Spain and America
The Cortes of Cádiz
As their first act, the deputies to the Cortes of Cádiz declared themselves representatives of the nation and assumed sovereignty. When the Cortes convened, 104 deputies were present, 30 of them represented the overseas territories. Twenty-seven Americans and 2 Filipinos had been selected as suplentes in Cádiz. Only 1 of the 38 proprietary deputies elected in America, Ramón Power from Puerto Rico, arrived in time to attend the opening session. The others were admitted as they arrived. Approximately 220 deputies, including 67 Americans, eventually participated in the General and Extraordinary Cortes in Cádiz. The delegates to the Cortes were one-third clergymen, about one-sixth nobles, and the remainder members of the third estate who, because of their professions, might be called "middle class". 22
The new parliament faced the enormous task of restructuring the government while prosecuting a war in Spain and preserving the overseas possessions. Since the Cortes was extraordinary , it had to establish rules and regulations. On the second day, the members appointed a commission of five deputies to prepare a Reglamento for the governance of the body. Even before the Reglamento was approved, talk began in and out of the Cortes about the need to prepare 'a code of laws' that would end despotism and introduce just and liberal practices. 23 After much discussion, on December 23 , the Cortes appointed a commission of fifteen individuals, among them five Americans, to prepare a project of the political constitution of the Spanish Monarchy. The commission, which acted with great care, took months to complete its project that was submitted on August 18, 1811. In the ensuing debates, which lasted several months, the deputies addressed fundamental issues, such as the role of the Cortes, the king, and the Judiciary; the nature of provincial and local government; the nature of citizenship and political rights; the nature of trade, the role of education and the military, and taxation. In the process of debating the articles of the proposed constitution, the deputies were forced to make political compromises among competing interest groups and ideologies represented in the Spanish Monarchy. The extensive parliamentary debates were widely disseminated by the press and significantly influenced those Spanish Americans who supported as well as those who opposed the new Hispanic government 24.
Despite strongly held opposing convictions that resulted in heated debate, the delegates from Spain and America to the General and Extraordinary Cortes, in session from September 24, 1810, until September 20, 1813, produced a document that transformed the Spanish Monarchy. The Constitution of 1812 was not a Spanish document; it was a charter for the Spanish world. Indeed, the Constitution of Cádiz would not have taken the form it did without the participation of the representatives of the New World, particularly novohispanos. The arguments and proposals of American deputies convinced many Spaniards to embrace substantial change in America as well as the Peninsula. Novohispanos, such as Miguel Ramos Arizpe and José Guridi y Alcocer, were responsible for the creation of a new institution that formed the basis of the constitutional system: regional administrative bodies called provincial deputations. With the creation of the provincial deputations, the Cortes abolished the viceroyalties, transformed the audiencias from judicial and quasi-administrative bodies into high courts of appeal, and divided the Spanish world into provinces that dealt directly with the national government in Spain. Ramos Arizpe and Guridi y Alcocer also played a key role in the establishment of the second home rule institution created by the Cortes, constitutional ayuntamientos, which substituted popularly elected officials for the hereditary elites who had heretofore controlled city government. Deputies from New Spain also successfully argued for the expansion of those governments in Spanish America; formerly city governments existed only in major cities. The Constitution, therefore, provided Americans who desired autonomy a peaceful means of obtaining home rule. A majority of Americans seized this opportunity.
The Constitution of 1812, one of the most radical charters of the nineteenth century, abolished seigniorial institutions, the Inquisition, Indian tribute, forced labor – such as the mita in South America and personal service in Spain – and asserted the state's control of the Church. It created a unitary state with equal laws for all parts of the Spanish Monarchy, substantially restricted the authority of the king, and entrusted the legislature with decisive power. When it enfranchised all men, except those of African ancestry, without requiring either literacy or property qualifications, the Constitution of 1812 surpassed all existing representative governments, such as Great Britain, the United States, and France, in providing political rights to the vast majority of the male population.
