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SUMMARY
Since their origins, congresses played significant roles in the emerging states of Latin America following independence from Spain. Yet their protagonism has been overshadowed by the so-called caudillos, the strongmen who seem to have dominated the politics of the region during most of the nineteenth century. This article argues that congresses were central political actors in Latin America during the century and it does so by examining their various functions. Congresses served to form governments, to define the legislative agenda and to limit the power of the executive. Congress was the institution around which political parties and their leaders were formed, while the practices of representative government developed.
Acknowledgement
I wish to thank the Centro de Estudios de Historia of the Universidad del Externado in Bogotá, and its Director, María Teresa Calderón, for their encouragement and generous support. Versions of this paper have been presented at a seminar on the history of congress in Colombia, co-organized with the Andes and Externado universities in Bogotá in 2014; at the Latin American Studies Association congress in Chicago, also in 2014; and at the 68th conference of the ICRHPI in Palma, Mallorca, 2016.
Notes
1 E. Wolf and E.C. Hansen, ‘Caudillo Politics: A Structural Analysis’, Comparative Studies in Society and Politics 9, (1967), p. 177.
2 The historiography on caudillos is extensive, but see J. Lynch, Caudillos in Spanish America, 1800–1850 (Oxford, 1992).
3 Before its emergence as an independent separate state, New Granada was part of a wider polity together with Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama, which the historiography refers to as Gran Colombia (1819–30). Following the disintegration of Gran Colombia, the country was named the republic of New Granada, until 1858, when it became the Confederación Neogranadina. It was renamed again in 1863 as the United States of Colombia until 1886, when it finally adopted its current name, the Republic of Colombia.
4 For a brief historiographical overview of ‘Namier's revolution’: I. Sharifzhanov, ‘Modern Parliamentary History: In Search of Methodological Consensus’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation 21, (2001), pp. 17–19. For a useful review of the Mexican literature, see I. Arroyo, ‘Miradas contemporáneas: el congreso mexicano del siglo XIX’, in M.L. Argudín and M.J. Rhi Sausi (eds), Repensar el siglo XIX. Miradas historiográficas desde el siglo XIX (Mexico City, 2016), pp. 115–44. While there are no prosopographical studies for Argentina, however there is some information on the social and educational background of congressmen between the 1880s and the 1940s, in D. Cantón, El parlamento argentino en épocas de cambio: 1890, 1916 y 1946 (Buenos Aires, 1916). I owe this information to Laura Cucchi.
5 I.M. Obando Camino, ‘The Congressional Committee System of the Chilean Legislature, 1834–1924’, Historia 44, (2011), pp. 165–89. See also his Legislative Institutionalization in Chile, 1834–1924 (Albany, 2009).
6 See the dated but still useful review by M.S. Thomson and J.H. Silbey, ‘Research on 19th Century Legislatures: Present Contours and Future Directions’, Legislative Studies Quarterly IX, (1984), pp. 319–50.
7 D. Bushnell, El régimen de Santander en la Gran Colombia (Bogotá, 1996; first English edition in Newark, DE, 1954), pp. 72–81; and ‘The Religious Question in the Congress of Gran Colombia’, The Americas 31, (1974), pp. 1–17. A valuable study from the social sciences which gave significance to the history of congress is J. Payne, Patterns of Conflict in Colombia (New Haven, 1968). For an old-fashioned but useful account, see Guillermo Fonnegra Sierra, El parlamento colombiano (Bogotá, 1953). For a recent study that examines the very first attempts at building congresses, see G. Ossa, Representación e independencia, 1810–1816 (Bogotá, 2007).
