By appropriating the concept of social negotiation, the article discusses how, since the beginning of the National Front in Colombia in 1958, professional women and men working for national and local states negotiated their identities as part of a middle class. The chapter also demonstrates how these women and men shaped development programs such as the Alliance for Progress. Through these negotiations, these professionals sought to legitimize themselves as the source of democratic government in an eternal opposition to those who were defined as the supreme representation of anti-democracy.