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Chapter Two: Populist Passions
As we look back over Colombian history it is clear that there were occasions when
the victims of the violence perpetrated by those who pursued the national interest hadlittle notion of what the nation meant. But when they did refer to it, as was often the
case, their complaints tended to focus on how the ideal of the nation had been
appropriated by corrupt rulers or destructive enemies for their own selfish ends. The
hope remained that one day, we whoever we happened to be would finally be
allowed to build the real nation, the one they Conservatives, priests, oligarchs,
Liberals, free masons, atheists, communists, foreign interests had stopped us from
constructing:la nacin soada . It is rare in Colombian history to encounter an echo of
the old Spanish anarchist slogan Ni Dios, ni Patria, ni Amo , with its express rejection
of patriotism as a stratagem through which subalterns are persuaded to accept their
subordination. Instead, the nation is cherished, unimpeachable, beyond criticism. There
is something about the nation, it seems, that resists rational criticism, a mystique whoselustre is rarely tarnished, whatever the horrors committed in its name.
At the same time, however, we might ask what role the nation really played in the
lives of the majority of the inhabitants of the state that came to be known as Colombia.
The answer to that question, of course, depends on what we mean by nation. Is the
nation an ideal of political community that promises liberty, equality and political
participation for all? Is it a territorial unit over which a state establishes its sovereignty,
an institutional order, a synonym for the state, an ethnocultural group, or an imagined
repository of eternal values? And for whom is it meaningful, and when? Does it mean
the same thing to rival elite factions? What, if anything, does it mean to subaltern
groups?
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Before going any further, therefore, it seems appropriate to restate the central
premise of this analysis: the nation here is understood as a legitimizing political fiction.
Whether it is used to invoke the common good or promoted as a transcendent cultural
ideal, the nation will therefore continue to be interpreted as a discursive category that is
deployed in order to universalize particular interests. Rather than as the name for a
community that precedes, transcends or justifies the state, the nation is conceived of
simply as a discursive nexus a nodal point in the terminology developed by Laclau
and Mouffe that is available for articulation in different ways by competing political
discourses. Indeed, in this respect I have attempted to follow Rogers Brubakers
in junction to think nationalism without the nation (Brubaker p.17). From this
perspective, nationalism is conceived of as a form of politics: contingent, opportunist
and discontinuous.
What follows, then, is not a study of the Colombian nation but of nationalism in
Colombia, understood as a set of discourses that have attempted to construct an idea of
the nation at a particular place and time, for particular political ends, with unpredictable
results. With this in mind, we can approach certainaspects of national history from a
slightly different angle. Rather than thinking of the nation as a sociological fact, or as a
predestined goal, we can analyze the effects and implications of articulating the nation
in different ways.
In this regard, I shall continue to follow the conventional route of understanding the
discourse of the nation as a central component of the search for hegemony. That said, I
want to stress the need not to overstate its significance in the attempt to both institute
and legitimize authority. While it is hard to disagree with the view that nationalist
discourse is a hegemonizing force indeed, it is hard to think of it in any other way
we can overestimate the importance ofactive acquiescence in the establishment of
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hegemony. Winning consent by persuading the population to identify with a particular
kind of national project is not the only way to construct and maintain authority. There
are other mechanisms, including more local projects and socioracial prejudice, not to
mention the use of violence, that play a major role in reproducing societies that are, to
borrow a phrase from Stuart Hall,structured in domination .
Furthermore, the way individuals understand their interests and act accordingly is
both more complex and less reflexive than can be grasped through any explicit debate
on the meaning of the nation at any particular conjuncture. It would be as implausible to
suppose that the state always pursues active consent through the production of various
forms of nationalist ideology as it would be to claim that political subjects always
actively question authority. Thus while we shall be considering ways in which various
groups have sought to use the term nation in order establish the legitimacy of their
political claims, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that hegemony generally has
more to do with the naturalization of a particular state of affairs than with the
foregrounding of any overt political claim. In her excellent work on the history ofla
Violencia in Antioquia, Mary Roldn illustrates precisely this point by citing Derek
Sayers assertion that it is the exercise of power pure and simple that itself authorizes
and legitimates; and it does this less by manipulating beliefs than by defining the
boundaries of the possible(Roldn p.30). Though this formulation is problematic for a
number of reasons, the central point stands, namely that passive acceptance of a state of
affairs works just as well as informed consent, if not better, given that the hegemony of
the state is also exactly what is most fragile about the state, precisely because it does
depend on people living what they much of the time know to be a lie (Sayer p.377).
This is an area that I shall be exploring in detail in the following chapter, which
analyzes how ordinary Colombians understand the nation today. For the moment,
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however, I simply want to note the multiplicity as well as the contingency of the factors
that combine to produce a given state of affairs. Nationalist discourse is one of these, an
important one, to be sure, but by no means always the most important. Political
discourse itself stands in complex relationship to other contingent factors, such as the
vagaries of capitalist development and the impact of extraterritorial forces. We need,
therefore, to bear in mind that in spite of their universalizing and unifying pretensions,
the discursive practices analyzed here are limited in their scope and impact.
For the same reason, I want to emphasize that this chapter is not an attempt to
produce an alternative history of twentieth century Colombia. Instead I simply want to
show how elites have articulated the nation, in what circumstances and with what
consequences, in order to help us to interpret the utterances of present day Colombians
when invited to deliberate on the meaning of nationhood. This will allow us to identify
some of the ways in which different and often contradictory forms of nationalist
discourse have become part of contemporary common sense and thereby serve as the
basis for future re-articulations. At the same time, however, I will frequently refer to
what we might think of as thehegemonic version of Colombian historythe history
in which the nation always appears as a flawlessimage of shared community in an
attempt to go some way towards de-familiarizing this numbingly conventional narrative
whose apparent objectivity is in itself the result of the qualified success of a number of
hegemonic projects. In particular, I want to question the supposition that the
development of nationalist discourse was part of a coherent or unified project that needs
to be understood through the overarching explanatory narrative of nation building.
Indeed, the notion that nationalist discourse developed is in itself problematic as it
implies precisely the sense of teleological continuity that I seek to undermine through
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an examination of what it meant at any given to time to claim that a fundamentally
unequal and divided social order was in some sense anation.
Before embarking on the analysis proper, however, I want to sketch out some of the
general themes that help to situate an approach to nationalist discourse in Colombia. As
we have already seen, in the nineteenth century both the nation and the people were
invoked as legitimating devices. However, these terms were articulated in different
ways by both competing and overlapping discourses. The nation, for example, meant
one thing in a discourse that claimed its universality through references to the
inalienable rights of sovereign nations everywhere and quite another in a discourse that
emphasised the Hispanic cultural heritage of Colombia or New Granada. Similarly, the
people could be articulated with both kinds of discourse, in the former as the source of
legitimacy of any rational political regime and in the latter as the repository of specific
national values, often understood in spiritual and therefore moral terms. At other
times, however, the nation and the people seemed to refer to the same thing, particularly
when they referred to the concept of popular sovereignty.
The penetration of Colombian Conservatism by liberal and republican ideals meant
that civic nationalism, with its emphasis on citizenship, was very much to the fore in
both of the historic parties. Rather than ethnocultural nationalism, therefore, it was
patriotism, understood as loyalty to a state, which became the focus of elite discourse.
This was in a sense quite understandable, given the complexities of the system of caste
identities that had developed under Spanish rule, heavily influenced by the obsessive
concern withlimpieza de sangre that dominated colonial understandings of social and
cultural difference.Furthermore, during the nineteenth century this spontaneous
sociology was bolstered by the circulation of scientific and pseudo -scientific discourses
that claimed to explain social difference in terms of race, thus effectively confirming the
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marginal status of much of the population. For our purposes here, it is important to bear
in mind that these taxonomies were fundamental to the construction of the regional
identities that continue to be so important in the sociocultural imaginary of Colombia,
with its Andean core and tropical periphery. The logic that dominated this network of
representations had always emphasized difference rather than similarity, dividing up
social space betweenblancos , mestizos , mulatos, indios and negros . Indeed, the
existence throughout Colombia of a kind of informal social apartheid reveals an acute
awareness of what separates social subjects rather than what unites them and thereby
constitutes a formidable barrier to the construction of an idea of the nation as a
horizonta l solidarity, to use Andersons evocative phrase. Thus in spite of liberal
appeals to reason and justice, equality before the law and individual freedom, what
everyone knew about society included the common sense realization that not all
Colombians were citizens and that not all citizens enjoyed the same rights. Nor did they
share the same culture.
