Historia y Sociedad
La revista publica artículos en español, inglés y portugués que sean originales, inéditos y resultados de investigaciones hechas desde el método histórico-empírico y que acudan a enfoques historiográficos para tratar las historias iberoamericanas a partir del siglo XVI hasta la historia del tiempo presente. También publica transcripciones de documentos de archivo y reseñas sobre libros de Historia publicados en los últimos cinco años.
ISSN-L 0121-8417
E-ISSN 2357-4720
Página principal: https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/hisysoc
Supervisors: Orián Jiménez Meneses (director-editor) and Daniela López Palacio (coordinadora editorial)
Phone: +57 (604) 430 92 16
Address: Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Sede Medellín. Facultad de Ciencias Humanas y Económicas. Departamento de Historia.
Carrera 65 Nro. 59A-110, edificio 46, oficina 108, Centro Editorial
Código postal 050034, Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia
ISSN-L 0121-8417
E-ISSN 2357-4720
Página principal: https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/hisysoc
Supervisors: Orián Jiménez Meneses (director-editor) and Daniela López Palacio (coordinadora editorial)
Phone: +57 (604) 430 92 16
Address: Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Sede Medellín. Facultad de Ciencias Humanas y Económicas. Departamento de Historia.
Carrera 65 Nro. 59A-110, edificio 46, oficina 108, Centro Editorial
Código postal 050034, Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia
less
InterestsView All (13)
Uploads
Número 51 (julio-diciembre de 2026) by Historia y Sociedad
In the mid-18th century—a period marked by ideological transformations and the diffusion of Enlightenment thought into New Spain—María Ignacia de Azlor y Echeverz established the Colegio and Convent of Our Lady of Pilar, popularly known as La Enseñanza. Conceived as an inclusive project, it sought to provide education for women of all social classes and castes, thereby enabling their participation in the intellectual and civic demands of the new era. Within this initiative, the architectural and religious ensemble itself played a decisive role: its façade articulated a deliberate visual discourse through the deployment of Baroque vocabulary. The central question, however, concerns the nature of this message. Proceeding from the hypothesis that the façade inscribed a reasoning which positioned women as integral and transcendent within the framework of male education, this article advances a preliminary interpretive approach. Through iconographic and iconological analysis, it aims to reconstruct the modes of reception available to contemporaries and to elucidate the symbolic program that its founder sought to embed in the social fabric of her time.
Nineteenth-century European publishing houses expanded the reach of their publications to broad sectors of society. They established and maintained production and distribution networks within European national markets that projected outward toward the Americas, markets that were captured primarily by France and Spain. In order to determine what was being offered in Colombia at the time and to identify the influential book trade that stimulated interest in reading, this study analyzes the catalogs of Bogotá bookstores from the early years of the second half of the nineteenth century. It summarizes the descriptive contributions of a broader research project whose findings confirm the initial hypothesis: in addition to offering imported books aimed at moral formation and the practical-utilitarian orientation of professional education, the market also witnessed a resurgence in the availability of religious books. These elements provide a necessary starting point for discussing their relationship to the aspiration for a prosperous life in accordance with the ideals of the Colombian Republic, as well as to the shaping of its Catholic character.
This article examines the socioeconomic transformations in Carhué (Buenos Aires, Argentina) following its military occupation and incorporation into the national state during the “Conquest of the Desert” (1879–1885). The study addresses two concurrent processes: first, the mechanisms and actors involved in the state appropriation and subsequent privatization of frontier lands; and second, the demographic and labor trajectories of Indigenous populations associated with this frontier enclave. Drawing primarily on census and cartographic sources, the analysis explores how the reorganization of local space was intertwined with the emergence of new productive relations. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of late nineteenth-century Argentina, highlighting the critical interplay between national state consolidation, the formation of the modern land tenure system, and the enduring consequences for subjugated Indigenous Peoples.
