[2] Abadía, as president, had to face the difficult economic situation and world recession caused by the Great Depression.

His administration borrowed an enormous sum (70 million pesos) from the United States of America, mainly to promote infrastructure, which greatly alleviated the unemployment situation.

In November 1928, workers of the United Fruit Company in the Department of Magdalena mounted a strike protesting unfair labour practices and conditions imposed by the company to the workers and the community at large, the United States responded by threatening to mount a military invasion of some sort to bring to an end the strike.

The Government responded by sending in the Military to quell the protests and arrest the labour workers accused of instigating the strike, what happened next is known as the Banana massacre where an undetermined number of people were killed by the Colombian Army; this event was recounted by Gabriel García Márquez in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.

This event marked the decline of the United Fruit Company influence in the region and created a large discontent among the population of the Caribbean Region towards the United States, the Liberal politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán would mount a large campaign to investigate and bring into account the actions taken by the Abadía Administration in the handling of this event, his popularity rose in opposition to that of Abadía and the Conservative party, something that would bring about their decline soon after.

Born July 5, 1867 in Las Vegas de Los Padres, his family's estate in Coello, Tolima, in the United States of Colombia, to Miguel Abadía C. and Arcelia Méndez López.