Abogados en Nueva Granada

The Lawyers and New Granada's Late Colonial State
Author(s): Victor M. Uribe

Source: Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Oct., 1995), pp. 517-549
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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The
Lawyers
and New Granada's Late
Colonial State*
VICTOR M. URIBE
Abstract. This article
presents
a
portrait
of New Granada's colonial
lawyers.
Though
it focuses
primarily
on individuals
qualified
to
practise
law before the
Audiencia,
it deals not
just
with
practising lawyers
as such but also with those
who,
despite being qualified
to
practise
law,
ended
up choosing
other
occupations;
in
particular, joining
the
bureaucracy.
It examines the social
characteristics, family strategies,
and bureaucratic careers of these
professionals
to
demonstrate
how,
as chief
competitors
for state
jobs, lawyers complemented
their
clans'
power
in
important ways. By providing
a vital
component
of the colonial
elite's survival kit - bureaucratic
power
-
they
increased their families' overall
influence, honour,
and social status. In
doing
so,
some
lawyers
came to build true
family-bureaucratic
networks which
proved
resistant to the late colonial Bourbon
reforms that
sought
to undo them.
The
typical
elite families of colonial Latin America were
large
clans whose
members
strengthened
the clan's
potential by entering
diverse economic
and
political
activities
(the legal profession,
the
religious
life,
the
bureaucracy,
the
military,
land
ownership, mining,
and
eventually trade)
and
by establishing marriage
alliances with members of similar elite
families. The characteristics and survival
strategies
of these
groups
are
being
demonstrated
by
an
increasing body
of literature
concerning
both
the nature of
gender
roles and
family life,
and the
economic,
political,
and
social
significance
of elite trades and
occupations.
Much has been
learned,
for
instance,
about the families and activities of
landowners, miners,
merchants,
bureaucrats and
priests.1
*
The author wishes to thank Harold D.
Sims, John Markoff,
Mark
Burkholder, John
E.
Kicza,
Mark D.
Szuchman,
Noble David Cook and three
anonymous
reviewers for
providing
comments on earlier versions of this
paper.
He is also
particularly
indebted
to
George
Reid Andrews and Susan M. Socolow
who,
in addition to
judicious
criticisms,
provided generous
assistance and
encouragement. Support
for this research
was
provided by
the Tinke
Foundation,
the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the
Fundaci6n
para
la Promoci6n de la
Investigaci6n,
la Ciencia
y
la
Tecnologia,
Banco de
la
Repiblica,
Colombia.
Examples
of this literature include Diana Balmori et al., Notable
Family
Networks in
Latin America
(Chicago, 1984); Raymond
T. Smith
(ed.), Kinship, Ideology,
and Practice
in Latin America
(Chapel Hill, 1984);
Mark D.
Szuchman, Order,
Family,
and Community
in Buenos
Aires, 181o-186o (Stanford, I988);
Elizabeth Anne
Kuznesof,
'The
History
of
the
Family
in Latin America: A
Critique
of Recent
Work',
Latin American Research
Review,
vol.
24,
no. 2
(I989),
pp. I68-86;
Asunci6n
Lavrin, Sexuality
and
Marriage
in
Victor M. Uribe is Assistant Professor of
History
at Florida International
University.
J.
Lat. Amer. Stud.
27, 517-549 Copyright
?
1995 Cambridge University
Press
5 I7
5
i 8 Victor M. Uribe
Among
these
occupations,
the
legal profession
-
despite
the number of
men from elite colonial families who embraced it
-
is the one we know
least about.2 The
obscurity
of the
history
of Latin America's colonial
lawyers
and their families is
surprising compared
to the attention this
group
has received in
European
and North American
historiography.
In
those
regions
it has been demonstrated that, among
other
things
pertaining
to their constant
striving
for
honour,
prestige, power
and
wealth, lawyers played prominent public roles, having
an
overwhelming
presence
in
public
office and
revolutionary
bodies.3 In Latin America,
much as in
Europe
and North America,
the
legal profession traditionally
dominated
bureaucracy
and
politics.
In fact, many
official
posts,
particularly
some of the
highest public
offices (oidor and
fiscal), required
a
Colonial Latin America
(Lincoln, I989);
Muriel Nazzari, Disappearance of
the
Dowry:
Women, Families, and Social
Change
in Sao Paulo,
Brazil
(60o0-I900) (Stanford, I991);
Alida C. Metcalf, Family
and Frontier in Colonial
Brazil:
Santana de Parnaiba, 1i80-I822
(Berkeley, 1992);
David A.
Brading,
Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico,
I76}-I8io
(Cambridge, 197
); Susan M.
Socolow,
Merchants
of
Buenos Aires,
I778-I8So:
Family
and
Commerce
(Cambridge, 1978);
idem, The Bureaucrats
of
Buenos Aires, I769-18I0:
Amor al
Real Servicio
(Durham, I987);
idem,
and Louisa S. Hoberman,
Cities and Society in
Colonial Latin America
(Albuquerque, I986);
Ann Twinam, Miners, Merchants,
and
Farmers in Colonial Colombia (Austin, I982); John
E. Kicza,
Colonial
Entrepreneurs:
Families and Business in Bourbon Mexico
City (Albuquerque, I983);
Susan E. Ramirez,
Provincial Patriarchs: Land Tenure and the Economics
of
Power in Colonial Peru
(Albuquerque, I986);
Linda Arnold, Bureaucracy and Bureaucrats in Mexico
City,
1742-18r3 (Tucson, I988).
2
Limited information can be found in
Enrique
Ruiz Guiniazd, La
magistratura
indiana
(Buenos Aires, 1916),
ch. o;
Hector Parra
Mirquez,
Historia del
Colegio
de
Abogados
de
Caracas,
2 vols.
(Caracas, 195 2);
Vicente 0.
Cutolo, Abogadosy
escribanos del siglo
XVII
(La Plata, i963);
Adolfo Rolando Padilla,
La
abogacia
en Guatemala.
Epoca
colonial
(Thesis,
Univ. de San Carlos, Guatemala, I964); Miguel Angel
de Marco, Abogados,
escribanos,
jy
obras de derecho en el Rosario del siglo XIX
(Rosario, 1973); Rogelio
Perez
Perdomo,
Los
abogados
en
Venezuela
(Caracas, 198 i);
Vicente Oddo, Abogados de Santiago
del Estero durante
elprimer
siglo
de existencia de la ciudad
( 1553-1653)
(Santiago
del Estero,
1981).
See also notes
5
and
78.
3
Among
several works see, e.g.,
Loretta A.
Norris,
American Colonial Courts and
Lawyers:
An Annotated Bibliography (Washington,
I976);
Samuel Haber,
The
Quest for
Authority
and Honor in the American
Professions, i7fo-i9oo (Chicago, I991),
ch.
3; J. Clay Smith,
Emancipation:
The
Making of
the Black
Lawyer, 1844-1944 (Philadelphia, 1993); John
D. Eusden, Puritans, Lawyers,
and Politics in
Early Seventeenth-Century England (New
Haven, 1958);
Robert Robson,
The
Attorney
in
Eighteenth-Century
England (Cambridge,
1959);
Wilfrid Prest,
The Rise
of
the Barristers: A Social
History of
the
English Bar,
19o0-1640
(Oxford, I986);
C. W. Brooks,
Pettifoggers
and
Vipers of
the Commonwealth:
The 'Lower Branch' of the
Legal Profession
in
Early
Modern
England (Cambridge, I986);
David
Lemmings,
Gentlemen and Barristers: The Inns
of
Court and the
English Bar,
i680o-i70
(Oxford, i990);
Lauro Martines, Lawyers
and
Statecraft
in Renaissance Florence
(Princeton, I968);
Leonard Berlanstein,
The Barristers
of
Toulouse in the
Eighteenth
Century (i74o-I793)
(Baltimore,
I
975);
Richard
Kagan,
Lawsuits and
Litigants
in Castile,
I7oo-i7yo
(Baltimore, I98 );
Michael Fitzsimmons,
The Parisian Order
of
Barristers and
the French Revolution
(Cambridge, I987);
David A. Bell, Lawyers
and
Citizens:
The
Making
of
a Political Elite in Old
Regime
France
(Oxford,
1994).
New Granada's Colonial
Lavwyers 519
law
degree
as a condition of
entry.
In
addition,
because of their
upbringing
and
functions,
lawyers
were
strategically
located between state
and
key segments
of
society,
whether it be their own
family groups
or
their diverse clienteles.
Lawyers
can thus
provide
valuable information
related to both state and
family
formation,
their evolution and interaction.4
This article therefore
presents
a
portrait
of New Granada's
lawyers,
filling
some of the
gaps
in current historical
knowledge
of this
key group
in colonial
society.
It focuses on those individuals
qualified
to
practise
law
before the Audiencia. The article deals not
only
with
practising lawyers
but
also with individuals who were
qualified
to
practise
law but chose other
occupations;
in
particular,
the
bureaucracy. Through coupling genea-
logical
information on several elite clans with
contemporary
memoirs,
various edited collections of
documents,
and notarial and
government
records,
this
study
examines the social
characteristics,
family strategies,
and bureaucratic careers of
lawyers
to demonstrate
how,
as chief
competitors
for state
jobs, lawyers complemented
their clans'
power
in
important ways. By providing
a vital
component
of the colonial elite's
survival kit - bureaucratic
power
-
they
increased their families' overall
influence, honour,
and social status. In
doing
so,
some
lawyers
came to
build true
family-bureaucratic
networks which
proved
resistant to the late
colonial Bourbon reforms that tried to undo them. It is also
possible
that
these
networks,
although
disliked
by
the
crown,
may paradoxically
have
benefited the colonial
state,
because their members were
quite
con-
servative. Yet
lawyers eventually provided
much
energy
for
revolutionary
mobilisation a few
years
later,
helping
to
bring
about the end of colonial
rule. That turnabout
poses interesting questions
for further research.
Reception
and Evolution
of
Colonial
Lawyers
The
presence
of
lawyers
in New Granada was noted and debated from the
early
sixteenth
century
on,
as it was in other
Spanish
colonies.5 Luis
Martin Fernandez de Enciso was one of the first
lawyers
to settle in New
Granada.
Arriving
sometime between I
500
and
I 5 Io,
he became alcalde of
a
village
in the
region
of
Darien,
located in what is
today Panama,
and
4
Max
Weber,
'Politics as a
Vocation',
in H. H. Gerth and C.
Wright
Mills
(eds.),
From
Max Weber:
Essays
in
Sociology (New York, 946), pp.
85, 94;
William
Taylor,
'Between
Global Processes and Local
Knowledge:
An
Inquiry
into
Early
Latin American Social
History,
1
500-1900',
in Oliver Zunz
(ed.), Reliving
the Past: The Worlds
of
Social
History
(Chapel
Hill, 1985),
p.
I47; Socolow,
Bureaucrats
of
Buenos
Aires, p. 59.
5
Ruiz
Guifiazd,
La
magistratura
indiana; Ricardo
Levene,
'Notas
para
la historia de los
abogados
en
Indias',
Revista Chilena de Historia del
Derecho,
vol. I
(I95 ).
See other
sources listed in
Jaime
del Arenal
Fenochio,
'De
abogados y leyes
en las Indias hasta
la
Recopilaci6n
de
I680',
in
Recopilacidn
de las
leyes
de los
Reynos
de las
Indias,
vol.
5
(Mexico, 1987),
pp.
I79-206;
and Victor M.
Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
Young
"Mandarins":
Lawyers,
Political
Parties,
and the State in
Colombia, 1780-I850',
unpubl.
PhD
diss., University
of
Pittsburgh, 1993.
5
20 Victor M. Uribe
shortly
thereafter,
because of
quarrels,
was removed
by
other
conquerors.
Various sources mention at least ten more
lawyers
as
having actively
participated
in the
conquest
of New Granada between
500
and
I550.6
One,
Gonzalo
Jimenez
de
Quesada,
in addition to
serving
as chief
magistrate
of the Atlantic coast
city
of Santa
Marta,
set out to
explore
the
headwaters of the
Magdalena
River,
the area's
Mississippi.
He
eventually
sailed
up
the river itself
and,
after a
long
march,
founded
Bogota
in 1
5 38,
making
it the
capital
of the
newly conquered territory.7
Since he
converged
on this
place
at the same time as other
conquistadors, litigation
followed to resolve their
conflicting
claims.
Jimenez
de
Quesada
also
faced a
legal
suit
posed by
another
lawyer,
Licenciado Fernandez
Gallego,
who claimed
rights
to the
booty
collected in
Bogota.8
These were but a
few of the
many lawyer-inspired
conflicts that flared
very early
in the
Spanish
colonies and
prompted
the
king's
concern.
In
15 09
Charles V ordered the
Spanish
Casa de Contrataci6n
(Board
of
Trade)
not to let
any lawyers
travel to the Indies without
special
licence;
the crown feared that otherwise
litigation
would increase. In
521
Charles
restricted the number of
lawyers
in Cuba.
Following
numerous
petitions
from the
Viceroyalty
of New
Spain,
in
1528
the
king
also ordered the
local audiencias to
regulate
the
legal profession
and limit the number of
practitioners.9
The
following year, 15 29,
the
king
banned all
lawyers
from
the
colony
of Peru.10
Nevertheless,
probably
because of their valuable
skills in the rules of formal administration and
government, by 542
no
fewer than nine
lawyers
were
performing
bureaucratic
jobs
in New
Granada;
and
despite
the
opposition, they
continued
arriving
in other
colonies as well.1
Although lawyers
were
being
trained
locally
in New Granada
by
the
late seventeenth
century,
the various
royal prohibitions
were
probably
effective at
curbing
the
presence
of
lawyers
in the
Spanish
American
6
Antonio B.
Cuervo,
Coleccion de documentos ineditos sobre la
geografia
y
la historia de
Colombia,
vol. 2
(Bogota, I892),
p. 363; Jesis
Antolines
Wilches,
'Primeros
abogados
espafioles que
vinieron al Nuevo Reino de
Granada',
Boletin de Historiay
Antiguedades
(hereafter
BHA)
vol.
22,
no.
239-40 (I934),
pp. 217-22;
Parra
Marquez,
Historia del
Colegio
de
Abogados, pp. 66-7; Javier Malag6n
Barce6l,
'The Role of the Letrado in the
Colonization of
America',
The
Americas,
vol.
i8,
no. i
(I96I), pp. 1-17.
7 David
Bushnell,
The
Making of
Modern Colombia: A Nation in
Spite
of Itself (Berkeley,
I993), PP. 9-10.
8
'Pleito
seguido por
el licenciado
Gallego y
sus herederos contra el licenciado
Jimenez
de
Quesada' [1539], BHA,
vol.
23,
no.
259-60 (1936), pp. 297-302.
9
Arenal
Fenochio,
'De
abogados y leyes', pp.
I84-8.
10
James
Lockhart,
Spanish
Peru, IfJ2-Is6o (Madison, I968), pp.
61-2;
Kagan,
Litigants
and Law
Suits,
p.
90;
Alexandra Parma Cook and Noble David
Cook,
Good Faith and
Truthful Ignorance:
A Case
of
Transatlantic
Bigamy (Durham, 199 ), p.
