The RAE’s expansion program
As indicated in the introduction to this part, in 1870 the Real Academia Espa˜nola (henceforth RAE) decided to promote the creation of subsidiary academies in Spanish America in an effort to secure institutional representa-tion in this continent and strengthen its authority. In order to counter possible accusations of interventionism, the RAE declared that the initiative had “no political objectives and was therefore independent of any attempts to carry out actions and establish relationships with the respective governments” (Puente Apezechea 1873a: 289). Their main goal was to protect Spanish so that “it would recover and preserve the essence of its ancient purity and grandilo-quent accent on American soil” (Puente Apezechea 1873a: 279). The new academies would be granted a certain degree of freedom to adapt the RAE’s bylaws to local needs and the right to withdraw from this association at any time (Puente Apezechea1873a: 280–1). The Colombian (1871), Ecuadorian (1874), Mexican (1875), Salvadoran (1876) and Venezuelan (1883) academies were created first. They embraced the RAE’s goals and eagerly collaborated in the academic task of lexicographical codification with the aim of unify-ing, purifying and enriching the Spanish language. The result of this collab-oration was the publication in 1884 of the landmark twelfth edition of the RAE’s dictionary, the Diccionario de la Real Academia Espa˜nola (henceforth DRAE 12).
Supporters of the expansion program were asked to publicize it throughout Spanish America (Puente Apezechea1873a: 286). In Mexico, the newspaper La Iberia (February 15, 1872, pp. 1–2)1and the journal La Sociedad Cat´olica (Vol. IV, 1872, pp. 34–46) initiated this campaign and provided first-hand
I would like to express my gratitude to Liborio Villag´omez (of the Mexican Academy’s archive) and Guadalupe Landa (Assistant Director for Periodical Publications in UNAM’s Central Library) for their generous support.
1 The article was entitled “Sobre los trabajos de la Academia Espa˜nola”[“On the work of the Spanish Academy”]. In this paragraph, we quote from this article. The article published in La Sociedad Cat´olica was entitled “La Academia Espa˜nola.”
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information on the expansion program by publishing a full version of the RAE’s “Summary of Activities” for 1870 and 1871. The Summary’s author, RAE’s secretary Antonio Mar´ıa Segovia (1808–74), reported that the origi-nal idea had been advanced by Spanish academician Eugenio Hartzenbusch (1806–80) in collaboration with a few Colombian colleagues and that the final plan to establish the subsidiary academies had been drafted in November 1870.
There had been consensus within the RAE, he wrote, regarding the benefits of the project: the Spanish language and the Catholic religion, two essential components of national spirit shared by Spain and Spanish America, would be strengthened. According to Segovia, in previous years, educated elites through-out the Spanish-speaking world had been showing a favorable attitude towards promoting proper usage of the language. Spain itself was a good example of this trend, he said, since linguistic corruption, which earlier “appeared to be an incurable gangrene,” was no longer in vogue. It was noticeable that “newspa-pers, the congress and the courts[showed] greater interest in language” and that the RAE’s normative texts were more widely accepted. In Spanish America, there was also a growing number of learned people who had a “very fertile intelligence and possessed an in-depth knowledge of our language evidenced in works of outstanding prose and verse.” And these, he added, were also involved in the production of works of grammar, orthography and prosody.
The RAE needed, the report claimed, the support of these authors in order to build strong subsidiary academies and protect the language from further deteri-oration in the Americas, which, according to the RAE’s special committee for the development of Spanish America’s associated academies (CAACE for Comisi´on de Academias Americanas Correspondientes de la Espa˜nola), had begun with independence and become more pronounced with the passage of time as a result of political divisions and the proliferation of trade with foreign cultures.
