VIOLENCE: ORIGIN, HISTORY (DEVELOPMENT) AND CONSEQUENCES - HISTORY - 2025

La Violencia or bipartisan violence is the name received by a period in the history of Colombia characterized by armed confrontations between liberals and conservatives. There is no absolute consensus on the start and end dates, although 1948 is usually established as its beginning and 1958 as its end.

Although violent acts had already occurred before, most historians affirm that the origin of the Violence was the so-called Bogotazo. This consisted of the assassination in the Colombian capital of one of the liberal leaders, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.

Jorge eliecer gaitan. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The result of the crime was an uprising of the population of Bogotá. From that moment on, the violence spread throughout the country. It was, in short, a true undeclared civil war. The fatalities were between 200,000 and 300,000 people.

Both parties, liberal and conservative, ended up forming a coalition government in 1957, seeking an end to the conflict. Despite these intentions, the result was not 100% positive. In some regions of the country, new armed organizations appeared that would start a new conflict.

Origin

Most historians believe that the origin of "La Violencia" is located in 1948, after the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, one of the liberal leaders. This event triggered a violent wave of protests throughout the country.

However, other scholars advance its beginning until 1946. In this case, experts affirm that the bipartisan conflict began when President Alfonso López Pumarejo announced that he was leaving office. His replacement was Alberto Lleras Camargo, who called an election won by the conservatives.

A third sector within historians go so far as to affirm that "violence" began much earlier, in the 1930s. It is at that time that the so-called conservative hegemony ended and there were some violent acts carried out by liberals from the south of Santander and the north of Boyacá.

This disparity is also found when marking the end of the period. The date fluctuates between 1953, the year in which Gustavo Rojas Pinilla took power through a coup, and 1958, when liberals and conservatives formed a coalition government to end the conflict.

Liberals

The end of the presidency of Alfonso López Pumarejo was preceded by the pressure suffered from within his own party, the Liberal. When he resigned, his organization found itself orphaned by a natural leader and an internal struggle began to gain control of it.

Meanwhile, the conservatives rallied around Mariano Ospina, seeking to return to a presidency that they had not held since 1930. The conservative leader, with a very moderate speech, found much support in part of Colombian society.

The Liberals, for their part, suffered from internal division. In the end, his supporters split into two streams. The first was led by Alberto Lleras Camargo and the second by Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.

Lleras represented the commercial elites and the old liberalism, the same one that had established the Liberal Republic. For his part, Gaitán was more to the left and managed to attract the most popular classes.

The candidate chosen for the presidential elections was Turbay, from the Llerista sector. Gaitán and his people were relegated to an independent trend.

1946 elections

The 1946 elections, with divided liberals and conservatism supporting Ospina Pérez together, made the latter president. In his inauguration speech, he asked that all sectors of the country forget their differences, especially the conservative extreme right and Gaitán's supporters.

Likewise, the new president proceeded to appoint a government of national unity, with ministers from both formations.

However, violent clashes soon broke out in rural areas of central and southern Colombia. Supporters of both parties were joined by the police, who supported the Conservatives. As early as 1947, these violent struggles had claimed the lives of 14,000 people.

History

The aforementioned clashes were no more than an advance of those that would later occur. La Violencia, understood as a historical period, was one of the bloodiest times in the country's history, with liberals and conservatives fighting each other for several years.

The Bogotazo

Most historians consider that the period of the Violence began on April 9, 1948. That day, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was assassinated in Bogotá by Juan Roa Sierra. The crime occurred when the Liberal leader was leaving his office from work and on his way to lunch, at 1:05 p.m.

The news soon spread throughout much of the city. The popular reaction was to catch the murderer, mutilate him and walk his body through all the streets.

Although, with exceptions, everyone accepts the authorship of Roa Sierra, there are many hypotheses about the motivations of the crime and its possible instigators. Some authors claim that it was a political assassination, even accusing the United States of being behind it. Others, on the other hand, do not see political causes.

Gaitán's death sparked a violent popular uprising in the capital, known as the Bogotazo. Soon, the riots spread across the country, causing some 3,500 deaths in the week that it lasted. The Ospina government managed to crush the revolt, although with considerable difficulty.

Coalition government

The coalition government formed by Ospina Pérez broke down before the approach of new elections. The first parliamentary votes were held in June 1949 and ended with the victory of the Liberals.

The conservatives, fearing that the same could happen in the presidential elections the following year, accused their rivals of preparing an electoral fraud. Verbal violence soon led to armed clashes.

At first, it was some gangs made up of conservatives, called "birds", that began to attack the liberals. With the support of the departmental and municipal police, controlled by caciques, they began a campaign of assassinations and massacres in many areas of the country.

The most serious events occurred in Valle del Cauca, where more than 2,000 people died within 3 months.

1949 elections

The Liberals, thanks to the control of the senate achieved in the last elections, decided to advance the presidential elections to November 1949. When they were going to question Ospina in Parliament, he declared a State of Siege and assumed dictatorial powers, although he did not call off the elections.

Given this, the Liberals did not present any candidate, arguing that there were insufficient guarantees. With the help of a sector of the Army, they organized a military uprising that was to take place just two days before the elections.

The coup never took place and the liberal leaders were shot in Bogotá. Among the victims was the brother of Darío Echandía, then the leader of liberalism. This favored that the conservatives took control of the victory in the voting.

The elected president was Laureano Gómez. His first measures continued with the security policies of his predecessor against partisan violence. For the government, it was not admissible to negotiate with the rebels, orienting their actions towards a war situation.

