A republican myth of racial harmony: Race and patriotism in Colombia, 1810-12

Historical Reflections

Volumn 29, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 43-63

  Lasso, Marixa ^a  

^a CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33749869743     PISSN: 03157997     EISSN: 19392419     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. The power and endurance of this nationalist notion is apparent in the ways in which Latin-American intellectuals and politicians adapted European and U.S. racist ideas. Even during the height of scientific racism in the mid-nineteenth century, Latin-American intellectuals refrained from wholeheartedly endorsing European racial concepts. They hoped their nations would progressively lighten through racial mixing between white immigrants and local blacks. Perhaps more importantly, these modified racist notions failed to affect a political discourse which continued to emphasize racial unity and equality attractive to black voters. For Latin-American intellectual ideas about race, see Richard Graham ed., The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940, (Austin, 1990)
2. For a careful analysis of the relationship between racial discourse and Afro-Cuban political participation, see Alejandro de La Fuente, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill, 2001)
3. For elite use of a republican rhetoric of equality to attract black support during the wars of independence, see John Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions (New York, 1973)
4. Winthrop R. Wright, Café con Leche: Race, Class, and National Image in Venezuela (Austin, 1990)
5. David B. Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (Ithaca, 1966)
6. George Stoking, Race, Culture and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (Chicago, 1982)
7. Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hibridity in Theory, Culture, and Race (London, 1995)
8. Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery (Lonon, 1988), pp. 267-291
9. Gilberto Freyre The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization (New York, 1956)
10. Frank Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen, the Negro in the Americas, (New York, 1946)
11. Marvin Harris, Patterns of Race in the Americas (New York, 1964)
12. Carl Degler, Neither Black nor White, (New York, 1971)
13. Florestan Fernandes, A inlegraçāo do negro na sociedade de classes (Sâo Paulo, 1965)
14. Emilia Viotti da Costa, The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories (Chicago, 1985)
15. George Reid Andrews, Blacks & Whites in Sâo Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1988 (Madison, 1991)
16. Peter Wade Blackness and Race Mixture: The Dynamics of Racial Identity in Colombia (Baltimore, 1993)
17. Winthrop Wright, Café con Leche
18. David B. Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, p. 286
19. Anthony W. Marx, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of South Africa, the United States, and Brazil (Cambridge, 1998). Although Marx's focus on the processes of national formation is useful, his emphasis on Brazil's peaceful political transition from colony to republic is highly problematic because in other regions of Latin America the emergence of the myth of racial democracy was tied to bloody conflicts between royalists and patriots
20. I have found the theoretical approaches of Benedict Anderson and Lynda Colley on nationalism quite useful for answering this question. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1991)
21. Linda Colley Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven, 1992)
22. C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York, 1957)
23. Anthony Marx, Making Race and Nation, pp. 120-144
24. I am using Anthony Marx's summary of the association between Afrikaners' identity and Africans' inferiority: Making Race and Nation, pp. 35-42
25. C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins
26. David Geggus, Slavery, War and Revolution: The British Occupation of Saint Domingue, 1793-1798 (Oxford, 1982)
27. The complex political and ideological changes of these years have been studied in detail elsewhere. See François-Xavier Guerra, Modernidad e independencias: ensayos sobre las revoluciones hispánicas (Madrid, 1992)
28. Jaime Rodríguez, The Independence of Spanish America (Cambridge, 1998)
29. Manuel Chust, La cuestión nacional americana en las Cortes de Cádiz (1810-1814) (Valencia, 1999)
30. The best analysis of Cádiz debates over representation concerning blacks remains James F. King, "The Colored Castas and American Representation in the Cortes of Cádiz," Hispanic American Historical Review 33 (1953): 33-64
31. See also Marie Laure Rieu-Millan, Los diputados americanos en las corles de Cádiz (Madrid, 1990), pp. 152-173
32. Chust, La cuestión nacional, pp. 53-73 and 150-173
33. James F. King, "The Colored Castas," pp. 43-44
34. Guerra, Modernidad e independencias, pp. 327-333
35. Chust, La cueslión national, pp. 128-129
36. See, for example, Arguelles' arguments on January 23, 1811 in Diario de Sesiones de las Cortes Generales y Extraordinarias (hereafter, Diario de Sesiones) vol. 3 (Madrid, 1870)
