The Sovereign According to Colombian Independence Constitutionalism: The Catholic People or the Catholic Nation?

Abstract

This paper points out the differences and similarities between the concepts of sovereignty used in the Hispanic American world, with emphasis on the New Granadian case, between 1811 and 1815: Catholic people and Catholic nation. The most significant differences were: (i) considering the Catholics as the sovereign people allowed the expression of local and family interests that dominated the provincial constitutionalism of the First Republic and (ii) approaching the Catholics as the sovereign people was a way to oppose to the concept of a Catholic nation used by the Cortes and the Constitution of Cadiz in Spain, which was the warlike counterpart during the first years of the Revolution of Independence. Once the First Republic had been defeated, the rules of the new type of war and the lessons learnt from the political errors gave rise to the emergence among the revolutionaries of the concept of a (catholic) nation as the new sovereign, which allowed a project of collective identity among the “independentistas” that went beyond the local level. This project was absent from the provincial constitutionalism of the First Republic. Therefore, when the Revolution of Independence assumed the discourse of national sovereignty in both the political and military realms, the local and even family distances between the revolutionaries could be overcome, thus fostering a successful unifying project. So, sovereign nationalism was not a discourse accepted in early Independence, but one created by the pursuits of war and constitutional politics, once the provincial constitutions of the First Republic were discarded.

Enviado el (Submission Date): 03/04/2017
Aceptado el (Acceptance Date): 23/06/2017