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Left Liberalism and Race in the Evolution of Colombian Popular National Identity*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

W. John Green
W. John Green*
Affiliation:
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia
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Though a nation of discordant regionalism and historically weak central institutions, Colombia can paradoxically claim strong currents of popular national identity. It is well known that long centuries of relative economic isolation, coupled with Colombia's largely subsistence internal economy and torturous topography, provided few opportunities to integrate the nation's different regions. Such conditions resulted in fractured regional identities and racial compositions. What few links to the world market Colombia enjoyed before the late nineteenth century came from the mining of gold, with short episodes of tobacco and quinine exportation. Only in the 1880s and later did coffee production finally reorient the nation's economy and introduce new questions of land tenure and social relations. Colombia's fiercely partisan political system evolved during the nineteenth century, therefore, when the country was still overwhelmingly rural, inward-looking, and little more than a collection of semi-autonomous regions. Keith Christie noted that before the 1950s, regionalism was so strong that “Bogotá was essentially just another provincial capital.” As a consequence, the national army in the nineteenth century seldom proved more powerful than the many rebel armies it faced. Indeed, according to the basic Weberian definition of the “state” as the entity that controls a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and evidenced by the fact that the national government still does not control large portions of the country's territory, Colombia's central state structures continue to be glaringly weak at the end of the twentieth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , July 2000 , pp. 95 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2000

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Footnotes

*

Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the symposium, “Colombia: State, Nation, and Pueblo,” at the University of Texas at Austin, 23 April 1997, and at the XXI LASA Congress, Chicago, IL, September 1998, where I received useful criticism. I would also like to thank The Americas' anonymous readers.

References

1 Christie, Keith H., Oligarcas, campesinos y política en Colombia: Aspectos de la historia sociopolítica de la frontera antioqueña (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 1986), p. 119.Google Scholar Yet he also notes that studies on the regional level have been more the exception than the rule.

2 I use the words “left Liberal” as opposed to “popular Liberal” (more in vogue with historians) because they were more commonly used in the 1930s and 40s. There were (and continue to be) breeds of popular Conservativism as well, but they were of a very different nature from currents on the Liberal left. In particular, they were not derivative of the Enlightenment revolutionary tradition of 1776-1789-1848 as was Colombian left Liberalism, but rather found their roots in Colombian Catholicism. And the geographical distribution of such Conservative popular strains was more concentrated. Left Liberalism has traditionally been strong on the Atlantic coast, in the Santanderes, in western Cundinamarca, eastern Tolima, and Huila (the “upper Magdalena”), and in Valle. Popular Conservativism was more pronounced in Antioquia and its coffee country environs, in Boyacá, and perhaps, in Nariño and Cauca. While relatively little research has been done on popular Conservative currents, Diago, César Ayala addresses them seriously in his Resistencia y oposición al establecimiento del Frente Nacional: Los orígenes de la Allianza Nacional Popular (ANAPO), Colombia 1953–1964 (Bogotá: COLCIENCIAS, 1996).Google Scholar

3 This essay embodies elements of a larger project in its final stages, Superior to Their Leaders: Gaitanismo, Left Liberalism, and Popular Mobilization in Colombia, 1928–1948.

4 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso Books, 1983).Google Scholar While Anderson’s view of nation building is problematic in that it does not consider the impact of popular culture (a very serious failing when applying it to Latin America), his understanding of nationalism and community as constructed, “imagined,” concepts is very useful.

5 Joseph, Gilbert M. and Nugent, Daniel, eds., “Popular Culture and State Formation in Revolutionary Mexico,” Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), p. 13.Google Scholar In this, they were looking to Corrigan, Philip and Sayer’s, Derek, The Great Arch: English State Formation As Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1985).Google Scholar

6 Joseph, and Nugent, , “Popular Culture and State Formation,” p. 17.Google Scholar, quoting Corrigan and Sayer. Joseph and Nugent drew on Corrigan and Sayer’s understanding of state formation as “a cultural revolution” underling how the “world is made sense of.” Corrigan and Sayer focus on “the totalizing dimension of state formation, linked to its constructions of ‘national character’ and ‘national identity.’” Ibid., pp. 19–20.

