ONE

ARTISAN SOCIOECONOMIC EXPERIENCES

NINETEENTH-CENTURY BOGOTÁ, IN THE WORDS OF GABRIEL García Márquez, was “a gloomy city where on ghostly nights the coaches of the viceroys still rattled through the cobbled streets. Thirty-two belfries tolled a dirge at six in the afternoon.”¹ Santa Fé de Bogotá had served as the viceregal capital and, although its name had been shortened to appease republican sentiments, the city retained much of its colonial character through the nineteenth century. The prominence of the cathedral in the city’s center reflected a highly religious society, one whose daily patterns were deeply influenced by the Roman Catholic church. Essential social divisions changed only slowly over this period. And, although García Márquez does not say so, neither did economic patterns depart severely from the time of Santa Fé. Bogotá and the province of Cundinamarca remained physically remote and economically isolated, not only from neighboring provinces, but from the outside world.

The Colombian capital is located on the vast sabana de Bogotá, a fertile highland plain that had yielded grain, vegetables, and meat for the city and region since prehistory. The 8,500-foot altitude of the sabana frequently spawns cold, drizzly conditions, though summer days are glorious in their clarity and splendor.² The sabana descends to the west and northwest to the lowlands of the Magdalena River valley and is interrupted to the northeast by a series of peaks and ridges that separate Cundinamarca from the province of Boyacá. Travelers approaching the city 160 years ago noticed first the massive crests of Guadalupe and Monserrate that determine the city’s eastern boundary and direct its urban development along a general north/south contour.³ From the mountain peaks flowed the San Francisco and San Agustín rivers, now covered by thoroughfares such as the Avenida Jiménez.

Rugged mountains and dismal transportation conditions kept Bogotá isolated from most of the country and the world through the nineteenth century. Passage from the northern coast to the capital required weeks of boat travel up the unpredictable Magdalena River. After arrival at the river towns of La Vuelta or Honda, the arduous ascension to Bogotá over treacherous mule paths required several days before the sabana opened to the traveler or merchant. The governments of the 1820s sponsored efforts to develop steam navigation on the Magdalena River, but, despite their best intentions, pole-propelled skiffs dominated the nation’s primary transportation artery until the 1860s. Permanent steam service was in place by 1847, which reduced upriver transportation costs by up to one-half by the 1860s.⁴ Even with steamboats on the Magdalena, mule teams carried most imports up the rugged mountains from the river to the capital until early in this century, when rail lines finally connected the capital to the river.

Bogotá was, until late in the century, divided into four wards (barrios) that surrounded the Plaza de Bolívar, the symbolic and physical heart of the city. Las Nieves is situated to the north, San Victorino to the west, Catedral in the more central location, and Santa Barbara to the south. Most of the streets were cobblestone, although those further from the center were dirt. Many of the streets had gutters cut in their middle to drain the refuse, wastes, and runoff from rain into the rivers. Only those streets in the business section had appreciable sidewalks. Their two-foot width seldom allowed persons walking in opposite directions to pass. When two persons met, the person with a lower social station stepped aside.⁵

The spatial distribution of socioeconomic groups became increasingly distinct over the course of the nineteenth century. Social elites traditionally clustered around the central plaza, often in two-storied houses, while Las Nieves, the “artisan barrio,” and the other wards were dominated by one-story adobe houses. Shops or stores commonly occupied either the first floor or front of a house. Artisans and small shopkeepers lived in the house with their shops more frequently than did the city’s elite, many of whom rented the first floor of their houses for craft or commercial use. Lower-class individuals and new migrants resided on the city’s periphery, often in mud and thatch dwellings.⁶ This spatial distribution changed toward the end of the century, as the middle and upper classes moved northward, settling around the suburb of Chapinero.⁷

In its demographic expansion during the nineteenth century, Bogotá parallels that of those Latin American cities that did not experience marked levels of foreign migration. (See Table 1.) There is little evidence that changes in birthrates or mortality rates dramatically affected the city’s size until the twentieth century. Instead, civil unrest, migration from the countryside, and the pace of economic expansion determined the rate of urban growth. Economic stagnation and widespread civil disorder during the post-independence period helps to account for the slow rate of expansion in the 1820s to 1860s, while the improved economic situation of the city and region accounts for the growth after the 1870s.⁸ These same variables determined the tempo of expansion in Lima, Peru. Buenos Aires, by contrast, displayed a markedly distinct growth pattern due to high levels of foreign immigrants and its sustained economic development.⁹

A description of the city’s social structure is complicated by the failure of social scientists to agree upon a common set of criteria by which to stratify the society of the nineteenth-century city. The two-class model that dominated analyses of the region through the 1950s has given way to various analytical constructs with at least three layers that contain major substrata variously defined as subcultures, classes, occupations, or social classes.¹⁰ R. S. Neale’s five-class model, though elaborated for England, is particularly instructive for this study. Neale isolates the upper class, middle class, middling class, working class A, and working class B within the context of political and social conflict of nineteenth-century England. His image of class divisions revolves around access to the polity and socioeconomic status, both of which are revealed by social tensions. For Neale, these considerations combine to make the middling sector a critical barometer of change in representative politics and economic growth. During periods of growth, the upward mobility of working class A into the middling class is more possible, as is the shift of the latter into the middle class, which contributes to increased pressures for an expanded voice in the polity. Periods of decline restrict upward mobility, forcing many in the middling class downward, producing tensions of a different nature.¹¹

