Florida International University FIU Digital Commons FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations University Graduate School 12-2-1992 One hundred years of servitude : the Colombian labor movement 1848-1948 Curtis Curry Florida International University DOI: 10.25148/etd.FI14061575 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd Part of the Latin American Studies Commons Recommended Citation Curry, Curtis, "One hundred years of servitude : the Colombian labor movement 1848-1948" (1992). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2699. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2699 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the University Graduate School at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS One Hundred Years of Servitude: The Colombian Labor Movement 1848-1948 by Curtis D. Curiy Florida International University, 1992 Miami, Florida Professor Guillermo Grenier, Major Professor The current study seeks not only to place into focus the general patterns of social and economic organization prevalent in Colombia in the late nineteenth centuiy and the early twentieth (such political and economic organization has been ably illustrated by several authors), but also strives to elucidate the systems of thought or 'ideologies' to which such socio-economic and political structures gave rise. It is concerned with the thought-systems that influenced the development of the Colombian labor movement, those of actors external to organized labor and indigenous systems of thought of labor activists themselves. The hypothesis is that class and party-based interests channelled the early development of organized labor toward a path that would further, or failing that, not conflict with dominant élite interests. Artisans, proudly independent, exerted inordinate influence over the movement, hindering the development of working class consciousness. As the result of dominance by élites external to the labor movement itself, workers were never able to forge an independent voice that would allow them to define their own interests in society. FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Miami, Florida One Hundred Years of Servitude: The Colombian Labor Movement 1848-1948 A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Aits in International Studies by Curtis D. Curry 1992 To Professors Guillermo Grenier, Douglas Kinkaid and Alex Stepick: This thesis, having been approved in respect to form and mechanical execution, referred to you for judgement upon its substantial merit. Dean Arthur Herriott College of Arts and Sciences The thesis of Curtis D. Curry Is approved, Douglas Kincaid Alex Stepick Guillermo Grenier, Major Professor Date of examination: December 2,1992 Dean Richard L. Campbell Division of Graduate Studies Florida International University, 1992 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES VI Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION 1 REVIEW OF THE RELEVANT LITERATURE ON COLOMBIAN LABOR 3 METHODOLOGY: OVERVIEW OF THE APPROACH 13 IDEAS AND SOCIAL REALITY 16 2. COLONIAL COLOMBIA 31 INTRODUCTION 31 The Cross and the Crown 32 The Colonial Economy 36 SOCIAL THOUGHT AND IDEOLOGY IN THE COLONY AND THE EARLY REPUBLIC 42 Economic Factors 42 Ideological Currents 45 Independence 48 CONCLUSION 49 3. NINETEENTH CENTURY COLOMBIA 55 THE EARLY REPUBLIC 55 CONFLICT AND IDEOLOGY: THE BIRTH OF THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM 59 Conservatives and Liberals 59 Regionalism and the Geography of Colombia 66 Federalism 70 Artisans and the Liberal Party: Las Sociedades Democráticas 73 FEDERALISM AND LIBERAL REFORMS 78 Emancipation of Resguardo Lands and the Abolition of Slavery 80 The Roman Catholic Church and Liberal Reforms 82 General Economic Trends Affecting Artisan Production 84 Social Conditions: The Distinct Worlds of Artisans and Upper Class 86 CONCLUSION 88 4. UTOPIAN SOCIALISM, IDEOLOGY AND CLASS CONFLICT IN THE 91 NINETEENTH CENTURY THE INFLUENCE OF UTOPIAN SOCIALISM 91 Page ARTISAN CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS AND CONFLICT 97 The Liberal Party Fractures: Gólgotas and Draconianos 99 The Artisan Republic of 1854 102 ARTISAN PRODUCTION IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 105 Rafael Núñez and the Artisans 108 The Mutualist Societies 112 CONCLUSION 115 5. VICTORY IN DEFEAT: CONSOLIDATION OF THE LIBERAL EXPORT ECONOMY 119 MYTH OF THE DEMOCRATIC FRONTIER: LABOR AND LAND IN THE COUNTRYSIDE 119 THE RISE OF THE EXPORT ECONOMY: TOBACCO AND COFFEE 127 RAFAEL NUÑEZ AND THE RISE OF SOCIAL CONSERVATIVISM 129 WAR OF A THOUSAND DAYS AND THE PANAMA CRISIS 131 CONCLUSION: CONSOLIDATION OF THE LIBERAL EXPORT ECONOMY 133 6. EARLY INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE EMERGENCE OF A PROLETARIAT 137 INTRODUCTION 137 THE NASCENT LABOR MOVEMENT’S STRUGGLE TO ASSERT ITS AUTONOMY: 1910-1928 141 Artisans. Socialists. Anarchists, and Working Class Politics 143 Strikes and Repression 158 Dance of the Millions 166 The Conservative Party Fractures 170 CONCLUSION 171 7. LABOR AND THE LIBERAL REVOLUCIÓN EN MARCHA 111 LOS NUEVOS, SOCIALISM, AND A NEW IDEOLOGICAL ORIENTATION 177 THE RURAL PROTEST: SMALLHOLDER STRUGGLES TO ACQUIRE LAND TITLES 182 iv Page LA REVOLUCION EN MARCHA 192 CREATION OF THE CONFEDERACION DE TRABAJADORES DE COLOMBIA (CTC) 199 CONSERVATIVE REACTION 204 THE DECLINE OF LABOR’S POLITICAL INFLUENCE 206 GAITÁN AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT 209 CONCLUSION 212 8. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH 216 CONCLUSION 216 IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH 236 BIBLIOGRAPHY 243 V LIST OF TABLES Table Page 3:1 Active Population in 1870 73 5:1 Coffee and Tobacco Exports in Thousands of Pesos 127 6:1 Average Annual Rates of Increase of Industrial Production, 1925-1953 139 6:2 Average Annual Percentage Growth in Value of Manufacturing Production: 1929-1949 140 6:3 Manufacturing Population of Departmental Capitals, 1905-1951 141 6:4 Freight Moved by the Railroad and Riverboats in Tons 151 7:1 Colombian Coffee Exports 1900-1925: Volume and Value 185 7:2 Cundinamarea's Coffee Farms in 1932 and 1940 188 8:1 Parcelas Abandoned During La Violencia, 1946-1966 229 8:2 Total Urban-Rural Population 1918-1964 231 v i CH APTER 1 INTRODUCTION To use a simple analogy, what happens is that in our empirical investigation we become aware o f the fact that we are observing the world from a moving staircase, from a dynamic platform, and, therefore, the image o f the world changes with the changing frames of reference which various cultures create. ...In the world of visual objects, we acknowledge that completely. That you can only see various perspectives of a house and there is no view among them which is absolutely the house and in spite o f that there is knowing because the various perspectives are not arbitrary. The one can be understood from the other. What we, without any difficulty, admit for the apperception o f the visual world, we ought to admit for knowledge in general1 Karl Mannheim, in a letter to Kurt H. Wolff, April 15, 1946 The ideas o f the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means o f material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means o f mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas o f those who lack the means o f mental production are subject to it The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas o f its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think...The division of labour, which we have already seen above as one of the chief forces of history up till now, manifests itself also in the ruling class as the division o f mental and material labor, so that inside this class one part appears as the thinkers o f the class (its active, conceptive ideologists, who make the perfecting of the illusion o f the class about itself their chief source o f livelihood), while the others' attitude to these ideas and illusions is more passive... Karl Marx, The German Ideolosv2 Images of past and present reality are created as much by the social and cultural milieu in which the beholder observes his or her "reality" as they are by any physical, objective "reality" that may exist apart from the observer. Man must necessarily perceive reality through his own eyes, eyes that have been colored by the temporal and spatial constraints imposed on each individual by birth. Such perceptions are also influenced by the entire cultural infrastructure, complete with artifacts of a particular era, that bind an 1 Letter written from Karl Mannheim to Kurt H, Wolff, (15 April 1946), quoted in Wolffs "The Sociology of Knowledge and Sociological Theory," The Sociology of Sociology (Larry T. Reynolds and Janice M. Reynolds eds., New York: David McKay Co., Inc., 1970), pp. 35-36. 2Quoted in Kail Marx’s The German Ideology, in Robert C. Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978), pp. 172-173. 1 individual to a specific temporal "reality". In our time, the general validity of this assumption may be illustrated by contrasting an international businessperson's view that he/she "knows the realities" of the world marketplace, and who disparages "ivory tower" assessments of contemporary economic or socio-political realities. At the other pole, we might look into the beliefs held by a few academicians, who wielding the scientific method, are certain that they alone possess a monopoly on comprehending ultimate "social reality." Who comprehends "reality", the businessman or the academician? Both perhaps? Certainly this phenomenon of self-certainty, of comprehending the ultimate reality is not of recent vintage.