8 Histories of democracy tend to ignore the Latin American nineteenth-century experience. A recent revisionist view that incorporates it, however, focuses on the caudillos: J. Keane, The Life and Death of Democracy (London, 2009), pp. 374–454. For other attempts to incorporate the regional experience into the general history of democracy, see J.S. Valenzuela and E. Posada-Carbó (eds), Origins of Democracy in the Americas. The Formation of Electoral Institutions in the 19th Century (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press, 2018); E. Posada-Carbó, ‘Democracy’, in J. Kinsbruner (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture (Detroit, 2008), vol. 2, pp. 786–91. and ‘La independencia y los orígenes de la democracia en Hispanoamerica’, in H. Calvo and A. Meisel Roca (eds), Cartagena de Indias en la independencia (Cartagena, 2011), pp. 13–56; J.E. Sanders, The Vanguard of the Atlantic World. Creating Modernity, Nation and Democracy in Nineteenth-century Latin America (Durham, 2014).
9 See G. Arboleda, Historia contemporánea de Colombia (Bogotá, 1990), 12 vols. Published originally in 6 vols, between 1918 and 1935, Arboleda's Historia is a rich source for the study of congress. For general accounts on the politics of the period, see M. Palacios and F. Safford, Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided Society (Oxford, 2001), and Malcolm Deas, ‘Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador: The First Half-century of Independence’, in L. Bethell (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America, 11 vols (Cambridge, 1984–2008), vol. III (1985), pp. 507–38.
10 Arboleda, Historia contemporánea, vol. 2, pp. 366–7.
11 There were more extraordinary episodes. When a senator became ill, thus depriving the senate of the quorum, the senate decided to move the sessions to his home. For Restrepo, having fulfilled the constitutional mandate of convening congress ‘saved the republic from complete dissolution’. See J.M. Restrepo, Historia de la Nueva Granada (Bogotá, 1952), 2 vols, vol. 1, pp. 222, 224, 227, 263.
12 ‘Crónica’, El Neogranadino, 28 February 1852.
13 Arboleda, Historia contemporánea, vol. 3, p. 218.
14 The Chilean Congress was bicameral since 1828. I owe this information to Juan Luis Ossa.
15 Arboleda, Historia contemporánea, vol. 3, pp. 88–90, and 171; and Decreto del poder ejecutivo (Bogotá, 5 October 1835).
16 The size of congress in Mexico, however, varied significantly from the 1830s, when it was similar to that of New Granada, to the 1840s. The unicameral congress after 1857 had up to 227 deputies. I wish to thank Israel Arroyo for this information. In the 1860s, there were 20 senators and 72 deputies in Chile; see J. Heise, Historia de Chile: el período parlamentario, 1861–1925, 2 vols (Santiago, 1982) vol. 2, p. 65.
17 As far as I can tell, there are no prosopographical studies of congresses in New Granada. But a cursory reading of Arboleda's listings of congressmen indicates that their regional origins were varied. On Mexico, see for example, V.M. Núñez García, ‘Liberal Parliamentarism in Mexico. Notes for Reflection: The Parliamentary Representation of the State of Puebla in the Mexican National Congresses, 1833–56’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation 33, (2013), pp. 45–65.
18 See Constitución del Estado de la Nueva Granada dada por la Convención Constituyente de 1832 (Cartagena, 1832), pp. 2–18; and Constitución política de la república de la Nueva Granada, reformada por el Congreso en sus sesiones de 1842 y 1843 (Bogotá, 1843), pp. 2–8.
19 Each chamber had its own internal regulation. The 1836 and 1840 Reglamentos of the chamber and senate respectively had some 155 articles regulating all aspects of their procedures. See Reglamento para el réjimen interior de la Cámara de Representantes del Congreso de la Nueva Granada (Bogotá, 1836), and Reglamento para el réjimen interior de la Cámara del Senado del Congreso de la Nueva Granada (Bogotá, 1840). I wish to thank Luis Gabriel Galán for providing me with copies of both documents. The regulation of the house of representatives in 1878 was richer in details, including the dress code: all congressmen had to attend the meetings in ‘black suits’. It was also a longer document: all in all it contained 339 articles. See Reglamento de la Cámara de Representantes para su rejimen i policía interior (Bogotá, 1878). According to Fonnegra Sierra, ‘those who dominated parliament at all times were precisely those who mastered their knowledge of its internal regulations’; El parlamento colombiano, p. 13. Thomas Jefferson's Manual of Parliament, translated into Spanish in 1827, seems to have been widely used by congressmen. See Thomas Jefferson, Manual del Derecho Parlamentario o resumen de las reglas que se observan en el parlamento de Inglaterra y en el Congreso de los Estados Unidos para la proposición, discusión y decisión de los negocios (translated by Joaquín Ortega, Paris, 1827). The Luis Angel Arango Library in Bogotá keeps several copies of this edition.