The distinct levels of industrialization in early nineteenth-century England and Bogotá give different weights to the compositions of these five classes, especially in the middle, middling, and A working classes. The Colombian capital had smaller numbers of professionals, relatively few members of the industrial proletariat, but significantly larger numbers of artisans. Consequently, artisans had a proportionately more important role in Bogotá than in the English urban setting. Moreover, the impact of economic change upon that sector, in combination with the crucial role of the urban middling class in the formation of Colombian political culture, suggests that, in the Colombian setting, artisans served as a critical indicator of urban economic and political change.¹²

The full weight of Neale’s image of class contention becomes apparent only when variables of social stratification, social class, class consciousness, and relations to authority are considered in combination.¹³ José Escorcia’s studies of nineteenth-century Cali argue that property ownership (or the lack of it), ethnic stratifications, and political power combine to define the social structure of the Cauca valley. In the city, merchant and mining interests, “second step” creole elites, an intermediate strata of small property owners, artisans, and controlled-wage laborers served as nubs of social identification. Social conflict revolved around how these multiple sectors were affected by property interests, ethnic rivalries, and access to political power.¹⁴ Together, these factors, which parallel those in Neale’s five-class model, contributed to a period of intense social conflict in western Colombia.

The lack of anything resembling the archival data that supports Escorcia’s analysis complicates the construction of a comparable profile of Bogotá. (See Tables 2 and 3.¹⁵) The analysis of extant data on various occupational categories, assigned essentially according to levels of skill, reveals that the relative composition of each category remained rather constant during the course of the nineteenth century. This is especially true of the skilled-labor sector, which was by and large composed of artisanal workers. According to the 1851 census of Las Nieves, just over 36 percent of all adult males with stated occupations called themselves artisans. Only 1 percent of the women referred to themselves as artisans. Clearly craftsmen is an appropriate label. Demographic information from the 1880s suggests the same 36 percent, a figure that coincides well with the 31 percent artisan share reported in an 1893 directory. The 1912 census enumerated 28,027 workers in the city, 32 percent of whom were classified as practicing artes y oficios along with their apprentices. (See Table 4.) These data fit within the range of artisan compositions reported in other nineteenth-century Latin American cities.¹⁶ If we interpret these data with healthy portions of salt, the argument that artisan workers persisted as important components of the productive structure seems plausible.

Qualitative descriptions of Bogotá’s social stratifications reinforce the quantitative data’s suggestion of less radical social transformation during the nineteenth century. The Scottish-born John Steuart, writing in the late 1830s, noted three strata: the poorest, made up of peons and “lower” house servants; the second class, which consisted of artisans, small shopkeepers, and the “best” servants; and the gente decente, the highest level of society, which included hacendados, larger merchants, and holders of important political posts. Dress habits accentuated the class distinctions: artisans and their peers wore ruanas (a Colombian poncho); the upper-class men wore coats; and the pueblo (lower classes) walked barefoot.¹⁷

Two travelers in the 1880s commented upon similar divisions, albeit with somewhat less distinct boundaries and more complex strata. According to the Swiss Ernst Röthlisberger, the “people” (gente del pueblo) occupied the lowest rung on the social ladder. They toiled as agricultural workers, day laborers, water carriers, and servants. Moneyed aristocrats and a “nobility” (nobleza) consisting of liberal professionals such as doctors or lawyers occupied the upper class. Alfred Hettner agreed on the composition of the upper classes, which included both the upper-class and nobleza groups, but added the middle classes, which consisted of artisans, empleados, shopkeepers, and the like. For both travelers, the use of the ruana generally divided the middle from the upper sectors, just as the non-use of shoes divided the pueblo from the middle classes. Both Röthlisberger and Hettner noted, however, that by the 1880s many artisans dressed like members of the upper class and exhibited similar material characteristics, suggesting a weakening of these social distinctions.¹⁸

Casta considerations inevitably enter the discussion of Latin American social stratification schemes. The correlation between racial labels and occupational practice becomes very difficult to establish when examining the republican period, when racial labels were removed from most public documents. At best it is safe to say that Bogotá was largely a white/mestizo town in the later colonial period and probably remained so through the nineteenth century. A 1789 parochial census labeled 91 percent of the population as white or mestizo. Blacks made up 5.7 percent of the population and Indians 3 percent.¹⁹ However imprecise this count, it seems that most of Bogotá’s late-colonial residents were either white or mestizo, an assessment with which travelers throughout the nineteenth century concurred.²⁰ The 1917 national census estimated that whites or mestizos constituted 93 percent of the population, blacks 1 percent, Indians 2.7 percent, and the remainder was unknown.²¹ While one cannot extend the argument into occupational analysis with great confidence, nineteenth-century observers noted the lightest skin at the upper levels of society and the darker tones at the lower, suggesting that casta and class were positively correlated, a pattern common to much of Latin America.

