LAND TENURE, AGRARIAN REFORM, AND FARC IN

COLOMBIA

By

Jorge E. Arboleda

Ph.D. program in Political Science, The Graduate Center of The City University of New York

2005

1

Table of Contents

Page1. Chapter One. Introduction: Land Tenure Patterns and Political Violence. 5

1.1. Land Tenure and Agrarian Reform as Cause of Violence.1.2 The Growth Of An Exclusionary Social System.1.3 Violence Explained Through Interest in Controlling Assets and Markets.1.4. This Thesis.

2. Chapter Two: The Origins of Colombia’s Conflict: Land Reform vs. Industrialization, and the Rise of FARC.

23

2.1. Politics, Agrarian Reform and Guerrillas Prior to La Violencia: 1930- 1948

30

The years of the Revolución en Marcha: The First Term of Alfonso López Pumarejo (1934-38).

34

La Revolución No Marcha: The Presidency of Eduardo Santos (1938-42), and the Second Term of López Pumarejo (1942-45).

37

The Mariano Ospina Pérez Years (1946-50). 392.2. Staging La Violencia: The Late 1940s 42Conclusion. 47

3 La Violencia: Policy Inconsistency, Political Frustration, and the Birth of FARC

49

El Bogotazo. 50 The Birth of Guerrilla Groups. 52 The Unfinished Gómez Term (1950-53). 58 A Welcomed Dictatorship: The Rise of Rojas Pinilla (1953-57) and

the First Amnesty. 63

Conclusion. 694 Readdressing the Land Question: The National Front, the Birth of FARC,

and the Development of a Pacifying Agrarian Reform Policy71

4.1. El Frente Nacional: Partisan Peace, and Guerrilla Demobilization, 1958-1970.

72

Launching El Frente: the Lleras Camargo years: Major Attempts to Demobilize Combatants.

73

The Birth of FARC. 76 Setting the Reforma Agraria: The Valencia-Lleras Restrepo Era

(1962-1970).80

4.2. The End of the Frente Nacional: a Period of Counter Reformism, Contra la Reforma, 1970- 1978.

82

Conclusion. 925 FARC: Political Participation, Narcotrafficking, and Land 94

5.1. The 1980s and the Beginning of the Peace Processes. 955.2. The 1990s: Narcotrafficking and the New Economy. 101

2

5.3. Land Policy in the 1990s. 1065.4. Peasants, Guerrillas, and Armed Violence 107

6 Party Differences over Agrarian Reform 1116.1. Partisan Approaches to Agrarian Reform. 1126.2. Interpretations to the Liberal Choice. 121

7 Agrarian Regional Structures, Land Tenure, and Political Violence. 127

7.1. Violence, Guerrillas and Agrarian Structures 131a. The Pre-Violencia: 1936-1948 131b. La Violencia: the 1950s. 132c. The National Front: 1958-1970. 133d. The Counterreformism of the1970s 134e. The 1980s’ Peace Process and the 1990s’ War on Drugs. 1367.2. Agrarian Structures and Violence in Colombia: Some Interpretations 136

8 Conclusion. 1427. Bibliography 155

List of Tables

No. Page1 Distribution of Land in Colombia, by number and size of farms, 1960. 272 Distribution of farming land, 1995. 283 Conservative and Liberal Urban Vote 1946-1949. 614 Peasant Land Invasions 1970-1978. 865 Lands Acquired By INCORA after Law 35 of 1982. 976 Agrarian Reform Laws and Liberal/Conservative Governments. 1237 Agrarian Regional Structures, Main Class Sectors and Their Demands. 1308 Classification of the Colombian Departments (States) According to their

Prevailing Agrarian Structures in The 1960s.130

9 Lands Acquired by INCORA 1962-1978. 13510 Lands Acquired by INCORA 1979-1995. 13611 Violence, Guerrilla Activity and Agrarian Structures. 139

List of Maps

No. Page1 Colombia 62 The Independent Republics 903 Agrarian Structures in Colombia 143

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To my father, a true fighter.

4

Chapter One

Introduction: Land Tenure Patterns and Political Violence.

“Three terrorist groups evidence both the motivation and the capability to attack the United States, thereby posing the greatest threat. Al Qaeda, Lebanese Hizballah, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [FARC] demonstrate the highest degrees of both hostility toward the United States as well as the ability to carry out sophisticated attacks. Some highly capable groups, such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, do not pose a significant threat to the United States because they have not demonstrated high degrees of anti-U.S. sentiment. By the same token, groups such as Jemaah Islamiya have demonstrated a willingness to attack U.S. citizens overseas but are unable to carry out large-scale operations. U.S. policymakers can use this framework to sort out which groups merit significant concern and which do not.” Cragin, R. Kim, and Sara A. Daly. 2004. The Dynamic Terrorist Threat: An Assessment of Group Motivations and Capabilities in a Changing World. The Rand Corporation. RANDMR-1782-AF, 2004. Research Brief, P. 1

This thesis will explore the relationship between the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias

de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) (FARC) and the land conflict

existing between the landowners and landless in Colombia. This thesis finds support for

the proposition that, first, struggles over land tenure and agrarian reform have created the

conditions for the pervasive civil conflict from the 1930s and, hence, for the emergence

and development of FARC.

Conflict over land has fueled the unrelenting civil strife in Colombia and many other

countries. In agrarian societies land is the people’s most important possession, and

conflict over land distribution pervades in rural and developing societies, especially those

with a legacy of colonialism. It is important for the analysis to understand the ties

between land conflicts in Colombia and the emergence and development of FARC as a

guerrilla group. By understanding the relationship between conflict and land issues,

scholars, activists and policy makers will be better able to develop strategic responses to

5

civil strife. Such understanding will also encourage scholars to approach civil conflicts

and their connection to the land problem, guerrilla warfare and armed militias, from a

different viewpoint.

FARC, is today one of the most active, largest, and oldest, guerrilla movements in the

world. Contrary to what is expressed on the epigraph above, this thesis demonstrates that

FARC is not merely a terrorist group but an armed politically oriented guerrilla

organization whose origins were fueled by the existence of a land tenure conflict in

Colombia. Originally inspired in the principles of Marxist-Leninist Communism, FARC

has evolved in line with Colombia’s developing socio-economic circumstances. Its

origins are deeply rooted in the land disputes of the 1930s in the States1 of Tolima and

Cundinamarca in central Colombia.2 FARC’s earliest activities began by giving political

and military support to landless peasants who fought wealthy landowners in the foothills

of Colombia’s Central Mountains during La Violencia (The Violence) of the 1940s and

1950s.3

Initially focused strictly on fighting for land rights for peasants, FARC’s activities

have evolved to incorporate current issues such as Colombian nationalism through its

opposition to foreign control of the economy, democratization by acting against the

1 I use the word “state” to translate the Spanish word “Departamento” which in Colombia is the equivalent of territorial units governed by elected governors, and departmental assemblies. 2Jiménez, Michael. 1990. “The Many Deaths of the Colombian Revolution: Region, Class and Agrarian Rebellion in Central Colombia.” Papers on Latin America # 13. New York: The Institute of Latin American and Iberian Studies, Columbia University. P. 22Also, Pizarro, Eduardo, 1992. “Revolutionary Guerrilla Groups in Colombia,” in Violence in Colombia: The Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspective. Ed. Bergquist, Charles et. al. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, P. 180. 3 The term “La Violencia” refers to a general violent uprising mainly in Colombia’s rural areas and small towns from 1946 to 1964. La Violencia’s statistics show that during that period between 200,000 to 400,000 people were killed in events related to political violence between Conservative and Liberal factions. For detailed information on La Violencia see Sánchez, Gonzálo. 1992. “The Violence: an Interpretive Synthesis.” in Violence in Colombia: The Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspective. Ed. Bergquist, Charles, et. al. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources. Ps. 75-124

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monopolistic Liberal-Conservative control of Colombia’s political institutions, and

human rights by denouncing violations perpetrated by the linkage between Colombia’s

military and paramilitary groups.4 During the last four decades FARC has grown from a

small-armed band of approximately 200 guerrillas in 1960 to today’s estimated 18.000

fighters.5 Currently, FARC’s main actions continue to be the targeting of wealthy

landowners and the government that represents the interests of Colombia’s upper classes,

in a civil conflict that only between January and October 2002 killed more than 23,000

people and displaced 231,000.6

FARC’s support in Colombia has derived from a political system that facilitates

institutional gaps allowing FARC to play different roles in the society. The political

system has allowed FARC to act as a guarantor of rights to citizens (especially the

landless peasantry) in ways the state has not. First, in matters of land tenure FARC’s

viability is depending on the existing contention between the landowning class and

landless peasants. By acting as a military and political force in the rural areas, FARC has

secured customary property rights for peasants thus gaining their support and confidence.

Second, FARC has also benefited from the very limited access to power given by the

4 Petras, James. 2000. “FARC Faces The Empire.” Latin American Perspectives, issue 114, vol. 27 No. 5 September 2000: 1345 It is hard to define exactly the number of FARC’s fighters. i.e. James Petras (2000: 134) estimates it at 18.000. The U.S. State of State provides an estimate of 9.000 to 12.000 (U.S. Department of State. Patterns of Global Terrorism 2000 Released by the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism. April 30, 2001. Appendix B: Background Information on Terrorist Groups)6 “United Nations. High Commission for Human Rights. Report of the High commissioner on the Human Rights Situation in Colombia. The United Nations Economic and Social Council, February 24th 2003. P. 17-26.

According to REUNA, an academic news link from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, in 2003 there were 33.206 violent deaths in the country, and 13.277 of those deaths were related to the political conflict. This number represented a 17.6 % decreasing of the number of violent deaths in relation to 2002 when the number of violent deaths rose to of 40.302. REUNA - Red de Extensión Académica de la Universidad Nacional, 23 de Septiembre de 2004/09/23 07:31:45. U:\thesis\articles thesis\violence-state\data univ. nal..htm. The Graduate Center of CUNY, Mina Rees Library, April 9, 2005: 4:30 pm.

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political system to the lower classes. FARC has filled such gaps by assuring its followers

they can obtain at least some of the gains they would get by openly participating in the

political system, through armed protest.

Some scholars traditionally have argued that the origins of the Colombian civil

conflict and FARC, especially during the period of La Violencia, are mainly rooted in

disputes between members of the Liberal and Conservative parties in the rural areas of

the country.7 This thesis demonstrates that these partisan disputes are more deeply related

to disagreements over land tenure and agrarian reform than to ideological disputes

between the two parties. Therefore, partisan violence has been nothing other than a

metaphoric representation of a deep conflict over the control of land. This conflict over

land has led to the formation and evolution of FARC, and today continues fueling

FARC’s raison d’etre as a military and political movement.

The evidence presented in this thesis supports that land tenure is the most

significant variable affecting violence in Colombia for two main reasons. First, political

violence is mainly affecting people in the countryside8 where land represents the main

asset in peasants’ patrimony and the basis of their livelihood. Second, in the countryside,

the people’s relationship with land is solidified, as there are no other job opportunities

than agricultural employment. As a result, most of Colombia’s conflict zones are located

in rural areas where families generally survive on the produce from very small

landholdings.

7 See: Weinert, Richard S.: “Violence in Pre-Modern Societies: Rural Colombia.” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 60, No. 2 (June, 1966), 340-47 p. 346. Also Sánchez, Gonzálo. 1992. “The Violence: an Interpretive Synthesis.” In Bergquist, Charles, et. al., 1992: 1058 Recent estimates support that 1,200,000 people have been displaced by the Colombian violence (58% being women and girls) in to the cities. Kay, 2001: 754.

8

Violence and guerrilla formation have also been fueled by the vacillating way the

political elites and the government have approached the land issue. In Colombia all

agrarian reforms had been superseded by counter reforms whose objectives have been to

take back some of the rights granted by the preceding reforms. For example, the agrarian

reform of 1936, which conditioned the rights of property to productivity of estates while

giving rights of property to squatters, colonizers,9 and sharecroppers, was superseded by

Law 100 of 1944. In this Law 100 the state shifted its objectives from strengthening

agrarian reform towards developing industrialization, affecting thus the interests of the

peasantry as the government’s support of programs in rural areas was cut. Such

inconsistency set a pattern along the Twentieth Century that, as it will be demonstrated,

has affected the levels of violence in the country.

This alternation of opposing policies has caused a succession of three full cycles in

which policy shifts have stimulated increasing or decreasing levels of rural violence and

guerrilla warfare. Thus, the first cycle starts with the enactment of the agrarian reform

Law of 200 of 1936 during the government of President López Pumarejo. Law 200

marked the starting point of a period in which peasants organized grassroots movements

in order to exercise pressure on the government to obtain land titles, and to counteract the

power of the landowners.

The second half of the first cycle, which lasted from the 1940s to the late 1950s, is

related to the implementation of polices congruent with the import substitution

industrialization model (ISI) that stimulated the industrialization policies of the Latin

9 Colonization is understood in this thesis as the activities developed by poor landless peasants in order to develop farming in the unspoiled regions of Colombia. It generally refers to small settlements of peasant families who live together in small villages or rural zones in order to develop new farms, and to obtain rights of property for such lands.

9

American governments of the 1940s and afterward.10 As a result, the governments of

President Eduardo Santos (1938-42) and second government of López Pumarejo (1942-

46) began a second half of a cycle in which industrialization was considered a priority

over agrarian reform. This period is marked by the enactment of agrarian reform Law 100

of 1944 which reinforced the landowners’ right to keep their properties contrary to Law

200 of 1936. During this period the peasantry reacted violently against the government

and landlord encroachments by joining early guerrilla organizations that had sprung from

the grassroots organizations of the 1930s. It was during this period when Colombia

registered the the highest levels of political violence during La Violencia of the early

1950s.

A second cycle, from 1958 to 1982, is marked by the readdressing of agrarian reform

policy as a way of decreasing the levels of violence after La Violencia of the 1950s,and a

further reversal of such reform during the 1970s. This cycle starts with the approval of

Law 135 of 1961 during the government of President Alberto Lleras. Law 135 revived

some of the provisions of the Law 200 of 1936 in order to diminish the effects of La

Violencia by granting land titles to peasants and former guerrillas. During the first half of

this cycle Colombia enjoyed a peaceful period from the late 1950s to 1970.

The second half of the second cycle, from 1970 to 1982, is marked by a reversal of

the agrarian reform policies begun in 1961. During the 1970s pro-landowner interests

gained control of the government and attempted to counterreform the agrarian reform

progress made during the 1960s. This period is marked by the enactment of Laws 4 and 5

of 1973 during the term of President Misael Pastrana (1970-74) and Law 6 of 1975

10 Glade, William P.1998. “The Latin American Economies Restructure, Again.” In Latin America: Its Problems and its Promise –a Multidisciplinary introduction. Ed. Jan Knippers Black.Third Edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. P. 153

10

during the government of Alfonso López Michelsen. These laws were enacted in

accordance with international policies that advocated for an agribusiness model in

developing countries while attacking the advances of the local agricultural development

model followed by the agrarian reform of 1961. 11 During this half of the second cycle

violence and guerrilla activity increased in Colombia as a consequence of the

counterreformation policies of the governments of Pastrana and López Michelsen.

The third cycle, from the early 1980s to the present, is marked by a period in which

the government, again, attempted to lessen the effects of violence through an agrarian

reform program which was part of a peace agreement, and later reversed agrarian reform

when neo-liberal policies were placed in the country during the 1990s. This cycle started

with the enactment of Law 35 of 1982 that revived some of the provisions of Law 135 of

1961 which had granted land titles to peasant colonos and former guerrillas., In contrast

to what happened during the first half of the second cycle, during this third cycle

violence did not decrease as expected because a new factor, narcotrafficking, began

affecting land tenure and agrarian reform in the country. Narcotraffickers were replacing

the old landowning class and had become radical in fighting peasant and guerrilla

organizations. From the 1980s to present times, narcotrafficking, mixed with ambivalent

agrarian reform policies, continued causing high levels of violence in Colombia.

This study, drawing on Zamosc’s 1986 Classification of the Colombian States

According to Their Prevailing Agrarian Structures in the 1960s, finds that there is a

correlation between the form of regional economic development and land tenure patterns

on the one hand, and guerrilla presence and political violence on the other hand. Thus, the

11 Tausssig, Michael. 1978. “Peasant Economics and the Development of Capitalist Agriculture in the Cauca Valley, Colombia.” Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 5, No. 3 Peasants, Capital Accumulation and Rural Underdevelopment (Summer, 1978), 62-91.

11

Colombian conflict has evolved differently in each particular area according to its

agrarian structure (See Table 8: the adaptation of Zamosc’s chart: Agrarian Regional

Structures, Main Class Sectors and Their Demands12 in Chapter Eight below). Each type

of agrarian structure is tied to different patterns of use and distribution of land that

ultimately generate distinctive characteristics and levels of violence and guerrilla

presence in the area. However, violence has spread out rapidly to all agrarian areas after

the 1970s when increasing narcotrafficking activities began in Colombia’s countryside.

Violence in Colombia persists as long as there is need for “extensive” land

concentration to ensure continual income growth by the landholding classes.13 This

phenomenon explains why even when the country receives immense income from drug

trafficking14 the conflict persists, because drug dealers play the same role as traditional

landowners as they attempt to increase control over the land in order to secure production

of illicit drugs. Therefore, the expansion of the narcotics industry has contributed to the

support of the guerrillas and other illegal armed groups since narcotrafficking, initiated

during the mid-1970s, reinforced and intensified the longstanding pattern of contention

between the landless and the narcotraffickers who have become new landowners.

Land ownership in Colombia is based on a model in which wealthy landlords are

mostly city-dwelling absentee proprietors who delegate land administration and

12 Zamosc, León.1986. The Agrarian Question and the Peasant Movement in Colombia. London: Cambridge University Press. P. 3113 Colombian scholar Alejandro Reyes explains that the buying of lands by narcotraffickers has increased the concentration of property in few hands, and, as a result, it has caused displacement of peasants to colonization areas and into the cities. Reyes Posada, Alejandro. 1995. “La Compra de Tierras por Narcotraficantes en Colombia.” In Machado, Absalón. 1998. La Cuestión Agraria en Colombia a Fines del Milenio. Bogotá: El Ancora Editores. P. 89 (Translation by author)14 Mauricio Reina writes that by 1994 narcotraffickers in Colombia had accumulated a total wealth of between U.S. $39 and U.S. $66 billion. In Reina, Mauricio. 2001. “Drug Trafficking and the National Economy.” In Violence in Colombia, 1990-2000. Eds. Charles Bergquist, Ricardo Peñaranda, and Gonzálo Sanchez.Wilmington: Scholarly Resources. P. 81

12

exploitation to their staff formed mainly of poor peasants.15 The state has reinforced this

structure, and prioritizes protecting property of the rich landlords over the interests of the

landless. In these circumstances the guerrillas have flourished, in a process very similar

to the one Elizabeth Wood elaborates in her analysis of the causes of the civil war in El

Salvador. Wood argues that the setting of an exclusionary social system based on

prevalence of a system that has assured the power of the elites and the exclusion of

peasantry has created the conditions for an unending conflict between the aristocracy and

the lower classes.16

In the case of Colombia, the power of the landowning elites has grown stronger

through their ability to control a government that has enabled them to take advantage of

different agrarian reform programs that originally were designed to protect the interests

of the landless. By pursuing policies to increase productivity, the Colombian government

has protected the interests of rich landowners who have enjoyed the benefits of low

interest credit, subsidized prices, and the development of infrastructure in order to

transform the wealthy landowning class into a group of export producers, while making

the peasantry into producers of products for domestic consumption. As Safford and

Palacios explain the logic of the process very clearly:

Redistributive policies, administered by the Instituto Colombiano de la Reforma Agraria (INCORA), were neutralized by other government policies favoring large landowners. The government encouraged increased productivity of large units by providing credit and machinery at subsidized prices and by undertaking costly irrigation projects. In this way the value of large landholdings

15 Bejarano Ávila, Jesús Antonio. 1997. Colombia: Inseguridad, Violencia y Desempeño en las Áreas Rurales. Bogotá: Fonade, P. 222 16 Wood writes: “The coalition of the economic and regime elites … forged a pattern of repressive labor relations and concentrated property rights that left a legacy of class relations whose enforcement and reproduction depended on the strong arm of an authoritarian state… This strategy of accumulation by force paid off for the elite and the state but… both indigenous and ladinized communities bore the costs, [to the point that] many Indian communities resisted and some revolted.” Wood, Elizabeth J. 2000. Forging Democracy From Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pages 25 and 28

13

was increased so much that they could not be expropriated with compensation. At the same time, government policies hurt peasant farmers by imposing controls on the prices of food. The legal administrative restraints placed upon INCORA and a wall of juridical formalisms in the process of acquiring lands were additional impediments to a more equitable distribution of land.17

1.1. Land Tenure and Agrarian Reform as Cause of Violence.

In the different cases of land disputes throughout Latin America, most of the violence has

not helped to free the lower classes from exploitation by the rich landowning class nor to

secure their control over the land. In many cases most of the violence has erupted as a

response of the elites in order to prevent the empowerment of dominated classes and to

reinforce the traditional power structures.18 On this basis, this study hypothesizes that a

causal relationship exists between Colombia’s land conflict and the formation of its main

guerrilla group, FARC, because a process of land concentration fuels the creation of an

exclusionary social system in which competitors (landowners and the landless) compete

for access to the one main resource, land.

Early in the Twentieth Century, the Peruvian scholar José Carlos Mariátegui

wrote on the relationship between violence and land, and on the creation of an

exclusionary social system as a result of the concentration of land in few hands:

In Peru communal property does not represent a primitive economy that has gradually been replaced by a progressive economy founded on individual property. No; the “communities” have been despoiled of their land for the benefit of the feudal or semi-feudal latifundium,19 which is incapable of technical progress.20

17 Safford, Frank and Marco Palacios. 2002. Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press Pgs. 309-10 18 Kay, Cristobal. 2001. “Reflections on Rural Violence in Latin America.” In Third World Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 5, pp. 741-775. P. 74119 The word Latifundio (in Spanish ) or Latifundium (Latin) is used in this thesis to indicate large landholdings (usually more than 500 hectares) which exploitation is mainly dedicated to cattle grazing or not mechanized agriculture. The word Minifundio or minifundium indicate small landholdings which extension vary between one and five hectares. 20 Mariátegui, José Carlos (1928). 1971. Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, P. 58

14

Mariátegui, a follower of Lenin, analyzed what he called the “Indian Question,”

i.e., the conditions of poverty and misery in which Peruvian indigenous people were

living. To Mariátegui, it was clear that the problem of land in Peru was the result of

colonization and the formation of an exclusionary system that empowered the landowners

at the expense of the indigenous’ and poor peasants’ labor. Therefore, to Mariátegui,

there was no other hope for the Peruvian peasantry than, as Lenin wrote years before, to

“prepare… not only to cut down the tares, but to reap the wheat of tomorrow.”21 Thus, by

drawing on Lenin, Mariátegui set the bases for understanding land conflicts as the origins

of widespread violence in Latin America.

In a more recent study Midlarsky (1992) has argued that the upsurge of violence

in the formation of democracies in agrarian societies is rooted in the land question.

According to Midlarsky, three models explain the origins of violence as related to the

land issue. In his first model, he suggests that the formation of inequality is due to the

“connection between agricultural density and land inequality. Increased density yields

increased inequality as the result of the increased land scarcity attendant on population

increase.”22 As I discuss below, most of the tragic events of La Violencia in the 1950s

21 “Our task is to fight the tares*. It is not our business to grow wheat in flower pots. By pulling up the tares, we clear the soil for the wheat. And while the Afanasy, Ivanoviches and Pulkeria Ivanovas (wealthy landowners of the time) are tending their flower –pot crops, we must prepare the reapers, not only to cut down the tares, but to reap the wheat of tomorrow.” In Tucker, Robert C. (Ed.)1975. The Lenin Anthology. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. P. 71. * Tares: Any of various weedy plants of the genus Vicia, especially the common vetch. Or any of several weedy plants that grow in grain fields. Also, as Lenin means it, “tares” is an unwelcome or objectional element, in this case, the power of the wealthy landowners. (Note by the author)

22 Midlarsky, Manus. 1992. “The origins of Democracy in Agrarian Society: Land Inequality and Political Rights.” In “The Journal of Conflict Resolution,” Vol. 36, No. 3 (Sep., 1992), 454-477. P. 458

15

were mainly located in the rural coffee area of Colombia where population density is

higher than in the rest of countryside.23

A second model elaborated by Midlarsky makes reference to Barrington Moore’s

(1966) findings on the relationship between democracy and violence. Midlarsky points

out that “violence is a midwife of democracy,” and that in this second model “land

inequality results in political violence which in turn leads to democratic reforms either

directly as a response to the violence or through a more complex revolutionary process

and its aftermath (e.g., the French Revolution).”24 A relationship between Midlarsky’s

second model and the formation of FARC can be inferred by analyzing the events that led

to the signing of the agreement between Colombia’s Liberal and Conservative parties in

1958. The agreement, called the National Front, led the early Liberal guerrillas and the

newly formed FARC to gain concessions for the landless peasantry.

Midlarsky’s third model explains the relationship between land inequality and

scarcity and the displacement of the landless to urban centers.25 This third model helps to

explain why the increasing violence during the late 1930s and 1940s in Colombia was a

reaction against the government’s shift from agrarian reform oriented policies towards a

pro-industrialization model. The government took the decision of shifting policies after

urban population increased. This caused afterwards the displacement of peasants who

23 Regarding population density in the countryside of Colombia, Safford and Palacios write: “The population in Colombia has clustered most densely in the highland regions, which provide an escape from heat and tropical diseases and where intermontane valleys offer favorable conditions for agriculture. About 9 percent of Colombia’s national territory lies between 1000 and 2000 meters (3300-6000 feet), on mountain flanks or intermontane valleys, where the climate is warm but comfortable (and where coffee farming can be very successful). Only 6 percent of the land is higher than 2000 meters (6600 feet), where the temperature is relatively cool, or at the higher reaches, even cold. Yet in the 15 percent of the country’s territory that lies above 1000 meters (3300 feet) live the overwhelming preponderance of the population –in the nineteenth century about two-thirds of the people, in 1964 a little more than three-fifths.” In Safford and Palacios, 2002: 324 Midlarsky, 1992: 46125 Midlarsky, 1992: 462

16

came to the cities attracted by the government’s industrialization projects while escaping

the waves of rural violence produced by the enmity between Liberals and Conservatives.

I will analyze the relationship between land scarcity and displacement when referring to

the policy changes generated by the government during the late 1930s and early 1950s. It

was during this period when the Colombian government shifted from its supported

agricultural export model and agrarian reform oriented policy, towards the development

of industrial programs focused on supporting the needs of an increasing urban population.

From the peasant’s viewpoint this shift represented an attack on the very identity of the

peasantry as a social group, and a strikingly clear sign that their very existence was being

threatened. The cutting of the government’s agrarian reform programs represented then

the enacting of policies in which the government stopped giving titles of state lands and

developing economic infrastructure that could finance the peasants’ living.

While authors such as Huntington (1968), and Midlarsky (1992) have found

strong connections between land maldistribution and the upsurge of violence, a more

recent wave of skepticism towards such relationship appeared during the late 1980s and

early 1990s. Muller and Seligson (1987) provide data in “Inequality and Insurgency”

supporting the assumption that “theories emphasizing land maldistribution as a

fundamental precondition of insurgency and revolution are misspecified.”26Muller and

Seligson based their claims on a response to Midlarsky’s three models in which

increasing population density and pressure over limited lands create discontent that is

expressed through violence. In response to Midlarsky’s findings on the origins of

violence in Nicaragua and El Salvador, Muller and Seligson state that “the fact that,

26 Muller, Edward N. and Mitchell A. Seligson. 1987. “Inequality and Insurgency.” In “The American Political Science Review,” Vol. 81, No. 2 (June, 1987), 425-452. p. 427

17

during the same period of time, two other Central American states, Costa Rica and

Panama, remained quite peaceful despite the presence of exactly the same preconditions

supposed to have caused insurgency in El Salvador and Nicaragua.”27 Muller and

Seligson conclude that income distribution was a more important factor in explaining the

origins of political violence rather than land distribution.28

Muller and Seligson’s findings created such an impact in the research field that

Midlarsky, Muller and Seligson, published a paper together explaining their differences.

Yet, in spite of their common effort, they kept their basic positions. Muller and Seligson

concluded that “the search for a systematic relationship between patterns of land

distribution and political violence has been long and frustrating. Supporters of the

hypothesis of this linkage would be disappointed by the results obtained by the

analysis.”29

In the same paper, Midlarsky concluded that his choice of land inequality as a

more important factor than the distribution of income was due to two main

considerations. First, land in agrarian societies is a fixed non-renewable resource, while

income in industrial societies can be generated and multiplied in expanding economies.

Second, scarcity leads to conflict when land represents a fixed resource.30 This thesis will

argue that in the case of Colombia, in spite of the reasons explained by Muller and

27 Muller and Seligson, 1987: 426. I should also add that “Between 1983 an 1985 (Costa Rica received) $592 million in U.S. economic aid [which] was equivalent to a staggering 35.7 percent of the Costa Rican government’s budget, one-fifth of export earnings and about 10 percent of GDP. By 1985 Costa Rica was the second highest recipient of U.S. assistance in Latin America, after war-torn El Salvador, and the second highest per-capita recipient in the world, after Israel.” In Edelman, Marc. 1999. Peasants Against Globalization: Rural Social Movements in Costa Rica. Stanford: Stanford University press. P. 7828 Muller and Seligson, 1987: 426.29 Muller, Edward N.; Mitchell A. Seligson; Hung –der-Fu; Manus I. Midlarsky. 1989. “Land Inequality and political Violence.” In “The American Political Science Review,” Vol. 83, No. 2 (June, 1989), 577-596. P. 58630 Muller, Seligson; Hung –der-Fu, and Midlarsky, 1989:594

18

Seligson to give priority to income distribution, land concentration plays an important

role in causing violence because access to land is related to income distribution for a

great part of Colombia’s population, even though Colombia’s colonization area is vastly

unspoiled.31

In 1990 Lichbach analyzed how inequality played a role in generating violent

conflicts. His findings, supportive of those of Muller and Seligson, concluded that

“inequality would never produce violent conflict among rational people,”32 and that the

nexus between inequality and violent conflict is spurious. For Lichbach, “violent conflict

may occur even in the best of times when rational but relatively deprived people make

Samson’s choice [of destroying the temple at the cost of killing himself].”33

Despite Muller and Seligson’s, and Lichbach’s findings on the relationship

between inequality and conflict, and the connection to land-violence, I present data to

show that land concentration is a highly significant variable affecting violence. In the

case of Colombia, as in El Salvador in Wood’s analysis, land accumulation generates the

formation of an exclusionary social system and creates conditions for competition and

discord. In agricultural societies, land forms the base of the economy, provides the raw

materials from which all wealth is established, and is a developing country’s most

marketable economic asset.

This thesis argues for land as a more significant variable in Colombia than income

distribution, for two main reasons. First, political violence mainly affects people in the

31 Safford and Palacios argue that 85 percent of the Colombian territory is used only by one third of the entire population and that the Eastern Llanos and Amazonian territory, which make 56 of Colombia’s land only contains one percent of the country’s population. Safford and Palacios, 2002: 332 Lichbach, Mark Irving. 1990. “Will Rational People Rebel Against Inequality? Samson’s Choice.” In “American Journal of Political Science,” Vol. 34, No. 4 (Nov., 1990), 1049-1076. P. 107233 Lichbach, 1990. 1072

19

countryside where land clearly represents the main asset in peasants’ patrimony and

forms the basis of their livelihood. Second, in the countryside, the people’s relationship

with land is solidified, as there are few viable opportunities for non-agricultural

employment. This is why most of Colombia’s conflict zones are located in rural areas

where families generally survive on the product from very small landholdings. Moreover,

people in these areas do not have access to secure non-subsistence employment because

the settlement pattern of a dense peasant population based on small landholdings does not

allow agri-businesses to acquire lands.

1.2 The Growth Of An Exclusionary Social System.

In Colombia accumulation of land fuels an exclusionary social system which relegates

those who do not possess land to the lowest strata of the society and, as a consequence,

denies them economic opportunities and social and political rights. Some political

scientists agree that the establishment of power relations based on wealth accumulation

generates a social order with two or more opposite groups divided basically between

those who control economic and political power and those excluded from such power.

