Liberty and Equality in Caribbean Colombia, 1770-1835

The Haitian Revolution seemed to echo infinitely in the nineteenth-century white psyche. Simply the idea of black action coupled with the might of French declarations of republican fortitude kept many perpetually chasing the ghost of slave revolt in their own backyards. This was no less the case for colonial Colombia. As the University of Geneva's (Switzerland) Aline Helg persuasively argues, the Haitian specter virtually blinded local white elites. Instead, an intense racial component all but ignored the very real threat from Native Americans in the area in favor of keeping the nonwhite population immobilized. After an almost blinding turning of events beginning around 1810, a dizzying racial make-up and a pocketed social formation kept much of the colony from effectively organizing to challenge an already weakened Spanish presence.Simon Bolivar's appearance changed the trajectory of the independence movement in Latin American. Initially thwarted by incessant infighting within a group of New Granada's elites, Bolivar wisely left the region and plotted his return. Unbeknownst to them at the time, the anti-Spanish masses squandered perhaps their best opportunity to seize independence from an absent King Ferdinand VII. Local concerns over regional and national attachments were evident almost immediately. Various enclaves, to cite one instance, simply renegotiated their alliances to suit the most pressing local needs. For Helg this is no small matter. She demonstrates, more to the point, that the infinite kinship and patronage ties at the village and city level bound a diverse grouping of people in ways that race and often class simply could not.Helg's conclusions are as powerful as they are persuasive. Her findings add a tremendous counter-narrative, in many ways, to the oft-repeated mantra of race, class, and gender as somehow absolutely binding criteria for group identity formation. The author, it should be noted, does not argue that those categories did not matter for the black and colored majority. Instead, Helg suggests that the racial landscape was fragmented, mind numbingly diverse, and constantly redefined in the face of both internal and external factors. Drastic population reductions and broken community networks, particularly after the First Independence period, are only two such example of the new socioracial reality that groups adjusted to in countless ways.To reconstruct the social and political landscape of colonial Colombia, Helg consulted archives on five continents. Combining a careful if daunting blend of contemporary accounts, travel narratives, royal memoranda, and elite correspondence with vast secondary works, Liberty & Equality in Caribbean Columbia is remarkable for its ambitious grasp of the transnational narrative, analysis, and attention to context. While at times the somewhat haphazard narrative pace confuses the reader--particularly regarding Bolivar's ascendance in Latin America--Helg's historical vision amply makes up for any serious defects.The African experience in the Caribbean only once reached the height of the Haitian example. Far from Bolivar's pathetic ramblings of "pardocracia," Africans and their descendants struggled simply to survive. Whether in the urban centers or at the peripheries of empire, free and enslaved alike sought meaning for their lives in daily rituals and communal relations. Helg's account profoundly emphasizes the fact that the most remarkable of the lot did not appear in 1791 only after burning Le Cap, but instead of the countless numbers that contributed in countless ways to the diverse Colombian experience itself.

So interesting and informative I had no idea that historians has tried to block out the African heritage of Columbian’s Caribbean coast.I also had no idea that in Columbia today one in three piropos is of African descent