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Colombia Professionalization Efforts
During the military reform of 1907, the centerpiece of
Reyes's
reorganization, the Military Cadet School (Escuela Militar
de
Cadetes) at Bogotá and the Naval Cadet School (Escuela
Naval de
Grumetes) at Cartagena, were established as the army and
navy
service academies, respectively. This effort was aided by
the
arrival of Prussian-trained Chilean military advisers. The
Chileans, who were stationed in Colombia from 1907 to
1915, helped
to develop the schools' curricula and training programs
and
introduced what were then considered modern European
concepts of
military doctrine and technology. Indeed, Chileans
commanded both
service academies during the first years of their
operation.
Chileans also helped to found the armed forces staff
school, the
Superior War College (Escuela Superior de Guerra). Modeled
after
Prussia's Kriegsakademie, the college offered advanced
training for
the officer corps and graduated its first class of
thirty-seven
officers in 1910. Finally, in 1916 the Noncommissioned
Officers
School (Escuela de Suboficiales) was opened.
Also part of the military modernization program was the
attempt
to enforce provisions for obligatory military service. The
government sought to expand the pool of conscripts beyond
the
traditional recruitment base of the lower classes and
rural areas.
President Reyes believed that universal conscription would
help
build a military that was not subservient to the specific
interests
of either the PL or the Conservative Party (Partido
Conservador--
PC). At the same time that increased numbers of conscripts
were
being introduced into military service, the size of the
standing
army (in 1904 authorized at the level of 5,000 soldiers)
was
reduced.
In attempting to generate professional standards, the
military
reform of 1907 also provided for the regularization of
promotions
and military pay scales based, in part, on the officers'
completion
of professional training programs. The military's
involvement in
civic action projects also began during this period.
Troops helped
construct new roads and bridges and rebuilt churches,
convents, and
hospitals that had been damaged during the War of a
Thousand Days.
The success of the modernization program resulted both
from Reyes's
political skill and from his selection of such able
military
leaders as General Tomás Rueda Vargas. Reyes was not
without his
detractors, however. Congressional leaders and partisan
stalwarts,
fearing the loss of civilian control, often resisted his
professionalization efforts.
Despite Reyes's resignation in 1909, government
attention to
the development of the armed forces continued. For the
first time
in national history, the long-held prejudices against the
military
and military service were being broken down. Decree 623 of
1911
amended the law regulating implementation of the draft. By
1925 an
increasing number of the students accepted at the Military
Cadet
School came from the country's middle class. In 1919 the
Military
Aviation School (Escuela Militar de Aviación) was opened.
Two years
later, the government created the Colombian Air Force
(Fuerza Aérea
Colombiana--FAC). During the 1920s, a naval air arm also
was
established, and orders were placed with Britain for the
construction of several gunboats.
Toward the end of the 1920s, however, governmental
interest in
the armed forces again began to wane. In 1928 the
government called
upon the army to suppress a series of strikes against the
United
Fruit Company by banana workers
(see The Labor Movement
, ch. 3).
Although the army did restore public order--thereby
fulfilling one
objective of modernization--its use of extensive and
indiscriminate
force, which produced over 1,000 casualties, also
suggested that it
had not yet become wholly professional. In addition,
partisan
influence in the armed forces continued to be a problem.
Following
the return of the presidency to the PL in 1930, only
one-fifth of
the army's officer corps were Liberals. Despite the
efforts of the
preceding years, the upper ranks of the corps continued to
be
dominated by PC sympathizers.
Data as of December 1988
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