¹ This article does not deal with the second López administration of 1942–6, discussed in Cantor, Renan Vega, Crisis y caída de la República Liberal 1942–1946 (Bogotá, 1988)Google Scholarand in Abel, Christopher, Política, Iglesia y partidos en Colombia (Bogotá, 1987), pp. 134–41Google Scholar. However, the interpretation here does bear on the failure of the second administration.

² During the 1934–8 period, bank deposits nearly doubled, the national budget increased by nearly 70%, and receipts from direct taxation increased sixfold. Mendoza, Plinio Apuleyo (ed.), El liberalismo en el gobierno: sus hombres, sus ideas, su obra 1930–1946, t. 3 (Bogotá, 1946), pp. 84–5Google Scholar; Avila, Jesús Antonio Bejarano, ‘La economía entre 1930 y 1945’, in Mejía, Alvaro Tirado (ed.), Nueva Historia de Colombia, t. 3 (Bogotá, 1989), pp. 115–42Google Scholar; Kalmanovitz, Salomón, Economía y natión (Bogotá, 1986), chap. 5Google Scholar; Ocampo, José Antonio and Montenegro, Santiago, Crisis mundial, protección e industrialización (Bogotá, 1984)Google Scholar. For the agrarian conflicts that gave rise to Ley 200, see G., Gonzalo Sánchez, ‘Las ligas campesinas en Colombia’, in , Sánchez, Ensayos de historia social y política del siglo XIX (Bogotá, 1984), pp. 113–213Google Scholar; LeGrand, Catherine, Frontier Expansion and Peasant Protest in Colombia, 1850–1936 (Albuquerque, 1986), pp. 91–153Google Scholar.

³ See, for instance, Interior Minister Camargo's, Alberto Lleras remarkable speech in Bucaramanga in May 1936: ‘El gobierno ha sido combatido por todas las fuerzas reaccionarias nacionales y ha realizado una revolución sin perturbar la paz del país. ¿Estáis contra el gobierno de López o estáis con el gobierno de López contra todos sus adversarios?’ ‘El suceso político del mes: Discurso del Ministro del Gobierno Dr. Lleras’, Acción Liberal, no. 36 (06 1936), pp. 55–60Google Scholar.

⁴ Pécaut, Daniel, Política y sindicalismo en Colombia (Bogotá, 1973), 177–244Google Scholar, and Orden y violencia: Colombia 1930–1954, 2 vols (Bogotá, 1987), t. 2, passim; Caicedo, Edgar, Historia de las lucbas sindicales en Colombia (Bogotá, 1977)Google Scholar; Rovner, Eduardo Sáenz, ‘Industrialists and Politics in Colombia, 1945–1950’, PhD diss., Brandeis University, 1988Google Scholar.

⁵ Dix, Robert H., The Politics of Colombia (New York, 1987), p. 6Google Scholar; Gonzalo Sánchez Guzmán, intro. to Guerrero, Javier, Los años del olvido: Boyacá y los orígenes de la Violencia (Bogotá, 1991), p. 19Google Scholar.

⁶ ‘Dialogar ante la intolerancia’, Revista Dominical (El Espectador), 30 April 1989; Kalmanovitz, Salomón, ‘La vieja historia’, Gaceta Colcultura, no. 2 (05–06 1989), pp. 3–4Google Scholar; Medina, Medófilo, ‘La historiografía política en Colombia’, Historias, no. 1 (1992), pp. 17–25Google Scholar.

⁷ Among the more influential works are Pécaut, Política y sindhalismo; Bejarano, Jesús Antonio, El régimen agrario de la economía exportadora a la economía industrial (Bogotá, 1979)Google Scholar; Posada, Francisco, Colombia, violencia y subdesarrollo (Bogotá, 1969)Google Scholar; Cuéllar, Diego Montaña, Colombia: país formal y país real, 3rd edn. (Bogotá, 1977)Google Scholar, first published in 1962; Colombiano, Partido Comunista, Treinta años de lucha del partido comunista colombiano (Bogotá, 1960)Google Scholar; Mesa, Darío, ‘30 años de historia colombiana’, in , Mesa et al. , Colombia: estructura politica y agraria (Medellin, 1971)Google Scholar, written in 1957. Arrubla, Mario, ‘Síntesis de historia política contemporánea’, in , Arrubla et al. , Colombia, hoy, 9th edn. (Bogotá, 1981), pp. 186–220Google Scholar, touches all the bases in two pages (pp. 188–90).

⁸ Bejarano, ‘La economía colombiana’, and El régimen agrario, pp. 242–5; the work which has tipped the balance in favour of active industrialisation in the 1930s is Ocampo and Montenegro, Crisis mundial. Some of the evidence used in Ocampo and Montenegro is problematical, e.g. pp. 136–8, 178, 184, 199, and 212, where data on rising imports of raw and semiprocessed inputs are used to claim increases in installed capacity in the beer, sugar, and textile sectors.

⁹ Any critical perusal of Ocampo and Montenegro, Crisis mundial, pp. 297–333, will demonstrate this; see especially p. 333.

¹⁰ For López's fiscal orthodoxy, see Kalmanovitz, Economía y nación, pp. 321–3; Ocampo, José Antonio, ‘The Colombian Economy in the 1930s’, in Thorp, Rosemary (ed.), Latin America in the 1930s: The Role of the Periphery in World Crisis (New York, 1984), p. 133Google Scholar; Bejarano, ‘La economía colombiana’, p. 132. López's tax reform was not inimical to fiscal orthodoxy, but essential to it: only through increased tax receipts could the government run surpluses while increasing education and public works spending.

