Afro-Latin-American Patriots and the Origins of Spanish American Political Modernity

This is a draft, please do not cite or circulate without the author's permission

Marixa Lasso

"Without doubt the specificity of the Hispanic revolutions resides in the absence of

popular modern mobilizations and of Jacobin type events."1 With this sentence, the masterly

work of François-Xavier Guerra gave new strength to an old historical tradition that

disconnected the popular classes of Spanish America from the popular, Jacobin ideologies of the

Atlantic Revolutions.2 This essay uses Guerra's sentence as a starting point to ask how does the

historiography of the wars of independence changes when it incorporates the research published

in the last twenty years, which indicates that Jacobin-styled popular mobilizations were much

more common that previously thought. How do general histories and interpretations of the wars

of independence change when we alter Guerra's sentence and consider Afro-Latin Americans of

the independence period as modern political actors?

Afro-Latin-Americans and political modernity

If we consider the ideal of legal and political equality and the aspiration to a better future

one of the characteristics of political modernity, Afro-Latin-Americans fight for racial equality

represents one of the most modern aspects of the wars of independence in Spanish America and

1
François –Xavier Guerra, Modernidad e Independencias: Ensayos sobre las revoluciones hispánicas
(México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1993), 36.
2
Lynch, John. The Spanish American Revolutions 1808-1826 (New York: Norton, 1986, 2nd ed.). John
Charles Chasteen, Americanos: Latin America’s Struggles for Independence (Oxford University Press,
2008) andJaime Rodríguez, The Independence of Spanish America, (Cambridge University Press,1997);
Lester Langley, The Americans in the Age of Revolution (McMillan Press, 1996), 147-212.

1
in the Atlantic world. In spite of the enormous historical importance of the declarations of

Venezuelan, Mexican and Colombian patriots about the equality of humankind regardless of

color or origin, the grand narrative of the Age of Revolution in Spanish America gives race a

secondary role.3 Even now that several generations of historian have highlighted the importance

of the Haitian Revolution, histories of Spanish America continue to see the struggle for racial

equality as a peripheral event to the general history of Independence. Yet, race was a central

issue during the anti-colonial wars of the Age of Revolution. During this period, democracy was

for the first time linked to human equality regardless of color and geographical origin. And it

was in the Americas that anti-colonial wars faced first a question that would become common to

the anti colonial wars of the modern era: How to construct unifying national identities in

societies beset by racism and racial and ethnic conflicts? Elites did not decide alone the solution

to this predicament. Indigenous peoples and peoples of African descent played a crucial role in

the creation of new national identities. Ignoring this history not only erases the contribution of

people of African descent to the emergence of political modernity, but it also helps perpetuate

historical constructions that disconnect Latin America from the production and construction of

modernity. Obscuring the centrality that racial equality acquired during the Age of Atlantic

Revolutions also buries what might be one of Latin America’s most original contributions to

modern political thinking.

In other works I have analyzed how the participation of blacks and mulatos during the

wars of independence was silenced; here I only want to mention the crucial role that Simón

Bolívar's writings played in this process. His attacks on lawyers, demagogues, and incendiary

theoreticians for their failure to grasp that modern politics cannot be transferred to Spanish

3
Marixa Lasso “Race War and Nation in Caribbean Gran Colombia, Cartagena, 1810-1832,” American
Historical Review, Vol. 111, no 2, 2006, 336-340.

2
America without sufficient attention to local geography and culture are well known. 4 What often

goes unacknowledged is his influence in the development of an intellectual tradition that erased

the contribution of the Spanish American popular classes in the history of modern democracy

and made modernity seem a mere illusion of the elite. Bolívar’s first line of argument sought to

prove that fully representative politics did not suit South Americans. He did this by creating a

dichotomy that distinguished between politically virtuous North Americans and South

Americans, whose “character, habits and present enlightenment does not suit perfect

representative institutions.” An “entirely popular system,” he insisted, was not appropriate for

this region.5 Second, he cast local demands for popular and regional representation as the

political pipedreams of a handful of enlightened lawyers.6 In his address to the Congress of

Angostura, he criticized the current constitution by reminding legislators that “not all eyes, are

capable of looking at the light of celestial perfection.”7 Representative democracy might belong

in paradise, but not in South America. By making representative politics look like the exclusive

aspiration of self-deluded lawyers, he detached the new constitutional governments from the

societies that birthed them. The legacy of this narrative was to erase from historical memory the

local struggles over the nature of the new political system. Yet, if Bolívar lashed out against

lawyers’ inability to realize that liberal and perfect institutions did not fit the geography of

