Lithograph of the Palácio do Conde dos Arcos, published in Robert Walsh’s Notices of Brazil in 1828 and 1829.
Furtado, resentful of Saraiva, reluctantly supports the ministry and gets his friends to contain themselves. “I will give the government,” he says in the Senate, of which he was then a member, in July, “the means of sustaining the foreign war in which the empire finds itself endeavored, and my support, until events come to disavow the words of your excellencies … While events are forthcoming, I will keep a look out to see if the political swallows migrate (1). I have nowhere to which to migrate.”
The rift, the separation between Liberals and Conservatives that they’d sealed in 1862, was evident. The Liberals were getting along better with the pure Conservatives (2), with which they united against the Olinda government, than they did with their allies of yesterday. The more this breakdown of the party affected Nabuco, the further he found himself from wanting to contribute to it; nor did it suit him to aid the opposition in eliminating the Conservative element from the party, of which element he himself was a part.
Considering both halves separately, he still preferred that which represented the doctrine of Paraná, Conciliation, which represented the earliest Liberal tradition; recognizing, however, the insufficiency of that element as a third party, he preferred the government of the Conservatives, who formed an essential party. With the fusion of Liberals and moderates to form the other party not being possible, the Conservative party should have governed, the Conservative party which, since Itaboraí surrendered power to Paraná in 1853, had not returned to power except with the reconstructed Abaeté ministry in 1859, and with the Caxias-Paranhos ministry, also reconstructed, and which even in these two cases of purification had lacked Conservative leaders.
The truth is that the Nabuco’s spirit was objective and practical enough to let itself be dominated, especially during grand crises, by traditions without tangibility, by divisions without distinction, by sides with names that had only personal scope, and by relationships that were purely negative. He considered administration to be a practical thing, that required skill, preparation, the height of vision, and a sense of responsibility; for him there was not but one mode of administration, as in the navigation of waters there is not but one course to follow. Ferraz being at the head of the war chest seemed well to Nabuco, as Ferraz was an energetic, expeditious man, with his own resources and audacious initiatives; Nabuco did not have to enter into inquiries about if in 1860 he had fought with all his might in favor of the Conservative party; he accepted Ferraz’s word of honor of not being already joined with that group, without putting forth clear motives or intentions, nor entering into the examination of the past.
The Chamber’s adjournment freed the government from political minutiae; the recess would be long and would provide time for work. Nabuco would make an effort, would work tirelessly all through this period (almost a year) and then when the Chamber reconvened, if political passions showed themselves to be unyielding, rather than ingratiating himself with one of the sides, he would abandon power. Instead of volunteering to destroy the edifice he had raised, he would leave the work of demolishing it to the architects of ruins, precisely because he was sure that the common enemy would not delay in making a sudden invasion into the house divided, interrupting the work of the internal collapse.Read More »
The speech Nabuco gave in the Chamber on 26 May 1865 was, for that divided assembly, like a shining ray of patriotic eloquence. In the middle of the partisan disagreements, which only tended to worsen and become more irreconcilable, no one expected that appeal to harmony, that invitation to a political armistice in the name of the invaded country. In that moment, his speech had everyone’s assent. Nabuco’s presence beside Olinda was in itself only an agenda of political truces, since one could not forget the sacrifice that he made—his little fondness for power, and his neutrality in personal rivalries. A year later historians will come to do justice to Nabuco’s intentions to save the government and avoid internal struggle. From the first day, his attitude was such that, upon the ministry’s fall, he would continue to be the organizer preferred by the political spirits of the majority and the minority. The session had been very busy. “I have seen you shine today in the Chamber of Deputies,” the humorist Abaeté writes to him, “and I would have envied you if the feeling of friendship did not prevail over that of envy. There is nothing like being minister of the King!”
The speech was short, as fit an appeal to national sentiment, but, precisely because of this, it was vibrant. After having explained the reasons he had for not wanting to take on the task of forming a cabinet, he declares the reasons that moved him to accept his role as justice:
José Tomás Nabuco as depicted in Galeria dos Brasileiros Ilústres by Sébastien Auguste Sisson.
“My noble friend senhor Minister of the Navy has already explained the reason for my entry into the current ministry. It was a sacrifice that patriotism imposed on us all. You know the circumstances in which the country found itself: the crisis was becoming prolonged; public anxiety instantly increased; each day wasted harmed the great concern by which everyone was preoccupied, that is to say, the dream of returning our national honor and dignity. There does not exist any contradiction in my behavior, given the circumstances that suddenly arose, and besides, there is a great difference between organizing such a cabinet—being its brain—and forming a part of it. What’s more, this ministry’s agenda has been reduced to the war, not wanting to alter the political status quo. The noble deputy of Minas province (i), explaining the reasons that he has for not putting confidence in the current ministry, examined some of its members, attending only to the Liberal element, but upon doing so forgot the principle that serves as the basis of the current government. In effect, so that the noble deputy may deny the ministry his trust for such a reason, he should begin by proving that the Progressive Party, under whose government this Chamber was elected, is dissolved.”
Finally, he invoked with the solemnity of his convictions, words, and gestures, the irresistible motivation of the country’s defense, winning over the Chamber and making it forget its divisions:
“It is evident, senhores, that the same thinking that stopped me from accepting the charge to form a ministry, has brought me to enter into this one; that is, the desire to not alter the status quo during a war. Nothing is less timely than exciting political passions in these moments in which we need the concurrence of everyone to save the country, which has been invaded and bloodied by foreigners. This is not a good opportunity to divide the Chamber, making it powerless to do good and making the life of any ministry impossible.
“I believe, senhores, that with the government limited to this agenda of making war without altering the status quo of our political system, it can’t help but deserve the trust and support of this Chamber and of the whole country.
“I could say more, senhores, but I conclude by making these vows: God would not wish that the country, swayed by political passions, come to be powerless against the foreigners that have insulted our flag; God would not wish that history deplore the fluke of a young nation full of resources and life, but disgraced by its own failings … Let us take on the responsibility of the war and leave the settling of scores for after the victory.”Read More »
I know I said it last chapter, but this chapter you really will be completely lost without reading this supplemental post on politics of the Empire of Brazil.
The ministry reflected the situation of the party, but with respect to the hope of restoring unity to the party, the sacrifices that the ministers made were certainly in vain. Otaviano—representative of the Liberal Party in the organization, confidante and friend to Teófilo Ottoni, Furtado, and Sousa Franco—soon proved it, refusing the position offered him. The reason alleged by Otaviano was that he had been designated by Furtado, that is, by his own friends; and for an ambassador of his prestige, standing before the Progressive cabinets, the role of minister did not equate to the position of executor of the Triple Alliance, which he himself ended up signing, or the position of arbiter in the theater of war.
But the reasons he alleged did not leave doubt about the insurmountable division of the old allied parties. To Olinda, who had informed him of his appointment, he answers with the following, in a letter dated 29 May: “The names of political friends, friends at whose side I have been since I began to form part of one of the two parties, appeared in the previous potential cabinets. With such names suppressed in the last and definitive ministerial organization, I don’t consider seemly for me, nor useful for the ministry, my separation from those friends, becoming weakened and without moral force, alongside another citizen friend of mine—a personal friend worthy of my admiration for his talent, but with whom the nation has seen me fighting some in the press, on the debate platform, and in elections, when I appealed to the people who were convinced that he’d fulfilled a great debt.”
The friend alluded to is Ferraz (1), although few politicians have shown more willingness to forget old fights and personal offenses upon entering that cabinet than he. With his political self-sacrifice upon accepting this reliable post, exposing himself openly before the Chamber to the attacks of his adversaries from 1860, he seems to symbolize the sacrifices that partisan interests had to make for the sake of our forces’ victory in the South—sacrifices of which the most heroic was without a doubt that of Caxias (2), who, aged and ailing, went to suffer the fatigues of long campaigns in the marshes and under the sun of Paraguay.Read More »
I wrote this post before Ursula K. Le Guin passed, though it seems fitting now to open it with these words of hers, in response to the question, “What do you want to happen to your books after you die?”: “I want them to be available, I want cheap paper editions of them, I want them to be continuously downloaded in forty different languages, I want them to be read, I want them to be argued about, I want people to cry over them, I want unreadable dissertations written about them, I want people to get angry with them, I want people to love them.” Well, I’ve read a second-hand cheap paper edition of The Left Hand of Darkness, gotten angry with it, kind of loved it in a few moments, argued about it (in my head, with myself and with two different versions of Le Guin), and now, behold, an unreadable dissertation blog post. Hopefully, this is exactly as Le Guin would wish. Rest in peace.
