THE PAST AS PROLOGUE?

A HISTORY OF U.S. COUNTERINSURGENCY

POLICY IN COLOMBIA, 1958-66

Dennis M. Rempe

March 2002
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ISBN 1-58487-084-2

ii
FOREWORD

This monograph is the final supplement to a special

series stemming from a major conference entitled

“Implementing Plan Colombia: Strategic and Operational

Imperatives.” The Dante B. Fascell North-South Center of

the University of Miami and the Strategic Studies Institute

of the U.S. Army War College cosponsored the conference.

The conference clarified issues relating to Plan Colombia,

focused the debate, and provided a forum for mutual

learning.

In this monograph, the author outlines the history of

U.S. counterinsurgency policy and the recommendations

made by U.S. Special Survey Teams in Colombia from

1958-66. The monograph comes at a time when the United

States seriously is considering broadening its policy toward

Colombia and addressing Colombia’s continuing internal

war in a global and regional context. Thus, this report

provides a point of departure from which policymakers in

the United States and Colombia can review where we have

been, where we are, and where we need to go.

The Strategic Studies Institute and the North-South

Center are pleased to offer this monograph as a contribution

to the national security debate on Colombia within the

United States and abroad. The results of that debate will be

critically important to the promotion and protection of U.S.

national interests in the region and the rest of the world.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute

iii
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

DENNIS M. REMPE is a consultant for an engineering

firm. He served as an infantry officer in the Canadian

Armed Forces (Reserve) and was a member of the Canadian

National Team-Military Pentathlon. Mr. Rempe has

written numerous articles on counterinsurgency,

intelligence, and foreign international defense, including

“Guerrillas, Bandits, and Independent Republics: U.S.

Counterinsurgency Efforts in Colombia, 1959-65”; “An

American Trojan Horse? Eisenhower, Latin America, and

the Development of U.S. International Security Policy,

1954-60”; and “The Origin of International Security in

Colombia: Part I, A CIA Special Team Surveys La Violencia,

1959-60.” Most recently, he completed a chapter entitled

“The Information Challenge in the Global Security

Environment” for the forthcoming Edwin G. Corr, Robert H.

Dorff, and Max G. Manwaring edited volume, The Search

for Security: A Forward Strategy for the 21st Century. He is

currently completing “The Origin of International Security

in Colombia: Part II, Containing La Violencia—‘Nuts and

Bolts’ Counterinsurgency, A CIA Special Team

View—1960.” Mr. Rempe is completing his Ph.D. on

U.S.-Colombian internal security issues at the University of

Miami’s School of International Studies.

iv
SUMMARY

The author examines the history of U.S.

counterinsurgency policy in Colombia from 1958-66. He

points out that as early as 1958, the United States sent a

Special Survey Team to Colombia to make

recommendations for Colombia in dealing with its ongoing

internal war. Subsequently, other teams made additional

recommendations. The author concludes that

strategic-level recommendations have been rejected by both

Bogota and Washington. Many tactical and

operational-level military recommendations have been

accepted and implemented, but with limited success.

Lessons learned over the past 40 years indicate that (1)

solutions to the continuing violence in Colombia require a

cooperative and integrated strategy that addresses the

political, economic, social, as well as military dynamics of

the problem; but, (2) while there is exclusively no military

solution, counterinsurgency operations remain a key

element to solving Colombia’s violence problems.

v
THE PAST AS PROLOGUE?

A HISTORY OF U.S. COUNTERINSURGENCY

POLICY IN COLOMBIA, 1958-66

Introduction.

Colombia’s internal security situation has reached a

critical juncture. That nation’s three concurrent wars

against narcotrafficking, paramilitary, and insurgent

groups1 have produced a state of near cataplexy in the

administration of President Andres Pastrana. Gradually

this paralysis has given way to an attempt at a more

cohesive and comprehensive strategy—Plan

Colombia—aimed at ending decades of political violence.

Though comparisons should not be too tightly drawn, the

contours of the debate today are reminiscent of and

informed by an earlier era in Colombia’s history known as

La Violencia—the Violence. In its latter phase, 1958-66,

similar concerns regarding guerrilla violence, government

legitimacy, military capabilities, and security assistance

dominated bilateral relations between the United States

and that South American nation.2

In this monograph, the author examines U.S.

counterinsurgency policy during this latter phase of the

Violencia period, offering an historical analysis that has

implications for policymakers confronting the current crisis

in Colombia. He investigates the key role played by the

United States in constructing Colombia’s unconventional

warfare capabilities, analyzing how U.S. policy initiatives

expedited the ability of Colombia’s security forces to

undertake offensive counterinsurgency operations in an

effort to liquidate bandit-guerrilla organizations and

restore stability to the countryside. Ultimately he

establishes the unique role played by the United States in

facilitating the development of all aspects of Colombia’s

internal security infrastructure in order to contain “one of

1
the world’s most extensive and complex internal wars of this

century.”3

La Violencia: The Historical Context.

Relations between the United States and Colombia in

the field of national security began to expand as a result of

World War II and Colombia’s geostrategic proximity to the

Panama Canal. This relationship intensified as the United

States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)

engaged in cold war. Though Colombian policymakers

supported U.S. global strategy, internal crisis consumed

them for almost 2 decades.

In the early afternoon of April 9, 1948, an assassin shot

and killed populist Liberal Party leader Jorge Eliécer

Gaitán in central Bogotá. Shortly thereafter a crowd seized

Gaitán’s killer and beat him to death. They then dragged

the corpse to the front of the Presidential Palace and hung it

in a public street. Uncontrolled violence followed, resulting

in the deaths of some 1,400 people over a 2-day period,

before security forces regained control. In the countryside,

near civil war followed the so-called Bogotazo.4

The broader, historical reasons for the Bogotazo and the

violence that ensued lay within the dynamics of social and

political life in Colombia. A social structure had developed

based on ownership and use of land. Latifundista

institutions formed to support this structure, while values,

beliefs, and attitudes associated with it remained

practically unchanged from what can be described as a

“peasant order.”5

The two traditional parties, the Liberals and

Conservatives, dominated politics. While leadership of

these parties came from the upper economic and social

strata of the society, the intense rivalry that developed

expressed itself at all levels of Colombian society.

Traditional political antagonism coupled with social and

2
economic dislocation fuelled violence that, particularly in

rural areas, “had the characteristics of a blood feud.”6

Generally speaking, the Violencia era is broken down

into four periods.7 Increasing political instability

characterized Phase I (1946-April 9, 1948) as the Liberal

party under Alberto Lleras Camargo split its left and right

wing constituencies, losing power to a minority

Conservative government led by Mariano Ospina Pérez.

Out of power for nearly 16 years, the Conservatives utilized

the new opportunity to fill patronage positions throughout

the country with party supporters, exacerbating existing

political enmities. The assassination of Gaitán on April 9,

1948, produced the Bogotazo, the most visible expression of

these simmering internal tensions.

Phase II (Bogotazo-June 13, 1953) saw the bloodiest

period of insurrection, with guerrilla warfare spreading in

Colombia from the Llanos into Tolima. Both Liberal and

Conservative campesinos organized into guerrilla

self-defense groups in rural areas to protect themselves

against partisan attacks.

As the Conservative government lost control over the

situation, partisan use of the National Police, and to some

extent of the Army, increased, tarnishing those institutions

and further mobilizing the Liberal peasantry against the

regime.8 As violence reached unprecedented levels, General

Gustavo Rojas Pinilla stepped in to overthrow the

government and install a military dictatorship. For his

actions, he was, as one Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

document described it, “hailed as a deliverer” throughout

the country.9

Phase III (June 13, 1953-May 10, 1957) coincides with

the Rojas Pinilla dictatorship. The regime successfully

initiated amnesty programs to quell the violence that had

engulfed the country. However, as progress toward

restoration of constitutional processes stalled, corruption

increased, lingering violence met with repression, and

guerrilla warfare once again began to spread.

3
Fearing a return to previous levels of bloodshed and

pushed by Rojas’ attempts to create a political “Third Force”

movement, Liberal and Conservative leaders reached

bipartisan agreement to form the Frente Nacional (National

Front) government—a plan to alternate the presidency and

split power between the two parties every 4 years. On May

10, 1957, a 5-man military junta displaced Rojas, forcing

him into exile and ushering in the final phase of the

Violencia era.10

This final phase—Phase IV (August 1958-1966)

—encompasses the first two National Front governments of

Liberal Lleras Camargo and Conservative Guillermo León

Valencia. It witnessed an extensive collaborative effort

between the United States and Colombia in developing the

latter’s internal security apparatus, ultimately yielding the

most successful counterbandit/counterguerrilla operations

of that time in the Western Hemisphere. Although this

“officially” ended the Violencia era, bringing a greater

measure of stability to that nation, problems rooted in this

period continue to plague Colombia to the present.

Special Survey Team in Colombia.

Colombia inaugurated the new National Front system of

government in August 1958. Founded on an alternation

plan that split power between the country’s Liberal and

Conservative parties for a 16-year period, it offered an

opportunity to end a decade of terror, internecine political

warfare, and military dictatorship brought on by Gaitán’s

assassination. Plagued by ongoing guerrilla-bandit

problems, the National Front’s first president, Alberta

Lleras Camargo, sought internal security assistance from

the United States.

In response to this request, the Eisenhower

administration assembled a Special Survey Team to

investigate Colombia’s internal security situation. Under

State Department direction and with Department of

Defense (DoD) support, the CIA fielded a team of specialists

4
with wide-ranging irregular warfare experience in Europe,

Asia, and Latin America.

