BACKGROUND OF THE WARS OF INDEPENDENCE 159
own creole sons might be given a landed estate;
other creole sons might enter the church or the
law, both overcrowded professions.
Thus, although there was some elite creole
presence in both foreign and domestic trade, penin-
sular Spaniards continued to dominate the lucrative
export-import trade and provincial trade. Spanish-
born merchants, organized in powerful consulados,
or merchant guilds, also played a key role in fi nanc-
ing mining and the repartimiento business carried
on among the natives by Spanish offi cials. Not un-
naturally, some upper-class creoles, excluded from
mercantile activity and responsible posts in the
government and church, developed the aristocratic
manners and idle, spendthrift ways with which the
peninsulars reproached them. Many other creoles
of the middling sort, vegetating in ill-paid indige-
nous curacies and minor government jobs, bitterly
resented the institutionalized discrimination that
barred their way to advancement.
As a result, although some wealthy and power-
ful creoles maintained excellent relations with their
peninsular counterparts, fusing their economic
interests through marriage and forming a single
colonial Establishment, creoles and peninsulars
tended to become mutually hostile castes. The pen-
insulars sometimes justifi ed their privileged posi-
tion by charging the creoles with innate indolence
and incapacity, qualities that some Spanish writers
attributed to the noxious effects of the American
climate and soil; the creoles retorted by describing
the Europeans as mean and grasping parvenus. So
intense was the hatred among many members of
these groups that a Spanish bishop in New Spain
protested against the feeling of some young creoles
that “if they could empty their veins of the Spanish
part of their blood, they would gladly do so.” This in-
evitably fostered the growth of creole nationalism;
Humboldt, who traveled in Spanish America in the
twilight years of the colony, reports a common say-
ing: “I am not a Spaniard, I am an American.”
The entrance of Enlightenment ideas into
Latin America certainly contributed to the growth
of creole discontent, but the relative weight of vari-
ous infl uences is uncertain. Bourbon Spain itself
contributed to the creole awakening by the many-
sided effort of reforming offi cials to improve the
quality of colonial life. Typical of this group was the
intendant Juan Antonio Riaño, who introduced to
the Mexican city of Guanajuato, the capital of his
province, a taste for the French language and lit-
erature; he was also responsible “for the develop-
ment of interest in drawing and music, and for the
cultivation of mathematics, physics, and chemistry
in the school that had been formerly maintained
by the Jesuits.”
Many educated creoles read the forbidden
writings of Raynal, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rous-
seau, and other radical philosophes, but another,
innocuous-seeming agency for the spread of En-
lightenment ideas in Latin America consisted of
scientifi c texts, based on the theories of Descartes,
Leibnitz, and Newton, which circulated freely in
the colonies. By 1800 the creole elite had become
familiar with the most advanced thought of con-
temporary Europe.
The American Revolution contributed to the
growth of “dangerous ideas” in the colonies. Spain
was well aware of the ideological as well as the po-
litical threat the United States posed to its empire.
Spain had reluctantly joined its ally France in war
against England during the American Revolution,
but it kept the rebels at arm’s length, refused to rec-
ognize American independence, and in the peace
negotiations tried unsuccessfully to coop up the
United States within the Allegheny Mountains. Af-
ter 1783 a growing number of U.S. ships touched
legally or illegally at Spanish-American ports. To-
gether with “Yankee notions,” these vessels some-
times introduced such subversive documents as the
writings of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson.
The French Revolution probably exerted an
even greater infl uence on the creole mind. The Ar-
gentine revolutionary Manuel Belgrano recalled:Since I was in Spain in 1789, and the French
Revolution was then causing a change in
ideas, especially among the men of letters with
whom I associated, the ideals of liberty, equal-
ity, security, and property took a fi rm hold
on me, and I saw only tyrants in those who
would restrain a man, wherever he might be,
from enjoying the rights with which God and
Nature had endowed him.