History and Human Rights

Leaders of the banana workers' strike.

Tragically, Colombia’s tumultuous and often violent past and present have been scarred by many human rights violations.

Massacre of the Banana Workers

The country’s most famous historical tragedy was undoubtedly the 1928 Banana Workers’ Massacre, in which hundreds or thousands of peaceful laborers on strike against the United Fruit Company (today’s Chiquita) were machine gunned in the plaza of the town of Ciénaga. (Gabriel García Márquez described the massacre in his Nobel Prize-winning novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.) The massacre was committed by the Army, with the apparent blessings of both the  banana company and the U.S. government.

Assassination of Gaitan

Jorge Eliecer Gaitán

Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala, a leftist politician, made his fame by denouncing the massacre, and by the 1940s he was a contender for the presidency. However, in 1948 as Gaitán left his office in downtown Bogotá he was assassinated, in a killing which has never been solved. Gaitán’s murder triggered huge riots in Bogotá and across the rest of the country in which thousands of people died and the capital’s banks, streetcar system and government buildings were destroyed.

Pedestrians pass the memorial to Gaitan on Seventh Ave.

The riots were followed by ‘La Violencia‘: a decade of civil war between the Liberal and Conservative political parties. During this period small town churches had two entrances – one for Liberales and the other for Conservadores, so that they would not fight in church. La Violencia only ended after the two parties made a pact to trade the presidency back and forth between the two parties.

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This building, on 3rd Ave. and 12th St. in La Candelaria, was during the '50s the headquarters of the secret police, who had a prison in the basement.

Birth of Guerrillas

The 1960s saw rebellions by groups of landless peasants, who would later evolve into the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group, which still exists today. They were followed by the National Liberation Army (ELN) in 1964 and the more urban M-19 guerrillas in 1970.

Among the M-19′s complaints were opposition to Colombia’s practice of extraditing criminals for trial overseas and the two main political parties’ monopoly on power. The M-19 entered the political scene by stealing the sword from a statue of Simón Bolívar and then invading the Dominican Republic’s embassy during a party.

Tanks attacking the Justice Palace

In 1985, the M-19 attacked the Palace of Justice and took the justices and employees hostage. The government responded militarily, attacking the building with tanks. The palace was left in ruins, and about 100 people died, including judges, guerrillas and employees in the building’s cafeteria. The episode is still controversial today, as videos have been discovered which show that some of the dead were brought out alive by soldiers, who apparently then executed them in what is today the 20 de Julio Museum.

Memorial to victims of the Justice Palace Attack

A few years later, the M-19 demobilized, signed a peace treaty with the government. Today, several ex-leaders of the group are prominent members of Congress.

Crimes by the Guerrilla and Paramilitary Groups

Colombia’s guerrilla groups seem to have lost their idealistic origins and have morphed into terrorist organizations which kidnap, traffic drugs, plant land mines, recruit children and drive peasants from their homes. The guerrillas are considered terrorists by the Colombian government, the United States and the European Union.

Gustavo Moncayo has compaigned incessantly for the freedom of his son, a soldier held by the FARC guerrillas since 1997.

During the 1980s and ’90s, paramilitary organizations appeared across the country, often with government support. Financed by businesses and ranchers, these groups fought the guerrillas, but turned into terrorist organizations themselves, trafficking drugs, displacing peasants and committing many of the worst massacres in Colombia’s recent history. Colombia today has more than two million internally-displaced people, the world’s second-largest number after the Sudan.

The military itself has been found to have killed civilians and committed other rights abuses. In many areas of Colombia, it has been an open secret that the country’s military has worked hand-in-hand with the outlaw paramilitaries. Although many paramilitary units demobilized in 2006, others, calling themselves the ‘Black Eagles,’ have reappeared in many parts of Colombia.

Recent Scandals

In recent years, the country has been rocked by more human rights scandals, including the ‘parapolitica,’ in which dozens of senators have been prosecuted and imprisoned for working with the far-right paramilitaries. Also, the military has admitted that some units have kidnapped and killed peasants and other civilians and dressed them in guerrilla uniforms in order to receive bonuses for killing guerrillas.