Colombia

Colombia is a formal constitutional democracy and one of the oldest democracies in Latin America. Nonetheless, its democracy has often been dysfunctional in character. Even in the early twenty-first century, it struggled to provide effective guarantees of civil rights and liberties to its citizens amidst a long-standing civil conflict involving left-wing guerrilla movements, state security forces, and right-wing paramilitary forces. This conflict was further aggravated by the existence of a flourishing trade in illegal drugs.

geography

Colombia is located in the northwest corner of South America, adjoining the Panamanian isthmus. It is the fourth largest country in South America, comprising 1.14 million square kilometers (439,735 square miles). Colombia is dominated by the Andes Mountains, which enter the country at its southern border with Ecuador. Most of Colombia's people live in cities and towns located in the intermountain basins and plateaus of the Andes. The country also has extensive low-lying areas known as "hot country" (tierra caliente); the temperature there is significantly warmer than the temperate climate of the mountains. Relatively speaking, all of the tierra caliente is sparsely populated. Colombia's population is primarily mestizo (of mixed indigenous and European origin), with a smaller number of Caucasians, Afro-Colombians, mulattos (of mixed African and European origins), and indigenous people. Spanish is the primary language, and the major religion is Roman Catholicism.

socioeconomic conditions

Between 1950 and 2000, the Colombian population more than tripled in size, growing from 12.6 million to 42.1 million. Colombia also moved from being a predominantly rural society in 1950 to a largely urban society by 2000, when 75 percent of the population resided in urban areas. The latter half of the twentieth century also witnessed a marked decline in population growth, accompanied by a significant improvement in the average Colombian's living conditions. Life expectancy at birth increased by more than twenty years, to 70.7 years, and the infant mortality rate dropped from 123 to 30 deaths per thousand live births in 2000.

Despite these changes, in 2000 Colombia continued to be classified by the World Bank as a lower-middle-income economy, with a gross national income per capita of $2,020. A severe economic crisis that began in 1996 reversed the reduction in poverty that had occurred during the previous two decades. In the early 2000s, Colombia also had one of the world's highest rates of income inequality. These difficult circumstances were exacerbated by extraordinarily high rates of violence. The country's homicide rate tripled between 1970 and 1991, declining somewhat during the 1990s. The poorest sectors of society bore most of the burden of homicide. In particular, young Colombian males faced the highest risk of murder. Meanwhile, the wealthier strata of the population experienced a high incidence of property crime, extortion, and kidnapping.

Colombia's violence primarily resulted from an ongoing civil conflict involving the state, leftist guerrillas, and right-wing paramilitary forces, and it was exacerbated by its illicit drug trade. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Colombia was the world's largest producer of cocaine, and it also had become a significant supplier of opium poppy and heroin. The drug trade produced violence between state security forces and drug-trafficking organizations, as well as among drug traffickers themselves. The drug trade also served as a major source of financing for both the left-wing guerrillas—in their quest to overthrow the Colombian government by force—and their sworn enemies, the right-wing paramilitary forces. The Colombian state security forces also received significant assistance from other countries, particularly the United States, in an effort to counter the drug trade and

to advance in their fight against the illegal armed combatants. From 1985 to 2000 at least 1.5 million Colombians were forcibly displaced from their homes due to the growing military conflict.

political history

The Spaniards established their first permanent city, Santa Marta, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia around 1525. At the time of the Spanish conquest, Colombia's indigenous population comprised various groupings of Caribs, Arawaks, and the predominant Chibchas. The Spanish invaders subdued the natives and established the capital city of Bogotá by 1538. Colombia achieved its political independence in the violent revolutionary struggles that shook the South American continent after Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) deposed King Ferdinand VII of Spain (1784–1833) in 1808. Although the struggle for independence began in 1810, royalist forces were not defeated in Colombia until August 7, 1819.

The nineteenth century was tumultuous. Just a decade after its independence, the Republic of Colombia experienced a severe dismemberment: Venezuela and Ecuador broke away to form independent countries in 1830. The remainder of the century was marked by a series of civil wars between the Liberal and Conservative Parties, both of which originated in the late 1840s. Conservatives favored centralized political administration, economic protectionism, and the defense of the Catholic Church's interests, while Liberals supported federalism, free trade , and the separation of church and state. These ideological differences helped to foment seven major civil wars in Colombia during the second half of the nineteenth century. The wars also weakened Colombia significantly, facilitating the separation of Panama in 1903.

Despite this recurring political violence, Colombia experienced no sustained periods of military rule, a factor that helped the two political parties establish themselves as the primary actors in Colombian politics. Indeed, much of Colombia's political history can be understood as a struggle between the Liberal and Conservative Parties for control of the state.

