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Journal of Early American History 1 (2011) 105–141

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI 10.1163/187707011X577432

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J O U R N A L O F E A R LY AMERICAN H I S T O R Y

* Socrates Barinas Coiscou, “La Revolución de los italianos”, in Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación (hereinafter, “ BAGN ”) 58 (1948), pp. 215-89 at 252. ! e research for this article was conducted with the aid of a Merriwether-Sattwa Grant from New York University and a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship. Special thanks to Ada Ferrer, Michael Gomez, Aldo Lauria Santiago, Graham Nessler, Richard Turits, Elena Schneider, Harvey Neptune, and the anonymous review- ers for their helpful comments and critique of di" erent pieces and versions of this article. ! anks to Rachel Lang for her work on the images accompanying this article.

** Anne Eller is an advanced Ph.D. Candidate in the History of the African Diaspora and Latin America at New York University and a Fulbright-Hays scholar. Her dissertation, tenta- tively entitled “Let’s Show the World We are Brothers: the Dominican War of Restoration and Caribbean Worlds of the Nineteenth Century”, deals with the popular participation of Dominicans and Haitians in the War of Restoration (1861-5) against Spain.

“All would be equal in the e! ort”: * Santo Domingo’s “Italian Revolution”, Independence, and Haiti, 1809-1822

Anne Eller ** New York University

E-mail: aee218@nyu.edu Received 5 February 2010; accepted 2 November 2010

Abstract ! is article explores the colony of Santo Domingo just after it had passed from French back to Spanish hands in 1809. Although impoverished and at the very margins of the Caribbean planta- tion system, revolutionary winds were nonetheless bu" eting the colony. Using the testimony of a failed 1810 conspiracy known as the “Italian Revolution”, the article explores the enduring inequalities present in Santo Domingo, the immediate infl uence of the Haiti to the west, and the beginnings of Latin American independence more generally. Whereas Spanish authorities and other Caribbean elites might have dismissed the colony as marginal to the political events, there- fore, the conspiracy sheds light on its importance to subaltern travelers and migrants from neigh- boring islands. Finally, it shows the tremendous concrete and symbolic importance of the Haitian Revolution on the neighboring colony, complicating a historiography that often argues for confl ict, and not interrelation, between the two sides of Hispaniola.

Keywords Santo Domingo ; Haitian Revolution ; Independence ; Conspiracy ; Spanish colonialism ; Subaltern thought

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I. “Foolish Spain”: " e Rebellious, Forgotten Colony of Santo Domingo

Ayer Español nací A la tarde fuí Francés Hoy, dicen que soy Inglés No sé qué será de mí. 1

Sometime in the hot summer months of 1810, a group of unlikely conspira- tors hatched an independence plot in Santo Domingo’s beleaguered capital city. 2 By all the varying accounts, it was a daring plan: the conspirators plotted to seize the city center, declare de jure independence, and then cling to politi- cal control until military reinforcement from Haiti arrived to secure it. ! e scheme was similar in form to the coup-like independence e" orts of the short- lived “First Republic” in nearby Venezuela, which had been declared just months before. In fact, pamphlets from Caracas were seized from multiple suspects detailing the revolutionary events in neighboring colonies. Unlike in Caracas, however, the Hispaniola conspiracy was not an elite-led e" ort. In the impoverished port city of Santo Domingo, the conspirators in the so-called “Italian Revolution” were fairly regular folk, artisans and veterans of the various confl icts of the last decade. Evidently, they assumed that the masses of people, beginning with free people of color in the capital itself, would read- ily support them. ! e apparent aims were multiple and heterogeneous, a dis- parate collection of interests that refl ected both the political fragmentation and desperation of the colony itself in the wake of several particularly di# cult decades. Most signifi cantly, they looked to neighboring revolutionary Haiti for help.

Despite its turbulent history—three independence e" orts in 1821-2, 1844, and 1863-5—Santo Domingo does not fi gure prominently in literature about independence movements in Latin America. While its complicated trajectory from empire to independence embodied the “broad array of possibilities … improvised and reactive” of the independence period, nationhood was far

1 “Yesterday I was born Spanish / In the afternoon I was French / Today they say I am English / I do not know what will become of me”, Antonio del Monte y Tejada, Historia de Santo Domingo , Tomo III (Santo Domingo: Imprenta de Garcia Hermanos, 1890), p. 192 (capitaliza- tion in original). ! e quintilla was reported to have been written by a priest in Santiago, Don Juan Vasquez, around 1804.

2 At some point, the historian has to decide whether or not a conspiracy actually existed. I think that it did, given the context of Santo Domingo at the time, the relative consistency of the testimony (including multiple confessions), and in interests of less stilted prose for this article (although its form and scope is much more open to interpretation).

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from a foregone conclusion. 3 Compared with the contemporary 1810 inde- pendence e" orts in Venezuela and Mexico, the impoverished colony of Santo Domingo seemed to lack cohesive class actors so relevant in the continent’s struggles; there was neither a prospering Creole class in Santo Domingo nor a consolidated landless peasantry. 4 Consideration of Santo Domingo has even largely escaped scholars of the Haitian Revolution, despite its relevance as a staging ground and immediate neighbor to the struggle. Because Santo Domingo was not an entrenched plantation society by the time of the initial uprisings, there is simply not the sorts of evidence for which researchers often look, the titillating archival trail of revolutions spreading: massive defensive e" orts on the part of an elite to restrict the fl ow of information, an easily docu- mentable change in subaltern political discourse citing the Revolution as an inspiration, or in fact any major uprisings at all. For the next decade or so, the colony limped along through the period of “España Boba” (1809-21), as if dooming it to historiographical oblivion. By the time the Haitian Unifi cation/ Occupation occurred, uniting the whole island under President Jean- Pierre Boyer from 1822-44—surely this would be a ripe fi eld to study the Haitian revolutionary state in action?—scholars have, so far, not shown much interest.

Within Dominican historiography, the 1809-21 period is often referred to as “España Boba”, or “Foolish Spain”, a moniker that refl ects a certain degree of retrospective disdain. Indeed, historians tend to conceive of the di# cult period—the colony’s last direct connection with Spain, save a four- year re-occupation in 1861—as one of tragic metropolitan neglect, disrup- tive revolutionary circumstances, and relative isolation. Scholars from the left and right lament the downfall of local elites that resulted from the tumult: “History snatched the Dominican fruit from its tree before the sap of life

3 Jeremy Adelman, “Iberian Passages: Continuity and Change in the South Atlantic”, in David Armitage and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds.), ! e Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760-1840 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 59-82 at 59. Santo Domingo is an exemplary case, similarly, for Adelman’s arguments about independence struggles emerging as products of imperial tension and crisis in, e.g., “Age of Imperial Revolutions”, American Historical Review 113, no. 2 (2008), pp. 319-40.

4 Deive writes about a rancher class whose conservatism and hispanofi lia are analogous in sentiment, if not at all in wealth, to latifundistas elsewhere in the Spanish empire, Carlos Esteban Deive, “Santo Domingo, las Cortes de Cádiz, y los primeros intentos separatistas”, in Rebeldes y Marginados: ensayos históricos (Santo Domingo, República Dominicana: Banco Central de la República Dominicana, Departamento Cultural, 2002), p. 122. ! e merchant class of Santo Domingo, on the other hand, bore much less resemblance, selling only small-scale agricultural exports (mahogany, tobacco) and often so lacking in capital that they were unable to make pur- chases in return.

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5 Pedro L. San Miguel, ! e Imagined Island: History, Identity, and Utopia in Hispaniola , Jane Ramírez, trans. (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2005 [1997]), p. 30. ! is refrain in e" ect laments the downfall of the modest plantation economy that the small elite maintained, essentially echoing the pro-slavery pleas of Antonio Sánchez Valverde in the 1780s. As Silvio Torres Saillant observes, “[t]heir ardent love for Spain and their nostalgic languor for the early colonial days sprinkles the discourse of traditional Dominican critics with plaints and lamentations”. ! is lamentation refl ects hidden and not-so-hidden racist undertones, especially when writing of the emigration of white families in the period; “[c]onvinced that Dominicans are (or should be) white, traditional literary scholars have made a link between moments of decay in the colonial past and a reduction in the number of white families living in Santo Domingo”, Silvio Torres-Saillant, “Dominican Literature and its Criticism: Anatomy of a Troubled Identity”, in Albert James Arnold, et al (eds.), A History of Literature in the Caribbean (New York: John Benjamins, 2004), pp. 49-64, at 51-4.

6 Ciriaco Landolfi , Evolución Cultural Dominicana, 1844-1899 (Santo Domingo: Editora de la UASD, 1981), p. 62.

7 Carlos Esteban Deive, “ Los mitos del tema negro en la historiografi a” in Comisión Nacional Dominicana de la Ruta del Esclavo, La Ruta del Esclavo (Santo Domingo: Editora Búha, 2006), pp. 471-98. ! e Spanish slavemaster displayed “supreme benevolence, great charity, and much tenderness”, Pedro Francisco Bonó wrote (quoted in San Miguel, ! e Imagined Island , pp. 13-14). Trujillista Angel S. Rosario Pérez sought to discredit historian Jean Price-Mars by claiming that African slaves were only brought into Santo Domingo between 1510-50, e.g. Ernesto Sagás Ernesto, Race and Politics in the Dominican Republic (Gainesville, Fla.: University of Florida Press, 2000), p. 53.

8 Samuel Martínez, “Not a Cockfi ght: Rethinking Haitian-Dominican Relations”, Latin American Perspectives 30, no. 3 (2003), pp. 80-101.

9 San Miguel, ! e Imagined Island , p. 3.

could ripen it as Nature intended”, the Marxist historian Juan Bosch writes. 5 Revolutionary republican culture had a “desolate” impact on the patriarchal and insular colony, scholars argue. 6 Because of the crushing poverty—and in eagerness to distinguish the colony from neighboring Saint-Domingue— historians also tend to characterize the period as one of relative equality, albeit an impoverished one. ! e myth of benign slavery in Santo Domingo—and as a corollary, the alleged quiescence of the enslaved—plagues Dominican histo- riography. 7 Finally, the relationship between the Dominican Republic and Haiti in the nineteenth century is almost always treated as the historical back- ground to what the Dominican anthropologist Samuel Martínez has termed “the fatal-confl ict model” of Haitian-Dominican relations. 8 ! e sheer magni- tude of anti-Haitian historiography produced during the Trujillo dictatorship in Santo Domingo—“massive, majestic” in its profusion—has long overshad- owed accounts that acknowledge cross-island linkages and exchange. 9 For decades a “historical taboo … constrained our historians not to touch any aspect of our relations with the Haitians that might be considered positive”,

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10 Ismael Hernández Flores, Luperón, héroe y alma de la Restauración & Haití y la Revolución Restauradora (Santo Domingo: Lotería Nacional, 1983), p. 14.

11 Many important exceptions exist, of course, such as Emilio Cordero Michel, La revolucion haitiana y Santo Domingo (4 th ed.) (Santo Domingo: Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, 2000 [1968]). ! roughout the period of the Trujillato , however, historians such as Manuel Arturo Peña-Battle and Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi focused only on the most negative incidents between the two states—Dessalines’ retreat in 1805 being a favored topic, but even hyperbolic accounts of Louverture’s brief sojourn in Santo Domingo—to the almost total exclu- sion of more careful analyses of the revolution’s impact. ! eir unrelentingly negative tone echoes the elites of the nineteenth century—including otherwise liberal historians like José Gabriel García—but does not satisfactorily refl ect common perspectives of the period.

