“Time was not passing...it was turning in a circle...” this quote of Gabriel García Márquez from One Hundred Years of Solitude is just a summary of never-ending conflict in Colombia. Colombia had a chain of civil wars since late 19th century. But the most bloody and inhuman link of this chain was the period of “La Violencia”. Following the assassination of liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, “The Bogota Riots” changed the destiny and became the trigger of the countries violent history. “Even if the cause is a mixture of anarchy, peasant insurgency, terror which influenced by government and politics, it’s hard to explain the extreme violence during the period.” This period of 1948-1958 (which had its effects until 60s) had three distinctive
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These locations included not extremely poor but small farmers which we can call wealthy considering those times living conditions. From James L. Zackrison’s article about La Violencia the geographic facts of the civil war and the historical perspective of the war intersects. The fact that the war happened in the valleys formed by Andes mountains (which created a fertile zone for farming), supports the second characteristic of this war, which was economy. The economic and peasantry perspective showed that the farmers were mostly involved in this war instead of poorer sections of the population. And the valleys that La Violencia took place was these fertile farmlands which were in the middle of the oppression from both Liberal and Conservative sides. According to Zackrison’s paper, after the riot in Bogotá “In the areas covered by the departments of Tolima, Caldas, Valle, and parts of Cundinamarca, the bandits used the rough terrain to their advantage, forcing the police and armed forces to rely on transportation accessible to both sides.” So the population here had the advantage that armed forces were not able to use any airplanes, helicopters or guns in the mountains. Their only transportation was animals because of the rough terrain. This equalized the war conditions between army and farmer or farmers who joined guerillas for a while. But because the fighters were unable to fight without the advantage and the cover of the mountains in early 1960s by the technological advantages of the military they were dramatically easily conquered. As a conclusion, the third characterization of Colombian Civil War, geography had importance in two aspects. Firstly, geography explains why did the civil war affect especially some areas (valleys between the Andes Mountains), which this also explains the intersection of the rural economy and geography considering the war. Secondly, how
These locations included not extremely poor but small farmers which we can call wealthy considering those times living conditions. From James L. Zackrison’s article about La Violencia the geographic facts of the civil war and the historical perspective of the war intersects. The fact that the war happened in the valleys formed by Andes mountains (which created a fertile zone for farming), supports the second characteristic of this war, which was economy. The economic and peasantry perspective showed that the farmers were mostly involved in this war instead of poorer sections of the population. And the valleys that La Violencia took place was these fertile farmlands which were in the middle of the oppression from both Liberal and Conservative sides. According to Zackrison’s paper, after the riot in Bogotá “In the areas covered by the departments of Tolima, Caldas, Valle, and parts of Cundinamarca, the bandits used the rough terrain to their advantage, forcing the police and armed forces to rely on transportation accessible to both sides.” So the population here had the advantage that armed forces were not able to use any airplanes, helicopters or guns in the mountains. Their only transportation was animals because of the rough terrain. This equalized the war conditions between army and farmer or farmers who joined guerillas for a while. But because the fighters were unable to fight without the advantage and the cover of the mountains in early 1960s by the technological advantages of the military they were dramatically easily conquered. As a conclusion, the third characterization of Colombian Civil War, geography had importance in two aspects. Firstly, geography explains why did the civil war affect especially some areas (valleys between the Andes Mountains), which this also explains the intersection of the rural economy and geography considering the war. Secondly, how