Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:39:06.474Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Elections and Civil Wars in Nineteenth-century Colombia: The 1875 Presidential Campaign

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Eduardo Posada-Carbó
Eduardo Posada-Carbó
Affiliation:
Lecturer in History at the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

On 1 February 1875, a hopeful President Santiago Pérez took pride in informing Congress of the peace and prosperity brought about by a decade or so of Radical rule in Colombia. His optimism was soon disappointed. A week later, he quelled a mutiny only by replacing both his Minister of War and the Army Commander-in-Chief. At the end of the month, the State of Magdalena was showing serious signs of political turmoil, while the recently sacked Minister of War, General Ramón Santodomingo Vila, was in the port of Barranquilla plotting against the government of the Union. By August, the States of Bolívar and Panamá had both officially declared war against Pérez's administration; rumours reached Bogotá which accused ‘Santo Domingo Vila of conspiracy to be President of the Republic of Costa Firme’. Customs-houses in the Caribbean ports were held by rebel forces for almost four months, and rebel steamers on the Magdalena river blocked the country's main artery of trade. Bloody confrontations completed the picture of another civil war, leaving behind an indefinite number of casualties and a Treasury in disarray. When President Pérez again faced Congress to give his annual message in 1876, he had to acknowledge his previous misjudgement.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , October 1994 , pp. 621 - 649
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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

The author wishes to thank Malcolm Deas for his encouragement and for giving him access to useful material.

1 Mensaje del Presidente de la Unión al Congreso de 1875 (Bogotá, 1875), pp. 3–4. The term ‘Radical’ refers to a wing of the Liberal party identified with the nineteenth-century liberal orthodoxy as expressed in the 1863 Constitution. See Piñeres, Eduardo Rodríguez, El Olimpo Radical (Bogotá, 1950)Google Scholar; and Delpar, Helen, Red against Blue. The Liberal Party in Colombian Politics, 1863–1899 (University, Alabama, 1981)Google Scholar.

2 Panama Star and Herald, 21 July 1875, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Corporation of Foreign Bondholders Council (hereafter cited as C.F.B.C), the newspaper cuttings of the Council of Foreign Bondholders in the Guildhall Library, London, Films 1411: Colombia, vol. 2/240. Magdalena, Bolívar and Panamá, often identified as the Estados Costeños, were sovereign states in a federal union known as Estados Unidos de Colombia. The other states were Cundinamarca, Boyacá, Cauca, Antioquia, Santander, and Tolima.

3 Mensaje del Presidente de la Unión (Bogotá, 1876), p. 3.

4 Memoria del Secretario de Hacienda (Bogotá, 1875), pp. 1, 28–30. For Colombian foreign trade, see Ocampo, José Antonio, Colombia y la economía mundial, 1830–1910 (Bogotá, 1984)Google Scholar.

5 Parliamentary Papers (hereafter cited as P.P.), LXVI (London, 1874), pp. 56–8. See also Money Market Review, 9 April 1875, C.F.B.C., vol 2/162; Diario Oficial. Estraordinario (Bogotá) 16 Sept. 1874; and Pellet to US Department of State, Barranquilla, 30 Sept. 1874, The National Archives of the United States, Washington (hereafter cited as N.A.U.S.), Despatches from US Consuls in Sabanilla, Colombia, 1856–84 (hereafter cited as US Despatches/Sabanilla), microfilms T426/4.

6 P.P., LXVI (London, 1874), p. 1009.

7 See, among others, Deas, M., ‘Poverty, Civil War and Politics: Ricardo Gaitán Obeso and his Magdalena River Campaign in Colombia, 1885,’, Nova Americana, vol. 2 (1979), pp. 263–303Google Scholar; Bergquist, C. W., Coffee and Conflict in Colombia, 1886–1910 (Durham, N.C., 1978)Google Scholar; Jaramillo, C., Los guerrilleros del novecientos (Bogotá, 1991)Google Scholar.

8 French Consul to Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, Panamá, 29 Aug. 1875;, Archives du Ministère des Relations Extérieurs, Quay d'Orsay, Paris: Colombie, Correspondance politique des consuls. Panamá, Barranquilla, Sainte Marthe, Colón, 1870–1885; (hereafter cited as C.P.C.), vol. 4/84.

