Welcoming Alexander von Humboldt in Santa Fé de Bogotá, or the Creoles' self-celebration in the colonial city

Abstract

On 8 July 1801, Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland arrived in Bogotá. They were welcomed by a large parade that escorted them from the edges of the city to the house of José Celestino Mutis, director of the Royal Botanical Expedition of the New Kingdom of Granada and the first promoter of natural philosophy in this kingdom. This essay explores two main ideas from the perspective of political symbolism. First, the author argues that this magnificent welcome was a sign of respect and admiration for the German scientist, while at the same time serving as an opportunity for New Granada's educated Creoles to publicly call attention to their importance and prestige. Second, the author explores Humboldt's thoughts about the Creoles' social attitudes and the colony's potential emancipation from Spain.

Keywords:

• Alexander von Humboldt
• José Celestino Mutis
• New Kingdom of Granada
• Creoles
• natural philosophy

Notes

1. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.

2. Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, Empire, and Nation, 5; see also chap. 6.

3. Humboldt, Cartas americanas, 85.

4. The bibliography related to Mutis and his Botanical Expedition in the New Kingdom of Granada is abundant. Some of the most relevant studies are: Amaya, Mutis, Apóstol de Linneo; Frías Núñez, Tras el dorado vegetal; Hernández de Alba, Historia documental; San Pío Aladrén, Mutis; and Soto Arango, Mutis.

5. For the incorporation of Newtonian philosophy in Santa Fé, see Hernández de Alba, “Humboldt y Mutis.” On the history of education in the New Kingdom of Granada, see Silva, Universidad y sociedad. On Mutis and his pedagogical and educational influence, see Soto Arango, Mutis, and Nieto Lozano, La educación. On education during colonial times in general, see Gonzalbo, Historia de la educación, and Lanning, Academic Culture.

6. One can discern three different periods with respect to the importance of Humboldt in Latin American cultural production. The first period starts with his visit to the Caribbean and South America (1799–1804) and covers the process of independence. The Creoles who welcomed Humboldt in the various Spanish-American cities, and Simón Bolívar himself, were the first to announce and promote the value of the new dimension that Humboldt's work gave to American geography and its cultural past. In 1824, in a letter advocating for the freedom of Bonpland, who was jailed in Paraguay under the tyranny of Dr Francia, Bolívar began his missive to the tyrant by affirming that “[d]esde los primeros años de mi juventud tuve la honra de cultivar la amistad del señor Bonpland y del barón de Humboldt, cuyo saber ha hecho más bien a la América que todos los conquistadores” [During the very early years of my youth, I had the honor of nurturing a friendship with Mr Bonpland and with the Baron Humboldt, whose knowledge has benefited America more than all the Conquistadors] (Bolívar, Cartas de Bolívar, 54). The beginning of the twentieth century, until the decade of the eighties, marked a second important period in Latin American and Iberian Humboldt studies, with works produced on both sides of the Atlantic (see Miranda, Humboldt y México; Ortega y Medina, Humboldt desde México; and Pereyra, Humboldt en América). The most comprehensive and contentious study of Humboldt in America published during this time was Minguet's Alejandro de Humboldt. For Colombia, see, for example, the magazine of Colombian culture, Bolívar, vols 52–4, which are dedicated to the memory of Humboldt in honor of the centenary of his death (1959). Also published in 1959 was Pérez Arbeláez's Alejandro de Humboldt en Colombia, an extract of Humboldt's works. The third period of studies covering the presence of Humboldt in America has offered readings of his cultural and ideological influence (see Pratt, Imperial Eyes). For Atlantic perspectives on Humboldt, see Pagden, “Identity Formation,” and Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, Empire, and Nation.

7. For the socio-economic conditions of the Creoles in New Granada during Humboldt's visit, see McFarlane, Colombia before Independence, and Jaramillo Uribe, “La sociedad colombiana.”

8. For a recent study about Creoles' identity formation from a transatlantic perspective, see Bauer and Mazzotti, Creole Subjects. For seminal works on the topic of Creoles' identity formation, see Lafaye, Quetzalcóatl and Guadalupe; Lavallé, Las promesas ambiguas; Phelan, People and the King; and especially Brading, First America, and Pagden, “Identity Formation.”

