Not Such Strange Bedfellows
"Colombia has been the United States' most consistent, ingratiating ally in the hemisphere, if not the world." "To speak of Colombia as a responsible power with which one should have relations...
...It was Colombia which entered the resolution before the OAS in the early 1960s that Cuba be subjected to sanctions and then expelled from that body...
...Direct investments from the United States also determined the unwillingness of successive Chart 1 Colombia: Total Exports and Tnt.l mfnffP Fvnnrt 1RAR.107n Marco Palacio, El cafe en Colombia (1850-1970), (Bogota: Editorial Presencia, 1979) Colombian governments to challenge their northern neighbor...
...It would be like dealing with a group of Sicilian or Calabrese bandits...
...Nor did this bi-party exclusion exist only at the level of the presidency...
...More than 43,000 people perished in 1948, more than 50,000 in 1950-by the most cautious estimates...
...The U.S...
...One of the faculties wrested by the FNC from the weak state was the authority to administer a National Coffee Fund which centralized the payment for the coffee crop and effectively apportioned the coffee taxes as it saw fit...
...Senate, however, refused to ratify the treaty until 1921 when the words "sincere regret" were removed from the document...
...The answers to these questions are deeply embedded in Colombian history and its current political and economic reality...
...The L6pez government pushed through liberal reforms in its first term which included programs to modernize coffee production, develop industry and reform the agrarian structure in favor of the peasantry...
...9. Gabriel Garcfa Mgrquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (New York: Avon Books, 1971), p. 284...
...Colombia: Mid-century...
...3. Ibid...
...U.S...
...Both of Colombia's two major parties had occupied the presidential palace for extended periods of time during the twentieth century, first the Conservatives (1904-1930), and then the Liberals (1930-1946...
...By 1947, only 350 persons accounted for 30% of the aggregate personal income in Colombia...
...Slaughter, "An Analysis," p. 84...
...officials, the "world's premier counterinsurgency force" was not in Vietnam but in Colombia...
...At the same time, Colombia was the site of the first Latin American counterinsurgency training school, begun in 1952...
...Violence Remakes Colombia The Violencia period-broadly speaking between 1946 and 1966-was to significantly change Colombia's political and economic structures and lay the foundations for the country's development over the succeeding three decades...
...favor became all the more obvious...
...eight decades of hard work seemed about to go down the drain...
...With the signing of the Inter-American Coffee Agreement, a marketing quota arrangement for the region, the need to curry U.S...
...The Conservative president refused to step down, and soon was even able to garner the support of some Liberal sectors in a coalition cabinet...
...5 (Sept.-Oct...
...Every country in Latin America and the Caribbean has struggled over its own concept of nationalism, and Colombia is no exception...
...Tensions, which were stretched to the breaking point, finally snapped on April 9, 1948, when Gaitin himself was assassinated as he walked down a BogotA street...
...of an economy which, according to all estimates, generates far more revenues today 2"Not even the provoked loss of Panama, Colombia's most important province and its only claim to geopolitical clout, could incite Colombia to sever ties with the United States...
...Alvaro Tirado Mejfa, "Colcmbia: Siglo y medio de bipartidismo," in Mario Arrubla, et al, Colombia, Hoy, 6th ed...
...The National Front established the alternation of Liberals and Conservatives in the presidential palace each four years...
...XVI, no...
...New York Times, August 13, 1981...
...The workers' demand was for recognition as employees of the company...
...Though with fewer dead, the results were the same...
...At the same time, nearly 60% of the nation's budget was raised through taxes on the 90% of the population which earned less than $570 a year.' 4 L6pez' policies were a disaster, the unions had become stronger, as had the popular organizations, and they were shifting their support from L6pez to more charismatic leaders...
...Colombia, a nation of small-plot producers in the 1940s, had become devoted to large-scale coffee production by the 1960s...
...What?'"' "The dead," he clarified...
...Particularly in the plains to the east of Bogoti and in Southern Tolima, opposition forces composed of Liberal and Communist guerrillas quickly formed and prevented Conservative military or police units from entering or operating in the region...
...Nothing has happened in Macondo, nothing has ever happened, and nothing ever will happen...
...5. Charles W. Bergquist, Coffee and Conflict in Colombia, 1886-1910 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1978), p. 214...
...As one writer speculated, "The financial and industrial sectors began to distance themselves from G6mez' corporativist project and his insane repression, despite the economic benefits which accrued to the capitalist sector...
...President Kennedy consciously selected Colombia as a "showcase" for his Alliance for Progress...
...By a decision of the court it was established and set down in solemn decrees that the workers did not exist...