CIA officer Hans Tofte headed a team that included

Colonel Napoleon Valeriano (Philippine and U.S. Army),

Major Charles T. R. Bohannan, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph

T. Koontz, Colonel Berkeley Lewis, and Lieutenant Bruce

Walker. They arrived in Colombia on October 26, 1959, and

remained for 2 months, meeting with political and labor

leaders, military commanders, jailed bandit and guerrilla

fighters, and several guerrilla chieftains, logging over

23,000 kilometers in an attempt to survey the violence

problem.

On January 27, 1960, the Special Team completed a

preliminary report, summarizing its findings of the security

situation in Colombia. The report outlined the critical

problems of current, active (primarily bandit), and potential

(primarily communist guerrilla) violence. The team

estimated that violence had taken more than 250,000

lives—10,000 alone between 1958 and 1959—while

displacing more than 1.5 million people from farms and

homesteads in the countryside.

The inability of security forces to take effective action

compounded this grave situation. The Army remained

garrison-bound; security forces lacked any kind of

information, public relations, or psychological warfare

capabilities; and the population despised the National

Police. Military and civilian intelligence organizations had

proved ineffectual.

Public opinion toward government, justice and law

enforcement agencies, and security forces oscillated

between distrust and outright hatred after more than a

decade of brutal internal war. Communist forces, though

not an immediate threat, had the potential to exploit the

existing situation and already controlled several rural

enclaves, organizing armed militia groups into autodefensa

(self-defense) units.11

5
In the team’s opinion, the personal prestige, ability, and

integrity of Lleras Camargo constituted the key element

and asset in any effort to rebuild a broadly supported

democratic government in Colombia.12 Long-term solutions

to the violence problem could only be undertaken through

major structural changes in the social, economic, and

political system of that country.

Recognizing the need to utilize Lleras’ influence and

authority in any immediate bid to control the violence, the

Special Team recommended the following six-point

program to the Colombian government.

1. Found a special counterguerrilla combat force from

Lancero units within the Colombian Army.

2. Institute an effective military intelligence service and

reorganize the civilian Servicio de Inteligencia Colombiana

(Colombian Intelligence Service [SIC]).

3. Establish an effective government public information

service with a covert psychological warfare capability.

4. Initiate a so-called “attraction” program, coordinated

through a Civil Affairs (G-5) section of the Armed Forces, in

an effort to rehabilitate public opinion of Colombia’s

security forces.

5. Reorganize, train, equip, and deploy the National

Police and rehabilitate their public image.

6. Emphasize national development and rehabilitation

programs, particularly land settlement and

government-community welfare (“self-help”) projects.13

U.S. national interests required that Colombia, given its

strategic Caribbean location, not be allowed to sink into

turmoil and revolution that might lead to a government

hostile to the United States. Consequently, an emergency

U.S. aid program that offered assistance and guidance to

the Lleras administration best served that national

interest. Both materiel and appropriate personnel were

6
needed to support objectives outlined in the six-point

program for Colombian action.14

On May 25, 1960, the Special Team presented its final

report to Secretary of State Christian Herter. This detailed

review and analysis of Colombia’s multifaceted violence

problem reinforced and elaborated upon the findings

proffered in the preliminary report. Echoing Lleras

Camargo’s concerns, the team identified current, active

violence as the most critical, short-term problem facing the

new National Front government.

Primarily criminal in nature, this was the work of bandit

gangs committing acts of murder, rape, and “economic

terrorism” in coffee-growing and cattle-raising regions. Led

by violentos (violent ones) nurtured in the brutality of the

period, these gangs operated as quasi-guerrillas, raiding

and maintaining rudimentary intelligence networks

throughout their areas of operation and establishing

spheres of influence that promoted a rapid growth in

black-market activities, aided by intermediaries and

purchasers of illicit produce.15

The team judged that the Colombian government could

eradicate these groups more easily because, unlike real

guerrillas, they lacked ideological motivation and popular

support. Lancero units, guided by qualified advisors and

supported by a functioning intelligence service as well as

basic psychological warfare and civic action programs, could

alleviate this problem relatively quickly. By employing

counterguerrilla methods to “capture, kill, or adequately

discourage bandits and outlaws,” the team estimated that

current, active violence could be quelled in 10-12 months.16

As to overcoming the second, more substantial obstacle

of potential violence—a problem not easily remedied by a

single action—the team was less sanguine. To bring

long-term stability to Colombia required wide-ranging

reform of that country’s social, political, and economic

system. Military solutions were secondary and largely a

derivative of nation-building efforts that would entrench a

7
broadly respected, democratic society.17 Their stark

appraisal: short of “genocide or bankruptcy” no military

solution to the problem of potential violence existed.18

The Lleras administration faced the “rock-bottom,

elementary issue” of reestablishing confidence in

government among Colombia’s demoralized population.

Restoring public faith in the government’s ability to

maintain peace required it to reduce current, active

violence, develop political stability based on democratic

processes, and ensure equitable solutions to basic social and

economic needs.

It could only achieve internal stability by coordinating

military and law-enforcement activities with ongoing

efforts to eliminate widespread social, political, and

economic injustice. The “cardinal principle” to achieving

this goal in Colombia was the development of a true

democratic government, reflecting the will of the majority of

its people while concomitantly protecting minority rights.19

But the team did not minimize the extent of Colombia’s

social ills, recognizing the magnitude of the dilemma faced

by any Colombian government, even one led by a person of

Lleras’ stature. These problems included a large rural

population displaced from the land or onto tracts too small

for productive use (minifundia); widespread illiteracy in the

countryside; racial inequality; the highest rates for diseases

such as typhoid, typhus, yellow fever, small pox, and leprosy

in the Western Hemisphere; and an entrenched political

oligarchy, serving only the interests of the elite. Critical

shortages of food, housing, medical services, and education

had contributed to what can only be described as a

revolutionary situation among “have-nots.”20

In Colombia, efforts to suppress violence, promote

effective labor organizations, develop extensive social

welfare and rehabilitation services, resettle displaced

persons, and stabilize the economy remained necessary

components to establishing internal stability. Lleras

attempted to do this by supporting land resettlement and

8
malaria suppression programs, improving educational

facilities, undertaking judicial reform, and promoting

government initiatives to expand industrial and

agricultural productivity as well as infrastructure

improvements to transportation and communications

facilities.21

But countering insurgents requires a coordinated

political-military posture that incorporates a full spectrum

of social, economic, and psychological components into any

security strategy.22 Though Lleras had taken important

first steps, the Special Team offered a list of new

programs—many of them focused on reorienting Colombia’s

security forces to an internal security mission—that it

deemed essential to developing the kind of comprehensive

strategy needed to achieve lasting stability.

Key elements included regaining public trust in the

Armed Forces by focusing military efforts on the problem of

active violence; establishing competent national

intelligence and public information agencies; enlarging

rehabilitation efforts; and improving national tax

structures as well as government administration and

operations. Finally, the team recommended that Lleras

initiate an antisubversive program either “partially or

wholly clandestine, to discredit or eliminate by legal means

those anti-democratic forces seeking for their own benefit,

or for the benefit of a foreign power, to impede or prevent the

establishment of a stable, popular, democratic government.”23

The Special Team also identified another vital

component to any successful political-military strategy

designed to counter internal instability in Colombia: U.S.

support. Emphasizing “quasi-covert” assistance to augment

and reorient Colombian stabilization efforts, the team

envisioned “special temporary aid” in the form of both

materiel and advisory personnel.

Specialists with experience in counterguerrilla,

information, and psychological warfare, intelligence and

9
counterintelligence, civic action and rehabilitation

programs, and police operations would focus on both

short-term antiviolence activities and long-term measures

aimed at ameliorating the root causes of potential violence.

In short, they would concentrate their efforts towards

reorganizing Colombia’s conventionally oriented security

forces. The team recommended that these advisors be fitted

into the existing Country Team framework on a temporary

basis under the supervision of a senior advisor acting as

special assistant to the U.S. Ambassador.24

In an effort to deflect “interventionist” charges, the

Special Team also advocated the use of third-country

nationals—contracted to the Colombian government under

“cover” arrangements but actually under covert U.S.

control—as advisors to security forces engaged in

guerrilla-bandit suppression operations. Non-U.S.

personnel, they reasoned, brought experience and training

not readily available in the United States and offered

additional propaganda value by demonstrating

“international solidarity and support of U.S. objectives.” As

to material aid, the team suggested “sterile” equipment,

stripped of U.S. markings and supplied through alternate

military aid channels. Total U.S. costs for this special

temporary aid were estimated at less than one million

dollars.25

In the final analysis, the Special Team report offered a

“blueprint” for prosecuting the war against internal

violence in Colombia. This blueprint—weighted as it was in

the short-term towards securing the stability of the

Colombian state—did not neglect long-term solutions

centered on legitimate, democratic governance. Its

wide-ranging counterinsurgency strategy encompassed

those military, economic, and sociopolitical elements vital to

the success of any nation-building effort.

Ultimately policymakers in Colombia and the United

States narrowed the focus of this strategic proposal,

concentrating too heavily on military solutions at the

10
expense of broad social reform. Nonetheless, the Special

Team’s contribution was a benchmark strategy for

combating revolutionary insurgency and revitalizing a

structural reform process that might have led to deeper

democratization in Colombia.

Internal Defense during the Early National Front

Period.

In 1961 the new Kennedy administration completed

Eisenhower’s policy reorientation towards Colombia,

placing it on a firm internal defense posture. The

administration utilized a bifurcated policy of military and

socioeconomic assistance—counterinsurgency coupled to

the Alliance for Progress. This dual-track model remained

in place under Lyndon Johnson, though with less

commitment, given the exigencies imposed by growing U.S.

involvement in the Vietnam War.