¹¹ The quotation is from Zambrano, Bernardo Tovar, La intervención económica del estado en Colombia 1914–1936 (Bogotá, 1984), pp. 10–11Google Scholar. The most satisfying brief interpretations of the Revolución en marcha adopt this broader perspective, e.g. Dix, Robert, Colombia: The Political Dimensions of Change (New Haven, 1968), pp. 77–91Google Scholar; Abel, Christopher and Palacios, Marco, ‘Colombia, 1930–1958’, in Bethell, Leslie (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. VIII (New York, 1991), pp. 599–600Google Scholar.

¹² E.g. Pécaut, Orden y violencia, t. 2, p. 188. Since López was a coffee dealer and representative of foreign banks for a quarter-century, he is more logically (though no more correctly) vulgarised as a toady of imperialism, as in Ocampo, José Fernando, Colombia siglo XX: Estudio histórico y antología político (Bogotá, 1982), p. 184Google Scholar.

¹³ Recognition from the left includes Medina, Medófilo, Historia del Partido Comunista de Colombia (Bogotá, 1980), p. 238Google Scholar; Molina, Gerardo, Las ideas liberates en Colombia, (Bogotá, 1974–1981), t. 3, p. 91Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Colmenares, Germán, Partidos políticos y closes sociales (Bogotá, 1968), p. 152Google Scholar.

¹⁵ García, Antonio, Gaitán y el problema de la revolución colombiana (Bogotá, 1955), quotes from pp. 64, 272–3Google Scholar. García's influence is apparent in Ocampo, Colombia siglo XX, and in Fluharty, Vernon Lee, The Dance of the Millions: Military Rule and Social Revolution in Colombia 1930–1956 (Pittsburgh, 1957)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Martínez, Fernando Guillén, Raíz y futuro de la revolución (Bogotá, 1963)Google Scholar, and the more materialist El poder político en Colombia (Bogotá, 1975).

¹⁷ Also deserving of mention are Abel, Político, Iglesia y partidos, esp. pp. 110–23, 205–12, 268–73 and Mejía, Alvaro Tirado, Aspectos políticos del primer gobierno de Alfonso López Pumarejo (Bogotá, 1981)Google Scholar, and ‘López Pumarejo: La Revolución en Marcha’, in Mejía, A. Tirado (ed.), Nueva Historia de Colombia, t. 1 (Bogotá, 1989), pp. 305–48Google Scholar. Both authors provide valuable information and insights on 1930s politics, but avoid overall characterisations of the López regime and its origins. Abel emphasises López's political constraints, implying that he sought support wherever he could get it (e.g. pp. 113, 116). Tirado touches virtually all interpretive bases but favours a diffusionist view of lopismo as Colombian liberalism's appropriation of the Mexican Revolution, Aprismo, and other contemporary currents.

¹⁸ Braun, Herbert, The Assassination of Gaitán (Madison, 1985)Google Scholar. I see López as far more subversive (albeit unintentionally) of the elite mentality of convivencia than Braun allows, at least during his first presidency.

¹⁹ Pécaut's Orden y violencia is dense with provocative insights, but ultimately does not integrate a rural Colombia whose social logic is depicted as partisan (t. 1, p. 17) with an urban Colombia whose logic is depicted as class (and with great sophistication, e.g. t. 1, pp. 129, 174–8).

²⁰ Bergquist, Charles, ‘Colombia’, in , Bergquist, Labor in Latin America (Stanford, 1986), chap. 5Google Scholar.

²¹ An example of the first is Palacios, Marco, ‘La clase más ruidosa’, in Estado y clases sociales en Colombia (Bogotá, 1987), pp. 9–85Google Scholar; for the second, Guerrero, , Los años del olvido, and Roldán, Mary Jean, ‘Genesis and Evolution of La Violencia in Antioquia, Colombia, 1900–1953’, PhD diss., Harvard University, 1992Google Scholar.

²² Exceptions include Tirado, , Aspectos políticos, and El pensamiento de Alfonso López Pumarejo (Bogotá, 1986)Google Scholar, invaluable surveys from a lopista perspective. Recent documentary volumes include Alfonso López Pumarejo, polemista político (Bogotá, 1986), and Obra selecta, 2 vols. (Bogotá, 1981).

²³ Benavides, Abelardo Forero, ‘El mensaje presidencial’, in Anuario Liberal 1935 (Bogotá, 1935), P. 54Google Scholar; Santos, Santiago Salazar, Alfonso López Pumarejo, mis recuerdos sobre su vida y su obra (Bogotá, 1993), p. 16Google Scholar.

²⁴ Interview with El Espectador, 22 March 1937, in López, Obra selecta, t. 1, p. 410; for the 1897 platform, Bergquist, Charles, Coffee and Conflict in Colombia 1886–1910 (Durham, 1978), pp. 64–6Google Scholar. For Uribe and Herrera, see Pécaut, Política y sindicalismo, pp. 86–7; for López's view, see Tirado, El pensamiento de Alfonso López, pp. 23–9, and the chronology of López's interviews and editorials on pp. 351–6.

²⁵ ‘El Dr. Alfonso López habla sobre intervencionismo del estado’, Acción Liberal, no. 47 (June 1937), pp. 13–24.

²⁶ ‘La juventud radical y los problemas nacionales’, El Tiempo, 1 Jan. 1926, in López, Obra selecta, t. 1, p. 50.

