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Identity and Persuasion: How Nations Remember Their Pasts and Make Their Futures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Consuelo Cruz
Consuelo Cruz
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Columbia University
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Identity struggles are once again a salient problem in world politics. This article aims to throw light on the sources, dynamics, and consequences of identity formation and mobilization. It makes two theoretical arguments. First, because collective memory is both a seemingly factual narrative and a normative assessment of the past, it shapes a group's intersubjective conceptions of strategic feasibility and political legitimacy. This is why collective identity is above all an expression of normative realism: a group's declaration to itself and to others about what it can or cannot do; what it will or will not do. Second, at critical junctures competing actors assert or contest the normative realism underlying collective identity. They do this through rhetorical politics, deploying their powers of persuasion in order to engage the constitutive elements of the group's shared identity. In practical terms, rhetorical politics is structured by a dominant frame: a historically shaped discursive formation that does two things. It articulates in readily accessible ways the fundamental notions a group holds about itself in the world and allows or disallows specific strategies of persuasion on the basis of their presumptive realism and normative sway. Within this frame, rhetorical politics engenders a collective field of imaginable possibilities: a restricted array of plausible scenarios about how the world can or cannot be changed and how the future ought to look. Though circumscribed, this field is vulnerable to endogenous shifts, precisely because actors' rhetorical struggles introduce conflicts over the descriptive and prescriptive limits of what is “realistically” possible. Such conflicts may in fact produce a new dominant rhetorical frame and profoundly influence a nation's political and economic development. Two contrasting cases from Latin America offer empirical support for these arguments. The article shows that the sharp developmental divergence between Costa Rica and Nicaragua can be properly understood only through close analytical scrutiny of the different rhetorical frames, fields of imaginable possibilities, and collective identities that rose to prominence at critical points in these countries' colonial and postcolonial histories.

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Research Article
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World Politics , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , April 2000 , pp. 275 - 312
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Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2000

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References

1 A third approach, instrumentalism, concentrates less on identity formation and more on the rational incentives that motivate political entrepreneurs to mobilize their “primordial” constituencies. In this article the role of political leaders is also emphasized (although I explore the popular dimension of identity formation elsewhere, in Cruz, “World Making in the Tropics: The Politics of Fate and Possibility” [Book manuscript]). But leaders' mobilizational motivations and capabilities, as well as rationality itself, are treated here as embedded in the broader political-cultural conditions shared by their respective groups. A more detailed discussion on this point follows in the text below, with reference to David Laitin's work.

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4 This view of collective memory hinges on the narrative construction of history while at the same time eschewing the presumed split between the normative and cognitive thrusts behind narrative construction. For some, like Hayden White, the objective behind the construction of sequenced history is to impose a normative claim to authority. For others, like Louis O. Mink, narrative construction is a cognitive enterprise. See White, , Metahistory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973)Google Scholar; idem, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,” in Mitchell, W. J. T., ed., On Narrative (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981)Google Scholar; and Mink, , “Everyman His or Her Own Annalist,” in Mitchell, . For a succinct discussion of the split, see David Carr, Time, Narrative and History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

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6 Development is not conceived here as a fixed end point. Rather, development is the ongoing, effective creation of institutional conditions that (1) a critical mass of agents deems necessary for the rational pursuit of economic prosperity and that (2) allow for the establishment of a viable system of political legitimation, thus making possible the relatively smooth distribution of material resources and the stable allocation of authoritative functions and prerogatives among rulers, officials, and citizens.

7 Even in the natural sciences, individuals live with doubt, to which they respond in a variety of ways, ranging from isolated tinkering to heated debate and paradigmatic discovery. Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

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25 Albert O. Hirschman, for instance, has shown that the rhetorical struggles associated with land-mark social and economic reforms in the advanced industrial democracies produced “contrasting pairs” of arguments that not only shaped the struggles themselves but, whether progressive or reactionary, could be “exposed” as “extreme statements” in “highly polarized debates.” Once exposed, such statements may be reduced to the status of “limiting cases” in need of qualification, mitigation, and/or amendment. See Hirschman, , The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991), 166–67Google Scholar.

26 See Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991), 7, 50, 60. I develop my counterclaim in Cruz (fn. 1)Google Scholar.

