A multiple and pluralistic reading of historyCommission on History of the conflict and their victimsEduardo Pizarro LeongomezTrials11 in the appointments of footer along the rapporteurship we will limit ourselves to mentioning the name of the author of the aforementioned essayand the page that shows the comment or the phrase we have used.1. Gustavo Duncan, Exclusion, insurgency and crime2. Jairo Estrada, capitalist accumulation, class domination and subversion.Elements for a historical interpretation of the social and armed conflict3. Dario Fajardo, Study on the origins of the social conflict armed, reasons for its persistenceand its most profound effects in Colombian society4. Javier Giraldo, contributions on the origin of the armed conflict in Colombia, its persistenceand its impacts5. Jorge Giraldo, politics and war without compassion6. Francisco Gutirrez, does a simple story?7. Alfredo Molano, fragments of the history of armed conflict (1920-2010)8. Daniel Pecaut, a armed conflict at the service of the social status quo and political9. Vicente Torrijos, Cartography of the conflict: interpretive guidelines on the evolution of theColombian conflict irregular10. Renan Vega, interference of the United States, insurgency and terrorism ofState11. Mary Emma Wills, The three knots of the Colombian war12. Sergio de Zubiria, "cultural and political dimensions in the Colombian conflict"SummaryIntroductionI. The origins and the multiple causes of internal armed conflict1. Temporary Origin(A) long time, average time(b) continuities and ruptures(c) The modern armed conflict(d) The National Front or the appeasement of the blood feuds (e) of the appeasement to the widespread violence2. Specification 3. Actors in the conflict4. Factors, actors, joints, and dynamics of the conflictII. Major factors and conditions that have facilitated or contributed to the persistence ofconflict1. The drug trafficking2. Patterns of violence against civilians: the role of the kidnapping and extortion3. Institutional Precariousness4. The private provision of coercion/security5. Weapons and ballot box6. Political System ingratiating-parochial7. Inequity, property rights and agricultural issue8. The vicious circle of violenceIII. The effects and impacts of the most notorious conflict on population1. Definition of victim2. Typology of victimization, number of victims and agents responsible3. The impacts of violence in the economy, equity, politics and cultureConclusions Introduction InMay of 1958, the Military Junta Government convened the National Commissioninvestigating the causes and current situations of violence in the National Territory in order to carry out a diagnosis of the causes of the violence and to proposemeasures to overcome it through plans of pacification, social assistance andrehabilitation. The researcher , as it was known in his time, led by theformer minister and liberal writer, Otto Morales Benitez, had a very short life, from May 1958to January 1959, that is to say, mere nine months, and its results were not satisfactory.According to the analysis provided by the professor Jefferson Jaramillo, a very knowledgeable of the subject, since then it has beenat least twelve similar commissions2 designed astools to help overcome the chronic violence the country has endured, including the National Commission on Violence3 and the National Center for MemoryHistorica4.2 Jefferson Jaramillo, past and present of the violence in Colombia. Study on the commissions of inquiry(1958-2011), Bogota, Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2014, p. 34 ET seq.3 Commission of Studies on Violence, Colombia: violence and democracy, Bogot, National University ofColombia, 1987.4 National Center of Historical Memory, Enough is Enough! Colombia: memory of war and dignity, Bogot,National Printing Press, 2013.5 The CHCV is not and should not be confused with a Truth Commission. The CHCV was not itself achannel of expression of the victims. However, these tests, as says the agreement signed between the governmentand the FARC, you must serve the future Commission of Truth as a useful input and indispensable.The vast majority of Colombians expected, however, that we are dealing with nowwill be the last commission of these characteristics, before the closure of the symbolic already longarmed conflict, through a Truth Commission, which we can encourage in someappropriate time in the futuro5.The Commission on History of the conflict and their victims (CHCV), installed in Havana on 21 August2014, was created by the peace table in the framework of the general agreement for the completion of theconflict and the construction of a stable and lasting peace, signed by thenational government and the FARC on 26 August 2012. This Commission has, however,a special feature when compared with those of the past: its members were not appointed by thenational government, but, through an agreement between the two parties involved in the peace negotiationsin Cuba6, with the objective to contribute to the understanding of the complexity of thehistorical context of the internal conflict7 and for providing inputs for thedelegations in the discussion of different points of general agreement that are pending, in particular the point 5 of the agenda, the issue of the victims.6 Jefferson Jaramillo, The Historical Commission of Havana: background and challenges, in Public Reasonhttp://www.razonpublica.com/index.php/conflicto-drogas-y-paz-temas-30.html..7 Given the enormous diversity of terms used by the various essayists to characterize thearmed confrontation, which the country has suffered since the inception of the National Front (war,armed conflict social, asymmetric warfare, among others), along the rapporteurship we are going to use the more generic notion ofinternal armed conflict , that is to say, which is used in the documents themselves to the peace table in Havana.The Commission was composed of twelve experts, each of which should developwith total autonomy and intellectual rigor, a report in relation to three key pointsdefined by the Bureau of Peace: (a) The origins and the multiple causes of the conflict; (b)major factors and conditions that have facilitated or contributed to the persistence of the conflictand (c) the effects and impacts more notorious of the conflict on the population. On the basis of these reportsfrom the twelve experts, the two rapporteurs were required to prepare asynthesis report, reflecting with greater objectivity consensus-building, and the disagreements and the plurality of viewsof the experts. Finally, as we explained in a joint introduction,we have decided to give two rapporteurs to deepen the spirit plural which has guided thework of the CHCV.According to the communiqu No. 40 Of the peace table in which it was announced thecreation of CHCV, the final report (which includes the twelve tests and two rapporteurships),must be a vital input for the understanding of the complexity of the conflict andthe responsibilities of those who have participated in or had an effect on the same, andto determine the truth. But, in any case, the CHCV had the power to determineindividual responsibilities nor of prosecuting those responsible.The text of Daniel Pecaut begins by stating that even when it comes toevents that are considered historical ruptures on the scale of the great revolutionsor the great wars, that oblige us to consider without a shadow of doubt that there is a before and after a , the debate on the origins or on the multiplicity of causesnever closes8. This same conviction mood to the peace table from Havana toask twelve scholars an individual trial, not looking for a unique vision - which is impossible,at least in the field of history and the social sciences-, but a multiplicity ofviewpoints. The outcome of this exercise demonstrated the existence of consensus, but, equally, of dissension on the three themes chosen: origin, factors ofpersistence and victims and the impact of the conflict. These dissents can spark a debatemuch more productive, to delve into a democratic culture founded in therecognition of the other and in the right to dissent and difference, that a so-calledunanimous narrative.8 Daniel Pecaut, p. 1. We could add an additional fact that it is virtually impossible to have a single story: the absence of sufficienthistorical perspective, therefore, to a large extent we are referring to a history of the present , given that there is still the political violence in the country. If you are still vivid discussions on thesignificance, for example, of the wars of independence, how to think that there might beconsensus on total historical processes in course?9 For the sake of integrating under a common name the many terms used in the tests to refer tothe factors (Molano, p. 1), knots (Wills, p. 1), trigger factor (Fajardo, p. 3),multiplicity of causes (Zubiria, p. 4) Or others who have contributed to the violence that has hit the country,The Rapporteurship has as main objective to carry out a map and more balanced and rigorous as possibleof the thesis and the arguments contained in the twelve tests; and, through a breakdown ofthe three thematic topics, highlight both consensus and disagreementsmultiagency of these readings. We are far short of a impossible and undesirable official history oran equally impossible and undesirable single truth. On the contrary, these testsshould serve to the peace table and Colombians in general open a wide-ranging discussion aboutwhat happened to us, why we are step and as overcome it. That is to say that the Rapporteurshipis an invitation to the pluralistic and democratic dialog and, we must emphasize this point, it is onlya tight synthesis of the thesis contained in the twelve tests. His reading does not replacenor is it intended to replace the great wealth that analytical contain the various texts presentedby the commissioners. It is therefore a general guide for your reading.On the other hand, it is interesting to note that, despite the profound differences of approach in thetests, many agree highlight certain 9 geological faults in the construction ofwe have chosen the metaphor more neutral of the geological faults (ECLAC-UNDP-IDB-FLACSO, Latin Americaand the crisis, Santiago de Chile, 1999) or geological fractures (Raul Urza and Felipe Aguero (eds. ), fracturesof democratic governance, Santiago de Chile, 1998). In no way this metaphorcan lead us to think in objective causes permanent and unchangeable. In fact, one of the main factorsof violence in the fifties, the sectarian culture bipartisan, disappeared under the National Front.10 The nation of presence traumatic State was coined by Professor Pierre Gilhodes, throughout his prolificintellectual work.11 Sergio de Zubiria, speaks of the failure or indefinite postponement of social reforms, p. 17, As one of the evils ofthe Colombian society.the Colombian nation that, in certain circumstances and under various strategies from differentpolitical and armed actors, have served as a substrate for the unleashing ofacts of violence. For example: the agrarian question, the institutional weakness, the Hondaincome inequality, the trend to the simultaneous use of the weapons and the polls or thepresence precarious or, in