20 Other countries with similar indirect presidential elections had a smaller number of electoral assemblies: Venezuela in the 1830s, for example, had 200, eight times less than in New Granada.
21 The results of these elections in the various electoral assemblies can be consulted in Registraduría Nacional del Estado Civil (ed.), Historia electoral colombiana, 1810–1988 (Bogotá, 1988). These individual elections have received scant attention by historians.
22 See E. Posada-Carbó, ‘New Granada and the European Revolutions of 1848’, in G. Thomson (ed.), The European Revolutions of 1848 and the Americas (London, 2002), pp. 217–40.
23 Constitución del Estado de la Nueva Granada (Bogotá, 1832), pp. 30–31. The subjects were limited to convene the national guard, to negotiate loans and to issue arrest warrants, amnesties and pardons.
24 Constitución política (Bogotá, 1843), p. 12.
25 Arboleda, Historia contemporánea, vol. 2, pp. 101–4, 127.
26 Arboleda, Historia contemporánea, vol. 3, pp. 6, 200–201.
27 See J. Lynch, Argentine Dictator. Juan Manuel de Rosas, 1829–1852 (London, 1981).
28 M.P. Costeloe, ‘General versus Politicians: Santa Anna and the 1842 Congressional Election in Mexico’, Bulletin of Latin American Research 8, (1989), p. 257. See also Arroyo, ‘Miradas contemporáneas’, pp. 117, 124, 130, 133.
29 J. Basadre, Elecciones y centralismo en el Perú. Apuntes para un esquema histórico (Lima, 1980), p. 22.
30 For the notion of ‘limited control’ of the Chilean executive over the electoral system, see J. Samuel Valenzuela, ‘Building Aspects of Democracy before Democracy: Electoral Practices in Nineteenth Century Chile’, in E. Posada-Carbó (ed.), Elections Before Democracy. The History of Elections in Europe and Latin America (London, 1996), pp. 223–57. There were important parliamentary elements in the Chilean system; the 1833 constitution, for example, allowed members of congress to be part of the cabinet. From the 1860s onwards, parties seem to have gained the upper hand in the political process, the power of the executive being gradually undermined. The system broke down in 1891, when the outcome of a civil war that pitied the executive against the legislative led to a parliamentary regime that lasted until 1925. See P.S. Reinsch, ‘Parliamentary Government in Chile’, American Political Science Review 3, (1909), pp. 507–38.
31 Constitución del Estado (1832), pp. 18–21; and Constitución política (1843), p. 12.
32 Restrepo, Historia de la Nueva Granada, vol. 1, p. 171.
33 Restrepo, Historia de la Nueva Granada, vol. 1, p. 166. Arboleda, Historia contemporánea, vol. 3, p. 203.
34 ‘Programa conservador de 1849’, in Directorio Nacional Conservador (ed.), Los programas conservadores de 1849 a 1949 (Bogotá, 1952), pp. 47–8; the first liberal programme is reprinted in G. Molina, Las ideas liberales en Colombia (Bogotá, 1970), vol. 1.
