Rape and the Anxious Republic: Revolutionary Columbia, 1810-1830

There are no sustained studies of the impact of the Spanish-American wars of independence on relations between men and women, or of the meaning of these terms to the revolutionaries. Did the Spanish-American wars of independence invest the image of women with new political meaning? In what ways did the revolutionary process itself redefine views of women’s proper role? What position did women occupy within the revolutionary project? Answering such questions will help us understand the relationship between women and the new republican states that formed across Spanish America in the aftermath of independence. It will also shed some light on the nature of the revolutionary processes themselves. This chapter looks specifically at revolutionary Colombia, although it attempts to maintain a broader comparative horizon.