Anibal Galindo, the
Colombian Economist of the XIX Century[1]
(In Memory of Jesus Antonio
“Chucho” Bejarano Avila)
Luis Guillermo Velez Alvarez
Economist; Professor, EAFIT University
Chairman, ECSIM Foundation
I
The scene, real or imaginary, may have taken place in
Bogotá in June, 1862. The government of General Tomas Cipriano de Mosquera had just
decreed the forced currency of notes issued by the Nation and was determined to
impose it by the sword. A shoemaker –ex fighter of the military uprising that
led Mosquera to power– is being detained for refusing to receive government
paper in exchange for the produce of his labor. Economist, Economist! –shouts
the craftsman, to draw the attention of a subject that happens to pass by the vicinity
of his shop at that time– come here, I put you as a witness, tell me if it is
true that these papers are current money, whether it is fair that in exchange for
them they want to deprive me of the value of my work.
The economist in question is Anibal Galindo and the
scene described marks the beginning of his burlesque article "Paper Currency",
published in La Paz newspaper in February, 1863, to ridicule in the manner of
Bastiat, the nonsense of an authoritarian government that intended to make gold
with lithographic presses as Galindo himself would say years later. The
craftsman avoids being imprisoned accepting government paper in payment of the
booties and paying in turn, this one in cash, a fine for his insubordination. A
delicious dialogue starts then, in which Galindo explains the principles of
political economy and free trade which the clever craftsman will find
incredibly simple.
II
This little episode defines what the attitude of
Galindo towards life and society of his time was. He always saw himself as a
liberal economist, namely as an intellectual concerned about understanding rationally
economic problems, proposing solutions and illustrating his contemporaries on
the principles of free trade.
Descendant of a wealthy family[2], he was born in Coello, a small village of Tolima
Grande, in 1834 and died in Bogotá in 1901. He lived through the turbulent
period of formation of the Colombian nation –marked by civil wars and
constitutional instability– and of the unsuccessful integration of its economy
to international trade flows and foreign investment[3] Between 1830 and 1901 Colombia suffered nine general
civil wars, 14 local civil wars, two international wars –both with Ecuador– and
seven constitutions were issued[4]. That is also the time when there are major political
and economic changes in the country that allow the liquidation of the colonial
regime and the gradual, conflicted and imperfect emergence of the institutions characteristic
of the capitalist economy.
In both processes, which naturally are deeply
articulated, Anibal Galindo will be active starring: fighter in two civil wars,
Congressman on several occasions, Governor of the States of Cundinamarca and
Tolima, public officer in various national administrations, trader and successful
entrepreneur, trial lawyer, Secretary of the Embassy of Colombia before
governments of England and France, representative on boundary negotiations with
Venezuela and Peru, university professor, journalist and permanent student of
the economic problems of the country. The debate on protectionism and free
trade, the liquidation of colonial taxes and their replacement by modern
taxation, the nature of state intervention in the economy, the development of the
monetary and financial system, the importance of railways, the question of wastelands
and amortized assets, in short, the significance of socialist ideas versus
liberalism are some of the matters addressed in his economic writings,
characterized all of them for relevant employment of economic theory, knowledge
of history, permanent reference to the experience of other countries and using,
as far as the circumstances permitted, statistics and hard facts.
Naturally, Galindo had no formal economic education. He
studies in Bogota in the Jesuit Seminary and the colleges of The Rosary and St.
Bartholomew. In the latter he graduated as a lawyer in 1852, at the age of 18.
In St. Bartholomew he surely attends the chair of Political Economy provided by
Ezequiel Rojas Ramirez, but his true learning of the economy and public
finances will start during his work as Assistant Director of National Income
between 1855 and 1857, in the administration of President Manuel Maria
Mallarino. With regard to this experience he observes in his Historical Memories:
"Having to prepare in
that delicate position serious work on customs, salt mines, the Panama
railroad, national stamp, wastelands, national assets, etc., etc., for which it
was not enough to know how to make speeches or write articles about politics, I
needed to apply myself to serious economic studies on these subjects, in which
I persevered and came to acquire enough sufficiency".
