Territorial Rule in Colombia and the Transformation of the Llanos Orientales

2. The Violencia and Its Impact on the Llanos, 1946–1953

2 The Violencia and Its Impact on the Llanos, 1946–1953 There is general agreement among scholars that the era of La Violencia—the undeclared civil war that lasted from 1946 to 1962—was a major turning point in Colombian history.1 Because much of the fighting that occurred between 1947 and 1953 was localized in the Llanos, the conflict had perhaps an even greater impact on that region than it did on the rest of the country. Increasing unrest broke out with the return of Conservatives to power in 1946, but the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán on April 9, 1948, plunged Meta, Casanare , and Arauca into an open warfare that would traumatize its inhabitants for five years, until July 1953, when the principal Liberal guerrilla chieftains accepted the amnesty offered by General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla and turned in their weapons. After a brief review of the key phases of the Violencia at the national level, this chapter will investigate the development of the struggle in the Llanos and assess the consequences of the fighting for the region. Key Phases of La Violencia in Colombia Historians usually associate the start of La Violencia with the bitter struggle between the traditionally hostile Liberal and Conservative parties that intensified after the election to the presidency of Conservative Mariano Ospina Pérez, an event that ended sixteen years of Liberal rule at the national level. Although Ospina Pérez invited six Liberals to join his cabinet, violence broke out in several departments as Conservatives, urged on by the supreme chief of their party, Laureano Gómez, and the Catholic Church attempted to regain political control by attacking and persecuting Liberals.To restore order Ospina Pérez organized a new, extremely violent police force known as the Chulavitas, which functioned as an extension of the Conservative Party and a fearful in- 30 Territorial Rule in Colombia and the Transformation of the Llanos Orientales strument of terror against the Liberals.2 The assassination of populist Liberal leader Gaitán on the streets of Bogotá on April 9, 1948, incited unprecedented mob riots in the capital (known as the Bogotazo) and in other cities throughout the country. After the urban violence receded, “the rural aspect of this nightmare of twentieth-century Colombian history continued.”3 Tension heightened on November 9, 1949, when Ospina Pérez closed Congress, decreed a state of siege,limited civil liberties,and assumed discretionary powers.These draconian moves were followed in 1950 by the election of Gómez in a contest boycotted by the Liberals. During the next three years, Gómez and his surrogate, Roberto Urdaneta Arbeláez, unsuccessfully attempted to turn back the clock on the Liberal reforms and“restore order through the principle of centralized, vertical and hierarchical authority.”4 Although the national economy steadily improved, wages lagged behind prices; the government forcibly broke up strikes, and for laborers it was the worst of times. In rural areas, La Violencia intensified. Expanding into new regions (eventually all of Colombia except the Caribbean area was affected ), it increasingly assumed the nature of a class struggle as peasants defied the efforts of landowners and their hired thugs to eject them from their parcels and Communist Party activists began organizing strongholds of self-defense among uprooted peasants. The period between 1949 and 1953 saw a rise of resistance in guerrilla zones inhabited by peasants and fugitives fleeing from regions marked by anarchy or terror, many of which were located in the Llanos. As Robert Dix points out, “The guerrilla bands were spontaneous in origin, restricted in their range of operation, and limited in their goals—which were often those of self-defense or revenge against local political enemies or local officials.”5 The inability of the Gómez-Urdaneta dictatorship to defeat the guerrilla movements and restore peace contributed to the weakening of its authority. On June 13, 1953, General Rojas Pinilla seized the presidency, a coup supported by the armed forces and representatives of both parties. Rojas Pinilla moved quickly to proclaim an unconditional amnesty to all guerrillas who would agree to return to civilian life.Several thousand of them accepted this peace initiative. They surrendered their weapons and returned to their old homes, but a few refused to give up,continuing sporadic resistance into the mid-1960s.Rojas Pinilla ’s failure to completely eliminate the violence contributed to his overthrow in May 1957, when the leaders of the Conservative and Liberal parties resolved to work together to...