by John Lynch
The Bolivarian message, dictated with typical irony, was consistent. Authority was needed to tame Colombians and to counteract their want of social homogeneity; those who opposed the message were a danger to the state and would have to be marginalized. He realized that this was a far cry from Rousseau, whose works were still among his favourite reading and to whom he nominally deferred. Bolívar was always concerned to protect his cultural image and to be known as a man of the Enlightenment, even as he retreated from some of the Enlightenment’s basic ideas; the alternative would be obscurantism and a blow to his vanity. Who wants to appear illiberal? Who will abandon the mentors of a lifetime? So he continued to read and to quote Rousseau, a Bolivarian Rousseau, interpreted by him, not by American philosophers and legislators, who did not understand that liberalism had to acclimatize to American conditions. The liberalism of Bolívar was based not only on values but also on calculations. In making policy decisions he did not automatically reach for the political model of the Enlightenment but looked at specific situations.
Cúcuta appeared to give Bolívar the legal framework he sought but it fell short of the strong government he considered essential.3 His own constitutional ideas from Angostura, the hereditary senate, the moral power, did not convince the legislators at Cúcuta, but he kept his peace and expressed his reservations discreetly. When the bells rang to celebrate the constitution he remarked, ‘They are tolling for Colombia.’ The Constitution of 12 July 1821 created a strongly centralist state, a greater Colombia, comprising Venezuela, New Granada and, potentially, Quito, united under a single government with its capital in Bogotá, and subdivided not into three regions but into a number of departments, headed by intendants, in effect the immediate agents of the executive. This was roughly what Bolívar wanted, but it was an elitist project imposed by the few on the many, who were not consulted, and it left questions of national identity unresolved.
Ultimate authority resided in the legislature, made up of a senate and house of representatives, chosen by electoral colleges voted in by those citizens who had the franchise; this was restricted to literates who had real property valued at a hundred pesos. The president, who was also commander–in–chief of the armed forces, was elected for four years, with the possibility of re–election for a second term. But his authority was limited except in the case of foreign invasion or domestic disorder, when he could assume complete power. Always ready with words, Bolívar remarked that ‘the government of Colombia was either a gentle stream or a devastating torrent’. The constitution embodied the classic freedoms; the judicial power was absolutely independent of the executive and the judges were almost impossible to remove. It was also mildly reformist: it abolished the Indian tribute and gestured towards abolition of slavery, though what this meant in practice remained to be seen.
On 7 September congress elected Bolívar, the victor of Carabobo and the liberator of two countries, as first president of Colombia, with Santander as vice–president. Bolívar was sick of being denounced as a usurper, tyrant and despot, and he claimed no great administrative talent. So he disavowed any ambition to be president and had already suggested the nominations of Nariño, Urdaneta or Santander (in order of age); and ‘if to my regret, they insist on nominating me, I will always be absent from the capital, or always ill’.4 Against the insistence of his friends he protested that he was not qualified for government: ‘You tell me that history will say great things about me. I believe that it will say nothing was greater than my renunciation of power and my absolute dedication to the arms that could save the government and the country. History will say, “Bolívar took over the government to free his countrymen, and when they were free he left them so that they would be ruled by law and not by his will.” That is my answer.’5
But when he was informed that congress unanimously re–elected him to the presidency he travelled to Cúcuta to take office and to preside over a constitution that had already been ratified. He still protested that he was a soldier, not an administrator, and that his future lay on the battlefield not in a government office, which would be ‘a torture chamber’ for him. He accepted ‘only out of obedience’, and on condition that he be authorized to continue the campaign of liberation as head of the army, leaving government to the vice–president, Santander. In his speech to congress on taking office he reaffirmed his convictions: ‘I am a son of war, the man whom combat has raised to government…. A man like me is a dangerous citizen for a popular government, a threat to national sovereignty.’ And carried away perhaps by his own eloquence he beseeched them to address him not as Liberator, but as ‘good citizen’.6
Already the politicians, the lawyers and the military were sharpening their knives. Congress passed a further law granting Bolívar extraordinary powers to secure the liberation of territories still held by Spain. As disunity reared its ugly head Bolívar was glad to leave the government of Colombia to the capable, if grim, Santander, as the law allowed and his ambition dictated, and to resume his career as Liberator. That was where glory lay. And the road to glory was still open. In mid–December 1821 he left Bogotá and began his march to the south, through unfamiliar country and routes new to him: Tocaima, La Plata, Pedregal, across the Cordillera Central to Calí, then down to Popayán and Taminango, a world away from Venezuela and the Caribbean.
Continuity and Change
As Bolívar rode southwards, the peoples he left behind began to gather the fruits of victory. They were not a sweet mixture. Officers secured estates. Soldiers claimed land. Landowners retained slaves. Slaves wanted freedom. Creoles sought offices. Pardos demanded equality. Liberation released a flood of incompatible interests.
