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x Preface Regardless of nationality or specialty, most historians have evaluated the Liberal generation that reached maturity in the 1850s unfavorably. This generation has been criticized above all for a doctrinaire commitment to laissez faire and an anti-statist bias that resulted in the emasculation of governmental authority, especially while the federalist Rionegro constitution was in force from 1863 to 1885. Because of its weakness, the critics say, the federal government was unable to check the political turbulence of the period or to provide the direction needed to stimulate the economic development of the nation. Conclusions similar to these are evident, for example, in Indalecio Lievano Aguirre's biography of Rafael Nunez and in William Paul McGreevey's Economic History of Colombia. 2 Despite the pervasiveness of this interpretation, however, it has never been adequately documented or assessed. The present study does not pretend to make such an assessment, but one of its goals is to show that the historiographical indictment of the Liberal regime is in need of qualification. The general purpose of this work is to assist in the task of filling the lacunae in the early political history of Colombia by examining the evolution of the Liberal party from 1863 to 1899 and its role in the Colombian political system during that period. The era selected for study shows the Liberal party first as the ruling party in control of the national government (1863-85) and later as the opposition (1886-99) to the Conservative -dominated, regime known as the Regeneration. In 1899 Liberals embittered by their long exclusion from public office unleashed a revolutionary upheaval of such dimensions that it marked a watershed in the political history of Colombia. The period derives continuity from the fact that many of the leading party chiefs of the 1860s and 1870s remained active in politics until the last decade of the century, though their hegemony was challenged by younger men after 1886. Although the study focuses on the Liberal party, the emphasis could just as easily have been placed on the Conservatives. In any event, it proved impossible to analyze the Liberals in isolation from their adversaries, for Liberal positions and strategies can be fully comprehended only by comparing them or otherwise relating them to those of the Conservatives. Throughout the study the term Liberal party is used as it was by nineteenth-century Colombians, for whom it embraced all who considered themselves Liberals. As this concept indicates, during the years under consideration party organization remained embryonic, and to the extent that a modern political party is distinguished by the nature of its organization ,3 the Liberals did not constitute a modern party until the twentieth century. By 1863 the term Liberal party had been in use for over a decade and was associated with a set of ideas and leaders presumed to have some hold on a body of more or less loyal followers. When elections were held, candidates identified as Liberals regularly competed, and electoral committees were formed to advance their cause. There were, however, no permanent structures on the national or regional levels to provide organi- Preface xi zational continuity. Decisions were made by informal groups of Liberal notables, mainly members of Congress and other office-holders. It was not until the 1890s that self-renewing party directories came into existence and that party conventions began to be held. Despite the flimsiness of the party's structure throughout the nineteenth century, it must be stressed that the Liberal party, along with its Conservative counterpart, was the only institution besides the Catholic Church that crossed regional and class lines. Moreover, because party identification was normally intense and permanent, other institutions like the armed forces or new parties proved unable to mount serious and sustained competition for the loyalties of politically active Colombians. Similarly, individuals who sought to bypass or drastically alter the party system found it impossible to achieve their goals, no matter how gifted or charismatic they were. The careers of Tomas Cipriano de Mosquera and Rafael Nunez, it will be seen, illustrate this point. It is probable, therefore, that the persistence of a form of liberal democracy in twentieth-century Colombia can be attributed at least in part to the evolution of the party system in the nineteenth century. Indeed, the Colombian case may bear out the hypothesis of Eric A. Nordlinger that the likelihood of stable, nonauthoritarian government is greater when protoparties have preceded mass parties and mass suffrage. In the absence of protoparties...

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