The 1893bogotazo:Artisans and Public Violence in Late Nineteenth–Century Bogotá

Abstract

Bogotá suffered its most severe outbreak of public violence of the nineteenth century on 15 and 16 January 1893. Indeed apart from thebogotazoof 9 April 1948, it was perhaps the worst violence that the Colombian capital has ever experienced.1For twenty-four hours the city experienced serious social disorder, which was brought under control only by the use of regular army troops at a cost of an unknown number of casualties. Surprisingly, the January 1893bogotazohas not been subjected to serious historical examination. The role of craftsmen in the outbreak of violence offers a window in the largely unknown course of artisan political activity in Bogotá after the decline of the Democratic Society of Artisans in the mid-century reform period. More broadly, whereas the relationship between wage labourers and violence has attracted many scholars, the propensity of the artisan class to engage in violent activities in nineteenth-century Colombia (and in Latin America as a whole) deserves more scholarly investigation. What were the causes and the nature of the 1893 riot? Were they typical of nineteenth-century urban violence? Finally, how does the 1893 riot fit within the broad sweep of Colombian collective violence?2Before attempting to answer these questions it is necessary to look briefly, by way of background, at Bogotá in the late nineteenth century, its economy and society, at the nature of Colombian politics and, in particular, at the role of artisans inbogotanopolitics and in earlier episodes of urban disorder.

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