For example, in the Liberian case Stephen Ellis explains the opposition between the

Americo-Liberians and the native Liberians:

During the heyday of the rule of the settler-dominated True Whig Party, which governed Liberia for all but six years between 1780 and 1980, elite families were intensely proud of their Christian heritage and American-style institutions of government and culture which marked them out from the despised ‘country people’ or ‘tribal people’, the name generally applied to Liberians of non-American origin…. Americo-Liberians, in fact, were as much a social and political class, a type of aristocracy, as they were a true ethnic group.34

34 Ellis, Stephen. 1999. The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War. New York: New York University Press. P. 43

20

In this case, as expressed by Ellis, the relationship between actors in the conflict is one of

exclusion mediated by patronage and clientelism. Access to power was defined by the

strength of the Liberians’ relationships with the True Whig Party. As Ellis explains:

The True Whig Party was able to run the system with little open dissent precisely because control was exercised through social networks…. Becoming part of the clique, faction or network… was the best way for those with ambition to secure preferential treatment, including the generation of the young, self-proclaimed ‘progressive’ politicians who led [the] opposition.35

In the case of Colombia, becoming part of the old landowning class became a step up the

ladder for political power. For example, during the Twentieth Century most members of

the political class were connected to the landowning elites, and they designed and

operated the policies on land reform that, in most cases, ended benefiting the landowning

class in detriment of the peasantry.36

In the context created under the rule of just one faction, access to power in Liberia

was conditioned by limiting opportunities to other factions to benefit from rights. This

allowed the existence of a system of social exclusion which generated violence as the

only recourse in changing radically the system itself and enhancing power in the hands of

the formerly excluded. As Ellis writes:

The maintenance of political control over a long period of time through manipulation of social networks was surely a prime reason why [and how] the war was fought…. Armed riding, ‘petty cannibalistic warfare’ in Harley’s phrase, was a means for young men to acquire wealth and to rise in status and power and was a form of factional struggle between rival families, political parties, and towns.37

35 Ellis, 1999: 62-5136 In the Colombian case, for example, “Policies, administered by the Instituto Colombiano de la Reforma Agraria (INCORA), were neutralized by other government policies favoring large landowners. The government encouraged increased productivity of large units by providing credit and machinery at subsidized prices and by undertaking costly irrigation projects.… At the same time, government policies hurt peasant farmers by imposing controls on the prices of food. The legal administrative restraints placed upon INCORA and a wall of juridical formalisms in the process of acquiring lands were additional impediments to a more equitable distribution of land.” In Safford and Palacios, 2002. Pgs. 309-1037 Ellis, 1999: 289

21

Paul Richards agrees that in Sierra Leone violence is also a response to a

profound system of social exclusion:

A mobilization of the youth on behalf of a small group of people angry at their exclusion from an opaque patrimonial political system serving mineral extraction interests…. The war in Sierra Leone drags on essentially because there are social factors feeding the conflict, and because the main rebel group feels it has not yet had an opportunity to get its political views across…. Long term patterns of ‘primitive accumulation’ of forest and mineral resources … have fed a modern politics dominated by patrimonial distribution…. The political elite builds support through distributing resources on a personal basis to followers. Relatively few resources are distributed according to principles of bureaucratic rationality or accountability…. The Sierra Leone war, it will be argued, is a product of this protracted, post-colonial crisis of patrimonialism.38

As in the Colombian case, Elizabeth Wood discusses the origins of the dispute

between El Salvador’s aristocracy and the country’s low classes in the prevalence of a

system which assured the power of the elites and the exclusion of peasants. 39 Also, a

point of comparison between Colombia and El Salvador’s land concentration effects -on

creating an exclusionary social system- can be extracted from Montgomery’s study of the

Revolution in El Salvador. Montgomery points out that in El Salvador, as in Colombia,

the developing of an enduring pattern of agriculture based on a system of monocrop

exploitation (Such as coffee, bananas and other export products), led to an increasing

concentration of land in few hands which “coupled with the utter deprivation of the

overwhelming majority of the population.”40 In Colombia, the case can be applied to the

country’s dependence on coffee exports during most of the Twentieth Century and the

further development of the drug industry and its need for increasing concentration of

land, as it will be supported by this thesis.

38 Richards, Paul. 1996. Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone . Portsmouth, NH: The International African Institute, IAI and Heinemann-James Currey. P.16439 Wood, 2000: 2540 Montgomery, Tommy Sue. 1995. Revolution in El Salvador: From Civil Strife to Civil Peace . Boulder, Co: Westview Press. Second Edition. P. 25

22

1.3 Violence Explained Through Interest in Controlling Assets and Markets.

In Colombia’s most conflictive zones, Peasant Economy Areas (PEAs) and Colonization

Areas (CAs) in process of peasantization (in Zamosc’s classification of 1986), land

constitutes an asset that allows individuals to support their living while at the same time it

also fuels contention and is the objective sought by the parties in conflict. Several recent

studies of internal wars find that assets such as land, buildings, infrastructure, minerals

and other extractable natural resources, are potential objectives of civil conflict. As seen

in some of the political science literature, resources such as land, coca plantations, and oil

in Colombia, diamonds in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Namibia and South Africa,

timber in Liberia, and buildings and land in Sudan, are subject of violent conflict.

As groups fight to obtain (or maintain) control over assets, this also means that

when one of the factions is in control of the sought-after assets, impoverishment of the

other faction is the most likely outcome. As Mark Duffield writes:

The coping strategies of losers, therefore, can become an important factor in the continued survival of more fortunate groups. From this perspective, the potential of asset transfer, while helping some, is also part of a process causing poverty and underdevelopment: resource depletion, the spread of absolute poverty and the collapse of social and economic infrastructure. 41

Control over assets has fueled many civil conflicts around the world. In Rwanda the Tutsi

control over markets, lands and government may have encouraged Hutus to participate in

the 1994 genocide as a way of alleviating the land shortage.42 In Colombia and Peru,

illegal production of drugs has played an important part in supporting insurgency and was

important to Sendero Luminoso’s financing. Oil has fueled guerrilla movements in

41 Duffield, Mark. 1994. “The Political Economy of Internal War: Asset Transfer, Complex Emergencies and International Aid.” In Macrae, J., and Zwi, A. B. (eds.). 1994. War and Hunger: Rethinking International Responses in Complex Emergencies. London: Zed Books. P. 5242 Keen, David. 1998. “The Economic Functions of Violence in Civil Wars.” “Adelphi Papers” No. 320. London: Oxford University Press. P. 47

23

Biafra, Sudan and Angola’s Cabinda enclave. In Colombia the National Liberation Army,

Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), acts as a rebel group which mostly concentrates

its attacks on the oil and gas infrastructure.43 Other examples can be taken from

Afghanistan’s conflict where warlords’ armies fight over control of trading routes and

illegal commerce of opium; or Colombia’s Drugs War where FARC operations are

mainly set in areas where coca is the main asset. Since assets form part of a widespread

economic system, dominion over assets, then, creates opportunities for violence because

groups need to establish control over such assets as a way to secure their prevalence in

power or to overcome the dominion of their competitors.

Paul Collier has supported the preeminence of economic factors in defining the nature

of wars by assuring that “conflicts are far more likely to be caused by economic

opportunities than by grievance. If economic agendas are driving conflict, then it is likely

that some groups are benefiting from conflict, and that those groups therefore have some

interest in initiating and sustaining it.”44

Confrontation between groups for controlling markets forms the basis for the

existence of violence in different countries. Some political scientists have developed

models which explain violence deriving from the economic relationship between actors

struggling to acquire legitimate domain over economic markets. William Reno has

studied how the peaceful stability of new political orders in Africa is dependent on the

definition of market agreements and control. “International borders and internal

bureaucracies become expensive liabilities, especially when targets of control are

43 Keen, 1998: 42-43 44 Collier, Paul: “Doing well out of war: an economic perspective.” In Mats Berdal and David M. Malone. 2000. Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars. London: Rienner-IDRC. P. 91

24

regional commercial networks.”45 Also, in Afghanistan Barnett Rubin calls attention to

the same issue in relation to the interest of warlords and armed groups in controlling

commercial routes and lands where opium grows.46

The cases mentioned in this introduction are cases where groups aim to control

markets as a way of gaining political prevalence over their adversaries. When markets are

at stake, all the assets included in the structure of such markets are potential resources to

control, including roads, production centers, distribution markets, financial offices, etc. In

the case of Colombia, the conflict over land in traditional coffee areas in earlier eras has

been broadened by the appearance of illegal drugs as a new marketable asset whose

production and distribution also require the control over lands.

1.4 This Thesis.

The information presented in this thesis supports the hypothesis that there is a causal

relationship between Colombia’s land conflict and the origins and evolution of FARC.

Chapter Two explains the relationship between Colombia’s FARC, and the land conflict

from the early 1930s to the late1940s. It argues that conflict over land fueled the violence

during that period. It analyzes the first half of the first cycle of agrarian reformism by

exploring how policy shifts, from state supported land and agrarian reform towards

government promoted industrialization, fueled the formation of early guerrilla

movements and their evolution, which later gave rise to FARC.

The formation and evolution of FARC is explained in this chapter as a direct result of

the political events related to land tenure and agrarian reform policy after the end of the

45 Reno, William. 1997. “War, Markets, and the Reconfiguration of West Africa’s Weak States.” In “Comparative Politics,” July 1997. P. 50546Rubin, Barnett. 2000. “The Political Economy of War and Peace in Afghanistan.” In “World Development.” (Great Britain). Vol. 28, No. 10. P. 1790

25

Conservative governments of the 1920s. Even though FARC appeared as a consolidated

guerrilla group in Colombia around 1964, its members have been active in predecessor

movements since the early agrarian struggles of the regions of Sumapaz and Viotá in the

1930s. Thus, FARC has developed its presence and military power mainly in the areas

where conflicts over land existed, and it has moved its areas of major activity as conflicts

over land moved.

Chapter Three argues that the way in which the governments of Colombia have dealt

with the agrarian problem, alternating between support for peasants and support for major

landlords and other powerful interest seeking to gain control of peasant lands, caused

political frustration among the peasantry which fueled the consolidation of guerrilla

groups and the resulting widespread political violence. This alternation in policies

throughout the 1930s and 1940s created the second half of the first cycle of agrarian

reformism in which peasants aspiring to own or to keep their land saw the enactment of

agrarian reform policies that during the 1930s benefited the peasantry, and then during

the 1940s and 1950s the enactment of new policies emphasizing industrialization that

took away such benefits. This fueled a sense of political frustration in which violent

armed response against the government and landowners was chosen as FARC’s and the

peasantry’s only recourse to obtain rights over the land. Thus, alternation of policies set a

pattern which further developments affected FARC’s formation and evolution, and

caused violence along the Twentieth Century.

Chapter Three analyzes the political events related to land and agrarian reform and

the formation of guerrilla groups during the period of La Violencia (1950-57). It

describes how policy shifts from agrarian reform and land reform towards a national

26

industrialization plan contributed to rising violence during that time. It covers the

governments of President Laureano Gómez (1950-53) and Dictator Rojas Pinilla (1953-

57).

Chapter Four analyzes how after the signing of the bipartisan agreement, The

National Front (1958), the relationship between the readdressing of the land reform

policy helped initiate a new peaceful period in Colombia during a second cycle of

agrarian reformism. It also analyzes the second half of this cycle of agrarian reform in

which the government reversed the progress made during the third cycle on matters of

agrarian policy. Chapter Four highlights the fact that by readdressing land and agrarian

reform policy to benefit the rebellious peasantry the government was able to lead a peace

process and to keep its legitimacy in the country. However, it also argues that the

reversing of the agrarian reform policy of 1960s caused an increase in the levels of

violence and guerrilla activity at the end of the second cycle of agrarian reform policy.

Chapter Four is divided in two main sections which coincide with the first and second

halves of the second cycle of agrarian reformism. Section 4.1, El Frente Nacional: 1958-

1970, analyzes the end of La Violencia through the setting of the bipartisan agreement

The National Front and the restoration of agrarian reform as a leading policy aimed to the

pacification of the guerrillas during the governments of President Lleras Camargo (1958-

62), Guillermo León Valencia (1962-66), and Carlos Lleras Restrepo (1966-70). Section

4.2, The End of the Frente Nacional: Contra la Reforma 1970-1978, analyzes how policy

shifted from emphasizing a national agrarian reform program that focused on supporting

peasants’ production and local agricultural development during the National Front, to a

new policy of agro-industrial production (agri-business) and agrarian counter-reformism

27

during the periods of Presidents Misael Pastrana (1970-74) and López Michelsen (1974-

78). The new laws reduced the security of peasant land tenure and constrained political

participation by peasant organizations, causing guerrillas’ activity to revive and to

increase political violence.

Chapter Five, which examines the third cycle of agrarian reform, argues that denial of

political participation for FARC, repression from the government, and the dirty war

initiated by the military-supported death squads caused FARC’s recourse to violence

during the 1980s and 1990s. Narcotrafficking during the same period affected prices and

access to the land but also gave a chance to FARC to finance itself after the support from

Soviet and Cuban international Communism ended with the end of the Cold War.

Narcotrafficking created a new dynamic in the Colombian conflict which took violence to

a bigger scale than ever before in the country. Policy shifting continued during these two

decades fueling FARC’s reasons to join a peace process or reasons to rebel against the

government.

Chapter Five concludes that after the appearance of narcotrafficking, violence in

Colombia persists because narcotrafficking requires intensive land concentration in order

to succeed in today’s drug markets. Violence continues because drug dealers need to

increase their control over the land in order to secure production of illicit drugs. By the

same token, the guerrilla organizations try to increase control over increasing territory in

order to increase their own military and political power. And, at the same time, the

landless peasantry tries to acquire land and to persevere as a social group.

Chapter Six examines the roles of Colombia’s two principal political parties. It

demonstrates that Colombian Conservatism is congruent with landlordism and policies

28

favoring concentration of ownership, and that Liberalism is closer to agrarian-reformism.

It underlines the fact that most Colombian agrarian reform laws have been approved

under Liberal governments and attacked by the opposing Conservative party. 47 As a

consequence of this relationship historically in Colombia there has been a relationship

between Conservatism and landlordism; and between Liberalism and agrarian reform

until the 1970s. This relationship may have brought other scholars to conclude that

Colombia’s conflict was mainly based on the ideological disputes between the two parties

rather than on the existence of a land conflict.

Chapter Seven takes Zamosc’s typology of land tenure patterns and shows how each

of four typical Colombian agrarian structures presents a specific use and distribution of

land that in the end shapes the characteristics and levels of violence and guerrilla

presence in each agrarian structure area. It shows how the evolution and levels of

violence in Colombia’s conflict were mainly located within rural areas characterized by a

Peasant Economy Areas (PEAs), but that with land tenure changes and drug trafficking

the conflict intensified in other areas such as the Colonization Areas (CAs), Traditional

Latifundia Areas (TLAs), and Agrarian Capitalism Areas (ACAs).

Chapter Eight summarizes and draws the conclusions of the study.

47 Liberals have been more likely to approve policies of agrarian reform in Colombia than Conservatives. As Duff writes: “The most effective implementators of agrarian reform in Colombia have been the Liberal party, under the astute leadership of Carlos Lleras Restrepo, and the Catholic Church.” Duff, Ernest Arthur, 1964. “Agrarian Reform in Colombia: Problems of Social Reform.” Ph.D. diss. University of Michigan. P. 330

29

Chapter Two

Land Reform vs. Industrialization, and the Rise of FARC, 1920s-1948.

“On the land we are born, from it we live, to it we return again -- children of the soil as truly as is the blade of grass or the flower of the field. Take away from man all that belongs to the land, and he is but a disembodied spirit. Material progress cannot rid us of our dependence upon land.”

Henry George – Progress and Poverty

This chapter explores the relationship between Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces,

FARC, and the land conflict from the early 1930s to the late 1940s. It argues that conflict

over land ostensibly fueled the violence during that period. It also considers on how a

policy shift, from state supported agrarian reform towards government promoted

industrialization, fueled the formation of early guerrilla movements and their evolution,

which later originated FARC.

My intention here is to analyze the land and political disputes during the 1930s

and the appearance of the armed movement that preceded the formation of the guerrillas,

prior to and after the enactment of the agrarian reform of 1936. Chapter Two highlights

the agrarian-related events of first cycle of agrarian reformism when landowners often

usurped lands worked by peasant colonos48 in regions where the land was usually owned

by the state. It also draws from the consequences of the policy shift from the government

strongly supported agrarian reform between 1934 and 1938, to the beginnings of a

48 The word Colono refers to “peasant colonizer” in the Colombian vocabulary. Colonization is understood here as the activities developed by poor landless peasants in order to develop farming in the unspoiled regions of Colombia. It generally refers to small settlements of peasant families who live together in small villages or rural zones where the land belongs often to the State. Colonos move to these “colonization” areas in order to develop new farms, and to obtain rights of property for such lands in an analogous way as the American “homesteaders,” who looked after being granted property of their processed lands through the Homestead Act of 1862.

30

government supported industrialization plan during the governments of Presidents Santos

(1938-42) and Ospina Pérez (1946-50). It takes into account the period from the first term

of President Alfonso López Pumarejo (1934-38) to the presidential term of Mariano

Ospina Pérez (1946-50).

A process in which the Colombian government’s agrarian reform policies have

affected the levels of violence and political conflict during most of the Twentieth century

is analyzed in this chapter. The formation and evolution of FARC is explained here as a

direct result of the political events related to land tenure and agrarian reform policy since

the end of the Conservative governments of the 1920s. Even though FARC appeared as a

consolidated guerrilla group in Colombia around 1964, its members and politics had been

forming and evolving since the early agrarian struggles of the regions of Sumapaz and

Viotá between the states of Tolima and Cundinamarca in the 1930s. Thus, FARC has

developed its presence and military power mainly in the areas where conflicts over land

existed.

Whenever the government has supported positive changes in favor of making

agrarian policies friendlier to the interests of the peasantry, particularly by providing

peasants with access to title to the lands they worked, the levels of violence and political

conflict declined in rural areas. For example, during the 1930s, when the governments of

Olaya Herrera (1930-34) and López Pumarejo (1934-38) were deeply concerned about

finding solutions to the land problem, the levels of political conflict were low. Violence

rose in the 1940s and 1950s during the governments of Santos (1938-42), López

Pumarejo’s second term (1942-46), Ospina Pérez (1946-50), and Laureano Gómez (1950-

53) because their governments favored industrialization and reversed the policies

31

favoring agrarian reform. afterward, during the Governments of Lleras Camargo (1958-

62), Guillermo León Valencia (1962-66), Lleras Restrepo (1962-66) when programs of

agrarian reform were priority objectives of such governments. Again, levels of violence

increased during the 1970s when the governments of Pastrana (1970-74) and López

Michelsen (1974-78) repressed the peasant organizations and suppressed the benefits of

the agrarian reform of the 1960s.49

This alternation of opposing policies has originated a succession of cycles in

which policy shifts have stimulated increasing or decreasing levels of rural violence and

guerrilla warfare in the country. Chapter two analyzes the first cycle and its relation to the

enactment of the agrarian reform Law 200 of 1936 during the government of President

López Pumarejo. Law 200, which attempted to give rights of property to peasants

possessing de facto lands, caused a reaction from landowners who quickly moved to

usurp property rights to state lands that were already possessed by poor colonizers. The

enactment of Law 200 originated a period in which peasants organized grass roots

movements in order to exercise pressure on the government to obtain land titles, and to

counteract the power of the landowners.

The alternation of policies favoring peasant interests with policies harming the

interest of the peasantry has caused political frustration50 among the peasants, and thus

created favorable conditions for the consolidation of guerrilla groups like FARC, and the

resulting widespread political violence. The constant policy shifts throughout the

Twentieth Century have created a process in which peasants aspiring to own the land

49 For information on violence and peace agreements before Law 135 of 1961 see Henderson, 1985: 206 and ss. For information on agrarian reform and violence after 1961 see Zamosc, 1986: 3.50 Political Frustration is understood as in Fals Borda: “[The peasantry] frustrated in their expectations became embittered and irrational, producing a wave of destruction.” Fals Borda, Orlando. 1969. Subversion and Social Change in Colombia. New York: Columbia University Press. P 143-44

32

have seen the enactment of a number agrarian reform policies that sometimes give

benefits to the peasantry, and that at other times take away such benefits. For example the

enactment of the agrarian reform law of 1936 which gave land rights to squatters and

colonizers on idle land while conditioning land ownership to successful economic

exploitation was undermined by the Law 100 of 1941 which reassured the land

ownership rights of landowners over unexploited lands. This created a sense of political

frustration in which violent armed response against the government and landowners has

been chosen as the only recourse for the peasantry to obtain benefits.

As the process continues, both peasants and landowners compete to obtain more of

the limited resource of land. This generates a continuous cycle in which sometimes

landowners are strong enough to convince the government to legally change the agrarian

laws and to take away lands possessed and developed by peasant workers. Other times

the cycle reverses and after strong displays of violence, the government approves

agrarian reform laws granting them rights over some lands. Because the cycle keeps

changing directions, agrarian reform policies can not be relied upon. Therefore, the

conflict continues and intensifies as the peasant guerrillas and their organizations realize

that, after many reforms and changes, they still have not obtained full rights of property

over the land subject of their struggle.

Colombia’s land ownership pattern is one of the most concentrated in the world (see

tables “Distribution of Land in Colombia, by number and size of farms, 1960” and

“Distribution of farming land, 1995”), and this has led to a repertoire of contention

between the traditional landowning class of the country and the landless. Almost seventy

years after the enactment of the first Colombian land and agrarian reform (Law 200 of

33

1936) land is still one of the most concentrated in the world. In 1998 a million small

farming units held only 5.2 percent of Colombia’s farmed area. The size of each unit was

not even three acres, and most of them were located in eroded, hilly, and mostly

unproductive land. On the other hand, 40 percent of the land used for agriculture and

cattle ranching was owned by 1.7 percent of Colombia’s landowners.51

Table 1.

Distribution of Land in Colombia, by number and size of farms, 1960

Agricultural Census, 1960

Size of Farms(Hectares)

Number of Farms (000’s)

Percentage Area in Hectares (000’s)

Percentage

Under 4.9 756.6 62.6 1,238.9 4.55.0-9.9 169.1 14.0 1,164.7 4.3

10.0-19.9 114.2 9.4 1,572.1 5.720.0-49.9 86.8 7.2 2,638.6 9.750.0-99.9 39.9 3.3 2,680.4 9.8

100.0-499.9 36.0 3.0 6,990.4 25.6500.0-999.9 4.1 0.3 2,730.7 10.00ver 1,000.0 2.7 0.2 8,321.6 30.4

Total 1,209.6 100.0 27,337.8 100.0Source: DANE, Censo Nacional Agropecuario, 1960. In Zamosc, 1986: 24

Table 2

Distribution of farming land, 1995

Size(Hectares)

% of the total of farms % of Colombia’s land % of estates’ land used for agriculture

Very Small(0-5)

46.8 3.2 38.6

Small(5-20 )

27.5 9.9 22.9

Medium (20-50 )

12.8 13.8 12.7

Large (50-200 )

10.2 33.3 6.9

Very Large (More than 200 )

2.8 39.9 2.5

Source: Fajardo, 2002: 22

51 Safford and Palacios, 2002: 309

34

Table 1, Distribution of Land in Colombia, by number and size of farms, 1960, shows

that the pattern of land ownership in Colombia presents a high concentration of property

in few hands. While in 1960 a million small farming units held 15 percent of all

agricultural land, in 1998 a million of small farming units formed only 5.2 of the farmed

area. Comparison between Table 2, Distribution of farming land, 1995, also show that

large estates represented only 2.7 of the total number of properties in 1960, and 2.8 in

1995, while they held 40.4 percent of the land in 1960 and 39.9 in 1995.

The Colombian Violencia of the 1950s began in areas where land conflicts were highly

developed on the basis of land scarcity. Conflicts over land had existed in such areas

since early in the Twentieth Century, and its roots, as some scholars agree,52 went much

deeper than political infighting between Liberals and Conservatives during the times of

La Violencia. However, another group of scholars preferred to relate Colombia’s conflict

mainly to the people’s “deep seated loyalties to the two historic parties.”53

During the first years of conflict, at the end of the 1940s, Colombian peasants

developed ways of keeping landlords out of their territory by joining small guerrilla

groups that the government called “Bandoleros” (bandits). After El Bogotazo,54 more

organized guerrilla groups appeared in central Colombia (States of Cundinamarca and

Tolima) in order to secure land for peasants. Most of them were founded with the support

of the Liberal Party (PLC) or the Colombian Communist Party (PCC) after some party

52 for example, Legrand, Catherine. “Agrarian Antecedents of the Violence.” In Bergquist, et. al. 1992: 31-74 53 See Dix, Robert H. “Consociational Democracy: The Case of Colombia.” In Comparative Politics, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Apr., 1980), 303-321. P. 304, 54 El Bogotazo was the uprising that followed the killing of Liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitán in Bogotá in April 9, 1948. A journey of riots, chaos, generalized assaulting, and killing between Liberals and Conservatives led to the destruction of the city’s center, its commerce, the well kept trolley system, and the killing of more than two thousand people. Leo-Grande, William and Kenneth E. Sharpe. 2000: “Drugs and Guerrillas: Colombia's New Violencia.” In World Policy Journal, Vol. XVII, No. 3, Fall 2000; P. 3

35

leaders had taken part in training and forming peasant organizations in central Colombia

during the 1930s.55 These guerrilla groups were formed in areas where organized peasants

had received incentives from the agrarian reform law of 1936 such as land titles and

government aid to become settlers or homesteaders and develop small agricultural

enterprises.

During 1949 and the early 1950s the Liberal Guerrillas, as they were called,

became involved in regions where conflict over lands and businesses between organized

partisan factions was present, and where the state had a minimal presence.56 In doing so

the guerrillas filled a key role by acting as para-state organizations giving a sense of

order within the confines of regions or municipalities. These precursors to FARC began

their activities as Liberal Guerrillas in regions with a tradition of land ownership disputes,

such as the States of Huila, Tolima, and the region of the Eastern Llanos.57 These

peasants, at the time, were known as squatters or “colonizers” by the landowners, who

were trying to dispossess the peasants and obtain property rights over the lands the

peasants were occupying. In most of the cases these lands were state owned lands

(“baldíos”) which had been worked and developed by the colonizers, and not private

property previously owned by the landlords.

2.1. Politics, Agrarian Reform and Guerrillas Prior to La Violencia: 1930- 1948

Land ownership disputes between wealthy landowners and landless peasants created the

conditions for the formation of guerrilla violence in the central region of Colombia which

55 See Jiménez, Michael, 1992: 2256 See Pizarro, Eduardo. “Revolutionary Guerrilla Groups in Colombia.” in Bergquist, et. al., 1992: 169-194. Also, Molano Alfredo. “Violence and Land Colonization.” in Bergquist, et. al., 1992:. 195-216.57 “By mid 1950 the Llanos force stood at some 2,500 men operating under a central command. Elsewhere guerrilla units totaled roughly 2,000 men operating independently of one another in the several States of central Colombia.” In Henderson, James D. 2001. Modernization in Colombia: The Laureano Gómez Years, 1889-1965. Gainesville, FL: The University Press of Florida. P.322

36

include the States of Tolima, Cundinamarca, and Huila. Such disputes go back as far as

the 1870s and increased continuously until the breaking of the period of la Violencia in

the early 1950s. Colonizers and landless peasants in many cases worked for the land

owners as sharecroppers or, in other cases, were renters living within the large haciendas

(estates) of the area. Disputes between the two developed after peasants expressed desire

to own lands they had worked for generations but whose titles of property were also

claimed by the wealthy hacendados (landowners). In addition, these hacendados

depended on the labor force represented by the landless peasant colonos (colonizers) in

order to exploit their estates. Therefore, when peasants were granted property rights over

plots of land they preferred to work their own lands and, as a result, disappeared as labor

force available to the landowner. This situation incited the landowning class to fiercely

oppose government’s proposals for granting property rights to landless peasants. 58

In most of the cases in the states of Tolima, Cundinamarca, and Huila the struggle

between landowners and landless peasants was due to unclear titles of land ownership.

Most of the wealthy landowners based their claims on old and confusing titles granted

either during the Colonial period or during the early years of the Republic in the

nineteenth century. Such haciendas increased in land extension mainly because in most

cases they were located close to lands belonging to the state, and as the international

agricultural market increased toward the end of the nineteenth century and the first half of

the twentieth century, landowners and peasants saw opportunities to expand their profits

by exploiting state lands. Both landowners and peasants asked the government to grant

58 For information on the exploitation model of estates (haciendas), colonization, and the relationship between landowners, sharecroppers, and colonizers see Legrand, Catherine. “Agrarian Antecedents of the Violence.” In Bergquist, et. al. 1992: 35

37

property titles over the farmed lands on the basis that they had worked such plots and

transformed them into productive farmable lands.59

The government tried to resolve the peasants’ claim but in doing so it found itself

caught between the interests of landowners and peasants. Adding to the struggle between

landowners and peasants was that of the indigenous groups of Tolima who also were

fighting the landowners to recover their old dissolved communal lands or resguardos.60

During the late 1920s Tolima was famous as the place where the indigenous leader

Manuel Quintín Lame protested to gain recognition of indigenous rights to their land.

The eight men who governed Tolima during the thirties would have breathed a bit easier had only Conservative-Liberal feuding broken State calm. Unfortunately for them, two other conflicts troubled their tenure. The more complicated and far-reaching was strife between renters and the owners of large commercial coffee farms in eastern parts of the State; the other involved Indians of south central Tolima and their struggle to maintain the integrity of their resguardo lands.61

As a result of the many heated disputes over land, mainly between peasants and

landowners, and between indigenous communities and landowners, the Tolima

government realized that protecting the rich landowners was not in its best interest, as

most of the electorate was landless. By 1928 the government enacted decree number

59 Legrand’s “Agrarian Antecedents of the Violence” is a great source on the consolidation of rural properties in Colombia and the resultant conflict between landowners and peasant colonizers between the 1870s and the 1930s. In Bergquist, et. al. 1992: 31-5060 Regarding to the disputes between Indians and landowners, Henderson writes: “To strike at Indian ethnicity and to open “unproductive” lands to non-Indians, the resguardos [indigenous communal lands] came under attack in a series of laws and decrees formulated in Tolima between 1877 and 1924. By the 1920s, it seemed that nothing could save the lands from dispersal and probable absorption by surrounding haciendas…. But in April, 1922 a remarkable man appeared in southern Tolima who led the Indians in a long campaign against white encroachment. Manuel Quintín Lame, an Indian militant from the Valle del Cauca, was already well known in Colombia. After more than a decade of activity, he was driven form his home and ultimately settled in Tolima. Called “Jefe Supremo” by his followers and “Indio hijo de puta” by whites, he used every legal means at his disposal to protect the resguardos.” In Henderson, James D. 1985. When Colombia Bled: A History of the Violencia in Tolima. University of Alabama Press. P. 75 61 Henderson, 1985: 74

38

1,110 that opened a series of new lands to colonization in an area between Tolima and

Cundinamarca. Henderson writes:

In June 1928 a juridic storm cloud appeared over the verdant haciendas. The Colombian Supreme Court ruled that a large amount of land in the Sumapaz region of Cundinamarca and Tolima was open to colonization, and the specific areas of settlement were spelled out in presidential decree #1,110 of that year. At about the same time, President Miguel Abadía Méndez decreed that every citizen possessing more than 500 hectares of land had to register the title with the minister of industries to aid in the search for petroleum within national territory. Neither law was in itself particularly dangerous to the interests of latifundistas. Decree #1,110 clearly delimited the area of colonization to baldío lands [land owned by the State] except for four unexploited haciendas in the municipio of Cunday.62

But instead of satiating the desire for land, application of the decree only

increased the campesinos’ appetite for colonizing not only the lands belonging to the

state but also the uncultivated lands held by the hacendados (owners of large estates),63

whose property rights were not clear at the time. In addition, many large estate owners

decided to expel renters and sharecroppers from their properties because of fear of losing

their lands.64

Compounding the landowners’ fears, the government obliged them to prove

ownership, which was no simple task since their titles of were not clear either in showing

the limits of their properties nor in their legal history. “Most of them [the landowners]

knew that they could not produce title to all of the land they claimed because they had

62 Henderson, 1985: 7863 Henderson writes on how peasant colonizers were encouraged by Law 200 of 1936 to claim ownership over plots of land: “Now that the government was encouraging new colonization in the region, campesinos logically expected that unused portions of the haciendas were open to them also. Many proceeded to establish homesteads there, and, if they had previously lived on the property as renters, stopped paying. When the hacendados [landowners] tried to expel them, the colonos [colonizers] just smiled and asked to see their title to the land. All over eastern Tolima, land invasions took place in increasing numbers during the late 1920s and early 1930s, while local bureaucracies tried frenetically (sic.) to stop them. In some cases, detachments of the national army were used to expel invaders.” Henderson, 1985:7864 Safford, Frank. 1995. “Agrarian Systems and the State in Colombia.” In Agrarian Structure and Political Power: Landlord and Peasant in the Making of Latin America. Eds. Evelyne Huber and Frank Safford London: University of Pittsburgh Press. P. 140

39

illegally taken over chunks of the national domain [state lands] and added them to what

may have originally been rather modest holdings.”65

Decree No. 1,110 continued to have unexpected results. While government

intended for the decree to defend the property interests of the landlords, the decree

inadvertently encouraged peasants to interpret the decree in their own interests. 66 As a

result, by the early 1930s the States of Boyacá, Tolima, Cundinamarca, and Magdalena

were suffering the conflicts between landowners and squatters. The latter, with Decree

1,110 as a legal base, invaded lands with unclear ownership. While the landowners tried

to avoid the invasions of the squatters, or to give any chance to them to present legal

claims over the landowners’ estates. Liberal President Enrique Olaya Herrera attempted

to solve the problem by presenting in 1933 a bill to congress reforming Decree 1,110, and

enacting a law aiming to stop the land problems by granting land to those claiming it,

mainly renters, sharecroppers, and colonizers. The bill did not pass but later, during the

term of his successor, Alfonso López Pumarejo, the same bill became Law 200 of 1936,

or the first Colombian agrarian reform law.67

The years of the Revolución en Marcha: The First Term of Alfonso López

Pumarejo (1934-38).

