HELG, Aline. The Limits of Equality. Free People of Color and Slaves in The First Independence of Cartagena (1810-1815) PDF

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Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave

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The limits of equality: Free people of colour and slaves

during the first independence of Cartagena, Colombia,
1810–15
a
Aline Helg
a
Department of History, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, 78712–1163
Published online: 13 Jun 2008.
To cite this article: Aline Helg (1999): The limits of equality: Free people of colour and slaves during the first independence
of Cartagena, Colombia, 1810–15, Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, 20:2, 1-30
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01440399908575275
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The Limits of Equality: Free People of
Colour and Slaves during the First
Independence of Cartagena, Colombia,
1810-15
ALINE HELG
The supposed rights of equality ... were all what [the scum of the people]
were interested in and the origin of their fanaticism.
Antonio Jose de Ayos, 1816
Slavery & Abolition 1999.20:1-30.
On 11 November 1811, hundreds of men, most of them pardos, blacks, and

zambos? forced the Junta of Cartagena de Indias to declare the full
independence of the Colombian Caribbean province from Spain. By doing
so, they went beyond the will of most of the city's white Creole elite who
advocated only autonomy from the weakened metropolis. Yet, neither on 11
November nor in the three years that followed, during which the people held
the balance of power, did Cartagena's free population of colour demand the
abolition of slavery.
Why Cartagena's free blacks and mulattos did not eliminate slavery
when given the historical opportunity to do so - and, thus, why did the
region's slaves have to wait until 1851 to witness abolition? This article
argues that the answer lies in the socio-economic structure of the Colombian
Caribbean coast and in the complex intersection of race, colour, ethnicity,
class and status. In a region where the majority of the population was free
and of mixed African descent, shades of colour and class worked together
to preclude the formation of a racial consciousness uniting the free and the
slave of full and partial African ancestry. The article concludes with a brief
comparative comment on free people of colour and abolition in the
Caribbean and the circum-Caribbean.
Aline Helg is in the Department of History, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712-
1163.
Slavery and Abolition, Vol. 20, No. 2, August 1999, pp.1-30
PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON
2 SLAVERY AND ABOLITION
The Society and Economy of Cartagena

In 1811 Cartagena's population did not fundamentally deviate from the
portrait given by the 1777 Spanish census.2 In 1777 the city counted 13,396
inhabitants, of whom 27.0 per cent were classified as whites, 56.8 per cent
as free persons of colour, 15.7 per cent as slaves, and less than 0.5 per cent
as Indians.3 The population of the coastal capital differed from that of the
rest of the Province of Cartagena for its much higher proportion of whites
and slaves and for its insignificant proportion of Indians." Yet, even so,
about three cartageneros out of four were of full or partial African descent,
and one cartagenero out of six was a slave.
The fortified city consisted in four racially mixed barrios: Santa
Catalina, where most of the civil and church buildings were located, and
Nuestra Senora de la Merced, where most of the army was garrisoned, both
inhabited by wealthy whites as well as by some artisans of all colours; San
Sebastian, the city's commercial center and the residence of rich whites, of
some artisans, and of poor free people of colour on the barrio's periphery;
and Santo Toribio, residence and working place of most artisans and slaves.
The island of the suburb of Getsemanf housed mostly free blacks, mulattos,
and zambos, labourers or artisans, as well as some white merchants. Also
protected by walls, Getsemanf was linked to the city's main gate by a
bridge.5 Indicative of the social standing of the five neighbourhoods, the
proportion of slaves in the population of each of them ranged from 30 per
cent in La Merced, to about 22 per cent in Santa Catalina, Santo Toribio, and
San Sebastian, and to less that 5 per cent in Getsemanf.6
At the end of the eighteenth century the economy of Cartagena revolved
around the city's military role in the defence of the Spanish empire and its
central position in the legal trade of the viceroyalty of New Granada.
Cartagena was the viceroyalty's coastal stronghold and its most fortified
city. Since the military reform of the 1770s, it garrisoned an infantry
battalion, two artillery companies, and a fixed battalion known as the Fijo.
This reform had brought to Cartagena numerous new soldiers from the
interior of New Granada. Soldiers and officers needed food, housing,
clothing and services, which prompted economic growth. The 1770s was
also a decade of major investments in the fortifications and channels of
Cartagena and its bay, bringing employment to hundreds of local workers
and artisans.7
In the 1780s, as a cumulative effect of the 1778 Edict of Free Trade and
military reform, the city's legal trade was revitalized. Cartagena was the
most important port not only for the coast, but also for the Andean interior
up to Quito. Through the Caribbean port passed imported manufactured
goods, cloth, and wheat as well New Granada's exports of precious metals,
SLAVES DURING THE FIRST INDEPENDENCE OF CARTAGENA 3
tropical agricultural products, brazilwood and emeralds. The community of

Spanish and white Creole merchants established in Cartagena increased
rapidly and gained economic as well as political power, leading to the
Spanish-approved creation of a consulado de comercio (merchant guild) in
1795.8
In addition, the number and size of the haciendas dedicated to tropical
agriculture (particularly sugar cane) and cattle ranching increased, using
slaves and/or peones and sharecroppers. In the vicinity of Cartagena, several
large cane haciendas employed up to 100 slaves each. This development
was facilitated by the'various military expeditions launched by Spain from
the 1740s to the 1780s to destroy the insubordinate indigenous communities
and the rochelas (small illegal settlements inhabited by runaway slaves,
poor free people of colour, fugitives, deserters, consenting or abducted
women and their children) that occupied most of the province's territory.
Tens of thousands of these men, women, and children were then forcibly
baptized and resettled in legal villages, where many became sharecroppers.

As a result, production and trade expanded in the region, and reflected in a
growing elite of wealthy hacendados, merchants, bureaucrats and
ecclesiastics, many of whom resided in Cartagena from where they ran their
businesses. This explains the relatively high proportion of whites and slaves
in the city, because these men and their families surrounded themselves with
dozens of slaves who contributed to their luxurious lifestyle.9
Whereas the elite focused on export agriculture, cattle raising, and trade,
the free population of colour autonomously produced most of Cartagena's
food, goods and services and also benefited from the expansion.
Getsemani's dwellers and small independent peasants and sharecroppers
cultivated fruits and vegetables in the vicinity of the capital; women of
colour transported and sold goods on the local markets; black, pardo and
zambo artisans made tools and clothing in small family shops and larger
units employing free and slave labour. Black and mulatto masons,
carpenters and cabinetmakers provided the city with buildings and furniture.
Although some artisans prospered, they obviously never acceded to white
elite status. Their skin colour and African origin prohibited them from
entering the professions, the Church and many positions in the army and the
bureaucracy.10
However, even at its peak, the Caribbean coast's economy was weak
compared with that of other tropical colonies at the same time. Forced by
Spain to limit its exportations to gold and silver until 1778, the region
turned late and only marginally to tropical export crops and cattle raising.
Most of its agriculture was still for regional consumption and in the hands
of small landowners and tenants. Even after the expeditions of resettlement,
large portions of the province remained unconquered. Most of the rural
population lived in conditions close to self-subsistence, and both the state

and the church had only a sporadic presence in settlements and villages. The
economy of Cartagena itself was founded on trade, but the capital produced
little for exportation. As a result, the revenues of the province were grossly
insufficient to pay for the maintenance of its capital, which was partly
financed by revenues from Quito and other provinces of New Granada."
The domination of Cartagena's elite on coastal society was, thus, far
from being firmly established in the province, and even in Cartagena it was
subjected to the colonial state and the church. Hacendados and merchants
controlled the city's provision in meat, corn and sugar from the hinterland
but depended on Spain's will for imports and exports. Although they kept
the independent producers from the free population of colour in check
through labour and land contracts, buying practices and networks of
patronage, they were largely outnumbered by the latter, who could easily
take advantage of any elite weakening.
In the- 1790s, three major changes contributed to halt the Caribbean

coast's modest and long-awaited boom. First, due to financial constrains,
the crown suspended Cartagena's fortification works and reduced its
military force. Second, a Spanish decree authorizing the free importation of
brandies and rums from Catalonia and Cuba brought an end to the incipient
local production of molasses and liquors. Cattle ranching, cotton,
brazilwood and cacao fared better, thanks to the continuing legal trade and
contraband.12 Third, the slave trade, on the monopoly of which many of
Cartagena's hacendados and merchants had built up their early fortunes,
was in sharp decline. Few new slaves were legally imported from Africa
and other American regions since 1780, and, with few female slaves giving
birth to babies, the existing slave population was naturally decreasing. In
addition, the practices of slave self-purchase, manumission, and granting j
freedom to the newborn were not rare, and showed the endeavour of some
slaves to gain individual freedom for themselves or their children.13
Although slavery continued to be the principal form of labour on coastal
haciendas and represented one of their major assets, new taxes and the
importation of foreign brandies forced several sugar cane haciendas to
reduce their rural slave labour force dramatically. The excess slaves were
sold at higher prices to the mines of the Pacific region or relocated in
Cartagena.14
These changes, in a Caribbean context of revolution and social upheaval,
affected all classes of society. Although many elite Creoles envied the
privileges of the Spanish-born, Spanish and Creole merchants and
hacendados were brought closer together by their common economic
interests. Simultaneously, the philosophy of Enlightenment and economic
liberalism had made their ways into the younger generation trained in the
viceroyalty's capital, Santa Fe de Bogota1. No doubt, they shied away from

the egalitarian principles of the French revolution, the abolition of slavery,
and racial equality; yet some began to favour reform within the established
system.13 The free population of colour was hit hard as state and elite
demand for labour, services and goods drained away. As the material
benefits of the boom vanished, the limitations of their racial condition
appeared all the more unfair, particularly in the light of the events in Saint
Domingue and other parts of the Caribbean.16
The numerous men, women, and children who worked as servants and
slaves in Cartagena's domestic service as well as in construction, small trade,
port activities and agriculture in the proximity of the city were also affected
by the recession. The relocation of rural slaves to the province's capital did
not go without readjustment for both rural and urban slaves. Those slaves who
lived separately from their masters and were subjected to the payment of
wages saw their earnings decrease. Simultaneously, they were informed of the
major local and international movements happening around them, above all,
the Haitian Revolution. As expressed by the viceroy of New Granada in 1800:

'Slaves don't need much incentive to conceive ideas of freedom in view of the
pernicious example of those from the French colonies'.17
Indeed, during the Holy Week of 1799, Cartagena reportedly escaped a
major slave rebellion. A group of French slaves recently acquired by
officers and wealthy cartageneros, in association with some African-born
and Creole slaves and a sergeant of the black artillerymen, planned to take
control of the city. Apparently, their scheme was to murder the governor and
seize a fortress and some military defences of the city. They expected then
to rally the support of the free population of colour, and, with them, kill the
whites, ransack the city, and gain their own freedom. One day before its
launching, the alleged conspiracy was denounced to the governor by a
pardo corporal whom the slaves had hoped to rally to their cause, together
with his pardo militia unit. Most conspirators were immediately arrested
with little damage, except the burning of a hacienda by two runaway slave
conspirators in the vicinity of Cartagena.18
Cartagena's First Independence, 1810-15