The period from 1946 to the early 1960s has come to be known as La Violencia, a bloody sectarian conflict between the Liberal and Conservative Parties in which approximately 200,000 people died. La Violencia began in the aftermath of the 1946 elections as Conservatives and Liberals fought over the spoils of political office. This violence intensified after the assassination of the popular Liberal Party leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán (1902–1948) on April 9, 1948. Particularly in the early years of La Violencia (1946–1953), state security forces were used by the Conservative Party to destroy Liberal towns, strike against Liberal Party members, and repress popular social movements. Armed Liberal guerrilla groups organized to confront the Conservative terror. La Violencia eventually spiraled out of control in the form of rural banditry, local political vendettas , and violent efforts to confront large landowners or, alternatively, to plunder small landholders.

General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1900–1975) overthrew the Conservative government in 1953, but his military dictatorship (1953–1957) proved to be incapable of stopping La Violencia. In the end, only the negotiation of a formal political pact between Conservative and Liberal Party leaders was able to halt the bloodletting. The pact created the National Front regime (1958–1974), an explicit power-sharing arrangement designed to protect the interests of both parties. Specifically, the presidency was to alternate every four years between the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party for a period of sixteen years, while all state positions, elected and appointed alike, were to be divided equally between the two parties, to the exclusion of all other parties or movements.

The National Front restored civilian rule to the country and terminated the vicious partisan conflict of La Violencia. The regime, although civilian in character, was not very democratic. All third parties were formally excluded from participation in the National Front. Even as the partisan violence of La Violencia faded away, one result was that a number of leftist guerrilla movements emerged in the 1960s and early 1970s. The principal guerrilla movements were the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC), the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional, or ELN), the People's Liberation Army (Ejército Popular de Liberación, or EPL), and the April 19th Movement (Movimiento 19 de Abril, or M–19). Unlike the Liberal guerrillas of La Violencia, these leftist guerrillas sought to overthrow the established political and socioeconomic order.

The National Front regime formally ended in 1974 with the termination of bipartisan presidential alternation and congressional parity , though other aspects of parity remained in place until the early 1990s. In 1991 a speciallyelected National Constituent Assembly drafted a new national constitution (the first since 1886) with the explicit purpose of broadening and deepening Colombian democracy. Nevertheless, the 1991 Constitution did not end the ongoing civil conflict, primarily because neither the FARC nor the ELN participated in its drafting and thus did not feel compelled to respect the new constitutional order.

civil conflict and contemporary politics

The last quarter of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twentyfirst century in Colombia were characterized by an intensification of the internal civil conflict, punctuated by intermittent attempts at peace negotiations. The peace effort of Belisario Betancur's (b. 1923) Conservative administration from 1982 to 1986 ultimately failed. However, it progressed the furthest with the FARC, which launched a legal political movement called the Patriotic Union (Union Patriótica, or UP). Soon after its founding, however, thousands of UP members began to be assassinated, largely by right-wing paramilitary forces with the occasional participation or acquiescence of state security forces. The ceasefire with the FARC ultimately broke down during the Liberal administration of Virgilio Barco (1921–1997) from 1986 to 1990.

During the Barco administration, right-wing paramilitary groups began to flourish as they benefited from an influx of drug money and the collaboration of certain sectors of the state security forces. The growing power and violence of drug cartels also reached a peak during this period. In the face of an intense state crackdown in 1989 and 1990, the Medellín Cartel initiated a campaign of terror that included dynamite attacks, car bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations. During this same period, however, the M–19, the EPL, and two smaller guerrilla movements signed peace accords with the government and disbanded. The possibility of participating in the 1991 National Constituent Assembly to draft a more democratic constitution provided a concrete incentive for the demobilization of these guerrilla movements.

With the adoption of the 1991 Constitution, much of the violence perpetrated by the drug traffickers eased during the Liberal administration of Cásar Gaviria (b. 1947) from 1990 to 1994. The new constitution expressly prohibited the extradition of Colombians to stand trial abroad, a key concern of the drug cartels. Nevertheless, the violence continued unabated, as neither of the country's largest guerrilla movements—the FARC and the ELN—had participated in drafting the new constitution. Although the Gaviria administration engaged in peace negotiations with both guerrilla movements, these efforts did not come to fruition.

The Liberal administration of Ernesto Samper (b. 1950) from 1994 to 1998 was marred by a serious drug scandal, in which the president was accused of receiving several million dollars from the Cali drug cartel to fund his election campaign. Although Samper steadfastly denied the charges, the accumulation of evidence led to two unsuccessful attempts to impeach the president, a marked worsening of relations with the U.S. government, and a debilitating crisis of political legitimacy, all of which weakened Samper's efforts to deal with the civil conflict. Both left-wing guerrilla movements and right-wing paramilitary groups expanded significantly during this period, benefiting from their profitable involvement in the drug trade.

Conservative President Andrés Pastrana (b. 1954), whose term ran from 1998 to 2002, engaged in a fitful dialogue with the FARC leadership for more than three years, during which time the guerrillas were ceded a (41,440-square-kilometer/16,000-square-mile) demilitarized zone that was intended to facilitate peace talks. The talks ultimately failed, however. The Pastrana administration grew increasingly concerned about abuses committed by the FARC in the demilitarized zone, while the FARC repeatedly charged the government with failing to curtail the right-wing paramilitary forces. The peace talks broke down definitively in February 2002 when the government ordered the military to reoccupy the demilitarized zone. Parallel peace talks with the smaller ELN guerrilla movement also were unsuccessful. Meanwhile, with the goal of combating drug trafficking, the United States vastly expanded its funding and training of Colombian state security forces under the auspices of Plan Colombia.