In 1934 the election of the Liberal candidate, Alfonso López Pumarejo, to the

presidency marked the beginning of a modern economic plan based on a constitutional

reform that allowed the development of an agrarian reform program. López believed that

there was a need to reform Colombia’s constitution because the 1886 constitution did not

65 Henderson, 1985: 7866 Henderson, 1985: 79-8067 Duff, 1964: 25

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require that property perform a social function. López based his claims on the fact that,

through the 1886 constitution, landowners could keep as much land in their hands as they

were granted property titles to, without being required to exploit such lands. According to

López, ownership over land needed to function in a way that would better the life of both

owners and workers and would foster dynamic production and markets. López

represented an interventionist liberal idea of the state, in which protection of landowners

was considered damaging to the economy because it generated monopolies.68

The López government convinced congress to approve the 1936 agrarian reform

in order to stop monopolies over lands and to reactivate the economy in those years of

economic depression (the crisis of 1929 was still affecting Colombia). The reform, also

known as Law 200 or the Ley de Tierras,69 granted lands to colonizers of state lands and

to organized peasant workers who demonstrated they had worked their possessed lands

long enough to transform them into productive units. The provisions of the reform

“pressured large landowners [who did not exploit their lands] to exploit their properties

or to face expropriation.”70

The agrarian reform law of 1936, as it created incentives to peasants to organize

and to raise petitions for land titles, also influenced the later development of the

organized guerrillas that appeared in the bordering region of the states of Tolima,

68 See Stoller, Richard. 1995. “Alfonso López Pumarejo and Liberal Radicalism in 1930s Colombia.” In Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 27, No. 2 (May, 1995), 367-397. P. 367, and 373.69 “In 1936 the Liberal dominated congress passed Law 200, a package of provisions aimed at providing more security to the thousands of people who occupied lands that were tied up in litigation over ownership. In the first article, priority ownership of land was granted to those who actually lived on it, and claimants needed to show proof that their title had been granted before the year 1821 in order to retain possession. Eviction of squatters dropped sharply as a result of the provision. The second article founded on a revolutionary phrase from the constitutional revision of 1936: Property is a social function which implies obligations”. Hence landownership carried with it the obligation to exploit it productively and any privately owned land lying fallow for ten years was liable to expropriation by the state.” Henderson, 1985: 8270 Stoller, 1995: 367

41

Cundinamarca, and Huila after the Bogotazo. The geographic location of the early

guerrillas of the late 1940s and 1950s was in the same area where Liberal and Communist

leaders organized peasants to fight for lands illegally occupied by wealthy landowners.

The guerrillas’ modus operandi began typically connected to the development in this area

of farming communities similar to those developed in the Sumapaz during the land

disputes of the 1930s. These similarities help to conclude that not only the effects of the

agrarian reform of 1936, but also the levels of organization of the peasantry in central

Colombia, influenced the later development of the modern guerrilla organizations.

The application of Law 200’s provisions did not initiate a peaceful period in the

country. The government’s application of Law 200’s dispositions served as a warning to

the majority of landowners and united them against the government.71Conservative

politicians and landowners joined forces to fight for what they considered their natural

right to keep property free from government intervention. At this time it was clear that

the government was not taking only the side of the dispossessed but acting in its own

interest of empowering itself by acting as designer and operator of a more modern

economic plan. By empowering the peasants’ popular movement against the rich

landlords, the government gained a degree of independence and decision making power

unprecedented in the Twentieth Century, while also setting the basis of a more efficient

economy.

71 Henderson writes: “The day before being sworn in he [López] answered them [the hacendados] in a much-publicized letter that gave every landowner in the nation cause for worry. ‘The law shall not place itself at unconditional service of injustice’, he began, striking a forceful and slightly self-righteous note. He went on to state that, though the country’s law was written to defend property, his government was not disposed to ‘the bloody application of juridic concepts which permit unlimited abuse of the right to possess land without exploiting it’ and that he fully intended to ‘raise the standard of living of the campesinos, and bring about efficient land exploitation by owners.’ This, Colombians reflected, did not sound like the sort of presidential rhetoric they were used to hearing.” Henderson, 1985: 81

42

Unfortunately for the people of Tolima and most of Andean Colombia, the

Reforma Agraria of 1936 was not able to end conflicts over land. The law created a

climate of fear within the landowning class who, in response to the possibilities of being

expropriated, began forcing out renters and sharecroppers from their estates. In addition,

the law was blamed for eliminating the food plots once cultivated by tenants and

sharecroppers in such estates, thus raising the prices of food mostly in the coffee areas,

and, as a result, increasing coffee’s production costs.

The old political struggle between Liberals, Conservatives, and Communists

played a role in the way peasants accessed to the benefits of Law 200. For example, in

Tolima, a long period of Liberal government post 1930 allowed the Liberal party to

occupy all of the State’s official positions in detriment to the Conservative opposition.72

The situation was also reflected in the way the campesinos obtained ownership of the

land through the provisions of agrarian reform. Generally, in Liberal municipalities, the

Liberal bureaucracy favored their co-partisans when obtaining property titles. Likewise,

in Conservative municipalities, Conservative public officers gave advantages to

Conservative voters in validating their property rights. As Safford and Palacios write:

This was the drama that Alejandro López called “the struggle between the axe and the stamped paper,” that is between the men who cleared the land and those who could manipulate legal decisions about property rights in their favor.

These conflicts occasioned prolonged bargaining, and some fighting, at times homicides. The process involved mayors, police, notaries, judges, shysters and surveyors. But behind the scenes lurked two figures of local power, political bosses and parish priests, and two figures of local commerce, operators of mule trains and fonderos-the latter at once innkeepers, operators of country general stores, and coffee buyers…. The violence sparked by conflicts over land was legitimated by local or regional political intermediaries.73

72 Henderson, 1985: 8473 Safford and Palacios, 2002: 352

43

The grievances between landowners and landless peasants, renters, and colonizers

grew more aggravated during the late 1930s and most of the 1940s. Landowners believed

the best way to protect their land was to expel sharecroppers and renters from their lands

so that “no prescription claims could be made.”74 The landless peasants then appealed to

legal authorities to defend their rights. In most cases what the peasants found was layers

of bureaucracy blocking them from obtaining the right to occupy land they had worked

for generations. Finally, “Land Judges” decided that peasants would be permanently

dispossessed of their lands, and, in exchange, they were offered lands the colonization

Areas of Caquetá and the eastern Llanos to slash, burn, and plant. In many cases, months,

or even years, after the dislodged colonizers had already planted, and harvested the small

plot of land, a rich landowner would appear, again claiming rights over the peasants’

property.

La Revolución No Marcha: The Presidency of Eduardo Santos (1938-42), and

the Second Term of López Pumarejo (1942-45).

The successor to President López-Pumarejo, the Liberal Eduardo Santos, in what

he self-defined as a “pause” to the effects of the agrarian reform of 1936, was interested

in slowing down the pace of López’s reforma by developing industrialization in

Colombia. Santos openly opposed continuing to pour money and resources into coffee

plantations, rural development, and agrarian social reform. In his view, Colombia, needed

to supply the basic needs of its rapidly growing population. The Santos government,

encouraged by the internationally-promoted imports substitution industrialization model

(ISI), thought industry represented the only way of both addressing the urban needs and

bringing an end to the violence in the countryside. With a clear agenda, President Santos

74 Duff, 1964: 21

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set in motion what he believed to be a plan to pull the country out of its backward

agrarian present. He founded the Instituto de Fomento Industrial (IFI) and put it in charge

of heading all industrial development in order to substitute the expensive imported

manufactured goods needed in the Colombian market.75

After Santos had completed his presidency, López Pumarejo was elected for a

second term (1942-46). During his second term López followed mainly the new policies

introduced by Santos and put to rest his old Revolución en Marcha and his agrarian

reform efforts. López did not finish his second presidency because of his illnesses and a

coup attempt. The magazine “Semana” wrote about López’s second term:

The young intellectuals who had once discoursed with him on the constitutional reform of 1936, on the Spanish Republic, on the English democracy, were replaced by solid financiers, particularly sensitive to the poetry of figures. The ministers in this second government of López did not become millionaires, but millionaires frequently became ministers.76

After numerous financial scandals involving his family, and his suspected

participation in plotting the murder of one of his ferocious critics, the retired popular

boxer “Mamatoco,” a group of colonels arrested him in a hacienda in the surroundings of

the city of Pasto. The colonels retreated on their intentions once they lacked support from

politicians and the military.77 The resultant crisis made López resign the presidency in

75 Safford and Palacios write on the role of the state in supporting industrialization: “IFI [Institute for Industrial Development]…, made direct investments of capital, slow maturation, and high risk -such as the steel industry and the production of basic chemicals. These enterprises, it was hoped, would come under private ownership when they became profitable.

IFI’s investments of capital in the 1940s were disseminated among various regions of the country. The IFI backed a steelworks in Medellín (1941). It created a rubber factory (Icollantas) near Bogotá in 1942, with the raw material coming from the Guaviare and Vaupés regions of Colombia. It established a shipyard in Barranquilla (1943) and initiated the largest of the state industries, the steel plant at Paz del Río in Boyacá, although that project came to completion under later conservative and military governments.” Safford and Palacios, 2002: 29076 In Duff, 1964: 1877 Braun, Herbert. 1985. The Assassination of Gaitán: Public Life and Urban Violence in Colombia. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. P 77

45

1945. He went into exile to New York leaving Alberto Lleras Camargo as the new

president for the rest of the term until 1946. .

The Mariano Ospina Pérez Years (1946-50).

The terms of Eduardo Santos (1938-42), the interrupted second term of Alfonso López

Pumarejo (1942-46), and the term of Mariano Ospina (1946-50) marked an important

period in Colombia’s history. During this time the government, following international

recommendations of the ISI model, fully shifted its support towards industrial

development instead of supporting agrarian reform. While the development of industrial

programs was mainly directed towards supporting the needs of an increasing urban

population,78 in the peasants’ view the change from agrarian reform to industrialization

represented an attack on their very identity as a social group. For the peasantry and their

leaders, the switch in policies was a clear sign that Santos and Ospina had forgotten the

peasants’ fundamental interest – land and the infrastructure that would allow them to

have access to markets and to survive as a social group.

The election of Conservative Mariano Ospina for the term of 1946-50 came as a

surprise for the Colombian electorate. Both parties, Liberal and Conservative, took on the

electoral race of 1946. Conservative Laureano Gómez, who was expected to win his

party’s ballot, became afraid that his anti-Liberal sectarianism had alienated even the

Conservative voters. Gómez then withdrew from the Conservative convention leaving

78 Policies supporting industrial development in Latin America were originally designed by international institutions in order to cop with the need of increasing urban populations. As Glade writes: “Baptized ‘import substituting industrialization (ISI),’ the strategy came to be administered carelessly, distorted from the pristine ECLA vision by the tug of rent-seeking interest groups and by policies that have been characterized as macroeconomic populism. Bedecked also with some of the trappings of the modern welfare state, to placate the crucial urban constituencies, the public sector came to exemplify a concept of the state as the great piñata. Inflation was rampant, balance-of-payments crises were frequent, agricultural and traditional export sectors were undermined, and in time the policy environment turned increasingly hostile to foreign direct investment.” In Glade, William P.1998. “The Latin American Economies Restructure, Again.” In Latin America: Its Problems and its Promise –a Multidisciplinary introduction. Ed. Jan Knippers Black.Third Edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. P. 153

46

his place to moderate Mariano Ospina so their party could defeat the Liberals and win the

presidency after 16 years out of power.79 Thus, Ospina was selected to run against the

Liberal Party which at the time was experiencing an internal division. The liberals had

put forward two candidates: Jorge Eliecer Gaitán and Gabriel Turbay.

The Liberal division was based on the fact that the most popular of its candidates,

Gaitán, did no have the support of the traditional Liberal elite while Turbay had all the

support from the party’s directorate. The division, besides weakening the party, clearly

represented two different political styles within the party: the explosive populism of

Gaitán, at the time known as “Socialist”, and the “measured and calculative” style of

Turbay more committed to preserve the traditional norms and hierarchy of the party.

An examination of the 1946 election shows that for the first time a debate over

industrialization and ethnicity was included in the agenda of Colombian politics. The

debate was based on the fact that two new issues appeared on the election’s agenda. The

first issue was that all three candidates promised to develop an official policy to immerse

the nation into a process of industrial development and in the post war international world

market (both Gaitán and Turbay were highly interested in having on their side the votes

of the industrial labor unions). They dedicated very little of their political speeches to the

agrarian reform issue.

The second issue that gave the 1946 election a new characteristic was the ethnic

debate launched during the period of campaign. Both Liberal candidates were ethnically

79 Braun writes about Gómez’s political move: “On March 23, 1946, just six weeks before the election, everything changed. Laureano Gómez adroitly manipulated the Conservatives, which had had no intention of proclaiming a candidate, into nominating a moderate who, unlike himself, could be seen as a candidate of national conciliation [Mariano Ospina Pérez]” in Braun, 1985: 105

47

different. Gaitán was known as “el negro” because of his dark skin,80 and Turbay as “el

turco” because of his Syrian origins.81

Gaitán knew very well how to use his dark skin and his humble origins in his

favor when it came to winning the votes of the poor majority. His speeches, applauded by

gigantic crowds, are still remembered by people and scholars as very well directed to the

expectations of the poor classes of his time. Henderson writes on Gaitan’s looking and

remarks:

Gaitán even resembled his followers. Stocky and dark-skinned, the young Gaitán had impressed his schoolmates with remarks such as, “I owe my success with women not to my great intellectual aptitudes, but rather to my Gipsy eyes and my dark beauty”. The sight of Gaitán haranguing a multitude of widely enthusiastic and equally swarthy followers was intimidating to the staid members of the país político [the political class]. Even Gaitán’s teeth intimidated his political enemies. Large and slightly protuberant, they were seen by some as metaphors for the menacing movement he led.82

Turbay, Catholic like most Colombians, did not receive the same popular

acceptance as Gaitán despite his experience in Colombian politics and his constant

involvement in the government and in different political campaigns. He seemed an alien

to the crowds. The multiple attacks because of his Syrian origins, from both Liberal and

Conservatives, affected his results in the election and brought about his political decline.

Comments such as “how well this Arab had adapted to Colombia’s high society,”83 or

speeches such as the one in which Guillermo León Valencia swore that Conservatives

80 Henderson, 2001:29381 In Colombia, until recent years, many foreigners, and even Colombians of Middle Eastern and Jewish origins, were nicknamed “ Turcos” (Turks) because their ancestors had migrated before World War I from areas then controlled by the Ottoman Empire. 82 Henderson, 2001:29383 Braun, 1985: 105

48

“would wage a crusade against the turco in a new battle of Lepanto,”84 in case he won the

election, became common in Colombia during the 1946 presidential campaign.

Election Day was May 5th, 1946 and, as a result of the Liberal division, the winner

was Mariano Ospina Pérez. The Liberals protested loudly and even attempted to declare

fraud. Ospina took advantage of his stronger position to invite the Liberals to reconcile

their differences and to take part in the building of the new government. While few

Liberals took over important positions in the cabinet, Ospina tried to keep equal Liberal

and Conservative quotas in the government offices.

Ospina’s government attempted to continue many of the industrial policies

initiated by Santos and the second López administration. Ospina, an industrialist himself,

was more interested in the industrial and technical development of the country than in the

political fights between the two parties and the peasants’ fights over land.85

2.2. Staging La Violencia : The Late 1940s.

During the 1940s, especially after the end of the Second World War, government’s

policies continued favoring the developing of a national industry but still the economy

maintained its dependency on agriculture. The policies of the 1930s, mostly concerned

with land tenure and agrarian reform, were left behind. Thus, while during the 1930s,

each appointment held by a party leader, by a priest, by a merchant, or by an official

appointee, represented in some manner disputes over pieces of land. The 1940s instead

were times of intense industrial development in which the workers, with the security

84 Braun, 1985: 105. Lepanto was a naval battle in which the Christian fleet defeated Ottoman forces on October 7, 1571. 85 Henderson writes about Ospina: “Mariano Ospina Pérez, nephew and grandson of presidents…. A wealthy Antioquian businessman and industrialist representing the moderate nationalist wing of his party, was far more acceptable to moderate and right wing Liberals than either of their own candidates [to the presidency].” Henderson, 2001: 296

49

given by their relatively high paid urban positions, became less tied to the traditional

elites of their parties and more attracted to new ways of rethinking the national reality,

such as the Gaitán movement. In spite of this change, the Colombian economy still

continued strongly dependent on coffee exports. The agricultural market was still the

most representative in the country, and most of Colombia’s population was still living in

the countryside.86

The circumstances generated by the shift from agrarian reform towards industrial

development were exploited by the most visible figures of the Conservative and the

Liberal parties, Laureano Gómez, and the Jorge Eliecer Gaitán. While Gómez, the ultra-

Conservative representing the old political class, saw in the peasant masses the future of

his political career, Gaitán thought that workers were the new political force of the

country. Gómez, an “ultragodo” (Colombians call Conservatives by the name of

“godos”or Goths) admirer of Spanish Generalísimo Francisco Franco and the Catholic

Church, knew very well the politics of Colombian rural Catholicism, and the Church’s

fears of a Communist revolution.

Gaitán, the Liberal leader of humble urban origins, was mainly concerned with

the fact that a decade of sober governing and bipartisanism during the periods of

presidents Santos, López, and the current president Mariano Ospina, had blurred the

political landscape and created the illusion that there were no ideological or practical

differences between the two main political parties. Both liberal and conservative

86 In 1951 out of 11,620,000 Colombians, only 4,967,000 were living in urban centers. Data from Oxford Latin American Economic History Database at: http://oxlad.qeh.ox.ac.uk/results.php (The Graduate Center of CUNY, Jan. 17, 2005: 2:52 pm)

The Economic Active Population of Colombia in 1950 was 3,995,000. out of that population, 2,366,000 labored in agriculture, and only 476,000 in the manufacturing industries. Source: Oxford Latin American Economic History Database at: http://oxlad.qeh.ox.ac.uk/results.php (The Graduate Center of CUNY, Jan. 17, 2005: 2:58 pm)

50

traditional politicians were widely known as the “Convivalistas” (From the Spanish verb

“convivir:” to live together). Gaitán “showed up that the practice of convivencia was

ideology, a lofty public cover-up of the private, personal interests of the politicians.”87

Gaitán’s main political asset was his ability to communicate with the masses in

their language. Since the early days of the campaign of the 1946 presidential election

Gaitán had been able to explain in simple terms that Colombia’s problems were rooted in

discrepancies between economic and political elites, and that those discrepancies in no

manner represented the interests of the people. Gaitán developed his understanding of

Colombia’s political reality not as founded in the Liberal-Conservative division but in the

existing division between the people (the “País Nacional,” as he coined the term) and the

political class (the “País Político”).88

Gaitán’s ideas on the division and deep discrepancies between the people and the

“politicos” caused discomfort inside both the Liberal and Conservative elites. While

Presidents Santos and Ospina preached mutual understanding between the parties and

cooperation, Gaitán positively attacked such sense of convivencia because, according to

him, it only protected the interests of the elites and kept the power in the hands of the

same traditional political class affecting the interest of newcomers like himself. Both

parties and their leaders then looked suspiciously at Gaitán and his followers.

The first two years of Ospina’s government were characterized by a good level of

bipartisan cooperation within the government but a bad relationship between members of

the parties outside the government and outside the cities. Even though dissident Gaitán

87 Braun, 1985: 3688 Gaitán said about his division of “two countries:” “In Colombia there are two countries: the country of politics [país político] that thinks… of its power, and the country of nationhood [país nacional] that thinks of its work, its health, its culture, all which are ignored by the country of politics. Dreadful drama in the history of a pueblo.” Gaitán in Braun, 1985: 77

51

agreed to participate in the government of president Ospina through appointing some

leaders of his movement, cordiality dissolved once Gaitán himself accused the president

of responsibility for the increasing levels of Conservative violence against Liberals in the

countryside.89 Gaitán asked his followers in government to resign their positions and to

oppose the Ospina government.

A wave of fear among Conservatives and non-Gaitanistas Liberals was unleashed

after the withdrawal of Gaitán from the government, and after the results of the 1947

midterm election were published. As in 1946, a divided Liberal party was represented by

two movements, one led by ex-president Santos and the other by Gaitán. Both were

competing against a united Conservative party led by President Ospina’s followers.

Gaitán’s followers (448,848 votes), against all expectations, defeated Santos’ “official”

branch of the Liberal party (352,959 votes), and positioned Gaitán’s movement as the

second with most votes behind the united Conservative party (653,987 votes).90 The

situation immediately generated fear that Gaitán’s “gleba” (“rabble”), as his movement

was disparagingly called, would soon rise in power against the interests of the old

political class, the church, and the wealthy.

The fear among the traditional elites of the parties in power evolved into clear

repression against Gaitán’s followers in the cities and in the countryside. In the cities the

“chulavita” police, a group of rural Conservatives imported from the rural municipality

of Chulavita (Boyacá) and the State of Santander, was put in charge of instigating the

Gaitanistas.91 In the countryside followers of Gómez (who was trying to win the

Conservative ballot for the 1950 presidential election), supported by the Church, the

89 Braun, 1985: 12790 Braun, 1985: 11891 Braun, 1985: 133

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landlords, and the police forces, increased their attacks not only against Liberal

Gaitanistas but also against all Liberal Party members. By the end of 1947 the violence

between Liberals and Conservatives had claimed the lives of 14,000 people.92

The attacks on the Gaitanistas increased and Gaitán continued his inflammatory

speeches and marches accusing the Conservative government of the violence in the

countryside. On February 7, 1948 Gaitán organized one of his biggest marches to mourn

the souls of the Liberals killed in the countryside. His “Marcha del Silencio” (Silent

March) was very different from his old verbal explosions, and attempted to protest the

death of Liberals with a “sacred silence.” As Braun writes:

The crowd was ordered to wear black and to bring large black banners…. There were to be no cheers and no songs….Gaitán carefully inverted the liturgy of the public plaza. The words were few and somber. He spoke scarcely for five minutes, selecting each word with utmost care….Gaitán’s speech was filled with religious language…. ‘Senor Presidente Ospina Pérez, under the weight of a profound emotion I address your Excellency, interpreting the wishes and the will of this immense multitude that hides its burning heart, lacerated by so much injustice, under a clamorous silence, to ask that there be peace and mercy for the nation.93

Gaitán’s Marcha del Silencio marked a new stage in the relationship between his

followers and the Conservative government. The more than one hundred thousand

people94 demonstration in the Plaza de Bolívar increased the fear not only of

Conservatives but also of the old Liberal elite. The march was the final confirmation that

no reconciliation could be possible between the people and the political class.

The upcoming Liberal verbal attacks on Ospina and the Conservative party

infuriated their followers. Such attacks, plus the fear of having to deal with Gaitán as a

president after the coming 1950 election, kept fueling the wave of violence and

92 Braun, 1985: 11993Braun, 1985: 12794 Braun, 1985: 127

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harassment against Liberals mainly in the countryside where Conservatives had their

stronghold. The violence confirmed the old Colombian saying: “nada es más peligroso

que un tonto asustado” (nothing is more dangerous than a scared fool)

While violence kept increasing in the countryside, within the government and the

elites efforts were made to keep Gaitán out of touch with the people. Conservatives had

lost enough with the attacks of Gaitán: the results of the 1947 election, and the

resignation of all the Liberal members of the cabinet in February 1948. The government

cracked down hard. Gaitán’s newspaper, “La Jornada” (The Workday), was closed to

circulation in Bogotá in March 1948. The main newspapers attempted not to mention any

of the events that the Gaitánistas held after the Marcha del Silencio, and the radio was

filled with classical music and programs which mainly favored the interests of the

convivalistas.95 Most of broadcasting was filled with the events related to the upcoming

Ninth Pan-American Conference to be held in Bogotá in early April, 1948. The

conference would bring the U.S. Secretary of State, General George Marshall, and the

foreign ministers of the rest of the American continent. Colombia was to be represented

at the Conference by twelve plenipotentiary ambassadors that were selected among the

most important politicians in the country. Not surprisingly, Gaitán was not selected

among them.96

Conclusion.

The political events and partisan disputes during the period between the early 1930s and

1950 show that the land conflict was fundamental in the uprising of early political

violence and in the formation of grassroots organizations that, after working on the land

95 Braun, 1985: 121-12296 Braun, 1985: 129

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issue, would later form small guerrilla groups. This first cycle of agrarian reformism has

been important in showing how the policy shift from agrarian and land reform towards

industrialization helped to polarize the factions in conflict. This means that peasants

became aware very early about the consequences of industrialization and that was the

reason that made them organize during the 1930s in order to obtain land rights and

government support in the rural areas. Peasants were worry about industrialization

because of their fear on the government abandoning the development of infrastructure in

the countryside, and invalidating former policies of land tenure reform.

The formation and evolution of FARC is a direct result of the political events of the

first cycle of land tenure and agrarian reform since the end of the Conservative

governments of the 1920s. Even though FARC would appear as a consolidated guerrilla

movement in 1964, its members and politics were formed and became active during the

early land struggles of the 1930s.

The Colombian government’s agrarian reform policies affected the levels of political

violence during the 1930s and 1940s. Whenever the government has supported positive

changes in favor of making agrarian policies friendlier to the interests of the peasantry,

the levels of violence and political conflict declined in rural areas, as happened during the

1930s, when the governments of Olaya Herrera (1930-34) and López Pumarejo (1934-38)

were deeply concerned about finding solutions to the land problem. These levels of

political conflict were inferior to those of the 1940s and 1950s when the governments of

Santos (1938-42), López Pumarejo (1938-46), Ospina Pérez (1946-50) became more

inclined to favor policies for industrialization instead of agrarian reform and agricultural

infrastructure.

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Chapter Three

La Violencia , Repression of Peasants, Political Frustration, and the Birth of FARC,

1948-1957.

The vacillating way in which the governments of Colombia dealt with the agrarian

problem caused political frustration97 among the peasantry, which in the meantime fueled

the consolidation of guerrilla groups, and the resulting widespread political violence

during the end of the first cycle of agrarian reformism. The constant alternation of

policies throughout the 1930s and 1940s created a process in which peasants aspiring to

own the land saw the enactment of agrarian reform policies that during the 1930s

benefited the peasantry, and during the 1940s and 1950s took away such benefits by

emphasizing industrialization. This originated a second half of the first cycle in which the

reversal of agrarian reform policies, and the harassment inflicted by Conservatives on

Liberals, fueled a sense of political frustration among the peasantry. Thus, the peasantry,

organized in small guerrilla units, violently responded against the government and

landlord encroachments as their only recourse to obtain rights over the land. Cycles

formed by agrarian policy shifts set a pattern affecting FARC’s formation and evolution,

and caused violence along the Twentieth Century.

This chapter explores the political events of the end of the first cycle of land and

agrarian reform and the formation of FARC during the period of La Violencia (1948-57).

It analyzes how policy changes affected violence during this period through a policy shift

from agrarian reform and land reform towards a national industrialization plan. It covers

97 Political Frustration is understood as in Fals Borda: “[The peasantry] frustrated in their expectations became embittered and irrational, producing a wave of destruction.” Fals Borda, Orlando. 1969. Subversion and Social Change in Colombia. New York: Columbia University Press. P 143-44

56

the governments of President Laureano Gómez (1950-53) and Dictator Rojas Pinilla

(1953-57).

It is important to note that during La Violencia the conflict seemed to be principally

centered on entirely political disputes between Liberal and Conservatives. Such partisan

dimension is mainly based on the fact that Colombia’s worst period of violence appeared

almost a year after the assassination of the Liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitán on April 9,

1948, in the event known as El Bogotazo. In response to the killing of their leader and to

the widely open persecution from Conservatives, Liberals joined and supported rural

guerrilla groups operating in areas where old land disputes had existed and where Liberal

peasants had organized in order to obtain land titles and government aid. Thus, the

partisan dimension of the conflict came to appear as a cover of the deeper land conflict.

El Bogotazo .

The climax of the violence between the two parties took place in the afternoon of

April 9, 1948 at around 1:30 p.m. when shocked and uncontrollable crowds rapidly

spread the bad news: “Mataron a Gaitán, mataron a Gaitán” (“They killed Gaitán”).

Their screams, sobbing, and frustration were announcing the assassination of Jorge

Eliecer Gaitán. Henderson describes the event:

It was after 1 pm on April 9, 1948, when Jorge Eliecer Gaitán accompanied by Plinio Mendoza Neira and three other associates, left his law office at the corner of Carrera Séptima and Avenída Jiménez, the capital’s busiest intersection. No sooner had the group emerged from the building than an obscure drifter named Juan Roa Sierra stepped up and fired two .38 caliber bullets into his back and another into his skull. Gaitán was rushed to a nearby clinic where he was pronounced death at 1:55 pm. Meanwhile a crowd sized Roa [the assassin] and kicked him to death.… The initial assumption of the rioters was that the Conservative government had ordered Gaitán’s murder. In symbolic expression of that conviction they dragged Roa Sierra’s lifeless body five blocks down Carrera Séptima, leaving it at the doorstep of the presidential palace. 98

98 Henderson, 2001: 309-310

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After Gaitán was assassinated his followers attempted a coup against the Conservative

government of Mariano Ospina. Frustrated by the loss of their leader, they turned to

ransack the city, in a gigantic riot which came to be known as El Bogotazo. They

assaulted all public commerce, destroyed public and private buildings, and damaged

Bogotá’s proudly well kept trolley system,99 until order was restored later. At the end of

the day, the city had witnessed “some 2500 people… dead in the streets, many

thousands… injured, and nearly 200 private businesses, government buildings, parochial

schools, and churches lay[ing] in smoldering ruin.”100

Liberals saw Conservatives as the killers of Gaitán, and faulted them for the

violence during and after the Bogotazo. They blamed the Chulavita police forces for the

violence and for being the instigators of violence at the service of Conservatives.101 The

Conservatives, led by Laureano Gómez, blamed the “Liberal mob,” the admirers of

Gaitán, for having caused the disaster of the nueve de abril (April Ninth). According to

Gómez, it was the voracious appetite of Communism, disguised as a Liberal crowd,

which had guided the mob to destroy the city:

Our basilisk [the Liberal Party] walks on feet of confusion and naiveté, on legs of abuse and violence, with immense oligarchic stomach, with a chest of rage,

99 Henderson writes that during El Bogotazo a “fiery demise of Bogotá’s street railway was a calculated act of economic opportunism. Half of all the trolleys destroyed that day were burned by employees of Bogotá’s privately owned companies who used the upheaval of April 9 as a convenient cover for eliminating their chief source of competition. Immediately after Nueve de Abríl, bus fares doubled. The bus companies were also given permission to import new buses for their fleets.” In Henderson, 2001:314100 Henderson, 2001: 309101 Chulavita was the name given to the Conservative police recruited under Gomez’s tenancy at the Ministry of Government. As Safford and Palacios write: “…at the beginning of the Ospina Pérez administration (1946-1950), a number of police were recruited from the rural community of Chulavita, a region of Boyacá that for many years had been predominantly Conservative. At the end of the 1940s Conservatives in this region made a war against the Liberals of El Cocuy, forcing the latter to take refuge on the páramo [a high, cold, barren plateau]. Liberals from El Cocuy later joined the guerrillas of the Llanos. When the chulavitas arrived in Liberal communities they acted as an army of occupation.” In Safford and Palacios. 2002: 350

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with Masonic arms and with a tiny Communist head… this creation is the result of intellectual reasoning. It is the conclusion one reaches through consideration of recent events, in the manner of a chemist in a laboratory who studies reactions in order to reach (sic) conclusion, the nueve de Abríl was a typically Communist phenomenon, but one carried out by the basilisk. The diminutive, imperceptible head so disposed it and the body carried it out to the shame of the nation.102

The Bogotazo marked the begining of the period of La Violencia. Five years after

the assassination of Gaitán in 1948 the number of Colombians killed as a result of the

conflict between Liberals and Conservatives between 1948 and 1953 was of

approximately 144,548.103 By 1966 the number of deaths related to political violence had

risen to more than 200,000.104

The Birth of Guerrilla Groups.

Almost a year after the Bogotazo, Liberals began organizing armed bands –

cuadrillas- to defend their lives and property. A period of pre-guerrilla organization took

place between 1949 and 1952. A number of well-organized guerrillas began operating in

the vicinity of Bogotá, in the rural area of Sumapaz-Tequendama (States of

Cundinamarca and Tolima), with the support of the Liberal and Communist Parties.105

Henderson writes:

Liberals could hardly accept such persecution without fighting back. Party leaders like Carlos Lleras Restrepo traveled to the United States in search of support for the guerrillas; other leaders sought armaments closer to home, in neighboring Ecuador, Venezuela and Panama. Meanwhile other party leaders were willing to take up arms against the government. In December 1949, Plinio Mendoza Neira approached Communist Party leaders for help in manning guerrilla units. As a consequence of those efforts the Liberals were able to establish guerrilla units in Antioquia, Caldas, Tolima, Huila, Cundinamarca, Boyacá, the Santanderes and the Llanos.106

102 Laureano Gómez quoted in Henderson, 1985: 135103 Oquist, Paul.1980. Violence, Conflict, and Politics in Colombia. New York: Academic Press. P. 6104 Oquist, 1980: 10105 Jiménez, 1990: 2106 Henderson, 2001: 322

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These guerrilla groups emerged in the same areas where the land tenure disputes

of the 1930s had taken place, that is, where peasants had organized successfully in

defense of their interests. The purpose of these forces was principally to secure land for

peasants and military positions to counterattack what Liberals and Communists viewed as

the Conservative attempts to annihilate the Liberal party. Even though the assassination

of Gaitán continued disguising the everlasting conflict over land as if it were a conflict

between Liberal and Conservative ideologies, the manifestations of the land conflict were

still vivid principally in the countryside.

Most of the early guerrillas were commonly known as bandoleros (Bandits) or

chusmeros (a rabble). Some of them were organized under the guidance of political

leaders from the Liberal, Conservative, or Communist parties. Others were small-

disorganized bands that operated mainly on the particular interest of their individual

leaders. Both political and criminal bands operated mainly in the coffee region of the

States of Caldas, Quindío, North of the Valle del Cauca, and the highlands of Tolima and

Cundinamarca (all areas of “peasant economy” in Zamosc’s classification).

The political guerrilla groups, mostly Liberals, were better organized and received

instructions and some funding from the leaders of the Liberal party.107 Their superior

organization was based on the fact that they, and their families, had been formed as part

of the peasant organizations and farming communities that took part in the land struggles

of the 1930s right before and after the enactment of the Ley de Tierras of 1936.108

107 In an interview on August, 15 2004, a former Conservative leader maintained that a friend of his, a Liberal guerrillas commander, had received 15,000 pesos from the Liberal National Directorate to buy arms and ammunition for his group. Note: all names of people interviewed for this thesis have been withheld, as requested by the interviewees.108 See Pizarro, 1992: 180, and Jiménez, 1990: 22

60

The criminal bands’ modus operandi was very similar to that of the stereotypical

mafias109, and their functioning consisted of exchanging products, or favors, and selling

security and protective services to landowners and members of their respective parties.

