Valparaíso, Chile, defined itself as a relatively autonomous, cosmopolitan port city during the nineteenth century. As the leading Pacific port in South America, it played a key role in the Chilean economy. A strong foreign presence, rapid growth, and omnipresent commerce accompanied local prosperity. Local leaders sought the latest urban technologies to bring “progress”—essentially, to mitigate problems created by rapid growth. Although Valparaíso's mercantile elite favored practical solutions rather than the Haussmann-esque urban renewal seen in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Santiago de Chile, the city tackled planning challenges aggressively and succeeded notably in some areas. It successfully negotiated tensions over its residents' dual allegiances to the Chilean state and to international trading communities until the early twentieth century. At that point, political centralization in Chile subordinated Valparaíso to Santiago's power while economic and transportation changes diminished its importance as an entrepot and the city's cosmopolitan identity receded.
Vicente Pérez Rosales, Recuerdos del Pasado (1814-1860) (Santiago de Chile, c. 1860; reprint, Santiago de Chile: Zig-Zag, 1930), 1:32-33.
2.
Eduardo Cavieres Figueroa analyzes Valparaíso's role in trade in Comercio chileno y comerciantes ingleses1820- 1880: un ciclo de historia economica, Monografias Historicas 2 (Valparaiso, Chile: Instituto de Historia, Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, 1988).
3.
This notion reflects what Santiago Lorenzo S., Gilberto Harris B., and Nelson Vásquez L. called "entrepreneurial spirit" in Vida, costumbres y espíritu empresarial de los porteños: Valparaíso en el siglo XIX, Serie Monografías Históricas 11 (Viña del Mar, Chile: Instituto de Historia, Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, 2000).
4.
Leslie Bethell, ed., The Cambridge History of Latin America, 11 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-).
5.
Works on trade and economic policy point out this decline: A. Kim Clark writes of the " ruralization . . . of the highlands" in late colonial and early independent Ecuador: The Redemptive Work: Railway and Nation in Ecuador, 1895-1930 (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1998), 23; Paul Gootenberg describes a shift from active internal trade to "self-sufficiency" in the interiors of many of the new Latin American republics: Between Silver and Guano: Commercial Policy and the State in Postindependence Peru (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press , 1989), 39.
6.
Gootenberg, Between Silver and Guano, 28.
7.
James Scobie, "The Growth of Latin American Cities, 1870-1930," in The Cambridge History of Latin America, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-), 4:234-37. See, for example, Gerald M. Greenfield, ed, Latin American Urbanization: Historical Profiles of Major Cities (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994), xv. There were always exceptions, such as James R. Scobie, Secondary Cities of Argentina: The Social History of Corrientes, Salta, and Mendoza, 1850-1910, completed and edited by Samuel L. Baily ( Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988). Six of the nine substantive articles in Ronn Pineo and James A. Baer , eds., Cities of Hope: People, Protests, and Progress in Urbanizing Latin America, 1870-1930 ( Boulder, CO: HarperCollins-Westview, 1998) deal exclusively with major capital cities, but three deal with smaller cities.
8.
Mark Overmyer-Velásquez , Visions of the Emerald City: Modernity, Tradition, and the Formation of Porfirian Oaxaca, Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); Christina Jiménez, "Popular Organizing for Public Services: Residents Modernize Morelia, Mexico, 1880-1920," Journal of Urban History30 (2004): 497.
9.
For the concept of the gateway city, see A.F. Burghardt, "A Hypothesis about Gateway Cities," Annals of the Association of American Geographers61 (1971): 269-85.
10.
Simon Collier and William F. Sater, A History of Chile, 1808-1994 ( Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), 60-61.
11.
Chile, Archivo Nacional, Censo de 1813 Levantada por don Juan Egaña, de orden de la junta de gobierno formada por los señores Perez, Infante y Eyzaguirre (Santiago : Imprenta Chile, 1953), unnumbered pages of tables near page 215.
12.
