Democracy, Colombian Style

...The decision by the Communist left to run its own candidate also weakened Maria-Eugenia's hopes of taking all the votes of the more radical opposition...

...On the few campaign issues, he opposed even the nominal agrarian reform sponsored by Lopez Michelsen, somehow seeing Brazil's example of socio-economic inequity as the ideal model for development...

...But, having been built around General Rojas's personality and popularity, the ANAPO lacked the ideology to sustain mid-term elections...

...More than his corruption and inefficiency, in fact, it was the threat of a "third force" that united Conservatives and Liberals alike behind "democracy" and the need to end the military regime...

...She was named its candidate and she began to campaign energetically...

...Ron Ziegler, President Nixon's press secretary, says it was strictly "a third-rate burglary attempt...

...the Liberals are said to be progressive, anti-clerical, intellectual, and urban (businessmen and workers...

...Promising everything and defining nothing, Rojas swept through the slums and succeeded in mobilizing the poor...

...But while some Conservatives shared this view, most politicians of both parties were anxious to return to the ring, confident that no "third force"—i.e., the ANAPO—would interfere with their plans...

...many key Liberals are large landowners...

...The genteel members of the bourgeoisie attend mass, eat well, dress soberly, and speak softly "in the best Spanish of Latin America...

...The advance of military regimes across the continent is painful—thirteen of the twenty Latin American republics are ruled by their armies—but do the surviving "democracies" offer any consolation...

...But if these are "the people," this is also the context for Colombian "democracy...

...Given the stagnation of Colombian "democracy," this might seem a viable answer, assuming the emergence of a leftist-nationalist military regime such as currently exists in Peru...

...But he cannot escape his aristocratic image: he rolls up his sleeves and has poor peasants trucked in to hear his speeches, but he uses the language of those who inherit—rather than win—power...

...By offering amnesties and "pacifying" those who refused, by 1956 General Rojas had returned Colombia to some semblance of order...

...some important Conservatives are industrialists...

...When it came to election day, the poor turned out in force and, according to most impartial observers, gave Rojas a narrow victory...

...Although the presidency alternated, cabinet seats and bureaucratic posts were shared by the two parties and their political positions therefore steadily merged...

...The old Conservative and Liberal parties—modeled after the Tories and Whigs of Victorian England—have somehow survived in Colombia when they have disappeared in most of Latin America...

...He has contributed to The London Times, The Miami Herald, and The New York Times...

...Former President Lleras Restrepo, one of the country's most popular politicians and the then leader of the Liberal party, was insistent that stability could be preserved only through continuismo of the National Front for at least eight more years...

...The ideal situation, of course, would be a transformation of Colombian society within a formal democratic structure, but unless the Lopez administration proves this possible, the alternatives to "democracy" will become more appealing...

...THE WAY WE SAW IT These excerpts from articles and editorials published during The Progressive's sixty-five year history have been edited only to achieve brevity...

...Now it is the Liberals' chance to act under Colombia's stagnant two-party system Democracy, Colombian Style ALAN RIDING The recent elections in Colombia pose the question: Is democracy worth saving in Latin America...

...During a decade of conflict, the civil war—which was so described only after it was over—cost about 300,000 lives...

...Yet in Colombia's case, perhaps the question is unfair...

...For example, less than one per cent of the country's twenty-three million inhabitants owns more than forty per cent of the cultivable land and 4.6 per cent of the population earns forty per cent of the income...

...And in April 1948, the assassination of the popular Liberal leader, Jorge Elicier Gaitan, and subsequent violent protests—events known as the "Bogotazo"—thrust Colombia into a brutal undeclared civil war between the two old parties...

...Notwithstanding, Lopez Michelsen did register a stunning victory, winning more than 2.5 million votes, one million more than Gomez Hurtado and two million more than Maria-Eugenia...

...Illiteracy and unemployment are widespread...

...then his Conservative fellow-negotiator, Valencia, took over for the next four-year term...

...investors have chosen Colombia as the beachhead for their economic offensive in the six Andean nations and the U.S...

...With the opposition "on the run," the neo-fascist Conservative Laureano Gomez was unopposed in the 1950 elections and he quickly stepped up the war against the Liberals...

...But some of her father's old supporters could not tolerate the idea of a woman candidate for the presidency—she was in fact Latin America's first—while others could not support her controversial platform of socialism a la Colombiana...

