Socio-political Histories of Latin

American Statistics Cecilia T.

Lanata-Briones
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/socio-political-histories-of-latin-american-statistics-ce
cilia-t-lanata-briones/
STUDIES OF THE AMERICAS

Socio-Political
Histories of
Latin American
Statistics
Edited by
Cecilia T. Lanata-Briones
Andrés Estefane
Claudia Jorgelina Daniel
 Studies of the Americas

Series Editor
Maxine Molyneux, Institute of the Americas, University College
London, London, UK
The Studies of the Americas Series includes country specific, cross-
disciplinary and comparative research on the United States, Latin
America, the Caribbean, and Canada, particularly in the areas of Politics,
Economics, History, Sociology, Anthropology, Development, Gender,
Social Policy and the Environment. The series publishes monographs,
readers on specific themes and also welcomes proposals for edited collec-
tions, that allow exploration of a topic from several different disciplinary
angles.
This series is published in conjunction with University College.
London’s Institute of the Americas under the editorship of Professor
Maxine Molyneux.

More information about this series at

https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14462
Cecilia T. Lanata-Briones · Andrés Estefane ·
Claudia Jorgelina Daniel
Editors

Socio-political
Histories of Latin
American Statistics
Editors
Cecilia T. Lanata-Briones Andrés Estefane
Department of Economics Independent Researcher
University of Warwick Santiago, Chile
Coventry, UK

Claudia Jorgelina Daniel

Centro de Investigaciones Sociales
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones
Científicas y Técnicas
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Studies of the Americas

ISBN 978-3-030-87713-2 ISBN 978-3-030-87714-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87714-9

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.

Cover image: © ETrayne04/Alamy Stock Photo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
Claudia Jorgelina Daniel, Cecilia T. Lanata-Briones,
and Andrés Estefane
2 The ‘Philosophical Eye’ and the ‘Industrial Spy’:
Statistical Thinking in South America After
Independence 27
Marcelo Somarriva and Andrés Estefane
3 Mapping Numbers: Statistics, Cartography,
and the Making of National Space in Brazil 49
Alexandre de Paiva Rio Camargo
4 Portraits for an Exhibition: The Making of a Statistical
Culture for Public Life in Mexico During the Time
of the Dirección General de Estadística, 1882–1922 89
Laura Cházaro García
5 Ethnic Origin, Race, and Nation in the Argentine
Censuses, 1869–1914 123
Hernán Otero
6 Loose Numbers: Political Centralisation and Statistical
Fragmentation in Colombia, 1886–1930 151
Victoria Estrada Orrego

v
vi CONTENTS

7 Socio-political History of Latin American Statistics:

A Bibliographical Essay 179
Claudia Jorgelina Daniel, Cecilia T. Lanata-Briones,
and Andrés Estefane
 Notes on Contributors

Alexandre de Paiva Rio Camargo is Associate Professor at the University

Research Institute of Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ) of the Candido Mendes
University (UCAM, Brazil) and former Visiting Professor at the School
of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS, France). He is a
political and historical sociologist, with a research agenda focused on the
politics of numbers, vital and ethno-racial statistics, the role of quantifica-
tion in the constitution of scientific disciplines, and nationalism and state
building, with a regional focus on Brazil. He is the author of numerous
book chapters and journal articles.
Laura Cházaro García is full-time Professor-Researcher in the Departa-
mento de Investigaciones Educativas del Centro de Investigación y de
Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional (Mexico). Her
main research interests include history of sciences, nineteenth-century
Mexico, social history of medical and statistical thinking, quantification,
and bodies measurements.
Claudia Jorgelina Daniel holds a Ph.D. in Social Sciences from
the University of Buenos Aires (UBA, Argentina). Currently, she is
Adjunct Researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientí-
ficas y Técnicas based at the Centro de Investigaciones Sociales (CIS-
CONICET/IDES, Argentina) and Lecturer at the School of Social
Sciences (UBA, Argentina). Her research focuses on the study of

vii
viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

the Argentine institutions that produce official statistics from a socio-

historical perspective. Her interests range from the production to the
social and political uses of statistics in contemporary societies. She is the
author of Números Públicos. Las estadísticas en Argentina (1990–2010)
(Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2013). She is a founding member of the
Asociación de las Américas por la Historia de las Estadísticas y el Cálculo
de las Probabilidades (AAHECP).
Andrés Estefane holds a Ph.D. in History from the State University of
New York at Stony Brook, and is an Independent Researcher based in
Santiago, Chile. His research explores the links among bureaucracy, local
power, and the production of state knowledge in historical perspective.
He co-edited the four-volume project Historia política de Chile, 1810–
2010 (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2017–2018) and recently published
Cuando íbamos a ser libres, an annotated edition of primary sources on
the history of liberalism in Chile (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2021).
Victoria Estrada Orrego holds a Ph.D. in History from the School of
Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS, France). She is Lecturer
at the Metropolitan Technological Institute (Medellin, Colombia). Her
work examines the history of medicine and statistics in Colombia during
the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first half of the
twentieth century.
Cecilia T. Lanata-Briones is Assistant Professor in the Department of
Economics of the University of Warwick (UK) and Adjunct Researcher of
the Centro Interdisciplinario para el Estudio de Políticas Públicas (Ciepp,
Argentina). She holds a Ph.D. in Economic History from the London
School of Economics and Political Science (UK). Her research interests
focus on the production and use of Latin American economic statistics
from a socio-historical perspective.
Hernán Otero is a Historian and Demographer. He holds a Ph.D. from
the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS, France).
He is Principal Researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones
Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET, Argentina) and teaches sociology of
population at the Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de
Buenos Aires (Tandil, Argentina). He is a member of the Academia
Nacional de Historia de la República Argentina. His areas of research
concern the history of population, especially international migration, the
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix

formation of the Argentine statistical system, and, more recently, the

history of the elderly.
Marcelo Somarriva holds a Ph.D. in History from University College
of London (UK). He is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Liberal
Arts, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Chile). His research focuses on the
relationship between Britain and South America, with emphasis on the
cultural encounters during the Enlightenment. He is currently conducting
research on the influence of climate theory and the political language of
“public happiness” in the construction of the colonial imaginary in Latin
America.
 Abbreviations

DGE Dirección General de Estadísticas (General Board of Statistics),

Mexico
DGE-B Diretoria Geral de Estatística (General Board of Statistics), Brazil
DNE Departamento de la Estadística Nacional (Department of National
Statistics)
IBGE Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (Brazilian Institute of
Geography and Statistics)
IHGB Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro (Brazilian Historical and
Geographical Institute)
NAM Academia Nacional de Medicina (National Academy of Medicine)
SHC Consejo Superior de Salubridad (Superior Health Council)
SMGyE Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística (Mexican Society for
Geography and Statistics)

xi
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Atlas do Imperio do Brazil (1868) (Source Almeida [1868,

