Redes comerciales en las provincias suroccidentales de Colombia, siglo XIX

TL;DR

The article reconstructs 19th-century commercial networks in the southwestern Colombian provinces of Pasto, Túquerres, and Barbacoas, showing how Andean food and manufactures were exchanged for Pacific salt, imported goods, and Barbacoas gold. It argues that despite road, steamship, and railway projects, the region’s commercial order remained anchored in small-scale, precarious exchanges rather than transforming into the dynamic capitalism promoters expected.

Key findings

• Andean provinces supplied food, livestock, hats, textiles, and liquor to the Barbacoas mining port, while Barbacoas and Tumaco supplied salt, fish, coconut, imported clothing/liquor, and gold; around 70 cargo carriers reportedly entered Barbacoas daily, and about 80 canoes gathered at its river market.
• The Túquerres–Barbacoas road was inaugurated in part in 1891 but initially reached only Altaquer, with roughly 150 km still to build; 1,000 peones completed the missing stretch, and by 1895 authorities still owed part of their wages. By 1899 commerce intensified and three steamships ran Tumaco–Barbacoas via the Patía and Telembí, while Ecuador lost part of its markets in Pasto, Túquerres, and Ipiales.
• Barbacoas gold remained central but declined: in 1895 its estimated gold-dust exports were about 25,000 pesos monthly, while national gold exports were about 3 million pesos and Barbacoas contributed only about 300,000 pesos. Tumaco’s customs also depended on fleeting booms: rubber exports there reached 20% (67,000 pesos/year) of Colombian exports in 1870–1873 and 26% (111,800 pesos) of national rubber value in 1898; quina exports peaked in 1868–1874 at 3% of national value and 8% of volume.
• Other exports remained marginal: coffee exports through Tumaco were 277 sacks in 1893 versus 118,000 in Cúcuta a year later; Samaniego produced 3,000 quintales in 1896 while Cúcuta and Pamplona produced more than 83,000 sacks. Hat production reached about 108,000 hats/year, and Pasto’s liquor monopoly revenues rose from 28,000 pesos in 1870 to 120,000 in 1892.

Methods

• Historical narrative organized by province (Pasto, Túquerres, Barbacoas) and period: exchanges 1826–1875, road/communication projects, and exchanges 1880–1898.
• Sources include travel accounts (Boussingault, André, Codazzi, Triana), official reports and legislation, and customs/statistical compilations such as *Anuario Estadístico de Colombia*, *Estadísticas de Colombia*, Arboleda, Ocampo, and Gutiérrez.
• Analysis combines qualitative reconstruction of routes, goods, and projects with tables of customs import/export values, quina, rubber, and other commodity figures.

Limitations

• The paper does not state a limitations section.
• Evident from the text: the account relies heavily on foreign travelers’ impressions, which the author says can be “tan certeras como disparatadas,” and on official reports written by competing functionaries; the author also notes that travelers’ traces are “demasiado tenues” and that the image of Barbacoas is ambiguous.
• Evident from the text: some statistical tables are incomplete or inconsistent—e.g., Cuadro 6 notes the national total is incomplete and does not match the sum by ports, and Cuadro 4 notes rubber figures do not coincide with Ocampo.