Una lectura sobre la historia del conflicto armado.

1. A short story of the Colombian conflict
An overview for foreign visitors
Source: https://latintravelguide.com/colombia/short-history-colombian-conflict
For all its excellent travel opportunities, there is no denying that
Colombia is a country with a turbulent past. The violent conflict which
has blighted the country over the past five decades has undoubtedly
left its mark on the culture and outlook of its inhabitants.
Understanding something about the country's history will not
only help you gain a valuable insight into the local mindset, it also
enables you to appreciate how far the country has come from the
depths of its conflict two decades ago. The country's political history is
complex, with different actors rising and falling, and alliances forming
and breaking, over the years. Here is a guide to understanding all these
twists and turns over the past decades:
Origins of the Colombian Conflict
A number of structural factors provide the backdrop for the
emergence of armed conflict in Colombia. A history of poverty,
inequality, insecurity and a lack of state presence, especially in rural
areas, feature highly among the long-term causes of the country’s
problems with violence. For most historians, however, it was the
events of the mid-20th century that sowed the seeds for later armed
disputes.
LaViolencia
In the 1930s and 1940s, Colombia’s political system was
dominated by two main parties: the Liberals and the Conservatives.
These two blocks had starkly opposing ideas about how the country
should be governed. Feelings ran particularly high over the issue of
land, which was highly unevenly distributed among the population in
this period.
While Liberals favoured a degree of land reform and advanced
legislative proposals to this end, the Conservative Party believed
redistribution of the country’s territory would destroy the economy.
The more extreme of the Conservatives even argued that the Liberals’
comparatively modest reform proposals amounted to nothing less
than a communist overhaul of the land ownership system.
The dispute between these two sides over this and other issues
became increasingly aggressive, creating a highly charged political
environment. In this context, the murder of Liberal Party leader Jorge
Eliécer Gaitán in Bogota in 1948 proved to be explosive. The
assassination provoked mass rioting across the capital in which
approximately half of the city destroyed. This was the first incident of a
decade long period of violence, known simply as “ La Violencia”.
In the years which followed an estimated 200,000 people lost
their lives, often in a horrifically brutal fashion. Members of both the
Conservative and Liberal elite sought to whip up public anger for their
own political purposes and both sides provided arms and support to
members of the civilian population. These militia groups, formed
overwhelmingly of rural peasants, aimed not only to defeat their
opponents, but also to erase any trace of their existence. Barbaric
methods of punishment, torture and execution were widespread.
After nearly ten years of bloodletting, Conservative and
Liberal Party leaders eventually brokered a truce in the late 1950s.
Under the new political structure, which came into force in 1958,
senior officials from the two parties effectively agreed to rotate power

2. as part of a coalition government known as the National Front. This
arrangement was a qualified success in that it put an end to the worst
of the violence of the previous decade and ushered in a new period
of relative political stability.
A less positive outcome of this power-sharing pact was that it
closed the political system to new entrants and emerging forces.
Colombians in many rural areas – where rates of poverty were
particularly elevated – felt especially disenfranchised by the new
structure. A number of the peasant militia which had been formed
during “La Violencia” thus opted not to surrender their arms to
authorities, refusing to accept the legitimacy of the central
government. Instead, they asserted their autonomy, forming
self-proclaimed ‘independent republics’ in remote parts of the
countryside.
Left Wing Insurgency
During the first few years after “La Violencia”, authorities
exhibited a degree of reluctant tolerance towards these independent
republics. However, as time progressed and the new political regime
consolidated, Bogota’s attitude towards the peasant militia groups
hardened. By 1962, authorities decided it was time to act and began a
new military offensive against the largest of these entities, the ‘republic’
of Marquetalia.
During May and June 1964, military forces bombarded and
invaded Marquetalia. Leading the peasant resistance against the attack
was Manuel Marulanda Vélez, aka “Tirofijo” or “Sureshot”. Though the
army eventually took control of the area Tirofijo and other peasant
leaders escaped with their lives, fleeing to remote jungle areas to plan
their next move. The military invasion of Marquetalia convinced the
group, which was already advocating Marxist political thought, of the
need for a radical overhaul of the Colombian political system.
Shortly after, the group settled on armed struggle as a means to
achieve political change and adopted the name the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In order to finance its military
activities, the group began to carry out its first kidnaps of wealthy
landowners and political figures. This tactic was originally intended as a
kind of redistributive action; extracting money from the wealthy and
transferring it to the rural poor.
The FARC was only one of a myriad of left wing insurgent
organisations which formed around this time – itself, a reflection of the
confrontational and polemical nature of Colombian politics in the early
1960s. In 1964 the National Liberation Army (ELN) was created by a
group of rural students who had travelled and studied revolutionary
ideology in Cuba on scholarships funded by Fidel Castro.
These two insurgent organisations (both of which remain
operational to date) were joined in 1967 by the now defunct
Population Liberation Army (EPL): a violent offshoot from Colombia’s
Communist Party. A final group, M-19 – which comprised a mixture
of mainly urban left-wing activists, students, disaffected FARC militants
and trade unionists – was formed in response to widespread
allegations of fraud during the 1970 general elections, which proved
detrimental to left leaning candidates.
Thus, by the 1970s the Colombian state was already facing a
number of armed challenges from both rural and urban areas of the
country. With weak government institutions and the proliferation of
violent actors, the stage was set for a long-lasting conflict.