35 In 1835, future president Herrán considered that the house of representatives had lost prestige, thus his preference for the senate. See Herrán to Mosquera, Bogotá, 2 September 1835, in L. Helguera and R.H. Davis (eds), Archivo epistolar del General Mosquera, 2 vols (Bogotá, 1966–72), vol. 1 (1966), p. 206. For a humorous critique of congressional activities, see (Anonymous), Cartas a piquillo i de piquillo o breve resumen de los trabajos del Congreso de 1856 por un diputado de la barra (Bogotá, 1856).
36 Arboleda, Historia contemporánea, vol. 3, p. 92.
37 Arboleda, Historia contemporánea, vol. 3, p. 5.
38 In his memoirs, José María Samper noted his apprenticeship in ‘parliamentary oratory’ as a deputy in the provincial legislature of Ibagué, where he ‘acquired his skills to speak in public, always improving his speeches’. See J.M. Samper, Historia de una alma, 1834 a 1881 (Bogotá, 1948), 2 vols, vol. 2, p. 38.
39 Letter from Pombo to Cenón de Pombo, Bogotá, 15 May 1838, in S. Díaz and L. Guillermo Valencia (eds), Confidencias de un estadista. Epistolario de Lino de Pombo con su hermano Cenón, 1834–1877 (Bucaramanga, 2010), p. 125.
40 F. González, Memorias. Controversias bolivarianas (Buenos Aires, 1933), p. 75.
41 González, Memorias, p. 82.
42 J.V. Lastarria, Diario político, 1849–1852 (Santiago, 1968), pp. 27, 31, 36, 37. There are repeated references to the barras in the Chilean Congress in I. Errázuriz, Historia de la administración Errázuriz (Santiago, 1935), pp. 268, 365, 401, 435, 436. In 1850, El Mercurio, a leading newspaper in Santiago, warned those of the opposition who mobilized their partisans from their clubs to the barra since, in El Mercurio's views, they were instigating a social conflict that they would not be able to control in the long term. See ‘Los clubs y la barra’, El Mercurio (Santiago), 6 July 1850. Contemporary satirical pamphlets about congressmen also included references to the barra; see (Anonymous), Los demóstenes de la mayoría. Bosquejos parlamentarios (Santiago, 1868), pp. 11, 31, 34, 41.
43 Arboleda, Historia contemporánea, vol. 3, p. 239, vol. 6, p. 169.
44 González, Memorias, p. 80.
45 J. María Samper, Derecho público interno, 2 vols (Bogotá, 1951), vol. 1, p. 173.
46 El Neogranadino, 28 March 1851. The paper estimated a crowd of 1500 – this seems an exaggerated figure, but it does indicate the presence of an extraordinary number of people.
47 ‘Congreso’, El Neogranadino, 11 March 1853.
48 For example, the adoption of Jeremy Bentham's texts during the Santander administration was opposed by the church and lay Catholics, who led a campaign of petitions in the 1830s to ban Bentham from the educational system. One of these petitions, signed in 1839 by hundreds of people, including the Archbishop of Bogotá, noted that congress had already received ‘similar petitions from provincial assemblies and thousands of peoples’ throughout the republic. See HH. Senadores y Representantes (leaflet, Bogotá, 14 April 1839). Over one hundred people sent a petition to congress in 1848, requesting the end of the tobacco state monopoly: A la M.H. Cámara de Representantes (photocopy of leaflet, Cartagena, 4 April 1848). I thank Gustavo Bell for providing me with a copy of this document.
49 Fundación Mapfre (ed.), Colombia a través de la fotografía (Bogotá, 2011).
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Eduardo Posada-Carbó
Eduardo Posada-Carbó is Professor of the History and Politics of Latin America, University of Oxford. He is editor of Elections Before Democracy. The History of Elections in Europe and Latin America (London, 1996), and (with Iván Jaksić, eds) Liberalismo y poder. Latinoamérica en el siglo XIX (Santiago, 2011). His publications on the history of elections and democracy include articles in The Journal of Latin American Studies, The Hispanic American Historical Review and The Historical Journal.