Matthew Bush is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His area of specialization is Latin American literature with an emphasis in investigation of the social novel in Mexican, Peruvian, Argentinean, and Brazilian literature. |
How to cite this review: Bush, Matthew "Aguirre, Robert D. Informal Empire: Mexico and Central America in Victorian Culture. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2005". Dissidences. Hispanic Journal of Theory and Criticism. On line. Internet: 15/09/05 (http://www.dissidences/ ReviewInforEmpire.html) |
| "Tracing the trajectory of British contact with Latin America throughout the Victorian Age, Aguirre’s study convincingly illustrates the successes and failures of the British informal empire and is an interesting and very much quotable investigation" |
| Aguirre, Robert D Informal Empire: Mexico and Central America in Victorian Culture Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2005 |
| D |
n
In Informal Empire: Mexico and Central America in Victorian Culture (2005), Robert D.
Aguirre examines the political and economic methods and goals of British “informal empire”
in the region that currently constitutes the states of southern Mexico and the countries of
Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras. The author presents the region as a
contested object of imperial domination, an area in dispute for imperial control between two
international superpowers, Great Britain and the United States, where the United States is
rapidly gaining ground and solidifying its control, a fact evidenced by the Spanish American
War in 1898. This study focuses upon the ways in which Britain, increasingly unable to
sustain physical imperial domination in the face of international competition, attempts
through the construction of social ideology to incorporate Central America as part of its
international empire. Aguirre examines how the British government seeks to extend its
imperial domination through the control of cultural capital and the institution of ideology that
establishes British cultural and racial superiority over the Latin American Other.
Aguirre’s study examines five interrelated moments in British history spanning from 1821 to
1898 that evidence first the endeavors at the configuration of, and later the recognition of the
impossibility of informal British political and economic control in southern Mexico and
Central America. One of the primary strengths of Aguirre’s study is that he is able to expose
the precarious nature of the formulation of informal empire while examining several different
cultural manifestations. The author considers museum collections, visual arts, official
governmental dispatches, freak shows, and literature of the Victorian Age to display the ways
in which Latin American otherness came to be codified and commoditized so as to later be
presented to mass audiences. In each one of these varied representations, Aguirre’s study
strives to demonstrate how the Latin American Other is leveled or flattened out, reduced to
his/her most basic characteristics so as to demonstrate that he/she is essentially inferior
both culturally and racially to his/her British counterpart. This portrayal of the Latin
American subject attempts to substantiate the correctness of a British presence in the region
to civilize and make productive that physical space that constitutes Central America.
As may be gleaned from the terminology used thus far, Edward Said’s Orientalism is
fundamental in Aguirre’s theoretical approach in this study. However, the author seeks to
move beyond Said’s work noting that “Orientalism, whose rigid binaries (us/them;
West/East) and strict Foucauldian model of discourse allow for very little resistance on the
part of the Orient, flattening out the always conflictual, contingent, heterogeneous, and
partial quality of imperial practices” (XXV). Instead, Aguirre follows the studies of Nicholas
Thomas and Mary Louise Pratt, analyzing in each chapter of his study the ways in which
imperial power was contested by the Other, thus suggesting a Laclauian model of
hegemonic processes. However, while interested in presenting the case of resistance, the
author is careful not to present a romanticized vision of the indigenous subject noting that:
The archives that shape my inquiry, whether British or Spanish, are not transparent or all-
inclusive; they are ideological constructs in themselves. Here, at least, the subaltern does
not speak, except through the voices of British and Spanish elites. Hence, I limit myself to
suggesting the ways in which the indigenous presence that haunts these discourses
constitutes a kind of colonial unconscious, an anxious, ambivalent reminder of violent or
symbolic dispossession. (XIX)
This aspect of Aguirre’s study is at once a strength and a limitation of his work. The author
presents an extremely interesting topic of investigation, but at times the question of the
subaltern appears lost in the study, a closing remark rather than an integral part of the
investigation. However, as Aguirre clearly states, his aim is not to attempt to reconstruct the
subaltern perspective, but rather to mark his/her ambiguous presence in the British
imperial project.