In the early 1800s, a combination of economic and political conditions
brought elite white Creoles, some Spanish residents, and the free population
of colour of Cartagena together in the defence of their community against
Spanish direct rule." Spain's continuing wars against Britain and France
further worsened the economy and weakened the colonial order. Since the
1790s, Spanish and Creole merchants struggled to obtain the authorization
from the metropolis to trade with neutral ports, as their then flourishing
peers in Havana, Caracas and Buenos Aires. Increasingly, they perceived

that the issue of free trade was linked to the broader issue of the province's
autonomy in its economic and domestic affairs from both Spain and Santa
Fe de Bogota.20 In 1808, the abduction of King Ferdinand VII by Napoleon
and the formation of regional juntas and a Central Junta in Spain created a
new context that widened the options of Cartagena's elite. The juntas
introduced the principle of the sovereignty of the people, and some leading
cartageneros began to think of their region as an autonomous province
within the Spanish kingdom.21
In 1809, Cartagena's cabildo (town council), comprising 12 Spanish and
Creole merchants and hacendados, defied a ban by colonial authorities and
continued to trade with the United States.22 The arrival later that year of a
new Spanish governor for the province, Brigadier General Francisco
Montes, only increased tensions between Cartagena, on the one hand, and
Santa Fe and Spain, on the other. In May 1810, the cabildo accused Montes
of secretly supporting France against Spain and of dangerously favouring
Spaniards over Creoles. The cabildo, under the leadership of the Creole
hacendado and lawyer Jose Marfa Garcia de Toledo, claimed that only an
autonomous government made of elite white Creoles and Spaniards could
guarantee the stability of the Caribbean coast within the Spanish empire.23
On 23 May they submitted Montes to the supervision of two elected
deputies, one creole and one Spaniard.24
Simultaneously, Garcia de Toledo capitalized on popular discontent to
organize a force able to neutralize, if needed, the pro-Spanish Fijo and other
troops garrisoned in the city. He entrusted one powerful mulatto artisan, the
Cuban-born Pedro Romero, with the mobilization of 'a large number of men
of worth and resolution [from the black and mulatto suburb of Getsemanf],
who would be ready at Garcia Toledo's first call'. He assigned the same task
to others in the city's barrios of Santo Toribio and Santa Catalina.25 Romero
rapidly rallied 'all the neighbourhood of Getsemanf in the unit of the
Patriotic Lancers of Getsemanf.26 On 14 June 1810, men from these three
neighbourhoods, armed with machetes and backed by a huge crowd, stood
in front of the Governor's Palace, where the cabildo was meeting. The
cabildo then unanimously voted to depose the governor, who was deported
to Havana. Impressed by such a display of popular resolution, the chiefs of
all the military corps, including the Fijo, solemnly approved the cabildo's
decision.27 The cabildo then tried to prevent clashes between Spaniards and
Creoles by stressing their 'ties of fraternal union and fidelity to Spain', their
common religion, rights and duties. In addition, it formed two battalions of
'patriot volunteers to conserve the august rights of Ferdinand VII', one for
whites uniting Spaniards and Creoles, the other for free pardos, thus
confirming the Spanish colonial divisions along racial lines.28
In August 1810, a Supreme Junta was established to rule Cartagena and

its province autonomously.29 When in November, the Regency sent a new
governor to replace Montes, the cartagenews of colour took arms and
randomly attacked Spaniards and pro-Spanish Creoles, and again a crowd
took position around the Governor's Palace to make sure that the cabildo
would not allow the new governor to disembark. At this point, several
Spaniards, among them some top military and civil officials, took refuge in
the royalist port city of Santa Marta, close to Venezuela.30
Cartagena's pro-Spanish population, however, was still hoping to turn the
tide of the events. On 4 February 1811, the Fijo, backed by supporters of the
Regency, attempted to take over the Governor's Palace. Denounced by two
lower-rank officers, the conspiracy fell through before any shots were
fired.31 Nevertheless, the lower classes took to the streets. For several days,
hundreds of armed blacks, mulattos, and zambos attacked Spanish homes,
arrested Spaniards, and imprisoned them in the barracks of the Pardo
Patriots. According to a pardo militiaman,
All the night [of 4 February] was of revolution: over 3,000 souls were
patrolling and walking in the streets, and it was the first time that we
saw the Junta meeting a whole day and night ... The day 5 was of
horror and fright. The streets covered with people looking for the
accomplices of the revolt of the 'Fijo', whom they said were all
Europeans ... During the days 6, 7, 8, 9, and today 10, the
imprisonment and movements continued, but already more slowly
because the chiefs were locked up and because Mr. Garcia Toledo was
bringing an action for insurrection and lese-homeland.32
After the thwarting of the conspiracy of the Fijo, it became increasingly
difficult for the Supreme Junta of Cartagena to maintain its loyalty to Spain
in the face of the popular classes and a radical portion of the elite who began
to demand that the province declare independence, a step already taken by
part of New Granada. Critics denounced the junta's fierce repression of the
city of Mompox, on the Magdalena River. In effect, in October 1810, the
cabildo of Mompox promulgated the independence of the city from Spain
and, as Cartagena maintained its ties to the crown, declared its secession
from the province of Cartagena and its adhesion to the federation of
independent provinces created under the leadership of Santa Fe. In
response, the Supreme Junta ordered the military occupation of Mompox
and the prosecution of its revolutionary leaders. Of preeminence among the
momposinos was the patrician Vicente Celedonio Gutierrez de Pineres,
brother of Gabriel and German Gutierrez de Pineres, two residents of
Cartagena members of the Supreme Junta and active participants in
Cartagena's reformist process.33
The occupation of Mompox sealed the beginning of a personal feud

between Garcia de Toledo and the Gutierrez de Pineres brothers that rapidly
evolved into a political and socioracial conflict between the toledistas,
comprising the reformist elite and some intermediate sectors interested in
progressive reforms without upsetting the social order, and the pineristas,
comprising the darker and more radical lower classes and their leaders who
advocated independence and social equality.34
In June 1811, the radical elite met with the Supreme Junta to demand
Cartagena's declaration of independence on the grounds that the Spanish
Cortes had failed to recognize full equality between Americans and
peninsulars. In August they presented a formal petition signed by 479
residents from Cartagena, but the junta responded that it would declare
independence only after having consulted all the residents of the capital and
the provincial cabildos of Tolu, Mompox, San Benito Abad, and Simiti.33
Two months later, the junta was still procrastinating. In the meantime,
Cartagena was now virtually at war with the royalist province of Santa
Marta.36
On 11 November 1811, the radicals launched a coup that compelled the
junta to declare independence. The Patriotic Lancers of Getsemani and the
Pardo Patriots took position on the walls and turned the artillery against the
barracks of the Fijo and the White Patriots to prevent them from
intervening. Gabriel Gutierrez de Pineres and Pedro Romero assembled
lower-class men and artisans from all over the city in front of the church of
Getsemani. The crowd entered the city, forced the doors of the arsenal to
seize arms, and, 'armed some with guns, others with lances and still others
with daggers, they all went to the front of the [Governor's] Palace'.37 They
sent two delegates to the junta to demand absolute independence from
Spain, 'the equal rights of all the classes of citizens', a government divided
into three powers, the attribution of the army command to the executive
power, the opening of the legislators' sessions to the public, the abolition of
the Inquisition, the exclusion of 'anti-patriotic Europeans' from public
office, and an end to the occupation and repression of Mompox. In addition
to the key demand for equal rights, the demonstrators requested that 'The
battalion of pardos has its commander from the same class and the faculty
to name its adjutants ... The militias of artillerymen has the same terms as
the battalion of pardos, with officers from their class.'38
Then the armed populace invaded the palace, molested Garcia de
Toledo, and extorted from the full junta the signing of the act of
independence of the province.39 The document presented the Spanish
Cortes's decision not to grant equality of representation to Americans as the
main justification for the act.40 In the days that followed, all the military
corps, the public officials and the ecclesiastic authorities sworn fidelity to
independence. Only the bishop of Cartagena refused and was later

expelled.41 As for the Inquisition, it ceased its activities, and in early 1812
its officials moved the Holy Office to Santa Marta.
After the declaration of independence, the politics of Cartagena
continued to be ruled by the conflict between the toledistas and the
pineristas allied to the free people of colour. Each party had the backing of
a military body: the toledistas, the Fijo purged from its royalist elements and
the White Patriots; the pineristas, the Pardo Patriots and the Patriot Lancers
of Getsemani. Although less disciplined than before, the military was more
reliable and democratic, with several men of colour in positions of
command.42 In 1812, male heads of family throughout the province
designated the electors who would choose the deputies to a constituent
convention. Sign of the new times, among the 36 elected deputies, at least
two, Pedro Romero and Cecilio Rojas, were men of colour.43
The 1812 constitution developed the principles put forward by the 1811
Act of Independence. It was representative, republican, liberal and stressed

the fundamental rights of free individuals. It granted the right to vote to all
free men regardless of colour who were 'resident, father or head of a family,
or head of a household, who lives of his rents or labour, without depending
on another person'. It stated the importance of the Catholic religion to
preserve public morality, seen as the necessary complement to the people's
freedom. The constitution was concerned with slaves' well-being and
supported the decline of slavery but did not mention abolition. Inapplicable
in the conditions of war and upheaval that followed its adoption, it was
rapidly superseded by a series of regulations that gave extraordinary powers
to the executive.44
For the three years to come until the bloody reconquest of the Caribbean
coast by Spain in the second half of 1815, Cartagena struggled internally
and externally. Inside the city, the toledistas strove to neutralize the
pineristas and to bring the population of colour back under their control,
which they only achieved in early 1815 at the high cost of recalling the pro-
independence troops to besiege and occupy Cartagena. Outside the city, the
cartageneros waged war on the royalist forces in Santa Marta and faced the
province's increasing resistance to forced war levies and recruitment. They
were further weakened by the fierce animosity existing between the
province's chief of the pro-independence army, Manuel del Castillo, and the
Venezuelan caudillo Sim6n Bolivar, a rivalry that benefited the royalists. In
addition, Cartagena became a haven for French corsairs with their crews
and refugees from the Venezuelan pro-independence army, who took up
many of Cartagena's military and administrative positions.45
In August 1815, the Spanish troops under the ruthless General Pablo
Morillo began a deadly four-month siege of the city. When the Spaniards
finally entered Cartagena, about one third of its approximately 15,000

inhabitants had died of hunger and disease. Two thousand managed to
escape to the Caribbean on corsair boats, many to die, others to be captured
by the Spanish, still others never to return.46 Shortly after, Spain prosecuted
and executed most of the main leaders who had remained in the city or had
been captured, notably the toledistas Jose" Maria Garcia de Toledo, Antonio
Jose" de Ayos, and Manuel del Castillo, but the pineristas were more
successful in escaping from the wrath of Spain. For the following five years,
the Spanish ruled with an iron fist a city in ruin and despair, orphaned of its
leadership and popular organizations.47
Race, Colour and Class in Bourbon Cartagena

