The text of the letter from José María Córdova to Simón Bolívar dated September 21, 1829, is faithfully reported. It should be noted that many expressions and spelling conventions of that time are considered orthographic errors today, but at that time they were accepted and very common (for example, writing "gefe" instead of jefe, or "espresar" instead of expresar). The original letter is held at the Luis Ángel Arango Library of the Banco de la República, located at Calle 11 No. 4-14, La Candelaria, Bogotá, to which we are grateful for their collaboration. For the first time, the full text of this remarkable letter from our national hero is published online!
REPUBLIC OF COLOMBIA.
COMMAND OF THE ARMY OF LIBERTY
Medellín, September
21, 1829
MOST EXCELLENT SIR, LIBERATOR SIMÓN BOLÍVAR
Sir.
With the most sincere respect and a profound sentiment, I address Your Excellency to express the resolution I have taken, driven by honor and the motives I have had. For a long time my spirit has been torn by opposing ideas, which, clashing against each other, kept my judgment in suspense; I let myself be carried away by the torrent of circumstances, waiting for the course of events, illuminating my reason, to reveal the path where duty ordered me to direct my steps. My heart, full of gratitude toward the foremost of the Liberators of my country, enthusiastic admirer of merit, idolater of the people’s liberty, and sincere defender of principles, has endured, Most Excellent Sir, a long and painful conflict to decide on the most important matter that can confront a Colombian today: namely, to decide what Your Excellency’s intentions are regarding the government of Colombia; or in other words, whether by continuing the Republic under Your Excellency’s current government it will regain or not its former freedom. As this can only be inferred from Your Excellency’s political conduct, it is this that my reflection has examined.
I examine the protests and solemn oaths of Your Excellency made in the congresses of Guayana and Cúcuta, the opinions expressed in your writings, your declarations of detachment from command, and the repeated renunciations of the highest office; and I find in all of this only the model of a perfect republican: love and respect for principles, a religious veneration for the laws, and a decided hatred against monarchical government. Your Excellency’s actions in the early period of your political career, which I count up to your dictatorship in Peru, do not seem to contradict your oaths. This conduct, which captivated the admiration and affection not only of Colombia but of the Americas and the world, did not allow even the most distrustful to suspect anything of Your Excellency’s republican ideas: it had made such an impression on my spirit that, when Your Excellency’s subsequent actions alarmed zealous republicans, who ardently called for a return to the path of law that seemed abandoned, my heart resisted listening to them and sought reasons to excuse Your Excellency’s conduct. For a long time my spirit battled between the professed reasons that persuaded me that Your Excellency would always uphold the principles espoused by the free men of Colombia, supporting a popular, representative, alternating, and elective government; and the facts that convince one that Your Excellency has abandoned your original ideas and proposes to give us a disguised monarchy cloaked in republican appearances. Your Excellency’s early actions, promises, oaths, reputation, and glory were the guarantees that allowed us to believe in your fidelity at first. The chain of events from the publication of the Bolivian constitution to these recent days are the reasons that, depending on the attention with which they were examined and the degree of trust placed in Your Excellency, have gradually convinced all Colombians that Your Excellency has renounced the principles that Colombia, the Americas, and the free men of the world profess.
I wish, Most Excellent Sir, to present to Your Excellency a brief account of some of the most public and well-known events that manifest Your Excellency’s intentions regarding Colombia and that have ultimately decided me to embrace the course I have just taken. I begin with the Bolivian constitution. Your Excellency undoubtedly established in it the system of government you deemed most suitable for Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia, since you compelled Peru to accept it and proposed it to Colombia as the only means of saving it from the anarchy into which it was being led. That Your Excellency compelled Peru to receive this constitution is unquestionable, given the fury with which that nation immediately sought to destroy it at the first opportunity: the anger with which it sought revenge for this affront, provoking us into a war from which no one gained anything other than witnessing the misfortunes of their adversaries, disregarding the evidence that the writers of that nation have accumulated against Your Excellency. It is equally certain that Your Excellency attempted to establish it in Colombia: everyone has seen the official correspondence sent by Your Excellency’s Secretary General to the authorities of Guayaquil, the letter to Mr. Cristóbal Mendoza, and many other documents that confirm this, none of which Your Excellency has yet denied. And since the lifelong, unaccountable presidency that this code establishes constitutes a true monarchy, with powers that even kings lack—such as naming a successor—it is clear that Your Excellency neglected the liberal principles that America has adopted and which Your Excellency has sworn so many times to uphold. The unanimous outcry across the Republic against this code should have demonstrated to Your Excellency how much Colombia abhors the political ideas expressed in it, and that by continuing the constitutional course then followed, it would have been impossible to ever abandon a liberal Constitution to embrace one it already detested.
