Violence in Pre-Modern Societies: Rural Colombia

Abstract

Violence is a common phenomenon in developing polities which has received little attention. Clearly a Peronist riot in Buenos Aires, a land invasion in Lima, and a massacre in rural Colombia are all different. Yet we have no typology which relates types of violence to stages or patterns of economic or social development. We know little of the causes, incidence or functions of different forms of violence. This article is an effort to understand one type of violence which can occur in societies in transition.Violence in Colombia has traditionally accompanied transfers of power at the national level. This can account for its outbreak in 1946, when the Conservative Party replaced the Liberals. It cannot account for the intensity or duration of rural violence for two decades. This article focuses primarily on the violence from 1946 to 1953, and explains its intensification and duration as the defense of a traditional sacred order against secular modernizing tendencies undermining that order. We shall discuss violence since 1953 in the concluding section.

Perspectives for the Historical Study of Rural Politics and the Colombian Case: An Overview

“…Analytical articles on La Violencia, the majority of which are based on the above book, fall into the first two categories of explanation of peasant unrest examined at the beginning of this paper. Robert C. Williamson (1963) sees it as the product of economic, political, and social frustration combined with anomie, while Fals-Borda (1965) and Richard Weinert (1966) interpret La Violencia as a reactionary attempt by peasants to defend their traditional and "sacred" order against change.…”

Colombian Parties and Political Development

“…Richard Weinert (1966) also argues that the tragedy of recent Colombian politics is to be explained by the response of the traditional parties to the stress of modernization. He argues that social mobilization was a serious threat to the traditional parties because both were based heavily on mass peasant support secured through traditional identification and authority relationships which social mobilization was likely to erode.…”