Race war and nation in Caribbean Gran Colombia, Cartagena, 1810-1832

American Historical Review

Volumn 111, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 336-361

  Lasso, Marixa ^a  

^a CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 33749865170     PISSN: 00028762     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/ahr.111.2.336     Document Type: Review

References (219)

1. I use the term "racial harmony" because it is more reflective of early-nineteenth-century language than "racial democracy," a term coined much later. Some of the ideological characteristics of the myth of racial democracy changed between the early nineteenth century and the twentieth century - highlighting the need to historicize its cultural evolution in the past two centuries. However, what did not change was the linkage between nationalism and racial harmony and equality that characterizes this myth. Richard Graham, ed., The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940 (Austin, Tex., 1990).
2. Quotation and translation from George Reid Andrews, Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000 (New York, 2004), 87.
3. La constitución federal de Venezuela de 1811 y documentos a fines, preliminary study by C. Parra Pérez (Caracas, 1959), 205. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.
4. Quotation and translation from George Reid Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800-1900 (Madison, Wis., 1980). 59.
5. Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, Mass., 1981).
6. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1991);
7. Nicolas Shumway, The Invention of Argentina (Berkeley, Calif., 1991);
8. Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, Calif., 1984);
9. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992);
10. David A. Bell, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being French: Law, Republicanism and National Identity at the End of the Old Regime," AHR 106, no. 4 (October 2001): 1215-1235;
11. Andrew W. Robertson, " 'Look on This Picture... and on This!' Nationalism, Localism, and Partisan Images of Otherness in the United States, 1787-1820," AHR 106, no. 4 (October 2001): 1263-1280.
12. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, N.Y., 1966), 229.
13. "The modern house of race in each country was built on similar foundations of prejudice but constructed according to varying circumstances." Anthony Marx, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of South Africa, the United States, and Brazil (Cambridge, 1998), 10. Marx's analysis, however, focuses on the second half of the nineteenth century and not on the anticolonial struggles of the Age of Revolution.
14. For an assessment of the revolutionary nature of the Spanish American wars of independence, see Eric Van Young, "Conclusion: Was There an Age of Revolution in Spanish America?" in Victor M. Uribe-Uran, ed., State and Society in Spanish America during the Age of Revolution (Wilmington, Del., 2001), 219-246.
15. Victor M. Uribe, "The Enigma of Latin American Independence," Latin American Research Review 32, no. 1 (1997): 236-255, analyzes the "limited impact" of social history in the historiography of the wars of independence.
16. John Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions, 1808-1826, 2nd ed. (New York, 1986), 211-212;
17. Winthrop R. Wright, Café con Leche: Race, Class, and National Image in Venezuela (Austin, Tex., 1990), 13-42;
18. Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 42-63;
19. Aline Helg, Liberty and Equality in Caribbean Colombia, 1770-1835 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2004), 6-7, 253-255.
20. See also Lester Langley, The Americas in the Age of Revolution, 1750-1850 (New Haven, Conn., 1996), 175-177;
21. Jaime E. Rodríguez O., The Independence of Spanish America (Cambridge, 1998), 115-116;
22. Eric Van Young, The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology, and the Struggle for Mexican Independence, 1810-1821 (Stanford, Calif., 2001), 4.
23. The best treatment of the myth of racial democracy as a hegemonic construct remains Graham, The Idea of Race in Latin America.
24. Antonio Annino, ed., Historia de las elecciones en Iberoamérica, sigh XIX (Mexico, 1995);
25. David Brading, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492-1867 (Cambridge, 1991);
26. François-Xavier Guerra, Modernidad e Independencias ensayos sobre las revoluciones hispánicas (Madrid, 1992);
27. Manuel Chust, La cuestión nacional americana en las Cortes de Cádiz (1810-1814) (Valencia, 1999);
28. Anthony Pagden, Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination, 1513-1830 (New Haven, Conn., 1990), 133-153;
29. Eduardo Posada-Carbó, ed., Elections before Democracy: The History of Elections in Europe and Latin America (London, 1996);