Why, then, did the armed free blacks and mulattos, who held the balance of
Cartagena's politics from 1811 to 1814, demand independence and equality
for themselves but not the abolition of slavery?
In the early nineteenth century, race, class, gender and status narrowly
restricted one's life. When, in 1777, the Spanish authorities counted the
population of the city of Cartagena household by household, they generally
reported whether men, women, and children were Spanish, white,
quinteron, quarteron, mulatto, pardo, zambo, black, moreno, mestizo, or
Indian. Don or dona preceded the names of white men, women and children
with a higher birth status, whereas 'slave' followed the names of those in
slavery. Gender and status conditioned the presence of information on
gainful occupation: whereas free male heads of household and free men
over the age of 12 were generally listed with their occupation, the
occupation of women, even when they were heads of household, and the
occupation of slaves, even when they lived independently from their master,
were only exceptionally indicated.48
Because the 1777 census precedes 1810 by more than one generation
and presents serious deficiencies, its data must be considered only as
indicative of some trends. The census returns of the barrio of Santa Catalina
have disappeared, those of La Merced and San Sebastian do not give the
racial classification of more than one half of their inhabitants, and those of
the suburb of Getsemani do not give racial information and rarely mention
the occupation of free men. In fact, only Santo Toribio, the most densely
populated and the most racially mixed barrio of all, presents sufficient data
for a close analysis. Yet, Santo Toribio's population comprised mostly free
persons of colour and was the residence of 32.4 per cent of all Cartagena's
and Getsemani's slaves, about one third of them living independently from
their masters. It thus provides insights into the intersection of colour, class,
and status and makes it possible to understand why Cartagena's free
SLAVES DURING THE FIRST INDEPENDENCE OF CARTAGENA H
population of colour did not demand the abolition of slavery in 1810.

In general, the 1777 census shows that whites and free people of colour
lived side by side in the same streets and often in the same residential units,
but it also exhibits a socio-racial hierarchy corresponding to residence: the
nearer the unit to the Plaza Mayor, the Governor's Palace and the Cathedral,
the more likely it was to be headed by a white man living with numerous
slaves (up to twenty-eight slaves) and often his close family. In contrast, the
further from the city centre, the darker the population.49 As for Getsemani,
it is possible to extrapolate from the limited number of slaves (five per cent
of its population) and of persons qualified with the title of don and dona that
the suburb was inhabited principally by lower-class free persons of colour.50
The census also indicates a preference for endogamous marriages
between identical racial.categories and an avoidance of free-slave unions,
precluding the formation of a broader racial consciousness among the
population of African descent.51 Whites tended to marry with whites,
quadroon with quadroon, pardos with pardos, mulattos with mulattos,

zambo with zambo, and blacks with blacks. In the barrio of Santo Toribio,
299 out of 446 married couples (67.0 per cent) are listed with the racial
category of both partners. Seventy-five per cent of them united partners
from the same racial category. Only 13 per cent united two persons of colour
from different categories, and 12 per cent united whites and persons of
colour (all white men with women of partial African descent, except one
between a white man and a black woman). No slave was married to a free
person.52 In the barrio of La Merced, 49 out of 121 married couples (40.5
per cent) come with a complete record. Out of these, 93.9 per cent united
partners of the same racial category. In San Sebastian, only 72 out of 227
married couples (31.7 per cent) were listed with the racial category of both
partners. Among these, 86.1 per cent were endogamous. In these two
barrios, most exogamous unions comprised persons of African descent from
different racial categories. There were a total of four couples uniting a free
person of colour and a slave, two of them comprising persons from the same
racial category."
However, any conclusion about colour consciousness in sexual unions
should remain tentative for various reasons. First, only the barrio of Santo
Toribio presents sufficient data to indicate that there existed a preference for
racially endogamous marriages; in the other barrios, a majority - and, in the
case of Getsemani, the totality - of the married couples are recorded with
incomplete racial data. Second, the 1777 census did not register as couples
men and women living in consensual union or unmarried women heads of
household with one or more obvious male sexual partners. Third, the acute
imbalance of sex ratios, especially among the population of African descent
(65.6 per cent female among the free population, 56.5 per cent, among the
slaves) dramatically limited these women's chances of finding a groom in

their own racial category.54 And last but not least, several studies have
shown the fluidity of racial categories, because census-takers often relied on
their personal observation rather than on individuals' self-identification
when recording race, because some partners probably harmonized their
racial classification at marriage to fit the expectations of society, and
because one individual's label could change according to the socio-
economic circumstances.55
Yet, according to the 1777 census of Santo Toribio, racial categories
often came with certain economic attributes that also compromised the
formation of a racial consciousness uniting free persons of full and partial
African ancestry. There was a clear hierarchy of professions corresponding
with the colour hierarchy. Some hard manual occupations, such as mason
and carpenter, were overwhelmingly in the hands of black men and
comprised some men of mixed ancestry but no whites; other more qualified
occupations, such as barber, tailor, silversmith and fisherman, were held
predominantly by pardos and mulattos, a few whites but no blacks; still

others, such as storekeeper, truck farmer, baker, were the prerogative of
whites and of a few men of mixed ancestry but, again, comprised no blacks.
Only in the popular craft of shoemaker, the distribution between blacks and
men of mixed African descent paralleled their demographic weight, but
whites were underrepresented. In addition to the church and state positions
legally requiring purity of blood, some occupations, such as merchant,
clerk, shop assistant, guard, officer and master craftsman were the
exclusivity of whites in Santo Toribio.56
Slaveownership was closely related to colour but was not the privilege
of any racial group, as heads of household of all categories except mestizos
and Indians owned slaves. Yet there were some important differences
between them: 76.6 per cent of the slaves living with their masters were in
white-headed households, in contrast with 23.6 per cent in colour-headed
households. The whiter the head of household, the more likely he or she was
to own slaves: 38.7 per cent of the white-headed households included
slaves, in contrast with 11.6 per cent of the households headed by persons
of mixed African descent, and only 3.8 per cent of black-headed
households. Also, whites tended to own a higher number of slaves than
persons of mixed African ancestry, whereas the four black slave-owners (in
contrast with 28 of partial African descent) had no more than one or two
slaves.57 Still the mere fact that in Santo Toribio one household of colour out
of seven included slaves jeopardized the possibility of a racial
consciousness uniting the free and the slave of African descent.
Among the free persons of colour, the lower economic condition of the
blacks was reinforced by the fact that blackness was often identified with
slave status, a trend continued in current Colombian scholarship. Such

identification did not match reality: although the 1777 census shows that a
majority of slaves were black, many were mulatto or pardo, and some
zambo or quarteron. This probably explains why free persons of colour
were generally mentioned without their legal status, but 'free' was added to
several records of blacks living in separate households and of persons of
colour in white-headed households comprising slaves.
In addition to a socio-racial hierarchy assigning 'full' blacks to the lower
strata, ethnicity mattered. Despite the waning of the slave trade, the African
born were still noticeable in the city: the 1777 census recorded several
cabildos de nation, all located in Santo Toribio: the Loangos, the Araras,
the Jojoes, the Minas, the Carabalis, the Lucumis, and the Chalaes had
established cabildos frequented by slaves and freed blacks.
According to the childhood memories of General Joaqufn Posada
Gutierrez, several patterns displayed by the 1777 census still prevailed in
the early nineteenth century. In February, during the carnival festivities of

the Virgin of the Candelaria, patroness of the city, each racial category
occupied a specific space and celebrated the virgin in a particular way. The
wealthy whites, the pardos, the mulattos, the zatnbos and the blacks went to
Pie de la Popa, at the foot of the hill where stood the convent venerating the
virgin. Poor whites and quadroons remained in Cartagena. The aristocracy
and the free people of colour of some means organized dances in a ballroom
in Pie de la Popa, in which whites from Castile, pardos and blacks took
turns without mixing. 'The poor and shoeless, free and slave, pardo or
black', danced outside, beneath the sky, 'to the sound of the African drum'.
Indians participated with their own dances, which they performed to the
sound of the gaitas (long flutes). Within the walls of the city, the poor
whites, the blancos de la tierra (native whites of uncertain racial
background) of some means, such as physicians, pharmacists, painters and
silversmiths, organized separate dances in their homes, a tradition also
followed by the 'quite poor quadroons' who made up most of the city's
dressmakers, seamstresses and cigar makers.58
Class, thus, divided people within the same racial category. Moreover,
Posada's reminiscences indicate that those whose condition clearly
questioned the socio-racial hierarchy - the poor whites and the light-
skinned mulattos of some means - segregated themselves or were
segregated from the main festivities. Only the poor of colour, free and slave,
seemed to intermingle. However, the African-born slaves and some of their
offsprings generally organized along ethnic lines in their cabildos de
nacidn. These socio-racial boundaries were occasionally crossed,
particularly after mass during the carnival, when the wealthy welcomed the
rich and the poor in their homes, without colour or status restriction. Finally,
on the last day of the festivities of the Virgin of the Candelaria, people of all
colours and classes met in Pie de la Popa, the wealthy richly dressed up, the
poor with 'meticulous neatness', and the slaves with their masters' dress
and jewellery, to attend mass and climb in orderly procession to the convent.
Then each returned to his or her own group to celebrate and dance until
dawn, when all hierarchies were re-established, and the slaves returned
dresses and jewels to their masters.59 No doubt, on this day the free and the
slaves, the poor and the less poor had the opportunity to envisage equality.
Free people of colour also gained a sense of equality in the many
corporations they joined. Still during the festivities of the Virgin of the
Candelaria, the guilds of the merchants, the artisans, the navy register
(matricula de mar), and the arsenal workers (maestranzas) attended mass
and participated in the procession. Although the merchant guild consisted
almost exclusively of Spaniards and white Creoles, other associations were
racially mixed.60 For example, in Santo Toribio in 1777 the navy register
included members of all racial categories."
Of more transcendence and impact on free men of colour was the

