Spectacles of Freedom: Public Manumissions, Political Rhetoric, and Citizen Mobilisation in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Colombia
2011; Frank Cass & Co.; Volume: 32; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0144039x.2010.548174
ISSN1743-9523
Autores Tópico(s)Politics and Society in Latin America
ResumoAbstract This article rethinks the role of public manumission ceremonies and emancipation itself in mid-nineteenth-century Colombia as symbolic gestures designed to attract and be meaningful for audiences composed of citizens. Whereas scholars have focused on the presumed failures of the manumission juntas, the present study argues that their primary goal was not to free slaves but to create rituals of civic participation, embodiments of egalitarian citizenship, rhetoric of republican virtue, and propaganda for Liberal Party rule. By rendering slaves into symbols of citizens' interests and preoccupations, these spectacles obscured the role of slaves themselves in destroying slavery. Acknowledgements Research for this article was funded in part through fellowships and grants from the Tinker Foundation, the Fulbright program, and the Indiana University Center for Caribbean and Latin American Studies. Karen Inouye, Michelle Moyd, Ellen D. Wu and the anonymous reviewer provided me with suggestions that significantly improved this essay. An earlier version was presented at the Atlantic Emancipations Conference, McNeil Center for Early American History, Philadelphia, April 2008. My thanks to Christopher Schmidt-Nowara and other conference attendees for feedback and comments. Notes Informe, Miguel Vidales, Majagual, 5 January 1852, Archivo General de la Nación, Bogotá (hereafter AGN), Gobernaciones–Mompós, Tomo 31, folio 376. Jorge Castellanos, ‘The failure of the manumission juntas in the Colombian province of Popayan, 1821–1851’, Michigan Academician 14, no. 4 (1982): 440; Russell Lohse, ‘Reconciling freedom with the rights of property: slave emancipation in Colombia, 1821–1851’, Journal of Negro History, 86, no. 3 (2001): 206. See also Dolcey Romero Jaramillo, Esclavitud en la Provincia de Santa Marta, 1791–1851 (Santa Marta: ICTM, 1997), 140–67; Margarita González, ‘El proceso de manumisión en Colombia’, Cuadernos Colombianos, 2 (1974): 147–240; John V. Lombardi, The Decline and Abolition of Negro Slavery in Venezuela, 1820–1854 (Westport: Greenwood, 1971), 61–72. David Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia (Berkeley: University of California, 1993), 107; Helen Delpar, Red Against Blue: The Liberal Party in Colombian Politics, 1863–1899 (University: Alabama University, 1981), 18; James Sanders, ‘Contentious republicans: popular politics, race and class in nineteenth-century southwestern Colombia’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2000), 146–50, 170–1, 174–5. For Conservatives' near-consensus on emancipation: Jay Grusin, ‘The revolution of 1848 in Colombia’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Arizona, 1978), 40, 83, 158, 160. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1982); Thomas C. Holt, ‘The essence of the contract: the articulation of race, gender, and political economy in British emancipation policy, 1838–1866’, in Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies, edited by Frederick Cooper, Thomas C. Holt, and Rebecca Scott (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2000), 33. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1975); quoted from Thomas Bender, ‘Introduction’, in The Antislavery Debate, edited by Thomas Bender (Berkeley: University of California, 1992), 9. J.R. Kerr-Ritchie, Rites of August First: Emancipation Day in the Black Atlantic World (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2007), 14ff. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon, 1995). For Afro-Colombian ‘invisibility’: Aline Helg, Liberty and Equality in Caribbean Colombia, 1770–1835 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2004). Robert N. Bellah, ‘Civil religion in America’, Daedalus, 96, no. 1 (1967): 1–21. Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York: Vintage, 1976), 16–35, quoted from 31; Marixa Lasso, Myths of Harmony: Race and Republicanism during the Age of Revolution, Colombia 1795–1831 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2007), 59. ‘Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1195 (13 February 1851), 91; ‘Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1202 (9 March 1851), 144; Prospero Pereira Gamba, ‘Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1193 (2 February 1851), 75; ‘Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1189 (19 January 1851), 43; quoted from ‘Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1192 (30 January 1851), 69. Pablo Arosemena, ‘Informes’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1185 (5 January 1851), 10; ‘Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1229 (28 May 1851), 344. ‘Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1188 (16 January 1851), 34; quoted from ‘Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial No. 1195 (13 February 1851), 91. ‘Celebracion del 20 de Julio’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1148 (25 August 1850), 425. See also ‘Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, No. 1149 (29 August 1850), 433; Lohse, ‘Reconciling freedom’, 213. Governor Castellanos to Secretario de Relaciones Exteriores, Mompós, 7 June 1851, AGN, Gobernaciones–Mompós, Tomo 30, folio 93. Gobernador de Cartagena to Secretario de Relaciones Exteriores, 26 Nov. 1851, AGN, Gobernaciones–Cartagena, Tomo 52, folios 14, 155; Manuel Ezequiel Corrales, Efemérides y Anales del Estado de Bolívar v. 4 (Bogotá: M. Rivas, 1892), 84–5; ‘Libertad de Esclavos’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1186 (9 January 1851), 18–19. ‘Libertad de Esclavos’, Gaceta Oficial No. 1186 (9 January 1851), 19. 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William Frederick Sharp, Slavery on the Spanish Frontier: The Colombian Chocó, 1680–1810 (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1976), 148–50. Peter Blanchard, Under the Flags of Freedom: Slave Soldiers and the Wars of Independence in Spanish South America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2008), 8–9, 15, 65–6. Rebecca Earle, ‘The war of the supremes: border conflict, religious crusade or simply politics by other means?’, in Rumours of War: Civil Conflict in Nineteenth-century Latin America, edited by Rebecca Earle (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 2001), 132–3. Helg, Liberty and Equality, 65–7, 78; Romero Jaramillo, Esclavitud en la Provincia de Santa Marta, 165; Anthony McFarlane, ‘Cimarrones and Palenques: Runaways and Resistance in Colonial Colombia’, Slavery and Abolition, 6, no. 3 (1985): 131–51; Antonio José Galvis Noyes, ‘La abolición de la Esclavitud en la nueva Granada’, Revista Colegio Mayor Nuestra Señora Rosario, 515 (1981): 54–5. Lei adicional a la de manumision, 12 March 1855, AGN, Fondo Congreso, Legajo 31, folio 517. Robert L. Gilmore, ‘Nueva Granada's socialist mirage’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 36 (1956), 190–210; Eduardo Posada-Carbó, ‘New Granada and the European revolutions of 1848’, in The European Revolutions of 1848 and the Americas, edited by Guy Thomson (London: Institute for Latin American Studies, 2002), 217–40; Frank Safford and Marco Palacios, Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided Society (New York: Oxford University, 2002), 197ff.; Bushnell, Modern Colombia, 101–17. Carmen Escobar Rodríguez, La Revolución Liberal y la Protesta del Artesanado (Bogotá: Fundación Universitaria Autónoma, 1990), 145–7; Francisco Gutiérrez Sanin, Curso y Discurso en el Movimiento Plebeyo, 1849–1854 (Bogotá: Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Relaciones Internacionales, 1995), 131–47. Enciclopedia del Semanario de Cartagena, 1 Aug. 1850; El Eco de los Andes, 5 January 1852. 