30. Marie Laure Rieu-Millan, Los diputados americanos en las cortes de Cádiz (Madrid, 1990);
31. Rodríguez, The Independence of Spanish America;
32. Victor M. Uribe-Uran, Honorable Lives: Lawyers, Family, and Politics in Colombia, 1780-1850 (Pittsburgh, Pa., 2000).
33. Alfonso Múnera, "Failing to Construct the Colo ian Nation: Race and Class in the Andean Caribbean Conflict, 1717-1816" (Ph.D. diss., University of Connecticut, 1995);
34. Peter Guardino, Peasants, Politics, and the Formation of Mexico's National State (Stanford, Calif., 1996);
35. Peter Blanchard, "The Language of Liberation: Slave Voices in the Wars of Independence," Hispanic American Historical Re view (hereafter HAHR) 82, no. 3 (2002): 499-523.
36. See also Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 42-113;
37. Seth Meisel, "From Slave to Citizen-Soldier in Early Independence Argentina," Historical Reflections 29, no. 1 (2003): 65-82;
38. Camilla Townsend, " 'Half of My Body Free, the Other Half Enslaved': The Politics of the Slaves of Guayas at the End of the Colonial Era," Colonial Latin American Review 1, no. 1 (1998): 105-128;
39. Silvia C. Mallo, "La Libertad en el discurso del estado, de amos y esclaves, 1780-1830," Revista Historia de América 112 (1991): 121-146.
40. For Brazil, see Hendrik Kraay, " 'As Terrifying as Unexpected': The Bahian Sabinada, 1837-1838," HAHR 72, no. 4 (1992): 501-526.
41. September 7, 1811, in Diario de Sesiones de las Cortes Generales y Extraordinarius (Madrid, 1870), 3:
42. 1796; July 31, 1811, Libro de Actas del Supremo Congreso de Venezuela, 1811-1812 (Caracas, 1959), 254.
43. I am inspired by works on the French Caribbean that set the debates about manumission and racial equality at the center of analysis of the Age of Revolution. David Geggus, "Racial Equality, Slavery, and Colonial Secession during the Constituent Assembly,"AHR 94, no. 5 (December 1989): 1290-1308;
44. Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2004);
45. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, 1996).
46. Marx, Making Race and Nation;
47. Frederick Cooper, Thomas C. Holt, and Rebecca J. Scott, Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000).
48. See also George Reid Andrews, "Brazilian Racial Democracy, 1900-1990: An American Counterpoint," Journal of Contemporary History 31 (1996): 3, 483-507;
49. Thomas E. Skidmore, "Racial Mixture and Affirmative Action: The Cases of Brazil and the United States," AHR 108, no. 5 (December 2003): 1391-1396;
50. Darién Davis, Slavery and Beyond: The African Impact on Latin America and the Caribbean (Wilmington, Del., 1995);
51. Suzanne Bost, Mulattos and Mestizos: Representing Mixed Identities in the Amer icas, 1850-2000 (Athens, Ga., 2003);
52. Marilyn Grace Miller, Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race: The Cult of Mestizaje in Latin America (Austin, Tex., 2004);
53. Darlene Clark Hine and Jacqueline McLeod, eds., Crossing Boundaries: Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora (Bloomington, Ind., 1999);
54. Jane Landers, ed., Against the Odds: Free Blacks in the Slave Societies of the Americas (Portland, Ore., 1996);
55. Norman E. Whitten, Jr., and Arlene Torres, Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean: Social Dynamics and Cultural Transformations (Bloomington, Ind., 1998).
56. Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2001);
57. Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1999);
58. Aline Helg, Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995).
59. Similarly, Emilia Viotti da Costa has explained how "the myth of racial democracy was created and destroyed," tracing its origins to the 1930s. According to her, the origins of the myth emerged from a need on the part of the traditional planter elite, who felt besieged by a new social force: working-class, modern Pulista elites who mocked the past. Gilberto Freyre sought to confront the new modernizing forces with a positive aspect of Brazilian tradition: racial democracy. Emilia Viotti da Costa, The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000), 234-246.
60. Similarly, John Wood Sweet has argued that modern segregation patterns were first established in the North during the revolutionary era. Sweet, Body Politics: Negotiating Race in the American North, 1730-1830 (Baltimore, Md., 2003).
