A Great Fear by Timothy Hawkins;

Author:Timothy Hawkins;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780817392130
Publisher: University of Alabama Press

6

Fighting Napoleon in Totonicapán

Now I have received exact warnings that the Maquiavellian French government has dispatched a number of emissaries to different parts of our Americas with proclamations and letters supposedly or forcibly drawn from our king Fernando VII. Some of these vile messengers have arrived in the United States of America where they seek transportation to different points in our most loyal possessions. Among these are the Gulf of Honduras, where they are crazy enough to believe that they will be able to spread their venom and find allies among the faithful inhabitants of the most loyal, religious, and peaceful kingdom on earth.

—Antonio González Saravia, Guatemala City, April 22, 1810

Following the collapse of the Spanish monarchy in 1808, the Kingdom of Guatemala faced a political challenge without precedent in its history. On the surface, despite the unprecedented nature and consequences of Napoleon’s intervention into Spanish politics, the colonial bureaucracy survived the shock of the Bayonne coup that brought down the Bourbons. On the far side of the Atlantic, a captain general and audiencia remained in place to sustain the sovereignty of the deposed Fernando VII across the length of the Central American isthmus. At the provincial level, a secondary tier of Crown-appointed governors personified Spanish authority over fifteen distinct and largely autonomous jurisdictions. Finally, at the local level a diverse group of authorities administered the colonial population within both municipal and district boundaries as they had done for the past three centuries.

Nevertheless, after 1808 this traditional political framework had to adapt quickly to a new threat. In short order some of the most minor figures in the colonial bureaucracy found themselves on the front line of defenses designed to protect the Spanish possessions from Napoleon. By 1810 a rational fear of the threat posed by the French emperor had combined with rumor, gossip, propaganda, and genuine intelligence to convince senior Spanish officials that the danger of a French invasion of the colonies was both legitimate and imminent. Ultimately, local officials there became critical links in what would become a long, rapidly evolving, and occasionally awkward administrative chain stretching from Spain to the Americas, as these bureaucrats were expected to block an anticipated first-wave assault on the Spanish colonies by French emissaries, spies, and provocateurs. Direct communication between loyalist Spain and the Americas fanned some of these concerns. However, as the preceding chapters have shown, by 1810 the person most responsible for defining and shaping the colonial response to Napoleon was the Spanish ambassador to the United States, Luís de Onís. By using the Guatemalan alcaldía mayor administrative unit of Totonicapán as a case study, this final chapter evaluates the impact of the Onís warnings on Spanish America by tracing them through the layers of the Spanish colonial bureaucracy and deep into the most isolated corners of the empire.

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