some occasions, traumatic of the State in many regions of theCongress.10 territory. The history of Colombia is, from this perspective the history of theindefinite postponement of necessary changes, both in state institutions and social structures, such as in the conduct of the actores11.The emphasis in these tasks always postponed, these trials may contribute to the design of apost-conflict in peace, solid and durable. That is to say, the analysis presented bythe Commissioners can have not only a analytical value, but that could contributeto the design of public policies necessary and urgent in order to consolidate the peace.Given the great diversity of perspectives on tests, it is important that both the peace tableas the readers of the special rapporteur and the twelve tests know in advance whichhave been the thematic axs object greater controversy and, in the same way, in that land there has beenconsensus and in which dissent. As you can see the reader, these themeshave been precisely the framework on which has been structured is rapporteurship:- The determination of historical time- the continuities and ruptures between the period of the violence and the current conflict -the characterization of the internal armed conflict- the determination of the responsible agents- the factors that have influenced the emergence of the guerrilla in the sixtiesand the paramilitaries in the eighties- The evaluation of the National Front- The explanatory factors of the new wave of violence from the eighties- The factors that have an effect on the continuation of the armed conflict in Colombiato contrast with the rest of Latin America- The universe of victims, the suffering and the responsibilities of the various actors- Impacts Violence in the culture, democracy, equity, andcitizen protest- the characterization of the armed rebellion in Colombia, either is characterizedas legitimate or, on the contrary, as an unjust war.Enrique Santos Caldern has pointed out with regard to the motives that led him to assume an important rolein the early stages of the current peace negotiations, whichfelt a combination of political duty, personal obligation, moral commitment12.These are also my own motivations. A political responsibility, as I am awareof the need to contribute to overcoming the armed conflict that affectsour country. A personal and intellectual responsibility, given that I've been linked most of my professional lifechores to the university, to research andteaching. AND a moral responsibility, because I agree with the majority of Colombiansthe urgency to build a peace process by taking as a vertex the values of respect forhuman life, democracy and social justice.12 Enrique Santos Caldern, how it all began. The first face-to-face between the FARC and the government in Havana, Bogot, Intermediate Publishers, 2014, p. 35.I. The origins and the multiple causes of internal armed conflict1. Temporary OriginIn general, to discuss the origins of the armed conflict the various essayists are in turnraise their hypotheses about the reasons that influenced their outbreak. For this reason, the discussion that follows is not only temporary but entailsdiffering positions about causal factors or triggers, in which we findboth convergences as substantive differences.(A) long time, half timeIn the essays submitted there are those who consider necessary to go back to the remote pastto clarify the factors that have influenced the various periods of violencethat has hit the country, including, the reciente13. Others believe that, while the current violencereflects distant echoes of the past, its actors and their dynamics can be studiedonly by taking into consideration a historical period more restricted. This was the case of FranciscoGutirrez, Gustavo Duncan, Jorge Giraldo and Vicente Torrijos who, withoutignoring the value of a wide historical look -which references to menudoprefirieronfocus their interpretations in the period subsequent to the National Front. Daniel Pecautchose a middle path, as you begin your analysis through the study of thefactors that, in his view, impacted during the Liberal Republic in the violenceof the fifties and its subsequent impact on the contemporary history of the country. DarioFajardo, Alfredo Molano, Sergio de Zubiria and Javier Giraldo begin their stories with the emergence ofthe agrarian conflicts in the twenties.13 This is the case of Renan Vega, whose essay primarily focuses on the relations between Colombia andthe United States. Vega from the early nineteenth century and divides his essay in five major periods:Phase I: from the birth of the Republic (1821) until the end of conservative hegemony (1930); Phase II:the Liberal Republic (1930-1946); Phase III: from the Inter-american Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (RIO TREATY) from 1947 until the US military mission of William P. Yarborough in 1962; Phase IV: from the beginnings of themodern counterinsurgency (1962) until the Plan Colombia (1999); and, Phase V: Plan Colombia -2014. This essayist, one of the factors that could explain the violence in Colombia ischronic the subordination of the elites in Washington.14 Mary Emma Wills, p. 4.15 The only exception was, according to the author, Uruguay (p. 4, Appointment, 11), a country which was affected both or more than Colombiaby harsh civil wars between whites and the colorados in the nineteenth century, but that, after the lastconfrontation in 1904, was opened to a bipartisan model Civilist, secular, under the baton of Jos Batlle y Ordez.Mary Emma Wills followed, as Renan Vega, the first approach and I believe that it is essentiala gaze of long duration to understand in depth the present, studying the particularitiesof the formation of the nation state (which can be distinguished from other countriesof the continent by its sequence and articulationhistorical 14. From their point of view,the particularity of Colombia arises from a key fact: the Liberal and Conservative partieswere forged prior to the consolidation of the State and became central actors in theprocess of imagination and inculcation of a nacional15 community, with itsmulti-sector networks type of clientele, its role of articulating angles between the regions and the center,and their mobilization based both on the ballot as arms.This political model-partisan was given in a country characterized by multiple regionsrelatively autonomous, a little integrated domestic market, a peasantry in themargins of the agricultural frontier weakly represented and a veryfragile state construction. According to Maria Emma Wills, the State had very limited fiscal resources, aprecarious army and a non-professional bureaucracy, which renewed kept pace with the changes inpartidista16 hegemony. In this context, the armed clashes wererecurrent. In fact, throughout the nineteenth century there were eight civil wars of national characterand fourteen in the regional level.16 Mary Emma Wills, p. 7.17 Steven Pinker, the better angels of our nature. Why violence has declined, New York, Viking Penguin,2011, pp. 86-87.According to several tests, probably the most characteristic feature of Colombia during the nineteenth centuryand the first half of the twentieth century, was the confrontation between a religious visionand a liberal vision of the world, without that other aspects have a significancein determining the political division. This could explain the weight of the ideologies in Colombian politicsand the ease with which they have been given a sacred character to the end,allowing the use of questionable means.However, after the last civil war traditional, the so-called war of a Thousand Days(1899-1902), the country experienced an extended period of relative calm, almost half a century, dottedhere and there by episodic acts of violence (such as the massacre of the banana plantations or victims ofsectarian violence following the end of conservative hegemony). In opencontrast with almost all the rest of Latin America, Colombia is succeeding electionsand civil governments. It is more. In the thirties of the last century homicide ratesin Colombia, between 5 and 8 homicides per hundred thousand population per year, were similar and,in some cases, lower than those of some nations europeas17. However, in the late fortiesColombia expiring immersed in a new period of violence, theviolence (in uppercase). According to data from the Police and the Ministry of Justice, one can say withsome certainty that in 1946 the homicide rate had risen in the countryto ten per hundred thousand habitantes18.18 Mario Chacon and Fabio Snchez, violence and political polarization during the violence, 1948-1965 ,Documents CEDE, Universidad de Los Andes, 2004.19 Daniel Pecaut, p. 3.20 On the meaning and implications of this sectarian culture , it is interesting to read the now classic work ofMalcolm deas and its exciting compared with Northern Ireland: violent exchanges. Reflections onthe political violence in Colombia, Bogota, Taurus, 1999.What happened to make this happen?Daniel Pecaut argues that, in the years prior to the violence, two specific traits thatdistinguish the history of Colombia of the other nations in Latin Americastill stood out with clarity. On the one hand, the tyrannic regime, i.e. the predominance of the civilian eliteon the military institution; and, on the other hand, the precariousness of the symbologynational 19.But in those same years two new features to be added: on the one hand, a widening ofthe accession of the population to the two traditional parties which, more than simplemachines politico-electoral, shape as two genuine warring political subculturesand, on the other hand, the adoption by the elites of a liberal model of developmentin open contrast with the mobilizations national-populist or nacionalautoritariasthat dominated the latin american outlook of the time.That is to say, while in Colombia were dominated by a model of joint political-partisanof the population based on a sectarian culture 20, exclusive, in many other countries of the continent arearticulated to the emerging urban classes through a speech ofnational integration. The two sharp changes in the political hegemony that occurred in 1930and 1946 are going to accentuate the deep commitment that partisan, in fact, replace thereferences to a common citizenship. On both dates a division of the dominant partyprovided the electoral triumph of the opposite party and, equally, on the same dates were unleashedinterpartidistas episodes of violence. In 1930, the division of the ruling partybetween two candidates, Guillermo Valencia and Alfredo Vasquez Cobo, you facilitated to EnriqueOlaya Herrera access to power with meager 369,934 votes, that is to say, being aminority force. In this change of the political hegemony there were many acts ofsectarian violence against the followers of the defeated party, especially in the departments ofBoyac, Santander and Norte de Santander. According to some historians, the memory ofthese events will serve as an incentive for the acts of violence that will live the countrytwo decades more tarde21. Something similar to what happened in 1930 took place in 1946 with thedivision of the Liberal Party between Gabriel Turbay and Jorge