La Violencia in Colombia

Abstract

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.