formation of Cartagena's disciplined militia in the 1770s.62 The militia
comprised two battalions, one of whites, the other of pardos and a battalion
of artillery, to which the crown extended the military fuero and some
corporate privileges that reduced the authority the cabildo and ordinary
justice had on their members.63
The extension of military privileges to men of colour was not the result
of new colonial social policies challenging the inferior status of castas but
was prompted by demographic and practical considerations: if Spain
wanted to keep the Caribbean coast of New Granada safe, it needed the
military participation and support of its population, which was mostly of
colour. However, full equality did not exist among whites and men of colour
in the militia. By law, pardo officers could only command in pardo units,
and under the supervision of an all-white command and staff; until 1800, the
highest position they could be promoted to was that of captain, though later
with Spain's increasing reliance on them to defend its empire, some reached
higher positions.64
Simultaneously, the formation of the militia strengthened the colour and ,
class hierarchy within the population of African descent exhibited by the !
1777 census. Although allocation to a white or pardo unit was not strictly
based on race, and racial categories were flexible, the militia corresponded
to a colour continuum, from the lighter militia of whites, the mostly mixed
militia de pardos, and the darker militia of artillery. According to the 1780
census of the city's artisans, the militia of whites included Spaniards, white
Creoles as well as some quadroons, mulattos, pardos, zambos and a handful
of blacks, whereas the militia of pardos contained quadroons, mulattos,
pardos, zambos and blacks. The militia of artillery included darker-skinned

people - predominantly blacks, together with some mulattos and pardos."
As a result, for the men of colour who managed to belong to the militia of
whites, new opportunities, perhaps also a modification of their racial
classification and a new white identity could result from such enlistment.66
In addition, belonging to the militia put free men of colour in a position of
power regarding the lowest strata of society: the Indians, the free destitute,
and the slaves.67
The alleged slave rebellion of Cartagena in 1799 further illustrates the
role of colour, ethnicity and status in precluding the formation of racial
consciousness among Cartagena's free and slave people of full and partial
African descent. The handful of creole and African-born slaves as well as
the only officer that the 'Black French slaves' had been able to 'attract' to
the conspiracy were 'of the same colour as them'.68 They were denounced
by a pardo corporal, Manuel Yturen. Their subsequent arrest 'had not
produced the minor sign of insanity or discontent among the other blacks'
in the city, free and slave peoples of mixed African descent had stayed out
of the conspiracy, and there was no reason to 'fear anything from this
numerous class of slaves distributed throughout the Province by the owners
of haciendas to cultivate them'.69 As a result, when New Granada's viceroy
and Cartagena's governor decided to make an example of Yturen's heroism
and faithfulness, rather than emphasizing the punishment of the rebels,
Spain agreed. The pardo corporal was rapidly promoted to captain, awarded
a military merit decoration and granted the privilege of a permanent pay
even when not in active service - a privilege the viceroy justified to the
secretary of war as uncostly, because Yturen's race excluded him from
higher promotion and because he would almost always be on duty.
Nevertheless, the viceroy considered 'very essential to congratulate with
this demonstration the courage of this very numerous class of people of
colour in that Province who so far has not belied their loyalty, and whose
corruption would be of irreparable consequences'.70
Indeed, in the early 1800s the Caribbean coast seemed Spain's
stronghold in the viceroyalty. The anti-Bourbon Comunero Revolt in 1781
had been an Andean, not a coastal affair. Although the periphery of the
province of Cartagena was still dominated by unconquered Indians and
people living in rochelas, the areas of recent forced resettlement were
peaceful. The palenques of runaway slaves that since the early eighteenth
century constituted independent territories within the province represented
no serious threat. As for the slaves living in large haciendas, although in a
few cases they took advantage of their isolation to revolt and take
momentary control of their workplace, they never managed to organize a
large-scale, concerted rebellion.71 Despite the recession, Cartagena's
population seemed resigned to their fate and peaceful, and urban enlistment
in the militia met with little resistance, even when it meant hardship to some
artisans. Both in the repression of the Comunero Revolt in 1781 and in the
military campaign against the insubordinate Indians of Darien in the mid-
1780s, black and mulatto militiamen had shown their reliability, endurance,
and willingness to serve outside of Cartagena.72 Moreover, the city's 1799
slave conspiracy had been thwarted before its launching thanks to the
intervention of apardo officer.73
How, then, to reconcile the apparent conformity of Cartagena's
population of colour with the colonial order in the early 1800s with their
subsequent violent participation in the process of independence but not in
the abolition of slavery? In the militia and multiracial guilds and
associations, men of colour gained a sense of participating equally with
whites in some of the colonial society's fundamental corporations that
functioned independently from the local government and the Catholic
Church. As citizen soldiers, they shared the same juridical status as white
men facing the outside world and carried their military dignity into daily
life, which gave them a new awareness of their socio-political role. In the
long term, this affected their subordinate relation with the white Creole and
Spanish elite.74 Simultaneously, however, they reproduced their class and
colour divisions into the movement for independence and considered
themselves as an intermediate stratum between the elite and the more
subordinate groups, which helps explain their dissociation from the fate of
the slave population. Conversely, slaves and Indians were excluded from
these fundamental colonial institutions, subjected to special jurisdictions
that made them minors, and sometimes confined to circumscribed spaces
and disconnected from the wider world. Consequently in 1810, after the
breakdown of Spanish authority, Cartagena's free population of colour
invaded the political arena, whereas slaves (and, in the province, slaves and
Indians), with a few exceptions, did not take advantage of the new situation
to act collectively to assert their freedom and equality.
Equality and Freedom during Cartagena's First Independence

From 1809 to 1810, the franchise for the election of the members of the
cabildo of Cartagena was limited, but simultaneously in the metropolis the
debates of the Cortes of Cadiz opened the question of who was a citizen of
the Spanish empire, thus entitled to vote. Followed in Cartagena with a few
months of delay, the debates showed that racial prejudice ran high among
the delegates in Cadiz. Whereas Spanish and Creole delegates agreed on
granting citizenship to Spaniards, Indians, and those of mixed European-
indigenous descent, only a minority of enlightened Creoles supported the
inclusion of free Africans and their full or mixed descent in the body of
citizens. To the majority of the delegates, the 'stain of slavery' was indelible
on the issue of civil rights, despite the people of African descent's
continuing fundamental military role in the militia.75
Such views had dramatic consequences for the elite of the province of
Cartagena, whose population was overwhelmingly of mixed African
descent, thus excluded from suffrage. With a system of representation
proportional to the enfranchised population, the Caribbean coast would not
have a single delegate to promote its interests in the next Cortes, and New
Granada would be exclusively represented by the antagonistic Andean
interior. Cartagena's free population of colour took advantage of the
situation to make their voices heard and to be recognized by their cabildo as
citizens with electoral rights. They armed themselves, took to the streets,
and showed their readiness to die to protect their elite cabildo against Spain.
According to the reminiscences of an anonymous witness, the people's
participation in governor Montes' capitulation was the turning point in the

formation of patriotism and citizenship:
[On 14 June 1810] the people foresaw the luminous rays of liberty in
the midst of the guns and the bayonets; and they already felt the
decreasing weight of the chains in which they were born, as if they
saw them fall broken at their feet... From this moment on, the people
of Cartagena began to feel the importance of their dignity and
support.76
In the December 1810 reform, the province's electoral system was
democratized. All male parish citizens, 'whites, Indians, mestizos, mulattos,
zambos, and blacks who were heads of a family or a household, or lived on
their labour' could participate in the election of parish electors. 'Only
vagrants, those who had committed a crime leading to infamy, those salaried
in actual servitude, and slaves will be excluded from [elections]'.77 The
electoral system became of indirect semi-proportional representation: the
citizens elected the parish electors, who in turn elected the districts' grand
electors; the latter elected the deputies to the Supreme Junta. Indians were
granted the full rights of citizenship, and there was no restriction based on
the race or place of birth of the people's representatives.78
Of course, the structures of the past still weighed on society, and despite
references to the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and
Citizens, the Cartagena of the coast's first independence was half-way
between a society in which the state is perceived as 'a community of
citizens enjoying equal rights and responsibilities', and as 'a structure built
of classes and corporations, each with a unique and peculiar function to
perform'.79 In 1810, the white elite cabildo built an alliance with the white
and pardo disciplined militia and created new military units, the Pardo
Patriots and the Lancers of Getsemanf, of full and mixed African descent,
to challenge die Spanish order. As a result, strengthening a process already
at work in the colonial militia, classes traditionally subordinated because of
their race and birth gained further political consciousness of their rights as
citizens, grounded on their political, economic, and military participation.
This participation, however, did not break sharply with the colonial
structure, but was an outgrowth of the disciplined militia and followed the
colonial colour lines. Opponents to Spain joined military units
corresponding to their own racial classification, and referred collectively to
each other as the pardos, the zambos and the blacks.80
In addition, the alliance between the reformist white elite and the free
population of colour, unlike the French revolutionary clubs, remained
highly hierarchical. At the top were leaders belonging to the white landed
and merchant elite or the priesthood, such as Garcia de Toledo and the more
radical Gutierrez de Pineres brothers. These influential and wealthy whites

had patronage networks that included lower-rank officers, labour bosses,
and powerful artisans of colour. From these men rose several leaders of
colour, such as Pedro Romero and Manuel Trinidad Noriega, who
controlled substantial sectors of the population of colour organized along
neighbourhood lines and mobilized their followers in favour of an electoral
candidate or massed them in front of the Governor's Palace to force the
authorities into a decision.
From 1810 to 1815, the racially based military units created to defend
the new order did not transform themselves into autonomous political
organizations. The population of colour continued to entrust elite leaders
with, conveying their specific demands directly to the cabildo or the
Supreme Junta.81 When in August 1810, the Junta conceded to the popular
classes of Cartagena to elect six additional deputies who would represent
their interests, their designation was done in a public demonstration in
which various groups of people went to the Governor's Palace to demand
that two priests and four white elite Creoles be their deputies.82 The
December 1810 reform did not radically change electoral practices and
modes of political mobilization. Apparently, during the February 1811
elections, some powerful popular leaders, such as Noriega, Romero and
Manuel Marcelino Nunez in Getsemanf, carried enough prestige and
drained enough votes among the free population of colour to be courted and
even bought by electors and candidates for deputy.83 Only in 1812 did the
cartagenero voters chose a man of colour, Pedro Romero, as a deputy,
leaders of colour with some economic means continued to mediate
between elite Creoles and the lower classes.84
The free people of colour, however, were far from being blind and
obedient followers in the process for change. After the removal of governor
Montes, they repeatedly met in front of the Governor's Palace to
demonstrate their resolution and to demand specific changes, and
sometimes their leaders had to use all their power of conviction to prevent
them from violent interference with the Supreme Junta's deliberations.85
Moreover, their very alliance with creole elites to build political blocs
challenged in the long term the colonial lines of race, class and citizenship,
because ideology mattered in these alliances. The population of colour
entrusted their political representation only to creole elite leaders who had
a discourse of liberty and equality, and when Garcia de Toledo began to
resist a process too threatening to his socio-racial interests, the Gutierrez de
Pineres brothers and a few others with a more radical agenda understood
and capitalized on the people of colour's thirst for independence and
equality to rally them under their leadership. Incidentally, one of their most
important links with the free people of colour was Ignacio Mufioz Jaraba, a
white lawyer from Corozal married to the mulatto daughter of Pedro

