Welfare as Warfare: The Role of Modern Architecture during the Colombian Dictatorship

Abstract This study draws on the findings of a cultural analysis of the state architecture built in the mid-twentieth century in Colombia and promoted by the former dictatorship of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. It questions the rationale underlying the infrastructure developed in Bogotá by situating it within the international politics of Latin America during the Cold War. I find that the massive transformation of the built environment during the Rojas regime remains a shadowy and elusive subject, but this does not mean that the regime did not have an agenda for the built environment. Architectural objects were material embodiments of the paradigms of the Modern Movement under the discourse of the welfare state, yet they conveyed the purpose of warfare. Most of these buildings have been largely neglected by canonical studies and communities, despite that they shaped the urban development of the country, and most remain in regular use.