Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T02:50:43.106Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

La Violencia Revisited: the Clientelist Bases of Political Violence in Colombia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Steffen W. Schmidt
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Lying at the heart of the problem in analyzing Colombian violence is the relative poverty of conceptual frameworks not only for dealing with violence but with the institutions and processes and traditions which form the social environment of the society. In the following pages I shall argue that a dialectic between violence and patron-client relations offers a useful analytical framework. The first part will deal with the historical dynamics of Colombian politics. In part two, patron-client politics will be looked at in a small town setting.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , May 1974 , pp. 97 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The literature on La Violencia is abundant, but very uneven in both approaches and analytical clarity. The most obtuse study is the 761-page dissertation by Frances, A. S. entitled Structural and Anticipatory Dimensions of Violent Social Conflict (University of Pittsburgh, 1967),Google Scholar which despite its pretentious length and theoretical title is primarily a history of Colombia, a review of conflict theory and finally a jargon-filled conclusion which ends with the sentence: ‘But the motivation of the elites to led (sic) the peasantry into internal war belongs to the anticipatory domain, in the present (sic) of an all pervading cultural back. ground, which we have called the Hispanic Catholic Ethic’ (p. 761). A useful source book is the two-volume study La Violencia en Colombia by GermanGuzman Campos, Orlandos Fals Borda and Eduardo Limana Luna (Bogota, Tercer Mundo, vol. I, 1962, vol. 11, 1964). See also Williamson, Robert G., ‘Toward a Theory of Political Violence: The Case of Rural Colombia’, Western Political Quarterly, 28 (03 1965)Google Scholar and Richard, Weinert, ‘Violence in Pre-Modern Societies; Rural Colombia’, American Political Science Review Vol. 60, No. 2 (06 1966).Google Scholar

2 An excellent description of one of the leaders of Liberal radicalism is the recently published Gustavo, Rodriguez, Santo: Acosta Caudillo dcl Radicalismo (Bogotá, Biblioteca Colombiana de Cultura, 1972).Google Scholar

3 J. Leon Helguera has brought together some very useful primary material on the period: The Problem of Liberalism Versus Conservatism in Colombia: 1849–1885’, in Pike, Fredrick B. (ed.), Latin American History Select Problems (New York, Harcourt Brace & World, 1969). The descriptions of bands roaming through countryside and cities, intimidating their political opponents, and the class-based tensions separating the cachacos and los de ruana, leave little doubt about the intensity of the conflict.Google Scholar

4 It is important to point out that despite several efforts to form third parties, notably Gaitán‧s in the 1940s, López Michelsen‧s in the 1960s and Rojas Pinilla‧s in the 1970s, these have been short-lived ‧and both their leaders and their following moved into one of the two dominant groups.

5 Patron-client relations are ‘… an exchange relationship between roles – may be defined as a special case of dyadic (two-person) ties, involving largely instrumental friendship in which an individual of higher socio-economic status (patron) uses his own influence and resources to provide protection and/or benefits for a person of lower status (client) who, for his part, reciprocates by offering general support and assistance, including personal services, to the patron ‘. Scott, James C., Patron-Client Politics and Political Change in South-east Asia’ American Political Science Review Vol. 66, No. 1 (03 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 The exchange resources may be cash credir, protection, work, gifts and education from the patron, usually a landlord, and loyalty, work, the vote and armed protection from the client, usually a peasant villager or farm laborer. It should be noted that the bureaucracy has been looked upon by the two parties as a source of patronage and pay-off for loyal followers. Clientelist networks, therefore, have looked with eagerness to their party coming to power. It inevitably meant both jobs for some of them and preferential treatment in the distribution of public goods and services. For some useful comments on this, see Payne, James L.Patterns of Conflict in Colombia (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1968) especially Part One, chs. 3 and. I have also argued this point in ‘Bureaucrats as Modernising Brokers? Clientelism in Colombia’, Comparative Politics (forthcoming).Google Scholar

7 Clientelism is, of course, not an explicitly political phenomenon; rather it is a form of exchange and obligation. F. G. Bailey says, for instance, speaking about patrons in India ‘In so far as a man is chief he is expected to protect the interests not of the community at large, but the interests of his own followers against rival chiefs and their followers.’ ‘The Peasant View of the Bad Life’ in Teodor, Shanin (ed.), Peasants and Peasant Societies (Harmondsworth, England, Penguin Books, 1971), p. 306. I would argue that the introduction of national political parties into village clientelism adds greater resources (external to the limited ones found in peasant communities) and makes the Outcome of struggles immeasurably more important because national control is now at stake.Google Scholar

8 In the Colombian case, the role of the central government did not extend forcefully into the countryside. Even such a rudimentary presence as the law enforcement instruments, army and police, has not existed in large areas during most of Colombian history.

