Women, War, and Partisan Politics in Colombia: The Case of Tomás C. Mosquera’s Female Supporters and Clients, c. 1859–62

On October 23, 1861, three months after Liberal forces led by General Tomás C. Mosquera took Bogotá, Candelaria de la Torre Pinzón, a local widow, sent the Liberal leader a personal letter. The letter alluded to her husband's death while serving under Mosquera fourteen years earlier and reminded him that the deceased man had been one of his “most faithful friends.” It detailed the widow's own contributions to Mosquera's recent victory. These included recruiting fifteen men for the army. De la Torre's only reward, however, had been imprisonment and exile at the hands of Conservative enemies along with the latter's seizure of part of her personal fortune. She asked for compensation, hoping Mosquera would order at least partial “indemnification” for the losses she had suffered while serving him. Although Mosquera's response has not survived, De la Torre's missive–and hundreds like it in Colombian archives–shows some of the dimensions of female involvement in the Liberal-Conservative conflicts that marked mid-nineteenth century Colombia. It shows that, like the subalterns portrayed in James Sanders's Contentious Republicans (2004), women in general became active, if informal, participants in the country's competitive two-party political system. It hints at women's roles within the clientelistic networks that party leaders like Mosquera relied on for vital support and information; and, to some extent, at their use of new modes of political bargaining. This paper will examine such roles and bargaining through analysis of correspondence and other sources from the period of the Mosquerista movement. It will also shed new light on the social (and, gender) basis of that movement that, in 1860-61, allowed the caudillo to revolt against the Conservative government, gain control of the presidency, and inaugurate a new, far-reaching reign of Colombian Liberalism.