The Rise of Nationalism in Venezuela (review)

This short, dense treatment of the origins of Venezuelan nationalism takes issue with the preponderate thinking in Venezuelan historiography, namely, that early revolts against Spanish colonial authority by creoles serve as precursors of a nationalism that emerges fully developed in the struggle for independence. Eastman also questions Benedict Anderson's contention in Imagined Communities (1983) that the development of modern nationalism emerged among Latin American creoles before it took root in Europe. Finally, he argues that the civic, collectivist nature of Creole nationalism fostered an authoritarianism and personalist "political-cultural environment" (p. 22) right up to the present time.

One really cannot know this book by its cover. The title, disciplinary specializations of its author (sociology and anthropology), and the fact that the book is extracted from a longer dissertation supervised by a committee of social scientists all lead one to expect this work to survey a long swath of Venezuela history, well into the present. The volume, in fact, makes no attempt to show the persistence and consistency of Venezuelan political culture or concepts of the nation empirically beyond the immediate decade after Bolívar. The author's argument for his third major claim, then, is more a tantalizing hypothesis than a persuasive argument. The book is persuasive, however, in showing that nationalist ideas, though not fully developed, were gestating already in Bourbon Spain late in the eighteenth century, an import from France subsequently transported to America. These ideas found fertile ground, Eastwood argues, because of a growing sense of status-inconsistency among creoles. This phrase refers to the very real, psychological discontent among the colonial ruling class with the power and authority wielded over them by the peninsulares. Status-inconsistency motivated creoles to begin to convert themselves to nationalism, a shift "far more revolutionary than the choice of a specific geopolitical referent of national loyalty" (p. 113).

The unwillingness of the creoles to incorporate the masses into the polity is ground already well covered. Eastman's innovation is to argue that this fact led to the development of a civic nationalism rather than an ethnic notion of nationalism. In his quest to show a very real psychological sense of status-inconsistency among creoles in the late colonial era and their relation to the early circulation of nationalist ideas, Eastman delves deeply into recent revisionist scholarship and primary sources, especially philosophical tracks, from both sides of the Atlantic.

Eastwood shows that personalist tendencies in Venezuelan culture have antecedents in the debates among creoles about "which nation" would be formed with independence. He argues that Venezuelan nationalism is, following Liah Greenfeld (a member of his dissertation committee) of the collectivist variety because creoles developed more of a civic than social egalitarian conception of nationalism. He takes as a given, again following Greenfeld, that the collectivist variety is more inclined toward authoritarianism. This is a much more contentious claim not adequately demonstrated in this volume. Missing is a demonstration of the causal path-ways between early and later Venezuelan history. One might also note that not all Venezuelan presidents have clearly exhibited the same personalist style. Notable exceptions might include Isaías Medina Angarita (1941-1945) and Rómulo Betan-court (1958-1963), both highly influential and generally admired today. Greenwood also does not adequately support his claim that Anderson's theories are structuralist rather than constructivist. Greenwood himself seems to draw upon structuralism in explaining why creoles opted for a civic conception of nationalism rather than a more radical egalitarian variety. The choice, he acknowledges, was rooted in the nature of the colonial export economy—not a novel argument to be sure, but one implying that class structures make a difference. Yet he devotes very little attention to social class issues and how they shaped creole thought. Even less attention is devoted to gender, despite some evidence that choices made in the kitchen may influence national identity as much as choices made in male-dominated social realms.

Despite its shortcomings this book...