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Colombia Historical Background
The origins of the modern Colombian armed forces can be
traced
to the militia organized by the independent government of
the
United Provinces of New Granada declared in 1811. The
force was
composed of volunteers, divided among infantry and cavalry
units,
who were trained by the officers of a senior corps that
was
referred to as El Fijo (The Permanent). The constitutional
charter
of 1811 assigned the power to raise and organize the army
to the
congress, which proved supportive of the military. Spanish
military
structure and traditions were adopted, weekly drills were
made
mandatory, and plans were laid for the creation of an
academy that
would regularize military training.
Following independence, two developments combined to
prevent
the expansion of the armed forces' influence in Colombia's
political affairs. First, an antimilitarist tradition
emerged among
the nation's civilian leaders. Second, by the 1850s the
organization of two strong political parties effectively
limited
political participation to those within these parties.
Even though
government leaders often held the rank of army general,
party
identification predominated. In response to popular
sentiments of
the era, government officials rarely displayed any
interest in the
development of a stronger military. Rather, as a result of
the
frequent rebellions that had occurred during the
nineteenth
century, the armed forces were continuously plagued by
organizational problems. At one point--in the 1860s--the
armed
forces were disbanded and replaced by a popular militia.
When sectarian fighting subsided in the 1880s, the
government
approved the first organic laws governing the military and
formally
defined the military's constitutional responsibilities of
providing
for domestic order and external defense. The Constitution
of 1886
also called for a first program of universal military
conscription,
but this provision was not uniformly enforced until the
early
twentieth century.
The limited progress these measures encouraged in
military
discipline and morale was dealt a severe setback with the
1899
Liberal Party (Partido Liberal--PL) revolt that marked the
beginning of the conflict known as the War of a Thousand
Days
(see Consolidation of Political Divisions
, ch. 1). Nearly a
century
later, this nearly three-year-long war, in which over
100,000
Colombians died, remained one of the most violent civil
conflicts
in the nation's history.
Data as of December 1988
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