Territorial Rule in Colombia and the Transformation of the Llanos Orientales

Territorial Rule in Colombia and the Transformation of the Llanos Orientales

University Press of florida

Florida A&M University, Tallahassee

Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton

Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers

Florida International University, Miami

Florida State University, Tallahassee

New College of Florida, Sarasota

University of Central Florida, Orlando

University of Florida, Gainesville

University of North Florida, Jacksonville

University of South Florida, Tampa

University of West Florida, Pensacola

Territorial Rule in Colombia

and the Transformation

of the Llanos Orientales

Jane M. Rausch

University Press of florida

Gainesville / Tallahassee / Tampa / Boca Raton

Pensacola / Orlando / Miami / Jacksonville / Ft. Myers / Sarasota

•

•

Copyright 2013 by Jane M. RauschAll rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America. This book is printed on Glatfelter Natures Book, a paper certified under the standards of the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC). It is a

recycled stock that contains 30 percent post-consumer waste and is acid-free

This book may be available in an electronic edition.

18 17 16 15 14 13 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataRausch, Jane M., 1940–

Territorial rule in Colombia and the transformation of the Llanos Orientales / Jane M. Rausch.p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-0-8130-4466-8 (alk. paper)

1. Llanos (Colombia and Venezuela)—History. 2. Llanos—Colombia—History. 3. Llanos (Colombia and Venezuela)—Social life and customs. 4. Frontier and pioneer life—Colombia.

5. Colombia—Politics and government. I. Title.F2281.L52R38 2013

986.1—dc23 2013015090

The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida

Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida,

University of South Florida, and University of West Florida.

University Press of Florida15 Northwest 15th Street

Gainesville, FL 32611-2079http://www.upf.com

Contents

List of Illustrations viPreface vii

1. The Llanos Frontier on the Eve of La Violencia 12. The Violencia and Its Impact on the Llanos, 1946–1953 29

3. Rojas Pinilla and the Pacification of the Llanos, 1953–1957 544. Territorial Rule during the National Front and Its Aftermath,

1958–1978 795. The Contemporary Era, 1978–2010 108

6. Changing Concepts of the Llanos Frontier in the Last Half of the Twentieth Century 128

Glossary 147Abbreviations Used in Notes and Bibliography 151

Notes 153Bibliography 171

Index 179

Illustrations

Maps

1.1. The national territories of Colombia showing the Llanos and Amazon frontiers in 1931 10

2.1. The Llanos frontier in 1950 354.1. Areas of colonization in the Llanos and Amazonia during the National

Front 886.1. The Llanos of Colombia showing the Llanos Arriba and the Llanos

Abajo 1336.2. The region of Orinoquia 1386.3. The border between Colombia and Venezuela as established by the

Treaty of 1941 142

Tables

2.1. Population of the Llanos as reported in the censuses of 1938 and 1951 49

3.1. Population growth in the Llanos between 1938 and 1964 604.1. Population growth in the Llanos between 1951 and 1984 865.1. Population growth in the Llanos between 1973 and 2005 118

Preface

Colombia is a nation of extraordinary geographic diversity. With 1,138,400 square kilometers of territory bordering on two oceans, its landscape has been largely determined by three branches of the Andes Mountains: the Cordillera Occidental, between the Pacific Ocean and the valley of the Cauca River; the Cordillera Central, between the Cauca and the Magdalena rivers; and the broad Cordillera Oriental, which extends northeastward into Venezuela. Since colo-nial times, these Andean highlands, connected by the Magdalena River to the Caribbean ports of Cartagena and Barranquilla (or what is called the Costa Atlántica by Colombians), have dominated the country’s development, amount-ing to less than half of the national domain but encompassing 98 percent of the population. The other half of the country consists of five lowland regions: the Pacific Coast, the Guajira Peninsula, the islands of San Andrés and Providencia, Amazonia, and the Llanos Orientales. While each of these regions has played a unique role in the development of Colombia that is worthy of greater study, this book focuses on the Llanos Orientales—and the region’s interaction with the highland core from 1946 to 2010—in order to investigate recent developments that have occurred on Colombia’s eastern frontier. In the 1980s the discovery of exploitable petroleum deposits in Colombia’s eastern plains transformed a long-neglected region into one of the fastest grow-ing sections of the country. Territorial Rule in Colombia presents a history of the Llanos in the second half of the twentieth century based on an examination of government policies toward the region and the resulting political, economic, and social changes, sometimes planned but more often spontaneous, that occurred in the present-day departments of Meta, Casanare, Arauca, and Vichada. The book completes my survey of the history of the region recorded in three earlier books: A Tropical Plains Frontier: The Llanos of Colombia, 1531–1831 (Albuquer-que: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), The Llanos Frontier in Colombian

History: 1830–1930 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), and Colombia: Territorial Rule and the Llanos Frontier (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999), which covers the period from 1930 to 1950. As in my earlier work, this book seeks to demonstrate that the Llanos as a tropical frontier has played a far greater role in Colombia’s evolution than is generally acknowledged and that the problems posed by the Llanos for the future have much in common with other South American frontiers, especially the Amazon basin, that until the late twentieth century have remained outside modern ex-ploitation and settlement. The Llanos Orientales are the tropical plains lying to the north of the Ori-noco River. The plains encompass 253,000 square kilometers in Colombia (and extend for another 300,000 kilometers in neighboring Venezuela). They ac-count for 30 percent of the national territory but contain less than 1 percent of the population. Cut off from the core population in the Andean highlands by the rugged Eastern Cordillera, the isolation of the Llanos and the deadly tropi-cal climate restricted development there throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Despite these drawbacks and the neglect of the region, gov-ernments in Bogotá have consistently regarded these vast grasslands as “Lands of the Future” that might one day hold the key to Colombian progress. In the 1950s, having endured the terrible undeclared civil war know as La Violencia, the Llanos territories of Meta, Casanare, Arauca, and Vichada began to undergo enormous changes. Immigrants from other regions spontaneously poured into the Llanos seeking to carve out a new destiny as colonos on pub-lic lands. Under the Constitution of 1991, the former territories were elevated into departments. The discovery of oil, first in Arauca in the 1980s and then in Casanare, Meta, and Vichada, transformed the plains into the fastest growing region in Colombia, even though its population of 1,335,491 in 2005 was still less than 1 percent of the total national population of 42,090,502. In short, over the last fifty-year period, the Llanos have become no longer the “future” of Colombia but very much at the center of the country’s “present” expectations for prosperity. And yet, as the asymmetrical ratio of population suggests, the region re-mains a “frontier”—an elusive term, first defined by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 as the line of settlement “separating savagery and civilization” that moved rapidly westward across the North American continent. Over the decades this concept has been subjected to many interpretations. For the purposes of this book, “frontier” denotes a geographical region originally inhabited by native people that lies at the edge of Hispanic settlement. Over the course of centuries the frontier becomes a zone of interpenetration between previously distinct so-

Prefaceviii

cieties, but the geographic characteristics of the area place limits on the nature of human activities. First the Spanish and then the Colombians intruded into the Llanos from their bases of operations or metropolises in the Andean high-lands. They then established institutions to incorporate the land and people into the republic while Venezuelans, more sporadically, moved into the region from their eastern base. The interplay of indigenous and Hispanic cultures and their adaptation to the environment produced a regional identity that has had an impact on the metropolis, an impact that has become ever more profound in the second half of the twentieth century. Just as the Llanos has experienced significant changes during the last fifty years, so has the historiography of Colombia. The decade of the 1960s saw the emergence of scholars professionally trained in Colombian, European, and U.S. universities who brought new perspectives to the history of their country. With few exceptions, however, these young historians have ignored the Llanos to concentrate their attention on the developments in the Andean, Caribbean, and Cauca Valley zones. It has been up to individuals with strong connections to the plains to apply more sophisticated methodologies to interpret the region’s past and to present scenarios for its future development. The holding of the first Simposio de Historia de los Llanos Colombo-Vene-zolanos under the rubric “Los Llanos: Una historia sin fronteras” on August 8–10, 1988, in Villavicencio marked the beginning of this process by bringing together scholars from different disciplines to share their research on a variety of aspects of the history of the plains. By 2006 twelve similar symposia had been held, alternately taking place in Colombian and Venezuelan cities, and the published memorias of these symposia fill twelve thick volumes. Since 1988 there also has been a plethora of books and essays that deal with the region, and even a guide to the archives in Meta. Nevertheless, after reviewing this material, Hector Públio Pérez has concluded that while these monographs, symposia, and congresses have brought to light a variety of subjects worthy of explora-tion, the research remains weak and fragmented. What is needed, he argues, is a synthesis of this information in order to understand the region’s economic, social, and political evolution over long periods of time.1

It is my hope that by offering an overview of sixty years of regional history, this study will help to fill this gap and serve as a starting place for those who seek to investigate in greater depth specific eras, topics, and individuals. The data combine recent work by local scholars with a review of manuscripts, news-papers, other published documents, essays, and books located in Amherst at the DuBois Library of the University of Massachusetts; in Bogotá at the Archivo General Histórico, the Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, and the Biblioteca of the

Preface ix

Ministerio del Interior y Justicia; and in Villavicencio at the Archivo Templete, the Casa de la Cultura and the Biblioteca Germán Arciniegas. It also draws on resources accumulated in researching my earlier books during the last forty years. Many institutions and people have contributed to this project since its incep-tion in 2007. In that year Virginia Hernández of the Universidad del Llano in Villavicencio invited me to attend a conference sponsored by the university on the history of the Llanos. Participation in this conference and three succeeding ones held in 2009, 2010, and 2011 enabled me to refresh my familiarity with scholarly activity in Meta and observe firsthand the changes taking place in that department. In 2009 a Fulbright Scholar Grant for Research and Lectur-ing financed my study in Bogotá and further trips to the Llanos. In 2010 an invitation to attend a conference in Paz de Ariporo, Casanare, broadened my knowledge of that important department and its capital, Yopal. I am especially indebted to Wilson and Angélica Ladino Orjuela, Hector Públio Pérez, Al-berto Baquero Nariño, Nancy Espinel Riveros, Tomás Ojeda Ojeda, and María Eugenia Romero Moreno for their constructive suggestions, encouragement, guidance, and support. I am grateful to Peggy McKinnon for preparing the electronic version of the manuscript and to Don Sluter for his elaboration of an informative set of maps. Finally, the enduring inspiration of my late husband, Marvin Rausch, made the completion of this work possible. For its errors and shortcomings, I alone am responsible.

Prefacex

1

The Llanos Frontier on the Eve of La Violencia

The attraction of the Llano is irresistible. It can happen that it may produce a de-formation of the spirit and that men, accustomed to the comforts and advantages of what is called civilization, will become fond of what there is in the plains, in the hatos, in the primitive life, in exchange for enjoyment of full, absolute freedom, with pure air for the lungs, permanent paintings for the eyes, peaceful horizons for the spirit. . . . I felt the mysterious call of the Llano, and I understood, I exalted, I envied the life of the Llanero.

Luis Eduardo Nieto Caballero, 1935 (author’s translation)

In 1935 Luis Eduardo Nieto Caballero toured the Llanos Orientales of Co-lombia and published a book about his experiences titled Vuelo al Orinoco. The journalist was a keen observer, and the quotation cited above reflects both his awareness of the lack of development in the plains and the mystical attraction that the region held for visitors from other parts of Colombia. Thirteen years later the assassination of the popular Liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, on April 9, 1948, unleashed a violent civil war that proved especially severe in the Llanos and brought this often neglected region to the attention of Bogotá lead-ers as never before. Dragging on for five years, the brutal nature of the conflict exposed centuries old social, economic, and political problems that called for resolution. The object of this chapter is to summarize briefly the geography and history of the region up to the outbreak of La Violencia in late 1947 in order to provide a baseline for understanding government policies that occurred in the second half of the twentieth century—policies that eventually sparked a radical transformation of the frontier.

The Colonial Legacy

Lying east of the Cordillera Oriental, the Llanos Orientales are tropical grass-lands that extend to the Arauca River and the Venezuelan border in the north

Territorial Rule in Colombia and the Transformation of the Llanos Orientales2

and are bounded in the south and east by the Guaviare and Orinoco rivers. Drained by tributaries of the Meta, Orinoco, and Casanare rivers, the region encompasses 253,000 square kilometers of Colombian territory and stretches into Venezuela for another 300,000 square kilometers. From an altitude of a few hundred feet at the base of the Andes, the plains slope gently toward the Orinoco, broken here and there by low mesas. Although they are hot through-out the year, the Llanos are alternately flooded and dry in response to changing conditions of weather and terrain. The rainy season, or “winter,” begins in May and intensifies between June and October, when much of the land becomes flooded. During the dry season, or “summer,” from December to March, the swollen rivers recede; the land becomes parched, and the grass turns brown and brittle because of lack of moisture. Dense forests line the streambeds and cover the base of the mountains, but the typical vegetation is tall, coarse grass with some dry scrubby forest and scattered palms. In this difficult environment characterized by clouds of insect pests, a brutally hot climate, and unappetizing pasturage, cattle and horses introduced by the Spanish in the sixteenth century managed to adapt and thrive, grazing freely in large numbers over the open grassland and forming the basis for the distinctive Llanero subculture that had evolved by the eighteenth century. Before the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century, the portions of the Llanos near the mountains (piedmont or llanos arriba) were occupied by Arawak-speaking Achagua, Sáliva, and Tunebo, who used slash-and-burn agriculture to raise food crops and supplemented their diet by hunting and fishing. Scattered farther east throughout the open plains (llanos abajo) were the nomadic Guahibo (also called Chiricoa), who depended on hunting and gathering. The mobility of these people made them excellent fighters, and they were more successful in resisting conquest by the Europeans than the sedentary groups to the west.1

During the colonial era, the Crown came to rely on regular clergy to extend its rule over the plains, for after the conquistadors failed to discover any trace of the mythical kingdom of El Dorado in Caquetá-Putumayo (the colonial Ama-zon provinces) or the Llanos, neither the rain forests nor the plains held much attraction for white settlers. The solution was to hold the frontier by employing missionaries to convert the indigenous people to Christianity, to convince them to settle down in towns, and to incorporate them into Hispanic life. Accord-ingly, the Franciscans labored in the southern portion of the region known as the Llanos of San Juan and San Martín (present-day Meta), the Augustinians and Recoletos (Candelarios) worked in the northern section, known as the Lla-nos of Casanare and Arauca, while the Jesuits established their missions along the Casanare and Meta rivers.

The Llanos Frontier on the Eve of La Violencia 3

By the eighteenth century, the religious had obtained some modest success, converting thousands of natives while fending off European settlers and slavers as well as attacks by Guahibo and Carib. The neophytes, through their agricul-ture, crafts, textiles, and cattle, formed the backbone of the regional economy, which was complemented by Spanish towns located mostly in the Andean foothills and ranches scattered throughout the region. The missions were so firmly rooted in the plains that they survived the crisis created by the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767. Franciscans, Recoletos, and Dominicans quickly took over many of the reducciones (towns of Indians converted to Christianity) their colleagues had been forced to abandon, so that in 1800 the population of the Llanos consisted of some thirty-one missions with 15,679 Indians and approxi-mately 5,000 whites and mestizo settlers.2

The deathblow to this relatively prosperous colonial province came with the War of Independence (1810–1821), when patriot soldiers raided the Llanos missions, recruiting the natives to fight against the royalists and sacking the churches. The clergy who stayed at their posts received neither subsidies nor military protection from either side. When peace was restored in 1821, only four prewar missions still stood in the Llanos. In addition, nine years of fight-ing had disrupted the white population, decimated the livestock, depleted the economy, created a multitude of discontented and landless veterans, perpetu-ated lawlessness, and nurtured caudillism.3

An Old Frontier

By 1830 the Llanos Orientales were already an “old” or “permanent” frontier characterized by a unique cowboy subculture and deeply rooted Hispanic in-stitutions—towns, missions, and ranches. Three hundred years of European contact had transformed the ecology of the region. Cattle and horses grazed on plains that previously had supported no animals larger than the jaguar. The indigenous people had been decimated, absorbed into Spanish society by mis-sionaries and encomenderos, or driven eastward into areas yet untouched by the intruders. Both whites and Indians cut down the gallery forests in the piedmont and along the rivers to plant crops, and they systematically burned the dry sa-vanna grass to produce better pasturage for the cattle; but surprisingly enough, as geographer John Blydenstein has pointed out, man’s direct influence on the landscape was slight because of low population density. Even in a place like Tame, Arauca, where records show that cultivation occurred for more than four hundred years, the forest was able to maintain itself. It was not until the massive influx of colonos (settlers who farm or graze cattle on public land without legal


title to their plots) began arriving after World War II that the piedmont forest began to disappear, leaving chronic erosion and scarred mountains slopes.4

Until the mid-twentieth century, isolation caused by the towering Eastern Cordillera and the tropical climate, fraught with dangers posed by typhoid fever, malaria, yellow fever, cholera, and tropical anemia, discouraged colonization. Outside the towns, a highly stratified social order developed based on the cattle ranch or hato. Colonos, or conoqueros as they were known, occupied the lowest place in this society. In addition to their modest dwellings, they owned no cattle and made their living by working for others. Their situation was made even worse since the hato owners habitually suspected them of being cattle thieves. Slightly better off were the vegueros, who lived along the rivers where they fished and raised crops. With the consent of the hato owner, the veguero might also own some cattle. On the hato itself, the vaqueros were in charge of work-ing with the cattle. They owned their own horses and riding equipment neces-sary for their job and received a salary. Caballiceros took charge of caring for the horses on the estate. The hato also employed a few servants in charge of prepar-ing food and occasionally native Indians who hired out their labor individually as concertados. Mayordomos were responsible for the day-to-day administration of the hatos since the owners might only visit once or twice a year. They lived with their wives in houses, and although they received monthly salaries, the other members of their families were expected to work on the hatos without pay. Equally impor-tant were the caporales in charge of the cattle herds, who organized roundups and the branding and slaughter of the cattle. During La Violencia, it was the caporales who tended to become leaders of guerrilla bands. The owners, at the top of this social pyramid, generally lived in the towns. They formed a class apart, expecting complete submission from their workers in this semifeudal arrangement.5

Nineteenth-Century Territorial Experiments

Heading a new nation in 1830, Colombian leaders struggled to find a political formula that would promote national unity and economic growth. They experi-mented with five successive republics: New Granada, 1832–57; the Granadan Confederation, 1857–61; the United States of New Granada, 1861–63; the United States of Colombia, 1863–86; and the Republic of Colombia, 1886 to the present. Between 1832 and 1863, Congress adjusted the internal provincial boundaries fifteen times, and although at one point the nation was divided into thirty-five provinces, the overall tendency was for the more densely populated


Andean regions to increase their preeminence while the less populated low-land regions declined. For example, under the Spanish rule, Casanare (includ-ing Arauca and all of the Llanos north of the Meta River to the Venezuelan border) had been an autonomous province, but its diminished political and economic viability after the War of Independence brought about its incorpo-ration into the sovereign state of Boyacá in 1857. In the same year, the Llanos of San Martín (including present-day Meta and Vichada) became a canton of the sovereign state of Cundinamarca. Throughout the nineteenth century, the governments of Colombia sporadi-cally attempted to develop the eastern portion of the republic. Members of both political parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, steadfastly proclaimed that the Llanos was a region of untold wealth and resources that within a few short years would become the heartland of Colombian prosperity, and nearly every administration produced some sort of scheme for accomplishing this goal. Their strategies included reviving the missions, promoting steam navigation on the Meta River, building roads, encouraging immigration, and fostering economic growth by introducing new crops, improved pasture, and better cattle breeds, but nearly constant civil wars prompting abrupt changes of government im-peded the fulfillment of these good intentions. The Radical faction of the Liberal Party, which dominated the nation be-tween 1861 and 1880, a period know as the Federation Era, devised the first truly functional system of national territories. Article 78 of the Constitution of Río Negro, which was approved by the nine sovereign states of Antioquia, Bolívar, Boyacá, Cauca, Cundinamarca, Magdalena, Santander, Tolima, and Panama, stated that a state or states with territories that were “thinly populated or inhabited by tribes of Indians” might cede those regions to the general govern-ment to be governed by “a special law for the purpose of promoting colonization or for making material improvements.” As soon as a territory had a “civilized” population of three thousand inhabitants, Article 78 continued, it could send a commissioner to the House of Representatives with a voice and vote in discus-sions about laws concerning the territory and a voice but no vote in discussion about laws of general interest. When the population reached twenty thousand, it could elect, in place of a commissioner, a representative with a voice and vote in all discussions. On achieving one hundred thousand inhabitants, the territory would be eligible for statehood.6

Between 1866 and 1872 the states handed over six territories to national control: the islands of San Andrés and Providencia (ceded by Bolívar), the Lla-nos of San Martín (ceded by Cundinamarca), Casanare (ceded by Boyacá), La Nevada y Motilones and Guajira (ceded by Magdalena), and Bolívar (ceded by


Santander). During this period, the federal government invested 455,379 pe-sos in administering and developing these special territories. Enthusiasm ran high in the years of peace and economic growth that preceded the civil war of 1876–77. On February l, 1870, President Santos Gutiérrez exhorted Congress “to attend to the territories with solicitude, if only because the expenses made on their behalf will be fully returned with considerable wealth,” and Gil Colunje, who served as minister of government from 1873 to 1874, predicted the rapid redemption of the territories.7

This optimism soon proved to be unrealistic, for by the end of the decade, the territorial initiative had lost its momentum, reflecting the declining influ-ence of its sponsors. A worldwide recession ended the commercial boom of the early 1870s, and the devastating civil war of 1876–77 further weakened support for Radical policies. The dismantling of the special territorial system began during Rafael Núñez’s first administration (1880–82), and Article 4 of the Constitution, adopted in 1886, reduced the states to departments and re-incorporated all existing national territories into their former departments.8 Despite their failure, however, the Radicals had established the principle of federal responsibility for the peripheral regions that later administrations could no longer ignore. Even as the Constitution of 1886 abolished the existing spe-cial territories, it included a provision authorizing Congress to separate from the departments “regions that have formerly been territories” and “to dispose of them as it may deem proper.”9

Between the beginning of Núñez’s second presidency in 1884 and the end of the five-year authoritarian government of Rafael Reyes (known as the Quin-quenio) in 1909, a civil-ecclesiastical government for the territories evolved by fits and starts. On September 7, 1892, Congress passed Law 13, which detached from Cundinamarca and Boyacá the Llanos of San Martín and Casanare re-spectively and ordered the national government to administer those regions as it judged convenient. Four months later, Decree 392 of January 17, 1893, declared each a “national intendancy” in which the chief administrative officer, or intendant, was appointed by the president. At first the intendants reported to the Ministry of Justice, but with the suppression of that office in 1894, they were shifted to the Ministry of Government. In November 1898, Congress separated Guajira from Magdalena and declared it an intendancy. The outbreak of the War of the Thousand Days (1899–1903) delayed other changes, but on September 20, 1902, the restored Congress erected the eastern Llanos region of Vichada into the Intendencia Oriental, designating the village of Maipures as its capital.10

The 1890s also witnessed an energetic attempt to revitalize the missions.


The Constitution of 1886 declared Roman Catholicism the national religion. It stated that civil authorities were to enforce respect for the church, that public education was to be conducted in accordance with Catholic teachings, and that the church was to be considered a juridical person in civil law. The Concordat of 1887 amplified these prerogatives by affirming the church’s independence from civil authority and granting it substantial influence over education. In Article 15, Colombia pledged to pay the church in perpetuity an annual sum of one hundred thousand pesos to support its dioceses, chapters, seminaries, missions, and other activities. More important, the government agreed in Article 31 that any treaties it might sign with the Vatican “for the development of Catholic mis-sions among the barbarous tribes” would not require congressional approval.11

The Concordat initiated a new era of mission expansion on Colombia’s fron-tiers. On September 14, 1888, Congress pledged to provide twenty-five thou-sand pesos annually for the conversion of indigenous peoples in San Martín, Antioquia, Darien, Caquetá, Chocó, Tierradentro, Guajira, and Casanare. In 1893, Pope Leo XII authorized an apostolic vicariate for Casanare, assigning it to the Augustinian Recoletos. In 1897 he extended this designation to the Llanos of San Martín and placed it in the charge of the Salesians.12

Liberal guerrillas disrupted the missions in the Llanos during the War of the Thousand Days, but soon after the fighting ceased, President José Manuel Marroquín and the Vatican signed the Convention on Missions of 1902. This agreement granted to the religious orders absolute authority to govern, police, and educate the natives in their mission territories. It also gave them control over the public education of Colombian citizens as well as unlimited amounts of baldíos (public lands) to promote colonization. The convention raised the official subsidy to seventy-five thousand pesos a year and stated that no person unacceptable to the missionaries might be appointed to a position of civil au-thority. Ostensibly adopted to protect the indigenous people and missionaries from government persecution, this last provision had the effect of compelling intendants and other territorial officials to submit to the wishes of the apostolic vicars and prefects.13 Liberal opponents of the convention strongly objected to the policy of allowing religious orders composed mostly of foreign nationals to exercise supreme political, judicial, and ecclesiastical authority in the frontier regions, but Marroquín approved the agreement over their objections.

Territorial Developments in the Early Twentieth Century

As ecclesiastical rule expanded during the Quinquenio, civil control over the territories all but evaporated, for President Rafael Reyes was determined to


break the power of the regional elites who in the past had challenged the na-tional government’s hegemony. To weaken their influence, in 1905 he prodded Congress into reorganizing the republic into thirty-one departments, each sub-divided into municipios (townships).14 An earlier legislative decree of that year abolished the short-lived Intendencia Oriental, combined the Llanos of San Martín and Casanare into the national Intendancy of Meta, and created two new intendancies: Alto Caquetá and Putumayo. In March 1906, however, Con-gress suppressed the latter two, returning Alto Caquetá to the department of Nariño and Putumayo to Cauca. By the same act it split off several municipios from the Intendancy of Meta and reassigned them to Boyacá, Huila, Quesada, and Tundama.15

Within fifteen months this arrangement was further modified. Decree 778 of July 5, 1907, revised the limits of the Meta intendancy, adding some of its land to the departments of Boyacá and Quesada, and erecting within the inten-dancy the provinces of Arauca and Casanare. The remodeled entity was then placed under military rule and transferred from the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice to that of the Ministry of War.16 The result of this administrative tur-moil was the disintegration of civil government in the territories. As Minister of Government Victor M. Salazar observed in his memoria of 1922, the legislation passed during the Quinquenio “eliminated at a stroke” the intendancies that had been created between 1892 and 1905 and erected others without giving them the administration they required to justify their separation from the their departments.17

Reyes’s reforms disrupted but did not extinguish the system of territorial rule begun by Núñez. One of the first acts of the National Assembly hastily convened after the president’s abrupt departure into exile on June 13, 1909, was to restore the departments and intendancies that had existed before he took office. Law 65 of December 14, 1909, divided the nation into ten departments and stated that the territories of San Martín, Casanare, Caquetá, Guajira, and Chocó “would be administered directly by the national government as inten-dancies.”18 An earlier measure, Decree 238 of September 25, 1909, had already reorganized the Intendancy of Meta to include the municipios of Villavicencio, Orocué, and San Martín, and Decree 340 of 1910 reestablished the Intendancy of Chocó.19

During the administration of Carlos E. Restrepo (1910–14), which began a twenty-year period usually referred to as the Conservative Republic, Con-gress created a new territorial category, the comisaría especial (special commis-sariat), for regions of lesser importance that required even greater assistance from the national government than did the intendancies. On March 24, 1911,


it designated Arauca as the first comisaría by separating the caseríos (hamlets) of Arauca (referred to from here on as Arauca City in order to distinguish it from the comisaría of Arauca), Arauquita, Todos los Santos, and El Viento from Boyacá. This step was prompted by the request of the governor of Boyacá, Rafael Castillo Mariño, who conceded that his department could not rule this region effectively due to its distance and isolation from Tunja, the large number of Venezuelans living in Arauca City, and a lack of soldiers to secure the border.20 Two years later Decree 523 of 1913 separated the easternmost section of the Intendancy of Meta and declared it the Comisaría of Vichada.21 Thus by 1913 the territorial division of the plains that existed in 1950 had been put into place. Conservative rule further reinforced the role of the missionaries in admin-istering the Llanos intendancies and comisarías. In 1908 the first conference of Colombian bishops created the national Junta de Misiones to coordinate the drive to “civilize the savage tribes” and colonize frontier areas.22 At their second conference, held in January 1913, the bishops published a pastoral titled “Mis-sions among the Unfaithful,” in which they stressed that the religious orders must continue to wield complete control over the natives in order to protect them from outside evils, and that to promote their conversion, the clergy should found towns, churches, and schools; build roads; and acquire boats for river transportation. They must also start homes for native children and farms where adults might learn agricultural techniques. The bishops called on all Colombi-ans to support the missions with their money and prayers. Congress responded to this initiative by increasing its annual subsidy to the Junta de Misiones from seventy-five thousand to one hundred thousand pesos.23

By 1930 there were four apostolic vicariates—Casanare, San Martín, Ca-quetá, and Guajira—and seven apostolic prefectures: Chocó (created in 1908), Arauca (1916), Tierradentro (1921), San Jorge (1924, Tumaco (1927), Magda-lena (1928), and the apostolic mission of San Andrés y Providencia, founded in 1912. The Montfort Fathers (Montfortians) and the Daughters of Wisdom, masculine and feminine orders of the Society of Mary founded in France by St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort in 1705, had responsibility for the Ap-ostolic Vicariate of San Martín (which included Meta and Vichada) and the Apostolic Prefecture of Arauca, while the Recoletos were in charge of the Ap-ostolic Vicariate of Casanare. For two decades the civilian and religious au-thorities worked together to promote the Christianization of the indigenous peoples, colonization, improvement of health conditions, and development of public works with the goal of making Colombian rule over the Llanos more effective. In spite of the efforts of some dedicated individuals, however,

~LEGEND~

SCALE

kilometers

0 100 200 400

Intendancies

Comisarías

Amazon Frontier

Capitals

National Capital

N

C a r i b b e a n S e a

Panama

Venezuela

GUAJIRA

Uribá

MAGADLENA

BOLÍVAR

ATLÁNTICO

SANTANDER

NO

RT

E d

eSA

NTA

ND

ER

ANTIOQUIA

CHOCO

CALDASBOYACÁ

ARAUCA

Arauca

VICHADA

VAUPÉS

CAQUETÁ

HUILA

VALLE de CAUCA META

CAUCA

NARIÑO

PUTUMAYO

CUNDINAMARCA

AMAZONAS

Ecuador

Brazil

Peru

Mitú

Villavicencio

Mocoa

Quibdo

PuertoCarreño

BOGOTÁ

TOLIMA

Leticia

Pacific Ocean

Florencia

Map 1.1. The national territories of Colombia showing the Llanos and Amazon frontiers in 1931. (Rausch, Colombia, 7; map by Don Sluter.)


Colombian presence in these regions remained tenuous at best, and there was much truth to the assertion that for the people of the highlands, the Llanos remained mysterious lands of menace and danger.24

Territorial Developments during Liberal Rule, 1930–1948

The return of the Liberals to power in 1930, after two decades of Conservative rule, marked a watershed in Colombia’s policy toward its frontier territories, just as it did in other aspects of the country’s political, economic, and social legislation. In his state of the union message of July 20, 1931, Enrique Olaya Herrera declared:

The Government considers that it is indispensable to carry to the most distant frontiers an official and civilizing action, and it has taken as a matter of study and consideration the best way to serve the intendan-cies and comisarías, seeking easier and more rapid means of communica-tion. . . . Those territories of great national wealth and of much future promise will compensate with growth the money that may be invested to develop them and to tie them closer to the rest of the country.25

Other presidents had made similar statements, but Olaya Herrera and his successor Alfonso López Pumarejo broke with the long tradition of neglect to demonstrate through their administrative reforms, financial subsidies, public works, health campaigns, and promotion of colonization a genuine commit-ment to extending effective national rule to the wilderness regions. Olaya Herrera, bolstered by a renewed desire on the part of the Colom-bian elite to “civilize the country” and a nationalism fanned by war with Peru over Leticia in Amazonas (1932–34), began the territorial policies that López Pumarejo later incorporated into his Revolution on March program.26 Even before the war, Olaya promoted territorial integration by creating the Inten-dancy of Amazonas and negotiating the settlement of international boundaries with Venezuela and Brazil. On October 8, 1930, Congress approved Law 10, which reorganized the financial structure of the territories, specifying that the annual national budget must include a subsidy to each region in proportion to its needs. An amendment adopted in September 1931 made the Ministry of Government responsible for all matters concerning territorial budgets. Un-fortunately, despite improved fiscal accountability, the government’s financial straits in 1932 forced a 10 percent reduction of all federal subsidies, dooming prospects of greater monetary assistance to the territories.27


Improving transportation and communication was another concern. In 1931 Congress passed Law 88 calling for the development of a national highway system extending over sixty-four hundred kilometers, but from the standpoint of the Llanos, the most dramatic change was the introduction of air service. Prompted by the Leticia crisis, the Ministry of War created the Servicio Aero-postas on October 31, 1932, to provide regular mail service to war zones in the Amazon region. Soon SCADTA pilots were providing regular cargo and passenger services to the Llanos reducing by hours the time it would take to communicate overland.28 Construction of telegraph stations in the capitals of the intendancies and comisarías further enhanced communication by the end of Olaya’s term of office. From an administrative point of view, the most important reform endorsed by Olaya was the creation of a special office to supervise the governing of the territories. Decree 1909 of November 30, 1933, established the Department of Intendancies and Comisarías (DIC) under the aegis of the Ministry of Govern-ment. Previously, the section chief in the ministry, who was in charge of “general matters,” had handled territorial affairs. Now the territories would have their own office with a staff consisting of a director, secretary, visitador (inspector), budget official, stenographer, and file clerk. The department was to oversee ter-ritorial administration, politics, public works, social assistance, government, hygiene, education, colonization, industry, finance, Indian protection, budget, statistics, agriculture, cattle, and navigation.29

The first director, Bernardo Rueda Vargas, a lawyer who had earned his de-gree from the Universidad Nacional, began work with his visitador, Jorge Ortiz Márquez, on December 1, 1933, in a small office in the Palacio de Justicia with jurisdiction over half the territory of the republic and a budget of three hundred thousand pesos. Citing the nearly complete ignorance on the part of Bogotá bureaucrats as to the nature of the peripheral territories, Rueda Vargas received permission from the minister of government to begin a series of visits to all the regions within his domain. In January 1934, he and Ortiz Márquez set out on a four-month excursion by airplane to Caquetá, Chocó, San Andrés, and Guajira, a trip that initiated the extraordinary labors that Rueda Vargas would continue during the López Pumarejo administration.30

Alfonso López Pumarejo, president from 1934 to 1938 and again in 1942–45, was, especially during his first term, an even more outspoken reformer than his predecessor. His program, introduced in 1934 and known as the Revolution on March, is often compared to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in U.S. politics and is widely credited as shaping Colombian twentieth-century destiny.31 A central theme of his political message was “to rediscover” Colombia’s peripheral


lowlands, and López showed a special affection for the Llanos Orientales. His territorial policies, building on the initiatives of Olaya Herrera, set the inten-dancies and comisarías on a new path toward development. Of the many measures López introduced between 1934 and 1936, the Con-stitutional Reform of 1936 had the greatest significance for the territories, since prior to that year, neither the Constitution of 1886 nor the amend-ments enacted to it by Legislative Act No. 3 of 1910 specifically recognized their existence. Article 2 of Title I of the charter adopted in 1936 redressed this deficiency by stating, “The national territory is divided into Departments, Intendancies and Comisarías; the first (i.e. Departments) are divided into municipios or distritos municipales.” It went on to stipulate that new depart-ments could be erected when such action was requested by three-fourths of the concejales (members of the municipal council) of a given region if it had at least 250,000 inhabitants and annual revenue of five hundred thousand pesos. Until this might happen, the intendancies and comisarías were to re-main under the “immediate control of the Government, and Congress will have power to provide for their organization and for their administrative sub-divisions.”32 The reform further legitimized the Department of Intendencias y Comisarías (DIC), renaming it the Departamento de Territorios Nacionales (DTN) in 1939. The Charter of 1936 also attempted to reduce the power of the Catholic Church by guaranteeing liberty of conscience and liberty of all cults and by making primary education free and obligatory in public schools. Although these provisions were inserted into the Constitution, the Liberals were unable to ratify a revision of the Concordat of 1887, leaving the powers of the church largely intact. As a result, the Convention on Missions remained in effect, and clergy continued to govern, police, and control the indigenous people in the territories as well as to supervise primary education for all inhabitants. Despite Liberal protests before and after 1936 that the agreement was unconstitutional, missionaries remained the dominant figures in the territories, a situation rein-forced in 1953 when the government of Rojas Pinilla renewed the convention without modification.33

Although the Catholic Church continued to be the most powerful force in the territories, during the Revolution on March, the national government made great strides in the development of public works, the expansion of public edu-cation and health facilities, planned and spontaneous colonization, the broad-ening of the army’s mission in the territories, and the development of a fron-tier police force. Regretfully, by 1937 opposition to López Pumarejo’s reforms mounted by clergy, Conservatives, and Liberal moderates, forced a relaxation


of his initiatives and enabled the inauguration on August 7, 1938, of Eduardo Santos as his successor. Santos was a moderate Liberal who believed that the Revolution on March had gone too far, too fast. He announced that his regime would be one of “con-solidation rather than innovation,” and he worked to restore an atmosphere of peace. With much of his attention diverted to foreign affairs due to World War II, he described his domestic policies as proceeding “without pause or haste,” and though he ignored López’s reforms, he did not repeal them. In spite of the war, conditions continued to improve in the territories but at a slower pace.34 In 1941 Colombia ratified a treaty with Venezuela that settled once and for all its southern and eastern international boundaries. The gov-ernment imposed a more rational fiscal regime for territorial administration. It sponsored a large number of public works, including improvements on the Bogotá-Villavicencio highway, new roads and schools in Arauca and Vichada, and construction of more modern buildings in Meta. As a result, Santos could announce in his last annual message to Congress on July 20, 1942, that “the government has completed a great labor in the territories and has tied them more closely to national life. Today, they show growing indications of progress, development of wealth and appreciable growth in income.”35

There is general agreement among historians that López Pumarejo’s reelec-tion to the presidency in 1942 was, to use the words of Hubert Herring, “a disservice to the man and to the nation.”36 Colombia, transformed by wartime economic conditions and the growth of passionate party politics, was a very dif-ferent country than it had been in 1934. The dynamic leader who in the 1930s had sought to recast the political, economic, and social structure of the country was powerless to either continue his reforms or heal the breach between the radical Liberals championed by Jorge Eliécer Gaitán and the moderates still loyal to Santos. When in 1946 this irreconcilable split permitted the victory of the Conservative presidential candidate, Mariano Ospina Pérez, the era of the Liberal Republic came to a close, leaving the country poised to embark on one of the most violent phases of its history in the twentieth century.37

During this last tumultuous quadrennium, Congress did pass one impor-tant piece of territorial legislation. Law 2 of 1943, “Organic Statute of the Intendancies and Comisarías,” set right some of the inconsistencies created by the Constitutional Reform of 1936 by regularizing the legal status, adminis-tration, and electoral privileges of the territories. On December 14, 1943, Act-ing President Darío Echandía issued Decree 2451, which implemented Law 2 by detailing the functions of the intendants, comisarios, councils, judges, and municipios as well as the fiscal organization of each territory.38 While this law


solidified the legal status of the territories, there were still some difficulties. One problem was that the national funds assigned to them were channeled through various government agencies making it difficult for the director of the DTN to coordinate his budget. Another was that the department had insufficient personnel to carry out its obligations, given that it had authority for over nearly half of Colombia’s territory. In 1944 Director General Alfredo J. de León requested that the staff be expanded to sixteen individuals, but in 1947, the minister of government actually reduced it to six people: the direc-tor, an inspector, a fiscal agent, a keeper of statistics, a typist, and a porter-file clerk.39

It is clear that by 1948 important changes had taken place in the rule of the territories in general and the Llanos in particular. The government had increased its financial support. A regular schedule of air cargo and passenger service and the extension of telegraph and radio systems had broken down the isolation of the most remote regions. Completion of the highway linking Bo-gotá with Villavicencio facilitated immigration. Improvements in sanitation and health conditions and changes in land policies encouraged colonos to reg-ister their claims as they began producing rice and other products to ship to highland markets. Despite these improvements, obvious problems remained. Congress still al-lotted less than 2 percent of the national budget to sustain the territories, and the subsidies it awarded were too meager to meet even modest goals. Another major weakness was the failure to develop an official policy regarding indig-enous people. With the Convention on Missions unchallenged, religious com-munities remained responsible for the “civilization” of the Amerindians. Despite the best efforts of the clergy, the actual presence of priests was limited to the capitals of the territories and a few mission outposts. The vast majority of na-tives who remained outside their potentially “protective” care either reacted to the gradual invasion of their lands by whites by raiding the settlements and ranches or were forced into debt servitude on the ranches. Colonos who ventured out to the Llanos from the densely populated depart-ments of Boyacá, Cundinamarca, or Huila fared little better than the natives. Equipped with determination but little expertise about how to survive in a tropical climate, the settlers would clear a few hectares of land and raise corn, yuca, and topocho (small plátanos) to support their families. It was still difficult for them to gain legal title, and often, wealthy entrepreneurs would claim their improved plots, turning them into tenant farmers. As one critic observed, “At the end of five, ten or fifteen years of residence spent in the midst of the fierce jungle, the burning plains or the impetuous rivers, they (the colonos) could


show no more profit than a life destroyed by diseases, malnutrition and the neglect and indifference which the government has shown toward their stub-born and patriotic effort.”40 Notwithstanding this gloomy conclusion, in 1948 conditions differed greatly in the four sections of the Llanos, the comisarías of Vichada and Arauca, the Intendencia of Meta, and Casanare, a province of the department of Boyacá.

The Comisaría of Vichada

In 1948 the Comisaría of Vichada was the more remote and least developed of the four sections of the Llanos. Encompassing 102,242 square kilometers of grassy plains and selva (forest) in the northeast corner of Colombia, it was separated from the Intendancy of Meta by an artificial border in 1913, a con-dition reconfirmed by Law 2 of 1943. In the north, the Meta River divided it from Casanare, the Comisaría of Arauca, and Venezuela. To the south, the Guaviare River set it off from the Comisaría of Vaupés in the Amazon region, while the Orinoco itself formed Vichada’s eastern boundary with Venezuela. Other tributaries of that vast river cut through the comisaría, including the Vichada, from which it took its name. In 1922 Buenaventura Bustos founded the capital, Puerto Carreño, a town that remained the most important urban center throughout the first half of the twentieth century. According to the census of 1938, the population of Vichada was 9,094, of which 8,200 were native people who had various degrees of interaction with the whites.41 The indigenous included substantial numbers of Piapoco and Pui-nave, who lived in small towns located in the forests bordering the Guaviare. Primarily cultivators, those who knew a little Spanish traded hammocks and mañoco (yuca flour) with white merchants. Even more numerous, however, were the nomadic Guahibo, also known as Sikuani, who hunted and fished along the tributaries of the Vichada. Completely naked and exhibiting a fierce demeanor, they were armed with bows and arrows. Sometimes when they were hungry, the Guahibo approached the comisaría authorities to demand food or merchandise, but more often, they would attack the towns of settled Indians, stealing their crops and animals. They also raided ranches owned by whites who retaliated by pursuing the marauders with guns and frequently slaughtering them.42

Nearly all of the approximately one thousand whites in the comisaría were Venezuelans, some of whom had originally fled across the border to escape the repressive regime of Juan Vicente Gómez (1908–35). Those who were not bandits supported themselves by raising cattle or fishing. The three hundred


people who lived in Puerto Carreño purchased necessities from boats that oc-casionally anchored at the port on their way from San Fernando de Apure or Ciudad Bolívar, paying with Venezuelan bolívars since Colombian pesos rarely circulated and were heavily discounted.43

Vichada was part of the Apostolic Vicariate of San Martín, but the mission-ary efforts by the Montfort Fathers based in Villavicencio were ephemeral. In 1933 the párroco (parish priest) of Orocué, Emeterio Foronda, made the first trip to Puerto Carreño but stayed there only a month. Four years later Padre Antonio Arrieudarré, párroco of Cabuyaro (Meta), made a brief visit to Puerto Carreño, but it was not until February 1946 that Monseñor José Bruls assigned Padre Jesús Amador Ruiz to be based permanently in Puerto Carreño. This third initiative ended unfortunately, however, with the drowning of Amador Ruiz in the Orinoco on September 13 of that very year.44

The reforms begun under Olaya and López had greater success in establish-ing a national presence. On July 21, 1935, López announced a plan to extend the Bogotá-Villavicencio highway to Puerto Carreño, and on February 27, 1936, he became the first president to visit Vichada when he flew to Puerto Carreño from Bogotá in the presidential tri-motor, accompanied by his ministers of war and agriculture, the director of military aviation, and other functionaries.45 By 1938 the highway had only reached Puerto López, but a few daring individu-als managed to drive their automobiles all the way to Puerto Carreño along the planned route.46 The launching of two ships on the Meta provided a more reliable fluvial connection between the city and Orocué. Extraction of forest products such as tonka beans and ranching formed the basis of the economy, but the comisaría was too isolated from highland markets to support expansion of these activities.47

Relations along the border improved with the signing of a treaty with Ven-ezuela in 1941. Colombia stationed three national police officers and forty-six agents in Puerto Carreño to help maintain peace, so that in 1944 Comisario Bonilla Media could report that “all problems which are common on frontiers have been solved amicably with the effort of both sides.”48 In that year the Ser-vicio Cooperativo Interamericano de Salud Público established a health post in Puerto Carreño, but the single doctor the post employed could do little to combat malaria and other endemic diseases that afflicted the population. In 1947 there were just two official schools, both located in Puerto Carreño. Vi-chada had access to telegraph and air service, but in most other ways it was just as isolated as it had been in 1930. Too remote to attract many colonists, by 1951 its population had increased to just 12,330. In an article published in 1948, “Los problemas de los Llanos Orientales,”


Gustavo Jiménez Cohen presented a much bleaker picture of conditions in Vi-chada than that conveyed by official reports. He accused the national govern-ment of displaying an “encyclopedic ignorance” of all the national territories and especially of Vichada, where fourteen thousand of the estimated population of fifteen thousand were native Guahibos whose lands were in danger of being seized by “unscrupulous adventurers.” Of the one thousand white inhabitants, 60 percent were Venezuelans; the others presumably were Colombian busi-nessmen and ganaderos (ranchers). Of the 400 inhabitants of Puerto Carreño, 150 were Colombians and the rest were Venezuelans. Two monthly flights by Colombian air force squadrons provided the only regular connection of Vi-chada with the interior, and Venezuelans dominated local economic transac-tions. Jiménez warned that the government’s failure to reinforce the frontier left the comisaría open to a Venezuelan takeover, and he pointed out that in Puerto Ayacucho on the Venezuelan side of the border, numerous Colombians work-ing for Venezuelans were being subjected to humiliating treatment because of lack of official Colombian presence. Jiménez believed the establishment of a flotilla of motorboats on the upper Orinoco and in Vichada was an “imperious necessity,” and he recommended as well the promotion of agricultural colonies, completion of a highway, and the founding of five health centers located in the native towns where disease, due to the lack of medical assistance, was decimat-ing the population. Observing that the national government was responsible for the economic and cultural development of the territories, Jiménez urged the Senate to create a special committee to study the suggestions that he had proposed.49

The Comisaría Especial de Arauca

The Comisaría de Arauca was located in the northern section of the Llanos. With an area of 23,818 kilometers, it was limited on the north and east by Ven-ezuela, on the south by Vichada and Casanare, and on the east by Boyacá. The census of 1951 calculated its population as 13,221. There were three main urban centers: the capital, Arauca City, located on the Venezuelan border, Arauquita, and Tame, and the principal economic activity was cattle ranching. Unlike Vichada, indigenous people were a distinct minority in Arauca, ac-counting for fewer than one thousand of the inhabitants in 1951. Since colonial times European penetration into this comisaría had been more intensive, so that by the twentieth century the Tunebo, Macaguane, Chiricoa, and Yaruro tribes had virtually disappeared, having been decimated or assimilated into white cul-ture. Those natives who survived were primarily Guahibo, who withdrew to the


forests along the tributaries of the Casanare and Meta River. Organized into bands known as capitanías, they regularly raided towns and isolated hatos. The white population regarded them with implacable hatred, and the presence of missionaries did little to counteract this racial hostility.50 In 1916 ecclesiasti-cal authorities created the Apostolic Prefecture of Arauca and assigned it to the Lazarists, who were also known as Vincentians. Since the district included Chita and La Salina in Boyacá, the Lazarists established their headquarters in Chita, which due to its higher altitude enjoyed a healthier climate than the settlements in the plains. As a result the missionaries made no effort to convert the Guahibo, confining their energies to the churches and schools in the white towns.51

The “rediscovery” of Arauca by Liberals in the 1930s was less dramatic than that of Vichada, since in the past the comisaría had frequently drawn national attention due to border issues with Venezuela. The neighboring republic domi-nated Arauca’s economy as much as it intruded on its political life. Although it was possible for ranchers to drive their cattle across the Colombian plains to get them to highland markets via Villavicencio and Sogamoso, they preferred to depart from Arauca City, fording the Arauca River, which marked the inter-national border to reach El Amparo on the Venezuelan side. From there they followed the San Cristóbal road, traveling through Venezuela from El Amparo to San Cristóbal and crossing the border back into Colombia at Cúcuta, even though using the road meant paying Venezuelan tolls. Denied the right to free navigation on the Meta and Orinoco rivers, Araucano merchants had to import goods through Venezuelan middlemen in Ciudad Bolívar and El Amparo pay-ing double duty. The result was that two-thirds of the region’s trade was contra-band, and at times Venezuelan bolívars were the only currency that circulated.52

The Venezuelan treaty of 1941, which finally defined the location of the frontier between the two countries, also authorized free navigation on rivers that crossed or separated them. This settlement was expected to improve bor-der relations, and two years later, the comisaría reported evidence of progress and accommodation. Nevertheless, commerce along the Arauca, Orinoco, and Meta rivers remained inconsequential, and the sixty-two agents who made up the Arauca Division of the National Police received so little support from the government that they were ill equipped and too sick to apprehend contraband-istas (smugglers).53

In 1947 Comisario Carlos E. Esguerra estimated the number of cattle in Arauca at 190,000 head, but ranching continued to be hampered by lack of veterinarians, deterioration of the breed, unwillingness of the ranchers to plant improved pasture, and rampant theft. Eighteen hacienda patrols main-


tained by the national police were insufficient to control cattle rustling, and raids by Guahibo were equally relentless. Esguerra wrote that since they had no expectation of assistance from either the government or the missionaries, the ranchers continued to take matters into their own hands, hunting down the Indians “in a cruel manner to the point of converting their pursuit into a true blood bath.”54

In 1936 congress passed Law 200, intended to enable colonos to claim prop-erty that they had lived upon for at least five years. The Liberals hoped that this measure would encourage new settlers to move to Arauca, thus diminishing the influence of Venezuela. Despite this and other incentives, few highland-ers relocated in Arauca for three reasons. First, they were discouraged by the lack of progress on the Sarare Road, which by connecting Norte de Santander with Arauca would have provided easier access to the highlands through Co-lombia. Second, although a branch of the Caja de Crédito Agrario was located in Arauca City, government support for farmers was minimal, and it was still virtually impossible for them to gain title to their land. Finally, the deadly topi-cal climate continued to limit the region’s appeal. Excessive heat and humidity together with malnutrition and lack of public awareness intensified the dangers posed by tropical anemia, malaria, and syphilis—all endemic diseases through-out the Llanos. The expansion of a hospital in Arauca City provided some pro-tection, but most Araucanos had no access to medical facilities. Elementary health reforms were not even attempted, and the Rockefeller Foundation Sani-tary Campaign, formed to eradicate hookworm (the cause of tropical anemia), reached Arauca only after the end of World War II.55

Some progress was made during the Santos regime on education and public works. In Arauca City the new boys’ colegio (high school), General Santander, was completed, and two primary schools were built so that by 1947 Arauca was educating 830 children in seventeen schools, ten supported either by the comisaría or the nation and seven by the missionaries. Air and telegraph service was functioning. Repairs were made on several roads and bridges, and Tame received a new matadero (slaughterhouse) and an electricity generating plant.56

The process of issuing cédulas (identity cards that verified Colombian citizen-ship and the right to cast ballots in elections), begun during the first López ad-ministration, advanced by fits and starts. By 1946 a total of 2,478 cédulas had been issued: 1,439 in Arauca City, 282 in Arauquita, and 757 in Tame. The out-come of the presidential elections of 1942 and 1946 revealed that most Arau-canos supported the Liberal Party. In 1942 they cast 1,008 votes for López and just 43 for his Conservative opponent, Carlos Arango Vélez. In 1946 of the 560


ballots recorded, 476 went to the Liberal candidates with Gaitán receiving 256 and Gabriel Turbay, 220, while Conservative Mariano Ospina Pérez got 84.57

