La Violencia in Colombia
Author(s): Norman A. Bailey
Source: Journal of Inter-American Studies, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Oct., 1967), pp. 561-575
Published by: Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Miami
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/164860
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A.
NORMAN BAILEY
Department of Political Science
Queens College of the City University of New York

LA VIOLENCIA
IN COLOMBIA*
F

OR THE PAST TWENTY YEARS the South American republic of

Colombiahas sufferedfrom a social phenomenonof such magnitude that it has defied not only the contemporaryjargon of sociologistsand political scientistsbut even the time-honoredterminolrebellion,riot and revolution.Perhapsbecause the ogy of insurrection, only element of this phenomenonthat all observerscan agree upon is the fact that it is and has been eminentlyviolent, it has come to be called simply "la violencia," or "The Violence."
The phenomenon known as la violencia never has been completely

absentfrom Colombiasince 1946, but it has had two periodsof particular virulence,the firstbetween 1948 and 1953 affectingthe departments of Tolima, Boyaca, Cundinamarca,
Antioquia, Valle, Caldas, Cauca,
Santanderdel Sur, Arauca, Huila, Choc6, Caqueta, Meta, Casanare,
Vichada and Bolivar, that is, the entire countrywith the exception of of parts of the Atlanticcoast and the southernmost department Narinio.
The second period of increasedviolence, between 1954 and 1958, was considerablymore circumscribed,affecting only the departmentsof
Caldas, Valle, Antioquia, Cundinamarca,
Tolima, Huila and Cauca, and where the violence still continuesit is found within these regions, which, it might be noted, representthe heartlandof Colombia.
* This paper was delivered as the closing address of the Twelfth Annual Meetings of the Pacific Coast Council on Latin America, at San Fernando Valley State College,
Northridge, California, October 20-22, 1966. The field research was done in Colombia during 1963, on a Social Science Research Council grant.

561

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Any kind of exact statistical measurement of la violencia is impossible for the simple reason that in many areas records were not kept at all and in most others what records exist are very incomplete. There is a simple and good reason for this--much of la violencia was perpetrated by those who were supposed to be keeping the records, and much of the rest by those interested in destroying the record-keepers. Certain estimates can be made, however, and they lead to the astounding conclusion that some 200,000 Colombians have been brutally murdered over the past twenty years in what was not even an openly-declared rebellion or civil war. This number is greater than the total Western casualties, including South Korean, in the Korean War.1 As to the number of injured, if we assume that the proportion of injured to dead was less than that common in organized warfare, and adopt the modest figure of three-to-one, we find some 600,000 injured, many among the hundreds of thousands of Colombians who fled their homes to seek safety in the cities and towns, in unaffected rural areas, or in Venezuela. In short, we can very modestly assume, if we include the populations of cities which experienced mass violence during the same period, that at least twenty per cent of the total Colombian population was directly affected by la violencia between 1946 and 1966.
The one department of Colombia where fairly complete statistics on la violencia were kept is Tolima, and in that relatively small region, between 1946 and 1958, 1,993 families left the department (perhaps
8,000 people), 34,730 farms were abandoned and 970,000,000 pesos worth of property was destroyed (about 400-500 million dollars).2
Yet all of this could have happened, and yet still not have been given the name of "The Violence," perhaps, had it not been for the almost incredible ferocity with which most of the killings, maimings and dismemberings were done. Certain techniques of death and torture became so common and widespread that they were given names, such as
"picar para tamal", which consisted of cutting up the body of the living victim into small pieces, bit by bit. Or "bocachiquiar", a process which involved making hundreds of small body punctures from which the victim slowly bled to death. Ingenious forms of quartering and beheading were invented and given such names as the "corte de mica", "corte
1 Mons. German Guzman, Orlando Fals Borda and Eduardo Umafia Luna, La violencia en Colombia, 2 vols. (Bogota: Ediciones Tercer Mundo, 1962 & 1964), vol.
I, ch. XI and vol. II, Part III, chapter 2.
2 Guzman, et. al., La violencia, I, 293-94. See also Departamento del Tolima,
Secretaria de Agricultura, La violencia en el Tolima (Ibague: Imprenta Departamental,
1958).

