Colombia has historically been known as a fragmented country because of its poor territorial integration. This dissertation intends to transcend the traditional way in which this (dis)integration process has been studied, principally linked to geographical determinism. Based on the theories developed by Henry Lefebvre, David Harvey and Milton Santos regarding the production of space, geographical determinism is confronted in two ways: on one hand Colombian spatial problematic is inserted within a global context, which highlights that the production of space is dependent in peripheral areas, and on the other hand, the role of the symbolic field in the production of space is studied through the conformation of a genealogy of Colombian geographical imaginaries.

This is a restricted genealogy in the sense that it focuses only on three historical periods: the nation-state building process in the nineteenth century, the period known as La Violencia (1948-1965), and the "triple war" that has been active since the seventies. The sources studied for each respective period are: travel literature and travel illustrations, testimonial novels, and testimonies. Chapter one focuses on the production of the national space, and through an inter-artistic approach of the textual and visual components of the Comisión Corográfica (1850-1859), it highlights this project's influence on the construction of the country as a regionalized country. Chapters two and three focus on how different types of violence have emerged as agents of deep spatial transformations, and highlight that the cultural field not only constructs discursively the "spaces of terror" produced by violence, but by doing so, it contributes to the inclusion of those spaces in the nation's geographical imaginaries. Finally, the conclusion comprises the spatial transformations brought about by the Constitution of 1991, which inevitably refer to the first chapter's view on how national space was constructed in the nineteenth century. This genealogy highlights both the role of the cultural field in the production of space, and in the diffusion of "alternative spaces" (Lefebvre), as it contributes to insert them within the geographical imaginaries.