Tag: Columbia stamp

Columbia is famous for coffee growing, though in output it is third in the world after Brazil and Vietnam. How it got there was a combination of the little guy beating out the big guy followed by an old fashioned uplifting Madison Avenue ad campaign. 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.

This stamp shows a little progression in Columbia and then a reversion. The stamp issue lasted over a decade with the first printing carried out by the American Bank Note Company in the USA. My stamp is from that batch. In 1944 there was a batch printed locally by the Columbian Bank Note Company and even something called Lithographia National Bogotá. In 1949, the stamp was back to the American Bank Note Company with the stamp turning blue. No of the changes effect the stamps low value but I wonder the story there.

Todays stamp is issue A176, a 5 Centavo stamp issued by Columbia on March 3rd, 1938. It was an eight stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp in all it’s forms is worth 25 cents.

Coffee planting began in Columbia in the 1790s. It was a group of Catholic Priests that promoted the cultivation. In particular, a Priest named Francisco Romero would require coffee cultivation as penance. In 1808 the first export of Columbian coffee was made out of the port of Cucuta.

In the late 19th century, international coffee prices were quite high and the rich families of Columbia set up large slash and burn plantations to take advantage. To do so, they borrowed large sums of capital from abroad. In the early 20th century, there was both a a war in Columbia and a drop in the international price and lead to bankruptcy of the large scale operations. The industry was saved by a group of very small planters who formed a federation to get their high end arabica beans out to the world market.

In 1958 the coffee planters federation hired an American ad agency under William Bernbach. His motto was “Lets prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling.” The federation was worried that their beans would be blended with cheaper beans from other countries and people would not realize how good the Columbian beans are. Bernbach came up with the fictional character of Juan Valdez who would be usually shown with his mule Cochita to represent positively the Columbian coffee planter. For 37 years Juan Valdez was played by Columbian actor Carlos Sanchez and since 2006 by real life coffee planter Carlos Casteneta. The branding is even popular in Columbia with 135 coffee shops named for Juan Valdez.

The coffee federation to show how important coffee planting was to Columbia and inspired by a sugar industry experience opened a Coffee Experience Park in 1995. As with stamp collectors these days, they found the park wasn’t interesting anyone under 40. To increase visitors, they acquired the old Zambezi Zinger roller coaster from an amusement park in Kansas City to attract the young at heart. Ugh.

Well my drink is empty. I wonder if Mr. Valdez has any suggestions for the next round. Come again soon when there will be another story to be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2021.

Gran Columbia became Columbia as region after region broke away. Not the kind of thing that happens to a place that is successful. There were two visions of how to right that ship, a conservative vision put forth by landowners and the Catholic Church, and a liberal one that embraced overturning the old order. 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.

A fairly dashing man personalizing his portrait with a signature. Pretty good for a twice failed Presidential candidate. His conservative party and the frequent military juntas were perhaps not at the time putting their best face forward. The conservative leader, President Gomez had been successfully vilified as a monster and waiting his turn as Foreign Minister with higher ambitions was Valencia’s son. A great time to remember a dashing father who had never had a chance to display his own incompetence as President.

Todays stamp is issue A251, a 25 Centavo stamp issued by the Republic of Columbia on October 20th, 1951. It was a single stamp honoring poet and politician Guillermo Valencia who had died 8 years previous. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

Guillermo Valencia was born to a wealthy family. He was a politician and diplomat rising as high as Governor of the Province of Cauca. Unusually for a conservative political figure, he was also a poet. Further unusually, his work was part of the modernist school of poetry that involved much fantasy and escapism. He put out a magazine in Columbia that provided an outlet to other poets and artists. As he got older and perhaps to burnish his political credentials among his fellow conservatives, he took on more work translating European masters into Spanish. He ran twice for President 1917 and 1930, but both times he was passed over for the more liberal candidate.

The conservatives were viewed differently in Columbia in Valencia’s time. Today the relative success of Columbia compared to the relative failure of former provinces with lefty governments like Venezuela and Ecuador burnish the reputation of Columbia’s modern conservative Presidents. In Valencia’s time it was different. The loss of territory was blamed on the conservatives as they were seen as a reemergence  of Colonial time with powerful landowners and Catholic clergy acting to keep up Spanish colonial style rule without their competence. Periods of conservative rule lead to violent opposition from the left. The then President Gomez, vilified has a monster, saw his personal home, a restaurant he had built, the Presidential Palace, and his political newspaper offices burned by opponents. At the end of his elected term, he was forced into exile in Spain. What a bunch of losers.

Gomez from exile managed to work a deal with the liberal party that politicians from the two parties would take turns as President and the two parties merged into a National Front. This worked from 1956-1974 until the left began to form splinter parties and eventually armed struggle. In the early 1960s, Valencia’s similarly named son had a turn as President.

Well my drink is empty and I am left wondering what road would have more quickly turned things around. Definitely not one of the roads tried. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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.