Santander in decline: the failure of Bartolomé Rugeles’ investments in Puerto Wilches Railroad, 1903-1916.

Abstract

From the detailed monitoring of investments and activities of the bumangués merchant Bartolomé Rugeles (1860-1938) this article discusses the many difficulties encountered in the construction of the railway that would connect Bucaramanga with Puerto Wilches, and the Magdalena River. The prospect assumed for this implies a necessary association of this problem with the general process of decline faced by the Santander region because of the political implications and materials that had to take after the War of the Thousand Days. So, the problem set about this railway is a transversal edge to identify the specific impact of the decline in Santander society of the early twentieth century, from the most diverse shades.In addition to its peculiar insertion on the environment in which this process held, the choice of Bartolomé Rugeles as central reference to analyze the problem of the decline of Santander in the twentieth century is based on the valuable research opportunity of access to his personal journals. Some meticulous records accumulated by him between 1899 and 1938, which made it possible to form the corpus of e complementary documents required for the writing of this article.

Key Words: Railway, Bartolomé Rugeles, Santander, Puerto Wilches, merchant.