La Iberia (November 15, 1873) disseminated another document taken from Eco de ambos mundos, published in London. The author was Ferm´ın de la Puente Apezechea (1812–75), member of the RAE and first secretary of the CAACE (significantly, he had been born in Mexico). His article (Puente Apezechea 1873b) reproduced the expert report that had recommended, in the first place, the creation of associated academies and offered a rationale for the expansion program. The arguments emphasized the common origin of Spaniards and Spanish Americans and minimized the cultural effects of polit-ical independence and more recent geopolitpolit-ical conflicts between Spain and its former colonies. Apezechea naturalized the RAE’s role as guardian of the shared linguistic and literary legacy, and therefore assumed that the Spanish corporation would also be responsible for protecting that heritage from frag-mentation in the American continent, with its estimated 20 million Spanish speakers. By resorting to the uncritical identification of language and national
identity, the CAACE appealed to the creation of a common front against the most feared of enemies, United States expansionism:
The Academy will rebuild the violently broken ties of fraternity between Spanish Americans and Spaniards; it will reestablish the community of glory and literary interests that should never have disappeared between us; and, finally, it will build a retaining wall, more powerful perhaps than bayonets themselves, to halt the invasive spirit of the Anglo-Saxon race in the world discovered by Columbus. (Puente Apezechea1873b: 1) Another report on the initiative – by Eugenio de Ochoa (1815–72), another member of the CAACE – was printed in the Mexican journal El eco de dos mundos (1873, Vol. II: 21–3). The original contribution of this piece was the effort to identify the specific threats to the purity of Spanish in both the Old and the New Worlds. Ochoa affirmed the harmful influence of French and English interventionism and argued that the language of Spaniards had been corrupted as a result of “the foreign wars that have burdened us over the past two centuries”
(Ochoa1873: 22). By contrast, he felt that in the Americas, “as a rule, a more authentic and pure form of Spanish is spoken, especially in the central States,”
and emphasized the language’s health among the regular folk, who “generally speak today the same beautiful form of Spanish that they inherited from their courageous forefathers, the first settlers” (Ochoa1873: 21–2). At the same time, however, he claimed that the situation was not the same among “the illustrious writers, who nowadays honor the Americas . . . and in general among the most educated classes in those societies, especially in official circles” (Ochoa1873:
21). These, Ochoa claimed, consciously adulterate the language by mixing it with foreign words, following the example of English, whose grammarians, lexicographers and linguistic authorities seem more likely to accept foreign loanwords. These practices, he insisted, were ultimately political statements made to highlight “the unquestionable fact of independence” in the realm of linguistic normativity. He warned that this type of behavior was contrary to the advice of the most conservative and purist elite, for whom true progress for Spanish entailed the preservation of the original traces, foundation of its purity.
La Sociedad Cat´olica (1872, Vol. IV: 235) also included an anonymous arti-cle – originally published in El Diario de Marina run by the Spanish government in Cuba – to report that the linguistic attitudes of Spanish American liberals, who fought for a norm more open and dynamic than the RAE’s, went against the unitary development of the Spanish-speaking community. The author reviewed the Colombian case, emphasizing that Spain’s failure to recognize this country’s independence had not prevented the maintenance of a solid tradition of good language use. Colombian philologists and grammarians had fought the perni-cious influence of French literature and an even greater danger: “the behavior of some writers from the liberal school who have stood against the project of preserving the language in its authentic value and purity . . . believing . . . that
the theories of democracy, freedom and republicanism . . . cannot be defended in authentic Spanish or that this language represents a danger to them.” In view of their call to break away – “Spanish, dead language!” – the author of the article sided with the “honorable men” who did not see a contradic-tion in defending republicanism and, at the same time, recognizing the most precious legacy received from Spain: the Catholic religion and the Spanish language.
El Diario de Marina’s article invited its readership to think of the Spanish language as the instrument that would clear the way for progress in Spanish America. This good fortune was under threat in places where Spain’s regional varieties were being brought by new immigrants and contact with foreign languages was frequent. The problem was especially noticeable, it said, in large cities and coastal areas highly influenced by the arrival of railroads, shipping and the telegraph. Given these circumstances, it was essential to subscribe to a common norm in order to guard against the risks of corruption in language, material progress, affectation and the exchange of ideas. All these, the article concluded, were responsibilities shared by all who belonged to the same race, and were not therefore a matter incumbent upon each separate Spanish American nation.
The Mexican subsidiary
On August 23, 1875, the Mexican newspaper El Porvenir reported that the RAE had approved the establishment of a Mexican Academy (henceforth AML from Academia Mexicana de la Lengua). Among its founding members were several well-known Mexican and Spanish philologists, grammarians and writers whose work, taken as a whole, dealt not only with Spanish but also with American Indian languages, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, English and German: Jos´e Mar´ıa Bassoco (1795–1877), Director; Joaqu´ın Garc´ıa Icazbalceta (1825–94), Secretary; Alejandro Arango y Escand´on (1821–83), Librarian; Manuel Peredo (1830–90), Censor; Jos´e Mar´ıa Roa B´arcena (1827–1908), Treasurer; Juan Bautista Ormaechea (1812–84); Sebasti´an Lerdo de Tejada (1823–89); Joaqu´ın Cardoso (1803–80); Casimiro del Collado (1822–98); Manuel Orozco y Berra (1816–81); Rafael ´Angel de la Pe˜na (1837–1906); and Francisco Pimentel (1832–93) (Carre˜no 1945: 18, 120–241). With three branches already estab-lished (in Colombia, Ecuador and now Mexico), the RAE was optimistic: “it is expected that with this noteworthy example other countries throughout the American continent will relatively soon join them,” so that all the academies can finally constitute “a true and most useful federation” (Puente Apezechea 1875: 3).
