PREFACE

IN MAY 1846, 230 ARTISANS PETITIONED THE COLOMBIAN CONGRESS to maintain existing levels of tariff protection against foreign merchandise competitive with their own products. Rumors that the congress would soon lower tariff rates sparked fears among craftsmen that the availability of greater quantities of competitive products would make their already precarious economic situation untenable. Speaking in the name of some 2,000 artisans and their families living in Bogotá (bogotanos) and for tradesmen in other areas of the country, the petitioners argued that they constituted a crucial productive sector of the domestic economy and that repercussions from the damage they would suffer would be felt by other social sectors—as the artisan class became less productive and the economy in general deteriorated. Besides, they complained, lowered rates were unjust to artisans with years of service in the national guard.¹ In spite of these arguments, congress lowered tariff rates by about 33 percent the following year. The same tradesmen thereupon formed La Sociedad de Artesanos de Bogotá in order to undertake political action to raise tariff rates to previous levels.

Bogotano craftsmen first entered the formal political process because they felt threatened by increased amounts of foreign manufactured goods in the local market. War and financial crises had already hurt their accustomed lifeways; further competition might cause them to lose the independence that their work brought them. In expressing their concerns, tradesmen thought it important to stress both their socioeconomic importance as producers and their civic services in support of the legal constitutional order. Artisans feared that the new legislation would jeopardize not only their own fortunes but also that of their families, other social sectors, and even the country as a whole. The artisans who presented this petition to the congress clearly did not view themselves in isolation, but as important components of a social environment that in its largest manifestation included the entire nation.

This study traces artisan political activity in Bogotá, Colombia, during the “long nineteenth century,” from the 1830s through the 1910s.² It reveals the social, economic, and political goals sought by artisans through active participation in a political system normally described as oligarchic. The long nineteenth century serves as a useful conceptualization of the transition from the colonial period to the establishment of national political, economic, and social norms—a process not completed in Colombia until at least the 1910s. Bogotá and Colombia experienced marked economic and social change during this period. Bogotá had a largely self-sufficient economy in the 1820s, which was supported by traditional industries and linked by mule and human carriers to a limited regional market. By the 1910s the Colombian capital was in the throes of industrialization and had been integrated by steam and rail transportation and commercial networks into both national and international markets.

The transformation of Bogotá’s and Colombia’s economies had a fundamental impact upon bogotano artisans. As the local, regional, and national economies evolved, a variety of forces threatened artisans. Many craftsmen suffered economic dislocation or proletarianization through the loss of their once isolated and protected economic niche. A few artisans emerged as small “industrials” who operated shops employing up to thirty people, but most suffered deterioration of their social and economic positions while they continued their craft activities. Artisan social relations were affected by changes in their productive function and in the larger economic environment. Relationships with other members of their class were redefined, as were those with individuals of other classes. The host of socioeconomic changes created special problems, which in turn called into being new class interests that evoked individual and collective responses by craftsmen.

In order to understand the context in which artisans pursued their specific concerns, much attention will be directed toward Colombia’s political system. The struggle for power between elite-dominated Conservative and Liberal parties constituted the catalyst of nineteenth-century Colombian politics. Elites strove to implement their own ideological programs and competed for limited governmental positions. They drew non-elite social groups into the political process in the effort to enhance their partisan chances for domination of the state apparatus. The competitiveness of the political system first enabled artisans to gain a political voice and in time offered them the opportunity to express their class objectives. Artisans were not wholly dependent upon elites for political mobilization however; at times they organized for satisfaction of their own ambitions. Yet tradesmen could not isolate themselves from established parties, and thus the narrative of their political activity is closely intertwined with that of the larger process.

