economy into the depths of recession, forcing the increasingly desperate Liberals to launch a reconquest attempt in 1887.
The War of ‘87 was yet another disaster for the Ecuadorians. Low morale, growing budgetary issues, and highly-motivated resistance saw the Ecuadorian Army shatter on impact with Cacha forces, allowing the Cacha to occupy Quito and secure the remaining Andean Mountains. By the time the Cacha withdrew from Quito, Ecuador was forced to acknowledge the loss of not only the Andes, but the Ecuadorian Amazon as well. Reduced to the Lowlands, the Liberals would attempt to continue governing and stave off a self-inflicted bankruptcy for several more years before the army launched a coup in 1894.
Peru
The collapse of Ecuadorian authority in the interior was looked on with keen interest by the Peruvians, who had a long-standing territorial dispute over Amazonian territory. After recovering from the War of the Pacific, in which Peru and Bolivia were defeated by Chile, the Peruvian Army was dispatched to the border with orders to occupy the area. After a three-month campaign in which disease, poor supply, and Cacha partisans sapped away at Peruvian strength, the Peruvians withdrew in accordance with the Grace Contract, in which Peru’s creditors agreed to pay its debts in exchange for certain concessions.
The withdrawal from the disputed territories and the Grace Contract proved to be too much for the Peruvian President, Andres Avelino Caceres, to survive politically and resulted in his loss in the 1890 elections. After a brief return to power in 1895, Caceres would step down due to popular pressure and would be replaced by Nicolas de Pierola. Under Pierola, Peru would begin to institute reforms to rebuild the national economy, which had never truly recovered from the War of the Pacific, and begin the era known as the Aristocratic Republic.
Colombia
On the opposite side of Ecuador was Colombia. During Barrios’ War of Reunification Colombia had supported the anti-Guatemalan coalition, with several hundred volunteers serving in the Costa Rican Army, due to fears that a united Central America would desire Panama. This foreign policy victory would help legitimize the recently-empowered Regeneration movement, who had overseen the creation of a new, more centralized constitution in 1886. Under a strong executive, the Colombian government would be dominated by the Conservative Party despite the best efforts of the Liberals to unseat them. As political unrest gripped the country, political violence became normalized and would result in the radicalization of Colombian society.
Venezuela
Unlike its eastern neighbor, Venezuela would enter into a period of stability and growth in the last quarter of the 1800s as General Antonio Guzman Blanco seized control. Taking power in 1868, Blanco would put an end to the struggles between the Centralists and the Federalists that had torn apart the nation in the Federal War in the early 1860s. Centralizing power, Blanco would oversee the growth of Caracas into the nation’s premier city. The modernization of Venezuela’s infrastructure and expansion of public schooling occurred during Blanco’s second official term as President between 1878 and 1884.
Despite growing resistance to his continued rule, Blanco would begin a third term as President in 1886. Blanco would eventually fall, however, as he spent more and more time in the United States before entering into voluntary exile in 1887. He would remain in the US for the rest of his life despite an invitation from Vo Nhung, who viewed him as a model Great Man, to visit Saigon in 1896. He would eventually be succeeded by Juan Pablo Rojas Paúl in 1888.
Rojas’ rule would see the beginning of constitutional reform, with Rojas peacefully transferring power to Joaquin Crespo at the end of his term in 1890, although Crespo’s position in the army resulted in suspicions that his election was not completely legitimate. Regardless of the truth of the accusations, Crespo would take office and oversee the passage of a new constitution that strengthened the Presidency in 1891. Crespo would be reelected in 1895, but this time the suspicious circumstances nearly resulted in a revolt by Presidential challenger Jose Manuel Hernandez before Crespo agreed to support Hernandez in the 1899 elections and diffused the crisis.
Chile
For the winner of the War of the Pacific, the 1880s was a veritable golden age as the sale of nitrates brought in significant amounts of wealth in Chile. Utilizing its new wealth, Chile would engage in a naval buildup that would temporarily see it become the strongest naval power in the entirety of the Americas and take part in a naval arms race with its Argentine neighbor.
This golden age would come to a crashing halt in 1890, however, as tensions between the executive and the legislature broke out into open warfare. While President Jose Manuel Balmaceda initially held the upper hand due to holding the army’s loyalty, the Congressionalists were able to rally and take the majority of the south of the country. After a desperate victory by Presidential forces at Pozo Almonte, the nitrate-producing regions of the north were secured for Balmaceda.
As 1890 dragged on into 1891, Balmaceda became ever more isolated from his political base. The loss of Santiago had done much to cripple his legitimacy in the eyes of the elite and his former allies pressured him to surrender. Balmaceda, afraid of being executed if he did, refused and in desperation turned to the nascent Chilean labor movement. Personally traveling to Tarapaca, he parlaid with the leaders of the miners there to gain their support and for them to vouch for him. In exchange he would dismiss the brutal taskmasters of the mines and ensure that any future managers were approved by the miners themselves.
