Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T16:07:04.321Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The 1893 bogotazo: Artisans and Public Violence in Late Nineteenth–Century Bogotá*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

David Sowell
David Sowell
Affiliation:
David Sowell is Assistant Professor of History, Juniata College, University of South Carolina.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Bogotá suffered its most severe outbreak of public violence of the nineteenth century on 15 and 16 January 1893. Indeed apart from the bogotazo of 9 April 1948, it was perhaps the worst violence that the Colombian capital has ever experienced.1 For twenty-four hours the city experienced serious social disorder, which was brought under control only by the use of regular army troops at a cost of an unknown number of casualties. Surprisingly, the January 1893 bogotazo has not been subjected to serious historical examination. The role of craftsmen in the outbreak of violence offers a window in the largely unknown course of artisan political activity in Bogotá after the decline of the Democratic Society of Artisans in the mid-century reform period. More broadly, whereas the relationship between wage labourers and violence has attracted many scholars, the propensity of the artisan class to engage in violent activities in nineteenth-century Colombia (and in Latin America as a whole) deserves more scholarly investigation. What were the causes and the nature of the 1893 riot? Were they typical of nineteenth-century urban violence? Finally, how does the 1893 riot fit within the broad sweep of Colombian collective violence?2 Before attempting to answer these questions it is necessary to look briefly, by way of background, at Bogotá in the late nineteenth century, its economy and society, at the nature of Colombian politics and, in particular, at the role of artisans in bogotano politics and in earlier episodes of urban disorder.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 1-2 , June 1989 , pp. 267 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The bogotazo of 9 April 1948 occurred in reaction to the assassination of the popular Liberal party leader Jorge Elicier Gaitán. It destroyed much of downtown Bogotá and resulted in hundreds of deaths, while igniting the nationwide outbreak ofLa Violencia. For a recent account see Braun, Herbert, The Assassination of Gaitán: Public Life and Urban Violence in Colombia (Madison, 1986).Google Scholar

2 Rural and urban violence during the colonial period, rural violence in the nineteenth century, and ‘modern’ incidents of collective violence have attracted considerable attention in Latin America, especially in Mexico, the Andean republics, Brazil, and Colombia. For the latter, considerable progress has been made towards a long-term understanding of collective violence. The late colonial period, especially the Comunero rebellion of 1781, is well synthesised in McFarlane, Anthony, ‘Civil Disorders and Popular Protests in Late Colonial New Granada’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 64, no. 1-2 (02 1984), pp. 17–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Various studies have sought to explain rural violence in the early national period, notably LeGrand, Catherine, ‘Labor Acquisition and Social Conflict on the Colombian Frontier, 1850–1936’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 16, pt. 1 (02 1984), pp. 27–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar There is abundant literature on violence in twentieth-century Colombia, most of it focusing on La Violencia of the 1940s and 1950s. Gonzalo Sánchez offers a conceptual framework for La Violencia and its historiography in ‘La Violencia in Colombia: New Research, New Questions’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 65, no. 4 (11 1985), pp. 789–807.Google Scholar See also Sánchez, Gonzalo, Once ensayos sobre la Violencia (Bogotá, 1985).Google Scholar And for the urban environment, Medina, Medófilo, La protesta urbana en Colombia en el siglo veinte (Bogotá, 1984)Google Scholar and Winn, Peter, ‘The Urban Working Class and Social Protest in Latin America’, International Labor and Working Class History, No. 14/15 (Spring 1979), pp. 61–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Morse, Richard M. (ed.), The Urban Development of Latin America, 1750–1920 (Stanford, 1971), p. 62Google Scholar; Ámato, Peter Walter, An Analysis of Changing Patterns of Elite Residential Areas of Bogotá, Colombia, PhD diss., Cornell University (1968), p. 138.Google Scholar

4 Vásquez, Luis Ospina, lndustria y protección en Colombia, 1810 a 1930 (Bogotá, 1959)Google Scholar, passim.

5 Samper, Miguel, La miseria en Bogotá y otros escritos (Bogotá, 1969), pp. 9, 11.Google Scholar See also La Opinión, 14 10 1863, 12 10 1864, 4 01 1865Google Scholar; La República, 9 Oct. 1867.

