Glossary of Latin American Colonial and Revolutionary History

Flashcards covering political, social, and economic terms from Chapters 7 and 8 of the lecture glossary.

Anticlericalism

A political philosophy that rejected the right of Catholic clerics to exercise secular power in political, social, or economic affairs and restricts their influence to private religious matters.

Cédula

A royal decree issued by the Spanish crown.

Cédula de gracias al sacar

The royal decree that reflected the socially contingent nature of race in colonial Spanish America by permitting mixed-race peoples to purchase legal titles to whiteness.

común

A central committee.

Consulado

A merchant guild and a tribunal of commerce during the colonial period.

Deism

A political philosophy that recognizes the existence of God but subordinates public policy decision making to the rational application of natural law.

Development

A process through which a nation maximizes the distribution of its resources to enhance the quality of life for the greatest number of its citizens, measured by standards like poverty reduction, literacy rates, and per capita income.

Estancias

Literally “estates,” this refers to the large cattle ranches that monopolized land, transformed the Argentine pampas, and rendered Argentina dependent on beef exports.

fiscal

attorney

forasteros

outsiders

fuero militar

A grant of military perquisite that gave protection from civil legal jurisdiction and liability, except for specified offenses, instituted as an attempt to make military service attractive to the creole upper class.

Growth

A process through which a nation maximizes the production and utilization of its resources, usually measured against standards including the gross national product, the gross domestic product, foreign direct investment, and balance of payments.

guardacostas

Private warships commissioned by the Spanish government to help check smuggling in the Caribbean

Latifundio

The system of large landholdings, feudal in its origins, that has dominated Latin America since the colonial period.

Mesta

A Spanish stockbreeders’ corporation

mingas

free workers

mitayos

drafted workers

pardos (Chapter 7)

Free mulattos who, under the last Bourbon kings, were allowed to buy legal whiteness through the purchase of cédulas de gracias al sacar.

Patria

The fatherland.

saladeros

Salting plants that produced salted meat for export in Spanish America

subdelegados

Deputy intendants, nominated by intendants and confirmed by viceroys, appointed to govern indigenous towns.

tumultos

riots

Côrtes

The Portuguese parliament.

cajas de comunidad

Community treasuries, abolished in Mexico by Morales, whose funds were often misused by village notables or drained off by royal officials.

fico

“I remain.” Dom Pedro's famous response on January $9$, $1822$ to an order from the Côrtes to return to Portugal.

Llaneros

The mixed-race inhabitants of the llanos, who defended their individual liberty both against Spanish colonialism and Spanish American creole aristocracy.

Llanos

The flat plains in northern South America that were the agricultural heartland of Gran Colombia.

mazombos

Portuguese elites born in Brazil

Pardos (Chapter 8)

Literally “browns,” the designation of mixed-race peoples both in Spanish and Portuguese America.

Porteño

In Argentina, an inhabitant of Buenos Aires.

Proletariat

The class of propertyless people forced by what Max Weber called the “whip of hunger” to sell their labor to secure the wages necessary to purchase their survival.

Reinóis

Literally “of royalty,” this term identified elites born in Portugal and appointed by the Portuguese crown to serve loyally the colonial administration in Brazil.

Sierra

The remote mountainous regions of Spanish-speaking Latin America more generally but also used to describe the guerrilla insurgency in the Cuban Revolution.