Author: Rodrigo Escribano Roca
DOI : https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15433824
It is not easy to write a synthetic biography of Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, that romantic liberal of the 19th century who was a secret agent, landowner, senator, exile, prisoner, revolutionary, patriot, Americanist, nationalist, Anglophile, presidential candidate, elite scion, populist, social reformer, agitator, urban planner, intendant, novelist, historian, and journalist.
Vicuña Mackenna was born in Santiago de Chile in 1831. He came into the world with all the elements to become a figure of prominence in the Chilean political scene and to have a special relationship with the English-speaking world. He descended from two lineages that played an important role in global Hispanic history. On the one hand, there was the Vicuña, a mercantile dynasty of Basque origin that had established itself in the power networks of the viceroyalty of Peru and the Captaincy General of Chile during the 18th century. On the other side, we find the Mackenna family, a not uncommon case of Irish Catholics who fled the confessional conflict in their homeland to join the armies of the Spanish Monarchy , thriving in the militias of his American dominions. Both families had a well-to-do position, and both took sides in favour of independence. The grandfather of our protagonist, John Mackenna (1771–1814), was one of Bernardo O’Higgins‘ staunch allies and lost his life in a duel with one of the Carrera brothers. It is worth noting that both families supported the republican emancipatory movements from the very beginning.
Benjamín’s father, Francisco Ramón Vicuña, was the founder of El Mercurio de Valparaíso – today the oldest Spanish-language newspaper continuously in print – and supported the liberal constitutionalism led by President Francisco Antonio Pinto until 1829. Francisco Ramón was an outspoken believer in a parliamentary and federal republic capable of breaking with the status quo bequeathed from the Ancien Régime. This led to his exclusion from high politics when the so-called “pelucones” took control of the institutions. The political system that crystallised in the Constitution of 1833, devised by Diego Portales and José Joaquín Prieto who presided over the Conservative Republic period between 1831 and 1861. These were decades of remarkable political stability, with only three presidents who succeeded each other without too much trouble: José Joaquín Prieto, Manuel Bulnes and Pedro Montt. However, stability came at a price: tremendously powerful governments that imposed themselves on the work of parliamentary and judicial bodies; the continuity of the traditional prerogatives of corporate and ecclesiastical powers, and the drastic curtailment of civil rights and suffrage.
Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna spent the first thirty years of his life within this conservative order. He did so while keeping in line with his family’s stance. The young man had the education, material comforts and contacts befitting a scion of the republican elites of the time. However, he continued and even accentuated the reformist approach of his predecessors, pinning Chile’s future on the triumph of democratic, federal, and secular constitutionalism. His education developed in elitist institutions: the Cueto School, the Instituto Nacional (National Institute) and the University of Chile, where he graduated in Law and Political Science in 1849. It was at this time that the activist Vicuña Mackenna came to the fore, befriending the great democratic-republican ideologues of his time, such as Miguel Luis Amunátegui, José Victorino Lastarria and Francisco Bilbao. They were all inspired by the advent of the Second French Republic and Lamartine’s romantic evocation of the French Revolution in his History of the Girondins. In those years, the biographer became involved in organising a movement that aspired to convene a constituent process to rebuild the Chilean system on liberal-radical foundations. To this end, he became one of the pioneers in coordinating democratic and revolutionary social organisations, such as the Club de la Igualdad (Equality Club) and the Sociedad de la Igualdad (Equality Society). Vicuña Mackenna began to make himself known as a public writer in this period. His work as editor of newspapers such as La Tribuna and the publication of historiographical works such as El Sitio de Chillán disseminated the romantic and liberal-republican patriotism to which he subscribed.