The administration revived earlier plans to develop a

special counterguerrilla team deployed from helicopters

and the Colombian armed forces received a “special impact

shipment” of approximately $1.5 million worth of military

hardware in late 1961 to enable Orden Público (Public

Order) missions. This included a variety of vehicles,

communication equipment, and small arms meant to equip

and mobilize the specialized ranger-style unit that became

prototypical in the campaign against rural violence and

uncontrolled banditry in the countryside.26 It also included

the first shipment of helicopters, an aircraft that proved “a

major, even crucial, element in the struggle against

violence.”27

For the Kennedy administration, this special shipment

became the first tangible effort to assist Colombian military

forces in their struggle against internal violence and led to a

vastly expanded internal security effort under Military

Assistance Program (MAP) support.

11
The Yarborough Team.

In February 1962 Brigadier General William P.

Yarborough led a U.S. Army Special Warfare Center team

to Colombia in a follow-up study to the Special Survey

team’s report. The Yarborough team’s primary objective

was to study the violence problem, evaluate the

effectiveness of the Colombian counterinsurgency effort,

and make recommendations that would allow the effective

deployment of a U.S. Counterinsurgency Military Training

Team (MTT).28

During a 12-day mission, the team toured areas

encompassing four of Colombia’s eight brigades. In its final

evaluation, it concluded that lack of central planning and

coordination had seriously affected all levels of the

counterinsurgency effort in Colombia. Fragmentation of

resources; lack of essential communications, transportation

and equipment; reliance on static outposts; and improper

use of military personnel in civil capacities placed the army

on the defensive and allowed both subversive and bandit

elements to acquire the initiative.

Inadequate collation and dissemination of intelligence

at both an army and national level further hampered

internal security operations, as did the lack of

counterintelligence training. Civic action and psychological

operations programs remained sporadic, no properly

delineated relationship existed between the army and

National Police, and broader social, political, and economic

problems existed for which resolution seemed remote.29

The team recommended that the Colombian government

institute corrective measures, including greater

collaboration among the DAS, National Police, and armed

forces in the fields of intelligence and counterintelligence;

coordination and standardization of programs structured to

a national counterinsurgency plan; and improved

transportation and communications equipment.30 At

brigade level, they believed it essential to garrison fixed

12
outposts with state police in order to facilitate increased

army mobility, prioritize action areas, intensify antibandit

propaganda, equip and maintain troops for rapid reaction

and night operations, and conduct joint, inter-brigade

operations.

Armored buses filled with soldiers or police in civilian

clothing could be covertly introduced into the

transportation system, and operational zones isolated

through curfews, civilian registration programs, and other

populace control measures. Finally, exhaustive

interrogation of captured bandits and guerrillas using

sodium pentathol and polygraph was needed in order to

gather intelligence information on hostile groups.31

The Yarborough team also recommended that the

United States provide guidance and assistance in all

aspects of counterinsurgency. To establish proper

antiviolence plans, requirements, and operations, the team

envisioned the deployment of MTTs for psychological

warfare, civic action, air support, and intelligence, as well as

five Special Forces A-teams that would work concurrently

with the battalions of the four brigades most seriously

engaged with guerrillas and bandits.

Finally, concerned by the political instability

surrounding the transfer of power from Lleras to Valencia,

the Yarborough team presented its final report to the

Kennedy administration’s Special Group (Counterinsurgency) with a secret supplement. The team believed

that, in view of the economic and political environment in

Colombia, “positive measures” should be instituted if the

internal security situation deteriorated further. This would

require civilian and military personnel clandestinely

selected and trained in resistance operations, in order to

develop an underground civil and military structure.

This organization could then undertake “clandestine

execution of plans developed by the U.S. Government

toward defined objectives in the political, economic, and

military fields.”32 While pressuring for reforms, it would

13
also undertake “counter-agent and counter-propaganda”

functions as well as “paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorist

activities against known communist proponents.”

If such a structure already existed, the Yarborough team

declared, it should be deployed immediately against

communist elements. The team suspected that “the Rurales

operating in the Llanos are CAS [Covert Action Staff]

directed through DAS in Colombia.” This being the case,

they believed it a “step in the right direction” as long as CAS

had “positive leadership influence” over the security force.33

Although the use of U.S. Special Forces A-teams in a

direct combat role “was not favorably considered by the

Colombian Minister of War, COMUSMILGP [Commander

U.S. Military Group], or the United States Ambassador,”34

the Colombian government did make maximum use of U.S.

MTTs in the period following submission of the Yarborough

report.35 To facilitate internal security programs in

Colombia and throughout the other American republics, the

Latin American Special Action Force (1st Special Forces,

8th Special Forces Group) was stationed in the Canal Zone

in August 1962.

This force provided the majority of mobile training

teams (MITs) used in support of internal defense.

Numerous MTTs involved in a broad range of instruction

went to Colombia in the decade after the Yarborough team,

teaching everything from supply, engineering, sanitation,

and other civic action projects; to intelligence,

counterinsurgency, psychological warfare, and special

operations. In fact, more MTTs went to Colombia during

this period than any other country in Latin America.36

Overall, the Yarborough Team report represents the

beginning of a drift in U.S. policy towards a more militarized

approach to Colombia’s internal security problems. Less

focused on a broad, nation-building strategy, it is,

nonetheless, notable for promoting components—

professionalization of security forces, collaborative

intelligence structures, development of rapid reaction

14
capabilities—critical to the tactical and operational success

of any counterinsurgency plan.

Also notable is that U.S. policymakers resisted the

temptation to “Americanize” Colombia’s conflict through

the introduction of Special Forces combat teams directly

onto the battlefield. Unlike Vietnam, decisionmakers

pursued an indirect policy that played to America’s

strengths: economic and military aid, training of security

forces, technical assistance, and logistical and intelligence

support. Not only did this policy prove judicious from a

domestic political standpoint, it ensured Colombian

solutions to Colombian problems while furthering U.S. Cold

War interests.

Plan LAZO.

After the Yarborough and Special Survey team reports, a

Colombia Internal Defense Plan evolved that was designed

to integrate military efforts with the economic, social, and

political aspects of the internal security problem. Approval

of this plan came from the highest levels of the Kennedy

administration.

In May 1962 . . . Ambassador [Fulton] Freeman established

the Country Team Task Force to consider recommendations

for an antiviolence program. The recommendations of this

task force were handcarried by the Ambassador to

Washington in June, 1962, where they were presented to

Special Group (CI). The Special Group shortly thereafter

approved the recommendations as the Colombia Internal

Defense Plan. In August, 1962, the recommendations and the

implied offer of U.S. assistance to implement them were

presented to President Valencia and the Minister of War.

Upon their concurrence, the way was cleared for close

cooperation between the United States Country Team and the

Colombian Government on an antiviolence campaign.37

During this same time period, Commanding General

Ruiz Novoa, Generals Rebeiz and Fajardo, Colonel Alvaro

Valencia Tovar, and a dozen other Colombian Army, Air

15
Force, and National Police officers—all supported by a U.S.

Counterinsurgency MTT—prepared the Colombian

military response to the violence problem. Known as Plan

LAZO (“snare” or “noose”), it called for broad civic action

programs within violence zones and an improved

antiviolence apparatus coupled with military action that

would target leading bandit elements and suppress and

eliminate guerrilla forces. Ultimately, it would become the

basis for additional counterinsurgency plans, including

more sophisticated ones involving joint operations such as

the Colombian Armed Forces (Joint) Counterinsurgency

Plan of 1964-66.38

Plan LAZO’s primary components were:

• Tightening and integrating the command structure of

all forces engaged in public order missions to clearly

establish military responsibility for all operations;

• Creating more versatile and sophisticated tactical

units capable of successful unconventional warfare

operations;

• Expanding the military’s public relations and

psychological warfare units to improve civilian

attitudes toward the army’s public order mission;

and,

• Employing the armed forces in tasks intended to

contribute to the economic development and social

well-being of all Colombians, especially those

subjected to guerrilla-bandit activity.39

The Colombian army implemented Plan LAZO in July

1962. One of its primary objectives was to “eliminate the

so-called “independent republics” created by leftist

insurgents and some bandit elements in the upper

Magdalena Valley.40 Within these insurgent enclaves, U.S.

intelligence estimated that 11 communist guerrilla groups

of approximately 1,600 to 2,000 men remained active, aided

16
by the Partido Communista Colombiano (Colombian

Communist Party-PCC). The PCC attempted to both

organize and strengthen these enclaves, establishing

militia units in an effort to direct and control bandit and

former Liberal-guerrilla paramilitary capabilities.41

Another 29 noncommunist guerrilla groups of

approximately 4,500 men continued to exist primarily in the

southern and central departments of Colombia. Remnants

of the fighting since the assassination of Gaitán, these

groups continued to maintain arms and remained

unresponsive to government actions to improve social and

economic conditions in their areas unless coordinated

through former guerrilla leaders.

Though largely inactive, they remained a potential

threat to the government should the National Front system

fail and partisan violence escalate in the countryside.