39]) 60
Fig. 3.2 Brazilian population by density and geographic region
(1908) (Source Brasil [1909, 78]) 67
Fig. 3.3 Brazilian surface, population, and density in 1912,
with average annual growth since 1872 (1916) (Source
Brasil [1916, 252–253]) 70
Fig. 3.4 Education level of Brazilian population at school age
(1920) (Source Brasil [1929, XVIII]) 71
Fig. 3.5 Rural establishments by territorial extension and geographic
regions (1920) (Source Brasil [1923, XIV]) 71
Fig. 3.6 Brazilian territorial re-division project, by Teixeira de
Freitas (Source Freitas [1947]) 76
Fig. 3.7 Brazilian regions established in 1942 (1950) (Source IBGE
[1995]) 78
Fig. 4.1 Example of a German census form (Berlin 1870)
that Peñafiel used to create forms for the 1882 Mexico
census (Source Peñafiel [1882, 146] Courtesy Archivo
General de la Nación, Mexico) 105
Fig. 4.2 Esqueleto (framework) for the civil servants
of the Municipality of Mexico City to fill in with the data
requested by the DGE in 1896 (Source AHCM, Vol.
1032, Exp. 76, f. 2. Courtesy of Archivo Histórico de la
Ciudad de México) 109

xiii
xiv LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 4.3 Chart of geographic coordinates prepared for the Anuario

estadístico de 1900 with information provided by engineers
and astronomers (Source DGE [1901, 4–5]. Courtesy
of Bibliothèque Nationale de France) 110
Fig. 4.4 Visual display of statistics on imports in the Anuario
estadístico de 1900 (Source DGE [1901, 161]. Courtesy
of Bibliothèque Nationale de France) 112
Fig. 4.5 Mortality rates in the Anuario estadístico de 1900 (Source
DGE [1901, 171]. Courtesy of Bibliothèque Nationale de
France) 113
 List of Tables

Table 6.1 Institutional changes in the Colombian statistical system

(1888–1923) 162
Table 6.2 Institutional changes in the Colombian statistical system
(1906–1952) 170

xv
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Claudia Jorgelina Daniel , Cecilia T. Lanata-Briones ,

and Andrés Estefane

This book brings together works representative of the themes and

approaches that have informed the studies on the socio-political history
of Latin American statistics after independence. These investigations illus-
trate the robustness and future perspectives of an area of research that
has shown a remarkable dynamism in recent decades. This publication,
however, not only assembles selected works on and from the region. It
also aims to build bridges between Latin American investigations and

C. J. Daniel
Centro de Investigaciones Sociales, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones
Científicas y Técnicas, Buenos Aires, Argentina
e-mail: cdaniel@ides.org.ar
C. T. Lanata-Briones (B)
Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
e-mail: cecilia.lanata-briones@warwick.ac.uk
A. Estefane
Independent Researcher, Santiago, Chile

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
C. T. Lanata-Briones et al. (eds.), Socio-political Histories of Latin
American Statistics, Studies of the Americas,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87714-9_1
2 C. J. DANIEL ET AL.

those that explore the trajectory of statistics at an international level.

Given that only a small percentage of the research on the history of Latin
American statistics is published in English, the trajectory of the region
tends to have a marginal or dispersed presence in global and transnational
approaches. By bringing Latin American academic production closer to
wider audiences, this book seeks to foster substantive dialogues that could
enrich the understanding of the socio-political history of this science from
a truly global perspective.
The studies published in this volume were guided by diverse questions,
usually defined by the national experiences they focused on. However,
they converge in some common concerns, which account for the type
of questions the socio-political history of statistics has been exploring
since the end of the twentieth century. One of those concerns focuses
on the emphasis on the social and political factors that make possible
and determine the production of official numbers. These are works that
examine very closely both the institutions that produce statistics and the
modes of production of these figures, while always considering the struc-
tural conditions in which those processes of knowledge production took
place. Likewise, the chapters of this book follow a similar approach when
scrutinising the problem of legitimacy and/or authority of any enumer-
ation or counting operation, particularly of those led by the state. While
neither legitimacy nor authority are taken for granted, the contributors
to this book carefully explore the efforts to claim objectivity, universality,
or even usefulness of the statistical knowledge on the part of the histor-
ical agents identified with this science. In doing so, these works embody
what French sociologist Alain Desrosières aspired to when thinking of the
need to reassess “statistical reasoning as a mode of abstraction into a more
general social or political history” (1998, 324).
In more general terms, these studies are samples of an intellectual effort
aimed to reconstruct the institutional, cultural, and political conditions
of the production of statistical knowledge, taking also into account the
objectification work carried out by statisticians. This task implies taking
distance from the understanding of statistics as a phenomenon detached
from producers and users of numbers or as unproblematic and self-
evident facts. Following Desrosières (1998), statistics create new objects
by combining different and heterogeneous elements which in turn follow
a common principle of equivalence. A socio-political historical approach
to statistics is characterised by the effort to grasp the meaning of those
creations, restoring the structure of consensus—and of controversy—that
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

makes statistical measurements hold as stable social and political artefacts

at a given historical moment.
Such an approach traces the conventional aspects of statistical practices
to identify how they become naturalised norms and standards as well as
technical requirements. Following it, scholarsstudy the official produc-
tion of statistics without losing sight of the social, cultural, and political
factors that influence the contents and limitations of statistical research
programmes. Among the tasks involved in the production of numbers,
even the classification schemes and their categories are conceived as the
product of historically conditioned intellectual constructions. Every statis-
tical objectification procedure implies choices and assumptions that tend
to be heavily influenced by the projects and aspirations of their creators—
which are not always made explicit. Moreover, all statistics face debates
about methods, interpretation, and use. The modes of appropriation and
the social uses of the numbers that circulate in the public space are also
multiple and diverse, and become understandable when considering them
within their contexts. This is the framework in which the chapters of this
book can be located, as representatives of a constructivist epistemology
that allows opening the ‘black box’ of statistics to observe what is inside
or behind them.
The first section of this introduction examines the interplay between
statistics and nation—and state—building processes, looking at how this
knowledge managed to remain as a universal science while being devel-
oped in national contexts. The following section deals with several of
the statistical practices detected in Latin America throughout the period
covered by the book allowing us to understand the regional particulari-
ties in the assimilation of this science. A third section, relatively connected
with the previous one, analyses how the statistical culture dealt with the
constitutive social and political frictions of Latin America, shedding light
on its role in the hybridisation processes that characterised the history of
the region. The last section of this introduction describes the content of
the book.