Then, Your Excellency, taking advantage of the movements in Venezuela, which had no other pretext than the Vice President’s administration and the desire for reforms, and which were already beginning to calm, sent Leocadio Guzmán with letters of credentials to invite the people, in Your Excellency’s name, to rebellion and anarchy, causing them to disobey the Constitution of the Republic and proclaim that of Bolivia, and Your Excellency as dictator: a fact corroborated by the testimony of Mr. Argote, who was acting as Intendant of the Isthmus upon Guzmán’s arrival, the municipal records of Panama, and several other documents that have not been contradicted. It became evident to all the influence of Your Excellency in the disruption of the Republic when the cities declared themselves under Guzmán’s transit in a direction opposite to what they had expressed a few days before. It is necessary, Most Excellent Sir, that Your Excellency had the firmest resolution to replace the liberal institutions governing Colombia with another system of government, undoubtedly that expressed in the Bolivian constitution, thereby stirring unrest in the Republic through means that have caused us so much harm and whose example will always be disastrous in the future.
Your Excellency arrived in Colombia, and finding no pretext for the disruptors of the State to continue tearing apart the Republic, calm and order were restored everywhere. There is no one who is not convinced that if Your Excellency had then assumed the head of the government as Constitutional President, it would have been sufficient for good order to continue without the need for extraordinary measures, which have dragged us into the painful situation we now face. How many evils Your Excellency could have avoided! But far from siding with the law to uphold a Constitution which was fervently defended throughout almost the entire Republic, against which the reformists could prove nothing, and which bore no part in the misfortunes suffered by the people — misfortunes that were nothing compared to those experienced after the guarantees code was broken — Your Excellency promised that the Constitution would be violated and that a great convention would be convened, which was perhaps expected to sanction the code offered to Colombia. This act, which the less informed in the true state of the Republic believed necessary under those circumstances, could have been forgivable if Your Excellency’s conduct at this time had not shown otherwise. For when the period of Your Excellency’s first presidency ended, and without having yet taken the oath required by the Constitution to assume that very magistracy, for which you had been elected a second time, Your Excellency acted as a dictator — that is, as a President with extraordinary powers, having no legal authority at the time — while simultaneously making the most expressive protests of hatred for command and desire to separate from it in your renunciations. The Congress, terrified by the absolute authority with which Your Excellency acted everywhere in defiance of opinion and law, did nothing but comply with your wishes. It refused to accept Your Excellency’s resignation and agreed to convene the great convention despite the resistance of the most zealous and enlightened representatives, who, disregarding fear, valiantly upheld the fundamental institutions of their homeland. If breaking a Constitution and causing an entire people to refuse to honor their oaths under the pretext of minor inconveniences is the most disastrous example for posterity, it is equally certain that the public violations of a state’s fundamental laws, shamelessly committed by its highest magistrate, are the surest means of dragging a people into disobedience and contempt for institutions, rebellion, and anarchy.
After having left Venezuela in peace, Your Excellency returned to the capital of the Republic, where you had the decrees you had issued approved by Congress, despite most of them being contrary to the Constitution. During the time Your Excellency remained in that city, when the laws and Constitution should have governed and all citizens should have been promised the most perfect security under their protection, the opposite occurred for those who had expressed, or were believed to hold, ideas contrary to Your Excellency’s projects. It is true that Your Excellency did not order anyone to be persecuted by decree; but a group of military, under whose orders the city’s armed force was placed, and some of whom were part of Your Excellency’s entourage, destroyed printing presses, mistreated printers, harassed public writers with insults and threats, and brutally and shamefully outraged the most respectable citizens whose liberal ideas were well known. Such outrages, unprecedented until then, aimed to silence the zealous republicans through terror, who could not fight back with reason. In the end, they succeeded, for it would have been reckless to oppose force with reason.
When the time fixed by Congress arrived, the great convention met in Ocaña, which, despite being convened against the Constitution, was seen by the entire nation as the last refuge of liberty. And Your Excellency, far from remaining withdrawn from this body and not interfering in matters relating to its decisions, under the pretext of traveling to Venezuela, left part of the capital and approached Ocaña as much as possible, establishing your headquarters in Bucaramanga; sending your aides to the convention; and, with troops in Bogotá, Mompox, and Cartagena, appeared to adopt a hostile and threatening posture toward this body, which, at a time when all feared Your Excellency, needed to deliberate freely without the slightest indication of distrust.
Several representatives, whose liberal ideas were well known, were denied assistance for their travel to Ocaña. Finally, Your Excellency, attempting to have some elected members admitted to the convention who, it alone was responsible for qualifying, had refused to admit because they did not meet the necessary requirements, seemed to believe you had sufficient authority to dispute the resolutions of the nation’s constituent body, ignoring that it acted sovereignly. Your Excellency declared that you would uphold your decrees against the convention, which was the same as declaring you would disobey it if it did not act according to your determinations. And, since Your Excellency was only the acting President of the Executive, it is clear that you had no other authority to oppose the convention than the force at your disposal. I cannot, Most Excellent Sir, compare Your Excellency’s conduct on this occasion with the respectful behavior you maintained with the constituent congresses of Guayana and Cúcuta without being convinced that there has been an absolute change in your principles and aims. The brevity of this letter does not allow me to recount all the events that make Your Excellency’s conduct toward the national convention reprehensible. Let us leave the account here, without even recalling the manner in which that body was dissolved; let us take a quick glance at some of the subsequent events that had the greatest influence, such as the records in which the authority of the great convention was disregarded and Your Excellency was elected absolute arbiter of the Republic’s destiny.