A gulf therefore separated the promises of nationalist discourse and the everyday
experience of life in Colombian society. After independence, new forms of domination,
exploitation and exclusion emerged and Colombia, in each of its incarnations,
remained an impoverished state in which the vast majority of the population was tied to
the land and effectively disenfranchised. Peasant and indigenous groups fought to make
the best of the changing institutional framework, and at certain key moments the Liberal
party mobilized the black population in areas like the Valle del Cauca but in general the
disputes over the meaning of the nation centred on the rivalries between different elite
factions. In the twentieth century, however, elite efforts to impose a particular form of
political regime were increasingly contested from below, giving rise to conflicts that can
be understood as a struggle for hegemony, in the Gramscian sense of the term. Official
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political discourse began to articulate the demands of emergent socio-economic groups
and political actors (peasant coffee producers, textile workers, trade unionists and even
the urban unemployed) in order to incorporate them into what came to be seen as the
national project. For their part, these gr oups rearticulated key elements within
nationalist discourse and gave them a popular inflection in order to further their own
claims. The twentieth century can therefore broadly be characterized as the period
during which the discourse of the nation was popularized, in the most general sense of
the term.
This process became a central part of political debate with the Liberal regimes of the
1930s and 1940s which invoked the people as the privileged subject of national history,
and the theme of populism in Colombia, and its failure, will be an important part of
what follows. The polity based, nation shaping nationalism of the period reveals the
contradictions inherent in official discourses, in particular the impossibility of
reconciling the concept of popular sovereignty with what Marco Palacios has called the
fear of the people, the deep -rooted suspicion of the rascal multitude that needs to be
kept in its place not only because it is uncultured and uncivilized but, more importantly,
because its unruliness threatens elite control of the state (Palacios 2002).Palacios
phrase is, as ever, suggestive and there is no doubt that fear was one of the ways in
which social prejudice manifested itself amongst the upper classes. It is important to
recognize, however, that this sentiment was not just an aberration that prevented
otherwise enlightened elites from carrying through a policy of radical democratization
but wholly in keeping with the socioracial imaginary within which elite identity
continued to be constructed. Thishabitus framed political action in such a way that even
the politicians who attempted to nationalize the people baulked at the prospect of
articulating a discourse of national identity that would include the marginalized cultural
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identities that together made up the political category of the popular. This was so
because cultural difference was still understood largely through the prism of theories of
race which equated modernization withblanqueamiento . Indeed, one of the many
contradictions of what is often regarded as the populist moment in Colombia was that
the summoning of the people to the political stage was accompanied by an intense
scrutiny of the racial origins of what were to come to be known as the popular classes.
Though ethnocultural heterogeneity is by no means the only cause of populisms
failure, it does help to explain why populist politicians never came to power in
Colombia. That said, populism continued to be a hugely important force in the 1940s
and might well have propelled Jorge Elicer Gaitn to the presidency but for the
caudillo s assassination in 1948, which sparked off more than a decade of violence in
certain areas. However, the experiences ofla Violencia, presented by the elites as a
moral fable underlining the dangers of stirring up popular passions, may have weakened
populism but they did not destroy it entirely. Nor did the repositioning of official
political discourse in accordance with the exigencies of Cold War, a period dominated
by the desarrollismo and technocratic elitism of the National Front. Instead, the
national-popular was invoked against the traditional parties authoritarian civic
nationalism by groups such as the Alianza Nacional Popular (ANAPO) and the left
nationalists of M-19. The discourse of this guerrilla movement in particular is
significant because of its influence on the drafting of the constitution of 1991,
Colombias most recent foundational document , in which an attenuated form of
populism appears alongside the ideals of social democracy, the demands of a neoliberal
economic agenda and the acceptance of a rudimentary multiculturalism.
Even this prcis , however, strays too far in the direction of presupposing a
continuous narrative of nation building. We might still think in terms of the
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development of a single discourse, suitably matched by institutional reforms, in the
direction of modernity and inclusivity,culminating in a move towards
multiculturalism. But, as I have already pointed out, such an interpretation is
unsatisfactory both because it fails to capture the disjointed and contingent nature of the
struggle for hegemony and because it represents precisely the kind of wishful thinking
that sees the discourse of the nation as constantly on the point of fulfilling its promises.
Happy endings are best left to Hollywood, however, and in order to avoid the tendency
to overemphasize continuity and development I will attempt to contextualize certain key
moments in order to provide a better approximation of the role played by the nation in
political discourse.
Territorial Anxiety and Patriotic Elitism: The Case of Panama
As we saw in Chapter One, the Regeneration may have been promoted by a NationalParty, but the nation imagined by its ideologues was under stood in narrow and
exclusive terms, almost unrecognizable today. Rafael Nez, Miguel Antonio Caro and
the other architects of the authoritarian constitution of 1886 were modernisers in so far
as they believed wholeheartedly in the development of the republican state but they
understoodnational values as a Hispanic, Catholic cultural heritage to be preserved by
the elites rather than as a set of beliefs and customs that resided in the people. As
Palacios and Safford put it,[t]he mentality of the Colom bian elite could not subscribe
to a nationalism based on the mestizo populace, or on an appreciation of its values. 1
1 Catherine LeGrand (1986) distinguishes between Colombia and other Latin American countries in thisregard, claiming that in Colombia, where immigration did not provide an alternative source of labour, the
native settler was alluded as a hardworking, determined, even heroic type whose efforts to open newlands advanced the cause of national development. The prosperity of the Antioqueo colonization regioncontributed notably to this image, which stood in sharp contrast to the derogatory vision of the squatter in
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Nor could it conceive an image of a national culture compatible with modernity or the
changes occurring in the broader world (Palacios and Safford p.251). In purely political
terms, Caro himself opposed the principle of popular sovereignty and favored the two
chamber system precisely because it was not exclusively democratic and therefore
allowed for the distinction between the people or crowd and the organizedinterests
which were the organic members of the State. 2 In other words, although this form of
nationalist discourse continued to claim that even the least member of the national
community should be ready to die for the patria , it continued to understand society as
fundamentally divided between the cultured elites and the ignorant lower orders and left
the direction of the state firmly in the hands of the former.
Along with this basic elitism, a key feature of official discourse at the start of the
twentieth century is the sense of crisis that derived from two central events, both of
which seemed in their different ways to pose a threat to the continuing viability of the
patria . The first of these was the Thousand Day War, a vicious conflict between rival
factions over the control of the state, which Marco Palaciosdubbed the struggle for the
soul of the nation , a phrase that uncharacteristically presupposes the existence of both
the nation and its soul. The ideological divide that structured elite competition in the
nineteenth century seemed to have been temporarily resolved in favour of a
Conservative, Catholic authoritarianism when, under the aegis of the short-lived Partido
Nacional , the alliance of Rafael Nezs Independent Liberals and Miguel Antonio
Caros Conservatives attempted to impose order through a centralist reorganization of
Chile and Brazil ( LeGrand, p. 17). However, her claim misses the ethnocultural prejudice of theanioqueo ideal, which has always stressed the whiteness of the so-called raza paisa . 2 Dentro del concepto exclusivamente democrtico, no cabe la dualidad ni multiplicidad de cmaraslegislativas; porque si slo el pueblo ha de ser representado, y el pueblo es uno, uno e indivisible ha de serel cuerpo representativo del pueblo, como lo han sido en otras ocasiones pocas las convenciones yasambleas en Francia [] La dualidad de cmaras ha de apoyarse y se apoya en efecto en un fundamentoverdadero y slido: en la distincin entre el pueblo o muchedumbre que forma la cmara popular, por una
parte, y por otra los miembros orgnicos del Estado, clases o intereses sociales en cualquier formaorganizados, que deben constituir la alta cmara. Cited in Ospina, J.D., Los constituyentes de 1886, Bogot: Banco de la Repblica, 1986, pp. 458-459
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the state. However, the constitution of 1886 was too ideologically skewed to be taken as
the basis for a politically and culturally conservative political hegemony. The Liberal
rebellion of 1899 was the result, as the excluded sections of the elites took up arms,
leading to a bloody confrontation that ended with their defeat in late 1902. Unlike most
of the civil wars of the nineteenth century, which were limited in scale, the Thousand
Day War was extremely destructive and greatly weakened the state, thereby facilitating
the conditions for the second critical event, the secession of Panama, which occurred
almost exactly a year after the end of hostilities in November 1902.