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563

de franela", "corte de corbata", and so on. Crucifixions and hangings were commonplace, political "prisoners" were thrown from airplanes in flight, infants were bayoneted, schoolchildren, some as young as eight years old, were raped en masse, unborn infants were removed by crude
Caesarian section and replaced by roosters, ears were cut off, scalps removed, and so on. The purpose of this recital is to indicate that we are dealing here with a phenomenon of unparalleled ferocity in modern times, insofar as movements at least to some extent spontaneous are concerned. Perhaps the most curious fact about la violencia, however, is the almost total puzzlement, both inside and outside Colombia, as to why it occurred, why it developed as it did, and, particularly, why it became so utterly bestial. Explanations are not lacking, and later we will examine some that have been put forward, but the community of social investigators, never backward in proposing explanations for social dilemmas, has totally failed to come up with a convincing explanation for la violencia in Colombia.
Perhaps the extent of this puzzlement can be most graphically demonstrated by quoting two Colombian commentators. Msgr. German
Guzman, who along with Orlando Fals Borda and Eduardo Umafia
Luna wrote the most complete and penetrating work on The Violence
(La violencia en Colombia), after examining and rejecting several possible correlations, expressed it this way: "We have seen that the violence, as a social phenomenon, did not respect race or economic status, and that it took place in regions of minifundia and of latifundia, among the prosperous and the miserable, in desert and plain, in burning valley and Andean crags."3 And Luis L6pez de Mesa, an astute commentator, wrote in El Tiempo in 1962: ". . . all the nations of the earth have shown cruelty as horrible and destructive as ours .... But I find in our ethical situation an element and a refinement of horror unknown in the world, because the cruelty was applied, not to adversaries or possible rivals, but to brothers, equal in situation, or even more humble and innocent."4 In attempting a tentative explanation of la violencia it will be useful to review briefly Colombian history, especially since 1930, and then to characterize the various stages through which the violence passed, without falling into the error of thinking that by categorizing,
3 Guzman, et. al., La violencia, I, 139.
4 Edition of September 30, 1962.

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we have explained.5
It should perhaps first be noted that violence is nothing new, recent, or unusual in Colombian politics. When the rebellion of the
"comuneros"
againstthe reductionof the rights of the free towns was in down by the Spanishauthorities 1781, the heads and quartered put bodies of the principalleaders of the rebellionwere exposed on pikes along the highwaysuntil they rotted off. Continuouscivil strife took place in the nineteenthcenturybetweenthe "ins,"who tried to consolidate and perpetuatetheir position, often by physicallyeliminatingthe refusedto accepttheir opposition,and the "outs,"who almostuniformly and work through constitutionalnorms. In 1876, position peacefully for example, an especially bloody civil war raged for eleven months, with the Conservatives whippingup the religiousfervorof the peasantry of to create the atmosphere a holy war againstthe Liberalgovernment.
It is not known exactly how many died in the civil war of 1876, but
20,000 is a reasonablefigure,which, given the populationof Colombia at that time, representsconsiderable carnage.The war of 1876 resembled la violencia in geographicextent and bloody cost of the fighting, but differedfrom it in being an organizedcivil war with specificobjectives and elite leadershipand with most of the casualties among the combatants. when the political situationbecame too anarchic,the
Periodically,
two great contendingpoliticalpartieswould join to form a government of "nationalunity." Soon the elements of both parties in the government, however,would be opposed, often violently,by elementsof both parties out of the government,and the struggle would begin again.
Colombiais currentlyin the latest of such periods of national unity, and this is only one of the many continuitiesof Colombianpolitical history that we shall discover, along with certain unique aspects introduced by la violencia.
Some commentators date la violencia from 1930, the year the

Liberalscame to power by means of a free and honest election, after dominance.6 The Conservatives turnedpower a period of Conservative over to the Liberalswithoutprotest or uprising,and in many parts of
5 For general background on the modern period, see German Arciniegas, The State of Latin America (1952); Vernon Lee Fluharty, Dance of the Millions (1957); John
D. Martz, Colombia (1962); Luis L6pez de Mesa, Escrutinio socioldgico de la historia colombiana (1955), and Eduardo Santa, Sociologia politica de Colombia (1955).
6 See, for example, Belisario Betancur, Colombia cara a cara (Bogota: Ediciones
Tercer Mundo, 1961) and Laureano G6mez, Comentarios a un regimen (Bogota: Editorial Minerva, 3rd ed., 1934).

