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Political Radicalism in Colombia: Electoral Dynamics of 1962 and 1964

1965; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 7; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/164820

2326-4047

Kenneth F. Johnson,

Cultural and political discourse analysis

Who is to blame when the political rhythm of an organized society slips into atrophy and chaos? This enigmatic question towers in the background of recent Colombian history. A country of relative political stability since the birth of Liberalism in the 1930's, Colombia's political life was suddenly rent in 1948 by a horrendous bloodletting which threatened to raze Bogotá and plunged the nation into anarchy. The real villain, wrote Vernon Fluharty, was the system itself. Although the civil war proportions of the violence that followed the bogotazo were ended during the military government of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953-57), a fierce sequence of guerrilla activities continued to plague the countryside. Much of the violence was precipitated by young men who, having deserted their primary groups after the assassination of Gaitán, carried on the war against humanity as a way of life, often in the absence of any ostensible political motive or economic gain.