...Over the previous century, one party or another tended to hold power for two or three presidential periods and then be voted or thrown out of office...

...The industrialists are closely associated with U.S...

...There were five candidates of left and right and the winner was the non-controversial nominee of the centrist Liberal Party, Alfonso Lopez Mich-elsen, who won almost sixty per cent of the poll...

...Continuismo" became the motto of the National Front and symbol of the increased economic activity the country began to enjoy...

...Potomacus August 1972 COOLIDGE'S IMPERIALISM With utmost self-complacency, unmindful of our promise to the Philippine people, overlooking the fundamental principle of our republic, President Coolidge goes on record as the first President to veto an act of the Philippine legislature—an act to hold a plebiscite on the question of whether or not the people of the Philippine Islands want independence...

...A military junta assumed power and the National Front went into effect the following year...

...But the conservatism of the Colombian armed forces is such that a military coup would almost certainly favor the oligarchies to the detriment of the population...

...In 1966, it was again the turn of the Liberals and Carlos Lleras Restrepo was elected to serve until 1970, when Misael Pastrana Borrero of the Conservatives, the final beneficiary of the National Front, became president to serve until this spring...

...The lack of real choice inherent in Colombia's form of democracy has become particularly marked during the past two decades...

...But in practice, there is little to distinguish them: both are highly conservative and oligarchic...

...On the other hand, high world prices for coffee, Colombia's principal export, have ensured average economic growth rates of six per cent over the past five years...

...birth and upbringing, he was a Conservative, but he sought to build a new political movement around himself to perpetuate his power...

...Less than forty-five per cent of the electorate cast ballots, and, of those who participated, more than eighty per cent voted for either Lopez Michelsen or Gomez Hurtado...

...Somehow, both Moscow- and Peking-line factions of the Colombian Communist Party managed to unite with other leftist groups behind the candidacy of a fifty-three-year-old doctor, Hernan Echeverry...

...General Rojas's administration was both populist and popular, partly as a respite from the recent bloodshed and partly because he spent wildly (filling his coffers in the process) and created considerable employment...

...There is the populist alternative offered by Maria-Eugenia and the ANAPO...

...The colorless official candidate, Pastrana, desperately accused the General of neo-fascism and revived old charges of corruption, but much of the electorate was not listening...

...But after President Mariano Ospina Perez assumed office in 1946, a "witch hunt" was launched against the Liberals...

...For the 1970 presidential elections, the old General was launched as a dissident Conservative candidate under the flag of the newly formed National Popular Alliance (ANAPO), with Maria-Eugenia (as she is known everywhere) managing the campaign...

...But her type of populism, unless it takes on more coherence in the coming years, would be arbitrary and unstable and might not be the solution to Colombia's dilemma...

...Guillermo Leon Valencia of the Conservatives and former President Alberto Lleras Camargo of the Liberals jointly worked out Colombia's immediate political future along traditional party lines...

...he declared a state of siege, suspended constitutional guarantees and then simply proclaimed Pastrana the winner...

...Support for the Christian Democrat candidate, Hermes Duarte, however, was clearly minimal...

...Unlike most Latin American countries, where the capital city is the single focus of development, Colombia has several important urban centers—Medellin, Cali, Barranquilla, Cartagena, and Buenaventura, as well as the capital of Bogota—and each is the heart of a mini^empire of regional political and economic interests...

...But Gomez's fanaticism was disturbing even to many Conservatives and in 1953 his army commander-in-chief, General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, seized power with the backing of most of the party...

...Legal divorce is non-existent and "a single adultery can upset the entire society...

...But this same rhetoric has created heightened expectations which may well rebound against the future regime...

...Nevertheless, for the first time in twenty-eight years, there seemed to be a real choice to be made in the elections...

...In Colombia, this phenomenon was less apparent than in many countries, but the concientizacion—the creation of awareness—was nevertheless sufficient to convince peasants and workers alike of the futility of the elections...

...Yet the electorate remained both uninterested in the "democratic" process and unwilling to risk change by turning away from the traditional two parties...