In his training as an economist the three trips made
to Europe along his life will be relevant: The first in 1856, the second between
1857 and 1859, and the third between 1866 and 1868, as business manager and Secretary
of the legation of Colombia before France and England. During his second stay
he resides in London and writes articles on economic and political issues for
El Vapor, a newspaper published in Honda[5]. Even more important for his training will be his
third stay in which he drafts[6] Theory of Banks. Study on the organization of the Bank of England, which can be considered the most academic of his writings. The text was published in 1869 and
according to Galindo it will be "the most influential writing in
determining the establishment of the first bank in Bogota". For many years
it will be used as a text for teaching the subject at the National University
and the College of The Rosary. From these trips Galindo will also get a great
knowledge of English[7] and French, allowing him first-hand contact with the
work of the leading economists of the time.
Galindo was active in the political life of his time.
He was member of the Liberal Party, in the radical wing called
"Golgotha"[8], of which were also part Manuel Murillo Toro, Aquileo
Parra, Salvador Camacho Roldan, Januario Salgar, the Samper brothers –Jose
Maria and Miguel– and Carlos Martin, among others . He was a Congressman on
several occasions and in addition to the aforementioned Assistant Direction of National
Income, he served (1874 – 1875) as Secretary of Statistics in the
administration of Manuel Murillo Toro and as Finance Minister in the government
of Jose Eusebio Otalora, in 1883.
As head of the Statistics Office he published the
first Statistical Yearbook of Colombia with information on territory,
population, government, political-administrative division, education, crime,
production, foreign trade, currency, communications, rents and taxes, public
debt, etc. Based on reports to the Congress of successive secretaries of
finance he constructs statistical series for certain variables since 1831[9]. His passage through the Ministry of Finance was
extremely short, just 15 months, but he had to face a fiscal crisis that he got
around obtaining from the Inter-Oceanic Canal Company a loan of 2.5 million
francs. In 1886 he is appointed also briefly as interim President of the State
of Tolima and in 1894 in exercise of his last job as public officer he travels
to Peru to negotiate the Amazon boundaries.
In 1880 Galindo published his fundamental work, Economic
and Fiscal Studies, which brings together his main economic writings, "the
result of 25 years of application to the study of this science of Political Economy",
will say his dedication to the Society of Political Economy of Paris[10]. The last years of his life were devoted to writing
his properly historic works: The Decisive
Battles of Freedom, 1888, and Historical
Memories, 1900[11].
III
Anibal Galindo was still a lad when Florentino
Gonzalez[12], Finance Secretary in the first government of General
Tomas Cipriano de Mosquera, won congressional approval of the customs reform (July
14, 1847 Act) and the removal of the tobacco monopoly (May 24, 1848 Act) that
marked the beginning of the dismantling of the tax and protectionist system
inherited from the colony. Years later in his Notes Galindo will indicate that in 1847 begin the great liberal
reforms that will end the protectionist system established since the independence
and which had failed in their objective of stimulating the development of
domestic industry:
"The 26 years that
lasted in-office the protectionist system that restricted with very high duties
the import of cotton fabrics for general consumption of the population and
footwear, furniture, clothing made, saddles, beer, iron and copper in rough,
flour, gunpowder, manufactured tallow, crockery and other articles of domestic
production, left no trace of progress or advancement in the industry of the
country. On the contrary, these manufactures numbed with the protection of the
law, maintained by a hateful and unfair tax that levied most taxpayers in favor
of a few, far from advancing were retrograde and something ¡unique! The country
has had world-class artisans (...) to rival foreign products, only when in the
middle of freedom the stimulus of competition has forced them to form "[13].
However, moving away from the radicalism of his
Florentino Gonzalez[14], Galindo accepts some protection to certain new
industries:
"It is true that our
country is destined mainly to provide the old world manufacturing industry with
materials that their machines transform into that infinity of objects that
satisfy our rarest whims. But it is also true that only half-savage tribes may
have a unique, equal, common, emptied and stereotyped-in-the-same-mold industry.
