In the first half of the nineteenth century the Venezuelan expatriate Andrés Bello set down the rules for Chilean historians, stressing meticulous research. Several generations of Chilean scholars respected Bello’s advice, with the result that Diego Barros Arana and others won renown for their thoroughly documented and scholarly writings. Francisco Encina, flying in the face of Chile’s historical traditions, maintained that archive-grubbers, and he included Barros Arana, cannot be historical scholars, for what the genuine historian needs is imagination.
Why is it that Encina’s works should inspire Ricardo Donoso, one of Chile’s established historians in the tradition of Bello and Barros Arana, to devote his time and energy to a two-volume denunciation of Encina? The best answer to this question was given by Charles C. Griffin in his excellent review article, “Francisco Encina and Revisionism in Chilean History,” HAHR, 37:1 (February 1957), 1-28. Concerning Encina’s highly personal view of Chilean history, Griffin states: “It outrages scholars because of the cavalier way in which it disregards all the rules of the professional historian’s craft; it outrages present-day liberals because of its attack on Barros Arana and on the whole liberal tradition in Chilean historiography; it shocks the filio-pietistic sentiments of many by ruthlessly cutting down to size the figures in a whole gallery of patri patriae and magnifying the historical role of other heroes; it titillates the Hispanist sentiment of one sector of the Chilean intellectual world while it infuriates indigenistas and Americanists” (p. 2). He adds, “The violence and immoderation of Encina’s discussion of Barros Arana does him a disservice and obscures the occasional elements of truth in his criticism. It has called down on him a torment of bitter condemnation from those who resent his manner and has prevented any dispassionate analysis of the questions raised in substance” (p. 9, n. 21).
These comments make it clear why professional historians rejected Encina and his work. Ricardo Donoso states that an inescapable intellectual, moral, and civic duty impelled him to perform his laborious task. Nearly half of the first volume concerns Encina’s family and myths that Encina apparently created about his ancestors. The remainder of the volume takes up Encina’s writings on different topics and the parallels between his passages and those of Barros Arana, C. H. Haring, and others. Although these are called “plagiarisms,” they appear to be more accurately described as paraphrasing without giving credit to the source. The second volume continues the same discussion.
Despite these thoroughly documented criticisms Encina won the national prize for literature in 1955 and the gold medal of the Academia de Historia two years later. His multi-volume works have attracted a large following, and although Encina died in 1965, it appears that he and his views of Chile’s past will be warmly debated for a long time to come.
