Patriarch

In 1967, Gabriel García Márquez and several other Latin American writers concocted a plan for a volume in which each participant would undertake a literary treatment of one of the larger-than-life political figures — dictator, caudillo, or what have you — from the annals of his or her respective native country. Despite a good deal of initial enthusiasm, the volume never came off, but García Márquez (Colombia) had already decided who he wanted to write about, and described his choice in a letter to Carlos Fuentes:

My candidate is General Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, aristocrat, former officer under Bolívar, who assumed the presidency four times. To be sure, he had much in common with your Santa Anna. Don Tomás was completely crazy, and nevertheless he was a great man: the first liberal to intercede against the dictatorial fever of the Liberator, and, of course, he ended up a dictator in his turn. He had his entire jaw reconstructed from silver, he dressed, in his second period, like the kings of France, and he was cruel, arbitrary, truly progressive, and a very fine writer. He expelled the Jesuits from the country, headed by his own brother, who was archbishop primate of Bogotá. In his full decadence, crazy and alcoholic, he walked around with his old cutlass chasing the boys who made fun of him through the streets. He complained to the president, and as the latter paid no attention to him, he kicked him out of the palace and proclaimed himself commander-in-chief for the third time. In short, he belongs to the great line of the fathers of the country.

García Márquez, who was living in Mexico City at the time, may have misremembered some of the details. Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera did have a brother, Manuel José Mosquera, who was an archbishop, but the latter was already dead when Tomás expelled the Jesuits (in 1863 or 1864), and had left the country in 1852, under pressure, in an earlier wave of anticlericalism. But whether true or not, the image of the old soldier with his prosthetic jaw brandishing his sword to chase away impertinent boys, and taking the government into his hands when he couldn't get satisfaction, must have been too garciamarquesco to pass up.

Image: Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, looking a little jaundiced, portrait from the Museo Nacional de Colombia. The text of the letter from García Márquez to Carlos Fuentes is from Las cartas del Boom (translation mine).