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UTO
OPIIA
AS
IN

LAT
ATIN AMERICA
Past and Present
pro index 4 28/02/2018 08:34 Page ii

Sussex Library of Study

New Historical and Comparative Perspectives
on Latin America
SOCIETY, POLITICS, AND CULTURE
Editorial Board
Chair: Carlos H. Waisman
Jaime Concha (Literature), Christine Hunefeldt (History),
Ev Meade (History), Nancy Postero (Anthropology),
Pamela Radcliff (Iberian History)

This Sussex series, organized in cooperation with the Center for Iberian and Latin
American Studies (CILAS) at the University of California, San Diego, is entitled
“New Historical and Comparative Perspectives on Latin America: Society,
Politics, and Culture.” The series will focus on the interdisciplinary study of Latin
America, bringing together different viewpoints from the social sciences and the
humanities.
The Editorial Board is chaired by Carlos H. Waisman, Professor of Sociology,
and made up by faculty members in the departments of History, Literature,
Anthropology, and other social sciences at UC San Diego. The series publishes
original monographs and contributed works from scholars in the United States,
Latin America, and Europe, as well as papers drawn from CILAS projects and
research conferences.
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UTO
OPIIA
AS IN

LAT
ATIN AMERICA
Past and Present
EDITED BY JUAN PRO
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All chapters copyright © Sussex Academic Press, 2018; Introduction and editorial
organization of this volume copyright © Juan Pro, 2018.

The right of Juan Pro to be identified as Editor of this work has been asserted in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN 9781845199227 (Cloth)

ISBN 9781782845416 (PDF)

First published in 2018 in Great Britain by

SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS
P.O. Box 139
Eastbourne BN24 9BP

Distributed in the United States of America by

ISBS Publisher Services
920 NE 58th Ave #300, Portland, OR 97213, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and
review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pro Ruiz, Juan, editor.
Title: Utopias in Latin America : past and present / edited by Juan Pro.
Description: Brighton ; Portland : Sussex Academic Press, [2018] | Series: Center for
Iberian and Latin American Studies (CILAS)/Sussex Academic Latin American library
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017057086 | ISBN 9781845199227 (hb : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Utopias—Latin America—History.
Classification: LCC HX806 .U775164 2018 | DDC 355/.02098—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017057086

Typeset and designed by Sussex Academic Press, Brighton & Eastbourne.

Printed by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall.
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Contents

Series Editor’s Preface vii

Editor’s Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1
Juan Pro

1 Utopia in the Spanish Language: The Origin of a Word, the History 15

of an Idea
Juan Pro

2 How to Do Things With Utopias: Stories, Memory and Resistance 36

in Paraguay
Marisa González de Oleaga

3 Vasco de Quiroga rewrites Utopia 53

Geraldo Witeze Junior

4 Where Is Columbus’s Helmsman Taking Us?: The City of the Sun 76

of Tommaso Campanella as a Utopia Critical of the Iberian Empires
Carlos E.O. Berriel

5 Utopian Imagination Across the Atlantic: Chile in the 1820s 92

Carlos Ferrera

6 Cabet’s Utopia, from Minorca to Argentina: Bartolomé Victory y Suárez 115

Horacio Tarcus

7 The Utopia of the “Latin Race”: Michel Chevalier, Victor Considerant 139
and Public Debate in Spain Concerning the Intervention in Mexico
(1861–1867)
Nere Basabe

8 Rhodakanaty in Mexico 159

Carlos Illades
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vi | Contents

9 The Cecilia Colony: Echoes of an Amorous Utopia 180

in the Libertarian Press
Laura Fernández Cordero

10 Technologies of the Afterlife: Spiritualism and Social Imagination 198

in Nineteenth-Century Mexico
Ana Sabau

11 Universopolis: The Universal in a Place and Time 215

Andrew Ginger

12 The Commune in Venezuela: A Utopian Prefiguration 235

Dario Azzellini

13 Walking towards Utopia: Experiences from Argentina 262

Marina Sitrin

The Editor and Contributors 280

Index 284
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Series Editor’s Preface

This volume brings together papers that explore Latin America as a setting, for both
Europeans and Latin Americans, of utopian thought and action.
Utopian visions or practices have existed since the beginning of recorded history,
but it is with modernity that the imagining and the attempts to establish alternative
forms of social organization have become institutionalized. The essence of modernity
was captured by Marx’s famous dictum, “all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy
is profaned . . . ” 1 In pre-capitalist and pre-Enlightenment societies, utopian thought
or attempts to establish utopian communities were the product of either unusual intel-
lectual foresight and audacity, such as Plato’s or Thomas More’s, or extreme
circumstances, such as religious persecution of “heretic” medieval sects. These
societies were not composed of social classes in the modern sense of the term, but of
rigid status groups, practically akin to castes. Social mobility, both vertical and hori-
zontal, was rare, except as a consequence of wars or other calamities. And the
prevailing belief was that God had dictated both social organization and political
institutions, which were therefore inalterable.
Modernity destroyed these social structures and ideologies: The establishment of
capitalism meant, in terms of social structure, the abolition of serfdom and the instau-
ration of markets for goods and labor, with the ensuing potential for large-scale vertical
and horizontal mobility; and the Enlightenment set the stage for the understanding
that institutions and forms of social organization were contingent, and subject to the
human will. These changes created the conditions for the massive mobilization of
utopian thought and action that has characterized Western politics and culture since
the “Great Transformation”: from the very idea of a market society which, as Karl
Polanyi has pointed out,2 was itself utopian, to the liberal and democratic institutions
understood as “government by the people”; anarchism (itself an extreme form of
liberalism), and the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century.
As this book makes clear, Latin America was strongly involved in this process of
utopian theorizing and implementation. First, as several of these essays show, the
region was conceived as a social “tabula rasa” in the imaginary of European utopians:
an ideal environment for carrying out new social designs, at both the micro and macro
levels. In the second place, Latin America has been a milieu in which both elites and
anti-status quo revolutionaries have engaged in envisioning and bringing, or trying to
bring into being, alternative institutional formulae for the organization of social or
political life, sometimes at the level of local communities, others as the result of the
thorough transformation of societies. nineteenth-century constitutions, as this book
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viii | Series Editor’s Preface

shows, contained strong utopian elements, and Latin America has been a fertile
ground for the appearance and development of radical movements, political and
religious, reformist and revolutionary, some democratic and others totalitarian.
Why this propensity? A central trigger for utopianism, both North and South, has
been an intense dissatisfaction with the status quo, coupled with the conviction that
other institutional arrangements, more consistent with the utopist’s values, are
possible. Sources of collective dissatisfaction have been plenty in Latin America since
independence: economic backwardness with respect to other societies; the widespread
belief that the region is dependent or directly controlled by foreign powers, responsible
for this state of affairs; glaring inequality along economic and in many societies ethnic
lines; prevalence, for much of the twentieth century, of authoritarian rule, sometimes
very repressive; marginality and economic and political exclusion of large segments
of the population; extensive governmental corruption; etc. At the same time, political
ideologies, usually of European origin but locally re-interpreted, have served as a basis
for generating alternative institutional frameworks: from conventional Marxist-
Leninist formulae to original local products, such as theology of liberation or Hugo
Chavez’s “Twentieth-Century Socialism” and other variants of contemporary
populism.
Many of these movements or actual experiments have failed and others are trailing
badly, but as long as the two determinants of utopianism mentioned above — dissat-
isfaction with the current social organization and the hunger for alternative formulae
— remain, utopian movements and organizations will be recycled and re-constituted,
and they and the societal responses they generate will continue making up one of the
central dimensions of the social and political dynamics of Latin American societies.

1
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Ch. 1.
2
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1944).
pro index 4 28/02/2018 08:34 Page ix

Editor’s
Acknowledgments

The texts in this volume reflect part of the work of the Transatlantic Network of
Utopian Studies (Red Trasatlántica de Estudio de las Utopías – Rede Trasatlântica de
Estudo das Utopias), which was created in 2015 for the specific purpose of putting
scholars of utopianism in the Iberian and Latin American spheres in touch with each
other and, in turn, promoting the establishment of a field of Utopian Studies in the
Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world. The Network was set up in 2015–2016 with
financial assistance from the Santander Bank as a collaborative inter-university project
between the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Latin American universities
(Project CEAL-AL/2015-26). At present, it comprises more than a hundred
researchers from all over the world interested in the topic of utopia in the Atlantic area.
The texts have all been presented and discussed in a variety of academic forums,
such as the International Conference, Utopian Imaginaries: Past, Present and Future
(Madrid, 30 September, 1 and 2 October 2015), which is where the idea of publishing
them in a collective volume arose. That conference was organized by the IMAGEST
group at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Imaginaries of the State: Models,
Utopias and Dystopias in the Nation-State Building Process in Spain from a Comparative
Perspective, 18th–20th Centuries, HAR2012-32713 MINECO-FEDER project of the
National R & D Plan of Spain, 2013–2015). Subsequent discussion of these topics,
always within the framework of the Transatlantic Network mentioned above, has
continued under the aegis of the HISTOPIA group (History of the Future: Utopia and
its Alternatives in the Modern Horizons of Expectation, 19th–21st centuries, HAR2015-
65957-P MINECO-FEDER project of the National R&D Plan of Spain, 2016–2018).
Chapters 1, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 11 come from the research carried out by their authors in
the HISTOPIA project. This book has been made possible thanks to the financial
support of this research project.
The authors are grateful for the criticisms and suggestions received from col-
leagues who took part in the 2015 Conference, as well as at other meetings, including
the International Utopian Studies Seminar (Seminário Internacional de Estudos
Utópicos) at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (São Paulo, Brazil, November
2015), the Seminar on Contemporary Social and Cultural History at the
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (September 2016), the Third Conference on
Latin American Intellectual History: Forms of Intellectual History: Theory and
Praxis (Formas de Historia Intelectual. Teoría y Praxis, El Colegio de México,
November 2016) and the Colloquium Utopia: A Historical Approach to a
Philosophical Notion (La utopía: enfoque histórico de una noción filosófica, Madrid,
pro index 4 28/02/2018 08:34 Page x

x | Editor’s Acknowledgments

Casa de Velázquez, February 2017). Nevertheless, any errors are obviously the sole
responsibility of the authors.
We specially wish to thank Janet and Anthony Dawson, who translated in English
the original Spanish texts of most of the book (Introduction and chapters 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12) and revised chapter 13. Their help in the preparation of
this edition has been invaluable.
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pro index 4 28/02/2018 08:34 Page 1

Introduction
Juan Pro

This book considers the question of utopia in Latin America. It is plural, like the topic
of utopia itself and the part of the world to which it refers. The collection of thirteen
texts, which focus on thirteen cases or specific aspects of the utopian phenomenon in
Latin America, shows the importance of utopia in the modern world. Because of the
characteristics of our subject of study, we have decided not to include a specific
chapter of conclusions. Utopia is an open space — a Not Yet, as Ernst Bloch would
say1 — the results of which can never be evaluated completely, since each generation
reads them afresh, offering new interpretations and drawing new conclusions.
We have therefore refrained from coming to any conclusions as such. Perhaps
arriving at a final conclusion based solely on a few specific cases would have been a
step too far, given the vastness of Latin American space and its rich history.
Nevertheless, the cases presented here are sufficient to suggest a positive overall inter-
pretation of Latin American utopias, without allowing enthusiasm to cloud the critical
sense that ought to guide all research. It is left then to the readers to draw their own
conclusions and to nurture their own utopias. Our hope is that the historical cases that
we present here will serve as an invitation to think about all that the concept of utopia
contains: the promises that it has symbolized in the past for Latin America, and those
that it can continue to offer in the present.
Utopia is a burning issue of the kind that cannot be disregarded. The recent
commemoration of the fifth centenary of the first edition of Utopia by Thomas More,
who coined the word, serves to remind us that this concept has been with us since
Early Modern times.2 Indeed, it is an essential part of Western modernity, which began
with the discovery and colonization of America. This does not mean that utopia makes
any claim to spatio-temporal exclusivity. Some scholars have plausibly argued that
utopian thinking and mechanisms existed in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, well
before the term was invented, and there are those who have found parallels in other
cultural contexts, such as the Islamic world, India and China, even to the point of
suggesting that it is an anthropological universal.
Nevertheless, what nobody has disputed is the centrality of utopianism to the
development of the West in modern times, from the Renaissance to the present day.
The break with age-old traditions, confidence that human rationality could find out
about the world and organize it, the criticism of inherited conventions — all these
opened the door to the imagining of possible worlds in search of a better future.
Geographical discovery and voyages of exploration provided a powerful stimulus for
thinking about how many alternative ways of organizing society and distributing
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2 | Juan Pro

power were potentially available. Even More’s Utopia purported to be the account of
a Portuguese seafarer, Raphael Hythloday, who had sailed with Amerigo Vespucci
and recounted what he had seen in remote lands, lands that some have tried to identify
with specific real places in the Antilles or on the American continent.
At the heart of this book — and this would be the main conclusion, if it were neces-
sary to propose one — is the idea that there has been a constant relationship between
utopia and America (Latin America in particular), which has helped to clarify the
concept of both Utopia and Latin America. The one cannot be understood without the
other.
From the very beginning of modern history at the end of the fifteenth century,
down to the most recent political experiments currently being developed in a
number of countries, the destinies of this part of the world have been bound up with
various forms of utopia. The Latin American experience helps us understand that
the impulse that lay behind Thomas More’s new literary genre in 1516 was the same
one that prompted nineteenth-century European socialists and anarchists to
emigrate to the Americas to put their ideal communities into practice, and also
inspired the mobilization of the revolutionary guerrillas and populist masses in the
twentieth century. This impulse of a bold imagination eager to build the future is
what can be called utopia in its many and diverse manifestations. The idea that we
are putting forward is that this powerful cultural force that encourages change has
been, and continues to be an essential feature of the history of Latin America. In
other words, it is not only the physical Latin America that is reflected in statistics,
but also the one dreamt of by its inhabitants or imagined by foreign observers, which
are just as “real”. What is more, we are not the first to say this, since the same idea
has been expressed before by important Latin American philosophers and literary
essayists such as the Mexican, Alfonso Reyes.3 The link between America and utopia
has also been the subject of academic studies, although basically from the standpoint
of cultural studies or literary analysis, or by concentrating exclusively on present-day
social struggles and mobilizations in the region.4 In this book, we put forward the
view that it is essentially a historical topic, the extent and depth of which can only be
understood by expanding the focus to include the most diverse manifestations of
human activity and dealing with them in a temporal framework that connects past,
present and future.
Myths and legends of utopian content already proliferated at the time of the voy-
ages of exploration, spurring on the conquistadors, while the knowledge gap about
lands awaiting discovery was filled with stories about utopias such as El Dorado or
the land of the Amazons.5 From the sixteenth century onwards, the America that the
Spanish and Portuguese had discovered became the space in which it was possible to
envision the widest variety of forms of human coexistence. This was partly due to the
discovery of indigenous cultures and the sheer lushness and profusion of their natural
environments, which provided the raw material for thinking about diversity and
variety and for comparing and expanding the boundaries of the possible, and partly
to the colonial tendency to consider the vast American territories as empty space in
which it was possible to start afresh. Starting from scratch and founding towns and
cities was the way to set utopias in motion, to imagine the best of worlds without
being subject to the inertia and constraints imposed by history and the institutions
and customs of the Old World. This sort of utopianism was inscribed into the shapes
of Latin American towns and cities, their toponymy, the programmatic documents
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Introduction | 3

of the conquest, as well as the proposals critical of the way it should be carried out,
those by Vasco de Quiroga, for example (which are discussed in Chapter 3 of this
book).
In the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment multiplied that world of possibilities
and America became the place where full rationality, which continued to be fettered
by tradition and fanaticism in Europe, was once more possible. There can be little
doubt about the utopian content of the Jesuit Reductions in Paraguay or California,
or the Franciscan projects. In the same century, idealization of the Inca monarchy,
which was by then extinct, gave rise to a utopia based on its future restoration.
Utopias infused by enlightened rationalism flourished, but they were at the same
time changing tone, and abandoning the classic genre of imagining ideal societies situ-
ated in remote, hitherto undiscovered, places. The exploration of virtually the whole
planet made this literary device less plausible. The future, on the other hand, was
unfolding like an endless virgin territory that could be colonized by uchronias, that is,
timeless utopias.6 The revolutions in the United States (1776) and France (1789)
finally breached the last dikes that held back this utopianism of the future. Henceforth,
the future would no longer be predetermined. It would not simply be the continuation
of the present and the past, but a blank slate that nations and peoples could fill with
their own decisions and struggles. Utopia became commonplace and ubiquitous, for
in such conditions it was essential to explore the diverse possibilities of the future,
compare alternative developments and their consequences, and to have a compass to
set a course for that voyage into the unknown.
Revolution came early to Spanish and Portuguese America, right from the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century. And it came to stay, for it became a fundamental
ingredient in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American history. Revolution
and the utopian proposals associated with it not only marked the processes of eman-
cipation in the new Latin American nations, but also the subsequent creation and
consolidation of the independent states, as well as the history of the entire region (as
Chapter 5 shows in the specific case of Chile). The significance of constitutions as, in
some respects, utopian texts should be indicated here, since they represent designs for
an ideal state that must be achieved in the future, rather than an actual state of affairs
that needs to be institutionally defined. This is truer of Latin America than of Europe,
although there is a certain utopian component in the history of all modern constitu-
tionalism. In the case of the Latin American constitutions, most of which were born
of revolutionary processes, the aspirations of their authors were frequently written into
them. Such aspirations for the future were achieved later, either in part or not at all,
in a climate of marked political instability, which quickly made the utopias of their
forebears obsolete; one needs only to think of the 1917 Mexican Constitution, a
lengthy compendium of the dreams of the Revolution, some of which have still not
been realized a hundred years later.
After Independence, Latin America continued to be fertile territory for political
and social experimentation, in which revolutions and counterrevolutions, constitu-
tions, republics, movements and alternatives could all take root. It was an extremely
fluid history, punctuated with utopias both homegrown and imported. Those that
were imported are better known. For many European intellectuals and activists, Latin
America was the ideal territory for testing utopian proposals that ran into insurmount-
able problems in Europe. The so-called “utopian socialists”, for example, frequently
looked to Latin America for places to set up their model communities with greater
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4 | Juan Pro

success than in similar experiments undertaken on the other side of the Atlantic. Some
of the utopian socialists, such as Considerant, Chevalier, Saint-Simon and Cabet,
actually went to America to try and put their ideas into practice. Nonetheless, it was
mainly ideas, rather than people, that flowed from one side of the Atlantic to the other,
looking to Latin America for suitable soil in which they could germinate. Chapters 6,
7 and 8 of the book give an account of the thrust of this current in various time frames,
territories and ideologies.
After the failure of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, Latin America became a
destination for exiles, where freedom of thought and the opportunity to experiment
with democratic and socialist utopias could be recovered. America was also the
utopian dream of many thousands of emigrants from old Europe, emigrants who
expected to live the rich and fulfilling lives that they had not been able to enjoy in
their places of origin, whether through political or religious persecution, or the dis-
tress of being part of a minority that was discriminated against, or simply because of
extreme poverty, exacerbated at moments of agricultural crisis, like those experi-
enced at the end of the nineteenth century. Faced with the same old world, fraught
with suffering, America stood as the idealized image of an earthly paradise, full of
freedom, opportunities, promises: a true utopia. Chapter 9 shows an extreme case of
Latin America as a refuge for utopian experimentation in the specific case of Italian
anarchism transplanted to Brazil.
Two major stereotypes around that time explained the special link between Latin
America and utopia. The first one emphasized the nature of Latin America as a terra
nova, a new land in which the way of organizing future society had not yet been deter-
mined. It was also free of the vices and the straitjacket of traditions, prejudices, and
established powers imposed by European history, which meant that utopian proposals
that faced insurmountable obstacles back in Europe were now seen as practicable. In
the second stereotype, European Romantics regarded the luxuriant vegetation and
abundance of nature in some parts of America, especially the tropics, as motivating
the wealth of possibilities that the land offered for different forms of social organiza-
tion. The colossal scale of the natural setting of Latin America, which the Europeans
found so breathtaking, excited their imagination, suggesting not only that previously
unimaginable forms of nature were possible there, but also new-style social institutions
and practices, the fruit of an equally fertile utopian imagination.7
The special link in the minds of Europeans between utopia and America in general,
and Latin America in particular, became more apparent over time. The idealization
of everything Latin American went on to turn it into a symbol of utopia during the
twentieth century, with the mythologizing of guerrilla struggle, the Cuban revolution,
the figure of Che Guevara, Latin American protest songs, and so on. The existence of
an endogenous, homegrown Latin American utopianism, however, is more strongly
disputed. This prejudice has to do with another, more general one: the widespread
assumption that Iberian cultures in general — chiefly the Spanish- and Portuguese-
speaking countries on both sides of the Atlantic — are little inclined towards
utopianism. The mainstream literary canon, which extolls certain works written in
English, French, Italian and German as key utopias, has tended to neglect the signif-
icance of Hispanic and Portuguese utopianism, both in Europe and America.
According to this stereotype, based on unfounded assumptions, Iberian cultures are
little given to boldness of imagination or creative freedom and are more inclined
towards pragmatism and tradition. To express it in terms of well-known literary
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Introduction | 5

figures taken from a Spanish work, these would be societies made up of Sancho
Panzas, not Don Quixotes.
This stereotype comes from a need to justify the relative economic backwardness
of Iberian countries and to blame their victims for it. It has been further reinforced by
asymmetrical scientific developments, in which the spotlight has shone on works that
feed the rich Anglo-Saxon, French, Italian and German utopian traditions, but left the
treasures of Spanish and Portuguese utopianism buried away in semi-darkness. In this
instance, the difference in the perceived relevance of utopianism is more in the eye of
the beholder than in the reality observed and could be turned in the opposite direction
just as soon as a dedicated line of research pointed out, not only the wealth of utopian
literary productions in Latin America, but also the many other forms of utopia, such
as political and social movements, community experiences, approaches to urban plan-
ning, artistic and cultural trends, institutions and practices. An example of the former
— utopian literary productions from Latin America — is examined in Chapter 11,
and examples of the latter — active utopias in the form of social experiences and move-
ments — in Chapters 12 and 13.
At this point we arrive at one of the central problems in any study whose subject
is utopias, namely, which definition of utopia we are going to work with, what is
included and what excluded. The boundaries of the term are blurred because it has
been used to refer to quite different things with very different connotations during its
history. The first chapter in the book deals, to some extent, with the historical fluctu-
ations in the concept of utopia and, more specifically, its uses in the Spanish language.
We shall dispense here with the political use of the concept, which has generally been
as a weapon to discredit proposals made by opponents and dismiss them as impossible
dreams. Our interest lies in those analytical uses of utopia that are helpful in academic
contexts for pinning down a real phenomenon and accounting for its evolution,
modalities, characteristics, causes and consequences. At the end of the twentieth
century, these uses seemed to be important enough to give rise to the formation of the
new scientific field of Utopian Studies, defined, precisely, by its object of study, utopia.
This implies accepting that it is a recognizable object and, on this matter, there is
academic consensus.
It is important to emphasize that the institutionalization of Utopian Studies has
developed around two poles — one North American, the other European — to the
extent that there are two functioning scientific societies, one American and another
European, with two sets of periodic conferences where developments are exchanged
and an academic community is constituted.8 Latin America does not really belong to
either of these two areas and an equivalent process of defining the scientific field has
not yet emerged in the region. As in the social sciences as a whole, Latin America has
been relegated to a marginal role in the academic study of utopias. Its scholars occa-
sionally participate in European or North American activities and maintain
communication with both worlds, but Latin America continues to appear more as the
object than the subject of Utopian Studies.
In its origins, this interdisciplinary academic field had a markedly philological
stamp, which still persists. Among the classic works, the central thread of the history
of utopias was made up of literary works belonging to the genre initiated by Thomas
More’s Utopia and all its later variants, down to works of science fiction in the present
day.9 This tendency to identify utopia with a literary genre has been widely challenged
and overcome because the indifference to the content of literary works considered
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6 | Juan Pro

utopian led to loss of focus. To put it another way, the type of proposal that shaped
individual imaginary societies became irrelevant.
Nowadays it is generally accepted that a history of utopia cannot confine itself to
ideas expressed in literary form, let alone a single literary genre. Utopia is not only
text, it is also experience and action. Certain social movements — revolutions, for
example — even when they are not inspired by utopian texts, are responses to an
undeniably utopian stimulus, because of their tendency to imagine an ideal future that
contrasts with the limitations of the present. Certain community experiences, ranging
from the model communities of utopian socialists and anarchists in the nineteenth
century to the hippy and eco-pacifist communes in the twentieth, are also responses
to the utopian mechanism, which consists of thinking up ideal ways of constituting
society and putting them into practice directly, with or without a canonical text to
define the undertaking.
The concept of utopia that applies at present in Utopian Studies is therefore a plural
one, and extends beyond the purely literary. It includes, at the very least, community
experiences and social movements.10 After expanding the boundaries of the definition,
there then remains the problem of defining which movements and experiences can be
considered truly utopian for their boldness in imagining a better future that is radically
different from the present. The field of Utopian Studies continues to be a lively
academic space, with many intersecting polemics, and the work of definition is still
incomplete, leaving its frontiers open to further research and theoretical discussion.
With respect to Latin America particularly, expanding the concept of utopia to
include the political and social spheres, as well as the merely literary, simultaneously
means giving it greater prominence. While the tradition of utopian writings in Spanish
and Portuguese remains relatively hidden, the abundance of community experiences
and social movements in the history of Latin America that can be considered utopian
is glaringly obvious. Hence, the region is sure to have a central place in any develop-
mental scenario of Utopian Studies that is not determined by cultural prejudices or
nationalistic distortions.
===❖===
The opening chapter by Juan Pro (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), entitled
“Utopia in the Spanish Language: The Origin of a Word, the History of an Idea”,
makes reference to the performative capacity of language by focusing on the different
ways that the term utopía has historically been used in Spanish. This review of its uses
in journalistic, literary, and political texts shows the interrelationship between semantic
change and the political and social changes taking place in each period. Juan Pro also
shows that, in spite of the dominant trends, there has always been some margin for
interpretation. Utopía, together with its derivatives, was a polysemous word, which
made it possible for the speaker or writer to emphasize particular aspects of its
meaning, whether the negative connotation of extreme idealism, bordering on fantasy,
or the positive one of creative imagination necessary to drive progress in a particular
direction. Placing this chapter at the beginning of the book serves to draw attention to
three things: first of all, the role of language in the construction of historical reality,
particularly when discussing cultural realities mediated through language use, such as
this one on the creation of utopias. The second draws attention to the multiple — even
contradictory — definitions of concepts like utopia as they are used in the various
academic today, and also within the particular historical spatio-temporal framework
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Introduction | 7

that is being studied. Lastly, attention is also drawn to the fact that recourse to utopian
strategies has been cyclical, waxing and waning in popularity, lest we fall into the temp-
tation of confusing the most recent of these cycles, or any other, with a definitive
long-term trend. Bearing in mind these caveats about the concept and the ways in
which utopia has been used, we then go on to study a different grammar that needs
to be considered: the grammar of memory.
The second chapter, “How to Do Things With Utopias: Stories, Memory and
Resistance in Paraguay”, is the work of Marisa González de Oleaga (Universidad
Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain). She focuses her attention on five of the
many utopian colonies that were established in Paraguay in the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries and analyses the way in which these experiences have been passed down
to the present day, resulting in their memory being ‘disabled’ for present-day social
movements. The text is a reflection on the constraints imposed by literary genre on
the transmission of utopian experiments and calls for new forms of writing and
representation. Whereas the first chapter alerts us to the linguistic dimension of the
construction of utopia, the second one raises the question of the paradoxes of historical
memory. Thus, by triggering the tension that exists between history and memory in
relation to complex cultural objects such as utopias, the question of the tension
between past and present, which is intrinsic to this book, is also raised.
Leaving behind the “grammar of utopia” considered in the first two chapters,
Chapter 3 is the first in a chronological sequence covering a series of historical mile-
stones that take utopia from the beginnings of modernity in the colonial period to
present-day Latin America. The text “Vasco de Quiroga rewrites Utopia”, by
Geraldo Witeze Junior (Instituto Federal de Goiás, Brazil), analyses the early attempt
by the bishop of Michoacán to address the issues and abuses of Spanish colonization
in Mexico by using an alternative model of pueblos-hospitales for the indigenous pop-
ulation. Vasco de Quiroga developed these communitarian experiences, inspired by
Thomas More’s Utopia, in the 1530s, and wrote a description of them as a model for
harmonious coexistence for the whole of Spanish America. This is therefore one of
the earliest examples of Hispano-American utopianism, in which three fundamental
characteristics can be noted: first, the tendency to accompany the production of texts
— like those written by Vasco de Quiroga — with the practical implementation of
their ideas in the field; secondly, it is a re-reading from the American continent of
ideas originating in other places in Europe (in this case, England) expressed from a
Hispanic point of view; and thirdly, the emergence of the indigenous question, which
is central to Quiroga’s project and cannot be avoided in any forward-looking
approach for Latin America.
In Chapter 4, “Where is Columbus’s Helmsman Taking Us?: The City of the Sun
by Tommaso Campanella as a Utopia Critical of the Iberian Empires”, Carlos Berriel
(Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil) shows us that the classic seventeenth-
century utopia, The City of the Sun (1602) contains a criticism of the Hispanic
Monarchy and the way it governed its European kingdoms — in the Iberian peninsula
and Italy, where Campanella was writing — and also those in America. From the time
of Philip II, the monarchs of the House of Austria had incorporated the Portuguese
Crown and its dominions in Brazil into their Monarchy. When we talk about a criti-
cism of the Hispanic Monarchy therefore, we are referring, in this case, to a political
formation that encompassed the whole of what we today call Latin America, plus the
whole of the Iberian peninsula and other territories in Europe, Asia, Africa and
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8 | Juan Pro

Oceania. It was a genuine world power with aspirations to a Universal Monarchy. The
City of the Sun used utopian philosophy as an instrument to launch an early, sharply
critical attack on that Monarchy’s methods of governance: absolutism, wars,
fanaticism, aversion to modern science, in short, everything that, from Campanella’s
point of view, was leading to ruin and backwardness in the dominions of the Hispano-
Portuguese empire. Starting from the premise that The City of the Sun is one of the
key works in the literary canon of the utopian genre, the important aspect of this
chapter is that it highlights two fundamental ideas: first, the fact that all utopian
content involves implicit or explicit criticism of something existing in the historical
moment, and second, the centrality of the Latin American world in any history of
utopias, even when discussing works written in Italy, as in this one by Campanella (or
in England, such as More’s, for that matter).
Chapter 5, “Utopian Imagination Across the Atlantic: Chile in the 1820s”, by
Carlos Ferrera (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) takes us to nineteenth-century
revolutionary South America. From the very start of its independent existence,
Chile, perhaps because of its remoteness and relative inaccessibility, was seen as a
prime example of utopian space, among conservatives, as well as liberals and social-
ists. This view was rooted in eighteenth-century philosophical Geography and
proponents of it used moral criteria to define territories — often without visiting
them — as places of barbarism, but also as utopias. Based on this, the Atlantic
became a space for the channelling of ideas, projects and people that permeated the
culture of the Creole elites. Independence stimulated experimentalism by triggering
processes for constructing utopias with a view to creating harmonious republics of
virtuous citizens.
In Chapter 6, “Cabet’s Utopia, from Minorca to Argentina: Bartolomé Victory y
Suárez”, Horacio Tarcus (CeDInCI — Universidad Nacional de San Martín —
CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina) provides a somewhat later example of these
transatlantic utopian flows in the specific field of what came to be known as utopian
socialism or romantic socialism. He considers the figure of Bartolomé Victory (1833–
97), a Spanish printer, publisher and publicist close to the ideas of Cabet, who
emigrated to Argentina after the defeat of the revolutionary movements of 1854–56.
Here we see the importance of political exile among Europeans in generating utopian
expectations of America, and also as a vehicle for the circulation of utopian ideas in
search of environments where they could be disseminated and implemented. Victory
was one of those prophets of advanced ideas who, when contemporaries accused them
of being utopians, responded by proudly defending the term:

utopia has recognized the human personality and declared it sacred; utopia allows us to cross
thousands of leagues in just a few hours; utopia enables us to converse in thirteen minutes
from one world to another; utopia has changed the face of laws, customs, and even religions
themselves.11

In short, Victory argued in favour of an idea that would become common in the second
half of the nineteenth century: the utopias of today are the realities of tomorrow. The
idea that utopia is a purely historical concept that should always be approached from
a historical perspective is one of the key ideas that this book seeks to establish. There
are no intrinsically utopian ideas. New ideas surface in a specific historical context,
and it is in context that they are conceived of as utopian. Only later, after time has
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Introduction | 9

passed, can it be demonstrated whether or not that idea was realizable. History is a
succession of utopias, some of which come to fruition, while others fall by the wayside
as mere possibilities.
The following two chapters also have the same theme of transatlantic utopian
socialism and its development in Latin America. In Chapter 7 “The Utopia of the
‘Latin Race’: Michel Chevalier, Victor Considerant and Public Debate in Spain
Concerning the Intervention in Mexico, 1861–67”, Nere Basabe (Universidad
Autónoma de Madrid) considers the joint French, British and Spanish intervention
against the government of Juárez in Mexico and the subsequent Mexican Empire
under Maximilian I as framed in utopian concepts and proposals. European utopian
socialists viewed this neo-colonial expedition as an opportunity to implement some of
their proposals in America; there were, however, proposals of a different kind, such
as those linked to the concept of the “Latin race”, a utopia of intercontinental unity
and critical redemption that contrasted with the modern tendencies imposed by the
Anglo-Saxon and Germanic nations to the north. This chapter raises the interesting
question of the relationship between utopias and power. As many of the utopias that
are commonly studied arose from contestation against established power, those who
formulated utopias have always sought the help of political power in order to imple-
ment them, and quite a number of historical experiences of the use of power can be
found that were driven by more or less explicit utopian ideals. In Latin America alone,
a whole host of political experiments can be identified that started off as ideas that
contemporaries regarded as utopian. Nere Basabe mentions the Second Mexican
Empire of Maximilian of Habsburg because it is connected to the idea of the “Latin
race”, although others mention José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, Dr Francia, in
Paraguay (1814–40), to whom Fourier himself wrote, seeking help in the creation of
a model phalanstery. In the twentieth century, we could point to the utopian content
at the heart of the Cuban Revolution (1953–59) or the Sandinista Revolution in
Nicaragua (1978–79).
The Chapter 8, “Rhodakanaty in Mexico”, by Carlos Illades (Universidad
Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico), shares the same stage: Mexico in the middle
decades of the nineteenth century. Plotino Rhodakanaty was a cosmopolitan
European of Greek origin, who not only set in motion a socialist utopia in Mexico
using elements taken from Fourier, Proudhon and the whole of the previous socialist
tradition, but also actively disseminated his own version of utopia by contributing to
the revolutionary mobilization of the peasants and the emergence of the workers’
movement in Mexico. Rhodakanaty’s version of utopia was an original one, however
much it harks back to known precedents and models. His aim was the creation of
sovereign federated bodies, which, when added together, would make up society. In
the long term, the State would have to be suppressed and replaced by a social pact
endowed with political functions, although this pact could be revoked at any time.
While we catch glimpses of an anarchist utopia in Rhodakanaty, this is fully devel-
oped in Giovanni Rossi’s project, which is the subject of Chapter 9: “The Cecilia
Colony: Echoes of an Amorous Utopia in the Libertarian Press”, by Laura Fernández
Cordero (CeDInCI — Universidad Nacional de San Martín — CONICET,
Argentina). This Italian anarchist developed the Cecilia Colony experiment in Brazil
between 1890 and 1894. It involved putting into practice an ‘amorphist’, radically
anarchist utopia, a society without institutionalized authority in which absolute
freedom prevailed, extending even to emotional relationships between men and
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10 | Juan Pro

women. The chapter analyses the intensive publicity given to that Latin American
experiment with a view to making it a universal model.
The topics treated in Chapters 8 and 9 introduce us to the problems that utopias
face when translating theory into practice. In both cases, this step involved a shift in
space from one place to another — from Europe to America — that seemed to be
comparable to time travel, since it made it possible to realize something that had never
been achieved before on the Old Continent. The theme, therefore, is the journey to
America as a journey in time.
Both the “Greek”, Plotino Rhodakanaty, and the Italian, Giovanni Rossi, were
non-conformists who wanted to go further than simply set out their utopias in
theoretical terms and who managed to make that leap onto American soil, in Mexico
and Brazil, respectively. The two experiments enjoyed a measure of success,
Rhodakanaty’s because of his ability to mobilize the peasants, and Rossi’s because he
was able to set up a human community that survived for three years living according
to anarchist principles. Nonetheless, both ended badly. The 1869 peasant revolt,
inspired by Rhodakanaty’s teaching, ended in a bloodbath, suppressed by the Mexican
government, while Rossi’s small community, the Cecilia Colony, had to be abandoned
in 1894 after being sacked the previous year by Brazilian government troops. What
stands out in the first case is the way that social groups can appropriate particular
utopian discourses for their own purposes and launch into violent actions in order to
turn them into reality, so running considerable risks; the second experiment — as its
founder recognized — revealed how difficult it was for participants in those commu-
nitarian experiments to overcome the system of values and patterns of behaviour
instilled earlier by the dominant social order. The outcomes of both experiments raise
the issue of the destiny of utopias, which conservative historiography considers by
definition to be doomed to failure. The meaning of that failure can be interpreted in
different ways, in as much as such episodes have continued to be remembered as
models down to the present day, and not only continued to inspire those who took
part in them, but also later generations of activists and researchers.
Ana Sabau (University of Michigan) is the author of Chapter 10: “Technologies
of the Afterlife: Spiritualism and Social Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Mexico”.
In this chapter, she addresses an issue that is crucial to the history of utopianism,
namely, the tendency to explore alternative forms of knowledge and unconventional
belief systems, such as spiritualism, alongside the new possibilities of social and
political organization. Between the middle and end of the nineteenth century, Mexico,
like many other countries, witnessed the rekindling of spiritualist doctrine. A great
number of men and women became devotees of this new worldview somewhere
between a science and religion, attending spiritualist clubs and societies that spread
across the country. Even though such practices seem bizarre today — maybe even
damaging the reputations of those who promoted them, along with their ideas about
social change — spiritualist circles were inspired by a strong common impetus for
freedom. The publications of these societies show that, at the same time that spiritu-
alism was imagining communion between the worlds of the living and the dead, it was
also trying to promote a freer, more equal society. Followers of spiritualism were
committed to freeing themselves from conventions that would constrain the ambitions
of emancipatory thought, and that utopian commitment included shedding the
conventionalisms of inherited religion, as well as the new impositions of positivist
science. The link between utopia and alternative spirituality has been underlined many
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Introduction | 11

times, starting at least as far back as Thomas Müntzer and the peasant uprising in
Germany, in 1524–25.12 In Latin America, thanks to the repeated revolutionary read-
ings of the Christianity of the Scriptures, this journey has been particularly intense
and continuous. We could refer again to the evangelical inspiration of the Jesuit
communities in Paraguay or the pueblos-hospitales of Bishop Quiroga in Mexico, but
much closer in time, there is a whole history to be told about the utopian content of
Liberation Theology and the impact that it has had in Latin America in the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries.13
The title of Chapter 11 by Andrew Ginger (University of Birmingham),
“Universopolis: The Universal in a Place and Time”, makes reference to an essay by
the Mexican, José Vasconcelos, La raza cósmica (The Cosmic Race) (1925), in which
he conceived the Latin American populations as a “fifth race”, a “race of bronze” or
a “cosmic race”, an agglomeration of all the races in the world, ready to usher in a
universal era of humanity. He envisioned the utopia of a new civilization,
Universopolis, constituted of knowledge and values from around the world. Andrew
Ginger presents this philosophical-literary utopia as the epitome of universalism,
arguing that universalism is one of the quintessential manifestations of utopia. The
universal constitutes literally a no-place, as well as a no-time, precisely because it
escapes the confines of geographical and historical contextualization. Universopolis
was a utopia that set out to break down the barriers that marginalized the misfits and
those on the fringes, giving them a prominent role in the development of the world.
Today, when national identities, borders and clashes of civilizations threaten irrecon-
cilable conflicts everywhere, the idea of universalism reflected in the work by
Vasconcelos acquires fresh currency. His idea of linking universalism to a particular
geographical and cultural space like Latin America is not without interest. In essence,
each of the American countries is a conglomerate made up of migrants of diverse
origin and native populations that have survived under very difficult circumstances.
Miscegenation and cultural syncretism are characteristic features of Latin America,
which is why it is better positioned than other regions to offer the world a possibility
of overcoming racial and national conflict by pursuing the utopia of a humanity
without borders. In view of the fact that the rejection of immigrants and refugees has
reached such a height in Europe and North America that it challenges the framework
of democratic coexistence, might it not, therefore, be important to explore this utopia?
Each of the final two chapters of the book takes a look at utopian approaches active
in the Latin America of the twenty-first century. In Chapter 12, Dario Azzellini
(Cornell University) discusses “The Commune in Venezuela: A Utopian
Prefiguration” as the utopian impulse latent in the “Bolivarian Revolution” in
Venezuela, activated by means of key institutions, such as communal councils and
communes. These are forms of local self-government, aimed at creating a new
geometry of power. Although precedents can be found in the history of revolutionary
movements in Europe, the communes are also firmly anchored in Latin American
traditions — the experiences of resistance among the indigenous peoples and the Afro-
Americans, for example — or those reflected in Simón Bolívar’s writings on toparchy
(a system of local self-government). They also constitute new utopian proposals,
characteristic of their time, that offer a response to globalization.
Finally, in Chapter 13, “Walking towards Utopia: Experiences from Argentina”,
Marina Sitrin (State University of New York, Binghamton) reminds us of the
continued vigour of initiatives resistant to the hegemonic order in present-day Latin
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12 | Juan Pro

America, initiatives that are opposed to the seemingly unstoppable logic of capitalism
and globalization. By means of various recent expressions of social defiance in
Argentina, Marina Sitrin shows that the vital utopian spark that drives them, as well
as the world views and human relationships that lie behind them, are undoubtedly
constitutive elements of operational utopias.
The point of these final chapters is to show that history continues, even after the
critical moments of 1989–91, which some interpreted as signalling the “end of
History”.14 Although the crisis in the Communist bloc — exemplified in Europe by
the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of the Soviet Union — was important,
it could not be taken to mean the end of the historical process of humankind, and even
less so in Latin America, where the persistence of the Castro regime in Cuba reminds
us that the rhythms and tempos there are different. History has not ended with the
victory of capitalism and the establishment of a unipolar — imperial — order in which
the only social, economic and political model is the one offered by the United States.
There have been conflicts since, and there will continue to be conflicts, dissatisfaction
with the existing order, innovation and change, the driving forces of History.
As we try to show in this book, utopias are powerful driving forces of that historical
dynamism. The yearning to achieve a better world, whether it turns out to hit the mark
or to be totally misguided, continues to prefigure the future and to set the direction
for building a country that is very different from the present and past versions that we
are already familiar with. These final two chapters demonstrate that, in the twenty-
first century, there are still some who dare to dream of alternative systems to
capitalism, and to do so from one of the peripheral regions of the world, which Latin
America continues to be. The communes in Venezuela and the occupation of factories
in Argentina are two good examples. The fact that utopian approaches of this type
should flourish and proliferate on Latin American soil cannot in any way be regarded
as the product of chance. This part of the world is blighted by extreme poverty and
inequality, appalling shortages that contrast with the abundance of natural resources,
and governments that are especially antisocial, repressive and corrupt. Utopia germi-
nates spontaneously in these conditions, in its attempt to escape a reality that is both
stubborn and cruel, raising its voice to demand what ought to be obvious, gearing itself
up time and time again to protest against some unjust order. It all germinates in the
form of utopia because this seems to be the very language of Latin America, the
language of a boundless imagination, flowing from the cultural richness of a continent
that still has much to offer the world.15
Latin American utopianism — which is easy to recognize in the Early Modern
centuries, in the experiences of nineteenth-century utopian socialists and the revolu-
tionary guerrillas of the twentieth century — has continued down to the present day
and manifests itself in various ways, some of which appear in these last two chapters
of the book. Utopia is not only a thing of the past, but also has a place in the present.
This sets up other kinds of polemics, because it turns the utopian object into something
much more dangerous and challenging than if it were placed in a museum showcase
as an object of contemplation, an archaeological object, a relic of the past. There is no
shortage of writings — in Latin America especially — that talk about the end of utopias
from the comforting standpoint that this form of imagining the future had its moment
but has now passed. According to this approach, utopia would be a primitive way of
dealing with uncertainty about the future by imagining fanciful solutions to real
problems. The repeated failures that mark the history of utopias have created the
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Introduction | 13

widespread conviction that experiments of this type end up causing more problems
and suffering than the situations they set out to overcome.
This is certainly a conservative interpretation, closely inspired by the collapse of
the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent discrediting of what had been one of the
grand utopias of the twentieth century: communism. Perhaps, with its downfall,
communism caused the collapse of other traditions of alternative thinking, even the
very drive for social transformation itself, giving rise to a moment of hegemony of the
so-called pensée unique or ‘single way of thinking’. Capitalism, the class society, the
nation state, the established world order; it all seemed for a moment unshakeable,
discouraging any kind of critical thought or dreams of an alternative. For a short space
of time, perhaps, the only meaning of utopia was once again that discardable fantasy
of dreaming of ideal worlds that can never come true. Nonetheless, it did not take long
for alternative thinking to start up again and the movements of contestation, which
had never ceased, often nurtured fairly well-defined utopias of the future. Not even
the annihilation of the communist utopia and the complete transformation of the world
that it brought in its wake managed to put an end to the production of utopias; they
simply changed their form and content, as they always had. Different utopias spring
up in every age, expressing the concerns, hopes, and conditions of possibility of their
times. This historical dimension is one of the most interesting aspects of the study of
utopias. It allows us to read these singular phenomena for certain dimensions of their
time — such as their expectations for the future — which are perhaps less immediately
obvious when analysing other kinds of sources.
Utopias that have long been a fundamental ingredient in the historical trajectory
of the region, are far from disappearing from present-day Latin America. What can
be detected, however, is the existence of historical cycles in the growth and decline of
utopias, both in Latin America and the rest of the world. This is an interesting chal-
lenge for Utopian Studies, because the reasons why a utopian outlook is discredited
at certain times but appeals at others has to do with cultural frameworks and changing
socio-political circumstances, which is why investigating it could be so illuminating.
In the same way that we can establish an origin for utopia and associate it with the
beginnings of modernity, so the possibility of the complete disappearance of utopian
proposals in the future could also be considered. Utopia could disappear at some
point, although it has not happened yet. Utopian cycles of growth and decline, which
have always existed, should not be confused with the complete disappearance of the
phenomenon, the premature announcement of which seems to be more a case of
conservative wishful thinking.
The twenty-first century did not begin with the end of utopia, but rather with the
upsurge of a new utopian cycle. Myriad political, social, artistic and intellectual move-
ments confirm this, with particular intensity in Latin America. In short, utopia is a
necessity in our societies, a response to their deficiencies. Perhaps this is why the
utopian impulse is so strong in Latin American countries, where the deficiencies are
so appallingly obvious in contrast to the expectations and possibilities. In such condi-
tions, imagining alternative futures is not such a wild idea; what is a wild idea is to take
for granted that the future will be nothing more than the mere continuation of what
we already know.

Notes
1 Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).
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14 | Juan Pro

2 Thomas More, De optimo reipublicae statu, deque nova insula Vtopiae (Leuven: Dirk
Martens, 1516). The academic commemoration of this fifth centenary, which was
celebrated throughout the world, also reached Latin America, with a symposium organized
by the Universidad de la República (Uruguay), Utopías: pasado y presente: A 500 años de
Utopía de Tomás Moro (27–28 October 2016).
3 See especially the essay that Alfonso Reyes began in 1924, “No hay tal lugar”, in Obras
completas (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1960), 11: 336–390.
4 An example of the cultural studies approach, with particular attention to an analysis of
literary works is the book by Kim Beauchesne and Alessandra Santos, eds., The Utopian
Impulse in Latin America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). A more recent book, Kim
Beauchesne and Alessandra Santos, eds., Performing Utopias in the Contemporary Americas
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), concentrates on the study of present-day protest
movements and actions, extending the focus to the Americas as a whole.
5 An early reflection on the utopian meaning of such expectations in the myths and legends
of the discovery of America was made by Alfonso Reyes in another of his essays in 1942:
“Última Tule”, in Obras completas (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1960), 11: 11–
155.
6 This change is usually considered to have occurred after the publication of the work by
Louis-Sébastien Mercier, L’an deux mille quatre cent quarante, Rêve s’il en fût jamais
(London, 1772).
7 Pierre-Luc Abramson, Las utopías sociales en América Latina en el siglo XIX (Mexico: Fondo
de Cultura Económica, 1999), p. 217.
8 The academic institutionalization of Utopian Studies in the United States came about in
the form of the Society for Utopian Studies (SUS), founded in 1975. Since 1987, it has
published the journal, Utopian Studies. The equivalent organization in Europe is the
Utopian Studies Society, established in 1988.
9 Lyman Tower Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature 1516–1975: An Annotated
Bibliography (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1979); Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent, eds.,
The Utopia Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1999).
10 There is an up-to-date discussion of academic definitions of utopia in Ruth Levitas, The
Concept of Utopia (Berne: Peter Lang, 2010); or, from the Latin American perspective, in
Graciela Fernández, Utopía: contribución al estudio del concepto (Mar del Plata, Argentina:
Suárez, 2005).
11 B. Victory y Suárez, “La verdad social”, El Artesano 11, 9 May 1863, pp. 1–2. Reproduced
by the author as an appendix in El comunismo de Esteban Cabet (Buenos Aires: Imprenta
Central B. Victory y Suárez Editor, 1864), pp. 152–57: “la utopía ha hecho consagrar el
reconocimiento de la personalidad humana; la utopía nos hace cruzar millares de leguas en
pocas horas; la utopía nos hace conversar en trece minutos desde uno a otro mundo; la
utopía ha cambiado la faz de las leyes, de las costumbres y hasta de las mismas religiones”.
12 A reading in utopian terms in the 1921 study by Ernst Bloch, Thomas Müntzer als Theologe
der Revolution (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977); also in Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia
(Oxford–New York: Routledge, 2013), pp.190–97, originally published in 1936.
13 Tom Moylan, “Mission Impossible? Liberation Theology and Utopian Praxis”, Utopian
Studies 3 (1991): 20–30.
14 Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History”, The National Interest (Summer 1989): pp. 3–
18.
15 The vitality of the utopian impulse in the context of social and political struggles in present-
day Latin America can be traced in works such as Eugene Gogol and Latin American
Colleagues, Utopia and the Dialectic in Latin American Liberation (Leyden: Brill, 2015); or
Camilo A. Pérez-Bustillo and Karla V. Hernández Mares, Human Rights, Hegemony, and
Utopia in Latin America: Poverty, Forced Migration and Resistance in Mexico and Colombia
(Leyden: Brill, 2016).
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Utopia in the Spanish

Language: The Origin of
1 a Word, the History of
an Idea
Juan Pro

The capacity of language to reflect complex historical processes and also to have an
effect on the changes that determine those processes is particularly evident in certain
complex polysemic concepts, such as utopia, which has charted a course through five
centuries of Western culture since it was first invented by Thomas More in his 1516
work of the same name.1 The process by which the fictional toponym of Utopia
became a common noun in the Spanish language was a long and tortuous one. While
the uses of the term have gradually changed over time in response to transformations
in the social, political and cultural environments, the same uses have, at the same time,
also affected the social and cultural changes themselves, showing the capacity of
language to construct reality.
Using the press, non-periodical print publications and dictionaries of the Spanish
language as the principal sources, this study explores the history of the uses of the term
utopia in Spanish language texts on both sides of the Atlantic, from its origins until
that moment in the nineteenth century when it became part of the political battlefield.
My text ends when the word was officially recognized in dictionaries in the 1850s and
1860s. The hypothesis that is explored here is that the word utopia was a fundamental
tool that paved the way for utopian thought and the activism that derived from it, both
in peninsular Spain and in Latin America. In short, the semantic field of utopia was
also a social and political battlefield during the nineteenth century.

Thomas More’s island in the Hispanic Atlantic

It took a hundred and twenty years before Thomas More’s Utopia, originally written
in Latin, was published in a Spanish translation. The first translation was actually done
in America in the sixteenth century, when the Bishop of Michoacán, Vasco de
Quiroga, translated at least the first book — and possibly the entire work — into
Spanish. He sent the translation to his friend, Juan Bernal Díaz de Luco, in the hope
that he would persuade the Council of the Indies to have it published; in the end,
however, it was never printed and was subsequently lost.2 There were no more Spanish
translations until Medinilla’s in 1637.3
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16 | Juan Pro

Two years before that date, Francisco de Quevedo had translated a passage, which
he inserted in Spanish into his political lampoon, Carta a Luis XIII (Letter to Louis
XIII).4 The translated passage, incidentally, was the one in which the supposed trav-
eller, Raphael Hythloday, says that it is pointless for philosophers to try and counsel
kings, since, if the latter are surrounded by ignorant, self-serving courtiers, they will
be given bad advice and be persuaded [against their better judgment] to go to war
anyway. This dilemma goes back to the very origins of utopian thought, even before
More coined the term in the Renaissance, since it refers to Plato’s failed attempt to
counsel the tyrant of Syracuse.
It was probably the success of Quevedo’s work, with seven editions in two years,
that contributed to the launching of Medinilla’s Spanish version of More’s classic;
indeed, that edition appeared with some “Preliminaries” written by Francisco de
Quevedo. Even then, however, the Spanish version of Utopia was incomplete, since
Medinilla opted to publish only the second book and left the first one out of his trans-
lation.5 There were two further editions of that translation before the Spanish
monarchy collapsed in 1808.6 No new Spanish translations of Thomas More’s Utopia
appeared until the twentieth century.7
For a long time, therefore, Utopia was a Latin word of Greek origin that circulated
in Spain and Spanish America only among certain educated elites, which included
Quevedo, who seems to have had a copy of the 1548 Louvain edition at his disposal.8
For all of them, Utopia was a learned word that was written (in Spanish) without the
diacritical mark that it has nowadays, and with a capital letter, since it was a proper
noun. In his Información en Derecho (1535), Bishop Vasco de Quiroga comprehen-
sively analysed More’s Utopia with a view to proposing its application to the
pueblos-hospitales that he founded for the Indians in Michoacán.9
After that, we come across a host of references during the sixteenth, seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, generally written with a capital letter and no accent; some
examples are Andrés de Poza (in his work De la antigua lengua, poblaciones y comarcas
de las Españas, 1587), Fray Juan Márquez (in El gobernador cristiano, 1612), Francisco
de Cabrera (in the Discurso de los tvfos, copetes y calvas by Bartolomé Jiménez Patón,
1639), Juan de Solórzano y Pereira (Política indiana, 1648), Benito Jerónimo Feijoo
(Teatro crítico universal, 1726) and so on.10 The newspapers of the Ancien Régime
also contained mentions of Utopia.11 The word did not, however, appear in Francisco
Sobrino’s dictionary, which was the standard lexical reference work for educated
Spanish speakers from the time the Bourbons were established on the Spanish throne
in the early eighteenth century.12
Throughout the ancien regime, whenever the word utopía appears, it is in connec-
tion with Thomas More’s work or his imaginary island. When the French invasion
(1808) and the Cortes assembled at Cadiz (1810) completely transformed the social
and political landscape of the Spanish Monarchy in the first two decades of the nine-
teenth century, the term utopía appeared more frequently, but continued to be used
in the same way as in the earlier period.13

On utopia in the revolution

In the nineteenth century — not before Riego’s revolt (1820) — utopía began to make
a tentative appearance as a common noun, which transferred the characteristics of
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Utopia in the Spanish Language | 17

More’s project, by a process of metonymy, to other proposals that could be called by

the same name. The first time it appeared in this form was in 1820, in the translation
of a French text, an indicator of the many words — and practices — that made their
way into Spanish politics at that time from its influential French neighbour. The text
reproduced passages from the plea by Dupin, the legal counsel for the defence in the
trial of abbé Pradt, in a case brought against him because of a work that he had
published about electoral law: “Aunque esta idea fuera una exageración está llena de
grandeza; y aunque fuera una utopia, inspira por su sola elevación, meditación y
respeto” (Even if this idea were an exaggeration, it is full of grandeur; and even if it
were a utopia, it is inspiring for its uplifting quality, meditation and respect alone).14
Shortly afterwards, it was used in the same sense in El Censor of Madrid, in an article
in 1821:

Having already settled as an incontrovertible principle that even anarchy could be considered
a kind of government, and that its beginning is lost in the mists of time, it is obvious that we
consider the others as mere babes-in-arms with respect to that utopia, with a few centuries
here or there not making any difference whatsoever.15

Here utopia, no longer in italics, was associated with anarchy very early on. In
1822, the Madrid newspaper, El Universal, published a brief article critical of another
one on law and order in the newspaper, El Tribuno. With reference to the implicit
contradiction of the Tribuno criticizing the lack of security on the roads while at the
same time rejecting the use of the National Militia or public law enforcement by the
Government, it commented with heavy sarcasm: “To tell the truth, this discovery by
the Tribunes [of the people] is remarkable, and they would perform a most important
service for the nation by publishing the details of this extraordinarily ingenious
utopia.”16
As can be seen, at that time the word generally appeared without the written accent
on the í (its correct spelling later), underlining the fact that it came from another
language. It was also italicized, indicating that it was transcribed directly from the
Greek. When the common noun, utopía entered the Spanish lexicon, therefore, it was
associated with the liberal revolution and the influence of France. It formed part of
the new language with which the change of political regime between 1808 and 1840
was implemented.17
At the end of that decade, when the revolutionary experience seemed have been
left behind and the restoration of absolutism was prevailing, the word utopía appeared
in a poem by the Romantic writer, Bretón de los Herreros, taking advantage of the
greater freedom offered by the poetic genre to use language in unusual or unfamiliar
ways. His lines portray the Spanish worker of his time as more pragmatic than his
French counterpart, and his mind less contaminated by utopias:

The artisan here, without that imbroglio

That inflames the man from Lutetia [i.e. Paris] and turns him into a fanatic,
Makes sure of his daily pittance, and his noodle
Does not seethe with so much horrendous or foolish utopia.18

For Bretón, then, utopias were horrendous or foolish and the consequences of
them were to create confusion, inflame people and turn them into fanatics. A politi-
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18 | Juan Pro

cally conservative viewpoint, certainly, but linguistically revolutionary, because of the

innovative way the word was used. In that context of absolutist hegemony and timid
reformism that accompanied the last period of Fernando VII’s reign, utopia prospered
only as a derogatory label, as in this memorial by Olavarría in 1833:

It is but a short step from a system to a utopia, and speaking of the wonders worked by indus-
trial power, let us avoid lapsing into the defect common to so many philosophers and
legislators who have educated man exclusively for the land, against the manifest design of
Providence, which created the land for man.19

The way was open for what would then become the most common use of the term
utopia, namely, something deplorable, on account of the perverse ignorance of the
constraints of reality. Within a short period of time of each other, two Madrid news-
papers used the term utopía, first, in 1828, to discredit economic policies in favour of
free trade and then, in 1844, to discredit protectionist ones. Utopía was used to criticize
free trade policies by reproducing a speech that Friedrich List gave in Philadelphia
while travelling around the United States, which leads us to think that the concept was
also entering the lexicon of Spanish speakers through translations from the English:
“Mr Say is very popular in France. As far as his theory of laissez-faire is concerned —
a very naïve utopia — it is well known that it is the basis of the pseudo-cosmopolitan
system of the Adam Smith school.”20 But equally, utopía was used to criticize protec-
tionist policies, particularly by attacking customs protectionism in the United States:
“The United States, apparently abandoning one of the main conditions of its pros-
perity, is increasing its import duties, to give its manufactures some illusory protection.
This is the utopia that has been created.”21
Reactionaries, traditionalists and conservatives of every stripe would load this word
with negative connotations over the centuries, until it became a synonym for a childish
dream or a capricious fancy. This pejorative meaning of the concept of utopía has most
certainly been the dominant one in the Spanish language in Spain and America in all
periods, and should be taken as the backdrop against which to observe subtle historical
changes in meaning that have taken place over time. These changes allow us to observe
the cycles of appreciation and contempt for the concept, which reflect the historical
cycles of appreciation and contempt for utopian ideals.
It seems that utopía started to be used as a common noun somewhat later in Latin
America than in Spain, since, until the 1830s, it is only found in the traditional form
of the colonial era, that is, capitalized and alluding directly to Thomas More’s work.
In 1830, Andrés Bello made early use of the term to refer to a literary genre, giving
the name utopía (in lower case) to a similar type of work to the one that Thomas More
had written in 1516.22
It is in 1836 when we come across the modern form of utopía as a common noun,
detached from its specific origin in More’s work. It is found in Mexico, in an article
that practically gives a definition of the concept, in connection with Eduardo Turreau
de Linieres’ project:

Citizen Eduardo Turreau de Linieres’ huge project, aimed at establishing a college of arts
and sciences for a thousand young people, a house of education for two hundred girls, and
a hospice where a thousand respectable old people can find comfortable shelter; all this
founded on the association of many individuals contributing a small sum of 18 rs. a month
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Utopia in the Spanish Language | 19

until it totals 270 ps., which will be recognized as capital and earn an income in perpetuity;
the project, we say, colossal in its dimensions, born of such modest sacrifices, and pre-
sented to a country to which the spirit of association, [which is] the vital principle of the
greatest European establishments, is still quite foreign, was looked upon by many of our
compatriots as a utopia; the dream of a well-meaning man, full of attractive ideas, but impos-
sible to implement.23

The same publication used the term a year later, now with a written accent, to refer
once again to a project that nobody denied was something positive, desirable and laud-
able, but which was assumed nevertheless to be quite unworkable, even if — as in this
case — such an assumption could well turn out to be mistaken and a way somehow
be found — here, through industrial development — to bring the utopia into being:

The unity of industry is such, that the slightest modification that it undergoes, whatever the
circumstance, is immediately communicated everywhere with the speed of an electric
current. It is also true that barriers disappear before it, and that it alone could achieve the
famous utopia of universal society.24

The concept can also be found in a speech by the president of the Republic of
Guatemala, José Francisco Morazán, at the closure of the sessions of the ninth legis-
lature, on 31 August 1836, in a passage defending the institution of trial by jury.25

A concept travelling across time (and the political spectrum)

In his study on the history of the concept of utopia in Spain, Juan Francisco Fuentes
discerns three different strands in the way the term was used in the nineteenth century.
The first was a tale or account set in an imaginary place with satirical or moralizing
purposes; the second was synonymous with a pipe dream that was unworkable, used
pejoratively to refer to proposals of social, economic or political change; and the third
was a global alternative, revolutionary in nature, to the established order. He suggests
that, although these three uses of the concept combine with and overlap each other,
there is, nonetheless, a certain chronological order. The first one corresponds to the
early years of the nineteenth century, continuing the trends of the eighteenth, whereas
the second is specific to the period of transition between the revolution and the liberal
post-revolution from the 1830s onwards. The third corresponds to the period in the
1860s when utopian socialism and revolutionary movements of socialist or anarchist
tendency burst onto the scene. 26 His assessment holds up, although the question is a
little more complex.
The term utopía throughout the 1830s and 1840s was used with no other meaning
than some ideal that was impossible or very difficult to achieve. This usage became
the standard one, since it is found in publications spanning the entire ideological and
sociological spectrum of the time. The process of standardization involved writing the
word with its proper stress by placing an accent on the i, something that began to be
done occasionally in the 1830s, although it existed alongside the unaccented version
until the beginning of the twentieth century.27
All ideological currents then used utopía in the negative sense of the quintessential
innocence that chasing impossible dreams tended to imply, although with some key
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20 | Juan Pro

nuances in the application of the concept. The progressive press generally put a posi-
tive gloss on the word and acknowledged the innovative nature of utopia, since, even
if the objectives pursued were beyond reach, they were always laudable and heading
in the right direction. El Eco del Comercio (The Commercial Echo), for example, when
it gave an account of Olavarría’s 1833 memorial, quoted earlier, said that:

The author supposes that his project is as portentous as the means to execute it is simple;
but at the same time he knows that it is but a short step from a system to a utopia. It is
certainly the case that, in this century, in which only the positive is appreciated, it is right and
well-founded for nations to be wary of all systems and theories.28

The sense in which the term is used is clearly the opposite of the positive sense and
associated with the realm of the imagination and the unworkable. These reservations,
nonetheless, were framed within the context of a generally positive evaluation of the
project mentioned, insofar as it proposed ideas about progress, advanced ideas with
which the progressives sympathized: putting an end to vagrancy, correcting the
Spanish temperament, improving the condition of the working classes, introducing
technological innovations in all branches of production, introducing exotic crops and
improving the welfare of the population.
The reactionary press, on the other hand, which also took the concept of utopía as
equivalent to an unworkable fantasy, did so with no sympathy whatsoever. For
example, El Amigo de la religión y de los hombres (The Friend of Religion and Men), in
an article that defended “la sublime verdad de la suprema soberanía de la Iglesia sobre
la cristiandad” (the sublime truth of the supreme sovereignty of the Church over
Christianity), wondered:

[Can it be that] so many wise bishops, so many illustrious princes of the Church like Bernard,
Thomas Aquinas, Antoninus Pius, Raymond of Penyafort, Bonaventure, Gregory the Great,
Gregory VII, Pius II, who have fought to defend that basis of civilization have endured so many
hardships and laboured so tirelessly for the sole purpose of recreating their fantasy with the
simulacrum of a utopia? No.29

Meanwhile, in the liberal-conservative press, the term appeared more as a synonym

for something that could never be realized, without bothering to consider either the
positive assessment of the progressive press or the negative one of the reactionary
press. This can be seen in the newspapers edited by Andrés Borrego in the 1830s, for
example, in El Español (The Spaniard) of Madrid, referring to the disturbances taking
place in Malaga at the time:

Perhaps the government took for self-interest, the frankness, good faith and trust with which
its friends — patriots as interested as itself in not letting the programme of 14 September be
reduced to a utopia — sought to join it in order to prevent one of the principal cities in Spain
from setting the sorry example that we are lamenting today, and we shall not do the govern-
ment the injustice of believing it is not lamenting with us.30

Or in El Correo nacional (The National Post): “this, in the language of experi-

ence, is a utopia, an impossibility.”31 If anything, in this ideological context, even
more nuances could be pointed out, since the most combative and conservative part
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Utopia in the Spanish Language | 21

of the moderate press tended to use the concept in the same negative sense as the
reactionaries, in other words, as something not only unworkable, but intrinsically
wrong. So, for example: “The forlorn utopia that Rousseau invented, which the
constituent assembly of France tried to put into effect, made executive power the
slave of the legislature.”32
So, utopía gradually came to be associated with a few favourite targets that tended
to assimilate the dimension of unattainability that the concept implied. The first of
these was peace. In 1836, Larra inaugurated the realistic assumption that it was as
tempting as it was impracticable:

Merciless law of nature: either devour or be devoured. Peoples and individuals, either victims
or executioners. And even in peace, a fanciful utopia still not achieved in the continuous
struggle of beings, even in peace, peoples devour, just as calm waters carve out their course
more surely, although with less of a roar than the torrent.33

Other ambitious objectives of revolutionary politics were immediately branded

utopian. These included national sovereignty, universal suffrage, democratic
monarchy, reconciliation between liberals and absolutists after the civil war, the unity
of the various parties into which liberalism had splintered, the creation of a party of
the centre, the unification of Germany, the abolition of slavery, communism (under-
stood as property that was fully held in common), the distribution of land ownership
and restricting private property. With respect to the latter, Alcalá Galiano referred to
those who looked for alternatives to that fundamental principle of bourgeois society
as utopistas (utopists), thereby initiating a semantic family branching out from the
root utopía.34
Soon after, attempts were also made to stop people thinking about democracy by
dismissing it as a utopia, as can be seen in the following speech in 1842 in Mexico:

Let the events of eighteen years speak for themselves, they will persuade us more eloquently
that social utopia, which congress is inclining towards, is a piece of fiction for a respectable
majority of the nation untutored in the knowledge of their duty and rights; knowledge that
can only be inculcated through study, and the experience of a long political career. Since the
unfortunate fall of the hero of Iguala [Agustín de Iturbide, 1824], a big mistake has been made
in applying pure democracy — which carries within it the seed of disunity, turbulence and
factions — to the Mexican people.35

In Spain, the republican form of government, which was the banner of the struggle
for democracy, was also denounced as utopian.36 Not surprisingly, the Democratic
Party felt obliged to publicly reject the accusation:

Our fellow democrats will understand that democracy is not a utopian dream or pious hope,
as our enemies have tried to imply, but a party already organized for the struggle in the sphere
of reality and practice, now ripe for power, with victory now in sight.37

From the 1840s, the term was associated with revolutionary, radical or extreme
positions with respect to the dominant political spectrum, and used in particular to
target socialist proposals and experiments. An article in the Revista de España in 1869,
for example, warned against the socialist ideologies that were beginning to spread,
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22 | Juan Pro

describing them as utopian: The shameful scenes taking place in Andalusia are the
product of the bizarre combination of ancient customs and laws and delusional
modern utopias.”38 And in another article later, it went on:

In the name, no longer of the bizarre utopias of socialism that deranged intellectuals seek to
raise to the category of a scientific system, but [basking] in the warmth of the enthusiasm
that promises of the most brutish socialism cannot help but sow among the masses, a few
Deputies come to the new Assembly with the inevitable mission of forgetting the commit-
ments in the name of which they have acquired such an honourable investiture or of defending
solutions against which solemn protest will rise up from the very depths of their souls.39

Utopia was associated with the likes of Owen, Blanqui, Cabet, Fourier, Proudhon,
Saint-Simon, Considerant and Barbès,40 and the word appeared without fail in count-
less critical essays published in condemnation of socialism.41
With this negative meaning, the term became part of the arsenal that helped the
language of conservatism to impose its hegemony after the post-revolutionary turn
that accompanied the consolidation of state institutions in all countries from the
middle decades of the nineteenth century. The word utopia was used overwhelmingly
to disqualify and discredit; it would be regarded as something illusory and nonsensical,
something that evoked, in that particular age of pragmatism and materialism, the revo-
lutionary period that they were trying to bring to an end and hence, clearly
reprehensible. It was always used in opposition to realism, so that, on occasions, it was
associated with contemplation, as if it were a literary genre of pure fantasy and only
useful for aesthetic delight,42 or else with extreme ideological positions or doctrinal
rigours that made it impossible to apply in practice.43 The term utopía began to appear
collocated with adjectives such as ridícula (ridiculous), irrealizable (unworkable),
despreciable (contemptible), insensata (senseless), imperdonable (unforgivable), vana
(futile), impracticable (impracticable), loca (mad), absurda (absurd), funesta (disas-
trous), ruinosa (ruinous), descabellada (hare-brained) and so forth.44
It is true that the term utopía is also associated at that time with adjectives with
apparently positive meanings, such as bella (beautiful), bellísima (most beautiful), feliz
(happy), brillante (brilliant), admirable (admirable), seductora (seductive), galana
(elegant), lindísima (lovely), apetecible (appealing), halagüeña (promising), generosa
(generous), suprema (supreme), magnífica (magnificent), deslumbrante (dazzling), and
even posible (possible) and realizable (feasible).45 In general though, these were either
found in texts that sought to create ironic or sarcastic effects, or deliberate journalistic
oxymorons in which the generally negative appraisal of the term did not change. The
negative connotation held sway. To say, therefore, that someone was “poco utopista”
(not very utopian), in the sense of “no se apasiona por las concepciones poéticas de
la fantasía” (he is not passionate about poetic notions of fantasy) — as Miguel Luis
Amunátegui said of Bernardo O’Higgins — was praise, praise that could be applied
to a nation as a whole, since he went on to add that “bajo este aspecto, puede decirse
que era muy chileno” (in this respect, it may be said that he was quite Chilean).46
Furthermore, from the middle of the century, the idea arose in Latin America that
the transfer to the new continent of ideas and approaches that had been conceived in
Europe for societies of a different kind was turning out to be utopian. This is how José
Mármol’s use of the word utopía appears, for example, in the 1850s, in what might be
regarded as the first Argentinian novel, Amalia:
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Utopia in the Spanish Language | 23

The history of the world’s social revolutions is the most perfect treatise on logic: such effects
must follow on from such causes. And the great upheaval that the monarchist principle under-
went here, an improvised republic in which there was neither enlightenment nor virtues to
preserve it, and the sudden implantation of civilized ideas and habits among peoples accus-
tomed to the comfortable inertia of ignorance, was a magnificent but impractical utopia, which
barbarism would demolish, until a more thorough lesson in the same school of public misfor-
tunes created a generation to raise it up and put it into practice, such a thing was bound to
happen, and that, unfortunately, is what did happen.47

This perception of utopia as something essentially negative would culminate in the

kind of approach found in El Clamor Público:

Is there any chance anyone who will be able to vouch for the fact that everything that seems
to us today to be the very pinnacle of freedom as far as the institutions are concerned will
not, in ten thousand years time, be an actual utopia, an aberration of the understanding, a
bondage typical of our ignorance, the child of our social concerns, the fruit of our selfish-
ness?48

The paragraph, nonetheless, contained an argument that would be relevant later

to future evaluations of utopia, namely, that the boundaries of utopia shift in every
age in response to the cultural frameworks and enabling conditions that change with
each generation. The journalist in 1850 was using the same argument in a conservative
sense, suggesting that what seems reasonable today could well turn out to be utopia
tomorrow, equating utopia with an “aberration of the understanding” or “bondage of
ignorance”, “social concerns” (in other words, prejudices), or “selfishness”. The
opposite argument would be useful to others later to rehabilitate the concept of utopía,
when, in the light of experience, it was realized that what looks like a utopia at one
point in time may not be one when the apparently unachievable objectives have
actually been achieved or are within reach.

The vindication of utopia

In the mid-nineteenth century, utopía was already so common in texts written in

Spanish that a Madrid magazine ventured to emphasize how odd it was that, despite
being used so often, it could not yet be found in the Dictionary of the Spanish Royal
Academy.49 It was relatively common to express the feeling of living in utopian times,
as was said with reference to political developments in France after 1848: “Since the
February revolution till now, there has been no novelty that has not been tried out, no
utopia that has not been followed, no absolute principle that has not had its cohorts
of followers. The sea of ideas has risen to such a level that it has flooded the world.”50
The situation reached such a pitch in those middle decades of the nineteenth
century that the liberal newspaper, La Iberia, devoted an editorial to the concept of
utopia in 1854, condemning the self-serving ways in which it was being used. The
article was quite a manifesto. It rejected the idea that the conservatives had such fore-
knowledge of what would be possible or impossible in the future that they were able
to discredit every plan for progress, every emancipatory or progressive idea as utopian
(since that was the main use to which the term was being put until then). The author
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24 | Juan Pro

of that article had no other meaning in mind than the commonest one in circulation
at the time, namely an imaginary project impossible to put into practice. Nevertheless,
brushing aside this type of attack and vindicating every idea that the reactionaries were
dismissing as utopian initiated a new shift in the way the word was used; those who
were on the receiving end of the insult proudly adopted the word as their own and
went on to invest it with more favourable overtones, precisely because it encapsulated
everything that the reactionaries had tried to block:

There are men of diminished intelligence and faint of heart for whom anything that embraces
a horizon any wider than the limited circle of their faculties and opinions is illusory and fanciful.
For them, humanity must crawl around in eternal infancy. . . . In the absence of reasons with
which to oppose the doctrines that terrify them so much, in the absence of material means
to halt the flight — which grows more powerful every day — of the principles against which
they rail in vain, absolutists of every stripe and school have invented a word, which — to
judge by its frequency and, especially, the aplomb with which they utter it — must be a real
talisman for them: that word is utopia.
Immense indeed must be the power of that word when it is invoked with so much faith
and when it is raised, so to speak, as if it were a veritable barrier, before every generous aspi-
ration, every progressive thought, every humanitarian idea, in order to block their path, or
at least hinder their progress.
Try arguing that the human species is not a flock whose fate it is to be forever shepherded
by those who, judging it to be so, have arrogated to themselves the privileged role of shep-
herds, and you will immediately hear them cry: utopia! Say that peoples are not the patrimony
of certain classes, families or individuals, that the institutions that rule them should be the
product of their will, that national sovereignty is the only fount of justice and law, that indef-
inite progress is a providential law, and it will not be long before the word utopia will be
ringing in your ears. In short, support those ideas that so gratify the mind, that help form such
a lofty Concept of man and of the designs of the Creator, ideas that enlarge the spaces of
moral and material creation, that make this arid present enjoyable, and awaken in us the
comforting intuitions of a brilliant future and this world of sweet hopes, magnificent
prophecies, presentiments worthy of human intelligence will doubtless be opposed and
emphatically waved away with that wretched word.51

This veritable manifesto in defence of utopia went on to appeal to an argument

that was destined to have a long life, namely, that ideas denounced as utopian in the
present may simply be the precursors of what, in future years, will be a fully accepted
reality. In the end, the same argument became a weapon to be used against the conser-
vatives’ resistance to change:

Many ordinary souls before you regarded as utopias, and even as signs of madness, the
immense ideas which, with the passing of the centuries, would later shine as glorious truths.
How many of these, of every kind, were not described as fanciful, out of stupidity and alarmed
interests! And yet they triumphed, because the inevitable future of the truth is to triumph;
and the petty-minded creatures who relate everything to themselves, who see everything
through themselves, had to confess their short-sightedness and the shameful inaccuracy of
their opinions.
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Utopia in the Spanish Language | 25

What looked like a wild dream yesterday, will be a reality tomorrow; what is condemned
today as impracticable, will shortly, perhaps in the not too distant future, be a protective insti-
tution; what, in our turbulent days, flickers as uncertainly as a breath of lukewarm air, will
tomorrow be giving off torrents of light and heat. The measure of the mysterious line sepa-
rating the possible from the impossible has still not been taken, and perhaps it never will be,
because it is probably one of the Creator’s great secrets; refrain, then, so-called politicians,
from constantly repeating any word whose meaning is known only to Him . . .
Do not believe that everything that is baptized with this undefined and indefinable term
is a utopia; you yourselves, on more than one occasion, have seen what you thought was
impossible to achieve when you were young has now been achieved. Who can determine
what will, within in the space of a few years, have similarly passed into the sphere of reality,
crossed over the present hazy boundary of the problem, and the axiom of theory and insti-
tution? . . .
And believe us, if there are real utopias in the world, they are yours, when, despite what
is happening in front of your eyes, you still think of yourselves as destined to play some role
in this colossal drama.52

After that, it seems that there was a certain amount of public discussion about the
concept. Not long afterwards, it once more occupied the pages of the democratic daily,
La Europa, which also devoted an article to the word utopía. The paper rejected once
more the negative sense in which it was generally used and called upon all progressives
to eliminate that particular meaning of it from their vocabulary:

For Charles V, steam power was a dream; for Napoleon an explainable theory. For both a
utopia. . . . So, utopia, in the figurative sense used by the conservatives when they want to
establish that something cannot be done, is a meaningless phrase. Utopia used in this sense
is not Spanish. Progressives! Erase it from your dictionary.53

As the article pointed out, technological progress was demonstrating how what was
previously impossible had, in a very short period of time, become possible, so that it
was imperative to use the same reasoning in the realm of political and social ideas.
Indeed, from the middle of the nineteenth century, the idea of utopia started to be
associated with technological change and the way in which it could be used to trans-
form life. Hence, as a result of the observation of technological progress, the concept
gradually became decontaminated as it started to shed the negative connotations that
it had accumulated in the previous decades. For example, the enthusiasm for the Great
Exhibition of 1851 in London gave rise to some of these comments, which linked the
great social utopias to modern industry: “Universal peace has ceased to be a utopia
since industry took the first steps towards its achievement by bringing peoples of
different races, religion and customs together in a common centre.”54
More widespread use of the concept meant that it appeared in the 1850s in a few
privately published Spanish language dictionaries, such as those by Eduardo Chao
and Rafael Baralt.55 In Chao’s dictionary, utopia was defined as “any idea that is
acceptable in theory, although impossible to achieve,”56 whereas in Baralt’s it was a
“system that is principally based on fevered imaginings with no real basis in history,
customs or human propensities, although made with the best of intentions to improve
the condition of man and the state of peoples.” This second one is particularly signif-
icant because it comes from a Diccionario de galicismos (Dictionary of Gallicisms),
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26 | Juan Pro

which means that it explicitly recognized utopia as “one of the words, expressions and
phrases of the French language that [had] been introduced into modern Spanish
speech” in the first half of the nineteenth century, not because it was a French word,
but because its customary use as a common noun and its value as a political concept
came from France.57
In Spain, the concept became firmly rooted following the triumph of the coalition
of liberal unionists, progressives and democrats that led the Glorious Revolution
in September, 1868. The hour of utopias had arrived at last, at a time when the
republican groups and the socialist and workers’ movements were finally free to
openly engage in their activities. The concept even began to turn up in official
Government documents, thus denoting its now irrevocable entry into Spanish polit-
ical vocabulary.58
It was this Revolution, then, that created the conditions that made it possible to
overcome the reluctance of the conservative Spanish Royal Academy to add concepts
such as utopía, which was already in common use in the Spanish language, to its
Dictionary, and indeed the term was introduced into the eleventh edition of the
Dictionary in 1869. Since then, it has appeared as a noun in every edition, without the
definition ever failing to stress the unworkable nature of projects called utopian: “noun
fem. A plan, project, system or doctrine that sounds pleasing in theory, but is
impossible to put into practice” (f. Plan, proyecto, sistema ó doctrina que halaga en
teoría, pero cuya práctica es imposible). One would have to wait until the 1992 edition
of the Academy’s Diccionario to find the added detail that its nature as something
unworkable referred only to the moment of the project’s formulation, so leaving the
door open for its possible realization at some later date: “An optimistic plan, project,
doctrine or system that seems to be unworkable at the time of its formulation.”59
Academy dictionaries have clearly lagged well behind linguistic practice in Spanish-
speaking countries, because this particular nuance in the way the term was used had
appeared at least one hundred and fifty years before it was officially reflected in
dictionary. The same can be said about the appearance of words derived from utopía,
such as the adjectives utópico and utopista (utopic and utopian), which did not enter the
Dictionary until the 1884 edition, even though we know that both were in common
use long before that,60 not to mention the noun, utopismo (utopianism), which denotes
“Tendencia a la utopía” (A tendency to utopia), which did not appear until the
twenty-second edition, in 2001.
Although the Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary does not create language, but
confines itself to giving an account of it, its effect on the way words are used should
not be underestimated. Many native users of Spanish, including professionals, such
as journalists and writers, resolve lexical queries by consulting the Royal Academy
Dictionary. Hence, the inclusion of these terms, after four decades of trying, certainly
had the effect of legitimizing them, which helped consolidate the presence of the
concept of utopia in the Spanish language.
At that stage of the nineteenth century, there were still no significant differences
in the ways the term utopía and its derivatives were used in peninsular Spain and
Spanish-speaking America. Utopía appeared with similar meanings in Spain — in the
writings of Benito Pérez Galdós, José Echegaray, Joaquín Costa, Leopoldo Alas, also
known as Clarín, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Miguel de
Unamuno and Juan Valera — as in texts by Spanish American writers, such as
Recuerdos de provincia by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1850), the Apuntamientos
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Utopia in the Spanish Language | 27

para la historia de la Nueva Granada by José María Samper (1853), a Cuban novel like
Ambarina by Virginia Auber Noya (1858), the Excursión a los indios ranqueles by Lucio
Mansilla (1870), Adolfo Alsina’s Report on the Argentinian frontier (1877), or the
River Plate pioneers of the novel, such as José Mármol, Eduardo Acevedo or Manuel
Podestá.61 The reason, on both sides of the Spanish Atlantic, may have been to do
with the common influx of translations of works in other languages — from Latin to
English and French — in which the term utopía had taken root earlier. It is indicative
that the Ecuadorian writer, Juan Montalvo, used the term utopistas (utopians) in 1882,
precisely in a text in which he called upon Spanish intellectuals to translate the great
European authors into Spanish and to stop sending minor Catholic devotional works
to America:

If you are freethinkers, translate Laplace, Littré; if kindly utopians, Flammarion, Delaage; if
avowed heretics, Renan, Peyrat. . . . If you want French authors in everything and for every-
thing, there is an illustrious throng of historians, orators, scientists, philosophers, and even
novelists, great novelists, like the author of René, the author of Obermann, the author of
Corinne ou l’Italie. Translate the Encyclopaedia for us, for God’s sake, translate it for us, you
Spaniards who are so fond of and partial to Rousseau, Diderot, d’Alembert, Grimin and other
shining stars in the great constellation of the eighteenth century, whose pole star, the helix
of hell, is François-Marie Arouet, converted into Voltaire by the grace and work of the devil.
But those little books, those novelettes, the little saints and little religious pictures that the
bookshops are stuffed with. . . .62

Conclusion

The concept of utopía, which was linked to modernity from the start, became a normal
feature of the Spanish language during the period of the revolutions on both sides of
the Atlantic Ocean, and, in large measure, as a result of the influence of French.
Between 1820 and 1850, it received a bad press, because it was first and foremost a
concept of the conservatives, aimed at discrediting progressive political approaches
that were more imaginative in nature or broke with the existing regime. It was in the
1850s and 1860s, in the heat of the new revolutionary cycle initiated in 1848, that the
term was recuperated with a positive value, to express the capacity for imagining new,
better worlds to fight for. Rehabilitation was undoubtedly driven by the speed of tech-
nological progress, and even took utopia into the pages of the dictionaries.
This review of the conceptual uses of utopía in the intellectual history of the Spanish
language up to 1870 clearly shows that it was not only a linguistic history, but a mani-
festation of the performative capacity of utopian language. The war of words to
establish the language of utopia and surround it with positive values was a tool used
by intellectuals in particular historical situations to critique and transform reality.
The men and women of the nineteenth century witnessed such great changes, in
both the technological and political spheres, that the idea took hold that they were
living at a time when principles that they had until recently considered to be impossible
to achieve or illusory were now becoming reality (always going hand in hand with the
progress that technological innovations were bringing about). Corroboration of that
provided the permanent impetus to rehabilitate the concept of utopía and surround it
with positive connotations, in spite of the conventional definitions.
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28 | Juan Pro

Notes
1 Thomas More, De optimo reipublicae statu, deque nova insula Vtopiae (Leuven: Dirk
Martens, 1516).
2 Silvio Arturo Zavala, Recuerdo de Vasco de Quiroga (Mexico: Porrúa, 1965), pp. 161–165.
3 Utopia de Thomas Moro, traducida de latin en castellano por Don Geronimo Antonio de
Medinilla i Porres (Cordoba: Salvador de Cea, 1637).
4 Francisco de Quevedo, Carta al serenissimo muy alto, y muy poderoso Luis XIII, Rey
christianissimo de Francia . . . en razon de las nefandas acciones . . . que cometio contra el derecho
diuino... en la villa de Tillimon en Flandes Mos de Xatillon vgonote; con el exercito descomulgado
de franceses herejes (Zaragoza: Hospital Real y General de Nuestra Señora de Gracia, 1635).
5 Francisco López Estrada, “Quevedo y la Utopía de Tomás Moro”, in Actas del Segundo
Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas, compiled by Norbert Polussen and Jaime Sánchez
Romeralo (Nijmegen, Instituto Español de la Universidad de Nimega, 1967), pp. 403–409.
6 The second edition in Madrid by Pantaleón Aznar in 1790; the third, also in Madrid, by
Don Mateo Repullés in 1805.
7 Thomas More, Utopía (el estado perfecto). Traducción, prólogo y notas de Ramón Esquerra; va
añadido un juicio crítico sobre Utopía y su autor por D. Francisco de Quevedo Villegas
(Barcelona: Apolo, 1937). There was, however, an earlier translation into Catalan: Thomas
Morus, Utopía, traducció catalana... precedida d’un comentari sobre l’autor y l’llibre per J. Pin
y Soler (Barcelona: Massó, Casas et Cª, 1912).
8 López Estrada, “Quevedo y la Utopía de Tomás Moro”, p. 405.
9 “Información en Derecho del licenciado Rojas sobre algunas provisiones del Consejo de
Indias” (1535), in Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y
colonización de las posesiones españolas en América y Oceanía, sacados de los Archivos del Reino
y muy especialmente, del de Indias, edited by Joaquín F. Pacheco, Francisco de Cárdenas and
Luis Torres de Mendoza, vol. 10 (Madrid: Imp. de M. Bernaldo de Quirós, 1868),
pp. 333–525.
10 References are taken from the Corpus of the Nuevo Diccionario Histórico del Español
(Real Academia Española), where there are 2,036 allusions to the term utopía in 892 docu-
ments. Available online at http://web.frl.es/CNDHE/org/publico/pages/consulta/
entradaCompleja.view (accessed 14 July 2016).
11 Memorial literario instructivo y curioso de la Corte de Madrid, December 1790, p. 63; Diario
de Madrid, 9 February 1791, p. 3, 7 March 1793, p. 1, 5 February 1806, p. 2; Nuevas efemé-
rides de España históricas y literarias, 5 July 1805, p. 2; Memorial literario o Biblioteca periódica
de ciencias, literatura y artes, 10 February 1808, p. 10. The instances in journalistic texts are
taken from the Hemeroteca Digital (Biblioteca Digital Hispana), available online at
http://www.bne.es/es/Catalogos/HemerotecaDigital/ (accessed in July 2016).
12 Francisco Sobrino, Diccionario nuevo de las lenguas española y francesa (Brussels: Francisco
Foppens, 1705). Utopía does not appear in this first edition, or in the later ones of 1734,
1751, 1760, 1769 and 1775.
13 El Revisor político, 17 August 1811, p. 1; Almacén de frutos literarios inéditos de nuestros
mejores autores antiguos y modernos, 1813, p. 10; Crónica científica y literaria, 31 December
1819, p. 8; Miscelánea de comercio, política y literatura, 13 June 1820, p. 2.
14 El Constitucional, o sea, Crónica científica y literaria (Madrid), 25 September 1820, p. 2. The
fact that it appears in italics in the original shows that its figurative use was still not very
common.
15 “Sobre el despotismo”, 8 September 1821, pp. 282–83: “Habiendo sentado ya como prin-
cipio inconcuso que hasta la anarquía se podía considerar como un género de gobierno, y
que su principio se oscurece en la noche de los tiempos, claro es que consideramos á los
demás unos mozalbetes respecto de aquella utopia, sin que influyan para nada algunos
siglos mas ó menos.”
16 10 April 1822, p. 4: “A la verdad que este descubrimiento de los Tribunos es admirable, y
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Utopia in the Spanish Language | 29

que harían un servicio importantísimo a la nación en publicar los pormenores de esta inge-
niosísima utopia.”
17 A change about which the following, among others, have given an account: María Paz
Battaner, Vocabulario político-social en España, 1868–1873 (Madrid: Real Academia
Española, 1977), María Cruz Seoane, El primer lenguaje constitucional español: Las Cortes de
Cádiz (Madrid: Moneda y Crédito, 1968) and Eduardo García de Enterría, La lengua de
los derechos: la formación del Derecho Público europeo tras la Revolución Francesa (Madrid:
Alianza Editorial, 1994).
18 Manuel Bretón de los Herreros, La desvergüenza: poema joco-serio (Madrid: Mellado, 1856):
“El artesano aquí, sin esa embrolla / Que exalta y fanatiza al de Lutecia, / Su pitanza asegura,
y no en su cholla / Hierve tanta utopía horrible o necia.”
19 Juan de Olavarría, Memoria dirigida a S. M. sobre el medio de mejorar la condición física y
moral del pueblo español (Madrid: Fundación Banco Exterior, 1988): “De un sistema á una
utopía el trecho es corto, y hablando de las maravillas que obra la potencia industrial,
evitemos el caer en el defecto comun á tantos filósofos y legisladores que esclusivamente
han educado al hombre para la tierra, contra el fin bien manifiesto de la Providencia, que
crió la tierra para el hombre.”
20 Correo literario y mercantil, 1 December 1828, p. 1: “Mr. Say es muy popular en Francia.
En cuanto a su teoría de dejar hacer, utopia muy inocente, es sabido que es la base del sistema
pseudocosmopolita de la escuela de Adam Smith.”
21 La Esperanza,17 October 1844, p. 4: “Los Estados-Unidos, renunciando al parecer á una
de las condiciones principales de su prosperidad, aumentan los derechos de importación,
para dar una protección quimérica á sus manufacturas. Esta es la utopia que se han
formado.”
22 Andrés Bello, “La oración inaugural del curso de oratoria del Liceo de Chile de José Joaquín
de Mora”, in Obra literaria, edited by Pedro Grases (Caracas: Ayacucho, 1985): “El único
fiador de la moderación de Ciro es Jenofonte en una obra que el mismo Jenofonte parece
haber querido que se mirase como una utopía o novela política, pues la contradice abierta-
mente cuando escribe como historiador.” [The only guarantor of Cyrus’s moderation was
Xenophon, in a work that Xenophon himself seems to have wished to be looked upon as a
utopia, or political novel, for he openly contradicts it when he writes as a historian.]
23 Diario del Gobierno de la República Mexicana, 2 January 1836, p. 3: “El gigantesco proyecto
del ciudadano Eduardo Turreau de Linieres, dirigido á establecer un colegio de artes y cien-
cias para mil jóvenes, una casa de educación para doscientas niñas, y un hospicio en que
mil ancianos respetables encuentren cómodo asilo; todo esto fundado en la asociación de
muchos individuos que contribuyan con la pequeña cantidad de 18 rs. al mes hasta
completar 270 ps. que serán reconocidos como un capital, y ganarán una renta perpetua;
un proyecto, decimos, colosal en sus dimensiones, nacido de tan módicos sacrificios, y
presentado en un pais á donde el espíritu de asociacion, principio vital de los mayores esta-
blecimientos europeos es todavia extrangero, fué mirado por muchos de nuestros
compatriotas como una utopia; como el sueño de un hombre de bien, lleno de ideas agra-
dables, pero imposibles en la ejecución.”
24 “Es tal la unidad del hecho industrial, que la mas leve alteracion que sufra en cualesquiera
circunstancias, se comunica en el acto por do quiera, con la rapidez del fluido eléctrico. Es
verdad también que ante él desaparecen las barreras, y que él solo podría realizar la famosa
utopía de la sociedad universal.” Diario del Gobierno de la República Mexicana, 19 January
1837, p. 4. In the same vein, ibid., 29 January 1838, p. 3: “Una sociedad sin crímenes es
una utopia” [A society without crime is a utopia]; also ibid, 8 November 1838, p. 3: “La
igualdad absoluta de condiciones y fortunas es una utopia, es un delirio de la excéntrica
Mrs. Francés Wrigth [sic] que divierte en los teatros, y carece de efecto en la escena del
mundo” [Absolute equality of conditions and fortunes is a utopia, it is a delusion of the
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30 | Juan Pro

eccentric Mrs Francis Wright who is entertaining in the theatres, and has no effect on the
world stage].
25 “Mas no pudiendo ser una utopia la que se nos presentaba” [But it was not possible for the
one that was being presented to be a utopia], reproduced in the Diario del Gobierno de la
República Mexicana, 7 January 1837, p. 2.
26 Juan Francisco Fuentes, “Utopía”, Diccionario político y social del siglo XIX español, edited
by Javier Fernández Sebastián and Juan Francisco Fuentes (Madrid: Alianza Editorial,
2002), pp. 685–688.
27 The progressive Madrid daily, El Eco del Comercio, 15 March 1835, p. 4, was one of the
first to Hispanicize the term: “cuando las autoridades se hacen superiores á recelos tan
vanos como peligrosos, la unión entre los liberales españoles no es una quimera ni una
utopía” [when the authorities rise above such futile yet dangerous misgivings, union
between Spanish liberals is not a pipe-dream or a utopia].
28 El Eco del Comercio, 15 June 1834, p. 2: “El autor supone que tan portentoso es su proyecto
como sencillo el medio de ejecutarle; pero conoce al mismo tiempo que de un sistema á una
utopia el trecho es corto. Ciertamente que en este siglo, en que solo se aprecia lo positivo,
es justa y fundada la prevención de los pueblos contra todos los sistemas y teorías.”
29 El Amigo de la religión y de los hombres, 1836, pp. 27–28: “¿Un Bernardo, un Tomas de
Aquino, un Antonino, un Raimundo de Peñafort, un Buenaventura, un Gregorio el grande,
un Gregorio VII, un Pio II, tantos sabios obispos, tantos ilustres principes de la Iglesia, que
han combatido en defensa de esa base de la civilización, no han empleado tantas fatigas y
esfuerzos sino con el objeto de recrear su fantasía con el simulacro de una utopia? No.”
30 El Español, 26 February 1836, p. 3: “Quizás el gobierno tuvo por interesada la franqueza,
la buena fe y la confianza con que amigos suyos, patriotas tan interesados como él mismo
en que el programa de 14 de setiembre no se quedase reducido á una utopia, buscaron á
unirse á él para evitar que una de las principales ciudades de España diese el triste ejemplo
que hoy lamentamos, y que no haremos al gobierno la injuria de creer que no lamenta con
nosotros.”
31 El Correo nacional, 20 February 1838, p. 1: “esto en el lenguaje de la esperiencia es una
utopia, un imposible.”
32 El Guardia nacional of Barcelona, 31 May 1838, p. 1: “La triste utopia que inventó
Rousseau, y que quiso llevar á efecto la asamblea constituyente de Francia, hizo al poder
ejecutivo siervo del legislativo.”
33 Mariano José de Larra, “Horas de invierno” (1836), in Fígaro. Colección de artículos dramá-
ticos, literarios y de costumbres (Barcelona: Crítica, 2000), p. 607: “Ley implacable de la
naturaleza: o devorar, o ser devorado. Pueblos e individuos, o víctimas o verdugos. Y hasta
en la paz, quimérica utopía no realizada todavía en la continua lucha de los seres, hasta en
la paz devoran los pueblos, como el agua mansa socava su cauce, con más seguridad, si no
con tanto estruendo como el torrente.”
34 Antonio Alcalá Galiano, Lecciones de Derecho Político (1843–1844) (Madrid: Centro de
Estudios Constitucionales, 1984): “Entre los reformadores de la sociedad en estos nuestros
tiempos, entre los llamados utopistas está recibiendo el dogma de la propiedad individual
duros embates, con el intento de substituirle una como propiedad común, entendida o
repartida, según los diferentes formadores de planes para variar la sociedad de diversos
modos” [Among the reformers of society in our times, among the so-called utopians, the
dogma of individual property is receiving a severe pounding, with an attempt to replace it
with one of common property, understood or distributed, according to the different
devisers of plans so as to vary society in diverse ways].
35 “Discurso pronunciado por D. Francisco E. de Castro, en la junta de autoridades, emple-
ados y vecinos, que tuvo lugar el dia 19 del corriente mes de Diciembre” [A speech delivered
by D. Francisco E. de Castro, at the board meeting of authorities, employees and local resi-
dents, which took place on the 19th of this month of December] in 1842 in Tamaulipas
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Utopia in the Spanish Language | 31

and published by El Tiempo in Santa Anna de Tamaulipas and reproduced by the Diario
del Gobierno de la República Mexicana, 13 January 1843, p. 3: “Hablen los hechos de diez y
ocho años, ellos nos persuadirán con mas elocuencia que la utopia social, á que propende
el congreso, es una novela para una respetable mayoría de la nación que no está aleccionada
en la ciencia de su deber y sus derechos; ciencia que solo puede inculcarse por el estudio y
esperiencia de una larga carrera política. Desde la caida infortunada del héroe de Iguala, ha
habido un gran error en aplicar al pueblo mexicano la democracia pura que en sí misma
lleva el germen de la desunión, de la turbulencia y de las facciones.”
36 The conservative Madrid newspaper El Castellano, 26 February 1842, p. 1 associated utopía
with republicanism in an article in which it commented on the rumours of a possible armed
insurrection: “Los republicanos esperan ganar mas que ningún otro partido, no solo porque
los progresistas se desacreditan completamente y dan muestras ostensibles de inhabilidad
para gobernar, sino porque llegado el momento de una nueva insurreccion, y aun sin mas
que los rumores de ella, conseguirían establecer juntas en las provincias, acusar de ineptitud
y aunque sea de traición á los ministros, formar su deseada junta central y acabar de una
vez con las instituciones todas, dando principio á la realización de su desatinada utopía”
[The Republicans expect to win more than any other party, not only because the
Progressives are completely discredited and show clear signs that they are unfit to govern,
but also because, once a new insurrection takes place, and even with mere rumours of one,
they would succeed in establishing juntas in the provinces, accusing the ministers, even if
it is treason to do so, of ineptitude, setting up the central junta that they have longed for
and putting an end to all institutions by initiating the implementation of their hare-brained
utopia].
37 “Manifiesto del comité central del Partido Democrático” in Madrid, 15 March 1865, repro-
duced in Miguel Artola, Partidos y programas políticos, 1808–1936. II: Manifiestos y
programas políticos (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1991), p. 77: “Nuestros correligionarios
comprenderán que no es la democracia el sueño utópico o la esperanza insensata, como
han querido suponer nuestros enemigos, sino el partido organizado ya para la lucha en la
esfera de la realidad y de la práctica, maduro ya para el poder, apercibido ya a la victoria.”
38 Revista de España, vol. 6 (1869): 135: “Las vergonzosas escenas que tienen lugar en
Andalucía, son producto de la extravagante combinación de costumbres y leyes antiguas y
de delirantes utopías modernas.”
39 Revista de España, vol. 6 (1869): 291: “En nombre, no ya de las extravagantes utopías del
socialismo que locas inteligencias quieren elevar á la categoría de sistemas científicos, sino
al calor del entusiasmo que no pueden menos de sembrar en las masas promesas del más
brutal socialismo, vienen á la nueva Asamblea algunos Diputados con la inevitable misión
de olvidar los compromisos en cuyo nombre han adquirido tan honrosa investidura ó
defender soluciones contra las cuales se levantará en el fondo de su propio ánimo solemne
protesta.”
40 With Robert Owen in the conservative Barcelona periodical, El Museo de familias (“Los
socialistas ingleses”, 1841, p. 326). With Blanqui in El Clamor Público, 25 July1848. With
Cabet in El Balear of Palma de Mallorca, 21 September1848; Diario Constitucional de
Palma, 22 February1849; El Heraldo, 27 February1850 and El Nuevo Observador of
Madrid, 18 June 1852. With Fourier in El Heraldo, 27 February 1850 and El Nuevo
Observador, 18 June 1852. With Proudhon, Saint-Simon and Considerant in El Nuevo
Observador, 18 June 1852. With Barbès in El Clamor Público, 25 July 1848 and El Nuevo
Observador, 18 June 1852.
41 As in the book by Nicomedes Pastor Díaz, Los problemas del socialismo: lecciones pronunciadas
en el Ateneo de Madrid en el curso de 1848 a 1849 (Madrid: Imp. de Manuel Tello, 1867).
42 As did Joaquín Francisco Pacheco in his Lecciones de Derecho Político of 1845 (Madrid:
Centro de Estudios constitucionales, 1984, p. 109): “El propósito de este curso no es el de
examinar utopías, que dejamos intactas a los que gusten dedicarse a su contemplación.
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32 | Juan Pro

Debemos tomar por nuestra parte el mundo como es, como Dios le hizo, como nos lo
muestra la historia de cuatro mil años, y la observación de su estado presente” [The purpose
of this course is not to examine utopias, which we leave untouched for those who like to
spend their time contemplating them. We must, for our part, take the world as it is, as God
made it, as four thousand years of history, as well as observation of its present state, have
shown us that it is].
43 Nicomedes Pastor Díaz used it in this other sense in the Cortes in 1845 in his speech on
the return of property to the clergy (reproduced in Discursos, Barcelona: Fundación Caja
Madrid-Anthropos, 1996, pp. 339–340): “Nuestro cargo es asimismo práctico: nosotros
no estamos autorizados para sostener utopías, sino cosas hacederas: no hemos venido aquí
a representar nuestras exigencias de sistema, ni aun la pureza ortodoxa de nuestras
doctrinas” [Our task is likewise practical; we are not authorized to uphold utopias, but
things that are feasible; we have not come here to represent our requirements for a system
or even the orthodox purity of our doctrines].
44 Ridícula in El Espectador of Madrid, 9 March 1845; El Eco del Comercio, 11 March 1845;
and El Clamor Público, 5 September 1852. Irrealizable in El Eco del Comercio, 19 September
1845; El Castellano, 5 December 1845; El Pensamiento de la Nación, 10 June and 1 July
1846; El Clamor público, 4 December 1847, 9 March 1850 and 4 April 1850; El Católico,
20 December 1847; La Época, 1 May 1849; El Heraldo, 21 July 1849; Revista mensual de
agricultura, 1850; La Ilustración, 9 February 1850 and 26 May 1850; La España, 26 March
1850; La Nación, 4 April 1850; El Áncora of Barcelona, 3 August 1850. Despreciable in El
Espectador, 18 October 1845. Insensata in El Español, 20 December 1846; El Heraldo, 18
February 1849. Imperdonable in El Clamor público, 23 May 1847 and 26 January 1849. Vana
in Revista barcelonesa, 4 July 1847. Impracticable in La Esperanza, 29 July 1847; El Heraldo,
7 January 1849. Loca in Boletín de Medicina, Cirugía y Farmacia, 1 April 1849. Absurda in
La Nación, 11 June 1850. Funesta in El Clamor Público, 28 July 1852. Ruinosa in El Áncora
of Barcelona, 10 October 1852. Descabellada in La Esperanza, 4 September 1854.
45 Bella in El Español, 16 November 1845; El Popular, 11 April 1848; El Heraldo, 2 August
1850. Bellísima in El Castellano, 26 May 1845; La Esperanza, 5 July 1852. Feliz in El
Espectador, 26 July 1845; La Nación, 4 August 1849. Brillante in El Eco del Comercio, 22
August 1845. Admirable in El Eco del Comercio, 7 September 1845 and 11 July 1846.
Seductora in El Castellano, 4 March 1846; El Heraldo, 12 October 1848. Galana in El
Pensamiento de la Nación, 1 July 1846. Lindísima in El Popular, 3 September 1847. Apetecible
in El Español, 9 October 1847. Halagüeña in the Boletín de Medicina, Cirugía y Farmacia,
16 January 1848. Generosa in La Patria, 12 March 1850. Suprema in El Áncora of Barcelona,
13 May 1850. Magnífica in La Esperanza, 27 June 1850. Deslumbrante in El Áncora of
Barcelona, 23 June 1852. Posible in La Esperanza, 4 October 1845. Realizable in Semanario
pintoresco español, 25 April 1847.
46 Miguel Luis Amunátegui Aldunate, La dictadura de O’Higgins (1853), in Biblioteca Virtual
Miguel de Cervantes, Universidad de Alicante, 2002.
47 José Mármol, Amalia (1851–55) (Madrid: Cátedra, 2000), pp. 581–82: “La historia de las
revoluciones sociales en el mundo es el tratado de lógica más perfecto: a tales causas han
de suceder tales efectos. Y el gran trastorno que sufría aquí el principio monárquico; la
improvisación de una república, donde no había ni ilustración ni virtudes para conservarla;
y la plantificación repentina de ideas y de hábitos civilizados, en pueblos acostumbrados a
la cómoda inercia de la ignorancia, eran una utopía magnífica pero impracticable, con la
cual la barbarie daría en tierra; hasta que una enseñanza más prolija, en la escuela misma
de las desgracias públicas, crease una generación que la levantase y la pusiese en práctica
tal cosa debía suceder; y así ha sucedido, por desgracia.”
48 El Clamor Público, 3 September 1850: “¿Acaso podrá nadie responder de que todo cuanto
nos parece hoy el colmo de la libertad en punto á instituciones no sea dentro de cien siglos
una verdadera utopía, una aberración del entendimiento, una servidumbre propia de
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Utopia in the Spanish Language | 33

nuestra ignorancia, hija de nuestras preocupaciones sociales, fruto de nuestro egoísmo?”.

A very similar expression, probably by the same author, in the editorial in El Clamor Público
of 15 June 1851, p. 1: “Lo que se elogia hoy como la mas sublime concepción, se condena
mañana como una utopia ridicula” [What is praised today as the most sublime of concep-
tions is condemned tomorrow as a ridiculous utopia].
49 El Laberinto, 1 April 1845, p. 173: “El hombre feliz, que es la especie mas utópica (de utopia,
con permiso del Diccionario) que se conoce en el humano enjambre” [The happy man, the
most utopian species (from utopia, with the permission of the Dictionary) that is known in
the human swarm.]
50 El Heraldo, 12 August 1849, p. 1: “Desde la revolución de febrero acá no ha habido novedad
que no se haya ensayado, utopia que no se haya seguido, principio absoluto que no haya
tenido sus secuaces. El mar de las ideas ha salido de madre, y ha inundado al mundo.”
51 La Iberia, 21 September 1854, p. 1: “Hombres hay de menguada inteligencia y asustadizo
corazón para quienes es ilusorio y quimérico todo aquello que abarca un horizonte más
vasto que el limitado círculo de sus facultades y opiniones. Para ellos la humanidad debe
arrastrarse en eterna infancia (…). Á falta de razones que oponer a las doctrinas que tanto
les horripilan, á falta de medios materiales con que detener el vuelo, de dia en dia más pode-
roso, de los principios contra que en vano declaman, los absolutistas de todos los matices
y todas las escuelas, han inventado una palabra, que, á juzgar por la frecuencia, y sobre todo
por el aplomo con que la pronuncian, debe ser para ellos un verdadero talismán: esta es la
palabra utopia.
Inmenso, en efecto, debe ser el poder de ese vocablo, cuando con tanta fé se le invoca,
y cuando haciendo de él un verdadero valladar, se levanta, por decirlo asi, ante toda aspi-
ración generosa, ante todo pensamiento de progreso, ante toda idea humanitaria, para
cerrarles el paso , ó por lo menos dificultar su marcha.
Sustentad que la especie humana no es un rebaño destinado á ser siempre conducido
por los que, conceptuándola tal, se han reservado el ventajoso papel de pastores, y les oiréis
al punto esclamar: ¡utopía! Decid qué los pueblos no son patrimonio de determinadas clases,
familias ó individuos; que las instituciones que los rijan deben ser producto de su voluntad;
que la soberanía nacional es la única fuente de la justicia y el derecho; que el progreso inde-
finido es una ley providencial, y no tardará en resonar en vuestro oido la voz utopia. Apoyad,
en fin, esas ideas que tanto halagan la mente, que tan alto Concepto hacen formar del
hombre y de las miras del Criador; ideas que agigantan los espacios de la creación moral y
material, que nos hacen agradable este árido presente, despertando en nosotros las conso-
ladoras intuiciones de un brillante porvenir; y á este mundo de dulces esperanzas, de
magníficas adivinaciones, de presentimientos dignos de la inteligencia humana, sé os
opondrá, sin duda, con enfático ademan aquella asendereada palabra.”
52 Ibid.: “Muchas almas vulgares juzgaron antes que vosotros utopias, y aun rasgos de
demencia, las gigantescas concepciones que, andando los siglos, debian brillar como
gloriosas verdades. ¡Cuántas de estas, en todo género, no fueron calificadas de quimeras
por la estupidez y los intereses alarmados! Y sin embargo, triunfaron, porque el triunfo es
el porvenir infalible de la verdad; y los seres mezquinos que todo lo refieren á sí, que todo
lo miran á través de sí mismos, hubieron de confesar la pequeñez de sus miras y la vergon-
zosa inexactitud de sus juicios.
Lo que ayer parecía un delirio, será mañana un hecho; lo que hoy se condena como
impracticable, será dentro de un plazo, tal vez no lejano, una institución protectora; lo que
en nuestros turbulentos dias brilla indeciso y tímido como una tibia exhalacion, despedirá
mañana torrentes de luz y calor. La línea misteriosa que separa lo posible de lo imposible
no ha sido medida aun, y quizá no lo será jamás, porque es acaso uno de los grandes secretos
del Hacedor; guardaos, pues, pretendidos políticos, de repetir á todas horas una palabra
cuya acepción solo de él es conocida (…).
No creáis utopias todo lo que con esta no definida é indefinible calificación se bautiza;
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34 | Juan Pro

vosotros mismos habéis visto realizado lo que en vuestra juventud juzgasteis irrealizable,
mas de una vez; ¿quién puede fijar lo que en el discurso de algunos años habrá pasado
asimismo á la esfera de los hechos, salvado el hoy oscuro confin del problema, y el axioma
de la teoría y la institución? (…).
Y creednos: si hay en el mundo verdaderas utopias, son las vuestras, cuando, á despecho
dé lo que pasa á vuestra vista, os considerais aun llamados á representar algún papel en ese
drama colosal.”
53 La Europa, 29 October 1854, reproduced by El Genio de la Libertad, Barcelona, 3
November1854, p. 2: “Para Carlos V fué el vapor un sueño; para Napoleón una esplicable
teoría. Para ambos una utopia (…). Utopia, pues, en la acepción figurada con que los
conservadores quieren verificar lo irrealizable, es una frase sin sentido. En tal concepto
utopia no es castellano. ¡Progresistas! borradla de vuestro diccionario.”
54 La Nación, 23 October 1850, p. 2: “La paz general deja de ser una utopia, desde que la
industria dé los primeros pasos hacia su realización, reuniendo en un centro común á
pueblos de razas, religión y costumbres diferentes.”
55 Cited by Juan Francisco Fuentes: “Utopía”, in Diccionario político y social del siglo XIX
español, edited by Javier Fernández Sebastián and Juan Francisco Fuentes (Madrid: Alianza
Editorial, 2002), pp. 685–88.
56 Eduardo Chao, ed., Diccionario enciclopédico de la lengua española: con todas las vozes, frases,
refranes y locuciones usadas en España y las Américas españolas, en el lenguaje común antiguo y
moderno; las de ciencias, artes y oficios; las notables de historia, de biografía, de mitolojía y
geografía universal, y todas las particulares de las provincias españolas y americanas 2 vols.
(Madrid: Imprenta y Librería de Gaspar y Roig, 1853–1855): “cualquier idea que es acep-
table en teoría, aunque imposible de realizar.”
57 Rafael María de Baralt, Diccionario de galicismos: o sea de las voces, locuciones y frases de la
lengua francesa que se han introducido en el habla castellana moderna (Madrid: Imprenta
Nacional, 1855): “sistema que principalmente se funda en lucubraciones sin fundamento
real en la historia, en las costumbres, o en las propensiones humanas, si bien formadas con
el buen deseo de mejorar la condición del hombre y el estado de los pueblos.” And “una
de las voces, locuciones y frases de la lengua francesa que se han introducido en el habla
castellana moderna.” Even as late as 1874, Baralt still regarded the term utopia as a neolo-
gism, although he considered its use to be advisable because of Thomas More’s work.
58 The minister of Internal Development of the provisional Government that emerged from
the Revolution, Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla, used it in the Explanatory Memorandum to the
Decree of 28 January 1869 (Gaceta de Madrid, no. 30, 30 January 1869, p. 1). At the
Ministry of Overseas, Adelardo López de Ayala also used it in the Explanatory
Memorandum to another Decree, on 30 January 1869 (Gaceta de Madrid, no. 32, 1
February 1869, p. 1).
59 Real Academia Española, Diccionario usual de la lengua española (Madrid, 1992): “Plan,
proyecto, doctrina o sistema optimista que aparece como irrealizable en el momento de su
formulación.” This definition was retained until the 2001 edition.
60 Real Academia Española, Diccionario usual de la lengua castellana, 12th ed. (Madrid, 1884):
Utópico, with its obvious meaning of “adj. Que halaga en teoría, pero que es irrealizable”
[Adj. That which is gratifying in theory, but which is unworkable], simplified in the 1925
edition to “adj. Perteneciente o relativo a la utopía.” [Adj. Belonging or relative to utopia],
a definition that was kept until 2001. Utopista: “ Que forma utopías ó es dado á ellas. Ú. m.
c. s.” [Adj. That which forms utopias or is given over to them. Used more as a noun], also
until 2001.
61 José María Samper, Apuntamientos para la historia política y social de la Nueva Granada
(Bogota: Imprenta del Neo-Granadino, 1853), p. 526; Virginia Auber Noya, Ambarina
(1858), edited by Isabel Ruiz Apilánez (Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia,
Consellería da Presidencia e Administración Pública, 1989): Lucio Victorio Mansilla, Una
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Utopia in the Spanish Language | 35

excursión a los indios Ranqueles (1870), edited by Saúl Sosnowski (Caracas: Ayacucho,
1957), pp. 195, 276, 382; Adolfo Alsina, La nueva línea de fronteras. Memoria especial del
Ministro de la Guerra (Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Porvenir, 1877), p. 51; Eduardo Acevedo
Díaz, Brenda (1886) (Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2002); Manuel T.
Podestá, Irresponsable. Recuerdos de la Universidad (1889) (Buenos Aires: Biblioteca Clarín,
2003).
62 Juan Montalvo: Siete tratados (Besançon: Imprenta de José Jacquin, 1882), pp. 381–82:
“Si sois librepensadores, traducid á Laplace, Littré: si amables utopistas, á Flammarion,
Delaage: si herejes declarados, á Renan, Peyrat (…). Si en todo y para todo quereis, auto-
res franceses, ahí están en ilustre muchedumbre, historiadores, oradores, científicos,
filósofos, y hasta novelistas, grandes novelistas, como el autor de René, el de Obermann,
el de Corina. Traducidnos la Enciclopedia, por Dios, traducídnosla, vosotros que sois, oh
españoles, tan amigos y partidarios de Rousseau, Diderot, d’Alembert, Grimin y más pun-
tos luminosos de la gran constelacion del siglo décimoctavo, cuya estrella polar, el hélice
del infierno, es Francisco Maria Arouet, convertido en Voltaire por obra y gracia del
demonio. Pero esos libritos, esas novelitas, esos santitos, esas estampitas de que están ates-
tadas las librerías . . .”
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How to Do Things With

Utopias: Stories,
2 Memory and Resistance
in Paraguay
Marisa González de Oleaga

“En la suela de los zapatos está la verdad de la historia.”

