Description of the Project

Germán Carrera Damas
President of the International Scientific Committee for the drafting of a
General History of Latin America

In the space of only 500 years, Latin America has become one of the world’s major geocultural regions. Its territorial unity is obvious. Its sociocultural maturity can be seen on a day-to-day basis. Its importance on the world cultural scene is beyond dispute. The region is recognized for its ongoing and increasingly successful efforts to develop as a group of modern, democratic societies which are moving daily towards higher levels of well-being. In short, Latin America as a comprehensive entity is a historical reality. That is why we have written this General History of Latin America.

From a scientific perspective, nothing is more futile than to seek to compare the development of the world’s main geocultural areas. The organic links between them, together with the differences in historical time, blur boundary lines and hence defy comparison. For Latin American Creole societies, the fact that they appeared during what are considered the modern and contemporary periods in Western European historiography definitely emphasizes these links. Even in many preexisting societies in the Americas these linkages are there, reflected in fundamental features which have as much to do with basic technologies as with spiritual values. However, although this condition is common to all Latin American societies, the way of experiencing it is different. Nor therefore does it seem easy to compare the world’s main geocultural regions from their answers – or lack of answers – to a middle line in respect of a set of problems considered similar.

The General History of Latin America is hence the outcome of an attempted new approach to the historical evolution of Latin America. It sets out to capture both the unity and the diversity of the region, not in terms of contrast or juxtaposition, but rather articulated as the essential elements at the historical root of these societies. While it is true that such a focus does evoke the long-running debate over unity and diversity in Latin American history, the History does not look to answer such a question but rather to accept it as a reality, a matter of knowledge not requiring explanation. The informational content of this work is accordingly the result of a careful and critical exploration of accumulated historical knowledge, as well as a systematic reflection of the broad strokes in the process of Latin American history. As a result, the intention has not been to offer a vision of Latin America which, under the guise of a claim to scientific objectivity, disregards the forms of spiritual and intellectual expression which synthesize Latin American passion – one as legitimate and respectable as that kindled in any other of the world’s great geocultural regions. This History therefore represents, above all, a Latin American effort at self-comprehension. This effort, however, in no way seeks to mask an absurd pretension of historiographical isolationism. Nor does it involve the slightest downplaying of the role filled by the broad scenarios in which Latin American reality has evolved. Still less does it to scorn an outside perspective. It represents a genuine effort by Latin American societies to understand themselves, which has been aided by dozens of reputable Latin American, European and North American researchers. They are not Latin Americanists in the traditional sense, surviving in many academic circles, but rather scientific minds for whom Latin America is also something more than an object of study: a genuine desire to understand, combining scientific knowledge with fellow feeling.

This work has sought to be a history of societies. The intention therefore was to take in the historical existence of social groups that are diverse on account of their distinctive traits but also, and fundamentally, owing to how they have combined the traits shared with other societies, producing the unique course of history in Latin American societies. Forming the complex mosaic of societies that is Latin America, these processes also reveal a creativity to be found in a growing interrelationship with “universal” historical processes. This metaphorical use of a mosaic of societies is not without justification. It illustrates, at the same time, both the weft that unifies and the fissures that differentiate and even separate the pieces. Yet the Latin American mosaic is not the expression of a failed hope for standardizing fusion – a hope necessarily set aside by the clearest minds in contemporary Creole societies (1) – but rather an honest admission of a reality spurring new processes of historical development. These processes take the shape of subregional blocs which seek to combine real diversity in the setting of open integration projects. In this effort to empower Latin American societies, the determining factors come not from the community of origin but rather from the commonality of intentions. The same route was taken in the movement to unify the Old Continent, determined now to prove the existence of Europe as a historical and not just geographical entity.

Every historiographic approach to Latin America is governed by three important elements. Firstly, there is the accumulation and layout of the stages of historical time. Secondly, the fact that the shaping of Creole societies was, from the outset, recorded in a dense and extraordinarily rich and ongoing historiographic corpus. Thirdly, the sustained and productive work of archaeologists, anthropologists and historians has yet to fill in the historically generated rifts and the most structured indigenous societies.