Artisans

Defining artisan is an arduous task. From the point of view of production, distinguishing the skilled craftsman from the unskilled laborer is relatively simple. However, the label artisan had a social meaning that overshadows its productive function. An early eighteenth-century definition introduces the problem. It describes artisans as those “who earn their daily bread with their hands; and it especially means that they have a public shop and are involved in mechanical trades. Also called . . . oficiales, . . . obreros [or] menestrales.”²² The Oxford English Dictionary seconds the importance of the manual, industrial arts in defining the term.²³

In the Hispanic context, ascribed social position and the social stigma of manual labor complicates the matter. According to Spanish law in the Americas, only pure-blooded Spaniards could gain membership in guilds, denying mixed bloods, at least in theory, access to the organized trades. In fact, mestizos and mulattos regularly joined guilds, although they were less frequently represented among the masters. Moreover, manual labor was thought by many to be a less than honorable way to earn one’s living. One artisan noted in 1858 that the colonial belief that “the arts are dishonorable” handicapped the efforts of manual laborers to earn public recognition of their social value.²⁴ Manual labor brought with it a social stigma, one that forged among craftsmen a shared identity in opposition to those who thought themselves above such toil.

Scholars who define the artisan in the non-Iberian context tend to stress different variables. Karl Marx characterized artisans as members of the petit bourgeoisie who lived off their own labor but also the labor of others, especially journeymen and apprentices who toiled in the shops of master craftsmen.²⁵ Eric Hobsbawm, following the analytical insights of Frederick Engels, identifies the artisan as the “labor aristocrat” of late nineteenth-century England.²⁶ The skilled manual labor required for work, in combination with control over that skill, is a frequently cited mechanism for defining the artisan. Many classify artisans as skilled manual workers and make little effort to isolate other characteristics of labor activity.²⁷ Howard B. Rock defines the artisan as “a skilled handicraftsman, owning his own tools, who worked either for himself or as a foreman for a contractor or merchant, in which case he was master craftsman, or else for a daily or weekly wage in which case he was a journeyman.”²⁸ E. P. Thompson’s masterpiece (itself an artisan word), The Making of the English Working Class, extends the conceptualization of artisans, suggesting that class is an experience that “happens when some men [people], as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men [people] whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs.”²⁹ Artisans worked as skilled craftsmen who shared not only patterns of labor but also experiences of life, including trade or guild membership, social standing, cultural practices, and, often, economic fortunes. Artisans became members of a class when their experiences produced a consciousness and set of activities that distinguished them from other social sectors.

Bogotano artisans were defined first by their status as skilled manual laborers. Those skills, acquired through a lengthy apprenticeship, afforded craftsmen a middling social status and a degree of economic and social independence, especially for master craftsmen. As independent producers, artisans were less beholden to others, which set them apart from the majority of urban dwellers. At the same time, manual labor in the Hispanic context carried a social blemish that separated artisans from higher social strata. Second, insofar as most artisans were apprenticed in the shop (taller) of a master, they acquired not only the skills of a trade but also the social traditions of the shop. Apprenticeship initiated the artisan into both the “society” of artisans and the world of the skilled laborer. Artisans learned social values in the shop, which, in combination with the independence that came with their labor, sustained the pride “de ser artesano” (to be an artisan). Craftsmen not only did skilled manual labor, they were skilled manual laborers. Thus, de ser artesano implies not only a collective identity emanating from a shared productive function, but also common social values, and position vis-à-vis other social sectors. Changing economic conditions over the course of the nineteenth century threatened many artisans, heightening this sense of shared identity. So, too, did their recruitment into the political arena by partisan elites. Economic threats and political recruitment forged an artisan class during the middle decades of the century, a class that (as will be seen) articulated its ideology most forcefully in the Union Society of Artisans (1866–68).

Artisan nevertheless served as a variable label according to the context in Bogotá. For example, an “artisan” newspaper in the 1860s argued that craftsmen constituted two-thirds of the nation’s populace, if one included seamstresses and displaced craftsmen in that portion. The same paper frequently complained of the indiscriminate use of the term artisan and attested that only 10 percent of the city’s population deserved the title.³⁰ The obviously contradictory usage stems from the fact that in one instance an appeal was being made to the broader population and in the other instance artisans were seeking to set themselves apart from the “mass” for purposes of identification. Artisans saw themselves as both a part of and distinct from the pueblo as it fit their purposes. This indicates a middling social position that linked artisans to two social worlds, both of which might be used to certain advantages in the political context.

Only general insights about craft stratification are available. The absence of formal guilds stimulated viceregal officials during the Bourbon reform era (1777) to establish such a system, but with little success.³¹ Guilds did not become firmly established, however, and their abolition in 1824 evoked little opposition.³² Nevertheless, an 1858 account, “The Artisan of Bogotá,” claimed that during the colonial period, masters (jefes or dueños del taller) and journeymen (oficiales or jornaleros) were clearly distinguishable, both socially and economically. Masters exerted some control over prices and successfully kept journeymen from establishing their own shops. Masters’ control over journeymen was shaken by the disruption of the Independence period, but not eliminated.³³ In keeping with republican notions of equality, masters who tried to maintain their traditional powers were attacked in the press during the 1820s.³⁴ By the 1830s, journeymen reportedly could establish their own shops and many were undermining masters through lower prices. Masters complained that while the journeymen’s labor was cheap, the quality of their goods was poor.³⁵ Despite these changes, masters and journeymen remained linked by collateral relations, by wages, and by more informal, traditional bonds. Masters still tended to dominate the relationship within the shop, but they lacked sufficient power to control all journeymen activities.³⁶ By the end of the century, internal trade distinctions appear to have given way to the economic reality that the pinnacle of the craftsmen’s profession was shop ownership.

