Manuela Sáenz, Jonotas, and Natan Extended Biography
Manuela Sáenz, Jonotas, and NatanExtended BiographyYou may wish to share this biography with students, or just to read it for your own information.Manuela Sáenz was a rebel, literally. She was born into rebellion. The child of a wealthy merchant father and his mistress, her father’s family strove to hide her illegitimacy and his shame. In the social hierarchy of the Spanish empire, Manuela was an hijo espurio, a child out of wedlock. Her very existence illuminated cracks in the standards of Spanish colonial ideas about respect and decency. Manuela was intimately familiar with such codes of behavior and honor and bristled against them. To preserve their honor and see to her well-being her family sent her to the Convent of Santa Catalina when she was seventeen. Within the confines and strict rules of the convent, Manuela was introduced to a community of female intellectuals, who ranged from highly conservative to liberal. These nuns were able to take advantage of the privacy afforded by strict directives regarding cloistering, chastity, and solitude to explore revolutionary ideas of freedom, citizenship, and constitutional law. But the sisters of Santa Catalina were at least outwardly deferent and pious and Manuela, a rebel among rebels, was not. As a result, she was kicked out. Manuela got her rebellious spirit not only from the circumstances of her birth and formal education, but also from the lessons of her lifelong companions Jonotas and Natan. To characterize Jonotas and Natan as Manuela’s “companions” is not exactly accurate because they had no real choice in the matter. Jonotas and Natan were enslaved people “given” to Manuela by her father when she was a child. Furthermore, none of the existing history has been able to recover the perspectives of Jonotas and Natan. They have either been omitted or sympathetic writers of historically based fictional works have made up their words and perspectives for them. Despite these limits, we do know a little bit about them and their relationship to Manuela. Jonotas and Manuela both defied the gender norms of their time. They dressed in men’s clothes, brandished swords, and rode astride horses instead of side saddle. Manuela and Jonotas shared this penchant for flamboyance. Manuela even kept a pet bear. But they, along with Natan, were also exceptional spies, marshalling different identities to elicit particular prejudices that they then played into to gain information. Manuela was adept at moving from gentle to “crazy”, from beautiful to brazen and Jonotas was her mentor. Just as Jonotas’s mentorship did not negate the institution of slavery, Manuela’s free spirit did not keep her from the institution of marriage. Once again, her family saw both to their respectability and her well-being, at least financially, by securing her marriage to an English merchant named James Thorne. Once again, Manuela rebelled. She openly disdained the marriage and began an affair with Simón Bolívar, who was leading a revolution against the Spanish. Manuela, Jonotas, Natan, and Bolivar all fought together against the Spanish. At the battle of Ayacucho in 1824, Manuela cut the upper lip and moustache off a slain Spanish soldier and kept it as a trophy. But, as noted above, Manuela’s real gift in wartime was her ability as a spy. She, Jonotas, and Natan were so good at gaining information on Spanish plans that Bolivar’s army gained significant advantages. In recognition of these efforts in espionage, Manuela was granted the Order of the Sun, Peru’s highest honor. She wore it proudly. Jonotas and Natan received no such formal honors. Though Bolivar’s forces succeeded in gaining independence from Spain, unrest plagued his rule. Several attempts were made on his life. Manuela saved him on at least two occasions. Once, by showing up to a ball wearing the
2Manuela Sáenz, Jonotas, and Natan - Extended Biographycaptured Spanish moustache and causing a scene that disrupted the plotted assassination attempt. Once, by convincing Bolívar to flee out a window and then confusing the group of men who had come to kill him by feeding them disinformation and buying time. Once they realized that she had abetted Bolívar’s escape they severely beat her. In the aftermath of Bolivar’s death from tuberculosis in 1830, Manuela found herself confronted with many political enemies. Chief among them was Francisco Santander who had her exiled to Jamaica after she disrupted an anti-Bolívar rally. Manuela eventually returned and settled in the village of Paita, Peru. In 1856 she died there during a diptheria outbreak. Alongside Jonotas and Natan, Manuela tested the limits both of Spanish respectability and repression and liberation in the age of revolution.