All this activity, which had its catharsis in his involvement in the Liberal Party mutiny against the government in 1851, led Vicuña Mackenna into a precautionary exile. It was, of course, a golden exile, which almost resembled the Euro-American tour typical of the Latin American patriciate cubs. His travel diary, published in 1856, recounts his passage through Mexico, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Italy. Through its pages, we follow the young expatriate through the perilous landscapes of the Mexican heartland, punctuated by the civil strife that conditioned the development of the newborn republic. Then we ride with him on the locomotives connecting the effervescent American markets in the United States. The Anglo-Saxon republic gave the protagonist mixed impressions: surprised by its material prosperity and egalitarian character; disappointed by what he perceived as a materialistic and somewhat hypocritical society. We crossed the sea with him. On 2 August 1853, he sighted the coast of Ireland, the homeland of his ancestors, from the steamship that was carrying him. In the United Kingdom, he discovered the incipient but unstoppable evil of pauperism, and his republicanism began to be enriched by a certain working-class consciousness. He spent an unremarkable but very formative year in England at the Cirencester Royal Agricultural College where he got an expertise in applying modern agricultural production techniques. His diary reveals his lack of affinity with English society: he failed to understand the local community which he considered somewhat closed and dull. He could not share his fellow students’ fondness for horse riding, fishing, and cricket. Nor did he have much sympathy for the fox hunts organised by Henry George Bathurst, 4th Earl Bathurst. However, his studies were intense, and he travelled through the British Isles hunting for scientific novelties. In January 1854, he attended the annual fair of the Royal Agricultural Society of England. There he examined an extensive collection of the latest tools and technologies, paying particular attention to those that could contribute to the productivity of Chile’s cereal crops. His time in Scotland that same year also allowed him to admire the literary and scientific heritage of Edinburgh and the manufacturing and commercial wealth of Glasgow.
At the end of July 1854, he arrived in Ireland. His diary describes with excitement his landing in Belfast, from where he travelled through Armagh, Enniskillen, and Dublin to the old Mackenna family home in County Monaghan. There he met his grandfather’s sister, Laticia or Letitia O’Higgins, who apparently was no less than 106 years old, although extensive research has neither allow us to verify that claim nor find an explanation for her adoption of the O’Higgins surname which seems to suggest a blood connection of the Mackennas with the family of Bernardo O’Higgins. The old woman showed him around and recounted the ups and downs of the family’s past, emphasising the Mackennas’ resistance to Anglo-Protestant rule. In April 1855, after completing his studies at the Royal Agricultural College, he left the British Isles, never to return. However, he took with him a strengthened sense of family identity, a republican ideology steeped into the social question and a wealth of agricultural knowledge that he would end up introducing in the Chilean public sphere, generating essential innovations in its production dynamics. In short, by reconstructing the wanderings of the young republican, we come into contact with a personal experience that gives an account of the processes of circulation of scientific knowledge, political ideas and cultural frameworks that were shaping the intersecting modernities of the Americas and Europe and, very notably, of the Anglo and Hispanic worlds.
His travels during these years also took him to the Paris of the Second Empire, where he had the opportunity to catch up with the Avant-Garde of European radicalism, rejecting the hierarchical universe of monarchism more than ever. On his continental tour, Vicuña Mackenna carefully observed the avenues, public monuments, and sanitation systems of French and Italian cities. In October 1855, back in Chile, he returned to his democratising activism. In 1858, he went into exile, this time not by choice, to Europe again. After that, his life alternated brief revolutionary activities in Chile with and exile until the accession to the presidency of President José Joaquín Prieto – his personal friend – in 1861 that allowed him to become integrated into Chilean political life.
It is at this point in his biography that Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna’s other primary interaction with the Anglo-World took place because of his role in the Spanish-South American War, the conflict between the Spanish Monarchy, Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia that broke out between 1865 and 1866. It all began in 1862 when Spain sent a modern steam flotilla to circumnavigate South America’s Pacific coast. The aim of the Pacific Squadron was quite explicit: Spain, which was doing well economically, wanted to show off the power of its renewed naval forces to its former dominions so that the Latin American republics would be amenable to the interests of the numerous Spanish emigrant colonies residing in their capitals and to the commercial and diplomatic influence of the Monarchy. This plan and the misunderstandings arising from it led the Spanish squadron to occupy the Peruvian guano islands and later to enter into conflict with Chile. It all ended with the fleet bombardment of Valparaíso and Callao in 1866. The Pacific expedition thus ended in disaster, but the plan responded to a detailed projection of the international arena that was opposed to that advocated by Americanists such as Vicuña Mackenna, which called for an American world organised into sovereign states based on democratic constitutionalism and republican solidarity.
