17 Lessons of the Colombian Constitutional Reform of 1991 Toward the Securing of Peace and Reconciliation? Donald T. Fox, Gustavo Gallón-Giraldo, and Anne Stetson he idea that a political constitution The situation of America is so singular and so embodies a society’s deepest level of horrible that it is not possible for anyone to consent is ancient in Western civili- hope to conserve order for a long period, not even in a city. Never have I considered a danger zation. In The Laws, Plato defined a consti- so universal as now menaces the Americans; I Ttution as a framework that had to be built express this badly; posterity never saw a scene before a society’s laws could be authorita- as frightening as America offers, more for the tively drafted and promulgated. future than for the present because where has The polestar of constitutionalism as a anyone imagined an entire people to fall into a 1 © Copyrightmeans of securing democratic by government the Endowmentfrenzy and devour its own race as cannibals? of has guided Latin America since 1811, shortly The history of Colombia tragically dem- after the wars of independence began. Simón the United States Instituteonstrates Bolívar’s fears,of as Peacethe entire nine- Bolívar, creator of the short-lived Gran Co- teenth century was marked by civil wars lombia, convened a constitutional assembly interrupted by sporadic periods of relative in 1819 and later drafted a constitution of 151 articles for Bolivia. Some of his early peace. That said, a gradual solidification of ideas, such as a national chamber of civic democracy also characterizes Colombia, virtue to direct morals and punish vice, were which possesses one of the oldest democra- unfeasible, but his constitutional thoughts cies in Latin America. On a political level, were presciently directed at curbing anar- the competing ideologies of liberal and con- chy and violence among deeply antagonis- servative were embodied in parties fighting tic peoples and at developing a consensual for control of the central government and framework for government. While dying in regional economies. The military defeat of exile, he recognized the quixotic nature of his liberal forces in 1885 garnered conservative life’s ambition; about the region that he had control and ushered in the nearly fifty-year sought to unify, he prophesied that period of so-called Conservative hegemony. 467 468 Donald T. Fox, Gustavo Gallón-Giraldo, and Anne Stetson Among its first acts, the conservative govern- Popular protest against the Conservative ment abolished the federal constitution of hegemony increased in the late 1920s, es- 1863, promulgated under the auspices of the pecially after armed forces in Bogotá killed Liberal Party, and adopted the authoritarian two students and the Army massacred work- constitution of 1886. This iteration of the ers from the United Fruit Company in Colombian constitution placed the govern- 1928. The Liberal Party won the 1930 elec- ment under the firm control of the president, tions and inaugurated a sixteen-year period allowing him to suspend constitutional rules known as the Liberal Republic. A second and rights by frequently declaring a state of reform of the constitution of 1886, adopted emergency (estado de sitio), as would occur in 1936, attempted to introduce some ele- throughout the late nineteenth and twenti- ments of a welfare state, such as government eth centuries. Declaring a state of emergency intervention in the economy, and diminished was an exceptionally grave situation for the the constitutionally granted influence of the political and juridical order of the nation, as, Catholic Church over public institutions and apart from suspending constitutional rights, society. it permitted delegation of extraordinary In 1945, a third reform of the consti- faculties to the military. The constitution of tution of 1886 sought to modernize the 1991 would add the power to invoke el estado state’s administrative organization, though de comoción interior, a domestic uprising or the Conservative Party recovered power with situation of violent tumult. the 1946 presidential election of Mariano The explosive growth of coffee cultivation Ospina Pérez. Liberals had obtained more led to the development of regional econo- votes, but were divided between two candi- mies; growth of the oil industry and foreign dates. One of them was Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, investment led to prosperity, but the wealth leader of a liberal faction called the Union of was not shared with the majority of the pop- the Revolutionary Left. As he obtained the ulation, nor were those who held it enlight- larger percentage of the vote between the two ened enough to invest in extending efficient liberal candidates, he became the leader of government outside the major cities. As a re- the party and headed the opposition against sult of discontent among the poor and of the the new Conservative government. Gaitán ©weak Copyright state, the violence continued. by Between the was murderedEndowment on April 9, 1948, and his deathof 1899 and 1902, the Thousand Days’ War be- opened a new ten-year period of violence