The importance of the family in Latin American life goes unquestioned. Yet the political history of Latin America has often been written as if great events happened outside the home, while families stayed within it; or as if family influence in politics were too endemic, too unspoken, to have a history. On the other hand, histories of Latin American families have tended to demonstrate the importance of a particular line and of inherited characteristics, without analyzing the responsiveness between kinship and political systems. This essay examines one case during the independence period in Chile, that of elite families who won the right to imprint their values and the practices of kinship politics on the new nation. I am suggesting that the elite’s use of family organization in the 1810 revolution altered the structure of authority between Chile and Spain, and at the same time set prototypes of authority between one Chilean and another. By tracing one strand which has been lost from the independence story—the influence of Chile’s most important revolutionary family—I hope to show that kinship was involved in critical issues: the disputes over office-holding, the means of revolutionary organization, the substructure of political factions, and the metaphors of revolutionary ideology.
Liberal and nationalist interpretations of Chilean independence have presumed that Creoles rebelled against Spain because they experienced discrimination in acquiring offices, and because they measured the Spanish government by liberal Enlightenment principles.1 The questions remain: why were Creoles royalists as well as patriots, and why did a liberal ideology not produce a liberal, egalitarian government? Recently, some historians have argued that a class of wealthy Creoles encouraged the revolution in order to solve their economic problems, and that they disavowed social or political equality.2 Yet economic analyses have not connected class position with the family’s ability to regulate its patrimony, nor have they explained the civil war among revolutionary factions of the same class. This essay approaches such unanswered questions in line with perceptions of the time. It is important to look at the independence movement again, to uncover the assumption—shared by revolutionaries and royalists, by Creoles and Spaniards—that men are brought together by family bonds as strong as those of class or nationality, and are motivated as much by family as by personal interest.
In the eighteenth century, belonging to an established family was the most durable mark of identification the society offered. Only the strength and continuity of the family could guarantee the time to build a patrimony, to prove ancestry, to inherit titles, offices, or property, and to bargain on the prestige of the family name.3Familia and casa in Spanish, etcheonda in Basque, signified a compound of family, home, lands, name, and ancestors; the words connoted larger relationships among family members than those of blood and marriage. Favors circulated among kindred: notarial records show that relatives formed joint commercial companies, provided each other credit on easy terms, acquired and transferred property through carefully controlled marriages and inheritance.4 For example, Basque families had business networks stretching over the colonies to the Iberian peninsula. Through these networks they built strong political and economic clans in eighteenth-century Chile.5 We can get a closer sense of the importance of kinship by focussing on the experience of one Basque family, the Lar-raíns, who came to Chile from Aranaz in Navarre.6
Santiago Larraín Vicuña arrived in 1685 to join the commercial enterprise of an uncle. In turn, a nephew of his, Martín José de Larraín, came to Chile under his auspices in 1733. Martín José’s children, the Larraín Salas, formed a kinship cluster distinct from the descendants of Santiago Larraín, and this distinction assumed political significance during the independence movement. Such family clusters depended on the reinforcement of blood ties through compadrazgo and marriage. In each Larraín branch, godparents were chosen from immediate kin, rarely from outside the family or from the other branch.7 As in many families, marriages were arranged between cousins, between uncles and nieces, or between in-laws. But no marriages connected the two branches of the Larraín family, perhaps because of their differing social and economic positions.8
Through income from the family business, dowries and legacies, Santiago Larraín and his descendants had acquired some of the most valuable properties in Santiago province. He established entails (called mayorazgos) which were passed on inalienable to the next generations. His grandson solicited a title of Castile, and his great-grandson, at the age of three, became the Marqués de Casa Larraín in 1790. In contrast, the progenitor of the Larraín Salas branch, Martín José, arrived in Chile almost fifty years after Santiago Larraín. He and his sons bought some land, but their fortune, like that of most first-and second-generation Basque immigrants, was based on an import-export business managed jointly by them. The Larraín Salas assets were depleted by familial and external circumstances. Martín José had to dower six daughters,9 and the socially prestigious marriages he and his sons made brought little wealth into the family through dowries or legacies. The half of Martín José’s estate assigned to his widow was consumed by her expenses, and her sons and sons-in-law took her to court for dissipating their future legacies. She accused them of rebellion and lived on.10 The archives abound with such disputes over inheritance among family members. It was a crucial issue, because each individual’s social position depended on the family patrimony.
Moreover, the commercial economy on which the Larraín Salas patrimony depended was rocked by wars between Spain, France, and England, and by the government’s trade policy, which opened the Chilean market to a flood of European goods. Many merchants com plained of ruin: in one year, between wars, the value of goods in Martin Larraín’s warehouse dropped 20,000 pesos.11 Thus while the Marqués de Larraín’s branch, spanning four generations in Chile, could stand on its accumulating legacies, entails, and connections, the second-generation Larraín Salas branch—like many of the patriot families—had to look to institutions for support. Francisco Javier Larraín Salas was regidor of the Santiago cabildo, the colony’s most important town council, as well as corregidor of Santiago; his brother Diego was a militia captain with a minor municipal post; another brother, Vicente, was canon of the Santiago cathedral and professor in the university; and another, Joaquín, became head of the Mer-cedarian Order. Their brothers-in-law, Juan Enrique Rosales and Francisco Antonio Pérez, were alcalde and regidor of the Santiago cabildo.
Such cabildo and church offices hardly carried large salaries, yet Creoles fought over them, for their prestige and functions were crucial to family interests. The cabildo was responsible for lands, roads, guilds and trade which affected family assets;12 the ecclesiastic cabildo handled church appointments and marriage dispensations; the regular orders distributed endowed funds in private loans.13 Though a large proportion of such offices were for sale, from the lower bureaucracy up to the Audiencia,14 family connections limited open competition. Offices frequently passed from one family member to another by inheritance or resale, and letters of solicitation and recommendation dwelt on the services of relatives. In other words, family networks opened the way to offices which in turn served family interests. When Creoles complained that Spain discriminated against them in conferring offices, the self-fulfilling relation between families and offices became part of the politics of independence.
Kinship and Office-Holding
Some historians have questioned the purpose of Creole claims of discrimination, pointing out that Creoles shared with Spaniards all important secular and religious offices except the governorship. Creoles even predominated in the militias, the church, and the lower bureaucracy (where the administration had to call on available manpower), and at certain periods they held most of the powerful Audiencia posts.15 However, this participation in the bureaucracy did not obviate Creoles’ resentment that peninsulars were awarded superior offices, even if they were newly arrived and less conversant with Chilean needs. Those Creoles who held offices still drew generalizations from their own frustration in securing them, in obtaining promotions, titles, and honors, and in serving near home where their families could benefit. For example, a later patriot, José Antonio Rojas, who had unsuccessfully solicited a title for his father-in-law, wrote that only six Creoles in all America had been able to enter the prestigious Order of Charles III. In fact, nineteen Creoles from Chile alone were eventually received in the Order, but some Creoles who craved the signs of aristocracy, such as Francisco Javier Larraín, the mayorazgo Agustín Larraín, the administrator of the mint, and the rector of the university, had all applied for membership in the Order and been turned down.16 Within the Larraín Salas family, Francisco Javier tried and failed to acquire several important municipal posts, and Vicente failed to be awarded five chairs in the university. Juan Mackenna, an Irishman who married Vicente’s niece, had been refused promotion in the Spanish army, and had come to Chile where he worked eleven years rebuilding the town of Osomo; but his petition for reward was turned down. It was Mackenna who wrote Bernardo O’Higgins (the future revolutionary commander) that being Creole was the major obstacle to acquiring offices.17
The Bourbon administration, determined to extract more value from the colonies through a centralized and responsive bureaucracy, favored Spaniards or Americans from outside Chile. These men were free, at least temporarily, from connections with local families. So even where Creoles were granted important posts, they could not always serve at home. In the eighteenth century, seven of the nine bishops of Santiago were Americans, but most of these were born outside Chile, and several of the Creoles in the royalist Audiencia of 1810 came from other colonies. In addition, the Crown repeatedly banned the marriage of high officials and their families with men and women in the same jurisdictions.18 More seriously, the Audiencia of Chile was disbanded in the 1770’s because of its patronage toward Creole families.19 The primary intention could not have been the exclusion of Creoles from high office; in this case the judges were transferred to other audiencias. Rather, Spain’s intervention in American audiencias, like the concurrent installation of the intendancy system, controlled the substructure of government in which officers might owe allegiance to local families.