9 Otero, José M. Quijano, Diario de la guerra civil de 1860 y otros sucesos políticos (Bogotá, 1982), p. 195Google Scholar.

10 Park, James, Rafael Núñez and the Politics of Colombian Regionalism, 1863–1886 (Baton Rouge and London, 1985)Google Scholar, and ‘Regionalism as a Factor in Colombia's 1875 Election’, The Americas, vol. 42, no. 4 (1986), pp. 453–72. Helen Delpar, Red against Blue, pp. 110–217. See also Rodríguez Piñeres, El Olimpo Radical, pp. 115–45.

11 With a few exceptions, Colombian electoral history has not attracted much scholarly attention. For some significant contributions to the subject, see for example, Bushnell, David, ‘Voter Participation in the Colombian Election of 1856’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 51 (05 1971), pp. 237–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and his ‘El sufragio en la Argentina y en Colombia hasta 1853’, Revista del Institute de Historia del Derecho, no. 19 (Buenos Aires, 1968), pp. 11–29. The importance of elections in Colombia's history has been emphasised by Deas, Malcolm in his ‘Algunas notas sobre la historia del caciquismo en Colombia’, Revista de Occidente (10 1973), pp. 118–40Google Scholar. Socio-economic cleavages in one electoral campaign have been explored in Bergquist, Charles W., ‘The Political Economy of the Colombian Presidential Election of 1897’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 56 (02 1976), pp. 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The electoral history of nineteenth-century Latin America has been receiving increasing attention by scholars though the subject is still largely under-studied. See, for example, Valenzuela, J. S., Democratización vía reforma. La expansión del sufragio en Chile (Buenos Aires, 1985)Google Scholar; Graham, R., Patronage and Politics in Nineteenth-century Brazil (Stanford, 1990)Google Scholar; Alonso, P., ‘Politics and Elections in Buenos Aires, 1890–1898’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 25 (1993), pp. 465–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sábato, H., ‘Citizenship, Political Participation and the Formation of the Public Sphere in Buenos Aires, 1850s–1880s’, Past and Present, vol. 136 (1992), pp. 139–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Guerra, F. X., ‘Les avatars de la représentation au XIXe siècle’, in Couffignal, G. (ed.), Réinventer la démocratie. Le défi Latino-américaìn (Paris, 1992), pp. 49–84Google Scholar.

12 See Piedrahita, Carlos Restrepo, Constituciones de la primera república liberal, 4 vols (Bogotá, 1985)Google Scholar.

13 Bunch to the Earl of Derby, Bogotá, 14 June 1875, Public Records Office (hereafter cited as P.R.O.), FO55/234.

14 El Republicano, 15 July 1875; and Alarcón, José C., Compendia de historia del Departamento del Magdalena (Bogotá, 1963), p. 273Google Scholar.

15 Guerra, J. J., Viceversas liberates (Bogotá, 1923), p. 208Google Scholar.

16 The standard biography of Núñez is Indalecio Liévano, Rafael Núñez (Bogotá, 1946). The best documented work on Núñez's ascendancy to power is Park, Rafael Núñez. For an interesting essay which discusses the historiography on Núñez, see Delpar, Helen, ‘Renegade or Regenerator? Rafael Núñez as Seen by Colombian Historians’, Inter-American Review of Historiography, vol. 35 (1985), pp. 25–37Google Scholar. For Parra, see Memorias de Aquileo Parra (Bogotá, 1912).

17 Memorias de Aquileo Parra, p. 12.

18 El Republicano, 20 May 1875.

19 US Minister to Secretary of State, Bogotá, 27 Feb. 1876, Bodleian Library, Oxford, N.A.U.S.; Despatches from US Ministers in Colombia, 1820–1906 (hereafter cited as U.S.M.D. Films 832). See also Bunch to the Earl of Derby, Bogotá, 16 Feb. 1875, P.R.O., FO55/234.