Elicer Gaitn, which opened the doorsof the presidency to Mariano Ospina Perez with a 40.5 % of the votes. From that yearthey returned to live episodes of sectarian violence, in particular in the same departmentsof 1930 (Boyaca and the two and Santanderes destination routes), which, after the assassination of Gaitan, were aggravatedand spread to other regions of the country.21 Cf., Javier Guerrero, the years of oblivion. Boyac and the origins of violence, in Third WorldEditors/IEPRI, 1991.22 Daniel Pecaut, p. 7.A fact that facilitated the gestation of a climate of bipolar confrontation in these years was the weakness(PCC) and, in some cases, the failure of the third parties (such as, bread, andthe UNITE), since the bipartisanship had no strong challenges. The Communist Party,whose birth coincided with the change of political hegemony in 1930, after a short timeby applying the ultra radical theses of the Communist International of class against class ,joined the spirit of the popular fronts approved in the VII Congress of the Comintern(Moscow, 1935) and ended up being an appendix to the Liberal Party for more than a decada22.With few exceptions (Honduras, Paraguay and Uruguay), the bipartisanship in Colombia remainedintact, while in the majority of nations in Latin America aroseother parties at the beginning of the twentieth century that defied with success that bipolar model:parties communists, socialists, radicals or other that reflected the interests of theemerging urban classes. In Colombia, the Liberal Party became in the thirties in thespokesperson of the middle classes and, above all, of the nascent working class.During these years, an external event had a profound impact in the country: the Spanish Civil War(1936-1939). For Daniel Pecaut, Mary Emma Wills, Renan Vega andAlfredo Molano the echoes of this civil war gave the traditional sectarianism partisanideological connotation a more pronounced and, infinitely more polarizing. Pecautemphasizes that, in this respect, the mixture of the old partisan cultures, those that have nourished theviolence ( ), with the modern ideological content is revealedexplosives 23. The liberalism ended up being assimilated, in certain speeches of thetime, communism and one and one contrary to the values of Occidente24. It was the samespeech that was used by the opponents of the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1939). Probably the abstention of the Conservative Party, citing a lack ofguarantees, in the presidential elections of 1934, 1938 and 1942 was the most unsettlingexpression of this climate of disqualification of the adversary liberal25. In 1934, the liberal candidatetriumphant, Alfonso Lopez Pumarejo, had only a symbolic opponent, the indigenous leaderand candidate of the Communist Party, Timote Eutiquio, who obtained 3,401 votes.In 1938 only is presented Eduardo Santos and in 1942 there were two liberal candidates,Alfonso Lopez, as official candidate and Carlos Arango Velez, as dissident candidate.The other expression of this alarming climate full of tension was the predominance of acurrent illiberal pronounced in the Catholic Church, which, according to Fernn Gonzlez,contributed to the political polarization and paved the way for the violence26.23 Daniel Pecaut, p. 5.24 Renan Vega, p. 8.25 Alfredo Molano, pp. 7 and 8.26 Quoted by Alfredo Molano, p. 12.This climate of pugnacity would have to combine with the consolidation of a liberal model of developmentthat obstructed the potentialities of the reformist Revolution Underway ofAlfonso Lopez Pumarejo. These had been not a few, according to Daniel Pecaut and Mary Emma Wills: removed the reference to God in the preamble of the Constitution, established theuniversal male suffrage, were introduced innovative educational reforms, recognizedimportant trade union rights, established property rights and access tohigher education of women, and there were some measures of agrarian reform.The latter sought to make more transparent and clear capitalist relationsthrough, on the one hand, the safety of the titles of the major nuclear-weapon States land if usedproperly (by eliminating the requirement to prove the original title ofassignment of the State, the so-called devil's test) and, on the other hand, by stimulating the wage labor, through the abolition of sharecropping.The reaction to these measures led by factions of both parties did not wait long. In fact, many of the measures of the reformist timidly revolution underway were arrested, and even reversed. The large landowners liberals and conservatives, organised around the Union of Agricultural owners and entrepreneursthat later led to the patriotic action National Economic (Appendix), were the spearhead ofa counter agrarian that it would be particularly damaging for the future of thecountry and it would be in using the Law 100 of 194427. As a prominentcolombianista, Albert Berry: Colombia has been characterized by extreme inequality inthe distribution of access to agricultural land and a serious ambiguity around the rights ofproperty. These problems have contributed to many other economic and social ills, among them the waves of violence that regularly touredthe country during the twentieth century and part of the nineteenth century28. Dario Fajardo, whose analysis focuses onthe agrarian question as trigger factor of social conflict and assemblepais29, poses that had existed since the early decades of the twentieth century a variety oftensions in the agro, potentially explosive: an excessive concentration of rural property, a hondo disorder in the forms of appropriation of badlands, aweak legitimacy of titles and persistence ofarchaic forms of authority within the property without any attachment to the standards laborales30.27 Dario Fajardo, pp. 20-21. It is important to emphasize that this law was issued under a climate of fear due to the food crisis,the fall in production and the rise in agricultural prices as a result of the SecondWorld War and the low internal productivity.28 Albert Berry, does Colombia finally found an agrarian reform that works? , in institutional economics,V. 4, No. 6, Bogot, 2002, p. 33, Quoted by Dario Fajardo, p. 6.29 Dario Fajardo, p. 3.30 Dario Fajardo, p. 8.This reverse reformist, in a climate of acute confrontation political-ideological, combinedwith the persistence of a weak State and military institutions with some veryprecarious, which had not been able to achieve a real autonomy vis--vis the partisan bickeringand that were not able to guarantee a real control of the territory andeven the monopoly of legitimate violence. Added to this is thepartisan high politicization of the National Police, which both reflected and reproduced in his inside thesectarian struggles of the two traditional political parties.In this environment, the triumph of the Conservative Party in 1946 sparked anew theblind sectarianism in many rural areas. Between 1946 and 1948 there were already thousands ofvictims. But it was after the assassination of Jorge Elicer Gaitn that violence overflowed andstate institutions suffered what Paul Oquist termed a partial collapse of theState31. Since then, the death of Gaitan has been perceived in the collective imaginarynational radical as a watershed, a before and an despues32.31 Paul Oquist, violence, conflict and policy in Colombia, Bogota, Banco Popular Library, 1978, quoted bySergio de Zubiria, p. 4.32 Cf., Jorge Orlando Melo, Gaitan: the impact and the syndrome of the April 9, Credential History, Bogot,No. April 96 1988.33 Dario Fajardo calculates that the displacement of the rural population reached in these years 10% of thepopulation of the country (p. 26), which sum both forced displacement product of violence, such as thevoluntary mobility of many families in the quest for better living conditions.34 DAMAGE, permanent Seminar of colombian problems, agriculture in Colombia 1950-1970 1950-1970 1950-1970 1950-1970 , Bogot, 1978. Cited by Javier Giraldo, p. 11.35 Gonzalo Snchez, Rehabilitation and violence under the National Front, in Political Analysis, No. 4, Mayoagosto1988, p. 21.Various essayists reconstructed in its analysis this complex historical period that leftdeep scars in the country. On the one hand, the massive displacement of the population in rural areashad increased the concentration of the earth and created immense misery beltsin the ciudades33. Colombia went in a few decades of being a predominantly rural countryto become an urban country. In the census of 1938, the rural populationstood at 70.9 % of the total population; in the census of 1951 had risen to 61.1 % andin 1964 was already minority: a 47.2 %34. On the other hand, Violence had destabilizedthe property in some areas, had been paralyzed production in other and had upset themarketing channels in many, i.e. had altered in various ways theeconomic and social order. The task, the challenge of the National Front, in both political projectof pacification, was to create the conditions for reset35.However, several essayists agree that the measures taken to tackle the most harmful effects of theviolence were very insufficient. The government of AlbertoLleras created the Special Commission of Rehabilitation that placed the emphasis on construction ofschools and good roads, attention to displaced persons and distribution of wastelands, butthat was extinguished quickly by absence of support indicators36. In fact had onlya life of two years, between September 1958 and december 1960.36 Alfredo Molano, p. 32.37 The National Association of Peasant Farmers was driven by Carlos Lleras Restrepo in 1967 througha group of promoters linked to the Ministry of Agriculture and the INCORA. In the three yearsfollowing reached nearly a million members and 450 associations. Cf., Alfredo Molano, pp. 34 et seq.38 Alfredo Molano, p. 33.39 Dario Fajardo, p. 28.In turn, the National Commission investigating the causes and current situations of violencein the national territory, created in May of 1958, also had, as we saw,a short existence: was dissolved nine months later. And the Law 135 of 1961 ofagrarian reform, inspired by the Alliance for Progress and supported internally byreformist sectors of the Liberal Party (rather than by a peasant movement existentand it will take a decade to be organized around the ANUC)37, did not have greater results. This law, whose aim it was to expropriate the properties improperlyexploited, did not have the resources to carry out the task and almost everything thatcould be retrieved was extinction through the domain of the latifundios not exploited.Which was, however, a significant impact on the formation of a sector ofrural entrepreneurs who sought promote a development model based on the greatmodern property: sugar, cotton, soybeans, bananas, etc. However, according to the perspective ofAlfredo Molano, the balance sheet of the agrarian reform was very poor. The concentration of landintensified; the medium properties are not strengthened; the sharecroppers and tenant farmersdeclined; advanced the colonization of the piedemonte amazon, Magdalena Medio,Uraba, Catatumbo and Pacific Coast. Ultimately, the agrarian reformonly benefit to the 8% of the families without tierra38. This failure was, in large part, the result ofthe hostility of conservative sectors, especially in the current laureanista,to the reformist policies of the two Lleras (Alberto and Carlos). Opposition that with the backingof intellectual Lauchlin Currie and the so-called Operation Colombia, thatthought it best that the peasants will be moved into cities, where they couldbe more productive and live in better condiciones39. That is to say, the same argument that would welcomeMisael Pastrana Borrero a decade later, in 1971.