Louis Proyect wrote: > > The two parties saw each other as rivals, but their real rival were the > popular classes. The Liberals sought to modernize the state and reduce the > influence of the Catholic Church, while the Conservatives sought to > maintain the status quo. No matter how much they disagreed with each other, > even to the point of resorting to arms, they agreed on the big question, > which was how to exploit Colombia's agricultural wealth without allowing > the mass of peasants ownership or control over the land, or the right to > share in its benefits. > The Conservatives and Liberals ruled and still rule to some extent like the PRI in Mexico as corporatist parties aiming to unify all classes in society under their umbrella through a mixture of corruption, intimidation, violence and patronage. I would view the Colombian Liberal and Conservative parties as different but no necessarily opposing wings of the ruling class; the conservatives being the party of the aristocracy and old elite and the Liberals being the neo-liberals. > The fundamental contradiction in Latin American capitalism is this: > Capitalist agriculture for the export market requires preservation of the > hacienda system, which provides the social base for the Conservative Party > and semifeudal reaction. On the other hand, the modern state requires tax > revenues and democratic participation from a mass social base of small > proprietors, such as the shopkeepers and peasants who provided the shock > troops of the French Revolution. Since Colombia, and no other Latin > American country, can resolve this contradiction, tensions persist and > periodically erupt in bloody conflicts where the two bourgeois parties > become surrogates for deeper class antagonisms. > > The other important factor was the growth of suburbs and the increased > separation between workplace and home. Restaurants cropped up in factory > and downtown financial districts, where coffee drinking became part of an > everyday ritual to get the depressed and alienated worker through the day, > just as cocaine use became widespread on lunch breaks in the Wall Street > area during the 1980s. > Very much so.You can see street vendors with broomsticks with coffee pots hanging off of them walking around downtown Bogota at lunch. This counter-revolution resulted in the murder of 300,000 people, one of > the great bloodbaths of Latin American history. Was this bloodbath > necessary? One of the things that is difficult to gauge in Colombia is the > extent to which such excesses are a function of bourgeois > "over-corrections" such as the kind that ideological frenzy often leads to. > Would Colombia have been better off if the Conservatives had been open to > the idea of allowing Gaitán's populism to prevail? Certainly he did not > intend to abolish the capitalist system, but only to eradicate some of the > more glaring injustices. In this, he was no different than Guatemala's > Arbenz, or any other middle-class reformer who has emerged in the past > half-century. Suffice it to say that right-wing anticommunism involves a > level of fanaticism that once unleashed is difficult to bottle back up like > a genie. When the history of this barbarian epoch is finally written, > anticommunist fundamentalism will be recorded as much more demonic and > violent than anything ever encountered in the middle ages. I would argue that the La Violencia period has never really ended. To some extent La Violencia was a product of conditions such as agrarian problems, family and caste rivalries and disputes,private armies, banditry, that made Colombia ripe for a social explosion. Most of the violence was plain looting and lacked political content. La Violencia strengthened the hand of the dominant parties as they were able to play the peasants off against one another; Liberals killing Conservatives and vice versa. There are few examples of cross-class violence e.g.Liberal peasants attacking Liberal landlords. The main cause and consequence of La Violencia was a lack of organization among the peasantry. The peasantry was weak and divided as a class and this played itself out during La Violencia. Most of the violence was rural and didn't really disrupt the national economy. Wealthy landowners remained safe in the cities. > > In setting the context for Colombian politics today, we must point out that > today's most powerful guerrilla group in Colombia, the FARC, is a product > of this period. Yes, but it grew during the National Front(1955-74) period when the two parties had an absolute monopoly on all aspects of political life. All other parties were banned, thus dissidents had to resort to armed and clandestine struggle to press their demands. This situation is very much alive today as any group such as the UP or M-19 trying to insert itself into Colombian political life is immediately wiped out through violence making violence the only means of pressing the class struggle. Sam Pawlett