Finally, somewhere between 90 and 150 bandit gangs

totaling over 2000 men were reported as active primarily in

the coffee-rich Cauca Valley region. Operating in a highly

individualistic, though quasi-guerrilla, fashion, these

groups maintained intelligence nets throughout local rural

communities. U.S. intelligence concluded that organization

and operational coordination had increased; but interbandit

rivalry continued to cause clashes, and attempts by the PCC

to control these gangs had, at that point, achieved little

success.42

In conjunction with military civic action programs,

targeting these bandit gangs and communist enclaves

became the primary focus of the Colombian army as Plan

LAZO progressed. As pacification in some violence-plagued

departments took hold and area commanders determined

“that control had shifted in their favor,” they employed a

classic technique vital to the long-term success of any

counterinsurgency plan: “The army then organized civilian

self-defense units (autodefensa) and directed them to relieve

army units of some patrolling and local garrisoning.” Within

urban centers, security forces initiated a comparable

17
program the following year as a “wave of kidnapping had

created apprehension among the wealthy.”43

Communications and civil defense early warning

networks played an important role in linking these

autodefensa units to security forces under Plan LAZO. At

the national level, the U.S. Army Mission and Colombian

Ministry of Government prepared a plan in November 1962

for a communications network in the Llanos-Amazonas

regions.44 The new system allowed military, police, and

border elements to utilize the system for security purposes,

while simultaneously allowing the central government to

maintain closer links with its territorial areas. By 1965

plans existed to expand the communications net into

isolated regions along Colombia’s Pacific coastline.45

At the departmental level, the Colombian government

established rural civil defense early warning radio nets with

local community support. These nets were utilized in

violence-afflicted regions as a means of gathering

intelligence and providing early warning against bandit or

guerrilla attacks. Colombian security forces described each

net as a “Federation,” with subscribers contributing $200

for radio equipment that brought two-way communication

down to individual farm level. Authorities intended the

system to link battalions in I, III, VI, and VIII Brigade areas

to local authorities and the civilian populace, as well as local

and National police and the air force.46

Supported by groups that had suffered considerable

economic dislocation in the violence, eleven separate

networks existed in the spring of 1965. These included

coffee cooperatives along the Cauca River in Caldas, Valle,

and Tolima; agricultural groups in the sugar growing region

of Cauca and cotton growers in Magdalena, and other armed

agricultural groups along the central Magdalena River

Valley from Bolivar; and the major oil extraction and

refining area of Santander to Huila. Each net consisted of up

to 100 citizen-band radio sets distributed to farms, civilian

defense centers (net control stations), and military civil

18
defense monitor and repeater locations. Based on the

success of the original nets, Colombia’s security forces

scheduled another 47 for installation in the 1966-68

period.47

It is clear that Plan LAZO was an ambitious and

innovative counterinsurgency strategy that reflected the

security interests of the Colombian state. With its inception,

counterviolence measures became more determined as

security forces increasingly aimed their operations towards

destroy and capture missions.48 Despite earlier U.S.

concerns regarding Colombian military capabilities, the

Armed Forces took to counterinsurgency with alacrity. Late

1962 saw 75 percent of Colombia’s military forces engaged

in some form of antiviolence measures.49

Equally important is the fact that Plan LAZO

incorporated civic action and civil defense in conjunction

with counterinsurgency operations in an effort to win

popular support. By engaging Colombia’s rural—and

urban—population, security forces denied radical groups

the ability to develop the kind of widespread, clandestine

civilian infrastructure vital to the successful prosecution of

revolutionary “People’s War.”

Acción cívica militar.

Decisionmakers in both Washington and Bogotá

supported rehabilitation programs for Colombia’s civilian

population as an integral component to their antiviolence

policy. Early in the National Front period, the Lleras

government instituted rehabilitation commissions and

Equipos Polivalentes (“Welfare Teams”) to coordinate

civilian efforts at ameliorating conditions wrought by the

Violencia and to reestablish stability in violence-affected

departments.

At the national level, rehabilitation commissions

attempted to track programs in designated zones,

coordinate relief efforts (particularly for abandoned

19
children), assist refugees in finding employment, seek

solutions to land title problems, and promote colonization of

unused land.50 In an attempt to provide credit to displaced

peasants seeking to reestablish farms, the Lleras

government made extensive use of social security

ministries, banking institutions such as the Credito

Agrario, religious organizations, the Red Cross, and U.S.

assistance through Public Law (PL)-480 surplus provisions.

At the community level the administration dispatched

30 Welfare Teams, each composed of a doctor, nurse, several

agrarian technicians, an engineer, veterinarian, home

economist, and occasionally a public administrator. The

government used these special impact teams as advisors in

community development efforts, particularly projectoriented, small-scale undertakings that utilized agrarian

credit assistance and co-op style local labor to build rural

schools, mills, medical facilities, or “model farms.”51

Welfare Teams produced “the best kind of propaganda

favorable to the long-term objectives of the [administration],” establishing a government presence in rural

communities previously outside existing national

structures. Despite this fact, “partisan politics” impeded

rehabilitation efforts as did “lack of funds, lack of personnel,

and perhaps most of all, [a] lack of appreciation among

certain elements of the ruling class in Colombia, of the

magnitude and the critical importance of these needs.”52

At the same time, Colombian military officers began to

show heightened interest in the concept of acción cívica

militar—military civic action. In 1958 Louis J. Lebret,

French economist and clergyman, produced a report on

development conditions in Colombia in which he proposed

to use the military, by virtue of its institutional coherence,

as an agent of social change. Lebret called for:

. . . the optimal utilization of the armed forces to assure

harmonious development, particularly in what refers to the

more rapid establishment of infrastructure, for the preparation

of technicians at different levels for the purpose of exploiting the

20
territory, and for the cultural elevation of the whole. Stated in

another form, the armed forces of a developing country not

only have a defensive function: they should also be, according

to the eminent French rural economist, Jean Marious

Gatheron, “a creative army.”53

Ruiz Novoa, nominated as Commanding General of the

Colombian Army in 1960, strongly advocated the use of

Colombia’s armed forces “as agents to mend the national

social fabric and to develop the social infrastructure.” Ruiz

believed that destroying guerrillas was simply not

enough—the army must also “attack the social and

economic causes as well as the historic political reasons for

their existence.”54

Civic action efforts remained sporadic until AprilSeptember 1962, when the Colombian military, working

with the United States Country Team, developed an

“impact” program for violence-afflicted regions. A U.S. Civic

Action MTT positively evaluated the plan later that year

and projects outlined within it—road construction and

maintenance, education, health care centers, and

communications networks—“came to embody the core” of

the Colombian civic action effort in the early National Front

period. Informal programs ran throughout much of that

following year until Presidential Decree No. 1381

established the Comité Nacional de Acción cívica militar on

June 24, 1963.55

Road construction fostered by MAP and MTT support

began in June 1963, and over the next several years the

Colombian government initiated gravel surfaced routes in

the violence-ridden departments of Huila, Cauca, Caldas,

Valle, Cundinamarca, Santander, and Tolima. Providing

access to both civil and military traffic, maintenance and

construction of “farm-to-market” and penetration roads had

a direct effect on the suppression of violence in these areas.56

Beginning in February 1964 the Valencia

administration, supported by MAP and Agency for

International Development (AID) funding, established 19

21
health care centers in an attempt to reach approximately

100,000 people in rural areas particularly impacted by the

Violencia. That same year, the Colombian air force and

navy—again with MAP support—developed a “Flying

Dispensary” to reach colonists and indigenous populations

in remote regions by aircraft and two “Floating

Dispensaries” along the Putumayo and Magdalena rivers.57

In communist-influenced regions or areas controlled by

violentos, the Colombian army also undertook civic action

programs such as construction of water wells and potable

water systems, literacy training programs, development of

youth camps, and construction of rural schools, as well as

dispensaries to provide dental treatment and medicine. In

one instance, a dispensary established in an area of Caldas

became instrumental in turning the populace against the

leader of a local bandit gang.58

Simultaneously, U.S. support for community action

groups and public safety programs in Colombia began under

the Alliance for Progress. Though not directly under U.S.

military control, this assistance did provide community

development funds at the local level, while also providing

aid to both the National Police and DAS in order to improve

training, administration, operations, communications, and

public relations.

In sum, the Valencia administration, with extensive

U.S. support, implemented civic action programs within the

context of Plan LAZO as a means to improve internal

security throughout the countryside. Rural development

projects alleviated factors contributing to violence, opening

areas to greater pacification efforts by security forces and

projecting state power into regions long ignored by

successive governments in Bogotá.

Civic action allowed security forces to overcome “the

traditional suspicion of the military held by the people in the

violence regions,” improving intelligence and support for

internal security operations.59 In that sense, civic action

became a means not only for building physical

22
infrastructure, but also for denying Colombia’s human

infrastructure to insurgent organizations.

In the long run, however, the failure of successive

Colombian administrations to build and maintain an

effective state presence in the countryside allowed

insurgent forces to regain momentum. Ultimately, the

ensuing security vacuum also gave rise to the privatization

of civil defense in the form of paramilitary forces.

Building Colombia’s Intelligence Structures.

Intelligence is critical to the successful conduct of

counterinsurgency operations. But by its very nature,

irregular warfare:

. . . place[s] new demands on conventional concepts of

intelligence. . . . In counterinsurgency, underground and

guerrilla targets are elusive and transitory, and the life cycle

and usefulness of intelligence are brief. . . . In conventional

warfare intelligence is not primarily concerned with

individuals, whereas in counterinsurgency activities it focuses

on individuals and their behavior patterns. The identity and

whereabouts of the insurgents are usually unknown and their

attacks are unpredictable. The underground lines of

communication and the areas of underground logistical

support are concealed from view. It is to these highly specific

unknowns that counterinsurgency intelligence must address

itself.60

In Colombia, the Rojas regime perpetrated a classic

litany of abuses—“resorting to torture, concentration

camps, and indiscriminate aerial bombing” 6 1—

characteristic of a government ill-prepared to meet an

underground enemy. By the time the U.S. Special Team

arrived in Colombia, it found an intelligence apparatus that

still remained unprepared for the exigencies of

counterinsurgency operations.

