Jose de Bustamante and Central American Independence: Colonial Administration in an Age of Imperial Crisis (review)

As president and captain-general of the audiencia of Guatemala, José de Bustamante y Guerra governed the Spanish colony of Central America from 1811 to 1818, a period characterized by crisis and warfare throughout the empire. Traditional historiography has portrayed Bustamante as a cruel, and perhaps even mentally unbalanced, tyrant, whose brutally repressive regime stifled in the Central American provinces the spirit of liberty that was at that moment awakening in the rest of the Hispanic world. In a long-overdue reassessment, historian Timothy Hawkins challenges the established view of Bustamante by inverting the frame of reference, focusing not on the independence process but on efforts by colonial administrators to preserve the empire. From this perspective, Bustamante ceases to be the monster whose excesses provided early national historians with a justification for Central America's failure to produce an effective independence movement. Rather, the captain-general appears as a level headed, loyal Bourbon bureaucrat, whose judicious measures kept the isthmus at peace and attached to Spain, while imperial rule experienced increasingly serious threats elsewhere in the Americas.

Bustamante was a representative of the Enlightenment, and of the Bourbon ideal of enlightened absolutism in particular. Prior to his assignment to Central America, he had been an officer in the scientific expedition led by Alejandro Malaspina (1789-1794), and had also served as governor of Montevideo (1797-1804). During his tenure in the Banda Oriental, Bustamante enacted a number of reforms and enjoyed good relations with local elites. The working environment of colonial administration changed dramatically, however, with the political crisis that swept the empire in 1808, when Napoleon Bonaparte usurped the Spanish throne for his brother Joseph.

When Bustamante arrived in Guatemala in 1811, memories of New Spain's Hidalgo revolt were fresh in people's minds. His predecessor, Antonio González Saravia, had already adopted effective measures to defend colonial rule in Central America. Bustamante built upon these, consolidating what Hawkins calls a "counterinsurgency state," characterized by repressive legislation and broad military mobilization. Although the new captain-general took steps to block challenges to his authority by municipal councils, fearing the spread of social disorder, local elites ultimately collaborated with him. The proclamation of the Constitution of 1812 made Bustamante's job more difficult. His military training, absolutist ideological orientation, and practical counterinsurgency experience did little to dispose him in favor of liberal innovations. Accordingly, the captain-general welcomed the restoration of Ferdinand VII in 1814 and moved quickly and efficiently to reverse the Cádiz reforms. From this time until his departure from Guatemala in 1818, Hawkins writes, Bustamante was finally able to govern Central America in his preferred manner, as the enlightened agent of an absolute monarch.

To old charges that in this post-Cádiz period Bustamante needlessly prolonged what earlier historians called el terror bustamantino, Hawkins responds that Central America may have been at peace, but its neighboring provinces of New Spain and New Granada definitely were not. What is more, when compared with those adopted by his counterparts in Mexico and Venezuela, Bustamante's repressive measures may be described as relatively mild. In the end, Bustamante's political problems, which ultimately resulted in his being recalled to Spain, appear in this admirable account to have had less to do with dictatorial excesses than with the antagonism felt by local elites when confronted by an austere Bourbon administrator, who appeared to be immune to bribery, flattery, and local collusion, and who was at the same time determined to enforce royal policy, including the revival of monopolistic trade regulations.

Making good use of manuscript records and contemporary printed materials found in archives and libraries in Guatemala, Spain, Mexico, and the United States, Timothy Hawkins has produced an eminently readable book. It is not only a convincing corrective to a long-standing myth in Central American historiography, but...