240 CHAPTER 10 RACE, NATION, AND THE MEANING OF FREEDOM, 1821–1888
all free males who were married or aged twenty-
one and were not domestic servants or day labor-
ers. In practice, a small aristocratic ruling class
dominated political life.
The geographic, economic, and social condi-
tions of the new state posed even greater obstacles
to the creation of a true national society. Domi-
nated by the towering Andean cordillera, whose
ranges, valleys, and plateaus were home to a mil-
lion people, the country’s diffi cult geography of-
fered formidable barriers to communication and
transport.
New Granadan industry displayed many pre-
capitalist features. Most industrial activity (weav-
ing and spinning, pottery making, shoeware) was
done in the home, chiefl y by women. Many state-
sponsored efforts to establish factories producing
soap, glassware, textiles, and iron were enacted in
Bogotá, but most ended in failure. By the 1840s
sizable artisan groups had arisen in larger towns
like Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali, but despite moder-
ate tariff protections for local industries, they had
diffi culty competing with imported foreign goods.
The backwardness of economic life was most ap-
parent in transportation; in parts of the country,
porters and pack mules were used for transport
well into the twentieth century. Even after steam-
boat navigation became regular on the Magda-
lena River, it took between four and six weeks to
make the voyage from Atlantic ports to Bogotá.
The limited development of productive forces and
the sluggish tempo of economic activity produced
modest wealth even for the elite. In the fi rst half
of the nineteenth century, the income of Bogotá’s
upper class came to about $5,000 per capita, and
the number of individuals whose capital exceeded
$100,000 could be counted on one hand.
The lack of a dynamic export base to stimulate
the economy and provide resources for a strong
nation-state was a major factor in Colombia’s
economic and political diffi culties in its fi rst half-
century. Efforts to replace declining gold production
with tobacco, cotton, and other export products
generated a series of short booms that quickly col-
lapsed because of shrinking markets, falling prices,
and growing foreign competition. The absence of
an export base and a nationally dominant elite
helps explain the “economic archipelago” or re-
gional isolation and self-suffi ciency that developed.
A corollary of this economic autarchy was political
autarchy, an almost permanent instability punc-
tuated by frequent civil wars or threats of war and
even secession by hacendado-generals, who could
mobilize private armies of peons to settle scores with
rival caudillos or the weak central government.
The large hacienda or plantation, mainly dedi-
cated to growing wheat, barley, potatoes, and rais-
ing cattle, dominated agriculture, the backbone of
the economy. Their labor force usually consisted
of mestizo peons or tenants who paid rent in labor
or in kind for the privilege of cultivating their own
small parcels of land; their freedom of movement
could be restricted by debts, and sometimes they
owed personal service to their patrón.
Alongside these haciendas and on marginal
lands and mountain slopes lived other peasants
whose precarious independence came from sub-
sistence farming and supplying food to nearby
towns. The northwest region of Antioquia, with its
rugged terrain and low population, had few haci-
endas and numerous small and medium-size land-
holdings; a more independent peasantry had also
arisen in neighboring Santander. The Spanish had
enslaved thousands of Africans and their descen-
dants to labor on plantations and in gold-mining
districts in the western states and on the Caribbean
coast. However, the institution, greatly weakened
by in dependence wars, slave resistance, and “Free
Womb” legislation, was in decline. Nonetheless,
slave owners zealously defended their property
rights and sought to limit both the pace of abolition
and the rights of freedmen (libertos) born to slave
mothers after 1821. During the 1840s, to ensure
their mothers’ masters a plentiful supply of cheap
labor, laws limited freedmen’s mobility, enforced
prison penalties for violation of vagrancy laws,
and sanctioned concertaje, a mandatory “appren-
ticeship” program that placed freedmen in a “trade
craft, profession, or useful occupation” until age
twenty-fi ve.
Naturally, slaves and libertos resisted these ef-
forts to control their labor by rebelling violently or
running away. Moreover, they also joined together
with merchants, artisans, peasants, and freed-