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static gOvernMent, sOcial evOlutiOn, 1968–1979 Chapter 8 The cultural threads of 1960s freedom and expression dropped into the early 1970s with hippies, marijuana, and nonconformity adding to the tumult of rapidly expanding large cities. By the early 1970s, Colombians became more cynical about the National Front and about the Concurso Nacional de Belleza in Cartagena, both seen as elite fixes rooted in the past. By mid-decade, the challenge of revolution—be it political or cultural—had subsided, but so too had the delivery of meaningful and positive reforms. By the late 1970s, the drug trade brought a new inflow of dollars, spiraling homicide rates, and a new florescence of the violent beast in both rural and urban areas. Politically, the active and reformist energies of the Lleras Restrepo administration (1966–1970) pressed for land reform, export promotion, and currency stabilization, the latter two leading to a larger and more diversified economy, the thwarting of land reform, continued rural marginalization, and increasing cynicism about the state. State promotion of Import Substitution Industrialization (isi) protected some industries, like the new Renault automobile plant, making the boxy, utilitarian, high-clearance “4” model the ubiquitous “carro colombiano” for the next three decades. Export promotion of cut flowers from the sabana around Bogotá and of bananas near the border with Panama created new sources of wealth but also social problems and violence in the banana zone. As a showcase of the U.S.-sponsored Alliance for Progress and to promote land reform, Lleras Restrepo backed the creation of the Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos (anuc) to support rural development and land reform, an initiative effectively blocked by large landowners and the politicians they controlled. Land concentration, inequality, and absolute poverty in rural areas increased in the 1960s through the 1980s.1 National Front requirements that at least 10 percent of the national budget be spent on education led to an increase of children seven to thirteen years old attending school and a decrease in illiteracy. Alliance for Progress monies helped push that budget percentage to 14 percent in 1964, increasing to 20 percent in 1978 when the federal government assumed school funding responsibilities from departments. Secondary school attendance increased even 158 Of Beasts and Beauty faster in the 1960s and 1970s, but still less than half of Colombian teenagers matriculated. In rural areas, by the late 1980s, a startlingly low 7 percent had access to postprimary education, while university attendance in urban areas increased from 1 percent in 1950 to 10 percent in 1985. In short, the government focused more on export agriculture and urban industrial development, leaving the countryside in a marginal and unattended position ripe for nonstate actors like guerrillas, trafficking organizations, and paramilitaries.2 More Colombians saw and were influenced by television by the mid-1970s, often watching a set at a neighbor’s home, out front in furniture stores, or in restaurants and bars. Commercial programming in 1971 from the United States included The Brady Bunch, Gilligan’s Island, Lassie, The Wonderful World of Disney, The Virginian, Mannix, Ironside, The Mod Squad, and Get Smart. Many of those shows presented a world of affluence and wealth unavailable to most Colombian viewers. The Spanish-language telenovelas (Simplemente María, for example), dubbed films, news programs, and broadcast of sporting events brought viewers closer to the society and geography they knew, but still pushed attitudes and fashions far beyond the local or regional level. Colombians saw the broadcast of humans arriving on the moon, of events from the other side of the world, images framing long-term visual memories. By the 1970s, the government cut its sponsorship of creative programming made in Colombia, so good programs were less available, yet television remained the medium that allowed one to forget the daily grind.3 The man who introduced television to Colombia in 1954 on the oneyear anniversary of his seizure of power, Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, made news and brought drama to National Front politics during his 1970 run for the presidency. The seventy-year-old former general, boosted by his energetic daughter, María Eugenia, ran as a Conservative since it was that party’s turn to control the presidency. He kept alive Gaitán’s railing against the oligarchy, handing out food and money at mass rallies, promising to increase the value of the Colombian peso from six cents to fifty cents the day after the election . He garnered strong support from the urban working and lower middle class, gaining...

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