A history of reds and blues: traditional Colombian political parties from Independence to the mid-19th century

Abstract

With the aim of contributing to the debate on political thought in Colombia at the turn of the Bicentenary, this article focuses on the development of Colombia’s two traditional political parties, highlighting the central role that the ideas of the Enlightenment and modern liberalism played in this process at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, and which were also key in the development of New Granadan and, eventually, Latin American Independence. Equally, it is important to focus on the conjunction of ideas that preceded the formal consolidation of the two party system at the end of the 1840s, and to highlight the role of the press as an agent for mobilizing ideas and as a platform for the launching of the political programmes and ideologies adopted by the Colombian two party system in its early years.