3. The Conflict Intensifies
Though several insurgent groups formed in the 1960s, their
activities remained comparatively limited for the first few years of their
operation, while they developed their political and operational
strategies.
The FARC, the largest of the insurgent organisations, spent its first 15
years or so, mainly on defending its territory and gradually building up
its membership and military capacity. It was not until 1978, at the
organisation's sixth conference, that its leadership opted to switch to a
more proactive and aggressive strategy.
To finance the military expansion, FARC commanders throughout the
country were instructed to resort to whatever means necessary to
increase the group's income. This saw the insurgent organisation
dramatically scale-up its involvement in the trade in illegal drugs.
Extortive kidnaps became regular practice for the organisation;
ransoms became larger while the level of wealth required to become a
target fell.
Paramilitary Emergence
While guerrilla groups were increasing in strength, the
Colombian state appeared increasingly weak and ineffectual. Unable
to guarantee security in large parts of the country, President Belisario
Betancur (1982 – 1986) adopted a softer approach to the guerrillas
than had his predecessors and attempted to negotiate a peace
settlement with the various insurgent groups.
In an effort to coax them into giving up the violent struggle,
the government offered guerrillas a number of concessions. These
included the reduction of state military operations against FARC
strongholds and the release of dozens of guerrilla leaders from the
country’s prisons.
The reduction of state actions against the rebel groups, just as
the FARC and others were becoming more aggressive, provoked a
violent backlash from sections of society which felt directly threatened
by the insurgents. Self-defence groups and paramilitary forces began to
form in the areas of greatest guerrilla presence at the time, especially
in the valley of the Magdalena River.
These new forces were made up of those wishing to protect
themselves from kidnaps, extortion and other violent acts perpetrated
by the increasingly aggressive guerrilla groups. The emerging
paramilitaries benefited from the tacit / active support of local military
officials, who were invariably conscious of the state’s inability to
provide security in the surrounding areas. Unofficial ties formed, with
military and paramilitary forces sharing intelligence, ammunition and
weaponry; they even coordinated a number of military offensives
against the guerrillas and those perceived as their supporters.
Diverse Groupings
Some of the paramilitaries were formed by local rural workers
in response to direct threats on themselves or their families. One of
the earliest groups was formed by Ramon Isaza, then a campesino who
the FARC had ordered to be kidnapped after he refused to pay
protection money to the organisation. Another was formed by the
Castaño brothers, Fidel and Carlos, after their father was kidnapped
and killed by guerrillas, despite the family paying two ransoms to
secure his release.
Other paramilitaries emerged from sections of the underworld,
which had begun to come into conflict with the various guerrilla

4. groups. From the mid-1970s, the attention of Colombia's criminal
elements began to become increasingly fixed on the profits available
from exporting cocaine from the Andes to the United States. One of
the most notorious drug trafficking syndicates was the Medellin Cartel,
led by the notorious drugs baron, Pablo Escobar. Given the huge sums
being earned by this organisation by the early 1980s, they themselves
came to be seen by guerrilla groups as legitimate kidnapping targets
and in 1981, the M-19 group decided to kidnap a close relative of one
of the senior cartel members.
The response of the cartel was fierce. Escobar ordered the
formation of a new paramilitary organisation, known as “Muerte a
Secuestradores” (MAS), or Death to Kidnappers. The cartel leader
placed Fidel Castro at the head of the new group which began a
vicious campaign to locate and execute alleged members and
collaborators of M-19. Within three months, some 200 such
individuals were killed. Frustrated with the government's inaction
against the guerrillas, a number of serving and former state security
officials also began to work with MAS.
In one fell swoop, the various paramilitaries, drug traffickers
and state officials had all been brought together in their fight against
the guerrillas. However, with the armed forces taking little action
against the insurgents, and with guerrilla incomes expanding rapidly,
the FARC and other militias showed no sign of giving up the fight.
The Rise of Pablo Escobar
One of the key figures in the cocaine trade from the late 1970s
was Pablo Escobar. Together with several associates, Escobar formed
the infamous Medellin Cartel which, at its height, was estimated to be
making around USD 60m a day from cocaine exports to the United
States. Escobar, who aspired to be accepted by the country's political
class, spent large sums on public works for the poor and campaigned
for a congressional seat, which he won in the early 1980s. However,
his election brought him into the spotlight and eventually encouraged
Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla to initiate an investigation into the
source of his wealth. After investigators conclusively confirmed
Escobar's involvement in illicit activities, the drug boss lost his
congressional seat and was permanently ejected from Colombia's
political establishment.
Escobar’s Terror Campaign
Seeking revenge for this humiliation, Escobar ordered Minister
Lara assassinated. The brazen killing of a serving government minister
prompted the first serious state clampdown on the Medellin
Cartel. Escobar declared himself to be at war with the state and in the
space of less than three months in 1989 his associates staged over 100
bomb attacks on government buildings and public spaces in Colombia.
He ordered the assassination of Luis Carlos Galán, a popular and
charismatic presidential candidate, and subsequently tried to kill his
successor Cesar Gaviria by bombing a public airliner. This terrible
attack killed 107 civilians. These and countless other incidents of
terrorist violence were all designed to force the state to end
extradition to the US for anyone arrested on drugs offences.
Surrender and Death
The government eventually conceded to this demand and the
drugs baron handed himself in to authorities in 1991. However, he did
so only on the condition that he would be imprisoned in a special

