Catalina Muñoz-Rojas is associate professor of history at Universidad de los Andes.

Incisive and creative, historian Catalina Muñoz follows Liberal politicians, bureaucrats, and intellectuals in the manner of an ethnographer using the paper trail they left behind. This critical study is beautifully crafted. Muñoz convincingly demonstrates that the simultaneous promotion of national unity and inclusion worked hand in glove with the maintenance of vertical ties for the legitimacy of the ruling elite, making the history of Colombia during the decades prior to the escalation of violence less exceptional than we have assumed. This is a must-read for anyone interested in how democracy is an ongoing, contingent project in a permanent state of expansion and contraction.

• Table of ContentsIntroduction: Cultural Politics and State Formation during the Liberal RepublicChapter 1: “A Vastly Transcending Mission”: The Cultural Politics of Music during Colombia’s Liberal Republic, 1930–1946Chapter 2: “A Broad Path of Popular Action”: Forging Citizenship through the Stage and the ScreenChapter 3: Hygiene, the “Social Question,” and the Making of a Racialized, Classed and Gendered CitizenshipChapter 4: Who is Colombian? Nationalizing the Past and the PresentEpilogue

Catalina Muñoz-Rojas is associate professor of history at Universidad de los Andes.

Incisive and creative, historian Catalina Muñoz follows Liberal politicians, bureaucrats, and intellectuals in the manner of an ethnographer using the paper trail they left behind. This critical study is beautifully crafted. Muñoz convincingly demonstrates that the simultaneous promotion of national unity and inclusion worked hand in glove with the maintenance of vertical ties for the legitimacy of the ruling elite, making the history of Colombia during the decades prior to the escalation of violence less exceptional than we have assumed. This is a must-read for anyone interested in how democracy is an ongoing, contingent project in a permanent state of expansion and contraction.

• Table of ContentsIntroduction: Cultural Politics and State Formation during the Liberal RepublicChapter 1: “A Vastly Transcending Mission”: The Cultural Politics of Music during Colombia’s Liberal Republic, 1930–1946Chapter 2: “A Broad Path of Popular Action”: Forging Citizenship through the Stage and the ScreenChapter 3: Hygiene, the “Social Question,” and the Making of a Racialized, Classed and Gendered CitizenshipChapter 4: Who is Colombian? Nationalizing the Past and the PresentEpilogue