[The truth of history is found on the soles of shoes]
J. Consiglio, Hospital Posadas

“Truer in the sense of poetic or emotional truth.”

J. M. Coetzee and A. Kurtz, The Good Story: Exchanges on
Truth, Fiction and Psychotherapy

“C’est agir en vaincus: (…) ne pas voir l’espace — fût-il interstitiel, intermittent,
nomade, (…) — des ouvertures, des possibles, des lueurs, des malgré tout.”
[It means acting like the defeated; (…) not seeing the space — whether it be
interstitial, intermittent, nomadic, (…) — within the openings, what is possible,
the flashes, the nevertheless, the in-spite-of-everythings].”
G. Didi-Huberman, La survivance des lucioles 1

The West has an abundant literature on the subject of utopias. These exercises have
traditionally concentrated on what was called “utopian thought” and “literary
utopias”, a genre of writing with its own conventions and rules. Actual cases of utopias
that were set up at some point in contemporary history seem to have generated less
interest, possibly because the very definition of utopia — as a “no-place” or an “ideal-
place” — appears to preclude any project carried to completion, which, for that very
reason, would cease to be utopian. How to do things with utopias is a proposal that is
developed at length in En primera persona: Testimonios desde la utopía,2 an analysis of
the limitations that the literary genre imposed on the representation and circulation of
the memory of utopian/dystopian experiments, and which calls for new forms of
writing and representation.
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How to Do Things with Utopias | 37

A clotted memory

Paraguay is a country that is unknown in Mediterranean Europe. Hemmed in by

Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia, little is known of its existence or its history. Whereas the
imaginaries of the other nations bordering it are associated with emblematic objects
and historical events (caipirinha and slavery; mate and the last military dictatorship;
coca and the first indigenous government of Evo Morales) or are linked to more or less
stock scenes associated with music and dance (the samba and the bossa nova; the
tango and the Andean flute), nothing seems to represent Paraguay on the European
side of the ocean. Perhaps the two most significant landmark historical events
associated with the country are the Jesuit Indian settlements (popularized by
Hollywood) and the harsh dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner.
Nevertheless, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were quite prolific in histor-
ical events in Paraguay. Not just dramatic ones, like the War of the Triple Alliance
(1864–1870) or the Chaco War (1932–1935), to cite two episodes of major impor-
tance for the population; it was also the setting for alternative social projects. In spite
of being marginalized — or perhaps because of it — Paraguay proved to be fertile
ground for religious and political utopias and the occasional dystopian experiment.
These included anarchist and theosophical colonies, Mennonite and Hutterite
communities, socialist enclaves and even a racist Aryan colony founded by Elisabeth
Förster-Nietzsche, the sister of the famous German philosopher. These were veritable
social, political and economic laboratories on the margins of the State and the market
with a clear vocation for communitarianism and self-management.
From the end of the nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth, at the
same time as a new political order was being organized throughout Latin America,
utopian communities proliferated in a number of countries in the area. In Paraguay,
the government’s “racial whitening” policies offered incentives (in the shape of land
grants, tax reductions, religious and linguistic freedom, autonomy in education and
security, exemption from military service) that led immigrant contingents to consider
the country as a place to settle. The Paraguayan authorities looked upon the members
of these groups — mostly European — as disciplined, dedicated workers who were
going to “infect” the local population with their industriousness, and make a crucial
contribution to launching the economy of the nation. For the newcomers — quite a
few of them, political exiles — Paraguay was that empty fertile space where they could
build a better society.
However, none of these goals was realized. The arrival of immigrants with alter-
native projects did not provide the kind of stimulus that the “fathers of the nation”
desired, while the founding of self-managing colonies did not extend any further than
their own symbolic, physical limits, and most of them had very little impact on the
local populations. Stranger still was the complete absence of contact between these
communities;3 as if they had become prisoners of the very metaphor that had given
rise to them, these political and religious utopias remained islands in the national land-
scape for decades; and what was even worse, the memory of them fared no better. In
a country not known for its writing, a good deal has been written about the utopias in
Paraguay. But in spite of the abundant bibliography on each of these experiments
(articles, monographs, web pages, documentaries and other audio-visual devices),
memory of them — the copious accounts of their experiences — has failed to circulate
and the image of these ventures that has become consolidated is of failed, non-repeat-
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38 | Marisa González de Oleaga

able experiments. Little or nothing of that enormous symbolic capital appears in the
form of tradition, trace or reference in the new social movements or in the discourse
of progressive organizations. They are known to have existed, but the memory of them
has not been inscribed within the framework of alternative social models, but
portrayed rather as experiences of foreign settlers doomed to failure. It is not
uncommon to hear that these ventures were “cosas de gringos” (gringo affairs), a
statement accompanied by the twofold sentiment of envy (of what others had or have)
and impotence (for what they will never have because they are Paraguayans).
But how do we explain and understand the fate that the memory of these
experiments suffered? In the first place, political historiography must accept its share
of responsibility. Concerned in recent decades about the creation of the State and
building citizenship, it neglected those other phenomena that ran parallel to the
organization of the liberal order, by stressing — more by omission than commission
— that they were expendable. The questioning of the role of the State that accompa-
nied the neoliberal wave unleashed in Latin America as a whole in the 1990s drove
historians to dig deeper into the past to recreate the different institutional genealogies,
although they forgot about or scorned these other forms of collective organization. In
the second place, the utopian/dystopian character of these ventures also worked
against them. The very notion of utopia as an unworkable project, or a venture that
sooner or later would degenerate into its opposite, dystopia, hampered the transmis-
sion of these memories.4
And, last but not least, and this is the subject of the present chapter, it is likely that
if, despite the relative abundance of stories about these utopian experiences, the
memory of those experiments has not been passed down, perhaps there is something
about the form or the narrative structure of those stories that hindered or contributed
to their failure. It would be a question, then, of failed or faulty transmission that
prevented some experiences of the past from becoming part of the knowledge of the
present.

How to do things with utopias5

In Paraguay, the memory of the utopian/dystopian colonies has not surfaced in the
present day. But, then, why should it have done? After all, is it not possible that if there
is no echo of those experiences in the present, it is perhaps because they are not useful
or have little to offer today? Why attempt to make it easier for society to appropriate
other people’s experiences? Why refer to the aesthetic responsibilities of the narrators
rather than to the truth of their stories as a fundamental element in transforming other
people’s experiences into knowledge of one’s own? For what reason and to what end
do we do things with utopias?
In the first place, utopias/dystopias — like other alternative historical processes –
can offer possibilities. In a globalized world where homogeneity rules and difference is
reduced to a format or a brand, historical accounts — those narratives that give an
account of “what was” — can serve as spaces of alterity, places in which “the different”
and “difference” can be intuited or represented, and utopian experiments — which
arose as alternatives in the interstices of State power — turn out to be a clear and
encouraging example, in this respect. To be able to incorporate that difference into
one’s own imaginary, however, requires the ability to conceive of those transforma-
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How to Do Things with Utopias | 39

tions as possible, to think that there is nothing natural or irremediable in any historical
situation, past or present. And that imagination that constructs new landscapes draws
nourishment from different sources, one of which may be the historical account, the
narration of scenarios that are no less luminous for being non-repeatable.6 The effec-
tiveness of those historical accounts lies not so much in the fact that they are
instruments of sociological engineering (which tell us how social life works and how
we could alter it) as in their poetic potential to inspire (which clears the way to the
imagining of other presents).7 If socio-political difference was possible in the past, why
should it not be so in the present and the future? It is the discontinuity that difference
(of utopias/dystopias in this case) opens up in our expectations of the past, which
enables us to imagine that same disparity (other alternative forms of organization) in
the present or the future. That historical imagination that wonders about other
possibilities is a condition, although not the only one, of every transforming action.
Secondly, and following on from the previous argument, transformative actions
require, besides the idea of possibility — change is possible — a certain conviction on
the part of the subjects about their own capacity, because somebody may know that
other worlds are possible but not consider that they are competent to take part in those
changes. This is the case of public opinion in Paraguay, which usually considers
successful utopian experiments, such as the Mennonite colonies, as instances that do
not concern them or from which nothing can be learnt because “they are (the product)
of another culture”. These are all formulas that seek to explain how other people
triumph over natural and economic adversity, but at the same time, shut down any
possibility of experimental appropriation for the locals. The complex processes of
identification and identity intervene in this construction of qualified subjects, both
individual and collective, and, in this transition, a leading role is played by transmission
via stories, because these are what create identities. As Stuart Hall points out, identities
“[…] are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position
ourselves within, the narratives of the past”.8 Narratives enable identifications, which is
the key to actions that promote reasoned changes and help create imaginaries of
resistance. Transmission is a human and social need; social and individual identities
are not created from nothing, as something inaugural, but form a fabric, a weave made
with the appropriation of some narrative threads from the past. As Jacques Hassoun
points out, in all transmission of memory of the past, an attempt is made to reconcile
what is received with desire.9 To put it another way, one takes from the weave of the
past that which enables desire in the present to be recognized, sustained and
relaunched. Thanks to this transmission, the past is symbolized, and assigned a value
and a place, which enables some identifications to be made, certain features, certain
threads, to be appropriated, which leads to the symbolization or resignification of the
present. Lack of transmission in the present, or silence about the past, makes it difficult
for subjects to take part in social life. The historical account, the story about the
memory of utopias/dystopias may be the scenario, or point of departure from which
to realize that passage, where that transmission can take place.
In the third and final place, if every transformative action requires the idea of possi-
bility, and a subject or subjects convinced of their capacity to bring about change, it
is also worth enquiring into the relationship between the two elements, because the
transmission of memory is neither repetition, nor rupture, but elaboration. And in the
process of elaboration, the dystopian possibility that lurks within any human project
serves as a limit, and a warning. It is not a matter of “copying” (assuming such a thing
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40 | Marisa González de Oleaga

were possible) or of wanting to imitate the ways of life of utopian/dystopian commu-

nities of a hundred years ago. While there is a level of practice that can be reproduced
(forms of cultivation, the governability strategies of certain communities such as the
Hutterite-Bruderhof), nevertheless what is transmitted is not only information that
aims at a sort of sociological engineering, but inspiring images or emotions that enable
the subjects to identify themselves and recognize their desire. In transmission, what is
at stake is not the truth of the facts, but the subjective truth of that which was important
to those who preceded us (desire) and with which we can identify and use to empower
ourselves in the present.
Hence enquiring about the reasons for the failed transmission of these alternative
memories is not a trivial matter. It represents a major resource in the building of collec-
tive imaginaries of resistance and the creation of traditions (communitarian and
self-managing) that are understood as “a version of the past which is intended to
connect with and ratify the present.”10

The structure of the stories

We counted five colonies with an abundance of written or audio-visual material about

each one of them, regularly present in the national media: anniversaries, distinctions,
events, cultural activities. These colonies were: Nueva Germania [New Germany];
Puerto Bertoni / Colonia Guillermo Tell [Port Bertoni /William Tell Colony]; Nueva
Australia [New Australia] / Cosme Colony; the Mennonite Colonies of the Paraguayan
Chaco; and the Hutterite Colonies of Primavera. It is not ignorance of their existence
or their history that has prevented their memory from being inscribed within the
common imaginary, but rather the particular way in which these records have been
worked into collective stories. The memory of those communities has undergone a
process of depoliticization and the message that circulates does not account for their
status as alternative projects to the State and the market, but their lack of continuity
in time and their foreignness.
How can the “obliteration” of this enormous symbolic capital be explained? How
can this be understood, particularly among the ranks of progressive social movements
looking for references and traditions to appeal to? I have already pointed out the way
in which the circulation of their memories was hampered by the fact that the experi-
ments were regarded as utopias/dystopias, so clotting their transmission. But there was
something else, and it might be supposed that that remainder must be inscribed
somehow into the way that these experiences have been told whenever the histories of
these communities have been transmitted in the form of stories. But what is that
narrative structure like?
Five utopian/dystopian colonies and a variety of stories in different formats: polit-
ical and religious communities that had features in common (despite their many
differences), a collective ideal that transformed them into living communities and
some form of communal property. There are written, photographic and audio-visual
narratives of all of them. The choice of the corpus calls for two preliminary clarifica-
tions.11 Firstly, some explanation is needed for the inclusion of a dystopia (Nueva
Germania) among the set of utopian colonies; and secondly, why such disparate
stories have been included in the same set. The five colonies can all be considered
utopian projects in the traditional sense of the term, as proposals for creating “another
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How to Do Things with Utopias | 41

place” or “an ideal place.” They were all regarded as utopias by their founders and
first colonists, and as dystopias by many of their members throughout their history.
In the case of Nueva Germania, an instance of an Aryan racist colony, I find it difficult
not to describe it as a dystopia from the start after the aberrations that that particular
aspiration took in twentieth-century European history. Nonetheless, as far as this
study is concerned, it is not so much the way in which their utopian or dystopian nature
is defined that is of interest here — a task that is always complicated and partial — but
their status as alternative projects to liberal order. It is their very alterity that justifies
the inclusion of such disparate ventures in one and the same group. As for the diverse
nature of the stories that form the corpus — written in different languages by authors
from different disciplines — this is a virtue rather than an obstacle; in spite of these
differences, we are able to talk of a common literary genre that would be imposed on
the various disciplinary mandates, a sort of metanarrative that would condition the
narrative structure of the stories about utopias/dystopias.
In all cases, the predominant literary genre is the travelogue, a mode of writing that
can encompass quite diverse forms and in which a variety of discursive strategies inter-
sect.12 In the case that concerns us here, two elements have been included: the traveller
and the route he took, in a three part movement in which they narrate the journey of
the historical protagonists, incorporate the narrator’s encounter with that experience,
and try to repeat this exercise with the reader, who accompanies the protagonist and
the narrator on that journey.13 The stories about utopias/dystopias in Paraguay do not
set out to describe what each community was like in an objective way — as a sociologist
would, for example —, but are exercises in discovery of other forms of life organized
from the standpoint of an autobiography. These are not “scientific” accounts as some
sociological currents or other social disciplines might set out to be, but they are not
autobiographical accounts in the strictest sense either, as in the case of an extra-
ordinary individual retelling his adventures. The genre we are considering is in tension
somewhere between these two extremes.
They all share some common features and one reaction that is repeated. What is
surprising about this corpus is the type of emotion that the stories arouse: fascination.
It is a very particular emotion, one triggered by something exceptional and non-
repeatable that the protagonists in the colonies talked about in their relationship with
nature,14 which is retold by the narrators of those experiences that others lived at first
hand, and is then referred to by the literary critics or reviewers of those narratives.15
Here are some examples:

Works such as the great falls of Guayrá are not described; they are marvelled at. Scenes of
nature inspire the poet: the Guayrá is one of those that leave him speechless (…) and the
roar silences thunder, in the stunning solitude of the jungle — all of that stifles words,
confounds reason and subjects the heart to the most diverse and mixed of feelings.16

The most fascinating of all to me was the unwritten story of New Germany, the racist colony
Elisabeth helped to found in the middle of South America over a century ago.17

A sparkling idea, and its realization . . . yields vivid travel writing and information of a ghostly
but fascinating sort.18
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42 | Marisa González de Oleaga

The book Mr Macintyre has written about Elisabeth Nietzsche is a fascinating, provocative
and highly eccentric volume that is part biography, part travelogue, part detective story.19

I could reproduce other quotes in which the word “fascination” appears or where
some characteristic typical of this emotion is described. And this is just as true of the
protagonists of the utopian/dystopian experiences — Bertoni’s relationship with
nature in the example given above — as of the ones who related those experiences
second-hand — Macintyre on the Nueva Germania experiment — and of the critics
— Steiner and Kakutani — who reviewed the accounts. As the dictionary of the
Spanish Royal Academy indicates, fascinación, or fascination, is synonymous with
delusion or hallucination; it also defines the word as “irresistible attraction”.
Fascination is a singular passion, an irresistible attraction that blocks any possibility
of exchange or appropriation, locks the stories in like clots of meaning. To feel
fascinated is to be captivated, enraptured, absorbed by the object (Freud, 2006).
In theory, we do not know what produces fascination but we can certainly try to
find something common to all the stories. It seems plausible to suggest that if they all
produce fascination it is because they contain some similar ingredient. If there is a
common effect it may be that there is a common cause. If we confine ourselves only
to the content of the accounts, there is a constant in the narrative structure of all of
them — that which is traditionally called “subject matter” or “argument” — and in
the way that that content is organized. Regardless of the variety of detail in the actions
or the number of characters that perform them, all these accounts have a common
three-part structure that can be summed up as follows. The subject — individual or
collective — the hero of the tale abandons the comforts of a modern city to set out on
an adventure in an unknown country, represented by a mysterious nature — at times
bountiful, at others terrifying — and succeeds, in spite of, or because of his suffering,
in taming that savage nature and redeeming it for the good of humanity. His is a
journey of no return, a one-way journey because even if he returns to his country of
origin, he will no longer be the same, since he pays for his resolve with his life or his
identity. In this drama, in which the subject/hero decides to exchange the comfort of
the familiar for the unknown, there is a reward that he will never enjoy, a legacy that
is passed down to all mortals: a fascinating intellectual work or significant moral values,
the strength of someone who dared to go beyond what was known. But it also conceals
a threat: the possibility that that legacy will be lost for ever, due to human apathy,
neglect or indifference. It is a threat that the author(s) of the story/stories warn(s)
about and seek(s) to invoke with narrations that are a way of making the hero return
to his place of origin and so allow him to rest in peace.
All the accounts analysed share a constant three-part structure: separation; initia-
tion; and return, somewhat similar to the folktales analysed by Vladimir Propp.20 In
spite of the differences between the stories, these three functions are common to all
the texts. The protagonists set off leaving family and friends behind, and begin an
adventure in territories unknown, where they arrive, more often than not, by chance
rather than as a result of deliberate choice. This was the case of Bertoni who, having
had his fill of the decadence of modern urban life, sought out that ideal place, first in
the northwest of Argentina, then in the port that bears his name in Paraguay. Or the
case of William Lane, who left Australia after the failure of the 1891 shearers’ strike,
convinced that his socialist ideals could only be realized in some country in South
America, first in Argentina, then in neighbouring Paraguay. Elisabeth Nietzsche, the
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How to Do Things with Utopias | 43

driving force behind Nueva Germania, would also leave her native country to follow
her husband, Dr. Bernhard Förster and establish their project of racial purity in
Paraguay, that terra incognita. Much the same can be said of the Hutterite, later
Hutterian, Brethren of the Primavera Colonies who, in exile in Great Britain during
the Second World War, sought refuge for their way of life and Anabaptist beliefs in
Paraguay. Finally, the Mennonites also left several countries (Russia, Canada and
Mexico) persecuted by the new laws of the States that were being constructed, to find
safe haven in the “new paradise” of Chaco — a dense “spiny forest” — where they
could live according to their religious and cultural traditions.
In all the cases analysed, the stories in which these experiences are related single
out this first function or stage, and do so by using it to trigger the narration. They
could have indicated other functions or made a different aspect the centre of the narra-
tion. There is nothing self-evident about selecting the move away from the country or
place of origin as the initial element of the story. In Bertoni’s case, he could have used
some other aspect as the organizing principle of the account, for example, the
omnipresence of his mother (in a somewhat peculiar family structure), who
abandoned her husband to accompany her son’s family to the “promised land”.
Likewise, the second stage — initiation and difficult task — is present in every one
of the five cases studied. Separation gives rise to initiation, a new path to be taken and,
in this new beginning, the protagonists will rely on the help of a supernatural being
(God in the case of the religious colonies) or the collaboration of powerful entities
(such as nature or an overarching ideology, in the case of the other communities).
Nothing will be easy, the stories tell us, and the heroes are not going to achieve their
objectives straightaway. They will pay a price, no gains without pains, and that price
will be paid in the form of a difficult task. The supernatural beings that help and guide
them, or the natural and political entities, which, without being supernatural, have
enormous powers, put the heroes to the test and these tests mark a turning point in
the story. The narrations about New Australia depict William Lane as obsessed with
socialist ideals, intent on building a Workingman’s Paradise, and subjected to tests from
which he did not emerge unscathed: having to accept the gulf between his ideals and
human and social reality. The tales about the Port Bertoni / William Tell Colony speak
of a hero naively confident in the powers of nature, an ambiguous nature: exception-
ally fertile, but which will put him to the test more than once. The death of his little
daughter, Inés, and the loss of his plant collection — the work of many months lost as
the result of a flood in the first settlement in Missions — seem to be part of the price
Bertoni had to pay to sustain his ideals. Something similar is recorded in the story
about Nueva Germania. The ideal of a racially pure community was what drove the
Förster-Nietzsches to Paraguay, and they would do their utmost, or at least try, in spite
of the tests to which husband and wife were put: the accusations of the colonists,
Bernhard Förster’s suicide in San Bernardino, and the desertion of the peasants. The
Mennonites and Hutterites, who shared many distinguishing characteristics, relied —
according to their accounts — on the help of God, who steered their lives but also
placed a number of tests in their path towards achieving his kingdom on earth, namely,
the death of hundreds of new arrivals from disease and malnutrition, the dreadful,
extreme climatic conditions as well as the internal and leadership crises that threatened
their survival.
Separation, initiation and return are the three functions common to all the
accounts; the return stage does not necessarily have to be physical but it will always
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44 | Marisa González de Oleaga

be symbolic. Moisés Bertoni died in 1929, in Foz de Iguazú, and rests “en una plenitud
misteriosa bajo este majestuoso árbol de ciprés” (in mysterious plenitude beneath this
majestic cypress tree), as it states on the sign accompanying his grave (placed there
by the Itaipú Hydroelectric Company) in the Port that bears his name. He never
returned to the canton of his birth; nonetheless, the story arranged another kind of
return for him, according to which his death — his return to nature — enables the gift
of his legacy — his wisdom, his courage — to be bequeathed to the whole of humanity.
The Mennonites did not return to their places of origin either (that place being much
more difficult to determine given the centuries-old diaspora of the community); never-
theless, the stories that are told about them emphasise their symbolic return, namely,
the attainment of their objectives, their ability to maintain their identity and traditions
and, at the same time, achieve great economic success. The Hutterites of Paraguay
moved on again in 1960, after what came to be known as the “Great Crisis”, which
was basically a crisis of leadership. They left the Primavera colonies and settled in the
state of New York. The stories of this event and the later development of the commu-
nity also record this symbolic return and the legacy that it represented for the
protagonists and the new members.
The stories of the colonies founded by William Lane and Elisabeth Nietzsche turn
out to be rather different. Lane, in his time, was accused of being authoritarian and
purist — which was what caused his departure from New Australia to found a parallel
community, Cosme Colony — while Elisabeth Nietzsche was accused of having
embezzled the funds of the colonists. Both returned (physically) to their places of
origin, but the accounts seem to say that they did not succeed in passing the tests
imposed by their ideologies, or the constraints of reality. Even so, such is the power
and the force of this three-part narrative structure in the development of the story,
that there is a sort of return and gift. Lane returned to his own country and the New
Australia and Cosme Colony would end up being dissolved as socialist communities
shortly afterwards, and their lands divided into lots and distributed among the settlers.
The stories, however, insist on picking up on the legacy of their memory; it was a
failure, but it was those first colonists and their socialist leader who laid the necessary
foundations that enabled a figure like the anthropologist León Cadogan to be born
and grow up in that community. Cadogan became a specialist in the Mbyá-Guaraní
and Aché Indians, and was acknowledged by Claude Levi-Strauss as the foremost
authority on those cultures and a staunch defender of indigenous rights in Paraguay.21
The accounts acknowledge that Lane failed to the extent that he did not manage to
keep the socialist colony going, but see the birth of Cadogan — who, during his life-
time, was more than critical of the extinct socialist project — as a pretext for the story
to follow the three-part structure.
The stories about Nueva Germania are even more eloquent. This was an experi-
ment that is not in tune with present-day sensibilities. Elizabeth Nietzsche went back
to Germany and decades later struck up an excellent relationship with the Nazi party
and its leader. The narrative structure is imposed on the content to such an extent that
the author of the story himself feels compelled to seek, and indeed finds, a kind of
symbolic return and legacy, by stressing the dark side of the experiment, which would
lead years later to concentration camps and gas chambers for millions of people.
Nevertheless, his fascination is such that Elisabeth is seen as a woman of enormous
energy, “of extraordinary courage, character […] and chutzpah”.22 There is no doubt
that the author of the account, Ben Macintyre, feels no sympathy for or has any
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How to Do Things with Utopias | 45

ideological affinity with Elisabeth Nietzsche and, yet, he cannot help being drawn to
her and has to look for some reason (her fighting spirit, her capacity for transgressing
limits in order to go beyond what is known) to justify his fascination. And he finds it
in this lady’s personal qualities, a sort of decontextualized personal legacy.
Apart from the three-part structure — so reminiscent of the folktales and fairy
stories of oral folklore that Propp studied — there is another interesting ingredient:
the binary oppositions that shore up the stories. I remember a newspaper feature that
I read in Foz de Iguazú in 1991, which was when I first became aware of Port Bertoni.
Its front-page headline said: “Bertoni: A Museum in the Jungle” and the title of the
article: “A Swiss Genius in the Upper Paraná River Jungle”. These polarities, or binary
oppositions, turn up in the majority of the titles of the works cited. By way of example,
take Paradise Mislaid: In Search of the Australian Tribe of Paraguay, a work by Anne
Whitehead, who plays with this opposition of a paradise that is found, but then mislaid
or has gone astray (has become hell?), and a tribe of white Australians in Paraguay.
Strangers Become Neighbors is the title of the book by Redekop about the relationship
between the Mennonites and the indigenous peoples. Once again, oppositions: the
strange versus the familiar. Macintyre’s account of Nueva Germania, Forgotten
Fatherland, recreates that duality with a title that alludes to the loss of memory (of the
fatherland, the origin, the place of the father). One of the works by Baratti and
Candolfi about Port Bertoni repeats this pattern: Vida y obra del sabio Bertoni: Moisés
Santiago Bertoni (1857–1929): un naturalista suizo en Paraguay (The Life and Work
of the Learned Bertoni: Moisés Santiago Bertoni (1857–1929): A Swiss Naturalist in
Paraguay) reinforcing a twofold opposition. On the one hand, the one forged between
his birthplace, modern Switzerland, and his new homeland, unknown and wild
Paraguay; on the other, in this latter country, Bertoni’s status as a learned man. All
these oppositions are inherent in mythical tales — those tales about marvellous deeds
and supernatural beings — whose structure was described by Levi-Strauss. Among
these oppositions, the culture-nature opposition is the one that is characteristic of the
myth of the hero, exactly as shown in the research of the mythographer Joseph
Campbell, and also in that of Hugo Bauzá.23 The hero is, more than anything, a trans-
gressor; a being in permanent conflict between two worlds, a mediator between the
civilized and the wild, between order and disorder; he is a being capable of going
beyond the limits imposed on mere mortals.
The three-part narrative structure — the functions of Propp’s fairy tales — and
the binary oppositions are the two common elements that appear in every story about
the utopian/dystopian communities in Paraguay. And these two constants seem to be
associated with the fascination that was, as we saw, the prevailing emotion in the recep-
tion of the stories. We can say, then, that we are in the presence of mythical stories
about heroic figures that follow the structure of fairy tales. But there is something else.

The paratexts

Those common elements of the narrative structure with the power to fascinate us —
the three-part functions and binary oppositions — are not restricted to the accounts
themselves but can also be observed in the paratexts, those visual elements that turn
a story into a book.24 In almost every case, the paratexts, those discourses of
transition/transaction that serve as pragmatic devices anticipating the structure of the
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46 | Marisa González de Oleaga

book, seem to match each other. I refer here to the book covers, a sort of letter of
introduction to the book, which draws in the reader and directs the type of reading or
interpretation. The book covers of the cases studied here have characteristics in
common. Exotic motifs predominate, whether they are photos or illustrations; jungles,
Indians, and animals on the one hand, and modest buildings and white settlers on the
other. The semantic oppositions that are so characteristic of the texts have also
migrated to the covers, suggesting that we are not looking at academic books but at
stories that are more like the fables or folk tales that Propp spoke about. Apart from
the way the covers “exoticize” the text, an abundance of maps and photos in the para-
texts is another common feature in all the accounts that serves to differentiate them
from others.
The presence of maps is a constant and their inclusion does not seem to be due to
any need to be informative. In most cases, the maps are generic, contribute no infor-
mation whatsoever, or are so basic — such as Paraguay outlined on the continent as
a whole — that they seem to be there for other purposes. If the studies were about a
colony in Sheffield instead of being about Paraguay, nobody would include the outline
of Great Britain on a map of Europe as a guide, unless the book was written for young
children, when they would either include other types of map (showing the use of space,
distribution of the population, communication networks) or would dispense with
school maps altogether. However, in the works analysed, these simple maps appear,
reinforcing the idea of remoteness, the uncharted place of the territories of
utopia/dystopia. Hence, Paraguay appears inscribed as a place so remote that the mere
representation of its outline is sufficient to give it substance, to make it emerge from
the shadows. Remoteness and empty space; the outline of the country is marked and
then the site where the colony settled, as if the colonists had arrived in terra nula, an
empty uninhabited place, and, incidentally, naturally adopting that colonial perspec-
tive that makes the original peoples invisible.
All the works have a large number of photos, divided between historical
photographs of the colonies, those showing the activities that were carried out in those
enclaves, and other photographs — and they are always there — in which the author(s)
of the story is/are seen decades later with the descendants of the settlers and posing at
emblematic sites in the colonies. In principle, there is no reason to include this material,
not even to support the story with pictures, unless the purpose is to guide the reading
in some way. The inclusion of period photos looks like an attempt to anchor the story
in the real world, a way of tying that “exoticized” tale — so close to the narrative
structure of fairy tales — to “what really happened”. Reproducing these pictures and
including the narrator in the scene form part of a strategy for increasing the mimetic
capacity of the story; historical photographs in which the author of the story invariably
appears indicating two time periods: the past and the present. This inscription bears
the obvious meaning of authorization, branding, the “I was there” that constitutes the
hallmark of scientific ethnography.
Paratexts also follow the three-part structure that we saw in the narrations: separa-
tion, initiation, and return. The maps and photographs exoticize, separate the object of
the story and summon the reader to an unknown space, deliberately made strange.
Exotic, but translatable; the past is brought up to date in a present that rests on the
author’s point of view. Once the reader has been summoned, he may find in the
reading of the text a form of initiation into knowledge, the possibility of understanding
something that, in principle, is presented as alien. And just as the hero mediated
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How to Do Things with Utopias | 47

between two worlds, so the author — serving as a bridge — mediates between the alien
and the familiar, transforming the strange into the readable, intelligible, making the
reader return to the known.

Transmission

Everything seems to indicate that something about the narrative structure — shaped
in a similar fashion to folktales — and the exoticizing paratexts have influenced the
circulation of the stories about utopias/dystopias in a negative way; it is as if the most
contemporary narrative versions of those experiments were dragged down by the
genre markers associated with the literary utopias/dystopias; a genre close to the folk-
tales and fairy stories of European folklore that structured the content by
mythologizing it, heightening the aspects of those experiences that were exceptional
and non-repeatable. If we accept this argument, it begs another question; in what other
way could stories about utopias/dystopias be written that would enable those experi-
ences to be actively and critically appropriated?
Let us reconsider some of the characteristics of the stories about utopias/dystopias
in Paraguay. We saw that one of the markers of the way those stories were narrated
was the inclusion of the author in the story, both in the narrative structure and the
paratexts, which is what I shall call the autobiographical character. Reflexivity and auto-
biography: the inclusion of the author in the story is an interesting and necessary
marker. This inclusion can make it easier for the memories of the communities to
circulate, but it is not without its problems. In recent decades, it has been common to
find an authorial presence in the social sciences. It occurs in some disciplines — like
ethnography — more than others, but it is becoming increasingly common for the
narrator to appear as one more character in the story, an attempt to debunk the posi-
tivist fallacy of the objectivity of the scientific account. Forming part of the narration
that gives an account of a phenomenon is to uncover the inherently biased, perspec-
tive-laden nature of any interpretation. Thinking and giving an account of the position
from which one is speaking (one among many) implies considering the relationship
with that which is the object of study and analysis. The result is a shift from the idea
of truth — my story represents what happened — to the idea of responsibility — my
story is, at best, one of the possible, interested, partial views of what was observed,
and for which I must answer. It is in this sense that the appearance of the autobio-
graphical element as the marker of the stories of utopias/dystopias in Paraguay seems
to me to be interesting.
However, instead of resolving the problem, the inclusion of the author in the scene
simply creates other problems. The inclusion of the author in the story may make one
think of a centred subject, with a fixed identity, master of his word, an autonomous,
rational, unified subject, one of the great inventions — along with the subject/object
split — of modernity. Feminists, poststructuralists and deconstructionists have all
justifiably attacked this assumption. And I say justifiably because the debates about
the crisis of the subject are political debates that concern our daily lives, and the possi-
bility of thinking about alternative ways of life. After all, this modern subject —
regarded as rational, self-centred and autonomous — is the cause and effect of modern
forms of domination. Without going so far as to take up the most radical positions, in
which the subject is a mere effect of discourse, how does one include oneself in the
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48 | Marisa González de Oleaga

story while accepting that all processes of identification are unstable and relational,
and that the postmodern individual is being created and transformed in and through
the story?
Let us recall what was said about the inscription of the subject in the stories about
utopias/dystopias in Paraguay; this is a marker of authority, it is about the need to
endow the narration with a certain realism threatened by the exoticization of the object.
This authorial function and its anchorage are a long way from the relativist, perspec-
tivist, decentred function that the inclusion of the postmodern individual seems to
bring with it. Nevertheless, the idea of a journey, which runs through these stories as
a metaphor, fits in with the idea of a narrator who is created and transformed in the
course of the narration. It is a narrative journey from which one emerges at the end
different from the way one was at the beginning, and can generate a similar effect in
the reader. Hayden White and Roland Barthes have analysed an alternative mode of
writing, applied to certain historical accounts and testimonies about traumatic memo-
ries, such as those of the Holocaust.25 This is the so-called “middle voice”, a voice
halfway between the active and the passive voice.26 The subject is, at one and the same
time, subject and object of the action. In the case that concerns us here, the employ-
ment of this pronominal form would mean starting from a premise that would be
difficult for the empiricists to digest, namely, that when we narrate, we are not giving
an account of something external to the story itself, but rather the story generates a
relationship, an encounter, an exchange with that which we are studying. It is not a
question of narrating a prior experience; the story is the experience.27
The inscription of this type of subject in process ought to go for a choral, polyphonic
story in which the author included in the account would show his other facets, his
contradictions, his losses; in other words, a chorality that does not appeal to other
voices, but other voices of his own, a plural-singular voice, because a story about an
alternative experiment or about a utopian/dystopian colony is, ultimately, an
encounter, an exchange, a friction between the person writing and the traces of past
experiences. It would be as well, then, to think of how to inscribe oneself into an
account of utopias/dystopias, how to demolish the fallacy of the centred subject
without at the same time eliminating all possibility of thinking about another type of
subject (or individual, if you prefer). A subject in process would be unable to transmit
stable, finished knowledge; however, if there is no communicable knowledge, what
might the relationship of the social actors — in other words, those subjects who are
going to appropriate the alternative experiences of the past — be with the stories about
the historical utopias/dystopias in Paraguay?
Representation or evocation/friction: representation is the characteristic expression
of the social sciences in modernity. Returning that knowledge of the past to presence
is what historiography and other related disciplines have done for more than a cen-
tury. But what aspect of historical experience — in this case utopias/dystopias — may
be useful today? For after all, is not the knowledge that we can extract from the past
firmly gripped between irrelevance and exceptionality? What I mean is, if there were
some more or less specific knowledge derived from the utopian/dystopian historical
experiences, it would be so general and so obvious that it would not require looking
into specifically. Pointing out that utopian/dystopian colonies have problems main-
taining themselves at some point during their history (problems of leadership,
conflict of interests and so on) does not seem to be such a far-reaching conclusion
that it would deserve our attention. Pointing out that religious communities seem to
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How to Do Things with Utopias | 49

last longer — because they have stricter rules — does not seem to be a great discovery
either. An analysis of each particular case would enable us to reach more finely cali-
brated conclusions but what would be the point of such findings if their conditions
of possibility cannot be repeated? What I mean by this is that what is general to all
the communities is too obvious and what is peculiar to each one cannot be repeated.
What then can be taken from those experiences that would be of use today?
Representing — in other words, returning what was and what took place to presence
— would mean accepting that there is some stability in the signification of events,
which is questionable at the very least. Can we account for the significance of
utopias/dystopias once and for all? But even if we were capable of doing so, what use
would it have? “What was”, in its most diverse modalities, is over, but “that thing
that was” contains one facet that has not really been explored: “what might have
been and was not”. So, representation, based on the similitude or mimesis between
the story and what happened, is replaced by another operation, evocation,28 a move-
ment founded on difference, on what did not take place. “What might have been”
are those other possibilities that were discarded, or not possible because they
belonged to other codes of signification and value.29
If, as I have pointed out, “what was” is unstable, why should “what might have
been and was not” be any more so? The intention is not to replace one representation
with another, but to subvert the very idea of representation by means of friction.
Friction is a kind of dialogue in which creation takes place, not appropriation. When
there is friction between a reader and a text, this movement sparks images, ideas,
scenarios, landscapes that were not there before. Friction indicates returning its many
presents to the past, at the same time as it converts the present into historical material,
relativizing it and putting it into perspective.30
The irony of the story and binary oppositions: with a decentred subject who evokes
and is in friction with the past, the resulting story ought to be quite different from the
traditional one. This new subject, since it is constantly shifting, would opt for an ironic
text that would mark the doubt in every assertion, reject single significations and
suggest other possibilities. One of the most characteristic features of the narrations
about utopias/dystopias in Paraguay were the binary oppositions, those formulas —
together with other ingredients — that generate fascination and tend to perpetuate the
legacy of the experiments as myths. How can that structure be altered? By introducing
polyphony and chorality. Faced with the nature versus culture opposition, it is not a
question of inverting the value of either of the two terms but of opening up play to
other voices, in other words, changing the duality into multiplicity. This polarity that
keeps appearing in contemporary stories could perhaps be altered and denatured if
other voices are summoned, that of the Mbyá-Guaraní, for example, that are far from
conceiving that relationship as a duality; introducing other codes of signification and
value is to denature one’s own. The same could be said of the fate of the colonists, of
that heroic version that the stories introduce. If those binary oppositions fracture,
almost certainly, one of the most important ingredients of the myth of the hero as
mediating between two worlds will collapse. Even at the risk of being cacophonous, it
would be necessary to superimpose different stories about that fate (of the protago-
nists, the native witnesses, the contemporaries in their places of origin), to change the
tempos and modes of narrating (the corollary of including other voices will be to
deploy these different tempos and stories with different structures), to experiment …
with knowledge that is open, in process, which knows that it does not know and shows
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50 | Marisa González de Oleaga

its lack of knowledge. Experimenting and opening ourselves up to experimentation

because:

If one can stop looking at the past and start listening to it, one might hear echoes of a new
conversation; the task of the critic would be to lead speakers and listeners unaware of each
other’s existence to talk to one another. The job of the critic would be to maintain the ability
to be surprised at how the conversation goes, and to communicate that sense of surprise to
the other people, because a life infused with surprise is better than a life that is not.31

Acknowledgement
This chapter forms part of project HAR2012-31212, financed by the Spanish Ministry of
Economy and Innovation.

Notes
1 Jorge Consiglio, Hospital Posadas (Buenos Aires: Eterna Cadencia Editora, 2015), p. 55;
J. M. Coetzee and Arabella Kurtz, The Good Story: Exchanges on Truth, Fiction and
Psychotherapy (New York: Viking Random House, 2015), p. 11; George Didi-Huberman,
La survivance des lucioles (Paris: Minuit, 2009), p. 36.
2 Marisa González de Oleaga, ed., En primera persona. Testimonios desde la utopía (Barcelona:
NED/Gedisa, 2013).
3 There are two cases that show the almost complete indifference of these communities: the
projected anarchist colony, William Tell, and the Cecilia colony on the one hand, and the
Anabaptist colonies of Friesland and Primavera, on the other. In spite of their ideological
and geographical proximity, contact was practically non-existent or very sporadic. See
Danilo Baratti and Patricia Candolfi, L’Arca di Mosè. Biografia epistolare de Mosè Bertoni
(Bellinzona: Casagrande, 1994), pp. 39 and 44; Yaacov Oved, The Witness of the Brothers:
A History of the Bruderhof (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1996), pp. 109 and 118.
4 Already in the nineteenth century, in the work of Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and
Scientific (1880), so-called utopian socialism was discredited for advocating a model that
was impossible to realize, and was described as a mere step along the road to formulating
scientific socialism. Edward Forster, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Karl Popper, Aldous Huxley,
George Orwell are only a small sample of the authors whose literary works and essays sealed
the fate of the concept. If to this, we add that a significant number of these ventures did not
last, the hypothesis of utopia as a daydream, or a project doomed to failure, was reinforced.
A detailed development of the critiques of utopia can be found in Rafael Sánchez-Mateos,
De la ruina a la utopía: una constelación menor. Potencias estético-políticas de la infancia
(Unpublished PhD diss., Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, 2015), pp. 290–
318. Daniel W. Hollis III, Utopian Movements (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO,
1998), p. xv; Krishan Kumar, Utopia and Anti-utopia in Modern Times (London: Blackwell,
1991); Richard C. S. Trahair, Utopias and Utopians (Connecticut: Greenwood Press,
1999), p. xii.
5 Both the title of this chapter and this epigraph are indebted to the classic work by John L.
Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1975).
6 Experiences are non-repeatable as such, although some repetition is necessary in the gesture
of creating and constructing ways of life that represent alternatives to the hegemonic way.
If this were not so, if there were not some repetition in the gesture we would not be talking
about utopias and we would not be able to compare them. Repetition, however, does not
mean copy but rather re-creation, in the sense of something new meeting the old. Jacques
Derrida, “Firma, acontecimiento y contexto”, in Márgenes de la filosofía (Madrid: Cátedra,
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How to Do Things with Utopias | 51

1989), pp. 347–372 and by the same author, Acts of Literature (New York: Routledge,
1992).
7 Michèle Petit, El arte de la lectura en tiempos de crisis (Mexico: Océano, 2009) and Greg
Dening, Readings/Writings (Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1998).
8 Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation”, Framework: The Journal of
Cinema & Media 36 (1989): p. 69.
9 Jacques Hassoun, Los contrabandistas de la memoria (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de La Flor,
1996), p. 29.
10 Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977),
p. 115.
11 The following is a list of the colonies and the stories used: Nueva Germania (San Pedro),
an Aryan racist colony founded in 1887 by Bernhard Förster and Elisabeth Nietzsche;
descendants of the original colonists are still living in the colony; Ben Macintyre, Forgotten
Fatherland: The Search for Elisabeth Nietzsche (New York: Harper Perennial, 1993); Puerto
Bertoni or Colonia Guillermo Tell (Alto Paraná), an anarchist colony project transformed
into a family colony, founded in 1893 by the Swiss Moisés Bertoni; its last inhabitant died
in 1929; Danilo Baratti and Patricia Candolfi, L’Arca di Mosè. Biografia epistolare de Mosè
Bertoni (Bellinzona: Casagrande, 1994), and by the same authors, Vida y obra del sabio
Bertoni, Moisés Santiago Bertoni (1857–1929). Un naturalista suizo en Paraguay (Asunción:
Helvetas, 1999); Colonia Nueva Australia and Cosme Colony (Caaguazú), a socialist
colony founded in 1893; in May 1894, William Lane and other colonists broke away and
founded Cosme Colony, seventy kilometres from the first settlement; Lane left the commu-
nity in 1899, which continued until 1905; Gavin Souter, A Peculiar People: William Lane’s
Australian Utopians in Paraguay (Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1991
[1968]); Anne Whitehead, Paradise Mislaid: In Search of the Australian Tribe of Paraguay
(Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1997); Anabaptist Mennonite Colonies
(Menno, Fernhein and Neuland in the Department of Boquerón, Chaco Paraguayo)
founded in 1927, 1930, 1947 to the present day; Calvin Redekop, Strangers Become
Neighbors:Mennonite and Indigenous Relations in the Paraguayan Chaco (Ontario: Herald
Press, 1980); Peter and Elfreida Dyck, Up From the Rubble: The Epic Rescue of Thousands
War-Ravaged Mennonite Refugees (Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1991); the Hutterite
Primavera Colonies (Caazapá), founded in 1945; in 1960, they moved to the United States;
Yaacov Oved, The Witness of the Brothers: A History of Bruderhof (New Brunswick:
Transaction Publishers, 1996); Bob and Shirley Wagoner, Community in Paraguay: A Visit
to the Brotherhood (Farmington: Plough and Hutterian Brethren, 1991).
12 The following are research studies of undeniable interest: Diana Salcines de Delás, La lite-
ratura de viajes: una encrucijada de textos (Unpublished PhD diss., Universidad
Complutense de Madrid, 1996); G. Percy Adams, Travel Literature Through the Ages: An
Anthology (New York: Garland, 1988); Eric Leeds, Shores of Discovery: How Expeditionaries
Have Constructed the World (New York: Harper Collins, 1995); John Needham, The
Departure Lounge: Travel and Literature in the Postmodern World (Manchester: Carcanet
Press, 1999); Mary Louis Pratt, Imperial Eyes, Travel Writing and Transculturation (New
York: Routledge, 1992); Christian Kupchik, “Elogio de la fuga. En busca de la identidad
perdida”, unpublished manuscript, 2005.
13 Northrop Frye, “The Journey as Metaphor”, in Myth and Metaphor: Selected Essays
(Charlottesville–London: University Press of Virginia, 1990).
14 Stephen Greenblatt, “Resonance and Wonder”, in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and
Politics of Museum Display, edited by Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine (Washington and
London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), pp. 42–56, defines wonder precisely, as a
way of displaying an object so that it fascinates, and contrasts that with resonance, which
has the power to evoke a much more productive reception.
15 Frye, “The Journey as a Metaphor”.
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52 | Marisa González de Oleaga

16 Moisés Bertoni in Baratti and Candolfi, L’Arca di Mosè, p. 129. “Obras como el gran salto
del Guayrá no se describen: se admiran. Las escenas de la naturaleza inspiran al poeta: el
Guayrá es de aquellas que lo enmudecen (…) y el estruendo que enmudece al trueno, en
la soledad imponente de la selva -todo aquello ahoga la palabra, confunde a la razón y
somete al corazón a los más diversos y encontrados sentimientos.”
17 Macintyre, Forgotten Fatherland, pp. xi–xii.
18 George Steiner, “Review of Forgotten Fatherland written by Ben Macintyre”, The New
Yorker, 19 October 1992, p. 122.
19 Michiko Kakutani, “Books of the Times; On the Trail of the Other Nietzsche”, The New
York Times, 16 October 1992.
20 Vladimir Propp, Morfología del cuento (Madrid: Akal, 1998).
21 Richard Arens, ed., Genocide in Paraguay (Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 1976).
22 Macintyre, Forgotten Fatherland, p. xii.
23 Claude Levi-Strauss, “La estructura de los mitos”, in Antropología Estructural (Barcelona:
Paidós, 1995). Joseph Campbell, El héroe de las mil caras: psicoanálisis del mito (Madrid:
Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1998) and Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, El poder del
mito (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1988). Hugo F. Bauzá, El mito del héroe. Morfología y semántica
de la figura heroica (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1998).
24 The paratextual elements are those “devices and conventions, both within and outside the
book that form part of the complex mediation between book, author, publisher and reader:
titles, forewords, epigraphs and publishers’ jacket copy are part of the public and private
history of the book”, in Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Threshold of Interpretation (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997).
25 Hayden White, “Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth”, in Probing the Limits
of Representation, edited by Saul Friedlander (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992), pp. 37–53. Roland Barthes, “Escribir, ¿un verbo transitivo?”, in El susurro del
lenguaje (Barcelona: Paidós, 1994), pp. 23–34.
26 This is a formula characteristic of Greek, Sanskrit and Indo-Persian that was lost when the
Greeks began to use a vocabulary associated with the idea of the will and began to think of
the agent as the source of all action. Barthes, “Escribir, ¿un verbo transitivo?”, pp. 23–33;
White, “Historical Emplotment”.
27 Martin Jay, Songs of Experience: Modern American and European Variations on a Universal
Theme (Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005). We have an inter-
esting corpus of experiments in this respect: Alun Munslow and Robert Rosenstone, eds.,
Experiments in Rethinking History (London: Routledge, 2004) and Art Spiegelman, Maus
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1973).
28 José Ramón San Miguel, “La evocación. Un análisis fenomenológico”, Catoblepas 35 (Jan.
2005): 10.
29 Elizabeth D. Ermarth, “The Closed Space of Choice: A Manifesto on the Future of
History”, in Manifestos for History, edited by Keith Jenkins, Sue Morgan and Alun Munslow
(London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 50–66.
30 Greg Dening, “Performing cross-culturally”, in Manifestos for History eds. Jenkins et al.;
Hayden White, “Afterword. Manifesto Time”, in Ibid., p. 225.
31 Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 23.
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Vasco de Quiroga
3 Rewrites Utopia
Geraldo Witeze Junior

This chapter examines the Utopian project that Vasco de Quiroga (1478?–1565)
developed in New Spain from 1532 onwards, which resulted in two pueblos-hospitales:
one in Michoacán and the other close to Mexico City. We discuss some of Quiroga’s
texts and argue that his project is a rewriting of Utopia by Thomas More (1478–1535).
The intention is to show the close relationship between Quiroga’s texts and More’s,
and the many similarities, but also the differences between the two, especially on issues
such as slavery and the death penalty.
Thomas More published his book in 1516, a work that has enjoyed great success
down to the present day. Vasco de Quiroga set off for America not long after that date
— in 1531 — to take up a post as judge in the second Audiencia (Assize Court) of
New Spain, after the first one had been dissolved. In 1532, while he was visiting the
region of Michoacán, he founded a community, which he referred to as a pueblo-
hospital, for the Indians to live in. He returned to Mexico City, where he organized
another similar pueblo. He saw these two pueblos as a model to be followed in the
Spanish dominions and a way of solving the problems resulting from the Spanish
Conquest.
Fintan B. Warren has recounted the history of these pueblos and I shall not repeat
it here.1 The idea of bringing the Indians together in groups to instruct them in
Christian doctrine was not invented by Vasco de Quiroga, although there was one
major feature that was unique to his project: its very close link with Utopia. It was
associated with the work that inaugurated and lent its name to the utopian literary
genre, rather than with utopian thought in its widest sense, rooted in Plato’s Republic.
Quiroga interpreted the book more as a proposal for America than as a critique of
English society or of Spain’s colonial system.
Quiroga did not manage to extend his project to the whole of New Spain.
Nevertheless, those pueblos survived until the end of the nineteenth century, which
gives some idea of how important they were. Perhaps because they were set up on
the periphery of the world, the story of these pueblos tends not to occupy a prominent
place in histories of utopias, especially in Anglo-Saxon circles. This is a gap that
needs to be filled, as some authors have already tried to do,2 because in fact Vasco
de Quiroga answers the question “what is Utopia?” with some precision. We do not
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54 | Geraldo Witeze Junior

necessarily have to agree with the answer he gave, but his contribution helps clarify
the meaning of Utopia, and since his reading is such an early one, it is of even greater
interest.

The concept of pueblos-hospitales

Vasco de Quiroga probably read Utopia after he had already arrived in America. His
friend, Juan de Zumárraga (1468–1548), who was the first bishop of Mexico, owned
a copy of the 1518 edition, published by Johann Froben (1460–1527). Silvio Zavala
explains that Zumárraga lent the volume to Quiroga, and the idea that More’s book
would be useful for improving the organization of the pueblos-hospitales in Mexico and
Michoacán was the result.3
The decision to build pueblos for the Indians did not come from Utopia, but the
project was carried through as a result of reading it. During his very first year in New
Spain, the judge wrote a letter to the Council of the Indies, the supreme governing
body of Spain’s colonies in America, in which he stated that it was both important and
necessary for the Indians — who had been scattered throughout the territories since
the conquest — to be grouped together in pueblos. Quiroga saw it as the only way to
guarantee their survival, enable them to be evangelized and ensure the continuity of
the colony, and he clung to this idea until the end of his life. The pueblos would be
“ordered along civilized, law-abiding lines and with good holy Catholic ordinances”,4
ordinances that Quiroga himself was responsible for writing later.
As was the case with other Europeans who knew the New World, Quiroga held the
Indians in high regard. He stressed their intellectual capacities, especially their orator-
ical skills, but also praised their morality. Their good qualities were akin to the
Christian virtues of humility, obedience, poverty and contempt for the world. They
were the ideal men to undertake the renewal of the Church that so many humanists
were dreaming of.
Most of the Spanish settlers were the opposite of the Indians. Motivated by gain
and greed, they did not possess the virtues necessary to be part of Quiroga’s utopian
project. They were not categorically excluded from it, but they were not suitable for
it either. Nor did the settlers readily accept the project, since it went against their own
interests, which was to make slaves of the natives. Their stance was essentially anti-
utopian.
The Indians were the main characters in that utopia in New Spain. In his letter to
the Council of the Indies in 1531, Quiroga described the Indians as “a clean slate and
very soft wax”.5 Later, in 1535, in his Información en derecho (Information on Law),
he said that the Indian was “teachable and made of wax for all things good”.6 They
were like the apostles of the early Church and could help revive it. What was missing
was for them to learn about the Gospel and acquire a few good habits, although this
course of action would be made easier if the idea of the pueblos-hospitales became a
reality.
This did not mean that the Indians were a kind of “good savage”. Far from it, they
were humans, and even with some negative characteristics: they did not have good
governance, they continued with their age-old religions, they were habitual drunkards,
and so on.7 Even so, they were better than the Spanish settlers, more willing in spirit,
more amenable to correction.
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Vasco de Quiroga Rewrites Utopia | 55

There was a multitude of indigenous ethnic groups and we can almost never be
certain which one of them Quiroga was referring to. In the territory he was operating
in, there were the Mexicas, the Purhépechas or Tarascans,8 and the fearsome
Chichimecas. He does not specify their customs and he refers to Indians in generic
terms, a mental construct based on his daily experience of the natives. It would be an
uphill task to find out about the Indians from what Quiroga wrote about them, and
this should be taken into account. Nonetheless, from what we know of his life and his
movements in New Spain, it may be assumed that he had more contact with the
Mexicas in the early days when he was a judge in Mexico City, and that, after 1536,
when he was bishop of Michoacán, he was probably closer to the Purhépechas. The
hospital close to Mexico City was still under his jurisdiction.
The Indians themselves would have to build the pueblos that Quiroga was
proposing, since, as he said, “it is all for them, their children, their descendants and
relatives, and for the common good of everyone; where the orphans and the poor of
the territory round about must be gathered together and indoctrinated in and taught
the things of our holy faith”.9 The major question of the exploitation of the indigenous
workforce was not a concern in this case, since the Indians themselves would enjoy
the fruits of their labour. Quiroga was not interested in exploiting Indian labour, as
the settlers were wont to do, and even invested his own money in the construction of
the pueblos, a factor that critics of the project should bear in mind.
These pueblos were the opposite of “the hellish chaos of the mines”, where the
Indians toiled until they died of exhaustion, starvation or disease.10 They offered the
Indians salvation on two levels: physical salvation, an opportunity for them to live and
work for themselves, and also spiritual salvation, through knowledge of the Gospel.
For Quiroga, the two were inseparable.
Fulfilling the will of God was a very important aspect of his philosophy. He consid-
ered that the only legitimate reason for the European presence in America was to
preach the Gospel to the natives; everything else was superfluous. He believed that
God intervened in history and that his own projects were in accordance with the divine
plan. This also strengthened his line of argument, since the Catholic Monarchy would
not go against the will of God; a hypothesis that proved to be a risky one.

Interpreting Utopia

Utopia emerged as a way of organizing the pueblos, once the project was already
underway. Quiroga talks of many features being taken from More’s book and adapted
according to need. Although Quiroga’s interpretation forms part of the history of read-
ings of Thomas More’s work, he intended his project to serve useful social and political
purposes, rather than form part of a literary debate or a humanist game.
Quiroga described the republic of Utopia so as to “talk about it and to state that it
was something seen, tried and tested, because, if it was not tried out once, it seems
that it could not be believed”.11 Imagination and literary creativity helped conceive
possibilities for society, as though many of its problems had already been resolved. In
this way, one could see not only what the desired new world would be like, but also
the new man, the key element for achieving it.
It was like a dream, but it was more than that: “anyone who has experienced it,
does not question it”.12 In other words, for Vasco de Quiroga, the meaning of the
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56 | Geraldo Witeze Junior

experiment in America was to confirm that utopia was a practical possibility, not only
in the future, but in the here and now. Rather than a critique, it was a sort of prophecy.
The interesting thing is that Quiroga was not interpreting the New World on the basis
of his reading of More, but the reverse; Quiroga read Utopia based on his own expe-
rience of daily life among the Indians.
Thomas More knew of Amerigo Vespucci’s accounts of the New World and drew
on them for inspiration for his own book. For some authors such as Frank Lestringant,
Utopia did not depend on America for its existence, which is open to discussion,13
although it can at least be stated that without America, Utopia would have been a very
different book. Trying to pinpoint the geographical location of More’s island is a joke,
as the etymology of the word attests. Quiroga was not concerned about this; he thought
that if a vision of the New World as simple as More’s could produce such a good
description, living there could enable one to dream of so much more.
So, he did not doubt that More knew “what these most simple peoples of this New
World were like”, adding that they seemed to him to be “just like those of the people
of gold in that first Golden Age”.14 According to this interpretation, Utopia not only
depended on America but was actually talking about it.
Quiroga saw a likeness between the Indians and the people of the Golden Age and
projected his understanding onto More, most probably because his edition of Utopia
also contained the Saturnalia by Lucian of Samosata (125–180?), translated into Latin
by More himself. Indeed, Quiroga quoted Lucian in his Información en derecho when
he compared the life of the Indians with the Golden Age. It seemed obvious to him
that More, being familiar with the customs of the Indians and the description of the
Golden Age in Lucian, had made a connection between the two things.
Quiroga referred to More as a “distinguished man and of a more than human
genius”, which qualified him to describe the best state of a commonwealth, very useful
for building a new world. He went further and declared that the book was not merely
a human work, but was “inspired by the Holy Spirit”.15 God was working through
More to remedy the problems in New Spain.
This link with the Holy Spirit would certainly not have displeased More, who was
a devout Christian, and even lived with the Carthusians for four years, but it was far
removed from his thinking as expressed in the letters that preceded Utopia, and even
in the text itself. One example was the sentence almost at the end of the book where
More said that he did not subscribe to all the institutions that Raphael Hythloday
described, in spite of the fact that he admired them.
This did not appear to matter to Quiroga; his interpretation was in keeping with
the tone of a letter by Guillaume Budé, who treated the account of Utopia as a histor-
ical reality. It seems that this letter was supposed to be interpreted in a metaphorical
sense, although Quiroga chose to interpret it literally. Utopia emerged then as the set
of “regulations and the best state of the commonwealth” suited to the qualities of the
Indians and it was then a question of making sure that there were “enough of them
[the Indians], for them to be able to keep and maintain themselves, and to introduce
them to the faith and a mixed policía, which is the only thing they lack”.16 Thus, the
evangelizing plan and More’s book were inextricably linked.
Christian virtues came naturally to the Indians, but, nonetheless, they did not know
what good government was. The political aspect was a key part of Quiroga’s thinking.
One of the paradoxes of his utopia was that the Indians were as virtuous as the Apostles
and yet, at the same time, barbarians who were strangers to acceptable political forms.
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Vasco de Quiroga Rewrites Utopia | 57

Quiroga thought that it would be easier to teach those virtuous Indians Christianity
and politics than to incline the hearts of the Spaniards towards the Christian virtues.
Furthermore, More was not just anybody, but a “great Greek scholar and a major
expert, with a good deal of authority”.17 His words were worthy of consideration and
respect. If he had translated Lucian and taken an interest in the men of the Golden
Age, if the Indians were like them and he had written a book to solve the problems of
the American peoples, this should be appreciated.
Quiroga insisted that “for such people, such a well-wrought state of a common-
wealth was both in their interests and necessary and that their preservation could only
be assured in this [commonwealth] and in no other, for all the reasons mentioned”.18
It may have been that he had noticed, while living among the Indians, that they were
accustomed to quite a disciplined kind of life and that those ancient societies had strict
standards of behaviour, so that the ordered life described in Utopia would suit them
much more than it would the Europeans. The Europeans were already developing a
kind of individualism that made it difficult to establish a life in which communal
interests were favoured over individual wishes.19 The modern world was moving in
the direction of strengthening individuality, while Quiroga’s utopia was heading in the
opposite direction.
Utopia was much more than a good project and a good idea; it was the only way
to preserve the Indians, convert them to Christianity and teach them good govern-
ment. So, just as Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474–1566) entitled his work Del único
modo de atraer a todos los pueblos a la verdadera religión (On the Only Way to Attract
All Peoples to the True Religion), here we have the only way of preserving the Indians.
This rhetorical device demonstrates that Vasco de Quiroga was involved in the
disputes about the fate of America that were being decided in the Council of the Indies.
In fact, he sent his Información en derecho to his friend, Juan Bernal Díaz de Luco
(1495–1556), who held a seat on the Council and was in a position to exert influence
on any decisions that it took.20 The question of what was to be done with the New
World was one of overriding importance and the response would affect the lives of
many people. At that time, there were many responses and still dreams of a happy
outcome for the indigenous population. The history that we know, however, is a
terrible tragedy, although some tried to prevent it from happening.
Since it was important in debate to anticipate objections in order to rebut them,
the first one that Quiroga envisaged was that “a human, civilizing policía of such
perfection could not be preserved, if they were not all good, something which seems
impossible”.21 He recognized, and never doubted, that the Indians were human, and
it was consistent, therefore, also to assume that they had a fallen nature as a result of
original sin. Since they were human, they were not perfect. Why introduce a policía
suited only to perfect men? It would not be practicable in the real world unless men
themselves were perfect.
Quiroga’s response points to something that he had always talked about: the
combination of faith and politics that he called policía mixta, or a mixed policía. In
order to be successful, it was essential to cut out “the roots of all discord and anxiety,
all lust, greed, idleness and misspent time”. This was how temporal and spiritual
affairs would be ordered and would make it possible to implement the best state of the
commonwealth. Of course, there were no perfect men and they all needed to be
perfected by God, so that “with the introduction of peace and justice, everyone in it
[the commonwealth of the hospital] kisses and embraces each other in equity”.22
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58 | Geraldo Witeze Junior

In some respects, the text of Información en derecho is very close to Utopia.

Quiroga envisaged, “a city of six thousand families, each comprising from ten to six-
teen married family members, which is more than sixty thousand residents”,23 and
the numbers on the Island of Utopia were exactly the same: “care is taken that each
household (there are six thousand of them in each city, leaving aside the rural
districts) has no fewer than ten or more than sixteen adults”.24 A little further on,
Quiroga says that the administrative organization that they were seeking to set up
would have one jurado [a sworn representative] for every thirty families, and one
regidor [a councillor or alderman] for every four jurados; the corresponding structure
described by Hythloday has one Syphogrant for every thirty families, and one
Tranibor for every ten Syphogrants. These references indicate Quiroga’s textual
dependence on More, and when it comes to the Reglas y Ordenanzas (Rules and
Regulations) of the Santa Fe Hospitals, it is even more obvious.
Vasco de Quiroga believed that Utopia itself actually answered the questions that
would be raised in opposition to his project. Silvio Zavala claims that Quiroga him-
self translated at least the first book into Spanish,25 although he may also have
translated the second one too. He sent his translation, together with his Información
en derecho, to his friend Luco, calling him “exceedingly wise and diplomatic” and
able to resolve any possible queries concerning his calculations.26 Unfortunately, this
translation was lost and only a few words referring to it have survived.
At the end of the Información en derecho, there is a summary of More’s intentions
in writing Utopia: “to respond to and satisfy all opposing arguments and tacit objec-
tions to his commonwealth that this most prudent man felt could be brought against
him, which are the same as those that have been and may in the future be brought
against my own version”.27 In other words, it was not necessary for him to explain
himself further, since the Englishman had already done this with the inspiration of
the Holy Spirit.
Something was still missing, however. Quiroga concluded his comments on
Utopia in his Información en derecho by quoting the letter-cum-preface of Guillaume
Budé, “the honour and glory in these times of the School of France”. He accepted
every word that the Frenchman wrote and read the libelus aureus as if it were “a sem-
inar on correct and profitable customs, from which it was up to each person to
extract and adapt traditions for his own respective society”.28 He tried to do exactly
that in his Reglas y Ordenanzas for the two pueblos-hospitales.

Utopia is rewritten

The Reglas y Ordenanzas para el Gobierno de los Hospitales de Santa Fe de México y

Michoacán, Dispuestas por su Fundador el Rmo. y Venerable Sr. Don Vasco de Quiroga,
Primer Obispo de Michoacán (Rules and Regulations for the Government of the
Hospitals of Santa Fe in Mexico and Michoacán, drawn up by its founder, the Right
Reverend Venerable Don Vasco de Quiroga, First Bishop of Michoacán) were prob-
ably written between 1554, when Quiroga returned to America from Spain, and
1565, the year of his death. It is a provisional text, with gaps and repetitions, which
was discovered by Juan Joseph Moreno in the eighteenth century and published
together with his biography of Vasco de Quiroga. Moreno states that Quiroga drew
the rules up in “the final phase of his life, which is why they remained in draft form,
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Vasco de Quiroga Rewrites Utopia | 59

without him being able to make a clean copy or ensure that they were observed, as
the pious author of them wished”.29
If Moreno is right, and it seems to me that he is, the Reglas y Ordenanzas do not
describe the way the Hospitals actually functioned, but rather what their creator had
in mind. There are certainly some glimpses of everyday life, but the text is basically
Utopia adapted to the indigenous societies of New Spain.
Like More, Quiroga valued manual work and was concerned about the problem
of idleness. He named “the trades of Weavers, and others attached or belonging to
this trade, and Stonemasons, Carpenters, Masons, Blacksmiths and others like them
that are both useful and necessary for the Commonwealth of the Hospital”,30 which
are practically the same ones cited in More’s Utopia. Everything was oriented to
serving the common good.
In the pueblos of Santa Fe, as on the Island of Utopia, everyone would know how
to work the land, since it would be an integral part of their childhood education. The
working hours, six hours a day, were also the same, although in the Hospitals, the work
could be concentrated into “two or three days of work, from sunrise to sunset, per
week”, depending on requirements.31 The Ordenanzas included an exhortation both
to work and to obey the regidores, a sign of the real world that was absent from the
imaginary island. Disobedience has no place in an ideal society, where everything is
perfectly ordered.
Those who had carried out all their duties and had time to spare would have to
devote themselves to “any suitable work related to the trades or the needs of the said
Hospital”.32 Everything would have to be carried out during the six hours, since there
would be no extra time for work. Any time left over would have to be devoted to
building maintenance; anything, in fact, to stop workers from lapsing into idleness or
to prevent possible disruptions to the work, such as lack of materials.
Some families would be sent into the countryside for two years so that they could
engage in agricultural production. After this period, they could return to the town and
others would take their place, until everyone had fulfilled this assignment. The cycle
would then begin again, making sure that there would always be someone with more
experience in the fields capable of directing the rest. Those who enjoyed rustic life
would be allowed to “remain there longer, with the express authorization of the Rector
[Governor] and regidores, and there was no other way to do this”. All this was exactly
as in Utopia; Quiroga added only that the families in the countryside would “have to
be properly trained and supplied with the tools and implements necessary for their
labour”.33
Overseeing the families in the countryside, there would be a “General Supervisor,
who would oversee and visit them, and notify the Rector, the Principal and the said
Regidores of any matter that concerned them that needed to be remedied, supplied, or
reformed”.34 In Utopia, one of the phylarchs carried out this function, supervising
thirty families. Since fewer people in the pueblos of Santa Fe lived in the countryside
and the distances were also shorter, it would be possible for the supervisor to live in
the urban area, go out to visit the families and return home at night to sleep.
Those who dwelt close to the main centre of the Hospital would be granted leave
“to go one day to relax and enjoy [themselves] with the rustic families in the coun-
tryside”.35 This period of recreation was not the same as a holiday or period of
idleness, since those who went to the countryside would work there like everyone
else. This detail demonstrates that Quiroga anticipated the possibility of the
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60 | Geraldo Witeze Junior

inhabitants becoming weary of urban life, something that did not exist in Utopia.
This may have been the influence of Antonio de Guevara (1480–1545), an author
that Quiroga knew through Menosprecio de corte y alabanza de la aldea (Scorn of
Court Life and Praise of Village Life), published in 1539, and other works in which
he praised the simplicity of the countryside and contrasted it with the difficulties of
urban life, or it may have been that the need for relaxation arose from the fact that
the Indians of that time, who were accustomed to living in the fields and mountains,
did not adapt well to urban life. This could only be done “with the permission of the
Rector, Principal and Regidores, and in no other way” so that communal life would
not break down.36 They would be granted leave for a specified period and while they
were away, they would receive food and live on equal terms with their companions
in the countryside. In short, apart from the two years’ stint common to everybody,
there were two ways of moving to the country: to go for a specific period in order to
recover from some unpleasant aspect of urban life, or permanently, because they
adapted better to country life.
Both men and women would work. More criticized societies in which women and
nobles did not do any work, because this placed too much of a burden on everyone
else; it was necessary to share the workload so that it did not become too onerous. He
proposed entrusting women with lighter tasks. Quiroga spoke of “women’s occupa-
tions that suited them and that they had adopted, and that were necessary for their
own benefit and good and for that of the commonwealth of the Hospital, [occupa-
tions] such as working with wool, linen, silk, and cotton, and anything necessary,
pertaining to and useful for the trade of weaving”.37
Neither of them regarded dividing the work according to gender as a problem, nor
did they see it as oppressing women. On the contrary, doing so suggested equality in
every sense of the word. Besides, the Purhépechas were used to the division of labour
by gender, and the women even “helped their menfolk with sowing and harvesting,
as well as weaving blankets, paños de chocolate [embroidered serviettes used for wiping
chocolate from the mouth], and other things that were welcomed by society in
general”.38 Equality was not the same as uniformity and it was accepted therefore that
the work for men and women would not be exactly the same. Apart from that, each
inhabitant was free to choose the trade he or she liked best out of all those that were
useful to the hospital. Collective harmony was at the heart of everything and it was
not necessary for all inhabitants to carry out the same functions.
Quiroga also imitated More’s idea of storing and distributing the production of
foodstuffs “rationally, comfortably and honestly, so that when each according to his
type, need, manner and condition required it for himself and his family, nobody
should want for anything in the Hospital”.39 This was one of the most important
features that can be traced back to the communal living of the early Christian com-
munities in Jerusalem, or Plato’s Republic, and brings to mind Karl Marx’s aspiration
in his Critique of the Gotha Programme: “From each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs!”40 It is obviously not a question of a foreshadowing, but of
analogous ideas circulating in history.
The Judeo-Christian tradition transmitted the well-known story of Joseph, nar-
rated in Genesis 37–50. Among other lessons, it taught the principle of storing up
provisions for future periods of scarcity, a precaution that was often ignored in history,
especially in American colonial societies. Sérgio Buarque de Holanda has referred to
the inertia and lack of foresight of the settlers as typical characteristics of colonial
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Vasco de Quiroga Rewrites Utopia | 61

Brazil;41 even Spain’s possessions in America suffered from food shortages in later
years and it was necessary to use the gold obtained from the mines they exploited to
remedy the problem.
This gave something of an idea of the sumptuary mentality that Bartolomé
Bennassar talked about.42 Quiroga foresaw this problem and was concerned to avoid
it, even in the sixteenth century. He proposed that the Hospitals should follow the
practice mentioned in Utopia of storing food supplies to avoid possible hardship in the
years to come and instructed the inhabitants of the hospitals as follows: “each year,
you will sow twice the amount that you need for a single year, which you will keep
until such time as it is unlikely to be needed for the current year”;43 only after taking
such precautions could the surplus be sold.
The Indians in the hospitals would guarantee the production of food using “cer-
tain indicators and likelihoods” and “certain assumptions about nature”.44 In Utopia,
a primitive type of statistics was used to make precise calculations of consumption,
while the Hospitals placed their trust in the knowledge of the indigenous peoples.
Knowledge that we would consider today as traditional was a guarantee that the food
supply of the whole community was assured, and indeed, what the Europeans
learned about nature in the Americas depended fundamentally on the social
mediation of the Indians.45
Farming would take place first on common land in the countryside, where some
of the inhabitants would work for two years at a time and then be replaced by others,
although families would also cultivate vegetable gardens and grow fruit trees close to
their homes. While the question of land ownership was already settled in Utopia,
Quiroga felt it necessary to stress that this formed the basis of his enterprise, because
there were many disputes about land between natives and settlers. Land could not be
transferred or sold at all because “otherwise, this good work would be lost”.46
That principle turned out to be a shrewd one, because it protected the two hospitals
for more than three centuries, until the second half of the nineteenth century, when
they finally disappeared. The liberal reforms, by putting an end to the collective
ownership of land, accomplished what the Spanish settlers, the Church and the Crown
had been unable to do. As a result of this, “conflicts started to break out in the pueblos
when the sale of properties to strangers began”, so marking the beginning of the end
of the pueblos, which finally occurred in the 1870s.47
Long before their final demise, however, still in the sixteenth century, the watch-
word was abundance. With everyone actively involved and nobody left idle, and the
work being evenly distributed and not excessive, they would have lacked for nothing.
It was neither poverty nor luxury, but frugality. The dignity of their existence lay in
them having what they needed to live well, not working themselves to death, nor
wishing for a plethora of superfluous things. With cooperation and frugality, there
would be abundance; with competition and luxury, shortage.
Quiroga listed what would be raised and cultivated in the pueblos: “many birds of
every kind, both from Castile and from the local areas, and turkeys, and other kinds,
both useful and colourful, and livestock, such as ewes, rams, goats, cows, pigs, and
domesticated animals, depending on the quality of the land, and oxen”.48 Whereas in
Utopia only chickens, horses and oxen were mentioned, in Quiroga’s writings
European breeds were mixed with American ones, and indeed the exchange of animals
was important in many ways and transformed the lives of both the Europeans and the
Indians for ever.
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62 | Geraldo Witeze Junior

He also referred to plant life. There would be “fruit trees from Castile and from
this land, as well as all kinds of good garden produce, and useful, health-giving seeds,
flax, hemp, wheat, maize and barley, and liquorice”.49 The prejudice against hemp
had not yet been established at this time. Although only maize was mentioned among
the indigenous crops, this does not mean that the inhabitants would not take advantage
of local products, but simply indicates Quiroga’s limited knowledge of America’s
native flora and fauna. The Indians would undoubtedly have used their traditional
foods, as well as those from Europe that they found to their taste.
The principle of benefit or advantage determined what would be cultivated, and
nothing that was useful would be discarded; the Europeans, however, had not yet
studied the natural world of America sufficiently, so that they would not use many of
the things that it could offer. What the Indians knew about the environment would
have had to be put into a language that could be understood by educated Europeans
like Quiroga before the knowledge could be used. If this task has still not been
completed in the present-day, what chance was there of it happening in the sixteenth
century when the process was just beginning and the arrogance of the colonizers held
back progress?
Balancing production and storage would make it possible to care for those who
were sick, by giving them the best of what was produced. The frailest would receive
special attention and care, while carriers of contagious diseases would be isolated
from the rest. This too relied on More’s text, along with the growing practice of hold-
ing Mass in a chapel so that the sick could hear it.50 While it is well known that there
was religious toleration in Utopia and various religions existed together, for Quiroga,
this was just not possible; his utopia, as was mentioned earlier, was completely
Christian.
The tolerance that Raphael Hythloday referred to indicated that it was only
possible to apply moderate persuasion to convert others to one’s religion. In one case,
a recent Utopian convert became “so carried away that he not only placed our faith
above all others, but noisily condemned the rest as profane and their followers as
impious, sacrilegious and destined to eternal fire”.51 As a result of this, he was impris-
oned for causing a commotion. The Utopians believed that the truth would triumph
in the end and that there was no need to force the pace.
Quiroga, on the other hand, had been a bishop since 1536, and his aim — and the
principal mission of his utopia — was to evangelize the Indians; it was, furthermore,
the only reason that justified the Spanish presence in the New World. It should also
be added that he never used force to convert the natives and his missionary activity
remained strictly based on persuasion and love. As he saw it, the Christian example
of “love thy neighbour” came before preaching. Following the example of St Paul,
and Erasmus (1466–1536), he used metaphors of war in his writings, but ruled out
the use of violence for the purposes of evangelization. Although it has occasionally
been claimed that he did use force, a careful reading of his texts allows us to verify
that this was not the case.52
Evangelizing the indigenous populations would not solely be the work of foreign
missionaries. The converted Indians would take the new religion to those they knew
after receiving religious and political instruction. Anybody who wanted to leave the
pueblos on friendly terms would need the permission of the rector and regidores, after
the manner of Utopia. In addition, Quiroga instructed them, “you should teach, or be
able to teach [what you have learnt], and use it to benefit our neighbours wherever
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Vasco de Quiroga Rewrites Utopia | 63

you go, and may you always find someone who will welcome you because of it, and
do you honour and profit”.53
For the Christian education of the Indians, Quiroga left doctrine in printed form
that had been “approved by his Holiness the Pope”.54 The author of that Christian
doctrine was Gutierre González Doncel (1468?–1527) and his objective was “to
promote a tangible improvement in the level of instruction and spiritual formation”,55
an idea that he shared with Erasmus (although Erasmus had already been condemned
at the time that Quiroga printed the doctrine). Discreetly and at his own expense, the
Bishop of Michoacán printed doctrine that was consistent with his religious views and
at the same time ratified by the Church. His conciliatory attitude avoided problems.
Although movement between cities on the Island of Utopia was allowed after
obtaining permission from the Tranibors and Syphogrants, there was no notion
among the Utopians of setting up missions to teach their way of life to other peoples.
This would only occur when they set out to colonize other regions in the event of over-
population. Quiroga’s pueblos, on the other hand, and the College of San Nicolás,
which he also founded in Michoacán, were centres from which to spread the Christian
faith and “good government” from Europe. He originally thought of ordaining Indian
priests, although the idea met with resistance within the Church and was later officially
prohibited.
Nonetheless, as with the early Christian Church described in the Acts of the Apostles,
informal missions did not depend on the ordination of indigenous priests, since the
Indians who went out from the pueblos of Santa Fe would spread the Christian
message, as Quiroga wished. It is possible that this conception of missionary activity
contributed to the rise of popular Christianity in Michoacán, where Vasco de Quiroga
is remembered as a hero and founding father, the tata Vasco of the Purhépechas.
For religious reasons, the Ordenanzas do not follow Utopia on the question of
marriage. One only has to recall the pre-nuptial ritual proposed by More: “the woman
— be she virgin or widow — is shown to the suitor by some reliable and trustworthy
matron while stark naked; and in the same way, some appropriate man shows the
suitor naked to the prospective bride”.56 The reason for this was to make sure that
there would be no scope for fraud or deception concerning the body, and no regrets
afterwards. Even with these precautions, the marriage was not guaranteed. Divorce
was permitted with the agreement of both consorts, but only with the consent of the
Senate. It was not a simple matter and did not occur without good reason. As for
adultery, it was considered abhorrent and was severely punished.
The monastic propriety of Europeans in holy orders would obviously not allow
anything similar. Quiroga’s Ordenanzas prescribed something simpler: the parents
would marry off their sons when they were fourteen years of age and their daughters
from twelve. The couple would preferably be formed from members of the families
in the hospitals, although marrying someone who lived outside was not forbidden. The
main thing was to do “everything always according to the order of the Holy Mother
Church of Rome, and not clandestinely, although if possible, with the consent of the
natural Father and Mother and family”.57
The way households were governed, on the other hand, did follow the pattern set
out in Utopia. The oldest man would preside, the women would obey their husbands,
and the younger ones their elders. With such a hierarchy, “manservants and maid-
servants, and other kinds of servant, who are generally very expensive and annoying
to their masters” could be dispensed with.58 Families would function without the need
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64 | Geraldo Witeze Junior

for help from outside, and everything would be organized and resolved through the
wise rule of the elders, in the manner of the biblical tradition that led to the establish-
ment of the priesthood.
Heads of families were charged with controlling the “excesses and disagreements”
of all those under their authority, and if they did not do so, the rector and regidores
would take over this task. In cases where “such excesses and mistakes occurred as a
result of the incompetence of the paterfamilias or his failure to communicate orders
properly, they should choose others who are skilful, as best suits the family”.59 Their
authority was not absolute, but depended on the proper discharge of their obligations.
In Utopia, public punishment set an example to prevent others from committing the
same offence. This was not the case in the Ordenanzas, although fathers who failed to
control their children would be accused of “shame and dishonour in correction” by
their superiors.60
The good example of leaders, rather than punishment, should guide the actions of
others, and this was the method chosen by Vasco de Quiroga to convert the Indians,
even the fearsome Chichimecas, who were well known for their ferocity, as his aide,
Cristóbal de Cabrera, recounted later.61 A good example based on love would be more
effective than punishment. Likewise, the authorities in the hospitals would serve as
models and the rest would follow them.
Since life in the pueblos-hospitales was based on agricultural production, the heads
of the peasant families would supervise the work. As well as supervising, it was
important for them “to get involved in the work from time to time, chiefly at the
beginning, so that the others would be shamed into doing likewise and not be lazy or
have an excuse to stop doing what they should be doing”.62 A good example would
be infectious.
After more than two decades of existence, the pueblos of Santa Fe proved to be
successful, although without meeting initial expectations. The low number of inhab-
itants was in stark contrast to their original dreams. In Utopia, the cities had nearly one
hundred thousand inhabitants, like the major cities of Europe.63 In the Hospitals of
Vasco de Quiroga, the population barely reached a few thousand, so that the original
idea was only partly realized, and on a much smaller scale.
It should be stressed that the isolation of Utopia in the fictional account was not
possible in the real historical and geographical setting of the Hospitals of Mexico and
Michoacán. What Quiroga actually wanted was to protect the Indians from the unde-
sirable influence of the Spanish settlers with their unbridled greed and bad company,
which was not the same situation as on the Island of Utopia. Nor did he want isolation,
in the sense of lack of communication, since his plan, as previously mentioned,
included missionary activity.
For the same reason, and unlike Utopia, the hospitals did not renounce the use of
money. The inhabitants did not need money because the plan of communal work and
the distribution of production eliminated the need for commercial exchange within
the pueblos. Money would be needed, however, for relations with the outside world; it
would be important if they needed to buy food from elsewhere, for example. For such
situations, Quiroga recommended having “a strongbox, or large coffer, securely
fastened with three keys, one held by the Rector, another by the Principal, and another
by the oldest Regidor” who were instructed always to keep them in a safe place, where
the money belonging to the pueblos would be kept.64 Likewise, the deeds to the lands
purchased by Quiroga or obtained through donations would be placed in the coffer
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Vasco de Quiroga Rewrites Utopia | 65

for safekeeping. This would prove to be sound advice, since many lawsuits were
brought against the hospitals.65
Clothing was another characteristic that distinguished the inhabitants of the Santa
Fe pueblos from outsiders. Everybody’s clothes would be identical, as in a monastery,
and following the model of Utopia. It was recommended to wear garments “of cotton
and wool, white, clean and decent, plain, without costly embroidery and not too
fancy”.66 This was in line with what More had written, but did the Indians readily
accept it?
The Indians in New Spain were well known for their creative talents. The craft
objects that Hernán Cortés sent to Charles V evoked great admiration for their beauty,
magnificence and wealth of detail.67 After the Conquest, many Indians succeeded in
using their skills in order to learn the techniques of the Spaniards, which was funda-
mental to their survival in the new world that they were forced to enter.
The Indians, particularly the women, were highly skilled weavers. Their everyday
garments were certainly simple, but there were some that were very rich in detail and
it was for this reason that Quiroga advised against wearing over elaborate clothing; it
was the price of equality. A social hierarchy that was reflected in what people wore
had to disappear completely. We do not know exactly what the Indians thought about
the matter, although the fact that Quiroga should bring it to their attention is enough
to lead us to believe that the old habit of wearing clothes with bright colours and other
costly embroidery continued. Since the process of changing a culture is neither easy,
nor rapid even when it is successfully achieved, it is possible that uniformity in clothing
caused them some distress and aroused their resistance. There were moral and
spiritual reasons for this proposal. The stated objective was to ensure similarity among
the residents, “so that envy and the pride of wanting to be better dressed, with some
standing out more than others, which generally sows envy among men who are vain
and imprudent, not to mention dissent and discord, may cease”.68
Likewise, body and face painting was condemned. The Indians used both for
festivities, religious rituals and war, although Quiroga did not want them to retain the
practice in the Hospitals and warned them “neither to smear yourselves with red dye,
nor paint, nor dirty your faces, hands and arms in any way, as you used to do”.69 This
requirement formed part of the struggle to change specific aspects of the indigenous
cultures.
Since evangelization was at the heart of Quiroga’s utopian vision, it would not be
possible to allow outward expressions that were linked to the old religions to continue.
Painting their faces was an obstacle, which was why he referred to it as “dirtying the
face”; the faith of the Indians’ ancestors was seen as a vice, a stain that had to be
cleansed. An exception was made, however, when painting the body was for medicinal
purposes, although there is no explanation as to how the paints were made or what
their ingredients were. Quiroga went so far as to say that clothing ought to express
“whatever was in the soul”.70 If the inside was clean, the body would reflect it. The
colour white symbolized spiritual purity, and simple clothing expressed the same
quality that was expected of all good Christians.
Married women would comply with propriety by following the biblical custom of
covering the head “and most of the body, on top of the other garments that they nor-
mally wear and without adornments or colourful embroidery and which should not be
very expensive, or very fancy, especially when going to church”.71 This would differ-
entiate them from the unmarried women, who were exempted from this obligation.
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Their garments also had a practical function, such as protection from the heat and
cold. They should be cheap, hard-wearing and appropriate to everyday life in the
hospitals. One fatherly recommendation that stands out is the one that advises the
Indians to wrap themselves up well in winter, to prevent the “pain in the side that it
causes, and goes to the chest, and kills”.72 This is the tata Vasco that the Indians
remember.
Everyone would have just two sets of clothes, one for ordinary working days and
the other for “appearing in public in the square and at church on feast days”.73
Nothing else. Life would essentially be monochromatic after the style of a monastery,
so that their minds would be fixed on important matters.
The authorities in the hospitals would be elected. Quiroga himself said in
Información en derecho that this was the form used by the Indians so that the best man
would govern. At that time, Quiroga was critical of this indigenous practice, but he
later adjusted the norms of his hospitals to reflect their custom, perhaps because it also
coincided with what was set out in Utopia.
Heads of families would elect one or two hospital principales, “from among the four
representatives of the four groups, or cuadrillas, into which all the poor in the Hospital
were divided, with each cuadrilla [choosing] its own, or all of them together”. Voting
would be secret, and the mandate would be for a period of three or six years, followed
by more elections. It went further than the democracy envisaged by More, since the
office of Prince in Utopia was for life. The regidores would be chosen via the same
process, although for a term of one year “and in such a way that all competent married
men take their turn”.74 The positions of principales and regidores would be held by
Indians.
Both More and Indian custom stipulated that the man who was most suited to the
functions of government should be chosen, while Quiroga, as might be expected,
confined himself to stressing the religious component of this choice. The election
would be held after the “Mass of the Holy Spirit, and having properly sworn that they
will choose, without passion or preference, the man who, in their view, is the most
competent, useful and sufficient for the common good of the Commonwealth of the
Hospital”.75
The rector would be above all of these and his duty would be to authorize free elec-
tions. The incumbent of this office, however, would not be determined by election
and while Quiroga was alive, he himself indicated who he thought would be the best
rector. For posterity, he left other instructions: “after we are no longer here, he [the
rector] should be appointed every three years by the man in charge of the said
hospitals”.76 This “man in charge” was the Rector of the College of San Nicolás, and
he, therefore, would be the person who would appoint the rector of the hospitals after
Quiroga’s death.
Like the principal, the rector could remain in office for a longer period if he demon-
strated “competence, honesty and prudence”, although his mandate would always be
renewed “every three years, as has been stated, and with express permission given in
scriptis, signed by us and the man in charge and the rector and lector . . . of the said
college of San Nicolás, with the opinion of the dean and chapter”.77 It was necessary
to safeguard against tyranny.
In Utopia, the main authorities belonged to the class of letrados [those with legal
training], to which Quiroga also belonged. Nevertheless, he did not make this a
requirement for his Hospitals, but recommended instead that the Principal “be gentle,
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patient, and not more abrasive or harsh than is necessary […] and does not allow
himself to be treated with contempt, but should rather seek to be loved and honoured
by all, as is reasonable, more through goodwill and love, than fear and strictness”.78
His description recalls the qualities required of bishops and deacons in the New
Testament,79 where St. Paul advised his disciple Timothy using similar words: “The
Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome but be kind to all, able to teach, patient
when wronged.”80 This set him apart from Machiavelli who thought that it was “far
safer to be feared than loved”.81 On the other hand, he was close to Erasmus: “let him
love, who would be loved, so that he may attach his subjects to him as God has won
the peoples of the world to Himself by His goodness”.82 Authority is obtained through
setting a good example.
The Principal and regidores would meet every three days to take decisions, with two
heads of families taking turns to attend. Quiroga added, “no other local council apart
from this one should be held by anyone in the Hospital, under serious penalty of being
expelled and so deprived of it”.83 The sanctions were different but both Utopia and
the Ordenanzas included rules for upholding the institutions and controlling the
authorities. Quiroga included another warning in the same vein. All decisions had to
be “in accordance with these Regulations; anything else that they deemed appropriate,
as long as it did not conflict with them [the Regulations], always required the consent
of the Rector”.84 To guarantee the continuity of the communities, no authority was
above the Hospital rules.
When the authorities made decisions, it was important to exercise prudence. For
resolutions on “doubtful or difficult matters, they should first discuss the matter three
days beforehand and decide what could be done, unless it be a matter of little impor-
tance or one that would not admit of such a delay”.85 After coming to a resolution on
the matter, they would communicate their decision to the rector.
The rector, by ratifying decisions, appeared to be an essential figure in providing
political stability. Since he was not subject to election, it seems that he could mediate
more calmly in conflicts, and also exert some religious influence on secular policy, an
important feature of the mixed policía that Quiroga aspired to implement.
In Utopia, there were three types of assembly: the Prince’s Council, the Senate, and
assemblies of the whole body of the people. More does not describe any of them in
great detail. Similarly, because it was a provisional text, the draft of the Ordenanzas
does not allow us to draw any conclusions as to whether there would be one or two
types of assembly. What does emerge is that the text drew heavily on Utopia and the
uncertainty, therefore, may be related to the fact that More’s text is also rather vague
on this point.
In communities of people, it is normal for conflicts to arise. Quiroga expressed
harmony and friendship as an ideal and insisted that there should be few or no lawsuits;
even so, he had to draft a rule in case they did arise. Utopia emphasized the absence
of lawyers because: “In this way there is less scope for misunderstanding, and it is far
easier to arrive at the truth”.86 In the Ordenanzas, the concerns are more moral in
nature and biblical in inspiration.
Given this ideal, it would be the responsibility of the rector and the regidores to get
to the root of grievances “in a straightforward and amicable fashion”, guided by true
testimonies. The first objective was to prevent the case being taken to external judges,
“where you pay a fee and afterwards they throw you in jail”. The second objective
was spiritual growth, because it was better to lose the argument and have peace than
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68 | Geraldo Witeze Junior

to win and hate one’s neighbour: “In this Hospital, you are all to be brothers in Christ,
bound by peace and charity, as you were ordered to be and as is greatly to be
commended”.87
The conciliatory attitude was the same as the Sermon on the Mount,88 seeking to
avoid greater evils, such as imprisonment. St Paul too wrote to the Corinthians to
correct their quarrelsome attitude, asking: “Why not rather be wronged? Why not
rather be defrauded?”89 When utopian morality deviated from Christianity, Quiroga
frequently resorted to the Scriptures or ecclesiastical authorities to fill the gap. Even
when he basically agreed with what More was saying, the bishop of Michoacán would
add something to bring his text more clearly into line with Christian teachings. So he
emphasized the Utopian ban on mocking the afflicted, by offering praise to God that
they were not “like one of them, and this with the great compassion that you should
have for them and also because, by doing so, you obey our Lord God’s command [to
love] our neighbour”.90 Utopian reason and Christian spirituality are bound together
in the Ordenanzas.
Quiroga also advised attending mass, “because it is a holy pursuit, in which much
is gained in everything”.91 The hospitals observed a series of religious festivals, the
main one being the Exaltation of the Cross. These ceremonies were educational and
filled the gap left when the Indians gave up their old indigenous festivals, which they
must certainly have missed. There is, however, little sense in comparing religion in
Utopia with the Christianity that Vasco de Quiroga professed; they were two different
conceptions and the Utopian description was a non-historical abstraction.
So far, I have talked about how Vasco de Quiroga interpreted Thomas More’s
Utopia. I shall now try to show that while the text of Información en derecho and
especially the Reglas y Ordenanzas, both draw heavily on More’s Utopia, they do not
constitute copies, but rather appropriations, re-readings of More’s work, in which
Quiroga dispensed with whatever did not serve his purpose, changed some points and
included new ones. Hence, we can speak of a rewrite, by means of which Quiroga
adapted More’s text to the realities of the historical situation, which is more than an
interpretation.

Irreconcilable differences

Before concluding, the most important difference between the two texts should be
discussed: the subject of the penalty for those who disobeyed the rules. On this point,
there was no possibility of agreement, since Utopia accepted slavery and the death
penalty, two practices that Quiroga fought against during the four decades that he
lived in New Spain. Hence the matter deserves to be treated at greater length.
In Utopia, it states, “serious crimes are punished with servitude, since it is consid-
ered that this is no less daunting to the guilty and far more profitable to the community
than hurrying to be rid of them by immediate execution”.92 This was a criticism of the
situation in England, where theft, for example, was punished by death, as More’s book
explains earlier. The idea was to moderate the punishment and allow the criminal to
be rehabilitated, which could not happen if the person was dead. Those who rebelled
against slavery, however, were not tolerated: “But if they rebel and resist such treat-
ment, then — like wild beasts that can’t be controlled by either bars or chains — they
are put down”.93 On this point, Utopia takes a brutal and uncompromising utilitarian
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view: the life of a criminal was only protected if he was useful to the collective as a
whole; More had no problem with killing rebels.
There was one possibility for releasing prisoners: “Once they have been tamed by
long punishment, if they show by their contrite manner that they regret their crime
more than the punishment it brought on them, then by authority of the governor or
by a public vote their servitude can be mitigated or remitted altogether”.94 Deciding
how to interpret this somewhat subjective criterion rested with the authorities; in other
words, in this case, More was contradicting the principle of rulers being subject to the
law, since they were given the power to determine what should be done, without
having to adhere to any rule. The idea was that the just ruler was not going to commit
an injustice.
On the Island of Utopia, prisoners of war were not regarded as slaves, and slavery
was not passed on from one generation to the next. Only those found guilty of commit-
ting serious offences — whether native-born or foreign (the latter much more
frequently) — were turned into slaves. For such as these — bought for derisory prices
or given away — there was no remission; they were bound in chains and condemned
to perpetual labour. The Utopians treated compatriots who were condemned to
slavery with greater harshness because they thought that they deserved an exemplary
punishment; they reasoned that they “couldn’t be kept from crime in spite of an
admirable education that directed them towards virtue”.95 There were no doubts
about the quality of the education that they had received in Utopia, so that the respon-
sibility fell wholly on the individual, and the sanction was necessary to maintain the
social equilibrium.
There was a type of voluntary slave, the mediastinus. These were the poor from
neighbouring countries who volunteered to serve the Utopians. They were treated
much better than the others, almost as if they were citizens: “Should one of them want
to leave, which doesn’t occur often, they don’t hold him against his will or send him
away empty-handed”.96 This hardly seems like slavery, although that was what More
called it.
None of these forms of slavery was acceptable to Vasco de Quiroga. Cruel histor-
ical reality prevented him from compromising on the matter. The Indians were being
made slaves solely through the greed of the Spanish settlers, against the evangelizing
mission that he wanted. Slavery frequently led to their deaths in the mines. Hence,
neither slavery nor death entered into Quiroga’s plans.
The most common forms of slavery in New Spain arose as a result of war or
ransom. The first consisted of making slaves of prisoners in a “just war”; the second
appeared when someone bought an Indian who was already a slave and was required
to pay the price of his “ransom”. The main objective of Información en derecho was to
demonstrate that none of these types complied with Spanish legal requirements and
were therefore illegitimate.
For Quiroga, the lax attitude towards the practice of slavery in Spanish America
derived from lack of experience, poor understanding, or manipulation of information
in order to favour particular interests, such as the exploitation of the mines using
indigenous labour. His text, therefore, is presented as a kind of battle for the truth, so
that the Council of the Indies would take the decision to abolish slavery in all its forms.
Quiroga said that the slavery of the Indians meant “the total destruction of all the
land”;97 in a physical sense, the Indians would die, the Spaniards would not be able to
guarantee their livelihoods and the whole land would be destroyed. In short it would
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70 | Geraldo Witeze Junior

be a complete disaster, in a spiritual sense also. Everyone would lose: the Indians
because they would remain ignorant of the Christian faith and the Spaniards because
they had abandoned it.
Slavery among the Indians was associated with the old tyrannies, especially the rule
of Moctezuma, the supreme chief of the Mexicas. The Spanish monarch should not
be equated with such tyrants, and this would certainly happen if slavery were main-
tained. If the situation of the Indians stayed as it was before the arrival of the Spaniards,
the conquest could not be justified. In addition, tyranny would challenge the authority
of the Prince.
As for prisoners of war, Quiroga argued that there was no such thing as a just war
and hence that this form of slavery was not in accordance with the legal system of
Spain. He said that the Indians “do not invade us, are not a nuisance, nor do they resist
the preaching of the Holy Gospel”,98 which were the reasons anticipated in doctrine
for considering a war to be just. Nor could the Indians’ natural self-defence against
the attacks of the Spaniards be used to justify war. In the final analysis, slaves of war
were all illegal.
As for the “ransomed” slaves, the line of reasoning was the following: true slavery
did not exist among the Indians, only something that might be called “hiring labour
in perpetuity”. This custom was quite common and those who were hired did not lose
their freedom or their family, and they did not become the property of the lord, so that
when one of these was “ransomed”, his status was changed illegally.
These were the general lines of Quiroga’s argument. Slavery and war against the
Indians were the worst things that could be done in America and nothing could justify
them. Quiroga fought against the enslavement of the Indians and set out his project
as an alternative to the way in which the Spaniards were treating them. From his point
of view, colonization should be based not on violence, but on love. His pueblos-
hospitales were the best way to preserve the land, evangelize the Indians and guarantee
the sustenance of the Spaniards. Opposition to slavery was the cornerstone of the
hospitals’ creed; slavery, therefore, was unacceptable.
The maximum punishment envisaged in the Ordenanzas was expulsion. The
Ordenanzas spoke of behaviours that would carry this sanction: “being unruly, or
outrageous, or a bad Christian, or getting drunk, being too lazy, or refusing to obey
these Regulations or doing anything against them, and being incorrigible in this, or
going against the benefit and common good of the said Hospital”.99 These were poten-
tially contagious behaviours that could compromise the work as a whole. Whoever did
not want to follow the rules of this utopia was invited to leave and live his life elsewhere,
where the world was much worse, and slavery and death probably awaited him.

The meaning of utopia

Vasco de Quiroga interpreted Utopia on the basis of his experience in the New World.
It is a reading based on his actual experience of the daily life of the Indians in New
Spain, particularly in Michoacán. More’s Utopia, set behind a literary artifice, was
detached from history in order to better criticize it. The bishop of Michoacán set out
to make the journey in reverse and bring utopia back as a project with a date and place
for its realization. The existence of the two communities of Santa Fe bears witness to
this.
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Vasco de Quiroga Rewrites Utopia | 71

The writings of Vasco de Quiroga are sharply critical of the colonial system, espe-
cially the violence perpetrated by the Spaniards against the Indians, and slavery. It was
necessary to return to the central values of the Christian faith — “love thy neighbour”,
a simple life, and humility — although the settlers were too bent on becoming rich at
all costs, which left only the Indians.
Quiroga did not think that radical critiques, such as the one made by Las Casas,
would have any effect. The Spanish settlers would not return to the peninsula, the
Crown would not give up its possessions and the Church would not renounce its
authority over the Indians. What options remained then? He thought it necessary to
create an alternative within the colonial system, one under the authority of the Church
and Crown, but avoiding abuses and enabling the lives of the Indians to be reorganized
with some dignity; and, indeed, historical testimonies show that life in the pueblos of
Santa Fe that were governed by the norms of Vasco de Quiroga was, in fact, incom-
parably better than outside them. This probably explains why tata Vasco has remained
a hero in the memory of the indigenous peoples.
Información en derecho and the Reglas y Ordenanzas are at one and the same time a
critique of the colonial system and an attempt to harmonize interests. It was not
possible to extend the solution that they proposed more generally because of the short-
term goals of all the actors. The settlers wanted only to accumulate wealth quickly.
The Crown needed to defray the costs of colonial administration and to increase its
revenues. The Church wanted rapid results in terms of evangelization. Quiroga’s
work, on the other hand, took a long-term view and was not adapted to the frenetic
rhythm of the dawn of modernity.
Quiroga’s utopia can certainly be criticized. It was a top-down, European project,
created by an intellectual for the people, by the metropolis for the colony. It did not
break with the colonial system and, to some extent, contributed to colonization, even
though that was not Quiroga’s intention. Criticism, though, does not need to be
simplistic or to ignore history. It should be recognized that Quiroga proposed a work-
able alternative to colonization, one that was actually implemented, even if only in part.
The proposal had some colonial features, obviously, but there was also a genuine
desire to dignify the lives of the Indians. The fact that the communities lasted for more
than three centuries and the testimony of the Indians themselves show that the objec-
tive was achieved to some extent.
Vasco de Quiroga’s interpretation and rewriting of Thomas More’s Utopia
deserves, nevertheless, to figure more prominently in the universal history of utopias.
More’s Utopia inaugurated the utopian genre and its success over the following
centuries. It was, however, no small matter that barely twenty years after its publica-
tion, a Spanish lawyer should interpret it as a project inspired by God to correct the
course of history. While it was not possible for Quiroga to fully realize his dream, he
did manage to achieve something. And in hard times, it is always as well to remember
that something is better than nothing.

Notes
1 Fintan B. Warren, Vasco de Quiroga and his Pueblo-Hospitals of Santa Fe (Washington DC:
Academy of American Franciscan History, 1963).
2 Bernardino Verástique, Michoacán and Eden: Vasco de Quiroga and the Evangelization of
Western Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000); Fernando Gómez-Herrero,
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72 | Geraldo Witeze Junior

Good Places and Non-Places in Colonial Mexico: The Figure of Vasco de Quiroga (1470–1565)
(Lanham: University Press of America, 2001).
3 Silvio Arturo Zavala, Recuerdo de Vasco de Quiroga (Mexico: Porrúa, 2007), p. 66.
4 Vasco de Quiroga, “Carta al Consejo”, in La utopía en América (Madrid: Dastin, 2002),
p. 62. “ordenados en toda buena orden de policía y con santas y buenas y católicas
ordenanzas”; Alejandra B. Osorio, Inventing Lima: Baroque Modernity in Peru’s South Sea
Metropolis (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), p. 220, glosses the sixteenth-century
concept of policía as follows: “Policía. The good government and civilized life made possible
by the laws and ordinances of a well-ordered community or república; civic order; civility;
urbanity, refinement, and manners”.
5 Ibid., p. 63: “tabla rasa y cera muy blanda”.
6 Vasco de Quiroga, “Información en derecho”, in La utopía en América (Madrid: Dastin,
2002), p. 93: “dócil e hecho de cera para todo bien”.
7 Sonia Corcuera de Mancera, El fraile, el indio y el pulque: Evangelización y embriaguez en la
Nueva España (1523–1548) (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1991).
8 Pedro Márquez Joaquín, ed., ¿Tarascos o Purépecha?: Voces sobre antiguas y nuevas discu-
siones en torno al gentilicio michoacano (Morelia: UMSNH, Instituto de investigaciones
históricas-Universidad Intercultural Indígena de Michoacán-El Colegio de Michoacán-
Grupo Kw’anískuyarhani de Estudiosos del Pueblo Purépecha, 2007).
9 Quiroga, “Carta al Consejo”, p. 64: “pues todo es para ellos mismos y para sus hijos y
descendientes y deudos y para pro y bien común de todos donde se han de recoger los huér-
fanos y pobres de las tales comarcas y ser doctrinados y enseñados en las cosas de nuestra
santa fe”.
10 Quiroga, “Información en derecho”, p. 75: “la confusión e infierno de las minas”.
11 Ibid., p. 195: “contarla y afirmarla por cosa vista y hecha y experimentada, y porque, si esto
una vez no se experimentase, parece que no se podría creer”.
12 Ibid., p. 196: “quien lo tiene experimentado ninguna duda pone en ello”.
13 Frank Lestringant, “O impacto das descobertas geográficas na concepção política e social
da utopia”, Morus — Utopia e Renascimento 3 (2006): 155–73.
14 Quiroga, “Información en derecho”, p. 218: “el arte y manera de las gentes simplicísimas
de este Nuevo Mundo”; “conformes y semejantes a aquéllas de aquella gente de oro de
aquella primera edad dorada”.
15 Ibid.: “varón ilustre y de genio más que humano”; “inspirado del Espíritu Santo”.
16 Ibid.: “ordenanzas y muy buen estado de la república”; “para hacerlos bastantes para no se
consumir ni acabar, y para introducir la fe y policía mixta que solamente les falta”.
17 Ibid.: “gran griego y gran experto y de mucha autoridad”.
18 Ibid., p. 219: “para tal gente, tal arte y estado de república convenía y era menester, y que
en sola ella y no en otra se podía conservar por las razones todas que dichas son”.
19 Agnes Heller, Renaissance Man (New York: Routledge, 2016).
20 Marcel Bataillon, “Vasco de Quiroga et Bartolomé de Las Casas”, Revista de Historia de
América 33 (1952): 83–95.
21 Quiroga, “Información en derecho”, p. 223: “policía humana en tanta perfección no se
podría conservar, si todos no fuesen buenos, lo que parece imposible”.
22 Ibid., p. 224: “las raíces de toda discordia y desasosiego y de toda lujuria y codicia y
ociosidad y pérdida de tiempo mal gastado”; “se introduce la paz y justicia, y en ella [la
república] se besan y abrazan con la equidad”.
23 Ibid.: “una ciudad de seis mil familias, y cada familia de diez hasta diez y seis casados
familiares de ella, que son sobre sesenta mil vecinos”.
24 Thomas More, Utopia (London: Penguin, 2012), p. 68.
25 Zavala, Recuerdo, pp. 161–165.
26 Quiroga, “Información en derecho”, p. 234: “harto sabio y sutil”.
27 Ibid.: “para responder y satisfacer a todos los contrarios y tácitas objeciones que sintió este
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Vasco de Quiroga Rewrites Utopia | 73

varón prudentísimo que se le podrían oponer en su república, que son las mismas que se
le han opuesto y podrán oponer a la de mi parecer”.
28 Ibid.: “honra y gloria en estos tiempos de la escuela de Francia”; “un seminario de correctas
y provechosas costumbres, de donde cada uno ha de sacar y acomodar tradiciones para su
respectiva sociedad”.
29 Rafael Aguayo Spencer, Don Vasco de Quiroga: Taumaturgo de la organización social, seguido
de un apéndice documental (Mexico: Oasis, 1970), pp. 243–244: “el último periodo de su
vida y por esta razón quedaron en borrador, sin haberse podido sacar una copia en limpio,
ni haberse puesto en observancia, como lo deseaba su piadoso autor”.
30 Vasco de Quiroga, “Reglas y Ordenanzas para el Gobierno de los Hospitales de Santa Fe
de México y Michoacán”, in La utopía en América (Madrid: Dastin, 2002), p. 253: “los
oficios de Tejedores, y otros todos a este oficio anexos, y pertenecientes, y Canteros,
Carpinteros, Albañiles, Herreros y otros semejantes útiles y necesarios a la República del
Hospital”.
31 Ibid.: “dos, o tres días de trabajo de sol a sol en la semana”.
32 Ibid., p. 263: “obras que convengan para los oficios, y necesidades del dicho Hospital”.
33 Ibid., p. 261: “estar allí, más tiempo, que con licencia expresa del Rector y Regidores, y no
de otra manera alguna lo pueda hacer”; “han de estar bien instructas, y proveídas de herra-
mientas, e instrumentos necesarios para la labor”.
34 Ibid.: “Veedor general de ellas, y que las vea, y visite, y avise al Rector, y Principal, y
Regidores dichos los que hubiere de remediar, proveer, y reformar en ellas”.
35 Ibid., p. 266: “ir algún día a recrear, y os desenfadar por las familias del campo rústicas”.
36 Ibid.: “con licencia del Rector, y Principal, y Regidores, y no de otra manera”.
37 Ibid., p. 259: “los oficios mujeriles dados a ellas, y adoptados, y necesarios al pro, y bien
suyo y de la república del Hospital, como son obras de lana, y lino, y seda, y algodón, y
para todo lo necesario, accesorio, y útil al oficio de los telares”.
38 María Guadalupe Chávez Carbajal, “Visión y condición de la mujer en Nueva España: el
caso de Michoacán”, Historia y Espacio 19 (2002): 1–10, esp. p. 2: “participaban junto a
sus hombres en las siembras y cosechas, además de tejer mantas, paños de chocolate y otras
cosas más que eran bien recibidas por la sociedad en general”.
39 Quiroga, “Reglas y Ordenanzas”, p. 255: “congrua, cómoda y honestamente, según que
cada uno, según su calidad, y necesidad, manera, y condición, lo haya menester para sí, y
para su familia, de manera que ninguno padezca en el Hospital necesidad”.
40 Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1972),
p. 17.
41 Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1995).
42 Bartolomé Bennassar, La España del Siglo de Oro (Barcelona: Crítica, 2004).
43 Quiroga, “Reglas y Ordenanzas”, p. 263: “sembréis en cada un año doblado de lo que
hayáis menester, lo cual guardaréis hasta que no pueda faltar verosímilmente el año
presente”.
44 Ibid., pp. 263–264: “ciertos indicios, y verosimilitud”; “ciertas conjeturas naturales”.
45 Mauricio Nieto Olarte, “Ciencia, imperio, modernidad y eurocentrismo: el mundo atlántico
del siglo XVI y la comprensión del Nuevo Mundo”, Historia Crítica, Special Issue (2009):
12–32.
46 Quiroga, “Reglas y Ordenanzas”, p. 256: “si de otra manera fuese, se perdería esta buena
obra”.
47 Paz Serrano Gassent, Vasco de Quiroga: utopía y derecho en la conquista de América (Madrid:
Fondo de Cultura Económica-Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, 2001),
p. 229: “empezaron a aparecer conflictos en los pueblos, al iniciarse la venta de las propie-
dades a extraños”.
48 Quiroga, “Reglas y Ordenanzas”, p. 262: “muchas aves de todo género, así de Castilla,
como de la tierra, y Pavos, y de otros géneros provechosos, y vistosos, y ganados, como son
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74 | Geraldo Witeze Junior

Ovejas, Carneros, Cabras, Vacas, Puercos, y animales serviles, según de la calidad de la

tierra, y Bueyes”.
49 Ibid.: “árboles fructíferos de Castilla, y de la tierra, como de todo género de hortaliza buena,
y de todas las semillas saludables, y provechosas, lino, cáñamo, trigo, maíz, y cebada, u
orozuz”.
50 Ibid., p. 271.
51 More, Utopia, pp. 108–109.
52 Ernest J. Burrus, “Cristóbal Cabrera on the Missionary Methods of Vasco de Quiroga”,
Manuscripta 5, 1 (1961): 17–27; Ross Dealy, Vasco de Quiroga’s Thought on War: Its
Erasmian and Utopian Roots (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1975).
53 Quiroga, “Reglas y Ordenanzas”, p. 258: “que enseñéis, o podáis enseñar [lo que habían
aprendido], y aprovechar con ello a nuestros prójimos do quiera que fuéredes, y halléis
siempre quien por ello os acoja, y os hagan honra y provecho”.
54 Ibid., p. 257: “aprobada por su Santidad del Papa”.
55 María Amparo López Arandia, “De Castilla a Michoacán. La obra de Gutierre González
en la educación del siglo XVI”, Revista de Antropología Experimental 10 (2010): 131: “una
mejora en el nivel de instrucción y formación espiritual en un ámbito tangible”.
56 More, Utopia, p. 92.
57 Quiroga, “Reglas y Ordenanzas”, p. 258: “todo siempre según orden de la Sta. Madre
Iglesia de Roma, y no clandestinamente, sino si posible es con la voluntad de los Padres, y
Madres naturales y de su familia”.
58 Ibid., p. 259: “criados, y criadas, y otros servidores, que suelen ser costosos y muy enojosos
a sus amos”.
59 Ibid., p. 260: “los excesos y desconciertos”; “aconteciesen los tales excesos y descuidos por
la inhabilidad, y mal recaudo de los dichos Padres de familia, elíjanse otros, que sean hábiles
que más convenga de la misma familia”.
60 Ibid.: “vergüenza y deshonra en la corrección”.
61 Burrus, “Cristóbal Cabrera”, p. 19.
62 Quiroga, “Reglas y Ordenanzas”, p. 260: “poner algunas veces las manos en la obra,
mayormente a los principios, porque los demás hayan vergüenza, y hagan lo mismo, y no
tengan pereza, ni excusa para dejar de hacer lo que deban”.
63 Aires A. Nascimento, note 48 in Thomas More, Utopia ou a melhor forma de governo, 2nd
ed. (Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2009), p. 310.
64 Quiroga, “Reglas y Ordenanzas”, p. 264: “una caja, o cofre grande barreteado de tres llaves,
una que tenga el Rector, otra el Principal, y otra el más antiguo Regidor”.
65 Warren, Vasco de Quiroga, chapters 5 and 7.
66 Quiroga, “Reglas y Ordenanzas”, p. 265: “de algodón, y lana, blancos, limpios, y honestos,
sin pinturas, sin otras labores costosas, y demasiadamente curiosas”.
67 José Luis de Rojas, “Inventiva y picaresca indígena en el trabajo en la Nueva España en el
siglo XVI”, Relaciones. Estudios de Historia y Sociedad 11, 44 (1990): 7–31.
68 Quiroga, “Reglas y Ordenanzas”, p. 265: “y así cese la envidia, y soberbia de querer andar
vestidos, y aventajados los unos más, y mejor que los otros, de que suele hacer envidia entre
hombres vanos, y poco prudentes, y disención, y discordia”.
69 Ibid., p. 270: “ni os imbixéis, ni pintéis, ni os ensuciéis los rostros, manos, ni brazos en
manera alguna, como lo solíades hacer”.
70 Ibid.: “que haya dentro en el alma”.
71 Ibid., pp. 265–6: “y lo más del cuerpo, sobre las otras vestiduras, que suelen traer y sin
pinturas, ni labores de colores, que no sean muy costosas, ni muy curiosas, mayormente
cuando vais a la iglesia”.
72 Ibid., p. 265: “dolor de costado, que de ello se causa, y da en los pechos, y mata”.
73 Ibid.: “en público en la plaza, y en la iglesia los días festivos”.
74 Ibid., pp. 266–67: “de cuatro que de sí mismos todos los pobres del Hospital, divididos en
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Vasco de Quiroga Rewrites Utopia | 75

cuatro partes, o cuadrillas, de cada cuadrilla, el suyo, o todos juntos”; “y de manera que
ande la rueda por todos los casados hábiles”.
75 Ibid., p. 266: “la Misa del Espíritu Santo, y habiendo jurado en forma, que elegirán a su
entender el más hábil, útil y suficiente al pro, y bien común de la República del Hospital,
sin pasión ni afición”.
76 Vasco de Quiroga, “Testamento de Don Vasco de Quiroga”, in La utopía en América
(Madrid: Daston, 2002), p. 286: “después de nuestros días se ponga de tres en tres años
por el patrón de los dichos hospitales”.
77 Ibid., p. 287: “suficiencia, honestidad y prudencia”; “siempre de tres en tres años, como es
dicho, y con expresa licencia dada in scriptis firmada de nos y del dicho patrón rector . . .
de dicho colegio de San Nicolás, con parecer del deán y cabildo”.
78 Quiroga, “Reglas y Ordenanzas”, p. 267: “sea manso, sufrido, y no más áspero, ni riguroso
de aquello que convenga [...] y no consienta ser menospreciado de nadie antes procure ser
amado, y honrado de todos como sea razón, más por voluntad, y amor, que por temor, ni
rigor”.
79 1 Timothy 3:1–13; Titus 1: 6–9.
80 2 Timothy 2: 24. New American Standard Bible (NASB).
81 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1909–14; Bartleby.com,
2001), p. 32.
82 Desiderius Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince (New York: Octagon Books,
1963), p. 206.
83 Quiroga, “Reglas y Ordenanzas”, p. 267: “Y otro Ayuntamiento fuera de éste no se haga
por nadie en el Hospital, so penas graves de ser lanzados, y privados de él”.
84 Ibid., p. 268: “conforme a estas Ordenanzas, y lo demás que les pareciere que convenga no
yendo contra ellas, con acuerdo del Rector siempre”.
85 Ibid.: “cosas dudosas, o dificultosas, lo platiquen primero tres días antes, que se determinen
en lo que se hubiere de hacer, salvo si fuere cosa de poca importancia, o que no sufra tanta
dilación”.
86 More, Utopia, p. 95.
87 Quiroga, “Reglas y Ordenanzas”, p. 269: “llana y amigablemente”; “donde paguéis dere-
chos, y después os echen en la cárcel”; “Habéis de ser en este Hospital todos hermanos en
Jesucristo con vínculo de paz, y caridad, como se os encarga, y encomienda mucho”.
88 Matthew 5: 25–26.
89 1 Corinthians 6, 7. NASB.
90 Quiroga, “Reglas y Ordenanzas”, p. 270: “como uno de ellos, y esto con mucha compasión,
que de ellos hayáis, y porque también en esto cumpláis lo que Dios nuestro Señor nos
manda de nuestros prójimo”.
91 Ibid., p. 272: “pues es santa ocupación, en que se gana mucho en todo”.
92 More, Utopia, p. 94.
93 Ibid.
94 Ibid.
95 Ibid., p. 91.
96 Ibid.
97 Quiroga, “Información en derecho”, p. 73: “la total perdición de toda la tierra”.
98 Ibid., p. 83: “no nos infectan, ni molestan, ni resisten a la predicación del Santo Evangelio”.
99 Quiroga, “Reglas y Ordenanzas”, p. 272: “ser revoltoso, o escandaloso, o mal cristiano, o
se emborrachar, o demasiado perezoso, o que no quisiere guardar estas Ordenanzas, o
fuere, o viniere contra ellas, y fuere en ello incorregible, o fuere, o viniere contra el pro y
bien común de este dicho Hospital”.
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Where is Columbus’s
Helmsman Taking Us?:
4 The City of the Sun of
Tommaso Campanella
as a Utopia Critical of
the Iberian Empires
Carlos E. O. Berriel

In 1602, when Tommaso Campanella wrote The City of the Sun, there were three
wholly Catholic countries: Spain, Portugal and Italy. These same countries also consti-
tuted the richest states in Europe. The Italian states were advanced centres of
Mediterranean trade at the time, while the Iberian peninsula was united under a single
crown and controlled the New World, which included America, India, Africa and
other colonial territories. Three hundred years later, these three countries were among
the poorest in Europe and their societies lay in ruins. In large part, they survived by
exporting their peasants to the emerging Latin American economies that had once
been their possessions. They all remained impeccably Catholic. They all adopted
fascism shortly afterwards as a form of state.
None of this could have been foreseen by the thinkers and philosophers of the
Counter-Reformation. Nevertheless, Campanella already perceived some of the
essential elements of the situation, which makes him a shrewd observer and analyst of
his time and its problems. In order to understand the complex structure of the utopia
that he created, The City of the Sun, it is necessary to relate it to the events of that
historical period, by which we mean not only the religious crisis and the reorganization
of the Catholic Church during the Council of Trent, but also the creation of the Iberian
colonial system, the consolidation of the Spanish monarchy under absolutism, the
wars of religion in France, the Thirty Years’ War, the transition from a merchant
economy to a manufacturing one and, finally, the scientific revolution.
Campanella’s utopia arose in the context of the Counter-Reformation. It is both a
criticism of the Counter-Reformation and hostile to what the Iberian monarchies
stood for in their alliance with the Roman Catholic Church. In this respect, therefore,
the City of the Sun would be the antithesis of the model that Spain and Portugal
imposed on their respective empires; it represents a proposal that charts a different
course, one which, had it been followed, would have led Latin America towards a polit-
ical, economic and cultural model more in accord with modern science and the
developments being promoted by the bourgeoisie in the Protestant countries of
Northern Europe.
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Where is Columbus’s Helmsman Taking Us? | 77

Campanella: A utopian, a rebel and a prophet

The author of the utopian work that best expressed the complex problems of the
Reformation and Counter-Reformation and the turbulent atmosphere that sur-
rounded them was Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639). He set out his ideal republic
in his best-known work, The City of the Sun (1602).1 This republic, in his view, offered
a political model that was able to save the Church from the devastating blows of the
Protestant Reformation and lead it once and for all to a prime position among the king-
doms of this world. His idea of salvation for the Church, however, did not coincide
with the hegemonic view, strongly influenced by the Jesuits, that was conceived at the
Council of Trent. His is a theocratic polis based on the natural philosophy of
Bernardino Telesio, the same philosophy that was sending Giordano Bruno to the
stake, and which would soon bring Galileo Galilei before the court of the Inquisition.
Campanella, like Thomas More, was a scholar and an enemy of scholasticism and
both were political martyrs. Campanella came from the poverty of the Calabrian
countryside, where he was born in 1568, the son of an illiterate shoemaker. Calabria
was a land of medieval communists, later rocked by heresies and religious move-
ments, and was also the birthplace of the medieval millenarist Joachim of Fiore. In
order to obtain a good education, he entered the Order of Preachers, or Dominicans,
since he was an ardent admirer of the doctrine of the great saints of the Order, St.
Thomas Aquinas and St. Albert the Great. In the libraries, he read everything, from
medicine to astrology, books of magic and prophecy, works of superstition and
science. At the age of twenty, he read De rerum natura iuxta propria principia by
Bernardino Telesio (1509–88), a work in which Telesio explained physics as based
entirely on nature and was the complete opposite of the Aristotelianism that was
prevalent in the schools.2 The influence of Telesio would be enduring, providing
Campanella with a mental framework that would be crucial for writing The City of
the Sun. His utopian polis was, as we shall see, a vast, complex and bold structure,
which can only fully be understood by reference to the circumstances of his time.
Campanella, like Thomas More, was an astute reader of the contemporary world,
which he portrayed in the City of the Sun.

