The growth of drug trafficking and guerrilla warfare
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The process of change brought with it new political, economic, and social problems, which stemmed from uneven development, unequal gains, and a growing perception that the benefits of higher income were not widely shared. Since 1974 limited progress has been made on those issues; however, the Colombian economy has grown despite pervasive violence, fed both by guerrilla insurgencies and traffic in narcotics.
As the National Front era was ending, a new problem surfaced in Colombia—narcotics. The country’s role as a supplier in the international drug market developed rapidly following the major interdiction efforts launched by officials in Mexico in 1975. Colombia soon was providing as much as seven-tenths of the marijuana being imported into the United States. Using the profits from marijuana, drug leaders—especially from Medellín—diversified to cocaine trafficking, and shipments grew from individuals carrying small amounts to large quantities on boats and low-flying airplanes. Two major Mafia-like organizations—dubbed drug cartels—evolved from this illicit, lucrative trade: the first in Medellín, led by Pablo Escobar, and the second in Cali.
In the political sphere the transition from National Front to moderate political competition between Liberals and Conservatives in 1974 was reasonably smooth. Alfonso López Michelsen of the Liberal Party served his four-year term as president (1974–78) and handed power to Julio César Turbay Ayala, a centrist Liberal. Low rates of voter participation continued, keeping alive fears that military alternatives to democratic elections might be sought from the right or the left.
In 1982, however, the Liberal vote was split, and Belisario Betancur Cuartas, the Conservative candidate, was elected president. His presidency was marred by extremes of violence that tested Colombia’s long-term commitment to democracy. In 1984 individuals linked to the international drug trade assassinated the minister of justice. The next year M-19 guerrillas entered the Palace of Justice in Bogotá and took scores of hostages; when the military assaulted the building, some 100 people were killed, including half of the Supreme Court judges. These events pointed to an ominous growth in the power of drug traffickers and to an apparent inability of the government to control terrorist activities.
William Paul McGreeveyBetancur attempted to end guerrilla violence. In November 1982 he signed a law granting amnesty to almost all insurgents, and in the following years he was able to convince the FARC and the M-19 to enter into cease-fire agreements. At the same time there was an increase in vigilante groups in the country, which, depending on one’s point of view, were called either “self-defense” or “paramilitary” organizations. In many cases these groups represented attempts by landowners to protect themselves from guerrillas. Quite often the Colombian army helped equip and train the groups, which existed within the law and had been encouraged by the government since the 1960s.
The presidency of Virgilio Barco Vargas, a former mayor of Bogotá, began in August 1986 with hopes of improving civil order, but instead guerrilla groups became more active than ever, and paramilitary groups caused even more deaths than the leftist insurgents. Drug groups, especially the Medellín cartel, also began using terror to increase their bargaining power with the government. As a result, homicide became the leading cause of death in the country and 1989 was the most violent year in Colombia’s brutal history, with more deaths per capita from violence than during any year of La Violencia.
Barco’s other main challenge was to reverse the long-term decline in the rate of economic growth, which was confounded by low efficiency in manufacturing. The discovery in 1985 of a large petroleum reserve was a major boost toward improving the economy and reducing Colombia’s dependence on external energy sources.
The drug trade, while always a political problem, was at times an economic asset, making annual trade balances positive when they were negative for legal goods. Further, as drug dealers became wealthier, they spent money refining cocaine, organizing groups for protection, and constructing buildings (both residential and commercial), ironically benefiting more Colombians than the legitimate economy.
In the 1990 presidential campaign, three presidential candidates, including the poll-leading Liberal Luis Carlos Galán, and hundreds of other people were killed by drug traffickers in a backlash against tougher drug-trade policies. Despite threats of terrorism, however, about half of the population voted in the peaceful May election, which was won by former finance minister and hard-line anti-drug candidate César Gaviria Trujillo of the Liberal Party.
During the Gaviria years the question of continuing violence was addressed more than ever before. The president played a leading role by calling a constituent assembly, which replaced the 1886 constitution with the constitution of 1991; negotiating with the FARC and ELN, especially in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1991 and in Tlaxcala, Mexico, in 1992; and striking plea-bargain agreements with drug cartel chiefs and with paramilitary leaders.
The constitutional changes were significant, at least on paper. Presidents, who were limited to one term, were to be elected by an absolute majority, with a second-round vote if need be. The Senate was to be elected by a national constituency, which in theory gave minority parties a chance to elect a senator with only 1 percent of the vote. New electoral rights (including initiative and recall) were instituted, and a new National Prosecutor’s Office (Fiscalía) was set up to make the Colombian prosecutorial system more like that of the United States.
