Named for Christopher Columbus, though he never set foot there, Colombia is a land long wracked by internal conflict, banditry, and insurgent warfare. It has been called a “nation in spite of itself.”1 The United States has been involved in Colombian affairs since the turn of the last century. The relationship morphed from being an obstacle to U.S. government policy—when the government thwarted U.S. plans to build a canal through the Colombian province of Panama—to becoming an asset during the Korean War. The Colombia of today is an important American partner in the Global War on Terror and in its war on drugs. To understand Colombia, and U.S. policy involved, one must know a little about its history. Then, the current situation can be placed in context. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief historical overview.
Simón Bolivar, “The Liberator,” led the army that wrested Colombia from Spanish control. He was also the first president of the Republic of Gran Colombia, made up of modern-day Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela.
Although long inhabited by native groups, the first permanent European settlement in Colombia was in 1525. To put this into perspective, Jamestown, Virginia—the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States—was founded eighty-two years later in 1607. Colombia’s capital city of Bogotá was founded in 1538. Independence from Spain was proclaimed in 1813, although it took several years of bitter fighting for this to become reality. In 1822, the United States was one of the first nations to recognize the new state of “Gran Colombia,” made up of the modern countries of Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela, and parts of neighboring Brazil, Guyana, and Peru. Eight years later, the territories that make up the modern day states of Venezuela and Ecuador broke away from Gran Columbia.
After a series of minor internal clashes in the nineteenth century, the country underwent two major civil wars in the twentieth. Both were caused by differences between the two primary political factions, the Liberals and the Conservatives. These wars were the War of a Thousand Days and La Violencia (The Violence).
La Violencia (1948–1966) claimed somewhere between 100,000 and 250,000 lives and ranks as one of the bloodiest wars in the Western Hemisphere.2 This period of domestic turmoil set the tone for Colombia for the remainder of the twentieth century and has carried forward into the new century. Prior to La Violencia, there were underlying political and economic tensions between all classes of Colombian society, but especially so with the peasants. Between 1946 and 1947, the working class staged more than 600 demonstrations and organized strikes.3 In May 1947, violence broke out a when some 1,500 striking workers were arrested. When government troops moved in to repress the agitators, 14,000 were killed in the subsequent confrontation.4
Jorgé Eliecer Gaitan
However, the main escalation in La Violencia occurred after Liberal leader Jorgé Eliecer Gaitan was assassinated on 7 February 1948. Gaitan was a populist with strong support among union members and the lower classes. After his murder, large segments of the urban population filled the streets in protest. A massive rebellion, referred to as the Bogotazo, broke out in the capital. Then it spread into the provinces, where the Conservatives had already formed armed groups to handle the insurrectionists. The Conservative-led government action forced much of the rural opposition to flee their homes. Many armed themselves and formed bands for self-defense. Several of these early bands adopted tenets of communist and socialist philosophy. They became the basis for some of today’s insurgent groups.5
In 1957, former President Alberto Lleras Camargo effected a power-sharing agreement between the Liberals and the Conservatives. This arrangement, called the National Front, alternated the presidency between the two leading parties every four-years for the next sixteen years. The National Front also dramatically changed how the armed forces in Colombia operated. For the first time, the police, who had largely been responsible for fighting the insurgent groups, were placed under the control of the Ministry of Defense. This meant that the Army, that had the mission of territorial defense, and which had managed to stay out of internal conflicts, was given the authority and mission to pacify the troubled areas.6
However, the National Front was a pact only between mainstream Liberals and Conservatives. Communist and socialist groups and radical Liberals had no representation in government. This condition provoked a return to violence. The civil war moved into an “unofficial” second phase that continued until 1966. Another 18,000 people were killed during this period.7
American military assistance to Colombia started during La Violencia. In 1948, the United States, Colombia, and the majority of Latin American states signed the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS).8 The OAS charter included a mutual defense–assistance protocol. It would be the Korean War that prompted Bogotá to request training for Colombian military officers in the United States, and material assistance. Colombia was the only Latin American country to offer armed forces to the UN after the North Koreans invaded the South. In Korea, Colombian Army officers gained valuable experience that they later applied in counter-insurgency operations. By 1955, the first Colombian officers had graduated from the U.S. Army Parachute and Ranger Schools at Fort Benning, Georgia. In 1962, a U.S. Army Special Forces contingent led by Brigadier General William Yarborough came to Colombia on the invitation of President Camargo to make recommendations on how to fight the insurgency.9 Many of these ideas were adopted by the Colombian military and incorporated in Plan Lazo, the first national strategy to restore law and order to the countryside.10
In 1966, Pedro Marín, better known by his nom de guerre, Manuel Marulanda, or his nickname, Tirofijo (“Sureshot”), founded the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, better known as the FARC.