7 Mallon, Florencia E., Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 4.Google Scholar

8 Note too the general absence of anti-Gringo/imperialist discourse. Colombia was of course affected by the structures of the international economic system and the power relations that it engendered, but given its relative isolation (compared, for example, to Mexico), Colombia remained somewhat insulated; its history of political and class struggle was still largely an internal dynamic in the 1940s. The importance of the European revolutions of 1848 in Colombia belie the inward-looking nature of Colombian political history somewhat, but once their influence was established, Colombians created their own traditions. For a more internationally oriented interpretation, see the on going work of Michael Jiménez on the coffee workers of Viotá in the upper Magdalena, who demonstrates that no single explanation will suffice for the Colombian experience.

9 Dix, Robert credits Miguel Antonio Caro with coining the phrase in his Colombia: The Political Dimensions of Change (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), p. 211.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., p. 231; Borda, Orlando Fals, Historia doble de la costa, vol. 2: El presidente Nieto (Bogotá: Carlos Valencia Editores, 1979), pp. 73B–74B.Google Scholar

11 The basic works are: Safford, Frank, “Social Aspects of Politics in Nineteenth-Century Spanish America: New Granada, 1825–1850,” Journal of Social History 5 (1972);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Dix, Colombia: The Political Dimensions of Change; Uribe, Jaime Jaramillo, La personalidad histórica de Colombia y otros ensayos (Bogotá: El Ancora Editores, [1977] 1994);Google Scholar Mejia, Alvaro Tirado, El Estado y la política en el siglo XIX (Bogotá: El Ancora Editores, [1978] 1983);Google Scholar Phelan, John Leddy, The People and the King: The Comunero Revolution in Colombia, 1781 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978);Google Scholar Molina, Gerardo, Las ideas liberales en Colombia, tomo 1, 1849–1914, 12th Edition (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo, 1988),Google Scholar and Las ideas liberales en Colombia, tomo 2, 1915–1934 (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo, 1989); Bergquist, Charles, Coffee and Conflict in Colombia, 1886–1910 (Durham: Duke University Press, [1978] 1986);Google Scholar Oquist, Paul, Violence, Conflict, and Politics in Colombia (New York: Academic Press, 1980);Google Scholar Delpar, Helen, Red Against Blue: The Liberal Party in Colombian Politics, 1863–1899 (The University of Alabama Press, 1981);Google Scholar Peña, Mario Aguilera and Cantor, Renán Vega, Ideal democrático y revuelta popular: Bosquejo histórico de la mentalidad política popular en Colombia, 1781–1948 (Bogotá: Instituto María Cano, 1991);Google Scholar Sowell, David, The Early Colombian Labor Movement: Artisans and Politics in Bogotá, 1832–1919 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992);Google Scholar Bushnell, David, The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993);Google Scholar Bushnell, and Macaulay, Neill, The Emergence of Latin America in the Nineteenth Century, 2nd Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994);Google Scholar Sanín, Francisco Gutiérrez, Curso y discurso del movimiento plebeyo: 1849–1854 (Bogotá: Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Relaciones Internationales-El Ancora Editores, 1995);Google Scholar Palacios, Marco, Entre la legitimidad y la violencia: Colombia, 1875–1994 (Bogotá: Editorial Norma, 1995);Google Scholar See also Long, Gary, “Popular Liberalism and Civil War in Nineteenth-Century Colombia: Historical Roots of Labor’s Radical Ideology in the Twentieth-Century,” Paper presented at the XIV Latin American Labor History Conference, Duke University, 3 May 1997;Google Scholar and the forthcoming book from the University of Pittsburgh Press based on his dissertation, “The Dragon Finally Came: Industrial Capitalism, Radical Artisans and the Liberal Party in Colombia, 1910–1948” (Ph.D. dissertation., The University of Pittsburgh, 1995).