27 Developmental success or failure is assessed according to the criteria outlined in fn. 6.

28 Guatemala was the administrative seat of the Kingdom of Guatemala, which comprised all of colonial Central America. Following independence in 1821 and the collapse of the ephemeral Mexican empire in 1823, the various Central American states formed a federal republic, which by 1838 was virtually defunct.

29 These explanations, it should be noted, bear scant analytical relation to sophisticated national-character arguments. Alex Inkeles, for example, posits that national character refers to “the mode or modes of distribution of personality variants within a given society.” The national-character explanations articulated by Costa Rican and Nicaraguan scholars, in contrast, merely echo and reinforce dominant mythologies that are part and parcel of intersubjective realisms established through long-forgotten contestations. And yet, analytically unrelated as they are, both Inkeles's argument and the homegrown national-character explanations eclipse intersubjective dynamics and contestation processes. Inkeles treats national character as the collective expression of individuals' personality, and he assumes an interrelation among modal personality, institutional structures, cultural patterns, and the actions of nation-states. By taking a cumulative rather than an intersubjective perspective, Inkeles fore-closes the possibility of a group dynamic independent of its members' personality makeup. By removing the element of struggle, he reduces individuals and macrostructures to unproblematic reflections of one another. But while Inkeless reductionism helps explain the declining influence of national-character explanations, the simplifications by Costa Rican and Nicaraguan scholars hint at some of the ways in which different rhetorical frames became entrenched in our two cases. Inkeles, , National Character: A Psycho-Social Perspective (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1997)Google Scholar.

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36 Hierarchical distinction, while not peculiar to Costa Rica, does go against its yeoman-democracy image, especially once we take into account the fact that postcolonial elites' command of credit re-sources and of “administrative skills and commercial contacts” led to skewed control of coffee processing and export marketing. Roseberry, William et al. , eds., Coffee, Society, and Power in Latin America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 20Google Scholar; Stone, Samuel, La Dinastía de los Conquistadores: La Crísis del Poder en la Costa Rica Contemporánea (The conquerors' dynasty: A crisis of power in contemporary Costa Rica) (San José: EDUCA, 1975), 75–76Google Scholar; and Gudmundson, Lowell and Lindo-Fuentes, Héctor, Central America, 1821–1871: Liberalism before Liberal Reform (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995), 46–47Google Scholar.

37 For a prominent exponent, see Cruz, Rodolfo Cerda, Formación del estado en Costa Rica (State formation in Costa Rica) (San José: Editorial Universídad de Costa Rica, 1967), 96–99, 156–59Google Scholar.

38 This account also overlooks the fact that Costa Rica's aristocracy (located in the “closed” city of Cartago) and the progressive elites (located in “bourgeois” San José) were one and the same, both in terms of social origins and in terms of access to national power. See Stone (fn. 36) for the shared genealogy of power holders.

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43 Ralph Lee Woodward, for example, astutely concentrates on familial and localist struggles but does not connect them to actors' rhetorical strategies. See Woodward, , “The Aftermath of Independence, 1821–1870,” in Bethell, Leslie, ed., Central America since Independence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar. Similarly, Victor Bulmer-Thomas treats the emergence of national identity in Latin America as dependent on the success or failure of economic development. Bulmer-Thomas is certainly correct that the two are related. But as I argue below, the causality runs in the other direction: national identity shapes developmental outcomes. See his excellent work, Bulmer-Thomas, , Economic History of Latin America since Independence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 19–45Google Scholar.

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49 See Veliz, Claudio, The Centralist Tradition of Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 29Google Scholar.

50 Lockhart, James and Otte, Enrique, eds., Letters and People of the Spanish Indies, Sixteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 73–77Google Scholar.

51 For cabildo letters, see de la Tabla, Javier Ortiz et al. , eds., Cartas de Cabildos Hispanoamericanos, Audienda de Guatemala (Letters from Hispanic-American Cabildos, Audiencia of Guatemala) (Seville: Publicaciones de la Diputación Provincial de Sevilla; Publicaciones de la Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1984)Google Scholar.

52 For the original texts, consult Solórzano, Federico Arguello and Arguello, Carlos Molina, eds., Monumenta Centroamericae Histórica: Colección de Docutnentos y Matteriales Para el Estudio de la Historia y de la Vida de los Pueblos de la America Central (Monumenta Centroamericae: Collection of materials and documents for the study of the history of the peoples of Central America) (Managua: Instituto Centroamericano de Historia, Universidad Centroamericana, 1965)Google Scholar.

