Political Timeline

History

With almost two hundred years of independence from Spanish colonies, Colombia has gone through several transformations in order to arrive at the political system it has today.

1811-

The conquest of South American territory is organized by colonial divisions of cities in which viceroys maintain a local government. Tired of discrimination and abuse, the Criollo population begins to fight for autonomy of their land, one city at a time. On November 11, 1811 the province of Cartagena was the first territory of the New Granada to declare independence.

1813-

The provinces of Cundinamarca, Antioquia, Neiva and Tunja achieve their independence, thus allowing for the first period of independence of the New Granada as a whole. The idealistic differences of the Criollos turned a war of independence into a civil war, which lasted for two more years.

1815-

Though there are still tumults in Spain after the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814, Spanish king Fernando VII orders the reconquest of New Granada and sends 10,000 soldiers under the command of Pablo Morillo. Tired of fighting, the Criollos quickly gave up. Most of the territory was taken back by the Spaniards, except for the Eastern Plains, where Criollo armies gathered to strengthen their forces. Simón Bolívar took command and was even helped by the English Legion, which contributed with weapons and an army of over 5,000 men.

1819-

The victory of the battle of Boyacá on August 7, 1819 marked the definite defeat of the Spanish Army. It was this battle that served as inspiration for the following independence campaigns in Venezuela, Quito, Peru and high Peru. The Great Colombia was formed in this same year, containing the territories of Venezuela (at which point owned what is now Panama), Colombia and Ecuador. Since some of the territory was still under Spanish command, Bolívar left vice president Francisco de Paula Santander at the new capital, Santa fe de Bogota, in charge and took for the battle field.

1830-

After years of conflict between followers of Bolívar who wanted the leader to have an almost monarchic power and the followers of Santander who wanted a federal government, the Great Colombia began to crack. Venezuela and Ecuador declared independence from the Great Colombia, which was left only with the territory that is currently Colombia and Panama.

1832-

The end of The Great Colombia resulted in the creation of a new country, the Republic of New Granada. The first president of the Unitarian Republic was Santander.

1843-

A new Constitution for the Republic turns it into an Authoritative Regime in which president General Pedro Alcántara Herrán draws political power to himself in order to take control of the national population, which at the moment was going through its first civil war, the War of the Supremes.

1853-

Once again the Constitution is changed, now into a federal regime in which slavery is eliminated and the right to vote is given to all men older than 21 years of age. Administrative and religious freedom were also institutionalized, as a separation of church and state came about. General José María Obando was elected president with the support of the artisans, who were hopping he would adopt economic reforms that would protect the industry, however once in power he declared he would proceed with neoliberal measures.

1854-

On April 17 civil war exploded between neoliberals and protectionists. Constitutionalists establish the capital in Ibagué temporarily but on December 4 they took back the capital and after bloody battles a new government is installed with the Panameñan José de Obaldia. The general who was supporting the artisans in the war and the former president, Obando, were trialed in Congress. Close to two thousand artisans were banished to Panamá where they died in shameful conditions.

1886-

A new constitution finally cancels out federalism in the now called Republic of Colombia, though the political scene was as unstable as ever. A movement of “regeneration” is initiated by president Nuñez, and persecution to radicals falls in place, bringing another civil war named Thousand Days Civil War (1899-1902).

1903-

Just as Colombians were beginning to recover from the last civil war, came the most traumatizing event of the century for the nation: the separation of Panamá, which was encouraged and coordinated by the United States since they bought the Panama Canal from the French and needed some of the land in Colombia to finish the project.

1921-

With a political ambiance relatively stable and progress in place, the Colombian government managed to negotiate with the United States over a long period of time and several threats from the northern country to take back what they had done at the Canal. The States had demanded special privileges to its oil companies to exploit the Colombian product and now they finally rectified the 6 of April treaty, giving Colombia $25 million as indemnification for the lost of Panamá.