Many artisans continued to operate their own shops with a few journeymen, thus maintaining their economic and social independence throughout the nineteenth century, even though their production undoubtedly represented a decreasing percentage of the city’s output. Others, such as the shoemaker Martín Silva, labeled themselves “industrials” by the beginning of the twentieth century. Industrials were generally craftsmen who had successfully used the division of labor to change their shop to a small manufacture. Silva, for example, practiced his craft as the owner of a shop that became increasingly larger until, in 1908, he employed thirty workers, produced a wide range of shoe styles, and had two sales rooms.³⁷ The “industry” of Silva did not compare to the fully mechanized Bavaria beer factory, which by the same year had almost four-hundred wage laborers, but it was probably typical of shops whose owners had taken advantage of the division of labor to expand their productive capacity. Of the workers who toiled for Silva and other industrials, most probably faced a life of wage labor. Some realistically might hope to achieve the independence of the artisan; only a very few would reach the status of industrial.

In addition to the artisan, the journeyman, the industrial, and assorted wage laborers, other work situations were common by the twentieth century. Concerns such as the Railroad of the Sabana employed a wide range of workers, from highly skilled to untrained manual laborers. The more skilled wage laborers in that venture often referred to themselves as artisans, although they of course lacked the economic independence of the true artisan and should 2be compared to the skilled laborer in the United States’ industrial setting. Domestic service and sewing were the dominant labor activities of women through the end of the century, when, as will be seen below, many began to enter low-skilled positions in industrial concerns.

Accurate descriptions of the composition of Bogotá’s craft structure are simply not available. The 1851 census of Las Nieves reveals that masons, carpenters, cobblers, tailors, cabinetmakers, and blacksmiths constituted the bulk of the skilled trades. An 1881 guide listed sixty shoe shops, fifty tailors, a hundred or so carpentry shops, twenty printers, twenty-five blacksmiths, and an “infinity” of masons.³⁸ All these trades fit well within the spectrum of traditional crafts. The guide included no “modern” wage occupations filled by males, although females labored in cigar and match factories. A 1904 listing of trades represented in the Sociedad Unión de Industriales y Obreros included most traditional trades, along with brewerymen and electrical installers.³⁹ Trades participating in a 1914 workers’ celebration were dominated by traditional crafts, but also included industrials and factory workers (from breweries, the electric company, glass factory, railroads, chocolate factories, and cement plants).⁴⁰

Bogotá’s occupational structure might well be compared to the “bastard workshop” described by Sean Wilentz in his study of nineteenth-century New York, albeit set in a far less dynamic economic environment. Metropolitan industrialization affected different trades according to their capacity to resist commercialization and rationalization in varied ways. Sweated trades such as clothing production rapidly lost their craft character in the New York setting. Similar trades in Bogotá faced increased pressure from foreign-made goods. In New York, certain transport and construction trades retained their fundamental integrity, as they did in the Colombian capital. Other crafts fell somewhere in between.⁴¹ In both instances, production pressures forced craftsmen to adapt their own shops and work rhythms in order to maintain their financial well-being.

Public ceremonies, such as the 20 de julio celebration of Colombian independence or May Day, provided the opportunity for public manifestations of social solidarities. That artisans were an important collective force in Bogotá’s social world is evident in public ceremonies and in expressions of class cohesion. A typical festive occasion in the early national period included events sponsored by the employees of the national and state governments, the military, hacendados, merchant groups, foreigners residing in the city, and artisans.⁴² Similar groups participated in Holy Week (Semana Santa) activities throughout the nineteenth century. Not until the early 1910s did ceremonies depart from these patterns. By then, working sectors marched as wage laborers and artisanal workers in May Day and Independence Day parades, sometimes according to trade.⁴³ Quite significantly, artisan political organizations attracted large numbers of craftsmen during the same periods (1830s–60s) in which public ceremonies saw artisans represented as a collective entity. By the twentieth century, ceremonies reflected the increased divisions of the city’s laboring population, such as the wage and craft workers in the 1910 centennial of Colombian independence.

Craft traditions set artisans apart from other social sectors. Certain work habits, such as taking Monday off (“St. Monday”), are commonly associated with artisanal and preindustrial labor settings. Evidence suggests that hacer lunes, as it was referred to in Bogotá, persisted through the last and into the present century. In 1867, the carpenter Rafael Tapias criticized this habit, saying that the “Bacchanalian excess” of the Monday celebration not only lost the artisan an estimated forty-eight pesos yearly, but also gave rise to heated political debate and violence.⁴⁴ Hostile responses from other craftsmen forced Tapias to add that his intention had not been to criticize anyone’s work habits, but only to point out the loss of time and danger of mixing fun and politics.⁴⁵ Thirty years later, a leading artisan defended the tradition by commenting that, since artisans were their own bosses, the days they chose not to work were their own decision.⁴⁶ Early factory concerns encountered problems when managers tried to impose a stricter time regimen upon recently recruited laborers. One 1904 account noted that laborers rejected the industrial discipline; they wanted to enjoy their work and hacer lunes.⁴⁷ Even in the 1990s one hears reference to el lunes de los zapateros (cobblers’ Monday).