Taking advantage of the political chaos caused by the Bogotazo, many bandoleros

acted with no political agenda. Most of their activities were those of thieves, paid hit

men, or simply killers. Many of these criminals, in return for their services to influential

individuals, were granted money, positions in the police forces, the judiciary, or wherever

they could make their living as official employees. They were appointed wherever they

would protect their personal interest and that of the gamonal (political boss) who gave

them their positions.

Armed criminal bands from either party, many times acting under the personal

interest of the party’s members, acted as hit-men. They regularly vandalized property,

blackmailed people, and assaulted vehicles transiting the inter-municipal roads and farms,

stole weapons, and forced owners to leave their lands and businesses at the bands’ mercy.

Many men began Bandolero life as a way of getting some capital to start small

business. Others acted on behalf of the gamonales of the towns when they felt it

necessary to expel un-desirable business competitors, and political enemies. As Safford

and Palacios write:

At first coffee stolen from farms whose owners had fled could be sold by farm managers or tenants to fonderos without armed bands playing a role. The business prospered wherever partisan pressure expelled Liberals, thus “Conservatizing” rural communities. The armed bands emerged from the political confrontation between Liberals and Conservatives. Later, many landowners, fearing being wiped out by their enemies, approached the latter, seeking to make a deal. Imperceptibly the farm owners became interlocked in the shady business, which was masked by the more visible conflict. Ortiz describes a kind of division of labor: while Conservative gangs dealt in stolen coffee, Liberal bands dedicated themselves to rustling cattle. But from stealing coffee, and cattle the mafiosos went on to the purchase of farms, by subjecting

109 Safford and Palacios, 2002: 347

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the owners to extortion and forcing them to flee, in the process “Conservatizing” the land, or later ‘re-Liberalizing’ it.110

As the number of bandoleros, armed bands, and guerrillas increased, their ties to political

bosses also did so. Regional, national and local bosses were tied in webs of political

power, which ties descended directly from the central power towards the local power of

the gamonales in the small towns and regions. Thus, when the Conservatives were in

power, government positions, services, aid and the benefits or any law were applied in

favor of the Conservatives. Similar occurred when the Liberals were holding office.111 As

example, In one of my interviews during Summer, 2004, a woman from the Huila region

mentioned how during the visit of Álvaro Gómez -the son of the Conservative President

Laureano Gómez- to her village, he personally ordered the governor of Huila to expedite

licenses for a radio station, a movie theater, and the state liquors distribution in favor of

the woman’s brother in law.

Political order, after Gaitán’s assassination, degenerated with such strength that

Ospina’s last year in office (1949-50) ended in complete political chaos. That year the

Liberals declared a de facto war on Conservatives and the latter, led by the Government

Minister Laureano Gómez, reciprocated. Instability hit bottom in 1949 when the Liberal

senator Gilberto Moreno declared in congress “the Liberal party is armed, and if it does

not triumph in the [1950] elections, it will declare civil war.”112 Senator Moreno was

making reference to the armed Liberal guerrillas already operating in the region of

Sumapaz between the States of Tolima and Cundinamarca.

110 Safford and Palacios, 2002: 352111 Schmidt, Steffen W. 1974. “La Violencia Revisited: the Clientelist Bases of Political Violence in Colombia.” Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1 (May, 1974), 97-111. P. 103112 Henderson, 2001: 316

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The liberal response was to fully withdraw from Ospina’s government in 1949

even though Ospina had attempted to please the Liberals when, few days after the

Bogotazo, he had replaced his Government Minister, Laureano Gómez, with the Liberal

Dario Echandía. Echandía stayed in office until 1949, and Gómez left for a voluntary

exile in Spain. He returned a year later to run as a Conservative candidate for the

presidential election of 1950. Even though Ospina’s government had worked hard to stop

the bleeding by introducing laws in Congress favoring the interest of Liberals, nothing

seemed able to stop the civil war that up to 1949 was more than imminent. 113 Quite a few

political-peace agreements were signed between the main parties but their effects were so

limited that they did little to lessen the violence in most of the country.114

In the cities the conflict increased as it did in the countryside. Every faction in

politics took its own side in the urban landscape to win the support of the increasing

population. The workers unions, which had already acquired power under the industrial

umbrella developed by the Santos and Ospina, became then the objective of the

Communist party, the Liberals and the Church. Workers’ organizations rapidly became

involved with the Liberal party and the Communists contributing then with their protests

and marches to the political chaos already vivid the countryside. The urban political

landscape became thus uncertain and volatile, as the violence increased in the rest of the

country.

113 Henderson writes on the bipartisan cooperation to avoid more violence: “In spite of the intransigency prevailing in both parties, Ospina and Echandía labored through the 1948 Congressional term to effect reforms that they believed would lessen political violence. Key among them were the nationalization of Colombia’s police forces, promotion of bipartisan administration at every level of government (termed “crossed” administrations), and passage of an electoral law whose chief purpose was to reduce vote fraud.” Henderson, 2001: 316114 Henderson, 2001: 317

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In the countryside, the violence seemed to respond not only to the killing of

Gaitán but to the issue of land tenure that had been ignored during the three presidential

periods of Santos, López Pumarejo, and Ospina Pérez (1938-1950). Policy changes

during the governments of Santos-López-Ospina were clear about the official interest in

moving the population from the agrarian lifestyle to that of a modern industrialized

society. In the peasant’s view the shift from the agrarian question to industrialization

constituted an attack on their identity as a social group and they felt that their very

existence was being threatened. As Weinert writes:

Colombian violence… was a feudal or pre-modern conflict generated by modernization. Modernization begun in the 1930s presented a threat to a sacred traditional order, and created a potential for populist legitimism, or violent defense of that order. This potential was realized because of four additional factors: traditional and universal loyalty of peasants to the Liberal or Conservative party; the identification of the Liberal party with modernization; a legacy of political violence accompanying transfers of power at the national level; and the Conservative party’s political interest in exploiting violence. Violence against Liberals widened and intensified into a holy war against modernization, with which Liberal peasants were associated through traditional party loyalty.115

In 1949, the fears of Communism fueled by the Cold War were brought to

Colombia by Laureano Gómez who returned from his exile in Spain to run as the

presidential candidate of the Conservative party. Gómez then became successful in

equating the aspirations of the Liberal party to those of Communism. He went back to

his old ideas of the basilisk in portraying the Liberal party as a horrendous monster

seeking the destruction of the Colombian society and its Catholic values. Gómez

articulated his message in the same way the Spanish Falange had done it against the

Republicans during the Spanish civil war. As a woman from the city of Popayán

remembered in an interview in August 2004:

115 Weinert, Richard S.: “Violence in Pre-Modern Societies: Rural Colombia.” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 60, No. 2 (June, 1966), 340-47 p. 346

64

The nuns made us pray every day during the [political] campaign in the chapel of St. Agustin School. We were obliged to ask God to favor Gómez in the election. On Sunday masses, when every body could come to our chapel, we heard messages such as ‘to kill a Liberal is not a sin, to kill a Liberal is to defend the values God had given to us as Colombians; to kill Liberals means to defend God.’

With the blessing of the Catholic Church, Gómez filled the minds of Conservative

peasants with accusations against the Liberal peasants and the guerrillas for

destroying the values of family, Catholic tradition and property.116 The many times he

spoke to the crowd, he successfully convinced it that Liberals were aiming to kill

Christianity just as they had lynched and killed father Pedro M. Ramirez in Armero,

Tolima, during the memorial of the first anniversary of Gaitán’s assassination in April

10, 1949.117 His speeches were clear in terms of blaming the Liberals and accusing

them of perpetrating a widespread conspiracy against the Catholic state:

When they erased the name of god from the preamble of the constitution, when they adulterated the wise principles which reigned over the concordance of the spiritual and civil power, when the youth in the university and secondary schools was submitted to unmasked instruction in naturalism and atheism, there emerged a process of disfiguration of our national soul and destruction of our noble Christian and free country, giving us instead a structure which forced the people to pass over red paths of revolution.118

The Unfinished Gómez Term (1950-53).

To Gómez, Communism was Colombia’s recurring nightmare, and the only way to fight

it was by embracing the power of the Catholic Church. During his campaign of 1949

116 Henderson, 2001: 319117 Henderson writes on the lynching of Father Ramirez. “The murder of [Father Pedro María Ramírez]… in Armero was only one of numerous acts of violence against the Church in Tolima and elsewhere on the nueve de Abríl. A historic community of interests between the church and the Conservative party helps explain Liberal anticlericalism, and the radio broadcasts from Bogotá supplied the rationale for individual acts of violence. In his heart every armeño Liberal knew that the Conservatives had killed Gaitán; he knew that every priest was a Conservative; and he heard with his own ears the news reports from Bogotá: ‘the curas, the sons of God, the administrators of charity, are assassinating the people… they are firing on the people from the tower of the Church of San Ignacio… The Christian brothers are firing from the windows of the La Salle high school!’ In that ambiance of passion and violence, the mob that lynched father Ramírez lacked any reason to doubt his enmity.” Henderson, 1985:123118 In Weinert, 1966: 342

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Gómez and his co-partisans opened a partisan cleansing of the Liberal opposition which

they said they would not stop until the Liberal enemy was destroyed, or had surrendered.

Gómez’s appointee for Minister of Government (the Ministry in charge of order and

policing) declared in 1950: “what this country needs is the discipline of the rifle butt”.119

During his campaign of 1949 Laureano Gómez knew clearly how to control and

promote himself within the peasantry, and he did not wait to address this objective. From

his old position as Ospina’s Minister of Government (1946-48) he had assigned all

positions in the police forces to his comrades with the intention of militarily controlling

the heart of Liberal and Conservative towns. Thus, the country was entirely guarded by

the Conservative Chulavita police, judicial cases were judged by Conservative judges,

their secretaries, police inspectors, etc. Whenever there was about a dispute regarding

land property, even a fight, or a robbery, the Conservative police and the Conservative

courts were immediately present to serve the interest of their Conservative political

patrons. The rule of law did not apply in conflicts where Liberals were involved.

The Liberal withdrawal from the Government of Ospina in 1949 finally

contributed to the election of Gómez as President in 1950, as the Liberals boycotted the

election by not participating in it. Without participation of the Liberal party Gómez won

the election in a landslide. After the election’s results were published, Ospina declared a

state of siege in November 1949 when riots in the main cities protested the election of

Gómez. Gómez won the presidency in the worst moment possible, as a result of his

unpopularity within the Liberals.

It was after November 1949 that the Liberals, led by their political elite,

concluded that there was no option but to organize armed guerrillas to defend themselves

119 Henderson, 2001: 323

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from the Conservative attacks, now being launched from the government’s offices. The

first Liberal guerrillas appeared in the Sumapaz area in the States of Tolima and

Cundinamarca and later they spread to the region of the eastern plains (Llanos

Orientales), east of Bogotá. The Liberals armed 10,000 guerrillas under the open support

of the Dirección Nacional Liberal in Bogotá where Carlos Lleras Restrepo harangued the

population to continue the Resistencia.120 It was impressive how in only one year since

the Gómez’s inauguration the Liberal networks were able to coordinate an armed

insurgency that later would take Gómez’s regime to collapse.

A factor that helped the Liberal guerrillas to obtain popular support was the fact

that, even though Gómez had convinced the peasantry of the Liberal evils of

anticlericalism, moral leniency, and sympathy for Communism, his government –just as

those from Santos through Ospina- had also forgotten the peasants’ fundamental interest

in land and agrarian reform. For the peasantry, Gómez’s discourse turned out to be mere

violent rhetoric and a surreal verbosity about the coming of an apocalyptic evil

Communist era disguised under the clothes of the Liberal Party.

Gómez, in his profound admiration for Franco’s industrial revolution, believed

that industries owned and operated by the state would answer the needs of the populace.

He believed that only an industrial revolution carried on the shoulders of peasant morality

and Conservative Catholicism121 would secure not only a fair distribution of the profits

120 Henderson, 2001: 348121 Henderson writes on Gomez’s plans to re-Christianize Colombia: Gómez, “convinced that Liberalism has corrupted the nation’s youth, launched a program of “re-Christianizing” the nation’s educational establishment by injecting heavy doses of religion into the curriculum and firing teachers who were not confessing Catholics.” Henderson, 2001: 352

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among the population, but that it also would secure the control of those industries in the

hands of his Conservative supporters.122

In developing his industrialization project, Gómez faced a problem derived from

the fact that Liberals constituted a majority in urban centers (see Table 3, Conservative

and Liberal Urban Vote 1946-1949), and they also constituted the majority of the

displaced landless. In the meantime, Conservative majorities were located in small towns

and the countryside. This situation made Gómez engage in a process of violent political

repression and killing of Liberals in the countryside as a way of getting rid of his political

adversaries. As Weinert writes:

To retain political power, Conservatives were … obliged to counter Liberal urban mobilization with rural mobilization. Stimulation of rural violence, assisted by the legacy of the 1930s, accomplished this goal in two ways. First, it aroused Conservatives, and intimidated Liberals: in elections in rural areas, more Conservatives and fewer Liberals vote.123

Gómez’s violent campaign against the Liberals constituted a serious attempt to

cleanse all his political adversaries in the manner of recent genocides. The calling of

Colombia’s Conservative politicians and the Conservative side of the Church to cleanse

the Liberal opposition during the Government of Laureano Gómez fits perfectly the

description of recent genocides such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The killing of

50,000 Liberals during the first year of the Gómez’s term is enough to indicate that a

carefully designed campaign had been carried out in order to murder the Liberal

opposition. Also, the displacement of 361,800 persons, the burning of 34,300 of their

122 Safford and Palacios write about Gomez’s admiration of Francisco Franco: “An admirer of Franco’s Spain, Gómez was convinced of the need for large scale industry. But Gómez believed that industry should not expand without the embrace of the state. In 1953 Gómez declared that, while economic production was founded on freedom of enterprise and private initiative, it had to be exercised “within the limits of the common good”. Gómez further asserted that the state could intervene, under the law, “to coordinate the various economic interests and to guarantee national security.” He also said that the state would encourage enterprises to share their profits with their workers.” Safford and Palacios, 2002: 320123 Weinert, 1966: 342

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homes, and the abandonment of more than 40,000 rural properties in the Liberal state of

Tolima between 1949 and 1957 are signals that there was a deliberate systematic attempt

to destroy the Liberal party.124

Table 3

Conservative and Liberal Urban Vote 1946-1949

Index of 1949 Vote with 1946= 100City Liberal Conservative Total Liberal % of 1949

VoteArmenia 118 99.5 93 66.8Barranquilla 96.5 92 93.5 82.5Bogotá 132 116 127.5 75.6Bucaramanga 150.5 115 138 73.3Cali 145.5 118.5 137.5 67.5Cartagena 122 114 120 77.7Ibague 121.5 110.5 120 69.6Manizáles 128 110.5 119.5 54.4Medellín 138 127 135 56.2Pereira 136 94 118.5 74.5

Source: Weinert, 1966: 341

The continuously inflammatory speeches in Congress, the sectarian messages

from the presidency, and the usurping of all Liberal government positions, fueled the

Liberal uprising until the Gómez regime began to crumble in 1952. In the countryside the

guerrillas had gained military control over extensive territories and the police forces were

insufficient to stop their advance. The peasantry was fighting hard against the numerous

attacks of the police forces, and the Conservative death squads –pájaros- supported by

the government. Michael Jiménez writes:

Under dissident Liberal and Communist banners, the rural poor, workers and urban artisans, and the local petty bourgeoisie in western Cundinamarca, Tolima, and Huila responded… with local defense organizations. These diverse groups eventually established a loose resistance network, calling for an end to government repression and a generally radical agrarian reform program. The various strands of rebellion…slowly coalesced into a more coherent guerrilla movement. In August, 1952, at a clandestine meeting in the Communist redoubt of Viotá, plans were laid for a broad based rural uprising.125

124 Data from Sánchez, Gonzálo. 1992. “The Violence: an Interpretive Synthesis.” In Bergquist, Charles, et. al., 1992: 105125 Jiménez, Michael. 1990: 2

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The Viotá meeting mentioned by Jiménez constituted the real birth of organized

insurgency in Colombia. In one of my interviews in the Summer of 2004, a former

Liberal commander who was present in Viotá agreed that this meeting marked a

fundamental change in the way the Liberal and Communist guerrillas fought the

Conservative government, as well as the coming governments of the 1950s and 60s. The

difference with prior tactics was made when the commanders of all groups attending to

the meeting agreed to create a central command which would be able to travel around the

country recruiting new guerrillas and promoting a national rebellion. Viotá, thus, marked

the beginning of both Communist and Liberal guerrillas acting together in order to defeat

a common enemy: the oligarchic rule of Colombia’s political class, or, as Gaitán had

called it, it was the need for defeating the “País político” in favor of the “País Nacional.”

The influence of the Viotá meeting was definite in setting a pattern of nationally

organized guerrilla warfare from 1952 to present.

Despite the peasants’ organized insurgency against the government, the

government didn’t address the real reasons for their struggle: land and agrarian reform.

Widespread violence did little to affect the government’s lack of interest in pushing for a

new agrarian reform. As a result, peasant frustration transformed a politically directed

violence aiming at major changes in the land tenancy structure, into bipartisan vendettas

between individuals, families, and small communities, over pieces of land. Zamosc

writes,

By 1951 and 1952 … significant changes were occurring amid the uproar of the factional struggle. In the coffee areas and through the highlands, landlords and peasants were beginning to use the Violencia to settle by force old and new land disputes…. In addition, widespread banditry was developing behind the partisan

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banners, as more and more of the originally political gangs now [were] bent on private revenge and economic profit.126

A Welcomed Dictatorship: The Rise of Rojas Pinilla (1953-57) and the First

Amnesty.

During the third year of the Gómez Presidency, Colombia’s political landscape had fallen

into complete political chaos. The discontent was evident not only among the Liberals but

also among the Conservative elite led by former President Ospina. Both, the Liberal and

Ospina’s opposition had agreed that the resigning of the president was necessary in order

to lower the levels of violence. Thus, an agreement between the dissident Conservative

elite of Ospina and the Liberal directorate (which had won the approval of most of the

guerrillas) was able to organize a general period of disobedience to the President and his

government. As a consequence, an ultimatum from the leaders of the two parties was

given to the President to resign. President Gómez was replaced by the commander of the

army, General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, who governed Colombia from 1953 to 1957. Rojas

was supposed to govern until the end of Gómez’s term, but because the violence couldn’t

be stopped by June 1954, he was reconfirmed by the senate and continued as a President

designated by the senate for the period 1954-58.

The selection of Rojas Pinilla as the only option able to set a peace in Colombia

meant that in response to the unified insurgency, the Colombian elites were also uniting

together in order to fight the very aggressive Liberal-Communist insurgency. As a result,

the main priority of the Rojas Government was to pacify the guerrillas of the Llanos and

126 Zamosc, 1986: 15

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to destroy peasant insurgency by dismantling “the loosely-connected local rebellions in

the strategically important [areas of the] upper Magdalena valley.”127

Three aspects of the Colombian Violencia contributed to Gómez’s fall. First, the

continuous and damaging guerrilla attacks to the army reported in Tolima and in the

Llanos, where the Liberal guerrillas had secured control of the entire territory. Second, a

guerrilla attack against the military base of Palanquero in the outskirts of Bogotá which

created enough fear in the population to ask their President to resign.128 Third, the Liberal,

Communist, and Ospinista rejections to Gómez’s desperate calls to participate in the

presidential elections of March 1953. Even though the Conservative wing led by Ospina

Pérez, had presented intentions to compete against Gómez, it later preferred to orchestrate

the coup with help of the Liberal elite after the guerrilla attacks of Palanquero.

During the period running up to the election of 1953, it had become increasingly

clear for the Liberal party that there were no guarantees for their participation in the

electoral race, and the enmity between the two main Conservative leaders, Ospina and

Gómez kept growing. Colombia’s most prominent politicians began looking for a “third

way” to solve the problem among the political parties, and bring a stop to the political

chaos and growing violence. Their solution was to offer the presidency to the military in

the hands of his commander General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, a middle class son of

Conservative farmers from Tolima and close friend of President Ospina. According to the

parties’ elites, Rojas Pinilla was chosen because he was the leader of Colombia’s one

“major social institution not hopelessly politicized.”129 Henderson writes on the coming

of Rojas to the presidency:

127 Jiménez, 1990: 2128 Henderson, 2001: 358129 Henderson, 2001: 363

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Rojas Pinilla’s takeover was greeted by Colombians with relief. Some have even suggested that Laureano Gómez, aware that he had no other alternative, simply stepped aside and allowed the coup to run its course. … As so often in the past, Dario Echandía provided the truest characterization of the military takeover. He termed it a “coup by public opinion,” sprung from the generalized understanding that there could be no end to the Violencia while Laureano Gómez remained in office.130

Four days after Rojas took power, he announced his objective of launching a general

amnesty to guerrillas acting in the areas of Tolima, Huila, Antioquia, Cundinamarca and

the Llanos. By September 1953, the government claimed that more than 10,000 guerrillas

accepted the offer while being granted lands in the Llanos and in other colonization areas

to establish farming communities. Another 5000 returned to their abandoned lands in the

countryside, and about 30,000 reported having been helped by the government to resettle

in their former lands.131

Following in the footsteps of Gómez, Rojas did very little to focus priorities on a

viable agrarian reform program which would have addressed the growing anger and

violence in the countryside. Most of the programs his government started in order to

placate the insurgency, especially in the eastern plains, were soon left unfinished. As a

result, violence was soon again on the rise. As was his deposed enemy, Laureano Gómez,

Rojas was also an anticommunist, and an admirer of the Spanish generalissimo Franco

and his recent Latin American followers Anastasio Somoza and Juan Perón. His

conviction that Communism was a threat to Latin America and the world granted him a

good relationship with the United States government, which supported him with capital

and training for the Colombian troops.

130 Henderson, 2001: 363131 Henderson, 2001: 367

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Rojas’ campaign against Communism caused tragic consequences on peasant

civilians and on the recently demobilized guerrillas. Rojas’s infamous invasion of

Villarica in 1954 marked one of the worst state terror campaigns in Liberal Tolima. The

Operación Villarica was ignited by some skirmishes between the army and the peasants,

resulting in the arrest of the peasants’ leaders. In response, the guerrillas attacked an

entire infantry company patrolling the area. Using troops recently returned from the

Korean War, the Colombian army, under Rojas command, attacked the entire region in

one of the biggest attempts to end a Communist enclave. Villarica was located in a region

where peasants were supported by the guerrillas to develop farming activities in order to

recover lands from landlords who had claimed property rights based on questionable

titles.132

Villarica was one of Rojas’ greatest mistakes. To have ordered such overreaction

against a number of poor and hungry peasants cost him discredit and a falling of his

popularity. An old ex-guerrilla from Tolima remembered how his worst nightmare

happened when he tried to get across the Sumapaz River in company of almost seven

hundred people while the army kept harassing them and shooting even at children and the

sick mothers. Crossing the Sumapaz became harder not only in their struggle for saving

the lives of entire families but also in their effort to save the minimal rations of food and

numerous cattle that traveled with them as they fled the army’s siege of Villarica. The

army had closed roads and trails, and had infiltrated secret soldiers among the guerrillas,

and no food could be obtained during the days prior to the operation. Therefore, during

132 Henderson writes on Villarica: “The reasons for Villarica involvement in the violence were complex. A rugged, heavily Liberal region of recent settlement and a history of agrarian conflict, Villarica had witnessed constant strife between larger, better-established landowners and less affluent campesinos, many of whom had fought with Liberal guerrillas prior to the guerrilla demobilization of 1953.” Henderson, 2001: 370

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the escape, entire families needed to carry their heavy supplies and the live cattle, and

poultry to keep feeding themselves until they would find a place to restart their farming

community. As a survivor woman from Villarica recalls:

The army killed many of us…. And we had to kill many of them in order to defend ourselves… the troops burned everything. They cut down coffee groves with machetes; they destroyed crops of yucca and anything else that was edible… Of my seven children all but three died.133

Rojas popularity kept falling after Villarica. After the operation the hundreds of displaced

peasants who came to the cities with their stories, and the hundreds of bodies that

appeared on the shores of the Sumapaz and Magdalena rivers, were enough to weaken the

Rojas regime. Besides the discredit gained after Villarica, on August 6, 1956 a new

incident fueled the discontent of the population when a military convoy accidentally

exploded in the center of Cali killing more than one thousand people and destroying a

great part of the city’s center.

Rojas’ intentions to stay in power after his term would be over, combined with his

well known support of the paramilitary death squats (then known as pájaros),134 -which

acted on behalf of the rich landowners-, his mismanagement of the country’s economy,

and the fall of the coffee prices135 caused him to rapidly lose popular support.

133 Quoted in Henderson, 2001: 371134 A good narrative on the relationship between Rojas and the paramilitary El Cóndor, Colombia’s most famous paramilitary pájaro, is Sánchez, Gonzálo. 1992. “The Violence: an Interpretive Synthesis.” Bergquist, Charles, et. al., 1992: 109.

Also Francisco Norden’s movie “Cóndores no Entierran Todos los Días” (in English: “A Man of Principle”), tells the story of León María Lozano, a.k.a. El Cóndor,.135 Henderson writes on Rojas mismanagement of Colombia’s economy: “Rojas Pinilla did no better in handling Colombia’s economy than he did in finding lasting solution to the Violencia. The robust economy he inherited on June 13, 1953, soon weakened and stagnated thanks to the new regime’s profligacy and mismanagement … Coffee prices fell in late 1954, aggravating and accelerating problems brought on by poor fiscal mismanagement. Although the slide continued over the remainder of Rojas’ term, the president did not alter spending practices.” Henderson, 2001: 375-6

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When Rojas was asked to leave office in 1957, he refused to step down, leading to

even greater political turmoil. By early 1957 he and his advisers had founded a third

political party, and he began suggesting that his term in the presidency needed to be

extended in order to finish the pacification of Colombia. In late January 1957 Rojas’

Minister of War, General Gabriel Paris, publicly recognized Rojas’ intentions of staying

in the presidency until 1962. This situation created an automatic confrontational reaction

from the Conservative and Liberal elites who in union of the economic groups and the

Church plotted a general strike to be hold in May 10th against the dictator.136

Also, counts of Rojas’ corruption had already been known by Colombia’s public

opinion at the same he expressed his intention of staying in power. Henderson writes:

Rojas quickly became attached to the presidency and its perquisites. He accepted gifts of blooded cattle for his finca [farm] in Melgar (Tolima), which magically grew in size, achieving the status of hacienda by the end of his rule. The patrimony of his family members and close associates also increased rapidly.137

The strike began on May 10th 1957 and it caused the closing of all commerce after

riots took place in the main cities. In Cali the army and the pájaros killed many protesters

as they marched in the streets138, and many more were injured by the attacks of the police

in different cities. The May 10th strike marked the fall of Rojas who left the presidency

that same evening after a meeting with the main political and business leaders.

Immediately after the strike, Liberal and conservative elites and the economic groups met

together to draw an agreement to call for elections for the presidential period of 1958-

1962.

136 Sánchez, 1992: 110137 Henderson, 2001: 366138 Henderson, 2001: 378

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Rojas went into exile in Spain, and a military junta139 composed of five of his

former military advisers took power on May 10th, 1957. The Junta served in office as

executive power until the two parties fully designed a consociational agreement, El

Frente Nacional (The National Front), not only to call for new elections but also to share

the presidential office between the two parties during the coming 12 years (1958-70). The

people in a plebiscite finally approved the National Front agreement on December 1957,

and its first president took power in August 1958.

Conclusion.

Political frustration was the result of the shift between pro and anti-agrarian reform

policies during the first cycle of agrarian reformism. From the first half of the cycle,

when the government strongly supported agrarian reform, the policies shifted toward the

promotion of industrialization under the ISI model, and the government showed lack of

interest in protecting the interests of peasants. The reaction of the peasantry was then

guerrilla violence against the government and landlord encroachments. Peasantry’s

frustration fueled the consolidation of guerrilla groups, and the resulting widespread

political violence during the end of the 1940s and the late 1950s. The shifts in policy

making from the 1930s to the 1950s formed a first cycle in which peasants aspiring to

own the land saw the enactment of agrarian reform policies that during the 1930s

benefited the peasantry and then, during the 1940s and 1950s, policies that took away

such benefits and instead emphasized industrialization and diminished the importance of

139 As Robert Dix writes: “The immediate successor to Rojas was a military junta that, as previously agreed by civilian and military leaders who had overthrown him, had by august 1958 restored constitutional government by giving way to the first elected president under the National Front. Originally designed to continue in effect for twelve years, and embodied in the constitution pursuant to overwhelming popular assent in a plebiscite on December 1, 1957.” In Dix, Robert H. 1980. “Consociational Democracy: The Case of Colombia.” Comparative Politics, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Apr., 1980), 307-8

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agrarian reform. This sense of political frustration fueled the formation of a violent armed

response against the government and the landowners. Armed violence and guerrilla

warfare were chosen as the peasantry’s only recourse to obtain rights over the land.

During La Violencia the conflict seemed entirely centered on the political disputes

between Liberal and Conservatives. This partisan dimension was based on the fact that

Colombia’s worst period of violence appeared right after El Bogotazo. Liberals joined

and supported rural guerrilla groups in response to the killing of Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, and

to the wide open persecution from Conservatives. Guerrillas began operations in the same

areas where old land disputes had existed and where Liberal peasants had organized in

order to obtain land titles and government benefits in terms of land and agrarian reform

of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Thus, the partisan dimension of the conflict represented

only a cover of the deeper land conflict.

Chapter Four

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The Full Second Cycle: The National Front, the Birth of FARC, and the Adoption,

and then Rejection, of a Pacifying Agrarian Reform Policy, 1958-1978.

Chapter Four analyzes how after the signing of the bipartisan agreement, The National

Front (1958), the relationship between the readdressing of the land reform policy helped

initiate a new peaceful period in Colombia during a second cycle of agrarian reform. It

also analyzes the second half of such cycle in which the government reversed the

progress made during the first half on matters of agrarian policy. Chapter Four highlights

the fact that, by readdressing land and agrarian reform policy to benefit the rebellious

peasantry, the government was able to lead a peace process and to keep its legitimacy in

the country. However, Chapter Four also argues that the reversing of the agrarian reform

policy of 1960s caused an increase in the levels of violence and guerrilla activity during

the second half of the second cycle of agrarian reform in the 1970s. Section 4.1, El

Frente Nacional: 1958-1970, analyzes the first half of the second cycle of agrarian

reform and end of La Violencia through the setting of the bipartisan agreement The

National Front. It highlights that the restoration of agrarian reform as a leading policy led

to the pacification of the guerrillas during the governments of President Lleras Camargo

(1958-62), Guillermo León Valencia (1962-66), and Carlos Lleras Restrepo(1966-70).

This section also presents the fact that while the National Front helped to pacify the

rebellious Liberal guerrillas formed after the Bogotazo, it also alienated insurgents from

different political parties such as the Communist Party. This situation fueled the

frustration of a sector of the peasantry and the Communist party and led to the “official”

formation of FARC in 1964.

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Section 4.2, The End of the Frente Nacional: Contra la Reforma 1970-1978,

analyzes the second half of the second cycle of agrarian reform and the policy shift

from a government-supported program of agrarian reform, that focused on supporting

peasants’ production and local agricultural development during the National Front to

that of agro-industrial production (agri-business) and agrarian counter-reformism

during the periods of Presidents Misael Pastrana (1970-74) and López Michelsen

(1974-78). It shows how the new laws affecting land tenancy and political

participation of peasant organizations caused an increase of political violence and the

reappearance of the guerrilla organizations.

4.1. El Frente Nacional : Partisan Peace, and Guerrilla Demobilization, 1958-1970.

The National Front agreement was a clear example of how Colombia’s political elites had

enough power to initiate a peaceful period by establishing a political arrangement so that

power would be shared equally by opposing political elites. El Frente Nacional came as a

result of the bipartisan “March Pact,” and as a response to the elite’s fears of letting the

entire nation fall in the hands of Communism. Also, some scholars have argued that the

Frente Nacional was the result of a steady period of economic growth between the years

of 1946 and 1955 during which the country’s GDP increased at a 5.15 percent annually

rate.140 Or, as Colombian scholar Medófilo Medina writes:

Between 1945 and 1949 the gross national product, the national per capita product, and the gross national income grew at annual rates of 5.9, 3.6 and 7.5 per cent, respectively. Between 1945 and 1953 industry grew at a record annual rate of 9.2 per cent. Agriculture saw a 77 per cent increase in the volume of production for 1948, and 113 percent for 1949.141

140 Henderson, 2001:xv141 Medina, Medófilo. 1992. “Violence and Economic Development”. In Bergquist, et. al., 1992: 156

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The agreement’s main provisions contained in a document approved by a

plebiscite in 1957 considered a period of 12 years in which the Liberal and Conservative

elites agreed that:

1. Seats in all “public corporations” in the nation [the senate and the chamber of representatives, state assemblies, and municipal councils]… [are] to be divided equally between Conservative and Liberal parties and only those parties …

2. All cabinet offices (with the exception of the military appointees), as well as positions in the supreme court, … [are] to be distributed according to the proportion of seats held by the parties in the national Congress [that is, equally]

3. All government employees in the various branches of the public administration [including national and local levels] … [are] to be appointed on the basis of parity between Liberals and Conservatives.

4. The approval of non-procedural measures within all elective bodies… [is] to be by two-thirds vote.142

Colombia’s third parties and political movements, led by the Communist party,

opposed the agreement because it denied opportunities to third or new political parties to

share power. Most of Colombia’s left became harsh critics of the National Front because

they considered the agreement maintained the power concentrated in the same hands that

have held power all over Colombia’s history. Therefore, the period of organized

revolutionary struggle developed after Viotá and the Bogotazo seemed to have produced

no institutional opportunities for the poor and the landless to participate politically. Minor

criticism came from inside the Liberal party which critiqued the fact that Conservative

minorities would secure government positions that they would never get under normal

electoral conditions.143

142 Dix, 1980: 308143 Henderson, 2001: 380

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Launching El Frente: the Lleras Camargo years: Major Attempts to

Demobilize Combatants.