The election of the hard-liner and maverick Liberal Alvaro Uribe (b. 1952) as president of Colombia in 2002 reflected the growing frustration and disillusionment of much of the Colombian populace with the ongoing conflict. Uribe had been critical of the peace process during the Pastrana administration and promised to reestablish firm state authority throughout the country.

constitutional structure and actual practice

State authority is formally exercised in Colombia in accordance with the 1991 Constitution, which defines Colombia as a "decentralized , unitary Republic, with autonomous territorial entities, democratic, participatory, and pluralist" (Article 1). Administratively, the country is divided into thirty-two departments that are further subdivided into municipalities . Colombia does not have a federal structure, since departments and municipalities are strictly limited in their scope and competencies by the constitution and national legislation.

At the national level, the executive branch is led by the president, who is both head of state and head of government. The president and vice president are elected by national popular vote to serve four-year terms. If no candidate receives a majority of votes in the presidential election, a run-off election is held between the top two candidates. The president is limited to one term in office and governs with the aid of a cabinet of appointed ministers. Traditionally, the president has exercised tremendous political power. The 1991 Constitution removed the president's ability to appoint departmental governors, weakened the president's veto power, limited the president's ability to issue legal norms, and restricted the president's ability to govern under "state of siege" decrees. Nevertheless, the presidency remains Colombia's key political office. The executive branch enjoys extraordinary fiscal powers; all budgetary bills must originate in the executive branch, and Congress can increase spending in a given area only with the written authority of the respective cabinet minister.

The legislative branch consists of a bicameral Congress, the members of which are elected through a system of proportional representation to four-year terms. The 102-member Senate has 100 members elected from a single national electoral district and 2 indigenous members elected by members of indigenous communities. The Chamber of Representatives is elected in departmentally based districts, with each department granted a minimum of two representatives and an additional representative for every 250,000 inhabitants. In the 2002 legislature, this translated into 166 representatives. Congress traditionally has suffered from alack of public confidence due to such practices as absenteeism, nepotism , corruption, foreign junkets made at taxpayers' expense, and extensive pork-barrel legislation. The 1991 Constitution addressed some of these concerns by establishing strict eligibility requirements for candidates for Congress, as well as explicit

conditions under which a member of Congress could be removed from office and stringent conditions for travel abroad. The 1991 Constitution also strengthened the legislative branch by giving Congress the power to override presidential vetoes more easily; to censure executive cabinet members; to modify legislative decrees issued by the president; and to limit the president's authority under the declaration of a state of siege.

The judicial branch is organized into several functional jurisdictions. The "ordinary" jurisdiction works through a hierarchical system of municipal courts, circuit courts, superior courts, and the Supreme Court, a twenty-three-member body that hears appeals from lower-level courts and has the authority to investigate the president, members of Congress, and other top government officials. The "administrative" jurisdiction deals with disputes arising from official public acts, as well as the acts of private entities performing public duties. It adjudicates these matters through departmental courts and the Council of State, a twenty-seven-member body that serves as the highest administrative court in the country. Finally, the "constitutional" jurisdiction is the realm of the Constitutional Court, a nine-member body dedicated to determining the constitutionality of a wide range of laws, bills, referendums, and treaties.

The 1991 Constitution transformed the previous judicial system in which judges had been responsible for investigating a crime, issuing a verdict, and sentencing the criminal. Under the new system of justice, a separate, independent body investigates the crime and prosecutes the accused before the judge, whose responsibility is limited to that of judging and sentencing. The leading role is played by the office of the general prosecutor, which is charged with "investigating crimes and accusing the suspected infractor before the corresponding courts of law" (Article 250). The general prosecutor, who serves for a period of four years, is selected by the Supreme Court from among three nominees chosen by the president.

The formal, constitutional exercise of power as delineated in the 1991 Constitution is constrained in actual practice by several significant factors. First, the weakness of the Colombian state has opened the door to de facto control of certain areas by guerrilla movements or paramilitary organizations. Second, the Colombian political system is still clientalist: politicians use their access to office to distribute specific state benefits in return for promises of future votes. Such a system perverts the notion that all citizens should have equal access to state benefits and encourages citizens and politicians to think in narrow, selfserving terms rather than in terms of the public good.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, Colombian presidents governed largely under the declaration of a "state of siege," which allowed them to exercise legislative and judicial power. Excessive reliance upon state-of-siege governance undermines democracy through the undue accumulation of power in the hands of the executive. Finally, Colombian democracy continues to be weakened by the direct and indirect participation of the state security forces in human-rights abuses in their conduct of the war against leftist insurgents .

See also: Constitutions and Constitutionalism; Democracy; Dictatorship; Political Corruption; Political Parties; Presidential Systems.

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John C. Dugas