...Bogota: Siglo XXI, 1980), p. 179...
...He lost, but, given his strong showing, was asJorge Eliecer Gaitan with his wife, Ampara Jaramillo sured of his control over the party...
...2 Reagan's only public appearance during that December 1982 stopover in Colombia-a wreath-laying ceremony at the statue of Sim6n Bolivar-lasted approximately 10 seconds...
...But what about the other important economic sectors, particularly in the cities...
...Similar to many other Latin American countries, in Colombia these revolts shook the foreign-dominated export enclaves, particularly the banana plantations and the oilfields...
...Peter Calvert, Latin Americo: Internal Conflict and International Peace (New York: St...
...There are two reasons why no sector successfully challenged the "northern star" policy...
...The new impetus of the coffee exporters under wartime conditions contributed to the polarization process...
...No wonder Reagan fumed as he listened to Betancur's criticism in December 1982...
...Ibid, p. 77...
...Owners of the 2% of the coffee lands which were defined as "large farms" and which produced up to 30%7 of the crop were important in the FNC, but the exporters were its real power, and they were truly powerful...
...Mariano Arango, Cafie industra 1930-1958 (Bogota: Carlos Valencia Editores, 1982), pp 175-231...
...The matter was nearly resolved in 1914 when the two countries agreed upon a new pact in which the United States expressed its "sincere regret" over the Panarpa incident and offered Colombia compensation of $25 million for the loss of the canal, which by then had been built...
...warships prevented Colombian troops from disembarking in Panama to put down the rebels...
...Additionally, the United States sent almost $100 million more in military equipment...
...A large U.S...
...In fact, at least some of the current revolutionary guerrilla movements directly trace their roots to this time...
...of a period of time known simply but tragically as the "Violencia," during which a minimum of 200,000 people died...
...next 10 consecutive years...
...2 1 * Termination of intra-class violence While Rojas Pinilla initially managed to staunch the flow of blood in the country, he too soon found himself in a precarious situation...
...As long as coffee prices were high, the traditional economic elite were willing to put up with his reforms...
...By 1946, internal conflict had risen to unprecedented levels, and would continue for the next two decades...
...By the mid-1960s, according to U.S...
...It is the product of a country whose five geographical regions seemingly developed autonomously, contemptuous of a national government...
...2 6"Between 1946 and 1966, the Republic of Colombia was the scene of one of the most intense and protracted instances of widespread civilian violence in the history of the twentieth century...
...In 1932, for example, nearly 78% of the crop came from small parcels...
...On December 6, 1928, at Ci6naga, troops opened fire on the workers and townspeople gathered in the village square...
...In 1953, General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla May/June 1983 9NACLA Report brought the military directly into politics with the consent of sectors of both the Liberal and Conservative parties...
...A massive, angry, popular insurrection rolled over the city, venting its ire on government 8 B o m e o"The guerrilla groups became increasingly independent from other political forces, and on numerous occasions those operating in the eastern plains came close to toppling the government...
...By the late 1920s and through the 1930s, conflicts were developing internally and internationally which this neat structure could not contain...
...The first time these issues combined to the detriment of Colombia was at the turn of the century...
...Populist in the sense that he sought to integrate all classes into one program for change, Gaitin developed a loosely defined model of economic and political transformation based on the social usefulness of property, not its profit-making function...
...The United States became the only possible largescale buyer of Colombian beans...
...Supported by both parties in 1953, two years later both were conspiring to remove him from office, fearing that they would become marginalized by his increasingly populist approach...
...As former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara cautioned, "The goals of the Alliance can only be achieved within the framework of law and order.''"" A precursor to Guatemala's current "bullets and beans" approach to poverty and discontent, Colombia's strategy, known as Plan Lazo, would represent the hemisphere's first serious attempt at a combined program of economic reforms and sophisticated counterinsurgency...
...The formation of the National Front also marked the definitive turn of the Violencia away from intra-bourgeois struggle and more harshly toward inter-class conflict...
...373-374...
...Given the absence of state authority in many regions and over extended periods of time, Colombia's political leaders would turn to the United States to help them both define and create a new concept of public order in their nation in the post-World War II period...
...And the state was unable to control the bloodletting...
...In different regions, for different reasons, by different participants...
...President Theodore Roosevelt' Eighty years later, Ronald Reagan might have had similar thoughts as he sat, dour and stony-faced in Bogoti, listening to Belisario Betancur, the Colombian president, rake his policies over the coals...
...To borrow Garcia Mdrquez' apt symbol, the Violencia is like an onion, with layer upon layer of elements...