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54 The absence of Nicaragua's governor from the province was a crucial historical accident, in the sense that with the governor away in Spain, his sons and their allies had no high representative of royal authority to turn to for on-site mediation. The only other high representative of the crown was the bishop—the very embodiment of evil in the rebels' eyes. Had the governor remained in Nicaragua, one of two alternative scenarios would likely have materialized. Either the governor himself would have led his clan in rebellion against the laws, in which case the outcome would have been even more similar to that of Peru. Or the governor and his clan would have refrained from rebellion and opted instead

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57 Ibid., 209–10.

58 The first “official” history of Nicaragua, written by a conservative in 1882, depicted Nicaragua's early conquerors as cruel and ambitious and the bishop whom they stabbed to death as a pious man. In 1889 an anticlerical liberal historian painted the bishop as a “victim of his own arrogance.” But an-other liberal historian soon restored the initial interpretation, emphasizing the vileness of Nicaragua's conquerors while vindicating the bishop as a staunch protector of Indians. Tijerino (fn. 53 ), 5.

For illustrations of how the colonial historical record, taken prima facie, shapes the historiography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Ayón, Tomás, Historia de Nicaragua desde los tiempos mas remotos hasta año 1852 (History of Nicaragua from the most remote times until the year 1852) (Managua: Tipografía de el centro-Americano, 1889)Google Scholar; Gámez, José Dolores, Historia de Nicaragua desde los tiempos prehistoricos hasta 1860 (History of Nicaragua from prehistoric times until 1860) (Managua: Tipografía del país, 1889)Google Scholar; Almán Bolaños (fn. 32); Coronel Urtecho (fn. 32). See also Urtecho's, José Coronel introduction to Ernesto Cardenal, El Estrecho Dudoso (The doubtful strait) (Mexico and Buenos Aires: Ediciones Carlos Lohlé, 1972)Google Scholar.

59 Melendez (fn. 30), 41–47, 49.

60 Trejos, José Francisco, ed., Progenitores de los Costarricenses, Los Conquistadores (The Costa Ricans' progenitors: The conquerors) (San José: Imprenta Lehmann, 1940), 34Google Scholar.

61 For the original texts, see Cartas de Relación Sobre la Conquista de Costa Rica (Narrative reports on the conquest of Costa Rica) (San José: Academia de Geografía e Historia de Costa Rica, 1964)Google Scholar.

62 If anything, the first Franciscans to come to Costa Rica served as the “conquerors' right hand.” Rodríguez, Arnoldo Mora, Historia del Pensamiento Costarricense (History of Costa Rican thought) (San José: Editorial Universidad Estatal a Distancia, 1992), 64Google Scholar.

63 There was, for example, no such controversy when the Costa Rican governor, a most obedient subject by his own account, actually ignored a royal ban on the allotment of Indians (a ban that forbade conquerors from distributing Indians among themselves).

64 Montero, Francisco, Historia de Costa Rica (San José: Tipografía Nacional, 1892), 40Google Scholar.

65 The crown seldom granted titles of nobility in Spanish America, but this did not diminish the nobiliary pretensions of Costa Rica's conquerors.

66 Royal ordinances on “pacification,” 1573, in Hanke, Lewis, ed., History of Latin American Civilization, Sources and Interpretations, vol. 1, The Colonial Experience (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973)Google Scholar.

67 Montero (fn. 64), 44.

68 Guardia, Ricardo Fernández, Crónicas Coloniales (Colonial chronicles) (San José: Imprenta Trejos Hnos., 1921), 517Google Scholar.

