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Colombia The Political Role of the Armed Forces
During the 1980s, analysts generally viewed the
Colombian
military as one of the least politically involved armed
forces of
Latin America. Between 1900 and 1988, the military
leadership
participated in only a single successful coup d'état
against a
civilian government, the coup that brought Rojas Pinilla
to the
presidency in 1953. Since 1953 Colombia and Venezuela have
been the
only two Latin American countries that have maintained
civilian-led
governments.
Even before the 1953 coup, however, the leaders of
Colombia's
armed forces had shown a reluctance to support political
intervention. The only other successful military
intervention
against an elected civilian government was an 1854 coup
carried out
by General José María Melo. One other coup attempt, the
abortive
Pasto coup of 1944, failed because the middle-ranking
officers who
led it lacked the support of the institution's hierarchy
(see The Development of the Modern Armed Forces
, this ch.). Though
rumors of
planned coups and military revolts often surfaced in the
Colombian
media during the 1970s and 1980s, there was little
indication that
such plans had widespread support within the armed forces.
Most
observers concluded that the professionalization efforts
pursued
during the early twentieth century had successfully
ingrained in
the armed forces the norms of respect for constitutional
procedures
and obedience to civil authorities.
Despite a record of minimal overt involvement in
politics,
Colombia's armed forces often have supported the civilian
political
leadership through the maintenance of public order and
internal
security. Military support for the ruling civilian
political
elite--with whom the officer corps often has agreed on
political
issues--was considered crucial for Colombia's continuing
stability.
Such military support for the political status quo first
became
evident during the early 1960s, when, in supporting the
first of
the four bipartisan National Front governments, the
military
expanded its role in civic action and counterinsurgency
and began
to define those who opposed the National Front as enemies
of the
state.
Broad military support for the civilian leadership
survived the
dismissals of several popular officers who had made public
statements that challenged the traditional limits of the
armed
forces' acceptable political involvement. These dismissals
included
the retirement of Minister of War Ruiz Novoa in 1963, Army
Commander General Guillermo Pinzón Caicedo in 1969, and
Army
Commander General Alvaro Valencia Tovar in 1975. In
January 1984,
Minister of National Defense General Fernando Landazábal
Reyes was
retired for criticizing the Betancur administration's
efforts to
achieve truces with the country's guerrilla groups and for
criticizing Colombia's foreign policy toward the
revolutionary
government of Nicaragua. The Betancur administration's
policies did
cause tension in civil-military relations, however. In
November
1988, President Barco accepted the resignation of Minister
of
National Defense General Rafael Samudio Molina after the
president
publically repudiated the general's call for an all-out
war against
leftist guerrillas.
One area of continuing friction related to the
military's
political role was the question of military autonomy. Many
of the
administrative reforms that affected the armed forces
during the
1960s were poorly received by the officer corps. The
officers
believed the new measures undermined the military's
ability to act
independently in carrying out its constitutionally
assigned
missions. During the 1970s, however, some regions of the
country
occupied by guerrillas were placed under the control of
military
authorities. These militarized areas generally were rural
and
sparsely populated; nevertheless, the appointment of
military
officers as mayors or governors recalled the government's
response
to the rising violence of the early 1940s. The almost
continuous
state of siege during the four decades following la
violencia also led the civilian government to expand
the
military's legitimate national role by assigning the armed
forces
jurisdiction over crimes against national security.
During the 1980s, the military's influence in
government
decision making was limited to internal security and
certain
foreign policy issues, such as the offshore boundary
dispute with
Venezuela. Its political orientation was strongly
anticommunist, an
attitude attributable to the influence of the United
States armed
forces as well as to the military's role in the struggle
against
Marxist-inspired domestic insurgents (which dated from the
early
1960s). At the same time, the military's input into
government
policy making on these issues remained subject to the
approval of
the civilian leadership. As a result, though the military
considered itself a supporter of the Constitution, the
relative
ideological compatibility of the military and civilian
leadership
influenced the military's support for the government.
Given this
compatibility, respect for the president's constitutional
authority
remained sufficient to permit the chief executive to
pursue his
policy goals.
Following the 1986 inauguration of the Barco
administration and
an upsurge in political violence, military autonomy was
somewhat
expanded to buttress internal security. During the late
1980s, some
analysts speculated that increasing political violence and
repeated
challenges to public order posed by the narcotics
traffickers and
guerrillas might prompt the armed forces to assume a more
overt
political role. At the same time, some international human
rights
organizations charged that military personnel were
participating in
right-wing death squads and were actively involved in
torture and
disappearances of leftist political opponents. The
Ministry of
National Defense strongly rejected these charges.
Data as of December 1988
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