Resumen

MORALES GALIANA, Javier Muñoz de. Fear of the Alleged anti-Spanishness of Rebel Colonies: The Independence of the River Plate Region in the Novel Sofía and Enrique (1829), by Vicenta Maturana. Secuencia [online]. 2022, n.114, e1896.  Epub 07-Feb-2023. ISSN 2395-8464.  https://doi.org/10.18234/secuencia.v0i114.1896.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the independence attempts of the River Plate territory were viewed with the most absolute disdain by those related to the regime of Fernando VII. The peninsular press of those years offered a completely partial view of the conflict, and the same happened with literature. In the present work we analyse the novel Sofía y Enrique, by Vicenta Maturana, composed in 1825 and published in 1829. What the author of this work raises is not so much a denunciation of the revolutionaries for being disloyal to the king, but for promoting an anti-Spanishist sentiment in the American territory that happens to exclude, marginalize, and attack any person who comes from the peninsula. The importance of this text would lie, therefore, in consolidating an imperialist discourse based on victimhood, for sympathizing with the Spaniards who are expelled from a territory that once would have been dominated by their own monarch.

Palabras llave : River Plate independence movement; Spanish imperialism; nationalism; anti-Spanishism; colonialism.