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Simon Bol var and the Spectre of

Pardocracia: Jose Padilla in


Post-Independence Cartagena
ALINE HELG
Abstract. This article examines the tensions between the Gran Colombian repub-
lican constitution of 1821 and Simon Bol vars fear of a mulatto takeover. It focuses
on Cartagena in the 1820s, where the mulatto general Jose Padilla challenged the
socio-racial hierarchy and accepted notions of equality of the city, heading a three-
day coup in 1828 against Bol vars attempt to impose a new authoritarian con-
stitution. Padilla failed to rally the mostly African-derived population of Cartagena
behind the republican views of Francisco de Paula Santander and was promptly
executed. Using the protagonists correspondence, manifestos, criminal investi-
gations, consular reports and censuses, the article analyses the factors in the citys
demography, political leadership and culture, and in the composition of its military
forces, that explain Padillas failure. It highlights the role played by race and by
Bol vars views of mulattos in the process.
From 1810 to 1831 New Granada experienced extraordinary changes as it
evolved from a colonial caste society ruled by a distant Spanish monarch to
a multiracial republic of free and equal citizens, rst in the union of Gran
Colombia and later as an independent nation. The 1820s, in particular, was
a decade during which the military leaders who had just defeated Spain
confronted elected legislators often themselves former military men over
the new nations form of government and its citizens rights and duties. In
broad terms, from 1826 the civilians supported the establishment of a con-
stitutional republic embodied by the man of letters and vice-president of
Gran Colombia, Gen. Francisco de Paula Santander, against the attempts
Aline Helg is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of
Texas at Austin.
The following abbreviations have been used: AHNC (Archivo Historico Nacional de
Colombia, Bogota), RE (Seccion Republica), AR (Archivo Historico Restrepo), GM
(Fondo Guerra y Marina), HI (Fondo Historia) ; BNC (Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia,
Bogota), SM (Sala Manuscritos) ; MAE-Paris (Ministe`re des Aaires Etrange`res, Paris),
CCC (Correspondance Consulaire, Colombie, Carthage`ne) ; NA (National Archives of the
United States, Washington, D.C.), DCC (Dispatches from the United States Consuls in
Cartagena, Colombia, 18221906 [Microcopy]) ; PRO (Public Record Oce, London), FO
(Foreign Oce Papers).
J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 35, 447471 f 2003 Cambridge University Press 447
DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X03006849 Printed in the United Kingdom
by the Liberator and president, Gen. Simon Bol var, and several military
leaders to keep Gran Colombia together by imposing authoritarian regimes
on Venezuela, New Granada and Ecuador under Bol vars centralised super-
vision. By the end of 1830 Bol var had died and Gran Colombia had sep-
arated into the three nations. In New Granada the supporters of Santander
triumphed over the bolivaristas by mid-1831 and proceeded to restore a re-
publican government, but the fact that they achieved their victory on the
battleelds rather than at the polls instituted a bipartisan political system
(Liberals versus Conservatives) in which it was often military triumph that
secured political change.
By focusing on the scarcely studied relationship between Bol var, San-
tander, the pardo (mulatto) General Jose Padilla, and their respective con-
stituencies in the predominantly Afro-Caribbean port city of Cartagena, this
article analyses how the socio-racial structures of the colonial past, the
spectre of the Haitian Revolution, and contradictory visions of the future
shaped these leaders trajectories in the early republic.
1
Whereas fear of
people of African descent and the need to keep the lower classes in check
dominated Bol vars thinking, the urge for controlling the military, regardless
of race, guided Santander. Padilla, who routinely experienced the racism of
Cartagenas aristocrats, oscillated between the old scare tactic of mobilising
his pardo class and a modern discourse of democracy and equality. In
a political culture based on clientelism, in which many white elites under-
stood references to blackness and its mixtures as threats of another Haiti,
such ambivalence limited Padillas regional leadership. Moreover, unable to
choose between military discipline and political beliefs, Padilla cultivated
the dual patronage of Bol var and Santander even after the two leaders had
clashed and Bol vars authoritarianism began to clearly contradict his own
socio-racial interests. When in early 1828 Padilla eventually chose Santander
and launched a coup in favour of the latters constitutionalist views, the
1
For brief mentions of Padilla in Bol vars trajectory, see I. Lievano Aguirre, Bol var (1950;
reprint, Caracas, 1988), p. 501; G. Masur, Simon Bol var (2nd ed., Albuquerque, 1968),
p. 447; John Lynch, Bol var and the Caudillos, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 63,
no. 1 (1983), pp. 301; D. Bushnell, The Last Dictatorship: Betrayal or Consummation?,
ibid., p. 78. The most complete military biography of Padilla is J. C. Torres Almeyda, El
Almirante Jose Padilla (epopeya y martirio) (1983; reprint, Bogota, 1990). See also E. Uribe
White, Padilla: homenaje de la armada colombiana al he roe de la batalla del lago de Maracaibo
(Bogota, 1973) ; E. Otero DCosta, Vida del Almirante Jose Padilla (17781828 ) (1921; reprint,
Bogota, 1973). For a novelised narrative, see J. Zapata Olivella, Piar, Petion y Padilla: tres
mulatos de la revolucion (Barranquilla, 1986), pp. 31106. For an innovative discussion of the
events in Cartagena in 1828, see J. Conde Calderon, Provincias, ciudadan a y clase en el
Caribe colombiano, 18211855, unpubl. thesis, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Programa
de Doctorado Las mascaras del poder en el imaginario latinoamericano, Seville, 2001),
pp. 1037.
448 Aline Helg
santanderistas gave him little support. Bol var could easily accuse him of in-
itiating a race war and have him executed.
In 1821 Gran Colombia achieved independence from Spain, and the
Congress of Cucuta adopted the new nations rst constitution. As other
republican constitutions in the 1820s, this document stressed its protection
of Colombians liberty, security, property, and equality. It established a
system of indirect representation that limited surage to adult men with real
property or independent trade, but in practice unqualied military men were
allowed to vote until 1827.
2
Simultaneously, all references to the colonial
racial categories other than Indians and slaves disappeared from laws, cen-
suses, and legal documents.
3
This reected not only the principles of equality
promoted by the French Revolution but also the fact that the armies that
liberated Gran Colombias territories were racially integrated and made up
principally of men of mixed African and Indian ancestry. Although con-
gressmen and military leaders tacitly accepted the abolition of the colonial
racial privileges as a natural outcome of independence, a few elite native
whites worried that constitutional racial equality and the example of the
Haitian Revolution could inspire mulattos and blacks into taking power in
the regions where they were in the majority, notably Venezuela and New
Granadas Magdalena department.
Gran Colombias uneasy relations with Haiti added to the governments
preoccupation. In 1816, after Spain temporarily reconquered the region,
Simon Bol var had welcomed Haitian money, arms and ammunitions to
revive the struggle for independence, in return for the abolition of slavery
in the territories he would liberate. However, he only partially fullled his
promise, as the 1821 manumission law did not free the slaves, but only the
children of slave mothers born after 1821.
4
In 1823, unfounded rumours
spread that Haiti attempted to destabilise Venezuela and the Magdalena de-
partment and that pardos conspired to exterminate whites. The following
year the independent government in Bogota refused to establish diplomatic
relations with Haiti, on the pretext that it might dissuade the European
nations from recognising Gran Colombia.
5
Moreover, Haiti was the only
2
D. Uribe Vargas (ed.), Las Constituciones de Colombia, vol. 2 (Madrid, 1977), pp. 71213;
D. Bushnell, The Santander Regime in Gran Colombia (Newark, 1954), pp. 1314.
3
For a British praise of the measure, see F. Hall, Colombia, Its Present State, in Respect of
Climate, Soil, Productions, Population, Government, Commerce, Revenue, Manufactures, Arts, Litera-
ture, Manners, Education and Inducements to Emigration (London, 1825), p. 14.
4
Ley, 21 Oct. 1821, in Republica de Colombia, Sala de Negocios Generales del Consejo
de Estado, Codicacion nacional de todas las leyes de Colombia desde el ano de 1821, hecha conforme a la
ley 13 de 1912 (Bogota, 192433), vol. 1, pp. 1417.
5
Consejo extraordinario de gobierno del jueves 8 de julio de 1824, in Acuerdos del consejo de
gobierno de la republica de Colombia, 18211824 (1892; reprint, Bogota, 1988), pp. 2356.
Simon Bol var and the Spectre of Pardocracia 449
American nation neither President Bol var nor Vice-President Santander
invited to the Inter-American Congress held in Panama in mid-1826.
6
No leader was more concerned with mulatto power than Simon Bol var.
Bol vars apprehension dated back to his rst-hand experience of the racial
violence of the troops of pardos as well as manumitted and fugitive slaves
under the royalist Jose Tomas Boves against the Venezuelan white creoles
in 1814, during the rst phase of the anticolonial struggle, often referred to
as a race war.