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the country were greeted, in turn, by the triumphantLiberals with destruction propertyand burningof churches, of massacre,assassination, and in Boyaca. The essentiallymodespeciallyin the two Santanderes erate coalitiongovernment LiberalEnriqueOlayaHerreradid everyof thing in its power to suppressthe outbreaksand punish the perpetrators, but the episode left scars which were easily reopened in 1946.
Despite similaritiesto the later violencia, however, that phenomenon cannot properlybe dated from 1930, because the outbreaksthen were largely confined to a single year and did not differ importantlyfrom hatred in previous Colommany similar outburstsof politico-religious bian history.
For sixteen years Colombia was governed by the Liberal party, of throughthe two administrations reformistAlfonso L6pez and the moderate administrations Olaya Herrera and Eduardo Santos. By of 1946, however,the partywas hopelesslysplit betweenits moderateand reformistwings, and presentedtwo mutually-hostile candidatesin the elections of that year, allowing the Conservativecandidate, Mariano
Ospina Perez, to win with a minorityof the votes cast. The patternof
1930 was repeated, in reverse, and the triumphantConservativesin many parts of Colombiapaid back their Liberalneighborswith accrued interest, despite Ospina Perez' vigorous efforts to prevent bloodshed.
Unlike that of 1930, however,the violence did not die down after a few monthsbut continuedto grow, exceeding anythingin previous Colombian history in scope, brutalityand duration.
MarianoOspinaPerez governedin an atmosphereof ever-increasing anarchyuntil 1950, giving way to Laureano G6mez, intransigent leader of the Conservative party, who won an uncontestedelection and to establish a civilian dictatorshipalong Falangist lines. proceeded Cedingthe presidencyto RobertoUrdanetaArbelaezbecause of illness,
G6mez later resumedit, only to be overthrownby a militarycoup led by GeneralGustavoRojas Pinillain 1953. Initialhopes for a restoration of nationalsanityand a generalamnestyled to a considerable diminution of la violencia,but Rojas soon provedhimself an inept politicianand a hopeless administrator.
Aping Per6n, he wasted Colombia's substance on showy projectsand meaninglesssocial welfareprogramspreciselyat the time when high coffee prices should have allowed the country to spurt economically.Colombia is still trying to recover from his four as years of mismanagement, Argentinahas not yet recoveredfrom ten years of Per6n.
In 1957 the leaders of liberalismand conservatismcombined to

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overthrowRojas and restoreparty hegemonyin Colombiain the latest of the periodsof "nationalunity,"the so-called "alternation" supposed Presidents to last sixteen years, with two Liberaland two Conservative andwith all administrative posts equallydividedbetweenthe two parties.
Liberal Alberto Lleras Camargowas the first president under alterGuillermoLe6n Valencia and Liberal nation,followedby Conservative
Lleras Restrepo. Throughall these administrations,
Liberal and
Carlos
civilian dictatorship,
Conservative,through constitutionalgovernment, la and militarydictatorship alternation, violenciahas waxed and waned, but for twenty years never has entirely left Colombia.
For convenience of analysis the stages of development of la violencia can be divided into four periods: The Political Stage, 1946 to 1953; the UnstructuredStage, 1953-1955; the Economic Stage,
1955-1960, and the Ideological-Economic
Stage, 1960 to the present.
It must be stronglyemphasized that these periodsare not airtight.They overlap each other extensively, both in time and in character.
Both Liberalsand Conservatives to blame for the inceptionof are la violenciain 1946. Not only did the victoriousConservatives indulge in attackson Liberals,but in many areasthe Liberals,who after sixteen and years of power dominatedthe bureaucracyand the departmental local governments, often refused to accept the legally elected although minority Conservativepresident and resorted to armed resistance to the Conservativeassumptionof power. In reply the Conservatives began to politicize the police and the armed forces, replacingLiberal officers and recruits wherever possible with Conservatives,and then using the forces of public order as partisanpolitical instruments.In bandsto harassthe reply the Liberalsbeganto form organizedguerrilla and the Conservatives authorities,increasingly Conservative-dominated, in turn strengthened their hold on the police and the army and began the formationof counter-guerrilla bandsmade up of fanaticalConservative peasants, whipped to a religious frenzy.7 Outnumberedin the countryside,the Liberals,throughthe former Presidentialcandidateof the radical wing, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, now sole leader of the party, in began to act demagogically upon the urban masses, particularly the
Liberal strongholdsof Bogota and Cali. In April 1948 Gaitan was assassinatedon a Bogota street, and for two days Bogota was in the hands of a looting, killing, raping, leaderless mob, which destroyed
7 See Guzman, et al., La violencia, II, Part I; Eduardo Franco Isaza, Las guerrillas del llano (Bogota: Distribuidores Libreria Mundial, 1959; Gustavo Sierra Ochoa, Las guerrillas en los llanos orientales (Manizales, 1954), and Testis Fidelis, El basilisco en accicn o los crimenes del bandolerismo (Medellin: Tipograffa Olympia, 2nd ed., 1953).