(B) continuities and rupturesIn addition to the diversity in the management of the times (long or medium) that the essayistsconsidered necessary to find the key explanatory of the current armed conflict, the testsare another important difference. On the one hand, between those who advocatethe continuities between periods (for example, between the violence and the current conflict) andthose who, without ignoring the continuities, also highlights the ruptures between the various historical periods.In fact, one of the more complex topics of the Colombian historiography and that has been reflectedclearly in the various essays for CHCV, has been to determinewhen he began as the armed conflict that the country has endured inthe last few decades. Do in 1930? Do in 1946? Do in 1948? Do in 1958? In the eighties of thetwentieth century?In this regard there are, among the commissioners, two main glances. On the one hand, those who believe thatthe current armed conflict broke out in the period of violence,as is the case of Alfredo Molano who begins his essay with a lapidary phrase: armed conflictbegins with violence40, or even before that is41; and those who consider that,while there was continuity between this period and the modern armed conflict, the differences in both historical moments are so profound that one andanother should be clearly differentiated. In trials such as those of Dario Fajardo,Sergio de Zubiria and Javier Giraldo argues that there is a line of basic continuity fromthe twenties of the last century up to today - in particular, due to the agrarian conflictswould have been the source of the causal violence both current and those of the past, while otherauthors, such as Daniel Pecaut and Francisco Gutirrez, for example,prefer to show both the continuities and the discontinuities and ruptures. According to the latter, one thing is that there is continuity in the historical factors and it is quite another40 Alfredo Molano, p. 1.41 For others, such as Javier Giraldo, Dario Fajardo and other even more back in the twenties of the last century, with the first social conflicts in rural areas, given that the substrate of the historicnational conflict has been, according to these essayists, the agrarian question .the determination of a date on which can be analytically fix the beginning of thecontemporary conflict are two different exercises. Nothing prevents a conflictstarted in the sixties, after the impact of the Cuban revolution in Latin America andColombia and the birth of the guerrillas in the region as a whole, may have roots or processes initiatedlong time ago.Therefore, the diversity in the management of the times (long or medium) is one of the keysto understand the different approaches: those who argue the thesis of thecontinuity, chose the long-term; on the contrary, those who opted for a more focused analysistemporarily, they felt that a thing was the violence and quite anotherconfrontation between the insurgency and counterinsurgency. The only thing that moved away from these two approacheswas Daniel Pecaut, who analyzed what happened from the thirties to putin evidence that there were two historic moments with their own characteristics.ContinuityThe shaft of Dario Fajardo to explain the middle weight of the land issue in theviolence that the country has experienced in recent decades is based, according to their perspective,in the antagonism between two tracks of agricultural development in the formation of capitalism, whichhave been confronted in Colombia since the twenties: on the one hand, thePrussian track, founded in the large property, and, on the other hand, the track of the small property, which wereboth t hey were theorized by Karl Kaustsky42. According to Fajardo, these two tracks were theexpression of two society projects that have confronted since the last centuryshaping a common thread, a basic continuity, between violence and the contemporary conflict.Similar arguments can be found in the testing of Javier Giraldo, whobelieves that the main detonating for armed conflicts in the country throughout the twentieth centuryand until today have been recurrent struggles to access the tierra43. In thatsame line, Mary Emma Wills argues that the policy of settlement and exploitation ofthe barren land gave rise to a independent peasantry that was not prepared to42 Karl Kaustsky, the agrarian question. Study of the trends of modern agriculture and the agricultural policyof the social-democracy , Mexico, twenty-first century Publishers, 2002.43 Javier Giraldo, p. 10.The public scene disappear reconverted in farm worker or displacedurbano44. This is also the shaft's storyline Alfredo Molano, who argues that Law 200(1936) - which in reality was an extension of the advanced Law 83 of 1931-is the axis around which revolve since then the agrarian conflicts on the missroots armed struggle45.44 Mary Emma Wills, p. 37.45 Alfredo Molano, p. 9.46 Charles Bergquist, work in Latin America: Comparative Essays on Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, andColombia, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986, p. 11. The deep concentration of the earth today in Colombiais linked, first and foremost, with the processes of dispossession and displacement of the peasant populationto live the country in successive waves from the fifties, the agrarian counter-reform throughthe covenant of Rural Areas of Misael Pastrana Borrero in 1971 and to the models of large farms linked to exportthat will be promoted by Alfonso Lopez Michelsen and Alvaro Gomez Hurtado in the seventies of thelast century.Reading around the interrelationship between the agrarian conflict and violence is the subject ofmany controversies within the CHCV. Before the Act 83 of 1931 was enacted Law 74 of1926 which ordered partition the estates of more than 500 hectares that havetenants. This law, accompanied by the judgment of the Supreme Court of Justice of thesame year, which put the burden of proof of property titles in the landowners -demanding the original title colonial, that is to say, the so-called diabolical proof -, added to the mobilization ofthe agrarian leagues - which had been legalized by the law itself 83-,may explain the active agitation in the field between 1931 and 1934. Charles Bergquistargues that in Colombia there was no agrarian revolution because in the decade of the twenties andthirties of the last century, the farmers achieved fragment the property and create a country, unlikePeru, Brazil, Venezuela or Argentina, where the majority of the farmers weresmall or mid propietarios46. The central argument of Bergquist is that, asin Colombia, the great wealth was the coffee and had many peasants, there was noactual agricultural movement, because farmers had resources and expanded stronglywith the allotment arising from the Act 83. This absence of peasant organizationprovided that they were dragged into the political conflicts of policlasista base that led to violence. That is to say, there was violence because there was not a real peasant movement, not the other way around.BreakOther essayists, on the contrary, they believe that if there were continuities, but, equally,pronounced changes in the actors, in the contexts and the dynamics that compel us todifferentiate the period of the violence of the armed conflict later. Jorge Giraldo, for example, locates the germs of the current armed conflict at the beginning of the National Front, with the emergenceof the so-called Cuban guerrillas postrevolucion. This is also theposition of Vicente Torrijos, who says that this conflict has its origin in 1964, when the commanders of theFARC and the ELN take the decision to defy the State.4747 Vicente Torrijos, pp. 1 and 2.48 Francisco Gutirrez, p. 1.Daniel Pecaut and Francisco Gutierrez, who also share the need to differentiate between these twoperiods, consider that the violence that shook the country in the late forties andthe following decade, had traits, actors, dynamics and motivationsof the profoundly different that there was after the birth, a few years later, the marxist guerrillascarriers of a revolutionary agenda. In this regard, said Gutierrez, althoughboth waves are organically connected (that is to say, the violence and the period of thewar against-insurgent) and show many continuities ( ), are different in theiractors, main motives and underlying logical48.Daniel Pecaut, likewise, recognizes that there are some continuities (and, therefore, that it is essential to considerthe period of violence as a necessary antecedent to understand whatwould have to happen later); but, at the same time, maintains that there areparticular features in this new stage in our history. One was the time of the so-calledViolence, which more than a civil war bipartisan -as there were numerous in the nineteenth century and during theWar of a Thousand Days - there was a war of a thousand faces where theculture sectarian liberal and conservative, after the change of political hegemony, unleashed alocal confrontation in the rural areas and led to the emergence of all sorts ofviolence overlapping (policies, obviously, but, equally, violence linked by thedispossession of land, the theft of the coffee, etc. ). And something very different is the insurgent violence andinsurgency, whose germs are found in the early attempts to create andconsolidate guerrilla groups in the beginnings of the National Front. It was no longerorganizations struggling for limited objectives, as was the case in thebipartisan conflict, but by absolute targets (the overthrow and the replacement of thedominant political elites), having a organizational strategy and a coherent discoursedesigned for that purpose.For the essayists argue that the thesis of the differentiation of the two historical periodsthere was a multiplicity of factors that, in certain circumstances both national and internationaland under the impetus of old or new players, equipped with different interestsand different strategies for access to power, will generate more or less lengthy periodsof violence. If we stick to their analysis, since the end of the war of a ThousandDays, we had basically two periods of violence: from 1946 to 1964 and from 1964 untiltoday.In general the historians agree distinguish three distinct phases during the period 1946-196449. Initially, from 1946 the outbreak of the sectarian violence following the change ofpolitical hegemony, especially in regions that had also undergone asimilar violence after the start of the Liberal Republic in 1930 (Boyaca and and Santanderes destination routes).A second phase, after the murder of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan on April 9, 1948, in whichmixed sectarian confrontations and the social and