Time and circumstance: the revolution in the sciences

The most original aspect of Tommaso Campanella’s thought was rooted in his aspi-
ration to reconcile the new Renaissance natural philosophy with a proposal for the
radical reform of the sciences and society.3 The image of nature as the bringer of
harmony, truth and justice — and understood as the expression of the ars divina —
became a model that served as the inspiration for re-establishing the encyclopaedia of
knowledge and, in particular, for reflecting upon life associated with man. Violence,
injustice and the human errors that unsettle civil societies all stemmed from the fact
that men had strayed from the model of nature, in which it was necessary once more
to find fresh inspiration in order to reform communal life effectively.
It was not a question of evils — violence, injustice and errors — seen in terms of
ethical abstractions, but specific aspects of earthly life. One of the most terrifying
questions at that time was the hostility of the Catholic Church towards scientific
discoveries. After the Council of Trent, the Church — which in previous times had
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78 | Carlos E. O. Berrriel

been objective and neutral with respect to both these advances and the philosophy that
gave rise to them — identified the scientific revolution as one of the main sources of
Protestantism, because it was a strand of thought that released science from the
custody of religion, and regarded man — based on the humanism of Pico della
Mirandola and Erasmus, among others — as an analogue of God and fully capable of
initiating a satisfactory relationship with the creator of the world and his work, without
the need for intermediaries like the Church.
Campanella’s work was well expressed and directed towards the single aim of re-
establishing the power of the Church; this was the complete opposite of what his many
enemies claimed. He considered that the Tridentine reform was not only insufficient
to lead the world back to the Catholic Church and its control, but also inadequate for
restoring Rome as the appropriate entity for accomplishing that task.
In writing The City of the Sun, Campanella relied on the social imaginary in its
utopian variant in order to undertake a thoroughgoing criticism of the Tridentine
Church, its decisions and commitments, and at the same time, to advocate a complete
overhaul of the theoretical and practical assumptions of the Counter-Reformation. In
essence, Campanella wanted to reconcile faith and reason by redirecting science
towards the inner workings of the Church; this action was indispensable for saving it
from imminent irrelevance with respect to those states that were already Protestant,
supporting the scientific revolution with its corresponding economic repercussions,
and which would soon become the principal centres of power and colonial
metropolises. More specifically, Campanella wanted the expression of faith conceived
by the Counter Reformation to yield to the way of thinking of the scientific revolution
in order to conquer the throne of the world. This would involve a radical change in
Church policy, which saw the essence of its new identity in the structural alliance with
the Iberian metropolises. Ultimately, what the philosopher wanted was to save the
Church from itself and to rectify the path that it had taken.
Campanella’s universalist ideal was born and manifested itself immediately in
mature form. In his first political text, he already addressed the questions that would
occupy his mind for forty-five years: the state of primordial innocence in nature, the
loss of that innocence — which brought all the evils into the world — and the hope
for a cosmic regeneration that would lead humanity back to the golden age, the
moment when, with all antagonism overcome, a single universal, priestly, Christian
monarchy would be instituted, which would rule the world in an age of peace and
supreme blessedness.
These objectives of Campanella’s are intrinsic to the Catholic conception of
universalism. The sin of Adam continued to be the origin of the destruction of the
Garden of Eden and the coming of Christ brought redemption. That redemption,
however, was merely potential, and was not immediately effective in social and
political affairs without the efficacious collaboration of Man. According to
Campanella, human action for conscious salvation was still at an early stage because
Christ’s words were neither faithfully heard nor followed, so delaying the return of
peace and happiness on earth.
To hasten the prophesied coming of this golden event announced in the scriptures,
Campanella became involved in eliminating the obstacles represented by international
political agreements and in correcting the Church’s drift off course, a Church that was
slow to renew and purify itself of excesses in order to match up to the task of universal
government that he himself was preaching.
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Where is Columbus’s Helmsman Taking Us? | 79

Even before The City of the Sun, Campanella had already drawn up a bold and
ambitious plan. With the Lutheran Reformation and its consequences for European
politics, the separation between temporal and spiritual powers intensified, a division
that Campanella rebelled against. In his view, the Christian world ought to have a
single government, exercised by an authority who was a political and a religious leader
at one and the same time; logic dictated that it should be the pope. In practice,
Campanella advocated that a European sovereign sufficiently powerful to make the
conquest of that universal monarchy a viable proposition should mobilize economic,
political and military resources and place them at the feet of the throne of the pontiff
of Rome. Campanella initially proposed that Philip II, king of Spain, should lead this
mission (Discorsi ai prìncipi d’Italia, 1595), and forty years later, that it should be the
king of France, Louis XIV (Monarchie delle nazioni, 1635) and his minister, Cardinal
Richelieu.

The circumstances of a work: The Calabrian revolt

and Spanish domination

For Maria Moneti Codignola, with The City of the Sun, Campanella joined in the
debate of an issue that was already settled and his contribution was to reinforce certain
topoi and characteristic notions, such as the Calabrian heretical-utopian tradition and
the dramatic panorama of Italy, especially southern Italy, between the end of the six-
teenth century and the first half of the following one.4 This panorama was
characterized by Spanish domination, which would immediately adopt those colonial
features for which it unfortunately became notorious, namely, economic and cultural
decline due to the loss of political freedom, the strong presence of the Church and its
fight against heretics and reformers, spearheaded by the Holy Inquisition. For Moneti
Codignola, reading Campanella means picking one’s way through the language of
someone who is forced to live a life of constant pretence and dissimulation out of the
sheer need for self-preservation and so expresses himself in cyphers and codes.
Historical elements make it necessary to establish a connection between the
creation of this utopia and the crisis caused by Spanish domination of the kingdom
of Naples, and more specifically, the movement known as the Calabrian revolt. The
“real” world of Campanella was, first and foremost, Spanish domination of the coun-
try where he was born. Campanella was a subject of Naples and also, therefore, of
the Spanish Empire, because the monarchs of Aragon had occupied the throne of
Naples. Between 1503 and 1713, Naples was the second most important city in the
Spanish monarchy. As well as harbouring the biggest fleet in Europe, it was the city
with the largest number of inhabitants. This feature helped to make the city the major
cultural hub of the empire and an important centre of political and economic power.
In addition to being a philosopher, Campanella was a supporter of direct political
action, and the 1599 revolt in Calabria, just after the death of Philip II, provided him
with an exceptional opportunity. Campanella threw himself body and soul into this
visionary enterprise. Camouflaged among the multitude of dreamers, rebels and
bandits, he had a plan to liberate Calabria, which, under the yoke of the feudal nobil-
ity, high-handed clergy and oppressive Spanish rule, lived in a state of dire poverty
and discontent. This situation persuaded him that it was possible to organize a large
scale movement of popular revolt by taking advantage of the internal divisions in the
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80 | Carlos E. O. Berrriel

Kingdom of Naples and seeking assistance from the Turks, who wielded great power
in the Mediterranean. His denunciation of the oppression and decadence of local
public life took on a utopian, prophetic tone. He preached a republican polis in
Calabria, one that he intended to establish by force. It would be a communitarian,
theocratic polis, without private property or classes, and he himself would be its leg-
islator and leader, organizing the region according to the principles of a City of God.
Campanella openly incited rebellion against the Church, which had dismissed his
ecumenical proposals. Based on his studies of astrology, he announced future trans-
formations of the world, prophesied, on the basis of omens, the imminent return of
political and religious unity, and forecast significant wonders for the year 1600, the
moment when the Christian republic promised by St. Catherine and St. Bridget would
arrive. That republic was the one he set out in The City of the Sun.
Two traitors betrayed him to the Spanish government and the revolt failed.
Together with hundreds of rebels, Campanella was taken prisoner and, as the recog-
nized leader of the revolt, was accused of treason and heresy. Brutally tortured,
Campanella spent twenty-seven years in the Spanish prison in Naples, where he wrote
his utopia. The objective of this work was to explain his political project and the theory
that informed it and — as we have already mentioned — perhaps, in this way, secure
his release.

The Solarian programme

Campanella wrote The City of the Sun while in prison in Naples. The work was written
primarily with the intention of demonstrating that the union of faith and reason, of the
Church and the new science, would lead to Caesaropapism. The symbiotic relation-
ship between Rome and the Iberian metropolises that the Jesuits had fostered, on the
other hand, had turned reason and faith into irreconcilable polar opposites. The result
was the rejection of the modern world by the Church, cloistered in its particularism
and contrary to the universality of scientific reason.
The name of the City of the Sun derives from the practice of sun worship that was
observed there. Initially it was written in the Italian vernacular (Città del Sole, 1602),
but there are numerous later versions in Latin (Civitas solis). The novelesque plot owes
a good deal to More’s Utopia, the literary framework, and even the significant number
of utopias published during the ninety years that separate these two central works of
the genre. It has the most obvious and commonly found external characteristic of
utopias — insularity — since utopias are always isolated from history, even when they
are not actually islands; Campanella’s city of the sun, for example, is to be found
“rising from a broad plain”.5 This insularity is not merely a geographical fiction, but
a mental attitude in which the island has the classic function of an ideal representation.
The objective of using the island as a metaphor is to preserve the utopian community
from outside corruption. In this way, it is possible to represent a closed world, a micro-
cosm ruled by specific laws that enable a society uncontaminated by evolution to exist,
a contrast to the “real world”, in which both the author and the readers of the utopia
are situated.
According to Germana Ernst, at the same time, The City of the Sun was drawn up
as a programme for the failed insurrection and its philosophical idealization. The
appeal to nature, understood as the intrinsic expression of divine art, and the
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Where is Columbus’s Helmsman Taking Us? | 81

criticism of existing society, unhappy and unfair precisely because it had strayed
from that model or because it did not imitate it correctly, are the keys to a simpler,
more persuasive reading of Campanella’s utopia. In his utopia, Campanella sketches
the philosophical city he wished to found. The correct imitation of the natural model
would initially involve readjusting the relationship between social roles and individual
attitudes and intentions. When this relationship is upset, the roles in the social
comedy are assigned without rhyme or reason and what predominates is a separation
between being and appearance. Thus, false kings like Nero prevail, whereas wise
men like Socrates, a king in veritate and by nature, are persecuted and put to death.
The aim of the Solarians is to reject the dominant madness in order to re-establish a
proper connection between society and nature. This would help to avoid the distor-
tions and ills stemming from the prevalence of chaos over reason and appearance
over truth.
In the City of the Sun, autonomous natural science and faith are not incompatible
but complementary, contradicting the ideals of the Council of Trent. Given that
nature is the living statue of God, studying the laws and phenomena of nature is to
draw nearer to God, since He is present in them. Scientific research is an activity
similar to prayer, which is why Hoh, the great ruler, is both the chief priest and the
principal scientist.
The City of the Sun is an unusual utopia, which differs from other common expres-
sions of utopia by presenting itself, not as a satire, but as clear scientific prediction, an
inevitable, fateful event destined to happen in the real world once the stars were
favourably aligned. Hence, it brings together, with remarkable energy, prophetism and
natural philosophy.
In its original conception, the City of the Sun occupied the whole of the earth; only
later was it reduced to a single city. The city reproduces Copernicus’s rational model
of the solar system; it comprises seven concentric circuits with the names of the seven
planets, at the centre of which there is a round temple, which acts as the heart and
brain of this philosophical polis.
The work takes the form of a poetical dialogue between a Grandmaster of the
Knights Hospitallers and a Genoese Sea-captain who had been Christopher
Columbus’s helmsman and who, upon disembarking at the island of Taprobane,
discovered the City of the Sun in the middle of a large plain.
The political regime of the City of the Sun is reminiscent of a theocratic system.
Above them all is the Metaphysic 6 or the Sun, named Hoh, “their spiritual and their
temporal chief ”.7 He is both priest and prince, whose pre-eminence shines out because
of his immense wisdom. The power exercised by the ruler emanates from God and
belongs, on Earth, to Hoh. This priesthood invested with political power owes its pres-
tige to metaphysical wisdom and historical and technical experience, and is
consecrated by means of the sacramental act of ordination and divine investiture.
In the exercise of power, Hoh receives the support of the Supreme Council, a
triumvirate of princes comprising:

~ Pon, or Power, with jurisdiction over all matters pertaining to war and peace.
Under his orders, women and children are continually prepared for war, in spite
of the fact that Solarians — like More’s Utopians — are peace loving and fight only
to defend themselves or to keep the balance of power in the region.
~ Sin, or Wisdom, coordinates the production of knowledge and education, which
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82 | Carlos E. O. Berrriel

is universal. The seven walls of the city are decorated with frescoes of geographical
maps, mathematical proofs and theorems, great people and figures, animals,
plants, and so on, turning the city itself into a kind of book. This radical educational
method generates wise men such as Hoh the Metaphysic, an all-knowing creature,
at once a priest, scientist and philosopher, a mediator between the divine will and
human intelligence. Particular importance is attached to the sphere of education,
which is regarded as all-powerful and the fundamental method for acting on
human material; its intention is to eradicate the anarchic, individualistic, primitive
nature present in the citizens. Its paideia seeks the introjection of order and rules
to eliminate dissidence and opposition, with the fundamental aim of adapting the
structure of the mind in accordance with the social structure. The boys are taught
from their earliest years, as they play and walk along the city walls. It is not a ques-
tion of guiding them according to their personal inclinations, but of ensuring that
they gain an understanding of all areas of knowledge. In this way, the boys learn
all the trades, choosing a definitive occupation only when their general education
is finished. For the Solarians, the man who masters all branches of knowledge is
suited to the science of government, for he is the one who best understands the
knowledge that is essential to social order.
~ Mor or Love is in charge of procreation and matrimony, two strictly controlled
activities that are not left to the free will of individuals, who obediently hand their
bodies over to the State for the essential function of reproduction. The men are
married at the age of twenty-one and the women at nineteen. Matrimony is medi-
cally prescribed and regulated, according to circumstances, by eugenic criteria
typical of stock breeding in order to improve the race and produce the type of
Solarians that the State wants. The doctors choose the couples in accordance with
physical characteristics determined by the State. Copulation takes place at a time
determined by astrologers in order to favour characteristics also imposed by power.
The future spouses, while they wait separately, recollect themselves in prayer. The
woman must contemplate statues of distinguished men, whose images will have a
positive influence on their progeny. Sterile women remain at the service of the
community and may attend to the needs of men who are unable to remain chaste.
The boys, as in Sparta, belong to the State. It is not the citizens who choose the
city, but the city that chooses its citizens.

In principle, nobody has absolute power in the City of the Sun. The people’s
Assembly has the authority to remove any magistrate from office, except the four prin-
cipal ones. Removal from office is decided in a consensual manner, because the
magistrates are so wise and virtuous that they resign their posts of their own accord if
they find more suitable and worthier citizens to carry out their functions.
The egalitarian nature of their laws brings about social uniformity; dissidence,
objections or demands are unknown among the Solarians, and there are no active
minorities or political parties. The citizen is regarded as part of the whole, a whole in
which he is a mere particle. His will blends instinctively into the State’s, which is
rational and just, and where the individual is always subject to the requirements of
order and general equilibrium.
State control over all aspects of life is revealed in the geometrical structure of the
city. The passion for symmetry reflects a love of order taken to mystic extremes. Its
inner workings run like clockwork.
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This polis is organized along the lines of a convent, with perpetual worship before
the altar of the temple, whose interior is decorated like a representation of the
Copernican universe. The divine will is the inspiration for everything. The city’s
hierarchy goes from God to man, passing first through the priests, who “serve as
mediators between God and man”8 due to the greatness of Hoh the Metaphysic. The
religious abstraction of deism prevails, supported by rational inquiry. The main pillars
of Solarian religion are: a generalized worship of the Creator and a belief in divine
providence, the immortality of the soul, reward and eternal damnation. They worship
no physical creature and there are no manifestations of idolatry. The Sun is venerated
only as the visible image of God. Public and secret confession is practised, although
the objective of this is more ethical and social than religious.
In the City of the Sun there is only a residual form of commerce. The singular
energy of Campanella’s proto-economic ideas is one of the profoundest results of his
links with Telesio’s philosophy, which, as we saw, is reflected in his concept of religion.
For Agnes Heller,

The utopias of More and Campanella should not be treated simply as ideal demands for ethical
norms, springing purely from moral indignation. They wished (…) to satisfy at one and the
same time the demands of both optimalization and humanization. This optimalization (…)
explored the possibilities of making maximum use of the means of production (…) or of
raising productivity.9

Under these conditions, there was no asceticism or sharing of poverty in these utopias,
so that the concept of the satisfaction of basic human needs would be a static one.
Consequently, Campanella and More “desired and premised a way of life in keeping
with the needs of their time, but truly humanistic, and one that could be enjoyed at
the existing standard of the age”10. The combination of the ethical and economic
perspectives gives rise to a special style, which is precisely utopia:

Passionate indignation and deep moral pathos are combined with an expert, objective, scien-
tific, and detailed description of the model proposed. (…) Objectively, the paradoxical thing
about both works is that (…) their critical sections have universal validity, while their objec-
tive, ‘scientific’ sections turn out to be naïve.11

As Campanella is more specific with respect to the participation of the Solarians in

science and its technology, he would come across as more exaggeratedly “naïve”.
Nevertheless, as Heller says,

But the brilliance of both works shines through the naivety. It is particularly apparent in the
fact that when the economic structure is described, (…) the emphasis falls at least as much
on production as on distribution and consumption. More and Campanella instinctively knew
that ‘inequities’ in distribution are a function of how production is organized. Here, moreover,
the seemingly more naïve Campanella was actually the more perceptive. For while More
thought that the elimination of private property would be sufficient to set a new productive
mechanism in motion, that was still not enough for Campanella. In More, production is carried
on in the family. Sons follow their father’s trade, the family makes its own clothing, and so
forth; only distribution, and in part, consumption, are in common. Campanella, however,
envisages production too as social, in large-scale workshops and work brigades. The fact that
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84 | Carlos E. O. Berrriel

he could conceive of such a thing only at the cost of abolishing the family (among other things)
bears witness not only to the Platonic tradition, but also to the influence of certain contem-
porary, especially Anabaptist, examples.12

There is no idleness or exclusion in the City of the Sun, no corrupt clergy, and the
strong do not abuse the weak; in fact, there are no strong or weak. There is no poverty,
hunger or shortages, no disorder, civil disobedience or revolts, no crime and no
violence directed at the institutions. Order reigns supreme and there is respect for the
sacred, which is subjected to empirical checks.
There is no place for fantasy or exception in collective life, only the rule of
rationality implicit in the city. There is a fear of “natural” development, subject as it
is to the unsettling actions of history and the everyday events of real life. For this
reason, the City of the Sun has no past and is not the result of a historical evolution.
The Solarian utopia just is; it exists in an immutable present that knows neither
past nor future, since, being perfect, it will never need to change. The visitor to this
utopia, the Sea-captain who had known Columbus, only discovers it once it is
completed.
The life of the Solarians is ordered entirely by reason, which means that they live
according to the dictates of Campanella’s metaphysics. Their religion falls only slightly
short of being Christian; the Solarians, “who follow only the law of nature are so near
to Christianity”.13 The difference lies in the absence of the revelation, in other words,
the coming of Christ, and since they have not heard of his coming, the Solarians do
not believe in the Trinity, but in a single God, represented by the life-giving Sun. For
Campanella, Christianity “adds nothing but the sacraments to the law of nature”14 and
is therefore “the true law and . . . once its abuses have been corrected, it will become
mistress of the world”.15

The theoretical assumptions of utopia

The City of the Sun is, by common consent, one of the most significant works of polit-
ical thought of its time, one that combines a theory of society and of the state, a
philosophy of nature, a theology and a set of ethics. And it is precisely because it
possesses these formal requirements that it can be classed as a utopia; otherwise it
would be a political fiction.
Utopia is one of the most complex literary genres. Its scope extends beyond
literature to reach philosophy — in its various branches — history, political thought,
religion, town planning, psychology, aesthetic movements, and so on. There are few
literary genres whose birth certificate is clearer than that of the utopian genre. With a
date (1516) and an author (Thomas More), from its cradle Utopia lent its name,
defining characteristics and procedures to this genre. Throughout its history, utopia
has acted as a constant interlocutor with a variety of societies and their corresponding
political theories, very often unequivocally taking the form of a political theory and a
blueprint for society. Since the publication of Thomas More’s work in 1516, utopia
has been used to describe any society supposedly perfect in every respect, and indeed
his work became the prototype of a literary genre that has continued to evolve and to
split into numerous sub-genres.
The birth of utopia was roughly contemporary with the publication of Niccolò
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Machiavelli’s The Prince (1513) and Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier
(1528), two works that jointly marked the culmination of quattrocento humanism and
perhaps also its limit: the idea, constructed through social praxis, that man could take
control of his own destiny. Humanism saw individual existence and collective life as
historical — human — and, therefore, pliable material that could be moulded with
reference to a teleology that had always existed, but was then attaining a fleeting eman-
cipation. According to Quentin Skinner, “Some scholars have treated Utopia simply
as a contribution to a more general ‘programme’ of humanist reform, a programme
which More is said to have worked out in close agreement with Erasmus, Vives, Elyot
and their various followers.”16
The key notion that drove the genesis of utopia was the underlying belief in the
perfectibility of society; on the other hand, what was intrinsic to the Christian con-
ception was the perfectibility of the human being. Utopia pointed out that society
was incomplete but that that imperfection could be resolved. The literary expression
of the complete remission of social problems is a utopia in itself: a text that constructs
the perfect polis with words, presumes itself to be complete and considers that a per-
fect society is possible, once the dictates of Reason have been applied. Utopia as
allegory formalizes the contradictions of the time in which it was written, and projects
a notion of the eternal that is the product of those circumstances. The Platonic
ferment is self-evident: utopia is the image of social perfection inherent in a specific
historical moment.
It is reasonable to believe that the characteristic set of problems associated with the
utopian genre originated with Plato’s Politeia (The Republic) and also legitimate to
consider any utopia as always being a rewriting of that Republic. We may, in short,
say that the circumstances of Plato’s work were determined by the decline of the model
of life in the polis of Attica, and consequently, the old political community being over-
taken by history. In the Athenian model of the community, individual existence
depended on his relationship with the aristocratic collective, and with the polis, poli-
tics, and the public interest. In this context, individual and community formed a single
indissoluble unit, to the extent that, without the community, the individual immedi-
ately lost his very means of survival, and not only citizenship. Belonging to the
community preceded possession of the means of production and subsistence. The
citizen possessed economic resources because he was a member of the community,
not the other way round (as is the case in bourgeois society). The individual had an
acceptable standard of living because he was a citizen; he did not become a citizen
because he possessed material goods. This situation ran counter to economic law, as
would be the case in the literary utopias. Economics was subordinate to politics, and
to the interests of the polis. In other words, having money neither conferred citizen-
ship, nor did it mean having political power. This made the Greek aristocrat a link in
the community chain, one that could not be broken. Consequently, individual and
community were inseparable. The crisis and collapse of the Attic community in the
latter half of the fifth century BCE came about as the result of the increasing dominance
of relations based on money; gradually and inevitably, money became the centre of
economic life and so the means of access to control of the State. The result was that
the community ethos gave way to the metic, the proto-bourgeois selfish individual
opposed to the collective, the mortal enemy of Plato and future utopian systems.17
The most common explanation of the origin of this literary genre that was so close
to history, philosophy and politics essentially follows the idea that utopia was gener-
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86 | Carlos E. O. Berrriel

ated by the bourgeois process of rationalizing life so characteristic of the Renaissance.

In the atmosphere of philosophical humanism encapsulated in the pre-cogito of Pico
della Mirandola, the idea was toyed with of man as the author of his own existence,
and the individual as analogue of the architect of the world.
In his Discorso sopra la dignità umana (1486), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola intro-
duces the concept of man as microcosm of the universe. Starting from the myth of
creation, Pico imagines that God, after creating the world, decided to complete his
work by giving life to Man. However, in spite of the fact that all possible spaces were
filled, his creative will was unabated. He decided therefore that Man would not have
a definite nature or a specific place to live in, so that he himself would be completely
free to choose and find the position where he would be most satisfied. So, in contrast
to a natural world governed by fixed immutable laws decreed by God, there was the
human being with the power to choose his essence, so that he could sink to the level
of a beast or soar until his spirit merged with the divine. According to Pico, Man does
not have a nature of his own, but creates his essence through action. Hence, human
evolution is open to the possibilities of growth and improvement, of transforming
himself and the world with no other limits than the attainment of perfection and eternal
bliss. Essentially, the dignity of man of which Pico speaks does not consist of being but
of becoming, which does not happen with natural things. Pico’s ideas contain enormous
possibilities and it is no coincidence that his Discorso was always considered to be the
manifesto of Humanism; without it, there is no bourgeois ethic. Without this philo-
sophical heritage, utopian ideas are simply not possible. It is no coincidence either that
More translated his work into English.18
The historian, Luigi Firpo, considers that, in order to define the characteristics of
Renaissance utopias, specifically the Italian series, it is necessary to understand the
spiritual climate at the beginning of the cinquecento.19 This was a period when
humanist rationalism prevailed, characterized by a longing for human autonomy, the
idea of the supremacy, almost the omnipotence, of intelligence, as well as an attitude
to life that was heroic, courageous and vital. Ultimately, after centuries living under
the discipline imposed by the rigid absolute rule of Catholic dogmatic culture, the
humanist discovered sufficient reason intrinsic to the physical world to guarantee him
harmony: nature. As the new science would confirm, nature becomes aware of itself
through the human essence and takes the name of reason, the new model and measure
of action. For More, virtù (virtue) was to live secondo natura (according to nature); the
man who followed the model of nature was the one who obeyed reason, which was
nature aware of itself, in its own essence.
This intellectual process of the scientific revolution transformed the medieval
conception of nature as a stage created by God for man to that of an actor alongside
man. The question was: what would the purpose of nature be? Self-recognition in and
by man. The senses — communicating vessels between man and nature — became a
criterion of knowledge. Modern Galilean science depended on this new principle:
using the mind, which was both the bearer of reason and also in nature, as the starting
point for forging the world. Following the same reasoning, connecting to nature in a
rational way meant breaking with the traditional form of collective living. On the polit-
ical plane, the journey towards nature to extract the complete set of rules for collective
living directly involved the concept of equality, which led in turn to the concept of
legality.
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Science and religion: Is harmony possible in the City of the Sun?

The “natural sciences”, as they were called at the beginning of the sixteenth century,
were stated to be a new style. Several authors highlighted the fact. In a letter sent to
Galileo in 1632, Campanella claimed that he could see “a new science” heralded by
“new worlds, new stars, new systems, new nations”.20 The Aristotelian system, the
basic framework for many European intellectuals since the thirteenth century, was
frequently called into question. In the natural sciences, as well as in the arts, a concern
for the difference, or even contrast between appearance and reality emerged, which
justifies the idea of the “mechanization of the world picture” used to refer to this
period. The experimental method, a term associated with the concept of experience,
marked a clear difference with regard to the precepts of faith. The new philosophy
was taking a route that was leading inexorably to collision with the Catholic Church.
In the twentieth century, historians like Herbert Butterfield used the phrase scientific
revolution to summarize all these advances in natural philosophy.21
The scientific revolution then underway started from the empirical axiom that
scientific truth was reached via the human senses, the seat of experience. Thus, the
criterion of truth was shifting from revelation to man’s physical senses. The senses,
formerly a source of error and perdition, were now becoming the basis of reliable
knowledge of the physical world. In consequence, science became independent and
broke away from the field of theology, which undermined the authority of the Church
in practice and made her redundant in this area. This brings us to Telesio.
The philosophy of nature that underpins The City of the Sun is the result of the
influence of Bernardino Telesio’s work, De rerum natura iuxta propria principia,
which Campanella read in his youth and which left a permanent impression on his
thinking and work. Telesio did for the philosophy of nature what Machiavelli had
done for politics: transform it into an area of reflection and discussion that was inde-
pendent of other spheres of thought, such as morality or religion. His basic aim was
to reveal the objective reality of nature, since, if they were observed correctly, the
things themselves displayed their intrinsic nature and characteristics. This explana-
tory principle had universal validity; in other words, nature is unique, at all times and
in all places. And what was most important, man possessed the capacity to learn the
secrets of nature because he himself formed part of it. The senses were an effective
means of gaining access to knowledge and man, like nature, had sense perception.
Consequently, what nature revealed of itself coincided with what the senses bore
witness to. Sense perception, therefore, was nature revealing itself through one of its
constituent parts, man. Galileo would adopt this principle as his thesis and take it to
its logical conclusions.
In Telesio, Campanella discovered a way to reach the truth via the direct observa-
tion of nature. As he would write later, the whole of his work seemed to him to be both
coherent and liberating, and he was completely fascinated and convinced by it. In
1590, Campanella followed in Telesio’s footsteps by writing Philosophia sensibus
demonstrata, a heterodox text in which it was blatantly obvious that his philosophy
departed from the prevailing rules of the Church.22
Telesio developed a rational method for apprehending tangible reality, which
postulated that there were only natural forces in nature and that these should be
explained only in accordance with their intrinsic principles, without recourse to meta-
physics. Men had the capacity to know nature as an entity and so had power and
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88 | Carlos E. O. Berrriel

dominion over everything that was part of nature. Hence the natural world was an
extensive estate at man’s disposal, an emporium to be appropriated, in a material as
well as in an ideal sense. Nature could therefore be appropriated in a profane way.
This philosophical principle was established in the early days of manufacturing, which
was clearly an opportune moment for such ideas to emerge and had crystal-clear
historical implications for the logic of manufacturing: the complete modification of
social relations by means of a new modern society, new social classes, a new form of
state and a new outlook on the world.
If Campanella’s thesis were to prevail, the Church and the empires allied to it —
Spain and Portugal, as well as the Italian states — could welcome the new science with
open arms, could consider nature an entity accessible to the profane mind, which
would notwithstanding still be able to find God. The sovereign would be a scientist as
well as a high priest. The investigation of nature by means of rational science and
prayer could be the same activity. This philosophy would therefore bring the Roman
Catholic faith and the scientific revolution together, since it acknowledged the exis-
tence of the sacred in the world, even as it laid down the philosophical foundations of
modern science. A close link between reason and faith was therefore possible, which
meant that the Church could ally itself with the system of modern manufacturing that
was already being established in Northern Europe. In the end, this would be more
effective for safeguarding the interests of the Church than what the three Catholic
states were implementing in the world of the Counter Reformation.

The City of the Sun as the antithesis of the Spanish Empire

The Spanish Monarchy, which was being kept afloat at that time by the gold and
silver from the New World, had become an irrational, ecclesiastic, aristocratic system
in economic terms. Work was considered dishonourable. The Church and the
nobility owned most of the wealth, which was tied up in sumptuous buildings or
government bonds or squandered on luxuries, and so diverting it away from produc-
tive economic activities. The result was that Spain, in its imperial role, was in no
condition to satisfy the demand for material goods and equipment from her
American dominions, so making her dependent on those countries that were open to
manufacturing and the sciences, which were precisely the Protestant countries. So,
those that were growing rich at the expense of the Spanish Empire were the same
ones that were practising what the Inquisition had condemned, and even prohibited
in its dominions.
To reproduce itself, this empire had no need to take advantage of the latest
advances of the scientific revolution that was already underway, but instead relied on
the predominantly Jesuit leadership of the Propaganda Fide, the inquisitorial Sacred
Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, which set out to prevent the new
science from being absorbed by categorically prohibiting its conceptual and economic
structures from taking root in the Iberian countries and Italy. Indeed, the Spanish
Inquisition behaved in all respects as a veritable economic agent. By sending scientists
to be burned at the stake and banning the scientific revolution, the Inquisition forced
countries under its control to follow the economic and political path prescribed by the
colonial system and its underlying practices: the colonial pact, slavery and exploitation
of the indigenous population (via the system of encomiendas), production of primary
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Where is Columbus’s Helmsman Taking Us? | 89

products, monoculture farming on large estates, and so on. The persecution of

science, in short, was an integral part of the framework of the colonization of America,
an expression of Iberian power.
This was where the crux of the matter lay. Which political path would best enable
the Church to achieve its aim and become the Mistress and Saviour of the World?
Campanella did not need to invent a scenario that he could then oppose; it was enough
to observe what was happening around him. The inquisitorial policy and its impact
on the world that was still Catholic provided all the material he needed to construct
The City of the Sun. Campanella’s utopian polis is an ideal republic in which every-
thing, or almost everything, that is done is the opposite of the prevailing policies of the
Inquisition. In short, the City of the Sun is the antithesis of the Iberian countries and
Italy and expresses what the world might look like without the Counter-Reformation
alliance of the Church and the Iberian empire: a universally Christian, rational world
united under the Throne of St Peter.
Since Campanella’s utopia is the union of scientific reason and faith, it is accord-
ingly a complex system that brings together scientific rationality and prophetic
irrationality, a modern mentality and religious traditionalism. Campanella is not a
supporter of the Counter-Reformation but a bizarrely rational reformer. And, in his
game of smoke and mirrors, which is both a criticism and defence of the Church, his
City of the Sun is, perhaps contrary to expectations, the most baroque of seventeenth-
century utopias. At first, as we know, scientific reason was not opposed to faith, but
enjoyed a certain autonomy of its own. It was at the Council of Trent that the Catholic
Church opted to transform simple autonomy into opposition, with serious conse-
quences, the most obvious being the violent persecution of scientists and the bloody
episodes that everyone is familiar with; the whole process, after all, was associated with
the Protestant Reformation.
The fact is that the Reformation freed a substantial part of Europe from the
authority of the Church, thereby reducing the Catholic circle unambiguously to
Portugal, Spain and Italy. It is equally true that these countries, the three greatest
European powers at the time of the birth of the Reformation, became the poorest and
weakest on the continent within a few centuries. Tridentine Catholicism — Italy, Spain
and the subordinate kingdom of Portugal — refused to adopt the bourgeois methods
that used the new scientific reason to lead their economies to manufacturing and the
unfettered development of trade. Their own actions locked the triad of Catholic
countries into the circle created by the Inquisition, which became the architect of an
economic system based on colonial exploitation. Inquisitorial irrationalism also
became a political and economic system. It is possible to argue that this downward
spiral was not yet apparent at the beginning of the seventeenth century; nonetheless,
Campanella’s The City of the Sun does seem to contradict this idea.
To sum up, after the Reformation, Europe was basically split into two blocs. On
the one hand, there were the Catholic nations, the major imperial metropolises of the
time, which would stagnate in their regime of colonial pacts; on the other, there were
the Protestant nations, as yet without significant colonial empires but which, over time,
would stimulate their economies by following the path of manufacturing and become
more modern nations, open to future industrialization.
The Tridentine Church, in effect, gave expression to the papacy’s pact with the
Iberian monarchies, proceeding to become both dependent on them and part of them.
In other words, the Church merged with the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies.
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Rome’s destiny remained locked into the process of merchant capitalism, which was
both its economic manifestation and, at the same time, its limit; and this defined the
way societies in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in America were organized. This
alternative entailed the exclusion of manufacturing — associated with bourgeois ratio-
nality — as the hegemonic option for the Catholic economic circuit. The result was
that the Jesuit missionary Church, opposed to science and actively involved in inquisi-
torial trials, was ultimately charged with the task of deciding the fate of the two Iberian
monarchies and the shape that they would take in the future. The destiny of the
Church was to join forces with the colonial pact and that particular brand of Iberian
merchant capitalism that would lead to the incorporation of new territories occupied
by the Jesuit missions. In the end, the Inquisition was not an organ subordinated to
the Church; on the contrary, the Church was subject to the power of the Inquisition.
The Counter-Reformation confirmed the radical split between Catholic orthodoxy
and the new attitudes of religious consciousness and secular culture. The generation
of Giordano Bruno (1568–1600), Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) and Tommaso
Campanella (1568–1639) was present as the restoration of the principle of authority
was being enforced and saw, from the start, how all opportunities for developing
scientific knowledge were vanishing and, in consequence, how the opportunities for
social development associated with that knowledge and economic practice were also
vanishing. In stark contrast to this would be a Church open to the new sciences,
actively encouraging modern methods of research, well disposed towards books that
had not yet been read and eager for new knowledge. In short, this would be a Church
whose destiny would be bound up with the manufacturing bourgeoisie and that would
sit alongside it on the throne of the World. What might have happened but did not is
precisely the meaning of The City of the Sun.
The City of the Sun is an essential document for understanding Campanella’s
deepest, truest intentions, a text written to synthesize and define his own religious,
philosophical and social ideas, and to set out his proposed reforms for the Church and
the political institutions. This is the only way to explain the origin of this utopian
dialogue read as a literary document. The City of the Sun is not — at least, not exclu-
sively — a book written to attract the goodwill or protection of judges and powerful
men. Written in the squalor of an inquisitorial prison, this work was taking stock,
among other things, of the episode of the Calabrian revolt, a re-affirmation of the thesis
of the advent of the “new Golden Age” heralded by the imminent “great conjunc-
tions” and an alternative political model for the Catholic Church and the monarchies
of Spain and Portugal. Along with theocratic universalism, which he would assert once
more in 1637 in De regno Dei, Campanella retained the social idealism of the City of
the Sun as the highest value of his political speculation throughout his life.
In The City of the Sun, therefore, faith addresses God the creator, as revealed in the
spectacle of nature and perceived by means of reason. The City of the Sun appears as
the philosophical discovery that demonstrates that the truth of the Gospel is in
harmony with nature.
Campanella presents us with a republic that is founded, not by God, but by philos-
ophy and human reason, in order to demonstrate that the truth of the Gospel and
rational philosophy do not contradict each other. The natural religion of the Solarians,
discovered through philosophy and based on reason, derives its power from a rule that
allows them to compare historical religions, choose the one that is true, and reduce it
to its core essence, eliminating the abuses that are harmful to society. In this respect,
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Where is Columbus’s Helmsman Taking Us? | 91

he considers that natural religion, which is innate, is always true, whereas constructed
religions are imperfect and may even be false. Natural religion is a characteristic of all
living beings, and since God created them, they will all return to Him. In this way, a
rational polis demonstrates its superior capacity for constituting a power that would
secure for the Church control of the world, which the policy of alliance with the Iberian
metropolises formulated at the Council of Trent was already showing signs of not
being able to achieve. We may conclude, then, that The City of the Sun would be the
Iberian colonial system turned on its head, in other words, its antithesis.

Notes
1 Tommaso Campanella, La Città del Sole: Dialogo Poetico (The City of the Sun: A Poetical
Dialogue), translated into English by Daniel J. Donno from the Italian text, edited by Luigi
Firpo (London: University of California Press, 1981).
2 Bernardino Telesio, De rerum natura iuxta propria principia, libri IX (Naples: Horatium
Salvianum, 1586).
3 Germana V. Ernst, Tommaso Campanella. Il libro e il corpo della natura (Rome-Bari: Laterza,
2002).
4 Maria Moneti Codignola, “Campanella, a cidade historiada”, Morus — Utopia e
Renascimento 5 (2008): 86–106.
5 Campanella, La Città del Sole: Dialogo Poetico, p. 27.
6 Ibid., p. 31.
7 Ibid., pp. 31–32.
8 Ibid., p. 103.
9 Agnes Heller, Renaissance Man, translated by Richard E. Allen (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 359.
10 Ibid., p. 359.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid., pp. 359–360.
13 Ibid., p. 121.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: Volume One: The
Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 255–256.
17 José Chasin, “O Futuro Ausente”, in Ensaios Ad Hominem, vol. 3, 1 (São Paolo: Estudos e
Edições Ad Hominem, 2000).
18 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Discorso sulla Dignità dell’Uomo, intro. by Eugenio Garin,
edited by Giuseppe Tognon (Brescia: La Scuola, 1987).
19 Luigi Firpo, Per una definizione de Utopia, in Utopie per gli anni ottanta: Studi interdisciplinari
sui temi, la storia, i projeti, edited by Giuseppa Saccaro Del Buffa and Arthur O. Lewis
(Rome: Gangemi, 1986).
20 Tommaso Campanella, Apologia di Galileo. Tutte le lettere a Galileo Galilei e altri documenti,
intro and ed. by Gino Ditadi (Este, Padua: Isonomia, 1992), p.128.
21 Sir Herbert Butterfield (1900–79) was a British historian, remembered basically for his
book Whig Interpretation of History (London: Bell, 1931). Other historians, such as the
American, Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1996), by restoring the nineteenth century dispute over the “Revolt of the
Medievalists”, disagree with several aspects of this theory.
22 Tommaso Campanella, Philosophia sensibus demonstrata: Testo latino a fronte, Vivarium
series (Naples: La Scuola di Pitagora, January 2013).
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Utopian Imagination
5 Across the Atlantic:
Chile in the 1820s
Carlos Ferrera

In the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, the Atlantic world was
shaken by the liberal revolutions. Historiography that tended to look beyond the nation
as its object of analysis, whether the focus was the Atlantic or transnational, has
presented this geographical space as a framework for the multi-directional movement
of goods, people and ideas, and driven by trade, emigration and exile. Pratt Guterl has
advocated the study of specific topics as the best way to achieve a transnational
approach and, in this respect, utopia may play a primary role, since, among those
ideas, we find many associated with utopian language; this is not in the least surprising,
given the importance of formulations of this kind in liberal and republican proposals
of that period. The hypothesis of this study is precisely that utopia permeated the
political thought of the time and filled it with images, a significant point in a culture
characterized by sensismo [sensualism], the doctrine that proclaimed the power of
those images, their capacity to affect the imagination and to use feelings to drive
knowledge and action.
Utopian approaches circulated on both sides of the Atlantic in more or less explicit
form in countless contemporary literary works, as well as in specific policies. They
were well received in Latin America, which was trying to keep abreast of what was
happening in other parts of the world during the period of independence. This
occurred at a time when expectations of progress and civilization were spreading in
the wake of the sweeping transformations brought about by the political crisis in the
Spanish monarchy and a foundational moment in politics seemed to be emerging. In
that climate, the American continent, in turn, was seen in Europe as a new space, open
to all possibilities.1
Exile and other forms of displacement played a major role in that process. In this
connection, we need to consider both the gravitational pull of London as a place on
which exiled Latin Americans and Europeans converged, to which should be added
the drive and vibrancy of the political and economic scene in England at the time. The
common thread running through this essay will be José Joaquín Mora, who
represented the Spanish liberalism that first arose in Cadiz in 1812, and who lived in
exile in London and later travelled around South America, invited by various rulers
to collaborate in establishing a new society. Without, of course, being the only one,
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since many more embarked on that transatlantic voyage, he was, nevertheless, typical
because of his intense public activity and tireless travelling from place to place.
Although Mora worked in the United Provinces of the River Plate and in Santa Cruz’s
Bolivia, he was mainly active in Chile, a place regarded from the earliest moments of
its independence as a territory that lent itself to an ideal society.

An age of utopias

The importance of utopia in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries seems to
be beyond all doubt. According to Christine Rees, it burgeoned in response to the
anxieties deriving from the intense transformations experienced during that period.
The proposal of a “new city” implied both a radical critique of the previous society
(defined by despotism and the predominance of religious order) and a break with it.
In general, ideal models remained anchored in the usual assumptions made of a
Golden Age; nevertheless, they differed from those models because they did not
simply boil down to natural abundance, but rather their existence came to depend
equally on a proper social organization, based on reason. Although the traditional
models were kept, utopian language was renewed with new approaches in which egal-
itarian experiments coexisted with others based on private property, urban models
together with rural ones, and so on. Likewise, the aspiration to attain the ideal was
occasionally tackled in sub areas, such as perpetual peace, happiness, national regen-
eration or the creation of new men by means of education. There was, simultaneously,
a transformation of this discourse because of its tendency to reveal itself as something
possible and pragmatic, the fruit of reform and of anticipation of the future, and
because of its refusal to be branded as utopian or unrealistic. The result of this was
that many accounts changed direction. The customary travellers in that narrative
genre started to arrive in societies where utopia was not so much a finished reality as
had been the norm laid down by More, but was something potentially within their
grasp. Antoine Hatzenberger has highlighted the dynamic nature of the utopias of the
time, their adaptability to the new scientific doctrines emerging in that period, for
example, the Hollow Earth theory that gave rise to a flourishing genre of utopias in
subterranean worlds. Such works even influenced contemporary scientific and
political language, which borrowed the ideas of utopia, such as the progressive regen-
erative myth of a society created out of nothing.2
As European travel to other continents intensified, utopias tended to be located in
territories that were just beginning to be explored. From the seventeenth century, such
enclaves came to represent a state of nature where utopia could be realized, as was
demonstrated, for example, in the works of De Foigny, who situated his rationalist
utopia in La Terre Australe Connue (1676) in the Antipodes. Likewise, Defoe
constructed utopias on islands in the South Pacific in Robinson Crusoe (1719) and A
General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (1724), while
the characters in Robert Paltock’s The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (1750) or
Simon Berington’s The Memoirs of Signior Gaudentio di Lucca (1737) found them-
selves overseas with worlds already set up under a utopian philosophy. In the same
way, Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint Pierre recalled, in the preamble to L’Arcadie,
that after sailing the seven seas he ended up establishing an ideal society in the
Amazon, where men lived in tolerance and in accordance with the laws of nature.
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94 | Carlos Ferrera

The role of spaces overseas was reinforced as a result of the success, in the eigh-
teenth century, of philosophical Geography, which defined territories according to
moral criteria. Locations, often little known or never visited, were described as places
of barbarism, but also as utopias. As Wolff has emphasized in the case of Eastern
Europe, their circumstances fuelled projects of social experimentation — including
those of Voltaire and Rousseau — and of the reorganization of territory and civilization
assigned to enlightened monarchy. Something similar occurred in America, where the
earliest samples of geographical analysis had certainly had a negative bias, represented
in Buffon’s formulations and his defence of the natural inferiority of America with
respect to Europe. The development of Natural History, on the other hand, which
Mary Louise Pratt situated from the time of La Condamine’s expedition to the Royal
Audience of Quito in 1735, made it possible for knowledge to be systematized in
accordance with Linnaeus’s systems of classification and for them to spread from the
coasts to the interior of the continents. That approach, however, was accompanied by
a Romantic vision based on a sentimental, aesthetic perception. America became a
sublime utopian setting and hence external to the everyday world. It was filled with
static, luxuriant, breathtaking lands ready to be turned into a place for ideal experi-
ments and promotion of the capitalist economy. That vision was strengthened in the
early decades of the nineteenth century, as demonstrated by Humboldt’s work, which
was well received by the Latin American elites and a distinguished group of European
geographers, invited first by the colonial authorities — as had been the case of
Humboldt himself — and then by the leaders of the new independent republics.3
Chile was not left out of this scenario. In Viaje a Chile en la época de la independencia,
written in 1817, Samuel Haigh began the account of his travels by recalling how he
had dreamt of walking along streets paved with gold when they had offered him the
chance to go there. Of course, he found nothing of the kind, but he did find what he
defined as “natural potential”, capable, using a good irrigation system, of turning the
country into the “granary of America”. For his part, Alexander Caldcleugh in his
similarly named Viaje a Chile, of 1819, spoke of a “privilegio geográfico” (privileged
geography), the provider of a happiness, truncated only by the continual wars suffered
during the process of achieving independence; its natural blessings were similarly
transferred to its population, whose upper classes were endowed with attributes that
were foreign to corrupt traditions, and the lower orders to vice. One final example,
whose experiences in the country left a greater mark, was Claude Gay, who arrived in
Chile in 1828 as a teacher and was hired by the Ovalle Government to undertake a
geographical study of the country. After travelling around the country for twelve years,
he published the Historia física y política de Chile (Physical and Political History of
Chile), accompanied by two atlases. His work is interesting from our point of view
because it includes elements of the utopian genre. His narrative was characterized by
a tendency to costumbrismo with very rich descriptions, similar to contemporary
portraits of ideal societies. At the same time, the adventures of the narrator throughout
his journey harked back to the accounts by utopian travellers, since they were liberally
sprinkled with hardships and hazards; this was also true of his feelings of nostalgia,
solitude, love of freedom or awe at whatever he had seen. Apart from that, Gay
combined the system of classification of Linnaeus with the sublime synthesized vision
of Humboldt for the utilitarian purpose of attaining universal scientific knowledge and
placing some of the virgin, fertile territories under cultivation.4
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The foundational moment of independence

The independence process bore a strong political foundational stamp; here we adopt
the sense attributed by Rancière to historic moments when the permanent constitutive
elements of society are being rejected and a language of emancipation and openness
to possibility is being formulated. Although many who supported independence
resorted to cultural expedients of the past, they experienced the process of the collapse
of the Spanish monarchy as a new moment, a return to a state of nature and the prelude
to a possible ideal society.
Rafael Rojas, for his part, has recognized the presence of a republican utopia in
that period, a synthesized version of the sentimental language of Italian Enlightenment
of Beccaria and Muratori, the neo-Thomism of Francisco Vitoria and Suárez and the
traditional ius gentium of Grotius and Pufendorf. The republic’s political project
aspired to the formation of a homogeneous community of a Christian stamp, founded
on virtue and with a regenerative mission, which was where its utopian component
would be. The geographical context chosen was initially restricted to domestic terri-
tories, although, throughout the process, there was a desire to transcend national
entities, as is indicated by the attempts at continental unity noted at the Congresses of
Panama (1826) and Tacubaya (1828).5
In the case of Chile, utopianism was present from the years prior to independence,
and was associated in large measure with its geography. The so-called conspiracy of
the Three Antonios in 1781 had already tried, unsuccessfully, to replace the monarchy
with a republic where slavery and hierarchies would be abolished and the redistribu-
tion of the land would be undertaken. In 1804, Juan Egaña’s Oración inaugural para
la apertura de los estudios de la Real Universidad de San Felipe (Inaugural speech to open
the academic year at the Royal University of San Felipe) highlighted the utopian
potential of a country so well endowed by nature:

The idea of a city formed for wisdom and with only the wise for inhabitants, if it were to be
accomplished, nowhere in the world could it be better located than in Chile. Because of its
situation, 300 leagues away from that great world where war, intrigue and urgent necessities
occupy the lives of more than a third of its inhabitants, and free, because of its political destiny,
from that tumult of passions that excite ambition, ideas of superiority and balance of power,
we retain an existence that is orderly and without differences, where birth and death regularly
form a circle, and where we always remain at the same point in the hierarchy.6

According to Sagredo Baeza, it stemmed from the idea that its geographical unique-
ness and isolation would guarantee freedom and the arrival of the “republican Eden”,
as the eighth verse of the national anthem put it

By sea and land the henchmen

Of the vile despot threaten,
But the whole of nature
Awaits them to fight:
The Pacific to the South and West
To the East the Andes and the Sun
To the North an immense desert
And the Centre freedom and unity.7
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96 | Carlos Ferrera

Or as Camilo Henríquez himself put it, in 1813:

This is a visible fact of geography and makes Chile’s situation tangible to us. This vast region,
being able to survive on its own, and having, in the bowels of the earth and on its surface,
not only what is necessary for life but even for the recreation of the senses; being able from
its ports to engage in useful trade with all nations, to produce sturdy men to cultivate its
fertile fields […] finding itself enclosed as if within a wall, and separated from other peoples
by a chain of extremely high mountains topped with everlasting snows, by an extensive
desert, and the Pacific Ocean, would it not be an absurdity contrary to the destiny and order
inspired by nature to go in search of a despotic government, a venal, corrupt ministry, harm-
ful obscure laws, or the biased decisions of ambitious aristocrats, on the other side of the
world?8

Nonetheless, this vision was not always restricted to Chile but, as we pointed out
earlier, embraced the continent as a whole. In La Camila, the play written by
Henríquez, the leader of the independence movement, some people from Quito who
were fleeing the Spanish repression of 1809, found a utopia in the privileged environ-
ment of the Amazon — in the same setting chosen by Saint Pierre in Arcadie — where
it was possible to live according to natural law under a philanthropic government. Just
as in Argentina, the discourse of independence rested on the creation of a community
of patriots, which could be developed through the idealization of the territory. Those
blessings of geography were enriched with a temporal dimension, because pre-
Hispanic populations, such as the Incas and Araucanians, were included at its heart.
It was an appeal to an idealized past that heralded a future of perfection with millenarist
echoes, motivated and legitimated by the sacrifices made in the heroic struggle for
independence.9

The transatlantic dimension of utopia

In such a climate, the movement of people, including exiles, adventurers or those

driven by economic motives, had a major role to play. In this context, London came
to prominence by becoming a meeting point for Europeans and Latin Americans. The
linguistic and ideological affinities of Spanish liberals taking refuge in the metropolis
favoured contact with diplomatic agents from Latin America who were asking for their
translations and publications; at the same time, the new disorganized republics repre-
sented an opportunity for European military men, scientists and artists. The Latin
Americans, for their part, who had sought refuge during the last years of Spanish rule,
went in search of British political and financial support in the early years of indepen-
dence. This objective was attained in part by means of the proliferation of publications
that described the political situation and the economic and investment potential in the
new states of Latin America. A case in point was the anonymous Colombia: Being a
Geographical, Statistical, Agricultural, Commercial, and Political Account of That
Country, published in London in 1822, which, according to its sub-title, was “Adapted
for the General Reader, the Merchant, and the Colonist”. When it came to attracting
European colonists, its pages were full of the superiority of this new republic over the
United States, because of its proximity to Europe, its climate, what it produced and
“its distinguished geographical situation”; likewise, the advantages were also of “a
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Utopian Imagination Across the Atlantic | 97

moral nature” because its constitution guaranteed civil, political and religious liberties,
and an educational policy designed to raise the cultural level of the common people.
Not all publications originating among groups of exiles followed a similar course.
The more conservative El Emigrado Observador, without relinquishing utopian
imagery, appealed to English capitalists to invest in Spain, “el verdadero jardín de las
Hespérides” (the true Garden of the Hesperides) and not South America because of
its instability. Nevertheless, the general trend was in the opposite direction; the
Repertorio Americano, for example, talked of a new era, the potential of the Orinoco
river, or the need to introduce Lancasterian schools and hydraulic systems in order to
spread civilization.10
In this context, the work of the London publisher, Ackermann, was indispensable,
because of his contacts with members of the exiled communities and representatives
of the new Latin American states. Through periodicals and catechisms published on
general or specifically Latin American topics, he promoted an educational programme
for that continent. His works, aimed at broad sectors of society, also pursued the
dissemination of knowledge that tended to promote British trade in the area. Utopian
imagery was not unusual among his proposals either, and could already be seen on
the December 1811 cover of his monthly publication, The Repository of Arts. In its
centre was a bust of Athena who observed, as if in a panopticon, an ordered environ-
ment with looms, the attributes of culture and the arts and cornucopias.
Eighteenth-century catechisms, an example of the dialogue literary genre with
strong echoes of religion, grew in importance during the revolutionary process because
of their simple didacticism. They were also important for the topic that concerns us
here. On the one hand, they were different from those aimed at the British public,
which sought to educate the lower classes in order to prevent social unrest, whereas
in Latin America they were positioned to create citizenries; on the other hand, their
literary structure was similar to the utopian one, since they set up a dialogue with
scarcely any debate, where the evidence of a more perfect world was unveiled.
Whether the subject was astronomy or political economy, knowledge, expounded in
a clear structured manner, showed reality as ordered and deeply harmonious. At the
same time, the texts showed South America with blank territories, ready to be
exploited according to the geographical principles pointed out earlier. Equally, they
showed a world in which racial relations were structured hierarchically between whites
and natives, with the latter on a lower rung because of their inability to convey feelings.
This racial focus was not, of course, alien to the utopian genre. In this respect, a
contemporary example was set in the vicinity of Chile. In El descubrimiento austral por
un hombre-volador o el Dédalo francés (The Southern Discovery by a Flying Man or
the French Daedalus), various rational, egalitarian societies appeared, ruled by the
French. Their rulers, in a show of social engineering, mixed the native races together
and allowed the French elite to have concubines; however, they made sure that the
resulting “offspring” could not mix with the French again in order to avoid the racial
degeneration of the latter.11
Ackermann’s collaboration with the Spanish liberals in exile centred in turn on the
figures of José María Blanco White and José Joaquín Mora, to whom were added other
authors such as José de Urcullu, Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva and Pablo Mendíbil.
Blanco White, who stood out because of his political and cultural Anglophilia, handled
utopian categories in the quarterly publication, Variedades o El Mensajero de Londres,
in which England is described in idealized images as he sails into port, for the language
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98 | Carlos Ferrera

of freedom “resonaba en sus oídos” (rang in his ears). Blanco confessed his pleasure
at seeing himself in possession of the impossible “porque había penado toda mi vida”
(because I had suffered hardship all my life); the inn he stayed at in the first village he
came to had seemed like a palace to him; the houses had no bars on the windows,
which gave an idea of the general security, there were no deserted places, everywhere
was cultivated and roads were plentiful. These ideas were simultaneously combined
with a rejection of “the panaceas of charlatans” — which was an allusion to events
experienced during the French revolutionary process — promising to “regenerar un
estado por medio de algunas máximas” (regenerate a state by means of a few maxims);
he also recalled the need to put order before anarchy, for anarchy was the danger
facing Latin America, and the reason why he made constant appeals not to surrender
to excess and, in short, to complement the political changes — a utopia of order —
with a programme of education and virtue.
In his Consejos importantes sobre la intolerancia, dirigidos a los hispanoamericanos
(Important advice on intolerance, addressed to the Hispano-Americans), he lamented
the idea of women losing “their shyness”, young men feeling “more republican”
through ignoring serious and sensible men, and frankness turning into “a Bacchanal”.
Notwithstanding, in the picture he presented of Latin America he praised the native-
born for having risen several notches on the intellectual and civil scale during the wars
of independence; he valued the constitutional effort deployed in the new republics to
show a “creencia en la perfectibilidad que en Europa se había abandonado” (a belief
in perfectibility, which had been abandoned in Europe) and felt he could not blame
them for the succession of such constitutions and systems and the heightened passions
because of the “estado del que se partía” (situation they had started from).12
The end of the collaboration between Blanco and Ackermann was due, according
to Tully, to Blanco’s growing interest in more aesthetic matters. Durán, however, has
insisted on the political dimension of that literary approach, as evidenced in his works
of criticism. Blanco White had adopted a gloomy view of Spanish literature, which he
considered had been the product of a history of intolerance and despotism since the
sixteenth century. According to Durán, the break came about because Ackermann was
looking for literature of a lighter kind, suitable for a mostly female readership. In any
case, he was not the only one in that circle to mix literature and politics or to consider
literature as the barometer of the development of a country. The Duque de Rivas once
again took up the idea of a mythical Spain, or “Hesperia”, in his ode to “El Desterrado”
(The Exile), published in Ocios de Españoles Emigrados (Leisure Pursuits of Spanish
Émigrés). The country in the poem was moribund, even though it had been an “empo-
rio de riquezas y de placeres” (emporium of riches and delights); its inhabitants lacked
vital energy, which led the poet to call up the heroic spectres of the past. However, the
voices of brave living Spaniards could soon be heard above the others and, with them,
hopes of regeneration were reborn, in which the future assumed the form of an ideal
model, one that was “libre, triunfante y glorioso” (free, triumphant and glorious).13
After severing relations with Blanco White, Ackermann approached José Joaquín
Mora with a venture that in no way entailed a shift away from politics; this would, in
any case, have been a difficult thing to do at that point in the nineteenth century when
the various manifestations of literature and science were inextricably bound up with
politics, and therefore utopias.
Having received an enlightened education, Mora went on to teach Bentham and
Condillac at the Colegio de San Miguel in Granada during the reign of Charles IV.
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After the return of absolutism in 1814, he was involved in a heated polemic with Böhl
de Faber, whose irrational Romantic metaphysics he censured. In the course of the
Liberal Triennium (1820–1823), he became much more radical and, when the
Triennium ended, had to go into exile, following a course that reflected the situation
of the Atlantic world, mentioned earlier. He lived in London and wrote for
Ackermann’s publications. He crossed the Atlantic to Buenos Aires, summoned by
Rivadavia; from there, he moved on to Chile, where he stayed rather longer, working
with General Pinto’s government, and ended up in Bolivia as an adviser to Santa
Cruz. In every case, he was the driving force behind numerous reforms with a strong
utopian resonance, curtailed by the early political demise of his mentors. 14
Earlier, in La Crónica Científica y Literaria, he had welcomed the Congress of
Vienna for opening up a space to the Enlightenment and the technical, industrial and
artistic discoveries in Europe that enabled the ruins of war to be repaired promptly.
There is no doubt that in his ambivalent discourse, he seemed to reject utopias, as we
saw in the case of Blanco White. In a commentary on George Dyer’s On the theory
and practise of benevolence, Mora preferred the term “benevolence”, used by the
author, to the one frequently used by others, “humanity”; although both implied the
same thing, humanity referred to “las grandes teorías, a conquistas gigantescas y a los
abusos de fuerza” (grand theories, giant conquests and the abuse of force), whereas
“benevolence” referred to “la virtud doméstica” (domestic virtue). After that, he
found that the key to re-establishing social harmony lay in the education of the poor
by the rich, although, shortly afterwards, he was praising Hofwil, a clearly Utopian
Swiss educational establishment. A mixture of rural colony and educational experi-
ment, it brought together both poor and comfortably-off young people who studied
according to the Pestalozzi Method, which involved working the land, using modern
methods such as underground irrigation, under the watchful eye of the headmaster
from a tower. In that panopticon, the “espíritu de orden, moderación y regularidad”
(spirit of order, moderation and regularity) reigned and the young men behaved with
“la moral más pura” (the purest morality). Together with education, technology was
taking on a utopian dimension as it enabled the shaping of a new man, characterized
by his ability to excel and imaginative power. From that point on, the euphoria they
felt because of their accomplishments reached sublime heights at the prospect of the
sheer scale of unstoppable progress.15
In London, he collaborated with Ackermann on the publication of the Museo
Universal de Ciencias y Artes, which was also published in Colombia, Buenos Aires,
Chile, Guatemala and Peru. Its structure was typical of enlightened publications, with
many articles containing useful information pertaining to agriculture and chemistry,
expressing great confidence in machines, and plenty of literary and geographical
texts. The image of the American continent that it conveyed reiterated the idea of a
future full of promise. A note in the 1825 issue included an allegory of the “Triunfo
de la Independencia Americana” (Triumph of American Independence). In its
description, the genius of independence appeared as a young woman, “lozana, bella
y con un gorro frigio”, (glowing with health, beautiful and wearing a Phrygian cap)
sitting in a “carro triunfal tirado por seis caballos en representación de las seis repú-
blicas independientes” (triumphal chariot drawn by six horses representing the six
independent republics). As always in compositions of this kind, the image was
surrounded by perfect allegories of Prudence, Hope, Temperance, Justice, the
Sciences and the Arts, Eternity, Unity, Commerce and Plenty.16
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100 | Carlos Ferrera

In keeping with the context indicated earlier, Mora praised the discipline of geog-
raphy because displaying the “public riches” of a place and the “moral state” of its
inhabitants showed that it was ready for good government and the impulse of trade.
At the same time, it showed a bountiful America in which each individual state had a
larger expanse of territory than, and riches on a par with, the most powerful nations
in the world. Eliminating the perverse colonial government would do the rest. As he
demonstrated in a review of the progress made in the new countries, Colombia was
showing signs of regeneration, West Indian women were displaying their serenity as
good wives and mothers, and Haiti had become a civilized nation twenty-five years
after independence. In the same issue, he summarized a letter from the philanthropist,
John Thomas Barber Beaumont, who asserted that America would shortly be
supplying the world with its products and perhaps “nobles y útiles ejemplos de orga-
nización social” (noble and useful examples of social organization). Naturally, the
continent welcomed utopian experiments. In 1826, Mora wrote in the Museo Universal
about the New Harmony community, founded by Robert Owen in the United States.
After pointing out that the project had earned the approval of all “profound
economists” and “all friends of humanity”, he explained that Owen’s ideas had been
poorly received in Europe, which was “devastated by revolutions”. This was why he
had concentrated his efforts in the United States, where the experiment was devel-
oping successfully, as was apparent from the increase in its population, the
multiplication of schools and the stimulus to productive agriculture. He went on to
advise the republics to the south to copy those plans as a way of increasing their popu-
lation. Finally, he dismissed those who considered such measures as pipe-dreams by
citing the example of the opening of a canal between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic,
which had been considered a fantasy ten years earlier but was now a reality.17
Likewise, in accordance with the colonizing tradition of the Enlightenment, he
lauded the creation of colonies in the Argentinian territory of Calera de Barquín in
Entre Ríos, to which colonists who were “healthy and of good conduct” would be
sent.18 The Museo included the “Bosquejo de un plan de colonización en la América
del Sur” (Outline of a colonization plan in South America), published by the company
run by an Englishman, Barber Beaumont. This project included plans of the chief
towns of the colonies, each one intended for some six hundred inhabitants. These
towns were of extreme geometrical regularity, a square mile in area, ringed by trees,
vegetable plots and flower gardens that guaranteed recreation and healthy living. They
were set out in great detail: the width of the streets, which were numbered, and of the
houses, and even the sizes of the blocks of dwellings were all indicated. Most of the
colonists were tenants whose passage to America had been paid for, although the
possibility that they might, in time, become owners was not ruled out. These
proposals, together with his praise for Owen’s experiments, reflected utopianism
imbued with the Enlightenment and a republican tradition in which the identification
of liberalism with private property was not as strict as it became later. In any case, a
property of modest size was desirable, in accordance with the republican tradition, so
as not to spoil in any way the dream of a community of economically independent
equals that prevailed in the revolutionary process. The utopian ideal did not depart
from this model and was described in some enlightened utopias written at the time,
such as Saint Pierre’s Arcadie, which was constituted as a society of frugal peasants,
or Jean Baptiste Say’s Olbie, a utopia whose political economy was governed with
frugality and economic equality. Mora did not depart from this model either; in his
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Catecismo de Economía política (Catechism of Political Economy), which was

published by Ackermann for the Latin American market, he argued in favour of the
role of capital as a tool to drive mechanization and bring about a society of plenty, as
well as high wages, which would guarantee high consumption and morality by
promoting education and good manners in people.19
Mora viewed the political economy, which he thought exemplified rationality and
the scientific spirit, as the key to social happiness, since it released the sources of
production and trade, eliminated obstacles to consumption and maintained the “equi-
librio entre la opulencia y la penuria” (balance between opulence and penury). In this
way, he was following the eighteenth-century trail that led from the old utopias, based
exclusively on agriculture, to those that introduced trade, as well as contemporary
theories about the market as an instrument capable of accelerating the decentralization
of society and displacing the political power that had traditionally intervened, in an
arbitrary way, in the allocation of resources. The result of his applying it to the real
world opened the door to a multitude of ideal images:
if we were to see all the land in that country cultivated with the utmost perfection, all its
inhabitants applying themselves to useful, productive work; the interests of the government
identified with those of individuals; public authority employed in alleviating public ills and
advancing the common good; order consolidated on the foundations of social happiness and
the whole nation turned into one vast family whose concord would be born of its own
interest, (would not the theoretical instrument deserve the name of science?)20

The new economy could not be understood without a utopia of individual

sovereign beings, in which moral education was just another economic variable. The
importance of this was confirmed in Lorenzo Villanueva’s Catecismo de moral
(Catechism of Morality), which equated society with a moral body, safeguarded by
citizen virtue. This meant placing the common good first, subordinating leisure to
work and, in short, attaining a “remedo de la bienaventuranza eterna” (imitation of
eternal bliss) on Earth. To that virtue, José de Urcullu, for his part, added manners,
which made relations in the “human family” run more smoothly. Likewise, No me
olvides (Forget-me-not), published in 1829 in London and several Latin American
capitals by another exile, Pablo Mendíbil, included a moral tale, entitled “La esclava
de Booroom” (The Booroom Slave), which was a story of civilization and racial
subjugation with a gender dimension. Its plot recounted the vicissitudes of a black
princess who was captured by slave traders after she had gone for a walk in the jungle
without the permission of her parents. She soon managed to escape and after many
hardships she reached a natural paradise of plants and animals, inhabited, of course,
by English people who boasted that they never made slaves of anybody and educated
her in humility and respect for her superiors. After a while, the princess regained the
“virtud de la obediencia” (virtue of obedience), was calling them (in the Spanish
version) “amitos” (little masters), and living happily and surrounded by the advances
of civilization, such as “peines y vestidos” (combs and dresses).21

The situation in republican Chile

Mora’s arrival in Chile from Buenos Aires was not something that was particularly
exceptional. José Victorino Lastarría, in his memoirs, highlighted the arrival of men
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102 | Carlos Ferrera

of learning from abroad for the purpose of improving education in the country, and
their fleeting role in attempts to inculcate independence of thought and regeneration.
Miguel Amunátegui, who took a conservative standpoint, attributed the invitation
extended to Europeans to the “utopian vision” in favour of changing things rapidly,
which prevailed among the Chilean elites of the day.22
The 1820s were a time of struggle between conservative liberals, called ‘pelucones’
(bigwigs), and more radical ones, known as ‘pipiolos’ (upstarts), who, by 1828, were
in power with General Pinto as President. Gabriel Salazar considered the struggles as
expressing the conflict between conservative centralism and federalism, with the latter
in favour of greater sovereignty for the local powers, the so-called “pueblos”, and also
of more direct political participation through assemblies rather than a representative
regime. Other authors, on the other hand, have emphasized the similarities between
the two groups. For Jocelyn Holt, the differences were circumstantial and complicated
by the presence of other sectors with particular claims, such as the tobacco dealers —
a conservative group that controlled part of the overseas trade through their tobacco
monopoly and advocated strong government — the federals and followers of the
former “supreme director” Bernardo O’Higgins, or of the late Carrera, who was
O’Higgins’ rival during the independence process. In this regard, Ana María Stuven
has stressed the ideological similarities of the Chilean elite, influenced by the culture
of the Spanish Enlightenment and the French Revolution. As successors to the colo-
nial power, the members of the elite believed in a natural order of things. Even though
they could differ about whether that order was the fruit of divine creation, in the
conservative case, or of history and compromise, in the liberal case, both sides
defended the maintenance of constitutional order and its reforms within a gradual
process. We can also point out that the elites as a whole shared, at least initially, the
existing utopian climate, which focused on three areas: the educational, the festive and
the constitutional.23
Education fulfilled a prime role in the enlightened project and in eighteenth-
century utopianism, as well as in early nineteenth-century liberalism, since it allegedly
had the power to create citizens and law-abiding people, in short, the new man. Hence
its progress was considered “la panacea de todos los males políticos y morales que
aquejaban a Chile” (the panacea for all the political and moral ills that afflicted Chile).
From the earliest stages of independence there was consensus about the need to
develop education. Manuel de Salas had argued for a utilitarian education; Camilo
Henríquez had set up the National Institute and promoted Lancasterian schools; and
in 1810, Juan Egaña had proposed a plan to foster scientific and industrial education
for the purpose of “suavizar las costumbres” (refining people’s manners).24
This educational programme was linked to the catechisms mentioned earlier, and
to the Lancasterian system of mutual instruction, for which the catechisms served as
manuals. This system was based on a cooperative methodology, whereby pupils at
more advanced levels were responsible for teaching their younger companions and
which made it easy to spread education at a low cost. At the same time, it was unde-
niably in the utopian tradition, as demonstrated by the fact that it was the system
employed in utopias like Henríquez’s Camila or Cabet’s Voyage en Icarie.
Alongside that model of general education, there were more selective experiments
in the ‘pipiolo’ period, such as the Plan de Estudios del Liceo de Chile (syllabus of the
Chile Lyceum) drawn up by Mora, which aimed to reform society by starting with
the elites, and targeted the children of the well-to-do. With a bias that was typical of
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Utopian Imagination Across the Atlantic | 103

the Enlightenment, it included, for the first time, studies of the humanities, with special
emphasis on literature — whose mission was “fecundar un campo tan vasto en un país
tan favorecido por la naturaleza” (to fertilize such a vast field in a country so favoured
by nature) — geography, eloquence and Bentham’s utilitarianism. It also tackled the
creation of a new language, a characteristic aspect of eighteenth-century utopianism,
which had a strong presence in Latin America after independence. Mora attributed
the lack of intermediate sounds in the Spanish language to the fact that the speech of
the average inhabitant was unintelligible gibberish. He installed, in its place a simple
clear language and replaced Nebrija’s Gramática de la Lengua Castellana (Grammar
of the Castilian Language) with another concocted by himself. Furthermore, he
believed that all the things that were wrong with the language had a political repercus-
sion, since they perverted ideas and opened the way to despotism. For that reason, the
language of the peninsula had little to offer the liberated American continent, which
led Mora to argue for a Latin American literature that adopted models of the British
writers, Shakespeare, Hume and Milton, the French, Molière, Racine and
Montesquieu, or the Spanish, Jovellanos and Quintana.25
Just as significant was the organization of the Lyceum as an institution. Student
life was regulated along typically utopian lines, down to the last detail; these included
references to the size of the dormitories, the distance between the beds, as well as other
arguments of a hygienist nature, such as prescribing cleanliness, the existence of a pool
for bathing and swimming, and light meals. Moreover, a disciplinary organization was
added in accordance with the monastic principles of utopianism that were clearly
apparent in Salomon’s House in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, which Mora so
admired, with its community of wise men, guides to the ideal city. Inside the Lyceum,
the rule of silence was respected, there was absolute equality, “uproar and shouting”
were forbidden, as were conversations with those who had no connection to the school
or the servants.26
In keeping with enlightened principles, education was to be extended to women
with the aim of improving their capabilities as mothers and as companions to men. In
his Cartas sobre la educación del bello sexo (Letters on the Education of the Fair Sex),
Mora echoed the expectation aroused by America, where “todas las esperanzas de los
filántropos sobre la mejora de la especie humana” (all the hopes of philanthropists
concerning the improvement of the human species) were directed. The need for a
moral revolution after the political one of independence could only be based on educa-
tion. Girls should be inculcated with civic virtues: the value of effort, compassion, and
moulded with an austere rather than capricious character. Their education should
avoid all specialization and be acquired by means of “gently sentimental” literature.
To this end, Mora recommended learning English instead of French because of the
“gravity of its literature” which led to “reflection and a devotion to freedom”. The
ideal scenario for the educational project was to be found in the rural environment,
where fraternal ties could be established more easily than in the city, as well as a
methodical life based on work and the development of practical philosophy, not on
the fanciful dreams that were habitual in French literature. In this way, he turned
utopia into reality and connected with the enlightened ideal of the creation of utopian
enclaves, such as the one represented in Lady Hamilton’s Munster village, where a
benefactress created an ideal society on one of her estates, with schooling for every-
body, religious tolerance, manufacturing work and stage plays. These ideas came to
fruition in the School for Young Ladies that Mora’s wife set up in Santiago. Inspired
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104 | Carlos Ferrera

by Lancasterian principles, it was similar to one she had previously opened in Buenos
Aires. Eventually it had sixty pupils who received an education that centred on
Christian Morality and Religion, sewing, the inevitable English and French, Spanish
Grammar and descriptive Geography.27
Along with education, public festivals and ceremonies constituted another essen-
tial element in utopian programmes and were, as such, habitual in the landscape of
the ideal societies that featured in the literature of the genre. Maurizio Ridolfi has
stressed the role of ritual as an instrument in the sacralization of politics and its use
of the symbolic dimension to construct identitarian social links. Bronisław Bazcko,
for his part, saw the utopian side of festivals as a way of reflecting the dreams of a
society, as well as its capacity for becoming a place of renewal and of exercise of the
collective imaginary. Celebration also became an island with its own rules and
rhythms, set within everyday society, and contributing, albeit episodically, to the
shaping of the new man. Displays laden with ritual significance expressed this kind
of aspiration during the Pinto government. According to the historian, Pinto Vallejo,
the political programme of the ‘pipiolos’ rested on the creation of an abstract people,
more imagined than real, which had closer links to the idealized image of the
(Ancient) Romans than to the labourers and craftsmen of contemporary Chilean
society. This model was no doubt consistent with the project of a new man that
matched up to the utopia being invoked. In the brief period of the ‘pipiolo’ mandate,
festivities commemorating Independence or the proclamation of the new
Constitution followed hard on the heels of each other, all serving educational pur-
poses and with the aim of reinforcing the political community. Accordingly, they
included orderly parades of all representatives of society “con semblantes de alegría”
(with happy faces), collective meals, stage plays, public games and dances, “alejados
de toda inmoralidad” (with no suggestion of any immorality), austere vegetable
decorations and pyramids “como en las repúblicas antiguas” (as in the ancient
republics), bells, masses, public prayers led by members of parliament and actors,
and night-time illuminations of symbolic value because they represented the triumph
of “light over the darkness”.28
In this area, theatre and drama played an important role. Enlightened tradition had
given it an educational civilizing function that the Chilean elite had shared since
Independence. El Boletín del Monitor, for example, celebrated the première of the anti-
clerical play by Nevares, Aristodemo, and recommended it be staged once a month. Its
packed audiences would applaud “las razones contra la superchería” (the reasons
against fraud). According to the periodical, its message made a deep impression on
all strata of society: on “enlightened men” because they discovered the bishop of Rome
and his “secuaces del clero fanático enriqueciéndose a costa de la credulidad”
(henchmen, the fanatical clergy, enriching themselves at the expense of [people’s]
credulity); and lesser thinkers, who learned that those societies, where ignorance ruled,
were looted by “hordas de sacrílegos” (sacrilegious hordes) in the name of God. The
theatre was a way of “polishing manners and language”, encouraging sociability,
without which man was a “semi-wild” creature. For that reason, and as had been the
case with the men of wisdom, the theatre had to be imported from Europe because of
the cultural backwardness of the country. With such ideas floating in the air, it was no
surprise that during those years the Spanish theatre companies of Teresa Samaniego
and Emilia Hernández, Francisco Villalba or Francisco Rivas Prádenas should disem-
bark there in quick succession. The arrival of Teresa Samaniego, who was a disciple
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Utopian Imagination Across the Atlantic | 105

of the famous Spanish actor Máiquez and a committed liberal in the Triennium of
1820–1823, was greeted as the dawn of civilization in Chile.29
Through the use of the emotions, theatre has frequently brought community links
closer. Mora himself had already acknowledged the potential of performance accom-
panied by tasteful, harmonious music when he published Doce canciones en español
(Twelve Songs in Spanish). The work included a hymn to Simón Bolívar, whose
“solemn and religious” melody could easily be adapted, according to the author, to
grand patriotic sentiments; and another to the sixteenth-century comunero, Juan Bravo,
backed by the “lively warlike” music of Weber’s opera, Der Freischütz, in which the
word “Liberty” repeated in lively energetic notes “set the pulse racing”.30
Tragedy played a prominent role in this educational project; Camilo Henríquez in
his time had considered it fundamental on stage, and there were frequent appeals to
put on new tragedies during the years that concern us here. In this respect, the leaders
of the independence movement elevated Vittorino Alfieri, a dramatist from Piedmont,
to mythic status, and the press of the day called for his works to be performed for their
civic value. Piero Gobetti highlighted his utopian dimension because he presented
solitary heroes, locked in the eternal struggle between freedom and tyranny, characters
living in a timeless golden age governed by models of virtuous behaviour. In short, the
sort of ideal people that the Chilean elite yearned for, according to Pinto Vallejo, ready
to sacrifice life and self-interest for the community. Another case was Virginia,
performed at commemorations of Chilean independence. Set at an unspecified time
in Ancient Rome, it staged the story of a heroine who preferred to kill her children and
commit suicide rather than live under tyranny. Her example stirred up the erstwhile
submissive Roman people, who rose up against their ruler. In this way, the play
showed that the ultimate alternative to tyranny was exemplary sacrifice in order to
achieve a future of virtue.31
Civic theatre of this kind had a recognized place in many of the utopian projects
of the era, such as Louis Sébastien Mercier’s L’an deux mille quatre-cent-quarante,
published in 1786, Jean-Baptiste Say’s Olbie or An Account of the First Settlement, Laws,
Form of Government, and Police, of the Cessares, A People of South America, a work of
1764 by James Burgh, in which the mission of the theatre was to prevent the corruption
and “effeminization” of the people. In the Chilean case, it never concealed its political
content, since the works were put on with proclamations delivered by members of
parliament or actors. After a performance of the tragedy, La condesa de Castilla by
Álvarez Cienfuegos, for example, the Spanish actress Emilia Hernández recited the
following poem, foreshadowing an ideal future of freedom and progress:

Free; be satisfied
That living in peace and unity
Chile will be a great nation
Wise and opulent
Forever free of tyrants
And of superstition
May heaven grant you to see,
Freedom of conscience
And the sciences will come to Chile
As announced by Volter (sic)
Then, oh what pleasure
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106 | Carlos Ferrera

The Arts will be reborn

Everyone will love God
Even though in different ways
Since, there being one God for all
All will enjoy one God
But let not impious fate
Wish that this fortunate land
Should find itself marked
By fanaticism like mine [Spain] . . . 32

Theatrical language also affected interpretations of events at the time. The failed
coup against Pinto’s government in 1828, for example, served to re-launch Alfieri’s
republican heroes:

The people’s feeling that only over their dead bodies would independence be taken from
them opposed [the attempted coup]. Pinto held out, surrounded by people of all classes.
Disappointment of the rebels, for they had been led to believe that they would be received
in triumph. Instead of those false promises, there were expressions of loyalty and patriotism
at every turn. The apparatus of force did not impose silence on the unarmed crowd. In the
midst of their ranks, voices cried out ‘Long live the people! Long live Pinto!’ The scene we
have just described was a sublime spectacle. It should be enshrined in our annals as the most
solemn testimony of the progress that the people have made on their road to freedom.33

Regrettably, the tragic tension appeared to be too much for the cultural level of the
time. Years before, El Censor de Buenos Aires had pointed out the dangers of a poor
acting. Both overacting and acting without feeling turned the sublime into the ridicu-
lous, removed the sense of illusion and pressed the audience into participating directly
by praising or censuring. In general, the enlightened elites in Chile (and in Argentina,
too), regardless of their political affiliation, were wary of the lower orders and sought
to limit their expansion. In the case of the theatre, an attempt was made to discipline
the audience, just as the enlightened European theatre of the day — which was
accepted as the paragon of utopias — had advocated. They called for clean audito-
riums, theatre judges to censor works considered immoral and publicly condemn their
authors, as Mercier did in his utopia, L’an deux mille quatre-cent-quarante. Likewise,
they decried the kinds of performance considered base and common, even if they were
much more successful, such as magic comedies. These spectacles were condemned
because they were too far removed from rationality and because they occasionally
included disturbing political content, such as defence of guerrilla leaders. Something
similar happened with the chinganas, dances that, according to Mora, degraded the
“orden físico y moral de la sociedad” (physical and moral order of society) by encour-
aging the promiscuity of men and women with gestures of wild abandon.34
Despite the good intentions, civic theatre did not prosper. Tragedy seemed to be
a genre that was too elevated to be understood by the general public, so that intellec-
tuals like Andrés Bello and Mora himself recommended staging comedies that were
well done and had some kind of a moral content. In this regard, Mora staged El marido
ambicioso (The Ambitious Husband), which followed in the wake of the neoclassical
Spanish playwright, Moratín, and did not forgo passages with strong utopian echoes.
The leading character, a determined liberal ready to sacrifice his married life to obtain
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Utopian Imagination Across the Atlantic | 107

an important political post, expressed his anticipation of a society in which his ideals
would triumph:

Reason is queen of the world

Interests, in accord
Only with reason hold sway
From the south to the north
May Your Excellency make easier
With wise rulings
The enlightenment of the masses:
May you shape an education
In line with the principles of the century;
May the Gothic frameworks of our grandfathers fall
Before the truth; and may the woods
Become splendid cities where burgeon
Virtues, gold and work /
Like flowers in the meadow.
Command them, Your Excellency, to study
From the old to the young,
Chemistry and Economics
And the rights of man.
Let unjust exemptions from birth cease;
Let work be given to the wise man
Not to the schemer, nor to the noble;
Let there be severe punishment
For those fierce tyrants
Despots of thought
And persecutors of opinions.
Cleanse the secretariats
of those stupid vermin.35

In short, it was a project for a new society that led his interlocutor in the scene to
respond that if he expressed those theories, he would be considered “a lunatic”.36
The final element of the project to create a new society rested on the drafting of a
constitution. Projects of this type proliferated in the decade following independence,
but were criticized by conservatives in subsequent decades for being out of touch with
reality and for the chaos they caused. Against this, Renato Cristi and Pablo Ruiz Tagle
have re-evaluated their role in the later consolidation of republican Chile, as well as
their egalitarian content associated with the progress of civilization and ideas about
promoting wealth through work. This process of permanent testing was a conscious
thing, as General Pinto himself demonstrated when, in his speech introducing the
1828 text, he maintained his opinion of the “perfectibilidad de las constituciones”
(perfectibility of Constitutions) until a republic like the Chilean one was attained.37
In that same year, in fact, a text was approved, the drafting of which was attributed
to Mora. Egaña’s earlier conservative version of 1823 had merged enlightened
elements with utopian-sounding republican ones, such as the establishment of a moral
power as being, “único capaz de llegar a un estado ideal” (the only one capable of
arriving at an ideal state), and the promotion of civic festivities, plays and prizes for
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108 | Carlos Ferrera

virtue. For its part, the 1828 Constitution — to which Mora had added a variety of
elements inspired by the Cadiz Constitution of 1812 — incorporated equal rights
(including the end of ecclesiastical privileges and primogenitures), freedom, property,
the primacy of the Legislative body, the extension of the right to vote, freedom of the
press, as well as trial by jury and religious tolerance. It also envisaged a federal compo-
nent, which, for Salazar, represented the triumph of the provincial middle classes over
the Santiago oligarchy.38 This was not altogether an anomaly, because in the years
following independence, federalism, throughout Latin America, reflected the
autonomous tradition of the town councils of the colonial period, and was considered
by many a source of freedom. The Mercurio de Valparaíso, for example, praised the
advance of federalism on the continent as the only means of resolving conflict and
spreading freedom.39 At the same time, another London periodical aimed at the Latin
American market, the Repertorio Americano, which was published by exiles and
included contributions from Pablo Mendíbil and Andrés Bello, commented on the
Columbiad by Joel Barlow, a radical republican from the United States. Throughout
its pages, Hesper, the guardian genius of the western continent (America), after
appearing to Columbus and showing him the horrors of the conquest, encourages him
with the triumph of independence:

A work so vast a second world required,

By oceans bourn’d, from elder states retired;
Where, uncontaminated, unconfined,
Free contemplation might be able to expand the mind,
To form, fix, prove the well adjusted plan
And base and build the commonwealth of man.
A new creation waits the western shore,
...
Here social man a second birth shall find,
And a new range of reason lift his mind
Feed his strong intellect with purer light,
A nobler sense of duty and of right,
The sense of liberty; . . .

Freedom spread across the world thanks to education and federal government and the
last book of the work confirmed the triumph of a federative utopian vision on a world-
wide scale with

freedom of trade, advances in communications as a result of the opening of the Suez and
Panama canals, the appearance of cities in America, the social pre-eminence of scientists,
whose researches were moving in the direction of prolonging the life and happiness of man,
and the men of letters and philosophers, instigators of the love of order and of moral actions.
Finally, a conference of all the nations was called to achieve human harmony. The delegates
met in a temple of reason, situated in Egypt, in whose porch stood the figure of earth’s genius
with Truth’s mirror in his hands. On his pedestal the symbols of the most noble arts were
engraved; at his feet, the symbols of war and superstition. The delegates entered the temple
of reason and received from her the order to strengthen their links until they formed a federal
empire. As a result, they avoided war and misfortunes forever, and peace and happiness
reigned in the universe.40
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The end of utopia

The ‘pipiolo’ liberals were not in power for long, being ousted by the conservatives
after the Battle of Lircay in 1830. Earlier there had been the failed coup, mentioned
above, and a tense political climate, described in terms that were once more indebted
in large measure to utopian language. The Mercurio de Valparaíso associated the
drafting of the Constitution with material and spiritual regeneration, with a strong
classical tone:

Hail, Chile the fortunate! After many vicissitudes, you raised, in the year 28, a monument as
astonishing as the lofty Andes! Hail, you mansion of free men, nation of smiling Amalthea,
sanctuary of candour and spirituality! You are born anew!41

Their rivals also resorted to a similar type of language and announced a future full of
promise after the fall of Pinto:

. . . And a resounding voice at once inspires

The longing for a happy future
Then a gracious nymph appears,
In shining chariot
And with loud echo declares imperiously thus
Chile will be for ever fortunate
Unity will reign in it eternally,
It will serve as a refuge for the innocent,
And a happy mansion for the unfortunate;
Upon its fertile soil will not enter
Horrendous tyranny […]
Its soul [i.e.] industry, sciences,
Trade, the arts,
Will everywhere make
More than a thousand advances
The powers will populate
Our ports with ships,
Even as far as the deserts
The ingenuity of manufacturing
And useful agriculture
Will create abundance […]
Public spiritedness will be revived
In glorious scenes,
That made Rome, Sparta, Athens
And Greece eternal.42

Shortly afterwards, Mora was expelled from Chile and took refuge in Peru. Utopia had
crumbled and with it his confidence in the country, which lost its idyllic qualities and
became an “Arabia”; the Chilean new man likewise went from being a “Roman hero”
to being branded a “coarse Boeotian”.43 It was perhaps because of this that Mora
backed the strong government of Marshal Santa Cruz in his new country of residence.
The trend was general. Mora had shown the importance of utopianism in early
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110 | Carlos Ferrera

liberalism. He rejected, of course, great transformations, which explained why he

rejected the French Revolution. He was more in favour of a gradual strategy, one that
could change society in the medium term, but also in a fundamental way. By contrast,
the end of the 1820s marked a break in Latin American liberalism. One of the most
outstanding cases was Bolívar; he censured the constitutionalist utopianism of those
who conceived “republics of air” and set out to attain a political perfection that was
not connected to the social reality surrounding it. In the Chilean case, Andrés Bello,
who had previously been close to Mora and was now the inspiration behind the new
conservative government of Portales, represented that appeal to a historical rationality
and the search for stability. These objectives were only possible if republican power,
built on strong centralized institutions, was handed over to the oligarchy until the
people were ready, forgetting the attempts to erase the past and start with a clean slate.44

Notes
1 Matthew Pratt Guterl, “The Future of Transnational History”, American Historical Review
118, 1 (2013): 130–139. For the idea of Latin America as a consumer of European ideas
that brought hope of change, see Miguel Ángel Centeno and Fernando López Alves, “The
Other Mirror: Grand Theory through the Lens of Latin America”, in Imported Modernity
in Post Colonial State Formation, edited by Eugenia Roldán and Marcelo Caruso (Frankfurt
am Main: Peter Lang, 2007), pp. 7–28.
2 Christine Rees, Utopian Imagination and Eighteenth-Century Fiction (London: Longman,
1996), p. 9. For changes in utopian models, see Bronisław Baczko, Lumières de l’Utopie
(Paris: Payot, 1978), pp. 29, 37 and 410; Antoine Hatzenberger, ed., Utopies des Lumières
(Lyon: Ens, 2010), p. 36.
3 The role of overseas in utopias, in Rees, Utopian Imagination, pp. 55 and 80ff; Larry Wolff,
Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of Enlightenment (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 395; for Buffon’s view of American inferiority, see
Antonello Gerbi, La disputa del nuevo mundo. Historia de una polémica, 1750–1900 (Mexico:
FCE, 1960); Mary Louise Pratt, Ojos imperiales: literatura de viajes y transculturación
(Mexico: FCE, 2010), p. 75.
4 Samuel Haigh, Alexander Caldcleugh and Max Radiguet, Viajeros en Chile, 1817–1847
(Santiago de Chile: Editorial del Pacífico, 1955), pp. 14 and 25, 148 and 160, respectively.
Zenobio Saldivia, La visión de la naturaleza en tres científicos del siglo XIX en Chile: Gay,
Domeyko and Philippi (Santiago de Chile: Universidad de Santiago de Chile, 2003),
pp. 125 and 138.
5 The application of Rancière to the moment of independence, in Patrice Vermeren, “El
desplazamiento de la filosofía, el no-lugar de la democracia y la lengua de la emancipación”,
in República, liberalismo y democracia, edited by Marcos García de la Huerta and Carlos Ruiz
Schneider (Santiago de Chile: LOM 2011), pp. 161–175; Rafael Rojas, Las repúblicas de
aire. Utopía y desencanto en la revolución de Hispanoamérica (Madrid: Taurus, 2009), pp. 38
ff and 244.
6 The quotation by Egaña, in Enrique Fernández, El nacimiento de la cultura política de la
nación en el Río de la Plata y Chile (1808–1818) (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico,
2011), p. 84: “La idea de una ciudad formada para la sabiduría y habitada solamente de
sabios, si fuese capaz de realizarse, en ningún punto de la tierra podría colocarse mejor que
Chile. Distante por su situación a 300 leguas de aquel gran mundo donde la guerra, la intriga
y las necesidades urgentes ocupan la vida de más de un tercio de sus habitantes y libre por
su destino político de aquel tumulto de pasiones que excitan la ambición, las ideas de supe-
rioridad y el equilibrio de poder conservamos una existencia metódica y uniforme donde
el nacimiento y la muerte regularmente forman un círculo que nos viene a dejar en el mismo
punto de jerarquía.”
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Utopian Imagination Across the Atlantic | 111

7 Rafael Sagredo Baeza, “Chile: de finis terrae imperial a ‘copia feliz del edén autoritario’”,
in Crear la nación. Los nombres de los países de América Latina, compiled by Juan Carlos
Chiaramonte, Carlos Marichal and Aimer Granados (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2008),
pp. 41–67: “Por el mar y la tierra amenazan / Los secuaces del déspota vil / Pero toda la
naturaleza / Los espera para combatir: / El Pacífico al Sud y Occidente / Al Oriente los
Andes y el Sol / Por el Norte un inmenso desierto / Y el Centro libertad y unión.”
8 Henríquez’s text, in Enrique Fernández, El nacimiento, p. 127: “Esta es una verdad de
geografía que se viene a los ojos y que nos hace palpable la situación de Chile. Pudiendo
esta vasta región subsistir por sí misma, teniendo en las entrañas de la tierra y sobre su super-
ficie no sólo lo necesario para vivir, sino aún para el recreo de los sentidos; pudiendo desde
sus puertos ejercer un comercio útil con todas las naciones, produciendo hombres robustos
para la cultura de sus fértiles campos[…] hallándose encerrada como dentro de un muro,
y separada de los demás pueblos por una cadena de montes altísimos de eterna nieve, por
un dilatado desierto y por el mar pacífico, ¿no era un absurdo contrario al destino y orden
inspirado por la naturaleza, ir a buscar un gobierno arbitrario, un ministerio venal y corrom-
pido dañosas y oscuras leyes, o las decisiones parciales de aristócratas ambiciosos, a la otra
parte de los mares?”
9 Camilo Henríquez, La Camila o la patriota de Sud-América (Buenos Aires: Imp. de
Benavente y cía, 1817). The idea of an idealized past heralding a perfect future, in Enrique
Fernández, El nacimiento, p. 178.
10 For the role of exile in the Atlantic world, see Juan Luis Simal, Emigrados. España y el exilio
internacional, 1814–1834 (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2012),
pp. 37 and 327; Eugenia Roldán Vera, The British Book Trade and Spanish American
Independence: Education and Knowledge Transmission in Transcontinental Perspective
(Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate 2003), p. 47; Colombia: Being a Geographical, Statistical,
Agricultural, Commercial, and Political Account of That Country, vol. 1 (London: Baldwin,
Cradock and Joy, 1822), p. civ; El Emigrado Observador (February 1829): 41; El Repertorio
Americano 1 (1829): 80.
11 For the role of catechisms in America, see Roldán, The British Book Trade, pp. 93, 142 and
164. For the link between structured knowledge and harmony, see José Joaquín Mora,
Museo Universal de Ciencias y Artes vol.1 (1825): 271; Nicolas-Edme Restif de la Bretonne,
El descubrimiento austral por un hombre-volador o el Dédalo francés (Santiago de Chile: Centro
de Investigaciones de Historia Americana, 1962).
12 José María Blanco White, Variedades o El Mensajero de Londres 1, 5 (1824): 17 and p. 404.
The advice is in vol. 2, 7 (1825): 95.
13 The praise for constitutionalism, in Variedades o El Mensajero de Londres 2, 6 (1825): 2;
Carol Tully, “Ackermann, Mora, and the Transnational Context: Cultural Transfer in the
Old World and the New”, in Londres y el liberalismo hispánico, edited by Daniel Muñoz and
Gregorio Alonso (Frankfurt am Main: Iberoamericana Vevuert, 2011), pp. 153–164;
Fernando Durán López, ed., José María Blanco White. Artículos de crítica e historia literaria
(Sevilla: Clásicos Andaluces, 2011), p. 62; Ángel Saavedra, Duque de Rivas, El Desterrado
[manuscript], Biblioteca Nacional de España [National Library of Spain], online version,
https://beta.worldcat.org/archivegrid/collection/data/430966189; for the relationship of the
latter with exile, see Peter Cooke, “Nation, Myth, and History in Ocios de Españoles
Emigrados (London, 1824–27)”, in Londres y el Liberalismo, Muñoz and Alonso, pp. 95–
109.
14 For Mora’s life and career, see Luis Monguió, Don José Joaquín Mora y el Perú del
Ochocientos (Madrid: Castalia, 1967).
15 Crónica Científica y Literaria, 4 April 1817, and 29 April 1817. Mora’s technological utopia,
in Pilar Asensio, “Mora en Londres: Aportaciones al Hispanoamericanismo”, in Londres y
el liberalismo, Muñoz and Alonso, pp. 111–123.
16 Museo Universal de Ciencias y Artes 1 (1825): 219.
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112 | Carlos Ferrera

17 Museo Universal de Ciencias y Artes vol. 1 (1825): 359, 375 and 315. Utopian experiments
are in vol. 2 (1826): 61 and 62.
18 In 1825, the British company, River Plate Agricultural Association, settled fifty colonists in
Calera with the objective of growing wheat, although the settlement was soon abandoned.
19 Museo Universal de Ciencias y Artes 1 (1825): 251. For limitations on property in early
liberalism, see Pierre Rosanvallon, The Society of Equals (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2013). José Joaquín Mora, Catecismo de Economía Política (London: R.
Ackermann, 1825), pp. 22 and 25.
20 Mora, Catecismo de Economía, p. 90: “si viésemos en aquel país cultivado con la mayor
perfección todo su terreno, dedicados todos sus habitantes a trabajos útiles y productivos;
identificados los intereses del gobierno con los de los individuos; empleada la autoridad
pública en aligerar los males públicos y en fomentar el bien; consolidados el orden en las
bases de la ventura social y convertida la nación entera en una vasta familia cuya concor-
dia naciera de su interés propio (¿no mereciera el nombre de ciencia el instrumento
teórico . . . ?)”. For the change to utopias based on trade, see Gregory Claeys, Utopias of
the British Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). For the role of
the market as the basis of utopia, see Pierre Rosanvallon, El capitalismo utópico (Buenos
Aires: Nueva Visión 2006), p. 13.
21 Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva, Catecismo de Moral (Paris: Garnier Hermano, 1896), first
published in 1826. José de Urcullu, Lecciones de Moral, Virtud y Urbanidad (Madrid:
Librería de Antonio Calleja, 1845), p. 53 (a work of 1825). No me olvides. Colección de
producciones en prosa y verso, orijinales (sic), imitadas y traduzidas (sic): para MCCCCXXVIII
por D. Pablo Mendíbil (London: Ackermann, 1828), p. 63.
22 José Victorino Lastarría, Recuerdos literarios. Datos para la historia literaria de la América
Española y del progreso intelectual de Chile (Santiago de Chile: Librería de M. Servat, 1885),
pp. 12 ff. Miguel Amunátegui, Don José Joaquín de Mora: apuntes biográficos (Santiago de
Chile: Imprenta Nacional, 1888), p. 101; in a similar vein, Hernán Godoy Urzúa, Apuntes
sobre la cultura de Chile (Valparaiso: Universidad Católica, 1982), p. 80.
23 Gabriel Salazar, Construcción de Estado en Chile (1760–1860): democracia de “los pueblos”,
militarismo ciudadano, golpismo oligárquico (Santiago de Chile: Sudamericana, 2005);
Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt, La Independencia de Chile: tradición, modernización y mito (Madrid:
Mapfre, 1992); Ana María Stuven, La seducción de un orden. Las elites y la construcción de
Chile en las polémicas culturales y políticas del siglo XIX (Santiago de Chile: Universidad
Católica, 2000).
24 The new man, in Museo Universal de Ciencias y Artes 1 (1825): 216. The panacea of ills in
El Mercurio chileno, 1 April 1828.
25 José Joaquín Mora, Oración inaugural del curso de oratoria del Liceo de Chile (Santiago de
Chile: Imp. de R. Rengifo, 1830).
26 For the rules of El Liceo, see El Mercurio de Valparaíso, 17 December 1828.
27 José Joaquín Mora, Cartas sobre la educación del bello sexo por una señora americana (London:
Carlos Wood, 1824), pp. 5, 12 and 42; Lady Mary Hamilton, Munster Village (London:
Robson & Co, 1778) in Digital Library Project, http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/
hamilton-mary/munster/munster.html (accessed 20 September 2015). For the College of
Young Ladies, see Amunátegui, Mora, p. 134.
28 Maurizio Ridolfi, “Fiestas y conmemoraciones”, in Historia cultural de la política contempo-
ránea, edited by Jordi Canal and Javier Moreno (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y
Constitucionales, 2009), pp. 59–96; Bazcko, Lumières de l’utopie, pp. 236 and 244; Julio
Pinto Vallejo and Verónica Valdivia, ¿Chilenos todos? La construcción social de la nación
(1810–1840) (Santiago de Chile: LOM, 2009), p. 161. Examples of civic festivities in
support of independence and the Constitution are in El Mercurio de Valparaíso, 22
September 1827 and 24 September 1828.
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Utopian Imagination Across the Atlantic | 113

29 For the civilizing value of the theatre, see El Argos de Chile, 1818; El Boletín del Monitor, 5
November 1827; El Verdadero Liberal, 9 March 1827.
30 For emotional utopia in the theatre, see Jill Dolan, “Utopia in performance”, Theatre
Research International 31, 2 (2006): 163–173. Enthusiasm for the arrival of Samaniego in
Miguel Amunátegui, Primeras representaciones dramáticas en Chile (Santiago de Chile:
Imprenta Nacional, 1888), p. 80. The twelve songs are in Museo Universal de Ciencias y
Artes 1 (1825): 82.
31 Henríquez’s defence of tragedy is in Amunátegui, Primeras representaciones, p. 102.
Giuseppe Bellini, Storia della Relazioni Letterarie tra l’Italia e l’America di lingua spagnola
(Milan: Cisalpino-La Goliardica, 1977), pp. 95 ff. The request for new plays by Alfieri in
El Argos de Chile, 3 September 1818. Piero Gobetti, La filosofía política di Vittorio Alfieri
(Turin: Piero Gobetti, 1923), p. 125. José Victorino Alfieri, Virginia (Madrid: Imp.
Repullés & Vargas, 1813), p. 11.
32 El Mercurio de Valparaíso, 22 September 1827: “Libres; estad satisfechos
Que viviendo en paz y unión / Chile será una nación / Grande, sabia y opulenta / De tiranos
siempre exenta / Y de la superstición / El cielo os conceda ver, / La libertad de las conciencias
/ Y a Chile vendrán las ciencias / Como lo anunció Volter (sic) / Entonces, ó (sic) que placer
/ Las artes renacerán / Todos a Dios amarán / Aunque de diversos modos / Pues siendo un
Dios para todos / Todos de un Dios gozarán / Mas no quieras suerte impía / Que esta tierra
afortunada / Por el fanatismo hollada / Se encuentre como la mía . . . ”
33 El Mercurio de Valparaíso, 30 July 1828: “Se opuso el sentimiento del pueblo de que sólo
muertos se les quitaría la independencia. Pinto se mantuvo rodeado de gentes de todas las
clases. Decepción de los rebeldes, se les había hecho creer que serían recibidos en triunfo.
En lugar de esas falaces promesas se veía por todas partes expresiones de lealtad y patrio-
tismo. El aparato de la fuerza no impuso silencio a la muchedumbre inerme. En medio de
las filas se gritaba ¡viva el pueblo!, ¡viva Pinto! La escena que acabamos de referir formó un
espectáculo sublime. Debe consagrarse en nuestros anales como testimonio más solemne
de los progresos que el pueblo ha hecho en su carrera a la libertad.”
34 El Censor de Buenos Aires, 5 September 1815. The misgivings of the Chilean elites, in Pinto
Vallejo and Valdivia, ¿Chilenos todos?; those of the Argentinian elites, in Gabriel Di Meglio,
¡Viva el bajo pueblo! La plebe urbana de Buenos Aires y la política entre la Revolución de Mayo
y el rosismo (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2007), p. 115. Carmen Maturana, “La Comedia de
Magia y los efectos visuales de la era pre-cinematográfica en el siglo XIX en Chile”, AIST-
HESIS 45 (2009): 82–102. Criticism of the chinganas in Mercurio de Valparaíso, 24 July
1829.
35 José Joaquín Mora, El marido ambicioso (Santiago de Chile: Imp. de R. Rengifo, 1828), p.
28: “Reina es la razón del mundo / Los intereses, acordes / Con la razón solo imperan /
Desde el mediodía al norte / Facilite Vuecencia / Con sabias disposiciones / La ilustración
de las masas: / Una educación conforme / Con los principios del siglo; / Las góticas arma-
zones / De nuestros abuelos caigan / Ante la verdad; los bosques / Se conviertan en ciudades
/ Espléndidas, donde broten / Virtudes, oro y trabajos / Como en el prado las flores. / Mande
Vuecencia que estudien / Desde el anciano hasta el joven, / Química y Economía / Y los
derechos del hombre. / Que del nacimiento cesen / Las injustas exenciones (sic); / Que el
empleo se dé al sabio / No al intrigante ni al noble; / Que con rigor se castiguen / Esos tiranos
feroces / Déspotas del pensamiento, / Y verdugos de opiniones. / Limpiad las secretarías /
De esas sabandijas torpes.”
36 Mora, El marido ambicioso, p. 31.
37 Renato Cristi and Pablo Ruiz-Tagle, La República en Chile. Teoría y práctica del
Constitucionalismo Republicano (Santiago de Chile: LOM, 2006); Rojas, Repúblicas, p. 110.
38 Salazar, Construcción de Estado en Chile, p. 327.
39 El Mercurio de Valparaíso, 12 September 1827.
40 Repertorio Americano 2 (1829): 20: “libertad de comercio, avances en las comunicaciones
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114 | Carlos Ferrera

por la apertura de canales en Suez y Panamá, la aparición de ciudades en América, la pree-

minencia social de los científicos, cuyas investigaciones se encaminaban a la prolongación
de la vida y la felicidad del hombre, y de los literatos y filósofos, impulsores del amor al
orden y a las acciones morales. Finalmente, se convocaba un congreso de todas las naciones
para lograr la armonía humana. Los delegados se reunían en un templo de la razón, situado
en Egipto, en cuyo pórtico figuraba el genio de la tierra con el espejo de la verdad en la
mano. En su pedestal aparecían engastados en oro los símbolos de las artes más nobles; a
sus plantas, los símbolos de la guerra y la superstición. Los delegados entraban en el templo
de la razón y recibían de ella la orden de estrechar sus vínculos hasta formar un imperio
federal. Como resultado, huían para siempre la guerra y las desgracias, y la paz y la felicidad
reinaban en el universo.”
41 Mercurio de Valparaíso, 31 December 1828: “Salve ¡o Chile venturoso! que después de una
larga serie de vicisitudes alzasteis el año 28 un monumento tan asombroso como los
elevados Andes! ¡Salve mansión de hombres libres, patria de la risueña Amalthea, asilo del
candor y la espiritualidad! ¡Renacisteis!”
42 El Crepúsculo, 3 October 1829: “ . . . Y una sonora voz al punto inspira / La ansia de un
porvenir venturoso / Mas se aparece en resplandeciente carro / Una ninfa graciosa, / Y
alzando el eco dice así imperiosa / Chile será por siempre afortunado / La unión reinará en
él eternamente, / El servirá de asilo al inocente, / Y de mansión feliz al desgraciado; / En su
suelo feraz no tendrá entrada / La horrenda tiranía […] / La alma industria, las ciencias, /
El comercio, las artes, / Harán en todas partes / Progresos más de mil / Poblarán las potencias
/ De buques nuestros puertos, / Y aun hasta los desiertos / El ingenio fabril / La útil agri-
cultura / Creará la abundancia […] / Revivirá el civismo / En gloriosas escenas, / Que a
Roma, Esparta, Atenas / Y a Grecia eternizó.”
43 Mora’s contemptuous descriptions of Chile and the Chileans in Amunátegui, Mora,
pp. 274 and 316, respectively.
44 The republics of air, in Rojas, Repúblicas, p. 244. Iván Jaksic, Andrés Bello: La pasión por el
orden (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 2001). Miguel Ángel Centeno. “Republics
of the Possible: State Building in Latin America and Spain”, in State and Nation Making in
Latin America and Spain, edited by Miguel Ángel Centeno and Agustín Ferraro
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013), pp. 3–24.
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Cabet’s Utopia, from

Minorca to Argentina:
6 Bartolomé Victory y
Suárez
Horacio Tarcus

After the Battle of Caseros in 1852, Argentina experienced a historic moment of such
intense and far-reaching transformations — driven by the dominant class —, that it
was recently referred to as a “veritable process of social engineering”.1 During the
course of this transformational period, three major objectives were achieved. In the
first place, Argentina completed its integration into the new world capitalist order, so
establishing the foundations of bourgeois order in that corner of the world. This was
mirrored not only in the extremely rapid urbanization of Buenos Aires and other
provincial capitals, the modernization of transport and means of communication, the
commercial exploitation of all the factors of production in anticipation of a national
market, but also in the transformation of regional bourgeois groups born under
colonial or post-independent rule into a modern agricultural bourgeoisie that strove
to control the levers of political power and set itself up as a dominant class of national
scope.
Secondly, the country finally managed to form a unified system of political repre-
sentation during this period. According to Marta Bonaudo:

The constitution that was approved in 1853 asserted the criterion of the sovereignty of the
people and situated the figure of the citizen as the basis of all legitimacy. However, starting
with the specific practices of power that emerged and were developed during those thirty
years, the elites systematically violated fundamental aspects of the thinking that was at the
heart of that legitimacy, but which did not prevent them from consolidating a narrative of
legality that shored up the edifice of the nation state.2

Such factious forms of political practice were not, however, an obstacle to the
creation of a public sphere, which was envisaged as a space for discussion and delib-
eration in which private individuals met in public and appealed to reason and
argument, with a view to mutual understanding.3 Creoles and immigrants, bourgeois
sectors and those associated with the workplace all contributed to what came to be
called the Argentinian “associative explosion” that followed Caseros, and which
encompassed clubs, cultural associations for the people, mutual, cooperative, liter-
ary, scientific and masonic associations and so on.4 No less crucial for the
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116 | Horacio Tarcus

development of the public sphere was the expansion of an extensive network of

newspapers and periodicals, the space of public debate par excellence. This press
network was complemented by increasing numbers of pamphlets, magazines and
books being published, fuelled by a growing network of bookshops and printing
houses, which, shortly afterwards, would become the publishers that emerged at the
end of the nineteenth century.5 All this meaningful expansion and diversification of
the reading public was, in turn, favoured by a flourishing school system, which had
been established round about 1884 when the National Education Act (law 1420) was
passed, but enjoyed its most rapid expansion at this time. During this expansionary
cycle, a field of intellectual endeavour gradually emerged, as a glittering array of
writers, journalists, educators and political essayists helped shape and organize the
different spaces within it.
The third objective reached was the organization of the State. After a decade of
coexistence between two quasi-states at loggerheads with each other, a nationwide
state apparatus began to be put in place, as the constitutional rules required, under
the presidencies of Bartolomé Mitre and Domingo F. Sarmiento. Its sovereign power
was strengthened in the sense that it took over and centralized in Buenos Aires prerog-
atives and functions that had hitherto been in the power of the provinces, namely,
those concerned with fiscal and monetary affairs and those of a military, judicial,
administrative and educational nature.6
In the context of this far-reaching process, the concerns and interests of the Creole
intellectual elites shifted from the problems associated with revolution and “regener-
ation” to those of social order, from romanticism to liberalism, from socialism to
positivism. Chiaramonte has described this process in terms of a shift in the mentality
of the elites:

In Argentina, after the so-called Generation of 1837, the mission of intellectuals ceased to
be thought of in terms of revolution. The writings of Esteban Echeverría and some of his
contemporaries are the last in which nineteenth-century intellectuals conceive of their task
as a revolutionary one. After that time — and the subsequent works of various members
of that generation also seem to bear witness to the changes — Argentinian intellectuals seem
resigned to the fact that certain aspects of society could not be modified. Across Ibero-
America as a whole, the prospects of brilliant economic expansion that were offered by the
international division of labour tended to diminish the emphasis on social inequalities, so that
the central problem was social order itself, which became the key slogan of end-of-century
governments, in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico too. This was not a fashionable phenomenon,
not just the result of positivist influence — to the extent that positivism accepted the exist-
ing social order and accentuated order so as to make progress — but constituted a true
shift in mentality among the Latin American political elites, induced by the prospects of
establishing a connection with the world economy and by the very changes in the social
structure of those countries.7

For Tulio Halperin, this change in the ideology of the Generation of 1837 had
operated “bajo el doble estímulo del fracaso de las tentativas de liberar a Argentina y
de la frustración de la experiencia revolucionaria francesa de 1848” (under the
twofold stimulus of the failure of attempts to liberate Argentina and the frustration
of the French revolutionary experience of 1848).8 Nonetheless, romantic socialism
did not disappear from the River Plate after this major shift in the way of thinking of
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Cabet’s Utopia, from Minorca to Argentina | 117

the intellectual elites or with the failure of the 1848 revolutions. It would be precisely
those on River Plate soil who were exiles of the counter-revolution, which followed
the burgeoning of social and political activity during those years, who would encour-
age a second phase of social romanticism. These were the men who had been
expelled as a result of their political, journalistic or intellectual activity, especially
from France or Spain, who arrived in Latin America, not as simple immigrants eager
to seek their fortune, but with the hope of realizing their dream of an emancipated
social order on a new continent, without the encumbrances of the Old World. They
are the ones who, in tribute to the splendid study by Edward H. Carr, we refer to
here as the “Romantic Exiles”.
Marcelo Segall pointed out that “cada jornada revolucionaria vencida en Europa
está señalada por la llegada de exiliados a la América” (every day of revolution in
Europe ending in defeat is marked by the arrival of exiles in South America). The first
European outlaws were the liberal soldiers defeated by the Holy Alliance, who fought
alongside the Creole liberators. The second wave of refugees was made up of the
opponents of the July Monarchy, especially teachers and journalists committed to the
ideas of romantic socialism. The third wave of political immigration coincided with
the 1848 Revolutions. Those who fought in Paris in the Days of the June Uprising
were the first to arrive; next came the revolutionaries from Germany, followed by the
Mazzinianos (from Italy). Most headed for Chile, others for Uruguay and Brazil.
Later, a great number chose to take refuge in Argentina.9
Arriving as part of this third wave of exiles were the Chilean, Francisco Bilbao (who
arrived in Buenos Aires via France), the Minorcan Bartolomé Victory y Suárez, the
Frenchman, Alejo Peyret and the Spaniard, Serafín Álvarez, the main bearers of the
books, pamphlets, periodicals, in short, the ideas, of Fourier, Saint-Simon, Leroux,
Owen, Cabet, Lamennais, Proudhon and Fernando Garrido; they were the ones who
circulated these ideas and texts not only in the intellectual spaces of the elites, but also
in the Argentinian workers’ movement, which was in the early stages of organization
and expression. The new socialist ideas, promoted by the “romantic exiles”, would of
necessity circulate via the new liberal press media, in the nascent literary circles, the
education system and the reformist periodicals, whose thought the Creole elite
hegemonized. It was no coincidence, then, that we find Peyret and Bilbao collabo-
rating with the project of President Urquiza, the mutualist Victory y Suárez managing
the Rural Society no less, and the Utopian, Serafín Álvarez becoming a trial judge.
Nonetheless, even if the exiles occupied a relatively minor place in the process of
“national organization” — as progressive educators, people who drove the new jour-
nalism forward, encouraged mutualism and cooperativism, or promoted colonization
policies — their socio-political conceptions, midway between “utopian socialism”,
radical 1848-style democracy and modern socialism, often brought them into conflict
with pragmatic liberalism and the incipient conservatism of the dominant Argentinian
elite. This elite, for its part, firmly anchored in realpolitik, would resist the renewal of
the romantic socialist ideas that it had largely helped introduce in 1837, to the extent
that the whole programme that aspired to link together intense civil associationism
with a radical democratic system and a federalist state, would be repeatedly discredited
by the elites as “utopic”. Those who cultivated these ideas were branded as
“dreamers” and “visionaries”. The romantics could not but pick up the gauntlet.
Francisco Bilbao assumed the risk involved: “Ni el rubor de pasar en política por
utopistas puede ser una dificultad a los propagadores de la idea” (Not even the embar-
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118 | Horacio Tarcus

rassment of being taken for dreamers in politics can be an obstacle to those who prop-
agate the idea).10 The romantics, for their part, questioned the “realism” of the liberal
generation in power, their “worship of facts” and contempt for the law and their pater-
nalistic attitude towards the citizenry. If the liberals argue that “the citizenry was not
mature”, the romantics will maintain that the citizenry is being educated in servitude
and obedience. The romantics’ verdict was, at times, categorical: “Los evangelistas de
la víspera son los apóstatas del día siguiente” (Yesterday’s evangelists are tomorrow’s
apostates).11 Those who sought to renew those ideas, the “romantic exiles” of the
River Plate of the 1850s and 1860s would have to challenge their authority and
powerful resistance.
These romantic exiles of the River Plate were not utopian in the strict sense of the
term, even if metaphorically speaking their audacious ideas ahead of their time have
often warranted the term. They did, however, correspond to a certain notion of utopia
in the sense of their bold, visionary anticipation of the social and political realities of
the morrow. If utopia means, as Quevedo translated it, “there is no such place”, the
River Plate romantics were utopian in the sense that they did indeed postulate “ideas
out of place”.12 In the second half of the nineteenth century, at a time when the
countries of Latin America were starting to establish highly centralized presidentialist
political systems, were not the efforts of people like Alejo Peyret — seeking to make
Proudhon’s Principle of Federation available to the press of the Argentine
Confederation — absolutely “out of place”? Was not Francisco Bilbao’s insistence on
offering Argentina, his country of asylum, a democratic Constitution that would
peacefully integrate immigrants, Creoles and Indians, simply “absurd”? Was not
Victory y Suárez being utopian when, in 1863, he postulated that the social rights of
workers should be built into the Constitution?
If the romantic socialists were labelled utopian, they accepted it only grudgingly,
since they committed themselves in practical terms to the creation of modern
Argentina. On the one hand, they supported the liberal nature of the Constitution, the
accelerated modernization of civil society, secular educational policies, the inflow of
capital, technology and immigrants, and the setting up of a state that would guarantee
economic progress and public civil liberties. On the other, however, they would not
accept Juan Bautista Alberdi’s stagist strategy; they doubted that the “possible
republic” was the path that would lead Argentina to the “true republic”.
So, by questioning the “republic that actually existed” in the name of the true —
democratic and federal — republic, they were impugning the separatism of Buenos
Aires behind the nation’s back, the presidentialist political system that operated in the
guise of federal republicanism, the central government’s interventionism over the
provinces, the retention of the death penalty, electoral fraud and political assassina-
tion, and the policy of conquest of the land and repression of the aboriginal peoples
carried out in the name of Civilization.

