history of Colombia

The audiencia

Establishment of the audiencia (an administrative and judicial tribunal) of Santafé de Bogotá in 1549 opened the colonial era. The conquerors had organized local governments in accordance with the terms of their contracts with the crown. The crown then rapidly repossessed the broad powers granted the conquerors and formed its own institutions to rule the empire. The governments of Popayán, Antioquia, Cartagena, Santa Marta, Ríohacha, the New Kingdom of Granada (Bogotá), and the llanos of Casanare and San Martín were made subject to the new audiencia. The president of the audiencia was the executive head of government, subject to the viceroy of Peru in administrative matters. The difficulties of travel, however, impeded communications and checked centralized control. The Indigenous population of the area declined through the introduction of European diseases and the economic demands made upon them.

As elsewhere in the Spanish empire, the downward trend in population seems to have reversed itself at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century. Acculturation and intermarriage rapidly destroyed most of the special cultural traits of the remaining Indigenous people. Subordinate political jurisdictions developed strong regional characteristics as a result of isolation, which fostered intense local loyalties and rivalries. The economy was based on mining and agriculture, but a small yet important textile industry grew up in Socorro, north of Bogotá, by the mid-18th century. Slavery was introduced during the conquest and became common in the placer mining areas of the Chocó and western Antioquia and in the agricultural regions of the Cauca valley, the lower Magdalena valley, and the coastal lowlands. Indigenous persons were treated much like enslaved people; from the early 16th century they were subject to the encomienda system (requiring tribute in the form of gold or labour). By 1700 most of the privately held encomiendas had reverted to the crown, and they were rarely granted thereafter, but the Indigenous population continued to be abused.

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During the era of the audiencia, from 1549 to 1740, the population was politically quiet. The Roman Catholic Church played an important role, providing most welfare services and operating most schools. The church was an effective instrument of the crown, since the latter controlled much of its activity.

Viceroyalty of New Granada

The Viceroyalty of New Granada, which included present-day Colombia, Panama (after 1751), Venezuela, and Ecuador, was created in 1717–23 and reconstituted in 1740, opening a new era. In the next decades the crown introduced political and economic measures to reorganize and strengthen the empire by greater centralization of authority, improved administration and communication, and freer development and movement of trade within the empire. Population grew, trade increased, and prosperity touched the colonial subjects. There was a spurt of intellectual activity and the formation of a corps of intellectuals and professional men among Creoles (whites born in Spanish America), many in government positions. The small Creole officer corps came into being when Charles III, then king of Spain, authorized militia defense units in the colonies. A relatively large group of wealthy landowners and merchants constituted the economic community that supported these new groups. In 1781 peasants and artisans at Socorro originated the Comunero Rebellion in response to tax increases; although some Creoles helped lead the rebels to Bogotá, most hesitated to support the uprising or even helped to undermine it. Between 1785 and 1810 in New Granada the outlook of the Creole upper and middle groups changed from resistance against political and economic change to a quest for specific changes in imperial policies. In 1809 they moved toward the free enterprise system, the abolition of slavery, restrictions on government, and worldwide freedom of trade.

Educational reforms played an important role in the changing outlook of the Granadine Creoles. Archbishop Caballero y Góngora as viceroy (1782–88) made education one of his main interests. He modernized the program of studies in the schools, opened a school of mines, and initiated the botanical expedition under the able guidance of naturalist José Celestino Mutis. The new institute trained many of the major figures of the independence movement. The first newspaper and theatre were introduced during the 1790s. A new interest in writing developed, and intellectual gatherings for discussion were introduced. In 1808 the allegiance of the Granadines to the crown remained unquestioned except for a few individuals. The once warm loyalty of the Creole middle and upper classes, however, was cooling under the pressure of economic interests, scandals in the royal family, and persistent social tension between Creole and European Spaniards.

Conservative-Liberal struggle, 1840–80

Colombia’s modern political history began in the late 1840s with the delineation of the Liberal and Conservative parties. Gen. Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, a Conservative, during his first term as president (1845–49) replaced the government monopoly on tobacco sales with a private monopoly and expanded international trade. These changes increased the production and export of tobacco but reduced the tax income of the national government.