Almost every petition to the government from artisans cited families and social worth as reasons that the government should support artisan interests. In most artisan families both men and women worked, as did children old enough to be apprenticed or earn some money. Apprenticeship began around age seven or eight and would last for six or seven years. At least one report in the 1860s admitted that artisans apprenticed more youngsters than business could sustain, but that the social obligations of shop owners outweighed purely financial considerations in agreeing to train new craftsmen.⁴⁸ A 1906 propaganda article against the sale of ready-made imported clothes is rooted in this theme.

If the importation of these articles brings the paralyzation of work and with this misery to those homes [of craftsmen], the responsibility will weigh heavily upon us; remember the terrible words that your father used on many occasions when work was short and the situation hard and troubled: Oh! ready made clothes! These damned clothes steal the bread from my children! When will we see these men who import them [realize] . . . how impossible it is for us to earn our living and provide bread for our children?⁴⁹

It is impossible to isolate the artisan shop from the artisan home, either physically or socially. Together they served as the primary sources of social values and class consciousness. The language of artisan petitions, with constant joint references to home and work and to the artisan fate as a microcosm of national society, is the language of the artisan class.⁵⁰ It is on this base that class mobilizations rested.

The question of who spoke for artisans requires a final comment. An 1868 artisan newspaper observed that many masters had the “absurd idea” that they were the social superiors of journeymen.⁵¹ Since most voices seeking to speak for the artisan class came from shop owners, a troublesome question central to this study must be asked. If masters saw themselves as unequal to journeymen, how representative, then, were their voices? No unwavering answer can be presented, but one of the arguments to be forwarded by this study is that one can, up to a point, judge the representativeness of artisan leaders both by their ability to successfully mobilize their subordinate counterparts and by their staying power as leaders. Artisans who were skilled and lasting advocates of their class interests were able to persist as leaders because they were more, rather than less, representative of those whose opinions are not available for historical examination.

Economic Environment

Independence accelerated the pace of Colombia’s integration into the world market, even while the more permanent features of that relationship were not defined until the early years of the twentieth century. Coffee’s eventual position as the mainstay of Colombian exports came only after a series of disappointing failures after mid-century in export commodities such as tobacco and cinchona bark (quina, a source of quinine). Even with coffee’s role as the country’s primary export commodity and generator of capital, its development had an unequal impact upon various areas of the country. Due to its geographical isolation and the halting development of export commodities, the highland capital was only sporadically affected by the gradual development of an export-driven economy. Extensive portions of the central highlands did not benefit directly from the coffee boom of the late nineteenth century and exhibited traditional characteristics well into this century. These general economic patterns fuel the debate over the degree of economic continuity from colonial to national periods.⁵² Recent literature indicates the persistence of colonial economic patterns until mid-century in most areas of the country, followed by the slow and uneven development of external relationships thereafter with many regional variations.⁵³ Most of the country was not integrated into the world market until well into the twentieth century. This slow pace of economic change meant that social structures would be only gradually transformed, which insured the continued presence of craftsmen in Bogotá’s labor structure.

Colombian economic history and the policies that shaped it follow a generational rhythm. Independence leaders conducted themselves in ways that reveal their familiarity with colonial policies, with their experiences during the war for independence, and with the pragmatic fiscal needs of a young government. Economic policy did not rapidly depart from its colonial patterns until at least the mid-century, when a generation of politicians born during the national period wrestled control of the government from their elders. These leaders soundly rejected the country’s colonial inheritance and imposed reforms based upon liberal economic principles and a belief in export-driven growth. The short-lived expansion of tobacco production in the Magdalena River valley, fueled by the abolition of the colonial tobacco monopoly and a receptive foreign market, appeared to validate the correctness of the reform program. However, by the 1860s tobacco profits plummeted and again a more pragmatic tone invaded the political elite. As a consequence, the shapers of the Constitution of 1886 returned the state to a more direct role in economic development, rejecting the laissez-faire orientations of the earlier generation of liberal reformers. The Regeneration government facilitated the rise of coffee by interventionist economic policies and helped to spur, in Medellín and to a lesser extent in Bogotá, the development of a nascent industrial capacity.

These economic turns and policy shifts affected the capital’s artisan class. Policy makers, on the whole, retained many colonial programs during the so-called Neo-Bourbon period (1821–46), during which time the state continued to assume partial responsibility for economic development, policies largely favorable to craftsmen.⁵⁴ The fledgling government of Simón Bolívar, managed by Francisco de Paula Santander, did make several important policy changes, included the abolition of Indian tribute, elimination of fees on interprovince commerce, and removal of most applications of the alcabala (a sales tax), but none that affected artisans detrimentally. The fiscal needs of the republican government necessitated retention of various monopolies, including the lucrative tobacco monopoly, and tithes on production. Even those politicians who found these practices ideologically distasteful saw the necessity of preserving the more lucrative ones.⁵⁵

The most reliable source of government revenue—tariffs—directly influenced the country’s artisans.⁵⁶ Little difference in the level of tariff duties can be seen from the late colonial to early national periods, but in neither instance were rates extremely high.⁵⁷ Methods of assessment were altered and tariff schedules adjusted during the 1820s, but the essential degree of protection was not significantly altered. As tariffs were the largest single source of revenue for the government, few officials were willing to reduce the already meager fiscal base of the government. Even with moderate tariff reductions, however, and with the opening of Colombian ports in the 1820s, manufactured products far superior to earlier Spanish products entered the country in ever-increasing quantities.⁵⁸ José Manuel Restrepo suggested that the depressed conditions in the early 1830s stemmed as much from the introduction of foreign goods into national markets as from civil disorder.⁵⁹ Perhaps as a result, both the 1832 and 1833 tariffs afforded increased protection levels for domestic producers. Finance Minister José Ignacio de Márquez insisted that the latter schedule include protection, as well as revenue, as one of its formal objectives. In addition to customs duties, local and provincial taxes on imported goods added to the economic protection of the native producer.⁶⁰

