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A Land Divided
Colombia is an Andean country and a Caribbean country and an Amazonian country. In addition, like Venezuela, Colombia has interior llanos in the Orinoco River basin. Also, the Cauca and Magdalena Rivers divide Colombia's Andes into large valleys, differing markedly in climate, cuisine, life-ways, and accent. In fact, for its size, Colombia is the most regionalized country in Latin America. Region is a primary reference in Colombian social life. Colombians typically get to know each other by establishing regional origins, each of which has certain behavioral and racial stereotypes attached. Tolimenses, Antioqueños, Vallunos, Costeños, Llaneros, and Pastusos (not nearly an exhaustive list) are expected to speak, look, and act differently from one another. While regional stereotypes exist all over Latin America (and the world) their profusion and intensity in Colombia is unusual. Partly, Colombian geography has created them, but partly each regional identity has itself become a project, elaborated in folklore, reiterated in humor, and reinforced by politics. Colombian political parties, for example, tend to be strongly regionalized. Natural obstacles of transportation have been reinforced by patterns of development. Colombia's highway system, for example, is unimpressive for a country of its considerable resources and technological know-how.
Colombia's other divisions, the ones that have made it the most conflictive country in Latin America today, have some regional dimensions, but mostly they are national problems. Colombia's guerrillas control certain parts of the country, but they remain more or less permanently on the move. Guerrilla forces have many regional fronts, but they respond to an overall national command. The drug mafias have regional bases, but their activities are nationwide. Even the paramilitary forces launched by landowners against the guerrillas have created a national organization. Colombia's divisions are a national problem, too, in another sense. Colombia's national government, its national state, has been historically weak, often unable to command the entire national territory. For a time during the mid 1800s, the country's regions virtually became independent republics in a loose national confederation. This historical background helps explain the proliferation of armed groups able to resist the control of the country's national armies in the late twentieth century.
Topics:
Questions for Analysis and Further Reflection:
- Where does Colombia fit in analytical schemes like sedentary/non-sedentary or core/fringe?
- What territory comprised Gran Colombia at the end of the wars of independence, and what factors led to its division?
- How has the drug trade contributed to Colombia's woes?
Country Bibliography: (Titles with ** are good starting places.)
** Bushnell, David. The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993.
Well-written and thoroughly documented, the chapters are evenly balanced in focus on the colonial period, the nineteenth century, and the twentieth century through the early 1990s. The narrative foregrounds politics and ideologies. There is also a great photo-essay section, a set of comparative population charts (1825—1985), a list of the country's presidents, and a well-organized bibliographical essay.
Kline, Harvey. Colombia: Portrait of Unity and Diversity. Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1983.
Students will find the first half of this concise, reader-friendly book most useful. Kline draws a clear historical picture of Colombia, beginning with land and demographics, moving on to the colonial period and the first century of independence (1830—1930), and finally surveying Colombian history from 1930 to the early 1980s. The second half of the book approaches government institutions, Colombia's economy, and Colombia's foreign relations, from the perspective of the early 1980s. Notes are included at the end of each chapter, and tables, maps, a selected readings list, and an index follow the narrative.
Posada-Carbó, Eduardo. The Colombian Caribbean: A Regional History, 1870—1950. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
A serious scholarly close-up of one of Colombia's most historically important regions, the Caribbean coast. While not written for undergraduates, its introduction, prologue, and conclusion present useful summaries, and its chapter breakdown—"agriculture, cattle, town and countryside, transport," and so on—lends itself to targeted reading. Over two-dozen figures, maps, and tables succinctly present points in the text.
** Safford, Frank and Marco Palacios. Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided Society. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Readable and broad in scope, this book constitutes an especially good starting place for undergraduate research on Colombia. Many tables and maps are included, as well as a bibliography of selected reading and an index. Students with a two-book reading assignment might compare this one to The Making of Modern Colombia.
Maps:
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