12 Sybille Fischer, Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 182; Christina Violeta Jones, “Revolution and Reaction: Santo Domingo during the Haitian Revolution and beyond, 1791-1844” (Ph.D. diss., Howard University, 2008), p. 1.

13 San Miguel, ! e Imagined Island , p. 126. 14 Julius S. Scott, “! e Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American Communication in the

Era of the Haitian Revolution” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1986).

Ismael Hernández Flores has observed. 10 Even the Haitian Revolution itself— freeing as it did hundreds of thousands of people from bondage—rarely receives positive treatment in Dominican historiography. 11 As the general nar- rative holds, the “trauma” of the Haitian revolution caused loyalism and reac- tion in the Dominican side; “[n]owhere in the Greater Caribbean did the Haitian Revolution … leave a deeper and more warped trace”, concludes one account; “nowhere did it leave a deeper [or] more distorted view” reports another. 12 Many traditional narratives echo some form of this argument, that the revolution caused some sort of “Dominican historical arrhythmia” and casting subsequent Dominican nationalism as all things anti-Haitian. 13

! is article argues against an isolationist view of the colony, asserting that Santo Domingo was another important port through which “common wind” of revolutionary thought was blowing in the early nineteenth-century Caribbean, especially from neighboring Haiti. 14 First, it gives a brief overview of the economic and political trajectory of the colony from 1795-1809. While plantation slavery had virtually disappeared from the colony, I argue that rac- ism continued to govern the lives of many residents, a fact that compounded the insecurity of the capital city’s unstable and revolutionary climate. Next, the article explores the intensely international nature of the city; the very vir- tue of the colony’s secondary economic status, I argue, made it an important crossroads for neighboring islands. ! e mobility of free and enslaved people of color from neighboring colonies (especially Puerto Rico), while slow to emerge from archival sources, refl ects Santo Domingo’s importance in subaltern

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networks of migration and freedom that have yet to be explored. Finally, the article details the events of the “Italian Revolution” itself, the persistent inequalities within the struggling Spanish colony, and the widely varying aspi- rations of the conspirators and city residents. In fact, the conspiracy was not really Italian at all; troubled o# cials seem to have been eager to minimize its much more immediate links to Pétion’s republic in southern Haiti. It is these important connections to revolution in Haiti—both concrete and symbolic— that have too long been e" aced.

II. Background: A Colony in Crisis, 1801-1809

Multiple changes in sovereignty, almost-constant fi ghting on the island, disruption of agriculture, and signifi cant emigration characterized the years leading up to the so-called “Italian Revolution” in the impover- ished capital city of Santo Domingo. It is beyond the scope of this article— indeed, out of the scope of the extant secondary literature—to craft a thorough analysis of the popular sentiment about the vicissitudes of the 1795- 1809 period, but certain prefatory statements can be made about the impact of the changes in sovereignty that prefaced the 1810 conspiracy. Santo Domingo’s residents were bu" eted by changing imperial fortunes: they had been turned over to France in 1795, occupied briefl y by Louverture (1801- 02), reclaimed by France (1802-08), blockaded by the British navy (1809) and only in 1808-09 reclaimed for the Spanish, who were at that exact moment a kingdom without a king. 15 ! e siege and bloody retreat of Dessalines in 1805, the continuing instability between the neighboring Haitian states (King Christophe’s kingdom in the North, President Pétion’s constitutional republic in the South), and perpetual threats of French invasion, combined with European confl icts to forge a volatile mix of poverty and insecurity in the eastern part of Hispaniola, but its political direction was far from clear.

15 Fray de Utrera writes dramatically that a “cry of pain” rose collectively from people as they heard the proclamation ceding the colony to Spain in 1795, and furnishes poetry that questions the cession despairingly, in the voice of the desperate and feminized capital city: “Shall I leave for a convent?”, Juan Sánchez Ramírez , Diario de la Reconquista (Ciudad Trujillo [Santo Domingo]: Editora Montalvo, 1957), pp. viii, x. Nor did they particularly want to fi ght with the French against Louverture in 1801, General Kerverseau complained, Philippe R. Girard, “ Liberté, Égalité Esclavage : French Revolutionary Ideals and the Failure of the Leclerc Expedition to Saint- Domingue”, French Colonial History 6 (2005), pp. 55-78 at 69.

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16 Deive writes that the “spirit of most of the enslaved was greatly moved by the agitation and chaos” of the period, and indeed it seems many enslaved in the east actively fought for emancipation during the revolutionary years, Guerrilleros , p. 204. Some took inspiration from Saint-Dominguen fi ghters—like Jean-François, of the negros auxiliares fi ghting with Spain—and added their own interpretations and allegiances. While Jean-François himself remained loyal to Spain, therefore, others invoked his name as part of plans to revolutionize the east. One such man, a slave named ! omas, was apprehended with a note referring to “San Fransuá” before his plans could be realized, at p. 206. Others doubtless drew inspiration from the fi ghting as well, even as allegiances were at times shifting and contradictory.

17 Cordero Michel, Revolución haitiana , p. 71, Deive, Emigraciones , p. 92. Numerous travelers’ accounts corroborate the story of Louverture’s joyful initial reception in Santo Domingo, e.g., James Franklin, ! e Present State of Hayti (London, 1828), pp. 130-1; Marcus Rainsford, A Memoir of Transactions that Took Place in St. Domingo in the Spring of 1799 (London, 1802), p. 256.

18 Cordero Michel, Revolución haitiana , p. 140. He suggests that the rural sectors accustomed to rural lifestyles then “turned their back”, on Louverture, and his only remaining base of support were the urban middle and lower classes (who had artisanal and small commercial enterprises) and the population of Cibao (which had commercialized production of tobacco). Nevertheless, French General Kerverseau reported that even the wealthy members of the capital city did not want to send reinforcements for the French fi ghting Louverture, quoted in Gustavo Mejía Ricart, Historia de Santo Domingo , p. 14.

19 Sánchez Ramírez, Diario , p. xix; Cordero Michel, Revolución haitiana , p. 136. Some Santiago de los Caballeros o# cials actually moved to Port-au-Prince, for example, from where they continued to lobby the Spanish crown on various subjects, e.g. Regidor Perpetuo de Santiago de los Caballeros to Secretario de Estado, 29 April 1813, Archivo General de Indias (hereinafter, “AGI”): Audiencia de SD 1017, Expte. s/n.

! e popular impact of the fi rst years of the revolution on the fl ounder- ing colony of Santo Domingo brought considerable chaos and ferment. 16 During Toussaint Louverture’s brief occupation of the capital city in 1801, he immediately proclaimed slavery abolished. ! e abolition decree and the open- ing of the ranks of eastern troops to former slaves evidently gained the sympa- thy of much of Santo Domingo’s population, and Louverture continued to make special appeals to people of color in Santo Domingo after Napoleon proposed a “regression” to 1789 slavery statues. 17 Support may have fl agged, however, particularly among those submitted to Louverture’s forced labor projects; nor could the burden of continuing defense costs to ward o" the French have been popular to eastern residents. ! e 1802 French reoccupation of Santo Domingo restored slavery to the province, and abolition became legally moot, ending the brief unifi cation entirely. 18 French General Kerverseau observed that he could not count on the loyalty “of blacks and the rest of the people of color” in the commercial town of Santiago de los Caballeros, and some historians suggest that Dessalines was in fact welcomed when he fi rst arrived there several years later, indicating continuing sympathies for Haiti in the east. 19 Dessalines’ brutal tactics upon his retreat alienated the Dominican

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people, however, and his violence at Moca and Santiago accrued a “debt of blood”. 20 For their part, eager as they must have been to drive aggressive French authorities from the island, Haitian authorities must not have been pleased at the return of the Spanish to Santo Domingo in 1808-09. Internal turmoil on both sides of the island complicates the picture of these fi rst revo- lutionary years further. More research is necessary (and forthcoming). 21

It is similarly di# cult to parse out exactly what sentiments for the subse- quent French government were (1802-09)—perhaps because the French General Kerverseau and his successor, General Ferrand, attempted to keep something of a low profi le with the populace. “Spaniards of the east part of St. Domingo, you are all become Frenchmen; or rather French and Spaniards, we form together one band of brothers and friends”, General Ferrand insisted. 22 It seems that liberalization of trade, for example, was relatively popular. Other actions, such as the replacement of Spanish bishops with French and moves to secularization and prohibitions on cattle trading, were clearly less popular generally. 23 Punctuating the period of French government was Dessalines’ invasion in 1805, which wrought more destruction, from the northern part of the island to the capital city. 24 Most signifi cantly, however,

20 Cordero Michel, Revolución haitiana , p. 136. 21 Graham Nessler’s forthcoming University of Michigan doctoral dissertation, “A Failed

Emancipation? ! e Struggle for Freedom in Hispaniola during the Haitian Revolution, 1789-1809”, and Antonio Jésus Pinto Tortosa’s “Una colonia en la encrucijada: Santo Domingo, entre la revolución haitiana y las ambiciones francesas (1791-1809)” (Ph.D. diss., Universitad Complutense de Madrid, forthcoming 2011) join recent work like Jones’ “Revolution and Reaction”; they promise to elucidate much about the impact of the revolutionary period in the Spanish colony as well as its role in shaping the events of the revolution itself.

22 Quoted in Captain ! omas Southey, Chronological History of the West Indies , 3 vols. (London, 1880), 3: 415. A contemporary British observer claimed that French o# cers were encouraged to intermarry in Santo Domingo “in order to extend [their infl uence] over the Spanish inhabitants of the country” and also wrote of alleged French military abuses and robber- ies in Santiago and other cities, William Walton, Present State of the Spanish Colonies (London, 1810), pp. 197, 201.

23 Deive, “Las Cortes”, p. 123; Frank Moya Pons, Historia colonial de Santo Domingo (Santiago, D.R.: Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, 1976), p. 382; Franco Pichardo, Los negros, los mulatos, y la nación dominicana (Santo Domingo: Editora Manatí, 10th ed., 2003), p. 114.

24 According to historian Franklin Franco Pichardo, Dessalines’ advance, though undoubt- edly spurred by General Ferrand’s provocations (he had issued an ordinance authorizing eastern colonists to capture and sell Haitian youth into slavery), was also the result of an invitation of the people of Santiago—free people of color who opposed the encroachment of plantation- minded Ferrand in the region, Franco Pichardo Los negros , p. 111. Some, like José Tavares,

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slavery was restored with the return of the French. A preliminary exploration into Domin ican archives reveals that despite the tremendous economic depres- sion—or perhaps because of it—the price of slaves barely decreased when tra# cking resumed again with French occupation. 25 By the time slavery was defi nitively abolished in 1822, some 24,000 were still enslaved, according to some estimates. 26

! e Reconquista and the Beginning of “España Boba”

Spurred in part by indignation at the news of the Napoleon’s overthrow of the Spanish king—all semblance of a French-Spanish alliance then collapsed— a restoration e" ort known as the Reconquista erupted in Santo Domingo in 1808. 27 With the support of the Spanish governor of Puerto Rico, Dominican loyalists launched a campaign to restore Spanish rule. Signifi cantly, they sought aid from Pétion and Christophe, who were also eager to see the aggres- sive French kicked o" of the island. ! e Reconquista fi ghting, although ini- tially dismissed by French authorities as “two or three hundred scoundrels from Puerto Rico”, mobilized many in the southeastern part of the island. 28 Juan Sánchez Ramírez, a Dominican who had immigrated to Puerto Rico several years before, traveled extensively in the colony and was able to gener- ate much popular support. 29 ! ey were successful after months of siege at the capital city—its second prolonged siege in fi ve years—realized by the British Navy. ! e toll on the city was high. “Perhaps the annals of no wars … a" ord examples of more cruelty and horror, than those to which the Spaniards were exposed in this occasion”, one British o# cial empathized. 30 Sánchez Ramírez, the hero of the decisive battle of Palo Hincado, was named acting governor of the embattled colony. “Born with a friendly spirit and accessibil- ity, he knew how to win the hearts of the island’s inhabitants, who saw him

lent Dessalines their lasting support, José Gabriel García, Compendio de la Historia de Santo Domingo (Tomo I) (Santo Domingo: Imprenta de Garcia Hermanos, 1893), pp. 298, 313. Dessalines’ sojourn in the colony, particularly the legacy and memory production around his bloody retreat, is again ambiguous and deserves exploration in further detail.

