Bandits, Peasants, and Politics: The Case of "La Violencia" in Colombia (review)

Bandits, Peasants, and Politics: The Case of "La Violencia" in Colombia. By GONZALO SANCHEZ and DONNY MEERTENS. Translated by ALAN HYNDS. Institute of Latin American Studies Translations from Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001. Photographs. Maps. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xviii, 229 pp. Cloth, $40.00. Paper, $19.95.

We now have an English translation of Gonzalo Sánchez's and Donny Meertens's seminal study of the later stages (1958-1965) of La Violencia in Colombia. In addition to exploring the causes and historical evolution of this conflict, the work is a case study to test what we might call bandit theory. Indeed, readers' responses to the volume may largely depend on their appraisal of banditry as an appropriate theoretical model with which to investigate this aspect of Colombian history. Sánchez and Meertens are much indebted to Eric Hobsbawm's conception of social banditry, but they also propose a new category to explain the Colombian case, political banditry. These bandits' defining features were their relation to national politics and their political subordination to local authority figures, who used bandoleros to bolster their own power vis-à-vis the central state. The authors argue that while political bandits defied the central state's designs toward the countryside and, at times, represented rural peoples' discontent, they concomitantly often (although not always) prevented that discontent from developing into a revolutionary force.

After presenting the concept of political banditry, the bulk of the work details the regional variations of bandolerismo, for which the authors propose four distinct types: (1) political bandits who broke with local bosses to represent peasants' concerns more fully; (2) those who moved even further into revolutionary activity, such as Pedro Brincos (who even traveled to Cuba); (3) mercenary bandits, whom urban operatives paid and directed; and (4) a category the authors call the "peasant myth" that resembles Hobsbawm's social bandit, only more established. This section also provides an excellent social history of bandit bandas, which were, among other things, an entire "way of living or surviving" (p. 187). Indeed, the strength of the authors' analysis is that they refuse to reduce banditry's causes to one factor, but instead position bandolerosin a complex local environment of political bosses, anxious rural peoples, and a repressive state.

The work continues with an analysis of the national congressional debates on whether La Violencia was simply a question of law and order or a larger social problem. It concludes by addressing the end of this period of rural violence, stressing the increased repressive power of the state (with the help of U.S. military advice, ominously foreshadowing the present moment) and the withdrawal of local bosses' support, which forced bandits to extract further resources from—and thereby alienate—their peasant supporters. This explanation begs for further explication of these local political bosses, who remain shadowy figures. The study also may have benefited from a more in-depth analysis of Liberal and Conservative bandits' political ideas, as well as a greater engagement with Colombia's past—the authors refer to Conservatives' religiosity as "superstition" (p. 38) and nineteenth-century civil wars as caused by "disturbing irrationality" (p. 9). After all, in the nineteenth century, many "political bandits" seemed to exist—men who enjoyed much popular support and who moved between respectable politics and "banditry" depending on their political party's fortunes.

Thanks are due to the University of Texas Press and Alan Hynds for translating this work, especially given the paucity of studies about Colombia available to those who do not speak Spanish. However, it is unfortunate that only works deemed "'classics'" benefit from translation; Sánchez and Meertens's study is now over 15 years old (there is a new, but brief epilogue). While the book does not seem dated, new works have appeared in the meantime on La Violencia, and bandit studies has progressed significantly as well, with important...