Shaping the Tyrant: The Role of Emotions in Nineteenth-Century Accounts on the Argentine Dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas (1830s-50s) (original) (raw)
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An Approach to Early Nineteenth-Century Latin American Dictators through Emotions
Differently from post-Napoleonic Europe, Latin America became the cradle of many dictatorships already during the first half of the nineteenth century. After the independence from absolutist Spanish rule, many new nations placed their fates in the hands of a dictator such as Simón Bolívar, Bernardo O’Higgins, José Gaspar de Francia or Antonio López de Santa Anna, at a time when this concept had no definitely negative connotation yet. As Jürgen Osterhammel pointed out, dictators lack the sanction by tradition, dynastic legitimacy or religious consecration. In addition to this, one has to recall Max Weber’s Three Types of Legitimate Rule, since dictatorship belongs to the type of “charismatic authority”. These reflections raise the question on the compensation of those lacks and the construction of dictatorial charisma by means of emotions. I argue that emotions did not only play a relevant role in the genesis of the ruler’s glorious image but also in discrediting him. Europe got acquainted with José Gaspar de Francia (1766-1840), Supreme Dictator of Paraguay, and Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793-1877), Governor of Buenos Aires, through travel reports, newspapers, political essays and novels too. My paper aims at focussing on the emotions (fear, hope, empathy etc) mobilised in different (mainly European) accounts about these two dictators and for different purposes.
Cronfa, British Library and Worldcat , 2021
For many decades, Argentina's former populist President Juan Domingo de Perón has been frequently compared with the infamous nineteenth-century Federalist dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas. The official liberal historical perspective postulates that the Perón government was the 'second tyranny', the first being the notorious Rosas regime, but this assertion is problematic. Despite the evident parallels to be drawn, both men's zealous supporters and archenemies use the similarities to reinforce their own political agendas. This thesis explores the plausible comparisons between Argentina's most polemical political leaders, focusing on the literary representations of both figures in a series of nineteenth and twentieth-century fictional and historical works. Studying Rosas and Perón is even more significant in view of the striking similarities between their wives, who were instrumental in elevating their husbands to long-term political supremacy. Both women assumed unofficial roles in their spouses' administrations and one, namely Eva Perón, is arguably Argentina's most celebrated political icon. The parallels between both men and women have-strangely-never undergone literary treatment. This study provides the first comprehensive analysis of the four most controversial political figures who have influenced much of the historiography of Argentina.
Routledge Studies in Modern History, 2023
Between the mid-eighteenth and the mid-nineteenth century, the idea of dictatorship changed drastically, leaving back the ancient Roman paradigm and opening the way to a rule with extraordinary powers and which was unlimited in time. While the French Revolution produced an acceleration of history and created new narratives of dictatorship, with Napoleon Bonaparte as its most iconic embodiment, the Latin American struggle for independence witnessed an unprecedented concentration of rulers seeking those new nations’ sovereignty through dictatorial rule. Starting from the assumption that the age of revolution was one of dictators too, this book aims at exploring how this new type of rulers whose authority was no longer based on dynastic succession or religious consecration sought legitimacy. By unveiling the role of emotions – hope, fear and nostalgia – in the making of a new paradigm of rule and focusing on the narratives legitimizing and de-legitimizing dictatorship, this study goes beyond traditional conceptual history. For this purpose, different sources such as libels, history treatises, encyclopedias, plays, poems, librettos, but also visual material will be resorted to. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of modern history, the history of emotions, intellectual history, global history, cultural studies and political science.
Postmodern Parody in Latin American Literature The Paradox of Ideological Construction and Deconstruction, 2017
Enriquillo Sánchez’s first novel, Musiquito: Anales de un déspota y de un bolerita marked an important moment when it was published in 1993 in the Dominican Republic. Incorporating recognizable traces of the dictatorial novels of Gabriel García Márquez, Augusto Roa Bastos, and Mario Vargas Llosa, Sánchez’s novel dared to directly criticize the ongoing political repression lived in the Dominican Republic during the 1980s and 1990s through his presentation of the comically absurd fictional dictator, Porfirio Funess. Funess’ name directly refers to Borges’ short story “Funes, el memorioso” and to the eccentric figure of the Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz, who was in power from 1876 to 1911. The incorporation of this precise literary text, along with the reference to a key historical figure in the political sphere of Latin America, are central to the characterization of Porfirio Funess, and they subtly illustrate a crucial idea: an ideological continuum based on the dissociation of memory and truth from history. In this chapter, I analyze how Porfirio Funess represents an ideological continuum in the Dominican Republic in the sense that he represents not only the literary references of other dictatorial novels, but more importantly, illustrates how in the Dominican Republic there has been succession of political regimes whose despotic ideology was very similar. As a composite of the political regimes of Pedro Santana (in power from 1844-1848, 1853-1856, and 1858-1861), Ulises Heureaux (in power from 1882-1884 and 1887-1889), Rafael L. Trujillo (in power from 1930-1961), and Joaquín Balaguer (in power from 1960-1962, 1966-1987, and 1986-1996), Funess’ absurdity and megalomaniac personality aligns with what has occurred historically in the Dominican Republic. Much like the narrator of the Musiquito, Sánchez was a part of the generation of the 1970s who were born and raised under the Balaguer administration. In fact, the publication of Musiquito coincided with Balaguer’s administration. The effects of living under an ongoing cycle of repressive administrations appear throughout the novel, and it is particularly embodied by the narrator. It is through his filtered memories that we get a glimpse of the tutelary Musiquito, his father, and of Funess but more importantly it is through the narrator that we get a glimpse of how many of the societal factors that were present during Funess’ regime still exists in the present. The narrator alternates between a retroactive narration of his father’s and of Funess’ deaths, and of his precarious living conditions in the Dominican Republic during present time. Therefore, in this chapter, I am also analyzing how the historical conditions that have given rise to the absurd and despotic figures in the past are still present and always ready to reappear in the Dominican Republic.
An Author without a Nation: Fictional Renderings of Leopoldo Lugones in Argentine Literature
Latin American Research Review, 2023
This article examines three novels that use fiction to revise the figure of the Argentine author Leopoldo Lugones: Ricardo Piglia's Respiración artificial (1980), C. E. Feiling's Un poeta nacional (1993), and César Aira's Lugones (2020). These three novels present different portrayals of Lugones, which also mirror their opposing views of the Argentine literary tradition. Piglia, Feiling, and Aira look back at the so-called national poet when self-fashioning themselves as writers and outlining a literary project in a (post)dictatorial scenario. In a cultural field marked by the effects of state terror and neoliberal reform policies, these fictional renderings of Lugones become a means of reflecting on the political past and the future of literature. Ultimately, I argue that Respiración artificial, Un poeta nacional, and Lugones devise a figure of the Argentine author decoupled from the mission of consolidating a national identity that Lugones epitomized for nearly half a century.
The Emotions of Power: Love, Anger, and Fear, or How to Rule the Spanish Empire
Emotions and Daily Life in Colonial Mexico, 2014
I edited by Javier Villa-Flores and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8263-5462-4 (pbk.: alk. paper) -ISBN 978-0-8263-5463-1 (electronic) i. Mexico-Social life and customs-17th century. 2. Mexico-Social life and customs-18th century. 3. Mexico-Social life and customs-19th century.