Statistics and the Construction

of Latin American Nation States
One of the moments most explored by the socio-political history of statis-
tics—the organisation of statistical offices in Europe during the first half
of the nineteenth century—constitutes a period of great political upheaval
4 C. J. DANIEL ET AL.

in Latin America, even of violent confrontation, due to the wars for inde-
pendence, particularly in Spanish Latin America. These disputes largely
stopped the quantitative ambitions of members of the intellectual and
political elites and generated a deadlock in the quantifying processes.
Political stability seemed a requirement to enumerate. In a certain sense,
however, these conflicts also nurtured the interest in counting. For the
not yet fully consolidated states, the disputes brought to the forefront the
need to strengthen themselves militarily, and hence to know the number
of individuals suitable for military service and to ensure the domain of the
territory.
Interestingly, these objectives were not very different from those the
Spanish monarchy had pursued during the colonial period and particularly
during the last decades of imperial rule. Indeed, during the eighteenth
century, the metropolis systematically sought to collect news of its over-
seas colonies. These experiences were valuable precedents for future
inquiries. To satisfy this need, the metropolis encouraged the organisa-
tion of scientific expeditions and the distribution of questionnaires for the
preparation of topographical descriptions. While the expeditions involved
organising and financing itinerant commissions of scientist and poly-
maths to gather and produce knowledge, the groundwork behind the
topographical descriptions implied entrusting these investigations to local
administrative bodies, including civil, military, and ecclesiastical officials.
In these cases, imperial bureaucrats officiated as implementers and infor-
mants. Most of those questionnaires were prepared by the Council of the
Indies (Consejo de Indias ) with the aims of knowing the territory, iden-
tifying its resources, and determining the conditions and characteristics
of the subjects of the monarchy. Colonial authorities were responsible
for coordinating the distribution of surveys, processing the information
collected, and writing reports.
This practice was not restricted to the Enlightenment years. These
inquiries, which in some cases had more than four hundred questions,
date from the first days of the Conquest. Over thirty questionnaires
crossed the Atlantic during the three centuries of colonial rule—eight
of which took place during the eighteenth century. Although some
inquiries were designed for specific territories, most of them had a conti-
nental focus, imposing relatively uniform processes of data gathering.
Also known as land descriptions (relaciones de tierra) or geographical
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

descriptions (relaciones geográficas ), these colonial texts required extraor-

dinary administrative efforts, which mobilised and connected almost all
the bureaucratic strata of the Spanish Empire (De Solano 1988).
In that sense, the Spanish monarchy was able to put into motion
a massive transatlantic chain of documentary production. To do so, it
bundled together a myriad of actors that will also be entrusted to produce
statistics in the post-colonial period: the military, parish priests, and influ-
ential inhabitants (vecinos ). Hence, the colonial production of imperial
knowledge left significant footprints at different levels, but in partic-
ular among intermediate and low-level colonial officials, who acted as
compilers, reviewers, and even ghost writers of the local reports sent
to viceroyal and peninsular authorities. The long-term impact of these
colonial efforts of data collection must be considered when examining
the environment in which national statistics started to develop (Estefane
2017).
This connection, however, did not necessarily imply the existence of
a perfect continuity between the colonial and the post-colonial ways of
knowing. From a formal point of view, there were more differences than
similarities between both models. Colonial research responded to occa-
sional initiatives and failed in consolidating routine practices. It was not
undertaken by specialised bureaucracies, nor did it differ from the daily
tasks of government. The knowledge produced did not have a public
orientation, nor was it perceived as an input for open political discus-
sions. On the contrary, the data obtained was usually kept under reserve
or total secrecy (Ventresca 1995, 50–54).
After independence, it became increasingly difficult to keep social infor-
mation under reserve. Elections were one of the political novelties that
turned the enumeration of inhabitants into a vital practice, subject to
permanent scrutiny and disputes. Indeed, given the demands imposed
by the principle of popular sovereignty, it was imperative to know the
exact number of inhabitants with the right to vote and to determine the
bases of political representation. In more abstract terms, imagining those
years of political upheaval allows us to understand the vital need those
elites had to generate some order within the chaos. From this point of
view, statistics could be thought of as a type of rationality that was sought
to be imposed on a troubled territory that was experimenting change.
Many of the censuses taken in the first half of the nineteenth century
6 C. J. DANIEL ET AL.

were the result of provincial or city-specific efforts rather than of consoli-

dated central states.1 They were attempts to order a changing reality and
give legibility—in the sense proposed by James Scott (1998)—to disparate
and fragmented population settlements within a territory where commu-
nity and local ties persisted, and where it took time to establish common
measurement standards.2
The literature converges when highlighting the close relationship on
both sides of the Atlantic between the consolidation of the modern
state and the official production of statistics. Statistical knowledge was
developed concomitantly with the process of shaping the national state,
which forces us to conceive of statistics not only as a scientific disci-
pline, but as a branch of government. The historical reconstruction of
the Latin American statistical trajectory explored throughout this edited
volume contributes to the understanding of the role of statistics in the
construction of the modern state. How did statistics become part of
the administrative repertoire of Latin American states? As in Europe,
where no uniform model of organisation of statistical activity emerged
despite the intentions of the promoters of statistical internationalism
and the recommendations emanating from their institutions (Randeraad
2010), the evolution of statistics as an administrative practice also differed
between Latin American countries. Within the region, it is as difficult to
make generalisations as it is to find a single institutional model. The strate-
gies of state and nation construction that the Latin American countries
applied throughout the nineteenth century, as well as the uniqueness of
the political projects and the relations of force that ended up influencing
their trajectory, were diverse. Such divergence clearly determined the
forms of institutional organisation, the statistical practices, the objectives
of the knowledge production processes, and the themes to be explored
using numbers.
Even in the countries that achieved internal pacification of the previ-
ously disputed territory, the development of statistics as an administrative

