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La Violencia in Colombia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Norman A. Bailey*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Queens College of the City University of New York

Extract

For the past twenty years the South American republic of Colombia has suffered from a social phenomenon of such magnitude that it has defied not only the contemporary jargon of sociologists and political scientists but even the time-honored terminology of insurrection, rebellion, riot and revolution. Perhaps because the only element of this phenomenon that all observers can agree upon is the fact that it is and has been eminently violent, it has come to be called simply “la violencia,” or “The Violence.”

The phenomenon known as la violencia never has been completely absent from Colombia since 1946, but it has had two periods of particular virulence, the first between 1948 and 1953 affecting the departments of Tolima, Boyacá, Cundinamarca, Antioquia, Valle, Caldas, Cauca, Santander del Sur, Arauca, Huila, Chocó, Caquetá, Meta, Casanare, Vichada and Bolívar, that is, the entire country with the exception of parts of the Atlantic coast and the southernmost department of Nariño.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1967

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Footnotes

*

This paper was delivered as the closing address of the Twelfth Annual Meetings of the Pacific Coast Council on Latin America, at San Fernando Valley State College, Northndge, California, October 20-22, 1966. The field research was done in Colombia during 1963, on a Social Science Research Council grant.

References

1 Mons. Germán Guzmán, Orlando Fals Borda and Eduardo Umaña Luna, La violencia en Colombia, 2 vols. (Bogotá: Ediciones Tercer Mundo, 1962 & 1964), vol. I, ch. XI and vol. II, Part III, chapter 2.

2 Guzmán, et. al., La violencia, I, 293-94. See also Departamento del Tolima, Secretaría de Agricultura, La violencia en el Tolima (Ibagué: Imprenta Departamental, 1958).

3 Guzmán, et. al., La violencia, I, 139.

4 Edition of September 30, 1962.

5 For general background on the modern period, see Germán Arciniegas, The State of Latin America (1952); Vernon Lee Fluharty, Dance of the Millions (1957); John D. Martz, Colombia (1962); Luis López de Mesa, Escrutinio sociológico de la historia colombiana (1955), and Eduardo Santa, Sociología política de Colombia (1955).

6 See, for example, Betancur, Belísario, Colombia cara a cara (Bogotá: Ediciones Tercer Mundo, 1961)Google Scholar and Gómez, Laureano, Comentarios a un régimen (Bogotá: Editorial Minerva, 3rd ed., 1934).Google Scholar

7 See Guzmán, et al., La violencia, II, Part I; Isaza, Eduardo Franco, Las guerrillas del llano (Bogotá: Distribuidores Librería Mundial, 1959 Google Scholar; Ochoa, Gustavo Sierra, Las guerrillas en los llanos orientales (Manizales, 1954)Google Scholar, and Fidelis, Testis, El basilisco en acción o los crímenes del bandolerismo (Medellín: Tipografía Olympia, 2nd ed., 1953).Google Scholar

8 Ramírez, Gonzalo Canal, Nueve de abril 1948 (Bogotá: Editorial Cahur, 1948).Google Scholar See also Osorio, Abraham T., ¿Por qué mataron a Gaitán? (Bogotá: Editorial Minerva, 2nd ed., 1949)).Google Scholar

9 Borda, Orlando Fals, Campesinos de los Andes (Bogotá: Editorial Iqueima, 1961)Google Scholar and Arango, Euclides Jaramillo, Un campesino sin regreso (Medellín: Editorial Bedout, 1959).Google Scholar

10 Guzman, et. al, La violencia I, 276

11 Comité Central del Partido Comunista en Colombia, Treinta años de lucha del partido comunista en Colombia (Bogotá: Ediciones Paz y Socialismo, 1960). See also Rojas, José María Nieto, La batalla contra el comunismo en Colombia (Bogotá: Empresa Nacional de Publicaciones, 1956).Google Scholar

12 See Testis Fidelis, El basilisco, Belisario Betancur, Colombia cara a cara and others.

13 See Comité Central del Partido Comunista, Treinta años de lucha, mentioned in note 11.

14 See, for example, Aristizábal, Horacio Gómez, Teoría Gorgona (Bogotá: Editorial Iqueima, 1962).Google Scholar

15 Guzmán, et. al, La violencia I, ch. XIII.

16 Martínez, Fernando Guillen, Raíz y futuro de la revolución (Bogotá: Ediciones Tercer Mundo, 1963).Google Scholar

17 Guillen Martínez, Raíz y futuro, p. 185.

18 Guillen Martínez, Raíz y futuro, pp. 179-180.

19 Guillen Martínez, Raíz y futuro, p. 187.