The first chapter of Aguirre’s study entitled “‘Open for Inspection’: Mexico at the Egyptian
Hall in 1824” deals primarily with a 1824 exhibition of pre-Columbian artifacts collected by
British entrepreneur William Bullock on a visit to Mexico in 1823. What is of interest to
Aguirre in this chapter is to show that Bullock’s collection not only presents foreign objects
to be observed, but also proposes “ways of looking and perceiving that reinforce imperial
subject positions” (22). Aguirre shows that Bullock’s exhibit is an effective fusion of science
and spectacle under the guise of disinterested humanitarian motivation. The author
presents the ways in which Bullock purports himself as a mere collector of “curiosities,”
interested only in the preservation of the antiquities of Aztec culture threatened first by
Spanish disregard during the Conquest of Mexico, and later by Creole incapacity to preserve
such cultural treasures. However, Aguirre’s analysis also shows how Bullock’s exhibit
displays a pejorative attitude with respect to Mexican culture as primitive and in need of
modern British guidance, thus extending an invitation to British economic and industrial
investment in the region.
Aguirre demonstrates how Bullock’s collection evidences a Victorian aim to “dominate from
a distance.” Employing Arjun Appadurai’s theories of “decontextualization” and
“recontextualization” the author shows how through the configuration of the museum
collection, a process is enacted where the objects removed from their original surroundings
come to be reevaluated and assigned new cultural significances. Artifacts are not assessed
aesthetically, but rather ethnographically and archeologically. As Aguirre demonstrates,
such scientific criteria of evaluation consistently lead to a negative appraisal of both the past
and present state of Mexican culture. Additionally, Aguirre documents how the Mexican
Creole elite attempted to contest exhibitions such as that of Bullock’s, enacting legislation in
order to retain historical artifacts within their own national boundary. The author contends
that such acts on behalf of the elite display a rejection of British imperial techniques that
attempted to acquire Mexican antiquities for incorporation into the imperial catalogue.
The second chapter of Aguirre’s study entitled “Buena Vista: Panoramas and the
Visualization of Conquest” examines the use of landscape aesthetics and the representation
of panoramas in the construction of informal empire. In this chapter the author seeks to
demonstrate how the control over visual representation intends to further imperial control
over distant territories. Aguirre defines the panorama as “vast 360-degree paintings
displayed in specially designed, circular theaters” (36) and to analyze the massive paintings
the author draws a suggestive parallel between the panorama and Jeremy Bentham’s
panopticon, the architectural figure analyzed by Michel Foucault. Aguirre demonstrates
that in the presentation of panorama the viewer is at once incorporated into the spectacle
that he/she observes while at the same time maintaining a privileged gaze upon the work
itself, a view that suggests the domination of the landscape being observed.
In the examination of a panorama created by Robert Burford and exhibited by William
Bullock, Aguirre notes that imperial painting seeks to represent Mexico as an orderly space
so as to assure financial interest couched in the language of “mutually beneficial exchange”
(44). As was the case in his museum exhibit, Bullock presents British interest in Mexico as
that of fostering growth not only for Britain, but for Mexico as well – an aim clearly not held
by the Spaniards who intent was only to dominate Mexico. Aguirre’s focus then shifts to the
United States and the historical context of the Mexican War, analyzing a novel by William
Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843), and a mobile panorama by Corydon
Donnavan. The author argues that these representations seek to justify a second conquest
of Mexico by basing themselves in the rhetoric of Manifest Destiny. Again, Aguirre
demonstrates that these cultural manifestations did not go uncontested by Mexican cultural
elites and that in the criticism of such works an anti-imperialist sentiment is exhibited.
The third chapter of the book entitled “Agencies of the Letter: The British Museum, the
Foreign Office, and the Ruins of Central America” investigates a highly complex web of
official governmental dispatches composed between 1841 and 1855 regarding the
unsuccessful attempt to acquire artifacts from present-day Guatemala and Honduras for
display in the British Museum. What is of principal importance for Aguirre in this chapter is
to demonstrate how writing serves to both empower and cripple imperial domination. The
author examines how British interest in the acquisition of artifacts from Copán, Quiriguá,
and Tikal was spurred on by knowledge attained from travel narratives, primarily from
Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan (1841) written and illustrated
by John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood. Again, native disregard and ignorance
serves as an important justification for the pillage of these Mayan ruins and again, the
context of imperial competition serves as an important backdrop for the author’s
investigation.
