Agustín Agualongo Revisited: Popayán and the Pacific Royalist Block
I challenge this founding narrative that strictly defined the Popayán royalists in negative terms, as anti-Colombian rebels, by examining the emergence of royalist alliances in the first years of the monarchical crisis, and emphasizing the vitality of imperial political identities among Indians, free blacks, and slaves in the region. I expand the temporal frame even further and explain subaltern royalism in Popayán during the Spanish monarchical crisis studying the relationships that Indians, slaves, and free blacks had with the monarchy before 1809. In this way, royalism can be seen in a “positive” or creative way. I also argue that Colombian historians who generally portrayed Popayán as an abnormal, anti-national enclave, have ignored the broader political geography in which the region was inserted during this context. In other words, the story of New Granada’s southwestern royalists cannot be comprehended if it is kept within the bounds of Colombian national geography.
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