The team noted that President Lleras received no

intelligence briefing, the civilian SIC had proved inefficient

and incompetent, the intelligence section of the National

23
Police (F-2) suffered from training deficiencies, lack of

direction, and no clear mission, while military intelligence

as it existed provided little more than “classified news

reporting.”62 It recommended extensive U.S. intelligence

support, both civilian and military, in order to increase the

effectiveness of Colombia’s intelligence organizations.

Lleras sought to alleviate some of these deficiencies by

instituting the Departamente Administrativo de Seguridad

(Administrative Department of Security-DAS) in place of

the deactivated SIC. The DAS performed intelligence and

counterintelligence functions and coordinated

countersubversive actions among all security forces, while

the F-2 section of the National Police concentrated on

antibandit (criminal) measures. The mandates of these two

agencies were ostensibly delineated by political versus

criminal acts of violence, but the interrelated nature of

violence within the Colombian context often made it

difficult to differentiate between them.63

Interest in developing an effective military intelligence

program increased as more Colombian officers recognized

the need for timely and accurate intelligence in maintaining

public order. They supported the U.S. idea of establishing a

broad intelligence course for Latin American military

personnel in Panama, and, beginning in 1960, the

Colombian army filled its quota in each class in an effort to

expand this program. However, difficulties arose in

assigning personnel to duties on their return as the army

lacked a proper intelligence infrastructure.64

U.S. efforts to institute a more effective military

intelligence organization in Colombia began in earnest with

a two-man U.S. Intelligence MTT in February 1961,

followed by a second, three-man Intelligence MTT in May

1962 and a permanent Mission intelligence advisor. The

first team was not completely successful,65 but it did

establish a base for intelligence operations that became

increasingly more effective after the adoption of Plan LAZO

by the armed forces. In the same period, the United States

24
initiated plans to deploy a Psychological Warfare MTT to

Colombia and made course spaces available for officers at

both the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North

Carolina, and the Canal Zone in psychological operations

and counterresistance training.66

The second U.S. Intelligence MTT proved more

successful. It gave several short-term training programs for

interrogators, mobile intelligence groups (grupos móviles de

inteligencia), and Localizadores teams (grupos inteligencia

de localizadores—intelligence hunter-killer teams).

Colombia’s armed forces used hunter-killer teams,

composed of 25 veteran officers, noncommissioned officers

(NCOs), and civilians ( heavily armed), trained to operate in

the field for long periods of time, and to fight and penetrate

hostile groups as well as work with informants.67

Perhaps the most notable military aspect of Plan LAZO,

however, was the adoption of counterguerrilla warfare

techniques that highly depend on sophisticated

intelligence-gathering and analysis.

. . . Army tactical units acquired a “comando localizador,” or

unconventional warfare shock group, which clandestinely

killed or captured guerrilla and bandit leaders. In addition,

Mobile Intelligence Groups (grupos móviles de inteligencia)

were attached to all major operating units. Their activities

seem to have included counterguerrilla work similar to the

comando localizador, as well as information-gathering.68

These tactics brought security forces continued success

against urban radical groups, killing or capturing nearly

two dozen people largely associated with the United Front of

Revolutionary Action (FUAR) and “Workers-StudentsPeasants” Movement (MOEC), and against rural bandits

and guerrillas, killing 388 in 1962 alone.69 Attacking the

leadership structures of guerrilla-bandit groups splintered

organizational cohesion and led to a 20 percent increase in

deaths attributable to the military’s aggressive new tactics.

Casualty ratios went from about even to 7:2 in favor of

Colombia’s security forces.70

25
In 1963 the Colombian armed forces developed and

issued Internal Security Directive 001. Addressed to all

three military services, the National Police, and DAS, it

called for cooperation through a Joint Operations Center

(JOC) and the establishment of an intelligence agency that

would consider both military and national intelligence

requirements.71 Although the Valencia administration did

form a central intelligence committee consisting of the three

military services and the National Police, no “substantial

progress towards the establishment within the Colombian

Government of an interagency intelligence committee

which could coordinate intelligence produced by all agencies

having a collection capacity” was made by mid-1964.72

However, the Colombian Armed Forces did create a

Military Intelligence Battalion to undertake combat

intelligence, counterintelligence, and special operations.

Fielded to assist in coastal surveillance and internal

security operations against infiltration of agents,

“provocateurs,” arms, and propaganda, it was also used to

find, destroy, or eliminate communist and extremist

activities through a network of clandestine agents.73

Finally, the United States provided vehicles, radios, and

other equipment to II Brigade in the Guajira area in an

effort to establish a surveillance-intelligence net that could

monitor Colombia’s northern coast for “subversive agents

and contraband.”74

In sum, despite national-level deficiencies,

U.S.-supported reorganization of Colombia’s intelligence

organizations played an integral part in the containment of

the violence problem. Enhanced intelligence capabilities

“proved a key factor” in helping security forces to halve the

level of violent death—especially of civilians—in the

countryside from the pre-National Front period.75

Reorienting Colombian intelligence to an unconventional

mindset facilitated the ability of that nation’s security

forces to deal with both the overt and clandestine

components of insurgent organizations, that is, both

26
main-line guerrilla units and their underground support

structures.

Although the transformation remained incomplete,

Colombia’s intelligence organizations became adept at

performing their counterinsurgent function and provided

timely information that helped to curtail the kinds of

combat excesses that might have ignited widespread

support for a revolutionary movement that could destroy

the existing state. In short, intelligence proved to be a force

multiplier, critical to the successful conduct of counterinsurgency operations in Colombia.

Operation Marquetalia.

Even prior to the inception of Plan LAZO, the Colombian

government deemed action against the communistinfluenced independent republics essential to internal

security. While most of these regions remained relatively

passive, causing little interference in government affairs,76

they did gradually develop shadow governments ruled by

skilled Marxist guerrilla leaders unresponsive to control

from Bogotá.77 Early in the National Front period, Lleras

Camargo attempted a two-track policy against these

guerrilla zones. The administration attempted both to

encourage peasants to participate in rehabilitation

programs while eliminating guerrilla leadership that

resisted government efforts to gain local support.78

This was the case in 1961 when guerrilla leader Manuel

Marulanda Vélez (Tiro Fijo) declared a “Republic of

Marquetalia.” The Lleras government, fearing that a

Cuban-style revolutionary situation might develop,

launched a surprise attack against the area in early 1962.

Although unsuccessful in driving irregular forces from their

stronghold, the army did establish several outposts in the

area.79 Ironically, Marulanda began his guerrilla career in

the early Violencia period with other Liberal irregular

forces that later combined with communist fighters from the

same area prior to the formation of the National Front.80

27
The Colombian government accelerated probing actions

against the enclaves after the development of Plan LAZO,

adopting a U.S. counterinsurgency methodology that

included:

• Counterguerrilla training for security forces,

initiation of civic action programs, recruitment of

informers, and infiltration of security personnel into

guerrilla groups.

• Conducting psychological operations in order to

establish control over the civilian population.

• Initiating operations to blockade specific areas and

isolate guerrilla groups from their sources of support

and intelligence.

• Utilizing in-place informers and infiltrators to

splinter the internal cohesion of the guerrilla groups

and conducting ongoing offensive counterinsurgency

operations, coupled with psychological warfare to

destroy guerrilla units and liquidate leadership

cadre.

• Reconstructing operational zones economically,

socially, and politically under the auspices of U.S. aid

programs.81

For Colombia’s security forces, 1964-65 proved pivotal

years in the struggle against the enclaves. On May 18, 1964,

the Valencia government launched Operation

MARQUETALIA against Marulanda’s guerrilla forces,

using a combined arms approach that included heavy

artillery, air force bombing, and infantry and police

encirclement of suspected guerrilla villages.82 Some 3,500

men swept through designated combat zones, while 170

elite troops were airlifted into Marulanda’s hacienda

redoubt in an attempt to trap the guerrilla leader.83 The

government recruited Paez Indians with notable success

28
against the guerrillas as scouts and guides through difficult

terrain.84

Security forces drove most of the guerrillas—including

Marulanda—out of the Marquetalia area, though they

escaped the army cordon and fled to the neighboring

“republic” of Río Chiquito. On July 20, 1964, Marulanda and

other guerrilla leaders from the Tolima-Cauca-Huila border

areas met in the First Southern Guerrilla Conference.

Declaring themselves “victims of the policy of fire and sword

proclaimed and carried out by the oligarchic usurpers of

power,” the new coalition called for “armed revolutionary

struggle to win power.”85 Composed originally of both

communist and noncommunist bandit and irregular forces,

this southern guerrilla bloc, with some financial and

political aid from the PCC, consolidated its command into a

unified group known as the Fuerzas Armadas

Revolucionarias Colombianas (Revolutionary Armed

Forces of Colombia-FARC).86

The modern mythology of the FARC promotes the idea

that Operation MARQUETALIA was a defeat for the

Colombian state.87 Nothing could be further from the truth.

Ernesto “Ché” Guevara, in reference to Marquetalia,

declared that the existence of a “self-defense zone when it is

neither the result of a total or partial military defeat of

enemy forces, is no more than a colossus with feet of clay.”