The “Popular Library” of Victory y Suárez

In the year 1864, nearly three years after the Battle of Pavón, the Argentine nation
finally appeared to be unified, although the montoneras (insurgent rural militias) in the
interior, weapons in hand, resisted the centralist policies of President Mitre. In spite
of the conflicts and the fact that the country was preparing for an unpopular war
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Cabet’s Utopia, from Minorca to Argentina | 119

against Paraguay, the national territory was being settled by immigrants at the same
time as the telegraph, railways and wire fencing were spreading apace.
Although numerous press media were stirring up political life in the cities, it
would be another decade at least before a stable press system would be formed. Even
though the printing houses in the largest cities, such as Buenos Aires and Cordoba
brought out newspapers, periodicals and books, true publishing houses had still not
emerged in the country. The bookshops were stocked mainly with books published
in Spain and France. Ernesto Quesada was still bewailing the fact in 1882, that “aquí
no hay —con excepción de rarísimos ejemplos— editores que puedan llamarse
propiamente así” (here — apart from the rarest of exceptions — there are no
publishers who are truly worthy of the name). It was no coincidence, then, that one
of the earliest Argentine publishing experiences undertaken in the city of Buenos
Aires should bear the title Biblioteca Popular (Popular Library). The life and work of
Bartolomé Victory y Suárez (1833–1897), whose brainchild the Popular Library
was, seem to follow the course taken by the worker’s movement; this son of 1840s
and 1850s Catalan labour culture — he was a typographer, a member of that nine-
teenth-century “labour aristocracy” — went into exile in Buenos Aires in 1857,
linking up with the incipient mutualist and associationist movement (the Buenos
Aires Typographical Society), at the same time as he won a place for himself as
publisher, journalist and even administrator among the educated Buenos Aires elite.
The product of popular culture, he carved a niche for himself among the elites from
which to launch his own publishing project, which he did not hesitate to baptize the
“Popular Library”. Sergio Pastormerlo observed that when the cycle of popular cul-
ture was complete round the 1920s, “the popular” overlapped with “the
commercial”. In1864, though, “Popular Library” meant only one thing: a collection
of books chosen for the instruction of the People.
As far as we know, the Library consisted of only five titles that appeared between
September 1864 and 1865. It is worth reviewing them one by one, noticing briefly
their graphic characteristics and especially the system of publisher’s notes. Once the
titles have been introduced, we shall then consider the political and intellectual coher-
ence of the collection.
The Popular Library was inaugurated in 1864 in Buenos Aires, with a thick 19-
cm. high volume of a Spanish translation from the French of Alexis de Tocqueville’s
Democracy in America. On its cover, it said:

Popular Library
Democracy in America
by Alexis de Tocqueville
Translation of the tenth French edition
Buenos Aires, Central Press of Bartolomé Victory y Suárez Publisher
454 Calle de Rivadavia 458
186413

This would be the first edition of this classic of nineteenth-century political thought
in South America and the second in Latin America. The work had been originally
published in two parts in Paris: the first in 1835 (two volumes) and the second in 1840
(another two volumes). In 1836, the first part had already been translated into English
and Spanish (in Paris). The first complete translation into Spanish was the one carried
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120 | Horacio Tarcus

out in Spain in 1842; there is a Mexican edition of 1855 and then the one published
by Victory y Suárez in Buenos Aires in 1864.
On the first page, dated 1 September 1864, “The Publisher” addresses “the
Reader” to justify the publication of this work in the new and dramatic context of the
American Civil War (1861–1865). For Victory, this book would not only make it
possible for readers in Argentina to understand the dynamics of the Civil War, but
also the fact that the abolition of slavery in the North and the triumph of the Union
would mean the implantation of a Federal Republic based on democracy, a system
that henceforth would have to have “más seguridades de estabilidad en doquiera que
exista o se proclame” (more assurances of stability wherever it existed or was
proclaimed).
The publisher is careful to clarify on the title page from which edition (the tenth
French edition of 1848) the work had been translated, although he does not supply
the name of the translator (more than likely because he took a version that already
existed, the Spanish one). However, after comparing the Spanish edition of 1854, on
which it is based, with various French editions, Victory y Suárez points out that a series
of notes, paragraphs and even articles have been suppressed. He considers that “in a
free country like this” such mutilation is “unforgivable” and therefore he puts them
back in at the end of the work, in an “Appendix”, under the heading “Additional notes
to the work”. He then adds, on page 52 of the Appendix, an article, which “has been
copied from the Spanish democratic socialist newspaper, La Discusión (Madrid, 11 July
1864) and the notes in it have been added by the author of this edition.”14
A small engraving repeated on all title pages served as the logotype for the “Popular
Library”. It was an open book, propped upon another one, acting as its lectern; one
book on another book.
The second book he issued was:

Popular Library
Second Publication
Communism by Étienne Cabet
Lawyer, public writer, former Member of the Chamber of Deputies, former
Public Prosecutor and Founder of the Icarian Colony
Translated and augmented, with quotations and notes integrated in the text.
Buenos Aires, Central Press of Bartolomé Victory y Suárez Publisher
454 Calle de Rivadavia 458
186415

This is the second edition of Cabet’s text in Spanish and the first edition on the
American continent. Cabet was not unknown in republican and democratic circles.
His Voyage en Icarie (Voyage to Icaria) had made him very popular from the 1840s
onwards, not only in Europe but also throughout America. The Voyage was translated
into Spanish in Barcelona, in 1848,16 and copies of that edition were sold in the book-
shops of Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile and Montevideo, and also figured in popular
library catalogues at the end of the century. The Catalan followers of Cabet had, in
that same year, also translated two of Cabet’s pamphlets: “De qué manera soy comu-
nista” (Why I am a Communist) and “Mi Credo Comunista” (My Communist
Credo).17 Cabet’s pamphlet, reissued many times in France — entitled Comment je
suis communiste et mon Credo communiste (Paris, March 1841) in its original edition —
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Cabet’s Utopia, from Minorca to Argentina | 121

and translated and divided into two parts in 1848 in Barcelona, was now published
for the first time in America. Through the edition that Victory entitled El Comunismo
de Esteban Cabet, the Argentinian reader would have had the first biographical infor-
mation about the author and more specific details about his doctrine. We shall refer
later to the notes that Victory y Suárez inserted into this edition.
His third publication was:

Popular Library
Third publication
Inquisitorial Jurisprudence or Inquisitorial Manual
by Nicholas Eymerich
Augmented edition with notes and historical documents
Translated by José Marchena
Buenos Aires, Central Press of Bartolomé Victory y Suárez Publisher
454 Calle de Rivadavia 458
186418

This was doubtless taken from the abbreviated version of the Inquisitorial Manual,
translated and with a commentary by Don José Marchena y Ruiz: Manual de
Inquisidores, para uso de las Inquisiciones de España y Portugal, o compendio de la obra
titulada Directorio de Inquisidores, de Nicolás Eymerico. Traducida del francés en idioma
castellano por J. Marchena; con adiciones del traductor acerca de la Inquisición de España
(Inquisitorial Manual, for the use of the Inquisitions of Spain and Portugal, or
compendium of the work entitled Directorium Inquisitorium, by Nicholas Eymerich.
Translated from the French into the Spanish language by J. Marchena; with additions
by the translator about the Spanish Inquisition).19
According to the study by Jaume de Puig i Oliver, this was the eleventh edition of
the Manual and the first in Spanish. A re-issue (the 12th) appeared in Montpellier in
1821 and a new edition in Madrid in 1822 (the 13th). The fourteenth edition was the
one published by Victory y Suárez in Buenos Aires.
The Abbé Marchena (1768–1821) was a Spanish journalist and translator with
liberal leanings who lived a good part of his life in exile in France, fleeing, as it happens,
from the Inquisition. This enabled him to take part in the events of the revolution of
1789. It is to his translations that we owe the dissemination of authors such as
Lucretius, Voltaire, Rousseau, Volney, Molière and Montesquieu in Spanish.
Nicholas Eymerich (Gerona, c.1320–4 January 1399) was a Roman Catholic
theologian and also Inquisitor General of the Crown of Aragon during the second half
of the fourteenth century. His most important work, the Directorium inquisitorum,
composed in 1376, was a famous manual that initially circulated in manuscript copies
and was used for centuries by the inquisitors of Spain and Portugal as a handbook of
procedure and penal code. Eymerich set out to define different types of “witchcraft”
as heresy, as well as a series of methods for identifying all types of heretical practice.
He also described various ways of extracting a confession, including primitive forms
of psychological manipulation, not excluding torture, which he himself practised.
It was the freethinkers and then their left-wing heirs who took pains to disseminate
this sinister piece of inquisitorial thinking; it was even re-issued in the twentieth
century, especially in Spain and Portugal. In 1982, for example, the left-wing
publishers, Fontamara of Barcelona, reproduced the old translation by the Abbé
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122 | Horacio Tarcus

Marchena with the title Manual de Inquisidores (Manual for Inquisitors) and a year
later the Hispano-Argentinian, Jacobo Muchnik, reissued it in the French translation
by Francisco Martín, adding an introduction, a translation from Latin into French and
notes by Luis Sala-Molins (El Manual de los Inquisidores).
The fourth volume was:

Constitutions
of the
United States
and of the
State of New York
Buenos Aires, Central Press of Bartolomé Victory y Suárez Publisher
N° 454 — Calle de Rivadavia — 458
186420

This was a separate print run of the texts of the two constitutions that Victory had
already published as part of the de Tocqueville edition.
Finally, the fifth and apparently last volume, published in 1865, was Ceferino
Tresserra’s El derecho democrático (Democratic Law):

Popular Library
Democratic Law
Buenos Aires, Central Press of Bartolomé Victory y Suárez Publisher
454 Calle de Rivadavia 458
186421

Its author, Ceferino Tresserra y Ventosa (Barcelona, 1830 — La Coruña, 1880),

now forgotten, even in Spain, was a democratic politician, a federalist and a mason.
A journalist and writer, he was the author of various socio-philosophical novels that
enjoyed widespread popularity in his time. He was persecuted for belonging to the
Democratic Party in Spain (1849–1869), a group that broke away from the
Progressive Party, led by Pi y Margall, who was a contributor to his newspaper, La
Discusión.
Initially he played a part in propagating the ideas of utopian socialism in Spain,
and founded a secret society in 1858 modelled on Italian Carbonarism, which spread
throughout Catalonia and Andalusia and was finally dismantled by the police, as a
result of which he ended up in prison that same year. In 1859, he published his
famous Cuadro sinóptico del derecho democrático (Synoptic picture of democratic law)
“which was reported and withdrawn by royal order at the behest of the Bishop of
Barcelona after the legal term stipulated by the law, despite which it continued to be
sold surreptitiously.”22 This experience of being held in jail was the inspiration for
Los misterios del Saladero: Novela filosófico-social (1860) (The Mysteries of the
Saladero: a Socio-philosophical Novel), a work that was very close to those of
Eugenio Sue in the depiction of the lower classes and a life of crime. Tresserra was
also the author of numerous political works, of which his Cuadro sinóptico de la
democracia española (Synoptic Picture of Spanish Democracy) was outstanding.23
According to Rodríguez Solís:
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Cabet’s Utopia, from Minorca to Argentina | 123

Thousands and thousands of this sheet were sold, which many considered to be the Gospel
of the people, and there was not a social club or workers’ society in Catalonia that did not
possess one, keeping it hidden from strangers, but was discovered and studied and learnt by
heart by all the sons of the people, by all democrats.24

During the First Republic, Tresserra was the civil governor of Soria and Palencia.
He was behind the creation of a collective volume of Catalan writers entitled El libro
del obrero (1862) (The Worker’s Book), which was a tribute to Anselmo Clave, the
founder of the “choral societies” made up of working-class people.
Having now presented the five titles and their authors, the question arises what is
the common thread that unifies these titles published as a collection? And an even
more meaningful question must be where is the political unity of a series comprising
a classic of liberal political thought, such as that by de Tocqueville, the Constitutions
of the United States and of the State of New York, an inquisitorial manual, a lampoon
by a radical democrat like Tresserra, and some texts by a Utopian like Cabet?
Little is known of the life and thought of Bartolomé Victory y Suárez, his education,
readings and correspondence with his old companions from the world of Spanish
typography and journalism to enable us to answer these questions definitively.
However, a brief review of his life, paying specific attention to his formative period in
Barcelona between 1840 and 1850, will provide us with a valuable clue to grasping
the intrinsic ideological unity of a project such as the “Popular Library”, which might
otherwise appear to be an assorted jumble of books and authors.

The life and work of Victory y Suárez

Bartolomé Victory y Suárez was born in Mahon, on the island of Minorca, on 2 August
1833, into a working-class family. We know from his own testimony that when he was
“only seven years old, he went to a modest elementary school, run by an old school-
master in poor health and rather prone to impatience”.25 In 1846, at the age of thirteen,
he left Mahon, never to return; he went to live in Barcelona, where his father, José
Victory, a typographer and mason, set up a printing house. There he worked as a
typographer and took part, with his father, in the early stages of socialist agitation and
Catalan working-class organization, which enjoyed a period of rapid growth between
1854 and 1856. In 1855, he contributed to the Barcelona daily, El Tribuno. Enlisted
in the ranks of the republicans, father and son took part in the armed resistance to the
suppression of the general strike in Catalonia, called in the context of the so-called
“reacción del 56” (reaction of ‘56). It was within the framework of the repression of
the workers that José Victory had to dismantle his printing business and take his family
into exile, to Argentina, docking in Buenos Aires on 9 October 1857 on board an
English merchant ship. In Buenos Aires, Bartolomé set up the “Imprenta Central de
B. Victory y Suárez Editor” (Central Press of B. Victory y Suárez, Publisher) at
454/458 Rivadavia Street, from where he launched his “Popular Library”.
For reasons of health, he had to leave the printing trade around 1865 and devote
himself to journalism. During 1863, he edited the newspaper El Artesano, a pioneer
of working-class socialist journalism in Argentina, which published texts by other
European and Latin American quarante-huitards (Forty-Eighters), such as Francisco
Bilbao, Amadeo Jacques and Alejo Peyret. Besides wanting to set himself up as a sort
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124 | Horacio Tarcus

of “encyclopaedia” for artisans and small industrialists, he sought at a very early stage
to legitimize the “social question” in the eyes of public opinion as part of the Nation
building project without presenting them as in conflict with each other. Next he edited
three newspapers in quick succession: El Pueblo Español, in 1865, La Iberia, in 1867
and Crónica del Progreso, also in 1867, the last one being masonic in orientation.
Between 1867 and 1873, he was a regular contributor to La República, the daily news-
paper edited by Manuel Bilbao, where he promoted industrial and agricultural
development, secular education, the equality of women and democracy.
On the basis of his modern nation project, Victory y Suárez promoted associations
for agriculturalists, industrialists, artisans and manual workers. He advocated cooper-
ative and mutualist models for organizations, supported by “protective labour laws”.
He argued that, as well as the “political rights” enshrined in Argentina’s Constitution,
it was necessary to fight for “social rights”. Social rights would only be included in the
Constitution of Argentina in 1949, almost a century after Victory was writing. The
democratic electoral reform of the Argentine political regime was approved in 1912,
although a stable democratic system only became normal in 1984. How should we
understand this and other examples of Victory being ahead of his time?
Our author called for the forces of labour to organize with a view to creating
artisans’ associations, grouped by skill, trade and profession, a sort of consumer
cooperative, supplying associates with goods and services at direct cost and without
the need for commercial intermediaries: “Work is the source of all wealth. Let us
associate our labour then; let us associate by skill, trade and profession. Let us
arrange it so that money is not indispensable for supplying us with what we need”.26
Victory y Suárez has been called “utopian” and “a utopian socialist” but, for him,
“no hay utopía, todo es realizable, todo es fácil y sencillo, solo requiere fuerza de
voluntad” (there is no utopia, everything is achievable, it is all easy and simple, it just
requires willpower):

Let all the skills, trades and professions be constituted as societies. Let the societies pay for
only half the labour in money and the other half in vouchers. Let each society have a ware-
house for selling articles of their craft and let them hand over to their associates anything
they might need in exchange for vouchers at cost price. . . . Let the associates of whatever
art or craft be able to dress and be shod, eat, and so on, in exchange for vouchers.27

Appealing for vouchers to replace money may seem naive to us today, but we
should remember that this first outline of cooperativism in Argentina was written in
1863, when the earliest experiences of the English pioneers were just about starting to
be known in other European countries.28 In that same year, the Spaniard, Fernando
Garrido, made those earliest experiences known to the Spanish-speaking world in his
Historia de las asociaciones obreras en Europa (History of Workers’ Associations in
Europe).29
Several of his friends gathered the journalistic articles together in the 1873 volume,
Cuestiones de interés público (Questions of Public Interest). In 1870, he figured as a
supporting member of the Typographical Society of Buenos Aires and was a regular
contributor to its 1870–1871 newspaper Anales. According to various sources, it was
Victory y Suárez who facilitated the contact between the typographers’ mutual benefit
society and the Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores (International Workers
Association). So it was that the organ of the Consejo Federal de la Región Española
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Cabet’s Utopia, from Minorca to Argentina | 125

(Federal Council of the Spanish Region), La Fraternidad (Fraternity) reproduced in

its pages one of Victory’s articles from Anales. In those articles, he defended cooper-
ativist principles, and disseminated the experience of the Rochdale Pioneers.30
Finally, turning his full attention to masonic propaganda, he published a series of
pamphlets and, between 1873 and 1875, he edited the Revista Masónica Americana
(the South American Masonic Review). He also contributed to El Estudiante (The
Student) in 1867, and to the Anales de Agricultura de la República Argentina
(Agricultural Annals of the Republic of Argentina) between 1873 and 1876. He
became secretary of the Asociación Española de Socorros Mutuos (Spanish
Association for Mutual Aid) and manager of the Ferrocarril Oeste (Western Railway).
In addition to his work as a journalist, he promoted the modernization of agriculture
in Argentina; he worked for seven years as a manager of the Sociedad Rural Argentina
(Argentine Rural Society) and was treasurer and one of the promoters of the
Exposición Nacional de Córdoba (Cordoba National Exposition), inaugurated in
1871. He was the editor of the Boletín de la Exposición Nacional de Córdoba (Bulletin
of the Cordoba National Exposition), which was published from 1869 to 1873. Emilio
Frers said of him “Fue como el alma secreta que ponía en movimiento todos los
resortes sociales, desde la administración del local y las exposiciones, hasta la redac-
ción de los Anales” (He was like the secret soul that set all the social springs in
movement, from administering the premises and exhibitions to editing the Anales). In
addition, the Province of Buenos Aires commissioned him to produce a Rural Code.
He was editor of El noticiero agrícola (The Agricultural News Bulletin) in 1880 and
the Revista popular de la Exposición Rural Internacional (Popular Review of the
International Rural Exhibition) between 1884 and 1886. In 1881, he was one of the
founders of the Liberal Club. He died in Buenos Aires on 10 May 1897. Some days
after his death, on 15 May 1897, the socialist weekly La Vanguardia bade farewell to
him as follows: “Ha fallecido el domingo pasado en esta Capital el fundador del primer
periódico obrero en la Argentina” (The founder of the first workers’ newspaper in
Argentina passed away last Sunday in this Capital).31

The ideological universe of Victory y Suárez

The doyen of historians of anarchism, Diego Abad de Santillán, maintained that

Victory y Suárez arrived in Argentina already influenced by the Fourierist-inspired
radical democratic ideology of the Spaniard, Fernando Garrido:

During his time in Spain, Victory y Suárez did not come across the ideas of the International,
because they only began to be propagated after he had arrived in Argentina; his humanitarian
socialism seems to be influenced by reading the books of Fernando Garrido, especially the
study he wrote of the working classes in Europe [Historia de las asociaciones obreras en Europa],
whose explanation of the Rochdale experience seemed to have interested him very much
and influenced his social conceptions.32

However, even though the work of Garrido must have been among the required
readings of Victory y Suárez, the two volumes of Historia de las asociaciones obreras
en Europa appeared in Barcelona in 1863, when Victory had already been in Buenos
Aires for six years. There is no doubt that shortly afterwards the work arrived in the
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126 | Horacio Tarcus

Buenos Aires bookshops where Garrido was read. Victory, however, as we know
from the most specific biographical sketch that we have of him, was already a polit-
ical activist in Barcelona in the 1850s and it was his militancy that forced him into
exile to Argentina:

He works as a typographer. He starts to write. In 1855, he is a contributor to El Tribuno in

Barcelona. The political position is adopted. Father and son will defend republican ideas with
weapons in their hands. And for that reason, both will have to flee Spain, hidden in an English
merchant ship that leaves Barcelona for Buenos Aires on 24 August 1857, and where they
arrive on 9 October.33

Even in its brevity, Olivier’s line “Father and son will defend republican ideas with
weapons in their hands”, gives us a valuable clue that connects directly, as we shall
see, with the titles in the “Biblioteca Popular” and the articles in El Artesano.
In 1846, Victory y Suárez, father and son, both typographers, arrived in a skilled
working-class Barcelona that was a hive of intellectual activity and trade union orga-
nization. In the following decade, Catalonia would witness intense socialist
propaganda and workers’ agitation that would conclude with violent government
repression.
According to Francisco Mora, one of the pioneers of socialist and working-class
history in Spain:

In 1840, on the initiative of a worker called Munts, the Society of Handweavers was founded
in Barcelona, which in a short space of time, came to have more than two thousand members,
and which is regarded as the first Society in Spain resistant to capital. This society also served
as a charitable fund for helping disabled workers.34

Mora added that “the success enjoyed by this society encouraged workers in
different trades to found others of a similar kind and, as mechanical industrialization
continued to develop, so working-class societies were also created in Barcelona and
other places in Catalonia.”35 So, if societies of weavers, bleachers, dyers, painters,
spinners, hosiers, printers, makers of canvas sandals and so on, already existed in
Catalonia in the 1840s, it is reasonable to suppose that the young Victory y Suárez
and his father were already affiliated to a printers’ society.
These working-class societies were particularly receptive to the universe of
“associative” ideas. The first attempts to build a federation of societies, such as the
“Union of classes”, arose in that same decade, and the “Three Classes of Steam” in
the following decade. In parallel “se fundaron también algunas Cooperativas de
producción y consumo” (some producers’ and consumers’ cooperatives were also
founded) in cities such as Barcelona, Cadiz and Valencia as well as “Sociedades
obreras de instrucción y recreo” (working-class societies for instruction and recre-
ation) like the Working Man’s Cultural Association in Barcelona, the Reus Reading
Centre, and the Cultural Association of the Working Class in Villanueva and Geltrú.36
It is in this context in Barcelona that the young Victory y Suárez could have learned
of the incipient attempts at cooperatives, whose programmes he would later advocate
in the Argentinian press.
Later, these working-class societies languished for a few years, to resurface in the
mid 1850s at the peak of the workers’ conflicts in Catalonia and the start of the
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government reaction: “Coinciding with the July Revolution in 1854, which gave power
to the progressives, the workers’ movement was reborn and new working-class
societies were created; in Barcelona and other localities in Catalonia, there was stiff
opposition to the introduction of automated machines, known as selfactinas (from the
English term ‘self-acting’.”37 A Workers’ Committee from the spinning mills, led by
José Barceló, ordered a boycott of the machines. In January 1855, a Central Board of
Directors of the Working Class was established. In June of the same year, however,
the government reacted with vigorous repression, dissolved the workers’ associations
and worker members were dismissed. On 2 July, for the first time in Spanish territory,
a general strike was declared throughout Catalonia. The strike failed, many workers’
leaders were thrown into prison and others emigrated. A military tribunal sentenced
Barceló to death by garrotting.
Nevertheless, a year later when the textile industrialists demanded of their workers
an extra half hour on Saturday in weeks when there was a public holiday, the workers
refused to comply and a new conflict broke out (June 1856). To make matters worse,
these events coincided with the return of the “moderates” to government in Spain and
the beginning of a new period of repression against labour organizations that would
be remembered by the workers as “the reaction of ’56”.38
However, in order to obtain a more accurate idea of that incipient labour move-
ment prior to the establishment in Spain of the Asociación Internacional de los
Trabajadores in 1869, it is necessary to stress it was a communicating vessel with feder-
alist republicanism. Francisco Mora observed that the workers’ associations were
“hotbeds of revolutionary ideas, which followed with interest, and supported with
effectiveness all the preparations for the Glorious Revolution of 1868.” Mora added
that “the Spanish working class, not of their own initiative, and completely unaware
of their destinies, in good faith followed the advice of the bourgeois parties that most
flattered their own unconscious aspirations of social improvement”.39
According to another classic of Spanish socialist history, “la masa obrera de las
grandes poblaciones es progresista, primero, y luego demócrata, y más tarde republi-
cana federal” (mass labour in the large towns is first of all progressive, and then
democratic, and ultimately federal republican).40 The progressive, especially the
democratic, press — El Republicano, La Soberanía Nacional, La Democracia, and La
Discusión — was read by the most politicized sector of the Spanish working class,
starting with those who created it, the typographers. Morato went on to say that “De
todos los hombres de los partidos republicanos, tres conquistan sobre todo la adhesión
y el cariño de las masas, y estos hombres son Abdón Terradas, Sixto Cámara y
Francisco Pi y Margall” (Of all the men in the republican parties, three in particular
have won the support and affection of the masses, and those three men are Abdón
Terradas, Sixto Cámara and Francisco Pi y Margall).41 He explained that:

It cannot, in all justice, be said that Terradas was a socialist. His newspaper, El Republicano, is
read by the masses, mainly and almost exclusively in Catalonia, and its editor is held by them
in high regard, but at the root of Terradas’ doctrines, there is nothing more than a desire for
political equality and a longing for taxes to fall on the rich.42

With his daily newspaper La Soberanía Nacional and pamphlets, Sixto Cámara
went a step further, even as far as questioning individual property:
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128 | Horacio Tarcus

And the first person to talk about the iniquity of capital was Pi y Margall in 1854, in a manifesto
published in El eco de la Revolución (The Echo of the Revolution), a document that Iberia called
incendiary . . . In 1864, when he took over as editor of La Discusión, and the historic polemic
with Castelar’s La Democracia started up, Pi y Margall went so far as to declare land owner-
ship to be illegitimate and anti-social.43

Morato concluded that “the republican party deserved, then, — or some of its men
did — the considerable popularity that it enjoyed among the workers. As a result, then,
when the International was founded, a large number of industrial workers were repub-
licans.”44 This is confirmed by Diego Abad de Santillán, who stated that “the socially
inspired republican movement acquired considerable vigour for having been linked to
strongly working-class neighbourhoods.”45
More than half a century after the first attempts at working-class history, academic
historiography confirmed this viewpoint:

The workers and their weak, impotent, sporadic organizations acted in conjunction with the
middle class in all the major political upheavals of the nineteenth century. We see them
deserting the workplace in 1820, collaborating with the industrialists of Barcelona in the
triumph of Riego and constitutionalist liberalism, at the street barricades during the progres-
sive uprising of 1854, and in the innumerable riots, disturbances and uprisings in Madrid,
Barcelona and other provincial capitals. They fought in the republican rebellions in Andalusia
and Catalonia and contributed decisively to the overthrow of the Bourbons. But they never
collectively formulated an opposing plan, nor even one that was just different from the one
that the liberals, progressives, democrats or republicans were contemplating.46

In parallel to this, both the progressive left wing, as well as the workers’ associations
thrived on socialist ideas that originated in France. So Pi y Margall would translate Du
Principe Fédératif (The Principle of Federation) and other works by Proudhon.
According to Santillán, “en las sociedades obreras clandestinas se difundieron las
doctrinas de Cabet” (the doctrines of Cabet were disseminated in clandestine workers’
societies).47 French socialist ideas also found their way into the incipient workers’
press. Narciso Monturiol, influenced by the ideas of the author of Voyage en Icarie,
brought out the newspaper La Fraternidad in Barcelona (1847–1848) and after that
El padre de familia (1849–1850). Monturiol, together with the novelist and historian,
Francisco J. Orellana, translated Cabet’s Voyage en Icarie into Spanish in 1848 and
published it in the pages of La Fraternidad before it appeared in book form. In 1850,
another Cabetian, the musician, José Anselmo Clavé, founded the “choral societies”,
made up primarily of workers.48 According to González del Rivero’s unpublished
doctoral thesis, Ceferino Tresserra formed part of the Fraternidad group, and might
even have been the author of some of the translations from French:

Tresserra, who was seventeen years old at the time, according to Iris Zavala’s research,
formed part of this small group of utopian socialists. The same researcher also attributes the
translation of some of Cabet’s writings to our author [Tresserra], but does not specify which
ones. Elorza cites Orellana and Monturiol as certainly being the translators of Viaje por Icaria,
although he mentions another two works by Cabet of 1848, De qué manera soy comunista and
Mi credo comunista but does not tell us anything about their translator, who may have been
Tresserra (1970: 102). Among the handful of members of the group of Cabetists that Elorza
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does list, Monturiol, Terradas, Orellana, Paula Coello, Clavé and Suñer y Capdevila, there is
no mention of our novelist (1970: 101). This list, which he warns was not exhaustive, does
however coincide with the core group that shortly afterwards founded the Spanish
Democratic Party, and which certainly included Tresserra.
On 12 December 1847, the Catalan Cabetists founded La Fraternidad, a newspaper which,
from its inauguration, ‘presented itself to the reader as the organ of the Spanish socialist party,
the repository of social truth, just as Cabet’s writings had set it out’.49 Zavala regards
Tresserra as one of the co-founders of the communist publication, but contributes no more
details about his participation (1971: 140).50

According to Termes, Monturiol and the whole of “Catalan utopianism [was]

closely linked to democratic currents of a Jacobin complexion”. Monturiol, Clavé,
Tresserra and other Cabetists joined the Democratic Party after the failure of the
Icarian expedition to the United States in 1848. A left wing calling itself “socialist” —
as distinct from the “individualists” — emerged within the party, the same left wing
that published the newspaper, La Discusión. Termes specifies the scope of the term
“socialism” as used by the men at La Discusión:

They wanted to temper social differences, they were trying to mediate in the brutal struggle
between the various social classes, and improve the conditions of the worker’s life, because
they had confirmed the deficiencies of the capitalist system of free competition. In summary,
they were in favour of State intervention in the social and economic areas and desired legis-
lation that would protect the worker, regularize the work of men, limit that of women, and
suppress that of children.51

They were “socialists” in so far as they were opposed to economic individualism.

This is therefore a transitional moment between the old craftsman-worker corpo-
rations where the boss was still “the master”, and the workers’ trade unions of the end
of the nineteenth century for whom the boss would be “the bourgeois”, and the class
enemy who enjoyed the usufruct of other people’s labour.52 Even in the 1840s and
1850s, the dynamic of resisting the introduction of modern machinery, the wage
claims, as well as an early desire to organize themselves drove the workers into
confrontation with the Catalan industrial bourgeoisie, although that trend was
counterbalanced by the political, intellectual and moral influence that the republican
left wing still exerted over the workers.
The birth of the International in Spain in 1869 and the hegemony of the anarchists
inaugurated a new cycle in the Spanish workers’ movement, but until that time,
workers’ associationism was actively politicized; in their ideological universe, Cabet’s
utopianism combined with reformist and associationist socialism, cooperativism and
the cult of study and enlightenment as the stage preceding social emancipation, repub-
licanism, federalism and democracy. This and no other was the political and
intellectual universe of Bartolomé Victory y Suárez.

A socialist in the Buenos Aires of 1864

The library of this ideological universe contained publications from the enlightened
tradition that the Abbé Marchena had been producing since the beginning of the
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130 | Horacio Tarcus

nineteenth century; it also had the 1843 and 1854 versions in Spanish of de
Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, as well as Spanish translations of the French
romantic socialists, such as Lamennais (translated by Larra), Cabet (translated into
Spanish by Monturiol) and Proudhon (translated by Pi y Margall). In Spain itself,
this library included distinguished authors such as Emilio Castelar, Ramón de la
Sagra, Narciso Monturiol, Ceferino Tresserra, Fernando Garrido and Pi y Margall
himself.
This was the world of works and authors that Victory was steeped in when he
went into exile to Argentina in 1857, at the age of twenty-four, taking with him in all
probability his printing trestles with their trays, letter types, borders, fleurons, proof-
ing press, press and typometer, and certainly the pamphlets and books from this
socialist republican library, as well as his experience in the emergent Spanish work-
ers’ movement.
Now, although contemporary political traditions have been built on the opposition
between liberalism and socialism, de Tocqueville, Tresserra and Cabet formed part
— not without tensions, of course — of the library of the radical republican of 1848
or 1855. Social processes like the formation of an intensive network of institutions that
made up civil society in the United States, which de Tocqueville studied thoroughly,
earned their attention, study and plaudits, as did the Icarian movement experiences
(also in the United States) or cooperative associations like the Rochdale Equitable
Pioneers Society in England. The de Tocqueville that Victory y Suárez was so bent
on publishing in 1864 was not so much the theorist of liberalism, which is how we
think of him today, but the brilliant political essayist who saw the struggle for equality
as the driving force of modern history, who renounced the aristocracy in order to
announce the irreversible advent of democracy, the député of 1848, the Vice President
of the National Assembly in 1849, the opponent of the coup d’état of 1851.
Victory y Suárez, as did, in their way, other Spanish republicans of his time, clung
to a socialism that was defined by a will to form associations as a counterweight to the
risks of free market individualistic liberalism. Why then would he publish a “commu-
nist” like Cabet in Buenos Aires in 1864? A “Foreword” by the publisher, signed in
Buenos Aires on 1 November 1864, begins with what, at first sight, appears to be an
implicit reference to the Communist Manifesto, “Communism has been one of the
spectres used to frighten weak spirits through ignorance or self-interest.”53 Victory
wanted Communism to be recognized as one of the “great conceptions of the world”
aimed at remedying social evils:

Communism, however, is one of the endless theories born of the study of social hardships
and of the means that reason teaches in order to eradicate them. The system may be more
or less complete or more or less in accordance with the nature of Man; so, as long as these
two points are debated, Communism will remain on the high ground occupied by the great
conceptions of thought; it will not descend to the level of farce as long as it is not shown to
be unattainable or unstable.54

The publisher pointed out the practical projection of what seemed to be a nebulous
utopia, by stressing the still experimental nature of the Icarian proposal:

Cabet has proved that Communism can be a practical reality. Whether organizing it would
offer a guarantee of long-term stability can neither be confirmed nor denied, because
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neither one nor a hundred frustrated attempts implies that the stability of Communism is
impossible.55

Once again, Victory comes to the defence of what, from the perspective of order,
is discredited as “anarchic” or “utopian”.

The hypothesis that the Comunismo de Cabet is unworthy of occupying the intelligence of
man simply because its first trial was a failure, or because such and such people of intelli-
gence have argued against the possibility of it being realized, and have in addition fought
against it because they consider it anarchic and a disruption of order would be offensive and
would not stand up to examination either; furthermore, what new idea is not anarchic
before it becomes a reality? What reform does not entail disorder? What is the most
insignificant governmental action that does not upset the established order that it acts
upon? Can anyone cite a single step forward taken by humanity on the path to progress that
has not first stirred things up and then caused disruption before the idea that germinated
as the precursor of progress later became established in practical life? Is not human life one
continuous revolution?56

Victory y Suárez here is echoing the final page of Cabet’s brief treatise, in which
the Frenchman argues that each and every one of humanity’s innovations is always
dismissed as “impossible”.
Victory added an appendix to Cabet’s text with the title “Una explicación” (An
explanation). In this text, he reproduced an article of his own, “La Verdad social”
(The Social Truth), which first appeared on 9 May 1863 in his newspaper El artesano,
where he had professed his socialist faith. In a brief page of particular interest,
however, he justifies the republishing of the article in that text, in order to establish
the difference between Cabet’s communism and his own non-communist, but demo-
cratic socialist conception of it. Victory clarifies his view:

I found out that I have been labelled a Communist because I have published this book. This
label would not concern me at all if I was not already certain that it was malicious and
involved the idea of discrediting me in the eyes of a certain class of person. I say this
because those who call me a communist harbour the twisted belief that Communism is the
social religion of lost people . . . the riffraff! I believe therefore that I have the duty to
demonstrate that I am not a Communist, but at the same time, faced with such an outrage
to this System, I put forward a reading of this same book and a reminder of the communist
teachings of Christ and his Apostles. I am not a Communist, but I am a socialist; I am not a
supporter of Cabet’s system, and even less of the monastic Communist system, but I am of
another one.57

It is very unlikely that Victory y Suárez fully shared Cabet’s programme, particu-
larly his conception of a “community of goods”, whether it was the monastic version
or a modern one. In the same book published by Victory, Cabet made a distinction
between the “community of goods” based on industrial progress and mechanization,
which he postulated, and the “equality of poverty” that would turn men into “monks”
and make society a “convent”.58
Victory had proclaimed that he was a socialist a year before, in the article that he
would subsequently transcribe as proof of his beliefs.
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132 | Horacio Tarcus

I demonstrated it in El Artesano, when I was its editor. I demonstrated I was a socialist precisely
by writing an article with the objective of separately defining two ideas that are generally
confused in political discussions and which confusion necessarily stems from empty words,
humbug, chaos. I am referring to the separate definitions for the political idea and the social
idea, the first represented by the word republic, and the other by the word Democracy.59

The article did not go as far as Cabet, as far as the foundation of “Icarias” or the
“community of goods”, but it was undoubtedly inspired by his principles and values.
Let us not forget that, in the end, Cabet’s communism was not revolutionary but
reformist and democratic; it was not classist, but addressed the complete spectrum of
“the popular”.

The utopia of social rights

In his journalistic campaign of the 1860s, Victory introduced the distinction between
republic and democracy, political constitution and social constitution, political rights
and social rights. The republic, he tells us, has conquered political rights: the right to
vote, to free expression, to religious freedom. Democracy came and added social
rights: the right to a State education that is secular and free of charge; the right to an
old-age or invalidity pension; the right to housing; the right of the immigrant worker
to receive land and tools of work from the State; the right to free justice for the worker;
the right to protected industry, and so on. The first, the Republic, produces individ-
uals; democracy, persons.
The self-taught Minorcan typographer here attains the stature of a social
constitutionalist: “Si queremos ser, pues, consecuentes, si queremos dar al pueblo lo
que es el pueblo, es preciso que nuestra República sea democrática” (If we want to be
consistent then, if we want to give the citizenry what the citizenry is, it is necessary for
our Republic to be democratic). For this, Victory y Suárez postulated — in 1863! —
adding social rights to the Constitution of Argentina. He was aware that his proposal
was a bold move and ahead of its time, and there was no naivety in the way he set it
out:

We know that if tomorrow we were to call for the declaration of social rights [to be included]
in the constitution of the republic, we would be subjected to ridicule, at the very least; we
know that if we were to ask for this, accompanied by all those who believe it just and neces-
sary, we would risk being rewarded by having our political privileges taken away from us, but
. . . we have made it our duty to record the rights of the people in writing, and we are doing
that here. Time will do the rest.60

Utopian? Maybe, but only in so far as the realities of today are the utopias of
yesterday:
Utopia has recognized the human personality and declared it sacred; utopia allows
us to cross thousands of leagues in just a few hours; utopia enables us to converse in
thirteen minutes from one world to another; utopia has changed the face of laws,
customs, and even religions themselves.61
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Notes
1 Marta Bonaudo, ed., Liberalismo, Estado y orden burgués, vol. 4 (1852–1880) (Buenos Aires:
Sudamericana, 2003), pp. 13 and ff.
2 Ibid., pp. 16–17: “La Constitución sancionada en 1853 afirmó el criterio de la soberanía
del pueblo y colocó a la figura del ciudadano en la base de toda legitimidad. Sin embargo,
a partir de las prácticas de poder concretas que emergieron y se desarrollaron durante estos
treinta años, las elites violaron sistemáticamente aspectos fundamentales del ideario que
estaba en la base de su legitimidad, lo que no impidió la consolidación de una trama de lega-
lidad que apuntaló la construcción del Estado-nación.”
3 Jürgen Habermas, Historia y crítica de la opinión pública (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1982).
4 Pilar González Bernaldo del Quirós, Civilidad y política en los orígenes de la Nación Argentina.
Las sociabilidades en Buenos Aires. 1829–1862 [1999] (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 2007), pp. 174 and ff; Roberto Di Stefano, “Orígenes del movimiento asocia-
tivo: de las cofradías coloniales al auge mutualista”, in De las cofradías a las organizaciones
de la sociedad civil. Historia de la iniciativa asociativa en la Argentina. 1776–1990, edited by
Roberto Di Stefano, Hilda Sabato, Luis Alberto Romero and José Luis Moreno, compiled
by Elba Luna and Élida Cecconi (Buenos Aires: Gadis, 2002).
5 By 1855, Héctor Varela’s Almanaque comercial y guía de forasteros para el Estado de Buenos
Aires, publicado por La Tribuna confirmed the existence of eleven bookshops, ten printing
houses, and two lithographic printers. In 1858, this figure, according to data from the
Register of Printing and Publishing Activity in the City of Buenos Aires had increased to
fifteen bookshops, twelve printing houses and two lithographic printers. By the 1870s, using
an analysis based on advertisements appearing in the press, eighteen bookshops were
accounted for, concentrated in and around the Buenos Aires City Hall. Alejandro Eujanian,
“La cultura: público, autores y editores”, in Liberalismo, estado y orden burgués, 1852–1880,
edited by Marta Bonaudo, vol. 4 of the Nueva Historia Argentina collection (Buenos Aires:
Sudamericana, 1999), p. 559.
6 Oscar Oszlak, La formación del Estado argentino (Buenos Aires: Belgrano, 1982).
7 José Carlos Chiaramonte, Formas de sociedad y economía en Hispanoamérica (Mexico:
Grijalbo, 1984), pp. 63–64: “En Argentina, luego de la llamada generación del ’37, la
misión de los intelectuales deja de pensarse en términos de revolución. Los escritos de
Esteban Echeverría y algunos de sus contemporáneos son los últimos en que los intelec-
tuales del siglo XIX conciben su tarea como revolucionaria. A partir de allí, y los trabajos
posteriores de varios de los integrantes de esa generación también testimonian el cambio,
los intelectuales argentinos parecen resignarse a aceptar ciertos aspectos de la sociedad
como inmodificables. En el conjunto de Iberoamérica, las perspectivas de brillante expan-
sión económica que ofrece la división internacional del trabajo tiende a disminuir el énfasis
en las desigualdades sociales, de manera que el problema central será el del orden social,
que llegará a constituirse en la consigna central de gobiernos finiseculares, tanto en
Argentina como en Brasil o México. Este fenómeno no es una simple moda, no es solo fruto
de la influencia positivista —en cuanto el positivismo acepta el orden social existente y pone
el acento en el orden para el progreso—, sino que constituye un verdadero cambio de
mentalidad en las élites políticas latinoamericanas, inducido por las perspectivas de
conexión con la economía mundial y por los propios cambios en la estructura social de estos
países.”
8 Tulio Halperin Donghi, “Prologue” to Domingo F. Sarmiento, Campaña del Ejército
Grande Aliado de Sudamérica (Mexico/Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1958),
p. xxvii.
9 Marcelo Segall, “En Amérique Latine: Développement du Mouvement Ouvrier et
Proscription”, International Review of Social History 17, 1 (1972): 325– 326.
10 Francisco Bilbao, Revista del Nuevo Mundo (Buenos Aires) no. 2 (July 1857): 44.
11 Alejo Peyret, Cartas sobre la Intervención del Gobierno Federal a la Provincia de Entre Ríos.
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134 | Horacio Tarcus

Por un estranjero (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Litografía y Fundición de Tipos de la Sociedad

Anónima, 1873), p. ii.
12 Roberto Schwarz, “Las ideas fuera de lugar” (1973), in Absurdo Brasil. Polémicas en la
cultura brasileña, edited by Adriana Amante and Florencia Garramuño (Buenos Aires:
Biblos, 2000).
13 “ Biblioteca Popular / La democracia en América / por Alejandro de Tocqueville / Traducción
de la X edición francesa / Buenos Aires, Imprenta Central de Bartolomé Victory y Suárez
Editor / 454 Calle de Rivadavia 458 / 1864.” A 19-cm. volume of 535 + XLII + 56pp. The
figures in Arabic numerals correspond to the pages as numbered in the original, and the
Roman numeral to the number of paratexts. This book has three sets of figures probably
because the editor decided to add an appendix at the last minute, which he renumbered in
Roman numerals.
14 “se ha copiado del periódico democrático socialista español La Discusión (Madrid, 11 julio
1864) y las notas que lleva han sido añadidas por el autor de esta edición” (The italics are
in the original).
15 “Biblioteca Popular / Segunda publicación / El Comunismo / de Esteban Cabet / Abogado,
escritor público, exdiputado, exprocurador general / y Jefe de la Colonia Icariana. /
Traducido y aumentado con citas y notas integradas en el texto. / Buenos Aires, Imprenta
Central de Bartolomé Victory y Suárez Editor / 454 Calle de Rivadavia 458 / 1864” (A 157-
page volume).
16 Étienne Cabet, Viage por Icaria, trans. Francisco J. Orellana and Narciso Monturiol
(Barcelona: Imprenta y Librería Oriental, 1848).
17 Antonio Elorza, Socialismo utópico español (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1970) p. 102.
18 “Biblioteca Popular / Tercera publicación / Jurisprudencia inquisitorial o Manual de inqui-
sidores / de Nicolas Eymerich / Edición aumentada con notas y documentos históricos. /
Traducido por José Marchena / Buenos Aires, Imprenta Central de Bartolomé Victory y
Suárez Editor / 454 Calle de Rivadavia 458 / 1864” (A 192-page volume).
19 Montpeller [sic], Imprenta de Feliz Aviñón, 1819: XII + 159 pages. The figure in Roman
numerals corresponds to the paratexts. There are examples with a title page from Bordeaux.
20 “Constituciones / de los / Estados Unidos / y del / Estado de Nueva-York / Buenos Aires,
Imprenta Central de Bartolomé Victory y Suárez Editor / N° 454 — Calle de Rivadavia —
458 / 1864” (A volume of forty-four pages).
21 “Biblioteca Popular / Ceferino Tresserra / El derecho democrático / Buenos Aires, Imprenta
Central de Bartolomé Victory y Suárez Editor / 454 Calle de Rivadavia 458 / 1865” (A
volume of sixteen pages).
22 Fernando Garrido, Historia del reinado del último Borbón de España. De los crímenes, aposta-
sías, opresión (Barcelona: Librería de Antonio de San Martín, 1869), part 3, p. 861: “que
fue denunciado y recogido de real orden, a la instancia del Obispo de Barcelona después
del término legal que marcaba la ley, pero a pesar de esto se vendía subrepticiamente.”
23 Porvenir de las asociaciones de la clase obrera: origen y estado actual de la cuestión del trabajo en
Cataluña (Barcelona: Imprenta de Narciso Ramírez, 1855); Tablas del derecho democrático
(Barcelona: Manero, 1859); Cuadro sinóptico de la democracia española (Barcelona: Librería
de Salvador Manero, 1865). (This took the form of a folding 73 x 53 cm sheet of paper
with portraits of Confucius, Plato, Christ, Gutenberg, Galileo and Franklin, a sort of gene-
alogy of radical thought, which was stuck on the walls of houses, shops and businesses. No
copies are preserved in Argentinian libraries, although it is cited in various works); Cuadro
sinóptico del Derecho democrático (Banned by the Bourbon Governments) (Barcelona:
Librería de Salvador Manero 1869); ¿Los anarquistas, los socialistas y los comunistas son
demócratas? (Barcelona: Librería de Salvador Manero, 1861); Catecismo democrático-
republicano (Madrid: Manuel Galiano, 1868); Catecismo de la Federación Republicano-demo-
crática (Madrid: Molino y Cía, 1870); ¿Hay Dios? Estudio crítico-filosófico de la cuestión de
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Cabet’s Utopia, from Minorca to Argentina | 135

las cuestiones según el racionalismo puro 3rd ed. (Barcelona: Est. Tipográfico de Narciso
Ramírez y Compañía, 1873).
24 Pablo Ramos González del Rivero, Las armas de la república europea de las letras: propaganda
y pedagogía democráticas en la narrativa popular decimonónica: Ceferino Tresserra (PhD diss.
Autonomous University of Madrid, 2008), p. 88: “Miles y miles se vendieron de esta hoja
que muchos consideraron como el Evangelio del pueblo, y no había casino ni sociedad
obrera de Cataluña que no lo poseyera manteniéndole oculto para los desconocidos, pero
descubierto y estudiado y aprendido de memoria por todos los hijos del pueblo, por todos
los demócratas.”
25 “solamente siete años de edad, frecuentaba una humilde escuela dirigida por un pobre
dómine anciano, achacoso y algo dado a la impaciencia.”
26 B. Victory y Suárez, “Asociémonos”, El Artesano no. 9, 25 April 1863, 2: “ “El trabajo es
la fuente de toda riqueza. Asociemos, pues, el trabajo; asociémonos por artes, oficios y
profesiones. Arreglémonos de modo que el dinero no sea indispensable para proporcionar-
nos lo que necesitamos.”
27 Ibid. “Que todos los artes, oficios y profesiones se constituyan en sociedad. Que las socie-
dades paguen solamente la mitad del trabajo en dinero y la otra mitad en bonos. Que cada
sociedad tenga un almacén de venta de los artículos de su arte y entregue a los asociados
todo lo que precisen en cambio de bonos al precio de costo . . . Que recíprocamente los
asociados de cualquier profesión o arte que sean, puedan vestirse, calzarse, comer, etc. en
cambio de bonos.”
28 Although very much focused on experiences in England, Germany, France and Belgium,
the classic study by Gromoslav Mladenatz, Historia de las doctrinas cooperativas (Buenos
Aires: Intercoop, 1969) offers a concise history of European cooperativist thinking.
29 The classic work by George Holyoake, Self-help by the People: The History of Co-operation
in Rochdale (The Society of Equitable Pioneers) had been published in part in the Daily News
in London in 1857 and appeared a year later as an independent volume. Even though it
was immediately reprinted in New York and in various reissues in England, it took several
years before it was disseminated in other languages. The first French edition was in 1881,
although various advance passages in Le Progrès in Lyon, achieved a very wide circulation.
In the Spanish-speaking world, the first and main disseminator was Fernando Garrido,
who included Holyoake’s work in his two-volume, 443-page work Historia de las
asociaciones obreras en Europa ó Las clases trabajadoras regeneradas por la
asociación (Barcelona: Salvador Manero, 1864).
30 Ricardo Falcón, Los orígenes del movimiento obrero (1857–1899) (Buenos Aires: CEAL,
1984), Horacio Tarcus, Marx en la Argentina. Sus primeros lectores obreros, intelectuales y
científicos. 1870–1910 (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2007).
31 For Bartolomé Victory y Suárez, see Ángel Giménez, Precursores del socialismo en la
República Argentina (Buenos Aires: La Vanguardia, 1917); Ernesto Olivier, “Bartolomé
Victory y Suárez, propagador de la cooperación en la Argentina”, in B. Victory y Suárez,
Cuestiones de interés público. La asociaciones cooperativas. 1870 (Buenos Aires: Círculo de
Estudios Cooperativos de Buenos Aires, 1970); Juan Antonio Solari, “Un precursor”, in
Recuerdos y anécdotas socialistas (Buenos Aires: La Vanguardia), 1976, p. 50; Horacio
Tarcus, Marx en la Argentina.
32 Diego Abad de Santillán, El movimiento anarquista en la Argentina. Desde sus comienzos
hasta el año 1910 (Buenos Aires: Argonauta, 1930), pp. 12–14: “Victory y Suárez no
conoció en España las ideas de la Internacional, que comenzaron a propagarse después
de estar él en la Argentina; su socialismo humanitario parece influenciado por la lectura
de los libros de Fernando Garrido, sobre todo del estudio escrito por este sobre las clases
obreras de Europa, cuya exposición de la experiencia de Rochdale parece haberle intere-
sado mucho e influenciado sus concepciones sociales.”
33 Olivier, “Bartolomé Victory y Suárez, propagador de la cooperación”, p. 6: “Trabaja
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136 | Horacio Tarcus

como tipógrafo. Empieza a escribir. En 1855 colabora en El Tribuno barcelonés. La posi-

ción política está tomada. Padre e hijo defenderán las ideas republicanas con las armas en
la mano. Y por ese motivo ambos deberán huir de España escondidos en un barco mer-
cante inglés que abandona Barcelona el 24 de agosto de 1857 rumbo a Buenos Aires,
adonde llegan el 9 de octubre.”
34 Francisco Mora, Historia del Socialismo Obrero Español (Madrid: Imprenta de I. Calleja,
1902), pp. 44. “En 1840 se fundó en Barcelona, por iniciativa de un obrero llamado Munts,
la Sociedad de Tejedores a la mano, la cual en poco tiempo llegó a contar más de 2000
socios, y que se considera como la primera Sociedad de resistencia al capital constituida en
España. Esta sociedad tenía también el carácter de Montepío para el socorro de inválidos
del trabajo.”
35 Ibid., p. 45: “El éxito alcanzado por esta sociedad animó a los obreros de otros oficios a
fundar otras de la misma especie, y a medida que la industrialización mecánica fue desa-
rrollándose, fueron también creándose Sociedades obreras en Barcelona y otros puntos de
Cataluña”.
36 Ibid.
37 Joseph Termes, Anarquismo y sindicalismo en España. La Primera Internacional (1864–1881)
(Barcelona: Ariel, 1972), p. 20: “Coincidiendo con la revolución de julio de 1854, que dio
el poder a los progresistas, el movimiento obrero renació y se crearon nuevas sociedades
obreras; se produjo en Barcelona y otras comarcas catalanas una aguda oposición a la intro-
ducción de máquinas automáticas denominadas selfactinas.”
38 Termes, Anarquismo y sindicalismo en España, p. 22.
39 Mora, Historia del Socialismo Obrero Español, p. 46: “semilleros de ideas revolucionarias, en
los cuales se seguía con interés y se apoyaba con eficacia todos los preparativos de la
Revolución del 68 . . . La clase obrera española, sin propia iniciativa, y desconociendo por
completo sus destinos, seguía de buena fe los consejos de los partidos burgueses que más
halagaban sus inconscientes aspiraciones de mejora social.”
40 Juan José Morato, El Partido Socialista Obrero [1918] (Madrid: Ayuso, 1976), p. 41. The
author is referring to the trend towards the division and recomposition of the Spanish
political parties, the Progressive and the Democratic.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.: “Con justicia no puede decirse que Terradas fuese socialista. Su periódico El
Republicano es leído de las masas, principal y casi exclusivamente en Cataluña, su director
es estimado de ellas, pero en el fondo de las doctrinas de Terradas no hay más que un deseo
de igualdad política y el anhelo de que los tributos recaigan sobre los ricos.”
43 Ibid. “Y quien primero habla de la iniquidad del capital es Pi y Margall el año 54, en un
Manifiesto publicado en El eco de la Revolución, documento que Iberia calificó de incendiario
. . . En 1864, cuando se encarga de dirigir La Discusión y se entabla la histórica polémica
con La Democracia de Castelar, Pi y Margall llega a declarar ilegítima y antisocial la
propiedad de la tierra.”
44 Morato, El Partido Socialista Obrero, pp. 42–43: “Merecía, pues, el partido republicano —
o lo merecían algunos de sus hombres— la considerable popularidad de que gozaba entre
los obreros. Tenemos, pues, que al fundarse la Internacional gran número de obreros indus-
triales eran republicanos.”
45 Diego Abad de Santillán, vol. 1 of Contribución a la historia del movimiento obrero español
(Mexico: Cajica, 1968), p. 65: “ El movimiento de inspiración republicana y social adquirió
un vigor considerable por haberse vinculado con fuertes núcleos obreros.”
46 Termes, Anarquismo y sindicalismo en España, p. 27: “Los obreros y sus débiles, impotentes
y esporádicas organizaciones actuaron conjuntamente con la clase media en todas las
grandes conmociones políticas del siglo XIX. Les vemos desertar del trabajo en 1820 cola-
borando con los industriales de Barcelona en el triunfo de Riego y del liberalismo
constitucionalista; en las barricadas callejeras durante el alzamiento progresista de 1854; y
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Cabet’s Utopia, from Minorca to Argentina | 137

en los innumerables motines, asonadas y alzamientos de Madrid, Barcelona y otras capi-

tales. Lucharon en las sublevaciones republicanas de Andalucía y de Cataluña y
colaboraron decididamente en el destronamiento de los Borbones. Pero nunca formularon
colectivamente un plan opuesto, ni tan solo distinto, del que planteaban liberales, progre-
sistas, demócratas o republicanos.”
47 Abad de Santillán, Contribución a la historia del movimiento, p. 64.
48 Termes, Anarquismo y sindicalismo en España, p. 17.
49 Iris M. Zavala, Masones, comuneros y carbonarios (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1971), p. 102.
50 González del Rivero, Las armas de la república europea de las letras, pp. 42 and 43:
“Tresserra, que por entonces contaba diecisiete años, según los trabajos de Iris Zavala,
formó parte de este reducido núcleo de socialistas utópicos. La misma investigadora
atribuye a nuestro autor la traducción de algunos escritos de Cabet, aunque no especifica
cuáles. Elorza cita a Orellana y Monturiol como traductores seguros de Viaje por Icaria,
aunque menciona otras dos obras de Cabet de 1848, De qué manera soy comunista y Mi credo
comunista, y no informa sobre su traductor, que quizá fue Tresserra (1970: 102). Entre el
puñado de miembros del grupo de cabetistas que enumera el mismo Elorza, Monturiol,
Terradas, Orellana, Paula Coello, Clavé o Suñer y Capdevila, no aparece nuestro novelista
(1970: 101). En todo caso, este elenco, del que advierte de su carácter no exhaustivo,
coincide con el núcleo que muy poco después fundará el Partido Demócrata español y en
el que es seguro que se halló Tresserra.
El 12 de diciembre de 1847 los cabetistas catalanes fundaron La Fraternidad, periódico que
desde su aparición “se presentó al lector como órgano del partido socialista español, depo-
sitario de la verdad social, tal y como la misma quedara expuesta por los escritos de Cabet”.
Zavala considera a Tresserra uno de los cofundadores de la publicación comunista, aunque
no aporta más datos sobre su participación (1971: 140).”
51 Termes, Anarquismo y sindicalismo en España, pp. 16–17, 27–28: “que deseaban suavizar
las diferencias sociales, que pretendían mediar en la brutal pugna entre las diversas clases
sociales, y mejorar las condiciones de vida del obrero, porque habían comprobado las defi-
ciencias del sistema capitalista de libre competencia. En síntesis, eran partidarios de la
intervención del Estado en el campo social y económico, y deseaban una legislación que
amparase al obrero, que regularizase el trabajo de los hombres, limitase el de las mujeres y
suprimiese el de los niños.”
52 Morato, El Partido Socialista Obrero, p. 40.
53 B. Victory y Suárez, “Advertencia” [Foreword] to El comunismo de Esteban Cabet (Buenos
Aires: Imprenta Central de Bartolomé Victory y Suárez Editor, 1864), p. 1: “El comunismo
ha sido uno de los fantasmas con que se ha querido aterrar a los espíritus débiles por igno-
rancia o por egoísmo.” If Victory knew the Communist Manifesto, it was at a later date, after
the Spanish edition of 1886 or the Argentinian one of 1893. The “spectre of communism”
is not the creation of Marx and Engels, but, as Gareth Stedman Jones has shown, was
already being raised by the literature of reaction in the 1840s, which Victory knew very well,
see Gareth Stedman Jones, El Manifiesto comunista de Karl Marx y Friedrich Engels (Madrid:
Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2007), p. 19.
54 Ibid.: “El Comunismo es, sin embargo, una de las infinitas teorías nacidas del estudio de
las miserias sociales y de los medios que la razón enseña para extirparlas. El sistema puede
ser más o menos completo y más o menos conforme con la naturaleza del hombre; siempre
que se discutan, pues, estos dos puntos, el Comunismo conservará el puesto elevado que
ocupan las grandes concepciones del pensamiento; no se rebajará al nivel de la farsa, mien-
tras no se demuestre que es irrealizable y que no es estable.”
55 Ibid.: “Cabet ha probado que puede el Comunismo ser un hecho práctico. Que su organi-
zación ofrezca garantías de estabilidad por mucho tiempo, es lo que ni se puede negar ni
se puede afirmar, porque la frustración de uno ni cien ensayos, no implica la imposibilidad
de la estabilidad del Comunismo.”
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138 | Horacio Tarcus

56 Ibid.: “Ofensiva y raquítica por demás sería la hipótesis de que el Comunismo de Cabet es
indigno de ocupar la inteligencia del hombre por el solo hecho de haber fracasado en su
primer ensayo, o porque tales o cuales personas de talento han argumentado en contra de
la posibilidad de su realización y lo han combatido además por considerarlo anárquico y
perturbador del orden: mas, ¿cuál es la idea nueva que no es anárquica antes de ser un
hecho? ¿cuál es la reforma que no entraña desorden? ¿Cuál es la más insignificante acción
gubernativa que no trastorna el orden establecido sobre el que acciona? ¿Se puede citar un
solo paso dado por la humanidad en la senda de su progreso, que no haya agitado primero,
perturbado luego, para establecer después en la vida práctica la idea que germinaba como
precursora del progreso? ¿La vida humana no es una revolución continua?”
57 B. Victory y Suárez, “Una explicación”, in Cabet, El comunismo, p. 151: “He sabido que
se me ha calificado de Comunista por el hecho de publicar este libro. Ninguna importancia
daría yo a esta calificación si no me constara que es maliciosa y que envuelve la idea de
hacerme desconceptuar ante cierta clase de personas. Digo esto, porque los que me llaman
comunista, abrigan la torcida creencia de que el Comunismo es la religión social de la gente
perdida... de la chusma! Por esto me creo en el deber de manifestar que no soy Comunista,
pero al mismo tiempo, contra semejante ultraje a este Sistema, opongo la lectura de este
mismo libro y recuerdo las doctrinas comunistas de Cristo y de sus Apóstoles. No soy
Comunista, pero soy socialista; no soy partidario del sistema de Cabet y mucho menos del
sistema Comunista monacal, pero lo soy de otro.”
58 Cabet, El comunismo, p. 10.
59 Victory y Suárez, “Una explicación”, in Cabet, El comunismo, p. 151. “Lo he manifestado
en El artesano, cuando estaba bajo mi dirección. Precisamente manifesté ser socialista escri-
biendo un artículo que tenía por objeto definir separadamente dos ideas que generalmente
se confunden en las discusiones políticas y de cuya confusión nace necesariamente la pala-
brería hueca, la farsa, el caos. Me refiero a la definición separada de la idea política y de la
idea social: la primera representada por la palabra república, y la otra por la palabra
Democracia.”
60 B. Victory y Suárez, “La verdad social”, El Artesano, no. 11, 9 May 1863, pp. 1 and 2.
Reproduced by the author as an appendix in El comunismo de Esteban Cabet (Buenos Aires:
Imprenta Central B. Victory y Suárez Editor, 1864), pp. 152–157: “Sabemos que si
mañana aconsejáramos la declaración de un derecho social en la constitución de la repú-
blica, seríamos cuando menos motivo de ridículo; sabemos que si lo pidiéramos
acompañados de todos los que lo creen justo y necesario, nos expondríamos a recibir en
premio un desafuero político, pero... nos hemos impuesto el deber de consignar el derecho
del pueblo, y lo consignamos. El tiempo hará lo demás.”
61 Ibid.: “La utopía ha hecho consagrar el reconocimiento de la personalidad humana; la
utopía nos hace cruzar millares de leguas en pocas horas; la utopía nos hace conversar en
trece minutos desde uno a otro mundo; la utopía ha cambiado la faz de las leyes, de las
costumbres y hasta de las mismas religiones.”
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The Utopia of the “Latin

Race”: Michel Chevalier,
Victor Considerant and
7 Public Debate in Spain
Concerning the
Intervention in Mexico
(1861–1867)
Nere Basabe

France responded to the announcement made by the liberal government of Benito

Juárez in 1861 that Mexico’s foreign debt payments had been suspended by leading
a military expedition to that country, supported by British and Spanish troops, which
ended in armed conflict. This chapter in history, known as the Second French
Intervention in Mexico, culminated in the establishment of the Second Mexican
Empire under Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg and generated heated controversy
in French and Spanish public opinion. Set in the context of the new race for empire,
an attempt was made to justify this interference with a rhetorical discourse that
appealed to the supposed ideals of brotherhood and revolved around a central concept
that quickly spread: the Latin race. The aim of this chapter is to explore the more
utopian dimensions of the concept of “the Latin race” by means of an analysis of its
meanings and the ways it was employed in contemporary intellectual debate, first of
all in France, where Saint-Simonian and Fourierist authors launched into arguments
over the objectives of the intervention and the destiny of the so-called Latin race, then
in the press and in Spanish parliamentary debate. It is of interest because, apart from
its ideological justification of imperial domination, the discourse on the Latin race
harboured many classic utopian aspirations: as a project for social regeneration and a
new form of universal association.

America as an “irrevocable decree of destiny”

As Edgar Quinet would recall, “Fourier and the other visionaries taught us that
Mexico is the natural capital of the world.”1 The Fourierist newspaper was called Le
Nouveau Monde, and with good reason, for the New World as a whole, and not only
Mexico, had always been the territory par excellence for utopia, which had finally
ceased to be a “no-place”.
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140 | Nere Basabe

It had been such since the age of the discoveries and the conquistadors, when the
American continent was introduced as a “large blank slate waiting to be filled with
meaning,”2 or a “gift to human life”, according to the Enlightenment definition by
Antonio de Alcedo in his famous geographical and historical dictionary of the West
Indies, the Diccionario geográfico-histórico de las Indias Occidentales (1786−1789).3 By
the nineteenth century, the consolidation of the various processes of emancipation and
the birth of the new nations turned America once more into a continent where
anything was possible. The space was now being opened up to republics in which
fairer models of society could be constructed, with vast territories waiting to be popu-
lated. It became a privileged field for experimentation and, consequently, the driving
force for criticism of the Old World with a strong performative mission, in which the
old was opposed to the new, the past to the future, and discourse became prophetic
and emancipatory. In the words of the Mexican historian, Guillermo Zermeño,
“America refers to a land, a geography, a climate, and a demand for a future in the
face of ‘Old’ Europe.”4 Once the new theories of Rousseau’s good savage had
triumphed over the discourse of inferior civilizations, there was a shift towards acclaim
for the virtues of America, especially its unprecedented uniqueness, and a search for
a form of civilization appropriate to the “American genius”. The theories conceived
in the Old World would therefore be unsuitable for the needs of the New World, as
was repeatedly stated by Juan Manuel de Rosas, leader of the regime in Buenos Aires
(1835−1852), who developed a project for an “American System”.5 The same asser-
tion was made everywhere: “Spanish America is unique; its institutions and
government should be unique, as should the means of establishing both of them.
Either we invent, or we lose our way”.6 It was a call for a “political mission”, one that
was ready even to set “an example for the world” and also to bring about transforma-
tion in Europe.7 The American continent was set up pre-eminently as a project that
looked to the future, a desideratum of collective liberation. In the words of the
Liberator, Simon Bolivar, “America . . . is a sovereign, irrevocable decree of destiny,”8
fertile ground for utopias of every stamp.
Charles Fourier was never in America. His leading disciple, Victor Considerant,
however, arrived there in 1852 and tried to set up “the New World of Fourier adapted
to the geographical New World.”9 In 1855, he founded the colony of La Réunion on
the banks of the Red River in newly independent Texas, which had been Mexican
territory until 1836. Within a year, though, few of the initial three hundred colonists
were still there, and by 1863, it had been completely abandoned. It was not the only
one. In Mexico, numerous phalansteries, utopian colonies and projects were set up.
These included the Champ d’Asile, or Field of Refuge, a colony set up by Bonapartist
exiles who contemplated rescuing the Emperor from the island of Saint Helena and
offering him a throne in America;10 the communes of Aguascalientes, founded by José
María Chávez in 1850; the one that Rhodakanaty set up in Chalco (1865); and the
Tobolobambo community, founded by an engineer from Pennsylvania, Albert
Kimsey Owen, in the bay of Ogüira (State of Sinaloa), which survived until 1895. In
1848, a vanguard of followers of Étienne Cabet tried to establish their Icarian colony
there, only to move shortly after to Illinois, while, twenty years earlier, Robert Owen
himself had tried to persuade the Mexican government to cede the provinces of Texas
and Coahuila to him so that he could put into practice there “a harmonious new society
that would put an end to social, national, commercial and religious strife.”11
Compared with these experiments, there seems to be little that is intrinsically
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The Utopia of the “Latin Race” | 141

utopian about the historical chapter of the French Intervention and the Second
Mexican Empire, which has been described as that “great moment of collective
delirium in which utopia blends with the sordid.”12 The interests in play there were
undoubtedly economic and military ones, rather than benevolent or humanitarian.
Nevertheless, it is instructive to take a look at the rhetoric that was deployed to justify
the enterprise — specifically, the notion of “the Latin race”, a term that was repeatedly
brandished to vindicate the imperial project — because this was the moment when
America ceased to be Spanish in order to become Latin, and to break once and for all
with its colonial past. As we shall see, this reinvention owed a good deal to Michel
Chevalier, who took a Saint-Simonian view of the Mexican question, a combination
of scientific undertaking, typical of a political economist, and a vision of a shining
future in a better world, where vast, fertile plains would be scored in all directions by
canals and railway tracks.

Michel Chevalier and Victor Considerant: Two French utopians

on the intervention in Mexico

After the aspirations of the 1848 revolutions had been dashed, the European utopian
schools in the second half of the century placed all their hopes on the other side of the
Atlantic. On many occasions, many of these formerly Europeanist movements now
also adopted new supranational types of doctrine, while keeping their roots firmly
planted in the prevailing nationalism. Pan-Latinism arose in response to the concepts
of Mitteleuropa and Pan-Slavism. It was promoted to a high degree by the Second
French Empire and gave rise to specific policies, such as the Latin Monetary Union,
which was founded in 1865 by France, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland. The new term
of “Latin America” was also coined in this environment and was promoted in France
— like the term Pan-Latinism — by Michel Chevalier, an outlawed former Saint-
Simonian who became a senator and palace advisor to the Emperor.13 America, which
had hitherto been only “Spanish” or “Iberian”, now became “Latin” and a space
where French ambitions could also be accommodated.
In the 1830s, Michel Chevalier, as editor-in-chief of the Saint-Simonian news-
paper, Le Globe, had already launched various projects for establishing a European
(and even world) confederation of states by means of a “Mediterranean system”, an
extensive infrastructure network of railways and canals that would bring the West
closer to the Near East. In those articles, Chevalier preached the advent of an
“Amphictyonic Congress of Europe” and a new “universal associationist civiliza-
tion”14 and also supported the independence movements in Spanish America. At the
end of the 1850s and beginning of the 1860s, after a study trip round North America
that took him as far as Mexico,15 his thinking changed. He not only started to develop
a theory of the new Pan-Latinism, but also to postulate the existence of a Latin
America, based on the notion of “the Latin race”, which he had frequently referred
to in his earlier work. This concept would ultimately justify France’s right to intervene
in affairs in that part of the world.
Madame de Staël had used the idea of the Latin race — even before Chevalier did
— when, at the beginning of her famous work De l’Allemagne (1813), she portrayed
Europe as divided into three distinct races, which were the origin of the main nations
of the day: the Latin, Germanic and Slavic races. The Latin race — which included,
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142 | Nere Basabe

in her opinion, the French, Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese — had received its
language and civilization from the ancient Romans; it was, therefore, the race with the
oldest civilization, equipped for politics and domination as well as earthly pleasures,
able to adapt to circumstances, originally pagan and not given to abstract thought,
unlike those who resisted the Romans, the Germanic peoples.16
Somewhat obscured for almost half a century, the concept of the Latin race reap-
peared in the 1850s and was common currency again at the time of the joint French,
British and Spanish intervention in Mexico. Some aspects of its conceptual content
had changed since the original formulation by Madame de Staël. In addition to the
historical heritage and common civilization, the Latin race was now characterized by
a shared religion, Roman Catholicism (as opposed to Protestantism in Northern
Europe), and was extended so as to encompass also all those American peoples with
shared linguistic and religious roots. What was still missing, however, was any attempt
to justify the term on ethnic or truly racial grounds, this at a time when racial studies
and arguments were starting to proliferate (after all, Arthur de Gobineau had
published his Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines in 1853). In this context, therefore,
the term “race” was merely a synonym for civilization and a justification for the supra-
national unity that they sought.
The Pan-Latinism of the former Europeanist, Michel Chevalier, the invention of
Latin America and the supposed existence of a Latin race all served to lay the doctrinal
foundations for the French to intervene in American territory and to justify their
presence in Mexico. In 1861, taking advantage of the American Civil War, France and
Great Britain decided to send an army to Mexico to depose the new government of
Benito Juárez, who had decided to cancel Mexico’s foreign debt payments. At the
height of the race for empire and driven by economic interests, Bonapartist discourse
adopted the idea of “the Latin race” as an antidote to, and a means of holding back,
the robustly dynamic “Anglo-Saxon race” to the North. The historian Pierre-Luc
Abramson notes that “without the help of Saint-Simonian ideology, and without
Chevalier and his knowledge, there is no doubt that the emperor could neither have
produced nor presented to the general public such forward-looking justifications for
the ‘Grand Design of the Reign’.”17
Thus, Michel Chevalier went from defending the universal association of his
master, Saint-Simon, to being the standard-bearer of Latin association. His trip to the
United States and Mexico in 1835 marked the turning point in his thought. He
followed the example of Alexander von Humboldt, who had also written about Mexico
in his Essai politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne, by extolling “this inex-
haustible fund of wealth contained in the New World,”18 while in an early letter to
Madame Mathieu de Saint-Hilaire in 1835, he had already stated that what kept him
in Mexico was the interest that the country offered and, furthermore, the interest that
it was likely to offer within what he supposed would be a very short period of time.19
Chevalier considered the possibility of cutting the canal that would later connect the
two oceans through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (rather than in Panama) and planned
a whole series of social and agrarian reforms and transport links so that the Mexican
fields “would be populated with a new race.”20 These reforms, nonetheless, would be
backed by a good number of Europeans with technical qualifications who would have
to go and settle in the North American country (in 1831–1832, in the Globe news-
paper, he had similarly defended the conquest of Algeria under the pretext of the
so-called civilizing mission that history had entrusted to the French).21
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Chevalier thought that he had found the best example of the deterioration of the
Latin race in Mexico, against the Anglo-Saxons. In 1842, in his Cours d’économie
politique, he quoted the words of Jefferson, who predicted that Mexico would be
conquered piece by piece and annexed by the United States; Chevalier believed that
the most industrious race in the world would inevitably dominate the other. He hoped,
however, that Mexico could also be a space for the “regeneration of the race”, as long
as the other Latin peoples mobilized to collaborate in appreciating its great natural
wealth.22 That opportunity seemed finally to have arrived when the French troops
embarked for Veracruz and Chevalier became, what Abramson referred to as, the
“rhapsodist of the expedition”,23 with a lengthy article in two instalments in La Revue
des deux mondes in April 1862, in which he justified intervention, pointed out the
advantages of a monarchical regime (although expressing his reservations about the
origins of Maximilian of Habsburg, citing the incompatible characters of the
Germanic and Latin races as his reason) and examined the human and economic
resources of the country, offering practical advice for the success of the enterprise.
The article concluded with him denouncing the Monroe doctrine and invoking
France’s role as the protector of the Latin nations.24
A fuller version of this work was published the following year in his two-volume
study, Le Mexique ancien et moderne, in which he reviewed the history of Mexico from
its pre-Columbian past and considered its potential for the future. Chevalier set out
two political reasons for defending the French intervention. The first, which he
considered to be “of universal interest” was to erect a barrier to prevent the imminent
invasion of the whole of the continent by the United States; and the second, which
drew more on French policy, was to protect and save “from irreparable ruin”, not only
Mexico, but also “the whole Spanish branch of Latin civilization in the New World.”
The expedition was not interference as such, but the point of departure for “the polit-
ical regeneration of Mexico.”25
Chevalier had still not forgotten his former dreams of a unified Europe — which
he did by evoking Napoleon I, who had claimed that any European war was a civil
war — but thought that the harmony and unity that should govern relations between
the different European states was more necessary, and possibly more achievable,
between the Latin nations, that branch of Western civilization marked by Catholicism,
and whose soul and eldest sister was France.26 The Latin races, however, were losing
their dominant position in the world in the face of the Protestant advance; he also
noted that it was fundamental for French politics to safeguard its role in the world,
because France herself would lapse otherwise into international irrelevance:

The destinies of France and the greatness of her authority are subordinate to the future
prospects of the Catholic States in general and of the Latin races in particular. This is the
most powerful argument that can be offered in support of the expedition to Mexico.27

Chevalier’s thinking about Mexico, which was based on the idea of a “clash of
civilizations” avant la lettre, swung therefore between imperialist zeal, the Realpolitik
that it now seemed to have become, and echoes from his Saint-Simonian past. The
whole vocabulary of the industrial classes and government by administrators is still
there, as well as his great passion for railways and steamboats as “powerful instruments
of civilization”. The call for the unity of the Latin race was just another of the many
forms of universal association, expressed in terms of the protection and guardianship
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that were necessary for a people that was consumed by anarchy and “would not know
how to provide its beautiful country with the most essential elements of social order
and public prosperity.” This would justify the “civilizing mission” that he had so often
advocated before, because, as he concluded, with an idea that any utopian would
appreciate, “in Mexico, it all remains to be done.”28
The fact is that Saint-Simonianism always paid more attention to technical issues
(Chevalier’s works are lengthy studies on economics, agriculture and demographics)
and industrial development than to public or individual freedoms, so it was not so
much that Chevalier was a utopian thinker whose thought became more politically
pragmatic in the shadow of power, but that there persisted in him a strand of ideolog-
ical continuity. Chevalier’s thoughts on Mexico and the works he wrote, although
forgotten and reviled by many today, contributed nonetheless to the emergence of a
future “Latin” identity as the Uruguayan, José Enrique Rodó, claimed in his famous
essay “Ariel”.
Chevalier’s decisive influence on the Mexican enterprise was certainly acknowl-
edged at the time and he was attacked by some of his contemporaries who were
opposed to intervention. The Republican, Edgar Quinet, for example, did not hesitate
to mock the old Saint-Simonian and his idea of a Latin race. It was an alleged right
based on kinship and elevated to a “new divine law” that granted authority and power
to fight those who did not belong to the family and to keep the close relatives on a tight
rein. It was an absurdity carried to extremes (for who was able to state with any
certainty that he did not have a single drop of Latin blood in his veins or one word with
Latin roots in his vocabulary?) and its only purpose was to impose Caesarism on the
Spanish republics. Words like “civilization” were used to mask “un coup d’état contre
les libertés du genre humain” (a coup d’état against the liberties of humankind).29
The Frenchman who was most familiar with the New World was without a doubt
that other major utopian involved in the Mexican campaign, the Fourierist, Victor
Considerant. From 1852, he resided in America, between the failed colony in Texas
and his subsequent retreat in San Antonio, where he remained until 1869, when an
amnesty was declared and he was able to return home to France. Fourier’s leading
disciple refined his master’s theory and stripped it of its most eccentric features so that
it could be put into practice. He was an early participant in phalanstery experiments
in France, and also involved in the politics of his time as a parliamentary representative
in the Second Republic of 1848. Then, following the coup of 2 December 1851 and
because of his protests against Napoleon III’s military expedition to Rome — a bone
of contention also for Quinet, another Republican — he was imprisoned and forced
to seek exile in Belgium. Considerant, like the Saint-Simonian, Chevalier, was a former
student of the École Polytechnique; also like him, he devoted some of his early works
to the project for a “universal democratic federation”, a “Congress of Spherical Unity”
and, more specifically, a European federation.30 The democratic humanitarianism of
Fourierism, however, with its doctrine of regeneration and social harmony, moved
away from the more authoritarian theories of Saint-Simonianism, and after 1840,
Considerant took up the baton of Fourierism to devote himself to the task of spreading
utopia overseas. Until 1848, Considerant was heavily involved in the European
question; after that date, America was uppermost in his mind. He believed that that
was where the social difficulties and the great European question needed to be
resolved. It was not a matter of abandoning the European mother country, but of
preparing the ground for its salvation and that of the world.31
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Once the Fourierist experiment of La Réunion had collapsed, Considerant and his
wife took refuge in San Antonio between 1863 and 1869. For Considerant, this town
was a “symbol of the conflict between the Mexican mestizos and the white Anglo-
Saxons. . . . a privileged observatory of the political and military events . . . of the French
Intervention.” In point of fact, both the Fourierist, Victor Considerant, and Robert
Owen, whose own project was referred to earlier, viewed the Texan frontier as an area
of common ground, a land between two cultures that was ripe for socio-religious
utopia.32 From there, Considerant visited Nuevo León and Coahuila, assiduously read
Francisco Zarco’s newspaper, El Siglo XIX, and met one of the precursors of the
Mexican revolution, Alberto Santa Fe, author of an ambitious plan for agrarian reform,
as well as Santiago Vidaurri, the architect of the breakaway Republic of Sierra Madre.
Considerant’s wide knowledge of Mexican society, language and culture is captured
in his Quatre lettres au maréchal Bazaine (Four Letters to Marshal Bazaine), published
anonymously in Brussels.33 The objective of these letters was none other than to per-
suade Marshal Bazaine, and through him, the Emperor, of the need to abolish the
system of servitude among the Mexican peasantry, known as peonazgo, or forced
labour. Although Considerant was ideologically closer to Benito Juárez than to
Maximilian and did not shrink from expressing his reservations critical of the French
intervention, he did nonetheless write to his “enemies” in order to set out his ideas.
The traditional indifference of Fourierism to the nature of the political regime — since
it wanted socialism to spread through its own example rather than be imposed by sub-
versive means — led Considerant to concentrate on its social and humanitarian aspects
and to propose the need for reform “from below”, which was in tune with the idea of
his master, Fourier, who had dreamt of the “annihilated races” taking their revenge on
the conquistadors and turning Mexico into the Magnat of future humanity.34 In this
respect, Considerant’s Mexican letters constitute a plan for social reform of the agrar-
ian question that would involve “una visión utópica de México, tierra nueva donde
todo es posible por hallarse poblada de hombres sencillos y rectos, cercanos a la natu-
raleza” (a utopian vision of Mexico, a new land where anything is possible because it
is populated with simple, upright men who live close to nature).35
In the same way that Considerant inserted references here and elsewhere to
Rousseau’s good savage, so he also echoed the Owen project and lamented that the
independent Republic of Texas had not survived as a neutral buffer against the incur-
sions from the North. In the main, however, he paraphrased — although from the
other end of the ideological spectrum — the ideas of Michel Chevalier about the Latin
race. The goal of protecting the Latin races from Anglo-Saxon influence, the oft-
repeated reason for the intervention, seemed to him to be “une vue élevée et de
politique vraiment humanitaire” (a lofty, truly humanitarian political vision).
Meanwhile, Maximilian’s objective should be to pluck those races that spoke Latin
tongues from the jaws of Anglo-Saxon individualism and help them fulfil their destiny,
which was none other than Pan-American unity.36
So, Victor Considerant had also absorbed the prevailing racial discourse of the
time, although with some slight differences. Rather than “Latin race”, he preferred to
talk about “races that spoke Latin tongues” (unlike Chevalier, Considerant privileged
linguistic ties over religious ones, because he also sought freedom of worship for
Mexico). More particularly, he favoured the term “Mexican race”, even though in his
philosophy, he was seeking to achieve universal brotherhood in which the Mexican
race was already freed from the European yoke and open to Pan-American unity. In
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146 | Nere Basabe

the Quatre Lettres, Considerant characterized the Mexican race as “une race inculte
très cultivée” (an uneducated race that is very cultured) (p. 17), “[qui] possède une
grande douceur . . . et une extrême docilité” (very gentle . . . and extremely docile)
(p. 15) and naturally sociable, in contrast to the steely self that characterized the North
American (p. 18). He even referred to them in the Prologue as “la race rouge” (the
red race). Paraphrasing Fourier, he said that it would be a race with a lesser title that
was not without greater capabilities (p. 17). It was, however, in danger of being swal-
lowed up by the stronger race from the North, just as the buffalo had been, and so
needed a bulwark to protect it (p. 81 and p. 86). The question of peonazgo, however,
which was at the heart of the matter, was not a problem of race (as slavery was), but
embraced a whole social class (p. 44), and that was why Considerant favoured a
humanitarian, socialist policy rather than a civilizing approach.
Victor Considerant, unlike Chevalier, never abandoned his Fourierist activism,
which he continued to vindicate in his work. The course of events, he tells us, was
proving his master right and he ventured the prediction that the humanitarian policy
that still provoked derision among pragmatic politicians would end up being the key
question in future times. He never abandoned his commitment to the lot of the dispos-
sessed Mexicans and declared that the true, pure Mexican was the poor Mexican
(p. 14), and he ended his days, twenty-five years later, an eccentric old man who
strolled through the Latin Quarter in Paris, mixing with the young students and
wearing a serape and Mexican sombrero.

The “Latin race” in the Spanish press

Although the expression “Latin race” was a French invention, it very quickly spread
to Spain, a country, we should remember, that was not a founder member of the
Latin Monetary Union, joining it a few years after it had been established; what is
more, the idea spread so successfully that it eventually eclipsed the notion of Spain’s
claim to its former colonies (albeit with some exceptions, as we shall see). The Revue
des races latines [Journal of the Latin Races] (1857−1861), the French journal
founded by the government of Napoleon III, had a Spanish counterpart, Revista
española de ambos mundos [Spanish Journal of the Two Worlds] (1853−1855), whose
first issue opened precisely with an article by Michel Chevalier, “Sobre el progreso
y porvenir de la civilización” (On the progress and future of civilization), and which
went into print again in 1874 with the new title of Eco de ambos mundos: Órgano de
la raza latina [Echo of the Two Worlds: Organ of the Latin Race].
Spain, led by General Juan Prim, joined the Franco-British expedition to Mexico
from the start. Prim, however, contrary to the opinion of the government, led by
General Leopoldo O’Donnell, favoured negotiations under the auspices of Great
Britain, rather than the monarchist, interventionist solution that Napoleon III was
aiming for in the figure of Emperor Maximilian.37 This issue generated a good deal
of controversy, and the conflict was increasingly interpreted in Spanish public
opinion as a clash between the Latin and Anglo-Saxon races. It was particularly well
received among the conservatives of the Liberal Union party, led by O’Donnell, and
those who supported a Mexican monarchy.
The expression “Latin race” first appeared in the Spanish press in that revolu-
tionary year of 1848, the turning point in European history and in utopian dreams; it
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appeared, therefore, even before it became commonplace through the work of Michel
Chevalier. In the 1850s it was frequently used with one outstanding feature: whenever
it was mentioned, it would be in terms of the “degeneración de la raza latina” (degen-
eration of the Latin race), “decadencia” (decadence) or “abatimiento” (dejection).38
When compared with the progress that the Teutonic races had made in both Europe
and America, it marked the end of the influence of the Latin race and its loss of
“virility”. Newspapers such as the conservative El Heraldo — the decadence of the
Latin race was a leading topic in the more conservative media, although not only there
— attributed it to the excessive presence of and dependence on the State among the
peoples of the south, as opposed to Anglo-Saxon individualism and self-government,39
an idea repeated later by Victor Considerant. In short, the conclusion at that time could
not have been more pessimistic: “we may as well start weeping like the motherland of
today because of the danger that threatens the Latin race, which seems to us to be now
very Greek.”40
A single exception to this spate of lamentations before the intervention in Mexico
was found in the Balearic newspaper, El Genio de la Libertad (The Spirit of Freedom),
affiliated to the Liberal-Progressive party, where the expression “Latin race” came to
enshrine the most advanced political values. So, they echoed the manifesto of the joint
French–Spanish–Italian Democratic Committee, set up in Paris and headed by
Lamennais, in which these three countries were presented as “the nucleus of the Latin
race” and the vanguard of democratic, republican reform that was intended to reach
every corner of Europe. The news that the Russian tsar had recognized the new
Belgian government was also enthusiastically received, and interpreted as evidence of
divine right losing ground before the “truth” of the Latin race (this “truth” being a
constitutional monarchy elected by suffrage).41
Finally, another article on 8 May 1853 (p. 2), this time in the Liberal Monarchist
newspaper, La España, provided an illuminating advance explanation of what the
Mexican question and the confrontation of the races that was symbolically unfolding
there was all about. The article, entitled “Sobre la situación de México” (On the
situation in Mexico), sounded a warning against the growing dominance of the Anglo-
Saxon race vis-à-vis the Latin one, since it upset the providential equilibrium of
Western civilization. More particularly, readers were alerted to “la guerra de exter-
minio que Washington tiene jurada a México” (the war of extermination that
Washington had sworn to wage against Mexico).
Use of the term the “Latin race” soared in the Spanish press in 1861, just as Prim
was making preparations for the expedition to Mexico. By that time, its meaning had
changed. It was no longer concerned with decadence and degeneration, but had
become an open celebration of its virtues and possibilities. Many of these articles
began with a characterization of the Latin race, or a clarification of what it meant. La
Discusión (Discussion) for example, stated, “Unity, society, this is the eminently
distinctive character of the Latin race. The distinguishing feature of the Anglo-Saxons
is freedom [and] individualism.”42 This same newspaper (founded by the Democratic
parliamentarian, Nicolás Rivero, whose parliamentary speeches, as we shall see, also
dealt extensively with the topic of the Latin race), extolled the three major contribu-
tions of the Latin race to humanity as being, “el imperio, la sociedad universal, el
catolicismo, la religión universal y la revolución francesa, que es la revolución
universal” (Empire, the universal society; Catholicism, the universal religion; and the
French revolution, which is the universal revolution). It also stressed the importance
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148 | Nere Basabe

of understanding history, and not only the present day, in terms of races; in its contro-
versy with other newspapers, such as El Constitucional, which was accused of denying
the existence of such races, it became the leading left-wing exponent of this discourse
on race. La Discusión pointed out that whereas Russia and Prussia had found strength
in Pan-Slavism and Pan-Germanism, the Latin race, unlike those countries, would
find unity, not by absorption, but by means of the free confederation of the various
nations of which it was comprised.43
Only one newspaper dared to criticize the supposed values attributed to the Latin
race at that time (in a text that appeared, oddly enough, in La América in 1861), taking
up an argument from a decade earlier that had appeared in El Heraldo, namely, that
the general tendency of the race “que se ha convenido en llamar raza latina” (that we
have agreed to call the Latin race) was to obliterate the individual in favour of the
government. Apart from this exception, however, the press, on the left and the right,
was quick to embolden the Latin spirit and to call accordingly for the necessary unity
of the Latin peoples so that those values would prevail in the Western hemisphere: “in
this age of the rebuilding of nationalities and the grouping together of fraternal
peoples, the union of the Latin race is not an empty phrase.”44 La España reported a
grand scheme for an alliance between the Latin races and their resources, whose objec-
tives would include the abolition of slavery overseas, the return of Gibraltar to Spain,
the ending of England’s maritime dominance, and making a variety of deals and agree-
ments with the American republics to protect them from being absorbed by the United
States.45 A few months earlier, the view of La Época had been that an alliance between
the three peoples of the Latin race (Spain, France and Italy) was the only “possible
guarantee for the future in the West and that liberal Europe [would] applaud.”46
This more or less utopian, more or less geostrategic programme for an alliance
between the peoples of the Latin race focused its attention at that time on the military
intervention in Mexico led by France. La Iberia repeated time and again that “Spain’s
dignity and interest oblige us to bring about the union of our race in America by every
means at our disposal.”47 Spain, the bridge between the Old and New continents, was
seen as the key to bringing the American peoples within the purview of the Latin race,48
which was why the racial character of Mexico as Latin would continue to be asserted,
even though, as La Iberia stated, it was a “raza degenerada sin duda pero a la cual resti-
tuiría su energía natural un gobierno bueno y firme” (degenerate race, certainly, but
one whose natural energy would be restored by good, firm government). It was for
that very reason that it was necessary to “intervenir en Méjico para salvar allí los
grandes intereses de la humanidad, de la civilización y de la raza latina” (intervene in
Mexico in order to save the major interests of humanity, civilization and the Latin race
there).49 La Época, a conservative monarchist newspaper and the organ of the Liberal
Union party at the time, was the one that placed most emphasis on supporting the
initiative of O’Donnell’s government, appealing constantly to the unity of the Latin
race as its motive. It stated explicitly that it did not do so in a display of rhetorical
instrumentalization, but because that question was more important than lending rates:

It is necessary for the European governments, especially those of the Latin race, to agree
once and for all that they should intervene in the Spanish-American republics, not to rule
over them or to impose their will on them, but to restrain them, protect them, in short, to
prevent the total ruin that threatens them.50
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However, not only the newspapers in favour of O’Donnell’s government

supported intervention in Mexico. So, and for identical reasons, did those of the oppo-
sition, such as El Contemporáneo, which supported the Moderate Party. The main
reason, common to all of them, was to prevent “a powerful State not of our family”
from dominating in Mexico.51 La Época presented the union and strengthening of the
Latin race, first and foremost, as the “last line of defence against the Anglo-Saxon
invasion” and intervention was the only means of heading off the present anarchy and
future conquest.52
This was how the Mexican question came to take the form of a “clash of civiliza-
tions”, a battle of counter-concepts between two opposing races (a topic that Michel
Chevalier had already developed at length, as we have seen) in a discourse that histor-
ically interpreted the 1815 treaties as “an agreement between the nations of the North
to destroy the nations of the South; . . . an absolutist pact against freedom; the machi-
nations of several races in order to finish off our Latin race.”53 La España claimed that
“all the efforts of the Anglo-Saxon race have been directed at destroying the influence
in America of the Latin race, which should, according to the noblest of ideals, carry
the greatest weight in those countries.”54 La América expressed its view as follows:

Our most sincere wish is that our brothers and sisters in South America should consolidate
their freedom and organize their social and political life under the conditions that may have
the most effective influence on their happiness; we wish those Republics . . . to become rich,
peaceful, flourishing States. . . . But we shall never approve of these results being achieved as
wards of the Anglo-Americans . . . , because the distinctive traits of the Latin race of the inhab-
itants of our former colonies are in stark contrast to those that are dominant in the race of
their neighbours, and they would degenerate into a coarse copy and shapeless caricature if
they lost their originality and adopted an outward appearance so contrary to their native
character.55

The confrontation even reached such a pitch that La Época found itself rejoicing at
the outbreak of the American Civil War: “con placer hemos visto la profunda escisión
de aquel pueblo que, enemigo de nuestra raza latina, trataba de lanzarnos de las
Américas, cambiando la religión, las costumbres y la lengua de nuestros hermanos”
(it is with pleasure that we have seen the deep division within that nation — the enemy
of our Latin race — which was trying to drive us out of the Americas, changing the
religion, customs and language of our brothers and sisters).56
Nonetheless, although most of the newspapers seemed to be unanimous in their
support for the intervention in Mexico, based on the claim of supposed Latin soli-
darity, controversy broke out subsequently over the details of the intervention and the
possible solutions that could be applied. The first concerned whether the tripartite
nature of the intervention was the right one and the fact that Spain had surrendered
the initiative — which some claimed should have been theirs for historical reasons —
to France. Reactionary newspapers, such as El Reino, or the Catholic-monarchist La
Esperanza, expressed the humiliation they felt because Spain had not occupied that
prime position, “because we, the representatives of the Latin race in America, those
most threatened by the ambition of the United States, we, . . . should have tried to be
the leading, though not the only actors, there in that great undertaking.”57 La Época,
on the other hand, did support the tripartite intervention and the government’s action
in the matter, and took the view that unilateral intervention would have been “fatal
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. . . for the destiny of the Latin race in America.”58 Apart from the role of France,
another thornier question was the role played by England, “enemiga de nuestra raza
latina” (the enemy of our Latin race), which was bitterly attacked in the pages of La
Época. So, they raised the situation of Gibraltar and asserted that “talking to England
about . . . the regeneration of the Latin race is to talk to her in a language that the
Foreign Office does not understand.”59 The columns of the Contemporáneo were also
critical of Britain’s policy. By leaving France to its own devices in Mexico and putting
pressure on Spain to withdraw from the conflict as well, Britain had “achieved another
objective . . . to thwart the plan to unite the Latin race that would bring France, Italy
and Spain together in a common policy.”60
The arguments intensified particularly when the time came to propose a candidate
for the Mexican throne and France put forward the name of the Austrian Maximilian
as Emperor. Moderate and democratic newspapers alike, all opposed to O’Donnell,
virulently attacked the French aspirations: “France’s policy in America should not be
to stir up trouble if it does not want the Latin race to lose its present dominance there
or the major interests bound up with it to suffer irreparable damage.”61 It was for that
very reason that La España proposed an alternative candidate for the throne of Mexico.
Its opinion was that Isabella II’s sister was the most suitable: “from the point of view
of Mexican interests and Spain’s transatlantic ones; from the point of view that the
cause of liberalism wins if she triumphs; from the point of view of how desirable it is
for the preponderance that the Latin race must acquire there where the Anglo-Saxon
race is trying to assert its dominance.”62
Meanwhile, the attitude of La Época (the official organ of the government) vis-à-
vis the Mexican throne remained ambiguous. While the newspaper supported the plan
for a monarchy, which had, it said, been a Spanish initiative, it lamented that it was
being consolidated with a candidate that was opposed to the Latin race since Spain
would end up losing influence in the territories that it had created with its laws and its
children. It reiterated constantly that “the salvation of the Latin race” depended on
the stance that Spain took on this issue.

We do not want to harbour the regret of having missed perhaps our only opportunity to
have contributed to our union with Europe, to the salvation of the Latin race and Spanish
influence in the New World. . . . A constitutional throne raised and consolidated in Mexico
. . . is, above all, the European barrier against the Latin race being absorbed by peoples with
interests in [Spanish] America that rival our own.63

The conservative newspaper La Esperanza (the unofficial mouthpiece of Carlism)

was in favour of a monarchy and reacted angrily to the letter that General Prim
addressed to the French government, pointing out that it was of the utmost interest to
the glory of Spain to save “the Latin race, Catholicism and the language of Cervantes”
in America.64 Such was the success of the notion of the Latin race that it spread, not
only through the ranks of the more utopian democrats and socialists, but also to the
most reactionary and traditionalist elements.
Reality, however, finally prevailed. La América pointed out that, in contrast to that
imperial dream of the Anglo-Saxon race lying prostrate on the ground, while the Latin
race rose up powerfully in the shadow of the monarchy that was to be established in
Mexico, the paramount influence of the Latin race on South American soil was on the
wane, because, as it reminded its readers, “en América no hay elementos monár-
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quicos” (there are no monarchist elements in America). The expedition led by Prim
withdrew from Mexican territory with scarcely anything to show for it, and the
Austrian Emperor Maximilian imposed by the French did not last long either.
Meanwhile, the Mexican government under Juárez was prepared to reach an agree-
ment after all with the United States, leaving the ultraconservatives of La Esperanza
lamenting yet again that “the possession of Mexico by the Anglo-Americans means
the definitive triumph of the Anglo-Saxon race over the Latin race in America.”65
The debate about the question of the Latin race in the context of the intervention
in Mexico took place not only in the pages of the newspapers, but was also a major
topic of parliamentary debate during those years. The Minister for Grace and Justice
at that time, Santiago Fernández Negrete, defended the intervention with the
following words: “There is a nation in America that is not of Spanish origin, the United
States, whose circumstances make it a rival of our race, and which believes and says
that the Latin race is to be conquered by force in America.”66 General Prim, addressing
the Senate, also based his arguments on the idea of the interests of the Latin race, but
precisely in order to defend the opposite viewpoint; leadership of the race could not
be conquered with cannon fire.

Stop there, gentlemen, stop there. What will you gain by taking your armies to Mexico?
Nothing, neither honour, nor glory. The only thing that you are going to achieve is to destroy
the influence over the Latin race that Spain should exercise, now and forever, and influence
is not imposed with cannon fire. Do not lose sight of the fact that the United States, at the
head of the Saxon race, is advancing with every day that passes. Let us not, therefore, by
employing Spanish arms, facilitate their eagerness to invade.67

The Mexican diplomat assigned to Paris, José Manuel Hidalgo y Esnaurrizar, also
published, for the benefit of the French public, a selection of debates held in the
Spanish Cortes on the Mexico question, outstanding among which were the speeches
of Bermúdez de Castro, the Marquis of Havana and Ríos Rosas. In his introduction,
Hidalgo used that notion of the Latin race on numerous occasions and predicted an
impending “struggle between races”.68 In the session on 13 January 1863, Ríos Rosas
delivered a speech to Congress, which he began by recalling the presence of two
European races in America, which had taken civilization to its limits over there, so
presenting the conflict once again as a clash of races.
In the parliamentary arena, however, the man who most vigorously upheld the exis-
tence of the Latin race and asserted the need for its unification was Nicolás María
Rivero, the leader of the Democratic Party and founder of the newspaper, La
Discusión. Other newspapers of the time, as well as La Discusión, reported (on 12
March 1861) one of Rivero’s speeches, in which the parliamentary representative
called for the unity and confederation of the Latin race. His proposal was backed by
other progressive members of the Cortes, including Salustiano Olózaga, and even
Sagasta of the Liberal Party, who later served as Prime Minister on a number of occa-
sions. The opposing benches, however, accused them of wanting to resurrect
Napoleonic projects. The most hostile to Rivero’s proposal was undoubtedly the
conservative, Cánovas del Castillo, the future prime minister, who replied that he did
not believe in the unity of races, and that it was not, in any case, the business of govern-
ment to talk about races, let alone suggest that the Spaniards could be referred to as
“Latin” since, he quipped, the only thing that they had preserved of Latium were the
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152 | Nere Basabe

ruins of Saguntum and Numantia.69 General José Gutiérrez de la Concha, Marquis

of Havana, expressed himself in a similar vein a year later (on that occasion, in a reply
to Prim himself, “the Marquis of Castillejos”), equating liberal policy with “racial
policy” and dismissing it as “unworkable” (in other words, utopian).70
It is clear, therefore, that, in spite of the constant references to the Latin race in the
political discourse of the time, and regardless of the enthusiasm of those who thought
that race was a “law of history and biology” — like the columnists of La Discusión,
mentioned at the beginning of this section — there were, nonetheless, a number of
voices here and there expressing their scepticism of the new concept. The sceptical
point of view was eloquently laid out in an article that appeared on 9 May 1862 in La
Época (p. 2), in which the contradictions inherent in “esta ruidosa cuestión de razas
con que diariamente nos atruenan los oídos” (this much discussed question of races
with which our ears are deafened daily) were pointed out, those for example that led
to an Austrian emperor being endorsed as an appropriate choice for a nation of the
Latin race. After all, the writer wondered, what is the Latin race? Is it a question of
religion, language, or blood? On what is that unity based? What right has Napoleon
III to claim such representation for himself? The author of the article deflates that
“sueño o manía predilecta de algunos de nuestros políticos” (dream or favourite
obsession of some of our politicians), by reminding his readers that those nations,
supposed brothers in race, instead of behaving fraternally, had historically waged war
against one another, made alliances with nations from outside their own alleged race
and had never obeyed any reason other than the reason of state, which was contrary
to any utopia.