The Intendancy of Meta

The Intendancy of Meta was created in 1909. After Congress detached Vichada from its jurisdiction and established it as a comisaría in 1913, the intendancy consisted of 85,220 square kilometers of piedmont and grassland extending eastward from the Cordillera Oriental and watered by the tributaries of the Guaviare and Meta rivers. To the north, the Meta separated the intendancy from Casanare, while along the south the Guaviare set it off from the Amazo-nian Comisaría of Vaupés. Artificial lines marked the eastern boundary with the Comisaría of Vichada and the western boundary with Cundinamarca. Be-cause of their isolation from the Colombian highlands, Vichada and Arauca had been settled largely by Venezuelans and were as much a frontier of that country as they were of Colombia. By contrast, the majority of white settlers in Meta had come from Cundinamarca, Boyacá, Tolima, and Santander, gradu-ally assimilating the original Guahibo and Sáliva natives or pushing them back to the far reaches of the territory along the Guaviare and Manacacías rivers. Since the last half of the nineteenth century, the Bogotá-Villavicencio carretera (highway) had provided relatively easy access to Meta, and the intendancy’s close political, economic, and cultural ties with Bogotá and Cundinamarca cre-ated the necessary conditions for more rapid growth in the twentieth century. President López Pumarejo did much to encourage these developments because of his special attachment to Meta, and the Montfort missionaries were active in expanding ecclesiastical presence throughout the intendancy. Between 1918 and 1951 the population of Meta tripled from 11,671 to 67,492, a growth rate among the ten national territories second only to that of Chocó. Although the intendancy was divided into four municipios (Villavicen-cio, Restrepo, San Martín, and El Calvario) and eight corregimientos (districts) (Uribe, Surimena, San Juanito, Cumaral, Acacías, San Pedro de Aremena, Cabuyaro, and Mazanares), more than one-third of the inhabitants resided in the capital, Villavicencio. Over this forty-year period the population of Villavi-cencio expanded from 4,736 to 33,342 to maintain its position as the largest city east of the Andean cordillera.58

Undoubtedly spurring this growth were improvements in the Bogotá-Villavi-cencio road. With paving completed down the length of the highway in Febru-ary 1936, trucks and automobiles moved freely between the two cities, giving a boost to colonization and commerce. New towns were founded at Puerto López


(1935) and Puerto Carreño (1934).59 The number of cattle grazing on Meta’s pastures multiplied thanks to improved ranching techniques. Some 354 people, many of them colonos, successfully acquired legal title to 49,296 hectares of land, and in addition to beef cattle, Meta began supplying the highlands with large shipments of rice, plátanos, yuca, and corn. The construction of liquor factories in Villavicencio generated new sources of revenue, while international oil companies continued their explorations for exploitable petroleum deposits. Regularly scheduled air flights, wireless telegraph, and telephones linked Meta with the interior. The development of a yellow fever vaccine promised some control over a new strain of the disease that had surfaced in 1934. Sewers and aqueducts were built in Villavicencio. The Montfort missionaries oversaw the expansion of their hospital and published the only newspaper based in the Lla-nos, Eco de Oriente. In 1937 there were twenty-two official schools enrolling 585 boys and 385 girls and twenty Montfort schools with 505 boys and 834 girls. Because of their proximity to Bogotá, the people of Meta were more attuned to national developments than were their counterparts in the other Llanos ter-ritories, and they participated in the presidential elections dividing their ballots more or less evenly between the two parties. In 1942 there were 3,320 votes for López Pumarejo and 3,207 votes for his Conservative opponent, Carlos Arango Vélez. By election time four years later, 14,256 people had acquired cédulas, and there were 4,246 votes for the Conservative candidate, Mariano Ospina Pérez, while 3,835 Liberals, forced to choose between two candidates, registered 2,163 votes for Jorge Eliécer Gaitán and 1,672 votes for Gabriel Turbay.60 In 1947, despite failed efforts by its intendants to convince congress to elevate Meta’s status to a department, the intendancy seemed well positioned economically and politically to lead the Llanos in fulfilling their destiny as “the Future of Colombia.”61

Casanare, Province of Boyacá

During the early twentieth century, Casanare was the only section of the Llanos not to be erected as a national territory. Reunited with Boyacá in 1909 after the fall of Rafael Reyes, it was administered by that department until President Laureano Gómez declared it a comisaría in June 1950 in a desperate but futile attempt to stem the wave of Violencia that engulfed the plains. By the twenti-eth century, Boyacá, despite its relatively large size and population of 950,264 inhabitants, was the poorest department in Colombia.62 It was a bastion of the Conservative Party, and the resistance of its civic and religious leaders to Liberal


rule after 1930 exacerbated economic malaise and popular unrest. Focusing their policies on the altiplano (highland) portion of the department, the gover-nors and assembly members showed little concern for the special needs of the Provincia de Casanare, isolated by topography and beset by disease, poverty, and lawlessness. Surveying the situation in 1944, Humberto Plazas Olarte, a Boyacense journalist, declared that Casanare was a case study of “official negli-gence” unmatched elsewhere in Colombia.63

Separated from the rest of the department by the Cordillera Oriental, Casa-nare’s twenty-five thousand square kilometers included a piedmont zone at the base of the mountains and tropical plains that extended to the Casanare River and the Comisaría of Arauca in the north and to the Meta River, the Inten-dancy of Meta, and the Comisaría of Vichada in the south and east. Although during colonial times, it had been the center of Spanish activity in the plains, its fortunes fell during the nineteenth century so that its population of 25,481 in 1928 was approximately the same as in 1810 before the War of Independence. The province was divided into eleven municipios, their jurisdictions extend-ing over great expanses of undeveloped land. About half the population, or 14,789 people, lived either in Nunchía, the capital, or in the other piedmont towns of Támara, Marroquín, Sácama, and Ten. Many of these urban residents owned hatos or fundaciones (ranches with three hundred to one thousand head of cattle) in the savannas to the south and east, but they visited their proper-ties only during the dry season, content to leave them to the care of mayordo-mos during the rest of the year. Another 5,420 people lived in Manare, Maní, Moreno, and Pore along the base of the cordillera. Moreno and Pore at vari-ous times during the nineteenth century had been capitals of the province, but hampered by their hot, unhealthy climates, they had fallen into a state of decay. Finally, 5,772 people lived in Trinidad and Orocué, towns on the open plains, open to Venezuelan influence and imbued with true Llanero culture.64 By 1928 the once numerous Amerindians had been reduced to approximately two thou-sand individuals, including remnants of the Sáliva and Tunebo peoples, who had been christianized by Recoleto missionaries, and the defiant Guahibo, who resisted Recoleto efforts and systematically raided ranches and homes around Orocué.65

In accordance with departmental organization, the municipios were gov-erned by popularly elected councils and alcaldes (mayors) chosen by the prefect who was the chief administrative officer of the province. Appointed by the gov-ernor, he had powers commensurate with those exercised by intendants and comisarios in the national territories. As in the territories, the clergy wielded extensive power. Pope Leo XII created the Apostolic Vicariate of Casanare in


1893 and assigned it to the care of the Augustinian Recoletos, also known as Candelarios. After Arauca was designated as a separate apostolic prefecture in 1916, the vicariate was left with some forty-five thousand square kilometers un-der the rule of Bishop Santos Ballesteros, who resided in Támara. It was divided into five districts—Támara, Nunchía, Moreno, Orocué, and Chámeza—each served by two missionaries, who visited the towns within their districts four to six times a year. The Recoletos were assisted by nuns belonging to the order of Hermanas de Caridad Dominicana de la Presentación de Tours, who taught in the schools and ministered to the sick in the larger towns.66

In comparison with Vichada, Arauca, and Meta, which enjoyed support from the national government, Casanare showed scant political, economic, or social improvement during the first half of the twentieth century. Information gathered from the annual prefects’ reports housed in the departmental archive in Tunja suggests that many of these officials were grossly incompetent. An exception was Rafael La Rotta, who arrived in Nunchía in 1938 to take up his duties. La Rotta discovered that his predecessor’s office was “a dirty, dilapidated little room” with furniture consisting of three tables in a bad state, three broken stools, and two bookcases. The archive contained “shapeless mounds of the re-mains of informes (reports) devoured by termites,” and the former prefect had slept in the office “where he held parties many nights so that the following day, the citizens had to see the spectacle of the official’s intimate belongings without a screen to hide them from view.”67

The other municipal governments were in even worse shape than that of Nunchía. Often the towns were deserted, except for the alcaldes and the con-cejales (councilors), the other residents tended to live on their hatos to take care of their cattle. Dysfunctional municipal government made the issuing of cédulas and draft cards all the more difficult. In 1938 only about half of eligible people had obtained these documents. Revenue collection was erratic, produc-ing barely enough to pay the salaries of local officials. As a result Casanare was dependent on departmental or national coffers for funds for public works.68

Improvements on the two roads connecting the province to the highlands were sporadic. In 1938 Prefect La Rotta reported that help was on the way in the form of six hundred pesos from the department for repairs to the Cravo road linking Sogamoso with El Morro via Labanzagrande, and the road con-necting Socha in the highlands with Támara in the piedmont. In that same year Congress ordered that bridges be constructed over the Pauto and Tocaría rivers, but the fifteen thousand pesos it allotted for the work were not forthcoming.69 More promising was the establishment of regular air service in Orocué in 1934. Five years later Nunchía, Moreno, and Trinidad also had landing strips, and


ARCO airlines flew to these and other towns “without interruption and with all safety.”70

Opportunities for quality education were limited in Casanare. Prefect La Rotta was critical of the instruction offered by the Recoletos in the twenty-four primary schools administered by the vicariate. In his report of 1939 he bluntly stated:

Unfortunately the work of the missionary fathers, who are in charge of what is called public education, is alarmingly and disturbingly inadequate. The missionaries do not have the least notion of pedagogy nor are they concerned with developing a system appropriate for teaching Llaneros. They are solely interested in collecting the money paid to them by the national government, and have shown their scorn for public education in Casanare by suppressing many important rural schools such as those of Santa Elena de Cúsiva and Santa Elena de Upía.71

The concerns raised by La Rotta eventually evoked a response from the de-partmental assembly, for in 1942, Juan Medina Díaz, secretary of education for Boyacá, reported that the administration of Governor Antonio Córdoba Mora (1939–42) had opened fifteen schools in Casanare municipios and had contracted for the construction of new school buildings in Maní, Yopal, and El Morro.72

The scourges of malaria, tuberculosis, and tropical anemia—the most preva-lent diseases in Casanare—were intensified by malnutrition, poor sanitation, and the lack of doctors and medicine. The infant mortality rate was “30 for 100,” and the prefects estimated that during the rainy season, up to 70 percent of the inhabitants were ill.73

Improvements in the late 1930s included the appointment of an official doc-tor for the province and the opening of Casanare’s first hospital in Nunchía in 1939. Lack of potable water delayed the founding of a hospital in Támara, a town where residents depended on shallow agüeyes (wells) for household needs. By 1940 sanitation commissions based in Orocué and Trinidad were urging residents to build latrines and to pour oil on any standing water to prevent mosquitoes from breeding, but in the opinion of the official doctor, Dr. Paris Olaya, a more effective solution would have been for the government to equip the towns with aqueducts and sewers.74

With the exception of Orocué, which as a port on the Meta River main-tained vital commerce with ships coming from Venezuela up the Orinoco, Casanare’s economy depended on ranching supplemented by limited cultiva-tion of food crops. In 1936 Juan Medina R. estimated that there were 393,865


cattle distributed among 151 hatos and fundaciones in the province.75 Every year Llaneros drove 40,000 head up the cordillera to Sogamoso and 60,000 to Villavicencio—the latter leaving from Maní to follow the left bank of the Cusiana River to the Meta. An estimated 12,500 horses, 9,700 pigs, and 2,735 mules rounded out the livestock population.76 Although these figures might seem substantial, the herds in Casanare were actually declining due to the fail-ure of the owners to crossbreed, the impact of disease, relentless slaughtering of females, and theft. Moreover, the paving of the Bogotá-Villavicencio highway in 1936 had the long-term effect of ending Orocué’s commercial relations with Venezuela and linking its economy with Puerto López and Villavicencio.77

Before the 1940s, historian Roberto Franco maintains that life in Casanare, despite deep social divisions between owners and workers, was generally peace-ful with the glaring exception of conflicts between whites and Indians. It was a region of low crime, “where conflicts were resolved by fistfights, sexual crimes were non existent, and there were reciprocal relationships all along the social scale. . . . Cattle rustling was unknown except for the more or less traditional form known as ‘cachilapeo.’ ” 78 By September 1946 the situation was clearly changing. El Tiempo reported that every year in Casanare rustlers stole cattle worth a million pesos, assassinating their owners “in the most cowardly and cruel manner.”79

It is clear that by this time, public security was regarded as a critical issue. A detachment of departmental police proved unequal to controlling either the outlaws or Guahibo raids. In 1940 the first national police arrived. The agents were organized as a subsection of the Arauca and Vichada Division until July 1942, when the Casanare unit was declared autonomous with five officers and forty men based in Trinidad. Their most important duty was to monitor cattle drives to prevent theft, but for lack of resources, they were no more effective than the former agents of the Guardia de Boyacá. In 1947 Virgilio Barco, sub-director of the Guarniciones de Fuera (Border Garrisons), reported that while, in spite of all obstacles, the police had been able to control disturbances result-ing from political conflicts in the piedmont region, they were too few and too scattered throughout the province to exercise effective vigilance.80

By the 1940s it was evident that by comparison with progress in Meta, Arauca, and Vichada, Casanare lagged far behind. In his doctoral thesis, “Los territorios nacionales con una introducción al estudio de su geografía y de su historia,” published in 1944, Humberto Plazas Olarte devoted an entire chapter to the plight of Casanare to offer a sweeping indictment of Boyacá’s rule.81 Citing the lack of economic and social progress, he argued that Congress should immedi-ately declare the region an intendancy. With twenty-five thousand inhabitants,


an annual income of more than 120,000 pesos, and an area of twenty-five thou-sand square kilometers, the province easily met the requirements for intendan-cies as laid down by Law 2 of 1943. The administration of national territories was especially designed to provide official tutelage to regions such as Casanare, and it was unrealistic to expect Boyacá to deal effectively with problems so dif-ferent from those of the highlands surrounding Tunja. To emphasize the need for action, Plazas Olarte pointed to the increasing violence in the Llanos. For some years, the province had suffered the scourge of gangs of cuatreros (cattle thieves) who attacked citizens and threatened to end the ranching industry. The whole country, he continued, was aware of the mag-nitude of the problems, but the government of Boyacá had simply abandoned Casanare to its fate. Plazas Olarte believed that only the nation, through the mediation of the Ministry of Government and the national police, could control the bandits. “Elevate Casanare to a national territory,” he pleaded. “If the matter of public order in Casanare is not dealt with, there will be grave and incalculable repercussions.”82

Summary

Sixteen years of Liberal rule had produced some striking changes within the national territories that made up three-fourths of the Llanos frontier. Progress was the greatest in Meta, where thanks to the Bogotá-Villavicencio highway, and the favoritism shown by President López Pumarejo, the population had tripled, new towns had been founded, and the economy was booming. Growth was more modest in Arauca, but the settlement of border issues with Venezuela showed promise of a stronger economy, while in Vichada the most discernable transformation was confined to the capital, Puerto Carreño. On the other hand, Casanare, under the rule of Boyacá, offered a stark contrast, with scant popula-tion growth, a stagnating cattle economy, and growing insecurity. At the same time, one is forced to conclude that the reforms sponsored by the Revolution on March did not change the basic structure of the Llanos fron-tier or its relationship to the highlands as it had been developing over the previ-ous three centuries. For example, the Liberals were critical of the work of the missionaries but did not succeed in reducing their role in the Llanos or in com-ing up with an alternative program for assimilating the indigenous people into the Colombian nation. Throughout the plains, relations between whites and Indians remained antagonistic. As colonos encroached upon their homelands, the natives fled into the more remote wilderness. They attacked the ranches and outlying towns and were hunted down like animals by the whites.


Without viable roads to connect them to the highlands, Arauca and Vi-chada continued to function more as western frontiers of Venezuela than as the far eastern frontier of Colombia. The economies of Arauca and Casanare still depended on cattle, and in neither region were the ganaderos able to adopt modern techniques to improve the yield and quality of their animals. The pe-ons (day laborers) and vaqueros (cowboys), who lived outside the towns, had no access to schools or health facilities, or realistic opportunities to gain title to land on which they might have lived for many years. Ranchers and work-ers were staunchly Liberal, in contrast to those in Meta, where Conservatives had a slight majority, but few were able to take part in either local or national elections. After 1930 the Llanos frontier continued to serve as a place of refuge for people fleeing the highlands, as it had since the colonial era. The national gov-ernment had fortified its presence in the capitals of the territories, but the plains and selvas surrounding the towns remained as lawless as ever. When the Con-servatives returned to national political power in 1946, heightened tensions between political parties in Tolima, Cundinamarca, Boyacá, and Santander prompted a wave of individuals to flee to the Llanos to escape persecution. As the next chapter will show, the revancha (revenge) unleashed by the Conserva-tives against Liberals in Boyacá spurred the arrival to Casanare and Arauca of the first politically committed guerrilla fighters, such as Franco Isaza, the Villamarín brothers of Cocuy, and the Colmenares brothers of Paz de Río.83 The invasion of the Chulavita armies into the piedmont cities of Casanare af-ter the assassination of Gaitán was the final event that persuaded men such as Guadalupe Salcedo and Eliseo Velásquez to begin their insurgency against the government headed first by Mariano Ospina Pérez and after August 1950 by Laureano Gómez.

2

The Violencia and Its Impact on the Llanos, 1946–1953

There is general agreement among scholars that the era of La Violencia—the undeclared civil war that lasted from 1946 to 1962—was a major turning point in Colombian history.1 Because much of the fighting that occurred between 1947 and 1953 was localized in the Llanos, the conflict had perhaps an even greater impact on that region than it did on the rest of the country. Increasing unrest broke out with the return of Conservatives to power in 1946, but the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán on April 9, 1948, plunged Meta, Casa-nare, and Arauca into an open warfare that would traumatize its inhabitants for five years, until July 1953, when the principal Liberal guerrilla chieftains accepted the amnesty offered by General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla and turned in their weapons. After a brief review of the key phases of the Violencia at the national level, this chapter will investigate the development of the struggle in the Llanos and assess the consequences of the fighting for the region.

Key Phases of La Violencia in Colombia

Historians usually associate the start of La Violencia with the bitter struggle between the traditionally hostile Liberal and Conservative parties that inten-sified after the election to the presidency of Conservative Mariano Ospina Pérez, an event that ended sixteen years of Liberal rule at the national level. Although Ospina Pérez invited six Liberals to join his cabinet, violence broke out in several departments as Conservatives, urged on by the supreme chief of their party, Laureano Gómez, and the Catholic Church attempted to regain political control by attacking and persecuting Liberals. To restore order Ospina Pérez organized a new, extremely violent police force known as the Chulavitas, which functioned as an extension of the Conservative Party and a fearful in-

30 Territorial Rule in Colombia and the Transformation of the Llanos Orientales

strument of terror against the Liberals.2 The assassination of populist Liberal leader Gaitán on the streets of Bogotá on April 9, 1948, incited unprecedented mob riots in the capital (known as the Bogotazo) and in other cities throughout the country. After the urban violence receded, “the rural aspect of this night-mare of twentieth-century Colombian history continued.”3 Tension heightened on November 9, 1949, when Ospina Pérez closed Congress, decreed a state of siege, limited civil liberties, and assumed discretionary powers. These draconian moves were followed in 1950 by the election of Gómez in a contest boycotted by the Liberals. During the next three years, Gómez and his surrogate, Roberto Urdaneta Arbeláez, unsuccessfully attempted to turn back the clock on the Liberal re-forms and “restore order through the principle of centralized, vertical and hier-archical authority.”4 Although the national economy steadily improved, wages lagged behind prices; the government forcibly broke up strikes, and for laborers it was the worst of times. In rural areas, La Violencia intensified. Expanding into new regions (eventually all of Colombia except the Caribbean area was af-fected), it increasingly assumed the nature of a class struggle as peasants defied the efforts of landowners and their hired thugs to eject them from their parcels and Communist Party activists began organizing strongholds of self-defense among uprooted peasants. The period between 1949 and 1953 saw a rise of resistance in guerrilla zones inhabited by peasants and fugitives fleeing from regions marked by anarchy or terror, many of which were located in the Llanos. As Robert Dix points out, “The guerrilla bands were spontaneous in origin, restricted in their range of operation, and limited in their goals—which were often those of self-defense or revenge against local political enemies or local officials.”5

The inability of the Gómez-Urdaneta dictatorship to defeat the guerrilla movements and restore peace contributed to the weakening of its authority. On June 13, 1953, General Rojas Pinilla seized the presidency, a coup supported by the armed forces and representatives of both parties. Rojas Pinilla moved quickly to proclaim an unconditional amnesty to all guerrillas who would agree to return to civilian life. Several thousand of them accepted this peace initiative. They surrendered their weapons and returned to their old homes, but a few re-fused to give up, continuing sporadic resistance into the mid-1960s. Rojas Pini-lla’s failure to completely eliminate the violence contributed to his overthrow in May 1957, when the leaders of the Conservative and Liberal parties resolved to work together to scuttle the dictatorship and to share power peacefully there-after in an arrangement that came to be known as the National Front.6

31The Violencia and Its Impact on the Llanos, 1946–1953

Causes of La Violencia in the Llanos

There are several reasons an important theater of La Violencia was located in the Llanos. First, as noted in chapter 1, since colonial times, geographic isola-tion and the lack of state infrastructure had made the plains a fertile region for resistance to the Spanish Crown and to subsequent national governments. Of course, as is well known, the Llaneros were indispensable to Bolívar’s victory at the Battle of Boyacá on August 7, 1819, but in 1830–31, a Llanero army also challenged the post–Gran Colombian government established by Rafael Urda-neta. Led by General Juan Nepomuceno Moreno, they marched from Casanare over the cordillera contributing to the downfall of the Urdaneta regime. Sev-enty years later, during the War of the Thousand Days (1899–1902), Casanare was again a major theater of fighting, and General Gabriel Vargas Santos, a Llanero chieftain, was a key figure in the Liberal command, albeit on the losing side. In 1916–17 Humberto Gómez seized control of Arauca City and declared the comisaría an independent republic. His revolt was short lived, but like the previous protests, it underscored the lack of Colombian control over its far eastern frontier. Second, in the absence of effective national governance, by the twentieth cen-tury the social structure of the Llanos frontier was little changed from colonial times. In 1930 the population numbered less than 70,000 or not even 1 percent of the republic’s total of 7,851,000. Cattle ranching continued to be the prin-cipal economic activity, and the hatos and fundaciones were organized along traditional lines. Ganaderos and merchants wielded political and economic power while the colonos, peons, and vaqueros on the ranches lived in poverty, beset by disease, without legal guarantees, and vulnerable to exploitation. In some places, the Amerindians had been assimilated into white society, while in others the two groups engaged in bitter warfare. Lawlessness and violence were endemic, and the Llanos remained a place of refuge for fugitives from the highlands and for would-be Venezuelan revolutionaries.7

Finally, although during the Liberal Republic the López government paid more attention to the Llanos territories than they had ever received before, the impact of the reforms varied, as demographic, economic, and political development depended more on local conditions than on any single govern-ment program. For example, with the exception of the capital, Puerto Carreño, the Comisaría of Vichada was barely touched by the Revolución en Marcha. Although telegraph and air service was operating by 1947, efforts to connect Puerto Carreño by a highway faltered; the Monfort missionaries had only a


token presence, and the poorly equipped national police force stationed on the border could not contain contraband coming from Venezuela. Liberal policies in Arauca had more impact. During the tenure of Rueda Vargas as director of the DIC, measures were taken to strengthen border de-fenses, encourage colonization, halt the decline in cattle, protect the indigenous people, and improve health and education. Income derived from traditional taxes on distilled liquor, alcohol consumption, and degüello (slaughtering of cattle), when augmented by new levies on tobacco, increased from less than forty thousand pesos in 1938 to more than ninety thousand pesos in 1946. Some public works projects were completed in Arauca City, Arauquita, and Tame, but ranching continued to be hampered by a lack of veterinarians, dete-rioration of the breed, the ranchers’ reluctance to plant improved pasture, and rampant theft by Guahibo and common bandits. Despite this limited progress, the outcome of the presidential elections of 1942 and 1946 revealed that most Araucanos supported the Liberal Party.8

In contrast, the situation of the Intendencia del Meta suggests that Liberal policies brought significant change as well as increased discontent. There is no question that the opening of the Bogotá-Villavicencio highway improved trade and the general economy or that there were more schools, hospitals, and better communication with the interior. Nevertheless, despite the reform of 1936, few colonos had been able to gain title to their lands. The vast majority of vaqueros and peons remained at the mercy of absentee landlords and unscru-pulous mayordomos. Cattle rustling and banditry continued to be persistent problems. Moreover, the cost of living skyrocketed in the 1940s as speculation raised prices of locally grown products, and food shortages were common when frequent landslides interrupted traffic on the highway to Bogotá. In his book Villavicencio entre la documentalidad y la oralidad, the late histo-rian Tomás Ojeda Ojeda notes that a small directing class controlled the local government in Villavicencio.9 Because of their proximity to Bogotá, this group was more aware of national developments than their counterparts in Arauca, and unlike the situation in the comisaría, the elections of the 1940s revealed that their loyalties were rather evenly divided between the Conservatives and Liberals.10 The fact that neither party held a commanding majority heightened tension in the intendancy, especially in 1946, when President Ospina Pérez chose a Conservative lawyer from Boyacá to govern the territory. From the mo-ment of his arrival in Villavicencio on September 16, 1946, the locals resented Intendant Lisimaco Cárdenas Ojeda as an outsider, and widespread criticism of his actions convinced Ospina Pérez to replace him with another Conservative, Manuel Castellanos, who held the post until November 1947.


Castellanos was more popular than his predecessor, but his appointment failed to defuse the tension caused by Cárdenas Ojeda’s systematic removal of Liberal officeholders during his five-month tenure. In December he fired the Liberal collector of intendancy taxes, Tobías García Espinel, and appointed in his place Daniel Rojas, the publisher of the weekly newspaper Eco de Oriente, the voice of the Catholic Church and of dissident Conservatives. Two Liberal teachers also lost their positions thanks to Cárdenas Ojeda. A few weeks later, according to El Tiempo, the intendant “practically liquidated Liberalism” in Restrepo by appointing Conservatives Eduardo Cediel and Baldomero García as the territorial judge and municipal collector of taxes, respectively.11 Cárde-nas Ojeda’s actions mirrored those of Conservative officials in Boyacá, Cun-dinamarca, and Tolima, who were determined to create a strong base for their party, and as in those departments, they stirred up Liberal animosities and cre-ated a climate of insecurity. Although congressional elections were conducted peacefully in March 1946, the balloting for municipal offices in Meta on October 5 of that year was a dif-ferent story. The announced results gave 4,046 votes to the Liberals and 3,702 to the Conservatives. Liberals won in Villavicencio, casting 2,846 votes for their candidates as opposed to the 2,029 garnered by the Conservatives. Once the ballots had been counted, the authorities permitted bars to reopen, and the Liberals began to celebrate their victory. Claiming electoral fraud, the Conser-vatives started a countermanifestation, and the ensuing melee left four Liberals and two Conservatives wounded, one of whom later died. Intendant Castellanos reported that he had the situation under control within fifteen minutes, but local Conservatives viewed the incident in a different light.12 They claimed that Liberal mobs had brutally attacked them on election day, and in a telegram to Jorge Sabogal, the national party director in Bogotá, they declared that they had lost the election because of interference by the intendant and because the army and police had prevented people from freely exercising their vote.13

A final factor contributing to unrest in Meta was the politicization of the po-lice. On September 16, 1947, one month before the army opened La Vanguardia airfield at Apiay outside Villavicencio, the Conservative mayor of the capital, Eliécer Calderón Pardo, fired the Liberal police inspector, claiming that he was revalidating Liberal cédulas. The next day Commandant Quintana of the na-tional police discovered one of his officers, Guillermo Lombana, drinking beer at a Liberal bazaar and arrested him for fraternizing with Liberals. Then on September 18, as Lombana was preparing to make a statement to the municipal police inspector about the incident, Quintana murdered him by shooting him five times in the back. A correspondent to El Tiempo reported that Intendant


Castellanos immediately declared Quintana “incommunicado” and that Liberal policemen were saying publicly that they “would kill their Conservative officers if the fact of being a Liberal was sufficient motive to place their lives in danger.”14

In Meta unfulfilled promises of the Revolución en Marcha, widespread, un-controlled banditry on the plains, the high cost of living, and raucous political squabbling between nearly evenly divided Liberals and Conservatives created a fertile seedbed for the upcoming Violencia. In Casanare the situation was rather different. As a province of Boyacá, Casanare had not received any benefits from the national programs under the Revolución en Marcha, and the Tunja govern-ments did little to ameliorate its problems. Nevertheless, once the elections of 1946 brought the Conservatives back into control of the national government, events in highland municipios of Boyacá profoundly affected Casanare’s fate. In departmental balloting, after Liberals eked out a narrow victory—casting 35,016 votes for Gabriel Turbay as opposed to 32,655 for Ospina Pérez—they naturally expected to remain in power. To their consternation, President Ospina appointed a Conservative governor, Alfredo Rivera Valderrama, who immediately set about a revancha of Boyacá for his party using techniques, in the words of historian Richard Sharpless, that were “direct, simple, and brutal”:

In swing vote areas the national police ranks were filled with Conserva-tive sympathizers willing to carry out the orders of Conservative officials. Liberal job holders were dismissed [and] holders of Liberal identity cards intimidated. Liberal peasants were dispossessed of their lands, saw their property destroyed, and often were killed. In this atmosphere, old feuds over water, land, and local interests flared up and took on a partisan char-acter. . . . Latifundistas, especially in Boyacá, took advantage of the violence to restore lands lost after the Liberal agrarian reforms or to create new latifundia.15

As Liberals scrambled to defend themselves against these attacks, the spiral of terror widened. By the end of 1946 violence had wracked Siachoque, Monguí, Chiquinquirá, and even the normally peaceful Duitama, reaching a climax dur-ing the local elections of March 1947. The returns demonstrated the success of the Conservative campaign. Of 120,629 votes cast, 58,668, or 57.2 percent, were for Conservatives and 43,962, or 42.8 percent, were for Liberals.16

After Gaitán’s murder on April 9, 1948, political hatreds escalated the unde-clared civil war. In Boyacá violent incidents between police, paramilitary orga-nizations, and ad hoc groups of civilians became a daily occurrence. Villages in Boyacá that were predominantly Conservative or Liberal participated in ven-dettas against one another so that political and nonpolitical revenge became


increasingly indistinguishable. Since the Conservatives had the backing of both national and departmental police, many Liberals were forced to flee: some went to Venezuela while others sought refuge in Casanare.17

Surprisingly, not all of Boyacá experienced political violence after 1946. Casanare, protected from the Conservative revancha by its geographic inac-cessibility, enjoyed relative tranquility until the middle of 1949. Between May 1946 and December 1947, the violent incidents occurring there that made the pages of El Tiempo had more often to do with crimes against property and individuals than with politics. For example, Dr. Luis Bonilla Morales was shot and killed in Tauramena while trying to defend a widow whose cattle had been stolen, and in Yopal, Gabriel Páez was killed in a dispute over the election of a local beauty queen.18 In their communications to El Tiempo, Casanareños expressed outrage over the rustling and the impact of cattle disease, and there were demands that the government provide ranchers with bañaderos (tanks used to disinfect cattle) and salt; that hospitals be built in Támara, Pore, and Trinidad; that telegraph lines be extended to Maní, Manare, Ten, and Sácama; and that more schools be built and teachers’ salaries raised.19

N

SANTANDER

BOYACÁ

ARAUCA

Arauca

VICHADA

META

Villavicencio

PuertoCarreño

BOGOTÁ

TOLIMA

Pac

ific

Oce

an

CUNDINAMARCA

CASANARE

Tunja

SCALE

kilometers

0 100 200 400

Vich

ada

Río

Tomo

Campanaparo

Arauca

Orinoco

Guaviare

Meta

Río

Río

Río

Río

Río

Río

~LEGEND~

Met

a

Guaviare

Río

SettlementsCapitalsRiversBoundaries

Map 2.1. The Llanos frontier in 1950. (Rausch, Llanos Frontier in Colombian History, 226; map by Don Sluter.)


By the beginning of 1948, however, reports from Casanare took on a more ominous tone. Municipal elections held the previous October revealed that al-most all the voters had supported Liberal candidates. The tally for the seven municipios that reported was 1,164 Liberal votes and 196 Conservative votes. On February 4, El Tiempo’s Casanare correspondent observed that Liberals in the province were closely following the political situation in Boyacá and were prepared to aid their embattled colleagues in the highlands. The people of Tá-mara, he added, would welcome Liberals forced to flee from their homes, and despite their unwarranted fear of the deadly tropical climate, such refugees would be safe in the Llanos.20

The Impact of Gaitán’s Murder in the Llanos: April 9, 1948– November 27, 1949

The murder of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán on April 9, 1948, which unleashed a vio-lent uprising in Bogotá, ignited political warfare throughout Colombia. The consequences of the event were immediately felt in Meta but were somewhat delayed in Casanare. When the tragic news via radio reports reached Villavi-cencio at 1:30 p.m., the situation in the city became explosive. Conservatives rejoiced, while Liberals felt only indignation, hatred, and sadness. To avoid confrontation, city authorities cut off electricity, but this action only inflamed the Gaitanistas, who joined a large, armed crowd outside the electrical genera-tor, forcing the restoration of power while shouting, “Viva el partido liberal y abajo los godos.”21 Despite calls for calm by the local Liberal director, Dr. Jesús Arango, the mob surrounded the town hall, demanding the resignation of the mayor. When the mayor appeared on the balcony, he tried to shoot his gun over the heads of the people but somehow managed to kill a Liberal named Marco Pardo. The mob, now thoroughly enraged, wanted to set fire to the building, but their leaders dissuaded them, so they stormed instead the office of the Catholic newspaper, Eco de Oriente. Smashing open the doors, they seized copies of the latest issue and burned them in the plaza. The crowd also demanded the resig-nation of the Conservative intendant, Ricardo Julio Rengifo, but Rengifo held firm. Those not involved in the riot shuttered their businesses and took refuge in their homes. By twilight, the city was calm, but three people had died—Pardo and two policemen.22

The following day, clothing, watches, hardware, and other articles looted from stores destroyed by the mob in Bogotá and transported down the high-way between the two cities, were on sale in Villavicencio at bargain prices.23 City authorities used the police to maintain order and to prevent renewed pro-


test. Terror reigned as officials launched an implacable persecution against the Liberals (derisively known as cachiporros), whose houses were marked at night as a sign of a death sentence. “Many died of crimes that occurred in their own homes; others were killed in the streets, which were bathed in blood; at night others were obligated to climb into buses that took them to the Guatiquía or Guayuriba River. There the assailants murdered them and threw their bodies into the river.”24

The reaction in Puerto López was even more violent and perhaps more sig-nificant. On learning of Gaitán’s death, Eliseo Velásquez led a group of Liberal guerrillas into the town, where they staged a mini-coup, shooting ten policemen and forcing a change in municipal authorities. A native of Líbano, Tolima, Ve-lásquez was a member of a staunchly Liberal family who operated a small saw-mill. After Conservatives killed his father in 1946, he joined the national police and rose to the rank of sergeant. He was taken into custody after he avenged the death of his father by murdering three Conservatives whom he believed to be the killers, but with the aid of Jorge Gaitán, he managed to mount a successful legal defense and recover his freedom. Velásquez went out to the Llanos in early 1948 and soon emerged as a leader of the disaffected Liberals. The April 9 attack on Puerto López proved to be a turning point in his career. Unprepared to hold the city, he withdrew with his men, but in the words of Russell Ramsey, he had “crossed over the line of no return. Velásquez was now the hard-core revolutionary who could kill and torture and also inspire romantic legends among the country folk.”25 News of his attack heartened Liberals fleeing towns in Tolima, Cundinamarca, and Boy-acá.26 Regarding Velásquez as the chief of the nascent guerrilla movement, they traveled down the roads to Meta and Casanare to join him, setting the stage for the Liberal insurgency that within a few months would engulf the Llanos. On March 17, 1949, Ospina Pérez assigned an army detachment to Villavicen-cio, where persecution of Liberals was continuing unabated. The troops found the town in ruins and forty people dead. Four days later Velasquez’s guerril-las attacked from the south, and on April 29 they proceeded to lay siege to Nunchía in Casanare. These surprise attacks, mounted with the tacit approval of Liberals in Bogotá, showed the power of the guerrillas and enabled them to acquire more weapons. As the tenacity and cruelty of Velásquez increased the fame of the guerrillas, some Liberals considered them authentic heroes of the party while Conservatives dismissed them as bandoleros (bandits), chusma (rabble), and pistorelos (hired gangsters) hired by their rivals.27

Meanwhile, in Arauca, news of Gaitán’s death sparked no immediate reper-cussions. In early 1949 the governor of Boyacá, José María Villareal, ordered


Chulavita police to all the municipios in Casanare.28 Tension mounted after Velasquez’s attack on Nunchía on April 29. On May 4, an ominous report pub-lished in El Liberal stated that the Chulavitas had arrived in Nunchía and Tá-mara six days previously and were now sowing terror and ruin. “The Llaneros,” wrote Juan Salagero Bravo, “are visibly alarmed by this action by the governor of Boyacá, who is surely following the instructions of the Conservative Director-ate with the sole objective of preventing Llaneros from voting in the congressio-nal elections of June 5.”29 Subsequent events bore out Salagero’s misgivings. In Tame the corregidor ordered the ballots burned after a count showed 463 votes for Liberals and 39 for Conservatives. Likewise the registrar destroyed ballots from other municipios in the presence of an army sergeant, and as an added insult, the authorities prevented El Tiempo’s correspondent Luis del Llano from sending the results to his newspaper.30

The situation worsened after the election. In a letter published in El Liberal on June 16, Fabio Luis Echenique declared that many towns were living un-der a reign of terror because of police activities. On July 18 a correspondent from Moreno reported that the Chulavitas were terrorizing and killing Liber-als instead of capturing criminals. He added, “We submit these facts to the minister of government, for it is not just or humane that we are pursued like ferocious animals since we are the true creators of Colombian wealth and the descendants of the brave Llaneros who gave us independence and liberty.”31 In August the correspondent sent word that the government had closed all the public schools and the police were continuing to harass people. In Orocué they were searching every boat that sailed on the Meta between Puerto López to Puerto Carreño, seizing guns and even the knives that the crews carried to defend themselves against the Indians. By October El Tiempo’s correspon-dent in Maní, citing the threat posed by the Chulavitas against Liberals, was calling on President Ospina to send the army to Casanare, while another reporter in Támara demanded that Congress convert the province into an intendancy.32

Conspiracy and Insurrection from Above: November 27, 1949–1951

The dynamics changed in November 1949, when the National Liberal Direc-torate attempted to prevent the election of Laureano Gómez, the Conservative presidential nominee who had returned to Colombia the previous July after a thirteen-month stay in Spain. The coup directly involved participation by Liberals in Meta, and its failure unleashed the first phase of the guerrilla war in the Llanos, which Orlando Villanueva in his Ph.D. thesis, “Guadalupe Salcedo


y la Insurrección Llanera 1949–1957,” has called “Conspiracy and Insurrection from Above, November 1949–1951.”33

Even before November, Liberal congressmen had tried to strip President Mariano Ospina Pérez of much of his power and voted to advance the presi-dential elections from June 1950 to November 27, 1949. Fearing that a victory by the fanatical Conservative nominee, Laureano Gómez, would fan the already atrocious violence occurring throughout the country, the National Liberal Di-rectorate called for a boycott of the election and began formulating a scheme to impeach Ospina. Before they could act, however, the president closed Congress on November 9 and placed the nation under a state of siege.34 The Liberal Directorate countered by deciding to support a military coup d’état that would coincide with the Conservative Party’s unilateral election of Gómez as presi-dent. Hernando Durán Dussán, who represented Meta on the directorate and served as a liaison with the guerrillas in the Llanos, alerted Captain Alfredo Silva, a Liberal sympathizer, of the plan. On November 25 Silva seized control of the small airbase in Apiay southeast of Villavicencio and marched into the city, unaware that the directorate had already scrapped their coup plot in favor of promoting a general strike.35 With the aid of two young lieutenants in com-mand of rebel forces, Silva captured the commercial center of Villavicencio, shooting three policemen but without committing any other act of violence. On the same night, Eliseo Velásquez prepared to lead a guerrilla band on a second assault on Puerto López but found the town too well guarded to risk an attack. Marcelino Beltrán, a colleague of Captain Silva, took the town of Cuma-ral northeast of Villavicencio, leaving three policemen and a Conservative dead. On November 16, Captain Silva traveled to Cumaral, where rebels continued fighting Conservatives and attempted to burn voter registration rolls. Because the nearly simultaneous seizure of these three towns created the impression that there was an organized revolt in the Llanos based in Villavicencio, the gov-ernment quickly dispatched more soldiers and police to put it down. Warned that an army battalion commanded by Colonel Ezequiel Palacios had arrived in Villavicencio and had occupied the city without a shot, Captain Silva returned to Apiay, where he was arrested by the army while many of his associates fled to the east to organize new guerrilla bands.36

News of the election of Gómez to the presidency on November 17 was re-ceived in the Llanos with heightened fear and determination to resist, an in-clination promoted by Eduardo Santos and Darío Echandía of the National Liberal Directorate, who believed that expanding the fight in the Llanos would enable the Liberals to overturn the Gómez regime. According to sociologists Germán Guzmán Campos, Orlando Fals Borda, and Eduardo Umaña Luna,


who compiled one of the first books to analyze La Violencia, there were eventu-ally nineteen independent guerrilla groups in the Llanos working within well-defined regions. It is interesting to note that most of the leaders of these bands were from the middle class and resided either in the highlands or the piedmont zone of the cordillera, and only one of them, Guadalupe Salcedo, was native to the Llanos. In the piedmont, where 90 percent of the region’s population was located, the bands were comprised of colonos, gamonales (local bosses), and small proprietors. In the lightly populated llanos abajo, Guadalupe Sal-cedo led peons and vaqueros who were “auténticos llaneros” (true Llaneros)—campesinos pressured by the guerrillas to join in the resistance.37

In addition to Salcedo, who controlled the region between Puerto López and Arauca, five other guerrilla chiefs were especially influential: the aforemen-tioned Velásquez, who assisted by Marco Tulio Rey continued to dominate the region between Guanapalo and Ariporo; Eduardo Franco Isaza, born in Soga-moso into a landowning family, who made his headquarters in Yopal, Casanare; Tulio Bautista, originally from Aguaclara, Boyacá, who headed up a band of four brothers (Pablo, Manuel, Roberto, and Rubén) that ruled over the regions between the Cordillera and the Cusiana and Upía rivers; and Dumar Aljure, born in Giradot, who deserted the army to join the guerrillas in Casanare in 1950. These leaders adopted contrasting strategies. At one extreme were Ve-lásquez and Rey, who unleashed brutal operations to do as much damage as possible. At the other was Eduardo Franco, who did not reject violence but worked with other leaders for a positive program of social action.38

According to Oquist, in addition to support from the National Liberal Di-rectorate, the guerrilla movement enjoyed at least initially region-wide, mul-ticlass support. During the first phase, prosperous Liberal ranchers who felt threatened by the Conservative regime helped to organize and finance the struggle. The guerrillas, for their part, at times looked upon the directorate as their supreme mentor, while at other times believed the politicians of the capital to be “comfortable hypocrites content with newspaper polemics while peasants were slaughtered by the police and the army.”39

By the beginning of 1950, the organized guerrilla bands in the Llanos in-cluded some twenty-five hundred combatants who had many sympathizers in the towns and the surrounding region. They operated a radio transmitter and broadcast messages that called for the defeat of the government from a station known as the “Voice of Liberty, Free Radio of Colombia.” The popularity and scale of this initially Liberal Directorate–backed rebellion in the eastern plains led to a massive reenforcement by the army of police activities in the region. In March 1950, Minister of War Urdaneta Arbeláez, fearing that the guer-


rillas might be strong enough to seize Villavicencio (the largest town in the region), decided to station the Vargas Battalion in Apiay. Its commander, Ma-jor Eduardo Román Bazurto, encouraged self-defense by local militias against the guerrillas and began a punitive campaign with the object of controlling all towns or haciendas used by the rebels to get cattle, money, and recruits. War planes taking off from airports in Bogotá and Apiay indiscriminately bombed houses and ranches, often killing civilians and Indians who had no connection with the guerrillas, while partisan fighting raged on within Villavicencio. According to eyewitnesses, the most horrible vendettas occurred in the Plaza Villa Julia, where campesinos who came to sell their goods were often shot on sight. Many of them disappeared or were jailed, later to be decapitated, their bodies thrown into the rivers. Such atrocities turned friends against one an-other, their political loyalties and sensibilities whipped to frenzy by party lead-ers.40 By contrast, in other zones pro-Liberal officers reached “live and let live” agreements with the rebels and even sabotaged police operations. “In the end drastic ‘carrot or stick’ anti-guerrilla tactics led to significant military advances for the government.”41

On April 1, 1950 Gómez further strengthened the government offensive by signing a decree creating the Jefatura Civil y Militar de los Llanos, which con-centrated administrative, legislative, and judicial functions in the power of a sin-gle official. This decree was reinforced by the creation of the Destacamento de los Llanos (Troops for the Llanos) on April 20. The following June, by Decree 1093, Gómez separated the province of Casanare from Boyacá and declared it a comisaría especial with the town of Trinidad as its capital, thus placing it under direct control of the national government.42 On November 1, 1950, the president appointed General Carlos Bejarano Muñoz jefe civil y militar de los Llanos. Bejarano served as the chief official for the entire Llanos region until July 11, 1952, when he was replaced by Colonel Pedro A. Muñoz.43

The Insurrection from Below, 1951–1953

The second phase of the insurrection in the Llanos began in February 1951, when a group of fifty ganaderos and businessmen met with Jefe Civil y Militar General Bejarano Muñoz at the Club Meta de Villavicencio. Concerned by the militancy of the guerrillas and fearing that the continued insurgency was harm-ful to their own interests, on February 18 these men signed an agreement that condemned acts of banditry during recent years and offered their unconditional support to General Bejarano to restore normalcy in the Llanos.44 A few days later, in Sogamoso, eighty members of the Sociedad de Ganaderos signed a


similar declaration. Thus ranchers who had originally backed their peons in their struggle to defend their political and economic interests now supported the Conservative government and the army. They accepted the “imprimatur of bandits” on Liberal insurgents and undertook a vast campaign of persecution and extermination of workers in the Llanos.45 Detachments of the Vargas Bat-talion set up posts on the hatos. Supplied with money and horses from the ranchers, they seized individuals suspected of aiding the guerrillas. Many peons were shot or placed in prisons. According to Franco Isaza, “The purge was rapid, effective, and silent.”46

In a move to further quash the insurgency, the ganaderos, army, and po-lice created a specialized body of contra-guerrillas known as guerrillas de paz, made up of military personnel dressed as civilians, ex-combatants who deserted the rebels to join the government side, the sons of ranchers, and Conservative campesinos. Their objective was to stop cattle rustling, eliminate the chusmas, as they had begun to call the Liberal guerrillas, and “clean up” people suspected of collaborating with the guerrillas in urban sectors. Groups of these contra-revolutionaries operated in Villavicencio, Támara, Arauca, and several other towns, and once they had joined the struggle, there were approximately twenty thousand combatants fighting in the plains.47

Heavy fighting continued until the middle of 1951, when José Gnecco Mozo, a Conservative lawyer, convinced Urdaneta Arbeláez that the government might achieve more by negotiating with the guerrillas than by trying to crush them. Accordingly, on June 28 Gnecco went to a finca (small farm) north of Villavicencio to confer with the insurgents. At this time the two principal lead-ers of the insurrection were Eduardo Franco, who headed the Cusiana-Arauca front, and Tulio Bautista, who commanded the Cusiana–Humea–San Martín front.48 Bautista and Franco Isaza met with Gnecco Mozo and gave him a list of seventeen demands. Included among them were that Gnecco Mozo be named governor of the Llanos “because he is the only one in whom we may trust,” that troops be withdrawn to their pre-1949 positions, and that the govern-ment begin plans to create rural credit, build roads, and organize free public schools.49 Although Gnecco approved these demands by signing the Acta de Compromiso on August 19, Urdaneta refused to accept the agreement. “Gnecco Mozo was disauthorized, vilified and even detained for a short period,” and the government intensified attacks on the guerrilla units.50

Urdaneta, who on October 5 was officially appointed acting president due to Gómez’s failing health, made another attempt at negotiations, asking ex-Presi-dent López Pumarejo to carry out discussions with the guerrilla leaders. López visited the guerrillas at the end of December during a general cease-fire, but the


talks were even less productive, for by this time the rebels were convinced that the government did not truly desire peace.51

In June 1952 Urdaneta proceeded to launch the largest military operation against the insurgents. Other battalions joined the brigades stationed in Meta and Boyacá, and riverboats manned by the navy as well as airplanes to transport soldiers were added. The army was ordered to burn hundreds of homes, villages, cemeteries, and pastures, and to kill anyone who might approach them on the road. Two columns of soldiers marched toward Villavicencio and Sogamoso, leaving burning villages in their wake and lines of refugees on the road. Air-planes from Apiay bombed and burned Puerto López, El Turpial, Las Delicias, El Frío, and San Pedro de Arimena, leaving their inhabitants dead or homeless. The guerrillas fought back with equal force. New bands formed throughout the plains so that between July 1952 and July 1953 there were some twenty-three different commands controlling defined zones of territory stretching from Arauca to Vichada. Key to rebel success was their ability to mobilize the civilian population in favor of their movement. By consolidating their authority and power structures, they increased control. Throughout 1952, as the guerrillas grew in quantity and quality, they sought to detach themselves from Liberal ideology and the influence of the National Liberal Directorate. Unfortunately, this transformation from a partisan struggle to one of social action ultimately worked against the insurgent movement.52

In the summer of 1952 Guadalupe Salcedo won two important victories against government troops. On June 18 his group of guerrillas attacked an army post in Caño Orocué, killing eighteen soldiers.53 Then, on July 12, Salcedo and Alberto Hoyos ambushed and vanquished a ninety-six-man rifle company at El Turpial, a site near Puerto López. According to Villanueva Martínez, this second victory was “doubtless the most important triumph of the insurrection,” and in retaliation the army later massacred in Puerto López all those suspected of collaborating with the guerrillas.54 These actions not only signaled renewed conflict in the plains but also intensified in Bogotá the debate over whether the National Liberal Directorate was encouraging armed resistance in the Llanos.55

On July 20, guerrilla leaders met at the San Jorge ranch to discuss new strat-egies and new ways to acquire additional weapons. Among their decisions were resolutions to attack the Conservative post at Sevilla and to urge the Liberal Directorate to take new actions in support of the effort for peace. To this end, they sent a letter to López Pumarejo that contained their position and peti-tions. López Pumarejo responded by writing an extensive letter to ex-President Ospina Pérez that was published in El Tiempo and El Espectador on September 4, 1952. López Pumarejo rejected the arguments for continued fighting but


recognized the underlying causes for rebel actions.56 In September, Conser-vative mobs went on a rampage in Bogotá, destroying the offices of Liberal newspapers El Tiempo and El Espectador, as well as the homes of Carlos Lleras Restrepo and López Pumarejo. Greatly dispirited, the two men went into for-eign exile, leaving behind a “shattered, dispirited, and leaderless Liberal Party.”57

After this setback, the fighting in the Llanos escalated with greater intensity on both sides. The army began to shoot guerrilla prisoners and often those who were merely suspects. One of the early casualties was Velásquez, who Venezu-elan authorities had imprisoned at the end of 1950. On September 3, 1952, they released him from prison. He immediately rejoined the rebels, only to be killed on September 9.58 Two days later Franco Isaza met with the remaining guer-rilla leaders and issued the “First Law of the Llanos.” The text of the document, signed by Franco Isaza as jefe del estado mayor, Salcedo as jefe supremo, and thirty-seven other guerrilla commanders, consisted of eighty articles and was the first attempt by the rebels to organize a government over the land they con-trolled.59 The killing of the five Bautista brothers in skirmishes with the army in November and December of 1952 further consolidated Isaza and Salcedo’s leadership of the insurgency. By the beginning of 1953 the rebels controlled approximately 90 percent of the Llanos. Part of the reason for their success was that the attention of the army had been diverted to rebels in other parts of the country, including those occupying the mountain passes in Chita and El Cocuy, Boyacá. Even more important, as the army’s Colonel Gustavo Sierra Ochoa asserted, was that the resistance movement enjoyed “the sympathy and complicity of the greatest number of the inhabitants of the region.”60

As the official government presence diminished in the Llanos, the guerrillas were able to consolidate the nature of their dominance. Guerrilla legal codes, courts, and taxes replaced those of the national government, and by June 1953, when they issued the Second Law of the Llanos, “the scope and quality of their control indicated that a protracted stalemate had been created on the plains.”61

Los Llanos, 1949–1953

On August 16, 1951, at the height of the war that had engulfed the Llanos, Gomez’s cabinet ministers submitted their annual reports about developments in their areas. Horacio Rosero Caicedo, jefe de territorios nacionales, asserted that in spite of the vicious fighting and depopulation, progress had continued in the intendancies and comisarías. He was especially positive about the situ-


ation in Meta, emphasizing that Villavicencio was a “flourishing city.” In 1950 the government had opened a vocational school, an experimental farm, and a basketball stadium, “which is one of the best in the republic.” The town had received a modern, well-equipped firefighting force and new sanitation trucks. Equipment for the liquor factory, a basic source of income for the intendancy, had been upgraded. Work was continuing on the refrigeration plant, the exis-tence of which would solve the problem of sanitizing meat eaten locally.62 The Montfortian missionaries had installed the magnificent Cristo Rey monument on a hill overlooking the city. Villavicencio had air and land communications as well as radio-telephones. Rosero conceded that much of the budget of 107,789 pesos had been spent on controlling the insurgency, that violence had dimin-ished the economy, and that more money was needed for the anti-tuberculosis hospital and to reorganize the liquor factory. Nevertheless, he concluded that the city remained “a true social, cultural and commercial center whose advance increases daily and whose prosperity had not been crushed by the turbulence of public order.”63

