Racial War and Nation in the Caribbean Gran Colombia, Cartagena, 1810-1832

Abstract

Whereas most historians connect the origins of current racial relations to colonial slavery, Marixa Lasso argues that the Revolution Era of the American anti-colonial struggles was determinant to the development of distinct modern racial imaginaries in nations with similar colonialism, slavery and racism. The analysis focuses on the origin of the nationalist ideology of racial harmony and equality (the myth of racial democracy, as per the 20th century denomination), during the Hispanic-American independence wars. The analysis focuses on Gran Colombia, a key-region in the struggle for Hispanic-American independence, in which war transformed the racial imaginary in two ways. War fomented the idea of racial equality uniting a strongly emotional patriotism and transforming it into a nationalist ideology that transcended party and regional differences. At the same time, the ghost of another kind the war, the "racial war", created fundamental differences between what constituted a legitimate and an illegitimate racial discourse. The fear of racial war inhibited political actions by blacks and limited their opportunity to denounce the existing prejudices and patters of informal discrimination.