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Colombian social, armed conflict: Part one
An Unending Violence Over Land, Peace, and Bread
Waldo Xavier III
In PART ONE of the Colombia History Series we shall begin by discussing an important period in Colombian history known as La Violencia (1948-1958). This period of history is fundamental to an understanding of Colombia in a historical context as well as to an understanding of the political and social crisis which has shaped much of the country. Because much of what we know about Colombia today is presented by the mass media and other popular commentary through “drugs”, “terrorism”, and “conflict” here and throughout the series we shall present an alternative perspective to the many challenges facing the country.Since the Spanish Conquest, landowners and merchants have played a powerful role in Colombian economic life. During Spanish colonialism, the power of landowners (or latinfundistas in Spanish) reflected just how important landownership also played in political life. A system of colonial exploitation called the hacienda was introduced developing a rural class structure of Spanish landlords and landless campesinos (peasants). In the hacienda system, the colonisation of land by the property owners was met with militant resistance by the poor peasantry. The campesinos, as well as Afro-Colombians escaping slavery, rural workers escaping the haciendas, and poor settlers, fled to the slopes and plains of the Andes. Land meant freedom to those exploited, and when the independence movements from Spanish rule swept Latin America, the landlords of Colombia pledged their allegiance to Spain. These independence movements were inspired by Simon Bolivar, the Latin American hero of independence, whose ideals for political and economic independence as well continental unity remain strong to this day.
The hacienda system created its own internal contradictions, the colonos –landless workers and the poor peasantry struggling for land. The result of this phase of struggle was a class society based on sizes of land ownership that by the early twentieth century also witnessed an increase in militant trade unionism and industrial conflict in the cities. La Violencia (1948-1958) was a political eruption, when the landlords in their struggle against the landless workers and poor peasantry split along political, ideological, and regional lines in the Colombian parliamentary system. Old rivalries between the two major political parties in parliament, the Liberals and Conservatives, were relived. Amidst the parliamentary infighting, a Liberal presidential candidate, Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, enjoyed popular appeal. His message was to the people against the oligarchy, the “real country” against the “political country”. This national expression was demonstrated through class conflict between industrialists and unions, between the masses and the oligarchy. It reached a climax when Gaitán was assassinated on April 9, 1948. His assassination spurred a major uprising in the capital Bogotá –hence it was called the Bogotazo.
Liberals and leftists alike blamed the ruling Conservative government for Gaitán´s assassination. Workers, the middle class and common people stormed the city attacking anything which symbolised a government that excluded and impoverished them instigating La Violencia. Landowners called upon the military to fire on crowds. The upsurge convulsed the country and liberal landowners organised peasant-guerrilla armies. Paramilitary groups of both civilians and police carried out military operations. Unions retaliated by organising self-defence groups in the mountains. The Communist Party reorganised the peasant resistance including the foundation of guerrilla camps under the political leadership of the Communist Party aligned to Moscow. With the support of the US, the Colombian military responded by destroying the encampment while survivors were forced to flee to distant zones.
On May 18, 1964, a US guided and financed counterinsurgency campaign began when Colombian Armed Forces surrounded and attacked the principal rebel agrarian community –Marquetalia. Labelling these autonomous communities as “independent republics” the Colombian government sent 16,000 troops, accompanied by tanks, helicopters, and warplanes, and carried out bombing campaigns against the department of Marquetalia. The Communist Party and peasant rebels retreated to the agricultural frontiers in Amazonia where the state had a limited presence. Modelled on the notorious “Phoenix Program” in Vietnam, “Plan Lazo” sent hunter-killer units to assassinate peasants, both armed or unarmed and between 1963 and 1966, Colombian state forces used US-supplied helicopters, vehicles, communications equipment and weapons to destroy the rebel communities in Marquetalia, Rio Chiquito, El Pato-Guayabero, and Santa Barbara.