25 AGN-RD Archivo Real de Higüey Legajos 11-27. 26 Cordero Michel, Revolución haitiana , p. 71. 27 Gabriel García, Compendio , p. 320. ! e campaign sought to “assert the trampled rights of

their beloved Ferdinand”, Walton concurred, Present State , p. 206. 28 Sánchez Ramírez , Diario , p. 323; Southey, Chronological History , p. 418. 29 Moya Pons, Historia colonial , p. 395; Gabriel García, Compendio , p. 320. 30 Walton Present State , p. 207.

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31 José Núñez de Cáceres to Secretario de Estado, Santo Domingo, 18 February 1811, AGI: Audiencia de Santo Domingo 1016, Expte. s/n.

32 Sánchez Ramírez, Diario , p. 317. 33 Some historians place the latter number at as few as approximately 60,000, Francisco

Bernardo Regino Espinal, “La esclavitud en la España Boba, 1809-1821”, in Revista CLIO 171 (2006), pp. 85-112 at 92.

as a loving father”, an observer wrote. 31 It was a remarkable moment for pro-Spanish loyalism. “Puerto Ricans and Dominicans … your heroic patrio- tism has shone in América, and will shine in all the Universe”, a Spanish o# - cial proclaimed. 32

Unfortunately, for Santo Domingo there were to be no spoils of victory after 1809. A period of poverty and neglect known as “España Boba” began that would last for another long decade. ! e sheer extremity of economic and social devastation in Santo Domingo by the end of the Reconquista e" ort—its population declined from 190,000 in the 1790s to fewer than 80,000 in 1809, capital-deprived and eking by on subsistence after months of fi ghting and siege—wreaked tremendous stress on the colony’s residents. 33 Nor did Spanish funding increase; a paltry situado of 100,000 pesos did not arrive from Spain for nearly two years (in early 1811), and even then,

Fig. 1. Border towns in the east founded in the 1700s. Almost all of the new populations founded in the 1700s evidence the importance of intra-island trade, usually of cattle, wood, and other foodstu" s, that continued after the fi ghting concluded. Image: M. Rosario Sevilla Soler, Santo Domingo Tierra de Frontera 1750-1800 (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1980.)

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34 Moya Pons, Historia colonial , p. 405; Gabriel García, Compendio , pp. 361" . Another would not arrive until 1817.

35 Gabriel García, Compendio , p. 345; also Sánchez Ramírez, Diario , pp. 347" . Spain’s resources, of course, were very soon diverted to defeating independence movements in Latin America. Recalcitrance on the part of Puerto Rican and Cuban o# cials seems to stem from another source—general disdain for the Dominican colony. Cuban observers likewise seemed to see Dominican as impossibly backward and contrasted its residents with their own plantation state. On the economic devastation—Gabriel García notes that the only area not totally devas- tated in 1810 was Puerto Plata, which was trading tobacco from the Cibao region to United States merchants, at p. 360.

36 Núñez de Cáceres to Secretario de Gracia y Justicia, Santo Domingo, 28 August 1811, AGI: Audiencia de Santo Domingo 1017, Expte. s/n.

37 Carlos de Urrutia to Secretario de Estado y del Despacho de Hacienda, Santo Domingo, 1 October 1813, Audiencia de SD 962, Expte. s/n.

38 Xavier Caro, comisionado en la isla de Santo Domingo por el Despacho de Hacienda to Nicolás Maria de Sierra, Santo Domingo, 18 December 1810, Audiencia de Santo Domingo 961, Expte. s/n.

39 Cabildo de Justicia Regimiento de la ciudad de Santo Domingo to the King, Santo Domingo, 17 February 1815, Audiencia de Santo Domingo 1063, Expte. s/n.

it barely covered the costs of feeding troops in the capital’s Plaza. 34 Authorities in Puerto Rico and Britain demanded restitution for their aid in the Reconquista; meanwhile, relief money solicited from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Spain was not forthcoming. 35 “Only through daily experience could one form an idea … of such a melancholy scene”, wrote future independence activist José Núñez de Cáceres in frustration in 1811. 36 Almost every administrator writing to Spain in the 1810s formulated their accounts in an identical way: that the impoverishment of the colony was so total that it was impossible to imagine it without actually witnessing it fi rsthand. As Governor Carlos de Urrutia echoed several years later, “the people are nude, starving, and so calamitous that a multitude of sicknesses are about … It’s not easy, even if one wants to, to paint a true picture of the calamities of this island”. 37 Disor- der “exceeds anything I could say about it”, one commissioner wrote. 38 “! is most faithful isle has been reduced to a shocking skeleton”, another petition pleaded. 39

General dissatisfaction among capital city residents seemed to extend from the underpaid bureaucrats, to the underpaid soldiers, to economically desti- tute population more generally. Gabriel García writes that the “dreadful plight” had gripped public opinion:

Given that the results obtained with the Reconquista didn’t correspond with the perceived hopes of the majority of Dominicans, who in sacrifi cing to recover their original nationality … thought that they were achieving a bright future.

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40 Gabriel García, Compendio , p. 363; Moya Pons, Historia colonial , p. 408. 41 Ayuntamiento de Santo Domingo to Secretario de Estado y de la Gobernación de Ultramar,

Santo Domingo, 16 January 1813, AGI: Audiencia de Santo Domingo 972, Expte. s/n. 42 Gabriel García, Compendio , p. 352. 43 Gabriel García, Compendio , p. 359. ! e fate of many of these Dominican emigrants was

extraordinarily di# cult; Reconquista hero Juan Sánchez Ramírez reported that he was never able to get a peso of aid “just like almost all of the emigrados”, he laments, Diario , p. 1. For more on the emigrants, see Carlos Esteban Deive, Las emigraciones dominicanas a Cuba, 1795-1808 (Santo Domingo: Fundación Cultural Dominicana, 1989).

44 Sánchez Ramírez Diario , pp. xxix, 320.

! e agitation of morale, far from calming down, increased each day … with the desire to separate from Spain … [and] form a sovereign and independent country. 40

! e colonists were deeply dissatisfi ed with the extreme destitution of the col- ony; a situation they felt was being exacerbated by wrongful neglect on the part of Spain. ! e pleas were constant: “We have been restored to the arms of a liberal Mother who wants prosperity for all her children, even the most dis- tant”, the local government insisted in one letter, but another situado from Spain was not to arrive for years. 41 Trade with the United States and Britain, the latter codifi ed in the treaty that ended the fi ghting, further oriented the people away from an ideal of Spanish dependency. 42

Leveled, But far from Equal

! e Reconquista campaign restoring Spanish rule brought confl icts over sov- ereignty, independence, and belonging into sharper focus for the residents of Santo Domingo. Familiar hierarchies, which had been disrupted in the chaos of the previous decade, returned to the colony. Many of wealthier families who had emigrated (mostly to neighboring Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela) did not return—in fact General Ferrand had declared their lands abandoned, and reclaimed them for the state—but a few did return after the Spanish were reinstated, seeking to reclaim land titles and usurp political power. 43 Finally, the attitude of Spanish authorities could not have been well received by the majority of Dominicans. ! e Governor of Puerto Rico Toribio Montes—who had been charged with supporting the Reconquista e" ort—openly cast asper- sion on General Juan Sánchez Ramírez, in both private correspondence and the Gaceta de Madrid, as an “irresponsible, uneducated mulato , slow to under- stand orders he is given”. 44 Sánchez Ramírez should not have retained the

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118 A. Eller / Journal of Early American History 1 (2011) 105–141

Fig. 2-5. Imports and exports of Santo Domingo to neighboring Spanish possessions and other regional sites depict a colony that, while poorer than its plantation neighbors, was very much integrated into the regional economy. Images: M. Rosario Sevilla Soler, Santo Domingo Tierra de Frontera 1750-1800 (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1980).

A. Eller / Journal of Early American History 1 (2011) 105–141 119

45 Juan Sánchez Ramírez accused Ciriaco Ramírez of seeking opportunistic gain from the Reconquista fi ght. His military strategy was unethical, the former argued, and his conduct “insolent and provocative”, Diario , pp. 67-8, 83-4. Ramón Power of the Spanish navy corrobo- rated these accusations, and praised Sánchez Ramírez for his restraint in the matter, at pp. 325-9.

46 Juan Sánchez Ramírez to Min. de Hacienda, 24 July 1810, AGI: Audiencia de Santo Domingo 1062, Expte. s/n. Many who had served as part of the negros auxiliares from fi ghting in Saint-Domingue were also still in the colony, and their future was hotly debated, AGI: Audiencia de Santo Domingo 1062.

47 Declaracion de Enrique Capri, 9 September 1810, BAGN 228-9. 48 In the trial records almost all of the urban enslaved are working as day laborers (and coart-

ación is readily evident in the archives and travel accounts). One slave, Manuel Fernández, is recorded as a “day laborer who lives with his master, but has no other investment with his mas- ter [after the work day has ended]”, Declaración de Manuel Fernández. BAGN 261. ! e popula- tion of the city was so reduced that slave owners were compelled to lend out their slaves to rebuild destroyed public works in the capital city; they complained about the lost labor (Comisionado Xavier Caro to Nicolás María de Sierra, Santo Domingo, 29 November 1810, AGI: Audiencia de Santo Domingo 961, Expte. s/n. Nevertheless, as many as 6,000 enslaved Africans were brought to the colony from 1774-1807, historians estimate, Espinal, “La esclavi- tud en la España Boba”, 89.

governorship, Toribio Montes argued, “given his social status and his blood were not at all clean”. Rather, the governor openly favored another Reconquista fi ghter, Ciriaco Ramírez, who was an ambitious peninsular of relatively dubious conduct established in the southern part of the island. 45 Sánchez Ramírez retained the governorship, but he jailed his Spanish rival on suspicion of treason. Members of the militia of color—63 of whom were freed by Sánchez Ramírez for their e" orts in the 1808-09 fi ghting, for example, and others who had been free since the revolution in the west—must have bristled at the renewed rigidity in colonial power after their recent Reconquista e" orts as well. 46 ! ey still guarded the plaza in 1810; some of the witnesses who testify against the conspiracy are soldiers from this regiment, including soldiers who had been born in “Guarico” (Cap Français/Henri/Haitien). 47

Meanwhile, a complex geography of slavery and freedom continued to govern the island. ! e general poverty of Santo Domingo had weakened slavery—many of the enslaved men and women in the trial records were day laborers, for example—but it was far from disappeared from the life of the colony. 48 Furthermore, the physical reminders of plantation slavery were everywhere. ! e Boca de Nigua ingenio , site of a major slave rebellion in 1796, was less than a day’s ride from the capital. Free towns like San Lorenzo de los Mina and the southern port town of Palenque, both not far from the capital city, bore living geographic memory of segregated modes of labor

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49 Around 1800, San Lorenzo de los Mina, was reported to have “about 300 inhabitants, almost all black, descendants of [those] who had fl ed the French side”, quoted in Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, La Era de Francia en Santo Domingo (Ciudad Trujillo [Santo Domingo]: Ed. Caribe, 1955), p. 188. Today it is a neighborhood of the capital city, lado oriental .