political banditry. This phase and the last, whose intermediate deadlines are difficult to establish, are closed during the so-calledlate violence with the dismantling of the decomposed remnantsof banditry in the mid-years sesenta50.49 Sven Schuster, Colombia: country without memory? Past and present of a war without name, in Journal ofColombian Studies, v. 36, 2010, p. 31. Although in general the historians secure the date of 1946 as the start of theviolence, in reality still in that year, and in the following year, homicide rates are relatively low, 8 homicides per 100 thousand inhabitants. The widespread violence beganitself from 1948 but, first and foremost, from the following year.50 See the classic work of Gonzalo Snchez and Donny Meertens, bandits, "whitened and peasants,Bogot, Salva Liarte Publishers, 1983.However, according to the arguments put forward by these essayists in the contemporary periodof violence (1964-65 until today) can be distinguished in its turn two distinct phases. On the one hand, a germinal stage in which emerge, as in all of Latin America, guerrilla groups inspired by various revolutionary projectsSocial51 change. On the other hand, a second phase that, after a sharp decline in homicide ratesand a weakening of the guerrilla groups of first generation , you will live atrue climbing from the eighties up to today, with the slow recomposition of theFARC, the ELN and the EPL, the emergence of the guerrillas of second generation (M-19, Quintn Lame and PRT), the expansion of drug trafficking and the birth of theparamilitary groups.51 According to the preliminary inventory of Jorge Giraldo there was in the continent around 102 guerrilla groupsfrustrated or consolidated from 1956 (p. 7, Event No. 8).52 Gabriel Silva, The origin of the National Front and the government of the Military Junta, New History ofColombia, v. II, Bogot, Editorial Planeta, 1989.In the differentiation of the periods of violence the country has experienced in recent decades(1946-1964 and 1964 until today), these essayists consider that it is necessary to mentiontwo basic facts: the bipartisan escalation of sectarianism and the impact ofthe Cuban Revolution. In relation to the first factor, argue that theNational Front was a successful institutional design in this crucial aspect: achieving the cooling of thesectarianism polarizing, whose overflow had played a central rolein previous cycles of violence. For this it was necessary to overcome themere exclusive hegemony, although scattered in moments of acute crisis of fragilebipartisan coalitions, to ensure a prolonged coexistence without bipartisanbackground in the history nacional52.In relation to the second factor, they argue that during the National Front emerged,as in the rest of Latin America, the guerrillas postrevolucion cuban and, therefore, the logic ofthe new armed confrontation would have a new symbolism: the struggle between two models of societyperceived as antagonistic, in the framework of the bipolar world orderown of the cold war (1947-1991), which has bought all its force after the arrival of the26th of July Movement to power in Havana and its subsequent breakdown in relations withWashington. Without doubt, the cold war will impact so deep in the forms, ideologiesand motivations for political action in the world, in Latin America and in Colombia itself, during these four decades. The term cold war was first used bythe adviser to the President Harry Truman, Bernard Baruch, the April 161947, in a speech in the Congress, in which raised: Let us not deceive ourselves: we are immersed in acold war53. The end of this period is generally placed around threehistorical events: the start of perestroika (1985), the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) andthe dissolution of the USSR (1991)54.53 The term, however, was popularized by the columnist Walter Lippmann in a book published thesame year and precisely titled Cold War. Some authors argue, however, that this newworld order was itself defined in the famous speech of Wilson Churchill at the University ofMissouri (Fulton County), on 5 March 1946, in which said that from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, has fallen on the continent (European) an iron curtain, cf., Rafael Pardo, between two powers.How the cold war molding to Latin America, Editorial Taurus, Bogot, 2014.54 John Lewis Gaddis, new history of the cold war, Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico, 2011.55 The only exception in Latin America was Costa Rica. See, in this regard, the classic work by Richard Gott, guerrillamovements in Latin America, New York, Doubleday & Company, 1971.56 Cf., Jeff Goodwin, no other way out. States and revolutionary movements, 1945-1991, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001.57 On 1 January 1959, in the wee hours of the night, had already entered Havana the troops commandedby commander Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo of the Second National Front of Escambray, and, hours later, enter two of the top commanders of the 26th of July Movement, Camilo Cienfuegos andErnesto Guevara. At the other end of the island, the same day, Fidel Castro had entered victorious to Santiago de Cuba, had declared the town such as the provisional capital of Cuba and appointed judgeManuel Urrutia Lle as president of the country. For these reasons, this is considered the date date(c) The modern armed conflictJorge Giraldo illustrates the emergency in these years of guerrilla groups in Latin America55 and emphasizes that this spread of cores guerrillas on the continent was due mainly torevolutionary voluntarism, powered by the revolutionary wave thatawoke the triumph of the 26th of July Movement, to see that it was possible to access thepower through armed even a few miles from Miami.Latin America, from those years, he has lived two great waves of guerrilla movements. A, in 1959, with the triumph of the Cuban revolution and another, less extensivebut probably more intense, after the triumph of the Nicaraguan revolution twenty years later, in 197956. As we shall see later, in the two phases of contemporary violencethat some analysts have considered the impact of these two revolutions(1959 and 1979) is critical to understanding the evolution of the guerrilla movement in thecountry.On 7 January 1959 makes its triumphal arrival in Havana on maximum commander of the26th of July Movement, Fidel Castro57. That same day in Bogota various organizationsof the symbolic start of the Cuban revolution. But, in fact, it is not until January 7 that Fidel Castro makes itsarrival in Havana, after traveling all over the island, more than a thousand kilometers away, in a triumphant parade.58 Cf., the thesis for a master's degree in history at the National University of Jos Abelardo DiazJaramillo, the Workers' Movement Student January 7 peasant and the origins of the new left in Colombia1959-1969 .59 The own Diaz Jaramillo suggests that the date chosen by the ELN to announce publicly the start oftheir military actions, on 7 January 1965 by the decision of Simacota (Santander), would have been intribute to the pioneer group, the MOEC January 7. See, also, Jos Abelardo Diaz, the Workers' MovementPeasant Student January 7 and the origins of the new left in Colombia 1959-1969, doctoral thesis, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2010, p. 130 Et seq.60 Even when all the communist parties of guidance pro-china in the sixties in Latin Americaadopted the thesis of the protracted people's war , very few gave you that step. One of the few was thePCML of Colombia to impetus the EPL. Cf., Marisela Connelly, Influence of the thought of Mao inLatin America, in studies in Asia and Africa, V. 18, No. April 2 - June 1983: policies andsocial, including the student movement, is throwing to the streets of Bogotato protest the rise of urban transport approved by the first agent of theNational Front, Alberto Lleras Camargo. Relate these two events is not arbitraryif we know that the first political movement in Colombia to be attempting to replicatethe experience in guerrilla warfare triumphantly in Cuba would be initially theWorkers' Movement and Student January 7, in homage to this day of social protests,the largest since the August 7 1958 when it ranked Lleras Camargo58.You will later add the peasantry to the initial name.The MOEC is not only historically important for having been the first groupthat sought replicate the experience of the Cuban revolution (create a Sierra Maestra in the Andes ), but because of that, in one way or another, had an impact on the origin of other guerrilla experiencesfrustrated at the same time (Fuar, the FUL-FAL) and even in two of the guerrilla groups thatsucceeded take root and survive: the EPL and ELN59. With the singleexception of the FARC, whose origins date back to the peasant self-defense forces and guerrillasof the communist mobile years fifties, the rest had apredominantly urban composition and a leadership from middle layers student and professional.This revolutionary effervescence not only would take place in Colombia. In all of Latin America, as we have said, emerge in this time armed groups under the impact ofthe events in Cuba and, in some few cases, as a result of therupture sino-soviet60 or, on the initiative of the communist parties pro-sovieticos61.61 Few communist parties guidance of pro-soviet took the option of the weapons in these years, giventhat the XX Congress of the CPSU had adopted the policy of peaceful coexistence. The only ones who took up armsin the sixties were the Party of Labor of Guatemala, the PC of Venezuela and theColombian PC, even when in the latter case only as a strategic reserve in case of a military coupand not as the dominant form of struggle.62 Francisco Gutirrez, pp. 6-7.Initially under the modality of guerrillas located in rural areas, especially in Central Americaand the Andean region and, later, after the death of Che Guevara in Bolivia, in the modality of urban guerrillas in the Southern Cone and Brazil.For Francisco Gutirrez, one of the factors that explains the prolongation of the armed conflictin Colombia has been the assimilation of skills or the recruitment of experienced individuals fromthe previous cycles of violence, by new or renewedarmed actors. At the beginning of the National Front, these were people or rural communitiesthat had been acquired skill in war or organizational capacity for the resistanceagainst armed adversaries, thanks to experiences in the field and not through manualsfrom the Soviet Union, China or Vietnam62. This dynamictook place both in the sixties when the guerrillas emerged first generation, as in the eighties when years have been reassembled the FARC, EPL and theELN guerrillas and were born of second generation . Later, when we look atthe reasons that can explain the prolonged the conflict, the assimilation of skills acquiredby men in arms at different times, it will be decisive to unravelas the violence produces own dynamics that perpetuate it. Even, as we shall see, leaders of criminal gangs as the Clan suga acquired their skillsbefore being members of the guerrilla groups.In fact, one of the specificities of the history of the guerrillas