Ambitious Rebels: Remaking Honor, Law, and Liberalism in Venezuela, 1780-1850

Chapter Three. Law Versus Justice: Legalism in the Courts

96 chapter three Law Versus Justice Legalism in the Courts In January 1823, Policarpo Mendo found himself in a jail cell, and to a large degree his uncertain future hinged upon his reputation. The events that brought him to this precarious situation began a few days earlier, when he stood in a Caracas plaza and watched a cartload of women accused as godas [Spanish loyalists] being driven out of the city. He had conversed with another onlooker, Lameda Cipriana. Though the two did not know each other, they began to argue, exchanged insults, and she called him a godo. According to Cipriana and her six witnesses, Mendo then struck her to the ground and kicked her; according to Mendo and his three witnesses, he merely pushed her away. Mendo soon found himself locked in a jail cell, charged with verbal and physical injury. More worrisome than the injury charges, Cipriana and her witnesses also asserted that Mendo was known to support the royalist cause. Royalist troops still fought republican forces in some coastal cities, so an accusation of treason was no trifling matter. Further, for centuries reputation had formed one of the most important types of courtroom evidence for determining a person ’s credibility or guilt. The testimony of Cipriana’s six witnesses, therefore , placed Mendo in a precarious situation. In what probably surprised both parties, however, the judge saw the case in a different light; he considered the evidence against the defendant so weak as not to merit the *This chapter appears in expanded form in Reuben Zahler, “Liberal Justice: Judicial Reform in Venezuela’s Courts, 1786–1850,” Hispanic American Historical Review 90, no. 3 (2010): 489–522. Law Versus Justice • 97 court’s attention, so he released Mendo and ordered him and Cipriana to split the court costs.1 This trial offers valuable insights not only into honor conflicts and fears of godos, but also into the profound changes that occurred within the Venezuelan courts across the middle period. During the late colonial period, the court system represented a powerful arm of the government and an important sphere of contact between the state and its subjects. Colonial subjects looked to the king as the ultimate arbiter of justice and used the courts as one arena (along with Church and communal institutions) to resolve disputes and maintain social harmony. The republican government hoped to maintain the importance and legitimacy of the courts, but to infuse them with liberal standards. Inspired by Enlightenment ideals, republicans sought to establish a judiciary that would follow specific, rules-based procedures rather than more abstract notions of traditional justice that allowed judges considerable leeway in reaching decisions. This chapter demonstrates that republican courts adopted several new standards based on liberal paradigms and that citizens continued to use the courts as they had during colonial times. Until recently, historians believed that the new republics in general, and the judicial system in particular, achieved virtually no profound liberal reform until the late nineteenth century.2 Among most historians of Venezuela, it is still a truism that the judicial system, though strong and well respected during the colonial period, virtually collapsed after independence . This interpretation holds that republican citizens stopped using the courts because they trusted neither the competence of the judges nor the potency of the courts to enforce a decision (i.e., to collect a fine), and therefore saw little reason to waste time with them. Plus, after a decade of war, a culture of violence had pervaded the population, making people too impatient to bother with inept state officials and far too willing to take matters into their own hands. The courts, then, serve as an example of state institutions that failed to garner trust from or use by the populace.3 This investigation into the judiciary of the middle period presents a very different picture through using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Arlene Díaz challenged the standard scholarly perspective , as she took samples from the years 1786–90 and 1835–40 and found that the republican sample had more court cases.4 Building upon Díaz’s findings, and using more comprehensive data than was available when she conducted her research, this investigation finds that republican Venezuelans used the courts in numbers similar to those of their colonial 98 • Chapter Three forebears. These data indicate that the courts remained an important feature of Venezuelan society despite the disruptions of the...