5. facility which he had personally designed, financed and built. “La
Catedral” - as the 'prison' was known - was not so much a detention
centre as a luxury mansion where Escobar could receive countless
visitors. The extraordinary privileges Escobar enjoyed allowed him to
continue to direct his illegal empire from prison. Once the central
government became aware of this, they tried to relocate him in 1992.
During the bungled operation, Escobar escaped and once again tried
to wage war on the state. This time around, Escobar's power was
much diminished, as many allies had left him and his list of enemies had
grown. After 18 months in hiding, state officials eventually tracked him
to a house in Medellin in late 1993 and killed him during a subsequent
raid on his hideout.
The Height of Conflict: Mid-90s to 2002
In the meantime, the FARC and other rebel groups had used
the breathing space afforded by the state's war against Escobar to
redouble their military and criminal activities. As a result, they
expanded both their membership and territorial control dramatically.
Their increased power also prompted their opponents to consolidate
against them and, by the late 90s, the previously disparate paramilitary
forces united under one national organisation, known as the AUC.
Violent competition between the AUC and the left-wing insurgents
increased, with paramilitary forces in particular perpetrating repeated
massacres of civilians deemed to be 'guerrilla collaborators'. The
paramilitary violence served to displace the FARC from drug trafficking
areas and separate them from one of their main income sources. This
led the organisation to turn instead to the practice of mass-kidnapping
in the early 2000s, mounting roadblocks on public highways
throughout the country in order to detain victims and extort their
families.
TheTide Begins toTurn: 2002 - 2010
In this dismal security context, Colombians voted the hard line
former governor of the Antioquia region, Alvaro Uribe, to the
presidency in 2002. Using substantial military aid provided by the US,
President Uribe began a determined counter-offensive against the
country’s illegally armed groups, with a particular focus on left wing
groups. He also initiated negotiations with the AUC, overseeing the
eventual (heavily flawed) demobilisation of tens of thousands of
paramilitary members. Such initiatives were successful in that large
swathes of territory were reclaimed for the state, levels of violence
reduced and the FARC's mass-kidnappings ended. This last
development was of huge psychological importance to the population,
especially in urban areas, who once again felt they could travel outside
of cities without fear of being captured. These advances were not
without their cost, however. During the Uribe government, there were
widespread allegations of serious human rights violations committed by
the country’s armed forces and many of Uribe's political allies faced
investigation and conviction for their links to brutal paramilitary
commanders.
Santos and the Pursuit of Peace
In 2010, Juan Manuel Santos was elected as Colombia’s new
president. Santos had served as Defense Minister during much of the
Uribe government and had directed some of the most controversial
military operations of this era. While he was widely anticipated to
continue with the policies of the former president, Santos surprised

6. many by adopting a different approach to the country's political
challenges. Though he has continued to apply military pressure to
insurgents, his principal priority has been to achieve a negotiated
solution to the armed conflict. Despite some hiccups, the current
round of peace talks with the FARC are the most hopeful of the past
five decades. The two sides have already reached partial agreement on
a number of key negotiating points and most observers now expect a
final deal will be concluded before the end of 2016. No doubt, there
will be plenty of problems in implementing the agreement - not least
because of the vocal criticism of Uribe, who is now President Santos'
greatest opponent - but the signing of a peace deal would be a hugely
positive development for the prospects of permanent peace in
Colombia.