The first president of the Frente Nacional, the Liberal Alberto Lleras Camargo

did not delay in starting peace talks with the guerrillas early in his term. 144 These

guerrillas, both Liberal, and Communist, responded to the Frente Nacional’s request to

demobilize in two different ways. On one side the Liberal guerrillas, mostly supported by

the Liberal’s party elite, decided to depose arms and return to civil life. On the other side,

the Communist guerrillas decided to continue fighting against the Colombian government

and the National Front agreements because their political party had been denied political

opportunities and the ability to participate in the electoral process. As was clear to all

political movements, “Politicians who were not either affiliated with either the Liberal or

Conservative parties were barred from holding elective positions over the agreed-upon

period.”145

As a consequence of the bipartisan agreement, most non-Liberal guerrillas

considered any new agreements derived from the National Front as representing the

interests of only Liberal ex-combatants, and the Liberal elites. The process of signing

peace pacts was known then as “Entregas”. When some ex-guerrillas signed peace pacts,

other ex-combatants -who weren’t members of any political party or were members of

the Communist Party- saw their demobilization as a defeat. Charro Negro (alias of

Jacobo Prías Alape), a former famous ex-Liberal combatant put the situation in his own

terms: “The armed popular struggle was defeated not through armed struggle but by

144 Henderson writes: “Immediately upon taking office he [President Lleras Camargo] created a second committee charged with effecting rehabilitation of Violencia victims. As a result, public moneys were applied to a range of resettlement activities, the most important of which were in the Ariari region of Meta, in the eastern Llanos. Lleras also sent distinguished citizens to govern the most troubled States. Foremost among them was Dario Echandía, sent to administer his native Tolima.” Henderson, 2001: 388 145 Henderson, 2001: 380

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politics.”146 Pinheiro’s description of Brazil applies to the Colombian case: “the end of

authoritarian regimes and the return to constitutionalism through political transitions

proved insufficient to guarantee access to democracy for large segments of the

population.”147

Despite the guerrillas’ early rejection of President Lleras Camargo’s invitation to

demobilize, in 1958 most of guerrillas attended and signed peace pacts.148 Many ex-

guerrillas took advantage of the extended amnesty of 1959, and as new developments in

the agrarian reform policy emerged, the ex-combatants were granted several plots of land

so they could start their own agricultural projects. Most of the beneficiaries of this policy

were members of a coalition of many small guerrilla groups then known as the

Movimiento Revolucionario del Tolima. Other ex-combatants were granted government

contracts to develop public works such as building and maintaining roads, building

schools and health posts, etc.

Opposition from members of the Military, the Conservative party, the

conservative wing of the Catholic Church, and the economic interest groups (such as the

Federation of Cattle Breeders, FEDEGAN, or the Agriculturalist Society, SAC) grew

rapidly as the efforts of the government for demobilizing the insurgency began

developing. In one of my interviews in August, 2004 a former Liberal guerrilla

146 Henderson, 1985: 183147 Pinheiro, Paulo Sérgio. 1997. “Popular Responses to State-Sponsored Violence in Brazil.” In The New Politics of Inequality In Latin America. Ed. Douglas Chalmers et. al. New York, Oxford University Press. P. 262148 As Henderson writes: “Of extreme significance in the Entregas [peace pacts] of 1958 was the fact that the guerrillas began making peace with each other as well with the national government. Conservative [paramilitary groups] and Liberal combatants in southern Tolima signed a series of ‘peace pacts’ during late August and early September 1958. Members of the National Commission to Investigate the Causes of Violence were on hand to witness one such declaration in Casa Verde, Ataco, on September 4 they heard ex-guerrillas roundly condemned Violencia and wax eloquent on the joys of peace.” In Henderson, 1985: 206

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commander observed that a very important –not widely known- event on the origins of

FARC was the fact that the military de facto denied the validity of the agreements signed

by demobilized guerrillas and the government. For example, he said, the withdrawal of

today’s highest commander of FARC, Manuel Marulanda “Tirofijo,” was due to the

persecution the army inflicted on him and some of his comrades during the period that

followed the signing of the peace pacts of 1961. During the “Entregas” Marulanda was

granted a contract to do maintenance work on a road north of Neiva (Huila). The military

tried many times to ambush Marulanda and four other demobilized guerrillas. Frustrated

after the attacks, Marulanda and his men waited for the next ambush. Well prepared the

ex-guerrillas attacked the military by surprise and killed many of them. The interpretation

of the former Liberal commander was that the military colonel who plotted the operation,

purposely failed in the ambushes by sending non-trained soldiers. His only objective was

to have the guerrillas kill the unprepared soldiers and, after that, to make the guerrillas

fall in disgrace with the Liberal government.

The Birth of FARC.

The agreements between Liberal guerrillas and the government caused disagreements

between the government and the Communist guerillas and many other guerrilla groups whose

political affiliations were not clear. By the early 1960s Communist guerrillas began expressing

their discontent with their exclusion from the benefits of peace pacts. This situation was

compounded by a number of violent incidents that served to further alienate the non-Liberal

guerrillas, and marked the real beginning of FARC as a communist guerrilla movement. First, in

early 1959 Chispas (“Sparks”, alias of Teófilo Varón), a well known bandit, reclaimed his

outlaw status after the government failed to guarantee him protection where he lived on his small

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farm. Second, on October 1959, in what was called the Bear’s Massacre, Masacre del Oso,

Conservatives killed twelve members of a Liberal household in a farm in the surroundings of El

Líbano, Tolima, while they were having breakfast. The Masacre happened just a day after 12

Conservatives had been also killed in the same region149. A third incident was the assassination

of Charro Negro on January 1960, which allowed Manuel Marulanda, alias Tirofijo, to become

the commander of the Communist guerrillas of Southern Tolima. As Henderson writes:

Far more ambitious than Charro Negro… [Tirofijo] was committed to the idea of using southern Tolima as the staging ground for a nationwide revolution in the style of the bearded Fidel Castro’s recently successful revolution in Cuba. Tirofijo and his colleague Ciro Castaño150, leader of the nearby Communist enclave of Río Chiquito, Cauca, were students of the Castro movement and enjoyed already (sic) access to the latest theoretical works on Castroite tactics, such as Ché Guevara’s Guerra de Guerrillas [Guerrilla Warfare].151

After these episodes, some guerrillas continued fighting against the National

Front, advocating not only for the need of agrarian reform but also for policies to grant

open participation for third political parties. President Alberto Lleras Camargo decided

that prior to addressing the claims of the ex-guerrillas his government needed to pacify

the nation and develop an agrarian reform program to placate the discontent present in the

countryside. To direct the peasantry’s claims over land and government services Lleras

Camargo succeeded in convincing congress to approve Law 135 of 1961,152 or Ley de

Reforma Agraria (Agrarian Reform Law), and to create an institutional organism for

149 Henderson, 2001: 388-9150 Still is unclear if Charro Negro or Ciro Castaño were Communist or Liberal guerrillas.151 Henderson, 1985: 219-221152 Ernst Duff writes: “Project Law 135 became Law 135 on December 13, 1961, when it was sanctioned by President Lleras …. Chapter I stated the objectives [of the Law]. Chapter II created INCORA (…)” in Duff, 1964: 113

Also Zamosc writes on Law 135: “The approval of Law 135 of 1961, the agrarian social reform law, came as a proof that a broad political consensus had been reached among the dominant classes. When the law was submitted to a Congress controlled by Liberals and Conservatives, only the most doctrinaire Conservatives opposed it. That law was a result of a long bargaining process during which the reluctant landowning class succeeded in softening the criteria for expropriation and securing indemnification procedures with acceptable terms of payment for the land.” In Zamosc, 1986: 35

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implementation of the law. During his presidential term the Instituto Colombiano de la

Reforma Agraria, INCORA, began activities to shape the policies of the new law. Lleras’

Agrarian Reform Law was the beginning of a government strategy to counterattack the

threat of a growing Communist revolt.

The passing of Law 135 of 1961 marks the beginning of a first stage in the

modern concept of agrarian reform in Colombia (1962-1972). During this stage the

government retained its right to invalidate titles and claims of private lands on grounds of

social utility, as it did it with Law 200 of 1936. Through Law 135 the government

presented its firm intention of granting titles of property to individuals working the land

as renters and/or sharecroppers. Law 135 also conditioned the existence of large

landholdings to their productive exploitation, which meant that no large landholding

could be left idle because it risked expropriation. Furthermore, Law 135 kept in the

state’s hands the function of granting titles over State owned lands to individuals who

demonstrated productive exploitation of such lands.153

After Law 135 was enacted, the government attempted to solve the existing

conflicts over land ownership in the regions of Tolima and Huila. This affected the

guerrillas’ presence in the area because many of the ex-guerrilleros, upon being granted

plots of land154 and guarantees to return to civil life, decided to become part of a new

153 Machado, Absalón. 1998. La Cuestión Agraria en Colombia a Fines del Milenio. Bogotá: El Áncora Editores. P. 133154 On April 3, 1962 INCORA released the first agrarian reform project, “Proyecto Tolima 1” whose main objective was to distribute 15,000 hectares of land to benefit 1,500 peasant families of Tolima who had been displaced by Operation Villarica during the Rojas Government. A good source on this project is Duff, 1964: 142-152In areas of colonization the Lleras Camargo government supported the Colonization of the Ariari river basin which “saw the convergence of various colonization forces, not only those oriented toward Communist agrarian reform…, but also those formed of groups of dispersed Liberals after their defeat in the war of the eastern plains, and by Liberal groups in the States of Tolima and Valle, who had been defeated by government troops between 1955 and 1960.” In Molano, Alfredo. 1992. “Violence and Land Colonization.” In Bergquist, et. al. 1992: 200

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government-sponsored peasant movement the Liberals were creating. This increased the

already ideological conflict arising between Liberal and Communist guerrillas because

the Communists felt militarily at risk. 155

In response to their exclusion from the agrarian reform benefits, many dissident

Liberal and Communist guerrillas initiated farming communities with intention of

establishing revolutionary focos in the manner of the Cuban Sierra Maestra. This new

conflict between the government and the still- armed guerrillas was reported from the

bordering zone between the States of Tolima, Huila, Cauca, and Valle –in the region of

Tierradentro. These guerrillas had moved to Tierradentro’s sub-region of Ríochiquito

between 1961 and 1964, an area where conflict over lands between indigenous and

Colombian mestizos had existed since the early years of the 20th century. In Ríochiquito

the guerrillas joined many colonizers who were eager to cultivate lands, as the

government’s reform stated that only cultivated land would be granted titles of

ownership, under the provisions of Law 135 of 1961.

Ríochiquito inspired other farming communities led by Liberal and Communist

ex-guerrillas who founded them also in emulation of the foquista ideas of the Cuban

Sierra Maestra. These guerrilla settlements were scornfully nicknamed by Álvaro Gómez

–son of ex-President Laureano Gómez-, and echoed by the Colombian military, as the

“Repúblicas Independientes” of Ríochiquito, Planadas, Marquetalia, El Pato, and El

Guayabero.156 Gómez’s declarations about the Independent Republics clearly represented

the elites’ fear that a Communist revolution, like the Cuban Revolution, was being

155 Zamosc, 1986: 44156 A Liberal ex-guerrilla commander noted that their idea of farming communities never was related to the Cuban experience. He considered that the Colombian Repúblicas Independientes constituted a further development of the 1930s farming communities of Sumapaz in the States of Cundinamarca and Tolima. However, Alfredo Molano supports the idea of the farming communities, or Repúblicas Independientes, as the focus that originated FARC. Molano in Bergquist, et.al., 1992: 200-201

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prepared in the mountains of Cauca, Huila and Tolima (see Map 2, The Independent

Republics). After Gómez attacks on the farming communities, the government ordered

the Colombian air force to strike the Repúblicas Independientes in 1964, in what was

called Operación Marquetalia. Marquetalia brought similar effects to those caused by the

infamous operation Villarica.

The few dozen families making up the ‘independent republic’ of Marquetalia were in fact barely holding their own in an internecine battle with Liberal guerrillas as the Colombian army readied its attack.

The Liberal and Communist guerrillas operating in southern Tolima had acted jointly for a time during the early 1950s. But their ideological differences were unbridgeable and within a few years they were at war with one other. When the army staged its attack on Marquetalia in May 1964, the enclave had been reduced to a small region west of Gaitania…. The Communists of “Charro Negro” embraced values diametrically opposed to those of the Liberals. They valued communalism of the sort described in the writings of Karl Marx and other utopian socialists.157

The government then took advantage of the irreconcilable division between the

Liberal guerrillas and the Communists to accomplish its objectives of developing an

agrarian reform, while creating a peasant movement led by the Liberal party and the

government. In an attempt to placate the anger and frustration of the survivors of

Marquetalia and other rebellious Independent Republics, the government re-launched an

agrarian reform program to grant land titles through a general amnesty. It was the

beginning of an agrarian reform program led by the government and operated directly by

a peasant organization widely approved by the traditional political class. The birth later of

the National Association of Peasant Users, ANUC, marked the beginning of a new era in

which the Liberal elites supported peasant participation in the decisions of the state on

matters of agrarian reform.

157 Henderson, 2001: 403

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Setting the Reforma Agraria: The Valencia-Lleras Restrepo Era (1962-

1970)

The governments of Lleras Camargo (1958-62), Valencia (1962-66), and Lleras Restrepo

(1966-70) prioritized agrarian reform as the key to defeat insurgency. After the

experience of the Reforma Agraria of 1936, which mainly attempted to grant land to

colonizers, these governments found that granting land alone to peasants was not

adequate. They knew that a major agrarian reform program was needed to supply new

farmers not only with land but with health services, schools, markets and infrastructure.

They also concluded that addressing exclusively the claims of the insurgents wouldn’t

fully resolve the claims of the sector of the peasantry that was not involved in the

violence but that had invaded the lands of wealthy landowners.

The landowners boycotted government policies supporting agrarian reform in

protest against the government’s refusal to stop peasant invasions. Wealthy landowners

presented opposition as a group represented by the Colombian Association of

Agriculturalists, Sociedad de Agricultores de Colombia, SAC, and the Federation of

Cattle Breeders, Federación de Ganaderos, Fedegán.

In response to the landowners’ opposition, the Lleras Restrepo government took a

leading role in putting the peasantry on the side of the agrarian reform program. The

Lleras government promoted its idea by promising the peasantry a voice in the

developing of policies related to agrarian reform.158 After a process of promotion and

lobbying among peasant leaders and organizations, the government finally created

158 Zamosc writes on the creation of the National Association of Peasant Users, ANUC, as a governmental institution that facilitated the communication between the peasantry and the government: “A further relevant aspect of ANUC’s experience is the changing nature of the relationship between the peasant movement and the Colombian state.” In Zamosc, 1986: 3

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ANUC159 a peasant organization to facilitate communication between the government and

the peasants. ANUC was formed of peasant leaders from all over the country who

collectively had decision power on the policies and operation of the agrarian reform

program.

The opening of channels of communication between the peasantry and the state

through the ANUC reinforced the leadership of the Liberal elites160 and diminished the

power of the guerrillas among the peasantry. In constituting the ANUC the government

seemed to have finally won the fight against insurgency. Peace seemed at hand. What

resulted from such policies were an alienated guerrilla movement, and a more frustrated

group of third political parties, such as the Communist Party.

Despite all the good intentions from the Liberal governments in implementing the

agrarian reform policies, they met with strong opposition from the Conservative party,

the Communist party and a new dissidence from the Liberal Party under the leadership of

Alfonso López Michelsen, son of agrarian reformist President López Pumarejo. Other

minoritarian leftist groups such as the Maoist Movimiento Obrero Independentista

Revolucionario, MOIR joined the opposition against the agrarian reform of the National

Front. By 1970, with the inauguration of president Misael Pastrana Borrero, the

Colombian agrarian reform still began fighting its worst war against the vices and power

159 Zamosc writes: “Lleras Restrepo … issued the presidential decree 755 of May 2, 1967 [Creation of ANUC]. Stressing the need for popular participation in social change and national affairs generally, the decree ordained the registration of the users of the state agricultural services, defining as usuarios both the actual and the potential (peasants) beneficiaries. After the registration process began, the Ministry of Agriculture would conduct a national campaign to establish the local, regional, and national frameworks of the Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos (ANUC). The functions of ANUC were specified in a long list, in which representation in the official institutions and “collaboration” in the massive application of agrarian reform” were the most important items.” Zamosc, 1986: 51160 As Zamosc concludes: “With the enactment of decree 755, Lleras Restrepo had set the stage for peasant mobilization, using ANUC to spearhead the agrarian project of bourgeois reformism.” (In Zamosc, 1986: 51) “Taking into the account both the special organizational difficulties of the peasants and the conditions that prevailed in Colombia in the wake of the Violencia, it can be speculated that perhaps a national peasant movement would have never emerged without this initiative from above.” Zamosc, 1986: 3

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of the traditional landowning class. However, it was clear that agrarian reform had made

much more progress in the 12 years of the National Front than in the rest of the Twentieth

Century.

4.2 The End of the Frente Nacional : a Period of Counter Reformism, Contra la

Reforma , 1970- 1978

The suspected fraudulent results of the 1970 election, the first in which the

National Front allowed the participation of a non-Liberal-Conservative movement, fueled

FARC’s frustration over lack of political participation for third parties. The new pro-

agribusiness policies of the incoming Pastrana government also contributed to FARC’s

decision on continuing its armed war against the Colombian landowning and political

classes. Both the suspicions of electoral fraud and the pro-agribusiness policies of the

new government also fueled the desires of other left-wing political groups to recur to

armed violence.

During the elections of April 19, 1970 the Conservative candidate Misael Pastrana

was declared president despite widespread belief that the majority of votes favored the

independent candidate, former dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. Rojas had returned from

his exile in Spain to participate in the elections as candidate of his movement, the

National Popular Alliance, Alianza Nacional Popular, ANAPO. The government stopped

radio broadcasting results on election night when Rojas was leading, and by early

morning, on April 20, the news resumed announcing the election of Pastrana.161 People

161 As Safford and Palacios explain: “In the election of 1970, the National Front coalition completely lost credibility. Hours after the polls closed, radio broadcasts were reporting the victory of General Rojas. That night the government cancelled transmission of partial results and the following morning announced victory of the official candidate, the conservative Misael Pastrana. The next day President Carlos Lleras Restrepo confirmed the result and imposed a curfew in the big cities.” In Safford and Palacios, 2002: 330-31. See also Pizarro, Eduardo, 1992. “Revolutionary Guerrilla Groups in Colombia,” in Bergquist, et. al. 1992: 182

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and third party members were furious and as a result of the incident, a new guerrilla

movement, the Movimiento 19 de Abríl, M-19,162 was born as an urban guerrilla

organization.

The inauguration of the Pastrana administration marks the beginning of a period

of agrarian counterreformism in which the Conservative government attempted to curb

the advances of the Liberal agrarian reform of 1961. General discontent increased during

Pastrana’s term after his government began attacking all minimal progress the

governments of the National Front had made on agrarian reform. Pastrana replaced

Liberal agrarian reform policies with his new program, which aimed to reinvigorate agro-

industrial production, and to support the existing land-owning class.

Pastrana’s counterreformism started with his attempts to break the fluid

communication already established between the peasantry and the government during the

Liberal governments of the 1960s. By restricting the influence of ANUC on the peasantry

after a period of land invasions in 1970, Pastrana and his minister of Agriculture

denounced what they have called the Mandato Campesino (Peasant Mandate), as

conducing to rebellion and a calling for subversion. Attacks from the government on the

administration of INCORA, and cuts to its budget were made in order to cut the effects of

the Liberal agrarian reform. The peasantry answered with more land invasion in 1971 but

162 Mark Chernick writes on the M-19: “M-19 (Movimiento 19 de Abríl de 1970), Nationalist [guerrilla] consciously modeled after the Montoneros and Tupamaros in Argentina and Uruguay, [It was] founded during the period following the disputed electoral defeat of former dictator Rojas Pinilla in the presidential elections of 1970 by members of the left wing of Rojas Pinilla’s party Alianza Nacional Popular (ANAPO), along with dissident members of FARC. (It) combines nationalistic rhetoric with a heterodox Marxism. (It) began as an urban guerrilla organization that sought to adapt new forms of military and political struggle to the conditions of Colombia.” In Chernick, Mark. 1989. “Negotiated Settlement to Armed Conflict: Lessons From the Colombian Peace Process.” Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Winter, 1988-1989): 59

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at this time the alliance between the government and the wealthy landowners associations

had gained such strength that the executive was able to convince Congress to approve

severe military repression to land invasions and peasants’ public protests.163

A climate of general discomfort with Pastrana’s policies and with those of his

successor, the Liberal President Alfonso López Michelsen (1974-78) increased during the

rest of the 1970s. Even though López was considered Pastrana’s main political enemy,

and founder of the Liberal leftist Movimiento Revolucionario Liberal (MRL), his policies

on agrarian reform were not different from those of Conservative Pastrana. López’s

objective was also to develop Colombia’s agro-industry and to maintain the export

orientation of the country under the clumsy slogan of transforming Colombia into the

“Japan of South America.”164

Guerrilla organizations increased in number and in activities during the López

term as a result of the government’s attempts to transform peasant economy into a

modern capitalist agro-industry, and as a way of protesting its lack of support of the

peasant organizations, and the government’s support of laws prohibiting the invasion of

large estates. López’s term was marked by several workers union strikes and also by the

increasing of urban guerrilla activities.165 April 19th Movement, M-19, grew up

significantly during the López government and during that of his successor Julio César

Turbay Ayala166 (1978-82). FARC kept growing during this period by obtaining recruits

from the landless and unemployed peasantry which, in search of new lands, had

continued moving from central Colombia into the colonization areas in the eastern

163 In Zamosc, 1986:97 164 Zamosc, 1986: 112165 Safford and Palacios, 2002: 336166 Safford and Palacios, 2002: 359-60

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territories of Caquetá and the eastern Llanos between the Amazon and Orinoco basins.

The main damage caused to the progress in agrarian reform during 1960s was

caused by the Pastrana administration during the early 1970s. Conservative Pastrana, in

agreement with the wealthy landowners, members of FEDEGAN and the SAC, saw

dangerous paths of subversion in the unionist work of the peasants’ ANUC. The first step

taken directly by Pastrana was to openly attack ANUC through his official spokesman,

Victor Manuel Calle. Calle accused ANUC of being a “ghost” entity whose claims did

not represent the aspirations of the peasants’ majority. He also accused the organization

of serving the political the interests of Lleras Restrepo.167

In response to the government’s accusations, ANUC developed a campaign that

began by organizing marches to protest the government, taking over offices of INCORA

and invading lands in Meta, Tolima, Urabá, Magdalena, Atlántico, and Cauca (See Table

4, Peasant Land Invasions 1970-1978). The journey of protest was followed by reactions

from both the government and the landlords. Violence erupted after the government

ordered the army to stop the invasions and to dismantle the peasants’ settlements

established within private property. In the middle of the violent activities perpetrated by

the government against the peasants, many peasant leaders disappeared or were killed,

especially in the northern areas of the country.168

167 Perry Rubio, Santiago. 1994. “Las Luchas Campesinas en Colombia.” In El Agro y la Cuestión Social, Ed. Ministerio de Agricultura. Bogotá, Tercer Mundo Editores. P. 254168 Zamosc, 1986: 85

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Table 4

Peasant Land Invasions, 1970-1978

Year 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 TOTALLand

Invasions 47 645 54 51 123 70 15 20 6 1,031Source: Zamosc, 1986: 75

Both government and landowners associations took advantage of the invasions to

categorize the ANUC as a subversive organization. The government’s accusations were

joined by the landlords’ associations: FEDEGAN and SAC. The government, represented

by the Minister of Agriculture, Hugo Escobar Sierra, invited Colombia’s political “parties

and sectors to vote against land invasions and political disorder caused by ANUC, and to

reach a great national agreement on agrarian reform to save the country from the dreadful

consequences of a Red Revolution.”169

As a consequence of the government’s attacks on ANUC and the peasants’

organizations, a national meeting of pro-government peasant associations, political

parties and the landowners’ associations was organized. The meeting had as objectives to

set new approaches to the agrarian problem and to draw a national response to the

deteriorated rural situation. The meeting was finally held in the town of Chicoral, Tolima,

in January 1972. It produced a document that historically marked Colombia’s main

regression in agrarian reform and as a consequence Laws 4 and 5 of 1973 were enacted.

Chicoral represented the dismantling of the agrarian reform started through the

enactment of Law 135 in 1961. Once more, as in the counterreform of 1944, wealthy

landowners were reassured of their rights of property over large landholdings without

conditions of social utility. The government offered the landowners low interest loans

and subsidies through the National Agricultural Fund so they could develop mechanized

169 Zamosc, 1986:99

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agriculture and develop agribusinesses. The Pastrana administration also rewarded the

landowners who had faced expropriation during prior reforms with compensation that

corresponded to the commercial value of their estates, instead of the census value as

stipulated in prior laws. 170

Chicoral brought about a more open government campaign to curb ANUC’s influence

within the peasantry. As a result, military mayors were appointed in the towns where the

ANUC had strong presence. The army began a more frequent detention of peasant

leaders, some of whom were killed by death squads. The INCORA halted its program of

purchasing land, and even created a black list with the names of members of ANUC,

who, therefore, would never be granted land bought under INCORA’s program. Finally,

the government began a series of legal battles against ANUC that later brought the lifting

of the organization’s official status granted during Lleras’ government. After these severe

actions against ANUC, the government took away the official funding the agrarian

reform program had given to the peasants’ organization during the 1960s.171 ANUC

maintained its autonomy and continued its promotion of land invasions until 1978 despite

the strong harassment from the governments of Pastrana and López Michelsen and

despite the violence of the landowners and their supported death squads.

Four economic and political issues contributed to the declined of ANUC

during the 1970s:

First, the beginning of drug trafficking as an important component of the

Colombian economy affected the strength of ANUC as a unionizing organization.

Once the organization stopped receiving economic support from the government,

170 Zamosc, 1986: 98171 Perry Rubio, 1994: 258

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many of its members moved away from political action to make profitable their

agricultural skills in planting and harvesting illegal crops in the northern Sierra

Nevada de Santa Marta, in a period to be known as the marijuana boom –Bonanza

Marimbera. Logistically this affected the organization because it drained peasants

out of the organization as a consequence of the lack of incentives. The marijuana

boom had also affected ANUC because the Sierra Nevada sat in a geographical area

where it had been strong and where many of the land invasions of the 1970s took

place.

The developing of the illegal drugs market also caused a change in the rural

labor market, as peasant labor became scarce, creating a rise in the peasants’ wages.

This made peasant workers of the seasonal harvesting of cotton and coffee more

costly. As a result, cotton and coffee became expensive products even for their

consumption in the local market.

The second aspect affecting the fall of ANUC was the increasing emigration

of Colombians to Venezuela, a country that at the time was benefiting from the rise in

the prices of oil during the oil crises of the 1970s. Colombian peasants took

advantage of the need of labor in Venezuela to emigrate, most of them illegally, and

to make their living in a more peaceful and higher paying setting.

A third aspect was related to the nature of the ANUC as an official government

supported organization. This characteristic made it difficult for the ANUC to survive

without the support from the state during the governments of Pastrana and López. Also,

as a consequence of ANUC’s short history the organization was not able to develop

strong ties with the popular masses of the peasantry, who mainly saw ANUC as a

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governmental institution. Thus, the peasantry saw ANUC as an organism that could fund

their needs and provide services, but not as an organization they needed to fund.172

Fourth, the approval of Law 6 of 1975 commonly was known as Ley de Aparcería

(“Sharecropping Law”)173 affected greatly the fall of ANUC. This law, contrary to Law

number 1 of 1968 that declared sharecropping illegal, established new ways to legalize

such activity in order to secure jobs for peasants. The problem that arose from law 6 of

1975 was that even though peasants could secure some jobs, their aspirations for

becoming owners of the land they had already worked as non-salaried sharecroppers were

completely nullified with the approval of sharecropping as a legal activity. While Law

Number 1 of 1968 recognized to peasants rights of property over the land they had

worked as sharecroppers, Law 6 of 1975 denied these rights. Zamosc comments:

Law 6 of 1975 regulated sharecropping and tenancy contracts and included two key provisions: it stipulated that owners of estates greater than 200 hectares had to provide subsistence plots to their laborers and their families, and it protected from agrarian reform all landowners who could present evidence of legal sharecropping contracts. Essentially the Sharecropping Law tried to alleviate the social pressures created by landless peasants who could not be used as permanent laborers by large-scale agriculture. At the same time it attempted to make available the seasonal labor force needed for that agriculture…. To summarize, then, the agrarian policy of López Michelsen included important concessions for the stable well-to-do peasants but only palliatives for the semiproletarianized and landless.174

Law 6 of 1975 naively attempted to protect both the landless peasantry and the

172 The three aspects are discussed in Perry Rubio, 1994: 262-263173 Sharecrooping in Colombia, Aparcería, is based on a model in what the landowner rents a piece of land for the sharecropper, the aparcero, to plant a product. Once the harvest comes, the landowner and the aparcero divide the money obtained from the sale of the harvest in two equal halves. The landowner usually does not invest any capital and his only risk is that bad weather or plagues would affect the harvest. The aparcero risks the capital he invests on buying seeds, fertilizers, contracting workers, and renting machinery, plus the value of his labor. If the harvest does not produce what both the landowner and the aparcero expect, obviously the most badly hurt is the aparcero.174 Zamosc, 1986: 126

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middle-class farmers175 but its implementation ended hurting the latter because most of

the middle class farmers were politically powerful in their communities and represented

the base of the Liberal and Conservative parties in Colombia’s provincial towns. López

Michelsen’s government believed that by supporting the middle-class farmers, it would

support the landless peasantry because employment would be generated by the farmers

and not by the poor peasantry who lacked capital, technology, and, most important, land.

The López government had concluded that because Colombia’s rural population was

divided between the very poor landless and the better off farmers, therefore the objectives

of the government needed to aim to close the existing “gap” between these two

socioeconomic classes of Colombia’s rural society. Government’s advisers thought that

in “closing the gap” they would increase the production of foods, and would foster the

vocation of the country as agricultural exporter.

Under the “Plan Para Cerrar la Brecha” (“Closing the Gap Plan”), López

Michelsen embraced the World Bank’s recommended initiative for the Third World. In

Colombia such initiative was called Programa de Desarrollo Rural Integrado, DRI

(Integrated Rural Development). DRI was a program in which the World Bank (WB),

through the government’s institutes and local banks, lent capital in the form of subsidies

mainly to mid-size farmers who promised to use such subsidies in increasing the

production of their estates.

The justification for DRI was quite simple. Despite the problems caused by lack of resources, technological backwardness, unemployment, and poverty, the ‘traditional [landless] peasant subsector’ provided 55 percent of the food consumed in the country. Injections of credit, technology, and services would improve the productivity of this group, increasing the food supply and giving the

175 Middle-class farmers could be defined as a group of mid-size landlords who owned mid-size properties (approximately 200 hectares) in areas of good agricultural production such as the valleys of the rivers Cauca and Magdalena.

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peasants better income and more employment.176

By giving more benefits to the farmers than to the landless peasants, DRI was not

successful in closing the gap between the farmers and the landless but in widening it.

Even though DRI accomplished its objective of obtaining better levels of food

production, that increase in the end came to be paid by the already poor peasantry.177

DRI’s failure in delivering benefits to the peasantry was based on the fact that

only the middle class farmers were the ones who possessed enough resources and

political contacts to benefit from the program and to compete in a capitalist mode of

production. They had enough resources to travel from the towns to the cities where the

agencies functioned, to wait until the functionaries took care of their demands, and to

make the necessary contacts with powerful politicians who made their demands heard in

the circles of decision making of the program. Middle-class farmers were the only ones

who really benefited from loans made in the name of the DRI, who could pay debts on

time to the banks, and who could buy the lands of other troubled peasants who were not

able to keep with the demands of the financiers of DRI.178

The failure of the government in addressing the needs of an agrarian reform

program in Colombia during the 1970s, and the failure of the DRI program either in

176 Zamosc, 1986:124177 Michael Taussig has concluded on the effects of the DRI program in Colombia’s Cauca Valley: “In the case of the southern Cauca Valley, agribusiness has been dependent on the formations of a class of poor peasants who combine wage labor on capitalist farming units with their own small-scale peasant production. On the one hand, capitalist farms provide the peasants with a type of subsidy through wages. But on the other hand, the semi-proletarians, as peasant producers, are supplying the capitalist farmers with a subsidy too. It is a subsidy which allows farmers to extract higher rates of surplus value than would be possible were (sic) the costs of maintaining and reproducing labor totally dependent on the capitalist mode of production.” Tausssig, Michael. 1978. “Peasant Economics and the Development of Capitalist Agriculture in the Cauca Valley, Colombia.” Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 5, No. 3 Peasants, Capital Accumulation and Rural Underdevelopment (Summer, 1978), 62-91. P.86178 Taussig, 1978: 83

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fostering the aspirations of both the landowners and the landless fueled the increasing of

violence in the country. DRI did not fulfill the expectations of the landowner class who

wanted the country to become an agricultural exporting superpower nor did it fulfill the

aspirations of the landless who wanted to become landowners. Failure of the government

programs in addressing the agrarian problem continued fueling the increase of guerrilla

activity, and this time not only in the countryside but also in the cities.

Conclusion.

The readdressing of the land reform policy during the second cycle, and the setting of a

peaceful period in Colombia during the National Front, highlights the fact that by

supporting land and agrarian reform policy the government was able to lead a peace

process and to keep its legitimate functions. Because of the success of the government in

readdressing the interests of the peasantry on agrarian reform, the government and the

political elites were able to maintain control over the country’s political parties and to

establish reliable ties with the peasantry through the formation of the official ANUC.