Many critics, then and now have erroneously dismissed the Constitution of Cádiz as unrepresentative of the desires and needs of the people of Spain and America. In fact, the Charter "was the effort of pragmatists who were determined to create a modern Spanish nation while taking into accounts its traditions and experiences". 25 The most revolutionary aspects of the Constitution of 1812 were making the executive and judiciary subordinate to the legislature and introducing mass political participation. Unlike the United States Constitution, which established three equal branches of government, the Charter of Cádiz created three unequal branches. The judiciary received little independent power and the executive was subservient to the legislature. National sovereignty was entrusted to the Cortes. Mass political participation was ensured in two ways. First, local government increased dramatically because population centers with a thousand or more inhabitants were granted the right to form ayuntamientos. The change would have the greatest impact in America which previously possessed fewer ayuntamientos than the Peninsula. And second, granting all males, except those of African ancestry, the franchise without requiring either literacy or property expanded the scope of popular politics beyond that of any other contemporary Western government. Thus, the Constitution placed the Spanish Nation in the forefront of the broader movement transforming Antiguo Régimen societies into modern nation states.
The Charter of Cádiz dramatically increased the scope of political activity. The new constitution established representative government at three levels, the ayuntamiento (Ayuntamiento Constitucional), the province (Diputación Provincial), and the Monarchy (Cortes). When it allowed cities and towns with a thousand or more inhabitants to form ayuntamientos constitucionales, it transferred political power from the center to the localities by incorporating vast numbers of people into the political process 26. The Constitution of 1812 was widely introduced in those regions of the Monarchy that recognized the government in Spain. It is striking that New Spain and Guatemala, lands that contained more than half of the population of Spanish America, implemented the new constitutional order more fully than any other part of the Spanish Monarchy, including Spain itself. Other areas of America under royal control – the Caribbean, Quito, Peru, and Charcas – as well as in parts of Venezuela, New Granada, and the Río de la Plata also introduced the charter.
Despite confusion, conflict, and delay resulting from the implementation of a new system, the first constitutional elections in Spanish America, contributed to the legitimization of the new political culture. Spanish Americans established more than a thousand constitutional ayuntamientos and sixteen provincial deputations during 1812-1814. In some areas, such as the territories of the Provincial Deputations of Yucatán and New Galicia, as many as three successive ayuntamiento elections were held during the 1812-1814 period. Several areas held two elections, first to establish and then to renew their provincial deputations. Americans also elected more than a hundred deputies to the Cortes in Madrid. Hundreds of thousands of citizens, perhaps more than a million, including Indians, mestizos, castas, and blacks, participated in the elections and in government both at the local and provincial levels. It is ironic that scholars have tended to ignore this great political revolution and instead have focused almost exclusively on the insurgencies. By any standard, the political revolution was more profound and extensive than the insurgencies, which have primarily occupied historians 27.
Unlike the elections of 1809 for the Junta Central and those of 1810 for the Extraordinary Cortes of Cádiz, which were conducted by the ayuntamientos, the new constitutional elections of 1812-1813 were the first popular elections held in the Hispanic world. Relatively free elections occurred in those areas dominated by the royalists. In contrast, the insurgents either did not hold elections or failed to conduct them in a "democratic" or "popular" manner. Although the elite clearly dominated politics, hundreds of thousands of middle-and lower-class men became involved in politics in a meaningful way and made their presence felt. François-Xavier Guerra's analysis of the 1813 election census in Mexico City, for example, concludes that 93 percent of the adult male population of the capital possessed the right to vote 28. Most striking, the Indian communities – members of the former repúblicas de indios – participated actively. In a number of regions, such as Cuenca and Loja in the Kingdom of Quito, they not won control of their local towns they also formed inter-ethnic coalitions to participate in the government of the larger provincial capitals 29. Ironically, the new Hispanic political system forced many insurgent governments to enhance their legitimacy by drafting constitutions and holding elections. Their constitutions, however, were less revolutionary than the Constitution of Cádiz and restricted suffrage by imposing literacy and property qualifications 30. For example, the elections held in New Spain for the Congress of Apatzingan, involved a few thousand voters.
The first constitutional era ended in 1814 when King Fernando VII returned. The king's return provided an opportunity to restore the unity of the Spanish World. Virtually every act that had occurred since 1808 – the struggle against the French, the political revolution enacted by the Cortes and the autonomy movements in America – was taken in his name. Initially it appeared that he might accept moderate reforms, but ultimately the king opted to abolish the Cortes and the Constitution of Cádiz. His autocratic government relied on force to restore royal order in the New World. There followed a five year period in which, unfettered by the Constitution, the royal authorities in the New World crushed most insurgent movements. Only the isolated Río de la Plata remained beyond the reach of a weakened Spanish Monarchy.