Repression and Regional Identity: The Postwar Reckoning of 1855 in Cauca and Bogotá

This paper addresses question of regional identity and politics in New Granada by comparing efforts at political control in and around Cali and Bogotá in 1855. This paper stems from an ongoing investigation of indultos, acts of clemency, as a tool employed by successive New Granadan regimes following the War of the Supremes (1839-42), the War of 1851, and the Golpe de Melo of 1854. Considering the place of indultos in this inchoate legal culture draws on questions about the nature of pardons, grants invoking monarchical largess in a constitutional era, and demands considering successive attempts to reinvent indultos as rational acts of law rather than charismatic displays of mercy. These points intersect with the specifics of politics in New Granada, the battle over which elements of liberalism would be privileged in the new republic, regional articulations of national trends, and the place of popular ideals in politics.

Examining indultos, specifically decrees listing indultados and individual petitions, provides a method for researching how laws impacted individual lives and how ordinary people understood these dynamics. Examining individual petitions from these two regions is a method for comparing the post-war reckoning that followed the Melista rebellion in Cali and Bogotá. Though these cities were the centers of the rebellion they are generally examined within their distinct regional historiographies. Though there were notable differences between the Draconian liberalism of Afro-Colombians in Cauca and of Artisans in Bogotá, both centers were crucial in the politics of the 1850s and response to politics in each shaped the political trajectory of New Granada in the few years that remained to it before its reformation as the United States of Colombia after 1863.