Conclusion: a project of social regeneration and political

unity for the New World

Of all the historical experiences and experiments in Latin America — a territory that
has lent itself to the conquest of all kinds of dreams and ideals and in which so much
blood has been shed — the second European intervention in Mexico in the 1860s, the
overthrow of Juárez’s liberal government and the French occupation do not appear to
warrant a chapter in the history of utopias, apart from the political oddity of placing
a monarch from the House of Habsburg, however fleetingly, on the throne of a so-
called Mexican Empire. The reasons for this foreign intervention (the suspension of
debt payments by the revolutionary government, the defence of the rights of the clergy
and the status quo, the threat of invasion from their Anglo-Saxon neighbours to the
north, and the race to empire of the European powers) seem even less idealistic.
And yet this enterprise with interests that were so patently less than noble made use
of a rhetorical charge whose range far exceeded the bounds of self-interest to appeal
to sentiments of a more altruistic nature. The use and misuse of such a distinctive con-
cept as the “Latin race” is an outstanding example. Some of the most prominent
French utopian thinkers of the second half of the nineteenth century were directly
involved in its formulation and dissemination, which spread even to the most extreme
reactionary groups. In France, conceptualization of the supposed existence of a Latin
race served to create a new ideology that justified imperialist expansion in Latin
America, one that Spain made use of also in its attempt to maintain its post-imperial
ascendancy in those territories.71 And if, for the Europeans, it represented a first-rate
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The Utopia of the “Latin Race” | 153

intellectual instrument that could be used to rearticulate relations with their now inde-
pendent former colonies, the Latin Americans (Bilbao, Torres Caicedo), for their part,
also made use of it to lay claim to their own identity in opposition to Old Europe and
the giant to the north. In the face of the real advance of the influence of the United
States and the Monroe doctrine, which claimed the whole continent as its “exclusive
sphere of influence”, the “Latin race” would turn out to be an illusory invention,
almost naïve in its impotence, and its success, ephemeral and merely rhetorical.
Agents of extraordinarily diverse ideologies were able to exploit the notion of the
Latin race, because the very definition of it was always so vague. It did not imply a
biological sense, so much as a cultural or “civilizing” one, which was understood in
terms of religion, language, a shared history and supposed moral characteristics. What
it implied, however, in most cases — which made it an excellent utopian tool — was
the commonly projected idea of social regeneration and supranational political unity.
Latin America had always been conceived of as a place “destinado a la regenera-
ción de la humanidad” (destined for the regeneration of humanity), where
palingenetic aspirations joined hands with the Bolivarian utopia of the unity of the
New World,72 and the idea of the “Latin race” was certainly more than enough to
embrace both these historical and utopian aspirations. It is no coincidence, therefore,
that convinced former Europeanists like Michel Chevalier or Victor Considerant —
who fought on behalf of European unity and universal association and harmony until
the middle of the century — should, in the 1860s, join in the battle for the Latin race
(much more reduced in scope, of course, but for that very reason more feasible and
concrete).
With the revolutionary dreams of emancipation and brotherhood in the Old
Continent dashed after 1848, many of those utopians turned their gaze towards
America. The very idea of a free and united America was not new and not even
enjoying its best moment given the consolidation of the newly independent
autonomous states, but the longing for unity and regeneration expressed in the
ideology of the Latin race helped revitalize it. A long time before this invention, the
Argentinian revolutionary and promoter of independence in Latin America, Bernardo
de Monteagudo, had already appealed (in 1823) to these affinities between Spanish-
American nations (political affinities, he stressed, but also physical and moral ones),
which ought to lead to the creation of a single nation. In a draft plan to achieve this,
drawn up at the behest of Simon Bolivar himself, he encouraged the establishment of
a great common congress:

A spotlight that will light up [Spanish] America; to create a power that unites the forces of
fourteen million individuals; to strengthen the relations between the [Spanish] Americans,
uniting them with the great bond of a common congress, so that they learn to identify their
interests and literally form a single family.73

With or without the bonds of kinship, the idea of universality and association as a
constant of every enlightened or utopian project has continued to surface from time
to time, even down to the present day, although always with a certain ambivalence,
because, ultimately, it was never certain whether the project for uniting the Latin race
concealed an imperialist plan for domination or the promise of regeneration and the
emancipation of brothers. Even the French republican, Edgar Quinet, who was as
critical of his country’s interference in Mexican affairs as he was of the notion of the
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154 | Nere Basabe

“Latin race”, concluded his short work on the expedition to Mexico by calling for the
establishment of a great American confederation that would also include the powerful
democracy of the United States, which would put a stop to all attempts at Old World
Caesarism, since, as he pointed out, the New World “est encore l’espérance de tous
les amis de la liberté” (is still the hope of all the friends of freedom).74

Notes
1 Edgar Quinet, L’expédition du Mexique (London: Imprimerie de J. Taylor, 1862), p. 10:
“Fourier et les autres visionnaires nous ont enseigné que Mexico est la capitale naturelle du
monde.”
2 Luis Ricardo Dávila, “América: Venezuela”, in Diccionario político y social del mundo ibero-
americano, compiled by J. Fernández Sebastián (Madrid: Fundación Carolina, Sociedad
Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales y Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales,
2009), p. 166: “gran página en blanco en espera de ser llenada de sentido.”
3 Antonio de Alcedo, Diccionario geográfico-histórico de las Indias Occidentales o América, 5
vols. (Madrid: Imprenta de Benito Cano, 1786), 1:68: “regalo de la vida humana.”
4 Guillermo Zermeño, “América: México”, in Diccionario político y social, Fernández
Sebastián, p. 134: “América refiere a un suelo, una geografía, un clima y un futuro
reivindicado frente a la ‘vieja’ Europa.”
5 Gaceta Mercantil (Buenos Aires), 20 January and 23 January 1844.
6 Simón Rodríguez, Sociedades Americanas (Caracas: Monte Ávila, 1992), p. 39 (the original
citation is in the 1828 Arequipa edition, p.151): “la América española es original: originales
han de ser sus instituciones y su gobierno, y originales los medios de fundar uno y otro. O
inventamos, o erramos.”
7 El Telégrafo de Lima, 29 April 1833.
8 Simón Bolívar, “Carta a Francisco de Paula Santander, Guayaquil, 6 de agosto de 1823”,
in El mundo según Simón Bolívar, edited by Carlos José Reyes (Bogota: Icono, 2006), p. 26:
“América . . . es un decreto soberano, irrevocable del destino.”
9 Pierre-Luc Abramson, Las utopías sociales en América Latina (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 1999), p. 33: “la adecuación del Nuevo Mundo fourierista al Nuevo Mundo
geográfico.”
10 This Champ d’Asile was established in Texas on the orders of General Rigaud in 1815. It
was constituted as a “Napoleonic confederation” with a militia of nine hundred men that
called themselves the “Independent Soldiers of Mexico” whose aim was to fight the
Bourbons in America and free Napoleon from his prison on Saint Helena. They were finally
defeated in 1818 [“Plan pour la Confédération napoléonienne” cited by Jacques Penot, Les
relations entre la France et le Mexique de 1808 à 1840, 2 vols (Lille/Paris: Atelier de repro-
duction des thèses de l’Université de Lille III — Librairie Honoré Champion, 1976), 1:169].
11 Carlos M. Rama, Utopismo socialista (1830−1893) (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1977),
p. 185. The original note with Owen’s text is kept in the Mexican Archivo General de la
Nación, Exp. H/554: “una nueva sociedad armónica que acabase con las disensiones
religiosas, mercantiles, nacionales o sociales.”
12 Abramson, Las utopías sociales, p. 57: “gran momento de delirio colectivo donde la utopía
se mezcla con lo sórdido.”
13 Michel Chevalier was one of the leading disciples of Count Henri de Saint-Simon and a
prominent representative of the Saint-Simonian school, based in the Ménilmontant
commune. A graduate, like so many utopians, of the École Polytechnique in Paris, his work
was devoted to social and economic reform, and to developing railways, canals, finances
and colonization. After spending six months in prison when the Saint-Simonian commune
was closed down (1832), a trip to the United States changed the direction of his work.
Although most researchers have credited Chevalier with the neologism [Aims McGuiness,
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The Utopia of the “Latin Race” | 155

“Searching for ‘Latin America’: Race and Sovereignty in the Americas in the 1850s”, in
Race and Nation in Modern Latin America, edited by Nancy Appelbaum et al. (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2003)], another version maintains that the expression
“Latin America” was first used by South Americans, such as the Colombian, José Maria
Torres Caicedo (in the poem “Las dos Américas”, 1856) or the Chilean, Francisco Bilbao
(in a lecture “Iniciativa de la América. Idea de un congreso federal de las repúblicas” deliv-
ered in Paris in 1856, or in La América en peligro, 1862, a dissertation against the French
intervention in Mexico), although both authors at that time were residing in Paris and wrote
their works there [see Walter Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell,
2005) and Joao Feres and Flavio Alfredo Gaitán, La historia del concepto “Latin America” en
los Estados Unidos (Santander: Universidad de Cantabria, 2008)].
14 Le Globe, 12 February 1832, etc. Press articles gathered together in Michel Chevalier, De
la religion saint-simonienne. Politique européenne (Paris: Au bureau du Globe, 1832) and
Michel Chevalier, De la religion saint-simonienne. Le Système de la Méditerranée (Paris: Au
bureau du Globe, 1832).
15 Michel Chevalier travelled to the United States between February and May 1835, with a
commissioning order from the then Minister of Public Works, Adolphe Thiers, to study
the transport links in North America. In Mexico, he visited Vera Cruz and the Federal
District, where he took copious notes that he would use later for his many writings on
Mexico, to the extent that he became the official specialist in France on Mexican questions,
with works such as Le Mexique (1851) and Le Mexique ancien et moderne (1863).
16 Anne-Louise-Germaine, Madame de Staël, De l’Allemagne (Paris: Charpentier, 1839),
pp. 9ff.
17 Abramson, Las utopías sociales, p. 54: “sin el auxilio de la ideología sansimoniana, y sin el
de Chevalier y sus conocimientos, es indudable que el emperador no habría podido elaborar
ni desarrollar, ante la opinión pública, las justificaciones progresistas del ‘gran designio del
reinado’.” In the 1840s, Napoleon III had been an enthusiastic reader of Enfantin and
Bazard, since he had been interested at the time in the proposed inter-oceanic American
canal. It comes as no surprise that the Latin American idea germinated in the industrial
Saint-Simonian environment; many such as Olinde Rodrigues and the Pereire brothers,
founders of the first modern credit bank in Spain (1856), showed early interest in doing
business in the Iberian peninsula and in the possibility of replacing the power of the long-
standing decadent metropolis of Madrid in America with the influence of Paris.
18 Michel Chevalier, Cours d’économie politique fait au collège de France, année 1841−1842
(Paris: Capelle, 1842), p. 234: “cet inépuisable fonds de richesses que renferme le
Nouveau-Monde”. There he already gives a foretaste of most of his reflections on Mexico
(the quotation is reminiscent of “la richesse du sol, l’abondance des subsistances, la beauté
du climat” in Alexander von Humboldt, Essai politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle-
Espagne, 4 vols (Paris: Renouard, 1825–1827), 4: 266).
19 Letter from Michel Chevalier to Madame Mathieu Saint-Hilaire, 28 February1835 (kept
in the Prosper Enfantin Collection, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Sign. 7706).
20 Chevalier, Cours d’économie politique, p. 298: “se peupleraient d’une race nouvelle.”
21 Osama W. Abi−Mershed, Apostles of Modernity: Saint-Simonians and the Civilising Mission
in Algeria (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), pp. 27ff.
22 Chevalier, Cours d’économie politique, p. 226, and “Le Mexique”, in Encyclopédie du XIXe
siècle (Paris: Maulde et Renou, 1851).
23 Abramson, Las utopías sociales, p. 53.
24 Michel Chevalier, “L’Expédition européenne au Mexique. I. Les révolutions mexicaines
depuis l’indépendance” and “L’Expédition du Mexique. II. Des ressources et de l’avenir
du pays. Des motifs et des chances de l’expédition”, Revue des deux mondes, 38 (1 and 14
April 1862): 513–561 and 879–918.
25 Michel Chevalier, Le Mexique ancien et moderne, 2 vols. (Paris: Librairie de L. Hachette,
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156 | Nere Basabe

1863), p. 479: “le rameau espagnol tout entier de la civilisation latine dans le nouveau
monde.” And p. 474: “la régénération politique du Mexique.”
26 Ibid., p. 588. In Chevalier’s opinion, the distinguishing characteristic of the Latin race was
religion, not language, which presented him therefore with a conflict, since, at the same
time, he looked upon the Church of Rome as an “enemy of modern civilization”, which is
why the prior reconciliation between Catholicism and “progress, liberalism and civiliza-
tion”, constituted the greater challenge: “le plan de régénération (du Mexique) . . . ne
pouvant avoir d’autres fondements que les principes libéraux” [the plan for the regeneration
(of Mexico) . . . can have no other foundations than liberal ones].
27 Chevalier, Le Mexique ancien et moderne, p. 508: “Les destinées de la France et la grandeur
de son autorité sont subordonnées aux chances d’avenir des États catholique en général et
les races latines en particulier. C’est le plus puissant argument que soit possible de faire
valoir á l’appui de l’expédition du Mexique.”
28 Ibid., p. 518: “ne saurait procurer à leur beau pays les éléments les plus indispensables de
l’ordre social et la prospérité publique.” And p. 539: “tout est à faire au Mexique.”
29 Quinet, L’expédition du Mexique, pp. 10−15 and 36−38.
30 Victor Considerant, De la politique générale et du rôle de la France en Europe (Paris: Bureau
de la Phalange, 1840) and La dernière guerre et la paix définitive en Europe (Paris: Librairie
Phalanstérienne, 1850), in which he calls for social democracy and the fraternity and
association of nations.
31 Victor Considerant, Au Texas (Paris: Librairie Phalanstérienne, 1854), quoted in Silvio
Zavala, “Victor Considerant ante el problema social de México”, Historia Mexicana,
vol. 7, 3 (1958): 312.
32 Cited in Abramson, Las utopías sociales, pp. 59−60: “símbolo del conflicto entre los mestizos
mexicanos y los blancos anglosajones. . . . un observatorio privilegiado de los aconteci-
mientos políticos y militares . . . de la Intervención francesa”. And pp. 41−42. The failure
of Owen’s 1828 project, which set out to make Texas an independent buffer state between
Mexico and the United States, failed, according to his own testimony, as a result of the
Mexican government’s opposition, because of the requirement for religious freedom in the
emancipated “regenerated” territories.
33 Victor Considerant, Quatre lettres au maréchal Bazaine (Brussels: C. Muquardt, 1868). The
letters are dated 1865 and 1867 (the last one). The first of these is franked in Concepción.
Marshal Bazaine was in command of the second French intervention in Mexico and was
regarded as suspect because of his political attitudes that were critical of Emperor
Maximilian and close to those of the Mexican resistance. Prior to this attempt to find a more
propitious interlocutor (although it is not known whether the letters actually reached the
Marshal), Considerant also wrote a lengthy letter to Emperor Maximilian (1865), the
unpublished draft of which is kept in the École Normale de Paris [quoted in Russell M.
Jones, “Victor Considerant’s American Experience (1852−1869)”, The French-American
Review (1976 and 1977): 65−94 and 124−170].
34 Charles Fourier, Théorie des quatre mouvements (Paris: J.-J. Pauvert, 1967), p. 150, cited by
Quinet, L’Expédition du Mexique, p. 10.
35 Abramson, Las utopías sociales, p. 63; although Considerant was an enemy of the
Bonapartist Empire and any monarchist project that attacked Mexican independence, he
also thought that the liberal reformist programme of Juárez did not go far enough, because
it did not initiate the redistribution of land or abolish peonazgo. This practice would not be
officially abolished until 1910 (Silvio Zavala, “Victor Considerant ante el problema social
de México”).
36 Considerant, Quatre lettres au maréchal Bazaine, p. 81, and Zavala, “Victor Considerant
ante el problema social de México”, pp. 320−321.
37 Manuel Ortuño Martínez, “La intervención en México del general Prim (1861–1862)”,
Trienio: Ilustración y liberalismo 58 (2011): 21−60.
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38 See for example, El Heraldo, 14 October 1852, p. 1 and 21 December 1852, p. 3; La España,
12 May 1852, p. 3, and El Clamor Público, 26 June 1852, p. 2; La Esperanza, 22 September
1849, p. 3.
39 El Heraldo, 9 November 1852, p. 1.
40 La Esperanza, 21 September 1849, p. 4: “estamos por ponernos a llorar como la Patria de
hoy por el peligro que amenaza a la raza latina, que nos parece ya muy griega.”
41 El Genio de la Libertad, 7 September 1851, p. 1 and 2 March 1853, p. 1.
42 La Discusión, 26 August 1862, p. 1: “La unidad, la sociedad, es el carácter profundamente
distintivo de la raza latina. La libertad, el individualismo, es el rasgo de los anglo-sajones.”
43 La Discusión, 10 May 1861, p. 1.
44 La Época, 13 November 1861, p. 3: “en esta época de reconstitución de las nacionalidades,
de agrupamiento de los pueblos hermanos, la unión de la raza latina no es una vana frase.”
45 La España, 13 June 1861, p. 3.
46 La Época, 7 January 1861, p. 2: “garante posible del porvenir en Occidente y que la Europa
liberal aplaudirá.”
47 La Iberia, 8 March 1861, p. 1: “la dignidad y la conveniencia de España nos obligan a
procurar por cuantos medios estén a nuestro alcance la unión de nuestra raza en América.”
48 “En esta gran crisis humana, en esta gran evolución de los pueblos, España debe tener el
primer puesto. Siendo el lazo de unión entre Europa y América, podrá representar en ambos
continentes el papel de jefe de la raza latina y hacerse respetar como tal” [In this great human
crisis, in this great evolution of the peoples, Spain should occupy the leading position. Being
the bond that unites Europe and America, [Spain] will be able to represent on both
continents the role of head of the Latin race and be respected as such for it] La Iberia, 15
November 1861, p. 1.
49 La Época, 12 and 13 September 1861, p. 2.
50 La Época, 5 September 1861, p. 2: “Es necesario que los gobiernos europeos, sobre todo
los de raza latina, se convengan una vez por todas de que deben intervenir en las repúblicas
hispano-americanas, no para dominarlas ni imponer allí su voluntad, sino para moderarlas,
protegerlas, para impedir, en fin, la total ruina que las amenaza.”
51 El Contemporáneo, 10 September 1861, p. 1: “un Estado poderoso que no sea de nuestra
familia.”
52 La Época, 12 September 1861, p. 2: “última barrera opuesta a la invasión anglo-sajona.”
53 La Iberia, 8 March 1861, p. 2: “un convenio de las naciones del Norte para destruir las
naciones del Mediodía; . . . el pacto del absolutismo contra la libertad; la inteligencia de
varias razas para acabar con nuestra raza latina.”
54 La España, 7 April 1861, p. 3: “todo el trabajo de la raza anglo-sajona se ha dirigido a
destruir en América el influjo de la raza latina, que por los más altos conceptos debiera ser
preponderante en aquellos países.”
55 La América, 24 February 1861, p. 2: “Deseamos sinceramente que nuestros hermanos de
la América del Sur consoliden su libertad y organicen su vida social y política con las condi-
ciones que más eficazmente puedan influir en su ventura; deseamos que aquellas
Repúblicas (…) lleguen a convertirse en Estados ricos, pacíficos y florecientes. . . . Pero no
aprobaremos jamás que estos resultados se consigan bajo la tutela de los anglo-americanos
. . . , porque los caracteres distintivos de la raza latina que poseen los habitantes de nuestras
antiguas colonias, están en abierta oposición con los que sobresalen en la raza de sus
vecinos, y degenerarían en copia grosera e informe caricatura si perdiesen su originalidad
y adoptasen exterioridades tan opuestas a su índole nativa.”
56 La Época, 26 September 1861, p. 1.
57 La Esperanza, 16 May 1862, p. 3: “porque nosotros, representantes de la raza latina en
América, los más amenazados por la ambición de los Estados Unidos, nosotros . . . debí-
amos haber tratado de ser allí los primeros, ya que no los actores únicos, en esa grande
obra.”
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158 | Nere Basabe

58 La Época, 29 March 1862, p. 2: “fatal . . . para el destino de la raza latina en América.”

59 La Época, 13 September 1862, p. 2 and 15 December 1862, p. 2: “hablarle a Inglaterra de
. . . regeneración de la raza latina es hablarla un lenguaje que es incomprensible para el
Foreign Office.”
60 El Contemporáneo, 10 January 1863, p. 3: “conseguido otro objetivo, . . . estorbar el plan
de unión de la raza latina que reuniría en una política común a Francia, Italia y España.”
61 La España, 26 February 1862, p. 2: “La política de Francia en América no debe ser pertur-
badora, si no quiere que la raza latina pierda allí su actual preponderancia, y los grandes
intereses con ella enlazados sufran daños irreparables.”
62 La España, 22 March 1862, p. 2: “desde el punto de vista de los intereses mejicanos y los
trasatlánticos de España; de lo que con su triunfo gana la causa del liberalismo; de cuán
conveniente es a la preponderancia que la raza latina debe adquirir allí donde la anglo-sajona
intenta dominarla.”
63 La Época, 26 and 28 April 1862: “No queremos abrigar el remordimiento de haber perdido
acaso la ocasión única de haber contribuido a nuestra unión con la Europa y a la salvación
de la raza latina y de la influencia española en el nuevo mundo. . . . Un trono constitucional
alzado y consolidado en Méjico . . . es sobre todo el dique europeo opuesto a la absorción
de la raza latina por pueblos que tienen en América intereses rivales a los nuestros.”
64 La Esperanza, 28 April 1862, p. 3: “la raza latina, el catolicismo y la lengua de Cervantes.”
65 La Esperanza, 24 June 1862, p. 3: “La posesión de Méjico por los anglo-americanos signi-
fica el triunfo definitivo en América de la raza anglo-sajona sobre la raza latina.”
66 Reported by El Clamor público and other newspapers on 23 November 1861: “Hay en
América una nación que no es de origen español, el pueblo norteamericano, cuyas circuns-
tancias la constituyen en rival de nuestra raza, y el cual cree y dice que la raza latina le ha
de estar supeditada en América.”
67 Le général Prim, le Sénat, les Cortès et la presse espagnole dans la question du Mexique (Paris:
E. Dentu, 1863), p. 4: “Deteneos, señores, deteneos. ¿Qué ganaréis llevando vuestros
ejércitos a México? Nada, ni honor, ni gloria. Lo único que vais a lograr es destruir la
influencia que España debe ejercer, ahora y siempre, sobre la raza latina, y la influencia no
se impone a golpes de cañón. No pierdan ustedes de vista que los Estados Unidos, a la
cabeza de la raza sajona, avanzan cada día más. No les facilitemos por tanto, mediante las
armas españolas, su avidez de invasión” (the date of the debate on the Mexican question
in the Senate: 1858).
68 La question du Mexique devant les Cortès d’Espagne: discours prononcés au Sénat et au Congrès
/ par MM. Bermudez de Castro, Concha, Mon et Ríos y Rosas; traduits de l’espagnol et précédés
d’une introduction par J. M. Hidalgo (Paris: A. Lainé et J. Harvard, 1863), p. 9.
69 La Discusión, 23 December 1862, p. 2.
70 La question du Mexique devant les Cortès d’Espagne, p. 197.
71 Joseba Gabilondo, “Genealogía de la raza latina. Para una teoría atlántica de las teorías
raciales hispanas”, Revista Iberoamericana 75, 228 (2009): 803.
72 Abramson, Las utopías sociales, pp. 345 and 348.
73 Bernardo de Monteagudo, Ensayo sobre la necesidad de una federación general entre los estados
hispano-americanos y plan de su organización (Guatemala: Imprenta del estado por
J. González, 1825), p. 22: “Un foco de luz que ilumine a la América: crear un poder que
una las fuerzas de catorce millones de individuos: estrechar las relaciones de los americanos,
uniéndolos por el gran lazo de un congreso común, para que aprendan a identificar sus
intereses y formar a la letra una sola familia.”
74 Quinet, L’expédition du Mexique, pp. 17 and 15.
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8 Rhodakanaty in Mexico
Carlos Illades

Very little is known about Plotino Constantino Rhodakanaty. It is said that he was
born in Athens on 14 October 1828 and that his father, a doctor and writer, fought in
the Greek War of Independence against the Turks (1821–1829), dying before the
London Protocol of 1830. After his father’s death, his mother took him to Austria to
live with his grandparents. However, when Rhodakanaty registered his own son,
Plotino Nefi in 1881, he was forty-seven years old according to the records, which
means that he must have been born in 1833 or 1834, four or five years after the date
stated by Valadés and repeated by all of us who have followed the enigmatic life story
of this Greek socialist. This would also modify the record that we have of his educa-
tion, at least with regard to the dates. Based on this, Plotino Constantino’s father could
not have died during the Greek War of Independence either, but maybe a few years
later.1
While still young, Rhodakanaty began studying medicine at the University of
Vienna, which was one of the oldest institutions of higher education in Central Europe
(founded in 1365) and with a strong tradition. At that time, the Austrian capital was
a bastion of European culture in which one of the most robust of socialist traditions
on the continent would flourish. Possibly in the early months of 1848, Rhodakanaty
left for neighbouring Budapest — which had been shaken by the democratic revolution
of Lajos Kossuth — and would have resumed his medical studies later in Berlin, where
his family may have taken up residence in 1848. He could have remained there
perhaps until 1857. Rhodakanaty probably visited Paris in 1850 in order to meet
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in person.2 It is also possible that seven years later the young
Greek moved to the City of Light for good, where it is presumed that he published a
pamphlet entitled De la Naturaleza.3
In the French capital, Rhodakanaty would have gone further into his philosophical
studies and learnt other languages, Spanish among them. According to his own
records, it was in Paris that he joined the ranks of the socialists, and it was possibly
there that he also became aware of the decree of 1 February 1856 favouring the estab-
lishment of agrarian colonies in Mexican territory. This document extended the rights
of foreign residents and also extended the circumstances under which naturalization
would be granted.4 This opportunity was worth considering, and so, at the end of
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160 | Carlos Illades

1860, Rhodakanaty travelled to Barcelona, later embarking for Mexico. He arrived in

Veracruz at the end of February1861 and shortly after, in the capital. Practically
unknown, probably with little money, but having his medical and philosophical knowl-
edge to hand, as well as his ability in both classical and modern languages (Greek and
Latin, Spanish, German, French, English and Italian), Rhodakanaty started to earn
his living and put the finishing touches to his plans for founding a study circle and an
agricultural colony. That was a time of intense political conflict, when political and
religious ideas emanating from Europe and the United States were circulating while
at the same time the national press was growing. All this, and perhaps some contact
with Paris, helped Plotino Constantino to integrate quickly.

Changing times

Rhodakanaty’s Cartilla Socialista o sea el catecismo elemental de la escuela de Carlos

Fourier: el falansterio [Socialist Notebook or the Elementary Catechism of the School
of Charles Fourier: the Phalansterian] (Imprenta de Vicente García Torres, 1861)
suggested that the supreme objective of human reason was to bring about the universal
association of peoples and that only an order based on association could put an end
to conflict that caused individuals to fight among themselves and that set families,
peoples and classes against each other. Rhodakanaty’s short tract considered that man
was naturally good, but that flawed social institutions had altered the course of his
behaviour, so favouring conflict. It would therefore be necessary to rebuild the insti-
tutions in order to establish a fair and equitable social contract that would bring
different groups into harmony instead of causing social disagreement. A contract of
this kind ought to benefit from the natural attributes of individuals by bringing them
together in such a way that they would give of their best. Work, as well as being varied,
would alternate with play and recreation. There would be a mix of sexes and ages to
make the most of the intrinsic virtues of each. Isaiah Berlin points out that, for the
romantics, what mattered was

not the common base but the differences, not the one but the many; for them the craving
for unity — the regeneration of mankind by recovery of a lost innocence and harmony, the
return from a fragmented existence to the all-embracing whole — is an infantile and
dangerous delusion: to crush all diversity and even conflict in the interest of uniformity is, for
them, to crush life itself.5

Simple conviction based on concrete experience would be enough for humanity as

a whole to recover its providential purposes as a guide to individual and collective
behaviour. The social model sketched out in the pamphlet considered abolishing the
privileges of the aristocracy, in particular putting an end to idleness, and promoting
the work of the whole community, by sharing out material and spiritual wealth in an
equitable manner. With all members having products and services to exchange, there
would be no point in using money as a medium. The result would be universal
harmony of the community and passions, in other words, fraternity realized in full. A
social experiment on this scale could not be accomplished by breaking existing laws:
conviction and persuasion would be the way to carry it forward. The resources to
achieve this would include written and oral propaganda, and practical exercises. When
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Rhodakanaty in Mexico | 161

the collective as a whole was convinced that this was the best way to organize the life
of the community, attention could then turn to transforming the political regime,
which would happen in a natural way, as the validity of the experiment could be tested
and verified at the local level.6
After a didactic presentation of Fourier’s doctrine, Rhodakanaty sought to dissem-
inate his ideas directly. In 1863, he set up a free school that some referred to as “El
Falansterio”, or the Phalanstery, in which, “por principios se enseñaba al pueblo los
derechos y prerrogativas de su soberanía nacional” (as a matter of principle, the people
were taught the rights and prerogatives of their national sovereignty) and also to be
wary in religious matters of any authority that was not “reason and common sense”,
and spreading awareness among the working classes of “los principios más puros y
luminosos de la moral universal” (the purest and most luminous principles of universal
morality).7 It may have been at that time that he invited some young men who were
interested in philosophy and concerned about social issues to join his circle; they
included Francisco Zalacosta, Hermenegildo Villavicencio, Juan B. Villarreal and
Santiago Villanueva. He also published a second short tract entitled Neopanteísmo,
consideraciones sobre el hombre y la naturaleza (Neo-pantheism: Considerations
Concerning Man and Nature) (Imprenta de Rivera, 1864).8
Possibly in March 1868, Rhodakanaty left the capital to settle in Chalco with the
intention of founding an agricultural colony and putting the “agrarian law” into prac-
tice. He failed in his first intention, but he was successful in setting up the “free school”
where he spread his philosophical and social ideas. One of those who attended was
Julio López, a farm labourer who led a peasant uprising that gave the Mexican
landowners no respite that year. López was probably taken prisoner in San Nicolás
del Monte, district of Yautepec, and executed by firing squad in Chalco on 9 July1868.
It is said that Rhodakanaty and Zalacosta tried to join the peasant uprising, but the
former was apprehended in Huamantla and threatened with the death penalty, which
was commuted to banishment from the region. After this failed rebellion, the Greek
socialist went to the state of Morelos to spread Fourier’s societary doctrine.9
Upon his return to Mexico City, Rhodakanaty worked on creating an organization
that would lead to social regeneration. Founded by him on 20 March 1871, the Social
envisaged the affiliation of its members as free and voluntary and that its operation
would be the responsibility of a “Central Organizing Committee”, consisting of seven
delegates elected by majority, with its headquarters in the federal capital and a news-
paper entitled La Internacional, which was the responsibility of Zalacosta. The
organization proposed ending the exploitation of labour, recognizing women’s rights
and rehabilitating the indigenous population. Rhodakanaty prioritized its objectives:
in the first place, it would try to put an end to pauperism and prostitution by encour-
aging public wealth, health, hygiene and morality; later, it would fight for the
transformation humanity through beauty, virtue and science. Rhodakanaty conceived
the association as a “sociocratic party” that would inform the “proletarian class” of
its rights and obligations, and be constituted as the “órgano oficial del pueblo
mexicano” (official organ of the Mexican people). It would also be an “internationalist
party”, not to mention providential, given that it had to implement evangelical charity.
It represented the impoverished of Mexico and the world, taking the fight to the
aristocracy, despotic governments and false churches, in other words those that made
resignation the habitual sentiment of the poor. Poverty, unemployment, war, prosti-
tution and corruption constituted the worst scourges of modern civilization, and they
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162 | Carlos Illades

could only be overcome with socialism, a stage in human development where there
would be bread, work and education for all.10
According to Rhodakanaty, natives, workers and women made up the race, class
and gender oppressed by modern society. All social reform projects should include
reparation of their rights and bring them closer to the rest of the community with more
advantageous conditions. The emancipation of women and workers would set the
standard for social regeneration. There would be a verifiable improvement in the
working class provided that certain conditions were in place for them, such as orga-
nization at local, national and worldwide levels, if wages were increased, productive
activities were financed and cooperatives formed, and if the factors of production of
capital, labour and talent were harmonized. The “agrarian law”, which included abol-
ishing the monopoly of the latifundistas (owners of large estates) and regularizing
individual property, was the solution to the problem involving the natives. Divorce
was one answer to the disadvantageous situation of women and not even the Gospels
opposed it. When the Legislature began to discuss the matter, Rhodakanaty came out
in favour of accepting civil divorce because it guaranteed the freedom of the spouses
and their right to marry again. His argument was also grounded in the law since it
stressed the obvious contradiction between individual freedom — the natural right of
man — and the fulfilment of a contract — marriage — that was indissoluble and life-
long, since divorce was prohibited by the Constitution of 1857. He was not against
the family, but rather in favour of adapting it to the present time; he vindicated free
love, “Christian marriages”, although in cases of immoral behaviour on the part of the
parents, the State would be entrusted with the care of the children.11
A new social contract had to be formulated, but totally different from the one
proposed by Rousseau. According to Rhodakanaty, for Rousseau “todos los hombres
le aparecen como otras tantas fuerzas o individualidades separadas, no solamente
iguales, sino idénticas, que no pueden ser unidas en nada más que por contrato” (all
men appear to him as so many separate forces or individualities, not only equal but
identical, that cannot be united in anything except by contract), the consequence of
which was the uniformity of the contracting parties, making them homogeneous
instead of “semejantes” (equals, fellow beings). Formal equality, which was what the
contract was based on, was for Rhodakanaty a subterfuge that left out natural
inequality and led to individualism and selfishness. Furthermore, ceding individual
sovereignty to an outside entity, the State, seemed to him to be an outrageous waste
of human freedom. In Rousseau’s contract, the citizen pledged everything. Not even
in classical antiquity did they go that far, since some rights were reserved for citizens
that were not subject to state arbitration. Subordinating the minority to the will of the
majority inevitably led to slavery and despotism, since, unlike Rousseau — for whom
“la voluntad constante de todos los miembros del Estado es la voluntad general; por
ella son ciudadanos y libres” (the constant will of all members of the State is the general
will; that is why they are citizens and free) — Rhodakanaty thought that, in the social
contract, man was free only “in having his say and a vote”, for “once the law is passed,
he is a slave” of the majority who crush those who think differently.12
Rhodakanaty proposed creating sovereign federated bodies, which, when added
together, made up society itself. Within the neighbourhood or municipality, the inter-
ests of individuals, families and classes could be expressed in a harmonious way. The
core element comprised individuals and, as with any agreement in a harmonious
society, it ought to be free, voluntary and revocable. At a later time, it might even be
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Rhodakanaty in Mexico | 163

necessary to suppress the State, replacing it with a social pact endowed with political
functions. With the elimination of governments and abominable politicians, public
administration would be managed by the “social contract”. The meaning that
Rhodakanaty gave to the term was different from Rousseau’s, since for the former, it
had to do with civil society, not political society, as Rousseau thought, or, at any rate,
a synthesis of the two that operated in the socio-economic sphere: “the organization
of economic forces” would eventually “replace public powers”, in other words, “the
commonwealth of labour” would be born.13 Politics would then lose its autonomy and
be reabsorbed by intermediate federated bodies, which, after crossing national bound-
aries, would make up the universal association of peoples.
Rhodakanaty, an 1848 revolutionary, after all, defended democracy because it
enshrined universal rights for all humankind. This could not function fully without
socialism, so the question was, “What would be the use of enjoying our inalienable
political and natural rights […] if, on the other hand, we have no guarantee that ensures
our livelihood, providing us with bread and work, the two elements necessary for our
physical existence?”14 He also attached greater weight to “social democracy” over
representative democracy or, in other words, to “direct government by the people”.
If the ruler breaks the social contract by turning into a tyrant, citizens who are
organized as a people acquire the “natural” right to rebel: “at that moment, undoubt-
edly, the anarchist revolutionary principle of Proudhon, which has up till now been
looked upon as an exaggerated utopia, would be justifiable.”15
“Garantismo Humanitario”, published in instalments in El Socialista between 1876
and 1877, conceived of future society as the recreation of a Golden Age, the return of
man to his original “state of nature”, to “Edenism”. In Fourier, Rhodakanaty identi-
fied various stages of development that human societies would pass through: Edenism,
savagery, patriarchate, barbarism, civilization, socialism, guarantism and universal
harmony. The present age corresponded to civilization, albeit an imperfect one
because it was ravaged by hunger, poverty, prostitution, war and despotism. If the
existence of the preceding historical phases was recognized, the feasibility of future
stages could be deduced, given that the assumption that the present could not be trans-
formed meant denying that there was a Divine Plan.16
The historical phases to come would synthesize the best of the preceding periods,
and wrongs and outdated institutions would gradually disappear. Every historical
stage had its own defining characteristics: in the case of Edenism, freedom of the
passions and harmony, as well as its universality and the absence of sickness and
geological cataclysms. During the phase of savagery, the prevailing characteristic was
the unrestrained independence of individuals, an indomitable warlike spirit, cruelty,
oppression and slaughter; slavery also appeared. Patriarchate, although despotic,
increased the rights of legally recognized wives and was implemented in the Orient.
Barbarism was obscurantist, rejected science and favoured serfdom, institutionalizing
it under feudalism. Civilization produced slavery in freedom, poverty in plenty, igno-
rance in encyclopaedism, the exploitation of labour by capital and of woman by man.
Progressing beyond civilization was only possible by means of association, the element
that connotes socialism. Under guarantism, marriage would survive, abject poverty
would be reduced, political revolutions would decrease as social and natural balance
increased. Meanwhile, universal harmony would lead to the human passions being in
perfect equilibrium and to the fullness of the natural order, with individual interests
coinciding with collective interests. It would be an enhanced return to primitive
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164 | Carlos Illades

Edenism, since humanity would have benefited from what it had learned during the
course of its history, and through enlightenment it would recognize its providential
purposes. Given the universality of movement and progress, the Earth would reach
its optimal position in space. Climates would improve and natural catastrophes would
disappear. Arriving at this goal would be inevitable, because history was governed by
a natural inexorable law created by God.17

God

In the 1870s, Rhodakanaty wrote articles about religion for La República and was the
editor of El Craneoscopio, periódico frenológico y científico (The Cranioscope: Scientific
Phrenological Weekly), but earned his living by teaching homeopathic medicine and
languages.18 He saw churches as a useful tool for social reform, since they were spaces
where groups of people assembled and so places where he could explain his ideas and
engage in political proselytism. All types of circles and schools, whether socialist or
religious, whether they discussed philosophy or talked about social calamities, as well
as use of the religious press were all seen as compatible with the societary doctrine and
as methods of spreading its principles, in as much as it saw persuasion as the ideal
instrument for winning followers and all means were valid for disseminating its
doctrine. Except for the Roman Catholic Church, all the other Christian congrega-
tions practised an austere morality that Rhodakanaty found persuasive, as well as being
suitable for shaping the minds of his followers; they would be highly valuable, there-
fore, given the process of secularization that the country had gone through.
Rhodakanaty was certain that the intolerant Roman Catholic Church had distorted
the Gospel, perverted the faith and encouraged hypocritical and sexually deviant
behaviour among the ministers of Catholic worship. In accordance with what he had
learnt in the Orthodox Church of his native Greece, he considered it pressing, there-
fore, to end the celibacy of priests, as well as to adopt austerity in the practice of religion
and daily life as preached by the Mormons. The ability to freely consult the Holy
Scriptures, postulated by the Protestants, was both indispensable and urgent. The goal
was to return to primitive Christianity. The separation of Church and State was
crucial, not only because it corresponded to the theological division between the
earthly and the divine, but also because it had generated innumerable conflicts
throughout history. On the temporal plane, ministers of worship would have to be
subject to civil laws and authorities. According to Rhodakanaty, socialism meant
updating the message of Jesus Christ and the possibility of restoring the natural order
that had been lost, put off or corrupted by the ambition and selfishness of the powerful.
The process was inevitable because, from his point of view, all human societies were
moving naturally towards progress and perfection.
Rhodakanaty was not a deist, nor was he an atheist; on the contrary, he considered
that external worship was a justifiable expression of the Christian faith; consequently,
he did not coincide with the Protestants, who were too strict on this point. This
emphasis on the manifestations of faith did not distance him from Baruch Spinoza
(1632–1677), of whom Rhodakanaty considered himself to be a follower, since the
Jewish Dutch philosopher did not reject revealed religion as such, but the adulterations
that were the work of theologians, which is why he is acknowledged as a precursor of
biblical criticism. The geographical spread of Protestantism, according to the Greek
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Rhodakanaty in Mexico | 165

socialist, corresponded to the thoughtful positivist character of northern Europeans,

but not to the warm sentimental temperament of Latin peoples and there was no doubt
that religious convictions played a role in the destiny of societies. Accordingly, while
Protestantism accommodated social inequality, Catholicism harboured intolerance
and obscurantism. Midway between the two positions, the Orthodox Church was the
legitimate heir to the purest Christianity of the first Christian martyrs, and corre-
sponded to a society that was democratic, austere and also practised the necessary
external worship of God. Greece and Russia were its most important bastions; Turkey
its limit. One of its most appreciable characteristics was its marked emphasis on
persuasion and conviction, resources that Rhodakanaty regarded as essential and
which harmonized easily with Fourier’s societary doctrine.19
Towards the end of the 1870s, Rhodakanaty taught Greek and philosophy courses
in the seminary of the Church of Jesus and also helped out in their shelter. It was said
that he received twenty pesos a month for his classes.20 He even managed to publish
a booklet on the correct pronunciation of Greek, on which he was still an acknowl-
edged authority at the turn of the century:

To clarify this most interesting point on Greek pronunciation, let us see what Professor
Rhodakanaty says about Erasmus’ phonetic system. ‘Classical Greek pronounced as it is taught
in schools and universities in Europe [in Italy, France, Spain, Germany and England] as well as
in the United States and here in Mexico, that is, according to the system of pronunciation
invented by Erasmus of Rotterdam [for the single purpose of making it easier for foreigners
to study] and more or less modified later in each country in accordance with the special
characteristics of their respective languages, is just as intelligible today to modern Greeks, as
it would be equally to ancient Greeks, since they had the same pronunciation, which has been
preserved without interruption by a centuries-old tradition, and whose refusal to move on
certain matters is such a particular feature of our race […]’21

The shelter for young girls of the Church of Jesus had belonged to the convent of
San Antonio Abad (St. Anthony the Great), which was nationalized by the Liberal
government. María Josefina Hooker, who ran the institution, invited the Greek
socialist to visit the premises, where Jacinto Hernández, one of his disciples, coordi-
nated religious worship. Rhodakanaty was attracted by the austerity and the
atmosphere of the orphanage and by Mrs Hooker’s strict moral leadership. The fact
that forty girls of different classes and nationalities could live together under the same
roof clearly demonstrated that “la igualdad cristiana ha sabido nivelar bajo su fraternal
disciplina” (Christian equality had managed, with fraternal discipline, to place on the
same level) those whom society had unacceptably separated on the basis of their
wealth. In a way, it represented an ideal community that ought to multiply its influence
in society as a whole. Rhodakanaty, as he usually did, talked about social regeneration
and the pressing need to improve the conditions of the poor inhabitants of the country
and of the world. Nor did he pass up the opportunity to point out how urgent it was
to create social institutions aimed at achieving women’s emancipation. At that time,
Rhodakanaty also wrote for La Verdad, modifying his view of Protestantism, showing
greater benevolence towards the theological assumptions of the Church and its rites.
He started from the consideration that Roman Catholicism and Christianity were not
synonymous, so that it would be possible to be a Christian without being a Catholic.
He would now characterize it as “pure Christianity”, equivalent to the Orthodox
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166 | Carlos Illades

religion, the Egyptian Copts, the Christians of Syria or the Armenians, in other words,
all the “dissident communions”, given that God had revealed himself in different ways
and forms to all the peoples of the globe.22
In the middle of 1874, Brigham Young, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, thought that the time was ripe to take the Gospel to the Mexicans,
which is why he instructed Melitón González Trejo and Daniel W. Jones to translate
the Book of Mormon into Spanish, publishing 1,500 copies of a selection from the
sacred text, which they carried out themselves using a fund of 500 dollars received in
donation. Shortly afterwards, the first mission was organized that would travel to
Mexico; it comprised Jones himself (accompanied by his son), Helaman Pratt, James
Z. Stewart, Anthony W. Ivins, Robert H. Smith and Ammon M. Tenney. Of these,
only Jones and Tenney spoke Spanish. The evangelists set off from Nephi, Utah, in
September 1875 and entered Mexico by present-day Ciudad Juárez, formerly Paso
del Norte, just as winter was beginning. They spent some time in the city of Chihuahua
from where, with the assistance of some supportive postal workers, they sent out
hundreds of copies of Trozos selectos del Libro de Mormón (Choice Selections from the
Book of Mormon) to prominent men across the country; one of these fell into the
hands of Ignacio Manuel Altamirano and another into Rhodakanaty’s. Daniel W.
Jones records that the writer from Guerrero, Altamirano, sent him a letter of thanks,
while Rhodakanaty’s missives informed him that he had “una visión que le mostraba
la verdad del Libro de Mormón” (a vision that showed him the truth of the Book of
Mormon).23
In the early months of 1878, Rhodakanaty wrote to Trejo asking for more infor-
mation about the Church, and John Taylor, its president after Young’s recent death,
sent him various pamphlets.24 Although the Greek did not defend polygamy, he was
rather closer to the approach of members of the Mormon Church on matters of agri-
cultural colonization, collectivism, “united order” and concern for the indigenous
population. Furthermore, he possessed the “gift of tongues”, much esteemed by the
Mormon rite. On November 15, Rhodakanaty declared that he was sympathetic
towards it:

After reading the Spanish translation of the Mormon Bible, which has reached these latitudes,
I am convinced of the truth and purity of the Mormon faith, and am anxious to become a
member of its Church but, given that there are no Mormon missions here, I am asking you
to send one, with full authority to preach and convert.25

On 15 December, Rhodakanaty and some followers that he used to meet with on

Sundays — at its height, the group increased from twenty to seventy people26 —
communicated to the Mormon hierarchy that they considered themselves to be
members of that faith. According to the account by historians of the Church, the
socialist Rhodakanaty published a monthly periodical entitled La Voz del Desierto in
the Mexican capital in order to spread the faith.27 The letter, sent to Salt Lake City,
stated that:

Having been convoked to a private meeting in the home belonging to Dr. Plotino Constantino
Rhodakanaty, managing promoter of the same Church, for the purpose of organizing a small
circle or congregation of religious and social persuasion in this capital city, said gentleman
read to us for such purpose a work entitled Choice Selections from the Book of Mormon,
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Rhodakanaty in Mexico | 167

translated into Spanish by the reverend Elder Meliton G. Trejo and Daniel W. Jones, the
mystical and highly transcendent meaning of which was later elucidated to us by the same
Doctor, who proved unto us and fully convinced us of the evidence of the divine origin of
such a precious book, and of the lofty mission that its doctrine has to accomplish in the world
causing through its entirely providential and divine influence a complete humanitarian palin-
genesis or transformation in the religious as well as in the moral, social, and political orders.28

Dr Plotino Constantino Rhodakanaty signed as “propagador gerente de la Iglesia”

(managing promoter of the Church), and Domingo Mejía, Darío F. Fernández,
Miguel Enríquez, José Cleofas G. y Sánchez, Luis G. Rubín and Félix Rodríguez also
signed the letter.29 In January 1879, Taylor replied to the missive from Rhodakanaty,
who responded on 27 February, finalizing details about the scope and composition of
the new Mormon mission:

I very much hope that a month at most does not pass before the arrival of the missionary
appointed by the decision of that centre. It should be noted that said missionary should be
able to speak some Spanish and if he is accompanied by gentlemen with the same objective,
it would be better for spreading the word to bring books too. It is best to take the Veracruz
route because it is safe and the rail transport goes to the capital. I stress the need for the
agent of the mission to come invested with broad powers, so that when I confer with him,
we can settle some quite important business that I have to communicate to you.30

The “Quorum of the Twelve Apostles” of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-
day Saints accepted Rhodakanaty’s request. Despite Rhodakanaty’s impatience, the
second mission, composed of James Z. Stewart, Melitón G. Trejo and Moses
Thatcher, embarked in New Orleans and did not arrive in the port of Veracruz until
14 November 1879, on board the steamer City of Mexico. Two days later, they put up
at the Hotel Iturbide in the centre, in calle Francisco I. Madero, called calle de San
Francisco at that time. On 16 November, the Mormon envoys received a visit from
“Doctor Plotino Constantino Rhodakanaty, who was glad to see us, and we immedi-
ately had a good impression of his frank warm hearted manners and his frank and
intelligent appearance.”31 Thatcher was struck by the number of natives that were still
in the country, the opportunities available for agricultural colonization and the reli-
gious tolerance written into the Mexican laws.32
The mission settled into the Hotel San Carlos and later at No. 7 calle de San
Francisco. After intense dialogue lasting four days, they baptized Rhodakanaty and
Silviano Arteaga, and also confirmed them as members of the Church on Thursday,
20 November:

In company with Elders Stewart and Trejo, I visited Doctor Plotino Constantino Rhodakanaty
at 8:30 this morning at his residence, and being there together with two believers we all knelt
and offered prayers.33

They then moved on to Tacuba and, in a private garden near the tree of the Night
of Sorrows, they located

a rustic dressing-room, circular in shape, of perhaps some three metres in diameter [which
they entered] through a narrow bathroom door with a pool of some two and a half by three
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168 | Carlos Illades

and a half metres, and one metre thirty centimetres or a metre and a half deep; [it was
surrounded by a wall and railings], so that we were completely protected from the sight of
anyone in the garden.34

Thatcher stepped into the pool, followed by Rhodakanaty,

With the watery element surrounding our bodies from just below the arm pits and with the
clear blue sky of heaven above us on which the sun was shining brightly and while all nature
was smiling around us and I believe angels were rejoicing above [I baptised] in the name of
the Father Son and Holy Ghost the first person ever baptised in this part of the world by the
authority of the Holy Priesthood since the days of the Nephites.35

Seven more people were baptized in those days of November. Three of those were
ordained within the Melchizedek Priesthood and made elders, including Rhodakanaty
who was also appointed as the president of the Mexican branch. Becoming a Mormon
cost him his job, a wage of 20 pesos a month and caused a rift with the Church of
Jesus.36 Elder Thatcher noted that:

Brother Rhodakanaty has received news of his dismissal from the Episcopal Academy where
he has been employed as a teacher of Greek. The bishop informed him that he could defend
Catholicism or the doctrines of any of the Protestant sects, but not those of Mormonism,
and that, through its [the church’s] newspaper, he had to retract what he had said in La Voz
del Desierto37 in favour of those perverse persons, the Mormons, and that he had to deny all
connection with and sympathy for those persons and that, if he did not, he would have to
leave the Academy.38

To strengthen their evangelization campaign, the Mormons published the first

Spanish edition of Voz de la amonestación e instrucción al pueblo o sea la introducción a
la fe y doctrinas de la Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días (A Voice of
Warning and Instruction to All People, or, an Introduction to the Faith and Doctrine of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), written by Parley P. Pratt and translated
by Trejo, Stewart and Rhodakanaty; this work kept the doctor busy from the middle
of December 1879. By then, the relationship between the Mormon missionaries and
Rhodakanaty had already deteriorated because of his attempts to persuade the faithful
to join in his socialist project, assuring the Elders “que el pueblo aceptaría el Evangelio
a cambio de escuelas, hospitales y colonización” (that the people would accept the
Gospel in exchange for schools, hospitals and colonization). Rhodakanaty and some
of his followers later broke with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
although, according to Thatcher, the problem was a different one: Rhodakanaty was
poor both in “spirit” and poor “economically” and when he was offered work, he
would not accept it. Besides, given the straitened circumstances in which he was living,
propagation of the Mormon faith was little more than a job for him, an attitude that
was condemned by the congregation, which considered this materialistic motivation
a spurious one when it was a question of spreading the doctrine. Furthermore, the
Elder accused him of having published an article critical of the Mormon Church in
La Reforma Social (2 May 1881), perhaps to put pressure on it. As proof, the congre-
gation translated the text into English and sent it to Salt Lake City. Finally, on 28
August, Elder Wilcken read out in church Rhodakanaty’s resignation from leadership
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Rhodakanaty in Mexico | 169

of the Mexican branch, which was accepted by all those present, and he was excom-
municated as an apostate.39
But man does not live by religion alone, and Rhodakanaty was sufficiently preoc-
cupied with other things. The Greek socialist warned that the social revolution would
happen suddenly if there was not a greater levelling of the social classes by attending
to the problems of those most in need, who could turn the status quo upside down at
any moment. The Paris Commune and the International Association of Workers were
setting the trend in Europe, and in Mexico, sooner or later “the commune” would be
paying us a visit. This revolution was as necessary as it was urgent for the “poor
classes” who were without the basics. It also concerned the “reasonably comfortably
off classes”, because while their situation was not precarious, it was uncertain. Both
were victims of “la anómala e irregular manera de ser de la propiedad” (the anomalous
and irregular nature of property), which enables “un número muy reducido de
personas” (a very small number of people) to own much more than other classes and
live well above the level that was necessary. To combat these social problems it was
essential to ignore the “teorías economistas, que son las que matan al pobre pueblo en
nombre de la ley” (economist theories, which are what are killing poor people in the
name of the law).40 The vice at the root of this insensitive, unfair order was none other
than the material inequality of the society that it was based on. Faced with this state
of affairs, communism represented one of the most worrying “dangers for the future”,
given that although this “government of all, by all” obeyed the noble ideal of
redeeming the poor, it would stir up disorder and hatred, making social harmony
impossible. Rhodakanaty was not mistaken; the Rebellion of the Pueblos Unidos of
Querétaro and Guanajuato soon broke out in which “General” Félix Rodríguez, one
of the members of the Social baptized by the Mormons, played a prominent role.41

Transcendental philosophy

Even though philosophy occupied a central place in Rhodakanaty’s intellectual

discourse, perhaps from when he lived Berlin, the philosophical texts that he actually
published correspond fundamentally to the final stage of his Mexican journey. He
called his doctrine rationalism or transcendental philosophy and he began to dissem-
inate it in the study circle that he formed in Mexico City. He went back to it in 1880,
when he put on a course, open to the public, on the subject of positivism, the theoret-
ical paradigm of the time, but which he rejected out of hand; however, he also
published essays in which he presented both the philosophy of nature and Spinoza’s
pantheism. His phase of proselytism and practical action was coming to an end, and
he returned to reflection, which became ever more abstract.
Rhodakanaty became familiar with Romanticism as a young man in Vienna and
Berlin. In Central European circles, it was still considered to be a valid intellectual
current, with its interplay between dreams, madness and the harmony of the human
soul and the cosmos. The exploration of eastern religions and the occult sciences also
formed part of Romantic hermeneutics. Karl-Gustav Carus and Eduard von
Hartmann were to develop the notion of “the unconscious”, linking it to either the
universe or the individual psyche. For von Hartmann, even “the manifestations of the
universal will are purposive and conscious, but without knowing themselves to be so”.
There would remain traces of a link between the past, the present and the future
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170 | Carlos Illades

because human behaviour preserves traces of past behaviours belonging to a “golden

age” that would possibly be discovered again in the future.42
Rhodakanaty’s philosophical texts have more in common with Romanticism than
with Kant’s transcendental idealism or Hegelian dialectics, although he had great
respect for both. With the spread of positivism, which banished God from the sphere
of knowledge of nature and society, hostility towards pantheism — which Rhodakanaty
identified with — was possibly increasing in Mexican academic circles. Even among
spiritualists, who opposed positivism, there was no sympathy whatsoever for Fourier’s
societary doctrine and by the same token, as far as Rhodakanaty was concerned,
spiritualism lacked a solid basis since it reduced “science to mere speculation” and also
discarded “all experimental observation on the grounds that the idea is the true reality”.
In this, spiritualism gained very little, if anything, over positivist philosophy. In spite
of the fact that the Greek doctor started from metaphysics, his intellectual horizons
were complex, given that he included contemporary science and accepted a priori
knowledge, although without dismissing empirical evidence, as is clear from his social
engineering project, the Phalanstery, which would be empirically verifiable.43
Rhodakanaty thought of himself as a rationalist who embraced the philosophy of
nature and pantheism. He believed, with Spinoza, that the universe, the world and
man were the objectification of God in natural processes. Certain analytical and epis-
temological consequences followed on from this divine patent; the first was the
assertion of the tendency towards perfection and harmony in all these orders, and the
second was the necessary character of, on the one hand, events, processes and histor-
ical stages, and, on the other, of celestial and natural phenomena. Since nothing was
arbitrary, everything could be known. Nonetheless, and this was fundamental to his
philosophical viewpoint, science was one of the various ways of grasping reality. There
were, rather, a priori truths, such as moral truths, which needed to be tested by exper-
iment while others, such as physics, chemistry or social science, did not.44
Rhodakanaty had a wide-ranging philosophical culture. He made constant refer-
ence to Descartes, Spinoza, Pascal, Vico, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Feuerbach,
Schopenhauer and von Hartmann in his manuscripts. He read Darwin and agreed
with the principle of natural selection. He was also of the opinion that Wundt’s
psychology and the logic of Tiberghien were sound. He was well acquainted with the
writings of Comte, Bain, Littré and Spencer and although he did not share the posi-
tivist ideas at their core, he thought the work of the English thinker was the richest and
subtlest, while Comte’s orthodoxy bordered on dogmatism. He abjured positivism’s
naïve belief in sensory knowledge, the value it attached to factual evidence as the
criterion of truth, its rejection of a priori knowledge, the imperialism of the hard
sciences over the human sciences, its denial of universal laws, its contempt for
psychology (seen as a sort of metaphysics), as well as its vulgar materialism. According
to Rhodakanaty, positivist morality was the morality of Anglo-Saxon utilitarianism;
based on Hobbesian authoritarianism, its politics was driven by the law of “might is
right”, while its economic doctrine amplified social inequality.45
Rhodakanaty’s controversy with the positivists began when Ignacio Mariscal, the
Minister for Foreign Affairs, recommended him to Ezequiel Montes, responsible for
the department of Justice and Public Education in the government of Manuel
González, for a post (bear in mind that he had now severed relations with the
Mormons). Apart from anything else, this enabled the good doctor to provide support
for his “School of Transcendental Philosophy”, which he set up in his surgery on 15
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Rhodakanaty in Mexico | 171

March 1880. He opened his seminar — given by him or one of his brightest followers
— to students of both sexes (whether the classes were individual or group) on
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. He charged four pesos per
month, a sum that covered the costs of translating, printing, importing and publishing
books and other items. This income, along with his consultations, the sale of homeo-
pathic medicine and the classes in logic that he taught helped with Rhodakanaty’s
living expenses.46 It is possible that he was still offering the Alkaheste Fluídico-Astral
(universal panacea) to the public at 12 reals a flask, which was advertised as follows:

This excellent medicine, the best of all those known until now, is the most efficacious restorer
of the life force and a blood tonic and cleanser of ill humours, as experience has demonstrated,
and as vouched for by the numerous authentic certificates from the sick, for whom three
bottles at the most have sufficed to leave them completely healthy.47

Rhodakanaty stressed the importance of studying psychology and how useful it

would be to include it in the syllabus of the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (National
Preparatory School) (ENP), as a prerequisite for understanding the Krausist-inspired
work of the Belgian philosopher Guillaume Tiberghien, whose Lógica. La ciencia del
conocimiento (Logic: The Science of Knowledge) — translated by José María del
Castillo Velasco — had recently been adopted as a textbook in that renowned estab-
lishment. Rhodakanaty did not wholly agree with the Krausist line of panentheism,
because he believed that it deviated from Spinoza’s doctrine; nevertheless, panen-
theism itself lent weight his anti-positivist crusade. At the end of the day, Rhodakanaty
did not achieve his objective (the first chair of psychology was instituted in the ENP
in 1896) because in 1881 he became embroiled in an academic dispute with the natu-
ralist Alfonso L. Herrera, the director of the institution, who, much to his surprise,
met the suggestion of “such an important reform” with great reticence, and then
hostility and open opposition.48
Rhodakanaty rejected the positivist approach according to which the object of
psychology was the study of the laws governing the phenomena of the spirit, laws
emanating from physiology that could be captured through empirical data perceived
through the senses, empirical data systematized a posteriori by scientific discourse. He
also argued that it was impossible to deduce the order of the mind from a biological
foundation, since the mind constituted an a priori and obeyed an absolute abstract
principle, like logic and mathematics (as Pythagoreans and rationalists showed), that
could not be reduced to particular empirical manifestations, or be registered by the
world of the senses or historical contingency. The soul, the object of psychology, could
be neither measured nor weighed, which was why the method used to record spiritual
processes would have to start from rationalist philosophy or metaphysics, since science
was concerned with individual phenomena (whether natural or social), as well as
accounting for the physical world, whereas the task of philosophy was to tackle the
foundations of the world, absolute truths, universal values.49
In 1881, Rhodakanaty issued a short simplified version of Spinoza’s Ethics, or a
“pantheosophical catechism”, for use as teaching material in his school, which merited
an honourable mention at the Industrial Exhibition in Querétaro the following year.
He credited Spinoza with having laid the foundations of the German school that
followed by pondering, as did Fichte, on the “Absolute Ego”, or the “transcendental
subjective-objective identity” according to Schelling, or Hegel’s “essential, logical
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172 | Carlos Illades

evolutionary idea”. Western philosophy was also indebted to Spinoza for the discovery
of the one absolute universal substance, God, who included all things and had, at the
same time, innumerable attributes, each one of them expressing “an infinite eternal
essence”, perfect, self-regulating, free and necessary, independent of any external
factor and making self-determination possible. Since the universal essence was “a
cause of itself”, nothing was contingent and everything corresponded to “divine
nature’s need to exist and to work in a given manner”. So, “second causes” — in other
words, the manner in which empiricism tackled knowledge of the world of the senses
by sidestepping the problem of God — were dismissed, in order to go back to the first
cause, but not to the origin, because for pantheism nothing was created, everything
was an extension of the Godhead.50
Rhodakanaty translated some passages from the Theory of the Unconscious (1868)
by Eduard von Hartmann, a “respectable and very learned friend”, and wrote a
synthesis, published in instalments in El Socialista in 1884, as well as an essay, which
he brought out the following year. The philosophical pessimism of von Hartmann,
inspired by Schopenhauer, characterized the unconscious as a universal, omnipresent
will that ruled the human psyche, an immanent rationality that acted purposively and
consciously, “plastic energy”, although without awareness of itself, like the universal
Hegelian spirit. “But in rising above its individual striving, it also unites itself with the
striving, teleological cosmic process as a whole. Recognizing the cosmic purpose, it
can now selflessly identify with it.”51 Rhodakanaty saw von Hartmann as the modern
interpreter of pantheism. It should be remembered that Spinoza included “intuitive
knowledge” among the three kinds of cognition, that is, knowledge directed at
grasping the “formal essence of certain attributes of God”, whereas von Hartmann
employed the “inductive method of the natural sciences” to penetrate the human
unconscious. This introspection demonstrated the existence of a pre-established
harmony, and, as the soul was indivisible, that harmony acted simultaneously in every
part of the organism and even if this were cut up into pieces, its original attributes
would remain intact.52

The final years

Rhodakanaty frequently changed his place of residence. In 1877, he was living at

no.10, calle de la Amargura; in 1879, he lived and had his surgery and medical dispen-
sary on the ground floor of no.1, Puente de Balvanera, and after that, possibly at no.
9, callejón de López; by 1880 he was in the callejón de Cuajomulco, where he also had
his surgery. He subsequently occupied a house at no. 10, callejón de la Santa Veracruz.
The Greek socialist constantly had problems earning a living, but it did not prevent
him from carrying out his proselytizing activities and earning something of a reputa-
tion in the Evangelical churches, workers’ organizations, local City Hall and the liberal
circle. He also formed a family about which, as with everything concerning
Rhodakanaty, we know little, and what we do know is confused. In the only one of his
poems that we know of, from 1877, he addresses Ida as his soulmate, and recalls the
moment “cuando tus bellos ojos lanzaron sobre los míos esa mirada fascinadora, en
ella me comunicaste toda la fuerza de tu inteligencia, todos los encantos de tu amor”
(When your beautiful eyes held me spellbound by their gaze, in it you conveyed to me
all the force of your intelligence, all the charms of your love).53
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Rhodakanaty in Mexico | 173

Whether Ida was real or imaginary, it was not with Ida that he engendered a son,
but with Soledad Girón. Plotino Nefi Rhodakanaty Girón was born in Mexico City
in 1879. Rhodakanaty’s “infant son” was blessed by the Mormon missionaries, who
gave him the name of “Nephi Moses” within the congregation; from that moment on
he would be welcomed by the Church and would live, as Moses Thatcher wrote in his
journal, “in the grace of the Lord and [would] perform ordinances for the redemption
of his forefathers”.54 A letter of 1880 gives an account of the straitened circumstances
in which the “teacher of transcendental philosophy and languages” lived with his
family:

Sincerely wishing to contribute in some way to the enlightenment and morality of the masses
of the town, I have established a People’s School in this house (which is your house) at number
10 callejón de la Santa Veracruz, where, for a modest stipend, I teach various subjects of posi-
tive utility for the working and commercial classes, as you will see from the attached syllabus
accompanying this request; however, having reached the critical unfortunate moment where
I find myself currently devoid of all pecuniary resources, with the inevitable burden of
sustaining my family, and without being able to continue paying the rent of the house that I
am occupying as a consequence of finding myself, in addition, quite ill and for this reason
prevented from raising the wherewithal to keep my establishment going […].55

Apparently, the City Hall did not grant his request because when they registered
Plotino Nefi, Rhodakanaty and Soledad Girón stated that they were still living at
number 10 callejón de la Santa Veracruz. There are two birth certificates for the child,
issued on 28 and 30 March 1881 respectively; the mother’s name appears on the first
one and Rhodakanaty’s on the second; the witnesses are the same in both cases.
Soledad Girón is said to be from Huichapan, of legal age and “casada amasiamente”,
that is, a common-law wife. And two days later, “Mr Plotino Rhodakanaty of Greece,
47 years old, a bachelor, homeopathic doctor, living at callejón de la Santa Veracruz,
number 10, appeared and presented a little boy, alive, Plotino Nefi, who was born at
No. 9 López on 8 eighth July 1879 at 2.00 am, his natural son.”56
The financial hardships did not ease while Rhodakanaty persevered in his attempt
to acquire a piece of land to set up his school and also move his home there. In
December 1884, he reported to the city council the existence of “un terreno eriazo,
que mide 30 metros de longitud por 20 de latitud, situado hasta la parte este de la
garita de Peralvillo, entre estación Irolo y el Rastrillo núm. 4 del ferrocarril de
Circunvalación” (a piece of waste ground, measuring 30 metres long by 20 metres
wide, bordering the eastern part of the Peralvillo Customs House, between Irolo
station and Rastrillo No. 4 of the railway loop). The legal process followed its course,
so that on 6 March 1885, the local council agreed “se pregone por los periódicos dicha
denuncia” (to announce said report in the newspapers). On 3 October, the council
resolved to adjudicate “to citizen Plotino Rhodakanaty the piece of land he reported”.
Nevertheless, one problem remained to be solved; the city council set the price of the
land at 228 pesos and 22 centavos, and received a counteroffer from him that “el hono-
rable ayuntamiento se sirva conceder la referida adjudicación en el precio de cien pesos
($100) pagaderos, con hipoteca del mismo terreno, en 20 mensualidades, conforme
al precedente general de las leyes de nacionalización” (the honourable city council
should kindly concede the referred adjudication at a price of one hundred pesos
($100) payable, with the land itself standing as surety, in twenty monthly instalments,
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174 | Carlos Illades

in accordance with the general precedent of the laws of nationalization”). In response

to his request, on 24 November, the council reduced the sum to 154 pesos and 20
centavos.57 This amount, however, was beyond Rhodakanaty’s financial means and,
in early 1886, he wrote as follows to the city council:

Since it is absolutely impossible for me to pay a fixed sum every month, in view of the fact
that what I can generate in my shaky profession as a homeopathic doctor is so intermittent,
and which I [can only] exercise with a good deal of uncertainty, because of suffering from a
chronic illness that prevents me from leaving my home unaccompanied, and on account of
such a lamentable state, I beg of you, citizen president, to deign to allow me to make the
payment of the amount referred to, or the value of the land, in the same period of one year
that has been indicated to me, but by paying what I can when I can, solemnly committing
myself to reimburse in said period, the full amount stipulated at once, which I certainly can
do, provided that I can make whatever use I please of the land mentioned, in order to make
it easier to expedite the payment of it.58

In March, the city council decided in favour of Rhodakanaty’s request, without

this being much use, since the doctor resolved to transfer the right to the property to
another person. What could have been so urgent that made Rhodakanaty cede the
rights to 616.0082 square metres of land for fifty pesos? It must have been something
important. Furthermore, when he realized that he could not meet the commitment,
he played the card of writing to President Díaz requesting the free gift of a building
in the Centro del Panteón de Santa Paula, in view of “the pressing nature of my
circumstances and the alarming seriousness of a chronic illness that I suffer from”.59
The last piece of information that we have in this pitiful chronology indicates that
on 14 June 1886, Helaman Pratt, accompanied by Elder Stewart, Silviano Arteaga and
Amando Pérez, visited Rhodakanaty at his home (perhaps still in callejón de la Santa
Veracruz), enquiring of him whether “he wanted to continue to be recognized as a
member of the Church”, as well as calling upon him to “attend to his duties” (of
president of the branch and elder); his reply is not known. By then, the Greek socialist
was suffering such economic hardship that he trying to survive by giving classes in the
Instituto Monasterio, a Catholic school; furthermore, he was ill and it had been a year
since he had published any of his writing in socialist newspapers.60
Nevertheless, in January 1886, the national press had reported the foundation —
on 22 of that month at Rhodakanaty’s home — of the literary society, the Arcadia
Mexicana, under the motto of “honradez en la igualdad” (integrity in equality). The
circle comprised Rhodakanaty himself, José Vera, Manuel Agoitia, José Muñoz,
Carlos Servo, Felipe Torres, Eduardo Álvarez and José Monroy, these last two being
secretary and president respectively. None of them were veterans of his political
adventures. A year later the Arcadia Mexicana brought out a scientific and literary
weekly magazine with the same name in which only Monroy appeared among the
contributors. The Greek doctor no longer had the opportunity to return to Europe as
Valadés and Hart speculated. Residing, very probably in abject poverty, in one room
at number 5 callejón de Magueyitos (today Galeana, in the Guerrero Colony),
Rhodakanaty died of pernicious fever at midnight on Sunday, 2 February 1890 in
Mexico City, and was buried the following day. His remains lie in the Panteón Civil
de Dolores.61
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Rhodakanaty in Mexico | 175

Notes
1 José C. Valadés, El socialismo libertario mexicano (siglo XIX), prologue by Paco Ignacio Taibo
II (Culiacan: UAS, 1984), p. 17; Registro Civil del D.F., 1881, fols 109, 111, MHMM
[Museum of the History of Mormonism in Mexico], unclassified.
2 Valadés, Socialismo libertario mexicano, p. 18. There is no evidence of later contacts, since,
in Proudhon’s correspondence at least, no letters have been found addressed to
Rhodakanaty. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Correspondance, préc. J.A. Langlois, 14 vols (Paris:
Lacroix, 1875).
3 The reference to the pamphlet is from Valadés, Socialismo libertario mexicano, p. 18. After
a thorough search of major libraries in Europe and the USA, I found no testimony to its
publication.
4 Plotino C. Rhodakanaty, Obras, edition, prologue and notes by Carlos Illades, compilation
by María Esther Reyes Duarte (Mexico: UNAM, 1998), p. 34; Manuel Dublán and José
María Lozano, Legislación mexicana o colección completa de las disposiciones legislativas expe-
didas desde la independencia de la República Mexicana, 42 vols (Mexico: Imprenta de
Comercio, 1876–1890), 8: 95.
5 Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas, edited by
Henry Hardy, foreword by John Banville (London: Pimlico, 2013), p. 46.
6 Carlos Illades, Las otras ideas. Estudio sobre el primer socialismo en México 1860–1935
(Mexico: ERA/UAM, 2008), p. 137.
7 Carlos M. Rama, Utopismo socialista, 1830–1893 (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1977),
p. lix; Pierre-Luc Abramson, Las utopías sociales en América Latina en el siglo XIX (Mexico:
FCE, 1999), p. 227; Rhodakanaty, Obras, p. 22, cited here.
8 A good deal of confusion surrounds Villanueva. While Valadés, Socialismo libertario mexi-
cano, p. 22, portrays him as an active, vigorous young man, who died before his time,
Rosendo Rojas Coria, Tratado de cooperativismo mexicano, 1952, 3rd ed. (Mexico: FCE,
1984), pp. 152–153 attributes the foundation of the philanthropic friendly society La Gran
Familia in 1840 to someone of the same name, which means that, if it was the same indi-
vidual, he would have been at the very least a mature man in the 1860s.
9 Marco Antonio Anaya Pérez, Rebelión y revolución en Chalco y Amecameca, Estado de México,
1821–1921, 2 vols (Mexico: Inherm/Universidad Autónoma de Chapingo, 1997), 1: 117;
Rhodakanaty, Obras, p. 22; Valadés, Socialismo libertario mexicano, p. 170.
10 Plotino C. Rhodakanaty and Juan de Mata Rivera, Pensamiento socialista del siglo XIX,
edition, prologue and notes by Carlos Illades, compiled by María Esther Reyes Duarte
(Mexico: UNAM, 2001), p. 30; Carlos Illades, De la Social a Morena: Breve historia de la
izquierda en México (Mexico: Jus, 2014), pp. 42–43. The former is cited. For a fuller, more
detailed version of the Social, see Illades, Las otras ideas, chap. 5.
11 Carlos Illades, Rhodakanaty y la formación del pensamiento socialista en México (Barcelona:
Anthropos/UAM, 2002), pp. 68–69; Rhodakanaty and De Mata Rivera, Pensamiento socia-
lista del siglo XIX, p. 116.
12 Rhodakanaty, Obras, pp. 170, 171; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Contrato social, 1969, translated
by Fernando de los Ríos Urruti, 10th ed. (Mexico: Espasa-Calpe, 1992), p. 127.
13 Illades, Rhodakanaty y la formación del pensamiento socialista, p. 68; Rhodakanaty, Obras,
p. 249. The latter is cited.
14 Rhodakanaty, Obras, p. 261: “¿de qué nos serviría solamente gozar de nuestros inalienables
derechos políticos y naturales [...] si, por otra parte, carecemos de una garantía que nos
asegure la subsistencia, proporcionándonos pan y trabajo, que son los dos elementos
necesarios de nuestra existencia física?”
15 Ibid., p. 240: “entonces, a no dudarlo, sería justificado el principio anárquico y revolucio-
nario de Proudhon que, hasta ahora, se ha mirado como una exagerada utopía.”
16 Illades, Rhodakanaty y la formación del pensamiento socialista en México, p. 57.
17 Ibid., p. 58.
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176 | Carlos Illades

18 La Democracia, 1 December 1872.

19 Rhodakanaty and De Mata Rivera, Pensamiento socialista del siglo XIX, pp. 24–26;
Rhodakanaty, Obras, pp. 216, 246.
20 “Journal of Helaman Pratt”, MHMM, unclassified.
21 Cited in Jesús Díaz de León, Curso de raíces griegas, 7th ed., corrected and enlarged (Paris:
Librairie de la Veuve de Ch. Bouret, 1903), p. 16: “Para esclarecer este punto tan intere-
sante sobre la pronunciación griega, veamos lo que dice el profesor Rhodakanaty sobre el
sistema fonético de Erasmo. “El griego clásico pronunciado como lo enseñan los colegios
y universidades de Europa [en Italia, Francia, España, Alemania e Inglaterra] y también en
los Estados Unidos y aquí en México, es decir, conforme al sistema de pronunciación inven-
tado por Erasmo de Rotterdam, [con el único fin de facilitar su estudio a los extranjeros] y
más o menos modificado después en cada nación según la índole especial de sus respectivos
idiomas, es tan inteligible hoy para los griegos modernos como lo sería igualmente para los
griegos antiguos, puesto que éstos tenían la misma pronunciación que se ha conservado por
una tradición secular ininterrumpida, cuyo carácter de inmovilidad en ciertas cosas, es tan
peculiar en nuestra raza […].” Author’s own emphasis. I am grateful to Rodolfo Suárez
Molnar for the reference.
22 Rhodakanaty, Obras, pp. 30, 256. These more restrained writings with regard to
Protestantism, as well as his collaboration with the Church of Jesus, have persuaded some
historians that Rhodakanaty embraced Protestantism in 1877. Jean Pierre Bastian, Los disi-
dentes. Sociedades protestantes y revolución en México, 1872–1911 (Mexico: El Colegio de
México/FCE, 1989), pp. 65–66. This seems unlikely if we take his earlier criticisms into
consideration. At most, the episcopal affiliation of the Greek socialist lasted hardly any time
at all, since, in 1878, he approached the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
According to Mormon historians, Rhodakanaty was already sympathetic to their Church
from 1876. Raymundo Gómez González and Sergio Pagaza Castillo, El águila mormón o el
anarquista cristiano. Plotino Constantino Rhodakanaty primer miembro de la Iglesia de
Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días en México (Mexico: Museo de Historia del
Mormonismo en México AC, 1997), p. 12.
23 F. Lamond Tullis, Mormons in Mexico: The Dynamics of Faith and Culture/Los mormones en
México. La dinámica de la fe y la cultura (Mexico: Museo de Historia del Mormonismo en
México A.C, 1997), pp. 172 and ff; Daniel W. Jones, Memoirs, n.d. MHMM, unclassified.
The translation was done by the Museo de Historia del Mormonismo [Museum of Mormon
History] in Mexico A.C. The latter is cited. See also Daniel W. Jones, Forty years among the
Indians: A True Yet Thrilling Narrative of the Author’s Experiences Among the Natives (Salt
Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1890).
24 Tullis, Mormons in Mexico, pp. 179 and ff. Years earlier, Taylor had been on a mission to
Paris where he made contact with a journalist named Krolokoski who was an admirer of
Fourierism. Robert C. Webb, The Real Mormonism: A Candid Analysis of an Interesting but
Much Misunderstood Subject in History, Life and Thought (New York: Sturgis & Walton
Company, 1916), p. 119.
25 MHMM, unclassified. The letter is written in English. The Museum’s own Spanish trans-
lation is cited here: “Después de haber leído la traducción española de la biblia mormona,
que ha llegado hasta estas latitudes, he quedado convencido de la verdad y pureza de la fe
mormona, y ansío llegar a ser un miembro de su iglesia pero, dado que aquí no existen
misiones mormonas, les solicito que envían una, con amplia autoridad para predicar y
convertir.”
26 Agricol Lozano Herrera, Historia del mormonismo en México (Mexico: Zarahemla, 1983),
p. 28. A figure of eighty sympathizers has also been suggested. Ygnacio Zárraga,
“Editorial”, In Yaotlapixqui (El atalaya de México), September 1938. Amando Pérez talks
of an initial group of twelve people that later grew to sixty. Sendero Lamanita, 1942.
27 B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:
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Rhodakanaty in Mexico | 177

Century I, 6 vols. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1965), 5: 569; “The
division of the Mexican mission”, Liahona, July 1956. The information is taken from the
journal of Moses Thatcher.
28 It has been rightly pointed out that, in the letter itself, the socialist conviction of the signa-
tories is made explicit, a fact that was not sufficiently taken into account by those in the
Church hierarchy. Bill L. Smith, “Impacts of the Mexican Revolution: The Mormon
Experience, 1910–1946”, (PhD diss.,Washington: Washington State University, 2000).
29 MHMM, unclassified. The museum has a copy of the letter.
30 MHMM, unclassified. The letter is written in Spanish. “Deseo mucho que no pase un mes
a lo más sin que venga el misionero ya indicado según la determinación de aquel centro.
Conviene poner que dicho misionero sepa hablar algo del idioma español y si viniese acom-
pañado de señores con el mismo objeto sería mejor para la propaganda a la vez que provisto
de libros. El mejor camino es el de Veracruz por la seguridad y el transporte del ferrocarril
que conduce hacia la capital. Insisto en la necesidad de que el agente de la misión venga
investido de amplias facultades para que al conferenciar yo con él podamos arreglar
negocios bastante importantes que tengo que comunicarles.”
31 “Registro de miembros e hijos de la Iglesia de los Santos de los Últimos Días perteneciente
a la Misión Mexicana” [Register of the members and children of the Church of Latter-day
Saints belonging to the Mexican Mission] book 1, MHMM, unclassified; “Paquete ameri-
cano de Nueva Orleáns”, El Monitor Republicano, 15 November 1879; “Letter from Moses
Thatcher to John Taylor, Mexico D.F. 29 November 1879”, MHMM, unclassified. The
latter is cited.
32 The Year of Jubilee. A full report of proceedings of the Fiftieth Annual Conference of the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, held in the Large Tabernacle Salt Lake City, Utah, April
6th, 7th and 8th, A.D. 1880. Also a report of the Exercises in the Salt Lake City Assembly Hall,
on the Sunday and Monday just preceding the Conference, reported by George F. Gibbs and John
Irvine (Salt Lake City: Desert News Printing and Publishing Establishment, 1880), pp. 15
and ff.
33 “Letter from Moses Thatcher to John Taylor, Mexico D.F. 29 November 1879”, MHMM,
unclassified. “En compañía de los élderes Stewart y Trejo esta mañana visité a las 8:30 al
doctor Plotino Constantino Rhodakanaty en su residencia, y estando allí junto con dos
creyentes ofrecimos oraciones todos de rodillas.”
34 Ibid.: “un rústico cuarto vestidor en forma circular de tal vez unos tres metros de diámetro
[al que entraron] a través de una angosta puerta de baño con una pila de unos dos y medio
por tres metros y medio, y con una profundidad de un metro treinta centímetros o de un
metro y medio; [una pared y un enrejado la rodeaban] de tal manera que estábamos comple-
tamente protegidos de la vista de los que estuvieran en el jardín.”
35 Ibid.
36 Illades, Rhodakanaty y la formación del pensamiento socialista en México, p. 104.
37 A monthly publication edited by Rhodakanaty himself according to the Mormon envoys.
“Registro de miembros e hijos de la Iglesia de los Santos de los Últimos Días perteneciente
a la Misión Mexicana”, [Register of the members and children of the Church of Latter-day
Saints belonging to the Mexican Mission] book 1, MHMM, unclassified.
38 “Letter from Moses Thatcher to John Taylor, Mexico D.F. 29 November 1879”, MHMM,
unclassified: “El hermano Rhodakanaty ha recibido noticia de haber sido despedido de la
Academia Episcopal en donde ha sido empleado como profesor de griego. El obispo le
informó que podía defender el catolicismo o las doctrinas de cualquiera de las sectas protes-
tantes más no las del mormonismo, y que, por medio de su periódico, tenía que retractarse
de lo que había dicho en La Voz del Desierto a favor de esas perversas personas de los
mormones, y que tenía que desmentir toda conexión con y simpatía para estas personas y
que, de no ser así, tendría que dejar la Academia.”
39 “Journal of Moses Thatcher”, MHMM, unclassified; Lozano, Historia del mormonismo en
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178 | Carlos Illades

México, p. 34; F. Lamond Tullis, “Early Mormon Exploration and Missionary Activities
in Mexico”, Brigham Young University Studies vol. 22, 3 (1982): 309–310; Tullis, Mormons
in Mexico, p. 207.
40 Rhodakanaty, Obras, pp. 63,112. For Fourier, “la economía política invadía todo el dominio
de la charlatanería” (the political economy was taking over the whole domain of charla-
tanism). Charles Fourier, La armonía pasional del nuevo mundo, introduction by Eduardo
Subirats and Menene Gras (Madrid: Taurus, 1973), p. 142.
41 Rhodakanaty, Obras, p. 260; Carlos Illades, Conflicto, dominación y violencia. Capítulos de
historia social (Mexico: Gedisa/UAM, 2015), pp. 73 ff. The former is cited.
42 Isaiah Berlin, Las raíces del romanticismo, edited by Henry Hardy (Madrid: Taurus, 2000),
p. 27; John W. Burrow, The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848–1914 (New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 65. The latter is cited.
43 Rhodakanaty, Obras, p. 129; Illades, Rhodakanaty y la formación del pensamiento socialista,
p. 36. The former is cited.
44 Illades, Las otras ideas, p. 139.
45 Ibid., p. 138.
46 Rhodakanaty, Obras, pp. 68, 128.
47 Don Evaristo, “Plumadas”, El Combate, 6 June 1878: “Esta excelente medicina, la mejor
entre todas las que se conocen hasta ahora, es el más eficaz restaurador de la fuerza vital y
depurativo de la sangre y de los malos humores, según lo ha demostrado la experiencia y
lo acreditan los numerosos certificados auténticos de los mismos enfermos a quienes han
bastado a lo más tres botellas para quedar enteramente sanos.” Author’s emphasis.
48 Rhodakanaty, Obras, p. 68. A detailed analysis of the translation of Tiberghien’s book is in
Antolín C. Sánchez Cuervo, Krausismo en México (Mexico: UNAM, 2004), pp. 140 and
ff. Psychology would finally find a niche in the positivist system when Justo Sierra presided
over the Segundo Congreso de Instrucción Pública (Second Congress of Public Education)
in 1891. It was only in 1907, however, that Ezequiel Chávez and Justo Sierra, influenced
by the American psychologist, James Mark Baldwin, opened the door to the Sociedad de
Estudios Psicológicos (Society of Psychological Studies), Charles A. Hale, La transforma-
ción del liberalismo en México a finales del siglo XIX (Mexico: Vuelta, 1991), pp. 407–408;
Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, “Stereophonic Scientific Modernisms: Social Science Between
Mexico and the United States, 1880s–1930s”, The Journal of American History 86, no. 3
(1999): 1180.
49 Illades, Las otras ideas, pp. 141–142.
50 Celestino Díaz, Memoria de la Primera Exposición Industrial de Querétaro, y lista de objetos
presentados en la misma (Querétaro: Imprenta de Luciano Frías y Soto, 1882), p. 86;
Rhodakanaty and De Mata Rivera, Pensamiento socialista del siglo XIX, pp. 117, 169, 119,
126, 120, 124. The latter is cited.
51 Burrow, Crisis of Reason, p. 66.
52 Rhodakanaty, Obras, pp. 185, 186. Rhodakanaty and De Mata Rivera, Pensamiento socia-
lista del siglo XIX, pp. 134, 135. Von Hartmann, considered to be a precursor of
psychoanalytic theory, died in 1906. Eleven editions of his book were published during his
lifetime.
53 Rhodakanaty, Obras, p. 74.
54 “México, bautismos: 1560–1950”, MHMM, unclassified; Gómez González and Pagaza
Castillo, El águila mormón o el anarquista cristiano, addendum 1.
55 “Carta de Plotino Rhodakanaty al presidente del ayuntamiento, México D.F., 22 de octubre
de 1880” (Letter from Plotino Rhodakanaty to the president of the city council, Mexico
D.F., 22 October 1880), Archivo Histórico del Distrito Federal [AHDF], Fondo
Ayuntamiento, Instrucción Pública, vol. 2490, exp. 1480: “Deseando sinceramente contri-
buir de alguna manera a la ilustración y moralidad de las masas del pueblo, he establecido
una Escuela Popular en esta su casa callejón de la Santa Veracruz núm. 10, donde por un
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Rhodakanaty in Mexico | 179

módico estipendio enseño varias materias de positiva utilidad para las clases obrera y
mercantil, según verá usted por el adjunto programa que acompaño a esta solicitud: más
habiendo llegado el momento crítico y fatal de encontrarme en la actualidad exhausto de
todo recurso pecuniario, con el gravamen forzoso de sostener a mi familia y sin poder seguir
pagando el arrendamiento de la casa que ocupo a consecuencia de encontrarme además
bastante enfermo e imposibilitado por lo mismo para arbitrarme recursos con que seguir
fomentando mi establecimiento […].” The syllabus content was quite comprehensive and
included logic, ideology, morality, sociology, phrenology, hygiene, physics, chemistry,
natural history, pure mathematics, mechanics, humanities (Greek, Latin, universal history,
rhetoric, mythology and classical biographies) and languages (“Mexican”, Spanish,
German, French, English, Italian). The price was two pesos, “payable in advance”.
56 The record is in the D.F. Civil Register of 1881, fols 109, 111, MHMM, unclassified:
“compareció el señor Plotino Rhodakanaty de Grecia, de 47 años, soltero, médico home-
ópata, vive en el callejón de la Santa Veracruz núm. 10 y presentó vivo al niño Plotino Nefi,
que nació en el de López número 9 el día 8 ocho de julio de 1879 a las 2 de la mañana, hijo
natural suyo.”
57 “Carta de Plotino Rhodakanaty al presidente del ayuntamiento. (Letter from Plotino
Rhodakanaty to the president of the city council, Mexico D.F. 5 December 1884), AHDF,
Fondo Ayuntamiento, Terrenos, vol. 4088, exp. 1429; AHDF, Fondo Ayuntamiento,
Terrenos, vol. 2491, exp. 1557, fols 3, 28, 30.
58 “Carta de Plotino Rhodakanaty al presidente del ayuntamiento, México D.F., 19 de enero
de 1886” (Letter from Plotino Rhodakanaty to the president of the city council, Mexico
D.F., 19 January 1886), AHDF, Fondo Ayuntamiento, Terrenos, vol. 2491, exp. 1557, fol.
33: “Mas no siéndome absolutamente posible exhibir cantidades fijas cada mes, en atención
a la eventualidad de lo que voy generando en mi raquítica profesión de médico homeópata,
y la cual además ejerzo con bastante inseguridad, por adolecer de un mal crónico que me
imposibilita para salir libremente de mi domicilio y a razón a tan lamentable estado a usted
suplico ciudadano presidente se digne concederme el que verifique yo el pago de la referida
cantidad o valor del terreno, en el mismo plazo de un año que me ha sido señalado, pero
mediante la exhibición de partidas libres, comprometiéndome solemnemente a integrar en
dicho plazo, toda la cantidad ya mencionada a la vez, el que desde luego pueda hacer yo el
uso que me convenga del citado terreno a fin de tener mayor facilidad de expeditar su pago.”
59 AHDF, Fondo Ayuntamiento, Terrenos, vol. 2491, exp. 1557, fol. 35; “Carta de Plotino
Rhodakanaty al presidente del ayuntamiento, México D.F., 2 de junio de 1886” (Letter
from Plotino Rhodakanaty to the president of the city council, Mexico D.F., 2 June 1886),
AHDF, Fondo Ayuntamiento, Terrenos, vol. 2491, exp. 1557, fol. 39. In July 1888,
Virginia Alcalde had still not settled the payment for the piece of land. AHDF, Fondo
Ayuntamiento, Terrenos, vol. 2491, exp. 1557, fol. 44; AHDF, Fondo Ayuntamiento,
Terrenos, vol. 2491, exp. 1557, fol. 28; “Carta de Plotino Rhodakanaty a Porfirio Díaz, 20
de abril de 1886”, (Letter from Plotino Rhodakanaty to Porfirio Díaz, 20 April 1886),
Colección Porfirio Díaz, Universidad Iberoamericana [CPD], leg. 11, box 9, doc. 4145.
60 “Journal of Helaman Pratt”, MHMM, unclassified.
61 “Instituto Monasterio”, El Tiempo, 4 February 1886; “La Arcadia Mexicana”, El Siglo
Diecinueve, 28 January 1886; Valadés, El socialismo libertario mexicano, p. 144; John Mason
Hart, El anarquismo y la clase obrera mexicana, 1860–1931 (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1980),
p. 97.
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The Cecilia Colony:

Echoes of an Amorous
9 Utopia in the
Libertarian Press
Laura Fernández Cordero

The experiment known as the Cecilia Colony was founded in Brazil by Giovanni Rossi
and a group of Italian anarchists at the end of the nineteenth century. The aim of this
chapter is to explore the intense coverage given to the experiment in the anarchist press
in Argentina and which has so far received little attention. A potted history of the brief
life of the colony appears in a pamphlet entitled Un episodio de amor en la Colonia
Cecilia (An Episode of Love in the Cecilia Colony), published in 1893 by Livorno in
their Biblioteca del Sempre Avanti series. Two years later, the Buenos Aires publishing
group La Questione Sociale selected it for a series aimed at women. The author was
trying to narrate the most dramatic side of the experiment: the practice of “amor
múltiplo” (plural, multiple love). The colony survived for only three years; neverthe-
less it proved to be very effective in terms of propaganda. In the early months of 1892,
there was already news of Cecilia in the anarchist newspapers, El Perseguido and La
Révolte. Shortly afterwards, other anarchist newspapers circulating in Argentina, such
as La Protesta Humana, La Revolución Social, El Oprimido, and La Fuerza de la Razón,
also reported on the experiment and contributed their own critical viewpoints. This
chapter presents an account of these traces in the press and sets them in dialogue with
the most general framework of anarchist ideology relating to the utopian tradition, free
love and the emancipation of women.1

Anarchisms and utopias

The points of contact between anarchism and utopian thought are not as obvious as
might appear. For many anarchists, the utopian imagination was too organized. For
others, it was an exercise that distracted them from the fight against capitalism.2 The
experimental colony also aroused suspicion, above all when it had recourse to the
money of the bourgeoisie or royalty to finance itself, or when it led to workers
emigrating to unknown countries, so weakening the battle front in Europe. For these
reasons, there are few utopian accounts that are anarchist as such, although several
can be found presenting libertarian points of view or elements that anarchism shared
with other currents concerned with sociality.
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The Cecilia Colony | 181

The resistance of anarchism towards the utopian tradition stems from its notion of
freedom, which was so extreme that it prevented them, in many cases, from thinking
ahead to what the organizational coordinates of the ideal city might look like.
Determining the guidelines for communal living or government in advance must have
seemed a complete contradiction to them. At the same time, the epithet of utopian
was laden with certain negative connotations related to the projects being flights of
fancy or pipe-dreams and so impossible to realize. When the publishers, La Protesta,
launched a series called “Los utopistas” (The Utopians), the introduction made it
clear that:

Utopia is not, as is often believed, a pipe-dream or the result of a fanciful desire to offer social
evolution a ready-made plan. […] libertarian utopias are much less numerous, because the
energy of the Libertarians in the fight against so many obstacles is very frequently absorbed
by other kinds of militancy.3

The anarchist Matt Nettlau was pointing out there that the Utopian had to resolve
one central question: forms of authority. In many cases, despite the good intentions
of its creator, the perfect city eventually turned into an implacable order maintained
with obvious authoritarianism,4 a tendency that the convinced anarchist could not
overlook. For some, though, the reasons for writing utopian accounts were over-
whelming, partly because anarchism was a tributary of the same broader Enlightened
tradition that revived the genre and linked it to scientific progress. At the same time,
it offered them an excellent vehicle for propaganda since many readers were drawn to
the attractive, intriguing narrations about utopias.5 It also enabled the anarchists to
offset their reputation for being “destroyers of order” and to demonstrate that they
had thought of a viable organization for the day after the revolution.
Finally, another point of contact between anarchism and utopian thought is that
they both coincide in not subordinating the organization of everyday life and affective
relations to the alleged superiority of economic transformation; in this sense, both
traditions show that they are highly sensitive and intuitive with regard to the impact
of social orders on subjectivity. In the most classic accounts of the utopian genre, the
system of government and the arrangements for eating, the local economy and dress,
urban planning and forms of love are all described with equal care. Amorous relation-
ships and sexuality (generally linked to reproduction) are never left out of the utopian
plan. Furthermore, most of the authors of this tradition during the nineteenth century
try to provide some response to the demands for the emancipation of women.
In the case of Joseph Déjacque (1821–1864) — whose work, L’Humanisphère (The
Humanisphere), is recognized as a precursor of the libertarian utopias — the intention
to rethink the role of women was not only vividly expressed in the account, but also
in the author’s explicit response to the misogyny of Proudhon.6 The cross between
utopia and anarchism was particularly fruitful in Argentina where the French anar-
chist, Joaquín Alejo Falconnet, under the pseudonym Pierre Quiroule, wrote a trilogy
of utopias: Sobre la ruta de la anarquía (On the Road to Anarchy) (1912), La ciudad
anarquista americana (The Anarchist City of America) (1914), En la soñada tierra del
ideal (In the Promised Land of the Ideal) (1924).7 In the second of the trilogy, which
is the best known, the author spends twenty-four chapters describing the ideal city,
the product of “a work of revolutionary construction” and adds a perfect, geometric
plan laid out with houses and gardens, bathing and swimming establishments, and
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182 | Laura Fernández Cordero

well-stocked storehouses, on streets called “Abundancia” (Abundance), “Actividad”

(Activity) and “Humanidad” (Humanity). His proposal for love is not one of the most
extreme, although he does imagine the family as being replaced by society, which is
responsible for raising children in an efficient pouponnière, or crèche house. He plans,
in turn, for women to have their own home where they can live alone.
Before going into detail about the repercussions of La Cecilia in the anarchist press,
we shall briefly describe the experiment, before giving an account of the framework
of the debates about free love.

An Italian-style amorous episode in Brazil8

One of the most famous utopians is undoubtedly Charles Fourier.9 Ambitious in his
writings and confident in his revolutionary plans, Fourier worked hard towards the
building of phalansteries, the creation of small perfect societies based on rational
combinations of types of passion. Their guiding principles were attractive labour and
task rotation so that their inhabitants could exploit their personal tastes to the full, to
the benefit of social order. He wrote various volumes explaining the global scope of
his projects and, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, anticipated transforma-
tions of space and social relations, which, today, seem to us quite mundane.10
Marx and Engels were able to see the discerning critical sense that Fourier was
applying to civilization, and his sensitivity to the historical subordination of women.
Given his interest in the passions, he proposed a “new amorous world” in which desire
was the mainspring of social consensus and certain “manias” would not be understood
as aberrations or deviations, but as examples of the profound variability of humans.
His closest disciples took pains to conceal the more audacious facets of it, especially
those passages in which Fourier integrated into the phalanstery those who obtained
pleasure from relations with persons of the same sex and who enjoyed group sex.
“Sapphianism” or scenes between women lovers formed part of his own personal
“mania” and the only problem he saw in those ways of experiencing pleasure was that
he might not be able to find companions of both sexes willing and ready to share them.
It was no coincidence that those old manuscripts, which had been gnawed by mice,
saw the light of day again in the 1960s when the new winds of free love and sexual
revolution began to blow, making it easier to read about that amorous utopia.
Despite the fact that the benefactor that Fourier apparently waited for at noon
every day never appeared — which meant that he was unable to sow the world with
phalansteries — his works were nevertheless widely read. Fifty years after his death, a
restless Italian, Giovanni Rossi, was alternating his books on agronomy with writing
inspiring passages about communities that lived in harmony based on principles that
were neither authoritarian nor oppressive. Rossi was a committed anarchist and also
a thoughtful scientist, convinced that an experiment was the best way to demonstrate
that anarchy was viable. He used his newspaper, Lo Sperimentale, to encourage all
types of utopian projects, as a result of which he ran into problems with those, like the
well-known Errico Malatesta, who stated that setting up colonies in isolation was coun-
terproductive to the revolutionary process, since those efforts needed to be
concentrated in Europe or in the rapidly expanding cities of the American continent.11
Rossi planned and implemented a few utopian experiments in Italy until he found
his own benefactor, Pedro II, the ruler of the Empire of Brazil. Shortly before the
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empire was replaced by the young republic, the ruler granted Rossi a piece of land in
the area of Paraná. The future founder immediately assembled a small group of people
and set sail, planning to work out the specific details of the long-awaited colony that
was to be called Cecilia.12 What met them was a country in political turmoil, a hot,
very humid climate and a piece of land a long way away from the major cities. His
plan was to make preparations for the arrival of a larger contingent that would bring
families to join this advance party, in which there were two or three women, although
this is not known for certain.
Within a few months, they had managed to clear the ground, build some dwellings
and start the sowing that would make the small village of Anarquía self-sufficient. In
those early stages, food was scarce and comforts non-existent. The work consumed
their every effort and living without rules turned out not to be so simple. The envi-
ronment was not easy either and those tempted by Rossi’s propaganda joined and left
the project whenever they were able to find less precarious opportunities elsewhere.
The colony began in 1890 and, despite the difficulties, remained viable for three
years. Rossi was the community’s internal leader and organizer, but was also respon-
sible for letting the outside world know how the experiment was faring. He was
convinced that the colony would make a major contribution by providing propa-
ganda with a tried and tested experiment that showed the specific possibilities of
organizing social life according to the principles of anarchism. He wanted to demon-
strate that work for the common good was given spontaneously, as well as make the
experimentation in love arrangements clear. His readings of Fourier had led him to
think that one of the main problems in sociality was the way in which the passions
were organized. Affective and amorous passions in the form in which they were
known in the traditional family represented a dead weight, which Rossi invited new
arrivals to cast off soon after they arrived in the colony. Inherited roles and marital
jealousies, however, prevented new ties from being created and retained the selfish-
ness typical of the family group. The founder, however, advocated the finis familias
and exploring the promises of libertarian love. His hypothesis that “loving more than
one person at the same time was a need of human nature” would not only be put to
the test in remote Anarquía, but was also summarized in a pamphlet that would take
the story to the world.13
Un episodio de amor en la Colonia Cecilia (An Episode of Love in the Cecilia Colony)
was published as a pamphlet through the Biblioteca del Sempre Avanti in Livorno in
1893, that is, immediately following the dissolution of the village. Rossi signed it under
his own name, but added the pseudonym of Cardias. Two years after that first edition,
the Buenos Aires publishing group, La Questione Sociale, chose it to complete its own
series aimed at women,14 hence, following on from pamphlets called A las Hijas del
Pueblo (To the Daughters of the People), A las muchachas que estudian (To the Girls
Who Study) and A las proletarias (To the Proletarian Women), this short ideological
essay appeared combining the characteristics of scientific treatise and romantic
novel.15
The opening epigraph serves as a warning “Si la verdad te espanta, no leas; porque
este librito está, para ti, lleno de espantos” (If the truth horrifies you, do not read it;
because, for you, this little book will be full of horrors). The main characters are
Cardias himself and a couple, Aníbal and Eléda, who had just arrived in the colony.
This unusual triangle would revolutionize traditional theory about married couples
and try to make it a reality. In this spirit, and while acknowledging a mild sensation of
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184 | Laura Fernández Cordero

falling in love, Cardias communicates his reasoning to Eléda. Already convinced by

the postulates of free love, she agrees to talk to Aníbal and to offer him the revolu-
tionary deal: she will share her time, her love and her body with both men.
Aníbal is hurt but bravely accepts the agreement. Much of the language that runs
through the pamphlet is of the sentimental novel, albeit restrained by rationality, the
superiority of the libertarian cause and control of the passions. Aníbal suffers the unde-
sirable bitter taste of jealousy, knows that Eléda is not his property, but prejudice and
habit still eat away at him the first night that she sleeps with Cardias. Nonetheless,
disinterested love, the joy of comforting another companion and his faith in freedom
soon cure him and enable him to send fraternal greetings to the man who, in any other
context, would be his rival. The remainder of the colonists look with respect upon the
experiment that finally puts the theory of anarchist love into practice. The narrator
has delicately sought to spare us any possible conflict. No passions are unleashed, there
are no broken hearts or tragic overtones, and to test it, he subjects each of the partic-
ipants to psychological questionnaires. The questions are diverse; in the case of
Aníbal, he is interested in probing his faithfulness to the libertarian cause and his
victory over doubt, fear, and selfishness; in relation to Eléda, he is concerned to
demonstrate that she has not lost her health, moral integrity, nobility of character and,
above all, that the experiment has not made her “more sensual”. Over and above
personal sentiments, what is valued is the outcome “con preferencia a todo, social-
mente útil” (with a preference above all for the socially useful), as the undaunted Eléda
asserts before answering the last question in the negative: “¿Te disgustaría no conocer
la paternidad de un hijo que ahora generases?” (If you bore a child now, would you
be upset not to know who the father was?)
The first part of the pamphlet closes, without outbursts of passion or major
disagreements, with a reflection in which Cardias reviews his own feelings and
confesses that the goodnight kiss that Aníbal sends when Eléda is with him has a
calming effect. The second part is one long reasoned argument in which the theoretical
assumptions of the thesis to be demonstrated are laid out. As the narrator has told us
in advance, the central idea is finis familias, or the destruction of the family, the hard
central core of selfishness, superstition, vices and slavery.
In the Italian edition, the episode was preceded by a kind of report about life in La
Cecilia; it explained how a small number of pioneers set sail on February 20, 1890,
with the idea of founding an experimental colony in the municipality of Palmeira, in
Paraná state, Brazil. The initial work was arduous and they were constantly threatened
by poverty, which, in the end, was what led to the dissolution of the village in only
three years. Although the relationship with a hostile environment, their own lack of
experience of agricultural work and the challenge posed by an organization without
leadership all contributed to the downfall, Rossi identifies the survival of the family as
a much larger problem. After giving an account of the economic and intellectual life
of the village, he dwells on the moral aspect and the subtle commandments that persist
in spite of the “morally hygienic environment” that they purported to construct. He
asserts that “la destrucción progresiva o espontánea de la familia monogámica prepara
el terreno al triunfo de nuestro ideal” (the progressive or spontaneous destruction of
the monogamous family prepares the ground for the triumph of our ideal), although
he warns time and again that family relationships remain firm and pose an obstacle to
experimenting with other ways of organizing work and living together in harmony with
others. As an example, he cites that “la casa social era confiada por pura formalidad
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a la única mujer del primer contingente” (the social house was entrusted as a pure
formality to the only woman in the first contingent), but when families were added,
the mothers spread themselves between the kitchen and the store.
The pamphlet in which the love episode appeared was advertised as being “full of
horrors” because of the substantial transformation that it required of the emotions and
the body, aspects that other emancipatory movements had paid least attention to. The
fact is that Rossi was occupied with the critical problem of planting potatoes and
cassava but he realized, at the same time, that the eventual fate of La Cecilia would
hinge on the love life within the colony. The small village of Anarquía had to demon-
strate, not only the viability of collectivist work, voluntary service and extreme
democracy, but also the transformation of everyday life, love relationships and subjec-
tivity itself.
We should not, however, be too quick to celebrate the “feminism” of Rossi, who
seems to be giving women the benefits of polyandry, until we have checked the back-
drop to the romance: the dearth of women in the colony. No lone female pioneers
arrived in La Cecilia and those who came accompanied were reluctant to take part in
the trios that could in theory be tried out in the poor village. Eléda’s acceptance, there-
fore, is the answer to two problems with fatal consequences for the social order:
celibacy and masturbation.
When, following the dissolution of La Cecilia, Rossi planned a new venture, he
took the problem of the scarcity of women very seriously. In a letter to his friend Alfred
Sanftleben, who was in Germany at the time, he confessed the following unsettling
idea:

It would be a question of setting up a distillery and […] of buying young Indian girls from semi
savage tribes with the aquavit! They would quickly become free comrades, but what a
shameful/wicked way of founding one’s freedom!16

The exchange of letters with Sanftleben brings to light other details of the romance.17
This is how we find out that Eléda is an anagram of Adele, a woman with the surname
Serventi who had arrived in Paraná with her partner Annibale after being captivated
by Rossi’s talks in Italy.18 In the letters sent by the leader to his German friend, the
self-sacrificing Aníbal / Annibale seems to be more jealous of and less in thrall to the
decisions of Rossi. It seems likely in fact that he intervened in the account of the love
episode, for example, by obliging Rossi to leave out the participation of a third man,
the young Breton, Jean Géléac, who had joined the romantic arrangement afflicted by
a misfortune or sickness greater than hard labour or starvation: sexual abstinence. In
one of his missives, Rossi comments that the young man would have died “por darse
a la masturbación a causa de la preocupación de las mujeres de la colonia por preservar
su honorabilidad” (of masturbation because of the concern of the women in the colony
to preserve their honour).19 Identifying masturbation with sickness, the dissipation of
vital energies and death is a constant in local anarchist discourse.20 Consistent with the
prevailing ideas of their time, they rejected “masturbatory” practice and, in dramatic
tone, listed it as one of the most repugnant vices.
Saved from such a fate, Géléac even turned out to be the father of Ebe, Adele’s
first daughter. Rossi confirms this detail, and it is curious that he should highlight it,
because one of the pillars of the project that he himself strongly advocated was to blur
the boundaries of certainty over paternity, and with it, its corollary of patrimony and
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186 | Laura Fernández Cordero

inheritances. Nonetheless, before the disappearance of the colony and of Géléac,

Adele and her two children left with Annibale, who was able to give them some
support, in spite of his indolence and alleged alcoholism, two defects that any anarchist
would deplore. By that time, Giovanni would have been living in Brazil on his own,
pursuing his profession; nonetheless, years later, back in Italy, he set up a common
family with Adele under the surname Rossi. According to her daughter, Ebe Rossi,
Adele and Giovanni communicated very little of their life in Paraná to her and
preferred not to recall that episode.21

Echoes in the press

Although the colony only survived three years, it nonetheless continued to be very
much present in anarchist propaganda, since its founders and those who lived in it
always made an effort to keep in touch with the libertarian newspapers. As was pointed
out earlier, in 1892, there were allusions to La Cecilia in El Perseguido of Buenos
Aires.22 La Révolte — issues of which reached Argentina through an exchange that the
newspapers organized themselves and were kept in the bookshop of Émile Piette23 —
published an informative letter by A. Capellaro and a discussion of the question some
months later.24
In the letter, the informant describes the colony, giving an account of the surface
area and number of inhabitants, the variety of foods and the organization of the work.
It is also stated that they were going to demonstrate that anarchy was not a utopia, as
their adversaries claimed, but that it could, in fact, be put into practice. In the following
issue, Capellaro described the poor food, the meagre balance sheet (yet in spite of their
poverty, they had set up a library) and the harshness of the work that was still carried
out despite the absence of bosses and overseers. He announced that the arrival of more
olonists, and especially, women, was expected. Some months later, under the heading
“Colonisation anarchiste” (Anarchist Colonization), an unnamed staff writer
complained that Capellaro’s reference to the scarcity of women provided bourgeois
journalists with the opportunity to speculate that the colonists would opt for sharing
them, thus reverting to a state of “primitive promiscuity”.25 He, on the other hand,
wanted to clarify that the ideal anarchist made sure that the total autonomy of women
was recognized, especially in so far as “matters of love” were concerned.
Before the clarifications made in the French newspaper, the editors of El Perseguido
in Buenos Aires published a very similar version of the letter, sent by C. A. (Amilcare
Capellaro?) from the Cecilia Colony. To the comment that what tormented them most
was the fact that “el amor libre todavía no ha penetrado en el corazón de nuestras
compañeras” (free love has still not penetrated the hearts of our female companions),
the editors add their unsigned opinion:

As for free love, it is well understood that in a Colony, the single man must suffer because
he cannot impose his love on his [female] companions in the Colony. It is our understanding
that free love does not mean that the woman is obliged to give herself to all men, and one
man to all women, but that, on the contrary, the woman is free to give herself to whomsoever
she chooses and if she only wants to give herself to one man, she is free to do so. When an
individual, whether man or woman, is acting of his or her own will, without subjecting himself
or herself to any rule, he or she is acting freely, but everyone is free to make any rule they
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want for themselves, never for another person; so, the man who wants to go with many
women, let him do so if he can find any who want to go with him, and the woman who wants
to go with many men, let her do so if she can find any who want to go with her, but equally
free is the man who only wants to love one woman, or the woman who only wants to love
one man.26

Despite the fact that none of the letters reported amorous trios or quartets, both
newspapers expressed misgivings about the radical nature of the experiment.27 In
other cases, its scientific side was highlighted; the editors of La Revolución Social, for
example, announced the appearance of Rossi’s pamphlet and commented that “it
lends itself to an in-depth study of the practice of free love, this becoming a matter of
utmost importance because of the psychological data that accompany it.”28 In the
Bibliography section of the newspaper El Oprimido, there is praise for the publication
and firm support for the thesis of plural, multiple love.29 The author highlights the
importance of destroying the family and points out:

This, which scandalizes and makes the hair of the moralists stand on end. . . without morality,
it is nonetheless, logical and reasonable; and, we would also say, indispensable for human well-
being. […] We recommend it to all women in particular, and to male companions in general.30

The group that published, La Fuerza de la Razón (The Force of Reason), however,
included an unsigned opinion piece in which, not without praising the series of
pamphlets, the author opposed Rossi’s theses and the views expressed in El Oprimido:

The ecstasy of the most intense pleasures cannot be multiform. One can move from ecstasy
to ecstasy, but one cannot be in two different places at one and the same time […] just as
one cannot blow out and suck in at the same time. […] As for the rest, the pamphlet is quite
profoundly logical and scientific, especially in the part that anathematizes the bourgeois
family.31

Months later, El Oprimido maintained its defence even when it published a note to
the contrary in which R. Canto declared that some cases of polygamy could be
accepted, but that there was no reason to think of it as the general state of affairs in
amorous relationships. The editors went on to point out that his arguments for refuting
Rossi’s thesis were very poor.32
As can be seen, the controversy was never resolved, and the more extreme positions
—in support of “plural, multiple love” — and the more moderate ones — restricted
to “free union” — coexisted across the broad spectrum of the anarchist press.

Free union or absolutely free love?

Rossi’s work and the fact that a group of editors should choose to publish it gives an
idea of anarchism’s contribution, typical of its time, to making the sexual question a
topic of interest.33 The particular feature of anarchism was that they debated those
subjects in the press itself; for example, in 1897, it was possible to find a brief item
praising a speaker who had given a talk to local village men and women and had
addressed the topic of “sexual relations” without recourse to euphemisms.34
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188 | Laura Fernández Cordero

In spite of the fact that the idea of free love was readily identified with the anarchist
manifesto, other political and cultural movements, such as socialists and freethinkers,
also proposed it;35 furthermore, not even those within the libertarian camp agreed on
a single definition of the meaning of free love, which was constantly subject to debate.36
By recuperating or reconstructing some of the debates and dialogues about free love
that the militants — editors, correspondents and contributors, both male and female,
rather than the major names or leading theorists — engaged in over many years, before
and after the publication of the pamphlet, this multiplicity of opinions becomes even
more obvious.
The series of pamphlets of Propaganda entre las mujeres (Propaganda Among
Women) itself offers two quite dissimilar versions. The publishers inserted an
unsigned appendix, entitled “La unión libre” (Free Union). By scouring the texts
available at that time, one realizes that it is a paraphrase of a passage that Jean Grave
devotes to love in La société mourante et l’anarchie (Moribund Society and Anarchy).37
This way of defining relationships between couples was a synthesis of a minimal agree-
ment: serial monogamous relationships with no legal or religious sanction. Only those
participating in the “affinity” could mark the beginning and end of the bond founded
on “free will”. The text follows through by characterizing bourgeois marriage as a
form of prostitution and predicting the eventual disappearance of adultery and
hypocrisy, since the respect for “genetic necessity” would lead to a family based on
true love and affection. They used this argument to defend themselves from the accu-
sation of being “destroyers of the family”, since they would only be fighting the
juridical family. They consider it impossible to “subject sexual relations to rules and
regulations” and assert that attempts to do so have only led to “new vices”. They
believe it necessary for human nature to develop in complete freedom in order for
“evolution” to act and the “fittest” to reproduce and survive. In short, monogamy
based on love, affection and sympathy, even if not governed by laws or other forms
of regulation, will be enduring.
The addition of this passage indicates a tendency to believe that freedom leads to
monogamy and not to the multiplicity of affections, as Rossi suggested in the following
pamphlet. A year after the series appeared, the first locally produced pamphlet was
published in Rosario devoted to the emancipation of women and affective and sexual
relations. La mujer y la familia (Woman and the Family) was a lecture in which the
well-known medical doctor Emilio Z. Arana set out an erudite analysis based on
history, philosophy and anthropology.38 After his daughter recited a poem, the doctor
opened his lecture without moving too far away from the basic ideology: woman, “ese
ser tan desgraciado” (that unfortunate being), had to be emancipated “con iguales
derechos, sin más diferencia en sus derechos que los contingentes á su sexo” (with
equal rights, with no more difference in her rights than those contingent upon her sex).
According to the author, modern civilization had made the situation of the “fair sex”
worse and condemned it to slavery, transforming the man “de compañero en amo”
(from companion to master). Building his case on the well-worn thesis of original
matriarchy, Arana tries to show the historicity of monogamy and concludes that “la
institución matrimonial es la base del régimen económico vigente” (the institution of
matrimony is the basis of the prevailing economic regime) and declares that it would,
therefore, be necessary to abandon marriage as prostituted by bourgeois laws and give
women all rights, including sexual ones. Nevertheless, those terms needed to be
defined with utmost care and precision, since:
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There are those who, not being familiar with the intimate nature of love — of whose existence
there can be no question — defend the multiple nature of this affection, the existence of
more than one affection of this type, that “loving more than one person at the same time is a
necessity of human nature”; this is quite simply a gratuitous statement without any basis to it,
which reveals a lack of observation on the part of the person who makes such a claim, or
[has] intentions, that, frankly, I neither understand nor wish to investigate further.39

Without naming the author, Arana is referring here to the thesis that Rossi sought to
verify and publicize. Like the editors of La Révolte, he was concerned about relapsing
into “primitive promiscuity”, many memorable instances of which, according to him,
could be found in the Bible. According to Arana, sexual love for an anarchist was
“natural and noble” and the purpose of it was “the preservation of the species”. Love
could therefore be “elective and mutable” but not excessively so. In his version of free
love, he explains that “no es posible que si la mujer tiene caprichos sexuales, haya el
hombre de procurárselos” (it cannot be that, if a woman has sexual whims, it is the
man who has to obtain them for her). For this speaker “well qualified in medical and
social sciences”, nature and morality were the limits within which “free union” should
be contained and, as a synonym of free love, it should mean nothing more than

the natural union of two individuals of a different sex for a more or less extended period of
time, according to the duration of the effect they profess, whether of sympathy or tenderness
that brought them together.40

He declares that in future society, the number of those who have short-term relation-
ships “to satisfy their genetic needs” will be fewer and fewer since the majority will
choose the “sweet delights of the home”. The first part of Arana’s pamphlet is a recital
of the best-known arguments for explaining the historicity and evolution of the
juridical family. The whole framework of the argument, without citing them, is based
on two works widely circulated among anarchists, socialists, feminists and freethinkers
at the time: La mujer en el pasado, en el presente y en el porvenir (Woman in the Past,
Present and Future) by August Bebel (1879) and El origen de la familia, la propiedad
privada y el Estado (The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State) by
Friedrich Engels (1884).41 Both of these were based on the theses of the anthropolo-
gists Johan J. Bachofen (1861) and Lewis H. Morgan (1877) about the ancient world,
especially those referring to a primitive state of promiscuity and the consequent
demonstration of the historicity of patriarchy and the family, and to the hypothesis of
an original matriarchy at a time when women would not have been subordinate to the
patriarchal order.42
Dr Emilio Arana and the majority of the libertarians followed this line of thought
because the works were considered as part of modern scientific knowledge about the
social world and history. As has been stated, some of the central ideas of evolutionism,
positivism and hygienism were shared by anarchism, socialism and liberalism.43
Nonetheless, a single quotation from an author or a reference to a particular theoretical
tradition might accompany quite opposite lines of argument. So, for example, there
are echoes of those widely accepted anthropological notions in Rossi’s pamphlet,
although they are used in an argument structure that ends up justifying polygamy, not,
as was customary, monogamy. This particular instance could have derived from his
Fourierist readings; it is likely, therefore, that when Rossi recognized that he had gone
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190 | Laura Fernández Cordero

beyond particular limits that anarchism itself dictated, he began his pamphlet by
warning of the horrors that his study might cause. But, which of them would be the
most shocking? Certainly not the idea of avoiding religious or legal sanctions, since
not only was this part of the basic creed of anarchism but, as Arana himself said in
passing, most workers were not legally married anyway; civil marriage was in fact a
very recent phenomenon and, until the Civil Code was modified in 1889, religious
marriage was enough to legalize the union.44
From the libertarian point of view, the corollary of this kind of union was adultery.
Hence, for some anarchists it would actually be untenable for free love, in certain
versions, to look like it (i.e. adultery). Far from adopting a tone of condemnation, Rossi
explained that adultery was proof of the possibility of loving more than one person at
the same time:

It is free love minus the loyalty, or rather the lie, the enjoyable lie; that is the sophistication
of free love; it is adultery. […] People are well aware of these things and put them into practice
every day. Except that right is exercised furtively, like theft; and what should be free trade
takes on the pleasurable and provocative — but undignified — character of contraband.45

These are echoes of Fourier who thought of adultery as a seed that could be left to
germinate because it would demonstrate “la posibilidad de compartir amigablemente
en el amor” (the possibility of sharing love amicably).46 As might be envisaged,
multiple unions would entail not being able to determine paternity, for which reason,
some anarchists preferred “free union” based on a pact of exclusivity.
This version was perfectly synthesized in the section that accompanied the series
of pamphlets aimed at women. So, even though they denounced all laws that conse-
crated patrimony and matrimony, a limit seemed to be drawn by those anarchists at
the point where blood lines became blurred, and as a result, extolling (serial)
monogamy was very important in those groups that shouldered the reputation of being
destroyers of the family and champions of the community of women. Adherence to
evolutionist ideas and confidence in the unlimited progress of humanity seemed to
have left some anarchist activists with the impression that multiple ties and not
knowing who the biological father was entailed a return to “savage” states or, as most
of the followers of this restricted version of free love repeated, one might lapse into
“primitive promiscuity”.
Whether primitive or in the present, promiscuity seemed to be the greatest horror
that the pamphlet about La Cecilia could deliver, particularly if it spread to women
who, in the case of a colony populated by many single males, would be the major
figures in polyandrous love arrangements. The margins of female sexual freedom
might be extended to unimaginable limits if the example of Eléda proliferated, as Rossi
seemed to suggest in Episodio de amor:

The heroine […] was tied by eighteen years of married life and a crown of five children.
Nonetheless, she too has felt a new affection arise alongside the old affection; and she has
nobly expressed this to the father of her children [who] heroically drained the bitter chalice
[…] We are all pleased with him for the strength of spirit with which he fulfilled his duty.47

Some writing in the press celebrated specific examples of women who were most
free:
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The female companion of hero Paulino Pallás has united freely with one of those comrades
who were prisoners in the warship “Navarra” during the persecutions. May the example
spread and for black and white priests to remain idle is our desire, because, to enjoy sexual
pleasures, no ceremonies are needed, but true affinities and the need for sexual pleasure.48

Others, such as Arana, preferred to restrict the number of love protagonists in the
present or to postpone it to an anarchist future. For the most extreme cases, Rossi
warned that “among many anarchists [there are those] who think they are the most
fervent instigators of freedom, yet when it comes to love are still Muslims, or some-
thing worse.”49 He extends his call to women but warns that there is little hope for
emancipation when the men who are interested disregard it themselves, and admits
that even the greatest enemy of property will try and retain possession of women.
When the women themselves talk about love, they do not share the most radical
versions; on the contrary, because of their own flesh and blood experiences, they warn
about the prejudices and violence that libertarian romances too may conceal.50
Some years later, the anarchists would hear of a new radical twist to free love from
the virtuous lips of the respected Italian criminologist, Pietro Gori. Gori, a driving
force behind the organizing sectors that eventually prevailed, travelled the country,
enthusiastically spreading the word. In one of his most oft-quoted lectures, he
addressed the women and attempted to demonstrate that women’s and workers’
causes were intimately linked.51 The journalists of the time point out the hypnotic
effect that Gori had on women, indicating to them, practically from the start of his
talk, which model they should follow: the Spartan woman, the companion to the
ancient warrior. After reciting two or three main points of doctrine, which included
comparing bourgeois marriage to prostitution, he opened with a disturbing question:
What happens when one is the companion of a socialist or an anarchist? He went on
to develop a version of love that does not fall under the heading of free union and
constituted one of the so-called most extreme versions of sexual freedom. At the begin-
ning of the twentieth century, Gori told the women in his audience:

If he sees you as a comrade, he will not let you succumb to the prejudices of a religious or
bourgeois order, which relate that a woman cannot or should not feel love for more than
one man at a time, and not experience the joys of sex with more than one man, always the
same one; or which cause the pleasures of the flesh to be considered inferior to any other.
If he thinks of you as a comrade, he will bring you up to date with liberating and subversive
ideas and knowledge in the matter of sex, if you are unaware of them, even if only to let you
make up your own mind. If he sees you as a friend, the voluptuous experiences that you can
obtain for yourself outside the home will make him as happy as those that you can find within
it, because nobody can call himself a friend of another if he does not share in his joys. And
even if you desire to have a child with a man other than the one you cohabit with, is not your
body your own?52

One might imagine that speeches of this type were infrequent or that, given the
maelstrom of voices, they succumbed in favour of less extreme tones. However, Gori’s
speech was recuperated on various occasions, including at the end of the 1920s, when
La Protesta did not seem to be receptive to such heterodox discourse on feminine sexu-
ality. The publishing house La Protesta was also responsible for re-issuing Rossi’s
pamphlet in 1920 as part of a small series that also included Charles Albert’s El amor
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192 | Laura Fernández Cordero

libre (L’Amour Libre) first published in 1900. The theses of the two pamphlets could
not have been more different. In the very first paragraph, Albert attacks those who
understand free love as “a regression to the sexual promiscuity of the earliest primitive
ages, or fortuitous pairing based on whim and giving free rein to the passions.”53 On
the contrary, he argues:

We know, in fact, that the love that has been the centre of so many rigged pedantic arguments
is just the form of sexual attraction typical of beings who have reached a certain stage of devel-
opment and which, for that very reason, forms the moral necessity of their reproduction.54

In 1921, another major publishing house belonging to Bautista Fueyo issued

Socialismo y Anarquía (Socialism and Anarchy) by Errico Malatesta, in which the
respected Italian author injected a certain note of realism against dalliances of a more
romantic sort, warning that the anarchist solution did not prevent being hurt by love
since the happy encounter of two lovers could never be guaranteed. The family, which
could be relaunched, according to the moral criteria of anarchism, would still retain a
certain raison d’être:

Let us note first that, in spite of the regime of oppression and lies that has prevailed, and
prevails still, within the family, it has been and continues to be the major factor in human
development, since it is in the family that the normal man sacrifices himself for the sake of
man, and does good for the sake of good, without wishing for any other reward than the love
of his companion and his children.55

In short, over four decades, the libertarian camp oscillated between two poles: serial
monogamy with no legal or religious sanction, on the one hand, and free, multiple,
simultaneous experiences of love, on the other. The restricted version of “free union”
was perhaps the most widespread; nonetheless, the most audacious strand of plural,
multiple love at the end of the nineteenth century — embodied in the account of La
Cecilia — was not lost and echoes of it resonated in two new, widely circulated, studies
in the 1920s. In the first place, the most extreme elements reappeared in Julio Barcos’
Libertad sexual de las mujeres, (Sexual Freedom of Women) a book that spread beyond
libertarian spaces and was reissued many times. This work, whose introduction
claimed that it was “modern, advanced and scientific”, cited Bachofen, Morgan and
Engels again,56 while the second of these, Morgan, was even considered at length
under the sub-heading of “Theory of the evolution of the family”. Barcos pointed out
that in multiple love affairs — whether simultaneous or serial — paternity would lose
its importance and, conscious of the radical nature of his proposal, he elected to
reinforce the maternal tie. So, implicitly recuperating the arguments of Bachofen, the
“right of mothers” was adopted again in all its force, the mother-child relationship was
enshrined as the only certain biological tie and this became the feature upon which the
family relationship was built. His book would be transcribed and critically commented
on by those responsible for the newspaper for women, Nuestra Tribuna.
In second place, there was the amorous camaraderie of Émile Armand, whose
proposals circulated in Argentina via the columns of the Ideas newspaper in the city
of La Plata in the early 1920s. Apart from offering a perspective from the standpoint
of Individualist Anarchism, Armand recuperated the ideas of Fourier as a foundation
for variation in sexual tastes, and opened up the possibility of wondering whether, in
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The Cecilia Colony | 193

an absolutely free version of love, there would be a place for people who loved those
of their own sex.
During these same years, the publishing house, La Protesta, re-issued the series of
pamphlets from La Questione Sociale, and with them, the episode of love. Once again,
the Colonia Cecilia reasserted its twofold utopian status. In principle, because of its
very characteristics, it was an imagined city, utopian, a benefactor, an unexplored
territory, a social reinvention, and so on. On the other, it was a vehicle for the dreams
of loves that were vital, diverse, and mutable: the utopia of a new amorous world.

