Naturalization and Denaturalization in the Age of Revolution: The Dilemma of Loyalist Patriotism in South America

This paper explores shifting identities in relation to territory, politics, and kinship of a generation that lived through the wars of Spanish-American independence. To consolidate sovereignty, the new Chilean government both forced citizenship on indigenous and frontier populations and threatened those who did not embrace the revolution with exile. Analysis of naturalization tends to focus on the cases of immigrants with less consideration of emigrants and those who may have remained in one place while the claims to territorial sovereignty changed. Moreover, its counterpart—denaturalization—has received less scholarly attention. In Spanish America, moreover, both parties to the conflict identified emigration as expressing one’s allegiance to another sovereign, making one an expatriate or a criminal fugitive in the eyes of separatists and royalists respectively. After the end of hostilities, however, many advocated for reconciliation, allowing émigrés to return to their natal or adopted homelands and pledging their fealty to new governments. This paper contrasts the case of a loyalist, whose great-grandfather settled in South America, with more recent Spanish immigrants. All claimed that their bond with both Chile as a homeland (patria) was compatible with allegiance to Spain as the motherland (madre patria), yet it was assumed that people would feel a natural love for their birthplace. Thus, it was easier for the Chilean authorities to excuse the Spaniards who had taken the side of the king than to completely absolve a compatriot who had not declared himself in favor of independence. In that view, a denaturalized person had acted both against nature and against the nation. As under monarchies, familial ties—both real and metaphorical—constituted the bonds of national unity. In striking contrast to later naturalization laws, Spanish men could naturalize through their marriage to local women and their fathering of future citizens.