The Mines of King Fernando: Silver, Gold, and Spain’s Barbarism in the Discourse of Independence in Spanish America

Abstract

Poetry and journalism were two closely related forms of expression adopted by writers fighting over the cultural autonomy and political independence of Latin America at the start of the 19th Century. This article maps out the central role of the debate over natural and mineral resources as well as the Spanish dependency on American silver and gold in some of the relevant works from the Latin American poetry of independence. The poems by Andrés Bello, José Joaquín Olmedo, and Bartolomé Hidalgo analyzed here, show how literary texts became a suitable space to explore the mechanical colonial relations of mineral exploitation and expropriation, and also to imagine the postcolonial future and the role (if any) assigned to mining industries in that new scene.