Notes
1 This chapter quotes sections of my book, Amor y anarquismo: Experiencias pioneras que
pensaron y ejercieron la libertad sexual [Love and Anarchism: Pioneer Experiences that
Thought and Exercised Sexual Freedom] (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2017).
2 Luis Gómez Tovar (comp.), Utopías Libertarias Americanas. La ciudad anarquista americana
de Pierre Quiroule (Madrid: Tuero, 1991); Luis Gómez Tovar (comp.), Utopías Libertarias.
Esbozo de Historia de las Utopías de Max Nettlau (Madrid: Tuero, 1991).
3 Max Nettlau, “Introducción”, in El humanisferio (Buenos Aires: La Protesta, 1927), pp. 9–
13: “La utopía no es, como se cree a menudo, el sueño ocioso o el resultado de un deseo
quimérico para ofrecer a la evolución social un plan hecho de antemano. […] las utopías
libertarias son mucho menos numerosas, porque la energía de los libertarios en lucha contra
tantos obstáculos es absorbida muy frecuentemente por otros géneros de militancia.”
Nettlau refers to the Cecilia Colony in glowing terms, as well as its utopian correlate Paraná
en el siglo XX. Gómez Tovar, Utopías libertarias, p. 83.
4 Max Nettlau, Esbozo de Historia de las Utopías (Madrid: Tuero, 1991). Laura Fernández
Cordero, “Buenos Aires de la utopía”, in El hilo rojo. Palabras y prácticas de la utopía en
América Latina, edited by Marisa González de Oleaga and Ernesto Bohoslavsky (Buenos
Aires: Paidós, 2009), pp. 33–43.
5 Raymond Trousson, Historia de la literatura utópica. Viajes a países inexistentes (Barcelona:
Península, 1995).
6 Déjacque, El humanisferio.
7 Adriana Petra,“¿Sueñan los anarquistas con mansiones eléctricas? Ciencia y utopía en las
ciudades ideales de Pierre Quiroule”, in El hilo rojo, González de Oleaga and Bohoslavsky
(Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2009), pp. 55–70. Pierre Quiroule, the pseudonym of Joaquín Alejo
Falconnet, Lyon, 1867–Buenos Aires 1938. He lived in Argentina as a child. He published
the periodical La Liberté (1893–1894). He contributed to El Perseguido (1890–1897) and
Le Cyclone (1895). He formed part of the editorial staff of La Protesta on various occasions.
He was a prolific writer of utopias, dramas and essays. Horacio Tarcus, Diccionario
biográfico de la izquierda argentina. De los anarquistas a la “nueva izquierda” (1870–1976)
(Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2007), p. 541.
8 This section includes some passages from Laura Fernández Cordero, “Una utopía amorosa
en Colonia Cecilia”, Políticas de la Memoria 5 (2004): 57–62.
9 Pierre-Luc Abramson, Las utopías sociales en América Latina en el siglo XIX (Mexico: FCE,
1999), p. 304. Eduardo Subirats and Menene Gras, “Prólogo: La voluptuosidad subver-
siva”, La armonía pasional del nuevo mundo, by Charles Fourier (Madrid: Taurus, 1973),
pp. 9–31. Charles Fourier, El nuevo mundo amoroso (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 1972).
Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola (Madrid: Cátedra, 1997).
10 Charles Fourier, El Falansterio (Buenos Aires: Intermundo, 1946). Charles Fourier, Teoría
de los cuatro movimientos (Barcelona: Barral, 1974).
11 Abramson, Las utopías, p. 320.
12 Cecilia was the name of an earlier tale written by Rossi. The author came from a family of
musicians and Cecilia was the patron saint of music. It is also possible that the name was
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194 | Laura Fernández Cordero

Giovanni’s tribute to La Cecilia, a mid-nineteenth century Italian revolutionary. See

Abramson, Las utopías.
13 From the first letter that gave the news of its operation, the anarchist experiment has
attracted the attention of the Academy, literature and the cinema. Classics are: Afonso
Schmidt, Colônia Cecília. Uma aventura anarquista na América, 1889 a 1893 (São Paulo:
Anchieta, 1942). Newton Stadler de Sousa, O anarquismo da Colônia Cecília, (Rio de
Janeiro: Civilização brasileira, 1970). See also the novel by Miguel Sanches Neto, Un amor
anarquista (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2006). See also, Cândido de Mello Neto, O anar-
quismo experimental de Giovanni Rossi de Poggio al mare à Colônia Cecília (Ponta Grossa:
UEPG, 1998); Helena Isabel Mueller, Flores aos rebeldes que falharam. Giovanni Rossi e a
utopia anarquista: colônia Cecília (Curitiba: Aos quatro ventos, 1999); Rosellina Gosi, Il
socialismo utopistico. Giovanni Rossi e la colonia anarchica Cecilia (Milan: Moizzi, 1977);
Isabelle Felici, La Cecilia. Histoire d’une communauté anarchiste et de son fondateur Giovanni
Rossi (Lyon: Atelier de Création Libertaire, 2001). See also, the film by Jean-Louis Comolli
entitled “La Cecilia” filmed in 1975, and the cinema and anarchism database created by
Santiago Juan-Navarro: http://www.cineyanarquismo.com/ For a critical evaluation of the
historiography of the colony, see Isabelle Felici, “A verdadeira história da Colônia Cecília”,
Cadernos AEL 8/9 (1998): 9–61. Izis L. Felix Cararo and Hélio Sochodolak , “1890-Colônia
Cecília, uma experiência anarquista no Paraná”, Revista Eletrônica Lato Sensu 1 (2008): 1–
25.
14 Héctor Recalde, “Sexo y amor en la propaganda anarquista”, Todo es Historia 355 (1997):
pp. 27–34. The pamphlets were recently re-published by Christian Ferrer and Martín
Albornoz (comps.) as Folletos anarquistas en Buenos Aires. Publicaciones de los grupos La
Questione Sociale y La Expropiación (Buenos Aires: Biblioteca Nacional, 2015).
15 Translated by José Prat, reissued in 1920 by La Protesta. Unlike the first Italian edition, its
title in Buenos Aires was Un episodio de amor en la Colonia Socialista Cecilia [An Episode of
Love in the Socialist Colony of Cecilia].
16 Felici, La Cecilia, p. 94: “Se trataría de instalar una destilería y […] comprar con el agua de
la vida jóvenes indias de tribus semi salvajes! Ellas devendrían rápidamente libres camaradas
pero qué forma ignominiosa/infame de fundar su libertad!” (author’s own translation).
17 Alfred Sanftleben compiled the data about the colony and this correspondence with Rossi
in Utopie und Experiment (1897). The publication was welcomed almost immediately, as
they announced it in La Anarquía 22, 8 August 1897.
18 Felici, La Cecilia, p. 57. Gosi, Il socialismo.
19 Felici, La Cecilia, p. 59.
20 N. d., “Notas y apuntes. Una contestación”, El Perseguido 98, 7 March 1896. Félix Basterra,
“El último desajusticiado”, La Protesta Humana 82, 15 April 1900.
21 Felici, La Cecilia, p. 94.
22 El Perseguido 42, 22 May 1892.
23 Émile Piette was a bookseller, originally from Belgium, who arrived in Buenos Aires in 1885.
His shop, which was well known for its “modern” and political literature and was a meeting
point for anarchists, made the local and international press available to readers. Tarcus,
Diccionario, p. 511.
24 La Révolte, 4 October 1892, and La Révolte 25, March 1893. I am grateful to Charles
Fonlupt for sending me this newspaper.
25 “Colonisation anarchiste”, La Révolte 25, 4–10 March 1893.
26 El Perseguido 55, 29 January 1893: “En cuanto al amor libre, se comprende perfectamente
bien que en una Colonia el hombre soltero ha de sufrir porque él no puede imponer su amor
á las compañeras de la Colonia. A nuestro entender el amor libre no quiere decir que la
mujer estará obligada á darse á todos los hombres, y un hombre á todas las mujeres, sinó
por lo contrario cada mujer es libre de darse al que ella quiera y si solo quiere darse á uno
ella es libre. Cuando el individuo, sea hombre ó mujer, obra por su propia voluntad sin
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sujetarse a regla alguna obra libremente, pero cada uno es libre de hacer la regla que quiera
para sí mismo y nunca para otro, pues el hombre que quiere ir con muchas mujeres, que
vaya si las encuentra que quieran ir con él, y la mujer que quiera ir con muchos hombres
que vaya si los encuentra que quieran ir con ella, pero también es libre el que solo quiere
amar á una, como la que solo quiera amar a uno [sic].”
27 Bearing in mind the period and the technical possibilities available, the speed at which news
travelled is quite remarkable. The main figures would have arrived in the colony in
November 1892. The text ends with the date April 1893. The Italian edition is at the end
of that same year, and the Buenos Aires edition, less than three years later.
28 La Revolución Social 9, 15 August 1896: “se presta a profundo estudio de la práctica del
amor libre, adquiriendo suma importancia éste, por los datos psicológicos que lo
acompañan.”
29 J. E., “Bibliografía”, El Oprimido 15, 7 June 1896.
30 Ibid.: “Esto, que hace escandalizar y poner los pelos de punta a los moralistas . . . sin moral,
es sin embargo, lógico, razonable; decimos más: indispensable para el bienestar humano.
[…] Lo recomendamos a todas las mujeres en particular y á los compañeros en general.”
31 N. d. “Apreciaciones y crítica”, La Fuerza de la Razón 1, 23 July 1896 (Communist-anar-
chist publication of Chivilcoy): “La estasis de los más intensos placeres, no pueden ser
multiformes. Se pasará de estasis á estasis, pero contemporáneamente no se puede estar en
dos distintos sitios […] como no se puede soplar y absorber al mismo tiempo. […] En lo
demás el folleto es muy profundamente lógico y científico, especialmente en la parte que
anatemiza la familia burguesa [sic].”
32 R. Canto, “Tribuna Libre. Un episodio de amor en la colonia Cecilia”, El Oprimido 25, 1
January 1897.
33 On this set of problems, we quote two pioneering studies: Dora Barrancos, Anarquismo,
educación y costumbres en la Argentina de principios de siglo (Buenos Aires: Contrapunto,
1990). Mabel Bellucci, “Anarquismo, sexualidad y emancipación femenina. Argentina
alrededor del 900”, Nueva Sociedad 109 (1990): pp. 148–157.
34 “Reuniones, grupos, iniciativas”, La Protesta Humana 3, 15 July 1897.
35 Saskia Poldervaart,“The Recurring Movements of ‘Free Love’”, workshop on ‘Free Love
and the Labour Movement’, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, 6
October 2000.
36 A compilation by Osvaldo Baigorria, El amor libre. Eros y Anarquía (Buenos Aires: Libros
de Anarres, 2006) offers us an overview of the different points of view.
37 Jean Grave (Breuil-sur-Couze, 1854–Vienne-en-Val, 1939) was an anarchist militant who
led and took part in various undertakings in the press: Révolté, La Révolte and Les Temps
Nouveaux. His best-known works are La Société mourante et l’Anarchie (1893), La Société
future (1895), L’Individu et la société (1897), L’Anarchie, son but, ses moyens (1899). Jean
Maitron, Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier français (Paris: Les Éditions
Ouvrières, 1981) was an author who was known and respected locally; in 1897, great efforts
were being made to collect the money necessary to publish his long work, La société future.
The author’s warnings about the Utopian genre demonstrate the ambivalence of anarchism
towards the tradition.
38 Emilio Z. Arana, La mujer y la familia (Rosario: Grupo de Propaganda Comunista
Anárquica Ciencia y Progreso, 1897). Agustina Prieto, “Notas sobre la militancia anar-
quista. Rosario, 1890–1903”, Entrepasados. Revista de Historia 32 (2007): 77–88.
39 Ibid.: “Hay quienes desconociendo la naturaleza íntima del amor, cuya existencia no puede
ponerse en duda, sostienen la multiplicidad de este afecto, la existencia de más de una afec-
ción de esta índole, que “amar á más de una persona contemporáneamente es una necesidad de
la naturaleza humana”, lo que no pasa de ser una afirmación gratuita, sin base alguna, que
revela una falta de observación en quien sostiene semejante tesis, ó fines que, francamente,
no alcanzo a comprender ni quiero entrar á investigar.” (The italics are the author’s).
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196 | Laura Fernández Cordero

40 Ibid.: “la unión natural de dos individuos de diferente sexo por un tiempo más ó menos
largo, según la duración del efecto que se profesen, de la simpatía ó cariño que les ha hecho
buscar su acercamiento [sic].”
41 August Bebel, La mujer en el pasado, en el presente y en el porvenir (Barcelona: Fontamara,
1980). Friedrich Engels, El origen de la familia, la propiedad privada y el Estado (Buenos
Aires: Claridad, 1941).
42 Stella Georgoudi, “Bachofen, el matriarcado y el mundo antiguo: reflexiones sobre la
creación de un mito”, in Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot, Historia de las mujeres: La
Antigüedad (Madrid: Taurus, 2003), pp. 517–536.
43 Juan Suriano, Anarquistas. Cultura y política libertaria en Buenos Aires. 1890–1910 (Buenos
Aires: Manantial, 2001), p. 27. It should be pointed out that, among the anarchists, this did
not mean an uncritical reading.
44 Héctor Recalde, Matrimonio civil y divorcio (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América
Latina, 1986).
45 “Es el amor libre menos la lealtad, o más la mentira, la grata mentira; es la sofisticación del
amor libre; es el adulterio. […] Estas cosas las sabe muy bien la gente, y las pone en práctica
cada día. Sólo que, el derecho, ejércese en el misterio, como el hurto; y aquello que debería
ser el libre comercio, asume el carácter placentero y provocativo — pero poco digno — del
contrabando.”
46 Charles Fourier, Jerarquía de cornudos (Mexico: Coyoacán, 2000). Charles Fourier, El
nuevo mundo amoroso (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 1972), p. 237.
47 “la heroína […] estaba ligada por diez y ocho años de vida matrimonial y por una corona
de cinco hijos. Sin embargo, ella también ha sentido surgir un nuevo afecto al lado del afecto
antiguo; y noblemente lo ha manifestado al padre de sus hijos [quien] apuró heroicamente
el amargo cáliz […] Todos nos hemos alegrado con él por la fuerza de ánimo con la cual
ha sabido cumplir su deber.”
48 N.d., El Perseguido 83, 16 June 1895: “La compañera del héroe Paulino Pallás, se ha unido
libremente con uno de los compañeros que durante las persecuciones estaban presos en el
buque de guerra “Navarra”. Que el ejemplo se propague y que se queden olgando los curas
negros y blancos es nuestro deseo; pues, para gozar de los placeres sexuales no hacen falta
seremonias; sino verdaderas afinidades y necesidad de gozar [sic].”
49 Juan Rossi, Un episodio de amor en la Colonia Cecilia, translated by J. Prat (Buenos Aires:
Biblioteca de La Questione Sociale, 1895). Reissue of La Protesta in 1920: “entre muchos
anarquistas que creen ser los más férvidos fautores [sic] de libertad pero que en el caso del
amor son aún musulmanes o algo peor.”
50 Laura Fernandez Cordero, “The Anarchist Wager of Sexual Emancipation in Argentina,
1900–1930”, in Geoffroy de Laforcade and Kirwin Shaffer (eds.), In Defiance of
Boundaries: Anarchism in Latin American History (Gainesville: University Press of Florida),
pp. 302–325.
51 Pietro Gori (Messina, Sicily 1865–Isle of Elba, 1911) was a lawyer, criminologist, journalist
and anarchist orator. He lived in Buenos Aires between 1898 and 1902. Tarcus, Diccionario,
p. 286.
52 Pietro Gori, “La Mujer y la Familia”, La Protesta 5841, 3 January1928: “Si te mira como
camarada no te dejará sucumbir en los prejuicios de orden religioso o burgués que cuentan
que una mujer no puede o debe sentir amor más que hacia un hombre al mismo tiempo y
no experimentar alegrías sexuales más que con un hombre, siempre el mismo; o que hacen
considerar como inferiores a los otros los goces de la carne. Si te considera como camarada,
te pondrá si lo ignoras al corriente de las ideas y los conocimientos liberadores o subversivos
en materia sexual, aunque no sea más que para permitirte determinarte. Si ve en tí una
amiga, las voluptuosidades que puedas procurarte fuera del hogar lo harán tan feliz como
las que encuentres en la casa, porque nadie puede decirse amigo de otro si no se regocija
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con sus alegrías. Y aun cuando deseases tener un hijo de otro hombre que aquél con quien
cohabitas, tu cuerpo, ¿no es tuyo?”
53 Charles Albert, El amor libre (Buenos Aires: Librería Sociológica, 1900): “una regresión á
la promiscuidad de sexos de las primeras edades, ó el aparejamiento fortuito de los
caprichos y la rienda suelta a las pasiones.”
54 Ibid.: “Nosotros sabemos, en efecto, que el amor, en torno del cual han sido amañadas
tantas discusiones pedantescas, no es otra cosa que la forma de atracción sexual propia de
los seres llegados á cierto grado de desenvolvimiento y que por este hecho mismo forma la
necesidad moral de su reproducción.”
55 Errico Malatesta, “El problema del amor”, in Socialismo y Anarquía (Madrid: Ayuso, 1975),
p. 65: “Hagamos observar antes que nada, que, a pesar del régimen de opresión y de mentira
que ha prevalecido y prevalece aún en la familia, ésta ha sido y continua siendo el más
grande factor de desarrollo humano, pues en la familia es donde el hombre normal se
sacrifica por el hombre y cumple el bien por el bien, sin desear otra compensación que el
amor de la compañera y de los hijos.” The newspaper Ideas included the note “El problema
del amor”in issue no. 144, 15 May 1925, extracted from that work by Malatesta.
56 Julio Barcos, Libertad sexual de las mujeres (Buenos Aires: n.d., 1925).
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Technologies of the
Afterlife: Spiritualism
10 and Social Imagination
in Nineteenth-Century
Mexico
Ana Sabau

On March 26, 1874, the Teatro Nacional in Mexico City offered its stage to a group
of mysterious performers who sought to unleash and invoke, on stage, the forces of
the supernatural. Journalists for Mexican daily newspapers — from El Monitor
Republicano to La Voz de México — chronicled the spectacle with scepticism and disbe-
lief, uncertain if the performance they had witnessed had been merely a charade or
perhaps the outcome of a true diabolical intervention. This commotion was prompted
by two illusionists from the United States, William Fay and Harry Kellar. They were
members of a troupe of magicians, The Davenport Brothers, who had begun their
careers in show business in 1854, travelling around the world and amazing audiences
with their ability to communicate with the powers beyond. An important local news-
paper narrated the performance as follows:

The Teatro Nacional had lowered the front curtain, and three rows of chairs were arranged
in a semi-circle with their backs to it. In the centre was an oval table with four guitars and six
small bells, a chair to one side, and at the edges of the stage, two tables with candelabra; the
apparatus could not have been simpler—no one could have suspected some hidden gimmick.
Kellar invited two people to tie his hands and feet as tightly and carefully as they could; the
two appointed, Santiago Sierra and Baron Gostowski proceeded to do so. The lights went
out and some moments later, guitars and bells went flying in a thunderous din. They moved
with extraordinary force, towards the feet of those present, then over their heads, the guitar
strings producing rare harmonies and the clappers of the bells chiming incessantly. When the
lights came on again, guitars and bells were strewn over the stage and Professor Kellar, still
tied, was sitting quietly with his bonds untouched. The phenomenon was inexplicable.1

Many interpreted the unusual spectacle through the lens of spiritualism, which after
gestating in the United States, had spread throughout the far reaches of the Mexican
Republic starting in the 1850’s.2 In one of the articles published in La Ilustración
Espírita, Santiago Sierra, one of the most prominent members of Mexican spiritualist
circles, investigated the possible connection between the spectacle at the Teatro
Nacional and the emerging doctrine.3 His willingness to embrace a supernatural inter-
pretation of Fay and Kellar’s show might seem incomprehensible to twenty-first
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Technologies of the Afterlife | 199

century sensibilities. However, at the end of the nineteenth century, amid rapid yet
unexpected technological development, the wilting power of the Catholic Church over
the public sphere, and the numerous imperial and civil wars that devastated large parts
of the population in different countries, spiritualism offered its followers a framework
through which they could assimilate and interpret the new experiences that modernity
was bringing with it.
Indeed the attempt to historicize spiritualism even today entails starting from an
uncomfortable position that challenges the hegemonic narratives of secularization and
nation building that have predominated in nineteenth century Latin American studies.
Perhaps for this reason, spiritualism and its impact on nineteenth century culture and
politics has remained a marginal topic in the historiography of this period. Followers
of spiritualist doctrine have long been seen as occupying a no-man’s-land between
religion and science, falling outside the framework of secularism because they clung
to beliefs about a tangible spiritual world, and excluded from institutionalized religion
due to their unorthodox beliefs. Nonetheless, it seems that this ambivalent position is
precisely what renders spiritualism an important topic for discussion today. It not only
opens a window to analyse aspects of the past that have received little attention, but
forces us to confront the internal contradictions that inhabit many current conceptu-
alizations of modernity. Through the convergence of trends that were, in principle, in
opposition to each other, spiritualism presented a case in which the conceptual cartog-
raphy of nineteenth-century Mexican society — sustained by dichotomies such as
“modernity” and “tradition”, “liberalism” and “conservatism” and “science” and
“religion” — became problematic. The phenomenon of spiritualism, which promoted
direct communication with the dead, blurred the boundaries in each of these
dichotomies, leaving a chaotic space where the concepts that supposedly ordered the
experience of the world collapsed. To approach that historical moment while recog-
nizing and reflecting on the porosity of those boundaries also forces us to subvert and
reconsider the limits that constitute our own paradigms of interpretation.
In Ghosts of Futures Past, for example, Molly McGarry argues that reactions to the
technological developments of the second half of the nineteenth century were not only
channelled towards a tendency to secularization that would lead to the so-called
“disenchantment of the modern world”.4 On the contrary, along with the furore
caused by the telephone, the telegraph and photography, among other things, there
was a great proliferation and variety of spiritual practices in which many men and
women of different social classes sought to incorporate the new inventions into their
transcendentalist visions of the world. To some extent, as McGarry states, the fact
that “this broadly popular movement has been marginalized in standard histories of
the nineteenth century tells us more about historiography and the history of secularism
than it does about religious life in the nineteenth century United States”.5 Far from
thinking of themselves as anti-modern or reactionaries, the followers of spiritualism
saw themselves as members of an avant-garde who had been able to find the perfect
balance between materialism and spirituality. The ease with which they inhabited both
spaces invites us to reflect with more complexity upon the contradictions that defined
their experience of “modernity” and also to reconsider the ways in which we currently
approach the flows and counter-flows between the dominant perspectives of a
moment and those occupying a more subaltern position.6
Spiritualism in Mexico not only provided its followers with techniques and
methods to be used in the practice of communicating with spirits; it also offered a
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structure — a lens that could both encompass and make more manageable popular as
well as learned ideas about contact between the world of the living and the dead. In a
century of change and political instability, spiritualist practices promoted new forms
of mourning, which, in turn, transformed ways of thinking and relating to historical
time. Despite the positivist influences introduced into spiritualism via the works of
Allan Kardec, the emerging doctrine exposed the contradictions of a linear, teleolog-
ical temporality in which the past remained fixed and remote.7 By claiming that it was
possible to engage in dialogues with spirits from any time or place in the universe,
spiritualist practices set in motion an experience of time based on anachronistic inter-
ruptions. The past ceased to be a uniform dimension and was fragmented into
infinitely small pieces that could reappear at any given moment to engage in dialogue
with the present without any chronological order or logic. That past, which was
pulverized but still available, vital and within reach, opened the doors to an affective
experience of history that traversed multiple temporalities. Each spiritualist séance
offered the possibility to hold a conversation with a mother, a brother or a dead uncle,
but also to talk with figures of the like of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, priest Miguel
Hidalgo y Costilla, Bartolomé de las Casas or Swedenborg himself.
Spiritualist gatherings constituted the material expression of a new way of engaging
with the relevance of the past. The process of conjuring a spirit and communicating
with it conveyed a desire for establishing fluid channels of communication between
various phases of history, challenging ideas related to the evanescence and irretriev-
ability of past moments. In communing with the world of the beyond, historicity was
negated in favour of a different conception of temporality where access to any moment
of the past was granted via direct communications with either figures of historical
importance or anonymous people who had something to communicate to the living:

The spirits manifest themselves spontaneously or in response to an invocation. All spirits can
be invoked: those that have animated the darkest mortals, as well as the most illustrious char-
acters, irrespective of the time in which they lived. We are able to invoke our relations,
friends, or enemies and we can receive oral or written communications, advice and general
information about their state beyond the grave, their thoughts about us, and any revelation
that they are permitted to share with us.8

As can be appreciated in the above quotation, spirits were also conjured based on the
conviction that the time for social regeneration had arrived. According to the emerging
spiritualist doctrine, spirits had overcome the obstacles of materiality in their transition
to the afterlife, and from this vantage point were sending messages about how living
humans could form a universal egalitarian community, promoted and attainable by
means of the study and practice of spiritualism itself.
In spiritualist séances, not only was the past reconfigured as multidimensional,
unexpectedly open and accessible, but imagination and the place of the future were
also at stake. Through the messages that the spirits sent from the afterlife, followers
of spiritualist teaching started to imagine an alternative society that could escape
current social pressures and what they saw as “moral decline” driven by hegemonic
materialistic philosophies. For the men and women who invoked the dead, the future
oscillated between the promise of something better to come and the constant realiza-
tion of the ephemeral, anachronistic promise announced every time one of the spirits
incarnated in order to communicate something. The invocations that took place in
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such gatherings facilitated an experience in which immaterial beings who existed

outside historical time were brought into the present. These beings inhabited a time
where past and future folded into each other. As such, spiritualist séances were spaces
and gatherings that dismantled linear views of time (albeit in a contradictory and
momentary way).
As might be imagined, the intersections between spiritualism and utopian thought
were many. The coincidences between these two strands of thought went beyond
sharing a historical moment and several of their thinkers. In the second half of the
nineteenth century, when men and women from different parts of Mexico gathered
round tables in clubs or houses with the intention of conjuring spirits and communi-
cating with the beyond, they also participated in reshaping the social order and the
polis. In the face of new, unsettling technologies, spiritualism provided a thought and
practice that made it possible to contain the fears and anxieties arising in response to
the rapidly changing world. Spiritualism was a way to tame and redirect those
concerns towards imagining a new society characterized by harmony, order and
equity—one in which even the grief caused by the death of loved ones could be avoided
by the fluid, open contact between the world of the living and the dead.
The emerging doctrine assimilated its historical moment by finding a crack in
which to imagine a harmonious confluence between tradition and the latest transfor-
mations of the time. The social readjustment facilitated by spiritualism can be analysed
on two main axes: the local and the cosmopolitan. At the heart of both sets of issues
lay, among other things, a dispute about notions of political representation (or non-
representation). Spiritualism — contradictory, fragmented and multi-temporal —
encapsulates the shocks and tensions, but also the possibilities of other social config-
urations glimpsed from the multiple facets of that historical period. This period at the
end of the nineteenth century was experienced as a turning point. In the remainder of
this chapter, I shall try to expand that picture in order to trace the tensions and imag-
inations that spiritualism mobilized along both those axes.

Negotiating the local: spiritualism and “new subjectivities”

Many studies dedicated to the final decades of the nineteenth century in Latin America
often mentioned the democratizing tendencies that presaged the consolidation of mass
culture. Increasingly expanding education systems, the proliferation of newspapers
and growth of the reading public, added to the migration of people to urban areas,
were translated as new collective subjectivities emerging in the social sphere and imag-
inary. The irruption of the masses onto the social stage, documented by fin de siècle
writers like José Martí, Rubén Darío and José María Ramos Mejía has been carefully
and insightfully studied by Graciela Montaldo.9 This phenomenon of new subjectiv-
ities became more and more tangible as the turn of the century drew closer and
brought with it a social reorientation, especially at the local level. Spiritualism, a
doctrine daughter of its time, was one of the spaces that documented and contended
with this readjustment.
On January 1st 1876, a short article published in the Yucatan spiritualist paper La
ley del amor, reported that its editors had received a group of experimental
photographs from New York. The images were the fruit of the work of Dr. J. R.
Simoni, who frequently sent the newspaper updates regarding his findings on the
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subject of spiritualist photography. The photographs included in his post revealed the
blurred figures of seventeen spirits, six of which were alleged to be those of people
who had lived in Merida. Apart from the obvious significance they had to the local
community, Simoni sought to add the photographs to the growing list of evidence that
proved the existence of a world after death that could be captured by emerging tech-
nologies. Subscribers to La ley del amor who might be interested in seeing the
photographs for themselves could go to the newspaper’s offices and contact the editors
to make an appointment to view the images with their own eyes.10
Apart from this information, the article offered a detailed description of Simoni’s
photographs, providing the readers with all sorts of particularities in order to capture
their attention. Although the identities of the six resident-spirits of Merida appearing
in the images were unclear, one of them at least was beyond doubt: “the identity of
one of them is absolute, with the notable circumstance that he died without ever having
had his picture taken because he lived in poverty. Despite this, he was a person known
to all by virtue of the fact that he always issued the subpoenas for the office of the
magistrates’ court of this capital.”11 Although it may seem a trivial detail, this quotation
illustrates why the study of spiritualism can shed some light on the unforeseen upsurge
of marginal subjectivities in the political sphere. If, as can be seen in the quotation,
photography in the nineteenth century was normally reserved to the upper classes and
“cartes de visite” were common practice in middle-class bourgeois families, the space
for representation and visibility that spiritualism imagined beyond the grave seemed
to be configured quite differently.12 While that anonymous person who lived in
poverty on the streets of Merida could not possibly have had a portrait or photograph
of himself taken while he was alive because of his social condition, the rules for gaining
access to the photographic medium, and so to the public sphere and visibility, operated
differently once the threshold of death had been crossed.
In the “Little History of Photography”, Walter Benjamin maintains that one of the
greatest impacts of the invention of photography was, for the first time, the “revela-
tion” or the “awareness-building” of the existence of an optical unconscious. The first
photographic images enlarged the field of vision, enabling glimpses of aspects of the
physical world that would otherwise have remained invisible to the naked eye.13
Legitimizing spiritualist photography hinged precisely on this argument, which
revealed an epistemology sustained by the intimate relationship between visuality and
evidence. If the photographic paper of Dr Simoni (in this case) had succeeded in
capturing the shadows and silhouettes of the invisible bodies of seventeen spirits, the
pictures could then be produced as irrefutable proof of their existence.
After the invention of photography, the telephone and other technologies were also
used to enter into contact with the beyond. Spiritualism can therefore be seen as a
symptom of the expansion of sensorial experience taking place at that time. Attempts
to communicate with the realm beyond the grave can be understood as another mani-
festation of an age that was beginning to consider the possibility that the senses and
consciousness did not necessarily have the capacity to capture the totality of physical
or objective reality that was developing external to the subject.
In another brief item published in 1887 in the daily newspaper, El Tiempo, spiri-
tualist theory suggested that mediums who mediated between the material and the
spiritual world were operating in an analogous way to Benjamin’s description of the
camera, whereby their sensorial apparatus enabled them to capture information that
was inaccessible or imperceptible to the majority of people:
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Technologies of the Afterlife | 203

Mediums who saw, felt and used all their bodily senses in a way entirely different from other
men; in such a way that it might be said of them that they had a sixth sense that engulfed all
the others and with a power superior by far to the five put together [. . .] I have met mediums
who could see regions that were thousands of kilometres away; and could see them better
than we could see them at a distance of less than a hundred metres. They could see the people
and animals that inhabited them and moved about in them; they could listen to human voices
and observe with precision whatever came under the power of their senses.14

In this way, spiritualism joined other phenomena of the time that favoured crystallizing
ideas about certain spaces of human experience that lay beyond consciousness. In
debates about the truthfulness of spiritualism and the manifestation of the presence
of spirits by means of so-called “rotating tables” (tables that moved in order to pass
on messages from some spirit that had been invoked), sceptics argued that supernat-
ural experiences could be explained, not because beings from the other side had
materialized for a moment, but because the participants in spiritualist séances were
moving the furniture without being completely conscious of doing so. It does not seem
to be a coincidence that just a few years after these changes were taking place, Freud
should think of the unconscious as something internal to subjectivity. As the above
quotation shows, the Mexican daily newspapers, which had been debating the
meaning of spiritualist knowledge since the 1850s, were offering expressions of an
experience that could not be completely absorbed or controlled through the conscious
use of reason and the senses.
This idea of the optical unconscious proposed by Benjamin — what the world
concealed from the eye of man but exposed to that of the camera — can also be thought
of in socio-political terms. Reconsider, for instance, the news article cited in the
Yucatan daily newspaper. The ghost of that anonymous person who had gone through
life as if invisible, from the poverty of the streets to the magistrates’ court in the city
of Merida, was now making his ghostly appearance in the photographic prints that
had been sent from New York to Yucatan, “revealing” on a social level what would
otherwise have remained invisible. So, it becomes almost inevitable to read the article
as if it were a document about the experience of the upper or educated classes in the
face of the upsurge of the popular onto the political stage. The idea conveyed by the
newspaper that if one lived in poverty, it was only possible to enter photographic space
as a ghost, can be seen as an indicator that these “marginal subjectivities” already had
a space — albeit an otherworldly one that was perhaps feared and unwanted — in the
imaginary of the bourgeoisie. The ghosts in the photographs from the newspaper
article inhabited a temporality flickering between announcement and arrival, lurking
in the historical present without fully materializing in it.
The newspaper’s mention of Dr J. R. Simoni’s images of spirits presents to its
readers the two sides, or the double-edged nature, of representation. Georges Didi-
Huberman recently expressed the idea more fully in Pueblos expuestos, pueblos
figurantes (Peuples exposés, peuples figurants). He argues that not only is it essential to
continue thinking about the multiple ways in which aesthetic and political represen-
tation intersect each other, but that this must also take into consideration that the leap
from the field of the invisible to that of material representation simultaneously, entails
new forms of erasure and exclusion; it implies the conquering of space by new subjec-
tivities (or peoples, in the case of Didi-Huberman) that, in the process, are exposed
to their own extinction. These considerations further lead to questions concerning the
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204 | Ana Sabu

ownership of the images and the loss of control over their circulation and dissemina-
tion which accompanies the entrance of the “representational” onto the social stage.15
Spiritualism, in this respect, was a field that was split in two. In its sustaining
ideology coexist the two sides of representation described by Didi-Huberman in his
book: the lurking of the peoples, but also the threat of their extinction, and the constant
efforts made to successfully neutralize and control their emergence in the social
sphere. To put it another way, through spiritualism’s doctrine and practice, we can
find traces of an emancipatory potential, on the one hand, while on the other, we also
see attempts to tame, control or bring back into harmony the many social changes
taking place at the time. Browsing through the spiritualist dailies exposes cultural
historians to various reflections on how the new doctrine encouraged the imagining
of possible ties and alliances through the multiple social strata, even if this seemed to
satisfy the anxious desire of upper classes to control the changes in that new social
mapping. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Spiritualist Society of Mexico was
one of the largest in Latin America, with a network of interconnected clubs and groups
scattered throughout the Republic, especially in the north of the country and in the
Yucatan Peninsula, as outlined above. La Ilustración Espírita, one of the major publi-
cations dedicated to spreading spiritualism in Mexico, was founded by Refugio
González in 1870.16 The issues of this publication are of unparalleled value in docu-
menting how spiritualism navigated and imagined new configurations of the
increasingly close interaction between elite and popular classes.
One of the most marked examples on the subject, which captured the attention of
many nineteenth-century Mexican readers, was that of Teresa Urrea, the Saint of
Cabora. She was a woman who allegedly had powers as a medium and healer, and in
whose name a number of popular uprisings took place on the northern border of the
country. Through the various articles that appeared about her in several issues of the
Ilustración Espírita, it is easy to appreciate how the platform of spiritualism helped
shape the figure of Saint of Cabora into a symbol capable of organizing different social
strata. Spiritualists recognized Teresa as a natural medium, “intuitive” and autodi-
dact, who had learnt the teachings of the spirit-world through trances and prophecies
communicated to her from the beyond, not through a bookish or formal education.
In this way, it did not matter that her knowledge of the spirit-world was cloaked in a
Christian, non-scientific discourse, because “true science” was said to be hiding
behind such popular manifestations:

Unfortunately, doctors in general despise anything that does not originate from them, and
they do not want to understand that behind ways that frequently seem ridiculous, behind the
ignorance of ordinary people who do not understand the truth of facts except by sorting out
their own concerns and vitiated ideas, behind folk medicine without the humbug, healing
without drugs or potions, and behind those ordinary men and women with no more knowl-
edge than their hands, and no more wisdom than the phenomenon that they can see in front
of them but cannot explain, there exists a type of true knowledge, a new truth, a surprising
revelation and a wonderful world whose virtue is unknown. Among healers and doctors alike
there are self-interested charlatans. No attention should be paid to one side or the other,
neither deserves consideration; but consideration is demanded by those who devote their
lives with noble disinterest to doing good to their brothers and sisters, who expose their
lives, spend their resources, deprive themselves of their own comforts and endure all sorts
of discomforts for the good and benefit of the sufferer. Teresa Urrea falls into this category.17
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As the quotation shows, educated spiritualists used such speeches to justify their role
in extracting the “scientific truth” from popular myths. In a world that was becoming
increasingly democratized, folk wisdom could not remain ignored; it was better to
assimilate it and find new ways of validating the pre-eminence of scientific knowledge
and learning over it. After all, the fact that there were “intuitive” mediums who
received their spiritualist knowledge without having been indoctrinated was even more
conclusive proof of the real existence of those laws of the beyond that were starting to
oppose materialism and positivism—two of the major currents of thought upheld by
Porfiriato [the Porfiriato was the name given to Porfirio Díaz’s thirty-five year presi-
dency].18 That someone like Teresa, without training in spiritualist ideology, should
receive messages from beyond the grave, was another way of proving the veracity of
the ideas that were giving shape to spiritualism. What is remarkable is that, by
promoting this line of argument, spiritualism was not only deploying its efforts to re-
validate formal learning over folk wisdom, but was also, paradoxically, opening itself
up to the possibility of disseminating a current of thought and a set of practices that
would be accessible to everybody. Mediums, to whom spiritual reality manifested itself
in many ways, could be found in any social class. Dialogues with the dead were not
then just an urban, upper-class phenomenon, but also occurred in the rural areas and
among the poorest social groups.
Reflections on the changes implied by technological developments frequently went
hand in hand with deliberations about the possibility of using them to overcome the
barriers that separated social classes from each other. In one of the many articles that
the renowned Spanish writer and spiritualist Amalia Domingo Soler contributed to
the Ilustración Espírita, the author wrote at length about how the increasing reach of
the press, in addition to opening the doors to communication with the afterlife, also
helped spread knowledge of the new doctrine through the different strata of society:
“The press is one, and perhaps the first of human advances because it revitalizes
thought, because it binds all social classes together, because a newspaper is a universal
letter, and because a book is a bouquet of sweet-smelling flowers that never withers.”19
From this vantage point, spiritualism found a way to embrace the recent transfor-
mations by taking the latest inventions and making good use of them as educational
tools. For Domingo Soler, spiritualism offered a framework that could be used for
profit by involving the emerging mass media. The fluid relationship between mediums
and spirits was repeatedly articulated as a relationship between readers and writers,
which, with the expansion of the press, had now extended considerably. In another
section of the article just cited, Domingo Soler wrote:

For some time now the number of writers has increased because our friends from the other
side are sending us their thoughts through recording, mechanical, intuitive and aural mediums,
and philosophical and historical works for pleasure have come to enrich literature on both
continents. The spirits said, Start writing! The spiritualists replied, Start reading! And study
groups and centres have been created and a part of humanity maintains active correspon-
dence with the souls of those who have departed. The universal family has ceased to be a
myth; we are related to beings who have left their corporeal forms. They write. We read.
Blessed are those who can write, and happy are those who make haste to read.20

Following Robert Darnton’s suggestion — which is detailed in his study on the role
of mesmerism in the early days of the French Revolution — we could well imagine
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206 | Ana Sabu

that the flexible nature of spiritualism, its openness to assimilating a wide variety of
traditions and discourses, as well as its ambivalent position between science and reli-
gion, captured the attention of many people at the same time that it eluded political
censorship.21 Cloaked in rhetoric with heavy overtones of morality and the spiritual
world, spiritualism promoted ideas that were quite radical for the time and which went
unnoticed to the censoring eyes of the Porfiriato. The doctrine did come up against
harsh criticism as soon as it arrived in Mexico, beginning with the 1875 debate in the
Hidalgo Lyceum where such prominent figures as José Martí, Ignacio Ramírez, the
Sierra brothers and Gabino Barreda all sought to clarify the place of spiritualism in
the realm of science. Nevertheless, the attacks directed at followers of spiritualism
were, more often than not, based on their participation in a movement that had strong
tendencies to charlatanism and that made it particularly difficult to find solid proof of
their beliefs — not for the politics that spiritualism promoted.22
Perhaps because they were masked by moralistic excess and adorned in Christian
rhetoric, the most radical egalitarian messages of spiritualist discourse filtered through
without attracting too much attention or causing scandal. However, a single quotation
from the numerous articles that were published on the subject reveals the political seed
one could speculate spiritualism helped to sow:

Spiritualism, this science founded on the fairest and most equitable principles of the most
pure philosophy — this doctrine, based, sustained and demonstrated in the Gospel;
debated, reasoned and accepted by many men distinguished for their wisdom, both ancient
and modern; and finally, revealed and also demonstrated by mutual consent, by a multitude
of intelligent beings from the afterlife — its throbbing heartbeat has already appeared
among all the peoples of the Earth and all classes of society with neither distinction nor
privilege.23

What makes this quotation politically interesting is not just the idea of equality being
able to penetrate all layers of society, but also the contradictory power of incorpo-
rating, in a single body of text, diverse traditions of thought that would generally be
at odds with each other.
One of the most important aspects of the local political reconfiguration of spiritu-
alism in Mexico is the way in which the basic tenets of the doctrine made it possible
for various women, in a century still marked by considerable gender inequality, to
intervene in the public sphere and the political arena in subject areas almost exclusively
reserved for men.24 Spiritualism in Mexico enjoyed its greatest boost in popularity in
the wake of the translation of the work of Allan Kardec, the famous French spiritiste,
who codified the principles of the doctrine in works such as El Libro de los Espíritus
(The Spirits’ Book) and El Libro de los Médiums (The Book of Mediums); neverthe-
less, from the start of the movement in 1848, with the Fox sisters in the United States,
spiritualism would give priority, or at least a position of equality, to women.
The fact that the vast majority of mediums were women did occasionally reproduce
stereotypes linked to the female character by perpetuating ideas on how female sensi-
bility favoured the reception of messages from the other side, or that women had a
certain predisposition towards morality. Nevertheless, mediumistic practices opened
up spaces for women to define themselves with greater autonomy, especially in the
case of young women who came from more rural areas, as Molly McGarry suggests
in her book Ghosts of Futures Past.25
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Technologies of the Afterlife | 207

At the core of spiritualism lay the assertion that human beings had individual souls
that survived the body after death. Two tenets in particular favoured gender equality:
the first linked to the world of the spirits and the second to the earthly world and the
role of mediums in it. With regard to the first tenet, Kardec claimed that once the spirit
was released from the body after death, gender distinctions were overcome. Sexual
difference in the afterlife did not function as it did in the living world. In a sense, the
world of the spirits took on the form of a utopian projection, reflecting the imagination
and political desire which shaped the moment in which spiritualism arose. Hierarchies
were not totally abolished, since some spirits were clearly more enlightened than
others; however, their position was not determined in the same way as it was in the
social hierarchy of nineteenth-century societies. Family ancestry was irrelevant, as
were gender, physical attributes and economic wealth. The structure of the imagined
community of spirits depended rather on noble and virtuous leadership, in which
wisdom, morality and, above all, the common good were fundamental:

Hierarchies among men can and should only be admitted through the power of virtue and
knowledge, and the man who is truly a virtuous sage is only a humble adviser, a passive
director of all those who are in need of his example and instruction, and he does good for
the sake of good and never to see what interest he can derive.26

With respect to the second tenet, the role of mediums in the earthly world, it is impor-
tant to refer to an article by Refugio González, which appeared in La Ilustración
Espírita and condensed the most important principles of spiritualist doctrine. After
participating in a séance, González stated that he had received the following message
from a ‘protective spirit’ assuring him that: “Every human being is a medium”.27 By
opening up spaces that were eroding the hegemonic stratification of nineteenth-
century Mexican society, spiritualist clubs were expanding the political imagination
of the time, which was conducive to the participation (but also control) of groups that
were normally relegated to the margins, among them, women.
It is no coincidence that we are able to study the nexus between the early manifes-
tations of nineteenth-century feminism in Mexico and spiritualism. Apart from Teresa
Urrea, who was mentioned prior, there were other, perhaps more obvious connections
between spiritualism and the struggle for women’s rights in Mexico.
Laureana Wright de Kleinhans, who had been the editor of one of the first Mexican
magazines written by and for women, Violetas del Anáhuac, was also one of the most
important contributors to Ilustración Espírita and one of the few women who were
considered part of the Hidalgo Lyceum. Little is known of her conversion to spiritu-
alism, although it has been stated that in the first years after the doctrine was
introduced to Mexico, the writer and intellectual did not take the emerging doctrine
seriously. It is possible, as Lucrecia Infante Vargas suggests in an article on the subject,
that Wright gradually became attracted to spiritualism because of its implicit openness
to matters related to gender equality, rather than because it was promoting beliefs or
8precepts about what was happening in the afterlife.28 Unlike La Ilustración Espírita,
almost no other publication of the time printed articles written by women in its general
sections — that is, in those sections not specifically devoted to topics traditionally
related to women’s interests. Hence, many of the issues of La Ilustración Espírita
published between 1890 and 1893 feature reflections by Laureana Wright on the front
page. Such articles help support the idea that Wright approached spiritualism because
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208 | Ana Sabu

of its openness to women. Moreover, they frequently offer thoughts about the place
of women and incisive criticisms of materialism, rather than addressing the topic of
séances and spirit messages from beyond the grave.

The universal family: spiritualism and cosmopolitanism

This chapter has concentrated so far on analysing the ways in which spiritualism
contended with social and political change on the local stage. However, spiritualism
also supplied tools for assimilating the transformations that were taking place as a
result of the growth and acceleration of transnational interactions. As indicated at the
beginning, spiritualism occupied a blind spot in nineteenth-century Latin American
studies for quite some time. One possible explanation for this was the tension
between religion and science, tradition and modernity, which was not only apparent
in spiritualist doctrine, but also challenged historiographical thinking that sought to
study the period by making a clear-cut distinction between these areas from the out-
set. Another explanation was the emphasis given to the study of nation building
narratives that started with the independence movements in Spanish America at the
turn of the 18th century.29
The image of spiritualism in Mexico that emerges from articles on the subject
published in newspapers and magazines is that it was a doctrine having little interest
in the national scene. The networks emerging from the spiritualist movement and the
imagining of that community of the future, where the material and spiritual worlds
and the living and the dead would converge, would be organized like a “universal
family” — to put it in the words of Amalia Domingo Soler in the article cited earlier.
This is perhaps the reason why spiritualism remained incomprehensible for some time
and why it seems to resonate more nowadays with an academic space that is increas-
ingly open and interested in studying the transnational and the global.
The pages of magazines and periodicals like La Ilustración Espírita and La Ley del
Amor allow us to read about the real and imaginary social networks sowed by spiritu-
alism and the ways in which these went beyond the limits of the national gaze. Through
numerous transcriptions of conversations with spirits — from Blaise Pascal, Ignacio
de Loyola and Allan Kardec to Miguel Hidalgo and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz —
articles in spiritualist publications punctuated the linear understanding of historical
time with their anachronism and also helped construct a discourse and experience of
history that lay beyond a narrow national perspective. The messages that the spirits
sent from the world beyond generally had little to do with strengthening the ties
amongst national communities and instead facilitated dialogues between different
places in the world, contexts and times, and also cut through or overturned the filters
separating the private and public spheres.
The latter occurred particularly when historical figures were said to have trans-
mitted knowledge that had little to do with the place they occupied in historical
memory, but that was directed rather to calming the mortal anxieties of those who
invoked them. A good example of this can be seen in the transcription of a conver-
sation with Bartolomé de las Casas that appeared in La Luz de México in 1873. In the
conversation, the spirit of Las Casas was answering the questions that those attend-
ing the spiritualist séance had anxiously asked him about the state of a friend by the
name of Castera, who had recently died. Las Casas’ replies contained no historical
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Technologies of the Afterlife | 209

dates and were confined to describing the state of Castera, who was completing the
process of transitioning from the body to the spirit and taking the last steps before he
could be released from his earthly worries: “But this does not cause him great suffer-
ing as might be believed, but is a passing disturbance that slightly dulls the
perceptions of the soul.”30 This conversation with the spirit of Las Casas allows us
to see history through spiritualist experience, as something where the past was far
from distant and bookish and instead acquired a refreshing vitality. The transcription
of this supposed chat with the spirit of the renowned Dominican friar reveals how
spiritualism activated the desire for an affective, personal experience of history, in
which conversations with the past provided an intimate knowledge, making it possi-
ble to cope with the recent subjective crises.
In addition to the numerous references to spirits that present a historical panorama
spanning time and geography, spiritualist magazines were full of articles originating
in the foreign press, especially from France, Spain and the United States, which had
been translated and republished. There were also, as we saw in the case of Amalia
Domingo Soler, periodical contributions by international figures. Spiritualism, like
Freemasonry, worked through societies and clubs that had international, as well as
local reach. The comings and goings between different countries are documented in
these publications as a fundamental element in the spiritualist imaginary from the
middle to the end of the nineteenth century.
The transnational map traced by spiritualism corresponded to the increasingly fre-
quent and accelerated availability of exchanges between different parts of the world.
Once again, as was the case on the local stage, it is possible to detect in the ideas of
spiritualist doctrine a certain ambivalence towards the changes that growing openness
and contact between multiple economies and cultures around the world entailed. On
the one hand, spiritualism manifested a utopian impulse — the desire for transforma-
tion and social regeneration, the scale of which had to be felt in global or “universal”
terms, to use the words of the time. On the other hand, it looked for ways to neutralize
the problematic disagreements to which transactions between different languages, cul-
tures and perspectives gave rise. In view of the tensions that could arise from the new
fin-de-siècle geopolitical order, spiritualism offered the harmonious, idealized image of
cross-linguistic encounters between different regions. In articles dealing with the sub-
ject, very few make reference to problems or obstacles when it came to communicating
with the spirits. Different languages or failure to understand the mechanisms and codes
used by the spirits to send their messages are rarely mentioned, but when they are, the
purpose is rather to stress the cosmopolitan nature of the spiritualist community than
to point out any friction in the dialogues between the world of the living and the
beyond. As early as 1853, a note in El Universal published under the heading “El diablo
hospedado en una mesa” (The devil a guest at a table), republished and translated
selections from a letter sent to the Catholic daily newspaper in Paris by the canon of
Limoges and Tulle, M. Charles Gay. The passages in the letter told of the experience
of the priest and a further group of people who, after invoking the spirits, had mistak-
enly managed to make contact with the Devil. The most striking feature of the note is
the conversation recreated between the members of the group and the spirit invoked,
since it is a scene that highlights the poliglot desire of spiritualism:

I begged for it not to proceed and I asked the priest if he would be so kind as to ask the spirit
in Latin. — ‘Loqueris ne latina?’ — Mr Bertrand said to him — There was no reply —‘Do
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210 | Ana Sabu

you speak Latin?’ he then asked him in French. — The table knocked once — And once again
in Latin ‘quis es tu? Dic nobis nomen tuum?’.31

Although perhaps the French version might have been read in a different way, the
translation and publication of passages from the letter in the Mexican newspaper
reveal multiple tongues converging at the heart of spiritualism. This scene presented
to the Spanish-speaking reader thus opened a way to envision the ideal spiritualist
séance as one that involved members from different places, or at least with different
knowledge and experiences. Those who could embrace the greatest number of
languages and possible codes were better prepared to respond to and understand the
messages that would be transmitted as soon as a spirit materialized.
It is highly likely that the communicative transparency frequently described in
spiritualist séances, and which seemed to have been one of their constant desires,
may have been a response to the notion that the afterlife was considered to be part
of the search to overcome all obstacles to communication. Although new technolo-
gies, such as the telephone, the telegraph and, later, the radio, had managed to
connect different social centres scattered across the world efficiently and rapidly,
communication was far from uncomplicated and free of technical difficulties.
Inspired by the potential of the new inventions, spiritualism promoted the fantasy of
immediate and transparent communication that could expand beyond the global
scale: “In short, M. Allan Kardec promises us a new telegraphic method that will
exceed all others in speed and accuracy. Two people, mutually invoking each other,
are able to transmit their thoughts to each other. ‘This human telegraphy will one day
be a universal medium of correspondence’.”32
Accordingly, spiritualism responded to the social and political changes that were
occurring along two axes. While locally spiritualism allowed us to trace the increasingly
apparent emergence of the popular classes and women into the political arena, at a
wider level, spiritualism imagined and gave form to a transnational polyglot commu-
nity who felt limited by a national paradigm. By drawing upon universal history,
multiple languages, and collaboration between spiritualist intellectuals residing in
different countries, followers of spiritualism in Mexico prepared themselves to shape
the social regeneration which they felt would eventually succeed in linking the spiritual
and material realms in one egalitarian social fabric: the religious and the scientific; the
local and the transnational; life and death.
Consequently, the doctrine that was initiated in the United States in 1848 and went
round the world in the twinkling of an eye, in Mexico fluctuated between domesti-
cating the changes proclaimed by the new century and breaking with social hierarchies.
The fate of entering history as a pseudo-science and a religion not to be taken seriously
has impeded thinking about the fundamental place of spiritualism in the politicization
and inclusion of certain marginalized groups, as well as their possible links with the
galvanization of the Mexican Revolution. In an era when the narrative of secularization
has been naturalized, it is commonly difficult to imagine a belief with spiritual and
religious overtones promoting revolutionary rather than conservative values.
As I have tried to show here, spiritualism invoked the past and the spirits to
legitimate a rupture—a social regeneration articulated not only in material but also
spiritual terms. While to our eyes, the show put on by Fay and Kellar at the National
Theatre would not have had anything supernatural about it, in their own time, it paved
the way for much broader questions. Spiritualism today can help us reflect not only
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Technologies of the Afterlife | 211

on issues that were important at the time, but also make us think about how the past
mobilizes and interacts with the present.

Acknowledgement
A shortened version of this chapter was published online in Spanish as “Ideas para el XIX:
Espiritismo”, Gaceta Frontal (7 July 2015).

Notes
1 Enrique Ovalaría, Reseña Histórica del Teatro, vol. 3 (Mexico: Imprenta, Encuadernación y
Papelería La Europea, 1895), p. 166. “El foro del Teatro Nacional tenía bajado el telón de
boca, y dando espalda a él, había tres órdenes de sillas formando un semi-círculo, en cuyo
centro se veía una mesa ovalada con cuatro guitarras y seis campanas, a un lado una silla,
y en los extremos de la escena dos mesas con candelabros: el aparato no podía ser más
sencillo, sin que nadie pudiese ni aun sospechar oculta máquina alguna. A invitación de
Kell[a]r, se nombraron dos personas que le ataran de pies y manos con cuanta fuerza y
precauciones pudieran; así lo hicieron Santiago Sierra y el Barón Gostowski. Apagadas las
luces, pocos momentos tardaron en volar guitarras y campanillas con atronador estrépito,
moviéndose con extraordinaria violencia ya a los pies de los concurrentes, ya sobre sus
cabezas, produciendo las cuerdas de las unas raras armonías, repicando los badajos de las
otras con incesante repetición: al volver a encenderse las luces, guitarras y campanas estaban
esparcidas por el suelo y el profesor Kell[a]r perfectamente atado y tranquilo; nada ni nadie
había tocado sus ligaduras: el fenómeno era inexplicable.”
2 As mentioned in José Ricardo Chaves, México Heterodoxo: diversidad religiosa en las letras
del siglo XIX y comienzos del XX (Mexico: Bonilla Artigas, 2013), p. 57, recent studies about
spiritualism in Mexico disagree about the origins of the spiritualist doctrine in Mexico.
Some situate the epicentre in the capital, while others insist that the doctrine originated in
the north of the country or in states of the Bajío, such as Jalisco. For references to spiritua-
lism in Mexico, see José Mariano Leyva, El ocaso de los espíritus: el espiritismo en México en
el siglo XIX (Mexico: Cal y Arena, 2005); Gonzalo Rojas Flores, El movimiento espiritista
en México (1858–1895) (Master’s thesis: UNAM Facultad de Filosofía y Letras,
Mexico, 2000); Lia Theresa Schaefer, The Spirits of the Times: The Mexican Spiritist
Movement from Reform to Revolution (PhD diss.: Davis, University of California, 2009);
Antonio Saborit, Pedro Castera (Selection and Prologue) (Mexico: Cal y Arena, 2004). For
a study of the development of spiritualism in the United States, see Molly McGarry, Ghosts
of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-Century America
(Berkeley–Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008). For studies of spiritualism
in other parts of Latin America, see Manuel Vicuña, Voces de ultratumba: historia del
espiritismo en Chile (Santiago de Chile: Taurus, 2006); Francisco Ferrándiz, Escenarios del
cuerpo: espiritismo y sociedad en Venezuela (Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, 2004); Michael
Taussig, The Magic of the State (New York: Routledge, 1997).
3 See Leyva, El Ocaso de los espíritus, pp.100–130.
4 McGarry is thinking of the United States, although certain aspects of her analysis apply
equally to the case of Mexico.
5 McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past, p. 5.
6 Ibid., p. 7.
7 Allan Kardec, born Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail, was a French intellectual, regarded as
the figure who systematized spiritism. One of his most important and most frequently trans-
lated books (in Mexico it appeared in the 1860s) was, as Leyva points out in his work, El
libro de los espíritus.
8 Quoted from one of Allan Kardec’s texts, translated in La Ilustración Espírita: “Los espíritus
se manifiestan espontáneamente o en respuesta a una invocación. Se puede invocar a todos
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212 | Ana Sabu

los espíritus: a aquellos que han animado a los más oscuros mortales, así como también a
los personajes más ilustres, sin importar la época en que hayan vivido. Podemos invocar a
nuestros parientes, amigos, o enemigos, y podemos obtener de ellos por vía oral o escrita
comunicaciones, consejos e información general sobre su estado de ultratumba, sus
pensamientos respecto a nosotros, y cualquier revelación que les sea permitida compartir
con nosotros.”
9 For her most recent study on the topic, see Graciela Montaldo, Zonas ciegas: Populismos y
Experimentos culturales en Argentina (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2010).
For her study on modernism, and the figure of Rubén Darío in particular, see Graciela
Montaldo, La Sensibilidad amenazada: Modernismo y Fin de Siglo (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo,
1994).
10 For this brief item, see “Fotografías Espíritas”, La Ley del Amor, Merida, Yucatan (1 January
1876). The daily can be consulted online via the Yucatan virtual library.
11 Ibid.: “la identidad de una de ellas es absoluta, con la notable circunstancia de haber falle-
cido sin haberse jamás retratado, porque vivía en la miseria, no obstante lo cual, en virtud
de que se ocupaba constantemente de hacer las citaciones de los juzgados de paz de esta
capital, era persona muy conocida de todos.”
12 For a study of the history of photography in Mexico, see Olivier Debroise, Mexican Suite:
A History of Photography in Mexico, trans. Stella de Sá Rego (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 2001). For a study of different uses of photography in its infancy in the nineteenth
century, see Allan Sekula, “The Body and the Archive”, October 39 (Winter 1986): 3–64.
13 Walter Benjamin, “Little History of Photography”, in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings
(1931–1934), vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2005), pp. 510 and 512.
14 Brief item, “El Hipnotismo vuelto a la moda”, El Tiempo, Mexico, 11 August 1887: “Los
mediums que veían, sentían y usaban todos los sentidos de su propio cuerpo de un modo
enteramente diferente de los demás hombres; de tal modo, que pudiera decirse de ellos que
tenían un sexto sentido que sumía todos los otros y de una potencia con mucho superior a
la de los cinco juntos […] he conocido mediums que veían las regiones que se encontraban
a millares de kilómetros de distancia; y las veían mejor que lo que nosotros las pudiéramos
ver a una lejanía menor que cien metros. Veían las gentes y los animales que las habitaban
y en ellas se movían; escuchaban las voces humanas y observaban con precisión cuanto
podía caer bajo el dominio de sus sentidos.”
15 See Georges Didi-Huberman, Pueblos expuestos, pueblos figurantes (Buenos Aires:
Manantial, 2014), pp.14–16. In Escenarios del cuerpo, Francisco Ferrándiz develops a
similar thesis to the one presented here, about the possibility of also tracing at the same time
emancipatory aspects of spiritualism so that they could be used as attempts to control
popular demonstrations.
16 For a detailed study of the publication, La Ilustración Espírita, see chapter 2 of Leyva, El
Ocaso de los espíritus.
17 Short article published as “Un problema para la medicina”, La Ilustración Espírita, Mexico,
June 1891: “Desgraciadamente, los médicos en general desprecian todo lo que no parte de
ellos, y no quieren comprender que, tras formas ridículas muchas veces, tras la ignorancia
del pueblo que no se explica la verdad de los hechos sino arreglándose a sus propias preo-
cupaciones y viciadas ideas, tras el curanderismo sin charlatanería, tras las curaciones sin
drogas ni brebajes y tras esos hombres y mujeres del pueblo, sin más ciencia que sus manos
y sin más sabiduría que el fenómeno que se ofrece a su vista sin explicárselo, existe una
verdadera ciencia, hay una verdad nueva, una revelación sorprendente y un mundo mara-
villoso cuya virtud se desconoce. Entre los curanderos y entre los médicos hay charlatanes
interesados. Ni a unos ni a otros debe atendérseles, ni unos ni otros merecen consideración;
pero sí la exigen aquellos que con noble desinterés se dedican a hacer el bien a sus hermanos
exponiendo su vida, gastando sus recursos, privándose de las comodidades propias y
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Technologies of the Afterlife | 213

sufriendo todas las molestias en bien y provecho del que sufre. En este concepto está Teresa
Urrea.”
18 It is important to point out that, in the years of its publication until 1893, La Ilustración
Espírita did not have an explicit anti-Porfirist policy, although there are many articles that
express this rhetoric opposed to materialism and progress without a spiritual dimension.
19 Quotation from a feature published by Amalia Domingo Soler, “Escribir”, La ilustración
Espírita, Mexico, September 1890: “La prensa es uno, quizá el primero de los adelantos
humanos, porque vitaliza el pensamiento, porque enlaza a todas las clases sociales, porque
un periódico es una carta universal, porque un libro es un ramillete de fragantes flores que
no se marchita jamás.”
20 Ibid.: “De algún tiempo a esta parte ha aumentado el número de los escritores, porque
nuestros amigos de ultratumba nos envían sus pensamientos por conducto de médiums
escribientes, mecánicos, intuitivos y auditivos, y obras filosóficas e históricas recreativas han
venido a enriquecer la literatura de ambos continentes. A escribir! han dicho los espíritus.
A leer! responden los espiritistas y se han formado centros y grupos de estudios y una parte
de la humanidad sostiene activa correspondencia con las almas de los que fueron. La familia
universal dejó de ser un mito, estamos relacionados con los seres que dejaron su envoltura
material. Ellos escriben, nosotros leemos. Venturosos los que saben escribir, y felices los
que se apresuran a leer!”
21 Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1968).
22 For information on the Hidalgo Lyceum polemic, see Zenia Yébens Escardó, “Las vicisi-
tudes del desencantamiento del mundo: espiritistas y positivistas en la polémica del Liceo
Hidalgo de 1875”, in Polémicas intelectuales del México moderno, edited by Carlos Illades and
Georg Leidenberger (Mexico: UAM–CONACULTA, 2008).
23 “El espiritismo, esta ciencia fundada en los principios más justos y equitativos de la más
pura filosofía, esta doctrina, basada, sostenida y demostrada por el Evangelio; discutida,
razonada y aceptada por muchos hombres prominentes en sabiduría, tanto antiguos como
modernos; y por fin, revelada y también demostrada de común acuerdo, por multitud de
seres inteligentes de ultratumba, ya ha aparecido palpitante entre todos los pueblos de la
Tierra y entre todas las clases de la sociedad sin distinción ni privilegio.”
24 For a study on the links between spiritualism and feminism in Mexico, see Lucrecia Infante
Vargas, “De espíritus, mujeres e igualdad: Laureana Wright y el espiritismo kardeciano en
el México finisecular”, in Disidencia y disidentes en la historia de México, compiled by Felipe
Castro and Marcela Terrazas (Mexico: UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas,
2003), pp. 277–294. For a study on feminism and spiritualism in the United States, see
McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past.
25 McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past, p. 29.
26 Brief item “Sin título”, La Luz en México, Mexico, 4 April 1873, p. 3: “Las jerarquías entre
los hombres solo pueden y deben ser admisibles por el poder de la virtud y del saber, y el
hombre que verdaderamente es un sabio virtuoso, solo es un consejero humilde, un director
pasivo de todos lo que necesitan de su ejemplo e instrucción, y practica el bien tan sólo por
el bien y nunca por ver al interés.”
27 See the published article, Refugio I. González, “Materia elástica manual de espiritismo y
magnetismo práctico, escrito por Refugio I. González. Para ayudar a todos los adeptos que
quieran practicar en círculos de evocación, conforme a la doctrina enseñada por el maestro
Allan Kardec”, La Ilustración Espírita, Mexico, May 1889.
28 See Infante Vargas, “De espíritus, mujeres e igualdad”.
29 For two of the most important studies on the narrative of nation building in Latin America,
see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso, 1983) and Doris
Sommer, Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993).
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214 | Ana Sabu

30 See Bartolomé de las Casas, “He venido a responder vuestras preguntas”, La Luz en México,
Mexico, 1 August 1873: “Pero no le produce esto gran sufrimiento, como sería de creerse,
sino que es una perturbación pasajera que tiene embotadas levemente las percepciones del
alma.”
31 “El diablo hospedado en una mesa”, El Universal, Mexico, 27 December 1853: “Supliqué
que no se siguiese adelante, y rogué al señor cura que tuviese la bondad de preguntar al
espíritu en latín. — ‘Loqueris ne latina?’ — le dijo Mr. Bertrand — No hubo respuesta —
‘¿Hablas latín?’ preguntóle entonces en francés. — La mesa dio un golpe — Y otra vez en
latín ‘quis es tu? Dic nobis nomen tuum?’”
32 Brief item “Doctrina espiritista”, La Unidad Católica, Mexico, 13 November 1861: “En fin,
M. Allan Kardec nos promete un nuevo método de telegrafía que excederá a todos los otros
en velocidad y exactitud. Dos personas, evocándose recíprocamente, pueden transmitirse
sus pensamientos. ‘Esta telegrafía humana será un día un medio universal de correspon-
dencia’.”
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Universopolis: The
11 Universal in a Place
and Time
Andrew Ginger

In his essay La raza cosmica (The Cosmic Race) (1925), the Mexican politician and
thinker José Vasconcelos issued one of the most resonant prophecies in Latin
American history. “By the great river” — the Amazon — he foresaw, “Universopolis
will arise, and from there will issue forth the preaching, squadrons, and planes prop-
agating Good News.”1 Universopolis would be home to the cosmic race of the essay’s
title, a future humanity characterized by its “universal human sentiment.”2 In turn,
the formation of this new people would find its precedent in the mixing of what
Vasconcelos calls races in the Spanish and Portuguese possessions in the Americas,
and in their post-independence successor states. “A history marked by war and
atrocity paradoxically produces utopia”, Marilyn Grace Miller observes of this vein
of thought, paraphrasing in turn the Mexican intellectual Leopoldo Zea.3 In his philo-
sophical essay “Mestizaje and Hispanic Identity” (2010), Gregory Velazco y
Trianosky remarks that this notion of the cosmic race is “certainly utopian in a literal
sense, since it is clearly envisioned by many of its advocates, past and present, both in
North and in Latin America, as defining a valued future state.”4
John A. Ochoa has explained how Vasconcelos wrote his essay at a time when
intellectuals and writers both in the United States — the Young Americans move-
ment — and in Mexico — among those associated with the cultural institution, the
Ateneo — shared an obsession with the history of visions of utopia, and especially of
its relationship to the Americas. This is as much the case in Lewis Mumford’s The
Story of Utopias (1922) as in Alfonso Reyes’s “The Presage of America” (El presagio
de América) (1920). Both groups were interested primarily in the “usable past”: that
is, the ways in which things found in history might be relevant to the present day in
imagining a future. More still, the rootedness of such utopias in the historical past
“was meant to give America a sense of validation. Utopias provided a sense of
belonging to a continuous universal culture, a fulfilled destiny”. Yet, for all this
common interest, “only Vasconcelos offered an actual utopia”.5 He did so on the
back of his role as Minister of Education in the revolutionary Mexican government
of the early 1920s (1921–24), where he coined his famous motto for the National
University of Mexico (UNAM), “Through my race the spirit will speak” (Por mi
raza hablará el espíritu).6 His vision of a cosmic race — as much in its broad-brush
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216 | Andrew Ginger

effect as in its details — was to prove suggestive for later movements, from student
protests in the Mexico of the 1960s to Chicano intellectuals and artists, that is, those
of broadly Latin descent living in the United States. In particular, it has been taken
up by the influential writer Gloria Anzaldúa.7
I am centrally concerned here with the twin character of Vasconcelos’s prophecy.
On the one hand, it is intensely local and specific: Universopolis will rise up in a given
place, on the banks of the Amazon at some future juncture, and good news will be
carried outwards from it by its legions. On the other hand, this is a universalizing
prophecy, destined ultimately for the redemption of all humanity. The compelling
force of The Cosmic Race derives not least from its powerful, vivid affirmation that the
universal will emerge through a concrete and particular time and place without ceasing
either to be universal or specific. This is at the heart of its utopian resonance. I want
to explore what might be involved in Vasconcelos’s envisioning that such a thing is
possible. In so doing, I will address some of the key objections to his prophecy, which
amount, in varying ways, to the preoccupation that his alleged universalism is
ultimately either bogus or necessarily a failure, or (often) both. At the heart of these
is the suspicion that particularity and its limitations must triumph, either because
Vasconcelos’s vision effectively promotes the goals of particular interest groups, or
because it will always be held back by historical realities. This is the view that — as
Nancy Stepan puts it in her book The Triumph of Eugenics (1991) — “the ‘cosmic’
race was not to be so cosmic or universal after all.”8
My interest is not simply in the detail of this debate, but also in what assumptions
about universality and particularity are involved on either side, and in whether and in
what way the discussion might be resolved, if at all. In so doing, I will consider how
Vasconcelos might understand transfiguration — the transformation of something
specific into something transcendent —, and its relationship to physical intimacy. I
will attend also to two challenging dimensions of the essay The Cosmic Race. The first
is its relationship to chronological time. Many accounts, understandably, seek to inter-
pret Vasconcelos’s words by contextualizing them within Mexican intellectual life of
the 1920s. Conversely, the essay itself ostensibly conjures up an unspecified future
time free of the limitations of Vasconcelos’s own context. The second is the style and
language of Vasconcelos’s prophecy — memorably described by Illan Stavans in his
introduction to an English-language edition of 2011 as “maddeningly obtuse” and “a
bumpy read”.9 My own interest here is not in trying to locate the essay within
Vasconcelos’ own extremely extensive oeuvre or in a deep contextualisation within the
Mexico of the 1920s. I am not even especially concerned with the relationship between
the essay on cosmic race itself and the lengthy travelogue that accompanied it when
it was published.10 I make no claim whatsoever to rival other scholars in those respects.
I am primarily preoccupied with elucidating the notions of universality and particu-
larity as expressed within Vasconcelos’ resonant and influential essay.
Vasconcelos’s account of the path to universality is, in some measure, a sort of
history of civilization and a projection of it into the future. Early on, he claims that
there was an ancient civilization in the lost society of Atlantis, and that among its
descendents are the native peoples of the Americas (pp.17–19). While this may sound
— and is — an extravagant claim, it had a distinguished lineage in the historical culture
of Mexico since the Spanish conquest. The great Mexican thinker of the late seven-
teenth century, Carlos Sigüenza y Góngora, inspired by the German Jesuit Athanasius
Kricher, had proclaimed the indigenous inhabitants of Mexico to descendents of
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peoples who had occupied Atlantis. In alluding to such assertions, Vasconcelos, like
Góngora y Siguenza before him, is preparing the way for an affirmation of the dignity
of Ibero-America in the face of outsiders who might look down upon it.11 The past
link to Atlantis is something preserved for a glorious future: the land has been kept to
one side from the march of civilization for 5000 years so it may serve as the cradle of
a new people (p. 33). For Vasconcelos, the Inca and Aztec empires were mere
decaying remnants of Atlantis, for by then the impulse of civilization had passed else-
where: first to Egypt, then to India, and on to Greece which provided the basis for
Europe (p. 20). The point of Vasconcelos’s remarks, though, is not so much to exalt
European culture and society, as rather to see these as a route back to the primacy of
the Americas. The key event in history that prepares the way to the future is the violent
arrival of what he terms the Anglo-Saxons (the British) and the Latins (the Spanish,
Portuguese, and to a degree the French) on that continent. This development sets up
a new historical dynamic: a struggle for supremacy between Latins and Anglo-Saxons,
which must be resolved outside Europe (p. 21). Vasconcelos singles out the French
Emperor Napoleon in the early nineteenth century for failing to see this, and for
assuming that the Americas were a sideshow to European conflict. His casual renun-
ciation of Louisiana tipped the balance of power in favour of the Anglo-Saxons by
opening their route to the Mississippi (p. 25).
What Vasconcelos is doing is to put the Americas at the heart of world history,
displacing accounts centred around Europe, shifting manifest destiny from the United
States southwards to Ibero-America. The manoeuvre is not dissimilar to that of the
influential twentieth-century artist Joaquín Torres García who famously depicted the
Americas with the south at the top, inverting the usual form of maps.12 For the time
being, and especially since the United States and the successor states of the Spanish
and Portuguese possessions gained independence, the Anglo-Saxon is dominant,
according to Vasconcelos. Anglophone success is based on an obsessive pursuit of
material advances such as railways, bridges, and businesses (p. 43). It is also rooted
in a defence of the power of one homogenous race and the destruction of others
(p. 32). To these two elements of the Anglo-Saxon triumph correspond two flaws that
point to an expiry date. First, the very exclusivism of the Anglo-Saxon triumph marks
its limits. All prior civilizations built on the hegemony of one group of human beings
have fallen, and therefore “it is clear that the dominance of the white will also be
temporary” (es claro que el predominio del blanco será también temporal) (p. 20).
Ultimately, such hegemony “does not resolve the problem of humanity” (no resuelve
el problema humano) (p. 33). By this, Vasconcelos means that any civilization that is
based on the exclusion of the vast swathes of human beings in the world will, sooner
or later, fall. Presumably there are two reasons for this: that the opposition will, in the
end, be too great; and that the hegemonic civilization itself will have denied itself the
insights and opportunities that the rest of the globe’s population might provide.
Second, the scientific and technological knowledge of the Anglo-Saxons can easily
be learnt and taken on by other peoples (p. 41). We might gloss this remark: it is
inherent to the claim that something is scientific that its truth should not be specific
to a given culture or society. At the same time, the very science promoted by the Anglo-
Saxons undermines any claim they might have to exclusive superiority: Vasconcelos
cites how Mendel’s work on genetic variations in inheritance has this effect (pp. 58–
59). The two flaws in present-day hegemony come together in the problem of social
injustice, which Vasconcelos predicts will split the Anglo-Saxons themselves. There
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218 | Andrew Ginger

is not just a concentration of power in one race, but of wealth and authority in an elite,
as well as neglect of things other than such material pursuits: “The whites themselves,
discontented with the materialism and social injustice into which their race has fallen
[...] will come to us to assist in the conquest of freedom” (Los mismos blancos, descon-
tentos con el materialismo y de la injusticia social en que ha caído su raza [...] vendrán
a nosotros para ayudar en la conquista de la libertad) (p. 43). This observation
connects to Vasconcelos’s view that the future will require “socialism in government”
(socialismo en el gobierno) (p. 62). He is looking to a thoroughgoing social and
economic transformation.
Crucial here is the notion that the present hegemony will “serve as a bridge” (servir
de Puente) (p. 20) and that whites “by fulfilling their destiny of mechanizing the
world, have themselves put in place, without knowing it, the bases of a new era” (al
cumplir su destino de mecanizar el mundo, ellos mismos han puesto, sin saberlo, las
bases de un período Nuevo) (p. 30). This is in part for the reasons given above, but
it is also — as the image of a bridge suggests — because of the effect of technology
and large-scale enterprise on the degree of integration of the world. The examples
Vasconcelos gives of what Latin America owes to the United States seem not coinci-
dental: railways, bridges, and businesses, that is, communications infrastructure
combined with international capital and commerce.
Conversely, Vasconcelos sees the post-independence Latin American states as
possessing both a flaw, which underwrites their present weakness, and an advantage
which points to their future success. Unlike the United States to their north, the
successor states of the Iberian monarchies created a series of separate countries, which
Vasconcelos disdainfully describes as “wee little nations and sovereign principalities”
(nacioncitas y soberanías de principado) (p. 28). This leaves them in a situation of
basic strategic weakness: “We jealously guard our independence in relation to one
another; but one or other way we are subject or allied to the Saxon Union” (Nos
mantenemos celosamente independientes respecto de nosotros mismos; pero de una
o de otra manera nos sometemos o nos aliamos con la Unión sajona) (p. 23). The
notion of a larger federation spanning the Atlantic and Pacific territories, and
proposed in the Spanish revolutionary constitution of 1812, was rejected, as was the
plan of the rebel Mina to defeat the old monarchy first in the Americas and then to
take the battle back to metropolitan Spain (p. 31). Despite the best efforts of the
leading light of the independence uprisings, Simón Bolívar, this has left the successor
states insufficient larger vision for the world and for humanity as a whole: their
concerns are notable for their “provincialism” and “lack of important/transcendent
plans” (provincialismo; la ausencia de planes trascendentales) (p. 28). More still, in
splitting in such a hostile way from Spain, the successor states have ignored relevant
aspects of their own cultural inheritance, and have become obsessed with the predom-
inant values of the hegemonic Anglo-Saxons. Vasconcelos refers to “de-Spanishizing
sermons and corresponding Englishment” (las prédicas despañolizantes y el ingle-
samiento correlativo) (p. 28).
On the other hand, the Latin American states inherit from the earlier monarchies
and from the independence period two latent advantages. These are occluded at
present. In both cases, Vasconcelos is looking to earlier history less as a series of
accomplished and realised events and outcomes, than as potentiality for the future:
the seeds of a might be more than a was. The first is the as-yet-unfulfilled legacy of
those earlier proponents that Latin America should be something more than a collec-
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tion of independent countries. Vasconcelos notes that, by and large, even those who
opposed a greater federation “felt driven by a feeling of universal humanity” (se
sintieron animados de un sentimiento humano universal) (p. 33). This is seen, for
example, in their declared — if not always realized — aim of abolishing slavery, and
their statements about human equality (p. 34).
The second — and the one which has most occupied readers’ attention — is the
willingness among Iberian colonists and their descendants to have children with other
peoples. Such behaviour contrasts markedly with the predominant culture of the
United States, and more broadly the Anglo-Saxons. “It is”, he says, “in this fusion of
different stock that we must find the fundamental character of Latin-American
distinctiveness” (Es en esta fusión de estirpes donde debemos buscar el rasgo funda-
mental de la idiosincrasia latinoamericana) (p. 34). Such attitudes and behaviour
provide a precedent — relatively absent in the Anglo-Saxon world — for an inclusive-
ness towards all humanity that will characterize the future Cosmic Race. It is a route
towards “the fusion of the various present-day races in a new one that completes and
surpasses them all” (la fusión de las distintas razas contemporáneas en una nueva que
complete y supere a todas) (p. 44). In significant measure here, Vasconcelos appears
to be evoking a biological and specifically genetic process. In conjuring up the
“marriage of a black Apollo to a white Venus”, he refers to the effects of “the crossing
of opposites, in line with the Mendelian law of inheritance” (enlace de un Apolo negro
con una Venus rubia; el cruce de contrarios, conforme a la ley mendeliana de la
herencia) (p. 51).
Before proceeding, I want to bring to the fore two characteristics of this account
of human civilization and its future. First, running through The Cosmic Race there is
a contrast between what Vasconcelos calls limitation and what he terms universality
and cosmic sentiment (limitación; universalidad; sentimiento cosmico) (pp. 33, 57).
Given that no formal definitions are offered for these or related terms, I will follow
Wittgenstein’s dictum that often “the meaning of a word is its use”.13 Limitation is
employed by way of summary of a series of things that Vasconcelos finds ultimately
defective, such as the “provincialism” described above. It refers to ways of being,
feeling, and thinking that are primarily confined to a specific society, culture, civiliza-
tion, or people, and, therefore, to a particular place and time. It likewise involves efforts
to restrict (genetic) variation among human beings. Often in human history, it is
associated with “violent domination” (violento predominio) (p. 43), that is, oppres-
sion. Universality and cosmic sentiment are, in this usage, a release from limitation. The
contrast is not, however, quite so straightforward, for all these terms are presented as
value judgements in Vasconcelos’s usage. Not every form of constraint is a limitation,
and not every surpassing of a boundary is per se universality. He is, for example,
concerned to stave off a potential accusation of foretelling “a repugnant process of
anarchic hybridism” (un proceso repugnante de anárquico hibridismo) (p. 44).
Universality and cosmic sentiment involve not simply being open to all humanity and
human possibility, but doing so in a specific spirit of freedom which characterizes a
new ethos and aesthetics. Universality and cosmic sentiment, then, are used to describe
a good life for humanity, and limitation is what has not attained that state of appro-
priate openness.
Second, all these things — limitation, universality, cosmic sentiment and related
notions — are presented as historical realities, whether actual or potential; that is,
whether things that have happened and do happen in human history up to the
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220 | Andrew Ginger

present, or, alternatively, things that — it may plausibly be judged on the face of his-
tory thus far — could happen. This means that — at least so far as Vasconcelos sees
it — universality is not an abstraction from the specificities of human existence in
place and time: quite the opposite, in fact. By extension, to seek to identify the
sources of universality is not in contradiction with locating things in a time and place.
Universopolis is, after all, to rise up in a specific geographical situation, by the
Amazon, at a given (if unspecified) juncture in time. Even limitation itself is not a
simple opposite of universality. It is, after all, a history thus far overwhelmingly char-
acterized by such limitation that ultimately provides the conditions for Cosmic
sentiment. This is the case, for example, in the bridging role undertaken by whites.
Moreover, things that happen historically are important, in Vasconcelos, not simply
for their having done so, or for their use in explaining present-day circumstances, but
rather as indicators and sources of what might be, even if in the past or present such
an outcome was defeated or oppressed. History, we might say, contains unrealised
potential, in the particular shape of Latin America.
Vasconcelos’s presentation of limitation, universality, and cosmic sentiment has the
potential to play havoc with some understandings of context — perhaps most obviously
exemplified in the Marxist Fredric Jameson’s cry, “Always historicize.”14 Things
which are, of their very nature, resistant to — indeed fundamentally opposed to —
being located in a particular place and time (universality), are, simultaneously, things
that happen in specific places and times (and vice-versa). Moreover, (many) things
that occur at a given point chronologically and geographically cannot be understood
fully as things proper to that point in place and time, because what matters about them
is a potentiality that resonates through and may be activated in their future. The role
of the historian, at least as Vasconcelos undertakes the task, is to appreciate the ways
in which all this may be so. I use the word appreciate not simply to mean notice, but in
its fuller aesthetic sense of experiencing with discernment and valuing (whether
positively or otherwise). This is one of the main senses in which Vasconcelos rejects
“empirical history, sick with short-sightedness”, and embraces “intuition based on the
data of history and science” (la historia empírica, enferma de miopía; intuición que se
apoya en los datos de la historia y la ciencia) (pp. 19–20). Again, no formal definition
is offered for intuition, but its usage within The Cosmic Race is clearly not reducible to
something like instinctive or irrational but rather expresses the more refined modes of
observation, feeling, and thought described here. This is consistent with the depar-
tures from positivism, which Guillermo Hurtado has shown to be fashionable within
the Mexican Ateneo from the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. For
example, the French philosopher Henri Bergson — serious interest in whom has been
revived by the theorist Giles Deleuze — used the term intuition to describe a way of
knowing things in the world intimately in their particularity.15 An outlook such as that
of Vasconcelos — if accepted — necessarily involves, not just assessments of past
events, but predictive judgements concerning which futures, arising from them, are
and are not possible and plausible, as well as desirable. That is a test at once of
verisimilitude and of ethics. It supposes not simply that such judgements must be
made, but that they can be viable. It is in this way that the historian of civilization is
also the prophet of utopia, and the writing of history is, at the same time, the uttering
of prophecy.
The principal objection often raised to The Cosmic Race is that its prophecy of
universality is, in fact, a perpetuation of limitation. In its broadest terms, this is the
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affirmation that the vision of a cosmic race is either not what it purports to be, or, at
the very least, that, carefully considered, it is not nearly as ethically enticing as it might
appear. Such claims may bleed into the wider view that things simply cannot be other
than what they are within the constraints of a particular time and place; imagining
otherwise is utopian in the most pejorative sense of the word. Either way, the recom-
mended approach is to situate The Cosmic Race firmly back in its place and time so as
to show what constrains its outlook: in short, to contextualize it.
In her balanced account, Marilyn Grace Miller notes that even if a majority of
Mexicans were by Vasconcelos’s time mestizos — of mixed “race” —, his prophecy
of mestizaje casts to the margins the large number of indigenous peoples — in the
Chiapas region for example — who had preserved more of a separate identity.16
Moreover, there is, she says, a “disconnect in the text between lived conditions in the
Americas and Vasconcelos’ philosophical prophesies.” Miller observes that he
enthuses about some regions of the continent and noticeably less about others, and
that in the accompanying travelogue, Vasconcelos is overwhelmingly enthused by one
of the most “white” of Latin American locations of the 1920s, supposedly
cosmopolitan Buenos Aires in Argentina, a place characterized by large-scale
European immigration.17 She sees strong parallels, in fact, between The Cosmic Race
and the positive consideration of eugenics and hopes for so-called “whitening”
throughout Latin America.18 A key point of the prophecy, then, is that it underwrites
the hegemony of the already dominant groups in Mexican society, and that it contem-
plates mixed sexual relationships and assimilation primarily in order to rid Latin
America of a strong indigenous and Afro-American presence.
In an essay on the mestizaje published in 2000, Catherine Poupenay-Hart puts this
viewpoint bluntly: “Vasconcelos’ program for the subcontinent is explicitly eugenis-
tic”, she says.19 In “The Hour of Eugenics” (1991), Nancy Stepan looked in detail at
Mexican interest in eugenics, including the role of Vasconcelos in particular. Stepan
underlines four distinctive factors. First there was a rejection of views promulgated
elsewhere in powerful countries that the mixing of “races” led to degeneration. Such
a view was self-evidently damaging to the standing of the Mexican ruling groups, and
great swathes of the country’s population. In response, there was an assertion of the
benefits of such mixing, with opinions ranging from the desirability of assimilation into
a dominant white group, to eulogies for a new racial type born of mixing.20 Second,
there was Catholic-inspired opposition to direct interference with reproductive pro-
cesses, which was shared even in many of the highly anti-clerical circles of Mexico’s
post-revolutionary leadership. Sterilization was widely opposed in Mexico, and intro-
duced only briefly, and probably more in law than in deed, in the state of Veracruz
during the year 1932.21 Third, none of this meant that a form of eugenics was not
widely endorsed, but rather that it took the form of what Stepan calls “preventive
eugenics” and “matrimonial eugenics”. That is to say, there were attempts to use mar-
riage laws and practices, as well as to promote immigration controls, so as to defend
and secure an improved Mexican stock. Notably, in 1928, three years after the publi-
cation of The Cosmic Race, the government introduced controls on the issuing of
marriage licences, which were supposed to be refused to those with specific illnesses
or vices.22 Fourth, there was a marked preference for the account of heredity provided
by the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century French biologist Jean-Baptiste
Lamarck, in particular his Second Law. On this view — “soft inheritance” — charac-
teristics acquired in a lifetime and in a given environment would then be transmitted
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222 | Andrew Ginger

to offspring. (While the notion that such traits would be overwhelmingly inherited has
long since been discredited, some recent scientists hold that, by a diversity of means,
some of them may be transmitted across generations.23) The Lamarckian view meant
that as Stepan puts it, “no sharp boundaries between nature and nurture were drawn.”
In consequence, Mexican intellectuals concluded that refining their “race” entailed
great attention to cultural and societal conditions and to individual and collective
behaviour.24
Stepan points out the close — and all too apparent — parallels between The Cosmic
Race and these dominant views about eugenics in Mexico. There is a marginalization
of indigenous peoples in their own right, an explicit but modified invocation of
eugenics — what Vasconcelos called “spiritual eugenics” —, a desire to create a puri-
fied and beautified race through selective biological reproduction, and advocacy of
immigration controls against the Chinese. It is striking that the Mexican scientist,
Alfonso L. Herrera had predicted four years before the publication of The Cosmic Race,
in 1921, that laboratory work would eventually generate an earthly paradise inhabited
by humans of outstanding beauty and merit.25 Stepan summarises the real purpose as
follows: “to eliminate heterogeneity in favor of a new homogeneity, the Europeanized
mestizo.”26 In John A. Ochoa’s view, Vasconcelos, through his writing, expressed his
response to the earlier years of life in the border zone of Mexico and the United States,
preoccupied with the menace both of the “Yankee” and indigenous peoples. In the
face of this, Ochoa suggests, Vasconcelos comes up with a “self-aggrandizing atti-
tude” in which he sees himself as “forced to become the personal representative of his
entire race”. From here derive the celebrated motto “Through my race the spirit will
speak” (my italics), and what Ochoa describes as the “utopian fantasy” of
Universopolis. Through such things, Vasconcelos ostensibly “joins the adamantly
individual to an indefinite, universal entity”, but is basically concerned in so doing
with creating a projection of his own biography and nationality.27 More still, he
presents himself as the embodiment of Mexican national identity, and vice-versa.
Discussing Vasconcelos in her study of Latin American autobiography, At Face Value
(1991), Sylvia Molloy evokes the Mexican muralist movement of artists such as Diego
Rivera. Molloy comments that “Vasconcelos “muralizes” himself, presenting a
gigantic self-image that overshadows that of Mexico while feeding off it [...] assigning
a national identity to his mythical persona”.28
Equally, it is possible to find ways of writing about The Cosmic Race that appear,
if not to contradict, at least to qualify the kinds of objection set out above. Among the
issues at stake are: whether The Cosmic Race is really concerned with Mexican identity
(a society in a given place); the degree to which, or way in which, it is about the 1920s
(a society at a given time); whether it advocates homogeneity; and how it treats a range
of historical causalities and material realities or alleged realities, biological and other-
wise. In her study of Latin American intellectuals, In the Shadow of the State (1999),
Nicola Miller bluntly observes that “neither La raza cósmica nor the subsequent
Indología (1927) was written to address mexicanidad (that is, Mexicanness)”, and that
“Vasconcelos regarded national identity as a spurious issue for Spanish American
countries”. What is more, Miller notes, Vasconcelos himself certainly did not identify
the existing “mixed race” society of Mexico with the Cosmic Race. His primary and
overwhelming concern was with “universalism” and with opposition to “chauvinistic
nationalism”. If the Mexican establishment subsequently re-invented his vision of a
Cosmic Race to their own nationalistic ends, this was a distortion of Vasconcelos’s
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essay.29 Years earlier, in his introduction to The Cosmic Race (1979), Didier T. Jaén
alerted readers to what he found to be misguided tendencies in readings of the famous
essay. He remarks that “the idea of a superior Latin American or Hispanic race was
not in Vasconcelos’s thesis.” Meantime, Jaén notes with concern, “his prediction of a
new age for humanity goes, not only unchallenged, but suspiciously ignored” in favour
of debates and interpretations centred on identity politics and “race” as presently and
historically understood. Readings of Vasconcelos are often, he says, “‘sociological’ and
‘from the point of view of genetics’”.30
There is some evidence in The Cosmic Race to support such qualifications, not least
the utter contempt that Vasconcelos voices for the obsession with nation-building in
Latin America since the independence wars, which he refers to as “idiocy” (imbecil-
idad) (p.31). More subtly, while he does affirm that Universopolis will be built in the
southern American tropics, Vasconcelos does not describe it as a Latin American, less
still a Mexican, polity. He speaks instead of “the One world” (el mundo Uno) (p. 32).
He even considers potential scenarios in which Latin Americans have little role in the
founding of utopia. “If our race turns out to be unworthy of this sacred soil [...] it will
find itself supplanted by peoples who are more able to realize the fateful mission of
those lands” (si nuestra raza se muestra indigna de este suelo consagrado, si llega a /
faltarle el amor, se verá suplantada por pueblos más capaces de realizar la misión fatal
de aquellas tierras) (pp. 56–57). In the event that the Anglo-Saxons were to succeed
in conquering the Amazon, Vasconcelos contemplates how, they themselves might
ultimately change and look to the formation of the Cosmic Race (p. 42).
The point of Latin American involvement, then, seems to be twofold in
Vasconcelos’s account. First, the openness to mixture in Latin America provides an
opportunity for its peoples to take up the leading position on the world stage. In short,
he is pointing to a strategic opening, a way out of second-class status, and is urging
his continental compatriots to seize it: “our civilization, with all its faults, may be the
chosen one”, he says (my italics; nuestra civilización, con todos sus defectos, puede ser
la elegida) (p. 32). Even there, Vasconcelos expects that the Latin Americans would
operate in alliance with many Anglo-Saxon whites rebelling against global injustice
(p. 43). Second, there is an apparent distinction in Vasconcelos’s account between the
causes and agents that might bring about Universopolis and, on the other hand, the
latter’s own identity. Put another way, for Vasconcelos, identity is not reducible to
causes. It does not follow from (a) the conditions and peoples of Latin America will
lead the way to the foundation of Universopolis, that (b) Universopolis will be a Latin
American state.
Moreover, so far as the creation of Universopolis goes, The Cosmic Race is clearly
projecting far, far into the future, presenting the circumstances and attitudes of the
1920s, in Mexico or anywhere else, as utterly inadequate to the task. “We are as yet
nothing,” Vasconcelos categorically remarks (nada somos aún) (p. 56). To the extent
that Latin Americans might have the opportunity to build utopia, they will clearly have
to change substantially in order to ready themselves for such an eventuality, not least
by giving up on their “purely national patriotism” (patriotismo puramente nacional)
(p. 22). What we have of value, he says, is “in potential” (en potencia) (p. 56). Mexico
and Latin America, then, are more of a tiny embryo, a hint of what might be, than
they are a blueprint for Universopolis. This is not to say, though, that the context of
the 1920s is irrelevant to the vision of Universopolis, any more than it is to affirm that
specifically Latin American peoples would not found the One world. Rather, The
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Cosmic Race is suggesting the way or ways in which the 1920s might, over a long time
period, extrapolate to the moment when Universopolis rises by the banks of the
Amazon. It is an expression of possibilities latent, however remotely, in those years.
These are presented in a very broadbrush fashion — perhaps because by the time the
extrapolation is complete, and given that Vasconcelos envisages a variety of different
possible time frames and agents, the details of 1920s Mexico will hardly be relevant.
The specifics of the context of 1920s Mexico only matter insofar as they might — and
the operative word is might — contribute to (or inhibit) these larger patterns.
The Cosmic Race is not, then, set simply either in the utopian future or in 1920s
Mexico or Latin America, but, rather, is presented as a perception of how the former
may extend out of the latter, as if seeing an opening or openings in present-time out
onto a larger horizon, a way in which the specifics, and even the limitations of the
chronological present, may transfigure into future universality. (I use italics here to
designate Vasconcelos’s specific usage of these terms.) Time thus expressed has both
chronological and non-chronological characteristics. These are not in simple conflict
with one another.31 Time proceeds through a series of ages, one after the other (it is
stadial, as people say), each led by a given “race” until the Cosmic Race arises in
Universopolis. That progression, however, involves the invocation of and connection
to “usable pasts”, and indeed usable presents. As we have seen, a series of moments
across chronological time, whether the 1920s or the conquest of the Americas, are
experienced and perceived as redolent with possibilities that open up routes to the
future Universopolis. Moments in time are, as it were, elastic or capacious: the spe-
cific form they take in their own period can be stretched and opened into a new shape
at and for a later juncture. This means that to pin the words of The Cosmic Race onto
specific meanings and deeds precisely situated in 1920s Mexico is to work — rightly
or wrongly — against the grain of how Vasconcelos employs contextualization, and
thus, of how — putatively — he deploys the language and terminology of his own
time.
At the heart of debate about the contextualization of The Cosmic Race is the vexed
question of “race”. The nature of causal relationships is, once more, crucial here, in
asking both whether the essay’s account of “race” arises specifically from and is
shaped by hegemonic elite views in 1920s Mexico, and, thence, whether The Cosmic
Race thereby supposes — in line with contemporaneous eugenics — that supposed
racial characteristics directly cause specific cultural, societal, and psychological
outcomes. At stake — once again — is the nature of the objectives that Vasconcelos
envisages for Universopolis, and whether its creation is to be an exercise in so-called
“whitening” or homogenisation of humanity or both.
Vasconcelos’s obsession with cross-breeding and his invocation of (Mendel’s)
genetics as routes to utopia support the view that his work is, in the end, racist and
eugenicist. This is true even of his apparently most generous sentiments, because of
the genetic, reproductive process that underpins the attainment of the good life, and
his insistence on the merits of so-called miscegenation in the former Spanish and
Portuguese possessions: “the crossing of blood” (el cruce de sangre) (p. 45). He
appears to identify a specific genetic make-up (which he supposes to create a given
“race”) with the causes of given phases of civilization: “We have then”, he says, “the
four stages and the four trunks [of humanity]” (Tenemos entonces las cuatro etapas
y los cuatro troncos) (p. 20). As Alan Knight puts it in his influential essay on “Racism,
Revolution, and Indigenismo” (1990), “it is the inescapable ascription that counts”.32
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Moreover, the ideology of “whitening” finds strong echoes in Vasconcelos’s extremely

disturbing remarks that “in a few decades of aesthetic eugenesia, the black could disap-
pear” (en unas décadas de eugenesia estética podría desaparecer el negro) and that
“the low types of the species will be absorbed by the superior type” (los tipos bajos de
la especie serán absorbidos por el tipo superior) (pp. 52–53).
In other passages, and whatever one’s final judgement, The Cosmic Race proves a
slippery text. There is the question of what Vasconcelos actually means by the very
term raza (race). Joseba Gabilondo has observed how “he simultaneously deploys
different historical theories of race, which are incompatible from a modern point of
view.”33 In The Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race, Miller likewise notes how the “notion
of a ‘mestizo soul,’” is “indicative of the elision between the physical and spiritual
definitions of the condition”.34 This is in part a matter of Vasconcelos’s own personal
usage, in part a consequence of neo-Lamarckian genetic thinking, and in part a
semantic feature of the Spanish language. Raza certainly encompasses common
present-day English-usage of Race as “a group [...] with particular similar physical
characteristics” (Cambridge English Dictionary), and it was used that way in relation
to classifications of human beings into castas in the colonial period, for example. But
it is also a looser term, defined historically and now by the Royal Spanish Academy
as a “quality of origin or lineage” (calidad del origen o linaje). This means that it could
historically refer to groups with a shared cultural inheritance. That interpretation
might well be detected in statements such as: “The advantage of our tradition is that
it possesses a greater facility for sympathy with others” (La ventaja de nuestra tradi-
ción es que posee mayor facilidad de simpatía con los extraño) (p. 32). Loose usage
of terms is apparent in places in Vasconcelos’s phrasing where he describes causality.
We are told that the Cosmic Race will be made “with the genius and with the blood
of all peoples” (con el genio y con la sangre de todos los pueblos) (p. 36). The repe-
tition of with (con) — unforced in Spanish as in English — implies that genius and
blood are complementary elements, but does little to elucidate their relative role or
importance or degree of causal connection to one another. On one occasion — when
offering an explanation for the course of Latin American independence —,
Vasconcelos uses the rather offhand wording “whether by dint of blood or culture”,
as if it was of no great importance which (por la sangre o por la cultura) (pp. 27–28).
In another place, we are informed that the world is heading to a state of affairs where
“all types and all cultures will be able to fuse” (todos los tipos y todas las culturas
puedan fundarse) (p. 21). The term type (tipo), often employed by Vasconcelos, was
used both in relation to “racial” categories, and more broadly to sociological groups
(or for that matter, physiognomic ones), having, as it does, one of its origins in nine-
teenth-century attempts to find ways to describe social and semiotic tendencies and
groups. In turn, the nineteenth-century precedents often explicitly recognized the
contingent or partial nature of such agglomerations.35 At one point, Vasconcelos
speaks of “a conglomerate of types and races” (un conglomerado de tipos y razas), as
if the two were not always identical (p. 34).
To complicate matters further, it is not always clear whether, when Vasconcelos
speaks of any given “race”, he is referring to a group with homogenous biological char-
acteristics, or whether he is simply evoking a commonly used descriptor or a contingent
predominance without making any strong intellectual commitments in so doing. He
certainly speaks of the whites as being the latest of the strong homogenous races
(p. 33). Yet, equally, he describes the white civilization as originating in Hellenic
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Greece through a mixture of Arians, Dravidians, Hindustanis, and unspecified others

(p. 29), and he says that all the great moments in history arise when races mix. In other
places, Vasconcelos even seems to draw attention to the way in which racial categories
are constructed by cultures and societies contingently. He talks of the “so-called
Latins” who are “not really Latins properly speaking” (llamados latinos; no son propi-
amente tales latinos) (p. 21). He likewise speaks of “the race we have come to call [or,
agreed to call] Atlantean” (La raza que hemos convenido en llamar Atlántida) (p. 20).
Alongside passages where Vasconcelos waxes obsessively on genetics, there are
parts where the historical stages and the “races” or “peoples” in The Cosmic Race could
be understood as contingent phenomena and in a non-essentialist way. I mean by this
that the major characteristics of these things might be taken to come about due to a
myriad of historical causes. Likewise, on such a reading, the fact that a given time
period or people can be described as exhibiting specific characteristics does not mean
that this is a direct causal result of it being a particular moment in chronology or of
there being a given set of genetic characteristics. This would give us an understanding
of the term race akin to that proposed by Gregory Velazco as a non-essentialist re-use
of the notion of mestizaje: that, in practice, people who have been treated as having
certain similar surface physical characteristics have often — for example, through
abuse or privilege — had certain shared political, cultural, societal, and economic
experiences that are relevant to their present situation. (Velazco holds that
Vasconcelos himself was an essentialist.)36 For example, parts of the essay might be
glossed as follows. The English (or more accurately, British), a major seaboard people,
happened to be those who became one of the dominant set of colonists in the
Americas; the struggles in the Americas opened up a new chapter of the economic,
social, cultural, and political life of the globe, and a singularly important one; a series
of factors in Anglo-Saxon cultures and societies meant that they took a lead globally;
this involved an emphasis on capital and infrastructure which enhanced global inte-
gration, even if it did so in a way that exacerbated many racial and social injustices. It
is in this way that the “Anglo-Saxons” set the global stage for the rise of Universopolis,
and that their culture is, as Vasconcelos puts it, “pre-universal” (p. 21). That historical
reality has nothing causally to do with their being “white”: it is nonsense, Vasconcelos
says, to affirm that the whites are at the upper end of evolution. More than nonsense,
it is a false ideology produced by their own hegemony: “All imperialisms need a philos-
ophy that justifies them” (Todo imperialismo necesita de una filosofía que lo
justifique) (pp. 54–55). Conversely, the peoples now habitually grouped together as
“Latins”, notably the Spanish and Portuguese, while also playing a major role in the
colonization of the Americas, did not happen to develop cultural and societal condi-
tions that generated the advantages claimed by their “Anglo-Saxon” rivals; however,
they did have a greater propensity for mixing sexually with other peoples, even as they
were often cruel and oppressive in their conduct; the break-up of these large polities
happened in a way that exacerbated fragmentation, and left them exposed to “Anglo-
Saxon” hegemony; but the openness to other peoples, with all its historical
qualifications, presents a potential long-term advantage. The broad outline of such an
account would remain in many respects familiar today.37 This would mean that the
stages of civilization that Vasconcelos describes are understood as such only in retro-
spect once events have conspired to bring about overarching patterns. This would be
consistent with some recent interpretations of nineteenth-century historiographical
interest in periodization, notably Žižek’s version of Hegel.38 In that case, when
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Vasconcelos speaks of historical periods and peoples having a “mission” (mission)

(p. 57), or of “predestination” (predestinación) (p. 33), he would mean something to
the effect that historical factors load the dice in favour of particular outcomes: some
eventualities are simply far more probable than others. That would be consistent with
his exploration of the different scenarios that could lead to Universopolis: it is, in his
judgement, overwhelmingly likely that the peoples of the world will come together and
mix, but rather less certain that the “Latins” will be those who bring this about. In
turn, the universality embodied in the Cosmic Race would itself be a contingent
outcome of a complex series of specific historical events.
Didier T. Jaén proposed that the operative word in the phrase Cosmic Race was
not, in fact, the noun but the adjective, sardonically noting that “biological mixture
would not fulfill what Vasconcelos expresses with the idea of the Cosmic race, any
more than a mixture of different breeds of chicken would produce a Cosmic
chicken”. Jaén’s point is that Vasconcelos only sees genetic — as opposed to other
kinds of — mixing as one aspect of the formation of the Cosmic Race, and not nec-
essarily the most crucial one.39 That it is only part of the package is suggested in
Vasconcelos’ description of the path to utopia as “Mendelism in biology, Socialism
in government, growing sympathy in souls” (mendelismo en biología, socialismo en
el gobierno, simpatía creciente en las almas) (p. 62). Many of the guiding principles
that Vasconcelos holds will direct both the formation of Universopolis and human
reproductive activity are realizations of human freedom and of refined mental,
emotional, and sensual experience. “Norms will be provided by the supreme faculty:
fantasia”, he affirms (Las normas las dará la facultad suprema, la fantasía). What will
truly matter is “creative sentiment and compelling beauty” (el sentimiento creador y
la belleza que convence) (p. 48). The point will be “to live in pathos” (vivir en pathos)
(p. 49). On that account, genetics may be very much the servant and not the master
in causing the rise of Universopolis. In neo-Lamarckian terms — which Vasconcelos
curiously attributes to Mendel —, it will be culture and environment, nurture, that
shape genetic outcomes, not the other way around: “the various faculties of
the spirit take part in the processes of destiny” (las distintas facultades del espíritu
toman parte en los procesos del destino) (p. 59). More still, Vasconcelos speaks of
replacing “scientific eugenics” with “the mysterious eugenics of aesthetic taste” (la
eugénica científica; la eugénica misteriosa del gusto estético) (p. 50). That phrasing
may be glossed as a form of genetic selection based on aesthetic criteria, but also with a
sentence like: “the key place occupied in many people’s minds in the 1920s by the
term scientific eugenics and its practices as a way to bring about utopia will be taken
over by aesthetics and its mysteries.” Vasconcelos, after all, rebukes the Anglo-
Saxons for their application of zoology to sociology (pp. 54–55). On that gloss, this
would not be eugenics as understood in the 1920s at all: Vasconcelos is playing with
and changing substantively the meaning of words. Doing so would be consistent with
his efforts to find the elasticity in and open out the resonance of any given moment
in time so as to trace a route to Universopolis.
Such is Vasconcelos’s emphasis in places upon a spiritual dimension to the Cosmic
Race that some observers have seen in the essay an effort to occlude or depart from
the real limitations of the physical and material reality of history. For example, John
A. Ochoa argues in The Uses of Failure that only in such an ideal domain could the
tensions and limitations of the Americas in the 1920s be ostensibly overcome.
Particularly telling here is Ochoa’s remark that “the only realistic way of transubstan-
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tiating the ideal into practice is by definition an incomplete version”.40 Ochoa’s stance
here is a variation upon the ongoing theme of objections to The Cosmic Race: that, in
one sense or another, its prophecy of Universopolis and of universality is ultimately
constrained by contextual conditions. In counterpoint to Ochoa’s observation, it might
be said that the fusion of ideal and practice is precisely and by definition what tran-
substantiation is: God’s incarnate body is literally there in the bread and wine of
communion, just as He is literally incarnate in Jesus Christ. Vasconcelos repeatedly
and explicitly invokes the legacy of (Catholic) Christianity as a major source of his
vision of universality: “Christianity liberates and engenders life”, he says, “because it
contains universal revelation” (el cristianismo liberta y engendra vida porque contiene
revelación universal) (p. 56). Vasconcelos’s assumption — unlike Ochoa’s — would
be that human history has the capacity to, and will, transubstantiate into Universopolis
where universality will be incarnate: the particular can indeed become universal.
Such a presupposition might have some explanatory power in elucidating The
Cosmic Race. It is resonant with echoes of influential Spanish-language thought about
the conquest of the Americas and human and international rights, notably that of the
sixteenth-century theologian Francisco de Vitoria. The latter speaks of “Christ’s
universal kingdom” whose “purpose” is “redemption”.41 Evidently, the incarnation is
such that this “universal kingdom” has an inception at a specific place and time: in
Palestine during the Roman Empire, just as it will have its critical moment in the cruci-
fixion on Golgotha, and as transubstantiation occurs when and where Mass is
conducted. Put another way, the universal has to have entry points where it can
become embodied in human history, and these are locatable in geography and
chronology. Vitoria remarks that “positive divine law is effective for all and binding on
all before it is promulgated to all. The mere fact of promulgation is sufficient. Thus the
law of the Gospel began to be binding on all men from the moment it was first promul-
gated”. Incarnation — and even transubstantiation in the Mass — therefore entails a
necessary problem: it cannot reach everyone at the same time, because the universal
is of a particular place and time. The universal, on this account, needs to begin to
travel through place and time, geography and chronology, to reach all humanity. So,
Vitoria goes on: “those whom news of it had not reached were pardoned. And it is still
true today that everyone in the world is bound by the law of Christ.”42 Following a like
turn of thought, if there is to be a Universopolis, if human beings are to embody univer-
sality, this must happen at a place and at a time which incarnates those qualities in a
transubstantiation. Thence, Universopolis will arise in a location (by the Amazon), at
a particular juncture (an unspecified future time), “and from there will issue forth the
preaching, squadrons, and planes propagating Good News.”
It is at least conceivable that Vasconcelos is making use of the terminology of
genetics and of breeding, not just for their own sake, but because they serve to evoke
an embodied, incarnate redemption: a transfiguration not just of some abstract mental
domain but of the whole human being. It is striking that just after alluding to Mendel,
Vasconcelos proceeds to affirm: “it might be said that it is Christianity itself that is
going to be consummated, but not now just in the souls but in the root of beings” (Se
diría que es el cristianismo el que va a consumarse, pero ya no sólo en las almas, sino
en la raíz de los seres) (p. 59). The verb consummate (consumarse) is redolent with
Christ’s last words on the cross: consummatum est, “it is accomplished” (John, 19.30).
It is as if Universpolis will offer a more fully realized incarnation and transfiguration
than even the Catholic Church has thus far proclaimed. To read The Cosmic Race this
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way is to go some considerable distance towards explaining the heady mixture, muddle
even, of allusions to cultural, aesthetic, and biological factors. These are ultimately
inseparable, not per se or not just because of the insights of Lamarck’s science, but
because a truly incarnational, transfiguring universality must involve them all together
to the ends of redemption.
The physical and emotion come together in Universopolis because it is as much as
anything a utopia of sexual intimacy. If we pay too much attention to matters of lineage
and to the nature of the offspring in The Cosmic Race, we can become distracted from
the importance of the sex act, of coupling, in and of itself to universality. Early in his
account of why “Latins” might be well prepared to found Universopolis, Vasconcelos
observes that they “persist in not taking much account of the ethnic factor in their
sexual relationships” (persisten en no tomar muy en cuenta el factor étnico para sus
relaciones sexuales) (p. 34). His sexual use of the word love is apparent in his
attributing this to the “abundance of love” (abundancia de amor) exhibited by the
Spanish conquerors (p. 32). Following through on this usage, Vasconcelos’ concern
that the Latins might not love enough to found Universopolis, presumably implies that
they might fall short in not having sufficient sex with enough different kinds of people
(p. 57). Vasconcelos’ clarification of his use of the term spiritual is especially striking
here. It is, he says, “the spiritual factor that will direct and consummate the extraor-
dinary enterprise” (el factor espiritual que ha de dirigir y consumar la extraordinaria
empresa) (p. 44). Not only does the use of the verb consummate potentially blur
redemption with sexual intercourse, but, if there were any doubt, Vasconcelos
explains: “By spiritual motive should be understood, rather than [or more than] reflec-
tion, taste directed by [or, that directs] the mystery of choosing a person amid a
multitude” (Por motivo espiritual ha de entenderse, más bien que la reflexión, el gusto
que dirige el misterio de la elección de una persona entre una multitud) (p. 45).
Sexual preference is the supreme spiritual guide of Universopolis, and it is subject “in
the end, to curiosity” (en último caso, a la curiosidad) (p. 45).43 These desires and
activities will take a highly refined form, consistent with the aesthetic sophistication of
a society centred on human creativity; they are something beyond “low appetites”
(apetitos bajos) (p. 49). At the same time, the choice of partner and pleasure will not
be reducible to some set of criteria: that is the sense in which it is a “mystery”, the ulti-
mately unfathomable depths — as Vasconcelos sees it — of why we prefer to have sex
with some people and not others. While evidently preoccupied in many passages with
the propagation of the Cosmic Race, the essay seems not to reduce the sexual relations
of Universopolis to reproductive acts. Vasconcelos in fact complains that one of the
problems with reproduction until now has been that it is “without any limit to quan-
tity” (sin límite de cantidad) (p. 52).
It is certainly possible to read the text in such a way that the babies who are born
in Universopolis form a homogeneous ethnic, “racial” group that marginalizes and
supersedes all others. If they are indeed to form the final “raza”, that may be thought
to be so. Such an interpretation depends on the supposition that a raza is, by definition,
such a group, and that the repetition of the noun, used to describe prior hegemonic
peoples such as the “whites”, implies the Cosmic Race is in that respect no different
from what preceded it. Equally, there is a potential elision here between (a) there being
a single overarching term for a group, and (b) that group being homogeneous, as more
broadly between (a) the one of “One world” and (b) monolithic. Conversely, and
invoking Mendelian thinking, The Cosmic Race describes the pattern of development
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of the population of Universopolis as consisting of an unending number of “discon-

tinuous and enormously complex variations” (variaciones discontinuas y sumamente
complejas) (p. 51). Moreover, given that the basis of association between its people
is non-rational — and ultimately unfathomable — attraction between particular pairs
of individuals (and not others), similar discontinuous variations must characterize the
patterns of social interaction as a whole.
In some significant measure, the issue hinges on whether the Cosmic Race is meant
to effect a “whitening” of all other races. As we have seen, at key junctures,
Vasconcelos’s language seems to point brutally and unpleasantly in that direction. In
adjoining passages, the emphasis sometimes shifts. Vasconcelos stresses that the
achievements of whites are often surpassed by those of other “races”, and he states
that the Cosmic Race will not be white but rather describes it as “that new race to
which the whites themselves will have to aspire” (sino esa nueva raza a la que el mismo
blanco tendrá que aspirar). This could mean that the whites will also disappear.
Vasconcelos, after all, seems to go out of his way to provoke white supramacists by
conjuring up their nightmares, as in his remark about a black Apollo with a white
Venus, and when he laments the lack of sexual interest that white women in the United
States feel for Asian officers (pp. 35, 51). His phrasing is, at times, ambiguous, as in
the words: “Perhaps among the characteristics of the fifth race the characteristics of
the white may predominate, but such supremacy must be the fruit of taste’s free
choice” (Quizás entre todos los caracteres de la quinta raza predominen los caracteres
del blanco, pero tal supremacía debe ser fruto de elección libre del gusto) (p. 43). The
use of the subjunctive (predominen) in combination with perhaps (quizás) means that
this could be taken merely as a concession to acknowledge others’ predictions, what-
ever Vasconcelos’ own scepticism.
In some passages, it seems possible, as Didier Jaén suggests, that the “cosmic race”
is, in fact, supposed to mark the end of the notion of race as understood in prior
history.44 In that case, the racial language and terminology of the 1920s, like the word
eugenics, are themselves fundamentally transfigured as they are stretched into the new
forms of Universopolis. Raza will mean something utterly different in the Good News.
To borrow Gabilondo’s words, the term race then becomes “simultaneously mythic,
historical, present, and utopian” effecting a “utopian realism”.45 Perhaps, in turn, the
fantasia of the rise of Universopolis, like the allusive use of the word cosmic, has some-
thing of the quality Paul Gilroy finds in “oracular [...] complex futuristic figures like
Sun Ra”. These explored a “racial” identity “blackness” in ways that “strove to be
both nationalist and internationalist” combining “a universalistic appeal to spiritu-
ality” with “shared human characteristics”.46 The language of the Cosmic Race,
calqued from a myriad of sources lying about in 1920s Mexico, so apparently slippery
upon analysis, seemingly contradictory or ambiguous, actually traces a path from the
present into the aesthetics of Universopolis. Like the city’s endlessly spiralling curves
(p. 41), existing language takes on recognizeable forms, but ones that are resistant to
sharp-edged definition and that open up successive possibilities. Words attain the
luminosity forecast for the arts of Universopolis (p. 41), in that their meaning is not
constrained in its context, but opened up like a brilliant window out onto the future.
“Reality will be like fantasy” (La realidad sera como la fantasia) (p. 41).
Yet, it is not at all clear to me that any of or all of these myriad nuances decisively
refute the objections to The Cosmic Race: that it is, in the end, a prejudiced product of
1920s Mexico. This is in part a matter of evidence also stacking up on the side of the
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objectors. Vasconcelos is absolutely capable of appalling outbursts, as when, in line

with contemporaneous scaremongering in Mexico, he describes the Chinese as multi-
plying like rats (p. 35).47 His account of sexuality excludes, among many other things,
same-sex relationships. He declares that in the future, really ugly people will not
procreate (p. 50). But the problem goes beyond a question of detailed evidence. It
comes down to the degree to which The Cosmic Race is constrained by its originating,
immediate historical context, and perhaps even to the degree to which things in general
are so constrained.
Knight comments that the essay “could not [...] break out of that [contempora-
neous racist] paradigm, but chose rather to criticize and and invert several of its basic
tenets.”48 Stepan concludes that “Vasconcelos’s idealization was fundamentally struc-
tured by the racism of the period.”49 On such an account, no modification or
qualification that Vasconcelos brings to the terminology of eugenics, race, genetics (and
so forth) could overcome the fact that these are intimately linked to the defects of
1920s Mexico. To interpret The Cosmic Race is to trace back such links and vocabulary
to their originating time and place: this is what a good, critically minded historian does.
The terms paradigm and fundamentally structured suppose that, once tainted thus by
a defective origin, the essay is pervasively, inescapably so, however much it tries or
pretends otherwise. Those practicing such historicizing un-masking and concerned
with contextual particularity are understandably suspicious of the essay’s claims to
universality. We have seen Ochoa’s assertion that transubstantiation of the ideal is
simply impossible and a distraction from historical realities. In an essay on hybridity
in cultural theory, Susan Mabardi states that Vasconcelos, “under the pretense of
creating unity and equality, in effect eliminates differences and ignores institutional-
ized racism.”50
Conversely, the more sympathetic account of the vision of Universopolis entails
two things. First, it involves a predisposition to search out and bring to the fore sources
of positive human potential within Vasconcelos’s 1920s account of the universal. The
tendency here is to see the flaws of the essay as falling short of the overarching premise
of a realizable universality, and thus as spurs to future revision. Such a reading parallels
the influential sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander’s way of reading historical assertions of
universal rights in his book The Civil Sphere (2006). The point of such formulations
of “universalizing solidarity”, Alexander argues, is not that, at any junction, they end
or are free from abuses. Rather, precisely because they are part of history, the attempts
to bring them about — to translate them — necessarily entail complex struggles, within
which “claimants can make the demand for their ‘civil rights’” and in which their
implications are contested.51 Similarly the more sympathetic reading of The Cosmic
Race parallels James Chandler’s observation of nineteenth-century historiography,
that many of the later criticisms of it are made precisely in terms that it itself had set
out but (arguably) failed to meet.52 Vasconcelos himself evinces awareness that some
forms of universalism serve hegemonic interests and may lead to the occlusion of real
and important conflict and divisions. In turn, assertions of differential identity (such
as nationhood) have a key historical role to play as a way of resisting the unity sought
by hegemonic oppressors. “In the present circumstances of the world,” Vasconcelos
observes, “internationalism would only serve to finalize the consummation of the
triumph of the strongest nations” (en las actuales circunstancias del mundo, el inter-
nacionalismo sólo serviría para acabar de consumar el triunfo de las naciones más
fuertes) (p. 24).
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This approach to reading the account of universality in The Cosmic Race is

concerned, then, with its inherent potential to generate future possibilities for universal
human self-realization beyond the essay’s origins in 1920s Mexico. That outlook is
tied to the second aspect of the sympathetic reading: a fundamental willingness to
suppose that particular, concrete circumstances might embody positive universal
values and experiences. Such a disposition is evident, for example, in some recent
responses to Vasconcelos’s South-Asian contemporaries. In the essay “Different
Universalisms” (2010), Sugata Bosa remarks that the “colonized world” was a “fount
of universalism” which challenged imperialism with its own “universalist patriotism”.
Such trends are at odds, Bosa notes, not just with many strains of analytical philosophy
but with “the premises of French and North American intellectual currents that are
deeply suspicious of all meta-narratives”.53 This, after all, is the gauntlet thrown down
by The Cosmic Race: that Universopolis could arise in a specific place and at a given
time in actual human bodies and minds through a series of historical events. Put at its
strongest, the reader of The Cosmic Race would need to be prepared to accept the possi-
bility of transfiguration. Alexander comments more mildly that “universalism anchors
itself [...] in the everyday lifeworlds” and that “difference can be positively recognized
only if the particular is viewed, [again] to paraphrase Hegel, as a concrete manifesta-
tion of the universal.”54
We can believe that The Cosmic Race is fundamentally shaped by its contextual
origins in 1920s Mexico, and that putative universal ideals are only ever manifestations
and occlusions of particular interests. Or we can hold that The Cosmic Race is an
outpouring of potentiality beyond its originating location, and that particular bodies,
places, and times may indeed become universals incarnate. There is an incommensu-
rability between the two positions, as there is between those who say that Universopolis
will be built by the Amazon, and those that state it will never rise anywhere. The split
arises from within The Cosmic Race itself: at times, Vasconcelos’ feet seem firmly in
the prejudices of the 1920s, at others, his arms appear to open out into new formations.
In the end, the question is: to what life possibilities are we open, and, correspondingly,
what potentiality either viewpoint opens up or closes for us? No system of reasoning
can give us the answer to that question.