12 Liberalism, a term that is seldom well defined, encompasses an extended and somewhat contradictory family of ideas. A product of European and North American intellectual tradition and political experience, liberalism emanates from a belief in the “natural” rights of individuals. These include the freedoms of speech, assembly, and of religion, freedom to own property, the right to due process and guarantees against arbitrary state power, and equality before the law (especially no extraordinary privileges based on birth). Liberalism is also widely associated with laissez-faire visions of the economy. Taken together, these elements comprise what is often known as “classical liberalism.” At the same time, however, alternative liberal notions and practice of government can be found in Rousseau’s collectivist concept of the “general will,” in the measures of the revolutionary regime in France between 1793 and 1794, and in the radical drift of liberal thought between 1815 and 1848.

13 'Daitsman, Andrew L., from “Chapter V, Elite and Popular Liberalism,” in “The People Shall Be All: Liberal Rebellion and Popular Mobilization in Chile, 1850–1860,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1995), p. 163.Google Scholar

14 Hamnett, Brain R., “Liberalism Divided: Regional Politics and the National Project During the Mexican Restored Republic, 1867 1876,” Hispanic American Historical Review 76:4 (1996): pp. 662 and 666.Google Scholar See also, Thomson, Guy P.C., “Popular Aspects of Liberalism in Mexico, 1848–1888,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 10:3 (1991): pp. 265–292;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Florencia Mallon, Peasant and Nation.

15 Daitsman, , “The People Shall Be All,” p. 161.Google Scholar

16 Bushnell, , The Making of Modern Colombia, p. 117.Google Scholar Herbert Braun argues that in politics, “more than ideology, the life and livelihood of individuals was at stake.” Braun, Herbert, The Assassination of Gaitán: Public Life and Urban Violence in Colombia (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), pp. 13–14.Google Scholar When historians have noted divisions among Liberals, they have tended to focus on divisions among the elite of the party; see Delpar, Helen, “Aspects of Liberal Factionalism in Colombia, 1875–1885,” Hispanic American Historical Review 51:2 (1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Mejia, Tirado, El estado y la política, p. 36.Google Scholar

18 Uribe, Jaime Jaramillo, “La influencia de los románticos franceses y de la revolución de 1848 en el pensamiento político colombiano del siglo XIX,” La personalidad histórica de Colombia, p. 162.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., pp. 165–166.

20 Ibid., pp. 169, 176, and 178.

21 Aguilera, and Vega, , Ideal democrático y revuelta popular, pp. 34 and 42.Google Scholar

22 Bushnell, , The Making of Modern Colombia, pp. 102 and 115.Google Scholar

23 Uribe, Jaime Jaramillo, “Las sociedades democráticas de artesanos y la coyuntura política y social colombiana de 1848,” La personalidad histórica de Colombia, p. 191.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., pp. 200–201.

25 Molina, Gerardo, Las ideas liberales en Colombia, tomo 1, pp. 62–63.Google Scholar See also, Gutiérrez Sanin, for whom the Sociedad Democrática of Bogotá was central to his analysis, because there he encountered “less mediated and more direct manifestations of autonomous expression of the plebeyo sectors.” Through their support for López, José Hilario, artisans proved “for the first time” that they could be “a decisive factor in political struggles,” Curso y discurso, pp. 63–64.Google Scholar

26 Bushnell, , The Making of Modern Colombia, p. 108.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., pp. 111–114.

