THE HISTORY OF COLOMBIA is characterized by the interaction of rival
civilian elites. The political elite, which overlaps with social and
economic elites, has shown a marked ability to retain the reins of
power, effectively excluding other groups and social institutions, such
as the masses and the military, from significant participation in or
control over the political process. Members of the lower classes have
found it difficult, although not impossible, to challenge or join the
established elite in the political and economic spheres. Their
subordination dates to the rigid colonial social hierarchy that placed
the Spanish-born above the nativeborn . Elite control of the military is
the result of the "civilian mystique" that developed along
with Colombian independence. That mystique has successfully restricted
the military to nonpolitical functions, with three exceptions--1830,
1854, and 1953. Thus Colombia has a history rare for Latin America in
that the country has been dominated more by civilian than by military
rule. Because military forces have been denied political power, the
civilian elites have had only themselves, divided into rival groups, to
contend with in the political arena.
Some analysts have divided the political elite along economic lines
between the landed and the nonlanded. The agricultural export sector,
the backbone of the Colombian economy, has supplied the two main
economic groups that also have been the most powerful in the political
sphere: the landed aristocracy, who are devoted to the large-scale
production of agricultural crops, and the merchants, who are engaged in
the trade of these export goods and imported consumer goods. Lesser
economic groups, such as the emerging manufacturing sector, have allied
themselves with one of the two dominant groups, most often the
merchants. Differences within the allied groups on issues such as trade
created factions within the alliances even before they officially became
established political parties. In addition, the nation's economic
development opened up new economic opportunities, and new forces
increasingly expressed their views through the political factions.
Elite members of the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party
alternately competed and cooperated with each other throughout the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Often the nature of relations
between the two parties depended on whether moderates or extremists
dominated the ruling party. During the periods when moderate factions of
both parties were in power, the parties were able to work together in
coalitions; when extremist factions prevailed, however, conflict often
resulted. During the competitive periods, one party usually sought to
limit or eliminate the rival party's participation in the political
process, attempts that often resulted in political violence. The most
notorious of these periods were the War of a Thousand Days (1899-1902)
and la violencia (1948-66). At the end of these civil wars, the
elite inaugurated the cooperative governments of the Period of
Reconciliation (1903- 30) and the National Front (1958-74),
respectively, the former catalyzed by the Rafael Reyes presidency
(1904-09) and the latter by the Gustavo Rojas Pinilla dictatorship
(1953-57). The replacement of the discredited extremist factions by the
more conciliatory moderate factions in each case made it possible for
the two parties to share power and to achieve a consensus on what
policies were appropriate for Colombian society at the time.
Although the elite dominated the masses, the different classes were
bound to each other through personalistic patron-client relationships,
especially in rural areas where peasants relied on the propertied upper
class for access to the land they farmed. These patron-client
relationships also tied the masses into the political system as the
numerical votes or bodies mobilized and controlled by local political
bosses. The affiliation adopted by the members of the lower classes was
determined largely by the affiliation of their patrons and their
families; these affiliations, as much for a party as against the
opposing party, became what Robert H. Dix termed "inherited
hatreds," elements of one's identity handed down from generation to
generation. The emotional bond to the party carried individual members
not only to the polls but also into violent conflict with adherents of
the opposing party during those times when political conflict could not
be controlled. In this way, the peasants and urban masses were recruited
by the party elite to participate in the civil wars that riddled the
nation's history.
Colombia's economic life has been based consistently on exports of
primary goods, especially coffee. In the sixteenth century, the
conquistadors and early colonialists, who often exploited Indian and
slave labor, mined precious metals and gems for export to Spain under a
mercantile system that inhibited the development of domestic industries.
Throughout the preindependence and postindependence periods, agriculture
on large landholdings, known as latifundios, became the
predominant mode of production for export crops such as sugar and
tobacco. By the 1860s, coffee had emerged as the key export crop. At the
turn of the century, tariffs on coffee exports were the main source of
government revenues, and profits from the coffee trade were the major
source of investment in the newly emerging industrial sector that was
beginning to produce basic consumer goods. Although the industrial
sector grew sufficiently to induce urbanization and economic
modernization in the first half of the twentieth century, industrial
exports remained relatively minor compared with coffee, which in the
late 1980s still accounted for almost 60 percent of all export earnings.
Economic modernization, supported by the coffee industry, became
significant at the turn of the century. Modernization brought social
changes and growing demands that produced various challenges to the
dominant position of the traditional elite: the populist movements of
the 1940s and 1970s, the military dictatorship of the 1950s, the rise of
guerrilla activity in the 1960s through the 1980s, and the emergence of
drug traffickers as a major economic and social element in the 1970s and
1980s. The increase in industrialization and the migration of peasants
to the cities accelerated the rate of urbanization and the formation of
urban working and lower classes. The heightened need for infrastructure,
both within a given city and among urban areas, spurred the growing
involvement of the state in the economy, especially during the reformist
period in the 1930s and 1940s. By the 1980s, the state had become an
important investor in and manager of strategic sectors of the economy,
such as energy resources, transportation, and communications.
The emergence of the National Front marked a significant break in the
traditional political and economic patterns in Colombian society.
Interparty conflict receded and was replaced in the 1960s by leftist
subversion, which continued through the 1980s. The illicit narcotics
industry emerged in the 1970s as a dominant economic force, altering the
structure of the national economy and disrupting existing social and
political relations. The leadership in both parties proved unable to
address inflation, unemployment, and a skewed distribution of income.
The post-National Front Liberal tenure bequeathed a triple legacy to the
incoming Conservative government in 1982: guerrilla activity, the
corruptive drug trade, and an inequitable economy.
Colombia - THE SPANISH CONQUEST
The administrative structure paralleled the social pyramid in that peninsulares
appointed by the crown generally controlled the higher jurisdictional
levels, and criollos could compete only for the lower posts. Two
councils in Spain presided over the colonies. The House of Trade (Casa
de Contrataci�n) controlled all overseas trade. The Supreme Council of
the Indies (Consejo Supremo de las Indias) centralized the
administration of the colonies and had legislative, executive, and
judicial functions. As the king delegated increasingly more authority to
this council, it effectively became the ruler of the colonies.
The viceroyalty, headed by a viceroy, was the highest authority in
the colonies. The next level of jurisdiction was the audiencia,
a regional court consisting of various judges and a president. The Real
Audiencia de Santa Fe, which presided over present-day Colombia, was
instituted in 1550. The audiencia had jurisdiction over the
governorships, which in turn controlled the cities. Governors, appointed
by the crown, had administrative and judicial functions and, in areas
considered dangerous, military duties. Cities, the lowest jurisdictional
level, were run by city councils, or cabildos. Cabildos
initially were elected by popular vote, but later seats were sold by the
crown, and positions on the council thus lost their democratic
character. Despite their low position on the administrative pyramid, cabildos
had the greatest impact on the day-to-day lives of citizens in the local
municipalities.
The cabildos became the first effective agency of civil
government, regularizing the processes of government and tempering the
authority of the governor, even though their membership was composed of
his subordinates. They included a varying number of magistrates or
aldermen, depending on the size of the community, and two mayors. The
mayors on the cabildo were elected annually and initially acted
as judges in courts of first instance with criminal and civil
jurisdiction. Appeals from their decisions could be taken to the local
governor or to a person functioning as his deputy and finally to the
royal court of jurisdiction. During times of crisis, the town citizens
of importance might be invited to sit with the cabildo in what
was called the open council. By increasing criollo participation in
government, the open council contributed to the movement leading to the
war for independence.
The royal courts in the colonies, unlike their counterparts in Spain,
performed administrative and political as well as judicial functions.
The courts were empowered to limit the arbitrary use of power by the
viceroy or any subordinate official in the New World. Major courts
existed in the higher jurisdictions, such as the viceroyalty;
subordinate courts existed at lesser administrative levels. Under the
Supreme Council of the Indies, the viceroys, as the direct
representatives of the sovereign, exercised royal authority in all civil
and military affairs, in the secular aspects of church affairs, and in
the supervision of the administration of justice. Subject to the overall
supervision of peninsular authorities, the executive officers also
exercised a degree of legislative power.
Two additional governmental practices designed to oversee the
colonial authorities were the residencia (public judicial
inquiry) and the visita (secret investigation). The residencia
was performed at the end of an official's term of office by a judge who
went to the chief seat of the jurisdiction of the official in question
to hear anyone who wished to make charges or to offer testimony
concerning the official's performance in office. The visita
could take place at any time without warning during an official's tenure
and was performed by an inspector who might, in the performance of his
task, sit with a court in public hearings.
Colombia - The Colonial Economy
The Spanish system encompassing the audiencia was extractive
and exploitative, relying heavily on cheap native labor. Domestic
industry was constrained during the colonial period because the audiencia
was bound to Spain as part of a mercantile system. Under this
arrangement, the colony functioned as the source of primary materials
and the consumer of manufactured goods, a trade pattern that tended to
enrich the metropolitan power at the expense of the colony.
Because Spaniards came to the New World in search of quick riches in
the form of precious metals and jewels, mining for these items became
the pillar of the economy for much of the colonial period. Indeed, the
extraction of precious metals--such as gold and copper--in the American
colonies formed the basis of the crown's economy.
Spain monopolized trade with the colonies. The crown limited
authorization for intercontinental trade to Veracruz (in presentday
Mexico), Nombre de Dios (in present-day Panama), and Cartagena. Direct
trade with other colonies was prohibited; as a result, items from one
colony had to be sent to Spain for reshipment to another colony. The
crown also established the routes of transport and the number of ships
allowed to trade in the colonies. Merchants involved in intercontinental
trade had to be Spanish nationals. Finally, the crown circumscribed the
type of merchandise that could be traded. The colony could export to
Spain only precious metals, gold in particular, and some agricultural
products. In return, Spain exported to the colonies most of the
agricultural and manufactured goods that the colonies needed for
survival. Domestic products supplemented these items only to a minor
degree.
Agriculture, which was limited in the 1500s to providing subsistence
for colonial settlements and immediate consumption for workers in the
mines, became a dynamic enterprise in the 1600s and replaced mining as
the core of the Colombian economy by the 1700s. By the end of the 1700s,
sugar and tobacco had become important export commodities. The growth in
agriculture resulted in part from the increasing exhaustion of mineral
and metal resources in the seventeenth century, which caused the crown
to reorient its economic policy to stimulate the agricultural sector.
As commercial agriculture became the foundation of the Colombian
economy, two dominant forms of agricultural landholdings emerged--the encomienda
and the hacienda. These landholdings were distinguishable by the manner
in which the landholders obtained labor. The encomienda was a
grant of the right to receive the tribute of Indians within a certain
boundary. In contrast, the hacienda functioned through a contract
arrangement involving the owner--the hacendado--and Indian laborers.
Under a typical arrangement, Indians tilled the land a specified number
of days per week or per year in exchange for small plots of land.
