How Napoleon Invented Latinas
If you proudly call yourself a Latina — as every single Latina I know does — then you have to thank Napoleon III of France for giving you that name.
Napoleon III, who was born Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, loved to name things and bestow titles. It’s no surprise, then, that he embraced Michel Chevalier’s proposal to proclaim all the peoples of the nations that constitute Hispanoamérica and Brazil something to his liking: Latin Americans.
Their consent on the matter was unnecessary: Napoleon III was, after all, an emperor.
*
How Napoleon III, the last French monarch and first president of France, decided to banish hispano and hispana in favor of latino and latina is the story of bold ambition and a daring challenge to nations that spoke English.
Napoleon III’s decision to invent L’Amérique latine made Michel Chevalier very happy. Chevalier, a French statesman and engineer, postulated the idea that Europeans could be divided into two groups. He believed that Europeans who spoke the principal Romance languages — French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian — were one race, the “Roman” race. They were distinct from “German” race, which, he believed, included the Anglo-Saxons.[1] He argued that this natural linguistic affinity meant that, in New World, the people who spoke Spanish, Portuguese, and French were a single race that stood in opposition to the English-speaking peoples of the hemisphere, by which he meant the Americans of the United States.[2]
He further advocated that, as the nations throughout the Americas established their independence from Spain and Portugal, there was an opportunity for France to step in and lead them into a fantastic Francophile future. In other words, if Spanish America and Brazil turned their backs on Madrid and Lisbon, respectively, Paris could take center stage. Chevalier wanted this because he was convinced that “the Spanish American seems nothing other than an impotent race without a future, unless it receives a wave of rich and new blood.”[3]
Napoleon III was receptive to all of this. He lamented that French was in decline in the Americas. He deplored the loss of New Orleans. He mourned the tsunami of the English language washing over Québec. He considered Haiti as an affront and humiliation.[4] Napoleon III desperately wanted to come up with a reason to get back in the game and to reestablish a formidable presence in the New World.
This is why Napoleon III fell in love with Chevalier’s ideas. Indeed, Chevalier convinced the French emperor that there was a natural division in the Americas. One America spoke “Latin” languages, Spanish and Portuguese. The other America spoke English. It was the “Anglo-Saxon America” that had to be vanquished. Chevalier further believed that “Latin” America would agree to battle “Anglo-Saxon America” under French leadership.
Napoleon III wanted to move forward with this terrific idea. In 1834, he sent Chevalier on a diplomatic mission to the United Sates and Spanish America to test the waters. It was on this trip that intellectuals in France and Spanish America seized on the idea that a united Amérique latine could stand in opposition to and defiance of the United States. “No longer will they be called hispanos, but latinos,” Chevalier confided to Andrés Manuel del Río, a Spanish-Mexican engineer and business partner. “The idea of América Latina — L’Amérique latine — was perfect,” Del Río wrote, thrilled by the possibility of a Paris-Madrid-Lisbon alliance to take control of the entire hemisphere. “The adoption of Latinoamérica allows for a sweeping unity across Spanish America, Brazil, and the French Caribbean that, together, could stand up to the behemoth of the Anglo-Saxon aggression from Washington, D.C.” the Spanish-born Mexican declared.
Napoleon III was thrilled with the good news and declared that hispanos were now latinos and hispanas were now latinas.
The emperor came up with an ingenious way to carry out his vision, but who could carry it off with competence and style? He looked around Europe and found a handsome, dashing, and accomplished Austrian archduke by the name of Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph Maria.[5] It helped that the archduke’s older brother was a fellow emperor: Franz Joseph I of Austria. That Maximilian had a storied career as the commander-in-chief of the Austrian Navy sealed the deal.
What are you doing this weekend? Napoleon III asked the young Austrian archduke.
Not much. Why? he replied.
How would you like to be an emperor?
An emperor like my brother? Emperor of what? Maximilian wondered.
Mergers & Acquisitions. I’ve merged Spanish America and Brazil into my Caribbean possessions. I’m calling it L’Amérique latine. And now I’m going to acquire all of it, Napoleon III explained. You’ll be the emperor of all the Latinos and Latinas I just invented.