9 The passion and commitment of the actors in these conflicts comes across vividly in General, Aurelio Acosta, Memorias: Un Sobreuiviente del Glorioso Liberalismo Colombiano (Bogotá, Editorial Cromos, 1940).Google Scholar Also, see Gonzalo, Paris Lozano, Guerrilleros del Tolima Manizales, Ed. (Arturo, Zapata, 1937) for an excellent feeling for the manner in which local patrones and, indeed, local farmers or party leaders mobilized their friends and followers, and joined in strategic military manoeuvers with other partisan armies to fight against the equally partisan government troops.Google Scholar

10 Fals Borda‧s description is the classic one for this political differentiation. ‘When the two modern political parties, the Conservative and the Liberal, started to take full form during the 1800s, the Liberal bond became one of the social characteristics of Saucio. Then the peasants followed the dicates of gamonales (brokers or bosses) who appeared to be mayor. domos, or supervisors, for local landowners such as the Neiras, the Maldonados, the Corteses, and others. ‘Open warfare caused each locality group to strengthen its internal political bond as a means of survival in civil conflict. In this manner politics became for the Saucite as important as life itself – it was identified with his struggle for existence,’ Orlando, Fals Borda, Peasant Society in the Colombian Andes (Gainesville, University of Florida Press, 1962), p. 242.Google Scholar

11 ibid., p. 43, points out that ‘Most veredas (rural neighborhoods) in Colombia can be classified according to a political dichotomy. Neighborhoods with a balanced number of Conservatives and Liberals are hard to find. When rural families migrate, they tend to move to veredas of the same political affiliation, where they will not be harassed, and where they can count on the solidarity of the whole group in case of emergencies.’

12 The best description of this war, called La Guerra de Los Mil Dias is Jorge, Martine Landinez, Historia Militar de Colombia, Tomo I (Bogotá, Iqueima, 1956).Google Scholar

13 The evidence is that the Liberal party, after it captured the presidency, rapidly moved to replace Conservative officials and bureaucrats at the local level. Abel, Carbonell, in La Quincena Politica (Bogotá, Editorial Cosmos, 1952),Google Scholar documents and describes a large number of incidents throughout the country. After the assassination of Liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gairán in 1948, Liberal partisans turned once more and violently against Conservatives. In the town of ‘Puerto Tejada, Public officials and Conservative leaders were imprisoned, savagely tortured until they died, then their bodies [were] mutilated, heads separated from bodies and thrown to the ferocity of the mob which organized, with those macabre trophies, a barbarian sport in the main square, where between hysterical yells, the bloodied heads flew back and forth, propelled by kicks, like bloody meteors from a barbarian sky.’ Rafael, Azula Barrera, Dc La Rcvolución al Orders Nuevo (Bogotá, Editorial Kelly, 1956), p. 416.Google Scholar

14 See, for example, Eduardo, Franco Isaza, Las Guerrillas dcl Liano (Bogotá, Librería Mundial, 1959). The book is written by the son of a landowner in the eastern part of Colombia who became the leader of a large guerrilla army which took control when the army of the national government came under Conservative party control and retreated from the area.Google Scholar

15 The best material on this extraordinary populist leader can be found in Gaitán: Antología de so Pensamiento Social y Ecómico (Bogotá, Ediciones Suramerica, 1968).Google Scholar

16 The documents pertaining to this can be found in Guzman Campos et a1., cited earlier. They are extraordinary documents, as complex and intelligent as any national constitution and its civil code.