4
A few analyses of Bolívar’s intellectual legacy are, Germán Carrera Damas, El culto a Bolívar (Caracas:
Instituto de Antropología e Historia, 1969); John Lynch, Simón Bolívar: a Life (New Haven, Yale
University Press, 2006), 92-94, 119-122; David Brading, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy,
Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492-1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 603-
620; Luis Castro Leiva, La Gran Colombia una ilusión ilustrada; Anthony Pagden, Spanish Imperialism
and the Political Imagination: Studies in European and Spanish American Social and Political Theory
1513-1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 133-153.
5
Obras Completas de Bolívar (La Havana: Editorial Lex, 1950, 2d ed.), vol. 1, 168.
6
This line of argumentation is strikingly similar to French revisionist blame of intellectuals for the
excesses of the French Revolution. Jacques Rancière, The Names of History, 40.
7
“Discurso Pronunciado por el Libertador ante el Congreso de Angostura el 15 de Febrero de 1819, día
de su instalación,” Obras Completas de Bolívar, vol. 3, 681-682

3
Colombia, it was because he feared not that the popular classes would remain aloof from modern

politics but that they participate too much. As Germán Carrera Damas has shown, he feared that

democracy in Spanish America could lead to the end of elite rule.8 What he blamed lawyers for

was not understanding that representative institutions among “the Caribes from the Orinoco, the

sailors of Maracibo, the bogas [river boatmen] of Magdalena, the bandits of Patia … and all the

savage hordes of Africa and America” would lead to Colombia’s ruin, perhaps to a second

Haiti.9 Further, in his famous Jamaica Letter he pondered that in Lima “the rich would not

tolerate democracy, and the slaves and pardos would not tolerate aristocracy.”10 Years later he

would warn José Antonio Paez against changing Colombia’s republican system arguing that,

among other things, “The height and brilliance of a throne would be frightful. Equality would be

broken and los colores [the colors] would see all their rights lost to a new aristocracy.”11 Future

interpretations of Bolívar would tend to forget the strong linkage between pardos and democracy

in his writings. His attack against lawyers’ “inability” to comprehend local society is what is

mostly remembered.12

Building on recent works on Cartagena and Caracas --two places were black citizenship

was granted by 1812-- this paper highlights the importance of modern popular political

participation in shaping the nature of legal equality in Gran Colombia. When we compare the

new research that highlights the participation of black patriots in the independent movements of

Cartagena and Caracas to Guardino’s study of Guerrero, it becomes evident that there is a close

8
Germán Carrera Damas, Venezuela Proyecto Nacional y Poder Social, (Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1986), 113-
133.
9
Simon Bolívar to Francisco de Paula Santander” San Carlos, 13 June 1821 Obras Completas de
Bolívar (La Havana: Editorial Lex, 1950, 2d ed.) vol. 1, 565.
10
“Contestación de un Americano Meridional a un caballero de esta Isla,” Kingston, 6 September 1815,
Obras Completas, vol. 1, 172.
11
Simón Bolívar to José Antonio Páez, 06 March 1826, Obras Completas de Bolívar.
12
Jaime Rodríguez, The Independence of Spanish America (Cambridge, 1998), 220; David Brading, The
First America, 613.

4
relationship among the active political participation of blacks and mulattos, the evolution of the

idea of racial equality, and the identity of these places as patriot regions or cities.13

From the start of the wars, the equality and citizenship of free people of African descent

became a major factor in the struggle against Spain. It soon became clear to all participants that

the support of people of African descent was a crucial factor in securing military victories. Many

blacks had good reasons to support the royalists. Some had received favors and special privileges

from the King as members of the colonial black militias. Others joined the royalist forces

because they offered the opportunity to fight landowners and slave owners under the legitimacy

of the king’s banner. To counter this sentiment, the first revolutionary juntas of regions like

Caracas and Cartagena courted the support of blacks and mulattos with new promises of

equality. In Cartagena, the creole elite sought the support of prestigious pardo artisans before

deposing the Spanish governor in May 1810. By December of the same year, the electoral

instructions for the Suprema Junta of the province of Cartagena included all races. “All

parishioners, whites, Indians, mestizos, mulatos, zambos and blacks, as long as they were

household heads and lived from their own work, were to be summoned for elections.” Only

“vagrants, criminals, those who were in servile salaried status, and slaves are excluded.”14

Similarly, some of the first measures of the Caracas’ Junta Suprema sought to include pardos.