...Gaitin's program was rooted in the belief that economic democracy (which he defined as breaking the stranglehold of the rich on the economy and redistributing the wealth) was an essential precondition for political democracy...
...See Ram6n Jimeno, "Colombia-Another Threat in the Caribbean...
...2 0 With large portions of the country in arms, the situation was fast moving to one of clear class warfare, while the government was barely able to survive...
...Everyone had received U.S...
...market accounted for 70% of those coffee exports...
...Ronald L6pez Slaughter, "Paradigm for El Salvador: The Model of Colombia" (unpublished ms...
...investments in "show-case" Colombia seem to have paid off...
...It was a foregone conclusion that he would be able to carry the country in the 1950 presidential elections...
...This training, along with combat experience in Korea, soon revealed its internal face when Rojas PinillaMay/June 1983 11NACLA Report himself one of the first Colombians trained by the U.S...
...United Nations, Demographic Yearbook (New York: United Nations, 1961), Vol...
...For Colombia's leaders, it was unthinkable to risk losing the U.S...
...Later, after a moderating trend in international relations in the mid-1970s that allowed for the re-establishment of ties between Cuba and Colombia, Colombia's President Turbay again severed relations in 1981, charging Cuban interference in his country's internal affairs...
...The coffee lands were the center of "late violence" (post-1954) conflicts, where a complex and shifting array of alliances and enemies set Conservatives, Liberals, Communists and apolitical bandits all battling one another...
...As in many other countries, the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting the dregs...
...Gabriel Garcia Mirquez used the experience of the banana workers' strike and subsequent massacre to write One Hundred Years of Solitude: "The company's lawyers proved that the workers' demands lacked all validity for the simple reason that the banana company did not have, never had had, and never would have any workers in its service because they were all hired on a temporary and occasional basis...
...Both parties would select the single candidate for president, Liberals first...
...Alliance with the United States The Violencia period helped forge a very strong political and military relationship between the United States and Colombia...
...His murderer was cornered and kicked to death, but the reaction did not end there...
...This is a happy town...
...Richard E. Sharpless, Gaitdn of Colmbia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978), p 17...
...Based on the support of the popular sectors, Gaitin battled the party's traditional leadership for control, giving the oligarchy the fright of its life by challenging both official Liberal and Conservative candidates in the 1946 election...
...No sooner had the Ninth Inter-American Conference convened in BogotA in 1948 than Gaitin was assassinated...
...They were penned in, swirling about in a gigantic whirlwind that little by little was being reduced to its epicenter as the edges were systematically being cut off all around like an onion being peeled by the insatiable and methodical shears of the machine guns...
...From that point until late 1982, with the sole exception of a brief period in the mid-1970s, the pattern repeated itself...
...To be sure, it did cast a pall over diplomatic relations for nearly 20 years until a second treaty was finally ratified by both the U.S...
...Why have successive Colombian governments so carefully cultivated good relations with their northern neighbor...
...It is incorrect to see the Violencia as a simple process, with one, two or even a set of root causes...
...Thomas E. Weil, et al, Area Handbook for Colombia (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1977), p. 321...
...The Violencia depicted by Leonel Gongora, a prominent Colombian artist...
...Why the Violencia...
...The United States would seize upon Colombia as a model and test case for its future economic and military plans for the region...
...2 In 1952, Colombia became one of the first five Latin American countries to sign a Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement (MDAA) with the United States...
...The existence of large-scale guerrilla movements persisted throughout the Violencia period and gave an historical and social context to the continued presence of guerrilla movements in many parts of Colombia...
...To speak of Colombia as a responsible power with which one should have relations is perfectly absurd...
...Militarization of Colombian society The Violencia increased the militarization of Colombia from the bottom up (the formation of opposition guerrilla movements), and from the top down (the military in control of the government...
...To oppose it, however, would threaten the loss of the U.S...
...During most of the first half of the twentieth century, the majority of Colombian coffee was produced on small farms...
...training...
...A significant number continued to oppose both parties and the military government, but at least 15,000 fighters laid down their arms...
...buildings, fancy shops and anything to do with the Conservatives...
...Estanislao Zuleta, La tierra en Colombia (Medellfn: Oveja Negra, 1973), pp...
...In the nineteenth century, the parties may have fought over the traditional issues of conflict-the role of the Church, levels of tariffs, federalism vs...
...and the country would grant the United States its unswerving loyalty in hemispheric and international affairs...
...The FNC bought the entire coffee crop from the small producers and arranged for its warehousing and sale, thus controlling the main flow of Colombia's foreign exchange earnings...