50 Juan José Arrom and Manuel A. García Arévalo, Cimarrón (Santo Domingo: Fundación García Arévalo, 1986). As many as 200-300 people had been living in Baoruco as early as the 1540s, Richard Price, Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas (Baltimore, Md.: ! e Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), p. 39. On the importance of these communities during the revolutionary period, see Carolyn Fick, ! e Making of Haiti: ! e Saint Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville, Tn.: University of Tennessee Press, 1990), especially pp. 51-6.

51 Carlos Esteban Deive, La esclavitud del negro en Santo Domingo, 1492-1844 (Santo Domingo: Museo del Hombre Dominicano, 1980), p. 500. ! e Haitian Revolution may have in fact swelled the ranks of the maniel communities temporarily; Deive writes that 100 families fl ed los Naranjos to Baoruco in 1795, for example, Deive Guerrilleros , p. 230).

52 Fick, Making of Haiti , pp. 55-6. 53 Walton, Present State , pp. 31-2; John Storm Roberts, Black Music of Two Worlds:

African, Caribbean, Latin, and African-American Traditions (New York: Schirmer Books, 1998 [1972]).

and community. 49 So, too, did highland maroon communities comprised of ex-slaves from the former Saint-Domingue, of which there had been three primary sites: in the Sierra de Ocoa (the original “Maniel” from which the rest of maroon communities in Spanish colonies would get their name), Sierra de Neiba, and the Sierra de Baoruco. 50 ! ey were reduced from the several thousands who must have lived there at the height of the eighteenth century, but it seems that the Maniel residents in the highlands of Baoruco had not simply integrated into the towns of San Juan de la Maguana and Azua after news of the revolution in the west. 51 In fact, their semi-independent sta- tus had allowed them to weather the upheaval with considerable continuity. 52

! e independent maroon communities of the south of the island preoccu- pied the attention of travelers and Spanish authorities alike. British Secretary William Walton, traveling the coasts of the island during the Reconquista, wrote that maroons had a “large promontory and fertile tract of land…with- out mixing in any of the broils of their surrounding neighbors”:

! e whole number of these Maroons does not exceed 600, principally Spanish runaway slaves, who live in a kind of republican manner, intent only on their safety, and governed by their own regulations. ! ey are tranquil, confi ned to their own limits, and only visit the neighboring towns of [San Juan] and Azua, when they have tortoise shell, a super-abundance of cured game, or a few ounces of gold, collected from the beds of the mountain torrent, to dispose of; which they exchange for powder and cloathing [sic]; as tobacco and rum, their chief luxuries, they grow amongst themselves. 53

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54 Declaración de José Ricardo Castaños, BAGN 223. José Ricardo Castaños testifi ed that he “had heard about three or four days ago that a few blacks from Maniel had arrived and that they were capable of conspiring”.

55 See Walton, Present State , pp. 161-2. 56 It is unclear whether these were the creation of the Spanish (correlating with the negro

auxiliares forces employed during their 1793-5 fi ghting with the French) or, more likely, that of Louverture when he briefl y occupied the city in 1801. Both the French and the Reconquista forces organized moreno regiments in 1808-09, Sánchez Ramírez Diario , p. 176.

57 Captain Alí, I think, is the same Pablo Alí y Augustin who has left something of a remark- able paper trail in the Spanish archives. He was born in West Africa—his Arabic surname suggests that he was Muslim—enslaved in Saint Domingue, fought in a position of signifi - cant military leadership of an all-black force known as the negros auxiliares on the side of the Spanish during the Haitian Revolution under General Biassou (and was close enough to Toussaint Louverture to later report how he chose his sobriquet), refused to be involved in intrigue in turning the Spanish colony over to the British in 1796, and was later awarded a medallo de oro for his service in exile (Puerto Rico) in 1809. ! en it seems his application for citi- zenship had been denied, and he reappeared—one might only guess at his disposition to the Spanish state and colonial authorities—in Santo Domingo in 1810, Beaubrun Ardouin, Études sur l’histoire d’Haïti (Paris, 1853), p. 227; Deive, Guerrilleros , p. 233; Deive, Emigraciones , pp. 71, 126-9; Rodríguez Demorizi, Milicias de Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Editora del Caribe, 1978), p. 425. He remained a very infl uential and respected military leader throughout the period of España Boba and is involved in the 1821 “ independencia efi mera ” project and in communication with Boyer by 1820. ! e 1810 conspirators observed that he held the “esteem of the people” and determine that Foló should try to win his support for their planned project ( BAGN 252). Although Muslims comprised a small minority of those brought to Saint- Domingue (as high as ten percent, as low as two to fi ve, by rough estimates), Michael Gomez notes that they often fi lled more privileged positions within the plantation hierarchy,

Although Captain Ventura—the leader of the southern maniel—does not emerge in the trial testimony of the “Italian Revolution” from the following year, it is clear that the maroons remained a concern of Spanish authorities in the capital city. ! e defendants were eager to displace blame as well. One of the conspirators tried to lay the blame for the conspiracy on a small group of maroons, claiming that several men from Maniel had entered the city to scope out the defenses of the town square. 54 Other markers of hierarchy per- sisted in the colony as well, not limited to the scrutiny of o# cials and European travelers directed toward popular religious practice. 55 Within the social world of the capital city itself, the organized black regiments of former slaves who continued to garrison the capital represented a formidable testament both to the strict stratifi cation of the island’s immediate past and to their indispens- able military presence. 56 One of the primary conspirators, Santiago Foló, was an o# cer of the company; he in turn sought the support of the formidable Captain Alí, commander of the regiment, important veteran, and well-known fi gure in the capital city. 57 Finally, the short-lived French occupation bore the

122 A. Eller / Journal of Early American History 1 (2011) 105–141

Black Crescent: the Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 83-4).

58 Two witnesses claimed to have been walking in the direction of the General’s ranch, for example, although he had been dead for two years at the time of the trial. Many of the witnesses and suspects are quizzed for their suspect allegiance to Ferrand in particular. Ferrand had autho- rized the capture of children younger than fourteen from the west to be sold into slavery, keeping only children younger than ten in the colony itself the rest to be sold elsewhere (Deive, Guerrilleros , p. 228).

59 Moya Pons, Historia colonial , pp. 378-80. 60 Ibid., p. 379. 61 Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, Viajeros de Francia , p. 122. 62 Disparaging comments are rife in the literature. One French observer remarked with

disdain in 1795 that he did not look forward to the transfer of the colony to French control, given that it was “already a damned land for whites, and a true cancer in the entrails of whom- ever would be its ruler in the future”, quoted in Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, La Era de Francia en Santo Domingo (Ciudad Trujillo [Santo Domingo]: Ed. Caribe, 1955), p. 13. A British observer, quoted in Moya Pons shares this “horror” upon seeing the impoverished and non- white Reconquista army, and has trouble even formulating it as such, “if that crowd of guerrilla soldier blacks, half naked, could even be called an army”, quoted in Moya Pons, Historia Colonial , p. 399.

63 Quoted in Rodríguez Demorizi, Viajeros , p. 121.

mark of a renewed enslavement e" ort; General Ferrand had encouraged the capture of children from the west for revenue, and his memory is ubiquitous in the testimony. 58

For all its recent ferment, persistent inequalities plagued the city residents. Many sectors of the population—certainly in urban settings, but probably in rural too—continued to be circumscribed by the o# cial racism embodied in the laws of the state. 59 ! e reinstating of slavery by the French after Louverture’s momentary abolition was just one facet of the repression. Historian Frank Moya Pons writes of the racism of the late colonial period as a sociopolitical wage of sorts, for example, claiming: “in Santo Domingo, that impoverished and leveled colony, the important thing was not to be totally black or too black”. A “ mulato ” was rarely enslaved for his/her whole life, Moya Pons con- tinues, but liberal manumission was doubtless a poor substitute for Louverture’s 1801 abolition decree. 60 Scattered assessments of the capital city by French travelers seem to preliminarily confi rm this characterization of the colony as relatively egalitarian but perniciously anti-black. 61 Even as foreign observers commented disparagingly on the relatively egalitarian composition of the colony as a whole, they remarked that the urban centers of political power were governed by racism. 62 Although certain posts and the honorifi c “Don” had been extended to certain people of color, one observed, “it cannot be extended as far as the blacks”. 63 Meanwhile, many elites who appealed to Spain

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64 Roxivio Ton--- to D. Francisco Saavedra, Pres. de la Suprema Junta de Sevilla, Puerto Rico, 15 October 1808, AGI: Audiencia de SD 1062, Expte. s/n.

65 Quoted in Rodríguez Demorizi, La Era de Francia , p. 191. An agent of the United States, David Dixon Porter, reported that color prejudices persisted in the capital city in the 1840s, Emilio Cordero Michel, La ciudad de Santo Domingo en las crónicas históricas (Santo Domingo: Comisión Municipal para la comemoración del V Centenario, 1998), p. 216.

66 ! e literature unfailingly refers to the humiliation su" ered by the populace at Ferdi- nand VII’s deposal, viz. Moya Pons, Historia colonial , p. 394, Gabriel García, Compendio , pp. 320" .

67 Alejandro de la Fuente, César García del Pino, and Bernardo Iglesias Delgado, Havana and the Atlantic in the Sixteenth Century (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2008).

68 de la Fuente et al., Havana and the Atlantic , p. 12. 69 Xavier Caro to Nicolás María de Sierra, 29 November 1810, AGI: Audiencia de SD 961,

Expte. s/n. 70 Ibid.

directly carefully emphasized white predominance in the colony, trying to assure them: “the inhabitants of the east are almost all Spanish”. 64 Some of the free men of color were able to pass themselves o" as white “without noisy reclamation”, travelers observed, but just as many others could not. 65 Intersecting with the local context was international tumult; Napoleon’s inva- sion of Spain, the revolutionary Junta of 1808, and the Cortes de Cádiz heightened both the sense of insecurity in the colony and the sense of the possible. 66

III. “" ere will be lots of fi re in the city”: " e Common Winds Blow in Santo Domingo

Undoubtedly, Santo Domingo was not ideally located for communica- tion with Spain, located as it was on the southern side of Hispaniola. Since the creation of the fl ota system in the latter part of the 1500s, Havana had long since supplanted Santo Domingo as a stopping point for Spanish ships, and the latter port languished along with the rest of the colony’s economy. 67 While Havana became the “key to all trading in the New World”, therefore, Santo Domingo declined as a entrepôt and imperial hub. 68 Island o# cials were well aware of the logistical di# culty and requested in 1810 that news at least be sent monthly to the northern peninsula of Samaná, although even this request encountered di# culty. 69 Contemporary o# cials complained that they knew “absolutely nothing” from the peninsula, when even monthly news failed to arrive. 70

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71 In terms of concrete networks of communication and trade, it is true that Santo Domingo was for some time considerably less signifi cant as a port city in the Caribbean than, for example, Havana. However, a number of works attest to the very real networks of communication that did exist between the colony and other countries in the circum-Caribbean, as well as important link- ages not only to the Spanish metropole, but to Britain and France as well, e.g., M. Rosario Sevilla Soler, Santo Domingo Tierra de Frontera 1750-1800 (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano- Americanos, 1980) for discussions of trade. For nascent suggestive tracts regarding the role of Hispaniola’s oriente in nineteenth-century revolutionary thought, see discussion of migration in José Morales, “! e Hispaniola Diaspora, 1791-1850: Puerto Rico, Cuba, Louisiana and Other Host Societies” (Ph.D. diss., University of Connecticut, 1986) and of ideology in José Antinoe Fiallo Billini, “La Construcción antillanista: Insinuaciones para una estrategia geopolítica”, Ponencia en el “Primer Seminario Internacional sobre Pensamiento Antillanista”, 25 November 2004.

