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In April 1948, after the assassination of populist leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, crowds of people poured into the streets of Bogotá. Buildings were set on fire. Churches were looted. Armed groups captured parts of the capital. Gaitán—a labor lawyer-turned-politician who seemed poised to become Colombia’s next liberal president—had built a following of Colombian working-class supporters disillusioned with inequality and elite rule. An angry mob beat the alleged gunman to death before his motive was revealed. Gaitán’s murder sparked El Bogotazo, an outbreak of unrest that marked the beginning of La Violencia, a violent conflict between Liberals and Conservatives that would kill more than 200,000 Colombians over the next decade.
In 1950, a copy in Atlantic he warned that Colombia’s “promising democracy” began to crumble. An anonymous writer said that the country had worked “steadily and longer than any other Latin American republic,” but its government was faltering. Throughout the Colombian countryside, Liberal and Conservative elites supported armed militias who fought to defend each party’s political power and economic interests. The country’s leaders seemed to rule by intimidation: opposition rallies were broken up in small towns, armed groups terrorizing voters, emergency decrees restricting democratic life.
More than 70 years later, familiar patterns are emerging as Colombia heads into one of its most important elections in years. On Sunday, Colombians will vote for a successor to President Gustavo Petro, the country’s first far-left president and former member of the Marxist M-19 rebel movement. Petro came into office promising to negotiate a ceasefire with every major armed group still active in Colombia, but most of these talks ultimately stalled or broke down. He suspended conversation last year by the National Liberation Army, or ELN—now Colombia’s largest rebel group—after launching attacks in northeastern Colombia that killed more than 30 people. Still, even as Petro’s peace agenda has faltered, several armed groups, including the ELN, they have given a signal so that they can be ready to resume negotiations with the next government.
The election has become a referendum on Petro’s “total peace” strategy. His supporters argue that Colombia cannot end decades of conflict with military force alone; Petro’s partner and presidential candidate Ivan Cepeda has promised to continue negotiations. His conservative rival Paloma Valencia and right-wing outsider Abelardo de la Espriella are each campaigning to restore security through a strong military response, arguing that Petro’s approach allowed armed groups to regroup and expand their control of territories, especially in rural and border areas.
The debate has become inseparable from the dire security situation in the country. Although the cities, where much of the country’s wealth and political power are concentrated, have become safer and more stable in recent decades, armed groups have carried out dozens of bombings and drone attacks across Colombia in recent months. Rebel groups from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC—a radical leftist militant group that fought the Colombian state for more than 50 years before signing a historic peace accord in 2016—were behind several of the attacks. targeting civilians and military installations a few weeks before the election. Some groups were unable to withdraw fully after the agreement, while others later withdrew from the peace process altogether. Especially during election cycles, these rebels use violence to protect their illegal economy and demonstrate their ability to continue in regions where they often have a greater presence than the government itself.
The race has felt, at times, like a message from 1948. Last summer, Colombian senator and presidential candidate, Miguel Uribe Turbay, he was shot during a campaign rally in Bogotá and died two months later. A 15-year-old boy who was hit by eight others they were arrested by shooting, and the country’s attorney general has issued warrants against the leaders of Segunda Marquetalia, a branch of the FARC, in connection with the murder. Earlier this month, a former mayor and an employee affiliated with presidential candidate de la Espriella were shot dead (the shooters have not been arrested). Colombian public defender’s office he warned that the killings could threaten “democratic participation” before voting.
Non-linear time Atlantic the author covered Colombia in 1963the country seemed very different. Tired of years of bloodshed, the Liberal and Conservative parties agreed to share power through a coalition known as the National Front, alternating the presidency and dividing government posts between them. The article describes the country trying to regain control after the chaos, building roads and housing projects, attracting foreign investors, and showing a sense of stability after years of party violence.
Still, under that stability, the author discovered problems, such as economic problems and oligarchic tendencies, which had not disappeared so much as difficulties. The success of the coalition government, the author observed, would ultimately depend on whether it could address “urban destitution and rural poverty, whose victims are awakened to feel their own power.” The ongoing tension would soon change Colombia again. A year after the article was published, FARC and ELN emerged as separate militias. A few decades later, presidential candidates, journalists, and judges were routinely killed by militant groups, guerrillas, and military groups fighting each other and the government.
1950 article in Atlantic ends without resolution: “What will remain of Colombia’s promising democracy after a long period of restraint and turmoil remains to be seen.” Reading it now, amid another difficult time in Colombian politics marred by murders, bombings and terror, the verse feels like a question Colombia has spent generations trying to answer.
More From Memory
The Slow Food movement was born in 1986 when Carlo Petrini, an Italian environmentalist and former radio journalist, gathered a group of friends to protest the replacement of a beloved coffee shop in Rome by McDonald’s. When a viewer asked what, if not fast food, he preferred, he said: “Slow food.” What exactly did “slow food” mean? It was something that Petrini, who died last week at the age of 76, would spend the next few years pondering, eventually sparking a global movement that included an embrace of sustainable agriculture and traditional cooking with an epicurean appreciation for fine dining. (Petrini would also found the University of Gastronomic Sciences, in Pollenzo, Italy, the first such institution in the world.)
In 1999, Corby Kummer, an Atlantic editor-in-chief and longtime food writer, he helped launch the Slow Food movement in America with his article “Doing Well by Eating Well.” “Appetite can unite power and extremism,” he wrote, “and both sides can be stronger” for him. The article would soon become a book The Pleasures of Slow Food: Celebrating Traditions, Flavors and Authentic Recipes..
Like Kummer he noted last week, Petrini showed people that they cannot enjoy the produce and the best local food “without recognizing the dignity and well-being of the people who make the food, the importance of tradition and human communication, and social and environmental justice.”
