Abstract:
When it concerns characterizing the role of businessman and their enterprises in front of the entire society, Colombian public opinion used to be divided into two radically opposite arguments. The first ones are supported by black legends that show the businessmen and their enterprises as an unscrupulous group of persons whose ethics is minimal or even more it doesn’t exist at all. This idea is completed by a statement that points to the heartlessness of those human beings who only seek their profits to the detriment of the common good. The latter argument, on the contrary, is based on a pink legend that tends to highlight the kindness, goodness of heart, and selfless actions developed by the business community around the creation of non-profit foundations. Indeed, the political ambiance of the country, in the 20th century, increasingly those legends, especially when the armed political conflict deepened the polarization of the country.
How to overcome these stereotyped images of Colombian entrepreneurship? How to understand Colombian entrepreneurship and its actions? The business history is a way to find possible ways out of these bottlenecks. With this statement in mind, the purpose of this paper is to study the actions undertaken by some entrepreneurs of Valle del Cauca (Colombia) between 1930 and 1945 in favor of the infrastructure works whose goals went beyond the limits of their own companies to reach the public interest of regional society. The work is supported by the private archives of the Cali Chamber of Commerce.