The encomendero, or recipient of the encomienda,
extended privileges to de facto control of the land designated in his
grant. In effect, the encomendero was a deputy charged by the
crown with responsibility for the support of the Indians and their moral
and religious welfare. Assuming that the land and its inhabitants were
entirely at its disposal, the monarchy envisioned the encomiendas
as a means of administering humane and constructive policies of the
government of Spain and protecting the welfare of the Indians. The encomenderos,
however, sought to employ the Indians for their own purposes and to
maintain their land as hereditary property to be held in perpetuity.
Most encomenderos were private adventurers rather than agents
of the empire. The remoteness of the encomiendas from the
center of government made it possible for the encomenderos to
do as they pleased.
Under the influence of church figures such as Bartolom� de las
Casas, the crown promulgated the New Laws in 1542 for the administration
of the Spanish Empire in America. Designed to remove the abuses
connected with encomiendas and to improve the general treatment
of Indians, the laws called for strict enforcement of the existing
regulations and freedom for the enslaved Indians, who were placed in the
category of free subjects of the crown. They further provided that encomiendas
would be forfeited if the Indians concerned were mistreated; that the
tribute paid by Indians being instructed in religion should be fixed and
in no case required in the form of personal service; and that public
officials, congregations, hospitals, and monasteries could not hold encomiendas.
Additional provisions-- especially resented by the encomenderos--prohibited
the employment of Indians in the mines, prevented encomenderos
from requiring Indians to carry heavy loads, forbade the granting of any
future encomiendas, ordered a reduction in size of existing encomiendas,
and terminated the rights of wives and children to inherit encomiendas.
Encomenderos opposed the royal government's attempts to
enforce these regulations. A formula was adopted according to which the
laws would be "obeyed but not executed." The encomenderos
also had the opportunity to send representatives to Spain to seek
modifications of the laws-- modifications that the crown eventually
granted. The tensions between the royal authority and the colonists in
the new empire were never entirely removed.
The institution of the hacienda with its associated mita
(ancient tribute) system of labor began in the late sixteenth century.
After 1590 the crown started to grant titles of landownership to
colonists who paid the crown for the land and reserved the right to use
Indian labor on their haciendas. Under an agrarian reform in 1592, the
crown established resguardos, or reservations, for the Indians
to provide for their subsistence; the resulting concentration of Indians
freed up land to be sold to hacendados. The purchase of land as private
real estate from the crown led to the development of latifundios.
The new hacendados soon came into conflict with the encomenderos
because of the ability of the latter to monopolize Indian labor. The
Spanish authorities instituted the mita to resolve this
conflict. After 1595 the crown obliged resguardo Indians to
contract themselves to neighboring hacendados for a maximum of fifteen
days per year. The mitayos (Indians contracted to work) also
were contracted for labor as miners in Antioquia, as navigational aides
on the R�o Magdalena, and as industrial workers in a few rare cases.
Although the mitayos were considered free because they were
paid a nominal salary, the landowners and other employers overworked
them to such an extent that many became seriously ill or died.
Because the mitayos could not survive their working
conditions, the crown sought an alternate source of cheap labor through
the African slave trade. The crown sold licenses to individuals allowing
them to import slaves, primarily through the port at Cartagena. Although
the crown initially restricted licenses to Spanish merchants, it
eventually opened up the slave trade to foreigners as demand outstripped
supply. The mining industry was the first to rely on black slaves, who
by the seventeenth century had replaced mitayos in the mines.
The mining industry continued to depend on slave labor into the
eighteenth century. Despite the decline of the mining industry, slavery
remained the key form of labor; from the second half of the seventeenth
century through the eighteenth century, plantation-style agriculture
rose in prominence and raised the demand for slave labor on sugar
plantations and ranches. Minor segments of the economy also supported
slavery and used slaves as artisans, domestic servants, and navigational
aides.
Slaves had no legal rights in the colonial system. The crown enacted
laws to separate the slaves from the Indians so that the two groups
would not join against the Spanish and criollo ruling classes. Slaves,
however, often revolted against their subhuman living conditions, and
many escaped to form palenques (towns) high in the mountains
where they could maintain their African customs. These palenques
separated themselves from colonial society and thus were among the first
towns in Spanish America to be free of Spanish authority. The palenque
movement was strongest in the eighteenth century. At this time, there
was a crisis in the institution of slavery as it existed in the Spanish
colonies. By the end of the 1700s, the high price of slaves along with
increasing antislavery sentiment in the colony caused many to view the
system as anachronistic; nonetheless, it was not abolished until after
independence was achieved.
Colombia - The Colonial Church
In addition to bringing the Christian religion to the Indians, the
church spread the ideas and institutions of Western civilization and had
responsibility for establishing and maintaining almost all of the
schools of the colonial period. In 1580 a monastery founded the
University of General Studies, the first in the territory. The Jesuits
established two additional universities in 1622 and 1653.
In its role as the patron of education, the church made an unintended
but significant contribution to developing a local spirit of
independence among the colonists. Church and state attempted to control
the intellectual life of the New World. Throughout the eighteenth
century, the church engaged in controversy with the country's leading
intellectuals, who were influenced by the political ideas of the
Enlightenment in Europe and by the concepts of positivism and empirical
scientific investigation. The education system also fostered opposition
to Spain's sovereignty over its American empire and provided the
groundwork for the intellectuals whose activities the church opposed.
Although the Roman Catholic Church influenced educational and
intellectual development in the colonies, the crown ensured its own
influence over the colonial church. Several papal bulls in the 1490s and
in the first decade of the 1500s strengthened the ability of the Spanish
kings to influence church affairs in the New World. In addition, the
Holy See granted to the Spanish state the papal rights governing the
administration and the personnel of the church and of bishoprics being
created in the New World. In addition to common economic interests, this
closely bound the church to the state during the colonial period.
Throughout the colonial period, events in Spain affected the
political, economic, and intellectual state of the colonies. One such
event was the ascension of the Bourbons to the Spanish throne in 1700.
Upon the death of Charles II--the last in the line of the Spanish
Hapsburgs--the Austrian Hapsburgs and Charles's nephew Philip of Anjou,
a Bourbon and the grandson of French king Louis XIV as well the
designated heir to the Spanish throne, contended for the Spanish throne.
The War of the Spanish Succession (1702-14) ended in the triumph of the
Bourbons over the Austrians, and the Treaty of Utrecht recognized the
Bourbon succession in Spain on the condition that Spain and France would
never be united under one crown.
Beginning with Philip of Anjou, now known as King Philip V (reigned
1700-46), the Bourbon kings placed themselves in more direct control of
their colonies, reducing the power of the Supreme Council of the Indies
and abolishing the House of Trade. In 1717 Philip V established the
Viceroyalty of New Granada (present-day Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and
Ecuador), and in 1739 Bogot� became its capital. Other Bourbon kings,
particularly Charles III (reigned 1759-88), tried to improve the
profitability of the American colonies by removing restrictions that had
hindered Spain's economic development in the 1500s and 1600s. Such
measures included the liberalization of commerce with the colonies and
the establishment of additional authorized ports. In 1774 the crown
allowed free exchange among the colonies of Peru, New Spain, New
Granada, and Guatemala. These reforms allowed the crown control over the
de facto trade among the colonies that previously had been illicit. When
Charles III declared war on Britain in 1778, he levied taxes on the
colonies to fund the war. These fiscal decrees affected imports and
exports, the sale of general items--especially tobacco and alcohol--and
the production of silver and gold. The crown demanded tribute from
Indians and the church and expected the general population to fund the
naval fleet that patrolled the Spanish American coast. Excessive and
increasing taxation in the late 1700s contributed to the discontent of
the criollos with the Spanish administration, which manifested itself in
the Comunero Revolt of 1781, the most serious revolt against Spanish
authority before the war for independence. The rebellion was a
spontaneous but diffuse movement involving many towns. The most
important uprising began among artisans and peasants in Socorro (in
presentday Santander Department). The imposition of new taxes by the
viceroy stimulated the revolt further.
Almost without exception, the rebels expressed their loyalty to the
king and the church while calling for a repeal of new taxes and a
modification of government monopolies. The rebels succeeded in getting
government representatives to abolish the war tax, taxes for the
maintenance of the fleet, customhouse permits, and tobacco and
playing-card monopolies; to reduce the tribute paid by the Indians and
the taxes on liquor, commercial transactions, and salt; and to give
preference to those born in the New World for appointments to certain
posts. Later, however, government negotiators declared that they had
acted under duress and that the viceroy would not honor the agreements.
The leaders of the rebellion were subjected to severe punishments,
including death for the more prominent among them. The rebels had not
sought independence from Spain, but their revolt against the king's
administration and administrators, despite protestations of loyalty to
the king himself, was not far removed from a fight for independence. In
this light, the rebellion was a prelude to the struggle for freedom.
In the late 1700s, the Enlightenment served as a second major
influence in the struggle for independence. After the Comunero Revolt,
the outlook of the local upper-class and middle-class criollos changed
as the ideas of the Enlightenment strengthened their desire to control
their own destiny. This movement criticized the traditional patterns of
political, economic, and religious institutions and as such was a threat
to both the central state and the religious authorities. The North
American and French revolutions also contributed intellectual
foundations for a new society, as well as examples of the possibilities
for change.
A third major event of the late colonial period that may have led to
the struggle for independence was the Napoleonic invasion of the early
1800s. In 1807 Napoleon Bonaparte made his brother Joseph the king of
Spain, forcing Charles IV to abdicate and his son Ferdinand VII to
renounce the throne. In exile, Ferdinand VII organized royalist
supporters under the Central Council Junta Central) of Seville, later
called the Council of the Regency (Consejo de Regencia). This council
constituted a provisional government for Spain and the colonies.
Both Napoleon and the royalists competed for support of Spain's
colonists in the New World. Napoleon wrote a liberal constitution for
Spain in which he recognized the colonies as having rights equal to
those of Spain. In competition for the colonies' loyalties, the Central
Council offered them certain privileges, such as participation in
Spanish courts. Colonists, however, were not satisfied with the
council's measure because of the larger representation accorded the
representatives from Spain. Despite conflict with the peninsulares
holding colonial authority in the viceroyalty, additional concessions to
criollos to win their support resulted in the creation of a criollo
governing council in Bogot� on July 20, 1810. The new local government
passed reforms favoring power-sharing by the criollos and peninsulares
and loosened the economic restrictions previously placed on the colony.
Most of the old Spanish laws remained in effect, however. The
establishment of other criollo governing councils laid the basis for the
first attempts at independence from Spain.
Colombia - THE FOUNDING OF THE NATION, 1810-1903
Leaders in the various localities that had formed criollo councils
sought to unite the colony of New Granada. From the beginning of their
attempts, however, conflict emerged over the form the new government
should take. The provincial councils did not want the centralist,
authoritarian type of government advocated by the Bogot� council,
preferring a federal type of government more in keeping with the liberal
principles of the Enlightenment and the example of the North American
revolution. This represented the first ideological split between groups
of leading criollos. Federalists rallied behind Camilo Torres;
Centralists rallied behind Antonio Nari�o. To avoid a civil war between
the two factions, the provincial councils sent representatives to Bogot�
in 1811 to draft a constitution for the territory. In November 1811, a
congress was installed, and the provinces formed the United Provinces of
New Granada. The federal union consisted of autonomous provinces joined
only in common interest; the national army was subordinate to Bogot�.
