Guiomar Dueñas Vargas. Of love and other passions. Elites, politics and family in Bogota, 1778 – 1870 (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2014) 345 pp.

Juan Fernando Báez Monsalve

Universidad Industrial de Santander- UIS

Marriage for the elites of Santa Fe de Bogotá become more emotionally intense as the century went by, despite religious influence and the economic interests behind it. Romanticism was one of the most important influences that couples relationships had after the Independence, a characteristic which allowed for the young members of the most prestigious families in the capital to choose their life partners with a certain freedom. The 19^th century gave to feelings the same relevance that religion and economy had in matrimonial unions, although only from level of romantic love, leaving out passionate love, as the catholic symbology tried to domesticate love within marriage, turning the relationship between the spouses into a filial relationship. This then supposed giving more importance to courtship, forming a family household, and the inclusion of women in domestic life, with the aim of formulating clear models of bourgeois masculinity and femininity, a project which also served to defy the authority of the father in the matrimonial bond. With these affirmations, Guimar Dueñas develops the argument of Of love and passions. Elites politics and family in Bogotá, 1778 – 1870, a work published by the School of Gender Studies of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in 2014.

Through a thorough analysis of documental sources, most of them personal diaries and letters of several well-known people who lived in the New Granada capital, Dueñas took on the study and proposed to understand the love and emotions of the bourgeois elites of a great part of the 19^th century in Bogotá, taking into account variables, such as politics, culture and, above all, biographical data. Conjugal love, the author argues, was shaded by the political and cultural events that took place in the country after the Independence from Spain, at a time that other emotions like friendship, between men as well as between men and women, took a different signification, despite being reduced by strong normative frameworks. In this way, Guiomar Dueñas sought to support the idea that love in conjugal relationships, at least in the elitist context of Santa Fe, was a changable feeling and very close to the consolidation of other aspects of sexuality and the social life of the individuals and bourgeois families, such as the idea of men linked to war and the sacralization of women and their feminine/maternal condition. To this effect, in nine chapters, the book shows the life of several people and families who served as an example of different types of marriages and the different feelings and emotions that the bourgeois elites of Bogotá created and discovered throughout the 19^th century.

The first sections of the book portray the cultural change that took place during the transition from the Colony to the Republic, in which the discourse of the Enlightenment played a preponderant role. The last years of the Spanish domain in New Granada were characterized by the strengthening of the father as an authority figure in the elite familes in Bogotá, the basis of this elite becoming weaker and weaker due to the expansion of racial mixing and the laxity of morality, and the sexual behavior in New Granada. For the wealthy families of the time, marriage was, in fact, linked to class and race interests, it helped to maintain honor and status, and strengthened the economic bonds between powerful families both traditional or emerging. However, it is important to highlight that in the personal aspect, marriage had a spiritual nature, by which the spouses got together (or had to get together) so as to create bonds of altruist generosity, in which the passion of the flesh should never interfere; thus it was established by the Church.

The figure of Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera is a clear example of the masculine prototype that abounded during the last years of the Colony and the first decades of independence. Mosquera, who came from the slave-driven Popayán, embodied the old member of the colonial elite, whose honor was supported by military glory, leaving his children and wife in the background, given that the masculine fate of the wealthy families of those years was in the military, in the war and in becoming prestigious political figures, all of which were attained by being a war hero. In this context, although Mosquera needed to and had to have a family which he needed to join together with through the ecclesiastic rite and take care of; this did not imply either sexual nor emotional fidelity to his wife. It was legitimate for him to have extramarital relations with women who were considered racially and morally inferior to his condition. The system of elitist masculinity of the end of the Colony approved of sexual and sentimental promiscuity, as long as it did not interfere with the economic, social and political hierarchies of the time: Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera’s wife was supposed to belong to his same social and racial class, while his lovers had to be inferior.

The fights over independence and the Spanish attempts to re-conquer, the book says, opened new spaces for old ideals of masculine and feminine gender, which people like Mosquera had faithfully represented. The expulsion of the Iberians gave the women of the Santa Fe elite families more access to public places, such as parties and social gatherings. The celebrations which became more and more popular with the independence allowed women from the wealthy families of the capital to leave their houses at times and become more recognized. In addition, the Independence also meant for many families from the capital the loss of aristocratic privileges, while people and families from the interior of the country that arrived in Santa Fe gained relevance from their economic means. This, therefore, brought about the need of the new rich to show themselves through socialization, which led to a greater presence of women in meetings, parties, and gatherings, even more if the importance that these spaces had to meet young men from bourgeois families that could become their future husbands is taken into consideration.

In any case, once the Republican system became strong in the country, strict morality was established again in the elite families of the capital, as it was considered that it was necessary for the consolidation of the state. The conservative ideas aimed to redirect female behavior, while liberal men were accused of wanting to destroy the institution of the family. The name of Rufino Cuervo clearly shows this ideal: his closeness to conservative ideas made him think that marriage and family were the only way to reach happiness. Marriage, for him, meant reaching adulthood and public respectability. When a man got married and formed a family, he became an example, worthy of being treated like a gentleman. Nevertheless, in the field of friendships, Guiomar Dueñas argues, relationships among men became stronger; friends were trusted with the most intimate secrets and they were supposed to give advice on possible relationships and couples, which was less frequent from fathers and priests. Young men from well-off families of the capital created emotional ties among them, a situation which showed a new meaning in the configuration of masculinity.