61. For example, in her excellent comparison of postabolition Louisiana and Cuba, Rebecca J. Scott is able to use the Cuban patriot ideology of racial equality as one of the factors that explain differences in race and labor relations, but is unable to explain how this factor itself emerged. Rebecca J. Scott, "Fault Lines, Color Lines, and Party Lines: Race, Labor, and Collective Action in Louisiana and Cuba, 1862-1912," in Scott, Beyond Slavery, 61-106.
62. Even works that look explicitly at the connection between nationalism and race in Latin America are more concerned with understanding how modem racial identities work once they are in place than with asking how they emerged. Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson, and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, eds., Race and Nation in Modern Latin America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2003).
63. There is a large and rich literature on modern racial identities. For Colombia, see Peter Wade, Blackness and Race Mixture: The Dynamics of Racial Identity in Colombia (Baltimore, Md., 1993);
64. Nancy P. Appelbaum, Muddied Waters: Race, Region, and Local History in Colombia, 1846-1948 (Durham, N.C., 2003);
65. Jaime Arocha, "Inclusion of Afro-Colombians: Unreachable National Goal?" Latin American Perspectives 25, no. 3 (1998): 70-89;
66. James Sanders, Contentious Republicans: Popular Politics, Race, and Class in Nineteenth-Century Colombia (Durham, N.C., 2004).
67. Alejandro de la Fuente has noticed similar conflicts between the elite and Afro-Cubans over the meaning and implications of the nationalist myth of racial democracy in postindependence Cuba. De la Fuente, A Nation for All, 28-30.
68. German Carrera Damas, Boves: Aspectos Socioeconómicos de la guerra de independence (Caracas, 1968);
69. Eleazar Córdova Bello, La independencia de Haiti y su influencia en Hispanoamérica (Caracas, 1967);
70. Francisco Zuluaga, Guerrilla y Sociedad en el Patta (Cali, 1993);
71. Múnera, "Failing to Construct the Colombian Nation."
72. For an analysis of the conflicts between Spanish authorities and the town councils of Cartagena, Guayaquil, and Panama over the pardos' fuero, see Allan Kuethe, "The Status of the Free Pardo in the Disciplined Militia of New Granada," Journal of Negro History 56 (1971): 105-117.
73. For comments on pardos' military loyalty vis-à-vis Creoles' increasing dissatisfaction, see Kuethe, Military Reform, 165-183,
74. and Archive General de Simancas, Secretaría de Guerra, 7069, Exp. 36-1, fols. 1-6. The question of whether a pardo novice should become a regular nun in the Cartagena convent of Santa Clara led to similar conflicts between Creoles and Spanish bureaucrats; Archivo General de Indias (hereafter AGI), Santa Fe, 997. For a comparable conflict over whether Cristobal Polo, & pardo lawyer, should practice in Cartagena, see Múnera, "Failing to Construct the Colombian Nation," 112. On changing Spanish racial attitudes in the late eighteenth century, see Frank K. Safford, "Race, Integration, and Progress: Elite Attitudes and the Indian in Colombia, 1750-1870," HAHR 71, no. 1 (1991): 1-33.
75. Magnus Mörner, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (Boston, 1967), 60-70;
76. Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions, 21-24.
77. "Informe que el Ayuntamiento de Caracas hace la Rey de España referente a la Real Cédula de 10 febrero de 1795," November 28, 1796, in José Félix Blanco, ed., Documentos para la historia de la vida pública del Libertador (Caracas, 1875-1878), 293.
78. Ibid., "Informe que el Ayuntamiento de Caracas hace la Rey de España referente a la Real Cédula de 10 febrero de 1795," Documentos para la historia de la vida pública del Libertador 1875-1878 292.
79. Archivo General de Simancas, Secretaría de Guerra, 7069, Exp. 36-1, fols. 1-6.
80. Creoles had already confronted Cornelius de Pauw's and Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon's theories of Americans' natural inferiority, and they saw themselves increasingly pushed aside from positions of power. Brading,
81. The First America, 428-432;
82. Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions, 1-37.
83. "Informe que el Ayuntamiento de Caracas," 293.
84. José Ignacio de Pombo, Comercio y contrabando en Cartagena de Indias (Bogotá, 1986; orig. written June 2, 1800), 57-58.