The Colombian capital served as the center of an upland market that stretched from Ibagué to the west and Bucaramanga to the north. Extreme geographical obstacles and poor roads limited commodity exchanges in the region to only the most valuable items—by weight. Bogotá, which had functioned primarily as an administrative center in the colonial period, produced goods consumed primarily in the city and its products did not circulate widely.⁶¹ The Gran Colombian government had formally opened its ports to foreign commerce in 1824, thus legalizing the trade that had developed since the early days of the independence war.⁶² Bogotá then became the distribution hub of various imported items.⁶³ John Steuart, writing in the 1830s, noted the presence of abundant quantities of British products, especially textiles, in Bogotá’s marketplace.⁶⁴ Nevertheless, the state of the region’s transportation network served to limit the quantities of foreign goods.

Economic stagnation contributed to the city’s isolation. Only in the 1830s was the economy even mildly stimulated, most likely by the return of peace after the political crisis following Bolivar’s death. The situation again became severe after the War of the Supremes (1839–42), the first partisan struggle of the century (discussed below). Judás Tadeo Landínez, a capitalist from Boyacá, helped sustain the government with loans during the worst stages of the war, as tariff revenues had been cut off and the government was in a desperate situation. With the very profitable results of his loans, Landínez invested heavily in sabana land holdings, spurring other investors to do the same. The ensuing explosion of speculation, sustained almost entirely by Landínez’s funds, burst in December 1841, dragging himself and many other speculators into bankruptcy. Credit was in very short supply in Bogotá from 1842 to 1843 as a result of the speculation crisis.⁶⁵

Government-aided industrial projects in the early national period offered the possibility of the transformation of the capital’s economic structure. Many early republican leaders, especially those from the highlands around Bogotá, favored governmental support of private industrial ventures as a supplement to the region’s agricultural and mining base.⁶⁶ The government would issue a monopoly for production of a certain item for a given number of years in a specified region, so that an industry might develop in a protected environment. Privileges enabled an iron works, china factory, paper plant, and factories for glass and textile production to begin operations, all industries that also enjoyed a certain degree of tariff protection.⁶⁷

These early industrial efforts nevertheless fell short of their founder’s expectations. The china factory began production in 1834 and reportedly had sufficient capacity to meet the needs of the entire nation by 1837. It operated through the end of the century. The Pacho Iron Works, granted a fifteen-year monopoly in 1827 and in production by the 1830s, proved to be an important factor in the regional economy, providing abundant quantities of lower-quality iron, which supported many spin-off industries.⁶⁸ Other ventures did not fare as well. A paper mill that began production in 1836 lasted only until 1849. The textile factory, which probably enjoyed the most protection under the tariff system, was producing good, inexpensive cotton fabric by 1838 that soon thereafter satisfied the needs of the Bogotá market. It was nonetheless bankrupt by January 1848, in part because of the credit crisis. The glass works privileged in 1834 proved to be a dismal failure.⁶⁹ Economic historians suggest that the disruptive effects of civil unrest upon capital and labor, a lack of sustained governmental support, and a market that was simply too small for consumer industries help to explain these industrial ventures. Their lack of success contributed to the governmental reorientation toward export agriculture that took place in the 1840s.⁷⁰

The effects of these industrial ventures upon the capital’s artisans were probably limited. Most factories employed foreign craftsmen and domestic unskilled laborers. On the whole, artisans labored under rather familiar conditions during the Neo-Bourbon period. Political unrest hindered their production, as did economic stagnation and the credit crisis. However, such had been the state of affairs for most of the generation since 1810. Aside from the few industrial efforts, neither the economic structure of the city nor governmental policies presented new challenges to craftsmen, although by the early 1830s some craftsmen voiced their concerns about the disruptive impact of foreign goods.⁷¹

Economic reforms during the Liberal Reform era (1846–63) threatened the relatively protected economic environment of the capital’s artisans. Liberal reformers eliminated most remnants of colonial economic policy and redirected the nature of the state’s intervention in favor of the production of export crops. The first reforms dealt with monetary and fiscal matters.⁷² The reduction of tariff barriers followed in 1847, a move deemed fundamental to the emergence of an export economy. The 1851 tariff raised duties on certain finished products somewhat, but it did not seek deliberately to protect native industries.⁷³ The stated purpose of the 1861 tariff was to produce revenues through a three-tiered system of assessment based solely upon weight, a pattern for duties that lasted until 1880.⁷⁴ Other efforts to facilitate international trade included granting duty-free status to several ports and the removal of taxes on international ships using the Magdalena River, although revenue needs forced the government to impose a mild tax on international river transportation in 1856.