in Colombia was itsearly emergence, in the modality of liberal guerrillas and, to a lesser extent, ofcommunist guerrillas many years before the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. Due to this fact, all the guerrillas without exception, that emerged in the sixties were supported byexperiences, characters, codes of violence and regions of the previous years.As Alfredo Molano reminds us, the initial nucleus of the ELN, i.e. , the group ofColombian students who received military training in Cuba and formed the BrigadeJose Antonio trouser, led by the former leader of the youth of the MRL, Fabio VasquezChestnut, took the decision to start their preparatory actions in August of 1964 in the Middle Magdalena, inwhere he had risen up in arms, after the April 9, 1948, RafaelRangel63. To do this, with the support of former members of the guerrilla liberalas Heliodorus Ochoa and Nicolas Rodriguez, the father of the current military commander of theELN64, as well as Hernn Moreno Sanchez65.Reading 63 a more nuanced view of the origins of the ELN, above all in relation to the role played by radical currentsof the MRLS and, above all, the youth of the Movimiento Revolucionario Liberal (JMRL),is located in Marco Palacios, op. cit. , p. 78 ET seq.64 Alfredo Molano, pp. 42-45. The takes of Simacota (Santander) took place on 7 January 1965, which constitutesthe foundation date of the ELN.65 Jorge Giraldo, p. 9.66 Alfredo Molano, p. 53. In documents of the EPL, is taken as the foundation date of December 171967, when it creates the first guerrilla detachment led by Pedro Vasquez Rendon and FranciscoCaraballo (cf., http://www.cedema. org/view.php?id= 2449).67 Alfredo Molano, pp. 35-41. In turn, Javier Giraldo, pick up a phrase of Jacobo Arenas who believes thatif they had not happened the military sieges against the evil calls independent republics, perhapsnot would be born the FARC (p. 16).68 Alvaro Delgado, The experiment of the Colombian communist party, in Mauritius Archila and others, an unfinished story: left-wing political and social in Colombia, Bogota, CINEP, 2009, p. 97. Quoted byJorge Giraldo, p. 10.The EPL was born, under the impulse of the marxist-leninist Communist Party -a dissent ofMaoist orientation of the PCC-, in December 1967 in the south of the department of Cordoba, in theregions of the Alto Sinu and the High San Jorge, where took advantage of theleadership and descent in the population of old guerrilla liberal, July Guerra66.With regard to the FARC, Alfredo Molano makes an extensive historical overview from the eruption ofthe first cores of defense and guerilla animated mobile by the Communist Party inthe Tolima, cradle of the FARC, until the military sieges againstin Marquetalia in 1964 and the birth of this armed group, two years later, in 196667.Already in IX Congress of the Colombian Communist Party, held in 1960, had been approvedthe thesis of combining all forms of struggle, as the track to access thepower, which had been ratified in the X Congress, shortly before fencein Marquetalia, and in which the PCC believed that the armed struggle is unavoidable and necessaryas a factor of the colombian revolution68. In the case of the FARC, is no doubt thecontinuity between the Communist guerrillas, their leaders and their areas of influence between theyears 50 and the next decade.(D) The National Front or the appeasement of the blood feuds Now well, for Francisco Gutirrez, Daniel Pecaut, Jorge Giraldo and Vicente Torrijos, thecontemporary armed conflict, though she had their initial germs in the sixties,suffered soon and quickly a deep decline, before returning to take flight in the eightiesin its current phase.One of the roots of this sharp decline in violence in general, and of the political violencein particular was, according to Jorge Giraldo, the relative success of the National Front to carry outa double transition: from dictatorship to democracy and the war to paz69.In regard to the first, the transition from dictatorship to democracy, Giraldo argues thatis filled to fully aware of how many years after, the theories of democratic transition, they would haveto devote as the virtuous path for this purpose: the appeasement of thepolitical confrontation, the opening of a more open competition and plural and the access ofminorities to the political bodies of political representation. For Mary Emma Wills, evenin the Congress there were heated debates on crucial issues such as raised by theagrarian reform; and demonstrate how, in spite of the millimetre-sharing in the bodies ofpolitical representation and in the bureaucracy in general, and the alternation in power, the National Front did not close the discussions or erased completely ideological bordersbetween the two traditional parties. Further, he argues, the public sphere becamemore plural, lived an educational revolution unprecedented dissident newspapers were foundedand social mobilization (student, worker and peasant) reached very high levels.69 Gustavo Duncan, it also feels that the covenant consocionalista the National Front, in which elitesare divided control of the government to pacify the political competition that, in the case of Colombia, had gotten out of controlduring the violence of mid-century ( ), was a considerable success. And he adds thatthis is a historical evidence that the violence of the late twentieth century did not respondproperly to the enclosure of the political system, but to reasons and circumstances different (p. 1, Note 1).Other essayists, on the contrary, they emphasize the negative aspects of thispolitical experience. Renan Vega, for example, has a totally different valuation of the National Front.He claims that during the National Front pact establishes a bipartisanexclusionary and undemocratic that to fend off the popular dissidence resorts tothe repression, the State of siege and the counterinsurgency70. Sergio de Zubiria, in turn,argues that by track and constitutional plebiscite, the privileges given tobipartisanship van becoming the State in mediator and representative of the particular interestsand associations. At this stage the consolidation of a State captured, or particularistprivatized 71.70 Renan Vega, p. 22.71 Sergio de Zubiria, p. 29.72 Daniel Pecaut, Colombia: violence and democracy, in Political Analysis, No. 13, 1991, p. 37.Without a doubt, the assessment of the National Front is one of the points ofcontroversy more acute in the CHCV.It is difficult to question that there were significant limitations for the political participation of thedifferent parties to the National Front between 1958 and 1974, due to the pinpoint sharingin the bodies of political representation, the civil service and in the high courts and thepresidential towers. But, in spite of these limitations, it was not itself,according to Daniel Pecaut, of a closed system . Pecaut believes that from a comparative perspectivewith the rest of the continent, where they dominated the military governments, theColombian regime was one of the most open and participativos72. Several factsindicate, such as maintain individual commissioners.First, the Communist Party regained the legality loss. In fact, on 10 June1954 the Council of Ministers of the government civil-military of Rojas Pinilla hadtaken the decision to outlaw the Communist Party, for which sent a request to theNational Constituent Assembly. By a majority of votes, this entity adoptedat the beginning of the month of September of that year a text whose first article said: is prohibitedpolitical activity of international communism. The plebiscite of 1 December1957, which gave rise to the institutions of the National Front, annulled all thedecisions taken by the National Constituent Assembly, including the banning of theCCP.Secondly, in spite of limitations for the participation of third parties in the chargesof popular representation, members of the left were elected during thisperiod in public corporations in partisan coalition opposing fractions with the National Front; they were also integrated in the public or the judicial institutions, including the high courts. The most notable example was the case of the leaderof the agricultural region of the Sumapaz, Juan de la Cruz Varela, first elected to the Departmental Assemblyof Cundinamarca in 1958 and two years later, the House of Representatives forthe same department, as an alternate of the leader of the MRLS and futurepresident Alfonso Lopez Michelsen73.73 Mary Emma Wills, p. 12.74 Mary Emma Wills, p. 21 ET seq.75 A data enough. Women were allowed to vote for the first time in the plebiscite of December 1 of 1957reaching in the country, finally, the universal suffrage. Although the female vote was approved by the National Constituent Assemblyduring the period of Rojas Pinilla -a move typical of aconservative authoritarian regime that wants to expand your audience, as was the case in other countries of Latin America-, there were noelections.Thirdly, the National Front was very far from being homogeneous. Fractions such asthe MRL or the ANAPO played a prominent role in the channelling of social discontentand scored a major political representation. This diversity of fractionsin partisan game broke the get annoyed that could contain the seeds of thebureaucratic frentenacionalista coexistence. As the shows Mary Emma Wills, there were debatestreble, for example with regard to the agricultural issues in 1961 and 196874.Fourthly, during these years there was an extension of the civiles75 freedoms, as well asin the right to organization and to social mobilization, as can be seenin the Graph 1. In fact, after a vertical drop of the strikes and work stoppagesduring the conservative government, the government civilian-military Rojas Pinilla and the Military JuntaGovernment (1946-1958), there was a rise of the worker mobilization on the domestic front,period that presents the highest levels of participation in the last sevendecades.Figure 1: strikes and stoppages in Colombia (1946-2013)Source: The data for the years 1946 to 1958 were taken from Mauritius Archila, Social Protest in Colombia,1946-1958 , in Critical History magazine, No. 11, 1995, p. 72; From 1958 to 1990 of MauritiusArchila, comings and goings, twists and turns. Social Protest in Colombia 1958-1990, Bogota,ICANH/CINEP, 2003, p. 202; From 1991 to 2009 of Archila et al. , research project.Incidence of violence against the unionized workers and evolution of their protest. Bogota, CINEP,2010, pp. 30-31; and, finally, those of the years 2010 to 2013, the system oflabor and union Information, SISLAB reports, 29 October 2014.Finally, in these years there were also notable social and cultural transformations. The country experienced a process of accelerated urbanization, an educational revolutionand profound cultural change thanks to an explosion of dissidence andcontestatory cultural currents and avant-garde, between them, the Nadaismo76. The press isdiversified, and even the Communist Party, which was banned a few years back, was able to publishwith a license from the Ministry of Justice his weekly Voice of Democracy, his magazinepolitical documents and, later, his magazine Marxistas77 theoretical studies. In addition,as has been shown Mary