72 Many were lawyers, Carlos de Urrutia to Secretario de Estado y del Despacho de Gracia y Justicia, Santo Domingo, 8 July 1813, AGI: Audiencia de SD 962, Expte. 1, doc. s/n.

73 E.g., Captain General of Caracas’ report on the state of Santo Domingo, 6 May 1803, AGI: Estado 61, Expte. 31.

74 As the British were allowed to trade with the colony (per the 1809 treaty), ships of other nations masqueraded under their fl ag to conduct this trade, Carreo de Castaños y Ciriaco Ramírez, BAGN 275.

75 E.g., Pedimiento de Angel García, BAGN 264. He was a furniture dealer (who likely was also interested in the mahogany trade) who had the poor luck of selling goods to one of the accused and seeks the return of his goods in the course of the trial.

76 For example, the 1807 resale of one man was labeled an e" ort “to recollect the blacks from that island” by Puerto Rico, Sale of Manuel/Mateo de Castro to Antonio Pene, AGN-RD

Where communication with the metropole failed, inter-island communica- tion and travel fl ourished, however, especially southward. ! e city was ideally located for travel to and communication with the rest of the coasts and islands of the Caribbean. 71 A number of the prominent fi gures who returned to fi ght the Reconquista had been observing events from Venezuela, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. 72 Steady communiqués from Venezuela are documented throughout the period (even during French domination). 73 ! e Dutch colony of Curaçao became increasingly important fi nancially and politically to Santo Domingo as the nineteenth century progressed; it became the primary refuge for Dominican political exiles by the 1840s. While the tobacco cultivation of the Cibao valley tended to be sold to European markets, the wood-selling indus- try of the south sailed into the Caribbean Sea, and Dominican beef often fed neighboring British islands. 74 From Puerto Rico, merchants from the western town of Aguadilla traveled easily to the eastern tip of Santo Domingo, as well as the capital city. 75 Also from the neighboring island, it seems that a steady trickle of enslaved men and women arrived to Santo Domingo in this period clandestinely in search of freedom; they appear only at the very mar- gins of the archives. 76 Other enslaved men and women were sold from Santo

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Archivo Real de Higuey, Leg. 27, Expte. 78. ! e most striking example is from the few surviving issues of an 1821 newspaper, El Telégrafo Constitucional . Of the thirty men and women recorded in the prison records of Santo Domingo, twelve of them were enslaved men and women fl eeing from Puerto Rico by boat in search of freedom who had been captured by authorities, El Telégrafo Constitucional #2, 12 April 1821.

77 E.g., Sale of Vital to Antonio Dobles, 26 November 1810, AGN-RD Archivo Real de Higuey Leg. 29, Expte. 43.

78 E.g., Sale of María by Juan Bautista Dati, resident of Puerto Rico, to Don José Guerrero, 1 September 1806, AGN-RD Archivo Real de Higuey Leg. 27, Expte. 63.

79 Secretario Interino de Hacienda de Ultramar to Ministro de Guerra, F.M. de Carvajal, Cádiz, 8 July 1812, AGI: Audiencia de SD 1062, Expte. s/n.

80 Vincente del Rosario Hermoso to Secretario de Real Hacienda, Santo Domingo, 12 April 1813, AGI: Audiencia de SD, Expte. s/n.

81 Elsewhere in the trial record he is recorded as from “Jeremias” (Jérémie?) ( BAGN 229). 82 Sánchez Ramírez, Diario , p. 342. 83 Gabriel García, Compendio , p. 320; Moya Pons, Historia colonial , p. 395.

Domingo to new slavemasters in Puerto Rico. 77 A few made the reverse trip, arriving to Santo Domingo from Puerto Rico in bondage. 78 Some of the negros auxiliares ended up in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, and other areas, as well as Spain. 79

Other free people of color traveled back and forth. Dominican moreno libre Vicente del Rosario Hermoso spent from 1803-10 in Puerto Rico, for exam- ple, but he returned to Santo Domingo after the French had been kicked out (while wisely requesting his pension be paid from the co" ers of Puerto Rico). 80 Juan José Ramírez, one of the accused who protested his innocence to the last, was a free man of color from San Juan who had moved to Santo Domingo in search of opportunity as an artisan. Another of those questioned in the 1810 trial was from Martinique, Jean Lafontaine, who had married and established himself as a tailor in the capital city. 81 Havana resident Don Juan Betancourt allegedly gave printed material to the conspirators. Few in the capital city would have been surprised the summer of 1810 when the governor demanded all travelers present themselves to authorities within 48 hours and that docu- ments “of any language” be scrutinized. 82 Clearly, it was the site of enough intra-Caribbean travel to be of signifi cant concern for authorities.

Furthermore, the citizens of distant, neglected, French-dominated Santo Domingo were also clearly listening carefully to events unfolding in the Spain itself, no matter how indirect the channels of communication. News of the deposal of the King quickly reached the colony, and the formation and debates of the Junta were the “magic words” that sparked debate by July of that year. 83 Meanwhile, the Governor of Puerto Rico covertly commis- sioned the distribution of Gaceta de Madrid and “other printed material from

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84 BAGN 277 (per Uber’s testimony). 85 Confesion de Ciriaco Ramírez, 15 September 1810, BAGN 274. 86 In addition to the Cuban military o# cers traveling to Santo Domingo, the Compendio

mentions that a number of wealthy fi gures from Santo Domingo traveled to Cuba in order to get to Spain and back again, at p. 347.

87 In addition to the numerous migrations to eastern Cuba, New Orleans, Philadelphia of planters and freedpeople, the negros auxiliares who had fought for Spain during confl ict on the island were still being shu$ ed around and resettled well into the 1810s, see, e.g., Pablo Mercurio to Secretario de Estado, 10 February 1809, AGI: Audiencia de SD 1062, Doc. s/n. See also Ada Ferrer, “! inking ! rough Haiti: Cuban Slave Society and the Haitian Revolution”, ms. in progress.

88 Ada Ferrer, "Speaking of Haiti: Slavery and Freedom in Cuban Slave Testimony”, in David Geggus and Norman Fiering (eds.), ! e World of the Haitian Revolution (Bloomington, Ind.: University of Indiana Press, 2008) pp. 223-47.

Sevilla” to prominent Dominican citizens to mobilize the Reconquista e" ort. 84 In the 1810 conspiracy trial, references to the Gaceta emerge several times in the testimony—then, contradictorily, as a contraband of sorts, detailing Spanish weakness—that Venezuelan conspirator Castaños shared with citizens in his confi dence, along with other pamphlets that he had obtained from another Venezuelan in the city (whose uncle had sent them as correspon- dence). “Castaños was always talking about the disastrous news from Spain and plausible rumors from Caracas, and the advances of the French”, another witness accused. 85 Documents from El Diario de la Reconquista corroborate that a fair amount of Spanish colonial news arrived from neighboring Cuba as well, by varying means. 86 Finally, the peripatetic nature of the primary con- spirators themselves is remarkable and is certainly indicative of the interna- tional infl uences on the capital city. Puerto Rico, fi rst to receive news from the metropole, had served as temporary residence for several at the heart of the conspiracy: Christoval Uber, Ciriaco Ramírez, and Juan José Ramírez. ! eir fi ghting in the Reconquista had spurred Santiago Foló (himself from the for- mer colony of Saint-Domingue) and others to tour the east extensively. None of the principal suspects, in fact, had been in the city for more than seven years at the time of the trial.

Finally, on the eve of the 1810 conspiracy, it is obvious that neighboring Haiti bore tremendous importance on the political and social landscape of Santo Domingo. First, the example of the Haitian Revolution loomed large, symbolically and concretely (as the former negros auxiliares and other migrants from both sides of the island continued to preoccupy authorities elsewhere). 87 Both Christophe and Pétion were vigilant against slave ships sailing through Haitian waters to reach Cuba and projected an international presence for Haiti. 88 Second, concrete security concerns united the interests of

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89 One of Sánchez Ramírez’ fi rst acts after landing on the island was to write to Christophe to broker peace with him, e.g. Diario , p. 13). Governor Toribio Montes sent the king the present of a clock, Diario , pp. 160, 280.

90 Sánchez Ramírez, Diario , p. 45. 91 Sánchez Ramírez, Diario , p. 279. 92 Quoted in Prince Saunders, Esq., Haytian Papers, A collection of the very interesting procla-

mations and other o" cial documents; together with some account of the rise, progress, and present state of the Kingdom of Haiti (London, 1816), p. 78.

93 Paul Louverture, briefl y entrusted with the southern region of Santo Domingo, oversaw “as active of a commercial frontier as possible” across the former border regions of the two states, (Cordero Michel, Revolución haitiana , p. 283). At Saint-Domingue’s height, colonists relied heavily on the Santo Domingo cattle trade. Dominican ranchers were among the strongest to continue to oppose trade restrictions from Haiti, for example (Franklin Franco, Los negros , p. 113).

94 D. Manuel Caballero to Secretario del Estado, Santo Domingo, 20 June 1811, AGI: Estado 12:56.

both sides of the island. Concern over ongoing French aggression necessarily piqued Haitian leaders’ interest in the occupation of the east of the island, and in fact the Dominicans immediately turned to the Haitian state in 1808. 89 During the Reconquista, Sánchez Ramírez—and the Spanish Governor of Puerto Rico, Toribio Montes—wrote to both King Christophe and President Pétion directly to ask for aid. Even the governor in Havana wrote promising o# cial goodwill and the aid of their free black battalion if needed. 90 ! e Puerto Rican governor reported that Christophe was “quick and generous” in his reply, sending 300 rifl es, 600 pistols, 300 swords, 300 cartridge belts, 300 pairs of boots, 80,000 cartridges, and other military supplies. 91 For his part, Christophe reported that he had “long conceived that, as inhabitants of the same soil, a similarity of wants ought to unite us with our brethren, the Spanish Haytians, when the same enemies menace our existence”. 92

! e alliance was more than just military. ! e collaboration “restores the ancient ties of friendship and of trade with this just, loyal, and sensible people, and the result has proved that I have had no occasion to repent of it”, Christophe wrote. Other authorities were eager to continue the healthy cattle trade from the east, perpetuating a long history of exchange between the two territories, albeit in new economic circumstances. 93 Finally, there existed a relatively intimate relationship between authorities of the two states. Santo Domingo o# cials passed on extensive news of Christophe’s coronation, for example, including copies of Haitian state documents. 94 Along with the Spanish o# cials of Santiago de Cuba—still nervous about any infl ux of migrants from the revolutionary island – Spanish o# cials in Santo Domingo served as an important source of information for Spanish authorities about

128 A. Eller / Journal of Early American History 1 (2011) 105–141

95 His name appears in various documents as Foló, Folau, Foleau, and Follot. 96 E.g., Sale of mulata Petrona Rodríguez by María Magdalena Capellán to M. Le Blanc,

10 February 1806, AGN-RD Archivo Real de Higúey 27, Expte. 126; see also Leg. 24, Expte. 18.

97 Carlos de Urrutia to Secretario del Estado, 12 July 1817, AGI: Estado 12, Expte. 53. 98 Careo de Moxica y Pezzi, BAGN 242-3. 99 Roberto Marte, Estadísticas y documentos sobre Santo Domingo, 1805-1890 (Santo

Domingo: Museo Nacional de Historia y Geografi a, 1984) and Félix de Bona, Cuba, Santo Domingo y Puerto-Rico (Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel Galiano, 1861).

events in neighboring Haiti. Haitian authorities probably kept abreast of Spanish news in a similar fashion.