The Caracas Junta Suprema named a [white] representative of the pardos’ guild, increased the

stipends of pardo militia officers, and expanded the rank to which pardos could be promoted

13
Alfonso Múnera, El fracaso de la nacion Alejandro Gomez "la revolución de Caracas desde abajo" y
“Del affaire de los mulatos al asunto de los pardos,” Marixa Lasso, Myths of Harmony, y Peter Guardino,
Peasants Politics. For a different perspective, see Aline Helg, Liberty and Equality in Caribbean
Colombia (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2005).
14
“Instrucciones 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,” 11
December 1810, in, Manuel Ezequiel Corrales, Efemérides y anales del Estado de Bolívar (Bogotá: Casa
Eeditorial de J.J. Peréz, 1889), 2:48.

5
from captain [the colonial limit] to coronel. The Junta Suprema of Caracas also awarded pardo

officers with medals for their “courageous and enthusiastic patriotism,” and their “virtue and

patriotism.”15 Similar to Cartagena, the Caracas Junta’s electoral laws for the General Congress

of Venezuela -- published in June 1810-- included all free men without distinction of color, as

long as they were not salaried or dependent, thus including many independent artisans.16 These

tactics bore fruit. Member of the pardo guild began to make monetary contributions to the Junta

and their donations were duly published by the Gaceta de Caracas, further fostering a sense of

unity of between pardo and creole patriotism.17 The language of Cartagena and Caracas' Juntas

was similar to José María Morelos' 17 of November of 1810 proclamation, which stated that “a

excepción de los Europeos, todos los demás habitantes no se nombrarán en calidad de indios,

mulatos ni otras castas, sino todos generalmente Americanos.”18

Much more than a simple elite cooptation of blacks as military force, these laws seem to

be the result of political alliances between free blacks and radical creoles. One of the groups that

promoted these alliances was Caracas’ Sociedad Patriótica, which counted among its members

figures like the Bolívar brothers, the Montilla brothers, and Francisco Miranda –who already in

1806 has proposed giving citizenship to indigenous peoples and free blacks and mulattoes. La

Sociedad Patriótica drew inspiration from the French Jacobin Clubs and admitted the

participation of peoples of all types and conditions. When Miranda became its president, one of

his first steps was to invite four free black and mulattos to become members. According to

contemporary witnesses, the support of men of color of the Sociedad Patriótica was due to the

15
Alejandro E. Gómez, “La revolución de Caracas desde abajo.” Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos
Nouveausx mondes mondes nouveaux-Novo Mundo, Dossier Independencias, May (2008), 12.
16
Alejandro E. Gómez, “La revolución de Caracas desde abajo.” 13.
17
Alejandro E. Gómez, “La revolución de Caracas desde abajo,” 12.
18
Ernesto Lemoine Villicaña, Morelos: Su vida revolucionaria a través de sus escritos y de otros
testimonios de la época, (México, General de Publicaciones, Segunda edición 1991) 162.

6
“warmth and enthusiasm with which the liberty and equality of mankind was discussed.”19 This

inclusiveness contrasted with the royalists and moderate independentists’ lukewarm willingness

to include only a few pardos of great distinction (pardos benemeritos). In 1811, the foreign

observer Gregor McGregor stated that the Sociedad Patriótica had given pardos confidence in

their rights to equality with whites. In Guerrero the blacks and mulattoes of Tierra Caliente allied

themselves with the independence movement of Morelos. In Cartagena, patriot politics were

divided between a radical group “the piñeristas” and a moderate group “the toledistas.” Although

both groups courted pardos’ support, the toledistas tried to control the extent their participation

to a few members of the pardo elite. In contrast, the piñeristas actively encouraged the political

participation of black and mulatto artisans in the streets and emphasized a radical rhetoric of

equality. In the royalist city of Honda it was a zambo artisan who sought alliance with the Creole

patriots of the neighboring town of Ambalema after the town council expelled some elite Creoles

with patriot tendencies. The zambo artisan Buenaventura Pérez took the initiative against the

Honda town council, which he considered a “satélite de los chapetones,” and invited other

artisans to organize a “juntica contra los blancos,” porque “si no lo hacían así éstos se

cagaban.”20 The linkage between white radicals and the lower and darker classes was heavily

criticized. Opponents called these radical groups demagogues, Jacobins, Sans Culottes, and Sin

Camisas.