After all, every people, for poor and backward as it is, needs to diversify
their occupations, under penalty of leaving many capacities unemployed, many
arms without work. Not everyone can engage in cattle raising, mining or hard
labor in agriculture (...) all people need to acclimate in their own soil
certain industries (...) although at first they have to make great sacrifices in
founding them to eventually buy their products at lower prices producing them in
the country than buying them abroad (...) it is cheaper to make great
anticipations to acclimate these arts in the country, than staying perpetually
importing products from overseas...”[15].
It is up to government to stimulate the development of
these industries but mainly through the training of workers:
"… between the
protective system that produces the result of printing to national activity a
different direction from what it would have taken in the midst of freedom; between
this and the initiative a foresighted and enlightened government should take to
educate the national work in order to make it smarter, more fruitful, more
productive, there is all the distance that separates error from truth and awkward
abandonment (...) from intelligent and foresighted activity of the true
statesman” [16]
IV
Anibal Galindo became a moderate interventionist,
although in the early years of his work as an economist like most of his
colleagues of liberal radical generation, focused naive and exaggerated hopes
on the effects that over economic activity would have the unrestricted
application of the "laissez-faire". In his report on the French postal
service written in 1868, not without irony recalls how Rafael Nuñez and he applied
the principle of "laissez-faire" when they were officers in the administration
of Mallarino. It is worth quoting at length that delicious text:
"In 1856, when I was General
Director of Income and when it was fashionable as the non plus ultra of
liberalism the laissez-faire
economic doctrine, false as an absolute principle, true only in its paradoxical
sense that governments should let do everything that they should not do, in
1856 I mean, we decided Mr. Nuñez, Finance Secretary and me, laisser faire the posts, namely to leave
without communication the towns we were in charge of serving. Then we
suppressed as a liberal measure most of the internal posts, leaving them reduced
to a few that put in communication the capital of the republic with the
provincial capitals and with the income administrations. I think my illustrated
friend Mr. Nuñez, who later got in touch with the civilized world, will
remember this act I will not say with shame, but with sadness. Rapid
communication of the various towns that make up a nation is a need as urgent as
that of administering justice and that of having a public force to repress the
bad guys and provide security to the innocent"[17]
In various writings Galindo addressed the issue of
government intervention in the economy. In his study on the railways, 1874,
against the arguments of Camacho Roldan he notes that more than a debate about
the nation's fiscal possibilities to undertake public works of general
interest, what is at stake is the definition of the scope of government
intervention in the economy:
"Under these modest and
deceiving appearances of a simple fiscal question, in this issue of
construction of railroads is hidden a political issue of the highest
importance, which is to determine with accuracy up to where the intervention of
general government should go in the promotion of material improvements” [18]
But it is in his History
of the Foreign Debt, 1871, where the position of Galindo on the role of
government is exposed more clearly, in no way far from that of Adam Smith[19]. Here are two examples:
"... In a backward and
poor country the task of government cannot be limited to the passive action of
letting go, being satisfied with abolishing on paper legal obstacles that go
against the free development of the faculties of the individual, but it is
necessary to use the resources of the community to break material obstacles
that go against this development, and that are in fact higher than the stimuli
and the foresight of the individual interest"[20]
"Our governments cannot
be limited then to the passive task of administering justice, although that
should be the most sacred of their duties and is the primary purpose for which
any government is instituted. But rather it will be necessary arming them of a
great economic power, so that with the resources of the nation they remove the material
and moral obstacles that nature and ignorance oppose to the development of
public wealth. On the cover of our administrative science should be written for
more than half a century the following aphorism: The Government is instituted
to provide security, to spread primary education and to make roads"[21]
And one more from the study of railways:
"In almost all
civilized countries public education, elementary and secondary, would not be
produced to the extent that is needed, if society did not set a fee to pay as a
general service what cannot be afforded by the direct consumers of it." [22]
These ideas about the role of government will set
Galindo aside from his fellow of the so called Olimpo Radical[23] who translated their liberal ideals in the 1863 Constitution
of Rionegro[24]. In respect of this constitution, Galindo wrote:
"... It was a crime
against civilization. No side had any absurd result. It formed nine republics
with their respective sovereignties (...) It could not be more defective in the
distribution of sovereignty. The citizen was all about granting absolute
guarantees for the exercise of individual freedom. The society was nothing. The
authority had no power, no means and no force to maintain order and make
justice prevail. The government of the United States of Colombia was reduced to
the craft of forming a budget and eating it"[25]
Despite his antipathy for the political regime of the
Constitution of Rionegro, Galindo was officer of several radical governments and
represented them before other countries. In the last years of his life he moved
even more away of radicalism and approached the sector headed by Rafael Nuñez. About
the centralist and presidential constitution of Nuñez and Caro he wrote in his Memories that "It would have been
therefore, in my humble concept, inconvenient for the Liberal Party to accept
the Constitution of 86 as a basis for a Republican modus vivendi..."