From the perspective of this study, the initial reactions to Panamanian independence
are fascinating in so far as they reveal the shape of the dominant forms of nationalist
discourse at the turn of the century and it is therefore on this loss of sovereignty over
what had hitherto been claimed as an integral part of the states territory that I want to
concentrate here. The first discursive response in the face of the immediate external
threat was an increased anti-Americanism, hardly surprising given theUSs role in
Panamanian independence. The immediate context within which the loss of Panama
was framed by official discourse in Colombia was provided by the already widespread
circulation throughout Latin America of representations of the US as an aggressive and
expansionist power. Many magazines and newspapers had made ironic references to
American territorial designs and these were increasingly prominent after the Spanish-
American war of 1898. In Colombia itself the difficult and often hostile atmosphere
surrounding the canal treaty negotiations and the cultural conflicts associated with the
presence of large numbers of American citizens in the isthmus fuelled this tension. Thus
it was no surprise when, sixteen days after the declaration of Panamanian independence,
Liberal newspaper El Espectador complained plaintively that
Ya no cabe duda alguna: Panam se ha arrancado de Colombia por s mismo, si bienvalindose infamemente de nuestras propias armas, de nuestros propios soldados, la vez
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que de armas y soldados extranjeros; se ha robado Colombia, digmoslo sin esbozo, paradarse los Estados Unidos en venta torpemente disfrazada. Y los Estados Unidos apoyanesa segregacin traidora, con el descaro de matones con que pretenden volcar hoy, pordondequiera, el derecho internacional moderno, para sustituirlo con el antiguo derecho delms fuerte, en su forma ms primitiva y brutal.( La tregua de la patria, El Espectador , 18 de noviembre, 1903)
This passage appeals to the supposedly universal principles of national sovereignty
and an imagined and imaginary community of nations in an attempt to find a forum
within which to condemn US actions. It positions itself on the side of modernity, in the
guise ofmodern international law, against the old fashioned law of the strongest , in
its most primitive and brutal form, which would be something like the Hobbesian state
of nature. However, it forgets that the Hobbesian Leviathan is able to protect its
citizens precisely because it is able to exercise force. In contrast, the community of
nations governed by international convention was little more than a fiction and in the
real world neither Colombia nor any other regional power was in a position to oppose
US interests. The editorial, however, continues:
La Patria ha sido despojada y ultrajada [] La soberana de nuestra Repblica no slo hasido destruida en Panam, sino que, debido la facilidad con que el despojo se haverificado, queda amenazada en todo su territorio. Si Colombia consiente con mansedumbreese atropello, sin embargo, y si el mundo civilizado lo deja pasar como corriente,envalentonado por el buen xito de su pirtica hazaa se apresurar el devorador de pueblos tomar de nuestra nacionalidad los bocados que vayan tentando su gula, si no es que decidaengullirse el todo de una vez.
The nation, understood here asnuestra nacionalidad , is simply conceived of as the
territory over which the state claims sovereignty. But there is also a cultural dimension
to the complaint that sets up a division between the civilized world and the US , which
thereby acquires a negative identity vis--vis its victims as a piratical, rogue state.
Indeed, it is worth remembering that until at least the middle of the twentieth century
the discourse of an important sector ofColombias Cons ervative elites would emphasize
a view of national identity that opposed Anglo -Saxon Protestantism and mechanical
culture to the spiritual values of Hispanism and Catholicism. As well as the religious
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divide, however, anti-Americanism within both the Conservative and the Liberal parties
fed on the resentment caused by the racist concept ofmanifest destiny and the so-
called Monroe doctrine which, in spite of its beginnings in 1823 as a declaration of anti-
colonial intent, had by the turn of the century become synonymous with US
expansionism. A typical strategy in the Colombian press, whether Conservative or
Liberal, was to undermine this imperial ideology by pointing out that the supposedly
superiorAnglo -Saxon r ace was nowhere near as civilized as it liked to make out. In
November 1903, for example, El Espectador reported on the lynching in Welmington,
New York, of a black man accused of raping and murdering the seventeen year old
daughter of a protestant minister. The lynching itself is represented as a cruel and
unlawful act, provoked by the fire and brimstone sermon of another preacher, a friend of
the murdered girls father, which is quoted in full. The point of the articles publication
in a contemporary Colombian newspaper is foreshadowed by its ironic headline: They
are coming to civilizeus. 3
But the blame for the humiliation of 1903 did not fall on the US alone. The problem
of how to represent the Panamaniansand their betrayal of the patria also had to be
resolved. In this endeavor colonial prejudices played a more important role than any
appeal to republican values. Indeed, such attitudes may well have been decisive in
establishing the circumstances that favored Panamanian independence. Alfonso Mnera
argues persuasively that the neglect of the isthmus, which in economic terms should
have been a central priority of the state, was due to the place it occupied in the social
imaginary of the dominant Andean elites. This represented the temperate slopes and
mesetas of the highlands as civilized, while the lowland areas of the river valleys, coasts
3 Contemporary American views of Colombia were hardly flattering. Roosevelt referred to them ascontemptible little creatures, inefficient bandits y a corrupt and pithecoid community (Palacios 1994 p.
70).
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and plains were considered to be backward and primitive.4 Panama, low lying and
coastal, with its large black andmulato population, was clearly closer to barbarism than
civilization. The Andean elites who had used nationalist discourse to universalize their
particular perspectivetherefore found it easy to articulate Panamanian treason
alongside one of the features that did indeed make Panama different, from them at least,
namely its blackness. As we saw in chapter one, blacks occupied a precarious and
ambiguous position at best within the patria and it was therefore convenient that the
part of the nation that had proved disloyal could be caricatured in this way .
There are many contemporary examples that illustrate this strategy. A cartoon in the
magazine Mefistfeles , on the eighteenth of March, 1904, depicts Colombia as a
weeping white woman sitting on top of the national coat of arms. In the background we
see the black Panamanian independence leader General Huertas, holding a bag marked
bribe in his hand. Just behind Colombia, a stereotypically black figure crawls
forward on all fours and reaches out to steal Panama from the Colombianescudo . It is
marked with the words the Panamanian traitor and, like Huertas, holds a bag labelled
bribe. Behind this figure, with one boot (marked Cuba) placed firmly upon its rump,
stands Uncle Sam, with a sack over his shoulder bearing the words weapon of
conquest: 40 million, a knife identified as the right of peoples in his right hand, and a
roll of paper marked Monroe Doctrine in his left. 5
This attempt to explain away Panamaniantreachery was part of the widespread
deployment of a patrician concept of patria , couched in the high-flown language of the
elites, which was often barely intelligible to the rest of the population. It is a discourse
4 To illustrate his point, Mnera cites Miguel Samper, brother of Jos Mara:Los que descubrieron y conquistaron esta parte de la Amrica encontraron la barbarie ms completa
sobre las costas y en las hoyas de los ros, en tanto que las faldas y mesetas de nuestra cordillera servan
de morada a pueblos relativamente adelantados en civilizacin. Cerca de cuatro siglos van transcurridosdesde que ocurri aquel hecho, y las cosas no han cambiado sensiblemente. (Mnera 2005, p. 116).5 Mefistfeles , 18 November 1903.
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full of references to violation, besmirched honor and treachery in which the patria
conventionally appears as a white female who has to be protected from desecration. The
events in Panama meant that she had been violated , a slight which had to be avenged
if her honor was to be restored. Such rhetoric took it for granted that the nation was
symbolically white and therefore invited ordinary Colombians to understand their
relationship to the patria through the ideological prism ofblanqueamiento . It did not,
therefore, understand national identity as having a direct link with the traditions and
beliefs of the people.There is no equivalent of Mother Russia available, no
articulation and interpellation of the narod , nor is there , as in the Marseillaise, a call
for the citizenry to protect their political freedoms by shedding foreign blood. On the
contrary, the people were often represented as unrepresentative of the patria or even
unworthy of the lofty ideals of patriotism.