8i.
1 Ruiz
Guifiazu,
La
magistratura
indiana,
pp.
33
-6;
Antolines
Wilches,
'Primeros
abogados', pp. 217-22.
Lawyers 52
colonies. In the late
i6oos,
the
Jesuits
of the
Colegio Mayor
de San
Bartolome- one of
Bogota's
two institutions of
higher
education-
argued
that the lack of
lawyers
left the courts 'without direction' and the
litigants
'without advice'.12 The
Jesuits
were
disputing
the Dominican
University
of San Tomas's
monopoly
on
granting legal degrees
in the
viceroyalty,
so their
protest
could have been
just
a rhetorical device.13 In
I694, however,
a
royal
cedula
requested
the Audiencia of
Bogota
to
increase the number of courses in
jurisprudence.
The audiencia itself
underlined the need to
promote
the
study
of law
because,
although
some
lawyers
had
graduated, they
were scarce in
Bogota.'4
Most
lawyers,
it was
alleged, 'stay
in the
city
of
Cartagena'.15 Although Bogota
was the
capital
of the then Presidencia of New
Granada,
and therefore the
colony's
main
administrative
centre,
Cartagena
was the
major port through
which other
regions
sent their
surplus
to the transatlantic
market,
receiving
a broad
variety
of
imports
in return.
Cartagena
was thus the central commercial
entrepot
for New Granada's
economy;
and this
might
have determined
more abundant business for the small number of
practising lawyers,
who
thus tended to cluster there.
Decades later the situation had
substantially changed. Lawyers
reportedly
were
numerous,
and
many
could be found in
Bogotai,
the
capital
of New
Granada,
which had been elevated to the condition of
viceroyalty
in the late
1730s,
thus
expanding
the bureaucratic
oppor-
tunities available to
all,
even local
aspirants. By 1771
Francisco Antonio
Moreno
y
Escand6n
(fiscal,
or
prosecutor,
of the
Royal Audiencia)
as
part
of his
challenge
to the Dominicans'
degree-granting monopoly
which still
prevailed,
demanded a reduction in the number of law
graduates.
Moreno
y
Escand6n,
a
first-generation
creole,
was the son of a mid-level
bureaucrat and mine-owner who had settled in the
Mariquita region
southwest of
Bogota. Although
he and his brothers
Miguel
and
Santiago
had
graduated
from one of
Bogota's
law
schools,
thereby benefiting
from
local
training
and related bureaucratic
fortunes,
he did not hesitate to
12
Francisco A. Moreno
y Escand6n,
'Metodo
provisional
e interino de los estudios
que
han de observar los
colegios
de Santafe...
I774', BHA,
vol.
19,
no. 222
(1932), pp.
644-5; John
L.
Young, 'University
Reform in New
Granada, I820-1850', unpubl.
PhD
diss.,
Columbia
University, 1970,
p.
21.
13 On the institutional
history
and evolution of
legal
education in New Granada see
Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
Mandarins',
ch. 6.
14
Up
to
I691, Bogota's
Colegio
del Rosario seems to have
produced only
three
lawyers,
two of whom were also
priests.
See Guillermo Hernandez de
Alba,
Crdnica del
muy
ilustre
Colegio Mayor
de Nuestra Sehora del
Rosario,
vol. i
(Bogota, 1938),
p.
223.
15
Renin
Silva,
'Escolares
y
catedraticos en la sociedad
colonial',
unpubl.
ms.,
Banco de
la
Reptblica
de
Colombia,
Fundaci6n Para la Promoci6n de la
Investigaci6n,
la
Ciencia
y
La
Tecnologia, I985,
p. 12;
Guillermo Hernandez de
Alba,
'Breve historia
de la universidad en
Colombia', BHA,
vol.
28,
no.
322
(I941),
pp.
911-17.
522
Victor M. Uribe
Table i. Elite Male
Occupations
in Late Colonial New Granada
Year
Occupation
Number of members
8 o Priests
3,5 04
1784 Regular army
officers
485
I8o6
Lawyers I30
to
I50
806
Top
bureaucrats
00oo
I768-1808
Medical doctors
27
Sources: 'Padr6n
general
de la
poblaci6n
de esta
capital',
La
Bagatela,
Santaf6 de
Bogota,
I
October
I853,
p. 79; Jos6
M.
Restrepo,
Historia de la revolucidn de la
repuiblica
de
Colombia
(Bogota, I942),
p. xxxviii;
Allan
J. Kuethe, Military
Reform
and Society in New
Granada
(Gainesville, 1978),
pp. 204-5;
Renan
Silva,
'Escolares
y
catedraticos en la
sociedad
colonial', unpublished
ms.,
Banco de la
Republica
de
Colombia,
Fundaci6n Para
la Promoci6n de la
Investigaci6n
la Ciencia
y
La
Tecnologfa,
I985, p.
91;
Antonio Garcia
de la
Guardia,
Kalendario
manualyguia deforasteros
en Santa Fe de
Bogota capital
del Nuevo Reino
de Granada
para
el ano de I8o6
(Bogota, 1988),
pp. 57-72; Juan
Marchena
Fernandez,
'The
Social World of the
Military
in Peru and New
Granada',
in Fisher et al.
(eds.), Reform
and
Insurrection in Bourbon New Granada and Peru
(Baton Rouge, 1990), pp. 84-7.
request
that the
Royal
Audiencia limit the number of
lawyers,
and also
subject
them to a
four-year apprenticeship
before
graduation.16
It is unclear to what extent the
fiscal's
claim as to the abundance of
lawyers
was true, although
some historians have
accepted
it at face
value.17 It, too, could have been a rhetorical
strategy,
this time to advance
some of the Bourbon
policies
aimed at
curtailing
the
power
of the church
and
increasing
that of the civil authorities
by secularising
the content of
legal
education and
creating,
as the fiscal was
requesting,
a state-controlled
or
public university.18
The
fiscal,
in
any case, argued
that 'the multitude
of
lawyers'
in New Granada was a result of the Dominicans' failure to
enforce the
graduation requirements, particularly
the
possession
of a
16
Francisco A. Moreno
y Escand6n, 'Documento sobre el exceso de
abogados' [I77I],
Biblioteca Luis
Angel Arango, Bogota, Documentos, p. i; Jorge
0.
Melo,
'Francisco
A. Moreno
y
Escand6n: retrato de un bur6crata
colonial',
in Melo
(ed.),
Indios
jy
mestizos
en la Nueva Granada a
finales
del
siglo
XVIII
(Bogota, 1985);
Uribe,
'Rebellion
of the Mandarins', appendix A; Anthony McFarlane,
Colombia
before Independence.
Economy,
Society and Politics under Bourbon Rule
(Cambridge, 1993),
pp.
205-7, 239.
17
Thomas Blossom, Narino: Hero
of
Colombian
Independence (Tucson,
I
967),
p. xvii;
Frank
Safford, The Ideal
of
the Practical: Colombia's Struggle to Form a Technical Elite
(Austin,
I976), p.
88.
18 The
teaching
of Catholic
philosophy, speculative
and moral
theology,
and canon law
had a
disproportional weight
in the
training
of
lawyers.
The more secular civil
(Roman
and
Spanish)
law courses were
scarce,
nor were there
any public
law courses until a
brief interval in the
I78os
and
early I790os.
Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
Mandarins',
ch. 6.
Concerning
some Bourbon
policies
see
John
L.
Phelan,
The
People
and the
King:
The
Comunero Revolution in Colombia,
r78I (Madison, I978);
Luis Martinez
Delgado,
Noticia
biogrdfica
delprocer
Don
Joaquin
Camacho. Documentos
(Bogota, n.d.), p.
290; John
Fisher
et al.
(eds.), Reform
and Insurrection in Bourbon New Granada and Peru
(Baton Rouge,
i990); Margarita Garrido, Reclamos y representaciones.
Variaciones sobre la
politica
en el
Nuevo Reino de Granada
(Bogota, 1993),
pp.
55-71.
Lawyers 5 23
bachiller
degree
and
subsequent practical training.
The
fiscal's dispute
with
the Dominicans
generated litigation
that continued from
1768
until at
least
I783.
In the
end,
the
religious
order was allowed to continue its
monopoly;
the
alleged
lack of state
funds,
disturbing
tax riots indicative
of other
priorities
and
needs,
and most of all the Dominicans'
legal
manoeuvres
prevented
the crown from
creating
the
public university
Moreno
y
Escandon so much wanted. Some
changes
in the duration of the
practical training
were
introduced,
however. It was extended from two
years
to
four,
and new courses were added to the curriculum.19
It
seems, however,
that these reforms did not
ultimately
reduce the
number of
lawyers.20
A
description
of the
viceroyalty
of New Granada
written in
1789 by
Francisco
Silvestre,
a career
bureaucrat,
former
viceregal
secretary,
and
governor
of the
province
of
Antioquia,
was still
demanding
'not to allow the
persistence
of so
many lawyers,
and to
establish the number of
lawyers
in
proportion
to the
population
of
different
regions;
and to
pay
with
public
funds the few that should be
allowed to continue'.21 Silvestre's
complaints
reiterated the colonial
authorities' earlier concerns. This
time, however,
the motivation was
different from the
preoccupations
of the
early
sixteenth
century.
Excessive
litigation
and
lawyer-inspired quarrels
had not ceased to be a
major
problem;
but
lawyers' political
demands and bureaucratic
pretensions
had
turned out to be even
greater
ones.
Professional
Activities and Career Paths
Along
with the
priesthood,
the
military,
the
bureaucracy,
and
medicine,
law was one of the most common
occupations among
the colonial elites.
In
comparative
terms, however, lawyers
were outnumbered
by
all but
high-ranking
bureaucrats and
physicians (see
Table
i).
Priests were more
numerous than
lawyers
in the late
eighteenth century
and remained so
during
much of the nineteenth.
Bogota
alone,
a
city
of close to
30,oo0
19
Moreno
y Escand6n,
'Documento sobre el
exceso',
p.
6;
Jose
A.
Ricaurte,'Compendio
de lo actuado sobre estudios
pdblicos' [I783],
BHA, vol.
24,
no.
272 (I937),
pp.
343-71; Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
Mandarins',
ch.
6;
Renan
Silva,
La
reforma
de estudios
en el Nuevo Reino de
Granada, I767-I790 (Bogota, I981).
20 The memoirs and obituaries written
by
the descendants of the
lawyers Joaquin
Ortiz
Tagle
and Pedro Vicente Martinez claim that
by
the
I78os
and
I790s
there were some
'sixteen or
twenty lawyers
in
Bogota',
or a
very
'scarce number' of
legal professionals.
Juan
F.
Ortiz,
Reminiscencias de D.
Juan
Francisco Ortiz
[i86I] (Bogota, 1907), p. I4;
'
Relaci6n de las
exequias
hechas en la ciudad de
Buga
el 18 de
agosto
de
85
o'
(Bogoti,
n.d.).
Both these accounts are
impressionistic
and
inaccurate,
judging by
the
observations of
contemporaries
and the
quantitative
data to be discussed in this article.
21
Francisco
Silvestre, Descripcidn
del Nuevo Reino de
Santafe [I789] (Bogota, I968), p.
I I6.
See also his Relacidn de la Provincia de
Antioquia
[1786-97] (Medellin, 1988);
and
Jose
M.
Restrepo,
Gobernadores de
Antioquia
(Bogota, i944),
pp. 205-15.
5 24
Victor M. Uribe
according
to a
1793 census,
had seven monasteries
housing 45
2
monks,
in
addition to at least
76
secular
priests.22
A
contemporary
account refers to
the existence of
approximately 3,504
members of the secular and
regular
clergy by
18Io in the whole
viceroyalty.23
Elite families
supplied
to the
church
48.5 per
cent of those members born in the
period I65 0-I700
and
30 per
cent of those born between
1700
and
I750.24
This
corresponded
both to the
society's
strongly
Catholic culture and to the
high
status and
economic
well-being
derived,
particularly,
from the
position
of
parish
priest.25
In absolute
terms,
military
men were as numerous as
priests.
The
army
had
expanded by
the end of the
eighteenth century.
In
1794
the
regular
army
numbered
3,597
and the militia about
7,860.26 However,
the officer
class in both the
regular army
and the militia was
relatively
small and
quite
select. In the
1760-I
8 0
period
the
regular army
of
Cartagena
and
Bogota,
where the most
important garrisons
were
located,
had
363
and 121 officers
respectively,
a third of whom were creoles or American-born
Spaniards.27
The creole
army
officers
belonged
to families of hacendados and
merchants,
most of them natives of
Cartagena
and
Bogota.
The militia
officers,
whose
exact number is
unknown,
were recruited from similar
prominent groups
in their
respective
cities. Like the
professional military,
the militia officers
enjoyed great
social
prestige, authority,
and
crown-granted privileges.
In
both
army
and
militia,
a handful of
pardos,
or
mestizos,
came to
integrate
certain
companies
and,
in the late colonial
period, managed
to reach
high
military
ranks.28
22
'Padron
general
de la
poblaci6n
de esta
capital',
La
Bagatela,
Santafe de
Bogota,
I
October
I853, p. 79.
As this census
indicates,
there were also five convents with
a
population
of about
472
nuns.
23
Jose
M.
Restrepo,
Historia de la revolucion de la
repziblica
de Colombia
(Bogota, I942),
p.
xxxviii.
24
Juan and
Judith
Villamarin,
'The
Concept
of
Nobility
in Colonial Santafe de
Bogota',
in Karen
Spalding (ed.), Essays
in the
Political, Economic,
and Social
History
of
Colonial
Latin America
(Newark, i982),
p.
138.
25
See Charles
Harris,
A Mexican
Family Empire:
El
Latifundio of
the
Sdncheg
Navarros,
i76j-'-i87 (Austin, 1975),
pp.
1I-I7;
Paul
Ganster,
'A Social
History
of the Secular
Clergy
of Lima
during
the Middle Decades of the
Eighteenth Century', unpubl.
PhD
diss., University
of
California,
Los
Angeles, I974; Raymond
P.
Harrington,
'The
Secular
Clergy
in the Diocese of Merida de
Yucatan, 1780-I850:
Their
Origins,
Careers, Wealth,
and
Activities',
unpubl.
PhD
diss.,
Catholic
University
of
America,
1982.
26
Allan
J. Kuethe, Military Reform
and
Society
in New Granada
(Gainesville, 1978), pp.
205-6.
The militia was a
widely dispersed pseudo-army composed
of volunteer units
led
by prominent
local
leaders;
in most cases
they
had no arms or uniforms. See
Juan
Marchena
Fernindez,
'The Social World of the
Military
in Peru and New
Granada',
in Fisher et al.
(eds.), Reform
and
Insurrection,
pp.
6i-2.
27
Juan Marchena
Fernindez,
'The Social
World',
p. 84.
28
A
good
social
profile
of both New Granada's
army
and militia can be found in
ibid.,
pp. 83-95-
Lawyers 5
z
5
In contrast to
priests
and
military
officers,
the number of medical
doctors was
meagre.