1928-

As one of the “banana republics” of Latin America, Colombia produced much of its bananas under de administration of the United States based United Fruit (currently Chiquita Banana). On November 12, 1928 a worker strike broke out on the Caribbean coast and national armies were sent in to control the over 11,000 United Fruit workers protesting. Under the command of General Carlos Cortés Vargas, who in turn is said to have acted under the petition of United Fruit, the army opened fire on the crowd, killing a number of people that was never officially determined. As a result of the scandal, president Miguel Abadía Méndez was voted out of office in 1930. Gabriel García Márquez’s Nobel Price winning novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” describes a version of the event as a massacre of 3,000 people.

1948-

A new liberal wave led by presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was causing tumult in the conservative government of Mariano Ospina. On April 9, 1948 Gaitán was walking in the city at lunch time when a man came up to him and shot a fatal bullet into the liberal leader. This single event untied a series of conflicts that lasted until the early 1950s; the period, known as “The Violence” began that same night with riots in Bogotá that would later on be named “El Bogotazo”. Violence took over the streets of the Colombian capital as robberies, riots and a blood bath transformed the city, ending a few days later with the spread of the rebellious mood to the rest of the country.

1953-

After five years of guerrillas fighting the conservative party and the government, and with over two hundred thousand deaths as a result of the violence, the General Gustavo Rojas organizes a coup d’etat to throw out president Laureano Gómez, and after taking over the power he grants amnesty to over five thousand liberal guerrilleros who in return drop their weapons.

1958–

Rojas’ dictatorship, filled with police abuse, media censorship and raw violence, came to an end as the people of Colombia elected Alberto Lleras as the new president and leader of the National Front, a new political alliance of the liberal and conservative party. After nine years the National Congress is reinstituted. Although “The Violence” came to an end, organized guerrilla groups began to develop.

1964–

What had started as a small communist guerrilla in 1949 grew stronger throughout “The Violence” years, backed by the communist party and idealistic intellectuals who were following the movement in Latin America. By 1964 the government could no longer ignore the power and influence of this group, so it sent the Colombian National Army to attack the “independent republics” they had created. Though the army managed to disperse the communists, they later came together again as the Southern Bloc and then renamed themselves as “Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia”, FARC. Now a days FARC has between 15,000 and 18,000 men, some of which were recruited as teenagers and look at the organization as a way of escaping poverty rather than an ideological group.

1974–

Liberal presidential candidate Alfonso López Michelsen wins the first free elections since 1958 by a margin of three million votes. Due to the new monetary units – UPAC – the previous president had created in order to give Colombians housing mortgages, an inflation puts the economy at risk and Michelsen declares the first constitutional emergency economic crisis. His government eventually managed to reactivate the economy and implement important reforms such as divorce.

1983–

The newly elected conservative president Belisario Betancur initiates peace talks with representatives of FARC. They agree to cease fire, and even though in two years the FARC would present a new political party as part of the reintegration to civil and legal life, in another year armed conflict would again take place. 1986 – The drug cartels that have been increasingly taking over political and economical power in the country cross the line when the chief of the Medellín cartel, Pablo Escobar, orders the death of Guillermo Cano, director of the newspaper El Espectador. The event unleashes a war against drug traffic, which actually thrives throughout the 80s and 90s.

1994–

The liberal presidential candidate Ernesto Samper win the election, and from the time the results are given his opponent brings to light cassettes with recordings that implicate Samper’s campaign to have been funded by drug cartels. The scandal, later dubbed “Process 8,000”, takes two years to resolve, and after countless investigations, interrogations and many murders, Samper is taken off the hook in 1996.

2002–

The independent liberal candidate Álvaro Uribe wins the presidential election by promising to put military pressure on the biggest guerrilla organization in the country, FARC. The security policy implemented by Uribe keeps the public happy. In 2004 governmental data shows that in two years homicides, kidnappings and terrorist attacks in Colombia have decreased by 50%. Some think Uribe is a bit authoritarian, since he supported a congressional modification in the constitution to introduce reelection. He was reelected in 2006 and is currently serving as president until 2008.