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246 Chapter 10 Santander del Norte. Little by little, it spread to other regions, gaining momentum after Gaitan's assassination in 1948 and again the next year, when feeble attempts at bipartisan accommodation failed because of acrimonious partisanship. The Violencia was defined in its particulars according to the regions and localities where it flared. Indeed, several parts of Colombia were never seriously affected. Most notable in that respect were the northern coast and the far southwestern department of Narifto, adjacent to Ecuador. Avariety of factors help explain the near-absence of Violencia along the Atlantic littoral and, to a lesser extent, in the department of Narifto. Those regions were both physically and psychologically distant from the nation's political heartland. A sense of their psychological distance is conveyed in the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He suggests a costeflo perception of the highlanders as dour rigid people-a race alien to inhabitants of the steaming lowlands. On the other hand, people from the interior disparaged the northern coast and often couched their criticism in racial terms. Costeflos resisted intense politicization thanks in part to their more cosmopolitan view of the world, and consequently were less willing to attach overweening importance to party labels. This explains why Conservative and Liberal costeflo elites were able to unite to minimize Violencia in their region in spite of political breakdown at the national level. \lVhile conflict was breaking out in other regions, costeflo leaders employed their armed forces in such a way that they were not perceived by the people as sectarian shock troopS.l0 The department of Narifto suffered some Violencia between 1946 and 1949, but little after those years. Here again, physical/psychological factors seem to explain why some local elites were more successful than others in holding bloodshed to low levels. Heavily indigenous in racial makeup, their accent quite unlike that of other Colombians, the "Indians" of Pasto were and continue to be the butt of tlpastuso jokes," which portray them as naive provincials. These differences, perceived and real, between the people of Narifto and those of the interior may well account for the reduced levels of Violencia in far southwestern Colombia. Narifto and the Atlantic coast were the only parts of the nation immune to heavy Violencia. Those regions that were highly politicized by a hundred years of recurrent partisan conflict reacted to the Liberal The Violencia and Tolima 247 decision in 1949 to resist the government that they viewed as illegitimate . Consequently} the violence that existed prior to that year in the departments of Santander and Santander del Norte} and to a lesser extent in BoyacB.} was easily transported to the Eastern llanos until the fall of Laureano G6mez in 1953. Other Liberal guenillas organized simultaneously to oppose the ConseIVative-dominated police in Tolima } Huila} Cauca} Valle} and Antioquia. When the military coup of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla unseated the G6mez government} most of the country was experiencing serious Violencia. After the fall of Laureano G6mez} economic motives began to supplant political ones as its principal engines. Further complicating the issue was the existence of many hundreds of violentos who were too young to have knO\NI1 anything but lives of outla\Nl)'} and who consequently were so damaged by their experience that they could not lay dO\NI1 their weapons. Also counted among the thousands of violentos who roamed the nation's backcountry were hundreds of genuine social revolutionaries} whose plan was to overthrow the military regime that succeeded G6mez} and} after 1957} the bourgeois government of the Frente NacionalJ and replace it with a Marxist one. This was the complex Violencia of 1953-65. The Frente NacionalJ by institutionalizing partisan cooperation} seIVed its chieffunction in that it depoliticized the Violencia. Once the ConseIVative and Liberal elites were again ensconced atop their party pyramids} directing the nation as they had in times past} the conflict lost its raison d'~tre and its motive force. Still} the bloodshed did not simply cease with the power-sharing compact. The Violencia had long since transcended its initial dynamic and had become much more than the persecution of Liberal civilians by sectarian ConseIVative functionaries and homicidal police. Thus} it could only be ended through the coordinated and tenacious action of the national military establishment} supported and assisted by a profoundly weary civilian population. Slowly} over a span of time embracing the better part of eight years-nearly half the period of the Violencia-the fighting was brought to an end. The army...

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