The radical groups who counted with the support of pardos were also the groups that

most favored independence. We cannot fully understand the initial declarations of independence

without examining how these multiracial alliances pressured undecided Creoles to establish

independent republics. In Cartagena, the pardo militias played a crucial role in pressuring the

19
Alejandro E. Gómez, “La revolución de Caracas desde abajo,” 15-16.
20
Marixa Lasso, Myths of Harmony 92-96.

7
creole Junta to declare independence on November 11, 1811. Contemporaries described how

pardos and mulattos armed with forced the undecided creole Junta to sign the act of

independence. Similarly, in Caracas it was the Sociedad Patriótica that pressured Congress of

Venezuela to declare independence. The Sociedad Patriótica published the radical newspaper El

Patriota de Venezuela, which fostered the idea of independence. This newspaper was credited

with having the purpose of "desacreditar y destruir el sistema de moderación bajo el que los jefes

de la insurrección han venido actuando ahstae el presente."21 According to the Oidor of the

Royal Audiencia of Acaracas, Francisco José Heredia, the members of Sociedad Patriótica

intimidated congress deputies "por medio de gritos y amenazas" forcing them to "adoptar

resoluciones, que ella había discutido y acoredado antes en sus reuniones nocturnas." One of

these resolutions was the July 5 declaration of independence. According to another witness, the

"turbulent youth" of the Sociedad Patriótica "armados de puñales, obligaron al Congreso a

declarar esta independencia." He described the protagonists of these events as "pelotones de

hombres de la revolución, negros, mulatos, blancos españoles y americanos corrían de una plaza

a otra, en donde oradores energumenos incitaban al populacho al desenfreno y a la licencia." 22

Pardos also took the initiative of defending patriot insurrections against royalist attacks.

Cartagena’s pardo defended the junta against the insurrection of the Spanish Fijo Batallion in

February of 1811. Similarly, the teniente coronel of the pardo militias Manuel Caballero led the

patriot defense against a group of Spanish men from the Canary Islands who challenged Caracas’

declaration of independence.23

21
Carole Leal Curiel, "Tensiones Republicanas: de Patriotas, Aristócratas y Demócratas. El Club de la
Sociedad Patriótica de Caracas," in Guillermo Palacios. Ed. Ensayos sobre la nueva Historia Política en
América Latina (El Colegio de México: México, 2007). p. 8
22
Cited by Carole Leal Curiel, p 10.
23
Alejandro E. Gómez, “La revolución de Caracas desde abajo,” 20.

8
 Given the importance of the alliances between pardos and radical Creoles, it is not

surprising that in these two cities, racial equality was one of the first issues confronted by

patriots. In Caracas, the same session that voted in favor of independence received a proposal to

debate “the destiny and circumstance of pardos [la suerte y condición de los pardos.]” Although

this discussion was postponed, it was only under the condition that it would be “the first thing to

be addressed after independence.”24 When the first constitution of Venezuela was sanctioned on

December of the same year, it contained a decree that granted free people of African descent the

same and rights and privileges of whites.25 Similarly, the new republic of Cartagena granted

equality to free blacks and whites. When it published its first constitution in 1812, two pardo

deputies had signed it.26 Although some Afro-Colombians remained royalists to the end of the

war, it was the alliance forged by black and white patriots that would create the legislation and
27
language that organized modern race relations in Gran Colombia. The alliances between

pardos and radical creoles would not only guarantee the promulgation of legal racial equality, but

also explain the strength of patriot movements in these regions and their survival during royalist

reaction. In the region of Guerrero and in the Venezuelan Caribbean, patriot guerrillas under the

leadership of black and mulatto leaders kept the patriot movement alive when royalist forces

dominated most of the territory.28

24
Alejandro E. Gómez, “La revolución de Caracas desde abajo,”18
25
Ramón Díaz Sánchez, Libro de Actas del Supremo Congreso de Venezuela, 11811-1812, (Caracas,
1959), p. 254-62; Manuel Alfredo Rodriquez, los pardos libres en la colonia y la independencia,” Boletín
de la Academia Nacional de la Historia 75, no. 299 (1992), 52
26
Marixa Lasso, Myths of Harmony, 47.
27
Frédérique Langue, « La pardocratie ou l’itineraire d’une “classe dangereuse” dans le Venezuela des
XVIIIe et XIXe siècles », Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos [En línea], BAC - Biblioteca de Autores del
Centro, Langue, Frédérique, Puesto en línea el 14 février 2005. URL :
http://nuevomundo.revues.org/index643.html, Marixa Lasso, Myths of Harmony.
28
Peter Guardino, Peasants, Politics, 45-80 and Ted Vincent, “The Blacks who Freed Mexico,” The
Journal of Negro History, 79 (1994) 3, pp 257-276.