7
The following year, in two open letters aimed from Jamaica
at British readers and seeking European support for the cause of Spanish
American independence, Bol var reected on the future of multiracial
America. Only through threat and violence, he explained, had Venezuelas
people of colour taken arms against the white creoles, but now that Spain
had restored its domination on the colony, the same freedmen and slaves
had joined the white creoles in their struggle for independence.
Yet, Bol var expressed his condence that in Venezuela, as in all indepen-
dent Spanish America, the white race, despite being a demographic minority,
possessed intellectual capacities that gives it a relative equality with the
majority made up of Indians, blacks and the racially mixed.
8
Moreover, he
already foresaw the union of New Granada and Venezuela in a nation called
Colombia, under a British-inspired political system halfway between dema-
gogic anarchies and monocratic tyrannies, similar to the semi-monarchical
republic he would propose in 1826.
9
Despite these arguments, in 1815
Bol var failed to obtain British help. Only poor and ostracised independent
Haiti, which he visited in 1816 and where President Alexandre Petion ex-
emplied mulatto military and political leadership, responded to his request
6
D. Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself (Berkeley, 1993), p. 58.
7
See, for example, Simon Bol var to [ Jefe de las Fuerzas de Tierra de S. M. B.], 17 June
1814, in S. Bol var, Obras completas, V. Lecuna (ed.) (La Habana, 1947), vol. 1, pp. 979.
8
El Americano [Bol var] to Senor redactor o editor de la Gaceta Real de Jamaica,
Kingston, [ ?] Sep. 1815, in Bol var, Obras completas, vol. 1, pp. 17881. Although many
historians have analysed this letter and the Letter from Jamaica, few have taken into
account that their addressees were British and that one of their main goals was to show
that Central and South Americans longed for peace but, as their North American pre-
decessors, they could not win the war against their colonial oppressors without the help
of other European powers (see, for example, Ernesto Archiga Cordoba, Una nueva
propuesta de discusion en torno a la Carta de Jamaica, Cuadernos Americanos, vol. 58,
Nueva epoca [ JulyAug. 1996], pp. 2745).
9
Bol var, Contestacion de un americano meridional a un caballero de esta isla [Carta de
Jamaica], 6 Sep. 1815, in Bol var, Obras completas, vol. 1, pp. 15974. On Colombia, Bol var
wrote: Its government could imitate the English government ; with the dierence that
instead of a king, there will be an elective executive power, at the most for life, but never
hereditary, if one wants a republic; a hereditary legislative house or senate, which will
mediate between the popular waves and the governments thunderbolts during the pol-
itical storms, and a legislative body, of free election, without other restrictions than those
of the lower house of England (p. 171).
450 Aline Helg
for material support.
10
Petions help did not appease Bol vars racial con-
cerns. He realised that only with the full support of the lower classes, which
in Venezuela and in large regions of New Granada were made up of people
of African descent, could the independence envisaged by members of the
native white elite be achieved. At the same time, however, both the Haitian
Revolution and his experience in Venezuela made him doubt the nal mo-
tives of the pardos and freedmen ghting under the banner of independence;
he believed that for many of them race was more important than the nation.
This doubt, added to Bol vars desire for absolute leadership, could be deadly
for those who stood in his way. As early as 1817, Bol var had the upper-class
pardo Manuel Piar executed for challenging his supremacy and allegedly
mobilising blacks against whites, but he used rapid military advancement
to tame his two other challengers, the aristocrat Santiago Marino and the
lower-class but white llanero Jose Antonio Paez.
11
From March 1821 to August 1826 Bol var was in Ecuador, Peru and
Bolivia, but he continued to express his concerns about what he called
pardocracia (the rule of the pardos) to his correspondents in Venezuela and
New Granada. One of the principal objects of his concern was Cartagena,
capital of Magdalena department, where Jose Padilla, the popular pardo
general, was committed to making racial equality a practical reality not only
in law, but also in the public and private sphere.
Born to a lower-class family in Riohacha in 1778, Jose Padilla had acquired
a broad experience as a sailor on the Caribbean Sea and while spending
three years in a penitentiary in England following his capture at the battle of
Trafalgar. In November 1811, after his return to Caribbean New Granada,
he joined Cartagenas radical movement. Comprised of the popular classes of
predominantly African descent led by the elite creoles Gabriel and German
Gutierrez de Pineres, this movement forced the proclamation of the prov-
inces independence on the more reformist and aristocratic faction in
power. From 1812 to 1814, as the radicals controlled Cartagena, Padilla par-
ticipated in the war against the royalists, supporting Bol var against the
reformist commander of the regional troops. When in early 1815 the reform-
ists regained power in Cartagena, Padilla continued to follow Bol vars
leadership, which led to his imprisonment by the Venezuelan aristocrat, Gen.
Mariano Montilla, then among Bol vars foes. After Spains reconquest,
Padilla took refuge in Haiti. He joined Bol vars expedition from Les Cayes
and fought in Venezuela, reportedly witnessing the execution of the pardo
10
P. M. McKinley, Pre-Revolutionary Caracas : Politics, Economy, and Society, 17771811
(Cambridge, 1985), pp. 1714.
11
Bol var, A los pueblos de Venezuela, 5 Aug. 1817, in Bol var, Obras completas, vol. 2,
pp. 11016; J. E. Rodr guez O., The Independence of Spanish America (Cambridge, 1998),
pp. 1878.
Simon Bol var and the Spectre of Pardocracia 451
Piar. He became a hero in Cartagena for his decisive role in liberating it from
Spain in 1821. In the next two years, together with the newly committed
Montilla, Padilla brought independence to Gran Colombias Caribbean
Coast, including Santa Marta. His military career culminated at Maracaibo
Bay in 1823, when he won the naval battle against Spain that sealed the
independence of Venezuela. As a result, Padilla gained broad popularity in
Caribbean New Granada. However, in a decision due partly to the fear of
pardocracia, the government promoted Montilla, not Padilla, to the position
of commander-in-chief of the department of Magdalena, despite the formers
previous opposition to Bol var. The personal rivalry between the two men
dating back to Padillas imprisonment in 1815 increased, and was exacer-
bated by race and class dierences.
12
Montilla suspected pardos and radical patriots of stirring up the issue of
race and repeatedly asked Vice-President Santander to remove Padilla from
Cartagena for purportedly threatening public order.
13
Simultaneously, the
citys white aristocracy did not miss an opportunity to humiliate Padilla,
notably by neglecting to invite him to private balls. They alleged that his
separation from his legal wife and cohabitation with a mulatto woman ex-
cluded him from the category of respectable paterfamilias. To aggravate
matters, in 1824 the government in Bogota rewarded Padilla for his triumph
at Maracaibo only with a promotion to general and an annual pension of
3,000 pesos. Not fooled, Padilla bitterly compared the high position other
military men had obtained as reward for their services with his own rec-
ompense, which he qualied as the pay of a mercenary. As an ocer, he
wanted to conclude his career with honour, not with a pension.
14
In the
end, he was appointed to commander of the navy in Cartagena, a position
below his expectations and in which he was doomed to clash with Montilla.
In November 1824, in response to defamation by an anonymous
paterfamilias, General Padilla issued an incendiary broadside, To the
Respectable Public of Cartagena, in which he denounced
[the white aristocrats] who each day shamelessly increase their attacks and under-
mine the holy edice of the peoples freedom and equality in order to build on its
ruins the foundation of ambition and replace the republican ways with their old
12
Uribe White, Padilla, pp. 65133, 194278, 306; Torres, Almirante Jose Padilla, pp. 2568,
31924. For vivid descriptions of Padillas popularity in Cartagena, see Uribe White,
Padilla, pp. 1812; and among the population of the Magdalena River, see C. A. Gossel-
man, Viaje por Colombia, 1825 y 1826, trans. Ann Christien Pereira (Bogota, 1987), pp. 98100.
The full name of Padilla was Jose Prudencio Padilla, but he signed his correspondence
Jose Padilla. He is sometimes referred to as a zambo rather than a pardo.
13
Montilla to Santander, 10 and 30 April 1822, 20 Aug. 1822, 20 Feb. 1823, in M. Montilla,
General de division Mariano Montilla: homenaje en el bicentenario de su nacimiento, 17821982
(Caracas, 1982), vol. 2, pp. 9223, 927, 943, 969.
14
Padilla to Santander, 30 Aug. 1824, in Uribe White, Padilla, pp. 3013.
452 Aline Helg
privileges and the exclusive domination of a small and miserable portion of families
over the great majority of the peoples.
Furthermore, he warned that the sword that I brandished against the king
of Spain, this sword with which I gave days of glory to the fatherland, this
same sword will support me against anyone who tries to lower my class and
degrade my person.
15
This declaration oers a rare insight into Padillas vision of equality. To
him, if the republic had banned privileges of birth and race, only service to
the fatherland should matter in the new social hierarchy. And because of
his outstanding military achievements, he deserved his superior rank and
the respect due to it, regardless of his lower-class origin and pardo race.