This article analyzed the career of Enrique Julio – founder of La Nueva Provincia in 1898, the most important newspaper in the history of Bahía Blanca (Argentina) and one of the most prominent cultural producers in the city – and the main factors that built his figure as a “local hero” after his death in 1940. The study examines biographies, institutional books, press releases, municipal regulations, and research on the cultural past of the city and the surrounding region, with the aim of recovering the principal representations built around his memory A repertoire of initiatives by his heirs to build a distinguished public image of the founder could be identified, which were accompanied by tributes in various spaces of sociability and government agencies. Based on these recognitions, it was possible to understand the effort of the Julio family and social sectors related to their interests to outline a famous image of the family patriarch as a man of the press, of culture and a defender of local interests as a way of legitimizing the hegemony of his companies over his competitors, consolidated by his descendants after his death.
This article explores the process of legal exclusion of women from culinary and hospitality labor in Buenos Aires, Argentina, during the first half of the twentieth century. It argues that the male appropriation of occupations such as cooks, maîtres d’hotel, and waiters required both the exclusion of women and the construction of these tasks as inappropriate for them. Various arguments contributed to shaping the culinary sector as a morally unsuitable environment for women, citing its development in the public sphere, long working hours, risks of accidents, night work, proximity to alcoholic beverages, and contact with a predominantly male clientele. The analysis relies on a corpus of sources including regulations, parliamentary debates, petitions to the Chamber of Deputies, the Information Bulletin of the National Department of Labor, and academic theses on women's and children's labor. These are supplemented by journalistic articles, advertisements, classified ads, and labor court rulings. The findings highlight how gender inequalities and hierarchies were historically constructed in the labor market, as well as the crucial role of spatial and temporal dimensions: while in certain spaces and times women could—and were expected to— perform tasks like cooking and serving, in others, they were virtually barred from doing so.
This article analyzes how statistical series and data were increasingly incorporated to explain the etiology of crime in Antioquia between 1890 and 1940. Specifically, the text explores how statistics contributed to the production and legitimization of discourses on criminality, investigates the actors and institutions involved in the dissemination and use of statistics, and questions the biases embedded in the use of numerical data to explain the causes of crime and to identify certain social groups as being more prone to criminal behavior. Drawing on an analysis of statistics from that period and newspaper reports, the article provides an interpretive reading of these records, highlighting their use in describing crime patterns and associated phenomena, such as the relationship between crime and alcohol consumption or urban growth. It also examines the methodological, discursive, and moral constraints that influenced the construction, interpretation, and dissemination of these data. The research adopts a qualitative historical approach, based on the analysis of statistical manuals, press sources, and judicial documents.
This article examines the development of the educational radio in Colombia (1930–1946) as a contested dimension of the cultural modernization project pursued during the Liberal Republic. Its objective is to analyze the regulation and utilization of this broadcasting medium by the state, commercial broadcasters and the Catholic Church. Using a social and institutional history framework, the article draws on a triangulation of primary sources including ministerial reports, journals, and newspapers to contrast normative discourse with material realities. The findings reveal a structural gap between pedagogical ambition and operational capacity. Unlike the coordinated deployment of cinema, radio remained fragmented given the absence of rural electrical infrastructure and the urban concentration of radio receivers. The article demonstrates that the consolidation of the National Broadcasting Service (Radiodifusora Nacional) in 1940 constituted a belated attempt to contest cultural hegemony in the face of commercial broadcasting. It concludes that liberal radio functioned as an incomplete technology of governance, remaining fundamentally urban despite its aspiration to become a rural medium. This experience revealed the inability of the secular state to monopolize distance education, facilitating the Catholic Church’s consolidation of its educational hegemony from 1947 onward.
This article analyzes the relationship between the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Cuban government from 1960 to 1975 through a transnational perspective of the Cold War in Latin America. The study draws on archival documents from Colombia and the United States, press reports from various countries, and materials produced by the ELN itself—including documents recovered from a backpack confiscated by the Colombian military from an ELN commander in 1972. The article demonstrates that Cuba initially played a crucial role in the emergence of the ELN by showing its leaders that a socialist revolution was possible in Latin America and by providing a model for how to carry it out. Subsequently, Cuba offered the ELN a space for training, refuge, and contact with other revolutionary organizations, as well as means to disseminate its actions and ideology. However, the geopolitical dynamics of the Cold War—shaped by shifts in Soviet-Cuban relations and Cuba's changing diplomatic stance in Latin America—progressively constrained the support Havana could provide to the ELN. This support ultimately ended in 1975 with the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and Colombia.