1 Examples include the incomplete 1813 Chilean census (Silva Castro 1953), the 1835
census of the north-eastern Brazilian state of Bahia (Barickman 2003), and the 1836 Lima
census (Peloso and Ragas 2001). Arrioja Díaz Viruell’s volume (2016) examines statistics
and enumerations implemented at a local level in Mexico during the first half of the
nineteenth century.
2 In some countries, like Mexico, this process extended until the twentieth century, see
Vera (2017).
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

tool was subsequently and constantly involved in political and adminis-

trative transformations. In relation to the external recognition of these
states, the borders that demarcated the territory that they legitimately
intended to dominate and that at the same time contained the population
to be enumerated were not yet fully established, as shown by the armed
conflicts caused, among other issues, by territorial disputes, such as the
War of the Triple Alliance and the War of the Pacific.3 On the domestic
front, the tension between civil and ecclesiastical authorities was charac-
teristic of the nascent republics. The young Latin American states tried,
with greater or lesser success, to displace the Catholic Church from the
registration and control of the population data that it regularly collected
through parishes. In certain cases, as the history of Colombia shows, the
states would not achieve this until well into the twentieth century.
During the second half of the nineteenth century and until the First
World War, the insertion of the Latin American countries into the
international market as producers of commodities made them strongly
dependent on foreign trade. Within the international stage, these states
occupied a peripheral position in relation to the European cultural
metropolises. In most Latin American economies, the creation of markets,
the establishment of capitalist social relations, and the adjustment of
the productive structure to the primary commodities export-led model
consolidated oligarchic states. Minority social groups with great economic
power not only had the monopoly of the most profitable productive or
extractive activities. They also controlled access to the government as well
as the mechanisms of political succession and, therefore, the administra-
tion of the state. These countries experienced the great weight of the
elites in the national political system. Given the government’s appetite to
integrate both commercially and culturally into the world, the produc-
tion of statistics was valued as one of the ways to demonstrate that
Latin American countries were following the path of the civilised nations
of Western Europe (Loveman 2013). Considering themselves as well as
being perceived by the rest of the world as ‘modern’ was one of the
most sought out goals of the newly unified states. In the framework of
the “globalisation of figures” movement of the late nineteenth century
(Brian 1989; Gagnon 2000), carrying out population censuses as well

3 In the War of the Triple Alliance, Paraguay fought against the coalition formed by
the Brazilian Empire, Uruguay, and Argentina between 1864 and 1870. The War of the
Pacific confronted Chile with Peru and Bolivia between 1879 and 1884.
8 C. J. DANIEL ET AL.

as compiling records of the country’s foreign trade or its demographic

evolution in the form of tables and graphs was a way of presenting
themselves as a member of the club of ‘civilised’ nations.
In those years, however, statistics was far from being a simple admin-
istrative practice carried out exclusively—and depending on the case—by
statistical offices, ministerial departments, or other government agencies.
It is possible to imagine how difficult it was to carry out statistical research
in Latin America before the extension of railway networks, with rudi-
mentary telecommunications, in territories lacking infrastructure, without
safe transportation, and without the technology that facilitated arithmetic
operations. Chile carried out its first formal national census in 1854. Costa
Rica followed in 1864, Argentina in 1869, Brazil in 1872, Venezuela in
1873, Peru in 1876, Guatemala in 1880, and Mexico in 1890. These
national population censuses were immense logistical operations given
the limited resources available at that time and taking into account
the widespread illiteracy of the population. These structural conditions
influenced the way statistics were adopted throughout the region.
Likewise, while states struggled to achieve political centralisation as
well as territorial penetration, the formation of the national statistical
apparatus was thwarted by tensions of various kinds. In certain cases, like
in Colombia (Estrada Orrego 2017), the most strained relations were
between the central and the local powers. However, in general terms,
these rigidities or institutional disputes varied depending on whether
countries were politically organised based on a strong—like Brazil—or
weak—like Argentina—federalism. Within the first group, the tensions
tended to manifest themselves between different levels of government, in
the form of clashes between the authority at the central or national level
and the states or municipalities controlled administratively by local elites.
In the second case, visible tensions prevailed between agencies or depart-
ments of the different ministries at the level of the executive branch of
government. The disputes took the form of jurisdictional disagreements
and bids for the cognitive monopoly on certain statistical objects.

Cultivating Statistics from Some

Corner of Latin America
If the production of statistics and censuses emerged in Latin America
as an imperative of modernity, it also expressed the desire of the ruling
elite to have a handful of certainties to face a changing and frequently
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

agitated reality. Statisticians and those interested in statistics shared the

assumption that an underlying order existed, and that statistical language
would sooner or later allow them to reveal it. However, their aspiration
to find that order was amid the political effort to build nation states.
This made Latin American statisticians focus both on the expansion of the
corpus of statistical knowledge and on imposing statistics as a guide for
state administration and political decisions. In the continuous search to
establish the legitimacy of official statistical practice by asserting the rele-
vance and usefulness of the figures, symbolic identifications flourished.
Statistics became a compass—the tool required to steer and guide the
state vessel. In parallel, the creation of statistical offices was perceived as
progress concerning the administrative organisation of the state. Statistics
were thought of as a function of what statisticians and those interested in
statistics imagined to be a modern and rational government.
These common expectations, however, should not hide the ample
variety of profiles that statistical practitioners in Latin America had in
this period. In a context in which scientific disciplines were in full bloom
in the region, in each country statistics joined their fate with that of
the members of a wide range of intellectual, professional, and academic
communities. Doctors, lawyers, military men, journalists, engineers, geog-
raphers, among others, were called upon to establish and spread the
statistical language throughout Latin America, but they did so from
very diverse institutional positions and academic communities. Moreover,
several Europeans—such as Francisco Latzina in Argentina, Francisco de
Bèze in Chile, or Anthony John Schlesinger and Sophus Höeg Warming
in Colombia—played a relevant role in shaping national statistical appara-
tuses in the second half of the nineteenth and in the first decades of the
twentieth century. In Latin America, domestic and foreign census takers
combined the knowledge, abilities, and skills that they had developed
themselves throughout their very different formal and informal training
and personal journeys. Beyond some widely known sporadic courses on
statistics that existed in certain countries or the superficial assimilation of
its categories and methods in the courses of political economy taught at
the main institutes and universities, statistical teaching was not rooted in
the region. These courses can be conceived as an inaugural yet isolated
milestone that was not really a consequence of the institutionalisation of
10 C. J. DANIEL ET AL.