To take just one example, in a debate on the eleventh of September, 1903, the
Conservative senator Marcelino Arango complained about the appointment of Jos
Domingo de Obalda, a supporter of the canal treaty with the US, as governor of the
department. Arango speculated about what might happen if the government simply
ignored the views of Congress and proceeded regardless with its own agenda. El
Espectador reported the incident in the following terms:
Preguntaba con amarga irona el H. Senador Marcelino Arango qu hara el Congreso si,despus de aprobar la proposicin de censura al Gobierno, ste insista en los nombramientosy remociones vituperados; y como aadiese: Nosotros estamos solos, no tenemos respaldo!,una voz de la barra le grit: Aqu est el pueblo! El pueblo? pregunt el Sr. Arango, el pueblo, habituado a obedecer y a callar, nos dejar solos!6
Arangos ironic outburst implies that the destiny of the patria is far too important to
be entrusted to a fickle and above all passive multitude and sums up the attitude of
much of the political class to the people, at least when this category was taken to mean
6 Graves declaraciones, El Espectador , no. 501, 21 de octubre, 1903, p.18.
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something more than a legal abstraction. Accustomed to obeying and being silent,
the people are regarded as both apathetic and unpatriotic. Given this fundamental
elitism, the dominant forms of nationalist discourse could not appeal directly to the
majority of the population as national subjects. Although the people had frequently been
invoked as part of a strategy of political legitimation, and to a lesser extent as the
bearers of a distinct cultural identity,7 the nationalization of popular customs and
traditions had yet to take place.
In fact, the feelings of the majority of the population about the loss of Panama are
hard to determine. However, an intriguing detail emergesamidst the newspapers
attempts to marshal patriotic sentiment. This is a reference to state decree 1022, which
called on all men between the ages of eighteen and fifty to report for possible
enlistment. The decree also made it clear that it was not to be regarded as a draft, given
that en tratndose de la defensa nacional, el recurso de reclutamiento es innecesario,
si se tiene en cuenta que es innato en todos los pueblos de la tierra el instinto de propia
conservacin .8 This claim rings hollow in the light of the fact that there were no
spontaneous acts of violence aimed at preserving the national territory, nor was there
any rush to enlist. Indeed, after the initial skirmishes no military action whatsoever was
taken. Though popular resistance in the face of US opposition would almost certainly
have failed, the apparent lack of response to the patriotic call to arms raises the question
of whether, in spite of nearly a century of such rhetoric, there was a widespread sense
that either a Colombian people or a Colombian nation existed or whether, along with
the direction of the state, the sentimental attachments of nationalism were the preserve
of the elites alone.
7 Thus, for example, Jos Mara Samper referred to the people as the creators of the bambuco , whichwas an expression of theirsoul.
8 El Espectador, 18 November, 1903, p.103
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For most Colombians, to be sure, there was little at stake, but that has often been no
obstacle to the waging of extremely destructive wars with great loss of life. What counts
is the states ability to maximize the use of ev ery discursive resource to mobilize
support for the national cause. In the Colombian case, however, neither of the parties
had had to offer the concessions required to achieve a form of hegemony that would
effectively nationalize the majority of the popu lation. Furthermore, no prolonged
foreign wars had had to be fought, and no external enemy, until now, had threatened the
survival of the republic. Thus the absence of strong nationalist feeling amongst the
people was hardly surprising. Indeed, David Bushnell tells us that after the loss of
Panama the sense of national unity as a whole continued weak (Bushnell 154). And
although one could focus on the historical peculiarities of the local merchant elites in
order to make a case for Panamanian exceptionalism, there were other areas of
Colombia which could have expressed significant grievances with the centralized
regime.
Bushnell, for example, refers to the scattered voices that called for further acts of
secession and which were a source of concern for the elites based in Bogot. General
Ospina, quoted in El Espectador just before the Panamanian declaration of
independence, raised fears about the possible loss of other parts of the states territory
by stating that la disolucin de Colombia germina en todas las almas; Cauca,
Antioquia, Panam, Bolvar, Santander, piensan en disgregacin . 9 Thus in spite of all
the struggles of the nineteenth century, capped by the centralising efforts of the 1886
constitution, the idea of Colombia as a natural state -nation did not go unquestioned.
9 El Espectador , Graves declaraciones, 21 de octubre de 1903, p. 1 8.
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Rather, local elites continued to ask themselves whether their particular interests might
not be better served by alternative configurations of power. 10
Populist Love, Fear and Hate
Within three decades this situation had changed radically. Under pressure from the
socialist, Marxist and syndicalist discourses that had begun to organize the demands of
subaltern groups, Colombian nationalism acquired a populist tint as the previously
marginalized popular masses began to be represented for the first time as the true
source of political legitimacy. But before we can attempt to understand the emergence
of a different kind of nationalist discourse in the 1930s, we need to take into account the
processes that had transformed Colombia in the intervening years.
In political terms the principle of minority representation lasted until the end o f
what has come to be known as the Conservative hegemony in 1930.11 This accord,
implemented in order to avoid a repeat of the Thousand Day War, helped to limit elite
conflict, and although the ideology of Catholic Conservatism remained in the ascendant
the discourse of the ruling party moved towards a more technocratic form of
desarrollismo , summed up by Pedro Nel Ospinas dictum: Colombia necesita un
gerente . During the 1920s, however, the rivalry between Liberals and Conservatives
was complicated by the development of new discursive strategies that tried to capture
the allegiance of a number of emergent socio-economic groups.
10 R ecognition of the contingent nature of the nation is a feature of Spanish American nationalistdiscourse. Thus to envision secession has remained a possibility in some Spanish American contexts, asin the recent examples of the state of Zulia in Venezuela and Santa Cruz in Bolivia, though it has yet to become a reality. Though the nation in Western Europe is just as much a product of contingent needs andconfigurations of power, its origins are more deeply buried, and the nationalist mystique has taken adeeper hold.11
Article four of the reform act of 1905 stated that En toda eleccin popular que tenga por objetoconstituir corporaciones pblicas y en el nombramiento de Senadores, se reconoce el derecho derepresentacin de las minoras, y la ley determinar la manera y trminos de llevarlo a efecto.
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Indeed, Colombias poli tical environment at the populist moment cannot be
understood without a consideration of the ways in which capitalist growth began to
transform physical and social space, creating new forms of regional identity that were
nonetheless interpreted in national terms. At the beginning of the twentieth century
Colombia was by any reckoning amongst the weakest states in the region. War had
devastated its already fragile economy, in particular the centers of coffee production in
the Santanderes, and with its four million inhabitants still overwhelmingly dedicated to
working the land, it was one of the most isolated territories in the Americas, especially
in terms of its relationship to international capital. The poorly integrated local
economies of its diverse regions attracted a tiny percentage of British and US
investment in the region, while local exports accounted for only two percent of the Latin
American total (Palacios 94 p. 74).12
The beginnings of change were driven by the desire to improve communications
between small economic areas. During RafaelReyes presidency Bogot was linked to
the Magdalena, the main communication route, through the Girardot railway line and
several hundred miles of roads were built.13 In the years following 1910, however,
coffee production expanded rapidly and by the 1920s was the principal motor of
economic growth. Exports doubled and by 1924 accounted for eighty percent of the
countrys total export revenue, which by this time was six times that of 1898. 14
Production of bananas and oil, two industries dominated by foreign interests, also
increased, while the growth of local manufacturing, especially in textiles, led to the
formation of a small urban working class in Medelln, Barranquilla and Bogot. The
Banco de la Repblica , the countrys first modern cent ral bank, was set up in 1923.
12 The figures for British and US investments were 0.5 and 1.5 percent respectively.13
For tables on the growth of the total amount of railway and road building done in the first 30 years ofthe 20th century, see Urrego 2004, pp. 91-94.14For coffee figures see Kalmanovitz p. 210 and Bushnell pp.155 and169.
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Something approaching a small scale modern economy was beginning to emerge,
though it remained highly localized and poorly integrated.
This period of economic growth was boosted by the ratification of the Panama
indemnity offered by the US in 1922, which meant that the state was finally able to get
the loans needed for investment in infrastructure.15 The administration of Conservative
president Pedro Nel Ospina almost doubled the railway network (to 2,434 kilometers)
and built many more roads. Even so, the main form of transport from the Caribbean to
the interior continued to be the steam ships that travelled between the coast and
Girardot. Revenue continued to be a problem because, windfalls apart, most of the
states fiscal income still came from customs duties. Income tax, introduced in 1919,
was largely symbolic and education and health, the sectors most often funded through
this kind of taxation, were certainly not priorities. Indeed, basic literacy was low and by
1930 life expectancy was still a mere thirty-four years (Bushnell 167).