As a result, Latin American societies today are organically tied to a process of settling the American continent which began around 25,000 years ago. These ties are directly visible in indigenous societies and indirectly so in all Latin American societies. At the same time, the European component in the shaping of Latin American societies links them directly to the original roots of the Mediterranean world, with its Arab facet, increasingly influenced by sub-Saharan culture in turn. Therefore, it is worth examining closely what can be referred to as the historical time of Latin America. Three fundamental aspects should be noted: first and foremost is the highly contemporaneous nature of Latin American societies in general, which reflect the different stages of this historical time, from the Upper Palaeolithic to the dawn of the Atomic Age. Secondly, there are still examples today of initial contact taking place between Creole and indigenous societies. Lastly, and importantly, owing to the socio-political consequences involved, is the fact that several societies which began their implantation process on the American continent in the early sixteenth century have yet fully to occupy their historically allotted space.

In compiling a history of these societies, we soon ran up against a historical fact that in many ways prevailed: the history of Creole and indigenous societies in Latin America has been written and cultivated by the socially dominant Latin American Creole perspective. Naturally, this applies not only to understanding and explaining history, but also to the gathering and preservation of sources, and the orientation of research projects. In many cases therefore, as the reader will probably note, less historical attention is paid to non-Creole societies, which take a back seat to Creole societies. I reject the facile explanation that Creole societies drive social institutions in Latin America. Rather, the historical rhythms are ill-synchronized in these institutions. Nor do I accept the albeit widespread notion of the stagnation of some of their components. I, in any case, object to this view as producing, in social practice, the most prejudiced judgements against indigenous societies, traditionally seen from a Creole perspective as being responsible for social backwardness and for blocking efforts towards progress. Those who actively reject this analysis and defend indigenous peoples and promote their cultural achievements may not have noticed that the actual source of the problem is the conceptualization of the relationship between Creole and indigenous societies from a Creole perspective, the latter being the only familiar component of this relationship, while the indigenous perspective tends to remain a matter of speculation and assumption rather than knowledge.

A divide has thus emerged between indigenous and Creole cultures, which has defied the efforts of the artistic, scientific and socio-philosophical communities. Recent ideological and political trends have also tried to fill this divide, and Latin American indigenous communities have had to suffer the intrusion of these usually predatory efforts. They thereby remain the arena of theories developed within Creole society during five centuries of domination. These theories, which are applied socially speaking when they are not explicitly stated doctrines, correspond to the juxtaposition of historical times apparent in some Latin American societies. This range of theories began with missionary movements – which themselves reflect this juxtaposition of historical times – and extends to the experimental anthropological theories of today. Generally speaking, however, the heart of the relationship between Creole and indigenous societies, forged in the sixteenth century, remains the same, based on the combined action of missionaries, merchants, liberators, soldiers, settlers and pillaging civil servants, followed in recent years by political activists looking for converts.

Latin America is therefore a place where several historical contexts meet to create one specific to the region. This General History attempts to grasp this context and present it to the reader. But this historical time is not unique, nor is its intrinsic diversity limited to Latin America. In hindsight, Latin American history reminds us that parallels to it exist, even though its singularity cannot be denied. When seen as the result of a colonization process that paved the way to the mixing of populations at all levels, this history seems similar in certain ways to more recent processes in Africa and Oceania. Such similarities nevertheless fade upon closer examination of these processes. Even though they reflect the same method of shaping new societies, the Latin American example presents clear and permanent distinctive features. The other recent settlement processes mentioned fall more readily into the category of population migration rather than the establishment of societies. Population mixing, whether or not a reality, is the fundamental difference between these two processes, insofar as the historical one involved primary mixing between indigenous inhabitants and new settlers. Seen in this light, the case of Latin American societies is singular, at least in modern times.