Medicine was not
yet
institutionalised as a
professional
career,
despite
some efforts
during
the late
eighteenth
century,
and
many
of the doctors in New Granada were
foreigners.
In
1796
Viceroy Ezpeleta
alerted the crown to 'la falta de medicos
que
generalmente
se
padece
en todo el Reino' and
urged
it to send some
physicians
from
Europe.
In
1803, Viceroy
Mendinueta also
argued
that 'la
falta de medicos
y
la sobra de curanderos
pide que
se fomente el estudio
de esta
iltima
ciencia
[medicina]'.29
In
1802,
only
seven students were
registered
for the scattered medical classes offered in
Bogota;
and between
1768
and
I808,
only 27
medical
degrees
had been
granted.30
The
shortage
of
physicians
in the
capital
caused alarm in
1803
when a
smallpox epidemic
attacked the
city.
In smaller
cities,
such as
Rionegro
in
the northwestern
region
of
Antioquia,
the situation was even
worse;
people easily
died of minor diseases for lack of medical care.31 At the same
time,
some locals seem to have
practised
medicine without a
degree.
The
profession
also,
notably,
was seen as an
oficio
vil,
or
ignoble
manual
occupation,
and therefore was not
highly regarded by
local
society.
This
might partly
have fostered the
acceptance
of
practitioners
without formal
training,
and the authorisation of
gambos
and mulattoes to
practise
in
places
like
Cartegena
-
although,
it should be
noted,
their
presence
made
the whites of the
city very unhappy.32
Finally,
the total number of bureaucrats in New Granada was close to
,000o
in the
early
nineteenth
century.
Much like those of the
army,
the
higher
ranks of the state
bureaucracy
were smaller and select.
They
comprised
more than oo00
individuals,
several of whom were members of
the local elites and the
legal profession.33
As for the total number of
letrados,
as
lawyers
were also
known,
an
almanac
published
in New Granada in I806 lists
roughly 130,
with some
omissions;
the real number could have been as
high
as
5o.34 Seventy-two
29
'Relaci6n de
gobierno
del Exmo
Sor.,
D.
Josef
de
Ezpeleta' [1796],
in German
Colmenares
(ed.),
Relaciones e
informes
de los
gobernantes
de la Nueva
Granada,
vol. 2
(Bogota, I989),
pp. 224-5;
'Relaci6n...
Virrey
Pedro Mendinueta'
[1803], ibid.,
vol.
3,
p.
92.
30
Silva,
'Escolares
y
catedraticos',
p.
9I.
31
Jose
M.
Restrepo, Autobiografia. Apuntamientos
sobre
emigracidn
de
s186,
e indices del Diario
Politico
[I816-I818] (Bogota, I957),
p. 10.
32
Andres Soriano
Lleras,
La medicina en el Nuevo Reino de Granada durante la
conquistay
la
colonia
(Bogota, I975),
pp. 260-87; Silva,
'Escolares
y catedraticos',
p. 164;
Thomas
Glick,
'Science and
Independence
in Latin America
(with Special
Reference to New
Granada)', Hispanic
American Historical Review
(hereafter
HAHR),
vol.
7 ,
no. 2
(May
1991),
p.
323.
33 Antonio Garcia de la
Guardia,
Kalendario
manualy guia
de
forasteros
en Santa Fe de
Bogota
capital
del Nuevo Reino de Granada
para
el ano de o806
(Bogota, I988).
34
Ibid., pp. 57-72.
This
I8o6
list should be taken as a
rough
indicator,
and it is
incomplete.
It does not include
prominent lawyers
of New
Granada,
such as
Jose
Maria
526
Victor M. Uribe
of those
listed,
or more than
half,
were in
Bogota,
and the rest in other
cities
(19
in
Cartagena;
9
in the southern and southwestern
regions
of
Neiva,
Buga, Popayan, Cartago,
and
Choc6;
i i in the eastern
regions
of
Socorro,
Tunja,
and San
Gil,
and
23
scattered in and out of the
viceroyalty).
The total number of
lawyers
was small
compared
to the
thousands of
priests
and hundreds of
military
officers;
yet,
as noted
earlier,
some
contemporary
observers seem to have considered it too
large.
Numerically,
law was the third most
important occupation.35
Because
many lawyers developed
into career
bureaucrats,
their social and
political
importance
was even
greater.
Indeed,
very
few law
graduates, probably
no more than a third of the
total,
became full-time
practising lawyers. Many pursued
other
activities,
such as
livestock-raising, mining,
and
trade,
or the
priesthood
and
teaching.
The
majority
were,
at least
part-time,
mid-level civil servants.
Some tried
slowly
to climb the bureaucratic ladder or contented
themselves with low-level clerical
positions,
where
they
could
very likely
spend
the rest of their lives. A handful
occupied high,
full-time
bureaucratic
posts
either in their native
regions
or in other colonial locales
(see
Table
2).
The
practising lawyers
fulfilled a
variety
of
professional
functions:
preparing
deeds and
writing
wills for
wealthy
families;
designing
commercial contracts between local merchants or local and
foreign
traders;
conducting
fiscal
disputes,
criminal
cases,
or
litigation
over
dowries, entails, inheritances, donations, land,
mining
and
property
rights,
and affairs of honour
- one of the
overriding
concerns of
hispanic
society.36
In
addition,
all
lawyers
had to
spend
time
serving
as
abogados
de
del Real
(I767-I835),
and oidores
Joaquin Mosquera y Figueroa (I747-1830)
and
Manuel del
Campo y
Rivas
(I750-i830),
who had
graduated
in New Granada in the
early I770S
and
I790S
and were still alive at the time the list was
compiled.
A few other
lawyers
of the southern
regions
of
Popayan,
Cali,
and
Buga,
who had
graduated
in and
belonged
to
Quito's royal audiencia,
are not
registered
here
either;
and a
couple
of
Antioquefio lawyers
are
missing
as well. Gustavo
Arboleda,
Diccionario
biogrdfico
y
genealdgico
del
antiguo Departamento
del Cauca
(Bogota, I962);
Beatriz Patino
M.,
Criminalidad, ley penaly
estructura social en la
provincia
de
Antioquia, I7/0-1820 (Medellin,
1994),
pp.
I64-73.
In
spite
of these
omissions,
it is
unlikely
that the total exceeded I
50.
35 Garcia de la
Guardia,
Kalendario
manual;
Moreno
y
Escand6n,
'Documento sobre el
exceso'; Silvestre,
Descripcion
del
reyno.
In absolute
terms,
as was
indicated,
priests
outnumbered
lawyers
in the late
eighteenth century
and
during
a
great part
of the
nineteenth,
but
by
the end of the colonial
period
the correlation was
slowly shifting
in
favour of
lawyers. Silva,
'Escolares
y
catedraticos',
p. 79;
Villamarin, 'Concept
of
Nobility'.
36 Archivo Hist6rico
Nacional,
Bogota
(hereafter
AHN),
Notaria
Ia. Bogota,
vol.
I3;
Notaria
za.,
vols.
9-1
I;
Notaria
3a.,
vols.
z, 4-5.
In
1787
one resident of
Medellin
sued
another who refused to address him with the honorific
don,
which
implied
noble
Lawyers 527
pobres,
or
pro
bono
attorneys,
an
obligation many deeply
disliked - and
tried to
avoid,
through
excuses
ranging
from the lack of
appropriate
clothes to the need to handle
only paid
cases to
support
their
poor
families. The
Royal
Audiencia
urged lawyers
not to come
up
with
'ridiculous' excuses to avoid the
regular
visits to
gaols
that,
as 'advocates
of the
poor', they
were
required
to make.37
Not
infrequently, lawyers
like
Jer6nimo
Torres,
member of a
wealthy
mining
and
landowning family
from the southern
region
of
Popayan,
also
kept busy representing
themselves in
disputes
over lands or mines and
doing
favours for the cabildo of their
city
or for
family
and friends.38
Another main
occupation
of
practising lawyers
was
handling
the
legal
affairs of the Catholic church or individual clerics. The
convents,
monasteries,
and church-administered
colegios mayores
owned
properties,
held
mortgages,
and
constantly
needed to
request payment
from their
many
debtors or to
engage
in
litigation
over
rights
to land or other
property.39
Individual
clergy
needed
lawyers
when
they sought
to move
up
in the church
hierarchy
or to
negotiate
their
parish appointments.40
And
priests
relied on
lawyers
to
help
them administer their often
substantial fortunes and
frequent
related
litigation.41 Despite
the
variety
of their activities and
clients,
most
lawyers
seem to have found it difficult
to accumulate
significant
wealth
through
fees for
litigation
or other full-
descent.
Twinam, Miners, Merchants,
p.
I
19. Litigation
of this sort was common
during
the second half of the
century. Jaime
Jaramillo Uribe, 'Mestizaje y
diferenciaci6n social
en el Nuevo Reino de Granada en la
segunda
mitad del
siglo XVIII',
Anuario colombiano
de historia
socialy
de la
cultura,
vol. 2
(I965),
pp.
46-8;
Alfonso Garcia
Valdecasas,
El
hidalgo y
el honor
(Madrid, 1948); Patinio, Criminalidad, ley penal y
estructura
social,
pp.
I97-247; Garrido, Reclamosy representaciones, pp. 217-26.
37
AHN,
Medicos
y Abogados,
2:
384, 235, 39I; Agustin Bermtidez,
'La
abogacia
de
pobres
en
Indias',
Anuario de historia del derecho
espanol,
vol.
50 (1980).
38 Carta de
Jer6nimo
Torres a su hermano
Camilo,
Popaydn,
20
October, 1807,
in 'Datos
para
la
biografia
de Camilo
Torres',
Repertorio Colombiano,
vol.
20,
no.
3
(1899),
pp.
I83-210.
See also 'Torres
y
Tenorio
Jer6nimo', BHA,
vol.
2,
no.
5 (I903),
pp.
I35-48.
39
AHN,
Notaria
ia.,
fol.
I42.
On the activities and
profits
of
lawyer Joaquin
Ortiz
Tagle,
who served
Bogota's
local
convents,
see
Ortfz, Reminiscencias,
p.
I4.
40
AHN,
Notaria
Ia.,
fols.
200,
281. It was also
customary
for
lay
members of
society
in
pursuit
of a bureaucratic
appointment
to be
represented by
a
lawyer.
See
ibid.,
fol. 2 I
3;
and letters from
Miguel
Tadeo G6mez to
Joaquin
Camacho,
in Martinez
Delgado,
Noticia
biogrdfica, pp.
288-9.
41
Julio
C.
Vergara y Vergara,
Don Antonio de
Vergara Acdiratey
sus
descendientes,
vol.
I
(Madrid, I952), p. I40;
Adolfo L.
G6mez,
El tribuno de
181
(Bogota, 1910),
p.
236;
Francisco de P.
Plazas,
Genealogias
de la
provincia
de Neiva
(Bogota,
98
5),
p.
1
2;
Ram6n
Correa,
'Jorge
Ram6n de
Posada', BHA,
vol.
6,
no. 61
(I909), pp.
11-29;
Camilo
Pardo
Umafna,
Haciendas de la Sabana
(Bogota, 1988), pp. 77-8
1. For
examples
of
priests'
litigation,
see
AHN,
Notaria
ia.,
fols.
280, 360;
Horacio
Rodriguez Plata,
Andres Maria
Rosilloy
Meruelo
(Bogota, 1944),
pp. 30-5, 38-9.
5
28 Victor M. Uribe
time
legal practices.
In
1809, Jer6nimo
Torres
expressed
his
agreement
with his brother Camilo's
complaints
about their
unproductive profession.
Camilo,
also a
lawyer,
was
certainly
not
destitute,
and could even lend
money
to
wealthy Bogota
merchants.42 Yet he was bitter about 'the sterile
occupation
of
defending
cases over
leaking
roofs'.43 Similar
complaints
were voiced
by Tunja
native
Joaquin
Camacho,
who
preferred
the
increasing
frustration of bureaucratic
jobs
to law
practice.44
Other
lawyers
who tried to make a
living practising
in
provinces
remote from the
capital
also
complained
about the little
money they
earned,
with even more
reason.45
The
profession's
limited
prospects
for economic advancement resulted
in
part
from the
generally poor
character of New Granada's colonial
economy.46
Yet
they
seem somewhat
paradoxical given
New Granadans'
high propensity
to
litigate.
Patrician and antimonarchical activist Antonio
Narifio Alvarez observed as much in
I797,
while in
jail
accused of
conspiracy.47
In the
mid-I79os,
the
viceroy
also
reported
to the crown on
'the
huge
number of
legal
cases... most of them
concerning
civil and
criminal
disputes,
filed
by
the inhabitants of the
city
of
Tocaima',
a little
village
near
Bogota.48 Cartagena-based
merchant
Jose Ignacio
de Pombo
42
Camilo Torres loaned
prominent
merchant
Jose
Gonzalez
Llorente,
a
Spaniard
based
in
Bogota,
more than
8,ooo pesos,
a
significant
amount in the
early
nineteenth
century.
Rafael Abello
Salcedo,
'La
primera republica',
BHA,
vol.
37,
no.
441-3 (95 i),
pp.
423-53.
See also Gonzales Llorente's i808
will,
printed
in Eduardo Posada
(ed.),
El 20
de
Julio.
Capitulos
sobre la revolucidn de iSio
(Bogota, I914), pp.
63-9.
43 To Camilo's bitter references to 'el oficio esteril de defender
pleitos
de
goteras',
Jer6nimo responded,
'You are
very right
to lament
being
a
lawyer,
and
having
to
perform
so
many partly
if not
wholly unproductive legal occupations
in our
poor
[miserrimo]
country'.
'Carta de
Jer6nimo', p.
192.
44
Miguel
Tadeo G6mez to
Joaquin
Camacho, 3 July I803,
in Martinez
Delgado,
Noticia
biogrdfica, pp. 277-8;
see also Horacio
Rodriguez
Plata,
La
antigua
Provincia del Socorro
y la
independencia (Bogota, I963),
p. 8
2; Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
Mandarins',
appendix
A.
45
AHN,
Medicos
y Abogados, 3: 235, 251.
46
See a
comprehensive
discussion of this
region's economy, society
and
politics
in
Mcfarlane,
Colombia
before Independence, esp. pp. 39-95.
47
Wrote Narifio: 'Una de las enfermedades mas destructoras de este Reino es la mania
de los
pleitos...
todos los dias vemos comenzar un
pleito por
los linderos de unas
tierras, y
acabar
por
la honra
y
la hacienda de los
litigantes'.
Antonio
Narifio,
'Ensayo
sobre un nuevo
plan
de administraci6n en el Nuevo Reino de Granada'
[1797],
in Vida
Jy
escritos del General Narino
(Bogota, I946), pp.
88-9.
48 The crown soon abolished the local cabildo and
appointed
a
lawyer
as teniente
gobernador
letrado to settle the numerous
legal disputes
in the
region.
See Pedro M.
Carrefio,
'Atavismo
litigioso',
BHA,
vol.
3 ,
no.
355-6 (I944),
pp. 556-62; Alejandro
B.