However, even if he considered himself superior to his fellow citizens, in
his view he was not only an individual of republican merits but also part of
a colonial socio-racial category the pardo class. Any aront to him was an
aront to all pardos and, by extension, to the republic they had helped
to build more than had the white elite. With this argument, Padilla openly
deed the socio-racial hierarchy inherited from Spanish colonialism and
threatened to rally the entire pardo class, regardless of economic or military
standing, behind him.
Padillas vision of equality clashed with the position of the cartagenero
aristocrats surrounding Montilla, who perceived further demands by pardos,
such as equal advancement with whites and equality in private relations, as
proofs of arrogance and violations of the private sphere. Padilla was also out
of line with many free men of African descent who accepted the ocial
egalitarian discourse. By using the colonial racial category of pardos to make
democratic claims, he could fairly have been criticised for being a man of
the past who clung to the Spanish caste system. Moreover, by announcing
that he would use his sword to defend the equal rights and full integration
of his pardo class at all levels, Padilla formulated the very scenario that, since
the late 1790s, colonial and early independent authorities had predicted
would transform Caribbean New Granada into another Haiti. In other
words, when Padilla began to use race as a mobilising idea, his detractors
could easily raise the spectre of the Haitian Revolution and accuse him of
preparing a race war. Indeed, the legal equality contained in the constitution
and the scarecrow of pardocracia prohibited people of African descent in
general from making demands as pardos.
Padillas broadside sent shock waves as far away as Santander in Bogota
and Bol var, still at war in Peru, prompting an exchange of letters in 1825
15
General Jose Padilla, Al respectable publico de Cartagena, 15 Nov. 1824, in AHNC, RE, AR,
fondo XI, caja 88, vol. 170, fols. 12526.
Simon Bol var and the Spectre of Pardocracia 453
between the two white generals about the threat of pardocracia. Bol var saw
Padillas protest as representative of
the disposition that [ Padilla] has toward the government and the system
_
I think
that this aair very much deserves the attention of the government, not to thrash
but to take measures that spare in the future the horrible disasters that Padilla
himself foresees. Legal equality is not enough for the spirit the people have, as they
want absolute equality, in the public and the domestic areas alike; and next they
will want pardocracia, which is their natural and unique propensity, in order to then
exterminate the privileged class.
16
Bol var did not dene the measures he estimated to be necessary then but
he expressed his conviction that equality and by extension, the power of
prominent pardos should have limits, otherwise people of African descent
would dominate and massacre whites. Far less critical of Padilla, Santander
responded to Bol var : I dont know how the germ of pardocracia could be
destroyed. Nothing pleases [the pardos] and everything annoys them. They
want everything exclusively; and I must be fair with Padilla, who until now
is among those who least spread scandal .
17
Nevertheless, Padillas declaration of November 1824 failed to mobilise
Cartagenas free population of colour. Moreover, it did not diminish his
popularity among the enfranchised citizens who in February 1825 elected
him a senator of the republic for the department of Magdalena. In August, as
a member of Cartagenas electoral council, Padilla took part in Gran Co-
lombias presidential election. Like almost all electors in the nation, he
re-elected Bol var to the presidency. But unlike most of Magdalenas electors,
who voted for the native cartagenero, Finance Secretary Jose Mar a Castillo y
Rada, Padilla also cast his vote for Santander, and so helped to secure the
vice-presidents more contested re-election.
18
As a result, Santander and
Bol var expressed to each other their renewed condence in the pardo leader.
Santander wrote to Bol var that Padilla was one of the most enthusiastic
friends of the government, who idolises me but you above all .
19
Bol var did
not hesitate to characterise Padilla as the most important man of Colombia
and added, I like him very much for his record of service and his adhesion
to me. May God keep him in this feeling.
20
However, Bol vars optimism was shortlived. In January 1826, Gen. Jose
Antonio Paez used troops to enforce enlistment in the militia among the
male inhabitants of Caracas. A majority in Gran Colombias senate promptly
16
Bol var to Santander, 7 April 1825, in Bol var, Obras completas, vol. 1, p. 1076.
17
Santander to Bol var, 21 July 1825, in F. de Paula Santander, Cartas SantanderBol var
(Bogota, 1990), vol. 5, p. 16.
18
Torres, Almirante Jose Padilla, p. 155; Bushnell, Santander Regime, pp. 31921.
19
Santander to Bol var, 6 Oct. and 6 Nov. 1825, in ibid., pp. 60, 1012.
20
Bol var to Santander, 27 Oct. 1825, in Bol var, Obras completas, vol. 1, p. 1222.
454 Aline Helg
voted to summon Paez to stand trial in Bogota, which Padilla and some
others opposed. In April, Paez deed Santanders government and launched
a massive rebellion in Venezuela. From Peru, Bol var began to fear that
Padilla would emulate him in Cartagena and became convinced that in
Venezuela and Caribbean New Granada the root of the problem was that
pardocracia was gaining ground.
21
Increasingly, race, conated with class,
dominated Bol vars social thinking. He lamented the abominable com-
posite of these hunting tigers who came to America to spill her blood and
breed with the victims before slaughtering them, to later mix the bastard
fruits of these unions with the fruits of the slaves uprooted from Africa. With
such physical mixes, with such moral elements, one could not establish
laws and principles, but only prepare the beautiful ideal of Haiti , he as-
serted. However, it was impossible to return to the order Spain had main-
tained for so long or to build a new order through more laws, and it was
dangerous to entrust it only to the army. We will have Guinea and more
Guinea; and I am not joking, those who will escape with their white faces
will be very lucky.
22
The Liberator also had growing doubts about the success of a republican
government in Gran Colombia and the civil administration of Santander. In
his view, only strong military leaders caudillos could prevent the end of
Gran Colombia and the rise of new Haitis. But this presented him with an
irreconcilable dilemma, as he believed that the African-descended lower
class would only obey a leader born into their own class, but he refused to
put any mulatto or black in high positions of power, for fear of pardocracia.
23
Thus, to the surprise of many, he perceived Paez as Venezuelas lesser evil :
although he was a rough lower-class llanero, he was white, popular, and
supported by a portion of the aristocracy. However, Bol var could not nd
an adequate leader for Caribbean New Granada: Montilla was from the
white elite but without a massive following; Padilla, a lower-class pardo with
broad popularity who agitated for racial equality. As Bol var wrote to San-
tander, Both seem very devoted to me: the rst one cannot [do] anything;
the second can [do] everything.
24
As a result, Bol var began to profess that
only by adopting the semi-monarchical constitution he had designed for
Bolivia, would Gran Colombia and Peru cure themselves from all the ills
typical of the young, multiracial and mostly illiterate Spanish-American
nations. Bol vars pan-Andean constitutional project consisted of a feder-
ation of authoritarian republics placed under the supreme authority of
21
Bol var to Antonio Jose Sucre, 12 May 1826, and Bol var to Santander, 7 June 1826, in
ibid., pp. 1323, 1365.
22
Bol var to Santander, 8 July 1826, in ibid., pp. 13901.
23
Bol var to Santander, 7, 13, and 23 June 1826, in ibid., pp. 1365, 1371, 1379.
24
Bol var to Santander, 7 May 1826, in ibid., p. 1322.
Simon Bol var and the Spectre of Pardocracia 455
a president for life (himself) who was to choose his successor, as sketched
from Jamaica in 1815. The project guaranteed equality and banned all privi-
leges as well as slavery, but limited surage to those who were literate, paid
taxes, and had an occupation.
25
It violated the 1821 constitution, which
authorised no revision before 1831.
Bol var sent from Lima the caraqueno Antonio Leocadio Guzman, well
known for his role in Paezs rebellion and his anti-Santander feelings, with
the mission of rallying the military and civic leaders of several cities behind
his project of semi-monarchical constitution.
26
Not surprisingly, Guzman
carried two letters of instructions from Bol var to Cartagena: one for Padilla,
the other for Montilla. In eect, as Bol var increasingly suspected Padilla of
promoting pardocracia and being in sympathy with Paez, he began to consider
Montilla, for whom he previously had little esteem, as his most dependable
ally in the region.
27
Despite the profound enmity between Montilla and Padilla, both facili-
tated the task of Guzman when he arrived in Cartagena in September 1826.
Within a couple of days, the town council and male heads of families had
been pressured into signing the resolution against the legal government of
Santander concocted by Guzman, who proudly reported to Bol var the citys
complete adherence to his dictatorship.
28
However, the correspondence
of several cartageneros to Santander illustrates the deep divisions within the
native elite. It also shows the limits of Padillas popularity and how the fear
of being accused of promoting pardocracia restricted him. In Padillas own
words, the letter from Bol var left him no choice but to listen to the ideas
and to trust the Liberator.