6 Roldán, Dario Bustamante, ‘Efectos económicos del papel moneda durante la regeneración’, Cuadernos Colombianos, vol. 1, no. 4 (1974), pp. 561–660.Google Scholar

7 See, for example, El Taller, 17 Jan., 1 June 1889; Las Noticias, 5 March 1889; La Capital, 10 Oct. 1890; El Heraldo, 10 Sept. 1890; Los Hechos, 12 June 1894; Bogotá, 2 May 1897; and Cotes, Manuel, Régimen alimenticio de los jornaleros de la sabana de Bogotá (Bogotá, 1893)Google Scholar, passim. The available serial data confirm that food prices remained generally stable from 1864 through the late 1870s, then slowly increased until the late 1880s, when they began a dramatic rise. Miguel Urrutia, ‘Estadísticas de precios, 1846–1933’, in Urrutia, Miguel and Arrubla, Mario, Compendio de estadísticas históricas de Colombia (Bogotá, 1970), p. 85Google Scholar; Bustamente, , ‘Efectos económicos del papel moneda’, pp. 645, 647.Google Scholar

8 Rivas, Medardo, Obras de Medardo Rivas. Parte primera, novelas, articulos de costumbres, variedades, poesías (Bogotá, 1883), p. 89Google Scholar; El Tradicionista, 2, 5 May 1874; La América, 4, 11, 18 May 1874; La Doctrina, 7 May 1879; Diario de Cundinamarca, 6, 7, 10, 13 May 1879; El Deber, 9, 13, 27 May 1879.

9 Delpar, Helen, Red Against Blue: The Liberal Party in Colombian Politics, 1863–1899 (University, 1981), p. 144Google Scholar, Bergquist, Charles, Coffee and Conflict in Colombia, 1886–1910 (Durham, 1978), pp. 37–8.Google Scholar

10 The 1832 national constitution allowed literate men (although literacy was not to be enforced prior to 1850) who were married, or over the age of 21, to vote if they had an assured income and were not employed as a domestic servant or day labourer. The constitution of 1843 substituted property requirements for the earlier occupational clause, while maintaining the literacy article. The most liberal of the nineteenth-century suffrage requirements came with the 1853 document, which enabled all men who were over 21, or married, to vote. The constitution of 1863 allowed states to determine their own requirements. Cundinamarca introduced a literacy requirement at that time. Finally, the Regeneration constitution required that males over the age of 21 exercise a profession or lawful occupation and demonstrate their means of support. Local and departmental elections were open to all males over 21. Gibson, William Marion, The Constitutions of Colombia (Durham, 1948), pp. 120, 162, 201–4, 227, 316Google Scholar; El Telegrama, 4 May 1887.

11 See Sowell, David, ‘“La teoria y la realidad”: The Democratic Society of Artisans of Bogotá, 1847–1854’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 67, no. 4 (11 1987), pp. 611–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 See Bushnell, David, ‘Two Stages of Colombian Tariff Policy: The Radical Era and the Return to Protection (1861–1885)’, Inter-American Economic Affairs, vol. 9, no. 4 (Spring 1956), pp. 3–23.Google Scholar

13 La América, 26, 27, 29, 30 Jan. 1875; La Ilustración, 25, 26 Jan. 1875; El Tradicionista, 26, 29 Jan. 1875; Cely, Eugenio Gutiérrez, ‘Nuevo movimiento popular contra el laissez-faire: Bogotá, 1875’, Universitas Humanistica, vol. 2, no. 17 (03 1982), pp. 177–212.Google Scholar

14 Gutiérrez, ‘Nuevo movimiento popular’, passim.

15 Miguel Perdomo Neira, a travelling curandero, sparked several days of unrest in the capital in May 1872. ‘Professional’ doctors took offence at the curandero's popularity and challenged him to demonstrate his skills, a challenge that set off several days of stone-throwing and attacks against the doctors by the ‘people’. After the incident, university students attempted to found a Democratic Society among the artisans to counter Perdomo's popularity. The editorialist ‘Captuso’ observed that most craftsmen refused to join the effort, seeking to avoid the political manipulation experienced by craftsmen in the 1850s. La llustración, 26 Jan. 1875.