The end of La Violencia through the bipartisan agreement, The National Front,

and the restoration of agrarian reform as a leading policy led to the pacification of the

guerrillas during the governments of President Lleras Camargo (1958-62), and Guillermo

León Valencia (1962-66) but, at the same time, it excluded and thus alienated different

political parties such as the Communist Party. This situation fueled the frustration of a

sector of the peasantry and the Communist party and led to the “official” formation of

FARC in 1964.

By shifting from an agrarian reform program that focused on supporting peasants

during the National Front to a national program that promoted agro-industrial production

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and that retracted the peasants’ political gains during the second half of the second cycle

of agrarian reformism, the presidents of the 1970s created a period of instability and led

to a strengthening of FARC and the formation of new guerrilla movements. The agrarian

counter-reformism inaugurated during the periods of Presidents Misael Pastrana (1970-

74) and López Michelsen (1974-78), especially the new laws reducing peasants’ chances

of obtaining title to the land they worked and restricting political participation of peasant

organizations, brought about the increasing of political violence and the reappearance of

the guerrillas.

Chapter Five

The Third Full Cycle: Opening and Closing of Agrarian Reform and

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Political Participation, Narcotrafficking, and the Intensification of FARC Activity,

1980-1998.

Denial of political participation for FARC, repression from the government, and the dirty

war initiated by the military supported death squads caused FARC’s recourse to violence

during the 1980s and 1990s. Narcotrafficking during the same period affected prices and

access to the land but also gave a chance to FARC to finance itself after the support from

the Soviet and Cuban international Communism ended with the end of the Cold War.

Narcotrafficking created a new dynamic in the Colombian conflict which took violence to

a bigger scale than ever before in the country. This third full cycle marks a policy shift

from the revival of agrarian reform to placate insurgency during the 1980s to its

abandonment in the 1990s, when narcotraffickers’ purchase of the land drives up land

prices, and neo-liberal policies of the government make agrarian reform ideologically

unacceptable and economically unaffordable. As in prior decades, the policy shift during

these two decades alternately fueled FARC’s reasons to join a peace process and then its

reasons to rebel against the government. Chapter five is divided in three sections which

explain both the effects of lack of political participation for FARC, and the effects of

narcotrafficking on FARC and on the land conflict.

Section 5.1. The 1980s and the Beginning of the Peace Processes, analyzes the

response of the government and the guerrillas to the political violence developed as a

consequence of the changes on agrarian policy during the 1970s. It analyzes the

government’s adoption of an agrarian reform program as part of the peace process with

FARC and M-19, with the aim of providing benefits and to support ex-guerrillas who

accepted the government’s amnesty.

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Section 5.2. The 1990s: Narcotrafficking and the New Economy, analyzes the

appearance of narcotrafficking as a variable affecting both violence and agrarian reform

during the periods of Presidents Gaviria (1990-94) and Samper (1994-98). It centers on

the premise that the land tenure conflict increased in Colombia because narcotraffickers

needed to control increasing land extensions as the illicit drug market expanded.

Section 5.3. Land Policy in the 1990s, summarizes the main aspects of the

agrarian law 160 of 1994 and highlights its differences with the preceding laws.

Section 5.4. Peasants, Guerrillas, and Armed Violence, concludes that is the

denial of peasants’ access to land and the exclusion of the landless from participation in

the political process that has caused both FARC’s choice to recur to armed violence and

the peasants’ choice of supporting the insurgency.

5.1. The 1980s and the Beginning of the Peace Processes.

During the 1980s lack of political participation for political groups different from the

Liberal and Conservative parties created a sense of frustration in which violence became

the way to protest the monopoly of the two parties, and the unofficial extension of the

Frente Nacional. By the end of the1970s guerrilla activity had increased in the cities and

in the countryside. In the countryside the effects of the DRI were catastrophic in

transferring the control of more land to the already wealthy landowning class. Presidents

López and Turbay were aware that the political participation rules imposed through the

Frente Nacional, and the fall of the peasant movement led by ANUC, were alienating the

masses179.

It was after the election of Conservative President Belisario Betancur (1982-86)

179 Safford and Palacios, 2002: 336

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that a serious political reform began taking form in Colombia. Such reform attempted to

avoid a bigger conflict between the already strong insurgency and the political class, the

economic groups and the landowners associations represented by the government. The

governments of Presidents López and Turbay (1978-82) attempted to generate some

escape to the existing tensions by proposing a political reform to the Colombian

Constitution of 1886 still in place. The reform proposed to open political participation to

different parties in addition to the Liberal and Conservative, and to give more power to

local political organizations in a traditional centralist state. Both Lopez and Turbay’s

proposals were defeated in Congress.180

Congress successfully passed a constitutional reform permitting popular election

of mayors in all municipalities during President Belisario Betancur’s term (1982-86). The

reform opened opportunities to local leaders to become elected majors by running in a

democratic election instead of keeping the old system in which mayors were appointed

by the States’ governors. Betancur’s reform constituted then a main effort in widening

popular political participation in Colombia until a constitutional assembly finally

approved a new constitution, replacing the old Constitution of 1886, in 1991.

In congruency with his plans to give more political participation to different

groups, President Betancur announced the initiation of a peace process with the

guerrillas. Betancur attempted to stop the discontent generated by alienation of

independent political movements in the cities and towns, and the evident frustration of

the peasantry who, after the effects of DRI, were already being drained into the guerrilla

forces.

180 Safford and Palacios, 2002: 336

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Betancur’s peace plan contained an agrarian reform program to respond to the

demands of the frustrated peasantry and ex-combatants. Betancur’s government,

through the enactment of Law 35 of 1982, reinstated INCORA’s role in land

redistribution, and regulated the colonization in the territories then known as

“territorios de frontera” (Colonization areas in Zamosc’s classification),181 which

covered the more undeveloped regions of the country. Law 35 of 1982 rapidly

increased the acquisition of lands by INCORA, as is shown in Table 5, Lands

Acquired By INCORA after Law 35 of 1982. Also, in an attempt to reach over the

peasantry’s leadership and organizations, Law 35 created a new institute, the Plan

Nacional de Rehabilitación, PNR, which coordinated the participation of peasant

communities in deciding over the investment of the national budget in rural areas.

Table 5

Lands Acquired By INCORA After Law 35 of 1982.

Year Hectares

1981 4,400

1985 25,111

1987 54,704

1992 96,098

Source: Fajardo, 2002: 51

The birth of Law 35 of 1982 was directly linked to Betancur’s desire to establish a

peace agreement with the guerrillas of FARC and the M-19. Such agreement was finally

signed with all guerrilla groups on March 28, 1984. In the agreement the government

committed itself to: (a) promote the modernization of the nation’s political institutions;

181 Fajardo, Dario. 2002. Para Sembrar la Paz Hay que Aflojar la Tierra. Bogotá: Instituto de Estudios Ambientales, IDEA, Universidad Nacional de Colombia. P. 51

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(b) to support vigorously the implementation of an agrarian reform policy; and (c) to

strengthen and facilitate peasant and indigenous community organization.”182

FARC, As a result of the agreement, saw not only the opportunity to demobilize

some of its guerrillas but also to start its own political party, The Unión Patriótica (UP).

UP was formed mainly of members of the Communist Party and other left-wing parties

and independent movements. The UP successfully participated in the elections of 1986,

obtaining 400,000 votes, which represented almost 4% of the national vote.183

Despite UP’s political success in the elections, FARC and its legal political arm

became targets of the right wing death squads when the traditional political class and the

landowners saw the left’s participation as a threat to their privileges of power. The death

squads, known as the “Paramilitares” (paramilitaries), were supported by military

officers, rich landowners, drug traffickers, and ultra-Conservative politicians who

launched an intense series of covert operations against the UP and its supporters. Mark

Chernick writes:

Throughout the electoral campaign… FARC denounced repeated confrontations between its fronts and the Colombian military despite the cease-fire agreements. FARC’s leadership asserted that 165 militants of the UP were assassinated during the last six months of the electoral campaign…. During the succeeding six months, 33 additional assassinations of UP militants were widely publicized in the national press, including slayings of one senator, one representative, five councilmen [concejales], and 25 activists. The UP directly accused the army, police and right-wing paramilitary groups of the murder of their elected representatives…. Evidence emerged directly linking mid-level military officers to specific crimes (Amnesty International, 1988). Further, reports surfaced linking drug traffickers and drug financing to the death squads..… Throughout 1987 and 1988 the killing of UP leaders and sympathizers continued unabated. By early 1988, the toll had surpassed 450, including the UP’s former presidential candidate [Jaime Pardo Leal] and two more of their elected congressional representatives.184

During the first four years of political action more than 1,000 members of the UP

182 Alape, Arturo.1985. “La Paz, La Violencia: Testigos De Excepción.” in Chernick, 1989:73183 Chernick, 1989: 75184 Chernick, 1989: 76

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were killed in assaults on their offices, in road ambushes, or on the campaign trail. UP’s

second presidential candidate, Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa, was also assassinated in early

1990 while he was waiting to take a plane in Bogotá. As The New York Times reported:

On March 22, Mr. Jaramillo sat with his wife, Mariela, at the domestic terminal of Bogotá’s airport. A year earlier, a fellow leader of his Patriotic Union party [José Antequera] had been shot to death at the same airport. But Mr. Jaramillo, who was heading to a Caribbean beach for a vacation, had decided to leave his bulletproof vest at home.

A young man walked up, ostensibly to greet the candidate. But his newspaper hid a submachine gun. And for the second time in nine months a Colombian presidential candidate died at the hands of a killer, most likely hired by cocaine traffickers, who have been linked to the country’s extreme right.185

The failure of the political reform which looked after guaranteeing political

participation to the landless peasantry and the poor represented by UP came as a result of

the open persecution from the political class, the landowners, drug traffickers, and the

paramilitary organizations. FARC then abandoned any attempts to participate politically

in electoral campaigns. FARC’s only attempt to participate in the electoral process

becomes then a another sad episode in the history books when 3500 members of its

Unión Patriótica (UP), were assassinated by paramilitary death squads,186 leading to

FARC’s final withdrawal from the original 1984 peace process. Political competition, for

FARC and the peasantry, had turned out to be a reprise of the historical violent

confrontation between the rich landowning class and the landless peasantry.

Frustration over the failed attempts for land and agrarian reform, as in early times

during La Violencia, has been the fuel that brought FARC to retake armed action as its

way of demonstrating political discontent. More than forty years of protest against the

wealthy landowning class, and many failed attempts of political and agrarian reforms had

185 As José Miguel Vivanco, Executive Director Americas Division, Human Rights Watch declared: “The Patriotic Union says 3,000 members have been killed since the party was formed by former leftist guerrillas in 1985. Of this number, the party counts 1,000 as ''leaders'' - members of Congress and city councils, mayors, and candidates, including the party's previous presidential candidate, Jaime Pardo Leal, who was slain in 1987.” José Miguel Vivanco, “Assassins Wiping Out Colombia Party.” The New York Times, April 9, 1990.186 Pardo, Rafael. 2000: 64

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caused enough frustration to the poor peasantry. Colombia’s attempts for developing

agrarian reform had not been allowed real political grounding either during the

Revolución en Marcha of the 1930’s, nor during the 1960’s Frente Nacional, or during

the latest constitutional reform of 1991. Because of the low impact of agrarian policies in

bettering land distribution during the three policy cycles, the peasants’ voices only had

appeared to be no more than small contending efforts against the power of the rich elites.

This has produced frustration among the peasantry who, as a result, has joined the

guerrillas since the times when the real effects of the first agrarian reforms became

evident. It has been as a result of the peasants’ frustration that FARC assumed armed

action as an avenue to demonstrate their discontent. Armed violence thus has become a

distrustful attitude towards the enemy. Safford and Palacios write:

Whereas the plebiscite of 1957 created a two party government from which all others were excluded, in the constitutional assembly of 1990, [the] demobilized guerrillas of the M-19 were so strongly represented (seventeen delegates) that they formed one of the three major forces in the assembly, along with the Liberal party (twenty-five delegates), and the Gómez faction of Conservatives, re-baptized as Movement of National Salvation (eleven delegates). On the other hand, in 1990 as in 1957 the process was organized from above. The Liberal chief, particularly Alfonso López Michelsen, and Álvaro Gómez Hurtado on the Conservative side showed that in Colombia the established political families still were in command.187

By taking up arms again FARC confirmed that the impetus for violence was based on

what Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda calls political frustration.188 The landless

peasantry, represented by FARC, never had real opportunities for political participation,

resulting in the recourse to armed action by the only entity which was in some way

accountable to them – FARC. This illustrates Tilly’s observation that “when the channels

187 Safford and Palacios, 2002:337188 Fals Borda writes on ‘political frustration’ as a phenomenon that caused La Violencia: “Once [the] charismatic leader [Gaitán] disappeared, the energies that had accumulated and then been frustrated in their expectations became embittered and irrational, producing a wave of destruction. La Violencia was thus an outlet for the overflow of the frustrated revolutionary development of 1948.” Fals Borda, Orlando. 1969. Subversion and Social Change in Colombia. New York: Columbia University Press. P 143-44

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of popular protest are denied, the next logic step is armed action.”189

5.2. The 1990s: Narcotrafficking and the New Economy.

This section argues that violence in Colombia persists because narcotrafficking reinforces

the need for land concentration in order to support today’s drug market. Therefore, while

the country gets immense revenues from drug trafficking, the conflict increases because

both drug dealers and narcotraffickers are able to increase their incomes through the

production and marketing of illegal drugs. This, at the same time, allows the guerrillas,

the peasantry, and narcotraffickers to possess more capital in order to compete for

controlling the land.

The appearance of narcotrafficking in the early 1970s in Colombia fueled

contention between Colombia’s landowners and the landless peasants. The rapid

development of the drug industry militarized the relationship between the peasantry and

the newly rich narcotraffickers who wanted to buy and control most of the productive

lands of the country. 190 Wealthy narcotraffickers began then financing their own personal

armies to force traditional landowners to sell their estates, and to force peasants out of

their small landholdings.191 The contention between narcotraffickers and peasants gave

strength to FARC because peasants saw the guerrilla organization as their armed

189 Charles Tilly, quoted in Chernick, 1999: 23190 Reyes Posada, Alejandro, 1994. “Territorios de la Violencia en Colombia.” In Ministerio de Agricultura (Eds.). El Agro y la Cuestión Social. Bogotá. Tercer Mundo Editores. P. 64-65 (Translation by author)191 Alejandro Reyes Posada writes on the changes in the composition of Colombia’s landowning class: “The change [in the landowning class] highlights a change from the lords of the land to the lords of the war because the mafiosos, in the regions where they possess great territories, have formed death squads to protect their interests and to administer private justice. In 126 municipalities where the narcotraffickers have bought land, there have been social protests. In three of the main regions of rural protest and guerrilla conflict, Urabá-Cordoba-Bajo Cauca, the Middle Magdalena, and the Ariari-Guayabero-Guaviare region, the armed mafias enjoyed the benefits of an implicit alliance with the government armed forces in their struggle against the guerrillas. Thus, the creation of the self-defense groups (AUC) by the armed forces, and the death squads by the mafias, constitute a single process developed since 1981.” Reyes Posada, Alejandro, 1994. “Territorios de la Violencia en Colombia.” In Ministerio de Agricultura (Eds.). El Agro y la Cuestión Social. Bogotá. Tercer Mundo Editores. P. 66 (Translation by author)

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protectors who could counteract narcotraffickers’ intentions to become a new landowning

class.

The expansion of the drug industry, and its increasing external demand, created a new

type of war in which control over land was also a central issue to FARC and other

guerrilla organizations who continued their struggles over land tenure issues and military

control of entire territories in the colonization areas. With the advent of the land-hungry

narcotraffickers, this contention grew.

The landless were affected not only because the narcotraffickers saw them as a threat

to their properties but also because the traffickers’ abundant capital inflated rapidly the

prices of the land. As in the past, the land conflict fueled a union between the guerrillas

and the landless against a new class of landowners. By the mid 1980s this new class of

landowners was already using from four to six million hectares for cattle grazing, out of

the total of Colombia’s 40 million hectares.192

As Colombian scholar, Alejandro Reyes Posada agrees, the purchase of land by

narcotraffickers has changed the characteristics of the agrarian problem because of four

main reasons: First, it has elevated the levels of concentration of property in few hands,

and, as a result, it has caused peasants’ immigrations to zones of colonization and to the

cities. Second, it has overvalued lands, and de-stimulated the investment of resources

from agriculture and cattle enterprises into the market. Third, it has contributed to private

financing of counterinsurgency in search of safety made by force, while fighting the

guerrillas, terrorizing the rural population, and increasing levels of violence. Fourth, it

has reinforced the inefficient traditional behavior of dedicating the country’s best lands to

192 Richani, Nazih. 1997. “The Political Economy of Violence: The War System in Colombia.” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Summer, 1997). P. 64

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cattle breeding while damaging agriculture and destroying the forests. In many areas of

the country the narcotraffickers have replaced the old landowners, and in doing so, they

have deteriorated the already scarce social leadership within the affected regions.193

Even though the peasantry and the guerrillas joined forces against the new narco-

landlords and their paramilitary self-defense forces, they also developed a mutually

beneficial relationship with the narcotraffickers. By taking refuge in the jungles near the

colonization territories both peasants and the guerrillas found themselves as very

successful in being able to get rid of the controls of the government, the police and the

army. This situation was used by narcotraffickers who counted on the service of both

guerrillas and peasants to develop the production of drugs. Thus, peasants acted as

agricultural laborers who planted, harvested, and processed cocaine and opium. The

guerrillas then acted as security organizations that gave military protection to

narcotrafickers peasants and illegal plantations. FARC and other guerrilla groups offered

security and acted as a governing entity, or mediator, between the narcotraffickers and

the peasant raspachines (coca planters). As Nazih Richani writes:

The guerrilla economy and that of narcotraffic are interdependent. The CGN [National Guerrillas’ Coordination] imposes a tax in coca and poppy that is equal to 10% of the market value, per kilo, or paste …. The CGN also safeguards the interests of the peasants who cultivate these illegal crops by making sure that traffickers (a) pay on time and (b) pay the market value.”194

[However,] the relationship between the drug traffickers and the guerrilla movement … is basically in conflict due to their irreconcilable concerns. The CGN imposes taxes and protects the peasants, two aims that increase the likelihood they will come into conflict with the traffickers (because) in some areas the traffickers have even become large landowners who then sought to expel the peasants.195

By the 1990s new international political conditions fueled FARC’s need to become part

193 Reyes Posada, Alejandro. 1995. “La compra de Tierras por Narcotraficantes en Colombia.” In Machado, 1998: 89.194 Richani, 1997: 48

The CGN [Coordinadora Nacional Guerrillera] was a group formed during the 1990s. It united the main Colombian guerrilla groups into one national organization. Today this organization has disappeared.195 Richani, 1997: 57

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of the narcotrafficking industry. The end of the Cold War, and the severing of Cuban and

Soviet block support of revolutionary movements, made the guerrillas define new

economic and military tactics for survival such as taxing the illegal drug industry,

increasing kidnappings, and extorting money from rich landowners, industrialists and

business people.

In the western hemisphere, the effects of the American-led War on Drugs affected

Colombia’s role in the drug market by unintentionally strengthening the presence of

Colombian narcotraffickers in the international market. Before 1990 most of production

of coca leaves was developed in Bolivia and Peru but after the two national governments,

aided by the U.S., launched a war against Peruvian and Bolivian cartels, the planting and

processing of illegal crops was moved almost entirely to Colombia. In Colombia costs of

production were less due to the civil conflict which allowed the lack of effective

government repression, and favored the activity.196 The conflict between the guerrillas

and the government generated ideal conditions to produce and market illegal drugs

because the weak or non-existent State presence, especially in the colonization areas,

favored production and marketing.

During the 1980s and early 1990s FARC moved its activities to the Caquetá and

Meta regions. Its survival and success as a guerrilla movement was based on what some

scholars called a "parasitic relationship" within the communities in which FARC

operated. "Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the guerrilla group's parasitic relationship

with regional economies frequently developed in areas where the state’s judicial norms

and institutions have been abandoned in the face of sudden economic booms.”197 The

participation of the guerrilla organizations in the drugs trade is explained by Buscaglia

196 “Given that the producers of other countries could not compete with the price at which Colombia could sell, the Colombians could charge a much higher price than that which covers their costs. Thanks to more effective repression in the rest of the world, Colombian drug traffickers could gain extraordinary profits.” Mauricio Reina, 2001. In Bergquist, et. al. 2001: 87197 Montenegro, Armando, and Carlos E. Posada in Rangel, 2000. “Criminalidad en Colombia.” Borradores Semanales de Economía, No. 4, 1994. Bogotá: Banco de la República. P. 583.

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and Radcliff:

Today, an estimated average of 50–65 percent of all FARC fronts’ financing originates in drug-related activities. The ELN’s and AUC’s (Autodefensas) proportion of their total operational funding reaches 63 and 52 percent, respectively. In many cases, these same groups have acquired ownership positions in the production and distribution of cocaine and opium. In April 2001 for the first time a top FARC leader was formally charged with drug trafficking, and Colombia’s army chief confirmed that a raid had turned up evidence of FARC involvement in almost every aspect of the international drug trade. Together, FARC, ELN, and AUC are estimated to have direct or indirect control of more than 70–75 percent of the distribution and 40–42 percent of the production in the 136,200 hectares of coca grown in Colombia. This profitable strategic alliance between fragmented drug cartels and guerrilla leaders explains why insurgent groups lack the incentives to seriously engage in peace negotiations with current offers and, thus, provides a major explanation of why more than any other country in the Western Hemisphere Colombia remains threatened by major civil strife.198

As in every regular business, cooperation between partners, narcotraffickers, guerrillas

and peasants, was not always agreeable. Both narcotraffickers and guerrillas began more

openly competing for control of the territory, and as a result of such competition, the

peasantry was caught between the fires of the two factions. As a result, more than 1.2

million poor peasants had to abandon their lands and move into shantytowns in the

outskirts of the main Colombian cities.199 A mass of displaced people became a new

problem to the government during the 1990s, not only because new public works and

infrastructure needed to be developed rapidly in the cities but also because agricultural

production declined during these years.200

The main obstacle narcotraffickers found in the production of illegal drugs was

198 Buscaglia, Eduardo and William Ratliff. 2001. “War and Lack of Governance in Colombia Narcos, Guerrillas, and U.S. Policy.” Publications on Public Affairs. Stanford, CA., Hoover Institution, Stanford University, P. 5199 Kay, 2001: 754200 In 1994 an estimated 32.69 percent of the national agricultural product was affected by the presence of guerrilla organizations (included paramilitary) and their activities. In regions such as Caquetá the agricultural product affected corresponded to 42.88 percent. In the state of Cesar, 34.63 percent. In the states of North Santander, South Santander, Sucre, Caldas and Cauca it was more than 12 percent. In Bejarano Avila, 1997: 159

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dealing with the guerrillas and the landless peasantry. While the profits gave

opportunities to narcotraffickers to offer economic payment to the guerrillas in exchange

for protecting production; it negatively affected the peasantry’s struggle to become

landowners. The peasants simply couldn’t compete with the narcotraffickers in buying

land on the open market. These circumstances generated violence between the narcos,

peasants, and guerrillas. It caused the narcotraffickers’ to create their own armies which

at this time became more involved in the politics of the country, and they began

systematically eliminating leaders and members of peasant and workers organizations,

and guerrilla groups. Their main objective was then not only to acquire and to control the

land but to militarily establish a domain all along the country. Buying lands at low prices

allowed the narcotrafficking organizations to expand rapidly and to better their

infrastructure in order to establish a more effective military control.

5.3. Land Policy in the 1990s.

According to Machado, the period between 1988 and 1994 marks a stage in Colombia’s

attempt at modern agrarian reform. During this stage, the government basically

eliminated the old classification of land prices according to census values and replaced it

with a more open system in which the values and classification of lands were tied to

market forces. During this period the government introduced the concept of “assisted

market” in which peasants were allowed subsidies of up to 70% of the value of the land,

in an attempt to re-distribute the lands away from middle and rich landowners towards

the small owners.201

The pressure from international institutions on the Colombian government to

promote neo-Liberal policies in the 1990s affected the land reform programs initiated

201 Machado, 1998:134 (Translation by author)

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during the peace process of the 1980s. In 1994 in response to the high flows of cash

(produced in part by narcotrafficking activities) the Colombian legislature passed Law

160. The law attempted to “commercialize” land enabling the buying and selling in an

open deregulated market, with prices fixed by supply and demand. “The fundamental

change (from prior laws) was to replace the direct intervention of the state within the land

market with an “assisted” intervention in the land market.”202 Thus, the state ended its

policy of granting plots of the state’s land, or private land bought from individuals, to

peasants. The state committed itself only to subsidize the purchase of lands through credit

and low interest loans.

Law 160 of 1994 introduced “Zonas de Reserva Campesina” (Peasant Reserve

Zones), which were designated areas granted by the state to rural communities where

peasants were denied the right to sell the land during certain time after adjudication. The

objective of the Zonas was to stabilize the settlements of small producers by restricting

the sale of their lands, and by doing so, to avoid higher concentration of property in the

few hands of individuals and organizations that had access to high flows of cash.203

5.4. Conclusion: Peasants, Political Participation, Guerrillas, and Armed Violence .

As the evidence in this study makes clear, in Colombia all periods of pro-agrarian

reform had been superseded by cycles of counterreform whose objectives/outcomes have

been to take away some of the rights granted by the preceding reforms. For example, the

agrarian reform of 1936 which conditioned the rights of property to the productivity of

202 Machado, 1998: 49 (Translation by author)203 Fajardo, 2002: 53 (Translation by author)

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estates, while giving rights of property to squatters and sharecroppers, was superseded by

the industrial counter reform of President Santos (1938-42). During Santos’ term the

government veered its objectives from strengthening agrarian reform to developing

Colombia’s industrialization project, negatively affecting the interest of the peasantry.

Also, by 1944 the same President López who had set the 1936 agrarian reform (Law 200

of 1936), pushed for a new law that opposed the Law 200 of agrarian reform. López’s

Law 100 of 1944 guaranteed the rights of landowners over property whether they made

their estates productive or not, and denied claims from peasant workers, invaders, or

sharecroppers over lands claimed by landowners. Thus, Law 100 of 1944, contrary to

what had been expressed in Law 200 of 1936, denied the aspirations given to peasants

under the law of 1936.

A similar situation occurred between the governments of the National Front and

the governments of the 1970s. During the National Front the government had pushed for

a strong program of agrarian reform through Law 35 of 1961. This law, besides giving

land to peasants, helped in creating an official peasant organization, the ANUC, to

coordinate with the government the acquisition of lands for the landless. At this time

(1958-70) the government openly supported the development of a strong peasant

economy in which the peasants, many of them ex-guerrillas, were allowed to operate

their own agricultural projects to supply the national food markets. Once the National

Front finished, the new governments of Pastrana (1970-74) and López Michelsen (1974-

78) dismantled ANUC and accused its members of subversion, while pushing for the

development of a national model of agribusiness in which the peasants would be

transformed from potential owners of the land during the 1960s to hired agricultural

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laborers in the 1970s.

Political frustration in the form of armed violence appeared inside Colombia’s

borders as a result of this long cyclical process of “giving and taking away.” This process

has fueled the growth of FARC and the struggle of the Colombian peasantry against the

political class, the landowners, the economic groups, and the government which

represents them. Understanding this process helps to explain why FARC, since its early

formation during La Violencia, has always justified its fighting against the Colombian

governments and the Conservative and Liberal parties, by putting itself on the side of the

landless. This process also gives the rationale to understand why FARC, in each one of

the peace pacts and agreements signed during the last fifty years, has always put agrarian

reform as a focal point of its political agenda.

The denial of access to land ownership to peasants and the denial to the landless

to participate in the political process had caused FARC to recur to armed violence. From

the times prior to La Violencia to present days, both FARC and the peasantry had been

denied their rights to obtain property titles over the land they worked and their rights to

open participation in the democratic process.

A continuous distrustful and violent competition between the political elites and

the poor peasantry has allowed the wealthy landowners to keep and increase their

properties, while political and agrarian reforms have not represented substantial political

changes in favor of the peasantry, and have given absolutely no rights to peasants to own

the land they had worked over the years. Colombian scholar Antonio Garcia’s assessment

holds true after the effects of the 1980s: after the first two efforts of agrarian reform only

marginal agrarian reforms have been developed. And these reforms have not really aimed

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to break the seigniorial monopoly over the land, nor to transform the land tenure

structure, the power relations, nor the system of norms existing in the society.204

Most of Colombia’s agrarian reforms have redirected the pressure over the land

towards the geographical periphery in the colonization areas. This geographical

relocation has helped to preserve the political status-quo in which both peasants and

landowners have kept their traditional roles. In Garcia’s terms, these agrarian reforms

could be better known as “agrarian counter-reforms: reforms that give the peasants many

things but not the land.”205

Chapter Six

Party Differences over Agrarian Reform.

Political violence in Colombia has been nothing other than a metaphoric representation of

a deep conflict over the control of land. This conflict over land has led to the formation

204 García, Antonio. 1972. Dinámica de las Reformas Agrarias en América Latina. Bogotá: Editorial Oveja Negra, P. 10205 García, 1972: 10-11

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and evolution of FARC, and today continues fueling FARC’s raison d’etre as a military

and political movement. Many scholars traditionally have argued that the origins of the

Colombian civil conflict and FARC are mainly grounded in ideological disputes between

members of the Liberal and Conservative parties in the rural areas of the country. This

chapter argues that these partisan disputes are indeed real, but that they are more deeply

related to disagreements over land tenure and agrarian reform than to ideological disputes

between the two parties.

This chapter demonstrates that historically attempts to favor Agrarian Reform policies

have mostly been supported by Liberal governments and attacked by the opposing

Conservative party. These dynamics establish Colombian Conservatism as congruent

with landlordism and Liberalism as closer to agrarian-reformism. As a result of this, the

Colombian conflict has its origins not in the ideological division between the two parties

but in issues surrounding the ownership of the land.

Partisan alternation in the control of the presidency and the centralized government

has caused cyclical alternation in agrarian policy because each party has tried to make

policies according to its own approach to the land question. Despite this factor of policy

alternation, both parties, Liberal and Conservative, have been consistent in terms of their

approaches to agrarian reform. As it will be shown, Liberal governments have been more

likely to approve agrarian reforms and more willing to change the structure of land tenure

in ways favorable to peasants than Conservatives.

At the end of the National Front in 1970, the traditional division between Liberals and

Conservatives in attitudes towards land reform was altered by intervention of

international institutions, as well as sudden political events that made party elites change

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their original views on the agrarian question.206 Thus, after 1970 the evolution of land and

agrarian reform policy in Colombia continued affected not only by a legacy of cyclical

policy alternation but also by factors like the intervention of international institutions,

such as the World Bank, which negotiated and imposed global policies in order to

maintain the prevalence of a capitalist economy in a world “threatened” by Communism.

The emerging of narcotrafficking was a second factor which caused the increase of land

concentration in the few hands of the rich narcotraffickers who strove to emulate the old

class of landowners. A third factor was the increasing military power and the disruptive

capacity of FARC and other guerrilla groups who continued pressuring to obtain land

rights for the landless.

As an example of changing partisan positions under these circumstances it can be said

that the inauguration of the government of Alfonso López Michelsen (1974-78) marked

the first episode in which a Liberal government became an antagonist of former Liberal

agrarian reforms. The peace process started during the government of Conservative

President Belisario Betancur (1982-86) represented the first time in which a Conservative

government promoted an agrarian reform in order to address the demands of insurgents.

6.1. Partisan Approaches to Agrarian Reform.

This chapter presents how Liberals and Conservatives have approached agrarian reform

from the 1930s to the 1990s. Sources and contents of the different agrarian reform laws

can be found in Table 6, Agrarian Reform Laws: Liberal Compared to Conservative

Governments. It shows how agrarian reform policies have mostly been supported by

Liberal governments and attacked by the opposing Conservative party.

206 Liberal pro-agrarian reform views had also changed at the very end of López Pumarejo’s second term when in 1944, after López’s financial scandals, Conservative forces in the senate won the approval of Law 100 of 1944 signaling thus the weakening of the Lopez’s reforms. Braun, Herbert. 1985. P 77, ff.

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Agrarian reform policy in Colombia can be analyzed from before the Twentieth

Century. However, the main changes in matters of land ownership came after the

constitutional reform of 1936, which called for a revision of the rights of property over

land and made them contingent on the economic exploitation of properties. During the

government of President Alfonso López Pumarejo the Colombian congress approved

Law 200 of 1936, also called Agrarian Reform Law, or Land Law (Ley de Tierras). Its

main objectives were to reactivate the economy by ending monopolies over lands. The

reform granted lands to colonos (settlers or homesteaders) of state lands, and organized

peasant workers who demonstrated they had worked their de facto possessed lands long

enough to transform them into productive units. The provisions of the reform required

owners of large landholdings who did not exploit their lands to exploit them or to face

expropriation. The agrarian reform law of 1936 gave incentives to peasants to organize

and to raise petitions for land titles. It also influenced the development of the peasants’

grassroots organizations whose objective was to obtain property rights over idle lands

held by wealthy landowners.

Pressure from Conservative opposition gained approval for changes in the

agrarian reform of 1936 in 1944, during the second term of President López Pumarejo.

Congress then approved Law 100 of 1944.Contrary to what had been expressed in Law

200 of 1936, Law 100 confirmed the landowners’ right to keep their properties. This law

guaranteed the rights of landowners over property whether they made their estates

productive or not. It denied claims from squatters or workers over lands claimed by

landowners, and requested that tenancy contracts and sharecropping activities were made

legal only through written contracts. Thus, Law 100 of 1944, contrary to what has been

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expressed in Law 200 of 1936, denied the aspirations given to peasants by law 200 of

1936.

