Developments

Fighting between supporters of the Conservative Party (formerly the centralists) and the Liberal Party (the federalists) continued throughout the remainder of the century on a small scale. As ever, the principal issue dividing the parties was the amount of power that should be given to the national government. In the mid- and late 1800s, the political pendulum swung between centralism and federalism, increasing ill feeling between the parties.

Between 1861 and 1885, successive Liberal governments implemented a series of federalist reforms. The 1863 federalist constitution divided the country into semi-independent regions known as “sovereign federal states.” The governments of these states had a great deal of power—so much, in fact, that the national government in Bogotá found itself starved of funds and unable to implement key decisions in education, transportation, and other areas.

The weakness of the national government corresponded with a breakdown in social order and prompted Conservatives and even some Liberals to try and claw back power from the local governments. In the words of Rafael Núñez, the Conservative president who dominated Colombian politics in the 1880s and 1890s, the country was facing a stark choice: “regeneration or catastrophe.”

For Conservatives, regeneration meant recentralization. And in 1886, a new constitution returned considerable power to the central government. The “sovereign federal states” that had arisen under Liberal rule became departments, and the president was granted the authority to appoint departmental governors.

In 1894, Liberals who hated the new constitution saw their nightmare candidate, Miguel Antonio Caro, become president. The architect of the Regeneration Movement, Caro represented the extreme right wing of the Conservative Party. In office, he enacted a number of new laws that stood in stark opposition to Liberal ideas. Most controversially, Caro restricted the freedom of the press, undermined free trade with the imposition of an export tax on coffee, and allowed only wealthy white elites full civil and political rights.

When President Caro’s handpicked successors were elected in 1899, Liberals throughout the country rebelled; the War of the Thousand Days had begun. Over the next few years, violence engulfed the country and claimed the lives of over 100,000 people.

During the first six months of the War of the Thousand Days, fighting occurred along the usual party lines, with the army taking the side of the Conservative government against Liberal Party supporters. But then the war changed in three major respects:

• Type of fighting: The war moved from the cities to the countryside, where supporters of the Liberal Party mounted guerrilla attacks against the army.
• Composition of sides: The Liberal side came to represent both the political party and an informal coalition of poor peasants, freed African slaves, and other socially disadvantaged Colombians.
• Aims of combatants: The Liberal side expanded its war aims to include the implementation of economic reform and social justice.

By 1900, what had started as a conventional battle between Colombia’s established political parties was transformed into a series of guerrilla skirmishes involving obvious elements of class warfare. These elements became more important as the war progressed. The sides were increasingly divided not only by party but also by class: black against white, poor against rich, peasants against landowners.

In the end, the fear among elites in both parties that the war was inspiring class-based violence brought them to the negotiating table. Rather than risk having Colombia’s poor turn against them, the elites ended the war. In 1902 (and a year later in Panama), the Liberals surrendered unconditionally.

In the years after the War of the Thousand Days, there was relatively good will between the Liberals and Conservatives. However, this amicable period ended in the 1930s, when a radical Liberal was elected president. The new leader passed a series of dramatic reforms that angered hard-line Conservatives and powerful landowners.

Colombians work together on an oil well - Petrolia Well, 1939
© 1939 Getty Images, Inc.

The reforms to which the hard-liners objected most strongly were constitutional amendments that guaranteed workers the right to unionize and authorized the government to take over private property for the public good. Other reforms the hard-liners opposed included higher taxes on the rich, better benefits for the homeless, and a more rigid separation of church and state.

Over the next decade, the antagonism between Liberals and hard-line Conservatives turned violent. In 1946 and 1947 alone, more than 10,000 people were killed in fighting between the parties. With tensions running so high, it only took a spark to ignite years of devastating violence in which at least 200,000 people lost their lives.

This spark came in 1948 with the assassination of the popular Liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. Gaitán had been a spokesman for Colombia’s peasants, urban poor, and native Indians. Since 1928, when Gaitán had pushed for an investigation into a massacre of striking banana workers, Colombia’s disadvantaged peoples had regarded him as the one politician who was prepared to stand up for them against the self-interest and corruption of the country’s elites. In 1948, Gaitán was widely expected to become the country’s next president and strike a blow against the families of Spanish descent that had monopolized Colombian politics since independence.

But on April 9, 1948, Gaitán was murdered. Blaming his death on Colombia’s political elites, particularly the Conservative government, thousands of Gaitán’s supporters went on a rampage throughout Bogotá. In what turned out to be the opening round of a long civil war, now known simply as La Violencia (The Violence), they destroyed government buildings, churches, stores, private homes, and cars. Security forces quickly suppressed the riot, killing around 2,000 rioters in the process.

Since La Violencia was never a declared war, there is no official explanation of what the sides were fighting for or even who the “sides” were. Here’s what’s known about the fighting:

• Phase 1: The uprising in Bogotá was followed by peasant uprisings throughout the country. In these uprisings, groups of poor Liberals vented their anger over Gaitán's murder at prominent Conservatives in their communities.
• Phase 2: In collaboration with the Conservative government in Bogotá, landowners throughout Colombia organized their supporters to fight the peasant rebels.
• Phase 3: The Colombian army entered the conflict on the side of the landowners, increasing the pressure on the peasant rebels to disarm or flee.
• Phase 4: Many of the peasant rebels retreated deeper into the countryside, where they regrouped and formed the nucleus of what would become the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

As had occurred in the War of the Thousand Days, fighting during La Violencia took on unmistakable elements of class warfare. By 1953, elites from both parties were again worrying that the continued fighting might lead to revolution and their removal from power. Consequently, economic standing began to trump party affiliation: Liberal landowners fought peasants, Liberal leaders turned a blind eye to the suppression of trade unions, and Liberals of all kinds were prepared to sacrifice constitutional rule for the restoration of order.

A poor farmer hauls trash through a field of pigs while buzzards circle overhead - circa 1950
© 1950 Getty Images, Inc.

A form of order came in a June 1953 military coup. With the backing of both Conservatives and Liberals, General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla assumed the presidency and suspended constitutional rule. By offering an amnesty to fighters willing to lay down their arms, Pinilla brought calm to the country. But the calm didn’t last. By May 1957, Pinilla was so unpopular with both parties that he had to leave the country.

A few months after Rojas Pinilla went into exile, the Liberals and Conservatives struck an agreement, known as the National Front, that brought the worst fighting of La Violencia to an end. According to the terms of the National Front agreement, power would be shared equally between the parties for 16 years, starting in 1958. Control of the presidency would alternate between Liberals and Conservatives, and the parties would have the same number of seats in Congress. All other parties were barred from running during that period.

The agreement by both parties to share power marked a crucial point in the history of the Colombian civil war. Here’s why:

• It effectively ended 150 years worth of violent party conflict.
• It signaled a recognition among the political elites that however severely they disagreed with each other, they needed to work together to avoid creating the conditions in which they might be overthrown.
• By excluding all third parties from the government, it provoked apathy among some voters and alienated others, particularly those whose views were more left wing than the official Liberal Party’s.

Ironically, the signing of the National Front agreement helped strengthen some of the very groups it was designed to defeat. By denying a political voice to anyone outside the political mainstream, it convinced people on the far left that they could not use political means to achieve their political goals. Consequently, many of the people who had once formed the extreme wing of the Liberal Party joined violent guerrilla groups.