Empire and emigration: The representation of the indiano in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spanish literature

From 1880 to 1930 Spain witnessed the largest mass emigration to Latin America in its history as Spaniards left to make their fortunes in the Americas. Writers from the Northern Spanish regions most affected by emigration agonized over the future of their agricultural countryside left with no young men to work the land. These writers were often suspicious of the foreign-bred modernity represented by returning wealthy emigrants, called "indianos," who encroached on traditional rural values and encouraged young boys to emigrate as well, perpetuating the cycle of emigration. Indianos were largely portrayed negatively in contemporary literature as ridiculous social climbers who replicated and conserved the social hierarchies and bourgeois mentality of Restoration Spain.;At the beginning of the twentieth century, though, members of the Generation of 1898 transformed the indiano character from a prodigal son of the old Restoration Spain into the prodigious son for a new modern Spain. This radical change was due to the intersection of the intellectuals' personal history of emigration and the indianos' socio-political endeavors. Machado, Maeztu, and Unamuno all had indiano fathers or grandfathers, and their representation of emigration to Latin America demonstrates the indelible mark this personal history left on their lives. Emigrant mutual-aid societies first established abroad to help arriving emigrants successfully effected agricultural, educational and labor reform measures in the emigrants' hometowns in Spain.;I trace this change in the representation of the indiano utilizing the poetry of Rosalia de Castro and Antonio Machado as exemplary models. Castro's poetry offers a female perspective of the largely male exodus from Spain in the mid-nineteenth century at the moment of departure and writes the history of those who stayed behind, while Machado's poetry reflects the potential for social change effected by returning indianos. The emigrant who abandons Spain in Castro's poetry becomes the indiano to save Spain in Machado's poetry. Injecting new capital and new ideas brought from the "New World" into a stagnant, backward Spain, the indiano would create a New Spain out of the Old Spain.