Geographical difficulties and communication flow in the rise of the twentieth century in Colombia

Abstract

A commonplace in our historiography has been to consider that at the end of the XIX century Colombia was isolated from the outside world and was not internally interconnected. Recognizing that this proposition is clearly topologically driven but built without awareness of this fact, in this article similar arguments to show the richness of a highly dense communicational network during that period are presented. Adding conceptual and technical resources from geography, mathematics, ethology and ¿some communication theories¿ to that evidence, it is pointed out that we are dealing with two different order phenomena: geographical difficulty and lack of communication. The opposition to the initial premise is reaffirmed, insisting that sociocultural lack of communication cannot be inferred from the difficulty of moving in a territory.

Keywords

• network
• system
• language
• communication
• grapho
• topology