V
Colombia ended the nineteenth century with less than
200 miles of rail, including 40 of the Panama Railroad[26]. In the early twentieth century, Argentina had more
than 20,000 miles of railroad; Mexico about 17,000; Brazil just over 16,000 and
Chile approximately 5,000[27]. In his study on the Colombian railroads, Galindo
refers to the experiences of Argentina and Chile and also to those of the
United States, India and Russia, putting in mind the impact that construction
of railway lines have on overall economic activity. This is his main argument
against Camacho Roldan, who argued that all what was transportable in Colombia
could be transported by bridle path in a less expensive way than by rail. Camacho
Roldan calculations assume that the cargo volume transported will be the same
before and after the introduction of the railway. Galindo mischievously points
out:
"... Mr. Camacho (...)
does not grant railway the virtue to dislocate in the change of products of
domestic and foreign trade one kilogram over those transported by mules and Indians"[28]
We know who was right in this dispute. In fact, the Congress
had adopted the June 5 Act, 1871 that included the construction of several
railroads. What really defeated Galindo were not the arguments of Camacho, who
years later recognized his mistake and came to preside the Girardot Railway
Company, but the fiscal poverty of the country –a country as poor as ours that
does not have money to build a railroad, say Galindo[29]– the topography, as Galindo recognized and the
inability to attract the foreign capital that financed the construction of
railways in Argentina, Chile and Mexico. For these reasons, in the nineteenth
century Colombia was left by the train[30].
VI
Until the mid-nineteenth century Colombia lacked a
modern financial system. The census system from the colony prevailed until
mid-century. In the early 40s the appearance of an audacious financial man,
Judas Tadeo Landinez, is recorded and he is responsible for the first
bankruptcy of the Colombian history. The first financial regulation is 1865 Act
35, which supports the free banking system that prevails in the country until 1885
when the government of Nuñez sets forced currency. Act 35 was extremely
liberal: "The establishment of banks of issue, deposit, discount and money
order and of mortgage banks is free in the State, and their exercise is not
subject to other duties than those imposed by the laws on trade companies and
traders", proclaims its first article. Therefore it is not surprising that
in 1881 the country had 42 private banks that issued their own gold backed
paper. Even a company, El Zancudo mine, issued its own money.
Galindo calls for his study on the organization of the
Bank of England the merit of having revealed to the country the benefits of
banking business and of having been decisive in establishing the first bank in
Bogota. This is certainly a well-written piece that presents systematically the
functioning and organization of the Bank of England and the functioning of the international
payments system. For many years it was a text for teaching the matter at the
National University and the College of The Rosary and surely influenced the
development of banking. Galindo was in favor of the gold standard and declared
enemy of forced currency. In his dialogue with the shoemaker evoked at the
beginning of this paper Galindo explains the difference between the notes
issued by the Bank of England and those put into circulation by the government
Treasury:
"... The Bank of
England (...) is at the same time creditor and debtor of banknotes put into
circulation; it has given them on loan
and not on pay, as the General
Treasury. (...) And even if the Treasury organized a permanent system of
change, to issue bearer notes admissible as money in all national income and contributions
and redeemable in all offices of the Treasury, the government could not still create,
in these circumstances, a representative sign, a circulating medium, but an
effect of trade, a good exchange merchandise.