37. Sessions of January 23-25, Diario de Sesiones, vol. 3. El Amigo de los Hombres (Philadelphia, 1812; Cartagena, 1813) Archivo General de Indias (hereafter AGI) R.17170,3-4. When the example of Haiti was used to dissuade créoles from Cartagena from declaring a junta, Antonio de Villavicencio, a royal emissary, responded: "It is completely absurd to fear an outcome similar to that of Saint Domingue, because of differences in circumstances and precedents. We recognize our king Ferdinand VII and we have not proclaimed liberty and equality or abolished the slavery of blacks, whose number was as excessive in Saint Domingue as it is scarce here. To all of those who share these fears with me I tell them to hide them." Antonio de Villavicencio to Virrey Amar, 30 May 1810, AGI, Santa Fé, 747, doc. 34
38. 10 September 1811, Diario de Sesiones, 3:1808
39. In 1795 the Spanish Crown published a royal decree which contained a list of some seventy-one royal waivers (gracias al sacar) with their respective prices. Among the listed exemptions was that of the category oipardo. For 500 reales it was possible for a pardo to buy his or her whiteness. This decree did not establish a new procedure but only regularized a previous practice that allowed meritorious and wealthy pardos to acquire the legal privileges of whites through service to the crown and a monetary gift. James King, "The Case of José Ponciano de Ayarza: A Document of Gracias al Sacar," HAHR 31 (1951 ): 640-645
40. See also José María Ots Capadequi, "Sobre las confirmaciones reales y las "gracias al sacar" en la historia del derecho indiano," Estudios de Historia Novohispana 2 (1968): 35-47
41. 7 September 1811, Diario de Sesiones, 3:1796
42. Chust, La cuestión national, p. 160
43. 7 September 1811, Diario de Sesiones, 3:1797
44. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses (New York, 1950), pp. 26-28
45. For an analysis of Spanish-American ideas about factionalism during the revolutionary era, see Glen Dealy, "Prolegomena on the Spanish American Political Tradition," HAHR (1968): 37-58
46. Rieu-Millan, Los diputados americanos, p. 154
47. 6 September 1811, Diario de Sesiones, 3:1788, "las distintas jerarquías que hay en el cielo nos convencen de que las hay en la tierra."
48. For an analysis of characteristics of citizenship in Spain and American during these years, see François-Xavier Guerra, "El soberano y su reino: reflexiones sobre la génesis del ciudadano en América Latina" in Ciudadanía politico y formatión de naciones: perspeclivas históricas de América Latina, Hilda Sabato ed. (Mexico, 1999), pp. 33-61
49. 7 September 1811, Diario de Sesiones, 3:1798
50. 10 September 1811 Diario de Sesiones, 3:1809
51. 6 September 1811, Diario de Sesiones, 3:1789-1790
52. 5 September 1811, Diario de Sesiones, 3:1781
53. 7 September, 1811, Diario de Sesiones, 3:1799
54. For the re-evaluation of mechanical arts during the enlightenment, see William H. Sewell, Jr., Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 64-72, 77-86
55. See also Sewell's recent study of Siéyès: A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution: The Abbé Siéyès and What Is the Third Estate? (Durham, NC, 1994)
56. Manuel Ezequiel Corráles, comp., Documentes para la historia de la provincia de Cartagena, hoy Estado Soberano de la Unión Colombiana (Bogotá, 1883), I:198
57. Antonio Narin̄o asked of Cartagena's junta: "In the sudden state of revolution it is said that the people assumes sovereignty; but in fact, how does it exercise it? By its representatives, it is answered. And who names the representatives? The people. And who convokes this people? When? Where? Under what formula?" Although Narin̄o's questions were intended to satirize Cartagena's fondness for liberal notions of representation, he pointed out the crucial question of how, in fact, the people were to exercise sovereignty. I am quoting from Jaime Jaramillo Uribe, El pensamiento colombiano en el siglo XIX (Bogotá, 1996), p. 152
58. For the crucial role that pardos played in Cartagena's independence, see Alfonso Múnera, "Failing to Construct the Colombian Nation: Race and Class in the Andean Caribbean Conflict, 1717-1816," Ph.D. diss., University of Connecticut, 1995, pp. 237-240
59. See also, Aline Helg, "The Limits of Equality," Slavery and Abolition 20 (1999): 1-30
60. Alfonso Múnera, El fracaso de la natión: región, clase y raza en el Caribe colombiano (1717-1821) (Bogotá, 1998), pp. 157-159, 175-176
61. Documentas para la historia, 1:127. As a result the council deposed the governor on June 14, 1810, when men armed with machetes and a crowd of local people of all classes surrounded his palace. It should be noted that Cartagena was not unique. In the nearby city of Mompox, the zambo (half-Indian, half-black) José Luis Mun̄oz was part of the 1810 town council conspiracies against Spanish authorities. According to the Spanish military commander, Don Vicente Talledo, it was necessary to win back Mun̄oz's support because of his influence with mulattos and zambos. "Informe del Comandante de Ingenieros, Don Vicente Talledo, al Virrey Amar, sobre conatos de revolución en Cartagena y Mompox," Documentos para la historia, 1:53-54. This pattern of securing pardo alliance for urban patriot conspiracies continued until the very end of the independence struggle. In 1819 Spanish authorities discovered a patriot conspiracy in Mompox in which members of the creole elite participated with zambo artisans. "Testimonio de lo que résulta 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 Ocan̄a includes men and women, whites and blacks, free and nonfree: "Relación de las personas que resultaron cómplices en la sorpresa y asesinato verificados en esta ciudad de Ocan̄a el 10 de Noviembre de 1819," AGI, Cuba 719 A