Undeclared war

The repression unleashed by the government ended up causing the opposite effect to what they wanted. Thus, several liberal guerrillas appeared and more than 10,000 men took up arms in various parts of the country, such as Los Llanos Orientales, the south of Córdoba or Antioquia.

Apart from these groups, in Tolima and Cundinamarca, other guerrillas related to the Communist Party were formed.

For its part, the government armed its own supporters, creating the counter-guerrillas or peace guerrillas. The Army was also mobilized to deal with the violent situation, as the police were unable to control it.

From that moment on, rural areas were devastated. The mixed units made up of the Army, the police and the conservative paramilitaries took up the scorched earth tactic. Similarly, the guerrillas responded with the same brutality, devastating the areas of conservative rule.

During this period, one of the bloodiest campaigns carried out by the counter-guerrillas took place in April 1952, in a rural area of ​​Tolima. More than 1,500 people were killed by pro-government forces.

National Guerrilla Conference

The Communist Party summoned the rest of the anti-government forces to hold a meeting in August 1952. This meeting, called the Boyacá Conference, was intended to coordinate the actions of all the groups to make them more effective.

As a result, on the last day of 1952, a large number of rebels attempted to take over the Palanquero air base, the center of the military apparatus of the Armed Forces. The attack ended in failure, but showed the growing power of the guerrillas.

At the time, it was clear that the government's policy to end the fighting was a failure. The conflict, the place of dwindling, was becoming more and more generalized. In addition, President Gómez, prone to fascism, was losing the support of his own.

This led to a part of the Colombian Army, supported by the traditional political class, staging a coup in June 1953.

Dictatorship of Rojas Pinilla

After the coup, the presidency of the country was held by General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. With his government the first stage of the Violence ended.

Rojas agreed to a truce with the liberal guerrillas, although his government was characterized by dictatorial repression, the establishment of censorship and the prohibition of the activities of opponents.

The agreement with the guerrillas included a partial amnesty offer, accepted by most of their leaders. Only a few communist organizations continued their struggle in southern Tolima and northern Cauca, although these were quite weak groups.

However, the massacre of students committed in Bogotá in June 1954, again intensified the conflict.

In addition, Rojas proceeded to legalize the Communist Party, unleashing intense persecution against its leaders. This ended up causing the Villarrica War, which took place between November 1954 and June 1955.

The assassination of several liberal leaders who had availed themselves of the amnesty, caused many of the groups that had disarmed to return to fight the government. This time the fight was not for partisan causes, but was aimed at ending the dictatorship.

military meeting

In May 1957, leaders of the two parties, with the support of the popular masses, called a great national strike against Rojas Pinilla.

Furthermore, the president no longer had the backing of the Army, so he had to resign from office on May 10. Instead, a Military Junta assumed power, with the purpose of organizing a return to the democratic system.

The Liberal Party and the Conservative Party negotiated the establishment of a transition period, beginning in 1958 and lasting 16 years. The agreement established that both groups alternate in power throughout this stage. The system was dubbed the National Front and was conceived to end partisan violence.

Consequences

The system of alternation in power called the National Front was the solution that both parties agreed to end the Violence. Only parties that had been left out of the agreement, such as the National People's Alliance, exercised the role of political opposition during those years.

The National Front soon disappointed the peasants of the country. Discontent was assumed, on the one hand, by the so-called Bandits and, on the other, by the revolutionary and / or communist organizations that began to appear.

The bottom of this discontent was the lack of reforms for the Colombian countryside. The new government also did not care about all the displaced people caused by the Violence, which made the conflict over land remain latent. In the long run, this laid the foundations for a new civil confrontation.

New conflict

In 1960, the conflict was reactivated in the south of Tolima. On this occasion, the landowners, together with the former local guerrillas, and the communists clashed. The assassination of the leader of the latter in January of that year caused the struggle to intensify in the territories of the Self-Defense Forces, led by Tirofijo.

On the other hand, historians point out that the Front, despite ending the massacres, greatly limited the functioning of democracy in Colombia. In the end, this created the conditions for new armed groups to appear to fight against what they considered a government of the elites.

Human casualties

Without a doubt, the most regrettable consequence of the Violence was the loss of human lives. It is estimated that, during the peak moment, around 1000 people died a month.

Taking the year 1958 as the end of the period, it is estimated that the deaths in the clashes were between 200,000 and 300,000 people, in addition to the hundreds of thousands injured.

Forced exodus

Another consequence was the forced displacement of the population, especially from rural areas to cities. Experts speak of a compulsory migration of more than two million people, a fifth of the total population of the country.

This exodus markedly changed the Colombian demography. Thus, before the Violence, the country was eminently rural. When it finished, it had become a nation of townships and cities.

The figures that support this fact are, according to historians, indisputable. In 1938, only 30.9% of Colombians lived in urban areas. By 1951, that number had grown to 39.6% and, by 1964, it had reached 52.1%.

References

1. National Library of Colombia. The violence. Obtained from Bibliotecanacional.gov.co
2. News. What was 'El Bogotazo', origin of 'La Violencia' in Colombia? Obtained from notimerica.com
3. Gómez Zea, Leonardo Javier. Biography, context and history: Violence in Colombia 1946-1965. Recovered from Bibliotecadigital.univalle.edu.co
4. Mass Atrocity Endings. Colombia: The Violence. Recovered from sites.tufts.edu
5. Harvey F. Kline, William Paul McGreevey. Colombia. Retrieved from britannica.com
6. Global Security. The Violence (1948-66). Retrieved from globalsecurity.org
7. Minster, Christopher. The Bogotazo: Colombia's Legendary Riot of 1948. Retrieved from thoughtco.com
8. CIA Historical Review. The Bogotazo. Retrieved from cia.gov