Syncretism or Crisis?

The Three Graces (spoof of Goya’s ‘Third of May 1808’) by Cesar Santos, contemporary exponent of Latin American syncretism

In a previous post I said it's wrong to portray Spanish colonial rule in Latin America as a kind of ‘identity crisis’ reverberating to the present day. Now I will explain why. We must start as America did, with la conquista. 

Conquest was made easier because the Spaniards encountered divided kingdoms, vicious inter-tribal warfare, and economies of forced tribute which syphoned goods and lives from one tribe to another. If every clash of tribes and every conquest signals an ‘identity crisis’, then Indo-Americans were accustomed to the process long before Spaniards arrived. There were multiple irreconcilable identities in Latin America prior to Spanish rule. By the end of the colonial era 300 years later, there was, for most intents and purposes, a universe identity - Hispanic.

Some historians, Westerners included, tried to portray at least one conquered civilisation -- the Incas -- as proto-socialist. That is a romantic or utopian view. The Inca empire was efficient, highly bureaucratic and authoritarian. However, Spanish conquest was made easier by the absence of egalitarianism (not to speak of popular participation) in Inca and Aztec rulership systems. The Spanish had only to capture the leaders to gain control. 

Notwithstanding, intellectuals of the post-cold war Latin American Left regularly resuscitate idealistic communitarian interpretations of pre-Hispanic America. They tell us why everything from contemporary soup kitchens to urban self-help housing today represent uniquely indigenous solidarity, a special substance which, they insist, necessarily conflicts with capitalist society.

Perhaps the most prominent of romantic intellectuals is the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, a glorifier of pre-Colombian indigenous society. He wants to “recover a community-based mode of production and way of life, founded not on greed, but solidarity, in the age-old freedoms and identity between human beings and nature”, and to “discover the American face of socialism, whose roots lie in the tradition of the community”.  

What age-old freedoms? In fact, it was Spanish Jesuits in the congregaciones who attempted, although unsuccessfully, to put in practice Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’ of communal society. The Jesuits were so powerful in Spanish America that they became a threat to the Spanish monarchy and were finally expelled. Indigenous local government, where it survived, retained the more brutal hierarchical rule of Indian ‘caciques’. Spanish rule was indeed facilitated by the commensurability between the roles of the native cacique and the authoritarian Spanish corregidor or alcade mayor. There was little romance in caciquismo. 

Spanish America was a complex syncretism rather than a discontinuous or dualistic clash over pre-Hispanic identities. In Latin America’s municipal museums one finds paintings and exhibits illustrating how Spanish officials, ever conscious of racial hierarchy, were overwhelmed by the melting pot of cultural and ethnic identities. Mid-18th century municipal authorities in Guadalajara, Mexico, identified sixteen racial types produced by the meeting of Spanish, Moorish, Chinese, African, and native people, all of them elaborately classified in descending hierarchical order. 

Assimilation was not all in Spain’s favour. European enlightenment spirit became a critical influence. We see it in David Brading’s fine study of creole patriotic politics and cultural expression. The creole modernising impulse repudiated ‘decadent’ Baroque pomp and ceremony in 17th and 18th century Spanish America. 

The aftermath of early 19th century independence struggles showed the creole intellectual elite had been prepared ideologically -- albeit not politically -- to pursue liberal economic and constitutional goals. From then on the challenge facing educated cosmopolitan elites was the difficulty of winning support for radical change from indigenous and mestizo masses who were fastened conservatively to the old power structure of patrimonial networks. Customs and norms of patron-client relationships that underpinned Hispanic political and religious systems have proven to be tremendously tenacious.

The Spanish were adept at preserving indigenous political, social, cultural and religious systems that served the imperial purpose and facilitated administration of a large population by small numbers of peninsulares (Spanish born) and criollos (Spanish descent). Hispanic and indigenous cultural expressions grafted onto each other symbolically, such as in the construction of churches on the foundations of Inca buildings, or catholic rituals performed with native language and music, and in the pervasive festivals and processions. 