Both changing socioeconomic conditions and the general political environment affected the tempo of artisan political activity. It is possible to speak of a more or less homogeneous artisan class in the beginning of the national period. Internal stratifications were present, but these did not override its essential homogeneity. The most cohesive artisan organizations existed during the generation before a profound crisis in the 1860s transformed earlier social and economic norms. As Bogotá’s economy evolved during the last third of the nineteenth century, differences in the artisan sector became more pronounced. Fragmentation of the artisan class resulted in the demise of broad mobilizations. By the beginning of this century, skilled independent craftsmen, journeymen associated with the emerging industrial concerns, proletarianized laborers, and various other types of workers made up the city’s working population. This division of the labor force, clearly visible by the 1910s, coincided with the gradual replacement of artisans as leaders of the Colombian labor movement by workers associated with industrial production, transportation systems, and the production of coffee.

Nuanced attention to the artisans and labor movement of the nineteenth century is absent in standard Colombian labor histories.³ Aside from the multitude of studies on the mid-century Sociedad Democrática de Artesanos de Bogotá, very little is known of other workers or of organizations in which they were influential.⁴ Miguel Urrutia, for example, in The Development of the Colombian Labor Movement, examines only the Democratic Society in discussing labor in the nineteenth century. Urrutia briefly mentions the formation of mutual aid societies in various cities (though he does not include those of Bogotá), but allows them no political role.⁵ Edgar Caicedo, the longtime editor of the Marxist newspaper Voz Proletaria, notes that “the activities of mutualist organizations, from the middle of the nineteenth century, constitute only the prehistory of the syndicalist movement. . . . Those organizations were heterogeneous groups of artisans, principally, with confused trade ideologies and limited objectives. To say this is not to lessen recognition of the important social and political struggles undertaken by artisans of the Democratic Societies in the dawn of Colombian capitalism.”⁶ Urrutia and Caicedo represent common tendencies in Colombian labor historiography, the focus upon twentieth century industrial and/or organized laborers, often from a traditional Marxist perspective. Few words have been dedicated to the social, cultural, or economic experiences of workers. Historical examinations of workers in cities other than Bogotá have been even sketchier. In short, little is known of organized labor activities by artisans or of the role of craftsmen in the transition to the modern labor movement.

The institutional focus and predominantly Marxist methodological analysis that dominates the study of Colombian labor history is equally apparent in the historiography of other nations of Latin America.⁷ Students of Latin American labor history have, for the most part, bypassed the nineteenth century in the rush to examine the twentieth century. Labor and syndicalist activists long dominated the discussion of the labor movement, adding a sense of urgency to their interpretations seldom found in the works of non–Latin American scholars.⁸ Representative of the traditional Marxist approach are the works of Argentine sociologist Julio Godio, who places a great emphasis upon “ideological influences” and the development of labor unions. Godio, in referring to the nineteenth century, analyzes the 1850–80 period as one of a “workers’ movement without a working class” and the 1880–1918 period as the years in which both the class and the movement itself came into being. While Godio recognizes the importance of mutual aid associations as precursors of latter-day syndicates, he fails to appreciate the conservative nature of these artisan-dominated bodies. For Godio, their importance was as a “brewing pot” for revolutionary ideologies.⁹

More recent attempts by U.S. academicians to pen histories of the Latin American labor movement have contributed to the rapid expansion of Latin American labor history. The works of Hobart Spalding, Jr., and Charles W. Bergquist stand out as stimulating interpretations of Latin American laborers within the context of national economies defined by their dependence upon the dominant North Atlantic economic structure. Spalding posits three general periods of organized labor in Latin America, each corresponding to a stage of integration into dependent economic relations. He concludes that governments have successfully restrained radical demands of laborers, thereby co-opting their movement and keeping Latin America “safe” for foreign capitalists.¹⁰ By contrast, Bergquist suggests that pressures by laborers in the export sector challenged the historic social indifference of many Latin American governments to the needs of the people and, in doing so, have ameliorated socioeconomic conditions in many countries. He allows that workers have been powerful agents in shaping nations in twentieth-century Latin America, with largely positive results.¹¹