Another important political development concerning Meta occurred after Rosero had submitted his report. On November 21, 1951, Enrique González Reyes introduced in the Cámara de Representantes in Bogotá a bill to declare the National Intendancy of Meta a department, even though its population fell short of the two hundred thousand inhabitants required by the constitution. Noting that Congress had already established a precedent in 1947 by elevating Chocó to departmental status without the necessary number of inhabitants, González emphasized that the intendancy produced more than 2 million pe-sos of annual income. In addition, in 1950 it sent to Bogotá 561,000 bultos of plátano, 300,000 bultos of yuca, 500,000 bultos of rice, 166,500 bultos of corn, 178 hides, 40,000 head of cattle, and 10,000 pigs.64 He also pointed out that the possibilities of discovering petroleum in Meta were high. González closed his argument by calling for the establishment of basic government in-stitutions in Meta such as Crédito Agrario, Fomento Industrial, and Crédito Territorial, adding that with all the banditry that currently existed, the Llanos could not be tamed just by money but by good administrative organization. Regretfully, Congress failed to act on this bill and did not take up the matter again until the creation of the National Front in 1958.65

In the other territories, disruption of public order made positive develop-ments less remarkable. Rosero reported that in Casanare government offices were being constructed in the newly designated capital of Trinidad, and work was proceeding on a road to connect the town with its airfield. There was regu-lar contact via air and radio-telephone. Thirty schools with 1,172 students were


functioning, and a health post was operating in Trinidad. Since Casanare had been erected into a comisaría only the year before, Rosero regarded its progress as satisfactory.66

Material improvements in the Comisaría of Arauca included additions to the government office, the Hospital de San Vicente, and the church in Arauca City. Nevertheless, there still was only one road—a three-kilometer stretch that connected the city with the airfield, and while nineteen elementary schools were functioning in the comisaría, the Colegio General Santander did not have suf-ficient capacity to offer all the more advanced courses that were necessary. With reference to the Comisaría of Vichada, Rosero admitted that progress was negligible. Regarding amenities, he could only cite the operation of an elec-tric plant, the comisarial boat Inírida, which traveled between Puerto Carreño and Puerto López, and one public school with thirty-five students administered by a mission of Monfortian padres.67

While government ministers struggled to put a positive spin on develop-ments in the Llanos, the situation from the perspective of the people living there could hardly have been more dire. The vicious conflict affected all of the Llanos but was most severe in Casanare and Meta. As Martínez Delgado wrote, “Casanare was a green hell splattered with the red of the blood of so many victims. There was no crime that was not committed. Among towns erased from the map by fire included Moreno, Manare, Trinidad, Tauramena, Maní, Sabanalarga as well as many caseríos and others in Arauca and Meta.”68 In 1953 the government decided to establish a naval base known as the Fuerza Naval del Oriente in Puerto López on the Meta River but later moved it to Orocué. Its purpose was to facilitate transport of troops dispersed in the Llanos, but after Rojas Pinilla’s coup, it took on important activities to aid the civilian popula-tion, promoting the recovery not only of this town but also of the region in general, which had been “totally decimated by the war and violence.”69

In Meta, Villavicencio as the largest city in the Llanos suffered dispropor-tionately from partisan violence and unstable conditions. In 1952 alone, there were four fires; the last one, which occurred on December 28, destroyed eleven houses and caused damage estimated at 250,000 Colombian pesos.70 Conser-vative Pedro Carmargo, who visited the city in April 1953, reported:

In Villavicencio, everyone thinks of war; the horrible murders by the ban-dits, the alarmist stories in the press, the rumors and gossip that circulate daily have created a curtain of smoke over everything. The National Army struggles implacably against the rebels who have extinguished that pictur-esque life filled with romanticism of the Llanos.71


Since cattle was the basis of the economy, policies regarding the extraction of cattle imposed by the government and by the rebels played a major role in influencing events. Liberal ganaderos had urged their vaqueros and peons to fight the Ospina government in the first stage of La Violencia because they felt threatened by policies that might be enacted by the Conservatives. As noted above, when the government began to systematically repress people in areas supporting the guerrillas, and when the insurgents’ demands implied signifi-cant social changes, the majority of Liberal cattlemen switched allegiances and branded the rebels as bandits. Other important reasons for this change were the guerrillas’ decision to im-pose a tax on cattle leaving the plains (10 percent for Liberal cattle and 20 percent for Conservative) and the army’s adoption of policies prohibiting the sale of cattle belonging to insurgents and imposing an economic blockade to impede their receipt of supplies. Throughout the conflict, the army demanded safe-conduct passes for cattle leaving the area. Conservative cattle were free to pass; Liberal cattle had to be proven to belong to government collaborators, while insurgent Liberal cattle were theoretically vetoed. Oquist notes that “in practice, the latter were bought by Conservative businessmen or by army of-ficers at discount prices” and that “numerous large fortunes were made by these means including the initial wealth of some of the richest families in contempo-rary Villavicencio.”72

The practice of issuing safe-conduct passes also applied to rice farmers. In June 1952 General Bejarano met with the head of the Federación Nacional de Aroceros, who informed him that there could be no rice harvest unless the growers were guaranteed safety for their workers to gather the crop and to transport their products. Bejarano agreed that rice farmers should come to the central headquarters to get the safe-conduct passes that would grant them free entrance and transit in the different areas, since until then the authorities, for reason of public order, had suspended free access to private citizens.73

In January 1952 the weekly news magazine Semana reported that to avoid loss of cattle to the guerrillas, the military command was urging ranchers in Casanare and Arauca to use airplanes to fly their steers to Villavicencio rather than trying to drive them there on foot in the traditional manner. The advan-tages of this scheme were that the animals would lose less weight on the brief flight and would not have to spend so much time on Meta ranches recovering. On the other hand, the article pointed out that the cost of transport for eight head of cattle would be 1,100 pesos, or 137.5 pesos apiece, while the cost of driving cattle to Villavicencio from the most distant points in Casanare was approximately 30 pesos a head. Moreover, most of the brokers in Villavicencio


preferred to buy reduced-weight cattle and allow them to graze in local pastures to become fat enough to survive the trip up the mountain to Bogotá. In short, the report concluded that for cattle transport, the land route offered more ad-vantages than air travel.74

The most effective strategy to extract cattle from the plains for shipment to highland markets proved to be the so-called cattle truces, in which both sides agreed to a stop fighting to allow the removal of the animals. The first of these occurred during 1951, when the army proposed a cease-fire in Maní, Casanare, which the guerrillas accepted. The truce “provided a hiatus in both the armed hostilities and the economic blockade. Thus, cattle left the region and supplies entered. The guerrillas were also provided a rest zone as a result of this measure.” Such cattle truces were possible because of “the dovetailing of interests between archenemies: the absentee ganaderos whose influence in the government achieved acceptance of the measure, and the guerrillas, who in the end also had cattle as their economic base.”75

Finally, cattle thievery was common and another prevalent route to immedi-ate wealth. After a truce was concluded, the army promptly renewed hostilities. Police raids on Liberal smallholders who had supported the guerrillas and the violent displacement of colonos, provided a major source of stolen animals. In some cases, fortunes were amassed in livestock as a result. It is clear that after peace was restored, some people who had played important roles in the military confrontation between the state and the guerrillas remained in the Llanos at the service of cattlemen, who used them to rid their property of tenant farmers.76

The exact number of colonos forced to flee the region is hard to determine. Giraldo Castaño notes that many Araucanos and “llaneros in general” sought refuge in Bogotá, Tunja, Sogamoso, or Venezuela. According to the Oficina de Rehabilitación y Socorro, by mid-1953, sixty thousand people had arrived in Bogotá coming from various zones of the conflict. Another twenty thousand, principally from the Llanos Orientales, took refuge in Venezuela. Eight years later the number of people who had changed residence in the country due to violence was calculated at 800,000, and it was estimated that there were some 150,000 refugees in Venezuela.77 La Violencia severely disrupted the Sáliva and Cuiva natives in Casanare, who did not receive any safeguards from either the army or the guerrillas. Some moved their houses deeper into the selva, re-turning to tend their fields when there was a lull in the fighting. Others sought refuge in Venezuela, where they already had relatives.78

A census published on May 9, 1951, set the population of Villavicencio at 17,194, a figure down from 24,315 recorded in 1938.79 Ojeda Ojeda asserts that between 1949 and 1951, approximately six thousand people abandoned Meta,


ranking it sixth among departments with the highest rate of out-migrations to other places. Another nine thousand people were killed there, placing Meta fifth among departments in this category.80 Yet despite this horrific loss of life and out-migration, a comparison of census figures for the four Llanos territo-ries between 1938 and 1951 (see table 2.1) shows only Casanare with a decline in total population. The explanation for this anomaly can be found in the scores of migrants displaced from equally troubled areas in other parts of the country who looked to the Llanos as a place for a better future. According to the Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística (DANE), between 1948 and 1965, sixteen thousand people migrated to Meta, although the majority of this influx occurred after the guerrillas laid down their arms in 1953. The new arrivals came from Tolima, Santander, Boyacá, Cundinamarca, Huila, Caldas, Antio-quia, and El Valle with the hope of colonizing public lands to begin a new life for their families. This influx would become the first wave of the enormous number of people who would swell the population of the Llanos by the end of the twentieth century. Despite the legacy of violence that had existed in the Llanos for decades, the development of well-defined guerrilla groups between 1946 and 1953 was a new phenomenon. As mentioned earlier, they emerged as a resistance movement and initially enjoyed region-wide multiclass support. In the first stage of the insur-rection, the National Liberal Directorate in Bogotá wholeheartedly backed their revolt. However, unlike the War of the Thousand Days, not a single national political figure actually joined in the fighting. Instead, the rebels were divided into isolated bands, directed by lower- and middle-class leaders who came for-ward in the course of the struggle itself.81 Throughout the Llanos, the guerril-las created enclaves that were “effective centers of permanent refuge and often insurmountable barriers to the imposition of government authority.” Sánchez

Table 2.1. Population of the Llanos as reported in the censuses of 1938 and 1951

Territory 1938 1951 Increase

Meta 51,674 67,492 15,818Arauca 11,156 13,221 2,065Vichada 9,094 12,330 3,236Casanare 23,290 22,087 -1,203TOTALS 95,214 115,130 22,119

Sources: Colombia, Censo general de la población, 1938, 1951.


writes that within these zones, codes of “revolutionary morality enforced re-spect toward women and children, and the elderly, and laws expressly prohibited the use of torture and scorched-earth policies against adversaries.” The rebels in-cluded women, as well as men, who served as the “eyes and ears of the guerrilla.”82

Although La Violencia took different forms in different regions of Colombia, there is general agreement that the insurrection in the Llanos, from its begin-ning and with all its limitations, was typical of a peasant insurgency. As such, it lacked a political, economic, or social revolutionary program. Composed of large and small proprietors—farmers and ranchers, former military officers and campesinos, it reacted to repression with violent retaliation but failed to propose an alternative organization or power structure to the one already established by the dominant elites. It became more radicalized in 1951, after the leaders felt themselves abandoned by the National Liberal Directorate. While this new orientation severely challenged the Gómez-Arbeláez regime and contributed to its downfall, in the end it failed to achieve any fundamental change in the social order of the Llanos.83 What it did produce were iconic guerrilla leaders, includ-ing Eliseo Velásquez, Eduardo Franco Isaza, Tulio and Pablo Bautista, Eduardo Fonseca Galán, Dumar Aljure, and, most important, Guadalupe Salcedo, “who became a legend of the resistance in the llanos and, in the years that followed, became an icon of the armed resistance over the entire country.”84

Orlando Villanueva Martínez has recently examined the rise to national prominence of Salcedo, who was born in 1922 in Tame, Arauca—the son of a Venezuelan rancher, Antonio Salcedo, and a Sáliva native woman, Tomasa Urnda of Orocué. Guadalupe was baptized in Arauquita and attended primary school in that town. As a youth he worked as a vaquero on his father’s ranch. He also helped out on an African palm plantation that his father had acquired, but the military was his real vocation. He joined a local militia as a teenager and later became a corporal in the Colombian army. After Antonio Salcedo’s death, Guadalupe took over the administration of his various businesses but quickly proved to have none of his father’s business sense. Wasting money on wild sprees and affairs with women, he was forced to sell the palm plantation and turn to less legitimate activities. In 1944 he moved to Orocué, where he dedicated his energies to cattle rustling. He soon emerged as an arrogant and much feared leader of a group of bandits, a man regarded as intelligent and capable but lacking culture. In 1948 he was convicted of murder-ing three people and was imprisoned in Villavicencio.85

Six months after Gaitán was murdered on April 9, 1948, Guadalupe was released on November 27, 1949, when Captain Alfredo Silva briefly seized the city in a failed attempt to topple the Ospina government. Tortured and humili-


ated while incarcerated, Salcedo also became aware that the demands of the Llanero people were justified. Once freed, he vowed to join the revolutionary cause. Accompanied by a band of followers, he returned to San Pedro de Ari-mena. Guadalupe resumed stealing horses and cattle, but he soon established his reputation as the “Terror of the Llanos” when he led an attack on San Luis de Palenque, killing twenty-five policemen.86 After that action he consolidated his command over the regions of Maní, Cusiana, Guanapalo, Pauto, and Cravo Sur to the Meta River, where he could count on the solid support of family members and compadres (godparents). He soon drew the attention of other insurgents, including Velásquez and Franco Isaza, but because he mixed cattle rustling along with his support of the insurgency, the owners of the hatos in this region regarded him with implacable hatred. During the summer of 1952, Guadalupe achieved his most important vic-tories. On June 18 he attacked Orocué, killing sixteen soldiers and a sergeant. Then, on July 10, a group of his rebels led by Subcomandante Alberto Hoyo ambushed a motorcade of seven army trucks at El Turpial, a vereda (small hamlet) near Puerto López. They killed ninety-six soldiers, and the four who survived joined the rebels. In addition, the group seized more than twenty thou-sand grenades, eighty-nine rifles, two pistols, and uniforms. The government response was immediate and vicious. General Bejarano ordered the assassina-tion of ten to twenty prisoners being held in custody for every soldier killed, an onslaught that provoked many of the civilian inhabitants to flee their homes and seek refuge in Venezuela.87

After the death of the Bautista brothers in November and December 1952, Guadalupe was elevated to a position of leadership equal to that of Eduardo Franco Isaza. His exploits had converted him into a legendary figure famous throughout the Llanos. According to a Conservative reporter, the image of Guadalupe was now that of a cruel and ferocious leader, unafraid of death and undeniably astute in directing rebel attacks throughout the region.88 This de-piction was supported by corridos (Llanero songs) and poems that proliferated among the people of the Llanos between 1948 and 1953 in the need to com-municate individual and collective experiences of the insurgency. One goal of these songs was to exalt the heroic actions of the rebel commanders, and their existence contributed to the construction of myths surrounding the guerrillas, especially Guadalupe Salcedo. To cite just three examples, in “El corrido de Vigoth,” the verse ends, “¡Viva Dios, viva la Virgen, / Ave María, Jesús Credo / y viva el terror del llano / don Guadalupe Salcedo!” (Viva God, viva the Virgen, / Ave María, Jesús Credo / and viva the terror of the Llanos / Don Guadalupe Salcedo!)


In “El corrido del Turpial,” the words include

Gracias a mi Dios benditoque había una carta guardaday el Guadalupe a los llanos alertabaque hay que matar a los godosPorque el llano se engusana.

(Thanks to my blessed Godwho had a hidden plan,And to Guadalupe who warned the LlanosThat it is necessary to kill the godosBecause the Llanos is plagued by worms)

And in “Colombia es mi patria”:

Guadalupe los equipaCon fusil y cartucheraPara peliar pecho a pechoY defender la banderaGuadalupe tenía un sabiohablaba de cielo a tierraSabía las ciencias ocultascomo un buen mago de verasde la montaña de Cuivavino a la tierra llaneraa darse cuenta del llanopor qué estaba en guerra.89

(Guadalupe equips themwith rifles and bulletsIn order to fight face to faceand defend the flagGuadalupe had a wise manhe spoke from heaven to the earthHe knew the dark scienceslike a true magicianfrom the country of the Cuivahe came to the Llanero landto make the llanos realizewhy it was fighting.)


Conclusion

By June 1953 the insurgency had achieved a military standoff with the Colom-bian army. During the preceding three years the onslaught of violence promoted by the guerrillas, the peace guerrillas, the Colombian army, and the police had laid waste to nearly every part of the Llanos (with the possible exception of Vichada), in spite of the efforts of the Gómez-Urdaneta government to put a positive spin on developments. But although they were successful in defying the Colombian state, the reb-els could not agree on truly revolutionary goals. On June 10, in an attempt to unify the movement instigated by José Alvear Restrepo, who represented the sector of Liberalism that followed Gaitán, 226 representatives of the various commands attended the Congreso Nacional Revolucionario. The congress pro-duced an agreement known as the Segunda Ley de los Llanos, which was signed on June 18. A document of 224 articles, the Segunda Ley demanded among other things that the Llanero population support the rebels. It guaranteed re-spect for liberty of conscience, expression, speech, religion, and small proper-ties. It called for the expropriation of hatos whose owners did not contribute to the revolution and emphasized the duty of armed personnel to respect the civilian population and the Indian communities. It claimed possession by the revolutionary forces of all land and cattle that had no known owner but stopped short of demanding agrarian reform or reconstruction of agrarian society in the Llanos.90 Franco Isaza rejected the law because he believed that it did not resolve the differences between those commanders who identified themselves as Communists and those who were fundamentally Liberals. As a result he withdrew from the meeting, leaving Guadalupe, who supported the law, as jefe supremo de los guerrillas liberales del Llano. Where this new compact might have led can never be known, for on June 15 General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, with the support of both Conservative and Liberal leaders in Bogotá, executed a coup overthrowing the Gómez-Urdaneta government and immediately instituted new policies that would bring about the end of this phase of the violence. In the view of Villanueva Martínez, al-though the insurrection in the Llanos contributed to the downfall of the hated Conservative government, in its aftermath the campesinos supporting the fight failed to achieve any benefit, while the true winners were the large landown-ers, who with the support of the military would retain their control over the region.91

3

Rojas Pinilla and the Pacification of the Llanos, 1953–1957

On June 13, 1953, Colombian army commander Lieutenant General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, with the support of all political groups in the country except the Laureanista wing of the Conservatives, staged a military coup that ended the presidency of Laureano Gómez. Born in Tunja in 1900, Rojas Pinilla had stud-ied engineering before entering the Colombian Military Academy. He received his commission in 1920. In 1924 he requested permission to retire from active service so he could study civil engineering in the United States at Tri-State Normal College in Angola, Indiana. He obtained the title of civil engineer in 1927 and returned to Colombia to work on construction projects. In 1933 the invasion of Peru into the Colombian Amazon territory of Leticia prompted him to reenter active army service to repel the aggressors.1 After Colombia’s victory in the war, he advanced through army ranks, crowning his career in 1949 with his promotion to general and chief of staff of the nation’s military forces. Although President Laureano Gómez had approved Rojas Pinilla’s promo-tion, he feared his potential power and assigned him to a variety of posts abroad. Later, when distressed by policies adopted by his acting president, Roberto Ur-daneta, Gómez resumed power on June 12, 1953, determined to remove Rojas Pinilla from his post. When he attempted to carry out his threat on June 13, however, the general announced that the armed forces had seized power. Two hours later, in a radio address to the nation, Rojas Pinilla called for peace with the following words:

No more blood, no more depredations in the name of any political party, no more rancor between sons of the same immortal Colombia. Peace, law and justice for all, without distinction, but with special consideration for those less favored by fortune—for the workers, for the poor. The patria cannot live in peace while its children are hungry and naked.2

Rojas Pinilla and the Pacification of the Llanos, 1953–1957 55

Rojas Pinilla immediately made good on his initiative. On June 19, he declared a general amnesty for all those involved in the violence except military desert-ers. “Those engaged in insurrectional activities, or other forms of violence, had merely to surrender their arms in order to return to civilian normality.”3 To pub-licize this policy, he sent air force planes over guerrilla strongholds in the Llanos, Antioquia, and Tolima to drop leaflets signed by his minister of war, General Alfredo Duarte Blum, announcing that Gómez had fallen and that the new gov-ernment would extend guarantees to all who wished to lay down their weapons. Many guerrilla leaders rushed to accept the amnesty. Following preliminary discussions that hammered out agreements on the terms of surrender, a flurry of meetings took place between army units and rebels during which former combatants relinquished their arms. “Between July and September 1953, over ten thousand guerrillas accepted the government’s terms, and by year’s end re-settlement workers had helped nearly five thousand people displaced by La Violencia to return to their homes and had aided more than thirty thousand others who had fled to Bogotá and other towns and cities.”4

At the national level, the impact of Rojas Pinilla’s dictatorship is controver-sial. On the one hand, given the protracted partisan fighting, members of the elite factions of both parties welcomed his military coup. In the first six months he was able to staunch the Violencia, relax press censorship, and release political prisoners. Underwritten by high prices for coffee on the international markets, his government began an extensive series of public works projects and improved the system of credits for small farmers.5

On the other hand, as time passed, the regime took on the character of a classic military dictatorship. The creation of the National Secretariat of Social Assistance (SENDAS) headed by Rojas Pinilla’s daughter, María Eugenia, ap-peared to be patterned after the policies of Argentine strongman Juan Perón, as did the general’s talk of creating a “third force” and his call for a national convention to draft a new constitution. The lull in the Violencia proved only temporary, with renewed fighting in some parts of the country along the same lines as before, and as years passed, Rojas appeared to be taking steps toward the establishment of a personal dictatorship with populist features. Press cen-sorship returned, and the partisan elite became increasingly uneasy. By early 1957, the regime had alienated most organized groups in Colombia, including the Catholic Church, labor unions, and the two political parties. Af-ter a general strike on May 10, 1957, top military officers forced Rojas Pinilla to leave the country. With the dictator’s departure, those same leaders formed a caretaker military junta that governed until civilians took over on August 7, 1958.6


In the case of the Llanos, the impact of Rojas Pinilla’s rule is equally contro-versial, but perhaps in a different way. As this chapter will show, for first time since Alfonso López Pumarejo’s first administration from 1934 to 1938, the central government made the Llanos Orientales a national priority, and there were some positive accomplishments. The return of peace won for the general the region’s gratitude, and massive immigration into the plains ignited an eco-nomic and social boom that would launch Meta, Casanare, and Arauca, if not Vichada, among the fastest growing regions in the country. Yet in the after-math of Rojas Pinilla’s overthrow, it was clear that the much vaunted peace was merely a short pause. The problems that had created the original insurrection in 1948 remained unresolved, and after a brief hiatus the violence transitioned into a new phase.

Restoring Peace in the Llanos

Rojas Pinilla had a special interest in restoring peace in the Llanos, which he had first visited as a young engineer. In 1928 he worked on the construction of the Soapaga-Socha-Casanare highway, originally planned to extend to Támara, Casanare, but abandoned after two years. As a boyacense Rojas had a better understanding of the mindset of the ranchers and the Llaneros than did most government leaders in Bogotá. While taking part in the conflict over Leticia in 1933, he had studied the best routes for communication and air networks between the eastern territories and Bogotá. In 1952 he was sent to Washing-ton, D.C., to observe the U.S. headquarters for troops fighting in Korea. On returning to Colombia, Rojas was acutely aware that the conduct of the armed forces and police in suppressing the Violencia was badly organized, and that the Llanos was the region most affected by the guerrillas.7

In November 1952, as commander of the armed forces, Rojas Pinilla traveled to Villavicencio, Arauca, and Yopal, receiving an enthusiastic reception in each town. When El Siglo interviewed him on his return to Bogotá, he observed that the region had three important economic assets: cattle, agriculture, and oil. At that time, ranching was the most lucrative business, but by limiting the num-ber of animals to be exported, the policy of the jefe civil y militar was causing great anxiety among the ranchers. Moreover, the lack of roads throughout the plains further aggravated the collapse of public order. Rojas Pinilla suggested that the “antisocial movement,” which began in the Llanos, had brought some positive consequences: “The Intendancy of Meta is being pushed into become a department. Bandolerismo is stagnating its potential, but as soon as normality is reestablished, it will resume its surprising growth.” Finally, Rojas was optimistic


about the military situation. “The llanero,” he said, “is convinced that only the army can defend his life and property and guarantee for his children the pros-perity of the land. Many of the bandits have already deserted and are joining the other side. The next months will be decisive.”8 As this interview reveals, Rojas Pinilla deviated from the position of Acting President Urdaneta Arbalaéz by regarding the guerrillas not simply as bandoleros but as victims of government neglect and party hatreds. It is ironic that on June 18, five days after the general seized control of the country, the guerrillas in the Llanos issued a document called “The Second Law of the Llano,” which recognized Guadalupe Salcedo as head of the revolution-ary fighters and Eduardo Franco as his chief of staff. In addition to organizing the rebel government and the armed forces, the document’s 224 articles codified agrarian reform, control of cattle, and council representation, and it articulated some ideas that were later adopted by the National Front government during the administration of Alberto Lleras Camargo.9 Despite this manifestation of their considerable military and political strength throughout the region, the guerrilleros were eager to lay down their arms. The following week they sent a letter to President Rojas Pinilla in which they accepted the terms of entrega (the delivery of weapons) as a basis for negotiations, and as proof of their good in-tentions they ordered a cease-fire against the army in ten towns, most of which were in Casanare and Meta.10

Rojas delegated Minister of War Duarte Blum to head up the talks with the guerrilla leaders. Once the rebels had received repeated assurances of full economic and social aid to help them return to civil life and guarantees of their personal security, they were willing to relinquish their weapons. 0n September 9 Guadalupe Salcedo delivered 1,124 men. Over a period of several days, Edu-ardo Fonseca, Dumar Aljure, and nine more leaders with 1,489 men handed over their guns. Thousands of other guerrillas did not wait for the ceremonies but simply laid down their weapons and returned home.11 The army also col-lected the guns of the so-called guerrillas de paz, the irregular forces formed by citizens to help the army fight the insurgents.12

The entregas received extensive publicity in Bogotá newspapers. On one such occasion, Rojas Pinilla invited forty-five North American journalists to observe the ceremony, and on another he traveled with his wife, Carola, and his daughter, María Eugenia, to oversee personally the operation.13 In Octo-ber a committee headed by María Eugenia journeyed to Yopal and San Luis de Palenque, bringing provisions, clothes, and medicine and receiving a joyous welcome from the inhabitants.14

It would appear from accounts in the media that the guerrillas were eager to


lay down their arms, but further investigation suggests that their decision was not an easy one. In fact, on September 4, before ordering his men to deliver their weapons, Guadalupe presented the government with a document—the so-called Junta de Gileña—signed by seventeen commanders demanding, as conditions for their surrender, that the government promise (1) to guarantee the safety of all combatants, (2) to indemnify victims of the conflict, (3) to pro-vide work for the guerrillas who received amnesty, (4) to free political prison-ers, (5) to rebuild towns that had been destroyed, (6)to construct schools and colegios, and (7) to make available credit and machinery to enable the creation of agricultural cooperatives.15

Rojas Pinilla did not accept this plan, yet Guadalupe went ahead with the entrega. One explanation may lie in the fact that the greatest preoccupation of the insurgents was that they be considered “revolutionaries” and not be stigma-tized as bandoleros, and that Guadalupe was satisfied that at least this demand would be met.16 As one of the first commanders to surrender, he agreed to help the army in pacifying the Llanos and accepted a military safe-conduct pass. He also promised that “he would not fight again as long as there was justice, liberty, work, and understanding.” Once surrendering his men, he returned to his finca in Guariamena near Orocué to face criticism that he had ended the movement without receiving sufficient guarantees for the Llanero people.17 For over a year, Eduardo Franco Isaza, the idealist of revolutionaries who was living in exile in Venezuela, complained bitterly that Salcedo had betrayed the revolution. Indeed, several other commanders refused to lay down their weapons and ad-opted a wait-and-see attitude.18

Franco Isaza’s opposition notwithstanding, Paul Oquist has noted that the return to “normality” in the Llanos “occurred at an incredibly fast pace.” The speed of the transformation supports the theory that the principal reasons for the uprising there were party hatreds and government repression, and that “the return of guarantees for Liberal citizens ended the basis of the conflict.”19 It also suggests that at least some policies adopted by Rojas Pinilla were positive steps in addressing the traditional complaints of the Llaneros.

The Problems Facing Reconstruction in the Llanos

On September 19, 1953, El Tiempo published a solemn assessment of the im-pact of La Violencia on the Llanos:

This four-year war that has ended has left as every war does only death, misery and ruin. Fields abandoned and destroyed by the force of nature;


towns leveled; people wandering through the Llanos seeking help, show-ing in their bodies and souls the tremendous vestiges of the struggle without truce and without hope; epidemics that destroy human be-ings and thousands of skeletons that testify to the harvest of hate and desperation.20

The article went on to note that before the war, Villavicencio, Arauca, Cravo Norte, Tame, Orocué, Pore, Moreno, and Corozal were flourishing towns. Now, haciendas were abandoned, and as cattle scattered without control throughout the plains, crops were rotting for lack of care. The greatest problem however, was public health. Anemia, tuberculosis, tapeworms, malnutrition, and malaria assaulted the people, most of whom had endured four years without shelter, food, salt, or drugs. In Villavicencio alone, it was estimated “that besides those who died directly from violence, there were 28,000 deaths due to the follow-ing causes: malaria, 12,000; anemia, 4,000; malnutrition, 3,000; tuberculosis, 4,500; amoebas, 3,000; and other, 1,500. This means that more than twenty percent of the population before 1948 was an indirect victim of the war.”21 An equally serious problem that El Tiempo failed to mention was the wave of mi-grants descending on Llanos towns that, still reeling under the impact of four years of war, were without adequate sanitation, sewers, or housing.

Paz, Justicia, Libertad, y Orden (Peace, Justice, Liberty, and Order)

Using the slogan “Paz, Justicia, Libertad, y Orden,” the Rojas Pinilla govern-ment began to address these issues by establishing special agencies located in Villavicencio (which retained its position as the principal urban center in the Llanos) to deal with problems specific to the Violencia’s aftermath. In October 1953 the general signed a decree creating a special tribunal known as the Corte Militar de Casación y Revisión. Located under aegis of the Ministry of War, this court’s mandate was to process thousands of criminal and civilian cases, and it was authorized to grant immunity even for men who had deserted from the army to join the guerrillas.22

To assist the reentry of former rebels into civilian life, the Oficina de Re-habilitación y Socorro (ORS) was set up on July 2. Headed by Dr. Bernardo Aguilero Camacho and Dr. Justiniano Ramírez Meléndez, this office distrib-uted clothes, food, and medical treatment. After Minister of Health Bernardo Henao Mejía toured the Llanos in September, plans were laid to create eight medical clinics scattered throughout the region, a fleet of three Beaver ambu-lance planes for the transport of the sick, a three-hundred-bed hospital to be


built in Villavicencio, and a fleet of boats based in Orocué on the Meta charged with the job of sanitizing the area bathed by that river.23

Without doubt the biggest challenge was the resettlement of thousands of refugees and migrants who came to the Llanos either to reclaim lands or to colonize tierras baldías (public lands). Of the former group it was estimated that as many as eight hundred parcels had been lost during the Violencia due to forced abandonment or panic sales. To provide immediate assistance, the Caja de Crédito Agario was authorized to make up to 5 million pesos available in loans to colonos, and on September 26, the commission received 300,000 pesos to begin the process.24

According to historian Myriam Jimeno Santoyo, “The magnitude of coloni-zation produced by the destabilization of rural life and the expulsion of masses of campesinos between 1950 and 1960 is not known in any precise way,” but the zones that showed the highest growth were Magdalena Medio, Caquetá, Putumayo, Sarare (Arauca), and Ariari in Meta.25 To get some idea of the im-pact on the Llanos, table 3.1 lists official Colombian census data for the Llanos territories in 1938, 1951, and 1964. These figures suggest that Meta was the preferred destination of migrants even in 1951, and that by 1964 the intendancy had outstripped the other ter-ritories. Arauca and Casanare also experienced substantial increases. Only Vi-chada failed to grow exponentially, undoubtedly due to its remote location from the central highlands. Efforts to support spontaneous colonization actually began in 1948, when Ospina Perez’s government created the Instituto de Parcelaciones, Colonizacio-nes y Defensa Forestal. At this time the individual most central to the formula-tion of population policy was a naturalized U.S. citizen and economist, Lauch-lin Currie. In 1949 Currie headed the first of the World Bank’s comprehensive surveys in Colombia. In his report published in Washington, D.C., in 1950 he

Table 3.1. Population growth in the Llanos between 1938 and 1964

Territory 1938 1951 1964 ± 1938–1964

Arauca 11,156 13,221 24,148 + 12,992Casanare 23,290 22,087 66,613 + 44,526Meta 51,674 67,492 165,530 +113,856Vichada 9,094 12,250 10,130 + 1,036TOTALS 95,214 115,050 266,421 +172,410

Sources: Colombia, Censo general de la población, 1938, 1951, 1964.


called attention to the rapid population growth and suggested that there was a need to expand national infrastructure via hydroelectric power and internal transportation. Currie established good rapport with Laureano Gómez, and having developed a liking for Colombia, he returned to Bogotá as an advisor to implement the report’s recommendations. As a result, the Colombian govern-ment made huge investments in these two areas, a development that accelerated internal migration and increased concentration of population in the four largest cities.26

In 1953 Rojas replaced the Instituto de Parcelaciones, Colonizaciones y De-fensa Forestal with the Instituto de Colonización e Inmigración. Three years later the functions of this second institute were assigned to the Caja Agraria, which opened a division specifically designed to promote planned colonization of the Ariari River Valley in Meta and El Sarare in Arauca in addition to proj-ects in Caquetá, Sumapaz, and Lebrija (Santander). The Caja Agraria, with an uncertain knowledge of the agricultural challenges posed by the Llanos, made grave mistakes in planning. It tried to create colonies that it officially organized and controlled by promising to build roads, to supply credit and technical as-sistance, and to provide schools. Unfortunately, such official colonies affected only small zones of the vast areas deemed tierras baldías, and because the wave of spontaneous colonization continued unabated, conflicts ensued, causing the failure of these efforts.27

Despite its announcement of plans for new colonies in the press and on the radio, the government was unable to carry them out. As a result, the refu-gees struck out on their own, claiming uncultivated land that they believed was tierra baldía. Conflicts occurred when hacendados (landowners) continued the practice of usurping land staked out by new arrivals. As in the past the state was too weak to enforce laws that would protect the newcomers from losing their claims.28

San Luis de Palenque, one such planned town in Casanare, showed promise at least in the beginning. It was founded in the plains on July 6, 1953, on the banks of the Río Pauto in the middle of the province. This location was only ten kilometers from Trinidad, the former capital, which had been totally destroyed by the violence, and there were many refugees in the area from other ruined villages. Hugo Gamboa Ramírez, a teniente de caballería, took charge of the organization of the new settlement. When María Eugenia Rojas Pinilla visited it the following October, it already had four thousand inhabitants, an electric plant, a church, a health post, schools, and stores. The general’s daughter, who was warmly received, distributed provisions, clothes, and medicine and prom-


ised that the government would give “all its aid and support for the rehabilita-tion of the region.”29

The town continued to prosper. In August 1954 Guillermo Ramírez re-ported that San Luis had a plaza, five blocks of houses, broad streets, and an airfield. Some dwellings were still provisional, but others boasted adobe or la-drillo walls with roofs of zinc or eternit (fiber cement). There were also a good number of prefabricated houses, and through arrangements with the Institute de Crédito Territorial and other entities, erection of forty more houses was as-sured. There were offices for a telegraph station, the Caja Agraria, the principal airline companies, and warehouses for salt. Ranching remained the dominant economic activity in the surrounding region, while twenty stores sold all types of merchandize to customers who arrived by horseback. Ramírez, who published his report in the journal Economía Colombiana, em-phasized that air service to the town had been critical to its growth since, be-sides planes owned by AVIANCA (the Colombian national airline), Sociedad Aeronáutica de Medellín (SAM), and Aerotaxi, there were also express flights by businessmen and tourists using small Cessnas and Pipers. In addition, dur-ing the five months of dry weather in the “summer,” trucks and jeeps could reach the town and freight could be shipped down the Pauto River. The population of San Luis included military personnel from the local army post, businessmen, and a small number of employees and functionaries of the government. The bulk of the vecinos, however, were people who had formerly lived in caseríos (hamlets) scattered throughout the region but who had been made homeless due to the Violencia. Many of the dispossessed had congregated around the military post in Guanapalo, and after June 13, 1953, a long caravan of sick and virtually naked people set off for the new location at San Luis de Palenque. Once they arrived, the Caja de Crédito Agrario and the Oficina de Rehabilitación provided funds to meet their immediate needs. Taking account of these developments, Ramírez believed that the upcoming first anniversary of the founding of San Luis de Palenque would mark a “period of incessant but fertile labor.” With continued improvement in ranching, the development of agriculture, the incorporation of machinery, and a rational use of natural resources, he predicted a “great future for the town.”30

The government faced much greater challenges in organizing the coloniza-tion of the Ariari region in Meta. Unlike the population of San Luis, which consisted primarily of casanareños, by the beginning of 1948 colonists from Tolima began moving into area around the Ariari River, which included the Llanos of San Juan de Arama and part of the Llanos of San Martín. Geographi-cally divided into three sections, the northern part of this region, known as the


Alto Ariari, contained the present municipios of Cubarral and El Castillo; the Ariari Medio included the municipios of Granada, Fuente de Oro, and Lejanías (Vega del Ariari); and located in the Bajo Ariari were the municipios of Puerto Lleras and Puerto Rico. With the development of rival guerrilla movements by 1951, the intendencia government of Meta encouraged Liberals to settle around the Ariari and the Conservatives near the Cubarral River. When Rojas Pinilla announced pacification, most guerrilla bands surrendered, but three leaders continued to be very powerful: Plinio Murillo Varón (alias Sargento Veneno) ruled over Cataclaro near the town of San Martín, while Bernardo Giraldo, known as “El Tuerto,” and Dumar Aljure controlled Nunchía. The most important political differences were between the settlers of Alto Ariari and those living in the Vega del Ariari since the colonists in the for-mer region embraced self-defense policies while those in the latter followed the official policies of the Liberal Party. The colonists in Alto Ariari were either Liberals coming from Villavicencio or Liberal migrants from eastern Tolima who had previously accepted organization promoted by the Communist Party. Once settled in the region, the two groups worked more or less together to repel sporadic assaults by Conservative guerrilla bands. When Plinio Murillo entered the zone, he consolidated the region, and by the end of 1958, Alto Ariari en-joyed apparent tranquility. In the Vega del Ariari lived fifteen hundred families of Liberal persuasion led by Dumar Aljure and Bernardo Giraldo. Both men followed the orders of the official National Liberal Directorate, but by the end of 1956 Giraldo had challenged the leadership of Aljure and a decision was made to divide the region into two zones. In that same year, Boca de Monte, a former military post, was converted into the municipio of Granada, which became the dominant settle-ment in Ariari and the “epicenter of all economic and political activities of the region.”31

Granada’s history dated from 1939, when Martín Viatela built a house there to become the first settler. By 1945 he had been joined by several other families; in 1947 a school was begun, and in 1948 Padre Raúl de Oliveria, parish priest of San Martín, celebrated the first mass. Between 1948 and 1951 the town pros-pered, but once the Violencia began to take its toll, many of the residents were forced to flee. The Gómez government established a military post in Granada in an attempt to restore stability, and after the Rojas Pinilla pacification in 1953, the Caja Agraria sent functionaries to make loans to the cultivators so that they could return to their farms. A year later Montfort missionaries arrived, and more schools were estab-lished. The jefe civil y militar of the intendancy, Teniente Coronel Luis Carlos


Turriago, visited the town to understand better the concerns of the settlers. The construction of a church was begun, and on July 10, 1954, the Fiesta de Nuestra Señora del Carmen was celebrated with great pomp. In 1955 a health center opened, and in 1956, the Instituto de Crédito Territorial built twenty houses for the people who had the greatest ability to pay for them.32 In that year, geographer Raymond Crist visited the Ariari region and was impressed by the stream of settlers moving into what was still called Boca de Monte. This village, he wrote, that “only a few years ago [was] a cluster of palm thatch huts literally at the edge of the forest, as the name implies, is now a thriving center, owing largely to the arrival of some 300 people from Armenia (Caldas).” These frugal and hard-working settlers were carving farmsteads out of the public land on which they grew corn, yuca, and plantains for home use and rice for the mar-ket. Crist rightly predicted, “As the edge of the forest recedes, the name Boca de Monte will have significance more historical than actual.”33 In that very year the townspeople voted to change the name of their town to Granada, and it was officially designated a municipio in 1957. With the exception of the emergence of San Juan de Palenque in Casanare and Granada in Ariari, effective government aid to colonists did not arrive until the overthrow of Rojas and the advent of the Frente Nacional in 1959. In his report in 1955 Colonel Turriago estimated that although an average of one hun-dred to three hundred people were arriving every month in Villavicencio, apart from the aid provided by the intendancy to build roads and schools, there had been no official help extended to these migrants to enable them to begin new colonies.34 Moreover, because Villavicencio was a small town, it was in no posi-tion to attend to the fundamental needs of the newcomers. Aqueducts inad-equate to supply water, deficient electricity, and lack of housing were only some of the problems made worse by the city’s tiny budget. Institutions such as the Banco Central Hipotecario and the Instituto de Crédito Territorial provided money for housing for the wealthy, but the popular classes remained without adequate shelter. As Tomás Ojeda Ojeda explains, highland refugees from the violence who arrived in Villavicencio “traumatized by nightmare of terror and the tragedy that accompanied even their dreams, really did not know what to do next, and neither did the government entities that were supposed to supply aid. Neither the government nor the Red Cross nor the city could find solutions to these problems.”35

In September 1954 Rojas Pinilla embarked on a bold and controversial plan to help the thousands of uprooted, homeless, and penniless campesinos who had flocked to cities throughout Colombia by establishing SENDAS (Secre-tariado Nacional de Asistencia Social) with his daughter, María Eugenia Rojas


de Moreno, as head of the organization. Acting through SENDAS, the gov-ernment by January 1955 had granted individuals loans of up to 9,000 pesos totaling 7.4 million pesos to peasants and small farmers in the Llanos and 16.6 million pesos to 11,700 people similarly affected in other areas of the nation.36 In Bogotá, 18,500 people received assistance; 500 people who had fled to Pan-ama were repatriated, as well as 1,000 others who had crossed over the border into Venezuela. Subsidies totaling 173,000 pesos were distributed to children orphaned by the fighting, and action was taken on twenty-six thousand peti-tions for restoration of property lost through sale or illegal occupation.37

Under the aegis of SENDAS, social security was extended to peasants. There were plans to establish nurseries for infants, kindergartens, and social welfare centers in all principal cities. After one year of service, Semana conceded that SENDAS “has given evident public services, with the establishment of councils in five hundred municipalities of the country, with direct aid to private beneficent organizations, with the creation of child and infant centers, in the reorganization of homes, and the readaptation of thousands of peasant fami-lies.”38 According to María Eugenia Rojas, “SENDAS was a magnificent expe-rience that merited being studied by groups coming from different countries,” but the similarities of its organization, as with many initiatives begun by Rojas Pinilla, smacked too much of Peronism. Once the general was overthrown in 1957, SENDAS was disbanded.39

Another manifestation of the call for “Peace, Justice, Liberty, and Order” was Rojas’s determination to bring about the moral regeneration and the creation of a Christian and Bolivarian state. In the words of David Bushnell, Rojas was “a fairly conventional Roman Catholic, who sincerely felt that close collaboration between church and state was essential for the moral regeneration he had in mind.”40 From the beginning of his regime he maintained a cordial relationship with Cardinal Cristiano Luque. One result of this connection was a tightening of control over Protestant activities in Colombia. In Circular Número 310, is-sued on January 28, 1954, the government stated that [as before] non-Catholics enjoyed complete freedom of conscience and could not be molested on account of their beliefs. What was new, however, was that the circular expressly prohib-ited them from proselytizing their religion outside their own churches.41

This restriction reinforced the wording of Colombia’s celebration with the Vatican on January 29, 1953, of the Convención sobre Misiones, first signed in 1902 and renewed in 1928. In accordance with this agreement, religious communities continued to have absolute authority to govern, police, educate, and control the Indians as well as maintain jurisdiction over primary educa-tion for all people—white or Indian—in the national territories. To support


these activities the government pledged to contribute 30,000 Colombian pesos annually to each of the vicariatos and prefecturas and another 360,000 pesos for the needs of the missions.42 Eleven territories were erected into vicariatos apostólicos, including the Vicariato de Villavicencio, which had jurisdiction over Meta and Vichada. Seven other territories continued as prefecturas apostólicas, including the Prefectura de Arauca. (Casanare as part of the Department of Boyacá did not come under missionary rule). The Montfort Fathers remained in charge of the Vicariato de Villavicencio while the Prefectura de Arauca was assigned to the Congregation of the Mission. The 1953 agreement specifically stated that members of other religions who resided in the national territories enjoyed constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience but that “they only can provide their religious and educational services to foreigners affiliated with their religion or sect in their own homes and in a strictly private matter.”43

Rojas and the National Territories

The Rojas Pinilla regime was the first since that of López Pumarejo to em-phasize the importance of the national territories. On November 13, 1953, the general became the first Colombian president to visit the islands of San Andrés and Providencia. He used the occasion to declare San Andrés a free port and to order the construction of an airport that would tie it closer with the mainland, but throughout his administration, his primary concern was with the Llanos. During his trial by the Senate in 1959, he explained that before he came to power, “without a doubt, the most convulsed area in the country was the Llanos Orientales”:

I believe that in all the departments, everyone, when he is a child is taught that Colombia’s independence is due in large part to the Llaneros. When I was in school in Boyacá, they told us that the Llanero conducted his busi-ness without need of official documents because the word of the Llanero was a public document. Personally I have always had a great respect, a great admiration for those people of the plains, and I wanted to bring peace there after June 13.44

In a speech delivered in Villavicencio on January 22, 1955, Rojas set forth a four-point program for the development of the Llanos. First, with Decree 112 he created the Federación Nacional de Ganaderos with the goal of strength-ening the cattle industry and elevating it to be equal with coffee production, already represented by the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros. Second, he an-nounced a plan to attract foreigners and foreign investment to the Llanos by


offering one or more hectares of land in the region for each head of hybrid cattle a foreign citizen or Colombian might import. Additionally he planned to build a factory that would use cattle byproducts to make fertilizers and ar-ticles for domestic life, and to establish slaughterhouses in the municipios to coordinate the distribution of meat. Third, he promised to develop a network of highways that would contribute to the conversion of the Intendancy of Meta into a department. These highways were from Sarare, Socha to Río Casanare; from Cusiana, Valle de Tenza to the Río Meta; and upgrades to the Bogotá-Villavicencio artery. Finally, he announced that the Ministry of Public Health was developing plans to construct health centers, housing, and facilities to sup-ply potable water to the entire population.45

Thanks to these initiatives, Rojas Pinilla’s first eighteen months in office were highly successful, and the inhabitants of Meta, Casanare, and Arauca were grateful to him for restoring peace so quickly to their region. Accompanied by his daughter María Eugenia Rojas, he visited the Llanos frequently. To express their appreciation for his support, the ranchers, apparently spontaneously, pre-sented Rojas Pinilla with three thousand head of cattle and three hatos (one each in Meta, Casanare, and Arauca), which according to former president López Pumarejo, who was at the ceremony, were worth a million Colombian pesos.46 Rojas Pinilla, in consultation with his family, decided to give these ha-tos together with the cattle to SENDAS to benefit refugees in the Llanos, and to mark the occasion he declared June 15, 1955, the “Day of the Rancher.”47

Impact of the Regime on Casanare, Vichada, Arauca, and Meta

In administering the Llanos region, Rojas retained with some modifications the system of national territories that had evolved under previous governments. Casanare, declared a comisaría by Gómez in 1951, was returned in 1953 to its provincial status within the department of Boyacá. In 1956 the Comisaría of Arauca was elevated to an intendancy. Intendants and comisarios responsible to the Ministerio de Gobierno continued to handle civil and administrative du-ties, but the jefe civil y militar de los Llanos Orientales, established in 1950 and based in Villavicencio, remained in charge of military operations throughout the Llanos through 1957. Although much of the official documentation of the regime disappeared in 1967, when the archive of the Ministerio de Gobierno was deliberately burned, a volume titled Teoría y Práctica de una Política Colombianista published in 1956 includes reports of the various ministers of Rojas’s administration.48 From the informes of the ministro of gobierno, Lucio Pabón Núñez; the director of the


Departamento de Territorios Nacionales (DTN), Brigadier General Arturo Chary; the jefe civil y militar del Meta, Colonel Luis Carlos Turriago; the jefe civil y militar, Mayor Telmo Acevedo Ardila in Arauca; and the comisario es-pecial del Vichada, R. Arturo Bueno, one can get an idea of developments in the region between 1953 and 1955, although the quality of their reports varies considerably. Regretfully, in his informe, the governor of Boyacá, Alfredo Rivera Valderrama, made no reference to the reintegration of Casanare into his depart-ment and thus recorded no information about this critical section of the Llanos. In his report, Minister of Government Pabón Núñez reinforced Rojas’s claim that the Llanos were receiving preferential treatment. He emphasized that among the president’s plans was an effort to intensify and improve ranching as a defense against any potential coffee crisis in the future. Rojas had “provided a strong impulse to public roads such as the highway that leaves from Cúcuta and crosses El Sarare to reach Arauca; measures to aid health and educate the public, creation of the branches of the Caja de Crédito Agrario, construction of air fields, telecommunications service, and many other things which are pro-ducing the progress of the National Territories.”49 In addition, earlier in the year, Pabón, as minister of government, hosted a conference of the intendants and comisarios in Bogotá to discuss common issues such as creating a fiscal code for the national territories and to learn more about other needs including developing practical and realistic legislation concerning indigenous people and measures to shore up Colombian presence along the border with Venezuela in Amazonas, Vaupés, Vichada, and part of la Guajira.50

Vichada

Of the reports submitted by the intendant and comisarios, the most curious was that of R. Arturo Bueno, comisario of Vichada, which consisted of a speech that he presented on June 13, 1956, after taking office on April 13. Bueno noted that his predecessor had done nothing worth mentioning during his tenure, but that since he had taken command, commissarial administration was function-ing more smoothly with better equipment and decent offices. He had learned from a meeting of the corregidores that even though all the towns were situated on the Orinoco, Meta, or Vichada rivers, there was great difficulty in commu-nication because of the lack of motorboats. This deficiency had been remedied in May. Repeated thefts from the customs house in Puerto Carreño had para-lyzed the work of the national government in making improvements in other commissarial concerns. Nevertheless, Bueno was confident that by the end of the month, a branch of the Caja Agraria would be established in the town. The


comisario praised the Rojas government for bringing peace to Vichada and re-ported that citizens who had endured great trauma during the Violencia were now celebrating the return of tranquility. Director of National Territories Arturo Chary confirmed that many new buildings had been constructed in Vichada and underscored the need for a branch of the Caja Agraria. He also noted other unresolved problems; for ex-ample, the commissarial launch, Inírida, was not large enough to transport nec-essary cargo. Although eighty-three kilometers of the road toward Villavicencio had been completed, it was very important to build the ninety-two-kilometer Maipure-Panumana carretera. This road would connect Puerto Carreño with regions that produced chiquichiqui, cacao, chicle, wood, and hammocks, and would free travelers from having to pass through Venezuela.51 Other needs were the creation of regular mail and telephone service with Bogotá and the estab-lishment of a colony at the site known as Nueva Antioquia (formerly Culebra) on the Meta River, which had excellent land suitable for agriculture and cattle. This proposed settlement would have strategic importance since it would be located only ten kilometers from the Venezuelan town of Carabobo, where Venezuelans maintained a military post.52

Although the majority of Vichada’s inhabitants were Guahibo, Sáliva, and Cuiva, and officially under the jurisdiction of the Vicariato Apostólico del Meta, before 1950 the Montfortians had made little progress in creating per-manent missions there. In that year on October 4, four clerics set out from Villavicencio, accompanied by two Indians from Vaupés planning to explore the region of San José de Ocuné in the Alto Vichada, but they were repelled by attacks by armed men commanded by Guadalupe Salcedo. On April 20, 1951, the missionaries embarked on a second attempt. This time they arrived in Puerto Carreño via military plane, accompanied by four nuns who belonged to the community founded by Madre Laura.53 After peace had been restored, the Montfortians sent another expedition in 1955 to the region of Ocuné popu-lated by Guahibos, Piapocos, and a few colonos. This expedition managed to establish a permanent post at Sunape, a site at the confluence of the Muco and Vichada rivers. These continuous evangelizing efforts were sufficient to con-vince Pope Pius XII to create in April 1956 the Prefectura Apostólica de Puerto Carreño, a jurisdiction that encompassed an extensive region bordering on the Intendancy of Meta. In that year the religious continued work on the mission in Sunape, erecting a building with a living area for the religious, classrooms, a chapel, a health post, a kitchen, a small store to supply natives and colonos, and a school where native children could be brought to live and be instructed in Christianity.54


Arauca

The report from the jefe civil y militar, Mayor Telmo Acevedo Ardila, was more cursory than that of Bueno, and although dated September 26, 1955, it made no mention of the elevation of Arauca from comisaría to intendencia the previ-ous January. On a single page Acevedo Ardila listed the public works carried out by his predecessor Teniente Coronel César A. Ferro Duque between June 1954 and June 1955, which included building schools, the installation of elec-tric plants in Arauquita, Tame, and Rondón, construction of a health post in Arauca, and the elaboration of plans for a new aqueduct.55 To this brief ac-count, Director Chary added that Arauca had been elevated to an intendancy and that its budget for 1955 had been increased from 1,606,453.46 pesos to 1,829,763.70 pesos.56

More informative was an article appearing in Semana on August 2, 1954, praising the work of Colonel Ferro. The reporter noted that in Arauca City, Ferro had begun construction of a tourist hotel, an industrial school, the Ave-nida Rojas Pinilla, a residence for the comisario, three slaughter houses to pre-pare meat for transport to Bogotá, and expansion of the electric generator. The region was producing one hundred thousand head of cattle annually, and prog-ress was being made in cross-breeding cebú and Santa Gertrudis animals. Ag-ricultural wealth included improved pasture, coffee, and sugar cane, all of which were increasing. Ferro had been able to arrange a loan of 3.5 million pesos with the Caja Agraria to complete his projects, and the article ended by stating that the five thousand inhabitants of Arauca City were very pleased over the success achieved “by the young military man in the brief period of his mandate.”57

A year later Alonso Lamo Pulido published in the Boletín de la Sociedad Geográfica de Colombia a more pessimistic assessment of conditions in Arauca in an article titled “La Comisaría Especial de Arauca.” While not discounting the developments cited by Acevedo and Semana, Lamo Pulido pointed out that the comisaría had only minimal sources of income. The taxes on tobacco, li-quor, and degüello did not produce significant sums, and since land titles were not registered, a tax on land was simply inoperative. One solution, as well as the most important necessity, was to find a way to deliver annually to national markets more than forty thousand head of cattle. This situation could not oc-cur until the completion of the so-called Sarare road, which leaving Toledo in Santander del Norte could reach the western part of the comisaría in four hours and the eastern part in five or six hours. The value of transporting goods on this road would cost two hundred pesos less per ton than the cost of the only cur-rently existing road tying Arauca with the highlands.