Carranza,
Don Dionisio de los Caballeros de Tocaima
(Bogota, I94I),
p. 221. Some
historical roots of New Granada's
litigiousness
can
probably
be found in
early
sixteenth-century Castile,
also a
very litigious society. Kagan,
Lawsuits and
Litigants,
pp.
3-20.
Lawyers 529
noted and was
equally
concerned
by
the
large
number of trials
dealing
with land
rights,
which he attributed to the lack of accurate
maps.49
Apparently,
not all of these numerous
legal
conflicts
provided
income
for law
graduates. Many
were handled instead
by practicos
or
tinterillos,
legal practitioners
who lacked formal
training
or law
degrees.
Others were
carried out
directly by
the
parties
involved, for,
as one
lawyer argued,
'it
is
quite
uncomfortable to
practise
law,
especially
in small
cities,
because
the
parties
interested take care of their own defence. That is
why
this
profession
is not
profitable enough'.50
Still other
legal
affairs were
handled
by
a
variety
of
legal
auxiliaries,
among
them the
procuradores
(solicitors)
and the escribanos
piblicos (scribes
and
clerks).
The former were
in
charge
of drafting
representaciones
(petitions, complaints,
and other
legal
briefs)
directed to the
authorities,
which
sometimes,
but not
always,
needed a
lawyer's
endorsement. The
latter,
not to be confused with the
prestigious
honorific officials known as escribanos de
cadmara, witnessed,
recorded,
and
very likely prepared
standard
legal
instruments,
including
contracts,
without
lawyers' participation.51
In
addition,
all these
lay
practitioners
and auxiliaries could utilise the abundant
help
available in
manuals
originally designed
to
help lawyers
in
practice.52
Faced with this
multilayered competition, lawyers
ended
up moving
into
other,
apparently
more lucrative activities.
Many
tended their lands
or mines and
engaged
in commerce.
By 1782,
Pedro Romero
Sarachaga
had been escribano de cdmara of the
Royal
Audiencia for more than I 6
years,
but had never received a
salary;
instead,
he made a livelihood out of
49
Pombo scorned the 'muchos
pleitos
eternos entre las
Provincias,
entre los
pueblos y
entre los
particulares
sobre
linderos,
que
son la ruina de
muchos, y particularmente
de
los labradores'.
Jose
I.
Pombo,
'Informe de don
Jose Ignacio
de Pombo del Consulado
de
Cartagena
sobre asuntos econ6micos
y fiscales,
abril
i8, 1807',
in
Sergio
E. Ortiz
(ed.),
Escritos de dos economistas coloniales
(Bogota, 1965),
p. 3
2.
50 'Las incomodidades
que experimentan
los de este oficio en las
poblaciones
cortas
y
en
donde cada interesado forma
por
si sus defensas. Por este motivo rinde
poco
la
profesi6n'.
These
complaints, presented
about
1807 by Antioquefio lawyer
Pantale6n
Arango,
were followed
by
an
i809
petition arguing
that since he had
practised
medicine for a number of
years,
he wished to have a licence to devote himself
entirely
to this
profession.
The licence and a
degree
were
granted
in
early
18 0.
AHN,
Medicos
yAbogados,
3:
235, 251.
51
AHN, Anexo,
Instrucci6n
Pdblica, 4: 474.
For the role of some of these functionaries
in
sixteenth-century
Peru and
Mexico,
and in colonial Venezuela see
Lockhart, Spanish
Peru,
chs.
4,
6; and Arenal
Fenochio,
'De
abogados y leyes', pp. 19I-3;
Nieves Avellan
de
Tamayo,
Los escribanos de
Venezuela (Caracas, 1994).
52
AHN,
Medicos
y Abogados,
3: 235, 25
. The oldest
example
found in the Colombian
archives is the 'Gufa
para dirigir jueces'
written in
I764 by
the
priest
Pedro de
Moya.
AHN,
Ortega
Ricaurte, caja
2. More than a
century earlier,
the
Spanish
had relied on
manuals like the 161 8 'Prctica de
procuradores para seguir pleitos
civiles
y criminales',
written
by Juan Mufi6z,
which was
very likely brought
to the New World.
Kagan,
Lawsuits and
Litigants,
p. 46.
5 3
o Victor M. Uribe
providing
the
city
of
Bogota
with 'beef fattened and seasoned in his own
haciendas'.53
Jeronimo
Torres
spent
most of his time in
mining
and
commerce;
he was in
charge
of
administering
his
family's gold
mine and
also had two
companzas
de
comercio,
or business
partnerships,
with the
wealthy Spanish
merchant Gonzalez de Llorente
(to
whom his brother
Camilo had lent
money). Trading
was the
major occupation
of
Jose
Felix
de
Restrepo,
from the northwestern
mining region
of
Antioquia,
who,
besides
teaching
at the local
seminary
in
Popayan
and
holding
a minor
bureaucratic
position,
had a
partnership
with his brother-in-law
Miguel
Maria Uribe Velez
trading goods
between
Popayan
and
Antioquia.54
Another
Antioquefio lawyer, Jose
Manuel
Restrepo, gratefully
remem-
bered his own mercantile
experience: just
after
receiving
his law
degree
in
1
808,
he was able to do some
trading
with the
help
of
money provided by
his father.
Otherwise,
he recalled in
dismay,
he would have had to content
himself with
making
a
living
as a
lawyer.55
A
large
number of
lawyers
were also members of the
clergy,
and their
predominant occupation
was often as
parish priests.
About one-third of a
sample
of
65 priests
whose careers are described elsewhere
appear
to have
also been
lawyers.
Part of the
training
of both
priests
and
lawyers,
particularly
the extensive
study
of canon
law,
was
remarkably
similar,
which contributed to the
affinity
between these two
occupations.
In
addition,
as we
know,
the
priesthood presented
economic incentives that
certainly
must have overshadowed those of
legal practice.56
53 'Relaci6n de los meritos
y
servicios del doctor Pedro Romero
Sarachaga... I777'.
Documentos Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia
(hereafter
DBNC),
F.
Pineda, 372.
On
Francisco Gaona de la
Bastida,
Francisco Sanz de
Santamaria, Jose
Maria Garcia de
Toledo,
and
Jose
Caicedo
y F16rez, lawyers
whose
major
activities revolved around
landownership
and livestock
raising,
see
Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
Mandarins',
appendix
A.
54
While in
Popayan, Restrepo
received from
Uribe,
who was in
Antioquia,
mules loaded
with merchandise from Castile.
Restrepo
in turn sent Uribe muleloads of cacao and
ponchos
made in the southern
region
of Pasto. The business was
quite profitable;
in
a few
years profits
reached
nearly
I
50,000 pesos.
See Guillermo Hernandez de
Alba,
Viday
escritos del Doctor
Jose
F.
Restrepo (Bogota, 1935);
Estanislao G6mez
Barrientos,
Don Mariano
Ospinay
su
epoca,
vol. I
(Medellin, 1913),
p. 48;
Garcia de la
Guardia,
Kalendario
manual,
p.
i68;
Gabriel
Arango Mejia, Genealogias
de
Antioquia
y
Caldas
(Medellin, 1973).
55 In his memoirs he
observed,
'el estudio
practico
de las
leyes
le...
puso
en
aptitud para
desempefiar cualquier
destino en la carrera de
abogado, profesi6n que pensaba seguir,
porque
no ten/a
patrimonio para emprender
otro modo de
mejorar
su
fortuna'. Restrepo,
Autobiografia, pp.
Io- i,
emphasis
added; Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
Mandarins',
appendix
C.
56
Ernesto
Restrepo
Tirado, 'Notas
genealogicas
sobre
algunos
individuos
que
honraron
la Nueva
Granada', BHA,
vol.
3 I,
no.
3 5 3-4 (1944),
pp.
322-50;
Garcia de la
Guardia,
Kalendario
manual,
pp. 57-72.
A few
examples
are
Ignacio
Maria
Tordecillas,
Nicolas
Mauricio
Omafa,
Andres Rosillo
y Meruelo, Fray Jose Joaquin Escobar, Santiago
Torres
Pefia,
Pedro
Salgar,
and Manuel B. Rebollo. Besides
being parish priests
or
occupying
other
positions
in the church
hierarchy,
some of these men were rich
Lawyers 5 3
Teaching
law at a
university
was also traditional
employment
for
lawyers.
This was not a full-time
occupation,
but a
complement
to some
of the other activities. A chair in law also served as a
catapult
to a
bureaucratic career. Law
professors
had a
greater
chance of
receiving
a
high-ranking
bureaucratic
appointment;
it is known that at least
up
to the late seventeenth
century, they
were included 'as a matter of
course on lists of candidates assembled for the use of the Caimara of the
Indies when it considered vacancies on the
entry
audiencias of South
America'.57
University
chairs therefore were a means to attain
'positions
of
political importance
more lucrative than the
chair',
an indication of
which is that the statement of academic activities and
accomplishments
was a
major
item in
lawyers'
relaciones de merito
(curriculum vitae),
an
essential
component
of
applications
for bureaucratic
jobs.58
As the
relaciones
attest,
joining
the
bureaucracy
was the
golden
dream of
many
letrados and also their
greatest
source of
pride.
As has been
demonstrated,
local
lawyers,
much like other
creoles,
wanted office for different reasons:
'as a
career,
an investment for the
family,
an
opportunity
to
acquire
capital,
and a means of
influencing policy
in their own
regions
and to their
own
advantage',
and also as a source of honour and
prestige.60
But
joining
the
bureaucracy
was not
simple.
In
fact,
lawyers regularly updated
their relaciones de merito
throughout
their bureaucratic
careers,
displaying
them as
proof
of services to the
king
and thus the basis of
personal
and
familial
virtue,
honour and status.59
Lawyers
and the Colonial
Bureaucracy
Before
entering
the
bureaucracy,
it was
customary
for a recent law
graduate
to serve a stint as an
unpaid apprentice,
or meritorio, often in the
same
agency
where one of his relatives served.
Subsequently
he
might
pursue
some
teaching
and also would
try
to lend his services to a cabildo
landowners.
Rodriguez
Plata,
Andris Maria
Rosillo;
Pardo
Umafia, Haciendas,
pp.
77-8I; Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
Mandarins', appendix
A. See also references cited in
note
25.
57
Mark A.
Burkholder,
Politics
of
a Colonial Career:
Jose Baquijano
and the Audiencia
of
Lima
(Albuquerque, 1980),
p. 46.
58
Ibid.,
pp. 45-6.
59
DBNC,
F.
Pineda, io66, 238-589;
Mark
Burkholder,
'Relaciones de Meritos
y
Servicios: A Source for
Spanish-American Group Biography
in the
Eighteenth
Century', Manuscripta,
vol. 21
(1977), pp. 97-104;
Garcia
Valdecasas,
El
hidalgoy
el
honor,
pp.
8, I7, 57-60; Julian
Pitt
Rivers,
'Honor and Social
Status',
in
J.
G.
Peristiany (ed.),
Honour and Shame: The Values
of
Mediterranean
Society
(Chicago, 1974),
pp. 2I-77;
Ann
Twinam, 'Honor, Sexuality,
and
Illegitimacy
in Colonial
Spanish
America',
in Lavrin
(ed.),
Sexuality
and
Marriage, p.
I23; Garrido,
Reclamos
y
representaciones, p. 35; M'cFarlane,
Colombia
before Independence, pp. 238-245.
60
John
Lynch,
'The Institutional Framework of Colonial
Spanish
America', Journal of
Latin American
Studies,
Suppl. (1992), p. 74; Garrido, Reclamosy representaciones,
pp. 35,
7
i-6.
5 3
2 Victor M. Uribe
or
city council,
not
necessarily
the one of his native
region,
as
regidor
(councilman),
alcalde ordinario
(mayor,
sheriff,
and
justice
of the
peace),
sindico
procurador (city
solicitor or
general attorney),
or asesor
(council's
legal adviser).
These were
mostly
honorific
jobs
that
generally
carried no
salary
and were considered somewhat of a burden.61
Then,
while
continuing
to teach law if
possible,
the
young lawyer
was
ready
to enter
the colonial
bureaucracy
in the
customary
lower
positions
of
oficial
secondario;
oficial
mayor;
asesor of a fiscal
monopoly,
such as the tobacco
concession;
or teniente asesor of a
provincial governor.
These
jobs
carried
yearly
nominal salaries of
400
to
i,ooo
pesos.
The lower
salary
was
acceptable
as
long
as the
job
could be
performed
in a
region
not far from
Bogota
or another
major
urban centre like
Cartagena
or
Popayan.
Otherwise a better
payment
was
expected.
It is
known,
for
instance,
that around the late
I79os,
no
lawyer
wanted to
accept
the
job
of
governor jue.
letrado of the northern
city
of
Mompos
when it was endowed with a
yearly salary
of
just 5oo pesos. By August
1801,
the
viceroy
was authorised to increase it to
,000o
pesos.
A similar
figure paid
in an
equivalent job apparently
was attractive even for
lawyers
with a
long
bureaucratic
trajectory,
like
Joaquin
Camacho.
Camacho,
who
had
taught
law and had served for several
years
as teniente
gobernador
and
corregidor
in different
regions,
was
encouraged by
a fellow bureaucrat and
friend to take the
thousand-peso position
of
oficial mayor
of the new
caja
real to be established in the north-eastern
region
of San Gil.62
At a later
stage
in his
career,
a letrado could
expect
to be
appointed
to
jobs
such as that of teniente
gobernador
of a small
province, corregidor
of a
major
town,
provincial governor
or auditor de
guerra (war auditor)
in an
important region,
or accountant
(contador)
of the Tribunal de Cuentas or
a fiscal
monopoly
like
Bogota's
Administraci6n
Principal
de
Aguardiente,
which carried a
yearly salary
of
2,000
pesos.
A
lawyer
could also be
appointed
to
judicial posts
like the much-coveted and
highly competitive
jobs
of
fiscal
or oidor of the
Royal
Audiencia,
which
by
I816
paid 3,300
pesos
a
year
or,
in
regions
other than New
Granada,
even
up
to
7,500
or
10,000
pesos.63
At least seven
lawyers
from New Granada held these
high
61
Twinam, Miners, Merchants;
Julian Vargas,
La sociedad de
Santafe
colonial
(Bogoti, 990),
p. 234; Patifio, Criminalidad, ley penaly
estructura
social, pp. I47-64.
62
Jose
M. Ots
y Capdequi,
Las instituciones del Nuevo Reino de Granada al
tiempo
de la
independencia (Madrid, 1958), p. 23; Miguel
T. G6mez to
Joaquin
Camacho, July I803,
in Martfnez
Delgado,
Noticia
biografica,
p. 278; Carranza,
San
Dionisio,
p.
222.
63
Guillermo Hernandez de Alba
(comp.),
Archivo
Narino,
vol.
I (Bogoti, 1990),
p. 44;
Ots
y Capdequi, Instituciones, pp. 23, 29, 90;
Sergio
E.
Ortiz,
'Eusebio Maria
Canabal',
BHA,
vol.
63 (197I),
p.
I5; Burkholder,
Politics
of
a Colonial
Career,
p.
112;
Jose
Camacho
Carrizosa,
'Hombres
y partidos', Repertorio Historico,
vol.
14,
no.
4 (I896), p.
