Timeline
La Violencia
Tram on fire during el bogotazo
© Santiago Martinez Delgado - Daniel Pradilla Holguin
In the 1930s and 1940s, Colombia’s political system was dominated by two main parties: the Liberals and the Conservatives.
Liberals and Conservatives strongly disagreed strongly about issues of land, which was unevenly distributed in Colombia.
The period known as ‘La Violencia’ was triggered in 1948 by the assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, the left wing Mayor of Colombia’s capital city, Bogotá.
The assassination sparked widespread riots and urban violence, known as ‘El Bogotazo’, between Liberals and Conservatives across Bogotá.
This violence spread to the countryside tearing communities and families apart, and leaving an estimated 200,000 people dead.
National Front Government
In 1957 a new governing system was agreed by the Conservatives and Liberals in an attempt to end the violence. The National Front Goverment introduced a system of power-sharing where the two parties swapped power every four years. Much of the violence came to an end as a result of this agreement.
However, no other political parties were permitted to govern. Colombians in many rural areas – where rates of poverty were particularly high – felt particularly excluded by the new governing agreement.
Most of the land in Colombia was owned and controlled by a few rich elites whilst rural workers, who were the majority, had very limited access. Insurgents and guerilla groups emerged because of poverty, inequality and exclusion - particularly because of the unfair distribution of land.
Emergence of Armed Groups
A guerrilla soldier on exercise
© Globovisión
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was founded in 1964. FARC was the military wing of Colombia’s Communist Party and the founders were small farmers and rural workers.
Other guerrilla groups emerged during this time such as the ELN (National Liberation Army) in 1964 and M-19 in 1970.
FARC, ELN and M-19 were frustrated with the narrow political system that only allowed for liberal and conservative rule and settled on armed struggle as a means to achieve political change.
In the beginning, FARC funded its fighting with money provided by the Soviet Union. At the end of the Cold War this funding stopped so they moved into criminal activity to sustain themselves. This included kidnapping civilians and forcing families to pay money for their safe return, and eventually drug production and trafficking.
Paramilitary groups also started to emerge at this time. Wealthy elites and large landowners were scared of the guerillas attacking them and taking over their land and homes so they paid groups of people to deal with guerilla forces.
The AUC (United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia) was the most notorious paramilitary group and had links with the Colombian Army and Colombian Government. They were also involved in drug production.
The violence perpetrated by the guerrilla and paramilitary groups varied from region to region, between rural and urban areas, and depended on the armed actors that were present. Many communities were affected by massacres, widespread sexual violence, forced disappearances, assassinations, bombings and landmines.
The violence also provoked mass displacement as many people were forced to leave their homes to escape the violence of armed actors. Colombia currently has an estimated population of more than 9 million internally displaced people (IDPs).
Plan Colombia
In 2002, Alvaro Uribe was elected President of Colombia with the aim to end the ongoing armed conflict with guerrilla groups.
President Uribe received considerable military and financial support from the USA through Plan Colombia as the USA were concerned about the amount of drugs entering the country from Colombia.
The early 2000s were characterised by violence against the AUC paramilitaries who had close ties to the Colombian elite and army. In 2005 the AUC formally demobilised.
Uribe was able to militarily weaken the FARC, but at a terrible human cost.
Many non-combatants were killed whilst the Colombian army (along with paramilitaries) attempted to weaken the FARC. The military’s capacity was expanded through additional funding with the aim to eradicate the FARC both in rural and urban areas.
The Government's attitude towards dealing with the conflict changed when Juan Manuel Santos was elected to government in 2010. Santos wanted to end the armed conflict through a negotiated settlement. In 2012, secret negotiations with the FARC began which eventually led to an historic peace agreement in 2016.
For more information about the end of the conflict with the FARC, have a look at the section about the peace agreement.