Shortly afterward, Balmaceda would take a steamship and slip past the Congressional navy to arrive in Concepcion, one of the centers of the labor movement still under the control of forces loyal to him. There he would meet with major members of the Democratic Party and local unions to hammer out an agreement for their support. Along with protections for strikes and the right to organize, Balmaceda would be forced to accept universal suffrage for all males 21 and over. In exchange for these concessions, areas under Congressional control would face strikes while thousands of workers took up arms for Balmaceda. For Balmaceda, he had sold his soul for a chance at retaining power.
1891 would see Congressional forces begin new offensives to finish the war, but would continue to be thwarted by Balmacedan loyalists. Despite this, the Balmacedans were being worn down as labor’s organizational and striking power proved to be less potent than hoped. New recruits were green, and even with the wealth of the nitrate mines Balmaceda struggled to keep his troops supplied. The Congressional navy continued to blockade the coast, choking the life out of his forces. As things seemed to be hopeless, French armed merchant ships carrying hundreds of rifles, tens of thousands of cartridges of ammunition, two artillery pieces, and a dozen advisors arrived in Concepcion. Threatening the Congressionalists with war if they were detained and claiming a larger caliber than they actually possessed, they had bluffed their way through the blockade.
French interest in the Chilean conflict was manifold, but the two main ones were Boulanger’s interest in expanding Socialist influence across the globe and to secure a steady supply of nitrates for France. While French chemists claimed they were close to being able to synthesize ammonia, a friendly Chile could ensure a supply and potentially cut off their enemies. The arrival of Chilean leftists in Paris in 1891 simply confirmed the decision to intervene by giving them a side to support.
The arrival of French supplies proved to be exactly what Balmaceda needed. His forces, reinvigorated and with increased morale, counterattacked toward Santiago. Congressional forces put up a fierce resistance, but were soon forced back as Balmacedan artillery opened up on their positions. With their own artillery out of position, they were unable to properly fight back and retreated. The Balmacedans would run out of steam near Curico, 180km south of Santiago.
1892 would see Balmaceda approach the Congressionalists to negotiate an end to the civil war. Afraid of the growing power of the labor movement, he suggested that the two sides should bury the hatchet to keep the Red Specter from sinking its claws into Chile. The Congressionalists considered the offer but remained non-committal. After two weeks without a response, Balmaceda prepared his soldiers to march on Santiago.
Word of Balmaceda’s attempt at negotiation leaked out in April as his forces prepared their offensive. Furious, Malaquías Concha Ortiz, the de facto leader of the labor forces supporting Balmaceda due to his position in the Democratic Party, confronted Balmaceda and demanded an explanation. Rather than receive an answer, Ortiz was arrested and nearly moved to a secret holding area before others discovered the treachery. Democrats and labor, infuriated, stormed Balmaceda’s headquarters and hauled him out. In a fit of rage, one of those present shot him before they could be stopped. Although the shot wasn’t immediately fatal, Balmaceda would bleed out in a matter of hours.
With the death of their leader, the Balmacedans were left without a clear purpose. Army soldiers loyal to Balmaceda had already deserted, with a significant number joining the to the Congressionalists, while those that remained were too angry to contemplate simply returning home. They had fought their way across hundreds of kilometers for their rights, and they weren’t simply about to turn back now. Ortiz, the movement’s new de facto leader, would manage to calm down the situation and buy himself time for one more round of negotiation.
Negotiations between the Congressionalists and the Democrats would take place in Santiago and dragged on for several weeks. The Congressionalists strung out negotiations as they prepared their forces, but never had any intention of agreeing to the concessions to the labor movement. Universal male suffrage was acceptable, allowing strikes and unions was not. By the time the Congressionalists were willing to drop all pretenses, they had mustered 18,000 men. After Ortiz narrowly escaped an attempt to arrest him, he retreated back to the now-Democrat army and prepared for a final stand.
In his absence, however, the remaining soldiers had not been idle. From an initial strength of 8,000 after the desertions, the rebel army had risen to 40,000 as members of the lower classes joined. Although they were more a militia than a proper army, its members were highly motivated and well-equipped. Spreading word that the Congressionalists were unwilling to negotiate and lying that they would confiscate all food and water in preparation for a siege, the Democrats managed to instigate a strike among the residents of Santiago that covered their advance to the city’s outskirts. Taking advantage of the ongoing chaos in the city as strikes descended into riots, the Democrats marched into the city and evicted the Congressional army in fierce house-to-house fighting. By the battle’s end the Congressional army had disintegrated as isolated units were either destroyed, surrendered, deserted, or retreated out of the city. The Chilean Civil War ended on August 13th, 1892, a month after the Battle of Santiago, as the Congressional leadership was caught attempting to link up with forces in the north.
The absolutely stunned Malaquías Concha Ortiz now sat as the de facto leader of Chile as remaining Congressional forces laid down their arms in exchange for clemency. Ortiz, who had never expected or really wanted to be in his position, elected to draw up a new constitution and to show clemency toward the captured Congressionalists to avoid creating a new schism in Chilean politics. The Congressionalists directly involved in the planning or the revolt were imprisoned and their property stripped from them, but the majority of the rank and file were let go. Constitutionally, Ortiz would oversee the creation of a semi-parliamentary republic where the executive still held some power, a system quite close to what the Congressionalists wanted, but made sure to include protections for workers and the guarantee of the right to strike.
