Matthew Brown
Creating National Heroes: The Memories of the Spanish American Wars of Independence
Spanish America wrestled itself free of colonial rule after 1808. The process was often bloody, drawn out and contentious. By 1826, nearly every single area of the American continental landmass was independent, an almost unimaginable state of affairs for those who had heard of the brutal repression of the Andean uprisings of 1780–1. The map of the Americas had been painted in resounding, vibrant republican colors. This paper will analyze how that founding conflict has been remembered in the continent, and worldwide, examining historical and literary sources to assess the extent to which memories of revolution have been manipulated, silenced, glorified, mythologized or simply forgotten. One particular focus will be on memories of the Venezuelan Simón Bolívar, and on how the cult to his memory has been portrayed, institutionalized and subverted.
Matthew Brown is Reader in Latin American Studies at the University of Bristol. He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Post-Independence Colombia and Venezuela (2012) and Adventuring through Spanish Colonies: Simón Bolívar, Foreign Mercenaries and the Birth of New Nations (2006) and the editor of Connections after Colonialism: Europe and Latin America in the 1820s (with Gabriel Paquette, 2013) andInformal Empire in Latin America: Culture, Commerce and Capital (2008). He is currently director of the Centre for the Study of Colonial and Postcolonial Societies at the University of Bristol, and is finishing a short book provisionally entitled From Frontiers to Football: Latin America and the World.