85. Anthony McFarlane, Colombia before Independence: Economy, Society, and Politics under Bourbon Rule (Cambridge, 1993), 311-314;
86. Alfonso Múnera, Fronteras imaginadas: La construcción de las razas y de la geografía en el siglo XIX colombiano (Bogotá, 2005), 45-88.
87. "Ordenanzas de la Conspiración de Gual y España," in Pedro Grases, La Conspiración de Gual y España y el Ideario de la Independencia (Caracas, 1996), 175-176.
88. For Haitian-inspired slave conspiracies in Cartagena, see AGI, Estado, 53, no. 77, fols. 1-2; Kuethe, Military Reform and Society, 141-143;
89. Aline Helg, "A Fragmented Majority: Free 'of All Colors,' Indians, and Slaves in Caribbean Colombia during the Haitian Revolution," in David Geggus, ed., The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Columbia, S.C., 2001).
90. For Venezuela, see Federico Brito Figueroa, Las insurrecciones de los esclavos negros en la sociedad colonial venezolana (Caracas, 1961), 72-76;
91. Pedro M. Arcaya, Insurrección de los negros de la Serranía de Coro (Caracas, 1949).
92. For an analysis of the Spanish American wars of independence, see Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions;
93. Guerra, Modernidad e Independencias;
94. Rodríguez, The Independence of Spanish America.
95. Chust, La cuestión nacional americana, 32, 52.
96. The best analysis of Cadiz debates over pardo representation remains James F. King, "The Colored Castas and American Representation in the Cortes of Cádiz," HAHR 33, no. 1 (1953): 33-64.
97. See also Rieu-Millan, Los diputados americanos, 152-173;
98. Chust, La cuestión nacional, 53-73, 150-173.
99. For the United States, I am relying on Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848 (London, 1988), 122-126.
100. September 6, 1811, Diario de Sesiones, 3: 1789-1790.
101. September 7, 1811, ibid., Diario de Sesiones 1799;
102. Chust, La cuestión nacional, 153-173.
103. "Carta 6a de Juan Sintierra sobre un artículo de la Nueva Constitución de España," El Español, October 30, 1811.
104. September 7, 1811, Diario de Sesiones, 3: 1798.
105. Newspapers, particularly the London-based El Español, had a crucial influence on opinions about the debates. On the importance of the Cortes and its debates for Spanish-American politics, see Rodríguez, The Independence of Spanish America, 82-103;
106. Guerra, Modernidad e Independencias;
107. Brading, The First America, 573-577. For Cartagena, Alfonso Múnera has noted that in Cartagena in 1811, the newspaper El Argos Americano reproduced fragments of El Español coverage of the Cádiz debates. Múnera, "Failing to Construct the Colombian Nation," 237. In her analysis of the Cádiz debates, Tamar Herzog examines the legal and historical basis for the denial of citizen status to people of African descent in the Spanish constitution, but does not note the divisions between Spaniards and Spanish Americans on this subject, and the fact that the Spanish American constitutions of this period recognized individuals of African descent as citizens.
108. Herzog, Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (New Haven, Conn., 2003), 158-163.
109. I examine these arguments in further detail in Marixa Lasso, "A Republican Myth of Racial Harmony: Race and Patriotism in Colombia, 1810-1812," Historical Reflections 29, no. 1 (2003): 43-63.
110. Alfonso Múnera was the first modern historian to recognize the crucial importance of pardo artisans in Cartagena's independence. Múnera, "Failing to Construct the Colombian Nation," 237-240.
111. See also Marixa Lasso, "Revisiting Independence Day: Afro-Colombian Politics and Patriot Narratives, Cartagena, 1809-1815," in Mark Thurner and Andres Guerrero, eds., After Spanish Rule: Postcolonial Predicaments of the Americas (Durham, N.C., 2003),
112. and Helg, Liberty and Equality, 121-161. This pattern of securing pardo alliance for urban patriot conspiracies continued until the very end of the independence struggle. In 1819, the Spanish authorities discovered a patriot conspiracy in Mompox in which members of the Creole elite participated with zambo artisans. "Testimonio de lo que resulta de la Causa Principal contra Don José Manuel de la Paz, Administrador General de Tabacos de la Villa de Mompox: Indiciado de haber entrado en la conspiración tramada en Mompox contra las armas del Rey," AGI, Cuba 719 A. Similarly, the list of patriot conspirators in 1819 Ocaña includes men and women, whites and blacks, free people and slaves. "Relación de las personas que resultaron cómplices en la sorpresa y asesinato verificados en esta ciudad de Ocaña el 10 de Noviembre de 1819," AGI, Cuba 719 A.