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Conservative
Conservative
headquarters, newspapersand the homes of
Conservative
leaders.8In Cali a similar outbreakwas better organized and the city was brieflyin the hands of an insurrectionary directorate, but the rebellioneventuallywas put down by the armywith considerable bloodshedin both cities, all the police having gone over to the insurgents. (As a result,the urbanand ruralpolice were reorganized entirely, making them almost totally Conservative.) In the light of the events of 1948, as well as less spectacularattacksbefore and since that year, it is difficultto understandhow various commentators,among them
Msgr. Guzman, can say that la violencia was a completely rural phenomenon. Responsibilityfor the death of Gaitan has not been determined, and OspinaPerez is almostcertainlynot responsible.In the light of the later attempton the part of the police to assassinateGaitan'ssuccessor,
Dario Echandia,it is quite conceivablethat Conservative party officials, with or withoutthe knowledgeor urgingof LaureanoGomez,convinced the fanaticallyreligioushalf-witwho perpetrated crime that Gaitan the the anti-Christand had to be exterminated. represented Whatever truthof the mattermay be, the bogotazosignalledan the intensification la violencia,with the guerrillabands growingin size of and ferocity and the governmentstrengtheningrepressive measures,
La
gainingin brutalityif not in effectiveness. violenciaspreadthroughout practicallythe entire country.The third phase of la violencia was in foreshadowed the first however,when the various contendingbands, to finance their activities,began to resort to extortion,pillage, expropriation and the forced sale of crops.
When Rojas Pinilla came to power in 1953, he declareda general to amnestyfor all guerrillaswho surrendered governmentforces with their arms.Thousandsof guerrillasdid so, and between 1953 and 1955 la violencia gradually changed character, transformingitself largely from politicalto economicin motivationand from guerrillato banditin character.As a result of this transformation, area of la violencia the became circumscribed, mentionedearlier,to preciselythose regions as where agrarianextortion and expropriation could be most easily and profitablypracticed.Nevertheless,it was in this "unstructured" phase "sovietrepublics" were formed,most notably also, that the widely-known
Sumapazand Marquetalia,areas governed by the rebellious peasants
8 Gonzalo Canal Ramfrez, Nueve de abril 1948 (Bogota: Editorial Cahur, 1948).
See also Abraham T. Osorio, iPor qud mataron a Gaitan? (Bogota: Editorial Minerva,
2nd ed., 1949)).

