230 Hispanic America
the Vice-RoyaIty of La Plata the struggle was due chiefly
to the opposition of interest, while in Venezuela the ideas
of political reform predominated. “All conspire in favor
of liberty: revolutions in Europe, English ministers, inde-
pendence of the United States, constitutional doctrines of
Cadiz, romantic faith of the liberators, political ambition
of the oligarchies, ideas of Rousseau and the encyclopae-
dists, the decadence of Spain, hatred of all the castes against
the inquisitions and Vice-Royalists.” Blanco Fombona fol-
lowed the same criterion: “Our fathers did not bind
themselves to exclusive economic improvement; they fought
for the establishment of a nationality, a thought to which
they subordinated all material advantages.”
We ought to consider also the explanation of inde-
pendence as a result of the international situation, as a
byproduct of the Napoleonic wars, the American Revolu-
tion, and the growing hegemony of England. Lord Bryce,
in a very unhappy moment, dared to say, referring to the
French invasion of Spain, that NapoIeon was the true
liberator of South America.
Other authors believed that the establishment of the
new nationalities was due chiefly to the attitude of the
United States, embodied afterwards in the Monroe Doc-
trine, and chiefly to the attitude of Canning, taking liter-
ally his pretentious statement in which he said, “We have
called the new World to life, in order to establish the
equilibrium of the Old.”
The modern critic ought to consider all these theories
in an effort to appreciate the influence of the different ele-
ments and to ascertain if there is something left unexplained
by them. The truth is this: that the essential feature of
the emancipation movement, its creative and heroic charac-