In 1964, the Colombian Army attacked the rural enclave of Marquetalia. There, communist and Liberal forces had set up an “independent republic” where they had originally gathered to weather La Violencia. Although the Colombian Army employed new weapons in the assault, including jet fighters and helicopters, most of the rebels escaped the government cordon and fled into the surrounding jungles. The attack at Marquetalia drove the disparate groups of radical Liberals and communists to join together under the leadership of a radical former-Liberal guerrilla named Pedro Marín.11 In 1966, this semi-united group adopted the name Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, better known as the FARC. The following year, a second communist-inspired insurgent group, the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) [National Liberation Army] was formed in the northern region of Santandar.
FARC flag
During this period, rightist paramilitary units began to evolve. Colombia has a long history of “self defense” militias, dating to the colonial period when small “armies” were formed to protect citizens, landowners, and businesses in rural areas from guerillas and bandits. In 1965, the government accorded them legal status to compensate for the lack of police and military forces in outlying regions.12 They would later be accused of gross human-rights violations.
The government escalated the war against the insurgents in 1965. President Guillermo Valencia declared a national “state of siege.” This gave the Army “expanded authority” to arrest and try civilians for subversive activities.13 Since the authorities were broad and general, the Army interpreted this to include physical suppression of strikes, protest marches, and critics of the military, who in their estimation became threats to law and order.14 In essence, the government had granted the Army carte blanche authority to use whatever force was necessary to suppress the insurgency. The only condition was that the military would not intervene in politics.
The Army “crackdown” on civilians prompted the creation of another insurgent group, “The 19th of April Movement,” or M-19, in the 1970s. In contrast to the FARC and the ELN, the M-19 was largely an urban group and its membership was filled by the children of the privileged classes. M-19 achieved prominence on 27 February 1980, when it seized the Embassy of the Dominican Republic during an official function. The group captured fourteen ambassadors, including the American, and numerous minor diplomatic personnel and civilian guests. After being held captive for weeks, the hostages were released unharmed in exchange for a sum of money, transportation, and the unhindered escape of the kidnappers to Cuba.
M-19 flag
By the mid 1980s, M-19 was Colombia’s second largest insurgent group, behind the FARC. Desperate for funding, M-19 tried to emulate the FARC, which was profiting from the drug trade. But unlike the FARC, M-19 was not integrated into the drug trade. Assuming that they would simply pay, M-19 decided to kidnap family members of drug traffickers for ransom. M-19 committed a grievous error in killing the victims when the narcotraffickers were slow in paying. Unwilling to be extorted, the drug traffickers undertook extreme counter-measures and formed a band called Muerte a Secuestradores (MAS), meaning “Death to Kidnappers,” which received tacit government support. M-19 suspects captured by the police were turned over to MAS, who tortured them for information and then killed them. The M-19 membership was quickly cut in half.15
Based on the radical example provided by MAS, other groups were formed and funded by narcotraffickers to provide security and to protect their interests. The narcotraffickers dealt with their “enemies” ruthlessly. From the mid-1970s into the mid-1980s, the narcotraffickers had increased their business so much that their profits had mushroomed to billions of dollars. Narcotraffickers purchased huge estates in the Colombian countryside and selectively used their wealth to gain popular support. Thus, the most wealthy and powerful narcotraffickers became quasi-political figures in their own right.
In 1984, the Colombian government negotiated a cease-fire with the insurgent groups. Only the ELN refused to join. The FARC renounced armed struggle and, in 1985, started a political party—the Unión Patriótica (UP)—to compete for representation. The UP easily won fourteen national-level political posts as well as numerous provincial and municipal positions. However, within months of being elected, several of the UP legislators were assassinated. In the next several years, hundreds of UP supporters were systematically murdered. These excesses destroyed the cease-fire and renewed the violence.