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themselves,into which governmentforces and officialspenetratedonly at peril of their lives. Despite their name, the soviet republicswere at their inceptioncommunistically orientedonly in the primitivemeaning of the term.9
By 1955, with the exception of the soviet republics,la violencia was entirely in the hands of a highly-organized, institutionalized consortium of rural bandits and urban gangsters, often in league with or corrupt public officials and professionals.These gangster-bandits, assuredofficial compliance,if not cooperation,throughthe
"pdjaros",
threat of assassination,a threat often carried out. They sometimes operatedthroughsimple extortionof wealthyurban and ruralelements underpain of death. More commonlythey demandeda portion of the crops, or imposedtheir own men as overseersof estates,refusingaccess to the owners,sellingthe crops to urban accomplicesand takingwhatever portion of the proceeds they deemed appropriate.At that time a la violenciabegan to demonstrate seasonalpattern,rising in intensity at harvesttime. Coffee was, of course, the crop most heavily affected, but sugar,cotton and cacao also were harvestedand sold underduress.
Sometimesowners were forced to sell their propertiesfor ridiculous pricesunderthreatof death.Msgr. Guzmannotes the forced sale of ten estates in Caldas with a tax valuation of 1,558,000 pesos, sold for
482,550 pesos.10

In 1960 a new phase of la violenciabegan. While economicbanditry continued,Castro-influenced groups of Communistsand Jacobin leftistsbeganto infiltrate both the soviet republicsand the banditgangs,
Army"for a hopingto ideologizethem and turnthem into a "Liberation
Castro-style overthrow of the Colombian government. The Communists were, of course, involved in la violencia from the beginning.
A guerrillatrainingschool had existed in Viota, department Cundiof namarca,for some time, and in 1952 the Communistshad called a
"Conferenceof Boyaca" of the principal guerrillachiefs. Communist in participation the bogotazoonce it began has been firmlyestablished.
Until the 1960's Communistattemptsto control and direct la violencia were remarkablyunsuccessful,however, perhaps because they were
9 Orlando Fals Borda, Campesinos de los Andes (Bogota: Editorial Iqueima, 1961) and Euclides Jaramillo Arango, Un campesino sin regreso (Medellin: Editorial Bedout,
1959).
10 Guzmin, et. al, La violencia I, 276
11 Comit6 Central del Partido Comunista en Colombia, Treinta anos de lucha del partido comunista en Colombia (Bogota: Ediciones Paz y Socialismo, 1960). See also
Jose Maria Nieto Rojas, La batalla contra el comunismo en Colombia (Bogota: Empresa Nacional de Publicaciones, 1956).

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569

directed by the old-line, colorless party hacks who had been in charge of
Colombian communism from the beginning.
Following 1960, however, the various Communist and Jacobin groups succeeded in ideologizing the soviet republics and turning them into Castroite strongholds. The Communists had less success with the bandit groups, but some of the leaders were converted and imposed their new "religion" on their followers, without ceasing their economic depredations. The gangster activities continue, complete with ambulances and rest homes for the bandits, who have discovered a new game, kidnapping for ransom. Some also claim to be making, on the side as it were, a
Castro-Communist revolution. The scope of the activities of these bandits has been substantially reduced, but the complete eradication of wellentrenched bandit-criminals in a nation such as Colombia, where large segments of officialdom are both inefficient and venal, is very difficult.
The soviet republics, however, have been destroyed by the Colombian military, trained in anti-guerrilla techniques by the United States at
Fort Gulick in the Canal Zone.
We have reached the point where we can examine some of the explanations advanced for the phenomenon of la violencia in Colombia.
We may reject rather quickly the partisan political explanations unfortunately still so common in Colombia.'2 Both the Liberal and the Conservative parties share the blame for the inception of la violencia, and once it began both parties escalated the conflict and eventually both agreed to try to end it. In the meantime most splinter groups were in one way or another trying to exacerbate, direct or take advantage of the conflict. There are many honorable individual exceptions to the foregoing statement, but in general, responsibility for la violencia rests with all major political groups.
The Marxists have had a terrible time with la violencia, not only practically, as we have seen, but also theoretically. Finally, by twisting the facts so they are barely recognizable, the Marxists have decided la violencia represents the rebellion of the downtrodden masses against the oligarchs-in other words, the class struggle.'3 But we have seen that one of the most startling aspects of la violencia is precisely that it was not undertaken nor did it continue on any basis of one social or
12 See Testis Fidelis, El basilisco, Belisario Betancur, Colombia cara a cara and others. 13 See Comite Central del Partido Comunista, Treinta anos de lucha, mentioned in note 11.

