In their special publication series, the Academia de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala and the Instituto de Antropología e Historia recently have published two rare, informative, and complementary documents from a controversial, although little studied, period of Guatemala’s past: the years during which Rafael Carrera dominated his country’s history, 1838-65. The Carrera years are fascinating from a variety of points of view. At age twenty-three, Carrera led a genuinely popular and successful rebellion, an Indian rebellion, against the Liberal and European-oriented government. Although often referred to as an “Indian,” Carrera was of mixed ancestry in which the Indian predominated. He knew the Indian communities well, enjoyed their total support, and defended their interests loyally, both during the struggle to overthrow the Liberal government, as well as during his many years as chief of state. The Carrera administration constitutes one of the unusual examples in nineteenth-century Latin American history of a government actually benefiting Indian communities. Carrera recognized the ejidos, protected their lands, even returned lands to the communities, and removed or reduced taxes on the Indians.
The Liberals who returned to power in the 1870s vilified Carrera as a “barbarian” and promptly set about Europeanizing Guatemala, much to the detriment of the Indian communities. Guatemalan historians echoed the governments’ denunciations of the Carrera years as hopelessly retrograde. Foreign historians generally followed suit. The historiographical treatment of Carrera needs reassessment. The Guatemalans may now be in the process of some revisionist historical thinking, which the publication of these two works indicates. Their availability certainly will help all of us better to understand Rafael Carrera and his impact on Central America.
The Memorias has an intriguing history of its own. The book had a first edition in 1906, prepared and financed by Ignacio Solis, but it is exceedingly difficult to find a copy of it. When President Manuel Estrada Cabrera, the Liberal heir, heard of its publication, he ordered the edition seized and burned. Only three-quarters of a century later has anyone dared to republish the Memorias. In this document, Carrera related through his secretary his version of the “popular” uprising and the reasons for it. Through the Memorias, the reader views those hectic years and singular events as the chief actor remembered them.
Francis Polo Sifontes, distinguished director of the Instituto, has written a useful prolog, putting the Memorias within its historical context. The edition includes the testimony of Ignacio Solís on the authenticity of the Memorias.
The second document, Reseña de la situación general, edited with excellent notes and an introduction by Jorge Luján Muñoz, takes us to the final years of the Carrera administration. The Guatemalan historian has exhumed this remarkable Reseña from the pages of La Semana, a splendidly informative newspaper of 1865. Enrique Palacios was no ordinary commentator. He held a variety of top governmental posts in the 1860s, and was author of the monetary reform of 1870.
Palacios divided his Reseña into nine parts. Statistics abound. Conveniently brought together, for example, are foreign trade statistics for 1851 to 1860, in which one learns that for seven of the ten years reported, exports exceeded imports. The author also points out the impressive diversification of agriculture and exports between 1852 and 1862. He offers some singular information on the cottage textile industry, one that did not grow as Palacios thought it would, but rather declined under the later Liberal governments. The data in the Reseña emphasize significant directions of the Carrera government, particularly in the years 1854-63, and will certainly become important in any historical revision of the Carrera administration.
Because of the unusual nature of the Carrera experience within the broader scope of Latin American history, one hopes that the publication of these two valuable primary documents might herald a more dispassionate and penetrating study of the Carrera years, a bit of revisionism to vary our historical point of view. The study of a populist caudillo should provide some beneficial contrasts and comparisons to the elitist and Europeanized governments of nineteenth-century Latin America.