29
He told Santander: If I had not taken this
step, maybe Montilla would have been the cause of the spilling of many
torrents of blood, because should he have sought to launch [a rebellion] like
Paez in Caracas, I would not have allowed it, and you can see how the action
25
Bol var to Santander, 27 Dec. 1825 and 13 June 1826, in ibid., pp. 12524, 1371; Bol var to
Sucre, 12 May 1826, in ibid., pp. 13234; Lievano, Bol var, p. 462. See also note 9.
26
Bol var to Rafael Urdaneta, Cristobal Mendoza, Francisco Javier Yanes, Jose Padilla,
Mariano Montilla, Tomas Cipriano de Mosquera, Juan Paz del Castillo, and Pedro Briceno
Mendez, 68 Aug. 1826, in Bol var, Obras completas, vol. 1, pp. 140815. See also Bol var to
Paez, 4 Aug. 1826, in ibid., pp. 14068. On Antonio Leocadio Guzman and his appreci-
ation of Bol vars constitutional project, see Jaime Duarte French, Poder y pol tica: Colombia,
18101827 (Bogota, 1980), pp. 46872, 4805.
27
See Montillas correspondence with Bol var, in Montilla, General de division, vol. 1,
pp. 21749, 56577; Padilla to Santander, 20 Aug. 1826, and Padilla to Paez, 29 July 1826,
in Archivo Santander, ed. Ernesto Restrepo Tirado (Bogota, 191332), vol. 15, pp. 12529.
28
Antonio L. Guzman to Bol var, 1 Oct. 1826, in D. F. OLeary, Memorias del General OLeary
publicadas por su hijo, Simon B. OLeary, por orden del gobierno de Venezuela y bajo los auspicios de su
presidente, general Guzman Blanco (Caracas, 18741914), vol. 2, pp. 35455.
29
Padilla to Santander, 2 Oct. 1826, in Archivo Santander, vol. 15, pp. 22932.
456 Aline Helg
would have gone.
30
Yet, the ideas contained in the public act Padilla
supported in September 1826 sharply contradicted his 1824 broadside. The
act made no references to equality and democracy but stressed the central
role of Bol var as the father of the Fatherland. Implicitly reassuming the
position of king of Spain, Bol var was the common centre that united all
interests, neutralised all oppositions, and irradiated all virtues. To be national
was to follow him.
31
In September 1826 Bol var left Peru and arrived in Bogota two months
later to assume the special powers reserved by the constitution to the presi-
dent in case of a national crisis. He promulgated extended legislation to rell
the treasury and reduce the public service and the armed forces. Most
unpopular among these measures was his decision to restore the colonial
alcabala (sale tax) and head tax, which he xed at three pesos on every male
over the age of fourteen, regardless of status. Discontent grew, and violence
broke out in Venezuela, prompting Bol vars departure to negotiate with
General Paez. In many regions, federalism was on the rise, and rumours of
secession multiplied.
32
In Andean New Granada, many cities mobilised
against Bol vars constitutional project and issued acts supporting Vice-
President Santander and the 1821 constitution. In Bogota, the conict be-
tween Bol vars supporters and those of Santander escalated.
Thus, Cartagenas unconditional support for the Liberator was increas-
ingly at odds with most of New Granada. The citys bolivarista publications
and polemics turned more and more aggressive against Santander and
his factious followers.
33
Despite the vigilance of Montilla, there too pro-
Santander sentiments were gaining ground among some ocers and
cartageneros. In March 1827, the British consul, a rm advocate of Bol var,
worried about some intrigues to seduce the 4,000 undernourished and un-
paid troops garrisoned in the city to favour views which are called consti-
tutional .
34
Nevertheless, Cartagenas unity behind the Liberator lasted
through most of 1827. When in July Bol var stopped in Cartagena on his way
back from Venezuela, the Army and the population welcomed him warmly.
30
Cited in Torres, Almirante Jose Padilla, p. 189.
31
Acta de la municipalidad de Cartagena, 29 Sep. 1826, in Efeme rides y anales del estado de
Bol var [ed. Manuel Ezequiel Corrales], (Bogota, 1889), vol. 2, pp. 3368. See also Fiestas
nacionales en diciembre de 1826, Gaceta de Cartagena de Colombia, 31 Dec. 1826, in ibid.,
pp. 3434; La Lanza Llanera (Cartagena), 1826 (n.d.), AHNC, RE, AR, fondo XI, caja 88,
vol. 170, fols. 14142.
32
J. M. Macpherson to Henry Clay, 24 March 1827, NA, DCC, roll 1; Bushnell, Santander
Regime, pp. 33843.
33
For examples of anti-Santander publications in Cartagena, see AHNC, RE, AR, fondo XI,
caja 88, vol. 170, fols. 14459.
34
Edward Watts to George Canning, 27 March 1827, and Watts to John Bidwell, 29 March
1827, in PRO, FO 1845.
Simon Bol var and the Spectre of Pardocracia 457
Bol var boasted to Paez: I have met a very enthusiastic people [and] two
excellent friends in Generals Montilla and Padilla.
35
The navy, despite
Bol vars attempts to reduce it, hosted a sumptuous banquet for him at
Padillas cramped home.
36
Ceding to the bolivarista pressure, in August 1827 the national congress,
controlled by the santanderistas, agreed to hold a convention in Ocana on
2 March 1828 to revise the 1821 constitution. The election of the delegates to
the convention was set for November, but the congress, in order to weaken
the bolivaristas, decided strictly to enforce the surage requirements imposed
by the 1821 constitution, disenfranchising soldiers and lower-ranking ocers
in active service who until then had been discreetly allowed to vote. As a
result, the election produced a minority of delegates in favour of Bol var,
prompting rumours that he would launch a coup detat.
37
By late 1827 support for democratic institutions became vocal even in
Cartagena. Generals Padilla and Montilla resumed their dispute, despite the
Liberators call for order.
38
The bolivaristas showed increasing nervousness,
particularly after Montilla, their candidate to the convention, failed to be
elected. By early February 1828, for Padilla, the salvation of the Fatherland
had ceased to depend on Bol var and his authoritarian constitution. To
Santanders great satisfaction, Padilla now backed the santanderista delegates
to the convention who would defend a freedom guaranteed by a popular
representative system.
39
In response, the pro-Bol var sectors led by Montilla
had the military chiefs and many ocers in the ground units issue an Ex-
posicion to the convention in Ocana that blamed the misery and shrinking
prerogatives of the army on the civilian government of Santander and backed
Bol vars strong power.
40
Some ocers who refused to sign the document
were threatened with transfer to remote posts. Padilla stood up for them and,
as the commander of the navy, prohibited the ocers under his authority to
sign the manifesto. On 29 February 1828 the two parties clashed in a tavern;
the defenders of the civil government called the champions of Bol var
servile, and the latter called the advocates of Santander factious. Padilla
oered to defend those who had refused to sign with his sword if necessary.
35
Bol var to Paez, 11 July 1827, in Bol var, Obras completas, vol. 2, p. 141.
36
For a description of the banquet at Padillas home, see Aurora de Colombia (Cartagena),
2 Aug. 1827. On Bol vars policy toward the Navy in 182627, see Torres, Almirante Jose
Padilla, pp. 1613, 1802, 188.
37
Ley, 29 Aug. 1827, in Colombia, Codicacion nacional, vol. 3, p. 307; P. Moreno de Angel,
Santander : Biograf a (Bogota, 1989), pp. 393408; Bushnell, Santander Regime, pp. 26970.
38
Bol var to Montilla, 6 Nov. 1827, in Bol var, Obras completas, vol. 2, p. 194.
39
Padilla to Santander, 9 Feb. 1828, in Archivo Santander, vol. 17, pp. 2456; Santander to
Juan Madiedo, 10 and 17 March 1828, in ibid., pp. 260, 286.
40
Exposicion dirigida a la Gran Convencion por la division del Magdalena, 25 Feb. 1828,
AHNC, RE, AR, fondo XI, caja 88, vol. 170, fols. 16167.
458 Aline Helg
Cartagenas acting commander-in-chief, Jose Montes, found the situation
explosive enough to ask for intervention from Montilla, who was in his
hacienda in Turbaco, fteen miles from Cartagena, but whom Bol var had
authorised to assume unlimited power whenever necessary. Instead, Montilla
chose to let the conict grow.
41
By late February, when Bol var had taken
the rst steps of his dictatorship, suspicions among santanderistas that he
would cancel the convention had escalated.
42
On 2 March 1828 Padilla rallied some ocers of African descent and told
them that he was leading the people to protect their freedom and the
convention because if the crown [i.e., Bol vars constitution] was to be-
come reality, they would kick us for being pardos.
43
Padilla also attempted
to mobilise a lower-ranking pardo ocer by asking him whether he could
not see that he had not advanced with so many years of service and that
tomorrow they would put above him any little white candidate as ocer,
as it was happening.
