• DOI:10.1353/TAM.2002.0030
• Corpus ID: 126534661

The Burden of Citizenship: Artisans, Elections, and the Fuero Militar in Santiago de Chile, 1822-1851*

@article{Wood2002TheBO,
  title={The Burden of Citizenship: Artisans, Elections, and the Fuero Militar in Santiago de Chile, 1822-1851*},
  author={James A. Wood},
  journal={The Americas},
  year={2002},
  volume={58},
  pages={443 - 469}
}

• J. A. Wood
• Published 1 January 2002
• Political Science
• The Americas

On December 13, 1845 the recently founded Santiago newspaper El Artesano Opositor (The Opposition Artisan) published a letter submitted by “twenty artisan friends of Cerda.” The letter related the tragic case of José Agustin Cerda, a young tailor, soldier in the civic militia, and member of an electoral association called the Sociedad de Artesanos de Caupolicán (Caupolicán Artisans Society), who had been arrested on November 12 by the city's military prosecutor on the charge that he was involved in an anti-government “conspiracy.” Claiming innocence, Cerda, according to his companions, denied his involvement in the alleged conspiracy “with noble arrogance.” As a result he was locked in iron shackles in a military prison, causing his legs to swell up and his illness-weakened lungs to struggle for air. A follow-up article in the newspaper announced that Cerda was still being held in that “unjust and inhumane” condition two months later, along with several other city residents who were linked to the electoral associations of the liberal opposition in Santiago. While the outraged authors of the letter to El Artesano Opositor singled out the Cerda case for its malicious effects on their friend, they clearly saw the incident as part of a larger problem: the routine and systematic mistreatment of all artisan militiamen by the conservative governing regime. Not content simply to demand the release of their colleague, the “friends of Cerda” demanded the complete reform of a political system that denigrated the honor, dignity, and patriotism of all the city's artisans. “Understand,” continued the letter in a provocative flourish, “that by attacking the innocent life of Cerda you attack the lives of all the artisans of the Republic.” “We should expect more,” it concluded solemnly, “from the men we elevate with our votes, defend with our blood, and maintain with our sweat and labor.”