²⁷ 1935 Message to Congress, in López, Obra selecta, t. 1, pp. 278–9.

²⁸ Restrepo, Carlos Lleras, Borradores para una historia de la República Liberal (Bogotá, 1975), p. 285Google Scholar; 1938 Message to Congress, in Alfonso López polemista político, pp. 141–2.

²⁹ Most famously in his speech of 30 Nov. 1936, in Acción Liberal, no. 42 (Dec. 1936), p. 53.

³⁰ Message to , Senate, 31 05 1937, in , López, Obra selecta, t. 1, p. 426Google Scholar; Ocampo and Montenegro, Crisis mundial, pp. 48–9. Ocampo and Montenegro believe (p. 114) that, although the rate of effective tariff protection fell from 57% to 26% from 1932 to 1935, non-tariff barriers such as exchange controls and import licenses more than compensated; the actual evidence, however, is largely conjectural. In any event, the key gremio in exchange debates was the Federatión Nacional de Cafeteros, not industrialists (pp. 100–8).

³¹ Lleras Restrepo, Borradores, p. 143; Rosselli, Alfonso Patiño, La prosperidad a debe y la gran crisis, 1925–1935, (Bogotá, 1981), pp. 642–3Google Scholar; Randall, Stephen J., Colombia and the United States: Hegemony and Interdependence (Athens, Georgia, 1992), pp. 159–62Google Scholar.

³² Message to Senate, 31 05 1937, in Obra selecta, t. 1, pp. 427–8Google Scholar; [Camargo, Alberto Lleras], Memoria del Ministro del Gobierno al Congreso Nacional 1938 (Bogotá, 1938), pp. 13–5Google Scholar.

³³ Gilhodes, Pierre, La Question Agraire en Colombie: Politique et Violence (Paris, 1974), p. 158Google Scholar; for López's underconsumptionist thinking, see López, Obra selecta, t. 2, p. 19.

³⁴ A key early example of López's personal mediation, the La Dorada cableway strike in March 1935, is in López, Obra selecta, t. 1, pp. 208–12; Molina, Las ideas liberates, t. 3, pp. 88–9. López's governors also followed this strategy, especially in Antioquia and Valle: Giraldo, Ignacio Torres, Los inconformes, 5 vols. (Bogotá, 1974), t. 5, pp. 78–9Google Scholar.

³⁵ López to Soto, Enrique et al. , 28 09, 1934, in , López, Obra selecta t. 1, pp. 140–1Google Scholar. Urrutia, Miguel, The Development of the Colombian Labor Movement (New Haven, 1969), 121–6, 170–6Google Scholar, views the creation of the Confederatión de Trabajadores Colombianos (CTC) in 1935 as a lopista strategy to mobilise labour on behalf of the regime; but as Pécaut finds (Orden y violentia, t. 1, p. 261), the CTC was more espejismo than reality through 1938.

³⁶ Molina, Las ideas liberates, t. 3, p. 96; López's only anticommunist outburst came in April 1935, just before the Communists' Comintern-ordered about-face (López to de Antioquia, Directorio Liberal, 10 04 1935, in , López, Obra selecta, t. 1, p. 229Google Scholar). Eduardo Santos, on the other hand, consistently blamed communist agitation for social tensions: Santos, Eduardo, Obra selecta (Bogotá, 1980), p. 565Google Scholar; Medina, Historia del partido comunista, pp. 309, 345.

³⁷ Molina, Las ideas liberates, t. 3, p. 90; Kalmanovitz, Economía y nación, p. 350; Urrutia, Development of the Colombian Labor Movement, p. 119; Restrepo, Gonzalo, ‘La política social del presidente López’, Acción Liberal, no. 57 (08 1938), pp. 87–96Google Scholar.

³⁸ Interview with La Razón, 18 Sept. 1936, in López, Obra selecta, t. 1, p. 57; Tirado, Pensamiento de Alfonso López, pp. 109–11.

³⁹ López told Congress in 1937 that to deny the existence of class conflict was a ‘false premise’. Quoted in Posada, Colombia violencia y subdesarrollo, p. 95.

⁴⁰ As stated admirably by Pécaut, Politica y sindicalismo, p. 133 – a book with many fine political insights, despite its standoffish attitude towards party politics.

⁴¹ We have, then, three analytically distinct (if entangled) lopista motives: (1) to maintain the existing socioeconomic order, (2) to maintain the Liberal party in power, and (3) to maintain the party system. The first is emphasised by Bergquist, Labor in Latin America, pp. 344–5;, and summarily by Bushnell, David, The Making of Modern Colombia (Berkeley, 1993), pp. 185–91Google Scholar; the second is emphasised by Collier, Ruth Behrins and Collier, David, Shaping the Political Arena (Princeton, 1991), pp. 289–313Google Scholar. The third imperative is aptly termed convivencia by Braun, Assassination of Gaitán, and its relation to López is summarily suggested (p. 32).

⁴² 6 Nov. 1933 speech in , Colombia, La política oficial, 5 vols. (Bogotá, 1935–1938), t. 1, pp. 7–8Google Scholar; see also Lleras Restrepo, Borradores, p. 390. For antipolitics, 1936 Message to Congress, in Acción Liberal, no. 38 (08 1936), p. 44Google Scholar.