By the end of the eighteenth century, a policy against family partisanship had been extended to many institutions filled by Creoles in Chile, and this policy stirred disputes unexamined by historians. The cases which follow make it clear that family connections were a vital resource in the competition between Creole candidates for a limited number of positions. The Spanish administration was able to use this form of competition by charging nepotism against an undesirable candidate, with the blessing of his rivals. For example, in 1798 two Creoles, Vicente Larraín Salas and Miguel de Eyzaguirre, received equal votes in a competition for a university chair, but one of Vicente’s votes came from his brother. The court favored Eyzaguirre’s stand against “the passion that blood ties engender, the partiality they produce.”20 Vicente took his case to Spain, acquired a family coat of arms to enhance his position, and finally gained the chair—but four years and thousands of miles later.
Another case of family favoritism, involving Vicente’s brother, Fray Joaquín Larraín Salas, caused such disruption that it had to be handled by the highest authorities in Spain. In an 1802 inspection of the Mer-cedarian Order, of which Fray Joaquín was provincial, the Creole visitador charged that Fray Joaquín had embezzled altar money and distributed funds and favors to his family. Indeed he had put a brother-in-law on retainer as a lawyer, sold convent slaves at low prices to his sisters, rented a convent hacienda to a brother, and lent money to family members which they had not felt obliged to repay. The visitador calculated that the Larraíns owed the Order 30,553 pesos. The Audiencia deposed Fray Joaquín, disenfranchised his supporters, and “decidedly favored” the Creole visitador, who was neatly elected provincial in 1806. This intervention by the Audiencia so disturbed the Order that half the friars left the chapter. At a time when Creoles were dominating peninsulars in the Dominican and Franciscan Orders, the king directed the acting head of the Chilean church, the Creole José Santiago Rodríguez Zorrilla, to carry out a “radical remedy” in the Mercedarian Order. In defense, Vicente Larraín Salas, as member of the ecclesiastic cabildo, began to mobilize support for his brother Fray Joaquín. This alliance threatened the vicar Rodríguez Zorrilla, because he thought Vicente “was working tremendously hard to get my office for himself.” The captain general and Audiencia held the strings, and they would not appoint to Church office candidates supported by Vicente Larraíns faction. The ecclesiastic cabildo struck back at this infringement on its appointment procedures, and refused to recognize the authority of the head of the Church. Vicente Larraín even rejected the Bishop of Lima’s control over the Chilean Church, when the Audiencia decided to submit the dispute to a superior power. By 1809 the ecclesiastic cabildo and the Audiencia were openly denying each other’s jurisdiction in Church disputes, and the Audiencia broadly accused Vicente Larraín of encouraging disobedience to constituted authorities.21
The secular cabildo of Santiago also came to challenge the authority of the Audiencia and governor in cases involving family favoritism. In 1792 and 1793 a Creole official brought suit against Francisco Javier Larraín Salas for holding multiple offices on the cabildo and for serving simultaneously with his brother, nephew, and compadre. The Audiencia, convinced of “the irreparable evils which result... from the concurrence of fathers, sons, brothers, and other relatives in business and contracts,” prevented Francisco Javier from buying a cabildo office in 1792, annulled his election to two others in 1793, and judged illegal an office he had held for three years. Francisco Javier’s provocative defense asserted that the cabildo’s right of self-election was an ancient custom, not to be changed even if “contrary to the law to the Indies.”22
Another nepotism case broke eight months before the formation of the junta in 1810, again testing the power of the governor and Audiencia over the cabildo. A Larraín Salas named Francisco Antonio Pérez was elected regidor in a cabildo including his brother-in-law and a nephew. Whereupon a competing Creole, José Joaquín Rodríguez Zorrilla, brought a charge of nepotism before the Audiencia, which annulled Pérez’ election. The Audiencia argued its cases from royal decrees which in 1789 had ordered it to remove any “unqualified” cabildo official, and in 1796 and 1804, to forbid nepotism on the cabildo.23 In the eyes of governor and Audiencia, local appointments were hedged with political danger. The Spanish had to strengthen lines of authority against organized clans, especially with the king in captivity. With its influence extending in secular and religious institutions, the Larraín Salas family had become known to Creoles and even to the Viceroy of Peru as the “Ochocientos,” the “Quinientos,” or the “Casa Otomana”—a family like a battalion, a dynasty.
Governors and Creoles alike attributed the growth of an autonomist movement in Chile partly to such family cliques. In 1807 Captain General Luis Muñoz de Guzmán, and again in 1810 Captain General Francisco Antonio García Carrasco, wrote the king that growing sedition in Chile could be traced to the Larraíns’ rage at the government’s treatment of their family.24 José Joaquín Rodríguez Zorrilla, not a disinterested observer, said the Larraíns challenged the authority of the governor only because their own family was involved, and he accused them of using the factions they had built in litigation to mastermind a revolution.25 Other Creoles, including the journalist Camilo Henríquez, thought the Larraín challenges to the Audiencia had “influenced the independence of the country.”26 In other words, what had started as the attempt of a family to defend its interests, ended by involving Creole institutions in serious disputes with the Spanish administration and challenges to Spanish authority. The Larraíns had come to reject the outside arbitration of a government which in any case began to crumble after 1808, and to favor government by corporate institutions. It was understood that these institutions would be controlled by a community of families.
Kinship and Political Organization
The sense of national purpose and military triumph that colors our vision of independence has obscured the central importance of the Larraín cabal in the creation of the Patria Vieja (1810-1814). But the family formed a political network evident to contemporaries. For support Joaquín and Vicente Larraín Salas could count on their brother Diego and their brothers-in-law Francisco Antonio Pérez and Juan Enrique Rosales, all in the cabildo; on their Guatemalan cousin Antonio José de Irisarri, a merchant and journalist who married his own and Joaquín’s niece in Chile; and on Juan Mackenna, an Irish officer in the Spanish army who married another niece. “A party has formed which does nothing but what Canon Larraín and his brother Fray Joaquín want: they relay the message about what has to be done to their brother-in-law Pérez, their brother don Diego, their nephew Ramírez.”27 Thus Rodríguez Zorrilla explained the effectiveness of the 1810 junta movement.