Romero.86
These hierarchical alliances represented for free men of colour a major
step toward their much desired integration into the new political system.
From equality inside their corporation, the militiamen of colour began to
demand individual equality for all men who shared the burden of the city's
defence, regardless of their skin colour. In the words of the toledista
Antonio Jose de Ayos, 'the supposed rights of equality ... were all what [the
scum of the people] were interested in and the origin of their fanaticism'.87
Here is the main explanation to the absence of political organization along
the same racial lines as in the city's defence units. Because a discourse on
equality required silence about the question of race, the demand for equality
was not made on the grounds of one's colour, but of one's personal value
and services to society.
The fact that the free population of colour's demand for equality was
made on these individual grounds automatically limited the application of
the concepts of equality and citizenship to the free adult male population
with a gainful occupation or some economic means. As a result, the free
dissociated their cause from that of other disenfranchised members of
society such as slaves, servants and women. By doing so, they also
indirectly avoided addressing the issue of the role played by race in the
definition of one's status. Moreover, by participating in some constituted
bodies, such as the militias, that supported the new social order against
anarchy, the free of colour helped prevent unwelcome movements and slave
unrest.
In reality, however, slaves and Indians maintained themselves at the
margin of the independence process and few, if any, organized massive
movements to gain their freedom and equality. As a result, the reformist

elite was free to draft social policies for these groups corresponding to their
own interests as hacendados, merchants and slave-owners. Not surprisingly,
the elite showed more willingness to bring the remote Indians into the free
community than the slaves who worked as their property in their houses and
haciendas. Seen as the symbols of past colonial oppression as well as
obstacles to a unitary republic and a competitive agriculture, the Indians
were the focus of an edict signed by Garcia de Toledo in May 1811. The
edict blamed the Indians' misery and degradation on the 'unjust personal
tribute', the priests in charge of their parishes, and the colonial authorities.
It revoked the tutelage instituted by the old regime, promoted Indians to 'the
class of free citizens', and designed a programme of indigenous integration
and infringement of the prerogatives of Indian pueblos.™
As already mentioned, the 1812 constitution did not free the slaves and
did not extend citizenship to them, but contemplated the decline of slavery.
It prohibited the 'importation of slaves into the state, as object of trade'. It
announced the possible creation of a manumission fund, but specified that

in no case would slaves be emancipated without the consent or
indemnification of their masters. The constitution also protected slaves from
maltreatment and neglect by their owners and prohibited the latter from
freeing the elderly and the sick in order to escape from their responsibilities
toward them.89
Indian and slave policies show the limits and ambiguity of elite creole
reformism regarding race, individual freedom, and equality. Confronted
with the demographic fact that most of the population of the Caribbean
coast was poor and of partial or full African descent, they resolutely granted
citizenship to all free men of colour, yet they kept separate militia units for
whites and persons of colour. They granted freedom and citizenship to the
Indians but assigned them to white battalions, possibly in order to break
their ethnic identity. Moreover, they blamed Indian misery on Spanish
colonialism, yet they did not perceive slavery as a colonial institution that
needed to be destroyed to achieve democracy. They repeatedly mobilized
the free people of the Caribbean coast against Spain with a discourse that
referred to colonialism as slavery, but they never acknowledged that they
themselves maintained other human beings in a real slavery on the grounds
of their race and birth.
Nevertheless, in the rapidly changing context of Cartagena's first
independence, the notions of equality and citizenship entered the popular
culture. Representative of this change is the comment made by the pardo
officer Noriega when he narrates his successful efforts to protect the family
and property of his Spanish boss during the popular riot that followed the
conspiracy of the Fijo in February 1811. Noriega describes 'the glory [he
achieved] in having paid off in one hour all the benefits [the Spanish
merchant] gave me in seventeen years'.90 No doubt, in his mind, Noriega
had now cancelled his debt and could see the elite Spaniard as his equal.
More generally, many men and women of colour began to think about
themselves as citizens with new rights and responsibilities, as shown by the
parish registers of baptism in which fathers, mothers and godparents had
their names preceded by ciudadano or ciudadana (citizen).91 The word
pueblo (people) began to be used with pride, and in 1811, Noriega presented
himself to the lower classes of colour 'As patriot as them, native son of the
country, lover of their cause, brother, friend, and eternal defender of all
those who were present'.92
Although socio-racial barriers did not disappear, it became unpopular
and even dangerous for white aristocrats to show prejudice. When Gabriel
Gutierrez de Pineres astutely accused Garcia de Toledo of racism in order to
attract the latter's popular following, Garcfa de Toledo took the pain to
publicly claim his good relations with the lower classes:

In my house I have given seats to all classes when they have come,
and on amusement days they have been down to its most remote
corners without me opening my mouth. I have danced in my house
and in many other parts with women from all classes; I have acted in
private relations with the greatest affability, so that I don't think that
anyone could say that I have offended him in words or acts, attending
every place I was invited to, and not accepting preferential seats
except in church celebrations.93
Moreover, several whites, including priests, began to register with their
names preceded by ciudadano to show conformity with the new order. This
trend, however, did not prevent other whites from continuing to register as
don or dona. In addition, the switch from don to ciudadano did not always
indicate a radical change of mentality. The case of the white slave-owner
Antonia Gomez is interesting in this respect, because it highlights how
much slaves were excluded from the process of democratization. In 1804,
registered as dona Antonia Gomez, she freed with her husband's consent
Juana Antonia del Carmen, the natural baby of her slave Antonia. Ten years
later, registered as ciudadana during Cartagena's first independence, she
kept in slavery Maria Gregoria de la Concepcidn, the natural baby of her
slave Marcisa Marienzo, and gave the newborn to her legitimate daughter,
'la cna [ciudadana] Dolores Heduvigis de Cespedes y G6mez'.94
Conclusion
No doubt, between 1810 and 1815, the free population of colour pushed for
a socio-political agenda that contrasted with that of the majority of the white
elite. Most of the elite was principally concerned with free trade and a new
system of self-government that would not compromise Cartagena's
preponderance on the Caribbean coast and its autonomy from the centralist
Santa Fe. In their perspective, independence was a long-term goal that
should be achieved progressively in order to avoid social upheaval. To most
free men of colour, in contrast, the question of Santa Fe's centralism
mattered little. They associated colonialism with their inferior status,
restricted rights, and oppression. To them independence meant equality and
decency, which they wanted without delay.
Although the free population of African descent advocated equality, they
sustained colour and class differences among themselves. Moreover, there
is no evidence that they fancied extending equality to the slaves. The 1812
constitution, which the radicals contributed to design, showed concern for
the slaves' well being and included measures to reduce their number.
However, neither this charter nor other legislation or measure openly
pursued the elimination of slavery.

By 1825, the number of slaves in Cartagena had decreased to about half
its 1777 level.95 Although slave individual and collective strategies to gain
freedom as well as manumission and grants of freedom to the newborn
accounted for some of this reduction, most of it was due to indirect factors,
such as the end of the slave trade, the economic crisis that characterized
these decades, the epidemics and hunger caused by the Spanish siege of
1815, and the turmoil produced by the wars of independence.
Reflecting the colonial structures, the non inclusion of abolition on the
agenda of Cartagena's free population of African descent, together with
their avoidance of the issue of race when they demanded equality, were not
unique to this city. In fact, whether they were a small minority in a
population largely made up of slaves, such as in Saint Domingue,
Martinique, Jamaica, and Barbados, or they comprised most of the
population, such as in Caribbean Colombia and Venezuela, free people of
colour seldom wilfully associated their struggle for independence and
equality with slaves' struggle for abolition. The case of Cuba, where in 1812
and 1844 slaves and free persons of colour united in conspiracies to end
colonialism and slavery, a double goal they pursued again in the Ten Years'
War, stands apart. It can partly be explained by Cuba's late sugar boom,
which boosted slavery when other societies had already embraced the
principles of legal equality and free labour.96 But Venezuela's free pardos
followed the same path as their peers in Cartagena: they saw the struggle for
independence as the best route to their own equality but did not use their
new power to destroy slavery, which slowly desintegrated before its
abolition in 1854."
In Saint Domingue, the gens de couleur included wealthy and educated
planters who owned about one-quarter of the colony's slaves but suffered
from racial discrimination. Shortly after the French Revolution, they fought
against white colonists for their own equal rights but joined forces with
whites against the slaves who rebelled in 1791. In early 1793, when whites
fled and the French revolutionaries governed, the gens de couleur
dominated Saint Domingue without questioning slavery. When the French
declared the abolition of slavery in August 1793 in an attempt to gain mass
support against foreign invasion, it triggered an intense struggle between
former slaves and anciens libres. Only in 1802, after Napoleon sent
thousands of troops to occupy Saint Domingue and enforce the restoration
of slavery, did free coloureds and slaves unite to fight for freedom, equality,
and independence. Racial consciousness - or the recognition that despite
colour distinctions, all Haitians belong to the black or African race, different
but equal to other races - permitted Haitian independence in 1804.98
In Jamaica by 1810, the free population of colour equalled the whites in
size, both groups being largely outnumbered by slaves. Although most free
coloureds were urban poor, some were rich slave-owners excluded from
politics and subjected to legal and social discrimination because of their
race. In addition, there was a strong colour hierarchy among them, with
black freedmen at the bottom. Nevertheless, they did not make common
cause with slaves. On the contrary, many showed their willingness to defend
the colonial order as militiamen actively repressing marronage and slave
rebellions. In 1813, facing new racial restrictions, Jamaican free coloureds
began to make collective petitions for equal rights with whites without
demanding an end to slavery, until they gained full civil rights in 1830. Even
during the Baptist War of 1831-32, which led to the abolition of slavery in
the British colonies in 1833, the involvement of free people of colour was
limited to a paternalistic support to progressive emancipation."
In societies in which they were less wealthy and proportionally less
numerous than in Saint Domingue and Jamaica, free coloureds were almost
forced to act in alliance with other social groups. Their margin of action was
also limited by internal tensions related to phenotype and colour. In
Guadeloupe and Martinique, for example, the Declaration of the Rights of
Man provided the framework in which free men of colour demanded equal
rights but ignored slave emancipation. However, some made common cause
with slaves and played a role in small slave rebellions.100 In Barbados the
legal condition of the free coloureds broadly followed the same development
as in Jamaica, and most attempted to distinguish themselves from the slaves,
struggling for their civil rights and supporting the slave system.101
In all these societies, the separation of the issue of equal rights from the
question of race and slavery had a long-lasting legacy. Everywhere, the
colour hierarchy has continued to broadly correspond to the class structure.
However, since independence and the adoption of universal suffrage, in

