ABSTRACT
In Colombia, as in other countries throughout the Americas, governments made unprecedented investments in cultural programs during the 1930s and 1940s. At the same time, artists, the rising media industry, and everyday citizens participated in lively debates about the terms of inclusion of subaltern groups into the nation. This chapter explores the ways in which popular Colombians engaged with the cultural policies put forward by the Liberal Republic (1930–1946) and emphasizes that culture constituted a fundamental arena in the definition of citizenship and democracy. In this sense, it expands the existing literature on power relations during the first half of the twentieth century in Colombia away from partisan politics, the unfolding of violence, the development of the coffee economy, the takeoff of industrialization, and labor and land struggles. By studying the paper trail left by the Liberal Republic's cultural institutions, this chapter argues that the official celebration of popular culture, which rendered its practitioners archaic and in need of guidance, was met by a dynamic, effervescent, and transnationally open cultural scene, in which popular sectors often used the government's frameworks and concepts to their own advantage, resisting limited definitions of the nation, counteracting programs they considered invasive, and negotiating inclusion.