Lamo Pulido noted that the inability of ranchers to get their cattle to market had encouraged “hateful speculation and what is more serious, a motive for ban-dits to rob the owners and take their stolen cattle to foreign markets.” Equally troubling was the existence of small groups of bandoleros who focused on cattle rustling and could be eliminated only by creating a military force made up of Araucanos who were familiar with the region. Lamo Pulido acknowledged the importance of the efforts of the army, but he believed that the creation of a local militia would be necessary if the bandits were to be suppressed and economic and social order reestablished.58

With regard to religion, the Lazarists remained responsible for the conver-sion and education of the inhabitants. Directed by Bishop Graziano Martínez, the prefecture had nine priests who ministered to whites and natives residing in four parishes, but there is no information about the success or lack of success of their efforts.59

Meta

The report on Meta presented by Coronel Luis Carlos Turriago on August 1, 1955, was considerably more detailed. The jefe civil y militar began by stating that the violence, which had besieged the intendancy, had been replaced by a period of peace and prosperity. Financial resources were modest, but if they were managed with care, he believed, that with effective aid from the central government, he could guarantee that the specter of the guerrilla banditry would be eliminated forever from the Llanos Orientales. In the meantime he had es-tablished police posts in the newly created corregimientos of Barranca de Upía, Surimena, San Pedro de Arimena y Cabuyaro, San Juan de Arama, Cubarral, Manacacías, and Cháviva. Turriago calculated the number of inhabitants in Meta at 150,000, for “without exaggeration, it can be assured that the population has increased 100 percent with respect to the 1951 census” with an average of one hundred new families arriving every month. The principal zones of spontaneous colonization were in Ariari and Guamal, but little official aid had reached the new colonos. Turriago urged that the Instituto de Crédito Territorial e Intendencial pay spe-cial attention to this region, “which represents for the Patria a true future of greatness.” In the area of public works, Turriago listed the expansion of 144 kilometers of roads and the construction of bridges and pontoons, schools, police barracks, and health centers. To achieve this progress, the intendancy had invested be-tween June 13, 1954, and June 13, 1955, 653,695.89 pesos and planned to invest


over 1.4 million pesos more in the year to come. Sources of income included taxes on tobacco, degüello, and bascule (weighing of animals to be slaughtered.) These figures did not take into account contraband, which paralleled legitimate commerce, but nevertheless Turriago stated that the income of the department and its expenses were in “perfect equilibrium.” With regard to education, seventy-three new schools were functioning, as well as six evening schools. In this area the most important needs were to be-gin a normal school for young women, two escuelas hogares, two internados for elementary students, the Instituto Agropecuario to train mayordomos, nation-alization of the Colegio Mariano Ospina Pérez, and the creation of a colegio de bachillerato for girls.60 Turriago ended his report by noting that the people of Villavicencio were also calling for the construction of a modern stadium where a variety of sporting events could be held.61

Director Chary for the most part reiterated the information supplied by Turriago. In addition, he made the following recommendations: (1) that funds be made available for tractors and other heavy machinery, (2) that funds be ap-propriated for improvements in Villavicencio’s telephone system, (3) that elec-tricity be expanded at least to the most populated centers of the Intendancy, (4) that the central government change the location of the Colonia Penal de Acacías since its present location was destined to become the site of the Insti-tuto de Capacitación Agropecuaria, (5) that the Instituto de Colonización e Inmigración open a center of operations in the Llanos, (6) that the Ministerio de Justicia create a Juzgado de Policía for Meta, and (7) that the government provide funding to expand the aqueduct, sewers, and plaza of Villavicencio and additional funds for the reconstruction of towns destroyed by the violence.62

Several other sources provide additional information about Meta and Villavi-cencio, the principal city in the Llanos during the Rojas regime. In his book Departamento del Meta, Joaquín Paredes Cruz notes that while Turriago served as jefe civil y militar between 1954 and 1957, two other military men—Manuel A. Iregui and Enrique Villavisar—also held the post briefly in 1957.63 Lieuten-ant Jaime García Ullo was alcalde from 1954 to 1955 and was succeeded by Jorge Rincón Osorio, Leonard Garavito Martínez, Captain Hernando Cleves, and José Antonio Barrera.64 Nancy Espinel states that before the Violencia, the intendancy had been divided into three municipios: Villavicencio (created in 1850), Restrepo (1915), and Acacías (1947), but due to the surge in coloni-zation, between 1953 and 1958 six more had been carved out of what previ-ously had been known as the Territory of San Martín. These were, in 1955, Cumaral, Puerto López, and El Calvario; in 1956, Granada and Guamal; and in 1958, San Martín. Because most of the newcomers settled in the Ariari re-


gion, Granada emerged as the epicenter of colonization and violence while San Martín continued to be an enclave of traditional customs.65

Tomás Ojeda Ojeda remembers that even after June 13, 1953, it was difficult for inhabitants of Villavicencio to leave the city. To go to another town, they had to acquire safe-conduct passes because traveling without one exposed them to arrest by the army.66 This situation was somewhat ironic since at the same time migrants from Tolima, the Santanders, and Viejo Caldas were pouring into the city. Between 1951 and 1964, Villavicencio’s population grew from seventeen thousand to forty-five thousand, a rate of 78.6 percent, making it the fastest growing town in Colombia. The urban area increased from 34 blocks (manza-nas) in 1937 to 100 blocks in 1958 to 362 blocks in 1964.67

DTN director Chary reported that Meta’s income had grown from 2,995,012.67 pesos in 1954 to 5,065,050.68 pesos in 1955.68 With peace re-stored, the intendancy quickly recovered its economic momentum. Coloniza-tion of the Ariari region produced increasing yields of beans, coffee, rice, and corn. Even though the Bogotá-Villavicencio highway was still limited to one-way traffic, Villavicencio remained the main center for distribution of machin-ery, food, and merchandise from the highlands to the nearby Llanos towns, and it continued to supply Bogotá with agricultural products and cattle. The resumption of the annual arrival of sacas (cattle drives) to Villavicencio from Arauca and Casanare also brought in an influx of the culture of the Llanos Adentro.69

Industry was expanding. The Bavaria Brewing Company, established in 1946, increased its capacity so that by 1961 it was turning out every month 4.2 million bottles of beer to supply the market in the Llanos and eastern Cun-dinamarca. In 1955 the Torres brothers, Guillermo and Armando, formed a li-quor company that six years later was producing every month twenty thousand bottles of “Llanero” and “Ariari” aguardiante.70

An article published in Semana on March 28, 1955, noted that Villavicencio had “progressed notoriously.” The city’s inhabitants could see films in four dif-ferent movie theaters. The newly founded Radio Villavicencio was broadcast-ing autochthonous music, especially bambucos and galerones, and publication had begun of a weekly newspaper, El Llanero. Recommending Villavicencio as a rewarding tourist destination, the reporter mentioned such amenities as the Hotel Meta, the Hotel Casino of Villa Julia, and the country club, Club Campestre.71

With regard to religion, the Compañía de María continued to administer the Vicariato Apostólica del Meta. In 1939 Monseñor Francisco José Bruls replaced José María Guiot as the vicario apostólico. During Monseñor Bruls’s tenure, the


Montfort Fathers played a dominant role in the life of the community’s twenty-one parishes.72 After Villavicencio’s cathedral burned down in 1947, they super-vised the building of a new church, and in 1955 Bruls inaugurated the Templo de la Virgen del Carmen. In addition to the official schools, the Hijas de la Sabuduría administered several private schools, and the Christian Brothers di-rected the Colegio de LaSalle.73 To respond to the booming colonization south of the city, Monseñor Bruls assigned Padre Benedicto Villalba, Padre Gilberto Linares, and Padre Ignacio Días to serve the new town of Granada. By 1960, however, the needs of this large area proved beyond the capabilities of the Mon-fortians, and the bishop petitioned Pope Paul VI to create a new prefectura apostólica. In 1964 the pope acceded to this request, establishing the Prefectura del Ariari and assigning its jurisdiction to the Salesians of Don Bosco.74

The Downfall of Rojas Pinilla

Despite Rojas Pinilla’s initial victories, historian David Bushnell suggests that four basic weaknesses doomed his presidency. The first was the increasingly heavy-handed nature of his regime, expressed in the decline of press freedom and the use of strong-armed tactics against the opposition. The second was the hardening of opposition by the traditional political parties. Rojas Pinilla had been able to take power despite his conservative leanings because he had no formal affiliation with either of the two parties. Although he granted women the right to vote, a long overdue measure, he held no elections in which the newly enfranchised could exercise this right. His attempts to create a populist-Peronist style government disenchanted Liberals first and then the Conserva-tives. Third, both groups were uneasy about his socioeconomic policies and especially “his frank attempt to build up organized labor as one of the two main props of his regime, alongside the armed forces.”75

And finally, Rojas Pinilla’s biggest problem turned out to be the resurgence of La Violencia. In the words of Marco Palacios, in 1953, when the Liberal guerrillas turned in their arms, the initiative passed to the Communists, who chose not to accept the government’s offer and regarded their resistance as “self-defense.” Juan de la Cruz Varela in the Sumapaz coffee-growing region of Cundinamarca pioneered this strategy. While pledging support for pacification, Varela simultaneously retreated to the most remote corners of Sumapaz and resumed fighting on behalf of settlers and sharecroppers. In 1954 landowners began to complain of extortion connected to the coffee trade by the Sumapaz guerrillas.76 There was also resistance in eastern Tolima and once again in the Llanos, where even in 1953 some guerrilla chiefs had refused to surrender. By


1954, Rojas Pinilla, believing the resisters to be Communists, permitted the army to carry out a raid against Sumapaz near Villarica, resulting in the deaths of several campesinos and the arrest of their leader, Isauro Yosa. The army and the national police began patrolling the region, and after a group of armed men ambushed them in late March 1955, on April 4 Rojas Pinilla declared eastern Tolima a “Zone of Military Operations.”77

In the Llanos there were no major outbreaks, but many former guerrillas believed that the government had broken its promise to those who had laid down their arms. For example, on June 13, 1954, the government had conceded amnesty to all persons accused of political crimes committed before January 1, 1954, but this amnesty was not extended to men like Dumar Aljure, who had deserted from the army and fought against the armed forces. For that reason, Aljure took up his weapons once again, as did Carlos Roa. In 1955 Rojas Pinilla stationed the army’s VII Brigade in Villavicencio, and in April airplanes again began dropping bombs on houses and families in the Llanos.78

After his surrender of weapons in September 1953, Guadalupe Salcedo, the most charismatic of the Llanero guerrilla leaders, became a kind of mediator for Rojas Pinilla’s efforts to pacify the Llanos, as well as a spokesman for the needs of the region. During the first two years he spent much time in Bogotá enjoy-ing his notoriety, but as time passed, it was obvious that despite government reforms, the majority of people in the Llanos were facing the same fundamental problems as before: official persecution, provocation on the part of the Conser-vatives, lack of resources for work, isolation, lack of schools, and an absence of help for small farmers—and that it was these problems that were provoking armed resistance once again.79 In November 1956 Guadalupe met with the high military command and ex-guerrillas in San Pedro de Arimena (Meta). He attempted to open the meeting with a conciliatory tone, stating, “Our previous life is in the past, and it is necessary to forget the quarrels, hatreds and rancor,” but the other guerrilla leaders denounced this point of view and presented a list of demands to Colonel Turriago that included, among other points, that the government stop persecuting Roa and Aljure, that it withdraw the civilian Conservative fighters and especially the “pájaros,” that it provide freedom for all prisoners jailed by the past regime who were residents of the Llanos, and that it comply with the promises it had made in the first day of June 13, 1953.80 Tur-riago responded that the government was working hard to comply with these demands and denied that it had anything to do with the arrival of the pájaros. He urged the guerrillas to respect the legitimate authorities, dedicate them-selves to honest work, collaborate with the armed forces to maintain peace, and reject any foreign intervention that threatened to upset public order.81


This dialogue proved to be unproductive. Guzmán Campos observes that January 1957 emerged as the key month for the renewal of La Violencia in the Llanos when ex-guerrillas protested an incident of army violence in El Ari-ari near San Martín and called for the removal of the lieutenant who was the acting mayor of that town. They also objected to the increase of cattle theft, stating that “it is publicly known in Villavicencio that the stealing of cattle is supported by various officials of the army in order to obtain two ends: to get rich . . . and because they know that the increase of robbery will demoralize the revolutionary movement.” By this time, Guadalupe had decided to rejoin the armed struggle and with the other ex-guerrillas issued a statement expressing solidarity with the guerrillas then fighting in Tolima. His goal was to reactivate the original struggle and put into effect the Second Law of the Llano by forming a National Revolutionary Government (Gobierno Nacional Revolucionario).82

Salcedo returned to Bogotá to coordinate resistance in the Llanos by sup-porting a conspiracy being organized by Juan Lozano y Lozano, a Liberal re-porter and longtime critic of the dictator. The plan was to base a new insurgency in Vichada using the old guerrilla leaders and to win the support of important politicians and Liberal army officers. By this time, however, it was already clear that popular support for Rojas Pinilla’s rule was unraveling. While the general, seemingly oblivious to the changing situation, was making preparations to be-gin a second term in office, Liberal former president Alberto Lleras Camargo and Conservative former president Laureano Gómez signed a pact in Spain to work together to overthrow the dictator and to share power peacefully there-after. A general strike begun on May 6, 1957, won the support of most major social groups and both political parties, and on May 10, “when the rest of the military high command suggested to Rojas Pinilla that he quietly withdraw for the good of the country, he made his way to exile.”83

Once the object of their opposition had left Colombia, the Lozano y Lo-zano conspiracy collapsed, but disenchantment with the national government remained high among the ex-guerrilla leaders in the Llanos. While Guadalupe was in Bogotá supporting the Lozano y Lozano conspiracy, he was murdered under suspicious circumstances on June 6, 1957. It was this despicable action, allegedly authorized by the newly installed junta militar, that solidified Sal-cedo’s fame as a martyr of popular resistance.84

Rojas Pinilla and the Llanos: A Balance Sheet

In a speech presented in Villavicencio on January 22, 1955, Rojas Pinilla elo-quently extolled the potential of the Llanos:


We find ourselves in a region singularly favored by the gifts of Providence, where notwithstanding its huge extension, progress will soon manifest itself with promising energy. A region historically given to great national enterprises, the Government considers that very soon it can be converted into a vast emporium that leaving its simple condition as a zone of the future may be transformed into an exemplary region of the Patria and a true land of promise, where technology will achieve a fertile prosperity.85

This optimistic assessment of the future of the Llanos bears striking similarity to statements made by the Radical presidents of the 1870s and López Pumarejo in the 1930s. Unfortunately, it is another example of the empty rhetoric against which, a year earlier, Jorge Bejarano, had raised heartfelt concerns. In August 1954 Bejarano, a well-known doctor and head of the Office of Rehabilitación Nacional, which was created by the government to remedy the problems caused by the Violencia, expressed his reservations in a somber essay published in the journal Económica Colombiana. In this article he discussed the “rediscovery of the Llanos” and pointed out that while the government had promised to re-deem the region “economically, educationally and health wise,” past history sug-gested that it would be unable to carry out its good intentions. Bejarano noted that similar efforts by previous governments had been abandoned because the “National Territories have had the misfortune to always be an appendix of the Ministerio de la Política, that is to say of the Gobierno, which was subjected to frequent change of ministers.” He continued, “This rich territory where Co-lombians live who neither complain nor vote, is easily ignored by the govern-ment and tragically forgotten. If personally I had not had the experience of this lack of continuity in government work, I might not write these reflections that, if they are filled with pessimism, take into account the hope that we can be successful.”86

A review of developments in the Llanos during the Rojas regime bears out Bejarano’s pessimism. There is no question that the end of the violence in Sep-tember 1953 was welcomed by nearly all inhabitants of the plains, and that institutions such as the Corte Militar de Casación y Revisión, the Oficina de Rehabilitación y Socorro, and SENDAS brought a measure of relief to the thousands of victims of the five-year civil war. Yet these efforts did nothing to change the traditional economic and social structure that had existed since colonial times. The large ranchers retained their position at the top of the social and economic scale while their workers were no better off than they had been before 1948. Even worse was the fact that the Colombian army, which in the beginning had been regarded as a force for peace, had lost the good will of the


people when it resumed military action against ex-guerrillas in 1955. Gonzalo Sánchez has observed that the attack on Sumapaz on April 4 and its designa-tion as a “Zone of Military Operations” more than any other event branded the Rojas regime as “not simply a transition or truce, but another chapter in La Violencia.”87

For the campesinos the peace of 1953 meant recognition that they were legitimate occupants of their land, but for the terratenientes (landowners), it meant only a return to the status quo in the region. Four years later, in the view of the campesinos, the military, once seen as a friendly force, was work-ing hand in glove with the landowners, and the ex-guerrillas interpreted this development as a call for renewed resistance. Dumar Aljure in Ariari and oth-ers of the so-called peacemakers had already carved out fiefdoms in Meta and Vaupés, “where strangers could only enter with their permission.”88 By 1957 the insurgent leaders in the llanos, including Guadalupe Salcedo, were ready to resume the struggle against the government. As Villanueva Martínez states, “The promises of the government meant nothing. Disillusion soon occurred which produced the reformation of the former guerrilla bands. All the policies of Rojas Pinilla toward the Llanos were a failure.”89

Nevertheless, it would be wrong to dismiss categorically the impact of the four-year dictatorship. The waves of migrants that poured into all the terri-tories with the exception of Vichada created an unstoppable momentum for change that was especially evident in the Intendancy of Meta. The thousands of newcomers, from many different regions of Colombia, placed new demands on the regional governments to provide shelter, schools, and health services. With their arrival, Villavicencio began its dramatic expansion that has continued to the present. New urban centers sprang up not only in Meta but also in Casanare and Arauca, and the traditional culture of the Llanero, which had been coalesc-ing for hundreds of years, was forced to absorb new influences. As a result, the military junta that took over from Rojas on May 10, 1957, and the subsequent formation of the National Front in 1958, encountered a transformed Llanos frontier that could no longer be taken for granted.

4

Territorial Rule during the National Front and Its Aftermath, 1958–1978

The threat posed by Rojas Pinilla’s populist leanings and his increasingly inde-pendent actions proved to be the final outrage that drove Liberal and Conserva-tive leaders to postpone (at least temporarily) the party strife that had caused so much damage to the social and economic fabric of the country in order to work together to oust the dictator. After meeting in Spain on July 26, 1956, Laureano Gómez and Alberto Lleras Camargo announced the Declaration of Benidorm, which affirmed the principle of political cooperation. This agree-ment was followed in 1957 by the Pact of Sitges, which stated that whatever the results of the next four elections, power would be shared equally between the two parties, with the presidency alternating every four years. In addition, all legislative bodies would be divided equally between Liberals and Conservatives, all congressional legislation would require a two-thirds majority to take effect, a minimum of 10 percent of the national budget would be assigned to education, and women were to enjoy equal political rights. After the forced departure of Rojas Pinilla on May 10, 1957, and a year of rule by an interim military junta, this unique arrangement, known as the Frente Nacional (National Front), took effect when Alberto Lleras Camargo, a Lib-eral, won the first post–Rojas Pinilla election and assumed the presidency on August 7, 1958. He was succeeded by Conservative Guillermo León Va-lencia (1962–66); Liberal Carlos Lleras Restrepo (1966–70); Conservative Misael Pastrana Borrero (1970–74); and Liberal Alfonso López Michelsen (1974–78).1

The shared-power agreement included a commitment to implement a social and economic program designed to rehabilitate the Violencia-stricken areas and to speed the pace of overall national development. Reinforcing this deter-mination was President John F. Kennedy’s announcement in 1961 of the Alli-


ance for Progress, a new U.S. Cold War policy designed to undercut the appeal of Fidel Castro’s ongoing Marxist revolution in Cuba. Under the Alliance for Progress, the United States pledged to spend $10 billion in Latin America to foster agrarian reform, fiscal order, and monetary stability, while in return the Latin American governments were to institute programs of social and politi-cal reform. The Lleras Camargo administration was the first in Latin America to respond to this incentive when it unveiled a ten-year development plan for 1961–70 that adhered to U.S. requirements.2 Colombia soon became a “show-case” for the alliance as money poured into the country supplied not only by the United States but also by Europe, Canada, Japan, the Inter-American Develop-ment Bank, and the World Bank. According to Robert Davis, “Between 1946 and 1984 Colombia received a total amount in international aid of US$ 6.601 billion. Of this the U.S. provided $988.8 million in loans and $382 million in grants.”3 The availability of these funds became an essential part of National Front programs to develop the Llanos and other national territories. Numerous studies of the Frente Nacional period have concluded that the policies adopted by the five presidents met only mixed success. The most com-petent chief executives were the three Liberals—Lleras Camargo, Lleras Re-strepo, and López Michelsen—while progress under Valencia and Pastrana was less evident. Nevertheless, this period saw a reduction of partisan violence. There was significant growth in Colombia’s economy, a notable improvement in public education, and some gestures toward social reform. On the other hand, as David Bushnell points out, there was little change in structural pattern of inequality, and none of the five administrations was able to suppress a new phenomenon—leftist guerrilla insurgency.4

As this chapter will show, the Llanos Orientales received preferential atten-tion during the National Front. That the region was to be given highest prior-ity was made clear when President Alberto Lleras traveled to Villavicencio on August 14, 1959, just three days after his inauguration. In a speech delivered on August 14 titled “Peace in the Llanos Orientales,” Lleras emphasized that with the exception of the administration of López Pumarejo (1934–38), Colom-bia had traditionally abandoned the Orinoco frontier. Such neglect, he stated, could not be continued:

No longer may the Llanos be regarded as a reserve for future centuries. Experience shows that there is a vast zone of fertile soil and abundant water where Colombians can create in a short time a much richer civili-zation than that which began to extend on the opposite side of the Cordi-llera from the time of the Spanish arrival. Within the next half century

Territorial Rule during the National Front and Its Aftermath, 1958–1978 81

this fortunate region will be one of the most prosperous of the Repub-lic. . . . Colonists will come and the new Department of Meta, which will be created soon, will be one of the most prosperous of the Republic.5

All five presidents personally toured the Llanos at least once, for a total of twenty executive visits: Lleras Camargo, one; Valencia, four; Lleras Restrepo, two; Pastrana, three; and López Michelsen, ten. Leonel Pérez Bareño adds that the sheer number of trips by López Michelsen, each one made with “great affec-tion and constancy,” is an accurate reflection that of all the chief executives, he was the most interested in the development of the Llanos.6

During the National Front era, the department administrating the National Territories was revitalized (although still perennially underfunded.) The Inten-dancy of Meta achieved departmental status, and, after languishing as province of the Department of Boyacá, Casanare became an intendancy in 1973. Modest progress was also attained in the Comisarías of Arauca and Vichada. Meeting the social and economic needs of the migrants who continued to stream into the region, agrarian reform, improvements in transportation and communication, preserving the rights of the indigenous communities, reforming the concordat with the Catholic Church, and the development of an economy based on ag-riculture, ranching, and petroleum were issues that affected the entire region. Unfortunately, so did the reemergence of violence, as several ex-guerrilla lead-ers were assassinated and the success of the Cuban Revolution, inspired new Marxist-oriented commanders.

Revitalizing the Department of National Territories (DTN)

The first official report from the director of national territories during the Na-tional Front regime was dated July 7, 1959. In it, Director Antonio Cauca Prada stated that Decree 33 of January 8, 1959, issued by the military junta, had re-organized the Dirección de Territorios to make it more effective. Regarding public order within the intendancies and comisarías, “complete normality was in effect.” Missionaries continued to be in charge of education, but it was es-sential to improve school facilities. Other needs included increasing national subsidies and enhancing communication. Urgently required, in addition, was the formulation of plans for colonization and aid to migrants as well as techni-cal assistance for development of agriculture and ranching.7

Nearly a year later, Decree 1634 of June 11, 1960, reorganized the Ministerio de Gobierno, giving it the important task of administrating the intendancies and comisarías that made up 49.1 percent of the territory of the republic. The


decree replaced the Dirección de Territorios with the División de Territorios Nacionales. The new division was composed of the Secciones de Desarrollo y Fomento and Control Administrativo—the latter assuming the work of the now defunct Dirección de Territorios. Regrettably, the change of title did not bring about an increase of resources. Director Eduardo Mora y Mora, in his informe for 1960, reported that despite the fact that the territories offered great possibilities, their development was hindered by inadequate communication. From the point of view of private individuals, travel from one place to another was impossibly costly, whether by land, river, or air.8 Another problem was that laws originating in the territories were for the most part illegal because they had been approved by simple ministerial resolutions of the national govern-ment rather than by decree, a situation that could not be allowed to continue. Finally, Mora y Mora stated that the development studies underway in each of the intendancies envisioned “spending fabulous sums to remedy all the evils at once, when our fiscal possibilities impede this [approach].” Modest proposals for transport and methods to use it would be far more effective, since Colom-bia’s sovereignty would be more evident if public functionaries could speak with authority in all those regions so remote from the rest of the country.9

A year later Minister of Government Augusto Ramírez Moreno complained that the personnel in the División de Territorios Nacionales did not have proper training for their jobs and even had to be instructed in how to prepare a budget. Despite this deficiency, Ramírez Moreno had already visited Amazonas and Vichada and was planning to go to Arauca, La Guajira, and “all the other National Territories which are very abandoned and need from us a great effort of understanding and interest.”10

In 1962 the jefe of the division, Luis López Guevara, reported that his of-fice had only six employees who were expected to deal with the daily review of decrees, resolutions, and so on, as well as intervene directly between authorities and private entities in search of support and solutions to the needs of the ter-ritories.11 He noted that it was “indispensable” that the division be given a mini-mum budget, autonomy, and all the attributes of a public interest enterprise in order to deal with the development of a special legal regime for the territories, discover new sources of capital, and promote improvement of living conditions and better means of contact between Bogotá and the territories. Despite these problems, López Guevara indicated that his office was working on several proj-ects, including a system of official radio communications, improvements in avia-tion, and a territorial lottery.12

One year after his election in 1962, Guillermo Valencia oversaw the creation of a fourth comisaría, Guainía (via Law 18, July 13, 1963), by separating from


the Comisaría of Vaupés a territory consisting of 78,065 square kilometers and locating its capital at Puerto Inírida.13 Perhaps more significant was his executive Decree 1059 of April 27, 1965, calling for the First Congress of Na-tional Territories with the objective of devising a technical and specialized study of how development of the intendancies and comisarías might best be carried out. The well-attended congress took place on May 23–28, 1966, in Bogotá’s Teatro Colón. Its published Memorias is an enormous volume containing all the speeches and recommendations that were presented. President Valencia opened the meeting by reaffirming that Colombia’s fu-ture lay in its national territories. He stated that the director of the DTN was justified in asking for more money but pointed out that the nation had many other problems to resolve before it could turn its attention to developing high priority areas in the territories. For this reason he warned the delegates not to endorse ambitious demands that were beyond the means of the government to fulfill. Valencia supported new laws protecting indigenous peoples, and he em-phasized the importance of the Llanos, which he had recently visited in order to inaugurate a bridge over the Ariari. This bridge, spanning one thousand meters, was the longest bridge in Colombia and one of the longest in South America.14

In his report to the congress, the jefe of the DTN, Fidel Cano Jaramillo, summed up the situation in the territories and made recommendations for im-portant changes.15 He reiterated these recommendations in his report to the Minister de Gobierno in 1966, emphasizing that the six-person staff of his office was insufficient to carry out all the studies and plans indispensable to territorial development. The isolation of the division and its lack of funding further complicated fulfillment of its mission. To resolve these problems, Cano Jaramillo suggested that Congress should either create a Ministry of Territories or transform the current division into an administrative department dependent on the executive branch (Presidencia de la República). Regardless of the option chosen, the important point was to give the division the technical and economic structure that it needed to be effective. He further proposed that studies be undertaken to identify reforms that were indispensable to streamline adminis-tration in the intendancies and comisarías and to stimulate investment, credit, colonization support, transportation, and road construction. Finally, Cano Jara-millo regarded as especially urgent the establishment of a Radio Communica-tions Section for the territories with sufficient personnel to utilize equipment that presently was not in service because of the lack of radio operators. “Fifty-seven stations currently located in the territories,” he warned, “run the danger of deteriorating for lack of adequate management of their operation not with-standing the fact that they have been officially inaugurated.”16


After several days of ponencias (communications) and informes, the dele-gates closed the congress with a list of ten recommendations, several endorsing Cano Jaramillo’s report. Their demands included the creation of a Ministry of National Territories; representation in Congress without reference to the population requirements stipulated in the Constitution; the appropriation of funds necessary for development; a study of each territory to determine its spe-cific needs; inclusion of the territories in the programs of INCORA (Instituto Colombiana de la Reforma Agraria); exemption from all national taxes on cat-tle, manufacturing, and extractive industries, with the exception of petroleum already established in the territories; cession to the territories of the income currently collected by the nation from taxes on wood, hunting, and liquor; ex-tension of SENA into the territories; and protection via INCORA for Indian resguardos.17

In his informe of 1966, Minister of Government Pedro Gómez Valderrama affirmed that the deliberations of the Congress of National Territories were significant and would provide orientation for future government policies. As for now, he reported that public order had improved and schools, health posts, and roads were being constructed in all the territories. A system of radio com-munications was up and running “so that the Ministry of Government for the first time can communicate from Bogotá to the most distant border areas.” SATENA (Servicio Aéreo a Territorios Nacionales) was maintaining a regular schedule of air flights to the territories, and a lottery organized for their benefit was beginning to generate funds for health and public assistance.18

Three substantial administrative changes occurred during the next seven years. First, in 1968 the División de Territorios Nacionales was reconstituted as the Dirección General de Intendencias y Comisarías (DGIC). Second, in 1973 Congress passed Law 19, which separated the province of Casanare from Boyacá and established it as an intendancy with Yopal as its capital.19 Finally, in 1974 López Michelsen, having declared his candidacy for president, announced that if elected, he would transform the DGIC into a Departamento Adminis-trativo de Decentralización y de Territorios Nacionales, which “would not be an obscure dependency of the Ministry of Government, but a department that would take charge of the inhabitants of these regions, attending to their re-quests, and carrying a true work of decentralization.”20

After his election, López Michelsen fulfilled his promise. In September 1975 he issued Decree 1925 creating DAINCO (Departamento Administrativo de Intendencias y Comisarías). In his memoria of that year, Minister of Govern-ment Roberto Arenas Bonilla reiterated the familiar problems of the so-called Territories of the Future:


Administratively, economically, sociologically, the territories are literally virgin fields, and while they are in formation, they must be saved from mistaken bureaucratic excesses and the lack of planning that might not take into account their actual realities, their potential, and the future needs for their evolution.21

Arenas confirmed that the establishment of DAINCO had given the territories a modern administration, and he noted that the resources made available for them in the last two years had been increased by 400 percent. The objectives of the government included incorporating the territories into the national econ-omy, decreasing regional imbalance, and improving relations along the frontiers with neighboring nations. Among official programs of action were improving health services, education, public services, and employment and creating urban centers along the 5,111 kilometers of international borders. To accomplish these ends, in 1974 Congress allotted 1,594,442,000 pesos for construction of high-ways, airports, electrification, aqueducts, sewers, and radio communication.22

DAINCO was not meant to substitute for state institutions. As former di-rector Leonel Pérez explains, DAINCO was a governing board for the inhab-itants of the Llanos, selvas (i.e., Amazonia), and islands, bringing together a group of men to shape a view of these regions. Their task was to formulate poli-cies and articulate their interests within the new National Plan of Development (DNP). In other words, DAINCO was to be a kind of fiscal agent with a spe-cialized bureaucracy trained to understand the panorama of regional perspec-tives, and although it began as a “dog without teeth,” the new entity gradually evolved as the chief planning office for the territories. Throughout its existence DAINCO played a significant role in progress of the territories until the adop-tion of the Constitution of 1991 transformed them all into departments.23

Population Increase and Agrarian Reform

Perhaps the major problem facing the National Front was the continual mi-gration of people from the highlands into the national territories. As table 4.1 reveals, the stream of migrants leaving Nariño, Tolima, Boyacá, and Cun-dinamarca seeking to begin new lives east of the Andes (previously noted in chapter 3) continued unabated. As a result, between 1951 and 1984 the popu-lation of the Llanos doubled, increasing from 115,050 to either 730,192 or 797,527, depending on which figures of the 1984 census are being used. Meta remained the destination of choice, since the arrival of more than 400,000 newcomers swelled the population to 474,046 in 1984. Casanare increased


from 22,087 to 147,472; Arauca grew from 13,221 to 89,972. Vichada regis-tered the slowest growth, increasing from 12,250 to 18,701.24 The magnitude of the population expansion and of the land being occupied transformed the Llanos during these three decades into “the principal area of modern coloni-zation in the country,” and the unceasing flow in migrants had ramifications for the administration, transportation, communication, the rights of indige-nous people, and policies of the Catholic Church concerning the territories.25

A New Department

The first concrete political reaction to the surge of population into the Llanos was the long-delayed transition of the Intendencia del Meta into a depart-ment. Efforts to accomplish this transformation had begun in 1947, the year Congress granted the Intendancy of Chocó departmental status even though it lacked the 250,000 inhabitants required by the Constitution of 1886. In November 1951, Deputy Enrique González Reyes prepared a bill to declare Meta a department emphasizing that its annual income was four times the minimum stipulated in the constitution and that its economy was far more viable than that of Chocó. The Chamber of Deputies unanimously approved the measure and sent it on to the Senate for consideration, but it became a


Territory 1951 1964 1973+ 1984* 1984**

Arauca 13,221 24,148 46,605 89,972 130,481Casanare 22,087 66,613 85,184 147,472 146,263Meta 67,492 5,530 261,863 474.046 488,183Vichada 12,250 10,130 12,215 18,702 32,600TOTALS 115,050 266,472 405,867 730,192 797,527Colombia 11,548,172 17,484,509 22,525,670 27,837,932 27,837,932

+ The DANE census for 1973 did not count the population in the national territories, and since Casanare was still part of Boyacá, it also did not appear. However, Hernández Morales gives the above figure taken from Proyecciones Servicio Seccional de Salud de Casanare, para. 1989, p. 102, Por los Caminos del Llano, vol. 2.

* Figures for 1984 are corrected figures from DANE, Población de Colombia en 1985.

** Source: Colombia, Diagnóstico geográfico Orinoquia Colombiana, vol. 1, 1986. According to the Di-agnóstico, the census of DANE in 1985 underestimated the population in Orinoquia because of the difficulty of locating all the people (182).


dead letter after Rojas Pinilla unseated President Gómez on June 13, 1953, and suspended Congress.26

Soon after the inauguration of the National Front, however, President Lleras Camargo, on September 9, 1959, approved Legislative Act No. 2, modifying the constitution to allow Meta to become a department despite its not having the requisite 250,000 people. Representative Hernando Durán Dussán im-mediately followed this action by presenting a bill on September 15 that, when signed by President Lleras on December 16, became Law 118 of 1959, “that creates and Organizes the Department of Meta.” Ernesto Jara Castro, who had been appointed Intendant of Meta on September 7, 1959, was invited to stay on as head of a transition government until the department could be formally inaugurated. The ceremony took place on July 1, 1960, in Villavicencio and was attended by President Lleras Camargo, Minister of Government Alberto Zuleta Ángel, Minister of Public Health Alfonso Ocampo Londoño, and many other dig-nitaries. In his speech, Lleras stressed that the department had been created under the most auspicious circumstances because it would be controlled not by one political party but by two, and he urged the people of Meta to use this opportunity to move on from civil war to peace.27 Departmental status placed Meta on a different footing than that of the comisarías of Arauca and Vichada and Boyacá’s Prefectura of Casanare, and while it fulfilled long held political aspirations, the ensuing years soon revealed that the local officials were unpre-pared for the new demands placed on their limited resources.28

Colonization

If the creation of the Department of Meta was an effort to induce its inhabit-ants to abandon violence for peace, other efforts sought to aid the newcomers in adjusting to life in a tropical environment entirely different from that char-acterizing the highland regions from which they had come. To discover the best way to approach this problem, Lleras Camargo had to choose between conflicting recommendations of two foreign experts, American Lauchlin Cur-rie and French priest Jacob Lebret. Currie, who once again became an advisor to the government after the exile of Rojas Pinilla, proposed moving Colom-bia quickly to an economic structure that was urbanized, industrialized and highly efficient in agriculture. His plan, Operación Colombia, submitted as a government memorandum in 1960, opposed advocating colonization of baldíos. Instead Currie called for rapid migration into the highland cities and

MAGADLENA

BOLÍVAR

ATLÁNTICO

SANTANDER

NORTE deSANTANDER

ANTIOQUIA

CHOCÓ

CALDASBOYACÁ

ARAUCA

VICHADA

VAUPÉSCAQUETÁ

HUILA

VALLE de CAUCA META

CAUCA

NARIÑO

PUTUMAYO

CUNDINAMARCA

AMAZONAS

TOLIMA

GUAVIARE

GUAINÍA

GUAJIRA

N

SCALE

kilometers

0 100 200 400

~LEGEND~


Pacific Ocean

Areas of developmentof colonization

InternationalBorders

Map 4.1. Areas of colonization in the Llanos and Amazonia during the National Front. (Map by Don Sluter.)


massive housing construction as a way to create jobs and provide shelter for the new urban arrivals. Although Lleras Camargo decided not to implement Operación Colombia, “migration to cities grew at such a dizzying rate that the population of Bogotá more than doubled during the sixteen years of the National Front.”29

Two years before Currie completed his proposal, Jacob Lebret put forward another option after coordinating a study of the socioeconomic order of the country using statistical samples gathered from forty-five representative muni-cipios. His two-volume report, published in 1958 as Estudio sobre las condiciones del desarrollo de Colombia, revealed that less than 1 percent of the population controlled 40 percent of the nation’s arable land. To relieve the problem of pov-erty in the Andean countryside, Lebret recommended improving rural condi-tions through irrigation, soil conservation, and planned colonization to frontier areas where large sections of public lands were available. Among places suitable for transplanting excess population from the Departments of Santander, Norte de Santander, and Boyacá was the piedmont region on the eastern side of the Andes, or, in other words, the territories of Caquetá, Arauca, and the Depart-ment of Meta. Lleras Camargo accepted Lebret’s recommendations and began to implement them.30

The first measure designed to aid individuals uprooted by the Violencia was Law 20 of 1959, the Plan Nacional de Rehabilitación y Socorro. Intended to organize official colonies on public land, the law assigned the responsibility for executing the program to the Caja de Crédito Agrario. In accordance with the Plan, the Caja, using its offices throughout the country, established certain criteria for persons eligible to participate in government programs to receive a plot of land and credit for working it.31

Three thousand people acquired parcels under Law 20, which also financed health posts, schools, warehouses for crops, and other local initiatives, but by the end of 1961 its provisions had proven insufficient to meet the needs of the colonos.32 Congress replaced it with Law 135, which created an agrarian reform agency—the Instituto Colombiano de la Reforma Agraria (INCORA)—au-thorized to expropriate privately owned estates, if necessary, for redistribution to those who had insufficient or no land at all. Expropriation, however, was to be a last resort. INCORA’s major role was to resettle peasants on land reclaimed for agriculture through irrigation or in the public domain. Law 135 stipulated that in order to receive legal title, the cultivator of baldíos had to develop at least two-thirds of the land that he or she was claiming and that fifty hectares was the ideal size of such a claim. The aim was to help both those peasants whose


farms due to repeated subdivision were insufficient to offer a decent livelihood as well as to offer plots to landless workers, provided all this could be done without seriously disrupting existing patterns of production.33 Conceding that Law 135 was controversial, Lleras Camargo celebrated its passage as the “culmi-nating moment of his administration.”34

Large property owners were strongly opposed to Law 135, and it did not pick up steam until after the 1966 election of Carlos Lleras Restrepo, the Na-tional Front president most committed to agrarian reform. Intended to relieve land concentration, eliminate latifundia and minifundia, increase agricultural production, and expand the economic frontier, the measure coincided with the spirit of the Alliance for Progress then in full operation and was supported by loans from AID (U.S. Agency for International Development), the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank. Criticized by the Right as going too far and by the Left as insufficient, the efforts of INCORA began to lose momentum during the administration of López Michelsen, although Law 135 remained in effect until 1984. INCORA’s principal colonies in the Llanos were El Sarare in Arauca and El Ariari and El Guaviare in Meta. Jimeno estimates that by 1980 the law had legalized some 29,354 property titles in Caquetá, Arauca, and Meta, encom-passing 1,352,946 hectares or about half of the land that was being colonized.35

Two other measures adopted by the National Front to assist campesinos were Acción Comunal (AC) and the Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos (ANUC). The interim military junta introduced Acción Comunal with Law 19 of 1958, but Lleras Camargo expanded the concept of this program of self-initiated social action with Decree 1761 of 1959 and Decree 164 of 1960. Acción Comunal was a nonprofit civic corporation composed by citizens in a community who united their efforts and resources to solve the most wanted needs of the community. Originally designed to combat the Violencia, during the Lleras administration Acción Comunal emerged as a development program. In 1966 the government estimated that nine thousand local committees had been formed, and it appropriated more than 35 million pesos for community action projects such as roads, water and sewage systems, festivals, charitable programs, athletic competitions, and health campaigns. Despite being subjected to modifications in the ensuing years, Acción Co-munal juntas remained important vehicles of popular mobilization as late as 1974, but it is difficult to assess their impact in the Llanos as a whole.36 Julio Vicente Apizano Restrepo, the director of the Division of Acción Comunal re-ported in 1967 that 100 percent of the 17 municipios in Meta had AC juntas, as did 129 of 132 municipios in Boyacá.37 In 1966, the intendant of Arauca stated


that he personally regarded the movement as a significant force for progress and that four juntas had been functioning in Tame since 1960. Overcoming various crises and frustration with the aid of a government coordinator, the program had expanded so that by 1966 there were two juntas in Arauca City as well as juntas in nearly every rural vereda of the comisaría.38

Lleras Restrepo also sponsored the creation of ANUC as a countrywide or-ganization of peasant farmers. Its members were users of state agrarian services including credit and agricultural extension programs. It was also assumed that ANUC would support reform objectives in the face of the antagonism of large landowners. Branches were organized throughout the country, and by 1970 nearly a million campesinos were listed as members. In the 1970s ANUC be-gan staging “invasions” of large private estates. These actions repeatedly forced officials to implement land partition but also hardened the attitude of the op-position, especially during the administration of Alfonso López Michelsen. By then ultra-leftists began taking control of ANUC in much of the country, a move that alienated many peasants who were not interested in promoting po-litical revolution.39

Transportation

The National Front presidents were aware of the critical need for better com-munication throughout Colombia. For centuries the rugged Andean geography had kept many highland towns in virtual isolation by limiting the construction of roads, and this lack of highways to connect the Llanos with the interior mar-kets of the country had severely restricted development of the region’s economy. During the Lleras Camargo administration, Congress increased the budget of the Ministry of Public Works from 212,109,790 pesos in 1959 to 377,973,191 pesos in 1962. Although a large portion of these funds was invested in complet-ing Bogotá’s El Dorado International Airport and expanding the Ferrocarril del Atlántico to improve communication between the capital and the coast, enough money remained to build 1,191 kilometers of new roads and pave an additional 489 kilometers.40 Three of these road projects were designed to fa-cilitate colonization of the Llanos: the Bogotá-Villavicencio highway, the El Sarare Camino, and the Carretera Marginal de la Selva. Since the nineteenth century the 122-kilometer road connecting Bogotá with Villavicencio had been the principal route from the highlands to the Lla-nos. In the 1920s and 1930s the Ministry of Public Works labored to finish construction of bridges on its trajectory and to pave at least some of the remain-ing sections to make it accessible to automobile traffic. In February 1936 Presi-


dent López Pumarejo traveled by car from Bogotá to Villavicencio to officially inaugurate the highway.41

During the National Front, additional improvements widened the road to accommodate two-way traffic. By 1972, 80 percent was paved, and with the completion of a bridge over the Guatiquía River, the trajectory was extended to Puerto López, the department’s port on the Meta River. The existence of this highway solidified Villavicencio’s position as the entryway into the Llanos and was a significant factor in the phenomenal growth of population of the city that had expanded from 41,910 inhabitants in 1951 to 112,130 in 1972.42

The highway was also the main conduit for commerce between the Llanos and the highlands. Large quantities of corn, rice, African palm, cotton, plátano, and yuca, along with six hundred head of cattle, were trucked daily from Vi lla-vicencio to Bogotá, accounting for some 20 percent of the capital’s supply of these commodities.43 Despite this heavy use, mudslides and falling rocks during periods of steady rain interrupted the free flow of traffic every year. In par-ticular, the precarious passage around a ridge known as Quebradablanca was a disaster waiting to happen. In 1974, after two landslides had halted traffic there in March and early June, the long-foreseen tragedy occurred. On June 18, an avalanche of earth fell, blocking eight hundred meters of highway and burying some thirty vehicles, including five buses packed with passengers, fifteen trucks, a tanker truck, and a camper. Many of the bodies could not be recovered, and it was estimated that the death toll was close to three hundred.44 While the Min-istry of Public Works struggled to reopen the road, an air bridge set up between the two cities provided planes to ferry stranded businessmen and tourists back to their homes, but cattle and tons of rotting produce waited in Villavicencio to be shipped to Bogotá. The government eventually constructed a 270-meter tunnel through the mountain and a bridge 115 meters long over a chasm to surmount the obstacles posed by Quebradablanca, but the disaster underscored the fragility of the connection between the two regions, which depended on the viability of a single and extremely dangerous road.45

Like the Bogotá-Villavicencio highway, the Camino del Sarare, which pro-vided access between Norte de Santander and Arauca, had origins in the nine-teenth century, but its development was slower and was far less successful. The name was taken from the Sarare or Zarare natives, who lived in a region that included parts of Norte de Santander, Boyacá, and Arauca. As early as 1856 the governor of Pamplona (present-day Norte de Santander) proposed building a road to Arauca in order to parallel an alternative Venezuelan route connect-ing El Amparo, the town across the border from Arauca City, with the city of San Cristóbal across the border from Cúcuta. Little progress was made in the


ensuing years, but Congress on November 19, 1904, passed Law 39 declaring the Camino del Sarare a national road that would unite the municipio of La-bateca in the Provincia of Pamplona with the municipio of Tame in Casanare (present-day Arauca). Congress approved a bond issue of 100,000 pesos in 1920 to build the Camino del Sarare, but extending the route proved difficult because of the exuberant vegetation. Workers would spend months clearing a tract of sev-eral kilometers only to see the forests return and obliterate their efforts. The comisario of Arauca reported that during the dry season several herds of cattle travelled along the uncompleted camino de herradura (unpaved road), despite experiencing delays of up to twenty days, but during the rainy season, the route was impassable. On February 4, 1934, an editorial published in El Araucano decried the absence of the road, which in reality, it noted, was only an “anhelo” (dream). The article pointed out that ranchers still had no viable way to get their cattle to Santander because of the lack of grass along the El Sarare “troche” and other “material difficulties that prevent the transit of cattle.”46 As a conse-quence, ranchers who shipped cattle to Santander continued to pay taxes to Venezuela in order to use the alternative El Amparo–San Cristóbal road. During the next two decades a stream of colonos from Santander made their way toward Arauca along the Sarare route, in spite of its primitive condition, and settled at key points along the rivers.47 By 1950 these sites had become small towns, only to be destroyed two years later during the Violencia. Ray-mond Crist, who inspected the road in 1956, reported that it extended from Pamplona and Labateca to the Río Negro, but along the last twenty kilome-ters, there were only six thatched huts, two of which were uninhabited. “By all means,” he noted, “the road should be improved if settlers are to be attracted. As things now stand, an oil strike south of the Arauca River would probably mean that the whole area would to a large extent be invaded by Venezuelans looking for work, rather than Colombians.”48

With the accession of the National Front, the Sarare camino became a pri-ority. By 1964, unpaved but completed, it connected Pamplona with the new town of Saravena in Arauca and served as the principal conduit for new settlers traveling to the Sarare colony sponsored by INCORA.49

Unlike the Bogotá-Villavicencio highway and the Sarare camino, the third initiative, the Carretera Marginal de la Selva, was a mid-twentieth-century idea suggested by Peruvian president Fernando Belaúnde Terry. In 1963 Be-laúnde invited the ministers of public works of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia to come to Lima for the purpose of studying the feasibility of con-structing a 5,596-kilometer highway along the eastern edge of the Andean


cordillera by connecting already existing shorter roads. Such a highway, when finished, would unite the Amazonian regions of the four countries and provide direct access from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, all the way to Arauca City. To achieve these objectives, the ministers signed an international agreement in 1963 (later joined by Venezuela) and began preparing preliminary plans.50 On January 8, 1964, they signed a contract with Tippetts-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton, a North American engineering company, to make a reconnaissance study of the route financed by a grant from the Inter-American Development Bank and contributions from the four countries. In their report, published in 1965, the engineers concluded that by incorporating existing roads, the total mileage needed to be constructed in Colombia was 920 kilometers, which would cost some U.S. $73 million, and they estimated that the seven unconnected sec-tions stretching between the Ecuadorean and Venezuelan borders could be completed by 1975.51

At the Primer Congreso de Territorios Nacionales, the minister of public works outlined the government’s plans to follow the recommendations of the engineers, stating that the carretera was vital for the Colombian economy be-cause it would facilitate commerce between one hundred towns, provide an outlet for highland overpopulation, and, by integrating Colombia with Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, fulfill one of Simón Bolívar’s aspirations.52 Although the road was not finished by 1975, work continued during the following de-cades so that by 2011 the Colombian portions of the highway (now designated as Ruta Nacional 65) lacked only the section between Mina Blanca in Caquetá and La Uribe in Meta. Once completed, the route is estimated to cut the time necessary to travel by car between Venezuela and Ecuador from thirty-three to twenty-two hours.53

Two branch routes diverging from the Carretera lead to other sections of the Colombia frontier. The Troncal de la Selva, starting at Mina Blanca, was planned to connect with Neiva in Tolima, but several sections remain to be built. The Troncal del Llano, extending from Arauca City to San José del Gua-viare in Vaupés, is already an important artery for regional integration, facilitat-ing communication between towns and permitting the flow of persons, goods, and services within the region and with the rest of the country.54

An aspect essential to the successful construction of any road in the Llanos was building bridges to allow unimpeded transport over the numerous rivers and their tributaries that characterized the plains. One of the most important of these bridges was the 165-meter Puente José Antonio Paéz, which spanned the Arauca River to connect Arauca City with the Venezuela town of El Am-paro. Venezuelan engineers took charge of constructing the bridge, which was


completed in August 1967 at a cost of 6.5 million bolívares.55 Presidents Lleras Restrepo and Raul Leoni of Venezuela met on September 20 in Arauca City to inaugurate the bridge and to sign the Declaration of Arauca, a document that called for renewed cooperation between the two nations and unity with the United States in the struggle against “communist-Castro aggression.”56 Previous to the existence of the bridge, fragile canoes plying the Arauca River transported commodities traded between Arauca and El Amparo, while llanero vaqueros forced their cattle to swim across the river. Because a highway on the Venezuelan side was planned to connect El Amparo to Caracas, the bridge not only facilitated local trade but also filled in one of the gaps in the Carretera Marginal. As such it was hailed as a solid demonstration of Colombian-Vene-zuelan cooperation.57