Its recapture by security forces, “. . . will have a major effect:

a great victory for the bourgeoisie, a great defeat for the

‘Castro-Communist revolution.’”88 As Régis Debray noted in

his response to Guevara, the recapture of Marquetalia

forced the FARC back to the first stage of mobile guerrilla

warfare.89

Thus, in contrast to policymakers today, securityminded officials in Washington and Bogotá during the early

National Front period considered the existence of strategic

base areas that might become a staging ground for

insurgent strike forces simply unacceptable. They directed

Colombia’s armed forces to respond with relentless

29
counterinsurgency campaigns against rural banditguerrilla groups coupled with ongoing operations against

urban terrorists. By 1966 this strategy brought an end to

the existence of the “independent republics,” significantly

reduced previous levels of intense violence throughout the

nation, and restored a semblance of stability to that country

after nearly 20 years of internecine warfare.

Conclusion—Lessons Learned?

What lessons can be derived from this historical analysis

that would lend themselves to policymakers facing the

current crisis in Colombia? Contemporary problems defy

easy categorization as the unintended consequences of past

policy failures have transmogrified this struggle from its

“standardized” Cold War template to a post-modern

internal conflict that grafts “autonomous”90 sources of

financing—kidnapping, extortion, narco-tax—onto classic

Maoist-style insurgency. Nonetheless, historical reflection

does offer observable landmarks that might guide policy.

• Colombia need not become “Another Vietnam.” It is

not an exaggeration to say that without the support of the

United States during the early National Front period,

Colombians could not have contained the Violencia so

effectively nor “found themselves at a stage where they

could seriously contemplate [its] elimination.”91 The

infrastructure established by Colombians in collaboration

with the United States during this period—psychological

operations and civic action capabilities, inter-regional

communi- cations and civil defense networks, and an

intelligence supported counterinsurgency apparatus—

proved essential to a nation that appears plagued by

“permanent and endemic warfare.”92

Equally important is the fact that U.S. policymakers

opposed direct involvement in Colombia’s internal security

problems. Then, as now, it remained a conflict for which

Colombians ultimately needed to find their own solutions,

though this did not connote U.S. disengagement from its

30
ally. On the contrary, it meant comprehensive support at

the highest levels of U.S. Government without

conjunctively Americanizing the conflict through the

introduction of combat forces. Ultimately, recognition of

mutual security interests ensured at least a short-term

solution to the violence problem that proved beneficial to

both nations.

Today, much rhetoric is expended on providing

long-term solutions to the current crisis in Colombia

through a broad sociopolitical strategy. But from an

historical perspective, it is apparent that policymakers have

once again narrowed their focus to a short-term, militarized

approach. For the United States, policy remains mired in a

supply-side approach to the war on drugs, while Colombians

must deal with a multifaceted violence problem where the

“drug issue is only one piece of a larger strategic puzzle.”93

In order to once again establish a sphere of mutual

security interests between the United States and Colombia,

policymakers must move away from the stale debate over

sprayed hectares and captured kilograms. They must move

instead towards the true center-of-gravity of the current

crisis: the struggle for state stability and the need to capture

the hearts and minds of Colombia’s human topography.

• The violence in Colombia requires an integrated

strategy that addresses the social, economic, political, and

military dynamics of the problem. The origin of modern U.S.

internal security policy in Colombia can be traced back to

the CIA Special Team survey of 1959. Their final study

offers insights relevant to Colombia’s current internal

security situation. Concerning the nature of the violence

problem, a clear distinction emerged between criminally

motivated violence versus the more complex phenomena of

“potential” violence posed by insurgent groups. A

comprehensive and integrated strategy was required to

eradicate the latter threat.

31
In this regard, the team correctly emphasized the need

to rebuild a brutalized populace’s belief in government and

restore political stability through democratic processes and

wide-ranging reform of Colombia’s social, political, and

economic infrastructure. Although its members clearly

viewed Colombia’s dilemma through a Cold War prism, the

Special Team’s lasting contribution to a broader

understanding of the Violencia era lay in the recognition

that military force alone would prove insufficient in solving

that nation’s complex violence problem.

While they did advocate military engagement and the

discriminating use of force against guerrilla-bandit gangs,

they also recognized that a prerequisite of successful

counterinsurgency operations was an integrated politicomilitary policy. Their key nation-building strategies

continue to resonate: professionalizing the armed forces,

curbing excesses in combat and building respect for human

rights, improving social and economic conditions for a

marginalized peasantry, and fashioning competent, widely

trusted, government institutions.

Unfortunately, in the long run, policymakers in both the

United States and Colombia chose to narrow the focus of the

Special Team’s wide-ranging counterinsurgency strategy.

Ultimately, they failed to recognize that counterinsurgency

is not a military strategy, it is a political strategy with a

derivative military component. The larger nation-building

concept envisioned in the original Special Team report was

supplanted instead by a narrow operational focus on

liquidating guerrilla-bandit groups.

Thus by emphasizing security and order over

development and democratization, by focusing primarily on

military repression of radical actors rather than a long-term

commitment to civic action and the amelioration of

structural factors that exacerbated internal tensions,

policymakers ensured containment—but not resolution—of

the violence problem.

32
• Important fault-lines in the domestic organization of

the Colombian state—structural discontinuities that

remain apparent to the present day—augmented the

violence problem. In Colombia, political mobilization of the

population after World War II eroded the structure of a

society already burdened by regional differences, elite

control over the institutions of power, and a certain cultural

acceptance of violence. Inefficient and partisan security

forces further aggravated this volatile situation.94 Issues of

land distribution, a widening gap between rich and poor,

polarized political loyalties, and a political system

inadequately prepared to adapt to changing expectations,

the spread of new ideas, and the uneven impact of

modernization further exacerbated internal tensions. As for

the judicial system, as one Colombian Minister of Justice

declared, “justice was not operative in Colombia.”95

While the first two National Front governments did

enact reforms that substantially reduced social grievances

and political dissent throughout the country, retrenchment

of Colombia’s political elite after 1966 rekindled these same

tensions. In response to failing oligarchical control, new

urban radical and rural insurgent organizations emerged,

promoting armed struggle and revolutionary alternatives to

the existing political system.96

The lack of political will to reform Colombia’s social,

economic, and political system ensured that the National

Front system became a means for conducting

“interoligarchical relations,”97 rather than a system of

government dedicated to building a fully-functional,

democratic society. For policymakers today, this means

facing many of the same structural weaknesses that have

plagued the Colombian state throughout much of its

history.

• While there is no exclusively military solution,

counterinsurgency operations remain a key element to

solving Colombia’s violence problems. The efficacy of

U.S.-Colombian counterinsurgency efforts during the latter

33
phase of the Violencia period must be evaluated from both a

short and long-term perspective. In the first instance,

reconstituting the government under the National Front

system allowed Colombian policymakers to generate

security and development strategies to contain the

Violencia and avoid a wider social revolution.

But even if Bogotá had dealt more effectively with that

nation’s social grievances in the long run, the dynamic of

revolutionary warfare—that is, the manifestation of “an

alternative political body”98 in the form of an organized

insurgent movement such as the FARC—requires an

ongoing commitment to a counterinsurgency strategy that

neutralizes the ability of any underground organization to

seize power. This commitment has been lacking in

successive Colombian governments to the present day.

The dynamic of insurgency leaves only three basic

options open to the state: (1) destruction of the insurgent

organization; (2) a negotiated settlement that incorporates

ex-guerrilla fighters into the body politic; or (3) unresolved,

ongoing low-intensity conflict. In Colombia, option three

prevails. The failure of the Pastrana peace initiative

coupled with the growing strength of the FARC presages

either state collapse or a wider conflict under a new,

hard-line government. The fact that U.S. officials have

publicly declared that “the political stomach [in

Washington] for going into the counterinsurgency business

is zero,”99means a continued mismatch of strategic interests

between the two countries that threatens any long-term

solution to the current crisis in Colombia.

• Security of the Colombian state is not necessarily

commensurate with the security of its citizenry. More than

50 years after the murder of Gaitán, Colombia continues to

survive largely under conditions of widespread internal

violence. Today, problems revolve around the issues of

narcotics trafficking, insurgent warfare, and the decay of

the Colombian state. The response is Plan Colombia: a

policy initiative that attempts to combine counter-narcotics

34
and institution-building strategies with a negotiated

settlement to that nation’s long-running insurgent war.

Fixated on the drug war, policymakers in the United

States—working in tandem with their Colombian

counterparts—need to refocus their efforts towards the

following interconnected policy agenda. First, a

multilateral, cooperative approach to countering the

narcotics problem is required that deals with issues

concerning consumption as well as production; decouples

national security from the wider spectrum of social,

economic, and political issues between Colombia, the

United States, and other nations in the region; and lastly,

has as its primary focus a strategy based on harm

reduction.100

Second, in the short-term, policymakers must secure the

stability of the Colombian state. A fundamental

manifestation of a modern state is its “monopoly of the

legitimate use of physical force,”101 but Colombia today, in

counterpoint to this classic definition, endures instead

under conditions of ”multiple sovereignty."102 Given the

dynamics of the armed conflict in Colombia, a situation now

exists between government, insurgent, and paramilitary

forces in which:

. . . (1) competing interest groups are so violently opposed on

highly salient issues that their differences cannot be

reconciled within the current political system, and (2) two or

more competing groups have sufficient resources—political,

financial, organizational, military—to establish “sovereignty”

over a substantial political or military base, and thus to seek to

achieve their goals by force.103

Conditions of multiple sovereignty will force Colombian

policymakers to counter these threats to state stability

using some variation of the following, basic, two-track

policy. First, they must concentrate security efforts on

neutralizing the clandestine infrastructure and military

power of insurgent groups; and, secondly, they must conjoin

counterinsurgency operations with legal, state-sponsored,

35
internationally monitored, civil defense groups—an

effective and proven “force multiplier”104—in order to

eliminate the power vacuum that has allowed paramilitary

forces to expand exponentially.

