Engendering Liberal Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Spanish America: Women, Partisan Politics, and the Federalist War in Colombia, 1859–1863

Abstract

AbstractThis article traces women's involvement in Colombia's mid nineteenth-century Liberal Revolution, particularly the 1860 Liberal-Federalist revolt led by General Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera and the two-and-a-half year civil war, or Federalist War, it precipitated. It uses personal correspondence and other archival sources to trace that involvement, highlighting how women both participated in the war, taking sides with one or another of the country's two rival political parties (Liberals or Conservatives), and shaped the larger partisan contest in which the fighting was embedded. It shows first how Mosquera's female supporters cooperated with him, offering logistical support and information that proved critical to the Liberal-Federalists’ eventual victory. It also shows how Conservative women opposed or resisted Mosquera and his followers. The article, moreover, examines the efforts of members of both groups of female partisans—pro-Mosquera Liberals or “Rojas” and anti-Mosquera “Godas”—to influence politics and public opinion, whether through private, behind-the-scenes personal conversation or through the spread of news, and sometimes disinformation. Above all, it reveals how women shaped the wartime public sphere through their active participation in the so-called ‘war of words’—the fierce ideological and rhetorical struggle that defined the very terms and meaning of the conflict.