Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Hispanic American Historical Review

Volume

84

Issue

2

Publisher

Duke University Press

Publication Date

2004

First Page

277

Last Page

313

Abstract

“All that belong to the Liberal Party in the Cauca are people of the pueblo bajo (as they are generally called) and blacks,” observes an 1859 letter written by Juan Aparicio, a local political operative who had undertaken the unenviable task of recruiting these same “lower classes” to support the powerful caudillo Tomás Mosquera’s new National Party. Aparicio tried to explain his failure in this assignment, arguing that “this class of people will not listen to anyone that is not of their party.”1 How had the local Liberal Party—controlled at the national level by wealthy white men—become associated with blacks and the poor in the Cauca region of southwestern Colombia? Or, more to the point, how did Afro-Colombians and other lower-class people transform elite political organizations into “their party”?

Comments

Originally published by Duke University Press. Publisher’s PDF can be accessed through Hispanic American Historical Review through Duke University Press .

Winner of the James Alexander Robertson Prize.

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