Coffee and Conflict in Colombia, 1886-1910

297 Pages·1986·20.915 MB·English

by  Charles W. Bergquist

Coffee and Conflict in Colombia, 1886-1910
To the memory of Julio Bohorquez
and to Joel and Andrea
Coffee and Conflict in
Colombia, 1886-1910
Charles W. Bergquist
Duke University Press Durham 1986
Copyright © 1978, Duke University Press
Allrights reserved
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
on acid-free paper
00
Third printing, 1989.
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 78-59581
ISBN0-8223-0735-9
Contents
List of figures, maps, and tables vi
Preface vii
Acknowledgments ix
Preface to the Paperback Edition xi
Prologue xvii
I Introduction: The Political Economy of
Nineteenth-Century Colombia 3
Part One The Origins of the War
II A Decade of Regeneration, 1886-1896 21
III The Failure of Reform, 1896-1898 51
IV The Liberal Party Drifts Toward War 81
Part Two The War of the Thousand Days
V The Outbreak of War 103
VI The Gentlemen's War 133
VII The Guerrillas' War 157
Part Three The Winning of the Peace
VIII The Eclipse of the Conservative Intransigents 195
IX The Reyes Quinquenio, 1904-1909 225
X The Outline of the New Order 247
Bibliography of sources cited 263
Index 270
List of figures, maps, and tables
Figures
2:1. World coffee prices and Colombian coffee exports, 1875-1900 22
9:1. World coffee prices and Colombian coffee exports, 1900-1925 230
Maps
Colombia: major towns, mountains, and rivers 24
Departments of Colombia, 1886-1904 25
Major coffee zones of Cundinamarca 159
Tables
2:1. Sample purchases of producing coffee trees, southwestern
Cundinamarca, 1893-1898 31
2:2. Average monthly exchange rate of Colombian pesos, 1886-1899 33
3:1. Occupational distribution by party ofpresidential electors and alternates
for the district of Bogota, 1897 70
4:1. Occupations of two hundred sample peace Liberals, Bogota, 1899 94
4:2. Occupations of fifty-six sample war Liberals, Bogota, 1899 94
6:1. Average monthly exchange rate of Colombian pesos, 1899-1902 145
7:1. Occupations of ninety-one Liberal officers captured in Iquira, Tolima,
December, 1900 162
8:1. Prewar and postwar Colombian customs duties 202
9:1. Average monthly exchange rate of Colombian pesos, 1903-1905 234
10:1. Volume and value of Colombian coffee exports, 1900-1925 255
Preface
This is a study of the political implications of the rise of the coffee
export economy in Colombia during the period 1886-1910. It explores
in a detailed way the local impact in Colombia of the powerful
economic, political, and cultural currents generated by the economic
development of the nations of the North Atlantic basin. The study
offers an explanation of Colombian politics and an interpretation of a
crucial transitional period in Colombian history based on a premise
foreign to the bulk of the literature on nineteenth-century Spanish
American politics. It argues that investigation of basic economic
trends and analysis ofelite ideological and economic interests provide
the most fruitful point of departure for an understanding ofColombian
political history at the tum of the century.
The study is divided into an introduction and three main parts. The
Introduction discusses different explanations of Colombian politics
and advances an interpretation of nineteenth-century political insta
bility that is applied in detail in the following chapters. The main
divisions of the study correspond to three distinct phases in the
economic and political life of the nation during the period under in
vestigation. Part One deals with the period 1886-1898 and traces the
origins ofColombia's greatest nineteenth-century civil war (the War of
the Thousand Days, 1899-1902) through an analysis of the political
ramifications of the coffee boom which developed after 1886. Part
Two covers the period of the war and relates both the outbreak of the
fighting, and the nature and long duration of the war, to the political
and social tensions engendered by depression in the coffee economy
after 1898. Part Three deals with the postwar era (1904-1910), a period
marked by limited, then rapid revival and expansion of the coffee
economy and recounts the steps by which coffee interests spawned in
the 1890's and defeated during the war managed to win the peace and
consolidate a new order of political stability and export-oriented
economic development in Colombia by 1910. The first and last chap
ters of the study, which deal respectively with the last half of the
nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, should be
viewed as interpretive essays. Based primarily on secondary sources,
these two chapters attempt to draw out the interpretive threads gener
ated by the detailed analysis which forms the core of the book.
Although the study is primarily concerned with the interaction of
viii
economic and political affairs, I have tried not to ignore the social
dimensions of either. Special attention is focused on the sociology of
political factions, and, as the argument proceeds, some consideration
of the nature of land tenure patterns and labor systems, the influence
of the Church on Colombian life, and the social aspects of political
violence are integrated into the analysis. Most of the material illustra
tive of the way economic and political affairs affected the lives of
common people is drawn from research focused on the politically
important and in many ways representative department of Cun
dinamarca.
Knowledge ofthe history ofColombia in the century following 1850
is still at a rudimentary stage, and, thanks in part to the critics who
have so generously commented on successive drafts of the manu
script, I am well aware ofthe many gaps and weaknesses ofthis study.
While the interpretation advanced in the first and last chapters suffers
most from the underdeveloped state of the field, the analysis pre
sented in the core of the book also needs to be complemented by
regional studies and more attention to the grass-roots dimensions of
the economic, social, and political forces analyzed in the book. At the
very least, I hope this study will help to stimulate that research.
Acknowledgments
My first contact with Colombia came in 1963-1965 when I served as
a Peace Corps volunteer in western Cundinamarca. In July, 1970, I
returned to Colombia to begin fifteen months of research made possi
ble through a grant from the Foreign Area Fellowship Program.
Funding for a year of dissertation write-up time was provided by the
same program, aWetter Fellowship from the Department ofHistory at
Stanford University, and the Committee on International Studies at
Stanford. Since completion ofthe dissertation I have returned twice to
Colombia for additional research thanks to grants from the National
Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society,
and the Duke University Research Council.
Many Colombians aided me in my research. I wish to thank espe
cially Fray Alberto Lee Lopez, archivist at the Colombian Academy of
History, who helped orient and enrich my search for primary docu
ments. At the National Library and Archive the entire staff proved
friendly and helpful, but Sra. Blanca de Armenta's charm made my
early work in the Sala de Investigadores especially enjoyable. Special
thanks go also to Dr. Jaime Duarte French, who, as Director of the
Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, extended me every aid to research in
that modem, pleasant library rich in materials on twentieth-century
Colombia; to the officials at the Archive of the Ministry of Defense
who assisted me in the use ofthe 170 volumes of telegrams relating to
the war housed in that repository; and to the congenial and efficient
staff of the notary public at Fusagasuga, Cundinamarca, who made
work in that warm coffee-country town a pleasure.
The example of a new and dynamic generation of Colombian histo
rians has greatly influenced this work. In their quest for solutions to
the problems of the present, these young historians are overcoming
the formidable material obstacles to serious historical research in an
underdeveloped country and transforming the quality of Colombian
historiography. I have benefited particularly from discussions with
Hector Melo, Marco Palacios, and Hermes Tovar.
In the United States, I would like to thank John Johnson, whose
great humanity, dedication to scholarship, and support over the years
created the environment which made this study possible. David
Bushnell provided encouragement and many constructive suggestions
at a critical stage in the work, as did John TePaske, my colleague at