These two books make a striking contrast. Guillermo Feliú Cruz has produced a veritable library of historical information compiled, edited, annotated, and analyzed with thorough, meticulous scholarship. Raúl Silva Castro, on the other hand, has rediscovered and presented anew a work which, in spite of the title and his claim, is not a historical study. It is a piece of literature—imaginative, at times poetic, and complex in terms of its literary reality.
This edition of the Memorias Militares of Coronel Beauchef is a work of reconstruction, coordination, organization, and interpretation based on manuscripts—three primary and two secondary sources. Feliú Cruz explains in his lengthy introduction that his first intent was to give unity and coordination to the manuscripts. Apparently Beauchef was a disorderly writer and often failed to make his meaning clear. Feliú Cruz maintains that he has made a technical estimation of the Memorias.
Coronel Jorge Beauchef was a French professional soldier who became disillusioned with France after the fall of Napoleon. He went to Chile and offered his services to the revolutionary forces fighting for independence from Spain. Bernardo O’Higgins considered him an excellent officer; General Ramón Freire admired his military ability; and Lord Cochrane praised his bravery. All three made their judgments from first-hand observation of his service. The Frenchman’s frank, critical, outspoken manner, however, prevented him from rising farther than a colonel in the military hierarchy. His memoirs and his correspondence include much Chilean national history.
Feliú Cruz has thoroughly surveyed the historical literature which is related to Beauchef and his activities during the period of Chile’s struggle for independence, and has added to his introduction a useful bibliography. He has also included in his book several essays concerning Beauchef written by well-known Chileans. While he admits that they are of varying historical quality and literary merit, he feels that they accomplish his purpose by producing a picture of Beauchef. It is a vivid picture and one which Feliú Cruz retouches somewhat in his version of the Memorias. This book is a valuable contribution to the historical literature dealing with Beauchef and his times.
La revolución del 20 de abril de 1851 was first published in 1893. Raúl Silva Castro has written a long introduction to the 1966 edition giving a personal and professional biography of Daniel Riquelme and an analysis of his work. Riquelme did not write for historians or, in fact, for the erudite. He was a journalist who wrote for the man on the street. Above all he was a costumbrista—a local colorist, a producer of mental photographs. His writing techniques were those of a storyteller. The story, however, seems to have been only a device with which he could create pictures of his native city, Santiago.
There are no footnotes and no bibliography; there is no thesis or interpretation. Riquelme gives little attention to the political aspects of the revolution, and his account of it deals almost exclusively with action in Santiago, although the insurrection was not confined to that city. He seems preoccupied with the physical appearance of the city and the details of every-day life. Nevertheless, his imagery is good and his style casual, so that he seems to be recording an after-dinner conversation in which one person has told a familiar story while the others made comments. The book makes interesting reading, but it cannot serve as reference material on the Chilean revolution of 1851.
