La Violencia in Colombia: New Research, New Questions*

Abstract

F OR those who have held power in Colombia, over a hundred and fifty years, or more, of bipartisan rule, the country has been a paradigm of democracy and civilian administration in Latin America. How could this image have been sustained in a land that, following the fourteen years of its War of Independence, experienced in the remainder of the nineteenth century eight general civil wars, fourteen local civil conflicts, two international wars with Ecuador, and three barracks' coups? How could it have been sustained when, in the twentieth century, Colombia, besides witnessing many local risings, has waged war with Peru; and in 1948 became the scene of one of the most serious of modern insurrections, an insurrection followed by the country's longest war, which has been given the elusive title of la Violencia? How can the image be maintained when one considers that negotiations are taking place today in Colombia with what is generally considered the oldest guerrilla movement in Latin America? The question itself might well serve as the rationale for a study of the ideological mechanisms by which the true processes of the country's history have been concealed. What is immediately apparent in contrast to this established view of democracy is that Colombia has been a country of permanent and endemic warfare. The principal problem that must be faced, then, is to define the nature and the historical variations of this warfare. As a pre-