Nonetheless, these economic changes brought with them new demographic realities.
In the years between 1900 and 1930 the population doubled, reaching around nine
million inhabitants. By 1925, nearly a quarter of these lived in cities, and the urban
population was growing twice as fast as that of rural areas (Bejarano 205). A gradual
incorporation of voters into formal democracy took place as these processes of
urbanization increased citizenship. In 1914, a mere 7% of the total population
participated in the presidential elections; for the congressional elections of 1949 this
figure reached 29%, in spite of the upheavals of La Violencia (Palacios 125). The nature
of participation in the Colombian polity was changing, and as it did so the nation began
to be articulated in different ways in political discourse.
15 $10M was received in 1923, $5M in 1924, $5M in 1925 (Bejarano, 2007, p.223).
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From the perspective of what might be considered the classic theories of nationalism
this is entirely predictable. Indeed, the period between 1930 and 1946, commonly
known as the Liberal republic , could be thought of as the Gellnerian moment, the
period when the citizen mobilizing and citizen influencing state recognized the need to
homogenize and rationalize society in order to meet the demands of the booming coffee
economy. Though in the Colombian case linguistic standardization, a key aspect of the
basic Gellnerian thesis, was largely unnecessary due to the acculturation, assimilation or
destructionof the countrys largest indigenous groups during the colonial period , the
educational reforms of the thirties, which gave a leading role to the state rather than the
church, and the setting up of the Radiodifusora Nacional in 1940, can be taken as
examplesof the states desire to reach previously forgotten or marginalized sections of
the population and turn them into literate and productive citizens. Indeed, 1938 saw the
setting up of the Academia de la lengua with theslogan la lengua es la patria .
Certainly, there is a sense in which it could be claimed that the Colombian state as we
understand it today comes into being during this period. However, the hegemonic
narrative of Colombian nation building presupposes that state, territory and nation were
and are synonymous. But was it really anation that was emerging? Though the
institutional framework of the state was being modernized, and significant resources
were being dedicated to the ideological work of promoting a sense ofnational
cohesion, what was actually happening was that the capitalist developments of this
period were creating space in characteristic fashion. Just as small industrialized areas in
northern England, often no more than twenty or thirty miles across, revolutionized the
hierarchy of socio-economic space in nineteenth century England, what today is known
as the eje cafetero (the coffee axis) became the hub of the Colombiannational
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and replaced by the Communist party in 1930. Indeed, the 1920s was characterized by
what Palacios describes asan ambiente nacional de agitacin ideolgica as radical
political movements began to make an increasing impact in Colombia. Socialist,
communist and syndicalist ideals began to spread throughout the country, not only
amongst industrial workers but also amongst the small scale capitalists, sharecroppers
and seasonal workers of the coffee regions. Organized workers and peasants began to
force concessions fromhacendados and landlords, and from local and particularly
central government. By 1919, for example, the right of association of employees had
been accepted, as was the right to strike, while peasant leagues were established in
Cundinamarca, the capitals rural hinterland (Kalmanovitz p. 90).
The struggles over land here and in adjoining Tolima department began to break up
the hacienda system, forcing it to abandon such pre-capitalist practices as requiring
payment for land usage to be made through labouron the owners estate. They proved
surprisingly successful in challenging thelarge landowners illegal acquisition of public
lands (Bejarano 257) and the role played in them by the Communist Party, the Liberal
Party and Jorge Elicer Gaitns short -lived Unin de la Izquierda Revolucionaria
(UNIR) lent them increasing prominence. Elsewhere, the measure of the success of
local peasant movements is apparent in the fact that small scale coffee production
increased dramatically throughout this period, a development that contributed to the
coffee boom because of the greater productivity of these smaller holdings.
However, the enduring symbol of the growing demands from below was the strike in
the banana growing region around Santa Marta, where workers in the United Fruit
plantations protested against their treatment by the company. The American company
had turned the area into a private fiefdom, taking the best land and dislodging
Colombiancolonos , and gaining complete control of transport and policing by bribing
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local officials. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the slogan that animated
the strikers por el obrero y por Colombia sought to lend universal validity to
their particular demands by appealing to economic nationalism against foreign interests
(Palacios 1994, p.119). The workers made full use the resources that nationalist
discourse had made available and combined them with a discourse that emphasized
social emancipation, revolution and anti-imperialism. Though the strike was vigorously
repressed and ended in the infamous massacre in the town of Cinaga in December
1928, the assertiveness of peasant organizations became increasingly apparent.
Unemployed workers began to occupy United Fruit land, calling themselvescolonos . In
a petition to the administration in Bogot in 1930, they claimed the right to be granted
land because we are colonos [...] and therefore are, according to the Minister, the first
citizens of Colombia; and also because we believe that now is the time the public land
laws must be put into effect so that they no longer constitute ornamental illusions for the
poor and for the North American imperialist capitalists real and effective means for the
easy accumulation of property. 16 Throughout Colombia peasant organizations not only
adopted a legalistic approach to land struggle in an attempt to turn the existing
institutional framework to their advantage but frequently claimed that their occupation
of unused lands was in the national interest (Legrand 1986, p.119).
However, that these events became a wider symbol of state repression was partly the
work of a young Liberal lawyer, Jorge Elicer Gaitn, described by Palacios as the
capitalizador de la masacre de las bananeras (Palaicos 1994, p.122).Gaitns
withering denunciations of the treatment of the striking workers indicate the direction in
which the more radical sectors of the Liberal party were moving. Indeed, the failure of
socialist movements to win mass supportthrough a discourse of the national popular
16 Archivo Nacional de Colombia, Bogot Ministerio de Industrias, Correspondencia de Baldos, volume72, folio 293.
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At this point there is a need to reflect on the meaning of the term pueblo and the
implications of its use. As we saw in Chapter One, in the early declarations of
independence and in documents such as the constitution of 1863 the pueblo was
invoked to establish the idea of popular sovereignty. The concept of the pueblo as a
source of legitimacy was therefore already firmly installed in the constitutional
discourse of the Colombian state, though it was largely superseded in the 1886
constitution by the termnacin , which nonetheless meant something similar. This view
of the people sees it as the abstract source of what Bernard Yack has described as that
constituent sovereignty which is unlimited and always remains with the people,
understood as the whole body of a territorys legal inhabitants (Yack p.519, italics
mine). Furthermore, Yack notes
the people exists by right rather than by custom or consciousness raising. To assert or deny itsexistence is a matter of ideology rather than a matter of sociology. It exists as long as one believes in a particular theory of political legitimacy. Those who deny its existence are guiltyof an injustice rather than a misdescription. Perhaps that is why we talk so little about 'people- building,' in spite of all our talk about 'nation-building. (Yack, p.521)
Almost everyone, by definition, forms part of this sort ofpeople hence Yack s
point about the strangeness ofthe idea of people - building, a term so inclusive that it
is, in effect, politically inert. But the populist moment, while continuing to invoke the
concept of popular sovereignty, articulates the people as part of a fundamental political
antagonism which, again by definition, cannot be so all embracing. In this context the
people is constructed in opposition to theoligarchy and thereforepeople building is
the political task par excellence , as Ernesto Laclau has shown so clearly (Laclau 2005).
This task necessarily involves the articulation of relations of equivalence, conceived of
as bonds of solidarity, which unite the diverse claims of particular groups into universal,
populist demands. In Colombia, workers, peasants, the urban unemployed and the petty
bourgeoisie would soon be invoked in this construction of a peopleagainst an oligarchy
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that would be presented as fundamentally non-national precisely because of its failure to
show solidarity.
However, official discourse of the mid 1930s understood the popular as a political
force that had to be channeled and tamed as well as mobilized. The fear of unleashing
the unruly mob was never far away and it was the Liberal tribunes, therefore, who were
to represent the popular will and speak the peoples words . This substitution had the
advantage of hiding the fact that the fragile unity of national popular discourse was
grafted onto the enduring colonial imaginary of racial, regional and social apartheid that
made the attempts to represent political antagonism as a simple conflict between the
people and the oligarchy difficult to maintain. Populist discourse had to skirt around
this issue, or else completely avoid it, which resulted in a constant tension between the
reality of socio-racial apartheid and the claims of what was to become official rhetoric.
