On the northern periphery of the Andes, Colombia (known as New Granada, the name of the old colonial viceroyalty, until 1863) entered the mid-nineteenth century poised on the threshold of a liberal experiment in nation building. After two decades of robust liberal rhetoric and halting reforms, although tempered by protectionist measures, Colombian elites coalesced around the orthodoxies of economic liberalism. The 1849 election of General José Hilario López, a veteran of independence and a wealthy landowner, inaugurated Colombia's heyday of liberalism. For the next several years, there was a frenzy of reform activity, ranging from a precocious experiment in universal male suffrage (later suppressed) to the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1850. The culmination of liberalism's social reforms was the swift abolition of African slavery in 1851. Wedded to the ideal of free trade, the liberal vanguard wanted to end all restrictions on the free play of “natural economic laws,” including the incipient labor market.

This economic logic also governed Liberal Party thinking about the Indians. Unlike the other Andean countries, Colombian politicians did not look to Indian tribute as a viable source of government revenue in the 1830s and 1840s. Instead, Colombian policy makers hastened to liquidate colonial vestiges of Indian landholding and segregation, as well as to encourage overseas trade. New liberal policies mainly targeted Indian communities that held usufruct rights to common lands (resguardos) in Colombia's eastern Cordillera, the hinterlands of Bogotá.