The fighting has been going for 16 years. In a country less populous than the state of New York, it has already claimed the lives of some 200,000 people — six times the total battle deaths of all U.S. forces in the Korean war.
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.
In 1962, according to statistics reported last week, 75 peasant gangs with 1,500 men terrorized the interior, killing some 2,500 civilians and government troops. Today only 33 gangs remain, with fewer than 800 men. Government and civilian casualties have dropped 50% in the past year, while bandit casualties are up 30%. As in other guerrilla wars, statistics never tell the whole story. Several trouble spots remain, but hundreds of families are returning to their lands in seven newly declared zones of "total pacification" in the outbacks.
Franela & Corbata. Colombia's violence started in 1948 as an ugly political war between the country's Liberals and Conservatives—triggered by the assassination of Liberal Party Leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan. Conservatives drove Liberals from their villages; Liberals in turn regrouped as guerrillas, making the plains their stronghold. Soon killing became an end in itself, sadistic and without cause. Some machete-wielding fighters specialized in the franela cut, in which the victim's head was sheared from his body with an incision resembling the circular neckline of a flannel undershirt; others preferred the cor bat a —one slice across the throat, through which the victim's tongue was pulled, to look like a necktie. With the grim slogan of "Leave no seed," children were murdered, men emasculated, pregnant women cut open.
Successive governments sent troops in, but the terrain and guerrilla tactics of the peasant gangs proved too much. In 1953, Military Strongman Gustavo Rojas Pinilla granted an amnesty; when that failed, he bombed villages harboring bandits and imprisoned entire communities. In 1958, the Liberals and Conservatives finally patched up their differences and formed the Frente Nacional coalition, hoping to restore peace. But the violence raged on. Besides military action, President Alberto Lleras Camargo tried buying off the bandits; one leader collected $15,000, then hurried back to the hills, where he ran his grisly toll to 592 murders before he himself was killed last year. Not until President Guillermo Leon Valencia was elected in 1962 did the bandit war take a turn for the better. The man responsible: Major General Alberto Ruiz Novoa, Valencia's battle-tough war minister and commander of the Colombian detachment that fought in Korea. Says Ruiz: "We learned from Cyprus, Algeria and other such experiences that you cannot defeat a guerrilla by regular warfare. You have to take away the support of the population."