Colombian historians have shown a particular interest in geography. Juan Carlos Vélez Rendón belongs to a circle of scholars based in the city of Medellín who have been at the forefront of historicizing the spatial aspects of nation-state formation. They pay special attention to the dynamics of regionalism, focusing mainly on their own province of Antioquia. Los pueblos allende el río Cauca makes an important contribution to Colombian scholarship by tracing the settlement and integration of the southwestern corner of Antioquia. The book also makes larger arguments about how Antioquia itself took shape as a cultural and political region.
Settlers founded new towns in the nineteenth century on the mountainous western side of the Cauca River, along the border with the then-province of Cauca. By the early twentieth century, this was an important coffee-producing district, well integrated into the regional and national economy. In the early nineteenth century, however, inhabitants...