Diego Larraín and Pérez pressured the president to reject an oath of allegiance to the Regency, which claimed to represent Spain and the colonies after Ferdinand VII was taken captive by Napoleon. In July 1810 the family took the lead in maneuvering the abdication and exile of Captain General García Carrasco.28 A month later Juan Enrique Rosales of the Ochocientos suggested that the viceroy of Peru “had lost... all of America”—tantamount to a warrant for independence.29 Then in September, some Larraíns and their allies persuaded the new president to assemble a group of notables who would nominate candidates for a junta to rule in the king’s name. Vicente Larraín presided over this meeting, according to a witness, “as if he were President of the Congress . . . speaking with extreme rhetoric . . . ‘Ah! What contentment for me, and what satisfaction for you to see concluded the high designs of your intrepid generosity.’”30 At the meeting, Vicente pulled out his own list of candidates for a junta. His choices, including his brother-in-law Rosales, were adopted at the cabildo abierto on September 18, 1810, which has become Chile’s independence day. Although the junta professed loyalty to the captive king, the Larraín faction advocated military assistance to Buenos Aires, which Juan Mackenna offered to lead. Such assistance could not have signified defense of the king, but rather, as Mackenna hoped, “a rigorous war against the viceroy of Lima.”31 In January 1811 Joaquín Larraín published anonymously the strongest plea for autonomy yet to appear, and in 1813 the Ochocientos’ Antonio José de Irisarri was publishing a weekly paper dedicated to independence and republican government.32
The new junta had the power to create and appoint a civil and military bureaucracy, so the Larraíns and their allies accumulated patronage and rewarded relatives. The three-man tribunal which replaced the royalist Audiencia included two Ochocientos, Pérez and Rosales. Mackenna was appointed governor of Valparaíso. New military posts were assigned to Diego Larraín and three other Ochocientos—Insani, Santos Mascayano, and Mackenna—as well as to two members of the Creole Carrera family; another junta member, Juan Martínez de Rozas, passed out military offices to four brothers-in-law.33 Rosales was head of the junta in 1811, in 1813 Pérez dominated it, and in 1814 Irisarri very briefly became the nation’s first Supreme Director. In effect, the patriots were shaping a clientele state, in which prominent families supported and were supported by the government.
After the first year of junta government the Larraíns moved to counteract the moderate loyalist Congress installed on July 4, 1811. Persuading another Creole family—José Miguel Carrera and his two brothers—to surround the Congress with troops, Joaquín Larraín on September 4, 1811 entered and ousted the most conservative delegates. Several weeks later he became president of the reformed congress. Under his leadership the legislature set out the tenets of nineteenth-century Chilean liberalism. The 1811 Congress approached the problems of agricultural and urban laborers superficially, but it freed the children of slaves (who were mainly in domestic service by 1810), and Indians were declared “if not privileged, at least equal” citizens, partly in honor of the Araucanian resistance to the Spanish conquerors, which came into vogue at this time.34 The clergy was required to swear loyalty to the junta. They could no longer receive payment for baptisms or marriages, and thus became dependent on government stipends.35 There were also laws benefitting the family at the Church’s expense: for example, religious dowries, like mar-riage dowries, were to return to the family at a nun’s death.36 Under Larraín influence the Congress established its right to set new directions in domestic policy without Spanish approval. This precedent amounted to undeclared independence.
Families and Factions
As the junta and congress moved beyond loyalty to the king, the Creole elite split into factions. What distinguished Creole royalists from patriots, and patriots from each other? The fact that all of the titled nobles and most of the mayorazgos were royalists37 might suggest that social rank determined political position. Some studies have mainly assumed that titles and mayorazgos stood at the apex of the Creole social structure.38 But it seems that the small elite formed a more complex group in which titles, entails, descent, birthplace, offices, and family relations weighed against each other. Moreover, one form of status did not necessarily imply another.39 While titles and entails usually originated in wealth, they could also diminish it. Title fees, as the Marqués de Larraín and others complained, on occasion impoverished the nobility;40 entails, which could not be sold or mortgaged, secured only the eldest son and locked up capital. Though the founders of the twenty-seven titles and mayorazgos in Chile often held important offices, the heirs were generally no better placed by 1810 than were non-noble Creoles.41
The case of titles and mayorazgos shows why kinship relations should be considered in analyzing the class basis of political positions. Creoles with titles and mayorazgos did not necessarily have the greatest wealth or the highest offices. What they had was an assurance of future security, in the form of prestige that would pass to their heirs, and the well-founded hope that their landed estates would accrue in value with each generation.42 This projection allowed them to make marriage alliances with high officials and other nobles or mayorazgos.43 If they had had titles and entails for several generations, like the royalist Marqués de Larraín, they had little to gain from changing a government that legitimized their promise to the future. While the nobles and mayorazgos could project family continuity and self-sufficiency, the patriot leaders saw their futures differently. Many of their families had been in Chile for only one or two generations.44 These families owned land and businesses, but they were not the largest landowners. They were merchants,45 professionals, soldiers, educated in law and theology46 and holding positions in the cabildo, the militias, the university, or the Church.47 None of the patriot leaders was a noble, and only one held a mayorazgo at the time of independence. The Larraín Salas, for instance, were without titles or entails, large dowries or legacies, and without marriage connections to high officials. Such families could not capitalize on the symbolic resonance of the family name. Their future depended less on family protection of marriages, or of patrimony, than on family manipulation of institutions. Thus, for their security they had to make demands on the state, demands which were condemned as nepotism. One could say that the different purposes and possibilities of using the family system separated royalist elite families from patriot elite families in their attitudes toward the old regime.
Kinship influenced political position more directly by providing circles of associates. In the confusing period after 1808, political ideas were worked out in family gatherings, sometimes in shared residences (Joaquín Larraín lived with Francisco Antonio Pérez, the three Carrera brothers lived with their father and sister).48 A tracing of patriot genealogies reveals that circles based on close lineage and marriage delimited political positions in 1810. Very few close kinship ties linked royalist to revolutionary leaders, so brother rarely turned against brother, brother-in-law, or nephew. On the other hand, there were many ties among royalist nobles, mayorazgos, and high officials.49 Moreover, those mayorazgos who at some point diverged from the royalist cause all had relatives on the patriot side, and many of the patriots with conservative leanings had relations among royalists.50
What emerges most strikingly is the degree to which prominent patriots clustered according to kinship. There were the Ochocientos— Larraín Salas, Mackenna, Irisarri, Pérez, Rosales, Vicuña Larraín. Another kinship group included Juan Martínez de Rozas, Manuel de Salas, José Antonio Rojas, José Miguel Infante, Fernando, Isidoro and Francisco Javier Errázuriz.51 And there were the Carreras—Ignacio, José Miguel, Juan José, Luis, and Javiera. Before the revolution, factions had been organized around families in Creole institutions, and this form of organization remained the most effective. Revolutionaries from outside Santiago or outside Chile, who had no relations in the Santiago elite, such as Juan Egaña from Lima, Camilo Henríquez from Valdivia, Bernardo O’Higgins from Chillán, Bernardo Vera y Pintado from Veracruz, Mexico, did not remain independent of the kinship clusters. For example, O’Higgins, Egaña, and Juan Martínez de Rozas associated with the Larraíns, while Camilo Henríquez drew close to the Carreras. By 1812 the patriots had cohered into two principal coalitions, each cemented by kinship ties, but with different sources of power: the Larraíns had more political experience and connections, the Carreras, more military and popular support.
