Thanks in part to a CLACLS summer travel fellowship, I spent four weeks in Bogotá, Colombia conducting preliminary research towards my dissertation which analyzes the representation of corpses in Venezuelan and Colombian biographical narratives written during the two country’s first hundred years as independent republics (1810-1910). My goal is to show how these narratives are subject to continuous processes of “watching over”, “disinterment”, and “dismemberment”, all with the aim of preserving the history of National Independence as an enduring referent in political and cultural discourse. This summer’s research provided me with the opportunity to explore the newspapers and documents collection held at Colombia’s Archivo General de la Nación and the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango. In these extensive archives, I discovered several cases that detailed the politics of corpses during the 19th century among everyday citizens, and found interesting documents that reveal a “post-mortem migratory policy” regarding Independence heroes that continues to inform Venezuelan national politics. I will incorporate a selection of these cases in my dissertation.