History of The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - La Violencia and The National Front

La Violencia and The National Front

There is more repression of individual freedom here than in any country we've been to, the police patrol the streets carrying rifles and demand your papers every few minutes ... the atmosphere here is tense, and it seems a revolution may be brewing. The countryside is in open revolt, and the army is powerless to suppress it.

Ernesto Che Guevara, in a letter to his mother from Colombia, written July 6, 1952

Following the murder of populist politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, in 1948, large-scale violence broke out in what became known as La Violencia ("The Violence"), which lasted until about 1958. More than 300,000 people were killed in the violence, the large majority of whom were peasants and wage laborers living in rural areas.

In 1958, Liberal and Conservative party elites, together with Church and business leaders negotiated an agreement that created an exclusively bipartisan political alternation system, known as the National Front. The two parties agreed to hold elections, but to alternate power between the two parties, regardless of the election results. They decided that the pact would remain in effect until 1974 (however, it lasted with only minor modifications until 1990). This enabled a consolidation of power amongst Colombian Conservative and Liberal elites, while simultaneously strengthening the military and preventing radical political alternatives and popular reforms.

During the 1960s, under a plan known as "Accelerated Economic Development", conceived by a wealthy Canadian rancher Lauchlin Currie (who had extensive landholdings in Colombia), the Colombian government began the pursue of policy of promoting large-scale industrial farms producing for export, rather than small farms producing for local consumption. The government heavily subsidized large-scale industrial farm owners, while violently forcing peasants off of their land, claiming that they were using it "inefficiently". A very large number of small landholders were pushed off of their land, and forced to migrate to urban centers, where they formed a cheap labor pool for the burgeoning industrial economy in the Colombian cities. By 1969, there were over 400,000 landless families in Colombia, with an annual increase of 40,000 per year since 1961. By 1970, latifundio (large farms of over 50 hectares), held approximately 77% of the land in Colombia. In 1971, 70% of the farmland in Colombia was owned by 5.7% of the population. Much of this land was consolidated in the hands of urban industrialists—which had seen marked increases in profits due to the influx of landless, displaced peasants, willing to work for very low wages—and cattle ranchers. Malnutrition and lack of basic medical care were almost universal amongst rural workers in the early 1960s, leading to extremely high rates of preventable disease and infant mortality.