Well, my apologies. First of all, my Japanese courses began, and I started to go back to the gym. I'm also exhausted, and disgusted at the fact this is going to be the 10th year in which I am single and I will see a lot of nauseating crap tomorrow. This caused a certain delay on the writing of this chapter.
However, I make up to this by starting to use more or less a somewhat farcical view on history, as if it was seen from someone who lives on that TL. As from this point on, I'll write about this timeline on this way.
Next chapter will be better, I swear. Because you'll finally see the flashpoint on one of the events described in here.
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Chapter 3
Things going South America
Almost at the same year when Mexican independence began, South America as a whole began its own struggle to free itself from the Spanish Empire. It all ended in... Doesn’t really matter, but at least we know that Paraguay ended with the Spanish domination almost bloodlessly and Chile was the last one to expel all remnants of the Spanish occupation. The point is that both Colombia [1] and La Plata [2] both dispute themselves as the place where the independence wars began, something that for two countries that are more or less a sideshow in modern politics, is the equivalent of the picture below.
The abridged discussion about who started the independence wars... in graphic format.
The only country that did not liberate itself from the Spanish Metropole was Perú.
Of all of these movements, only the “Peruvian Independence War” (or “The Intervention War”, if the Peruvians, Spaniards and Mexicans are to go by) failed. The reason for this can be drilled down to the following causes:
- Little support from the population in general.
- Peruvian upper class merchants disliked their Platinean and Colombian peers.
- Failed rebellions.
- Conservative population.
- Massive amounts of infighting. The rebels ended up fighting amongst themselves more than they did in the Loyalists.
- Agustín Agualongo
This comedy of failures came to an end when the Libertadores opted to stage a two-pronged attack onto Perú, with an expedition launched from Colombia on the north, and from Chile and La Plata from the south.
The campaigns in map-form... as by its own era. Witness the madness of calling Perú a Republic, and splitting it to make matters worse. The madness... the madness...
This guaranteed that those who would establish the Republic of Perú would have an easier time beating the Loyalists. Except that... it didn’t go as planned.
In northern Perú, we had Agustín Agualongo: A man who, with only a musket, standard-issue hot blood and unabashed loyalty to the King of Spain, would cause a series of logistical nightmares to the Colombian armies trying to go through the Andes, and who would never be captured by them. He also managed to fight Bolívar to a draw, and went on to avoid the crossing of any Colombian into the north. And the only way they could get out of his sight would be by going to the sea, where seemingly, he could not reach them. Agualongo would eventually fight his way until the Colombians gave up in 1824, fed up by having to disembark in the middle of nowhere just to avoid seeing his ugly mug ever again.
Or like our Anglo friends would say... “Rage quit”
The southern campaign was more successful, if only because they had been more prepared: They had a stronger army, reinforced by British mercenaries and seamen, better leaders, and a more organized army. And due to the character mentioned above, the Libertadores eventually gathered all of their forces in Callao, forming a large army to liberate Perú.
However, in February 1824, the Platinean forces called it quits, and rebelled against the Liberation Army. This further weakened the Libertador army, which was left with Colombians, some Mexican volunteers which we’ll learn about below, and Peruvian revolutionary forces. And to make matters worse for them, the Spaniards came in and supported the mutinied soldiers. The Liberation of Perú came to an anticlimactic close, in which José de San Martín was captured, Bolívar fled, and everyone else scattered against the onslaught. [3]
The Spaniards would later on force a truce onto the Republics, by recognizing some of the territorial gains they had: Colombia had gained themselves Quito and the Pastaza region. Chile and La Plata had also taken some territories from the Alto Perú. However, Perú would still remain as a Spanish possession. The people of Pastaza, however, would have it hard upon them for years to come due to their collaboration with the Spaniards, and Quito would also suffer for quite some time the presence of Colombian forces, which were neither better nor worse than the previous Spanish overlords.
And a strange inversion to all of this was Brazil, which, after the Napoleonic Invasion of Portugal in 1807, became the seat of government of the Portuguese Empire for a few years, until Portugal was liberated when the Bonapartists were defeated at Waterloo some years after that. However, the Brazilian ruling class did not wanted to see itself relegated to ruling a colony, so Brazil was made a Kingdom, joined together with Portugal in personal union. However, in 1821, Brazil suddenly saw itself again under the Portuguese domination, when the Cortes in Portugal decreed that Brazil should submit itself back to the Portuguese fold. The reaction for this was of complete outrage from both Brazilians and Portuguese inhabitants of Brazil. Troops mutinied against Portugal, and swore allegiance to Pedro I. In almost about a year, those who remained loyal to Portugal and agreed to the horrendous idea of having a subservient Brazil to Portugal were kicked out of the country
Pictured: The coronation of Pedro I
There was also the issue of the annexation of Cisplatina, [4] which caused frustration to the Platineans at the other side of the Mar del Plata. But anyways, those are stories for another day.
And while the Spanish-speaking nations of Latin America were trying to scramble any and all possible forces to “throw off the odious Spanish yoke” in Perú, Mexico finally managed to get an ambassador to Colombia. Crown Prince Agustín Jerónimo was sent as an ambassador to Colombia, and war heroes Vicente Guerrero and Guadalupe Victoria, in ever present service to the Fatherland, were also sent over to command a 1000-strong expeditionary force. Sadly, Don Vicente’s impressive sense of direction ended up becoming more of a nuisance to both sides, when he ended up in the mountains off in northern Perú, where he would never come back to Mexico, after he got cut off from his supply lines. Just as he did during the Independence War, he kept a successful aggressive guerrilla campaign against the Spanish forces. He remained there until 1827, when he was struck by a stray bullet in one of his many raids against the Spanish-Peruvian forces, and Don Guadalupe was done in by Agualongo in the Pastaza region. About 160 men came back to Mexico, their struggles were narrated in the famous tale “600 Días en Los Andes”. Nowadays, people see this as a blatant exercise on getting rid of political enemies.
Prince Agustín Jerónimo, however, managed to become a personal friend of Simón Bolívar, being also there when the latter had its last breath. Their friendship managed to bring a certain level of peace between Colombia and Mexico, something strange given the severe ideological differences between both governments.
At the end, most of the “Liberate our Peruvian Brethren” rhetoric from the Platinean, the Chilean and the Colombian governments petered out, when the Peruvians achieved their “independence”, as an autonomous kingdom within the Spanish Empire. By this, Perú was able to make its own decisions with the help of a local ruling class instead of having to rely on to Spain for any top-level decisions.
In the meanwhile, Colombia barely managed to avoid its own disintegration in their civil wars in the 1830’s decade and La Plata soon saw itself locked in a perpetual state of political instabilities, military dictatorships, civil wars, “Retake the Banda Oriental” rhetoric and “caudillo of the year” governments, and of course, their own rivalry with its northern neighbour and democratic antithesis: the Empire of Brazil. And Paraguay... was busy being Paraguay, and trying to remain itself out of the continuous bickering between Argentina and Brazil. Lastly, Chile had its own share of problems, with had to do with their small population and the Mapuche raids on the south.
[1] “Colombia” will be used as a catch-all term for Gran Colombia
[2] “La Plata” is Argentina.
[3] OTL, the Spanish forces didn’t make it in time.
[4] OTL Uruguay