In 1849 Gen. José Hilario López, of the radical faction of the Liberal Party, became president. It was his task to implement the reforms passed in 1850, which galvanized political sentiment and divided the country politically and economically for half a century. The guiding principle of the radical Liberals under General López was greater liberty for the people of Colombia. His government ended slavery, ended Indigenous people’s communal ownership of land, diverted tax resources from the central to local governments, and eliminated a number of taxes and monopolies held by the central government.

Rather than eliminating the institutional barriers to self-fulfillment by the people, however, the reforms of 1850 tended to eliminate the traditional proscriptions that had stood as safeguards against the exploitation of the poor by the rich. The reforms, despite the liberal rhetoric that accompanied them, legalized—indeed encouraged—a redistribution of landed property and tended to strengthen the position of the wealthy landowners, merchants, and professionals against the mass of poor Indigenous people, peasants, and artisans. Since there were only 25,000 enslaved people (in a country of 2,000,000 in 1851), the effects of manumission were small compared with those of the breakdown of the Indigenous communal system, which affected a third of the population. The Indigenous people were induced to give up their little plots of land and the small amount of independence they enjoyed. Within a few years the ownership of the land of Indigenous people was concentrated in a few hands; the Indigenous people had become tenants, their land used for grazing cattle.

While class conflict seethed under the surface in Colombian society, the struggle between members and groups within the elite was more open. Two issues in particular divided the upper class: first, whether a centralist or federalist political system would be the best arrangement for Colombia and, second, what role was appropriate for the Roman Catholic Church and particularly for its clerics in Colombian society. Adherents of federalism were strongest in the years between 1863 and 1880, during which time the country was called the United States of Colombia. Subsequent government publications were to refer to that period as the “Epoch of Civil Wars.” In 51 of the 240 months that passed in the 1860s and ’70s, there was some form of civil conflict taking place within the country. The Colombian army was so small that public order could not be maintained.

The power of the anticlerical faction reached a peak in the early 1860s. A revolutionary government headed by Mosquera expropriated church lands in 1861, and a constitution adopted in 1863 guaranteed freedom of religious practice, thus bringing to an end the traditional intimate relationship between church and state in Colombia.

The return of the Conservatives, 1880–1930

Both actions were reversed during the period of Regeneration (1880–95) under Rafael Núñez and the Conservatives who followed him. After further civil conflict in the 1880s, Núñez was able to promulgate a new constitution in 1886, to reestablish relations with the Vatican via the Concordat of 1887, and to promote some internal improvements and industrial development. But the political struggle between Liberals and Conservatives was far from over. Armed civil conflict reached its peak in the War of a Thousand Days (1899–1903). The estimates of the number of deaths in that struggle range from 60,000 to 130,000.

The devastating civil war was followed by the loss of Panama. The Colombian Congress refused an offer from the United States to build a canal across the isthmus, and in 1903 the Panamanians revolted against the government in Bogotá. They negotiated a treaty with the United States that created a Canal Zone 10 miles (16 km) wide under U.S. sovereignty in exchange for an agreement by the United States to build the canal and to provide a regular annual payment to Panama. Although the U.S. government later agreed to pay $25 million to Colombia, the episode embittered Colombian-U.S. relations for many years.

Colombia’s internal development quickened after 1905, with coffee exports expanding by nearly 10 percent per year between 1909 and 1928. At the beginning of the 20th century, Colombia supplied about 3 percent of world coffee exports; by 1923 its share had risen to nearly 10 percent. In the late 1920s coffee accounted for nearly one-fifth of Colombia’s gross domestic product.

The era of the Liberals, 1930–46

In addition, the Liberals came to power because of popular opposition to Conservatives’ use of the army against labour unions in the banana industry and because of the lack of unity in the Conservative Party itself. Although Olaya ruled much like his Conservative predecessors had, the presidency of Alfonso López Pumarejo (1934–38) brought a series of reforms called the “Revolution on the March.” The most important social act of the López regime established effective occupancy as the legal basis for tenure (1936), thus upholding the rights of thousands of peasant squatters against the claims of landowners who had been holding land without using it productively. In the coffee-growing zone of Cundinamarca, west of Bogotá, thousands of families obtained recognition of their ownership by occupation. (Subsequent governments took a more conservative stance toward the question of land rights of the poor, but in 1961 continuing social pressure finally resulted in legislation to create the Colombian Institute of Agrarian Reform. By the mid-1970s more than 135,000 land titles had been distributed by the institute.)

