The Story of Spanish by Jean-Benoit Nadeau

Author:Jean-Benoit Nadeau
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

21. Standard Shift

VENEZUELA PRODUCED THE THIRD GIANT of Latin America’s revolutionary period. In addition to El Precursor and El Libertador, there was El Escritor (the writer): Andrés Bello.

Unlike his famous revolutionary compatriots, Andrés Bello didn’t wage wars or rally entire populations to take up arms in rebellion. Yet he spent his life fighting a battle akin to Bolívar’s, albeit by different means. Whereas Bolívar struggled to unite the newly independent countries politically, Bello worked to maintain their bonds through a common tongue.

Bello had roughly the same background as Bolívar, who was an upper-class criollo. But that’s where the similarities end. Bolívar was romantic, flamboyant, idealistic, and militaristic; Bello was shy, introverted, and bookish. An award-winning student, well versed in both the classics and vernacular Spanish, Bello became Bolívar’s tutor when he was just twenty, instructing the eighteen-year-old Liberator-to-be in geography and literature. Bello, who obviously didn’t see Bolívar’s potential, famously characterized his young charge as “a talented but restless young man, deficient in application.”

Bello went on to fight a quieter battle than Bolívar. Yet he fought longer. While Bolívar died prematurely at forty-seven, his great dream of a continental Colombia having failed, Bello lived to eighty-three, a renowned writer, scholar, philosopher, jurist, poet, and statesman. Bello had lived according to the belief that even if Miranda’s idea of a continental Gran Columbia was politically untenable, Latin American could be united through language.

Independence threatened to split Spanish into separate dialects the way the continent split into separate political entities. Like King Alfonxo X of Castile and Antonio de Nebrija, Bello saw Spanish as a tool of unification, and his accomplishments completely transformed Spanish as a national language—of not one but nineteen countries. In fact, Bello’s work and influence changed attitudes in Spain. During the revolutionary period, Spain went from ignoring the Spanish spoken in the Americas to taking the first steps in defining Spanish as the language of a civilization that spanned two continents.

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Bello started his professional life as a rising member of Venezuela’s colonial administration, an administrator and secretary for three captains general translating French and English correspondence from the nearby Caribbean islands. In 1810, Bello produced the first book ever published in Venezuela, a Handbook and Universal Guide for Visitors in Venezuela, of which only three copies are known to have survived.

Bello’s superiors recognized his immense potential. In 1810, when Venezuela’s captaincy general was replaced by a junta, Bello was appointed first secretary of foreign affairs. The junta sent him, along with Simón Bolívar, to London to secure British support and funding for the nascent Venezuelan nation.

Venezuela’s diplomatic campaign in London was an uphill battle. After Napoleon had invaded Spain in 1808, the British government had changed hats. Britain was no longer interested in weakening Spain’s colonial empire; it supported Spain against Napoleon and refused to support any rebellious movements that threatened to weaken Spain’s colonial empire. Bolívar returned to Venezuela to fight, but Bello decided to stay in London and keep on working as a diplomat.

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