ABSTRACT
Salvador Camacho Roldan expressed admiration for everything he saw in the United States except racial segregation, which he considered immoral. The greatest failing of the United States, he reiterated, was racial separation in the southern states and the vicious treatment of Chinese immigrants in the West. Camacho Roldan had fought to end slavery in his own country, and he believed that in Colombia, each individual was treated according to his personal abilities without respect to race. Deep poverty shadowed prosperity, and commentators insisted that, except for the South where poverty was a legacy of slavery, the development was new. Many cities across the country grew rapidly almost solely because of rail expansion. The rapid spread of automobiles in the first two decades of the twentieth century followed the model of railroads and electricity in revolutionizing everyday life, while simultaneously demanding that Americans accept more regulation as a condition of material progress.