267. Judging by
the scale of salaries in the
Royal
Mint of
Bogota,
it
might
be assumed
that
high
bureaucrats were
paid
between
2,000
and
4,000 pesos
a
year,
middle
bureaucrats between 6oo and
2,000 pesos,
and lower bureaucrats below 6o0
pesos.
In
Lawyers
53
3
judicial positions
in audiencias outside the
viceroyalty
period.64
However,
it
certainly
seems that almost
any
of the mid-level
bureaucratic
positions
could be
tempting
for most
lawyers
at
any
time.
Nearly
half of the
46 lawyers employed by
the late colonial state
occupied
positions
at that level
(Table 2).
Lawyers
were also
willing
to
accept jobs
that carried no fixed
salary,
but
instead
depended
on the so-called derechos de actuacion or fees
proportional
to the number and nature of
legal
services and the
signatures endorsing
legal
documents,
which the
lawyer provided
as asesor. Interim
appointees
to the
position
of asesor de
gobernador typically performed
these services. In
these cases the fees were assessed
according
to an official
tariff,
or
arancel,
approved by
the
royal
authorities,
which
spelled
out in
great
detail the
amount to be collected for different activities.65 Not
infrequently,
particular
state
agencies
hired external
lawyers
to
perform specific
tasks
for a limited
period.66
Another common situation was that of
lawyers
working
as tax farmers and
administering,
for a share of the
profits,
state
monopolies
in
alcohol,
tobacco and the
postal
service. These
posts
were
normally
sold in
public
auction,
with the concessionaire
given
a
percentage
of the monies collected on behalf of the crown instead of a fixed
salary.67
reality,
a list of the salaries of this mint indicates that of the three
highest
officials
-
the
superintendente,
the
contador,
and the tesorero
-
the first earned
3,ooo
pesos
a
year,
and the
other two earned
2,000
pesos.
The
oficial mayor
had a
salary
of 680
pesos,
and the so-
called
peones
earned
just 144 pesos
a
year. Only
three manual
labourers,
the
ensayadores
and talladores
(probably qualified
technicians or even
artists)
had salaries of
,000o
and
even
1,600
a
year.
A. M.
Barriga
V.,
Historia de la Casa de la
Moneda, vol. z
(Bogota,
1969), pp.
I
I6-
7;
see also Francisco
J. Caro,
'Diario de todos los acontecimientos
que
van ocurriendo en esta camara
y
del
Virreynato
del Nuevo
Reyno
de Granada'
[1788],
in Alirio G6mez
Pic6n,
Francisco
Javier
Caro. Tronco
hispano
de los Caros en Colombia
(Bogota, I977),
pp.
292, 296.
Salaries seem to have been much
higher
in
Mexico,
where
some fiscal
jobs,
such as the
superintendencia
of the local
mint,
were
paid
6,ooo
pesos,
twice as much as in New Granada.
Arnold,
Bureaucrats and Bureaucracy, pp. 13I-52;
Socolow,
Bureaucrats
of
Buenos
Aires,
pp.
i
Io- , 166-7.
64 One of
them,
Nicolas Mesia
Caicedo,
was oidor in
Manila;
two
more, Joaquin
Mosquera y Figueroa
and Manuel del
Campo y Rivas,
in
Mexico; another,
Luis de
Robledo
y Alvarez,
in Santo
Domingo;
and three
more,
Francisco Xavier Moreno
y
Escand6n, Ignacio
Tenorio and Andr6s
Jose
de Iriarte
y Rojas,
were in
Quito,
the first
two as
oidores,
the third as
fiscal.
Garcia de la
Guardia,
Kalendario
manual;
Mark
Burkholder and D. S.
Chandler,
From
Impotence
to
Authority:
The
Spanish
Crown and the
American Audiencias,
i687-I8o8 (Columbia, 1977); Jose
M.
Restrepo, Biografias
de los
mandatarios
y
ministros de la Real Audiencia
(z67i-i8i9) (Bogota, I952); Arboleda,
Diccionario
biogrdfico, p. 426; Jose
Antonio Torres
Pena,
Memorias sobre los
orzgenes
de la
independencia
nacional
(Bogota, 1960).
65
Restrepo, Autobiografia, p.
I I. A
copy
of the late colonial 'Practico arancel de
regular
costas
procesales'
can be found in
AHN, Consejo
de
Estado,
i:
28-35.
66
AHN,
Notaria ia.
Escr., 3 January i8io,
pp.
1-2.
67
In the case of the Administraci6n de
Aguardientes
in
Cartagena,
for
instance,
it
seems that
lawyer
Eusebio Maria Canabal
paid io,ooo pesos
for the
job
in
I808,
and
in
exchange expected
to receive around 6
per
cent of the rents collected.
Enrique
5 34
Victor M. Uribe
Table 2. New Granada
Lawyers
in the State
Bureaucracy, 80o6,
by
rank
Rank of
post*
High-ranking
Middle
Low-ranking
Political
5 4
Fiscal
7
I6
Judicial 5
Clerical
3
2
Other
4
Total 20 22
4
*
High-ranking political jobs
consisted of
governors, corregidores
and tenientes letrados.
Middle-level
jobs
included tenientes
asesores;
high
fiscal
jobs
include contadores and tesoreros
of the Tribunal de Cuentas and the Casa de la
Moneda;
medium fiscal
jobs
consist of
administradores,
fiscales
and asesores of the Rentas de
Tabaco, Aguardientes, Correos, Bulas,
etc.;
high judicial jobs
include
agentes fiscales
and relatores of the
Audiencia;
high
clerical
jobs
include escribanos of the Real Audiencia and the Tribunal de
Cuentas;
medium clerical
jobs
consist of
oficiales
of the Contadurias of the Tribunal
Mayor
de
Cuentas;
and low-
ranking jobs
were those of
meritorios,
agregados,
and
padres
de menores.
Sources: Antonio Garcia de la
Guardia,
Kalendario
manualy guia deforasteros
en Santa Fe de
Bogotd
capital
del Nuevo Reino de Granada
para
el ano de
Io86
(Bogota, 1988),
pp. 57-72; Jos6
M. Ots
y Capdequi,
Las instituciones del Nuevo Reino de Granada al
tiempo
de la
independencia
(Madrid, 1958).
Evidence of
lawyers'
social
background
enriches the
understanding
of
lawyers'
access to bureaucratic careers and
subsequent promotions.
Social Characteristics
of
Late Colonial
Lawyers
Regardless
of the exact number of its members or the bureaucratic
position they might occupy,
the
legal profession
was a rather exclusive
circle. Research on the social
origins
of the
applicants
to
Bogota's Colegio
Mayor
del Rosario and other
upper-level
institutions shows that
among
219
applicants
in the
period
I66o-I800, 43
had fathers in the
military; 24
and 21 were sons of officials in the Audiencia Real and the fiscal
bureaucracy, respectively; 5
were sons of
alcaldes, alferez reales,
or
procuradores generales
of local
cabildos;
and 29 had fathers with
unspecified
tztulos
honorzficos. Only
six
belonged
to families of manual
workers,
such
as escribanos
(clerks), plateros (silversmiths),
and boticarios
(pharmacy
owners).68 Comprehensive biographical
information on New Granada's
Ortega
Ricaurte,
Proceso
hist6rico
del 20 de
Julio
(Bogota,
I
960), p.
I 2;
Eustaquio
Galavis,
'Relaci6n exacta
y
circunstanciada de todos los
empleos polfticos... 1787',
in Ulises
Rojas, Corregidoresy justicias mayores
de
Tunja y
su
provincia
desde la
fundacion
de la ciudad
hasta
i8i7 (Tunja, I962), pp. 578-88;
Archivo Hist6rico de
Tunja,
vol.
3I8,
fols.
407-I3; Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
Mandarins',
appendix
C.
68
Silva,
'Escolares
y catedraticos',
p. I56; Twinam, Miners, Merchants;
Vargas,
Sociedad
de
Santafe; Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
Mandarins',
appendix
A.
Neuw Granada's Colonial
Lawyers 5 3 5
colonial
lawyers
indicates as well
that,
with but a few
exceptions, they
came from
prominent
social
groups. By
I8oo,
the
profession comprised
first- to
fifth-generation
white male creoles who
belonged
to families of
mineowners, landowners, merchants,
and incumbent or former
military
and bureaucrats.
Finally,
several of the
profession's
members were
themselves sons of
lawyers.69
The elitist character of the
profession
was
guaranteed by
the
demanding
standards needed for admission to one of the local
colegios mayores,
and
thereby
to a
university degree.
Access was restricted to
white, male,
old
Catholic Americans or
Spaniards,
who did not come from families who
had
practised
manual trades
(oficios viles).
Candidates had to
prove
their
pureZa
de
sangre
and their
legitimate
birth
(legitimidad).
Indeed,
before
admission,
the
colegios
carried out a short trial-like
procedure,
the
procesillo,
aimed at
determining, through
the
testimony
of various
witnesses,
the
applicants' religious,
ethnic,
family,
and economic
background.70
Following
the
procesillo,
the
colegios
could
reject
an
applicant
without
explanation.
This
privileged secrecy
lent itself to additional
and,
not
rarely, capricious rejection
of students. In
1808,
for
instance,
Cartagena
native
Joaquin Jose
Gori,
a future
lawyer
and
vice-president
of the
republic, complained
about the
inexplicable
reluctance of a
colegio
to admit
him as a student. Gori feared the
damage
such
unexplained rejection
would cause to his honour and interests.
Averring
his
preoccupation
with
his bureaucratic future and his social
status,
he scorned 'the offence caused
to his
family
name,
source of
major
obstacles to those who
aspire
to obtain
honorific
jobs
or to
marry
into
prominent
families'. His
anger
was
aggravated by
the fact that his
procesillo
had not even been
completed
when he was refused admission.71
During
the
early
seventeenth
century,
the
procesillo
went back three
generations
in
reviewing
an
applicant's
ancestors.
By
the middle of the
eighteenth century, investigation
was
apparently
restricted
largely
to the
69
Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
Mandarins',
appendix
A.
70
A
study
of all the
procesillos
followed in the
colegios mayores
of New Granada mentions
various
examples
of students whose admission was
questioned
because of their fathers'
economic
activity.
One of them was the son of a
wealthy
merchant
trading
in
wax;
another the son of a
baker;
another the son of a
platero
de
oro,
or
goldsmith.
As noted
earlier,
even medicine and
surgery
were considered
oficios
viles until the late
eighteenth
century. Silva,
'Escolares
y
catedraticos',
pp. 163-4.
See also
'Madrid, 14
de
julio
de
1768.
Real orden sobre lo
propuesto
en cuanto a estatuto de
legitimidad y limpieza
de
sangre para
entrar en
colegios y graduarse
en las universidades
y
recibirse de
abogado',
in Richard Konetzke
(ed.),
Coleccion de
documentospara
la historia de
laformacidn
social
hispanoamericana,
vol. 2
(Madrid, 1962), p. 340.
71
AHN, Anexo,
Instruccion
Publica, 4: 366-441; Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
Mandarins',
appendix
C. Some victims of the
I78os
exclusions
complained
about oidor
Joaqufn
Mosquera's capricious
and
unspecified
influence in the decisions. Gori was denied
admission without even
having presented proof
of his social
background.
5 3
6 Victor M. Uribe
applicant's parents.72
There is also evidence that
by
this same
period
the
colegios' right
of
freely rejecting applicants
was
being
curtailed.73
Some relaxation of the racial standards was also
taking place.
In New
Granada,
Crist6bal
Polo,
a
mulatto,
had earned a law
degree
as
early
as
I755,
but
only
after much
opposition
from the
Cartagena
elites,
who
repudiated permitting
members of the 'castes' to enter the
legal
profession,
which
they regarded
as their exclusive domain.74
Overcoming
new restrictions introduced in the
mid-I76os
to the admission of mulatto
lawyers, Jose
Ponceano
Ayarza finally
received his law
degree
in
1798.75
In
1794
he had filed a
petition
to be
recognised
as a
lawyer by
the
Audiencia. The
petition
stated that he had been born in the northwestern
region
of
Portovelo,
his father's native
city.
Not
exactly
a
typical
mulatto,
the
father,
Pedro Antonio
Ayarza,
was
captain
of Portovelo's
pardo
militia
for
twenty years,
and was in
charge
of the administration of the
city's
church funds. Owner of a
major
cacao
plantation,
he had accumulated
enough
wealth to send three of his sons -
Antonio, Pedro,
and
Jose
Ponceano - to
study
at the
faraway Bogota colegios,
and had also donated
his
salary
to the crown to
help pay
for the war
against England during
the
I790S.
After three
years
of
litigation,
his son
Jose
Ponceano was allowed
to take his final law exams -
although
his admission to the local bar
became effective
only
in 180
3.76
The crown decided to 'dar
por extinguida
la calidad de
pardo
del
peticionario y dispensarle
la
gracia
de admitirlo a
grados'.
This case
symbolises
the
changing
attitudes towards mixed-race
individuals,
in that
prominent
members of the local
society
backed
Ayarza
in his demand and
provided
him with letters of recommendation.
They
included the
Pey
brothers
-
an
attorney
and an influential
priest
-
and the
lawyers
Frutos
Gutierrez,
Pedro
Groot,
and
Joaqufn
Rivera. This was a
72
Silva,
'Escolares
y catedraticos',
pp. I45-79.
73 In
July
I804,
a
royal
cedula abolished the
Colegio
de San Bartolom6's
privilege
of
keeping
silent as to the reasons for
rejecting
an
applicant.
AHN, Anexo,
Instrucci6n
Publica, 4: 372.
74
Polo confronted
opposition
from some
lawyers
and the local cabildo. His case lasted
at least ten
years;
he was
finally
allowed to retain the law
degree
he had
already
been
granted. AHN, Colegios,
z:
231-63; Jaramillo
Uribe,
'Mestizaje y diferenciaci6n',
pp.
35, 39-40.
In New
Spain during
the late
eighteenth century applicants
with 'strains of
black or Indian blood in their families' were also admitted to law school after some
litigation; by
the late
i780s, Miguel
Ger6nimo
Cequo y Morales,
an Indian from
Cholula,
was
practising
law in Puebla as an
attorney
for
prisoners
and fellow Indians.
See
John
E.
Kicza,
'The
Legal Community
of Late Colonial Mexico: Social
Composition
and Career
Patterns',
unpubl.
ms.,
c.
1984, p. 5.
75
See
'Madrid, 23
de
julio
de
1765.
Real cedula
para que
no se admita a
ningun
mulato
a
grado alguno
en la Universidad de Santa Fe de
Bogota',
in Richard Konetzke
(ed.),
Coleccidn de
documentos,
vol.
2, p. 331.
76
Cuervo,
Coleccidn de
documentos,
vol.
2, p. 372; AHN, Colegios,
2:
231-63; 'Aranjuez,
I6
de marzo de
1797.
Real c6dula
dispensando
a Pedro Antonio de
Ayarza
la calidad
de
Pardo',
in
Konetzke,
Coleccidn de
documentos,
vol.
2, p. 757.
