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Introduction

Patricia Londoño-Vega

in Religion, Society, and Culture in Colombia: Medellín and Antioquia, 1850-1930

This introductory chapter illustrates for Antioquia to what extent men and women of varying social groups intermingled in their daily routines, as well as the ties, frictions, prejudices, ... More

This introductory chapter illustrates for Antioquia to what extent men and women of varying social groups intermingled in their daily routines, as well as the ties, frictions, prejudices, hierarchies, and distinctions that stood between them. It evaluates the factors that narrowed or widened social distances, and the customs, ideas, values, beliefs, and attitudes that mediated between the rich and the poor. In order to explore these topics, the book draws a picture of the entities, groups, and voluntary associations that flourished in those years, congregating a growing number of Antioqueños of all conditions for devotional, philanthropic, educational, and cultural purposes. It also investigates the activities developed by voluntary associations and religious communities using a great variety of sources.Less

Prologue: Antioquia and its People

Patricia Londoño-Vega

in Religion, Society, and Culture in Colombia: Medellín and Antioquia, 1850-1930

This chapter begins by discussing the topography of Antioquia and its divisions. It then talks about the historical demography of the people of Antioquia. It explains that the Indian and the Negroes ... More

This chapter begins by discussing the topography of Antioquia and its divisions. It then talks about the historical demography of the people of Antioquia. It explains that the Indian and the Negroes were some of first settlers of Antioquia. It adds that Englishmen, North Americans, Germans, Spaniards, and Frenchmen, were the most numerous. It narrates that foreigners were hired for the mines of the region. This chapter also examines the occupations and ways of life of the people of Antioquia. It explains that occupation became an identifying factor of the social status in the region. It also analyses the crimes that have occurred in Antioquia.Less

Final Comments

Patricia Londoño-Vega

in Religion, Society, and Culture in Colombia: Medellín and Antioquia, 1850-1930

This chapter begins by discussing that in the recent past, numerous associations bind Antioquian people together across class, promoted either by individual initiative, by the Church, or by the ... More

This chapter begins by discussing that in the recent past, numerous associations bind Antioquian people together across class, promoted either by individual initiative, by the Church, or by the government. It then explains that the dynamism and positive outlook of Antioquia, mirrored in the proliferation of these societies, coincided with the economic expansion of the region. It adds that by the 1920s, the region was the busiest economic nucleus in Colombia, and led the modernisation of the country. It notes that sociability did not abolish class distinctions. It argues that even after facing years of threats posed by the drugs trade and the growth of guerrilla and paramilitary numbers and activity, the Antioquian society demonstrated the degree of resistance and even the capacity to recover. It suggests that the region’s past has played a more important role than is now conventionally accepted in responding to challenges posed by recent difficulties.Less

Resistance and peaces

Josefina Echavarria A.

in In/security in Colombia: Writing Political Identities in the Democratic Security Policy

This chapter is concerned with the analysis of discourses that have emerged in resistance to the Democratic Security Policy (DSP), and argues that the resistance discourses of armed groups reproduce ... More

This chapter is concerned with the analysis of discourses that have emerged in resistance to the Democratic Security Policy (DSP), and argues that the resistance discourses of armed groups reproduce the violent logic of in/security from the margins. It then discusses how those discourses have reworked the very matrix of power relations of the DSP to counter-propose different understandings of peace and in/security. The concept of reading resistance discourses in a contingent way might already be the first entry point for constructing a theoretical frame to investigate discourses contesting the DSP. The DSP discloses the power over life in multiple biopolitical practices. Analysing the nonviolence programme of the Congruent Peace Plan of the Province of Antioquia revealed that qualified state nonviolence does not serve as an alternative to the DSP, but merely as a way of filling in its gaps.Less

Final remarks: in/security, peaces, identities and politics

Josefina Echavarria A.

in In/security in Colombia: Writing Political Identities in the Democratic Security Policy

This chapter highlights how the writing of in/security discloses several notions of peaces that are constituted and constitutive of political identities and imaginaries in the Colombian context. By ... More

This chapter highlights how the writing of in/security discloses several notions of peaces that are constituted and constitutive of political identities and imaginaries in the Colombian context. By recognising the danger of narco-terrorism as posing a vital threat to the Colombian state and its people, the state has been able to reshape its own subjectivity and those of ‘nationals’ and ‘others’. The idealised constructions of identity categories in the Democratic Security Policy (DSP) for state, nationals and others disclosed an understanding of peace, politics and freedoms as postponed. The discourse of the Province of Antioquia had severe limitations. The congruent peace proposed by this state office put forward the limits of qualified state nonviolence. The Paeces del Cauca reject enrolment in the ‘army of good people’, to be ruled according to the in/security concerns of the DSP. The politics of affinity is finally addressed.Less

A Homogeneous, Vigorous, and Well-Formed Population: The Northeast and Antioquia

Nancy P. Appelbaum

in Mapping the Country of Regions: The Chorographic Commission of Nineteenth-Century Colombia

