Containing over one hundred selections—most of them published in English for the first time—The Colombia Reader presents a rich and multilayered account of this complex nation from the colonial era to the present. The collection includes journalistic reports, songs, artwork, poetry, oral histories, government documents, and scholarship to illustrate the changing ways Colombians from all walks of life have made and understood their own history. Comprehensive in scope, it covers regional differences; religion, art, and culture; the urban/rural divide; patterns of racial, economic, and gender inequalities; the history of violence; and the transnational flows that have shaped the nation. The Colombia Reader expands readers' knowledge of Colombia beyond its reputation for violence, contrasting experiences of conflict with the stability and significance of cultural, intellectual, and economic life in this plural nation.
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- I. Human Geography
- Ahpikondiá, Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff
- Photographs of Indigenous People, Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff
- “One after the Other, They All Fell Under Your Majesty’s Rule”: Lands Loyal to the Bogotá Become New Granada, Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada and Anonymous
- A City in the African Diaspora, Anonymous and Álvaro José Arroyo
- Crossing to Nationhood across a Cabuya Bridge in the Eastern Andes, Manuel Ancízar
- A Gaping Mouth Swallowing Men, José Eustasio Rivera
- Frontier “Incidents” Trouble Bogotá, Jane M. Rausch and Alfredo Villamil Fajardo
- Crab Antics on San Andrés and Providencia, Peter Wilson
- Pacific Coast Communities and Law 70 of 1993, Senate of the Republic of Colombia
- Toward a History of Colombian Musics, Egberto Bermúdez
- Colombian Soccer Is Transformed: The Selección Nacional in the 1990s, Andrés Dávila Ladrón de Guevara
- Colombian Queens, Jaime Manrique
- II. Religious Pluralities: Faith, Intolerance, Politics, and Accommodation
- Idolators and Encomenderos, Fray Jerónimo de San Miguel
- Miracles Made Possible by African Interpreters, Anna María Splendiani and Tulio Aristizábal, SJ
- My Soul, Impoverished and Unclothed . . . , Francisca Josefa Castillo
- A King of Cups, Gregorio José Rodríguez Carrillo, Bishop of Cartagena
- Courting Papal Anger: The “Scandal” of Mortmain Property, Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera
- Liberalism and Sin, Anonymous, Rafael Uribe Uribe, and Andrés Botero
- Sabina, Bring Some Candles to Light to the Virgin, Albalucía Ángel
- Processions and Festivities, Nereo López, Richard Cross, and Nina Sánchez de Friedemann
- We Were Not Able to Say That We Were Jewish, Paul Hané
- As a Colombian, as a Sociologist, as a Christian, and as a Priest, I Am a Revolutionary, Camilo Torres Restrepo
- Who Stole the Chalice from Badillo’s Church?, Rafael Escalona
- Life Is a Birimbí, Rodrigo Parra Sandoval
- Our Lady of the Assassins, Fernando Vallejo
- One Woman’s Path to Pentecostal Conversion, Elizabeth Brusco
- La Ombligada, Sergio Antonio Mosquera
- A Witness to Impunity, Javier Giraldo, SJ
- III. City and Country
- Emptying the “Storehouse” of Indian Labor and Goods, Anonymous: “Encomiendas, encomenderos e indígenas tributarios del Nuevo Reino de Granada”
- To Santafé! To Santafé!, Anonymous: Capitulaciones de Zipaquirá
- Killing a Jaguar, Jorge Isaacs
- The Time of the Slaves Is Over, Candelario Obeso
- A Landowner’s Rules, Ángel María Caballero
- Muleteers on the Road, Beatríz Helena Robledo
- Campesino Life in the Boyacá Highlands, Orlando Fals Borda
- One Lowland Town Becomes a World: Gabriel García Márquez Returning to Aracataca, Gabriel García Márquez
- The Bricklayers: 1968 on Film, Jorge Rufinelli
- Switchblades in the City, Arturo Álape, Interview with Jesús
- Desplazado: “Now I Am Here as an Outcast,” Anonymous
- An Agrarian Counterreform, Luis Bernardo Flórez Enciso
- IV. Lived Inequalities
- Rules Are Issued for Different Populations: Indians, Blacks, Non-Christians, Anonymous: Libro de acuerdos de la Audiencia Real del Nuevo Reino de Granada
- The Marqués and Marquesa of San Jorge, Joaquín Gutiérrez
- An Indian Nobleman Petitions His King, Diego de Torres
- A Captured Maroon Faces His Interrogators, Francisco Angola
- Carrasquilla’s Characters: La Negra Narcisa, el Amito Martín, and Doña Bárbara, Tomás Carrasquilla
- Carried through the Streets of Bogotá: Grandmother’s Sedan Chair, Eduardo Caballero Calderón