Rapid industrial development started in the 1930s. Medellín became the principal producer of cotton textiles and other fabrics. The limited availability of imports during the Depression was a major factor that enabled local manufacturing to get its start.

La Violencia, dictatorship, and democratic restoration

Liberal hegemony continued through the 1930s and the World War II era, and Alfonso López Pumarejo was reelected in 1942; however, wartime conditions were not favourable to social change. In the elections of 1946, two Liberal candidates, Gabriel Turbay and Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, stood for election and thus split the Liberal vote. A Conservative, Mariano Ospina Pérez, took office. Conservatives had been embittered by political sidelining and, since 1930, had suffered violent attacks at the hands of Liberal supporters. With the electoral victory of 1946 they instituted a series of crude reprisals against Liberals. It was the initiation of the period that was dubbed La Violencia. On April 9, 1948, Gaitán, leader of the left wing of the Liberal Party, was assassinated in broad daylight in downtown Bogotá. The resulting riot and property damage (estimated at $570 million throughout the country) came to be called the bogotazo.

La Violencia originated in an intense political feud between Liberals and Conservatives and had little to do with class conflict, foreign ideologies, or other matters outside Colombia. Authoritative sources estimate that more than 200,000 persons lost their lives between 1946 and 1964. The most spectacular aspect of the violence, however, was the extreme cruelty perpetrated on the victims, which has been a topic of continuing study for Colombians. La Violencia intensified under the regime of Laureano Eleuterio Gómez (1950–53), who attempted to introduce a fascist state. His excesses brought his downfall by military coup—Colombia’s first in the 20th century. Gen. Gustavo Rojas Pinilla assumed the presidency in 1953 and, aided by his daughter, María Eugenia Rojas, began an effort to end La Violencia and to stimulate the economy. Rojas was a populist leader who supported citizens’ demands for the redress of grievances against the elite. Support for Rojas began to collapse when it appeared that he would not be able to fulfill his promises, when he showed reluctance to give up power, and when the economy faltered as a result of a disastrous fall in coffee prices in 1957. He was driven from office that year by a military junta.

The arrangement for the National Front government—a coalition of Conservatives and Liberals—was made by Alberto Lleras Camargo, representing the Liberals, and Gómez, leader of the Conservative Party, in the Declaration of Sitges (1957). The unique agreement provided for alternation of Conservatives and Liberals in the presidency, an equal sharing of ministerial and other government posts, and equal representation on all executive and legislative bodies. The agreement was to remain in force for 16 years—equivalent to four presidential terms, two each for Conservatives and Liberals. The question of what governmental structure would follow the National Front was left unsettled.

It had been contemplated that a Conservative would be the first to occupy the presidency in 1958. When the Conservative Party could not agree on a candidate, however, the National Front selected Lleras, who had previously served in that office for 12 months in 1945–46. During Lleras’s tenure an agrarian reform law was brought into effect, national economic planning for development began, and Colombia became the showcase of the Alliance for Progress (a U.S. attempt to further economic development in Latin America). But severe economic difficulties caused by low coffee prices, domestic unemployment, and the apparent end of the effectiveness of import substitution were only partially offset by Alliance aid. The Alliance increased Colombia’s economic dependence on the United States, which, to some Colombians, had serious disadvantages. By 1962 economic growth had come almost to a standstill.

The precarious state of the economy and the degree of social tension were revealed when only about half of those eligible to vote did so in the 1962 presidential elections, which brought Guillermo León Valencia, a Conservative, to the presidency. During Valencia’s first year in office internal political pressures led to devaluation of the peso (Colombia’s currency), wage increases among unionized workers of some 40 percent, and the most rampant inflation since 1905. Extreme deflationary policies were applied in the next three years, raising the unemployment rates above 10 percent in the major cities and turning even more Colombians against the National Front. Less than 40 percent of the electorate went to the polls in the 1964 congressional elections.

Marxist guerrilla groups began appearing in Colombia during Valencia’s presidency. The first was the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional; ELN), which was created by a group of Colombian students who had studied in Cuba. Founded in 1964, the ELN followed strategies espoused by Che Guevara. Another guerrilla group, which followed two years later, was the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia; FARC), which was more connected to Soviet-influenced communist movements. Much of the FARC originated in the “resistance committees” that had appeared in Colombia during La Violencia.