Both of these works require the establishment of dominant export industries and dependent economic relations as catalysts to the Latin American labor movement. This approach seems partially appropriate for the comprehension of the twentieth century, especially in the analysis of Bergquist. It fails to address, however, the struggles of laborers in most industries, domestic service, non-export rural activities, and other types of work to provide for their own basic needs. Nor does it illuminate organized activity by laborers in the nineteenth century, before a dependent export economy was fully operative. Moreover, political activity undertaken by nineteenth-century laborers is often ignored, despite Bergquist’s observation that developing political systems in the nineteenth century strongly color the character of this century’s labor movements.¹²

Although “Latin American labor history has come of age,” the study of nineteenth-century artisans has not kept pace with examinations of twentieth-century wage laborers.¹³ This stands in marked contrast to historiographical trends in European or United States labor history, fields that have often favored the nineteenth-over the twentieth-century laborer.¹⁴ Especially in England and France the reactive mobilizations and violent political movements of craftsmen against threats to their labor and lives have attracted a host of scholarly studies. The same is not true of the Latin American artisan. These different trajectories are shaped in part by the perceived utility of labor studies. Imbedded in the scholarship of Europe and the United States are criticisms of industrial society and the effort to examine the characteristics of preindustrial Europe. Similarly, much of the thrust of Latin American labor history is provided by condemnations of twentieth-century social, economic, and political norms, which are frequently related to the emergence of dependent economies and exploitive relations between polities and organized labor—both of which are seen more typically as phenomena of the current century. The resolutions of these problems are not, however, for many Latin Americanists, to be found in an “idyllic” preindustrial culture such as E. P. Thompson describes for England, but in the rectification of contemporary structures of injustice. Only recently have historians begun to study nineteenth-century labor movements on their own terms. The best of these studies trace the transition from the colonial to the national periods or assist in the understanding of the transition from the early (artisan-based) to modern (wage-based) labor movement.¹⁵

The failure to investigate craftsmen and their organizational efforts clouds our understanding of the transition from colonial to “modern,” twentieth-century Latin American societies. The years after independence established social, economic, and political patterns that helped to mold contemporary Latin America. The study of artisan-based labor activity illuminates the foundations of contemporary societies. Such a project necessarily considers the socioeconomic and political contexts in which artisans labored. This simple axiom is frightfully complex. It requires the consideration of economic structures, social relations, and political machinations—unique variables for each country. Each of these themes relates to earlier patterns and to those that followed, in addition to the topic under immediate investigation. Not disregarding the peculiarities of national histories, the investigation of artisans—a social sector defined by a mode of production found in many societies—lends itself to comparative analysis. Further, nineteenth-century Latin American governments imposed essentially the same political economy, and most nations followed a similar economic trajectory. Considering the nature of artisan production, common economic policies, and similar routes of economic development—qualifications that can serve as guideposts—the study of Latin American craftsmen offers promising findings.

This effort represents one step toward that end. A detailed investigation of the artisan class of nineteenth-century Bogotá in the tradition of the once “new social history” is hampered by the availability of sources. The alcaldía, home of information on local taxes, juridical procedures, and city government, burned in 1903. Departmental archives and part of the archives of the diocese were destroyed in the 9 de abril riot, which followed the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a popular political leader, in 1948. Notarial archives are extant, but disorganized to a point of limited utility. Consequently, the nature of available sources dictates the political emphasis of this study. Fortunately, abundant data on artisan political history of the period is available in the Archivo del Congreso, the archives of the Academia Colombiana de Historia, several outstanding newspaper collections, and, perhaps most important, fine collections of political handouts and broadsides. Yet, while good data are available, their limitations define the scope of this work. Information on the artisan elite is more common than on the “rank-and-file” artisan. One can locate data on artisan political societies, but not have access to their internal functions. Informal associations are particularly difficult to document. Information on trade activities, including apprenticeship systems, are almost nonexistent, although complaints about tariff policy abound. Social information must be carefully gleaned from sources and employed with more generalization than would be desired; the data that remain dictate a political emphasis, balanced by an orientation toward social history. This includes a constant attention to economic conditions, changing modes of production, attendant cultural norms, and precisely analyzed attention to the intercourse between artisans and the polity.