Aguirre presents the homosocial world of Victorian British bureaucracy as enabled by the
power of the official dispatch, but at the same time limited by the capacity of the dispatch to
affect reality. The author also demonstrates how internal rivalry in the British political
hierarchy and personal rivalries among competing explorers paralyzed attempts to
consolidate imperial control in the region. It is in this chapter where Aguirre makes his most
convincing comments regarding the subaltern subject. His depiction of non-communication
between indigenous peoples and foreign explorers may lead the reader to consider this part
of Aguirre’s study in the light of the theories proposed by James C. Scott in Weapons of the
Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1985).
The fourth chapter of Aguirre’s study entitled “Freak Show: The Aztec Children and the
Ruins of Race” presents the case of Máximo and Bartola, two microcephalic children
brought from El Salvador to London in 1851 to star in a freak show as the “Aztec
Lilliputians.” In this chapter it is the author’s goal to demonstrate how the spectacle of
freakery is used in order to construct and legitimize social concepts of the racial inferiority of
the Other. Aguirre clearly documents how through the use of scientific discourse based in
ethnographic and racial theories, the two children pass from being simply enfreaked bodies
– examples of lost, ancient indigenous cultures – to being representative of the decline of the
mestizo and mulatto, thus justifying a sense of Anglo racial superiority. The children prove
to the Victorian scientific community that which had previously only been cited in travel
narratives and as such, the condemnation of the Latin American is confirmed and imperial
authority is upheld. Aguirre also examines a contemporary case of the performance art of
Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco that seeks to recreate conditions similar to those of
the Victorian freak show in order to invert the gaze of the spectator, making him/her the
object of spectacle.
Aguirre’s final chapter, “H. Rider Haggard and Imperial Nostalgia,” deals with Haggard’s
novel Montezuma’s Daughter (1894). Although this is the first chapter of the study entirely
dedicated to the analysis of a fictional narrative, throughout the book the author clearly
makes a case for the ways in which the writings that accompanied museum exhibits,
panoramic paintings, and freak shows attempted to substantiate claims of British imperial
authority. Here, Aguirre illustrates how Haggard’s tale of adventure and lost treasures may
be read as a commentary on “Britain’s lost opportunities in Latin America” (139). The
author notes that Haggard’s novel reflects a consciousness of loss of imperial power, making
the historical past where the story told in Montezuma’s Daughter is situated a place of
nostalgic refuge where the British Empire could look to the future with hopes of imperial
prominence.
Aguirre’s successfully shows how the various cultural media examined in his study worked
together to construct a particular way of looking at and appraising the otherness. Tracing
the trajectory of British contact with Latin America throughout the Victorian Age, Aguirre’s
study convincingly illustrates the successes and failures of the British informal empire and is
an interesting and very much quotable investigation.
Aguirre examines the political and economic methods and goals of British “informal empire”
in the region that currently constitutes the states of southern Mexico and the countries of
Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras. The author presents the region as a
contested object of imperial domination, an area in dispute for imperial control between two
international superpowers, Great Britain and the United States, where the United States is
rapidly gaining ground and solidifying its control, a fact evidenced by the Spanish American
War in 1898. This study focuses upon the ways in which Britain, increasingly unable to
sustain physical imperial domination in the face of international competition, attempts
through the construction of social ideology to incorporate Central America as part of its
international empire. Aguirre examines how the British government seeks to extend its
imperial domination through the control of cultural capital and the institution of ideology that
establishes British cultural and racial superiority over the Latin American Other.
Aguirre’s study examines five interrelated moments in British history spanning from 1821 to
1898 that evidence first the endeavors at the configuration of, and later the recognition of the
impossibility of informal British political and economic control in southern Mexico and
Central America. One of the primary strengths of Aguirre’s study is that he is able to expose
the precarious nature of the formulation of informal empire while examining several different
cultural manifestations. The author considers museum collections, visual arts, official
governmental dispatches, freak shows, and literature of the Victorian Age to display the ways
in which Latin American otherness came to be codified and commoditized so as to later be
presented to mass audiences. In each one of these varied representations, Aguirre’s study
strives to demonstrate how the Latin American Other is leveled or flattened out, reduced to
his/her most basic characteristics so as to demonstrate that he/she is essentially inferior
both culturally and racially to his/her British counterpart. This portrayal of the Latin
American subject attempts to substantiate the correctness of a British presence in the region
to civilize and make productive that physical space that constitutes Central America.