The Liberal party finally returned to power with the election of Olaya Herrera in
1930. However, the new currents in political discourse were only to occupy center stage
with the election of his successor, Alfonso Lpez Pumarejo. Lpez was elected without
opposition from the Conservative party, which had not only failed to resolve the internal
divisions that had allowed the Liberals to achieve power in 1930 but also claimed that
the likelihood of a fair election was slim. The increasing polarization of the supporters
of the two main parties meant that the relative peace that had been established during
the years of Conservative hegemony was under threat and in certain areas the conditions
that led tola Violencia were already present. Yet Lpezs election in 1934 seemed to
usher in a new era in Colombian politics. The political rhetoric associated with his
programme of government, which was presented as the Revolucin en marcha ,
constitutes a major departure in ways of talking about the national community. It was
the first time that a governing party invoked the needs and desires of the ordinary
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people, which now explicitly included peasants and workers, as a fundamental source of
legitimacy.
An examination of Lpezs ina ugural address allows us an insight into a form of
political discourse that was not quite populist in nature. It focuses openly on the
rhetorical changes taking place within Colombian political discourse, thus drawing
attention to the ways in which the more radical faction within Liberalism was self-
consciously re-inventing itself in order to appeal to subaltern groups that were
beginning to understand themselves as part of a class whose interests were
fundamentally opposed to those of the elites. Even though the elevated tone reminds us
that these words are uttered by a doctor , a member of the educated elite, the shift in
political discourses center of gravity is immediately apparent. Rather than simple
economic development and modernisation, or even national pride, it is social change
and the needs of what Lpez calls the popular masses that take center stage.
In his preamble, Lpez claims that his election represents the end of la primera etapa
de un ambicioso proceso de movilizacin intelectual de las masas populares que ha
principiado a sacudir la estructura ideolgica de la Repblica con vigor, y ha creado
una necesidad de cambio social como quizs no se sinti tan intensa en otra poca de
la vida colombiana (Lpez, p. 111). The appearance of concepts such as ideology is in
itself evidence of the inroads made by discourses of the left into contemporary political
common sense. The same goes for the revitalizationof the people as the popular
masses, no longer the co wed and passive lower orders scorned by Arango but the
proper subject of a more democratic politics. Indeed, the slow opening up of
Colombias political system is apparent in the fact that the majority are now significant
precisely because they are a majority. But rather than presenting the logic of democratic
politics as a series of conflicts and negotiations between a wide range of political
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interests and identities, Lpez portrays this majority as a monolithic entity that is
representative of the countrys true being. Thus he claims that it is not just some sectors
of the population but [e]l pas entero that is conmovido por una aspiracin
revolucionaria .
Numerous anxieties and inconsistencies are apparent, however. The populist logic of
Lpezs discourse recognizes that it is no longer enough for politicians simply to make
decisions on the basis of what they think is good for the patria . Instead, they have to
identify and then embody the popular will. Yet the changes that have occurred and are
yet to come, profound though they are, are presented as originating within the political
class itself. Lpez claims that it is the Liberal government that has overseen the
intellectual mobilization of the people, thus starting the process through which the
masses supposedly emerge into national history. Even as it recognizes the legitimacy of
the popular desire for change, therefore, the speech articulates the relationship between
the people and the party in a paternalistic way.This is entirely in keeping with Lpezs
own understanding of the people, whom he once described as pueblo dcil y firme, leal
y altivo, al que se le ha prohibido hasta ahora el ejercicio de una varonil y nobilsima
inclinacin de su nimo: la poltica (Lpez, p.77). The opinions of the populist leaders,
then, were not so very different fromArangos view of the people as obedient, silent
and suffering
There is another deeply contradictory aspect to all of this, however. In spite of the
paternalism that stresses popular passivity and loyalty to the party, Lpez is concerned
to channel collective desire so that it does not get out of control. In spite of the
revolutionary rhetoric, therefore, the leaders appeal to the people is full of calls for
patience, discipline and, above all, respect for existing democratic institutions:
Y el pueblo, enterado de que no lo invitar nunca a abandonar la paz, ni a salirse de lasnormas que le dieron sus legisladores y constituyentes, no encuentra obstculo para localizar
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en el Gobierno prximo las esperanzas de transformacin que otros le ofrecen vanamente conla promesa de romper las instituciones, quebrantando el sistema democrtico para sustituirlo por la dictadura de las minoras arbitrarias, y abriendo una solucin de continuidad en latradicin que ms nos enorgullece desde que las heroicas espadas de la ltima guerra civil seguardaron silenciosamente sobre el puente delWisconsin . (Lpez, p.111)
Through the reference to theWisconsin , the US warship on which the treaty that
ended the Thousand Day War was signed, Lpez tries to link contemporary popular
demands with the Liberal struggles of the past. The Liberal party makes its claim on
popular loyalty by suggesting that the cause of change is best served by an approach
which recognizes the achievements and, crucially, the legitimacy of past
legislators and delegates. The norms they produced are to be observed, and those
who would advocate a complete transformation of the political system are to be resisted
because they threaten to undermine the democratic institutions of the state. Thus while
Lpez does not mention Marxism by name in this extract he clearly has socialist
ideology in mind as a rival for the peoples affections. He therefore issues a warning:
though these groups offer profound change a real revolution one might be tempted
to say the price is the end of democracy and the dictatorship of the few. Ultimately,
then, the Revolucin en marcha reveals its reformist rather than revolutionary slant. The
people may have been recognized by the architects of the system, and invited to
participate more fully in it, but the system itself is not to be tampered with. Most
importantly of all, it is herethat Lpezs discourse veers shies away from populism
proper in so far as it stops short of attacking the reigning political order. It fails to reach
that certain point at which, in the words of Ernesto Laclau,what were requestswithin
institutions became claims addressedto institutions, and at some stage they became
claimsagainst the institutional order (Laclau 2006 p. 655).
However, populist discourse is only able to overcome the obvious heterogeneity of
the popular masses and construct an idea of the people through a relationship of
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equivalence that opposes them to the oligarchy and thereby lends them their political
identity. Were the oligarchy to disappear, the category of the people would collapse
under the weight of its own internal inconsistencies. When it comes to examining the
causes of social inequality, therefore, the oligarchy is blamed for the monstrous
injustices that weigh on Colombian society: [l]as monstruosas injusticias que pesan
sobre el conjunto social colombiano no estn todas protegidas por la ley, y muchas de
ellas habran tenido remedio si no se hubiese dado una interpretacin oligrquica a
unas instituciones en cuya letra no podra haber perdurado una aberracin contra la
voluntad de la Nacin entera (Lpez, p. 113). Even here, however, the implication is
that the sufferings of the people are the result of the Conservatives perverse
manipulation of republican institutions that are fundamentally just in their inspiration.
Indeed, the populist rewriting of national history as a communitys journey towards
development, equality and a respected place in the family of nations seems full of
emancipatory potential. At the same time, however, this re-fashioning of the national
narrative connects the people to the nation as an ideal to be lived up to, as something
above and beyond the popular. Thus Lpez speaks of:
[t]odo lo que significaba haber contribuido decididamente a la libertad de cinco naciones; el
buen xito de las armas colombianas cada vez que fueron probadas, en los tiempos en que era
aquella la suprema demostracin de vitalidad nacional; y, ms tarde, el florecimientouniversitario y acadmico que asombraba a nuestros vecinos con la constante renovacin de
nuestros hombres de letras; la admiracin que causaba en el Exterior el progreso de nuestras
instituciones polticas, y hasta la forma heroica con que ellas eran defendidas o atacadas en la
tribuna, en el Parlamento o en los campos de batalla; todo esto se fue perdiendo en un largo
proceso de egosmo nacional, fomentado por gobernantes sin ambiciones que slo deseaban
resolver sus problemas internos y que no lograban acomodar su espritu a la idea de buscar
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para Colombia un puesto de mayor influencia, de ms prestigio, en el concurso de las
naciones latinoamericanas.
Lpezs rhetoric suggests that national history is a fundamentally glorious narrative in
which corrupt individuals have played the role of villains. The early heroes are mythic,
aristocratic idols, impossibly noble, while the nation itself is a source of immense pride.
