Labor, Colonization, and the Freedom from Restraint in Nicolás Pizarro Suárez's El monedero (1861)

Abstract

This essay analyzes Nicolás Pizarro Suárez's novel El monedero (The Counterfeiter) (1861) as a novela del colono, or colonist novel, centered on a call for the liberation of labor. Steeped in nineteenth-century utopian socialism, El monedero challenged liberals to commit themselves to a rehabilitation of labor that went beyond the legal protection from the coercion of taskmasters that was enshrined in Mexico's 1857 Constitution. For Pizarro Suárez and the characters of the novel, truly free labor required the abolition of the conditions that made work a disutility; it also needed a positive concept of work. Pizarro Suárez found the key to this transformation in colonization, the establishment of new isolated colonies or settlements; that is, in the autarchical fantasy of a rational and autonomous social enclave established to foster principles of free labor.

Publisher

Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Arizona

Publication Date

1-1-2024

Publication Title

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

Department

Hispanic Studies

Additional Department

Latin American Studies

Document Type

Article

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1353/hcs.2024.a954140

Notes

Special Edition of Journal: Restos transepultos y espectros de la modernidad latinoamericana

Language

English

Format

text

Link to Full Text

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