statistical training which acquired continuity in the region years later.4

Some people even carried out highly significant individual and indepen-
dent research that fostered the development of statistics in their country.
However, it is difficult to separate their role from that of the local
academic groups or scientific societies that they formed part of.
What was the role of scientific associations in promoting statistical prac-
tices in Latin America at that time? How can their gravitation or influence
be accounted for? With the existing knowledge, a regional generalisation
would lead to hasty conclusions. Although this edited volume assumes
that throughout the period analysed in Latin America official statis-
tical services prevailed over any other private quantification initiative, the
existing research does not portray a complete institutional and sociolog-
ical picture of the spheres in which statistical knowledge was built upon in
the region during the nineteenth century. The references that specialists
make regarding the coexistence of both official—in the sense of admin-
istrative or governmental—and private statistics—that Laura Cházaro
highlights for the case of Mexico and Alexandre Camargo points out
for the case of Brazil—suggest that the analysis of both state offices and
agencies implies a partial understanding of the region’s statistics.
As in other parts of the world, in Latin America civil society was
also the birthplace of groups that were involved in various ways in the
deployment of statistical practices and intervened at different times in
highly elastic statistical chains. Without being robust enough to generate
their own surveys but being strong enough to demand statistical research
from the state, interest groups played a role in promoting statistics in
some Latin American countries. Although the historiographic progress
made in this regard indicates that interest groups did not completely
lead the quantification nor did they unilaterally establish the criteria for
the statistical measurements, they did have the ability to block, ques-
tion, or criticise and, thus, condition official statistical inquiries. Hence,
to advance in the quantification of markets or of certain domains of the
social world, the state needed to align the goodwill of these different
interest groups.
The evolution of statistics in Latin America was also fuelled by debate
and controversy. In Mexico, for example, since the 1830s and 1840s “sta-
tistical enumerations and calculations were constantly debated [because]

4 Camargo Pereira and Morettin (1991) for Brazil and Mentz and Yohai (1991) for
Argentina, for example, analyse the trajectory of statistical education.
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

different valuations and images of the population were derived from what
was measured. To create a single nation, it was necessary to discuss which
of all these possibilities was the best. The discussion was long and lasted
for the whole of the nineteenth century” (Cházaro 2001, 41, authors’
translation). In Brazil at the beginning of the twentieth century, sanitary
physicians engaged in important debates with government statisticians
(Camargo 2007), while in Chile contemporary observers were able to
criticise the census figures on occupation and endorse them with scepti-
cism (Hutchison 2000). In Argentina, resistance to as well as questioning
and criticism of official statistics even led to the interrogation of certain
representative individuals of the statistical civil service who engaged in
public discussions with interest groups such as industrialists and political
groups like the anarchists (Daniel and González Bollo 2010).
During the second half of the nineteenth century, a trans-nationalised
statistical community was consolidated given the regularity of events such
as the International Statistical Congresses that took place in different
European cities and with the subsequent creation of the International
Statistical Institute (Brian 1989). Despite their irregular assistance to
these meetings, Latin American statisticians remained connected with
those institutional gatherings of statistical internationalism. Together
with other communication channels such as journals, these spaces for
interaction and exchange between state and academic statisticians from
different countries of the world generated an international network for
the circulation of ideas (Gagnon 2000). From those congresses where
enlightened decisions were made, there was a proliferation of regula-
tions and guidelines on statistical work, proposals for institutional setups,
and classification schemes for administrative or census statistics, which
expressed a series of efforts aimed at standardising international statis-
tical activity. Some scholars that study statistical internationalism of the
late nineteenth century emphasise the type and content of these norms,
as well as the rules and values that sought to govern this trans-nationalised
statistical community. Others point out that, above its standardising aim,
the organisation of government statistics and national concerns influenced
the international agenda (Randeraad 2010, 8). To the extent that they
tended to bring the conventional aspect of statistical practices to the
forefront, these studies are less inclined to give visibility to the internal
power structures of those spaces, to identify mechanisms of authority, or
to record social dynamics of influence that were not unique nor neces-
sarily unidirectional. The divergent and often contradictory interests of
12 C. J. DANIEL ET AL.

the individuals of each local statistical community undoubtedly deserve

more attention. Perhaps this way it will be less difficult to capture the role
of Latin American statisticians within statistical internationalism of the late
nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries as it is known that
they have built various bridges both personally—through the exchange of
letters—and institutionally—by sending representatives to those events.
Through the study of these exchanges, the historiography will reach a
greater understanding of their role.
Although Latin American statisticians made use of foreign statistical
models and embraced theories perceived in these fields as universal, these
experiences never implied a passive reception, or an uncritical assimilation
of statistical conventions sealed outside the continent. Latin American
statisticians and statistical practitioners also pursued their own cogni-
tive interests and raised original questions that were discouraged by
the existing international standards. Even knowing the suggestions and
the ‘good practices’ envisioned in Europe, sometimes Latin American
statistical practitioners justified the infeasibility of applying these recom-
mendations to the reality of their countries, constructed independent
criteria, and made autonomous decisions. Distancing ourselves from inter-
pretive models that propose a linear influence on local practices or an
uncritical appropriation of foreign ideas or notions, it is important to
consider statistical internationalism from another angle. From the point
of view of Latin American statisticians, these spaces constituted, at the
same time, resources available to be put into play at the local level,
stamps of prestige, or sources of authority. Sometimes the references
of Latin American statisticians to international norms, congresses, and
organisations became a strategic resource to strengthen their position
within the local sphere given that political elites venerated Europe, to
acquire funding, and to innovate organisationally by borrowing the pres-
tige of those institutions and their best-known individuals. On other
occasions, also strategically, these ties with the international community
were mobilised by Latin American statisticians and statistical practitioners
to find external support for local statistical reforms when they were slow
or delayed by the absence of government authorisation.
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

Statistical Culture in the Frame

of Latin American Hybridisations
Blending the different populations given the ethnic and cultural diver-
sity that characterised Latin America to generate a national entity was
the common challenge for all the countries in the region. The numer-
ical description of their territories and populations was a way of creating
national imaginaries. Statistical language not only made it possible to unify
an artificially delimited geographic space. It also projected a certain image
of cohesive nations on politically fragmented territories and on ethnically
diverse population groups. This image of the national entity as a political
and demographic unit was supported by knowledge considered positive,
that is, numerical, with effects on reality. Thus, abstract entities such as the
nation became concrete thanks to statistical aggregations. It is in this sense
that the literature highlights that the modern population censuses had a
‘constitutive’ function concerning the nation, parallel to the political role
that they acquired in the configuration of the new republics. According
to Mara Loveman (2014), during the nineteenth century, Latin Amer-
ican censuses were guided by two complementary political projects: a
descriptive one, which contributed to defining the cultural boundaries of
an imagined community, and a prescriptive one, which established racial
miscegenation as a positive singularity of Latin American countries when
compared to the rest of the world.
Although they shared the political function of being nation-building
tools, the region’s censuses were not completely identical, at least until
the first regional coordination initiatives emerged in 1950 with the aim
of conducting the Census of the Americas.5 During the nineteenth and
the first half of the twentieth centuries, Latin American countries did not
include the same questions on their census schedules, nor did they even
maintain them over time. The Argentine census grid, for example, disre-
garded questions about the colour or race of its inhabitants—as Hernán
Otero analyses in this volume—about the origin of their ancestors, and
about religion. These lines of enquiry were, however, pursued by other
countries, even by those with similar experiences of receiving massive