On 6 November 1985, M-19 conducted a last, desperate large-scale action. Thirty-five M-19 insurgents seized the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, taking some 300 office workers, lawyers, judges, and supreme court justices hostage. Resolution of the crisis was turned over to the Colombian Army. Despite repeated pleas for restraint from the hostages, the Army attacked with overwhelming force. During the chaotic assault, the building caught fire and eleven supreme court justices and ninety civilians died. The majority of the insurgents also were killed. It was the most audacious but final action of the M-19. By the end of the decade, the remnants of M-19 had surrendered their weapons and transformed the organization into a political party.
The FARC and the ELN kept up their ongoing war against the government but increasingly encountered the right-wing groups and the armed bands formed by the narcotraffickers. These groups exponentially increased the level of ruthlessness set by the FARC and ELN. The para-militaries massacred anyone or any group suspected of providing aid to the leftists. The leftist insurgents retaliated in turn. The vicious cycle of threats, kidnappings, disappearances, bombings, blatant killings, and outright massacres escalated.
Pablo Escobar
In 1989, President Virgilio Barco formally renounced the paramilitary groups and tried to end military and police support. Having lost official sanction, the groups simply financed their activities with drug money. Tacit cooperation from the Army and Police continued. That same year, men working for narcotrafficker Pablo Escobar gunned down presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán. This forced the government to confront Escobar and other narcotraffickers. Barco cracked down, declared a war on drugs, and advocated extradition of drug dealers to the United States for criminal trial.
Escobar responded violently by ordering attacks on government officials who opposed him and/or advocated extradition. Escobar and the other narcotraffickers—banded together. The “extraditables” put so much pressure on the government by targeted killings and bombings that President César Gaviria renounced extradition and tried to negotiate the surrender of the “extraditables.” As an incentive, the constitution was rewritten in 1991, making extradition unconstitutional. This prohibition was later repealed.
AUC logo
Despite this latest protection, the violence continued. Escobar, who did surrender, later “escaped” from his private and lavish “jail.” After another round of protracted violence, Pablo Escobar was tracked down and killed in 1993 by an alliance of the armed group Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar (Victims of Pablo Escobar), commonly known as “Los Pepes,” government forces, and the United States. Instead of slackening, the violence got worse. In 1995 alone, over 25,000 Colombians were murdered, many by self-defense groups that worked with the unspoken consent of the military and police. As a result of this, in 1997, the U.S. Congress attached the Leahy Amendment to the Colombian Appropriations Bill. This amendment stipulated all U.S. military assistance to Colombia could go only to units cleared of human rights violations. In 1997, the various self-defense forces—still tacitly accepted by the government—formed themselves into a confederation called the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) because the government “affair” with the self-defense forces was at an end. Faced with pressure from human rights groups, denial of visas to Colombian military officers by the U.S. Department of State, and the conditions for U.S. funding, the government declared the AUC—at least on paper—illegal.
Colombian president Alvaro Uribe Vélez
Seeing no end to the violence, President Andrés Pastrana took a radical step. He solicited negotiation with the FARC. In 1999, Pastrana expanded the effort by ceding a demilitarized zone the size of Switzerland, known unofficially as “FARClandia,” and officially as the Zona de Despeje (the open land). Pastrana also was an architect of Plan Colombia, a $4.5 billion effort co-funded by the United States to end Colombia’s internal conflict, eliminate drug trafficking in six years, and to promote economic and social development.16 The current president, Alvaro Uribe Vélez, having observed the futility of negotiating with the FARC, took a tough stance. He refused to negotiate with any insurgent groups until they committed to a cease-fire and disarmed. He increased the size of the military and police force and gave them “expanded authorities.” This was followed by Plan Patriota, a military campaign to regain control of guerrilla-dominated territory.17 It began with the dismantling of FARClandia.
Map of despeje area.