Starting in 1812, individual provinces began declaring absolute
independence from Spain. That year, Sim�n Bol�var Palacio, considered
the liberator of South America, tried for the first time to gain
independence for New Granada. The absence of united support from the
various provinces, however, frustrated him. Bol�var left New Granada in
1815 and went to Jamaica. The continuing tension between federalist and
centralist forces led to a conflict that left New Granada weak and
vulnerable to Spain's attempts to reconquer the provinces.
At the time of Bol�var's departure, the independence cause in New
Granada was desperate. Ferdinand VII had been restored to the Spanish
throne, and Napoleon's forces had withdrawn from Spain. A pacification
expedition led by Pablo Morillo on behalf of the king proceeded from
present-day Venezuela to Bogot�, and those who laid down their arms and
reaffirmed their loyalty to the Spanish crown were pardoned. Morillo
also granted freedom to slaves who helped in the reconquest of the
colonies. Because of dissension between the upper class and the masses
and inept military leadership, Cartagena fell to the royalists by the
end of 1815.
In early 1816, Morillo moved to reconquer New Granada and changed his
tactics from pardons to terror; Bogot� fell within a few months.
Morillo repressed antiroyalists (including executing leaders such as
Torres) and installed the Tribunal of Purification, responsible for
exiles and prisoners, and the Board of Confiscations. The Ecclesiastical
Tribunal, in charge of government relations with the church, imposed
military law on priests who were implicated in the subversion. The
Spanish reconquest installed a military regime that ruled with violent
repression. Rising discontent contributed to a greater radicalization of
the independence movement, spreading to sectors of the society, such as
the lower classes and slaves, that had not supported the previous
attempt at independence. Thus the ground was laid for Bol�var's return
and ultimate triumph.
At the end of 1816, Bol�var returned to New Granada, convinced that
the war for independence was winnable only with the support of the
masses. In the earlier attempt at independence, large segments of the
population had been lured to the royalist side by promises such as
repartition of land and abolition of slavery. When the masses saw that
the promises were unfulfilled, however, they changed their allegiance
from Spain to the independence movement.
Two significant military encounters led to the movement's success.
After having won a number of victories in a drive from the present-day
Venezuelan coast to present-day eastern Colombia via the R�o Orinoco,
Bol�var gave Francisco de Paula Santander the mission of liberating the
Casanare region, where he defeated royalist forces in April 1819. After
the decisive defeat of royalist forces at the Battle of Boyac� in
August 1819, independence forces entered Bogot� without resistance.
The merchants and landowners who fought against Spain now held
political, economic, and social control over the new country that
encompompassed present-day Venezuelan, Colombia, and Panana. The first
economic reforms that they passed consolidated their position by
liberalizing trade, thereby allowing merchandise from Britain (New
Granada's major trading partner after Spain) freer entry into the area.
As a result, the artisan class and the emerging manufactguring sector,
who previously had held only slight economic and political power, now
lost stature.
Colombia - Gran Colombia
As victory over Spain became increasingly apparent, leaders from
present-day Venezuela, Colombia, and Panana convened a congress in
February 1819 in Angostura (present-day Ciudad Bol�var, Venezuela) and
agreed to unite in a republic to be known as Gran Colombia. After Bol�var
was ratified as president in August 1819, he left Santander, his vice
president, in charge of Gran Colombia and traveled south to liberate
present-day Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. When present-day Ecuador was
liberated in 1822, it also joined Gran Colombia. In 1821 the C�cuta
Congress wrote a constitution for the new republic. The C�cuta
political arrangement was highly centralized and provided for a
government based on popular representation with a bicameral Congress, a
president, and a Supreme Court consisting of five magistrates. The
constitution also guaranteed freedom for the children of slaves; freedom
of the press; the inviolability of homes, persons, and correspondence;
the codification of taxes; protectionist policies toward industry and
agriculture; and the abolition of the mita system of labor.
Nonetheless, political rivalries and regional jealousies
progressively weakened the authority of the new central state.
Venezuelan leaders especially were resentful of being ruled by
Santander, a native of present-day Colombia, in the absence of their
president and fellow Venezuelan, Bol�var. In 1826 General Jos� Antonio
P�ez led a Venezuelan revolt against Gran Colombia. Outbreaks and
disturbances also occurred elsewhere.
On his return from Peru in 1827, Bol�var was barely able to maintain
his personal authority. In April 1828, a general convention was convened
in Oca�a to reform the constitution of C�cuta, but the convention
broke up as a result of conflicting positions taken by the followers of
Santander and Bol�var. Those backing Santander believed in a liberal,
federalist form of government. Bol�var's followers supported a more
authoritarian and centralized government, and many, especially those in
Bogot�, called on Bol�var to assume national authority until he deemed
it wise to convoke a new legislative body to replace Congress.
In August 1828, Bol�var assumed dictatorial powers and attempted to
install a constitution that he had developed for Bolivia and Peru.
Unpopular with a large portion of the New Grenadine populace, this
constitution called for increased central authority and a
president-for-life who could also name his own successor. During a
constitutional convention held in January 1830, Bol�var resigned as
president, naming Jos� Domingo Caicedo as his successor. That same
year, the divisive forces at work within the republic achieved a major
triumph as the Venezuelan and Ecuadorian portions of the republic
seceded.
Colombia - New Granada
New Granada lay in a depressed state after the dissolution of Gran
Colombia. None of the country's three principal economic
bases--agriculture, ranching, and mining--was healthy. The import trade
was limited to a small group, the banking industry was inadequate, and
craftsmen and small manufacturers could supply only enough for local
consumption. Despite the desire and need for change, New Granada
retained slavery, the sales tax, and a state monopoly on the production
and trade of tobacco and alcohol. The problems facing the country, the
discontent of liberal groups who saw the constitution as being
monarchical, and the military's desire for power culminated in the fall
of the constitutional order and the installation in 1830 of the
eight-month dictatorship of General Rafael Urdaneta. After Bol�var's
death in December 1830, however, civilian and military leaders called
for the restoration of legitimate authority. Urdaneta was forced to cede
power to Caicedo as the legitimate president.
In October 1831, Caicedo convened a commission to write a new
constitution for New Granada. Finished in 1832, the new constitution
restricted the power of the presidency and expanded the autonomy of the
regional administrative subdivisions known as departments (departamentos).
Santander assumed the presidency in 1832 and was succeeded in 1837 by
his vice president, Jos� Ignacio de M�rquez. Personalism and
regionalism remained key elements in national politics in a country with
small cities, a weak state, and a semifeudal population that was bound
to the large landowners in patron-client relationships.
During the M�rquez administration, the political divisions in the
country reached a breaking point. In 1840 the political ambitions of
some department governors, the constitutional weakness of the president,
and the suppression of some Roman Catholic monasteries in Pasto combined
to ignite a civil war that ended with the victory of the government
forces led by General Pedro Alc�ntara Herr�n. This triumph brought
Herr�n to the presidency with the next election in 1841. In 1843 his
administration instituted a new constitution, which stipulated a greater
centralization of power.
In 1845 Tom�s Ciprianode Mosquera succeeded Herr�n. Personalism as
an important element in politics abated during his administration. The
Mosquera government also saw the economic and political ascendancy of
merchants, artisans, and small property owners. Mosquera liberalized
trade and set New Granada on the path of exporting primary goods.
The election of General Jos� Hilario L�pez as president in 1849
marked a turning point for Colombia both economically and politically.
Capitalism began to replace the old colonial structure, and the
ideological differences between the established political parties
overshadowed the previous emphasis on personalism. In 1850 the L�pez
administration instituted a socalled agrarian reform program and
abolished slavery. In order to allow landowners access to more land, the
agrarian reform program lifted the restrictions on the sale of resguardo
lands; as a result, Indians became displaced from the countryside and
moved to the cities, where they provided excess labor. In 1851 the
government ended the state monopoly on tobacco cultivation and trade and
declared an official separation of church and state. In addition, L�pez
took the education system from the hands of the church and subjected
parish priests to popular elections.
Colombia - Consolidation of Political Divisions
Although divided, the PL soon achieved electoral victories. In the
election of 1853, General Jos� Mar�a Obando, who had led the
revolutionary forces in the 1840 civil war and who was supported by the draconianos
and the army, was elected and inaugurated as president. Congress
remained in the hands of the golgotas. In May of the same year,
Congress adopted the constitution of 1853, which had been written under
L�pez. A liberal document, it had significant provisions defining the
separation of church and state and freedom of worship and establishing
male suffrage. The new constitution also mandated the direct election of
the president, members of Congress, magistrates, and governors, and it
granted extensive autonomy to the departments.
Despite the victory that the constitution represented for the
Liberals, tensions grew between golgota and draconiano
forces. When the draconianos found Obando to be compromising
with the golgotas, General Jos� Mar�a Melo led a coup d'�tat
in April 1854, declared himself dictator, and dissolved Congress. Melo's
rule, the only military dictatorship in the nineteenth century, lasted
only eight months because he proved unable to consolidate the interests
of the draconianos; he was deposed by an alliance of golgotas
and Conservatives.
In 1857 PC candidate Mariano Ospina Rodr�guez was elected president.
The next year, his administration adopted a new constitution, which
renamed the country the Grenadine Confederation, replaced the vice
president with three designates elected by Congress, and set the
presidential term at four years. With the draconiano faction
disappearing as a political force, the golgotas took over the
PL in opposition to the Conservative Ospina. General Mosquera, the
former president and the governor of the department of Cauca, emerged as
the most important Liberal figure. A strong advocate of federalism,
Mosquera threatened the secession of Cauca in the face of the
centralization undertaken by the Conservatives. Mosquera, the golgotas,
and their supporters declared a civil war in 1860, resulting in an
almost complete obstruction of government.
Because civil disorder prevented elections from being held as
scheduled in 1861, Bartolom� Calvo, a Conservative in line for the
presidency, assumed the office. In July 1861, Mosquera captured Bogot�,
deposed Calvo, and took the title of provisional president of the United
States of New Granada and supreme commander of war. A congress of
plenipotentiaries chosen by the civil and military leaders of each
department met in the capital in September 1861 in response to a call by
the provisional government. Meanwhile, the war continued until Mosquera
defeated the Conservatives and finally subdued the opposition in
Antioquia in October 1862.
Shortly after taking power, Mosquera put the church under secular
control and expropriated church lands. The property was not
redistributed to the landless, however, but was sold to merchants and
landholders in an effort to improve the national fiscal situation, which
had been ruined by the war. As a result, the amount of land held under latifundios
increased.
In February 1863, a Liberal-only government convention met in
Rionegro and enacted the constitution of 1863, which was to last until
1886. The Rionegro constitution renamed the nation the United States of
Colombia. All powers not given to the central government were reserved
for the states, including the right to engage in the commerce of arms
and ammunition. The constitution contained fully defined individual
liberties and guarantees as nearly absolute as possible, leaving the
federal authority with little room to regulate society. The constitution
also guaranteed Colombians the right to profess any religion.