17 Moreover, the ‘outs’ when they become ‘ins’ seem to take revenge for whatever abuse they suffered. ‘…once there is a change of government, those going in will settle accounts with those going out. This is a law of action and reaction. The more antagonistic and bloody the means used to remain in power, the stronger in antagonism and bloodshed the reaction of the persecuted…’ Fals, Borda, op. cit., p. 244.Google Scholar

18 This is argued by James Payne, op. cit., Fernando, Guillen Martínez, Raiz y Fuluro tie la Revolución (Bogotá, Ediciones Tercer Mundo, 1963), and Robert, H. Dix, Colombia: The Political Dimensions of Change (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1967).Google Scholar Guillen Martinez suggests that the history of the two parties has been like the confrontation between a mass of armed public employees defending their jobs against a mass of armed aspirants to those jobs. Loc. cit., p. 148.Google Scholar

19 A very interesting description from the guerrilla‧s perspective is found in Arturo, Alape, Diana de un Guernillero (Bogotá, Ediciones Abejon Mono, 1970).Google Scholar

20 This thesis is argued in a paper ‘The Erosion of Patron-Client Bonds and Social Change in Rural Southeast Asia’, by James, Scott, delivered at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., 5–9 09 1972.Google Scholar

21 It was pointed out earlier that third parties have never been successful in Colombia.

22 The interviews were carried out by the author and two key informants who participated as interviewers. The town is located in the coffee-growing central region of Colombia, the area hit hardest by violence.

23 ANAPO is a loose alliance between followers of former dictator Gusravo Rojas Pinilla (1953−7), small personalist factions of the Liberals and Conservatives, as well as some leftist groups. ANAPO has tried to mobilize a following by projecting itself as a populist party. It did vell in several elections during the 1960s and the 1970 presidential election. However, ANAPO suffered a serious set-back in the 1972 state and local elections.

24 The traditional security of clientelism in societies of scarcity may have been greatly enhanced in the Colombian case by thc incidence of protracted violence. In a recent study of the psychological effects of violence, a team of Colombian researchers analyzed a clinical sample of people. In comparing responses of the group which had experienced violence in the rural areas with a control group which had not, the investigators found that the ‘violence’ group ‘…displays a profound feeling of abandonment, helplessness, isolation and loneli. ness as well as uncertainty which pushes the individual in this group toward the search for greater security’, Aifredo, Ardila et al., Psicología y Problemas Sociales En Colombia (Tunja, Universidad Pedagógica y Technologica de Colombia, 1971), p. 82.Google Scholar It is possible that patron- client ties afforded the most accessible form of security available. In another study comparing victims of violence with others, the authors conclude ‘the Violencia victim doesn‧t look forward to the future; instead he desires to retreat to the past …’ Aaron, Lipma and Havens, A. Eugene, ‘The Colombian Violencia: An Ex Post Facto Experiment’, Social Forces, 44, no.2 (12 1965), p. 244.Google Scholar

25 The sample was of 200 women in barrios of the city. The proportion is representative of the distribution of the city and national population by class. Four classes were distinguished: Clase Alta, Media, Obrera and Baja. The full data obtained on a items of a questionnaire is in the process of being computed.

26 I am grateful to Judith T. de Campos, Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia for making available the data cards from the study. Parts of the survey have been published as ‘Colombia Polfuca, 1971’, Judith, de Campos and John, F. McCamont, Colombia Politica (Bogotá, DANE, 1972).Google Scholar

27 Two books published in Colombia punctuate this differentiation. One published by the Conservative Centro de Estudios Colombianos and containing articles by 15 prominent politicians is entitled Por La Dcrccha Hacia ci Desarrollo (Cali, Centro de Estudios Colombianos, 1968).Google Scholar Hernando Agudelo Villa, Minister of Finance from 1958–1961, member of the Liberal Party‧s National Directorate and leading promoter of a series of ‘encounter groups’ intended to unify the Liberal Party around a series of new goals, wrote a book which had the title La Alternativa Un Liberalismo de Izquierda (Bogotá, Tercer Mundo, 1969). The book is a hard-hitting combination of philosophical and practical innovations which the Liberal party should, in Agudelo Villas‧ view, undertake.Google Scholar

28 Since violence has always been part of Colombian political life it is possible that Marxist guerrilla attacks on towns may be perceived as simple banditry which in the past inevitably accompanied the political violence. A woman asked by newsmen what she thought of a raid on the town she lives in by a group of the National Liberation Army said, ‘Well these bandits killed fewer people than they usually do’. This was despite an assembly in the main square of the town in which the guerrillas lectured to the townspeople on the need for social justice, revolution and a new order. Most other people were probably similarly convinced that this was violence as usual‧. See Vea, 26 01 1972, p. 30.Google Scholar