Ever since initial contact was made between indigenous communities of the American continent and members of expeditionary forces from Mediterranean Europe, the notion of American origin – implicit in the concept of the New World – has been a subject of debate. Fray Antonio Vásquez de Espinosa identified these native settlers as descendants of the lost tribe of Israel. Later, various observers, including Galeotto Cey in the early sixteenth century, believed that Creole societies were simply poor copies of European societies, but conditioned by a geographical environment which was in many ways viewed as a degraded version of Europe.

From that supposed assessment, which downgraded Latin American Creole societies, their members saw both their creativity and the possibility that they could rise to the level of their European ancestors denied. Even at the end of the nineteenth century, European travellers and naturalists, of the likes of Juan Bautista Diosdado Boussingault, still showed more interest and liking for American nature than for the continent’s population. Still today, on the threshold of the twenty-first century, the image of American societies, both Creole and indigenous, which has been put out by some internationally successful Latin American writers, is more related to the fantastic and even the irrational than to the intellectual and social rationality determined by Western European criteria, shared by Latin American Creoles.

Furthermore, Europeans tend to judge their history with a selective present-day rationality, while Latin American societies are irretrievably branded as essentially irrational. There is nothing new in that either. Romanticism also, which is acknowledged as a stage in the sensitivity of Europeans, is considered not far short of an insuperable condition in Latin American Creoles.

Nothing in these concepts merits today greater attention than that lent above. They have remained recorded, in the evolution of Latin American Creole societies, as examples of the not always pardonable lack of understanding of the reality of their historical structure. But one may readily note the important role that those prejudices have played as grounds for justifying colonialist purposes, both old and modern, both formal and non-formal, of which the Franco-Austrian intervention in Mexico in the mid-nineteenth century was an eloquent example.

But it would be very convenient to attribute such a degree of incomprehension solely to the external observer of Latin American societies. Creoles too have avoided admitting their real situation, especially concerning their relations with indigenous societies, as well as their tenacious attitude of imitative subordination with respect to their European ancestors. This has interfered with the creativity of Latin American Creoles, both by the lingering in their conscience of the initial and primary modes of their relations with the indigenous societies and by their aspiration to identify themselves with European cultural patterns. I have tried to summarize this situation of Latin American Creoles by defining them as captive dominators because they strive to be different from the dominated natives, increasingly surrendering to their own captivity, represented by their accommodating submission to accepted cultural forms as paradigms, in whose formation they have had little, if any, involvement.

It would also be unjust – and above all it would be historically unwise – not to recognize that, despite these complex forms of their conscience, Latin American Creoles have been able to devise, promote and achieve the greatest and most arduous undertaking of severance of the colonial nexus pursued up to now, including the decolonization following the Second World War. The formulation of the theory of the emancipation of the Spanish colonies of America and their creative practice, the work of many men and women, today represented by the great names of Simón Bolívar, José de San Martín, Antonio Nariño and Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, constitutes just praise for the intellect and vigour of the social and political action of Latin American Creoles. Determined at that time, according to the European observers in the mid-nineteenth century, against all apparent reason, to constitute nationalities in the framework of sovereign States, they were capable of persisting in the republican experiment when Europe had returned, having clearly learned its lesson, to the security of the old monarchical order, in some cases little short of absolutist. The tenacity of Latin American Creoles in that respect was, however, termed obstinacy and it was even held up as clear evidence of irrationality. Basically, Latin American Creoles were required to arrive swiftly at a social and political order in whose attainment Europe had for centuries invested. There were many Latin American Creoles, readers of its reality in European science, who paid tribute to that further example of intellectual subordination and became exasperated. But, happily, there were many clear minds to challenge the deceptive wisdom thus cultivated.

The General History of Latin America has two fundamental purposes, which were set forth in the original version of the project in 1981, from which I believe it appropriate to cite lengthy passages, albeit with the introduction of some additional ideas and improvements to style. These aims arose out of the critical study of Latin American and Latin Americanistic history and historiography, as well as extensive and rewarding intellectual contact with many of the selected authors. These purposes, simply stated, are that the General History of Latin America, promoted by UNESCO, must assist both in overcoming the Creole, and essentially Eurocentric, vision of Latin American history and in updating national and nationalistic opinions that prevail in the associated historiography.

