Rafael Carrera and the Independence of Guatemala

Although he was the illiterate son of a muleteer, at a young age he became President of Guatemala and arguably the dominant figure in Central America. While he spoke no indigenous language and hailed from the city, he united the indigenous people of Guatemala’s highlands in a revolutionary movement.

The United Provinces of Central AmericaAlthough Spain lost its grip on Central America in 1821, Guatemala did not yet exist as an independent nation. In fact, the newly formed Mexican Empire ruled all of Central America until the region seceded from Mexico in 1824. Central American elites, heavily influenced by ideals of Western democracy, sought to create a federalist union: the United Provinces of Central America.

Carrera: Origins and Youth

Carrera hardly seemed a likely candidate to become future President of Guatemala. Born in Guatemala City in1814, during the tumultuous period of the American wars of independence against Spain, he belonged to a family of few means. His mother, a shopkeeper, once worked as a domestic servant; his father drove mules.

At age 12, he left home and joined the army as a drummer boy. Later, he worked as a servant and agricultural hand, wandering the countryside from one job to the next. His position finally improved when he acquired some pigs and established a successful pig-raising business in the town of Mataquescuintla in eastern Guatemala. There, he secured an advantageous marriage to Petrona García, the beautiful daughter of a local landowner.

Nineteenth Century Guatemala: Reform, Rebellion and Revolution

Political events quickly interrupted Carrera’s new life in Mataquescuintla. The new government of the United Provinces had enacted a series of reforms that outraged rural Guatemalans: imposition of a head tax, a land reform that favored elites and eroded community rights, and concession of large tracts of land to foreign colonists. Finally, cholera broke out in 1837, and the government instituted draconian measures, using troops to quarantine villages.

Many communities rebelled against these reforms, including Mataquescuintla in 1837. Carrera first appeared on the political scene when he persuaded a local mob not to lynch an official enforcing the cholera quarantine. This so impressed the military governor of the area that he appointed Carrera captain of the garrison of Mataquescuintla.

The misery in the countryside soon persuaded Carrera to abandon his allegiance to the government and join the growing revolutionary movement. He managed to unite the scattered rebels of eastern Guatemala into one coherent army, and his forces quickly gained ground. The desperate government of the United Provinces conscripted convicts, turning them loose on the countryside in a wave of cruel repression, which included an assault on Carrera’s wife.

The Origin of Modern Guatemala and Central America

This repression only made the United Provinces Government even less popular and added new recruits to Carrera’s growing army. By 1838, less than a year after he began his political life, Carrera entered Guatemala City at the head of an army and installed a new government. He was only 23 years old. Allegedly, he extracted an 11,000 peso bribe from the citizenry of the capital, but prevented his troops from looting (Stephens 1850).

Carrera returned to the capital the next year year, as he would several more times during his stormy career, when the new government he had helped install did not abandon the hated reforms at a quick enough pace. He returned yet again in 1840, this time to do battle with the forces of Francisco Morazán, leader of the United Provinces. Carrera’s defeat of Morazán in the streets of Guatemala City sealed the fate of the United Provinces; Central America would no longer exist under a united government, and Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Nicaragua would thenceforth function as independent states.

Carrera, the former swineherd, would dominate Central American politics for the next quarter century.

Sources

Archivo General de Centroamérica, Guatemala City.

Smith, Carol, ed. Guatemalan Indians and the State, 1540-1988. Austin: University of Texas press, 1990.

Woodward, Ralph. Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995.

Rafael Carrera

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