This is a succinct, well-written monograph comprising an institutional history of Colombia’s “single most important institute of technical education,” the Facultad Nacional de Minas, in Medellín. Based primarily on the institution’s official organs and archives, as well as personal interviews, this work explores the relationships among higher education, society, and development while documenting the evolution of a national political culture that today is “dominated increasingly by technocratic leaders.” Simultaneously, it also reaffirms Antioquia’s unique “ethos for entrepreneurship.” Yet despite the institution’s nomenclature, mining engineering has never been the largest program of the Facultad. Rather, civil, geological, petroleum, industrial, and “administrative” engineering have figured prominently in defining the institution, which has also trained entrepreneurs and Colombia’s first modern business managers.
Four historical periods are defined for what was originally called the Escuela Nacional de Minas. The first covers its fitful, positivist-inspired beginnings from 1887 to 1911, under the tutelage of two Berkeley-educated brothers who were members of Antioqueño’s merchant-capitalist elite. The second period, from 1911 to 1929, witnessed the Escuela’s rise to prominence as the “seedbed for a new industrial elite” whose social origins were to be found among both the regional “bourgeois” elite and the more modest middle sectors. The motto trabajo y rectitud informed the Escuela’s quest to produce the gentleman-engineer, “a hardworking, honorable agent of progress.” Appropriately, the curriculum emphasized applied, not theoretical, science. In the third period, 1930 to 1945, alumni participated in defining nationalist development goals, including that of wresting control of Colombia’s hydrocarbon resources from foreign corporations. Medellín became a major manufacturing center, and by 1939 the Escuela had become the Facultad Nacional de Minas, part of the Universidad Nacional. The final period, from 1945 to 1970, marks the Facultad’s transformation into a predominantly middle-class (as opposed to elite) institution for technical education. In particular, rapid economic growth in the 1960s redefined the Facultad as a national rather than a regional concern, whose mission was to produce technically trained professionals dedicated to solving Colombia’s problems.
Interspersed in this chronological sequence are two chapters concerning alumni. Chapter 4, perhaps the most interesting, examines the role of engineers in Colombian politics and society during the first half of the twentieth century. It traces the emergence of “techno-politicians” who participated in public policy formulation, often held positions in the public sector, and valued consensual, moderate politics. Chapter 5 recounts the surprisingly positive experiences of women at the Facultad and beyond, beginning in the 1940s.
If the book disappoints, it is only in that it accepts development events as givens, rather than reflecting on developmental processes, which the author begins to do in the all-too-brief epilogue. Today, development is understood as being more than just material progress, as these engineers were taught to think, and as they subsequently acted. But perhaps this is grist for Murray’s next work.
This book is recommended for upper-division undergraduate as well as graduate levels.