...Latin America, whose 200,000,000 people occupy a land mass more than two-and-a-half times that of the United States, is plagued by one-crop economies, crippled by dependence on exports, riddled by illiteracy, hunger, and disease, afflicted with shockingly low per capita incomes, harried by mounting inflation and falling world prices, rampant with tax evasion, and most of all torn asunder between the few enormously rich who usually control the country and the once silent but now stirring poor...

...We do harbor a few unworthy suspicions, based on the raiders' sundry links to the CIA, the White House, the Republican National Committee, and the Committee to Re-elect the President, but it would be unfair to speculate when the evidence is so circumstantial...

...What this means is that, through skillful use of reformist rhetoric, Lopez Michelsen has given traditional "democratic" politics a new lease on life—of perhaps no more than his four-year term...

...Colombia has had no military government since 1957 and the fifth consecutive "free" elections took place April 21...

...In fact, by the time the two "official" candidates for this year's elections were being chosen last summer, the ANAPO no longer seemed a threat...

...Party in-fighting increased and several key ANAPO politicians deserted and returned to the ranks of the Conservative and Liberal parties whence they came in 1970...

...President Lleras ordered the Army to break up ANAPO street celebrations...

...He has promised to increase the real wages of the working sectors, but can he do this without hurting the interests of the oligarchic groups he still loyally represents...

...And recent years have shown they are no longer even rivals, preferring to alternate in office rather than fight for power...

...We thought it rather first-rate ourselves, in conception if not execution, but perhaps Ron Ziegler knows more than we do...

...The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) details the success of this "democracy...

...After all, in most of these countries, elections are used merely to perpetuate the power of dictatorships or oligarchies and the electorate is offered no real choice at the polls...

...Since she had no access to the country's principal newspapers or radio and television stations—which are all controlled by the Liberals or Conservatives—she was forced to take her campaign into the depths of the countryside, visiting tiny villages rather than having the inhabitants travel to the nearest town to hear her...

...With the population growing annually by 3.2 per cent, per capita income has risen by 2.8 per cent per year...

...Tax reforms or nationalist sentiments about foreign investment would clearly be inappropriate for the new president...

...Its message was anti-establishment, and its tactics were blatantly populist...

...This year's April 21 elections were therefore the first occasion since 1946 on which separate Conservative and Liberal candidates sought the presidency...

...The formula agreed upon was the National Front: the two parties would share power for sixteen years with the presidency alternating in "elections" every four years...

...In other words, Colombian "democracy" hardly seems worth saving, but the alternatives of populism or militarism are far from enticing...

...She has already announced the start of her campaign for the 1978 elections and, at the age of forty, she is still at the beginning of her political career...

...In August, however, his forty-year-old daughter, Maria-Eugenia, returned from a year of medical treatment in the United States and took over the party...

...Supposedly, the parties are different: the Conservatives are described as right-wing, Catholic, and rural (squires and peasants, one should add...

...Peasant migration to the cities in search of employment swelled the slums and expanded the political class of urban poor...

...Since the ANAPO leadership was made up of Liberal and Conservative dissidents, many of these old politicos returned to their parties for the "crucial battle" rather than risk being permanently sidelined as "anti-establishment...

...In other words, today the cake is big enough to share...

...Morris H. Rubin June 1961...

...Lleras Restrepo's minority position thus lost him the party candidacy and the Liberals turned to former Foreign Minister Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, hardly a new name, since his father, Alfonso Lopez Pumarejo, had been president of Colombia from 1934 to 1938 and from 1942 to 1945...

...Colombia's Catholic Church is also by far the most conservative and powerful in Latin America: CardiAlan Riding, a specialist in Latin American affairs, is a roving correspondent throughout the area for The Financial Times, The Economist, and the BBC...

...But since the new income has been distributed along the same lines as the old, most people are in fact worse off...

...The Editors THE WATERGATE BREAK-IN We don't know who employed the five mysterious intruders, or why they were there—whether to plant a bug, or remove one, or merely to filch the small change from Larry O'Brien's petty cash box...

...If he is to modernize and transform Colombian society, Lopez Michelsen must be prepared to confront the new industrial elite, the old landed oligarchy, and, not least, the United States...

...Outside the two traditional parties, the ANAPO was without effective leadership for much of last year because of General Rojas's poor health...

...government has bolstered this effort with hundreds of millions of dollars of loans and assistance (Colombia receives more U.S...

...This is the nature of development throughout Latin America (except Cuba), but in "democratic" Colombia the people have supposedly endorsed this system through elections...