...The strength of the FNC and its ability to bring oligarchic sectors and a majority of industrialists in both parties into line behind the United States became even more solidified in Chart 2 Percentages of Coffee Exports to the United States, 1865-1970 10 0 % 1865 70 76 1580 85 18 0 95 19)0 1936 0 92 65 19 0NACLA Report 1939 with the outbreak of war in Europe...
...interests...
...In a previous NACLA Report, we detailed Colombia's participation in Reagan's secret war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua...
...He ousted G6mez and established order in the country where both parties had failed...
...The general staked his popularity on a reform program financed by record coffee revenues...
...And, for the United States, searching in the 1980s for new ways to impose its consensus on the region, a friend in need was a friend indeed...
...To ratify the treaty would not only compromise Colombian sovereignty in the isthmus, but was expressly forbidden by its own constitution...
...2 1 Predisposed to close relations, Colombia and the United States were further united by a totally unexpected event...
...1982), pp...
...He may be most remembered for his stint as secretary of state (19471949), during which he drafted the "Marshall Plan" for the economic reconstruction of Europe...
...The Turbay government even seems to have shown interest in working with the CIA's political and paramilitary operations against Nicaragua.:7 As a capstone of its support of U.S...
...By 1928 United Fruit had also angered local merchants (who couldn't compete with the company stores), other producers (who were denied access to United's rail lines) and even the government (which vainly tried to set rules on water usage in the zone...
...The woman measured him with a pitying look...
...The government declared a state of siege in the oil-producing city, fought with the strikers and jailed labor leaders throughout the country...
...Following the ratification of the treaty in 1921, it climbed to over 80%, where it remained, on average, for the next 40 years...
...142-143...
...private investment in Latin American strategic resources...
...Pitched battles, small massacres, individual assassinations...
...In this new game, only Liberals and Conservatives could play...
...of a country which has endured an official "state of siege" for almost all of the last 34 years-the same country which is commonly honored by the U.S...
...media and successive U.S...
...Colombia was in a bind...
...The guerrilla groups became increasingly independent from other political forces, and on numerous occasions those operating in the eastern plains came close to toppling the government...
...Ibid, p. 244...
...In short, the face of the country was changing...
...Years of rampant inflation had assaulted the wages of the poorest sectors of rural and urban workers...
...200-201...
...The outermost layer, most obvious for all to see, was the decades-old contest between Liberals and Conservatives...
...This is like a damn war zone," one White House official remarked, to which Reagan's press representative shot back, "We don't interpret this as reflecting any deep-rooted antiAmerican sentiment...
...With Gaitun's assassination, the state entered a period of outright collapse...
...See Chart II...
...advisers were conscious that economic development was but one half of the program...
...Violence became permanent...
...Thus, instead of plowing their surplus back into the small farms which grew the golden beans, the exporters either became industrialists or helped finance urban industrial projects...
...market for Colombian coffee and much sought-after foreign investment funds-including the lucrative contract for the canal itself...
...It is not surprising that other sectors did not muster any significant opposition to the FNC...
...At the Third Meeting of the Foreign Ministers of American States in 1942, Colombia was one of only three countries which fully backed the United States by recommending the severance of all ties between the American republics and Germany, Italy andJapan...
...policy-makers must have been pleased by Colombia's unswerving loyalty to Washington...
...The isthmus is lost for Colombia," lamented one Colombian diplomat...
...policies...
...More than two million peasants and their families fled from the rural coffee lands to the urban centers...
...Norton and Co., 1943), pp...
...The U.S...
...Each party was entitled to elect one-half of Congress, and the judiciary and the entire state bureaucracy, from ministers to janitors, were painstakingly divided between the two parties...
...Alfredo Molano, Amnistiay tiolencia (Bogoti: Cinep, 1980), p. 15...
...7. Ibid, p. 209...
...The violence also re-emerged in 1954, after a one-year respite...
...As secretary of defense (1950-1951), he persuaded Congress to appropriate $38 million for military aid to Latin America...
...It was a patronage system which would have brought joy to the late Mayor Daley of Chicago...
...The Violencia had arrived in all its fury...
...Turbay thus lent solid backing to Reagan's emerging Central America-Caribbean policy: "Our policies are on parallel tracks," the U.S...
...A formidable representative of the coffee exporters, Ospina P6rez continued the repression of both Liberal and popular movements, a phenomenon the unions had already begun to experience the previous year...
...Known simply as the Violencia, this social process took at least 200,000 lives, including 112,000 in the 1948-1950 period alone...
...counterinsurgency personnel...