This emotional closeness was also expressed in the creation of associations or fraternities in mid-19^th century, places where friendship, bonds of politics, and opinion were made among the men of the elite, and for that reason they were so exclusive so as to distance them from the rest of the inhabitant of the city. Newspapers had a similar role, even more because the individuals from the elite were among the few who knew how to read and write. Moreover, the written publications were intended to show the female ideals that associated them with the household, the family, good manners, grace, and an asexual body. The newspapers of the time showed women as part of the private spaces, who were supposed to be educated in order to find a husband, by cultivating beauty and virtue, therefore they should not get involved in the academic and work fields considered to be for men, where they would look ridiculous. The case of Soledad Acosta de Samper, Dueñas says, was exceptional, for her speeches, despite having the conservative doctrine as their core, gave the female body and their condition of womanhood a personality of its own, far from the ideals that the newspapers and the magazines written by men gave women. She defended marriage based on love, one of the principles of Romanticism, which was, according to her, the door to happiness, versus the colonial tradition of marriage for convenience.

Marriage for love, together with other ways of social relation like an intimate friendship between men, made masculinity more rational, self-controlled, concerned for the maintenance of the Nation and less prone to violence and heroism. José Eusebio Caro, for instance, thought that marriage was forever and that it was supposed to be supported by love. His ideal was to find happiness in a warm home, where the conjugal relationship had a real and constant closeness between the spouses. At the same time, he thought that family life was a permanent sacrifice, especially in the case of women. These thoughts were parallel to the idea that the mother and wife had to leave behind her love of self and personal projects, so the family life, which was a synonym for peace, could prosper. Silence, submission, and shyness became characteristics of the female personality, features that the Caro family intended to maintain. In addition, exile allowed José Eusebio Caro to show a degree of emotion that showed changes in the masculine condition: his poems dedicated to love and his country were symbols of a man who could express his feelings; the fragility portrayed in his writings would not have been accepted by the colonial standards.

Romanticism, then, had a great influence on the families and the individuals of the wealthy families of the capital, traditional as well as those from the interior of the country. The work of Soledad Acosta de Samper is proof of that. The romantic literature which came from Europe helped Soledad to understand her feelings for José María Samper, because it was now legitimate to choose a partner following personal taste, despite the family imposition that supervised the economic capacity, the honorability, and the ethnic origin of the suitors. José María, likewise, as a result of the romantic influence, had a more sentimental masculinity, closer to the bourgeois culture than to the military tradition of the period of Independence. Moreover, this emotional freedom gave way to young men and women paying more attention to their physical aspect and beauty. As courtship became an essential feature in choosing a partner, the degree of physical beauty, even more in women, helped to a great extent to have an significant number of men interested in being their husbands.

Courtship was one, if not the first, necessary step for marriage, in a context in which feelings and emotions took more relevance. Courtship was, then, the initial impulse for a conjugal life that supposed something more than only having children and starting a family. Love was also important now. According to the analysis of Guiomar Dueñas, the letters that married men from the Santa Fe bourgeoisie of the 19^th century sent to their wives showed emotional fragility and a spiritual commitment that contrasted the masculine ideal of the 18^th century and the attitudes of their own wives: given the daily obligations that married mothers had, taking care of the children and the relatives of an advanced age, theirs as well as their husbands’, the time they could dedicate to missing their husbands, most of the time in exile or in diplomatic or political functions, was quite reduced. Anyway, and despite the distance, fathers were considered an essential figure in the education of the children, including in punishments, for men, though they acquired more spaces to show their feelings, were still the authority of the household.

All these premises, according to Dueñas, allow for new perspectives on political and gender historiography in Colombia. The sources show that, for example, Soledad Acosta de Samper’s wishes to get married under the Catholic rite were stronger than the political principles of the liberal José María Samper, who defended civil marriage and opposed the ecclesiastic institution. Conjugal relationships, marriage, and the masculine ideal of the Santa Fe bourgeoisie of the 19^th century settled down more in intellectual spaces than in military ones, which allowed for a boom of the written culture, sensitivity and elitist emotionality. Notwithstanding, the sentimental fragility that men could show in private towards their wives was not permitted in their speeches or public gatherings, neither did it mean more openness as regards sexuality, perhaps because the separation of the functions of gender sought to consolidate heterosexuality as the only form of legitimate sexuality in the midst of the construction of the Nation-State, and for this matter, unfortunately the author leaves the topic out of her analysis. The love, tenderness, warmth, and sweetness that men and women could express as the century went by were, in fact, symbols of a sexuality domesticated in the household and the family: romantic love was now the norm. Women, on their side, were the guardians of good manners, social morality, decency, good behavior and maternity, for men, despite their expressiveness, continued to have, while in public, attitudes based on authority and austerity, accompanied by the rationality inherited from the Enlightenment.