16 La América, 27, 30 Jan. 1875.

17 La Ilustración, 26 Jan. 1875.

18 El Taller, 17 Jan. 1889.

19 Colombia Cristiana, 14, 21, 28 Dec. 1892; 4 Jan. 1893.

20 Ibid., 4 Jan. 1893. The editor, Enrique Alvarez B., made a similar statement in El Correo Nacional, 20 Jan. 1893.

21 El Orden, 11 Jan. 1893. Numerous artisans thanked Antonio María Silvestre, the director of El Orden, for his ‘act of justice’ in speaking in favour of the city's craftsmen. El Orden, 14 Jan. 1893.

22 El Relator, 17 Jan. 1893; El Correo Nacional, 1 Feb. 1893; El Telegrama, 14 Jan. 1893; El Barbero, 16 Jan. 1893.

23 El Relator, 17 Jan. 1893; El Correo Nacional, 17 Jan. 1893; El Telegrama, 14 Jan. 1893; El Heraldo, 2; Jan. 1893.

24 Details of the riot are drawn from various sources. Unless otherwise noted, the account that follows is a composite of information from: Archivo Histórico Nacional (hereafter AHN), República, Policía Nacional, Tomo 2, fols. 422–521r Tomo 3, fols. 409, 625–6; Diario Oficial, 2, 3 Feb. 1893; El Correo Nacional, 1 Feb. 1893; El Orden, 4 March 1893; Palacio, Julio H., Historia de mi vida (Bogotá, 1942), pp. 186–92Google Scholar; and Mejía, Alvaro Tirado, Aspectos sociales de las guerras civiles en Colombia (Bogotá, 1976), pp. 462–87.Google Scholar Gutiérrez published and had distributed a leaflet on the 16th which insisted that he had not meant to hurt or insult members of the artisan class, but he did not refute his earlier comments. El Telegrama, 16 Jan. 1893.

25 Diario Oficial, 2 Feb. 1893.

26 Ibid., 17 Jan. 1893.

27 Diario de Cundinamarca, 24 Jan. 1893.

28 El Correo Nacional, 1 Feb 1893.

29 AHN, República, Policía Nacional, Tomo 3, fols. 409, 625–6; Mejía, Tirado, Aspectos sociales, p. 463.Google Scholar About 50 prisoners reportedly were sent from Bogotá to the coast by steamboat. Diario de la Tarde, 7, 27, 28, Feb., 6, 8 April 1893; Diario Oficial, 4 Feb. 1893. One report alleged that the army drafted many prisoners into its ranks. El Telegrama, 19 April 1893.

30 Diario de Cundinamarca, 7, 14, 28 March, 21 April, 12 May 1893. Alfredo Greñas, an ardent enemy of the Regeneration, had published a mild analysis of the early riot on 16 January: El Barbero, 16 Jan. 1893. Governmental officials seized the opportunity to arrest the author and expel him from the country. Greñas sought refuge in Costa Rica, from where he continued his criticisms of the Regeneration government. For a discussion of Greñas's role as a cartoonist and political commentator, see Helguera, J. León, ‘Notes on a Century of Colombian Political Cartooning: 1830–1930’, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, vol. 6 (1987), pp. 268–72.Google Scholar

31 Diario de Cundinamarca, 7, 14 March 1893; El Heraldo, 8, 12, 22 April 1893.

32 AHN, República, Gobernaciones varios, Tomo 28, fos. 954–5; El Correo Nacional, 3 April 1893.

33 AHN, República, Policía Nacional, Tomo 2, fos. 520–ir; Diario Oficial, 2 Feb. 1893.

34 El Artesano, 8, 15, April, 2, 17 June 1893.

35 El Correo Nacional, 20 March, 3, 7, 10, 11, 13, 19, 21, 24, 28 April 1894; El Orden, 17 March, 14 April 1894.

36 Bergquist, , Coffee and Conflict in Colombia, pp. 44–45, 49Google Scholar; Delpar, , Red Against Blue, pp. 149–57.Google Scholar