...During the 1920s, Colombia experienced its first sustained, violent labor revolts...
...Although a boom in coffee production between 1860 and 1880 had allowed the establishment of a modicum of order in the country, the rapid fall of coffee prices after 1880 again cast the regional governing elites into fratricidal chaos...
...At one point, finding its coffers empty, the Conservative government decided to resolve its crisis by printing money...
...By the time that war broke out in Korea, 12 Latin American countries had signed MDAAs with the United States...
...The second is the importance of commercial and other economic links between the two countries...
...Was his lecture to the petulant Mr...
...When the dust finally settled in the early 1960s, coffee production had been transformed...
...And why does this appear to be changing under President Betancur...
...coffee market over wounded nationalist pride...
...pp...
...coffee market over wounded nationalist pride...
...policy-makers...
...Teddy Roosevelt had his eye on this strip as the ideal location for a transoceanic canal...
...in fact they raised it to a guiding principle of their foreign policy...
...market for its foreign exchange earnings...
...The second reason that no one challenged the coffee exporters' plans to hitch the country to the northern star was that others, too, profited from the arrangement...
...The first is Colombia's constant, frustrated search to define and create a stable national order out of a landscape that looks as if it must have been designed by committee, and has political and economic interests that are equally disparate...
...military-sent the returning soldiers into battle against anti-government guerrillas...
...Small coffee growers were constantly besieged by larger growers...
...The flames which swept BogotA still danced before his eyes...
...For this interpretation of the Violernia, see James Payne, Patterns of Conflict in Colombia (New Haven: Yale, 1968), p. 160...
...4. Miami Herald, December 26, 1982...
...credits, loans and funds to compensate for the loss of Panama flooded into Colombia over the next ten years...
...One would not have expected the country's coffee growers to oppose such a policy...
...5 Few expected the response to be so rapid and bold...
...This attempt would have failed as did earlier ones, had not U.S...
...Within some 20 years, there were over 30,000 banana workers in the province of Magdalena...
...It is difficult to calculate the real impact of these events on Marshall as he formulated future policy toward Latin America, and Colombia in particular...
...In 1942, for example, the United States purchased 99% of the crop...
...But when the bottom fell out of the market in 1956, there was quickly no more room for reform...
...Ibid, p. xi...
...To many of the Latin American diplomats assembled at the conference, the Bogotazo, as it was known, was a clear sign of deep-rooted economic and political malaise in the country...
...According to government sources, Colombia best combined "a high degree [of] opportunities and challenges both economic and political-which the Alliance was designed to meet...
...military mission in Colombia had been illegally importing arms for the Colombian National Police from bases in the Panama Canal Zone...
...Active particularly on behalf of the Conservatives, the official military forces had nevertheless tended to stay in the background of Colombian politics...
...administrations as "Latin America's oldest and largest Spanish-speaking democracy...
...I, Item BE 50...
...But it is not exaggeration to claim that from its declaration of war against Germany in 1942 to its petition to oust revolutionary Cuba from the Organization of American States in 1962, to its lonely support of the U.S...
...Ibid, p. 72...
...Large areas of the country disregarded Conservative rule, paid no taxes to the Conservative government, obeyed no Conservative authorities...
...Immediately after his death, revolutionary juntas of Gaitin-Liberals took over Cali, Barranquilla, Ibagu6 and other cities...
...The opposition, legally excluded from any possibility of participation in this scheme, was left with one remaining mechanism-one for which they were by now well-trained--the guerrilla struggle...
...And, in 1947, it was revealed that the U.S...
...Colombia would receive the aid it needed in order to develop economically and crush its internal insurgencies...
...Violence spread over the countryside...
...position on the Malvinas/Falklands war in 1982, Colombia has been only too happy to accommodate U.S...
...It is the Violencia period which provides us with the second reason for close U.S.-Colombian relations...
...There must have been three thousand of them" [recounted Jos6 Arcadio Segundo, Garcia Mdrquez' fictional sole survivor of the very real massacre...
...6. William Paul McGreevy, Historia econdmica de Colombia, 1845-1930(BogotA: Ediciones Tercer Mundo, 1975), p. 211...
...Until that time, the banana giant had sidestepped Colombia's labor legislation by hiring workers through small labor contractors...
...The Plaza Bolivar, Bogota...
...To the uninitiated, this reality can appear confusing, even bizarre...
...It must have been all the people who were at the station...
...29., Ronald L6pez Slaughter, "An Analysis of the United States Counterinsurgency Policy in Colombia, 1960-1975" (Ph.D...