Cover of the 1st edition, vastly superior to the latest edition’s cover, which is just a glacier, honestly it’s stunning how mediocre that new cover is. Courtesy of Ace Books
The Left Hand of Darkness is one of those books I’ve always felt silly for not having read—and likewise, Ursula K. Le Guin is one of those authors I’ve always etc. Not just because Left Hand is considered a classic, and Le Guin one of the greatest, most influential sci-fi/fantasy writers, but because it’s the kind of sci-fi and fantasy that really interests me. Sci-fi with a focus on society, on the world, on characters. Not to mention, the gender thing—I’ve always heard that Le Guin is a great feminist writer, someone who subverts and challenges our ideas about gender, and especially about women. And Left Hand is, of course, the gender book—or the book without gender. A world where the dominant sentient life-form has no biological sex—fantastic. I’m always interested in that kind of premise, I always like to see deconstructions and reconstructions of gender. Yet, I somehow never got around to reading it, I always had some other book or author I was more interested in. I finally decided to read the book when I got it in a white elephant gift exchange, and, for months, had the physical copy sitting about in my bedroom somewhere, staring at me.
So I read it. One less thing to feel silly about Francis, good job. After reading it, and kind of wondering what everyone else saw in it re: the discussion of gender, I read Le Guin’s essay on the book, “Is Gender Necessary?” Actually I read the “Redux” version, which was written over a decade later, with annotations from Le Guin clarifying and arguing with her past self. In some ways, the redux essay is a revisiting of a revisiting—Left Hand came out in 1969, “Is Gender Necessary” (henceforth to be referred to as IGN) in 1976, and the redux in 1988. Which would make this blog post a commentary on a commentary on a commentary on a book, at least in some part.
I’ve struggled with how to write this post. It seems unfair to review the book as if its some kind of argument—in fact, Le Guin herself mentions this in “Redux,” when she writes that “critics of the book insisted upon talking about its ‘gender problems’ as if it were an essay not a novel.” That line instantly made me think of “Cat Person,” the Kristen Roupenian short story that made the rounds last year, and which was bizarrely referred to as an “article” or “essay” by some. These stories did not ask to be scrutinized as perfectly hygienic arguments about gender and sexuality. The idea that Left Hand is an incredible classic which strikes right to the heart of gender politics is external to the book. So I’ll do my best to separate the two, to review the book as just a book, before specifically going into why I found it lacking in terms of gender commentary.Read More »
This chapter and the next few deal heavily with the politics of the Empire of Brazil (should these chapters even be included in this book?), so I recommend reading this supplemental post first. Or you could just skip these chapters entirely. I think they’re neat, but they’re not directly related to the war.
The Furtado ministry fell in a secret ballot vote soon after Parliament reconvened, having not wanted to call for a roll-call vote. They did not want or need to know their enemies.
Firstly, the Emperor called on the Viscount of Abaeté, who for a long time had been a mere spectator of the partisan fighting, to form a government. Abaeté put forward Saraiva’s name. Saraiva, fruitlessly, attempted to form a ministry—Furtado’s friends did not forgive him for that Liberal government’s fall, to which he had contributed (1). In vain, he tried to come to an agreement with Teófilo Ottoni, typical of Saraiva. Giving up, he indicated the name of Nabuco, who was then summoned.
For the first time the Emperor looked to Nabuco, after there’d been five ministries formed with members of the “League” (2), of which party Nabuco had been, in everyone’s opinion, the creator—and the sovereign did not even arrive at him without first having tried two other options. One could believe that the direness of the situation forced the Emperor to turn to Nabuco at the last moment; a circumstance that contributed much to Nabuco, in turn, not accepting.
It was not that some overblown pride moved him: none of his colleagues in the Paraná ministry (3) had even reached this position; Paranhos (Viscount of Rio Branco) would only reach it in 1871; Wanderley (Baron of Cotegipe) in 1885; Pedreira (Viscount of Bom Retiro) had renounced politics. Eusebio de Quierós, who had governed in, made, or unmade every ministry since a certain time, had been called only once to San Cristobal. But Nabuco had created the ruling government, and was, of everyone, the most proper to lead it, because he brought, in a greater degree than any other, the spirit of benevolence, the impartiality necessary to maintain it, and a spirit that inspired great confidence, to—their respective leaders aside—each one of the parties. He had destroyed the Conservative oligarchy in the senate and made possible the new political environment. Of this environment, he was, intellectually, the oracle; politically he had a neutral title—moderator. Because of this, since 1862, every summons to São Cristóvão that was not made to him (although for each time there has been some provisional reason not to name Nabuco) seems to be a preterition (4) For this the belief that he was a persona non grata had been ingrained in political circles; a belief that also existed with respect to Paraná, Eusebio de Quierós, Cotegipe, both Paulino de Sousas, Teófilo Ottoni, and others.
The primary condition for the success of any ministry is the Emperor’s goodwill, and not because he can betray a president of his Council, but because only his discretion can be enough to destroy the minister’s necessary trust in his own stability. So, perfect accord between the two entities—the Emperor and the head of the cabinet—was essential for the government’s progress. The two times that Nabuco had served in the cabinet the Emperor gave him no reason to complain, nor even the third. The reasons that had moved the Emperor to put him off as an option seemed to him plausible, from a strictly parliamentary point of view, given the detachedness in which, without ceasing to guide the government, Nabuco had been placed, and which he himself proclaimed. He also knew the Emperor’s methods well enough to know that if Dom Pedro II had wanted to have him as prime minister, he would have gone looking for him in his exile, as with others he had done on such occasions, even with statesmen that had ostracized themselves. That lack, not of trust, but of desire, of affinity, which the Emperor had toward him, weighed more on Nabuco’s spirit, making him refuse the belated investment of power, than some sensitivity to being summoned only after other ministers.
But more than anything, the visible division of the Conservative Party dominated the Chamber. Nabuco, who had not taken part in Furtado’s fall, was better looked on by historians than Olinda (5), Zacarias, and Saraiva, while the Progressives considered him their most eminent leader. But to form a ministry it was absolutely essential to ingratiate himself with one group or another; in matters of people—which is what these matters come down to, not anything else—and matters of cabinet, for deputies and senators, it was necessary to support their faith in the balance of power, and at the first moment that this was neglected, the minister, whoever they were, had to be excised, which was perhaps feared by Nabuco more than anyone. He would faithfully explain his qualms before the Chamber, and the reasons for his renouncement.
Pedro de Araújo Lima, Marquis of Olinda, ca. 1860.
Hearing this, the Emperor summoned the Marquis of Olinda, and Nabuco, as well as Saraiva, acceded to serve at Olinda’s command, proving that they were not motivated by any ambition for that highest position. The ministry was constituted in the following manner: President of the Council and Empire, Marquis of Olinda; Justice, Nabuco; Navy, Saraiva; War, Ferraz; Treasury, Días de Carvalho; Foreign Affairs, Otaviano; Agriculture, Paula e Sousa. Counting those who had been charged with organizing a cabinet and had not achieved it, the ministry brought under its wings four ex-presidents of the Council—Olinda, Ferraz, Nabuco, and Saraiva. Besides these, Otaviano would’ve entered among them, who found himself at the time in the Río de la Plata, and who could not accept. For such names was the ministry known by the denomination of thecabinet of eagles.Read More »
The constitution of the Empire of Brazil stated that “The representatives of the Brazilian Nation are the Emperor, and the General Assembly.” [Art. 11. Os Representantes da Nação Brazileira são o Imperador, e a Assembléa Geral.] In this way, the Empire of Brazil was a constitutional monarchy, wherein the Emperor and the Parliament were servants of the people of the empire. The idea was that emperor was the enduring, big-picture ruler (the “permanent will” as Nabuco says in Um Estadista [vontade permanente]), while the General Assembly attended more to the day to day concerns of the state.