69 For power relations in colonial Costa Rica, see Cruz (fn. 37), 85. Reputation building, of course, took place within particular institutional contexts. Costa Ricans, for example, had no institution of higher learning. (Any Costa Rican seeking enlightened cultivation had to study either in Guatemala City or in Nicaragua, at the seminary in León). This deficiency, though lamented by the nobles them-selves, meant that no institutional framework was available for the elaboration and recording of narrative challenges to the nobles' exceptionalist account of conquest and colonization. In Nicaragua, meanwhile, the seminary helped entrench the “fall from grace” view of history. The seminary, for ex-ample, opened up to the novel philosophies and political theories coming out of Europe and the United States but then molded them to the Christian worldview. Léon's “sacred orators,” for example, strove in the late eighteenth century and the early decades of the nineteenth to reconcile the progressive spirit of the Enlightenment with the immutable truths of the Christian worldview. And even as independent intellectual clubs began to form in the late nineteenth century, the church's influence remained sufficiently strong to extirpate revisionist interpretations of the bishop's murder. The short-lived counternarrative of the murdered bishop as victim of “his own arrogance” and the restoration narrative in which the bishop once again figured as a victim of “vile conquerors” were both penned by liberal notables associated with the city of Léon. This brief interpretive conflict and its swift resolution reflected the long-standing institutional entwinement of Léon's educational elites and the church qua guardian of hierarchical orthodoxy. For early examples of this entwinement, see “Discurso,” pronounced at the Léon seminary, May 16,1807. See also “Sermón,” delivered by Tomás Ruiz, professor of philosophy and vice-rector of the seminary, November 27,1804; and “Sermón en los Funerales del Padre Don Rafael Ayesta,” delivered by Ayerdi, Francisco, both reproduced in Boletín Nicaraguense de Bibliografiay Documentatión, no. 55 (November 1987/September 1988)Google Scholar.

70 Barrantes, Francisco Montero, Elementos de Historicía de Costa Rica (San José: Tipografía Nacional, 1892), 153Google Scholar. And Iglesias, Francisco María, “septiembre 15” (San José, September 15, 1888), in Revista de Costa Rica en el Sigh XIX 1 (San José: Letras Patrias no. 32)Google Scholar; and Máximo Soto Hall, “Capítulos de un Libro Inédito,” in Revista de Costa Rtca en el Siglo XIX 1, 87.

71 “Proclama de la Primera Junta Superior Gubernativa al Terminar su Período,” Alajuela, November 9,1822, in Chaverri, Carlos Meléndez, ed., Documentos Fundamentales del Siglo XIX (Fundamental nineteenth-century documents) (San José: Editorial Costa Rica, 1978), 93–94Google Scholar.

72 Astrid Fishel Volio, “La Educación en el Proceso de Formación y Consolidación del Estado Costarricense,” in Gómez et al. (fn. 35), 129–52.

73 “Manifiesto de la Asamblea del Estado,” San José, April 19,1825, in Meléndez Chaverri (fn. 71), 135–36.

74 “Torres Rivas(fn. 34), 17.

75 Joaquín Bernardo Calvo, “Nora del Ministro General del Estado de Costa Rica al Ministro de Relaciones Interiores y Exteriores de la Federación,” San José, October 8,1827, in Meléndez Chaverri (fn. 71), 147–50, emphasis added.

76 Juan Mora, “Mensaje del Jefe de Estado a la Asamblea,” San José, March 1,1829, in Meléndez Chaverri (fn. 71), 150–57.

77 “Dictámen de la Comisión para recabar arbitrios,” Cartago, August 15, 1831, in Meléndez Chaverri (fn. 71).

78 Ibid.

79 Ibid., 481–85.

80 José María Esquivel, “Sobre la Disolución de las Costumbres,” San José, May 15,1830, in Meléndez Chaverri (fn. 71), 474–75.

81 “Manojito de Flores”, El Josefino, San José, August 11, 1835Google Scholar, in Melendez Chaverri (fn. 71), 485–88.

82 Montero Barrantes (fn. 70).

83 Paige (fn. 41), 15.

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87 See Silva, Margarita, “Las Fiestas Civico-Electorales en San José Y El Reconocimiento de la Autoridad de Los Elegidos,” in Revista de Historia, no. 27 (January-June 1993)Google Scholar.

88 For the localist and clannish rivalries underlying this conflict, see Urtecho, José Coronel, Reflexiones sobre la Historia de Nicaragua: de Gainza a Somoza, vol. 1 (Reflections on the history of Nicaragua: From Gainza to Somoza) (Léon: Editorial Hospicio, 1962)Google Scholar; Gámez, José Dolores, Historia de Nicaragua (Managua: Fondo de Promocion Cultural, Banco de América, 1975)Google Scholar; and Urtecho, José Coronel, “Paradojas de las Intervenciones de Valle y Arce en Nicaragua,” Revista Conservadora del Pensamiento Centroamericano 28 (May 1972)Google Scholar.

89 Revista de la Academia de Geografía e Historia de Nicaragua 6 (April 1944), 181–85Google Scholar; and “Discurso” pronounced at the Ateneo, September 15,1881, in Revtsta Conservadora de Pensamtento Centroamericano 2 (July 1961)Google Scholar.