Notes
1 José Vasconcelos, La raza cósmica: Misión de la raza iberoamericana (Madrid: Aguilar,
1967), p. 42: “Cerca del gran río se levantará Universópolis, y de allí saldrán las predica-
ciones, las escuadras y los aviones de propaganda de buenas nuevas.”
2 Vasconcelos, La raza cosmica, p. 33: “sentimiento universal humano.”
3 Marilyn Grace Miller, The Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race: The Cult of Mestizaje in Latin
America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), p. 14.
4 Gregory Velazco y Trianosky, “Mestizaje and Hispanic Identity”, in A Companion to Latin
American Philosophy, edited by Susana Nuccetelli, Ofelia Schutte and Otávio Bueno
(Oxford: Wiley & Blackwell, 2010), pp. 283–96, esp. p. 286.
5 John A. Ochoa, The Uses of Failure in Mexican Literature and Identity (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 2004), pp. 119–20.
6 Ochoa, The Uses of Failure, p. 122.
7 Miller, The Rise and Fall, pp. 37–38; Ilan Stavans, José Vasconcelos: The Prophet of Race
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2011), p. xiii. On the outlines of the Chicano
interest, see, for example, Monika Kaup, “Crossing Borders: An Aesthetic Practice in
Writings by Gloria Anzaldúa”, in Cultural Difference and the Literary Text: Pluralism & the
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Universopolis | 233

Limits of Authenticity in North American Literatures, edited by Winfried Siemerling and

Katrin Schwenk (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1996), pp. 100–11.
8 Nancy Stepan, “The Hour of Eugenics”: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca
and London: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 153.
9 Stavans, José Vasconcelos: The Prophet of a Race, p. 14.
10 The point is particularly pertinent to some accounts of Vasconcelos’s utopianism, notably
Ochoa’s The Uses of Failure (see, for example, page 127).
11 On Sigüenza y Góngora’s views, see: D. A. Brady, Mexican Phoenix. Our Lady of Guadalupe:
Image and Tradition across Five Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001),
p. 115.
12 On Torres García’s map, see María Amalia García, “Cities of Abstract Art: Urban Journeys
through South America”, in Radical Geometry: Modern Art of South America from the Patricia
Phelps de Cisneros Collection (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2014), pp. 32–55, esp. pp.
36–37.
13 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, edited by P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim
Schulte (Oxford: Blackwell, 2015), p. 43.
14 Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (New York:
Cornell University Press, 1981), p. 9.
15 Guillermo Hurtado, “The Anti-Positivist Movement in Mexico”, in A Companion to Latin
American Philosophy, pp. 82–94. For Bergson on intuition, see David Krepps, Bergson,
Complexity and Creative Emergence (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan e-edition, 2015),
chapter 2.
16 Miller, The Rise and Fall, pp. 28–29.
17 Ibid., pp. 31–33.
18 Ibid., pp. 34–35.
19 Catherine Poupenay-Hart, “Mestizaje: ‘I understand the reality, I just do not like the word:’
Perspectives on an Option”, in Unforseeable Americas: Questioning Cultural Hybridity in the
Americas, edited by Rita A. Grandis and Zila Bernd (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), pp. 34–
55, esp. p. 41.
20 Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics, pp. 137–39.
21 Ibid., pp. 128–32.
22 Ibid., pp. 17, 125, 152.
23 See Gabriel Motzkin, “Lamarck, Darwin, and the Contemporary Debate about Levels of
Selection”, p. 3–8, esp. p. 7, and Eva Jablonka, “Introduction: Lamarckian Problematics in
Biology”, pp. 145–55, in Transformations of Lamarckism: From Subtle Fluids to Molecular
Biology, edited by Snait B. Gissis and Eva Jablonka (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011).
24 Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics, pp. 17, 111.
25 Ibid., pp. 134, 148–52.
26 Ibid., p. 130.
27 Ochoa, The Uses of Failure, pp. 119, 122, 124–25,
28 Sylvia Molloy, At Face Value: Autobiographical Writing in Spanish America (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 189–90.
29 Nicola Miller, In the Shadow of the State: Intellectuals and the Quest for National Identity in
Twentieth-Century Spanish America (London: Verso, 1999), pp. 142–43.
30 “Introduction”, in José Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race: A Bilingual Edition, edited by Didier
T. Jaén (Los Angeles: Johns Hopkins Press, 1997), pp. ix–xxxiii (pp. xi, xvi xix).
31 On the complex nuances of stadial time see Geraldine Lawless, “How To Tell Time,” in
Spain in the Nineteenth Century: New Essays on Experiences of Culture and Society, edited by
Andrew Ginger and Geraldine Lawless (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018)
(forthcoming).
32 Alan Knight, “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910–1940”, in The Idea of
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234 | Andrew Ginger

Race in Latin America, 1870–1940, edited by Richard Graham, Thomas E. Skidmore et al.
(Austin: University of Texas Press, c.1990), pp. 71–101, esp. p. 93.
33 Joseba Gabilondo, “Afterword to the 1997 Edition”, in Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race: A
Bilingual Edition, pp. 99–117, esp .p. 106.
34 Miller, The Rise and Fall, p. 3.
35 Martina Lauster, Sketches of the Nineteenth Century: European Journalism and its Physiologies,
1830–50 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 85–128 and 309–27.
36 Velazco y Trianosky, “Mestizaje and Hispanic Identity”, pp. 284, 286–95.
37 See, for example, John Elliot, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America
1492–1830 (Yale: Yale University Press, 2007) [kindle edition], locs. 3974–76, 6579, 6692,
6703, 580, 6669–70, 6981, 6984, 7009, 7042.
38 See, for example, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor
(London: Verso, 2008).
39 Jaén, “Introduction”, pp. xvi, xxix.
40 Ochoa, The Uses of Failure, p. 120.
41 Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings, edited by Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrance
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 98.
42 Ibid., p. 161.
43 See also Jaén, “Introduction”, pp. ix–x.
44 Ibid., p. xvi.
45 Gabilondo, “Afterword”, pp. 99, 106.
46 Paul Gilroy, Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 341–42.
47 Knight, “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo”, p. 96.
48 Ibid., p. 87.
49 Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics, p. 149.
50 Susan Mabardi, “Encounters of a Heterogeneous Kind”, in Unforseeable Americas, pp. 1–
20, esp. p. 13.
51 Jeffrey C. Alexander, The Civil Sphere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 65,
153–54.
52 James Chandler, England in 1819: The Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Literary
Historicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
53 Sugata Bosa, “Different Universalisms; Colorful Cosmopolitanisms: The Global
Imagination of the Colonized”, in Cosmopolitan Thought Zones: South Asia and the Global
Circulation of Ideas, edited by Sugata Bose and Kris Manjapra (Houndmills: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2010), pp. 97–111, esp. pp. 98–99.
54 Alexander, The Civil Sphere, p. 259.
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The Commune in
12 Venezuela: A Utopian
Prefiguration
Dario Azzellini

My objective in this chapter is to analyse the Venezuelan mechanism of local self-

government, the commune, as a utopian prefiguration. Since 2005, the Venezuelan
people has organized itself into communal councils, a non-representative form of
local self-government based on assemblies and direct democracy. Each communal
council comprises between 150 and 400 families. The commune is a higher level of
local self-organization, made up of various communal councils and other organiza-
tions present in the territory. At the end of 2017, there were more than 47,000
communal councils and more than 1,850 communes in Venezuela. Local self-gov-
ernment is not merely a question of administering one’s own local affairs, but a
repository of hope; it is seen as an instrument for developing and trying out new ways
of living. Communes can be thought of as concrete, or real utopias, rooted in Latin
American social and political traditions — and linked to a specific form of Latin
American utopianism whose temporality is clearly not the linear temporality of
modernity — connected to revolutionary and socialist experiences and the history of
indigenous, black, and popular resistance.
It is of critical importance to research and spread concrete utopias as constructions
that offer an alternative to the capitalist system, which is destroying the pillars on which
human life is based. Since the neoliberal offensive of the 1980s onwards, capitalism
has largely been justified on the grounds that there is supposedly no alternative and,
indeed, the slogan, “There is no alternative” (TINA), coined by the former British
Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, has been the main line of argument of the
neoliberals. Until a few decades ago, socialism was regarded by its followers and
enemies alike as a possible alternative to the capitalist system, although, as Erik Olin
Wright asserts:

Most people in the world today, especially in its economically developed regions, no longer
believe in this possibility. Capitalism seems to them part of the natural order of things, and
pessimism has replaced the optimism of the will Gramsci once said would be essential if the
world was to be transformed.1

Wright concludes that “envisioning real utopias [Wright’s term for what Bloch or
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236 | Dario Azzellini

Gutierrez call “concrete utopias”, author’s note] is a central component of a broader

intellectual enterprise, which can be called emancipatory social science.”2
Immanuel Wallerstein and other researchers at the Fernand Braudel Center called
their studies of historically practicable social alternatives to capitalism that opened up
spaces in which social relations based on equality, democracy and autonomy could be
experienced, the “scientific study of utopistics”.3 These alternatives, or utopistics, are
relational social practices, based principally on what Wallerstein calls the anti-systemic
movements, and are spread by these movements, rather than through instruments of
the State, the economy, or even academia.4
Real, or concrete utopias have a long history in Latin America. They can be traced
back at least as far as the resistance settlements founded by escaped slaves in remote
areas, frequently with assistance from the indigenous peoples, which were based on
alternative norms of social life to those of the colony. They gained strength in the inde-
pendence movements, especially in their dimension as social revolutions, and
reappeared later in the revolutionary movements of the twentieth century, notably in
the explicitly Latin American idea of poder popular (‘popular’ or ‘people’ power).
Liberation theology, in its opposition to an oppressive Church that sided with the
powerful, articulated the struggle for earthly paradise through concrete utopias. The
best theorist of this is Gustavo Gutiérrez, whose approach is based on Ernst Bloch.5
During the last two decades, the influence of the thought of Bloch and Walter
Benjamin — both of whom stressed utopian anticipation — has regained momentum
among the Latin American Left, where it carries more weight than in the Global
North. Unlike the modernizing, homogenizing logic of real socialism, these concepts
are compatible with decolonizing thoughts, practices and projects.
In 1988, Anibal Quijano stated very clearly, “Toda utopía es después de todo, un
proyecto de reconstitución del sentido histórico de una sociedad” (Every utopia is,
after all, a project for the reconstitution of the historical meaning of a society).6 In
Latin America, for at least the last two or three decades, this project has included
increasingly obvious decolonizing features.
The Venezuelan communes, as concrete or real utopias, are “propuesta[s] de
racionalidad alternativa” (proposals of an alternative rationality) that go further than
the postmodernist and antimodernist neo-conservatism that lauds the seductions of
capital, and further than the project of State socialism.7

Latin America, on the other hand, is beginning to constitute itself through new social practices
of reciprocity, solidarity, equity, democracy, in institutions formed outside or against the State
— in other words, as a private antagonist of private capital, of the State that belongs to this
private capital, and of its bureaucracy — as the possible site of an alternative proposal of
rationality to instrumental reason and to the same historical reason linked to the disenchant-
ment of the world.8

Twenty years ago Latin American utopias may have appeared to be “isolated cells
. . . with minimal contact with the rest of the social tissue . . . conceived of as ‘islets of
the future in the present’”.9 Today, however, it can be unequivocally stated that the
communes in Venezuela are inscribed within a continental framework of proposals
for an alternative rationality, alongside the experiences of the Zapatista autonomous
communities in Chiapas, Mexico, the autonomous, self-governing communities in
Oaxaca and Guerrero, Mexico, the MST settlements in Brazil, or the semi-urban
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The Commune in Venezuela | 237

settlements of popular organizations in Argentina, as well as many other examples of

community self-organization. As we shall see in the case of the Venezuelan communes,
these communities are constructing autonomies that are far from being projects of
self-isolation and autarky, but are instead interconnected with the rest of society and
make significant contributions to the construction of a new Left and a new society.
I shall begin by briefly outlining the way local self-government is structured and
how it works. I shall then examine various Marxist and emancipatory concepts of
utopia and link them to Latin American thought, in order to show why utopian pre-
figuration is regarded as a necessary part of the processes of revolutionary struggle.
There then follows an analysis of how a utopian prefiguration is practised in the com-
munes, which I demonstrate first, with the example of the names that the
communards chose for their communes. The names express a temporality that is
different from that of modernity, since past, present and future overlap and are inter-
woven with each other, thus forming a new meaning with respect to the future.
Another element that shows the character of the communes as concrete or real
utopias is their communal economy, the effort made by the communes to be self-
sufficient and to build an economy by and for the local communities. Lastly, I shall
analyse the communal state, which is the result of the coordination of the communes
at the highest level and will, in the popular imaginary, replace the bourgeois state.
This chapter is based principally on observation and dozens of interviews carried out
in Venezuela between 2006 and 2013.

Communal councils and communes

From the year 2000 onwards, popular organizations, communities and even some
institutions in Venezuela started to develop various local self-government initiatives.
The communal council, a form of self-government at the level of the neighbourhood,
arose from these experiences in 2005, followed by the commune, in 2007, as the tier
of self-government above that. For a large part of the Venezuelan population, espe-
cially among the popular strata, the community (urban or rural) as life space
constitutes the most powerful form of self-identification, and the place where their
social relations tend to be constructed. It can be argued that class becomes community
through stories of shared struggles and existing social relations.
In 2005, after the failure of the Local Public Planning Councils (the first initiative
of local participation at national level, which had remained locked into and dependent
on the liberal representative institutions),10 the president of Venezuela at the time,
Hugo Chávez, once more took up the idea of the communal councils, which had been
created from below, spread awareness of them and gave them a significant boost. In
many places, communal councils were created in the wake of the bill being made
public.11 Communes evolved later as a consequence of the need for communities to
come together at a higher level than the communal council in order to undertake more
wide-ranging projects. A commune is made up of various communal councils within
the same territory and is able to develop longer-term projects and measures over a
wider geographical area, while the decisions continue to be taken in the communal
council assemblies. The commune coordinates the communal councils, social
missions and grassroots organization so that projects are planned, implemented and
assessed jointly.12
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238 | Dario Azzellini

The search for a framework in which participatory democracy had a leading role,
as contemplated in the 1999 constitution, led to popular power and socialism, both
of which are connected with the historical line of the commune, not that of the State.
The idea of local self-administration is also associated with the historical experiences
of the indigenous peoples and the Afro-Venezuelans, as well as with some currents
of Latin American Marxist thought, that of the Peruvian, José Carlos Mariátegui, for
example.
Other council initiatives emerged (workers’, students’, fishermen’s, artisans’ coun-
cils, and so on) and, in 2007, Chávez launched the idea of communal cities as a level
of self-government above the communes. “Councilist structures” in different sectors
of society are understood as the basis of Venezuelan socialism-in-progress and must
cooperate and coordinate with each other at a higher level so that the communal state
can replace the bourgeois state. Chávez’s proposal took up a debate that went back to
the anti-systemic currents and applied it generally.13 A key theoretical reference for
the construction of the “communal system” is Istvan Mészáros’ book, Beyond Capital:
Towards a Theory of Transition, in which he outlines strategies for the transition to
socialism.14
Forms of local self-government have far-reaching implications for the model of the
State. The providentialist function of the State is no longer the responsibility of a
specialized bureaucracy, but is accomplished by means of transfers of public financial
and technical resources to the communities.15 Nevertheless, local autonomy is neither
isolation from State power nor a counterweight to it, but rather a networked self-
administration that supersedes the separation into political, social and economic
spheres and renders the State in its present form partly superfluous. Chávez defined
the communal councils as constituent power16 and the place where they take shape —
whether rural, urban or metropolitan — as the community (defined in terms of social
relations, rather than as an administrative entity). It is principally in the marginalized
zones of the urban and metropolitan areas that popular participation has been seen to
be greatest.17 The percentage of the population organized into communal councils
tends to be higher in rural areas than in urban areas.18 The first communes were
created in rural areas.
Participation helps break down “socio-spatial segregation”.19 The population
living in shanty towns reconquers public space at three levels: collective space, living
space and institutional space. Participation enables communities and their inhabitants
to expand their horizons and plan their lives, which are now more self-determined,
rather than reduced to a mere struggle to survive. It also makes it possible to develop
a utopia that is not located on the far side of what is imaginable, but is connected to
reality. It is a “concrete utopia”, as Ernst Bloch defined any kind of utopia — from
the field of art, architecture or technology to social utopias — that expresses “dreams
of living together in a better way”.20 In the following sections, I shall first of all discuss
various concepts associated with concrete utopias and then examine the communes
of present-day Venezuela as concrete social utopias.

Concrete utopias and prefigurative politics

In contrast to the way the term utopia is commonly used and to the attitudes of the
traditional Left, many authors have considered utopia and utopian prefiguration as
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The Commune in Venezuela | 239

fundamental to revolutionary movements, so taking up Marx’s contention that utopian

thinking is necessary, as he did in a letter to Arnold Ruge in 1843:

It will then become evident that the world has long dreamed of possessing something of which
it has only to be conscious in order to possess it in reality. It will become evident that it is
not a question of drawing a great mental dividing line between past and future, but of realizing
the thoughts of the past. Lastly, it will become evident that mankind is not beginning a new
work, but is consciously carrying into effect its old work.21

Many authors, using a variety of terms and approaches, have asserted the need for
utopia and utopian prefiguration in the struggle for a classless society. Walter
Benjamin talked of Now-time,22 John Holloway of the “cracks” in capitalism that
provide a glimpse of a possible different future.23 In the context of communist praxis,
Bloch considered that the anticipation of social utopia was essential.24 Apart from
engaging with the unfinished past, Bloch’s concept of the not yet also involves hope
and the imagining of a possible different future and a critical praxis of freedom is
necessarily founded on the hope of an achievable future. The importance of experi-
encing the new social relations is fundamental, since as Bloch stresses,25 Marx always
underlined, for example in the “Theses on Feuerbach”, that “the essence of man is
no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the
social relations”.26
Ernst Bloch developed the concept of concrete utopia,27 and made the distinction
between this and abstract utopia:28

The point of contact between dreams and life, without which dreams only yield abstract
utopia, life only triviality, is given in the utopian capacity which is set on its feet and connected
to the Real-Possible. And which in fact tendentially transcends what exists in each respective
case, not only in our nature, but in that of the entire external world of process. Thus the only
seemingly paradoxical concept of a concrete utopia would be appropriate here, that is, of an
anticipatory kind which by no means coincides with abstract utopian dreaminess, nor is
directed by the immaturity of merely abstract utopian socialism.29

A very similar concept of utopia can be found in liberation theology, which devel-
oped, not uncoincidentally, in the Latin American context, where it had, and continues
to have, more of a following. For one of the main theorists of liberation theology,
Gustavo Gutiérrez, who makes direct reference to Bloch, utopia has to be a concrete
utopia:

Utopia, contrary to what current usage suggests, is characterized by its relation to present
historical reality . . . Utopia necessarily means a denunciation of the existing order . . . But
utopia is also an annunciation, an annunciation of what is not yet, but will be; it is the forecast
of a different order of things, a new society . . . [Utopia is] the driving force of history and
subversive of the existing order. If utopia does not lead to action in the present, it is an evasion
of reality.30

Concrete utopia radicalizes the commitment of those men and women engaged in
the struggle and prevents them from betraying their purpose, which is “to achieve a
real encounter among persons in the midst of a free society without social
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240 | Dario Azzellini

inequalities”.31 In addition, according to Gutiérrez, utopia introduces a communal

dimension — which is where concrete utopias are principally developed, practised and
experienced — into the question of emancipation and liberation. The example of local
self-government confirms this.
For Herbert Marcuse, utopia was a necessary exercise in political imagination in
order to be able to develop alternative projects (although he was somewhat pessimistic
that these alternatives could represent a challenge to capitalist ideology as it then
existed in industrialized societies). The supposed “end of utopia”, as Marcuse would
say in his 1967 essay of the same title, was nothing other than “the refutation of those
ideas and theories that use the concept of utopia to denounce certain socio-historical
possibilities”.32
Since the 1960s, a feature of the movements has been the creation of spaces of
possibility for utopian creation. Wini Breines calls them prefigurative movements:

The term prefigurative politics . . . may be recognized in counter institutions, demonstrations

and the attempt to embody personal and anti-hierarchical values in politics. Participatory
democracy was central to prefigurative politics. . . . The crux of prefigurative politics imposed
substantial tasks, the central one being to create and sustain within the live practice of the
movement, relationships and political forms that ‘prefigured’ and embodied the desired
society.33

Marina Sitrin adopted the same term to describe the movements in Argentina after
2000.34 Prefigurative movements are those that “are creating the future in their present
social relationships.”35 The means are not subordinate to the ends. It is not a question
of implementing a programme, but an ongoing process with no predefined outcome,
an “inherently experimental and experiential practice”.36 The Zapatista slogan,
“walking we ask questions” reflects the same idea. Taking into account that prefigu-
rative practices are characteristic of many of the new global movements that have
arisen since 2011, many authors have also called them prefigurative movements.37
Teivanen suggests talking about democratic prefiguration, since, historically speaking,
there have also been religious, esoteric and fascist prefigurative movements.38

Communes and local self-government in Venezuela

Shortly after the first communal councils were formed in 2005, forms of cooperation
between various communal councils also appeared, known as mancomunidades (com-
monwealths) or confederaciones (confederations), or simply emerged in the form of
networks. The discussion and search for a form of self-government on a wider scale
began from below. Chávez took the initiative once more in 2007, when he started to
talk in public about communes as the level above the communal councils. He paid
special attention to the communes, which have been under construction autonomously
and with no “official script” since 2007.
Communes started to spread across the national territory. The communities have
taken over the concept and are now building communes, making it a priority in the
process that the self-governing communal structure is appropriate for the community;
to this end, the form and content of the communes are adapted to their needs and
abilities. Self-government works on the basis of democracy and participation and is
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The Commune in Venezuela | 241

opposed to the logic of institutional representation. In order to develop a structural

framework for the communes, several experiences of existing communes in the
country were studied and discussion was encouraged in the communities. In February
2012, Atenea Jiménez of the Red Nacional de Comuneros y Comuneras (RNC)
(National Network of Communards)39 described the process as follows:

In answer to a call from Chávez in 2007, debates started in each community as to what a
commune should be like. A commune is made up of several communal councils, but there
were historic popular movements that were not linked to the communal council, but then
they could not remain outside the commune [either]. This debate started in almost all the
experiences and it was agreed that all these movements as well as the communal councils
had to start being organically integrated into the commune.
There was also a risk that the commune would simply replace the municipality or the parish
in terms of politico-administrative organization, and what we are proposing is not that kind
of space, because otherwise, it would be, as in many other countries, just another entity in
the bourgeois liberal state. It would mean changing the name but continuing to operate as
before.
We started to build with that in mind, and we also started studying other historical
experiences of communes. We created a space for debate, and invited international guests
who had given the matter some thought. We began the task of visualizing the whole country
in terms of communes. If it is a construction process, it means the people being able to take
back the constituent power that is in the constitution, which is creative, allowing you to open
up spaces and create a whole number of things collectively. So then the people started to
say, let’s build the communes.
We started by mapping and identifying twenty-one pilot experiences. But as everything
at the level of bureaucracy is complicated, that process took a year. It made for a very inter-
esting project because the communes made substantial progress. The Ministry of
Communes was created and we were all thrown out and we decided then and there to
start the process of organization using popular power. There were sixteen communes at
that time. [We asked ourselves] how we could organize the work so as not to work on the
state’s initiative but on our own, with all the progress that we had made, how we could
organize ourselves, by training, teaching ourselves and teaching each other, supporting the
idea of endogenous development. We worked on popular education, the exchange of
knowledge . . . We started out in 2008 with sixteen, and right now there are more than
eighty experiences at national level in the Network, and with every activity that we do,
more experiences are joining in. Driving forward the process of building the commune
without being subordinated to any kind of power that is not the community itself is what
unites us.40

The social bases see the communes as the most important instrument of self-
organization for moving beyond representative democracy, the bourgeois state, and
the prevailing capitalist model. The number of communes registered by the Ministry
of Communes reached 1,862 by December 2017.41 About half of them were registered
in a single year, the majority since the Ministry of Communes appointed a new
Minister in April 2013. Although popular initiatives to set up communes increased
massively from 2010 onwards, the Ministry did not register a single commune until
2012, when it was obliged to do so because of protests and popular pressure from
communes under construction.
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242 | Dario Azzellini

The communes are not decreed by the government, but constructed through a
collective process by the communities, communal councils and popular organizations.
It was initially simpler to build the communes in rural and semi-rural suburban areas
on the outskirts of the cities. In rural areas, there are usually fewer communal councils
(between five and twenty) in each commune and the common needs are more obvious
than in urban areas (where communes generally consist of between 20 and 40
communal councils). One of the first communes appeared in a suburban area south-
east of Barquisimeto, the Ataroa Socialist Commune, which has a high density of
community organizations and capacity for self-government. It is made up of some
thirty communal councils and a large number of structures of popular organization.42
In the local self-government structures, consensual debate is the order of the day.43
At a workshop for forming communal cooperatives in a commune in the Metropolitan
Region of Caracas, Rafael Falcón explains that what is practised is not “the type of
democracy that smothers, where there is a loser and a winner, but a consensual democ-
racy that enables us all to see ourselves in the decisions that are made.”44 Decisions
are put to the vote, although rarely with a simple majority. Spokespersons are selected.
They cannot take decisions (or only very limited ones) and they can be removed from
their posts at any time by the community.45
In the context of forming communes and communal cities, it is important to bear
in mind that a distinction is made between (absolute) politico-administrative space
and (relational) socio-cultural economic space.46 Communes reflect the latter type of
space. They do not have to correspond to existing politico-administrative spaces and
they can cross municipal or even state borders, since the point is for the population to
define and model its own socio-cultural and economic spaces. The mechanism for
building socialist communes and communal cities is a flexible one and they themselves
can define which tasks they are going to undertake. As a result, the construction of
self-government can begin with what the population itself considers most important,
necessary or appropriate. This flexibility makes it possible for them to define their own
path to self-government. Non-representative self-government based on councils
creates a “new geometry of power”. According to Doreen Massey, the concept of
power in human or social geography has been “put to positive political use . . . recog-
nizing the existence and significance, within Venezuela, of highly unequal, and thus
undemocratic, power-geometries”.47
There is an inherent contradiction between representative democracy and its insti-
tutions on the one hand, and the structures of self-government on the other. Despite
all the government declarations in favour of communal councils and communes and
the valuable support that constituted power provides for their construction and
consolidation, it is the mutual antagonism between constituted power and constituent
power that lies at the root of the conflicts that arise during the process of construction.
While representatives of constituted power tend for the most part to view local self-
government structures as mere appendages of constituted power and try to reduce
them to executive bodies responsible for implementing institutional decisions, those
who take part in communal councils and communes regard them as embryonic forms
of a structure that must, in the long term, replace the State and its old institutions:

The communal councils are the right way to go for what the socialism of the future will be
like. . . . Communities discussing budgets . . . , peasants marking out streets, producing their
own electricity . . . the other thing is the workers’ movement, the part that is self-management,
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co-management, endogenous development, all these are key things for that future that we
are beginning to see.48

True popular power is that which is framed within the communal councils, that the councils
should take control of the State. . . . eliminate the parish councils and the bureaucracy of the
councillors and all those things, and in the future, the town halls too. Let the people them-
selves deal with the public policies and have real control of this. OK, so there’s quite a way
to go, but it is being constructed.49

The process of building local self-government structures was marked at a very early
stage by a simultaneous cooperation and conflict between constituent power and
constituted power. Juan Carlos Pinto of the Frente Nacional Comunal Simón Bolívar
(Simon Bolivar National Communal Front) (FNCSB),50 in the State of Barinas, stated
during a communal workshop for building a commune:

Usually the institutions of the state come together and say: this is the project, this is the
Comuna, this is ready, and they present everything. And then you ask yourself: When was this
project ever discussed at all? This destroys the essence, because the essence is the partici-
pation of the people and the people are writing their own history.51

As Melisa Orellana of the FNCSB explains, building a commune includes taking

over various functions generally performed by the State:

The establishment of the Comuna has to do with the whole community. We would like to
share this experience and to strengthen it from the grassroots level on, that’s how we under-
stand people’s power. Concerning the political, the economic, the cultural and the military
level.52

Contradictions and clashes arise especially where the structures of representative

democracy and the new forms of local self-government compete directly for influence
and political control:

Confrontations with the town halls . . . we’ve had them. They’ve called us anti-revolutionaries,
troublemakers etc., etc. Initially, when we started to do the work, we wondered, could we
be wrong about this? But no, we aren’t wrong because we believe that this is the right way
to go. . . . Not the way of the institutions, because the institutions are more of the same, who-
ever they put there, whether he’s a mayor of the revolution or whatever type of mayor they
set up there. It’s always going to be a bureaucratic institution, and that’s what we need to
break with, because the system that the institutions have doesn’t work. Many people say, ‘It’s
not that the staff there are no good.’ No. It’s the system that’s there. The system is no good.53

Those civil servants in the institutions of constituted power who fully support the
process of local self-government building, such as Carmelo González of the
Autonomous Municipal Institute for the Communes of Barinas, are in a minority. As
bureaucratization takes hold, they are increasingly being sidelined by the institutions:

Water, electricity, telephone and the establishment of the EPS (social production companies).
These are problems which are supposed to be managed by the assembly. This is your power
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and not ours as administrative officials. You have the possibility to acquire the power. This
is something new. This is the creation of a new kind of socialism in which there is a real partic-
ipation, which doesn’t exist anywhere so far. If the Comuna becomes a reality in the whole
country, in Barinas, in Venezuela, then as a result of the establishment of socialism — the
new geometry of power — we can attempt to construct a communal government.54

While the grassroots have a very clear idea of what their goals are, the relationship
between constituted and constituent power is defined by constituted power:

We have always said that we must make progress in building the new society with the State,
without the State and against the State. In other words, our relationship with the State is not
defined by us, but by the willingness of the State to subordinate itself to the interests of the
people.55

The Messianic power of the past in the construction of

concrete utopia

In order to build a concrete utopia, the past is strategically invoked and constantly
updated so that it remains relevant in the present and able to project itself towards the
future. This idea is brought out, for example, by Adys Figuera of the 7 Pilares
Socialistas (The 7 Pillars of Socialism) Commune in Anaco (Anzoátegui State), who
refers to what Marx described as “realizing the thoughts of the past . . . mankind is not
beginning a new work, but is consciously carrying into effect its old work”,56 while
simultaneously remaining optimistic and confident that the titanic work being under-
taken will bear fruit in the future:

You can create a new person with those values and principles that we do have but that have
been forgotten; you are not sowing them, and suddenly you see that these people are starting
to change. Your way of life changes too. And how do I feel? Happy, because I know we are
going to reach our goal. Maybe we won’t see the Communal State as constructed socialism,
but we know that our children are going to see it: a better Venezuela, better people, better
men.57

As Benjamin points out, an awareness of past generations is fundamental:

Not man or men but the struggling, oppressed class itself is the depository of historical knowl-
edge. In Marx it appears as the last enslaved class, as the avenger that completes the task of
liberation in the name of generations of the downtrodden. . . . Social Democracy thought fit
to assign to the working class the role of the redeemer of future generations, in this way
cutting the sinews of its greatest strength. This training made the working class forget both
its hatred and its spirit of sacrifice, for both are nourished by the image of enslaved ancestors
rather than that of liberated grandchildren.58

The commune is not only linked to libertarian socialist concepts, but also to the
experiences of the indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan peoples. In the Barlovento area,
where many former slaves took refuge after they managed to escape and where many
Afro-Venezuelans were also confined after the abolition of slavery, Afro-Venezuelan
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communes call themselves cumbes, a cultural reference to the communities that the
runaway slaves formed during the time of slavery.
Chávez established a further connection with the early socialist, Simón Rodríguez,
Bolívar’s tutor and mentor and a central part of the ideological and cultural imaginary
of Bolivarianism:

Look at what Simón Rodríguez said; he was talking about toparchy in 1847. In a document
addressed to Anselmo Pineda on 2 February 1847, Simón Rodríguez said: The true utility of
the creation of a republic is to make the inhabitants take an interest in the prosperity of their land.
This is how provincial privileges are destroyed (Bolívar used to say that in the towns, there was
a caste, and he called it [the caste of] the doctors, the military and the priests, it is the caste
in every place). If only every parish could set itself up as a toparchy. You know topos is the
place and archy is the authority or the government, like in monarchy or oligarchy, in this case,
it is toparchy, which is the government of the place, of the inhabitants of the place; it is popular
government, it is communal government.59

The names of various communes reflect their optimism and utopian ideals. So,
three communes include the term renacer (rebirth, revival) in their names, two make
reference to esperanza (hope) or futuro (future), and there are yet others bearing names
such as Patria Nueva (New Homeland),60 Hacia un Nuevo Mundo (Towards a New
World), Una Nueva Independencia (A New Independence), Abriendo Caminos (Blazing
a Trail) or Derribando Barreras (Breaking Down Barriers). Even communes set up and
registered during the worst days of the crisis in June 2016 bear names such as the
Comuna Socialista Agroalimentaria ‘Sembrando Futuro’ (the ‘Sowing the Future’
Socialist Agri-Food Commune), La Gran Esperanza del Sur (The Great Hope of the
South) or the Guaicamacuto Bicentenario Limón Nuevo Día (the ‘Guaicamacuto
Bicentenario’ Commune in the barrio of El Limón, New Day sector).61 Utopian names
with religious and mystic overtones can also be found, as in the Comuna Socialista San
Francisco de Asís (St. Francis of Assisi Socialist Commune), Comuna Socialista Cristo
Viene (The Christ is Coming Socialist Commune), Comuna Agroturística El Jinete del
Caballo Blanco (The Rider of the White Horse Agritourism Commune), the Comuna
Socialista Santa Rita de Casia (Saint Rita of Cascia Socialist Commune) — Saint Rita
was called the Patron Saint of Impossible Causes — and the Comuna Socialista Estrellas
del Futuro (Stars of the Future Socialist Commune).
The most common name, found in seventy-seven cases, makes some reference to
Chávez, either by including his name or the word comandante (commander), which is
hardly surprising given Chávez’s pivotal role in Venezuela and his support of local
self-government. All the major figures in the revolutionary Bolivarian imaginary can
be found in the names of communes. The Bolivarian imaginary62 connects the popular
imaginary to a revolutionary interpretation of republican heroes such as Simón Bolívar
(commemorated in the names of 30 communes), the peasant general of the Federal
War, Ezequiel Zamora (1817–1860) (19 communes),63 the combatant and indepen-
dence heroine, Manuela Sáenz (11),64 the philosopher, Simón Rodríguez
(1769–1854), Bolívar’s tutor, who frequented utopian socialist circles in France at the
beginning of the nineteenth century (4 communes), Antonio José de Sucre (4),65
Francisco de Miranda (3),66 Josefa Camejo (2),67 José Félix Ribas (2),68 Juan Jacinto
Lara (1778–1859) (2), Eulalia Ramos Sánchez, also known as Eulalia Buroz (1
commune),69 Josefa Joaquina Sánchez (1 commune),70 and nearly two dozen other
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246 | Dario Azzellini

independence heroes. Alongside these major figures, revolutionary Bolivarianism situ-

ates those revolutionary heroes (the heroines are still few in number) and anti-system
fighters who emerged from among the indigenous and African-descended
Venezuelans, the peasants and the poor, the marginalized, the excluded and perse-
cuted, the guerrillas of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as international revolutionaries
and recently assassinated Bolivarian militants. All of these prominent figures are
reflected in the names of communes.
Some twenty communes bear names associated with the indigenous resistance,
including Chief Coromoto (2) and the chieftains Guaicaipuro (1),71 Arichacan (1),
Nigale (1) and Tamanaco (1). These communes are not registered as indigenous
communes (and only three or four are in fact indigenous communities). Names of
communes referring to the Afro-Venezuelan heritage include Negro Miguel (1),72
José Leonardo Chirino(s) (3),73 the Negra Hipólita (1),74 and the fighters for
independence, Pedro Camejo,75 alias Negro Primero (4) and Juana Ramírez, “la
Avanzadora” (1).76 Five communes adopted the name of the anti-Gómez guerrilla
leader, Maisanta (5).77
About fifteen communes have taken the names of guerrilla fighters of the 1960s
and 1970s. Three are associated with Argimiro Gabaldón, alias Commander
Chimiro (1919–1964), and one with Fabricio Ojeda (1929–1966).78 Five communes
are named after Ali Primera, known as El Cantor del Pueblo Venezolano (Singer of
the Venezuelan People).79 The names of international revolutionaries can also be
found, such as Che Guevara (5), José Martí (1), Mao Zedong (1), Rosa Luxemburg
(1) and Camilo Cienfuegos (1). In addition to a dozen communes bearing the names
of local figures, such as rebels, musicians or historians, there is one named after Jesús
Antonio Guerrero, the peasant who was murdered by landowners in 2008, and
another after the Chavista member of parliament, Robert Serra, assassinated by
paramilitaries in 2014.
As was mentioned earlier, the names of the communes provide evidence that Latin
America inhabits a temporality in which past, present and future coexist simultane-
ously, which is therefore, different from the (false) linear temporality of modernity.80
This same Latin American temporality is also a feature of Latin American utopianism
(so contrasting with North American and European forms of utopianism), which takes
“a dual perspective that looks simultaneously towards the past and towards the future
[and] has been interpreted as a variant of the recovery of origins”.81
Tradition and myth have permanent roles in social struggles in Latin America,82
exerting what Walter Benjamin called “a weak Messianic power, a power to which
the past has a claim”.83 For centuries, aspects of past movements and struggles
against the established social order have been turned into banner issues in contem-
porary struggles.84 This is a process that involves constant updating and should not
be confused with nostalgia or folklore. Benjamin said that history and memory are
“secret rendezvous between past generations and our own”,85 and Mazzeo, that
“each update adds to the collective, historical composition of utopia, which thus
displays superimposed folds and layers”.86 This, along with their optimistic view of
the future, is particularly manifest in the names that the communards choose for their
communes.87
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The communal economy

The organized popular bases regard access to the financial resources necessary to build
the new communal economy as a right, albeit with an autonomist perspective. Ramón
Virigay, from a rural commune in the Llanos (the Plains) in the state of Barinas,
commented in a meeting of spokesmen and spokeswomen of eleven communes con-
vened to build the communal town, José Antonio de Sucre: “Even if we definitely need
the government agencies at the moment, we have to be independent tomorrow due to
our development. We cannot depend solely on the state forever.”88
Generally speaking, the communes have attached great importance to social
production projects under collective communal management. They are seen as
providing a guarantee that each commune can develop in accordance with its own
needs. Adys Figuera of the “Comuna 7 Pilares Socialistas” in Anaco, explains:

If we are not the owners of our own system of production, how are we going to be a
commune? It is just more of the same. We continue to be dependent on the same institutions,
and that is not the idea. The idea is to break free from daddy . . . [and] mummy, mummy town
hall and mummy regional government, and for us to own the means of production ourselves.
In fact, in the communities where we are, none of us are developing projects to lay pavements,
because we know that we can lay pavements later with the social production projects. So,
the approach has been to concentrate on social production projects.89

Nevertheless, the function of such projects is not only to improve the conditions
and quality of life in the communities and to lay the foundations for the financial
autonomy of the communes; they are also seen within the wider perspective of the
transformation of the relations of production and of the capitalist economic model.
The central element of the utopia that has taken shape in the communes is to construct
a model of society that does not involve exploitation or domination:

No commune can be autonomous if it does not produce wealth that can be distributed first
of all among its members. If we have a commune that depends on a third party — a governor,
a mayor, whoever — and not on itself to generate its goods and services and wealth, then it
is not a commune. How do we conceive these new socio-economic relationships that arise
in the commune? And surpluses, how are they distributed? What are relationships like in
these socially- or communally-owned enterprises, or whatever, inside the commune? What
are social relationships like there? . . . In a commune, there has to be workers’ control of the
enterprises that are already there and of the ones that are going to be started up. And not
only the workers, but the commune itself decides how it is going to function and how it is
going to produce and what to do with surpluses. Management is socialist because it is the
commune that decides.90

From 2008 onwards, the Enterprises of Communal Social Property (EPSC) model
emerged. Institutions and State-owned enterprises began to adopt and promote this
model of communal enterprise. The Ley Orgánica del Sistema Económico Comunal
[Organic Law of the Communal Economic System] of 14 December 2010 provided
the legal framework for Enterprises of Communal Social Property and there are now
thousands of such enterprises at the level of the commune. In the communities today,
EPSCs of all kinds can be found, although mainly in those sectors covering the most
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248 | Dario Azzellini

pressing needs in the shanty towns and rural communities: production of food and
construction materials and the provision of transport services. As a general rule,
productive enterprises such as textile plants, shoe factories and bakeries are common,
with some involved in agricultural production, although there are others. As Pablo
Arteaga from the “Eje de MACA” commune in Petare, Caracas, states:

In over 40 years of democracy here, it has been proven that private companies have failed;
even more so in means of service supplies: water, waste, electricity, energy, gas and other
types of services. The people from the communal councils who know the functions of these
services theoretically and practically, have taken up the task of finding a solution. That is what
we are doing here; it isn’t easy but it’s not impossible either.91

Some state-owned enterprises are promoting the creation of direct distribution

networks whose products are controlled by the community. In most cases, this arises
from the initiative of the workers themselves, as in the case of several of the state’s
cement companies. The nationalized company, Cemento Andino, started out as the
first cement company to encourage the setting up of community distributors of
construction materials, as well as of cement block plants (firms that produce cement
blocks for house building). Zoraida Benítez of Cemento Andino’s Community and
Environment Department noted that they managed to reduce speculation and lower
prices by eliminating the middlemen.92 Other State-owned cement companies
followed their example. In 2013, the paper and paper products factory, Invepal, began
promoting community shops to sell school supplies directly and, by the end of 2014,
had set up thirty community shops.
Generally speaking, the communities are supported by state institutions — the
Ministry of Popular Power for the Communes in particular — with workshops for
designing the preferred form of organization for the community enterprise. So, after
a long process of training and debate, the communities themselves decide on the struc-
ture and mission of their enterprises.93 During August and September 2010, in Petare,
Gran Caracas, at the Eje de MACA commune (comprising some thirty communal
councils), the author of this chapter was able to attend some excellent workshops deliv-
ered by an employee from the Ministry of Popular Power for the Communes, to
design, in conjunction with the community itself, the management structures for some
community enterprises.94 The debates and discussions concluded that the basic lines
of the enterprises would be decided by the Commune assemblies, as well as who would
work in them, and how any earnings over and above the costs needed to keep the enter-
prises operational would be managed.95
As Rafael Falcón, the Ministry of Communes promoter for the construction of
EPSCs explains:

The present models of leadership, organization and administration are made for individual
interests. They are those of the capitalist companies. There is someone who decides, who
enriches himself, and others that are being exploited and have no influence or control over
the activities. We want to finish with that! How will we finish with it? The means for this, we
must construct here, there is nothing like it existing yet. What should our model company
look like?96

Apart from collective decision-making with respect to the structure and aims of the
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EPSC, the issue that emerged as central for the communities was to avoid creating a
hierarchy of activities (so that differentiation according to task or ability did not lead
to a status or pay hierarchy). Other important questions were permanent training and
mutual learning, job rotation (according to ability), and being of social benefit to the
community, and beyond, if possible.97
The Eje de MACA’s liquid gas distributor began operations in April 2011 and
immediately began generating enough revenue to cover its operating costs and the
wages of its four workers.98 In June 2011, the Commune received six off-road mini-
vans suitable for transporting passengers and began to run its own communal
transport line in the shanty towns in the upper part of the Commune, which previously
had no regular transport.99
As the communes become consolidated, the proposals for productive projects are
increasing in number and size, and also becoming more sophisticated. Adys Figuera
León and Delbia Rosa Avilés of the “7 Pilares Socialistas” Commune, which is part
of the National Network of Communards (RNC), described the main productive
project of their commune as follows:

We have already brought some projects to fruition. We have the resources and they are in
the process of being implemented. The most important is the tile factory, which came about
precisely as the result of the meeting of the National Network of Communards in Carora,
Lara. It was there that we visited their production site for artisanal tiles and brought the idea
back to Anaco because we have the raw material, the clay. We were developing a project for
a factory to build dwellings with prefabricated panels, and the roofs of the houses have tiles.
...
We contacted specialists who make tiles, and we went to different communities taking
courses. The first funding we looked for was to build the kilns. We designed gas kilns . . . the
kilns are built in the communities. We are going to bring the raw material to build them and
what we are going to need is a space to put the kilns and space to store what we produce.
For the house-building factory project, we were working with the Ministry of Science and
Technology, and we worked jointly with the people in our communities: engineers, lathe
operators, builders, and so on, and we drew up the plans to produce prefabricated panels.
After firing clay tiles, the waste material is turned into a light material that can be processed
for use in panel production. The panels we are making right now, we are making by hand, not
with the moulds that we need, because the financing we need to make the moulds is very
high, we are talking about almost fifteen million bolivars [at the time about 3.5 million US
dollars].100

The house-building factory project comprises the tile factory, the mould factory, production
of the self-assembly kits of metal frames and . . . Right now, we’re building the six kilns,
distributed among groups of communal councils. With the kilns we are going to generate
1,326 jobs.101

The idea is to keep expanding the kiln manufacture and to take them to other communities.
It is not only the commune; our vision is the economic transformation of the whole munici-
pality. In this same housing factory, there is also communal carpentry and a factory for sinks;
so that we are the ones who build the houses, and not private companies, so that it will be
managed by the community through the communal councils or the commune.102
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More than a year later, Adys Figuera relates:

We created the housing factory as the ‘Revolutionary Forces for Everyone’ Communal Direct
Social Property Enterprise. We are installing an extrusion plant for tiles. The project has three
phases and a fish-farming project attached to it. We have a project for controlled-environ-
ment greenhouses, the ‘Cultivating Dreams’ Communal Direct Social Property Enterprise,
where we are going to produce vegetables, chilli peppers, onions, paprika . . . at the moment,
because of the lack of financing, we have only installed four of the twelve greenhouses that
we have planned. . . . We created the ‘Hugo Chávez’ school for productive socio-political
training, where we support the other state communities and municipalities with their orga-
nization, planning and economic development. The facilitators and work team come from the
7 Pilares Socialistas commune.103

At the RNC meetings, the communes also agreed to exchange products with each
other on a regular basis, for example, fish from a commune on the coast of Vargas and
goat meat from another in the mountains of Lara. Associated with the RNC, there is
also a barter network and a network of thirteen existing communal currencies, which
can be regarded as an indirect form of barter. The use of local currencies is restricted
to a very specific area, so that, apart from strengthening the local economy, they
supposedly generate a different kind of logic from capitalist logic, because they are
unsuitable for accumulation and their function is limited to exchange values. The
government has promoted and supported the use of local currencies, which was also
included in the Organic Law of the Communal Economic System (LOSEC) of
December 2010.104

Communal State: State or Non-State?

The form of the Communal State is a “work in progress” that is realized through the
construction of councils in different environments and territories, which then coordi-
nate with each other. So far, the territorial council system has three levels: communal
councils, communes and communal cities. In the Organic Law of Communes (LOC
2010), the Communal State is defined as a

form of socio-political organization, founded on the Social State of Law and Justice established
in the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in which power is exercised
directly by the pueblo, by means of self-governing communities with an economic model of
social property and sustainable, endogenous development that makes it possible for the
supreme social happiness of Venezuelan men and women in a socialist society to be achieved.
The basic structural cell of the Communal State is the Commune.105

This implies a profound transformation of constituted power and the re-significa-

tion of the State. By this definition, the Communal State would be a non-State rather
than a State.
According to the debate on the Communal State, the new structure would tend
to gradually replace the old institutional structures. Nonetheless, there have also been
statements by high-level government representatives to the effect that the old institu-
tions and territorial divisions remain intact and that the new structures act as a
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parallel power. The policy guidelines provided by Chávez were clear: “a communal
city, a city where there is no need for parish councils, where there is no need for the
office of mayor or municipal councils, but Communal Power.”106 Chávez was also
clear about the need to destroy the State and that this task could only be accom-
plished by popular power:

In order to advance towards socialism, we need a popular power capable of dismantling the
networks of oppression, exploitation and domination that linger in Venezuelan society,
capable of shaping a new sociality, starting with everyday life, where fraternity and solidarity
go hand in hand with the constant emergence of new ways of planning and producing the
material life of our pueblo. This involves the complete pulverization of the bourgeois form of
the State that we inherited — which is still reproducing itself through its pernicious old prac-
tices — and following through with the invention of new forms of political management.107

The proposals for a Communal (Communard) State and “communard democ-

racy” go back to Kléber Ramírez (Ramírez Rojas 1991; 1998), who was one of the
founders of the guerrilla group, FLN, then one of the leaders of the PRV-FALN
guerrillas and PRV Ruptura (in 1978–1979, Chávez was also part of the clandestine
leadership of PRV Ruptura, as he mentioned in his TV programme Aló Presidente 288
on 27 July 2007). Ramírez became one of the main ideologues of the clandestine civil-
military organization founded by Chávez, MBR-200. Their strategy is consistent with
the “from below” approach and the Communal State has become the political project
of the movements:

The question is how to begin to visualize the way to build socialism. At some point, we as a
pueblo found ourselves trapped; we gained power, we have a revolutionary government, we
have a revolutionary president, the banner of the left was raised . . . but there are still many
gaps in terms of proposals of what twenty-first century socialism is all about. We began
working on how we visualized, or what we thought this construction of the new State should
be like, in order to start from there, and we ended up at the construction of a Communal
State, realizing that this is a non-State. Communal State is a contradiction in terms. Some say
that what we are going to construct is a communal society.
The consensus of the RNC is that the existing State must be dismantled and that a new
form of organization and planning must emerge that starts with the commune as the form
and system of government, the government of the working class. The pueblo, the exploited
pueblo that has to give its labour power in order to live. We are still exploring the subject of
organization, both of the internal network and the country in general, as well as what that
organization of the Communal State or that communal city would look like.108

The Communal State, or more precisely, a form of social organization based on

self-determination, self-management and direct democracy, organized by means of
councils, is the point at which the grassroots movements in Venezuela all come
together. The points of view of the communal councils, the communes and the
National Network of Communards, as well as of the Settlers’ Movement, the move-
ment for workers’ control and the collectives in the shanty towns, all converge on the
Communal State. There is a good deal of support for it among the grassroots too,
since it corresponds to their own ideas, which have fully assimilated the concept of the
Communal State:
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The final stage is the Communal State, which will be led by Popular Power, in other words,
by the pueblo. What we have now is not led by the pueblo; what we have there, in fact, is
constituted power. The idea is this, to actually get to the point where it is Popular Power,
that is, the pueblo, that makes its own decisions.109

The Communal State is like a new Venezuela, let it be the pueblo that runs all its public policies.
How do we get there? We still have some way to go, but, yes, we are raising awareness in
the communities that we truly hold power in our hands, that they can exercise that power,
we are succeeding in becoming a Communal State.110

Nevertheless, dissolution of the representative structures has to be understood as

a long process. According to liberal critics, communal councils would restrict many
of the competencies of the municipalities, and the boundaries of institutional respon-
sibilities would gradually fade away.111 This is precisely where its potential lies.
The political organization of socialist societies in the twenty-first century, as a hori-
zontal confederation of communities or networks of social organizations, forges links
with indigenous and Afro-American experiences and with the communitarian socialist
tradition that was hegemonic prior to the appearance of State socialism. Gustavo
Esteva highlights socialism’s original “ímpetu comunitario” (communitarian impetus)
before it became “colectivismo, burocracia y autodestrucción” (collectivism, bureau-
cracy and self-destruction). “The communities appear as an alternative because the
unity between politics and place is restored, and the pueblo acquires a framework in
which it can exercise its power without having to surrender it to the State.”112 The
concept of the Communal State opens up the possibility of understanding the “State”
as the repository of certain limited, democratically legitimated functions that can
coexist with the autonomy of the communities.113

Conclusions

The processes involved in constructing communes in Venezuela are clear expressions

of a concrete or real utopia prefiguring future social relations, as theorized by Bloch
and Benjamin. They are clearly connected to diverse communal and collective expe-
riences, both traditional and historical, of indigenous and black people in Latin
America and the Caribbean, as well as to the historical legacy of communitarian, non-
state socialism and communism, and especially to Latin American traditions grounded
in poder popular114 and liberation theology.115 The names chosen by the communards
for their communes show how firmly the real utopias that they are building are embed-
ded in the history of Latin American popular resistance and socialism. They are
genuine Latin American (concrete) utopias grounded in the construction of a
decolonized Latin American identity.

Latin American identity, which cannot be defined in ontological terms, is a complex history
of production of new historical meanings drawing on multiple, legitimate heritages of ratio-
nality. It is then a utopia that forms a new association between reason and liberation.116

The communards are generally aware that their aspirations are only going to be
fulfilled if the communes are autonomous in their development. The support of the
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The Commune in Venezuela | 253

State has been important and has helped disseminate and strengthen many processes
of self-organization, while at the same time, inhibiting and limiting them. Attempts at
co-optation, the imposition of agendas and projects, and welfare-based paternalistic
practices by the institutions constantly threaten autonomous popular organization.
The centrality of the State and its role as the entity that allocates financial resources
necessarily make the relationship an unequal one, pushing popular movements and
communities to self-limitation, which is why many communes aspire to economic
autonomy. Quite apart from the diversion of funds, state institutions continue to
operate with a bourgeois logic and structures that do not correspond to the transfor-
mations demanded from below. Institutional logic and social logic are at odds with
each other. Social logic can be recognized in social processes that are seldom
quantifiable. Changes in social relations and the prefiguration of a different society,
which tend to be the most important aspects of the process of building communes,
cannot be measured using the numbers and tables favoured by institutional logic to
present its account of “progress” made. Nonetheless, the communities in Venezuela
are determined to continue along the road to building self-government and are increas-
ingly developing their skills, building networks, and specific pieces of a new economy,
a new politics and a new society.

Notes
1 Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias (London–New York: Verso, 2010), p. 1.
2 Ibid., p. 10.
3 Immanuel Wallerstein, Utopística, o las Opciones Históricas del Siglo XXI (Mexico: Siglo
XXI, 1998).
4 Immanuel Wallerstein, Geopolítica y Geocultura (Barcelona: Kairós, 2007), p. 316.
5 Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation (Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis, 1988), p. 234; Ernst Bloch, Principle of Hope (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986),
2: 580.
6 Anibal Quijano, Modernidad, Identidad y Utopía en América Latina (Lima: Sociedad y
Política), p. 65.
7 Ibid., pp. 65–66.
8 Ibid., p. 69: “América Latina, alternativamente, comienza a constituirse, a través de las
nuevas prácticas sociales, de reciprocidad, de solidaridad, de equidad, de democracia, en
instituciones que se forman fuera del estado o contra él, es decir, como un privado antago-
nista del privado del capital y del Estado del capital privado o de su burocracia. Como la
sede posible de una propuesta de racionalidad alternativa a la razón instrumental, y a la
misma razón histórica vinculada al desencantamiento del mundo.”
9 Fernando Aínsa, “Utopías contemporáneas de América Latina”, América: Cahiers du
CRICCAL 32 (2004): 9–33, p. 18: “células aisladas [..] donde los contactos con el resto del
tejido social se han reducido al mínimo […] concebidas como ‘islotes del futuro en el
presente.”
10 Dario Azzellini, Communes and Workers’ Control in Venezuela: Building 21st Century
Socialism from Below (Amsterdam: Brill, 2017), pp. 81–92.
11 Ibid., pp. 93–123.
12 Ibid., pp. 243–51.
13 Hugo Chávez Frías, El Poder Popular (Caracas: Ministerio del Poder Popular para la
Comunicación y la Información, 2008), p. 67.
14 Istvan Mészáros, Beyond Capital: Towards a Theory of Transition (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1995), pp. 739–70.
15 Fundación Centro Gumilla (FCG), Estudio de los Consejos Comunales en Venezuela (2008),
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254 | Dario Azzellini

http://gumilla.org/files/documents/Estudio-Consejos-Comunales01.pdf#page=3&zoom=
auto,-127,484, p. 6.
16 Chávez Frías, El poder popular, p. 15.
17 Cecilia Cariola and Miguel Lacabana, “Los bordes de la esperanza: nuevas formas de
participación popular y gobiernos locales en la periferia de Caracas”, Revista Venezolana de
Economía y Ciencias Sociales, 11, 1 (2005): 21–41, esp. p. 29.
18 Rafael Romero Pirela, Los consejos comunales más allá de la utopía. Análisis sobre su naturaleza
jurídica en Venezuela (Maracaibo: Universidad del Zulia, 2007), p. 136.
19 Cariola and Lacabana, “Los bordes de la esperanza”, p. 37.
20 Bloch, The Principle of Hope: 1, 479.
21 Karl Marx, “Marx to Ruge, Kreuznach, September 1843”, Marx and Engels Collected
Works (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 3: 141–144, esp. p. 144.
22 Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, in Illuminations (New York:
Schocken Books, 1968), 253–64, esp. p. 261.
23 John Holloway, Crack Capitalism (London: Pluto Press, 2010).
24 Bloch, Principle of Hope.
25 Ernst Bloch, On Karl Marx (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), p. 22.
26 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (New York: International Publishers,
1976), 5: 6–8, esp. p. 6.
27 Bloch, Principle of Hope, 2: 580.
28 Bloch, Principle of Hope, 1: 146.
29 Ibid., 1: 145–146.
30 Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, p. 234.
31 Ibid., p. 237.
32 Herbert Marcuse, “The End of Utopia”, in Five Lectures: Psychoanalysis, Politics and Utopia
(London: Allen Lane — The Penguin Press, 1970), 62–82, esp. p. 62.
33 Wini Breines, Community and Organization in the New Left, 1962–1968: The Great Refusal
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989), p. 6.
34 Marina Sitrin, Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina (Oakland: AK Press,
2006), also Marina Sitrin, Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina
(London–New York: Zed, 2012).
35 Sitrin, Horizontalism, p. 4.
36 Matthijs van de Sande, “The Prefigurative Politics of Tahrir Square — An Alternative
Perspective on the 2011 Revolutions”, Res Publica 19, 3 (2013): 223–239, esp. p. 232.
37 Ibid.; also Marianne Maeckelbergh, “Doing is Believing: Prefiguration as Strategic Practice
in the Alter-globalization Movement”, Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural
and Political Protest 10, 1 (2011): 1–20; Teivo Teivainen, “Occupy representation and
democratise prefiguration: Speaking for others in global justice movements”, Capital &
Class 40, 1 (2016): 19–36.
38 Teivainen, “Occupy representation and democratise prefiguration”.
39 The RNC coordinates communes and initiatives for forming communes, organizing
processes of self-training, mobilization, exchange of knowledge, legislative proposals, and
much more; its goal is the autonomy of the communes and the construction of a communal
State (see below). By the end of 2016, there were more than 500 communes taking part in
the RNC.
40 Atenea Jiménez, 38 years old, National Network of Communards of Venezuela, Bello
Monte, Caracas (I-AJ 2012), 14 February 2012: “A partir de un llamado de Chávez en el
2007 se comenzó a dar el debate en cada comunidad de cómo debería ser la comuna. Varios
consejos comunales forman una comuna pero había movimientos populares históricos que
no estaban articulados al consejo comunal, entonces no podían quedar fuera de la comuna.
Se comenzó a dar ese debate en casi todas las experiencias y se acordó de que en la comuna
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debían estar articulándose orgánicamente todos esos movimientos además de los consejos
comunales.
También había el riesgo de que la comuna sustituyera el municipio o la parroquia en
términos de la organización político-administrativa y nuestra propuesta es que no es un
espacio de ese tipo, porque si no sería como en muchos países una estancia más del estado
liberal burgués. Significaría cambiar el nombre, pero el funcionamiento sigue siendo lo
mismo.
Comenzamos a construir en ese sentido y comenzamos a estudiar también otras experien-
cias históricas de la comuna. Nos dimos un espacio para debatir y también traer invitados
internacionales que han pensado el tema. Empezamos a trabajar como visualizar a todo el
país en comunas. Si es una construcción, es poder retomar el poder popular constituyente,
que está en la constitución, que es creador, que te permite crear espacios y crear una
cantidad de cosas colectivamente, entonces, la gente empezó a decir, vamos a construir las
comunas.
Se comenzó a hacer un mapeo identificando 21 experiencias piloto. Pero como todo es
complicado a nivel burocrático, eso duró un año. Se hizo un trabajo bien interesante porque
las comunas tuvieron un avance sustancial. Nace el Ministerio para las Comunas y nos
botaron a todos y nosotros decidimos allí comenzar un proceso de articulación ya desde el
poder popular. Éramos 16 comunas en ese momento. Cómo articulábamos el trabajo, para
no trabajar desde el estado sino que nosotros mismos, con lo que habíamos avanzado, como
podíamos nosotros articularnos, formando, auto-formarnos, co-formarnos, apoyar el tema
del desarrollo endógeno. Trabajamos con la educación popular, con el intercambio de
saberes . . . Arrancamos en el 2008 con 16 y ahorita hay más de 80 experiencias a nivel
nacional en la Red y en cada actividad que hacemos, se suman más experiencias. Nos une
empujar el proceso de construcción de la comuna sin subordinación a ninguna especie de
poder que no sea la propia comunidad.”
41 And 47,203 communal councils, according to the list of communal councils and communes
officially registered on the website of the Ministerio del Poder Popular para las Comunas,
25 December 2017, http://consulta.mpcomunas.gob.ve/
42 In this case, the wealth of pre-existing experience was also crucial for development. For
more information, http://comunasocialistaataroa.blogspot.com
43 Dario Azzellini, Partizipation, Arbeiterkontrolle und die Commune: Bewegungen und soziale
Transformation am Beispiel Venezuela (Hamburg: VSA, 2010), pp. 271–300; see also Dario
Azzellini and Oliver Ressler, Comuna Under Construction, directed by Dario Azzellini and
Oliver Ressler (2010, Berlin: Good!movies, film, 96 min); also interview with A. Jiménez
(I-AJ 2012).
44 Azzellini and Ressler, Comuna Under Construction.
45 Dario Azzellini, “The Communal System as Venezuela’s transition to Socialism”, in
Communism in the 21st Century, vol. II: Whither Communism? The Challenges Facing
Communist States, Parties and Ideals, edited by Shannon K. Brincat (Westport: Praeger,
2013), 217–49.
46 David Harvey, Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical
Development (London–New York: Verso, 2006).
47 Doreen Massey, “Concepts of space and power in theory and in political practice”,
Documents Anàlisi Geogràfica 55 (2009): 15–26.
48 María Valdez, 62 years old, retired teacher, Benito Juárez Communal Council, Parroquia
San Juan, Caracas (the name and place have been changed) (I-MV 2007), 3 January 2007:
“Los consejos comunales son la piedra en el blanco de lo que será un futuro socialismo
. . . . Comunidades discutiendo presupuesto . . . , campesinos trazando calles, haciendo su
propia electricidad . . . lo otro es el movimiento obrero, la parte de lo que es la autogestión,
la cogestión, el desarrollo endógeno, todas esas son las cosas claves para ese futuro que
estamos vislumbrando.”
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49 Antonio Calabrese, 45 years old, a teacher in the metropolitan education system of the city
administration of Greater Caracas, Benito Juárez Communal Council, Parroquia San Juan,
Caracas (the name of the person and place have been changed), (I-AC 2006) 22 November
2006: “El verdadero poder popular es lo que está enmarcado en los consejos comunales,
que los consejos tomen el control del Estado. . . . que eliminen las juntas parroquiales y el
burocratismo de los concejales y todas estas cosas, y que en un futuro las alcaldías también.
Que sea el propio pueblo que maneje las políticas públicas y tenga el control verdadero de
esto. OK, falta bastante, pero se está construyendo.”
50 The FNCSB is the commune constructed by the Ezequial Zamora Peasant National Front,
the largest peasant organization in Venezuela. Together with other grassroots organizations
they form the Corriente Revolucionaria Bolívar y Zamora [Bolivar and Zamora
Revolutionary Current] (CRBZ). (Azzellini, Communes and Workers’ Control in Venezuela,
pp. 71–73).
51 Azzellini and Ressler, Comuna Under Construction.
52 Ibid.
53 Adys Figuera León, 33 years old, facilitator of popular power, Los 7 Pilares Socialistas
Commune, Anaco, Anzoátegui state. (I-AFL 2012) 11 February 2012: “Enfrentamientos
con las alcaldías . . . hemos tenido. Nos han tachado de antirrevolucionarios, problemáticos,
etc., etc. Inicialmente cuando empezamos a hacer el trabajo uno se preguntaba ¿será que
nosotros estamos equivocados? Pero no, nosotros no estamos equivocados porque nosotros
creemos en que éste es el verdadero camino. . . . Las instituciones, porque las instituciones
son más de lo mismo, pongan quien pongan, sea un alcalde de la revolución, sea un alcalde
del que se monte allí. Siempre eso va a ser una institución burócrata y eso es lo que nosotros
necesitamos romper, porque es que el sistema que tienen las instituciones no sirve. Mucha
gente dice ‘No es que las personas que están ahí no sirven’ No. Es el sistema que está. El
sistema no sirve.”
54 Azzellini and Ressler, Comuna Under Construction.
55 Andrés Antillano, 41 years old, a sociologist, Comités de Tierra Urbana (CTU), Antímano,
Caracas (I-AA 2016), 20 April 2008: “Siempre hemos dicho que debemos avanzar en la
construcción de una nueva sociedad con el estado, sin el estado y contra el estado. O sea
que la relación con el estado no la definimos nosotros, sino la define la disposición del estado
de subordinarse a los intereses del pueblo.”
56 Marx, Marx to Ruge, Kreuznach, September 1843.
57 Figuera León (I-AFL 2012): “Tú puedes crear una persona nueva con esos valores y prin-
cipios que sí tenemos pero que están olvidados, que no los estás sembrando y que de repente
tú ves que esas personas empiezan a cambiar. Tu forma de vida cambia también. ¿Y que
cómo me siento? Feliz porque sé que vamos a lograr la meta. Quizá no veamos el Estado
Comunal como socialismo construido pero sabemos que los hijos que nosotros tenemos sí
lo van a ver: una mejor Venezuela, unas mejores personas, unos mejores hombres.”
58 Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, p. 262.
59 Ceremony on the occasion of the annual message to the National Assembly, Palacio Federal
Legislativo [Federal Legislative Palace], 13 January 2007: “Fíjate lo que decía Simón
Rodríguez, él hablaba en 1847 de la toparquía. En un documento dirigido a Anselmo
Pineda, el 2 de febrero de 1847, dice Simón Rodríguez: La verdadera utilidad de la creación
de una república, es hacer que los habitantes se interesen en la prosperidad de su suelo. Así se
destruyen los privilegios provinciales (Bolívar decía que en los pueblos había una casta, y él
la denominaba de los doctores, los militares y los curas, es la casta en cada lugar). Ojalá
cada parroquia se erigiera en toparquía. Ustedes saben, topos de lugar y arquía es la auto-
ridad o el gobierno, como la monarquía, la oligarquía, en este caso es la toparquía, es el
gobierno del lugar, de los habitantes del lugar; es el gobierno popular, es el gobierno
comunal.” Chávez, El poder popular, p. 43.
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60 In the Venezuelan context, the cultural value of Patria is less nationalistic than in other Latin
American cases, where the discourse of the Patria Grande, the Americas, continues to be
followed.
61 It was called Guaicamacuto Bicentenario in honour of the Indian chief of the same name who
led the rebellion against the Spaniards in 1555.
62 See the entry by Dario Azzellini, “Bolivarianism, Venezuela”, in International Encyclopedia
of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to the Present, vol. 7, edited by Immanuel Ness (Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 412–16.
63 Azzellini, “Zamora, Ezequiel (1817–1860)”, in International Encyclopedia of Revolution and
Protest, pp. 3706–7.
64 Manuela Sáenz (1797–1856), Ecuadorian, and one of the heroines of the struggle for inde-
pendence, was Simon Bolivar’s sentimental companion. For centuries her role has been
reduced to that of Bolivar’s companion. Today, she is recognized as a combatant and leader
of the independence movement and considered a precursor of Latin American feminism.
65 Antonio José de Sucre (1795–1830), known as the Grand Marshal of Ayacucho, the most
skilled military strategist in the struggle for independence.
66 Francisco de Miranda (1750 –1816), a revolutionary precursor of the struggle for
Venezuelan independence. Miranda fought in the American Revolutionary War and the
French Revolution. In 1806, he failed in his attempt to trigger a War of Independence in
Venezuela when he established a short-lived beachhead at Ocumare de la Costa with a small
army of liberation.
67 Josefa Camejo (1791–1862) was a heroine of Venezuelan independence, she joined the
1810 revolution; in 1811, she raised groups of women to take part in the armed struggle;
in 1821, at the head of 300 slaves, her attempted uprising in the region of Coro against the
Royalists failed; at the beginning of May 1821 she was successful with her independence
uprising in the Paraguaná peninsula.
68 José Félix Ribas (1775–1815), a hero of the War of Independence in Venezuela.
69 Eulalia Ramos Sánchez (1795–1817), a heroine of Independence and part of the group
close to Bolívar. She died in combat.
70 Josefa Joaquina Sánchez (1765–1813) took part in an independence conspiracy in 1797–
1799 and is credited with having embroidered the first flag of Venezuela.
71 He was an indigenous leader of the pre-Columbian period in the Spanish province of
Venezuela in the sixteenth century who organized and successfully carried out a fierce resis-
tance against the Spanish settlers, driving them out of the region of Los Teques in the
Caracas valley and the nearby coastland for almost a decade. See Azzellini, “Guaicaipuro
(1530–1568)”, in International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, 1471–2.
72 The Negro Miguel was an African slave who, in 1553, led the first rebellion of African slaves
recorded by the Spanish colonial authorities. The revolt interrupted a gold rush in the
Venezuelan mining region of Buría. The Negro Miguel established a maroon settlement.
Today he is remembered as a leader in the historic struggle for racial justice in Venezuela.
See Azzellini, “Venezuela, Negro Miguel Rebellion, 1552”, in International Encyclopedia of
Revolution and Protest, 3451–2.
73 José Leonardo Chirinos, (also Chirino) (?–1796) is recognized as a precursor of the struggle
for independence and the abolition of slavery and as a symbol of Venezuela’s African
heritage. See Azzellini, “Chirinos, Jose Leonardo (?–1796)”, in International Encyclopedia
of Revolution and Protest, p. 737.
74 Simón Bolívar’s wet nurse.
75 Pedro Camejo (c.1790–1821), a lieutenant and the only officer of colour in Bolívar’s army,
was nicknamed Negro Primero (First Black) because he was always in the front line of attack
due to his skill with a spear.
76 Juana Ramírez (1790–1856) was the daughter of an African slave mother and white father.
She was emancipated at birth and became a military heroine in the struggle for indepen-
dence.
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77 Pedro Rafael Pérez Delgado (1881–1924), better known as “Maisanta” was a deserter from
the army who led a guerrilla fight against the dictatorial government of Juan Vicente Gómez,
and died in prison. He was Hugo Chávez’s great-grandfather.
78 See Azzellini, “Venezuela, guerrilla movements, 1960s to 1980s”, in International
Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, pp. 3441–5.
79 Ali Primera (1941–1985) was a singer-songwriter and also a communist militant.
80 The latter has also been called into question by historians such as Marc Bloch, The
Historian’s Craft (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1954/2004), pp. 34–35:
“Observation proves, on the contrary, that the mighty convulsions of that vast, continuing
development are perfectly capable of extending from the beginning of time to the present.
What would we think of a geophysicist who, satisfied with having computed their remote-
ness to a fraction of an inch, would then conclude that the influence of the moon upon the
earth is far greater than that of the sun? Neither in outer space, nor in time, can the potency
of a force be measured by the single dimension of distance.”
81 Fernando Aínsa, “Utopías contemporáneas de América Latina”, p. 24: “una visión dual
que se proyecta simultáneamente hacia el pasado y el futuro [y] se ha traducido en una
variante de recuperación de los orígenes.”
82 Miguel Mazzeo, El sueño de una cosa (Introducción al Poder Popular) (Caracas: El Perro y la
Rana, 2007), p. 56.
83 Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, p. 254.
84 To name but a few, Tupac Amaru, José Martí, Farabundo Martí, Augusto César Sandino,
Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, and so on.
85 Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, p. 254 (Author’s translation from the
German).
86 Mazzeo, El sueño de una cosa, p. 57: “cada actualización contribuye a una composición
colectiva e histórica de la utopía que, de este modo, presenta pliegues y estratos super-
puestos”.
87 The database for all the information about the names of communes is the list of 1,500
communes officially registered on the website of the Ministerio del Poder Popular para las
Comunas [Ministry of Popular Power for the Communes], 18 June 2016,
http://consulta.mpcomunas.gob.ve/
88 Azzellini and Ressler, Comuna Under Construction.
89 Adys Figuera León (I-AFL 2012): “Si nosotros no somos dueños de nuestro sistema de
producción ¿cómo vamos a ser una comuna? Es como que más de lo mismo. Vamos a seguir
dependiendo de las mismas instituciones y la idea no es esa. La idea es desprendernos del
papá . . . la mamá alcaldía, la mamá gobernación y ser nosotros mismos dueños de nuestros
propios medios productivos. De hecho nosotros ninguno, en las comunidades donde
estamos, desarrollamos proyectos para echar una acera, porque sabemos que las aceras con
los proyectos socio-productivos después las podemos hacer. Entonces el enfoque ha sido
el proyecto socio-productivo.”
90 A. Jiménez (I-AJ 2012): “Ninguna comuna que no tenga una producción de riqueza que
se pueda distribuir primero que todo entre sus miembros puede ser autónoma. Si tenemos
una comuna que dependa de un tercero, de un gobernador, de un alcalde de un quien sea,
que no depende de sí misma, de su propia generación de bienes y de servicios y de riquezas,
entonces no es una comuna. ¿Cómo pensamos esas nuevas relaciones económicas sociales
que se dan en la comuna? ¿Y los excedentes como se distribuyen? ¿Cuál es la relación en
esas empresas de propiedad social o comunal o como sea que están dentro de la comuna?
¿Cómo son las relaciones sociales ahí? […] En la comuna tiene que haber control obrero
de las empresas que están ahí y de las que van a nacer. Y no solamente los trabajadores sino
que la propia comuna decide cómo va a funcionar y cómo se va a producir y qué se hace
con los excedentes. La gestión es socialista porque la comuna decide.”
91 Azzellini and Ressler, Comuna Under Construction.
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92 Zoraida Benítez, 45 years old, a worker, Community and Environment Department,

Cemento Andino, Monay, Trujillo (I-ZB 2010), 10 August 2010.
93 Azzellini and Ressler, Comuna Under Construction.
94 Ibid.
95 Elodia Rivero, c.60 years old, a retired teacher, “Eje de MACA” Commune, Petare, Gran
Caracas, Miranda (I-ER 2011), 19 August 2011, and Pablo Arteaga, c.50 years old, unem-
ployed, “Eje de MACA” Commune, Petare, Gran Caracas, Miranda (I-PA 2011), 9
August 2011.
96 Azzellini and Ressler, Comuna Under Construction.
97 Ibid.
98 Lorenzo Martini, c. 50 years old, a lawyer, “Eje de MACA” Commune, Petare, Gran
Caracas, Miranda (I-LM 2011), 19 August 2011.
99 Arteaga (I-PA 2011).
100 Figuera León (I-AFL 2012): “Ya hemos materializado unos proyectos. Tenemos los
recursos y están en proceso de ejecución. El más importante es la fábrica de tejas que nace
precisamente de un encuentro que tuvimos en el encuentro de la Red Nacional de
Comuneros y Comuneras en Carora, Lara. Visitamos por allá la elaboración de teja arte-
sanal y llevamos a Anaco la idea porque tenemos la materia prima, la arcilla. Nosotros
estábamos desarrollando el proyecto de una fábrica de viviendas con paneles prefabricados.
El techo de la vivienda lleva teja.
Nos pusimos en contacto con especialistas que hacen tejas, y fuimos a diferentes comuni-
dades haciendo cursos. El primer financiamiento que buscamos es para hacer los hornos.
Diseñamos hornos a gas. […] Los hornos se hacen en las comunidades. Vamos a llevar la
materia prima para construirlos y lo que vamos a necesitar es un espacio para colocar el
horno y un espacio para ir almacenando lo que se va a producir. Para el proyecto de fábrica
de casas estuvimos trabajando con el Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, e hicimos un
trabajo mancomunado con gente de nuestras comunidades: ingenieros, torneros, albañiles,
etc., elaboramos los planes para producir los paneles prefabricados.
El desecho de la producción de tejas de arcilla después de quemar se convierte en un mate-
rial liviano que va a pasar a ser procesado para utilizarlo en la producción de los paneles.
Los paneles que estamos haciendo ahorita los estamos haciendo artesanalmente, no con
las hormas que necesitamos porque el financiamiento que necesitamos para hacer las
hormas es muy elevado, estamos hablando de casi 15 millones de bolívares” [en esas fechas
unos 3.5 millones de dólares US].”
101 Delbia Rosa Avilés, 45 years old, a facilitator of popular power, Los 7 Pilares Socialistas
Commune, Anaco, Anzoátegui state (I-DRA 2012), 11 February 2012: “El proyecto de
fábrica de viviendas está compuesto por la fábrica de tejas, la fábrica de hormas, la produc-
ción del Kit de estructuras metálicas y... Ahora se están haciendo los seis hornos,
distribuidos por agrupaciones de consejos comunales. Con los hornos vamos a generar
1.326 puestos de trabajo.”
102 Figuera León (I-AFL 2013): “La idea es seguir expandiendo la elaboración de hornos y
llevarlos a otras comunidades. No es solamente la comuna, estamos trabajando en visión
de la transformación económica de todo el municipio. En esa misma fábrica de vivienda
está también la carpintería comunal y la fábrica de bateas. Para que nosotros construyamos
las casas, que no sean empresas privadas sino que eso lo va a manejar la comunidad a través
de los consejos comunales o la comuna.”
103 Ibid.: “La fábrica de viviendas la creamos como Empresa de Propiedad Social Directa
Comunal ‘Fuerzas Revolucionarias Para Todos’. Estamos instalando la planta extrusora
de tejas. El proyecto tiene tres fases y consigo lleva un proyecto anexo de la cría de peces
en lagunas. Tenemos un proyecto de casas de cultivo en ambiente controlado, que es la
Empresa de Propiedad Social Directa Comunal “Cultivando Sueños”, allí vamos a
producir hortalizas sembrar ají, cebollín, pimentón . . . por ahora por falta de financia-
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260 | Dario Azzellini

miento hemos instalado 4 casas de cultivo de doce que planeamos. . . . Creamos una escuela
de formación sociopolítica productiva “Hugo Chávez” donde apoyamos a las demás
comunidades y municipios del estado para la organización, planificación y desarrollo
económico. Los facilitadores y el equipo de trabajo salen de la Comuna 7 Pilares
Socialistas.”
104 The law establishes that the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV) [Central Bank of
Venezuela] would regulate everything related to the communal currency. The BCV,
however, is unable to intervene since it is not within its remit to regulate any currency other
than the national one, the Bolivar, as was established by the Constitution and also by the
BCV Act. So, ironically, there is a law that gives legal status to the communal currencies,
which exist in any case, without such local currencies being able to be regulated in any way.
105 LOC (Ley Orgánica de las Comunas) (Caracas: Asamblea Nacional de la República
Bolivariana de Venezuela, 2010: “forma de organización político social, fundada en el
Estado Social de Derecho y de Justicia establecido en la Constitución de la República
Bolivariana de Venezuela, en la cual el poder es ejercido directamente por el pueblo, a través
de autogobiernos comunales con un modelo económico de propiedad social y desarrollo
endógeno y sustentable que permita alcanzar la suprema felicidad social de los venezolanos
y las venezolanas en la sociedad socialista. Célula fundamental de conformación del Estado
Comunal es la Comuna.”
106 Hugo Chávez Frías, “Fragmentos del Discurso de toma de posesión,” El Poder Popular.
Serie Ensayos. Propuestas para el debate (Caracas: IMU, Instituto Metropolitano de
Urbanismo, 2007), p. 6: “una ciudad comunal, una ciudad donde no hagan falta juntas
parroquiales, donde no hagan falta alcaldías ni concejos municipales, sino Poder
Comunal.”
107 Hugo Chávez Frías, “Propuesta del Candidato de la Patria Comandante Hugo Chávez
para la Gestión Bolivariana Socialista 2013–2019”, 2012, Internet version 16 September
2012, http://www.chavez.org.ve/Programa-Patria-2013–2019.pdf. p. 2: “Para avanzar
hacia el socialismo, necesitamos de un poder popular capaz de desarticular las tramas de
opresión, explotación y dominación que subsisten en la sociedad venezolana, capaz de
configurar una nueva socialidad desde la vida cotidiana donde la fraternidad y la solida-
ridad corran parejas con la emergencia permanente de nuevos modos de planificar y
producir la vida material de nuestro pueblo. Esto pasa por pulverizar completamente la
forma de Estado burguesa que heredamos, la que aún se reproduce a través de sus viejas
y nefastas prácticas, y darle continuidad a la invención de nuevas formas de gestión
política.”
108 Jiménez (I-AJ 2012): “La cuestión es cómo comenzar a visualizar cual es la vía para cons-
truir socialismo. Nosotros como pueblo nos encontramos entrampados en algún momento:
llegamos al poder, tenemos un gobierno revolucionario, tenemos un presidente que es revo-
lucionario, se levantó la bandera de la izquierda . . . pero todavía hay muchos vacíos en
términos de propuestas de qué es el socialismo del siglo XXI. Nosotros empezamos a
trabajar en cómo visualizamos o creemos que debe ser esa construcción del nuevo Estado
para empezar por ahí y llegamos luego a que la construcción es la de un Estado Comunal,
entendiendo que eso es un no-estado. Es como una contradicción el término de Estado
Comunal. Algunos dicen: es la sociedad comunal lo que se va a construir.
Lo que es consenso de la RNC es que es el desmontaje de este Estado que existe, y que
debe surgir una nueva forma de organización y ordenamiento que parte de la comuna como
una forma y un sistema de gobierno, el gobierno de la clase trabajadora. El pueblo, el pueblo
explotado que tiene que dar su fuerza de trabajo para poder vivir. Seguimos profundizando
en el tema de la organización, tanto de la red interna como del país en general, cómo sería
esa organización de Estado Comunal o esa ciudad comunal.”
109 Avilés (I-DRA 2012): “La recta es el Estado Comunal que va a ser dirigido por el Poder
Popular, o sea, por el pueblo. Lo que tenemos ahora no es dirigido por el pueblo. Tenemos
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The Commune in Venezuela | 261

ahí al poder constituido. La idea es esa realmente llegar a que sea el Poder Popular, el
Pueblo el que tome sus propias decisiones.”
110 Figuera León (I-AFL 2012): “El Estado Comunal es como una nueva Venezuela, que sea
el pueblo el que maneje todas sus políticas públicas. ¿Cómo llegar a hacer esto? Todavía
nos falta, pero si nosotros concientizamos a las comunidades de que de verdad tenemos el
poder en las manos, de que ellos pueden ejercer ese poder, nosotros logramos llegar a ser
Estado Comunal.”
111 Catalina Banko, “De la descentralización a la ‘nueva geometría del poder’”, Revista
Venezolana de Economía y Ciencias Sociales 14, 2 (2008): 167–84.
112 Gustavo Esteva, “Otra mirada, otra democracia”, Rebelión.org (2 February 2009), Internet
version: http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=80143: “Las comunidades aparecen
como alternativa porque en ellas se restablece la unión entre la política y el lugar y el pueblo
adquiere una forma en que puede ejercer su poder, sin necesidad de rendirlo al Estado.”
An English version of the same article was also posted as “Another Perspective, Another
Democracy” in the Journal of the Research Group on Socialism and Democracy (10 April,
2011), http://sdonline.org/51/another-perspective-another-democracy1/
113 Ibid.
114 Mazzeo, El sueño de una cosa.
115 Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation.
116 Quijano, Modernidad, Identidad y Utopía en América Latina, p. 69: “La identidad latinoa-
mericana, que no puede ser definida en términos ontológicos, es una compleja historia de
producción de nuevos sentidos históricos, que parten de legítimas y múltiples herencias de
racionalidad. Es, pues, una utopía de asociación nueva entre razón y liberación.”

Interviews
Antillano, Andrés, 41 year old, sociologist, Comités de Tierra Urbana (CTU), Antímano,
Caracas (I-AA 2016) 20/04/2008.
Avilés, Delbia Rosa, 45 year old, facilitator of popular power, Los 7 Pilares Socialistas
Commune, Anaco, Anzoátegui State (I-DRA 2012) 11/02/2012.
Arteaga, Pablo, ca. 50 year old, unemployed, Commune “Eje de MACA”, Petare, Gran
Caracas, Miranda (I-PA 2011) 19/08/2011.
Benítez, Zoraida, 45 year old, worker, Community and Environment Department, Cemento
Andino, Monay, Trujillo (I-ZB 2010) 10/8/2010.
Calabrese, Antonio, 45 year old, teacher in the metropolitan education system of the city admin-
istration of Greater Caracas, Benito Juárez Communal Council, Parroquia San Juan, Caracas
(name of person and place changed) (I-AC 2006) 22/11/2006.
Figuera León, Adys, 33 year old, facilitator of popular power, Los 7 Pilares Socialistas,
Commune, Anaco, Anzoátegui State (I-AFL 2012) 11/02/2012; and (I-AFL 2013)
17/09/2013.
Jiménez, Atenea, 38 year old, National Network of Communards of Venezuela, Bello Monte,
Caracas (I-AJ 2012) 14 February, 2012.
Martini, Lorenzo, ca. 50 year old, lawyer, Commune “Eje de MACA”, Petare, Gran Caracas,
Miranda (I-LM 2011) 19/08/2011.
Rivero, Elodia, ca. 60 year old, retired teacher, Commune “Eje de MACA”, Petare, Gran
Caracas, Miranda (I-ER 2011) 19/08/2011
Valdéz, María, 62 year old, retired teacher, Benito Juárez Communal Council, Parroquia San
Juan, Caracas (name of person and place changed) (I-MV 2007) 03/01/2007.
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Walking towards Utopia:

13 Experiences from
Argentina
Marina Sitrin

“What do I dream about? I don’t know. It’s funny, you know before I was
dreaming only about the future, and now I’m dreaming in the present.”1

“The dream is like utopia. I believe that we have to learn how to continue when
we are awake, and we must be awake to build new forms that will allow us to
arrive at this utopia-this revolution we’re seeking.”2

“Utopia is on the horizon: When I walk two steps, it takes two steps back. I walk
ten steps, and it is ten steps further away. What is Utopia for? It is for this, for
walking.”3

This chapter explores a few of the movements that arose in Argentina shortly before
and after the popular rebellion of the 19th and 20th December 2001, movements
whose forms of organizing, such as horizontalidad (horizontalism), prefigurative
politics and autogestión (self-organization), closely coincide with movements that have
emerged over the past twenty years across vast geographic areas, movements that
many — particularly the participants — find to be full of transformative possibilities.
This context opens up the question of what sorts of lessons communities and societies
can learn from the Argentine experience, not in a linear way, as something to be
adopted, but as an invitation to join the walk towards freedom and an autonomous,
self-organized destination, towards collective discovery and change.
The overarching concept of utopia used in this chapter directly follows the ideas
raised by those in the movements in Argentina. I lived and conducted ethnographic
and oral historical research in Argentina, beginning in 2002, and continue to spend
time there, meeting with movements and interviewing participants. I have written two
books on the topic of the autonomous movements, and this essay is based on my
ethnographic and interview-based work. Arguments are put forward on what people
in the movements have been saying directly about the concepts of horizontalidad, auto-
gestión, dreaming and utopia.
These are movements in which theory is actively being produced and ideas
discussed and debated regularly. While all movements create theory in their practice,
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Walking towards Utopia | 263

in Argentina there are frequent discussions within movements and inter- and intra
movement to discuss topics such as autonomy, the state, and how to organize hori-
zontally. One movement participant, in reference to the concept of horizontalidad,
stated:

Horizontalidad isn’t an end all, it has concrete limits that have to do with our various human
characteristics. I think that at first it’s a sort of utopia, which is a good place to begin the walk,
the walk towards horizontalidad. I also believe going on this walk towards horizontalidad is one
of the intentions of horizontalidad.4

This conceptualization can be traced back to the very origins of the concept, with
Utopia being a desired place, and a non-place. A place to walk, but never arrive. The
role of imagination and dreaming is central in the walk towards utopia, and, as refer-
enced by movement participants again and again, part of what they see as different
and new in what they are doing is that it is not a movement that is following a blueprint
or pre-thought agenda, but something that is a dream and imagined as people are
creating it, and thus, as it is created, it changes and becomes something different, still
following the imagination and dream.
Similar concepts also emerged from the Zapatistas in Chiapas Mexico, with
Subcomandante Marcos reflecting that they were an army of dreamers. In 1994, the
Zapatistas declared a resounding “Ya Basta!” to the Mexican state and the world and
rather than make demands on institutional power, autonomy created dozens of self-
governing communities; to Argentina, in 2001, with the popular rebellion singing,
“Que Se Vayan Todos! Que No Quede Ni Uno Solo! ”, through horizontal assemblies
organizing alternatives, from recuperating workplaces and creating popular media to
building autonomous communities on the peripheries of cities. And the hundreds of
thousands of people around the globe, often led by women, organized in neighbour-
hoods and entire communities to defend the earth, water and air, using forms of direct
democracy and direct action. Then to Occupy and the Movements of the Squares,
mobilizing millions around the world and looking to one another instead of the
institutions that created the crisis.
People have been finding ways to resist the various crises (economic, political,
social, environmental) by organizing together without hierarchies and in the space of
resistance and are creating something new, focusing on social relationships and prefig-
uring their desired ends. This way of relating has been referred to by some in Argentina
as Living Sin Patrón (without a boss).5 Borrowing from the recuperated workplace
movement, which uses the slogan Sin Patrón when describing workplaces after they
are recuperated from the owners, this idea is taken a step further to refer to the way
people are trying to live day-to-day and how they are changing individually and collec-
tively with and within this aspiration. Many now describe an existence where their
lives are their own — not having them dictated from above, without bosses or a market-
determined value placed on their relationships — and use the shorthand “living Sin
Patrón” to help reflect this way of living/being/doing.
What has been taking place around the world from the Zapatistas to Occupy and
the Movements of the Squares post-2010, is part of a new wave that is both revolu-
tionary in the day-to-day sense of the word, as well as without precedent with regard
to consistency of form, politics, scope and scale. Separately, many of these forms are
not “new”; however, it is taking them together that makes them such. These new forms
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264 | Marina Sitrin

have been practiced for over fifteen years in Argentina and include a diversity of
groupings, classes and geographic locations.

Societies in movement

The movements described herein paint a small part of a much larger picture of soci-
eties and communities in movement. These are not traditional social movements, with
participants mobilized around particular slogans or a single demand, planned and pre-
organized by a coordinating committee. Neither do they use pre-formed tactics to
meet a set strategy. The movements emerge from necessity, use the assembly form,
and having found demands on governments to be fruitless — with governments either
ignoring their needs or refusing to meet them — they turn to one another, creating
horizontally and self-organizing autonomously. They reflect that their choices of
tactics and strategies necessarily change, as their experiences inform the choices. As
with the overarching guide of a utopia similar to that which Eduardo Galeano outlined.
The participants in these movements have generally not been politically active
before, and most identify themselves as neighbours, grandmothers, daughters or
sisters. They do not organize with party or union structures and do not seek represen-
tative formations. They come together in assembly forms, initially not out of any
ideology, but because being in a circle is the best way for people to see and hear one
another. They strive for horizontalism because they do not want to replicate those
structures where power is something wielded. They do not start by talking about
power or empowerment, and they end up creating new theories and practices of what
it means to change the world.6
I am using the term “societies in movements” to help describe these movements
and to reflect a conscious break in the concept and framing of social movements. This
is not done to provide another theoretical framework, but as a loose description that
allows for more creative engagement than those so far offered in the contentious
politics field. First articulated by Raúl Zibechi in relation to Bolivia in the early 2000s,
I use the phrase both with the literal meaning (societies/communities that are moving)
and also as a way to help go beyond the structures imposed by social movement theory.
Raúl Zibechi argues that:

The old pattern of social action began with a strike in a workplace, backed by a general strike
and demonstrations. In the new pattern of action, the mobilization starts in the spaces of
everyday life and survival (markets, neighborhoods) putting . . . societies in movement, self-
articulated from within. And not laying siege, as transpired under colonialism two centuries
ago, but rather boring from within until cracks emerge and, later, partially smashing the
system.7

I take this a bit further and extend it to people creating their own communities, not
just those organized in geographic locations. I find it a more appropriate way of
speaking about these non state-centred movements that have emerged over the past
two decades, thus broadening the understanding. It is also useful in thinking about the
role of imagination and dreams as a utopian path, over something like a specific goal
based on a demand.
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Walking towards Utopia | 265

Occupy and the movements of the squares

Between 2011 and 2012,8 millions of people gathered in plazas and squares declaring:
No Nos Representan! (They Don’t Represent Us!) in Spain, Ya Basta! (in reference to
the Zapatistas) in Greece, Vy nas dazhe ne predstavlyayete! (You can’t represent us
and you cannot even imagine us!) in Russia, and the one that sparked it all off, Kefaya!
(Enough!) in Egypt.
People came together in the “no”, the refusal, and, looking to one another, began
to talk about alternatives. Turning their backs on the state and institutions that brought
them to this moment, they turned to one another, forming assemblies and, over time,
networks and self-organization groups.9 The media were incredulous, constantly
asking, what do they want? The traditional left was equally so, as well as angry when
the movements did not accept their leadership. And the social scientists were a combi-
nation of both, concluding that these were not movements but appearances, “we are
here” moments.10
The comparison with Argentina in the years after the economic collapse and the
current movements is astounding, even down to the critique they both received from
the traditional left and the social scientists. Most were critiqued as “flash in the pan”
moments rather than movements, and unserious due to their focus on social relation-
ships and prefiguration over building parties with an eye to state power.
A number of years have passed since the Plaza occupations, yet the reverberations
continue. As the Spanish 15M movement participants reflect, the movement was un
clima, a climate, a sensation and way of being. This echoes societies in movement in
Latin America over the past decade where, for example, people in Argentina, when
referring to their continued use of horizontalidad and autonomy speak of being chil-
dren, hijos of the popular rebellion of 2001.11 Looking to Latin America, and Argentina
in particular not only helps one understand what has been taking place with the move-
ments of the squares and possible ways forward, but opens up an entirely new way of
thinking about power, movement, society and ways of creating futures in the present.

Argentina’s Que se vayan todos! MTDs and recuperated workplaces

On December 19 and 20 2001, an economic crisis, precipitated by years of unprece-
dented privatization, came to a head. When the Argentine government froze people’s
bank accounts, they were no longer silent. Hundreds of thousands went into the streets
banging pots and pans, cacerolando. People were not organized by any formal
grouping, they merely saw their neighbours in the streets, cacerolando. There was no
specific talk or demand, but a song Que se vayan todos, que no quede ni uno solo (All of
them must go, not a single one can stay). It worked. They forced out four consecutive
governments. The movement has since been referred to as the 19th and 20th.
Rather than organizing political parties or looking to take over the State, people
came together and formed assemblies in their neighbourhoods, took over work-
places, and those unemployed neighbourhoods that were previously organized
exploded with more people and projects. New movements, groups and networks
emerged in neighbourhoods, from media and art collectives, people’s kitchens, after-
school programmes, groups for reflection, and a massive barter network.12 Due to
space limitations, this chapter will address only a few such formations: MTDs,
which stands for Movimientos de Trabajadores Desocupados (Unemployed Workers’
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266 | Marina Sitrin

Movements), recuperated workplaces, HIJOS, and movements in defence of the

land. This is a selection that represents both the diversity of classes and identities, as
well as geography. All of these movements functioned with assemblies, coining the
now widespread term, horizontalidad. As will be described, horizontalidad is a social
relationship that emerged in the space of rejecting hierarchical forms of organizing,
and over time has been described as both a tool and a goal for emancipatory
relationships.13
While some of the movements have shrunk numerically, and a few have even disap-
peared, the forms of organizing inspired by the popular rebellion continue. As activist
Emilio described in late 2014:

All the energy that was released on the 19th and 20th . . . did not slow down. There was an
epoch change — it has been more than ten years and we have a government with a long
continuum of Kirschnerismo and many changes in Latin America, but the important energy is
citizen participation, to join an assembly to discuss problems, listen, create tools through
direct action, and struggle with road blockades . . . That is not stopping, not at all, the
opposite.14

Argentine recuperations
“Occupy, Resist, Produce”.15 This slogan represents one of the most straightforward
yet sophisticated movements in Latin America over the past two decades. With over
350 recuperated workplaces in Argentina, workers are creating new relationships to
production, often challenging the capitalist mode of value production.16 Similarly,
workers have been organizing in Uruguay, Brazil and, most recently, Europe, recu-
perating their work through horizontal assemblies and a vision of an alternative form
of value production.
The process of workplace recuperations in Argentina arose out of economic neces-
sity. As with so many other things related to the popular rebellion, the workers took
the situation into their own hands. Not organized by unions, parties or any other
external force, they self-organized horizontally.17 Workers are not staging sit-ins,
strikes or occupations, but recuperating, almost always insisting on the language of
recuperar, meaning “to recover”, “reclaim” or “take back”, implying recovering some-
thing that was already theirs.18 They organize looking to one another, and almost all
explain how they organize by describing horizontalidad.19
In a recent visit to Argentina, in early 2015, I had heard that there had been a flurry
of recuperated restaurants, along with many other new workplace recuperations. I was
excited to check them out and take, what some had jokingly referred to as the gastro-
nomic tour of the movements. Andres Ruggeri, a long-time organizer and scholar with
the recuperated movements, suggested an orientation lunch at Los Chanchitos. This is
a typical neighbourhood tavern restaurant, serving asados, homemade pastas and local
wines, and whose survival is due to those from the neighbourhood who regularly eat
there. Now that the workers have taken it over and recuperated it, it is even more
popular, with neighbourhood regulars showing up to help defend the process of
recuperation and making a point of eating there all the more. And then add in the
people like us, choosing to eat there in solidarity, the result was that the meetings we
had intended to have were impossible, as the workers were too busy running the
restaurant, with a line of people still waiting outside.
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Walking towards Utopia | 267

Then, wandering around looking for one of the three recently recuperated fast food
choripán chains, Nac & Pop, I was happily surprised to find it on one of the busiest
corners of Buenos Aires, where Congreso meets the Avenida de Mayo. Across the
large intersection and park from the bookstore of the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo,
there is a small storefront grill with a sign that reads Nac & Pop Sin Patrón and
Trabajador@s de Nac & Pop en Lucha. There were many other handwritten posters as
well, addressing issues of the day, against police violence and xenophobia, for
example.
I spoke with a few of the workers, interviewing Emanuel, although the other
workers on shift occasionally came over to chime in. The four workers I spoke with,
as well as the others, from what I gathered from photos around the restaurant, are
under thirty years old and pretty alternative looking, meaning one has dreadlocks,
another brightly-coloured dyed hair, many have piercings and black seems to be the
colour of choice. They explained they are generally from the unemployed neighbour-
hoods, known for work precarity and day-to-day violence related to poverty. Some of
the young workers were migrants and none would ever have imagined themselves
getting involved in political organizing before then. They described their situation
thus:

Nac & Pop is now called Nac & Pop Sin Patrón (Without a Boss) because we, the workers,
are managing and running it ourselves.
Around a year ago we began to notice a real change with the owners and management of
Nac & Pop. We were not getting paid, they were making more and more excuses why they
were not paying us, we worked in black, meaning without a contract or any social support.
We then noticed that many people were having their shifts changed and were being moved
around from one restaurant to another and we realized they must be closing some of the
locales.
We knew we had to do something, but didn’t know what. None of us had previous expe-
rience, not in unions or with organizing groups — we had no relationship to the union. We
are all young and most are immigrants and mothers, and many have families. We were in diffi-
cult situations but had to do something, we just did not know how or have the tools . . . but
then a few compañeros in one locale suggested we could recuperate the workplaces . . .
But we did it. Though not without big challenges. . . .
Most of what has changed is the climate at work. In the beginning it was very difficult
because we had to decide everything, what steps to take, who had what responsibilities and
how to share them, making the schedules, figuring out how to do assemblies since we did
not have any tradition or experience with them and just winning space and respect for all
was huge.

Having spent time with workers in many dozens of recuperated workplaces over
the past decade plus in Argentina, it is remarkable how similar this brief description
in 2015 is to what workers have been describing with each recuperation process, the
feeling of a lack of alternatives and fear, yet coming together and deciding to recu-
perate. Also consistent are the feelings people express, finding a new dignity through
discovering that together they can take back their work and lives.
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Centrality of community

The community and neighbourhood are involved in the vast majority, if not all, the
recuperation processes.20 Many begin by showing support with food and financial
donations, and in those cases with direct confrontation with the police, sixty to sev-
enty percent of the recuperations,21 the defence of the workplaces came from the
community, with the majority coming from the neighbourhood in which the work-
place was located.
The close history of neighbours and workers in the workplaces is important when
looking at the plethora of workplaces that now also double as social community
centres. It is not the workplaces opening themselves up to the community, but rather
that the process of recuperation has always been a part of the neighbourhood and
community and the formation of community centres is one of the logical outcomes of
this relationship. When the people of the city of Neuquén where FaSinPat is located,
in the south of Argentina, say FaSinPat es del pueblo they really mean it: FaSinPat is
of the people and the people are FaSinPat. Some of the workplaces, such as the metal
shop IMPA and the Hotel Bauen, in downtown Buenos Aires, opened as community
spaces in the first weeks of their recuperation, even before they began their production
processes. Others, such as Chilavert, Globo and Nueva Esperanza, slowly became
community spaces. Beginning at first with a few events each month, now many hold
almost daily activities for the community, organized by the neighbours in collaboration
with the workers. These community events range from music and dance performances
to political talks and films, to classes in everything from tango and salsa to basic
computer literacy and writing. The activities and programmes depend on the wishes
and imagination of the neighbours.
In 2004, people throughout Argentina began to organize Bachilleratos, alternative
high school programmes. In a country that used to have some of the best public educa-
tion in Latin America, after the economic crisis, both access to, and the level of,
education plummeted. There are now tens of thousands of people participating in the
Bachillerato process. Students, together with the teacher/facilitator, choose their course
of study for their degree, and these choices are often things such as cooperativism (the
study of how a cooperative works) or socialism. A large number of the Bachilleratos
are held in recuperated workplaces.
The relationship between recuperated workplaces and the state has changed over
time. In the early years, it was mainly police repression and eviction orders. As the
years passed and the struggle of the state became, in part, to regain legitimacy, various
mechanisms were created so that autonomous movements would engage with it.22 One
such measure was the laws of cooperation, which include the legal option for work-
places to become cooperatives. This allows workplaces to function legally for a period
of time, allowing them to apply for government loans. At the same time, there are
regular attempts at workplace eviction, even of those that have requested legal status.
Plácido, from the recuperated print shop, Chilavert, explained that while the state
offers loans to some workplaces, it is “always putting obstacles in our way, like inspec-
tions, permits . . . and right when you are going to get back to work, there is another
bureaucratic obstacle that takes all your time and you end up doing nothing.”23
Despite the challenges, the recuperated workplaces continue and often refer to the
obstacles they face as “bumps in the road”.
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Unemployed workers’ movements in Argentina

The Argentine piquetero, or Unemployed Workers’ Movement (MTD), first arose in

the 1990s, but took off after 2001. Generally led by women, unemployed workers in
the northern and southern provinces took to the streets by the thousands, blocking
major transportation arteries and demanding subsidies from the government.24
Instead of using party brokers or elected officials, as was the norm, people came
together in assemblies, deciding horizontally what to do next. As they did not have the
option of strikes or other forms of collective action, the piquete was developed to stop
all transit. It was on the piquete that assembly experience deepened and relationships
between neighbours, supporting each other — often for days at a time — created the
solidarity and forms of self-organization that were to be the basis of the movements
in the future. Over time, people began to refer to the piquete, not so much as the shut-
ting down of something, but as the opening up of something else.25
The organization and consistency of the blockades forced the government to give
the first unemployment subsidies in Latin America. Within a few years of the
emergence of the piquete, many groups evolved into movements, expanding their
strategies and tactics beyond the piquete. Some movements continued to make
demands of the state, while others, those to which this chapter refers, decided to no
longer look to the state, abandoned the piquete and focused their energy on the new
relationships and forms of autogestión learned on the blockades. As Neka, one of the
organizers of MTD Solano, explained, “The most marvellous idea is not to think of
the future and deposit your life in the hands of others who will then guarantee this
future, but rather the recuperation of life and to live it in a way that is different”.26
In these areas, the movements sometimes squatted land, built housing, gardens,
raised livestock, or created alternative education and health care, along with many
other creative or subsistence projects. Almost all had a group for reflection. This could
mean anything from weekly discussion on popular topics, through study groups that
discussed books related to movements and autonomy, to the organization of regional
and national gatherings.
To take the example of MTD-Solano, some of the initial projects, apart from
bakeries and kitchens, were things such as fish hatcheries, shoe production from old
tyres and acupuncture classes. In MTD-La Matanza, also outside Buenos Aires, the
movement created a school, run by the movement and neighbours, a small sewing
shop and an elaborate bakery from which many in the neighbourhood bought prod-
ucts. In La Plata, they took over land to build housing, and in MTD-Allen, in
Patagonia, they developed a micro-enterprise called “Discover”; as a compañera
explained, “They named it ‘discover’ because through the MTD they discovered the
value of compañerismo, the value of solidarity. Through the MTD, they discovered
experiences that enable one to express oneself beyond words.”27 The micro-
enterprises produced clothing, shoes, bread and other food products.

