THE RE - CONQUEST (WEEK 11)

THE RE - CONQUEST

In the years 1808 to 1830 the Spanish Colony was in trouble, because recently in Spain, France had declared war to them, and that was a problem because the French were really well armed and Spain had soldiers all over America and few back in Spain. So they decided to send lots of troops into Europe to fight the aggressors, but also they needed money for the tools in the war and had to pay it with mostly all the products that were producing in America. But what they didn’t know was that with this war North America and countries like Colombia (Nueva Granada), Venezuela and panama were with low utilities and all the money they did, was send to Spain to a war that wasn’t theirs. Besides that the Army people that watched out that revolts didn’t happened were in Spain helping with the war, and it was a perfect timing to revolt. Precisely in Colombia, (in that time called Nueva Granada) the cities started to fight each other for the aniquilation of the Spanish and the power of a free Colombia. But that was kind of a mess because disputes also started between the different classes of people. Like it said in the book: “de quienes querian la independencia bajo la tutela española o quines deseaban una completa ruptura con España. (Colombia imagenes de su Diversidad by Hermes Tovàr Pinzòn pg 129), Santa Fe against Tunja, Valle against Popayan and Cartagena against Santa Marta, between “mestizos, Cahacos” black people “criollos” all against the Spaniards but personal issues and other emotion made it an internal civil war.

Before this war and probably another reason which brought the war was the way the Spanish forced the People to bow and respect as superior not only to their king Fernando VII, but also their vice king and other people. The Colombians were tired to receive orders from 10 different people that they didn’t even know. They reclaimed that the orders should be received by only the king, Still didn’t happened that way and the people was angry.

After all of this finally Spain defeated France and send back the troops to America. But they designed a special person to recover the order and was Pablo Murillo alias “el pacificador” and was one of the more bloodiest in the worlds history. And wit him will come the re-conquest.

I think Colombia didn’t had freedom in this period because instead of organizing well the revolution they started to fight between themselves instead of warring how to be free. So when Murillo came it was a country disorganized and easy to re-conquer.