...That began to change with the Liberal president, L6pez Pumarejo, who succeeded Enrique Olaya in 1934 at a moment of ruling-class division over how to deal with the effects of the Great Depression...
...It was this reality, in turn, which gave rise to a new phase of U.S.-Colombian relations...
...We face, then, two large questions...
...In that way they were finally able to wipe out the union leaders...
...policy initiatives, Colombia was one of only two South American countries which backed the United States on the Malvinas/Falklands war...
...Sharpless, Gaitdn of Colombia, p. 165...
...The last was particularly controversial, in that in 1936 L6pez passed a law granting ownership of land to any peasant who worked it for the Mav/June 1983 7NACLA Report "A massive, angry, popular insurrection rolled over the city, venting its ire on government buildings, fancy shops and anything to do with the Conservatives...
...While the strife produced changes in nearly every aspect of Colombian society, four are particularly important...
...Ibid, p. 178...
...There haven't been any dead here," she said...
...Thus Liberals and Conservatives, with the support of the military establishment, decisively reapportioned power in 1958 away from the growing popular tendencies both within and outside their parties...
...The United States had established its first military mission in Colombia in 1939, displacing French and Chilean officers who had been in charge of training the Colombian armed forces...
...By 1953, the Conservative President Laureano G6mez had alienated not only the Liberalswhom he persecuted viciously-but also many Conservatives...
...companies...
...Jorge Eliecer Gaitan Characteristic of this polarization was the emergence of Jorge Eliecer Gaitin as head of the Liberal Party and caudillo of the country's workers and peasants...
...Martins Press, 1969), pp...
...Coffee and Chaos Two issues permeate U.S.-Colombian relations like the smell of coffee brewing in a small kitchen...
...By 1920, coffee comprised three-quarters of all Colombian exports...
...New York Times, August 12, 1981...
...through illegal drug sales than through the export of its more traditional commodities...
...The aberrant aspect is not in the sparks of hostility between Colombia and these two "Big Stick" presidents, but rather that in the 80-year interim, Colombia has been the United States' most consistent, ingratiating ally in the hemisphere, if not the world...
...And All Hell Broke Loose Gaitin's challenge to the traditional Liberal bosses had shattered the party, allowing the election of Conservative Mariano Ospina PWrez in 1946...
...In fact, only splits in the ruling parties permitted the opposition to win in the polls, as happened in 1930 and again in 1946.'" This strong sectarian rivalry between Conservatives and Liberals did not have a deep ideological echo, however...
...What is known is that when the meetings reconvened after troops had restored order to the city, Marshall argued strongly against any broad-based economic development program for the hemisphere...
...Only one, Colombia, felt it necessary to send troops into battle in Korea...
...The President stepped from a helicopter into a bulletproof limousine, was driven the 100 feet to the statue, dropped his flowers at the feet of The Liberator, and fled back into his car as spectators-kept a block away-jeered and whistled...
...A consummate populist leader, Gaitin based his political stand on two issues: the need to break Colombia's domination by foreign, chiefly U.S., interests, and the belief that "the country cannot be developed on the basis of individualist criteria.'" Gaitin had organized his own party, the Revolutionary Leftist National Union (UNIR) in 1933, but re-entered the Liberal Party in 1935, where he remained until his untimely death...
...284-287...
...In 1963, for example, one of the first operations conducted under the auspices of Plan Lazo was a drive by nearly 7,000 soldiers, NCOs and officers in Marquetalia...
...The great strike broke out," Garcia MArquez continued...
...When push came to shove, however, the company was able to purchase the government's loyalty, and troops were sent in to arrest more than 400 labor leaders...
...Strikes and Opposition While, in the late 1920s, it would seem that everybody who was anybody was pleased with the course of events, this did not include the peasant coffee growers, obviously, or the workers...
...Instead, he pushed for military programs, the creation of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the "Point Four" program designed to increase U.S...
...In 1920, President SuArez charted Colombia's future course with just three words: Res Pice Polum-essentially, Follow the North Star (the United States...
...The Northern Star With or without sincere regret, by 1921 the frayed edges of U.S.-Colombian relations were fully repaired...
...Far from a smooth transition between the two, however, the parties fought bitterly, with the victor distributing all the spoils exclusively to his own party and totally marginalizing the loser...
...Reagan a sign of the times, an indication of a forceful new direction in Colombian foreign policies, or a manipulation by a populist, yet conservative leader...
...Its obsequiousness has stood out even in a region which, until recently, rarely thwarted U.S...
...In 1901, United Fruit began operations in the Santa Marta region on the Caribbean coast...
...Two months after the treaty was rejected in the Colombian Senate, Panama seceded from Colombia...