28 Molina, , Las ideas liberales en Colombia, vol. 1, pp. 64–65.Google Scholar

29 Uribe, Jaramillo, “Las sociedades democráticas de artesanos,” pp. 208–210.Google Scholar

30 Mejia, Tirado, El estado y la política, pp. 91–92.Google Scholar

31 Sowell, , The Early Colombian Labor Movement, pp. 78, 52–53, and 81.Google Scholar

32 Sanín, Gutiérrez, Curso y discurso, pp. 31–34.Google Scholar Throughout the late nineteenth century, Liberalism was known to be divided between “patricians” and “plebeians.” Long, “Popular Liberalism and Civil War,” p. 18; see also Deas, Malcolm, “Poverty, Civil War and Politics; Ricardo Gaitán Obeso and his Magdalena River Campaign in Colombia, 1885,” Nova Americana 2 (1979), pp. 263–303.Google Scholar Charles Bergquist notes that in the 1890s the “war Liberals” were revolutionary “men of the people” who saw their opponents within the party, the civilistas or “peace Liberals” as “faint-hearted merchants” in alliance with the Conservatives; Bergquist, , Coffee and Conflict, pp. 90–91.Google Scholar

33 Sanín, Gutiérrez, Curso y discurso, p. 79.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., p. 130.

35 Ibid., pp. 155–158.

36 Perhaps the most extensive history of the conduct of the war is Jaramillo, Carlos Eduardo, Los guerrilleros del novecientos (Bogotá: Fondo Editorial CEREC, 1991).Google Scholar

37 Bergquist, , Coffee and Conflict, p. 131.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., p. 149.

39 Delpar, , Red Against Blue, p. 188.Google Scholar

40 Bergquist, , Coffee and Conflict, p. 157.Google Scholar

41 Posada-Carbó, Eduardo, “Limits of Power: Elections Under the Conservative Hegemony in Colombia, 1886–1930,” Hispanic American Historical Review 77:2 (1997), pp. 249–250.Google Scholar In 1886 the Conservative Regime centralized the electoral system and established a two-tier structure. All male citizens could vote for city councilmen and diputados to the departmental assemblies; literacy and property requirements were instated for the lower house of Congress (which elected the Senators) and Presidential electors.

42 It should be noted, however, that while dominant during the “Liberal Republic,” the Liberal elite’s ideas were not representative of a unified ruling hegemony. The Liberal and Conservative elites in Colombian are known for their long tradition of struggle and war over competing ideas of the state. State formation was (and remains) a very messy business in Colombia.

43 See chapter one, “The Dialectics of Public Life,” pp. 13–38, of Braun, The Assassination of Gaitán.

44 I provide an expanded discussion of Lopismo in Chapter 4, “The Lopista Interlude: Revolución en Marcha, Pause and Crisis, 1934–1944,” of Superior to their Leaders.

45 Mallon, Peasant and Nation.

46 For a more detailed discussion of the ideology of left Liberalism and Gaitanismo, see John, W. Green, ‘“Vibrations of the Collective’: The Popular Ideology of Gaitanismo on Colombia’s Atlantic Coast, 1944–1948,” Hispanic American Historical Review 76:2 (1996).Google Scholar

47 E. Puerta Toro to JEG, Medellín, 26 October 1945; Archivo del Instituto Colombiano de la Participación “Jorge Eliécer Gaitán,” hereafter AICPG, v.0016 “Adhesiones y quejas Antioquia.” Interview by the author with Heliodoro Cogua P. (a small holder in Valle in 1940s, life-long Gaitanista, and former guide at the Casa Museo Gaitán), Bogotá, 17 May 1990. “Una voz insurgente: entrevista con Ofelia Uribe de Acosta,” by Torres, Anabel in Maria Cristina Laverde Toscano and Luz Helena Sánchez Gómez, eds. Voces Insurgentes (Bogotá: Editorial Guadalupe, 1986), p. 29.Google Scholar El Estado (Santa Marta), 29 April 1946, p. 4, “Porqué soy gaitanista,” Guillermo Núñez Bossio. Graciela M. de Morkin to JEG, B/quilla, 20 July (el Gran Día de la Patria) 1946; AICPG v.0012 “Cartas Atlántico 1946–47.”