Gaviria’s negotiations with the guerrilla groups yielded no agreements. Plea bargaining did lead to the surrender of most leaders of the Medellín drug group, although the most notable one, Pablo Escobar, escaped after only 13 months in jail. (Following an extensive manhunt, Escobar was killed soon afterward by government forces.) Statistics indicate that violent activities were as common at the end of the Gaviria years as they were previously, despite the attempts to negotiate peace.
The Gaviria government continued the economic opening begun by Barco. In keeping with the neoliberal mood throughout Latin America, the Colombians began a new economic order, with lower tariffs on imports, fewer subsidies for the poor, and a lower role of the government in the economy. The fact that Colombia privatized fewer state-run industries than did other Latin American countries did not indicate a lower enthusiasm for the neoliberal order; rather, it reflected a lower level of initial governmental ownership.
The 1994 presidential election, the first under the new constitution, was won in the second round by Ernesto Samper Pizano, a Liberal, over the Conservative candidate, Andrés Pastrana. Samper’s entire term was coloured by the accusation made by Pastrana that he had an audiotape of Samper advisers bargaining with representatives of the Cali drug mafia for campaign contributions. Ironically, during the Samper presidency the leaders of the Cali cartel surrendered, were tried, and were sent to jail.
Although Congress later refused to impeach Samper, he was considered guilty by the extralegal guerrillas and paramilitary units and by the U.S. government. Violence increased over previous levels, and the paramilitary groups, under the leadership of Carlos Castaño, founded a national organization called the United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia), who emblazoned their group’s initials (AUC) across their battle fatigues but typically wore ski masks to conceal their identities.
The 1998 election was won by Andrés Pastrana, whose first years in office included controversial attempts to negotiate with the FARC and the ELN, such as granting them de facto control over a large portion of the southern state of Caquetá. Also during that period the Colombian economy entered its worst recession since the Great Depression.
Harvey F. KlineColombia in the 21st century
In 2000 the U.S. Congress approved a controversial aid program that supplied Colombia with military assistance to help control the cocaine trade. The FARC continued to expand coca production, however, and economic uncertainties and the spectre of political violence remained major issues at the end of Pastrana’s term. Álvaro Uribe Vélez, an independent, was elected president in 2002 on promises to end the long-standing and violent conflict with guerrilla groups and restore security to the country. In December 2003 a peace agreement was negotiated between the government and the AUC, and by 2004 AUC members had disarmed. Some members of the FARC and the ELN gave up their weapons as well in exchange for a “lighter punishment.” Uribe was reelected in 2006.
Overall, Uribe’s intensive security operations against the FARC were productive, as the number of crimes, kidnappings, and terrorist attacks in Colombia significantly decreased during his tenure. Political tensions in the region escalated in 2008 when the Colombian military crossed the border into Ecuador to raid a FARC encampment. Uribe was constitutionally barred from running for a third consecutive term, but the June 2010 presidential election to replace him was won by Juan Manuel Santos—the minister of defense from 2006 to 2009, who was one of the principal founders of the Social Party of National Unity (Partido Social de Unidad Nacional), which was created by supporters of Uribe, most of whom, like Uribe, had left the Liberal Party. In July 2010 relations with Colombia were severed by Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chávez in response to Colombian allegations that Venezuela was harbouring FARC rebels. However, bilateral relations were restarted after a conciliatory meeting between Santos and Chávez in August. In September the FARC suffered a major blow when one of its top leaders, best known by his nom de guerre, Mono Jojoy (but also known as Jorge Briceño or Luis Suárez), was killed in a military air strike.
In February 2011 the FARC announced that it would cease kidnapping civilians for ransom to finance its activities. In April it released the last 10 policemen or soldiers it had been holding (some of them for as long as 14 years). Peace talks between the government and the FARC began in Norway in August and were continued in Havana in October. At the start of those talks, the FARC had initiated a unilateral cease-fire; however, there were accusations that the cease-fire was violated by the FARC several times. A formal announcement of the end of the cease-fire came in January 2013, followed in a matter of days by the kidnapping of a pair of policemen. Nevertheless, the peace talks continued, though without a bilateral cease-fire they came under heavy criticism from conservative sectors of Colombian society—including former president Uribe. The talks were a pivotal issue in the 2014 presidential campaign, which resulted in Santos’s victory in a June runoff election. He captured about 51 percent of the vote to defeat rightist Oscar Ivan Zuluaga (the winner of the first round of voting), who advocated forcing the FARC’s hand for a time and had proposed suspending the talks if the FARC did not cease fighting and end its criminal activity. Talks were suspended in mid-November 2014 when a high-ranking army officer was kidnapped (along with two other people) by the guerrilla group, but they resumed immediately when the FARC released him some two weeks later. On December 20 the FARC initiated another unilateral cease-fire, which was still holding in mid-January 2015 when Santos directed negotiators in Havana to open discussions regarding a bilateral cease-fire.