The struggle that developed between these two groups stands as strong evidence of the kinship substructure of revolutionary politics. The Larraíns and the Carreras each identified their family’s ascendance with the well-being of the state. In October 1811 Joaquín Larraín told José Miguel Carrera: “We have all the presidencies in the family: I am the president of Congress, my brother-in-law of the executive, and my nephew of the Audiencia. What more can we want?” “His pride angered me,” Carrera wrote later in his diary, “and I wanted to respond imprudently by asking him, And who has the presidency of the bayonets?”52 The Carreras did, and on November 15, 1811, they called for a new government, on the grounds that the coup of September 4, 1811 (executed by the Carreras for the Larraíns) had removed delegates illegally from Congress. But Carrera confided his real reason to his diary: he wanted “to take power from the hands of the Larraíns.” He wrote, “We expected any moment to see our country made the patrimony of that family, as the Merced convent was of Fray Joaquín.”53 On December 2, 1811, Carrera closed the Larraín-dominated Congress, because he said he had discovered a plot by the Larraíns to assassinate him. The trial evidence does not substantiate the charge, but Carrera penalized several Larraíns as a result.54 Claiming to represent the people against family monopoly, nonetheless he wrote to his father, “If this nation puts the staff in your hands, I will be content to live here. . . This, beloved father, is my feeling, flowing from the love which I profess toward my country and principally toward my family.”55 The Larraíns for their part claimed to represent the people against the military. When the viceroy of Peru organized an expedition against Chile in 1813, the Ochocientos Mackenna and Pérez convinced the junta to remove the Carrera brothers from command, so that “all the armies not be located in one family.”56 Internecine family strife, many observers believed, was the reason that Chile fell to the royalists in 1814.57 “While the two principal families were contending who should best sustain its influence,” Bernardo O’Higgins said, “the royalist Ossorio outwitted them both.”58
The patriots’ defeat made the rivalry more bitter. When the Carreras and Larraíns met in 1814 in Mendoza, where they were both fleeing the viceroy’s armies, Luis Carrera wrote to Juan Mackenna, “You have insulted the honor of my family,” to which Mackenna replied, “I have done you and your family too much honor.” In the duel of honor which followed, Carrera shot and killed Mackenna.59 Four years later he and his brother Juan José were executed in Mendoza by the Argentine government, for other interests had begun feeding on the feud. Provincial caudillos of the Río de la Plata backed José Miguel Carrera in their struggle against their own central government, which along with O’Higgins, General San Martín, and Great Britain, was looking for ways to use the family feud against its enemies.60 The liberation of Chile continued to be José Miguel Carrera’s cause, but his reaction to San Martín’s and O’Higgins’ victory over the royalists in 1818, according to a witness, was “rage and disappointment.”61 He swore he would topple the new government, which he held responsible for executing his brothers and persecuting his father. “My family,” he said, “is the sole object of my vigilance.”62 In 1820 Carrera marched on Chile. Mackenna’s brother-in-law Irisarri, now Minister of State, advised the Supreme Director O’Higgins to proceed against Carrera legally or illegally.63 Carrera was taken in Mendoza for the security of both new republics, and condemned to death. Only Javiera, his sister, was left to call it a “star-crossed family.”64
In its origin the contention between patriot factions had all the marks of a vendetta: coups d’etat to destroy the power of the other family, persecution of uninvolved relatives, murder by dueling and execution, and a propaganda war which lasted well into the nineteenth century.65 But Chileans since that time have excluded family interests and rivalries from the mythology of independence, and have transformed the family feud into a struggle of ambition between two military heroes, O’Higgins and Carrera, or more recently, into a test between Creole elitism and Carrera’s populism.66 Though Carrera was the first national figure to call upon the urban poor, contemporaries and later historians distrusted his family for royalist leanings and use of force, as they suspected the Larraíns of abusing patronage and of making a treaty with the enemy.67 In fact, both families fought committedly for independence, but they compromised the patriot cause and limited the possibility of representative government by carrying kinship politics over to the new state of Chile.
The emergence of kinship politics in the revolution validated the connection between ascribed status and political power, limiting government to elite families for a century. According to one Chilean historian, between 1834 and 1876 most of the deputies in Chilean congresses were related to each other and to members of the administration.68 Both branches of the Larraín family were consistently represented in nineteenth-century congresses and the executive.69 As before the revolution, marriage alliances reinforced political ones: the Larraín Salas descendants were Liberals and professionals who married with Liberal and professional families, while the descendants of the Marqués de Larraín were landowners, financiers and Conservatives who married with the families of former titles, mayorazgos, and Conservatives. Elite status was defined flexibly enough to allow new families to enter the scene. When the flow of Spanish immigrants stopped in 1810, Argentine and British arrivals were incorporated by marriage into the upper class. “Parties have always started with families”70: so Irisara rationalized the alliances and rivalries of the revolution, which taught the acceptance of family interest as part of republican politics.
The Old in the New Regime
The continuity of the kinship political system helps to account for the ordered succession and legitimacy of post-independence governments in Chile. The prominent families of Santiago, both those who led and those who opposed the revolution, inherited its fruits because there were no insuperable challenges to their authority. Certainly not from the populace, which was kept subordinate to patrons until called out as claques or troops; not from competing regions, for the port city Valparaíso remained a satellite of the capital, Concepción province was half destroyed, and the North had not yet developed; not from military leaders, who were attachés if not members of the great families.71 Nor were there challenges from powerful politicians: Carrera was killed, O’Higgins resigned under pressure from conservative families, and Diego Portales, who belonged to those families,72 was the grey eminence, not the caudillo, of the 1830’s.
In the decades after independence, liberal patriots and federalists who wanted greater distribution of power struggled without lasting success against the conservative groups who made strong centralized authority part of the 1833 constitution. But the conservatives were not solely responsible for the concentration of power and wealth in elite hands after independence. It was the liberal revolutionaries who had assumed that patriarchal monarchy could be most effectively dissolved by family oligarchies, and the conditions of the revolution strengthened that assumption. From the early junta movement, patriots envisioned the natural state of society as family sovereignty— which was not to be confused with popular sovereignty: “Misfortune has interrupted our relations with the sovereign and we should for the time being consider ourselves in the primitive state. In this state each head of the family is its natural governor; from every district or federation of families the magistrate or town councillor is elected . . ..”73
Images of the polity as a family or a federation of families pervaded revolutionary ideology. Patriot writers who objected that the king as “father of his vassals” should “dandle us like children”74 meant that Chile no longer required paternal protection. With expanded exports, with a university and mint established, Creole self-perception had changed. Moreover, as individuals, patriot leaders had had too many experiences of personal autonomy to consider themselves “children” in the imperial formula: they had been educated with their peers in the major colonial universities, many had travelled widely in Europe and America or were living far from their family homes, and some had been in trouble with the authorities in one way or another for years. These revolutionaries claimed, in the Independence Proclamation of 1818, “the right of a person whose minority has expired.”75
It is significant that the metaphors which patriots used in encouraging independence also reveal assumptions that permitted elite politics. Patriot ideology posed a division of opposites between powerful subjugator and innocent victim: the “father of his vassals” vs. the disinherited sons, the Spanish master vs. the Creole slaves, the conquistador vs. the Araucanian Indian defender. In other words, the patriots maintained no vision of continuum between Spanish ruler and Creole ruling class, no acknowledgment of the oppressed as oppressors in their turn. The idea that Creoles had rightfully come of age justified autonomy without preempting another form of paternalism.
The connection between political and family history, as seen in terms of grievances, organization, and ideology, can add substance to recent interpretations of Latin American independence which emphasize the new republics’ absorption of colonial legacies. Some historians point to the persistent dominance of aristocratic values and of interest groups such as landowners, merchants, and military.76 According to another perspective, the economic dependence of the colonies only allowed them to turn against Spain, not to bring about autonomous futures.77 Others argue that traditional structures persisted not only because certain classes, interests, or powers prevailed, but because even those who wanted change responded to patrimonial images deeply rooted in Hispanic culture.78 But traditional characteristics did not persist only because they were traditional. They were tested and revitalized by the revolutionaries themselves.
As members of the Creole elite, the patriot leaders were anxious to keep for their own class the power they took from the Spaniards. But there is more to it. As members of families, the patriots envisioned a society in which the family system could thrive, in which political relations had the intimacy and security of family relations. If their new society looks like the old society in many ways, it is because they turned to what they had. For organization they turned to kinship alliances. For political and social positions they drew on kinship qualifications. For ideology they called up the image of the family, which justified both rebellion and family interest in the state. So a pivotal revolutionary institution, by ensuring connections, patrimony, and continuity from past to future, also fostered generational ties between old and new regimes.