Baldomero Estrada Turra, "Doblamiento e inmigración en una ciudad-puerto ," in Baldomero Estrada Turra, Eduardo Cavieres Figueroa, Karin Schmutzer Susaeta, and Luz María Méndez Baltrán, Valparaíso: sociedad y economía en el siglo XIX (Viña del Mar, Chile: Instituto de Historia, University Católica de Valparaíso, 2000), 18.
13.
Jose Matias Lopes, Jose Domingo Otaegui, Ambrosio Ramon Achurra, and José Piñeso [representing the Valparaíso city council] to Minister of Interior, Dec. 5, 1828, Archivo Nacional Histórico, Santiago de Chile, Ministerio del Interior (hereafter, ANHI), vol. 86, fol. 86.
14.
Francisco de la Sastra to Minister, Dec. 6, 1828, ANHI, vol. 86, fol. 89.
15.
Manuel Manterola, city governor, to José M. Benavente, military governor, Aug. 18, 1829, ANHI, vol. 86, fol. 123.
16.
René Salinas Meza, "Nupcialidad, familia y funcionamiento del mercado matrimonial en Valparaíso durante el siglo XIX," in Primera Jornada de Historia Urbana, Valparaíso1536- 1986 (Valparaíso, Chile: Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, 1987), 78-78.
17.
Chile, Oficina Central de Estadística, Censo jeneral de la República de Chile levantado en abril de 1854 (Santiago, Chile: Imprenta del Ferrocarril, 1858), unnumbered last page.
Manuel Valenzuela Castillo to Minister, 11 Mar. 1858, ANHI, vol. 393. (Intendants were presidentially appointed officials who governed Chile's provinces and presided over the city councils of the provincial capitals, much as governors had done before Valparaíso became a provincial capital.)
22.
Chile, Oficina Central de Estadística, Censo jeneral, unnumbered last page. The part of the census that I have lists3,738 foreigners in the Province of Valparaíso; most of them probably lived in the city, but some must have lived elsewhere in the province.
23.
Sol Serrano , ¿Qué hacer con Dios en la República: Política y secularización en Chile (1845-1885) (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2008), 184-191.
24.
Fernando Rivas I., "El Barrio del Cerro Alegre: Orígenes y Desarrollo " (MA thesis, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso , Chile: 2000), 30.
25.
Chile, Oficina Central de Estadística, Censo jeneral de la República de Chile levantado en abril de1854, unnumbered last page.
26.
Salinas Meza, "Nupcialidad, familia y funcionamiento del mercado matrimonial en Valparaíso durante el siglo XIX," 78-78.
27.
I analyze this aspect of gaslight and horsecars in "Cuando el gas pasó de moda: la elite de Valparaíso y la tecnología urbana, 1843-1863 ," Eure83 (May 2002): 67-81.
28.
I show this contrast in "Progress Illuminating the World: Street Lighting in Santiago, Valparaíso, and La Plata, 1840-1890," Urban History29, no. 2 (2002): 223-38.
29.
Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Angela Davies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 32.
30.
Alejo Cornou , Valparaíso, to Miguel Santa Maria, Valparaíso , Oct. 10, 1848, ANHI, vol. 203, p. 193.
31.
City council minutes for Nov. 3, 1848, and July 17, 1849, ANHI, Municipalidad de Valparaiso, vol. 16, pp. 687, 808-9.
32.
"Alumbrado de gas," El Mercurio, Jan. 27, 1853, p. 2.
33.
"Festividades del 18," El Mercurio, Sept. 20, 1856), p. 3. The ceremony took place in front of (wealthy anglo-Chilean merchant) Mr. Edwards's new house, which was presumably in a prominent downtown location. It must have required many more lamplighters than on ordinary days.
34.
"Las fiestas del diez y ocho," El Mercurio , Sept. 20, 1856, p. 3.
35.
José María de la Cruz, Valparaíso, to Minister of Interior, Santiago, Mar. 16, 1843, ANHI, vol. 695, p. 224. The vivid report, written while the ruins were still smoldering, does not give cross-streets, only the names of owners of houses.
36.
Valparaiso English Mercury, Dec. 23, 1843, p. 1.
37.
Anacleto de la Cruz, Annual report of the city council, Nov. 14, 1844, ANHI, vol. 212, p. 209.
