270 CHAPTER 11 THE TRIUMPH OF NEOCOLONIALISM AND THE LIBERAL STATE, 1870–1900
Colombian Politics and Economy
Dominating the presidency and Congress in 1853,
the Liberals in Colombia authored a new constitu-
tion that provided for universal male suffrage, a
provision that troubled some Liberals, who feared
that illiterate proclerical peasants might vote Con-
servative. As a matter of fact, because in most ar-
eas voters continued to vote the wishes of the local
gamonales, or bosses, the new electoral law did not
signifi cantly change anything.
In economics the Liberals sought a decisive
break with the colonial tradition of restriction and
monopoly. They abolished the state tobacco mo-
nopoly and ceded to the provinces revenues from
tithes (hitherto collected by the state but used for
support of the church), the quinto tax on gold and
other precious metals, and other traditional sources
of national state revenue. The provinces were also
empowered to abolish these taxes. To compensate
for the resulting loss of state revenues, Congress
adopted a tax on individuals.
Having achieved these objectives with artisan
support, the Liberal elite now ignored their allies’
demands for tariff protection. This triggered a new
political crisis in 1854 when a coup, supported by
artisans who formed workers’ battalions to defend
the revolution, briefl y installed General José María
Melo. But Liberal and Conservative generals, put-
ting aside their differences, raised private armies
and defeated Melo in a short campaign. His artisan
allies were imprisoned and three hundred were
deported to Panama. The economic, political, and
military rout of the artisans was complete.
In 1860, Liberals carried their religious and
political reforms to their extreme and logical con-
clusions. They abolished compulsory tithes and
ecclesiastical fueros, suppressed all religious orders,
closed all convents and monasteries, and seized
church wealth. However, the resulting transfer of
massive amounts of church land into private hands
produced little or no change in the land tenure sys-
tem; clerical latifundia simply became lay latifundia,
contributing to a further concentration of landown-
ership. The principal buyers were Liberal merchants,
landowners, and politicians, but Conservatives also
participated in the plunder of church land.
In 1863, Liberal political reform reached its
climax when a new constitution carried the prin-
ciple of federalism to great lengths. The nine sover-
eign states became, in effect, independent nations,
each with its own armed forces and possessing all
the legislative powers not explicitly granted to the
central government, which was made as weak
as possible. The Liberals remained in power until
1885 in a political climate that approximated in-
stitutionalized anarchy, as the central government
was powerless to intervene against the local revo-
lutions that toppled and set up state governments.
The economic movement and its quest for the
export base that could fi rmly integrate Colombia
into the capitalist world economy continued. By the
1870s tobacco exports were down sharply, but this
decline was made up by exporting coffee, quinine,
and other products. Coffee was emerging as the
country’s major export product, but its development
lagged behind that of Brazil, which relied increas-
ingly on European immigrant free labor. In Co-
lombia, coffee production in its principal centers of
Santander and Cundinamarca was based on tradi-
tional haciendas worked by peons and tenants who
lived and labored under oppressive conditions. A
more satisfactory situation existed in Antioquia and
Caldas, characterized by a mix of haciendas with
more enlightened forms of sharecropping and small
holdings, operations marked by high productivity. It
was in these states that the twentieth-century take-
off of the Colombian coffee industry occurred.
The development of coffee as the major export,
the growing ties between foreign and domestic
merchants and coffee planters, and the stimulus
given to trade and speculation by the expropria-
tion of church lands created economic interests
that required a new political model—a strong state
capable of imposing order and creating the rail-
roads and the fi nancial infrastructure needed for
the expansion of the coffee industry. The Liberal
reform had removed many obstacles to capitalist
development but had created others by its federal-
ist excesses. By the early 1880s not only Conserva-
tives but many moderate Liberals were convinced
that political and social stability required the con-
solidation of a centralized nation-state, a project
initiated by Rafael Núñez in 1879.