The Rionegro constitution brought little peace to the country. After
its enactment and before the next constitutional change, Liberals and
Conservatives engaged in some forty local conflicts and several major
military struggles. Contention persisted, moreover, between the moderate
Liberals in the executive branch and the radical Liberals in the
legislature; the latter went so far as to enact a measure prohibiting
the central authority from suppressing a revolt against the government
of any state or in any way interfering in state affairs. In 1867 the
radical Liberals also executed a coup against Mosquera, leading to his
imprisonment, trial before the Senate, and exile from the country.
With the fall of Mosquera and the entrenchment of radical Liberals in
power, Conservatives found it increasingly difficult to accept the
Rionegro constitution. Eventually Conservatives in Tolima and Antioquia
took up arms, initiating another civil conflict in 1876. The Liberal
national government put down the rebellion, but only with difficulty.
Golgotas controlled the presidency until 1884 and defended
the Rionegro constitution's provisions for federalism, absolute
liberties, separation of church and state, and the nonintervention of
the state in the economy. Their economic policies emphasized the
construction of lines of communication, especially railroads and
improved roads. These projects did not unify the country and increase
internal trade but instead linked the interior with export centers,
connecting important cities with river and maritime ports. By allowing
easier access to imports, the projects thus favored the merchant class
over the national industrialists.
Under the golgota policy of completely free trade, exports
became a major element of the country's economy. Three main agricultural
exports--tobacco, quinine, and coffee--developed, especially after 1850
when international markets were more favorable and accessible.
Nonetheless, all three crops suffered from cyclical periods of high and
low demand. By the 1880s, it was clear that tobacco and quinine would
not be reliable exports in the long term because of stiff international
competition. Coffee also faced competition but nevertheless succeeded in
dominating the economy after the 1870s. The coffee merchants used their
profits as middlemen to invest in domestic industries, producing goods
such as textiles for domestic consumption, particularly in the Medell�n
area. The emergence of coffee as an important export crop and the
investment of profits from the coffee trade into domestic industry were
significant steps in the economic development of the country.
Colombia - The Nationalists
It became obvious to many Liberals and Conservatives that the lack of
governmental authority stipulated in the Rionegro constitution was
allowing the country to run a chaotic course and that the situation
needed to be corrected. The Regeneration movement sought a basic shift
in Colombia's direction. A key leader of the movement was Rafael N��ez,
who was elected president in 1879 and held the office until 1882.
Liberals and Conservatives who were disenchanted with the golgota
governments joined to form the National Party, a coalition that in
February 1884 brought N��ez to the presidency for a second term. The
Nationalists authorized N��ez to take steps urgently required to
improve economic conditions. As leader of the Regeneration movement, he
attempted to reform the constitution with the agreement of all groups.
The golgotas, however, were afraid that constitutional change
would favor the Conservatives and dissident Liberals at their expense.
In 1884 the golgotas in Santander started an armed rebellion,
which spread throughout the country. Nationalist forces suppressed the
revolution by August 1885, at which time N��ez also declared that the
Rionegro constitution had expired.
The most important result of the conflict was the adoption of the
Constitution of 1886 by a national council made up of two delegates from
each state. The Nationalist leaders believed that ultraliberalism as
practiced under the Rionegro constitution was not appropriate to the
needs of the country and that a balance was needed between individual
liberties and national order. Based on this philosophy, the Constitution
of 1886 reversed the federalist trend and brought the country under
strong centralist control. The Constitution renamed the country the
Republic of Colombia and, with amendments, remained in effect in the
late 1980s. The Constitution provides for a national rather than
confederate system of government in which the president has more power
than the governors, who head departments or two types of national
territories known as intendencies (intendencias) and
commissaryships (comisarias).
In 1887 N��ez consolidated the position of the church in the
country by signing the Concordat of 1887 with the Holy See. Through the
concordat, the church regained its autonomy and its previous
preferential relationship with the republic. The agreement stipulated
the obligatory teaching of Roman Catholicism as part of a child's
education and recognized Roman Catholic marriages as the only valid
marriages in the country. It also acknowledged Colombia's debt to the
Holy See brought on by the uncompensated confiscation of church assets
under Mosquera in the 1860s.
Political disorder did not cease with the adoption of the
Constitution of 1886. The Nationalists, who had become an extremist
branch of the PC after N��ez was elected, were opposed by the
Historical Conservatives, the moderate faction of the PC that did not
agree with the extent of antiliberalism taken by the new government. The
bipartisan opposition of Liberals and Historical Conservatives sought to
reform Nationalist economic and political policies through peaceful
means. The Nationalists, however, denied the civil rights and political
representation of the Liberals because differences of opinion concerning
trade policy and the role of the state in society created a gulf between
the Nationalists and their opponents. The PL split into Peace and War
factions, the former seeking peaceful reform of economic policies and
the latter advocating revolution as the only way to win political
rights. The Peace faction controlled the party in the capital, whereas
the War faction dominated the party in the departments--a response to
the violent political exclusion that was characteristic of rural areas
and small towns. The War faction staged unsuccessful revolts in 1893 and
1895.
In 1898 Nationalist candidate Manuel Antonio Sanclemente was elected
president. In ill health, Sanclemente left much of the governing to his
vice president, Jos� Manuel Marroqu�n. The Sanclemente/Marroqu�n
presidency faced increasing problems as the world price of coffee fell,
which, because of reduced customs revenues, left the government
bankrupt. The fiscal policy of issuing nonredeemable paper money, which
had replaced the gold standard under N��ez, added to the increasing
lack of confidence in the government.
In July 1899, in Santander, Liberals again attempted a revolution,
known as the War of a Thousand Days. Historical Conservatives eventually
cast their allegiance with the Nationalists, whereas the Peace and War
factions of the PL remained split, thereby weakening the rebellion.
Despite an initial victory in December 1899, the Liberal forces were
outnumbered at Palonegro five months later. The defeat left the Liberal
army decimated and demoralized and with little chance to succeed. The
Liberal army changed its strategy from conventional tactics to guerrilla
warfare, thus transforming the war into a desperate struggle that lasted
for two more years.
In July 1900, Historical Conservatives, seeking a political solution
to the war, supported Marroqu�n in a coup against Sanclemente. Contrary
to what his supporters had expected, Marroqu�n adopted a hard line
against the rebels and refused to negotiate a settlement. In November
1902, the defeated Liberal army negotiated a peace agreement with the
government. The war took more than 100,000 lives and left the country
devastated.
The War of a Thousand Days left the country too weak to prevent
Panama's secession from the republic in 1903. The events leading up to
Panama's secession were as much international as domestic. At the turn
of the century, the United States recognized the strategic need to have
access to a naval route connecting the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific
Ocean, such as a canal in the isthmus. The HayHerr�n Treaty of January
1903, which was to have been the basis for allowing the United States
canal project to proceed, was rejected by the Colombian Congress.
Because the proposed Panamanian route was preferred over the Nicaraguan
alternative, the United States encouraged the Panamanian separatist
movement, militarily assisted Panama in its movement for independence,
and immediately recognized the independent Republic of Panama.
Colombia - THE PERIOD OF RECONCILIATION, 1903-30
The Reyes Presidency
The devastation that resulted from the War of a Thousand Days
discredited the factions of each party that had instigated the conflict.
The moderates who assumed power in each party had similar economic
interests; they recognized the need for the two parties to reconcile
their differences and rule together in peaceful coexistence to ensure
the survival of the country and the economy. For the first time in
Colombian history, the Liberals and the Conservatives sought to share
power rather than exclude the opposition party from it. Although
Conservatives were nominally in control during this period, they formed
coalition governments incorporating minority Liberals into the cabinet
and other important political bodies. Rejecting the practice of
excluding the Liberals from political participation, as had been done by
the Nationalists, the moderate Conservatives removed the key element
that had prompted so much political violence in the past and laid the
foundation for economic progress in the country.
At the end of the civil war, the country needed a leader who was
strong enough to rebuild the nation after the loss of Panama and the
ravages of civil strife. General Rafael Reyes, elected president in 1904
with the support of moderate Conservatives, showed a determination to
unify the republic, renew the nation's economy, and prevent any
obstacle--constitutional or otherwise-- from standing in his way.
Reyes's policies were a contradictory combination of political
reconciliation and authoritarianism, which forced minority Liberal
representation in government on the elected Conservative majority in
Congress. His economic programs included a protectionist trade policy,
which represented a major intervention of the state into economic
activity. This trade policy encouraged domestic industrial growth, which
in turn led to the growth of cities and the need to develop an urban
infrastructure.
To ensure the passage of his economic reforms, Reyes greatly
strengthened the executive and thereby centralized power. He abolished
Congress and replaced it with a National Assembly composed of three
representatives from each department, selected by department officials
appointed by Reyes. This action ensured the adequate representation of
the Liberal support he needed in the legislative branch. This
extraconstitutional body was designed to approve his decrees and to pass
constitutional amendments. The National Assembly allowed Reyes to
implement policies that sometimes were at odds with orthodox economic
theory and therefore would not have been tolerated by a Conservative
Congress. Through these measures, Reyes established a sound fiscal
administration, stabilized the monetary system, initiated a return to
the gold standard, restored Colombian credit abroad, attracted foreign
capital, improved transportation, encouraged export agriculture, and
aided domestic industry. At the same time, however, he aroused a great
deal of political opposition.
Reyes realized that the soundest path to economic development-- based
on trade and foreign investment--required normalized relations with the
United States, an unpopular idea at that time. In 1909 Reyes
unsuccessfully tried to force legislative approval of the
Thompson-Urrutia Treaty with the United States, which was to reestablish
relations with that country and recognize the independence of Panama.
The issue of the treaty's ratification, however, provided a focal point
for opposition against Reyes, even though the treaty was ratified under
a subsequent administration. In June 1909, the Republican Union, a
bipartisan group of Liberals and Historical Conservatives who opposed
Reyes, won a majority in the congressional elections held to reestablish
the Colombian Cngress. In acknowledgment of the political current
against him, Reyes secretly resigned later that month and left the
country.
Carlos E. Restrepo, a Conservative who had been instrumental in
founding the Republican Union, assumed the presidency after Reyes. The
Republican Union represented a transformation in Colombian politics. The
Liberal merchants and Conservative agriculturists found a common
interest in coffee exports, which was quickly beginning to dominate the
Colombian economy. Their mutual economic interest allowed the moderate
factions of each party to join in a bipartisan coalition that gained
political control at the end of the civil war. Although Conservatives
retained nominal control of political institutions until 1930, they
accepted and applied the principle of Liberal representation and
participation in government. Conservative presidents appointed Liberals
to their bipartisan cabinets and thus included them in political
decision making. Although party conflict and rural unrest remained, the
coalitions that the two parties formed provided a basis for political
stability.