In 1957 the Military junta that replaced the Conservative Dictator Rojas Pinilla

enacted Law 290 of 1957 whose objective was to legalize some of the lands granted to

colonizers (many ex-guerrillas among them) in the eastern plains of the country. Law 290

also attempted to establish a geo-economics classification of Colombian lands but the

entire attempt ended in frustration after the government realized it lacked the land

surveys necessary for such an undertaking. Law 290 had very few effects in matters of

agrarian reform and its only real benefits were those of delimiting certain properties in

the eastern Llanos of Colombia.

After a period of Conservative dominance from 1946 to 1958,207 the Liberal party

came back to power at the end of La Violencia, and their interest in agrarian reform

became evident during the government of Alberto Lleras Camargo. In 1961 the Liberal

President Alberto Lleras attempted to revive some of the lost benefits of the Liberal

reform of 1936 in order to pacify the rebellious peasantry and the Liberal guerrilla groups

formed during La Violencia. Through the approving of Law 135 of 1961 the government

retained its right to intervene in and take over large unexploited estates as it was done

with Law 200 of 1936. It conditioned the existence of large landholdings to their

productive exploitation. Law 135’s main objective was the granting of property titles to

individuals who were working lands as renters and/or sharecroppers. Furthermore, Law

135 kept in the state’s hands the function of granting titles over state lands to individuals

207 Even though during the term of Rojas Pinilla the presidency was supposed to be non-partisan, and after the fact that Rojas was a military general, which in Colombia means not to be a member of a political party, Rojas himself was a Conservative affiliate. Rojas was a protected of Conservative President Mariano Ospina, and a member of a very Conservative family of farmers from Tolima. Thus, during Rojas term the government continued to be Conservative. See: Henderson, 2001: 361, ff.

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who demonstrated productive exploitation of such lands. During Alberto Lleras’

presidential term INCORA was born as the institution designed to operate land

acquisitions, expropriations, and distribution of lands caused by the application of Law

135.

The passing of Law 135 of 1961 marked the beginning of modern stage in the

concept of agrarian reform in Colombia (1962-1972). The birth in 1967 of the National

Association of Peasant Users, ANUC, marked the beginning of a new era in which the

Liberal elites supported peasant participation in the decisions of the state on matters of

agrarian reform. It was the beginning of an agrarian reform program led by the

government, operated in conjunction with the peasant organizations, and widely approved

by the traditional political class.

The approval of Law 1 of 1968 during the Liberal government of Carlos Lleras

Restrepo marked only a continuation of the agrarian reform policies applied after the

birth of Law 135 of 1961. No major changes in matters of agrarian reform were made

during the government of preceding Conservative Guillermo León Valencia (1962-66)

since Liberal agrarian reform had been successful in pacifying the country and ending the

remains of La Violencia during the term of Lleras Camargo. Law 1 of 1968 declared

sharecropping as illegal activity by setting fines and sanctions against landowners who

allowed sharecroppers to settle or work in their lands. It kept the same premises of Laws

200 of 1936 and Law 135 of 1961 regarding expropriation poorly exploited lands, and the

granting of property titles of unexploited lands to sharecroppers and tenants.

With the election of Conservative President Misael Pastrana in 1970, violence and

political discontent rose again, after 12 years of peaceful agrarian reformism. Pastrana’s

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election marked the beginning of a period of agrarian counterreformism in which the

government joined the landowners’ associations in order to set a new program in the

development of the country as an agribusiness heaven. The enactment of Laws 4 and 5 of

1973 represented the dismantling of the agrarian reform started by Law 135 in 1961.

Once more, as in Law 100 of 1944, wealthy landowners were reassured of their rights of

property over large holdings without conditions of efficient exploitation. Besides, the

landowners were offered low interest loans and subsidies through the National

Agricultural Fund so they could develop agribusinesses. The Pastrana administration also

rewarded the landowners facing expropriation with compensation that corresponded to

the commercial value of their estates and not to the census value, as it was decreed in

prior laws.

During Pastrana’s term INCORA halted its purchase of land and even created an

internal black list of members of ANUC who were denied titles over lands bought to be

distributed by the institute. The government lifted ANUC’s official status taking away the

organization’s official funding and decision power on agrarian reform matters. Despite

the harassment from the Pastrana and López administrations, and the killings and

disappearances perpetrated by the landowners-supported death squads, ANUC

maintained its autonomy and continued land invasions and political activism until 1978.

The López Michelsen administration (1974-78) brought ANUC to its final day

with the approval of Law 6 of 1975, commonly known as Ley de Aparcería

(Sharecropping Law). López’s term marked the first time in which a Liberal government

went against the traditional Liberal approach to agrarian and land reform due to the

intervention policies of the World Bank. The López administration saw the enactment of

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Law 6 of 1975, which legalized sharecropping as a way to secure peasant workers for the

new agribusinesses, in order to follow the World Bank’s policies in Colombia,. Law 6

nulified Law 1 of 1968 which had declared sharecropping illegal and recognized property

rights over lands to peasants that had worked lands as sharecroppers. As the peasants

were made to write new sharecropping contracts with landowners their rights for

becoming owners of lands they had already worked as sharecroppers became nullified

because the new Law 6 denied any rights derived from sharecropping activities.

By attempting to secure a supply of workers for the new network of agribusinesses,

Law 6 of 1975 naively attempted to protect both the landless peasantry and the

landowning middle-class of farmers. López’s government believed that by supporting the

better off farmers, it would serve the interests of the landless peasantry because

employment would be generated by farmers and not by the poor peasantry who lacked

capital, technology, and land. The provisions of Law 6 ended hurting the landless because

most of the profits from agriculture went directly to the middle class farmers and very

low incomes were left for the peasant workers. Also López’s expectations of

transforming Colombia into an agricultural superpower did not go as well as expected by

the government.

Law 6 of 1975 was designed as a way to follow the demands of the World Bank

in terms of modernizing agriculture and developing agribusiness. López’s idea of closing

the gap between the better off farmers and the landless was drawn from the WB

intentions of expanding the size of Colombia’s middle class. The WB has recommended

the DRI as a program in which the bank, through the government’s institutes and local

banks, lent capital in the form of subsidies mainly to mid-size farmers who promised to

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use such subsidies to give employment to poor peasants in their estates.

DRI accomplished its objective of obtaining better levels of production but it was

not successful in closing the gap between the two groups. DRI ended widening the gap by

giving more benefits to the farmers than to the landless peasants. DRI’s failure in

delivering benefits to the peasantry was based on the fact that only the middle class

farmers possessed enough resources and political contacts to benefit from the program

and to compete in a capitalist economy.

In 1982 the election of Conservative Belisario Betancur to the presidency marked

a new beginning in the uses of agrarian reform as a way of counterattacking political

discontent and violence. The enactment of Law 35 of 1982 marked the first time in which

a conservative government took a proactive approach in terms of using agrarian reform to

reach the frustrated landless peasantry. Betancur’s government attempted to lessen the

effects of Integrated Rural Development Program, DRI, and to stop the evident

frustration of the peasantry that was rapidly being channeled into the guerrilla forces.

Law 35 of 1982 was part of Betancur’s peace plan, which considered the need for an

agrarian reform program to respond to the demands of the frustrated peasantry who had

been badly hurt by the effect of Laws 4 and 5 of 1973, and Law 6 of 1975. Law 35 of

1982 reinstated INCORA’s role in land redistribution, increased the acquisition of lands,

and regulated colonization in Colombia’s unspoiled areas in the fashion of former Liberal

reforms.

The signing of Law 35 of 1982 was directly linked to Betancur’s desire to sign a

peace agreement with the guerrillas of FARC and the M-19. An agreement was finally

signed with all guerrilla groups on March 28, 1984. In the agreement the government was

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committed to promote open democratic political institutions, to support vigorously the

implementation of an agrarian reform policy and to strengthen and facilitate the

organizing of peasant and indigenous community groups. As a result, Law 35 gave birth

to the Plan Nacional de Rehabilitación, PNR, which coordinated the participation of

peasant communities in the decisions over the public spent of national resources in the

peasant areas. PNR tried to carry its activities in a very close fashion to what ANUC did

after the Liberal agrarian reform of 1961.

During the Liberal government of Ernesto Samper (1994-98) the IMF and World

Bank continued influencing agrarian policy in Colombia by recommending neo liberal

changes to the agrarian policies of the 1980s. thus, in 1994 the Colombian legislature

passed Law 160 which attempted to “commercialize” land enabling the buying and

selling in an open deregulated market, with prices fixed by supply and demand. At this

time the state ended its policy of granting plots of the state’s land, or private land to

peasants, and committed itself only to subsidize the purchase of lands through credit and

low interest loans. Under pressure from international financial institutions, Law 160

attempted to lessen the benefits given by law 35 of 1982, and to avoid the “giving for

free” land policy of Betancur’s peace plan. However, due to the strength of the guerrillas,

and the peasant and organizations, some of the benefits were kept intact, and access to

land ownership was “disguised” as government subsidized “land-buying” operations

during this Liberal term.

However, due to the not-so-good relations between the Samper administration and

the U.S government, President Samper attempted to win the support of the peasantry by

lessening the effects of the neo liberal demands from Washington. Thus, during Samper’s

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term the government used Law 160 of 1994 to stabilize communities of small producers

who had been granted lands during and after the 1982 peace process by restricting the

sales of their lands. Law 160 introduced the Peasant Reserve Zones, which were

designated areas subsidized by the state to rural communities where peasants were denied

the right to sell the land during certain time after adjudication. With the creation of the

Zones the law tried to avoid higher concentration of property in the few hands of

individuals and organizations that had access to high flows of cash. Part of this operation

was aimed to stop the new wave of narco-landowners who had been eager buyers of land

as a way of laundering money from the illegal drugs’ market. Samper’s attempts for

favoring the interests of the peasantry despite Washington’s pressure were finally

reversed once the U.S.-supported Andrés Pastrana became president in 1998.

Despite the policy alternation that periodically harmed peasant interests and

fueled violence and guerrilla formation during the Twentieth Century, both parties,

Liberal and Conservative have been most of the time consistent in their approaches to

agrarian reform. As has been shown here, Liberal governments have been more likely to

approve agrarian reforms and more willing to change the structure of land tenure than

Conservatives. Even though some other factors, such as external policies drawn by the

international institutions, and the development of narcotrafficking, have also affected

agrarian policy making, the parties have kept their basic approaches to agrarian and land

reform.

in the cycles of alternating agrarian policy have been due to the fact that the two

main parties have alternated the presidency, and during terms in office each party has

tried to design policies according to its own approach to the land question. Policies have

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been enacted, applied, and reformed in periods that initially averaged 12 years, with the

exception of the National Front when the parties alternated control of the government in

periods of four years. For example, the 1936 agrarian reform was the result of a trio of

Liberal governments: Olaya Herrera- López Pumarejo-Santos (1930-42). The counter

reform period of the 1936 reform was carried out also by a trio of Conservative

governments: Ospina Pérez-Laureano Gómez-Rojas Pinilla (1946-57).208 During this

counterreforming period of the first cycle, only one Liberal government, the second term

of López Pumarejo, was forced to approve the counterreforming Law 100 of 1944 after

the President fell in disgrace due to financial scandals involving his family.

During the National Front the agrarian reform of 1961 was carried out without

major changes during the Conservative term of Valencia (1962-66), until the end of the

agreement (1970). This was because the parties had agreed that a way of ending La

Violencia was the development of a strong agrarian reform program without interruption

until the end of the agreement.

After 1970 parties views have more likely to change from the original schema of

Liberal-pro-agrarian reform, and Conservative-anti-agrarian reform. During the last thirty

years the 12 year alternate periods were shortened to four years unless one of the parties

won the presidency more than once. After 1970, reforms to prior agrarian laws have been

applied depending on which party is in office and depending on the intervention of global

powers. Thus, policy alternation has not been only a matter of which party is in the

control of the presidency. Even though the Conservative and Liberal parties have tried to

208 I include Rojas as Conservative because of his closeness to the party even though in Colombia the military and policemen are not supposed to belong to any political movement and keep themselves neutral in political matters. Rojas declared himself as non-partisan when he used Bolivar’s famous quote: “La patria por encima de los partidos” (The nation’s interest are beyond the parties’ interests) during his inauguration.

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maintain their initial views and approaches to agrarian reform, powers stronger than those

of the political elites, such as the international institutions, narcotraffickers, and foreign

powers, have influenced decisions over agrarian policymaking making the parties to

change their decisions regarding agrarian reform.

6.2. Interpretations to the Liberal Choice.

A question that arises after analyzing how agrarian reform policies were favored by

Liberal governments is, why was it principally the Liberal governments who found

agrarian reform policies to be in their own self-interest? This chapter answers the

question based on two arguments.

First, the Liberals, interested in garnering the electoral support of the peasants,

took an antagonistic approach not only to the Conservatives but also to the findings of the

international economic missions that visited the country from the 1930 to the late 1960s.

To be on the side of the peasantry for the Liberals meant the gathering of votes in rural

areas where they were not as strong as the Conservatives. Liberals also opposed

international missions in order to keep strong contact with the Colombian workers’

unions and the peasants that, most of the time, opposed the recommendations of such

missions. For example, while the World Bank Mission of 1948-50 recommended a shift

from agricultural production towards industrial development as a way of creating jobs

and diminishing the negative effects of Colombia’s high rate of urban population

increase,209 the Liberals persevered in favoring agrarian reform over industrialization

because it made them closer to the interest of the peasant majority while securing the

peasant vote.

209 “The U.N. Statistical yearbook lists an annual increase of 2.2 percent for the period 1953-1960. The rate for the United States during the same period was 1.7 percent.” In Duff, 1964:174

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High population increase made the Head of the 1948 Mission, the prominent

Economist Lauchlin Currie, conclude that in Colombia there were too many people trying

to make a living from agriculture.210 Thus, Liberal support of agrarian reform was due

not only to the interest in protecting the peasantry still living in the crowded peasant

economy areas, PEAs211 but also to maintaining ties to the recent displaced peasants who

just had moved to the urban centers.

The Liberals’ pragmatic approach is derived from the interpretation the party’s

elite made of Currie’s findings. The Liberal political leaders found out that those

“marginal” producers of whom Currie spoke constituted the great majority of the farm

workers,212 therefore, the Liberal political campaigns needed to favor that majority in

order to secure success in the elections. Thus, the Liberal approach to agrarian reform

was in large measure a tactic to gather votes from the majority of marginal farm workers.

Second, some scholars have supported the idea that Liberals, more than

Conservatives, were advocates of agrarian reform due to their urbanite background.

Huber and Safford write:

There were several reasons for this. First, an element in the political elite, particularly in the Liberal party, was both essentially urban and susceptible to

210 Findings of the World’s Bank Mission of 1950, led by chief-economist Lauchlin Currie to recommend “a broad-based, integrated approach to economic development featuring road construction as well as fiscal and land reform.” However, after “landowners, who Currie proposed forcing to commercialize their holdings through punitive taxes, damned the scheme as ‘markedly socialist in orientation’, and its author as a ‘malignant reincarnation of Henry George (Henderson, 2001: 330), a second very influential publication of Currie, titled La Operación Colombia, concluded in 1962 that “although Colombia is very far behind the United States, its agricultural problems are essentially the same; a production capacity that chronically surpasses the increase in demand with the consequent pressures on marginal products. Unfortunately, and this is the big difference; in Colombia the “marginal” producers constitute the great majority of the farm workers (Currie in Duff, 1964: 175), what made the statement that “too many people trying to wrest a living from agriculture.” Duff, 1964:174. 211 Peasant Economy Areas (PEA): Areas presenting highly concentrated rural populations living under the system of small landholdings. In these areas peasants work basically their owned small plots of land. As the population grows peasants are likely to immigrate to colonization areas where land is easier to obtain. Peasant economy is based on a pattern of one peasant family (2-7 people) making their living from the produce of very small landholding (1-5 hectares)212 Duff, 1964: 175

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social democratic tendencies.… Conservatives were inclined to repress any sign of Marxist revolution. Some in a newer generation of urban Liberals… were attracted by Marxist ideas, and few evolved into leaders of Colombia’s Communist Party.213

To conclude this chapter, as the land struggle has developed in Colombia, the parties

have defined their composition and the elites their affiliations by approaching the land

question from different viewpoints. This has created a system in which in which Liberal

governments have been more willing to approve agrarian reforms while Conservatives

have voted against them. Thus, the Colombian conflict, initially thought as having

originated in struggles between Liberals and Conservatives, has its origins not in the

ideological division between the two parties but in a land conflict that lies deeper than an

ideological division.

Table 6

Agrarian Reform Laws: Liberal Compared to Conservative Governments

Agrarian Reform Law

Type of Government &

PresidentContent & Comments

Law 200 of 1936 Liberal: Alfonso López Pumarejo

This law was enacted under the constitutional amendment of 1936 which declared that “property is a social function which implies social obligations. [Therefore] for reasons of public utility or social interest… property may be

213 Safford, Frank. 1995. “Agrarian Systems and the State in Colombia.” In Huber, Evelyne and Frank Safford (Eds.) Agrarian Structure and Political Power: Landlord and Peasant in the Making of Latin America. London: University of Pittsburgh Press. P. 134 and 138

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expropriated by judicial decree with prior indemnification.”214

Chapter 1.a. Introduces the concept of extinción de dominio215 (extinction of the right of property).b.Declares that “validity of private titles to rural lands is subject to economic use.”216

c. “The landowner has a ten year period grace in which to demonstrate that he was making economic use of the land claimed.”217

Chapter II.Regulates the dispossession of illegal squatters but also (Article 22) requests “the payment by the owner to the illegal occupant for any improvements to the land which the latter might have affected.”218

Chapter III. - Creates the figure of Jueces de Tierras (land judges) to settle conflicts over lands.219

Law 100 of 1944 Liberal: Alfonso López Pumarejo (Second term)

Law 100 reassured the landowners their right to keep their properties. It regulated tenancy and sharecropping contracts and made requirement that all contracts needed to be in writing. Contracts could have a minimum period of one seasonal harvest or a longest period of two years. Betterments to a property needed a consensual agreement with between the tenant/sharecropper and the owner.In matters of expropriation, Law 100 kept the same regulations of Law 200 of 1936. However, it added, expropriations needed to be paid in cash,220 which made harder for the government to initiate expropriation processes against landowners.

Law 290 of 1957 Military Junta: Five Military Generals

Law 290 classified lands into four categories: 1. land appropriate for annual cultivation, and for mechanized agriculture, 2. land appropriate seasonal harvests, 3. land which needed improvements for cultivation, and 4. land inappropriate for agriculture.

(Continuation Table 6)

The law required the landowner to cultivate certain percentages according to how his/her property was classified. Law 290 became very inapplicable as the government did not possess land surveys of all Colombian lands221

Law 135 of 1961 Liberal: Alberto Lleras Camargo

Chapter I. Stated objectives: 1. Supported the distribution of available lands into smallholdings which would help to

214 Duff, 1964: 10215 Fajardo, 2002: 50 (Translation by author)216 Duff, 1964: 16217 Duff, 1964: 16218 Duff, 1964: 16219 Duff, 1964: 17220 Duff, 1964: 26221 Duff, 1964: 30

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the “reconstruction” of the peasantry after La Violencia. 2. Supported colonization movements in colonization areas. 3. Established a technical assistance program for cultivators in matters of production and marketing of products.222

Chapter II. Created INCORA.Chapter III. Created the Social Agrarian Council which was a public entity with the participation of both government and peasant leaders.Chapter IV. Created the concept of agrarian attorneys who defended the government in matters of expropriations.Chapter V. Established the National Agrarian Fund which allocated 100 million pesos annually from national budget, plus profits from loans, bonds and other sources.Chapter VI. Created the Regional Development Corporations which were in charge of technical assistance in each region.Chapter VII. maintained the figure of Extinction of Dominion from Law 200 of 1936Chapter VIII. Decreed that public lands could be adjudicated to individual in extensions not larger than 450 hectares. Corporations could obtain land only through contracts with INCORAChapter IX. Regulated colonization of landsChapter X. Defined the figure of family-farm units (extension and uses) and mandated the obligations of persons who received such units.Chapter XI. Regulated the acquisition of private own lands. This chapter became the most controversial because it kept on INCORA the right to expropriate. Later on this chapter was modified taking away limiting this right and changing the methods of payment from state bonus to cash.223

“Law 135 of 1961… implemented a ‘social agrarian reform’ aimed to put pressure on big landowners, and to make them modernize their exploitations of the land.”224

Law 1 of 1968 Liberal: Carlos Lleras Restrepo

As Law 200 of 1936, it aimed to expropriate lands poorly exploited, and to grant titles of ownership of such lands to sharecroppers who claimed them.225

Laws 4 and 5 of 1973

Conservative: Misael Pastrana

Laws 4 and 5 of 1973 sanctioned the provisions of the Pact of Chicoral:These laws marked the beginning of a period of counter-reforming Law 135 of 1961, and Law 1 of 1968. the (Continuation Table 6)government changed its objectives of supporting the smallholding model (family-farm units) towards supporting rich landowners to develop the agri-business model.Law 4 changed and limited the criteria used to

222 Zamosc, 1986: 35223 Duff, 1964: 113-116224 Fajardo, 2002: 50 (Translation by author)225 Fajardo, 2002: 50 (Translation by author)

135

define estates as liable to expropriation and redistribution.

Laws 4 and 5 modified Law 135 of 1961 by making compensation of expropriated lands to be paid according to the commercial value of the property and not in congruence with the census value (cadastral value). It stated also that a greater proportion of the value would be paid in cash, plus the payment of interest over the debt contracted by the government in favor of the landowner.

Laws 4 and 5 limited INCORA’s scope of intervention, and authorized budgets cuts affecting the functioning of the entity.

These two laws ordered the financing of the Agricultural Financial Fund with a fixed compulsory proportion of the loans of all the private and public banks in order to support the development of agri-business.226

Law 6 of 1975 (“Sharecropping Law”)

Liberal: Alfonso López Michelsen

Law 6 of 1975 protected landowners from any attempts of government expropriation whenever the land owner was able to demonstrate that she/he had provided sharecropper or tenants and their families with subsistence plots. It also emphasized the protection of the landowner whenever she/he was able to provide a legal written contract with the sharecropper or tenant“Essentially the Sharecropping Law [Law 6 of 1975] tried to alleviate the social pressures created by landless peasants who could not be used as permanent laborers by large-scale agriculture. At the same time it attempted to make available the seasonal labor force needed for that agriculture.”227

Law 35 of 1982 Conservative: Belisario Betancur

Law 35 of 1982 modified Laws 4 and 5 of 1973 reinstated the functions of INCORA in matters of land acquisition, and regulation of the areas of colonization.Law 35 of 1982 accelerated the acquisition of lands by INCORA. From 4,400 hectares acquired in 1981, INCORA went to acquire 25,111 in 1985, 54,704 in 1987, and 96,098 in 1992.228 Law 35 created the Plan Nacional de Rehabilitación, PNR, which functions were those of organizing political participation of peasant communities within the programs of the government concerning the re-insertion of ex-combatants to civil life.

Law 160 of 1994 Liberal: Ernesto Samper Pizano

The state began only subsidizing commercial acquisitions of land to peasants.229 It stopped giving land titles to peasants, and started a campaign to finance part of the price of the land through credit and subsidies.

226 Zamosc, 1986: 98227 Zamosc, 1986: 126228 Fajardo, 2002: 51229 Machado, 1998: 49

136

Law 160 introduced the figure of Zonas de Reserva Campesina (Peasant Reserve Zones) which represented a designated area directed to settle small communities of peasant producers by subsidizing the buying of their lands while restricting their sale. By doing so the government attempted to avoid higher concentration of property in few hands. Law 160 also promoted ecologically sustainable practices of production230 while promising subsidies for this type of production.

Chapter Seven

Agrarian Regional Structures, Land Tenure, and Political Violence.

The chapter explores the correlation between agrarian structures and guerrilla violence by

region. It analyzes how the particular socioeconomic characteristics of each Colombian

230 Fajardo, 2002: 53

137

agrarian regional structure correspond to different levels of violence and guerrilla

presence . As there is a strong relationship between land struggles and violence, this

study finds a relationship between agrarian structures and the levels of violence and

guerrilla presence in each region. For example, during the last fifty years violence has

been more intense in the Peasant Economy Areas (PEA) where peasants’ problems focus

“on the crucial alternative between an evolution based upon a peasant pattern of farming

with widespread ownership of land, or one dominated by landlords and entrepreneurs

who monopolize the means of production.”231

This chapter compares the evolution of violence in a conflict that started during

La Violencia in Peasant Economy Areas (PEAs) and gradually moved towards other

areas such as the Colonization Areas (CAs), Traditional Latifundia Areas (TLAs), and

Agrarian Capitalism Areas (ACAs). The classification of the Colombian territory in

agrarian structures is based on Zamosc’s The Agrarian Question and the Peasant

Movement in Colombia (1986).

Historically, violence in the Colombian conflict has been located in rural areas,

and only recently “violence has… ceased being an exclusively rural phenomenon, and

has adopted multiple urban faces.”232 These rural roots of Colombia’s conflict help to

understand the strong relationship between violence and land struggles.

Agrarian structures in Colombia can be defined as follows:

Peasant Economy Areas (PEA): Areas presenting highly concentrated rural

populations living under the system of small landholdings. In these areas peasants

work basically their own small plots of land. As the population grows peasants are

231 Zamosc, 1986:1232 Sánchez Gonzálo. “Problems of Violence, Prospects for Peace.” In Bergquist, et. al., 2001: 7

138

likely to immigrate to colonization areas where land is easier to obtain. Peasant

economy is based on a pattern of one peasant family (2-7 people) making their

living from the produce of very small landholding (1-5 hectares).

Colonization Areas (CA): Colonization is understood in this thesis as the

activities developed by poor landless peasants in order to develop farming in the

unspoiled regions of Colombia. It generally refers to small settlements of peasant

families who live together in small villages or rural zones in order to develop new

farms, and to obtain rights of property for such lands.

Colonization Areas are regions where newly established population

settlements develop farming activities in order to create new estates which can be

legalized as the family’s patrimony. Population density in these areas is lower

than in PEAs. Most Colonization areas present a tendency towards becoming

PEAs, as population grows. Peasants have access to land in these areas because

prior extracting activities (timber, mining, fishing, etc.) have facilitated the

creation of small centers or towns where land is cheap. Another reason for easy

access to land in these areas is because the government generally grants land titles

to peasant settlers to develop colonization programs in order to expand the

agricultural frontier.

Most of the time, lands in the CAs are owned by the state and recognized as

state lands. Property in these areas is not secured by the peasantry until the

government has conferred titles of property to peasants exploiting newly founded

farms. Sometimes peasants risk working lands in CAs which are claimed by

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wealthy landowners who based their claims on confusing titles from the late

Nineteenth or early Twentieth centuries.

Traditional Latifundia Areas (TLA): Areas where the land is mostly owned by

wealthy landowners and the peasantry lives on the margins of the landowners’

properties and work for the landlords as sharecroppers or salaried workers.

Peasants in these regions have no, or very limited, access to plots of land. In most

of these areas, land is mainly dedicated to grazing cattle. Population density is

lower than in the PEAs. There is a tendency, especially in the TLAs of the north

of Colombia, for peasants to emigrate to the main cities.

Agrarian Capitalism Areas (ACA). Areas where agro-industry is developed.

Population is highly concentrated in small towns and cities. Most of people live

on wages obtained as workers of the different agro-industrial projects. Access to

land in these areas is extremely limited to peasants because land prices are high,

and control of property is exercised by the most prominent families of Colombia’s

elites. Most of these areas sit on the most fertile inter Andean valleys such as the

Cauca Valley (sugar companies), the Upper and Middle Magdalena Valleys

(grains such as rice, sorghum, and corn, and cattle), and the plains of the Sabana

de Bogotá (flowers, vegetables, and grains such as wheat and barley).

140

Table 7

Agrarian Regional Structures, Main Class Sectors and Their Demands.

AGRARIAN REGIONAL STRUCTURE

PEASANT ECONOMY

COLONIZATION TRADITIONAL LATIFUNDIA

AGRARIAN CAPITALISM

↓ ↓ ↓ ↓MAIN CLASS SECTORS Stable peasants Precarious peasants Landless peasants Rural laborers

↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ASPIRATIONS IN RELATION TO AN INDEPENDENT PEASANT ECONOMY

To consolidate their control and property of the land.

To stabilize their living in settlements for the development of new estates, and creation of new properties.

To establish control over small plots of land through tenancy, sharecropping or buying.

To become workers at the agribusiness.

↓ ↓ ↓ ↓NECESSARY CONDITION

Improving existing conditions of production

Obtaining the basic infrastructure to develop economic production in the new estates.

Gaining access to the means of production

Payment of wages.

↓ ↓ ↓ ↓MAIN DEMANDS Improvement

of existing services, infrastructure, and credit.

Development of basic services, infrastructure, and credit.

Land Employment, wages, and labor conditions

↓ ↓ ↓ ↓POLITICAL ACTION DIRECTED TOWARDS/AGAINST

State State State, landowners Agricultural entrepreneurs

Adapted from: Zamosc: 1986: 31. Agrarian Regional Structures, Main Class Sectors and Their Demands.

Table 8

Classification of the Colombian Departments (States) According to their Prevailing Agrarian Structures in The 1960s

Peasant Economy Colonization Traditional Latifundia Agrarian CapitalismAntioquiaBoyacáCaldasCaucaCundinamarcaNariñoNorte de SantanderQuindíoRisaraldaSantander

AraucaCaquetáChocóMetaPutumayoTerritories of Amazonas and Orinoco Basins: Vaupés, Guainía and Guaviare.

AtlánticoBolívar CasanareCesarCórdobaGuajiraMagdalenaMeta (North)Sucre

HuilaTolimaValle del Cauca

141

From: Zamosc, 1986: 32

7.1 Agrarian Structures, Violence, and Guerrillas .

a. The Pre-Violencia: 1936-1948

Violence and guerrilla activity were stronger in the PEAs during the period 1936-1948.

Table 12, Agrarian Structures, Violence, and Guerrilla Activity, helps to portray how

violence and guerrilla activity were originated in land disputes in the highlands of the

departments of the PEA states of Cundinamarca, Tolima and Huila,233 Old Caldas

(Caldas, Risaralda, and Quindío), Boyacá, and Antioquia. Violence was aggravated in

PEAs after Congress approved Law 200 of 1936, which gave rights to sharecroppers and

renters over lands with unclear ownership titles. Also, Law 200 of 1936 was pivotal in

opening state lands (baldíos), and expropriated properties for colonization, much of

which was claimed by absentee landlords.

Colombia’s worst levels of violence were registered in PEAs, which are areas of high

concentration of small holdings234where land is scarce and population pressure is high. As

explained by Midlarsky’s first model, here the formation of conflict is due to the

“connection between agricultural density and land inequality… [where] increased density

yields increased inequality as the result of the increased land scarcity attendant on

population increase.”235

Colonization Areas (CAs) did not register violence or guerrilla activity during this

period. This was due to low population density during those years in CAs, and to the fact

233 Even though Table 8 shows Tolima and Huila as ACA, their highlands (coffee areas) can be classified as PEAs because of their land tenure structure.234 Zamosc also agrees on this comment. Zamosc, 1986: 74235 Midlarsky,1992: 458

142

that the opening of these lands to agricultural exploitation only came after the

government inaugurated programs for the colonization of these areas (Law 135 of 1961).

Likewise, violence from guerrilla activity was not reported from TLAs which

allows one to hypothesize about a relationship between scarcity of resources (e.g., lack of

land), lack of economic stability (e.g., lands that can be only exploited seasonally), and

lack of services affecting the economic and organizational capacity of the people to

organize guerrillas in order to fight landowners. If peasants don’t have opportunities to

generate economic surplus, then it is likely that they do not rebel because scarce

economic resources do not allow the to form armies.

ACAs did not present guerrilla violence in regions where agro-industrial activities

were developed such as the flatlands of the Upper Magdalena Valley in Tolima and Huila

and the entire flatlands of the Cauca Valley. Only the highlands of these departments

(which really could be really classified as PEAs) suffered from partisan guerrilla violence

during the end of the period 1936-1948. Classifying the highlands as PEAs derives from

the fact that no agro-industrial activity could be developed in the highlands because

mechanization is not possible due to the rugged geography. Also, the production of

coffee, the only agribusiness developed in the highlands, has been based on the

development of small and medium size farm units whose product is sold by small

landowners to urban coffee exporters.

b. La Violencia: the 1950s

During the second period, La Violencia of the 1950s, the highest levels of guerrilla

violence were located in PEAs. In these areas partisan violence between organized

guerrilla groups and armed bands of Bandoleros caused most of the estimated 200,000

143

deaths of La Violencia. In most of cases, partisan disputes in PEAs were related to

factions’ intentions in appropriating lands or businesses. This violence also moved from

PEAs to the highlands of ACAs, as it did during the period 1936-50.

CAs suffered increasing guerrilla violence as a result of the immigration of peasants

from violent zones in PEAs. At the same time, TLAs did not suffer major violence,

except in their highlands, which are really categorized as PEAs. Such categorization

derives from the fact that no mechanized agriculture can be developed in TLAs’

highlands. Coffee production, which is the only agribusiness developed in the highlands,

has been based on the development of small and medium size farms whose product is

sold by their owners to wealthy merchants who export the coffee overseas.

Almost no political violence was registered in TLAs or ACAs. However, in some

cities of ACAs, like Cali or Ibagué, killings of political and union leaders were registered

as executed by the paramilitary, and secret police.

c. The National Front: 1958-1970

The third period, The National Front, which goes from 1958 to 1970, shows a significant

decrease in guerrilla violence in PEAs as a result of the newly born agrarian reform plan

of 1961, and the demobilization of the Liberal guerrillas. However, violence grew in CAs

where many ex-guerrillas were granted land through the agrarian reform program, and

where the active guerrillas took refuge after Operación Marquetalia in 1964. Most of the

time violence was directed in CAs toward landowners with questionable titles of property

over the lands claimed by the ex-combatants. Other times, violence was due to the fact

that the government also granted CAs’ lands to some ex-paramilitary (enemies of the ex-

144

guerrillas) who had worked on the side of the government forces denouncing guerrillas,

causing disappearances, and acting as un-official secret police.