48 Alfonso Alexander M. to JEG, Ipiales, 2 April 1946; AICPG v.0050 “Cartas Nariño.”

49 “Servidores y copartidarios” of Líbano to JEG and Carlos Arango Vélez, 31 May 1933; AICPG V.0052 “Cartas Tolima.“ The party had been “contaminated” by Conservative and reactionary elements. These “so-called Liberals” employed gamonalismo, caciquismo, and “las roscas políticas of favoritism.” These Liberals, like the Conservatives before them, “paralyzed” the party’s dynamic. They were “enemies of revolutionary ideology.” Now was the moment, they argued, to move at full speed toward (their emphasis) the “ORGANIZATION OF A LEFTIST LIBERALISM.”

50 Solano, Armando, compilador, Caudillos liberales (Bogotá: Ediciones Antena, 1936), pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

51 La Opinión (Ibagué) 25 March 1944, p. 3 editorial “A la carga! !” by “Ali Califa.” He also warned that the party’s philosophical base had been infiltrated by an ideological “trojan horse.” The supposed leaders of the party “there on Olympus” were “kindlers of disasters” who pretended to be “guides.” Yet they caused “moral calamities.”

52 Vanguardia (Santa Marta), 11 September 1944, p. 3, “Hacia dónde va el liberalismo?” Where was Liberalism headed, asked “the true sons of democracy.” The new “legions of socialism” made ready for the “victory of their ideas.”

53 Vanguardia (Santa Marta), 14 February 1944, p. 3, “Conciencia de Partido.”

54 Puentes, Milton, Historia del partido liberal colombiano (Bogotá: Editorial Prag, 1961), p. 574.Google Scholar

55 Benítez, Otto Morales, ed. El pensamiento social de Uribe Uribe (Medellín: Ediciones Especiales Sec. de Educación y Cultura de Antioquía, 1988), p. 17.Google Scholar

56 Santa, Eduardo, El pensamiento político de Rafael Uribe Uribe (Bogotá: Ediciones Tercer Mundo, 1980), p. 9.Google Scholar As Santa goes on to say, his earlier book, Rafael Uribe Uribe: Un hombre y una época, went through seven editions, proving that Uribe Uribe continued to interest Colombians.

57 Cobanella, Guillermo, “Rafael Uribe Uribe, creador de una doctrina social,” in Benítez, Morales, ed. El pensamiento social de Uribe Uribe (Medellín: Ediciones Especiales Sec. de Educación y Cultura de Antioquía, 1988), p. 21.Google Scholar

58 Interview with Mauricio Archila, Barrancabermeja, 20 April 1985. Mauricio graciously gave me access to his interviews.

59 Sharpless, Richard, Gaitán of Colombia: A Political Biography (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978), p. 44.Google Scholar

60 El Estado, 14 October 1947, p. 1. And when Herrera was the Liberal presidential candidate in 1922, he spoke to large demonstrations in Barranquilla, Medellín, Cali, and Bogotá in January of that year. Rodríguez, Gustavo H., Benjamín Herrera en la guerra y en la paz (Bogotá: Universidad Libre, 1973), p. 249.Google Scholar These cities, it should not be forgotten, represented the main concentrations of urban and industrial workers in Colombia at that time.

61 El Debate (Cartagena), 13 December 1935, p. 3, “La reforma liberal.”

62 Letter from 200 Liberals to President ALP, Toro, March 1936; Archivo of the Colombian Presidency, vol. 4, 1936.

63 Pluma Libre (Pereira), 4 August and 20 August 1939.

64 Pluma Libre (Pereira), 13 August 1939.

65 El Estado (Santa Marta), 29 February 1944, “Benjamín Herrera” by Victor Granados.

66 El Estado (Santa Marta), 15 October 1945.

67 In 1947, for example, a group in Bolívar “cherished the hope” that Liberalism under Gaitán would return to public power to ensure “democratic revival,” as in “the days of… Uribe Uribe and Benjamin Herrera.” Letter from the self-styled “proletarians” of the Comité Liberal Pro Movimiento Popular, Morales, Bolívar to JEG, 12 February 1947; AICPG v.0061 “Cartas Bolívar y Nariño.”

