Writing the Liberal City: literature and the contested experience of economic change. Bogotá 1849-1870

Costumbrista literature has been repeatedly analysed as a strategy as well as an expression of the process of nation formation in nineteenth-century Latin America. However, it is also a powerful lens for exploring and interpreting the urban visions of literate elites during the turbulent period of liberal reforms and expansion of a capitalist market economy. Largely dismissed as picturesque and inconsequential, in its apparent simplicity, Costumbrismo casts light on how liberal and conservative elites attempted to capture the daily effects of the market economy, and express their anxieties about the increasing commodification of everyday life, the growing obsession with money, and the changes in their own experience of time. As I argue here, as writers tried to capture the experience of the market economy and the changing experience of time, they helped shape partisan differences and, in the process, became political elites.

Automated summary

Costumbrista literature is both a strategy and expression of nation formation in 19th-century Latin America, and a powerful lens for understanding urban visions of literate elites during liberal reforms and the expansion of a capitalist market economy. Despite being dismissed as inconsequential, it reveals the anxieties of elites about the effects of the market economy, commodification of daily life, and changes in their own experiences of time.