societies where black slaves outnumbered the free population of colour the
call to a racial consciousness uniting people of full and partial African
descent has become a necessity in times of broad mobilization. In contrast,
in Venezuela and Caribbean Colombia, where most of the colonial
population was free of colour, African ancestry and blackness have not been
acknowledged. In the particular case of Cartagena, the majority of mixed
descent has continued to discriminate against groups of more visible
African origin, such as the full blacks in general, the descendants of the
palenque of San Basilio, and the immigrants from the Choc6 and the islands
of San Andres and Providencia.102
NOTES
Research for this article was made possible by a grant from the Swiss National Fund for Scientific
Research. I am grateful to Anthony McFarlane, Franklin W. Knight, Gad Heuman, Russell Lohse,
Michael Hanchard and Robert L. Paquette for their helpful comments.
1. Pardos are of mixed European-African descent (or mulattos), and zambos of mixed
indigenous-African descent.
2. No population census was taken between 1777 and 1825. D. Bossa Herazo, Cartagena
independiente: Tradicidn y desarrollo (Bogotá, 1967), gives the figure of 17,600 in
Cartagena in 1809. Although further away in time, the 1777 census gives a closer portrait
of Cartagena in 1810 than the 1825 census, because wars and economic crises devastated
New Granada from 1812 to 1821.
3. H. Tovar Pinzón, 'Convocatoria al poder del número.' Censos y estadísticas de la Nueva
Granada (Bogotá, 1994), pp.484-503. The figures were 3,612 whites (including 223
ecclesiastics), 7,612 free of all colours, 2,107 slaves, and 65 Indians.
4. In 1777, the total population of the province of Cartagena without the capital amounted to
105,119: 66.7 per cent of them were free of colour, 19.8 per cent Indians, 7.9 per cent
whites, and 6.3 per cent slaves (Tovar, 'Convocatoria', pp.484-503). These statistics do not
include the population in rochelas and the still unconquered Indian communities. Another
remarkable characteristic of Cartagena's demography was that about six inhabitants out of
ten were female, an issue that I examine in depth, together with developments in the rest
of the province of Cartagena, in a forthcoming book on identities in Caribbean Colombia,
1777-1851.
5. J.P. Urueta, Cartagena y sus cercanías (Cartagena, 1912 [1886]); A. Sourdis de la Vega,
Cartagena de Indias durante la primera república, 1810-1815 (Bogotá, 1988), pp. 15-16.
6. Padrón del barrio de Sto. Thoribio, ano de 1777, Archivo Histórico Nacional de Colombia,
Bogotá (hereafter noted AHNC), Sección Colonia, Fondo Miscelánea, t.41, f.1078; Padrón
que comprehende el barrio de Nra. Sa. de la Merced, y su vecindario, formado en el año de
1777, por su comisario Dn. Francisco Pedro Vidal, capitán de Milicias de Blancos, AHNC,
Colonia, Censos Varios Departamentos, 6.8, f.164; Razón del barrio de San Sebastián, Año
de 1777 (signed Pedro Thomás de Villanueva), AHNC, Colonia, Miscelánea, t.44, f.957;
Padrón general ejecutado por Dn. Mariano Jose' de Valverde, regidor interino de M.I.C.J. y
Regimiento de esta ciudad de Cartagena de Indias y en ella comisario del barrio de la Sma.
Trinidad de Gimaní en el presente año de 1777, AHNC, Colonia, Censos Varios
Departamentos, t.8, f.131. The data for the barrio of Santa Catalina, for which the census
returns are missing, is inferred from the city's total slave population minus the slaves in the
four Padrónes cited above.
7. E.M. Dorta, Cartagena de Indias: Puerto y plaza fuerte (Madrid, 1960), pp.297-301; J.
Marchena Fernández, La institución militar en Cartagena de Indias en el siglo XVIII
(Seville, 1982), pp.314-19.
8. A.J. Kuethe, Military Reform and Society in New Granada, 1773-1808 (Gainesville, FL,
1978), pp.8-15; A. McFarlane, Colombia before Independence. Economy, Society, and
Politics under Bourbon Rule (Cambridge, 1993), pp.181-4; A.D. 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.101-6.
9. On the military expeditions of reconquest, see J. Palacios de la Vega, Diario de viaje del P.
Joseph Palacios de la Vega entre los indios y negros de la provincia de Cartagena en el
nuevo reino de Granada, 1787-1788, edited by G. Reichel Dolmatoff (Bogotá, 1955); A.
de la Torre y Miranda, 'Noticia individual de las poblaciones nuevamente fundadas en la
Provincia de Cartagena ... por el Teniente Coronel de Infantería, don Antonio de la Torre y
Miranda' (1774-8), in J.P. Urueta (ed.), Documentos para la historia de Cartagena, 6 vols.
(Cartagena, 1887-91), Vol.4, pp.33-78. See also A. Meisel Roca, 'Esclavitud, mestizaje y
haciendas en la provincia de Cartagena, 1533-1851', in G. Bell Lemus (ed.), El Caribe
colombiano. Selección de textos históricos (Barranquilla, 1988 [1980], pp.113-14; H.
Tovar Pinzón, Hacienda colonial y formación social (Barcelona, 1988), pp.48-54; Múnera,
'Failing to Construct the Colombian Nation', pp.72-4, 104-7; McFarlane, Colombia
before Independence, pp. 178-81.
10. G. Mollien, Voyage dans la république de Colombia, en 1823, 2 vols. (Paris, 1824), Vol.1,
pp.16-17; McFarlane, Colombia before Independence, p.43; Múnera, 'Failing to Construct
the Colombian Nation', pp.109-13. See also Relación que comprende los artesanos que
viven en el Barrio de Sn. Sebastián de esta ciudad con expresión de sus nombres, casas,
edades y los que son milicianos, AHNC, Colonia, Miscelánea, rollo 31, f.1014-15;
Relación que manifiesta los artesanos que existen en el Barrio de Sto. Thoribio el presente
ano de 1780, AHNC, Colonia, Miscelánea, r.31, f.148-54.
11. Mollien, Voyage, Vol.1, pp.45-50; McFarlane, Colombia before Independence, pp.41,
44-8; Múnera, 'Failing to Construct the Colombian Nation', p. 102.
12. J. de Canaverales, Informe de los hacendados dueños de ingenios de trapiches al
gobernador de la provincia de Cartagena, 17 Oct. 1789, Archivo General de Indias, Seville
(hereafter cited AGI), Santa Fe 1015; P. Mendinueta, 'Relación del estado del Nuevo Reino
de Granada. Año de 1803', in G. Colmenares (ed.), Relaciones e informes de los
gobemantes de la Nueva Granada, 3 vols. (Bogotá, 1989), Vol.3, p.126. See also Meisel,
'Esclavitud, mestizaje y haciendas', pp.110-11; McFarlane, Colombia before
Independence, pp.142-52, 161-2.
13. Archivo del Arzobispado de Cartagena, Parroquia La Catedral (hereafter cited AAC, PC),
Copia de las partidas de Bautismos del Iibro No 11 de Pardos y Morenos, correspondientes
a los años 1803 a 1811, el cual está completamente deteriorado [1943]; Archivo de la
Parroquia de la Stma Trinidad, Getsemaní (hereafter cited APST), Libro de Bautismos de
Pardos y Morenos que empieza oy dia nueve de Noviembre deste año de 1795 por su actual
Cura Rector Licenciado Andrés Navarro y Azevedo [termina 28 marzo 1803]; H. Tovar
Pinzón, De una chispa se forma una hoguera: Esclavitud, insubordinación y liberación
(Tunja, 1992), pp.47-58; J. Jaramillo Uribe, Ensayos sobre historia social colombiana, 2
vols. (Bogotá, 1989), Vol.1, p.73.
14. Tovar, Hacienda colonial, pp.48, 50, 249-54; G. Colmenares, 'El tránsito a sociedades
campesinas de dos sociedades esclavistas en la Nueva Granada, Cartagena y Popayán,
1780-1850', Huellas, 29 (1990).
15. See S.E. Ortiz (ed.), Ensayos de dos economistas coloniales (Bogotá, 1965); Múnera,
'Failing to Construct the Colombian Nation', pp.106-7, 119-28; H.-J. König, En el camino
hacia la nación. Nacionalismo en el proceso de formación del estado y la nación de la
Nueva Granada, 1750 a 1856 (Bogotá, 1994), pp.71-125.
16. 'Apuntamientos para escribir una ojeada sobre la historia de la transformación política de
la Provincia de Cartagena', in M.E. Corrales (ed.), Documentos para la historia de la
provincia de Cartagena de Indias, hoy estado soberano de Bolívar de la Unión
colombiana, 2 vols. (Bogotá, 1883), Vol.1, 127; Bossa, Cartagena independiente, p.124;
Múnera, 'Failing to Construct the Colombian Nation', pp. 108-13.