While legally relatively little had changed for a civil war that saw the collapse of the two instigating factions, in concrete terms the Chilean Civil War did much to empower the lower classes and help break the stranglehold the elites had held over the nation’s politics. In particular, the barons who had made their wealth in the northern mines were left significantly weakened as the miners went on strike for better working conditions in the immediate aftermath of the civil war. Unable to call in the army and the miners still carrying their arms from the civil war, capitulation would be the only solution to the problem. The election of a strong Democratic government in 1893 would solidify the new order, with an attempted coup by the army being halted by the mutual aid societies of Santiago striking for three days before the army backed down.
Argentina
Like the Chileans, Argentina would spend the 1880s in a boom period. Unlike its western neighbor, however, Argentina would not descend into civil war in the 1890s. Efforts to promote immigration were wildly successful, with hundreds of thousands moving to the country in the second half of the century as Argentina attempted to fill up the recently depopulated lands of the massacred Mapuche and Tehuelche in Patagonia. Alongside this mass influx of immigrants, the Argentine economy would significantly grow as exports of wheat and beef reached global prominence, the amount of railways in the country increased, and literacy rose. Under the Generation of ‘80, Argentina had become one of the most prosperous nations in the world by 1900.
Brazil
The Empire of Brazil was a strange country, having gained independence after the royal family of its former colonial master Portugal found they preferred the nation to their homeland. Still under the rule of the House of Braganza in 1880, Brazil would soon go through enormous changes after the death of Emperor Pedro II in Milan in 1887 and the abolition of slavery in 1888. A military coup attempting to take advantage of the Emperor’s death was halted under the new Empress Isabela in 1887.
Despite this initial victory, Empress Isabela would continue to preside over an Empire filled with growing unrest. Deep-seated social issues, such as rampant poverty and resentment over abolition by former slave owners, coupled with doubts that a woman married to a foreigner could properly rule to sow dissent against the Empire. The rise of the Social Republic of France would only inflame such sentiments as Socialist thought became more and more popular in Brazil. These tensions would boil over in 1897 as a Republican revolt broke out in Rio de Janeiro only to be brutally put down. Despite this, resentment at the monarchy would only continue to grow as Brazil entered the 20th century.
Uruguay
The struggle between the Colorados and Blancos in Uruguayan politics were a fixture of the past four decades by the 1880s. After plunging the nation into a thirteen-year civil war in 1839, the two parties had continued to dominate politics, although the Colorados held the upper hand and the government beginning in 1865. Despite several Blanco rebellions, Colorado control was maintained with the help of Brazilian forces until a military coup d’etat in 1876. It would not be until 1890 that civilian rule returned to Uruguay.
Internally, Uruguay saw exponential population growth in the aftermath of the civil war, with the population reaching over a million by 1900. Under military rule British economic investment flowed into the country, resulting in the rapid spread of telegraphs and railways, while educational reform saw the implementation of compulsory public schooling for the children of Uruguay.
Paraguay
The Paraguay of 1880 was a shell of itself, still recovering from the utter devastation of the War of the Triple Alliance. Crippled by its demographic losses, it was effectively an Argentine-Brazilian puppet until the withdrawal of Triple Alliance forces in 1876. Even four years later, the shadow of the two neighboring giants loomed large over the country. The new Legionnaire government, composed of exiles who had opposed the dictator Francisco Solano Lopez who was responsible for the war, was reliant on foreign aid until its eventual fall from power in 1878.
1878 would begin the Colorado Period of Paraguayan politics as the Colorado Party, formed in 1887, and its predecessors controlled the country. The Colorado Period would see proper reconstruction efforts begin. It would also see the rise of leftist thought in Paraguay as poverty and mutual aid societies spread. Although its presence was initially limited to Asuncion, the 1876 General Strike and the rise of l’Esprit du Nation in France would see a more nationalist fusion pierce both the ruling classes and the countryside. Deep-seated resentment at foreign domination of Paraguay’s economy and a national feeling of humiliation combined with a growing feeling of national community, which had come to encompass even the previously marginalized Guarani, to create a situation where Roland Beaumont’s ideas about combining conservatism with Socialist economics were highly appealing.
Beaumontism would officially enter Paraguayan politics in 1897 when President Juan Bautista Egusquiza began promoting the creation of farmer’s communes and the remilitarization of Paraguay. The War of the Triple Alliance was recast in a psuedo-socialist light as the cosmopolitan and egalitarian nature of the Paraguayan war effort, which had tapped every facet of Paraguayan society out of desperation, was emphasized and the cause of the war depicted as Paraguay’s struggle against foreign domination as part of the reconstruction of national pride. For the first time since the War, the Catholic Church regained national prominence as government support allowed it to fully recover from the post-War chaos that had affected it alongside the rest of the country. Perhaps most shockingly, the Colorados officially extended an olive branch to the Liberals to form a Government of National Unity. Beginning in 1899, the seemingly paradoxical Colorado-Liberal Coalition of National Unity was formed, bringing an end to the Colorado Period. For better or worse, Beaumontism had arrived in South America.
