Colombian conflict
The Colombian conflict began on May 27, 1964, and is a low-intensity asymmetric war between the government of Colombia, far-right paramilitary groups, crime syndicates and far-left guerrilla groups fighting each other to increase their influence in Colombian territory. Some of the most important international contributors to the Colombian conflict include multinational corporations, the United States, Cuba, and the drug trafficking industry.
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 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.
The reasons for fighting vary from group to group. The FARC and other guerrilla movements claim to be fighting for the rights of the impoverished in Colombia to protect them from government violence and to provide social justice through communism. 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.
According to a study by Colombia's National Centre for Historical Memory, 220,000 people died in the conflict between 1958 and 2013, most of them civilians, 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. 16.9% of the population in Colombia has been a direct victim of the war. 2.3 million children have been displaced from their homes, and 45,000 children have been 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. A Special Unit was created to search for persons deemed as missing within the context of and due to the armed conflict. 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.
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. Although the agreement was rejected in the subsequent October plebiscite, the same month, the then Colombian president 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. A revised peace deal was signed the following month and submitted to Congress for approval. The House of Representatives unanimously approved the plan on November 30, a day after the Senate gave its backing.
Background
The origin of the armed conflict in Colombia goes back to 1920, with agrarian disputes over the Sumapaz and Tequendama regions. Much of the background of the 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 quantities of agricultural products in Latin America at cheap prices, then resell the crops in foreign markets for inflated amounts. Local farmers were impoverished and 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, worthless outside company stores, which would further charge extravagant prices compared to what workers earned. Further, the employment system was usually one in which farmers would be forced to sell their property to the United Fruit Company. They ended up having to work on the land, becoming indebted to the company and having to pay it back.
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 government threat to the United Fruit Company's interests in the country would result in its overturning in a company-backed coup. It propped up friendly puppet politicians and supported right-wing militias to maintain power.
Workers often organized and went on strike against these conditions, forming local militias against the United Fruit Company. This would usually lead to conflict between the two sides. 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 week, 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 in Colombia's history, with many socialists, anarchists, Marxists, and leftists joining and organizing the strike. The United Fruit Company demanded that the workers and the union 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 Army shot into the crowd of strikers, killing between 68 and 2,000 people in what became known as the Banana Massacre.
This led to an outrage in the Colombian public, creating an explosion of leftists and revolutionary organizations. In Bogotá, leftist students protested and organized against the Colombian government, eventually hoping to overthrow it. This opposition exploded in 1948. Upon hearing of the assassination of socialist candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, many poor workers saw the death of Gaitán as a political assassination orchestrated by the rich. Workers began rioting and destroying the Colombian capital of Bogotá, 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 from 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 composed of Liberal Party supporters were demobilized. 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", or FARC, formed by Pedro Antonio Marín in 1964. The FARC was founded out of fighters who were unhappy with the peace settlement. The goal of the FARC, among other things, was land redistribution that would benefit poor peasant farmers like Marín, along with the desire to establish a socialist state.
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.
Causes
Colombia has a long history of political violence. Land, power, and wealth are unevenly distributed, and many rural citizens are used to having to fend for themselves. There is no consensus about the date on which the conflict began, with some saying 1958 and others 1964.In the mid-1980s, Colombia granted local governments greater political and fiscal autonomy. This strengthened the government's position in more remote regions.
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 congressmembers, 17 regional representatives, and 163 councilmembers. These killings aggravated the conflict.
In the 1980s, drug trafficking increased, bringing a concomitant increase in violence. Trafficking began 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. 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. After the Colombian government dismantled many of the drug cartels that appeared in the country during the 1980s, left-wing guerrilla groups and right-wing paramilitary organizations resumed some of their drug trafficking activities. They resorted to extortion and kidnapping for financing, activities which led to a loss of support from the local population. These funds helped finance paramilitaries and guerrillas, allowing these organizations to buy weapons which were then sometimes used to attack military and civilian targets.
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. As part of a controversial peace process, the AUC as a formal organization had ceased to function. 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. The United States is still the world's largest consumer of cocaine and other illegal drugs.
In February 2008, millions of Colombians demonstrated against the FARC and other outlawed groups. 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. During these years, the military forces of the Republic of Colombia were strengthened.
The 2012 peace process in Colombia refers to the dialogue in Havana, Cuba, between the Colombian government and the guerrilla of the FARC-EP 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. The government also began a process of assistance and reparation for victims of conflict. Recently, U.P. supporters reconstituted the political party within the reconciliation process. Colombia's congress approved the revised peace accord.
In February 2015, the Historical Commission on the Conflict and its Victims 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.