Word: violencia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Last week's congressional elections show how painful the headache is. In an effort to end la violencia, Liberals and Conservatives* agreed in 1958 to unite in a National Front, with the presidency alternating between parties every four years, and a two-thirds majority required for all laws. Things calmed down all right; but without any real opposition to the ruling coalition, apathy ensued. With only 40% of Colombia's 7,000,000 adults going to the polls, the front last week won 102 seats in the 190-man House of Representatives...
Murderous banditry bloodied Colombia's countryside for two decades until an all-out effort by the Colombian army last year finally brought a semblance of order to the backlands. Now la violencia has broken out in a more subtle form in Colombia's cities. Last week in Medellin, a city of 700,000 northwest of Bogotá, Carlos Mejia, 9, son of one of the country's richest industrialists, was kidnaped as he walked to school; the kidnapers demanded $180,000 for his safe return. That same day in Bogotá, the wife of a prominent doctor...
...horrors, la violencia was sporadic and disorganized. Colombian intelligence experts believe that most of the kidnaping is the work of Castro-Communist terrorists, who see it as a way to spread chaos and buy arms for their Army of Liberation, the guerrilla outfit that invaded the village of Simacota last January. There is certainly money in the racket. In the past year, more than $1,000,000 in ransom was collected in the 130 kidnaping cases reported to police. Much more was probably squeezed from victims too terrified to tell...
Slowly but surely, Colombians are writing an end to la violencia, which began in 1948 as a political war between the Conservative and Liberal parties, continued as degenerate terrorism long after the leaders made peace, and now has claimed 200,000 lives in the country's backlands. In March, troops trapped and killed "Desquite" ("Revenge"), one of the most notorious of the bandit leaders; in the past 15 months they have erased three other bandits responsible for 1,100 murders among them. Last week the most vicious killer still at large met his death. He was Jacinto Cruz Usma...
Colombians simply call it la violencia, the only way to describe the sense less slaughter and banditry waged by hate-filled peasants who long ago forgot what they were fighting about. Now, at long last, there are encouraging signs that Colombia's government is gaining the upper hand and beginning to pacify the remote badlands...