Spectacles of Freedom: Public Manumissions, Political Rhetoric, and Citizen Mobilisation in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Colombia

Abstract

This article rethinks the role of public manumission ceremonies and emancipation itself in mid-nineteenth-century Colombia as symbolic gestures designed to attract and be meaningful for audiences composed of citizens. Whereas scholars have focused on the presumed failures of the manumission juntas, the present study argues that their primary goal was not to free slaves but to create rituals of civic participation, embodiments of egalitarian citizenship, rhetoric of republican virtue, and propaganda for Liberal Party rule. By rendering slaves into symbols of citizens' interests and preoccupations, these spectacles obscured the role of slaves themselves in destroying slavery.