A History of Latin America

160 CHAPTER 8 THE INDEPENDENCE OF LATIN AMERICA

Another cultivated creole, the Colombian An-
tonio Nariño, incurred Spanish wrath in 1794 by
translating and printing on his own press the French
Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789. Sentenced
to prison in Africa for ten years, Nariño lived to be-
come leader and patriarch of the independence
movement in Colombia and to witness its triumph.
But the French Revolution soon took a radi-
cal turn, and the creole aristocracy became disen-
chanted with it as a model. Scattered conspiracies
in some Spanish colonies and Brazil owed their
inspiration to the French example, but they were
invariably the work of a few radicals, drawing
their support almost exclusively from lower-class
elements. The most important result directly at-
tributable to the French Revolution was the slave
revolt in the French part of Haiti under talented
black and mulatto leaders: Toussaint L’Ouverture,
Jean Jacques Dessalines, Henri Christophe, and Al-

exandre Pétion. In 1804, Toussaint’s lieutenant,

General Dessalines, proclaimed the independence

of the new state of Haiti. Black revolutionaries

had established the fi rst liberated territory in Latin

America, ending colonialism and slavery simulta-

neously. But this achievement dampened rather

than aroused support for independence among

the creole elite of other colonies. Thus, fear that se-

cession from Spain might touch off a slave revolt

helped keep the planter class of neighboring Cuba

loyal to Spain during and after the Latin American

wars of independence.

Despite the existence of small conspiratorial

groups, organized in secret societies, with corre-

spondents in Europe as well as America, the move-

ment for independence might have long remained

puny and ineffectual. As late as 1806, when the

precursor of revolution, Francisco de Miranda,

landed on the coast of his native Venezuela with

This sculpture of an enslaved Haitian, with machete in hand and using a conch shell to call his comrades
to rebel against the odious institution of slavery, commemorates the struggle that produced Haiti’s inde-
pendence and struck fear into the hearts of creole aristocrats throughout the Americas. [Alamy]