Between Legitimacy and Violence. A History of Colombia, 1875-2002 (review)

This is a very well written and informative book. The author addresses the long-term failure of the Colombian national state to modernize, to eliminate persistent internal violence, and to develop institutions and forms of representation that accurately reflect social change and channel it in salutary directions. This is not for lack of trying: Palacios reviews successive efforts, major and manor, running from mid-nineteenth-century Radical Liberals to the Rafael Nuñez' Regeneration, the Conservative Republic, the Liberal Revolución en Marcha, the Hispanophila of Laureano Gómez, the National Front and the 1990 Constituent Assembly. All are punctuated by continuing violence, and weakened by the enduring, if gradually attenuated, power of regionalism.

A primary theme throughout the book is the impact of the country's fragmented geography, the long-term underdevelopment of its agrarian economy, and the resultant severity and extension of poverty. The discussion of geography is excellent, but given its importance, one is surprised to find no maps of any kind in the book. A related theme is the persistent weakness of the national state and the inadequacy of public institutions of all kinds, including systems of banking and taxation. The author also examines the long-term presence of the Liberal and Conservative parties, through which competitive and relatively comparable elite groups have sustained their rule by managing patrimonial loyalties and loosely linked regional machines. The counterpart of this elite pattern has been the weakness of trade unions, peasant associations, and much of what passes elsewhere for "civil society." The continuing power and institutional presence of the Catholic Church is a notable element in this equation. Finally, of course, this is a national history punctuated by repeated moments (often lengthy moments) of intense violence. Since 1875, the count includes four civil wars (1876-77, 1885-86, 1895, and 1899-1902), one undeclared civil war (the Violencia of the 1940's and 1950's), along with persistent pockets of violence associated with struggles over land, with politics and vendettas, and with trade in a variety of valuable goods (most notably emeralds and drugs). Other trends that have helped make Colombia the way it is today include accelerated development of mass transport (from river fleets to railroads, roads, and airplanes), the growth of literacy and the spread of mass communications, and the notable pattern of multi-polar urban development with four major cities ( Bogotá, Cali, Medellin, and Barranquilla), each with a distinct identity.

The first three chapters detail the decline of radical liberal rule, the impact of late nineteenth-century civil wars, the rise of Nuñez and the Regeneration, and main lines of political history through to the great depression and the Liberal victory of 1930. During this period, the human and economic geography of the country begin to change as the extended peace (or at least the absence of open war) facilitated development of the coffee economy in the West, the economic surge of the Valle del Cauca, and the decline of once dominant regions like Santander and Boyaca. The author examines the character of Liberal rule (1930-1946), the crises that undermined it, and the rise, among Conservatives, of Laureano Gomez as kingmaker of party and country. This lays the groundwork for chapters 4 and 5 on the Violence and its impact and the subsequent search for an "elusive legitimacy" in the reconstruction of the state undertaken during the National Front period following agreements that settled, or at the very least greatly attenuated inter-party violence. The analysis of the Violence is thorough and compelling. Although the author concentrates more on elite interaction than on the savagery of local conflicts, he details important links between local and regional violence and national party leadership. In some areas violence became a way of life, a business (with kidnaping for ransom) and often a matter of local self-defense. Continuities with the violence later associated with the...