44
Rumours began to spread that Padilla was arming
a large number of individuals in Getseman , Cartagenas predominantly
black and mulatto suburb. On 5 March some ocers in the pro-Bol var
artillery shouted Death to General Santander ! Padilla devised with Montes
a way to stop the crisis. Montes resigned, and a commission nominated
Juan Antonio Gutierrez as the commander-in-chief. The acting intendant of
Magdalena, Vicente Ucros, remained in his post. Simultaneously, still from
Turbaco, Montilla assumed the extraordinary faculties given to him by
Bol var to restore the public tranquillity threatened by a spirit of faction.
45
In order to precipitate the downfall of Padilla, Montilla ordered all the mili-
tary units to pull out of Cartagena at 2:00 a.m. on 6 March and to transfer
to Turbaco. By so doing, he lured Padilla into taking charge with the intent
of accusing him of launching a coup and promoting the long-awaited race
war in the Caribbean Coast.
46
41
Montilla to secretario de estado del despacho del interior, 7 March 1828, in Efeme rides [ed.
Corrales], vol. 2, pp. 35961; Padilla to director de la comision de la Gran Convencion,
12 March 1828, in Gaceta de Colombia (Bogota), no. 342, 1 May 1828, facsimile edition
(Bogota, 1973).
42
Decretos del Libertador (Caracas, 1961), vol. 3, pp. 2732.
43
Proceso por los tumultos de Cartagena levantado por el general Mariano Mon-
tilla
_
contra el general Padilla y los ociales que se negaron a rmar la representacion
militar contra la convencion de Ocana, 12 March 1828, in Torres, Almirante Jose Padilla,
p. 331.
44
Proceso por los tumultos, p. 334.
45
Montilla to secretario de estado, in Efeme rides [ed. Corrales], vol. 2, pp. 3612. See also
Padilla to director de la comision, 12 March 1828; Apelacion a la razon (Bogota, 1828),
in Torres, Almirante Jose Padilla, p. 348; Jose Montes to Montilla, n.d., in Montilla, General de
division, vol. 1, pp. 38890.
46
La Cotorra (Cartagena), 23 April 1828; Apelacion a la razon, pp. 34551; Manifestacion
que Manuel Perez de Recuero hace a sus conciudadanos, Cartagena, 20 July 1831, BNC,
SP, no. 573; Otero, Vida del Almirante, pp. 918; Torres, Almirante Jose Padilla, p. 209.
Simon Bol var and the Spectre of Pardocracia 459
As expected by Montilla, Padilla immediately mobilised the navy and the
soldiers who were left in the city and assigned them to key guard posts.
Allegedly responding to popular pressure, he then assumed the military
command of the department, a decision he knew was illegal but he thought
necessary to bring the besieging general [Montilla] to reason.
47
According
to Cartagenas municipal council and the British consul, Padilla acted only
to secure the citys tranquillity, and there were no thefts or disorders on
6 March and the following days.
48
On 6 March all cartagenero men were called to a meeting in which the issues
of liberty and equality were at the forefront. Padilla declared that Montillas
goal was to destroy the 1821 constitution and to dissolve the Ocana con-
vention, and he committed himself to defend the peoples freedom with
his sword.
49
However, he said nothing in favour of slave emancipation or
the Haitian Revolution. As recognised by a pro-Bol var newspaper, Padilla
never accepted various propositions of plundering, contributions, and ex-
termination made to him.
50
In fact, according to all the declarants in the
investigation opened by Montilla a few days later, the most vocal activist
and Padillas guide was Ignacio Munoz, a radical white lawyer who had
played a leading role during the province of Cartagenas First Independence
(181015).
51
Munoz told the assembled men that he wished for the death of
Montilla because the latter wanted to subjugate the rest of the Colombian
population by tyranny, principally by the Bolivian Charter; that the latter
would be of no advantage for the second class [the pardos], because they
were the ones who had fought on the battleelds to suppress the tyranny;
that Munoz harangued General Padilla that in no way should he yield but
carry on the ght until the ultimatum. One witness declared that Munoz
had asked the militiamen whether they did not recognise [Padilla] as general
commander and intendant, whether they wanted to be slave or free.
52
Not
a single declarant stated that Padilla had mobilised the population of colour
against the whites. But two whites testied that on 6 March the pardo Captain
Damian Berr o had told them that Jose Ignacio Ibarra, a stranger
_
of
African colour, stirred up the racial question, even saying that one should
47
Padilla to director de la comision, 12 March 1828.
48
Apelacion a la razon, p. 350. See also Watts to Earl of Dudley, 7 March 1828, PRO, FO
1857, 11318; El Calamar (Cartagena), 13 March 1828, in AHNC, RE, AR, fondo XI,
caja 77, vol. 5.
49
Proceso por los tumultos, pp. 329, 333, 334.
50
El Amanuense, 16 March 1828.
51
On Cartagenas First Independence, see A. Munera, El fracaso de la nacion. Region, clase y raza
en el Caribe colombiano (17171810) (Bogota, 1998) ; A. Helg, The Limits of Equality: Free
People of Color and Slaves during the First Independence of Cartagena, Colombia
(181015) , Slavery and Abolition, vol. 20, no. 2 (1999), pp. 130.
52
Proceso por los tumultos, pp. 333, 337, 338.
460 Aline Helg
give the signal to behead the whites. However, when Berr o gave his
deposition, he said that Ibarra had only expressed his fear of a war against
whites, which would force him to escape for being at risk as a foreigner.
53
On 7 March the municipal council of Cartagena refused to declare Padilla
Magdalenas new intendant. It was decided to send two emissaries to nego-
tiate a settlement with Montilla: the santanderista Munoz and the bolivarista
Juan de Francisco Mart n, a rich merchant of Spanish descent who had been
a royalist during the First Independence and in 1824 had humiliated Padilla.
54
The mission, however, was to no avail. Montilla restated that he had assumed
extraordinary powers and began to redirect the troops to Cartagena.
55
The
next day, tensions in the city reportedly escalated to the point that some
men of African descent were talking about killing whites.
56
Simultaneously,
Padilla realised that his supporters had abandoned him. He returned the
military command of Cartagena to Jose Antonio Pineres and left with Munoz
and a few others for Mompox, on the Magdalena River.
57
In a letter to the
US consul, Padilla declared that he had left Cartagena in order to prevent
the spilling of blood that Montilla would have prompted if he had attacked
him.
58
When the troops under Montilla re-entered Cartagena, the supporters
of Padilla oered no resistance. Several ed; others were arrested and
imprisoned.
59
As soon as he reached Mompox, Padilla wrote to Bol var, blaming Car-
tagenas events on Montilla.
60
In the same breath, however, he denounced
Montillas misuse of power to the president of the convention in Ocana,
oering to help defend the convention against any attack by bolivaristas.
61
Padilla also sent an insulting letter to Montilla that instructed him to leave
Cartagena in peace and return to his native Venezuela.
62
Nevertheless, once
he arrived in Ocana Padilla only obtained passive support from the pro-
Santander delegates. He also failed to get practical advice from those who
backed Bol var. Quite disillusioned, he returned to Mompox, but the tight
security ordered in the city by Montilla forced him to continue to Cartagena,
where he arrived on 1 April 1828. He was immediately arrested, accused of
planning a race war in the city, and imprisoned in Bogota. There he was
53
Ibid., pp. 32730.
54
Torres, Almirante Jose Padilla, pp. 1458.
55
El Amanuense o Rejistro pol tico y militar (Cartagena), 16 March 1828, in NA, DCC, roll 1.
56
Proceso por los tumultos, pp. 331, 333.
57
Padilla to director de la comision, 12 March 1828; Vicente Ucros, Al publico, Cartagena,
19 May 1832, BNC, SS, Sala 1, no. 12881, pieza 32.
58
Padilla to consul de los Estados Unidos de la America del Norte, 9 March 1828, in NA,
DCC, roll 1.
59
Otero, Vida del Almirante, pp. 978.
60
Padillas 12 March 1828 letter to Bol var is partly cited in Torres, Almirante Jose Padilla,
pp. 21415. See also J. Posada Gutierrez, Memorias historico-pol ticas (Bogota, 1929), vol. 1,
p. 128.
61
Padilla to director de la comision, 12 March 1828.
62
Padilla to Montilla, 13 March 1828, in Montilla, General de division, vol. 1, pp. 3945.
Simon Bol var and the Spectre of Pardocracia 461
fatally entangled in a santanderista conspiracy against Bol var. On 25 Sep-
tember 1828, the night of the attempted murder of the Liberator, con-
spirators entered Padillas jail, killed his guard, gave him the latters sword,
and ran away with him. After turning himself in, Padilla was swiftly tried
and sentenced to death, with thirteen other defendants, for a conspiracy he
did not plan and a murder he did not commit. The next day, on 2 October,
a deant General Padilla was publicly stripped of his rank and shot, and his
body displayed hanging from the gallows. The presumed leader of the con-
spiracy, the white creole Santander, was reprieved and exiled.
