In this stunningly original reinterpretation of the New World, Grandin reveals how the United States …
The precedent set by the United States helped Spanish Americans justify their claims to republican sovereignty. In response, royalists brazenly cited Vitoria. They said that if the claims of independence leaders were to be taken to their conclusion, then Venezuela should be returned to its true sovereigns, to the “Caribes, Motilones, Guagiros, Quiripiripas, Guaranos, and other indigenous Indian nations” who ruled Venezuela before Spain’s arrival. This wasn’t an easy-to-dismiss criticism, and the best independence leaders could do was say that over time history created new obligations. There was no going back to the past. If Spanish Americans were required to return America to its original peoples, then Spain, republicans said, should give Iberia back to the Phoenicians or Carthaginians, “wherever they may be found.”