What do you mean by that
talk? Please explain in Castilian.
I say that even with these
notes neither your wife would buy eggs, meat, bread, candles, soap, chocolate
or lard, nor myself the shoes that so willingly you sell for my money.
Why not?
After the publication of his work on the banks in
1869, Galindo does not return to work on the banking issue. Vainly is sought in
his writings a judgment on the National Bank, which in 1880 was granted the
monopoly of the issuance and the subsequent forced currency regime established
in 1886.
VII
The problem of wasteland awarding is the most
remarkable aspect of the land question in the nineteenth century. Also
important are the topics of reserves and disentailment. The way how the
conflict on wastelands between productive occupants and landlords and holders
of land bonds was faced will impact in a decisive way the agrarian conflicts
even in the twentieth century.
In the nineteenth century lands in Colombia were
distributed in colonial haciendas, indigenous reserves, lands of the church and
those of public domain or wastelands[32]. No much is known of their quantitative distribution
in these forms of tenancy. The Geographer Agustin Codazzi, who toured the
country in mid-century, estimated that wastelands accounted for 75% of the
territory. Other scholars speak of a higher percentage. These forms of tenancy
determined both the orientation of the land policy of the republican governments
throughout the period –and even in the first three decades of the twentieth
century– and the nature of land disputes.
Since colonial times, the State gave large extensions
of public lands to private persons in payment for services or for the purpose
of promoting the occupation of the territory, especially in the period of the
Bourbon reforms. After independence and until the mid-nineteenth century, this
practice was maintained initially to reward soldiers who participated in the
wars of independence and later to encourage immigration and for fiscal purposes.
Wastelands were also granted for the construction of transportation routes –roads,
railways and canals. An 1835 Act granted 25,000 hectares to the contractor in
charge of building the road of Quindio.
The use of wastelands as fiscal resource goes back to
the moment of completion of the wars of independence. Lacking funds, the new
republics chose to reward former combatants with territorial bonds on
extensions that varied according to the degree of the military or the merits in
combat. In 1821, the Congress of Cucuta issued laws on rewards and disposition of
wastelands and ordered the creation of an office of surveying. An 1825 Act awarded
50,000 fanegadas. Another 1844 Act awarded wastelands to various military. Apparently
most of the beneficiaries of bonds, for lack of resources or for not being
interested in agriculture, did not claim the land granted and sold their titles
to merchants and landlords. An incipient market of land bonds was born that way,
which was gradually expanded with the titles of those who subscribed borrowings
of the nation redeemable in land. Thus, those who wished to acquire land to
engage in farming or to expand their possessions came to this secondary market,
acquired titles and subsequently claimed the land. Even in the early twentieth
century it was possible to buy wastelands with the old land bonds.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, as the
exporter economy of agricultural products progressed –tobacco, cinchona bark,
cotton, indigo and finally coffee– conflicts between absentee owners –the land bondholders–
and the occupants of fact became more frequent and intense. Catherine LeGrand
(1988) distinguishes two phases in the public land policy in the nineteenth
century. The first, between 1820 and 1870, would be marked by the nation's
fiscal problems, although it also sought to encourage immigration and occupy
the territory by granting concessions for the founding of villages. In the
1870s there is a change in the policy, leaving fiscal considerations that had
until then guided land legislation, and setting the objective of promoting the
economic exploitation of the border areas through free grants. Act 61, 1874 and
Act 48, 1882 reflect this orientation. LeGrand summarizes the guidance of the
new policy in the following terms:
"Laws specified that
although legal title had not been requested, by the fact of their occupation
settlers acquired land rights. It was expressly forbidden to bondholders the
acquisition of territory already opened by settlers and in lawsuits over land
rights the law favored over other applicants those who had plowed the land for
five or more years. Thus, in the years after 1870 the Colombian Congress
explicitly recognized a potential conflict between settlers and great
entrepreneurs and in doing so he sided with the settlers. Wasteland farmers
were the only peasant group in Colombia whose rights obtained explicit legal
definition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the same
time, the government encouraged independent settlers to seek through legal
means the awarding of the land they cultivated, because without land titles
they could not sell or mortgage their plots. By strengthening this way the
legal rights of farmers and facilitating the obtaining of their property titles,
the Colombian government sought to encourage settlement and economic use of
wastelands by both, large and small producers"[33]
The intentions of the national state to formalize
property rights of productive occupants in border lands would crash against its
weak capacity to intervene solving on their behalf the land conflicts that
would increase exponentially between 1870 and 1930. A reflection of this
situation is also the fact that territorial bondholders received most awarded
land even after the change of the policy.