New bridges were not always so successful. For example, on January 16, 1964, the governor of Boyacá, Gustavo Romero Hernández, accompanied by a committee of notable individuals, arrived in Yopal to inaugurate a recently com-pleted fifty-meter hanging bridge spanning the Cravo River. As the governor and his entourage advanced to the center of the bridge, one of its cables broke loose, causing fifty people to fall thirty meters onto the stony river bed below. Four of them, including the mayor of Sogamoso, were killed outright, while the governor and numerous others suffered serious injuries.58 In an editorial, published in El Tiempo on January 21, César Castro Perdomo blamed the trag-edy on poor planning by Governor Romero Hernández and the engineers who failed to take into account the fact that the bridge had to be strong enough to bear the weight of herds of two hundred to three hundred cattle, which would be passing over it almost daily. Citing Boyaca’s habitual neglect of the Prefectura of Casanare, Castro Perdomo urged the minister of public works to incorporate the needs of this section of the Llanos within national plans in order to avoid similar tragedies.59

In addition to improving land connections, National Front governments worked to extend access to the Llanos by air and river. Since they were first introduced in 1919, airplanes had served as reliable alternatives to nonexistent roads for transportation to and from the Llanos. By the 1960s hundreds of air-strips were scattered throughout the region. Suitable for small planes, they were used by local airline operators and private aircraft owners to carry cargo that otherwise could be transported only by surface means.60 AVIANCA had some limited routes to the Llanos, but on April 12, 1962, President Lleras Camargo greatly extended air service by issuing Decree 940, which created SATENA as an “aerial transport service for the benefit of the underdeveloped regions of the country, with the object of promoting the welfare of educational campaigns,


agricultural and pastoral development and the economic and social progress of such territories.”61

Under the control of the Colombian air force, SATENA opened its first routes between Bogotá and Leticia in the Amazon, but in 1965, in coordina-tion with the Bank of Bogotá, it initiated a subsidiary, AeroBanco, to provide air travel to other regions largely or completely inaccessible by road. A year later Fidel Cano Jaramillo, as jefe of the DTN, affirmed that if it were not for SATENA air flights, “one of the most important recent achievements to benefit the territories, our Intendancies and Comisarías would be totally isolated from the center of the country.”62 President Lleras Restrepo recognized the significance of SATENA’S activities by decreeing on December 12, 1968, that the company become a public entity, controlled by the Ministry of National Defense, with all requisite legal functions. Although on September 8, 1969, a SATENA passen-ger flight crashed near the Apiay Air Force Base outside Villavicencio, killing all thirty-two people on board, overall the company had a good safety record and provided reliable service to the main cities in the Llanos as well as Amazonas.63

Less successful was NAVENAL (Compañía Nacional de Navegación), cre-ated in 1944 as a semiofficial company that used profits from its shipping on the Magdalena River to subsidize navigation along the tributaries of the Ama-zon and Orinoco. At its peak in 1958 it had two modern ships, the Cataima, with a capacity of 2,300 toneladas (tons), and the Tolima, with a capacity of 1,800 toneladas, to cover routes extending 15,022 kilometers on the Orte-guaza, Caquetá, Caguán, Putumayo, and Amazon rivers. In the Llanos, ships traveling routes from Puerto López–Orocué and Trinidad–Cravo–Rondón–Arauca City could deliver cattle in five days as opposed to the fifty days that were needed to drive herds across the plains. Between 1950 and 1965, after salt warehouses had been built in these towns, NAVENAL ships also transported 12,131,000 kilos of salt.64 Unfortunately, despite their evident utility, these op-erations failed to produce a profit due to insufficiency of cargo, lack of consum-ers, and the long distances between ports. Political pressure eventually forced the company to concentrate on ocean navigation rather than inland waterways, a policy that contributed to its bankruptcy in 1983.65

Communication

Besides roads, airplanes, and ships, a massive expansion of radio-telegraph ser-vice began breeching the Andean barrier to provide nearly instant contact be-tween Bogotá and the main towns in the Llanos. As early as the 1930s telegraph stations were installed in the capitals of Meta, Arauca, and Vichada. In addition


to the official telegraph stations, both the church and the army had private net-works. By 1977 most towns in Casanare, Meta, and Arauca, as well as Puerto Carreño in Vichada, had postal, telephone, and telegraph service, but it was the boom in commercial radio that had the greatest impact on the population of the region.66 By the 1940s battery-operated receivers were becoming common in the Llanos. Metenses who owned radios listened to news, music, and radio novellas broadcast from Bogotá via Radio Caracol and Radio Santa Fe, while individuals in Arauca, Casanare, and Vichada received programs from Radio Rumbos in Caracas and Ecos del Torbes in San Cristóbal.67 In the 1960s the introduction of cheap transistor radios revolutionized the service. Transistors were especially suited to campesinos because they did not need much power, freeing listeners from being close to a place where there was energy. Thus it is not surprising, as Reynaldo Parreja in his Historia de la radio en Colombia, 1919–1980, points out, that the number of radios in all of Colombia more than doubled in five years from 2,084,287 in 1959 to 5,250,000 in 1964.68

Radio’s power to reach otherwise isolated people offered a variety of pos-sibilities to extend the central government’s influence. For example, President Lleras Restrepo used radio to publicize the work of INCORA, and in July 1969, when he was accused of rewarding large landowners with land INCORA controlled, the scandal became public because radio networks broadcast the senate debate concerning this latest instance of institutional corruption.69 In addition, the Catholic Church appropriated radio to promote adult literacy under a unique program known as Acción Cultural Popular (ACPO), or Radio Sutatenza. The increase in listeners in the Llanos may be judged by the fact that by 1974, besides the large networks emanating from Bogotá and Caracas, there were six local stations transmitting from Villavicencio and two from Arauca City.70

Preserving the Rights of Indigenous Communities

The stream of colonists into the Llanos put enormous pressure on previously isolated indigenous communities whose welfare under the Convention on Mis-sions of 1953 was the responsibility of Catholic religious communities. The ad-vent of the National Front coincided with new official concern about respecting native rights and the preservation of their cultures and languages. Estimates of the actual number of natives varied, but in the 1960s the most common fig-ure cited for all the national territories was thirty-five thousand. The majority of these groups were located in the Amazon comisarías of Putumayo, Ama-zonas, Guainía, and Vaupés, but a substantial number remained in Vichada


and Arauca as well as Meta and Casanare (the latter two not officially national territories). The Lleras Camargo administration created the Oficina de Negocios In-dígenas, which later was transformed into the División de Asuntos Indígenas (DAI), located under the Ministerio de Gobierno. The Agrarian Reform Law 135 of 1961 included a policy regarding Indian lands that permitted the cre-ation of new resguardos, or native reservations.71 In his ponencia to the Primer Congreso de Territorios Nacionales in 1966, the director of the DAI, Gregorio Hernández de Alba, revealed that Colombia would soon be a signatory to the International Treaty of 1957 respecting the rights of minorities, and that his of-fice had devised programs for the protection and integration of Indians in order to improve their living standard. Nevertheless, he confessed that little had been accomplished due to the lack of accessibility to the endangered populations in Orinoquia and Amazonia, and while colonos faced a difficult life in an unfamil-iar environment, the Indians, despite being acclimated to tropical regions, were victims of new diseases and objects of abuse who were being forced to withdraw ever farther into the jungles.72

Another concern raised at the Congreso by Sergio Elías Ortiz, jefe of the Sección de Lenguas Indígenas del Instituto Colombiano de Antropología, was the need to preserve Indian languages, which were quickly disappearing, espe-cially in the Amazonian region. He recommended that the government offer courses for primary school teachers in these languages to help them in their effort to increase literacy in the national territories. Ortiz also supported the ac-tivities of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), a U.S.-based, worldwide, Christian nonprofit organization, the aim of which was to study, develop, and document native languages via the translation of the New Testament but which under another name, Wycliffe Bible Translators, was determined to convert na-tives to evangelical Protestantism.73

After Lleras Camargo ceded the presidency in 1962 to Conservative Gui-ller mo Valencia, Valencia’s minister of interior, Fernando Londono y Londono, signed a contract with SIL under which the institute agreed to cooperate with the DIA by providing linguists to study some fifty or so native languages. In addition, SIL leaders pledged to attend to the “social, economic, civil, moral and hygienic improvement of the Indians” while respecting the prerogatives of the Catholic Church in accordance with the terms of the concordat.74

SIL was one of eleven rival evangelical Protestant groups actively prosely-tizing Indians in Colombian territories during this period, but it was the only group that enjoyed official government sponsorship.75 In 1962, having received government sanction, it constructed its headquarters, known as Lomalinda, on


land donated by Colombian air force general Armando Urrego Bernal located near Puerto Lleras, Meta. The institute employed North American linguists to translate Indian languages and maintained its own fleet of planes to fly them to the most remote communities. Its unsupervised activities were only marginally successful and provoked opposition from Catholic missionaries. SIL’s support by the U.S. military and its alleged involvement in a massacre of Guahibos in 1970 reinforced popular belief that it was really a secret CIA operation.76 By 1978 President López Michelsen was ready to revoke the government’s contract with SIL, but his successor, Julio Turbay Ayala allowed the institute to continue its work in Colombia despite vocal opposition by anthropologists, politicians, military officers, and journalists.77

Although the Catholic Church hierarchy officially tolerated the right of evangelicals to practice their religion in the national territories, it branded their efforts to proselytize natives as illegal under the Convention on Missions of 1953. The clerics complained that Protestant schools were not teaching pa-triotic history and that the instructors were urging children to resist Catholic teaching.78

The spirit of ecumenicism fostered by Vatican II and Pope John XXIII’s 1968 visit to Colombia had encouraged demands from the territories for a re-form of the Concordat of 1887 and especially the Convention on Missions of 1953, which gave the Catholic Church a state-supported monopoly on all education. After much debate at the Primer Congreso, the delegates approved a resolution calling on state and ecclesiastical authorities to study the advisability of revising the concordat and the Convention on Missions.79

At the same time Indian peoples were organizing their own movements to defend their lands and culture. The Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca (CRIC) was the most active, but other groups in the Llanos emerged to resist encroachments by settlers, evangelicals, and Catholic missionaries.80

Yielding to these pressures, the Colombian government signed a new con-cordat with the Vatican on July 12, 1973. Article VI of this agreement created a permanent commission of government officials and church leaders to work for the “prompt and effective promotion of humane and social conditions for the Indians and the white population resident in marginal zones.” It added, “The functions of the Permanent Commission will be exercised without prejudic-ing the proper planning authority of the State and without the Church taking charge of activities outside its nature and mission.” Article XII stated that the church would continue to supervise religious education in official and private schools, but Article XIII restricted the monopoly that the church held in the national territories by requiring it to submit for government approval contracts


for developing education programs that would be adjusted to the needs of the various regions.81 Although this new agreement maintained the close relation-ship between church and state, by 1975 the Catholic Church had relinquished control of a number of schools and accepted greater official supervision of its educational work in the territories. In 1978 the Ministry of Education officially adopted an ethno-education plan for Indian people designed to promote bilingual and intercultural teach-ing. By 1984 the government through INCORA had created in Vichada fifteen resguardos and three Indian reservations, amounting to approximately 2.6 mil-lion hectares of land.82 These policies did not solve the most serious problems facing the Indians, but they opened new possibilities for improvement in their legal position. The ideal of “civilizing” the indigenous was now on the wane, and with the adoption of the Constitution of 1991, the government recognized full rights for native peoples.83

Economic Development

During the National Front, economic activities in the Llanos diversified. While ranching remained the principal activity, production of rice, maize, plátano, cot-ton, and African palm registered increases, and efforts to find exploitable depos-its of oil intensified throughout the region.

Ranching

In 1966 DANE estimated that there were some 3 million head of cattle in the four Llanos regions, or about 15 percent of the national herd. Three-quarters of these animals were located in Arauca, Casanare, and Vichada, where the car-rying capacity was low, requiring twenty hectares to maintain a single animal. Management practices were primitive to the extreme, with nothing done to improve cattle that were small and with inferior characteristics for meat pro-duction. This situation was especially true on the extensive hatos in the outer plains, where shortages of water and forage during the dry months was a barrier to upgrading the stock.84

Conditions were substantially better in the piedmont region of Meta, where improved pasture served as a fattening area for three- to four-year-old cows and steers brought in from the outlying ranches. Held here for a few months on fenced pastures, they were eventually trucked to Bogotá for slaughter. In the wet season, forty to fifty cattle trucks climbed to the highlands every day via the Bogotá-Villavicencio road. Around Yopal in the Casanare piedmont was


another fattening center linked to the highland markets in Boyacá by a road from Sogamoso. Although the opening of the Camino del Sarare brought a promise that cattle from Arauca could eventually reach Cúcuta without making use of the parallel Venezuela highway, many of the cattle there and in Vichada continued to be sold as contraband in Venezuela.85

Outside the piedmont portion of Meta, however, Brunnschweiler noted that ranching continued to be carried out in the traditional manner with few inno-vations. “Except for rotating herds on the various sectors of a ranch, the only measure of pasture ‘management’ is laying fire to the desiccated grasses at the end of the dry season.” The poor quality of these cattle brought a low price at the slaughterhouse, placing the ranchers in a disadvantageous position. The people making a true profit from the cattle were middlemen who bought the underweight animals at low cost, fattened them on pastures around Villavicen-cio, and sold them in the Bogotá stockyards at 300 percent of the original sale price.86 Nevertheless, despite the lack of modern management techniques, the number of cattle within Meta quadrupled between 1960 and 1971, an increase from 313,000 to 1.2 million.87

At the end of La Violencia, sacas from Casanare and Arauca to Meta were renewed. Cattle raised in Vichada continued to be sent over the border to Ven-ezuela while another one thousand steers per year were flown out of Arauca to the fattening pastures around Cúcuta. Casanare annually dispatched about ten thousand head to Sogamoso, Boyacá, via Yopal, but the bulk of its cattle ready for market was driven along the Villavicencio-Bogotá market corridor through northern and eastern control stations. Ranchers shipped cattle on barges down the rivers while vaqueros drove the mature animals to the Meta Cercano on old established cattle trails. After they departed from Casanare, these drives took more than a month and the weight losses occurring during the migrations were such that the first half of the finishing period was really one of recuperation rather than fattening. It often required pasturing the animals in Meta as much as a year to bring them up to a satisfactory market weight.88

When the cattle were ready, they were loaded onto trucks that ascended the Villavicencio-Bogotá highway. Because there was a marked seasonal fluctuation in deliveries, acute meat shortages accompanied by simultaneous price rises oc-curred in Bogotá during the slack periods. During the rainy season, when the fattening pastures were most productive, some thirty to forty cattle trucks, each loaded with eight to twelve animals, set off from Villavicencio for Bogotá on an average day. In 1973, 22,162 cattle were slaughtered in Villavicencio to supply local needs, but the department planning office warned that the city still did not have an adequate hygienic slaughterhouse.


Crop Production

Most of the thousands of colonists who poured into Meta, Casanare, and Arauca aspired to create farms on previously unclaimed and free public land. The existence and easy accessibility of large tracts of forests that might be con-verted into productive agricultural land was a powerful incentive to peasants seeking to escape the violence in Cundinamarca, Tolima, Huila, and highland Boyacá. Facing the colonists were enormous problems, however, ranging from the “almost impossible task of clearing a dense forest without even the simplest of mechanical tools, to getting the harvested crops to market before the rains made the access roads impossible.”89 Relying on machetes and fire to clear their plots, they planted yuca, plátanos, corn, frijoles, and dry rice by hand. While reliable figures of production amounts are not available for Casanare, Arauca, or Vichada, thanks to the work of geographer Dieter Brunnschweiler, the situ-ation in Meta is much better recorded. With the passing of the Agrarian Reform Law of 1961 and the establishment of INCORA, a more effective plan was put into place in Meta to assist landless peasants in gaining title to their land. After 1964 INCORA began a program known as Meta No. 1 to protect colonos who duly registered their properties. The agency employed trained personnel to assist occupants of some 150 parcels in Meta, ranging in size from fifty to two hundred hectares, in building up their farms by providing supervised credit for carefully planned crop and livestock programs as well as for basic necessities. The Meta No. 1 initiative was centered in the newly established municipio of Vista Hermosa on the Río Güejar. In 1960 every fifth farm in Meta was held without official legal title. There were more than 10,000 crop farms (fincas) as against some 3,000 cattle ranches (haciendas or hatos). By 1970 the ratio of crop farms to ranches was estimated to have increased to 5:1. The 10,722 crop farms, representing 73 percent of all agricultural enterprises, occupied 468,500 hectares of the more than 3 mil-lion hectares considered productive in Meta, while 2,907 cattle ranches com-prised 80 percent (2.5 million hectares) of the department’s productive land. Brunnschweiler estimated that 400,000 of the 486,500 hectares were occupied but not effectively farmed, suggesting that a substantial amount of potentially productive land was claimed but not cultivated. “Considering the impetuous nature of the colonization process in its early phase, penetrating public land without official authority and privately owned land without respect for its legal owner, it is not surprising that the tenancy situation in Meta is a troublesome issue.”90

Despite all the problems, Meta showed a dramatic increase in crops pro-


duced not only for local consumption but also for export to Cundinamarca. The development of large-scale rice production was especially promising since the harvest in 1964, exceeding 60,000 tons, equaled 10 percent of national produc-tion. In 1972 production figures were as follows: paddy rice, 100,000 tons; dry rice, 30,000 tons; cotton, 10,500 tons; corn, 53,500 tons; soy, 480 tons; yuca, 500,000 cargas; plátano, 11 million bunches; African palm, 5,590 tons of oil; and sugar, 12,500 cargas of panela.91 There were also two worrying develop-ments. First, more and more peasants were moving onto the protected area of La Macarena, and second, by the 1970s marijuana had become a common crop, especially on both sides of the Güejar River, where airplanes were landing to take the harvest to the exterior.92

Although similar statistics are not available for Casanare, it is evident that the colonos who attempted to settle there had a more difficult time than those entering Meta. In Meta, at least in the 1960s, conflict between the ganaderos and the new colonos was minimal because farmers were cultivating previously forested land unsuitable for cattle, while ranchers continued to control the vast stretches of low-cost but almost sterile savanna that furnished the large operat-ing units needed for profitable stock raising.93 In Casanare, on the contrary, the ganaderos bitterly resented the influx of colonos on what they considered their land. In a statement published in El Tiempo on January 30, 1973, the ranchers declared that “invasions” of people arriving from other regions promoted by INCORA were disrupting the production of cattle. Since these newcomers were completely unfamiliar with the environment in the Llanos, which was characterized by flooding during the six months of winter and drought dur-ing the intense summers, they were unable to grow their subsistence crops. Many, driven by hunger, turned to stealing cattle for food, creating a wave of insecurity.94

Six months later, on August 19, the ganaderos issued an “ultimatum” to the government demanding that it put an end to wholesale cattle rustling, for which they blamed the detested colonos. “INCORA,” they claimed, “has done nothing except to move like chess pieces people from the interior who having nothing to live on, begin stealing cattle.” More than 50 percent of the hatos in Casanare had been invaded, and in cases like that of Hato Rancho Grande, 3,500 cattle had disappeared, stolen by gangs of rustlers who seized the cattle to start fincas of their own or to transport the animals across the border to Venezuela.95 Since the efforts of DAS (Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad) had been ineffective in controlling these thefts, the ranchers stated that they themselves had formed a “civil defense” composed of “honest people from Casanare” who in just fifteen days had recovered five hundred head of cattle and taken thirty


prisoners. As final proof that their opposition to the colonos was justified, they noted that half of the prisoners were members of agricultural colonies.96

The Search for Petroleum

Responding to rising demand for oil in the global economy, National Front gov-ernments intensified the search first begun in the 1930s for exploitable petro-leum deposits in the Llanos. During the 1950s and 1960s, Intercol, a subsidiary of Exxon, continued explorations that produced much useful knowledge about the geology of the plains. Although no strike was made at the time, the results were encouraging and unleashed a rush for drilling concessions in Meta. C. N. Neff, in an article published by The American Association of Petroleum Geolo-gists Bulletin in 1969, regarded this renewed interest in the Llanos as the most remarkable development in the Colombian oil industry in 1968.97

In 1969 congress passed Law 20, which authorized the government to de-clare as a “national reserve” any zone potentially rich in oil and to deliver it to ECOPETROL (Empresa Colombiana de Petróleos), the national petroleum company founded in 1951, without subjecting it to ordinary contractual rule. It further stated that ECOPETROL might explore, exploit, and administer said “national reserve” directly or in association with other companies of pub-lic or private capital, national or foreign. In August 1973 El Tiempo reported that ECOPETROL had located clear proof of exploitable oil in Casanare and had celebrated fourteen cooperative contracts with foreign petroleum compa-nies to begin the work of drilling wells.98 In Meta four companies—Conti-nental, International Petroleum Colombiano, British Petroleum, and Superior Oil—received concessions to explore approximately 390,000 hectares, while the French multinational company, Elf Aquitaine, stepped up its explorations in Casanare.99 Although it was not until 1986 that ECOPETROL and Oc-cidental Petroleum actually began producing oil from wells in Caño Limón in Cravo Norte, Arauca, the earlier exploratory activities of the various companies provided a boost to the economies of Meta, Casanare, and Arauca because if a major find were discovered, there was hope that the region’s share in the rev-enues from oil production would establish the financial base needed to improve public institutions and services.

The Continuation of Guerrilla Activity

While scholars debate the positive achievements of the National Front’s twenty-year rule, they generally agree that a flagrant shortcoming was its inability to


eliminate guerrilla activity, which mutated and intensified throughout the era. When Lleras Camargo took office in 1958, rebel groups were still active in several parts of Colombia, including the Llanos, but the violence had begun to lose its original political justification. Prior to the consolidation of the Cuban Revolution as a Marxist-Leninist phenomenon, the fighting had largely degen-erated into self-seeking robbery and murder. After Castro’s takeover in 1959, some of the old Communist agrarian groups of the early 1950s that remained were now joined by recently created guerrilla forces that, inspired by Cuba’s success, established a number of relatively self-contained, Marxist-controlled areas.100 These so-called independent republics were located in Marquetalia, Tolima; Río Chiquito in northern Cauca; El Pato and Guayabero on the bor-der of Huila and Caquetá; and the Ariari region of Meta, the latter dominated by ex-Liberal guerrilla fighter Dumar Aljure. Except in Meta, Communists in the other enclaves worked with the peasants, organizing them politically and militarily and providing social services and facilities. The Colombian army tolerated these “republics” during the Lleras Camargo administration, but when Guillermo León Valencia took office in 1962, their presence appeared to pose a challenge to the government’s authority. Accord-ingly, Valencia ordered the army to shut them down. After some early failures, in 1964 the army employed roughly one-third of its force to take control of the most important enclave, Marquetalia. A year later it destroyed the remaining “independent republics” with the notable exception of Dumar Aljure’s strong-hold in Ariari, Meta.101 In 1966 survivors of the Marquetalia republic, an esti-mated 350 to 500 men who operated primarily in Tolima, transformed them-selves into the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias Colombianas (FARC). On May 25, 1966, FARC’s leader, Manuel Marulanda, alias “Sure-Shot,” convoked the Segunda Conferencia del Bloque Sur in Ariari. Attended by del-egates from Marquetalia, El Pato, Guayabera, Riochiquito, and Tolima, this meeting marked the beginning of FARC’s presence in the Llanos. Although committed to social revolution, the group was less politically sophisticated than the Army of National Liberation (ELN), a second guerrilla organization in-spired by Castro that was active in rural Antioquia, Bolívar, and Santander in 1964–65. After Dumar Aljure, who still controlled most of Ariari, refused to join Marulanda, the latter established his “capital,” known as “Casa Verde,” in the municipio of Uribe, a location that allowed FARC to infiltrate the east and center of the country.102

In the meantime, Aljure’s “independent republic” survived thanks in part to Dumar’s allegiance to the Liberal Party and his close ties to Meta’s most promi-nent Liberal politician, Hernando Durán Dussán. As Richard Maullin has ex-


plained, because Aljure deserted from the Colombian army, he was not eligible for the amnesty offered by Rojas Pinilla. To escape police custody, he set up operations in Rincón de Bolívar in 1957. There he ruled as a “regional political chief with virtual autonomy from the central government, protecting himself by maintaining an armed force given to occasional banditry.”103 His domain extended over sixty thousand hectares of the upper Ariari Valley and included the municipios of Fuente de Oro, San Martín, and Granada. Within this area he built up a prosperous cattle operation. He imposed taxes on the peasant cultivators and cattlemen and, in return, provided them with protection from incursions by the army. For several years Aljure marshaled votes for slates of Liberal candidates headed or sponsored by Senator Durán Dussán, and despite his illegal activi-ties and past criminal acts, Colombian authorities considered him untouchable. By 1968, however, the officers of the VIII Vargas Brigade, located in Granada, were increasingly uneasy with his freedom of action and open flaunting of the law within his self-proclaimed domain. The army’s presence in the area embold-ened a number of peasants to give testimony against the terrorism of Aljure, who allegedly had a private cemetery where he interred the bodies of people brought to him for execution. The final straw appears to have been his failure to back candidates sponsored by Durán Dussán in the March 1968 congressional elections. After losing the election, the senator broadcast a highly emotional speech from Villavicencio in which he implied that a Conservative governor would be named for Meta to punish disloyal local Liberal leaders. Soon after, on April 5, the army and units of the national police made their move. They attacked Aljure’s guerrilla compound, and the ensuing battle took his life and those of his wife, thirteen of his followers, and six soldiers.104

Reporting in El Tiempo on April 8, Hernando Martínez C. remarked that with Aljure’s death “had died as well the legend and myth believed by thou-sands of campesinos who considered him endowed with supernatural pow-ers, uniquely capable of laughing at death, curing Christians and animals and even making it rain or the sun shine.”105 In the more mundane view of Maullin, Aljure had played a well-developed role in the Meta Department as a local chief who was adroit at constructing a personal system of power. Although he was said to be motivated by an “almost religious allegiance to Liberalism, his career did not reflect great ideological commitment. In the revolutionary spectrum, he must be ranked higher than an ordinary bandit for hire but well below the true believer.”106

The elimination of Aljure paved the way for FARC’s infiltration into the Ari-ari region. The new guerrillas offered peasants assistance in setting up self-de-


fense groups to resist the seizure of their lands by cattlemen and local farmers, and they extended services to people who were not aided by the government. As in the Aljure era, the campesinos “influenced and defended by the guerrillas tended toward autonomous forms of political and economic organization, but this tendency did not prevent them from participating in traditional political contests as well.”107 Because the government’s policies concerning subsidized credit, commercialization, land, and roads favored the interests of large land-owners rather than helping the colonists, the FARC was able to impose its will as an organized self-defense system on the peasants under its influence, setting up a situation in which renewed terrorism would become inevitable.108

Conclusion

In summary, the National Front era was a transition period that brought dra-matic changes to the Llanos. The unceasing flow of migrants forced the govern-ment to abandon its traditional neglect of the region. Building upon some of the policies adopted by Rojas Pinilla, both Liberal and Conservative adminis-trations experimented with new systems of governance. They improved land and electronic communication, promoted agrarian reform, reconsidered the rights of Native Americans and the role of evangelical and Catholic churches, and sought to provide more social services. Unfortunately, these initiatives fell short of the urgent needs of the residents, and the state’s failure to curb abuse of campesinos by large landholders paved the way for the resurgence of guerrilla activity, which mutated into new forms in the wake of the Cuban Revolution and the demand for illegal drugs such as marijuana and cocaine. The discovery of exploitable oil deposits by international oil companies suggested that the Lla-nos were on the brink of a period of rapid growth, but it fell to post–National Front administrations to deal with these new and ongoing challenges in the effort to elevate the region from a “land of the future” to a “land of the present.”

5

The Contemporary Era, 1978–2010

The demise of the Frente Nacional as Colombia’s political system brought a renewal of competitive politics at the national level with the elections of Liberal Julio César Turbay Ayala in 1978, Conservative Belisario Betancur in 1982, Conservative Virgilio Barco in 1986, Liberal César Augusto Gaviria in 1990, Liberal Ernesto Samper in 1994, Conservative Andrés Pastrana in 1998, and Álvaro Uribe Vélez, leader of El Partido de la U, in 2002. Beginning in 1984 these administrations faced a massive upsurge in violence resulting from the illegal drug trade, which reached its peak between 1987 and 2002, after which time it dropped sharply, owing to Uribe’s successful attack on its sources.1

Much of the violence over drug trafficking was located in the Llanos re-gion, and the rapid development of oil from wells located in Arauca, Casanare, and Meta further complicated the situation. The ongoing struggle compelled Llanero campesinos to seek safety in the towns, while at the same time the oil boom intensified the relocation of people from the highlands to the region in search of jobs and new opportunities. The effect of these trends was to compel Bogotá to accelerate the integration of the eastern frontier lands into the na-tion. The new Constitution of 1991 elevated all of the territories to the status of departments, rendering their administration under DAINCO obsolete. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a broad overview of these trends that transformed the Llanos from frontier to region by outlining administrative in-novations, the impact of violence and drug trafficking, and the economic and cultural changes caused by the long-awaited oil boom.

From Territories to Departments: Administrative Innovations

When it was organized in 1975 by Law 28 and Decree 1926, DAINCO rep-resented a step forward in the government’s attempt to create a more efficient agency to oversee the national territories, but it soon became evident that cer-

The Contemporary Era, 1978–2010 109

tain deficiencies in its organization needed to be corrected. President Betancur, after his election in 1982, proved to be especially interested in the potential of the eastern plains. He and his ministers made several trips to the Llanos and Amazonia, and he frequently inveigled well-known personalities such as Gabriel García Márquez to accompany them. Thus it is not surprising that on January 18, 1985, Congress passed Law 22, restructuring DAINCO and modi-fying the contractual and fiscal arrangements of the intendancies and comi-sarías. Among other changes, the law clarified the agency’s role as the primary intermediary between the central government and the territories and enhanced its importance by making its director a member of the Consejo de Ministros “with a voice but no vote.”2 Law 22 notwithstanding, DAINCO was still se-verely handicapped by a perennial lack of financing. For example, the national budget for 1986 allotted the agency 703,920.000 pesos, or 1 percent of the total national budget of 655,294,149,884 pesos, to promote development in approximately 58 percent of Colombia’s territory.3 In that year the agency em-ployed 126 individuals—44 of them occupying administrative posts.4

In 1985 Leonel Pérez Bareño prepared a balanced evaluation of the work of DAINCO. He pointed out that it was an “entity sui generis” because, in contrast to other administrative departments, its assignment was to supervise a specific area of the nation that had been consistently neglected and was substantially less developed than the rest of the country. DAINCO’s complex and multiple tasks were to formulate global policies and report the needs of the Llanos, Amazonia, and the Caribbean islands to the directors of the Plan Nacional de Desarrollo (PND).5 Faithful to this mandate, DAINCO, in ten years time, accumulated a large body of information about the territories and authored a series of blueprints for their development, but in Pérez’s view the agency should not be judged by the quantity of its achievements. More important was “its capacity to ‘hacer hacer,’ that is to complete the coordina-tion, projection, control, and assessments in the least time at the least cost and with the greatest efficiency the action of the state in the intendencias and comisarías.” Pérez added that DAINCO’s role was similar to “lobbies” in the United States that exploited their access to legislators to place pressure on Congress to carry out proposals in favor of regional projects. Over the years, government agencies in Bogotá had come to value DAINCO’s efforts (“Ha ganado enorme terreno en Bogotá, en el seno de las demás institucio-nes gubernamentales”). Its principal difficulty, however, was that it had not won support from regional political leaders, to whom its technocratic nature seemed strange (ajeno), and annoying (fastidioso). For these individuals, Pérez observed, “DAINCO appears to be a remote office, with a bureaucracy that


is arrogant and ignorant of the environment. It is the target of those who are critical of the mistakes made by the state.”6

By 1986, as Virgilio Barco Vargas prepared to assume the presidency, sen-timent was growing among local leaders of the intendancies and comisarías and their supporters in Bogotá that they should renounce their inferior sta-tus as “territories” and demand to be elevated to the status of departments. In August, Hernando Durán Dussán, chief of Barco’s transition team, delivered to the president-elect a document laying out the reasons for embracing the territories as departments. The document stressed that the extraordinary eco-nomic wealth in the territories, including agriculture and oil, could not be fully developed until they were granted complete participation in the country as de-partments. Noting that they still lacked adequate political representation in Congress, Durán Dussán argued that the “the moment has arrived to change the population criteria required by the Constitution for the intendancies and comisarías to become departments.” He continued:

These regions should be given representation for geographic, and eco-nomic reasons, as well as border sovereignty considerations independent of the number of inhabitants that they possess. Each of the three inten-dancies (Putumayo, Arauca, and Casanare) contain more that 150,000 inhabitants and qualify by other aspects to be elevated to the category of Departments.7

The election of a National Constituent Assembly in December 1990, spon-sored by President Gaviria for the purpose of revising the Constitution of 1886, provided an opportunity for DAINCO and the national territories to push for departmental status. Escalating violence, uncontrolled drug trafficking, and other problems had convinced broad segments of Colombian society that the nation’s institutions were proving inadequate to the challenges they faced. As a result, the holding of a convention to revamp the one-hundred-year-old con-stitution proved to be a popular decision. Inaugurated on February 5, 1991, the assembly turned out to be a “bewildering pluralistic body, containing represen-tatives of the indigenous movement and of the Protestant churches, along with those of the traditional parties and of the left; no one group held a majority.”8

As advocate for the territories, DAINCO submitted to the assembly a state-ment supporting their elevation to departmental status, but it also warned that due to their legacy of total dependency on the central government, they would require special support from the state in order to successfully complete the pro-posed transition. The authors of the statement indicated their awareness that the new arrangement might bring about DAINCO’s own dissolution, but they


suggested that in a reconstituted form, the agency, given its extensive accumu-lated knowledge of Orinoquia, Amazonia, and the islands, might continue to be employed as a simple planning agency and mediator during the transition phase.9

Under the new constitution, proclaimed on July 4, 1991, Colombia took the shape of a decentralized unified state with limited autonomy for its territorial entities. It retained the four-year presidential term of the Constitution of 1886 (modified by banning any possibility of reelection) but reinstated the position of vice president.10 It included numerous provisions designed to make Congress and the judicial system more responsible and efficient. For example, the Upper House was now to be elected by proportional representation on a nationwide basis, and the popular election of governors was reintroduced. The Constitu-tion of 1991 recognized ninety-nine specific human rights, including the right to divorce, and it contained important language designed to protect the envi-ronment. It proclaimed the eight remaining “national territories” full depart-ments, ending two centuries of tutelage. In addition, native people were granted two representatives in Congress and permitted to form “indigenous territorial units” in which they could govern themselves and administer their own natural resources.11

Most Colombians greeted the adoption of the new Constitution with eu-phoria in the belief that the nation was “moving beyond the stage of ‘represen-tative democracy’ to ‘participative democracy.’”12 Local advocates for the former intendancies and comisarías felt that their participation in the nation was fi-nally being recognized, but it was soon evident that transition from territory to department would be fraught with difficulties. First, the former territories did not receive enough essential support from the central government to enable them to take over the functions departmental status required, and second, the liquidation of DAINCO in December 1991 eliminated the agency that had fostered their development for twenty-five years.13

DAINCO’s elimination left responsibility for Orinoquia regional planning to the Consejo Regional de Planeación Económica y Social de la Orinoquia, or Corpes Orinoquia, which had been created in 1989. Regretfully, until its demise in 1999, Corpes Orinoquia suffered from the same weaknesses as its predeces-sor. Because it lacked personería juridical (legal incorporation) and a designated budget, a fiducia (trustee) managed its finances. Like DAINCO, Corpes Orino-quia enjoyed little support from the central state and still less from the regional elites it was supposed to represent.14

Second, the new departments quickly became prisoners of their own in-efficiency, corruption, and financial weakness. The precariousness of national


control in these vast outlying territories placed most of them in the crosshairs of new turbulence. Rising regional clans, traditional political networks, and large latifundistas sought to consolidate their social and political dominance in the presence of narco-traffickers, guerrillas, paramilitaries, and the military. The high cost of electoral campaigns converted new departments into a game preserve (coto de caza) as politicians from other regions, who were unfamiliar with Orinoquia’s problems, won the new legislative positions and, because they did not understand the issues, voted against the best interests of the region in Congress. In addition, although the Constitution of 1991 increased the number of representatives from Orinoquia from four to fifteen in the Cámara, after reapportionment between 1998 and 2002, the region lost two senators who previously had represented it in the Upper House.15

Third, while the indigenous people accounted for less than 3 percent of Co-lombia’s population, they made up a majority in Vaupés and Vichada in the Lla-nos as well as the Amazonian departments of Guainía and Guaviare. With the creation of “indigenous territorial units,” the potential mineral and petroleum riches in those departments could not be explored or developed without prior agreements with the resident communities. Even if their agreement was offi-cially obtained, the ongoing exploitation of oil in these formerly isolated regions threatened disproportionately negative impacts on the indigenous cultures.16

Finally, with petroleum production already underway at Caño Limón in Arauca, at Cusiana in Casanare, and at Castilla la Nueva in Meta, the central government declined to use the bulk of the oil profits to develop the infrastruc-ture of Orinoco departments. Instead, the Fondo Nacional de Regalías (FNR) distributed 70 percent of the revenue among other departments in the country. In the view of Pérez Bareño, this money might better have been invested in reforesting millions of hectares in the Llanos, constructing the Puerto Gaitán–Puerto Carreño road, restoring navigation on the Meta River, and consolidating centers of investigation and technology throughout the country.17

The Catholic Church and Administrative Changes

Throughout the history of the Llanos frontier, the Catholic Church has been an important presence in Orinoquia and often a political force more important than the state. The 1973 concordat modified the monopoly that the church held in the national territories, and the elevation of the intendancies and comisarías to departments brought a corresponding change in their status in the Catholic hierarchy. In 1964, four years after Meta had become a department, the Vatican converted the apostolic vicariate of Villavicencio into the Diocese of Villavi-


cencio, with Monseñor Frans Joseph Bruls Canisius of the Compañía de María as its first bishop. The territory south of Villavicencio, including the rapidly expanding municipio of Granada, became the Apostolic Prefectura del Ariari, under rule of the Salesians. In 1999 the Prefectura of Ariari became the Dio-cese of Granada. By this year Yopal had also been designated a diocese subject to the rule of the Archdiocese of Tunja, while Trinidad remained an apostolic vicariate. In 2004 Pope John Paul II elevated the Diocese of Villavicencio to an archdiocese. The new archdiocese includes a population of 512,320, of which 97.2 per-cent profess the Catholic faith. There are 117 parishes served by 120 secular and 20 religious priests. It has two seminaries in Restrepo and offers distance education in an effort to encourage campesinos to remain in the rural areas and not abandon them for the lure of Villavicencio. The archdiocese publishes a newspaper, Eco Llanero, and since 1994 it has operated a radio station, Voz del Llanos. Confronting a strong challenge mounted by competing evangeli-cal Protestant groups, the church relies on radio broadcasts to propagate the Catholic faith “to all corners of the Llanos Orientales.”18

The Summer Institute of Linguistics, the archdiocese’s primary evangeli-cal rival, continued to work in Colombia. In 1998 the Colombian Congress awarded SIL with the Orden de la Democracía in recognition for its thirty-five years of service on behalf of indigenous languages, but the end was drawing near.19 On May 31, 2000, the government terminated its working arrangement with the organization and dissolved the legal entity of SIL Colombia in 2002.20

Political Violence, Drug Wars, and Displacement

The Constitution of 1991’s elevation of Arauca, Casanare, and Vichada to de-partments undoubtedly complicated the national government’s effort to control the violence sparked by party hatreds, revolutionary sentiments, and drug traf-ficking that intensified midway through the National Front era. The leaders of the former comisarías, which lacked even a minimal tradition of autonomy, had more than enough to occupy their energies in developing new administra-tive structures without the added challenge of confronting the ever-increasing violence that had put down deep roots in these underdeveloped and under-populated territories.21

Between 1980 and 1990, Meta, Arauca, Casanare, and Vichada were the scene of ongoing conflicts between guerrillas, paramilitaries, narco-paramili-taries, and narco-esmerladeros. In addition, paramilitaries of the ultra-Right unleashed “cleansing” actions against sympathizers, activists, members, and


leaders of leftist groups as well as some sectors of the Liberal and Conservative parties.22

As noted in the previous chapter, the Frente Nacional had been unable to expunge the legacy of violence that had been accumulating since the 1940s. Rebel groups objecting to the mandatory alternation of Liberal and Conserva-tive leaders continued to challenge the system. In 1964 the FARC established a foothold in Meta after the Colombian army crushed its so-called independent republic of Marquetalia in Tolima. New colonos were vulnerable to guerrilla pressure because inadequate government support had left them unable to turn a profit on parcels they had cleared and planted. Often forced to sell their land to large-scale agriculturalists or to ranchers, some of them formed self-defense groups or paramilitary units while others discovered that the FARC’s rural-based strategy designed to gain and hold territory could offer them a measure of protection. The continuing efforts of large landholders to evict the colonos, combined with the lack of a strong government presence in the Llanos, permitted first the FARC, led by Manuel Marulanda Vélez (alias “Tirofijo”) in Meta, and later the ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional), a Marxist-Leninist movement en-trenched in Arauca, to win popular support, even though the actual number of committed guerrillas was fewer than six thousand.23 As Alfredo Molano ex-plains, “Insofar as the guerrillas were able to create defenses for the colonists, they tended to control the roles of the merchants and the intermediaries and to provide for or attend to the population’s most basic needs such as education, health, and justice.”24

The violence took on a new dimension with the introduction of drug traf-ficking. In 1975, after the United States cracked down on marijuana grown in Mexico, the center of its production moved to the north coast of Colombia. Thanks “to its direct introduction by U.S. traffickers who distributed seeds and guaranteed to purchase the harvest,” between 1977 and 1980 Meta campesinos in Vista Hermosa and Puerto Lleras south of the Ariari also began to grow marijuana.25 Because the colonos tended to dissipate the economic bonanza they gained from selling their harvests in luxurious expenditures, liquor, and prostitution, the climate was set for the introduction of coca cultivation. Be-tween 1980 and 1986 an understanding emerged between the newly formed Colombian drug cartels, which promoted the cultivation of coca in the Llanos and transferred technology there to process and refine the drug, and the FARC guerrillas that guaranteed internal order and levied a tax on cultivators and buyers. At this point the guerrillas assumed the posture of protecting the culti-vators, but the collapse of a 1984 truce between the FARC and the government


of Belisario Betancur brought down upon them the wrath of both the army and paramilitary groups hired by the large landowners to protect their persons and property.26

The violence was especially intense in the Province of Ariari. During the 1980s a contest for control of the region degenerated into a confrontation be-tween guerrillas and paramilitaries, both of whom declared a war to the death. The latter identified for removal any person suspected of sympathizing with the Left. Further complicating the situation was the diversity of agents willing to resort to violence: drug dealers, guerrillas, common criminals, and private self-defense groups. Assassinations, disappearances, and other crimes beset peas-ants, urban dwellers, and politicians.27

A closer examination of these events of the 1980s in the Llanos reveals that a large part of the violence was directed against members of leftist groups and especially against partisans of the Unión Patriótica (UP), a political party that had emerged on May 28, 1985, as part of the failed truce signed by Betancur and the FARC. The UP, which had the support of the Communists and other leftist sectors, grew rapidly as a party, winning some 250,000 votes in the 1986 elections. UP backing in Meta and Arauca was especially strong: in the former, the party won a Senate seat, and in the latter, a representative to the Cámara, and support continued to expand. In the bi-year elections of 1988 the party elected mayors in the Ariari region of Meta and in Arauquita, Saravena, and Tame in Arauca.28 Unfortunately, violations of human rights escalated in those elections years. All-out war was declared for control of Ariari, converting it into “a land of all and nobody”—as guerrillas confronted paramilitaries re-sulting in eight massacres taking the lives of more than sixty-two people.29 In Meta alone in 1988 there were 112 attacks against members of the UP, the majority of these being murders, while Arauca registered the highest number of “disappearances.” Keeping pace with violence inspired by political hatreds were constant con-flicts between the FARC, the ELN, and the Colombian armed forces. Ovalle records ninety-six such confrontations in Arauca in the 1980s, seventy-two in Meta, and twenty-one in Casanare. The ability of both the FARC and the ELN to challenge the army reflected the fact that they controlled large areas within the department and the intendencia. Moreover, their leaders were slowly chang-ing from committed revolutionaries aspiring to create a better political system for Colombia to simple warlords fighting for profit, prestige, and territorial control. They perpetrated attacks on citizens, including assaults, murders, and kidnappings, which provoked the self-defense groups to seek reprisals often against campesinos suspected of sympathizing with the guerrillas.


Despite their brutality, the FARC and ELN continued to win adherence from many people living in the area, especially in colonization zones in Ariari-Güejar, Duda-Guayabero, and La Uribe bordering Macarena—a mountain range the government had declared a national park but had been taken over by drug traffickers. On the other hand, the ongoing battles between the guer-rillas and the army forced many campesinos to leave the rural areas to seek safety in the cities.30 Government efforts either to crush the drug cartels and rebel groups or to reach some kind of truce with them were predictably un-successful. To cite one extreme tactic, in 1998, as a peace gesture, President Pastrana ceded to FARC uncontested control of a sixteen-thousand-square-mile zone in Caquetá south of Meta, but his gambit did not achieve the de-sired goal, as insecurity and terror continued to reign in the Llanos.

The Petroleum Boom

The insecurity in the plains did not stop the search by foreign and national petroleum companies for exploitable oil in Orinoquia. These prolonged efforts were finally rewarded in 1983 when tests on wells dug by ECOPETROL and Occidental Petroleum (known as OXY) at Caño Limón in Cravo Norte, Arauca, indicated that oil reserves in that location amounted to 500 million barrels.31 Mannesmann, a West German company, constructed a 186-mile pipeline to the Río Zulia oil terminal near the Venezuelan border, and Bechtel Engineer-ing built a 305-mile pipeline connecting Río Zulia with the port of Coveñas on Colombia’s northern coast. In 1986 the long-awaited “black gold” of the Llanos began pouring through the pipes at the rate of two hundred thousand barrels a day. By 1994 the flow was more than a million barrels a day, and the oil boom in the Llanos Orientales was underway.32

Between 1986 and the present, petroleum production increased in three of the four Llanos departments (exploration in Vichada is still in early stages) as the discovery of new wells continually raised government estimates of the amount of deposits lying in the subsoil. Soon after Occidental Petroleum began operations at Caño Limón, efforts by Elf Aquitaine and Brazilian Petrobras were consoli-dated under British Petroleum (BP) in Casanare. As part of a twenty-eight-year contract with ECOPETROL, BP was allowed six years for exploration and six years for exploitation. In 1990 oil was discovered in Casanare at Cusiana near Aguazul and at Cupiagua. In 1994 the government estimated the reserves of these two fields between 2 and 2.2 billion barrels of petroleum. President César Gaviria Trujillo predicted that Cusiana alone would generate U.S. $13.7 billion, which would provide U.S. $8.2 billion to the central government and ECOPET-


ROL as well as U.S. $5.5 billion to departments and municipios in the form of subsidies (regalías) and transfer of funds. In relative terms, the annual income from Cusiana was expected to increase from .5 percent of GPD in 1994 to 5 percent in 1997. While this influx of income might appear to be a providential windfall, “such amounts,” Gaviria warned, “could generate accumulation of inter-national reserves that could cause undesirable inflationary pressures.”33

In Meta operations at Chichimene, Castilla la Nueva, and Apiay started producing oil at the rate of 20,500 b/d (barrels a day) in 1996. All these wells were located in a thirty-hectare zone know as the Distrito Petróleo in Apiay, thirty minutes from Villavicencio on the road to Puerto López. A refinery con-structed in Apiay processes the crude oil to extract its principal derivatives: as-phalt, cocinol (cooking fuel), benzene, and gasoline. From the Distrito Petróleo, the petroleum is pumped to the Porvenir station in Casanare, and from there it moves by pipeline to the Bosconía station in the Department of César and on to Barrancabermeja in Santander to be shipped to the United States and Europe. Apiay also generates daily more than sixteen thousand feet of gas for domestic and industrial consumption in Villavicencio and Bogotá.34 By 2001 Meta’s wells were yielding 21 million barrels of oil a year or 11 percent of Colombia’s national output. This amount ranked Meta as the third largest petroleum-producing department, exceeded only by Casanare, with 45.1 percent of national output, and Arauca, with 17.7 percent.35

Since the 1990s the Colombian government has embarked on a policy to en-courage foreign investment in oil and gas exploration. In July 2002 the govern-ment signed a law revising its hydrocarbons royalties scheme, cutting royalties on recent discoveries of oil fields producing less than 125,000 b/d to between 8 percent and 20 percent (depending on daily output) from the longstanding, flat rate of 20 percent. The purpose of this change was to better compensate foreign oil companies for having to deal with the country’s instability and the risk of violence. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, “The sliding royalties formula was opposed by provinces with substantial oil reserves that depend heavily on revenue generated by the oil fields. Provinces keep 60 percent of the royalties with the rest going to Bogotá.”36

Impact of the Oil Boom

Despite the high level of insecurity in the Llanos, the oil boom converted the Llanos into the region with the greatest population growth in the country. As table 5.1 suggests, in-migration to the region continues to far exceed people leaving the area.


Between 1973 and 2005 the population in Orinoquia tripled, increasing from 405,487 people to 1,335,491. Between 1973 and 1995 Casanare regis-tered a growth of 97 percent, Vichada 53 percent, Meta 44 percent, and Arauca 30 percent.37 The bulk of the newcomers tended to settle in urban municipios located in the healthier piedmont areas or llanos arriba of each department, leaving the llanos abajo still largely empty of colonists. Between 1973 and 1997, inhabitants of Arauca City increased from 12,500 to 70,000, while the popula-tion of Yopal grew from 10,500 to 84,200. Villavicencio, the largest city in the region, went from a population of 91,559 in 1973 to 285,425 in 2003. While population changes in all three cities are impressive, according to Eduardo Mantilla Trejos, the growth of Casanare’s capital in 2000 exceeded that of the other urban centers because of “forced displacements, the great movements of money, the significant improvements in roads and public services, and the fact that many entrepreneurs from Arauca and Meta have moved their households to Yopal.”38

Petroleum has affected this population surge in a unique way, for once an oil company begins serious exploitation of a proven deposit, it creates a distinctive type of oil town. News of the operation attracts the migration of thousands of campesinos from all parts of Colombia. Sometimes the newcomers are young people, sometimes they come as families, but in either case their regional origin is identifiable by their skin color, lifestyle, and cultural patterns. The migrants tend to group together so that they form colonies of antioqueños, costeños, boyacenses, and so on around the camp. Even small towns such as Aguazul, Tauramena, Maní, Orocué, Castilla la Nueva, and Puerto Gaitán have suffered changes as hordes of migrants descend upon them, enticed by dreams of riches or fleeing from violence and disease. On December 11, 1991, the newspaper


Department 1973* 1985* 1993** 2005***

Meta 261,863 474,046 583,418 789,276Casanare 85,184 147,472 168,685 282,452Arauca 46,605 89,972 152,814 208,605Vichada 12,215 18,702 22,766 55,158TOTALS 405,867 730,192 927,683 1,335,491Columbia 22,525,670 30,062,198 35,886,280 42,090,502

* DANE, Población de Colombia en 1985, 23–24, 159.