This article examines the role of oil as a war infrastructure in the Colombian armed conflict, focusing on the case of the Central Bolívar Bloc (Bloque Central Bolívar, BCB) in the Magdalena Medio region. Drawing on judicial sources from the Justice and Peace proceedings and interviews with former paramilitary commanders, the article demonstrates how oil functioned not only as an economic resource for financing the conflict, but also as a strategic instrument for the repression of social movements and the construction of a neoliberal political-economic order. By proposing a new conceptualization of war infrastructures, this study shows how extractive activities and their associated infrastructures were progressively incorporated into the logic of counterinsurgency warfare, fostering violence against specific sectors of the population and facilitating the capture of public institutions. The article argues that the BCB’s control over the oil sector should be understood as a form of economic capture and as an integral component of a hybrid model of armed governance, one that was functional both to the consolidation of paramilitary territorial power and to the neoliberalization of Colombia’s energy sector.
Book review: Francisco Javier Cervantes Bello, Fundación y gentrificacion en los márgenes del río San Francisco. Puebla, siglos XVI-XXI, Puebla, Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla 328 pp.
Número 50 (enero-junio de 2026) by Historia y Sociedad
This dossier proposes to address the so-called “endings of war” and post-conflict reconstruction, two central problems of 19th-century Latin America that changed the configuration of the new independent political communities. To undertake this analysis, we contrast different regional spaces in South America, considering conceptual tools and methodological approaches that account for both the institutional and political circumstances of the 19th century and the voices of individual and collective actors. The objective is to discuss categories and theoretical formulations designed for similar processes that occurred in different parts of the Western world throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
This article analyzed the discourses and strategies adopted by 19th-century widows in New Granada in their pension applications to the military pension fund, with the aim of understanding how these women negotiated their place within the new republican order. The central problem addressed was the discursive transition from "grace," understood as a favor inherited from the monarchical regime, to the language of law and legality characteristic of the republican state. Methodologically, administrative records, decrees, and petitions from widows between 1837 and 1866 were reviewed, using a theoretical framework based on hegemony, discourse analysis, and social representations. The results showed that the widows used linguistic resources associated with patriotic sacrifice, morality, and vulnerability to legitimize their claims. Although they initially appealed to the government's grace as a paternalistic gift, they progressively incorporated legal language to substantiate their rights. It was concluded that pension applications provided a context that enabled the manifestation of female agency where women actively participated in the state system, contributing to the consolidation of republican discourse. This transition from supplication to legal demand highlighted their role in redefining citizenship and the relationships between gender, power, and legality in the 19th century.
This article analyzed the system of military rewards for disability promoted by the Regeneration governments in Colombia between 1886 and 1904. Through Laws 153 of 1887, 84 of 1890, and 149 of 1896, along with the study of 299 Supreme Court of Justice sentences, a database that allowed for a quantitative and qualitative reading of the phenomenon was created. A reading of the reward system was proposed as a mechanism used by the Regeneration
to legitimize its political project and to establish a direct relationship with the military, and with those who fought from illegality to defend conservative ideological principles.
Furthermore, a social characterization of the disabled men was presented based on military positions, participation in wars, and the type of disability. The reward policy configured a form of institutional exit from the nineteenth-century wars in Colombia, which allowed the Regeneration
to establish direct relationships with these men through the delivery of economic compensation. However, the system also had ideological limits by excluding regional conflicts.
The article has addressed the process of pacifying a revolution—or violent act of constitutional defense of independence—based on the question of how to limit or prevent it. It has focused on how the victors sought both to prevent their rivals from reversing their triumph and to reward their collaborators. As a hypothesis, it has argued that political allegiances in favor of the revolution, in addition to obeying institutional and doctrinal reasons, were partially linked to the needs of its actors to maintain and obtain professional and employment advantages. To demonstrate this, he has combined a macro and micro approach. On the one hand, through the narrative of “employment mania,” he has offered an overview of the role in politics of civil and military employees. On the other hand, by adding another collective actor, the battalions of artisans, he has exemplified the problem of punishment and reward since the mandate of Manuel Isidoro Belzu (1848-1855), as he constituted a government in a continuous state of emergency. The documentation—legislation, press, pamphlets, correspondence, and congressional reports—emphasizes that the practices associated with the “end of the war” required a transformation of the relationship between politics and violence.