In his writing Limitations of Domain and Award of Wastelands
Galindo analyzes with clarity the origin of the conflict and reminiscent of
Locke, develops the principles that should govern land appropriation. It is
convenient to illustrate to some extent his position:
"From the vast amount
of wasteland awarded, there are only about 100 thousand hectares that have been
granted to occupants and tillers of the soil, which are the only people who strictly
speaking of principles are entitled to acquire ownership on uncultivated land;
other represent concessions made without discrimination, on onerous contracts
that have always borne the implied condition of colonizing and cultivating the
lands granted, but which have not been met. And of the million and 100 thousand
hectares that have passed to private domain by material awards made in the
field, it can be ensured without fear of error, that the portion of that
surface that has been really occupied and modified by culture is less than one
hundredth".
And further:
"If territorial
property had not been founded on monopoly by the right of conquest, but by
natural soil occupation, by the scientific principle that the only legitimate
basis of value of land is the human service incorporated therein, its
distribution would have followed a very different course from the one it has
had in our country. Instead of one hundred original acquirers, there would have
been one thousand, ten thousand and probably one hundred thousand. The plus
value added by social progress constantly, which is the largest of the factors
that come into its value, would have been distributed among many; its pricing
would be the natural that an effective competition would have given
legitimately and not the artificial that the monopoly has given..."
Finally:
"The earth, as God made
it, originally belongs to the community. The law recognizes private ownership
for the purpose that the land be improved. The deeper science research cannot
discover other ethical foundation of property rights on the land"[34].
These ideas would be reflected in Act 48, 1882,
commonly known as Galindo Act. Spotlessly is noted in this law: "The
wasteland property is acquired by culture, whatever its size". It also
establishes that "growers of wastelands established therein with house and
farm will be considered as possessors in good faith and may not be deprived of
the possession but by judgment in ordinary civil trial"[35].
The enforcement of Act 48 was limited by the weakness
of central government against local authorities controlled by landowners.
Anyway it remains for history Galindo's substantive contribution to
understanding and solving the problem of landownership in a law which in many
respects was more progressive than the undeservedly famous 1936 Act 200.
VIII
Anibal Galindo was a man of study and action. His
contemporaries recognized to him merits in the field of law and economics.
Nuñez called him "one of the brightest talents in the liberal
constellation of the time"[36]. He knew the work of Smith, Malthus, Mill, Turgot,
Say, Bastiat, Carey, Garnier, etc. He was an applied economist with unique
talents, who used the theory to analyze the problems of his time. His rigor in the
empirical support of his work and the judicious use of theory is unmatched
among his contemporaries –Camacho Roldan, Miguel Samper, Florentino Gonzalez,
etc.– which posterity has enshrined as the great economic thinkers of the
nineteenth century. The unbearable Abel Cruz Santos does not mention him in his
"Economy and Public Finance", nor does Oreste Popescu in his History
of Colombian Thought. Even a so scrupulous Historian as Jaime Jaramillo Uribe
falls into the slip of treating him as a minor Benthamite. Credit is due to the
unforgettable Chucho Bejarano of having recognized his true condition entitling
his preface to the 1978 edition of the Economic and Fiscal Studies in this bare
way: Anibal Galindo – Economist.