Overcoming the Creole vision of the history of Latin American societies means adopting a historiographical position that seeks two fundamental objectives. First of all, the historical perspective of the long American period, characterized by indigenous societies, must be restored. These societies must be seen as a continuum, not as a predecessor of or a complement to the settlement process of new societies or Creole societies. Secondly, the implanted societies must be placed in a context of multiple interactions with factors and processes that, in the course of 500 years, have conditioned their development.

Achieving these objectives requires revising the nature of these societies’ relationships with “universal history”, indigenous societies, the African population brought to the Americas and the successive waves of immigration.

Between the implanted societies and “universal history”, a relationship must be sought that permits an accurate assessment of the signification of this relationship, which is both a means and a component, while taking into account the influence of Western European history in the conception of that universality. This requires better assessing the increasingly endogenous aspect, which very soon became predominant, of the settlement process of today’s Latin American Creole societies, as well as differentiating between the initial and successive ways of introducing Europeanness into this process.

With regard to indigenous societies, the two-way relationship between the conditioning and the conditioned must be examined, a relationship that still today constitutes the essence of implanted societies, in some cases increasingly so. This requires restoring the historical identity of indigenous societies that have been transformed into a sort of geo-human stage awaiting the exploits of conquest and colonization, or have been abusively relegated in countries to the status of minorities destined to vanish.

As regards the African population brought to the Americas, there needs to be a relationship based on the understanding that, in addition to being a component of global racial mixing, this relationship is also the source of Afro-American societies. Likewise, this requires insight to shed light on a whole set of ties still weighed down by the social and cultural discriminatory consequences of slavery.

With regard to the successive waves of immigrants, attention should be paid to a relationship characterized by a stimulating and open process that culminated, following the arrival of South Asians and Chinese, in European immigration to some areas of Latin America at the end of the nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth century.

Achieving these objectives supposes, as has been mentioned, overcoming the Creole vision of Latin American history. Much has been made of the need to overcome the crudely Eurocentric vision by replacing it with a genuinely universal one. Yet this argument is double-sided. One side, visible, corresponds to the generally accepted need to abandon the Eurocentric vision by, so to speak, pushing it out of the door. The other, hidden side consists in cultivating a Creole vision of Latin American history but brings back through the window the perspective pushed out of the door, inasmuch as both visions are fundamentally similar.

Attempting to overcome the Creole vision of Latin American history first of all requires the difficult task of defining that vision. It could perhaps be understood as the historical conscience, the product of one society’s settling in a territory already occupied by indigenous societies, a process that has given rise to a relationship of domination in which the dominators see themselves as representatives of historical reason within a global process and view the dominated as both predecessors and undesirable companions (“the indigenous problem”). The result is a fatalistic conception of relationships among societies, whereby the dominated is destined to join the Creole society. As a legitimizing factor, this conception underlies all the methods used over the centuries to solve “the indigenous problem”.

However, in a context of European colonial ties and new Americanness, the two-way interactive relationship that the implanted society forged with indigenous societies gave rise to the differentiation process of creolization. Its parameters have been a constant, persistent, fundamental and effective differentiation with regard to the indigenous societies, and an equally constant, increasing, inevitable but unwanted differentiation with regard to the original European context. Nonetheless, it must be kept in mind that, historically speaking, both parameters have permitted, and still permit, opportunistic temporary inclusion of the other sign. Despite appearances, the ultimate aim of this shifting is to maintain the differentiation process discussed above. Such was the case at the beginning of the nineteenth century when Creoles identified with indigenous peoples as victims of Spanish oppression in order to justify severing colonial ties. Such has been and is the case when Creoles try to identify with Europeans in order to back their own ethnic and social predominance.