Carlos Lleras Restrepo was the third National Front president (1966–70). He returned the economy to a sound footing, improved government planning for economic development, and pushed through political reforms essential to an orderly end to the Front (which seemed increasingly to constitute a monopoly of power by the Conservative-Liberal oligarchy). Although the constitutional reform of 1968 stipulated that elections would become competitive again after 1974, the president was still required to give “adequate and equitable” representation to the second largest political party in his cabinet and in the filling of other bureaucratic posts.

Also during the Lleras years, some semiautonomous government corporations expanded their services to the private sector: the capital and reserves of the Institute of Industrial Development, for example, were increased from 6.6 million pesos in 1967 to some 77 million pesos in 1969. Colombia achieved its best rate of economic growth near the end of the Lleras administration, when the real gross domestic product increased by some 7 percent. These successes were in part due to high coffee prices, but effective government policy was of undeniable importance.

In the 1970 presidential election Misael Pastrana Borrero, the Conservative candidate backed by the National Front, nearly lost to former dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla as the urban vote went strongly against the Front. (For the first time Colombia’s population was more than 50 percent urban.) A rapid migration from country to city had created new urban interest groups—particularly in the lower middle and working classes—that felt unrepresented by the traditional parties; nonetheless, the traditional parties prevailed and were not again successfully challenged.

Unhappiness with the 1970 election gave rise in 1973–74 to another guerrilla group, the 19th of April Movement (Movimiento 19 de Abril, or M-19), named for the date that the group asserted the election was “stolen” from Rojas. The M-19 launched itself to national attention when its members stole a sword that had belonged to Simón Bolívar. The group tended to rely on audacious militant actions, such as the kidnapping and murder of a labour leader in 1976, tunneling into a Bogotá arsenal and stealing arms in 1979, and kidnapping the guests attending a cocktail party at the embassy of the Dominican Republic in Bogotá in 1980.

The growth of drug trafficking and guerrilla warfare

The process of change brought with it new political, economic, and social problems, which stemmed from uneven development, unequal gains, and a growing perception that the benefits of higher income were not widely shared. Since 1974 limited progress has been made on those issues; however, the Colombian economy has grown despite pervasive violence, fed both by guerrilla insurgencies and traffic in narcotics.

As the National Front era was ending, a new problem surfaced in Colombia: narcotics. The country’s role as a supplier in the international drug market developed rapidly following the major interdiction efforts launched by officials in Mexico in 1975. Colombia soon was providing as much as seven-tenths of the marijuana being imported into the United States. Using the profits from marijuana, drug leaders—especially from Medellín—diversified to cocaine trafficking, and shipments grew from individuals carrying small amounts to large quantities on boats and low-flying airplanes. Two major Mafia-like organizations—dubbed drug cartels—evolved from this illicit, lucrative trade: the first in Medellín, led by Pablo Escobar, and the second in Cali.

In the political sphere the transition from National Front to moderate political competition between Liberals and Conservatives in 1974 was reasonably smooth. Alfonso López Michelsen of the Liberal Party served his four-year term as president (1974–78) and handed power to Julio César Turbay Ayala, a centrist Liberal. Low rates of voter participation continued, keeping alive fears that military alternatives to democratic elections might be sought from the right or the left.

In 1982, however, the Liberal vote was split, and Belisario Betancur Cuartas, the Conservative candidate, was elected president. His presidency was marred by extremes of violence that tested Colombia’s long-term commitment to democracy. In 1984 individuals linked to the international drug trade assassinated the minister of justice. The next year M-19 guerrillas entered the Palace of Justice in Bogotá and took scores of hostages; when the military assaulted the building, some 100 people were killed, including half of the Supreme Court judges. These events pointed to an ominous growth in the power of drug traffickers and to an apparent inability of the government to control terrorist activities.

Betancur attempted to end guerrilla violence. In November 1982 he signed a law granting amnesty to almost all insurgents, and in the following years he was able to persuade the FARC and the M-19 to enter into cease-fire agreements. At the same time there was an increase in vigilante groups in the country, which, depending on one’s point of view, were called either “self-defense” or “paramilitary” organizations. In many cases these groups represented attempts by landowners to protect themselves from guerrillas. Quite often the Colombian army helped equip and train the groups, which existed within the law and had been encouraged by the government since the 1960s.