62. "Instrucciones que deberán observarse en las elecciones parroquiales, en las de partido y en las capilulares, para el nombramiento de diputados en la Suprema Junta de la provincia de Cartagena, 11 December 1810, Manuel Ezequiel Corrales," Efemérides y anales del Eslado de Bolívar (Bogotá, 1889), 2:48
63. "Apuntamientos para escribir una ojeada sobre la historia de la transformación política de la Provincia de Cartagena," Documentas para la historia, 1:129
64. This point is made by Múnera, "Failing to Construct the Colombian Nation," p. 238. Documentos para la historia, 1:368
65. Although the debates of the Cartagena junta about pardo citizenship have not survived, those concerning pardo equality of the Venezuelan Constitutional Congress (1811) provide an illustrative example of the arguments used for and against pardos in a region with racial and political characteristics resembling those of Cartagena. In July the first congress of republican Venezuela discussed a constitutional prohibition of legal distinctions between pardos and whites. As in other parts of Spanish America where blacks and mulattos constituted an important percentage of the population, pardos in Venezuela had been an active and decisive force in the struggles between royalists and patriots. For a summary of the pardos' military role in the Llanos (the Venezuelan plains), see, for example, Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, pp. 340-360
66. Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions, pp. 190-227
67. Gerhard Masur, Simon Bolivar (Caracas, 1987). Unlike their Cadiz counterparts, Venezuelan deputies did not debate pardos' rights to citizenship. The issue was whether the constitution should explicitly eliminate political and civil distinctions between blacks and whites. The prohibition became part of the 1812 constitution
68. See the Venezuela debates of Session of July 31, 1811, Libro de actas del Supremo Congreso de Venezuela, 1811-1812 (Caracas, 1959), pp. 254-262
69. and Rodríguez, "Los pardos libres," p. 52
70. This rhetorical tactic was shared by other contemporary nationalist ideologies. See Eric Hobsbawn, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, 1990), p. 91
71. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven, 1992), pp. 6-7, 368
72. Derechos del hombre y del ciudadano con varias máximas republicanas y un discurso preliminar dirigido a los americanos (Santa Fé de Bogotá, 1813) Colección de Libros Raros y Manuscritos, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango. For the 1797 version, see Pedro Grases, "Estudio histórico-crítico sobre los Derechos del Hombre y del Ciudadano," Derechos del Hombre y del Ciudadano (Caracas, 1959), pp. 103-246
73. Benedict Anderson emphasizes the sense of newness shared by Spanish-American patriots, yet he restricts it to the elite. Imagined Communities, p. 193
74. Lynn Hunt's conception of the French Revolution as a "liminal period... in which the nation appeared to hover on the margins between what had been declared old and what was hoped for as new" is also appropriate for the Wars of Independence. Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, 1984), p. 180. The irremediable differences between Spain and America would be a constant element of patriot rhetoric throughout the Independence period. See, for example, Cuartel General del Libertador en Turbaco to Sr. Brigadier and Jefe Supremo de la Plaza de Cartagena, 28 August 1820, AGI, Santa Fe 1017
75. El Espan̄ol, 30 July 1810, p. 282
76. David Brading, The First America (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 573-577. In 1811 Cartagena, the newspaper El Argos Americano reproduced fragments of El Espan̄ol coverage of the Cadiz debates
77. "Sobre las facultades intelectuales de los negros," El Espan̄ol, no. XIX, 30 October 1811, pp. 3-25. Translating and commenting upon the abolitionist Wilberforce's "Letter from Liverpool," the writer for El Espan̄ol presented a defense of black intelligence that attacked the major arguments of contemporary racism. He contested the association between physical difference and intellectual inferiority
78. "Carta 6a de Juan Sintierra sobre un artículo de la Nueva Constitutión de Espan̄a," El Espan̄ol, 30 October 1811, pp. 65-79
79. James King, "The Colored Castes and American Representation," p. 34
80. James King, "A Royalist View of the Colored Castes in the Venezuelan Wars of Independence," Hispanic American Historical Review 33 (1953): 533
81. "Proclama de José Francisco Bermúdez," Cartagena, 8 August 1815, Archivo General de la Nación, Archivo Restrepo, rollo 5, fol. 179
82. "Observaciones de G.T. sobre la ley de Manumisión del Soberano Congreso de Colombia," (Bogota, 1822)
83. 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, Archivo Legislativo del Congreso de Colombia, Camara, Peticiones, p. 33, fols. 24-31
84. This is not lo deny that some parties were more strongly associated with pardo demands than others. The early federalist faction and later the Liberal Party tended to enjoy a larger degree of pardo support than did conservatives. For an examination of the relationship between abolitionism and the Liberal Party in the 1840s and early 1850s, see James Sanders, "Contentious Republicans: Popular Politics, Race, and Class in Nineteenth-Century Southwestern Colombia" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 2000)
85. I examine these conflicts in detail in Marixa Lasso, "Race and Republicanism in the Age of Revolution, Cartagena 1795-1831" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida, 2002)