Colombian conflict
The Colombian conflict (Spanish: Conflicto armado interno de Colombia, lit. 'Colombian internal armed conflict') began on May 27, 1964, and is a low-intensity asymmetric war between the government of Colombia, far-right paramilitary groups and crime syndicates, and far-left guerrilla groups, fighting each other to increase their influence in Colombian territory.[45] Some of the most important international contributors to the Colombian conflict include multinational corporations, the United States,[46][47][48] Cuba,[49] and the drug trafficking industry.[50]
The conflict is historically rooted in the conflict known as La Violencia, which was triggered by the 1948 assassination of liberal political leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán,[51] and in the aftermath of the anti-communist repression in rural Colombia in the 1960s that led Liberal and Communist militants to re-organize into the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).[52]
The reasons for fighting vary from group to group. The FARC and other guerrilla movements claim to be fighting for the rights of the poor in Colombia to protect them from government violence and to provide social justice through communism.[53] The Colombian government claims to be fighting for order and stability, and to protect the rights and interests of its citizens. The paramilitary groups claim to be reacting to perceived threats by guerrilla movements.[54]
According to a study by Colombia's National Centre for Historical Memory, 220,000 people have died in the conflict between 1958 and 2013, most of them civilians (177,307 civilians and 40,787 fighters), and more than five million civilians were forced from their homes between 1985 and 2012, generating the world's second-largest population of internally displaced persons (IDPs).[39][55][42] 16.9% of the population in Colombia has been a direct victim of the war.[56] 2.3 million children have been displaced from their homes, and 45,000 children killed, according to national figures cited by UNICEF. In total, one in three of the 7.6 million registered victims of the conflict are children, and since 1985, 8,000 minors have disappeared.[57] A Special Unit was created to search for persons deemed as missing within the context of and due to the armed conflict.[58] As of April 2022, the Single Registry of Victims reported 9,263,826 victims of the Colombian conflict, with 2,048,563 of them being children.
Approximately 80% of those killed in the conflict have been civilians. In 2022 the Truth Commission of Colombia estimated that paramilitaries were responsible for 45% of civilian deaths, the guerrillas for 27% and state forces for 12%, with the remaining 16% attributable to other groups or mixed responsibility.[59][60]
On June 23, 2016, the Colombian government and the FARC rebels signed a historic ceasefire deal, bringing them closer to ending more than five decades of conflict.[61] Although the deal was rejected in the subsequent October plebiscite,[62] the same month, President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring the country's more than 50-year-long civil war to an end.[63] A revised peace deal was signed the following month and submitted to Congress for approval.[64] The House of Representatives unanimously approved the plan on November 30, a day after the Senate also gave its backing.[65]
Background[edit]
The origin of the armed conflict in Colombia goes back to 1920 with agrarian disputes over the Sumapaz and Tequendama regions.[66] Much of the background of Colombian conflict is rooted in La Violencia, a conflict in which liberal and leftist parties united against the dictator of Colombia, Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. Colombia at the time was a banana republic, dominated by foreign monopolies specifically the United Fruit Company.
The United Fruit Company existed to buy large amounts of agricultural products in Latin America at cheap prices, then resell the crops in foreign markets for inflated amounts. Local farmers were largely impoverished and were forced to grow specific crops creating a monoculture in which farmers depended on the company for all food, products and wages. The United Fruit Company would usually pay their workers in coupons, which was worthless outside company stores, the stores would charge extravagant prices compared to what workers earned. As well as this the system of employment was usually in which farmers would be forced to sell their property to the United Fruit Company and then be indebted to the company having to work on the land and pay back the company. The United Fruit Company would hire private militaries to enforce its power, their purpose was to put down worker calls for reform, destroy unions, and put down worker revolutions. Any potential threat to the United Fruit Company would be overturned in a company backed coups, which would prop up friendly puppet politicians and support right wing militias to maintain power.
Workers would often organize and strike against these conditions, and would form local militias against the United Fruit Company. This would often lead to conflict between the United Fruit Company and the workers. This culminated in a strike in November 1928 by farmers in Ciénaga for better working conditions. The striking workers called for an end to temporary contracts, the creation of mandatory worker insurance, the creation of compensation for work accidents, the creation of hygienic dormitories, the 6 day work weeks, the implementation of a minimum wage, the abolishment of wages through company coupons and office stores, and the recognition of farmers and tenants as employees with legal rights. The strike quickly grew becoming the largest strike in all of Colombia's history, with many Socialists, Anarchists, Marxists and Leftists joining and organizing the strike. The United Fruit Company demanded that the workers disband and the Union should disband. Following several weeks of failed negotiations, the Colombian government of Miguel Abadía Méndez sent the Colombian Army to Ciénaga. After a standoff with the strikers, the Colombian Army shot into the crowd of strikers, killing between 68 and 2,000 people in what became known as the Banana massacre.[67]
This led to an outrage in the Colombian Public, creating an explosion of Leftists and Revolutionary organizations. In Bogota, leftist students protested and organized against the Colombian government, eventually hoping to overthrow it. This opposition to the Colombian Government exploded in 1948, upon hearing of the assassination of socialist candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, many poor workers saw the death of Gaitán as political assassination orchestrated by the rich. Workers began rioting and destroying the Colombian capital Bogota, leading to the death of 4,000 people. When news of the death of Gaitán reached the countryside, the local militias were furious and immediately started a civil war known as La Violencia. Joined by fellow Leftists a brutal war was fought for over 10 years leading to the death of 200,000 people and the destruction of much of the country, resulting in a peace settlement and the changing of power to the Colombian Conservative Party to the Colombian Liberal Party and the Colombian Communist Party in 1958.