** Colombia a su alcance, 63, 80, 105, 129.

*** DANE, 2005 census, in “Demographics of Colombia,” Wikipedia, September 27, 2011.


El Espectador reported that within a few months after the Cusiana discovery, searchers for oil had altered the Casanare countryside. New people arrived dur-ing the night in towns where there were no housing or health services for them. The towns soon became lawless; their authorities overwhelmed by the unprec-edented tempo of migration.39

The effect of this onslaught of migrants transformed urban areas, tradition-ally composed of ranchers and farmers, into makeshift oil camps. Luxury ho-tels, prostitution, banks, and huge old machinery parked on lots quickly sprang up. Helmets and oil boots replaced the traditional Llanero hats and sandals; sandwiches and hotdogs supplanted meat and plátano cooked over an open fire. The cumulative impact was a loss of a sense of identity. In 2003 Mantilla Trejos affirmed that developments during the last twenty-five years had dis-torted the local culture that formerly revolved around ranching and the joropo (a Llanero dance). He continued somewhat bitterly, “There is a tower of Babel in the Colombian east: for every person born in Meta, Arauca, Casanare and Vichada, there are three people who are ignorant of who a ‘pollona’ (a young Indian girl) is and perhaps will never have the opportunity to hear a ‘furroco’ (a Llanero percussion instrument).” The traditional Llanero knew how to control his environment. The new Llanero looks to erase and confuse all “in order to become a part of a small sentence in the book of history.”40

Also arriving in Orinoquia towns are thousands of displaced people, forced to leave their homes in the countryside due to violence, violation of human rights, seizure of property, and the fumigation of illegal crops. While this phe-nomenon is not unique to the Llanos—the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) has estimated that between 1985 and 2007 almost 4 million Colombians have been uprooted by violence, with 200,000 of these cases oc-curring in 2006—the situation is especially severe in Casanare, Meta, and Ar-auca due to paramilitary activity, drug violence, and fumigation of cropland.41

During the 1990s petroleum exploitation, especially in Arauca, but also in Casanare and Meta, exacerbated the already complicated violence. Groups at the margins on both sides of the law—the extreme Left (guerrillas) and the ex-treme Right (paramilitaries)—fortified themselves economically and militarily. The FARC and ELN were quick to capitalize on the opportunities offered by the presence of multinational corporations (MNCs) exploring for oil. In Arauca, oil pumped through the Caño Limón–Coveñas pipeline became a major target for both guerrilla forces. According to a top Occidental executive, rebels blew up the pipeline 460 times between 1985 and 1997.42 On August 20, 2004, Isabel Hilton, a reporter for the Guardian newspaper, observed that “a complex mosaic of armed groups—rightwing paramilitaries and the army, often work-


ing closely together, and leftwing guerrillas—were struggling for control of the lucrative pipeline and cocaine routes.” In response, President Álvaro Uribe de-clared a special security zone around the three northern municipalities of the department where the oil pipeline is located, and OXY Petroleum and the U.S. government were funding the army’s Eighteenth Brigade, the main government force in the zone. Despite this effort, security in the region was not increased, and civilians who assumed any position of leadership, such as teachers, health workers and union activists, were killed in “appalling numbers.”43

In Casanare, once it became public knowledge that huge oil deposits at Cusiana and Cupiagua represented an immense source of wealth for the de-partment and its municipios, a veritable avalanche of migrants from differ-ent regions of Colombia converged on the department, magnifying ongoing problems such as inadequate schools, housing, sanitation, potable water, and employment. Ten percent of the population continued to control 78 percent of the land as entrepreneurs invested in large-scale rice cultivation or exten-sive cattle ranches. According to Arcadio Benítez, former mayor of Támara, by 2003 narco-traffickers and emerald dealers had established themselves in the south of the department. Using their own self-defense groups, they displaced the guerrillas in order to seize land to graze cattle and to lay out African palm plantations. Because the Colombian state had signed contracts with the MNCs, it was obligated to defend them. A new modern military with more capability and greater radius of action was sent to the Llanos. A plethora of legal and illegal arms flooded the plains, weapons used not neces-sarily for combat but to assassinate, intimidate, and displace the population. The campesino families who had resisted the violence in the 1950s were once again caught in the middle of another war.44

By 2003 paramilitary groups controlled the south and center of Casanare and most of the flat land, with the exception of disputed territory bordering the Casanare River. The guerrillas were ensconced in the piedmont sections in the jungles of the Department of Vichada and Department of Guaviare, where they could wage attacks against the army and paramilitaries. In the northern part of Casanare, where the guerrillas could move most easily, confrontation was the greatest. Capturing police posts, combating the army, clashing with paramilitar-ies, and murdering ranchers and merchants, the FARC and the ELN continued to sustain a high degree of force and respect in this zone. The influx of oil money offered irresistible temptations to the inexperi-enced leaders of the new Llanos departments. With reference to Meta and Casanare, Professor Wilson Ladino Orjuela pointed out in July 2007 that the autonomy granted to departmental officials by the Constitution of 1991


only enhanced the opportunity of local leaders “to appropriate personal and family resources.” He continued:

They have been able to move from simple houses to great mansions pro-tected by enormous walls and state security forces, leaving by the wayside hundreds of thousands of citizens dreaming of better opportunities for themselves, their children and grandchildren. International organizations such as the UN, the European Union and AID are aware of these situa-tions. Perhaps in the coming years we will see an important change in the appointment of national leaders to these local positions, who will identify with the strategic value of the departments in Colombia.45

The situation was no better in Arauca. According to Alfonso Avellaneda C., departmental officials soon became the creatures of OXY Petroleum, which located its headquarters at Caño Limón rather than in Arauca City. OXY char-tered air flights to provide free transport for politicians and regional caudillos to bring them to Caño Limón, and in exchange for bribes and other such favors, these individuals allowed OXY to ignore environmental legislation and tax ob-ligations and to seek permission to build highways and bridges after the work had been completed.46

Cusmano and Preciado paint an even gloomier picture of the situation in Casanare. There, they argue, the enormous flow of petroleum revenues into local and regional coffers have produced a phenomenon of contratitis in which these funds are allotted to supporters of the local politicians reinforcing cor-ruption and clientelismo. Upstart politicians, contractors, and guerrilla lead-ers have displaced the traditional landowning elites. Despite the influx of new income, the traditional infrastructure of the department remains unchanged. Casanare continues to rely on an extractive and subsistence economy compli-cated by the weakening of traditional culture and values.47

Lax governmental controls and violence have combined to intensify the environmental damage caused by oil production. It is important to note that early on the national government was aware of the potential hazards of drill-ing, and in 1974, Congress passed legislation requiring environmental impact assessments (EIAs). It also crated INDERENA, an environmental protection agency responsible for administering the EIA rule that developers prepare im-pact statements and environmental and ecological studies as a requirement for obtaining their licenses. Going along with the general loosening of state control, however, in 1993 Congress passed Law 99, which phased out INDERENA and replaced it with the Ministry of Environment. Law 99 also required an environmental license for the execution of projects that might cause natural


resource or environmental damage, however, experience has shown that it has not been strictly implemented.48

The situation was most severe in Arauca, where in 1983 President Belisario Betancur suspended a decree that had designated a large area of the department a Nature Reserve (Santuario de Fauna y Flora). Accordingly, Occidental Petro-leum and Mannesman built their pipeline through once-protected forests, de-molishing the fincas of small farmers and ecosystems of the most varied wealth for nearly a thousand kilometers between Arauca and Coveñas. The workers, hired to dig pits along seismic lines, cut down trees and exploded dynamite that destroyed water deposits. By taking advantage of institutional weakness and bribing local officials, OXY dumped tens of thousands of barrels of contami-nated water into the flood zones of Caño Limón and the Arauca River, destroy-ing the vegetation and biological resources in the headwaters of the Cinaruco and Capanaparo rivers, a problem further compounded by repeated guerrilla attacks on the pipeline.49

These environmental calamities were especially troublesome for Native Americans previously living in semi-isolation in the Llanos. Although the Con-stitution of 1991 recognizes their rights of consultation over oil and mining exploitation in their territories, the government has been inconsistent in sup-porting them when they are threatened by the MNCs. The most notorious case occurred during the decade of the 1990s when Occidental Petroleum secured an agreement with the seminomadic U’wa tribe to explore for oil in four hun-dred thousand acres that lay just outside their reservation and along the border of the pipeline to Coveñas. After signing the agreement, the U’wa leaders had a change of heart and alleged that they had been tricked into accepting an ar-rangement that would permit drilling on their lands—an operation that would harm their culture and beliefs and even cause their physical world to implode.50

The U’wa took their case to the Colombian courts, arguing that although the land in question was outside their reservation, it was still theirs because it lay in their migratory path. When in March 1997 the Colombian Supreme Court decided the issue in OXY’s favor, the five-thousand-member tribe threatened to commit mass suicide by leaping from a cliff if OXY proceeded with its explor-atory drilling. This ploy, which caught the attention of international humani-tarian organizations, turned into a publicity nightmare for the company. By the end of 1998 it declared that it would temporarily withdraw its claim to U’wa territory, and in 2002 it relinquished its claim completely.51

The U’wa victory in 2002 proved temporary. On December 15, 2006, Co-lombia’s interior minister cleared the way for Ecopetrol to begin new explora-tions in the same territory—this time on behalf of the Spanish firm Repsol.


The minister justified this decision by stating that the U’wa had refused to par-ticipate in the consultation meeting he had organized to discuss the question. In response, Luis Tegría, president of the Assembly of the U’wa Indigenous Com-munity, said that the question of oil development was not negotiable. Protesting that the ministry’s decision was made public before the U’wa were officially notified, he pledged that his people would continue to defend their ancestral lands.52

In June 2003 the Association of Cabildos and Traditional Indigenous Au-thorities of the Department of Arauca (ASCATIDAR) was founded to pro-mote the local autonomy of the U’wa and Guahibo. The nomadic Guahibo had once roamed throughout the Llanos, but by the end of the twentieth century they had been pushed back to the northwestern corner of Arauca near the town of Saravena. The Guahibo had made adjustments to live with the campesino settlers, but with the arrival of oil exploration, their region became a target for armed guerrillas and paramilitaries as well as oil company employees. A decline of legitimate government in Saravena led to military rule. Both guerrillas and paramilitaries carried out atrocities against the Indians, while waste from the Caño Limón oil field contaminated the rivers and land.53

In Guaviare a nomadic tribe called the Nukak-makú faced a similar fate in the early 1990s. As hunters and gatherers, the Nukak rarely cultivated food, preferring to roam over a large portion of Casanare, Vichada, and the Amazon jungles of Guaviare. It was to help protect the Nukak that the national gov-ernment created the Reserva Forestal de las Amazonas in 1959. Some years later Ecopetrol signed a contract with Fronteras de Exploración Colombiana Incorporated (FECI) to explore some eight hundred kilometers of seismic lines. Included in the project, known as Programas Sísmicos Vichada-92, were six seismic lines, the most important being line VI-91–1100, which stretched from northeast to southeast for 370 kilometers, crossing the Guaviare River to penetrate the forests of Guaviare and end in the Reserva Forestal de Amazonas. FECI dug a three-meter-wide trench sixty-five kilometers long, using explosives to dig perforations of fifteen feet every eighty meters and constructing heliports every eight hundred meters. This exploratory trench threatened the integrity of the Nukak, who hav-ing only recently been discovered, were especially vulnerable to the impact of petroleum exploration. Fortunately, thanks to the adoption of the Constitu-tion of 1991, the territorial judge in San José de Guaviare ordered immediate suspension of road and trench construction in Nukak territory. When FECI appealed the order, an inspection of the impact on the Nukak by social scien-tists and judicial authorities produced enough evidence of the damage that was


being caused that the circuit judge in Villavicencio agreed that the work could not continue—a ruling that brought about the dissolution of FECI and repre-sented a significant victory for the Nukak.54

Economic Change

If the petroleum boom has emboldened government corruption, heightened violence, damaged the environment, and encroached on formerly isolated in-digenes, it has also revitalized agriculture, ranching, and other industries in Orinoquia. In Arauca, royalties from Caño Limón have sparked an increase in cattle, rice production, wood processing, and the establishment of two factories: Empresas Frutas de Saravena and Chocolates de Arauquito. The surge of new settlers has generated an expansion of subsistence crops such as plátanos, yuca, and maíz.55

In Casanare, after petroleum extraction, ranching remains the most impor-tant economic activity. The department contains 7.4 percent of the national cattle herd, with animals raised on hatos dispersed throughout the department. Although still relying on ranching practices that have scarcely varied since co-lonial times, Casanare sends between 180,000 and 200,000 animals to the highlands, ranking it third after the output of the Department of Córdoba and Department of Antioquia. In 2004, despite less than optimal climate condi-tions and fluctuations in prices, rice introduced by cultivators from Tolima and Santander accounted for 78 percent of Casanare’s agricultural production.56 In addition, power generated by the Chivor hydroelectric plant in Boyacá com-bined with improved highways have spurred industries such as Palmar de Ori-ente and Soceagro (a rice processing plant) as well as a reforestation program begun by Cervecerría de Colombia.57

Although Meta was last to experience oil production on a massive scale, as early as the 1950s a small refinery in Apiay was extracting asphalt, cocinol (cooking oil), and other petroleum derivatives from oil collected from wells opened and operating in Castilla La Nueva. The ready availability of asphalt permitted the paving of roads within the department and contributed to the construction of the Carretera Marginal. Since 1974 improvements in the Bo-gotá-Villavicencio highway, including the construction of two major tunnels that circumvent the most dangerous parts of the thoroughfare, have reduced travel time between the two cities from six to two and a half hours. Easier access to the huge market in Bogotá enhanced opportunities for important enterprises previously established in Villavicencio, such as Sales del Llanos and Aguardiente Llanero. In 1966, the slaughterhouse at Catama


was sacrificing 40,000 cattle to produce 120,000 tons of meat, while another 110,000 head were trucked up the mountain via the highway. In 1974 there were 1.1 million head of cattle in Meta. Annual export in the 1980s averaged 18 percent of the entire herd, but problems lay ahead. The hatos that supplied 80 percent of the cattle were located in the savanna, where production methods were backward and owner absenteeism was the rule. By the year 2000 hatos in Meta had disappeared, leaving only pasture for fattening cattle driven in from the outer plains on their way to Bogotá.58

Compensating for the decrease in ranching, production of dry and irrigated rice has boomed, promoted by the construction in 1987 of Induarroz, an ultra-modern factory capable of processing twelve tons of rice an hour. Within two years Meta was exporting fifty-five thousand tons of dry rice and seventy thou-sand tons of irrigated rice. By 2001, the department had become the primary Colombian producer of dry rice and ranked second in irrigated rice.59

The production of African palm oil has undergone a similar expansion. In this case, a multinational corporation, Unipalma, introduced modern tech-niques and mechanization of the harvest in Meta. Having acquired nine thou-sand hectares of land, it imported a labor force from the Pacific Coast to cul-tivate the trees. Other companies, such as Palmar de Oriente and Manuelita, have also established themselves. With eighty thousand hectares under culti-vation, Meta has become the number one producer of African palm oil in the country.60 Recently, African palm oil has also been produced around Villanueva in the southern part of Casanare. In all three departments, other crops of major importance are primarily grown in the piedmont zone. They include coffee, citrus fruit, soy, sorghum, yuca, and maíz.61 The downside of this rapid modernization is that small farm-ers and owners of hatos of five thousand to ten thousand cattle can no longer compete with much larger operations. Small rice cultivators have little power to negotiate the price of their harvest and must accept the conditions imposed by the large mills. In addition, many of these people have been unable to obtain legal title to their land. Compelled by these conditions and continuing violence in the region, they are often forced to abandon the rural areas to become part of the displaced people who have flocked to the urban areas.62

Cultural Developments

In 1986 President Virgilio Barco directed the Corpes Orinoquia to oversee the distribution of royalties from petroleum production (at that time being gener-ated by Caño Limón in Arauca) throughout the four sections of the Llanos—


Arauca, Casanare, Meta, and Vichada—plus the three adjoining Amazonian territories of Guaviare, Vaupés, and Guainía. The council’s offices were based first in Arauca City from 1989 to 1994, and then in Villavicencio from 1995 to 2000. They used the oil royalties to fund more than two hundred studies to seek solutions to basic problems, to facilitate the construction of roads and airports, and to promote improvements in health, education, and electrification. Emergency health centers were set up in Villavicencio, Acacías, Yopal, Aguazul, Tame, Saravena, and Arauca, and during the last twenty years more than fifteen private and public universities have been founded.63 In addition, the Univer-sidad de los Llanos, the oldest higher education institution in the region, was reorganized and expanded. By 2007 it included six schools: agronomy, veteri-nary, engineering, nursing, pedagogy, and economic sciences. It had graduated fifty-two hundred professionals and in that year had enrolled forty-five hun-dred undergraduate and postgraduate degree students.64 Meta, Casanare, and Arauca have established academies of history, and a modern public library in Villavicencio, the Biblioteca Germán Arciniegas, promotes cultural activities. Llanero authors produced some seven hundred books between 1975 and 1998, with metenses in the lead, followed by araucanos and casanareños. In all three departments, composers, artists, and poets abound and see as their mission the perpetuation of traditional Llanero themes, customs, and music.65 Villavicencio organizes annual events such as El Reinado Nacional del Joropo, the Festival de la Canción Colombiana, and the Encuentro Mundial del Coleo. Since 1960 it has sponsored the Torneo Internacional de Joropo, a five-day celebration of traditional dances and songs accompanied by harp, cuatro, and maracas that draws on average five hundred thousand spectators. Despite this cultural florescence, one of the most serious problems each de-partment faces is the loss of a communal identity that has been exacerbated by the arrival of thousands of migrants from other Colombian regions. In their paper, Cusmano and Preciado point out that a sense of anomie is a typical characteristic of a boom economy, “a phenomenon that is accompanied by cul-tural, economic and institutional disconnection that signifies the loss of shared human, juridical, social and cultural values.”66 The concern of Mantilla Trejos, who laments the disappearance of traditional Llanero values developed over centuries and based on cattle ranching, is a legitimate one.67 Given this situa-tion, other scholars have emphasized the need to develop a new kind of shared identity. María Eugenia Herrán de Novoa envisions an image of Villavicencio as an urban axis commanding the surrounding plains, while Pérez Barreño sug-gests the elimination of the four separate departments and their replacement by a regional government including all of Orinoquia.68 But whether this evolving


identity be micro or macro, it is clear that in coming decades one of the princi-pal challenges raised by the petroleum boom and the increasingly multicultural nature of the people living in the Llanos is to work out exactly what will be their common destiny.

Conclusion

The administrations that came to power after 1978 paid increasing attention to the Orinoquia region, for they were determined, on the one hand, to control the escalating violence and, on the other, to capitalize on the development of pe-troleum which by the twenty-first century would transform Colombia into the third largest petroleum exporting country in South America. The increasing need to integrate long-neglected national frontier regions bought administra-tive changes that cumulated, after the adoption of the Constitution of 1991, in the elevation of all former territories into departments. Although departmental status did not resolve many of the problems facing the Orinoco region, it did reflect the growing military and economic importance that Meta, Casanare, Arauca, and Vichada would play in the coming years. Despite the violence fueled by drug traffickers, guerrillas, paramilitaries, criminals, and the national army, the influx of migrants continued unabated, drawn by perceived opportunities of farming on public lands and/or work-ing for the petroleum companies. While large portions of the royalties paid by the petroleum countries were siphoned off to other departments, the sums that were invested in the Llanos produced extraordinary changes, positive with regard to improved infrastructure (i.e., roads, bridges, electrification), diver-sification of the economy, and general quality of life, negative with regard to augmenting corruption, environmental damage, displacement of indigenous people, and loss of cultural identity. For the Llanos, so long regarded by Co-lombians as “the future of Colombia,” the “future” had apparently arrived, but in many ways the region remained a frontier, peripheral to the highland heartland and still subject to an extractive and dependent economy. This changing nature of the Llanos frontier will be the subject of the next chapter.

6

Changing Concepts of the Llanos Frontier in the Last Half of the Twentieth Century

During the last half of the twentieth century, the Llanos Orientales of Colombia experienced an extraordinary transformation. For three hundred years the central government proclaimed the region as “the Future of Colombia,” but by the 1990s, the Llanos had somehow become “the Present of Colombia.” The explanation can be found in a series of developments. After the 1960s the entire nation experi-enced an escalation of violence, but the especially intense situation in the Lla-nos forced the government to focus on quelling the activities of the drug cartels, guerrillas, and paramilitaries in Meta, Casanare, Arauca, and Vichada. Simul-taneously, the petroleum boom attracted multinational corporations to the re-gion, accelerating the process of globalization already taking place in the national economy. By 2010, thanks to the output from the Llanos, Colombia was South America’s third largest oil-exporting nation. Along with the rapid development of industrialized processing of rice and African palm oil, the piedmont sections of the Llanos departments were registering the highest economic growth in the nation while continued migration and urbanization led to significant changes in the region’s demographic composition, social structure, and political dynamics.1

And yet, in spite of all these changes, the Llanos Orientales has remained a frontier in the Turnerian sense, vastly different perhaps than a century be-fore, but still exhibiting the characteristics of a region peripheral to the central highland region. In the 1990s, historians began conceptualizing the plains as “Orinoquia”—a transnational region—and the plains have also attracted re-newed examination as an international border. After a brief review of develop-ments in frontier historiography with regard to the United States and Latin America, the object of this chapter is to examine the three ways twentieth-century historians have used frontier concepts to analyze the role of the Llanos in the shaping of the Colombian nation.

Changing Concepts of the Llanos Frontier in the Last Half of the Twentieth Century 129

The Frontier in U.S. Historiography

As most historians are aware, the so-called “Frontier Thesis,” outlined by Fred-erick Jackson Turner in his seminal paper of 1893, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” has had enormous impact on the study of U.S. history. Turner, who originally defined “frontier” as the line between “civilization and barbarism,” in later works variously referred to it as “a migrating region,” a “form of society,” a “state of mind,” and a “state of society,” all of which empha-sized the idea that the “frontier was a process rather than a place.”2 In brief, he asserted, first, that the availability of “free land” on the North American frontier provided opportunity for upward social mobility not enjoyed by Europeans and, second, that the struggle for survival on the frontier, which required that newcomers simplify their lives, gave westering peoples a chance to rebuild their societies afresh. Turner argued that these twin social processes of settling and surviving on free frontier lands shaped American character and institutions, and that “to the frontier, the American intellect owes its striking characteris-tics of inventiveness, practicality, inquisitiveness, restlessness, optimism and individualism.”3

For much of the twentieth century U.S. scholars regarded the Turner thesis as the single most useful concept for understanding the distinctive features of North American civilization. Although they debated his definition and quib-bled about some aspects of the theory, in the main they accepted the notion that it was the frontier process that accounted for American “exceptionalism.” By the 1980s, however, after the closure of the frontier and the dispersion of people across the entire North American continent, a new generation of histo-rians emerged who were willing to abandon the whole concept of “frontier” as a useful category of analysis. Known as “New Western Historians,” they con-sidered the frontier as an ethnocentric construct, too time-bound to accommo-date the post-frontier twentieth century. In 1992 historian John Mack Faragher, taking into account the multiple objections that had been raised, concluded that “Turner’s thesis long ago found its way onto the trash heap of historical interpretations.”4

At the same time, other scholars, such as David Weber, Martin Ridge, and Richard Slatta, responded that “reports of the trash heap may be premature.” They pointed out that Turner’s thesis continued to attract those who find it useful in modified form and that the “frontier” remained a compelling heuristic device used even by Turner’s detractors. As Ridge argued, “Anti-Turnerians are strangely haunted by his silent scholarly ghost for they deny the usefulness of his historical vision but often unwittingly work within it.”5


In his book Comparing Cowboys and Frontiers: New Perspectives on the His-tory of the Americas (University of Oklahoma Press, 1997) Slatta suggested that revisionist historians notwithstanding, the frontier as an analytical construct remained important in framing the history of the Western Hemisphere. He wrote, “I believe it is counterproductive to bury the concept of frontier sim-ply because Turner’s formulation has proved incorrect.” In fact, the study of frontiers “has been enriched by framing them within the process of incorpora-tion. . . . Frontier social changes and interactions need more probing. Even if we acquiesce to burying Turner, we should demur from burying the concept of the frontier with him.”6

The Frontier in Latin American Historiography

At first, when Turner’s thesis became an obsession for U.S. scholars, native-born Latin American historians, accustomed to thinking of “frontera” as an international border, found little value in applying the North American’s ex-panded definition to the development of their own nations. An exception was Peruvian Victor Andrés Belaúnde. In a short essay written in 1923, Belaúnde considered how the thesis might apply to South America and concluded that the expanding frontier in the Turnerian sense appeared only rarely in Spanish America. In contrast to the modest barrier posed by the Alleghenies to west-ward movement in the United States, the South American Andes presented such insuperable obstacles for reaching the Amazon basin that the most typi-cal of Hispanic American republics—Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia—could not be classified as “frontier countries” and, therefore, developed differ-ently from the United States.7

Reflecting a widespread view, one of Mexico’s foremost historians, Ed-mundo O’Gorman, wrote in 1961, “Latin America was never a frontier land in the sense of dynamic transformation that has been given to that term by American historians ever since Frederick Jackson Turner: it was rather the passive object of transplantation and grafting.”8 Others, more cautious, such as Silvio Zavala and José Honório Rodrigues, agreed that there was no coun-terpart to the North American West in Latin America, but they suggested that more data was needed on individual regions before a final assessment could be made.9 Going to the other extreme, British historian Alistair Hennessy, in his comprehensive monograph The Frontier in Latin American History, con-cluded that “one of the most extraordinary features of Spanish American life is the persistence of frontier conditions throughout the centuries since the Conquest,” and that despite the dearth of research on this phenomenon, the


“heart of the Latin American historical experience is the interplay between metropolis and frontier.”10

Frontier Historiography and the Colombian Llanos to 1990

Before 1990 the only scholars to apply the Turner view of the frontier to the Colombian Llanos were North American geographers. Writing in 1931 and echoing Belaúnde, Isaiah Bowman noted that while the Spanish had quickly incorporated Amerindians living in the high Andes and along the coast into their New World empire, their impetus was checked when they arrived at the inhospitable jungles of the Amazon basin and the equally unattractive tropi-cal plains broken up by the Orinoco River. Blocked by geographic obstacles, deadly climate, native resistance, and lack of material incentives, they contented themselves with extending nominal rule over thousands of miles of unexplored tropical wilderness.11

Other geographers sharing Bowman’s view include Raymond Crist,12 Clar-ence F. Jones,13 and Raye Platt, who, writing in 1932, remarked that while some individuals had moved into the Llanos as early as the seventeenth century, they quickly found themselves isolated from the highlands by the rugged Andes and were soon resigned to a self-contained existence. As a result, Platt noted that although many Llaneros resided on farms or ranches occupied by their families for generations, they still lived under pioneer conditions:

They are pioneers in fact with a pioneer’s ambitions and hopes; but for the most part they are pioneers in outward appearance only, [having] long since settled into a state of apathetic contentment quite foreign to the true pioneer.14

Even in 1973, after a twenty-year period of rapid growth in Meta, geographer Dieter Brunnschweiler maintained that the Llanos frontier was not “expanding” at a pace similar to the western frontier of North America, and he concluded: “Colombia does not move eastward behind her eastern frontier.”15

Also North American, I am the first historian to apply Turner’s conception of frontier to the development of the Colombian Llanos. Between 1984 and 1999, I wrote three books that recount the history of the tropical plains from 1531 to 1950. My research substantiates that the line of Spanish settlement es-tablished by the seventeenth century along the edge of the eastern Andean cor-dillera expanded eastward only slightly despite improved health conditions and technology in the early twentieth century that made the tropical lowlands more accessible. As a result, the non-indigenous people who lived in Meta, Casanare,


and Arauca might rightfully be called pioneers, even though they lived on farms or in towns occupied by their families for generations. I agree with the geographers that the Llanos frontier with respect to Co-lombia’s core population in the Andes was until the 1950s characterized by its immobility; however, I also contend that this “immobility” did not keep the region from participating in Colombia’s historical development. Although tra-ditional histories tended to overlook its significance, it was evident that in the colonial period, Casanare was a major supplier of cattle to Boyacá, and that some of its inhabitants took an active part in the Comunero Revolt of 1781. Llaneros played a decisive role in the defeat of the Spanish in the War of Inde-pendence, and Casanare was again a battlefield during the War of the Thou-sand Days (1899–1902). In the 1930s President Alfonso López Pumarejo signaled out the Intendencia del Meta as a key area for development during his so-called Revolución en Marcha. Much of the fighting during La Violencia (1948–64) took place in Meta, Casanare, and Arauca, and one need only to read José Eustacio Rivera’s La Vorágine (Bogotá, 1924) or the poems written by Eduardo Carranza to appreciate the contribution of the Llanos to Colombian literature.16

The Transformation of the Llanos in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century

Defying Brunnschweiler’s prediction that “Colombia does not move eastward behind her eastern frontier,” the second half of the twentieth century saw a sharp turn in national awareness of the significance of the Llanos and espe-cially of the Intendencia del Meta that, thanks to improvements in the Bogotá-Villavicencio highway, had become a major supplier of cattle and agricultural commodities to the vast market in Cundinamarca. Although the Violencia that wracked the Llanos between 1948 and 1953 compelled at least six thousand people to abandon the plains, they were soon replaced by the arrival of sixteen thousand new emigrants fleeing violence in other parts of Colombia. Enticed by modern health measures that reduced the morbidity of the climate and by the opportunity to colonize public lands, these settlers came with the hope of be-ginning a new life for their families.17 By 1972, Meta, elevated to departmental status in 1959, was the fastest growing department in Colombia, registering a population of 261,863, of which 43 percent, or 112,130, resided in Villavicen-cio.18 Improvements during the National Front in territorial administration, land and electronic communication, and planned colonization programs pro-moted population growth in Casanare, Arauca, and Vichada as well. By 1993


the population of the four departments combined had reached 927,683, nearly double the 405,867 inhabitants in 1973. Although this figure accounted for less than 1 percent of Colombia’s total population of 35,886,280, in demography as well as economy the region remained one of the fastest growing sections of the country.19

Frontier Historiography and the Llanos since 1990: The Llanos as a Turnerian Frontier

The increasing significance of the Llanos thanks to the petroleum boom has prompted several Colombian scholars, all of whom were either born in the Lla-nos or have close ties to the plains, to offer new interpretations of the region as a frontier. Five of them, focusing primarily on Meta, have employed varia-tions of the Turnerian definition of “frontier” to interpret the recent history of the department. Other investigators have suggested that all four departments should be regarded as Orinoquia, that is, as a “region” rather than a “frontier,” which encompasses the Llanos of Venezuela as well as those of Colombia, while

N

Vichada

Río

Tomo

Arauca

Orinoco

Guaviare

Meta

SCALE

kilometers

0 100 200 400

~LEGEND~

Río

Río

Río

Río

Meta

Río

Río

LlanosArriba

LlanosArriba

LlanosAbajo

LlanosAbajo

SettlementsCapitalsRiversBoundariesPhysiographic Boundary

SANTANDER

BOYACÁ

ARAUCA

Arauca

VICHADA

META

Villavicencio

PuertoCarreño

BOGOTÁ

TOLIMA

CUNDINAMARCA

CASANARETunja

Guaviare

Río

Map 6.1. The Llanos of Colombia showing the Llanos Arriba and the Llanos Abajo. (Rausch, Tropical Plains Frontier, 3; map by Don Sluter.)


a third group, focusing especially on Arauca and Vichada, proposes exploring Llanos history from the standpoint of an international “frontier” or as a border with Venezuela. The first five (who might be regarded as “neo-Turnerians”) agree on essential points but diverge in their emphasis. In his 1997 book Un pueblo de frontera: Villavicencio, 1840–1940, historian Miguel García Bustamente challenged the traditional view that the Llanos formed a permanent frontier by pointing out that, notwithstanding the geographical difficulty of intercourse between them, the proximity of Villavicencio to Bogotá had from the seventeenth century in-volved a reciprocity characterized by unequal relations between the town and the capital because Villavicencio was dependent politically on Bogotá and its export economy of cattle and food commodities was directed almost exclusively to the national capital.20 In 2003 he further refined his analysis to suggest that the Llanos region as a whole consisted of two different frontiers. For García Bustamante, the piedmont section, or llanos arriba, was a frontera provisoria, or “temporary frontier,” characterized by constant interaction with the highlands, while the grasslands east and north of the piedmont, or the llanos abajo, re-mained a permanent frontier where development has been much slower.21

Anthropologist Nancy Espinel Riveros in her two books, Villavicencio: Dos siglos de historia comunera: 1740–1940 (1997) and Otra mirada a la historia de Villavicencio (2000) has emphasized that Villavicencio (and, by extrapolation, Meta as well) was a frontier from the standpoint of the east as well as the west, for just as it received a constant stream of emigrants from Colombia’s highland departments, it continued to be the western terminal for cattle regularly driven from the northern and far eastern plains of Casanare and Arauca to be sold even-tually in Bogotá. As a result, Villavicencio has been since its founding a mixture of two distinct cultures. The earliest inhabitants, who arrived there before 1940, came primarily from eastern Cundinamarca or Tolima, bringing with them a guate (highland) way of life, while the influx of vaqueros who accompanied their cattle from the east or the llanos abajo left in their wake elements of Llanero culture such as a distinctive type of music, the joropo; folk instrumental trios consisting of harp, cuatro, and maracas; folklore; and food such as mamona.22

Espinel notes that this duality of cultures exists to the present day. On the one hand, the majority of Andean people who come to Villavicencio have no intention of remaining. Imbued with a romantic vision of the Llanos as a land of cowboys and freedom, they regard the city as a jumping off place from which to set forth to claim their fortunes. Such people do not plan to establish roots in the town and show little civic concern for its well-being. On the other hand, for discouraged colonos returning from the llanos abajo, forced off their lands


by guerrilla threats, para-military violence, or economic failure, Villavicencio is a potential gateway to a new life in the highlands.23

Because of this mixture of regional cultures introduced from several high-land departments as well as those that evolved in Arauca and Casanare, Espinel Riveros writes that the ethos of the city is in a process of hybridization, and she adds, “It is necessary to insist that Villavicencio is not the Llano, and the Llano is not Villavicencio. Even though they participate in the same region and maintain mutual and intense relations, they have different commercial and cul-tural geographies.” In her view, Villavicencio has been converted into a human “crucible” in which all these distinctive customs have been mixed:

As a result the city is open to the stranger and the persecuted of what-ever condition. [It is] cosmopolitan in its social composition, multiple and diverse in its creative dynamic, but lacking a defined cultural identity because today it neither personifies the Llano as such, nor reproduces the highland ancestry, nor has it sufficiently assimilated the heterogeneous sub-cultural contributions of the migrants.24

Economist Alberto Baquero Nariño, in El caso Llanero: Villavicencio (1990) and Atavismo y traumaturgia, cosmos del diosonamuto (1996), also describes the phenomenon of a dual frontier, but he substitutes the term frontera interior for García Bustamante’s frontera provisora. Baquero argues that Villavicencio exhib-its the characteristics of a frontera interior because “immigrants pass through the city with little desire to settle in it; residency is impermanent; there is little sub-stantial financial investment in the region, and the inhabitants do not display a sense of civic concern.” Although there are some organizations, such as the Corporación Cívica Sesquicentenario, La Casa de la Cultura, and the Cámara de Comercio, that nurture a collective spirit, Villavicencio lacks a consolidated, directing group of administrators that could implement an economic plan for the city and the department. For more than four decades it has grown without any control or order, a fact that further demonstrates “the lack of an authentic leadership class that understands the urgency of the design of its space in order to avoid the continuation of privilege invoked by pressure groups on specific zones to the detriment of others.”25

In addition, Baquero analyzes the Llanos frontier from a dependency point of view. He argues that although Meta is the center of Llanero economy, since 1950 that economy has been characterized by “savage capitalism,” by which he means that it is dominated by “the continued exportation of economic products and the absence of a real agro-industrial economy that might generate wealth for the region.”26 Twenty percent of the cattle that leave Meta for Bogotá arrive


from hatos located in the piedmont, while 80 percent come from hatos near San Martín and Puerto López. Thus the bulk of the cattle depart from ranches characterized by traditional ranching techniques, absentee landlords, low pay for workers, and the selection of too many female animals to preserve the inven-tory. In short, the “transport of cattle on foot for Bogotá continues to indicate an extractive economy of very little regional value and minimal generation of employment.”27

The situation of rice and African palm production is little better. Domina-tion of these crops by large processing firms, such as Indaruz and Fanagra (a large corporation which produces refined palm oil, margarine, and other indus-trial derivatives), has driven many smaller operations out of business. These giant companies have their headquarters in cities other than Villavicencio, and the taxes they pay do not return to the region. By contrast, sawmills and carpenter and furniture-making shops located in Villavicencio remain technologically backward, and in clear decline throughout the Llanos are small-time processors of cotton, coffee, and cacao. Land tenancy is skewed, with less than 2 percent of the proprietors owning more than 61 percent of the land. According to the Corporación Llanos de Colombia, the economic growth of the plains “has been undervalued and products from the Llanos are regarded as inferior.”28 Llanero cattle slaughtered in Bogotá bring a cheaper price despite the excellent quality of the meat. Rice mills and palm oil processors that acquire raw materials from the Llanos commonly pack them with different names to sell them at higher prices.29

In short, Baquero argues that even as entrepreneurs are transforming the region, the bulk of the resources are going to Bogotá, and the Llanos are locked into a syndrome of an extractive economy that must be broken. To arrest this process of “savage capitalism” and “growth without development,” he suggests that the state needs to create a special development plan for the llano adentro. It should consider a new law on agrarian reform and find easier ways to provide credit for campesinos. In addition, the asymmetric interchange between Bogotá and the Llanos must be corrected, and local leaders must be given more power to take charge of regional development.30

Baquero, writing in 1990, does not consider the impact of the Llanos petro-leum boom in his analysis, but it is evident from the publications of historian Reinaldo Barbosa Estera that first in Arauca and then in Casanare and Meta oil exploitation has been similarly skewed to profit multinational corporations rather than the economic growth of the Llanos. The plains have a proven reserve of 500 million barrels of oil, but in those locations where it has been extracted, petroleum taxes have not fulfilled the promise of generating the expected lo-


cal revenues. Using the example of Caño Limón to calculate the economic and social benefits that oil has generated in Arauca, Barbosa affirms, “Not only has the resource been squandered, but efforts to capitalize on the investment have placed the department in debt by imposing a deduction on its incomes that will surely remain for a long time.” This situation has occurred because of the lack of orderly, intelligent, and objective planning. Barbosa further asserts that the deci-sion by the Ministerio de Minas y Energía to hand over the pipelines to a multi-national company for ninety-nine years “can be seen as a rebirth of colonialism.”31

Unlike the previous four scholars, who focus their attention primarily on the department of Meta, economist Fredy Preciado has concentrated his investiga-tions on exploring the reasons for Casanare’s arrested development—a lack of growth that is especially striking when compared with the rapid change occur-ring in nearby Meta—and he offers a solution. Conceding that the exploita-tion of oil in Casanare has only reinforced its position of dependency, Preciado proposes “endogenous development” as a strategy to combat this situation. By “endogenous development” he means strengthening local resources and empow-ering the local community in order to counteract the economic model based on extraction and exploitation.32 To enable endogenous development in Casa-nare, Preciado lays out a five-point plan. First, local micro-business individuals must use their expertise to produce products that can compete in regional and national markets. Second, universities, institutes, and colegios must adopt pro-grams that will endow local entrepreneurs with the knowledge to make neces-sary innovations. Third, it is essential to foster local values and institutions to support this development. Fourth, local administrators should create enterprise zones favorable to production and business development. And finally, to sustain local development, attention must be paid to Casanare’s specific environmental potentials and limitations.33

Preciado points out that the success of this method of economic develop-ment requires the participation of public and private actors and the construc-tion of appropriate institutions that will sustain growth. In the context of the Llanos, endogenous development is a necessity rather than an option, since given the current situation, any initiative or development imposed from above is destined to be suffocated. For that reason, Preciado concludes:

The stimulation of civil society, the creation from below of spaces for dis-cussion, the creation of mechanism for debate, discussion, and expression of different objectives about the use of political and economic income, appear as a fundamental step to favoring over the long term a greater capacity for economic initiatives by local actors.34


The Llanos as a Region

While for many academics some variation of the Turnerian concept of frontier is still relevant, in the 1990s others increasingly employed the term “Orinoquia” when referring to the Llanos Orientales. The name “Orinoquia” suggests a re-gion rather than a frontier, and the “region” is frequently expanded to encompass the entire Orinoco river basin, including the Llanos of Venezuela. In rejecting the Turner idea of “frontier,” these scholars are perhaps unconsciously mirror-ing a trend adopted by the so-called New Historians of the western United States. For example, Donald Worster has argued that Turner’s emphasis on a “process rather than a fixed geographical region” started “historians down a muddy, slippery road that ultimately leads to a swamp.”35 Instead, he suggests,

RíoVichada

Río

Río

Río

Río

Río

Río

Casanare

Arauca

ApureOrinoco

Guaviare

Meta

Villavicencio

N

SCALE

kilometers

0 100 200

META

APURE

VICHADACASANARE

GUÁRICO

BARINAS

MONAGAS

ANZOÁTEGUI

COJEDES

PORTUGUESA

ARAUCA

Caracas

Bogotá

Capitals

Cities

Rivers

National Boundaries

Department/State Boundaries

~LEGEND~

Valencia

CuidadBolívar


VENEZUELA

Map 6.2. The region of Orinoquia. (Adapted from Parsons, “Europeanization of the Savanna Lands of Northern South America,” 272.)


the North American West should be seen as a geographic region, just as the South and Midwest are regarded as regions. In looking at the West, historians should first examine “how a people or peoples acquired a place, and then, how they perceived and tried to make use of it.” Next, they must identify the survival techniques the newcomers adopted, their patterns of work and economy, and their social relationships. Finally, Worster calls for studies that encompass the region’s “total history,” including grazing and irrigation activities that have con-tributed to its uniqueness.36

For Colombian historians, the study of regions has been a more traditional approach than that of regarding peripheral areas as “frontiers,” for it is a meth-odology fostered by the broken geography of the country. In his classic study of Spanish American independence, John Lynch describes New Granada on the eve of the revolution as a “conglomeration of regions, isolated from each other by mountains, jungles, plains and rivers,” and David Bushnell’s survey of modern Colombian history emphasizes that because of the survival of these regions, Colombia still lacks “a true national identity or proper spirit of nation-alism, at least compared to most of its Latin American neighbors.”37 It is likely that Lynch and Bushnell would agree that not all Colombian regions are equal. Throughout Colombia’s history, Cundinamarca, Antioquia, Cauca, and Atlán-tico have dominated the country both in terms of political power and historiog-raphy. Compared to the vast amount of research concerning these departments, studies of Orinoquia lag far behind. As mentioned earlier, the meeting of the 1st Simposio de Historia de los Lla-nos Colombo-Venezolanos in Villavicencio on August 10–13, 1988 marked the beginning of a new movement to explore and preserve the history of Orinoquia. It was at this meeting that Omar Baquero and Luis Yesid Andoval issued a call for a regional history of the Llanos. They pointed out that with some notable exceptions, previous studies were “global descriptions” drawn largely from sec-ondary sources, particularistic accounts of local topics, or exalted biographies of individual heroes, especially those associated with the wars of independence. What was lacking, they argued, which would provide the building blocks of a true regional history, was systematic research that addressed essential themes such as the development of capitalist agriculture, the oil boom, guerrilla war-fare, the presence of drugs, colonization, and the relationship with neighboring nations—Brazil and Venezuela.38

In 1991 the editors of Caribabare, the journal of the Centro de Historia de Casanare, published Hermes Tovar Pinzón’s wide-ranging essay “La Historia regional como Problema y como Programa de la Historia Nacional.” Origi-nally presented at a 1981 conference in Ibague, Tolima, the essay reinforced the


points made by Baquero and Yesid. Tovar Pinzón stated that since 1982, con-ferences had been held in several Colombian cities devoted to regional history, but despite the plethora of papers on a variety of subjects, greater effort was required to create authentic regional history. In determining what constitutes a region, Tovar Pinzón proposed the following guidelines: (1) the region is a ma-trix of geo-historical problems; (2) the region is a unique entity and not like any other region; (3) the region is a living unit, changing and dynamic and not fixed and immobile in time or space; (4) the region is a source of identity and cultural affirmation; (5) the region is part of a greater territory that may be called an audiencia, viceroyalty, or nation, that is, the region is and will always be part of a whole; and (6) the region generates a consciousness that expresses itself in regionalism. Tovar Pinzón concludes, “Such ties of solidarity of regionalism do not constitute an obstacle in themselves but are contingent on the completion of projects of integration and the formation of the nation.”39

The concept of Orinoquia as a region appears to fulfill the requirements set out by Tovar Pinzón. In the late 1980s Bogotá officials increasingly used the term “Orinoquia” when they referred to the Llanos, a change underscored by President Virgilio Barco’s decision to create the Corpes Orinoquia to serve as an agency to promote development not only in the plains but also in Guaviare, Vaupés, and Guainía in Amazonia. (The latter three territories were included because their commerce was solely with towns in the Llanos and not with other parts of Amazonia.) The Corpes Orinoquia had its offices first in Arauca City from 1989 to 1994, and then in Villavicencio from 1995 to 2000. During these twelve years it in-vested, in U.S. dollars, $40 million in Arauca, $20 million in Casanare, and $10 million in Meta, and directed funds generated by oil production in Arauca to building public works in the Amazon territories.40 The existence of Corpes Orinoquia promoted common affinities between the Llanos departments and thus contributed to the developing sense of regionalism. In 2003 Leonel Pérez Bareño, a former director of DAINCO and the Corpes Orinoquia, made a strong case not just for writing a history of Orinoquia, but for the actual recog-nition of the region as a political entity. In a paper presented at the VIII Simposio Internacional de la Historia de los Llanos Colombo-Venezolanos, Pérez argued that five factors supported the dismantling of the four Llanos departments and their amalgamation into a single administrative unit. First, the region had cultural, sociological, and geo-graphical homogeneity. Second, its division into departments, being very recent, was not firmly established. Third, there existed an indisputable capital city—Villavicencio. Fourth, there was an abundance of royalties from petroleum


to support the change. And fifth, during the last sixty years, Orinoquia was the only Colombian region that had had experience with supra-departmental forms of government in the form of DAINCO and Corpes Orinoquia.41 Pérez bolstered his argument by emphasizing the strategic value of Orinoquia to the Colombian nation. In addition to its important petroleum production and high indices of demographic growth, the region offered great agricultural, ranching, and forest potential. It shared an extensive international border with Venezuela and had a base for educational institutions. “Thus, Orinoquia constitutes a clear possibility to test (ensayar) a new country (país), through decentralized formu-las that would give autonomy and responsibility to its communities.”42

Although Pérez went on to outline the specific constitutional changes nec-essary to create Orinoquia as an administrative region, his plan does not seem to have garnered support from congress in Bogotá, but the goal of promoting the historical study of Orinoquia as a Colombian region and as a region that includes the Venezuelan plains has consistently had more appeal. At the same 2003 symposium in Villavicencio, Alberto Baquero noted that setting aside the artificial international border, there was no natural division between the Co-lombian and Venezuelan portions of Orinoquia that shared much of the same environment, culture, and economy. He called for solidarity between Llanero historians of both countries as they sought to create the image (ideario) of the “País del Orinoco.”43 Since 2003, three more international symposia have been held: Villavicencio (2006), Barinas (2008), and Támara (2010). These (and other like meetings) have allowed scholars to exchange ideas, affirm academic ties, and forge friendships as they study what might be termed “Greater-Orino-quia,” and there is evidence that at least in Colombia, the term “Orinoquia” is slowly supplanting the traditional name of the region, “los Llanos Orientales.”44

The Llanos as an International Frontier

In ordinary conversation, the Spanish word frontera means “boundary, border, or limit.” Academics such as Baquero Nariño and Perez Bareño may dream of a “greater-Orinoquia” that transcends national boundaries, but the significance of the international border between Colombia and Venezuela is a reality that cannot easily be dismissed. Since the 1990s renewed recognition of its presence has opened up another way to conceptualize the Llanos—as an international frontier.45

Thanks to its location in the northwest corner of South America, Colombia borders four other countries besides Venezuela—Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Panama—yet since winning its independence from Spain, Bogotá in the high

RíoVichada

RíoRíoRío

Río

Río

Río

Río

Río

Río

Río

Río

Río

Río

Río

Tomo

Campanaparo

Arauca

Apure

UrbanteSarare

Orinoc

o

OrinocoGuaviare

Inirida

Guainía

VENEZUELA

C a r i b b e a n S e a Gulf of Venezuela

LakeMaracaibo

COLOMBIA

BRAZIL

San Antonio

El Amparo

Nuevo Antioquia

Guajira

Peninsula

Puerto Carreño

Arauquita

Cúcuta

Tibu

Puerto Ayacucho

YavitaPinichin

San Fernandode Atabapo

Río

Negro

Meta

N

SCALE

kilometers

0 200 400

Arauca

Map 6.3. The border between Colombia and Venezuela as established by the Treaty of 1941. (Rausch, Colombia, 85; map by Don Sluter.)


Andes has paid scant attention to the regions that lie along these lines. Even af-ter this policy of abandonment contributed to the secession of Panama in 1902 and the near loss of Leticia to Peru in 1932, successive governments did little to support the thinly populated, peripheral lowlands beyond reconstituting their status as national territories.46

The elevation of the remaining national territories to departments under the Constitution of 1991 reflected a belated recognition of their strategic im-portance, and on June 23, 1995, Congress attempted to redress past neglect by decreeing Law 191, known as the Ley de Fronteras. The object of the law was “to establish a special rule for the frontier zones in order to promote and facili-tate their economic, social scientific, technological and cultural development.”47 More specifically, the law requires state action in these areas to protect human rights, strengthen processes of integration and cooperation between Colombia and its neighbors, create conditions to support economic development, improve local infrastructure to support the integration of the frontier zones into the national and international economy, provide essential services such as telecom-munications, electricity, education, and health, preserve natural resources, and pursue cooperation with neighboring states to provide security and fight inter-national crime. In order to obtain these objectives and to be consistent with the principle of decentralization embraced by the Constitution of 1991, the law permits gov-ernors and mayors of frontier departments and municipios to carry out trea-ties with corresponding authorities on the other side of the border to foster cooperation for the development of public services, community welfare, and preservations of the environment. Law 191 directly effects the departments of Arauca and Vichada, for they border on the Venezuelan states of Táchira, Barinas, Apure, Bolívar, and the Federal Territory of Amazonas, but because the line is really an artificial divi-sion that cuts through the center of Orinoquia, there has always been great affinity between the mestizos and the Amerindians who live on either side of it (see map 6.3). Over decades social, economic, cultural, and family relations have created a common identity, and with the absence of a strong state presence on either side, the border itself had little meaning. Given the lack of highways to the east, Venezuela was the natural market for cattle and other products produced in Arauca and Vichada, and Venezuelans accounted for the bulk of the population in Arauca City and Puerto Carreño. The inauguration on Sep-tember 6, 1967, of the José Antonio Páez Bridge, which spans the Arauca River to link the Colombia town of Arauca with El Amparo in Venezuela, under-


scored the interrelationship between the two towns as well as the two nations.48 Luis Serrano Reyes, a reporter for El Tiempo who witnessed the ceremony, wrote, “Nationality is blurred in these two cities that have enjoyed a cordial interchange for many years, complementing, supporting and trading with each other.”49

In the 1990s the spread of oil exploration and the tendency of Colombian guerrillas to seek safe haven in Venezuela have awakened Bogotá to the need to pay more attention to its eastern border. Responding to a joint initiative by the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and the Universidad Central of Venezuela, Congress by virtue of Law 191 ordered the Escuela Superior de Administración Pública (ESAP) to carry out a study of the “international frontier reality” and “to offer recommendations that might improve the quality of life of the people resident on Colombia’s international frontier.” ESAP chose to focus on Vi-chada, and the result was the publication in 2010 of Apropiación de instrumentos fronterizos por parte de actores locales y su proceso de internacionalización: El caso del departamento del Vichada, by Wilson Ladino Orjuela and Pedro Duarte Moreno. The purpose of the Ladino-Duarte study was to “deepen knowledge of one of the sections of the extensive and complex international frontier of Colombia with Venezuela” and to investigate one of the least known segments, that is, the Department of Vichada and its interactions with the Venezuelan states of Apure, Bolívar, and Amazonas. After tracing the history of Vichada since the Spanish conquest, Ladino and Duarte show that until the 1970s its population was overwhelmingly Native American. The tiny mestizo element was concen-trated in the principal city, Puerto Carreño, and traditional economic activities involved the extraction of rubber and other natural products, ranching, and contraband. In the 1990s Corpes Orinoquia devised several plans for the integration of region along the Colombo-Venezuela border. The strategy for Vichada chosen by the Álvaro Uribe Vélez administration (2002–10) focused on extending Co-lombian presence in the department, defense of national territory, combating illicit drugs and organized crime, establishing a local economic base, promoting human rights, fortifying community awareness, and promoting international cooperation. This plan took into account the cooperation of ECOPETROL as it continued exploration for oil.50

Ladino and Duarte found that between 1993 and 2005, Vichada’s popula-tion increased from 36,336 to 44,592, with most of the growth coming from migration of mestizos from other parts of Colombia. The department was di-vided into four municipios: Puerto Carreño (the capital), La Primavera, Santa


Rosalia, and Cumaribo, the latter town showing the greatest growth. In addi-tion there were forty-six legally recognized Indian resguardos. Economic activi-ties continued to be agriculture and ranching, but coca cultivation was extend-ing along the Guaviare River. Across the border, Apure had a population of 337,756; Bolívar, 1,214,464; and Amazonas, 70,464. The latter, with its capital Puerto Ayacucho on the Orinoco River, had an economy similar to Vichada based on agriculture, ranching, and mining.51

Throughout the twentieth century the border was not well defined, as Co-lombian ranchers owned hatos in Apure, Bolívar, or Amazonas and vice versa. The population of Puerto Carreño included citizens of both nationalities and was characterized by a low level of education. In the 1990s, when the bolívar was strong in relation to the peso, Venezuelans crossed the border to buy food, shoes, and leather articles in Puerto Carreño, but since 2000, because of pro-grams established by the late Hugo Chávez, the situation has been reversed. Food, fuel, and construction materials are cheaper in Venezuela, and Colombi-ans visit Puerto Ayacucho with the object of buying these items.52

The development of drug trafficking has prompted both Colombia and Ven-ezuela to strengthen their military presence on the border. In recent years, the stationing of outposts of the army, police, and national armada on the Colom-bian side and the National Guard and the Cuerpo Técnico de Policía Judicial (PTJ), Venezuela’s largest national police agency, on its side have increased tensions between the two nationalities.53 Television programs broadcast from Caracas and Bogotá have contributed to hardening stereotypes. For the Ven-ezuelans, Colombians are the source of violence, drug trafficking, and para-militarism, while Colombians believe that royalties from petroleum permit the Venezuelans a more comfortable lifestyle.54

The Chávez government proposed a number of projects that would tie Vi-chada even more closely to neighboring Venezuelan states. These plans include the building of a railroad from San Cristóbal to Maturín, the construction of two bridges over the Orinoco River, the establishment of cement factories, the building of plants to produce and assemble heavy machinery for mining, the drilling of new oil wells, and the development of the petrochemical industry in general. These proposals reflect the asymmetrical relationship between the Vene-zuelan and Colombian segments of Orinoquia. Although treaties have been made and signed, they remain formalities, for in its situation as a much under-developed frontier, Vichada lacks functional political institutions to implement them. Based on their interviews with local inhabitants, Ladino and Duarte sug-gest that in spite of renewed efforts by the Colombian government, Vichada


lacks the necessary infrastructure to function effectively as a department. Like-wise the municipios are in no position to carry out the activities expected of them under the provisions of Ley 191. Poverty, low population density, and an absence of public services are characteristic. In many spheres such as electricity, local governments are almost completely dependent on their connection with Venezuelan services. Native Americans, lacking leadership and protection, are slowly migrating to the Venezuelan side of the border, and many mestizos are eager to acquire Venezuelan citizenship, though that status is much more dif-ficult to achieve now than in the past.55

To offset these disadvantages, Ladino and Duarte recommend that the gov-ernment adopt a long-term policy of development—if Colombia is to maintain its hold on this important section of its frontier territory. Among other steps, it should establish educational institutions in the municipios, support the for-mation of competent administrators, and promote agreements between local Colombian and Venezuelan governments to establish a binational agenda that would fortify the ties between the local authorities.56

Apropriation de instrumentos fronterizos is a pioneering study of the Llanos as an “international frontier,” and it suggests that this will be an important ap-proach for historians in the future. Given the spread of globalization and the not-always-tranquil diplomacy between the Uribe Vélez and Juan Manuel San-tos regimes with the Bolivarian under Hugo Chávez, a clearer understanding of the history and current situation of the people who live along the Colombo-Venezolano border appears to be one of the most pressing projects awaiting academic study.

