Gran Colombia

The official name of the country at the time was the Republic of Colombia.[6] Historians have adopted the term "Gran Colombia" to distinguish this republic from the present-day Republic of Colombia, which began using the name in 1863, although many use Colombia where the confusion would not arise.[7]

The name "Colombia" comes from the Spanish version of the eighteenth-century New Latin word "Columbia", itself based on the name of Christopher Columbus. It was the term preferred by the Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda as a reference to the New World, especially to all American territories and colonies under Spanish rule. He used an improvised, quasi-Greek adjectival version of the name, "Colombia", to mean papers and things "relating to Colombia", as the title of the archive of his revolutionary activities.[8]

Simón Bolívar and other Spanish American revolutionaries also used the word "Colombia" in the continental sense. The establishment in 1819 of a country with the name "Colombia" by the Congress of Angostura gave the term a specific geographic and political reference.

The Republic of Colombia comprised more or less the former territories of the Viceroyalty of New Granada (1739–1777), which it claimed under the legal principle of uti possidetis. It united the territories of the former Third Republic of Venezuela, the United Provinces of New Granada, the former Royal Audiencia of Panama and the Presidency of Quito (which was still under Spanish rule in 1821).

Before a new constitution could be written by the Congress of Cúcuta, the Congress of Angostura appointed Bolívar and Santander president and vice president, respectively. Under the Constitution of Cúcuta, the country was divided into twelve departments each governed by an intendant. Departments were further divided into thirty-six provinces, each headed by a governor, who had overlapping powers with the intendant. Military affairs at the department level were overseen by a commandant general, who could also be the intendant. All three offices were appointed by the central government. The central government, which temporarily was to reside in Bogotá, consisted of a presidency, a bicameral congress and a high court (the Alta Corte).

The president was the head of the executive branch of both the central and local governments. The president could be granted extraordinary powers in military fronts, such as the area that became Ecuador. The vice-president assumed the presidency in case of the absence, death, demotion, or illness of the president. Since President Bolívar was absent from Gran Colombia for the early years of its existence, executive power was wielded by the vice president, Santander. The vote was given to persons who owned 100 pesos in landed property or had an equivalent income from a profession. Elections were indirect.[9][10]

A mural by Santiago Martinez Delgado at the Colombian Congress representing the Congress of Cúcuta

Since the new country was quickly proclaimed after Bolívar's unexpected victory in New Granada, its government was temporarily set up as a federal republic, made up of three departments headed by a vice-president and with capitals in the cities of Bogotá (Cundinamarca Department), Caracas (Venezuela Department), and Quito (Quito Department).[11] In that year, none of the provinces of Quito, nor many in Venezuela and New Granada, were free yet.

The Constitution of Cúcuta was drafted in 1821 at the Congress of Cúcuta, establishing the republic's capital in Bogotá. Bolívar and Santander were elected as the country's president and vice-president. A great degree of centralization was established by the assembly at Cúcuta, since several New Granadan and Venezuelan deputies of the Congress who formerly had been ardent federalists now came to believe that centralism was necessary in order to successfully manage the war against the royalists. To break up regionalist tendencies and to set up efficient central control of local administration, a new territorial division was implemented in 1824. The departments of Venezuela, Cundinamarca and Quito were split into smaller departments, each governed by an intendant appointed by the central government, with the same powers that Bourbon intendants had.[12] Realizing that not all of the provinces were represented at Cúcuta because many areas of the country remained in royalist hands, the congress called for a new constitutional convention to meet in ten years.

In its first years, Gran Colombia helped other provinces still at war with Spain to become independent: all of Venezuela except Puerto Cabello was liberated at the Battle of Carabobo, Panama joined the federation in November 1821, and the provinces of Pasto, Guayaquil and Quito in 1822. That year Colombia became the first Spanish American republic recognized by the United States, due to the efforts of diplomat Manuel Torres.[13] The Gran Colombian army later consolidated the independence of Peru in 1824.

Bolívar and Santander were re-elected in 1826.

Federalists and separatists

The departments of Gran Colombia in 1820

A map of Gran Colombia showing the 12 departments created in 1824 and territories disputed with neighboring countries

As the war against Spain came to an end in the mid-1820s, federalist and regionalist sentiments that had been suppressed for the sake of the war arose once again. There were calls for a modification of the political division, and related economic and commercial disputes between regions reappeared. Ecuador had important economic and political grievances. Since the end of the eighteenth century, its textile industry had suffered because cheaper textiles were being imported. After independence, Gran Colombia adopted a low-tariff policy, which benefited agricultural regions such as Venezuela. Moreover, from 1820 to 1825, the area was ruled directly by Bolívar because of the extraordinary powers granted to him. His top priority was the war in Peru against the royalists, not solving Ecuador's economic problems.