...The "democratic" system, then, has survived, but it is becoming dangerously inefficient as a transmission-belt of the country's problems and tensions...

...But these years—1958 to 1974—also coincided with the "great awakening" of the Latin American masses...

...nals operate at a presidential level and bishops reign over their dioceses like Italian Renaissance princes...

...Preceding these nominations, a long debate took place within and between the two old parties over whether the country could now risk a return to partisan politics...

...Similarly, in the countryside, Lopez Michelsen has been careful to avoid commitment to any serious agrarian reform, particularly in relation to land distribution...

...The Marxist nominee, Echeverry, won about 150,000 votes, while the Christian Democrat candidate received the support of fewer than 10,000 voters...

...At the level of the poor, however, identical conditions exist, with the migratory phenomenon creating similar populations of frustrated unemployed slum-dwellers...

...The other possibility is a military intervention...

...More than ever, in fact, the parties are divided by tradition rather than ideology...

...No one believed the official results, but no one could challenge them because the electoral board, the courts, and the entire government machine were controlled by the National Front...

...investors, with whom they are sharing the benefits of participation in the Andean Common Market...

...and the Liberals go at ten a.m...

...To catch the political mood of Colombia, one must think of the Nineteenth Century...

...In the late 1960s, a young woman senator, Maria-Eugenia Rojas, began to gain popularity among these urban poor...

...President Coolidge's veto of the Philippines' request for opportunity peacefully to voice their wishes on the momentous question of self-government is a starding example of the imperialistic trend of his Administration...

...The old saying puts it this way: "The Conservatives go to Mass at nine a.m...

...The National Front allies were stunned, but they quickly recovered...

...aid than any other Latin American country...

...Nevertheless, land invasions and clashes betweeen hungry peasants and the gunmen of large haciendas are becoming almost daily occurrences and the Lopez administration would be unwise to ignore these warning signals from the campo...

...Robert M. LaFollette, Jr...

...For example, Lopez Michelsen has promised to control Colombia's booming inflation rate, yet most economic indicators point to an acceleration of this inflation...

...The Conservatives and Liberals bring together the landed gentry and the urban elite, and, between them, they work things out...

...Faced by a united opposition, General Rojas was persuaded to leave the country quietly in May 1957...

...And with Rojas himself ailing and unable to campaign extensively, his party lost ground in the polls...

...Unless an author's name is appended, the material appeared as editorial comment...

...In April 1972, there were congressional elections and this time the National Front brought out their biggest guns to counter the ANAPO...

...She campaigned forcefully against the National Front and eventually persuaded Congress to lift a political ban against her father, General Rojas, imposed after he was exiled in 1957...

...And particularly among the urban poor, her talents as an anti-establishment orator were effectively used...

...What escape routes remain for Colombia now...

...Lleras Camargo was the first National Front president between 1958 and 1962...

...May 1927 PLAGUED LATIN AMERICA Latin America is mortally sick because of its own failures—and our neglect...

...But then, behind this "democratic" facade, economic, social, and even political conditions in Colombia are probably worse than in many countries that have suffered successions of military or civilian dictatorships...

...The "young" Lopez, now sixty years old, sees himself as a reformer and has even dared to propose legal divorce for civil marriages (of which there are few in Colombia...

...Abstentionism grew rapidly, disturbances by student sympathizers of the Castro regime became more frequent, and several guerrilla groups emerged and survived despite constant counterinsurgency campaigns...

...Not only were the traditional parties running extreme rightist and centrist candidates respectively, but there were also nominees of the "anti-establishment" left, the Christian left, and the extreme left...

...So is Colombian democracy really worth saving...

...And this he is clearly unwilling to do...

...He was so distasteful to the right of traditional Colombian conservatism that many normal supporters of the party were frightened away...

...The Conservatives picked an unrepentant right-winger as their candidate, Alvaro Gomez Hurtado, whose father, Laureano Gomez, was responsible for much of La Violencia during his 1950-1953 presidency...

...The National Front undoubtedly helped heal the wounds of the civil war by depoliticizing the small upper and middle classes who had traditionally squabbled for power...

...The standard of living is described as "superior" for five per cent, "average" for fifteen per cent, "at survival level" for fifty-five per cent, and "sub-human" for twenty-five per cent...