Ensayos de Historia Poltica de Colombia, siglos XIX y XX by David Bushnell Review by: Malcolm Deas The Americas, Vol.

63, No. 4 (Apr., 2007), pp. 685-686 Published by: Academy of American Franciscan History Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4491323 . Accessed: 28/04/2012 00:40
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Ensayos de Historia Politica de Colombia, siglos XIX y XX. By David Bushnell. Medellin: La CarretaEditores, 2006. Pp. 195. Illustrations.Notes. David Bushnell is known to many as the authorof a classic study of GeneralFranof Gran Colombia, vice-president under cisco de Paula Santander'sadministration Bolivar in the 1820s, a work that has stood the test of over half a century,and of a wise generalhistory of Colombia.He is trulythe doyen of Colombianstudies, for as he remindsus here he first arrivedin Bogotaia couple of months afterthe 9 April riot A book of Bushof 1948 which followed the assassinationof Jorge Eli6cer Gaitain. nell essays is thereforean event, and this little collection does not disappoint. One only wishes that the essays were longer and that there were more of them. There are seven. Two are about Santander,one about his "problematicimage" and anotherdetailing his Venezuelan supporters.Another essay analyses Bolivar's final dictatorship,and thereis also an analysis of the press in GranColombia during is a comparisonof the "opening"of Colombia by the the 1820s. More contemporary liberals and the recent version of the same carried through mid nineteenth-century by C6sar Gaviria in the early 1990s. Also firmly in the twentieth century is a study of Colombian perspectives on the Spanish Civil War. Finally there is a piece of philosophical philately, in which the author reveals his secret weakness for the issues of the Conservative Republic, 1885-1930, and ponders the significance of whom they portray:Rafael Ntfiez alone made it onto a stamp while president, though he may not have been responsible himself. All these pieces have the Bushnell stamp of clarity and authority.All, even when it comes to stamps, have an evenness and maturityof judgement. Points are never laboured;there extraordinary is no overselling of the work in hand. It will be a pity if these virtues lead readers to underestimatethe importanceof this small collection, both as history and as a backgroundto some currentconcerns. The studies of Bolivar's final dictatorshipand of Santandershould be read by all interestedin the period, and by all who have curiosity enough to enquire what historical truths there may be in the current Bolivarian rhetoric emanating from Venezuela. Bushnell here is not anti-bolivarian,but he rightly has no patience with those who seek to make out this last phase of his politics as progressive. His analysis of the laws and decrees of the dictatorship-a close reading of legislation has always been one of Bushnell's strengths-shows a certainexhaustedrealism, but no great concern for the popularmasses. Of equal importance,and of the same evenwhich not only manages to convey with handedness,is the main essay on Santander, deft economy much of the characterof the man-virtues and vices-but which also explores the ups and downs of his posthumousreputation. Bushnell's long memorycan easily recall a Colombia where Bolivar was seen as the founding father of the Conservative party, and he finds his transformationin recent decades into a hero of the left ironical.Though he is far too professionala historianto be describedas a partisan,one can also detect in these pages an invitation

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to Colombiansand othersto think againaboutthe significance of Santander, who can claim the merit of discerningand devising how the countryhad to be governed, and whose liberalismwas more than skin deep. The pendanton Santander'sVenezuelan is unlikely to go down well with any chavista readerit may find. supporters The chaptersthat touch the twentieth century are also sure-footed. Separatedby more than a century though they are, the two aperturas can be usefully compared. Colombia was too remote,too poor and too peculiarlypoliticized itself for the Spanish civil war to have had much of an impact, and here Bushnell gives us an elegant lesson in not, in the Spanish saying, asking for pears from the elm-tree.
St Antony's College Oxford, United Kingdom MALCOLM DEAS

La oposici6n politica. By Elisa Servin. Mexico: CIDE, 2006. Pp. 136. Notes. Bibliography. Elisa Servin has managed to go beyond the small format of the introductory series coordinatedby Clara GarciaAyluardoand write a very suggestive synthesis of electoral oppositions in twentieth century Mexico. As Servin notes, narrativesof the twentieth century have been dominated by state-centeredperspectives and, for the latter half, by political science or testimonial accounts. Servin builds a clear account of the multiple attempts, from left and right, to challenge a regime that emerged from armed revolution. This adds up to a basic genealogy of the diverse movements, most of them democratic and all of them eventually institutionalized, that lead to the final defeat of the old PRI machine in 2000. Ratherthan privilegingone vector (Catholic resistance,labor organizing,peasant resistance,leftist activism), the book follows ideologically variegatedchallenges to the regime's electoralhegemony.Although the exclusion of those who chose the via armada is justified by space constraints,it poses a problem,since many such movements,like the 1910 revolutionitself, stemmedfrom failed electoralattempts,or, like the Cristeros,lead to or influencedelectoralresistance.Servin stresses the role of the furthersuggesting that the lines separatingelecpress, academicsand "intellectuals,"
toral opposition from other forms of struggle are permeable. She proposes the advance toward "political modernity" (p. 13) and expanded political rights as an appropriate

Mexican politics. Yet teleology it is, and might teleology to understand contemporary when tryingto understand movements, such prove less appropriate equally recurring as the recentprotestsat Oaxaca,Atenco and Chiapas,in which actors, on both sides, seem to place little value on institutions.Servin admits that the book focuses on the competitionfor the presidency,thus leaving aside regional diversity. The volume covers from the fall of the Porfiriatoto the 2000 elections, although the basic patternsof political opposition in the twentieth century are to be found in