Public Opinion and Militarization during the Wars of Independence

Abstract

The crisis of the Spanish Monarchy in 1808 opened new ways for Spanish Americans to develop and articulate a series of political practices and institutions that played a crucial role in shaping the emerging nineteenth-century Latin American nations. Atlantic warfare represents one of the most important developments during the imperial breakdown but it was not the only one, as military confrontation was accompanied by another important political force: the public opinion.Now, in the context of high militarization and permanent warfare that characterized Latin America?s revolution, the configuration of a public sphere was naturally conditioned by the military factor. Even though many early revolutionaries feared the regular armies as a danger to freedom and looked upon military men with distrust, the crude realities of wartime catapulted high- ranking officers to government and bestowed a lot of weight to their political opinions. The very question about the type of military forces that better fitted a Republic became a crucial and hotly contested topic in the political debates of the time. We argue, then, that the armies should be considered as an important dimension of the new public sphere forged in the fires of Latin Americans revolutions.