Recent political trends, both in Latin America and Europe, ranging from the universal protection of human rights to new socio-political ideological proposals, are variables in this process. These trends generally result in fewer disappearances of indigenous societies, although in many ways they accentuate the existing gap that separates the societies that have been implanted with European ideals. They can also discourage and even inhibit the creativity of the Creole conscience. However, fundamental change is under way in the region that could lead to a transformation of the general situation in certain areas of Latin America. The demographic, cultural and political restoration of indigenous societies could impede and even cancel out the fatalistic conception that comes with the implantation process and surrounds these societies. In an honest historical portrayal, one cannot dismiss the possibility that some of the indigenous societies are resuming their historical course. Obviously this does not imply a return to the sixteenth century, but it does rid us of the notion of Creole as a representation of the whole.

From the point of view of the implanted societies, the situation becomes complicated since, the process of implantation being still incomplete and in the early stages of initial occupation of territory and first contact with some indigenous societies, sixteenth-century problems concerning relations with these societies are today reappearing in a similar fashion in certain areas.

The changes in question complicate the already complex historical timeframe for the formation of implanted Latin American societies, regenerating the structural conflict of the Creole conscience. This conscience develops on two levels, shaped by the essential atavism of the sixteenth century and by the contemporary relevance of that century in certain areas, simultaneously with the appearance of some of these societies up to the twenty-first century, in the context of new world relationship patterns. It is thus essential for Latin American societies to go beyond the Creole vision of their history in order to develop. This is necessary for three reasons: to facilitate indigenous societies’ resumption of their historical course, to free the Creole conscience from structural limitations that affect the creativity of Creole culture through the acceptance/denial relationship in which it develops with respect to the indigenous societies and to the European and Anglo-American context, and essentially for the structuring of the historical existence of the Afro-American societies.

In short, the implanted Latin American societies have attained a very high level of consolidation which could give them positive self-perception without the need to compare themselves negatively with the other societies sharing the same territory. If this is achieved, the way would be cleared to display the Creoles’ culture and their options would be multiplied. At the same time, it would certainly help create favourable conditions for the overall development of the other societies.

The second basic objective of this General History is to assist in updating the national and nationalist points of view of the implanted Latin American societies to make them fall into line with the historical reality that these societies are experiencing and with the required historical reassessment of the indigenous and Afro-American societies.

Latin American nationalism has been the subject of all sorts of studies. By dealing with this theoretical/ideological topic, as with its study of the closely related theme of Latin American liberalism, the General History of Latin America has taken on one of the most complex themes. The importance of the work, however, does not end there. The methodological and critical historiographical effort that such a History entails forces the adoption of positions that exceed the historiographically limited preoccupation with nationalism and that quite fittingly enter the fields of historical conscience resulting in social and political conscience.

Without lending weight to the diatribe that, somewhat suspiciously, usually mainly proceeds from forms of nationalism that are as domineering as they are ill-concealed, and without lapsing into the excesses of verbose lyrical exaltation, it has been necessary to address the study of Latin American nationalism by seeing it as an expression of the essence of the forms of consciousness specific to the process of formulating and implementing the national projects of implanted Latin American societies. This method has meant fully assuming the emotional charge required by such a process during a long century in which, more than once, these societies believed that they were seeing their national project wrecked in the midst of vain efforts to overcome the structural crisis that had weighed them down from the late eighteenth century and the ravages caused by recurrent outbreaks of hostilities, all compounded by the effects of the European and North American imperial presence.

From this perspective, nationalism may be seen to have played a dual role in Latin America. One objective was to embed the nation as a criterion legitimizing the internal power structure of the society, once the king had been removed from that position, as a consequence of the severance of colonial ties and the adoption of the republican constitutional form. The other was to link the new political and administrative units, thereby also legitimizing the dominant control of the implanted societies over indigenous societies. Thus, in the name of the emancipated, republican nation it was possible to ensure the continuity of the settlement process which was started and developed under the monarchical-colonial nexus.

