Colombia (Lonely Planet, 5th Edition) - Jens Porup [10]
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AFTER INDEPENDENCE
With Colombia independent, a revolutionary congress was held in Angostura (modern-day Ciudad Bolívar, in Venezuela) in 1819. Still euphoric with victory, the delegates proclaimed the Gran Colombia, a new state uniting Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and Ecuador (although Ecuador and parts of Venezuela were still technically under Spanish rule).
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Although the conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar was rewarded for killing thousands of indigenous people, the Spanish Crown sentenced him to death for ordering the assassination of rival conquistador Jorge Robledo in 1846.
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The Angostura congress was followed by another one, held in Villa del Rosario, near Cúcuta, in 1821. It was there that the two opposing tendencies, centralist and federalist, first came to the fore. The two currents persisted throughout Bolívar’s administration, which lasted to 1830. What followed after Bolívar’s departure was a new (but not the last) inglorious page of Colombia’s history. The split was formalized in 1849 when two political parties were established: the Conservatives (with centralist tendencies) and the Liberals (with federalist leanings). Fierce rivalry between these two forces resulted in a sequence of insurrections and civil wars, and throughout the 19th century Colombia experienced no fewer than eight civil wars. Between 1863 and 1885 alone there were more than 50 antigovernment insurrections.
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THE FALL OF SIMÓN BOLÍVAR
Known as ‘El Libertador,’ Simón Bolívar led armies to battle the Spanish across northern South America, won the Colombian presidency, and ranks as one of the nation’s great heroes. It’s therefore surprising how it ended for him: humiliated, jobless, penniless and alone. He said, shortly before his death from tuberculosis in 1830, ‘There have been three great fools in history: Jesus, Don Quixote and I.’
How did it happen? A proponent of a centralized republic, Bolívar was absent – off fighting back the Spanish in Peru and Bolivia – during much of his administration, leaving the running of the government to his vice president, and rival, the young federalist Francisco de Paula Santander, who smeared Bolívar’s ideas of being a lifetime president with the ‘m’ word: monarchistic.
In 1828 Bolívar finally assumed dictatorship to a republic out of control, and restored a (hugely unpopular) colonial sales tax. Soon after, he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt (some believe Santander planned it) and a long-feisty Venezuela finally split from the republic. By 1830 Bolívar had had enough, abandoning the presidency – and then his savings, through gambling. He died a few months later.
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In 1899 a Liberal revolt turned into the Thousand Days War, which resulted in a Conservative victory and left 100,000 dead. In 1903 the US took advantage of the country’s internal strife and fomented a secessionist movement in Panama, then a Colombian province. By creating an independent republic there, the US was able to build and control a canal across the Central American isthmus. It wasn’t until 1921 that Colombia eventually recognized the sovereignty of Panama and settled its dispute with the US.
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Colombia’s red, yellow and blue tricolor flag was adopted in 1861. Yellow represents the land, blue symbolizes the ocean and red is the blood spilled by patriots.
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LA VIOLENCIA
The turn of the 20th century saw the unwelcome loss of Panama, but a welcome period of peace, as the economy started to boom (particularly due to coffee) and the country’s infrastructure expanded under the defused partisan politics of leader General Rafael Reyes. The brief lapse into a gentler world didn’t last long, however. Labor tensions rose (following a 1928 banana strike), and the struggle between Liberals and Conservatives finally exploded