Conclusion

Since the mid-twentieth century, under the impact of modernization, the pied-mont areas of the Llanos Orientales have changed almost beyond recognition while the llanos abajo continue to languish in their traditional state. Academic study of the Llanos Orientales has also made great strides. The frontier model has diversified, and each of its manifestations—neo-Turnerian, region, and international frontier—offer valid insights about the plains and suggest com-parisons that might be made with other South American peripheral areas. The proliferation of universities in Orinoquia offer the hope that newly minted his-torians and graduates in other disciplines will take on the challenge of increas-ing and deepening understanding of the history of this region that so captured the imagination of Luis Eduardo Nieto Caballero in 1935 and continues to fascinate even the most casual tourist.

Glossary

altiplano: highlandbandolerismo: banditrybañadera: tank used to disinfect cattlebascule: weighing of animals to be slaughteredbulto: measure of weight equal to 140 poundscabacillero: rancher worker in charge of organizing horsescachilapeo: rustling by changing the brand on a steercachiporro: derisive epithet for Liberalcamino de herradura: unpaved roadcapitanía: band of Indianscaporal: foreman on a roundupcarga: originally the capacity of a pack mule weighing 125 kilograms,

currently the capacity of a truckcarretera: highwaycaserío: hamletcédula: identity card verifying Colombian citizenshipchiquichiqui: palm tree fiber used by Indians to make cord, baskets, and hatschulavitas: derogatory name given to conservatively oriented policemen

during the Violencia who were sent to persecute Liberals or other alleged subversives

chusma: rabblecolegio: high schoolcoleo: a man on horseback throwing a bull by grabbing its tail.comisaría especial: territorial division less important than an intendancycompadre: godparentconcejal: member of a municipal councilconcertado: contract worker

conoquero: small landholder owning no cattlecontrabandista: smugglercorregimiento: districtcorrido: typical Llanero song with verses in the style of the Mexican corrida

that recorded events of the popular insurrectioncuatrero: cattle thiefDAS: Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, the agency created

in 1953 to handle matters of intelligence, security, and constitutional enforcement

degüello: tax placed on slaughtering of cattleECOPETROL: Empresa Colombiana de Petroleos, the government

petroleum corporation founded in 1951.ELN: Ejército de Liberación Nacional, the guerrilla movement begun in the

Department of Santander in 1964entrega: surrenderescuela hogar: boarding school established by missionaries for native childrenFARC: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, the oldest and largest

of guerrilla movements, formed in 1964ferrocarril: railroadfinca: small farmfrigorífico: plants designed to freeze meat from slaughtered cattlefundación: ranch with three hundred to one thousand head of cattlegamonal: local bossganadero: rancherguarnición de fuera: border garrisonguate: characteristic not of the Llanos but of the Andean highlandshato: ranch with more than one thousand cattleINCORA: Institución Colombiana de la Reforma Agraria, the institution

created in 1961 to undertake agricultural reforminforme: reportjoropo: dance accompanied by harp, cuatro, and maracas, characteristic of the

Llanoslatifundista: owner of a large estatellanos arriba: piedmont zone of the plainsllanos abajo: open plains lying east of the piedmontmamona: typical Llanero dish of roasted beefmanzana: street blockmañoco: yucca flourmatadero: slaughterhouse

Glossary148

mayordomo: overseer of an hato or haciendamemoria: annual reportmetense: inhabitant of the department of Metamunicipio: township or countypárroco: parish priestpersonería juridical: legal incorporationpistolero: armed gangsterQuinquenio: term applied to five-year rule of Rafael Reyes (1904–9)reducción: native settlement converted to Christianityresguardo: reservation set aside for Indiansrevancha: revengesaca: roundup of cattleSATENA: Servicio de Aeronavegación de las Territorios Nacionales, the

official air service created in 1962 to serve the national territoriesSCADTA: Sociedad Colombo-Alemana de Transportes Aereos, founded in

1919, was Colombia’s first airline to offer regularly scheduled service.selva: forestterrateniente: large landholdertierra baldía: public landtonelado: tontroche: trailvaquero: cowboyveguero: small farmer and fisherman who might also own some cattlevereda: small hamletvisitador: inspector

Glossary 149

Abbreviations Used in Notes and Bibliography

AGN Archivo General Histórico, BogotáBMIJ Biblioteca Ministerio de Interior y de JusticiaDAINCO Departamento Administrativo de Intendencias y ComisaríasDANE Departamento Administrativo Nacional de EstadísticaDIC Departamento de Intendencias y ComisaríasDTN Departamento de Territorios NacionalesISG Boyacá, Informe del Secretario de GobiernoMMG Memorias del Ministerio de GobiernoNHC Nueva Historia de Colombia

Notes

Preface

1. Pérez, “Reflexiones sobre Tendencias en las Investigaciones de la Historia Llanera,” Manirigua (Villavicencio) 1, no. 5 (August–September 2011): 11. In 1991 García Busta-mante and Torres Posada published Guía y diagnóstico general de los archivos municipales, notariales y parroquiales del Departamento del Meta (Bogotá: Colciencias, Colcultura, Unil-lanos, 1991).

Chapter 1. The Llanos Frontier on the Eve of La Violencia

Epigraph source: Nieto Caballero, Vuelo al Orinoco, 124, 128.1. The most complete study of the various native tribes of the Llanos can be found in

Introducción a la Colombia Amerindia.2. Rausch, Colombia, 9.3. Ibid.4. Blydenstein, “Tropical Savanna Vegetation,” 13.5. Franco, Historia de Orocué, 196–97; Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,”

172–73.6. Gibson, Constitutions of Colombia, 185–86.7. Diario Oficial 6, no. 1808, February 1, 1870; Memorias del Ministerio del Gobierno

(hereafter cited as MMG), 1874, 51.8. Gibson, Constitutions of Colombia, 314.9. Ibid., 315.10. Plazas Olarte, Territorios nacionales, 141–42.11. The text of the Concordat of 1887 is reprinted in Vázquez Carrizosa, Concordato de

Colombia.12. Rausch, Colombia, 16. Within the organization of the Catholic Church an apostolic

vicar is a bishop or priest with jurisdiction over an unorganized territory that is not yet ready to be a full diocese. An apostolic prefect is a priest who heads a missionary area even less developed than that of a vicariate. If a prefecture grows and flourishes, it is elevated to

an apostolic vicariate. The usual sequence of development is mission, prefecture, vicariate, and diocese.

13. The complete text of the Convention on Missions of 1902 can be found in Vázquez Carrizosa, Concordato de Colombia, 165–73.

14. Londoño, Integración del territorio colombiano, 340–42.15. Diario Oficial 41, no. 12,276, February 11, 1905; 42, no. 12,597, March 16, 1906.16. Ibid. 43, no. 13,004, July 17, 1907.17. MMG, 1922, LXIX–LXXII. Recent research on the policies of the Quinquenio has

produced a more positive view of Reyes’s efforts at territorial reform. Historian Ricardo Motta has argued that in his search for an ideal territorial configuration for the repub-lic, Reyes was trying to resolve a problem that continues to challenge governments of the twenty-first century. See Motta Vargas, Ordenamiento Territorial, 129.

18. MMG, 1910, II.19. Ibid.20. Boyacá, Informe del Gobernador de Boyacá, 4.21. Londoño, Integración del territorio colombiano, 347. In addition to Vichada and

Arauca, six more comisarías were created: Caquetá, Putumayo, La Guajira, Vaupés, Juradó, and Urabá. All endured except Juradó and Urabá, which were both reunited with Antioquia.

22. Uribe, Reforma administrativa, 575.23. Conferencias episcopales de Colombia, vol. 1, 1908–1953, 263–66.24. Rausch, Colombia, 26.25. Olaya Herrera, “Mensaje presidencial,” July 20, 1931, 9.26. Rausch, Colombia, 27.27. Informe, Jefe de la Sección 3, in MMG, 1932, anexo 49.28. SCADTA (Sociedad Colombo-Alemana de Transportes Aéreos) was formed in

1919 with a capital investment supplied by Colombians and Germans. The first flights be-gan in 1921. SCADTA provided air service to the Llanos until the 1940, when with the ap-proach of World War II, Pan American Airlines, which had already taken over SCADTA’s international flights, dismissed all Germans still working for the airline and changed its name to AVIANCA. See Davis, Historical Dictionary of Colombia, 468.

29. Informe, Director of Intendancies and Comisarías (hereafter cited as DIC), in MMG, 1935, 2:5.

30. Rausch, Colombia, 45.31. See, for example, Osterling, Democracy in Colombia, 81; Molina, Ideas liberales en

Colombia 3:11–13; Zuleta Angel, Presidente López Pumarejo, 11–12; Romoli, “López of Co-lombia,” 46–50.

32. Rueda Vargas and González Escobar, Intendencias y comisarías, 3–5; Gibson, Consti-tutions of Colombia, 364.

33. De Roux, “Iglesia colombiana,” 517–51; Vázquez Carrizosa, Concordato de Colombia, 259–63.

34. Bushnell, Colombia, 193.35. Santos, “Mensaje del presidente,” 1942, 489.36. Herring, History of Latin America, 554.37. After an unsuccessful coup against him on July 10 by some disgruntled military of-

Notes to Pages 7–14154

ficers further impaired López’s credibility and widened the breach between moderate and left-wing Liberals, the president tendered his resignation on July 31, 1945, leaving his min-ister of foreign affairs, Alberto Lleras Camargo, to finish out his term until August 7, 1946. See Rausch, Colombia, 102–3.

38. The complete text of Decree 2451 can be found in Plazas Olarte, Territorios nacio-nales, 227–40.

39. Informe, Departamento de Territorios Nacionales (hereafter cited as DTN), in MMG, 1944, 250; ibid., in MMG, 1947, 121.

40. Jiménez Cohen, “Problemas de los Llanos Orientales,” 39.41. Colombia, Censo general de la población, 1938; Informe, Director de DTN, June 1945,

in MMG, 1945, 130.42. Roca Castellanos, Diez luces, 91; Informe, Comisario Especial (CE) of Vichada, in

MMG, 1941, 143.43. Roca Castellanos, Diez luces, 225; Informe, DIC, in MMG, 1935, 209.44. Rozo G, Cien años, 155.45. Nieto Caballero, Vuelo al Orinoco, 116; El Tiempo, February 28, 1936.46. Eco de Oriente, February 3, 1938.47. The natives gathered tonka beans from trees that grew along the banks of the rivers.

Also known as sarrapia, the beans were really long seeds contained within an almond-like fruit that was prized by American and European pharmaceutical companies for its use in making perfume. See Munar, “Vichada,” 21.

48. Informe, CE of Vichada, in MMG, 1944, 293.49. Jiménez Cohen, “Problemas de los Llanos Orientales,” 37–40.50. Observing this animosity, Nieto Caballero wrote, “There is bad feeling between the

whites and the Indians. . . . For the Llanero the Indian is not a human being; he is an animal just the same as a lazy bear or a swift jaguar. With that mind-set hunting Indians becomes a sport where it should be an abomination.” See Vuelo al Orinoco, 234.

51. Fernández and Granados, Obra civilizadota de la Iglesia en Colombia, 497–99.52. Rausch, Llanos Frontier in Colombian History, 286, 264.53. Informe, DTN, in MMG, 1943, 170; Informe, Director de Policia Nacional, in MMG,

1947, 19–20.54. Informe, CE of Arauca, in MMG, 1947, 154.55. El Tiempo, November 22, 1946.56. Informe, CE of Arauca, in MMG, 1947, 157.57. Informe del Jefe de la Oficina Nacional de Identificación Electoral, MMG, 1946, 95;

Informe del Jefe de la Sección Primaria (Negocios Generales), MMG, 1946, 88.58. Colombia, Censo de 1928, Censo de 1951.59. When the Comisaría of Vichada was created in 1913, its capital was located at El

Picacho, a small village at the convergence of the Orinoco and Meta rivers. In 1934 the town was renamed after Pedro María Carreño, minister of foreign relations from 1912 to 1913.

60. Informe, Jefe de la Sección Primeria (Negocios Generales), June 10, 1946, MMG, 1946, 86–87.

61. Congressional elevation of the intendancy of Chocó to a department in 1947 encour-aged officials in Meta to press for a similar designation, but Congress rebuffed the efforts

Notes to Pages 14–22 155

begun in 1943 by intendant Alfonso Rojas, probably because the population did not reach the seventy thousand people required for departmental status and Meta’s budget was too small to offer the services and programs that the change would have required. See Informe, Intendant of Meta, MMG, 1943, 164–65; Rausch, From Frontier Town to Metropolis, 113.

62. Medina R., Boyacá, 18–19; 184.63. Plazas Olarte, Territorios nacionales, 210.64. Medina R., Boyacá, 111, 165.65. Revista de Misiones 7, no. 77 (October 1931): 449.66. Ayape, “Misiones de Casanare,” 787.67. Informe, Prefect of Casanare, 1938, in Boyacá, Informe del Secretario de Gobierno al

Señor Gobernador del Departamento (hereafter cited as ISG), 1939. 57.68. Ibid., 1938, ISG, 1939, 72–73.69. Ibid., 1939, ISG, 1940, 45–48.70. Ibid., 50.71. Ibid., 1938, ISG, 1939, 69–70.72. Boyacá, Dirección de Educación, Informe rendido al gobernador del departamento

(Tunja, 1942), 11.73. Informe, Prefect of Casanare, 1939, ISG, 1940, 74.74. Informe del Médico Oficial, ISG, 1940, 149.75. Medina R., Geografía económica 3:439–40.76. Plazas Olarte, Territorios nacionales, 202–5.77. Franco, Historia de Orocué, 195. 78. Ibid. 197. This assessment by Franco is supported by Padre Gregorio Garavito, of

the Montfort Missionaries in Meta, who wrote in 1961, “Until 1937 there were llaneros in Meta, their character defended by the insurmountable barrier of the Cordillera Oriental that isolated them from the interior. The Llanero of that time . . . lived on meat, was tanned by the tropical sun, strengthened by cattle or agricultural work, of patriarchal simplicity, high independence, honorable in every way, who did not need to sign documents to fulfill his promises. See Gregorio Garavito, “Potencial Humano del Departamento Del Meta, Vil-lavicencio, October 23, 1961,” in Archivo Templete.

79. El Tiempo, September 21, 1946.80. Informe, Director of the Nacional Policia, MMG, 1947, 19–20.81. The points raised by Plazas Olarte are very similar to those previous noted by Jimé-

nez Cohen regarding Vichada.82. Plazas Olarte, Territorios nacionales, 209–1383. Ramsey, Revolución campesina, 139.

Chapter 2. The Violencia and Its Impact on the Llanos, 1946–1953

1. The literature on La Violencia is immense and constantly expanding. In his recent doctoral dissertation, Villanueva Martínez reviewed eighty-two books and articles written about La Violencia between 1950 and 2009 classifying them as to type of production (i.e., works by academics, politicians, combatants, novelists, etc.), periods of publication, and contributions by genre. See his “Guadalupe Salcedo,” 1–60.


2. Chulavita is a small town in Boyacá whose inhabitants were known for their fiercely Conservative loyalty. Many of the men recruited for the new police force came from this region, and the term came to mean any Conservative-oriented officials or individuals who were sent to persecute Liberals. See Davis, Historical Dictionary, 137.

3. Kline, Colombia: Portrait of Unity, 49.4. Osterling, Democracy in Colombia, 91. After Gómez suffered a life-threatening heart

attack in October 1951, he appointed Roberto Urdaneta Arbeláez as acting president, but he continued to control the government from his sickbed. See Henderson, Modernization in Colombia, 352.

5. Dix, Colombia, 370.6. Bushnell, Colombia, 222.7. Rausch, Colombia, 128.8. In 1942 they cast 1,008 ballots for López and just 43 for his conservative opponent,

Carlos Arango Vélez. In 1946, of the 560 ballots recorded, 476 went to Liberal candidates Gaitán and Turbay, with Conservative Mariano Ospina Pérez receiving 84. See Rausch, Colombia, 154.

9. Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio, 205.10. Support for Conservatives was undoubtedly influenced by the important role played

by the Monfortian missionaries in Meta from the beginning of the twentieth century.11. El Tiempo, December 21, 1946.12. El Tiempo, October 8, 1947.13. El Siglo, October 8, 1947; El Tiempo, October 9, 1947.14. El Tiempo, September 16, 1947; September 18, 1947.15. Sharpless, Gaitán of Colombia, 161.16. Junco Velosa, Fraude y la Violencia, 103.17. Casas Aguilar, La Violencia, 26.18. El Tiempo, September 20, December 27, 1946.19. Ibid., September 20, 22, November 13, 20, 25, 26, December 18, 1946, February 2,

13, March 18, 22, April 10, June 1, 1947.20. Ibid., February 4, 1949.21. Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio, 182.22. El Liberal, April 18, 1949; El Liberal, April 19, 1948.23. Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio, 182.24. Ibid.25. Ramsey, “Modern Violence in Colombia,” 195. See also Guzmán Campos, Fals

Borda, and Umaña Luna, La Violencia en Colombia 1:174–77.26. Casas Aguilar, La Violencia, 37.27. Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio, 185.28. Franco, Historia de Orocué, 198.29. El Liberal, May 4, 1949. Congressional elections were originally scheduled for Oc-

tober 1948, but after the Bogotazo, President Ospina postponed them to June 1949 as a measure to reduce political tension. See Henderson, Modernization in Colombia, 316.

30. El Tiempo, June 7, 1949.31. El Liberal, June 16, 1949; El Tiempo, July 18, 1949.


32. El Tiempo, August 5, October 12, 14, 1949.33. Villanueva’s dissertation was published in 2011 by the Universidad Nacional de Co-

lombia. Because I conducted my research before the book appeared, my references are to his original dissertation.

34. Henderson, Modernization, 319–21.35. Oquist, Violence, 201.36. Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio, 189. Silva was tried on two occasions for his actions and

sentenced to five years in prison. In May 1951 he was permitted to go into exile in Guate-mala. See El Siglo, May 15, 1951.

37. Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,” 108.38. Guzmán Campos, Fals Borda, and Umaña Luna, La Violencia 1:62.39. Oquist, Violence, 202.40. Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio, 187.41. Oquist, Violence, 203.42. Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,” 131.43. El Siglo, October 21, 1951, July 11, 1952.44. Casas Aguilar, “Violencia en Casanare,” 409–10.45. Oquist, Violence, 204.46. Franco Isaza, Guerrillas del llano, 184–85; Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Sal-

cedo,” 146.47. Giraldo Castaño, Colonización, 107.48. Casas Aguilar, “Violencia en Casanare,” 410.49. For a complete list of the demands, see Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,”

136.50. Oquist, Violence, 206.51. Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,” 34.52. Ibid., 148.53. Franco, Historia de Orocué, 204–10.54. Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,” 150.55. Henderson, Modernization, 356–67.56. The entire letter is reprinted in Franco Isaza, Combatientes del Llano, 119–21.57. Henderson, Modernization, 357.58. Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,” 186.59. For a complete text of this law, see Casas Aguilar, La Violencia, 85–88.60. Cited by Oquist, Violence, 209.61. Ibid., 210; for the complete text of the Second Law of the Llanos, see Casas Aguilar,

La Violencia, 89–98.62. Brunnschweiler writes that a “relatively well-equipped freezing plant (frigorífico)

went into operation in Villavicencio in 1950, concentrating on freezing carcasses. It failed because the refrigeration trucks could not negotiate the miserable conditions of the Bogotá-Villavicencio highway and the distaste in Bogotá for chilled meat.” Brunnschweiler, Llanos Frontier of Colombia, 51.

63. Informe, Jefe de TN, August 16, 1951, in Colombia: Un año de gobierno, 1950–51 2:368–73.


64. Colombia continued to use some colonial weight measures in the twentieth century. The basic measure was a carga, or 280 pounds, the amount a pack mule could carry. The carga was divided into packages called bultos: Each bulto weighed approximately 140 pounds.

65. Semana 6, no. 268 (December 6, 1951); Flórez, Conozcamos al Departamento del Meta 1:73–76.

66. Informe, Jefe de TN, August 16, 1951, 382–83.67. Ibid., 381, 385.68. Martínez Delgado, Casanare y su historia, 96.69. Franco, Historia de Orocué, 213.70. El Siglo, December 28, 1951.71. El Siglo, April 22, 1953.72. Oquist, Violence, 205.73. El Siglo, July 1, 1952.74. Semana XII: 272 ( January 5, 1952).75. Oquist, Violence, 205.76. Medina, “Violence and Economic Development,” 160.77. Giraldo Castaño, Colonización, 111.78. Franco, Historia de Orocué, 202–3.79. El Siglo, May 12, 1951; Espinel Riveros, Villavicencio, 191.80. Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio, 205.81. Oquist, Violence, 203.82. Sánchez, “The Violence,” 93.83. Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,” 377.84. Sánchez, “The Violence,” 92.85. Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,” 313–20.86. El Tiempo, September 14, 1953.87. Giraldo Castaño, Colonización, 110–11; Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,”

332–33.88. Hector Polanía Sánchez, cited by Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,” 332–33.89. Cited by Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,” 234–35.90. Giraldo Castaño, Colonización, 113.91. Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,” 377.

Chapter 3. Rojas Pinilla and the Pacification of the Llanos, 1953–1957

1. Villar Borda, Rojas Pinilla, 47–54.2. Ibid., 101.3. Oquist, Violence, 187.4. Henderson, Modernization, 366–67.5. Dix, Colombia, 118.6. For a more extensive review of the Rojas regime, see Bushnell, Colombia, 215–22.

The standard defense of Rojas Pinilla in English is Fluharty, Dance of the Millions. Szulc, Twilight of the Tyrants, and more recently Galvis and Donadio, El jefe supremo, present a critical view.


7. Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, “Discurso pronuncido el 22 de enero de 1955,” in Rojas Pinilla, Mensajes y Discursos, 20–24; Villar Borda, Rojas Pinilla, 47–54.

8. El Siglo, November 14, 1952.9. Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio, 198; Guzmán Campos, Fals Borda, and Umaña Luna, La

Violencia 2:79–80. The complete text of this document can be found in Casas Aguilar, La Violencia, 89–98.

10. Ramsey, Guerrilleros y soldados, 223.11. Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,” 297; Ramsey asserts that of forces es-

timated at 20,000, fewer than 2,000 guerrillas formally surrendered and the rest simply returned home. He could find no documents supporting the official army figure of 6,500 hundred men who voluntarily delivered their weapons (227).

12. El Tiempo, September 18, 1953.13. Ramsey, Guerrilleros y soldados, 226; Rojas de Moreno, Rojas Pinilla, 151–55; Semana

15 (September 21, 1953): 361.14. El Tiempo, October 10, 1953.15. Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,” 292–93.16. Ibid., 291.17. Ibid., 338.18. Ramsey, Guerrilleros y soldados, 226.19. Oquist, Violence, 210. A cynic might add that since the government presence had

always been low in the Llanos, it was not so difficult to reestablish a semblance of authority.20. El Tiempo, September 19, 1953.21. El Tiempo, September 19, 1953.22. Semana 4, no. 361 (September 21, 1953): 7; Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio, 199; Rojas

de Moreno, Rojas Pinilla, 151–53.23. El Tiempo, September 19, 1953.24. El Tiempo, September 16, 1953.25. Jimeno Santoyo, “Procesos de colonización,” 3:385.26. McGreevey, “Population Policy,” 423. After Rojas Pinilla’s coup in 1953, Currie re-

tired from economic advisory work, married a Colombian woman, and devoted himself to raising Holstein cattle on a farm in Cundinamarca. With the return to civilian government in 1958, he served as an advisor for each of the National Front presidents.

27. Jimeno Santoyo, “Procesos de colonización,” 3:385.28. Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio, 62.29. El Tiempo, October 10, 1953.30. Ramírez A., “San Luis de Palenque,” 9–13.31. Gonzalo Londoño, “Approximation a la historia regional de Ariari,” 394–96.32. Paredes Cruz, Departamento del Meta, 206–9.33. Crist and Gull, “Pioneer Settlement in Eastern Colombia,” 398.34. Informe del Jefe Civil y Militar, June 13, 1955, in Teoría y Práctica de una political Co-

lombianista (hereafter cited as Teoría), 486.35. Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio, 63.36. Fluharty, Dance of the Millions, 250.37. Ibid.


38. “Si Podemos,” Semana (February 21, 1955): 8, cited by Fluharty, Dance of the Millions, 251–52.

39. Rojas de Moreno, Rojas Pinilla, 195.40. Bushnell, Colombia, 215.41. Informe sobre las labores de las dependencies del Ministerio de gobierno en el año de 1955,

in Teoría, 86–87.42. For the full text of the convención, see Conferencias Episcopales de Colombia 1:549–55.43. Ibid., 85–86.44. Rojas Pinilla, “Discurso, Febrero 27, 1959,” in Rojas Pinilla ante el Senado, 581.45. Rojas Pinilla, “Discurso pronuncido el 22 de 1955 (Villavicencio),” 21–24.46. Rojas Pinilla, Rojas Pinilla ante el Senado, 33–34.47. Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, “Palabras de Su Excelencia el 15 de Junio de 1955,” in Rojas

Pinilla, Mensajes y Discursos, 68; Rojas de Moreno, Rojas Pinilla, 196–201.48. See the discussion of this incident in Galvis and Donadio, El jefe supremo, 13.49. Memorias de Gobierno, in Teoría, 52.50. Ibid., 53.51. Chiquichiqui is palm tree fiber used by the Amerindians to make cord, baskets,

and hats.52. Chary, “Informe del Sr. Director del Departamento de Territorios Nacionales,” in

Teoría, 586–89.53. Madre Laura (Laura Montoya Upegui, 1874–1949) was a devout Colombian woman

who founded the religious community of Misioneras de María Inmaculada y de Santa Cata-lina de Siena.

54. Rozo G, Cien años, 156–58. See Castro Agudelo and Vega Cantor, “Guahibos del Vichada,” 327–42.

55. Mayor Telmo Acevedo Ardilla, “Informe del Jefe Civil y Militar,” in Teoría, 455–56.56. Chary, “Informe,” 571.57. “Arauca; Ahora en Ascenso,” Semana 405 (August 2, 1954): 15.58. Lamo Pulido, “Comisaría Especial de Arauca,” l77–78.59. Arauca (Diocese) [Catholic-Hierarchy], http://www. catholic-hierarchy.org/dio-

cese/darau.html/. Lazarist and Vincentian are popular names for members of the Congre-gation of the Mission (abbreviated as CM).

60. Escuelas hogares were orphanages. The missionaries forcibly removed native children from their parents and placed them in these schools to be hispanized as well as educated. Internados were another type of boarding school.

61. “Conferencia del sr. Jefe Civil y Militar de la Intendencia del Meta,” in Teoría, 485–504.

62. “Informe,” in Teoría, 580.63. Paredes Cruz, Departamento del Meta, 45.64. Espinel Riveros, Villavicencio, 226.65. Ibid., 228, 198.66. Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio, 242.67. Martínez Salas, “Crecimiento Urbano,” 2:202–4.68. Informe del DTN, in Teoría, 576.


http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/darau.html

http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/darau.html

69. Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio, 240.70. Paredes Cruz, Departamento del Meta, 101.71. Semana 438 (March 28, 1955): 15.72. Flórez, Conozcamos al Departamento del Meta 1:104–5, 108.73. Paredes Cruz, Departamento del Meta, 155–57.74. Martín González, Prefectura apostólica, 95.75. Bushnell, Colombia, 219.76. Palacios, Between Legitimacy and Violence, 164.77. Henderson, Modernization, 371.78. Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio, 202.79. Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,” 343–44; Casas Aguilar, La Violencia,

128–30.80. “Pájaros” was the name given to Conservative paramilitary organizations that pro-

liferated during the resurgence of La Violencia under Rojas Pinilla. “These groups were composed of civilian gunmen who could be called upon to act singly or in groups to help the army and police enforce their rule.” See Henderson, Modernization, 374–75.

81. Guzmán Campos, Fals Borda, and Umaña Luna, La Violencia 2:177–79.82. Ibid. 2:202; Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,” 355–56.83. Bushnell, Colombia, 222.84. Sánchez, “La Violencia,” 167; Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,” 366–70.85. Rojas Pinilla, “Discurso pronuncido el 22 de enero de 1955,” 21.86. Bejarano, “Futuro y destino de los Llanos Orientales,” 15–17.87. Sánchez, “La Violencia,” 166.88. Ramsey, Guerrilleros y soldados, 252.89. Villanueva Martínez, “Guadalupe Salcedo,” 352.

Chapter 4. Territorial Rule during the National Front and Its Aftermath, 1958–1978

1. The National Front arrangement officially ended in 1974, but because López Mi-chelsen continued the practice of sharing power with the Conservatives, his regime will be included in this chapter.

2. Abel and Palacios, “Colombia since 1958,” NHC 8:641.3. Davis, Historical Dictionary of Colombia, 228.4. Bushnell, Colombia, 223. Bushnell notes that the two Lleras—Lleras Camargo and

Lleras Restrepo—were distant cousins. For other studies of the National Front, see Berry, Hellman, and Solaún, Politics of Compromise; Palacios, Between Legitimacy and Violence; Dix, Colombia; Leal Buitrago, Estado y política en Colombia, and Hartlyn, Politics of Coalition Rule in Colombia.

5. Alberto Lleras Camargo, “Paz in los Llanos Orientales,” in Lleras Camargo, Primer gobierno 2:10–11.

6. Corpes Orinoquia, La Orinoquia a través de El Tiempo, pt. 1, 17–18.7. Informe, Director del Territorios Nacionales (hereafter cited as DNT), July 7, 1959,

175–76.


8. Informe, DTN, in MMG, 1960, 29.9. Ibid., 50–62.10. MMG, 1961, 72–74.11. The six positions were jefe, abogado jefe de control administración, visitador, a jefe

and auxiliar for the section de fomento, and an agente fiscal.12. Informe, Jefe de DTN, in MMG, 1962, 87–89.13. Ministerio de Gobierno, Territorios nacionales informativos 5:22.14. Guillermo Valencia, “Discurso,” in Memorias del Primer Congreso, Doc. 43, Anexo

D, 3.15. Ponencia del Jefe de DTN, in Memorias del Primer Congreso, Doc. 27:3.16. Informe, Jefe de DTN, in Memorias, 119.17. Memorias del Primer Congreso, Doc. 66, Anexo, 2. INCORA—the Colombian In-

stitute of Agrarian Reform—was created in 1961 to undertake agricultural reform. Its pro-grams included education, land redistribution, resettlement, and conservation.

18. Informe, MMG, 1966, 16–17.19. DAINCO, Boletín Informativo Mensual 1 (December 1973): 1–2. The elevation of

Casanare as an intendancy came only after a bitter struggle between the inhabitants of the region and the governing officials of Boyacá. Four years later, on December 23, 1977, Con-gress separated 42,327 square kilometers from Vaupés to form the fifth comisaría, Guaviare, with its capital at San José de Guaviare. For a detailed analysis of Casanare’s struggle for independence from Boyacá, see Rausch, “The Second Campaign for Liberation: Casanare’s Struggle to Win Freedom from Boyacá during the National Front (1958–1974),” Adminis-tración y Desarrollo (Bogotá) 40, no. 55 ( January–June 2012): 93–110.

20. Alfonso López M., “Palabras pronunciadas en la plaza pública de Tame, Arauca, el 23 de febrero de 1974,” in Pérez Bareño, Región de la Orinoquia, 131.

21. Memoria, MMG, 1972–74, 58.22. Memoria, MMG, 1972–74, 57–72.23. Pérez Bareño, Región de la Orinoquia, 133–36.24. Censo General de la Población, 1951, 1964, 1973, 1984.25. Jimeno Santoyo, “Procesos de colonización,” 5:389.26. Flórez, Conozcamos al Departamento del Meta 1:72–76.27. Lleras Camargo, Primer Gobierno 2:419–23. Paredes Cruz reprints the text of this

speech in Departamento del Meta, 49–52.28. Four years later, on November 10, 1964, Congress elevated the Intendencia of Gua-

jira to a department, so that with the exception of the intendencia of the islands of San Andrés and Providencia, all remaining national territories were located in the Orinoco and Amazonian region. See Davis, Historical Dictionary, 254.

29. McGreevey, “Population Policy,” 423–24. See also, Currie, “Operation Colombia.”30. Giraldo Castaño, Colonización, 146.31. Gonzalo Londoño D., “Aproximación a la historia regional de Ariari,” 396.32. Bejumea Yepes, Aproximación, 35.33. Bushnell, Colombia, 232.34. Lleras Camargo, “Ley de Reforma Agraria,” in Lleras Camargo, Primer Gobierno,

95–98.


35. Jimeno Santoyo, “Procesos de colonización,” 3:391. The breakdown for the three principal areas of colonization in Caquetá and the Llanos was Caquetá: 19,655 titles for 990,764 hectares, Arauca: 4,019 titles for 133,815 hectares, and Meta: 5,680 titles for 228,367 hectares.

36. Bagley and Edel, “Popular Mobilization Programs,” 259–70.37. Biblioteca Ministerio de Interior y de Justicia (here after cited as BMIJ), MMG,

1968, 63.38. Informe, Intendent of Arauca, in Memorias del Primer Congreso, 5.39. Bushnell, Colombia, 233–34. I have not found any statistics regarding the number of

ANUC groups in the Llanos.40. “Conferencia dictada por el Ministro de Obras Públicas, Agosto 1, 1962,” in Colom-

bia, Realizaciones del primer gobierno del Frente Nacional, 109–11.41. El Tiempo, February 25, 1936.42. Departamento del Meta, Monografía, 13–17. Writing in 1973 geographer Dieter

Brunnschweiler observed, “In spite of much improvement made on this road in recent years—less than one fifth of the 122 kilometers remain unpaved—the trip from the capital to Villavicencio is still a somewhat risky undertaking. The highway is interrupted every year by mudslides and rock falls during periods of heavy rains.” Llanos Frontier, 56.

43. El Tiempo, June 14, 1974.44. El Tiempo, June 30. 1974.45. El Tiempo, February 1, 1976; Vargas Rubiano, “Reflecciones sobre el Transporte,” 157.46. “El Camino del Sarare,” El Araucano, no. 3 (February 4, 1934), reprinted in Camejo,

Breve apuntaciones sobre Arauca, 106–7.47. Rausch, Llanos Frontier in Colombian History, 286–87.48. Crist and Guhl, “Pioneer Settlement in Eastern Colombia,” 409.49. César Lamus, “El Sarare: Un espacio historiográfico, 1960–1990,” in Castro Agudelo,

Los llanos: Una historia sin Fronteras, 54–55; Pérez Bareño, Región de la Orinoquia, 133.50. Bejumea Yepes, Aproximación, 42.51. Tippetts-Abbett and McCarthy-Stratton, Carretera marginal, 321.52. López Guevara, “Discurso del Presidente del Congreso,” in Memorias del Primer Con-

greso, Doc. 43.53. Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio, 24.54. Benjumea Yepes, Aproximación, 42.55. As part of the agreement, Colombians were responsible for building a bridge over

the Ureño River to connect Cúcuta in Norte de Santander with San Cristóbal in the Ven-ezuelan state of Táchira.

56. El Tiempo, September 21, 1967.57. El Tiempo, September 10, 1967. In 2004 the thirty-year-old bridge was in danger

of collapsing due to high use and poor maintenance. According to the Arauca Chamber of Commerce, 80 percent of products consumed in that city and in most of the department were transported over the bridge. See El Tiempo, August 14, 2004.

58. El Tiempo, January 16, 1964.59. El Tiempo, January 21, 1964.60. Tippetts-Abbeett and McCarthy-Stratton, Carretera marginal, 58.


61. “SATENA (Servicio Aéreo a Territorios Nacionales),” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATENA (accessed May 8, 2011).

62. “Ponencia: La Administración de los Territorios Nacionales,” Memorias del Primer Congreso, Doc. 27, 3.

63. “SATENA (Servicio Aéreo a Territorios Nacionales)”; El Tiempo, September 10, 1969.64. “Ponencia: Servicios Fluviales y Conexiones Terrestres, Compañía Nacional de

Navegación, S.A. (NAVENAL),” in Memorias del Primer Congreso, Doc. 31, 4.65. Davis, Historical Dictionary, 153.66. Pérez Barreño, Planes de Desarrollo, 92.67. Rausch, “Quebrando el lomo de los Andes,” 79.68. Pareja, Historia de la radio, 124–25.69. Ibid., 159.70. Tellez B., Cincuenta años de radiodifusión, 262, 266.71. González, “Iglesia en el siglo XX.”72. Hernández de Alba, “Ponencia,” Memorias del Primer Congreso, Doc. 16, 3.73. Elías Ortiz, “Ponencia,” Memorias del Primer Congreso, Doc. 5, 4.74. Stoll, Fishers of Men, 168.75. The other significant group was the New Tribes Mission led by Sophia Müller, who

had been active in Vichada since the 1940s.76. For an in-depth analysis of this massacre known as the “Planas Affair,” see Colombia

nunca más.77. Stoll, Fishers of Men, 185. Several articles published in El Tiempo in 1975 and 1978

reveal the ongoing controversy over the role and methods of SIL. See articles published on October 14 and October 15, 1975, and September 14 and December 2, 1978.

78. “Ponencia; Posición de la Iglesia Misionera en Territorios Nacionales,” Memorias del Primer Congreso, Doc. 54, 2–4.

79. El Tiempo, May 29, 1966, 12. See also González, “Iglesia en el siglo XX.”80. Stoll, Fishers of Men, 173.81. Vázquez Carrizosa, Concordato de Colombia, 15–21.82. Munar, “Vichada,” 33.83. Pineda Camacho, “Estado y pueblos indígenas.”84. Parsons, “Europeanization of the Savanna Lands of Northern South America,” 282.85. Ibid.86. Brunnschweiler, Llanos Frontier, 49.87. Departamento del Meta, Monografía, 42.88. Brunnschweiler, Llanos Frontier, 49.89. Ibid., 31.90. Ibid., 41.91. Departamento del Meta, Monografía, 38–39.92. Londoño D., “Aproximación a la historia regional de Ariari,” 400.93. Brunnschweiler, Llanos Frontier, 30.94. El Tiempo, January 30, 1973, 5b.95. El Tiempo, August 19, 1973.96. Ibid. Rojas Pinilla created Colombia’s intelligence service in 1953, but the depart-


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATENA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATENA

ment was reorganized by Lleras Camargo in 1960 and renamed Departamento Adminis-trativo de Seguridad (DAS). It was responsible for providing security to state institutions and personalities.

97. C. H. Neff cited by Brunnschweiler, Llanos Frontier, 53.98. El Tiempo, August 22, 1973.99. Departamento del Meta, Monografía, 17. Elf Aquitaine, a multinational company,

began activities in Colombia in 1972 in the lower Magdalena and later participated with other private companies in Casanare, where it conducted exploration in Trinidad, Santiago de las Atalayas, Río Pauto, and Cusiana. See Avellaneda C., Petróleo, 49.

100. Osterling, Democracy in Colombia, 99.101. Ibid.; Ruhl, “Military,” 195–96.102. Espinel, “Departamento del Meta,” 36.103. Maullin, “Fall of Dumar Aljure,” 7.104. El Tiempo, April 5, 1968.105. El Tiempo, April 8, 1968.106. Maullin, “Fall of Dumar Aljure,” 32.107. Molano, “Violence and Land Colonization,” 209.108. Ibid.

Chapter 5. The Contemporary Era, 1978–2010

1. In Víctima de la globalización, Henderson traces in meticulous detail the various stages of drug trafficking in Colombia and the effort of the Colombian and U.S. governments to curtail the trade and the violence associated with it. As the title of his book indicates, he argues that for three decades cocaine trafficking on Colombia “was the most extreme manifestation of savage capitalism,” however, since 2008 the country has embarked on a new postconflict phase (342).

2. Pérez Bareño, Región de la Orinoquia, 131.3. Osterling, Democracy in Colombia, 113.4. Pérez Bareño, Región de la Orinoquia, 143.5. The Constitution of 1991 provided for a Plan of National Development (PND) de-

signed and administered by a National Planning Council. The plan was intended to estab-lish long-range economic goals and to decide how existing resources could best be used to achieve goals in fields such as health, education, and general maintenance of a wholesome environment. See Davis, Historical Dictionary, 400.

6. Pérez Bareño, Región de la Orinoquia, 133.7. Documento inédito, elaborado por Hernando Durán Dussán (Agosto de 1986) in

Pérez Bareño, Región de la Orinoquia, 137–43.8. Bushnell, Colombia, 251.9. “El Dainco ante la Constituyente,” in Pérez Bareño, Región de la Orinoquia, 155–62.10. The rule banning presidential reelection was repealed in 2004.11. Bushnell, Colombia, 251.12. Palacios, Between Legitimacy and Violence, 246.


13. El Tiempo, December 24, 1991. Gaviria’s decree transferred DAINCO’s functions to the Ministerio de Gobierno and its extensive archive to the Archivo General Histórico (AGN).

14. Pérez Bareño, Región de la Orinoquia, 59. See also his “Presentación,” 7–8.15. Pérez Bareño, Región de la Orinoquia, 56.16. Palacios, Between Legitimacy and Violence, 249.17. Pérez Bareño, Región de la Orinoquia, 55–56. In 1992 a committee from Corpes

Orinoquia headed by Edgar González Salas prepared a summary of the difficulties the former comisarías were encountering in their conversion to departments. The document, titled “Lineamientos de una política de apoyo al proceso de departamentalización en los nuevos departamentos,” is reprinted in Pérez Bareño, Región de la Orinoquia, 163–84.

18. Garavito Jiménez, Historia de la iglesia en los llanos, 46–47.19. In 1992 SIL published 30 años de servicio y esperanza, a book written by Marco Fidel

Ramírez. It is a flattering account that summarizes the institute’s activities in Colombia, lists its many achievements and downplays any controversial aspects sparked by its presence in the country.

20. SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc.) website, http://www.sil.org/americas/colombia/sil.asp?/ (accessed September 30, 2011).

21. Pérez Bareño, Región de la Orinoquia, 165.22. Ovalle, “Violencia Política,” 3:311. The narco-esmeralderos had managed to break the

monopoly of the Medellín cartel over the emerald mines in Boyacá.23. Barbosa Estepa, “Para-Estados,” 149.24. Molano, “Violence and Land Colonization,” 205.25. Barbosa Estepa, “Para-Estados,” 151.26. Ibid.27. Ovalle, “Violencia Política,” 3:314.28. In Violent Democratization, Carroll provides an in-depth discussion of the struggle

in Arauca between peasant movements, guerrillas, ranching elite, the Colombian army, and Occidental Petroleum between 1970 and 1990. She concludes that a relatively united, strong, and stable peasant movement and electoral Left, combined with a repression-spon-soring elite faction declining in economic influence, facilitated a regional pacted peace with clear gains for social movements. See 177–273.

29. Ovalle, “Violencia política,” 3:314.30. Ibid. 3:315–16.31. El Tiempo, July 14, 1983.32. Avellaneda C., Petróleo, 54; “Petroleum Exploration and Development in Colombia,”

Colombia Today 20 (1985): 8.33. César Gaviria Trujillo, “El impacto de los nuevos ingresos petroleros,” in Departa-

mento Nacional de Planeación, Cusiana, 3.34. Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio, 143.35. Ministerio de Comercio, Industria y Turismo, Estructura Productiva, 13–14.36. U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Overview of Colombia, 3.37. Casanare, 101, 113.


http://www.sil.org/americas/colombia/sil.asp?

http://www.sil.org/americas/colombia/sil.asp?

38. Mantilla Trejos, “Luz y sombra,” 19.39. Avellaneda C., Petróleo, 85.40. Avellaneda C., Petróleo, 93; Wilson Ladino Orjuela, “Gran Transformación,” e-mail

to author, July 8, 2007; Mantilla Trejos, “Luz y sombra,” 18.41. IDMC (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre), “Almost 4 million Colombians

displaced by violence between 1985 and 2007,” http://www.internal-displacement.org/countries/colombia/ (accessed August 28, 2007).

42. Cited by Kraul, “Colombian Tribe has OXY over a Barrel.”43. Hilton, “Colombia’s Oil Pipeline is Paid for in Blood and Dollars.”44. Benítez, “Violencia y Desplazamiento en Casanare,” Memorias, 2003, 67.45. Wilson Ladino Orjuela, “Poder de los departamentos,” e-mail to author, July 8, 2007.46. Avellaneda C, Petróleo, 53.47. Cusmano and Preciado, “Institutions and Development,” 21.48. U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Overview of Colombia, 5.49. Avellaneda C, Petróleo, 51–54.50. Kraul, “Colombian Tribe has OXY over a Barrel.”51. Bill Weinberg, “Oil expansion threatens Colombia’s indigenous,” Indian Country To-

day, February 5, 2007, http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096414449/ (ac-cessed September 3, 2007).

52. Weinberg, “Oil Expansion.”53. Bill Weinberg, “Arauca: The Attack in Colombia’s Oil Zone,” ZNET, September 8,

2003, http://www.zmag.org/content/chowarticle.cfm?Item ID=4149/ (accessed Septem-ber 9, 2007).

54. Avellaneda C., Petróleo, 137–46.55. Mantilla Trejos, “Luz y sombra,” 15.56. Cusmano and Preciado, “Institutions and Development,” 14.57. Mantilla Trejos, “Luz y sombra,” 15.58. Baquero Nariño, Caso llanero, 67–70.59. Ministerio de Comercio, Industria y Turismo, Estructura productiva, 7.60. Rausch, From Frontier Town to Metropolis, 187.61. Cusmano and Preciado, “Institutions and Development,” 16.62. Avellaneda C., Petróleo, 93; Ladino Orjuela, “Gran Transformación.”63. Ladino Orjuela, “Gran Transformación.”64. For a brief summary of the historical evolution of the Universidad de los Llanos, see

Arango Mutis, “Haciendo Camino: 25 Años de la Universidad de los Llanos 1975–2000,” in Memorias, 2003, 362–68.

65. Mantilla Trejos, “Luz y sombra,” 22–24.66. Cusmano and Preciado, “Institutions and Development,” 21.67. Mantilla Trejos, “Luz y sombra,” 22–24.68. Herrán de Novoa, “Aproximación a la Consolidación de Identidad Urbano Regional:

Villavicencio y su Región,” in Memorias, 2003, 284–93; Pérez Bareño, “Experiencias de integración regional,” 359.


http://www.internal-displacement.org/countries/colombia

http://www.internal-displacement.org/countries/colombia

Chapter 6. Changing Concepts of the Llanos Frontier in the Last Half of the Twentieth Century

1. Cusmano and Preciado, “Institutions and Development,” 1.2. Billington, American Frontier Thesis, 18.3. Turner cited by Weber and Rausch, Where Cultures Meet, 10.4. John Mack Farragher, “Gunslingers and Bureaucrats: Some Unexpected Thoughts

about the American West,” New Republic, December 14, 1992, 30.5. Ridge, “Frederick Jackson Turner and His Ghost,” 76.6. Slatta, Comparing Cowboys and Frontiers, 131.7. Belaúnde, “Frontier in Hispanic America,” 208.8. O’Gorman, Invention of America, 142.9. Zavala, “Frontiers of Hispanic America,” 45–46; Rodrigues, “Webb’s Great Frontier

and the Interpretation of Modern History,” 158.10. Hennessy, Frontier in Latin American History, 2–3.11. Bowman, Pioneer Fringe, 296.12. Crist, “Fixed Physical Boundaries,” 230.13. Jones, South America, 607.14. Platt, “Opportunities for Agricultural Colonization,” 84.15. Brunnschweiler, Llanos Frontier, 88.16. Rausch, “Región Olvidada,” 32–40.17. Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio, 187, 205.18. Departamento del Meta, Monografía, 13–17.19. Colombia a su alcance, 134.20. García Bustamante, Pueblo de frontera, 11.21. García Bustamante, Persistencia y cambio, 40–41.22. Espinel Riveros, Villavicencio, 201–2.23. Ibid.24. Ibid.25. Baquero Nariño, Caso llanero, 32–34.26. Ibid., 18.27. Ibid., 69.28. Ibid., 105.29. Ibid., 106.30. Ibid., 152.31. Barbosa Estera, “Frontera Agrícola Orinoquense,” 164–68.32. Cusmano and Preciado, “Institutions and Development.”33. Preciado, “Desarrollo endógeno,” 4:37.34. Ibid., 4:38.35. Worster, “New West, True West,” 91.36. Ibid., 87.37. Lynch, Spanish American Revolutions, 229; Bushnell, Colombia, viii.38. Baquero and Yesid Sandoval, “‘Historia’ de la Historia Regional,” 455. In a recent


issue of the new journal, Manirigua, Hector Públio Pérez makes a similar plea. See his “Refelexiones sobre Tendencias en la Investigaciones de la Historia Llanera” in Manirigua l, no. 5 (August–September 2011), 11.

39. Tovar Pinzón, “Historia Regional como Problema,” 45–46. This essay was a revised version of a paper presented at a regional history meeting organized by the Universidad del Tolima in Ibagué 1981).

40. Pérez Bareño, “Experiencias de integración regional,” 357.41. Ibid., 358–59.42. Ibid., 359.43. Baquero Nariño, “Derecho y Deber al Ideario del País del Orinoco,” in Memorias,

VIII Simposio Internacional, 8–13. For a study of folklore common to all of Orinoquia, see Martín, Del folclor llanero.

44. Along with historians, Colombian and Venezuelan authors from the Llanos have met regularly. See the memorias of the 1st Encuentro Colombo-Venezolano de Escritores Llaneros published in Sobre Los Llanos and edited by Mantilla Trejos.

45. In 1978 Hennessy included the “political frontier” in his typology, pointing out that throughout Latin America international borders precipitated conflicts over territorial sover-eignty, cut through sedentary Indian communities, and generated contraband trading. Hen-nessy predicted that as internal frontiers of settlement moved closer to the international borders, disputes over territorial sovereignty would come to assume an even greater impor-tance, underlying “the urgent need for international cooperation and regional integration before it is too late.” See Frontier in Latin American History, 106–9.

46. The exception, of course, is López Pumarejo’s “Revolución en Marcha,” which in-cluded a concerted effort to address the needs of the territories.

47. Law 191 defined “Frontier Zones” as “those municipios, corregimientos especiales of the frontier departments located on the international border of the Republic of Colombia and those in which economic and social activities are directly influenced by their location.”

48. On August 14, 2004, El Tiempo reported that due to lack of maintenance, the bridge, which was the only point of crossing the border that stretched along for five hundred kilo-meters, was in such poor condition that it might collapse into the Arauca River.

49. El Tiempo, September 6, 1967.50. Ladino Orjuela and Duarte Moreno, Apropriación de instrumentos fronterizos, 30–34.51. Ibid., 41–55.52. Ibid., 62.53. The PTJ, created in 1958, was to be responsible for criminal investigations and fo-

rensic services as well as counternarcotics. In late 2001 it was replaced by the Cuerpo de Investigaciones Científicas, Penales y Criminalísticas. See Ungar, Elusive Reform, 97, 103.

54. Ladino Orjuela and Duarte Moreno, Apropriación de instrumentos fronterizos, 61.55. Ibid., 60.56. Ibid., 124–25.


Bibliography

Abel, Christopher, and Marco Palacios. “Colombia since 1958.” In Cambridge History of Latin America, ed. Leslie Bethell, 8:629–86. 8 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Arango Mutis, Arturo. “Haciendo Camino: 25 años de la Universidad de los Llanos 1975–2000.” In Baquero Nariño, Memorias, 362–68.

Avellaneda C., Alfonso. Petróleo: Colonización y medio ambiente en Colombia: De la Tora a Cusiana. Bogotá: Ecoe, 1998.

Ayape, Eugenio, “Misiones de Casanare.” Boletín de Historia y Antigüedades 28, nos. 323–24 (Sep-tember–October 1941): 769–98.

Bagley, Bruce, and Mathew Edel. “Popular Mobilization Programs of the National Front: Coop-tation and Radicalization.” In Berry, Hellman, and Solaún, Politics of Compromise, 257–48.

