War In Colombia

12 Pages 3038 Words

icle includes information and examples about the different acts of civil disobedience, activism, and terrorism that occur daily in Colombia.

In Colombia, during the early twentieth century, the two main parties were the Liberals and the Conservatives. The two groups very often bumped heads, afterwards resulting in outbreaks of violence. However, when the Liberal party's leader, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, was assassinated on April 9, 1948, a large uprising known as the Bogotazo occurred, followed by the revolution which led to the formation of the main guerrilla groups in Colombia. This civil war came to be known as La Violencia, which began in 1948 and lasted approximately ten years (BBC). "In total, about two hundred and fifty thousand to three hundred thousand people were killed" and because, during this time, two of the high-ranking liberals were assassinated, Laureano Gomez, a Conservative candidate, won the 1950 presidential election. However, after just three years in office he was overthrown by a military coup, bringing Gustavo Rojas Pinilla to power (Leech "Fifty Years of Violence").

In 1953, Pinilla issued an amnesty to armed peasants, and, in 1954, he extended the amnesty to those who were imprisoned for acts of terror on behalf of the Gomez regime. The main problem was that many of the people released from prison started killing innocent peasants in order to take their land, forcing these peasants to once again take up arms. Throughout the 1950s, peasants held long marches to many uninhabited places in an attempt to free themselves, however, the lands were taken away by colonists and the people then decided to disperse units of armed peasants to several regions throughout the country. In 1965, these units came under one central commander and were known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest guerrilla group in the nation (Molano).

The second largest guerrilla group, formed in 1964, is known as th...