Lawyers 5 3 7
period
when economic
fortunes,
particularly
those of
merchants,
were
becoming
as much a source of
prestige
and
power
as noble
titles,
landholdings, legitimacy,
and whiteness had been in the
past.
A
wealthy
pardo
could
gain
a foothold in the
upper segments
of
society,
and even
illegitimate
sons,
if
wealthy,
could become
prominent.77
Both Polo and
Ayarza,
moreover,
gained
their
right
to a
degree
thanks
partly
to their
fathers'
military
service to the crown.
Still,
both succeeded
only
after
protracted litigation,
and both cases were
exceptional.
Most
lawyers
were
white.
As with
race,
some
exceptions
were allowed for socio-economic status.
To be
sure,
as noted
above,
the
offspring
of
prominent
colonial families
of
mineowners, landowners, merchants,
lawyers,
and incumbent or
former
military
and bureaucrats dominated the
legal profession
of New
Granada and other colonial
regions,
such as New
Spain.78
Yet the
Colegio
del
Rosario,
for
instance,
had a few
fellowships
for
poor applicants,
making
it
possible
for individuals of modest
background
to obtain law
degrees.
Preference was also
given
to the sons of middle-level state
officials. Antonio Martinez
Recaman,
son of an escribano in the fiscal
bureaucracy,
and Fortunato Gamba
Valencia,
son of an
oficial
in a
provincial Caja
Real,
obtained law
degrees
in the
178os
and
early
i8ios,
respectively.
Such
individuals, however,
were
unlikely
to achieve
economic
prosperity through legal practice
or to
gain
access to
high
state
positions,
the
supreme aspiration
of colonial
lawyers.79
Those
positions
77
Twinam, Miners, Merchants;
Jose Escorcia,
Sociedad
y
economia en el Valle el Cauca.
Desarrollo
politico, social, y economico, 1800-18z4 (Bogota, I983);
Germin
Colmenares,
Sociedady
economia en el Valle del Cauca. Cali:
terratenientes, mineros, y
comerciantes.
Siglo
XVIII
(Bogota, I983);
Maria T. Uribe and
Jesds
M.
Alvarez,
'El
parentesco y
la
formaci6n de las elites en la Provincia de
Antioquia',
Estudios
Sociales,
Fundaci6n
Antioquefa para
los Estudios Sociales
(FAES),
vol.
3
(1988),
pp.
51-93.
On the
upward
social
mobility
ofpardos
from the
76os
and
beyond
see
comparative
comments
by
Robin
Blackburn,
The Overthrow
of
Colonial
Slavery, I776-1848 (London, 1988), pp.
335-6.
78
Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
Mandarins',
appendix
A. The
only
other
Spanish colony
in
America about whose
lawyers'
social
history
and
background
we have some
professional
information and
analysis
is Mexico. See
Kicza,
'The
Legal Community',
pp. 5-7. Fragmentary
evidence and
analyses
exist for
Argentina.
See Carlos A.
Luque
Colombres,
Abogados
en Cdrdoba del Tucumdn
(C6rdoba, 1943);
and
Cutolo,
Abogadosy
escribanos.
Finally,
there are some edited collections of documents
concerning
Venezuelan
lawyers.
See Hector Garcia
Chuecos,
Abogados
de la colonia
(Caracas, 1958)
and Los
abogados
de la colonia
(Caracas, 1965).
On other
regions
see also notes 2 and
5.
79
Martinez
Recaman, through
his father's modest
connections,
bought
his
way up
to the
middling job
of asesor of the
Bogota Cajas
Reales
by
the late
178os.
Gamba Valencia
rose to
high jobs
after the revolution. See
BNC,
F.
Pineda,
io66:
127;
Garcia de la
Guardia,
Kalendario
manual,
p. 172; Arboleda,
Diccionario
biogrdfico, p. 173;
Manuel
Uribe
Angel,
'Recuerdos de un
viaje
a
Medellin', BHA,
vol.
2,
no.
17 (I904);
Benjamin
Pereira
Gamba,
'Miguel Gamba', BHA,
vol.
3,
no.
34 (1906),
pp. 62I-5.
5 3
8 Victor M. Uribe
presupposed
elite
background, high
economic
resources,
and
good
connections.
Bureaucratic
Promotion, Family
Formation and
Family
Networks
It was not wise for an ambitious
lawyer
to
marry
until he had secured a
good
bureaucratic
post.
Otherwise he would not be attractive to the elite
women of the
city. Conversely,
even
wealthy, aspiring lawyers
found it
convenient to
marry
the
daughters
or sisters of a
well-placed
bureaucrat.80
The
lawyer
son of a
relatively wealthy
mineowner,
for
instance,
could
thereby gain
a foothold in the state
bureaucracy. Eventually, helped by
his
own
family's
economic
support
and his bride's
connections,
he could
travel to
Spain
to
lobby
for a better
job.
After
waiting
in
Spain
for an
uncertain number of
years,
sometimes as
many
as ten or
IS,
he could
return to his native or another colonial
region
as a
fiscal
or oidor of a
Royal
Audiencia.81
If,
instead of
marrying right
after
graduation
or on
entering
the
bureaucracy,
the dedicated
lawyer-bureaucrat
waited until he had risen to
the
position
of,
say, governor
of an
important province
- which would
take,
with
luck,
approximately
ten to
I5 years
- he could
aspire
to
marry
a more
prestigious
bride,
particularly
if his own
family
had
enough
wealth. The bride
might
be the
daughter
of a state official such as the
corregidor
of an
important region
or a
contador,
and
might
also
belong
to a
family
of
landowners, mineowners,
or
wealthy
merchants. The creole
Joaquin Mosquera y Figueroa,
scion of a
wealthy mineowning family,
married into a
powerful landowning
clan of the
region
where,
after ten
years
as a bachelor in the middle-level
bureaucracy,
he was
serving
as
governor.
Years later he became oidor in
Bogota,
an
exceptional
case in
New Granada.82
In
Mosquera's
case and those of several other New Granada natives
80
The same seems to have been true for Buenos Aires's bureaucrats.
Socolow,
Bureaucrats
of
Buenos
Aires,
pp. I96-9.
81
The cases of Francisco Antonio Moreno
y
Escand6n and Manuel del
Campo y
Rivas
roughly
fit this
description, except
that the latter remained a bachelor his entire life.
Others,
like Francisco de
Tordecillas,
had less successful careers.
Rojas, Corregidores,
p. 597; Vergara y Vergara,
Don Antonio de
Vergara A4cdrate,
vol.
I, pp. I3
-80. The
mechanics of some of the
appointment processes
are discussed
by Burkholder,
Politics
of
a Colonial
Career,
pp. 30-43.
82 In
I787,
at a time when Bourbon
policies
were,
paradoxically, supposedly trying
to
prevent
local
society
from
influencing
colonial
bureaucracy, Mosquera y Figueroa
became the
only
native creole
appointed
oidor to the
Bogota
audiencia in the entire
eighteenth century,
with the
exception
of
Juan Ricaurte,
who served as interim oidor
for a short
period
in
April I718.
Arcesio
Arag6n,
'Un
regente
de
Espafia,
nacido en
Popayin,
en el Nuevo Reino de
Granada',
Revista de
Indias,
vol.
36
(1949),
pp.
307-II;
de los mandatarios,
pp.
337-8;
Burkholder and
Chandler,
From
Impotence
to
Authority; Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
A.
Lawyers 5 3
9
who
becamefiscales,
contadores,
or
oidores,
being
a criollo was not an absolute
obstacle in
rising
to the
highest
bureaucratic ranks.83
Nonetheless,
creoles
had extra
difficulty joining
the
bureaucracy, especially during
the second
half of the
eighteenth century. Jose
Caicedo
y
Florez
graduated
from law
school in
1774.
He
belonged
to the same
generation
as oidor
Mosquera y
Figueroa,
but
despite
a similar elite
background
he never
gained
access to
the bureaucratic world as
Mosquera
did. Caicedo was a
fifth-generation
creole. His
grandfather
had been an
encomendero,
governor
of two
provinces, corregidor
and
superintendente
of two other
regions,
and a
large
landholder. His father had also been a
prosperous
landowner who seems
not to have
occupied high
bureaucratic
positions.
Caicedo's first wife was
the niece of a former contador of the
royal
mint of
Bogota, nearly
the ideal
match for someone in
pursuit
of a bureaucratic career.84 His second wife
was the
daughter
of a
lawyer
of the Audiencia of
Bogota,
who was also
a
wealthy
landowner but who does not
appear
to have had
any
bureaucratic
trajectory.85 Lawyer
Caicedo
y
Florez
served,
as was
customary,
as alcalde ordinario and
regidor
of the
Bogota
cabildo
during
the
I770s
and
i780s;
but
except
for a short stint as
governor
of an
unimportant province,
he
ostensibly
never
gained
access to
any
bureaucratic
jobs
and instead devoted himself to
practising
law and
ranching.86
He neither
taught
law nor
occupied
even a middle-level
position
that would accumulate meritos toward a bureaucratic
appoint-
ment.
Thus, twenty years
after
obtaining
his law
degree,
he was
unlikely
to find
major opportunities
in the colonial
bureaucracy
and
probably
because of this he became bitter and rebellious. At least a few of his much
younger colleagues, anticipating
the
agony
of a
long
wait to
join
the
state's
ranks,
were also
becoming
so.87
83
See the
example
of the creole
F16rez
clan
who,
through positions
in the
cathedral,
the
fiscal
bureaucracy
and the
audiencia,
built a
powerful
network of
power
in the
early
eighteenth century.
German
Colmenares,
'Factores de la vida
politica:
el Nuevo Reino
de Granada en el
siglo
XVIII
(1730-1740)',
in Manual de historia de
Colombia,
vol. I
(Bogota, 1982),
pp.
395-402.
84 One of his sisters was married to Pedro Romero
Sarachaga,
escribano de cdmara of the
local audiencia from
1766
to at least
I777,
and a
wealthy
landowner. Caicedo's brother
Fernando was the
parish priest
of the local cathedral from
1794
to I802 and later
became a
high ranking
member of the church
hierarchy.
Another
brother, Luis,
was a
wealthy
landowner.
Restrepo
and
Rivas,
Genealogias;
'Relaci6n de los meritos... Pedro
Romero
Sarachaga'. DBNC,
F.
Pineda, 372;
also
Figure
2 in this article.
85
Francisco Gaona de la Bastida
(I75 5-799),
Caicedo's
father-in-law,
owned at least two
major haciendas,
one of which was valued in
I779
at
I2,300 patacones,
a considerable
amount. Pardo
Umafia, Haciendas,
pp. 164, 2I5-i6; Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
Mandarins',
appendix
A.
86
Restrepo
and
Rivas,
Genealogias, p. I65;
Sandra
Montgomery,
'The Bourbon
Mining
Reform in New
Granada',
in Fisher et al.
(eds.), Reform
and
Insurrection, pp.
5I-3.
87
Caicedo was
suspended
from the
legal profession
as a
suspect
of
conspiracy
in the mid-
I790s.
See Germin Perez Sarmiento
(ed.),
Causas celebres a los
precursores... copias fielesy
540
Victor M. Uribe
What is
more,
Europeans
could
easily
outmanoeuvre creoles. Those
lawyers living
and
having
close relatives in
Spain,
where most decisions
were made and most
jobs assigned,
could move more
quickly
and with
less
expense up
the bureaucratic ladder. This is demonstrated
by
the case
of
fiscal
Alvarez.88
Manuel Bernardo Alvarez
(maternal grandfather
of Antonio
Narifio,
who would later bemoan New Granada's
unending litigiousness) wasfiscal
of the
Royal
Audiencia of
Bogotai
from
I736
to
75 5.
He was born in
Spain
in the late seventeenth
century,
and in
1728,
two
years
after
graduation
and still
single,
he came to the New World as teniente de
gobernadory
auditor de
guerra
in Caracas. In less than a
decade,
probably
through patronage
from friends and relatives in his
homeland,
he rose to
the
position
of
Bogoti fiscal.
Not until
then,
in
1738,
did he
marry;
his
bride was
Josefa
Casal
y
Freiria,
the
daughter
of a former
corregidor
y
justicia mayor
of the
neighbouring city
of
Tunja.89 They
had
I4
offspring,
at least six of whom married
important figures
in the local
economy
and
politics (see Figure i), becoming,
as
John
L. Phelan
argued,
the founders
of a true 'bureaucratic
dynasty'.90
Lawyers,
creole and
Spaniard
alike, were,
in
any
event,
eager
to
pursue
bureaucratic
careers,
and as the
examples already
offered
indicate,
that
goal
determined even their
family
formation
strategies.
Still,
it was not
uncommon for
lawyers
to
marry
the
daughters
of local
landowners,
mineowners, and,
period,
merchants,
a
group
that was
rising
to the
upper
economic
positions
in
regions
like
Cali,
Antioquia,
and
Panama and
presumably
also in
Bogota
and
Cartagena.91 Marrying
into
exactas de los
originales que
se
guardan
en el Archivo General de
Indias,
vol. i
(Bogota,
1939),
p.
92;
Victor M.
Uribe,
'"Kill all the
Lawyers": Lawyers
and the
Independent
Movement in New
Granada, I809-1820',
The Americas
(forthcoming).
88
See also the case of the
young lawyer Jose Valdes,
who arrived in New Granada in
early
1809 with the
position
of
corregidor
of the
important region
of Socorro and was
promoted
to oidor of Guatemala in less than a decade.
Rodriguez Plata,
La
antigua
Provincia,
pp.
190-3.
89 Antonio Benito del Casal
y
Freiria served in
Tunja
from
I733
to at least
I738.
He was
also
appointed
teniente
capitan general
during these
years,
and was
finally
transferred to
Maracaibo in
1740
as
gobernadory
comandante
general. Rojas, Corregidoresyjusticias, p. 507;
Jose
M.
Restrepo
and Raimundo
Rivas, Genealogias
de
Santafe
de
Bogota (Bogota, 1928),
pp. 225-6;
Hermes Tovar
Pinz6n,
'El estado colonial frente al
poder
local
y regional',
Nova
Americana,
vol.
5 (1982), p. 5I.
90
John
L.
Phelan,
'El
auge y
la caida de los criollos en la Audiencia de la Nueva
Granada', BHA,
vol.
49,
no.
697-8 (1972),
p. 607;
idem,
People
and the
King, pp. 14,
21;
Tovar
Pinz6n,
'El estado
colonial', p. 5 ;
Restrepo
and
Rivas, Genealogias, pp.
17-23;
Hernandez de
Alba,
Archivo
Nariio,
vol.
I; McFarlane,
Colombia
before
Independence,
pp. 238-45.
91
Twinam, Miners, Merchants; Colmenares,
Cali:
terratenientes;
Jose
D. Moscote and
Enrique
Arce,
La vida
ejemplar
de
Justo
Arosemena
(Panama, I956).
In
Cartagena,
the
high
status of merchants
Jose Miguel
Pombo and
Jose
Maria Garcia de Toledo
Lawyers
Teniente de
gobernador
and auditor de
guerra
in Caracas, 1729-1735
Factor and director of the
Compahfa
de Asientos de
Negros
de
Inglaterra,
Caracas, 1733-1735
Manfuell Bernardo Alvarez*@
Fiscal of the Real Audiencia de
Bogota,
1736-1755
Man1690-1774l = 1738
@
Retired with
2,000-peso salary,
1755
Maria Josefa del Casal y
F.
