For most part
of its history, Colombia has endured an endless political and economic
conflict. Early on it was evident that no one knew what to do with the new born
country. Some of the founding fathers wanted a federal model, others a
republican one, some wanted a constitution similar to the one France has, some
wanted to copy the United States constitution. Unable to decide, civil war
ignited, and from that point on being at war with ourselves became a tragic
aspect of our cultural identity.
Every
generation, since the republic was born, some two hundred and two years ago,
has had some political conflict shadowing its life. To the numerous civil wars
that preceded the final draft of the constitution that ruled the country from
1886 to 1991 and ultimately defined the two mayor political parties, liberals
and conservatives, one important conflict can be identify as the one who
defined Colombian political conflicts:
the thousand day’s war. With this political war Colombia finished the XIX
century and began the XX century. Its wounds have managed to remain open, as if
they were roots from a colossal tree.
It was at this
war where the concepts of guerrillas first emerged as a way to attack the
government forces, whether it was a conservative or liberal one. War became the only tool to show
disagreement and discontent, but also a way to survive political prosecution.
By the forties
the political tensions between the two traditional parties were at their
historical high, to the point where almost every Colombian family, especially
the ones that come from rural areas has a horror story regarding those tragic
years. Millions of people had to leave, and still do, their homes and towns to
save their life. They all lost somebody to this war without trenches. All you
need to die in those days was to wear a blue shirt on a liberal town or a red
tie on a conservative one.
The turning
point for the worse for this perpetual political violence can be trace back to
the hour. It was midday on April 8th 1948. Jorge Eliecer Gaitán was the liberal
party official presidential candidate and most likely the next president of the
country. As he was leaving his office building in downtown Bogotá to have lunch
with some of his closest friends, a disturbed and possibly manipulated
individual shot him several times. As he had predicted few days before, when
the threats against his life were at their pick, his death burned the country
for over fifty years.
Downtown Bogotá
became a battle field. Many of its republican buildings became ashes and
thousands of its inhabitants perished. Colombia would not be the same after el Bogotazo, as this sad event came to
be known.
The sixties and
seventies were not only a time of hippies and promises of peace and love, were
also a time of revolt. Inspired by the Cuban revolution of 1958 many Colombian
youths from different socio economical and educational backgrounds began to
explore communism and socialism as means to change the political context of the
country. Many sons and daughters of the middle and even upper class joined the
ranks of the scatter guerilla groups that were born at The Violence period or created new movements to fight against the
state regardless of the political inclination of the government. It did not
matter whether the government was liberal or conservative as it did before. For
the guerillas, both parties represented the same ideals and therefore were
considered the same evil.
At the same
time these new politically motivated movements began to grow and eventually
become clandestine, a new generation of criminals stared to arise as narcotics
became fashionable and highly profitable.
The dawn of a new kind of war showed Colombia a different face of violence.
On one hand, Colombia’s
political status quo was determined
not to allow communism or socialism to permeate in any way the country and so another
chapter of politically motivated violence erupted by the eighties. On the
other, drug lords began to grow increasingly notorious and violent. How can we
forget the horrific work of the infamous Escobar?
From small groups of liberal country man
fighting at different regions of the country in a diversity of scattered
battles on the frame of an endless political civil war, the guerillas by the
end of the twentieth century were becoming massive organized armies,
well-articulated in guerrilla warfare. Soon enough these organizations lost
their political perspective and socialist ideals and became something else.
Kidnaping, extortion, mine fields, recruitment by force of children, narcotics
and so on became ways to feed the insatiable war apparatus.
At the same
time, an important number of cattle farmers grew tired of paying extortions and
being killed or kidnap by the guerillas, as well as the lack of protection from
the government, and created a cure, that turn out to be worse than the disease,
paramilitary armies.
By the nineties
Colombia was immerse in a devastating cycle of violence. Terrorist attacks at
malls and airplanes, military and governmental buildings, selective
assassinations of politicians, journalist, judges, ministers, presidential
candidates, policemen, were Escobar’s strategy to force the government to
accept his terms and void the extradition treaty with the United States. While
Escobar’s war was focused on most mayor cities, especially Bogotá and Medellín,
the guerilla and the paramilitary armies destroyed the countryside, while the
government looked the other way, and in some cases provided logistical
information to help the paramilitaries.
While the
violence from Escobar ended when he got shot at the roof top of his hideout,
the horrific violence unleashed by both irregular armies continued to inflict
enormous amounts of suffering and displacement at Colombia’s countryside.
Hundreds of villages and small towns were destroyed, burn to the ground or
abandoned. Hundreds of thousands of acres were usurped by the paramilitary from
their rightful owners. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of victims seek
justice, employment, health coverage. For them, minimum civil and human rights
are seen as a commodity.
Despite the
overwhelming and heart breaking amount of information regarding recent
Colombian history, where the number of victims of different kinds of violence
rises above millions, despite all the evidence that indicates that not only the
guerillas, paramilitaries and drug cartels have contributed to increase these
numbers, but also that members of the army and police have been involved in
criminal acts against civilians, most Colombians do no care. Most Colombians
rather ignore the conflict and its implications in who we are as a nation, than
to embrace the tools to make it stop.
When the
government made it official that it was going to pursue peace dialogues with
the FARC guerilla, the country was mostly indifferent, pessimistic or
skeptical, when not enraged with a position that some right wing enthusiast
considered to be naïve, when not a sign of weakness.
More than a
year has gone by and the dialogues keep on going despite the general perception
that they will fail at any given minute. A hope that it is disturbing and
contradictory, as if ceasing the endless and heartless violence that has
defined us for the last two centuries was not something worth dreaming
about.