La Violencia made an important impact on land ownership in Colombia. The landless remained landless and the power of the landlords was assured with a dominant position in the nationís body politic. For the urban bourgeoisie, particularly the industrialists, La Violencia was an economic success. Capital accumulation was so great that President Alberto Lleras Camargo (1958-62) concluded that “blood and capital accumulation went together”. Political opposition was outlawed and repressed. Rewarded by the United States with financial support, Colombia was labelled a showcase for the Alliance for Progress of 1961, which saw huge expansions in commercial agriculture and landowners highly represented in the government.
The Alliance for Progress was an anti-Communist program to reward allies and offset the radicalising effect of the Cuban revolution in Latin America with aid. The US moved along two tracks in the early 1960s: to overthrow Cuba and neutralise revolutionary movements throughout the region; and to launch the Alliance for Progress ñ promoted as a free market solution to poverty but serving only to deepen US economic penetration of Latin America. Colombian initiatives conformed to the alliance emphasis on self-help and both US Secretary of State Dean Rusk and the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, singled out the Colombian programs for praise. US Ambassador Stevenson noted that Colombia continued to face problems associated with Communist infiltration, bandit-like violence in the countryside, and economic dislocation, but he expressed optimism in the Colombian reforms. The irony of its results was that Colombian and US governments in the 1960s and 1970s actually sought to achieve their reforms to prevent a Colombian revolution. These radical political developments led to the founding of the FARC in 1964 by La Violencia veterans Jacobo Arenas and Manuel Marulanda Velez, the former Chief Commandant of Central High Command, and other armed groups, the National Liberation Army (ELN), the Popular Liberation Army (EPL), and M-19 soon after.
The agrarian class conflict that begun during Spanish rule persists to the present ñ between the peasantry seeking to colonise lands ñ and the landlords who resist this process. Between 1970 and 1982 the FARC grew from the 500 who survived the wave of state terror to a peasant army of 3,000. The campesinos stood in the parameters of class struggle, whilst an emerging drug economy throughout the 1980s provided an opportunity to relieve their pauperisation by beginning to grow coca. While no legal crop offered the advantages of growing and selling coca for the campesinos, cocaine became a lucrative and ever expanding industry that produced an emerging narcobourgeoisie in Colombia.
Many Colombian historians agree that La Violencia was pivotal in the shaping of modern Colombia. However the “violence” of the Colombian state to repress the deep rooted social movements of peasant associations, trade unions, and militant groups did not end after La Violencia.
In PART TWO we shall discuss how the state-repression of left-wing and labour organisations continued during the historical period known as the Frente Nacional (or National Front 1958-1974), when the Liberal and Conservative Party agreed to put party differences aside by sharing power in the Colombian electoral system.
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Works Cited
FARC-EP. (2000). FARC-EP Historical Outline. International Commission, Toronto.
Hylton, Forrest. (2006). Evil Hour in Colombia. Verso Books, London.
Le Grand, Catherine. (1986). Frontier Expansion and Peasant Protest in Colombia 1850-1936. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.
Livingstone, Grace. (2003). Inside Colombia: Drugs, Democracy, and War. Rutgers University Press, New Jersey
McFarlane, Anthony. (1993). Colombia Before Independence: Economy, Society, and Politics Under Bourbon Rule. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Pearce, Jenny. (1990). Colombia: Inside the Labyrinth. Latin America Bureau (Research and Action) Limited, London
Randall, Stephen. J. (1992). Colombia and the United States: Hegemony and Interdependence. University of Georgia Press, Athens.
Richani, Nazih. (2002). Systems of Violence: The Political Economy of War and Peace in Colombia. State University of New York Press, New York.
Sanchez, Gonzalo. (1984). Ensayos de Historia Social y Politica del Siglo XX. El Ancora Editores, Bogot·
Schneider, Cathy L. (2000). “Violence, identity and spaces of contention in Chile, Argentina and Colombia”. Social Research. Fall Vol. 67. Iss. 3, pp. 773-802.
© Peace & Justice for Colombia (PJFC) 2008