The decentralization of the nation’s economic system in 1851 reflected the reformers’ belief that the economy should be allowed to function without direct interference from central authorities. A 10 percent tithe on production (diezmo) was removed from church jurisdiction and given to provincial governments, as were revenues from stamped paper. In the same spirit, much of the rest of the state’s fiscal apparatus was decentralized in 1850. At least initially, decentralization was a fiscal disaster. It was one reason for a 47 percent drop in national revenues between 1849 and 1851.⁷⁵ The demonopolization of tobacco production, begun in 1846 and completed in 1850, accounted for a considerable portion of lost government revenues. (Neither the salt nor liquor [aguardiente] monopoly was altered.) Liberal legislators anticipated that duties from increased production and exportation of tobacco would offset revenue losses from demonopolization. Tobacco production boomed in the Ambalema area under the direction of the Montoya y Sáenz firm and became the country’s most important export commodity through the 1870s. While it is questionable that earnings from tobacco exports indeed compensated the revenue losses from demonopolization, the nation’s economy was firmly reoriented toward the production of export crops.⁷⁶

Bogotá’s economic performance in large part paralleled the fortunes of regional export commodities and the level of civil tranquility. Weak exports and the disruption caused by the War of the Supremes, in combination with the Landínez bankruptcy, mired the city in the economic doldrums for much of the 1840s. The rapid expansion of tobacco production in the Ambalema region reversed this trend, leading to an economic upsurge that dominated the 1850s.⁷⁷ Unfortunately, the worldwide recession of 1857–58, coupled with the Colombian civil war of 1859–62, drove the economy into a deep recession that lasted throughout the 1860s—precisely when the tariff reductions of the 1840s and lowered transportation costs began to impact the city’s craft sector. By 1863, complaints of general economic misery caused by the war abounded; it was said to have hurt artisans, though not to the same extent as unskilled laborers. A year later even many independent artisans were reportedly hard pressed to find work.⁷⁸ Miguel Samper’s noted essay, “La miseria en Bogotá,” graphically portrayed the city’s depressed condition: “Beggars fill the streets and plazas. . . . The worker can not find constant employment, nor can the shop masters count on work; the property owner receives neither rent payments nor new rents; the shop-keeper does not sell, nor buy, nor pay, nor is paid; one sees the importer’s wares undisturbed in his store and his payments asleep in his wallet; the capitalist does not receive interest nor the employees salary.”⁷⁹ One artisan referred to the 1860s as the worst decade since the colonial period.⁸⁰

Artisans frequently clamored for inexpensive credit. Since craftsmen often advanced the cost of the goods involved in production, they had to arrange loans from speculators at the prevailing rate of interest, which ranged from 2 to 5 percent per month. Moreover, during time of feared or actual civil strife, such as the months prior to General José María Melo’s 1854 revolt, speculators withheld their capital and, consequently, evoked the wrath of artisans.⁸¹ The only sources of credit until 1845 had been the church or money lenders. In that year the Province of Bogotá founded a savings bank (Caja de Ahorros) that survived until 1863. The bank made funds available to investors of all social sectors.⁸² A branch of the Bank of London, Mexico and South America was established in Bogotá in 1864, but it survived only four years. The Banco de Bogotá began permanent lending services in 1871. The savings bank probably offered tradesmen the most reliable source of credit, as one of its objectives was to stimulate industry among workers and many of its depositors were craftsmen. Most of the banks founded in the 1870s favored loans to commercial concerns, but one, the Banco Popular, was designed to help smaller investors. Its shares sold for 50 pesos, an amount equivalent to perhaps one month’s labor by a craftsman; numerous artisans were among the initial purchasers.⁸³

The economy of the region in and around Bogotá slowly revived around 1870, due to a short-lived resurgence of tobacco exports and the first effects of coffee expansion. Favorable economic conditions lasted until the early 1880s, when tobacco’s definitive collapse, a temporary decline in coffee prices, and civil unrest caused a three-year downturn, after which the capital entered a ten-year expansionary phase. Domestic price inflation, war, and fluctuating coffee prices in the international market precipitated a period of economic decline in the mid-1890s. After the War of the 1000 Days (1899–1902), the capital entered a period of growth that lasted, with a few short recessions, until the Depression.

Numerous small industries and factories developed in the capital in this era, although without a marked impact on the male labor force. Another china factory opened in 1870, as did the Rey y Borda match factory, which by 1874 employed over two-hundred women. One hundred and fifty women labored in that same year in a cigar factory.⁸⁴ A Cuban cigarette factory, La Estrella de Bogotá, founded in 1883, used imported Cuban tobacco, Spanish paper, Cuban cigar masters, and employed some thirty to forty Colombian women workers. La Equitativa chocolate factory, established shortly thereafter by Luis M. Azcueñaga, also employed mostly female labor.⁸⁵ These early industries were oriented, on the whole, toward the production of consumer goods using low technology and unskilled labor. They did not compete with skilled artisanal production, nor did they complement traditional crafts.

Tariff rates had not been lowered to a degree that rapidly undermined domestic crafts production, contrary to craftsmen’s predictions.⁸⁶ In fact, the reorientation of the economy toward the external market ended the stagnation of the earlier period, which undoubtedly benefited many craftsmen, especially in construction trades. However, at the same time, the disruption of the ambience in which artisans labored altered the composition of the capital’s craft economy. Foreign competition increasingly threatened marginal producers, especially in trades such as shoemaking, tailoring, and leather work. By contrast, lowered tariff rates had little effect on construction trades, which owed their prosperity (or lack of it) to general economic conditions. The depression of the 1860s was probably very important in determining which trades would remain competitive and which would be reduced in significance.