Violence became stronger at the end of the National Front in TLAs as a result of

ANUC’s activities in organizing peasant leaders in order to claim land and, sometimes, to

invade private lands in order to pressure the government to acquire such properties.236

Also the expropriation of idle land (mainly from large land holdings), and participation

by organized communities in INCORA’s land purchase decisions -through the provisions

of Law 135 of 1961, was a cause of violence. Angry landowners began creating their own

paramilitary armies and death squads to retaliate against peasants who had been granted

land in the estates that once belonged to them.

d. The Counterreformism of the1970s.

The fourth period, the Counterreform of the 1970s, was characterized by a resurgence of

guerrilla violence in PEAs as a result of government repression against the recently

organized peasant movement led by ANUC, and as a consequence of the changes made

to the agrarian reform program through the Pact of Chicoral, which gave birth to Laws 4

and 5 of 1973. These laws modified the agrarian reform law of 1961 making it congruent

with the interest of the landowners, and with the Conservative Party’s attempts to develop

an agro-industrial program for the nation. As a reaction the peasantry, organized under

ANUC’s guidance, began a period of land invasions which caused the landowners’ and

government’s repression.

During this period no increase in guerrilla violence was reported within CAs.

Mid-high levels of violence appeared as a new phenomenon within TLAs as a result of

236 See Zamosc, 1986: 61

145

the land invasions sponsored by ANUC and the repressed peasant movement. The same

phenomenon affected ACAs, especially in the states of Tolima and Huila.

During this period, a new issue appeared in TLAs affecting levels of violence:

narcotrafficking. With hindsight, one can observe how this new phenomenon affects the

land tenure issue in the time to come. This period of the 1970s’ development of

marijuana production and export from Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta was

popularly known as the Bonanza Marimbera, and took place from early 1970s to early

1980s.

Surprisingly, despite the government’s repression of the peasant movement, it was

in 1970 when INCORA acquired the most of land during this period to be distributed

among landless peasants. Such acquisitions were a reaction to the massive land invasions

of the period (See Table 4, Peasant Land Invasions, 1970-1978). Also many of these

acquisitions were already arranged at the end of the government of Lleras Restrepo (Late

1960s) by INCORA and ANUC as a way of securing the success of the Liberal party in

the coming elections.237

Table 9

Lands Acquired by INCORA 1962-1978

Year 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78Hectares(000s)

1.6

11.8 17.5 18.8

11.3 24.3 35 28.6 76.3

70.4 50.3 27.3 26.5

12.8 7.0 9.5

4.8

President/Party

Guillermo León Valencia (Con.)

Lleras Restrepo (Lib.) Pastrana Borrero (Con.) Alfonso López Michelsen (Lib.)

Source: Zamosc, 1986: 148

237 It should be remembered that in the 1970 election, under the alternation rules of the National Front, the only party running was the Conservative. So the Liberal Party’s choice had to be a Conservative candidate. However, A Supreme Court rule invalidated the alternation rules of the National Front few months before the election, allowing the participation of the independent candidate of the National Popular Alliance, ANAPO, former dictator Rojas Pinilla. Both the Liberal and Conservative parties agreed on supporting the Conservative Pastrana against Rojas whose popularity had increased rapidly since the approval of his candidacy.

146

Table 10

Lands Acquired by INCORA 1979-1995

Year 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

94 95

Hectares(000s)

7.1

13.3

4.4

7.6

11.8

16.2

26.9

29.6

54.7

77.3

97.1

86.5

55.6

97.4

68

76.7

55.1

President/Party

Julio C. Turbay (Lib.)

Belisario Betancur (Con.)

Virgilio Barco (Lib.) Cesar Gaviria (Lib.) Ernesto Samper (Lib.)

Source: Machado, 1998:113-114

e. The 1980s Peace Process and the 1990s War on Drugs.

The fifth period, the 1980s’ Peace Process and the beginnings of the War on Drugs, and

the sixth period, The War on Drugs, show similar sharp increases of violence and

guerrilla activity to high levels in all agrarian structures (PEAs, CAs, TLAs, and ACAs).

Narcotrafficking becomes a strong factor affecting the increasing levels of violence, and

guerrilla organizations increase their activities in all regional structures. During these two

periods, organized guerrilla activity and levels of violence rise in such a way that in the

period 1988-1995, 19,631 people were killed by organized criminal groups, 2,937 were

killed by the guerrillas, and 16,694 were killed by paramilitary (autodefensas) and other

groups financed by narcotraffickers.238 Also between 1987 and 1989, 177 municipalities

registered high levels of violence. 156 of these was located in rural areas and 21 in urban.

The most violent municipalities were located in ACAs (which changed the pattern of the

1940s and 1950s when violence and guerrilla activity was located in PEAs), followed by

municipalities located in the PEAs, and municipalities in ACAs.239

238 Bejarano Ávila, 1997: 84239 Bejarano Ávila, 1997: 101

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7.2. Agrarian Structures and Violence in Colombia: Some Interpretations.

A conclusion from the relationship between agrarian structures and violence is that

violence and guerrilla organizations such as FARC, at least during the period between

1936 and 1980, erupted from the PEAs because peasants had set more stable settlements

than in the other agrarian structure areas. As a result, production of goods and access to

markets was secure in PEAs while not in the other areas. It can be hypothesized therefore

that the production of coffee (the main crop in PEAs) offered the necessary resources for

peasants to live and to have access to very small plots of productive land, and it created

opportunities to organize movements whose objectives were to improve their existing

conditions of living and production. It is true that peasants in PEAs had at least obtained

property rights over small parcels (1-5 hectares), but the size and quality of these lands

were not sufficient to allow a peasant family to live a decent life.240

Conflict occurred in CAs whenever these areas were in transition to become either

PEAs or ACAs. For example, violence appeared in the CAs only after the National Front

agreement came into existence. As the government, acting under Law 135 of 1961,

allowed colonization programs in CAs, population increased in these areas making land

resources more limited than before. Population increase then caused the “peasantization”

of some CAs and, as a result, conflicts similar to those already in PEAs began appearing

in CAs.

Tensions in CAs increased also because the former ex-combatants (guerrillas and

paramilitary) from PEAs settled in CAs with help from government and financial

institutions. Thus, while government aid naively supplied some of the necessary

240 During the 1960s INCORA concluded that the ideal peasant unit (Unidad Familiar) should be no less than 22 hectares in order to support the living of a peasant family of 3-5 people.

148

resources to maintain a cohesive organization of peasant and dissident guerrillas, the

levels of violence were further inflamed as narcotrafficking moved into this area.

Violence increased, and guerrillas became present in TLAs, only after the

inauguration of the National Front and the enactment of Law 135 of 1961. Then, the

government offered to peasants the resources and necessary training to organize and to

form ANUC.241 This gave the peasantry an effective capacity to exercise pressure over

the landowners and the government institutions in order to claim lands (notice that this

was the period when land invasions started in TLAs).

During the period 1936-1980 almost no guerrilla violence took place in ACAs

(with exception of the highlands) because agro-industrial production provided jobs to the

peasantry who otherwise would be interested in obtaining land to develop traditional

farming. Also as the elites were the main owners of these lands, the government kept

stronger control there than in other agrarian structures by establishing a larger military

and administrative presence. In these areas peasants had the opportunity of at least getting

jobs as sugar cane cutters, cotton pickers, etc.

Violence and guerrilla warfare also increased to the highest levels in all areas

where resources either from the government or from sudden booms (such as illegal

drugs) poured into the region, generating a surplus to support armed insurgency. In this

case, narcotrafficking increased the levels of violence by providing the necessary

resources to re-arm the guerrilla organizations, the paramilitary, and the peasantry.

Concluding on this chapter, as the rural roots of Colombia’s conflict help to

explain that there is a causal relation between land struggles and violence, there is also a

relationship between the agrarian structure of the region and the levels of violence and

241 Zamosc, 1986: 61

149

guerrilla warfare developed in that area. This phenomenon becomes clear after analyzing

the fact that violence acquires different characteristics depending on the particular

socioeconomic conditions of the agrarian regional structure where violent conflicts are

located. The correlation between agrarian structures, and violence, and guerrilla activity

is summarized in Table 11.

Table 11

Agrarian Structures, Violence, and Guerrilla Activity

Violence/guerrilla codes: LOW MEDIUM HIGH

Period Prevailing Agrarian Structures242

Peasant Economy (PEA)

Colonization (CA)

Traditional Latifundia (TLA)

Agrarian Capitalism

(ACA)The Pre-Violencia:1936-1948:-Violence is stronger in PEAs. - No violence in CAs- No violence in TLAs- Strong violence in ACAs is located only in highlands, which are considered as PEAs.

- Law 200 of 1936 is approved. It aimed to provide\ more security to peasants who occupied lands that were tied up in litigation over ownership.- Violent encounters between peasants and landlords in PEAs of Boyacá, Caldas, Cundinamarca, and today’s Quindío and Risaralda.- Guerrillas are still small groups without central coordination

No violence related to land is reported in CAs. Land is held by absentee landowner with titles to cattle herds.

-No guerrilla activity in TLAs.-Land is held by absentee landowners with titles that usually cover less land than what they claim

Violent confrontation between peasants and landowners only in the highlands of Tolima, and north of Huila (PEAs). No violence in lowlands, and valleys (ACAs)

La Violencia:1950s- High violence

- Violent conflict over land increases in

-Some Liberal guerrillas moved to new

No guerrilla activity in TLAs.Contention over

- High levels of violence in highlands of

242 Areas’ agrarian structures are defined according to Zamosc, 1986: 28-32

150

located in PEAS and Highlands of ACAs, (Continuation Table 11)which are also PEAs-Because of displacement from PEAs, then

violence appears in CAs- No violence in TLAs

PEAS: Boyacá, Caldas, Cundinamarca, and today’s Quindío, Risaralda. New guerrilla activity in PEAs of Cauca- Most of 200.000 deaths from La Violencia occurred in PEAs,243 and in the highlands of ACAs

settlements in CAs: Plains of Casanare and Meta. -Dictator Rojas grants land to ex-combatants from PEAs in CAs (territories of Meta and South Casanare)

alluvial and state owned land began between peasants without titles and landowners that claim to be de facto owners of plots sitting in the river’s surroundings next to their farms

Tolima, and Huila (PEAs)- Guerrillas coordinated under the command of political parties.A large percentage of the deaths from la violencia occurred in the highlands of ACAs (which in reality are PEAs)

The National Front: 1958-1970.- Violence decreases in PEAs, and the highlands of ACAs-Violence becomes stronger in CAs- Violence slightly increases in TLAs

- Law 35 of 1961 is enacted- Creation of INCORA and ANUC- Guerrilla activities decrease in PEAs after peace agreements of 1958-60.- Government opens lands for colonization. It grants land to peasants in CAs through a land reform program. - Guerrilla activity only increases in PEAs of Cauca

- FARC is born in CAs of Tolima after Operación Marquetalia . FARC moves headquarters to CAs in La Uribe (Meta)

- During late 1960s, after creation of ANUC, confrontations between landowners and peasant organizations began in TLAs.- Land invasions in TLAs: Córdoba, southern Atlántico, middle Magdalena and Casanare (see map p.42)

Guerrilla activity decreases in ACAS: Tolima and Huila. Peasant’s organized pressure (ANUC) replaces violent encounters. land owners offer to sell lands to government’s agrarian reform program.

The Counter-reformism of the1970s.- Violence becomes strong again in PEAs- No violence in CAs-High violence in TLAs (drug trafficking becomes a strong factor)- Mid-high violence

-Law 6 of 1975 (Sharecropping Law) is approved-Violence increases as ANUC and the peasant movement are repressed by Pastrana’s and López’s

No major land related violence in this area.

- Peasant movement repressed. Violence over land radicalizes in TLAs: Atlántico, Córdoba, and Sucre.-64.2 of the municipalities of

- Fights over land radicalize in ACAs of Huila and Tolima.- 30.3% of the municipalities of this area present land invasions. 246

-FARC reappears in Tolima and Huila with cadres

243“La Violencia never has been completely absent from Colombia since 1946, but it has had two periods of particular virulence. The first between 1948 and 1953 affecting the departments of Tolima, Boyacá, Cundinamarca, Caldas, Cauca, Santander del Sur, Arauca, Huila, Chocó, Meta, Casanare, Vichada, and Bolivar…. The second period of increased violence, between 1954 and 1958, was considerably more circumscribed to the departments of Tolima, Huila and Cauca, and where violence still continues it is found within these regions, which it may represent the heartland of Colombia.” Bailey, Norman. “La Violencia in Colombia.” Journal of Inter-American Studies, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Oct., 1967), 561-575. P. 561

151

in ACAs

(Continuation Table 11)

governments. -Guerrilla activity from M-19 began mainly in urban centers. -Land invasions in 23.2%244 of the municipalities of PEAs

this area have significant cases of land invasion. 245

-Production of Marijuana in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta displaces peasants from this TLA

coming from CAs in Meta and Caquetá

The 1980s: Peace Process and the beginning of War on Drugs.- High violence in all PEAs, CAs, TLAs, and ACAs. Increasing guerrilla activity and narcotrafficking.

- Congress approves Law 35 of 1982. INCORA is reinstated in role of facilitating land redistribution in PEAs- Peasants displaced by narco-landowners to CAs- M-19 and FARC sign a peace process. More than 2.000 UP (FARC’s political arm) members are killed by army and narcotraffickers’ paramilitary in all agrarian structures.

- FARC joins peasants fighting for obtaining legal titles to land, and promoting land invasions in CAs: Caquetá, Putumayo and the Llanos.- Peasants displaced by narco-landowners

- Formation of the Autodefensas Unidas de Córdoba y Uraba, AUC (paramilitary), to defend lands of landowners involved in narcotrafficking in TLAs- ELN and EPL increase activities by attacking oil pipelines and kidnapping land owners in TLAs in the north coast.-Peasants displaced by narco-landowners to CAs

- Peasants displaced by narco-landowners - FARC increases activity in ACAs of Tolima and Huila. Assaults, kidnappings, and taxing drugs production in this area.

The 1990s: The War on Drugs.- High Violence generalizes in all four areas.- Colombia’s rate of intentional homicides rises to 77.5 per 100,000 inhabitants247.

-Law 160 of 1994 enacted deregulating land market. It introduces concept of “assisted market” by granting subsidies to peasants who want to buy land.- FARC abandons

FARC’s starts providing infrastructure and acting as a Para-state organization in CAs: Caquetá, Putumayo, and the Llanos- FARC acts as intermediary between poor peasants and

- Actions of the AUC increase against landless peasants in TLAs. - FARC increases activities against landowners and multinational corporations extracting minerals in TLAs

FARC joins other guerrilla organizations forming the National Guerrillas Coordination, CNG. CNG increases attacks on landowners in ACAs.

244 Data for this period from: Zamosc, 1986:86-87245 Zamosc, 1986:86-87246 Zamosc, 1986:86-87247 Bergquist, et. al. 2001: 11

152

peace process and returns to CAs’

narcotraffickers and CAs- FARC increases presence in the north.

8. Conclusion.

This thesis has explored the relationship between the existence and survival of FARC,

and the land conflict between landowners and landless in Colombia. The thesis has found

support for arguing that struggles over land tenure and agrarian reform have created the

conditions for the emergence and development of FARC, and for the pervasive civil

conflict that exits until this day.

Conflict over land has fueled the unrelenting civil strife in Colombia during most of

the Twentieth Century. In most of Colombia’s rural society, and other developing

societies around the world, land is the people’s most important possession, and conflict

over land distribution has persisted, especially after a legacy of colonialism and economic

dependency. By understanding the relationship between the Colombian land conflict and

FARC, scholars, activists and policy makers will be better able to develop strategic

responses to civil strife.

In Colombia the land ownership pattern is one of the most concentrated in the world.

This has created conditions for contention between the traditional landowning class and

the landless that has plagued the country and left it mired in violence over the last 60

years. This conflict over land has led to the formation of armed peasant bands and,

ultimately, their evolution into FARC. This conflict today continues fueling FARC’s

motives as a military and political movement.

153

This thesis argued for land as the most significant variable affecting violence in

Colombia for two reasons. First, political violence has mainly affected people in the

countryside where land represents the main asset in peasants’ patrimony and the basis of

their livelihood. Second, in most of the countryside, the people’s relationship with land

has been solidified, as there are no other job opportunities than agricultural employment.

As a result of this reasoning, most of Colombia’s conflict zones are located in rural areas

where families generally survive on the product from very small landholdings.

Some scholars traditionally have argued that the origins of the Colombian civil

conflict and FARC, especially during the period of La Violencia, are mainly rooted in

ideological and partisan disputes between members of the Liberal and Conservative

parties in the rural areas of the country. This thesis has demonstrated that partisan

disputes have been more deeply related to disagreements over land tenure and agrarian

reform than to ideological disputes between the two parties. Thus, partisan violence has

been nothing other than a metaphoric representation of a deep conflict over the control of

land. This conflict over land has led to the formation and evolution of FARC, and today

continues fueling FARC’s main reasons to exist as a military and political movement.

Partisan approaches to land tenure and agrarian reform caused violence and affected

the land tenure conflict as parties took control of the government. This caused a pattern of

cyclical alternation in agrarian policy making that in the end produced cycles of

increasing and then decreasing violence in the rural areas of Colombia. In this cyclical

process during the Twentieth Century, each one of Colombia’s pro-peasant agrarian

reform was superseded by counter reforms whose objectives and outcomes had been to

take away some of the rights granted by the preceding reforms.

154

In developing the argument on how the land conflict, and alternating land and

agrarian reform policies have affected the formation of the forerunners of FARC and the

uprising of political violence, Chapter Two explored the formation and evolution of

FARC as a direct result of the political events related to land tenure and agrarian reform

policy since the end of the Conservative governments of the 1920s. The political events

and partisan disputes during the period between the early 1930s and 1950 showed that the

land conflict was fundamental in the emergence of early political violence and in the

formation of grassroots organizations that, after becoming strong political activists on the

land issue, later formed small guerrilla groups which evolved into FARC.

The period between the 1930s and 1950 also showed how policy shifting from

agrarian and land reform towards industrialization helped to polarize the parties in the

conflict. It was during this period when peasants became aware of the consequences of

industrialization and these, plus their fundamental interest in obtaining land, were the

reasons that caused them to organize during the 1930s in order to obtain land rights and

to counteract the government policies towards industrialization. Peasants’ fears that the

government would abandon the development of infrastructure in the countryside, and

that, furthermore, they would loose their chances ob obtaining property rights over lands

they worked, move them to oppose industrialization as a way of avoiding the investment

of government resources in the urban areas.

From the early 1930 to 1950 the Colombian government’s agrarian reform policies

affected the levels of political violence. Whenever the government supported positive

changes in favor of making agrarian policies friendlier to the interests of the peasantry,

the levels of partisan violence and political conflict declined in rural areas as it occurred

155

during the 1930s, when the governments of Olaya Herrera (1930-34) and López

Pumarejo (1934-38) acted on favoring the interests of the peasantry on obtaining land

rights, thorough the enactment of Ley de Tierras, Law 200 of 1936. The levels of political

conflict in this period were inferior to those of the 1940s and 1950s when the

governments of Santos (1938-42), the second term of López Pumarejo (1942-46), and

Ospina Pérez (1946-50) became more inclined to favor policies for industrialization

instead of agrarian reform.

The way in which the governments of the 1940s reversed the agrarian reform of 1936

caused political frustration among the peasantry that, in the meantime, fueled the

consolidation of guerrilla groups, and the resulting widespread political violence as

explained in Chapter Two.

Chapter Three continued exploring how political frustration derived from the changes

in agrarian policy, increased violence and transformed it into a widespread phenomenon

during the period of La Violencia. The alternation in policies throughout the 1920s to the

1940s created a process in which peasants aspiring to own the land saw the enactment of

agrarian reform policies that during the 1930s benefited the peasantry, and new policies

during the 1940s and 1950s that took away such benefits by emphasizing

industrialization. This fueled a sense of political frustration in which violent armed

response against the government and landowners was chosen as the peasantry’s only

recourse to obtain rights over the land.

Chapter Three explored the political events related to land and agrarian reform and

the formation of FARC in the period of La Violencia (1950-57). It explored the political

events during the worst years of La Violencia when presidents Laureano Gómez (1950-

156

53) and Conservative Dictator Rojas Pinilla (1953-57) held office. During this period the

conflict seemed to be principally centered entirely on the political disputes between

Liberal and Conservatives. This partisan dimension was mainly based on the fact that

Colombia’s worst period of violence came a year after the assassination of the Liberal

leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitán on April 9, 1948, during El Bogotazo. In response to the

killing of their leader and to the open persecution from Conservatives, Liberals joined

rural guerrilla groups rapidly organized in areas where old land disputes had existed.

There, Liberal peasants had founded early grassroots organizations in order to obtain land

titles and government aid. Thus, the partisan dimension of the conflict came to be only a

cover of the deeper conflict over land.

In order to stop the bloody consequences of La Violencia, the partisan elites signed

the National Front agreement in which agrarian reform and land reform came to be used

as spearhead to counterattack violence. Chapter Four explored the relationship between

the readdressing of the land reform policy and the setting of a peaceful period in

Colombia after the signing of the bipartisan agreement in 1958.

In its first section, El Frente Nacional: 1958-1970, Chapter Four highlighted the fact

that by readdressing land and agrarian reform policy to address peasant demands pressed

by guerrilla organizations, the government was able to lead a peace process during the

governments of Lleras Camargo (1958-62), Guillermo León Valencia (1962-66), and

Carlos Lleras Restrepo(1966-70).

In its second section, The End of the Frente Nacional: Contra la Reforma 1970-1978,

Chapter Four also continued analyzing how a new policy reversal undermined the

peaceful outcome gained with the signing of the National Front. This Section explored

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how a policy shift from the National Front’s agrarian reform program which focused on

supporting peasants’ production and local agricultural development, to that of agro-

industrial production (agri-business) and agrarian counter-reformism during the periods

of Presidents Misael Pastrana (1970-74) and López Michelsen (1974-78), caused the

increasing of political violence and the reappearance of the guerrilla organizations.

Chapter Five explored the period of the 1980s and 1990s. During the 1980s the

government, once more, addressed agrarian and land reform as a way to placate

widespread political violence that began after the policy changes introduced during the

prior decade of the 1970s. At this time the governments of presidents Betancur (1982-86)

and Barco (1986-90) were successful in containing the insurgents’ uprising through a

peace plan which contemplated the development of an ambitious agrarian reform plan

mainly directed to benefit the guerrilla groups supported by the peasantry. During the late

1980s and 1990s denial of political participation for FARC, repression by the

government, and the dirty war initiated by the military supported death squads caused

FARC’s abandonment of the peace agreement signed the decade before, and its posterior

recourse to violence.

Narcotrafficking in the 1980s and 1990s developed as a new phenomenon affecting

peace by causing a hike in the prices of land and, as a consequence, limiting the peasants’

access to it. Narcotrafficking also gave a new opportunity to FARC to finance itself

through illicit activities, after the support from Soviet and Cuban international

Communism ended once the Berlin Wall fell. Narcotrafficking then caused a new

dynamic in the Colombian land conflict which took violence to a greater scale than ever

158

before. Agrarian policy continued alternating during these two decades, leading FARC to

join a peace process at one moment, and to rebel against the government at another.

In three sections, Chapter Five explored both the effects of FARC’s exclusion from

political participation, and the effects of narcotrafficking on FARC and on the land

conflict. It analyzed the main political events of the 1980s in relation to FARC and the

land conflict. Its first section, The 1980s and the Beginning of the Peace Processes,

explored the response of the government and the guerrillas to the political violence that

developed as a consequence of the changes in agrarian policy during the 1970s. It

analyzed the government’s adoption of an agrarian reform program as part of the peace

process with FARC and M-19, and the development of that program as aimed to support

ex-guerrillas who benefited from the government’s amnesty.

The second section, The 1990s: Narcotrafficking and the New Economy, explored

narcotrafficking as a variable affecting both violence and agrarian reform during the

periods of Presidents Gaviria (1990-94) and Samper (1994-98). The analysis for this part

was based on the premise that the land tenure conflict increased in Colombia because

narcotraffickers needed to control increasing land extensions as the illicit drugs market

expanded.

Chapter Five’s third section, Peasants, Guerrillas, and Armed Violence, concluded

that it was the denial of access to land to peasants, and the exclusion of the landless from

political participation which caused both FARC’s recourse to armed violence and the

peasants’ support for insurgency.

In a way to explore policy inconsistency as a variable affecting violence, Chapter

Six analyzes the approaches taken by the Liberal and Conservative parties to agrarian and

159

land reform policy from the 1920s. This chapter concluded that partisan violence in

Colombia has been nothing other than a metaphoric representation of a deep conflict over

the control of land. Even though some scholars have argued that the origins of the

Colombian conflict and FARC are grounded on ideological disputes between Liberals

and Conservatives. Chapter Six argues that partisan disputes are more deeply related to

disagreements over land tenure and agrarian reform than to ideological disputes between

the two parties.

Chapter Six demonstrated that historically Liberal governments have supported

attempts to favor Agrarian Reform policies more often than Conservative ones. This

dynamic has established Colombian Conservatism as congruent with landlordism and

Liberalism as closer to agrarian-reformism.

However, the division between Liberals and Conservatives on matters of land and

agrarian reform changed to some degree after the end of the National Front. After the

1970s the evolution of land and agrarian reform policy in Colombia continued affected

not only by the legacy of policy alternation and armed insurrection but also by two new

factors. First, a stronger intervention of international institutions who negotiated and

imposed global policies, caused the parties to abandon their traditional approaches to

agrarian policy making. Second, narcotrafficking affected the parties’ approaches to

agrarian policy because the influence of narcotraffickers’ grew in terms inflating the

economy with large flows of cash which sometimes were used to lobby in favor of anti-

peasant policies, as the narcotraffickers showed interest in replacing the traditional

landowning class.

Chapter Six also demonstrated that Liberals’ pragmatic approach to favor agrarian

160

reform is derived from the interpretation the party’s elite of the fact that poor rural

landless had constituted the great majority of the farm workers. Therefore, the Liberal

party has seen the need to approach the interest of this group in order to succeed in

elections. Thus, the Liberal approach to agrarian reform has been largely a tactic to gather

votes from the majority of marginal farm workers.

Chapter Seven explored the relationship between Colombia’s agrarian structures,

and violence and guerrilla warfare, in order to understand how violence has spread over

the country, and how tied violence has been to the land question. Chapter Seven found

that there is a causal relationship between each Colombian agrarian structure and the

different levels of violence and guerrilla activity presence in each region. Levels of

violence and guerrilla activity appeared to be here shaped by the socioeconomic

characteristics of the agrarian structure where violence is located. As there is a strong

relationship between violence and land struggles, there is also a relationship between

each agrarian structure and level of violence and guerrilla presence in each region.

Chapter Seven finds that during the last fifty years violence has been more intense

in the Peasant Economy Areas (PEA) where peasants’ problems are more centered on

obtaining property rights over the land they have worked. By comparing the evolution of

violence in a conflict that started in Peasant Economy Areas (PEAs), and gradually

moved towards the Colonization Areas (CAs), Traditional Latifundia Areas (TLAs), and

Agrarian Capitalism Areas (ACAs), this chapter found how the conflict has moved from

the PEAs to the rest of the agrarian structures in a process initiated since the 1920s.

Historically in Colombia political frustration has been the consequence of alternating

policies of agrarian reform. Such sense of frustration fueled the consolidation of guerrilla

161

groups, and the resulting widespread political violence during the end of the 1940s and

the late 1950s. The alternation in agrarian policy making from the 1920s to 1940s created

a process in which peasants aspiring to own the land saw the enactment of agrarian

reform policies that during the 1930s benefited the peasantry, and new policies during the

1940s and 1950s took away such benefits, and emphasized industrialization thus

protecting the interest of the urban populations. This sense of political frustration fueled

the formation of a violent armed response against the government and the landowners.

Armed violence and guerrilla warfare were chosen as the peasantry’s recourse to obtain

title rights over the land.

As an example of agrarian policy alternation, the agrarian reform of 1936 which

conditioned the rights of property to productivity of estates, while gave rights of property

to settlers, homesteaders, and sharecroppers, was superseded by a counter reform in

which the government shifted its objectives from agrarian reform towards developing

industrialization. The peasantry felt affected because they feared the government would

not invest in developing infrastructure that would benefit their rural settlements. The

1944 Law 100 of agrarian reform, contrary to what was expressed in the agrarian reform

of 1936, denied the aspirations given to peasants in obtaining property rights over lands

they have worked as sharecroppers or colonizers. This caused a violent reaction from the

peasantry that marked the origins of La Violencia of the 1950s.

Colombia’s conflict has four main characteristics. First, the conflict is merely

masked by ideological differences between Liberals and Conservatives and is based

primarily in unequal access to land. Even though Liberal governments have been more

willing to approve agrarian reforms than Conservatives, partisan violence has been

162

nothing other than a metaphoric representation of a deep conflict over the control of land.

Second, Violence and guerrilla formation has also been fueled by agrarian policy

alternation . Most agrarian reforms started during last century had been superseded by

counter reforms which objectives and outcomes had been to take away some of the rights

granted by the preceding agrarian reforms.

Third, there is a correlation between agrarian structures, and violence, and

guerrilla activity. This phenomenon can be analyzed by observing the different levels of

violence and guerrilla presence in each Colombian agrarian structure, and their evolution

overtime. The Colombian conflict has evolved differently in each particular area

according to its agrarian structure. Each type of agrarian structure is tied to different

patterns of use and distribution of land that ultimately generate distinctive characteristics

and levels of violence and guerrilla presence in each of the agrarian structures.

Fourth, the expansion of the narcotics industry has contributed to the support of

FARC and other armed groups because narcotrafficking increased contention between the

landless and the narcotraffickers who have become new landowners. Violence and the

conflict over land persists as a consequence of strong narcotrafficking activities in

Colombia that since the mid 1970s added an additional contender to the struggle for land:

the narco-landowners.

FARC’s support in Colombia has derived from a political system that facilitates

institutional gaps allowing FARC to play different roles in the society. The political

system has given FARC the opportunity to act as a guarantor of rights to citizens

(especially the landless peasantry) in ways the state has not. First, in matters of land

tenure FARC principally owes its viability to contention resulting between the

163

landowning class and landless peasants. Therefore, by acting as a military and political

force in the countryside, FARC has secured customary property rights for peasants thus

gaining their support and confidence. Second, FARC has also profited from the existence

of very limited access by lower classes to political participation. FARC has filled such

gaps by assuring through armed protest that their followers obtain at least some of the

gains they would get by participation in the political system

The two points above led me to infer that after the appearance of narcotrafficking

in Colombia, the Colombian elites, the government, the guerrilla groups, and the new

forces of narcotraffickers, have contributed to keep the violence alive and growing

because citizens’ rights and freedoms became subjugated to their political self-interests.

Rights and freedoms become subjugated as the three factions, guerrilla groups, the

narcotraffickers’ paramilitary, and the government are allowed to exercise political

control and to grant benefits to distinct groups of the society. As these groups legitimate

their actions with the different social groups, they also obtain, in exchange, support from

the population and gain autonomy within the political system.

As the political and economic autonomy of the warring factions increase, they are

more likely to preserve and to improve the conditions which allowed them to succeed in

gaining such autonomy. This means that as the conflict increases, the contending factions

are more likely to increase their autonomy and to keep their interest in keeping the

conflict alive. The discussion here is based on Scokpol’s view of the state as an

autonomous structure, a structure with logic and interests of its own248 (I include here also

248 “the state (is) an autonomous structure –a structure with a logic and interests of its own not necessarily equivalent to, or fused with the interests of the dominant class in society or the full set of member groups in the polity.” in Skocpol, Theda. 1993. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France Russia, & China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. P. 27

164

the para-state organizations such as FARC, and the paramilitary). In the case of

Colombia’s civil conflict, each warring group guided exclusively by its own interests, has

nurtured the growth of an exclusionary social system in the way Ellis, Uvin, and Wood,

have described for the cases of Liberia, Rwanda, and El Salvador. By keeping violence

alive and the exclusionary social system that supports it, the Colombian fighting forces,

including FARC, can survive and keep their autonomy.

As in De Tocqueville,249 Lenin,250 and Skocpol, there is a need for consensus

among conflicting parties in order to set the stage for change, and halt the current

violence. However, when states or individual conflicting groups have a high degree of

power, autonomy, and capacity to manipulate access to citizens’ rights, and to profit from

widespread internal violence, it’s extremely difficult to develop a base for changing the

social order. This difficulty clarifies the need for social movements and international

forces to put continuous pressures on individual states in order to bring about the

revolutionary changes needed to set the basis for effective citizenship and rights in

different countries. In the Colombian case, the ideal of the conflicting parties coming

together to establish the foundation for an effective peace process is not promising. In the

same way, neither the state nor the guerrilla groups nor the paramilitaries are interested in

facilitating the creation of such a foundation because their individual power and

autonomy have allowed them to exercise unexpected levels of control over the rest of a

fragmented society.

249 “It was not easy task bringing together fellow citizens who had lived for many centuries aloof from, or even hostile to, each other and teaching them to cooperate in the management of their own affairs.” De Tocqueville, Alexis. 1983. The Old Regime and the French Revolution. New York: Anchor Books. P. 107250 “For a revolution to break out it is not enough for the “lower classes to refuse” to live in the old way; it is necessary also that the “upper classes should be unable” to live in the old way.” Lenin in Skocpol, 1999: 47

165

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