68 Manuel Márquez Ruíz to JEG, B/quilla, 22 April 1945; AICPG v.0091 “Adhesiones y quejas Atlántico.”

69 From a Poem by Dolores Prieto de Silva to JEG, B/quilla, 21 February 1946; AICPG v.0043 “Cartas Atlántico.” She even includes the spirit of Simón Bolívar for good measure. While father of la patria, however, he was not really a hero of the Liberals. Bolívar was claimed by the Conservatives and Francisco de Paula Santander by the Liberals.

70 “Carta abierta al doctor JEG” by Pedro N. Santamaría López, Medellín, 4 June 1932; AICPG v.0016 “Adhesiones y quejas Antioquia.” Indeed, his letter sounds as if it were written in 1946. He speaks of “the moral ruin of the false defenders of order conspires throughout the Republic against the national integrity” and of the need for political reform. The Liberal pueblo, “awakened from its lethargy” by his words, now had “a consciousness that seeks substantial renovation of the methods and systems of government,” aware as it was of the “great lies that exist in this catalogue of ignominy, index of malediction that is the Constitution of 86.” Gaitán heard the “clamor of a people without agrarian legislation;” “the small colono who in the struggle against hostile nature … is defrauded and absorbed by the latifundista who robs him of the fruit of his labor;” the “obrero del campo left to vegetate in ignorance and misery;” “a people tortured by hunger … and lack of work;” the “masses of urban workers who lack the assistance of a labor code that would guarantee their interests and rights in their relations with capital.”

71 Liberal Gaitanista Command de Mompós to JEG, 17 June 1947; AICPG v.0060 “Cartas Bolívar.” Vanguardia, 28 Februrary 1945, p. 1, “En Orihueca proclaman a Gaitán.” Santiago Cárdenas G. and “en medio siete mil almas,” (including children) to JEG, Los Palmitos, 10 April 1946; AICPG v.0088 “Adhesiones y quejas Bolívar. Left-Liberal politician Alfonso Romero Aguirre, and labor leaders Carlos M. Esquivia and Samuel Guerrero to JEG, Cartagena, 7 September 1946; AICPG v.0034 “Cartas Bolívar 1946.” Comité Liberal de Jagua de Ibirico to JEG, 20 September 1946; AICPG v.0011 “Cartas Magdalena.”

72 Charles Bergquist, in contrast, argued that it was widespread access to land, the means of production in Colombia’s coffee economy, which debilitated the organized labor movement and the Left (which he defined rather narrowly as the PSD). Bergquist, Charles, Labor in Latin America: Comparative Essays on Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and Colombia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), p. 279.Google Scholar For an extended discussion of these questions, see Green, W. John, “Sibling Rivalry on the Left and Labor Struggles in Colombia During the 1940s,” Latin American Research Review, 35:1 (2000).Google Scholar

73 Knight, Alan, “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910–1940,” Graham, Richard ed. The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), p. 72.Google Scholar Knight points out that “The supposed genetic bases of ‘racial’ differentiation have never been proven and, in consequence, the very category ‘race’ has been rightly questioned.”

74 Uribe, Jaime Jaramillo, “Mestizaje y diferenciación social en el Nuevo Reino de Granada en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII,” in Ensayos sobre historia social de Colombia (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 1968), p. 167.Google Scholar

75 Uribe, Jaime Jaramillo, “La población indigena de Colombia en el momento de la conquista y sus transformaciones posteriores,” Ensayos sobre historia social de Colombia (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 1968), pp. 127–128.Google Scholar

76 Santa, Eduardo, Sociologia de Colombia (Bogotá: Editorial Iqueima, 1955), pp. 69–70.Google Scholar

77 For an even more recent emphasis on the primacy of biology, albeit a “positive” interpretation, see Brazilian sociologist Darcy Ribeiro’s The Americas and Civilization which sought to define the concept of “Mestizaje” (in the tradition of Gilberto Freyre) under his general heading of “New Peoples.” This “biological fusion” was accompanied by the “acculturation of disparate ethnic groups within the slavocratic plantation framework.” The Americas and Civilization (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1971), p. 177.