63
The tragic
conclusion of the life of Jose Padilla illustrates again the double standard
that guided the Liberator. From 1826 to 1828 Bol var pardoned and nego-
tiated with the white llanero Jose Antonio Paez, despite the fact that the latter
headed a full-edged rebellion of Venezuela against the legal government
in Bogota, but he executed the pardo Padilla for a three-day bloodless coup in
Cartagena.
Still, Padillas fate also raises important questions. The most immediate
one is about the leading role played by Ignacio Munoz, of dubious pro-
Santander credentials, in the radicalisation of Padillas brief coup and ensuing
downfall, which has puzzled witnesses of the events, contemporaries and
historians alike. 1828 was not the rst time that Munoz had distinguished
himself as a popular leader. During the First Independence of Cartagena, he
had mobilised on several occasions large numbers of Cartagenas free men
of colour behind the radical Gutierrez de Pineres brothers. After the Spanish
reconquest in 1815 he took refuge in Les Cayes, Haiti, from where he par-
ticipated with Padilla in an expedition to re-liberate Venezuela. He was a
skilful manipulator of crowds, whom he harangued like a preacher .
64
That
he seized the opportunity to act again in 1828 behind or perhaps against
Padilla is not surprising. Less understandable is the fact that Padilla ac-
cepted Munozs support, when the two men had a long history of petty
denunciation and physical aggression against each other, which Montilla had
used to denigrate Padilla. Simultaneously, Padilla had repeatedly asked San-
tander to remove Munoz, this very evil man, from Cartagena.
65
As late as
February 1827 Padilla had warned Santander that Munoz was in jail for
having attempted to incite Cartagenas troops to rebel against himself and
63
E. Ortega Ricaurte (ed.), Documentos sobre el proceso de la conspiracion del 25 de Septiembre de 1828
(Bogota, 1942), pp. 1315, 249. See also J. M. Cordovez Moure, Reminiscencias de Santafe de
Bogota, ed. Elisa Mujica (Madrid, 1957), pp. 7323, 741.
64
Proceso por los tumultos, p. 337; D. Bossa Herazo, La vida novelesca e infortunada del doctor
Ignacio Munoz , palad n de la libertad (Cartagena, 1961), p. 9.
65
Padilla to Santander, 10 May 1825, in Archivo Santander, vol. 11, pp. 3556; Montilla
to Santander, 20 Sep. 1825, in Montilla, General de division, vol. 2, pp. 99192; Torres,
Almirante Jose Padilla, pp. 14950.
462 Aline Helg
Montilla but that he probably would not be properly punished.
66
In March
1828, Munoz not only radicalised and racialised Padillas movement in
Cartagena, he also represented him at the meeting with Montilla, where,
according to a pro-Bol var newspaper, he sold out Padilla.
67
Furthermore,
although eeing with Padilla, when Munoz was caught in June 1828 he made
a sworn declaration that provided the principal piece of evidence against
Padilla until the latters entanglement in the attempted murder of Bol var.
He accused Padilla of being the leader, together with several delegates to
the convention, of a broad armed conspiracy to prevent the adoption of the
Bolivian constitution and to separate New Granada from Gran Colombia.
Padillas intention upon leaving Ocana, Munoz claimed, was to stir up rst
Mompox then Getseman and the navy in Cartagena, but he failed to nd
backing.
68
Indeed, a more fundamental question is why the popular Padilla failed
to mobilise Cartagena in early March 1828. Why was the disliked General
Montilla able to restore his control over the city and to arrest Padilla there?
According to the British consul, Padilla plotted to overthrow all the sup-
porters of Bol var in Magdalena, conding in the strength of his own party
among the people of colour, los Pardos as he terms them. But they
deserted him.
69
Other sources conrm that as early as 7 March Padilla ac-
cused of apathy the people he could not move, and of treason the ocers
who misleadingly had oered him the cooperation of their units.
70
As a
close associate wrote to Bol var after meeting with Padilla in Ocana, Re-
garding Cartagena, I will say that Your Excellency has formed a very exag-
gerated idea of the event. Padillas steps in this city and the behaviour he
observed with me show, without any doubt, that he has no party at all.
71
In fact, only a close examination of Cartagenas society and economy in
the 1820s allows for an understanding of the isolation of Padilla in 1828. In
the late 1820s, Cartagena still suered from the eects of the wars of inde-
pendence and the deadly siege imposed by the Spanish general Pablo Morillo
in 1815, which left the city partly destroyed with the loss of about one-
third of its inhabitants.
72
According to the census of 1835, Cartagenas total
66
Padilla to Santander, 25 Feb. 1827, in Archivo Santander, vol. 16, pp. 2456.
67
La Cotorra, 23 April 1828. For a later conrmation of this accusation, see Ucros, Al
publico, BNC, SS, Sala 1, no. 12881, pieza 32.
68
Urdaneta to Montilla, 28 July 1828, in Archivo Santander, vol. 17, p. 374; Declaracion del
senor doctor Ignacio Munoz, 7 June 1828, in OLeary, Memorias del General OLeary, vol. 26,
pp. 2923.
69
Watts to Earl of Dudley, 8 March 1828, PRO, FO 1857, 11819.
70
El Amanuense, 16 March 1828.
71
Daniel OLeary to Bol var, 5 April 1828, in Cordovez, Reminiscencias de Santafe , p. 693.
72
Reminiscencias del sitio de Cartagena, hechas por el esclarecido ciudadano Lino de
Pombo, 8 April 1862, in [M. E. Corrales, ed.], Documentos para la historia de la provincia
Simon Bol var and the Spectre of Pardocracia 463
population reached only 11,929, in contrast to an estimated 17,600 in 1809.
73
For many residents in 1828 the memory of the horrors of the 1815 siege
and Spanish reconquest still served as a deterrent to any risky movement.
Cartagena also had lost the privileged military status and budget it enjoyed
during Spanish colonialism. The port citys monopoly of the foreign trade
of Colombia came to an end with independence. All attempts by cartagenero
authorities and merchants to restore Cartagenas predominant trade rights
were hampered by their inability to repair the canal that linked it to the
Magdalena River, New Granadas main waterway. As a result, few boats
anchored in Cartagena, and trade was low.
74
No doubt, Cartagena continued
to be the most important city in the Caribbean Coast, and therefore became
the capital of the department of Magdalena. However, due to the lack of good
communications, it remained quite isolated from its departments vast terri-
tory and from Bogota.
Nevertheless, Cartagena retained some of its colonial characteristics. As in
the eighteenth century, it was mostly inhabited by people of African descent.
In 1825 the rst impression of the Swedish traveller Carl August Gosselman
at landing on the esplanade between the citys entrance and Getseman
was that of a multicolour human anthill. The major part were blacks, ac-
companied by other colours forming a sample of tones that went from the
African black, passing by the American yellow-brown, and ending in the
European white.
75
Whites still held most positions of economic and political
power, but Spaniards had been replaced by British, North Americans,
French and other foreigners in trade, and several Venezuelans served in the
administration.
76
As before independence complex, networks of patronage
and kinship linked individuals across class and race. Another lasting colonial
characteristic was the high ratio of females among Cartagenas popular
classes of African descent (according to the 1835 census, the city counted an
average of 154.4 women over sixteen years of age for every 100.0 men, due to
female overrepresentation in the most popular neighbourhoods). As other
de Cartagena de Indias, hoy estado soberano de Bol var en la Union colombiana (Bogota, 1883), vol. 2,
pp. 16774.
73
F. Gomez, Los censos en Colombia antes de 1905, in M. Urrutia and M. Arrubla (eds.),
Compendio de estad sticas historicas de Colombia (Bogota, 1970), p. 20, table 3. Historians prefer
to use the 1835 census rather than the rst postcolonial census of 1825, which seriously
undercounted the population (ibid., pp. 1314, 18).
74
Manuel Rodr guez Becerra and Jorge Restrepo Restrepo, Los empresarios extranjeros de
Barranquilla, 18201900, in Gustavo Bell Lemus (ed.), El Caribe colombiano: Seleccion de
textos historicos (Barranquilla, 1988), pp. 1423.
75
Gosselman, Viaje por Colombia, p. 33.
76
G. Colmenares, El transito a sociedades campesinas de dos sociedades esclavistas en la
Nueva Granada, Cartagena y Popayan, 17801850, Huellas (Barranquilla), vol. 29 (1990),
p. 23.
464 Aline Helg
cities in the Americas, Cartagena oered women greater security, autonomy,
and economic opportunity in domestic service and the markets than did
small towns and villages. Although by 1835 slavery had declined to 5.0 per
cent of the citys total population (in contrast to 15.7 per cent in 1777), the
wealthy barrio of La Catedral showed the highest ratio of urban slavery
in Caribbean New Granada, with still one inhabitant out of ten being a slave,
a majority of them female.