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[1] Traducción de Esneda Botero.
[2] "I come from a family of wealthy landowners of Ibague..." With
this sentence Galindo begins his autobiography entitled "Historical
Memories".
[3] In the preamble to Historical
Memories we read: "Though with no pretensions to leading actor on the
political scene, I have found myself however mixed secondly for nearly half a
century, since 1851, in peace and war to many major policy transactions
..."
[4] See on the civil wars in Colombia: Tirado Mejia, Alvaro (1976) and
Pardo Rueda, Rafael (2004).
[5] He writes in Historical
Memories "... I filled with my correspondence the columns of El Vapor,
a newspaper drafted in Honda by Prospero Pereira Gamba".
[6]
In the Memories we read: “About the
same time I published my study on the organization of the Bank of England, carried
out by me with special permission of the Governor of the Bank, in all the offices
of that establishment, in 1866 and 1868, and which is reproduced in my book
Economic and Fiscal Studies".
[7] He became so proficient in English that performed a translation of Paradise Lost, the work of Milton, of
which he was particularly proud. That translation was published without his
authorization in an edition illustrated by Gustav Dore. In his Memories we read: "A few years
later appeared in Barcelona a magnificent deluxe edition of Paradise Lost,
illustrated with superb engravings of Gustave Dore, without saying whose translation
is that one copied in the work ".
[8]
At mid-nineteenth century, the Liberal Party was divided into two wings: Golgothas
and Draconians. The first were openly free traders and the second
protectionists.
[9]
In the introduction to the Yearbook we read: "Despite the arduous,
painstaking work the Office has employed in the formation of the attached
tables on the movement of national income, they are very poor and it was
impossible to obtain them complete".
[10] The 1978 edition of Bejarano gathers: Theory of Banks: Study on the
organization of the Bank of England, 1869; Paper Currency, 1863; Colombian Railways,
1874; Notes on the Economic and Fiscal History of the Country, 1874;
Limitations of Dominion and Wasteland Award, 1880; The Estate and the Law of War,
1879 and Socialism and the Working Class, 1850. Also included are major
statistical tables of the Statistical Yearbook prepared when he served as Chief
of the Bureau of Statistics. Bejarano excludes three works that are in the 1880
edition of Andrade, namely Inter-oceanic Canal, The Income of the Salt Mines
and The French Postal Service.
[11] In his biography of Galindo, Alberto Mendoza Morales reports the
following works: Argument presented by
Colombia on the boundary arbitration with Venezuela. La Luz Press. Bogota. 1882.
The Decisive Battles of Freedom. Ganier
Brothers. Paris, 1888. Historical
Memories. La Luz Press. Bogota. 1900. Economic
and Fiscal Studies. Andrade Editorial. Bogota, 1880. For Truth Time, for Righteousness God. Gaitan Press. Bogota. 1881. Economic and statistical history of the
national treasury from the colony to the present day. National Press. Bogota.
1874. Cerruti Arbitration. First
exposure of the national government on preliminary questions and principles
submitted to the international commission ruling on this case. La Luz Press.
Bogota. 1889 and The Northern Railway:
reply to the opinions of Mr. Salvador Camacho Roldan. Gaitan Press. Bogota 1974.
[12] Florentino Gonzalez (1805 – 1875) is perhaps the most representative
of the nineteenth-century liberal free traders. A presentation of his ideas is
in Ramirez (2003), where the author also analyzes the work of Salvador Camacho
Roldan and Miguel Samper.
[13] Galindo (1978), pages 147 – 148.