Emma Wills, is produced in these years a educational revolution, at least in quantitative terms, with the entrance of thousands and thousands ofstudents the school system of primary and secondary universitario78 and the system.050100150 200250 300195 1946 1949 195219581961196419671970197319761979 1982198519819119419720203206209201276 Alvaro Tirado Mejia, the sixties. A revolution in culture, Bogot, Penguin Random HousePublishing Group, 2014.77 Jorge Giraldo, p. 5.78 Mary Emma Wills, p. 15.But not only at the level of political participation, social mobilization, culture and educationthere was relevant results. In the field of the transition from war topeace it also achieved significant successes.First, as can be seen in the Chart No. 2 On homicide rates(1958-2013), Colombia had succeeded in reducing violence notoria79 manner. One of the factors that explain thedrop in homicide rates was the dismantling of the last vestiges ofbanditry in the mid sixties. Giraldo according theachievements in this plane were so damning that the historian JamesHenderson was able to say, thinking obviously in violence that in 1966, the conflicthad indeed finished80. As you can see in the graphic, the years 1969and 1970 remain the two years with lower rates of homicide from 1947 until today.0500000010000000EUR 30000000 15000000 20000000 2500000035000000400000004500000050000000010 2030405060 70 809019581961196419671970197319761979 19821985198819911994199720002003200620092012homicide rate per 100,000inhabitantstotal population79 The broad historical series that carries out the historian, Jorge Orlando Melo, in its article fifty yearsof homicides: trends and prospects, is key to differentiate a stage in which rates dropsharply homicide (between 1958 and 1980 approximately), another stage in the next decade in which there isan exponential increase in those fees, up to that in this new century the trend Beginsto descend again (http://www.razonpublica.com/index.php/conflicto-drogas-y-paz-temas-30/217-fifty-ade-homicides-trends-and-prospects.html).80 James D. Henderson, victim of globalization: the story of how the drug trafficking destroyed the peace in Colombia, Bogota, the century of Man Publishers, 2012, p. 35.Figure 2: homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants in Colombia (1958-2013)Source: Data for 1958-1961 were taken from the work of Paul Oquist, violence, conflict and Policy in Colombia; the data for 1962-2006 are from the National Police, Central Directorate Judicial Police; thepopulation data come from the DANE. The figures were calculated for interannual periods eachyear by applying to the geometric mean rate between censuses.Another factor explaining the decline of violence was the notorious weakening of theguerrilla groups. Although, as we have mentioned, during the initial years of the National Frontboth guerrilla groups emerged as other frustrated that, after deepsetbacks, they would have to be consolidated years later (FARC, ELN and EPL), all were, however, relatively marginal, with a number of very small member and with littlenational presence. As it was able to verify Maria Alejandra Vlez, the guerrillasin these years had its main radio station in action in remote regions and sparsely populated, already were the areas of armed colonization81 of the FARC, the southeasternAntioquia in terms of the EPL, or the municipalities of Santander in which attemptto root the ELN82, up to the point that the biographer of Camilo Torres, Joe Broderick, dared toqualify the armed conflict in the sixties, as a fantasy war 83. Without going any further, the three guerrilla groups were near collapse.81 William Ramirez, rural guerrilla in Colombia: a path to the colonization? armed inrural Latin American Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, Bogota, May-August 1981. According to Ramirez, colonization thenavy is a historical concept to interpret, from a certain kind of displacement of the population, thegenesis and development of the FARC ( armed Colonization, local power and private territorialisation,in Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, V. 7, No. 2, 2001).82 Maria Alejandra Vlez, FARC and ELN. Evolution and territorial expansion, degree thesis at the Faculty of Economics, University of the Andes, 1999.83 Quoted by Francisco Gutirrez, p. 5.84 Milton Hernndez, Red and Black: An approach to the history of the ELN, 1998.With respect to the ELN, after the tragic operation Anor (1973) only survived in the ranks of the organizationfrom that historic guerrilla column thirteen members,of which only one remained in the organization for some time. It was adoctor, who, after returning to the urban networks, are alsoexcluded, according to Milton Hernndez. And he adds that, at the urban level remained for several networks in Bogota, Medellin and Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, isolated from one another, without better knowledge of whatwas happening at the national level, without resources and plans or guidelines84.Many years required the ELN to replenish their ranks.The EPL, for its part, according to the story of his old commander, general Ernesto Rojas, afterthe three military sieges that suffered their armed cores in the Alto Sinu and the High SanJorge between 1968 and 1970, he came out completely weakened and only could not restart your slow reconstructionin the late years setenta85.85 Ernesto Rojas, on the history of the EPL, http://www.pcdecml.org/86 Alfredo Molano, p. 40.87 Jacobo Arenas, ceasefire. A political history of the FARC, Bogot, Editorial The Black Sheep, 1985,p. 90.The same thing happened to the FARC when second-in-command of the guerrilla, CiroTrujillo, took a wrong decision to concentrate in 1966 almost all the detachmentsin Quindio to act on the coffee area and the Valle del Cauca, but it wasmiserably defeated86. According to Jacobo Arenas, we lost many men and 70% ofthe weapons. It is recalled that up to the Fifth Conference could say ManuelMarulanda: finally we have spare of evil that almost annihilates us87. In summary, theprocess of Colombia guerrilla was not very different in this period of the rest of Latin America. In the seventies the latin american guerrillas as a whole had virtually disappeared, except for some isolated and marginal cores, without furtherincident.In Colombia, even after the dismantling of National Front since 1974 for the Presidency of the Republic and thebodies of popular representation (Senate and House of Representatives, Departmental Assemblies and Municipal Councils), the different political partiesto the two traditional parties enjoyed legal guarantees for its electoral participation. In 1974, the National Opposition Union (UNO), formed by the PCC, the Moir and factions anapistas, launched the candidacy of Hernando Echeverry Mejia.In 1978 there were three nominations from left: Julio Cesar Pernia (ONE), Jaime PiedrahitaCardona (MOIR) and relief Ramirez (PST). Even in the difficult situation of public orderin the early eighties, firm and one had supported the candidacy ofGerardo Molina.Using the broad base of comparative data of Freedom in the world (Figure No. 3),Jorge Giraldo shows that between the sixties and the seventies, the democratic performanceof Colombia was better than most of the rest of countries in Latin America (weheremilitary governments), but would be plummeting later, in the nineties, with the escalation of violence and corruption that would suffer the situation.88 In this graph,as in all that we have submitted or are we going to include along the Special Rapporteur, it is shockingthat the worsening negative of all the indicators from eightiesand, in particular, of the nineties. Without doubt, it is not possible equate the National Front periodand, in general, the seventies with what would have to happen later, in the next three decades.C: \Users\username\Documents\Commission\Data\freedomhouse2.png88 Jorge Giraldo, p. 6.Chart 3. Indicator of democracy, Colombia, Central America, South America 1972-2013Source: Freedom in the World, 2014.What happened then? Why is it that if Colombia appeared to be diverted toward a more democratic and pluralistic societyterm again wrapped in a cycle of violence that, in many respects,even surpassed the worst years of the period of violence? Why inLatin America were completed and the armed conflict in Colombia would last untiltoday? Why we were the only exception?For some essayists, in spite of the positive legacy that leaves the National Front indifferent levels, as well himself has left it without solution and many other issues resolved in a way otherinadequate or insufficient. Of the three tasks that the National Front had been proposed,according to Francisco Gutirrez, agree peace, promote the democratic transition andpromote programs are concerned.89 there were satisfactory results in the first twobut many shortcomings in the last. In the words of Marco Palacios,bipartisan the experiment had been worn; had failed the initiative of promised reforms(the agrarian, administrative, tax, labor) who were halfway90.89 Francisco Gutirrez, what the wind? The political parties and democracy in Colombia, 1958-2002, Bogota, Editorial Norma, 2007.Framework 90 palaces, public violence in Colombia, 1958-2010, Bogota, Fondo de Cultura Economica, 2012,p. 69.Without doubt, in relation to the principal motivation for the National Front, i.e. theovercoming of sectarian clashes and the culture of the blood feuds, this institutional arrangementwas a great success. But, in turn, some essayistsargue that this positive development also had many limitations. Perhaps the most notablewas the increasing depoliticization and detachment not only toward the parties, buttoward the organs of popular representation. In effect, the electoral abstention, which has beena constant in the political history of the country, was aggravated. It is likely that this cooling toward the parties and the electoral system is related to a palpable disappointment towardthe results of the National Front, whose high expectations in the social field were notfully satisfied.In effect, while the National Front was able to attain peace and keep the democratic system, was unable to move forward with a solid program of social reforms, by which he lostthe support of broad popular sectors sprinted to the abstention ortoward the populist vote, and the political system derived toward the patronage as a mechanismof political co-optation. According to Jorge Orlando Melo, reformism failure primarily inrelation to the changes in land ownership and the decrease in inequalityof income, although he had some success when the resources came from thestate budget: education, public management and services. If you look at the Table No. 1We can see the important social progress that has been in Colombia in recentdecadas91. This view is shared by Mary Emma Wills, who shows that there was inthese years significant increases in social spending and the expansion of the school placeson all levels (primary, secondary and university) 92.91 Jorge Orlando Melo, half a century of changes in Colombia, shows how a slow economic growthbut stable, helped increase public spending (http://www.jorgeorlandomelo.com/medio_siglo.htm)92 