Americas In The Age Of Revolution Analysis

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Lester Langely, argues in his book The Americas in the Age of Revolution, that “Ordinary people had little comprehension of this revolution from above and the principles its creators had espoused in the constitution of 1811. The revolution had been the work of elites determined to safeguard their old privileges.” Langley assumes the masses had little understanding of the politics of the country and does not search for a reason why this may happen. Other historians such as Marixa Lasso and Marcela Echeverri provide evidence to the contrary and demonstrate the attempts made by the Creole elite to silence and exclude the lower classes to secure their power.
Langley assumes complete political naiveté from the masses specifically the people of
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The Creole elite in Cartagena felt the “lower classes were counted among those obstacles that Creole patriots had to overcome,” because they “would drag the nation down the road to anarchy,” (Lasso 225). The Creole acknowledged the lower classes had their own opinions on the independence and would be able to impose such ideas through the force of their numbers. The Creole elite equate political rights to the masses to “anarchy”. After the Toledistas gained control of Cartagena they celebrated with many commemorative acts “to portray the role in saving the Creoles in saving the city from ‘chaos’” and to invent an official narrative of independence in which the participation of the colored lower classes was erased altogether,” (Lasso 237). In certain aspects Langley is not completely wrong. The revolution was the work of elites fighting to maintain their social standing and the best way to do this is to silence the opposition. The Creole elites actively sought to stifle the lower classes and to erase their political rights and paint a picture where the masses are too ignorant to create a new working