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5. The Contemporary Era, 1978–2010
- University Press of Florida
- Chapter
- Additional Information
5 The Contemporary Era, 1978–2010 The demise of the Frente Nacional as Colombia’s political system brought a renewal of competitive politics at the national level with the elections of Liberal Julio César Turbay Ayala in 1978, Conservative Belisario Betancur in 1982, Conservative Virgilio Barco in 1986, Liberal César Augusto Gaviria in 1990, Liberal Ernesto Samper in 1994, Conservative Andrés Pastrana in 1998, and Álvaro Uribe Vélez, leader of El Partido de la U, in 2002. Beginning in 1984 these administrations faced a massive upsurge in violence resulting from the illegal drug trade, which reached its peak between 1987 and 2002, after which time it dropped sharply, owing to Uribe’s successful attack on its sources.1 Much of the violence over drug trafficking was located in the Llanos region , and the rapid development of oil from wells located in Arauca, Casanare, and Meta further complicated the situation. The ongoing struggle compelled Llanero campesinos to seek safety in the towns, while at the same time the oil boom intensified the relocation of people from the highlands to the region in search of jobs and new opportunities. The effect of these trends was to compel Bogotá to accelerate the integration of the eastern frontier lands into the nation . The new Constitution of 1991 elevated all of the territories to the status of departments, rendering their administration under DAINCO obsolete. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a broad overview of these trends that transformed the Llanos from frontier to region by outlining administrative innovations , the impact of violence and drug trafficking, and the economic and cultural changes caused by the long-awaited oil boom. From Territories to Departments: Administrative Innovations When it was organized in 1975 by Law 28 and Decree 1926, DAINCO represented a step forward in the government’s attempt to create a more efficient agency to oversee the national territories, but it soon became evident that cer- The Contemporary Era, 1978–2010 109 tain deficiencies in its organization needed to be corrected. President Betancur, after his election in 1982, proved to be especially interested in the potential of the eastern plains. He and his ministers made several trips to the Llanos and Amazonia, and he frequently inveigled well-known personalities such as Gabriel García Márquez to accompany them. Thus it is not surprising that on January 18,1985,Congress passed Law 22,restructuring DAINCO and modifying the contractual and fiscal arrangements of the intendancies and comisar ías. Among other changes, the law clarified the agency’s role as the primary intermediary between the central government and the territories and enhanced its importance by making its director a member of the Consejo de Ministros “with a voice but no vote.”2 Law 22 notwithstanding, DAINCO was still severely handicapped by a perennial lack of financing. For example, the national budget for 1986 allotted the agency 703,920.000 pesos, or 1 percent of the total national budget of 655,294,149,884 pesos, to promote development in approximately 58 percent of Colombia’s territory.3 In that year the agency employed 126 individuals—44 of them occupying administrative posts.4 In 1985 Leonel Pérez Bareño prepared a balanced evaluation of the work of DAINCO. He pointed out that it was an “entity sui generis” because, in contrast to other administrative departments, its assignment was to supervise a specific area of the nation that had been consistently neglected and was substantially less developed than the rest of the country. DAINCO’s complex and multiple tasks were to formulate global policies and report the needs of the Llanos, Amazonia, and the Caribbean islands to the directors of the Plan Nacional de Desarrollo (PND).5 Faithful to this mandate, DAINCO, in ten years time, accumulated a large body of information about the territories and authored a series of blueprints for their development, but in Pérez’s view the agency should not be judged by the quantity of its achievements. More important was “its capacity to ‘hacer hacer,’ that is to complete the coordination , projection, control, and assessments in the least time at the least cost and with the greatest efficiency the action of the state in the intendencias and comisarías.” Pérez added that DAINCO’s role was similar to“lobbies” in the United States that exploited their access to legislators to place pressure on Congress to carry out proposals in favor of regional projects. Over the years, government agencies...