20 Poesías (Bogotá, 1977), pp. 6–10. See Galofre, Julio N., Núñez y Caro (Bogotá, 1891), p. 5Google Scholar.

21 El Republicano, 5 and 19 Aug. 1875.

22 Ortiz, Laureano García, Conversando (Bogotá, 1916), p. 179Google Scholar.

23 US Minister to Secretary of State, Bogotá, 15 Aug. 1875, U.S.M.D. Similarly, for the French Minister there were no significant issues involved in the quarrel; Consul à Ministre, Bogotá, 5 June 1875, Quai d'Orsay, Paris, Correspondence Politique (hereafter cited as F.C.P.). Colombia, vol. 32, film P3340/243.

24 On 10 May 1875, the British Minister reported that Núñez's partisans in Congress ‘have used the most revolutionary language (declaring) that the Coast states will secede and make Núñez the Chief of a separate republic’; in P.R.O., FO55/234. The few modern scholarly interpretations of the 1875 conflict strongly emphasised the ‘regional question’. The best regionalist interpretation is Park, ‘Regionalism as a Factor in Colombia's 1875 Election’. See also Delpar, Red against Blue, chapter 6.

25 Panamá Star and Herald, 8 March 1875, C.F.B.C., films 1411, vol. 2/158.

26 Santa Marta and Cartagena were rival ports. In addition, the Radical leader Murillo Toro had maintained close links with politicians in Santa Marta, where he had lived in the 1840s. The best work on the history of the ports of Cartagena, and Marta, Santa is Nichols, Theodore, Tres Puertos del Caribe (Bogotá, 1973)Google Scholar. The decline of trade in Santa Marta is described in P.P. (35), LXXVI (London, 1875), pp. 362–4 and 369–77.

27 Núñez, La reforma política, 7 vols (Bogotá, 1945), vol. 1, p. 69Google Scholar.

28 Diario de Cundinamarca, 2 May and 14 April 18 74, and Panamá Star and Herald, 21 Aug. 1874 and 5 Feb. 1875, in C.F.B.C, film 1411, vol 2/86 and 146; and Delpar, Red against Blue, pp. 112–14.

29 Memorias de Aquileo Parra, p. 666; Memoria del Secretario de Hacienda (Bogotá, 1876), pp. 73–87; and Diario Oficial (Bogotá), 27 Jan. 1875.

30 El Republicano, 5 Feb. and 15 July 1875. The Santandereano enthusiasm for the Northern Railway was mirrored in the pro-Parrista State of Boyacá. See Informe dirijido por el Secretario Jeneral al Presidente del Estado (Tunja, 1875), p. 25.

31 Parra remembered meeting Camacho Roldán, who ‘me sorprendió diciéndome que entre los dos había un duelo a muerte’; Memorial de Aquileo Parra, pp. 667–8. See also Aguirre, Antonio Pérez, 25 años de historia colombiana, 1853 a 1878 (Bogotá, 1959), pp. 341–2Google Scholar.

32 Bricefño, Manuel, La revolución 1876–77 (Bogotá, 1947), p. 9Google Scholar.

33 Núñez, Rafael, Ensayos de critica social (Rouen, 1874), pp. viiGoogle Scholar, 4 and 9. Núñez's concern with the position of both the Church and the Conservative party in Colombia should be appreciated in the wider context of the changing intellectual atmosphere of the 1870s. The Benthamite debate, which had raised Colombian passions in the early years of the republic, had resurfaced in the late 1860s following several publications on utilitarian doctrine. In El Tradicionista, Miguel Antonio Caro had launched a campaign in favour of the rights of the Church and in support of religious education, a campaign that was gathering momentum by the mid-1870s. Issues related to the role of the Church in society and, in particular, regarding education, were the focus of debate between El Tradicionista and the Radical Diario de Cundinamarca in 1875. See Caro, , Obras (Bogotá, 1962), vol. 1, pp. 921–7, 624–9 and 1347–52Google Scholar. Arguments for remaining aloof from the liberal dispute, basically religious concerns, were put forward in Medellín, by La Sociedad, 23 10 1875Google Scholar. See also idem., 24 April and 1, 8, 15 May 1875, and La Caridad (Bogotá), 17 June 1875.

34 See El Republicano, 26 Feb. 1875; Caro, Alvaro Holguín y, Carlos Holguin, 2 vols. (Bogotá, 1981), vol. 2, p. 757Google Scholar; Pérez Aguirre, Veinticinco años de historia colombiana, pp. 368–71; Núñez, La reforma política, vol. I (1), p. 118, and vol. II, pp. 42, 97; Holguín, Carlos, Cartas políticas (Bogotá, 1951), pp. 141–2Google Scholar. A month before the final electoral contest in Congress, Núñez was contributing, though under a pseudonym, to El Tradicionista; Núñez to Caro, 12 Jan. 1876, in Lemaitre, Eduardo (ed.), Epistolario de Rafael Núñez con Miguel Antonio Caro (Bogotá, 1977), p. 5Google Scholar.

35 Borda, Francisco de Paula, Conversaciones con mis hijos, 3 vols. (Bogotá, 1974), vol. II, pp. 143–4Google Scholar.

36 El Republicano, 8 July 1875.

37 Wallis, José María Quijano, Memorias autobiográficas, histórico-políticas y de carácter social (Grattoferrata, 1919), p. 247Google Scholar. See also Muñoz, G. Otero, La vida azarosa de Rafael Núñez (Bogotá, 1951), p. 58Google Scholar; and Acosta, General Aurelio, Memorias. Un sobreviviente del glorioso liberalismo colombiano (Bogotá, 1940), p. 24Google Scholar. In Bogotá, El Combate estimated that some 800 student voters supported Núñez.

38 Monsalve, J. Estrada, Núñez, el politico y el hombre (Bogotá, 1946), pp. 139–40Google Scholar.

39 Núñez, La reforma política, vol. II, pp. 60–1.

40 See US Minister to Secretary of State, Bogotá, 27 Jan. 1875, U.S.M.D.; Cordovez-Moure, J. M., Reminiscencias de Santa Fe de Bogotá (Bogotá, 1978), pp. 472–5Google Scholar; Panamá Star and Herald, 21 Feb. 1875, in C.F.B.C, vol 2/152, and Bunch to the Early of Derby, Bogotá, 28 Jan. and 10 May 1875, P.R.O., FO55/234; and Sowell, D., The Early Colombian Labor Movement (Philadelphia, 1992), pp. 108–11Google Scholar.

41 Bidwell, Charles Toll, The Isthmus of Panama (London, 1865), pp. 181–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The correspondence of Jenny C. White del Bal offers a superb description of the political climate of Panamá in the 1860s. See White, Rhoda E. (ed.), Memoir and Letters of Jenny C. White del Bal (Dublin, 1885)Google Scholar. Between 1870 and 1880, the arrabal, as the popular quarters were known, had a most prominent role in the politics of Panamá. Identified with the emerging mixed races, the arrabal liberal has been described as ‘el primordial contrincante de la oligarquía urbana’. See Figueroa, Alfredo, Dominio y sociedad en el Panamá colombiano, 1821–1903 (Panamá, S.A., 1978), pp. 329–32Google Scholar and 335; Reclus, Armand, Panama et Darien. Voyages d'exploration, 1876–1878 (Paris, 1881), pp. 65–7Google Scholar, and Repertorio Colombiano, 1 Aug. 1896, p. 130.

42 British Consul to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 21 Panamá June 1875, P.R.O., F.O.55/237.

43 For example, El País in Bogotá, El Republicano in Socorro, La Patria and El Ferrocarril in Magdalena, and El Filopolista in Panamá, were all founded that year to support Parra. In Bogotá, José María Samper established La Ley and a group of students launched El Combate to back Núñez, while more than twenty newspapers throughout the country were supporting his name; see Otero Muñoz, La vida azarosa, p. 58; and Estrada Monsalve, Núñez, p. 139. El Combate listed the newspapers backing Núñez on 26 Feb. and 10 April 1875.

44 El Republicano, 20 May and 3 June 1875. Other examples of shifts in loyalties during the campaign in ibid., 29 April, 10 June and 15 July 1875; Diario de Cundinamarca, 19 Feb. 1875; and El Combate, 13 March 1875.

45 See El Republicano, 10 June and 19 Aug. 1875; and Quijano Wallis, Memorias autobiográficas, p. 245. ‘Les journaux qu'ont été fondés ici, ces jours derniers pour soutenir l'une ou l'autre candidature sont redigés avec passion et ne gardent aucune moderation dans leurs attaques’; Consul à Ministre, Bogotá, 14 April 1875, F.C.P., vol. 32, film P3340.