The transition from colony to nation had implications beyond the political. The destruction of life and property, the emergence of new leaders, the militarization of society, these events were a shock to the old colonial order and to relations between social groups. Society could not be immune to the liberal and egalitarian ideas of the age, and to modes of thought which rejected discrimination and sought to reconcile social differences in the interests of nation building. Legal distinctions between racial groups were now abolished, and new constitutions declared all citizens equal before the law. But the law was not the only agent of change. Probably more important was the trend towards a class as distinct from a caste society, as wealth became the principal criterion of social distinctions and status derived from income rather than legal definition. Standard of living also defined the classes. Those who could afford foreign luxuries, enjoy sumptuous meals and drink wines imported from Chile or even France did not hide their wealth. Meanwhile Bolívar cared for war widows and left poor relief to charity.
Possession of land was a crucial issue in the war of independence and a prime source of wealth and power thereafter. Government office, of course, was of great interest to the creoles, and in general they replaced the Spaniards in top bureaucratic posts and found new opportunities in government and politics. But the urban elite was not a strong force in the new nations. The withdrawal of the Spaniards, the commercial dominance of foreign entrepreneurs and the political importance of the new power base – the hacienda — all combined to reduce the power and wealth of the urban elite and to diminish the role of the cities. Political power would now be exercised by those who had economic power, and this was based on land, an asset that remained firmly in the hands of a relatively small group of creoles who began to mobilize labour even more effectively than their colonial predecessors. In effect, Bolívar presided over a ruralization of power in which his immediate collaborators played a leading role.
In the course of the war the composition of the creole elite was modified, as soldiers, merchants and adventurers, who profited from the hostilities and from the decisions of the sequestration tribunals, managed to turn themselves into landed proprietors. In Venezuela, where the colonial aristocracy was reduced both in numbers and importance, the great estates passed into the hands of a new creole and mestizo oligarchy, the successfu
l warlords of independence. Leaders such as Páez, who acquired property that should in many cases have been allocated to the troops, frustrated Bolívar’s attempt to distribute confiscated and national land to the common soldiers, whom he regarded as the people in arms. But this moderate mobility did not affect the agrarian structure. Indeed this was now extended into new areas. In the llanos republican rulers promoted private property rights of big ranchers, deprived the nomadic plainsmen of communal usages, and reduced them to the status of rural labourers.
Control over labour was now virtually absolute. The slave trade, it is true, was abolished in 1810 or soon after, but slave emancipation and abolition of slavery was a slow and difficult process. A law of manumission in 1821 lacked conviction and was more concerned to compensate owners than to free slaves. Thus little was done. Indeed further black revolts in Venezuela in 1824–7 and in Ecuador in 1825–6 prejudiced circumstances for emancipation. An increased wave of agitation, and the attempted revolt of the pardo Admiral Padilla, led even Bolívar to speak of the ‘natural enmity of the people of colour’. In the face of the class interest of the administrators of manumission and of the widespread refusal to pay the taxes necessary to compensate slave owners, manumission was restricted to a slow and partial system, in which scores rather than hundreds were freed each year.
Indians in a sense were emancipated, for they were now free citizens and released from the payment of tribute. In Colombia the Indians were a large minority, socially and culturally outside the national life; they had little interest in independence and took little part in the struggle, unless they were coerced into the armies of one side or the other. A few Indian groups were royalists, notably in the regions of Santa Marta and Pasto, where they responded to Spanish prompting. There were Indians who reportedly wept when they heard that the king was gone, sensing, perhaps, that they had lost a protector. Pockets of unconquered Indians simply wanted to be left alone. The degrading colonial practice of publicly whipping Indians as a punishment may have ended, but demands for personal services and expectation of obedience did not automatically end with independence.7 After the war liberal legislators sought to make the Indians independent individualists, instead of protected subjects of the crown, to transfer community land to private ownership, preferably Indian ownership. Legislation in itself, of course, could not abolish Indian communities, which had their own mechanisms of survival. And community land was often protected in effect by the stagnation of commercial agriculture in the decades immediately after independence. But once demographic and market pressures increased, and Spanish America became more closely integrated into the international economy, then it would be found that the Indian communities had been stripped of their defences and abandoned to the encroachment of the hacienda.
While the prospects of blacks and Indians were little enhanced by independence, those of the mixed races were hardly better. In Venezuela the pardos, or mulattos, were the most numerous sector of society, about half of the population, and they came out of the war relatively stronger than other sectors. During the war in Venezuela population growth was reversed, declining from around 800,000 on the eve of independence to little more than 700,000 in 1825.8 The white population diminished through casualties and emigration, and after the war the elite groups were at an even greater demographic disadvantage. The pardos now demanded freedom from traditional restraints which law and society imposed on them, and sought opportunities hitherto reserved for creoles. Many of Bolívar’s officers were pardos and two of the most senior, Piar and Padilla, led revolts against him.9 It was in the upper ranks of the pardos that frustration was most acute and the struggle for equality most insistent. Some of them were successful, and these gained access to education, offices and social status. The British consul in Maracaibo noted that ‘The first officers, and leading men, civil and military, are of this class.’10 An example of a successful pardo was Judas Tadeo Piñango, whom Sir Robert Ker Porter, the British consul in Caracas, described as ‘an almost black – a sort of Sambo Indian’, who married a white woman of Bogotá, reached the rank of General and became a member of the State Council.11 Men of this rank came to have a vested interest in the revolution and were gravely suspicious of any constitutional change – towards monarchy, for example – that might revive their former status.
