Bipartisan confrontation in Colombia. The Vanguardia Liberal newspaper as a political actor opposed to the conservative party, 1949

Abstract

This article intends to analyze the political opposition that the liberal party from Santander exerted against the Conservative Government of Mariano Ospina Pérez from the Vanguardia Liberal newspaper pages. All this in the context of the 1949 elections. This opposition was characterized not only by the force with which the Government’s actions were criticized, but also by the use of loaded expressions of longstanding hatreds and, in general all the aspects that the ideological differences involve. There is no doubt that in Santander, Vanguardia Liberal led the political opposition to the conservative party and with its publishers it wanted to influence, both the region’s political future as well as the national. The analysis is organized in three parts. The first part reconstructs the image of the political antagonist created by the Santandereano liberalism; the second part is analyzing the image created by the liberals themself; while the last part looks at the way in which the opposition action was perceived by the bumangues’ newspaper. © Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Sociales.