ABSTRACT
Peru and Venezuela entered the post-1930 era some distance behind Chile and Colombia in terms of viable political structures and processes. Colombia's 1930 elections were heavily impacted by the onset of the world depression. For Colombia's political culture viewed political domination as the supreme objective of both the parties because domination ensured a monopoly of Patronage and the spoils of the political war, whereas failure to control the government meant at best the short. The radical transformation of Colombia he had in mind would leave the Conservative Party with no political future as surely as Peron's regime was in the process of doing in Argentina. Often expressing a desire to return Colombia to the days of Ferdinand and Isabella, he officially called for a "Hispanic Counterrevolution." In the broad comparative picture the Colombian National Front stands out as the clearest and most dramatic example of the political learning process in the totality of Latin American experience.