17. P. Mendinueta a J.A. Caballero, 19 Nov. 1800, AGI, Estado 52, no.102, f.2.
18. A. Zejudo a Virrey, 9 April 1799, AGI, Estado 53, no.77, f.9-15; P. Mendinueta a F. de
Saavedra, 19 May 1799, AGI, Estado 52, no.76, f.5-7.
19. On the colonial city as the primary focus for political identity and activity after 1808, see
A. McFarlane, 'Building Political Order: The 'First Republic' in New Granada,
1810-1815', in E. Posada-Carbó (ed.), In Search of a New Order: Essays on the Politics
and Society of Nineteenth-Century Latin America (London, 1998), pp. 12-26.
20. See for example 'Informe de la Junta al Rey' (20 Nov. 1810), in R. Arrázola, Documentos
para la historia de Cartagena, 2 vols. (Cartagena, 1963), Vol.1, pp.77-92. Also, Múnera,
'Failing to Construct the Colombian Nation', pp.155-64, 167-8; McFarlane, Colombia
before Independence, pp.298-306.
21. McFarlane, 'Building Political Order', p.10.
22. Los diputados del Ayuntamiento de Cartagena hacen presente las continuas escaseces de
víveres (1 Dec. 1809), AGI, Santa Fe 745. See also Múnera, 'Failing to Construct the
Colombian Nation', pp. 176-83, 200.
23. 'Oficios cambiados entre los señores Gobernador de Cartagena y Alcaldes ordinarios,
sobre los temores de una subversión del orden' (15 May 1810), in Corrales (ed.),
Documentos, Vol.l, pp.65-6; Confesión de J.M. Toledo, Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia,
Bogotá, Sala Manuscritos (hereafter cited BNC, SM), Proceso de los mártires de
Cartagena, 1816, f.88-89; Alegato del Dr. García de Toledo, Alegato del Dr. Granados,
ibid.
24. Resolución de establecimiento de una Junta Superior de gobierno en Cartagena (23 May
1810), AGI, Santa Fe 747.
25. 'Apuntamientos', in Corrales (ed.), Documentos, Vol.l, p.127. Unfortunately, the
anonymous author of this undated document, found by Corrales in the private archive of
Antonio Villavicencio, does not provide further details on the mobilization of Santo Toribio
and La Catedral. See also 'El comandante del apostadero a la corte' (30 May 1810), in
Arrázola, Documentos, Vol.l, p.57.
26. 'Apuntamientos', in Corrales (ed.). Documentos, Vol.1, p.127; 'Memorial de S. Verástegui
al general Luque sobre el coronel B. Rodríguez' (24 April 1834), in Corrales (ed.),
Documentos, Vol.1, p.413.
27. 'Acta de la sesión del Cabildo de Cartagena tenida el 14 de Junio de 1810', in Corrales
(ed.), Documentos, Vol.l, pp.81-90; A. de Narváez y la Torre al Virrey de Santa Fe, 19
June 1810, AGI, Santa Fe 1011; 'Defensa hecha por el señor J.M. de Toledo, de su
conducta pública y privada' (30 Nov. 1811), in Corrales, Documentos, Vol.l, pp.385-9;
'Apuntamientos', in ibid., Vol.1, pp.127-8.
28. 'Edicto por el cual el Cabildo de Cartagena excita a los habitantes de la ciudad a procurar
la unión' (19 June 1810), in Corrales, Documentos, Vol.l, pp.94-5.
29. A todos los estantes y habitantes de esta Plaza y Provincia, por J.M. de Toledo y J.M.
Benito Revollo (9 Nov. 1810), AGI, Santa Fe 747.
30. 'Defensa hecha por ... Toledo', in Corrales, Documentos, Vol.l, p.390; G. Jiménez
Molinares, Los mártires de Cartagena de 1816 ante el consejo de guerra y ante la historia,
2 vols. (Cartagena, 1947), Vol.l, p.149-53.
31. El Argos Americano (Cartagena), 4 Feb. 1811, suplemento; 'Carta primera de P.' (9 March
1811), ibid., 18 March 1811; M. Gutiérrez a capitán general de la isla de Cuba (3 March
1811), AGI, Santa Fe 747.
32. 'Carta en que se refieren muchos hechos relacionados y consiguientes a la sublevación del
Regimiento Fijo de Cartagena' (10 Feb. 1811), in [M.E. Corrales, ed.], Efemérides y anales
del estado de Bolívar, 4 vols. (Bogotá, 1889-1892), Vol.2, p.67-68. See also 'Defensa
hecha por ... Toledo', in Corrales, Documentos, Vol.l, p.391-92; Alegato del gobierno de
Cartagena, 8 Feb. 1811, AGI, Santa Fe 747.
33. On 20 July 1810 Santa Fe de Bogotá declared its independence from Spain, established a
Supreme Junta, and convened the viceroyalty's other provinces to a general congress,
which was opposed by Cartagena. See Junta de la Provincia de Cartagena de Indias a las
demás de éste nuevo Reyno de Granada (19 Sep. 1810), AGI, Santa Fe 747; 'Defensa
hecha por ... Toledo', in Corrales, Documentos, Vol.1, p.380-81; P. Salzedo del Villar,
Apuntaciones historíales de Mompox. Edición conmemorativa de los 450 años de Mompox
(Cartagena, 1987 [1939]); McFarlane, Colombia before Independence, pp.341-6; Múnera,
'Failing to Construct the Colombian Nation', pp.198-202.
34. These tensions were made public in Cartagena's first weekly paper, El Argos Americano,
where some contributors began to openly request independence (see 'Carta primera' [25
March 1811], El Argos Americano, 15 April 1811). See also Jiménez, Los mártires de
Cartagena, Vol.1, p. 192, 238-44, 260-63.
35. Del obispo de Cartagena al rey, AGI, Santa Fe 580; 'Representación para que se expida la
Constitución' (19 June 1811), in Corrales, Efemérides, Vol.2, pp.72-3; 'Defensa hecha por
... Toledo', in Corrales, Documentos, Vol.1, p.368.
36. La Junta Suprema de Cartagena a los habitantes de su provincia (31 Aug. 1811), AGI,
Santa Fe 747.
37. 'Exposición de los acontecimientos memorables relacionados con mi vida política, que
tuvieron lugar en este país desde 1810 en adelante, por M.M. Núñez' (22 Feb. 1864), in
Corrales, Documentos, Vol.1, p.412
38. Proposiciones presentadas por los diputados del pueblo y aprobadas y sancionadas el 11 de
Noviembre de 1811, in Carta del comandante general de Panamá a ministro de justicia, 30
Nov. 1811, AGI, Santa Fe 745.
39. On these events, see 'Acta de independencia de la Provincia de Cartagena en la Nueva
Granada' (11 Nov. 1811), in Corrales, Documentos, Vol.1, pp.351-6; 'Defensa hecha por
... Toledo', in ibid., Vol.1, pp.365, 371, 394-5; Urueta, Cartagena y sus cercanías,
pp.567-68; 'Estadística de Mompox', por F. de P. Ribón (La Palestra [n.p., n. d.]), in
Corrales, Efemérides, Vol.4, p.339; Salzedo, Apuntaciones historiales de Mompox, p. 113.
40. By the end of 1810, in order to win Spanish support for equal representation between
Spaniards and Americans in the Cortes, the creole representatives had agreed to limit
equality of representation to 'natives derived from both hemispheres, Spaniards as well as
Indians, and the children of both', which excluded by default Africans and those of full or
partial African descent. However, even this limited definition of equality failed to win the
majority of the votes. J.F. King, 'The Colored Castes and American Representation in the
Cortes of Cádiz', Hispanic American Historical Review, 33 (1953), pp.47-50; T.E. Anna,
'Spain and the Breakdown of the Imperial Ethos: The Problem of Equality', Hispanic
American Historical Review, 62 (1982), pp.242-72.
41. 'El Obispo felicita al Rey por su liberación y narra brevemente los hechos revolucionarios
de Cartagena' (12 July 1814), in G. Martínez Reyes (ed.), Cartas de los obispos de
Cartagena de indias durante el período hispánico, 1534-1820 (Medellín, 1986), p.587. On
these events, see Copia de la correspondencia entre la Suprema Junta de Cartagena de
Indias y el obispo Fraile Custodio (1 June 1812), AGI, Santa Fe 747; Jiménez, Los mártires
de Cartagena, Vol.1, pp.238-81.
42. Jiménez, Los mártires de Cartagena, Vol.1, pp.260-3, 288; Sourdis, Cartagena de Indias,
pp.34-6.
43. Jiménez, Los mártires de Cartagena, Vol.1, pp.281, 285-6.
44. 'Constitución política del Estado de Cartagena de Indias, expedida el 14 de Junio de 1812',
in Corrales, Documentos, Vol.1, pp.485-546. Cartagena's definition of citizens was similar
to the 1812 Spanish constitution's, with the major difference that the former tacitly
included free men of African descent (F.-X. Guerra, Modernidad e independencias.
Ensayos sobre las revoluciones hispánicas [Madrid, 1992], pp.355-60).
45. On the events from 1812 to 1815 see Sourdis, Cartagena de Indias, pp.47-75; B.B.
Hamnett, 'Popular Insurrection and Royalist Reaction: Colombian Regions, 1810-1823',
in J.R. Fisher, A.J. Kuethe and A. McFarlane, Reform and Insurrection in Bourbon New
Granada and Peru (Baton Rouge, 1990), pp.300-3; Jiménez, Los mártires de Cartagena.
46. 'Sitio de Cartagena de Indias por el General Don Pablo Morillo' (1823), in Corrales,
Documentos, Vol.2, pp.272-90. See also Sourdis, Cartagena de Indias, pp.130-52.
47. BNC, SM, Proceso de los mártires de Cartagena, 1816. For a description of Cartagena in
late 1815 see F. de Montalvo, 'Instrucción sobre el estado en que deja el Nuevo Reino de
Granada el Excelentísimo señor Virrey don Francisco de Montalvo, en 30 de Enero de
28 SLAVERY AND A B O L I T I O N
1818', in Colmenares (ed.), Relaciones e informes, Vol.3, pp.230, 235, 243, 247.
48. Padrón de Sto. Thoribio, 1777; Padrón de La Merced, 1777; Razón de San Sebastián, 1777.
Unfortunately, the parish and notarial records for this time period, with which the census
data could have been complemented, have not been found.
49. Padrón de Sto. Thoribio; Padrón de La Merced; Razón de San Sebastián.
50. Padrón de Gimaní, 1777.
51. Racial data on married couples are considered incomplete when one partner is not listed
('su marido ausente', most frequently) and when the racial category of one or both partners
is not indicated.
52. Padrón de Sto. Thoribio.
53. Padrón de La Merced; Razón de San Sebastián, f.946-57.
54. Tovar, 'Convocatoria', pp.484, 489, 492, 494, 497.
55. See R. McCaa, S.B. Schwartz, and A. Grubessich, 'Race and Class in Colonial Latin
America: A Critique', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 21 (1979), pp.422-9.
These findings question the existence of an ideal of whitening among free people of colour
put forward by some studies of Spanish Caribbean slave societies. V. Martinez-Alier,
Marriage, Class and Colour in Nineteenth-Century Cuba. A study of Racial Attitudes and
Sexual Values in a Slave Society (Ann Arbor, 1989 [1974]); J. Kinsbruner, Not of Pure
Blood. The Free People of Color and Racial Prejudice in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico
(Durham, NC, 1996).
56. Padrón de Sto. Thoribio. This finding takes into account the proportion of each racial
category in the barrio's population.
57. Padrón de Sto. Thoribio.
58. J. Posada Gutiérrez, Memorias histórico-políticas, 4 vols. (Bogotá, 1929), Vol.2, pp.195-9,
202-3.
59. Ibid., Vol.2, pp.206-9.
60. Kuethe, Military Reform, p.26; Posada, Memorias, Vol.2, p.207.
61. Padrón de Sto. Thoribio. See also P. Mendinueta a ministro de hacienda, 3 June 1803, AGI,
Santa Fe 1016.
62. For a discussion of the militia, see Kuethe, Military Reform.
63. The fuero militar allowed officers and enlisted men to present cases before military, rather
than royal or ordinary, tribunals. See L.N. McAlister, The 'Fuero Militar' in New Spain,
1764-1800 (Gainsville, FL, 1957), pp.1-15; J.P. Sánchez, 'African Freemen and the Fuero
Militar: A Historical Overview of Pardo and Moreno Militiamen in the Late Spanish
Empire', Colonial Latin American Historical Review, 3 (Spring 1994); C.I. Archer,
'Pardos, Indians, and the Army of New Spain: Inter-Relationships and Conflicts,
1780-1819', Journal of Latin American Studies, 6 (1974), p.233; S. Montoya, 'Milicias
negras y mulatas en el reino de Guatemala, siglo XVIII', Caravelle, 49 (1987), p.102.
64. Mendinueta a J.M. Alvarez, 19 May 1799, AGI, Archivo General de Simancas (hereafter
cited AGS), Guerra 7247, no.26, f. 145-48; Sánchez, 'African Freemen and the Fuero
Militar', p.168.
65. Relación que comprende los artesanos que viven en el Barrio de Sn. Sebastián; Relación
que manifiesta los artesanos que existen en el Barrio de Sto. Thoribio, 1780. See also P.
Mendinieta a secretario de estado y guerra, 19 June 1798, cited in Kuethe, Military Reform,
p.31.
66. Relación que comprende los artesanos que viven en el Barrio de Sn. Sebastián; Relación
que manifiesta los artesanos que existen en el Barrio de Sto. Thoribio, 1780.
67. Militiamen of colour were required to wear a ribbon with the company colours on their cap
to indicate their free status; when not in uniform, they had to wear a red belt so that they
could be distinguished from slaves. To prevent abuses, the law stipulated strict penalties for
any slave impersonating a freeman (Sánchez, 'African Freemen and the Fuero Militar',
p.169).
68. Mendinueta a Alvarez, 19 May 1799, f.145.
69. Zejudo a Virrey, 9 April 1799, AGI, Estado 53, no.77, f.11; Mendinuet3 a Saavedra, 19
May 1799, AGI, Estado 52, no.76, f.6.
70. Mendinueta a Alvarez, 19 May 1799, f.147-48; Resolución del Consejo de Guerra, 2, 4,
and 8 Oct. 1799, AGI, AGS, Guerra 7247, no.26, f.18-20, 22-23, 157.
71. On slave flight and resistance in Colombia, see A. McFarlane, 'Cimarrones and palenques:
Runaways and Resistance in Colonial Colombia', Slavery and Abolition, 6 (Dec. 1985),
pp.131-51.
72. Kuethe, Military Reform, pp.28-30, 86-7, 141, 179, 196; J.L. Phelan, The People and the
King. The Comunero Revolution in Colombia, 1781 (Madison, 1978), pp.144-5.
73. J. de Ezpeleta, 'Relación del gobierno del Excmo Sor. Dn. Josef de Ezpeleta' (1796), in
Colmenares (ed.), Relaciones e informes, Vol.2, pp. 155-6, 206-9; Mendinueta, 'Relación
del estado del Nuevo Reino de Granada', in ibid., Vol.3, pp.55-6, 165-7; Phelan, The
People and the King, p.26; Tovar, De una chispa, p.31.
74. Kuethe, Military Reform, pp.27-8.
75. King, 'The Colored Castes and American Representation', pp.33-64; Anna, 'Spain and the
Breakdown of the Imperial Ethos', pp.242-72.
76. 'Apuntamientos', in Corrales, Documentos, Vol.1, pp.128-9.
77. 'Instrucción que deberá 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', in Corrales, Efemérides, Vol.2, pp.48-56.
78. 'Acuerdo que reorganiza el gobierno provincial' (11 Dec. 1810), in Corrales, Efemérides,
Vol.2, pp.42-3.
79. McAlister, The 'Fuero Militar', pp.5-6.
80. See 'Carta [sobre] la sublevación del Regimiento Fijo de Cartagena', in Corrales,
Efemérides, Vol.2, p.64-70.
81. For a discussion of the 'articulation between the world of modern politics' and 'a society
ruled by corporate or community values and links of ancient type' in Spain and Spanish
America, see Guerra, Modernidad e independencias, pp.358-62.
82. Jiménez, Los mártires de Cartagena, Vol.1, pp.147-8, 238-9; 'Reorganización de la Junta
Suprema de Cartagena de Indias' (Semanario Ministerial, 7 March 1811), in Corrales,
Documentos, Vol.1, p.182.
83. 'Defensa hecha por ... Toledo', in Corrales, Documentos, Vol.1, pp.366, 372-4.
84. For an example, see the mediation of Diego Gallardo, a pardo captain in the Patriotic
Lancers of Getsemaní, between some popular sectors and García de Toledo (ibid., Vol.1,
pp.374-5).
85. Ibid., Vol.1, pp.373-4.
86. Ibid., Vol.1, p.369; Jiménez, Los mártires de Cartagena, Vol.1, pp.238-9, 241-4; E.
Lemaître, Historia general de Cartagena, 4 vols. (Bogotá, 1983), Vol.3, p.31.
87. Alegato de A.J. de Ayos, BNC, SM, Proceso de los mártires de Cartagena, 1816. The sense
of equality and independence of the free population of colour, especially the pardo militia,
was strong enough to deeply concern the Spanish authorities when they reconquered
Cartagena in 1816. The new viceroy, Francisco de Montalvo, reestablished the city's white
militia, but not the battalion of pardos, 'because of the pernicious impressions the
revolution [of 1811] has left on them'. Montalvo, 'Instrucción sobre el estado [del] Nuevo
Reino de Granada', in Colmenares (ed.), Relaciones e informes, Vol.3, p.254.
88. Edicto (6 May 1811), El Argos Americano, 13 May 1811. Under Spanish laws, Indians
corresponded to a separate estate and could not be enlisted (Kuethe, Military Reform, p.29).
For a discussion of the Indian as a symbol of colonial slavery and oppression in New
Granada, see König, En el camino hacia la nación, pp.234-65.
89. 'Constitución política del Estado de Cartagena de Indias', in Corrales, Documentos, Vol.1,
pp.540-1.
90. Suceso del día 4 de Febrero, El Argos Americano, Suplemento, 4 Feb. 1811; 'Carta [sobre]
la sublevación del 'Regimiento Fijo' de Cartagena', in Corrales, Efemérides, Vol.2, p.67.
91. AAC, PC, Libro de bautismos de pardos y morenos, 1811-1819; APST, Libro donde se
sientan las partidas de los bautismos de pardos y morenos que comienza en dos de Agosto
del año 1812 [to 12 Feb. 1818].
92. 'Carta [sobre] la sublevación del 'Regimiento Fijo' de Cartagena', in Corrales, Efemérides,
Vol.2, pp.66, 67.
93. 'Defensa hecha por ... Toledo', in Corrales, Documentos, Vol.1, p.379.
94. AAC, PC, Libro de bautismos de pardos y morenos, 1803-1811 [copy], pp.32, 4 June
1804; ibid.. Libro de bautismos de pardos y morenos, 1811-1819 [copy], f. 160, 29 Dec.
1814.
95. F. Gómez, 'Los censos en Colombia antes de 1905', in M. Urrutia and M. Arrubla (eds.),
Compendio de estadísticas históricas de Colombia (Bogotá, 1970), p. 19.
96. A. Helg, 'Race and Black Mobilization in Colonial and Early Independent Cuba: A
Comparative Perspective', Ethnohistory, 44 (Winter 1997), pp.53-74; R.L. Paquette, Sugar
Is Made with Blood: The Conspiracy of La Escalera and the Conflict between Empires over
Slavery in Cuba (Middletown, CT, 1988).
97. J.V. Lombardi, The Decline and Abolition of Negro Slavery in Venezuela, 1820-1854
(Westport, CT, 1971); W.R. Wright, Café con leche. Race, Class, and National Image in
Venezuela (Austin, 1990), pp.25-35.
98. D. Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour and National Independence in
Haiti (New Brunswick, N.J., 1996 [1979]), pp. 1-43.
99. G. Heuman, Between Black and White: Race, Politics, and the Free Coloreds in Jamaica,
1838-1865 (Westport, CT, 1981), pp.3-96; M. Craton, Testing the Chains. Resistance to
Slavery in the British West Indies (Ithaca, 1982), pp.291-321.
100. A. Pérotin-Dumon, 'Free Colored and Slaves in Revolutionary Guadaloupe. Politics and
Political Consciousness', in R.L. Paquette and S.L. Engerman (eds.), The Lesser Antilles in
the Age of European Expansion (Gainesville, FL, 1996), pp.259-79; D. Geggus, 'The
Slaves and Free Coloreds of Martinique during the Age of the French and Haitian
Revolutions', in ibid., pp.280-301.
101. J.S. Handler, The Unappropriated People: Freedmen in the Slave Society of Barbados
(Baltimore, 1974), pp. 190-218.
102. On current developments, see P. Wade, Blackness and Race Mixture. The Dynamics of
Racial Identity in Colombia (Baltimore, 1993); J. Streicker, 'Policing Boundaries: Race,
Class, and Gender in Cartagena, Colombia', American Ethnologist, 22 (1995), pp.54-74.