9
 The movements in these regions seem to indicate that multiracial alliances, in addition of

carrying the flag of independence, also developed the most radical ideals of equality of the

independence movement. As Carole Leal Curiel has pointed out, the Caracas Sociedad

Patriótica was famous (or infamous) for its Jacobin intentions and for the "murmuraciones

democráticas" provoked by the participation of pardos in its meetings and discussions.29

Cotemporary descriptions characterized them as society with "marcadísimas tendencias de

origen francés y una estrecha afinidad con el memorable club de los Jacobinos, tanto por la

violencia y extravagancia de los discursos que frecuentamente se pronuncian en sus sesiones

como por la influencia sobre los acuerdos que adopta el gobierno."30 Another foreign witness the

Sociedad Patriótica allowed Miranda to "caldear el espíritu del bajo pueblo; y sus discursos

contribuyeron al éxito de sus proyectos. ... se hizo de numerosos partidarios, escogidos entre

aquellos que se sentían descontentos con la altanería de los mantuanos. De ellos nacieron dos

partidos muy delimitados: el de Miranda y el de la alta nobleza."31 The Sociedad's newspaper El

Patriota de Venezuela ridiculed the "patriotas aristócratas" who might have wanted

independence, but continued to be attached to distinctions and honors. These aristocratic patriots

badmouthed the "pobres, a los que se quejan vicios de los aristócratas, a los que hablan con

claridad." Cartagena's piñeristas used a similar egalitarian language. A song against the royalist

Bishop declaimed “Respecto a que el Obispo es Fernandino, que salga jacobino.”32 Piñerista

pamphlets denounced the aristocratic behavior of the moderate patriots of the toledista group.

One of these pamphlets accused the president of the Cartagena Junta, José María de Toledo, of

29
L'Ambigu, 1812, cited and translated by Carole Leal Curiel, "Tensiones Republicanas: "). p
30
SEMPLE, 1812/1974, p. 63 cited by Carole Leal Curiel
31
Poundenx y Meyer, 1815/1974 cited by Carole Leal Curiel p. 9
32
Citado por Marixa Lasso, Myths of Harmony, 78

10
having aristocratic tendencies.33 He was told that, “in a popular government no man should be

superior to another, if José María Toledo [the Junta’s President] enjoyed too much recognition

and esteem, it was necessary to level him.”34 The movement of Morelos, like the Piñerista

movement of Cartagena, claimed to start an era when “La cobardía y la ociosidad será la única

que infame al ciudadano, y el templo del honor abrirá indistintamente las puertas del merito y la

virtud.”35 We frequently forget that the origin of this ideology, which eventually would become

commonplace in republican language, was institutionalized for the first time in the political

alliances between radical Creoles and blacks and mulattos.

The alliance between pardos and radical creole republicans continued until the end of the

wars; and in Colombia, the case I know best, it would continue for several decades. In the 1828

Ocaña convention, the alliance between black veterans and radical republicans pressuered for the

implementation of racial equality, as guaranteed by law, and for more inclusive electoral laws.

Although the Liberal party had not yet been created, at this convention the anti-Bolivar sector

called itself liberal. The Bolivarian sector favored a strong executive and a centralist state.36

Although this group favored broadening the electoral franchise, it sought to control it by

diminishing the number of electoral colleges. They considered themselves the party of order and

stability and saw anarchy as the most acute political problem. They called their opponents

exalted, Jacobins, demagogues, and anarchic. In contrast, the anti-Bolivar sector (or

Santanderista sector) did not trust a centralized strong state, which in their view would lead to

tyranny. Thus, they favored federalism, an elected and rotating presidency, and a strong and

33
“El honor vindicado” y Bravísima exposición de los motivos que han obligado al pueblo de Cartagena a
rechazar el nombramiento de gobernador del señor García de Toledo.”
34
Documentos para la historia de la provincial de Cartagena, 369.
35
“Elementos de la Constitución” Noviembre 7, 1812, en Ernesto Lemoine Villicaña, Morelos: Su vida
revolucionaria, p. 226.
36
David Bushnell, The Santander Regime in Gran Colombia (Newark: University of Delaware Press,
1954), 332-359.