Of particular importance to the city of Santo Domingo, the trial records indicate that a signifi cant west-to-east migration had occurred in the recent years from every corner of the western part of the island. One of the principle suspects in the “Italian Revolution”, Santiago Foló/Fauleau, was born in Cap Français, had served as a lieutenant in the Seventh Moreno Company of Santiago, and then migrated to Santo Domingo city in 1802. 95 Among the witnesses in the trial: Enrique Capri, also from Cap Français/Henri, Anrietta de la Cruz, from Jacmel, Sanita Huet from Port-au-Prince, and Constanza Dufren from Ouanaminthe. Not all those moving west brought with them revolutionary ideals of emancipation; “ mulata francesa ” Constanza Dufren, who had established herself in the capital city selling food and liquor, owned at least one slave, according to her interrogators. ! ere is some evidence that a few slaveowning residents from the former Saint-Domingue bought and sold individual slaves in Santo Domingo, although most wealthy former plan- tation owners probably moved on to sites like Cuba and New Orleans. 96 As España Boba progressed, Spanish authorities in Santo Domingo alluded to broader emigration from Christophe’s regime in the north, “even though those blacks know very well the agreement we have in the matter with French interests [about re-enslavement]”, one letter observed, ominously. 97 Conversely, at least one soldier in the trial proceedings was considering moving to south- ern Haiti, where he had been promised work; another witness, an artisan, wrote to Pétion asking for aid. 98 Exports out of Cap Haitien, although reduced from the decades of plantation slavery, still easily surpassed those of Santo Domingo, whose economy was weaker in comparison. 99

Instability reigned in Santo Domingo, despite the recent triumph of French expulsion. Several thwarted attempts to declare independence occurred in the space of a few months, including one by an enigmatic Havana émigré known in records only as “don Fermín”, but also by fi gures who were to become more prominent through the years, like José Nuñez de Cáceres, a

A. Eller / Journal of Early American History 1 (2011) 105–141 129

100 Gabriel García, Compendio , p. 364. 101 Scattered mentions appear in Moya Pons’ Historia colonial . Employing mercenaries was

common; Irish and German hired soldiers contracted by Brazil to fi ght Argentina in the 1820s and 1830s, for example where they also revolted when not paid, Boris Fausto, A Concise History of Brazil (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 83.

102 BAGN 228. Xirón was later exculpated, however.

colonial o# cial and prominent writer who was later to direct an indepen- dence e" ort in 1821. Some simply vied for local power; in particular, local elites who had parried for caudillo status in Reconquista fi ghting were still trying to gain positions in the colonial hierarchy. Both Cristobal Uber and Ciriaco Ramírez, two peninsulares favored by the Puerto Rican governor, emerge in the 1810 testimony, for example. ! e streets of the capital city were battleground for other sorts of contests on a daily basis as well, however, sites of contest over allegiance, racism, and class. ! e capital city was a veritable powder keg, waiting for a spark. In the fall of 1810, the conspirators planned to set it on fi re.

IV. “All classes and nations waited for the day of action”: Frustration and Plotting against Spain

! ere seems to have been several di" erent plans afoot in 1810, lumped together in such a way that most historians considering it have summarized it as “a conspiracy premeditated by heterogeneous elements … of which one can really only glean that it was … against the existing order of things”. 100 ! e fi rst group implicated—lending the conspiracy its hyperbolic name, “the Italian Revolution”—were a number of Italian soldiers stationed in the capital. ! ey had been fi ghting as mercenaries for both the French and Spanish troops for the last decade, and an Italian infantry company still guarded the town square of the Santo Domingo, having remained after power was restored to the Spanish. 101 Certainly these soldiers, in the employ of a destitute government that could not pay them, would have had reason for discontent, and it appears other residents were suspicious of them for their vestigial ties to the French. ! e testimony recounts how thirty patriotas gathered at twelve-thirty at night to investigate possible conspirator Antonio Xirón, a Corsican whose alleged Napoleonic ties had earned him muy mala opinion in the city. (In fact, Xirón was indeed armed—and fully dressed—apparently receiving three other Italian soldiers in the shadow of darkness. All four were carted o" to jail that same night. 102 ) In the course of the testimony, it becomes clear that some

130 A. Eller / Journal of Early American History 1 (2011) 105–141

103 Comisionado Xavier Caro to Nicolás María de Sierra, Santo Domingo, 18 December 1810, AGI: Audiencia de SD 961, Expte. s/n.

104 BAGN 243. 105 Declaración de Emiglio Pezzi, BAGN 225. 106 He, along with Uber, had been accused by Sánchez Ramírez during the Reconquista fi ght-

ing of allowing the French to escape at a battle in Azua, e.g., Confesión de Ciriaco Ramírez, BAGN 270. “By the time they got to Azua … they dedicated themselves only to getting rich”, the accusation continued. A certain scrambling for power within the Spanish colonial state was clearly occurring after the 1808-9 fi ghting. Don Antonio Sarmiento was also in jail at the time of the conspiracy, proclaiming that Señor Capitán General Muñoz had “stolen his rightful glory of the Reconquista” and that he intended to go to Spain by schooner to rectify the insult, BAGN 252. Sarmiento was convinced of a quick resolution to this vexation, as Muñoz had signed Haiti’s 1801 Constitution, an allegiance that clearly defamed his character.

107 Confesión de Castaños, BAGN 254.

of Italian mercenaries were clearly hostile to members of the moreno regiment in particular, and tension abounded amidst the underpaid and dissatisfi ed forces more generally; as one Spanish commissioner reported, “so many and so frightening [the disorders] amidst military men, that they surely exceed what I can even report”. 103 Despite initial suspicions, however, only Emiglio (Emilio) Pezzi, lieutenant of this company, appears to have been involved with the conspiracy itself, through his collaboration with Caracas-born José Ricardo Castaños. For his part, Pezzi never admitted any further intent than a few innocent “meetings” with Castaños and others. 104 “We talked about the ocean, a ring that the moon had, and other things”, he insisted at his interrogation. 105

Another character in the 1810 intrigue, wealthy Spaniard Ciriaco Ramírez, was probably caught up in suspicion for reasons of personal ambition. A prominent vecino of Santo Domingo (“ blanco ”, from Cádiz, married, 38, cattle rancher who had made his fortune in Azua), Ramírez was already in jail at the time of the conspiracy. His rivalry with Captain General Sánchez Ramírez for control of the colony, which had begun over serious disagree- ments during the fi ghting of the Reconquista, had earned him the charge of treason. 106 Perhaps seeking him as a scapegoat, other witnesses accused him of spreading a scandalous rumor about the Captain General’s own designs: that Sánchez Ramírez planned to ask Christophe for 5,000 troops in order to avoid turning over power to his replacement, en route from Spain, possibly even to enter into “some kind of federation or alliance” of his own or even to “turn over the Plaza” to the northern ruler, renouncing Spain entirely. 107 Whether or not he was guilty of the slander, the accused blamed another suspect for the rumor—“a very suspicious person”, he sni" ed—although he simultaneously

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108 Confesión de Ciriaco Ramírez, BAGN 274. 109 Careo de Castaños y Ramírez, BAGN 276. 110 Ramírez testifi ed simply, “from what I heard, the motive of the conspiracy was nothing

more than they were not satisfi ed with the Government”. It was personal, he asserted, for Santiago Foló “was especially mad because they had only made him a lieutenant of the Moreno Company”, BAGN 236. Ramírez also claimed he was illiterate when asked about Gacetas , though eventually he did sign at least his own name to the testimony. Other prisoners heard (and believed) Ramírez’ laments about simply having been in the wrong place at the wrong time; Domingo Pérez reported that he almost accepted Castaños’ invitation for a walk, too, and that he had only missed arrest because of his injured foot, BAGN 233.

claimed that he had actually planned to fl ee “so as not to be a victim of the blacks”, if the Christophe intrigue were true. 108 Others subsequently testifi ed that wealthy Ramírez had no part of the conspiracy, who vehemently agreed that he was not involved. 109

! e center of the actual conspiracy was comprised of a multi-national and heterogeneous bunch, and their plan was very ambitious: create temporary chaos in the capital and declare separation from Spain. ! ree of the most closely linked were José Ricardo Castaños (“ color pardo ”, 36, recently emi- grated from Caracas, married, probably a woodseller of some means), Santiago Foló/Fauleau (“ mulato ”, 26, born in Gaurico/Cap Français, married, Lieuten- ant of the Moreno Company), and Cristoval Uber (“ blanco ”, from Madrid but a vecino and soldier of Puerto Rico, 26 years old, working in trade since the Reconquista, single). Castaños and Foló seem to have been neighbors; Foló and Uber were reported to have been close friends, perhaps given the common bond of military experience. A third man interrogated by the Spanish authori- ties, Puerto Rican Juan José Ramírez (“ mulato o pardo ”, 35, married, tailor by trade but working in a local store, just two years residence in Santo Domingo), attempted to distance himself from the other principal conspirators. Ramírez insisted repeatedly—and plausibly—that he had been swept along only by association. He may have indeed been an indebted and irritated tailor caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time, although the weight of the others’ testimony against him must have seemed overwhelming. 110

! e conspirators’ plan, ambitiously, counted on the support of most of the capital city’s residents. First, the conspirators intended to storm the guard and police barracks, release and arm all of the prisoners of the city, and try to secure the town square. According to Moxica’s allegations and Castaños’ con- fession, the conspirators counted on the support of Captain Alí’s moreno com- pany (although Ali himself was reportedly neutral, he allegedly promised not to reveal the plot), “all of the mulatos franceses ” resident in the city, approxi- mately 400 people from the environs of the Plaza, and “at least 600 more men

132 A. Eller / Journal of Early American History 1 (2011) 105–141

111 Auto de proceder (Moxica) BAGN 219, Declaración de José Ricardo Castaños, ibid., 252. 112 Confesión de Juan José Ramírez, BAGN 236. 113 Declaración de Castaños, BAGN 252. 114 Ibid., 252. Castaños seems to have adopted the language of revolutionaries elsewhere; they

planned to “imprison all of the Europeans who were contrary to the Americans, without spilling too much blood”, he observed.

