02/07/2013
Author of Más liberal que libertador. Francisco de Miranda y el nacimiento de la democracia moderna en Europa y América
With letters to the Pope began, a little over five centuries ago, the history of America. The Catholic Monarchs and the Pope, who were the parties involved in that mail, shared their homeland. The election of Rodrigo Borgia to the chair of St. Peter had occurred on August 11, 1492, a week after Columbus sailed from Palos. Ferdinand and Isabella received with dismay the news of the conclave, as the ambitious and lightweight prelate from Xativa did not deserve their best opinion. However, both Rome and Valencia celebrated the ascension of Alexander VI as a Spanish triumph, and during the coronation ceremony the two Spanish ambassadors had the privilege of marching immediately behind the Cardinals. Upon learning about the findings of the Columbian expedition, the diplomacy of the Catholic Monarchs benefited from the professionalism of some of his best men: the Bishop of Cartagena, Bernardino López de Carvajal, who managed to get the famous Inter caetera bull, with which the vicar of Christ granted the findings to the crown of Castile; the viceroy of Galicia, Diego López de Haro, who went to Rome in extraordinary embassy with an impressive entourage; or Garcilaso de la Vega, father of the poet, whom King Louis XII of France called the "ambassador of Kings and King of the ambassadors".
For Marxist-Leninist historiography, it was precisely in those cunning dealings amongst courtiers where the policy which afterwards determined the life of the new continent was conceived: imperialism. According to this, the papal document instruction to "to send to the said firm lands and islands honest, virtuous, and learned men, such as fear God, and are able to instruct the inhabitants in the Catholic faith and good manners" poorly disguised the greed of a perverted humanity, which could not teach anything to those living in a state of natural happiness and goodness. We can draw two conclusions from this: that the Latin American policy should be to seek a Sonderweg, in other words, its "own path" conceived as an alternative to the "good manners" imposed by the hypocritical Western culture; and that violence is an entitled means to do so.
Today, however, it is a sovereign republic of the New World which shares nationality with the head of the Church. And if it be a slight to the American virginity restorers that a native of the "Indies" should lead a radically Western institution, it is not just Pope Francisco who should disturb them, but leaders such as the president of Argentina, called Fernandez de Kirchner, who rules the destinies of a nation state, built on the principles of liberal democracy and inserted in the global order. Everything inherited, unfortunately for them, from that world of "good manners" that Argentina cannot but belong to.
It can, indeed, assume bad manners, and those who do so have always found a convenient pretext in anti-Western discourse. Today, more than ever, it is necessary to discover the metamorphosis of "the noble savage to the good revolutionary" denounced by Carlos Rangel in a book of the same title in Spanish, published now by FAES in electronic version. Cristina Kirchner's "heterodox" greeting to the Pope, without any respect for protocol or syntax, reveals that precise itinerary and shows that the president resorts to the argument of subversive originality to hold the majesty of the State in derision. And if she does not take it in consideration when writing an official letter –because she finds it is "written as a formal obligation of the 13th century" (sic)– one can understand that Magna Cartas also seem to her mere hot air.