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Safford and Palacios, Colombia, 261. Berlin, Slaves Without Masters, 29–50, 91–3; Laird W. Bergad, The Comparative Histories of Slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States (New York: Cambridge University, 2007), 104, 199. Manuel Ancízar, Peregrinación de Alpha (Bogotá: Imprenta Echeverria Hermanos, 1853), 401; Hernández de Alba, Libertad de Los Esclavos, 74. Orlando Patterson, ‘Three notes of freedom’, in Paths to Freedom: Manumission in the Atlantic World, edited by Rosemary Brana-Shute and Randy J. Sparks (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 2009), 16. Aline Helg, ‘The limits of equality: free people of colour and slaves during the first independence of Cartagena, Colombia, 1810–1815’, Slavery and Abolition, 20 (1999): 1; Carolyn Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1990), 137; Gad Heuman, Between Black and White: Race, Politics, and the Free Coloreds in Jamaica, 1792–1865 (Westport: Greenwood, 1981), 14–15. Colombia, Codificación Nacional, 20; Colombia, Recopilación de leyes, 106–7. ‘Resumen Jeneral’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1198 (23 February 1851), 117; ‘Resumen’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1311 (4 February 1852), 74. For gender disparaties in manumission, see Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 263–5. ‘Celebracion del 7 de Marzo i Acto de Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1216 (23 April 1851), 249; ‘Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1226 (21 May 1851), 326. Colombia, Codificación Nacional, 164. I thank the anonymous reviewer for helping me to clarify this point. See ‘Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1219 (3 May 1851), 274; ‘Libertad de Esclavos’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1319 (3 March 1852), 141. Memorial, Junta de Manumision, 21 October 1850, AGN, Gobernaciones–Mompós, Tomo 28, folio 868. See also ‘Lista’ and ‘Libertad de Esclavos’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1173 (24 November 1850), 628. Charity Coker Gonzalez, ‘Agitating for their rights: the Colombian women's movement, 1930–1957’, Pacific Historical Review, 69, no. 4 (2000), 692–4. ‘Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1229 (28 May 1851), 344. David Bushnell and Neill McCauley, The Emergence of Latin America in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University, 1988), 212. Robin Blackburn, ‘Introduction’, in Paths to Freedom, 5, 9, 12. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 211ff. See, e.g., Memorial, Junta de Manumision, 21 October 1850, AGN, Gobernaciones–Mompós, Tomo 28, folio 868. Dr. Arcos, ‘Manumision de Siervos’, 293; ‘Relacion’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1181 (21 December 1850), 691–2. ‘Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1191 (26 January 1851), 60. ‘Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1166 (31 October 1850), 569; ‘Libertad de Esclavos’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1151 (5 September 1850), 450; quoted from ‘Libertad de Esclavos’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1296 (13 December 1851), 844. Corrales, Efemérides y Anales, 90. ‘Informes’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1190 (23 January 1851), 51. ‘Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1208 (30 March 1851), 193–4; ‘Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1211 (10 April 1851), 215. Governor of Cartagena to Secretario de Relaciones Exteriores, Cartagena, 21 March 1851, AGN, Gobernaciones–Cartagena, Tomo 51, folio 684; ‘Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1216 (23 April 1851), 248. Tomás del Real, ‘Celebracion del 7 de Marzo i Acto de Manumision’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1216 (23 April 1851), 249. See also David Sowell, ‘“La teoria i la realidad”: The democratic society of Artisans of Bogotá, 1847–1854’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 67, no. 4 (1987): 611–30. Amitai Etzioni, ‘Toward a theory of public ritual’, Sociological Theory, 18, no. 1 (2000): 44–59. See, e.g., ‘Libertad de Esclavos’, Gaceta Oficial, no. 1296 (13 December 1851), 844. Resolución del Alcalde, 6 June 1856, AGN, Gobernaciones–Cartagena, Tomo 40, folio 193. Antonio Miramón to Mariano Ospina, Santa Marta, 3 September 1857, Biblioteca Nacional, Fondo Antiguo, ms.211, folio 79. Mario Aguilera Peña and Renan Vega Cantor, Ideal Democrático y Revuelta Popular 2nd edn (Bogotá: CEREC, 1998), 89. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJason McGrawJason McGraw is in the Department of History, American Studies Program, Indiana University, Ballantine Hall 742, 1020 East Kirkwood Ave., Bloomington, Indiana, 47405-7103, USA
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