113. "Instrucciones que deberán observarse en las elecciones parroquiales, en las de partido y en las capitulares, para el nombramiento de diputados en la Suprema Junta de la provincia de Cartagena," December 11, 1810, in Manuel Ezequiel Corrales, comp., Efemérides y anales del Estado de Bolívar (Bogota, 1889), 2: 48.
114. For the use of Cádiz for war propaganda in Venezuela, see James King, "A Royalist View of the Colored Castes in the Venezuelan Wars of Independence," HAHR 33, no. 4 (1953): 527-537.
115. "Declaración de los capitanes Don Juán Jaldon y Don Andrés Maria Alvarez sobre lo ocurrido en su enviada a San Juan de Pyra para tratar con el Jefe disidente Paez," August 5, 1820, AGI, Indiferente, 1568.
116. "Proclama de José Francisco Bermúdez," Cartagena, August 8, 1815, Archive Histórico Nacional de Colombia (hereafter AHNC), Archive Restrepo, rollo 5, fol. 179.
117. See also Simón Bolívar, "A los pueblos de Venezuela," Guyana, August 5, 1817, in Bolívar, Obras Completas (Madrid, 1960), 647;
118. Bolívar, "A los Soldados del Ejército Libertador," October 17, 1817, in Daniel Florencio O'Leary, Memorias del General O'Leary (Caracas, 1884), 15: 423-424.
119. See, for example, the 1811 Venezuelan congressional debates over whether the constitution should explicitly eliminate any racial distinctions between blacks and whites. Libro de actas del Supremo Congreso de Venezuela, 254-262,
120. and Manuel A. Rodríguez, "Los pardos libres en la colonia y la independencia," Boletin de la Academia Nacional de la Historia 75 (1992): 52.
121. Gilberto Freyre's historical analysis of race relations in colonial Brazil has been instrumental in the popularity of this notion of racial tolerance. As far as I can tell, in Colombia the idea of Spanish racial tolerance was developed in the 1860s by conservative intellectuals who wanted to rescue the positive legacy of Spanish rule, in particular the role of the church. G. de Soroa [pseudonym for Sergio Arboleda], La República en la América Española (Bogota, 1869), 34-35.
122. Bolívar, "A los pueblos de Venezuela," 647.
123. This speech, which was delivered in Mompox during the Independence Day celebrations of December 1823, was printed in Gaceta de Cartagena de Colombia on January 17, 1824.
124. Mariano Montilla to Sr. Secretario de Guerra y Marina, Cartagena, May 10, 1822, AHNC, República, Secretaría de Guerra y Marina, t. 14, fol. 317.
125. Chust, La cuestión nacional, 102.
126. Jaime Jaramillo Uribe, "La controversia jurídica y filosófica, librada en la Nueva Granada en torno a la liberación de los esclaves y la importancia económica y social de la esclavitud en el siglo XIX," Anuario de Historia Social y de la Cultura 4 (1969): 76-80;
127. Observaciones de G.T. sobre la ley de manumisión del soberano Congreso de Colombia (Bogota, 1822), in Colección de Libros Raros y Manuscritos Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango; "Los Hacendados y Vecinos de la Provincia de Cartagena de Colombia al Congreso," November 30, 1822, Archive Legislativo del Congreso de Colombia, Cámara, Peticiones, t. 33, fols. 24-31.
128. Actas del Congreso de Cúcuta 1821 (Bogota, 1989), 1: 97.
129. Ibid., Actas del Congreso de Cúcuta 1821 219-220.
130. To my knowledge, there is no account of the total number of slaves manumitted by the juntas. However, available descriptions indicate that the juntas played only a symbolic role in the manumission process. Harold A. Bierck, Jr., "The Struggle for Abolition in Gran Colombia," HAHR 33, no. 3 (1953): 373-378;
131. Margarita González, "El proceso de manumisión en Colombia," Cuadernos Colombianos 2 (1974): 196.
132. Gaceta de Cartagena de Colombia, January 29, 1825.
133. For an analysis of manumission and state building in contemporary Argentina, see Meisel, "From Slave to Citizen-Soldier," 65-82.