The results of Plan Colombia are promising. A key part of this strategy—though controversial—has been aerial eradication of drug crops. Thousands of hectares are sprayed every year, the effect of which greatly reduces potential yields of illicit drugs. According to the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. street price of cocaine and heroin—the two primary drugs involved in the illicit Colombian drug trade—has increased. At the same time, the purity and availability of the drugs have fallen, indicating that the amount being imported into the United States may be decreasing.18 Now, the cultivation of opium poppies in hard to reach mountain areas has grown significantly in the past few years.
Plan Colombia has also increased security in the rural areas, long the domain of insurgent and bandit groups. The Colombian National Police now have a fixed presence in all municipalities, with more than 9,000 Granaderos and Carabineros deployed to rural areas.19 The increased police and military presence has helped to lower the number of kidnappings. Still, Colombia has the world’s highest rate. The plan has also helped reduce the number of insurgents by attrition, surrender, and peace negotiations. Promoting the premise that increased government pressure negated their need to operate against the FARC and the ELN, the AUC entered into negotiations with the Uribe government to demobilize.20Plan Colombia also provides the framework needed to expand U.S. military assistance. This has helped to raise the effectiveness of the Colombian military and paramilitary police in conducting counter-insurgency operations, especially since they are no longer “out-gunned” by the narcotraffickers, FARC, or ELN.
Colombia has long been a country wracked by divisive politics and feud-like violence. At times, the level of violence has threatened to tear the country apart. Still, Colombia remains a country in transition facing serious problems with narcotrafficking and insurgent warfare. Despite these threats, it is a dynamic country with many valuable natural resources. Under Plan Colombia, the country appears to be moving in the right direction to regain control of its future and curb the violence that has stained the twentieth century and threatens the twenty-first century.
ENDNOTES
David Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), front cover.[return]
Only the American Civil War (1861–1865) and the War of the Triple Alliance (also known as the Paraguayan War 1864–1870) produced greater casualties. Estimates on the number of casualties vary; Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia, 205, places the number at between 100,000 and 200,000. Geoff Simons, Colombia: A Brutal History (London: Saqi Books, 2004), 38, places it at more than 250,000. Other sources place the number of killed even higher. Official Colombian history usually marks the end of La Violencia in 1957 with the formation of the National Front.[return]
Geoff Simons, Colombia: A Brutal History (London: Saqi Books, 2004), 40.[return]
The text of the charter can be found at the OAS website at http://www.oas.org/main/main.asp?sLang=E&sLink=http://www.oas.org/juridico/english/charter.html.[return]
Ibid, 42, “Visit to Colombia, South America, by a Team from Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg, North Carolina,” 26 February 1962, ARSOF history files, Fort Bragg, NC.[return]
For more on the U.S. assistance to Colombia in this period, see Dennis M. Rempe, “The Past as Prologue: A History of US Counter-Insurgency Policy in Colombia 1958–1966,” March 2002, Strategic Studies Institute Monologue, available at http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB17.pdf.[return]
Connie Veillette, “Colombia: Issues for Congress,” CRS Report for Congress, 19 January 2005, 5–6.[return]
David Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 150.[return]
“Background Note: Colombia,” U.S. Department of State; October 2006, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35754.htm ; Geoff Simons, Colombia: A Brutal History (London: Saqi Books, 2004), 151.[return]
Frank Safford and Marco Placios, Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 247–51.[return]
Connie Veillette, “Plan Colombia: A Progress Report,” CRS Report or Congress, 11 January, 2006, 11.[return]
“Background Note: Colombia,” U.S. Department of State, October 2006, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35754.htm .[return]
“The CIA World Factbook: Colombia,” Central Intelligence Agency, 2006, http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/co.html.[return]
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, “Cocaine,” http://www.dea.gov/concern/cocaine.html , November 2006.[return]
Geoff Simons, Colombia: A Brutal History (London: Saqi Books, 2004), 61.[return]
For information on Escobar and his downfall, see Mark Bowden, Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw, (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001).[return]
The World Factbook 2005 (Washington D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 2005), 122–24.[return]
“Background Note: Colombia,” U.S. Department of State; October 2006, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35754.htm[return]
David Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 246.[return]
Robin Kirk, More Terrible than Death: Massacres, Drugs, and America’s War in Colombia (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), 104.[return]
Kirk, More Terrible than Death, 106–07, 112–13.[return]
