Crybaby Candidates and Apaleadores: Manly Self-Restraint, Violence, and Ethnicity in Late Nineteenth-Century Guatemala City

ABSTRACT

The cultivation of coffee and the Liberal Reforms of the 1870s instigated a transformation in the social composition of Guatemala City’s urban elite as rural and working-class ladinos rose to economic and political prominence. In response to this social mobility, criollo elites codified the precepts of hombría de bien, or proper manhood, in etiquette guides to distinguish themselves from ladinos, who they argued were characterized by rudeza or brashness. Contrary to criollo insistence, however, both they and ladinos prioritized self-restraint as the hallmark of their manliness. Where the two groups differed, however, was the constitution of self-restraint, especially concerning rage, cowardice, and the nature of violence. The political careers of Próspero Morales and José León Castillo provide examples of competing views of manliness during the 1890s. Crucially, the coffee depression during the closing years of the century signaled a shift toward ladino manliness as violence pervaded political life.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• masculinity
• self-restraint
• Guatemala

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. By 1898, the municipality of Ciudad Vieja was adjacent to the capital city and, in time, would be annexed. Today, Zone 10, including the United States and Mexican Embassies, comprises the area where Ciudad Vieja was located.

2. Archivo General de Centro America (AGCA), Juicios Criminales (JC), Indice 38, 1898, Juzgado 5° de la Primera Instancia, Leg. 11C, Exp. 35.

3. By the 1880s and 1890s, the Guatemalan state recognized two ethnic types: Indigenous and ladino. Strictly speaking, Indigenous people were identified by their language, clothing, and community, while ladinos were simply non-Indigenous. In practice, these categories were much more fluid and complicated as demonstrated by the historical literature. Similarly, though the colonial category of criollo—indicating individuals who claimed unadulterated European ancestry that dated back prior to independence—was legally subsumed by ladino classification, criollo families often went to great lengths to preserve the so-called purity or cleanliness of their blood, while adhering to aristocratic ethos. See Charles Hale, “Más que un indio:” Racial Ambivalence and Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Guatemala (Santa Fe: School of American Research, 2006); Todd Little-Siebold, “‘Where Have All the Spaniards Gone?’ Independent Identities: Ethnicities, Class and the Emergent National State,” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 6, no. 2 (2001); Greg Grandin, The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2000); Marta Elena Casaús Arzú, Guatemala: Linaje y racismo, 5th ed. (Guatemala City: F&G Editores, 2018); and Arturo Taracena Arriola, Etnicidad, estado y nación en Guatemala, 1808–1944, Volumen I (Antigua: Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica, 2002).

4. See Pablo Piccato, City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900–1931 (Durham: Duke Univ., 2001); Sueann Caulfield, In Defense of Honor: Sexual Morality, Modernity, and Nation in Early-Twentieth-Century Brazil (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2000); and Martha Santos, Cleansing Honor With Blood: Masculinity, Violence, and Power in the Backlands of Northeast Brazil, 1845–1889 (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2012).

5. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, The Origins of Macho: Men and Masculinity in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2019).

6. Robert Buffington, A Sentimental Education for the Working Man: The Mexico City Penny Press, 1900–1910 (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2015).

7. For discussions of elite concern with self-restraint, see Steve Stern, The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico (Chapel Hill: The Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1995); David Parker, “‘Gentlemanly Responsibility’ and ‘Insults of a Woman:’ Dueling and the Unwritten Rules of Public Life in Uruguay, 1860–1920,” in Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America Since Independence, ed. William French and Katherine Elaine Bliss (Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 109–32.

8. Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Theory,” Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (1988): 519–20. Drawing on a myriad of works on gender written since the 1980s, I assume that gender and the categories of masculinity, manliness, and manhood are non-essential and performative, that is, they are constructed within a web of social relations. See, too, Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990); Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1995); and Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1988).

9. Michel Foucault wrote about this practice in Technologies of the Self (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1988).

10. For waiting in Guatemala, see Michael Kirkpatrick, Optics and the Culture of Modernity in Guatemala Since the Liberal Reforms (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Saskatchewan, 2013); Patricia Harms, Ladina Social Activism in Guatemala City, 1871–1954 (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2020); and Julie Gibbings, Our Time is Now: Race and Modernity in Postcolonial Guatemala (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2020).

11. Gibbings, Our Time, 193.

12. While Rafael Carrera came from the working class, his rule only commenced the transformation of the ethnic composition of the urban elite primarily through the military, a process accelerated by later liberals. Casaús Arzú, Guatemala, 120.

13. See Severo Martínez Peláez, La Patria del Criollo: An Interpretation of Colonial Guatemala (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2009).

