Universities, schools, town councils, and churches are some of the institutions brought from the Iberian Peninsula to amalgamate what was already there with what had recently arrived. Although at first, as in every conquest, the idea of ”us and them” prevailed, until these institutions took effect, they generated a new “us,” the Spanish-American people. Music is perhaps the clearest example of this fusion, where the core is Western music, with its tonality and poetry, and the lyrics and intonation were provided by the people immersed in the diverse landscapes of the new continent.
This new people became a major player in the development of international relations in the three centuries following the discovery of America. It became the mainstay of the Spanish power, despite the ups and downs of European politics, also marked by the division of territories based on royal houses.
Spain – England: The Clash of Empires.
For centuries, we have heard a systematic attack on the Spanish legacy masked by the black legend of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. For centuries, we have heard the story of the creation of the Spanish-American nations under the logic of them (the Spanish) against us (the Americans), degrading the perception of Spain’s true achievements in the Americas, thereby weakening what made it possible to project itself as a power in the concert of nations.
However, all these stories are steeped in a constant struggle between England and Spain, which for centuries manifested itself in various armed conflicts, such as the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Asiento, and even the American War of Independence.
We could say that wherever Spain had a sovereign interest, England supported its current rival to undermine Spanish power, and the same was true in reverse, giving rise to the maxim that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” There are many examples, such as the aforementioned American War of Independence, in which Spain supported the thirteen colonies, or the Flanders War, where the English supported what is now known as the Netherlands, formerly a spanish territory.
The case of Spanish American independence was no exception. England forged networks with the ruling elites, primarily related to maritime trade, often through lodges, both Masonic and non-Masonic. These elites sought to increase their influence in both business and local politics through these contacts, thus countering the power that had emerged from the Spanish viceroyalties. Although it may seem strange, these practices, in which a group or political unit (any kind) seeks a greater share of power by joining forces with the adversary of the ruler, are more common than historical accounts suggest.
In the case of the independence of South America, it occurred mainly at the moment of greatest weakness of the Spanish Empire, during the period of French occupation of peninsular spain, at the beginning of the 19th century, despite the fact that at that time England and Spain were allies against napoleonic France.
As Spain’s influence in America declined, England’s influence advanced, contributing to the latter’s rise as the world’s leading power. This influence was clearly evident in the Hispanic territories, where territorial fragmentation was sought as a method to prevent the creation of a continental nation, as had been done in the War of the Spanish Succession, where the objective was to prevent by all means the union of the Spanish and French crowns.
This is the same reason why Spain supported Spain in its fight for independence against Napoleon. One of the great weapons it used to achieve this goal was “History,” bearing in mind that history is an instrument in the struggle for power, whether through omissions, exaggerations, lies, or half-truths.
All of these characteristics have their uses in national and international politics.
Just as propaganda serves to disseminate present actions in the struggle for power, history fulfills the same function but with actions from the past. Stripping a people of their illustrious past primarily seeks to strip them of their common destiny and their will to fight. In this way, it reduces the two main characteristics of power in each political unit: capacity and will. In fact, a war ends when the will of one of the contenders is subdued, regardless of whether they have the capacity to continue fighting.
Although the Anglo-Spanish disputes that may exist today are of little importance at a global level, the divide and conquer strategy continues to be expressed under cultural harassment, manifested in the interpretation of historical facts, the solution is as simple as it is profound, returning to the points of contact that Hispanicity knew how to contribute in the new continent, without prejudice, without fear of ceasing to be what it arrived to, without ceasing to be what it was before they arrived, accepting only to be what it knew how to build, Hispanic America.
A political actor in his quest to gain greater capacity or margin of action (power) always resorts to stories, truths or lies to make it useful for his objectives, even resorting to war is an option of last resort, hence Clausewitz’s (1832) conclusion that war is the continuation of politics by other means. If politics and war are part of the same thing, and we apply Aeschylus’s phrase (6th century BC), “the first victim of war is the truth” we will understand that the truth in politics is not a prized good but an instrument that is used under the logic of convenience – not convenience.
A good example of this is Napoleon in his letters to the generals who were on Spanish soil talking about Joseph Bonaparte (Napoleon’s brother), calling him a person with little intelligence for having published the exact number of soldiers that France had in the Iberian Peninsula, since for the French leader the real number of troops must be inflated by multiplying by four or five in order to lower the morale and the will to fight of the Spanish resistance.
