Page 300 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

802 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

aspects of our reasoning. It confutes partly, the analyses recognizing in the end of the Cold
War as a clean fracture between “old” and “new” conflicts and underlines its elements of
continuity. In addition, it gives us the opportunity to really understand the remarkable “adap-
tive abilities” of this conflict that have permitted it to conform itself successfully to the deep
transformations not only of the Colombian society but of the whole global society. In order
to avoid banal simplifications or partial readings of the conflict, the aim of this analysis is,
therefore, to adequately report the complexity of the phenomenon in examination through the
reconstruction of its fundamental stages and of the salient aspects of the involved actors.
As mentioned above, the first deep laceration of the Colombian society started in the second
half of the 1940s, that is, in the so called Violencia period, characterized by the violent explo-
sion of the historical opposition between liberals and conservatories. One of the causes of the
clash intensification, inside a society already strongly worn out by social conflicts and frus-
trations of the most uncomfortable classes, was the assassination of the representative of the
th
liberal party’s radical wing and presidential candidate on 9 April 1948, who had proposed a
social reform project threatening to subvert the status quo. Officially the civil war ended in
1957 thanks to an agreement between the two parts that led to the birth of the so-called Na-
tional Front, a sort of pact among the two formations that shared out the power excluding any
other alternative force from the political life. The suffocation of any legal demonstration of
political dissent made the insurgent fight the only outlet for opposition, determining the birth
of the first extreme left guerrilla formations, some of which resonated from the preceding
liberal guerrillas. This process of insurgent groups’ formation culminated in the mid-1960’s,
with the Farc’s birth, the principal insurgent organization, and in fact, since then it is usually
considered the date of the beginning of the current Colombian conflict.
But who are the Colombian conflict actors? Initially, in the mid-1960s, the clash saw the
State substantially contrasted by three guerrillas groups, the Farc, the eln (ejercito de lib-
eración Nacional - Nacional Liberation Army) and the Epl (Ejercito Popular de Liberacion
– Popular Liberation Army). Later the situation became more complicated, not only because
of the birth of other smaller guerrilla formations , but above all because of a new actor’s ap-
33
pearance in the early 1980s, the paramilitary groups, in a counter-insurgent position.
We will focus our attention mainly on the two most powerful illegal formations that,
together with the State, are the principal protagonists of this long war: the Farc and later the
Auc, the principal paramilitary organization which, in accord with the Uribe government
has accepted to start the process of demobilization beginning in 2006. Through the analysis
of both groups, insurgent and paramilitary, we will try to give a more complete picture of
the phenomenon considering inevitably, even though not in an exhaustive way for evident
synthesis reasons, fundamental aspects as the role of the narcotrafficking, the governmental
policies and the internal repercussions of external actors’ action .
The originary Farc’s nucleus dates back to the first self-defense groups, spawning in the

33 For instance the Quintin Lame, the PRT, the MIR Patria Libre and also the M-19 an insurgent organization
pertaining to the so called “second generation” of insurgency that tried to use political and social tools in the
struggle. The M-19 performed spectacular actions against the State and was later reintegrated in the civil so-
ciety thanks to the negotiations with the Barco Government in 1990. On an armed insurgency periodization
until 1989 see Pizarro L.E.:“La insurgencia armada: raìces y perspectivas” in Sànchez e Peñaranda, 2007.