Cardona
MPSA 2004
11
some essential element of Colombian national character nor assumes continuity from the
19
th
century to the 20
th
without specifying the mechanisms by which such persistence
could actually happen.
Colombia in the 19
th
Century: Between Chaos and Order
The origins of the two political parties that were to shape Colombian politics over
the next two centuries drew their origins from the struggles for independence (1811-
1822). The conflict between Simon Bolívar, the general who led the revolutionary armies
and advocated strong centralized rule, and Francisco de Paula Santander, another
prominent general who advocated federalism and promoted the rule of law over military
might, provided the symbolic origins of the parties. While the historical record may be
more complex than the simple opposition between Bolivar the militarist centralist and
Santander the legalist federalist, the fact remains that these figures formed the symbolic
figure heads for the Conservative and Liberal parties, respectively.
From the outset, the new republic faced a host of political and military problems.
The first was the integrity of the national territory, inherited from colonial arrangements.
“La Gran Colombia” included the territories of present-day Ecuador, Venezuela, and
Panamá, in addition to Colombia. The first two broke off and formed independent
republics by 1830, while Panamá was a source of contention and struggle throughout the
19
th
century, before finally seceding in 1903 at the end of the War of a Thousand Days,
discussed below.
Once the borders of la Nueva Granada, as the republic was known at the time,
were defined in 1830, the nation’s leaders faced a struggle with respect to the nature of
the constitutional order. While Colombia cycled through a total of 9 constitutions in the
Convention