⁴³ These characteristics are evident in Tirado, Aspectos políticos, passim; see also López to Governor of Caldas, 12 11 1934, in , Colombia, La politico oficial, t. 1, pp. 92–4Google Scholar, and López to Cartagena Conservatives, 7 03 1936, La politico oficial, t. 3, pp. 157–63Google Scholar; Galvis, Alejandro Galvis, Memorias de un político centenarista, 2 vols. (Bucaramanga, 1981), t. 1, pp. 306–7Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Abel and Palacios, ‘Colombia, 1930–1958’, p. 606; Sánchez, Gonzalo, ‘The Violence: An Interpretive Synthesis’, in Bergquist, Charles et al. (eds.), Violence in Colombia: The Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspective (Wilmington, 1992), p. 77Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Tirado, Pensamiento de Alfonso López, pp. 71–5;, 185–8.

⁴⁸ Nonfiction works which successfully convey this aspect of the political system in historical perspective include Santa, Eduardo, Sociología político de Colombia (Bogotá, 1964)Google Scholar, Oquist, Paul, Violence, Conflict, and Politics in Colombia (New York, 1980)Google Scholar, and Bergquist, Labor in Latin America, chap. 5 (especially pp. 292, 327–8).

⁴⁷ López gently chided such sentiments in his 1936 Message to Congress; for an interesting case study, see Christie, Keith, Oligarcas, campesinos y política en Colombia (Bogotá, 1984), pp. 173–80Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ López let the cat out of the bag in his triumphal ‘Conferencia del Municipal’ on 30 Nov. 1936: ‘Quiero verlos rodeados de garantías, para demonstrar cómo es cierto que el partido conservador es una ínfima minoría de la opinión colombiana.’ Acción Liberal, no. 42 (Dec. 1936), p. 48.

⁴⁹ López's most interesting thinking o n these matters is in his 1938 Message to Congress (Alfonso López polemista, pp. 81–144), where he comes tantalisingly close to branding the whole party system as pathological (pp. 83–7), but pulls back (p. 128); 12 April 1942 campaign speech, in Zuleta, Elpresidente López, paperback edn., p. 182.

⁵⁰ Cronshaw, Francine Barbara, ‘Landowners and Politics in Colombia, 1923–1948’, PhD diss., University of New Mexico, 1986, pp. 111–12Google Scholar.

⁵¹ López to Camacho, Nemesio, 25 04 1928, , López, Obra selects, t. 1, pp. 55–9Google Scholar. This important statement is discussed below.

⁵² Abel, Política, Iglesia y partidos, pp. 118–21; Tirado, Aspectos politicos, pp. 324–41; Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia, pp. 191–2; Christie, Oligarcas, campesinos y político, pp. 187–220.

⁵³ Pécaut, Política y sindicalismo, p. 184.

⁵⁴ For the top-level breakdown, see Wilde, Alexander W., ‘Conversations Among Gentlemen: Oligarchical Democracy in Colombia’, in Linz, Juan and Stepan, Alfred (eds.), The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes, Vol. 3, Latin America (Baltimore, 1978), pp. 28–81Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Bergquist, Labor in Latin America, pp. 281–94; Delpar, Helen, Red Against Blue: The Liberal Party in Colombian Politics, 1863–1899 (University, Alabama, 1981)Google Scholar; Aspectos polémicos de la historia colombiana del siglo XIX (Bogotá, 1983); Mejía, Alvaro Tirado (ed.), Aspectos sociales de las guerras civiles en Colombia (Bogotá, 1976)Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Abel, PolíTico, Iglesia y partidos, pp. 31–52, 75–90; for a regional case, see Henderson, James, When Colombia Bled: A History of the Violencia in Colombia (University, Alabama, 1985)Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Cabal, Hugo Latorre, Mi novela: apuntes autobiográficos de Alfonso López (Bogotá, 1961), chap. 1Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ , López speech of 4 03 1959, , López, Obra selecta, t. 2, p. 645Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Bergquist, Coffee and Conflict, pp. 171–92.

⁶⁰ Ibid., pp. 247–62; Bushnell, Making of Modern Colombia, p. 162; Melo, Jorge Orlando, ‘La política de 1904 a 1946’, in , Melo (ed.), Historia de Antioquia (Medellín, 1988), pp. 143–59Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Palacios, ‘La clase más ruidosa’, p. 31.

⁶² 22 Feb. 1921 editorial, in Santos, Obra selecta, p. 244.

⁶³ The Ibagué platform is in Villegas, Jorge and Yunis, José, Sucesos colombianos 1900–1924 (Medellín, 1976), pp. 408–12Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ See, for instance, Solano, Armando, ‘El hombre que cooperó’ (1924 ?), in Solano, , Glosas y ensayos (Bogotá, 1980), pp. 105–7Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Celis, Carlos Uribe, Los años veinte en Colombia, ideología y cultura (Bogotá, 1985), pp. 96–7Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ El Diario Nacional, 8 Aug. 1922, 25 May 1923; see also Michelsen, Alfonso López, Esbozos y atisbos (Bogotá, 1984), pp. 66–7Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ El Tiempo editorials, 6 04 and 25 Sept. 1927, in , Santos, Obra selecta, pp. 130–5Google Scholar, 344–6; on the theme of private versus public interest during this period, see Braun, Assassination of Gaitán, pp. 28–30.

⁶⁸ El Tiempo editorials, 29 04 1924, 27 April 1928, in , Santos, Obra selecta, pp. 288–9, 359–61Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ El Diario Nacional, 12 Sept. 1927, and El Tiempo, 6 March 1928, quoted in Molina, Las ideas liberales, t. 2, p. 226.