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economic class against another, or even of certain economic groups against others on the basis of a common economic interest. Poor peasantskilled poor peasants,the more prosperouskilled their like, the urban workers killed each other indiscriminately and the rural bourgeoisie engaged in fratricide.Killing took place all up and down the social scale, from the elite to the most miserable,without economic discrimination between attacker and victim.
There are two interrelated

psychological-sexualor Freudian

theories that have been advanced to explain la violencia.14 They are

both basedon the highincidenceof sexual crimefoundin Colombiaand connecteddirectlyor indirectly with othermanifestations la violencia. of One is that generationsof sexual frustrationand guilt fostered by fanaticalCatholicbelief, especiallyin the rural areas, found a political excuse for outlet and ran amok. The other,based on the guerrilla-bandit principleof "no dejarni la semilla,"posits a death wish on the part of the entire Colombianpopulation.These theoriesoverlookthe fact that sexual excess accompaniesconditions of semi-anarchywherever and an whenever found. As to the "death-wish," applicationof Occam's razor will indicate that simpler explanationscan be found for wishing to exterminatenot merely a political opponentraised to the status of a devil, but his entirefamily as well.
Msgr. Guzman and his associates seem genuinelypuzzled about the violence developedas it did. In additionto makingthe curious why assertionthat la violenciawas confinedto rural areas while recounting many examples of urban violence (there was even a Conservative
Liberal newscounter-bogotazoin 1952, with Liberal headquarters, papers and the homes of Liberalleaders destroyed), and then drawing from this highlyquestionable variousconclusions premise,the authorsof this otherwiseadmirablework can do no better than to concludethat of la violenciawas caused by an accumulation dysfunctionsin various social subsystems in Colombia, such as the political, bureaucratic, agrarian, judicial, religious, sexual, law-enforcement,and family.15
But this is practically tautological,akin to sayingthat a person became ill because his body did not function properly.
To my mind the most provocativetheory advancedto explain the phenomenon of la violencia is that of the distinguishedColombian commentatorand Professorof Culturaland Economic History at the
14 See, for example, Horacio G6mez Aristizabal, Teoria Gorgona (Bogota: Editorial
Iqueima, 1962).
15 Guzman, et. al, La violencia I, ch. XIII.

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NationalUniversity,FernandoGuillenMartinez,in his brilliantvolume
Raiz y futuro de la revolucion.16 It is Guillen's thesis that la violencia

was the culminationof the increasingfrustrationfelt by all strata of
Colombian society (except the party directors) at the progressive depluralizationof the Colombian social system, beginning with the revolt of the comunerosin colonial times and continuingthrough the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, impelled by an alliance of landowners and bureaucrats,creating a closed system with only two channels wholly dependentupon the paternalisticfavor of the party leaders. To quote Guillen: "This demon, that contemporaryhistory knows as 'the violence,' is the last and most sinister floweringof the social deformationsthat arose more than two centuries ago in the soul in contact with the bureaucratic
Ibero-American
despotismengenderedby Spanishsociety as a substitutefor the freedomof the genuine hidalgo and of the free towns."'7
My own analysisowes somethingto Guillen'sformulation,which the explainsquite satisfactorily diffusionin every respect of la violencia after its initial period. There is undoubtedlyan element of truth in all the various theories. Both political parties are to blame for initiation of the violence. Elements of class hatred were certainlynot absent in the bogotazo or in the formation and development of the soviet republics.The North American"liberal"theory, used to explain every upheaval in Latin America of whatever type, namely that of the democratically-inclined people strainingto throw off the yoke of the grasping,horny-handed oligarchy,also may have an element of truth, especiallyin the areas of latifundia.There is undoubtedlygreat sexual tension in large areas of Colombian society and the assertion of was certainlynot absent in the psychologicalmakeup of
"machismo"
bandits and guerrillas.La violencia undoubtedlywas the result many of a series of social dysfunctionsand it is eminentlytrue that many of of the more peculiarmanifestations it, such as the "boleteo"and the of of a photograph the bandit chief and his band on the bodies leaving of theirdeadvictims,indicatea pathological desireto assertthe existence of the self in the face of an obliteratingsocial system.
In attempting own formulationof the causes and development our of la violenciain Colombia,it should be kept in mind that a unitary early phase developedinto two quite divergentlines, and that the early
16 Fernando Guillen Martinez, Raiz y futuro de la revolucidn (Bogotai: Ediciones
Tercer Mundo, 1963).
17 Guillen Martinez, Raiz y futuro, p. 185.

