Origins of the Violencia in Colombia

Abstract

This study explains why, between 1949 and 1965, residents of mountainous Colombian back country became involved in a directionless conflict so savage that they could only call it the Violencia (the violence). A combination of broad institutional study and in depth regional analysis is employed to show how and why individual Colombians became powerfully bound up with the two traditional political parties in whose names they began the Violencia. After establishing that the great national idiosyncrasy was passionate adherence to the antipathetic yet strangely similar political. collectivities, it is shown that economic and social modernization helped drive political tension to a dangerously high level by the mid-1940's. Three political events of the later 1940's touched off the Violencia. Generalizations about causation and the Violencia are continually applied to the department (state) of Tolima, and within Tolima, to the municipality (county) of Libano. The effect is to keep the work focused on carefully delineated regions within Colombia. Major conclusions are that the Colombian Violencia was eminently political in origin. Strife of a socio-economic nature was present in it, but the strength of traditional political loyalties kept such issues subliminal, or at least peripheral. Thus the Violencia was a traditional or premodern conflict. The element of social revolution was present, but for the most part it was in the minds of frightened traditionalists. Ironically, the fear of revolution was a major stimulus of Violencia, as it moved conservatives to suppress violently the Liberal majority that they branded dangerously subversive of national institutions. Violencia was a local, sporadic, largely rural phenomenon whose outbreak was powerfully influenced by the efficacy of local civic leaders, political makeup of the region, and geographic factors. Where conditions were not optimum Violencia in the form of police partisanship, Liberal guerrilla activity, or common non-political criminality was likely to break out. Although political in origin the Violencia became many kinds of lawlessness, often merely incidentally political. Because it was basically directionless the Violencia was easily stamped out when Conservative and Liberal party leaders reconciled their differences and bent to that task.