Rafael Núñez repudiated many of the more dogmatic tendencies of economic liberalism after he assumed the presidency in 1880 in favor of more state-directed developmental policies. A national bank, founded in 1881, emitted paper money, which, in periods of moderate emissions, stimulated the local and regional economies. However, illegal emissions in the 1890s helped to destabilize the economy in the critical years before the War of the 1000 Days.⁸⁷ Moreover, the paper money policy of Núñez and his successor, Miguel Antonio Caro, alienated many merchants who preferred the adherence to a metallic standard. Núñez favored protection of national industries and successfully pressed the passage of the Tariff of 1880, which, although it lowered the basic rate, protected tailoring, shoemaking, and furniture production through a 25 percent surcharge. Tariff rates were raised 25 percent by two legislative measures in 1885 and 1886. Industrial activity in the Medellín area expanded due to these tariffs, but they had less impact on bogotano industries. Fiscal needs drove tariff rates upward through the 1890s. President Rafael Reyes’s tariff of 1905 further stimulated industrial growth, even though the tariff was primarily fiscal in nature.⁸⁸ This last measure again helped Medellín more than Bogotá.⁸⁹

Bogotá’s first major industrial complex, the Bavaria brewery, run by German-born Rudolf Kopp, introduced significant numbers of men into the factory system. Kopp used German technology and brewery masters and Colombian labor. His factory followed German industrial patterns, which by 1894 included workers’ housing next to the brewery. Weekly wages in the enterprise were reportedly the highest in the city, supplemented by health insurance, loans, sick pay, and up to two liters of beer a day. In return for such benefits, Kopp demanded rigid industrial discipline from his three hundred male and female workers (1906). Indeed, Bavaria’s managerial inflexibility sparked a series of conflicts over the pace of work and control of time, just as in most early United States industrial operations.⁹⁰

New monopolies on cigar, cigarette, and match production provided yet another component of the Núñez government policy to spur industrial development while providing urban women with jobs. The Regeneration’s moves to draw women into industrial labor evidenced some success after the War of the 1000 Days. El Rey del Mundo, a cigarette factory owned by the Spaniard Esteban Verdu, employed fifty women in 1904. Verdu also demanded strict discipline from his workers, who, according to one visitor to the plant, worked like “human machines.” The same commentator noted that this “kept them off the streets.” By 1916 some two-hundred women and fifty men labored for Verdu. In the latter year, however, heavy taxes on tobacco forced closure of Verdu’s plant and those of several other cigarette manufacturers, even as workers sought to change the industrial work discipline under which they labored.⁹¹

Conclusion

Colombian economic policies influenced the socioeconomic experience that sustained artisan political activity. Many Spanish colonial policies continued during the Neo-Bourbon period. After 1846, policymakers liberalized the economy to facilitate international trade and export agriculture. The Regeneration governments of the 1880s moderated this liberalism with the overt stimulation of internal industries and the establishment of protective tariffs, even while external trade remained the dominant economic priority. Post-1903 governments continued the policies of the Regeneration.

Artisans shared a common socioeconomic experience, especially during the first generation of Colombian independence, as they labored in an economic environment rather similar to that of the late colonial period through the Neo-Bourbon period and into the 1850s. Although it has yet to be proven statistically, it seems probable that the economic reforms of the 1840s and 1850s had, by the 1870s, undermined the cohesive economic and social traditions of Bogotá’s craftsmen. Socioeconomic distinctions became more apparent during the last thirty years of the nineteenth century as some trades hurt by foreign competition went into decline and others, largely unaffected by governmental policies, retained characteristics similar to those of the earlier period. Practitioners of displaced crafts and those of stable trades lost many of the shared experiences that had earlier bonded the craftsmen, fragmenting, as a consequence, their social, economic, and political lives. It was during these years that separate trade labels began to identify craftsmen. Moreover, by the 1890s, the creation of limited industrial and transport concerns gave rise to a small but important “modern” wage-labor sector. Various types of workers formed the occupational structure by the 1910s, employing both traditional and more modern productive techniques in a mixed-labor system, in which each laboring class had its own social norms and, as a result, its own organized political expression.

The orientation of the country’s economic structure toward participation in the world market slowly created a multifaceted labor force. One of its facets was much more influenced by policies that aided the development of an export economy and increased importation of foreign manufactured goods, policies which brought with them expanded transportation and commercial activities. Artisans affected by these policies lost their productive independence in a slow process of proletarianization. In rural areas, an agro-export labor force evolved to sustain the coffee economy. Other sectors of the economy were affected more by general economic conditions than by specific governmental programs, which sustained the growth of industrial, service, and informal workers (e.g., street merchants). Many trades continued to employ traditional productive practices throughout the period studied and retained their status as independent artisanal producers, even while the larger economic structure had seen radical change.

The transitions that redefined the artisan class are of particular importance for understanding artisan political activity. Both the credit crisis of the 1840s and the artisanal crisis of the 1860s prepared the way for intense political mobilizations by artisans. Significantly, both periods of activity occurred prior to increased fragmentation of the artisan sector. As a result, movements drew the participation of large numbers of craftsmen in defense of widely held beliefs. The same level of political activity would not return until the 1910s, when surviving artisans and emerging wage-laborers combined to initiate a new stage of political activity by Colombian workers, one that revealed quite distinct social ideologies.