La cuestion nacional americana en las cortes de Cadiz (review)

La cuestión nacional americana en las cortes de Cádiz. By MANUEL CHUST. Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; Valencia: Centro Francisco Tomás y Valiente; Fundación Instituto Historia Social, 1999. Bibliography. 325 pp. Paper.

The tantalizing title of this book promises more than it delivers. It is a narrative of the debates in the courts of Cádiz leading to completion of the Spanish Constitution of 1812, and of the participation of American deputies in those debates. The issue of the emerging national identities in the colonial dominions in America is not actually considered, and there are many critical issues left unpursued. It falls far short of the insightful and sensitive study of the same theme by Marie Laure Rieu-Millan, Los diputados americanos en las cortes de Cádiz (1990). Since the enactments of the courts of Cádiz and the 1812 Constitution of the Spanish Monarchy were so influential in the Spanish American countries as they moved toward independence and their own constitutions, many historians have touched on aspects of the subject. This is especially true of Mexico and, not surprisingly, Chust focuses most on Mexico among the Spanish American countries.

Among the issues raised in Cádiz some were of critical importance to the American dominions--the definition of the power relations in an empire that officially was not an empire, the nature of the Americans and their suitability for autonomy, slavery and the role of the Indians and castas. Chust touches on all these and more, yet his book remains essentially a narrative of the debates surrounding the constitution. He only considers the cortes extraordinarias (September 1810-September 1813) and concludes before the cortes ordinarias, or regularly elected parliament, took its place. There is little consideration of how the cortes decrees were received in America or of the historical grievances that influenced the American deputies' actions in Cádiz. Thus, although it is quite a competent narrative, Chust's treatment has limited use. This is mainly because the discussion strictly follows the main source employed, the Diario de las sesiones de las cortes generales y extraordinarias, with little deviation. When the Diario does not explain a development, Chust confesses he cannot either.

Chust's main theme is that the courts of Cádiz was the vanguard of a bourgeois revolution in both Spain and America. The court was neither Spanish nor American, but Hispanic, and its achievement was the creation of "the Hispanic national state," as distinguished from either the "Spanish" or the "American." As far as it goes, this is a useful tack, but the author only asserts the point, he does not define the terms used. For example, did this bourgeoisie include the creole elites for whom the American deputies spoke? When Chust argues that the constitution served to nationalize the Americans and integrate them into civil society, we reach a level of generality that does not actually explain anything. The author's real interest, in fact, rather than the American national question, is the Spanish national question--the beginning of the transition in peninsular political thought from a Spanish Monarchy based on siegnorial privileges and jurisdictions, to Spain as a nation-state. This process was not completed at Cádiz; indeed it required the loss of the American territories to bring about the emergence of Spain, as distinguished from the Spanish monarchy of the old regime. Chust says the Spanish bourgeoisie triumphed with the new Spanish constitution of 1837.

It remains unclear exactly how the peculiar notion gripped the deputies to the cortes extraordinarias that they could make a revolution in the midst of the struggle to resist the Napoleonic conquest of the peninsula. Chust deserves credit for highlighting the revolutionary dimension of the work of the cortes. But he also raises the question more clearly than before of whether the cortes deputies should...