La elusiva y difícil construcción de la identidad nacional en la Gran Colombia

In this paper, Professor María Teresa Uribe deHincapié proposes two quite novel fields of analysis for the study of the political history of the country. The first refers to the pivotal role of civic republicanism language during the emancipation process and throughout the nineteenth century. The second pertains to the identification of the patri-otic rhetoric that served as an anchor to make identity referents close and familiar, in the emotional realm, and feasible, in the political realm. The text argues that, in the absence of pre-ex-isting cultural identities and given the urgent need to create a political identity that would break with a past associated with the colonial regime, the New Granada intelligentsia found in the narratives of grievances, exclusion, usurpation and spilled bloodthe possibility of constructing a meaningful history, a glorious past and an authentic image of the nation.