Although limited to a series of naval operations, the Spanish-South American war had diplomatic and geostrategic importance of the highest order on a global scale. In it, as in Mexico and Santo Domingo at the same time, the question was whether the hegemony would correspond to the European monarchies or the American republics. In this context, we find Vicuña Mackenna, who by 1865 had already established himself as a leading journalist, historian and member of parliament. His democratising projects were more forceful than ever. However, he was now backed by his friendship with President José Joaquín Pérez and his affinity with some of the liberal-conservative fusion projects he represented. His reputation as a patriot, his democratic leanings and his proven energy earned him the appointment by the Minister of State, Álvaro Covarrubias, as Chile’s confidential agent in the United States. His objective was to acquire arms and diplomatic support from Washington to confront the Spanish fleet, which was already blockading Chilean ports. At this time, Vicuña Mackenna deployed a highly effective journalistic, rhetorical, and diplomatic activity to promote the Americanist cause publicly. During his time in Peru and Panama, he was able to tip the balance of the war in Chile’s favour, contributing to the formation of an allied government in Peru and promoting anti-Spanish agitation in Central America. Once in the United States, Vicuña Mackenna, provided with meagre resources and operating from a modest New York boarding house, was able to confront Spanish counterespionage and Secretary of State William Henry Seward. Both were pressing for the United States, wounded by the civil war, to remain neutral in the conflict without implementing the Monroe Doctrine. Many witnesses were overwhelmed by the hyperactivity of Vicuña Mackenna, who gave successful lectures in favour of the Chilean cause and American republicanism in such influential circles as the Travellers Club and the Cooper’s Institute in New York. He also lobbied the New York press and founded his own newspaper geared toward anti-Spanish war propaganda: La Voz de América. At the same time, he moved through the city’s upper and lower classes, negotiating with dealers, businessmen and diplomatic agents for arms and ships. These activities led him to being attacked by the press, frustrated by a lack of funds, and even having to attend two court hearings, one of those accused of violating the Union’s neutrality laws.
If his time in the United Kingdom was of great interest to the history of the circulation of scientific knowledge and political ideas in the Hispanic Anglosphere, his adventures in the United States are an essential milestone in the diplomatic dynamics that affected it. Between these episodes and his death in 1886, Vicuña Mackenna would become a renowned moderniser of Chilean agriculture, mayor of Santiago, an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency and an active promoter of the invasions of Peru and Arauco (the lands occupied by Native Mapuche tribes). Throughout this period, he would apply to his political and economic activities many of the knowledge and ideas he had acquired during his time in the British Isles and the United States.
Sources: Woods, David. Meteor. Cómo una aventura en Nueva York cambió la extraordinaria vida de Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna. Santiago de Chile: Ricaaventura, 2022.; Del Pozo Artigas, José. Benjamín: Una vida del siglo XIX. Santiago de Chile: RIL Editores, 2013; Ramírez Errázuriz, Verónica, y Patricio Leyton Alvarado. «Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna y La Ciencia: Defensor de La Astronomía Popular En Chile a Finales Del Siglo XIX». Historia y Sociedad, 2020. https://doi.org/10.15446/hys.n38.79949; Vicuña Mackenna, Benjamín. Diez meses de mision a los Estados Unidos de Norte America como ajente confidencial de Chile. Santiago de Chile: La Libertad, 1867; ———. Historia de la guerra de Chile con España (de 1863 a 1866). Santiago de Chile: Impr. «Victoria» de H. Izquierdo i ca., 1883; ———. Pájinas de mi diario durante tres años de viajes: 1853. –1854. –1855. Santiago de Chile: Imprenta del Ferrocarril, 1856.
How to cite: To cite from this page, please use any style (Chicago, Harvard, etc). Our preferred citation form is: Rodrigo Escribano Roca, ‘Vicuña Mackenna, Benjamin (1831–1886)’, The Hispanic-Anglosphere: transnational networks, global communities (late 18th to early 20th centuries), project funded by the AHRC and the University of Winchester in partnership with the National Trust and the Centro de Estudios Americanos-Universidad Adolfo Ibañez [ available at https://hispanic-anglosphere.com/individuals/vicuna-mackenna-benjamin-1831-1886/, accessed – please add date].
DOI : https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15433824
Thematic categories:
Exile and Migration; Politics; War and the Military; Press, Journalism & The Media; Science, Medicine and Technology
The Hispanic-Anglosphere ... 