⁷⁰ See, for instance, Guerrero, Los años del olvido.

⁷¹ Solano's letter is in Aguirre, Alfonso Romero, Ayer, hoy y mañana en el liberalismo colombiano, 2 vols., 4th ed. (Bogotá, 1972), t. 1, pp. 338–41Google Scholar. Solano soon returned to the Liberal fold, even accepting a diplomatic posting to France by the Conservative regime in 1929: Arguedas, Alcides, La danza de las sombras (Bogotá, 1983), p. 72Google Scholar.

⁷² Torres Giraldo, Los inconformes, t. 4; Guzmán, Gonzalo Sánchez, Los ‘bolcheviques’ del Líbano 2nd ed. (Bogotá, 1981)Google Scholar; Bergquist, Labor in Latin America, p. 344. The film María Cano, dir. Camila Loboguerrero (1988), is an absorbing and pintoresco account.

⁷³ López to Camacho, Nemesio, 25 04 1928, in López, , Obra selecta, t. 1, pp. 55–9Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ DLN to Solano, 7 May 1928, and Camacho to López, , 28 04 1928, in Aguirre, , Ayer, boy y mañana, t. I, pp. 363, 355Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ See the quotes of prominent Liberals, embarrassingly recalled after the 1930 victory, in Castro, Gabriel (ed.), La salvatión de Colombia (Medellín, 1930)Google Scholar; Guerrero, Los años del olvido, pp. 94–7.

⁷⁶ Lleras Restrepo, Borradores, p. 13.

⁷⁷ López, Obra selecta, t. 1, p. 63.

⁷⁸ Braun, Assassination of Gaitán, p. 13. A Medellín group led by Luis Cano and Adán Arriaga were in fact pushing for a Liberal candidacy: Torres Giraldo, Los inconformes, t. 4, p. 166.

⁷⁹ Arguedas, Danza de las sombras, p. 93, is the version quoted here; a slightly different version appears in Tirado, El pensamiento de Alfonso López, p. 165.

⁸⁰ Abelardo Forero, in Anuario Liberal 1935 P. 51.

⁸¹ Zuleta, El presidente López, pp. 67–9.

⁸² López, recalled these meetings in his 30 Nov. 1936 speech, in Actión Liberal, no. 42 (12 1936), pp. 41–6Google Scholar.

⁸³ Ocampo, Colombia siglo XX, pp. 77–8, 225, typically puts this in the shadiest possible perspective.

⁸⁴ Michelsen, Alfonso López, ‘Los últimas días de López’ y cartas intimas de tres campañas politicas (Bogotá, 1961), pp. 103–4Google Scholar; Braun, Assassination of Gaitan, p. 31.

⁸⁵ Arguedas, Danza de las sombras, pp. 117, 120. The socialist Torres Giraldo called olayismo ‘the marihuana of the pueblo’. Los inconjormes, t. 4, p. 207.

⁸⁶ Rodríguez, Gustavo Humberto, Olaya Herrera:politico, estadista, caudillo (Bogotá, 1980)Google Scholar, plate between pp. 156–7.

⁸⁶ Rodríguez, Gustavo Humberto, Olaya Herrera:político, estadista, caudillo (Bogotá, 1980), plate between pp. 156–7Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ The Liberal journalist Luís Eduardo Nieto Caballero famously suggested that Olaya should have been ‘shot in the back’ for his defence of US policy in Latin America. Olaya had correspondingly little use for most Liberals: López Michelsen, Esbozos y atisbos, p. 17.

⁸⁸ Cantor, Renán Vega, Colombia entre la democracia y el Imperio (Bogotá, 1989), pp. 133–59Google Scholar; Kalmanovitz, Economia y naciõn, pp. 315–23; Pécaut, Orden y violencia, t. 1, p. 198; Ocampo, ‘The Colombian Economy in the 1930s’, pp. 127–33; i Patiño, La prosperidad a debe, chaps. 10–11.

⁸⁹ Horgan, Terrence, ‘The Liberals Come to Power in Colombia, por debajo de la ruana: A Study of the Enrique Olaya Herrera Administration, 1930–1934’, PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 1983Google Scholar.

⁹⁰ Braun, Assassination of Gaitán, pp. 15–17; Lleras Restrepo, Borradores, pp. 149–52.

⁹¹ See Arciniegas, Germán, Memorias de un congresista (Bogotá [1933])Google Scholar.

⁹² Arciniegas, José Ignacio, Darío Echandía: su vida, su pensamiento (Bogotá, 1980), p. 12Google Scholar; Mar, José [José Vicente Combariza], Prosas (Tunja, 1964), pp. 17, 60Google Scholar.

⁹³ López Michelsen, Esbozos y atisbos, pp. 16–7, notes that Armenia's gamonal Carlos Barrera Uribe repeatedly asked Darío Echandía when the guns would arrive; Guerrero, Los años del olvido, pp. 106–7.

⁹⁴ Restrepo, Carlos Lleras, Crónica de mi propia vida, 11 vols. (Bogotá, 1980–), t. I, p. 51Google Scholar.

⁹⁵ López to Soto, Enrique et al. , 28 09 1934, in López, , Obra selecta, t. i, pp. 140–1Google Scholar.

⁹⁶ Zuleta, El presidente López, p. 74; Tirado, El pensamiento de Alfonso López, pp. 375–86, and ‘López Pumarejo: La Revolución en Marcha’, pp. 306–7; Acción Liberal, nos. 5–7 (Sept.-Nov. 1932), p. 231.