As may be gleaned from the terminology used thus far, Edward Said’s Orientalism is
fundamental in Aguirre’s theoretical approach in this study. However, the author seeks to
move beyond Said’s work noting that “Orientalism, whose rigid binaries (us/them;
West/East) and strict Foucauldian model of discourse allow for very little resistance on the
part of the Orient, flattening out the always conflictual, contingent, heterogeneous, and
partial quality of imperial practices” (XXV). Instead, Aguirre follows the studies of Nicholas
Thomas and Mary Louise Pratt, analyzing in each chapter of his study the ways in which
imperial power was contested by the Other, thus suggesting a Laclauian model of
hegemonic processes. However, while interested in presenting the case of resistance, the
author is careful not to present a romanticized vision of the indigenous subject noting that:
The archives that shape my inquiry, whether British or Spanish, are not transparent or all-
inclusive; they are ideological constructs in themselves. Here, at least, the subaltern does
not speak, except through the voices of British and Spanish elites. Hence, I limit myself to
suggesting the ways in which the indigenous presence that haunts these discourses
constitutes a kind of colonial unconscious, an anxious, ambivalent reminder of violent or
symbolic dispossession. (XIX)
This aspect of Aguirre’s study is at once a strength and a limitation of his work. The author
presents an extremely interesting topic of investigation, but at times the question of the
subaltern appears lost in the study, a closing remark rather than an integral part of the
investigation. However, as Aguirre clearly states, his aim is not to attempt to reconstruct the
subaltern perspective, but rather to mark his/her ambiguous presence in the British
imperial project.
The first chapter of Aguirre’s study entitled “‘Open for Inspection’: Mexico at the Egyptian
Hall in 1824” deals primarily with a 1824 exhibition of pre-Columbian artifacts collected by
British entrepreneur William Bullock on a visit to Mexico in 1823. What is of interest to
Aguirre in this chapter is to show that Bullock’s collection not only presents foreign objects
to be observed, but also proposes “ways of looking and perceiving that reinforce imperial
subject positions” (22). Aguirre shows that Bullock’s exhibit is an effective fusion of science
and spectacle under the guise of disinterested humanitarian motivation. The author
presents the ways in which Bullock purports himself as a mere collector of “curiosities,”
interested only in the preservation of the antiquities of Aztec culture threatened first by
Spanish disregard during the Conquest of Mexico, and later by Creole incapacity to preserve
such cultural treasures. However, Aguirre’s analysis also shows how Bullock’s exhibit
displays a pejorative attitude with respect to Mexican culture as primitive and in need of
modern British guidance, thus extending an invitation to British economic and industrial
investment in the region.
Aguirre demonstrates how Bullock’s collection evidences a Victorian aim to “dominate from
a distance.” Employing Arjun Appadurai’s theories of “decontextualization” and
“recontextualization” the author shows how through the configuration of the museum
collection, a process is enacted where the objects removed from their original surroundings
come to be reevaluated and assigned new cultural significances. Artifacts are not assessed
aesthetically, but rather ethnographically and archeologically. As Aguirre demonstrates,
such scientific criteria of evaluation consistently lead to a negative appraisal of both the past
and present state of Mexican culture. Additionally, Aguirre documents how the Mexican
Creole elite attempted to contest exhibitions such as that of Bullock’s, enacting legislation in
order to retain historical artifacts within their own national boundary. The author contends
that such acts on behalf of the elite display a rejection of British imperial techniques that
attempted to acquire Mexican antiquities for incorporation into the imperial catalogue.
The second chapter of Aguirre’s study entitled “Buena Vista: Panoramas and the
Visualization of Conquest” examines the use of landscape aesthetics and the representation
of panoramas in the construction of informal empire. In this chapter the author seeks to
demonstrate how the control over visual representation intends to further imperial control
over distant territories. Aguirre defines the panorama as “vast 360-degree paintings
displayed in specially designed, circular theaters” (36) and to analyze the massive paintings
the author draws a suggestive parallel between the panorama and Jeremy Bentham’s
panopticon, the architectural figure analyzed by Michel Foucault. Aguirre demonstrates
that in the presentation of panorama the viewer is at once incorporated into the spectacle
that he/she observes while at the same time maintaining a privileged gaze upon the work
itself, a view that suggests the domination of the landscape being observed.