5 In 1940, the Inter-American Statistical Institute was created. Since 1943, its work has
been published in the journal Estadistica. This institute began a series of Inter-American
Statistics Congresses in 1947 and 1950 that were later taken over by the Organization of
American States and were renamed Inter-American Statistics Conferences.
14 C. J. DANIEL ET AL.

immigration, such as Brazil. Moreover, the Brazilian censuses carried out

in 1872 and 1890 included the racial classification of the population,
while the censuses of 1900 and 1920 omitted it. In the Mexican case,
the first modern censuses abandoned the racial categories used in colonial
enquiries and normalised the statistical categories with reference to ‘citi-
zenship’ (Cházaro 2018). As Loveman (2009) shows when constructing
a comparative matrix, there was substantial variation in the census sched-
ules and in the statistical descriptions of populations contained in Latin
American censuses in this period. Therefore, the paths that led to the
representation of the population as a homogeneous entity were diverse.
In some cases, language and religion were crucial variables, in others racial
classifications were prioritised, while in several places nationality was more
decisive.
As the bibliographic essay that closes this edited volume exam-
ines, censuses and census categories, particularly racial and ethnic ones,
were headline topics within Latin American historiography.6 Exploring
the census classifications in historical perspective sheds light onto the
constructed character of the populations. The categories defined by
census takers, developed based on certain implicit assumptions and
racial beliefs, gave meaning and materiality to the notion of population.
At the same time, as Benedict Anderson (1983) suggests, these cate-
gories became identifiable for the population that they only claimed to
“describe”.
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Latin Amer-
ican statisticians adopted classifications that allowed them to imagine a
national community based on fragmented populations, while discarding
others. In some countries, the census deliberately promoted the ethnici-
sation of the population’s perception by favouring or giving centrality to
racial classification (Camargo 2009). There were many differences in the
production of racial statistics across Latin America. However, Loveman
identifies points of convergence in the conception of ‘whiteness’ that

6 This Latin American academic output must be framed considering the interest gener-
ated by censuses and racial classifications within the socio-political history of statistics
carried out in Europe, the United States, and Canada. The study of classifications—from
their definition to their application—followed two trajectories. One was closely linked to
intellectual history, focusing on conceptualisations, aspirations, and projects of the men
behind the censuses. The other, centred around the history of the empirical classification
practices during the enquiry, examined the characteristics of the different actors, resources,
and instruments involved in the census.
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

informed census-taking in the region (Loveman 2009, 210). Undoubt-

edly, as Cházaro (2001) suggests, the way in which the question of race
was intertwined with the numbers provided by official statistics constitutes
a Latin American singularity. Behind the concern to determine the ‘true’
total number of inhabitants, a series of moral notions was at stake about
the various elements that made up that problematic unit called popu-
lation. Throughout their history, Latin American countries have been
configured as hybrid cultures, the result of intercultural crossings and
mixtures of heterogeneous social groups. Those contemporary statistics
contained pre-established judgements regarding these diverse groups that
they later projected as self-evident truths. Numbers became the carrier
that fostered a moralisation directed both to the homogenisation of the
population and to its ‘civilisational normalisation’.
In addition to intercultural mixtures, the hybridisation of Latin Amer-
ican societies encompassed the intertwining of the traditional with
the modern. As Néstor García Canclini points out, in Latin America
there were processes of national construction or state building in
which modernising projects have coexisted “with traditions that are not
very compatible with what Europeans then considered as characteris-
tics of modernity”. The rationalisation of social life coexisted in Latin
America “with religious and ethnic fundamentalisms, illiteracy, and archaic
power arrangements” (García Canclini 1997, 111, authors’ translation).
Hybridisation also reached statistical practices. From the institutional
point of view, it related to the mode of organisation of statistical prac-
tice where there was often a forced coexistence between state actors and
ecclesiastical authorities, or the reliance on parish priests to achieve success
when carrying out the census. From the point of view of its content, it
correlated with the signs of survival of colonial statistics, although many
times re-signified, as well as with certain local traditions in the consolida-
tion stage of modern states. Following Camargo (2018), the convergence
of modernity and traditionalism in end-of-the-century census practice
emerges as a unique feature of Latin America. Properly modern aims
that pursued both exhaustive population counts and the compilation
of statistics on administrative sources—conceived then as indicators of
the progress made by the new nations—were supported by conservative
judgements and conceptions. If the standardisation of social life is a prop-
erly modern trait, it would be impossible to deny that in Latin America
statistics promoted this process. But the hybrid character of their societies
was also reflected or translated in their statistics.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
yit. Well’m, I must be er goin’ now. Hit’s late an’ I mus’ git my res’ fer
I got to do a lot er bossin’ termorrer an dat’s allers ha’d fer me. Lucy,
I’ll fetch you de deeds ter de house befo’ nine termorrer an’,
Madison, you kin repo’t to me at eight o’clock sha’p an’ give my little
boy a lesson on de guitar. You’ll be dah, won’t you?
Madison
[Meekly.] Yassuh.
Williams
Ready to whu’l in an’ scratch.
Madison
Yassuh.
Williams
Well den, les’ all shek han’s on de noo nes’ an’ de noo aig. [They
shake hands. He puts on his hat and turns to the door.] An’ dat
remin’s me, Lucy, you better tell Madison to play on dat guitar a
plenty tonight because he’ll need music fer to stan’ up undeh all de
lessons I’m goin’ to lay onto him. Well, I wish you good night. I’m er
gittin’ kin’er ole an’ I cain’ stay up late no mo’ without bein’ crosser in
de mornin’. Good night den an’ far’ you well bofe. Eight o’clock,
Madison. Good night.

[He goes, closing the door after him. The pair stand
silent for a moment, Madison with hanging head
and in deep dejection.]

Lucy
[Throwing her arms around him.] Oh, my husban’, I’ll pray fer you.
Don’ sorrer now. Git youah res’ tonight. We kin be hones’ now.
We’ve got de house at las’ an heah’s de guitar.
Madison
 Yassuh, heah’s de guitar. [He plays it and fondles it. Then his face
assumes again its melancholy look.]
Lucy
What’s de trouble?
Madison
I don’ undehstan’ dis worl’. If I wants to make music why cain’t
folks lemme alone to make music? If I dream a fine dream why is it I
always wake up? Looks to me like somebody’s always tryin’ to crowd
me out an’ git me in a tight place.
Lucy
You wuz doin’ all right till you got mix up wif dat white man an’ his
tricks. De trouble wuz dat dis dream of youahs wuzn’t a good dream.
Madison
Yes, but not all of my dreams is bad ones. All, I wants is room to
dream my good dreams an’ make my own music.