Colombia - Economic and Social Change
The economic modernization of the early 1900s unleashed social forces
that resulted in the emergence of new urban classes. As the traditional
elites failed to address the demands made by the new groups, tension was
generated. The growing urban electorate tended to favor those
politicians who advocated social reforms. The Liberals were better able
than the Conservatives to benefit from this development, especially
during the first administration of Alfonso L�pez Pumarejo (1934-38).
The populist movement of the 1940s, represented by the progressive
faction of the PL, attracted the most support, however, and represented
a threat to the more conservative traditional elites. For the first
time, nonelites had a voice with which to express their interests.
Although a split in the PC over candidates for the 1930 presidential
election aided in the ascension of the PL to power, both parties were
divided into factions. The PC consisted of moderates (led by Mariano
Ospina P�rez and known as ospinistas) who wanted to maintain
the status quo and reactionary conservatives (led by Laureano G�mez
Castro and known as laureanistas) who favored a restructuring
of the state along corporatist lines. The PL also had its moderates who
supported the status quo. The second faction of the PL consisted of
reformists, who favored controlled social change. These factions
represented different socioeconomic groups. In general, reformists
included the new financial and capitalist groups. Reactionaries
primarily were traditional latifundistas (owners of latifundios).
Moderates of both parties tended to have interests that incorporated
several economic activities and included groups such as export-oriented latifundistas.
As a result of the Liberal victory, many of the privileges that had
been afforded to Conservatives through patronage politics were now
denied. Because the president appointed the governors, who in turn
appointed the municipal mayors, the transfer of power from the PC to the
PL at the presidential level was felt at the municipal level. Because of
the change in the political affiliation of the police force, the
stricter application of the law was transferred to members of the
opposition party. Clashes resulted between partisan groups among the
lower classes, who sought either to gain or to maintain their
privileges. One such clash involved the peasants, who, amidst the
confusion, tried to attain greater control over small plots of land at
the expense of members of the opposing party.
The first Liberal president of the twentieth century, Enrique Olaya
Herrera (1930-34), was elected at a time when the price of coffee had
dropped to about one-third of the 1928 price, loans from United States
banks had stopped, and the country was gripped by an economic
depression. Olaya endeavored to hold together the moderate Liberals and
the moderate Conservatives, some of whom had worked for his election.
Although Conservative control of the legislature and concern over the
economy constrained Olaya's ability to enact a comprehensive Liberal
agenda, he succeeded in carrying out some reforms, notably in education.
Nonetheless, some Liberals, disappointed by their party's failure to
carry out a "revolution," in 1932 organized a movement called
the Revolutionary Leftist National Union (Uni�n Nacional Izquierdista
Revolucionaria--UNIR). The movement came to an end after Gait�n, its
leader, returned to the PL in 1935 when the party adopted many of his
proposed reforms and offered him a congressional seat.
International disputes also confronted the Olaya administration, one
of the most prominent being a boundary conflict with Peru. In 1932
Peruvians occupied Leticia, a Colombian outpost on the Amazon, and
hand-to-hand combat ensued between small Colombian and Peruvian forces.
The dispute was settled by direct negotiation in 1934, when Peru
recognized Colombian sovereignty over the port.
The most important president in the reformist period was Olaya's
successor, L�pez Pumarejo. Believing that the reformist faction of the
PL had become strong enough to carry out its program, the L�pez
Pumarejo administration implemented extensive reforms, principally in
agriculture, education, and the tax system. Known as the
"Revolution on the March," these reforms included
constitutional amendments that guaranteed the state's role in developing
the economy of the country and diversifying its exports, authorized the
national government to expropriate property for the common good,
provided special state protection for labor and the right for labor
unions to strike, and stipulated that public assistance was a function
of the state. Additional reforms included the strict enforcement of
progressive income and inheritance taxes, the guarantee of rights
granted to squatters on public and private lands, the reinforcement of
credit institutions, and the renewed separation of church and state.
The reforms put in place by the L�pez Pumarejo administration,
combined with import substitution policies, helped to accelerate the
capitalist development of Colombia. During the L�pez Pumarejo
administration, coffee prices and the volume of exports increased.
Protectionist measures helped to increase domestic production and
enlarge the domestic market. A surge in industrialization began in the
1930s, aided by various external and internal factors. The key external
factor was the world economic crisis of the 1930s, which limited the
availability of goods to be imported and limited markets for exports.
Internal factors included domestic capital accumulation via the tobacco,
gold, and coffee trade; the increased buying power of large groups,
especially coffee growers; the construction of transportation and
communication facilities that unified the internal market; and a
continuation of protectionist policies begun by President Reyes in 1904.
The increasing emphasis on growing and exporting coffee fostered
industrial development and allowed a more equitable distribution of
income because more skilled laborers were employed and received higher
wages. As a result, the demand for domestically produced consumer goods
increased further.
Reforms instituted under L�pez Pumarejo reflected a variety of
influences: the Mexican Constitution of 1917, which had set forth
provisions relating to social welfare, labor, and government
responsibility in education and economics; ideas of change favored by
the Peruvian apristas--members of the American Popular
Revolutionary Alliance (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana--
APRA); and the New Deal policies of United States president Franklin D.
Roosevelt (1933-45). Some Colombian intellectuals had become interested
in socialist thought, and the establishment of a liberal republic in
Spain during the early 1930s inspired Colombian Liberals.
The Liberals, recognizing the social changes that were under way,
identified themselves with the growing demands of the masses. In
contrast, the Conservatives favored a minimum of concessions, the
greatest possible influence of the church, and continued control of the
country by a small upper class; they saw L�pez Pumarejo's policies as
communistic. Meanwhile, disagreement over the extent to which Liberal
ideology should be applied led to a split between the pro-reform
supporters of L�pez Pumarejo and the pro-status quo followers of fellow
Liberal Eduardo Santos, owner of the national daily El Tiempo.
In 1938 Santos became president with the support of moderate Liberals
and of Conservatives opposed to L�pez Pumarejo's Revolution on the
March. Santos retained some of his predecessor's policies, such as
protectionism, and oriented his policies toward capitalist industrial
and agricultural development. The Santos administration improved the
economic capabilities of the country to invest in industry. It also
stimulated capital-intensive agriculture to convert traditional latifundios,
which relied on cheap labor, into capitalist haciendas, which used
advanced technology. The reduced demand for manual labor in the
countryside caused many campesinos to migrate to the cities. This urban
growth increased both the supply of labor and the demand for consumer
goods, further contributing to industrial expansion. Santos also reduced
taxes on machinery imports that were needed for industry.
In the later years of his administration, Santos turned his attention
to relations with the church and the United States. In 1942 Santos
reformed education by removing it from the control of the church. In the
same year, he concluded a new agreement with the Vatican, requiring that
bishops be Colombian citizens. During World War II, he cooperated with
the United States in the defense of the Panama Canal, ousted German
nationals from control of Colombia's national airline, and broke
diplomatic relations with the Axis governments. His administration also
strengthened economic, commercial, and cultural relations with the
United States.
Despite opposition from Conservatives, moderate Liberals, and a more
progressive Liberal group led by Gait�n, L�pez Pumarejo was elected
president for a second term in 1942. He was not as successful in the
second term in implementing reform, however, because of strong
Conservative opposition and a split in the Liberal organization in
Congress. Laureano G�mez exploited the Liberal division by attacking L�pez
Pumarejo's foreign policy, including the declaration of war on the Axis
Powers in 1943. Other effects of World War II were being felt at this
time, including an unbalanced budget, unstable foreign trade, a decline
in coffee prices, and an increase in import prices.
Discontent with L�pez Pumarejo increased. G�mez made personal
attacks on L�pez Pumarejo and his family that were so inflammatory that
G�mez was imprisoned in 1944. This triggered demonstrations and street
fighting in Bogot�. In July 1944, during army maneuvers, L�pez
Pumarejo and some of his cabinet members were held prisoner for a few
days by officers staging an abortive military coup in Pasto. Although
most of the military supported the constitutional order, L�pez Pumarejo
lost prestige and power. In July 1945, he resigned in favor of his first
presidential designate, Alberto Lleras Camargo, a Liberal who had
distinguished himself as a writer and government official.
L�pez Pumarejo's resignation resulted in part from pressure by the
political and economic forces that he had helped to strengthen through
the reforms of his first term. By 1942 a new group of industrialists
wished to perpetuate their gains and believed that reform should cease.
During L�pez Pumarejo's first term, the interests of industrialists and
those of other urban elements frequently coincided--for example, in
reducing the power of the church and large landowners and in stimulating
economic growth. In his second term, however, critics contended that the
social reforms and development policies of the first term no longer were
appropriate. Thus, the industrialists, looking for favorable tax
policies and protection against the demands of labor, joined with the
landowners in resisting reforms. Both groups helped block important
portions of L�pez Pumarejo's legislative program, and the reformist
trend of the PL was negated by more moderate elements within the party.
Lleras Camargo, who served as provisional president until August
1946, appointed representatives of all parties to his cabinet in an
effort to establish a "national union." Nonetheless, his
coalition policy was attacked by Gait�n, who had gained considerable
support among the masses and among some intellectuals and
industrialists. When Gabriel Turbay, a moderate Liberal, won the party's
nomination for the 1946 presidential election, Gait�n decided to run
independently, and his forces shifted to a more militant stance. This
serious split among Liberals resulted in the election of the
Conservative candidate, Mariano Ospina P�rez, by a plurality of 42
percent of the electorate.
Colombia - COLLAPSE OF THE DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM, 1946-58
The following month, the inevitable explosion occurred in the form of
the most violent and destructive riot in the country's long history of
conflict. On April 9, Gait�n was assassinated at midday in the heart of
Bogot�. An angry mob immediately seized and killed the assassin. In the
ensuing riot, some 2,000 people were killed, and a large portion of
downtown Bogot� was destroyed. The Bogotazo, as the episode came to be
called, was an expression of mass social frustration and grief by a
people who had lost the man who represented their only potential link to
the decision-making process.
Although order was restored in Bogot� and Ospina remained in
control, the tempo of rural violence quickened to a state of undeclared
civil war known as la violencia. La violencia claimed
over 200,000 lives during the next eighteen years, with the bloodiest
period occurring between 1948 and 1958. La violencia spread
throughout the country, especially in the Andes and the llanos (plains),
sparing only the southernmost portion of Nari�o and parts of the
Caribbean coastal area. An extremely complex phenomenon, la
violencia was characterized by both partisan political rivalry and
sheer rural banditry. The basic cause of this protracted period of
internal disorder, however, was the refusal of successive governments to
accede to the people's demands for socioeconomic change.
After the Bogotazo, the Ospina government became more repressive.
Ospina banned public meetings in March 1949 and fired all Liberal
governors in May. In November of that year, Ospina ordered the army to
forcibly close Congress. Rural police forces heightened the effort
against belligerents and Liberals, and eventually all Liberals, from the
ministerial to the local level, resigned their posts in protest.
