International Links to Early Socialism in Colombia

Abstract

The first decades of the twentieth century produced an enormous shift in Colombian political sensibilities, political discourse, and forms of political expression. The relationship of Colombian socialism in its most dynamic stage (1926—1930) with the Communist International was characterized by both sympathy and distance because its desire to become part of the international communist movement sometimes contradicted its commitments to a rich local political tradition. Colombian socialists eventually established ties with the Comintern in a roundabout way, but the ideological direction it offered was difficult to assimilate to the ideological substrate of militants and leaders, in which Christian values, liberal practices, and artisanal traditions mixed.