The research for this essay was made possible by a grant from the Doherty Foundation. I am grateful for the help of Dr. John J. Johnson of Stanford University, Carlos J. Larraín of the Museo Histórico Nacional de Chile, and John Felstiner of Stanford University. An earlier version of this paper was read at the American Historical Association Meeting, San Francisco, December, 1973.
The most useful and comprehensive source on Chilean independence is Simon Collier, Ideas and Politics of Chilean Independence, 1808-1833 (Cambridge, England, 1967); other interpretations include Miguel Luis Amunátegui, La crónica de 1810, 3 vols. (Santiago, 1876); Diego Barros Arana, Historia jeneral de Chile, 16 vols. (Santiago, 1884-1902); Ricardo Donoso, Las ideas políticas en Chile (México, 1946); Jaime Eyzaguirre, Ideario y ruta de la emancipación chilena (Santiago, 1957); Nestor Meza Villalobos, La conciencia política chilena durante la monarquía (Santiago, 1958); Sergio Villalobos, Tradición y reforma en 1810 (Santiago, 1961).
Luis Vitale, Interpretación marxista de la historia de Chile, 3 vols., (Santiago, 1971) III; Hernán Ramírez Necochea, Antecedentes económicos de la independencia de Chile (Santiago, 1959); Sergio Villalobos, El comercio y la crisis colonial (Santiago, 1968).
Studies which show the importance of kinship connections in colonial Latin America include: Jacques A. Barbier, “Elites and Cadres in Bourbon Chile,” HAHR, 52 (Aug. 1972), 416—435; Stephanie Blank, “Patrons, Clients, and Kin in Seventeenth-Century Caracas: A Methodological Essay in Colonial Spanish American Social History,” HAHR, 54 (May 1974), 260-283; David A. Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763-1810 (Cambridge, England, 1971); Mary Lowenthal Felstiner, “The Larraín Family in the Independence of Chile, 1780-1830,” (Ph.D. Diss. Stanford University, 1970); Roger M. Haigh, The Formation of the Chilean Oligarchy, 1810-1821 (Salt Lake City, 1972); John Norman Kennedy, “Bahian Elites, 1750-1822,” HAHR, 53 (Aug. 1973), 415-439; Doris M. Ladd, “The Mexican Nobility at Independence, 1780-1828,” (Ph.D. Diss. Stanford University, 1972); John L. Phelan, The Kingdom of Quito in the Seventeenth Century: Bureaucratic Politics in the Spanish Empire (Madison, 1967); Donald Ramos, “Marriage and the Family in Colonial Vila Rica,” HAHR, 55 (May 1975), 200-225; Stuart B. Schwartz, Sovereignty and Society in Colonial Brazil: The High Court of Bahia and Its Judges, 1607-1751 (Berkeley, 1973).
The principal sources on elite families in Chile are records of baptisms, dowries, testaments, solicitations, loans, sales, litigation and correspondence. The secondary materials are mainly genealogical. The most helpful are: Domingo Amunátegui Solar, Mayorazgos i títulos de Castilla, 3 vols. (Santiago, 1901-1904); Juan Luis Espejo, Nobiliario de la antigua capitanía general de Chile, (Santiago, 1917); Virgilio Figueroa, Diccionario histórico y biográfico de Chile, 5 vols. (Santiago, 1925-31); Luis de Roa y Ursua, El reyno de Chile, 1535-1810; estudio histórico genealógico y biográfico (Valladolid, 1945).
On the influence of Basques in Chile, see Luis Thayer Ojeda, Navarros y vascongados en Chile (Santiago, 1904) ; Elementos étnicos que han intervenido en la población de Chile (Santiago, 1919); and Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, Los orígenes de las familias chilenas, Los viscaínos, I (Santiago, 1903).
Published works on Larraín family members include J. M. Irarrázaval Larraín, El marqués de Larraín i su descendencia (Santiago, 1940); Carlos J. Larraín, “Don Santiago Larraín y Vicuña,” Boletín de la Academia Chilena de Historia (BACH), 7 (1940); Ricardo Donoso, Antonio José de Irisarri, escritor y diplomático, 1786-1868 (Santiago, 1966); Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, Don Juan Mackenna (Santiago, n.d.).
Forty-three of the fifty-five Larraín godparents of whom I have records (from the Archivo del Sagrario de Santiago) were close relatives of the child, usually uncles, aunts, and grandparents.
There was, in fact, a third branch of the Larraín family, of no social consequence, in northern Chile. The absence of any relationship between this branch and Santiago’s reveals what values counterbalanced blood ties. Juan Luis Espejo, “Discordias coloniales: las familias de Larraínes, “Revista chilena de historia y geografía (RCHG), 9 (Oct. 1919), 134-148.
Martín Larraín’s total outlay in dowries was about 54,000 pesos, or about one-fourth his assets. In the second generation of Santiago Larraín’s branch the total outlay was equivalent, but there were fewer daughters, so each dowry bought a more valuable husband. The large dowries and legacies which came to the sons of Santiago’s branch capitalized them. Dowries, Larraín Lecaros family: Archivo de Escribanos de Santiago (AES), vol. 876, f. 290-295; vol. 697, f, 134; vol. 576, Dowries, Larraín Salas family: AES, vol. 793, f. 177-179; vol. 940, f. 95-99; vol. 906, f. 7-11; vol. 905, f. 170-172; vol. 826, f. 131.
Martín José de Larraín, Expediente de partición de bienes, 1774, Museo Histórico Nacional de Chile; Martín Larraín con Francisco Javier Larraín, Dec. 24, 1781, Archivo de la Real Audiencia (ARA), vol. 1201, pieza 5.
The goods in Martín Larraín’s warehouse dropped in value from 61,613 pesos to 41,479 pesos, ARA, vol. 2809, pieza 4; Inventario, Aug. 11, 1770, AES, vol. 712, f. 399-431; Partición de bienes, 1774, Museo Hist. Chilean merchants derived little benefit from the Bourbon free trade policy because of oversupplies of goods, contraband, lack of currency, insecure shipping and markets in wartime, forced loans from merchants, and the Peruvian shipping monopoly. On economic grievances, see Ramírez Necochea, Antecedentes; Sergio Villalobos, El comercio, and Comercio y contrabando en el Río de la Plata y Chile, 1700-1811 (Buenos Aires, 1965); and “El comercio extranjero a fines de la dominación española,” Journal of Inter-American Studies, 4 (Oct. 1962), 517-544; Inge Wolff, “Algunas consideraciones sobre causas económicas de la emancipación chilena, “Anuario de estudios americanos, 11 (Seville, 1954), 169-196.
On cabildo functions, see Julio Alemparte Robles, El cabildo en Chile colonial: orígenes municipales de las repúblicas hispanoamericanas (Santiago, 1966).
Transactions which involved establishing and borrowing from endowed funds can be found in censo and capellanía documents, particularly in the Archivo de Escribanos and Archivo de Notarios of Santiago (ANS).
M. A. Burkholder and D. S. Chandler, “Creole Appointments and the Sale of Audiencia Positions in the Spanish Empire Under the Early Bourbons, 1701-1750,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 4 (Nov. 1972), 187-206.
Jaime Eyzaguirre, Ideario y ruta; Gonzalo Vial Correa, “Teoría y práctica de la igualdad en Indias,” Historia, 3 (1964), 87-163; Javier González Echenique, “Notas sobre la ‘alternativa’ en las provincias religiosas de Chile indiano,” Historia, 2 (1962-63), 178-196; Burkholder and Chandler, “Creole Appointments,” 201-202; Bernardino Bravo Lira, “Revolución e independencia en 1810,” RCHG, 137 (1969), 17-40; Vicente Carvallo Goyeneche, Descripción histórico-jeográfico del Reino de Chile, Colección de Historiadores y Documentos Relativos a la Historia Nacional (CHDN) IX (Santiago, 1875), 470, 472; Indice de los nombres. . . Real Audiencia, Fondo Varios (FV), vol. 300, pieza 7.
