Social scientists and humanities scholars may experience a little queasiness in reading this book. It is not that the narrative is poorly constructed or the writing poor—quite the contrary—but that López-Pedreros traces the history of transnational social scientists as they attempt to attain two significant goals: to construct the Colombian professional classes that they deemed necessary to hold oligarchs at bay while teaching poor workers and peasants how to build an enlightened democracy without brute force or communist sympathies.

Working with the Alliance for Progress from the 1950s through the 1970s, anthropologists, sociologists, economists, historians, and other scholars from the United States and Colombia—most of them trained in either Europe or the United States—analyzed Colombia's social strata and determined the optimal means by which ethical, professional Colombians could forge democracy in Colombia and across Latin America. Such a monumental project necessarily involved, in the minds of these scholars, the formation of a middle class that was at times defined as unique to Colombia and at others as fashioned after the middle classes of Europe and the United States—in short, a contingent middle class, one neither subject to “feminine sentimentality” nor suspicious of the economic principles of North Atlantic capitalism. The assumed link between a functional, masculine middle class and democracy seemed to have been questioned very little if at all, operating instead as a working assumption in sculpting economic development and educational programs, initially to develop human capital and, later, after mostly economists took the reins, to implement neoliberal economic policies and financial capital's monetary strategies. The gendered dimension of the middle class is among the more intriguing parts of López-Pedreros's argument, especially in light of the belief among intellectuals and professionals that professional women were uniquely qualified to “seduce” oligarchs into becoming people “who should be educated sentimentally in order to be likeable, desirable, and trusted” (59).

Reading López-Pedreros, what comes through is the arrogant presumption of these scholars and professionals that they are qualified to speak for the people of Latin America. Although some (mostly anthropologists) cautioned against underestimating the capacity of peasants and workers to adopt sophisticated political sentiments, the level of condescension among many of these scholars would have been funny—if they had not occupied positions of influence. This influence included helping to put into place economic development programs that encouraged small- and medium-sized businesspeople to consider themselves the true Colombian middle class.

These programs—largely based on extending credit—did result in propelling some of those whom López-Pedreros interviewed into the Colombian middle class and, perhaps equally important, resulted in their considering themselves the true source of the nation's wealth and future. Many of those he interviewed made moral economic arguments about achieving middle-class status through hard work and personal sacrifice and played down the roles that state programs played in subsidizing their businesses and lifestyles. Considering their achievement their own enabled them to legitimize inequality, which included conceptualizing the working classes as suited to simple work and simple possessions and the oligarchs as products of privilege and stewards of inherited, rather than earned, wealth.

The democracy that emerged from this middle class, however, was fragile and ultimately subject to many of the trappings of neoliberal thought and practice that have dispossessed so many, not only across Latin America but also throughout the world, encouraging alternative visions of democracy, new explanations of inequality, and new ideas about what it means to be middle class. Mirroring the growth of tertiary and service-sector jobs in many of the world's economies, democracy in Colombia and elsewhere fell victim to an ever more precarious and reactionary middle class. Is there any hope for a way out of this predicament? If there is, it may be found in histories like the one that López-Pedreros has given us.