Familial Appeals for Clemency after the Rebellion of 1854

On April 17, 1854 the Artisans' or Melista Rebellion, took place in Bogotá. The rising centered on economic policy, party factionalism, and artisan discontent with tariff reform. The rebellion has garnered scholarly attention as a war where the normally controlled class tension was a cause of the war. A coalition led by elite Liberals and Conservatives triumphed over Melo's regime and turned to the business of restoring order. The restoration included prosecutions for crimes committed during the rebellion, political and fiscal, and the linked offers of clemency, or indultos. These contradictory practices were a ritual of political theater as each decree of indulto brought a flood of petitions. This paper examines appeals made on behalf of family members, usually a parent for their child or a wife for their husband. Among the strategies employed to win sympathy for the accused was to highlight familial suffering. When Miguel Garcia's father sought to reduce the period of his son's exile he observed that he would not live to see his son's return as, “life is a vapor that dissipates.” In a variation Antonia Otero supported her husband's appeal explaining that she was, “a poor women beaten by misery and isolation,” who was concerned for their, “seven small children, for the most part girls, without bread, without education, and with a sad future.” These appeals document the intersection between the narrative of the idealized family and the inchoate narrative of the nation and constitutional order. They make it possible to document people's understanding of their place, within a family and the nation, at a time when the composition of the latter was still unknown.