Notes for a reform of Spain, without disruption of the monarchical government or religion
Keywords:
State Constitution, Monarchy, Republic, SpainAbstract
At a time when the spirit of liberty is making so much progress, and when the enthusiasm that follows it causes so much havoc, every good citizen should devote his meditations to avoid a revolution, which the abuses themselves prepare, which the example of other peoples anticipates, and which should be feared more than the evils we suffer, and which we so much desire to amend. It is an impossibility, once the revolution is verified, to expect from a congress of enthusiasts, that they do not propel themselves beyond the limits of reason, and that, in their rage against abuses, they do not also destroy the perhaps innocent causes that produce them: just as it would be impossible to get a gang of madmen to pull up weeds from a field without pulling up the wheat.
Author Biography
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Victoriano de Villava, Audiencia y Cancillería Real de La Plata de los Charcas
He was spanish. The background of his life in Europe is not known. He arrived in Buenos Aires in 1789 as a judge and went to Chuquisaca to hold the position of Prosecutor of the Audiencia in 1790. He was an upright magistrate and a generous defender of justice. His pen wrote the tax reports with the same height as the dissertations on the great political and moral problems of the time. “Apostolic figure endowed with great character and majestic flights of thought and expression” writes Ricardo Levene, in his book on The May Revolution and Mariano Moreno.
Villava's thought focused first on the theme that surely occupies the central point in the concerns of the national spirit: the Indian; a subject whose discussion was initiated by the theologians who tried to deny the soul of the American aborigine and which over time has taken on the most diverse aspects. He found the institution of the mita, created by the Incas and perpetuated by the Spanish and by virtue of which thousands of Indians, gathered in all the provinces of the viceroyalty, were forced to work in the mines. He was moved by this reality and wrote his Discourse on the Potosí mita, which served as the background for the Legal Dissertation on the personal service of the Indians, by Mariano Moreno.
This work comprised two parts. In the first Villava referred to the legal aspects of the mita, to the legal characteristics. In the second he studied the human problem of the Indian.
In this second part, Villava sided with the original inhabitants of the continent, whom, according to him, they wanted to consider as soulless beings, as simple machines, in order to be able to exploit them ruthlessly.
The speech provoked a controversy that had extraordinary resonance. The Governor of Potosí, Francisco de Paula Sanz, becoming a defender of the miners, published a lengthy Reply trying to refute Villava's claims. The Governor maintained that the mita was a public order service and that the Indian, being indolent and unproductive, should be forced to provide it, for his own benefit and for the benefit of the State.
Villava replied with a new writing, of which are the following words, whose echo has been resounding throughout the course of our history: «The Indian is not so incomprehensible to me, because everything I observe in him are precise consequences of his misery , of their oppression, of their distrust and in the same circumstances it can be, with a sure blow, to establish that the same would be any man ».
Reference
Reacción Charquina. (7 de junio de 2021). Victoriano de Villalva. https://rcharquina.wordpress.com/2021/06/07/victoriano-de-villalva/
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