The racists of the time poured scorn on these developments. Level de Goda, a former royalist official, denounced the pardo leaders for constituting, in alliance with the traditional whites, a new elite that ruled independent Venezuela. The leader of this oligarchy was Páez, ‘who is a pardo and an inveterate criminal’.12 The son of Páez, who was at West Point, wrote home to say that he and his two brothers were being called ‘mulatos’ in the United States, and his father was being called a ‘mulato’ in the Philadelphia press – ‘a terrible blow for me’.13 Páez himself, in his writings at any rate, did not make a great thing about race or colour. He claimed to stand for equality: ‘For the man of talent, whatever his origin, colour is neither here nor there, but simply a matter of chance.’14 The social structure was another matter. Páez supported and conformed to the prevailing order, though this was hardly to the benefit of the pardo masses. He was as sensitive as any of the elite to the problems of law and order in Venezuela, and he was merciless to slave insubordination.
While there was a degree of social mobility in Venezuela, the mass of the pardos were not in a position to profit from it. In numbers alone they were indispensable to the creoles in the war of independence, and in the army they gained some promotion. They also gained legal equality, for republican laws abolished all external signs of discrimination and recognized only one class of citizens. But the new rulers confined voting rights and therefore full citizenship to property–owners, so that inequality came to be based not on law but on wealth. Equality before the law, assurance of civil rights, these were not enough for the pardos. As Bolívar pointed out, they wanted absolute equality of opportunities. And this was only the beginning. Next, he warned, they would demand political access, and, more than this, political power leading to rule over whites. Bolívar thought that this was inevitable, for the revolution stopped short of the pardos and the fruits of victory were reserved for others. There was a climate of unrest. Seeing the landed oligarchy advancing through independence while they were left behind, the pardos fought back and struggled for a further stage of revolution. In the 1820s the threat of pardocracia appeared real enough to Bolívar, and he believed that a war of races was a distinct possibility. In the late 1820s Valencia, Barcelona and Cumaná were scenes of pardo disaffection, evidence of a high degree of group consciousness and readiness to use violence. In 1827, when Bolívar was in Venezuela, there was an insurrection of blacks in Cumaná and Barcelona, where their numbers were increasing through immigration from Haiti; they received short shrift from the Liberator, though many survived to fight another day. In December 1830 a black was arrested for trying to subvert troops, saying ‘that Venezuela ought to become a Second Hayti. That all the whites ought to be murdered, and that he had a strong band of blacks, who would aid them in the execution of this glorious task.’15
A substantial part of the pardo population worked in the rural sector. Some were already enlisted in plantation production and performed various tasks on the hacienda. But many had so far escaped peonage and did not form part of the labour force. Some worked in subsistence agriculture; many more found a life for themselves in the cattle economy of the llanos; and not a few survived on the margin of the agrarian sector, living by banditry and crime. Independence gave a new impetus to land concentration, as the victorious caudillos competed for haciendas in the centre north and powerful ranchers sought to establish yet greater private property rights in the llanos. Landowners observed a great mass of free and unemployed rural dwellers, and decided that the time had come to herd them into plantations and ranches, mobilize them for production and pay them minimal wages. Páez decreed a new ‘law of landowners and ranchers in the llanos’
(25 August 1828). This continued the policy of vindicating private property announced by the First Republic; it prohibited transit through estates without permission of owner or manager, and made rights over wild cattle depend on ownership of land.16 Thus the llaneros were tamed and brought within the agrarian structure of the rest of the country, beyond the reach of the Liberator.
For the mass of the pardos independence was, if anything, a regression. Political mobilization ended with the end of the war. Social mobility had been a Spanish policy, against the protests of the creoles. Now the creoles were in power, the new elite. In the 1830s, in the aftermath of independence, the population of Venezuela was under 900,000, about half of whom were pardos and free blacks, over a quarter were whites, while slaves numbered about forty thousand. Among the whites there was a super–elite of some ten thousand people – landowners, rich merchants and their families and kinship groups –who constituted the privileged class, monopolizing power and institutions from the presidency down to the cabildos. Where they did not own land they controlled offices, and they prolonged the wartime establishment of higher military appointments which became mere sinecures. In default of legitimate ways of advance, disaffected pardos had recourse to protest and rebellion and became a danger to creole government, prone to manipulation by caudillos or recruitment by brigands. In the years around 1830, Bolívar’s fears were realized, as black resentment erupted into sporadic violence in Venezuela. This was the volcano of which he spoke.
