Sacramento daily record-union., 1890-04-05
4 SISTER REPUBLIC.
SOMETHING ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT
OF COLOMBIA.
The Niagara of South America-Fannie
b. Wards Eleventh Valuable and
Interesting Letter.

Especial Correspondence of the RECORD -UNIos.l
BoGoTA Colombia, 1890.
Before bidding adios to this SISTER re-
public whose laws and Constitution are
supposed 10 have been directly modelled
after those OF the United States of the
North, We should take brief survey of its
political characteristics. One still fire.
quently hears the country spoken Of as the
United States of Colombia, although
bloody war was lately fought to do away
with that title, and its various divisions
are as often called States or provinces as
by their proper name Of departments. We
may as well get it right when about it,
and to this end scrap of history is
needed.
This Caribbean coast was not first dis
covered by Columbus, as most historians
have stated, but by two of his companies
in 1899. Three years afterward the great
navigator came here and gave the name
New Indi to all the unknown territory
south from Hispaniola Castilian explor-
them crossed the Isthmus and discovered
the mighty Pacific, after which the coun-
try was soon colonized by the Spaniards,
who after subduing the natives by superior
force of arms enslaved the survivors and
compelled them to adopt the language, re-
ligion, laws and customs of their conquer
ors. In course of time this section, in
common with all the Central and South
American countries, except Brazil and
Guiana, became
NEW SPAIN
In reality as in name, occupied by mixed
descendants of the conquerors and the con-
quered. They were ruled by the mother
country with the iron hand of tyrannical
despotism, intensified by the ignorance of
the distant rulers concerning the require
ments of country and people they had
never seen. This went on, growing more
and more unbearable, till the early decades
of the present century. The closing years
of the previous century had seen the rise
of the worlds model republic in the north
ern continent; France had become infused
with something of the spirit of freedom
and waded through a sea of blood from
monarchical despotism to political liberty
and even Hayti, in the Caribbean Sea, had
revolted from France and set up pigmy
republic after Washington's pattern. Nat
urally South America caught the infection
and in 1910 Colombia, in common with all
her sister provinces and Mexico far TO the
northward, drew the sword and declared
the domination OF Spain at an end.
The world knows all about the details of
that long and bitter contest and how it
terminated in the overthrow of Spanish
power. Colombias Washington, General
Simon Bolivar, was inaugurated first Pres
ident of the newborn republic and
probably all would have gone well enough,
had it not been for the dissensions that
arose from petty jealousies and personal
ambitions. The first Constitution survived
only eleven years, when the central pro-
vinces of the Union broke away and in
1881 united themselves with another re-
public called New Grenada. Bolivars
brain, like that of his antitype Alexander
and his contemporary Napoleon, teemed
with political schemes and his great hobby
was the union of New Grenada, Venezuela
and Ecuador into one extensive and pow
erful State. The idea found favor and was
ratified by the first Congress, which con-
vened at Apgostura in December, 1919.
The nation thus constituted occupied the
whole northern portion of the continent
from one ocean to the other, possessing the
advantage of thousands of miles Of sea-
board
Then followed half century of perpet-
bal dlssenslons, intestine warfare and the
subversion and reconstruction of constitu-
tion after constitution, in which Colombia,
In common with the other divisions of
South America, took part. With every
change OF government the political geogra-
ply of the country was altered, provinces,
departments, States, each new variation of
division having more or less autonomy of
its own, independent of their respective
central governments.
THE LAST REVOLUTION,
That of 1885, left Government which
seems to be more firmly established than
any that has preceded it. After its sup
preston a council OF delegates met in
Bogota in the summer of 1856 and sane
toned revised Constitution, whereby the
United States of Colombia were deprived
Of their individual autonomy, the name of
the country was restored to that it bore
nearly century before, viz, the Republic
of Colombia, the first article of the new
Constitution distinctly stating that "sov-
ereignty rests solely and exclusively with
the nation as whole, not with individual
States" 1t recreated departments instead
of States the same as in 1881, to be ruled
by central government located in Boz
gotta. The object being to render impossi-
bic a recurrence Of the petty revolutions
that have so often distracted the country,
1t gives to the departments no more than
L
essary for the defense of the peculiar ma
terial interests of each. The preservation
OF public order is vested solely in the
National Government, which alone can
maintain the army and navy, the whole
purport of the modification being the CEN
tralizstion of power; for the former Con-
stitution, which divided Colombia into
independent States, each State having the
attributes of sovereignty, with power to
issue paper money OF its own and to raise,
arm and equip militia, was found prolific
of much evil.
The departments are subdivided into
provinces and these again into municipal
districts, the former ruled by Governors
and the latter by Alcades. There are nine
departments, whose names are as follows
Magdalena, Bolivar, Panama, Antioquia,
Cauca, Tolima, Bojaca, Santander and
Cundinamaria, beside the federal district
of Santa Fe de Bogota, which contains the
capital.
The superficial area of this big republic,
which extends along the Atlantic seaboard
from the Isthmus of Panama to Venezuela,
southwark along the Pacific to Ecuador,
and in the interior to the upper waters of
the Orinoco on its western frontier and to
the northern tributaries of the Amazon on
the outskirts of Brazil, is about 504, ,773
square miles. Its southern boundary is
one Of the most definite landmarks of the
earth, being nothing less than the equator.
Its total population is estimated at 1885,
255, including more than
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