38.
Irarrázaval, Minister, and [Manuel] Montt, President, Valparaíso [summer capital], note of official decision, Dec. 17, 1844, attached to [Joaquín] Prieto, Intendant, Valparaíso, to Minister, Valparaíso, Nov. 26, 1844, ANHI, vol. 212, pp. 188-89.
39.
Anacleto de la Cruz, "Memoria de los trabajos de la Municipalidad ," Mar. 12, 1844, ANHI, vol. 212, p. 51.
40.
de la Cruz, Annual report, 209-10. Italics mine.
41.
J. S. Melo to Minister, Dec. 23, 1850, ANHI, vol. 265, p. 170.
42.
Jorge Garín Jiménez, Historia del Cuerpo de Bomberos de Valparaiso (Santiago, Chile[?]: Imprenta Salesianos S.A., 1998), 91-92; Roberto Simpson, Interim intendant, to Minister, Sept. 1, 1853, ANHI, vol. 291, pp. 506-7.
43.
Cristian Gazmuri , El "48" Chileno: igualitarios, reformistas, radicales, masones y bomberos. Imagenes de Chile (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1992), passim.
44.
Brian Loveman, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism, 2nd. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 165.
45.
Jules Verne , Paris au XXe sieècle: Roman (MS rejected in 1863; Paris: Hachette, 1994).
46.
"Los baños de mar," La Unión Liberal, Jan. 3, 1863, p. 1.
47.
"Los baños de mar [Part 2]," La Unión Liberal , Jan. 10, 1863, p. 1.
48.
Collier and Sater, History of Chile, 117.
49.
Naval War College (United States), International Law Situations with Solutions and Notes, 1901 (Washington, DC: 1901), 23-26.
50.
J.R. Lira, Intendant, to Minister [2 letters], Oct. 4, 1865, ANHI, vol. 474.
51.
"La canción ecuatoriana," El Mercurio, Mar. 3, 1966.
52.
Naval War College, International Law, 27.
53.
"Vuelve la táctica de la intimidación," El Mercurio, Mar. 13, 1866, p. 3.
54.
"Cañones," El Mercurio, Apr. 5, 1866, p. 2.
55.
"Las banderas," El Mercurio, Mar. 28, 1866, p. 3.
56.
Those familiar with the U.S. Civil War may recognize Kilpatrick as the pugnacious, but not always prudent or effective, general "Kill-Cavalry."
57.
Collier and Sater, History of Chile, 118.
58.
"Bien hecho!" El Mercurio, Apr. 7, 1866.
59.
Naval War College, International Law, 28.
60.
"Los residents estranjeros," El Mercurio, Apr. 9, 1866, p. 2.
61.
Untitled Article, El Mercurio, Apr. 3, 1866, p. 3.
62.
Australian News for Home Readers, Aug. 27, 1866.
63.
"Valparaíso," El Mercurio, Apr. 23, 1866.
64.
Francisco Echaurren , Valparaíso, to Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, Santiago, Apr. 26, 1872, Archivo Nacional Histórico, Santiago, Chile, Archivo Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, vol. 360, p. 100.
65.
I analyze Echaurren's attitude toward state power, municipal regulation, and public order in "`Every Class of Guarantee and Security': Urban Growth, Technology, and Government Power in Mid-Nineteenth Century Valparaíso," a paper presented at the XXVII International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Montreal, Canada, September 7, 2007.
66.
City council minutes for Aug. 17, 1874, in Valparaíso, Documentos municpales i administrativos de Valparaiso, Tomo Primero [Aug. 7, 1872-Dec. 23, 1874] (Valparaíso, Chile: Imprenta del Mercurio, 1875), 1:658.
67.
Echaurren to Minister, Nov. 5, 1873, ANHI, vol. 660.
68.
City council minutes for Aug. 17, 1874, in Valparaíso, Documentos, 1:656.
69.
City council minutes for Nov. 16, 1874, in Valparaíso, Documentos, 1:750.
70.
Ibid., 1:738-50. The senators came during the government's summer migration to the port.