78 Uribe, Jaramillo, “Mestizaje,” p. 165.Google Scholar

79 Ibid., p. 173; (Francisco Antonio Moreno y Escandon, fiscal de la real Audencia de Santa Fe).

80 In 1643 one Francisco Garcia (Español) prosecuted Juan, the slave of Francisco Sanchez de Oliva for assault and for having insulted his honor by calling him “a Mestizo dog, and other ugly words that my reputation will not allow me to declare.” In 1725 in Ciudad Socorro, Diego de Vargas brought a suit against Jose Delgadillo who insulted his honor by saying that his family members were, “zambos, mulatos, y ensambenitados.” Ibid., pp. 173–174, 176, and 182.

81 Safford, Frank, “Race, Integration, and Progress: Elite Attitudes and the Indian in Colombia, 1750–1870,” Hispanic American Historical Review 71:1 (1991), p. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

82 Though even there, as Alan Knight points out, the Revolution transformed “official thinking concerning race and ethnic relations” but failed to “banish racism from Mexican society.” Indeed indigenismo helped create the myth that racism was defeated. Knight, “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo,” p. 82.

83 Ibid., p. 86.

84 See Vasconcelos, José, La raza cósmica, misión de la raza iberoamericana (Paris: Agencia Mundial de Librería, 1925).Google Scholar

85 Safford, “Race, Integration, and Progress,” pp. 20 and 23.

86 Ibid.,pp. 23 and 25.

87 Ibid., p. 23. Or as the process is often characterized in Latin America, “para mejorar la raza.”

88 Pan American Union, “Colombia in Brief.” (Washington D.C.: Pan American Union, 1945), p. 10. Significantly, since 1917 no Colombian census has dealt with race in any way besides estimating the locations of the few hundred thousand ethnically “pure” Indians left in Colombia. Many studies even ignore the questions of race and ethnicity completely. A good example is de Rodriquez, Cecilia, La costa atlántica: algunos aspectos socio-economicos de su desarrollo (Fundación papa la Educación Superior y el Desarrollo, 1973).Google Scholar It studies the people of the Atlantic coast, largely black and mulatto, but gives absolutely no reference to race.

89 As does De Lannoy, Juan Luís, Estructuras demográficas y sociales de Colombia (Bogotá: Centro de Investigaciones Sociales, 1961), p. 52.Google Scholar

90 Uribe, Jaramillo Google Scholar, “Mestizaje,” p. 167. Miscegenation was wide spread in the colonial period, in spite of Spanish attempts to slow its progress. For details on the colonial laws of separation, see Oquendo, Andres Verdugo y, “Informe sobre el estado social y económico de la población indígena, blanca y mestiza de las provincias de Tunja y Velez a mediados de siglo XVIII,” Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultural, Vol. 1, No. 1, (1963), pp. 183–185.Google Scholar

91 Uribe, Jaime Jaramillo, “La población indigena de Colombia en el momento de la conquista y sus transformaciones posteriores,” Ensayos sobre historia social de Colombia (Bogota: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 1968), p. 167.Google Scholar

92 ibid.,p. 168.

93 Uribe, Jaramillo, “Mestizaje,” p. 167,Google Scholar

94 Lopez de Mesa, Luís, “El hombre,” Colombia en cifras (Bogotá: Imprenta Nacional, 1945–1946), p. 66.Google Scholar

95 Vergara y Velasco, F.J., Nueva geografia de Colombia (Bogotá: Publicaciones del Banco de la República, 1974), vol. 3, p. 923.Google Scholar It is important to note that Vergara y Velasco lumps mulattos in with mestizos in one category to demonstrate a “mixed” majority of society.