134. Article 12 of the manumission law of July 19, 1821, decreed that the juntas should manumit slaves during national celebrations. Actas del Congreso de Cúcuta 1821, 2: 52.
135. Gaceta de Cartagena de Colombia, January 1, 1825.
136. Ibid., Gaceta de Cartagena de Colombia January 29, 1825.
137. Ibid.,Gaceta de Cartagena de Colombia January 1, 1825.
138. Although manumission played a crucial role in the 1851 civil war, it did not become a lasting source of regional identification. Sanders, Contentious Republicans, 83-124;
139. Alvaro Tirado Mejia, Aspectos Sociales de las Guerras Civiles en Colombia (Bogota, 1976), 14-30;
140. González, "El proceso de manumisión en Colombia," 235-237.
141. See, for example, Luis Castro Leiva, La Gran Colombia: Una ilusión ilustrada (Caracas, 1985), 110, 125.
142. Simón Bolívar, "Discurso pronunciado por el Libertador ante el Congreso de Angostura el 15 de febrero de 1819," in Harold A. Bierck, Jr., Selected Writings of Bolivar, trans. Lewis Bertrand (New York, 1951), 2: 191-192.
143. For the relevance of this notion for Colombian political ideology, see Castro Leiva, La Gran Colombia, 110-115;
144. Castro Leiva, "The Ironies of the Spanish-American Revolutions," International Social Science Journal 41, no. 1 (1989): 53-67;
145. Hilda Sabato, "On Political Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century Latin America," AHR 106, no. 4 (October 2001): 1290-1315, 1301.
146. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses (New York, 1950), 26-28;
147. Castro Leiva, La Gran Colombia, 110, 125.
148. Castro Leiva, "The Ironies," 59.
149. Bierck, Selected Writings of Bolivar, 2: 191-192.
150. "Independencia," Gaceta de Cartagena de Colombia, no. 157 (1824): 2. The Gaceta de Cartagena published this history of independence in various segments.
151. Observaciones de G.T., 37-38.
152. Quote from Múnera, Fronteras imaginadas, 148. In the excellent essay "En busca del mestizaje," Múnera highlights the importance of the idea of mestizaje among nineteenth-century Colombian intellectuals.
153. This was hardly a problem faced exclusively by Colombians or Spanish Americans. As David Bell shows, French revolutionaries, while invoking the nation, confronted the problem of how to create the Frenchman who did not yet exist. Bell, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being French," 1215-1235.
154. See also Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution, 72-86.
155. Since the United States left the legal status of people of African descent to the individual states, legislation varied from the abolition of slavery and granting blacks full citizenship rights to slavery and disenfranchisement of free blacks. For a summary of the various state legislations, see Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 111-127, 267-291;
156. Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny;
157. Sweet, Body Politics, 314-350.
158. This quote from the Haitian constitution comes from Mimi Sheller, Democracy after Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Radicalism in Haiti and Jamaica (Gainesville, Fla., 2000), 73.
159. David Nicholls acknowledges the ideological and political dimension of this notion of "black," which included the hundreds of Polish soldiers who fought with Dessalines. Yet he links it to twentieth-century notions of black liberation rather than to contemporary notions of race, nation, and citizenship. Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour, and National Independence in Haiti, rev. ed. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1996), 35-36.
160. David Geggus points out the use of a shared black identity in contemporary attempts to unify a nation divided by class and color. Yet he also points out that the first constitution represented the only and a very short-lived attempt to stress blackness. Geggus, "The Naming of Haiti," New West Indian Guide 71 (1997): 45-46.
161. José Manuel Restrepo, "Memoria que el secretario de estado y del despacho del interior presentó al Congreso de Colombia sobre los negocies de su departamento: Año de 1823-13," Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia, Miscelánea no 1, 160.
162. David Bushnell, The Santander Regime in Gran Colombia (Newark, Del., 1954), 173.
163. Restrepo, "Memoria que le secretario de estado," 14-15.
164. This theme was recurrent in Bolívar's speeches in favor of abolition. His address to the Congress of Angostura, as well as his constitutional project for Bolivia, expressed his belief in the incompatibility between republicanism and slavery. Bolívar, Proclamas y Discursos, 232 and 332.