37 El Telegrama, 12 Jan. 1895; Los Hechos, 23 Jan. 1895.

38 El Orden, 4 March 1893.

39 Ibid., 8 March 1893.

40 El Diario de Cundinamarca, 10, 14, 21 March 1893.

41 El Heraldo, 8, 12 April 1893.

42 Ibid., 8 April 1893.

43 Ibid., 12 April 1893; El Telegrama, 4 May 1893.

44 Informe que presenta el subsecretario del ministerio de gobierno de Colombia al congreso constitucional de 1894 (Bogotá, 1894), p. iv.Google Scholar

45 On the reorganisation, see Castillo, Alvaro Castaño, La Policía, su origen y su destino (Bogotá, 1947), vol. 8, pp. 12–18Google Scholar; El Correo Nacional, 15, 16 Jan. 1892. Similar reactions to police reorganisations in the United States are described in Walker, Samuel, Popular Justice: A History of American Criminal Justice (New York, 1980), pp. 60–4Google Scholar and in England in Storch, Robert D., ‘The Plague of the Blue Locusts: Police Reform and Popular Resistance in Northern England, 1840–75’, International Review of Social History, No. 1 (1975), pp. 61–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Police officials realised that the riot in part impinged upon their organisation. In the months that followed the tumult, several changes were made in the methods of recruitment, patrols, and public comportment of officers. El Correo Nacional, 18 Feb., 29 March 1893. See also Vélez, Oscar de J. Saldarriaga, ‘Bogotá, la Regeneración y la policía, 1880–1900’, Revista Universidad de Antioquia, No. 211 (01–03 1988), pp. 37–55.Google Scholar

46 McFarlane, , ‘Civil Disorders’, pp. 31–2, 43, 50, 53–4Google Scholar, and passim.

47 For example, see Taylor, William B., Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford, 1979)Google Scholar; Phelan, John L., The People and the King: The Comunero Revolt of 1781 (Madison, 1979)Google Scholar; and Godoy, Scarlett O'Phelan, Rebellions and Revolts in Eighteenth-Century Peru and Upper Peru (Cologne, 1985).Google Scholar

48 Escorcia, José, Sociedad y economía en el Valle del Cauca. Tomo iii. Desarrollo político, social y económico, 1800–1854 (Bogotá, 1983), pp. 86–92Google Scholar; Taussig, Michael T., The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (Chapel Hill, 1980), pp. 55–65Google Scholar; Helguera, , ‘Antecedentes sociales de la revolucíon de 1851 en el sur de Colombia’, Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura, vol. 5 (1970), pp. 53–63Google Scholar; LeGrand, , ‘Labor Acquisition and Social Conflict’, pp. 27–49.Google Scholar

49 E. P. Thompson notes in his seminal article that the moral economy remains in the popular mind far after the new market has in fact upset traditional economic patterns. Thompson, E. P., ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present, vol. 50 (1971), p. 87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, passim.

50 Graham, Sandra Lauderdale, ‘The Vintem Riot and Political Culture: Rio de Janeiro, 1880’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 60, no. 3 (08 1980), pp. 431–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51 Meade, Teresa, ‘“Civilizing Rio de Janeiro”: The Public Health Campaign and the Riot of 1904’, Journal of Social History, vol. 20, no. 2 (Winter 1986), pp. 301–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Needell, Jeffrey D., ‘The Revolta Contra Vacina of 1904: The Revolt Against “Modernization” in Belle-Époque Rio de Janeiro’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 67, no. 2 (05 1987), pp. 233–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

52 On European collective violence in this period, see Tilly, Charles, Tilly, Louise, and Tilly, Richard, The Rebellious Century, 1830–1930 (Cambridge, MA, 1975), pp. 249–50, 259–64, 268–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 Sowell, , ‘Las bases sociales para la movilización de obreros en Bogotá: 1866–1912’, in Williams, Raymond L. (comp.), Ensayos de literatura colombiana, (Bogotá, 1985), p. 276.Google Scholar