Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2025
The concluding chapter discusses the ideological underpinnings of the Chuquisaca movement. It reappraises a recurring idea throughout the book: that appealing to ancient Hispanic constitutional doctrines did not make the political process more moderate and backward-looking, less intransigent and corrosive than other revolutionary movements in Spanish America at the time. It is a concept defined as the radicalism of tradition. Beyond formal political proclamations, routines of obedience to authority broke down; traditional social classifications were no longer associated with a particular kind of participation in public life; and the barriers between the urban popular sectors and the creole elites grew increasingly porous as the local communities asserted themselves as the primary loci of collective identity and their traditional place in the imperial order came under public scrutiny. The growing weight of the general will in state affairs favored a practical exercise of sovereign rights that, couched in the contractual character of the monarchy, made submission to the metropolis and its overseas agents a matter of opinion, an object of consent. A brief assessment of the reception of the liberal Constitution of Cadiz of 1812 highlights the pervasive effects of these shifts in the inner workings of politics and social representations.
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