90 Elections were first held for deputies and for the top executive positions of chief and vice chief of state soon after Nicaragua was “pacified” in 1825 through the diplomatic intervention of Manuel José Arce (with the backing of his Salvadoran troops). Significantly, one of the terms of the peace agreement was the exile of the popular caudillo Cleto Ordoñez, whose extraordinary eloquence was considered a destabilizing force.

91 “Un Nicaraguense,” “Relación del Origen y Progreso de la Revolución del Estado de Nicaragua,” May 10, 1827, Revtsta de la Academia de Geografía e Historia de Nicaragua 2 (September, 1937), 43Google Scholar; “Proclama de Juan Arguello sobre los sucesos de Guatemala en 1826,” Libro de actas municipales de Léon, 1826, Revtsta de la Academia de Geografia e Historia de Nicaragua 1 (1936–37), 69–70Google Scholar.

92 de la Cerda, Manuel Antonio, “A Ciudadanos Secretarios de la Asamblea Constituyente,” Léon, May 10, 1825Google Scholar, and May 19, 1825. Revista de la Academia de Geografia e Historia de Nicaragua 1 (1936–37), 255–56Google Scholar.

93 Revista de la Academia de Geografía e Historia de Nicaragua 6 (1944), 155–56Google Scholar.

94 “Discursos pronunciados en el Congreso Federal de Centroamérica el año de 1826, por José del Valle,” Anales de la Sociedadde Geografía e Historia de Guatemala 2 (December 1925)Google Scholar.

95 For a typical statement, see Registro Oficial (March 1845)Google Scholar.

96 See, for example, Sandoval's, José Léon broadsheet Al Público (Managua), September 22, 1846Google Scholar.

97 For a representative statement, see the broadsheet published by Granada notables, Al Público (Granada), July 11, 1848Google Scholar.

98 Vigil, Francisco, Manuscritos autenticos compilados, Padre Vigil (first published in Granada, 1930; privately reprinted in Managua, 1967), 119–22Google Scholar.

99 Charlip, Julie A., “‘So That Land Takes on Value’: Coffee and Land in Carazo, Nicaragua,” in Latin American Perspectives 26 (January 1998)Google Scholar.

100 Put another way, the late development of the Nicaraguan coffee economy was rooted in political-institutional factors. One seemingly compelling alternative possibility—that late development of the coffee economy was due to structural factors like preexisting landholding patterns—is challenged by recent scholarly research. Large tracts of indigenous ejido (communal) holdings, for example, did not obstruct the early spread of coffee production in Nicaragua. To the contrary, as Charlip (fn. 99) has shown, ejidal lands allowed for the ubiquitous subsistence economy that sustained the coffee economy's seasonal labor force (pp. 2–5).

101 Cruz (fn. 1).

102 See, for example, “Manifiesto de S.E. el Presidente D. Fernando Guzmán a los Pueblos de la Republica,” (n.p.: Imprenta del Gobierno, 1867).

103 See also Cruz, Arturo J. Jr., “Overcoming Mistrust: The Quest for Order in Nicaragua's Conservative Republic, 1858–1893” (Ph.D. diss., University of Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar.

104 This was the hope that led liberal intellectuals at the close of the nineteenth century to rally around José Santos Zelaya. And this too was the hope that in the 1930s led modernizing intellectuals, even some who later became renowned critics of the Somoza regime, like Pablo Antonio Cuadra, initially to support Anastasio Somoza García.

105 Cardenal, Ernesto, ElEstrecho Dudoso (The doubtful strait) (Mexico City and Buenos Aires: Ediciones Carlos Lohlé, 1972), 75Google Scholar.

106 “La orientación general de la Segunda República,” José Figueres, opening speech, constitutional assembly, January 16,1949; and Figueres, José, Cartas a un Ciudadano (Letters to a citizen) (San José: Editorial Universidad Estatal a Distancia, 1980)Google Scholar.

107 For striking examples, see Salazar Navarrete, José Manuel, Oduber, Electión Presidential de 1974 (Oduber, presidential election of 1974) (San José: EDARASA, 1978)Google Scholar; and Luis Alberto Monge, “Proclama de neutralidad,” Presentacion hecha en el Teatro Nacional, November 17,1983.

108 Anderson (fn. 26).