11
influential congress. Like their opponents, they favored broadening the electoral franchise, but,

unlike them, their constitutional project had lower property requirements and more electoral

colleges.37 They called themselves liberals and gave their opponents the epithets of godos,

serviles, and despotic.38

Contemporary political language codified these differences using the aristocrat/Jacobin

dichotomies. In the Ocaña convention, liberals often used the anti-aristocratic card to fight their

opponents. Conservatives nicknamed Santander Mr. Égalite and his followers sans-culottes.39

Probably, the liberal sectors attracted pardos because of its vigorous anti-aristocratic rhetoric,

which had been linked to racial equality from the first days of the republic. This rhetoric linked

racial hierarchies associated the racial hierarchies that privileged birth over merit and virtue with

the aristocratic character of the old regime.40 Similar to other liberals, pardo veterans owed their

political and social preeminence to their participation in the patriot cause during the wars of

independence. Liberals tended impeccable patriot credentials; while many of their opponents

belonged to the social sector that would lose the most with the end of colonial social and racial

hierarchies and had been indifferent patriots, if not royalists, and had gained positions of power

due to their education, wealth, and social prestige.41 Finally, pardo artisan would have more

political influence if the number of electoral colleges were expanded and the property

requirements diminished.

37
Diego Uribe Vargas comp. Las constituciones de Colombia, 2:710-712, 748-749, 790-792.
38
Restrepo, Historia de la Revolución, 6: 86-92; Daniel F. O’Leary a Simón Bolívar, Ocaña, 22 de marzo
de 1828 y Daniel O’Leary a Simón Bolívar, Ocaña, 22 de mayo de 1828, y 27 de mayo de 1828, en
Memorias del General O´Leary, 29:179-180, 306-309.
39
Daniel O’Leary a Simón Bolívar, 22 de marzo de 1828 y 25 de April 1828, Memorias del General
O´Leary, 29:180, 248.
40
Bolívar to José Antonio Páez, Magdalena, 6 March1826, Obras Completas de Bolívar.
41
Victor Uribe-Uran prevee un excelente análisis de las diferencias sociales entre los aristócratas y los
liberales—el prefiere llamarlos provinciales. Victor M. Uribe-Uran, Honorable Lives: Lawyers, Family,
and Politics in Colombia, 1780-1850 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000), 71-102.

12
 Afro-Latin Americans and the Historiography of the Wars of Independence.

Returning to the sentence by François-Xavier Guerra with which I began this essay, it is

time to ask how does our general interpretation of the wars of independence changes when we

recognize the modernity of Afro-Latinamerican patriots. There seems to be a wide disconnection

between the monographs written in the last twenty years about the participation of popular

groups in the Wars of Independence and the summaries of the wars of independence that do not

incorporate the research. Often summaries are the ones that determine the historical memory of a

region. Here I want to suggest ways in which the recognition of the political modernity of Afro-

Colombian groups changes some of the themes that organize the history of the wars of

independence.

First, the presence of modern popular politics questions entrenched characterizations of

Latin American societies as traditional and their political modernity as superficial. It become

impossible to continue stating that “the new republican constitutions of América seemed a bit

like exotic plants on Colombian or Chilean soil-- remote indeed from the historical experience of

the people.”42 Far from been characterized by the absence of popular Jacobin type movements,

patriots grew and survived thanks to these popular movements. This evidence forces us to

include the alliances between radical groups and pardos as one of the factors that explain the

strength of republican initiatives in some regions and cities. All seems to suggest that without

this alliance neither Cartagena, nor Caracas, or Guerrero would have become patriot bastions.

Behind the "Mask of Ferdinand XVII,” to use John Lynch's famous phrase, not only hid Creole's

autonomist sentiments, but also pardo's aspirations for racial equality that went back at least to
42
John Charles Chasteen, Americanos, 185. La traducción es mía.