Having been incorporated later into Gran Colombia, Ecuador was also underrepresented in all branches of the central government, and Ecuadorians had little opportunity to rise to command positions in the Gran Colombian army. Even local political offices were often staffed by Venezuelans and New Granadans. No outright separatist movement emerged in Ecuador, but these problems were never resolved in the ten-year existence of the country.[14] The strongest calls for a federal arrangement instead came from Venezuela, where there was strong federalist sentiment among the region's liberals, many of whom had not fought in the war of independence but had supported Spanish liberalism in the previous decade and who now allied themselves with the conservative Commandant General of the Department of Venezuela, José Antonio Páez, against the central government.[15]

In 1826, Venezuela came close to seceding from Gran Colombia. That year, Congress began impeachment proceedings against Páez, who resigned his post on April 28 but reassumed it two days later in defiance of the central government. Support for Páez and his revolt—which came to be known as the Cosiata (a Venezuelan colloquialism of the time meaning "the insignificant thing") in Venezuelan history—spread throughout Venezuela, aided by the fact that it did not explicitly stand for anything, except defiance to the central government. Nevertheless, the support Páez received from across the Venezuelan political spectrum posed a serious threat to the unity of the country. In July and August, the municipal government of Guayaquil and a junta in Quito issued declarations of support for Páez's actions. Bolívar, for his part, used the developments to promote the conservative constitution he had just written for Bolivia, which found support among conservative Ecuadorians and the Venezuelan military officialdom, but was generally met with indifference or outright hostility among other sectors of society and, most importantly for future political developments, by Vice-President Santander himself.

In November two assemblies met in Venezuela to discuss the future of the region, but no formal independence was declared at either. That same month, skirmishes broke out between the supporters of Páez and Bolívar in the east and south of Venezuela. By the end of the year, Bolívar was in Maracaibo preparing to march into Venezuela with an army, if necessary. Ultimately, political compromises prevented this. In January, Bolívar offered the rebellious Venezuelans a general amnesty and the promise to convene a new constituent assembly before the ten-year period established by the Constitution of Cúcuta, and Páez backed down and recognized Bolívar's authority. The reforms, however, never fully satisfied the different political factions in Gran Colombia, and no permanent consolidation was achieved. The instability of the state's structure was now apparent to all.[16]

In 1828, the new constituent assembly, the Convention of Ocaña, began its sessions. At its opening, Bolívar again proposed a new constitution based on the Bolivian one, but this suggestion continued to be unpopular. The convention fell apart when pro-Bolívar delegates walked out rather than sign a federalist constitution. After this failure, Bolívar believed that by centralizing his constitutional powers he could prevent the separatists (the New Granadians represented mainly by Francisco de Paula Santander and José María Obando, and the Venezuelans by José Antonio Páez) from bringing down the union. He ultimately failed to do so. As the collapse of the country became evident in 1830, Bolívar resigned from the presidency. Internal political strife between the different regions intensified even as General Rafael Urdaneta temporarily took power in Bogotá, attempting to use his authority to ostensibly restore order, but actually hoping to convince Bolívar to return to the presidency and the country to accept him. The federation finally dissolved in the closing months of 1830 and was formally abolished in 1831. Venezuela, Ecuador and New Granada came to exist as independent states.

In Peru, the dissolution of Gran Colombia is seen as a country ceasing to exist, giving way to the formation of new nation-states. The significance of this view is that the treaties Peru had signed with Gran Colombia became void when the countersignatory ceased to exist. The three new states, the Republic of New Granada (which later changed its name to Republic of Colombia), the Republic of Venezuela, and the Republic of Ecuador, in the Peruvian view, started with a clean diplomatic slate.[18][19]

An alternative view is that Ecuador and Venezuela separated from the Gran Colombian Federation and inherited all of the treaty obligations that Gran Colombia had assumed, at least to the extent that they apply to their respective territories. There are indications that Colombia itself maintained this position; Gran Colombia and its successor state, the Republic of Colombia, shared a capital city, a subset of the same territory, and much the same citizenry. It would be unnatural to disavow their common histories.[18][19]

The question of the status of treaties and accords dating to the revolutionary period (1809–1819) and Gran Colombia period (1819–1830) has a profound effect on international relations to the present day.[18][19]

• Federal Republic of Central America – another post-independence state on the American continent that underwent a similar fate, made up of modern Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Costa Rica.
• Peru–Bolivian Confederation
• Flag of Gran Colombia
• Reunification of Gran Colombia

• Bushnell, David (1970). The Santander Regime in Gran Colombia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-8371-2981-8. OCLC 258393.
• Gibson, William Marion (1948). The Constitutions of Colombia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. OCLC 3118881.
• Lynch, John (2006). Simón Bolívar: a Life. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-11062-6.

• "Gran Colombia," Flags of The World