THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF NEW GRANADA 1770 - 1815 Margarita Garrido de Payan St. Antony's College Dissertation submitted to the University of Oxford For the D. Phil. Degree on Modem History Oxford Trinity 1990 To my mother and to Carlos Alberto, Carlos Esteban and Maria del Mar ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all those institutions and individuals for their contributions to this thesis. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the Colombian Government. Banco de la Republica's Centenario de la Constitution de 1886 program awarded me a fellowship which enabled me to attend postgraduate studies at the University of Oxford. I am grateful also to the Universidad del Valle, which allowed me a two-year academic leave in order that I might complete this project. I extend special thanks to a number of institutions for providing excellent research environments: St. Antony's College, Latin American Centre and the Bodleian Library in Oxford; the Archive Historico Nacional, the Biblioteca Nacional and the Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango in Bogota; the Archive General de Indias in Seville; the John Carter Brown Library in Providence. I am deeply indebted to my supervisor for his tremendous insight and painstaking attention to both the content and writing of this text. He has committed his time and expertise and so supplied me with invaluable guidance in the completion of this thesis. I offer my gratitude to my most memorable teachers, colleagues and friends: German Colmenares and Jorge Orlando Melo for their interest in my ideas and their helpful observations; Jesus Martin-Barbero for his vital support and most enlightening comments. Thanks also to my colleagues at the Universidad del Valle for their support and willingness to fill in for me during my absence. Special thanks to my friends from St. Antony's who shared the struggles and joys of those unforgettable college days. Foremost among them are Beatriz Castro, who provided unfailing ii reassurance; Maria Cristina Dorado, who spent many long nights typing and editing this manuscript; Gustavo Bell, Eduardo Posada, and Efrain Sanchez. Thanks to my dear friends who have contributed in numerous ways to the achievement of my goals, a few of whom are Elvira Maldonado, Liliana Bonilla, Hilda Deas and Juan Carlos Henao. Thanks also to Ruth Hotges and Elvira Ryan, who kindly helped me at the Latin American Centre. To my mother and the memory of my father, who faithfully taught me love for my people and for knowledge, my gratitude. My mother, my brother, Armando, and my two sisters, Maria-Teresa and Maria-Consuelo, have been a tremendous support by providing me with their unconditional love and concern. Maria-Teresa and Maria-Consuelo have been particularly close to me throughout many long periods of intense work. Thanks also to my relatives-in- law, who have been a great help to me in many ways. None of my work would have been possible without the love and support of my husband, Carlos Alberto, and my two children, Carlos Esteban and Maria del Mar. They moved with me to England so that I might be able to study at Oxford, and in response to my long work hours, worked together to maintain the family in good spirit. No thanks are enough. Finally, I remember Julian Vargas, Maria Mercedes Holguin and Angelina Lemo whose untimely deaths have made it impossible for them to be with us today. iii POLITICAL CULTURE OF NEW GRANADA, 1770-1815 MARGARITA GARRIDO DE PAYAN D. PHIL. MODERN HISTORY ST. ANTONY'S COLLEGE TRINITY TERM 1990 ABSTRACT This thesis is a study of New Granadan political culture during the late colonial period (1770- 1810) and the first years of Independence, known as Patria Boba (1810-1815). The study focuses on the political experiences and perceptions of three distinguishable social groups: the educated Creoles, the ordinary vecinos and the hispanicized Indians. The geographical area covered is the territory of the Audiencia of Santa Fe, which roughly corresponds to present day Colombia. A combination of ideas and experiences shaped the Creole sense of order and identity. Family clans, intellectuals, bureaucrats, lawyers and merchants built networks that found a political use on the eve of Independence and during the Patria Boba. Their notions of themselves and the other social groups, their assessment of the country's resources and their perceptions of the authorities are examined. The humbler vecinos participated in local-level politics through the election of mayors and through the process of improving their township status in the Spanish colonial hierarchy of settlements. Their notions of authority, justice, equality and belonging provide an explanation for their attitudes and allegiances during the Patria Boba. Hispanicized Indians also took part in local politics and criticized the authorities and the clergy. They attempted to influence the appointment of rulers for their communities and to preserve their land. Their sense of identity, feeling of community, and perception of outsiders iv are visible in their complaints and petitions. Finally, their response to the Patria Boba has particular nuances. The documents examined for the colonial period show a number of forms of local political life and suggest that it was more lively and regular than has been supposed. It is also apparent that political types and practices, until now considered distinctive features of republican culture, had colonial antecedents. POLITICAL CULTURE OF NEW GRANADA, 1770-1815 MARGARITA GARRIDO DE PAYAN D. PHIL. MODERN HISTORY ST. ANTONY'S COLLEGE TRINITY TERM 1990 LONG ABSTRACT This work focuses on the political culture of the Audiencia of New Granada during the late colonial period (1770 - 1810) and the first five years of the period of Independence (1810- 1815). The first part studies the political experiences and perceptions of three distinguishable social groups: the educated Creoles participating in higher politics, the ordinary vecinos. freemen living in parishes, towns and small cities, and hispanicized Indians living in their communities. (The analysis of the political culture of blacks slaves has been left aside because of the scarcity of documentary material, apart from the criminal archives which deserve further research. I have deemed that outside the scope