HELG, Aline. The Limits of Equality. Free People of Color and Slaves in The First Independence of Cartagena (1810-1815) PDF

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Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave

The limits of equality: Free people of colour and slaves

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On 11 November 1811, hundreds of men, most of them pardos, blacks, and

The Society and Economy of Cartagena

tropical agricultural products, brazilwood and emeralds. The community of

baptized and resettled in legal villages, where many became sharecroppers.

population lived in conditions close to self-subsistence, and both the state

In the- 1790s, three major changes contributed to halt the Caribbean

viceroyalty's capital, Santa Fe de Bogota1. No doubt, they shied away from

the Haitian Revolution. As expressed by the viceroy of New Granada in 1800:

Cartagena's First Independence, 1810-15

peers in Havana, Caracas and Buenos Aires. Increasingly, they perceived

In August 1810, a Supreme Junta was established to rule Cartagena and

The occupation of Mompox sealed the beginning of a personal feud

independence. Only the bishop of Cartagena refused and was later

Act of Independence. It was representative, republican, liberal and stressed

finally entered Cartagena, about one third of its approximately 15,000

Race, Colour and Class in Bourbon Cartagena

population of colour did not demand the abolition of slavery in 1810.

quadroon with quadroon, pardos with pardos, mulattos with mulattos,

slaves) dramatically limited these women's chances of finding a groom in

predominantly by pardos and mulattos, a few whites but no blacks; still

slave status, a trend continued in current Colombian scholarship. Such

the early nineteenth century. In February, during the carnival festivities of

Of more transcendence and impact on free men of colour was the

pardos, zambos and blacks. The militia of artillery included darker-skinned

Equality and Freedom during Cartagena's First Independence

participation in governor Montes' capitulation was the turning point in the

radical Gutierrez de Pineres brothers. These influential and wealthy whites

white lawyer from Corozal married to the mulatto daughter of Pedro

movements to gain their freedom and equality. As a result, the reformist

announced the possible creation of a manumission fund, but specified that

publicly claim his good relations with the lower classes:

pursued the elimination of slavery.

However, since independence and the adoption of universal suffrage, in

Múnera, 'Failing to Construct the Colombian Nation', pp. 108-13.

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