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phase and one of the later developments are quite easy to explain without indulging in exotic theorizing.
The Colombian peasantry, which for most of the life of the country has made up the vast majority of the population, has, unlike many other Latin American nations, always been involved in the political process, both of violent and of peaceful political change. The involvement of the peasantry in elections, for instance, was not the mere herding to the polls of mindless serfs found elsewhere in Latin America, but a meaningful participation, because of the incidence of minifundism and of moderate-size farms in Colombia. As a result, both political parties attempted to instill in this peasant mass a fanatic loyalty to the party, so its votes could be counted upon in elections and its bodies in times of civil strife. In this contest the Conservatives also made use of their ties to the Catholic Church to create in their rural followers a confusion between party and religion, leading to a messianistic-millenarian element in their activities. This politicized peasant mass then found its only security in fanatical adherence to a political party and its leaders. To quote Guillen again: "The civil wars of the nineteenth century contributed, more than anything else, to the dysfunction of peasant life, to the destruction of the social, moral and economic importance of the smaller urban centers and to the conversion of the majority of the population into fanatic bands, whose only hope of survival consisted in vanquishing the enemy on the national scale, imposing the domination of one 'party' over the other."18
La violencia began in 1946, then, as a typical effort of the new
"outs" to get back in by force, coupled with an equally violent effort of the "ins" to consolidate their newly-won positions, so unexpectedly gained. The party directorates on both sides ". . . took advantage of the sensation of alienation and defenselessness of all Colombians
(especially peasants) when they do not second, irrationally and fanatically, all the directives imparted in rigorous order from the national level down through local bosses to estate overseers."'9 The conflict begun in 1946 was particularly convulsive because of the conviction on the part of the Liberals that they had been cheated of the spoils of office that were rightfully theirs, coupled with the almost pathological terror of the Conservatives at the changes taking place in Colombian society and which they feared might place them in a permanent minority position unless they could do something about it, even including physical
18 Guillen Martinez, Raiz y futuro, pp. 179-180.
19 Guillen Martinez, Raiz y futuro, p. 187.

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extermination of part of the opposition, if necessary.
Because of moder means of material and ideological communication, and because of its exceptional bitterness, this typical Colombian conflict situation got out of hand and beyond the control of the political manipulators, developing, in the post-1955 period, into economic gangsterism on the one hand, and into genuine peasant protest movements on the other, no longer tied to any particular party. Again I think that economic gangsterism requires no particularly complex explanation.
Greed and the willingness to expropriate the fruit of another's property or labor are common enough elements of human nature.
It is in the peasant rebellion, once it became divorced from partisan politics, that the social investigator finds interest in la violencia in Colombia. Paradoxically, the very democratic forms trumpeted abroad by the Colombians themselves and various gullible foreign commentators contributed to la violencia-the peasant mass had, over a century and a half, been drawn into a political struggle, with which they identified strongly and even viciously, but which was in fact completely irrelevant as far as their interests as a group were concerned.
As the party directorates became more centralized, and the governmental machinery increasingly bureaucratized, local institutions and associational groups became increasingly drained of meaningful content and function in the social structure. Thus the individual peasant (and his first cousin, the industrial worker, drawn, usually quite recently, from the rural mass) became increasingly the object, but not the subject, of political manipulation from the center, effecting violent and peaceful political change almost as an automaton or puppet. When traditional political violence broke its normal bounds, he asserted his individuality by first slaughtering his brothers and then, when the frenzy wore off and the political tie was broken, by reverting to a simpler social structure whose forms he could understand and control. Unfortunately he still, apparently, felt the need for a justification of his acts from the "doctores", and the Fidelistas got to him before anyone else, leading to the armed destruction of these exceedingly interesting social phenomena.
To sum up this analysis we may say, paradoxical though the terminology may seem, that a segment of the Colombian peasantry, after a period of dysfunctional bloody political strife, proceeded to make a dysfunctional revolution, dysfunctional because misdirected and divorced from the reality of Colombia in the twentieth century.
We may conclude with a series of observations that have come to mind as a result of a study of la violencia in Colombia. The first is that