In the long run, policymakers must focus their efforts

towards building a more democratic and inclusive society in

Colombia, constructing a policy which recognizes that

achieving state security “is not synonymous with the

security of the nation.”105 At this present juncture, ensuring

state stability is vital, but an equal, long-term commitment

to democratization, social reform, institutional

development, and economic progress is needed to ensure

that Colombia’s problems are finally resolved from a human

security perspective.106

ENDNOTES

1. Gabriel Marcella and Donald Schulz, Colombia’s Three Wars:

U.S. Strategy at the Crossroads, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic

Studies Institute, 1999, p. 3.

2. Elements of this chapter are copy-edited or drawn verbatim from

Dennis M. Rempe, “Guerrillas, Bandits, and Independent Republics:

U.S. Counterinsurgency Efforts in Colombia, 1959-1965,” Small Wars

and Insurgencies, Vol. 6, No. 3, Winter 1995, pp. 304-327; “An American

Trojan Horse? Eisenhower, Latin America, and the Development of US

Internal Security Policy 1954-1960,” Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.

10, No. 1, Spring 1999, pp. 34-64; and “The Origin of Internal Security in

Colombia: Part I-A, CIA Special Team Surveys, La Violencia,

1959-1960,” Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 10, No. 3, Winter 1999,

pp. 24-61.

3. Russell W. Ramsey, “Critical Bibliography on La Violencia in

Colombia,”Latin American Research Review, No. 8, Spring 1973, p. 3.

4. “National Intelligence Estimate: NIE 88-65-Prospect for

Colombia,” July 9, 1965, in Declassified Document Quarterly Series,

DDQS, Vol. 14, 1988, Microform 003075, Washington, DC: Carrollton

Press, 1989, p. 3. In Colombia, the Bogotazo is referred to by its date,

neuve de abril (Ninth of April), and those who took part are known as

nueveabrileños.

36
5. Orlando Fals Borda, “The Role of Violence in the Break with

Traditionalism: The Colombian Case,” paper given before the Fifth

World Congress of Sociology-1962, File 228-01 Permanent: HRC Geog G

Colombia 400.318, Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military

History-Colombia File, circa. 1965, Tab A, p. 1. (Hereafter cited as

Colombia Document, CMH Archive.)

6. National Intelligence Estimate: NIE 88-65-Prospect for

Colombia, July 9, 1965, DDQS, p. 3.

7. Ramsey, “Critical Bibliography on La Violencia in Colombia,” pp.

3-4; James L. Zackrison, “La Violencia in Colombia: An Anomaly in

Terrorism,” Conflict Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 4, Fall 1989, pp.6-7. See also

Russell W. Ramsey, “The Modern Violence in Colombia, 1946-1965,”

Ph.D. Thesis, Gainsville: University of Florida, 1970. This work is

published in Spanish as Guerrilleros y Soldados, Bogotá: Pressa Tercer

Mundo Editores, 2000 (2nd Ed.).

8. Report of the Colombia Survey Team, “Part I-Colombian Survey,

April 1960,” Charles T. R. Bohannan Papers, Box 11, File #-Part I,

Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace,

Chapter 2, “The Violence Problem,” pp. 2-8 thru 13; Ramsey, “Critical

Bibliography on La Violencia in Colombia,” p. 4. (Hereafter the

following are cited as Bohannan Papers, Hoover Institution Archives,

HIA; Report of the Colombia Survey Team (RCST); Colombian Survey

(CS); Recommendations for Colombian Action (RCA); Recommendations for U.S. Action (RUS). The basic report of the Colombia

Survey Team is broken into three parts. Part I details the actual survey

of the Colombian situation from October through December 1959 and

includes a preface and nine chapters: Chapter 1, Introduction to

Colombia; Chapter 2, The Violence Problem; Chapter 3, The Military

Establishment of Colombia; Chapter 4, National Police; Chapter 5, The

Lanceros; Chapter 6, Intelligence; Chapter 7, Information and

Psychological Warfare; Chapter 8, Relief and Rehabilitation; and

Chapter 9, Communism in Colombia. Chapter and paragraph numbers,

rather than page numbers, are given throughout Part I of the survey,

and citation will follow this convention. For instance, if paragraphs 17

through 27 of Chapter 2 are used, they will be cited as 2-17 thru 27.

Nonconsecutive paragraphs will be cited as 2-17, 19, etc. Part II details

Recommendations for Colombian Action (RCA) and Part III,

Recommendations for U.S. Action (RUS). Page numbers are given as

RCA-I-1, RCA-I-2, etc. depending upon the particular appendix number

(although the introductory chapter is, again, unnumbered) or RUS-1,

RUS-2, etc., and will be cited as such.

37
9. “National Intelligence Estimate: NIE 88-65-Prospect for

Colombia,” July 9, 1965, DDQS, p. 3.

10. RCST, Part I-CS, Chapter 2, “The Violence Problem,” Bohannan

Papers, HIA, pp. 2-14 thru 16; “Despatch from the Ambassador in

Colombia (Cabot) to the Department of State-Political Summary and

Assessment: The Rojas Regime and Its Fall, July 9, 1957,” in Foreign

Relations of the United States, FRUS, Vol. VII, 1955-57, pp. 943-45.

11. “Preliminary Report, Majority)-Forward,” pp.1-3 and “Outline of

Observations and Principle Recommendations,” Bohannan Papers,

HIA, pp. 6-17. A more rigorous analysis of the complete Violencia era

puts the total death toll at approximately 159,200. See Ramsey, “The

Modern Violence in Colombia, 1946-1965,” Ph.D. Thesis, p. 449.

12. “Preliminary Report (Majority)-Outline of Observations and

Principal Recommendations,” Bohannan Papers, HIA, pp. 11-12.

13. Ibid., p. 16, and Annex I, pp. 2-15, both in Bohannan Papers,

HIA.

14. “Preliminary Report (Majority)-Outline of Observations and

Principal Recommendations,” Bohannan Papers, HIA, p. 11.

15. RCST, Part I-CS, Chapter 2, “The Violence Problem,” Bohannan

Papers, HIA, 2-45 thru 55. For an extensive analysis of the relationship

between the Violencia, land transactions, intermediaries, and the illicit

trade in coffee, see Carlos Miguel Ortiz Sarmiento, “The ‘Business of the

Violence’: The Quindío in the 1950s and 1960s,” in Charles Bergquist,

Ricardo Peñeranda, and Gonzalo Sánchez, eds., Violence in Colombia:

The Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspective, Wilmington:

Scholarly Resources Inc., 1992, pp. 125-154.

16. Ibid., 2-56; RCST, Part III-RUS, RUS-9, 10; RCST, Part II-RCA,

Introduction-paragraph 16 (no page numbers in introduction) all in

Bohannan Papers, HIA. It should be noted that documents

encompassing Recommendations for Colombian Action available in the

Bohannan Papers are a “Rev. 10" version. Nonetheless, given the late

date, they are likely to closely reflect, likely even mirror, the final official

report sent to Herter.

17. RCST, Part III-RUS, Bohannan Papers, HIA, RUS-7.

18. Ibid., RUS-8.

19. RCST, Part II-RCA, Bohannan Papers, HIA,

Introduction-paragraphs 1 thru 7.

38
20. RCST, Part I-CS, Chapter 1, “Introduction to Colombia,”

Bohannan Papers, HIA, pp. 1-17 thru 45.

21. RCST, Part II-RCA, Bohannan Papers, HIA, Introductionparagraphs 8, 10.

22. Sam C. Sarkesian, U.S. National Security: Policymakers,

Processes, and Politics, Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1989, pp.

34-36.

23. RCST, Part II-RCA, Bohannan Papers, HIA, Introductionparagraphs 11, 12, 63.

24. RCST, Part III-RUS, Bohannan Papers, HIA, RUS-9, 10.

25. Ibid., RUS-15 thru 17, 31; RCST, Part III-RUS, Appendix I,

“Analysis of Requirements for U.S. Assistance,” to “Recommendations

for U.S. Action,” RUS/I-3, all in Bohannan Papers, HIA. Equipment

costs were primarily tied to purchasing two light helicopters and six

fixed-wing “Helio-Couriers” for Lancero units engaged in

counterinsurgency operations.

26. “Helicopter Operations in Colombia,” Tab L, p. 1; “Military Sales

and Military Assistance,” Part I, 1943 to 1960, Tab I, p.6; “Planning and

Objectives,” Tab E, p. 2, all in Colombia Document, CMH Archives.

27. Violence in Colombia: A Case Study, Department of State

Airgram A-649, April 6, 1964, NSF, Country File, “Colombia, Volume 1,”

Box 14, Austin, TX: Lyndon B. Johnson Library, p. 15. (Hereafter cited

as Violence in Colombia: A Case Study, LBJL). As the cover page to this

document states, it is “a case study of the Colombian rural ‘violence’

phenomenon prepared at the request of the Special Group (CI) following

its meeting with Ambassador Fulton Freeman on February 20, 1964.”

The study was written by Second Secretary Gerald M. Sutton of the

Embassy Political Section and contains [sanitized] information

furnished by Service Attachés, the Military Group, AID, the Colombian

Government, and local news media and publications. I am extremely

grateful to Regina Greenwell, Senior Archivist of the Lyndon B.

Johnson Library, for expediting the delivery of this document as it was

only just declassified prior to the final draft of this monograph. It is an

excellent overview of the Violencia period, with three appendices

detailing the communist role in the “independent republics,” a précis of

the Colombian military plan to stem internal violence, Plan LAZO, and

a brief history of U.S. internal security assistance.