Sounds hot, the Austrian archduke replied.
*
Mexico, throughout the 1850s, had borrowed heavily from several European powers. It owed a good deal of money to Spain and the United Kingdom. Worse, Mexico was in arrears. Napoleon III secured the support of Madrid and London for French military intervention by promising to get the Mexicans to pay what they owed once he established an Imperial Mexican Empire. The English and Spanish, eager to get their money back, went along with the French scheme.
On 8 December 1861 Napoleon III launched the Expédition du Mexique, the invasion of Mexico.[6] Three years later, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian was crowned Emperor Maximilian I.
Did you notice the year?
1861.
In April of that year the American Civil War began. Although Abraham Lincoln was stunned by the creation of an Imperial Empire in Spanish America under the auspices of Napoleon III, the Civil War prevented him from doing anything about it. Mexicans resisted the French, of course, but they were defeated. By the spring of 1864, Mexico had fallen. Months later, Maximilian arrived, declared political amnesty to all who had resisted the French. Furthermore, he stated that France, Spanish America, and Brazil were “one Latin race” that was “united” and “indivisible.” He, along with his wife, Charlotte, a Belgian princess who was crowned Empress consort of Mexico, established a royal court at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City.
Delighted, Napoleon III conferred once more with Chevalier for advice. The counsel Chevalier gave Napoleon III survived throughout Spanish America until the 1910s. It was this: French language instruction throughout L’Amérique latine would showcase the la race latine as the single, overarching identity above all else. Thus, students throughout Spanish America, from Mexico City to Santiago de Chile, Havana to Buenos Aires, were required to take one year of French language instruction.
Guess what Lesson One, la première leçon, taught?
Je ne suis pas hispanique. Je suis latin.
Je ne suis pas hispanique. Je suis latino.
Je ne suis pas hispanique. Je suis latina.
Isn’t that what an empire does? Brainwash its subjects?
*
Of course, you’re right to assume this did not end well for His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Mexico, Maximilian I. Mexicans rebelled and he was, after a few years, defeated. Arrested, he was tried, and sentenced to death. He was executed by firing squad on 19 June 1867 along with two Mexican generals who had supported his rule, Miguel Miramón and Tomás Mejía. He was, to his credit, dignified to the very end. History records his last words: “I forgive everyone, and I ask everyone to forgive me. May my blood, which is about to be shed, be for the good of the country. ¡Viva México, ¡Viva la independencia!”[7]
*
There it is.
If you choose to call yourself Latina, and not Hispana (or Hispanic), then you embrace a name and an identity that a French emperor created for you, his future subject, to call yourself. If you are proud to call yourself Latina, then you are heir to a thrilling episode in the history of this hemisphere, when France sought to impose its will on peoples Chevalier viewed with disdain but wanted to champion.
Latina: an enduring, beautiful conceit of Francophone imperialistic dreams.
*
Now, Latina, go buy yourself a few bandeaus from Louis Vuitton tout de suite!
[1] Chevalier believed the “Slavic” peoples were odd enough to be a third European race.
[2] If you’d like to read more, Walter D. Mignolo’s book, The Idea of Latin America, is a good place to start.
[3] See Arturo Ardao, Génesis de la idea y el nombre de América. https://www.academia.edu/36826477/Arturo_Ardao_Genesis_de_la_idea_y_el_nombre_de_America_Latina
[4] The only places where French is spoken in the Americas, apart from the province of Québec in Canada, are: Clipperton, Haiti, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin, and Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Mayotte, and Réunion are overseas regions of France, not dependent entities or sovereign nations.
[5] In Spanish, he was known as Fernando Maximiliano José María de Habsburgo-Lorena.
[6] This was the second time France invaded Mexico. The first time was in 1838 during the Pastry War (French: Guerre des Pâtisseries; Spanish:Guerra de los pasteles).
[7] The United States was struggling with the aftermath of the Civil War. President Andrew Johnson, like Abraham Lincoln before him, wanted to invoke the Monroe Doctrine. That Benito Juárez defeated the French saved the Americans the need to invade Mexico again, this time to depose Maximilian I. Juárez, it should be noted, was the first indigenous president of Mexico, being a Zapotec.
