In Colombia, as throughout Latin America, publicists…

In Colombia, as throughout Latin America, publicists and politicians see railroad construction as one key requirement.

U.S. concessionaires had opened a first rail line, over the Isthmus of Panama, in 1856.

In present-day Colombia, the first route is a short line completed in 1871, connecting the river port of Barranquilla with a point on the Caribbean to bypass the treacherous mouth of the Magdalena.

Other railroads follow: most are short, supplementing river transport, and built by foreign entrepreneurs in return for subsidies and privileges granted by state or federal governments.

For the federal authorities to be concerned with railroads at all, outside Panama, it is necessary to stretch the constitutional article restricting them to the promotion of interoceanic commerce, but they will be well within their rights in 1878 in approving a concession for French interests to construct a canal across Panama, and in 1882 work will actually begin—which the French will never finish.