...Between 1922 and 1929, Colombia was able to raise over $235 million on the New York capital markets, a truly impressive sum for that time.' Neither Liberal nor Conservative political 4 NACLA ReportMay/June 1983 leaders challenged this situation...
...The Coffee Fund greatly rationalized the production of the crop, but it also channeled its resources into private, non-agricultural enterprise, a complement to the millions of dollars raised between 1920 and 1929 which went into the creation of Colombia's first modern infrastructure: roads, railroads, urbanization...
...Colombia Carries the Torch U.S...
...Restructuring the coffee lands Not only was the violence primarily a rural phenomenon, but it particularly affected the coffee-producing regions of the country...
...But the flames of class rebellion burning since the 1930s and whipped out of control by Gaitin's assassination, now raged over the countryside...
...United Fruit was struck in 1924 and 1928...
...Jos6 Arcadio confronted the officers in command, who responded:] "You must have been dreaming...
...refereences NOT SUCH STRANGE BEDFELLOWS 1. Ramiro Guerra, La expansidn territorial de los Estados Unidos (Havana: Editora Universitaria, 1964), p. 417...
...Paul Oquist, Violence, Conflict and Politi's in Colombia (New York: Academic Press, 1980), p. 101...
...As one writer summarized, "On the ruins and spoilation of these peasant masses, there occurred the most substantial capitalist development of the agrarian sector...
...A novel way out of years of bloody civil war, the National Front was also an innovative way to avoid the increasing pressure for significant change which had become the main thrust of the "late violence" period...
...By the early 1940s, Colombia was already playing mouthpiece for U.S...
...Army Area Handbook for Colombia, were tremendous: "[this aid] has made the United States the single most important influence on the Colombian armed forces...
...Edwin Lieuwen, Arms ard Politics in Latin America (New York: Praeger, 1961), pp...
...both relate to the Colombian Federation of Coffee Growers (FNC...
...Literally hundreds of thousands of small coffee plots were destroyed or seized in the violence...
...Colombia was the only Latin American country to send troops to Sinai to participate in an international peacekeeping force backed by the United States...
...government saw this moment of turmoil as a propitious one to force through the Hays-Herran Treaty, which would grant the United States control in perpetuity over a strip of land across the isthmus of Panama, then Colombia's northernmost province...
...The FNC was, at its inception, less a coffee growers' organization than a clique of coffee marketers and exporters...
...Ambassador to Colombia enthused.3 4 As in the case of the Korean War, Colombia continued to supply its soldiers to buttress U.S...
...Such initial accord in the economic sphere, however, would not create any lasting order in the country's political life...
...Still, the strike was not broken...
...New York Times, April 8, 1983...
...centralism-but by the twentieth century they were locked in a battle over how to control the government, not what to do with the state once they controlled it...
...2. Los Angeles Times, December 4, 1982...
...In return for military aid, the signers promised "to facilitate the production and transfer...
...Simply put, Colombia was vitally dependent on the U.S...
...policy-makers in the region...
...To be expected, Colombia was one of the first countries to receive the aid-and, in return, to grant the United States exclusive access to its strategic resources...
...equipment provided through the MDAA was critical to Rojas Pinilla's ability to quell internal opposition to his regime.' Will the Circle Be Unbroken...
...Further, oil companies began to invest in Colombia after 1914 when the United States pressured Conservative President Marco Fidel SuArez to draft legislation favorable to the U.S...
...The Violencia changed that, too...
...NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol...
...108-109...
...For the next 16 years, as day followed night, Conservatives followed Liberals to the presidency...
...They had lost their political importance, and Liberal forces began to fear that "alien" (communist) influence would increase if they were not disbanded...
...and Colombian senates...
...Samuel Flagg Bemis, The Latin American Policy of the United States (New York: W.W...
...delegation, headed by Secretary of State George C. Marshall, watched in fright and hor10"For the next 1 6 years, as day followed night, Conservatives followed Liberals to the presidency...
...Inevitably, the latter had more long-lasting effects than the former...
...Says one researcher, "Between 1946 and 1966, the Republic of Colombia was the scene of one of the most intense and pro-, tracted instances of widespread civilian violence in the history of the twentieth century...
...Industrialization and L6pez' public works programs had increased the urban proletariat of Colombia, and the Depression brought sharper levels of conflict...
...What is remarkable about this episode is that not even the provoked loss of Panama, Colombia's most important province and its only claim to geopolitical clout, could incite Colombia to sever ties with the United States...