Boisterous festivals which were a feature of life in colonial Latin America served some economic (as well as spiritual and social) ends. The Spanish crown tried sporadically to regulate and humanise working conditions. The calendar of Andean indigenous festivities quite possibly evolved to allow several months of work-free days annually in order to mitigate the adversity of the living and work conditions of indigenous populations under colonial rule. Festivals also gave opportunity to vent political emotion (e.g. masked dances poking fun at drunken gamonales and cacique bosses). 

An old impertinent Andean gamonal dance, now performed with Cuzqueña beer instead of spirits

Traditional clientelism and patrimonialism exercised and exerted the main instrumental or functional effect. Cultural devices played an important part in that system. The soft power of cultural assimilation in Spanish America helped preclude any serious identity crisis, as historians observe.

Edwin Williamson: “The culture of the Catholic monarchy possessed enduring strengths: it pervaded all strata of society, linking high culture and low; it could accommodate mestizaje in all spheres, from sexual relations to architecture; and, finally, it was capable of reconciling great ethnic and regional diversity with a sense of underlying unity.  Catholic monarchy provided the bedrock of cultural identity for the Indies.”

J.H. Parry: “The rigidity of the class structure in most parts of [Spanish America] helped to preserve a remarkable appearance of cultural homogeneity throughout the area. Spanish immigrants through three centuries had settled with common assumptions of racial and social superiority… [Their] common culture was a generalised and simplified Hispanidad... By the time of the wars of independence all of Spanish America was strongly marked by a common cultural stamp. A common heritage was recognised across all the [regional] divisions caused by local loyalty, personal jealousy and provincial hostility… In large measure [today’s Latin American countries] still constitute a single culture area.”

If there was an identity crisis it was felt in Europe rather than America. The Spanish initially displayed little curiosity about the Americas. During eras of exploration and conquest many Europeans knew something of Africa and fell in love with Middle Eastern and Asian artistic, literary, and architectural forms. One of the striking facts of Hispanic colonialism was the virtual indifference of peninsular Spain to the exotica of the New World or the heroism of the conquistadores. Art and design in Spain were never much influenced by American motifs or the craftsmanship of pre-colombian civilisations. 

Early portrayals of America were of cannibalism, sexual deviance, paganism, and devil-worship. The artistic depictions were fascinating and grotesque. Missionaries found natural innocence and tablas rasas for conversion. But the reportage and imagery received by most Spaniards on the other side of the Atlantic ocean raised doubts about whether Indians were even human, and helped justify enslavement and humiliation. 

It was really no different from Chinese reactions to their Southeast Asian conquests in the 17th century. J. H. Elliot argues that colonial officials who first recorded encounters with barbarians and harsh tropical landscapes in either region “saw what they expected to see, and ignored or rejected those features of life for which they were mentally unprepared”.  

Gradually it dawned on Spaniards that their preconceptions and the secrecy of their governments concealed from them the beauties of far-off lands, the subtleties of local languages, the talents of Indian architects, labourers and traders, the astuteness of native rulers, and the variety that existed even among ‘barbarians’. By stages they became aware of a need to examine the impact of Latin American differences on Europe’s own culture, politics, and trade. It was a discovery of European identity itself, a result of now encountering something completely different. More importantly, conquest of America and its resources gave the Spanish establishment immense new wealth for patronage and war. 

For a century or more, conquest and dominance of the Americas kindled Europe’s pride in its technological, intellectual, spiritual, administrative, political, and economic accomplishments. Eventually a part of that self-esteem turned to shame. A dissident European pride emerged from the shadows, one that in Elliot’s words “rated freedom above authority, equality above hierarchy, and inquiry above acceptance”. This source of dignity never took hold in Latin America as powerfully as it did in North America, but it gave shape to Latin America’s first true crisis of identity, in the nineteenth century, which I will describe in a future post.

Michael G. Heller ©2014