(1717-7) Daughter of capitan de infanterfa in garrison-prison of Guayana, 1725
Capitan de
guerra
and
justicia mayor
of
Guayana,
1725-1731
Corregidor
of Tunja, 1732-1737
Gobernador and comandante general
of Maracaibo, 1749
Catalina Alvarez y Casal Contador oficial of the Cajas Matrices
(1739-7) 1758 Bogota, 1751-1771
icente Narino* I Contador mayor of the Tribunal y Real
Audiencia de Cuentas de
Bogota,
1770-1778
\
ntonio Nariho Alvarez
(and other
offspring)
Petronila B. Alvarez
y Casal Comandante of Riohacha
II
\
(1741-7) = 1760s Teniente de caballerfa of Viceroy Mesia de la;
Jer6nimo de Mendoza
y
/
guard
Hurtado
Manuel B. Alvarez y
Casal @ Contador interino of the Tribunal y
Real Audit
(1743-1816)
= 1778 Cuentas, 1771
Josefa Maria Lozano
Contador en propiedad, 1777-1779
Contador of the Casa de la Moneda,
Popayan,
1779-1803
Cuentas, 1803-1810
Daughter
of
Marques
de San
Jorge 7 offspring,
large landholder;
the Alvarez Lozano
niece of
lawyer-bureaucrats
(the Gonzalez
Manrique brothers).
Administrador of the Renta de
Joaquina
Alvarez
y
Casal Aguardiente, Mompos,
1760-1770
(1744-1796) = Administrador of the Renta del Tabaco,
Manuel Garcia Olano* Socorro, 1776-1778
Director of the Renta de Correos,
Bogota, 1781-1783
Antonia Alvarez
y
Casal
1 17457)
= 1761
Benito del Casal y Oidor of the Real Audiencia de Bogota,
Montenegro
@
1747-1781
uan de Dios Mariano Alvarez
Casal
I Parish priest, Moniquira
(1746-7)
Maria Josefa Alvarez
y
Casal Teniente de alabarderos of
Viceroy Mesla de
(1747-7)
- 1767 Contador ordenador of the Tribunal de Guerr
Jos6 L6pez
Duro Tesorero
general
of the Montepfo
Oficial of the
Cajas
Reales
Ignacio
A. Alvarez
y
Casal
(1747-7)
Teniente
gobernador, Pamplona,
\ \1775
Rita Alvarez
y
Casal Consultor
general
of the
Viceroyalty,
1776-17
rConventions:
. \ (1756-)
=
1778 oidor and fiscal del crimen of Audiencia
C
onventilons.
Francisco Robledo*@ Their son became oidor in 1810
Spouses \
Son
ordaughter
*
Spaniard Barbara Alvarez
y
Casal
Oficial real of the
Cajas
de
Bogota
(1758-1832)
=
1774
I
Contador mayor of the Tribunal y Real Audiel
@
Lawyer Manuel de la Revilla*
de Cuentas
Fig.
i. The
Alvarez
Bureaucratic
Dynasty (i73os-ISios).
541
Zerda's
mncia de
icia de
la Zerda
a
79;
ncia
542
Victor M. Uribe
elite but nonbureaucratic families
placed lawyers
in the
upper
economic
ranks of
society
but,
as in the case of Caicedo
y Florez,
delayed
or
endangered
their bureaucratic
changes.
Families of fellow bureaucrats
therefore were
always preferable.
Although government
bureaucrats were
prohibited by
law from
marrying
women kin of fellow bureaucrats or
having
kindred ties with
each
other,
the truth is
that,
after
obtaining permission
from the crown or
sometimes in
secret,
they customarily
did
just
that - married the
daughters
and sisters of fellow 'mandarins'. The
highest-ranking
bureaucrats were
related to each other
by marriage,
and that seems to have been considered
the best
way
to consolidate and advance their own careers and those of
their
family
members.92
The existence of a small
group
of
high-ranking,
interrelated civil
servants,
tied
together through marriage
across
clans,
contradicted the
Bourbon
theory
of
government.
In addition to
many
other
reforms,
the
Bourbons strove to reduce bureaucratic
corruption
and
nepotism. They
prohibited
bureaucrats from
marrying
women from their
jurisdiction
so
as to maintain a neutral or
impartial bureaucracy.
But that
policy
was
thwarted
by
the
flexibility
with which
marriage permits
were
issued,
or
else was circumvented
by
bureaucrats in different
viceroyalties
where
family
networks flourished in
spite
of the official
antiseptic
measures.93
The formidable task of
effecting
those reforms in the face of such
ingrown
resistance is
exemplified by
the
lawyer Juan
Francisco Gutierrez
underscores the
increasing power
of this economic
group.
See Gabriel
Jimenez
Molinares, Linajes cartageneros,
vol. 2
(Cartagena, 95 8),
pp. 3-69; Jorge
O.
Melo, 'Jose
Ignacio
de
Pombo',
in
Comercioy
contrabando en
Cartagena
de Indias. 2 de
junio
de
80oo
(Bogota, I986),
pp. 7-10; Anthony J.
McFarlane,
'Economic and Political
Change
in
the
Viceroyalty
of New
Granada,
with
Special
Reference to Overseas
Trade,
1739-I810', unpubl.
PhD
diss.,
London School of Economics and Political
Science,
I977.
92
Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
A;
de los mandatarios.
On
marriage
licences and restrictions see Richard
Konetzke,
Coleccion de
documentos,
docs.
73, 134-5, I85, 193, 213, 252, 262, 271, 310, 335, 357.
On the
participation
of
the
montepios (agencies providing pensions
for the survival of civil functionaries in the
Spanish Empire)
in the enforcement of
royal marriage policy
in the late
eighteenth
century
see Dewitt S.
Chandler,
Social Assistance and Bureaucratic Politics: The
Montepios
of
Colonial
Mexico, r767-i82s (Albuquerque,
I99 ),
ch.
3.
93
Stanley J. Stein, 'Bureaucracy
and Business in the
Spanish Empire, 1759-1804:
Failure
of Bourbon Reform in Mexico and Peru', HAHR,
vol.
6I,
no. I
(i98i); Jacques
A.
Barbier, Reform
and Politics in Bourbon
Chile, s7f-I7'66 (Ottawa, I980),
chs.
8-9;
Linda K.
Salvucci,
'Costumbres
viejas,
hombres nuevos:
Jose
de Galvis
y
la burocracia
fiscal
novohispana (I754-I800)',
Historia
Mexicana,
vol.
33,
no. 2
(1983), pp. 224-64;
Socolow,
Bureaucrats
of
Buenos
Aires,
pp. 193-228; Arnold, Bureaucracy
and Bureaucrats;
Susan
Deans-Smith, Bureaucrats, Planters,
and Workers: The
Making of
the Tobacco
Monopoly
in Bourbon Mexico
(Austin,
1992).
Lawyers 543
de
Pinieres,
who arrived in
Bogotai
in
1778
as both the crown's
special
visitador and the
appointed regente,
or senior chief of the audiencia. He had
the mission of
enforcing
all the Bourbon reforms
being promoted during
these
years;
but with few
exceptions,
such as the
partial dismantling
of the
Alvarez bureaucratic
dynasty,
the results of his visit show that local elites
had
enough
material
power
to frustrate the crown's
attempts
to
dispossess
them of the
privileges they
had
traditionally enjoyed
and valued.94
Furthermore,
the
hapless
visitador was run out of
Bogota
in
1781
by
a tax
riot,
the Comunero revolt.
The
continuing importance
of the colonial state as a source of
jobs
for
local
lawyers
and their clans
up
until the end of the colonial
period
was
underscored
by
the
presence
of at least one
important family
network
years
after Gutierrez's visitation: that of Francisco
Vergara y
Vela
Patifio.95
Throughout
his
nearly 40 years presiding
over
Bogota's
Tribunal de
Cuentas,
lawyer
Francisco had established another 'bureau-
cratic
dynasty'
that
by
the
I79os
had come to dominate
segments
of the
state and
society
in New Granada.
Vergara's story
confirms some of the
patterns
I have been
referring
to.
At the
age
of
15,
and after
having
submitted
proof
of his
'legitimate
birth and
purity
of
blood',
Francisco
Vergara y
Vela Patifo started
studying
law in
Bogotai, capital
of the soon-to-be
Viceroyalty
of New
Granada. It was the
year I727.
His
father,
Jose Vergara
Azcarate
y
Davila,
a
35-year-old
widower,
had
recently
become a Catholic
priest
and was
serving
in a little
parish
not far from
Bogota.
Don
Jose,
two of whose
brothers and two sisters had also embraced
religious
life,
had decided that
'after
having
lost his Gertrudis - his wife killed
along
with several of his
offspring by
a
ravaging epidemic
in
1719
- there was no other
refuge
but
the church'. Numerous other widowers
customarily
did likewise.96
94
The most recent evaluation of such reforms has been offered
by
Allan
Kuethe,
who has
pointed
out that in contrast to New
Spain
and
Peru,
the Bourbon reforms had a
relatively
minor
impact
in New Granada.
Kuethe,
'The
Early
Reforms of Charles III
in the
Viceroyalty
of New
Granada, I759-I776',
in Fisher et al.
(eds.), Reform
and
Insurrection,
pp. 19-53.
See also
Phelan,
'El
auge y
la
caida'; idem,
People
and the
King,
p. 17; McFarlane,
Change'; Kuethe, Military Reform;
Stein,
'Bureaucracy
and
Business';
Tovar
Pinz6n,
'El estado
colonial'; Salvucci,
'Cos-
tumbres
viejas'.
95
On elite families and the late colonial
bureaucracy
see also
Phelan,
'El
auge y
la
caida';
Jose
M.
Uricoechea,
'Noticias
geneal6gicas',
BHA,
vol.
58,
no.
675-7 (I971),
pp.
33-IOI;
Tovar
Pinz6n,
'El estado
colonial'; McFarlane,
Change'; Jorge
O. Melo,
'Retrato de un bur6crata colonial'.
96
One of Don
Jose's early nineteenth-century
descendants left a detailed
genealogical
description
of his
family,
titled 'Relaci6n
geneal6gica
de
Felipe
de
Vergara
Azcarate de
Avila, Caicedo, Velez,
Ladr6n de Guevara. Contiene una serie ordenada de los
matrimonios
que
sus ascendientes
paternos y
maternos han celebrado en Indias desde
el
tiempo
en
que
vinieron a este Nuevo
Reyno
de Granada sus
primeros conquistadores
544
Victor M. Uribe
On
being
ordained a
priest
in
1723,
Don
Jose gave up
an encomienda, or
royal grant
of Indian tribute and
labour,
which he had inherited from his
father. He also
relinquished
his bureaucratic
post
as teniente
corregidor,
or
provincial
administrative
chief,
which he had
performed
in various
towns,
a
position
that
might
have led to
higher
state commissions as well as
wealth,
power,
and
prestige.97
Instead of
climbing up
the bureaucratic
ladder he started on the ecclesiastical
one;
but
there,
besides some
spiritual
consolation,
one could also find
significant
material comfort.
Meanwhile
Francisco,
the
only
son Don
Jose
had
left,
completed
his
legal
studies in
Bogota.
In
1734,
the
year
the still-adolescent Francisco was
admitted as a
lawyer by
the Real Audiencia his father received the last of
a series of
clergy assignments:
the
parish
of
Socorro,
a town of
3,000
inhabitants northwest of
Bogotai.
In
Socorro,
a
region
of small cultivators
of
sugar
cane and tobacco and of artisanal
spinning
and
weaving,
the
priest
accumulated some economic wealth.98 In such middle-sized
parishes, priests
benefited from the fees
charged
for
baptisms,
burials,
weddings,
and,
more
important,
from the rent of tithes. The
priests
had
only
to hand over a small
portion
of the tithes to the
bishop
- a
portion
they
further reduced
by conveniently misrepresenting
the collection
records.99 In
time,
parish priests
converted this wealth and tended to
become
large
landholders and owners of livestock and slaves.100
Priest Don
Jose
died in Socorro about
1743,
and he must have rested
in
peace knowing
that his son Francisco was
by
then married and well
established in the
capital,
Santafe de
Bogota. Fortunately,
in
1736
Francisco had married the
daughter
of
Jose
de Caicedo
y
Pastrana,
a
wealthy
landowner who counted
among
his other
offspring
at least two
nuns and two
priests.
The Caicedo
family
owned extensive lands near
Bogota, along
with numerous livestock and even some slaves. In addition
hasta el
presente.
La escribo
para
el uso
y
noticia de mis sobrinos'. See
printed
version
in
Felipe
de
Vergara,
Relacidn
genealogica [I8io] (Bogota, 1962),
p.
102.
97
On Don
Jose's
encomienda see
Juan Villamarin,
'Encomenderos and Indians in the
Formation of Colonial
Society
in the Sabana de
Bogoti, 537
to
1740', unpubl.
PhD
diss.,
Brandeis
University, 1972, p.
389.
For
corregidores' typical
careers see Ulises
Rojas,
Corregidores;
for
general
comments and references see
Stein, 'Bureaucracy
and
Business'.
98 Richard
Stoller,
'Liberalism and Conflict in
Socorro, Colombia, I830-I870', unpubl.
PhD diss., Duke
University, 1991,
p.
31; Phelan,
The
People
and the
King,
p. 39.
99
Francisco A. Moreno
y Escand6n,'
Estado del
Virreynato
de
Santaf6,
Nuevo Reino de
Granada, y
relaci6n de su
gobierno y
mando...
I772', BHA,
vol.
23,
no.
264-5 (1936),
pp. 547-616; Narino, 'Ensayo
sobre
administraci6n', pp. 75-6.
100
G6mez,
El
tribuno, p. 236;
Charles
Harris,
A Mexican
Family
Empire;
Correa,
'Jorge
Ram6n de
Posada',
pp.
I
I-29; Plazas, Genealogias
de
Neiva, p.
1
12; Umaia,
Haciendas
de la
Sabana, pp. 77-8
.
Lawyers 5 4 5
to
tending
to their lands and
pursuing
careers as nuns and
priests,
several
of them were
encomenderos,
and at least a few became
lawyers
and state
officials.101 The Caicedos'
power,
however,
was more economic than
bureaucratic.
Indeed,
their lack of bureaucratic influence hindered
Francisco's own bureaucratic
aspirations.
Francisco
hoped
for
success,
moreover,
to continue a
highly
valued familial tradition of service to the
colonial state -
despite
his father's
disengagement
from the
bureaucracy.
Francisco's ancestors included an encomendero
great-grandfather,
who
also served the
bureaucracy
as
tesorero,
or
treasurer,
and
provincial
governor;
and a
high-ranking
bureaucrat
grandfather,
who,
after
buying
the
position
in the mid-seventeenth
century,
had become contador at
Bogota's
Tribunal de
Cuentas,
the central
accounting
office.102 The
bureaucratic
continuity
of Francisco's
family was, however,
interrupted
by
his uncles' and his father's choice of
religious
careers. This weakened
the clan's
political power.
