Military Struggle and Identity Formation in Latin America: Race, Nation, and Community During the Liberal Period

2. Soldiers and Statesmen: Race, Liberalism, and the Paradoxes of Afro-Nicaraguan Military Service, 1844–1863

2 Soldiers and Statesmen Race, Liberalism, and the Paradoxes of Afro-Nicaraguan Military Service, 1844–1863 Justin Wolfe ServiceinraciallysegregatedmilitiasinNicaraguaduringthecolonialperiod provided a key institutional structure for both black community formation and claims to equal citizenship. Soldiering was one of the few open avenues for black social advancement during the colonial period, but by the 1840s politics and professions had also become fertile fields. After independence from Spain, Afro-Nicaraguans could be found in both Liberal and Conservative camps, but it was among the Liberals that they achieved their greatest prestige and power.1 If military service connected Afro-Nicaraguans to their colonial past, it was a critique of that past that motivated their liberal ideals of equality and democratic republicanism, and their loathing of aristocratic conservatism. As both Afro-Nicaraguan military men and statesmen vied to expand their power into the national arena, they continued to draw—on the battlefield, in the streets, and at the ballot box—upon the communities from which they emerged. Popular support made this politics possible, but the popular performance of citizenship went far beyond blind loyalty to charismatic caudillos or mechanical allegiance to wealthy, powerful patrons.2 This chapter traces the struggles to define the parameters of popular liberalism, particularly in the Liberal stronghold of León, in the face of Conservative oligarchic exclusion and in relation to the popular rebellions and civil wars that engulfed Nicaragua between 1844 and 1863. Unlike early republican Colombia where white elites controlled liberal politics, in Nicaragua politics was dominated by Afro-Nicaraguan men from León.3 For soldiers, the colonial militia had provided the means to organize the black community and demand political inclusion. Liberal statesmen, by contrast, dismissed the colonial past in favor of a democratic future that promised Race, Liberalism, and the Paradoxes of Afro-Nicaraguan Military Service, 1844–1863 / 43 equal opportunity. Afro-Nicaraguan soldiers and statesmen needed one another to imagine these larger political projects, but their contradictions constantly pulled them apart and left the popular communities that supported them with difficult choices. For Afro-Nicaraguan military men of ambition, the extension of their power inevitably distanced them from their home communities and required developing a politics that spoke beyond local needs. This tested the loyalty of the communities that originally stoked their ambitions. For León’s Afro-Nicaraguan statesmen, by contrast, until the late 1850s, the center of their local power was home to the institutions and leaders of national politics. This shared urban space enabled these statesmen to leverage popular support for their national agenda while remaining attentive to local needs and responsive to local demands. Racial conflict had simmered beneath the seemingly tranquil surface of late-colonial Nicaragua. As the Spanish empire faltered in the early years of the nineteenth century, colonial officials worried about the size of Nicaragua ’s African descended population, which accounted for upward of 50 percent of the province’s inhabitants. León and Rivas, from which would hail the period’s most ardent Liberal voices, had even larger black populations , constituting 56 and 72 percent, respectively, in 1778. These figures hardly changed according to the census of 1883, with León’s black population rising to 57 percent and Rivas’s declining to 71 percent.4 Within this context, perhaps no place better illuminates the conflict between soldiers and statesmen than San Felipe, a barrio of the provincial capital of León, which had been created as a racially segregated black neighborhood and had housed the city’s pardo militia. After independence, San Felipe produced some of Nicaragua’s most influential Liberal political and military leaders. Scholars of Nicaragua have tended to view military participation as anathema to popular communities, but I argue that such conclusions stem from twentieth century nationalist historiography, which imagined Nicaraguan subalterns as homogeneously mestizo and politically disengaged.5 In other words, race is seen as irrelevant and communities as essentially reactive. Analysis of these issues is further weakened by the limited scholarship on the military in Nicaragua.6 As historian Hendrik Kraay has argued , although in Latin America “military institutions touched the lives of thousands of men and women, while their reform preoccupied liberals and conservatives alike,” their investigation has been relegated to the “historiographical back burner.”7 This chapter, by contrast, argues not only for the complexity of Nicaragua’s racial politics but also for the activism of subaltern communities like San Felipe. 44 / Justin Wolfe...