of my study.) The upper Creoles shared a feeling of being "antiguos de la tierra", favoured innovation in education and economic policies, and increased knowledge of the country through their travels as members of the Botanical Expedition, bureaucrats or merchants. They suffered censorship, discrimination and official mistrust. A combination of ideas and experiences shaped the Creole sense of order and enabled them to envisage the Audiencia as an independent community. Their assessments of the Viceroyalty's population and natural resources and the obstacles in the way of 'felicidad' are recorded in memorials, reports, projects, articles and speeches. The political experiences of more ordinary people are studied in the documents called representaciones. drafted by the vecinos in the parishes, towns and small cities. Much of them concern the management of the yearly election of mayors and judges, and the behaviour of local officials and priests. The vecinos also committed themselves to the improvement of their vi settlements and asked the Crown for recognisance at a higher lever in the hierarchy of towns and jurisdictions. These sources provide evidence about the political thought of ordinary people: their sense of identity and their notions of authority, justice, equality and belonging. Indian representaciones constitute a remarkable source for the study of their views, beliefs and attitudes. There, their sense of identity, feeling of belonging to the community and strong commitment to defend their land are visible. This thesis also examines some of their ways of solving disputes within the community and with outsiders. For vecinos' and Indians' experiences, the analysis of case-studies has been chosen as the most appropriate, since it allows the reader to see the diversity of attitudes, beliefs and expectations. The different cases are not equally well represented in the archives. In some the whole lawsuit has survived, in others just a few documents. The cases chosen include some of the richest and largest. All the regions of Colombia are represented and the main types of conflict are illustrated. However, regional differences are considered only when they help to explain some features of local or regional politics. Similar cases are mentioned to support the representativiness of the experience, attitude or belief. This work studies the widespread notions and beliefs that inspired and legitimized political practices. New ideas are also taken into account whenever they contributed to shape representations of reality. However, it is not a 'history of ideas' for it neither studies formal ideas nor does it look for their origins outside New Granada. Although not directly concerned with major insurrections during the period, this dissertation deals with numerous conflicts and problems in both high and local level politics. Most of the protests aim to uphold previous rules, and to restore the equilibrium of custom rather than to question the established order. Stress is on the of ways of settling disputes between ruled and rulers and of solving competing claims between groups or communities. vii Political life in late colonial New Granada appears richer and more continuous compared to the common picture of a quiet period disturbed only by a major insurrection in 1781. Each group had built an identity based either on ethnic grounds and inhereted expectations or on a feeling of local belonging. Each group had a sense of the "others" as distinct from "us" and shared a sense of order in which the relationship between them were defined. General notions of authority, justice, identity and inequality, past and future were shared by the members of each group. All New Granadans seemed to share a hierarchical sense of social order. The second part deals with the participation of the same three groups in politics during the period called the Patria Boba. 1810-1815. It analyses their coincidences and disagreements in practices and claims in the new political circumstances. For the second part, the analysis is based on official and unofficial documents on the most representative cases of political involvement during the Patria Boba. Many of these, as well as some of those about the Creole experience in the first part, have already been published. However, they have not been examined in the way this thesis attempts. This thesis is concerned with the ways in which the different groups got involved in the events of the first years of Independence - rhetoric, allegiances, claims and rituals - and attempts to explain them against the background of their political practices and expectations during the late colonial period. It neither attempts to give an alternative explanation of the causes of Independence nor to trace the evolution of formal ideas, doctrines or systems of government; the analysis of the first constitutions and the ideas they contain has been left aside. The coming of Independence affected the colonial accomodation. The creole leaders convoked the "sovereign people" to proclaim independence and evoked the Indian past as a common one for all "Americans". However, this alliance did not endure. Mutual fears and distrust and a viii non-democratic tradition prevailed. Different meanings of freedom caused groups to clash with each other. Expectations of local and provincial autonomies, and all kinds of competitive claims found political expression in parties and factions. Loyalties and allegiances were refrained. Language and rituals were partially renewed. Although Independence created new circumstances, most of the characteristics of the colonial political culture found expression in the Republic. Nineteenth-century political life has many more antecedents and precursors in colonial political practices and types than has hitherto been recognized. Most of the sources come from the Archivo Nacional de Colombia, some from the Archivo Central del Cauca and the Archivo General de Indias and a few from the British Museum and the Archivo de la Academia Colombiana de Historia. Books and published documents have been studied at the Bodleian Library and Latin American Centre in Oxford, the Biblioteca Nacional and Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango in Bogota. The last bibliographical survey was made in the John Carter Brown and Rockefeller Libraries in Providence, Rhode Island.