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Aftermath
- in
Colombia
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Cathedral of Riohacha
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The dream of Irish courage contributing to the
liberation of Spanish America
lived on in the hearts of some of the surviving adventurers.
In September 1822 Arthur Sandes wrote to Daniel O'Connell,
informing the leader of the struggle for Catholic Emancipation
of the death of his nephew Maurice O'Connell. Maurice died of
a fever in the Ecuadorian highlands after more than two years'
service in the Colombian army. Sandes emphasised that Maurice
had been 'brave, generous, sincere, and [had] possess[ed]
qualities which raise the esteem and talents which arrest the
attention of mankind'. His character was thus 'truly Irish,
uniting in it all those virtues for which the sons of our
country are so justly celebrated, being always worthy of his
ancient and honourable name and of that love of liberty which
had engaged him in the defence of an oppressed people'. [13]
Yet during the early 1820s Irishness had become a
dirty word in
Colombia. The rebellion at Riohacha meant that those Irishmen who did
not leave
Colombia during this period had to struggle to re-imagine and re-affirm
their own identities. Being Irish had become synonymous with
mutiny and indiscipline. As part of his submission to the
Colombian government in 1823, Colonel John Johnston claimed
that 'being from a country like Ireland, that has always been
struggling to be free, I acquired at birth the most liberal
sentiments that could possibly fill a man's heart […] so
that when […] I heard favourable talk of a Heroic Bolivar
and his glorious struggle […] against the tyranny and
despotism of Spain […] at that moment my heart inflamed with
the ardent desire to join such a noble cause'. [14]
Conclusion
The attempt to forge an Irish national identity
through adventure in Spanish America
was thwarted in 1820 by the practical difficulties of a
military campaign in an unknown environment, by the Irish
adventurers' constant fear of being attacked by indigenous
people, and by the logistical obstacles to keeping them fed
and watered to their satisfaction. The Irish rebellion at
Riohacha in 1820 occurred in a year when leaders like Bolívar
were looking for a convenient scapegoat against which to
affirm the virtues of 'true' Colombians, as the threat from Spain
diminished after the
Santa Ana armistice in November 1820. The timing and the manner of the
Irish Legion's rebellion and disintegration meant that for
several years Irishness was an unattractive identity for the
Irish adventurers who remained in
Colombia - they described themselves as ingleses
or colombianos instead.
The Irish Legion became fixed in Colombian historia
patria as the very epitome of the 'vile mercenaries' whose
depredations Bolívar lamented as the bane of his struggle for
independence.
The person who originally dreamed up the idea of an
Irish crusade for liberty in Catholic Spanish America, John
Devereux, did indeed profit considerably from the expeditions.
This was despite the rebellion at Riohacha at which Devereux
was not present, since he was still leading the recruitment
drive in Europe, and the ridicule to which he was subjected in
Colombia throughout the early 1820s. Devereux returned to Bogotá in
1840 after an absence of almost two decades and, perhaps
surprisingly, was welcomed with open arms by other veterans of
the Wars of Independence. [15]
Matthew Brown
Lecturer in Latin American Studies
Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies
(University
of Bristol, UK)
Acknowledgements
This article draws on research financed by the
Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the Graduate
School of University College London, and a Jean Monnet
Fellowship at the European University Institute in
Florence, Italy.
Note
of the Editor
Matthew Brown's Adventuring
through Spanish Colonies: Simón Bolívar, Foreign Mercenaries
and the Birth of New Nations in Gran
Colombia
will be published by Liverpool University Press later this
year. In
2005 the Museo Nacional de Colombia published Militares
extranjeros en la independencia de Colombia: Nuevas
perspectivas, co-edited with Martín Alonso Roa Celis.
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