In the 1949 presidential election, the Liberals refused to present a
candidate; as a result, G�mez, the only Conservative candidate, took
office in 1950. G�mez, who had opposed the Ospina administration for
its initial complicity with the Liberals, was firmly in control of the
party. As leader of the reactionary faction, he preferred authority,
hierarchy, and order and was contemptuous of universal suffrage and
majority rule. G�mez offered a program that combined traditional
Conservative republicanism with the European corporatism of the time. A
neofascist constitution drafted under his guidance in 1953 would have
enhanced the autonomy of the presidency, expanded the powers of
departmental governors, and strengthened the official role of the church
in the political system.
G�mez acquired broad powers and curtailed civil liberties in an
attempt to confront the mounting violence and the possibility that the
Liberals might regain power. Pro-labor laws passed in the 1930s were
canceled by executive decree, independent labor unions were struck down,
congressional elections were held without opposition, the press was
censored, courts were controlled by the executive, and freedom of
worship was challenged as mobs attacked Protestant chapels. G�mez
directed his repression in particular against the Liberal opposition,
which he branded as communist. At the height of the violence, the number
of deaths reportedly reached 1,000 per month.
Despite the relative prosperity of the economy--owing largely to
expansion of the country's export markets and increased levels of
foreign investment--G�mez lost support because of protracted violence
and his attacks on moderate Conservatives and on the military
establishment. Because of illness, in November 1951 G�mez allowed his
first presidential designate, Roberto Urdaneta Arbel�ez, to become
acting president until G�mez could reassume the presidency. Although
Urdaneta followed G�mez's policies, he refused to dismiss General
Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, whom G�mez suspected of conspiring against the
government. When G�mez tried to return to office in June 1953, a
coalition consisting of moderate Conservatives who supported Ospina, the
PL, and the armed forces deposed him and installed a military
government. They viewed such action as the only way to end the violence.
Rojas Pinilla, who had led the coup d'�tat, assumed the presidency.
Colombia - The Rojas Pinilla Dictatorship
Initial response to the coup was enthusiastic and widespread; only
the elements at the two extremes of the political spectrum protested the
action. Rojas Pinilla's first goal was to end the violence, and to that
end he offered amnesty and government aid to those belligerents who
would lay down their arms. Thousands complied with the offer, and there
was relative calm for several months after the coup. Other immediate
steps taken by Rojas Pinilla included the transfer of the National
Police to the armed forces in an effort to depoliticize the police,
relaxation of press censorship, and release of political prisoners.
The government also started an extensive series of public works
projects to construct transportation networks and hospitals and improved
the system of credit for small farmers. Rojas Pinilla attempted to
respond to demands for social reform through populist measures patterned
after the policies of General Juan Domingo Per�n (1946-55) in
Argentina. The National Social Welfare Service, under the direction of
his daughter Mar�a Eugenia Rojas de Moreno D�az, was created to meet
the most pressing needs of the poor, and the public works projects began
to provide jobs for the masses of urban unemployed. The tax system was
restructured to place more of the burden on the elite. Poorly
administered, however, these reform programs met with little success.
Rojas Pinilla was unable to restructure Colombian society.
Rojas Pinilla attempted to recruit political support from
nontraditional sources. He courted the military by raising salaries and
constructing lavish officers' clubs, and he counted the church by
espousing a "Christian" doctrine as the foundation of his
government. Through the creation of a "third force," Rojas
Pinilla attempted to fuse the masses of peasants and urban workers into
a movement that would counter the elite's traditional domination of the
country's politics; however, this served more to anger the elite than to
create a populist political base.
Support for the Rojas Pinilla regime faded within the first year.
Toward the end of 1953, rural violence was renewed, and Rojas Pinilla
undertook strict measures to counter it. Following a substantial
increase in police and military budgets, the government assumed a
dictatorial and demagogic character. The government reversed its initial
social reform measures and relied instead on repression. It tightened
press censorship and closed a number of the country's leading
newspapers, both Liberal and Conservative. Under a new law, anyone who
spoke disrespectfully of the president could be jailed or fined. Many
were killed or wounded at the socalled Bull Ring Massacre in February
1956 for failing to cheer Rojas Pinilla sufficiently. The administration
became increasingly corrupt, and graft in government circles was
rampant. In addition, economic deterioration, triggered by a drop in
coffee prices and exacerbated by inflationary government policies,
seriously threatened the gains made since World War II. Efforts of
government troops to suppress the widespread violence degenerated into
an enforcement of the president's tenuous hold on power, and their
methods became more brutal. Scorched-earth policies were introduced to
confront the 20,000 belligerents estimated to be active in rural areas.
Rojas Pinilla tried to provide a legal facade for his dictatorship. A
new constitution (the Constitution of 1886 was abolished in 1954)
created a Legislative Assembly composed of fifty-nine Conservatives and
thirty-three Liberals, twenty of whom were nominated by the president.
The assembly elected Rojas Pinilla to the presidency in 1954 for four
years; in 1957 it confirmed him as president until 1962, an action that
consolidated mounting opposition to Rojas Pinilla and precipitated his
subsequent fall from power.
By early 1957, most organized groups opposed Rojas Pinilla. Liberal
and Conservative elites, to whom the populist and demagogic Rojas
Pinilla had become a greater threat than their traditional party
adversaries, decided to stop feuding and to join forces against the
president under the banner of the National Front. Conservative and
Liberal leaders had been negotiating an alliance since early 1956. In
July 1956, G�mez--in exile in Spain--and Lleras Camargo signed the
Declaration of Benidorm, a document that laid the foundation for the
future institutionalization of a coalition government. The moderate
Conservatives, supporting Rojas Pinilla until 1957, did not join in
negotiations with the Liberals until that time.
Although factionalism between moderates and reactionaries slowed the
process, all concerned parties signed a final agreement in San Carlos in
1957. Based on the Sitges Agreement signed between the reactionaries and
the Liberals in Sitges, Spain, in 1957, the San Carlos Agreement
stipulated that a Conservative, either moderate or reactionary, would be
the first president under a National Front and that he would be elected
by a National Congress previously elected by popular vote. The Sitges
and San Carlos agreements, which sought to reduce interparty tensions
and provide a basis for power-sharing between the parties, also called
for the following: restoration of the Constitution of 1886, which had
been abolished by Rojas Pinilla; the alternation of the presidency
between the two parties every four years; parity between parties in all
legislative bodies; a required two-thirds majority vote for the passage
of legislation; the establishment of an administrative career service of
neutral parties not subject to partisan appointment; women's suffrage
and equal political rights for women; and the devotion of at least 10
percent of the national budget to education.
As the party leaders laid the basis for a coalition government, the
tides of discontent turned against Rojas Pinilla. When Rojas Pinilla
ordered the arrest of Guillermo Le�n Valencia, a Conservative leader
involved in the formation of the National Front, Rojas Pinilla was
confronted with student demonstrations, massive strikes, riots, and
finally the declared opposition of the church and the defection of
top-ranking military officers. In May 1957, faced with a multitude of
protesters and top military leaders requesting his resignation, Rojas
Pinilla resigned and went into temporary exile in Spain. Power reverted
to a five-man junta led by General Gabriel Par�s, who promised the free
election of a civilian president in August 1958.
In December 1957, Colombians voted overwhelmingly in a national
plebiscite to approve the Sitges and San Carlos agreements as amendments
to the Constitution of 1886. Congressional elections were held soon
thereafter, with the result that the reactionary Conservatives emerged
as the largest faction of the Conservative half of Congress. G�mez
vetoed the proposed presidential candidacy of Valencia, who until then
had been the strongest Conservative candidate. As a result of this
division within the PC, faction leaders agreed to allow a Liberal to be
the first president under the National Front and to extend the provision
of the coalition government from twelve to sixteen years. These
agreements were ratified by Congress as constitutional amendments in
1958. In August of that year, Lleras Camargo, a Liberal, was elected as
the first president under the National Front.
Colombia - THE NATIONAL FRONT, 1958-74
When Lleras Camargo took office in August 1958, he faced not only the
problems of rivalry between Liberals and Conservatives but also
factional controversies within the two parties. He succeeded, however,
in demonstrating that the National Front program could point the way to
a restoration of constitutional government. His administration adopted
vigorous measures to reduce banditry and rural violence.
Lleras Camargo introduced an austerity program to improve economic
conditions, with the result that in 1958 Colombia recorded its most
favorable balance of trade in twenty years. The government cut imports,
stabilized the peso, and established the National Planning Department. It handled
labor troubles with firmness. The Lleras Camargo government also
instituted a series of programs to improve the living conditions of the
masses, including expansion of the water supply, sewers, housing, and
education. An agrarian reform law passed in 1961 provided for a new
agency, the Colombian Institute of Agrarian Reform (Instituto Colombiano
de Reforma Agraria--Incora). Lleras Camargo's government made only
limited progress in land reform, however, in the face of opposition from
Liberals, who denounced the plan as inadequate, and from Conservatives,
who called it communistic and revolutionary. Nevertheless, at the end of his term in 1962, despite a
difficult political situation, Lleras Camargo had done much to stabilize
the economy, stimulate increased output of industrial and agricultural
products, and bring the people a renewed confidence in the future.
Although he was strongly opposed by G�mez and his supporters among
the reactionary Conservatives, Valencia became the next official
Conservative candidate of the National Front and was elected for the
1962-66 presidential term. Only half the eligible citizens voted, but
Valencia received more than 62 percent of the votes, which perhaps
confirmed the voters' belief in the principle of alternating the
presidency between the two leading parties. Valencia took only modest
steps to continue the programs initiated by his predecessor. He ignored,
for example, the National Planning Department and failed to fill
vacancies as they occurred. Incora's land reform program also ran into
opposition from large landholders. In addition, Valencia's finance
minister, Carlos Sanz, devalued the peso and proposed new taxes, thereby
arousing the hostility of Congress.
Declining economic conditions contributed to growing social unrest.
Increasing prices, the printing of growing quantities of paper money,
and a drop in the price of coffee affected the economy adversely and
contributed to increased inflation. Drains on the economy were generated
by contraband trade with neighboring countries. The equivalent of some
US$64 million in foreign loans promised in 1964 had been withheld, and
the government was faced with a serious deficit. Rumors of plots against
the government circulated, students protesting high prices rioted in
Bogot�, and kidnappings occurred frequently. Valencia declared a state
of siege in May 1965 and, having lost additional congressional support,
was forced to rule by decree. The war minister, General Alberto Ruiz
Novoa, succeeded in reducing civil disorders; Ruiz was dismissed in
January 1965, however, after he openly criticized the president and made
it known that he considered himself a leader who might bring order out
of the confusion that plagued the nation.
In mid-1965 the state of siege enabled Valencia and his new finance
minister, Joaqu�n Vallejo, to enact reforms by decree. They raised
taxes, collected delinquent taxes, limited imports, and applied other
austerity measures. The United States and international lending agencies
then agreed to make loans to Colombia with the understanding that the
government would take vigorous action to improve its financial
situation. Inflation leveled off, and rumors of plots to remove the
president died down.