77
In brief, if General Padilla lived among a population of predominantly
African descent, this population was also largely female, thus disenfran-
chised. No source mentions the presence of women in the events of
FebruaryMarch 1828, probably because women had little to do with the
issues that mobilised the rival parties, such as military pay, benets, and
surage, the Ocana convention, and the dispute between Bol var and San-
tander. This is not to say that women were not active in Cartagena. On the
contrary, aside from those working in domestic service, many women sold
goods in the streets and the markets, did laundry, ran inns, taverns and small
shops, and drove goods between the city and its surroundings. They often
were single heads of household. Thus, quite likely women would have
participated in a movement of broader appeal, such as a protest against
Bol vars recent reestablishment of colonial taxes, which aected most of
them. Surely, such a movement would also have rallied more men among
the citys jewellers, tailors, shoemakers, those who worked in construction
and small industries, as well as sailors, stevedores, porters, muleteers, sher-
men and daylabourers.
78
Yet, the focus of the dispute on military and
political matters made Padillas appeal most relevant to soldiers and ocers,
reputedly loyal to Montilla and whose number shrank after the latter with-
drew most of them from the city.
79
Moreover, the troops stationed in Cartagena generally comprised black,
zambo (of mixed indigenous and African ancestry), mulatto and Indian
peasants and labourers who had been dragged away from their homes and
had little interest in the disputes of the citys leadership. With the exception
of a mutiny for food and clothes in the artillery, swiftly repressed by Montilla
in 1823, according to a British ocer, the troops in Cartagena showed
patient endurance
_
under their many privations.
80
As already mentioned,
77
AHNC, RE, Censos, Censo de 1835. For example, J. Kinsbruner, Not of Pure Blood: The
Free People of Color and Racial Prejudice in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico (Durham, 1996),
pp. 8284.
78
G. Mollien, Voyage dans la re publique de Colombia, en 1823 (Paris, 1824), vol. 1, p. 16;
Macpherson to Clay, 24 March 1827, NA, DCC, roll 1.
79
Ibid., 30 March 1827.
80
Watts to Bidwell, 3 Feb. 1827, in PRO, FO 1845, 69. On the 1823 mutiny, see Watts to
Col. P. Campbell, 19 April 1825, PRO, FO 1353.
Simon Bol var and the Spectre of Pardocracia 465
in early 1827 Ignacio Munoz failed to instigate them to rebel against Padilla
and Montilla. Later that year Montilla encountered little opposition when he
had the ocers of all the citys military corps issue manifestoes supporting
Bol var against the faction of Bogota embodied by Santander.
81
Not sur-
prisingly, in February 1828, few resisted his demand that they sign the anti-
Santander Exposicion to the convention in Ocana, which protested the forced
conscription without pay, the exclusion of soldiers from surage, and the
lengthening of the military career through the creation of new intermediate
ranks, all issues stressing the inequality between citizens duties and rights.
82
In March the troops went along when Montilla pulled them out of Cartagena
in the middle of the night only to return them two days later.
Like the ground troops, most men in the navy left in Cartagena in early
March 1828 had been brutally enlisted. As noted by the US consul when he
observed the manning of ships in 1826, people resented the navy for bring-
ing men from the most distant parts, tied or handcued together, because
with little or no pay, seamen are out of question.
83
Moreover, the navys
practice of forcing Cartagenas artisans to abandon their shops and perform
unpaid work on ships alienated many, as exemplied by the carpenter Jose
Francisco Escudero. Since 1822, the navy had enlisted Escudero by bodily
force and mistreated him repeatedly. In the words of his protest to the
intendant, he was ready to full his duties as a citizen, but I will not consent
that, because they need my skills, they want to
_
reduce me to a Slavery
more unbearable than the one the Government is trying to extinguish in
the territory of the Republic. Although the intendant defended Escudero,
in 1824 Padilla ordered his arrest for disobedience and his allocation to
a warship, where he still served one year later.
84
Such experiences were un-
likely to prompt men in the navy to stand up and risk their lives in the
defence of their commander, Padilla, who until 1827 had sided with Montilla
and supported Bol vars authoritarianism.
In addition, in 1828 Cartagena lacked the powerful native leadership it
had in 1810, when a reformist elite of creole hacendados, merchants, lawyers
and priests had organised the free population of colour against Spains rule.
Many had died during the war or been executed by Spain in 1816. Now the
most outstanding members of the elite born in the region tended to pur-
sue their careers in Bogota, such as Jose Mar a Castillo y Rada, who was nance
secretary. Whites still held the highest positions of power, but some of
81
Manifestos publicos de los ociales de los cuerpos militares de Cartagena en favor de
Bol var, 1618 June 1827, in PRO, FO 1845.
82
Exposicion dirigida a la Gran Convencion, 25 Feb. 1828.
83
Macpherson to Clay, 6 May 1826, NA, DCC, roll 1.
84
Jose Francisco Escudero to intendente del Magdalena, 11 Sep. 1823, and Padilla to
intendente, 20 March 1825, in AHNC, RE, GM, tomo 373, fols. 3069, 347.
466 Aline Helg
them, such as Montilla, were Venezuelan. Others, such as Juan de Francisco
Mart n, had a royalist past. The native survivors of the First Independence
of some signicance, such as Ignacio Munoz and the rich merchant
Manuel Marcelino Nunez, were unable to oer a viable project for the de-
partment of Magdalena and to undermine the domination of Montilla. As
for Padilla, despite Bol vars assertion that he was the most important
man of Colombia, he could not transcend the limits imposed upon him
by his race and class. Because he had often boasted of his pardo identity and
his determination to defend his pardo class, he had exposed himself to ac-
cusations of pardocracia and of envisaging a revolution on the Haitian
model in the Caribbean region. As a result, in a political culture that banned
references to blackness and its mixtures (but not whiteness), Padilla had
excluded himself from the possibility of becoming a regional caudillo.
Unlike the uneducated but white Paez, whose boldness and resolution
had gained the support of Bol var against Santander and had progressively
united Venezuelans regardless of race and class against New Granadans,
Padilla simultaneously alienated the local aristocracy and courted the national
hierarchy.
85
Moreover, by attempting to reconcile Bol var and Santander after Bol var
initiated his campaign for a semi-monarchical constitution, Padilla distanced
himself from the native leaders, such as Nunez, who backed Santander.
86
Some even accused him of having absolutely sold out to the faction [of
Bol var] and of using seduction and intimidation to silence the lower classes
into obedience.
87
When in February 1828 Padilla eventually abandoned his
attempts to reunite Bol var and Santander and stood up in defence of the
latter, no doubt many cartageneros still remembered his role in the celebration
of Bol vars visit eight months earlier and did not take him seriously. More
importantly, the pro-Santander delegates in Ocana acknowledged Padillas
oer to defend the convention but did little to save him. Clearly, though
popular in Caribbean New Granada, Padilla lacked national stature and
political constancy, which explains the cartageneros reluctance to follow him.
All these factors strengthened the bolivaristas condence that the elimin-
ation of Padilla would not ignite a protest. Indeed, when in April 1828 his
sister, Magdalena Padilla, asked fteen political and religious notables in
85
On Paezs leadership, see A. Gomez Picon, Paez: Fundador del estado venezolano (Bogota,
1978), pp. 182298; V. Hebrard, Pueblos y actores municipales en la estructuracion de la
region venezolana, 18211830, Anuario de Historia Regional y de las Fronteras (Bucaramanga)
vol. 5 (2000), pp. 99149.
86
Padilla to Santander, 18 March, 2 April, and 18 Aug. 1827, in Archivo Santander, vol. 16,
pp. 299, 32223, vol. 17, p. 154.
87
Bonifacio Rodr guez to Santander, 31 March and 16 April 1827, in ibid., vol. 16, pp.
319, 333.
Simon Bol var and the Spectre of Pardocracia 467
Cartagena to declare that he had not disturbed the public order in March,
all declined.
88
Similarly, the broadside she issued then to refute the horrible
accusations with which they attempt to vilify the glorious prowess of my
brother, the general of division Jose Padilla, failed to mobilise cartageneros.
89
In addition, the dynamics of race, class and power in the city had changed
since 181011, when the reformist elite had empowered and armed militia-
men of African descent because it knew that it could only secure indepen-
dence from Spain by building an alliance with the free population of colour.
By the 1820s a conservative elite under Montilla dominated Cartagena and
sought to keep the lower class of colour in check, not to organise them.
Evidently, race still overlapped with class. As observed by a French diplomat,
the young men in the upper class tried to nd a government job or studied
law, and the mechanical professions were left to the foreigners and the
men of colour.
90
Yet racial boundaries were loosening. Among the pro-
gressive elite opposed to Montilla, a few white men were married to mulatas.
91
More generally, given the gender imbalance in Cartagenas population, sev-
eral women of African descent were involved in relationships with white
men, which tended to blur racial identity, especially for their children.
Among the lower classes, the introduction of legal equality, the end of racial
divisions in the armed forces and of the mention of race in state (but not
church) records had led people to refer to themselves more as citizens or
el pueblo than as los pardos , los negros or los zambos . Whereas race con-
tinued to be meaningful and inuential to individuals, it was less so collec-
tively. Thus, when in March 1828 Ignacio Munoz attempted to revive the
rhetoric of 1811 and 1815 and to mobilise the lower classes of colour on
racial grounds, he had limited success.