The Emperor appointed judges, magistrates, senators, provincial presidents, ministers of state, and eventually the President of the Council of Ministers—a position similar to Prime Minister. The Emperor was responsible for sanctioning laws in order for them to go into effect, though parliament could force a bill into law if it was voted through by two consecutive legislatures. The Emperor could also commute sentences and grant amnesty.
While it’s wrong to say that the emperor was just a figurehead, certainly the General Assembly was the main governing body of the Empire. It consisted of the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house) and the Senate (upper house.) The General Assembly (which is alternately referred to as “parliament” and “the legislature”) held the power of the purse, power to modify, suspend, and enact laws, control of the military, and power to create government offices.
The Senate was composed of 50 members, each serving lifelong terms, with provinces each having a certain number of senators representing them, based on population. They were appointed by the emperor, however the emperor had to choose from the three candidates who garnered the most votes from the citizens of whichever province.
The Chamber of Deputies was elected (pretty much) by Brazilian voters—specifically men who made above a nominal amount of annual income—for four-year terms. There were 102 deputies, also distributed proportionally based on population.
Executive power was effectively split between the Emperor and the Council of Ministers. The Council of Ministers (also called the “cabinet”) was a group of politicians appointed by the emperor to run specific ministries—Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of the Navy, Ministry of the Treasury, etc. Eventually, however, the emperor would nominate one President of the Council of Ministers (sometimes called the “prime minister”) to head this council, and allow this president to appoint the ministers of state himself. This cabinet functioned a lot like the government of a parliament, as it had to present an annual agenda to the Chamber of Deputies, and could be dissolved by the monarch (as could the entire Chamber.)
As well, the Emperor would only appoint presidents who he believed had the majority support of the Chamber, and would often dissolve the cabinet if the legislature passed a motion of no confidence. The President of the Council of Ministers also had some executive powers, as they were responsible for diplomacy, issuing decrees, and national security.
And there was an independent judiciary, though they aren’t especially relevant for this book.
With all that established, on to the history.
The First Reign and the Regency
The Empire of Brazil was a very centralized state from the beginning, with no way for citizens to directly elect the president of their province—and right from the beginning, there were constant provincial uprisings (such as the Cisplatine War, wherein Uruguay gained sovereignty.) To alleviate this unrest, many statesmen wanted to grant greater autonomy to the provinces, and—together with politicians who wished to confer greater power to the people of the empire, rather than the emperor—they began to form the Liberal Party. However, this “party” was really more of a loose coalition, composed of Republicans (called “extremists,” and farrapos, translated in English as “ragamuffins”) and “moderate” Liberals. The moderates were in turn split between the Coimbra bloc and the Nativists. The Nativists, led by Diogo Antônio Feijó, were one of the earliest political groups to form. They supported slavery and wanted more federalism, and more democracy. The Coimbra bloc was dominated by graduates of Coimbra University such as Pedro de Araújo Lima (Olinda), Honório Hermeto Carneiro Leão (Paraná), and Paulino Soares de Sousa. They actually supported a strong central government, and only aligned themselves with the Nativists and Republicans in order to oppose the Restorationists.
The Restorationists came about in 1831 when Pedro I, the first emperor of Brazil, abdicated the throne to take care of some royal drama in Portugal. They fervently argued for his return to the throne. In the meantime, Pedro II was only five years old, so a regency of elected officials was appointed.
Lithograph of the imperial palace in São Cristóvão, made from a photograph, ca. 1860. Photographer Victor Frond. Engraver Eugène Cicéri.
Not long after, the Ato Adicional was passed in 1834, an amendment to the constitution which allowed provinces to form provincial legislatures and control primary and secondary education. Despite this, separatist rebellions continued, including the 1835-1845 Ragamuffin War, which established the short-lived Riograndense Republic in Rio Grande do Sul.
The 1830s were quite eventful, because in 1835 news reached Brazil that Pedro I had died. The Restorationists, with no one to restore, joined the Coimbra bloc, and the Nativist-Coimbra-bloc coalition dissolved.
In 1837 the new political landscape appeared thus: The Coimbra bloc; the Liberals, composed of Nativists and a few other minor factions, only allied by virtue of shared opposition to the Coimbra bloc; and the Courtier Faction, composed of politicians and high-ranking servants in the imperial palace, who had ingratiated themselves with the young emperor, led by Aureliano de Sousa Oliveira Coutinho (later Viscount of Sepetiba).
The Liberals allied with the Courtiers, seeking to attain power by gaining the emperor’s favor, and declaring him of age as soon as possible. On 23 July 1840 they were successful. A 15-year-old Pedro II was declared old enough to rule, and a Liberal-Courtier cabinet took power—but less than a year later, infighting caused the Liberals to be dismissed from the cabinet, replaced by members of the Coimbra bloc. There was a sharp backlash to this, with yet more Liberal uprisings. These were easily put down, and after being arrested Feijó—the old Nativist—soon died in 1843.
Also in 1842, Pedro II appointed Paraná to lead a new cabinet, making him the unofficial first ever prime minister of Brazil. Around this time as well, the emperor purged the Courtier Faction from the government, placing an unspoken ban on the leader, Aureliano Coutinho, from ever holding political office again. The Liberal Party held power for some time, but in 1848 Pedro called on the Coimbra bloc, now known as the Conservative Party, to form a new government.
The Second Reign
A month later, another Liberal revolt kicked off in Pernambuco, the Praiera Revolt—though it was essentially a Courtier Faction revolt, led by Aureliano Coutinho. The revolt was crushed in February 1849. It greatly damaged public perception of the Liberal Party and paved the way for Conservatives to dominate politics for the next decade.
To put an end to factionalist violence and gridlock, Pedro II appointed Paraná to lead a government of “Conciliation” [Conciliaçao], inviting old Liberals to join in a Conservative coalition. Paraná complied, though there was strong pushback from old Conservatives who believed that these Liberals were really just working to further their own party, not for any shared conservative ideals. Especially vocal critics were Paulino Soares de Sousa, Joaquim Rodrigues Torres, and Eusébio de Quierós. Still, the cabinet (which included José Tomás Nabuco as Minister of Justice, Nabuco’s first time serving in the Council of Ministers) was able to function for years, until Paraná unexpectedly died in 1856. The next five years saw four different conservative cabinets, as each struggled to maintain majority support.
The Conservative Party was split between the Traditionalists—the older generation, critical of Conciliation—and the Conciliators, or moderate Conservatives—who supported it. With the Conservatives divided, Liberals seized the opportunity, winning several seats in the chamber in 1860. In June 1861, José Tomás Nabuco, who had served as Minister of Justice in the old Conciliation cabinet, gave a speech advocating for the merger of Conservatives and Liberals to form a new party which could overcome factionalism. With this speech, which instantly sparked an enthusiastic political movement among those groups, Nabuco effectively founded the Progressive League, which managed to take power in 1862. Zacarias de Góis e Vasconcelos was appointed to form a cabinet, ending 14 years of Conservative rule.
Ultimately, the Progressive League was short-lived, dissolving in 1868, at which point Conservatives regained power. Ex-members of the Progressive League went on to join the new-and-improved Liberal Party, and later (in 1870) the new-and-improved Republican Party. But that’s beyond the scope of this book, so I’ll leave things here.
Sources
The Empire of Brazil Constitution — for info on the government This article from Portal São Francisco — for info on the General Assembly
This Encyclopædia Britannica article — for info on the Ato Adicional A History of Modern Brazilby Colin M. MacLachlan — for general info on political machinations of the Empire of Brazil, especially during the first reign
And, as always, Wikipedia — sine qua non
I’ve just published “Beneath Them,” a short story available on Smashwords and Amazon.
In this piece of flash fiction, without warning, thousands of alien spaceships have appeared above major urban areas around the globe, and some have descended to devastating effect. Although the aliens have expressed a lack of ill intentions, and a desire for “recreation,” no one really knows what they are doing on Earth. The only thing that is clear is their overwhelming power, and their overwhelming intelligence.
In the shadow of this invasion, life goes on as Atlanta resident Cheyenne, and her younger cousin Denise, deal with roaches in their apartment.
Also included in this publication is a brief afterword, in which I describe my own encounter with a cockroach which inspired this story.
The first appeal to Brazilian patriotism, after López’s attack was known, had to be made by the Furtado Cabinet. The first recruitment of the Voluntarios da Pátria, decreed by the cabinet, produced a spontaneous national movement. The nature of our people being, in great part, recalcitrant toward military service, the battalions of volunteers, which the prolongation of the war necessitated, were recruited by allowing the recruits to choose between service in the rank and file and voluntary service, which would be temporary, with special advantages (i). This does not mean that the war with Paraguay would remain well regarded and popular until the end. There is always a great difference, in any country, between those that embrace the national cause with enthusiasm, and those who defend that cause on the battlefield. The merit of those that offer themselves to the war effort should be considered extraordinary; but the fact is that the campaigns of Paraguay were carried out with soldiers from the draft, and that the war would have been impossible to sustain in any other way given the scale it reached and the time it took. Our race, although we become militant as soon as we wear the uniform and grow accustomed to obedience, does not know to voluntarily exchange independence for discipline. However, that initial drive, which produced volunteer battalions, does not cease to be a prize of honor for Furtado, because it is impossible to deny that part of that drive should be attributed to the government’s popularity, and the expansive ableness of the Liberal element represented in the government.
Transferring power to his successors, in May, the Furtado Cabinet left to them the following inheritance: as far as liabilities, a war with Paraguay recently begun, Mato Grosso invaded and partially under control of the Paraguayans, and the expectation of an invasion of Rio Grande do Sul, towards which province Estigarribia’s corps was already marching. As far as assets, the war with Montevideo, which had looked all but declared, concluded despite itself, sooner than should have been expected, and turned into an alliance; the Triple Alliance signed in Buenos Aires, lacking only ratification; an army corps forming in Montevideo; on the Paraná the fleet that, later (11 June), would be victorious at Riachuelo; and, it can be said, in the shipyards, the better part of the ships that were destined to force the pass at Humaitá.
Footnotes
i. Tito Franco says, speaking about the Furtado Cabinet: “In very short time our little fleet numbered 33 steamers and 12 sailing ship, crewed by 609 officers and 3,627 soldiers. The cabinet began rapidly constructing two battleships in the shipyards of the capital, ordered the construction of others which would come later, bought transports and a great amount of arms and munitions. It joined the single voice of patriotism to an army, and through no other means than the decree to create corps of Voluntarios da Patria.”
“The number of citizens that have volunteered themselves to form battalions,” says the War Report, “can be calculated at 10,000. … Recruitment is suspended and recruiters are declared unfit in every province.” From December 1864 to 12 May 1865 (according to the Baron of Rio Branco in Schneider) 8,449 men went to Montevideo, and 1,898 to Rio Grande and Santa Catarina; total, with officers: 10,353. Compare with what Ferraz says later about the inheritance that the 12 May ministry received from its predecessor.
Brief note: This chapter deals with the Uruguayan War. In the final version of this book, I may end up switching the order of it, so that it occurs closer to chapter IV, V, and VI. Just a heads up. It threw me for a bit when I was first translating it.
The best argument that can be made of the events in Rio Grande is to confess that all our resources together were insufficient to face the enemy; that the enemy’s errors were even greater than ours; and that if we had been wise, perhaps the enemy could have been wise too, crushing us. What’s certain is that everything happened in the best way possible for us. The audacious plans based on the offensive against Estigarribia, when he found himself in Misiones, could have produced a disaster; the very defense of São Borja, could’ve resulted in the union of the three separate columns, and the aid of them by Robles’s army. The only military error worthy of attention that is observed in this improvised war is that of having begun it with forces inferior to the enemy. If the enemy had known to take advantage of the superiority it had in those first minutes, no one can calculate the consequences, or at least the political consequences, of the panic that would have been produced.
All the problems in this war were resolved for us in the most unexpected way. López had no enemy so fatal as his own acts, so poorly directed that they seemed embattled by a hidden power, which entertained itself by scuttling them. His attacks always surprised us, but they lost their effectiveness because of an excess of optimistic recklessness, because of an overly strong surety of being victorious, although the very sluggishness of our movements seems to have helped us, purposefully causing despair in a belligerent who was isolated from the outside world, as Paraguay continued to be, with the river blockaded. The need López felt to attack Rio Grande, a province that he knew to be defenseless thanks to his friends in Montevideo, Corrientes, and Uruguay, became an obsession in the manner of those other despotic whims, and that obsession determined the character of the war. A slave to his fixed idea, he let himself be dragged by it up to the point of invading Argentine territory when he already found himself at war with a nation many times stronger, numerically, than Paraguay, and of a different refinement, wealth, and diversity of resources. If he had proceeded in another way and instead of invading Argentine territory to reach Rio Grande he had left his army from Cerro León and Humaitá to cover his lagoons and jungles, attempting to awaken the suspicions of the Río de la Plata against Brazil’s so-called domineering tendencies, perhaps the Paraguayan War, with Argentine neutrality secretly maintained, would have been the Empire’s ruin.
From this comes the great responsibility taken on by the government that began the Uruguayan War—the cabinet of 15 January 1864 (1). They surely did not foresee Paraguay’s intervention, and when this came about in the form of mediation, it already would be ungraceful to back out. But that is precisely what politics is; the player must always calculate the possible moves of their opponent. In everything we undertake we fight the unexpected; the most foresighted player always wins the game. In 1864 there was in our political sphere a genuine movement in favor of the Uruguayan War, and the Zacarias Cabinet had to yield to that “national unanimity.” It is not a sufficient defense for the cabinet to claim that no one contributed to that unanimity more than the conservative leaders, above all Pimenta Bueno, but it would be valid before a court of chancery.
Given the risk that we ran, the war in 1864 was “a leap in the dark” that the government made with the most absolute unawareness of the complications of the fall. It is quite certain that the complaints and claims that the state of our border produced did not justify the declaration of war to Montevideo, requested by the messengers from the countryside; at least not while the Montevidean government had to fight an armed rebellion. It’s also true that the ministry of 15 January found in Saraiva a man that, through the sacrifice and nobility of his attitude, mended the toughness and wickedness that there could have been in our instructions, and gave the Blanco government an excellent opportunity to finish the civil war and ensure peace in all of the Río de la Plata; but that same government availed itself of such an opportunity to construct, with Urquiza’s resentment and López’s ambition, a system of forces capable of facing Brazil, once Buenos Aires’s superiority was destroyed. From that point arose an order of things full of dangers for us, in Montevideo, and fortune did not wish for the collision of the two coalitions in formation to remain deferred for a more unfavorable eventuality. In the exact moment in which a delay could have been attempted, which probably would come to facilitate, in the future, a combination of forces against Brazil, the ministry of 15 January falls.
On 31 August Furtado receives a situation that is impossible to modify, though he still wants to, because in place of Saraiva Tamandaré remains, the which considered diplomatic issues with the irritability of the mariner little disposed to measure the political consequences of his actions, so that his admiral’s honor and the brilliance of his flag remain intact before the foreign fleets, and also because in those decisive months of September and October Furtado himself found himself fighting with the great crisis of 1864 (2), which threatened to ruin the commerce of Rio de Janeiro. But the government only had one thought; any other person that would have occupied the seat of power in his place would have done the same; ignorance or calculation would give the same result. The Emperor, who was the permanent will of the country, didn’t think of backing out, but even if it had been proposed, events would not have permitted it. In one way or another López had to initiate the decisive match, and the adversary he chose was Brazil. Whatever the responsibility of the ministers that ran the risk of this war, for which the country did not find itself prepared, and which could have been disastrous, the campaign in itself can be considered (as much as it’s possible to calculate what would have happened if events took another course) as a true lightning rod of all the electricity that had been accumulating in the Río de la Plata.
Translator’s Notes
1. That is, the Zacarias cabinet, lead by Zacarias de Góis e Vasconcelos.
2. This refers to a financial crisis, involving a few major banks in Rio de Janeiro, which had been struggling due to a recent decline in global coffee prices (coffee being an enormous industry in the region.)
Last week there was a school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Following the shooting, many of the survivors—high schoolers—have come together to voice their outrage at the current state of gun regulation in America, spearheading a movement to pass better gun control laws, with the hope of preventing what happened to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High from ever happening to another American school. You can find out more about their cause here.
Just days before the attack, I began editing and writing the afterword for a play I wrote last year, Tallahassee Ca. 2045. In the play, a group of high school students (heavily inspired by my own very politically conscious friends from high school) organize a protest for youth rights, to lower the minimum voting age. After a global catastrophe strikes, the nature of the protest changes, and it steadily grows out of control, ultimately collapsing with little more than token reforms made. And it takes place in Tallahassee, capital of Florida. Needless to say, I wish the MSD students much better luck than the characters in my play.
So for the past week, these students, and the way people are reacting to them, and the way some people are trying to discredit them, and whether or not they’ll succeed, and the fact that most of them can’t vote, and the general perception of teenagers, have all been on my mind. I’m in Spain right now, and I so wish that I could be in my hometown of Tallahassee to protest in front of the capitol, or even just in Iowa City, where I go to school. I would love to throw my support behind these kids by physically marching with them, but I can’t. What I can do is post this.
If you can’t tell already, it’s a strange post. It’s not really about gun control, but rather about why we should listen to the kids campaigning for better gun control right now, and general misconceptions about the apoliticality of kids. My main purpose here is to provide insight into my personal understanding of young people, particularly high schoolers, re: politics—which should be a pretty solid understanding, given that I’m 20. So, here we go. The following is a segment of the Tallahassee Ca. 2045 afterword, adapted slightly for this post.
You could say that I fell in with the right crowd in high school. “Fell in” because, for the most part, I met them first as friends of friends, not through any shared extracurricular interest or from any effort on my part to meet new people. And “right crowd” not because they were straight-laced t-totalers or anything, but because they were incredible kids (and are incredible people, for that matter.) They were kids who talked about politics during lunch. Kids who talked about, and argued about, Ferguson and Santa Barbara and Syria, about Common Core and Jackie Pons and gay marriage, about dress code and rape culture and climate change. Kids who made up jingles about socialism. Kids who discussed gender and sexuality without the tied tongues of adults nor the giggles of less mature kids. Kids who participated in Model UN and Peace Jam and GSA. Kids (a few of them at least) who once went to the principal to ask that he improve the school’s nearly non-existent sex-ed. Very liberal kids all, some of whom had liberal parents and some of whom had conservative parents. Kids who were vegetarian and vegan. Kids who acted, kids who ran, kids who wrote, kids who played instruments, kids who spoke Spanish, a kid who spoke Portuguese, a kid who spoke Russian, kids who knew Latin (and who could speak it, though it’s Latin, so they mostly didn’t.) I don’t mean to give the impression that we were all just pundits or politicians—we of course did talk about other things, about teachers and homework, tattoos and vacations, books and movies, food and theatre—but these are the relevant points for this afterword.Read More »
Two facts explain that disorder— the first (temporary) our complete ignorance of López’s modus operandi; the second (of an essential and permanent character) was the weakness of the whole military system of the Empire.
Our oversight was general. All our civil servants suffered it, and it rested on the political prejudice, turned by the conservative school into a type of national dogma, that friendliness and alliance with Paraguay constituted Brazil’s principal interests in the Plata. That prejudice was so strong that without López’s attack Brazilian statesmen would have had difficulty in agreeing to move our army and fleet against Paraguay. It’s enough to read Paranhos’s circular manifesto from 26 January 1865, addressing the soon-to-be allied nations of the war which we saw ourselves forced to wage, to have an idea of how profoundly that imposed break-up of a friendship, which we cultivated with such care, affected our oldest political superstitions.
In light of subsequent events, this constant request for Paraguayan friendship appears an obvious error. Asunción fostered the secret purpose of dominating navigation on the Paraguay and its tributaries, and taking over Mato Grosso and Misiones, keeping them as a guarantee of their independence and peace. Brazil instructed the Paraguayan army and navy by means of Brazilian officials, like Porto-Carrero and Willagrán Cabrita, Soares Pinto and Caminada, constructing for them the trenches and batteries of Humaitá (1), and the whole system of its defenses; Brazil guided Paraguay through the hand of our diplomats and statesmen: Pimenta Bueno, Bellegarde, Paranhos. Brazil fulfilled no other role with Paraguay than that of the dupe. We armed it against the Empire and shaped the formidable resistance with which we were later to clash.
“The Guard-House of Humaitá,” engraving published in the London Illustrated News, 1864.
One of the hypotheses of that a priori diplomacy was that Humaitá’s fortifications would never serve against Brazil, but solely against the re-formation of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. With all that, it didn’t much reckon on what really had importance, dealing with a government like that of López. It did not reckon on his lack of mental fixity; nor on the fears that could assail him; nor on how much was left to the influence of intrigues, flattery, and fear; nor on his lack of perception of national interest or of the strength of his large neighbors; nor on his suspicion of being cheated and seeing himself become an instrument of hidden aims; nor on his extraordinary conceitedness, or on the profound indifference that he must’ve shown to all the benefits of civilization when his time of need, his time of misery arrived; nor on the nomad background, indolent and fatalistic, of the old reduced Indian, a background quite visible behind all the authoritarian ostentations and the regal appearance of his power. Brazil’s best course of action would have been to impede, as much as possible, the fortification of the pass giving access to Mato Grosso, and, if not that, at least not lend itself to help construct a Sevastopol (2) on the river. What is certain is that the appearance of ignoring the military conditions and disturbing strength of Paraguay—the cause of such oversight—reached, without exception, from the Emperor to all the parties, governments, civil servants, diplomats, and military figures of that time.
This ignorance is one of the main factors of the war in 1864. The other is the disorganization of the military service in Brazil. Since the first reign, and above all since the debacle of the Cisplatine War, the old military state, that’s to say, what little of the spirit of the Count of Lippe (3) Brazil’s secession had left us with, was forever decaying, and except in Rio Grande do Sul, the military career ceased to inspire enthusiasm and produce the sense of having a calling.
Little by little the spirit of independence is insinuating itself into the officers, the spirit of individual initiative, of criticizing one’s superiors and the way they carry out discipline. Politics, instead of considering the army as a noli me tangere, respecting its proper character and attending to the most perfect preservation of each of its essential qualities, shows itself indifferent to military glory, and it contributes to the decay of all the elements that constitute a militia. In this way the old traditions of obedience disappear before a new spirit of criticism, individualism, which will come be preponderant after the war, thanks to the importance that independent or irregular elements manage to acquire during it (volunteers and National Guards, above all the Rio Grande National Guard), with relation to regular troops or line infantry. Upon the sudden occurrence of the English affair in 1862 (4) the country feels that it is completely disarmed, without army or navy; that it has done nothing but sleep in the peace of a military dream for twenty years (more than a generation), interrupted only by the struggle against Rosas. Then there’s a reaction; attention turns to the country’s defenses, but fixed so singularly on the state of our fortifications, mere simulacrums at the entry-points of Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, so incapable of fulfilling their jobs with the frigate Forte (5) and later with the Wachussett (6).
Politics, more potent than every other concern, deteriorated and rusted the springs of public service. The blame is not isolated to any one person; it belongs to everyone. There was patriotism, good will, and self-sacrifice; but there were also three irresistible things: the indolence born of the climate, of race, and of social habits; the patronage produced by bonhomie and natural benevolence, by the effects of debility, by the lack of resistance, by the fear of consequences, by the near impossibility of saying no, by hurt, by disillusionment; and the partisan spirit with its traditional organization, its secretive freemasonry, its absolute excommunications, imposing conformity on all of its fellow believers. The old Portuguese discipline was too heavy—tiring, like the old dress and old manners—for a society that only wanted rest, the freedom to stretch out and sleep.
From this abandonment, from this force of habit, it is only the privileged class—the political class, responsible for the good preservation of the administrative machine—who could benefit and allow the machine to grind to a halt and become a factory in refuge from its clientele, only they could benefit from the idle parasitism that grabs ahold of the machine, and so, equally, grabs ahold of magistrates or police, schools, colleges and faculties, arsenals, ships and barracks, cathedrals, seminaries and parishes, railways, post offices, town halls, provincial governments, secretaries of state, legislative chambers, electoral colleges—all suffer the same continuous deterioration, upon all sits the same neglect, that same intermittence of energy, that same inferiority of work.
The warrior spirit, the ambition for glory on the battlefield, the custom of obedience and self-sacrifice that forms discipline, the custom of command which the concept of hierarchical superiority gives, which entrusts the care of the troops to the chiefs and makes them compete with each other in the eagerness to have the best instructed and best disposed troop possible—all that, which forms the military environment of a country, was waning, tempering itself to the general tone of indifference that characterized public services, and which, vainly, was hurriedly attempted to be remedied at the last moment. Luckily our moral fiber was not dead; it had been relaxed but not corrupted. There was torpor and laziness, but there was also sensibility, heart, honor, patriotism, idealism—and thanks to the quasi-customary veneration which was still preserved for living examples of the old spirit, of the court of that other epoch, like Caxias, Porto-Alegre, Osorio, Tamandaré, Barroso, thanks to the national conscience admirably embodied by the Emperor, thanks to our economic resources, still intact, thanks to the order of the central motor not yet deteriorated by the mold that covered the surface of the machine, our country could, in a relatively short time, present to the nations of the Plata the greatest military apparatus that to this day has ever been seen in South America, an apparatus that, because of the great expanse of the theater of war, never was fully compiled where it could be contemplated altogether.
Translator’s Notes
1. Humaitá, a Paraguayan fortress on a bend of the Paraguay River, was the single greatest obstacle the allies faced. From October 1866 to July 1868, the allies’ offensive operations all centered on surrounding, and then maintaining the siege of, Humaitá.
2. This is a reference to the Crimean port city, which became infamous when it resisted an enemy siege for 349 days (1854-1855) during the Crimean War. The comparison is apt because both Sevastopol and Humaitá were heavily fortified, both were under frequent, intense bombardment during their sieges, and both faced an allied assault (France, Britain, and the Ottoman Empire in the case of Sevastopol.)
3. An incredibly successful military leader, who reformed the Portuguese military and defended Portugal from the Franco-Spanish invasion during the Seven Years’ War. Despite being outnumbered three to one, Lippe successfully drove the invading forces back, and gained renown throughout the Portuguese Empire.
4. In 1862 the British consul in Rio de Janeiro presented the Brazilian government with an ultimatum, making absurd demands in response to a few incidents of Brazilians mistreating British sailors. Surprisingly, Brazil did not back down, and it instantly prepared for a naval war. The British consul backed down, though not before ordering British ships to capture Brazilian merchant vessels as indemnity. Brazil severed diplomatic ties with the empire in 1863, though the conflict did not escalate from there. More on this in Chapter XXV.
5. One of the British ships that captured Brazilian merchant vessels.
6. A warship of the Confederate States of America, captured by a Union ship while in Bahia Harbor, Brazil, violating Brazilian neutrality.
Hey wow, two books published in 2017! I’m only a little late to the party, for once! Also, two books that take place in the US Southeast! I could’ve broken this post into two separate review posts, since I have a lot to say about both books, but they kinda sorta pair I guess not really but whatever here we go!
Sunshine State by Sarah Gerard — I happened upon this book just by browsing through my local library’s non-fiction ebooks, looking for something to occupy my time over the winter break, and man am I glad I did. Sunshine State is a collection of essays mainly dealing with events, recollections, and social issues in the Tampa Bay area. Though the title comes from the nickname for Florida, Tampa Bay and Pinellas County are really the central locations of the book.
What I enjoyed most about these essays was Gerard’s ability to pierce through these very specific, or at times very personal, topics, and reveal something more universal, especially in essays like “BFF,” “Going Diamond,” and “Sunshine State.” “BFF” is the opening piece of the book, and is written as an address to an old, unnamed friend of Gerard’s. The writing is visceral, and the description of their painful, years-long parting is captivating. It’s a level of emotional, personal intensity that the collection never really returns to—at least not in full (it would be impossible to sustain anyway.)
This intensity is certainly sprinkled into most of the essays though, like in “Going Diamond,” an essay about AmWay, the direct selling (a.k.a. pyramid scheme) company. The essay describes the history of the corporation, as well as the Gerard family’s time as members of AmWay, interspersed with descriptions of Gerard and her husband posing as prospective homeowners, and touring enormous mansions in South Florida gated communities. The blend of all these elements creates this feeling of surreality around AmWay, a cloying, saccharine vision of country clubs and indoor pools and saving the earth with warm, honest capitalism. The American Way.Read More »
This was originally going to be just part of a “What I’ve Been Reading” post, but it turns out I have a lot to say about this book, so now it’s just its own review post.
Cover courtesy of DAW
The Name of the Wind is the first book in Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles, and it describes the early life of the first-person narrator and alleged Kingkiller, Kvothe. To describe the plot generally would paint this novel as clichéd. I guess that’s because it is, in its broad strokes. An exceptionally talented, fast-learning child lives a comfortable life as a player in his father’s troupe of traveling performers. When the troupe takes on an arcanist, young Kvothe is mentored by him in Sympathy—a kind of magic based on intense concentration and mental gymnastics. Eventually the arcanist leaves, and soon after the Kvothe’s father begins work on a ballad involving the mysterious Chandrian—mythical superhuman superevil beings, probably just fables. Then the Chandrian murder the entire troupe, leaving only Kvothe alive. For years Kvothe survives by the skin of his teeth, hitchhiking, begging, stealing, though he eventually determines to go to the University, to utilize its massive archives to research the Chandrian. Demonstrating exceptional intelligence and knowledge of sympathy, Kvothe is admitted to the University, where he spends the remainder of the book having adventures and misadventures, and trying to gain access to the archives.
Yes, with the exception of a few creative flourishes, the book traces a familiar arc. Where it stands out, or at least justifies its position as one of the most popular fantasy novels in the past decade, is in the execution. The book reminds me of a 19th-century serialized novel, like Great Expectations or Count of Monte Cristo—both of which, in their broad strokes, also rely on clichés, despite being terrific works. The pacing is tireless, each chapter lurches into the next as new dilemmas arise and Kvothe sets his sights on new goals. There’s a large cast of characters, but they’re all memorable, and you love to love the ones you love, and love to hate the ones you hate. Name of the Wind manages the great trick of being long and reading fast.Read More »
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! My novelette, “The Wisdom-Goddess Star,” is now available on Smashwords and Amazon. It has nothing to do with love or romance, but neither does St. Valentine (possibly), so it works out. Here’s the synopsis:
Alexander Irving. First generation Martian, born to Patricia Irving and Peter Leung. Studied journalism at the newly founded University of Mars, a petri dish for “human journalism,” a new style of journalism to compete with AI reporters. Moved to Phobos upon graduation and joined the staff of The Light, the premier news organization of Mars’s largest satellite. Reported primarily on the working class of Phobos—technicians, repair crew, service workers—and always felt he was missing something. The grit of real journalism, investigative journalism, the kind which humans still do in the mud and shadows of Earth.
2 Pallas. Third most massive asteroid in the solar system, the newest acquisition of the International Martian Program. Its colonization is the first major IMP project to make use of the Per Aspera Ad Astra program, recruiting a thousand new members from working class, low income, secondary education backgrounds. Due to its highly eccentric orbit, Pallas only nears Mars once every 2 years—making it the most isolated colony in the IMP.
Pallas gives Irving the opportunity he’s looking for, to probe deep into a colony from which AI cannot harvest data, as the colony still lacks a long-range communications relay. When Irving arrives, he shortly discovers that Pallas’s isolation may be the intentional work of the local governor, and he endeavors to discover what exactly the governor wants to keep hidden from the rest of the IMP.
In addition, the publication includes an afterword in which I discuss how a school superintendent election, a dysfunctional novella, and a few English classes influenced the creation of this story.
Although the Furtado (1) Cabinet was not yet in power when Rio Grande do Sul was invaded by the Paraguayan army, this event belongs to its administration for the same reason that the events of Yatay and Riachuelo, victories whose glory alone vindicated the cabinet, do. (Address from 13 August 1867.) The cabinet of 12 May (2) did not have time to prepare, from Rio de Janeiro, any kind of resistance to an invasion that had taken place on 10 June in São Borja, the Paraguayans being already on the opposite shore of the Uruguay. They had barely been able to send some order or other to Montevideo. Besides, the President of Rio Grande (Gonzaga), the commander general of the borderlands (Canavarro), the commander of the field army (Osório [3]), the admiral (Tamandaré), and the plenipotentiary of the alliance (Otaviano), had been appointed by the Furtado ministry. To the cabinet of 12 May, in propriety, one should attribute the events that happened after the arrival of General Porto-Alegre, Minister Ferraz, and the Emperor in Uruguaiana. The blame for not having prepared anything within Rio Grande itself to stop the devastation does not belong to it, but its predecessors.
Estigarribia (4) crossed the Uruguay River on 10 June 1865, without encountering any resistance other than that of a 370-man contingent of the National Guard, with which the 1st Battalion of the Voluntários da Pátria were joined. This small force could not stop the enemy. São Borja was occupied on 13 June and systematically surrendered to the soldiers. From São Borja the invading army marched through Itaqui, completely devastating it. Parallel to that army, Commander Duarte’s (5) column marched on the right bank of the river. On 7 June Itaqui, abandoned by its inhabitants, was occupied and immediately sacked. Between Itaqui and Uruguaiana runs the Ibucuí, a river that the enemy crossed without opposition after doubts and disagreements between Caldwell and Canavarro. On 5 August the Paraguayans enter Uruguaiana, where only the day before our generals’ decision to not defend it had been announced, producing an indescribable panic.
Map of the action described in the above paragraph. Source.
Serious condemnations of the Empire’s administration can be deduced from the state of helplessness on our side of the Uruguay. The basis for these criticisms was quite old because the government had known the invasion plan, put into effect in June, since January. In five months no effective measures were taken, nor was any defense plan drafted to impede the invasion. If a person wants to figure out to whom belongs the responsibility for having allowed the free and open crossing of the Uruguay by the enemy’s army, it is unclear how to cleanly place the blame.
The Furtado ministry defends itself by saying they trusted in the assurances that the president of Rio Grande do Sul province gave them, and above all, by claiming that they didn’t find a single thing prepared for them, because of which they had to improvise everything, and that even so, with the things that they hurriedly gathered together, we were victorious in Riachuelo and Yatay.
For his part Gonzaga, president of Rio Grande, defends himself by asserting the insufficiency of the resources that existed in the province, the simultaneous requests of Canavarro and Osório, and the assurances that the commander of the borderlands gave him that he would defeat the enemy, eventually wanting to go to Candelária in search of him.
Canavarro, for his part, defends himself by saying that his complaints were not attended, that he lacked the resources on which he had counted, and that after the strength and aims of the invading army were known, he employed against it a tactic with which he managed to destroy it completely, bringing about the best result that could be desired.
Osório excuses himself from not having run to the aid of São Borja or Uruguaiana, and from having disregarded Rio Grande, explaining the situation in which the Concordia army (6) found itself, and the necessity of not weakening it—it was the alliance’s base of defense—to which he added that, to his mind, any Paraguayan column that penetrated Rio Grande would be irredeemably lost.
Until, in January, López requested permission from Argentina to cross through the province of Corrientes, it was reasonable to consider the invasion of Rio Grande as improbable, given the fact that this region found itself defended by the neutral territory that lay in between it and the supposed invader. With that request made, now there was no such improbability in supposing López capable of the madness of crossing Argentine territory, creating a casus belli. It was still not probable, but protecting the border against any possible surprise was imperative. After the invasion of Corrientes, in the middle of April the likelihood, the almost certainty of an attack on Rio Grande was discovered, and since then the advisability of defending the Uruguay’s fords was evident.
Meanwhile, the ministerial crisis in Rio de Janeiro was happening with all the consequences that the change of governments always brought, all the more so since the transition of power from the hands of the historic Liberals to the progressives, had affected in Rio Grande do Sul (where each group or party had their own general) a radical change, or at least, a profound shake up of the military command.
Translator’s Notes
1. Francisco José Furtado, Brazilian Prime Minister 1864-65.
2. That is, the Olinda Cabinet, which took power on 12 May 1865.
3. Manuel Luis Osório, field marshal of the Brazilian army from 1865-66.
4. Antonio de la Cruz Estigarribia, Paraguayan Lieutenant Colonel who lead the invasion into Rio Grande do Sul.
5. Pedro Duarte, Paraguayan military officer.
6. Concordia is a city in Entre Ríos, which served as a rendezvous point for the allied armies. At the time that Estigarribia entered Rio Grande do Sul, Osório was already in Concordia, though the entirety of the Brazilian army had not yet arrived, and divisions from the other allied nations were on their way.
Mitre had been maintaining the most well-considered neutrality in the fight between Brazil and Montevideo, and he had no motive to intervene in the war with Paraguay. “We don’t know if at the end,” he writes to Sarmiento, in Lima at the time, on 10 December 1864, “we will be engulfed by that tempest that more than a year ago we were avoiding, despite the fact that I’m working with perseverance and willpower to prevent it; I don’t know if I will achieve this.” However his sympathies were not in doubt. Whatever the thinking was about the platine enemies of Brazil, civilization’s best interest lay in the destruction of the new power that, with an incalculable force and threatening character, supported by the complete servitude of its people, soon arose in the Alto Río de la Plata (1).
Lopez’s victory over Brazil would’ve been a disaster of greater consequence for Buenos Aires, or at least for the liberal order (in its infancy at the time), than it would for Brazil, which, sooner or later, would’ve ended up imposing its law over Asunción with its battleships. Perhaps neutrality was the Argentine Republic’s political duty; but because they also had a genuine interest in maintaining it, they had to be sure of the Empire’s ultimate victory; and even so it’s likely, in this case, that that interest lay in allying themselves with Brazil, for a new Battle of Caseros, against a tyranny worse than that of Rosas. The destruction of López could not have been a natural desire of the free nations of the Plata, before the use that that man decided to make of militarizing the Paraguayan people was known; but once known, all the countries bordering Paraguay were equally interested in tearing that terrible weapon from the tyrant’s hands. Mitre instinctively felt that the whole Río de La Plata would find itself invested in Brazil’s victory, which would be at the same time civilization’s victory.
After the invasion of Corrientes by Robles’s army, an attack that could already seem to be an act of dementia, there only remained for the Argentine Republic the choice between these two resolutions: To make war with Paraguay on their own, or to ally with Brazil. It is clear that they should prefer the second option; and in effect, the treaty of alliance is made official on May 1st, with the new government that, thanks to us, had triumphed in Montevideo being represented in it.Read More »
Cover of the first German edition, courtesy of Campus Fachbuch
I heard about this book around the time I was starting to form my own ideas about why people identify themselves as Americans, Porteños, Quebecois—and why other people don’t. Essentially, what does it take to convince people that they belong to a group? Why did US citizens identify more with their states than their nation, in the early 19th century? When does state building fail, and when does it succeed? Imagined Communities does not examine those specific questions, but it effectively answers them, and provides a whole bunch of tools for understanding nationalism, and, I ‘unno, separatist movements like the one that is happening right now. Might be worth picking up now for that reason.
The central conceit of Imagined Communities is that nationalism, even the concept of clearly delineated nations as the ultimate form of legitimacy, is recent, and that it was only possible with the rise of print capitalism. When reading newspapers based in Venezuela, inhabitants of the country could imagine other “Venezuelans” reading the same text as them, reading about the same political appointments, the same market changes, the same marriages of nobility. This “imagined community” is the nation. Of course, there are other imagined communities (Anderson describes religious community as the greatest precursor to national community), but because of the insularity of nations, and a host of other factors which he delineates in the book, this imagined community becomes one that people are willing to die for.Read More »
The Paraguayan War had such decisive importance in our destiny and in that of the whole Río de la Plata region that it can be considered a dividing line between two periods in our contemporary history. It signals the apogee of the Empire, but also within its origins are the principal causes of the decline and fall of that dynasty: The alluring force exerted by the Argentine Republic’s appearance and development, its military prestige, connected by the working-class spirit to exalted names, and united by the ties of camaraderie that war creates; Americanism; the very emancipation of slaves, an act that in many ways is tied to the war—thousands of Brazilians residing in foreign countries without slaves, constant insults from the enemies of the Brazilian alliance because of its practice of slavery, effective military inferiority for that reason, freedom conceded by the Count of Eu (1), husband of the heiress to the imperial throne, to the slaves of the defeated nation; and republican propaganda—partly of platine origin, a product of the influence of the institutions and the men of the Plata, during the campaign, over Quintino Bocayuba (2) and others, and political influence of the allied camp over our officials, principally those from Rio Grande.
This war’s history, whether military, diplomatic, or political, is yet to be written. It’s difficult to set out the military truth clearly because of the manifest bias of the war’s historians, each in favor of their respective countries. The diplomatic truth waivers not only under that same prejudice, but also under the secrecy of foreign offices, and the reservations of the characters controlling the conduct of the countries involved in the conflict. The political truth, that’s to say, the attitude, the motives, the culpability of the parties, in each one of the belligerent nations, is obscured by the sympathies felt by each writer. Writing a new version of this war does not enter into my purpose, nor would it be within my scope, nor could I even reconcile the three common versions: Brazil’s, Argentina’s, and Paraguay’s.
As far as the military angle, the criticism of any of these derivations comes down to affirming that it would have been better to do what was not done, that is, what was not tested on the touchstone of reality (3). Each time it will be more difficult to obtain the truth from such a critique, since, to arrive at truth, a kind of face-to-face confrontation, impossible today, would be necessary, between those that served as commanders of the opposite camps. It is certain that criticisms of this type lack force, because upon proving that this or that should have been done, instead of what was done, it would remain to be proven whether or not knowing what should havehappened was only possible by virtue of knowing what did happen; and what’s more, it would remain to be proven that every military operation would have been more fortuitous if the campaign had been taken in a different direction. The Paraguayan War will always be an unsolvable problem, because its critics, fundamentally, will always make mistakes, the historian lacking the knowledge of the conditions and circumstances of the moment.
Above the criticism of all those military operations rises the truth contained in the words of the Duke of Caxias, in the Senate, more than once quoted: “Nothing easier, after events have occurred, after the enemy’s territory, forces, and tactics have been familiarized, than criticizing from afar—with total calm and sangfroid, with the official reports available—the management of the campaign, and indicating the most advantageous plans. But it doesn’t happen the same to the person who finds themselves in the theatre of war, walking in the shadows of an entirely unfamiliar country, bristling with natural obstacles. It’s essential that the senators recognize that the Paraguayan War was done blindly, by feeling our way through. There were not maps of the country to serve as a guide, nor reliable pilots. The only terrain that was known was what we stepped foot on. It was necessary to do reconnaissance and scouting missions in order to take a step.”Read More »
By fortune, no darkness shrouds the origins of the Paraguayan War. In June, with López’s aid solicited by the Blanco government after Saraiva’s mission arrived in Montevideo, López offers his mediation to the imperial government; in August and September he protests Brazil’s threat of reprisals and the aid Tamandaré lent to Flores’s invasion. Seeing his mediation rejected, his protest scorned, in November he captures the steamer Marqués de Olinda, which was bringing to Mato Grosso the new governor, Carneiro de Campos, charged with organizing the defense of that western Brazilian province against any sudden attack from Paraguay. One month after the attack on the Marqués de Olinda, López invades Mato Grosso, his troops having the same orders to pillage and destroy, the same objectives of plundering and raping with which we later saw them cross into Uruguay. It was not a civilized war, this war which caught us by surprise. It was like an invasion of barbarians, a horde of Huns suddenly launched into our defenseless populations.
The Marqués de Olinda lost, Carneiro de Campos imprisoned, and Mato Grosso invaded, we had to force the pass at Humaitá and go on until Asunción. By our luck, a great obstacle was going to disappear from our way. Through the agreement of 20 February (1865), Montevideo was surrendered to Flores, and since that day, not only did we not have to sustain two wars, but we also could count on the Eastern State as an ally instead of an enemy.
Nothing is more likely to be true than the theory that attributes the abrupt resignation of Paranhos (Viscount of Rio Branco) to the emperor, because of that pact: however it is impossible to imagine that the emperor could have asked him to do anything else. And what could be expected to come from the forcible taking of a trading city, in great part foreign, European, such as Montevideo, even supposing that it could not defend itself? Or what could be expected to come from the city’s bombardment, the unavoidable preliminary action of such an assault?
The total deadlock in resolving the war with Montevideo, after the attitude taken by López, had been a catastrophe, and if the delay did not make an impression on our government, it’s because no one expected what happened: the invasion of Rio Grande do Sul, after that of Montevideo. In Flores’s complete victory, López sees the hand of the Argentine government, an accomplice to the invasion according to the Blancos, and he suddenly turns against Buenos Aires with the same violence with which before he turned against Brazil, repeating on 13 April what he did in the waters of the Paraguay with the Marqués de Olinda, only now with canister shot and soldiers boarding the other ships, by which method the Gualeguay and the 25 de Mayo were taken over, two small Argentinian warships that were caught unawares in the port of Corrientes. The following day General Robles (1) occupies the city and invades Argentinian territory, if not for which Paraguay could have claimed some pretext for their actions.
Now that I’ve explained what an “imperialist writing policy” is, and why it might be useful, here’s how to actually do it.
Compiling Your Curriculum
So you’ve got some reason for enacting an imperialist writing policy—what do you fill it with? What are your imperial holdings? As I said, with Suggest the Empire I initially began with plays I was already aware of—Shakespearean histories. However, Stuff Happens I only learned about by doing some research, looking up contemporary history plays. After finding these materials, I just continued with my life, and kept on the look-out for any books or shows or movies or podcasts that seemed like they could be useful, adding them to my curriculum as I found them.
I’d recommend the same—start with works that you are already aware of, or that you have already been wanting to read. If you have enough, great! If you don’t, it’s time to do some research. This is essentially how I determined what plays to read for Play Time (which was a literal curriculum, since it was an Honors project.) I started by looking at some plays dealing with time which I already wanted to read—We Are Proud to Present …, Strange Interlude, Top Girls, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead—then did some research. I pretty quickly found out about J.B. Priestly’s time plays, and stumbled upon a review of a few short Beckett plays staged together because of their similar treatments of time. The internet is an incredible thing.
If this seems overwhelming, start with Wikipedia. Look at the external links on the article, look at the references. Look up what resources your local library has, or, if you’re a college student, check out your university library. Find people who are experts in whatever you need to immerse yourself in, and see what they’ve written. See what they recommend. If you personally know anyone who has some experience with the topic, ask them to give you some recommendations—or, if they’re willing to give you their time, ask them questions about the topic and make note of the answers. Sift through your personal library, see if there are any old books you forgot you even had that might be useful (this is exactly how Top Girls made it onto the list for Play Time.) And if you’re really hitting a wall, just start reading whatever you have found. More likely than not (and especially if its non-fiction) that work will lead you to other works. You’ll start to get a sense of what the foundational texts in the field are, which authors keep coming up again and again, which authors have written stuff very similar to (and therefore very useful for) what you’re planning to write.Read More »
