A Fervent Crusade for the National Soul: Cultural Politics in Colombia, 19301946

(Hardback)

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A Fervent Crusade for the National Soul examines the implementation of cultural policies in relation to the contested configuration of citizenship in Colombia between 1930 and 1946. At a time when national identities were re-imagined all over the Americas, progressive artists and intellectuals affiliated with the liberal governments that ruled Colombia established an unprecedented bureaucratic apparatus for cultural intervention that celebrated so-called popular culture and rendered culture a social right. This book challenges pervasive narratives of state failure in Colombia, attending to the confrontations, negotiations, and entanglements of bureaucrats with everyday citizens that shaped the relationship between the ruler and the ruled. Catalina Muoz argues that while culture became an instrument of inclusion, the liberal definition of popular culture as authentic and static was also a tool for domination that reinforced enduring structures of inequality founded on region, race, and gender. Liberals crafted the state as the paternalistic protector of acquiescent citizens, instead of a warden of political participation. Muoz suggests that this form of governance allowed the elites to rule without making the structural changes required to craft a more equal society.

Reviews

CatalinaMuoz's book is a comprehensive and detailed history of the efforts of the Liberal governments that ruled Colombia from1930 to 1946 to shape--and control--the inclusion of a growing and increasingly contentious mass of citizens into the political process through the implementation of cultural programs. The book analyzes the discourses and policies crafted by Liberal intellectuals who occupied positions at the Ministry of Education, as well as the responses to these policies by Conservative critics and the general population... Muoz offers a compelling argument for the comprehensive political and social change that the Liberals spearheaded in this period and the important role that education and culture played in materializing these changes.

-- "The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History"

Establishing the stakes of her study is where Muoz-Rojas excels. Finalized in the context of not only Colombia's ongoing peace process but also the historic 2021 social mobilizations, the book's introduction and epilogue sizzle with contemporary relevance.[2] The epilogue could profitably be read alongside the introduction prior to the remainder of the book. Future regional studies will build upon Muoz-Rojas's empirical findings on cultural politics. In the meantime, Muoz-Rojas has modeled how to think critically about state making and inequality, as well as the connection between the past and the present.

-- "H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online"

In this excellent book, Catalina Muoz-Rojas argues that Liberal politicians who ruled from 1936-1946 sought to create a more inclusive polity, breaking with Conservative governments that had maintained a rigid social hierarchy through repressive mechanisms that excluded el pueblo--workers, campesinos, indigenous and black peoples--from many of the rights that adhere to full citizenship in a democratic society.

-- "Bulletin of Spanish Studies"

Incisive and creative, historian Catalina Muoz follows Liberal politicians, bureaucrats, and intellectuals in the manner of an ethnographer using the paper trail they left behind. This critical study is beautifully crafted. Muoz convincingly demonstrates that the simultaneous promotion of national unity and inclusion worked hand in glove with the maintenance of vertical ties for the legitimacy of the ruling elite, making the history of Colombia during the decades prior to the escalation of violence less exceptional than we have assumed. This is a must-read for anyone interested in how democracy is an ongoing, contingent project in a permanent state of expansion and contraction.

--Lina Britto, Northwestern University; author of Marijuana Boom. The Rise and Fall of Colombia's First Drug Paradise

This timely, well-organized, and highly relevant book might best be read by starting with the epilogue and working backward. Catalina Muoz-Rojas focuses on the cultural politics of the Colombian Liberal Republic from 1930 to 1946 and the political culture of Liberal elites and bureaucrats who sought to include the popular sectors in the national citizenry.... The writing is clear, jargon-free, and engaging. Graduate students in history and Latin American studies, specialists, and dedicated general readers will find much in this book about Colombian history as well as informed and sophisticated debates about democratic governance. Students of sociology and political science will also find useful Book Reviews / Twentieth-Twenty-First Centuries 369 comparative data for their work on state formation and democratic governance, and on state and society dynamics in Latin America.

-- "Hispanic American Historical Review"

Author Bio

Catalina Muoz is associate professor of history at Universidad de Andes, Bogot.