115 Ibid., 252. 116 Declaración de Castaños 250. 117 Declaración de Castaños 249. 118 Ibid. Foló recounted a sizeable French population in Santo Domingo, for example, but

discounted their prominence. In another letter, Pétion wrote regretting that his confl icts with Rigaud was preventing him from sending supplies for the conspiracy sooner.

on high alert”, if ignorant of the specifi cs of the plan. 111 Foló optimistically predicted that the coup would be spread instantly among the majority of the small city’s residents, “who were already discontent with oppression”. Castaños reportedly promised Ramírez and others: “being the owners of the island they would rule it, mulatos have as much merit as whites, as events in Caracas are proving”. 112 If the conspirators took an o# cial position on slavery, it never emerges from the testimony, although the nature of their alliances and strategy overwhelmingly suggests that they were opposed to it. “All classes and nations were waiting for the day of action”, Castaños insisted. 113 He assured conspira- tors that bloodshed was not inevitable, because “in his country, which was Caracas, not one person had died up to the present”. 114 After the capture of the square, he planned to return to Caracas, to spread the glorious news and ask for reinforcements. Nor was he the only plotter with strongly egalitarian leanings. When he asked Foló who was to be the leader, Foló replied, “all would be equal in the e" ort, and afterwards a leader would be chosen”. 115

Integral to their plan was to seek support and protection from Pétion’s southern Republic of Haiti and support of the capital city’s residents. Castaños, Foló, and Uber had allegedly been communicating with Pétion for months in separate correspondence; in at least one instance, Foló’s brother, who lived in Jacmel, ferried the communication westward from the southern pass near Azua. 116 According to the confession of his co-conspirators, Foló had even received a hat, sword, and epaulets as a sign of goodwill from the southern president, although he refrained from wearing them. 117 ! e conspirator and Pétion wrote back and forth about the state of the conspiracy and discussed the possibilities of military aid. 118 Uber, for his part, reportedly asked Pétion for four years’ worth of supplies and auxiliary foot soldiers. Castaños admitted that he signed a blank letter for Uber to write on his behalf, as he was in jail for debt at the time of their drafting. Pezzi also allegedly wrote a separate

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119 Pedimiento. BAGN II 417. 120 BAGN 250. 121 BAGN 236. 122 BAGN 252. 123 Quoted in BAGN 217. 124 Auto de proceder, 8 September 1810, BAGN 220.

missive. Even Juan José Ramírez’ defensor admitted that his defendant did write “a few lines” to Pétion at Foló’s and Castaños’ urging, but “only because he was miserable and hungry … because the treasury didn’t pay him enough to survive”. 119 Meanwhile, Pétion wrote regretfully that “as the British had not surrendered nor was the French-Spanish confl ict resolved, he did not dare provoke them”, but would send supplies as soon as matters had changed. 120 ! e communication allegedly confi rmed Pétion’s commitment of auxiliary troops and two boats, as soon as he could spare them from the confl icts with King Christophe in the north. 121 It was this aid that was delaying the start of the coup, all of the conspirators admitted.

Before help could ever arrive from Haiti, the conspirators confi ded in the wrong man, however. According to Castaños, “new recruit” Juan José Ramírez promised the support of at least fi fty men; one of those he approached was fellow Puerto Rican Joaquín Moxica. 122 Moxica—native of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, lieutenant, 26 years old—went to the authorities immediately. He met with the small group several times that September as they fi lled him in on the incriminating plan. “Each one was trying to attract people to the plan by pointing out the advantages to be won by their struggle and making them see that, although some would die, their memory would be eternal”, Moxica reported. 123 ! ey were confi dent of the support of all of the mulatos franceses , he continued, and were waiting only on defi nitive word from Pétion to launch the coup. 124 ! e scheme, though, was never realized—after three days of spy- ing for the Spanish authorities, Joaquín Moxica assisted in ambushing the conspirators during one of their last “innocent walks” before the plot was allegedly to take place, and all were taken prisoner.

! e Testimony and the Tension

! e conspirators’ plans, popular sentiment, and the shape of a potentially independent Santo Domingo all remain elusive and contingent in the archi- val record, even as the tensions of the capital city are immediately apparent. A strong sense of egalitarianism emerges from the ambitious proclamations of the testimony, therefore—“all would be equal in the e" ort”, as one participant

134 A. Eller / Journal of Early American History 1 (2011) 105–141

125 Adelman, “Iberian Passages”, p. 60. 126 BAGN 237. 127 Pedimiento, BAGN II 417. 128 BAGN 232. 129 Careo de Moxica y Pezzi, BAGN 242.

a# rmed—although it was far from clear exactly what sort of state the con- spirators hoped to forge. ! eir vision could not neatly be called nationalist, for example. As with other e" orts for independence, it seems that many elements “compet[ed] for legitimacy … the nation as a repository was simply one, admittedly potent, of these claims”, as one historian observes. 125 Nor was the plan’s success at all certain. While Castaños and the others were sanguine about the prospects of collaboration within the capital city, particularly amidst the population of color, their would-be allies held hybrid allegiances, some of them far from revolutionary. Of the black infantry serving the city, on whose aid the conspirators counted dearly, a number were avowedly royalist, for example. ! e city residents themselves proved to be occasionally (and even defi nitively) conservative; their allegiances often crossed imperial and racial lines, to Spain, to France, to Pétion and back again.

A volatile socio-political climate emerges in the testimony, a deep malaise that was expressed with seriousness and anger even in day-to-day interac- tions. Santo Domingo’s relative economic destitution meant that a number of the accused were facing trying economic circumstances. José Ricardo Castaños reported having been periodically jailed for debt in the preceding period; he met with other conspirators who visited his cell and slept at a humble boarding house when released. 126 Juan José Ramírez, the tailor, was also poor; “miserable and hungry”, his defense pleaded. 127 One witness reported hearing Jean Lafontaine—furious over being pressed to repay a small debt of thirteen pesos—swearing angrily in the streets that “within three or four months, Santo Domingo will burn!” 128 Even the informant Moxica admitted complaining about money and agreeing to write someone in the “ex-French colony” about the possibility of fi nding a job or aid in southern Haiti, although he insisted he had no idea exactly to whom the letter was to be addressed. 129 ! e witnesses and suspects ranged from soldiers, humble artisans, a few wealthy vecinos , several enslaved men who were day laborers, and a number of women for whom no occupational details were recorded. ! ey were from Cataluña, Cádiz, Puerto Rico, Martinique, Corsica, Santo Domingo, Caracas, Maracaibo, Sardinia, and especially the former Saint- Domingue, i.e., Haiti.

A. Eller / Journal of Early American History 1 (2011) 105–141 135

130 Gabriel García, Compendio , p. 348. 131 So-called “Frenchifi ed Dominicans” fought for the French in the capital city in 1808

against Reconquista forces (Gabriel García, Compendio , p. 340). A number of the arrested were questioned at length of their allegiances, or imagined allegiances, to French General Ferrand (although the General had committed suicide during the Reconquista, two years before). Juan José Ramírez originally fought for the French (despite the fact that he had just arrived in Santo Domingo in 1806) during the Reconquista, for example ( BAGN 235). Pezzi confesses to a continuing allegiance to the French. Witnesses testifi ed in the support of Xirón’s arrest, for example, citing his possible family ties “to Napoleon” (which Xirón, a sixty-four year old man living alone on the outskirts of the city as a beekeeper, vehemently denied). Even Ciriaco Ramírez, eventual leader in the Reconquista, had to be convinced to join the fi ght ini- tially, ensconced as he was in his profi table ranch in Azua.

132 Dufren is a fascinating character. According to her slave Teresa Moreno, she insulted the Spanish—“ los de aqui son unos arrastrados ”, she taunted Cartucho extensively ( BAGN 245), she hosted the conspirators’ meetings, and dated the ex-French mercenary, all while also still threat- ening that Pétion (not Bonaparte!) would wreak vengeance on the Spanish colony.

133 Even in the 1820s, Spanish authorities were loath to acknowledge their nationhood— repeatedly referring western Hispaniola as the “so-called Haitians” or “blacks from Santo Domingo”, Comandante Militar de Baracoa, Francisco de Valderrama, to the Governor of Santiago de Cuba, Baracoa, 30 June 1823, ANC: Asuntos Políticos: Legajo 113, Expte. 104.

! e considerable number of “French” women who testifi ed—“ mulatas fran- cesas ”, the interrogators record—illustrate the tremendous problem of lan- guage in the Spanish interrogation, and perhaps the limits of conception about Haiti in the colony itself. Surely, French presence and allegiance was still in the authorities’ minds: French citizens were ordered to leave the city at the time of reconquest, but it is unclear how many did from available evi- dence. 130 Furthermore, Juan José Ramírez, Ciriaco Ramírez, Cristoval Uber, Emilio Pezzi, and many of the rest of the Italian regiment avowed direct ties to France at some point in the recent past, a matter which preoccupied Spanish authorities intensely. 131 However, what of these migrants from the former Saint-Domingue? A number of them, like twenty-two year old Anrieta de la Cruz (Henriette de la Croix?) from Jacmel, had been residing in Santo Domingo long enough to speak perfect Spanish; Cap Haitien-born Santiago Foló had married the obviously Spanish-speaking María de la Angustia Gomes, and so on. Did they consider themselves “Haitian?” How would “ mulata francesa ” Constanza Dufren—herself a slaveholder, but also an alleged conspirator—have assessed the events on the western part of the island? 132 ! e authorities, for their part, insisted on using the moniker “French”, refl ecting their unwillingness to recognize Christophe or Pétion and certainly refl ecting France’s continuing imperial ambitions for the island, very much still an omi- nous reality in 1810. 133 Likewise, so-called “Denaturalized” and “Frenchifi ed” Dominicans ( dominicanos denaturalizados y afrancesados ) emerge repeatedly in

136 A. Eller / Journal of Early American History 1 (2011) 105–141

134 BAGN 231. 135 Ibid., 245. In reply, he reportedly cursed that “all French people are malos, y que eran unos

mulatos todos and that her President Pétion was one, too”. 136 BAGN 58, 231. 137 A possible reference to the dogs that Saint-Domingue slaveholders had used in pursuit of

slaves. 138 Declaración de Pedro Alcantara de Quesada, BAGN 243. 139 Ibid., 243. 140 Declaración de Constanza Dufren, BAGN 247.

the archives in subsequent decades, often obfuscating allegiances to neighbor- ing Haiti.

! e extraordinarily international composition of the city appears to have been of immediate and daily importance and a point of daily confl ict. A strange and shifting confl ation of pro-French, pro- and anti-Spanish, and defi nitely pro-Pétion allegiances emerge at di" erent moments in the testi- mony, as well as the sense that Santo Domingo’s sovereignty was extremely precarious. According to the testimony of black soldier Pablo Cartucho, “ mulata francesa ” Maria Françuela taunted him in the street as he was on his way to returning to military quarters. She called out to Cartucho, a soldier of Captain Pablo Ali’s moreno infantry accusingly, “You’re serving the Spanish!” 134 (Evidently she understood Spanish allegiance to be a self-evident insult for Cartucho.) “I’m serving the King!” Cartucho says he replied, in defense of a deposed monarch. “How many French have you killed?” she persisted, challengingly from her window. “As many as I want!” Pablo reported defi antly. 135 “Have patience”, María warned him, “because the French were coming by sea and Pétion by land and that they were going to hang him!” 136 In another exchange, “ mulata francesa ” Constanza Dufren allegedly harassed Cartucho, warning: “while the Spanish had forced the French to eat dogs [ostensibly in the course of the 1808-09 siege], then Pétion would have the dogs eat the Spanish!” 137 Cartucho was so alarmed that he recounted Dufren’s threat to several others. 138 When one of the Italian soldiers— allegedly Dufren’s lover—crossed through the square that Cartucho was guarding the next day, Cartucho called him over to discuss the incident. “Your company is a bunch of bandits ( brigan )”, the Italian allegedly replied, insult- ingly. “I am Spanish and you are the brigand, defending the French as you did”, Car tucho reportedly insisted. 139 In yet another argument with Dufren, Cartucho allegedly complained that “the French devils” were to blame for his poverty; that they were “ malos who had killed women, children, and every- one”. “! at always happens during war”, Dufren replied. 140 Furthermore, if

A. Eller / Journal of Early American History 1 (2011) 105–141 137

141 Declaración de Teresa Moreno, ibid., 245. 142 BAGN 288, etc. Evidently, he tricked the sister of a friend who had only recently returned

from Venezuela into lending him some Gacetas , which he promptly distributed. 143 Defensor of Uber and Foló (420). 144 Pedimiento, BAGN II 413. 145 BAGN 426. 146 Ibid.

