Columbia was a violent place in the 20th century, with a government mired in failure. It may make the parts that work, like the arts and the academy more important to national identity. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
The design of this stamp seems to let it down. A name, birth and death years, a portrait of an old man, and a too small to read emblem. Perhaps Mr. Casas was better known in Columbia, but he had died an old man many years before. If the point was for Columbians to remember Mr. Casas, something more of his accomplishments should have been included.
The stamp today is issue A325, a 1.7 centavo airmail stamp issued by Columbia on January 18th, 1967. The stamp honors Jose Joaquin Casas, a poet, educator, diplomat, and a leader of the Columbian Academy of the Spanish language. It would have seemed to make sense to issue the stamp the year before as it was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mr. Casas, but perhaps a year late is close enough. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.
Columbia entered the 20th century in a bad place. Having already lost much land, the territory of Panama was lost in 1903. A war was also being fought with Peru over the Amazon river basin. The country was not beset by racial or religious divisions. It was just that the Conservative and Liberal Party could not get along. To some extent it came down to neither side politically taking the blame for the failure to even hold together the country. Columbia eventually took a payoff from the USA to renounce claims on Panama. Do I even have to explain that the money did not go to the people? The Peru issue was not resolved by the war but by the intervention of the League of Nations.
With a record like this, it makes you wonder what Columbia puts on it’s stamps. Here there was some creativity. The population was gradually moving to the cities, especially Bogotá. There was some tradition of arts and professional societies in the big cities. This history is heavily explored on the stamps. Perhaps this is being used as an invitation to a more civilized life in the cities. It is better than just another 150 year old portrait of Simon Bolivar, the independence hero.
Well my drink is empty and so I will pour another to toast Mr. Casas. It cannot have been easy to dedicate ones life to the arts in the mist of all the political and economic turmoil. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.