Archivo de la Capitanía General (ACG), vol. 640; José Toribio Medina, Los Errázuriz (Santiago, 1898, rpt. 1964), p. 31; Luis Lira Montt, Las órdenes y corporaciones nobiliarias en Chile (Santiago, 1963), pp. 141, 162; Villalobos, Tradición, p. 121; Rojas’ information apparently came from the Representación del señor Dn. Thomás Ortiz de Landazuri, 1775, FV, vol. 115, pieza 2.
ACG, vols. 761, 897; Amunátegui Solar, Mayorazgos, II, 43; Mackenna to O’Higgins, Feb. 20, 1811, Archivo de don Bernardo O’Higgins, (AOH), ed. Ricardo Donoso et al. (Santiago, 1946-) I, 76-77.
Richard Konetzke, Colección de documentos para la historia de la formación social de Hispano-América, 1493-1810, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1953-62), III, 321, 459; Barbier, “Elites and Cadres,” shows marriages between nobles’ or mayorazgos’ families and high officials, but it is not clear if they were in office at the time. In some cases, after the marriages, oidores (high court judges) were transferred. A dispensation for such marriages could involve a drawn-out and sometimes unsuccessful procedure. See for example, Hermógenes de Irisarri, ed., Galería nacional o colección de biografías: retratos de hombres celebres de Chile, (Santiago, 1854), p. 57; Real Cédula, June 9, 1802, ACG, vol. 761; Villalobos, Tradición, p. 118.
Cf. Mark A. Burkholder, “From Creole to Peninsular: The Transformation of the Audiencia of Lima,” HAHR, 52 (Aug. 1972), 395-415.
ARA, vol. 598, pieza 2; vol. 1662, pieza 4; FV, vol. 807, pieza 1; ANS, vol. 6, f. 331; Jaime Eyzaguirre, “El doctor don Miguel de Eyzaguirre, universitario y magistrado, 1770-1821,” BACH, 22:52 (1955), 71-132 and 53 (1955), 154-159.
ARA, vol. 2484, pieza 6; ACG, vol. 1026; Colección de manuscritos de José Toribio Medina, vol. 277, no. 8178 and vol. 220, no. 5665; Archivo Vicuña Mackenna, vol. 72, pieza 17; José Santiago Rodríguez Zorrilla to Diego Rodríguez Zorrilla, Aug. 27, 1810, Colección de Historiadores y Documentos Relativos a la Independencia de Chile, (CHDI) (Santiago, 1900-) IX, 58; FV, vol. 251, pieza 6; Julio Retamal Favereau, “El cabildo eclesiástico de Santiago en los prolegómenos de la independencia de Chile,” Historia, 6 (1967), 285-314; Carlos Silva Cotapos, Historia eclesiástica de Chile (Santiago, 1925), pp. 48-49.
ARA, vol. 2299, 1773, piezas 4, 8.
ARA, vol. 2787, pieza 7. Captain General García Carrasco had also removed the government assessor, Pedro Díaz de Valdés. Though the cabildo did not like Díaz de Valdés, and he was a Spaniard, it defended him, the governor wrote the king, for his “family relations” with the Carrera family. “Carta de Santiago Leal.. . ..” CHDI, VIII, 235-236; García Carrasco to the king, Aug. 27, 1810, CHDI, IX, 7.
CHDI, XVIII, 96; IX, 17-18, 24-26; XXV, 235.
ARA, vol. 2787, pieza 7; Manuel Antonio Talavera, Revoluciones de Chile; discurso histórico, diario imparcial de los sucesos memorables acaecidos en Santiago de Chile, in CHDI, XXIX (Santiago, 1937), 38-39.
Conversaciones históricas de Claudio Gay con algunos de los testigos y actores de la independencia de Chile, 1808-1826 (Santiago, 1965), pp. 7, 9; El Monitor Araucano, June 24, 1815, CHDI, XXVI, 234.
José Joaquín to Diego Rodríguez Zorrilla, Aug. 26, 1810, CHDI, IX, 46-47.
Talavera, Revoluciones, pp. 34, 35, 36, 66, 80-81, 283; José Gregorio Argo-medo, ‘Diario de los sucesos ocurridos en Santiago desde el 10 hasta el 22 de Setiembre de 1810,“ CHDI, XIX, 7, 17, 23; Actas del cabildo de Santiago durante el período llamado de la Patria Vieja (1810-1814), ed. J. T. Medina, 2nd edition (Santiago, 1960) pp. 44, 47, 50.
Talavera, Revoluciones, p. 36.
Talavera, Revoluciones, pp. 80-81; Actas del cabildo, Sept. 15, 1810, p. 50.
Juan Mackenna to Bernardo O’Higgins, Feb. 20, 1811, AOH, I, 76; Mackenna to junta, Feb. 14, 1811, in Talavera, Revoluciones, p. 201.
Joaquín Larraín’s statement, Ibid., pp. 171-179; Irisarri edited El semanario republicano (1813-1814), CHDI, XXIV.
“Documentos de la primera junta de gobierno de 1810,” ed. Fernando Márquez de la Piata, BACH, 5:11 (1938), 63, 108, 145, 153, 201, 209, 219, 221; Actas del cabildo Fondo Antiguo, vol. 35, pieza 26.
Sesiones de los cuerpos lejislativos de la República de Chile, 1811-1845 (SCL), ed. Valentín Letelier (Santiago, 1885-1908), I, 133, 119. On patriot ideas of the Araucanian Indians, see Collier, Ideas and Politics, pp. 212-217.
SCL, I, 89-90, 95-112, 140, 144; “Documentos. . .. primera junta,” p. 345; Oficio de la junta al Vicario General, Archivo Eyzaguirre, vol. 19, pieza 85.
SCL, I, 145.
Nobles, members of military orders, and mayorazgos had to swear “never to engage directly or indirectly against the person of His Majesty.” Most mayorazgos stipulated that lèse-majesté required disinheritance. Amunátegui Solar, Mayorazgos, I, 459-461, 446-447. In fact, the early junta movement, when the junta was loyal to Spain, was supported by the Conde de la Conquista, the Conde de Quinta Alegre, and the Marqués de Larraín.
Ibid.; Barbier, “Elites and Cadres.”
For example, according to the names on an income account made for the Spanish government in 1790 (“Los magnates chilenos del siglo XVIII,” ed. Juan Ricardo Couyomdjian, RCHG, 136 (1968), 315-322, only four of the thirty-six wealthiest men were titled, only three held offices above cabildo or regimental posts. There were varied conceptions of rank in Creole society. According to the son of a Spanish oidor, “the majority of principal families of Chile descend from the conquistadors and Spanish governors”; his list did not include new nobles or untitled wealth. On the other hand, a Creole Jesuit’s list of two hundred fifty first families included only eleven descendants of conquistadors, and another Creole writer gave prominence to many eighteenth-century immigrants without titles. In the 1777 census of Santiago diocese, some census-takers distinguished “caballeros” (gentlemen) from mere “españoles” (Spaniards or Creoles) while others saw no distinction of rank. José Rodríguez Ballesteros, “Revista de la guerra de la independencia de Chile,” CHDI, V, 169-170; Miguel de Olivares, quoted in Francisco Antonio Encina, Historia de Chile desde la prehistoria hasta 1891, 20 vols. (Santiago, 1942—1952), V, 217; Felipe Gómez de Vidaurre, Historia geográfica, natural y civil del reino de Chile, CHDN, XV (Santiago, 1889), 287; “Censo de la Capitanía General de Chile en 1777,” Guillermo de la Cuadra, ed. BACH, 7:12 (1940), 85-132. For a description of complex elite structure, see Philip Dawson, Provincial Magistrates and Revolutionary Politics in France, 1789-1795 (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), p. 7.
