2 A Brief Overview of Colombian History

During the early 20th century, the liberal and conservative parties in Colombia both enjoyed large periods in power with minimal conflict between the two. However, after 1946, the competition between the two parties grew in intensity. The president at the time, Mariano Pérez, and the conservative party began to use the police and military to repress the liberal party. This resulted in the start of conflict in civil and political society. Then in 1948, populist political candidate Jorge Gaitán was assassinated in the streets of Bogotá. His death sparked violent riots known as the “Bogotazo.” These riots were the beginning of a large-scale violence that would erupt in Colombia. The conflict, known as La Violencia, was a civil war that lasted from 1948 through 1958 and resulted in the death of over 300,000 people who were mainly peasants. As a result of the conflict, liberal and conservative political leadership agreed to create a bipartisan political system known as El Frente Nacional (National Front). The power-sharing agreement required that the two parties’ alternate governments every four years until 1974. This would make it so the parties would not have to compete in elections. Although the original agreement was supposed to last until 1974, the bipartisan system was in place until 1990. El Frente Nacional gave way for the conservative and liberal elites to consolidate their socioeconomic control over Colombia and it prevented other political groups from being able to participate.

After La Violencia ended, Colombian Communist Party (PCC) members organized groups of people who felt neglected by the government and guided them to settle in the countryside to make their own communities (Mapping, 2019). Manuel Marulanda led one group to settle in Marquetalia, Tolima. During this time, the government was also starting to attack many of the communist groups in Colombia. In 1964, the military attacked the community of Marquetalia, which led Marulanda and Jacobo Arenas to form the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The FARC was formed to represent the interests of rural citizens after La Violencia. The original goal of the guerilla group was to overthrow the government and they financed their operations through kidnapping, extortion, and the drug trade (Mapping, 2019). The conflict between the government and the FARC lasted fifty years until a peace agreement was finally reached in 2016.