⁹⁷ Santos, Abel Cruz, Economía y hacienda pública, 2 vols. (Bogotá, 1965), t. 2, p. 283Google Scholar; Lleras Restrepo, Crónica, t. 1, p. 51.

⁹⁸ La política oficial, t. 1, pp. 7–8.

⁹⁹ ‘Alfonso López y la Revolución Liberal’, Acción Liberal, no. 10 (Nov. 1933), p. 474.

¹⁰⁰ Abel, Política, Iglesia, y partidos, p. 117.

¹⁰¹ For Mendoza, , Benítez, Otto Morales, Liberalismo destino de lapatria (Bogotá, 1983), p.167Google Scholar. After the ‘pause’ in the Revolutión en marcha declared by López in December 1936 the magazine lost much of its political bite, and it folded in 1939. The pause is discussed in the conclusion, below.

¹⁰² Out of 44 contributors (37 of whom appear as ‘el grupo de Acción Liberal’ in no. 43–44 [Jan. Feb. 1937], p. 16, the others culled from repeat contributors to earlier issues), information was found for 29, mostly in Quién es quién en Colombia (Bogotá, 1944), but also in Lleras Restrepo, Borradores and Crónica, passim. Multiple occupations being the norm among the Colombian elite, and more so among the middle-class intelligentisa who produced Acción Liberal, my judgements as to principal identifications are inevitably subjective.

¹⁰³ Acción Liberal, nos. 5–7 (Sept.-Nov. 1932), p. 204; no. 10 (Nov. 1933), p. 471; no. 13 (Feb. 1934), pp. 464, 474–5; no. 24 (March 1935), pp. 1064–5. All citations in this section are from Ación Liberal except where otherwise noted.

¹⁰⁴ Germán Arciniegas, ‘Novelín de la Tierra’, no. 9 (Oct. 1933), pp. 408–18; Dario Samper, ‘La Revolución en el campo’, no. 23 (Feb 1935), pp. 1025–7 (see also the cover, a Mexican-style woodcut labelled, ‘Luchemos contra el latifundio’); ‘Frente a la A.P.E.N.’, no. 24 (March 1935), pp. 1062–3.

¹⁰⁵ ‘Comentamos: Las asambleas del liberalismo’, no. 13 (Feb. 1934), pp. 511–12; ‘Comentamos: una discusión de ideas’, no. 14 (March 1934), p. 538; Uribe, Juancho, ‘José María Rojas Garrido’, no. 17 (06 1934), pp. 738–42Google Scholar; Lizarazo, J. A. Osorio, ‘Breve ensayo sobre el proceso de la política liberal’, nos. 43–44 (01–02 1937), pp. 19–34Google Scholar. Puentes, Milton, Historia del partido liberal colombiano (Bogota, 1941)Google Scholar, is a solid compendium of the partisan Liberal version of Colombian history tapped by the Acción Liberal writers.

¹⁰⁶ Samper, , ‘La revolución en el campo’, no. 23 (02 1935), pp. 1025–7Google Scholar, ‘La auténtica tradicion del liberalismo’, no. 25 (May 1935), PP. 1136–8, and his José Hilario López y la tradición democrática del liberalismo colombiano (San José [Costa Rica], 1939).

¹⁰⁷ The group also had an outer circle of dues-paying members known as ‘Afines’ (as opposed to the ‘Activos’ and ‘Adherentes’), including such prominent figures as Carlos Lleras Restrepo, Luis Cano, Plinio Mendoza Neira, and Dario Echandía. Cataño, Gonzalo, ‘Luis Eduardo Nieto Arteta: Marxismo y participación política’, in Borda, Orlando Fals (ed.), El marxismo en Colombia (Bogotá, 1983), pp. 171–96Google Scholar. For Grupo Marxista contributions to Acción Liberal, see Marxista, Grupo, ‘Elementos para un juicio sobre el nacional-socialismo’, no. 11 (12 1933), pp. 404–6Google Scholar; Saavedra, Eduardo Pinzón, ‘Revolución y no fachismo [sic]’, no. 10 (11 1953), pp. 497–504Google Scholar, including a neo-Trotskyite discussion of ‘simple’ versus ‘combined development’ in Latin America; Rangel, Eduardo Garzón, ‘Dialéctica de las transformaciones sociales’, no. 11 (12 1933), pp. 396–8Google Scholar, a cruder neo-Stalinist argument.

¹⁰⁸ Debate of 17 Jan., 1936, quoted in Arciniegas, José Ignacio, Dario Echandia: su vida, su pensamiento (Bogotá, 1980), p. 112Google Scholar. Echandía, , however, shared with his mentor López an essential scepticism and empiricism, well expressed in his Memoria del Ministro de Gobierno al Congreso Nacional 1935 (Bogotá, 1935), pp. IV–VGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁹ ‘El problems social’, no. 19 (Aug. 1954), pp. 823–7. For an extreme example of materialist analysis in the service of an idealist Liberal agenda, see Mejía, Diego, ‘La industrialización del pal's, un problema político’, no. 35 (05 1936), pp. 11–15Google Scholar, who argued for industrialisation because ‘the political, juridical, and intellectual advance of the Republic’ according to perennial Liberal goals could only occur with ‘a substantial modification in the modes and forms of production in Colombia’.