Agustín Larraín, título, Feb. 7, 1782, FV, vol. 418, pieza 4.
The founders of titles held such positions as oidor, fiscal of Audiencia, president of the Audiencia, Contador of the Mint; but the heirs held lower offices, except for the Marqués de Casa Real, who was canciller of the Audiencia, and replaced his father as aguacil mayor; and the Conde de la Conquista, who was lieutenant to the governor, promoted to replace him in 1810.
The eighteenth-century increase in production of dried beef, lard, and wheat for export made it more and more profitable to keep land in the family. Jean Borde and Mario Góngora, Evolución de la propiedad rural en el Valle de Puangue (Santiago, 1956), I, 60, 69; Ramírez Necochea, Antecedentes, pp. 31-32; Daniel Martner, Estudio de política comercial chilena e historia económica nacional, 2 vols. (Santiago, 1923), I, 29. For example, of the estates in Santiago Larraín’s branch, Viluco, worth 23,730 pesos in 1738, after improvements ascended to 266,101 pesos in 1825 (the peso remained more or less constant); Aculeo, bought for 21,000 pesos, was worth 181,107 pesos three generations later; Molina and Campusano, bought for 29,922 pesos in 1771, were worth 113,815 pesos sixty-six years later; Cauquenes, bought for 10,500 pesos in 1733, was worth 103,547 pesos in 1820. Juan Francisco Larraín Rojas, Partición de bienes, 1848, Archivo Judicial de Santiago, Leg. 551, pieza 2; AES, vol. 544, f. 278; vol. 754, f. 220; vol. 534, f. 207; ARA, vol. 995, pieza 1; ANS, vol. 176, f. 33-35.
The chart in Barbier, “Elites and Cadres,” p. 435, indicates that the longer a family had titles or entails, the more they married with families of oidores. In 1810 the Marqués de Larraín had two connections with high officials: his first cousin, José Santiago Portales was Superintendent of the Mint, and his uncle’s brother, José Antonio Martínez de Aldunate, was bishop of Santiago. The Marqués himself married the daughter and sister of fiscales of the Audiencia.
Revolutionary leaders whose families were in Chile one to three generations: Juan Egaña, Fernando Errázuriz, Agustín Eyzaguirre, Manuel José de Gandarillas, José Miguel Infante, Antonio José de Irisarri, Joaquín Larraín Salas, Francisco Lastra, Juan Mackenna, Juan Martínez de Rozas, Bernardo O’Higgins, Francisco Antonio Pérez, Juan Enrique Rosales, Manuel de Salas.
Distinctions should not be strictly drawn between landowners’ and merchants’ interests, because the family economic unit often had both within it. Prominent patriot families with commercial resources include the Errázuriz, Eyzaguirre, Infante, Larraín Salas, Pérez, and Rosales. The Carrera and Infante families owned mines, and the Carrera, Errázuriz, Larraín Salas, Pérez, and Rojas families owned land. Five of the nine members of the first junta of government had commercial connections: the Conde de la Conquista, Ignacio Carrera, José Gaspar Marín, Juan Enrique Rosales, and Juan Martínez de Rozas. The free trade act of Feb. 21, 1811 proposed not so much “free” trade as the protection of commerce from foreign inundation, the encouragement of Chilean shipping, and the receipt of duties for defense. “Documentos de la primera junta,” 194-198; Actas del cabildo, pp. 71, 76, 82; Villalobos, Comercio y contrabando, p. 138; Martner, Estudio, I, 132-33.
Patriot graduates of the college of San Felipe in Santiago were Joaquín and Vicente Larraín, Gregorio Argomedo, Agustín Eyzaguirre, Gaspar Marín, Juan Martínez de Rozas, Francisco Antonio Pérez and others. See Alejandro Fuenzalida Grandón, Historia del desarrollo intelectual en Chile (1541—1810), (Santiago, 1903); José Miguel Carrera, Juan Egaña, Camilo Henríquez, Bernardo O’Higgins, and Manuel de Salas studied in Lima, and Juan Mackenna and O’Higgins studied in Europe.
Office of patriot leaders and dates of appointment. In the military: José Miguel Carrera, infantry captain, 1809; Francisco Lastra, royal naval officer, 1804—07; Manuel de Salas, militia captain, 1774; Bernardo O’Higgins, maestre de campo, Chillán, 1806. In the Santiago cabildo: Gregorio Argomedo, asesor-, Agustín Eyzaguirre, alcalde, 1810; José Miguel Infante, asesor and procurador, 1810; Francisco Antonio Pérez, regidor, 1808; Juan Enrique Rosales, alcalde, 1801, regidor, 1808; Manuel de Salas, alcalde, 1775. Other civil offices: Juan Mackenna, governor of Osomo, 1787; Gaspar Marín, asesor of consulado; Juan Martínez de Rozas, asesor of intendancy, Concepción and Santiago, 1790-1804, Secretary of Government, 1808; Manuel de Salas, superintendent of public works, sindicato of the consulado, 1795, asesor of mining, 1798. In the university: Juan Egaña, cátedra, 1791, rector of Colegio Carolino; Vicente Larraín, cátedra, 1802; José Gaspar Marín, cátedra; Manuel de Salas, founder of Colegio de San Luis. In the Church: Joaquín Larraín, Provincial, Order of Mercy, 1791-94, 1800-02; Vicente Larraín, canon of Cathedral, 1804.
Residents listed by block in Carlos Stuardo Ortiz, “Vecinos de Santiago en 1808,” BACH, 26:60 (1959), 205-221. The revolutionary leaders lived within a few blocks of each other; their proximity and the winter season, when families were in Santiago, facilitated the rapid organization of the junta movement.
The Creole families who married titled or high official familes were generally titled or entailed. Two members of the royalist Audiencia of 1810 were bom into or married titled families (José de Santiago Concha and José Santiago Aldunate); the other four were not connected with Creole families.
Of the mayorazgos who showed some patriot leanings, José Antonio Rojas was brother-in-law of Manuel de Salas; Francisco de Paula Caldera was son-in-law of María Teresa Larraín Salas; José Antonio Valdés Huidobro briefly supported Carrera, and his father was Javier Valdés Carrera; Pedro Prado joined Carrera’s 1812 junta, and his grandmother was Maríana Carrera. Where relatives of titles became patriots (for example, the Marqués de Larraín’s brother-in-law, Agustín Eyzaguirre, and the Marqués’ first cousin, José Santiago Portales) they were in the conservative wing of the patriot movement.
These two groups were brought together by the marriage of Tránsito Rozas Salas, niece of Juan Martínez de Rozas and grand-daughter of Manuel de Salas, with Manuel Larraín Aguirre, nephew of Joaquín Larraín Salas. The sister of Manuel de Salas, Francisca, was married to Ramón de Rozas, brother of Juan Martínez de Rozas; another sister was married to José Antonio Rojas. Rojas’ own sister Rosa was married to José Miguel Infante. Manuel de Salas’ daughter Antonia was married to Isodoro Errázuriz, and his son Pedro was married to Rafaela Errázuriz.
José Miguel Carrera, Diario militar, CHDI, I, 37. The president of the executive junta was Juan Enrique Rosales, and Francisco Antonio Pérez was president of the Audiencia.
Ibid., pp. 35-36, 49.