165. The 1821 constitution of the Republic of Colombia declared all free men born in its territory to be Colombians. This constitution did not distinguish between the categories of Colombians and citizens, which were thought to be the same. The difference was established between those who were entitled to vote and those who were not.
166. Gaceta de Cartagena de Colombia, January 29, 1825.
167. Bushnell, The Santander Regime, 183-193.
168. Decree establishing the elementary schools in the cities of Honda, Mariquita, Ibagué, and Ambalema y Espinal, Boletín de Historia y Antigüedades 10, no. 109 (May 1915): 78.
169. Session of May 16, 1823, Santander y el Congreso de 1823: Actas correspondencia, senado (Bogotá, 1989), 3: 67-68.
170. Gaceta de Cartagena de Colombia, June 7, 1823.
171. See the 1780 and 1825 censuses for the province of Cartagena in Hermes Tovar Pinzón, Convocatoria al poder del número: Censos y estadísticas de la Nueva Granada 1750-1830 (Bogotá, 1994).
172. On public order and abandoned hacienda slaves, see Gustavo Bell Lemus, "Deserciones, fugas, cimarronajes, rochelas y uniones libres: El problema del control social en la provincia de Cartagena al final del dominio español 1816-1820," in Lemus, Cartagena de Indias de la colonia a la república (Bogotá, 1991), chap. 3; Cartagena, March 1816, AGI, Cuba 717. For the congressional dossier on the freedom of slave soldiers, see, for example, Archivo Legislativo del Congreso de Colombia, Senado, Consultas, t. 58, fols. 28 and 45-47. For the impact of the war of independence on slave soldiers,
173. see Blanchard, "The Language of Liberation," 499-523;
174. Meisel, "From Slave to Citizen Soldier," 65-82;
175. Bierck, "The Struggle for Abolition in Gran Colombia," 365-386.
176. Francisco de Paula Santander to the Minister of Interior, September 7, 1824, Archivo Legislativo del Congreso de Colombia, Senado, Consultas, t. 58, fols. 43-44.
177. José Manuel Restrepo, March 23, 1823, Diario político y militar: Memorias sobre los sucesos importantes de la época para servir a la historia de la Revolución de Colombia y de la Nueva Granada, desde 1819 para adelante (Bogotá, 1954), 1: 211.
178. Senate to Santander, June 7, 1823, Santandery el Congreso de 1823, 1: 309.
179. Ministerio de Interior, t. 1, fol. 155, República, AHNC.
180. Ibid.
181. AHNC, República, Ministerio de Interior, t. 1, fols. 154 and 163.
182. Ibid., fols. 5-32.
183. AHNC, República, Gobernación de Cartagena, t. 42, fols. 2-8; AHNC, República, Ministerio de Interior, t. 1, fols. 99-105.
184. AHNC, República, Ministerio de Interior, t. 1, fols. 351-353.
185. In her analysis of José Padilla, the most prominent and best-known Colombian pardo to face race war accusations, Aline Helg emphasizes the relevance of patron-client relations between whites and pardos to explain Padilla's failure to rally enough support in Cartagena. She argues that because of these clientelistic relationships and the appeal of legal racial equality, race-based rebellions were destined to fail. Helg, "Simón Bolívar and the Spectre of Pardocracia: José Padilla in Post-Independence Cartagena," Journal of Latin American Studies 35. no. 3 (2003): 447-471,
186. and Helg, Liberty and Equality, 195-222.
187. However, since Padilla's case was only one of a series of alleged racial conspiracies, the question remains why social tensions were expressed in the language of race war during this period. The answer requires analysis of racial conspiracies as a group rather than in isolation, which allows patterns to be observed that are otherwise not apparent.
188. "Causa criminal contra Valentín Arcia, alcalde ordinario de segunda nominación de Majagual por hablar mal contra los blancos y contra el gobierno," AHNC, República, Archives Criminales, t. 61, fols. 1143-1209, and t. 96, fols. 244-322.