46 Memorias de Aquileo Parra, p. 689.

47 ‘Consul à Ministre’, Bogotá, 14 April 1875, F.C.P., vol. 32, film P3340.

48 El Republicano, 20 May 1875.

49 Calderón, C., Núñez y la regeneración (Paris, 1894), p. 13Google Scholar.

50 Vergara, José M., Escrutinio histórico (Bogotá, 1939), p. 151Google Scholar.

51 García, José J., Crónicas de Bucaramanga (Bucaramanga, 1946), p. 282Google Scholar.

52 Consular report, Panamá, 5 July 1875, P.R.O., FO55/237. See also French Consul to the Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, Panamá, 10 July 1875, C.P.C., vol. 4/79.

53 El Republicano, 22 and 29 July 1875.

54 Quijano Wallis, Memorias autobiográficas, p. 247.

55 ‘El Presidente Pérez redujo su acción en esa tarde a lo que podía hacer: reforzar la guardia de Palacio y trancar bien las puertas hasta que se despejó la situación’; Cordovez Moure, Reminiscencias, p. 471. See also idem., pp. 470–1, and Ibáñez, P. M., Las crónicas de Bogotá y sus inmediaciones (Bogotá, 1891), p. 430Google Scholar.

56 Boletín Oficial. Orden Público (Bogotá, 1875).

57 The President of Cundinamarca, Eustorjio Salgar, paradoxically a Nuñista sympathiser, was made the scapegoat by an angry populace which demanded the release of the journalists. See Al pueblo colombiano. Acusación que el ciudadano José María Samper formula ante el pueblo colombiano y ante la historia contra Santiago Pérez (Bogotá, 1875); US Legation to State Department, Bogotá, 14 Aug. 1875, Bodleian Library, Films 832, roll 30; and Briceño, La revolución, p. 26.

58 See Panamá Star and Herald, 21 June 1875, C.F.B.C, vol 2/236; Scruggs to State Department, Bogotá, 7 June 1875, M.D.U.S., films 832/30; and French Consul to Minister, Bogotá, 5 June 1875, F.C.P., film P3340/243.

59 Gaceta Estraordinaria (Panamá), 23 Aug. 1875, in C.P.C., vol. 4/84.

60 The best contemporary account of the politics of Magdalena is Alarcón, Compendio de historia del Departamente del Magdalena. The events of 1875 are described in pp. 273–91.

61 Striffler, Luis, El Río César. Relatión de un viaje a la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta en 1876, n.d., possibly 1881, p. 23Google Scholar. For contemporary accounts of Ciénaga, as the ‘hotbed of revolution and disturbances’, see Memorias del Presbítero Pedro Maria Rebollo. Primera parte, de 1868 a 1906 (Barranquilla, 1956), p. 10Google Scholar, and Simmons, F.A., ‘Notes on the Topography of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta’, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. 1 (1879), p. 690Google Scholar.

62 El Republicano, 20 May and 1 July 1875.

63 Panamá Star and Herald, 21 July 1875, and El Republicano, 20 May and 10 June 1875.

64 The number of troops in the national Army was 1,200. See Diario de Bolivar, 8 June 1875 and P.P., LXXIV (London, 1874), pp. 568–9.

65 A full account of the peace negotiations from the point of view of the central government was given by Esguerra, Nicolás in his Certificatión del Secretario de Hacienda i Fomento sobre los acontecimientos de la Costa, espedida a solititud del Procurador Jeneral de la Nación (Bogotá, 1875)Google Scholar.

66 Certificatión del Secretario de Hacienda, p. 8.

67 Ibid., p. 11.

68 Ibid., p. 11.

69 Pereira, Octavio Méndez, Justo Arosemena (Panamá, 1919), pp. 439–40Google Scholar.

70 Méndez Pereira, Justo Arosemena, pp. 440–2, and Certificatión del Secretario de Hacienda, p. 15.

71 Gaceta Estraordinaria (Panamá), 23 Aug. 187;. See also mensaje del Presidente del Estado Soberano de Panamá la Asamblea Legislativa, 15 Sept. 187;, C.P.C., vol. 4/85–96.

