The captains-general court-martial to which Brigadier Gabriel de Torres y Velasco voluntarily submitted to clear his name for having surrendered the city of Cartagena de Indias was a military judgment that turned into a political one. The case demonstrates the continuing struggle between liberals and absolutists but also reveals the tacit assumptions about the need to keep silent about the recent past. Thus, in the entire trial, there were no references to the liberal triennium, or to the proclamation of the liberal constitution in Cartagena in 1820