Cardona
MPSA 2004
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the War of a Thousand Days and was able to position himself in its aftermath as an
outsider who could mediate the reconstruction of bipartisan relations (Bushnell 1993:
156). Law 17 of 1907, written at the instigation of a series of letters from army generals
across the country, developed rational criteria for the inclusion of officers on the
“escalafón militar,” or military hierarchy. Congress debated the nature of these criteria,
offering different starting points for the calculation of the hierarchy, whether it was to be
based on the escalafón of 1888 or 1896. The choice of starting point was not arbitrary,
but rather determined how many current officers would be included in the new hierarchy.
The initial proposal involved the 1888 version; the final version passed by Congress
moved this up to 1896 (Archivo del Congreso 1907).
The other major military reform carried out under Reyes concerned military
education. He created the Army Cadet School, the Naval School, and Army War College
(Escuela Superior de Guerra, ESG) to systematize the training of officers and chiefs
(Arancibia 2002: 385-86). Reports from the Ministry of War to the Congress in the years
following the reform track the progress of these institutions. In 1914, the ESG accepted
36 students: of these, 31 took a placement exam, and 16 passed (Memoria de Guerra
1915: 185). That same year, the Army Cadet School had 110 students (Memoria de
Guerra 1915: 191).
The relationship between these two sets of reforms is interesting to consider.
Writing in 1910, War Minister José Medina Calderón described the dilemma he faced in
implementing the rationalization of the military hierarchy:
If an Army of 6,000 men needs 350 Officers [as contemplated in the 1904 law that set troop
levels], for one of 50,000 [as was the case during the War of a Thousand Days] there would need
to be 2,917. To this figure we must add those from prior wars, from which it is not exaggerating to
Convention