72 Consul to Secretary of State, Ríohacha, 20 June 1875, US Despatches/Ríohacha, films T425/1; British Consul to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Panamá, 20 Sept. 1875, P.R.O., FO55/237; and Alarcón, Compendio de historia del Magdalena, p. 289.

73 See Mora, Luis María, Croniquillas de mi ciudad (Bogotá, 1936), p. 93Google Scholar; and Valdeblanquez, José María, Biografía del señor General Florentino Manjarrés (Bogotá, 1962), p. 9Google Scholar.

74 Memorias del Presbítero, pp. 19–20.

75 ‘Para el vulgo’, the ever observant Striffler noted, Farías was ‘un ser sobrenatural. Antes de empeñar una acción da a sus soldados su palabra de honor de que en la primera media hora de la refriega ninguno deellos será tocado… los hombres del Valle tienen feen él i la fe los salva a todos…i Farías, como se ve, conoce a su jente’; Striffler, Río César, p. 30. Farías's fame survived him. Apparently his legend was still alive when the anthropologists Gerardo and Alicia Reichel-Dolmatoff studied the region in the 1950s. See Gerardo, and Reichel-Dolmatoff, Alicia, The People of Aritama. The Cultural Personality of a Colombian Mestizo Village (London, 1961), p. 15Google Scholar.

76 See, for example, Certificación del Secretario, p. 29.

77 Palacio, J. H., La guerra de 85 (Bogotá, 1936), see pp. 111, 202, 204, 205Google Scholar.

78 ‘Se comienza por el humilde grado de capitán’, Striffler observed about the ranks of Maya's vaqueros, ‘para correr al de coronel y ascender al de General, título que da positión social, que cualquier revuelta da, y que ninguna quita’; Striffler, Río César, p. 141.

79 According to the 1870 census, the total population of the State of Magdalena was 85,225. The largest town, Ciénaga, had 7,127 inhabitants. Plato, and Tenerife, , raided by Riascos troops, each had less than 2,000 inhabitants; Anuario Estadístico de Colombia (Bogotá, 1875)Google Scholar.

80 Memorias del Presbítero, p. 26.

81 Striffler, El Río César, pp. 28–9; see also El Republicano, 29 July 1875.

82 Gaceta Estraordinaria (Panamá), 25 Aug. 1875. Striffler, El Río César, p. 29, and El Republicano, 5 Aug. 1875.

83 Pellet to Secretary of State, Barranquilla, 14 Aug. 1875, US Despatches/Savanilla, and Boletín Oficial No. 3 (Barranquilla), 3 Aug. 1875.

84 Revista Mercantil de la Casa de Comercio i Comisión de Groot, Paz i Campañía (Bogotá), 31 Oct. 1875.

85 See British Consul to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Barranquilla, II Aug. 1875, P.R.O., FO 55/327; Panamá Star and Herald, 5 Aug. 1875, C.F.B.C, films 1411, vol. 2/246; Alarcón, Compendia de historia del Magdalena, pp. 281–3, and Diario Oficial (Bogotá), 31 Aug. 1875.

86 Orden Público (Cartagena), 10 Sept. 1875.

87 British Consul to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Panamá, 21 Oct. and 20 Nov. 1875, P.R.O., FO55/237.

88 For a description of the intricacies of this process, see Galindo, Aníbal, Recuerdos históricos (Bogotá, 1900), pp. 195–8Google Scholar.

89 Pérez Aguirre, 25 años de historia colombiana, p. 366.

90 Bunch to the Earl of Derby, Bogotá, 4 Jan. 1876, P.R.O., FO55/242.

91 Pérez Aguirre, 25 añms de historia colombiana, p. 373.

92 Rodríguez Piñeres, El Olimpo Radical, p. 134; and Pérez Aguirre, 25 años de historia colombiana, p. 372.

93 Estrad a Monsalve, Núñez. El político y el hombre, p. 150.

94 Borda, Conversaciones con mis hijos, vol. 2, pp. I4I–4. José Quijano Wallis arrived in Bogotá on 28 Jan. to attend Congress as Cauca representative. The following morning, while still in bed, he was visited by Núñez, ‘a quien no conocía personalmente y con quien había llevado una activa correspondencia’; Quijano Wallis, Memorias auto-biográficas, p. 249.

