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David Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself

(Berkeley and London: University of California Press 1993), pp. x + 334,
$42.00, $17.00 pb

Article  in  Journal of Latin American Studies · February 1994

DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X00018927

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Review: [untitled]
Author(s): Marco Palacios
Source: Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Feb., 1994), pp. 237-238
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/157866
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 Reviews 237
control of coffee-producing land adjacent to the new railways, and the destinations
of government subsidies; from competitors on the River Magdalena who
protested because Cisneros undercut them by serving both halves of the river and
lowering fares on cargoes which used his services in both parts.
The book contains rewarding insights into themes as varied as the use of
convict labour to build railways and the Cuban immigrant community.
Dissatisfying in its treatment of the comparative dimension and hardly alert to
recent historiography on transport in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina or even Cuba,
the book does raise the tantalising question of how the interests of Latin
American business families operating commercial houses in New York, London
and Paris who accepted promissory notes and were active as suppliers of materials
and equipment were so integrated into the networks of the major metropolitan
centres that they were more part of foreign than national capital; but fails to
explore the subject.

University College London CHRISTOPHER ABEL

David Bushnell, The Making of ModernColombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself

(Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1993), pp. x+ 334,
$42.00, $17.00 pb.
This is a well written book from beginning to end. Its neat and lively prose will
attract particularly those readers who don't know where to place Colombia in a
map of the western hemisphere. In eleven chapters, some much tighter than
others, and a very brief Epilogue, the author offers a perceptive synthesis of
'Colombia's emergence as a modern nation, [which] is the end result of a personal
association with Colombia and Colombians that by now goes back almost half a
century'. Most of the eighteen photographs that illustrate the text, belonging to
the author's collection, attest that the country has in Bushnell a refined and
sensitive observer. The unbiased bibliographical essay includes works that would
form a basic Colombian library anywhere, not only in the USA as he modestly
points out, even though he did not include the corresponding chapters from The
CambridgeHistory of Latin America, one of which he is the author of.
One of the joys of reading this book is its frequent reference to everyday life
that others would throw away as frivolous. In some few cases a reviewer can,
nonetheless, put an interrogation mark. For instance, in dealing with an English
version of the Colombian national anthem (p. 144), it probably would have been
better to transcribe the official one as sung by the native inhabitants of the
faraway Caribbean islands of San Andres and Providencia. Had he done this, the
Islands would have been mentioned at least once in the text and Bushnell could
have commented on their cultural differences with the rest of the country.
Inconsequential defects of the same character can be observed in the superb
appendix on the presidential elections (i826-1990). One cannot resist improving
an almost impeccable table. For example, why not include the vote of the
Convenci6n de Rionegro of I863 that elected general Mosquera (37 votes of the
61 constituents present) or point out that in Aquileo Parra's election in I875 there
was a 'technical draw' and it was 'perfected' by Congress? The Reyes's rival in
 238 Reviews
the close 1904 election was not the antioqzueoMarceliano Velez, but the eminent
cartagenerolawyer, Joaquin Velez. Finally, the result of Restrepo's election in I91o
is too well known (23 votes against I8 for his main contender, future president
Jose V. Concha). In all these four elections there is room for more than one
remark on their long term political consequences.
If something is striking in this book it is the harmony reached in dealing with
major topics of economic, political and institutional history. The vicissitudes of
the gold, tobacco, coffee or oil interests are convincingly intertwined with the fate
of governments, congresses, entrepreneurs or with the shifts of a fickle public
opinion. One of the achievements of this book is to allow the common reader to
discern by himself how Colombia is much more that the violent historical world
supplier of gold, nicotine, caffeine and cocaine. However, this balance is achieved
at the expense of being placed beyond all controversy. The author circumvents
the pivotal thesis, amongst many others, put forward by the French sociologist
Daniel Pecaut in his L'Ordre et la Violence, Paris, I986. That is, on the one side
the continuity of liberal and representative institutions and of economic and
social policies alien to the world of Latin American populism and, on the other,
the emergence and permanence of a violence that seems to be part of the
Colombian order itself.
Questions and concerns of this type have no easy answers. Many times, out of
the findings of contemporary research, acknowledged by Bushnell in his foot-
notes, new and even more difficult questions would emerge. The book under
review holds back from considering at least some of the most crucial ones. Some
critics may judge this as its strong point and some others as its Achilles heel.

Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona MA R CO PAL A CIOS

Charles Bergquist et al., Violence in Colombia: The ContemporaryCrisis in

Historical Perspective(Wilmington, DE.: SR Books, 199I), pp. xiv+ 337,
$45.00, $14.95 pb.
In I973 Russell Ramsey, in his 'Critical bibliography on La Violencia' (Latin
American Research Review, vol. 8, no. i, 1973, pp. 3-44), gave ample evidence
of an already growing interest in what has become a favourite topic among
students of Colombia. Much has since been published on a conflict that took place
between the I94os and the I96os. Starting in the late 1970S the country has
witnessed another wave of violence which drags on to form part of a Colombian
tradition of violence. This book attempts to give a wider historical dimension to
the contemporary phenomenon of violence.
David Bushnell's fine chapter untangles the political turmoil of nineteenth
century Colombia, though he warns us that measuring violence by the number
of coups and rebellions could be misleading. Some appropriate comparisons are
made: the US Civil War (I86I-1865) left behind more deaths than all Colombian
civil conflicts together. Colombia, as Bushnell remind us, 'scarcely experienced
"repression" worthy of the name' (p. 26). Politics, and above all electoral politics
particularly at the local level, are the key to understanding the intensity of the
conflict. Religion was the main divisive issue between the Liberal and
Conservative rivalry in the nineteenth century.

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