As La Violencia wound down, most self-defense and guerrilla units made up of Liberal Party supporters demobilized, but at the same time some former Liberals and active Communist groups continued operating in several rural enclaves. One of the Liberal bands was a group known as the "Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia" (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), or FARC, formed by Pedro Antonio Marin in 1964, FARC was founded out of fighters unhappy with the peace settlement. The goal of the FARC, among other things, was redistribution of land that would benefit poor peasant farmers like Marin, along with the desire to establish a communist state.[68]
In 1958, an exclusively bipartisan political alternation system, known as the National Front, resulted from an agreement between the Liberal and Conservative parties. The agreement had come as a result of the two parties attempting to find a final political solution to the decade of mutual violence and unrest, remaining in effect until 1974.[51]
Causes[edit]
Colombia has a long history of political violence. Land, power, and wealth are unevenly distributed, and many rural citizens are used to fending for themselves.[69] There is no consensus about the date on which the conflict began, with some saying 1958 (with the start of the Frente Nacional (National Front))[70] and others 1964 (with the creation of the FARC).[71]
In the mid-1980s, Colombia granted greater political and fiscal autonomy to local governments. This strengthened the government's position in more remote regions.[72]
In 1985, during peace talks with then-President Belisario Betancur, the FARC created the left-wing Patriotic Union party as a route from violence to mainstream politics. Between 1985 and 2002, 4,153 members and supporters of the party were kidnapped and murdered by right-wing paramilitaries, with government support. This included two presidential candidates, 6 out of 16 congressmen, 17 regional representatives and 163 councilmen.[73] These killings aggravated the conflict.[74]
In the 1980s, drug trafficking increased, bringing a concomitant increase in violence. Trafficking had begun in the 1960s and 70s, when a group of Americans began to smuggle marijuana. Later, the American Mafia moved into drug trafficking in Colombia alongside local marijuana producers.[75] Cocaine and other drugs produced in Colombia were mostly consumed in the US as well as Europe.
Organized crime in Colombia grew increasingly powerful in the 1970s and 80s with the introduction of massive drug trafficking to the United States from Colombia.[76][77] After the Colombian Government dismantled many of the drug cartels that appeared in the country during the 1980s, left-wing guerrilla groups and rightwing paramilitary organizations resumed some of their drug-trafficking activities and resorted to extortion and kidnapping for financing, activities which led to a loss of support from the local population.[72] These funds helped finance paramilitaries and guerrillas, allowing these organizations to buy weapons which were then sometimes used to attack military and civilian targets.[78][79]
During the presidency of Álvaro Uribe, the government applied more military pressure on the FARC and other outlawed far-left groups. After the offensive, many security indicators improved.[80] As part of a controversial peace process, the AUC (right-wing paramilitaries) as a formal organization had ceased to function.[55][81] Colombia achieved a great decrease in cocaine production, leading White House drug czar R. Gil Kerlikowske to announce that Colombia was no longer the world's biggest producer of cocaine.[82][83] The United States is still the world's largest consumer of cocaine[84] and other illegal drugs.[85][86][87]
In February 2008, millions of Colombians demonstrated against the FARC and other outlawed groups.[88][89][90] The Colombian Ministry of Defense reported 19,504 deserters from the FARC between August 2002 and their collective demobilization in 2017, peaking in the year 2008.[91] During these years the military forces of the Republic of Colombia were strengthened.[92]
The Peace process in Colombia, 2012 refers to the dialogue in Havana, Cuba between the Colombian government and guerrilla of FARC-EP with the aim to find a political solution to the armed conflict. After almost four years of peace negotiations, the Colombian state and the FARC announced consensus on a 6-point plan towards peace and reconciliation.[93] The government also began a process of assistance and reparation for victims of conflict.[94][95] Recently, U.P. supporters reconstituted the political party, within the process of reconciliation.[96] Colombia's congress approved the revised peace accord.[65]
In February 2015, the Historical Commission on the Conflict and its Victims (Comisión Histórica del Conflicto Armado y sus Víctimas – CHCV) published its report entitled "Contribution to an Understanding of the Armed Conflict in Colombia". The document addresses the "multiple reasons for the conflict, the principle factors and circumstances that made it possible and the most notable impacts on the population", and explains Colombia's armed conflict in terms of international law.[97]
Timeline[edit]
1960s[edit]
During this period, the main conflict in Colombia was between leftist guerillas and the central government. Key concerns included access to land, the battle between communist and capitalist ideologies, and the marginalisation of peasant populations.[98]
In the early 1960s, Colombian Army units loyal to the National Front began to attack peasant communities. This happened throughout Colombia with the Colombian army considering that these peasant communities were enclaves for bandits and Communists. It was the 1964 attack on the community of Marquetalia that motivated the later creation of FARC.[99] Despite the infantry and police encirclement of the villages inside Marquetalia (3500 men swept through the area), Manuel Marulanda managed to escape the army cordon.
Unlike the rural FARC, which had roots in the previous Liberal peasant struggles, the ELN was mostly an outgrowth of university unrest and would subsequently tend to follow a small group of charismatic leaders, including Camilo Torres Restrepo.[100]
Both guerrilla groups remained mostly operational in remote areas of the country during the rest of the 1960s.
The Colombian government organized several short-lived counter-guerrilla campaigns in the late 1950s and early 1960s. These efforts were aided by the U.S. government and the CIA, which employed hunter-killer teams and involved U.S. personnel from the previous Philippine campaign against the Huks, and which would later participate in the subsequent Phoenix Program in the Vietnam War.[54][101]