- The Street-Car Bogotá of New Social Groups: Clerks, Switchboard Operators, Pharmacists, Augusto Morales Pino
- It Is a Norm among Us to Believe That a Woman Cannot Act on Her Own Criteria, María Cano
- I Energetically Protest in Defense of Truth and Justice, Manuel Quintín Lame
- Bringing Presents from Abroad, Manuel Zapata Olivella
- Cleaning for Other People, Anna Rubbo and Michael Taussig
- A Feminist Writer Sketches the Interior Life and Death of an Upper-Class Woman, Marvel Moreno
- Barranquilla’s First Gay Carnival Queen, Gloria Triana, Interview with Lino Fernando
- Romance Tourism, Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel
- They Are Using Me as Cannon Fodder, Flaco Flow and Melanina
- V. Violence
- Captains and Criminals, Juan Rodríguez Freile
- War to the Death, Simón Bolívar
- A Girl’s View of War in the Capital, Soledad Acosta de Samper
- Let This Be Our Last War, José María Quijano Wallis
- The “Silent Demonstration” of February 7, 1948, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán
- Dead Bodies Appear on the Streets, Gustavo Álvarez Gardeazábal
- Cruelty Acted as a Stimulant, José Gutiérrez Rodríguez
- Two Views of the National Front, Álvaro Gómez Hurtado and Ofelia Uribe de Acosta
- Starting Points for the FARC and the ELN, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia and Ejército de Liberación Nacional
- Where Is Omaira Montoya?, María Tila Uribe and Francisco J. Trujillo
- We Prefer a Grave in Colombia to a Cell in the United States, Los Extraditables
- A Medic’s Life within a Cocaine-Fueled Paramilitary Organization, Diego Viáfara Salinas
- Carlos Castaño “Confesses,” Mauricio Arangurén Molina
- The Song of the Flies, María Mercedes Carranza
- Kidnapped, Major General Luis Mendieta Ovalle
- Parapolitics, Claudia López and Óscar Sevillano
- Turning Points in the Colombian Conflict, 1960s–1990s, Joseph Fabry, James Mollison, Robert Romero Ospina, Daniel Jiménez, El Espectador, and Ricardo Mazalán
- VI. Change and Continuity in the Colombian Economy
- El Dorado, Fray Pedro Simón
- The Conquest Yields Other Treasures: Potatoes, Yucca, Corn, Juan de Castellanos and Galeotto Cei
- Cauca’s Slave Economy, Germán Colmenares
- A Jesuit Writes to the King: Profits from Coca Leaf Could Surpass Tea, Antonio Julián
- Bogotá’s Market, ca. 1850, Agustín Codazzi
- A Banker Invites Other Bankers to Make Money in Colombia, Phanor James Eder
- How Many People Were Massacred in 1928?, Telegrams, American Legation in Bogotá and Consul in Santa Marta
- Strikers or Revolutionaries? Strikers and Revolutionaries?, Mauricio Archila Neira and Raúl Eduardo Mahecha
- Coffee and “Social Equilibrium,” Federación Nacional de Cafeteros
- Two Views of a Foreign Mining Enclave: The Chocó Pacífico, Patrick O’Neill and Aquiles Escalante
- Carlos Ardila Lülle: “How I Got Rich,” Patricia Lara Salive and Jesús Ortíz Nieves
- The Arrow, David Sánchez Juliao
- A Portrait of Drug “Mules” in the 1990s, Alfredo Molano
- Luciano Romero: One among Thousands of Unionists Murdered in Colombia, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and Peter Brabeck-Letmathe
- VII. Transnational Colombia
- A Creole Reads the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, Antonio Nariño
- Humboldt’s Diary, May 1801, Alexander von Humboldt
- The Most Practical, Because the Most Brutal, José Asunción Silva
- Grandfather Arrives from Bremen, Pedro Gómez Valderrama
- We Were Called “Turks,” Elías Saer Kayata
- Two Presidents’ Views: “I Took the Isthmus” and “I Was Dispossessed, Insulted, and Dishonored to No End,” Theodore Roosevelt and Marco Fidel Suárez
- Facing the Yankee Enemy, José María Vargas Vila
- Bogotá’s Art Scene in 1957: “There Is No Room for Any of the Old Servilism,” Marta Traba
- 1969: The GAO Evaluates Money Spent in Colombia, US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
- Who Was Where during the Mapiripán Massacre?, Ignacio Gómez Gómez
- A Minga of Voluntary Eradication, Asociación Popular de Negros Unidos del Rio Yurumanguí (APONURY)
- Latin American Ex-Presidents Push to Reorient the War on Drugs, Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy
- A New Export Product: Yo soy Betty, la fea Goes Global, Yeidy Rivero
- Today We Understand and Can Say No, Lorenzo Muelas
- Toward a Stable and Enduring Peace, Delegados del Gobierno de la República de Colombia (Gobierno Nacional) and Delegados de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia–Ejército del Pueblo
- Suggestions for Further Reading
- Acknowledgment of Copyrights and Sources
- Index
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