In this way, the unjustly maligned nineteenth-century Latin American nationalism did much to shape the political map of the continent. For some time, and in a number of instances, this nationalism fostered attitudes of zealously defending the recently won autonomy, so that such attitudes were channelled through national projects that came up against structural difficulties. As attempts to overcome the difficulties failed, those difficulties seemed so deeply embedded that they were soon perceived as being insuperable in relation to the resources available to the emerging nations, particularly in the economic sphere. That understanding of the process by the most lucid of those involved in it soon became a widespread conviction, which was the basis for various political proposals of liberal inspiration, and was strengthened by the definite and prolonged effects of extensive social and economic dislocation caused by wars of independence that were particularly long, bloody and destructive. They were sufficiently so as to cause profound trauma, which was difficult to recover from, to societies which were still for the most part in the initial stages of structuring themselves as such when the colonial ties were severed.

The repeated and tenacious efforts in the first half of the nineteenth century to put into practice the national projects, which were based above all on the resources already existing in the corresponding societies, strengthened the conviction that those resources were not enough on their own, inadequate even, and that they could only be increased and consolidated through the comprehensive coordination of recently emancipated societies with more dynamic areas of the global capitalist system that were at that time forming and expanding. There is abundant evidence of what was early, deep and lasting about this form of consciousness, and about its legislative and administrative expressions in matters such as incentives for foreign investment and for immigration and colonization with a preferably European population. In that way, the correlation between hard-won autonomy and the conviction that the national projects were not viable as long as they were reliant on their resources alone, prepared the ground for the presence of European and North American imperialisms in the former Spanish colonies of America and, with considerable variation, in Brazil.

What has thus emerged is a complex historical situation whose dialectic has for decades been shrouded in large part by excessively hasty and unidirectional interpretations. These have given rise to a fragmentary and partial vision of the conceptual and methodological issues related to the historical study of modern and contemporary imperialism, including its role in the development of national projects in Latin America.

Everything points to the urgent need to submit this level of general knowledge of Latin America to a thorough historical review. The maturing of some Latin American societies and the political exigencies of all of them substantiate that need, against a backdrop of the proliferation of supranational forms of association, and in connection with the multinational development of capitalism, the emergence of new socio-political forms of organization and the opportunity to identify once again, in some areas, the ties between the implanted Latin American societies and the indigenous and Afro-American societies.

Counting among their historical credits the creation of sovereign and republican States, as well as the undeniable proof of their persistence in endeavouring to become independent nations and consolidate themselves as democratic societies, the Creole societies in Latin America are faced, although to varying degrees and with differing perceptions of the situation, with a difficult task: they must make a determined effort to overcome definitively those tenacious features of their consciousness that are rooted in their dominant position, since the early sixteenth century, vis-à-vis indigenous societies; or, in what amounts to the same thing, they must redefine their relations with indigenous societies and, above all, make known how they experience those ties. They need at the same time to modernize their nationalism, which emerged with such great difficulty in the nineteenth century and played such an important role in the construction of national States. In short, these are two important and demanding tasks which must serve as both a stimulus for and proof of, to the highest degree, the creativity of the Latin American Creole community, which can only be compared with that employed by indigenous societies to help them to endure Creole rule.

Whatever means – ideological, political or social – are used to address these challenges, there is apparently no need to prove that they have a common point of departure: they must be founded in a transformation of the historical consciousness of the Creoles. However, such a transformation can only be effected through the development of a critical awareness of the historical events in which Creole society is still today the main protagonist. From that vantage point, Latin American Creoles, backed by their rich indigenous and African heritage, will then be able to foster in their communities the freedom, democracy, welfare and justice to which they aspire and to establish similar ties with indigenous and Afro-American communities.

The fundamental aim of the General History of Latin America, published under the genuinely universal auspices of UNESCO, is to help heighten the historical awareness of the Latin American Creoles and, consequently, to foster the related role that must be played by the other communities with which it shares American territory.

The author is using the term “Creole” in its broadest sense in Latin America. The term denotes Europeans and Africans born on American territory and the children resulting from their intermixing with indigenous peoples. However, more than an ethnic criterion, it represents for the author a type of mentality associated with a relation of dominance over indigenous societies. In this sense, Creole consciousness exceeds ethnic limits.