To be
sure,
the
Vergaras'
economic
well-being
was
strengthened by
the income of
parish priest
Don
Jose
and further
consolidated when Francisco
joined
the Caicedo clan. But as Francisco's
subsequent
career
demonstrates,
economic
power
was not
enough;
bureaucratic influence was also vital to
promote
and maintain elite status.
Fifteen
years
after
graduating
from law
school,
Francisco was
weary
of
tending
to his
hacienda, Casablanca,
on the outskirts of
Bogota
and of
serving in a series of honorific but
usually unpaid jobs (regidor, procurador,
sindico
general,
alcalde
ordinario)
in
Bogota's
cabildo. He
may
have been
frustrated at not
having yet recaptured
his clan's control over a
key
bureaucratic
appointment.
Such a
position,
in addition to its material
rewards,
would have
strengthened
his
family
situation
through political
power,
the means to
dispense patronage,
meritos,
or
qualities
to obtain
future
jobs
for other
family
members,
honorific
treatment,
and status.
By
the late
740s
Francisco was
preparing
to sail for
Spain
to
lobby personally
for a bureaucratic
appointment,
as
many
American-born
Spaniards
were
obliged
to do.
By making
the
journey
themselves
they
avoided the
onerous and
sluggish brokerage
of the Iberian
agentes
de
negocios,
intermediaries between the crown and
job
seekers.
Just
before he
embarked, however,
Francisco obtained
-
through as-yet
undetermined
means,
probably protracted lobbying
and
large
sums of
money
-
an
important
commission as
regente
contador of the Tribunal de
Cuentas,
chief
of the
viceroyalty's
central
accounting
office,
the same
agency
where
101
See
Restrepo
and
Rivas,
Genealogias, pp.
I6I-2;
Pardo
Umafia,
Haciendas de la
Sabana;
Villamarin,
'Encomenderos and
Indians', pp. 33 8-47, 403-6;
'Documento
Hist6rico',
BHA,
vol.
6,
no. 6
(1909), pp. 3 , 36.
102 Ivan Fl6rez de Ocariz,
Genealogias
del Nuevo
Reyno
de Granada
[I674],
vol. 2
(Bogota,
95 5), P. o03;
vol.
3,
pp.
I86-7; Vergara y Vergara,
Don Antonio de
Vergara Azcdrate,
vol.
I,
p.
63; Villamarin,
'Encomenderos and
Indians',
pp. 388-9, 402, 4I0.
546
Victor M. Uribe
his
grandfather
had served decades earlier. Over the
following years,
lawyer
Francisco would use his office to
promote
not
only
the state's
interests but also those of his
large family.
Unlike his
father,
whose
marriage
and
family
were cut short
by
a
plague,
Francisco's
marriage
would last for
52 years,
and
produced
nineteen
offspring.
Two of his children became
priests,
three became
nuns,
and seven more died before
reaching
adolescence,
a not-uncommon
occurrence. Several of the
rest,
including
four
lawyers,
were
promoted by
their father and became links in a
family
network within the
bureaucracy
(Figure 2).103
At the time of New Granada's
I78I
Comunero revolt that Francisco
helped
in
pacifying,
two of the four
lawyers among
his
sons,
Felipe
and
Francisco,
Jr.,
held
high-ranking jobs
in the fiscal and
judicial
segments
of the
bureaucracy. Felipe
had
spent
at least seven
years
in
Spain
and,
with
the
help
of the
Marques
de los
Castillejos,
his
grandfather's
former
acquaintance,
had
finally procured
jobs
for himself and his brother in
1779.
He became contador in
Panama,
and his brother Francisco was
agente
fiscal,
or
prosecuting attorney,
of the Real Audiencia.
Jose
Manuel had
died
years earlier,
soon after
arriving
in
Spain
in a similar
pursuit.
Another
lawyer son, Juan,
married the
daughter
of a local
noble,
the
Marques
de
San
Jorge,
and secured a
position administering
the estate of a
wealthy
parish priest
in a
large village.
Later he received a
high-ranking
fiscal
job,
contador de
hacienda,
but died in
1804,
soon after
travelling
to
Spain
in
pursuit
of
yet
a
higher
one.104 To
compensate,
one of Francisco's
daughters, Josefa,
married the head of the central
treasury office,
Don
Antonio de
Ayala,
and two of her
offspring
became officials in the fiscal
bureaucracy.
Francisco
eventually
married a member of the influential
Sanz de
Santamaria
family
and became
part
of its network. The Sanz de
Santamarias,
much like the
Vergaras,
were active in the administration of
the colonial state
(e.g., they
held a
monopoly
over the
position
of tesorero
in the local
mint)
from which
they
derived
part
of their
status,
prestige,
and
power.105
These clans were still
exerting significant
clout in the
i8ios,
when
Iberia was
undergoing
French attacks and a
major political
crisis.
Felipe
103
Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
Mandarins',
ch. 2.
104
He married a
daughter
of
Jorge Miguel
Lozano de
Peralta,
a
large
landholder who
held the title
Marques
de San
Jorge.
Francisco de P.
Plazas,
'Los
Marqueses
de San
Jorge',
BHA,
vol.
58,
no.
678-80 (1971),
pp.
261-8;
Vergara y Vergara,
Don Antonio
Vergara A.cdrate,
vol.
I, p.
139.
105
Vergara, Relacidn,
p. 239;
'Sanz de
Santamaria', BHA,
vol.
57,
no. 666-8
(1970),
pp.
261-82;
Vergara y Vergara,
Antonio
Vergara A4cdrate,
vol.
I,
pp. 223, 226; Garcia de
la
Guardia,
Kalendario manual, p. 203.
Lawyers
547
Francisco Javier de
Vergara y Vela
Patiio
@ (Son of priest Don Jose Vergara Azcarate)
(1712-1788) 1736
o n of
pit
Don o
gaa
caat
Petronila Caicedo y Velez Ladr6n de Guevara S(ndico del cabildo in Bogota, 1741
(1717-1796) Alcalde ordinario in
Bogota,
1742
LRegente
contador of the Tribunal de Cuentas, 1749-1787
Daughter
of
capitan
de
guardia real, teniente coronel, governor
of a
province,
encomendero, corregidor
de indios, etc.
/ \\\
Josefa Vergara y Caicedo |
F
Tesorero
oficial of the Cajas Reales,
Josefa Vergara y Caicedo 1751-1777
(1737-1795) = 1760
1751-177
Antonio de Ayala y Tamayo*
7 offspring: the Ayala Vrgara
/ II \ \ \ .
-1777)
22 of whom (Pantale6n and Luis)
l/ ~ II~ i~ \ \^~
~
had
jobs
in the fiscal
bureaucracy.
~// ~
I l \ \ 1
|5~ I
~F~ IProcurador
of Colegio Major del Rosario
/ I I \ |
IJose Manuel Vergara y Caicedo Teacher of moral theology, 1762-1766
/
I (1738-1767)
Vice-rectorof
Colegio del Rosario,
1764
Went to Spain in search of a job and died 8 days after
/ I \ \
arrival in 1767
Teacher of canon law in
Colegio
del Rosario
Felipe
do
Vergara y
Caicedo :
Vice-rector of
Colegio
del Rosario, 1768
/
I
\
|
F1_e .d(1745-1818)
Ca o @
Travelled to Spain in 1772, returned as Contador
114-88
\ |
( 0180
T oficial of the
Cajas
de Panama, 1779-1784
!~~/~~~ ~~ I I i\ | |!~
Teniente-asesor of the
governor
of
Cartagena,
I~~/~ ~~ ~~~Ig~ I \
'1785-1789
Contador ordenador of the Tribunal
y
Real Audiencia
/
f
I
I k| I.
^of
Cuentas, 1790-1816
/f
I
j
\
|
(17481810) Jesuit priest
\
Fernando de Vergara
yAugustine monk
Caicedo @
(1763-1804)
Francisco J. de
Vergara y
C. @
Sindico procurador of Cabildo, 1778
\ \ I\
|~
(1750-1816)
= 1788 Agente fiscal en lo criminal of the Real Audiencia,
\ \ \ |
Francisca Sanz de Santamarfa I 1779-1810
\ \
\
||I I| I
Agente
fiscal
en
lo civil, 1810
I
"^
Daughter
of
lawyer, landowner, 7 offspring:
alcalde ordinario of
Bogota
in 1762. the Vergara Sanz de Santamarla,
2 brothers in the
bureaucracy
3 of whom (Tadeo, Isidro and Francisco
Gregorio) obtained fiscal jobs from 1800
to 1810.
Practising lawyer,
Juan de
Vergara y
Caicedo @ contador
general
in 1804,
(1760-1804)
- 1792
1 died in 1804 while
travelling
to
Spain
in
Manuela Lozano search of a
promotion
~I
^^~~I'3Their only
son was one of
~~~~~~~I ~~Bolivar's revolutionary generals,
Jose Maria Vergara y Lozano
Daughter
of
Marques de San
Jorge,
Jos Mara
ergara
Lozano
large
landowner.
Niece of
lawyer-bureaucrats,
the Gonzalez-Manrique brothers
Conventions:
=
Spouses
* Son
ordaughter
*
Spaniard
@
Lawyer
Vice-rectorof
Colegio
del Rosario, 1788.
Crist6bal de Vergara y
Caicedo Administrador lentes, Popayin,
Cristo6bal de Vergara y Caicedo
IContador
interventor of Alcabalas,
Popayan,
1791
(1766-1831) = 1796 l"A/dministrador
principal
of
Aguardientes, Popayan,
(1766-1831)1 1796
Francisca Nates y Rebolledo
Returned795 to contdo, 1807.
(m17751842) j
Returned
to contador, 1807.
Daughter
of
employee of Popayan's
Casa de la Moneda
Gertrudis 11741-1787), Petronila (1751-1792) and Lucia (1752-1808) were nuns. Juan Manuel
(1742-7), Ignacia (1744-7), Ignacio (1747-7), Antonio (1753-?), Manuela (1754-1770), Genoveva
(1757-?) and
Domingo (1758-1770) died
during
childhood or before
reaching adolescence.
Fig.
2. The
Vergara
Bureaucratic Network
(i74os-z8sos).
I
I III I-- I?IU,5!
548
Victor M. Uribe
Vergara
was a
high
accountant in the Tribunal de
Cuentas,
the same fiscal
agency
where his father had served for four decades. One more of
Francisco's
sons, Crist6bal,
was the main administrator and accountant of
the tobacco
monopoly
in the
important city
of
Popayan.106
Francisco's
sons
Tadeo, Isidro,
and Francisco
Gregorio
held
jobs
in the fiscal
bureaucracy.107
And Francisco's Sanz de Santamaria brothers-in-law were
still
high-ranking
bureaucrats in
Bogota's royal
mint and tobacco
monopoly.108 Clearly,
none of these
representatives
of the creole elite was
ever
dislodged
from his bureaucratic nest.
Furthermore,
even
though
the crown took a dim view of these
networks,
in
practical
terms
they
contributed to a
high degree
of
political
stability
in the
colony.
The
symbiotic relationship
that
developed
between
the state and some
groups
of the local elite made the latter
generally
unsympathetic
to anti-state activities.109
Conclusions
Along
with the
priesthood
and the
military,
and in
spite
of initial
opposition,
law became one of the main careers for New Granada's
colonial
elites,
as well as a
stepping-stone
to more coveted bureaucratic
positions. Although
most
lawyers belonged
to the
upper
economic
segments
of
society,
not all had
equal
chances to climb the bureaucratic
ladder,
and
many
had to content themselves with middle-level
positions,
nonbureaucratic legal
practice,
or other
pursuits.
Nevertheless,
local law
graduates
were
eager
to continue
attempting
the somewhat hazardous and
uncertain bureaucratic
path.
This had
traditionally symbolised
a stable
career,
a
family investment,
an
opportunity
to
acquire steady
income and
wealth,
and a source of
power,
honour and
prestige.
It was
not, therefore,
a bureaucratic career in the modern sense of the term.
The
Spanish
colonial state was not made
up
of a modern
professional
bureaucratic set of institutions. It was instead an
example
of
what,
following
Weber,
one could term a
'patrimonial
bureaucratic' state. The
king
bestowed on his
subjects
the honour to serve the crown and himself.
The colonial state's
management
was
placed
in the hands of the
king's
personal
servants,
who were maintained as
part
of the
royal
household and
rewarded at the
king's
discretion for their meritos and those of their
106
Vergara, Relacidn, p. 242.
107
In
1807 Tadeo,
a
lawyer,
was asesor of Reales Rentas in
Honda,
a
neighbouring
town
to
Bogota;
Isidro was meritorio in the Contadurfa General after I
804,
and
by
8 i
5
was
tesorero of the
royal mint;
Francisco
Gregorio
was
oficial
in the Reales
Cajas during
the
early
I8ios.
Vergara y Vergara,
Don Antonio
Vergara
A<cdrate,
vol.
2,
pp. 3, I7, 40.
108 Garcia de la
Guardia,
Kalendario manual; Uribe,
'Rebellion of the
Mandarins',
appendix
A. 109
Uribe,
'"Kill all the
Lawyers"'.
Lawyers 5 49
families. In addition to hundreds of
partly professionalised
bureaucratic
jobs,
the
king dispensed prebends
and
prerogatives,
like the one
enjoyed
by
the Santamarias in the
royal
mint. These
prerogatives
also included the
educational and
taxing powers given
to the local
church, and,
more
important,
an abundant number of
tax-farming positions
in small and
large
towns and cities.110
Local elite families
traditionally perpetuated
and increased their
presence, power,
and status not
solely through
economic endeavours such
as
ranching, mining
or
trade,
but more
importantly through
ecclesiastical
and bureaucratic
jobs
and
governmental privileges. They
therefore
deliberately prepared
some of their members to
join
the
priesthood
and
the
bureaucracy,
the latter
through
the
legal profession
and
appropriate
marriage.
In
addition,
elite clans also strove to
display
a
family history
of
service to the
king,
and in so
doing developed
a
symbiotic relationship
with the colonial state that
gained
them
patronage,
which
they
in turn
reciprocated
with as much
loyalty
as circumstances dictated.
Indeed,
lawyers
were
generally unwilling
to
oppose
the colonial state and risk
their chances for a
prosperous
career.
However,
some radical
changes
in
the
relationship
between
lawyers
and the colonial state took
place during
the
interregnum
of the
1790S
to the
i8ios,
forcing lawyers
to
opt
for
extraordinary
subversive measures. Those
changes
and measures are the
subject
of
ongoing
research.
110
Reinhard
Bendix,
National
Building
and
Citizenship (Berkeley, 1964),
p.
39;
Richard
Morse,
'The
Heritage
of Latin
America',
in Louis Hartz
(ed.),
The
Founding of
New Societies
(New York, i964), pp. I23-77; Magali
Sarfatti, Spanish
Bureaucratic
Patrimonialism in America
(Berkeley, I966); Spalding,
Essays; Lynch,
'Institutional
Framework'.

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The Lawyers and New Granada's Late Colonial State

Author(s): Victor M. Uribe

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