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JOURNAL OF INTER-AMERICAN STUDIES

it is a local phenomenon,with local causes and local effects. In support of this statementit may be noted that there was no spill-over into
Venezuela, despite violence in border areas and the actual movement of refugees,and the fact that certain isolated areas of Colombiaitself were not affected.Colombia,over the decades of its history, sowed a fertile field of hidalguia, intolerance, economic and social rigidity, the religiousstrife, bureaucratic preferenceand privilege,mercantilism,
Mediterranean
ethic and the "newfeudalism" paternalistic of industrialization, and it reaped la violencia.
The secondobservation concernsthe vulnerability a semi-closed, of such as that of Colombureaucratized semi-mercantilist, society highly bia to organized,institutionalized
This form of la violencia gangsterism. still continues and its eliminationis not in sight.
There are lessons also in the effectiveness anti-guerrilla of training for government forces. The experiencein Colombia,coupled with that in Peru, Argentina, Venezuela and elsewhere, would seem to indicate

that where such trainingis impartedto a relativelylarge, well-equipped, and technocratic professionalarmyit can prove to be quite effectivein combatting guerrilla movements. In small, poorly-trainedand venal armedbodies, however,such as those of Guatemalaand the Dominican
Republic, the value of such trainingprobablywill be minimal. Thus it is unlikely,for example,that any amountof trainingat Fort Gulick would have made the pre-Castro Cuban army an effective anti-guerrilla force. Anotherobservation inspiredby la violenciain Colombiathat has universalapplication that when the peasantry politicized,the results is is are difficult to predict and likely to be violent. This is true whether the

in causeis traditionalist, with the Jacquerie fourteenth as centuryFrance,
Pugachev and his followers in eighteenth century Russia, the Spanish

PeninsularWar, or Yemen today; economic, as with the peasant upas in risingsin Germany the MiddleAges; millenarian, with the Taiping rebellion in nineteenthcentury Manchu China; religious-ethnic,as in as Cyprustoday; or tribal-ethnic, in Nigeria,the Congo and elsewhere.
The elite in a traditionalsociety that awakensits peasantryto political
Box. Even when the politicization consciousness openinga Pandora's is it is carriedout peacefully and has only peaceful manifestations, may be that it is so only because certain steps which would lead to bloody rebellion have been precluded from political consideration.Adnan
Menderesawakened Turkishpeasantsto politicallife by buyingtheir the votes through governmentalsubsidies, and now no governmentcan eliminatethose subsidies,no matterhow economicallydamaging,except

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at the risk of civil war.
LatinAmericaprovidescertainexamplesof the phenomenon the of of the peasantry, and the results have been instructive. politicization and ineffectively
In Colombia,unchanneled quashed,it led to la violencia. In Mexico and Cuba "revolutionary" regimes, having used the in gaining power, have killed their leaders and now make peasants specialeffortsto keep the peasantryapolitical.This may to some extent explaintheirrelativestability.In Venezuelathe peasantryof the western portion of the country (borderingColombia) has traditionallybeen involvedin the politicalprocess,but has always,throughthe militaryor otherwise,had access to politicalpower, and more recentlyhas adhered to the successful Accion Democraticaparty. In Bolivia the peasantry was politicizedand armedafter 1952, has organizedand institutionalized its power, and is recognizedas a powerful pressuregroup and given respectas such.
La violencia has had many effects on Colombian life-social, economic, and political. For decades class warfare was avoided in
Colombia and replaced by partisanpolitical warfare.But la violencia weakenedparty ties, in the masses and among the elite, and awakened class consciousness.What new alignment will emerge is difficult to clampedon again predict,partiallybecausethe lid has been precariously traditionalparty hierarchs.But la violencia has brought new by the groupsinto the political process such as the business community,and
If
of the has transformed politicalinvolvement the peasantry. la violencia in Colombia has done nothing else, it has assured that Colombia's political future will not be a repetitionof Colombia'spolitical past.

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