ABSTRACT
Colombia was the most tragic victim of the inability to participate in the forging of great and essentially positive legacies a la Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina. In Central America, Guatemala began the 1930s with yet another transition from one caudillo dictator to another but underwent a revolution in 1944 that ushered in a turbulent decade culminating in a US-backed counter-revolution in 1954. Colombia's 1930 elections were heavily impacted by the onset of the world depression. In 1934, Lopez gained election as president but did not initially have control of the congress. The depression-influenced overthrow of Leguia in 1930, given his modernizing and populist, if not deeply reformist, orientation, like Yrigoyen's ouster in Argentina, allowed the return to power of backward-looking advocates of the old order. The 1930s in Venezuela found Juan Vicente Gomez and his cronies still firmly entrenched in power as they had been for two decades.