The trial provides some evidence of a conspiracy to overthrow the Carreras, but not to murder them. CHDI, XXIII, 20-24; VII, 77-88; Carrera, Diario, p. 51. Historians related to the Larraíns have doubted the conspiracy; e.g. Her-mógenes Irisarri, Galería nacional, p. 63; Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, Don Juan Mackenna, p. 16. Enrique Matta Vial, a Carrera descendant, has affirmed it: Guillermo Feliu Cruz, La historiografía de la Patria Vieja y Enrique Matta Vial (Santiago, 1966), p. 17.
Quoted in Barros Arana, Historia jeneral, VIII, 454.
Oficio de la junta, Nov. 27, 1813, CHDI, XXIII, 225; Carrera, Diario, p. 210.
Manuel José Gandarillas, “Don Bernardo O’Higgins: apuntes históricos de la revolución de Chile,” CHDI, XIV, 82; Manuel Riquelme in Conversaciones históricas de Claudio Gay, p. 268; Representación de oficiales, Mendoza [1814], AOH, VII, 8; El Censor Americano (London), ed. Antonio José de Irisarri, Andrés Bello, no. 2 (1820), 43. Visitors to Chile concurred in this judgment. See Report of U.S. Consul Joel Roberts Poinsett, quoted in H.M. Brackenridge, Voyage to South America (Baltimore, 1819), II, 30-31; Samuel Johnston, Cartas escritas durante una residencia de tres años en Chile, tr. José Toribio Medina (Santiago, 1917), pp. 125-26; Reports of John B. Prevost and W. G. D. Worthington, Special Agents of the U.S. Government, 1818, in William R. Manning ed., Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States Concerning the Independence of the Latin American Nations, 3 vols. (New York, 1925), II, 914—932.
Conversation between O’Higgins and Captain Andrews, in Captain Andrews, Journey from Buenos Ayres . . . 1825-26, 2 vols. (London, 1827), II, 255.
Gandarillas, “Don Bernardo O’Higgins,” pp. 152—155; Galería nacional, p. 69; Información seguida sobre . . . la muerte de Mackenna, Nov. 1814, AOH, VII, 288-342.
Juan Pueyrredón to José de San Martín, July 21, 1816, Oct. 14, 1816, Feb. 25, 1817, Carlos Pueyrredón, ed., La campaña de los Andes: cartas secretas y instrucciones reservadas de Pueyrredón a San Martín (Buenos Aires, 1942); Reports of William Bowles, Dec. 6, 1818, Nov. 30, 1818, Foreign Office Archives, London, F. O. 72, vol. 229, 279-280, 191.
Brackenridge, Voyage, I, 268.
José Zapiola, Recuerdos de treinta años (1810-1840), 5th ed. (Santiago, 1902), p. 188; Gandarillas, “Don Bernardo O’Higgins,” pp. 223—224, 226.
Irisarri to O’Higgins, Dec. 22, 1818, Archivo Vicuña Mackenna, vol. 88, f. 56-57; El Deunde, no. 15, 1818, CHDI, II, ix-x.
Quoted in Gandarillas, “Don Bernardo O’Higgins,” p. 207.
For example, Antonio José de Irisarri, Carta a los EE. del Mercurio de Valparaíso (Santiago, 1833); Melchor Concha y Toro, Contestación al folleto publicado por don Antonio José de Irisarri (Santiago, 1863).
Vitale, Interpretación marxista, III, 19-47; “Ranquil”, Capítulos de la historia de Chile (Santiago, 1973).
For a sympathetic view of Carrera, see Julio Alemparte, Carrera y Freire, fundadores de la República (Santiago, 1963); for a critical interpretation, see Collier, Ideas and Politics, pp. 121-125. From the Carreras’ point of view the 1814 Lircay Treaty with the invading royalist army sold the independence movement and threatened the Carrera family; from the Larraín point of view it provided time crucial for reinforcements. In any case, all sides disregarded the agreement. See Lowenthal Felstiner, “The Larraín Family,” pp. 149-185.
Guillermo Feliu Cruz, Prólogo a la obra ‘La guerra civil de 1891’ de Hernán Ramírez (Santiago, 1951), pp. 25-26.
Offices held after independence by Ochocientos: Irisarri, Minister of State under O’Higgins, governor of Curicó under Portales; Joaquín Larraín, deputy and Senator, 1823-24; Francisco Vicuña Larraín, Minister of State under Freire, 1825, Senator, 1828-29, President, 1839. The next generation served mainly as deputies: José Joaquín Pérez, 1840-49, Vicente Larraín Espinosa, 1837; Juan Antonio Rosales, 1837; Pedro Félix Vicuña, 1843; Bruno Larraín Aguirre, 1849; José Ignacio Larraín Landa, 1852. In addition, Manuel Vicuña Larraín was archbishop, 1841-43. Among the Marqués de Larraín’s descendants, his son, Rafael Larraín Moxó was Conservative Senator between 1855 and 1882, as was Patricio Larraín Gandarillas, 1855, 1864, 1867. The Deputies in the family were Rafael Larraín Moxó, 1843-49; José Ignacio Eyzaguirre, 1840, 1843; Nicolás Larraín i Rojas, 1843; Francisco Javier Errázuriz, 1843, 1846; José Antonio Lecaros, 1843; Manuel Eyzaguirre, 1849; Diego Echeverría i Recabárren, 1849; Francisco Echaur-ren Larraín, 1849; Francisco de Borja Larraín, 1852. Anuario Estadístico de la República de Chile, 1868-69 (Santiago, 1880), X, 261 ff.
El Semanario Republicano, Oct. 2, 1813, p. 75.
General Ramón Freire, who became Supreme Director in 1823, was a cousin of Mackenna and Irisarri by marriage to Manuela Caldera i Mascayano; Gregorio de las Heras, who also served with San Martín and became governor of Buenos Aires and president of Argentina in 1825, was married to Maria Carmen Larraín Aguirre, niece of the Ochocientos. Family ties between military leaders and the Chilean oligarchy are also discussed in Frederick M. Nunn, The Military in Chilean History: Essays on Civil-Military Relations, 1810-1973 (Albuquerque, 1975).
Diego Portales was the first cousin of the Marqués de Larraín through his father, José Santiago Portales Larraín.
Manuel de Salas, FV, vol. 812, pieza 4; Aurora de Chile, May 28, 1812, p. 63.
El Semanario Republicano, Nov. 18, 1813, p. 57. José Amor de la Patria, “Catecismo político cristiano,” CHDI, XVIII, 143. Simón Bolívar wrote in the same vein that Spain “kept us in a state of permanent childhood.” “The Jamaica Letter,” Sept. 6, 1815, in R. A. Humphreys and John Lynch, The Origins of the Latin America Revolutions 1808-1826 (New York, 1965), p. 263.
Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, III, 902.
Heraclio Bonilla, et al., La independencia en el Perú (Lima, 1972); Vitale, Interpretación marxista, III; Charles C. Griffin, Los temas sociales y económicos en la época de la independencia (Caracas, 1962) ; Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein, The Colonial Heritage of Latin America: Essays on Economic Dependence in Perspective (Oxford, 1970).
Bonilla, La independencia, pp. 15-62; Stein and Stein, The Colonial Heritage, pp. 107-198; André Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil (New York, 1969), pp. 37-66.
Richard Morse, “The Heritage of Latin America,” in The Founding of New Societies, ed. Louis Hartz (New York, 1964), pp. 159-169; Howard J. Wiarda, “Toward a Framework for the Study of Political Change in the Iberic-Latin Tradition: The Corporative Model,” "World Politics, 25 (January, 1973), 206—235; Glen Dealy, “Prolegomena on the Spanish American Political Tradition,” HAHR, 48 (Feb. 1968), 37-58.
Author notes
The author is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History, San Francisco State University.