be- came the longest and cruelest civil war the tween Liberals and Conservatives known as countrythe hadUnited yet experienced. StatesThe conflict la Instituteviolencia, a bit of a misnomer, of Peaceas the in- ended when the government defeated rebel crease in political violence had begun some forces and imposed an armistice. years before. Gaitán himself had addressed In 1910, the first significant reform of the growing violence in his most well-known the constitution of 1886 was adopted in re- speeches. sponse to the forced departure of President The year 1950 witnessed the inauguration Rafael Reyes, who had assumed dictatorial of a new Conservative government, with Lau- powers. The constitutional assembly of 1910 reano Gómez as president. The Liberal Party introduced some moderating changes to did not participate in the elections in protest the constitution of 1886, such as abolishing against the murder of its candidate, Camilo the death penalty and inserting the judicial Echandía, during a parade. The country had power of the Supreme Court to review the in fact been under a state of emergency since constitutionality of laws. November 9, 1949, when President Ospina Framing the State in Times of Transition 469 Pérez had closed down the Congress. New cleus were added groups of campesinos trying President Gómez organized a constitutional to organize protests against landowners. assembly to provide some legitimacy to his In 1970, The Movement of April 19 government and promote a new constitution (M-19), an urban guerilla group, was orga- based on a more authoritarian model, in- nized in reaction to alleged fraud in the May spired by the regimes of Franco and Hitler. 19, 1970, elections. The presidential contest In the face of growing violence, military that year was won by the conservative rep- chief Gustavo Rojas Pinilla declared that resentative of the National Front, Misael “the principles of Christ and Bolívar” re- Pastrana, who ran against the former dictator, quired him to take charge, which he did in General Rojas Pinilla. General Pinilla had June 1953. The dictatorship lasted until the the support of a growing number of people political parties, reacting to their exclusion who felt politically excluded by the National from power, created a coalition that forced Front’s institutions. Later, in 1984, the M-19 Rojas Pinilla from office in May 1957. The started a peace process with the conservative Liberal and Conservative parties forged a government of President Belisario Betancur; deal to reduce the political violence between other guerrilla groups, such as the FARC and them by rotating control of the presidency, EPL, did so, as well. The government broke thus establishing the parties’ dual hegemony. off the process in early 1985. That same year, This deal, the Covenant of the National the M-19 seized the Palace of Justice, which Front, was approved for a twelve-year pe- housed the Supreme Court, in an effort to riod as a constitutional reform by plebiscite force the government to reinitiate the peace on December 1, 1957. The system of shared process. Rather than negotiate, the Betancur hegemony proved so satisfactory to the prin- government consented to a full-scale military cipal parties that the system of alternating attack that resulted in the destruction of the control and proportionate participation of building and the deaths of about 100 people, each party was followed until President Vir- including twelve judges.2 Hostilities increased gilio Barco abandoned it in 1982. with the termination of the peace process. However, new sources of violence arose None of the armed groups would join in a that the political truce could not contain, common front, although some of them cre- © Copyrightas the disparities in economic by and politicalthe Endowmentated the Coordinadora Guerrillera Simónof Bolí - power provided rich fodder for the explo- var in the 1980s, a body that, in practice, did sive growth of the guerrilla movement. In not act in a very coordinated way. the1963, United student activists and States Catholic radicals, Institute In addition to theof violence Peace spawned by including Camilo Torres, a priest, founded the guerrilla groups, the United Self-Defense the National Liberation Army (ELN), hop- Force of Colombia (AUC), a loosely affiliated ing to emulate Castro’s revolution in Cuba. group of paramilitaries formed to oppose The Popular Liberation Army (EPL) broke the guerrilla groups, directed their attacks away from the traditional Communist Party largely against rural laborers. The AUC was and declared itself to be the armed faction protected by the Colombian army as an ally of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Colombia. in the antiguerilla struggle. But the organi- In 1964, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of zation’s brutality against peasants suspected Colombia (FARC) formed around a group of sympathizing with the guerillas and its of guerrillas formerly established by the Lib- practice of kidnapping civilians for ransom, eral Party that refused to abandon armed even in neighboring Venezuela, led most struggle in return for amnesty.