In the examination of a panorama created by Robert Burford and exhibited by William
Bullock, Aguirre notes that imperial painting seeks to represent Mexico as an orderly space
so as to assure financial interest couched in the language of “mutually beneficial exchange”
(44). As was the case in his museum exhibit, Bullock presents British interest in Mexico as
that of fostering growth not only for Britain, but for Mexico as well – an aim clearly not held
by the Spaniards who intent was only to dominate Mexico. Aguirre’s focus then shifts to the
United States and the historical context of the Mexican War, analyzing a novel by William
Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843), and a mobile panorama by Corydon
Donnavan. The author argues that these representations seek to justify a second conquest
of Mexico by basing themselves in the rhetoric of Manifest Destiny. Again, Aguirre
demonstrates that these cultural manifestations did not go uncontested by Mexican cultural
elites and that in the criticism of such works an anti-imperialist sentiment is exhibited.
The third chapter of the book entitled “Agencies of the Letter: The British Museum, the
Foreign Office, and the Ruins of Central America” investigates a highly complex web of
official governmental dispatches composed between 1841 and 1855 regarding the
unsuccessful attempt to acquire artifacts from present-day Guatemala and Honduras for
display in the British Museum. What is of principal importance for Aguirre in this chapter is
to demonstrate how writing serves to both empower and cripple imperial domination. The
author examines how British interest in the acquisition of artifacts from Copán, Quiriguá,
and Tikal was spurred on by knowledge attained from travel narratives, primarily from
Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan (1841) written and illustrated
by John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood. Again, native disregard and ignorance
serves as an important justification for the pillage of these Mayan ruins and again, the
context of imperial competition serves as an important backdrop for the author’s
investigation.
Aguirre presents the homosocial world of Victorian British bureaucracy as enabled by the
power of the official dispatch, but at the same time limited by the capacity of the dispatch to
affect reality. The author also demonstrates how internal rivalry in the British political
hierarchy and personal rivalries among competing explorers paralyzed attempts to
consolidate imperial control in the region. It is in this chapter where Aguirre makes his most
convincing comments regarding the subaltern subject. His depiction of non-communication
between indigenous peoples and foreign explorers may lead the reader to consider this part
of Aguirre’s study in the light of the theories proposed by James C. Scott in Weapons of the
Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1985).
The fourth chapter of Aguirre’s study entitled “Freak Show: The Aztec Children and the
Ruins of Race” presents the case of Máximo and Bartola, two microcephalic children
brought from El Salvador to London in 1851 to star in a freak show as the “Aztec
Lilliputians.” In this chapter it is the author’s goal to demonstrate how the spectacle of
freakery is used in order to construct and legitimize social concepts of the racial inferiority of
the Other. Aguirre clearly documents how through the use of scientific discourse based in
ethnographic and racial theories, the two children pass from being simply enfreaked bodies
– examples of lost, ancient indigenous cultures – to being representative of the decline of the
mestizo and mulatto, thus justifying a sense of Anglo racial superiority. The children prove
to the Victorian scientific community that which had previously only been cited in travel
narratives and as such, the condemnation of the Latin American is confirmed and imperial
authority is upheld. Aguirre also examines a contemporary case of the performance art of
Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco that seeks to recreate conditions similar to those of
the Victorian freak show in order to invert the gaze of the spectator, making him/her the
object of spectacle.
Aguirre’s final chapter, “H. Rider Haggard and Imperial Nostalgia,” deals with Haggard’s
novel Montezuma’s Daughter (1894). Although this is the first chapter of the study entirely
dedicated to the analysis of a fictional narrative, throughout the book the author clearly
makes a case for the ways in which the writings that accompanied museum exhibits,
panoramic paintings, and freak shows attempted to substantiate claims of British imperial
authority. Here, Aguirre illustrates how Haggard’s tale of adventure and lost treasures may
be read as a commentary on “Britain’s lost opportunities in Latin America” (139). The
author notes that Haggard’s novel reflects a consciousness of loss of imperial power, making
the historical past where the story told in Montezuma’s Daughter is situated a place of
nostalgic refuge where the British Empire could look to the future with hopes of imperial
prominence.
Aguirre’s successfully shows how the various cultural media examined in his study worked
together to construct a particular way of looking at and appraising the otherness. Tracing
the trajectory of British contact with Latin America throughout the Victorian Age, Aguirre’s
study convincingly illustrates the successes and failures of the British informal empire and is
an interesting and very much quotable investigation.
| (Matthew Bush, University of Colorado at Boulder) |
| n |
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