Although Santos refrained from declaring a bilateral cease-fire in response to the FARC’s cease-fire, he did order a cessation of bombing of rebel camps. However, he resumed bombing after FARC guerrillas attacked an army patrol in the department of Cauca in mid-April, killing 11 troops. A combined air and ground operation by government forces on May 21 resulted in the deaths of 26 guerrillas, prompting FARC to rescind its cease-fire, though the organization said that it remained committed to negotiations.
By July both sides were once again extending olive branches, with the FARC declaring a monthlong cease-fire that was matched by the government scaling back military operations, including initiating another moratorium on bombing. The FARC countered in August with an open-ended extension of its cease-fire. September 23 brought the earthshaking announcement by Santos and FARC negotiators, meeting in Havana, that they had pledged to reach a final peace agreement within six months. Important details remained to worked out, but several long-standing points of contention had been resolved, most notably a mutually satisfactory formula for administering justice for war-related crimes.
In the same week, the government resolved what had been an escalating dispute with Venezuela. In August 2015 the Venezuelan government had closed the country’s border with Colombia and deported some 1,500 Colombians whom it had accused of involvement in smuggling subsidized Venezuelan goods into Colombia for sale. Tensions between the neighbouring countries had risen quickly, and both had withdrawn their ambassadors before a meeting between Santos and Venezuelan Pres. Nicolás Maduro resulted in steps toward normalizing relations.
In June 2016 in Havana, Santos and Rodrigo Londoño (“Timoleón Jiménez” or “Timochenko”), the FARC’s leader since November 2011, signed a permanent cease-fire agreement, laying the groundwork for the final peace treaty. The agreement called for FARC forces to demobilize under United Nations (UN) monitoring within 180 days of the final treaty’s signing. Although details remained to be ironed out in the final treaty, the country’s constitutional court ruled in July that the treaty could be put to the people for approval in a referendum. Meanwhile, a smaller rebel group, the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional; ELN), continued its armed struggle against the government.
Less than a week after Santos had signed a historic final peace agreement with the FARC on September 26, 2016, the Colombian electorate shockingly rejected the agreement by the narrowest of margins (50.21 percent to 49.78 percent) in a plebiscite on October 2, 2016. “No” voters, led by former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez, generally cited what they considered to be the too-lenient terms for the FARC rebels as the reason for their opposition. The defeat of the referendum was a major blow to Santos, who had largely staked his presidency on brokering the peace agreement. Both the government and the FARC announced that they would continue to honour the cease-fire that was already in place as they prepared to turn to further negotiations.
In late November a renegotiated accord, which included many changes that had been demanded by opposition leaders, was ratified by the House of Representatives and the Senate (both of which were dominated by Santos’s ruling coalition). However, the opposition denounced the accord, which they had not been allowed to review and which failed to include some of their key proposals. Nonetheless, the process by which FARC guerrillas were to concentrate in some 20 transition zones and turn over their weapons to UN monitors was largely peacefully under way at the beginning of 2017.
On August 15, 2017, the Colombian government declared an official end to its conflict with the FARC as the last of the group’s accessible weapons (some 900 weapons remained in caches in remote areas) were turned over to UN representatives. In all, more than 8,100 guns and 1.3 million cartridges had been decommissioned. The weapons were to be melted down to be recast as three peace memorials to be located in Colombia and Havana and at the UN headquarters in New York City. The FARC moved forward with its transformation into a political party that was guaranteed 10 unelected seats in the Colombian legislature until 2026. In November FARC leader Londoño announced that he would run for president in 2018. In March 2018, however, he ended his candidacy, citing ill health.
For its part, the ELN had begun peace negotiations with the Colombian government in Ecuador in February 2017. In October the two sides undertook a temporary cease-fire.
In early November 2017 Colombia agreed to a deal with the UN that provided for payments to farmers to grow crops such as coffee or cacao rather than coca, the raw material of cocaine. Only days after the signing of the agreement, Colombian police seized some 12 tons of cocaine that had been buried at four banana plantations. The interdiction was the largest drug seizure in Colombian history.
