The Madrid Institute for Advanced Studies- Casa de Velázquez- Monthly Seminar
Paula Alonso: Latin America and the Global History of Democracy. Héctor F. Varela, Emilio Castelar and “El Americano”, 1860s-1870s
This presentation took place on May 27th, 2024 as part of a three-month residency as MIAS-François Chevalier Fellow, (March- June 2024) also supported by the Gerda Henkel Foundation. Comments were provided by Luis González Fernández, Directeur des Études Hispaniques et Ibériques, Casa de Velázquez, before they were open to the public.
The presentation was part of a research project that analyzes the promotion of republican democracy across the Spanish-American Atlantic in the 1860s and 1870s. In this case, I analyzed El Americano, an illustrated weekly periodical (as well as a series of Almanacs) published in Paris between 1872 and 1874 as part of a political project jointly elaborated between Héctor Florencio Varela (1833-1891) and Emilio Castelar (1832-1899). Born in Montevideo when his family was in exile, Varela travelled to Buenos Aires to fight against Juan Manuel de Rosas in 1852 and, the following year, founded La Tribuna which soon became one of the most influential political newspapers of its time in a context of a rapid rise of the partisan press and political activity in Buenos Aires. Politician, journalist, parliamentarian, historian, Emilio Castelar briefly presided over the First Spanish Republic (1873-1874). From the beginning of his public life in the 1850s, Castelar showed a particular interest in Latin America and forged close relationships with several politicians, diplomats, journalists and intellectuals of the region.
Varela and Castelar established a professional relation in the 1850s that became a long-time friendship when they coincided in Paris between 1866 and 1868 and they planned the promotion of democracy across the Atlantic through print. At a critical moment in the history of democracy in the nineteenth century, El Americano fostered a particular vision of the democratic experience in Latin America, which in turn could serve the purposes of the European demo-republicans. The analysis of the periodical allowed us to delve into a series of topics, including the universe of intellectual and political relations between Europe and Latin America in the mid-late nineteenth century and, more generally, on the place of Latin America in a global history of democracy.