¹¹⁰ ‘Alfonso López y la Revolución Liberal’, no. 9 (Oct. 1933), pp. 403–407; Sánchez, Arturo Vallejo, ‘Unirismo y Aprismo’, no. 9 (10 1933), pp. 432–43Google Scholar; ‘Significado y contenido de la revolución liberal’, no. 13 (Feb. 1934), pp. 473–80; ‘La Revolución Mejicana y Alfonso López’, no. 18 (July 1934), pp. 759–62. In mid–193; the Communists did move closer to the López regime, thanks to Comintern prodding rather than the baiting by Liberal radicals.

¹¹¹ Samper, Dario, ‘Frente a la A.P.E.N.’, no. 24 (03 1935), p. 1061Google Scholar.

¹¹² Sánchez, Arturo Vallejo, ‘Interpretatión de la historia colombiana’, no. 15 (04 1934), pp. 609–17Google Scholar; Eduardo Garzón Rangel, ‘Evolución histórico-económica en el pai's’, and Garcés, Ramón Lozano, ‘Una interpretación de la historia colombiana: el ciclo esclavista de la minería colonial’, no. 20–21 (10 1934), pp. 947–50, 956–8Google Scholar. Even more radical revisions include Arciniegas, Germán, ‘Novelín de la tierra’, no. 10 (11 1933), pp. 475–83Google Scholar, and Aragón, Victor, ‘La posición de las izquierdas en la política tradicional colombiana’, no. 40 (10 1936), pp. 27–36Google Scholar, which presage the cynical-leftist views of Antonio García and Fernando Guillén Martínez a generation later.

¹¹³ Solano, Armando, ‘El sentido de una evolución’, ‘Cuatro preguntas a Armando Solano’, no. 32 (02 1936), pp. 18–21, 51–5Google Scholar; ‘El movimiento liberal en Boyacá’, pp. 43–4 (Jan.Feb. 1937), pp. 95–7; see also Solano, Glosasj ensayos, pp. 233–4, 297, 362.

¹¹⁴ Forero, Abelardo, ‘Alfonso López’, no. 13 (02 1934), p. 490Google Scholar.

¹¹⁵ For the 1936 document in English, see Gibson, William M., The Constitutions of Colombia (Durham, 1948), pp. 351–96Google Scholar; the key amendments are articles 26 (social function of property), 28 (state intervention in the economy), and 50 (freedom of conscience). In the 1945 codificación used in legal histories (e.g. Carrizosa, Alfredo Vázquez, ‘La Reforma Constitucional de 1936 y la intervención del Estado en la economía’, in Mejía, Alvaro Tirado (ed.), Estadoy economía: jo años de la Reforma del 36 (Bogotá, 1986), pp. 25–60)Google Scholar, the key articles are 30, 32, and 53 respectively.

¹¹⁶ Molina, Las ideas liberates, t. 2, p. 26;; ‘La reforma de la Constitución y la opinión liberal del país’, Acción Liberal, no. 1; (April 1934), pp. 634–42; quote from Guerrero, Los años del olvido, p. 177.

¹¹⁷ Arguedas, Danza de las sombras, p. 145; Abel, Política, Iglesia j partidos, pp. 115–16; Directorio Conservador to López, Alfonso, 17 03 1936, in Tirado, (ed.), Estadoj economia, pp. 155–7Google Scholar.

¹¹⁸ La opinión national ante la reforma de la Constitutión (Bogotá, 1937), quote from pp. 72–3. The four replies were, to be sure, from backwaters: Salamina (Magdalena), Galán (Santander), Yotoco (Valle), and curiously, Campo de la Cruz (Atlántico). These sentiments had limited Liberal backing in Congress, among contemporaries of General Herrera such as Jorge Uribe Márquez: Tirado, Aspectospoliticos, pp. 397–400.

¹¹⁹ López to Directorio Nacional Conservador, 26 March 1936, in Alfonso López polemista, p. 72; Acción Liberal, no. 38 (Aug. 1936), p. 40; La opinión nacional, p. 31.

¹²⁰ Memoria del Ministro de Gobierno 1935, p. V.

¹²¹ Arguedas, Danza de las sombras, p. 145.

¹²² For the early debates, see Tirado, Estadoy economía, pp. 137–50.

¹²³ Abel, Política, Iglesiay partidos, p. 188.

¹²⁴ Compare the original prqyecto de acto legislative presented by Echandía on 14 Sept. 1934 (in Tirado, Estadoy economía, pp. 297–9) with the finished product. One of the few sober contemporary assessments is Mozo, José Gnecco, La reforma constitutional de 1936 (Bogotá, 1938)Google Scholar.

¹²⁵ In 1934–5 Conservative legislators led by Abel Catbonell successfully wrung from Echandía an admission that the reform was largely superfluous, an admission that had no effect on Liberal efforts, or the Conservative demonisation of the reform; see the debate in Benítez, Otto Morales, ‘Darío Echandía, un maestro de la ideología liberal’, in Echandía, Darío, De Hegel a Marx y filosofía de un cambio: la reforma constitutional de 1981 (Bogotá, 1981)Google Scholar. Pécaut, Orden y violencia, crosses the historiographical Rubicon by ignoring the reform altogether, an admirable strategy but one which, consistent with his approach, somewhat devalues politics. Note that the equally polarising Church State provisions of the constitutional reform may be interpreted in analogous fashion: Zuleta, Elpresidente López, pp. 70–1, emphasises the anodyne nature of the reformed Article 50.