The mystique of the nation, therefore, is inscribed in the rhetoric of the populist
moment, as popular affect is simultaneously stimulated and nationalised. Thus the
nation here is not only as aneffect of hegemony (Beverley 1999) but a crucial tool in
establishing it.
Indeed, the discursive strategy of the Revolution on the March was to connect popular
emotion to the nation in order to avoid radical institutional change. There were some
obvious reasons for this, foremost amongst them the Liberal partys investment in the
status quo . But the rhetoric of the Revolucin en marcha was also constrained by a
distrust of the very affect on which populism thrives. The references to democracy,
discipline and order that pepper Lpezs speech may have been part of an attempt to
allay the fears both of the Conservatives and of the powerful conservative sectors within
his own party, but they represent more than a tactical ploy. Though Lpezs text claims
that there is una dcil y espontnea facilidad en la democracia colombiana para hacer
revoluciones sin violencia, sin imposicin, sin alterar el ritmo legal y la estabilidad
republicana (Lpez, p. 111).it also recognises that [n]uestra democracia se resiente
todava de un apasionamiento que, cuando interviene en la propaganda de las ideas,
las enaltece, y enaltece a quienes las profesan con vigorosa insistencia; pero que se
desva frecuentemente a buscar en los atributos humanos razones para la admiracin o
el odio frenticos . (Lpez, p. 112)
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A call to heed the dangers of extreme forms of partisan politics was understandable in
the light of the increasing levels of inter-party violence in some parts of the country. Yet
there is also a development here of nineteenth century fears of inflaming passions that
are a threat precisely because they are popular. The suggestion, hidden behind the coded
references to ideas, is that while the civilized elites are capable of managing political
rivalry, the ignorant masses are likely to turn to violence. The difference, however, is
that by the thirties these ltimas capas de la sociedad can no longer be so completely
ignored.
The Liberal project envisaged by the Revolution on the March, then, has as much to
do with taming the passions as it does with exciting them. Populist love implies the
existence of its opposite, a destructive hate for the oligarchy that needs to be
domesticated within a civilized democratic framework. The populist discourse of the
thirties and forties contends that the existing institutional order is capable of delivering a
just society, provided a Liberal government is in control of the executive. It appeals to
the people and demands that they hand over sovereignty to their leaders, thus
simultaneously invoking and neutering the proposed revolution.
Even this reformist approach, however, provoked tremendous resistance. The
Revolution on the March lasted barely two years, reaching its peak in 1936, after
which a revolt by moderates within his own party led him to announce a pause,
especially in the light of the success of this tendency in the 1937 elections to the
Chamber of Representatives, at which point Lpez offered to resign (Palacios and
Safford: 294). However, in 1936, the key year of populism in power, a series of
measures were introduced which established the legacy of this brief moment of
reformist zeal. The now legendary Agrarian Reform law was passed.17 The government
17 Increased taxation on uncultivated lands and the acceptance of possession as the determining principlewhen it came to granting title to the peasantry remodelled the relationship between the state, the
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also encouraged workers to unionize and theConfederacin de Trabajadores
Colombianos was duly set up in 1936. The same year brought significant amendments
to the constitution, as the Liberals attempted to break out of the authoritarian
straitjacket of 1886. With the abolition of the literacy requirement for voting, universal
male suffrage was finally established in Colombia. Article seven of law one of August
the fifth, 1936 stated baldly that Son ciudadanos los colombianos varones mayores de
veintin aos , replacing article fifteen of the 1886 constitution which had stipulated
that in order to be considered a citizen an individual needed some profesin, arte u
oficio, o [] ocupacin lcita u otro medio legtimo y conocido de subsistencia .18 A
more complicated amendment stated that property rights were no longer paramount but
had to be weighed against social rights and obligations.19 Furthermore, the primordial
role of the church in state education was removed. From now on it was the state, rather
than the church, that was to assume responsibility in this area.
As the Revolution on the March stalled, the discourse of populism radicalised. To
understand this, we need to consider the fate of populism after the initial failure of the
Revolution on the March. This brings us to perhaps the most mythologized figure in
twentieth century Colombian history, Jorge Elicer Gaitn. Bushnells claim that it was
Gaitn who made the term oligarchy a household word in Colombia, and a bad word at
that may be overstated but it indicates how populist currents coalesced around the
impoverished rural majority and the immensely privileged landowning class. While not quite being ableto cast itself as the defender of the dispossessed, the state had established its role as mediator in ruraldisputes and as final arbiter when it came to adjudicating between conflicting claims to agricultural land.18 Though it had been enacted for the first time in the 1850s, the bill was swiftly rescinded (Bushnell, p.189).19 Article ten therefore states that Se garantizan la propiedad privada y los dems derechos adquiridoscon justo ttulo, con arreglo a las leyes civiles, por personas naturales o jurdicas, los cuales no pueden serdesconocidos ni vulnerados por leyes posteriores. Cuando de la aplicacin de una ley expedida pormotivos de utilidad pblica o inters social, resultaren en conflicto los derechos de particulares con lanecesidad reconocida por la misma ley, el inters privado deber ceder al inters pblico o social.
La propiedad es una funcin social que implica obligaciones.Por motivos de utilidad pblica o de inters social definidos por el legislador, podr haber expropiacin,mediante sentencia judicial e indemnizacin previa.
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figure of the Liberalcaudillo (Bushnell, p. 198). As we mentioned earlier, Gaitn, the
son of the owner of a second hand bookshop in Bogot, first came to political
prominence in the aftermath of the infamous massacre of striking workers in 1928.
After his election to the Chamber of Representatives in March 1929, his investigation of
the events in Cinaga and subsequent passionate interventions on the subject in the
Chamber of Representatives gained him a significant following amongst the radical
sectors of the Liberal Party.
Gaitns ideas are perhaps most succinctly resumed in El pas poltico y el pas
nacional . By 1945, when this speech was delivered in the Chamber of Representatives,
Lpez Pumarejo was about to resign from his second presidency in the wake of an
attempted coup. Within a year, the Conservatives would be back in power. In less than
three, Gaitn would be dead and La Violencia would be under way. At this point,
however, the populist agenda seemed to be once more in the ascendant. Gaitanista
discourse is important because it claims that the Liberal political class is as culpable in
the failure of the nation as the Conservatives. It seeks to undo the basic antagonism
between the parties, the unthinking and irrational allegiances that establish the divide
between red and blue as a hereditary passion rather than a programmatic divide.
In El pas poltico y el pas nacional the split between the people and an ol igarchy
whose lack of vision and selfishness are supposedly responsible for the nations ills is
expressed very clearly. The passion that was missing in Lpez Pumarejos attenuated
form of populist discourse returns here as Gaitn launches a coruscating assault on the
political class. The speech, however, initially focuses on the Liberal leaders concerns
about the direction being taken by the national project. Setting out the problems that
afflict Colombia at the end of the Second World War, Gaitn adopts the uncontroversial
position that modernizing development is the key to prosperity. However, the distinctive
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themes of the speech begin to emerge with the suggestion that before real progress can
be made another more pressing issue has to be dealt with. This is the problem of the
political culture that is debilitating the nation.
Gaitns famous division between the political and the national moves boldly in
the direction of the national popular by privileging the nation, that is to say, the
people, over politics, the corrupt politicians who fight to control the state . Those who
make up the national country want jobs, better living standards, education and health
care, whereas the political country, made up of a parasitic oligarchy, has no other goal
than to perpetuate itself in power. Politics here connotes politiquera , the pursuit of
power and influence rather than concrete policy goals.20 Thus while the people
supposedly have a collective agenda that focuses on sus problemas econmicos, en sus
problemas sociales, en el enriquecimiento de la agricultura, en la bondad de los
campos, en la defensa del parto de sus mujeres, en la curacin de la sfilis, en la lucha
contra el alcoholismo, en la destruccin de los parsitos, en la campaa contra del
paludismo, en la defensa del hombre y la grandeza de Colombia que se asientan sobre
la salud, la inteligencia y la capacidad del colombiano , the other group, the political
class no piensa en esas cosas [] tiene como razn vital de su actividad, de su pasin,
de su energa, los votos ms o los votos menos; la firma de fulano o el escamoteo de la
de zutano, la habilidad salvadora de un fraude, la promesa de una embajada, el halago
del contrato, en una palabra el solo y simple juego de la mecnica poltica que todo lo
acapara ! The Liberal leader ends this part of his sp eech by saying that Colombia is
actually two countries: [e]n Colombia hay dos pases: el pas poltico que piensa en
sus empleos, en su mecnica y en su poder, y el pas nacional que piensa en su trabajo,
en su salud, en su cultura, desatendidos por el pas poltico (Gaitan p.162) The
20 A term much used in recent Colombian politics, but with a long pedigree stretching back to thenineteenth century. Laureano used it frequently when disparaging his opponents.