Furthermore, in 1828 people were unlikely to defend Padilla against
Montilla because Cartagena was not a city where political confrontation of-
ten turned violent. In October 1829, exactly one year after the public ex-
ecution of Padilla, the US consul in Cartagena disagreed with his European
colleagues who still favoured Bol vars authoritarian constitution on the
grounds that Colombians needed a strong executive to prevent rebellions.
To the consul, neither a government of the wealthy nor a president for life
were necessary: All the insurrections that have disturbed the country within
88
Contiene quince cartas dirigidas por mi hermana a sujetos respetables y su contestacion,
AHNC, RE, HI, tomo 1, fols. 375411.
89
Magdalena Padilla, A la impostura y la intriga. La justicia y la verdad, AHNC, RE, AR,
Documentos varios de Cartagena, rollo 5, fondo 1, vol. 9, fol. 339.
90
Aversenc, Etat commercial, industriel, politique et moral de la province de Carthage`ne,
27 Sep. 1837, MAE-Paris, CCC, no. 1, fol. 236.
91
Notably Jose Mar a del Real, Vicente Ucros and Ignacio Munoz were married to pardas
(Montilla to Santander, 20 Feb. 1823, in Montilla, General de division, vol. 2, p. 969).
468 Aline Helg
the last two years have been attempts of well informed members of the
community; and in no one instance are the low and ignorant classes to be
blamed, he claimed.
92
In making this comment, the consul certainly had
in mind the events of March 1828, when Cartagenas blacks, mulattos and
zambos did not support Padilla against the unpopular Montilla. Yet this lack
of involvement did not signify that people were indierent to the form of
government that ruled them, as the consul believed.
93
In 1828 the lower
classes did not back the Venezuelan aristocrat Montilla either. They simply
did not take part in a dangerous confrontation that was unlikely to yield
much for them.
In reality, cartageneros tended to prefer non-violent political confrontation.
One French observer noted, beyond the customary remarks on Caribbean
peoples alleged idleness, that family bonds, social cohesion, and charity
characterised Cartagenas inhabitants: In their sharpest quarrels, they
_
never lack a certain dignity, this being in all classes of society, even the
lowest. Literate people tended to express dierences of opinion or protest
in the form of handwritten pasquinades and printed broadsheets directed
against a specic person. This generated responses and counterresponses,
as exemplied by the exchange between Padilla and the aristocratic pater-
familias in 1824, but, as the same Frenchman reported, consequently the
people of the country
_
only ght with quills.
94
Although few among
the population could read, the content of posters and newspapers reached
the illiterate in the streets, the workplaces, and the taverns through dis-
cussions and improvised speeches. Yet, if erce verbal disputes could arise,
such as the one that opposed Padilla to the supporters of Bol var in February
1828, they seldom or never led to manslaughter or lynching. By all accounts
no violence was committed during Jose Padillas takeover on 6 and 7 March
1828.
Finally, in March 1828 Padilla was unable to nd support outside
Cartagena, despite strong opposition to Montilla in several towns. In fact,
Padillas takeover had been so brief that Montilla could rapidly step up re-
pression and prevent similar movements elsewhere. Although Mompoxs
santanderistas welcomed Padilla with enthusiasm when he stopped there on
his way to Ocana, when he returned, Montilla had given discretional powers
to the military to prevent any sedition or pardo movement in the city.
Mompoxs militiamen were disarmed and replaced with more reliable forces
from Cartagena; those suspected of sympathy with Padilla were detained.
92
Macpherson to Clay, 4 Oct. 1829, NA, DCC, roll 1.
93
Ibid., 6 May 1826; Adolphe Barrot to ministre, 4 May 1832, MAE-Paris, CCC, no. 1, fols.
1516.
94
Aversenc, Etat commercial, 27 Sep. 1837, MAE-Paris, CCC, no. 1, fols. 23435.
Simon Bol var and the Spectre of Pardocracia 469
Padilla was thus forced to leave immediately for Cartagena, where he was
arrested upon his arrival and rapidly transferred to Bogota.
95
With the execution of Padilla in October 1828, Bol var had denitively
exorcised his fear of pardocracia in Cartagena and Caribbean New Granada.
Yet he quickly realised that his racial bias would weigh on his legacy. As he
wrote to Paez one month after Padillas death:
Things have reached a point that keeps me wrestling with myself, with my ideas and
with my glory
_
I already repent for the death of Piar, of Padilla and the others who
have died for the same cause; in the future there will be no justice to punish the
most atrocious murderer, because [ by saving] the life of Santander [ I have par-
doned] the most scandalous impunities
_
What torments me even more is the just
clamour with which those of the class of Piar and Padilla will complain. They will
say with more than enough justice that I have only been weak in favour of this
infamous white [Santander], who did not have the record of service of those famous
[ pardo] servants of the fatherland. This exasperates me, so that I dont know what
to do with myself.
96
However, Bol var did not need to worry about being accused of racism for
the execution of Padilla. In 1831, after the Liberators death from illness
and the victory of Santanders supporters in New Granadas rst post-
independence civil war, one of the rst acts of the constitutional convention
that met in Bogota under santanderista control was the rehabilitation of the
memory of Gen. Jose Padilla, but the delegates carefully avoided to mention
the role of the fear of pardocracia in his execution. They also approved a new
constitution similar to that of 1821 but did nothing to actively promote racial
equality and to end slavery.
97
As the santanderistas, under the new name of Liberals, rapidly dominated
the Caribbean region in the spring of 1831, Cartagena remained the only
stronghold of the bolivaristas. The lower classes of African descent did not
mobilise against their rulers, and the city fell to the Liberals only after a one-
month siege. The Liberals, some of them pardo, took leading positions
and banished Gen. Mariano Montilla and his associates. The Liberal press
ourished, celebrating freedom and the restored rights of the people. One
notice entitled To the Manes of Padilla, signed by six thousand cartageneros ,
demanded revenge for his blood and, somewhat forgetful of his loneliness
in 1828, asserted that the people idolise him.
98
Moreover, in a symbolic
95
Pedro Rodr guez to Adlercreutz, 21 March 1828, in C. Parra-Perez (ed.), La cartera del
coronel conde de Adlercreutz: documentos ine ditos relativos a la historia de Venezuela y de la Gran
Colombia (Paris, 1928), pp. 403; P. Salzedo del Villar, Apuntaciones historiales de Mompox.
Edicion conmemorativa de los 450 anos de Mompox (1939; reprint, Cartagena, 1987), p. 191.
96
Bol var to Paez, 16 Nov. 1828, in Bol var, Obras completas, vol. 2, pp. 5058.
97
Moreno de Angel, Santander, pp. 5479, 56770.
98
Correo Semanal (Cartagena), 24 June 1831. See also other issues of Correo Semanal ; Cartagenero
Liberal (Cartagena), JuneAug. 1831; He rcules (Cartagena).
470 Aline Helg
reversal, in October 1831 Padilla received grandiose obsequies in Cartagenas
cathedral.
99
However, as revengeful as they were, the citys Liberals, regard-
less of colour, followed the steps of their peer at the national level and did
not raise the issue of racial equality. They too believed that the elimination of
colonial racial privileges and the legal equality of the free rmly established
with independence suced. No doubt, although never mentioned, the fate
of Padilla reminded pardos, regardless of class, that to mobilise behind a racial
identity was ineective and dangerous. Indeed, Cartagenas First Indepen-
dence had resulted from the cross-class and cross-racial alliances that linked
the white elite to the popular classes of colour without challenging the socio-
racial hierarchy. At the local level, these alliances continued in the movements
attached to Bol var and Santander in 182631 and in the two-party system
Colombia adopted in the 1840s.
100
Long after, Conservative and Liberal
leaders continued to be able to channel lower-class people of African descent
under their respective banner, neutralising the latters autonomous socio-
racial challenge.
Although Simon Bol vars fear that Gran Colombia would disintegrate
did come true in 1830, when Venezuela, New Granada and Ecuador became
separate nations, pardocracia never seriously threatened the region. Initially
conceived in the context of racial violence of the rst phase of Venezuelas
struggle for independence, Bol vars views regarding people of African de-
scent were rooted in the colonial past and the spectre of the Haitian revol-
ution. He was in advance of many of his contemporaries when he opposed
the existence of slavery in republican nations, but his semi-monarchical
project of constitution and his reluctance to see pardos in government pos-
itions showed his inability to transform the racial equalisation required by
the war against Spain into full republican equality.
99
Rejistro Ocial (Cartagena), 13 Oct. 1831.
100
O. Fals Borda, El Presidente Nieto, vol. 2 of Historia doble de la Costa (Bogota, 1981), pp. 65B,
70B72B.
Simon Bol var and the Spectre of Pardocracia 471

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