Conflict, crime, and violence in Colombia

Even by Latin American standards, Colombia is a violent country. It is also an exceptional laboratory for researchers interested in crime, conflict and more generally, in violence. Violence in Colombia is not a recent phenomenon: The country experienced six major civil wars during the course of the 19th century. A period of relative calm followed the bloodiest of these confrontations: “The War of the Thousand Days,” that lasted literally 1000 days (1899–1902), and resulted in the deaths of a large fraction of the population. In the late 1940s after the assassination of a liberal presidential candidate, partisan grievances flourished and a new civil war (know as “La Violencia”) began. It was ended by a power-sharing deal between the liberals and the conservatives in the late 1950s. By most accounts, the current conflict began in the mid 1960s, when two guerrilla organizations – Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) – (both are still active today) were formed. The largest of them, FARC, emerged from communist guerrillas dissatisfied by the exclusion of the left from the power-sharing deal, and from the remnants of liberal guerrillas that did not laid down their arms when the deal was brokered.

• Fecha de publicación: 2014
• Institución: Universidad del Rosario
• Repositorio: Repositorio EdocUR - U. Rosario
• Idioma: eng
• OAI Identifier: oai:repository.urosario.edu.co:10336/21774
• Acceso en línea: https://doi.org/10.1515/peps-2013-0062; https://repository.urosario.edu.co/handle/10336/21774
• Palabra clave: Violencia; Conflicto armado; Problemas sociales & bienestar social en general; Violence; Conflict
• License: Abierto (Texto Completo)