Of Beasts and Beauty: Gender, Race, and Identity in Colombia

3. Bicycle Race, 1885–1914

Chapter 3 Bicycle race, 1885–1914 Colombian political leaders failed to bring either the liberty fervently pursued by Radical Liberals or the order cherished by Conservatives in the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The Radical Liberals lost control of the presidency to Independent Liberal Rafael Núñez, who forged working relationships with Conservatives after 1880. The beast of partisan war erupted in 1885, giving Núñez the political space to frame a new nationalist and centralist constitution in 1886, one that would survive until 1991. But Núñez’s Regeneration of the nation failed to end the cycle of political violence as Liberal exclusion from national government led to new revolts in 1895 and to a full-scale civil war from 1899 to 1902. Notions of beauty and the nation were pulled back to conservative Hispanist traditions but also toward modern innovations during these same years.1 Núñez focused on practical and pragmatic policies in his Regeneration and in the Constitution of 1886 framed by his Conservative partner Miguel Antonio Caro. Federalism was abandoned, replaced by a centralized national authority. Presidents enjoyed more formal power, and their term increased to six years. States became departments, the president naming the governors who selected all mayors. This institutional authoritarianism also mirrored the restoration of powers to the Catholic Church in social, legal, and educational matters and shut Liberals out of patronage and power positions, fertilizing partisan divisions and the future possibility of sectarian violence.2 The alliance between church and state made Catholicism a cornerstone of social order and Colombian nationality. The Church regained full control over marriage, with patriarchs ruling over wives and children as legal minors. Oversight over curriculum, school texts, and teacher appointments in public schools promised the order and morality of a church institution becoming more reactionary to modern trends. An influx of energetic and crusading foreign clergy, many of them displaced by nationalist and anticlerical movements in late-nineteenth-century Europe, bolstered the religious and social reaction to secularism and modernism. The institutional and social power of 62 Of Beasts and Beauty a resurgent but backward-facing Colombian Catholic Church would survive well into the twentieth century.3 About four million people lived in the country in 1886, most still in small towns and rural areas. Bogotá had about one hundred thousand inhabitants, the rich enjoying a hint of modern conveniences like telegraph, telephone, and electrical services. But the capital resembled a sprawling rural town, with open sewers and with pigs, horses, chickens, and cows commingled in many urban plots, regardless of the human residents’ class. Half of all newborns were birthed to unwed mothers, with many children left without a father or a chance at an education. Class tensions intensified in the colonial core of the city, especially among artisans, who faced a wave of imported commercial goods stocked in downtown stores in 1887–1888 and increasing urban rents that displaced many to the city’s peripheral neighborhoods.4 Modern conveniences opened greater social distance for elites to mark their privileged urban status.The capital’s small elite and middle class referred to themselves as “la gente buena” (the good people), dismissing the majority rural and urban working class as “indios” (Indians), a social binary maintained into the 1920s.5 While most city residents drew their water from open ditches or from Bogotá’s public fountains, downtown elites and bureaucrats enjoyed piped-in water from a new aqueduct system by the 1890s.6 Electric light created a brighter, more modern alternative to the formerly dim urban landscape of the colonial era for elites and public workers. The novelty of electric light brought an aura of elegance and romance to the streets and walls of Bogotá’s colonial La Candelaria neighborhood. Most residents embraced the splendid lighting that they now unequally enjoyed, but traditionalists warned “God Help Us” for the sin that was sure to increase during nocturnal parties and dances.7 Dances provided the opportunity for young dandies and ladies to shine in their European fashions, latest hairstyles, and elegant shoes and accessories. In a room decorated with fragrant flowers and filled with a flowing waltz, a coquettish look could trigger a budding romance and a future call. European fashions trickled into the capital through merchants’ shops and European magazines. Elites might change clothes several times a day and bathe with imported soaps, further distinguishing their separate status from the barefooted masses (“descalzos”) by wearing shoes.8 In contrast to the proliferation...