Walking with the challenges

Of the movements described in this chapter, the MTDs suffered the worst effects of
the struggle with the new governments, with many of the movements splitting, becom-
ing incorporated, coopted or just dissolving over time. As of 2015, a number of
movements continued to strive for autonomy and autogestión, though not without
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270 | Marina Sitrin

many challenges and internal divisions. Even while the Kirchner governments offered
the movements subsidies, they came with so many strings attached that many found
the relationship impossible. As El Vasco from the Movement for Social Dignity in
Chipolleti described it, “The relationship with the state will always be contentious, it
will always be a sordid war, always.”28 Now that there is a far-right government, the
movements will likely suffer even more direct repression. Of the things to learn, first,
participants would say that the movement needs to maintain its own agenda, not func-
tion in response to whatever the government does or does not offer, but rather decide
what it wants and organize towards that end, meaning in particular that the relationship
to the state must be carefully handled and done so in a way that is based first on the
movement’s desired goals. Another difficult lesson the movements suffered was infil-
tration and disruption, not a new issue for movements, but nonetheless destabilizing.
Participants have shared the need to have group and movement agreements on how
to deal with disruptive behaviour early on in the group’s formation. And, while specif-
ically disruptive, groups also need to agree in advance how lack of participation in
collective projects will be handled. And last, many reflect on the importance of being
dynamic with forms of relating and not turning relationships into ideologies, so keeping
things such as horizontalidad and autonomy as processes and not end results, not the-
ories one must subscribe to, but forms that are ever changing and must remain so.
Of the many positive lessons from the MTDs was the focus on concrete projects,
as with the recuperated workplaces, while focusing on maintaining their own agenda,
keeping their eyes on the horizon and not on the obstacles put in their way by the state.
And, as El Vasco from MTD-Allen in Patagonia describes it, deepening the rupture
while opening up more space for freedom.

I’ll answer the question of my dreams with a line from the song by Los Redonditos: ‘The future
has arrived, the future is today.’ I believe we’re living the future. That constant promise of
capitalism was like a carrot held in front of the mule to keep it moving in the direction they
want. What a lie! What sons of bitches! What pieces of absurdity they put in our drinks to
choke us, the future as something to only hope for, and that’s what will fulfil all our dreams.
No. Like Los Redonditos, I believe the future has arrived, that the future is today. Happiness
isn’t something you can postpone until tomorrow — we must live with total fervour today.
If we postpone our dreams or put off our aspirations, we’re delegating, and we’re subordi-
nating, subordinating the evolution of things we are going to do, or allowing someone to finish
the things we aspire to. In the end I believe every day must be lived. I believe that the rupture
from the past is something permanent, and something that is part of our daily life. Freedom
and the rupture are today.29

HIJOS

HIJOS, the acronym for Hijas e Hijos por identidad y justicia y contra el olvido y silencio
(Daughters and Sons for Identity and Justice and Against Forgetting and Silence),
began in the later 1990s in Argentina and is, in many ways, both a precursor to and
emblematic of the forms of organization of the post-2001 rebellion.30
Different from the Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) and
the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo), though in
solidarity with them, HIJOS does not place demands upon the government as their
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strategy for justice, but rather organizes itself so as to address society as a whole. They
do this in order to break the “social silence” that they argue is largely to blame for the
dictatorship and mass disappearances of their parents, family members and others in
society. The perspective of HIJOS is horizontal — looking to those around them as
the source of power — both in an attempt to transform society and as the location of
the silence that has supported the status quo.
Most members of the military were left untouched by the Argentine transition to
“democracy” in 1983. There was no public outcry at the Ley de Punto Final, a law that
permitted those who had participated in the dictatorship to live free among the popu-
lation under the guise of forgiveness and moving on. People continued to be afraid.
People continued to be silent. HIJOS was organized in this silence to change the way
people saw one another and their responsibilities towards their society, neighbours and
communities, and is reflected in their slogan, “Our indifference keeps them free”.
The goal of HIJOS is not to speak to the genocidas (those who committed genocide)
— or to ask for legal or state retribution — but to their neighbours and society. They
do this in large part through escraches. An escrache is a tactic for social awareness, using
direct action, theatre and education. One of the main slogans is ¡Si no hay Justicia, hay
escrache! (If there is no justice, there is escrache). The point of this action, however, is
not for justice, meaning either the judicial system or justice; the point is that there is
no justice by the very nature of the person living freely in society without any social
outcry.
According to the GAC website, an escrache, or escrachar (to make an escrache) is a
slang term that means “to put into evidence, disclose to the public, or reveal what is
hidden.”31 Escraches begin with research of the person who is to be “outed”. There
are often people who can testify that he tortured them or that they witnessed him
carrying out torture. There are oral or actual records of his participation in or with the
military. Once the person’s actions have been confirmed, education in the neighbour-
hood begins. HIJOS does this together with other human rights groups such as the
Madres and Abuelas, as well as, among others, with recuperated workplaces, neigh-
bourhood assemblies and MTDs.
No two escraches are exactly the same. The process of education in the neighbour-
hood depends on those organizing it, their local resources, the amount of time they
put into it, and so on. In some of the more high-profile escraches, maps are made, based
on city maps or the metro system, indicating locations that say AQUI (Here), in the
manner of maps indicating one’s position, followed by Aquí vive un genocida (Here
lives a person who has committed genocide). The map contains footnotes that go into
detail of the atrocities committed by the person. These maps are pasted on street
lamps, newspaper stands and storefronts throughout the neighbourhood.
HIJOS and their supporters distribute informational leaflets to the people who live
in the neighbourhood weeks in advance, asking if they know that a genocida lives there.
Actions take different forms. The network and infrastructure involved in the mainte-
nance of the dictatorship was vast, and HIJOS highlights this by organizing escraches,
not only at homes, but also at places such as hospitals, military bases and churches,
places where people were active and/or complicit in the killings. The intention of
HIJOS however is not to attack the house, hospital or other location. Instead it
performs street theatre, sometimes even acting out the horrors the person committed.
Sometimes it is more informational, and HIJOS declares what the person did and
concludes by throwing red paint bombs at the door and house or apartment.
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272 | Marina Sitrin

Gathering hope
HIJOS has also suffered from attempted co-optation and incorporation, with some
participants taking posts in government, and others choosing to relate to the newly-
formed commissions on justice in a way that is no longer horizontal. At the same time,
many others continue to organize autonomously and maintain the escraches. This has
created a split in the group. As with the MTDs, many continue to focus first on the
movement’s goal and not on demands, and from there to engage the government, not
allowing the terms of discussion to come from above.

Defence of the Earth

While corporations continue to land grab, exploit and privatize the little still held in
common, people around the globe have been rising up. Women are preventing dams
from being built in India; the indigenous-led movement, Idle No More, is defending
the earth; entire town and villages have organized to prevent airports, roads and mines
from being developed in France, Italy and Greece; thousands throughout the
Americas have used their bodies to block the construction of pipelines intended for
fracking; and throughout Latin America, and Argentina in particular, there are strug-
gles everywhere against mining and the exploitation of land and water. The use of
direct action comes first from the lack of response from the governments in each loca-
tion, or worse, their complicity in the exploitation of the land. Rather than petition a
government, which the movements see as fruitless, they take matters into their own
hands. Out of the mobilizations and blockades, new relationships emerge and have
become the root of many of the new forms of self-organization in the various commu-
nities. One organizer, Emilio states that “The Union of Citizens’ Assemblies
emphatically organizes with horizontalidad and with absolute independence from
NGOs, political parties and the state. We use direct action and self-organize
autonomously.”32
What began with a few neighbours meeting to find out what the ramifications of
Monsanto in their town might be, turned into hundreds and, within weeks, tens of
thousands, including supporters from outside the town, creating ongoing blockades
of a construction process and site. They stopped Monsanto and what would have been
the largest genetically-modified seed processing plant in the world. I spoke with
Vanessa Sartoris, one of the organizers of the Malvinas Assembly. She is 28 years old
and has a two-year old daughter, Alma. Her participation in the movement changed
her life and what she believed possible:

Malvinas is a town with 12,000 inhabitants, half of whom are children under 18 — it is a very
young population. Malvinas is already a very polluted city — a contaminated city. There are
soy crops all around and the fumigation is toxic. Children are suffering terrible health conse-
quences because of the fumigation. Neighbours, especially those who live near fields have
tremendous problems with leukaemia and cancer, particularly children, and so many kids also
have asthma, allergies and respiratory problems. Women regularly suffer spontaneous
abortions. We are already sick. To put Monsanto so close to our homes would end up killing
us. The plan was to put Monsanto within 800 meters of the largest school in the town.
Our resistance began in 2012 when a group of neighbours came together . . . within two
weeks we organized The Assembly of Malvinas, made up of neighbours — almost none of us
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had organizing experience before. The first assemblies had many hundreds of people. We
organize in a horizontal way, don’t have a leader and make all the decisions together.
We began to study their [Monsanto] movements and see which days things like cement
were arriving by truck. Then we would create human barriers, standing in front of the trucks
with banners and flags that said ‘Out Monsanto’ and the ‘Assembly of Malvinas’. In September
2013, we organized a festival at the gates of the construction site called ‘Spring without
Monsanto’. There were tons of people from all over Argentina. There were neighbourhood
organizations and community groups; people from the south who were fighting a mining
project; and the assembly from la Rioja; there were indigenous people from Chaco, Paraguay
and Brazil who are also fighting against genetically-modified soy; there were many from
Uruguay and even Central America. It was then that we decided to create a permanent camp
at the gates of the site until Monsanto withdrew.
On January 8, 2014, the courts in Córdoba decided that Monsanto had to stop the
construction and that their permits were illegal.33

While there was a legal victory, the people in Malvinas and throughout Argentina
stay vigilant and organized. Assembly participants reflect that it does not matter who
is in government, the only way to stop Monsanto and defend the earth is directly and
together. They tried petitions and asking, and in the end it was only through their
direct action and self-organization that things changed. The assembly continues to
meet, people speak to other towns and cities facing similar attempts at land grabbing
and contamination and the message is the same, “We did it and so can you.” Vanessa
reflected, “If someone had told me, ‘Your future is this’, I would not have believed it,
nor anyone else in the assembly — we are all neighbours — women housewives,
students, teachers and workers. Regular people.”
A few hundred kilometres to the northwest of Malvinas is La Rioja and the
mountain of La Famatina. Neighbours and communities in the region have been
organizing in local assemblies since early 2007 to prevent the strip mining of the
mountain by international mining companies. Neighbours in the town, as well as the
surrounding towns and villages coordinated in the Union of Citizens’ Assemblies, all
created blockades and prevented every attempt by different corporations to exploit
the mountain. The assemblies, as with almost all the land defence in Latin America,
are comprised of everyone, “regular people”, as Vanessa from Malvinas described
them.

Close to the fire are a retired 80-year old watchmaker, a public worker, an engineer, a walnut
producer, a teacher, a retired policeman, and a housewife. They are part of a big net of
citizens’ assemblies, those strange horizontal organizations without bosses, without leaders,
without political parties, which are open to any member of the community. They hold the
blockade during the night . . . and the blockade will continue until the definitive removal of
the company.34

The first company to withdraw was Barrick Gold, then Shandong Gold and finally
the Osisko Mining Corporation. Those involved in the movement say “the struggle
to defend La Famatina is forever.”35 What began as a defence of the mountain, earth
and water has evolved into a new space of creation. On the road blockades, as with
the piqueteros years earlier, people organize to cook together, arrange medical support,
and entertain themselves through music, dance and storytelling. At the heart of all this
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274 | Marina Sitrin

activity is the assembly. People in each town and village organize regular open assem-
blies in their squares and plazas where anyone can speak and be heard.
Out of the assemblies and the shared struggle against the mines, people have begun
to explore alternative ways of surviving and supporting one another, trying to recreate
their communities. Each blockade in the various towns shares similar stories of
learning together how to self-organize, first on the road, and then in society as a whole.
As Raúl Zibechi puts it, “It is in the small groups where ingenuity usually flourishes,
and within their breasts that new forms of political culture and protest methods are
born. This is where community ties between people can be born, which are so neces-
sary for deepening the struggle.”36
Moving much further east and a little to the north, Corrientes is a predominately
indigenous region, with Guarani as a co-official language. Here, the assemblies
decided not only to defend their land from mining and land grabs, but also to create
a range of micro-projects to sustain themselves and their communities as a way of
protecting the earth and surviving without corporations. Emilio Spartaro with the
Guardianes del Iberá explains:

The movement has social ecology as its main banner. What is common to the entire organi-
zation is the defence of the territory, confronting the advance of extractive companies that
want to plunder, and building autonomy with our own self-managed projects. For example,
in the rural zone of Lavalle, families who suffered contamination from fumigation are
producing organic food and flowers and selling them in the popular markets and fairs. Others
are producing bricks from the Paraná River. In Yahaveré, an impoverished rural zone, the
indigenous Guaraníes have organized an autonomous community and decided in their
assembly to produce beef in harmony with the environment. In other localities, such as
Chavarría, San Miguel and Concepción, they are organizing tourism collectively, in a way that
respects the dignity of the communities and serves to share what has been happening with
the local struggles. The economic form of organization is cooperative, and the decisions are
all made horizontally in assemblies.
Increasingly these new relationships are networking with one another, creating an ever
greater potential for regional and national change under ‘Union of Citizens’ Assemblies, or
UAC.37

Gathering hope
The land defence movements in Argentina have both learned from their predecessors
about the dangers of government relationships, and have also experienced local and
national governments that have sided with the multinational corporations, more often
than not. Hence they organize autonomously, based largely on experience first, and
then, often by studying preceding movements. For today’s movements today, from
Climate Justice to all the others, the first big lesson, and something in common with
many groups, is to organize with almost anyone around you, creating community-
based assemblies on the issue at hand rather than ideological organizations, and
keeping an open view rather than following a set plan. The next reflection is to create
alternatives to that which one is opposing, as described by Emilio above regarding the
region of Corrientes, stopping the mining and organizing alternative means of
survival, with an eye to the future and doing it now.
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Utopian visions and walking far

The state cannot be used to transform the world. The role that we attribute to it should be
revised.38

There is no formula for living sin patrón and creating a new world. There are how-
ever some common characteristics from the societies in movement described in these
pages that have been effective over the years in changing social relationships, deep-
ening self-organization and autonomy, and resisting cooptation and incorporation.
So much more can and should be said for all areas. This section is written to open a
conversation.

Horizontalidad
Horizontalism, a rough and imprecise translation of horizontalidad, since it is more
of a relationship than an “ism” and is in fact against ideological frameworks implied
by ‘isms’. That being said, “horizontality” is not descriptive enough to capture the
relational aspects of the word/practice. Variations on horizontalism have become a
global way of talking about social relationships that are both directly democratic and
strive for different relationships, so, ways of relating that are about the process being
a part of the end, and a process that is ever changing, since the end is never reached,
with each change in the process changing the concept, and each change in the con-
cept changing the practice. It is like the concept of utopia as a walk for social
relationships.
It is also important to learn from the Argentines that this is a process and not a
thing or something that exists because one wishes it so, but a process that is constant
and has to be struggled with collectively. It is a tool as well as a goal, as movement
participants learned and shared in the early years of the struggle. One of the challenges
that almost always emerges is the question of leadership. Leadership and horizontal
relationships are not antithetical; what is necessary are open and non-hierarchical
discussions and relationships to address the issue of leadership and create a space that
some call “leaderful”, where all are encouraged to lead. It is also important to have
accountability structures in place, which, again, are horizontal and based on the
consensus of the group, so as to be able to address tensions and issues of power as
they arise.

Autogestión is our power

The difference is thinking about power as a noun, to arrive at power, to obtain power, as if
it was a thing, and power is a verb.39

Autogestión, self-organization with horizontalidad in these cases, is the means that most
movements use to organize alternative ways of being, doing and relating. Rather than
looking to others, people find ways to do it themselves, with the ‘it’ ranging from taking
back their source of work to preventing mining in their region and creating alternative
forms of adjudication and justice. While the site of self-organization is sometimes
different, it is nonetheless the core of the organizational form. In the land defence
movements and HIJOS, for example, the struggle is territorial, yet some participants
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have other jobs or responsibilities that take them back and forth to the blockades,
projects or assemblies.
Inextricably linked to concept of power, projects that are autogestionados are outside
the decision-making spheres of the state or institutions of power, and instead are orga-
nized directly by those participating in the projects and struggles. Part of the intention
behind horizontal self-organization is to include the relationships created in the process
of the collective project, not just the outcome of said project. As related to utopian
visions, it must be together; “power to” is the only way that people can move together,
not with forms of “power over”. This concept of power with autogestión began in the
early days after the popular rebellion in Argentina and has continued (with many ups
and downs) over the past decade. As Paula, a neighbourhood assembly participant in
Buenos Aires reflected after two years of new movement construction: “These move-
ments are thinking of a distinct kind of power: the power of transforming daily
relations. Besides, when one talks of dominance, it is the need to build different social
relations in the present, then later think about a future society.”40

Autonomy: “What do we want?”

Both autogestión and power from below link to the concept of autonomy, not in the
theoretical sense of autonomist Marxism, but as a logical expression of relationships
that are not determined by institutions of power but are instead self-organized. The
cooperative Lavaca.org/MU described it thus:

The way we understand autonomy is: The autogestión of personal and collective projects.
The free flow of new forms of thinking and doing. The exercise of freedom, understood as a
form of social power. So as to develop these objectives, we have created a series of tools.41

It is an example of one of many groups that struggled with the question of

autonomy as it relates to receiving subsidies from the State. In particular, after the law
of cooperation was passed and groups other than recuperated workplaces could apply
for government funds, Lavaca was one of many that decided to do so (after many long
debates). Soon thereafter, finding themselves not receiving enough to survive on, and
in a constant relationship and battle with the government that was taking up a great
deal of their time (as Plácido from Chilavert commented above), they decided again
to self-organize without any funding from outside sources. At the same time, they also
had a conversation about what they wanted. As Claudia from Lavaca relates, “we had
to begin again and ask ourselves, ‘but what do we want’”, which seems like a simple
question but, as she explained, once there is government engagement in a movement,
the agenda often changes, and what the movement wants sometimes comes second or
gets put on the back burner, as the government has a list of proposals and offers that
are presented with such urgency that they are generally discussed first.
Lavaca decided that what they wanted was to maintain their autonomy and self-
organization as media producers, both without interference from the State and without
paying the 18% tax that all media makers are forced to pay. After organizing with sixty
other independent media outlets in the streets, and in the courts, they won. Now,
independent media do not have to pay any tax on their income. This has made it
possible for many cooperatives now to survive on their self-organized work, where
they could not before. Autonomy here came from the question: what do we want?
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As one of the initiators of the project Lavaca commented in the early years after
the popular rebellion:

This is a dream for me, to be with people where I can think, say, and do anything. This is an
ideal moment in my life, and I believe I can let myself dream without limits. . . . I look at it as
if things are advancing. Sometimes it feels as if we’ve arrived, sometimes it feels like it isn’t
so far off, and sometimes it seems like we’ll never achieve it. This is reality, to be at the height
of your dreams and confront reality all the time.42

The centrality of affect and new subjectivities

It’s about being able to create a new relational mode. . . . When this new form of politics
emerges, it establishes a new territory, or spatiality. And how is this sustained? It cannot be
supported through ideology. In the beginning, the assembly consisted of people from all walks
of life, ranging from the housewife who declared, ‘I am not political,’ to the typical party hack.
But there was a certain sensibility, I don’t know what to call it, something affective. And that
generated a certain kind of interpersonal relationship between people. It generated a way of
being and a certain sense of ‘we’, or oneness that is sustainable.43

Many movement participants, such as Martín from the neighbourhood assemblies, as

well as the unemployed movements and HIJOS, have used the phrase política afectiva
(affective politics) to explain part of the base from which their organizing and moti-
vating derives. Affect, meaning “affection and love”, is a relational emotion, based on
one’s own feelings, but also not separated from the group or the collective.
Members of HIJOS explain their relationship to affect, love and trust-based
politics in ways consistent with so many others with whom I have spoken over the
years:

PAULA: We try to build within ourselves that which we’re trying to achieve for society. We
believe that if we don’t live our lives in the way we desire and seek to live, then, we’ll never
achieve our goals.
GONZALO: Above all, what we have come to understand is what Che used to say: a revolu-
tionary is moved by great feelings of love, and we must create this love between compañeros.
Love is the link, because what we’re struggling for is of such great importance, it is so impor-
tant that it is only natural that we feel love among ourselves.44

Concluding to begin
Overall, I want us to be able to live with dignity, work, justice, and equality.
ARIEL: I agree with Dani.
I hope that the future arrives with a conscience.
I am going to continue fighting until I’m old, for my grandchildren.
DANIELA: The road is long . . .
ARIEL: The road is long . . .
DANIELA: And there are many bumps along the way.45
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278 | Marina Sitrin

Notes
1 Carina B., neighbourhood assembly participant, Buenos Aires, Argentina, quoted in
Marina Sitrin, Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina (Oakland: AK Press,
2006), p. 240.
2 Paula and Gonzalo P. HIJOS (Hijas y Hijos por identidad y justicia y contra el olvido y silencio;
Daughters and Sons for Identity and Justice and Against Forgetting and Silence), 245.
3 Eduardo Galeano, Walking Words (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993), p. 326.
4 Daniel, a participant in “Argentina Arde”, quoted in Sitrin, Horizontalism, p. 59.
5 Lavaca, the cooperative and collectively run media site (Lavaca.org) and its paper MU,
came up with this concept. It arose out of collective experiences, and thus they would not
want to be credited as the people who invented the term, particularly now that it has become
more widespread, although to the best of my knowledge, it was their personal/political expe-
riences, together with learning from and sharing with those in other autonomous
movements in Argentina that led them to this expression.
6 The descriptions found in this essay come from prior fieldwork in all the locations cited.
Some variations of the descriptions and interviews have been published, while many others
have not.
7 Raúl Zibechi, Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces (Oakland–Edinburgh:
AK Press, 2010), p. 77.
8 While the movements began before 2011 and continued occupying Plazas and Squares well
into 2013, the years 2011–2012 mark the high point of such movements.
9 Marina Sitrin and Dario Azzellini, They Can’t Represent Us: Reinventing Democracy from
Greece to Occupy (London–New York: Verso, 2014); Jérôme Roos and Leonidas
Oikonomakis, “We are Everywhere! The Autonomous Roots of the Real Democracy
Movement”, Paper Presented at the 7th Annual ECPR Conference Comparative
Perspectives on the New Politics of Dissent, Bordeaux (France), September 4–7, 2013.
10 Sidney Tarrow, “Why Occupy Wall Street is Not the Tea Party of the Left: The United
States’ Long History of Protest”, Foreign Affairs Online, October 10, 2011,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/north-america/2011-10-10/why-occupy-wall-
street-not-tea-party-left.
11 Marina Sitrin, Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina (London:
Zed, 2012); Valeria Falleti, Movilización y protesta de las clases medias Argentinas: Cacerolazo
y Asambleas Barriales (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2012).
12 The barter network in Argentina was the largest ever recorded, with between four and seven
million people participating, exchanging goods, services, and using representations of value
in their exchange.
13 Sitrin, Horizontalism; Raúl Zibechi, Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin
American Social Movements (Oakland: AK Press, 2012).
14 Marina Sitrin, “Defending the Earth in Argentina: From Direct Action to Autonomy”,
Tidal Magazine, 2014, http://tidalmag.org/blog/everyday-revolutions/defending-the-earth-
in-argentina-from-direct-action-to-autonomy.
15 This slogan has been borrowed from the Movimento Dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra
(Landless Workers Movement) in Brazil, whose slogan is, “Ocupar, Resistir, Produzir.”
16 Massimo DeAngelis, The Beginnings of History: Value Struggles and Global Capital (London:
Pluto, 2006); John Holloway, Crack Capitalism (London: Pluto, 2010); Boaventura de
Sousa Santos, Another Production is Possible: Beyond the Capitalist Canon (New York: Verso,
2007).
17 Raúl Zibechi, ‘Worker-Run Factories: From Survival to Economic Solidarity’, in Dispatches
From Latin America: On the Frontlines Against Neoliberalism, edited by Teo Ballve and Vijay
Prashad (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2006), pp. 339–349.
18 Andrés Ruggeri, ¿Qué Son Las Empresas Recuperadas? (Buenos Aires: Continente, 2014).
19 Marcelo Vieta and André Ruggeri, “The Worker-Recuperated Enterprises as Workers’ Co-
pro index 4 28/02/2018 08:34 Page 279

Walking towards Utopia | 279

operatives: The Conjunctures, Challenges, and Innovations of Self-Management in

Argentina and Latin America”, in International Cooperation and the Global Economy, edited
by Darryl Reed and J. J. McMurtry (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2009).
20 In everything I have ever read, and every conversation I have had with participants in the
ERTs, Empresas Recuperadas por sus Trabajadores (Worker-Recuperated Enterprises), and
those supporting them, I never once heard of a situation where a workplace was recuperated
without support from the community.
21 Marcelo Vieta, “Autogestión and the Worker-Recuperated Enterprises in Argentina: The
Potential for Reconstituting Work and Recomposing Life”, Programme for Social and
Political Thought, York University, Toronto, Canada, 2008, retrieved from
http://lsj.sagepub.com/content/35/3/295.abstract.
22 Sitrin, Everyday Revolutions.
23 Ibid., p.198.
24 Maristella Svampa and Sebastián Pereyra, Entre la ruta y el barrio: Las organizaciones
piqueteras (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2003).
25 Zibechi, Territories in Resistance.
26 Sitrin, Horizontalism, p. 242.
27 Ibid.,109.
28 Sitrin, Everyday Revolutions, p. 202.
29 Quoted in Sitrin, Horizontalism, p. 247.
30 HIJOS began in Argentina in 1995 in Cordoba and La Plata, with dozens of groups
organizing around the country. It then spread to Chile, Guatemala, Spain and Mexico, with
all groups being different, but based on the same basic principles, strategies and tactics.
31 Grupo de arte callejero, Pensamientos y Practicas, 2012, available at https://archive.
org/details/GacPensamientosPracticasYAcciones.
32 Emilio, in Sitrin, Defending the Earth in Argentina.
33 Marina Sitrin, “If We Can Stop Monsanto, We Can Change the World”, Telesur Opinions
column online (retrieved 14 October 2015), http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/If-
We-Can-Stop-Monsanto-We-Can-Change-The-World-20150301-0019.html.
34 Lavaca, “A cielo abierto: Famatina frente a las corporaciones mineras”, Lavaca.org, Notas,
29 December 2007, accessed 1 October 2015, http://www.lavaca.org/notas/famatina-
frente-a-las-corporaciones-mineras/.
35 https://www.facebook.com/famatina.nosetoca?fref=ts.
36 Raúl Zibechi, “Is It Possible to Defeat Monsanto?”, Chiapas Support Network, 2013,
available at http://compamanuel.com/2013/10/23/raul-zibechi-it-it-possible-to-
defeat- monsanto/.
37 Sitrin, Defending the Earth in Argentina.
38 Raúl Zibechi, Genealogía de la revuelta. Argentina: la sociedad en movimiento (Montevideo:
Nordan-Letra Libre, 2003), p. 202.
39 The voice of Sergio in Sitrin, Horizontalism, p. 195.
40 Sitrin, Horizontalism, p. 193.
41 Sitrin, Everyday Revolutions, p. 59.
42 Claudia, quoted in Sitrin, Horizontalism, p. 242.
43 Martín, quoted ibid., p. 232.
44 Sitrin, Everyday Revolutions.
45 Daniela and Ariel, MTD-Almirante Brown, quoted in Sitrin, Horizontalism, p. 248.
pro index 4 28/02/2018 08:34 Page 280

The Editor and

Contributors

Dario Azzellini is Visiting Research Fellow at the ILR School, Cornell University
(Ithaca). He holds a PhD in political science from the Goethe University Frankfurt
(Germany) and a Ph.D. in sociology from the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de
Puebla (Mexico). His research focuses on social movements, social transformation,
worker’s and local self-administration, commons, and democratization, with a special
focus on Latin America and Europe. Recent publications include Communes and
Workers’ Control in Venezuela: Building 21st Century Socialism from Below (2017), An
Alternative Labour History: Worker Control and Workplace Democracy (ed., 2015) and
They Can’t Represent Us. Reinventing Democracy From Greece to Occupy (with M. Sitrin,
2014). As a documentary filmmaker he has been filming in Latin America and Europe.
Together with Oliver Ressler he is producing Occupy, Resist, Produce, a series of
documentaries on recuperated factories under workers control in Europe.

Nere Basabe is Assistant Professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain).

With a Ph.D. in History of Political Thought, she has worked as a postdoctoral
researcher at the Universidad del País Vasco and Sciences-Po Paris. Her major
research interests include 18th-19th Century European History (France and Spain),
Intellectual and Constitutional History, History of political concepts and the History
of the Idea of Europe. She is a founding member of Concepta Board (International
Research School in Conceptual History and Political Thought) and a member of
Iberconceptos research network (Latin-American Project on Conceptual History).
She is the author of De l’Empire à la Féderation: idée d’Europe et projets d’union conti-
nentale, 1800–1848 (forthcoming).

Carlos E.O. Berriel is Full Professor of the Department of Literary Theory at the
Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Brazil). He holds a Master degree and a
Doctorate from the same University. He completed postdoctoral studies in Italy, at
the Università di Roma–La Sapienza (1996–7) and at the Università di Firenze (2006–
7); also, he has been Visiting Professor at the Department of Political and Social
Sciences of the Università di Firenze (2015). Since 1998 he has been dedicated to the
theme of literary utopias. He is the founder and editor of the academic journal Morus
— Utopia e Renascimento, a publication that organizes periodical international confer-
ences and meetings. He coordinates the project Renaissance and Utopia and directs
U-TOPOS — Centro de Estudos Utópicos at Universidade de Campinas. His
publications include Tietê, Tejo and Sena: A obra de Paulo Prado (2000; revised and
pro index 4 28/02/2018 08:34 Page 281

The Editor and Contributors | 281

enlarged edition 2013), Mario de Andrade Hoje (1989), and Carlos Ortiz and the
Brazilian cinema in the 1950s (1981).

Laura Fernández Cordero is a researcher of the CONICET (Argentina). She holds

a Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the Universidad de Buenos Aires. She is responsible
for the Academic Area of the Centre for Documentation and Research on Leftist
Culture (CeDInCI — Universidad Nacional de San Martín) and coordinator of the
“Sex and Revolution. Feminist and Sex-Gender Memories” program. She has
published articles in Argentina, Spain, Brazil, Chile, USA and France; furthermore,
she is the author of the book Amor y anarquismo. Experiencias pioneras que pensaron y
ejercieron la libertad sexual (2017).

Carlos Ferrera is Lecturer in the Department of Modern and Contemporary History

at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He has been Visiting Professor at the
Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina) and at University of Wisconsin–Madison
(USA). His research fields focus on 19th Century, especially in the liberal political
culture, the relationship between theatre and politics, utopia and uchronia. His recent
publications include Utopian Views of Spanish Zarzuela (2015), Heterodoxias espiri-
tuales y utopías en el siglo XIX español (forthcoming) and he is preparing the Spanish
edition of Uchronie (l’utopie dans l’histoire): esquisse historique apocryphe du dévelop-
pement de la civilisation européenne et qu’il n’a pas été, tel qui’il aurait pu être by Charles
Renouvier (1876).

Andrew Ginger is Chair of Spanish and Head of School of Languages, Cultures, Art
History & Music at the University of Birmingham. He has previously held chairs at
the University of Bristol and the University of Stirling. He is presently working on
notions of connectedness and universalism in relation to Hispanic cultures. He is the
author of four monographs, each dealing with revisions of the development of the
modern period and modernity in Spain: Liberalismo y romanticismo: La reconstrucción
del sujeto histórico (2012), Painting and the Turn to Cultural Modernity in Spain (2008),
Antonio Ros de Olano’s Experiments in Post-Romantic Prose (2000) and Political
Revolution and Literary Experiment in the Spanish Romantic Period (1999).

Marisa González de Oleaga, Ph.D. in History from the Universidad Complutense

de Madrid, she is Senior Lecturer of the Social History and History of the Political
Thought Department at the UNED (Spain). She has published articles in national
and foreign journals about political discourse, utopian experiences, museums, and
memory. She has been Visiting Professor in several European and Latin American
universities, and director of four research projects. Her recent publications include:
En primera persona. Testimonios desde la utopía (2013), El hilo rojo. Palabras y prácticas
de la utopía en América Latina (coedited with E. Bohoslavsky, 2009) and El doble juego
de la hispanidad. España y la Argentina durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial (2001).
Currently, she directs a research project about memory industries in Latin America.

Carlos Illades is Senior Lecturer in the Humanities Department of the Universidad

Autónoma Metropolitana — Cuajimalpa, Mexico. He is the author of works such as:
El futuro es nuestro. Historia de la izquierda en México (2018), El marxismo en México.
Una historia intelectual (2018), Conflict, Domination and Violence. Episodes in Mexican
pro index 4 28/02/2018 08:34 Page 282

282 | The Editor and Contributors

Social History (2017), La inteligencia rebelde. La izquierda en el debate público en México,

1968–1989 (2012), Las otras ideas. El primer socialismo en México, 1850–1935 (2008)
and Rhodakanaty y la formación del pensamiento socialista en México (2002). He has
also edited the books: Camaradas. Nueva historia del comunismo en México (2017) and
Mundos posibles. El primer socialismo en Europa y América Latina (2014, with
A. Schelchkov).

Juan Pro is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the Universidad

Autónoma de Madrid, and Coordinator of the Interuniversity Program for the
Doctorate in Modern and Contemporary History (Spain). He has worked since 1990
about the history of State-building and political cultures, and has worked since 2013
on the history of utopias, always with a special interest in the comparative history of
Spain and Latin America. He has been coordinator of the Transatlantic Network of
Utopian Studies since it was established in 2015, and is currently director of the
HISTOPIA project (History of the future: Utopia and its alternatives in the modern
horizons of expectation, 19th–21st centuries). He has edited books and special issues in
academic journals such as: Utopias and dystopias in Modern Spain (2015, with
C. Ferrera), La creación de las culturas políticas modernas, 1808–1833 (2014, with
M. A. Cabrera), and Latin American Bureaucracy and the State Building Process, 1780–
1860 (2013, with J. C. Garavaglia).

Ana Sabau is Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Michigan, Ann

Arbor. Her research focuses on 19th century Latin America (primarily Mexico) and
includes both written and visual culture. She is interested in indigenous studies, the
intersection between religion and political thought, and the intertwining of science,
technology, and culture. She is currently working on a book-length manuscript that
explores non-statist revolutionary struggles in an effort to unsettle traditional, nation-
alist narratives of 19th Century Mexican history, political thinking, and culture. Her
most recent publication appeared in the book Mexico in Theory (2017, edited by
I. Sánchez Prado), where she explores how literature participated in shaping ideas of
possession and property in Mexico.

Marina Sitrin is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the State University of New

York (SUNY) Binghamton. She holds a J.D. in International Women’s Human Rights
and a Ph.D. in Global Sociology. She writes about societies in movement. Her books
include They Can’t Represent Us!: Reinventing Democracy from Greece to Occupy (with
D. Azzellini, 2014), Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina
(2012), and Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina (2006). She is
currently writing a book on global societies in movement and non-movements with
the University of California Press.

Horacio Tarcus is a Professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, researcher at the

CONICET, and director of the Centre for Documentation and Research on Leftist
Culture (CeDInCI), in Argentina. He has a Ph.D. in History from the Universidad
Nacional de La Plata. He has a longstanding interest in the printed world (journals,
newspapers, editorial projects) of the Latin American left. He has published, among
other works, El socialismo romántico en el Río de la Plata (2016–2018), Marx en la
Argentina. Sus primeros lectores obreros, intelectuales y científicos (2007), Diccionario
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The Editor and Contributors | 283

biográfico de la izquierda argentina. De los anarquistas a la “nueva

izquierda” (2007), Mariátegui en la Argentina o las políticas culturales de Samuel
Glusberg (2002), and El marxismo olvidado en la Argentina: Silvio Frondizi y Milcíades
Peña (1994).

Geraldo Witeze Jr. teaches Modern History at the Federal Institute of Goiás (Brazil),
where he also coordinates the undergraduate course in Social Sciences and leads the
Research Group on Environment and Society. He has a Ph.D. in History (2016), with
a thesis about Vasco de Quiroga e a colonização utópica da Nova Espanha (1531–1565).
He was indigenist at the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) (2010–14) and
professor of Early American History and Literary Theory at the Universidade
Estadual de Goiás (2012–13). He researches themes related to history and literature,
with special attention to utopias, the first modernity, and the colonization of America.
In addition, he works with socio-environmental issues, focusing on the Cerrado biome,
its populations and traditional knowledge. He has edited a dossier on “History and
Utopia” in the journal Expedições. Teoria da História e Historiografia (2016).
pro index 4 28/02/2018 08:34 Page 284

Index

Abad de Santillán, Diego, 125, 128 Anales de Agricultura de la República Argentina,

Abramson, Pierre-Luc, 142, 143 125
abstract utopia, 239 Anales newspaper, 124, 125
Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, 270, 271 anarchism
Acevedo, Eduardo, 27 autonomy of women, 186
Aché Indians, 44 Blanco White’s writings, 98
Ackermann, Rudolph, 97, 98, 99, 101 destruction of the family, 182, 183, 184,
Acts of the Apostles, 63 187, 188
Adam (Biblical figure), 78 emancipation of women, 181, 188–9, 191
adultery, 63, 188, 190 free love practice, 180, 183–4, 185, 186–93
affective politics, 277 marriage, 188–9, 191
Agoitia, Manuel, 174 role of women, 181, 182, 185
agrarian colonies, Mexico, 159, 160, Rossi’s utopian experiments, 182–3
161 social order, 181, 185
Agricultural Annals of the Republic of Argentina, Spain, 129
125 utopia, 17, 180–2
Agricultural News Bulletin, 125 anarchist colonies
Aguascalientes commune, 140 Paraguay, 37, 50n, 51n
Alas, Leopoldo, 26 see also Cecilia Colony
Alberdi, Juan Bautista, 118 anarchist press, Argentina, 180, 186–7
Albert, Charles, 191–2 anarchist revolutionary movements, 19
Albert the Great, Saint, 77 Anarquía village, Brazil, 183, 185
Alcalá Galiano, Antonio, 21, 30n Ancien Régime, 16
Alcedo, Antonio de, 140 Andalusia
Alexander, Jeffrey C., 231, 232 Italian Carbonarism, 122
Alfieri, Vittorino, 105, 106 republican rebellions, 128
Algeria, 142 utopian socialism, 22
Alsina, Adolfo, 27 “Anglo-Saxon race”
Altamirano, Ignacio Manuel, 166 individualism, 145, 147
Álvarez Cienfuegos, Nicasio, 105 race mixing reluctance, 219
Álvarez, Eduardo, 174 technological progress, 217, 218
Álvarez, Serafín, 117 threat to “Latin race”, 9, 142, 145, 147,
Amazon 149, 151
utopian societies, 93, 96 Vasconcelos’s writings, 217–18, 223, 226,
Vasconcelos’s Universpolis, 215, 216, 220, 227
223, 224, 228, 232 anti-systemic movements, 236, 238
La América newspaper, 148, 149, 150–1 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 216
American Civil War (1861–1865), 120, 142, Arana, Emilio Z., 188–9, 191
149 Araucanian indigenous people, 96
El Amigo de la religión y de los hombres, 20 Arcadia Mexicana literary society, 174
Amunátegui, Miguel Luis, 22, 102 Arcadia Mexicana magazine, 174
Anabaptist Colonies see Hutterite Colonies; Argentina
Mennonite Colonies Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, 270, 271
pro index 4 28/02/2018 08:34 Page 285

Index | 285

anarchist press, 180, 186–7 “societies in movements”, 11–12, 262–77

autogestión (self-organization), 262, 269–70, state apparatus, 116
275–6 transition to “democracy” (1983), 271
autonomy, 263, 265, 269–70, 274, 276–7 war with Paraguay, 119
Bachilleratos, 268 workers’ movement, 117
barter networks, 265, 278n see also Buenos Aires
Battle of Caseros (1852), 115 Argentine Rural Society, 125
Bertoni’s utopian colony, 42 Arichacan (Venezuelan chief), 246
bookshops and printing houses, 116, 119, Ariel (HIJOS member), 277
133n Aristotelianism, 77, 87
bourgeoisie, 115 Armand, Émile, 192–3
cacerolando protests, 265 Armenians, 166
Calera de Barquín colony, 100 Arteaga, Pablo, 248
civil associationism, 115–16, 117, 124 Arteaga, Silviano, 167, 174
community spaces, 268 El Artesano newspaper, 123, 126, 131, 132
conservatism, 117 Aryan racist colony, Paraguay, 37, 41, 42–3,
Constitution, 115, 124, 132 51n
cooperation laws, 268 Asociación Española de Socorros Mutuos, 125
cooperativism, 124 Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores,
democratic electoral reform (1912), 124 124, 127
elites, 106, 115, 116–17, 119 Athenian community model, 85
escraches, 271, 272 Atlantis, 216–17, 226
exiles, 117–18 Attica community, 85
FaSinPat workplace, 268 Auber Noya, Virginia, 27
Generation of 1837, 116 authoritarianism, 44, 144, 170, 181
genocidas, 271 autogestión (self-organization), 262, 269–70,
Hijas y Hijos por identidad y justicia 275–6
(HIJOS), 270–2, 275–6, 277, 279n Avilés, Delbia Rosa, 249
horizontalidad (horizontalism), 262, 263, Aztec Empire, 217
264, 265, 266, 272, 275 Azzellini, Dario, 11
independence discourse, 96
integration into the capitalist world, 115 Bachofen, Johan J., 189, 192
intellectuals, 116–17 Bacon, Francis, 103
Kirchner governments, 270 Bain, Alexander, 170
land defence movements, 272–4, 275–6 Baldwin, James Mark, 178n
Lane’s utopian colony, 42 Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV), 260n
Ley de Punto Final, 271 Baralt, Rafael, 25, 34n
liberalism, 117, 118 Baratti, Danilo, 45, 51n
Living Sin Patrón, 263 barbarism (human society development stage),
Madres de Plaza de Mayo, 270, 271 163
montoneras (insurgent rural militias), 118 Barbès, Armand, 22
movement leadership, 275 Barceló, José, 127
Movimientos de Trabajadores Desocupados Barcelona
(MTDs), 269–70, 272 Cabet’s translated works, 120, 121
National Education Act (law 1420), 116 cooperativism, 126
neighbourhood assemblies, 264, 265, 272–4 disturbances and uprisings, 128
piquete, 269 Fontamara Publishers, 121–2
political immigrants, 117 political activism, 123, 126
popular rebellion (Dec 2001), 262, 263, Society of Handweavers, 126
265 workers’ movements, 126–7
prefigurative movements, 240, 262 workers’ opposition to selfactinas, 127
press network, 116, 119 Barcos, Julio, 192
public sphere, 115–16 Barlow, Joel, 108
publishing houses, 116, 119 Barreda, Gabino, 206
recuperated workplace movement, 263, Barrick Gold, 273
266–8 Barthes, Roland, 48
school system, 116 Basabe, Nere, 9
semi-urban settlements, 236–7 Bauzá, Hugo, 45
social order, 116 Bazaine, François-Achille, 145, 156n
pro index 4 28/02/2018 08:34 Page 286

286 | Index

Bazard, Amand, 155n Bretón de los Herreros, Manuel, 17–18

Bazcko, Bronisław, 104 Bridget, Saint, 80
Beaumont, John Thomas Barber, 100 Britain, intervention in Mexico (1861), 9, 139,
Bebel, August, 189 142, 150
Beccaria, Cesare, 95 Bruno, Giordano, 77, 90
Belgium, Latin Monetary Union, 141 Budé, Guillaume, 56, 58
Bello, Andrés, 18, 106, 108, 110 Buenos Aires
Benítez, Zoraida, 248 bookshops and printing houses, 116, 119,
Benjamin, Walter, 202, 203, 236, 239, 244, 133n
246, 252 elites, 119
Bennassar, Bartolomé, 61 publishing houses, 119
Bentham, Jeremy, 98, 103 urbanization, 115
Bergson, Henri, 220 Vasconcelos’s travelogue, 221
Berington, Simon, 93 Victory y Suárez’s exile (1857), 8, 117, 119,
Berlin, Isaiah, 160 123, 130
Berlin Wall, fall of, 12 Buenos Aires Typographical Society, 119, 124
Bermúdez de Castro, Manuel, 151 Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de, 94
Berriel, Carlos, 7–8 Burgh, James, 105
Bertoni, Inés, 43 Buroz, Eulalia, 245, 257n
Bertoni, Moisés, 42, 43, 44, 45, 51n Butterfield, Herbert, 87, 91n
Biblioteca del Sempre Avanti series, 180, 183
Bilbao, Francisco, 117–18, 123, 153, 155n Cabet, Étienne
Blanco White, José María, 97–8, 99 Communism, 120–1, 130, 131, 132
Blanqui, Louis Auguste, 22 “community of goods” concept, 131, 132
Bloch, Ernst, 1, 235–6, 238, 239, 252 Fraternidad group, 128–9
Bloch, Marc, 258n Icarian colony in Mexico, 140
Böhl de Faber, Juan Nicolás, 99 translations, 120–1, 128, 130
Boletín de la Exposición Nacional de Córdoba, utopian socialism, 4, 8, 22, 117, 129
125 Voyage en Icarie, 102, 120, 128
El Boletín del Monitor periodical, 104 Cabrera, Cristóbal de, 64
Bolívar, Simón, 11, 105, 110, 140, 153, 218, Cabrera, Francisco de, 16
245 cacerolando protests, 265
Bolivarianism, Venezuela, 11, 245, 246 Cadiz, cooperativism, 126
Bolivia, “societies in movements”, 264 Cadogan, León, 44
Bonaudo, Marta, 115 Caesaropapism, 80
Borrego, Andrés, 20 Calabrian revolt, 79–80, 90
Bose, Sugata, 232 Caldcleugh, Alexander, 94
bourgeois society Cámara, Sixto, 127–8
Argentina, 115 Camejo, Josefa, 245, 257n
Catalonia, 129 Camejo, Pedro, 246, 257n
community membership, 85 Campanella, Tommaso
individualism, 85 astrology studies, 80
manufacturing, 90 background, 77
marriage, 188, 191 Calabrian revolt, 79–80, 90
photography, 202 Catholic Church status and power, 78–9
private property, 21 Christianity, 84
replaced by communal state, 238, 241 De regno Dei, 90
spiritualism, 202, 203 imprisonment, 80
Tridentine Catholicism, 89 influence of Telesio, 77
utopian literary genre, 85–6 natural religion, 90–1
Bravo, Juan, 105 natural sciences, 87
Brazil perception of the contemporary world, 76,
Anarquía village, Brazil, 183, 185 77
MST settlements, 236 Philosophia sensibus demonstrata, 87
political immigrants, 117 political martyrdom, 77
recuperated workplace movement, 266 rebellion against the Church, 80
settlers, 60–1 reconciliation of faith and reason, 78, 80,
see also Cecilia Colony 88, 89, 90
Breines, Wini, 240 scholasticism, 77
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scientific revolution, 78, 90 Catholicism

Telesio’s De rerum natura iuxta propria conception of universalism, 78
principia, 77, 87 dogmatic culture of, 86
Tridentine reforms, 78 intolerance and obscurantism, 164, 165
universalism, 78–9, 90 “Latin race” concept, 142, 143, 156n
see also The City of the Sun (Campanella) natural sciences, 88
Campbell, Joseph, 45 Rhodakanaty’s views on, 164, 165
Candolfi, Patricia, 45, 51n Cecilia Colony, 9–10
Cánovas del Castillo, Antonio, 151 absence of contact with other colonies, 50n
Canto, R., 187 anarchist press coverage, 180
Capellaro, A., 186 Capellaro’s description of, 186
capitalism destruction of the family, 183, 184, 187
alternatives to, 180, 235, 239, 240 founding of, 180, 183, 184
Argentina, 115 free love practice, 180, 183–4, 185, 186–7,
Catholic Church links, 90 190–1, 192, 193
Iberian merchant brand, 90 naming of, 193–4n
Latin American resistance initiatives, 11–12 “primitive promiscuity”, 186, 190
Carlism, 150 propaganda, 180, 183, 186
Carr, Edward H., 117 Rossi’s Un episodio de amor en la Colonia
Carrera, José Miguel, 102 Cecilia, 183–6, 187, 189–91, 192
Carta a Luis XIII, 16 scarcity of women, 185, 186
Carus, Karl-Gustav, 169 El Censor de Buenos Aires newspaper, 106
Casas, Bartolomé de Las, 57, 71, 200, El Censor of Madrid newspaper, 17
208–9 Chaco, Paraguay, 40, 43
Caseros, Battle of (1852), 115 Chalco commune, 140, 161
Castelar, Emilio, 128, 130 Champ d’Asile settlement, 140, 154n
El Castellano newspaper, 31n Chandler, James, 231
Castera (Las Casas’ friend), 208–9 Chao, Eduardo, 25
Castiglione, Baldassare, 85 charlatanism, 206
Castillo Velasco, José María del, 171 Charles IV, King of Spain, 98
Catalonia Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 65
general strike (1855), 127 “chauvinistic nationalism”, 222
industrial bourgeoisie, 129 Chávez, Ezequiel, 178n
Italian Carbonarism, 122 Chávez, Hugo, 237, 238, 240, 241, 245, 251
reaction of ‘56, 123, 127 Chávez, José María, 140
republican rebellions, 128 Chevalier, Michel
workers’ movements, 123, 126–7 Catholic Church, 156n
workers’ opposition to selfactinas, 127 “clash of civilizations” concept, 143, 149
see also Barcelona Cours d’économie politique, 143
catechisms, 97, 102 Eco de ambos mundos, 146
Catherine, Saint, 80 École Polytechnique student, 144, 154n
Catholic Church European confederation projects, 141, 143,
alliance with the Iberian monarchies, 76, 153
89–90 Fourierism, 146
Campanella’s The City of the Sun, 76, 77, French “civilizing mission”, 142, 144
78–9, 88–9, 90–1 French intervention in Mexico (1861), 143
Chevalier’s opinion, 156n Le Globe editorship, 141, 142
hostility towards scientific discoveries, 77–8, inter-oceanic American canal, 142
87 “Latin America” term, 141, 142, 154n
modern manufacturing, 88 “Latin race” concept, 141, 142–4, 145, 147,
persecution of science, 89 153, 156n
rejection of the modern world, 80, 156n Mexican reforms, 142–4
Vasconcelos’s Universpolis, 228 Le Mexique ancien et moderne, 143
wealth of, 88 Pan-Latinism, 141, 142
wilting power of, 199 regeneration concept, 143
see also Spanish Inquisition; Trent, Council Saint-Simonianism, 141, 154n
of study trip to United States and Mexico,
Catholic Reformation see Counter- 141, 142, 154n, 155n
Reformation utopian socialism, 4, 9
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Chiapas region, 221, 236, 263 Mor or Love, 82

Chiaramonte, Juan Carlos, 116 natural philosophy, 81
Chicano intellectuals/artists, 216 optimalization and humanization demands,
Chichimeca indigenous people, 55, 64 83
Chile political regime, 81
Battle of Lircay (1830), 109 Pon or Power, 81
Caldcleugh’s Viaje a Chile, 94 procreation, 82
chinganas, 106 prophetism, 81
conservatism, 102, 107, 109 publication (1602), 76
Constitution, 107–8, 109 rationality, 82, 83, 84, 89
education, 102–4 reconciliation of faith and reason, 78, 80,
elites, 102, 104, 105, 106 88, 89, 90
federalism, 102, 108 religion, 82–3, 84, 90
festivals and ceremonies, 104–7 science and its technology, 83
Gay’s geographical study, 94 Sin or Wisdom, 81–2
Haigh’s travels, 94 social uniformity, 82
independence, 8, 93, 94, 95–6, 102, 105 Spanish Monarchy, 7–8, 88–91
Mora’s arrival, 101–2 state control of all aspects of life, 82
Mora’s expulsion, 109 Supreme Council, 81–2
Mora’s Plan de Estudios del Liceo de Chile, written in prison, 80
102–3 civilization (human society development
Ovalle Government, 94 stage), 163
‘pelucones’ (bigwigs), 102 El Clamor Público newspaper, 23
Pinto government, 99, 102, 104, 106, 107 Claudia (Lavaca member), 276
‘pipiolos’ (upstarts), 102, 104, 109 Clave, José Anselmo, 123, 128, 129
political immigrants, 117 Cleofas G. y Sánchez, José, 167
political struggles (1820s), 102 Coello, Paula, 129
School for Young Ladies, 103–4 Coetzee, J.M., 36
theatre and drama, 104–7 cognition, 172
Three Antonios conspiracy (1781), 95 College of San Nicolás, 63, 66
tragedies (drama), 105, 106 Colombia, 96, 100
uniqueness and isolation, 95–6 communism
utopianism, 8, 95, 101–8 collapse of, 12, 13
women’s education, 103–4 as “danger for the future”, 169
Chimiro, Commander (Argimiro Gabaldón), Victory y Suárez’s publications, 130–1
246 Communism (Cabet), 120–1, 130, 131, 132
Chirino(s), José Leonardo, 246, 257n Communist Manifesto, 130, 137n
choral societies, 123, 128 compañerismo, 269
Christian communities, Jerusalem, 60 Comte, Auguste, 170
Christians, Syria, 166 Comuna 7 Pilares Socialistas, 244, 247, 249–50
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Condillac, Etienne Bonnot de, 98
164, 166–9, 173, 176n Consejo Federal de la Región Española, 124–5
Cienfuegos, Camilo, 246 conservatism
The City of the Sun (Campanella), 80–4 Argentina, 117
Catholic Church, 76, 77, 78–9, 88–9, 90–1 Chile, 102, 107, 109
as a clear scientific prediction, 81 utopias, 10, 13, 17–18, 20–1, 22, 23–4, 27
commerce, 83 Considerant, Victor
connection between society and nature, arrival in America (1852), 140
80–1 École Polytechnique student, 144
economic structure, 83 enemy of the Bonapartist Empire, 156n
egalitarianism, 82 European confederation projects, 144–5,
existence in the present, 84 153
geometrical structure of the city, 82 Fourierism, 140, 144, 145, 146
hierarchical structure, 82–3 French intervention in Mexico (1861), 145
Hoh the Metaphysic, 81, 82, 83 “Latin race” concept, 145–6, 147, 153
influence of More’s Utopia, 80 “Mexican race”, 145–6
insularity, 80 peonazgo system, 145, 146, 156n
knowledge and education, 81–2 Quatre lettres au maréchal Bazaine, 145, 146,
matrimony, 82 156n
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refuge in San Antonio, 144, 145 Díaz, Porfirio, 174, 205

utopian socialism, 4, 9, 22 Didi-Huberman, Georges, 36, 203, 204
Consiglio, Jorge, 36 difference, utopian/dystopian experiments,
El Constitucional newspaper, 148 38–9
Constitutions of the United States and of the State La Discusión newspaper
of New York, 122 “Latin race” concept, 147–8, 151, 152
El Contemporáneo newspaper, 149, 150 Pi y Margall’s editorship, 122, 128
Copernicus, Nicolaus, 81 socialism, 129
Cordoba, printing houses, 119 Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, 120
Cordoba National Exposition, 125 typographers’ readership, 127
Corinthians, Epistles to, 68 Domingo Soler, Amalia, 205, 208, 209
Coromoto (Venezuelan chief), 246 Dominicans, 77
El Correo nacional newspaper, 20 Dupin, André, 17
Corriente Revolucionaria Bolívar y Zamora Durán López, Fernando, 98
(CRBZ), 256n Dyck, Elfreida, 51n
Cortés, Hernán, 65 Dyck, Peter, 51n
Cosme Colony, Paraguay, 40, 44, 51n Dyer, George, 99
“cosmic race”, Vasconcelos’s concept, 11,
215–16, 219, 220–1, 222–3, 224, 225, Echegaray, José, 26
227, 229–30 Echeverría, Esteban, 116
cosmic sentiment, Vasconcelos’s concept, El eco de la Revolución, 128
219–20 El Eco del Comercio newspaper, 20, 30n
Costa, Joaquín, 26 Edenism (human society development stage),
Council of the Indies, 15, 54, 57, 69 163–4
Counter-Reformation, 76, 77, 78, 89, 90 egalitarianism, spiritualism, 10, 200, 206–7
El Craneoscopio journal, 164 Egaña, Juan, 95, 102, 107–8
Cristi, Renato, 107 Egypt, autonomous movements, 265
Crónica del Progreso newspaper, 124 Egypt, ancient, 217
Cuba, Castro regime, 12 Egyptian Copts, 166
Cuban Revolution (1953–59), 9 El Vasco (Movement for Social Dignity
Cultural Association of the Working Class in member), 270
Villanueva and Geltrú, 126 El Vasco (MTD-Allen member), 270
Elorza, Antonio, 128–9
Daily News newspaper, 133n Elyot, Thomas, 85
Daniela (HIJOS member), 277 emancipatory social science, 236
Darío, Rubén, 201 Emanuel (Nac & Pop worker), 267
Darnton, Robert, 205–6 El Emigrado Observador journal, 97
Darwin, Charles, 170 Emilio (movement participant), 265, 272
Davenport Brothers, 198 empiricism, 48, 172
Defoe, Daniel, 93 encomienda system, 88
Déjacque, Joseph, 181 Enfantin, Barthélemy Prosper, 155n
Deleuze, Giles, 220 Engels, Friedrich, 50n, 137n, 182, 189, 192
La Democracia newspaper, 127, 128 England
democracy intervention in Mexico (1861), 9, 139, 142,
Argentina, 271 150
Mexico, 21 political and economic scene, 92
Rhodakanaty’s views on, 163 Enlightenment, 3, 95, 99, 100, 102–3, 140
as a utopia, 21, 117 Enríquez, Miguel, 167
Venezuelan communes, 235, 238, 240–1, La Época newspaper, 148, 149–50, 152
242, 243 Erasmus, 62, 63, 67, 78, 85, 165
Victory y Suárez’s publications, 130, 132 Ernst, Germana, 80
Democracy in America (Tocqueville), 119–20 Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, 171
Democratic Committee, 147 La España newspaper, 147, 148, 149, 150
Democratic Law (Tresserra), 122–3 El Español newspaper, 20
democratic prefiguration, 240 La Esperanza newspaper, 149, 150, 151
Descartes, René, 170 Esteva, Gustavo, 252
despotism, 93, 98, 103, 162 El Estudiante, 125
Díaz de Luco, Juan Bernal, 15, 57, 58 ethnography, 46, 47
Díaz, Nicomedes Pastor, 32n eugenics, 221–2, 224, 227, 230
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La Europa newspaper, 25 human societies’ development stages, 163

European revolutions (1848), 4, 116–17, 141 influence on Considerant, 140, 144, 145,
exiles 146
Argentina, 117–18 influence on Rhodakanaty, 9, 161, 163,
of the counter-revolution, 4, 117 165, 170
London, 92, 96 interest in the passions, 182, 183
Paraguay, 37 “Latin race” concept, 139
publications, 97 Mexico as natural capital of the world, 139
“romantic exiles”, 117–18 phalansteries, 9, 182
experiences, as non-repeatable, 37–8, 39, 50n Sapphianism, 182
experimental method, 87 societary doctrine, 161, 165, 170
Exposición Nacional de Córdoba, 125 utopian socialism, 9, 22, 117
Eymerich, Nicholas, 121–2 variation in sexual tastes, 192
Ezequial Zamora Peasant National Front, Fourierism, 139, 144, 145, 146
256n Fox sisters, 206
fracking, 272
“El Falansterio” (Phalanstery) free school, France
161, 170 Democratic Committee, 147
Falcón, Rafael, 242, 248 international role, 143
Falconnet, Joaquín Alejo, 181–2, 193n intervention in Mexico (1861), 9, 139,
family 140–1, 142, 143, 148–52
anarchism, 182, 183, 184, 187, 188 invasion of Spain (1808), 16
Cecilia Colony, 183, 184, 187 July Monarchy, 117
Malatesta’s writings, 192 land defence movements, 272
More’s Utopia, 63 Latin Monetary Union, 141
pueblos-hospitales, 63–4 “Latin race” concept, 141–6, 152–3
fascism, 76 phalansteries, 144
FaSinPat workplace, 268 political emigrants, 117
Fay, William, 198, 210 as protector of the Latin nations, 143
Federal Council of the Spanish Region, 124–5 socialism, 128
federalism, 102, 108 spiritualism, 209
Feijoo, Benito Jerónimo, 16 utopian socialism, 245
feminism Francia, José Gaspar Rodríguez de, 9
Mexico, 207 Franciscan projects, 3
spiritualism, 207 La Fraternidad newspaper, 125, 128, 129
Fernández Cordero, Laura, 9–10 French Revolution (1789), 3, 98, 102, 110,
Fernández, Darío F., 167 205–6
Fernández de Moratín, Leandro, 107 French Revolution (1848), 116, 117
Fernández Negrete, Santiago, 151 Frente de Liberacion Nacional, 251
Fernando VII, King of Spain, 18 Frente Nacional Comunal Simón Bolívar
Ferrándiz, Francisco, 212n (FNCSB), 243, 256n
Ferrera, J. Carlos, 8 Frers, Emilio, 125
Ferrocarril Oeste, 125 Freud, Sigmund, 42, 203
Feuerbach, Ludwig, 170 The Friend of Religion and Men, 20
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 170, 171 Friesland Colony, Paraguay, 50n
Figuera, Adys, 244, 247, 249–50, 256n Froben, Johann, 54
Firpo, Luigi, 86 Fuentes, Juan Francisco, 19
FNCSB (Frente Nacional Comunal Simón La Fuerza de la Razón newspaper, 180
Bolívar), 243, 256n Fueyo, Bautista, 192
Foigny, Gabriel de, 93
folk wisdom, 205 Gabaldón, Argimiro (Commander Chimiro),
Fontamara Publishers, Barcelona, 121–2 246
Förster, Bernhard, 43, 51n Gabilondo, Joseba, 225, 230
Forster, Edward, 50n Galeano, Eduardo, 264
Förster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth, 37, 41, 42–3, 44, Galilei, Galileo, 77, 87, 90
51n Garrido, Fernando, 117, 124, 125–6, 130,
Fourier, Charles 133n
adultery, 190 Gay, Claude, 94
historical subordination of women, 182 Gay, M. Charles, 209–10
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Géléac, Jean, 185–6 Hartmann, Eduard von, 169, 170, 172, 178n
gender equality, spiritualism, 206–8 Hassoun, Jacques, 39
Genesis, Book of, 60 Hatzenberger, Antoine, 93
genetics, Vasconcelos’s writings, 217, 219, Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 170, 171–2,
223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228 226, 232
El Genio de la Libertad newspaper, 147 Hegelian dialectics, 170
geography, 100 Hegelian spirit, 172
Germanic peoples, 9, 141, 142, 143 Hellenic Greece, 217, 225–6
Germany Heller, Agnes, 83–4
Pan-Germanism, 148 Henríquez, Camilo, 96, 102, 105
peasant uprising (1524–25), 11 El Heraldo newspaper, 147, 148
political emigrants, 117 Hernández, Emilia, 104, 105
Gibraltar, 148, 150 Hernández, Jacinto, 165
Gilroy, Paul, 230 Herrera, Alfonso L., 171, 222
Ginger, Andrew, 11 Hidalgo Lyceum, 206, 207
Girón, Soledad, 173 Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel, 200, 208
Le Globe newspaper, 141, 142 Hidalgo y Esnaurrizar, José Manuel, 151
Gobetti, Piero, 105 Hijas y Hijos por identidad y justicia (HIJOS),
Gobineau, Arthur de, 142 270–2, 275–6, 277, 279n
González, Carmelo, 243 historiography, 38, 48, 92, 128, 199
González de Oleaga, Marisa, 7 Hobbes, Thomas, 170
González del Rivero, Pablo Ramos, 128 Hofwil educational establishment, 99
González Doncel, Gutierre, 63 Holanda, Sérgio Buarque de, 60
González, Manuel, 170 Hollow Earth theory, 93
González, Refugio, 204, 207 Holloway, John, 239
Gonzalo (HIJOS member), 277 Holt, Jocelyn, 102
Gori, Pietro, 191–2, 196n Holy Inquisition see Spanish Inquisition
Gostowski, Baron, 198 Holyoake, George, 135n
Gramsci, Antonio, 235 Hooker, María Josefina, 165
La Gran Familia friendly society, 175n horizontalidad (horizontalism), 262, 263, 264,
Grave, Jean, 188, 195n 265, 266, 272, 275
Great Exhibition (London 1851), 25 humanism, 78, 84–6
Greece Humboldt, Alexander von, 94, 142
autonomous movements, 265 Hume, David, 103
land defence movements, 272 Hurtado, Guillermo, 220
Greece, ancient, 217, 225–6 Hutterite Colonies, Paraguay, 37, 40, 43, 44,
Greek Orthodox Church, 164, 165 50n, 51n
Greek War of Independence (1821-1829), Huxley, Aldous, 50n
159 Hythloday, Raphael, 2, 16, 56, 58, 62
Grotius, Hugo, 95
Guaicaipuro (Venezuelan chief), 246, 257n La Iberia newspaper, 23–4, 124, 148
Guanajuato, Pueblos Unidos Rebellion, 169 Icarian movement, 130–1, 140
guarantism (human society development Ideas newspaper, 192
stage), 163 Idle No More protest movement, 272
Guardianes del Iberá, 274 Ignacio de Loyola, 208
Guerrero, Mexico, 236 Illades, Carlos, 9
Guerrero, Jesús Antonio, 246 La Ilustración Espírita journal, 174, 198, 204,
Guevara, Antonio de, 60 205, 207, 208, 213n
Guevara, Che, 246 imperialism, 226, 232
Gutiérrez de la Concha, José, 152 Inca Empire, 96, 217
Gutiérrez, Gustavo, 235–6, 239, 240 incarnation, 228
independence movements, Spanish America,
Haigh, Samuel, 94 141, 208, 236, 257n
Haiti, 100 India, land defence movements, 272
Hall, Stuart, 39 India, ancient, 217
Halperin, Tulio, 116 Indian population
Hamilton, Lady Mary, 103 Araucanian indigenous people, 96
happiness, 101, 270 body and face painting, 65
Hart, John Mason, 174 characteristics of, 54
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Indian population (continued) scientific reason, 89

Chichimeca indigenous people, 55, 64 Spanish domination, 79
Christian virtues, 54, 56 Ivins, Anthony W., 166
conversion to Christianity, 53, 54, 55, 56,
62–3, 65 Jacques, Amadeo, 123
creative talents, 65 Jaén, Didier T., 223, 227, 230
disciplined lifestyle, 57 Jameson, Fredric, 220
election of officials, 66 Jefferson, Thomas, 143
encomienda system, 87 Jerusalem, Christian communities, 60
environmental knowledge, 62 Jesuits
food supplies, 61 California communities, 3
Jesuit settlements in Paraguay, 3, 11, 37 Iberian monarchies, 90
Mexica indigenous people, 55, 69–70 idea of salvation, 77
Mexico, 216–17, 221, 222 Indian settlements in Paraguay, 3, 11, 37
mining work, 55, 69 inquisitorial trials, 90
Purhépecha indigenous people, 55, 60, 63 Propaganda Fide leadership, 88
Quiroga’s regard for, 54–5, 56 relations between Rome and the Iberian
resistance settlements, 236 metropolises, 80
rights in Paraguay, 44 Jesus of Nazareth, 78, 164, 228
settlers’ exploitation of, 54, 55, 87 Jiménez, Atenea, 241
slavery, 69–70 Jiménez Patón, Bartolomé, 16
Spanish violence against, 70 Joachim of Fiore, 77
Tarascan indigenous people, 55 John, Gospel of, 228
urban life, 60 Jones, Daniel W., 166, 167
Venezuela, 238, 244, 246 Joseph (Patriarch), 60
weaving skills, 65 Jovellanos, Gaspar Melchor de, 103
see also pueblos-hospitales Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor, 200, 208
individualism Juárez, Benito, 9, 139, 142, 145, 151, 152,
“Anglo-Saxon race”, 145, 147 156n
bourgeois society, 85 “just war” concept, 69, 70
Rhodakanaty’s views on, 162
settlers, 57 Kakutani, Michiko, 42
“inductive method”, 172 Kant, Immanuel, 170
Infante Vargas, Lucrecia, 207 Kardec, Allan, 200, 206, 207, 208, 210, 211n
Inquisition see Spanish Inquisition Kellar, Harry, 198, 210
Inquisitorial Jurisprudence or Inquisitorial Knight, Alan, 224, 231
Manual (Eymerich), 121–2 Kossuth, Lajos, 159
instinct, 220 Krausism, 171
intellectuals Kricher, Athanasius, 216
Argentina, 116–17 Kurtz, Arabella, 36
Aristotelian system, 87
Mexico, 215, 222 La Condamine, Charles-Marie de, 94
Spain, 27 La Réunion colony, 140, 145
United States, 215, 216 la Sagra, Ramón de, 130
La Internacional newspaper, 161 Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, 221–2, 225, 227, 229
International Association of Workers, 124, 169 Lamennais, Félicité Robert de, 117, 130, 147
intuition, 220 Lancasterian schools, 97, 102, 103–4
“intuitive knowledge”, 172 Lane, William, 42, 43, 44, 51n
irrationality, 89, 220 Lara, Juan Jacinto, 245
Italy/Italian states Larra, Mariano José de, 21, 130
Calabrian revolt, 79–80, 90 Lastarría, José Victorino, 101–2
Carbonarism, 122 latifundistas, Mexico, 162
as Catholic state, 76, 89 Latin America
Democratic Committee, 147 first uses of the term, 141, 142, 154–5n
fascism, 76 as a terra nova, 4
land defence movements, 272 utopia, 1–5
Latin Monetary Union, 141 Latin American states
natural sciences, 88 advantages of, 218–19
political emigrants, 117 constitutions as utopian texts, 3
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human equality, 219 López, Julio, 161

“mixed race” society, 11, 219, 221, 223, Louis XIV, King of France, 79
224 Lucian of Samosata, 56
nation-building, 223 Lucretius, 121
post-independence, 3, 92, 215, 218 Lutheran Reformation see Protestant
provincialism, 218, 219 Reformation
revolutions, 3 Luxemburg, Rosa, 246
slavery abolition, 219 La Luz de México newspaper, 208–9
see also individual states
Latin American utopianism, 2–3, 4–5, 7, 12, Mabardi, Susan, 231
235, 246 McGarry, Molly, 199, 206
Latin Monetary Union, 141, 146 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 67, 84–5, 87
“Latin race” concept, 9, 139 Macintyre, Ben, 42, 44–5, 51n
“Anglo-Saxon” threat, 9, 142, 145, 147, Madres de Plaza de Mayo, 270, 271
149, 151 Madrid, disturbances and uprisings, 128
Bonapartist discourse, 142 Máiquez, Isidoro, 105
Catholicism, 142, 143, 156n Maisanta (Pedro Pérez Delgado), 246, 258n
Chevalier’s notion of, 141, 142–4, 145, 147, Maitron, Jean, 195n
153, 156n Malaga disturbances, 20
Considerant’s notion of, 145–6, 147, 153 Malatesta, Errico, 182, 192
first appearance in Spanish press, 146–7 Mansilla, Lucio, 27
French notion of, 141–6, 152–3 manufacturing, 88, 89, 90
Madame de Staël’s use of, 141–2 Mao Zedong, 246
regeneration idea, 143, 153 Marchena, José, 121–2, 129–30
Spanish parliamentary debate, 151–2 Marcos, Subcomandante, 263
Spanish press, 146–51 Marcuse, Herbert, 240
threat from Protestantism, 142, 143 Mariátegui, José Carlos, 238
Vasconcelos’s writings, 217, 226, 227, 229 Mariscal, Ignacio, 170
Lavaca Collective, 276–7, 278n Mármol, José, 22–3, 27
Leroux, Pierre, 117 Márquez, Juan, 16
Lestringant, Frank, 56 marriage
Levi-Strauss, Claude, 44, 45 anarchism, 188–9, 191
La Ley del Amor newspaper, 201–2, 203, 208 civil and religious, 190
Liberal Club, Argentina, 125 licences in Mexico, 221
liberal revolutions, 17, 92 pueblos-hospitales, 63
liberalism Rhodakanaty’s views on, 162, 163
Argentina, 117, 118 Martí, José, 201, 206, 246
identification with private property, 100 Martín, Francisco, 122
opposition to socialism, 130 Martín (movement participant), 277
role of education, 102 Marx, Karl, 60, 137n, 182, 239, 244
splintering of, 21 Marxism, 276
utopianism, 109–10 Massey, Doreen, 242
see also Spanish liberalism materialism, spiritualism, 199, 200, 205
Liberation Theology, 11, 236, 239, 252 matriarchy, 188, 189
El libro del obrero (The Worker’s Book), 123 “matrimonial eugenics”, 221
limitation, Vasconcelos’s concept, 219–21, 224 matrimony, 82, 188, 190
Linnaeus, Carl, 94 Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, 9, 139, 143,
Lircay, Battle of (1830), 109 145, 146, 150, 151, 156n
List, Georg Friedrich, 18 Mazzeo, Miguel, 246
literary genres Mbyá-Guaraní Indians, 44, 49
catechisms, 97, 102 Medinilla i Porres, Geronimo Antonio de, 15,
tragedy, 106 16
travelogue, 41 “Mediterranean system” of states, 141
see also utopian literary genre Mejía, Domingo, 167
Littré, Émile, 170 memory, utopian/dystopian experiments, 7,
Livorno publishing group, 180, 183 36, 37–8, 39–45, 48
London, exiles, 92, 96 Mendel, Gregor, 217, 224, 227, 228
London Great Exhibition (1851), 25 Mendíbil, Pablo, 97, 101, 108
López de Ayala, Adelardo, 34n Menéndez Pelayo, Marcelino, 26
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Ménilmontant commune, 154n Miller, Nicola, 222

Mennonite Colonies, Paraguay, 37, 39, 40, 43, Milton, John, 103
44, 45, 51n Mina, Francisco Javier, 218
Mercier, Louis Sébastien, 105, 106 Miranda, Francisco de, 245, 257n
Mercurio de Valparaíso periodical, 108, 109 miscegenation (race mixing)
mesmerism, 205–6 “Anglo-Saxon race”, 219
mestizaje, 221, 222, 226 Latin American characteristic, 11, 219, 221,
see also miscegenation (race mixing) 223, 224
Mészáros, Istvan, 238 United States, 219
metaphysics, 84, 87, 99, 170, 171 Vasconcelos’s La raza cósmica, 215, 221,
Mexica indigenous people, 55, 69–70 222, 223, 224, 226
Mexican Ateneo, 215, 220 Mitre, Bartolomé, 116, 118
Mexican muralist movement, 222 Mitteleuropa, 141
Mexican national identity, 222 Moctezuma, 69–70
“Mexican race”, Considerant’s notion of, modernity
145–6 spiritualism, 199
Mexican Revolution, 210 temporality, 235, 237, 246
Mexican Spiritualist Society, 204 utopia, 1, 13, 27
Mexico Molière, 103, 121
agrarian colonies, 159, 160, 161 Molloy, Sylvia, 222
“agrarian law”, 161, 162 Moneti Codignola, Maria, 79
Aguascalientes commune, 140 El Monitor Republicano newspaper, 198
autonomous, self-governing communities, monogamy, 184, 188, 189, 190, 192
236 Monroe doctrine, 143, 153
Chalco commune, 140, 161 Monroy, José, 174
Chevalier’s reform ideas, 142–4 Monsanto Company, 272–3
Chiapas region, 221, 236, 263 Montaldo, Graciela, 201
“clash of civilizations” concept, 143, 149 Montalvo, Juan, 27
Constitution (1917), 3 Monteagudo, Bernardo de, 153
eugenics, 221–2 Montes, Ezequiel, 170
feminism, 207 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de,
foreign debt payments, 139, 142, 152 103, 121
French intervention (1861), 9, 139, 140–1, montoneras (insurgent rural militias), 118
142, 143, 148–52 Monturiol, Narciso, 128, 129, 130
indigenous peoples, 216–17, 221, 222 Mora, Francisco, 126, 127
latifundistas, 162 Mora, José Joaquín, 98–101
marriage licences, 221 Ackermann’s collaboration with, 97, 98, 99
mestizos, 221, 222 arrival in Chile, 101–2
as natural capital of the world, 139 background, 98–9
peasant uprisings, 10, 161 Bacon’s New Atlantis, 103
peonazgo system, 145, 146, 156n Cartas sobre la educación del bello sexo, 103
phalansteries, 140 Chilean Constitution, 107–8
Porfiriato period, 205, 206 chinganas, 106
Pueblos Unidos Rebellion, 169 comedy drama, 106–7
Second Empire established, 139, 141 Doce canciones en español, 105
spiritualism, 10–11, 198–211, 211n educational projects, 102–4
sterilization, 221 exile, 92–3, 97, 99
student protests, 216 expulsion from Chile, 109
utopia and democracy, 21 Plan de Estudios del Liceo de Chile, 102–3
utopian colonies, 140 potential of performance, 105
Zapatistas, 236, 240, 263, 265 refuge in Peru, 109–10
Mexico City relations with Bello, 110
Teatro Nacional, 198, 210 Spanish language, 103
see also pueblos-hospitales Spanish liberalism, 92, 97
Michoacán travels in South America, 92–3, 99
College of San Nicolás, 63, 66 utopian gradual strategy, 109–10
rise of popular Christianity, 63 women’s education, 103–4
see also pueblos-hospitales Morales, Evo, 37
Miller, Marilyn Grace, 215, 221, 225 Moratín, Leandro Fernández de, 106
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Morato, Juan José, 127, 128 Negro Miguel (Afro-Venezuelan slave), 246,
Morazán, José Francisco, 19 257n
More, Thomas Negro Primero, 246, 257n
Christian faith, 56 Neka (MTD Solano organizer), 269
first use of term “utopia”, 15, 16 neo-conservatism, 236
manual work, 59 neoliberalism, 38, 235
model of nature, 86 neo-Thomism, 95
perception of the contemporary world, 77 Nero, 81
political martyrdom, 77 Nettlau, Matt, 181
scholarly authority, 56–7 Nevares, Miguel Cabrera De, 104
scholasticism, 77 New Harmony community, 100
translation of Pico’s Discorso, 86 Nicaragua, Sandinista Revolution (1978-79),
Vespucci’s voyages, 2, 56 9
see also Utopia (Thomas More) Nietzsche, Elisabeth, 37, 41, 42–3, 44, 51n
Moreno, Juan Joseph, 58–9 Nigale (Venezuelan chief), 246
Morgan, Lewis H., 189, 192 El noticiero agrícola, 125
Mormon Church see Church of Jesus Christ of Le Nouveau Monde newspaper, 139
Latter-day Saints Nuestra Tribuna newspaper, 192
mother-child relationship, 192 Nueva Australia Colony, Paraguay, 40, 42, 43,
Movements of the Squares, 263, 264 44, 45, 51n
Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario (MBR) Nueva Germania Colony, Paraguay, 40, 41,
200, 251 42–3, 44–5, 51n
Movimientos de Trabajadores Desocupados
(MTDs), 269–70, 272 Oaxaca, Mexico, 236
Muchnik, Jacobo, 122 Occupy movement, 263, 264
Mumford, Lewis, 215 Ochoa, John A., 215, 222, 227–8, 231
Muñoz, José, 174 O’Donnell, Leopoldo, 146, 148, 149, 150
Müntzer, Thomas, 11 O’Higgins, Bernardo, 22, 102
Muratori, Lodovico, 95 Ojeda, Fabricio, 246
Museo Universal de Ciencias y Artes magazine, Olavarría, Juan de, 18, 20
99, 100 Olivier, Ernesto, 126
Olózaga, Salustiano, 151
Naples El Oprimido newspaper, 180, 187
Calabrian revolt, 79–80, 90 optical unconscious, 202, 203
Spanish domination, 79 Orellana, Francisco J., 128, 129
Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 140, 143, Orellana, Melisa, 243
154n, 217 Orinoco river, 97
Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, 144, Orthodox Church, 164, 165–6
146, 152, 155n Orwell, George, 50n
National University of Mexico (UNAM), 215 Osisko Mining Corporation, 273
Natural History, 94 Oved, Yaacov, 51n
natural philosophy, 77, 81, 87 Owen, Albert Kimsey, 140
natural sciences, 81, 87–8 Owen, Robert, 22, 100, 117, 140, 145, 156n
natural selection theory, 170
nature Pacheco, Joaquín Francisco, 31–2n
Campanella’s The City of the Sun, 80–1 El padre de familia newspaper, 128
connecting to, 86 Paltock, Robert, 93
culture-nature opposition, 45, 49 Pan-Germanism, 148
human dominion over, 87 Pan-Latinism, 141, 142, 145
investigation of, 88 Pan-Slavism, 141, 148
medieval conception of, 86 Panama, Congress of (1826), 95
natural forces, 87–8 panentheism, 171
and reason, 86 pantheism, 169, 170, 172
sense perception, 87 Paraguay
uniqueness of, 87 Aché Indians, 44
utopian/dystopian colonies, 41, 42, 43 anarchist colonies, 37, 50n, 51n
Nebrija, Antonio de, 103 Chaco War (1932–1935), 37
Negra Hipólita (Simón Bolívar’s wet nurse), Cosme Colony, 40, 44, 51n
246 European knowledge of, 37
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Paraguay (continued) photography

Friesland Colony, 50n development of, 199
Hutterite Colonies, 37, 40, 43, 44, 50n, 51n spiritualism, 201–2, 203
immigrants, 37 Pi y Margall, Francisco, 122, 127, 128, 130
indigenous rights, 44 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 78, 86
Jesuit Indian settlements, 3, 11, 37 Piette, Émile, 186, 194n
Mennonite Colonies, 37, 39, 40, 43, 44, 45, Pineda, Anselmo, 245
51n Pinto, Francisco Antonio, 99, 102, 104, 106,
Nueva Australia Colony, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 107
51n Pinto, Juan Carlos, 243
Nueva Germania Colony, 40, 41, 42–3, Pinto Vallejo, Julio, 104, 105
44–5, 51n ‘pipiolos’ (upstarts), 102, 104, 109
public opinion, 39 Plácido (Chilavert worker), 268, 276
Puerto Bertoni/Colonia Guillermo Tell, 40, Plato, 16, 53, 60, 85
42, 43, 45, 50n, 51n poder popular, 236, 252
“racial whitening” policies, 37 Podestá, Manuel, 27
racist Aryan colony, 37, 41, 42–3, 51n political economy, 100–1
remoteness concept, 46 political historiography, 38
socialist enclaves, 37 polygamy, 166, 187, 189
Stroessner dictatorship, 37 Popper, Karl, 50n
theosophical colonies, 37 Popular Review of the International Rural
war with Argentina, 119 Exhibition, 125
War of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870), 37 Portales, Diego, 110
see also utopian/dystopian colony stories Portugal
(Paraguay) as Catholic state, 76, 89–90
Paraguayan Chaco, 40, 43 fascism, 76
Pardo Bazán, Emilia, 26 natural sciences, 88
Paris Commune, 169 scientific reason, 89
particularity, Vasconcelos’s concept, 216, 220 Portuguese Empire, imperial state model, 76
Partido de la Revolución Venezolana - Fuerzas Portuguese Monarchy, 89–90
Armadas de Liberación Nacional (PRV- positivism
FALN), 251 departures from, 220
Partido de la Revolución Venezolana Ruptura, existing social order, 116
251 objectivity of the scientific account, 47
Pascal, Blaise, 170, 208 Rhodakanaty’s philosophical texts, 169,
Pastomerlo, Sergio, 119 170, 171
paternity, 185, 190, 192 spiritualism, 10, 170, 200, 205
patriarchate (human society development postmodern individual, 48
stage), 163 Poupenay-Hart, Catherine, 221
patriarchy, 189 Poza, Andrés de, 16
patrimony, 185–6, 190 Pradt, Dominique Dufour de, 17
Paul the Apostle, 62, 68 Pratt Guterl, Matthew, 92
Paula (HIJOS member), 277 Pratt, Helaman, 166, 174
Paula (movement participant), 276 Pratt, Mary Louise, 94
Pedro II, Emperor of Brazil, 182–3 Pratt, Parley P., 168
‘pelucones’ (bigwigs), 102 prefigurative movements, 240
peonazgo system, Mexico, 145, 146, 156n “preventive eugenics”, 221
Pereire brothers, 155n Prim, Juan, 146, 147, 150, 151, 152
Pérez, Amando, 174 Primavera, Hutterite Colonies, 40, 43, 44,
Pérez Delgado, Pedro (Maisanta), 246, 258n 50n, 51n
Pérez Galdós, Benito, 26 Primera, Ali, 246, 258n
El Perseguido newspaper, 180, 186 prisoners of war, 69, 70
Pestalozzi Method, 99 Pro, Juan, 6–7
Peyret, Alejo, 117, 118, 123 promiscuity, 106, 186, 189, 190, 192
phalansteries, 9, 140, 144, 182 Propaganda entre las mujeres, 188
the Phalanstery (“El Falansterio”) free school, Propaganda Fide, 88
161, 170 prophetism, 81
Philip II, King of Spain, 7, 79 Propp, Vladimir, 42, 45, 46
philosophical Geography, 8, 94 La Protesta Humana newspaper, 180, 191
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La Protesta publishers, 181, 191–2, 193 regidors, 58, 59, 60, 62, 64, 66, 67
Protestant Reformation, 77, 79, 89 religious festivals, 68
Protestant states, 76, 78, 88, 89 slavery issue, 70
Protestantism urban life, 59–60
consultation of Holy Scriptures, 164 women workers, 60
external worship, 164 working the land, 59
geographical spread of, 164–5 Puerto Bertoni/Colonia Guillermo Tell,
Rhodakanaty’s philosophical texts, 164, Paraguay, 40, 42, 43, 45, 50n, 51n
165, 176n Pufendorf, Samuel, 95
scientific revolution, 78 Puig i Oliver, Jaume de, 121
social inequality, 165 Purhépecha indigenous people, 55, 60, 63
threat to “Latin race”, 142, 143
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph Querétaro, Pueblos Unidos Rebellion, 169
anarchist revolutionary principle of, 163 Quesada, Ernesto, 119
contacts with Rhodakanaty, 159, 175n La Questione Sociale publishing group, 180,
misogyny, 181 183, 193
Pi y Margall’s translations, 128, 130 Quevedo, Francisco de, 16, 118
Principle of Federation, 118, 128 Quijano, Anibal, 236
utopian socialism, 9, 22, 117 Quinet, Edgar, 139, 144, 153–4
provincialism, Vasconcelos’s concept, 218, Quintana, Manuel José, 103
219 Quiroga, Vasco de
Prussia, Pan-Germanism, 148 as Bishop of Michoacán, 15, 55, 62
psychology, 170, 171, 178n Christian faith, 62–3, 68, 71
El Pueblo Español newspaper, 124 death penalty issue, 53, 68
Pueblos Unidos Rebellion, 169 election of officials, 66
pueblos-hospitales evangelizing mission, 53, 54, 55, 56, 62–3,
ban on mocking the afflicted, 68 65
body and face painting, 65 founding of College of San Nicolás, 63
built by Indians, 55 Información en Derecho, 16, 54, 56–8, 66, 68,
as Christian communities, 62, 68, 70 69, 71
closure of, 53, 61 interpretation of More’s Utopia, 7, 16, 53–4,
clothing, 65–6 55–8, 68, 70, 71
concept of, 7, 54–5 journey to America (1531), 53
conflict resolution, 67 as judge in the second Audiencia, 53, 55
countryside assignments, 59–60, 61 “just war” concept, 70
cuadrillas, 66 manual work, 59
election of officials, 66 policía mixta, 56, 67
evangelizing mission, 53, 54, 55, 56, 62–3, prisoners of war, 70
65 regard for the Indians, 54–5, 56
expulsion as punishment, 70 Reglas y Ordenanzas, 58–68, 71
family life, 63–4 slavery issue, 53, 68, 69–70, 71
farming, 61 as tata Vasco, 63, 66, 71
food supplies, 60–2 translation of More’s Utopia, 15, 58
influence of More’s Utopia, 7, 55 see also pueblos-hospitales
jurados, 58 Quiroule, Pierre, 181–2, 193n
land ownership, 61
leadership, 66–7 racial relations, 97
letrados, 66 racial studies, 142
livestock, 61 “racial whitening” policies, 37, 221, 224, 225,
manual work, 59 230
marriage, 63 Racine, Jean, 103
mass attendance, 68 racism, Vasconcelos’s La raza cósmica, 224,
money system, 64 231
place in histories of utopias, 53–4 racist Aryan colony, Paraguay, 37, 41, 42–3,
Principal, 59, 60, 64, 66–7 51n
public punishment, 64 radio, development of, 210
Quiroga’s founding of, 7, 11, 16, 53, 54–5 Ramírez, Ignacio, 206
Quiroga’s Reglas y Ordenanzas, 58–68, 71 Ramírez, Juana, 246, 257n
Rector, 59, 60, 62, 64, 66, 67 Ramírez Rojas, Kléber, 251
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Ramos Mejía, José María, 201 Catholicism, 164, 165

Ramos Sánchez, Eulalia, 245, 257n Chalco commune, 140, 161
Rancière, Jacques, 95 changes of address, 172
“ransomed” slaves, 69, 70 Church of Jesus, 165, 168
rational philosophy, 90 contacts with Proudhon, 159, 175n
rationalism, 3, 86 De la Naturaleza, 159
Rhodakanaty’s philosophical texts, 169, democracy, 163
170, 171 “El Falansterio” (Phalanstery) free school,
rationality, 1, 3 161, 170
Campanella’s The City of the Sun, 82, 83, financial hardships, 173–4
84, 89, 90 Fourierism, 9, 161, 163, 165, 170
Latin American identity, 252 “Garantismo Humanitario”, 163
magic comedies, 106 Greek pronunciation authority, 165
political economy, 101 individualism, 162
“the unconscious”, 172 La Internacional newspaper, 161
Venezuelan communes, 236–7 language skills, 159, 160
realism, 22, 118 marriage, 162, 163
Realpolitik, 117, 143 Mormon Church, 166–9
reason move to Mexico (1861), 160
Campanella’s The City of the Sun, 78, 80, Neopanteísmo, 161
81, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90 pantheism, 169, 170, 172
and nature, 86 peasant uprisings, 10, 161
public sphere, 115 poem addressed to Ida, 172–3
Quiroga’s Reglas y Ordenanzas, 68 positivism, 169, 170, 171
supreme objective of, 160 Protestantism, 164, 165, 176n
utopian models based on, 93 rationalism, 169, 170, 171
Red Nacional de Comuneros y Comuneras religion, 164–9
(RNC), 241, 249, 250, 251, 254n “School of Transcendental Philosophy”,
Redekop, Calvin, 45, 51n 170–1
Rees, Christine, 93 science, 170
La Reforma Social newspaper, 168–9 social contract, 9, 160, 162–3
Reformation see Protestant Reformation Social organization, 161, 169
El Reino newspaper, 149 social regeneration, 161, 162, 165
religious colonies, 43, 48–9 socialism, 9, 159, 162, 163, 164
Renaissance, 16, 77, 85–6 study circle, 160, 169
Repertorio Americano magazine, 97, 108 teaching classes, 164, 165, 170–1, 173
The Repository of Arts journal, 97 transcendental philosophy, 169–72
representative democracy, 163, 241, 242, 243 universal harmony, 160
La República newspaper, 124, 164 utopian vision, 9, 10
republicanism, 128, 130, 132 La Voz del Desierto periodical, 166, 168
El Republicano newspaper, 127 Rhodakanaty, Plotino Nefi, 159, 173
Reus Reading Centre, 126 Ribas, José Félix, 245, 257n
Revista de España magazine, 21–2 Richelieu, Cardinal, 79
Revista española de ambos mundos journal, 146 Ridolfi, Maurizio, 104
Revista Masónica Americana, 125 Riego y Núñez, Rafael del, 16, 128
Revista popular de la Exposición Rural Rigaud, General Antoine, 154n
Internacional, 125 Ríos Rosas, Antonio de los, 151
La Révolte newspaper, 180, 186, 189 Rivadavia, Bernardino, 99
La Revolución Social newspaper, 180, 187 Rivas, Angel de Saavedra, Duque de, 98
revolutions (1848), 4, 116–17, 141 Rivas Prádenas, Francisco, 104
La Revue des deux mondes magazine, 143 River Plate Agricultural Association, 112n
Revue des races latines journal, 146 Rivera, Diego, 222
Reyes, Alfonso, 2, 215 Rivero, Nicolás María, 147, 151
Rhodakanaty, Plotino Constantino, 159–74 Rochdale Pioneers, 125, 130, 133n
a priori knowledge, 170 Rodó, José Enrique, 144
agricultural colony, 160, 161 Rodrigues, Olinde, 155n
Alkaheste Fluídico-Astral, 171 Rodríguez, Félix, 167, 169
background, 159–60 Rodríguez, Simón, 245
Cartilla Socialista, 160 Rodríguez Solís, Enrique, 122–3
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Rojas Coria, Rosendo, 175n Say, Jean Baptiste, 100–1, 105

Rojas, Rafael, 95 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, 170, 171
romantic socialism, 8, 116–18, 130 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 170, 172
Romanticism, 4, 169, 170 science
Rome, ancient, 142 Catholic Church hostility, 77–8, 87
Rosas, Juan Manuel de, 140 and faith, 78, 80, 81, 88, 89
Rossi, Adele, 185–6 independence of, 87
Rossi, Ebe, 185–6 Jesuit opposition, 90
Rossi, Giovanni persecution of, 89
Un episodio de amor en la Colonia Cecilia, Rhodakanaty’s views on, 170
183–6, 187, 189–91, 192 see also positivism
granted land in Brazil, 182–3 “scientific eugenics”, 227
survival of the family, 184 scientific revolution, 78, 86, 87, 88
utopian experiments in Italy, 182–3 scientific socialism, 50n
see also Cecilia Colony scientific truth, 87, 205
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques secularism, spiritualism, 199
Abbé Marchena’s translations of, 121 Segall, Marcelo, 117
good savage theory, 140, 145 senses, 86, 87
social contract, 162, 163 sensismo (sensualism), 92
social experimentation, 21, 94 Serra, Robert, 246
Royal Spanish Academy, 225 Servo, Carlos, 174
Rubín, Luis G., 167 settlers
Ruge, Arnold, 239 anti-utopian stance, 54
Ruggeri, Andres, 266 Brazil, 60–1
Ruiz Tagle, Pablo, 107 exploitation of Indian labour, 54, 55,
Ruiz Zorrilla, Manuel, 34n 87
Russia Indian slaves, 69
autonomous movements, 265 individualism, 57
Pan-Slavism, 148 land disputes, 61
see also Soviet Union motivations, 54, 70–1
Russian Orthodox Church, 165 pueblos-hospitales, 54
Shakespeare, William, 103
Sabau, Ana, 10–11 Shandong Gold, 273
Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of Shapin, Steven, 91n
the Faith, 88 Sierra brothers, 206
Sáenz, Manuela, 245, 257n Sierra, Justo, 178n
Sagasta, Práxedes Mateo, 151 Sierra, Santiago, 198
Sagredo Baeza, Rafael, 95 El Siglo XIX newspaper, 145
Saint Pierre, Jacques-Henri Bernardin de, 93, Sigüenza y Góngora, Carlos, 216–17
96, 100 Simoni, J.R., 201–2, 203
Saint-Hilaire, Madame Mathieu de, 142 Sitrin, Marina, 11–12, 240
Saint-Simon, Henri, comte de, 4, 22, 117, Skinner, Quentin, 85
142, 154n slavery
Saint-Simonianism, 139, 141, 144, 154n abolition statements, 219
Sala-Molins , Luis, 122 More’s Utopia, 53, 68, 69
Salas, Manuel de, 102 Quiroga’s position, 53, 68, 69–70, 71
Salazar, Gabriel, 102, 108 resistance settlements, 236
Samaniego, Teresa, 104–5 Venezuela, 244–5
Samper, José María, 27 Smith, Robert H., 166
Sánchez, Josefa Joaquina, 245, 257n La Soberanía Nacional newspaper, 127–8
Sandinista Revolution (Nicaragua 1978–79), 9 Sobrino, Francisco, 16
Sanftleben, Alfred, 185 social engineering, 39, 40, 97, 115, 170
Santa Cruz, Andrés, 93, 99, 109 social happiness, 101, 270
Santa Fe, Alberto, 145 social order
Santa Fe Hospitals see pueblos-hospitales anarchism, 181, 185
Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, 26, 116 Argentina, 116
Sartoris, Vanessa, 272–3 importance of knowledge, 82
savagery (human society development stage), phalansteries, 182
163 Social organization, 161, 169
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social regeneration workers’ movements, 123, 126–7, 129

“Latin race” concept, 139, 152–4 see also Andalusia; Barcelona; Catalonia
Rhodakanaty’s views on, 161, 162, 165 Spanish Association for Mutual Aid, 125
spiritualism, 200, 209, 210 Spanish Democratic Party, 122, 129, 151
social rights, 118, 124, 132 Spanish Empire, 88, 89
socialism imperial state model, 76
Fourierism, 145 Spanish Inquisition, 77, 79, 88, 89, 90, 121–2
France, 128 Spanish Liberal Party, 151
modernizing, homogenizing logic of, 236 Spanish Liberal Union Party, 146, 148
opposition to liberalism, 130 Spanish Liberal-Progressive Party, 147
as possible alternative to capitalism, 235, Spanish liberalism, 92, 96, 97
236 Spanish literature, 98
and Rhodakanaty, 9, 159, 162, 163, 164 Spanish Moderate Party, 149
Spain, 123, 126–9 Spanish Monarchy
see also romantic socialism; scientific alliance with Catholic Church, 76, 89–90
socialism; utopian socialism; Venezuela Campanella’s The City of the Sun, 7–8,
communes 88–91
socialism (human society development stage), collapse of, 16, 95
163 political crisis, 92
socialist colonies Spanish Royal Academy, 23, 26, 42
Cosme Colony, 40, 44, 51n Spartaro, Emilio, 274
Nueva Australia Colony, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, Spencer, Herbert, 170
51n Lo Sperimentale newspaper, 182
socialist enclaves, Paraguay, 37 Spinoza, Baruch, 164, 169, 170, 171, 172
socialist revolutionary movements, 19 “spiritual eugenics”, 222
El Socialista journal, 163, 172 spiritualism
Sociedad Rural Argentina, 125 ambivalent position of, 199
Socrates, 81 clubs and societies, 10, 204, 207, 209
Solórzano y Pereira, Juan de, 16 cosmopolitanism, 201, 208–11
Souter, Gavin, 51n egalitarianism, 10, 200, 206–7
South American Masonic Review, 125 feminism, 207
Soviet Union France, 209
collapse of, 12, 13 gender equality, 206–8
see also Russia on the local stage, 201–8, 210
Spain materialism, 199, 200, 205
15M movement, 265 mediums, 202–3, 204, 205, 206, 207
anarchists, 129 Mexico, 10–11, 198–211, 211n
autonomous movements, 265 modernity, 199
Cadiz Constitution (1812), 107–8, 218 “moral decline”, 200
as Catholic state, 76, 89–90 nation building, 199, 208
cooperativism, 126 new forms of mourning, 200
Cortes assembly at Cadiz (1810), 16 new subjectivities, 201–8
Democratic Committee, 147 past time dimension, 200–1, 209
fascism, 76 positivism, 10, 170, 200, 205
French intervention in Mexico (1861), 99, representation, 201, 203–4
139, 146, 149 Rhodakanaty’s views on, 170
French invasion (1808), 16 “rotating tables”, 203
Glorious Revolution (1868), 26, 127 séances, 200–1, 203, 207, 209–10
Italian Carbonarism, 122 secularism, 199
July Revolution (1854), 127, 128 social regeneration, 200, 209, 210
Liberal Triennium (1820–1823), 99, 105 Spain, 209
natural sciences, 88 technological progress, 199, 201–2, 203,
Progressive Party, 122 205, 210
reaction of ‘56, 123, 127 United States, 198, 206, 209, 210
republican movement, 128, 130 utopianism, 10–11, 201, 207, 209
scientific reason, 89 women, 204, 206–8
socialism, 123, 126–9 spiritualist photography, 201–2, 203
spiritualism, 209 Spiritualist Society of Mexico, 204
utopian socialism, 122 Staël, Madame de, 141–2
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Stavans, Illan, 216 Trent, Council of, 76, 77, 78, 81, 89, 91
Stedman Jones, Gareth, 137n Tresserra y Ventosa, Ceferino, 122–3, 128,
Steiner, George, 42 129, 130
Stepan, Nancy, 216, 221, 222, 231 El Tribuno newspaper, 17, 123, 126
sterilization, Mexico, 221 Tully, Carol, 98
Stewart, James Z., 166, 167, 168, 174 Turreau de Linieres, Eduardo, 18–19
Stroessner, Alfredo, 37 Typographical Society of Buenos Aires, 119,
The Student, 125 124
Stuven, Ana María, 102
Suárez, Francisco, 95 UNAM (National University of Mexico), 215
Sucre, Antonio José de, 245, 257n Unamuno, Miguel de, 26
Sue, Eugenio, 122 “the unconscious”
Suñer y Capdevila, Francesc, 129 Freud’s view, 203
Swedenborg, Emanuel, 200 optical unconscious, 202, 203
Switzerland, Latin Monetary Union, 141 von Hartmann’s notion of, 169, 172
Syria, Christians, 166 Unemployed Workers’ Movement (MTD),
269–70, 272
Tacubaya, Congress of (1828), 95 Union of Citizens’ Assemblies, 272, 273, 274
Tamanaco (Venezuelan chief), 246 United States
Tarascan indigenous people, 55 American Civil War (1861–1865), 120,
Tarcus, Horacio, 8 142, 149
Taylor, John, 166, 167, 176n Chicano intellectuals/artists, 216
Teatro Nacional, Mexico City, 198, 210 civil society, 130
technological progress Icarian movement, 130–1
“Anglo-Saxon race”, 217, 218 independence, 217
spiritualism, 199, 201–2, 203, 205, 210 Monroe doctrine, 143, 153
United States, 218 New Harmony community, 100
utopia, 25, 27 protectionist policies, 18
Teivanen, Teivo, 240 race mixing reluctance, 219
telegraph, development of, 199, 210 Revolution (1776), 3
telephone, development of, 199, 202, 210 spiritualism, 198, 206, 209, 210
Telesio, Bernardino, 77, 83, 87–8 technological progress, 218
Tenney, Ammon M., 166 threat to Latin America, 143, 152
Termes, Joseph, 129 unipolar status, 12
Terradas, Abdón, 127, 129 Young Americans movement, 215
Texas see also Texas
Champ d’Asile settlement, 140, 154n universal harmony (human society
as independent buffer state, 145, 156n development stage), 163–4
La Réunion colony, 140, 145 El Universal newspaper, 17, 209–10
Owen’s project, 140, 145, 156n universality
Thatcher, Margaret, 235 Campanella’s The City of the Sun, 78–9
Thatcher, Moses, 167, 168, 173 Campanella’s De regno Dei, 90
theosophical colonies, Paraguay, 37 Catholic conception of, 78
Thiers, Adolphe, 155n of scientific reason, 80
Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 77 utopian projects, 153
Tiberghien, Guillaume, 170, 171 Vasconcelos’s concept, 11, 216, 219–21,
El Tiempo newspaper, 202–3 222, 224, 227, 228, 229, 231–2
Timothy, Saint, 67 Universopolis, 11, 215, 216, 220, 222, 223–4,
Tobolobambo community, 140 226–32
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 119–20, 122, 130 Urcullu, José de, 97, 101
toparchy, 11, 245 Urquiza, Justo José de, 117
Torres Caicedo, José Maria, 153, 155n Urrea, Teresa, 204, 205, 207
Torres, Felipe, 174 Uruguay
Torres García, Joaquín, 217 political immigrants, 117
transcendental idealism, 170 recuperated workplace movement, 266
transfiguration, Vasconcelos’s concept, 216, utilitarianism, 103, 170
228, 232 utopia
transubstantiation, 227–8, 231 abstract utopia, 239
Trejo, Melitón González, 166, 167, 168 accent on the i, 16, 17, 19
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utopia (continued) family life, 63

adaptability to new scientific doctrines, 93 fifth centenary commemoration, 1, 14n
as an ideal place, 36, 40–1, 263 first publication (1516), 15, 18, 53, 84
anarchism, 17, 180–2 food consumption, 61
associated adjectives, 22 humanism, 85
birth of, 84–5 influence on Campanella, 80
as common noun in the Spanish language, land ownership, 61
15, 16–17, 18 leadership, 67
concrete utopias, 235–6, 238–40, 244–6, letrados, 66
252 livestock, 61
conservatism, 10, 13, 17–18, 20–1, 22, manual work, 59
23–4, 27 marriage, 63
defined, 5–6, 18–19, 25–6, 36 optimalization and humanization demands,
democracy, 21, 117 83
development of the West, 1 as peace loving, 81
in dictionaries, 15, 16, 23, 25–6, 27 prisoner releases, 68–9
dreaming, 263 prisoners of war, 69
dynamic nature of, 93 as prototype literary genre, 2, 5, 53, 84
first use of, 15 public punishment, 64
free trade policies, 18 Quiroga’s interpretation of, 7, 16, 53–4,
French language influence, 17, 26, 27 55–8, 68, 70, 71
historical changes in meaning, 18, 23–5 Quiroga’s translation, 15, 58
imagination, 263 religious toleration, 62
individual and community relationships, 85 slavery issue, 53, 68, 69
Marxist and emancipatory concepts of, Spanish translations, 15–17, 18
238–40 storage and distribution of foodstuffs, 60,
modernity, 1, 13, 27 61, 62
negative meanings, 6, 18, 19–21, 22, 25, 27 urban life, 59–60
newspaper mentions, 16, 17, 18, 20–1, 23–5 voluntary slaves, 69
as a no-place, 36, 118, 139, 263 women workers, 60
in official Government documents, 26, 34n utopian literary genre, 5–6, 36, 84–6
peace associations, 21 Andrés Bello’s early use of the term, 18
perfectibility of society, 85 folktales and fairy stories connection, 47
in poems, 17–18 public festivals and ceremonies, 104
as a polysemic concept, 6, 16 racial focus, 97
positive meanings, 6, 20, 22, 27 topics discussed, 181
progressives, 20, 25, 27 see also The City of the Sun (Campanella);
protectionist policies, 18 Utopia (Thomas More)
reactionaries, 20, 21, 24 Utopian reason, 68, 93
republicanism, 21, 31n utopian socialism, 3–4, 19, 21–2, 50n
revolutionary movements, 19, 21–2 Andalusia, 22
Spanish Royal Academy definition, 26 Cabet’s notion of, 4, 8, 22, 117, 129
spatio-temporal context, 1 Chevalier’s notion of, 4, 9
technological progress, 25, 27 Considerant’s notion of, 4, 9, 22
theoretical assumptions of, 84–6 Fourier’s notion of, 9, 22, 117
use of the term in Spanish language, 6–7, France, 245
15–28 Fraternidad group, 128–9
Western literature on, 36 Proudhon’s notion of, 9, 22, 117
written with a capital letter, 16, 18 Spain, 122
Utopia (Thomas More) Victory y Suárez’s notion of, 8, 124
adultery, 63 Utopian Studies, 5, 6, 14n
city sized, 57–8, 64 utopian thought
clothing, 65 anarchism, 180–2
conflict resolution, 67 origins of, 15, 16
countryside assignments, 59 Plato’s Republic, 53
death penalty issue, 53, 68–9 spiritualism, 201
divorce, 63 Western literature on, 36
economic structure, 83 utopian/dystopian colony stories (Paraguay)
election of officials, 66 autobiographical element, 41, 47–8
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binary oppositions, 45, 49 contextualization, 216, 220, 221, 224, 228,

book covers, 45–6 232
culture-nature opposition, 45, 49 “cosmic race”, 11, 215–16, 219, 220–1,
difference, 38–9 222–3, 224, 225, 227, 229–30
emotions, 41–2 cosmic sentiment, 219–20
evocation, 49 cross-breeding obsession, 224
fascination, 41–2, 44–5, 49 eugenics, 221, 222, 224, 227, 230
friction, 48, 49 genetics, 217, 219, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227,
heroic figures, 42, 43, 45, 46, 49 228
identifications, 39 Indología, 222
imagination, 38–9 intuition, 220
initiation stage, 42, 43, 46 “Latin race”, 217, 226, 227, 229
irony, 49 limitation, 219–21, 224
literary genres, 7, 36, 41 nation-building, 223
maps and photos, 46 national identity, 222
memory of, 7, 36, 37–8, 39–45, 48 particularity, 216, 220
narrative structure, 40–5 provincialism, 218, 219
paratexts, 45–6, 47, 52n “race” issue, 224–6, 229, 230
relationship with nature, 41, 42, 43 race mixing, 215, 221, 222, 223, 224, 226
representation, 48–9 “racial whitening” issue, 221, 224, 225, 230
return stage, 42, 43–4, 46–7 racism, 224, 231
separation stage, 42–3, 46 La raza cósmica (The Cosmic Race), 11,
three-part structure, 41, 42–5, 46, 47 215–32
travelogues, 41 social injustices, 217–18, 226
utopian/dystopian experiments spiritual factor, 229
difference, 38–9 transfiguration, 216, 228, 232
idea of possibility, 38–9 travelogue, 216, 221
identifications, 39 universality, 11, 216, 219–21, 222, 224,
memory of, 7, 36, 37–8, 39–45, 48 227, 228, 229, 231–2
religious colonies, 43, 48–9 Universopolis, 11, 215, 216, 220, 222,
subject capacity to bring about change, 39 223–4, 226–32
utopianism Velazco y Trianosky, Gregory, 215, 226
Catalonia, 129 Venezuela
creation of a new language, 103 Afro-Venezuelans, 238, 244–5, 246
development of the West, 1 Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV), 260n
early liberalism, 109–10 Bolivarianism, 11, 245, 246
Enlightenment, 100 Cemento Andino, 248
Hispanic and Portuguese, 4–5 communal cities, 238, 242
Latin American, 2–3, 4–5, 7, 12, 235, communal state, 238, 250–2
246 Comuna 7 Pilares Socialistas, 244, 247,
monastic principles of, 103 249–50
republican tradition, 100 confederaciones (confederations), 240
role of education, 102 Constitution (1999), 238
Spanish Royal Academy definition, 26 Corriente Revolucionaria Bolívar y Zamora
utópico, 26, 34n (CRBZ), 256n
utopismo, 26 Enterprises of Communal Social Property
utopistas, 21, 26, 27, 34n (EPSC), 247–9
utopistics, 236 Ezequial Zamora Peasant National Front,
256n
Valadés, José C., 159, 174, 175n Frente de Liberacion Nacional, 251
Valencia, cooperativism, 126 Frente Nacional Comunal Simón Bolívar
Valera, Juan, 26 (FNCSB), 243, 256n
La Vanguardia weekly newspaper, 125 independence movements, 257n
Varela, Héctor, 133n indigenous peoples, 238, 244, 246
Variedades o El Mensajero de Londres journal, Invepal, 248
97–8 Ley Orgánica del Sistema Económico
Vasconcelos, José Comunal, 247
“Anglo-Saxon race”, 217–18, 223, 226, 227 Local Public Planning Councils, 237
Christianity, 228 mancomunidades (commonwealths), 240
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Venezuela (continued) republic and democracy, 132

Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario Rural Society, 117
(MBR) 200, 251 social rights, 118, 124, 132
Organic Law of the Communal Economic socialism, 124, 130, 131–2
System (LOSEC), 250, 260n utopianism, 8, 118, 124, 130–1, 132
Organic Law of Communes (LOC), 250 “La Verdad social”, 131
Partido de la Revolución Venezolana - Vidaurri, Santiago, 145
Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Vienna, Congress of, 99
(PRV-FALN), 251 Vienna University, 159
Partido de la Revolución Venezolana Ruptura, Villalba, Francisco, 104
251 Villanueva, Joaquín Lorenzo, 97, 101
pueblo, 250, 251, 252 Villanueva, Santiago, 161, 175n
Red Nacional de Comuneros y Comuneras Villarreal, Juan B., 161
(RNC), 241, 249, 250, 251, 254n Villavicencio, Hermenegildo, 161
representative democracy, 241, 242, 243 Violetas del Anáhuac magazine, 207
slavery, 244–5 Virigay, Ramón, 247
Venezuela communal councils, 11 Vitoria, Francisco, 95, 228
as constituent power, 238 Vives, Juan, 85
cooperation between, 240 Volney, Constantin-François, 121
formation (2005), 235, 237, 240 Voltaire, 94, 121
liberal critics of, 252 La Voz de México newspaper, 198
numbers of, 235, 255n La Voz del Desierto periodical, 166, 168
size of, 235
structure, 237–8, 241, 242–3 Wagoner, Bob, 51n
Venezuela communes, 11, 12, 240–4 Wagoner, Shirley, 51n
alternative rationality, 236–7 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 236
Ataroa Socialist Commune, 242 Warren, Fintan B., 53
as concrete utopias, 235, 236, 238–40, 244– Weber, Carl Maria von, 105
6, 252 West Indies, 100, 140
distribution networks, 248 Western Railway, 125
economy of, 247–50 White, Hayden, 48
Eje de MACA commune, 248, 249 Whitehead, Anne, 45, 51n
names of, 245–6, 252 “whitening” policies, 37, 221, 224, 225, 230
numbers of, 235, 241 Wilcken, Elder, 169–70
social production projects, 247 William Tell Colony, 40, 42, 43, 45, 50n, 51n
structure, 237–8 Witeze Junior, Geraldo, 7
Vera, José, 174 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 219
La Verdad newspaper, 165 Wolff, Larry, 94
Vespucci, Amerigo, 2, 56 women
Vico, Giambattista, 170 anarchist colonies, 181, 182, 185, 186–7,
Victory, José, 123 188–9, 191
Victory y Suárez, Bartolomé autonomy of, 186
artisans’ associations, 124 education in Chile, 103–4
background, 123 emancipation of, 162, 181, 188–91
Biblioteca Popular (Popular Library), 119– feminism, 207
23, 126 gender equality, 206–8
civil associationism, 124 historical subordination of, 182
Communism, 130–1 More’s Utopia, 60
cooperativism, 124, 126 polyandry, 185
exile in Buenos Aires (1857), 8, 117, 119, pueblos-hospitales, 60
123, 130 “right of mothers”, 192
“Una explicación”, 131 Rossi’s Un episodio de amor en la Colonia
ideological influences, 125–9, 130 Cecilia, 183–6, 190–1, 192
journalism, 123–5 spiritualism, 204, 206–8
masonic propaganda, 125 Working Man’s Cultural Association in
on Minorca, 123 Barcelona, 126
move to Barcelona (1846), 123, 126 Wright de Kleinhans, Laureana, 207–8
political activism in Barcelona, 123, 126 Wright, Erik Olin, 235–6
political rights, 124, 132 Wundt, Wilhelm, 170
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Young, Brigham, 166 Zavala, Iris, 128, 129

Zavala, Silvio, 54, 58
Zalacosta, Francisco, 161 Zea, Leopoldo, 215
Zamora, Ezequiel, 245 Zermeño, Guillermo, 140
Zamyatin, Yevgeny, 50n Zibechi, Raúl, 264, 274
Zapatistas, 236, 240, 263, 265 Žižek, Slavoj, 226
Zarco, Francisco, 145 Zumárraga, Juan de, 54
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