This article examined the pardon policies decreed by the Venezuelan government in the mid-nineteenth century, during a period of intense conflict. These measures were adopted in the context of the removal from office of President José Tadeo Monagas in March 1858 and the emergence of an armed faction, the Facción de la Sierra, led by three members of the Liberal Party. The text was divided into two parts. First, it provided historical contextualization of the concepts and, secondly, drewed on judicial and administrative sources preserved in the Fondo de la Secretaría de Interior y Justicia of the Archivo General de la Nación, it sought to understand the transformations brought about by the construction of republican institutions and the hybridization of legal and political cultures in the use of measures of pardons and amnesty. These measures were understood as mechanisms for containing violence, ending armed conflict and pacifying the country.
With few exceptions, 19th-century civil wars in New Granada ended with one side defeating the other on the battlefield. Through the case of the army officers who were part of the defeated side in 1854, the objective of this article was to assess the consequences of the imbalance between victors and vanquished after civil wars. The general bibliography on the post-war periods in the history of Colombia (19th and 20th centuries) was used to frame the problem in the long term. The specific bibliography on the civil war of 1854 and its postwar period was contrasted with primary sources to test available interpretations. As a result, we found that for almost six months, the defeated army officers of 1854 could have been subjected to the death penalty for their political crimes, although they were ultimately treated clemently. This particular post-war reckoning set a precedent of clemency for the New Granadan revolutionaries of the second half of the 19th century that inspired different attitudes and behaviors in civilians and army officers.
In 1869, shortly after the election of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento to the presidency of the Argentine Republic, Félix Frías was nominated plenipotentiary minister in Santiago de Chile. Although the main objective of his mission was to consolidate good relations between the two countries and negotiate unresolved border differences, in his first years in the Chilean capital the Argentine representative had to confront the asylum of federal montonero Felipe Varela and his followers in the neighboring country. This article analyzes the discussion between Frías and the Chilean authorities during the government of José Joaquín Pérez, using diplomatic correspondence, principally of the Argentine representative, as well as the legal textbooks and international treaties that regulated asylum law during the 19th century. It argues that even before the codification of a regional framework to regulate the matter, a doctrinal base began to be emerge due to the prevalence of exile in the region. However, the right of asylum was a very ambiguous tool in a context of “exiting from war”, because it was functional for the opposition but ended up being dangerous once in power.
The article analyzed the strategies employed by the Missionary Sisters of Mary Immaculate and Saint Catherine of Siena to evangelize the Indigenous groups of western Antioquia, Colombia, during the initial stage of the missionary congregation’s formation (1914-1925). The study drew on sources published by the congregation’s founder, Mother Laura Montoya, as well as on archival materials from the collection of religious women in the Diocese of Antioquia. The text argues that the methods used by the Lauritas were innovative compared to those of other missions, as they adapted to the dispersed organization of Indigenous settlements and did not require elaborate buildings to create a Catholic space. In other words, the missionaries adapted the physical structure of the mission not only to the Catio settlements but also to the environmental challenges they faced. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that their strategies were accompanied by a reinterpretation of women’s roles within the missions, since the Lauritas assumed responsibility for the evangelization of Indigenous peoples and not merely their catechization, as was traditionally expected of women.
This article examined how leftist ideas, particularly anarchism, were disseminated and took root in Bolivia despite its apparent geographical and ideological isolation, owing in part to Italian migration. Drawing on documentation preserved in the Central State Archive of Italy, records from the Central Political Registry, and labour press, the study reconstructed the trajectories of these migrants and their participation in transnational networks. The findings revealed that, from the early decades of the twentieth century onward, the arrival of politicized Italians and their involvement in printing presses, labour unions, and anarchist circles strengthened the channels for the diffusion of leftist thought in cities such as Buenos Aires, Santiago, and Oruro. This evidence demonstrated how migration operated as a bridge of ideological resistance against state repression and the growing influence of fascism. In summary, the article explored the impact of migratory networks and displacements on the Bolivian leftopening new perspectives for examining the relationship
between migrant identity and the formation of labour movements in the Andes.