Baquero, Omar, and Yesid Sandoval. “La ‘historia’ de la historia regional: Hitos y perspectivas.” In Los Llanos: Una historia sin fronteras, 445–55.

Baquero Nariño, Alberto. “Derecho y deber al ideario del País del Orinoco.” In Baquero Nariño, Memorias, 8–13.

———. El caso llanero: Villavicencio. Villavicencio: Editorial sixlo XX, 1990.———, ed. Memorias: VII Simposio Internacional de los Llanos Colombo-Venezolanos: “Los últimos

25 años del siglo XX.” Villavicencio: Academia de Historia del Meta, 2004.Barbosa Estepa, Renaldo. “Frontera agrícola Orinoquense: De la precariedad estatal a la crisis

en derechos humanos.” In Conflictos Regionales: Amazonia y Orinoquia, edited by José Jairo González, Roberto Ramírez, Alberto Valencia, and Reinaldo Barbosa, 155–95. Bogotá: Tercer Mundo, 1998.

———. Guadalupe y sus centauros: Memorias de la insurrección llanera. Bogotá: CEREC, 1992.———. “Para-Estados y crisis institucional en la Orinoquia colombiana.” In Iglesia, movimientos

y partidos: Política y violencia en la historia de Colombia, edited by Javier Guerrero Baron, 135–77. Tunja: Asociación Colombiana de Historiadores, 1997.

Bejarano, Jorge. “Futuro y destino de los Llanos Orientales.” Económica Colombiana I:2, no. 4 (August 1954): 15–17.

Bejumea Yepes, Henry, ed. Aproximación a la historia empresarial del Meta 1960–2005. Villavi-cencio: EMSA, 2007.

Belaúnde, Victor Andrés. The Frontier in Hispanic America. Pamphlet No. 10. Houston: Rice Institute, October 1923.

Bibliography172

Benítez, Arcadio. “Violencia y desplazamiento en Casanare.” In Baquero Nariño, Memorias, 93–104.

Bergquist, Charles, Ricardo Peñaranda, and Gonzalo Sánchez. Violence in Colombia: The Contem-porary Crisis in Historical Perspective. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1992.

Berry, R. Albert, Ronald G. Hellman, and Mauricio Solaún, eds. Politics of Compromise: Coalition Government in Colombia. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1980.

Billington, Ray Allen. The America Frontier Thesis: Attack and Defense. AHA Pamphlet 101. Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1971.

Blydenstein, John. “Tropical Savanna Vegetation of the Llanos of Colombia.” Ecology 48 (Winter 1967): 1–14.

Bowman, Isaiah. The Pioneer Fringe. Special Publication, No. 12. New York: American Geo-graphical Society, 1931.

Boyacá. Informe del gobernador de Boyacá a la Asamblea Departamental en sus sesiones ordinarias. Tunja, 1911.

———. Informe del secretario de gobierno al Señor Gobernador del Departamento. Tunja, 1939.Brunnschweiler, Dieter. The Llanos Frontier of Colombia: Environment and Changing Land Use in

Meta. East Lansing: Michigan State University, 1972.Bushnell, David. Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of

California Press, 1993.———. Colombia: Una nación a pesar de su misma: Nuestra historia desde los tiempos precolombinos

hasta hoy. Translated by Claudia Montilla V. 15th ed. Bogotá: Editorial Planeta, 2012.Camejo, Ernesto. Breve apuntaciones sobre Arauca. Bogotá: Escuelas Gráficas Salesianas, 1940.Carroll, Leah Anne. Violent Democratization: Social Movements, Elites, and Politics in Colombia’s

Rural War Zone. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011.Casanare: Características geográficas. Bogotá: DANE, 1999.Casas Aguilar, Justo. “La Violencia en Casanare (1950–1953).” In Los Llanos: Una historia sin

fronteras, 403–24.———. La violencia en los Llanos Orientales. Bogotá: ECOE Ediciones, 1986.Castro Agudelo, Luz Marina, and Renán Vega Cantor. “Los Guahibos del Vichada ante los pro-

cesos de colonización y aculturación.” In Los Llanos: Una historia sin fronteras, 327–42.Colombia. Un año de gobierno, 1950–1951. 2 vols. Bogotá: Imprenta Nacional, 1951.———. Censo general de la población, 1928, 1938, 1951, 1964, 1973, 1984.———. DANE. La Población de Colombia en 1973: XIV Censo Nacional de Población y III de

Vivienda. Bogotá, 1978.———. DANE. La Población de Colombia en 1985: XV Censo Nacional de Población y IV de

Vivienda. Bogotá, 1990.———. Memorias del Primer Congreso de Territorios Nacionales. Bogotá, 1966.———. Ministerio de Comercio, Industria y Turismo. Estructura productiva y de Comercio Exte-

rior del Meta. Bogotá: 2004.———. Ministerio de Gobierno. Memorias, 1874–1974.———. Ministerio de Gobierno. Territorios Nacionales Informativos, 1974.———. Realizaciones del primer gobierno del frente nacional. Bogotá: ESAP, 1963.———.Teoría y práctica de una política colombianista. Bogotá: Imprenta Nacional, 1956.Colombia a su alcance. Madrid: Espasa, 1999.Colombia nunca más. Colombia: Proyecto Nunca Más, 2000.

Bibliography 173

Conferencias episcopales de Colombia. Vol. 1, 1908–1953. Bogotá: Editorial El Catolicismo, 1956.Corpes Orinoquia. La Orinoquia a través de El Tiempo, pt. 2, 1960–1979; pt. 3, 1980–1989.

Bogotá: Quebecor, 1999.Crist, Raymond E. “Fixed Physical Boundaries and Dynamic Cultural Frontiers: A Contrast.”

American Journal of Economics and Sociology 12, no. 2 (April 1953): 221–30.Crist, Raymond E., and Ernesto Guhl. “Pioneer Settlement in Eastern Colombia.” In Annual

Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 391–423. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1956.

Currie, Lauchlin. “Operation Colombia—A National and Social Program.” Microform. Bogotá, May 1961. Archivo Lauchlin Currie, Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango.

Cusmano, Lucia, and Fredy Preciado. “Institutions and Development: The role of élites and frontier-type social regulation in rural Colombia.” Open Area Studies Journal 4 ( June 2011): 41–52.

DAINCO. Boletín Informativo Mensual. December 23, 1977.Davis, Robert H. Historical Dictionary of Colombia. 2nd ed. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press,

1993.Departamento del Meta. Monografía, folclor, cultura y turismo. Villavicencio: Imprenta Departa-

mental, 1972.Departamento Nacional de Plantación. Cusiana: Un reto de política económica. Documentos pre-

sentados en el Seminario: “Cusiana y la economía colombiana en los años noventa,” Julio 7–8 de 1993. Bogotá: World Bank, 1993.

De Roux, R. R., “La Iglesia colombiana en el período 1930–1962.” In Historia general de la iglesia en América Latina, ed. Enrique Dussell, 7:517–51. 11 vols. Salamanca: CEHILA Ediciones Sígueme, 1981

Dix, Robert H. Colombia: The Political Dimensions of Change. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966.

Espinel Riveros, Nancy. “Departamento del Meta.” In Bejumea Yepes, Aproximación a la historia empresarial, 20–50.

———. Villavicencio: Dos siglos de historia comunera: 1740–1940. 2nd ed. Villavicencio: Editorial Juan XXIII, 1997.

Etulain, Richard W. Does the Frontier Experience Make America Exceptional? Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999.

Faragher, John Mack. “Gunslingers and Bureaucrats: Some Unexpected Thoughts about the American West.” New Republic 207, no. 25 (December 14, 1992): 29–36.

Fernández, J. M., and Rafael Granados. Obra civilizadora de la Iglesia en Colombia. Bogotá: Li-brería Voluntad, 1936.

Flórez, Raquel Angel de. Conozcamos al Departamento del Meta. 3 vols. Bogotá: Fondo Rotatorio Judicial Penitenciaria Central, 1962–63.

Fluharty, Vernon. Dance of the Millions: Military Rule and the Social Revolution in Colombia: 1930–1950. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1957.

Franco, Roberto. Historia de Orocué. Bogotá: Ecopetrol, 1997.Franco Isaza, Eduardo. Los combatientes del Llano. Bogotá: Universidad INCCA, 1987.———. Las guerrillas del llano. Bogotá: Librería Mundial, 1959.Galvis, Silvia, and Alberto Donadio. El jefe supremo: Rojas Pinilla en la violencia y el poder. Bogotá:

Planeta, 1988.

Bibliography174

Garavito Jiménez, Gregario. Historia de la iglesia en los llanos: 1616–1994. Villavicencio: Imprenta Departamental del Meta, 1994.

———. “Potencial Humano del Departamento del Meta, Villavicencio, October 23, 1961.” Ar-chivo Templete.

García Bustamante, Miguel. Persistencia y cambio en la frontera oriental de Colombia; El piedemonte del Meta 1840–1950. Medellín: Fondo Editorial Universidad Eafit, 2003.

———. Un pueblo de frontera: Villavicencio 1840–1940. Bogotá: Universidad de los Llanos, 1997.García Bustamante, Miguel, and Carolina Torres Posada. Guía y diagnóstico general de los archivos

municipales, notariales y parroquiales del Departamento del Meta. Bogotá: Colciencias, Colcul-tura, Unillanos, 1001.

Gaviria Trujillo, César. “El impacto de nuevos ingresos petroleras.” In Cusiana: Un reto de política económica. Departamento Nacional de Planeación, 2–8.

Gibson, Charles. The Constitutions of Colombia. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1948.Giraldo Castaño, Germán Hislen. La colonización en la Orinoquia colombiana: Arauca (1900–

1980). Bogotá: Ediciones Antropos, 2006.González, Fernán E., S.J. “La Iglesia en el siglo II: Las reformas al Concordato.” Revista Credencial

Historia, Edición 153. September 2002.Gonzalo Londoño, Oscar. “Aproximación a la historia regional de Ariari (1950–1970).” In Los

Llanos: Una historia sin fronteras, 385–402.Guzmán Campos, Germán, Orlando Fals Borda, and Eduardo Umaña Luna. La Violencia en

Colombia. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Bogotá: Tercer Mundo, 1962–64.Hartlyn, Jonathan. Politics of Coalition Rule in Colombia. New York: Cambridge University Press,

1988.Henderson, James D. Modernization in Colombia: The Laureano Gómez Years, 1889–1965.

Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001.———. Víctima de la globalización: La historia de cómo el narcotráfico destruyó la paz en Colombia.

Bogotá: Siglo de Hombre Editores, 2011.Hennessy, Alistair. The Frontier in Latin American History. Albuquerque: University of New

Mexico Press, 1978.Herán de Novoa, María Eugenia. Aproximación a la consolidación de identidad urbano regional:

Villavicenio y su región.” In Baquero Nariño, Memorias, 284–93.Herring, Hubert. A History of Latin America. 3rd ed. New York: Knopf, 1968.Hilton, Isabel. “Colombia’s Oil Pipeline Is Paid for in Blood and Dollars.” Guardian, August 19,

2004.Introducción a la Colombia Amerindia. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología, 1987.Jiménez Cohen, Gustavo. “Los problemas de los Llanos Orientales.” Revista Nacional de Agricul-

tura (Bogotá) 534 (1949): 37–40.Jimeno Santoyo, Myriam, “Los Procesos de colonización. Siglo XX.” In NHC 5:371–96.Jones, Clarence F. South America. New York: H. Holt, 1940.Junco Velosa, Edmundo. El fraude y La Violencia al clientelismo: Boyacá, 1930–1990. Tunja: Uni-

versidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia, 1992.Kline, Harvey F. Colombia: Portrait of Unity and Diversity. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983.Kraul, Chris. “Colombian Tribe has OXY over a Barrel.” Los Angeles Times, April 25, 1997.Ladino Orjuela, Wilson. “La Gran Transformación.” E-mail to author, July 8, 2007.———. “El poder de los departamentos.” E-mail to the author, July 8, 2007.

Bibliography 175

Ladino Orjuela, Wilson, and Pedro Duarte Moreno. Apropriación de instrumentos fronterizos por parte de actores locales y su proceso de internacionalización: El Caso del departamento del Vichada. Bogotá: ESAP, 2010.

Lamo Pulido, Alfonso. “La Comisaría Especial de Arauca.” Boletín de la Sociedad Geográfica de Colombia 13, nos. 47–48 (1955): 171–78.

Lamus, Julio César. “El Sarare: Un espacio historiográfico, 1960–1990.” In Baquero Nariño, Me-morias, 45–61.

Leal Buitrago, Francisco. Estado y política en Colombia. Bogotá: Siglo Veintiuno, 1984.Los Llanos: Una historia sin fronteras. Villavicencio: Academia de Historia del Meta, 1988.Lleras Camargo, Alberto. El primer gobierno del Frente Nacional. 4 vols. Bogotá: Imprenta Na-

cional, 1962.Londoño, Julio. Integración del territorio colombiano. Bogotá: Academia Colombiana de Historia,

1967.Lynch, John. The Spanish American Revolutions, 1808–1826. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1986.Mantilla Trejos, Eduardo. “Luz y sombra: 25 años de historia de los Llanos de Colombia.” In

Baquero Nariño, Memorias, 14–24.———, ed. Sobre Los Llanos: Memorias, 1st encuentro Colombo-Venezolano de escritores Llaneros.

Bogotá: Occidental de Colombia, 1988.Martín, Miguel Ángel. Del folclor llanero. 2nd ed. Bogotá: Ecoe, 1991.Martínez Delgado, Alberto. Casanare y su historia. Bogotá: Editorial Bochica, 1990.Martínez Salas, Gloria Evelyn. “Crecimiento urbano acelerado y marginalidad reciente de la Ciu-

dad de Villavicencio.” In Por los caminos del Llano 2:197–221.Martín González, Angel. La prefectura apostólica del Ariari (Colombia): Estudio histórico. Madrid:

Central Catequisita Salesiana, 1977.Maullin, Richard L. The Fall of Dumar Aljure, a Colombian Guerrilla and Bandit. Memorandum

RM-5750-ISA. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corporation, November 1969.McGreevey, William Paul. “Population Policy under the National Front.” In Berry, Hellman, and

Solaún, Politics of Compromise, 413–32.Medina, Juan R. Geografía económica de Colombia. Vol. 3: Boyacá. Bogotá: Contraloría General

de la República, 1936.Medina, Medófilo. “Violence and Economic Development: 1945–1950 and 1985–1988.” In

Bergquist, Peñaranda, and Sánchez, Violence in Colombia, 155–66.Molano, Alfredo. “Violence and Land Colonization.” In Bergquist, Peñaranda, and Sánchez, Vio-

lence in Colombia, 195–216.Molina, Gerardo. Las ideas liberales en Colombia. 3 vols. Bogotá: Ediciones Tercer Mundo,

1970–74.Motta Vargas, Ricardo. Ordenamiento territorial en el Quinquenio de Rafael Reyes. Bogotá: Edi-

ciones Doctrina y Ley, 2005.Munar, Carlos. “Vichada, del Orinoco indígena a la colonización y Marandúa.” Thesis, Departa-

mento de Sociología, Anthropología y Economía, Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia, Tunja, n.d. [1980s].

Nieto Caballero, Luis Eduardo. Vuelo al Orinoco. Bogotá: Camacho Roldán, 1935.Nueva Historia de Colombia (NHC). 8 vols. Bogotá: Planeta, 1989.O’Gorman, Edmundo. The Invention of America: An Inquiry into the Historical Nature of the New

World and the Meaning of Its History. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1961.

Bibliography176

Ojeda Ojeda, Tomás. Villavicencio entre la documentalidad y la oralidad. Villavicencio: Oscar Giraldo Durán Ediciones, 2000.

Olaya Herrera, Enrique. “Mensaje presidencial.” July 20, 1931.Oquist, Paul. Violence, Conflict, and Politics in Colombia. New York: Academic Press, 1980.Osterling, Jorge P. Democracy in Colombia: Clientelist Politics and Guerrilla Warfare. New Bruns-

wick, N.J.: Transaction, 1989.Ovalle, Elisender Adan. “La Violencia política y la acción guerrillera en los Llanos Orientales en

la década de los años ochenta.” In Por los Caminos del Llano 3:311–17.Palacios, Marco. Between Legitimacy and Violence: A History of Colombia, 1875–2002. Durham,

N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006.Paredes Cruz, Joaquín. El Departamento del Meta. Villavicencio: Cooperativa Nacional de Artes

Gráficas, 1961.Pareja, Reynaldo. Historia de la radio en Colombia, 1919–1980. Bogotá: Servicio Colombiano de

Comunicación Social, 1984.Parsons, James J. “Europeanization of the Savanna Lands of Northern South America.” In Hu-

man Ecology in Savanna Environments, edited by David R. Harris, 267–89. London: Aca-demic Press, 1980.

Pérez, Hector Públio. “Reflexiones sobre tendencias en las investigaciones de la historia Llanera.” Manirigua 1, no. 5 (August–September 2011): 11.

Pérez Bareño, Leonel. “Experiencias de integración regional en la Orinoquia Colombiana.” In Baquero Nariño, Memorias, 350–61.

———. Planes de desarrollo en la Orinoquia y la Amazonia. 2nd ed. Bogotá: Editorial Presencia, 1986.

———. “Presentación.” In Orinoquia la región, revista trimesta del Corpes Orinoquia (October–De-cember 1996) 1:7–8.

———. La Región de la Orinoquia: Antecedentes de su ordenamiento territorio. Bogotá: Gente Nueva, 2002.

“Petroleum Exploration and Development in Colombia.” Colombia Today 20 (1985): 8.Pineda Camacho, Roberto. “Estado y Pueblos indígenas en el siglo XX: La política indigenista

entre 1886 y 1991.” In Revista Credencial Historia, Edición 146. February 2002.Platt, Raye. “Opportunities for Agricultural Colonization in the Eastern Border Valleys of the

Andes.” In Pioneer Settlement, American Geographical Society Special Publication 14. New York, 1932. 80–107.

Plazas Olarte, Humberto. Los territorios nacionales con una introducción al estudio de su geografía y de su historia. Bogotá: Editorial Pax, 1944.

Por los caminos del Llano: A través de su historia. 4 vols. Arauca: Academia de Historia de Arauca, 1992.

Preciado, Fredy. “Institucionalidad para el Desarrollo endógeno de una región de frontera: Los Llanos Orientales, departamentos de Casanare y Meta, Colombia.” Unpublished study. Yopal, 2011.

Ramírez, Marco Fidel. 30 años de servicio y esperanza—1962–1992. Bogotá: Asociación Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, 1992.

Ramírez A., Guillermo, “San Luis de Palenque, el llanero y su presente.” Economía Colombiana 1:2, no. 4 (August 1954): 9–13.

Bibliography 177

Ramsey, Russell W. Guerrilleros y soldados. 2nd ed. Bogotá: Tercer Mundo, 2000.———. “The Modern Violence in Colombia, 1946–1965.” Ph.D. diss., University of Florida,

Gainesville, 1970.———. Revolución campesino, 1950–54. Bogotá: Ediciones Libres de Colombia, 1973.Rausch, Jane M. Colombia: Territorial Rule and the Llanos Frontier. Gainesville: University Press

of Florida, 1999.———. From Frontier Town to Metropolis: A History of Villavicencio, Colombia, since 1842. Lan-

ham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007.———. The Llanos Frontier in Colombian History: 1830–1930. Albuquerque: University of New

Mexico Press, 1993.———. “Quebrando el lomo de los Andes: La influencia de la radio en la frontera de los llanos de

Colombia, 1920–1950.” In Memorias, Metodología de la Investigación en Historia. Villavicen-cio: Universidad de los Llanos, July 2009, 71–80.

———. “Región Olvidada: Los Llanos en la historia de Colombia.” Revista de la Academia de Historia del Meta 2, no. 2 (April 1988): 32–40.

———. “The Second Campaign for Liberation: Casanare’s Struggle to Win Freedom from Boy-acá During the National Front (1958–1974).” Administración y Desarrollo 40, no. 55 ( Janu-ary–June 2012): 93–127.

———. A Tropical Plains Frontier: The Llanos of Colombia 1531–1831. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984.

Revista de Misiones 7, no. 77 (October 1931): 449.Ridge, Martin. “Frederick Jackson Turner and His Ghost.” in Writing the History of the American

West, edited by George Miles. Worcester, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, 1991.Roca Castellanos, Manuel. Diez luces sobre el futuro. 2nd ed. Bogotá: Editorial Nueva, 1935.Rodríguez, José Honório. “Webb’s Great Frontier and the Interpretation of Modern History.” In

The New World Looks at Its History, edited by Archibald R. Lewis and Tomas F. McGann, 155–64. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963.

Rojas de Moreno, María Eugenia. Rojas Pinilla, mi padre. Bogotá: Panamerica Formas e Impresos, 2000.

Rojas Pinilla, Gustavo. Mensajes y discursos. Bogotá: Empresa Nacional de Publicaciones, 1955.———. Rojas Pinilla ante el Senado. Bogotá: Editorial Excelsior, 1959.Romoli, Kathleen. “López of Colombia.” Inter-American 9 (May 1942): 46–50.Rozo G., José Aurelio. Cien años en Colombia construyendo futuro: 1904–2004. Compañía de

María-Misioneros Monfortianos. Bogotá: Ediciones Monfortianas, 2007.Rueda Vargas, Bernardo, and Arturo González Escobar. Intendencias y comisarías. Bogotá: Im-

prenta Nacional, 1937.Ruhl, J. Mark. “The Military.” In Berry, Hellman, and Solaún, Politics of Compromise, 181–206.Sánchez, Gonzalo. “The Violence: An Interpretative Synthesis.” In Bergquist, Peñaranda, and

Sánchez, Violence in Colombia, 75–124.———. “La Violencia: De Rojas al Frente Nacional.” In NHC 2:153–178.Santos, Eduardo. “Mensaje del presidente.” 1942.Sharpless, Richard E. Gaitán of Colombia: A Political Biography. Pittsburgh: University of Pitts-

burg Press, 1978.

Bibliography178

Slatta, Richard. Comparing Cowboys and Frontiers: New Perspectives on the History of the Americas. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.

Stoll, David. Fishers of Men or Founders of Empire? The Wycliffe Bible Translators in Latin America. London: Zed Press, 1982.

Szulc, Tad. Twilight of the Tyrants. New York: Holt, 1959.Tellez B., Hernando. Cincuenta años de radiodifusión Colombiana. Bogotá: Editorial Bedout, 1974.Tippetts-Abbett, McCarthy-Stratton. La carretera marginal de la selva: Estudio preliminar. Lima

and New York, 1965.Tovar Pinzón, Hermes. “Historia Regional como Problema y como Programa de la Historia

Nacional.” Caribabare 4, no. 4 (February 1992): 11–46.Ungar, Mark. Elusive Reform: Democracy and the Rule of Law in Latin America. Boulder, Colo.:

L. Rienner, 2002.Uribe, José Antonio. La reforma administrativa. Bogotá, 1917.U.S. Department of Energy. An Energy Overview of Colombia. Washington D.C.: GPO, Febru-

ary 6, 2003.Vargas Rubiano, Hernando. “Refleciones sobre el transport en la Orinoquia.” In Llanos de Colom-

bia,155–169. Bogotá: Litografía Arco, 1986.Vázquez Carrizosa, Alfredo. El concordato de Colombia con la Santa Sede. Bogotá: Italgraf, 1973.Villa Borda, Carlos J. Rojas Pinilla: El Presidente Libertador: Biografía. Bogotá: Editorial Iqueima,

1953.Villanueva Martínez, Orlando. “Guadalupe Salcedo y la Insurrección Llanera, 1949–1957.” Ph.D.

diss. Departamento de Historia, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2010.———. Guadalupe Salcedo y la insurrección llanera, 1949–1957. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional

de Colombia, 2012.Weber, David J., and Jane M. Rausch. Where Cultures Meet: Frontiers in Latin American History.

Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1994.Worster, Donald. “New West, True West: Interpreting the Region’s History.” In Etulain, Does the

Frontier Experience Make America Exceptional? 87–104.Zavala, Silvio. “The Frontiers of Hispanic America.” In The Frontier in Perspective, edited by

Walker D. Wyman and Clifton B. Kroeber, 35–58. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1957.

Zuleta Angel, Eduardo. El presidente López Pumarejo. Medellín: Ediciones Albon, 1966.

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to maps and tables.

Acción Comunal (AC), 90–91Acción Cultural Popular (ACPO), 97Acevedo Ardila, Telmo, 67, 70ACPO. See Acción Cultural PopularActa de Compromiso, 42Administrative changes: Catholic Church and,

112–13; from territories to departments, 108–12

African palm oil, 125, 128, 136Agrarian reform, in National Front, 85–86Agrarian Reform Law (1961), 98, 102Aljure, Dumar, 40, 50, 57, 63, 75, 78, 106Alliance for Progress, 79, 90Amazon, 12, 16, 96–97, 123; Peru invasion of, 54;

public works in, 140Amazon basin, viii, 130–31Amazonia, vii, 88, 98, 109, 140Amerindians, 15, 23, 31, 131, 143, 161n51Amnesty of guerrillas, 75; by Rojas Pinilla, 29,

30, 55Andean cordillera, vii–ix, 89, 94–95Andes Mountains, viiAntisocial movement, 56Anti-tuberculosis, 45ANUC. See Asociación Nacional de Usuarios

CampesinosApostolic Prefecture of Arauca, 9, 19Apostolic Vicariate of Casanare, 23–24Apostolic Vicariate of San Martín, 17Arango Vélez, Carlos, 157n8Arauca, vii, viii, 42; Apostolic Prefecture of, 9,

19; Caja Agraria in, 70; cattle ranch in, 19–20; economy, 19; education and public works in,

20, 70; as first comisaría, 9; Gaitán’s death and, 38; Liberal Party and, 19, 20; missionaries in, 2; Rojas Pinilla regime impact on, 67–68. See also Comisaría de Arauca

Arauca City: junta in, 91; medical facilities, 20Araucanos: Liberal Party support by, 32; military

force of, 71Arawak, 2Ariari region, 106–7, 115; colonization of, 73Armed forces, 56–57, 115; coup support by, 30;

Rojas Pinilla and, 74–75Army of National Liberation. See Ejército de

Liberación NacionalArticle 78 (Constitution), 5ASCATIDAR. See Association of Cabildos and

Traditional Indigenous Authorities of the Department of Arauca

Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos (ANUC), 90–91, 164n39

Assassination, of Gaitán, 1, 28, 29, 36–38, 51Association of Cabildos and Traditional Indig-

enous Authorities of the Department of Arauca (ASCATIDAR), 123

Atavismo y traumaturgia; cosmos del diosonamuto (Baquero), 135

AVIANCA airline, 62, 95, 154n28 Baquero, Omar, 139–40Baquero Nariño, Alberto, 135–36, 141Barco Vargas, Virgilio, 26, 108, 110, 126Battle of Boyacá, 31Bautista, Pablo, 50Bautista, Tulio, 40, 42, 50

Index180

Belaúnde Terry, Fernando, 94–95Betancur, Belisario, 108, 114, 122Bogotá, viii, 29, 108Bogotá-Villavicencio highway, 14, 15, 73, 91–92,

100–101; improvements in, 22, 124, 132, 164n42; López expansion of, 17; opening of, 32

Bolívars, Venezuelan, 17, 19Boyacá, 31, 81; Casanare incorporation into, 5,

22–27; political unrest in, 34–36Boyacense, 23, 56, 118BP. See British PetroleumBrazil, 11, 139, 141British Petroleum (BP), 116Bruls, José, 17, 73–74Brunnschweiler, Dieter, 101, 131, 132, 158n62,

164n42Bueno R., Arturo, 67, 68Bushnell, David, 65, 74, 139 Caja Agraria, 61, 62; in Arauca, 70; in Vichada,

68–69Caja de Crédito Agrario, 20, 60, 62, 89Cámara de Representantes, 45Camino del Sarare, 92–93, 101Campesinos, 40–42, 78, 113, 118, 136; expulsion,

60, 64; guerrillas defense of, 106–7; National Front assistance to, 90

El caso Llanero: Villavicencio (Baquero), 135Caquetá, 7–9, 60–61, 89–90, 94, 105, 116Cárdenas Ojeda, Lisimaco: Liberal officeholders

removal by, 33; the Llanos governing by, 32Carretera Marginal de la Selva, 93–94Casanare, vii, viii, 163n19; Apostolic Vicariate of,

23–24; cattle ranching in, 124; crop production in, 103; incorporation into Boyacá, 5, 22–27; missionaries in, 2; political unrest in, 34–36; regime impact on, 67–68

Casanareños, 35, 126Castellanos, Manuel, 32–33Castro, Fidel, 80, 105Catholic Church, 55, 98, 153n12; administrative

changes and, 112–13; Liberals persecution by, 29; as national religion, 7; power, 13, 112

Cattle ranch, 4, 31, 35, 47, 136; in Arauca, 19–20; Bogotá-Villavicencio highway, 100–101; in Casanare, 124; cattle transport and, 48; as economic asset, 56; economic development of, 100–101, 124–25; Lamo Pulido on, 71

Central government, 56; aid from, 71, 111, 116; influence, 97

Charter of 1936, 13Chary, Arturo, 67, 69, 70, 72Chulavitas armies, 38, 156n2; invasion of, 28; of

Ospina Pérez, 29–30Cold War, 80Colombia: geographic diversity of, vii; historiogra-

phy change in, ix, 131–32; national territories of, 10; nineteenth-century territorial experiments, 5–7; Venezuela treaty with, 14, 17

Colombia: Territorial Rule and the Llanos Frontier (Rausch), viii

“Colombia es mi patria,” 52Colombian air force, 18, 55, 96, 99Colombian army, 77, 105, 114, 115, 167n28Colonization, 73, 87–91, 164n35; areas during

National Front, 88Colonos, viii; in Llanos, 15, 32; violent displace-

ment of, 48Comisaría, 14, 23, 67–70; Arauca as first, 9;

creation of, 154n21Comisaría de Arauca, 9, 18–20, 46, 81, 93“La Comisaría Especial de Arauca” (Lamo

Pulido), 70Comisaría of Vichada, 9, 16–18, 31, 46, 81, 155n59Communication: Liberal Rule on, 11–12; radio-

telegraph service, 96–97Communist Party, 30, 74–75, 105Compañía Nacional de Navegación (NAVENAL),

96Comparing Cowboys and Frontiers: New Perspectives

on the History of the Americas (Slatta), 130Comunero Revolt (1781), 132Concordat of 1887, 7, 13, 99Congress: Ospina closing of, 29, 39; provincial

boundaries adjustment by, 5Conquistadors, 2Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca (CRIC), 99Conservative Party, 23, 157n10; Chulavitas as

extension of, 29; on Llanos development, 5Conservative Republic, 8–9Conservatives, 5, 13, 28, 74–75, 162n1; Liberals

persecution by, 29; La Violencia and, 32–34, 37–38, 47

Constitution (1886): Article 78 of, 5; on depart-ments, 6; on four-year presidential term, 111; on Roman Catholicism, 7

Constitution (1991), viii, 108, 111, 120–21, 166n5; Law 191 of, 143–44, 170n47; on national ter-ritories, 143

Constitutional Reform of 1936, 13, 14

Index 181

Constitution of Río Negro, 5Contemporary Era (1978–2010), 108–27; Catho-

lic Church and administrative changes, 112–13; cultural developments, 125–27; economic change, 124–25; petroleum boom impact, 116–24; political violence, drug wars and dis-placement, 113–16; territories to departments, administrative changes, 108–12

Contrabandistas, 19Contra-guerrillas, 42Convention on Missions (1902), 7, 13, 15Convention on Missions (1953), 65, 97, 99Cordillera, Andean, vii–ix, 89, 94–95Cordillera, Eastern, viii, 4Cordillera Central, viiCordillera Occidental, viiCordillera Oriental, vii, 21, 23, 156n77Corpes Orinoquia, 111, 140–41, 144, 167n17. See

also Orinoquia“El corrido del Turpial,” 52Corte Militar de Casación y Revisión tribunal,

59, 78Costa Atlántica, viiCountermanifestation, 33Coup d’état, 39, 54; of Rojas Pinilla, 30, 160n26CRIC. See Consejo Regional Indígena del CaucaCrist, Raymond, 64, 131Crop production, 102–4; African palm oil, 125,

128, 136; in Casanare, 103; in Meta, 102–3; rice, 125, 128, 136; yuca, 15–16, 22, 45, 64, 92, 102–3, 124

Crown, Spanish, 2, 31Cuban Revolution, 81, 105Cuerpo Técnico de Policía Judicial (PTJ), 145,

170n53Cultural developments, 125–27, 134–35Currie, Lauchlin, 60, 61, 87, 89, 160n26 DAI. See División de Asuntos IndígenasDAINCO. See Departamento Administrativo de

Intendencias y ComisaríasDANE. See Departamento Administrativo Nacio-

nal de EstadísticaDAS. See Departamento Administrativo de

SeguridadDepartamento Administrativo de Intendencias

y Comisarías (DAINCO), 84–85, 108–11, 167n13

Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS), 103, 166n96

Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Es-tadística (DANE), 49

Departamento del Meta (Paredes Cruz), 72Departamento de Territorios Nacionales (DTN),

13, 15, 67, 81–85, 96Department: Article 4 of Constitution (1886) on,

6; from territories to, 108–12Department of Boyacá, 81Department of Intendancies and Comisarías

(DIC), 12, 32Department of Meta, vii, 87DGIC. See Dirección General de Intendencias y

ComisaríasDIC. See Department of Intendancies and

ComisaríasDirección General de Intendencias y Comisarías

(DGIC), 84División de Asuntos Indígenas (DAI), 98DNP. See National Plan of DevelopmentDominican missionaries, 2–3Drug trafficking, 108, 113–16, 166n1DTN. See Departamento de Territorios NacionalesDuarte Blum, Alfredo, 55, 57Duarte Moreno, Pedro, 144–46Durán Dussán, Hernando, 39, 87, 105–6, 110 Eastern Cordillera, viii, 4Eco de Oriente newspaper, 33, 36Economic change, from petroleum boom, 124Economic development: cattle ranching, 100–101,

124–25; crop production, 102–4; petroleum search, 104

Economy, 25–26; of Arauca, 19; of Meta, 73, 135; during National Front, 80

ECOPETROL. See Empresa Colombiana de Petróleos

Education, 25, 100; in Arauca, 20; in Meta, 72; public, during National Front, 80; in Villavi-cencio, 74

EIAs. See Environmental impact assessmentsEjército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), 105,

114–16El Dorado, 2, 91ELN. See Ejército de Liberación NacionalEmpresa Colombiana de Petróleos (ECOPET-

ROL), 104, 116–17, 144Environmental damage, 121–22Environmental impact assessments (EIAs), 121Escuela Superior de Administración Pública

(ESAP), 144

Index182

Espinel Riveros, Nancy, 72, 134Estudio sobre las condiciones del desarrollo de Colom-

bia (Lebret), 89 FARC. See Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias

ColombianasFECI. See Fronteras de Exploración Colombiana

IncorporatedFederación Nacional de Aroceros, 47Federación Nacional de Ganaderos, 66Federation Era, 5First Congress of National Territories, 83–84First Law of the Llanos, by Franco Isaza, 44Fondo Nacional de Regalías (FNR), 112Fonseca Galán, Eduardo, 50, 57Franciscan missionaries, 2–3Franco Isaza, Eduardo, 28, 40, 42, 44, 50–53,

57–58Frente Nacional, 64, 79–80, 108, 114Fronteras de Exploración Colombiana Incorpo-

rated (FECI), 123–24Frontier: in Latin American historiography,

130–31; Turner on, viii, 129; United States historiography and, 129–30

Frontier historiography: Colombian Llanos and, ix, 131–32; in Latin America, 130–31; the Llanos since 1990, 133–37

Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias Colombianas (FARC), 105–7, 114–16, 119–20

Gaitán, Jorge Eliécer, 14; assassination of, 1, 28, 29,

36–38, 51; mob riots after assassination of, 29; political warfare after, 36–37

Gaitanistas, 36Garcia Bustamente, Miguel, 134, 135García Ullo, Jaime, 72Gómez, Laureano, 28, 76, 79; of Conservatives, 29;

election of, 39–40; Jefatura Civil y Militar de los Llanos creation by, 41; Liberals boycott of elec-tion of, 30; military coup for presidency end for, 54; National Liberal Directorate on, 38

González Reyes, Enrique, 45, 86, 154n17González Salas, Edgar, 167n17Granada, 63–64“Guadalupe Salcedo y la Insurrección Llanera

1949–1957 (Villanueva), 38–39Guahibo/Guahibos: attacks by, 3, 16; in Comis-

aría of Vichada, 16; of Llanos Orientales, 2;

massacre of, 99; petroleum boom impact on, 123

Guajira Peninsula, vii, 6Guerrilla, 42, 71, 80; activity, National Front and,

104–7; amnesty of, 29, 30, 55, 75; campesinos defense by, 106–7; groups, in La Violencia, 40; in petroleum areas, 120; as resistance movement, 49–50; Rojas Pinilla amnesty by, 29, 30, 55

Guerrilla fighters: Aljure, 40, 50, 57, 63, 75, 78, 106; Bautista brothers, 40, 44, 50; Franco Isaza, 28, 40, 42, 44, 50–53, 57–58; Salcedo, 28, 40, 43, 50–51, 57, 69, 75, 78, 160n11; Velásquez, 28, 37, 39–40, 44, 50–51

Guerrilla movement, 38; in Meta, 63; National Liberal Directorate support of, 40

Guerrillas de paz, 42, 57Guzmán Campos, Germán, 39–40, 76 Hennessy, Alistair, 170n45Hernández de Alba, Gregorio, 98Hispanic cultures, viii, 2, 3“La Historia regional como Problema y como

Programa de la Historia Nacional” (Tovar Pinzón), 139

Historiography. See Frontier historiographyHoyos, Alberto, 43, 51 IDMC. See Internal Displacement Monitoring

CentreINCORA. See Instituto Colombiana de la Re-

forma AgrariaINDERENA environmental protection agency,

121Indigenous people, 7, 97–100Instituto Colombiana de la Reforma Agraria (IN-

CORA), 84, 89–90, 97, 102–4Instituto de Crédito Territorial, 64Insurgents/insurgency, 28, 43, 80Insurrection, of La Violencia, 38–44Intendancy of Amazonas, 11Intendancy of Chocó, 86, 155n61Intendencia del Meta, 8, 20–22, 45, 81Intendencia Oriental, 6, 8Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre

(IDMC), 119Internal transportation, 61International Treaty (1957), 98

Index 183

Jefatura Civil y Militar de los Llanos, 41John Paul II (pope), 113John XXIII (pope), 99Junta: in Arauca City, 91; de Gileña, 58; de Misio-

nes, 9. See also Military junta Ladino Orjuela, Wilson, 120–21, 144–46Lamo Pulido, Alonso, 70–71Landholder, 107, 114Latifundia, 34, 90Latin America, historiography of frontier in,

130–31Law 2 of 1943, 14–15, 27Left, the, 115, 119Leftist, 80, 114–15León Valencia, Guillermo, 79–81, 105Leo XII (pope), 7, 23–24Leticia crisis, 56Liberal Directorate. See National Liberal

DirectorateLiberal Party: Arauca and, 19, 20; Araucanos sup-

port of, 32; Radical faction of, 5Liberal Republic, 14, 31–32Liberal rule: on Bogotá-Villavicencio highway, 14,

15; on DIC territories governing, 12; on Llanos financial support, 14–15; at national level, 29; on territorial budgets, 11; territorial develop-ments during, 11–16; on transportation and communication, 11–12

Liberals, 5, 40; Catholic Church persecution by, 29; Conservatives persecution of, 29; Gómez elec-tion boycott by, 30; Velásquez as leader of, 37

Literature, on La Violencia, 156n1Llaneros, 25–26, 38, 58, 66, 131–32Llanos, the, ix, 2, 31–32, 131–37, 133; colonos in,

15; frontier in 1950, 35; guerrilla war in, 38; increasing violence in, 27; influx into, 49; as international frontier, 141–46; Liberals and Conservatives on development of, 5; mission disruption in, 7; 1948 financial support of, 15; population of, 49, 60, 85–86, 86, 118, 118–19; rebels control of, 44; as region, 138–41; Rojas Pinilla and pacification of, 54–79; Rojas Pinilla four point plan for development of, 67–68; Rosero report on, 44–45; social structure, La Violencia and, 31; transformation of in second half of twentieth century, 132–33

Llanos abajo, 2

Llanos arriba, 2, 133, 134Llanos of San Juan, 2Llanos of San Martín, 2Llanos Orientales, vii–viii, 1–4, 48, 56, 66, 71,

128Lleras Camargo, Alberto, 57, 76, 79–81, 87, 91,

155n37Lleras Restrepo, Carlos E., 8–9, 44, 79–81, 90, 96Londono y Londono, Fernando, 98López Guevara, Luis, 82López Michelsen, Alfonso, 79–81, 84, 90, 99,

162n1López Pumarejo, Alfonso, 11, 44, 56, 67, 77, 80;

Bogotá-Villavicencio highway expansion by, 17; resignation of, 155n37; Revolution on March of, 12–13, 132

Lozano y Lozano, Juan, conspiracy, 76 Madre Laura, 69Mañoco, 16Marulanda Vélez, Manuel, 105, 114Medina R., Juan, 25Mestizo, 3, 143–44, 146Meta, viii, 71–74; crop production in, 102–3; as

department, vii, 87; economy of, 73, 135; educa-tion in, 72; guerrilla movements in, 63; migrants in, 60; political unrest in, 33–34; regime impact on, 67–68

Migrants: in Meta, 60; petroleum boom impact on, 118–20

Military junta, the, 55, 78–79, 81, 90Minifundia, 90Ministry of Education, 100Ministry of Environment, 121–22Ministry of Justice, 6Ministry of National Defense, 96Ministry of Public Works, 91–92Ministry of War, 8, 12Missionaries: in Arauca, 2; in Casanare, 2; Domini-

can, 2–3; Franciscan, 2–3; Recoletos, 2–3, 9, 23–25. See also Montfort Fathers

MNCs. See Multinational corporationsMonfortians, 9, 45, 69Montfort Fathers, 9, 17, 63, 66, 74, 156n77,

157n10; expedition into Ocuné, 69; in the Llanos, 32; in Vichada, 69

Multiclass, 40, 49Multinational corporations (MNCs), 119, 120

Index184

Narco-paramilitaries, 113National Assembly, 8National Front, 30, 78; agrarian reform, 85–86;

cattle ranching, 4, 19–20, 31, 35, 47–48, 56, 71, 100–101, 124–25, 136; colonization, 73, 87–91, 88, 164n35; communication, 11–12, 96–97; creation of, 45–46; crop production, 15–16, 22, 45, 64, 92, 102–4, 124, 125, 128, 136; economic development, 100–104, 124–25, 137; economy during, 80; guerrilla activity, 104–7; improve-ments during, 132–33; indigenous communities and, 7, 97–100; new department in, 86–87; petroleum search, 104; population increase, 85–86; public education during, 80; revitalizing DTN, 81–85; territorial rule during, 79–107; transportation, 91–96

National Liberal Directorate, 49, 63; on election boycott, 39; on Gómez, L., election, 38; leader abandonment by, 50; military coup d’état sup-port by, 39; peace effort, 44

National Planning Council, 166n5National Plan of Development (DNP), 85National Secretariat of Social Assistance. See Sec-

retariado Nacional de Asistencia SocialNational territories: Catholic Church power in,

13, 112; of Colombia, 10; DIC governing of, 12; Federation Era on, 5; Rojas Pinilla and, 66–67. See also Territories

NAVENAL. See Compañía Nacional de Navegación

New Granada, 4–5, 139Nieto Caballero, Luis Eduardo, 1, 155n50Nineteenth century: civil war, 6; eastern portion

development, 5; mission revitalization in, 7; recession, 6; territorial developments in early, 8–11; territorial experiments, 5–7

Non-Catholics, 65Nonpolitical revenge, 34Nonprofit organization, 90, 98Nukak-makú, 123–24Núñez, Rafael, 6 Occidental Petroleum (OXY), 104, 116, 121–22,

167n28Oficina de Rehabilitación y Socorro (ORS), 48,

59–60, 78Oil: exploitation, 136; exportation, 128; royalties,

125–26Ojeda Ojeda, Tomás, 32, 64, 73

Operación Colombia, of Currie, 87, 89Orinoquia, 128, 133, 138, 138–41. See also Corpes

OrinoquiaORS. See Oficina de Rehabilitación y SocorroOspina Pérez, Mariano, 14, 28, 157n8; Chulavitas

of, 29–30; Congress closing by, 29, 39; election of, 29

Otra mirada a la historia de Villavicencio (Espinel Riveros), 134

OXY. See Occidental Petroleum Pabón Núñez, Lucio, 67–68Pacific Coast, vii, 125Pact of Sitges, 79Paredes Cruz, Joaquín, 72El Partido de la U, 108Paul VI (pope), 74Paz, Justicia, Libertad, y Orden, 59–66; on Chris-

tian state, 65–66; Corte Militar de Casación y Revisión tribunal and, 59; ORS and, 59–60; refugees resettlement, 60

Peasant resettlement by INCORA, 89Pérez, Hector Públio, ix, xPérez Bareño, Leonel, 109, 140Peronism, 74Peru: Amazon invasion by, 54; Belaúnde as presi-

dent of, 94–95Petroleum boom impact: environmental damage,

121–22; on Guahibo, 123; IDMC and, 119; the Llanos population, 118, 118–19; migrants, 118–20; on Nukak-makú, 123–24; oil royalties, 125–26; political corruption, 120–21; violence and, 119–20

Petroleum deposits, vii, 116–24Piapocos, 16, 69Piedmont, 2–3, 23–24, 40, 89, 100, 134, 136Piedmont forest, disappearance of, 3Pius XII (pope), 69Plan Nacional de Rehabilitación y Socorro, 89Plan of National Development (PND), 166n5Plátanos, 15, 22, 102, 124Plazas Olarte, Humberto, 23, 26PND. See Plan of National DevelopmentPolitical unrest, 113–16; in Boyacá, 34–36; in

Casanare, 34–36; in Meta, 33–34Population, of the Llanos, 49, 60, 85–86, 86, 118,

118–19Postconflict, 166n1Preciado, Fredy, 137

Index 185

Prefabricated houses, 62Prewar, 3Protestantism, 98–99PTJ. See Cuerpo Técnico de Policía JudicialPublic health, in the Llanos, 58Public works: in Amazon, 140; in Arauca, 20, 70;

in Meta, 71; projects, 32Un pueblo de frontera: Villavicencio, 1940–1940

(García Bustamente), 134Puerto Carreño, 17, 31, 69, 145 Quinquenio, 6, 8, 154n17 Radicals, 5, 6Radio-telegraph service, 96–97Rain forest, 2Ramírez, Marco Fidel, 167n19Ramírez Meléndez, Justiniano, 59Ramsey, Russell, 37, 160n11Rausch, Jane M., viii, 131–32Recession in nineteenth century, 6Recoletos missionaries, 2–3, 9, 23–25Reelection, 14, 111Reenforcement, 40Region, Tovar Pinzón on, 139–40Region-wide, 40–49Republic of Colombia, 5, 170n47Reserva Forestal de la Amazonas, 123Revolución en Marcha, 11, 14, 27, 132; Meta and,

34; Puerto Carreño and, 31Reyes, Rafael. See QuinquenioRice production, 125, 128, 136Right, the, 113–14, 119Río Pauto, 61, 166n99Rivera Valderrama, Alfredo, 34, 68Rojas de Moreno, María Eugenia, 55, 57, 61,

64–65Rojas Pinilla, Gustavo, 53; amnesty by, 29, 30, 55;

balance sheet on, 76–78; coup of, 30, 160n26; downfall of, 74–76; four point plan for Llanos development by, 67–68; National territories and, 66–67; overthrow of, 30, 56; pacification of the Llanos and, 54–79; Paz, Justicia, Libertad, y Orden slogan by, 59–66; peace restoration in Llanos, 56–58; reconstruction problems in Llanos, 58–59; regime impact on Casanare, Vichada, Arauca and Meta, 67–74

Roman Catholic Church. See Catholic ChurchRosero Caicedo, Horacio, 44–45

La Rotta, Rafael, 24Rueda Vargas, Bernardo, 12, 32 Salcedo, Guadalupe, 40, 50–51, 57, 69, 78, 160n11;

government insurgency by, 28; on guerrillas, 75; victory against government troops by, 43

Sáliva, 2, 21, 23, 48, 50, 69Sánchez, Gonzalo, 49–50, 78San Juan de Arama, 62San Juan de Palenque, 64San Luis de Palenque, 57, 61–62San Martín, 9, 17, 62–63, 76SATENA. See Servicio Aéreo a Territorios

NacionalesSCADTA. See Sociedad Colombo-Alemana de

Transportes AéreosSecond Law of the Llanos, the, 44, 57, 76Secretariado Nacional de Asistencia Social (SEN-

DAS), 55, 64–65, 78Semana weekly news magazine, 47, 70Semifeudal arrangement, 4Semi-isolation, 122Semiofficial company, 96Senate, 18, 66, 86, 97, 115SENDAS. See Secretariado Nacional de Asistencia

SocialServicio Aéreo a Territorios Nacionales (SAT-

ENA), 84, 95Sierra Ochoa, Gustavo, 44“Significance of the Frontier in American History,

The” (Turner), 129SIL. See Summer Institute of LinguisticsSilva, Alfredo, 39, 158n36Slash-and-burn agriculture, 2Slatta, Richard, 129–30Soapaga-Socha-Casanare highway, 56Sociedad Colombo-Alemana de Transportes

Aéreos (SCADTA), 154n28Socioeconomic policies, 74, 89Spanish Crown. See Crown, SpanishSummer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), 98–99, 113,

167n19 Teoría y Práctica de una Política Colombianista, 67Territories: to departments, 108–12; developments

in early nineteenth century, 8–11; Liberal rule developments of, 11–16; nineteenth century experiments, 5–7

El Tiempo newspaper, 33, 35–36, 44, 58, 95, 106

Index186

Tovar Pinzón, Hermes, 139Transportation, 61; AVIANCA airline, 62, 95,

154n28; Bogotá-Villavicencio highway, 14, 15, 17, 22, 32, 73, 91–92, 100–101, 124, 132, 164n42; Camino del Sarare, 92–93, 101; Car-retera Marginal de la Selva, 93–94; El Dorado International Airport, 91; Liberal Rule on, 11–12; Lleras Camargo on, 91; in National Front, 91–96; SATENA, 84, 95; SCADTA, 154n28; Soapaga-Socha-Casanare highway, 56; Troncal de la Selva, 94

Tri-motor, 17A Tropical Plains Frontier: The Llanos of Colombia,

1531-1831 (Rausch), viiTurbay Ayala, Julio César, 99, 108Turner, Frederick Jackson, viii, 120, 129Turnerian frontier, the Llanos as, 133–37Turriago, Luis Carlos, 63–64, 67, 71–72Twentieth century, 128–46; Llanos history in, vii;

the Llanos transformation in, 132–33 Unión Patriótica (UP), 115United States, historiography of frontier, 129–30United States of Colombia, 5United States of New Granada, 4, 5UP. See Unión PatrióticaUpper House, 111–12Urdaneta Arbeláez, Roberto, 30–31, 40–43, 54,

157n4Uribe Vélez, Álvaro, 108, 120, 144U’wa tribe, 122–23 La Vanguardia airfield, 33Vargas Battalion, 41, 42

Vatican II, 99–100Velásquez, Eliseo, 28, 37, 39–40, 44, 50–51Venezuela: international border treaty (1941),

11, 14, 17, 142; international border with, 141; Llanos Orientales refuge of, 48

Venezuelans, 17, 19, 44Venezuelan treaty (1941), 11, 14, 17, 142Vichada, vii, viii; Caja Agraria in, 68–69; Montfort

missionaries in, 69; regime impact on, 67–68. See also Comisaría of Vichada

Villanueva Martínez, Orlando, vii–viii, 38–39, 43, 50, 53, 156n1

Villavicencio, 32, 39, 42, 46, 73, 74, 78Villavicencio: Dos siglos de historia comunera:

1740–1940 (Espinel Riveros), 134Villavicencio entre la documentalidad y la oralidad

(Ojeda Ojeda), 32La Violencia (1946–1953), viii, 1, 29–53, 132;

caporales as guerrilla band leaders, 4; causes of, 30–36; Conservatives and, 32–34, 37–38, 47; Gaitán’s assassination impact on, 36–38; guerrilla groups in, 40; insurrection, 38–44; in-surrection from 1951–1953, 41–44; key phases of, 29–30; Liberals ranchers support of, 40; literature on, 156n1; resurgence of, 74

Voice of Liberty, Free Radio of Colombia, 40La Vorágine (Eustacio Rivera), 132Voz del Llanos, 113Vuelo al Orinoco (Nieto Caballero), 1 War of Independence, 3, 132War of the Thousand Days, 6, 7, 31, 49World War II, 3–4, 14, 20, 154n28Yuca, 15–16, 22, 45, 64, 92, 102–3, 124

Jane M. Rausch, professor emerita of history at the University of Massachu-setts, Amherst, specializes in Colombian history and the study of comparative frontier regions. She is the author of Colombia: Territorial Rule and the Llanos Frontier and From Frontier Town to Metropolis: A History of Villavicencio, Co-lombia, since 1842.

Territorial Rule in Colombia and the Transformation of the Llanos Orientales

Documents

Transcript of Territorial Rule in Colombia and the Transformation of the Llanos Orientales