CURTAIN
 SIMON THE CYRENIAN
Note.—Although Cyrene was in northern Africa, the wall-paintings in the vast
Cyrenian tombs depict black people instead of brown.
That Jesus’ cross-bearer was a black man, as the early painters represented
him, is a fact that holds a certain suggestion bearing upon a phase of modern
society.
It has been the author’s design that all the characters in this play should be
represented by persons entirely or partly of Negro blood; and this intention has
been carried out in the original stage production. Simon is a full-blooded Negro,
Battus is a little less dark, Acte is a mulatto as were most Egyptians of the later
dynasties. Her attendants comprise both mulattoes and Negroes. The Roman
characters are played by persons of slighter negroid strain.
 SIMON THE CYRENIAN
And as they led him away they laid hold upon one Simon, a
Cyrenian, ... and on him they laid the cross that he might bear it after
Jesus.
Luke 23, 26.

PERSONS OF THE PLAY

Procula, the wife of Pilate
Drusus, a young Roman
Acte, Princess of Egypt
Battus, a Libyan prince, a boy
Simon
Pilate, governor of Judea
Barabbas, an insurrectionist
The Mocker with the Scourge
The Mocker with the Scarlet Robe
The Mocker with the Crown of Thorns
A Centurion
Longinus, a soldier
Procula’s Attendants
Acte’s Attendants
Soldiers

Time—The day of the Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth

Scene: A garden of Pilate’s house at Jerusalem. The whole scene is

strictly Roman, softened by its eastern location and by the
 beginnings of Rome’s decadence, but there is no trace of
Judean influence. At the back there is a gallery or raised portico
reaching entirely across the garden. It is roofed but open and
beyond it the morning sky is seen. This passageway, which will
be called the portico, leads from the Praetorium on the left to
other buildings on the right. The garden has entrances toward
the back at both left and right. At the left, near the front, a
narrow portion of the façade of Pilate’s house is seen, with a
doorway reached by three steps. At the right of the garden, near
the front, there is a wall fountain. There is a marble seat at back
centre. All the architecture is of mellow marble as dark as
alabaster.

[As the curtain rises Procula is discovered upon the

steps of her house. She is in an extreme state of
agitation. Her attendants are in the garden. The
sound of a mob, with cries of “Crucify him,” “To the
Place of the Skull,” “On to Golgotha,” etc. is heard
at the rise of the curtain and at intervals
throughout the play.]

Procula
Go! Go, send more messengers. Ah, Hera, help me.

[A Messenger runs into the garden from the right and

kneels before her, breathless.]

Procula
Has Simon the Cyrenian been found?
Messenger
The swiftest horseman reached him. He is nearing the city.
Procula
Hasten him. Bring him. Your freedom for it. [The Messenger
hurries out.]
 Procula
[To Attendants.] Is there no news yet?
Attendant
One messenger has not returned. He who was sent to the royal
woman of Egypt.
Procula
Send others after him, take wings. [Drusus enters the garden
from the left.] Drusus! Help me draw him swiftly.
Drusus
The wife of Pilate speaks. Whom shall I send to her?
Procula
Too late, too late. I speak foolishly. I have already sent.
Drusus
You are tormented.
Procula
Are mine the only eyes that see the doom unrolling?
Drusus
You speak strangely.
Procula
The Furies whip me.
Drusus
Tell me your secret.
Procula
This Jesus the Nazarene—
Drusus
 You need not fear him. He is in Pilate’s hands.
Procula
Out of that is my agony. Ah, my dream.
Drusus
Dreams?—
Procula
Did you feel the earth heave last night?
Drusus
I was drinking at Herod’s palace.
Procula
Trees groaned, the statues shuddered, the fountains dried, the
walls sweated, a red dew fell in the gardens.
Drusus
I felt nothing. I saw nothing.
Procula
I saw—I cannot tell it. Horror was heaped on horror.
Drusus
You dreamed of this Nazarene?
Procula
Of him. He must not die. I begged his life of Pilate but he fears the
Jews. Help me.
Drusus
Help you? How?
Procula
Bring Simon the Cyrenian.
 Drusus
That tiger?
Procula
I heard many voices in my dream and one voice cried, “Simon the
African shall bear the burden.”
Drusus
You have not felt his claws.
Procula
Then you too believe him dangerous?
Drusus
The most dangerous man in the empire.
Procula
Dangerous to Romans, it may be, but—
Drusus
[Scornfully.] The friend of slaves! Wherever he goes insurrection
follows him. He was the secret leader of last year’s armed uprising in
Rome when thirty thousand perished. He hollows out the empire with
sedition.
Procula
A stronger man than Rome.
Drusus
His influence spreads through the provinces. He plans world
empire, undermining Rome. Cæsar has been warned of him, but is
afraid or listless.
Procula
[Half to herself.] Surely such power should avail to save one life.
 Drusus
There is a rumour that he was here two nights ago to renew the
insurrection of Barabbas. We had spies set upon him.
Procula
Does he fear spies? I have sent for this man. If the Nazarene is
condemned Simon must kindle riot and take him from the soldiers.
Drusus
Will the wife of Pilate breed rebellion to Rome?
Procula
It is for Rome’s sake and in my extremity. What singing is that? I
heard it in my dream.

[During the last few speeches a marching song by

men’s and women’s voices is heard off left, at first
faintly then, growing louder; the words are
indistinguishable.]

Drusus
The air is African.
Procula
May it be Simon.
Drusus
[Looking off left.] A litter with Ethiopian bearers.
Procula
Ethiopians! It is the Egyptian. [Drusus starts to go off right.]
Procula
Though I sent for her I fear her. Stay with me.
Drusus
 I cannot. I bear word from Pilate to Herod. [He goes off right. A
Herald in Egyptian dress enters from left.]
The Herald
Acte of Egypt to the wife of Pilate.

[The voices off left are heard approaching and singing

the tune that today is known as the Negro spiritual
“Walk Together, Children.” Acte enters from left
walking with her litter-bearers and women. With
her is Battus, a boy of ten.]