9. See Humboldt, Personal Narrative, I.15. See also the letter from Humboldt to Baron von Forrell (without a date but probably from January or February of 1799), in which Humboldt outlined the specific privileges of mobility and courtesy that he wanted during his travel to South America and Cuba (Humboldt, Cartas americanas, 3–4).

10. It was in Quito where Humboldt met Carlos Montúfar, the son of the Marquis of Selva Alegre, who accompanied Humboldt and Bonpland for the rest of the expedition and even returned to Europe with them. Both Juan María Pío Montúfar and his son Carlos became heroes of the independence movement in Ecuador.

11. For pertinent studies of Spanish colonial public celebrations and their relation with political and social concepts, see Curcio-Nagy, Great Festivals and Valenzuela Márquez, Las liturgias del poder.

12. Diary entry, 23 June to 7 August 1801, in Humboldt and Faak, Reise, 93; translated by Vera Kutzinski. Botting, paraphrasing Humboldt to some extent, gives the following account: “The arrival of the expedition had been expected and the day after their arrival on the great plain before the city a cavalcade of finely dressed horsemen rode out to greet them and lead them, as distinguished visitors of the highly respected Mutis, in a triumphal procession into the capital. Humboldt was invited to sit in the archbishop's six-horse, London-built carriage, and behind him came Bonpland following in another carriage, while on either side of them trotted a large escort of sixty or more of the leading citizens of Bogotá – an escort which increased considerably in numbers as they drew near to the city. Few scientists can have been accorded such a popular civic reception and Humboldt found the whole thing almost comical. A great crowd of schoolboys and street urchins, running, shouting and pointing, stretched for a quarter of a mile behind the coaches, and every window of every house was crowded with spectators” (Botting, Humboldt and the Cosmos, 146).

13. Humboldt, Cartas americanas, 85.

14. Diary entry, 23 June to 7 August 1801, in Humboldt and Faak, Reise, 93; translated by Vera Kutzinski. See also Botting, Humboldt and the Cosmos, 146. In 1801, Santa Fé de Bogotá had approximately 21,000 inhabitants, and the city's urban development was not comparable to the wealth and cultural activities of Quito, Lima, or Mexico. For a solid study of the political and economic conditions of the New Kingdom of Granada during the eighteenth century, see McFarlane, Colombia before Independence. See also Jaramillo Uribe, “La sociedad colombiana.” For statistical information regarding population, ethnic composition, and cultural activities in Santa Fé de Bogotá between 1778 and 1806, see Vargas Lesmes, La Sociedad de Santa Fé.

15. Humboldt, Cartas americanas, 85.

16. Davis, Parades and Power, 6.

17. For the New Granada, Ramos studied these themes in relation to the concept of institutional pre-eminence in a legal case between the ecclesiastic members of the Santo Oficio and civil authorities in Cartagena in 1729. See Ramos, “Competencias.”

18. Elias, Court Society, 130.

19. For an in-depth study of the iconography and representations of colonial cities and events, see Kagan and Marias, Urban Images, and Phelan, Ceremonial and Political Roles.

20. For a detailed list and comments on public festivities and celebrations in colonial Santa Fé, see Vargas Lesmes, La sociedad de Santa Fé.

21. Quoted in Martínez, Bogotá, 60. For a detailed account of the public festivities and celebrations in Santa Fé de Bogotá during the last decades of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, see Vargas Lesmes, La sociedad de Santa Fé.

22. These measures taken by the Crown were put into effect in 1542 under the famous Leyes Nuevas [New Laws] of Carlos I. They were created as a reform of the previous laws of Burgos issued by Ferdinand II (the Catholic) in 1512. The New Laws were created to prevent the exploitation of the indigenous people by the encomenderos [landowners] by strictly limiting their power during the colonization process. The insubordinations of Gonzalo Pizarro against the viceroy Blasco Nuñez de Vela in 1544 in Peru and the rebellion of Cortez's brother in 1565–8, who wanted to establish an independent kingdom in Mexico, are representative cases of disobedience and political confrontation to the Crown's authority in the early stages of the conquest. See Brading, First America, and Pagden, European Encounters.