Garc´ıa Icazbalceta (Garc´ıa 1975a: 8–10), who became the AML’s spokesman, argued that Spanish was “a legacy received from our forefathers
so that we may understand each other and better enlighten ourselves,” and acknowledged that the RAE was the true depository of authority in matters of language. Moreover, he ratified the commitment to “encourage all efforts that lead to the furtherance of our common language and to strengthen relations between the old metropolis and its progeny the Spanish American countries”
(Garc´ıa Icazbalceta 1975b: 20). In the same context, Rafael ´Angel de la Pe˜na reviewed Mexico’s recent history – full of wars, losses and misunderstandings – to underscore the patriotism behind their concern for the Spanish language, “the strongest fraternal bond among the progeny of a common ancestral land[and]
faithful custodian of religious or national traditions, all beloved and revered”
(Pe˜na1975a: 23–4).
Although for more than three years the RAE’s supporters in Mexico had been praising the benefits of the extension program, once the AML was cre-ated some critical voices were raised. For example, Joaqu´ın G´omez Vergara (d.
1894), a liberal writer and member of Mexico’s diplomatic mission in Madrid, sent a long essay to El Porvenir (February 15–16, 1876) warning his fellow countrymen about the hegemonic purpose behind the RAE’s project, the lim-ited prestige of this institution even in Spain itself and the conservatism of the AML’s members. Gomez’s familiarity with Spain allowed him to contradict Eugenio de Ochoa and state that, in this country (Spain), not even the cultural and political elites comply with the RAE’s guidelines. He also questioned the political feasibility of intervening in processes of linguistic change. Gomez felt that chances of successfully influencing the linguistic development were mini-mal, since language evolution is subject to “time, the requirements of progress, the diversity of customs, needs, material objects and, above all, the presence of foreign languages” (G´omez Vergara 1876: 2). Moreover, he claimed, the alleged unity of Spanish was false. In clear contradiction of the statements made by Spanish academician Antonio Mar´ıa Segovia, G´omez maintained that in Mexico, “from the times of Spanish domination . . . the language was far from having a real uniformity with that of the metropolis, which is the goal behind the creation of subsidiary academies” (G´omez Vergara1876: 2).
G´omez Vergara also denounced the RAE’s monocentric view of language as insurmountable and considered it naive to believe that the RAE would promote Spanish American varieties or reconsider its purist position. The contribution of the subsidiaries, he feared, would be limited to reporting on deviations from the original pure language and satisfying Spaniards’ curiosity regarding certain Spanish American words. In opposition to the CAACE’s arguments, G´omez Vergara concluded that, at present and in the future, building Mexico’s nation-ality – with Spanish as one of its integral parts – was and should be the respon-sibility of Mexicans. Therefore, the AML was entitled “to assume supreme authority and sovereignty over our language” (G´omez Vergara 1876: 2).
Its activities should be channeled toward the production of a grammar and
a dictionary “adjusting precepts and rules according to how Mexicans speak their language” and in conformity with the principles of political sovereignty (G´omez Vergara1876: 2).
This skepticism was not unrelated to the fact that most original members of the AML had close associations with the recently defeated conservative party.
G´omez Vergara saw them as traitors for having fought against the 1857 Federal-ist Constitution, for supporting the Mexican church and for having collaborated with the Austrian imperialist government of Maximilian (1864–7). In order to counter the identification of the AML with conservatism, the RAE tried to strengthen the associated academy’s authority by also incorporating represen-tatives from the dominant intellectual and liberal circles. It was with this outlook that the RAE and the AML appointed Cardoso, Peredo and, later, Jos´e Mar´ıa Vigil and Alfredo Chavero, who, in addition to being active members of the lib-eral governments, were affiliated with the group headed by Manuel Altamirano (1834–93), a prominent intellectual who was engaged in the development of a nationalistic literature that would in turn legitimize the unique characteristics of American Spanish.
