Colombia Government and Politics
The creators of the National Front, clockwise
from the top: Mariano Ospina Pérez, Eduardo Santos, Alfonso López
Pumarejo, Alberto Lleras Camargo, and Laureano Gómez Castro
SEVERAL FEATURES DISTINGUISH Colombia's political system
from that
of other Latin American nations. Colombia has a long
history of
party politics, usually fair and regular elections, and
respect for
political and civil rights. Two traditional parties--the
Liberals
and the Conservatives--have competed for power since the
midnineteenth century and have rotated frequently as the
governing
party. Colombia's armed forces have seized power on only
three
occasions--1830, 1854, and 1953--far less often than in
most Latin
American countries. The 1953 coup took place, moreover,
only after
the two parties--unable to maintain a minimum of public
order--
supported military intervention. Colombia's conservative
Roman
Catholic Church traditionally has been more influential
than the
military in electing presidents and influencing elections
and the
political socialization of Colombians.
Some analysts of Colombian political affairs have noted
that in
the 1980s the military gradually began to assume a larger
decisionmaking role, owing to the inability of the civilian
governments to
resolve critical situations, such as the sixty-one-day
terrorist
occupation of the Dominican Republic embassy in 1980. The
military
had become somewhat more assertive in national security
decision
making as a result of the growing and more unified
guerrilla
insurgency and increasing terrorism of drug traffickers
(narcotraficantes). Nevertheless, Colombia's long
tradition
of military subordination to civilian authority did not
appear to
be in jeopardy in late 1988. When military leaders
attempted to
challenge civilian authority on several occasions in the
1970s and
1980s, the incumbent president dismissed them.
A contradictory feature of Colombia's long democratic
tradition
is its high level of political violence (six interparty
wars in the
nineteenth century and two in the twentieth century). An
estimated
100,000 Colombians died in the War of a Thousand Days
(1899-1902),
and 200,000 died in the more recent period of interparty
civil war
called la violencia, which lasted from 1948 to
1966.
According to Colombian Ministry of National Defense
statistics, an
additional 70,000 people had died in other political
violence,
mainly guerrilla insurgencies, by August 1984. This
violence
included left-wing insurgency and terrorism, right-wing
paramilitary activity, and narcoterrorism. For most of the
fortyyear period following the 1948 Bogotazo (the riot
following the
assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, in which 2,000 were
killed),
Colombia lived under a constitutionally authorized state
of siege
(estatuto de seguridad) invoked to deal with civil
disturbances, insurgency, and terrorism. In mid-1988 many
Colombian
academics who studied killings by drug smugglers,
guerrillas, death
squads, and common criminals believed that the government
was
losing control over the country's rampaging violence. They
noted
that even if the guerrillas laid down their arms, violence
by
narcotics traffickers, death squads, and common criminals
would
continue unabated.
Scholars, such as Robert H. Dix, have attributed the
nation's
violent legacy in part to the elitist nature of the
political
system. The members of this traditional elite have
competed
bitterly, and sometimes violently, for control of the
government
through the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party,
which changed
its name to the Social Conservative Party in July 1987.
These
parties cooperated with each other only when the position
of the
upper class seemed threatened. Unlike their counterparts
in other
Latin American countries, Colombia's Christian democratic,
social
democratic, and Marxist parties were always weak and
insignificant.
Constitutional amendments and the evolution of Colombia's
political
culture reinforced its highly centralized and elitist
governmental
system. The elites managed to retain control over the
political
system by co-opting representatives of the middle class,
labor, and
the peasantry.
A number of Colombianists also contended that the
traditional
parties had impeded modernization. The fact that the
guerrilla
movement was still strong in the late 1980s, after four
decades of
"armed struggle," manifested to some scholars the elitist
nature of
Colombian politics. For Bruce Michael Bagley, the
guerrilla
insurgency was only the most visible "dimension of a far
deeper
problem confronting the Colombian political system: the
progressive
erosion of the regime's legitimacy" as a result of its
failure "to
institutionalize mechanisms of political participation."
Bagley
also saw the legitimacy problem reflected in rising levels
of voter
abstention and mass political apathy and cynicism, as well
as
declining rates of voter identification with either of the
traditional parties and the emergence of an urban swing
vote. This
view notwithstanding, since the mid-1960s the elites
dominating the
two-party system usually have accommodated gradual change
in order
to preserve stability. For example, Colombia took a major
step
toward breaking with its elitist political tradition and
modernizing the country's political structures by holding
its first
direct, popular elections for mayors in early 1988.
Although some political accommodation had occured, the
Colombian government has been less successful in reducing
economic
inequality. During the 1980s, approximately 20 percent of
the
population controlled 70 percent of income. Rural poverty
was
particularly pronounced, with per capita income barely
reaching
half the national average. Analysts generally believed
that these
economic factors helped spawn political violence.
Data as of December 1988
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