The first, held in the capital on June 13, 1828, is the clearest victory of force over opinion. The first indication the people had of this act was the rumors that began circulating the night of the 12th that the Várgas battalion, which formed the main garrison of that city, had been armed and was prepared to carry out a revolution on the 13th; as this news was spread by some officers of that corps and by persons who must have known public affairs, no one doubted it. On the 13th, a proclamation appeared from the department’s intendant, assuming a forthcoming Spanish invasion, an open decision by the great convention to ignore the vote of the people, and a complete determination by Your Excellency to abandon the Republic to its supposed anxieties: he convened heads of households to a meeting to decide what was necessary to save the Republic from the supposed anarchy in which it was to remain. The most respectable individuals capable of deliberating on such an important point, terrified by the preparations of the forces, refrained from attending for fear of being crushed; even the less aware abstained, because all feared the outrage of the armed forces; but the intendant had particularly invited those most known for anti-liberal ideas, and the interested supporters of absolutism had roamed the countryside to gather men who perhaps did not even know a convention existed, let alone the state of affairs. It was with these people that the act was to be carried out. Despite the manifest resolution to compel the people by force to accept and sign the prepared act, there were eminent citizens who took the floor to oppose it; they were not allowed to speak, only to cast their vote; while those prepared to defend the violation were allowed to speak freely. In the end, the ideas expressed by the intendant, recorded in the prepared act, and feigned to be written there, were sanctioned: they amounted to disobeying everything emanating from the convention and endowing Your Excellency with unlimited powers to govern the Republic. Never has a people submitted more unwillingly to the rule of bayonets. All feared for the liberal individuals who had expressed opposition to the act, many of whom were insulted and persecuted by the military mob I mentioned. I dwelled on the details of this act because all such acts held across the Republic, with more or less violence, were carried out in the same manner; and because it is by virtue of these acts that Your Excellency governs Colombia today with unlimited power. But since these acts were contrary to the Constitution then in force, and there was no reason to disobey it; moreover, the main facts motivating them were false; and having been obtained through scandalous violence, it is evident that they are null for many reasons; and equally null is the authority attempted to be given to Your Excellency, which you use today to govern the entire Republic absolutely. Therefore, it is the duty of every citizen to refuse obedience.
When the events I have just recounted to Your Excellency, and many others whose account would be almost endless, had convinced me that Your Excellency, abandoning your initial ideas, intended to dominate the homeland, I received news from General Carmona that the remnants of the Southern army, from which he came, and the majority of the representatives of those provinces, were openly resolved that Your Excellency should don the crown as the only means of reconciling good order and the stability of the Republic.
I believed, Most Excellent Sir, that under these circumstances I could no longer remain a passive observer of my homeland’s disgrace without betraying my oaths and shamefully failing in my duty. We have all sworn to uphold the Republic’s liberty under a popular, representative, alternating, and elective government, whose magistrates must all be accountable; and without renouncing honor, we could not acquiesce to the continuation of an absolute government or the establishment of a monarchy, regardless of the monarch’s title. Therefore, yielding to the calls of my duty and the cries of these peoples, burning with love of liberty, who earnestly called me to lead them along the path of law, I have come to this province, where the people, invoking liberty and rejecting Your Excellency’s government as null, acquired solely by force, have proclaimed the Constitution of Cúcuta. I have sworn with all this people to uphold it and to die rather than suffer tyranny in Colombia.
When, obeying the imperative calls of my honor, I embraced the resolution I have just declared to Your Excellency, I found myself in the bitterest situation: the esteem, affection, and personal favors Your Excellency has always granted me; the respect and sincere love that animate me toward Your Excellency’s person, strongly opposed my heart. But what sentiment could silence the voice of patriotism speaking to a heart inflamed by the holy fire of liberty? Brutus, in the Senate, condemning his two sons to death to save the liberty of Rome, can offer Your Excellency an image of what my spirit has suffered in taking up the sword to restrain the march with which Your Excellency hastens to chain my homeland.
I depart for Cauca, where those towns, harassed by an absolute government and filled with love for liberty, anxiously await me to shake off the yoke. All my plans are directed toward restoring constitutional order. It is not my intention to attack Your Excellency; but if it is intended to force these towns by strength to return to the yoke of an arbitrary government they have just broken, I will uphold their freedom even with the last drop of my blood; although it is very painful for me to direct arms against Your Excellency.
May Your Excellency graciously accept the sentiments of my esteem and sincere affection.
José María Córdoba,
RIONEGRO:
Printed by Manuel Antonio Balcazar: year 1829.--20.