Colombia - Opposition to the National Front
Despite the constitutional amendment stipulating that only the PL and
PC were authorized to participate in elections, dissident groups
opposing the National Front arrangement formed "movements" to
challenge the establishment by presenting candidates under the Liberal
and Conservative labels. In 1959 Liberal dissidents formed the Liberal
Recovery Movement (Movimiento de Recuperaci�n Liberal)- -subsequently
renamed the Liberal Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Revolucionario
Liberal--MRL)--under the leadership of Alfonso L�pez Michelsen, son of
ex-President L�pez Pumarejo. The more serious challenge to the National
Front arrangement came from the populist National Popular Alliance
(Alianza Nacional Popular-- Anapo), which was founded in 1961 by Rojas
Pinilla after his return from exile. The potential popular support for
these dissident movements was manifest in the congressional elections of
1964, when 70 percent of the voters failed to cast ballots and 10
percent voted against Valencia's candidates. Congressional victories by
Anapo and MRL reduced Valencia's support in the legislature to a narrow
majority.
During the mid-1960s, the embers of la violencia were dying
out, but guerrilla activity was increasing. In 1964 the National
Liberation Army (Ej�rcito de Liberaci�n Nacional--ELN) was formed by
students who were disenchanted with the pro-Soviet Communist Party of
Colombia (Partido Comunista de Colombia--PCC) and inspired by the Cuban
Revolution. The ELN gained its greatest notoriety when Father Camilo
Torres, a Roman Catholic priest, joined the guerrilla group in 1966 and
was killed in an armed conflict with government forces shortly
thereafter. In 1966 another guerrilla movement--the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de
Colombia--FARC)--began operating and was officially designated as a
branch of the PCC.
Carlos Lleras Restrepo, the third president under the National Front,
proved to be an effective leader. He was opposed in the 1966 election by
the Liberal Anapo candidate, who won almost 30 percent of the vote.
Aided by an especially competent group of cabinet members, Lleras
Restrepo enacted a number of reforms during his tenure in office. He
swiftly announced the creation of a series of presidential task forces
to draw up national development plans, which included the establishment
of exchange controls to combat the mounting foreign exchange
difficulties; an increased state role in economic development; and
funding for new housing, infrastructure, and industrial development
projects. These proposals drew support from international lending
agencies, which helped ease the fiscal problems that had beset the
Valencia administration.
The effectiveness of the government was increased by the sweeping
constitutional reforms of December 1968, which abolished the requirement
of a two-thirds majority for Congress to pass major bills and gave
greater authority to the executive in economic decision making. In
addition, the reforms provided for the gradual phasing out of the
National Front arrangement during the coming decade. Having discarded
major obstacles that had stalemated previous National Front
administrations, Lleras Restrepo built on the efforts of Lleras Camargo
in economic and social reform. The government revised tax laws and
rationalized tax collection through more rigid enforcement. Wage and
price controls helped stabilize the currency, and inflation was held to
a moderate 7 percent per year. The Lleras Restrepo administration
improved the balance of payments situation through a program of export
diversification, through which exports other than coffee more than
doubled between 1966 and 1970. The government reorganized the Ministry
of Agriculture and gave it increased resources to finance investments in
the agricultural sector. Incora intensified agrarian reform efforts and
issued more than 60,000 land titles to tenants and sharecroppers in 1968
and 1969 alone. The creation of the Andean Common Market in 1969 further
stimulated economic expansion through the integration of the economies
of Colombia and its neighbors.
The policies of the Lleras Restrepo administration resulted in an
increased rate of economic growth. Nevertheless, an explosive population
increase continued to add some 200,000 young Colombians to the labor
force each year, and the problems of poverty and unemployment persisted.
A system of family planning was launched, in spite of considerable
church opposition, in an attempt to slow the population growth that was
largely nullifying the economic gains.
Unrest in the late 1960s assumed a more urban and more nearly
class-oriented base as rural and interparty violence receded. Rural
disorders declined markedly as a consequence of optimism on the economic
front and the capture of some of the most prominent guerrilla leaders.
In 1968, however, a new guerrilla group--the Popular Liberation Army (Ej�rcito
Popular de Liberaci�n--EPL)--was formed as the armed branch of the
Communist Party of Colombia-- Marxist-Leninist (Partido Comunista de
Colombia--MarxistaLeninista --PCC-ML), a pro-Chinese group. In December
1968 Lleras Restrepo lifted the state of siege that had been imposed
under Valencia in 1965. Sporadic incidents of violence occurred,
however, especially among dissident students and labor union members,
and the government reinstated its emergency powers on several occasions.
Dissidence within the PL was lessened through the reintegration of
the MRL and its leader, L�pez Michelsen, who came to play a valuable
role in the Lleras Restrepo government. In the 1968, congressional
elections, those elements of both the PL and PC that supported the
National Front arrangement gained a strong majority in the legislature.
Voter apathy persisted, however, and less than 40 percent of eligible
voters participated.
Under the banner of Anapo, Rojas Pinilla continued his appeal to the
urban masses and the peasantry, promising solutions to the problems of
unemployment and inflation and advocating free education and health care
for the poor. Anapo challenged the National Front by presenting Rojas
Pinilla as a Conservative candidate for the presidency in 1970. The
election took place in an atmosphere of escalating violence, and the
public received with widespread skepticism the official announcement
that the Conservative candidate of the National Front, Misael Pastrana
Borrero, had won by a narrow margin of 65,000 votes. The outpouring of
support for Rojas Pinilla indicated significant voter dissatisfaction
with the National Front's response to Colombia's persistent social and
economic problems.
Colombia - Dismantling the Coalition Apparatus
Pastrana was the last president to be elected under the provisions of
the National Front. In 1970 the government began to dismantle the
structure of the National Front in accordance with the 1968
constitutional amendments. The parity provision for elective legislative
bodies and the exclusion of nontraditional parties from participation in
elections no longer applied on the local level. These changes also went
into effect on the national level in 1974, in time for the election of
Pastrana's successor.
The liberalization of the political system in effect undercut support
for the bipartisan movements that had challenged the traditional parties
during the National Front. Although Anapo declared itself an official
party in 1971, it declined in popularity and electoral strength. Mar�a
Eugenia Rojas--the Anapo candidate in the 1974 presidential
election--received less than 10 percent of the vote. After General Rojas
Pinilla's death in 1975, the party continued to lose strength,
eventually allying itself with other marginal movements that, by
themselves, drew insignificant results at the polls.
Pastrana termed his administration the "Social Front" and
followed most of the policies of his predecessor. In two areas of
economic policy, however, he differed: land reform and the status of the
construction sector. Pastrana's proposals for land reform included
promises of redistribution; however, the large landowners objected to
the government's proposal to base taxation on potential rather than
actual income from the land. In the course of negotiations between the
agricultural interests and the different party factions, productivity
replaced redistribution as a priority. The government granted major
concessions to the large agriculturists concerning the bases for
assessing income and real estate taxes. It also guaranteed that new
sources of credit be made available for modernizing the agricultural
sector along capitalintensive lines.
In industrial policy, Pastrana selected construction as the
"leading sector." The administration advocated public
investment in construction projects as the engine of growth for the
economy because it created employment and increased income and, by
extension, increased demand for domestically produced items. Pastrana
also encouraged private investment in the leading sector through the
establishment of the Units of Constant Purchasing Power (Unidades de
Poder Adquisitivo Constante--UPAC), a system by which an investment not
only accrued interest but also was adjusted for inflation. The UPAC
system of adjusting for inflation extended to many elements of the
economy, including life insurance, wages, and prices. The combination of
the UPAC system and the huge investment in construction overstimulated
the economy and fueled inflation, which reached 27 percent by 1974.
Guerrilla activity continued during the Pastrana administration. In
1972 another guerrilla group--the 19th of April Movement (Movimiento 19
de Abril--M-19)--emerged. The M-19 took its name from the date on which
Rojas Pinilla was narrowly and, in their minds, fraudulently, defeated
by Pastrana. Although the M-19 claimed to be the armed branch of Anapo,
the Rojas Pinilla organization disavowed any connection to the guerrilla
group.
Colombia - THE POST-NATIONAL FRONT PERIOD, 1974-82
The Erosion of Partisan Affiliations
The PL and PC were weak, divided into factions, and inadequately
organized at the end of the existence of the National Front. Because the
political parties were not eager to engage in intense competition,
Colombia achieved a peaceful transition to an open system. The principle
of power-sharing was retained, although a president was allowed to
select appointees from whatever sources he chose if the opposition
refused to participate in his government.
The experience of the National Front, the lack of organizational
efforts by the parties, and the massive migrations from rural to urban
areas weakened party affiliations, which also decreased the likelihood
of interparty violence. This weakening of party identification emerged
as an unforeseen consequence of the nonpartisan structure of the
National Front, in which party loyalty was less important than support
for a particular faction. In addition, rapid urbanization and
industrialization eroded the traditional bases of partisan support
because Liberal supporters were transplanted to Conservative
communities. The period after the National Front also reflected a
growing gap between the issues and agendas of the political elite and
the demands, concerns, and expectations of the populace.
The erosion of the bond between the elites and the masses also was
manifested in the high rates of electoral abstentionism, rising levels
of mass political apathy and cynicism, the emergence of an urban swing
vote, and widespread distrust of the nation's political institutions and
leadership. The image the masses held of the elite was tarnished by the
failure of the elite as a whole to institute promised reforms and by
suspected links between some leaders and the drug trade. The traditional
mechanisms of political control, such as inherited party affiliation,
patrimonialism, and clientelism, lost their effectiveness, especially in
the growing urban areas.
The government's failure to accommodate the new social groups and
classes that had emerged during Colombia's modernization generated the
increasing alienation of the masses from the political leadership and
caused some elements among the masses to resort to militancy. Thus,
Colombia experienced a radicalization of peasant movements, an increase
in urban protests, a growing restlessness within the urban labor
movement, and a surge in rural and urban guerrilla activity.
Popular discontent with the government's management of the economy
continued despite steady economic growth and high primary export
revenues in the mid-1970s. The post-National Front period began in the
midst of inflation and unemployment that fueled social unrest and
prompted the government to institute unpopular antiinflationary
austerity measures. Subsequent moves to increase employment by raising
public spending on construction and infrastructure projects did more to
augment the national debt than to alleviate the unemployment problem. As
the coffee boom receded, growth rates declined steadily through the
1978-82 period. The massive underground economy, fueled by drug
trafficking and marijuana cultivation, undermined the government's
efforts to control inflation and contributed to the rise of a parallel
financial market, placing a large part of the national economy beyond
the control of legitimate authority.
Colombia - The Liberal Tenure
The first president elected in the post-National Front period, L�pez
Michelsen (1974-78), faced difficult situations in three areas: the
economy, the guerrilla movement, and the drug trade. Subsequent
governments inherited these same problems. The influx of foreign
exchange from the coffee boom and the illicit drug trade created a glut
of money in the financial sector that increased the rate of inflation.
To counteract this, L�pez Michelsen immediately instituted a
stabilization program that included austere measures, such as cutting
back on public investment and social welfare programs and tightening
credit and raising the interest rate. By declaring a state of economic
emergency, L�pez Michelsen was able to pass unpopular yet necessary
economic measures without legislative action.