[14] ".... The strong duty imposed on cotton fabrics intended for
general consumption of the population estranges the import of these products,
induces Grenadians to undertake manufacturing and holds a part of the
population in unproductive occupation of manufactures assembled without
intelligence and whose output may not be sold advantageously. Agriculture and
mining are neglected therefore and we fail to take advantage of the benefits
that they could provide (....) this wealth is not obtained but producing things
that can be sold at a profit as our tobacco, our sugar, our indigo, coffee,
cocoa, cotton, precious wood, gold, silver and copper from our mines, which are
sold at the immense and rich market of Europe, and not manufacturing in
isolation and without machines, canvases and cloths to be sold to the miserable
indigenous population (....) When agriculture and mining, which are the sources
of our wealth and food of our trade have been taxed –the one with the tithe and the other with the right of
fifths– protecting simultaneously artifacts that Europe and
North America can send at cheap prices to all markets of the world would be an
unforgivable economic contradiction. Freedom to produce and change, here is
what the legislator should give to all..." Florentino Gonzalez, 1847.
Finance Report, quoted by Galindo (1978) page 155.
[15] Galindo (1978), page 186.
[16] Galindo (1978), page 186.
[17] Galindo (1880), pages 91 and 92.
[18] Galindo (1978), page 94.
[19]
Galindo mentions Smith three times in his fiscal studies. In one of them he
cites the beautiful phrase of Smith according to which "the most sacred of
all property is this one that everyone has in his own work."
[20] Galindo (1880), page 250.
[21] Galindo (1978), page 251.
[22] Galindo (1978), page 64.
[23] In the history of Colombia the name of Olympus Radical is given to a
group of liberal intellectuals and politicians, some of whom came to the
presidency of the republic, whose ideas were determinant in the country's
politics in the second half of the nineteenth century. Among the most prominent are
mentioned Florentino Gonzalez, Francisco Javier Zaldua, Manuel Murillo Toro, Aquileo
Parra, Eustorgio Salgar, Santiago Perez, Felipe Zapata, Felipe Perez, Nicolas
Esguerra, Salvador Camacho Roldan and Miguel Samper. See:
Rodriguez Piñeres (1950).
[24] The Constitution of Rionegro was in force for 23 years, between 1863
and 1886. It was a federal constitution under which the country adopted the
name of United States of Colombia. One of its most remarkable features was the
extreme weakness of the national executive: The presidential period was 2 years
and the President of the Republic was appointed by the Presidents of the 9
states, these ones elected by popular vote.
[25]
Cited by Mendoza Morales (2012), page 67.
[26]
The first railroad built in Colombia was the Panama Railroad, between 1850 and
1855. In 1869 – 1870 the Bolivar railroad was built and La Dorada railroad
between 1881 and 1885.
[27] Bulmer-Thomas (1998), page 131.
[28] Galindo (1978), page 79.
[29]Galindo
(1880), page 80.
[30]
Frank Safford says about that: "... it is a matter of topography. In Cuba,
Mexico, Argentina and Chile, in the places where they built most of their
mileage the terrain was relatively flat compared to the obstacles of the
Colombian mountain chains. (...) Another factor was that in Colombia there was
no powerful incentive to attract foreign capital to invest in railway
construction (...). If Colombia had had a better history as to pay its
creditors, the country might have had the possibility of getting higher
borrowing to finance railway construction". Safford (2010), pages 565, 566
and 567.
[31] Galindo (1978), pages 54 and 55.
[32]
The small family-run property may have occupied some extent, but its
quantitative importance and economic significance have been poorly studied in
the economic history of Colombia. Referring to the land tenure between 1740 and
1810, the time of the New Granada Viceroyalty, Jaramillo Uribe says: "...
although the large estate prevailed, there was no lack of regions of small and
medium property. This seems to have been the case of Socorro, Pasto and the
province of Antioquia". In Antioquia, it is good to remember, the inspector
Juan Antonio Mon y Velarde conducted in 1785 a redistribution of land, since he
had found it very monopolized. This reform, which found no opposition between
the economic elite of the region –oriented
to cattle rising and trade–
probably was what allowed that at the dawn of independence the range of small
and medium owners in Antioquia were quite broad, according to Jaramillo Uribe.
[33] LeGrand (1988), page 38.
[34] Galindo (1978), pages 191 – 192.
[35] LeGrand (1988), pages 37 and 38.
[36] Mendoza (2012), page 105.