Acte
The wife of Pilate sent to me?
Procula
For Simon the Cyrenian. Men say you are his friend.
Acte
I have come here to find him.
Procula
He is not here.
Acte
If his mood holds he will not fail to come since you have sent for
him. Your men have told me that he nears the city.
Procula
Oh, help me rouse him when he comes.
Acte
What is your need?
Procula
A hidden service.
 Acte
You ask my aid? Then trust me.
Procula
[Coming down close to Acte and speaking in a low voice.] Jesus
the Nazarene must not die.
Acte
Has he been doomed?
Procula
Not yet. But if—
Acte
Are you not Pilate’s wife?
Procula
He fears the Jews.
Acte
And Simon?
Procula
If Jesus is condemned Simon must seize him.
Acte
Never.
Procula
It must be done. I beg you help me.
Acte
This Nazarene has no friend in me.
Procula
And you have never seen him.
 Acte
No, but I suffer much because of him.
Procula
And I. Jesus must live. Oh, move Simon to strike.
Acte
More lives than this magician’s wait on Simon. [An Attendant of
Procula enters from left.]
Attendant
[Calling.] Pilate has gone up toward the Judgment Hall.
Procula
Beg him to stay for me, for one word more. I’ll follow. [Attendant
goes out left. To Acte.] Command my household, wait here for
Simon. [Seizing Acte and pointing toward the Judgment Hall.] In
there and at this hour the fate of earth and heaven dangles in the
hands of blind men. Tell Simon this, see that his eyes are open.

[Procula hastens into her house. During Procula’s

words one of Acte’s Attendants, who has
strayed off right has reëntered, looking off.]

Attendant
Lord Simon rushes toward this place.
Acte
Make ready all.

[Her tire-women attend her and her men stand looking

expectantly off right. Simon enters from right. He
is a Negro of majestic bearing, with a sad, severe
countenance. He is dressed as a soldier.]

Simon
 Egypt!
Battus
[Rushing joyfully toward Simon.] Simon, Simon.
Simon
Battus, Royal Battus. [He embraces the boy.]
Battus
You have been long away.
Simon
Not so long as to have forgotten Battus.
Battus
And have you forgotten Cyrene and Egypt and our kingdom of the
free? [Acte hushes the boy, looking apprehensively about.]
Simon
No, Battus.
Acte
[To her Attendants.] Take the boy deeper in the garden. Wait
there till I call him. [The Attendants lead Battus off left.]
Acte
[Moving swiftly to Simon.] You are in danger here. What sorcery
called you back?
Simon
Where is the wife of Pilate?
Acte
She is asleep—or she listens to the harp.
Simon
 Why are you here?
Acte
I came to meet you. Why did you return?
Simon
Messengers from the wife of Pilate reached me.
Acte
What spell is on you, you who were never trapped? This is the
wolf’s own mouth. You tempt it to close upon you.
Simon
The tiger’s blood is never lapped by wolves.
Acte
Many can pull down one. Go back.
Simon
When is the Nazarene to be tried by Pilate?
Acte
So, I have found the hunter that has snared you.
Simon
When is he to be tried?
Acte
Who knows? Tomorrow. Perhaps never.
Simon
Today, the message said.
Acte
Perhaps this afternoon. Oh, Simon, wake. Shake off this net of
dreams. How were you taken in it?
 Simon
I am not taken.
Acte
You have seen this Nazarene?
Simon
I saw him.
Acte
When?
Simon
Two nights ago.
Acte
After you left me.
Simon
Afterward. I had summoned to a garden
The bravest of the slaves to help them plan
A new sedition that would free Barabbas.
There as I roused the jungles against Rome
I saw lights in another part of the garden,
I saw men come with torches and seize a man.
I hurried near and through the olive leaves
His eyes looked into mine,
His eyes burned into mine. I have seen them since,
Waking or sleeping.
Acte
You followed him?
Simon
No, and none saw me. I turned back through
the shadows and joined my men.
 Acte
And did you plot again that night?
Simon
My thoughts went wide. My words were broken.
I told the slaves to wait till my next coming.
Then, before dawn, I set out for the sea.
Acte
Oh, my Cyrenian, where is that fierce blood
That poured out from your heart fires to burn Rome?
Simon
My spirit is fiercer than it was before,
The groans of the oppressed louder than ever.
Acte
Then why have you turned back?
Simon
I have seen the whole world’s sorrow in one man’s eyes.
Acte
What does it mean? You are changed.
Simon
There as I looked upon him in the garden
A wound came in my side like a spear’s thrust,
Bleeding for him.
Acte
Is this all you know of him?
Simon
As I went seaward
I met men coming to the yearly feast.
These told me of his works, they spoke of marvels,
Of healings and of resurrections.
He suffers the old wrong of the downtrodden.
Acte
Are there no wrongs then in our Africa?
Simon
The whole earth groans beneath the persecuted;
The outcast, the despised cry out to me.
Acte
And you whom they trust to save them turn aside
To this one man.
Simon
I have not turned aside, yet I may help him.
Acte
Go back. Your peril grows. You will be trapped.
Simon
Rome cannot take me.
Acte
It is not Rome I fear but this Judean.
Simon

[Moving toward the doorway of Pilate’s house.]

Why does the wife of Pilate stay,
Having summoned me with horsemen?
Acte
[Going with him.] Doubtless she forgets.
Her whims are many.
 Simon
I must hear from her
What they have done with him.
Acte
[Placing herself before him.] Simon!
Mists are before your eyes,
Mists of forgetting.
You have forgotten Battus and all your holy vows before the
priests of Libya and Egypt to bring him back to Africa Rome’s
conqueror.

[She calls off left to Battus. The Attendants enter

with him.]

Come, lad, sit here. [She leads him to a seat at centre.] Let’s play
at worlds for Simon. Who are you?
Battus
I am Battus.
Acte
And who is Battus?
Battus
Son of Cyrenian kings and kings of Egypt,
Son of all Africa.
Acte
Who shall be your army?
Battus
The slaves of Rome.
Acte
Who shall lead them up to victory?
 Battus
Simon and I.
Acte
And then?
Battus
They shall be free. All wrongs shall be righted.
The great shall be brought low, the lowly raised.
Acte
How shall we reach our own?
Battus
Through blood and fire.
Acte
Who shall be our own?
Battus
All those who suffer wrongs, the poor, the captives.
Acte
[To Simon.] What do you say, now you have heard the faith he
lives by?
Simon
Oh, I have not forgotten. We shall go forward.
Acte
To triumph.
Simon
Yes, to triumph.
Acte
Through fire and blood.
Simon
Through fire and blood.
Acte
Ah, I have never doubted the fierce heart in you. Never be tamed.

[Procula appears in her doorway. Acte sees her and

moves apprehensively aside. Procula sees
Simon.]

Procula
You are the Libyan captain?

[Acte waves Battus and her attendants off left.]

Simon
The wife of Pilate sees him.
Procula
[Going swiftly to him.] You have seen Jesus the Nazarene?
Simon
I have seen him.
Procula
Save him.
Simon
When is he to be tried?
Procula
He has been tried.
Simon