95 Ibid.

96 Estrada Monsalve, Núũinez. El político y el hombre, p. 148.

97 Wallis, José María Quijano, Estudios, discursosy escritos varios (París, 1908), pp. 113, 120 and 121Google Scholar; and Estrad a Monsalve, Núñez. El político y el hombre, pp. 147–8.

98 Bunch to Earl of Derby, Bogotá, 6 Feb. 1876, P.R.O., FO55/242, and see Mensaje del Presidente de la Unión (Bogotá, 1876).

99 Bunch to Earl of Derby, Bogotá, 6 Feb. 1876, P.R.O., FO55/242.

100 Galindo, Recuerdos históricos, pp. 197–8.

101 ‘Se llama a la unión por la prensa con artículos que tienen todo el aire de múusica marcial; see les da el alerta y se les ordena estar en guardia’; Calderón, Núñez la regeneración, p. 21. Luis María Mora described how, in 1876, the favourite children's game was ‘civil war’. See Mora, Croniquillas de mi ciudad, p. 21.

102 D'Espagnat, Piere, Recuerdos de la Nueva Granada {1897–98) (Bogotá, 1949?), p. 94Google Scholar.

103 Plumb, J. H., The Growth of Political Stability in England, 1675–1725 (London, 1969), pp. 31, 41, 80, 81Google Scholar.

104 O'Gorman, Frank, Voters, Patrons and Parties (Oxford, 1989), pp. 255–9Google Scholar.

105 O'Gorman, Voters, Patrons and Parties, p. 256.

106 Hoppen, K. T., Elections, Politics and Society in Ireland, 1832–1885 (Oxford, 1984), p. 394Google Scholar.

107 Brown, Richard Maxwell, No Duty to Retreat. Violence and Values in American History and Society (Oxford, 1991), p. 10Google Scholar.

108 Graham, Patronage and Politics in Nineteenth-century Brazil, p. 141.

109 See Bushnell, ‘Voter Participation in the Colombian Election of 1856’, pp. 237–9.

110 Arboleda, Sergio, La constitución política (Bogotá, 1952), p. 128Google Scholar.

111 Samper, Miguel, Escritos político-económicos, 4 vols. (Bogotá, 1927), vol. IV, p. 449Google Scholar.

112 ‘Esos círculos no organizan aristocracias de nacimiento, pero sí privilegiados del sufragio’, Núñez pointed out; Núñez, La reforma político, vol. II, p. 97.

113 O'Gorman, Voters, Patrons and Parties, p. 7.

114 For a suggestive discussion, see Hoppen, Elections, Politics and Society, pp. 388–408.

115 See ibid., p. 399. Graham suggests that, in Brazil, electoral violence was also orchestrated from above; see his Patronage and Politics, pp. 138–45.

116 See Scruggs, William L., The Colombian and Venezuelan Republics (Boston, 1905), pp. 146–5Google Scholar.

117 Ibid., p. 148.

118 See, for example, Deas, ‘Poverty, Civil Wars and Politics’, p. 264; Alvarez, J., Estudio sobre las guerras civiles argentinas (Buenos Aires, 1914Google Scholar); Zeitlin, M., The Civil Wars in Chile (Princeton, 1984)Google Scholar; Matthews, R. P., Violencia rural en Venezuela, 1840–1858 (Caracas, 1977)Google Scholar; and Thompson, S., ‘The Federal Revolution in Venezuela, 1858–1863’, D Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1983Google Scholar.

119 Quijano Wallis, Memorias autobiográficas, pp. 518–37.

120 Christie, Ian, Stress and Stability in Late Eighteenth-century Britain (Oxford, 1986), pp. 156–82Google Scholar.

121 Samper, José María, Ensayo sobre las revoluciones políticas (1861) (Bogotá, 1984), p. 221Google Scholar.

122 Núñez, La reforma política, vol. I (2), p. 268, and vol. II, p. 91.

123 Quoted in Quijano Wallis, Memorias autobiográficas, p. 258. See also Calderón, Núñez y la regeneración, p. 26.

124 Estrada Monsalve, Núñenz. El politico y el bombre, pp. 151–2.