| This project explores popular political life in southwestern Colombia (the Cauca region) from 1848 to 1886. While Colombian politics is usually understood as a result of the formation of elite alliances, I propose that the powerful's relations with plebeians were equally important to Colombia's political trajectory. Central to the project is the study of three social groups: Afro-Colombian tenants and sharecroppers, Indian communalists, and mestizo peasant migrants from Antioquia. Due to their historical experiences and their racial, ethnic, class and regional identities, each group developed its own, often conflicting, vision of popular republicanism: popular liberalism, popular indigenous conservatism, and popular smallholder republicanism.;While popular liberals have been most studied by scholars, both elite Liberals and Conservatives needed to recruit subaltern allies to fight in their civil wars and support them in elections. However, all elites had to negotiate for this support. A strong culture of republican bargaining developed between elites and their popular allies, as the powerful made important concessions (from protecting Indians' communal lands to abolishing slavery) in order to satisfy their subaltern compatriots. This negotiation, necessitated by partisan conflict, significantly democratized Colombian political culture. However, subalterns' increasing political demands and elites' inability to discipline their plebeian allies caused many upper-class Colombians to attempt to restrict republican bargaining. This movement, called the Regeneration, sought to rein in popular republicans and limit their political influence.;The central sources include archival research (petitions, private and official correspondence, governmental reports) in Bogota, Cali, and Popayan newspapers, and other published sources.;I conclude that plebeian appropriation of republican language, ideas, and practices made Colombian politics significantly more democratic than heretofore recognized. The meanings given to the nation, democracy and citizenship were not just imagined by bureaucrats and intellectuals, but also by more common folk. I close the dissertation arguing that Colombia, although little studied, was as democratic as any society in the nineteenth century, and its history, along with the histories of other Latin American societies, is central to understanding the evolution of democracy in the Atlantic World. |