Cartucho would die for the Spanish king, then Pétion would surely chop o" his head, Dufren allegedly threatened. 141

Despite all of these tensions, authorities were loath to acknowledge domes- tic unrest. ! e very name given to the conspiracy—the “Italian Revolution”— indicated o# cial unwillingness to recognize the scope of Dominican dis content. In their interrogation, Venezuelan José Castaños, was vilifi ed through the trope of “Creole revolutionary” that Spanish authorities were doubtless fast in the process of developing. His possession, or possible posses- sion, of certain pamphlets was of obsessive interest to the interrogators; they asked almost every witness if s/he had viewed any folletos that Castaños might have received from Caracas. 142 He was cast as a “perverse and arrogant” stranger in the “loyal and noble city”, a man of “damaged heart and revolutionary spirit” who was “horrible in business, of terrible character, and always speak- ing badly of the government on street corners”. 143 Similarly, the defense for the remaining suspects depicted Santiago Foló as an outside agitator who “tricked and seduced” those around him. His story of aid from Pétion was nothing but “a fantastical idea…along with other contemptible gibberish”, the lawyer argued. 144 Pezzi and the others who had written to Pétion had only done so out of economic desperation, not political conviction, their defense held. On the other allegiances expressed in the testimony, authorities were com- pletely silent.

Asi se castiga traydores a la Patria

Sixteen days after their arrest, four accused conspirators were executed. ! e execution was to be a spectacle of warning to the public of Santo Domingo; Santiago Foló, José Ricardo Castaños, and Juan José Ramírez were hanged and displayed for six hours, with the inscription “ ! is is how Justice punishes those who are traitors to the country” carved in large letters on their chests. 145 Later, their heads were put on spikes on the roads from town where their meetings had allegedly taken place. Emilio Pezzi, whose service to the Spanish cause in the Reconquista was cited in his defense, was simply shot. 146 ! e rest of the

138 A. Eller / Journal of Early American History 1 (2011) 105–141

147 Gabriel García, Compendio , p. 366; BAGN 427. 148 Dale Tomich, ! rough the Prism of Slavery: Labor, Capital, and World Economy. (New York:

Rowman and Littlefi eld, 2004), pp. 118-19. 149 Richard Turits, “Par-delà les plantations. Question raciale et identités collectives à Santo

Domingo”, Genèses (Paris), 66 (2007), pp. 51-68 at 53, and Turits, Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Régime, and Modernity in Dominican History (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 2003).

Italian company was later exculpated and lauded for their e" orts in Reconquista fi ghting, although they were shipped o" to Puerto Rico and Havana to “con- tinue to prove their loyalty”. 147 Cristoval Uber, for his service in the Reconquista and ties to the Puerto Rican governor, was deported to Puerto Rico, sentenced to ten years in jail, and forbidden from ever setting foot in Santo Domingo again. Ciriaco Ramírez, Governor Toribio’s favored o# cial in the Reconquista fi ghting, seems to have been extradited to Puerto Rico and exculpated entirely. Antonio Xirón, Juan Lafontaine, and Constanza Dufren, the most prominent popular malcontents in the testimony, appear to have been freed, or at least disappear from the compiled testimony, and nothing further is known about their fate.

V. “Friendly relations and the utmost harmony”: Rethinking Santo Domingo’s Relationship with Haiti and the Revolutionary Caribbean

Writing of the interrelation of Caribbean islands, Dale Tomich observes that the diverse patterns of the islands “appear not as the history of particular island societies or individual imperial systems … but as a historical mosaic of inter- related, interdependent, mutually formative loci”. 148 Certainly, interaction and mutual constitution characterized the relationships between the colonial societies; the mighty slave economy of Saint-Domingue relied on cattle from neighboring Santo Domingo, for example (and the latter experienced a small boom as a result). More broadly, frameworks of exceptionalism, isolation, and “backwardness” for Santo Domingo are clearly insu# cient in this light. Spanish neglect sowed ferment. Where elites and subsequent commentators have seen underdevelopment, therefore, the formerly enslaved found freedom. ! e colony’s independent peasantry fl ourished and became the majority of the colony’s population; they represent an “intriguing and understudied” case of African-descended peoples in the Caribbean. 149 ! e contours of Santo Domingo society appear to have been well known to migrants beyond its shores as well. While larger outbursts of migration—during climactic events

A. Eller / Journal of Early American History 1 (2011) 105–141 139

150 Jorge L. Chinea, “Race, Colonial Exploitation and West Indian Immigration in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico, 1800-1850”, ! e Americas 52, no. 4 (1996), pp. 495-519.

151 On moving beyond a paradigm of archival silence, Ada Ferrer, “Talk About Haiti: ! e Archive and the Atlantic’s Haitian Revolution”, in Doris L. Garraway (ed.), Tree of Liberty: Cultural Legacies of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Press, 2008); on migration and transnational fi ghts for citizenship, e.g., Rebecca Scott, "Public Rights and Private Commerce: A Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Creole Itinerary”, Current Anthropology 48, no. 2 (2007), pp. 237-56, and Jane G. Landers, Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010).

152 Chinea, “Race”; Guillermo A. Baralt, Esclavos rebeldes: Conspiraciones y sublevaciones de esclavos en Puerto Rico, 1795-1873 (Río Piedras: Ediciones Huracán, 1981).

153 José Núñez de Cáceres to Secretario de Estado. SD 18 Feb 1811. AGI: Audiencia de SD 1016, Expte. s/n.

154 Case against Regidor del Cabildo de Santo Domingo, Don Manuel del Monte, AGI: Audiencia de SD 1000, Expte. s/n, p. 22v.

like the Haitian Revolution, for example—produce signifi cant records in the archive, smaller-scale migration does not. 150 ! e lives and itineraries of these travelers, forged in extraordinarily adverse circumstances, elude easy study, even as the news, rumor, and travel with which they developed interisland knowledge has been shown to be rich and detailed. 151 In the early nineteenth century, the same sources of knowledge that shrank the fl ow of migration of free people of color to Puerto Rico as its plantation society tightened must also have directed emigration from there to Santo Domingo, as migrants managed di# cult and shifting prospects. 152

Governor Sánchez Ramírez died less than a year after the “Italian Revolution”, and Spanish authorities fretted about how to maintain the colo- ny’s relationship with the neighboring states of Haiti. ! e governor had main- tained “friendly relations, the utmost harmony” with President (soon-to-be King) Christophe in the north of Haiti and regular, if less congenial with President Pétion in the south. 153 ! e 1810 rebels, clearly, had preferred Pétion, although their reasoning is frustratingly elliptical in the testimony. ! e very next year, an o# cial of the capital city was jailed for subversion that included a pamphlet, its principles underlined furiously,

! is island is totally wiped of Indians, Europeans are our fathers, and blacks our legitimate brothers, the mulatos our o" spring, and this island being populated and run by these three distinct colors, it should unite and form a solid body, for its essence is just one. We should have as a common interest the obligation to preserve our freedom, independent from the tyrants who wanted to treat us as savages . 154

! e rebellious o# cial—newly arrived from Caracas—had written to Pétion immediately upon establishing himself in Santo Domingo. More conspiracies

140 A. Eller / Journal of Early American History 1 (2011) 105–141

155 Auto del Alcalde Mayor de Santiago, Gregorio Morel de Portes, Santiago, 2 October 1812, AGN-RD: Archivo Real de Higüey 26, Expte. 7.

156 Deive, Guerrilleros , p. 230. 157 José Núñez de Cáceres to the Cabildo de Santo Domingo, 3 November 1812, AGN-RD

Archivo Real de Higüey 26, Expte. 5. 158 José Núñez de Cáceres to Secretario de Gracia y Justicia, Santo Domingo, 27 August

1811, AGI: Audiencia de Santo Domingo 961, Expte. s/n. 159 Carlos de Urrutia to Secretario de Estado y del Despacho de Hacienda, 1 June 1813, AGI:

Audiencia de SD 1064, Expte. s/n. 160 [Author unknown], “Romance de las invasiones haitianas” (Santiago de los Caballeros,

[1830]). In Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, Invasiones haitianas de 1801, 1805 y 1822 (Santo Domingo: Editora del Caribe, 1955), p. 223. ! e support of the enslaved for Boyer’s arrival has been documented elsewhere; it is likely that the author of this particular text was a member of Santiago de los Caballero’s small commercial class. Five years prior to the tremendously destabi- lizing demand of “indemnity” by France, the Haitian economy may well have seemed signifi - cantly more promising to the merchants of the Cibao than the neglectful (and monopoly-seeking) Spanish government would have been (e.g., Marte, Estadísticas ). ! e many meanings of Haiti to Santo Domingo in the 1810s and 1820s—revolutionary example, relatively sturdy economy and governance, and so on—have been erased by the tremendous weight of subsequent historiogra- phy. A number of pro-Haitian texts from the period were even physically destroyed (Fischer, Modernity Disavowed , p. 181).

soon followed. Rumors fl ew of a slave rebellion in Santiago de los Caballeros in late 1812. 155 Island residents continued to listen intently to the develop- ments of Spain. Another thwarted rebellion in the capital city involved libertos and slaves frustrated that the Cortes de Cádiz had failed to abolish slavery. 156 Authorities eventually suggested the need for a general island-wide pardon, but the conspiracies do not appear to have abated. 157 ! e colony had su" ered all sorts of misfortunes in the meanwhile, including a hurricane that had brought an o# cial to write “only the shell of the Capital retains some version of its former self, but even it is so ruined, that one must have a heart of stone not to su" er at the sight of the debris”. 158 It was a bloodless cadaver, concluded another. 159

España Boba limped along until an independence e" ort in December 1821—“Independencia Efímera”, or Ephemeral Independence—was quickly supplanted by integration to Haiti early the following year under President Jean-Pierre Boyer. A poem penned anonymously from Santiago de los Caballeros celebrated the end of Spanish rule and the prospect of Haitian governance,

Viva, viva en paz perpetua Long live, long live in perpetual peace el Presidente Boyer President Boyer que nos sacó de tal pena Who got us out of that misfortune… 160

A. Eller / Journal of Early American History 1 (2011) 105–141 141

161 Ibid. 162 Franklin José Franco Pichardo, “Remanentes ideológicos de la esclavitud en la República

Dominicana”, Revista Clío 167 (2004), pp. 79-98; Silvio Torres-Saillant, “! e Tribulations of Blackness: Stages in Dominican Racial Identity”, Latin American Perspectives 25, no. 3 (1998), p. 126-46.

Another thanked “Papa Boyé” explicitly for abolition at long last. 161 ! ese voices of pan-island unity have often been ignored; a historiography that has e" aced the persistent inequalities of España Boba has failed also to recognize the early appeal of integration to Haiti in 1822, as other scholars have observed. 162 As these struggles are re-imagined, so will a more united and revo- lutionary history of Hispaniola.