Mary Emma Wills, p. 15.93 Alfredo Molano, pp. 34-35.Box No. 1. Changes in socialindicators Colombia 1951-200419512004children per woman7.02.6 (2000)birth rate4.72.6Mortality Rate1.70.5Infant mortality rate12.32.5 (2000)life expectancy40.0 (1945)71.6 (2000)Height of the population of 21 to 25 years164.7 (1950)169.7 (2000)houses with electric powerhouses with 25.8 94.028.8 aqueduct94 houseswith sewerage>25.073health services coverage>20.054 (1999)primary education coverage4094Coverage of secondary education3076Coverage of higher education218inhabitants (thousands)12,96144,584 (2003)z29.270.7 (1995)Source: Jorge Orlando Melo, half a century of changes in ColombiaProbably the greatest frustration of the National Front came from the failed attempt totransform the field. As well as had already happened in the thirties, the efforts to promotean agrarian reform encountered the resistance of the sectors landowners, whoimposed a genuine reformation: the so-called Pact 93 rural areas. This failureresulted in a strengthening of the waves of colonization, which is described from crude wayby Alfredo Molano: The settler is a worker stripped of all resource; faces ajungle very powerful in very adverse conditions. In reality, it is a estatewith basis in debts acquired with the merchants. Sooner or later their improvementswill hand it over to the creditors, the concentrated as haciendas. Colonizationis a process of enlarging landowner of the agricultural frontier. The settlers are converted toprofessionals of the opening of improvements each time more distant94. It will be serious, such asadds the own Molano, cocalizacion of colonization areas and the impact thatthese illegal crops will have in these regions, probably the ones that will suffer most acutelythe intersection of multiple violence in the dispute over control of the resources from thecultivation, processing and marketing of the coca leaf and cocaine.94 Alfredo Molano, p. 46.95 Alfredo Molano, p. 33.96 Mary Emma Wills, pp. 24 and 25.97 Alfredo Molano, p. 34.In fact, before the shipwreck of the reforms and the pressure on land derived of the increase in population,this attempt be channelled through the expansion of the agricultural frontier. This policy of colonization without a real accompaniment of the State, the only thingthat was led to the configuration of regions with very weak institutional presence and, later, to the rise of illicit crops due to its high profitability along with a very highenvironmental cost. During these years was deforested the Caquet and the Magdalena Medio,areas that were planned for the agrarian reform, generating what describes Alfredo Molano:earth is assigned to the peasant, dismount or by distribution, but it allows the saleto those who are able to build large haciendas95.It is important to emphasize that, for Mary Emma Wills, the failure of attempts to agrarian reformnot only came from the reaction landowner, supported by the Congress, and thepersecution they suffered leaders of the peasant movement. It was also the product ofstruggles, of intransigence and sectarian strife between the various left-wing movements, whichwent bankrupt campesino96 internally to the movement. According to Alfredo Molano, thepeasant movement, very influenced by different and irreconcilable groups from left, was divided into two trends whose slogans summing up their programs: theland to the tiller and land without97 patterns, which made a irreconcilableand another.Another factor of frustration with the National Front was the persistence, in spite of many advances in thesocial field, from the deep income inequality and poverty.Gustavo Duncan shows how, according to the 1973 census, the poverty as measured by theunmet basic needs, was 70.5 %; while the GINI coefficient was higher thanthe 0.598 . Colombia continued to occupy, in this latter indicator, one of themost painful posts in the world.98 Gustavo Duncan, p. 4. See, also, it provides data which Javier Giraldo, p. 14 ET seq.99 Colombia appeared in the famous The Failed States Index of failed States) that publishes the magazine ForeignPolicy in the red zone (failed States), in the October 2005 issue. Vicente Torrijosquestioned, however, that Colombia has been a precarious state (prefuncional), failed, or collapsed(nonfunctional) , recognizing if that has been a State subject to constant challenges that have tested theirinstitutional architecture (p. 19).100 Along this rapporteurship we have raised, according to several essayists, that one of thegeological cracks of the national construction of Colombia has been the state weakness. A weak State can bedefined, according to Jorge Giraldo, the one who possesses a limited ability to bring theinstitutional decisions, related to their basic functions, are met in their territory (p. 2, 2).101 This reaffirmation of the futility of electoral participation for access to power is going to be one of the sources of thenew wave guerrilla warfare in Latin America. Even in Chile, with little background in the field ofarmed struggle, the Communist Party decided to create their own armed wing, the ManuelRodriguez Patriotic Front, which began operations on 14 December 1983.In addition to these pronounced gaps in the social field, it is equally important to notethe continuity of the trend, dominant throughout the twentieth century, to maintain very lowthe resources of the Armed Forces and Police, which, once again unleashthe dynamics of the armed confrontation will be to Colombia in the map of thefailed States99 and, what is even more serious, will open the doors for aprivatization of security as an alternative to the shortcomings of thepublica100 security.In this way, in spite of successful policies in different scenarios, the breeding ground forthe conflict remained alive and various factors, both internal and international,contributed to this conflict, own and normal in any democratic system, to be transformed into anew wave of violence that we still suffer from.(A) of the appeasement to the widespread violencethree external events were crucial. On the one hand, the overthrow of SalvadorAllende in Chile. The military coup against the government of the Unidad Popular in1973 was read out in the field of the left as a continental new confirmation of the unfeasibility ofaccess and retain power by tracks democraticas101. On the other hand, the triumphant revolutionin Nicaragua, which would have to awaken a new revolutionary wave in Latin America, in particular in Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia,Ecuador and Peru. And, finally, the new military doctrine of the United States, and that went fromthe old doctrine of containment to the doctrine of the renewed roll back, i.e. , the attempt torevert to the western camp the countries that had fallen, according to the perception ofWashington, in the orbit sovietica102. The government of Ronald Reagan ended the era of peaceful coexistenceand dtente and gave way to an era of international confrontationthat would culminate with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war.102 In particular, Angola, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, where armed groups were formedto destabilize their governments, such as the Nicaraguan Contras.103 Sergio de Zubiria, p. 41.104 Dario Fajardo, p. 35 ET seq.105 Juan Guillermo Ferro and Gabriela Uribe, the order of the war: the FARC/EP between the organization andpolicy, Bogot Xaverian Publishing Center, 2002, p. 29.In Colombia is not only revived guerrilleros103 movements, but, that was theintense irruption of the powerful drug cartels and, at the same time, the emergenceof self-defense groups and paramilitares104.One of the most striking features of this period was the reconstruction of the guerrilla groups inthe first generation . A few years after the operation, a small group ofactivists led by a Spanish priest, Manuel Perez Martinez,momentum the call National Meeting of 1983, which was in fact the starting point forthe refoundation of the guerrilla group. In 1980, the Communist Party Marxist-Leninist (PCML) at its 11th National Congress, was able to overcome its many fractures andinternal dissent and promote the reorganization of the EPL. The FARC, for its part, had been moved from thepurely vegetative stage, as a strategic reserve of the PCC to the case in whicha military coup, offensive to a stage that was reflected in their new acronyms, COLOMBIA-EJRCITO(FARC-People's Army). If in 1974 the FARC had only fourguerrilla fronts and in 1978 had eight, in 1982, using the tactics of the formation offronts, had reached the figure of 24 fronts and about a thousandmen in armas105.Without doubt, the climate relatively peaceful country in the years after the National Front had changedradical106 manner. Perhaps the clearest expression of this transformation was thenational strike on 14 September 1977, the president of the time,Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, described as a small April 9. This strike was an expression ofdeep disenchantment with the frustrated expectations of the National Front.Among the elections that gave rise to the covenant frentenacionalista -that counted with greater political participationin the history of the country - and the Civic Strike two decades later, you can measure thedegree of disillusionment that lived the country during this period.106 Relatively calm in terms of violence and armed conflict, because in these years there were significantsocial protests. It was one of the periods of greater student mobilization, a peasant and worker throughout the history ofColombia, showing how political violence and social mobilization occur in a parallel manner andwithout that there are many communicating vessels between one and another. See the essay by DanielPecaut, in this regard.107 Jorge Giraldo, p. 18.108 Mary Emma Wills, p. 28.109 Medofilo Medina says, in an interview with Juanita Len ( "Think that tested the peasantswas a revolution would be very wrong", the empty chair, 15 September 2013), that the immediate consequences ofthis strike were satisfactory for workers: the minimum wage, which was stalled,rose three times in the eight months following ( ); the wages in the industry increased in 16 % .As said Jorge Giraldo, is surprising lack of foresight on the ruling elites aroundthe dark clouds that already appeared on the horizon. An example was the perception thatthe economy of the drug was not a greater risk, but that, you could even use in a pragmatic wayto obtain the currency required by the country. The sinister windowwas an expression of the lack of understanding of the risks in ciernes107. Another expression ofwrong decisions was the approval, under the rules of the State of Siege,the Security Status in 1978, which led to a greater autonomy in the management ofpublic order by part of the Military Forces and, therefore, to a very negativemilitarization of conflicts sociales108. This fact was the key for the resurgence ofthe guerrilla groups: the repressive response caused a shift in perception of theguerrillas, especially of the M-19, which acquired the image of a handful of romantic heroesbeing persecuted by a repressive State and torturer.The National Civic Strike of 14 September