96 López, Javier Ocampo, Historia básica de Colombia (Bogotá: Plaza and James, Editores Colombia Ltd., 1984), pp. 90–91.Google Scholar

97 Galbraith, W.O., Colombia: A General Survey (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 19.Google Scholar

98 Borda, Orlando Fals Historia doble de la costa, vol. 1: Mompox y Loba (Bogotá: Carlos Valencia Editores, 1979), p. 150 B.Google Scholar

99 Wade, Peter, Blackness and Race Mixture: The Dynamics of Racial Identity in Colombia (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. 56.Google Scholar

100 Parsons, James, Antioqueño Colonization in Western Colombia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949), p. 4.Google Scholar Colombia’s racial composition in 1950: whites, 25 percent; Indians 5 percent; mestizos 42 percent; “Negroes and mulattoes” 28 percent. Smith, Lynn T., “The Racial Composition of the Population of Colombia,” Journal of Inter-American Studies 8: 2 (1966), p. 218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

101 Uribe, Jaime Jaramillo, “Esclavos y señores en la sociedad colombiana de siglo XVIII,” Ensayos sobre historia social de Colombia (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 1968), pp. 10–11 and 12.Google Scholar

102 Ramón, Franco R. Colombia: geografia superior económica y humana (Bogotá: Imprenta del Banco de la Republica, 1952), pp. 142–143.Google Scholar

103 Safford, “Race, Integration, and Progress,” pp. 29–30.

104 Richardson, Miles, San Pedro, Colombia: Small Town in a Developing Society (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), p. 16.Google Scholar

105 Wade, Peter, Blackness and Race Mixture, p. 3.Google Scholar

106 Richardson, , San Pedro, pp. 15–16.Google Scholar

107 “Carta abierta al doctor JEG” by Pedro N. Santamaría López, Medellín, 4 June 1932; AICPG V.0016 “Adhesiones y quejas Antioquia.”

108 Braun, , The Assassination of Gaitán, pp. 82–83.Google Scholar

109 Bushnell, , The Making of Modern Colombia, p. 107.Google Scholar

110 Long, “Popular Liberalism and Civil War,” pp. 6 and 7.

111 E. Puerta Toro (lawyer) to JEG, Medellín, 26 October 1945; AICPG .0016 “Adhesiones y quejas Antioquia.”

112 Buenahora, Gonzalo, Biografía de una voluntad (Bogotá: Editorial Minerva, 1948), p. 104.Google Scholar

113 República (B/quilla), 5 August 1945, “Gabriel Turbay no es Gabriel Turbay,” by Marco A. Gómez.

114 Comité Gaitanista de Manga, Cartagena, to JEG, Jan. 9, 1946; AICPG v.0074 “Cartas políticas.”

115 El Estado (Santa Marta), 11 Februrary 1946, p. 3.

116 Pedro J. Donado B. of the Droguería “La Providencia,” Magangué, Bolívar to JEG, 12 April 1946; AICPG, found in v.0011 “Cartas Magdalena.”

117 Letter from over 1000 adherents to JEG, Cartagena, 3 April 1946; AICPG v.0074 “Cartas políticas.”

118 Long, “The Dragon Finally Came,” p. 252.

119 El Estado (Santa Marta), 30 April 1946, p. 1, “Gaitanistas: alerta, mucho alerta!”

120 José Domingo Goenaga to JEG, Santa Marta, 15 March 1944; AICPG v.0011 “Cartas Magdalena.”

121 68 members of the Comando de Acción Municipal Gaitanista, Luís A Gonzalez sec, to JEG, Aracataca, 11 April 1946; AICPG v.0011 “Cartas Magdalena.”

122 Bossio, Guillermo Núñez, “Porqué soy Gaitanista,” in El Estado (Santa Marta), 29 April 1946, p. 4.Google Scholar

123 Leonidas Vera Durán to JEG, Baranoa, Atl., 24 May 1946; AICPG v.0032 “Cartas Adhesión.”

124 Comité Liberal de la Clase Media de Atlántico “Antonio José Restrepo” to López, Santos, and Chaux, B/quilla, 3 April 1946; AICPG v.0043 “Cartas Atlántico.”

125 Comité Liberal Gaitanista de Tumaco to JEG, 7 January 1946; AICPG v.0050 “Cartas Nariño.”