In this context, the founders of the AML proceeded with extreme caution with regard to the corporation’s public image and to its relation with liberal literary groups. An example of this vigilant practice was the decision not to sanction works other than those produced by the Academy itself and not to disseminate matters unrelated to the corporation’s activity. In order to avoid conflicts with liberal writers, Bassoco’s proposal that the AML establish its own journal was rejected, as was using those that already existed to condemn and correct the many barbarisms found in the official press. In 1876, just like the RAE, the AML decided to create its own publication, Memorias de la Academia Mexicana de la Lengua (Proceedings of the Mexican Academy of the Language, henceforth MAM), in order to report on its activities and disseminate the work of its members. Unlike the Madrid corporation, however, the MAM would be self-sufficient, funded solely by its members (Actas de la Academia Mexicana de la Lengua, henceforth and in the References AAML, June 22, 1876).
The voice of Mexicans in the DRAE
The Mexican Academy began its activities embracing the principle that Spanish language and literature were common goods shared by Spain and Spanish America. Having accepted the RAE’s bylaws, the AML’s main objective had to be the defense of the unity and purity of Spanish and the imposition of authentic – i.e. Castilian – norms while at the same time further pursuing, in accordance with the RAE’s and the AML’s statutes, original research from the – at the time fashionable – comparative-historical perspective (Fries1989: 71).
This double commitment to the defense of language and scientific innovation was already present in the RAE’s 1859 Bylaws (Estatutos de la Real Academia Espa˜nola), whose Article I stipulated that the corporation’s main tasks were to
“cultivate and stabilize the purity of the language; reveal its origins; fine-tune its grammatical principles; publish ancient unknown and precious documents;
and describe the slow but progressive development of the language” (Estatutos de la Real Academia Espa˜nola 1859: 1). In keeping with these guidelines, the members of the AML were of the opinion that the RAE was entitled per se and by right of seniority to conduct inquiries on the history of the language and to lead work on the dictionary (known as Diccionario de la Lengua) (AAML, October 16, 1875). However, they also decided that the AML should study as well the processes of “growth and corruption of Spanish in Mexico”
through two projects: a literary history of Mexico and a dictionary of Mexican provincialisms (AAML, September 25, 1875).
Arango y Escand´on felt that it was extremely important for the AML to produce a history of Mexican literature. This project would showcase those literary productions from New Spain and Mexico that more closely emulated, in form and spirit, aesthetic trends valued by the RAE as well as some original productions mainly in the realm of sacred oratory. Besides, on the basis of what this project would reveal, it would be possible to show that for the longest time Mexico’s lettered elites had exhibited a better command of Spanish than their peers in other Spanish American regions. For his part, Pimentel, a highly regarded philologist who received the Volney award in 1875, felt that it was indeed essential to engage in a type of historical work that critically approached language in various literary fields in order to educate young writers and, above all, to restore Mexico’s image abroad, demonstrating that “we weren’t a group of barbarians” (AAML, October 16, 1875). He felt, however, that a literary history of Mexico would fall outside the scope of the AML.
While, after consulting with the RAE, the AML realized that they lacked the necessary resources, in an effort not to completely abandon the initiative, Segura and Orozco y Berra suggested that, to the extent that it was possi-ble, each academician should contribute specific studies on the literature of different periods, authors and topics (AAML, April 13, 1876). Moreover, the Secretary, Garc´ıa Icazbalceta, emphasized that the establishment of the AML afforded Mexico the opportunity to remedy two unfortunate shortcomings: a lack of interest in – even scorn towards – the colonial period and the limited distribution and knowledge of old and modern Mexican literature. Recovery of historical, biographical and bibliographical manuscripts and books, as well as books dealing with the fine arts during the Colonial Period was essential, first, to produce a critical evaluation of the most representative works and authors, and second, to understand the introduction and spread of Spanish in the coun-try (Garc´ıa 1975a: 7–10). Academicians committed to both projects – those
conceived by Segura and Orozco y Berra and by Garc´ıa Icazbalceta respec-tively – presented their work at AML sessions and even published some of them in the MAM.
The dictionary of Mexican provincialisms (DP) was less controversial. Ini-tially, Arango y Escand´on opposed this project because he felt that most provin-cialisms were either old-fashioned words and phrases, already registered in the DRAE, or barbarisms whose use should not be sanctioned (AAML: October 2, 1875). However, his position did not gather enough support. A group of
The dictionary of Mexican provincialisms (DP) was less controversial. Ini-tially, Arango y Escand´on opposed this project because he felt that most provin-cialisms were either old-fashioned words and phrases, already registered in the DRAE, or barbarisms whose use should not be sanctioned (AAML: October 2, 1875). However, his position did not gather enough support. A group of