Fighting Words: The Discourse of Insurgency in Latin American History

Abstract

“What I suffer is pleasant because it shows that I am putting myself above the run of common men, that I am worthy of my Patria and of you…”Insurgent officer to his wife, 1893The appeal of sacrifice so frequently encountered in expressions of nationalism is an equally familiar theme in the rhetoric of political warfare in Latin America. Stories of political warfare take up a considerable part of Latin American historiography. The intent of this exploratory article is to suggest how the rhetoric and narrative written about nineteenth-century insurgency can be read to illuminate the political history of Latin America. Two South American civil wars of the 1890s constitute the empirical starting point for my speculations, although they are scarcely a convincing sample of the hundreds of insurgencies that have occurred since independence. Consequently, these observations on a Latin American discourse of insurgency must largely be content to ask questions, raise issues, and suggest hypotheses.