70 A BRIEF HISTORY OF COLOMBIA
these properties to merchants and large landowners who had ready cash —
making the rich even richer.
Meanwhile, pioneers from Antioquia established homesteads in generally
uninhabited lands in the central cordillera — Antioquians, known as paisas, are
still known for their entrepreneurial spirit. The lands they settled — the
departments of Caldas, Risarlda, Quindio and parts of Tolima — provided for
only the most basic subsistence agriculture until the late nineteenth century,
when it was discovered that their farms were ideal for raising coffee.
For most of the nineteenth century, the country was in a shambles, with
frequent partisan civil wars, local and regional uprisings, and governmental
ineffectiveness — as well as continued economic underdevelopment. The
frequent unrest discouraged international investors, while wealthy Colombians
took advantage of any crop that seemed to have promise as an export. A series
of booms began with tobacco in the 1840s, followed by indigo, cotton (during
the U.S. Civil War), and quinine in quick succession until the 1880s. Most local
merchants and hacienda owners who invested in these booms looked upon
them as get-rich-quick schemes, and without making the proper capital
investments to maintain quality and quantity, boom soon became bust.
Into this situation stepped the dynamic Rafael Núñez, who was elected president
as an "Independent" Liberal with Conservative support in 1884. His government
proclaimed a "Regeneration" and took a pragmatic but authoritarian approach
to organizing the nation, with the goal of setting Colombia on the road to
"progress." In contrast with previous Liberal administrations, the Church was
embraced as an institution that would help unify the nation and control the
masses. A new constitution was written in 1886 — with some modifications, it
remained the law of the land until 1991 — and a strong central government was
set up in Bogotá: the president appointed departmental governors, who in turn
appointed the mayors of the municipalities under their jurisdiction. By
appointing party members all along the executive hierarchy, Conservatives