...Between 1961 and 1967 Colombia received approximately $60 million in military assistance for counterinsurgency and "economic development programs" under the direct command of the Colombian Army...
...But to Marshall, his aides and his Conservative Party hosts, this was the communist uprising...
...Within hours, according to witnesses, "BogotA resembled a European city after a World War II bombing attack...
...4 The Militarization of Relations Marshall was a five-star general, a military man above all else...
...The United States Takes "Its" Canal The Colombian president urged ratification, but the Senate, opting for nationalism and constitutionality, rejected it by a close vote...
...In fact, the state's participation in the repression, combined with the virtual absence of state power in some regions, only stimulated the fighting...
...Rojas Pinilla began to pursue the Liberals, and the assassinations of many of the guerrillas who had laid down their arms did not provide much of an advertisement for the amnesty program...
...Ultimately, however, if Rojas Pinilla succeeded in anything, it was in finally uniting Colombia's two contentious parties...
...4 Something, clearly, does not add up...
...strategic materials required by the United States" and to limit their trade with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.1" Colombia continued to do the United States' bidding...
...Elections became a method to legitimize agreements privately reached by the traditional party bosses...
...As one might ima- gine, the violence mounted with each passing year as landowners became increasingly determined to displace their tenant farmers...
...For nearly three days the rebellious masses held BogotA, until the arrival of additional military forces turned the tide of battle...
...2 " Models are expensive, though...
...The principle was reaffirmed by Enrique Olaya, the first Liberal president of the century (1930-1934), who had served nearly a decade as Colombia's representative in Washington...
...According to many observers, U.S...
...The consequences of the aid, as summarized by the U.S...
...of a political accord called the National Front which, when all is said and done, was nothing short of the world's first attempt at a two-party dictatorship...
...Over the next twenty years, the Colombian military would conduct massive sweeps against guerrilla bases scattered throughout the country, using predominately, if not exclusively, soldiers trained by U.S...
...Each Latin American child is born owing $300," Betancur charged, "while each minute this crazy world spends $1 million on deadly weapons...
...ror as the insurrection swept the city, even surging around the convention center...
...it would be a rare year indeed, from that moment to the present, that coffee would represent considerably less...
...At the same time the FNC was strengthened when the government legalized its monopoly power over exportation...
...It was also given the authority to determine which internal producers' beans would be purchased in filling Colombia's production quotas in the newly signed InterAmerican Agreement...
...Here yankee influence predominates, and all Panamanians, with a few exceptions, are capable of selling the canal, the isthmus, and even their own mother...
...Colombia received over $1.5 billion in economic aid, both loans and grants, between 1960 and 1975.2 Yet U.S...
...26, Ibid, p. 201...
...But for Latin America, the military came first...
...dissertation, Atlanta University), p. 76...
...Formed in 1927, the FNC quickly assumed many of the functions of a state...
...By 1957 the two rival parties had united in the National Front which, with the backing of the military, now displaced Rojas Pinilla from power...
...With the Rojas Pinilla coup, the Liberals in particular saw no further need to maintain their guerrilla forces...
...Thus, digging a little deeper into our onion, we find that intense and growing inter-class conflicts began to underpin the sectarian intra-class disputes fought out between the two major parties...
...If the first issue provided the pretext for the United States to intervene in Colombia's internal political affairs, the second drew Colombia toward the United States, its favored market, like a moth to flame...
...Did not the nascent industrialists fear that such a close relationship with the more powerful United States would swamp their hopes for a more independent, diversified economic development...
...8. Marco Palacio, El Cafi en Colombia (1850-1970) (Bogoti: Editorial Presencia, 1979), p. 372...
...May/June 1983 3"For Colombia's leaders, it was unthinkable to risk losing the U.S...
...By 1960, Colombia had the highest "intentional" death rate in the world...
...By the mid-1940s, the country was in turmoil...
...Building the canal, the Republic of Panama, 1903...
...Area Handbook, p. 4 4 5 . 32...
...Ibid, pp...
...His first step was to offer an amnesty to the opposition guerrillas, arguing that he represented a third way...
...This was capped by the so-called War of the Thousand Days (1899-1902), fought between the Liberal and Conservative parties, which brought the country to the brink of collapse...
...With such power concentrated in its hands, the federation understandably had the undivided attention of government policymakers...
...See Chart I.) By 1903, when Panama seceded, the U.S...
...1 0 During the same years workers struck the U.S.-based Tropical Oil Company in Barrancabermeja...
...13-21...
...Lacking any paper on which to print it, the state commandeered a load of paper originally destined to wrap chocolate bars...
Vol. 17 • May 1983 • No. 3