14. René Reeves, Ladinos with Ladinos, Indians with Indians: Land, Labor, and Regional Ethnic Conflict in the Making of Guatemala (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2006), 142–53.

15. Casaús Arzú, Guatemala, 129–35.

16. See Regina Wagner, The History of Coffee in Guatemala (Bogotá: Villegas Editores, 2001); and Gibbings, Our Time.

17. See Marta Elena Casaús Arzú and Teresa García Giráldez, Las redes intelectuales centroamericanas: un siglo de imaginarios nacionales (1820–1920) (Guatemala: F&G Editores, 2005).

18. Michael Kimmel describes bourgeois manliness in Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: The Free Press, 1996).

19. See David McCreery, Rural Guatemala: 1760–1940 (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1994).

20. Coxe to Secretary of State, 25 March 1897, United States National Archives (hereafter USNA), Dispatches from United States Ministers to Central America, 1824–1906, 219/59.

21. Bederman, Manliness and Civilization; George L. Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996).

22. See Casaús Arzú, Guatemala.

23. Catherine Komisaruk, Labor and Love in Guatemala: The Eve of Independence (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2013).

24. Antonio Batres Jáuregui, La América Central ante la historia, 1821–1921, Tomo III: Memorias de un siglo (Guatemala: Impreso Nacional, 1949), 211; and La Escuela de Derecho, 31 May 1899, 74.

25. Manuel Antonio Carreño, Manual de urbanidad y buenas maneras (New York: D. Appleton y Cía, 1857), 29. Known colloquially as the Manual de Carreño, this guide was widely published and cited in Latin America. For discussion of the work, see Gaceta de los Tribunales de la República de Guatemala, October 15, 1884, 235–6. Carreño’s work was sold at Emilio Goubaud’s bookstore on Sexta Avenida. See Catálogo general de la Librería y Papelería de Emilio Goubaud (Guatemala: Tipografía La Unión, 1888), 40.

26. Antonio Silva, Manual de urbanidad y finos modales, para el uso de la juventud centro-americana (Guatemala: Imprenta de Luna, 1861), 54.

27. Lipsett-Rivera, Origins, 168.

28. See Parker, “Gentlemanly.”

29. Stern asserts that venting is deeply rooted gender relations, Secret History, 66.

30. “El Crimen del 27,” Diario de Centro-América, 30 June 1897, 1.

31. Archivo General de Centro America (AGCA), Signatura B, Gobernación, Legajo 28955, Expediente 91.

32. AGCA, Juicios Criminales (JC), Indice 31, 1897, Juzgado 4° de Paz, Leg. 68D, Exp. 63.

33. Silva, Manual, 17–24.

34. See Primer Congreso Pedagógico Centroamericano y Primera Exposición Escolar Nacional (Guatemala: Tipografía Nacional, 1894), 438; and Federico Hernández de León, El libro de la efemérides, Tomo II (Guatemala: Tipografía Sánchez & De Guise), 263.

35. Paul Burgess, Justo Rufino Barrios: A Biography (Philadelphia: Dorrance and Company Publishers, 1926), 29–30.

36. José M. Ramírez Colom, Reseña Biográfica del ilustrísimo y reverendísimo señor Arzobispo de Santiago de Guatemala Don Ricardo Casanova y Estrada (Guatemala: Tipografía Sánchez y De Guise, 1907), 12–4; and Burgess, Barrios, 201–2.

37. See David Carey, I Ask for Justice: Maya Women, Dictators, and Crime in Guatemala, 1898–1944 (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 2013).

38. The final scenario was known as rapto y estupro. See Kathryn Sloan, “Runaway Daughters: Women’s Masculine Roles in Elopement Cases in Nineteenth-Century Mexico,” in Masculinity and Sexuality in Modern Mexico, ed. Víctor M. Macías-González and Anne Rubenstein (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2012), 53–78.

39. William Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club and Other Episodes of Porfirian Mexico (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2004), 31.

40. David McCreery, “‘This Life of Misery and Shame:’ Female Prostitution in Guatemala City, 1880–1920,” Journal of Latin American Studies 18, no. 2 (Nov 1986): 350.

41. AGCA, Sig. B, Gobernación, Leg. 28798, Exp. 58, 60, 61, and 115.

42. “Un lance de honor,” 1894, Fondo Antiguo, Biblioteca Nacional de Guatemala, Guatemala City, Colección Valenzuela, Hojas Sueltas (BNGCV-HS), Paquete 1988.

43. See Caulfield, Defense of Honor.

44. On performativity, Butler, Gender Trouble.

45. “El Licenciado Don Próspero Morales,” La Ilustración Guatemalteca, 1 Sept. 1896, 39 and “Gabinete del Señor General Reina Barrios,” El Educacionista, August 1894, 49.

46. Jenner to the Marquess of Salisbury, 6 August 1898, British National Archives, Foreign Office (BNA-FO) 15/317.

47. Batres Jáuregui, América Central, 565–6.

48. For the entirety of Morales’s defence, see “Honorable Comisión,” 1895, BNGCV-HS, Paq. 1988.

49. Francisco Lainfiesta, Mis memorias (Guatemala: Academia de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala, 1980), 468–9.

50. “Acta,” 1896 and “Zacapa,” 1896, BNGCV-HS, Paq. 1988.

51. “Viva el General Don José María Reina Barrios,” 1897 and “Próspero Morales,” 1897, BNGCV-HS, Paq. 1989.

52. “Atrás el apaleador,” 1897, BNGCV-HS, Paq. 1989.

53. “Refutación a la Carta de un Patriota,” 1897; See, for example, “Lic. Y Coronel Don Próspero Morales,” 1897 and “Felicación,” 1897, BNGCV-HS, Paq. 1989.

54. “Las prosperistas sacan las uñas,” 1897, BNGCV-HS, Paq. 1989. Specifying the mob as “descamisados”—literally shirtless ones—speaks to the supposed working-class character of the group.

55. AGCA, JC, Indice 31, 1897, Juzgado 5°, Leg. 68D, Exp. 16 and 17.

56. The causes of the revolution are disputed, with some citing Reyna Barrios’s despotism while others arguing it was a response to the coffee crisis. Jorge Luján Muñoz, Las revoluciones de 1897, la muerte de J.M. Reina Barrios y la elección de M. Estrada Cabrera (Guatemala: Artemis Edinter, 2003).

57. El Torpedo, 28 July 1898, 4; 11 August 1898, 2; and 14 August 1898, 3.

58. “A los valientes guatemaltecos,” 1898, BNGCV-HS, Paq. 1990.

59. See Clemente Marroquín Rojas, La Bomba: historia del primer atentado contra Estrada Cabrera (Guatemala, Tipografía Nacional, 1967).

60. For government reports, see Boletín de Noticias from 18 and 19 August 1898, BNGCV-HS, Paq. 1990. Luján Muñoz, Las revoluciones, 59. Government sources claimed he succumbed to meningitis and exposure, though Lujan Muñoz speculates he was extrajudicially executed.

61. “Por lo de Acatán,” 1895 and “La cuestión palpitante,” 1896, BNGCV-HS, Paq. 1988. Pineda C. Felipe, Para la historia de Guatemala: datos sobre el Gobierno del Licenciado Manuel Estrada Cabrera (México: 1902), 10–1.

62. Pringle to Secretary of State, 19 June 1896, USNA, 219/58. For the government’s account, see “Alcance,” El guatemalteco 37 and 38.

63. Domingo Morales, “José León Castillo,” 1897, BNGCV-HS, Paq. 1989. Pringle to Secretary of State, August 26, 1896, USNA, 219/58.

64. Salvador Toledo, Recuerdos de un soldado ó el número 118 (Guatemala: Tipografía Nacional, 1897), 16 and 38.

65. Lainfiesta, Mis memorias, 424.

66. “Para la historia,” 1897, BNGCV-HS, Paq. 1989.

67. “Un candidato lloron,” 1897, BNGCV-HS, Paq. 1989.

68. “Dolora,” El Torpedo, 18 June 1898, 3.

69. “A los partidarios de la candidatura de don José León Castillo,” 1897, “Justicia,” 1897, and “Guatemaltecos,” 1897, BNGCV-HS, Paq. 1989.

70. Marroquín Rojas claims Morales’s Mexican “invasion” served as pretext for violence though aggressive tactics dated back to 1897. See Marroquín Rojas, Bomba, 10.

71. Lipsett-Rivera, Origins, 111–7.

72. “Cinismo y canallada,” 1898, BNGCV-HS, Paq. 1990.

73. “Al público,” 1898, BNGCV-HS, Paq. 1990.

74. “Orden público,” La Idea Liberal, 11 August 1898, 1.

75. “‘La Mazorca’ en Guatemala,” 1898, BNGCV-HS, Paq. 1990.

76. “Trinidad sin de-votos,” El Torpedo, 2 July 1898.

77. For discussion of masculinity and La Mazorca, see Regina A. Root, Couture and Consensus: Fashion and Politics in Postcolonial Argentina (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2010).

78. “Qué garantías,” 1898, BNGCV-HS, Paq. 1990.

79. See El Torpedo, 1 Sept. 1898, 4.

80. The issue also featured a caricature of an exorcism of a weeping Castillo dressed as a woman, further emasculating the presidential candidate.

81. Carey, I Ask.

82. Marroquín Rojas, Bomba, 22–4.