How did Latin American national identities emerge?

January 28, 2018 11:51 AM

Looking for books/your answers/other resources about how different Latin American national identities came to be and how the continent came to be divided into different countries. Why, for example, is North America split into 3 countries and Central and South America are split into many more? What differences are there between Chilean and Argentinian national identity? Those sorts of questions. I am mainly interested in the Spanish-speaking countries, not as interested in Brazil etc. Thank you!
posted by iamsuper to Society & Culture (7 answers total)

Mountains and jungles do a lot of the explaining for how the Spanish carved up South America into administrative jurisdictions. To use your example, the principal settlements of what became Chile could communicate with each other easily by sea and by temperate climate overland travel, as could the principal settlements of Argentina, but communication between (what became) Argentine and Chilean principal settlements was not at all easy. The borders were often initially created as administrative conveniences, which could be quite arbitrary at least at the time, given that they often laid hundreds of miles beyond the respective zones of settlement of district(s) in question. This distant-arbitrary-colonial-borders phenomenon is by no means limited to South America -- you can see it throughout Africa and to a lesser extent in North America, too. (It is muted in the United States because the US proved willing and able to alter colonial boundaries to suit the development of population and economies in the 19th century.)
posted by MattD at 12:49 PM on January 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

I am no expert, but a good place to begin amswering this question would be to research Simon Bolivar. Also, the roles of the colonizing powers in the region, since they played a major role in how the countries in question formed and became their modern incarnations. You might want to consider, as well, who immigrated to each country (a lot of Germans went to Brazil and Argentina after WWII, for example) and how shifting demographics like that influenced the cultures you are asking about.

This is a huge question, fascinating really.
posted by Crystal Fox at 1:18 PM on January 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

Read Benedict Anderson's book, Imagined Communities! It's about nationalism in general, but it's quite focused on the rise of nationalism in South America. It was written in 1983, so some bits are disorienting to a modern reader (he talks sometimes about the U.S.S.R. or wars that were current-events back then) but it's a completely brilliant book and there's lots of good reasons why it's considered a classic.
posted by colfax at 1:47 PM on January 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

Yes, read the classic “Guns, Germs and Steel” for how natural boundaries affect the political ones.

Regarding Brazil: Spain and Portugal once decided to divide the entire world between them, and the language differences in that area is all that remains.
posted by Melismata at 1:54 PM on January 28, 2018

The Spanish set up a bunch of different local governments for their own administrative purposes. Simon Bolivar wanted to liberate/combine a bunch of these governments into a new unitary American empire, but basically none of the other people involved did, and broke back away into their previous government units as soon as he left town. There was a season of Revolutions podcast that went over Bolivar's adventures and some of the liberation(s) of New Spain.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 3:18 PM on January 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

Side note to Huffy Puffy’s explanation:
At the same time Bolivar was pursuing his vision of a Europe-free unified continent (Gran Colombia), Jose de San Martin was fighting the Spanish in the south with local separatists who set up their own countries like Argentina, Chile. The two met in Guayaquil to hash out their differences with no record of what they discussed. San Martin retired, Bolivar completed his mission only to have it all fall apart into separate countries anyway.
posted by lowest east side at 7:49 PM on January 28, 2018

I think that the book you want is The Open Veins of Latin America or Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina by Eduardo Galeano.

He explores differences in the way the Spanish and Portuguese treated their colonies vs. the English. The English developed and the Spanish and less so the Portuguese "violated" or "raped" their colonies.

Galeano delves into the different countries/regions and their liberations. If I remember correctly he spends more time in The Northern countries of South America where Bolivar was the prime liberator. He touches on Chile and Argentina a little later on and British influence on Argentina for example. In this case the liberator of importance is San Martin.

Some other books you may find interesting:

Understanding Spanish Speaking South Americans Skye Stephenson - This gets into some identity distinctions, history at a general and country specific level.

I haven't gotten to these yet but:

Kiss, Bow or Shake Hands: Latin America Terri Morrison and Wayne Conaway - It's more of a business etiquette book. I don't know if it would help you but it was at the top of my stack of books.

Latin American Politics and Development is more current events and politics but a lot of South American had a quite interesting recent 50 to 70 years. I think it's safe to say for example, that the dictatorship had a huge influence on Argentine identity. This book may be getting a little dated though.

I'd be interested to know more about what you are researching. I'm kind of doing something similar but from a psychological point of view. I've been doing business in the Spanish speaking regions for some time and have amateur anthropological theories about the countries. Memail me if you have any interest in comparing notes.
posted by Che boludo! at 10:22 PM on January 31, 2018 [1 favorite]