13
the times of the Haitian Revolution.43 To understand the impulse behind independence

declarations, it is not only necessary to examine the history of Creole identity, but also the

history of pardo frustrations and aspirations.44

Second, acknowledging popular modern political participation during this period leads us

to recover voices and political tendencies that historians have not given the importance that they

had among contemporaries. In addition to the well-known divisions between patriots and

royalists and between centralist and federalists, there were other important divisions over the

level of popular political participation and the meaning of equality in the new governments that

need to receive the relevance that they deserve. The divisions between oils and vinegars that

Peter Guardino studied for Oaxaca, the divisions between piñeristas and toledistas in Cartagena,

the creation of political associations like "los veteranos defensores de la libertad" and the

popularity of the sociedad patriótica among the pardos of Caracas point to a richer political than

it is usually thought.45 The actors of this period cannot continue to speak through the mouth of

Simón Bolívar, who only represents one version of the republican thought of the independence

period. Bolívar's well-known invectives against pardocracy were part of a complex dialogue that

we continue to hear only through his speeches. It is time to incorporate in the grand narrative of

the wars of independence the voice of his popular interlocutors. For example, the writings of the

pardo general José Domingo Espinar reveals a vision of democracy much more ample and

radical than Bolívar's vision. When he was accused of being "the people's anointed one" “el bien

amado del pueblo” and having forced the respectable minority of Panama city to accept his

43
Para "La máscara de Fernando VII," ver John Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions.
44
Para un análisis de la identidad racial de los pardos a finales de la colonia, ver Ben Vinson III, Bearing
the Arms for his Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico (Stanford University Press,
2001).
45
Fort the vinagres y aceites, see Peter Guardino, The Time of Liberty: Popular Political Culture in
Oaxaca, 1750-1850, (Duke University Press, 2005), 156-222.

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government due to his ability to control the masses, he defended himself by saying: “vivimos en

el siglo de las mayorías y quien no se conforme con sus soberanas decisiones debe dejar el país

para siempre.”46

To study Afro-descendants as modern political actors also changes the perspective from

which Atlantic connections are examined. Like Guerra, this essay sees the Spanish liberal

revolution and the Spanish-American Independence as part of one broader Atlantic process that

culminated in the Cadiz constitutional debates. Yet, it argues that Cadiz was only one part of a

broader constitutional debate that cannot be fully understood without taking into account popular

influence on the debates over citizenship that took place in American cities. It is not possible to

generalize about notions of citizenship on the Spanish Atlantic based solely on the Cadiz debates

and Constitution as Tamar Herzog does. She highlights castas’ exclusion from citizenship in the

Cadiz Constitution, while failing to notice how these debates were followed in the Americas and

the crucial difference between Cadiz and Patriot legislation on blacks’ citizenship rights.47 Let us

not forget that numerous American constitutions were published at the same time of that the

Cadiz Constitution and that some patriot movements had granted equal citizenship rights people

of African descent as early as 1810. Indeed, positioning on this issue this would become a

defining marker that distinguished Spanish liberals from American patriots. The issue of recail

equality allows us to see that changes in the Atlantic world did not always travel in one direction

and that Latin America was not only on the receiving end of political changes, but was also a

46
José Domingo Espinar, “Resumen histórico que hace el General José Domingo Espinar de los
Acontecimientos Políticos Ocurridos en Panamá en el año 1830, Apellidados ahora revolución de Castas
por el gobernador José De Obaldia” Lotería, 1976, p.97. For a detailed analysis of Espinar’s essay, see ver
Marixa Lasso “La crisis política post-independentista,” in Alfredo Castillero-Calvo (ed.) Historia General
de Panama, vol 2, (Panamá: Comité Nacional del Centenario, 2004), 63-76.
47
Tamar Herzog, Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish
America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 157-163.

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source of political and legal changes. In the case or racial equality, it is clear that changes travel

from America to Spain.

From the perspective of social history, pardos' modern political participation highlights the

fact that inequality also has a history, a fact that becomes obvious every time that change is not

associated with progress. The denial of the political modernity of popular groups in part derives

from an historical perspective that examines the origin of the republican period assuming its

future incapacity to eliminate social inequality. This perspective continues to dominate the

summaries and generalizations of the wars of independence and thwarts the understanding of the

social and political changes of this period. In regard to race relations, the wars not only

inaugurated a political system organized around legal racial equality, but also opened new

avenues for social mobility and a larger level of black political participation. This is not to say

that the broad patterns of economic inequality that kept people of African descent at the bottom

of society ended, but rather it is to say that the ideologies that organized and legitimized unequal

social relations changed dramatically.

16