The Pacification Campaign on the Riohacha Frontier, 1772-1779

Abstract

URING TUE LATE colonial period, royal government in the Viceroyalty of New Granada conducted vigorous pacification campaigns against hostile Indians on two separate frontiers. The better known of these endeavors was waged in the Isthmus of Darien beginning in 1785.1 The other was launched during the preceding decade in the province of Riohacha. Until the present that action has remained obscure, and it is the subject of the present article. The campaigns in New Granada were only part of a widespread intensification of frontier operations in the Spanish Empire during the closing decades of the eighteenth century. In New Spain, for example, the royal government conducted extensive actions on the northern frontier, which Teodoro de Croix highlighted with his pacification efforts, 1776-1783, as commandant general of the Interior Provinces. And in Rio de la Plata the authorities waged a wide variety of operations in Mendoza, Cordoba, and Buenos Aires, from the 1770s into the last decade of the century.3 The distinguishing characteristic of these new frontier actions was the preponderant role played by military force, betraying an increasingly secular approach to the problem of unpacified Indians. The late eighteenth-century campaigns involved large contingents of armed forces, frequently used in an offensive capacity, while missionaries, who had traditionally borne the main responsibility for pacification, found themselves relegated to a secondary position at best. The frontier campaign in the province of Riohacha provides an interesting illustration of such a shift in emphasis. Riohacha was located on New Granada's Caribbean coast between