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“History’s So Strong”: The Topos of Historia Magistra Vitae and the Rediscovery of Dictatorship in Latin America

In 1967, German historian Reinhart Koselleck claimed that the Ciceronian topos called historia magistra vitae started fading in the late eighteenth century owing to the new aspects of irreversibility and acceleration that history had gained. History could thus no longer provide lessons for a deeply uncertain present after the French Revolution. Dictator and dictatorship are examples of terms in this dramatic reconfiguration that were rescued from an intellectual register and then used for political purposes. Meanwhile, it was in independent Spanish America that these terms and the reality behind them experienced a renaissance, though under particular circumstances conditioned by the creation of new states. This article discusses two Latin American dictators, José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, supreme dictator of Paraguay (1814–40), and Juan Manuel de Rosas, governor of Buenos Aires (1829–32 and 1835–52), from the point of view of historia magistra vitae. Based on sources that include travelogues, pamphlets, and political essays, it aims to understand the persisting or fading relevance of the topos for the explanation of these authoritarian rulers by contemporaries.