The third chapter is the first of several chapters that focus on the Chorographic Commission’s depictions of particular regions and aspects of New Granada, through which the commission organized the ... More

The third chapter is the first of several chapters that focus on the Chorographic Commission’s depictions of particular regions and aspects of New Granada, through which the commission organized the country’s diversity into ostensibly progressive highland regions and backward lowland regions. The chapter examines the Chorographic Commission’s expeditions during its first three years, from 1850 through 1852, in the northern, largely Andean provinces that soon after became the states of Santander and Boyacá (in the northeast) and Antioquia (in the northwest). The commission represented the inhabitants of each province as both highly diverse and essentially homogeneous. According to Ancízar, a republican mestizo race of granadinos was emerging in the highlands; Indians and blacks were disappearing, absorbed into this new whitened race. In images painted first by Carmelo Fernández and then Henry Price, and in texts authored by Manuel Ancízar and Agustín Codazzi, the population was dissected, depicted, and classified by racial type. Yet, paradoxically, Ancízar and Codazzi also glossed the population of these Andean provinces overall as largely homogeneous and increasingly white.Less

Business History in Colombia

Carlos Dávila

in Business History in Latin America: The Experience of Seven Countries

This chapter deals with the study of business history in Columbia. It presents a survey of the literature on Colombian business history. It explores the number of studies concerning specific aspects ... More

This chapter deals with the study of business history in Columbia. It presents a survey of the literature on Colombian business history. It explores the number of studies concerning specific aspects of the multifaceted business activity of Antioquia, namely colonisation, coffee, industrialisation, and the biographies of businessmen. The economic history and evolution of Viejo Caldas, Santander, Sabana de Bogotá, Valle de Cauca and Atlantic Coast is covered. This chapter shows studies of good quality in several sub–fields of business history in Colombia.Less

Limpieza: The Expenditure of Spectacular Violence

Aldo Civico

in Para-State: An Ethnography of Colombia's Death Squads

The chapter presents the terror strategy used by paramilitaries in Colombia. In particular, it chronicles the takeover of two towns in the subregion of Eastern Antioquia. The paramilitary’s ... More

The chapter presents the terror strategy used by paramilitaries in Colombia. In particular, it chronicles the takeover of two towns in the subregion of Eastern Antioquia. The paramilitary’s spectacular violence is a violence meant to purify, to cleanse. The author chronicles his fieldwork in the town of Granada, for a long time dominated by the guerrillas. The paramilitary penetrated the town one morning, randomly killing several people. The testimony of the people gives tales of terror. A paramilitary explains what the purpose of their social cleansing is.Less

New Experiments in Colonisation, 1666–1673

in Between Resistance and Adaptation: Indigenous Peoples and the Colonisation of the Chocó, 1510–1753

After the expeditions of 1638–1640 failed to bring about the pacification and settlement of the Chocó frontier, the Spanish Crown had to rethink, in Antioquia and Santa Fe, its strategy to colonise ... More

After the expeditions of 1638–1640 failed to bring about the pacification and settlement of the Chocó frontier, the Spanish Crown had to rethink, in Antioquia and Santa Fe, its strategy to colonise the region. Juan Velez de Guevara attributed this failure to advance colonisation to the difficulties he and his men encountered in trying to vanquish the Indians who lived dispersed along the rivers that intersected the Chocó. It took the Spanish Crown more than twenty years to make another attempt to subdue the indigenous peoples of the Chocó and colonise the region. In November 1664, Spain was advised by Don Diego de Egües y Beaumont, the new president of the audiencia of Santa Fe, to resort to a ‘war or conquest’ in order to finally conquer the peoples of the Chocó. This chapter looks at renewed Spanish incursions into the Chocó in 1645–1668 and again in 1669–1673, one from Antioquia and another from Popayán.Less

Resistance and Adaptation under Spanish Rule: The Peoples of Citará, 1700–1750

in Between Resistance and Adaptation: Indigenous Peoples and the Colonisation of the Chocó, 1510–1753

Far from embracing their fate at the hands of the Spanish Crown, Indians in the Chocó continued to mount a challenge to Spanish domination and Christian evangelisation, as well as to protect their ... More

Far from embracing their fate at the hands of the Spanish Crown, Indians in the Chocó continued to mount a challenge to Spanish domination and Christian evangelisation, as well as to protect their ethnic interests, identity, and cohesion. To escape Spanish reprisals in the aftermath of the Citará rebellion, many Indians set up runaway communities in remote and inaccessible parts of the region long before they were discovered only in the 1710s and 1720s. They also turned to less overt forms of resistance to prevent the Spaniards from fully incorporating them into the society and economy of the frontier region. This chapter, which focuses on the resistance and adaptation of the peoples of Citará to counter Spanish colonisation between 1700 and 1750, begins by looking at the establishment of a foothold for Antioquia in the region of the Murri river by Don Joseph López de Carvajal. It then looks at Spain's failure to convert native peoples to Christianity.Less