The presidency of Virgilio Barco Vargas, a former mayor of Bogotá, began in August 1986 with hopes of improving civil order, but instead guerrilla groups became more active than ever, and paramilitary groups caused even more deaths than the leftist insurgents. Drug groups, especially the Medellín cartel, also began using terror to increase their bargaining power with the government. As a result, homicide became the leading cause of death in the country, and 1989 was the most violent year in Colombia’s brutal history, with more deaths per capita from violence than during any year of La Violencia.

Barco’s other main challenge was to reverse the long-term decline in the rate of economic growth, which was confounded by low efficiency in manufacturing. The discovery in 1985 of a large petroleum reserve was a major boost toward improving the economy and reducing Colombia’s dependence on external energy sources.

The drug trade, while always a political problem, was at times an economic asset, making annual trade balances positive when they were negative for legal goods. Further, as drug dealers became wealthier, they spent money refining cocaine, organizing groups for protection, and constructing buildings (both residential and commercial), ironically benefiting more Colombians than the legitimate economy.

In the 1990 presidential campaign, three candidates, including the poll-leading Liberal Luis Carlos Galán, and hundreds of other people were killed by drug traffickers in a backlash against tougher drug-trade policies. Despite threats of terrorism, however, about half of the population voted in the peaceful May election, which was won by former finance minister and hard-line anti-drug candidate César Gaviria Trujillo of the Liberal Party.

During the Gaviria years the question of continuing violence was addressed more than ever before. The president played a leading role by calling a constituent assembly, which replaced the 1886 constitution with the constitution of 1991; negotiating with the FARC and ELN, especially in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1991 and in Tlaxcala, Mexico, in 1992; and striking plea-bargain agreements with drug cartel chiefs and with paramilitary leaders.

The constitutional changes were significant, at least on paper. Presidents, who were limited to one term, were to be elected by an absolute majority, with a second-round vote if need be. The Senate was to be elected by a national constituency, which in theory gave minority parties a chance to elect a senator with only 1 percent of the vote. New electoral rights (including initiative and recall) were instituted, and a new National Prosecutor’s Office (Fiscalía) was set up to make the Colombian prosecutorial system more like that of the United States.

Gaviria’s negotiations with the guerrilla groups yielded no agreements. Plea bargaining did lead to the surrender of most leaders of the Medellín drug group, although the most notable one, Pablo Escobar, escaped after only 13 months in jail. (Following an extensive manhunt, Escobar was killed soon afterward by government forces.) Statistics indicate that violent activities were as common at the end of the Gaviria years as they were previously, despite the attempts to negotiate peace.

The Gaviria government continued the economic opening begun by Barco. In keeping with the neoliberal mood throughout Latin America, the Colombians began a new economic order, with lower tariffs on imports, fewer subsidies for the poor, and a lower role of the government in the economy. The fact that Colombia privatized fewer state-run industries than did other Latin American countries did not indicate a lower enthusiasm for the neoliberal order; rather, it reflected a lower level of initial governmental ownership.

The 1994 presidential election, the first under the new constitution, was won in the second round by Ernesto Samper Pizano, a Liberal, over the Conservative candidate, Andrés Pastrana. Samper’s entire term was coloured by the accusation made by Pastrana that he had an audiotape of Samper advisers bargaining with representatives of the Cali drug mafia for campaign contributions. Ironically, during the Samper presidency the leaders of the Cali cartel surrendered, were tried, and were sent to jail.

Although Congress later refused to impeach Samper, he was considered guilty by the extralegal guerrillas and paramilitary units and by the U.S. government. Violence increased over previous levels, and the paramilitary groups, under the leadership of Carlos Castaño, founded a national organization called the United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia), who emblazoned their group’s initials (AUC) across their battle fatigues but typically wore ski masks to conceal their identities.

The 1998 election was won by Pastrana, whose first years in office included controversial attempts to negotiate with the FARC and the ELN, such as granting them de facto control over a large portion of the southern state of Caquetá. Also during that period the Colombian economy entered its worst recession since the Great Depression.