A joint review of these two volumes can be attempted only for the purposes of contrasting two quite dissimilar works. They are, it is true, re-issues of long out-of-print items, they are the personal recollections, in good part, “eye witness” accounts, of one or another phases of nineteenth-century Chilean affairs, they now appear as the products of the same press, and possibly they possess other surface likenesses. But their differences are quite fundamental. Le León’s “recollections” (originally published in French and now appearing in Spanish for the first time) are those of a French naval officer’s experiences while assigned as a foreign observer to accompany a Chilean army in its campaign in Peru. His personal involvement was for a period of about three months in late 1880 and early 1881, from the Chilean landing at Pisco in November, 1880, through to the destruction, at Chorrillos and Miraflores, of the Peruvian major forces and the occupation of Lima, in mid-January, 1881. Thus the major part of this book is a detailed account (apparently drawn from a journal kept during the campaign) of the climactic military operations of the War of the Pacific. The time span involved is a very brief one, the geographic limits are narrow, and the observations are those of a well-trained outsider, writing for a European audience about on-going events in South America.
In contrast the Pérez Rosales “recuerdos” attempt to cover the years from 1814 to 1860, describing his life and experiences in his native country (Chile), plus those in a variety of other countries (Argentina, Brazil, France, and gold rush California). They are, furthermore, the recollections of a well-born Chilean, were written for Chilean rather than European readers, and were not apparently intended, when originally published in 1882, to give insights into contemporary affairs. The mood, in fact, seemed to have been that of describing an age long past and scenes forgotten or unknown, whether of Alta California, to which he had journeyed as a merchant, or in the southern Chilean frontier where he had headed the government’s immigration program. Perhaps, however, these long-past events, these far-off scenes, were as remote to and out-of-the-ordinary-ken of his Chilean readers as were the War of the Pacific events and scenes for Le León’s European readers.
In each case, though to a lesser degree in the Pérez Rosales work, the author has gone somewhat beyond the parameters of his own personal observations or experiences. Pérez Rosales, for example, has begun his recollections with an account of the events of the first Chilean campaign for independence, even though his age (7 years) would have certainly limited his own observations and experiences in those events. The rest of the volume, however, is an account of his personal experiences, his personal observations of society, educational practices, and so forth, in earlier days and in foreign lands. Le León has, in his work, begun with a general account of the War of the Pacific from its start in 1879 and he concludes his volume with comments upon the course of Chilean-Peruvian events down to 1883, even though his own “recuerdos” were almost entirely for the brief time-span already mentioned.
In quite dissimilar ways each of these volumes contributes significantly to an understanding of nineteenth century Chilean history. Le León’s account of the victorious Chilean march is probably the most incisive, the most impartial, and the best informed of all surviving “eye witness” reports, and its reappearance is most welcome. Pérez Rosales’ work, apart from its first-hand, somewhat reportorial coverage of his Alta-Califomian and southern-Chilean experiences, is probably most interesting as a mirror to the reactions of a well-educated Chilean to the life and events in Europe and the new world.