23. As Pagden has noted, a good example of this Creole uneasiness with the Crown was the relación that a commission sent to Peru in 1556 to investigate the Creoles' feelings regarding their encomiendas. The report noted that “when the encomienda had been made perpetual, would the loyalty of the criollos [Creoles] be assured, ‘for as they are feudatories they will thus quench the fires of rebellion … which until now has not been the case, rather some of them have taken some pleasure in these disturbances because they are not holders of perpetual encomiendas’” (Pagden, European Encounters, 53).

24. Quoted in Brading, First America, 298. Interracial mixing in the Spanish-American colonies created a different form of racism. On the complexities and treatment of the discourse of race in the New Granada during the nineteenth century, see Lasso, “Race War and Nation.”

25. Quoted in García Avilés, El tiempo, 19–20.

26. For this discourse on abundance in Creole historiography and iconographies, see Ortega, El discurso.

27. We can find this Creole inversion of negative European classifications in Bernardo de Balbuena's Grandeza mexicana (1604), Antonio de la Calancha's Crónica moralizada (1639), Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora's Paraíso occidental (1684), and (for the specific case of the New Kingdom of Granada) Juan de Castellanos's Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias (1595) and Lucas Fernández de Piedrahíta's Historia general de las conquistas del Nuevo Reino de Granada (1681, but written in the 1640s). See also Guzmán, “La representación.”

28. The most representative was, of course, Bolívar, whom Humboldt met in Paris in 1804. José Ignacio Pombo, a close friend of Mutis's and one of the first Creoles of New Granada to write and propose serious commercial reforms for the colonies, was one of the first to welcome Humboldt in Cartagena in March 1801. There is no question that Pombo informed Humboldt about the Creoles' complaints regarding the Crown's tight commercial regulations and policies restricting their direct administration of the political life in the colonies.

29. Humboldt, Voyage, 52; Humboldt, Personal Narrative, IV.103.

30. Humboldt, Essai politique, 2–3; Humboldt, Political Essay, 206.

31. Humboldt, Essai politique, 3; Humboldt, Political Essay, 206.

32. The encounter and subsequent relationship between Humboldt and Caldas was very problematic. Caldas, a strong admirer of Humboldt's, was waiting for him with enthusiasm and with the hope of traveling with him to Mexico and even Europe. Humboldt recognized the intelligence and value of this young Creole but decided not to take him, even though Mutis offered to cover all the expenses. See Caldas's correspondence in Castrillón Arboleda, Biografía; see also Hernández de Alba, “Humboldt y Mutis,” and Bateman, “Caldas y Humboldt.”

33. Castrillón Arboleda, Biografía, 160.

34. The year 1810 was when the political and military process of independence began in the Spanish-American possession. It was a process completely consolidated by 1819 after the definitive expulsion of the imperial army that intended to reconquer these territories between 1816 and 1819. Beginning in 1810, the viceroyalties of New Granada, New Spain, and Rio de la Plata, as well as the captaincy generals of Chile, Caracas, Quito, Santo Domingo, Guatemala, and Yucatán, all undertook efforts to establish a republican system of self-government in their respective territories. For a comparative history of the revolution in the Americas, see Langley, Americas. For New Granada, see Safford and Palacios, Colombia.

35. A prominent Creole from Santa Fé, José Antonio Nariño, was the author of the translation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which cost him imprisonment and banishment from the New Kingdom of Granada in 1795. Humboldt met him in 1795.

36. Quoted in Herna′ndez de Alba, “El 20 de Julio,” 232.

37. Quoted in Garrido, “Precursores de la independencia,” 220.

38. Cacua Prada, Don Manuel, 120.

39. Cacua Prada, Don Manuel, 119.

40. Cacua Prada, Don Manuel, 121.

41. Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, Empire, and Nation, 121.

42. Caldas, “Estado de la geografía,” 276–7.