In elections for the federal legislature in March 2018, no party was able to gain a clear majority in either chamber. The Democratic Center Party (DC), founded by Uribe, took the most seats in the 108-seat Senate with 19, followed by Radical Change with 16 seats, the Colombian Conservative Party with 15, and the Colombian Liberal Party and the Social Party of National Unity with 14 each. The Colombian Liberal Party finished first with 35 seats in the 172-seat House, ahead of DC, which won 32 seats, Radical Change with 30 seats, the Social Party of National Unity with 25 seats, and the Conservative Party with 21 seats. Although its share of the vote in both chambers was negligible, the FARC was guaranteed 5 seats in both bodies.
More than 19 million Colombians voted in the presidential election in May, the largest turnout in some two decades. Santos was constitutionally prohibited from running for another term. Former senator Iván Duque, who had been handpicked by Uribe to represent the CD, finished first in the crowded field with about 39 percent of the vote, short of the 50 percent needed to prevent a runoff. His commitment to restructuring the peace agreement with the FARC stood in marked contrast to the wholehearted support for the agreement of former Bogotá mayor Gustavo Petro, who finished second in the polling with some 25 percent of the vote, just ahead of former Medellín mayor Sergio Fajardo, who tallied about 24 percent. With the leftist Petro, a onetime member of M-19, set to meet conservative Duque in the June runoff, Colombians were offered a choice of political polar opposites.
When voters returned to the polls on June 17, they handed a sweeping victory to Duque, who captured some 54 percent of the vote, compared with about 42 percent for Petro. The runoff predictably proved to be divisive, but the president-elect promised to heal divisions, saying, “I will not govern with hatred.” His pledge to revamp the peace agreement, however, left many Colombians anxious. Nonetheless, Petro accepted the election result, as did the FARC’s Londoño.
After Duque assumed the presidency, he was accused of half-heartedly carrying out the peace process and failing to protect the former FARC rebels (more than 200 of whom were killed) as well as political opponents (a number of whom also became murder victims). His critics also argued that Duque’s administration had failed to either facilitate the reintegration of the former rebels into Colombian society or to implement the necessary agricultural reform. Accusations of corruption also dogged Duque and his administration, including the allegation that his presidential campaign had accepted financial contributions from drug traffickers.
In November 2019 Colombians took to the streets en masse to demand action on an array of issues, ranging from demands for protection for political activists to health care and education reform. Although Duque appeared willing to take on these issues, his efforts to do so were forestalled by the outbreak of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 global pandemic of 2020. Duque was praised for his science-based approach to combating the public health emergency, but it was the country’s mayors who took the lead in implementing lockdown and social-distancing measures aimed at slowing the spread of the virus. Cases of COVID-19, the often deadly disease caused by the virus, began climbing in Colombia in June 2020 and generally remained on the rise for the next year. By June 2021 nearly 3.8 million cases of COVID-19 had been recorded in the country, and more than 95,000 Colombians had died of causes related to the disease.
At the end of April 2021, in violation of pandemic lockdown orders, Colombians took to the streets en masse to protest a plan by Duque for tax reform that would have squeezed the middle and working classes. In the weeks that followed, the demonstrations grew to include demands for an overhaul of the health care system, an end to police violence, and the provision of a guaranteed minimum income. Demonstrators established roadblocks that impeded the movement of food and supplies, which caused shortages in some parts of the country. Moreover, violence erupted that resulted in the loss of dozens of lives.
Central to these demonstrations was widespread disenchantment with Colombia’s growing income-inequality gap, which had been exacerbated by economic consequences of the pandemic and which would play a pivotal role in the country’s presidential election in 2022. In the first round of voting in May, two nontraditional politicians emerged from a field of six presidential candidates after none of the six received the 50 percent of votes required to preclude a second round of voting. Gustavo Petro, the former mayor of Bogotá and a onetime member of the M-19 rebel group, finished atop the field in the first round, followed by Rodolfo Hernández, a populist conservative millionaire, who became Petro’s opponent in the June runoff election. Petro, who stood to become the first leftist to lead Colombia in the country’s history, advocated greater government involvement in a greener, more equitable economy that would shift its emphasis from oil exploration to tourism and knowledge-based industries. His critics claimed that he would lead Colombia down what they characterized as a disastrous road toward Cuban- or Venezuelan-style socialism. Although conventional wisdom held that the runoff would be an exceptionally tight contest, Petro won convincingly, capturing more than 50 percent of the vote, compared with just over 47 percent for Hernández. Petro’s running mate, Francia Márquez, was to be the first Black woman to serve as Colombia’s vice president.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica