“Being Political in Bourbon Spain and Spanish America: Performances of Merit and Claims of Bureaucratic Efficiency”

• In Event: Re-pensando el sujeto político indiano: representaciones y performatividades políticas en el siglo XVIII hispanoamericano

Abstract

The Bourbon Reforms in Spain and Spanish America were intensely political in nature. Opposition to specific or varied aspects of the wide-ranging set of measures was strong in both sides of the Atlantic and at different levels of society—the Andean rebellions of the early 1780s being the most dramatic episodes of dissent. At the heart of the royal service, bureaucrats formed political alliances sustained by transnational patronage networks that advanced –or blocked—the reforms. Through the analysis of letters, reports, and memorials addressed to the Crown, I explore how opposing parties justified their participation and practices in the political arena. Typically, Bourbon reformers and anti-reformists claimed they were loyal servants of the Spanish king and that their proposals or actions were in the best interest of the Crown. In their writings, both sides of the bureaucratic spectrum used their experience and merits in office to support the validity of their assertions. The reformist side was in a riskier situation, however. Executive agents of structural change found themselves in an exposed position given the unforeseeable outcomes of such transformations. I contrast the reformers’ and their opponents’ frequently scripted discourses of merit and efficiency to show the inherently performative nature of eighteenth-century political culture in the Spanish empire.

Author

• Maria Barbara Zepeda Cortes, Lehigh University