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implication is that one of these must be destroyed if the nation is to truly come to its
own.
This antagonism runs right through society dividing it into two warring camps. Gaitn
develops his argument by claiming that the system of government that pertains in
Colombia is oligarchic, a form of political control that is not only el dominio de la
plutocracia but best defined as la concentracin del poder total en un pequeo grupo
que labora para sus propios intereses, a espaldas del resto de la humanidad (Gaitn
163). In a coruscating assault both on the privileges of the elites and on the practices of
many of those listening to him in the chamber, he treats his audience to a satirical sketch
of the contemporary political scene, which he divided into a number of political types.
The first category is made up of the political bosses, in turn subdivided into those who
lust for power and those who hunger after wealth, unos que no quieren sino el dominio,
el IMPERIUM en el sentido romano de la palabra, que su voz sea la voz del amo sin la
cual no se puede mover ninguna de las actividades colombianas, and others who
aspiran a que todas las riquezas, la especulacin, los contratos, los negocios, sean
para la camarilla afortunada (Gai tn 163) The middle-men follow, intelligent men
with secretarys souls ( almas de secretario ), who are well aware that they have no
vocation for the service of the people and who dedicate themselves instead to fawning
on the party leaders ( [s]aben que no han logrado por s mismos la aptitud de vivir para
su pueblo; reducen todo a rendir pleitesa a quienes los dirigen ). In third place come
the tentacles of the political machine, the fixers who insinuate themselves into every
nook and cranny of political life and make surethat the electoral scam is arranged to
their masters benefit ( los brazos que penetr[a]n a todos los lugares, que [van] desde
el ambiente municipal al barrio, a la asamblea, al comit; que atiendan al tinglado
electoral para beneficio del pas poltico , Gaitn 164). In return they will be treated
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with exaggerated and undeserved respect. Part of their reward will be to be accorded the
title doctor, though they will not have earned it ( [n]o tendrn ttulo pero sern
doctores Gaitn 164).
The entirety of this corrupt political establishment is described as having turned its
back on the nation. It now situates itself de espalda a los intereses de la nacionalidad .
Here, nationhood resides squarely in the people. In fact, the people are the nation, as
this term designatesall of those who are moved by idealism ( grandes ideales ) or feel
passion for things that have historic perspective ( perspectiva histrica ), those who
understand that el hombre no se aferra con empeo sino a sus ideas, sus amores, su
hogar, su pedazo de tierra; a sus tumbas y sus escuelas, a aquello que le da razn a su
vida (Gaitn 163 /4). The monolithic, idealized and ultimately abstract nature of this
people -nation stands out, along with the fact that the realization of the populist utopia
is blocked by an enemy that under this scheme can only be thought of as non-national.
Populism, in other words, claims the nation against its enemies, whom it represents as
renegades.
Within this populist nationalism is that the people are not a cultural unit but a political
one. Popular identity is constituted on the one hand by a monolithic popular will
understood here as a desire for progress and the struggle against a common enemy.
The question of exactly what constitutes popular identity, however, remains a problem
because even within gaitanismo the modernizingand whitening paradigm of
contemporary common sense is still clearly present. Although members of his own
party called him el negro Gaitn, a nickname that used race to refer to Gaitns
humble origins (hewas also known by the elite sections of his own party as The
Madman and The Idiot), the Liberal caudillo was not about to use this social identity
to make political capital (unlike Hugo Chvez today, for example, who openly states
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that he is indio y negro ). Gaitn may famously have identified himself as the
incarnation of people ( Yo no soy un hombre; soy un pueblo ) but he had no intention of
identifying himself with the culture of the people. He was thoroughly steeped in the
ideology that saw popular customs and practices as backward. As mayor of Bogot he
banned the wearing by municipal employees of theruana , the woolen poncho of the
peasantry, andalpargatas , the rough sandals worn by the poor. Even for the arch
populist Gaitn, it seems, development and progress were at odds with the cultural
practices of the pueblo . Even though political capital could potentially have been
accrued by appropriating these humble forms of dress as symbols of the people, and
indeed of the nation, the populist leader remains aloof, culturally on the side of the
elites. The symbolic capital of thecaudillo , which resides partly in his ability to speak
to the elites in their own language, also separates him from those to whom he referred as
the forgotten people of Colombia.
Fear and Love: Populism Meets the Colonial Imaginary
A description of the 1936 May Day demonstrations in Bogot by the Liberal writer
and journalist Armando Solano, one of the more radical Liberals of his day, illustrates
the ambiguities of the relationship between educatedlopistas and the pueblo that they
claimed to represent.21 His treatment of the spectacle of thousands of people marching
through the Plaza Bolvar in Bogot on May Day 1936, with its barely disguised
mixture of fascination and disquiet, brings to mind both the hysterical enthusiasm
elicited by the Nazi gatherings at Nuremburg and the near panic caused amongst the
elites by the sight of popular mobilization, reminiscent of the grande peur described by
21 Author of La melancola de la raza indgena and founder of the influential journalSbado .
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nineteenth century mass psychologists. Emotion, politically advantageous when
tempered by discipline but perilous when uncontrolled, provides the central axis along
which Solano organizes his account. Thus he not only describes the tumultuous scenes
he witnessed but reflects on his own feelings in the face of this outpouring of politically
inflected affect.
Having set the tone by telling us that Colombias young democracy is profundamente
emotiva y emocionada , Solano reinforces this sense of deep emotional commitment so
that a breathless sense of awe in the face of unfettered populist passion emerges. At the
same time, however, he also attempts to position himself, and by implication his
readers, as a thinking man, as a rational rather than an emotional subject. This is partly
an attack on Conservative obscurantism but it also foregrounds the problems posed by
the affect that pervades the contemporary political world.
From the outset it is clearly a contradictory approach. As he establishes what is to be
understood as the overall meaning of the scene, Solano claims that [a]sistimos a uno de
los ms bellos espectculos que le sea dado contemplar al patriota y el hombre de
pensamiento .22 Emotion therefore sneaks in at the very beginning as our thinking
subject is also a (sentimental) patriot. In any case, the sheer theatricality of the report
undermines any pretensions of cool rationality as it goes on to describe [e]se oleaje
humano, apretado, palpitante, vibrante, loco de entusiasmo, que desfil frente al
presidente Lpez aclamndolo con delirio . Indeed, Solano expressly gives up on the
attempt to capture the scene in words. Rather, he feels that he is engaged in a doomed
attempt to represent the ultimately indescribable spectacle of populist rapture:
Cmo daramos idea justa, representacin grfica y total, de la efusin, de la llama, del
impulso, de la vitalidad desbordante, del ro caudaloso que pasaba lentamente, sonoramente,22 El Tiempo , 3rd of May, 1936, p. 4.
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y no conclua de pasar, trepidante con el clamor glorioso que se alzaba como un trueno
inextinguible que estuviese creando ms anchos horizontes para dilatarse y resonar? No, no es
posible y debemos renunciar a tal empeo.
As he himself begins to feel affected, the author finds t his fervour both attractive
and troubling. He sees its potential to overflow the approved channels and transform
itself into something more threatening, and he therefore feels the need to constantly
reassure himself, and his readers, by underlining the discipline of this human tide:
Qu magnfica, qu formidable, qu ilusionadora manifestacin de potencia, de capacidad, de
fuero y de autodominio. La multitud que desfil para expresarle su apoyo al gobierno y para
exhibir la fuerza indestructible que se opone a la reaccin era toda Bogot, dominaba la
situacin, no hubo mulo ni resistencia posible, hubiera hecho de la ciudad confusa y sumisa,
todo lo que quisiera.
The fact that the city was momentarily at the crowds mercy should not concern us, he
implies, as calm and discipline prevailed. But as Solano begins to describe the various