Cities and Revolutions in Latin America

A call-for-proposals (CFP) with this title caught my attention, because it's something I've been pondering for practically all my adult life -- since my days in rebellious Caracas back in the 1960s. The session organizers, Federica Morelli and Jordana Dym, have also given it a lot of thought. But if their summary of current historiography is right, I have some doubts about the split between pre-modern (colonial and 19th century) and 20th-21st century views of city dynamics.

They write that scholars specializing in the colonial period "tend to emphasize cities as places of social revolution and economic dynamism. Scholars of independence and the nineteenth century see cities as places for popular mobilization (riots) and organized political opposition (juntas, coups) by elites. Scholars of the twentieth century and beyond tend to contrast Indian or peasant villages with the 'mega-cities' of Latin America where factories take in internal and external migrants, housewives demonstrate against dictators, gangs use urban institutions to organize, and politicians develop popular support that launches presidential careers."

The cut seems to be ca. 1920 or so. As described above, “colonialist” & 19th c. histories both see cities as “as places of social revolution and economic dynamism,” including riots & coups. That is, the rapid, innovative social dynamic of “cities,” built places with the greatest density of population – and an inertia of change – is clearly differentiated from the inertia of much slower change in their rural hinterlands, where Marx remarked on “the idiocy of rural life.” It is in the 20th century that ‘megacities’ incorporate the urban v. rural conflict within the urban density: that large numbers of rural people “invade” the cities, that is, are impelled to migrate there, but are not fully assimilated culturally.

Q1: Is this view of the premodern periods generally accurate? In Argentina and Venezuela (the 2 countries whose social history I know best), in the late colonial period and throughout the first century of independence, pressure for change came mostly from the rural areas: montoneras (rebellious bands of mounted men) in Argentina, in Venezuela the many rural revolts leading to changes in the central government in Caracas. The men who came to power, almost always by revolution (i.e., rural revolt), included Páez, a cattleman from the southern llanos, followed by the Monagas brothers (especially José Tadeo) from the rural east, others from rural Miranda or Falcón, and then a whole series of cattlemen and shepherds from the western Andes, especially the state of Táchira, where there was no city of important size.

The earlier independence wars were also largely rural affairs. The assemblies of dignitaries who declared independence met in cities (Tucumán, a quite small provincial capital in the remote north or Argentina, and the colonial capitals were usually centers of conspiracy, but the troops and very soon their officers came from smaller towns & villages). And even earlier, in Peru, Mexico and other places, the most serious threats to the colonial administration had come from small towns and villages.

Q2: In 20th & 21st centuries, why has the assimilation of rural migrants been such a difficult issue? Why have they formed villas miserias (Argentina), barrios (Venezuela), favelas (Brazil), campamentos (Chile), etc., that is, dense and precarious shantytowns surrounding and in interstices within the city, but seemingly antagonistic to its urban culture? Here are some likely explanations:

• Too many arriving too suddenly
• Rejection of the newcomers by the urbanites
• Preference of the newcomers for maintaining family ties & other traditions

The problem with the first hypothesis is that Buenos Aires, Caracas, Mexico City, Lima, Sao Paulo and other great cities have had much more difficulty assimilating their own rural compatriots than they have had with the large numbers of foreigners who began arriving around the beginning of the 20th century. I don't mean that all those Italians, Gallegos, Japanese, and Eastern European Jews were welcomed by the native urbanites, but that many of them found oportunities in their new environment to become effective urban actors, whether in politics, arts, business, or crime. The rural-urban migrants mostly did not.

I'm tempted to submit a proposal, even though I probably won't be able to get to Lyon (France) next August (I plan to be in the U.S. around that time). At the very least, I wanted to develop some ideas about it.

See the call for papers, IXth International Conference on Urban History, Lyon, France, 27th - 30th August 2008: Cities and Revolutions in Latin America


"9-11" x 2

Today is the anniversary of two massive assaults on civilian populations. The first, in Santiago, Chile 34 years ago, caused a proportionally greater loss of life (Chile was a country of only 10 million) and especially deep damage to the institutions of civil society, ushering in a dictatorship that endured for 17 years. The second, in 2001 in Manhattan, was much more concentrated, its effect magnified by its location in the media capital of the world. The two planes that struck the towers killed in a few hours about as many people as the Chilean counterrevolution killed in its much more prolonged assault, beginning on September 11, 1973 and continuing its ferocity for months.

The Chile events were very close to me. Before the coup, I had been a close observer, hopeful but fearful for the success of the country's peaceful revolution. Then, when the horror occurred, as soon as possible -- in February, 1974 -- I got to Chile as part of the ten-person Chicago Committee to Save Lives in Chile, getting into prisons, interviewing survivors, and even meeting with trade union and political activists in hiding.

The other September 11 was also very close. In 2001, I lived close enough to hear the impact of the first plane against the World Trade Center and then to watch from our rooftop the burning and the appalling, sickening collapse of the second tower, to breathe the air thick with incinerated cement, metal, plastic and human flesh.

And so, every year on this date, I cannot help remembering both of them. And this morning, I was wondering how they might be connected. Suddenly it seems obvious. Two sides of the same coin. The assault on democracy in Chile was a continuation of the long-standing, and continuing, United States practice of suppressing the popular will in foreign states. The Al-Qaeda attack was a response to that practice.

The most visible dirty work in Chile was done by reactionary Chilean generals and their far-right supporters, but they had been set in motion by Nixon and Henry Kissinger and K's subordinates, who provided them the money, weapons, technical assistance to create chaos (manipulated strikes, shortages, etc.) and then, when that proved insufficient, to strike by land, air and sea the center of government and all other points expected to put up resistance (including factories, community centers, schools).

All hegemonic powers act to suppress the popular will whenever it challenges the system of subjugation -- Rome, France, Belgium, Great Britain, the Ottomans, the Chinese, the Russians before, during and after the USSR, the USA at least since the Mexican War. Often they cloak their aggression by claiming to act in defense of "democracy," "the rights of man" or "socialist brotherhood." Those who oppose them are labeled "extremists."

And sometimes, finding no legal, institutional way to realize their goals or even to lead what they consider dignified lives, those opponents become extremists in fact, attempting suicidal violence against what they see as the foreign oppressor.

And when that foreign power has degraded the notions of "democracy" or "socialism" or "the rights of man" by its cluster bombs, SAM missiles, air raids, tortures of prisoners and other horrors, the rebels look for some uncompromisingly opposite doctrine to explain themselves. Whatever seems most likely to horrify the enemy. A century ago, in most of Europe and much of the U.S., that was anarchism. Today in a large part of the world, and for the young Arabs who rammed the planes into the World Trade Center, it's a rigid form of Islam.