Another key component of L�pez Michelsen's economic policy was
designed to improve income distribution. The cornerstone of this effort
was the "To Close the Gap" program. This program addressed the
rural sector by proposing to increase productivity and employment in the
countryside and integrate the rural sector into the monetary market with
the support of the Integrated Rural Development program.
The "To Close the Gap" plan had its greatest impact,
however temporary, in the tax reform of 1974. The tax reform, instituted
two months after L�pez Michelsen took office, made changes in the sales
tax, export taxes and incentives, import surcharges, the tax treatment
of government agencies, and personal and corporate income taxes. The
reform had four general goals: to make the tax system more progressive,
to reduce the distorting effects of the tax system on resource
allocation, to promote economic stability by increasing revenues on a
one-time basis and by enhancing the built- in response of the tax system
to growth in the national income, and to simplify tax administration and
compliance and thereby reduce evasion and increase yields. The
government recorded a short-term fiscal improvement; nevertheless,
inflation and a failure to improve administrative procedures allowed for
continued large-scale tax evasion and an ultimate drop in revenues.
The austerity that the L�pez Michelsen administration forced on the
country had unpopular consequences. Inflation outstripped wage
increases, nontraditional exports faced unfavorable trade conditions,
and the industrial sector entered into a slump. Students and labor
groups engaged in periodic protests and strikes. In October 1976, L�pez
Michelsen imposed a state of siege following two months of strikes by
social security employees. The continuing discontent with the government
erupted again in September 1977 when the four major labor unions joined
in a strike to protest the high cost of living. Under the state of siege
measures still in effect, the administration declared the strike
illegal. Riots following the government's attempt to suppress the strike
resulted in twenty deaths. Several cabinet ministers resigned in protest
over the way the strike had been handled.
Guerrilla activity resurged during the L�pez Michelsen
administration, although some groups actually became less active. The
FARC was the most active, operating in rural areas in the departments of
Antioquia, Tolima, Magdalena, Boyac�, Caquet�, and Meta. The M-19
kidnapped and held more than 400 people for ransom. The ELN, especially
active in southern Bol�var Department, kidnapped several prominent
people and ambushed army patrols. The EPL, however, declined in
importance after the death of its founder, Pedro Le�n Arboleda, in
1975.
Although L�pez Michelsen did not view drug trafficking as a serious
threat at the beginning of his administration, by 1978 he recognized the
ruinous impact that the drug industry was having on the political and
economic structure of Colombian society. Corruption financed by the drug
rings permeated all levels of the political system. Those in office or
campaigning for office who spoke out against the major drug traffickers
rightfully feared for their lives. In some areas, prominent drug
traffickers were so powerful that they were able to get themselves
elected to local or state offices.
Although the narcotics industry contributed to a foreign exchange
surplus and generated employment, its overall impact was detrimental to
the national economy. The influx of dollars contributed to the increase
in the money supply and the creation of a parallel economy that competed
with the official economy for financial resources. The industry created "boom towns" in rural
Colombia that rose and fell within short periods of time. The income
provided by the drug industry was used primarily for conspicuous
consumption rather than for productive investment. The slash-and-burn
method of cultivating marijuana destroyed fertile land that could have
been used for legal food production, resulting in both a damaged
environment and a national need to import food. The parallel economy
contaminated the official economy through the laundering of
narcodollars, often through the "side windows" of government
banks and the real estate industry. Drug traffickers also purchased
legitimate businesses, such as banks, textile mills, and sports teams.
The drug traffickers' control over a large portion of the illicit
economy and a significant amount of the official economy undercut
government efforts at national economic planning. In addition,
government efforts to combat drug trafficking drained funds that could
have been used more productively elsewhere.
In late 1977, observers mistakenly predicted that the Conservative
Belisario Betancur Cuartas would win the 1978 presidential election
because of the division of the PL into rival factions that supported
Lleras Restrepo and Julio C�sar Turbay Ayala. Turbay became the nominee
of the PL after his faction won the most seats in the February 1978
congressional elections. The presidential campaign was largely
personalistic in that neither candidate took specific positions on major
issues. The candidates differed, however, in their reliance on partisan
machinery. Turbay stressed the party connection, whereas Betancur,
representing the minority party, claimed to be a candidate of its
National Movement (Movimiento Nacional), which joined together
Conservatives, dissident Liberals, remnants of Anapo, and members of the
Christian Social Democratic Party (Partido Social Democr�tica
Cristiano-- PSDC). Turbay won the presidential election by a
narrow margin; approximately 60 percent of all voters abstained.
The Turbay administration (1978-82) inherited a slightly improved
financial situation because the austerity measures instituted under L�pez
Michelsen and declining coffee revenues had produced a lower rate of
inflation by 1978. Turbay focused his economic policy on reducing
unemployment and avoiding an impending recession. A main goal was the
decentralization of fiscal resources and the promotion of regional
autonomy, which made public investment in infrastructure a priority. His
National Integration Plan (Plan de Integraci�n Nacional--PIN) of
1979-82 foresaw growth in public investment to reach 19 percent in real
terms. Because government revenues from coffee exports were declining at
this time, Turbay had to finance the growth in public spending by
turning to foreign loans. The increased public spending thus contributed
both to a renewed rise in inflation and to a massive increase in foreign
debt. Attempting to avoid a recession, Turbay also encouraged foreign
investment in Colombia and promoted domestic investment in
labor-intensive industries to reduce high urban unemployment. In spite
of increased government spending, Colombia experienced a recession
caused by tight credit and high interest rates, a reduction in
protectionist tariffs, grants of import licenses for industrial goods,
smuggled imports, and a decreased world demand for industrial goods
produced in Colombia.
Shortly after taking office, Turbay gave top priority to combating
guerrilla activity and narcotics trafficking. Although designed
ostensibly to counteract drug trafficking, the institution of a state of
siege and the National Security Statute of 1978 substantially enhanced
the government's ability to act against guerrillas.
Critics charged that the military and police forces used the security
statute to detain indiscriminately "cultural subversives"-
-including prominent journalists, artists, and scholars--who were
suspected of being associated with left-wing elements. Threats to invoke
the security statute in nonpolitical cases, such as protests for a
better water supply, suppressed popular unrest. Persons arrested on
political charges alleged that the armed forces had resorted to torture
during interrogation. Although the government claimed that tough
measures were needed to counter leftist subversion, critics asserted
that repression resulted from the worsening economic situation. The
deteriorating human rights situation drew criticism from leaders of both
parties and from international organizations such as Amnesty
International. Turbay lifted the state of siege and nullified the
security statute in June 1982, shortly before leaving office.
Despite the severe measures taken against leftist subversion,
guerrilla activity increased and reached a peak during the Turbay
administration. Although the ELN was less active than during the L�pez
Michelsen administration, the FARC expanded its operations, especially
in Cauca and Caldas departments.
The M-19 emerged as the most active guerrilla group during this
period. In January 1979, members of the M-19 tunneled into a military
arsenal in Bogot� and took 5,000 guns. Within a few weeks, however,
most of the weapons were recovered, and many of the participants were
arrested. In October 1979, more than 200 accused M-19 members were
brought to trial in Bogot�. The delay of other military trials of M-19
members probably led to the movement's takeover of the embassy of the
Dominican Republic in February 1980, in which fourteen diplomats,
including the ambassador of the United States, were held hostage. The
seizure ended peacefully when the kidnappers received safe conduct out
of the city and a promise that the Inter-American Human Rights
Commission would be permitted to investigate allegations of human rights
abuses. By the end of 1981, the M-19 had shifted from purely urban to
mostly rural operations and had formed a tenuous union with the other
three guerrilla groups. In March of that year, Turbay proposed--and the
Senate approved--a limited four-month amnesty for those guerrillas
already detained if a sufficient number in the field were to lay down
their arms. A second limited amnesty for those guerrillas who
surrendered peacefully was approved for the period from February to June
1982.
Turbay also took a strong stance against drug traffickers. In 1978
the president gave the army a key role in the main operation to control
drug trafficking and marijuana cultivation in the department of La
Guajira, including allowing a military occupation of the region. Two
years later, the government transferred responsibility for the antidrug
campaign in La Guajira to units of the National Police. Combined efforts
with the United States produced some success; for example, the joint
Operation Tibur�n, which began in December 1980, resulted in the
seizure of more than 2,700 tons of marijuana. Despite some impressive
victories, however, the drug traffickers continued to wield increasing
economic and political power in the country.
In the early 1980s, evidence came to the fore linking some Colombian
drug traffickers with both Cuba and the M-19. In 1982 a federal grand
jury in Miami indicted four close aides of Cuban president Fidel Castro
Ruz on charges of smuggling narcotics into the United States. According
to the indictment, the aides assisted the operations of Colombia drug
trafficker Jaime Guillot Lara, who, in turn, funneled arms and money on
Cuba's behalf to the M-19.
A contradictory episode in the relationship between the guerrillas
and the drug trade was the December 1981 founding of the right-wing
"paramilitary" group Death to Kidnappers (Muerte a
Secuestradores--MAS) by prominent drug lords Carlos Ledher Rivas and
Jorge Luis Ochoa V�squez. MAS apparently was established to intimidate
and punish those guerrilla groups, especially the M-19, that had engaged
in the ransom of key members of the drug community in order to finance
their operations. MAS subsequently became a death squad, targeting
left-wing politicians, students, and party members.
The post-National Front Liberal presidencies proved unable to stem
the growth in guerrilla activity and narcotics trafficking. A divided PL
thus lost support and the presidency to the PC, effecting a peaceful
alternation of power between the two parties. In 1982 the PL presented L�pez
Michelsen for reelection, supported by the Turbay faction of the party.
Opposing him from the LP was Luis Carlos Gal�n Sarmiento, a member of
the Lleras Restrepo faction. In 1979 Gal�n had formed the New
Liberalism Movement (Movimiento Nuevo Liberalismo--MNL) and accused the
Turbay-L�pez Michelsen forces of opportunism, clientelism, and
corruption. The PC coalesced again behind Betancur and his National
Movement. L�pez Michelsen employed the partisan campaign style that
Turbay had used in the previous election, counting on the Liberal
majority to remain loyal to the party. Betancur retained his minority
strategy of stressing coalition over party affiliation and received
endorsements from Gloria Eli�cer Gait�n, daughter of Jorge Gait�n,
and from Mar�a Eugenia Rojas. With the voter abstention rate reduced to
54 percent, Betancur won a decisive victory, receiving support from some
traditionally Liberal areas. The election represented the first peaceful
exchange of power between the two parties since the end of the National
Front.
Upon taking office, Betancur confronted the economic and social
conditions bequeathed by his predecessors: economic recession, fiscal
deficit, foreign debt, inflation, and unemployment. The parallel economy
remained a major concern, as did the growing strength of drug
traffickers. On the social front, Betancur sought to negotiate a peace
with the guerrillas, offering them unconditional amnesty and legitimate
participation in the political system.
