Tapia’s monograph reopens an old question, though perhaps to little effect. With a brief glance at the exceedingly complex traditions of municipal democracy in medieval Iberia, the author proceeds to the heart of his work. This consists of a recital of the events surrounding several dozen cabildos abiertos held during the three centuries of colonial sway in all corners of Spanish America. These short narratives are arranged according to the type of occasion that necessitated the calling of a more or less general town meeting. Thus, in the chapter concerning the founding and removal of cities, we are presented anecdotal accounts of the founding of Lima in 1535, the peregrinations of Guatemala in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the removal of Guadalajara in the 1530s, and the abortive removal of La Serena in the 1690s. Subsequent sections set out in like fashion the sometimes obscure role of the cabildo abierto in the election of local officials (including such worthies as governors and a bishop), discussion of municipal religious observances, the voting of gifts of money to the Crown, measures for communal defense against pirates, Indians, and epidemics. In the last chapter the author summarizes his findings: “We believe that the evidence shown permits us to conclude that in the colonial cabildo abierto are to be found the seeds of a true democracy, that has perhaps not yet come to fruition … in any of the Spanish American republics” (p. 93). Unfortunately it permits nothing of the sort.
The problem of method is central. In eschewing analysis, the author is apparently aware that his universe is too large and his sample too small for drawing significant conclusions. As he looks at those towns—Asunción, Montevideo, Guatemala—where the cabildo abierto seems to have led a particularly vigorous life, the author does not possess enough data to permit anything like a case study approach. But what, then, is the point of his book? Moreover, Tapia has missed major opportunities. He has quite neglected the political role of the cabildo abierto—as ratifier, if nothing else—in the Comunero movements of the eighteenth century and especially in the events that flowed from the constitutional crisis of 1808. One does not have to share fully the suarecista thesis to wish that the question of the locus of sovereignty in Hispanic American political society had been explored. Thus the book does little more than demonstrate once again that in the interstices of the Spanish colonial system, and particularly at its periphery, there existed certain limited possibilities from below.
