José María Dionisio Melo y Ortiz (October 9, 1800 – June 1, 1860) was a Colombian general and political figure who fought in the South American wars of independence, and who rose to power and briefly held the presidency of Colombia in 1854.

Once again exiled to Central America, Melo fought against the invasion of Nicaragua by American mercenary William Walker, and pledged his support to Mexican President Benito Juárez at the outset of the Reform War.

[3] Some historians have called the extent of this ancestry into question, noting that both his father and mother were listed by the census as "white nobles" who came from important families in the colonial towns of Cartago and Buga, respectively.

[5] In Caracas, Melo was introduced to a group of military officers that favored the restoration of Gran Colombia, and opposed the separatist, conservative civilian government of José María Vargas.

[5] The group also opposed the continued influence of caudillo and former president José Antonio Páez, who was considered a chief ideologue of Venezuela's separation from Gran Colombia.

[8] In particular, Melo was drawn to the early utopians, including Charles Fourier and Henri de Saint-Simon, as well as the proto-anarchist ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Louis Auguste Blanqui.

[10] Despite his military training in Germany, he did not rejoin the army and instead settled in Ibagué, where he engaged in several commercial ventures and even taught classes at the Colegio de San Simón [es].

They rejected the Mallarino–Bidlack Treaty signed by the administration of Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, which allowed the U.S. to intervene in Panama, which at the time was a Colombian province, to protect their economic interests.

López's platform encompassed many of the demands of the Democratic Societies, including the abolition of slavery and the separation of church and state; he also pursued issues like land reform and decentralization.

In this capacity, Melo fought against the insurrection of 1851, where slaveowners and conservatives led by Julio Arboleda Pombo took arms against the López government in protest of the abolition of slavery.

Melo managed to defeat the rebels at Guasca, and after the rebellion was suppressed in the rest of the country, was named commander of military forces in Cundinamarca in June 1852.

Melo and the Democratic Societies felt that dissolving the resguardo system, as López proposed, would allow landowners to exploit indigenous as cheap labor for their plantations.

The ascendant faction were the Gólgotas, or Golgotha liberals, who espoused a form of bourgeois socialism while holding free trade principles; they included figures like José María Samper and Manuel Murillo Toro.

After the civil war of 1851, Melo and the Democratic Societies began to drift increasingly towards the Draconian camp, particularly due to the artisans' strong opposition to free trade.

Though its intended readers were military officers (and it railed against the Golgothas' proposals to reduce garrisons in urban centers), it became closely associated with both the Draconian Liberals and the artisans of the Democratic Societies.

The publication attacked both the Conservatives and the Golgothas, accusing them of planning to sell Panama to the United States, and of scheming to exile prominent Draconians like José María Obando.

He promulgated the Constitution of 1853, which was unprecedented in Latin America at the time; it established a federal system, formalized the abolition of slavery, extended near-universal male suffrage, and provided for national elections decided by direct popular vote.

[14] Melo proclaimed that his government was a rejection of the 1853 constitution and the Golgotha-controlled Congress, which sought to impugn the Army, "illustrious body of armed citizens that gave the people independence."

One artisan newspaper declared of the new government: "We are free, we are democrats, and we did not abandon our workshops, our homes, and our families, only to give away our sovereignty to one man; we will not, for any price, exchange our title of citizens for that of subjects.

[3] In a climactic battle south of the capital, San Diego y Las Nieves, Melo's army was decisively defeated and Miguel León, one of the regime's chief ideologues, was killed.

[22] On June 1, 1860, Melo's cavalry troops, encamped at the Juncaná hacienda in La Trinitaria, were ambushed by the Conservative forces of General Juan Antonio Ortega.