Refutacion contra la memoria presentada por Miguel Cabrera Nevares sobre las Americas: escrita por Luli.
Madrid: Imprenta del Imparcial: calle de los Abades, número 17. Por Don Lucio Olarieta, 1821. First edition. In publisher’s plain gray wrappers. 24 p. Unopened. Pages tanned due to age, with moderate foxing throughout, otherwise in fine condition.
A scarce Madrid pamphlet supporting Spanish American independence during the collapse of the Spanish Empire.
A rare Madrid political pamphlet printed during the final crisis of the Spanish Empire, written as a direct rebuttal to Miguel Cabrera Nevares’s Memoria sobre el estado actual de las Américas y medio de pacificarlas (Madrid, 1821), a constitutional-era intervention on the Spanish American revolutions that reportedly attracted attention within the Spanish government. The pseudonymous author, “Luli,” defends the American independence movements—particularly Buenos Aires and the Río de la Plata—against Cabrera’s accusations of ingratitude, disorder, and political incapacity, while simultaneously launching a sustained personal attack on Cabrera himself, portrayed throughout as vain, opportunistic, and politically inconsistent.
The pamphlet is notable for its detailed references to revolutionary Buenos Aires and to political conditions in Spanish America during the wars of independence. The author claims personal familiarity with events in the Río de la Plata, recounting controversies surrounding Cabrera’s stay in Buenos Aires around 1819, his alleged attempts to ingratiate himself with revolutionary circles, and his later denunciations of the same American movements before audiences in Madrid. Cabrera is accused of having previously sought citizenship in Buenos Aires and of altering his political positions according to circumstance and ambition.
Beyond its personal polemical character, the work constitutes a substantial defense of American emancipation from Spain. It argues that the colonies had reached political maturity and possessed a natural right to independence, comparing the Spanish American revolutions with the independence of the United States and invoking figures such as Washington and Franklin. The text discusses Hidalgo, Morelos, Bolívar, Upper Peru, Caracas, and the Río de la Plata, while also defending the participation of Indigenous peoples in the revolutionary cause against contemporary Spanish arguments denying American legitimacy.
Particularly striking is a long rhetorical passage in which “America” addresses Spain directly, accusing the metropolis of conquest, economic exploitation, monopolistic restriction, administrative corruption, and the draining of American wealth and population for the benefit of the Peninsula. The passage stands among the more forceful examples of anti-colonial rhetoric printed in Spain itself during the constitutional period.
Scarce. No copy traced in Rare Book Hub. WorldCat records copies at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Harvard, Berkeley, and the British Library; another copy located in the Biblioteca Nacional de España.
Sabin 42673, listing the author as “Lulli.”
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Price: €2,000.00