189. Ibid.Causa Criminal Contra Valentín Arcia, Alcalde Ordinario de Segunda Nominación de Majagual Por Hablar mal Contra los Blancos y Contra el Gobierno
190. See, for example, the trials of Colonel and Senator Remigio Márquez and General and Senator José Prudencio Padilla. A detailed analysis of these trials and Arcias's trial can be found in Marixa Lasso, "Haiti as an Image of Popular Republicanism in Caribbean Colombia, Cartagena Province (1811-1830)," in Geggus, The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 178-186,
191. and Lasso, "Race and Republicanism in the Age of Revolution, Cartagena 1795-1831" (Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 2002), 133-168.
192. For a different interpretation of Padilla's case, see Helg, Liberty and Equality, 195-223.
193. José Salvador de Narváez, "Operaciones del Ejército de Cartagena situado en la línea occidental del río Magdalena, desde el 22 de diciembre de 1814 hasta el 18 de enero de 1815, con motivo de lo ocurrido en el Colegio electoral y Revisor el 17 de diciembre citado," January 30, 1815, in Manuel Ezequiel Corrales, Efemérides y anales del Estado de Bolívar (Bogotá, 1889), 2: 172-176.
194. Pedro Gual, "Primer oficio del gobernador de la provincia al secretario del Estado y Relaciones Exteriores del Gobierno de la Unión," January 30, 1815, AHNC, Restrepo, rollo 5, fols. 115-116.
195. "Cartagena, Sumaria averiguación para aclarar asuntos relacionados con la seguridad pública y con la subordinación y disciplina en las clases del ejército," AHNC, República, Archives Criminales, t. 44, fols. 86-118.
196. I further analyze the context of these cases in Lasso, "Race and Republicanism during the Age of Revolution," 89-201.
197. AHNC, República, Gobernación de Cartagena, 42, fol. 5.
198. AHNC, República, Ministerio de Interior, t. 1, fol. 102.
199. Ibid., fol. 353.
200. Ibid.
201. Ibid., fols. 351-353.
202. For a detailed analysis of criminal cases against pardos in Cartagena during the first decade of independence, see Lasso, "Race and Republicanism in the Age of Revolution."
203. AHNC, República-Archivos Criminales, t. 96, fols. 244-322.
204. Ibid., t. 61, fols. 1143-1209.
205. AHNC, República, Ministerio de Interior, t. 1, fol. 102.
206. This process was not unique to early-nineteenth-century Colombia. A century later, black Cubans who organized to combat the persistence of racism were also accused of promoting race war. Helg, Our Rightful Share.
207. For a different approach to the relationship between crime and race in Cuba, see Alejandra Bronfman, " 'En Plena Libertad y Democracia': Negros Brujos and the Social Question," HAHR 82, no. 3 (2002): 549-587.
208. See the cases of the aforementioned senator Remigio Márquez and of Buenaventura Pérez, AHNC, Anexo, Guerra y Marina, 106, fols. 445-477.
209. AHNC, República, Ministerio de Interior, t. 1, fol. 351.
210. AHNC, República, Secretaría de Guerra y Marina, t. 14, fol. 115.
211. I am inspired by Linda Colley's notion that "men and women decide who they are by reference to who and what they are not." Colley, Britons, 6. Her idea that national identity is shaped in opposition to national enemies is crucial for understanding the impact of anticolonial wars in the development of national racial identities.
212. I am summarizing Sweet, Body Politics, 191.
213. Quoted in ibid., Body Politics 189.
214. Ibid. Body Politics
215. Ibid., Body Politics 191.
216. "Proclama de José Francisco Bermúdez," Cartagena, August 8, 1815, AHNC, Restrepo, rollo 5, fol. 179.
217. Leonard I. Sweet, "The Fourth of July and Black Americans in the Nineteenth Century: Northern Leadership Opinion within the Context of Black Experience," Journal of Negro History 61, no 3 (1976): 258-259;
218. Shane White, " 'It Was a Proud Day': African Americans, Festivals, and Parades in the North, 1741-1834," Journal of American History 81 (1994): 38-41.
219. Lary May, "Making the American Consensus: The Narrative of Conversion and Subversion in World War II Films," in Lewis A. Erenberg and Susan E. Hirsh, eds., The War in American Culture: Society and Consciousness during World War II (Chicago, 1996), 71-102.