In this book Romana Falcón recounts the fascinating and little-known story of the responses of official Spain and of individual Spaniards toward independent Mexico from the late 1840s to the fall of Maximilian’s monarchy in 1867, or roughly during the reign of Isabel II of Spain. Attitudes of lingering imperialism and racial superiority were dominant; Spaniards dismissed Mexicans as barbarians unfit for self-government and as wanting only the restoration of Spanish colonial domination and Hispanic civilization to enjoy the benefits of political and social stability. They were backed up by decades of denunciation of Mexican lawlessness and savagery by Spanish consular agents and Spanish merchants and hacendados alike. Bankrupt and devastated by civil war, Mexican governments could neither protect Spanish subjects living in Mexico nor enforce Mexican laws, giving rise to countless grievances on the part of Spain. It is a tragic tale of self-delusion and eurocentrism, and even if Falcón did not allow her Mexican loyalties to appear occasionally, the reader would still see the Mexicans as the victims in this unequal contest. In the final outcome, of course, the forces of European intervention and racism were defeated by the long-suffering Mexicans under Benito Juárez, in what must be one of Latin American history’s most satisfying morality plays.
Falcón recounts this drama with precision and considerable sensitivity. The main focus in the early part of the work is the Mexican lawlessness that affected Spanish owners of plantations and sugar mills, especially in Guerrero and Morelos, as well as the unpaid Mexican debt owed to Spanish interests. No actual summary of the amount of the debt is provided. This is followed by a substantial treatment of Spain’s role in the transportation of Mayan Indian laborers from Yucatán to Cuba in the wake of the outbreak of the Caste War in 1847. Here, Yucatecan and Mexican elite interests are assigned much of the blame for one of the most extreme human rights violations of the nineteenth century, but again, Spanish disdain for indigenous cultures played a major role. The mutual recriminations and grievances culminated in the tripartite European intervention of 1861, followed by Spain’s withdrawal under General Juan Prim in early 1862 in view of the French imperialistic objectives that had by then materialized. Spain was left to pursue a very troubled neutrality in response to the French invasion and imposition of Maximilian as emperor. At that point, the Spanish liberals were again on the rise at home and began to recognize, at long last, some of the justice of Mexico’s resistance to foreign conquest, although Spanish conservatives remained unrepentant. The final chapters thus achieve high drama.
Much of the material comes from Spanish diplomatic and political archives, as well as Spanish and Mexican periodicals of the day. Although modern secondary works are sometimes cited, Falcón could have made better use of existing literature on Spanish involvement in early independent Mexico and on the debt question. Throughout the book, one wishes for more concrete numerical data, particularly on economic and demographic issues. How many Spanish citizens lived in Mexico, how did the numbers fluctuate, what was the total debt they claimed from Mexicans? In the first half of the book the chronology is not always clear and there is a lot of retracing of steps.
None of these complaints lessens the significance of the insights this book provides on the cultural and political divisions tearing apart the Hispanic world in the mid-nineteenth century. There was much greater and more constant tension than previously noted in the historiography. It is clear Spain had not yet come to grips with the loss of empire. At the same time, there is perhaps no other book that reveals quite so powerfully why Mexicans so disliked and feared Spain and Spaniards in the decades after independence.