¹²⁶ A recent example is Jaime Vidal Perdomo, ‘La intervención del Estado en la reforma Constitucional de 1936’, in López Michelsen et al., Cambio y reforma en 1936 pp. 153–86. Tirado makes an equally a priori defence of the importance of the Church-State provisions in Aspectos politicos;, p. 412.

¹²⁷ Lizarazo, J. A. Osorio, Ideas de izquierda: liberalismo partido revolucionario (Bogotá, 1935), p. 53Google Scholar. Vigilant readers may note the apparent similarity between my argument and Payne, James, Patterns of Conflict in Colombia (New Haven, 1968)Google Scholar, who famously compared the policy preferences of Colombian legislators to those of birds. Whereas García and Guillén (see notes 15 and 16, above) believed that Colombian politicians espoused a spurious radicalism in order to deceive, or because words were meaningless to them, Payne argues that the dynamics of party competition could actually produce radical measures – which would get nowhere in implementation, since they were the detritia of non-programmatic considerations. A Paynesian interpretation of the 1936 reform is easily attempted, but I argue here that the reform, while juridically empty, fulfilled the complex ideological requirements of the Liberal left as nothing else could. Higonnet, Patrice, Class, Ideology, and the Rights of Nobles During the French Revolution (New York, 1981)Google Scholar, is a brilliant development of a structurally similar argument.

¹²⁸ López discussed the pausa, and regretted it, in the 1938 Message to Congress, in López López Pumarejo polemista, pp. 125–8.

¹²⁹ Ocampo, ‘The Colombian Economy in the 1930s’, pp. 124, 135–7.

¹³⁰ Tirado, Aspectos politicos, pp. 207–13; Abel, Política, Iglesia y partidos, p. 121; Solano, Armando, ‘Perspectives de un nuevo régimen’, Acción Liberal, no. 46 (05 1937), pp. 11–16Google Scholar.

¹³¹ The most extreme formulation is Pécaut, Política y sindicalismo, where López goes from class agent to total class misfit (p. 143); the process is elided in his more recent Orden y violencia, t. 1, pp. 273–6.

¹³² Santos in power delivered much more: direct state fomento, through the IFI and other agencies. The political economy of the Santos years is understudied - thanks to the belief that Colombian industrialisation is lopista in conception – but see Pécaut, Orden y violencia, t. 1, pp. 286–92; Medina, Historia del Partido, pp. 338–9; García, Gaitán yel problema, p. 279; Vázquez, Luis Ospina, Industria y protección en Colombia 1810–1930 (Medellín, 1955), pp. 463–4Google Scholar; Bejarano, ‘La economía colombiana’.

¹³³ In early 1936, at the Revolución's height, Solano analysed the class bases of support for the López regime, and concluded that there were none: the government ‘works in a vacuum’. That Solano did not proceed to doom the project to failure is an interesting detail in itself. ‘El sentido de una evolución’, Acción Liberal, no. 32 (Feb. 1936), p. 20. For the unsuccessful attempts of antilopista Liberals to position the party as ‘middle-class’, see Tirado, Aspectos politicos, pp. 243–55.

¹³⁴ Melo, ‘La politica (1904–1946)’, p. 159; Abel, Politica, Iglesia y partidos, pp. 302, 319–20. For the extent to which any understanding of reformism must include attention to subnational politics, and for a sense of what Colombian historiography has yet to accomplish in this regard, see Knight, Alan, ‘Cardenismo: Juggernaut or Jalopy?’, Journal of Latin American Studies vol. 26, no. 1 (1994), pp. 73–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³⁵ Galvis, Memorias de un politico, t. 1, pp. 304–15 (quotation from p. 312); Tirado, Aspectos políticos, pp. 33–48.

¹³⁶ The contradiction took a different (if less threatening) form in the hands of Liberal intellectuals like Osorio Lizarazo, wh o accused López of betrayal because he ignored the great issues of the nineteenth century party struggle, in favour of social issues which – as Osorio's novels suggest – he found distasteful. Osorio, Liberalismo partido revolutionary, p. 73.

¹³⁷ Certainly López's exaggerated empiricism greased the skids of the pausa: while opposition from expected quarters (Conservatives, the newly-taxed, etc.) affirmed him in his decisions, unexpected obstacles (Liberals, workers, etc.) provoked unashamed (and sometimes rapid) changes of course.

¹³⁸ This point is conveyed in the novels and essays of Eduardo Caballero Calderón, such as Siervo sin tierra, Tipacoque, and Historia secreta de los colombianos; see also the works cited in note 46. While there has been some political science interest in the detailed study of local clientelist politics (e.g. Buitrago, Francisco Leal and Guevara, Andrés Dávila Ladrón de, Clientelismo: el sistemapoliticoy su expresión regional (Bogotá, 1990))Google Scholar, historical studies are lacking.

¹³⁹ If Gómez's short-term goal was to provoke a Liberal collapse by pulling Conservatives out of the political process, then he failed: Abel, Politico, Iglesia y partidos, p. 115. But if, as seems more likely, his goal was to defuse Liberal mistica and stave off further radical innovations, he succeeded. Without the eternal enemy in the house, the Liberal right in Congress could oppose López with impunity. López understood this perfectly, at least in retrospect: Message to Congress 1938, in López, López Pumarejo polemista, pp. 122–3.

¹⁴⁰ Braun, Assassination of Gaitán, is the most impressive example of this for the period here discussed, though Bergquist, Labor in Latin America, does a compelling job for rural workers even while treating them as a huge collectivity.

¹⁴¹ Knight, ‘Cardenismo: Juggernaut or Jalopy?’.