39
28. “Planning and Objectives,” Colombia Document, CMH Archives,

Tab E, pp. 1-2.

29. Visit to Colombia, South America, by a Team from Special

Warfare Center, February 26, 1962, “Major Conclusions,” Low-Intensity

Conflict Document Collection, LICDC, National Security Archives,

NSA, pp. 3-4.

30. Ibid., Recommendations, LICDC, NSA, pp. 5-8.

31. Ibid., Narrative Report: Survey Team Activities Colombia,

“Observations,” LICDC, NSA, pp. 1-8.

32. All quotes from Ibid., LICDC, NSA, p. 1.

33. Ibid.

34. Violence in Colombia: A Case Study-Appendix C: The Role of the

Military Missions, LBJL, p. 3.

35. Planning and Objectives, Tab E, pp. 1-3; “Summary and

Conclusions,” pp. 1, 26, 33, Colombia Document, CMH Archives.

36. Captain Roy Benson, Jr., The Latin American Special Action

Force of the U.S. Army as a Counterinsurgency Force, December 1965, p.

2; “Classified U.S. Army Special Forces MTT Missions, Latin America

1962-1973,” Enclosure 2, “Colombia,” pp. 2-7. Both documents in Jack

Taylor, “Donation Box 2-Vietnam: Files-Latin America-MTTs,

Colombia-MTTs,” LICDC, NSA. See also “Training,” Annex B to Tab K,

“Mobile Training Teams 1960-1968,” Colombia Document, CMH

Archives, for MTT information not declassified in Jack Taylor collection.

37. Violence in Colombia: A Case Study, LBJL, p. 20.

38. “Report of Joint Mobile Training Team to Colombia,” RCS

CSGPO-125, No. 48-MTT-104-63, November 18, 1963, John F. Kennedy

Special Warfare Center-U.S. Army Special Operations Command

Archives, Fort Bragg, NC, JFKSWC-USASOC Archives, pp. 1, 5.

39. Richard Maullin, Soldiers, Guerrillas, and Politics in Colombia,

Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1973, p. 73.

40. Captain David Edison Malott, “Military Civic Action in

Colombia,” MA Thesis, Gainesville: University of Florida, 1985, p. 76.

40
41. Captain Charles L. Daschle, AI(CE) Assistant G2, U.S. Army

Special Warfare Center, “The Background to Potential Insurgency in

Colombia,” September 9, 1962, JFKSWC-USASOC Archives, pp. 3-6.

42. Ibid., pp. 7-16; “Summary and Conclusion,” Colombia

Document, CMH Archives, p. 18.

43. All quotes from Maullin, Soldiers, Guerrillas, and Politics in

Colombia, p. 75.

44. “After Action Report, Civic Action Mobile Training Team No.

48-MTT-01-63,” Colombia, South America, May 10, 1963,

JFKSWC-USASOC Archives, pp. 6-7.

45. “Civic Action Projects: Llanos-Amazonas National Territories

Net,” Colombia Document, CMH Archives, Tab H, pp. 5-7.

46. “After Action Report,” 48-MTT-01-63, pp. 7-8.

47. “Civic Action Projects: Rural Civil Defense Early Warning Radio

Nets,” Colombia Document, CMH Archives, Tab H, pp. 4-5.

48. “Summary and Conclusions,” Colombia Document, CMH

Archives, pp. 5, 18.

49. Minutes of Meeting of Special Group, CI, April 12, 1962, LICDC,

NSA, p. 3.

50. RCST, Part I-CS, Chapter 8, “Relief and Rehabilitation,”

Bohannan Papers, HIA, pp. 8-12 thru 8-20.

51. Ibid., pp. 8-21 thru 8-29.

52. All quotes Ibid., pp. 8-38, 8-41.

53. Louis J. Lebret, Estudio sobre los condiciones del desarrollo de

Colombia, Bogotá: Aedita Editores Ltd., 1958, p. 361, as quoted in

Malott, “Military Civic Action in Colombia,” MA Thesis, pp. 73-74.

54. Alberto Ruiz Novoa, El Gran Desafio, Bogotá: Ediciones Tercer

Mundos, 1965, pp. 53, 85-88, as cited in Maullin, Soldiers, Guerrillas,

and Politics in Colombia, p. 68.

55. Malott, “Military Civic Action in Colombia,” MA Thesis, pp. 90,

92.

41
56. The U.S. Army and Civic Action in Latin America, Vol. 3, July 1,

1963, to June 30, 1967, prepared by Staff Historian, Assistant Chief of

Staff, G3 HQ-USARSO, October 1968, File USARSO-1, 1963-67 cy.1,

CMH Archives, pp. 32-34; Civic Action Projects, Colombia Document,

CMH Archives, Tab H, pp. 1-2.

57. Malott, “Military Civic Action in Colombia,” MA Thesis, pp.

75-78.

58. “History of Counterinsurgency Training in Latin America,

October 1962 to December 31, 1965,” 3D Civil Affairs Detachment,

prepared by 3D Civil Affairs Detachment, Fort Clayton, Canal Zone

Headquarters, U.S. Army Forces Southern Command, File 8-2.9A DA

cy.1, CMH Archives, p. 1; Civic Action Projects, Colombia Document,

CMH Archives, Tab H, pp. 2-4, 7-8.

59. Violence in Colombia: A Case Study, LBJL, p. 16.

60. Andrew M. Molnar, Human Factors Considerations of

Undergrounds in Insurgencies, Department of the Army Pamphlet No.

550-104, Washington, DC: The American University-Special

Operations Research Office [SORO], 1966, pp. 234-235.

61. Violence in Colombia: A Case Study, LBJL, p. 5.

62. RCST, Part I-CS, Chapter 6, “Intelligence,” Bohannan Papers,

HIA, 6-2, 6-20, 6-52, and 6-56.

63. Ramsey, “The Modern Violence in Colombia, 1946-65,” Ph.D.

Thesis, pp. 405-406.

64. “Mission History-U.S. Army Mission to Colombia, 1959 and

1960,” Colombia Document, CMH Archives, Tab C, pp. 93-94, 98.

65. “USARMIS Intelligence Effort in Colombia, 1961-65,” Colombia

Document, CMH Archives, Tab F, p. 1.

66. “Public Relations, Public Information, Troop Information and

Education, TI and E, and Psychological Warfare,” Colombia Document,

CMH Archives, Tab M, p. 2.

67. “USARMIS Intelligence Effort in Colombia, 1961-65,” Colombia

Document, CMH Archives, Tab F, pp. 1-4.

68. Maullin, Soldiers, Guerrillas, and Politics in Colombia, p. 75.

42
69. Central Intelligence Agency Memorandum-“Cuban Training of

Latin American Subversives,” OCI No.0515/63, March 27, 1963, CIA

Research Reports, Latin America, 1946-1976, pp. 15-56. There is some

discrepancy in the figures estimated earlier by the Special Forces

intelligence officer (150 bandit groups, approximately 2,000 men) and

the sanitized source for the CIA. Figures from the latter for 1962 alone

estimated 2,582 bandits captured, 1020 detained on suspicion of

banditry, and 388 bandits killed. The CIA estimate does acknowledge

that only 2 percent of all those arrested and detained were actually

convicted and sentenced.

70. Violence in Colombia: A Case Study, LBJL, pp. 11, 16-17.

71. “Planning and Objectives,” Colombia Document, CMH Archives,

Tab E, p. 3.

72. Violence in Colombia: A Case Study, LBJL, p. 24.

73. “USARMIS Intelligence Effort in Colombia, 1961-65,” Colombia

Document, CMH Archives, Tab F, p. 5.

74. “Training,” Colombia Document, CMH Archives, Tab K, p. 6.

75. Violence in Colombia: A Case Study, LBJL, pp. 11, 16.

76. “Summary and Conclusions,” Colombia Document, CMH

Archives, p. 11.

77. Jorge P. Osterling, Democracy in Colombia: Clientelist Politics

and Guerrilla Warfare, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers,

1989, p. 280. One report describes the Lleras administration’s efforts as

“strongly identified, rightly or wrongly, with an appeasement policy

towards the bandits.” See Violence in Colombia: A Case Study, LBJL, p.

14. This assessment seems overly harsh, given the administration’s

efforts to enlist U.S. support against the violence problem.

78. Alberto Gómez, “The Revolutionary Armed Forces in Colombia”

as quoted in Richard Gott, Rural Guerrillas in Latin America,

Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1973, p. 298.

79. James D. Henderson, When Colombia Bled: A History of the

Violencia in Tolima, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985, pp.

221-222.

80. Osterling, Democracy in Colombia, p. 295. Marulanda was a

member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party as were

43
several others within the guerrilla leadership. See Gott, Rural

Guerrillas in Latin America, pp. 279-289.

81. Gilberto Víeira, “La Colombie à l’heure du Marquetalia,”’

Democratie Nouvelle, July-August 1965, as quoted in Gott, Rural

Guerrillas in Latin America, pp. 299-300.

82. Henderson, When Colombia Bled: A History of the Violencia in

Tolima, p. 222.

83. “The Backlands Violence is Almost Ended,” Time, June 26, 1964,

p. 31.

84. Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Revolution in

Latin America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents and Regimes Since

1956, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, p. 146.

85. All quotes in Manuel Marulanda Velez, “The Republic of

Marquetalia-Manifesto issued July 20, 1964, by the Armed

Revolutionary Forces of Colombia, FARC,” in J. Gerassi, ed., The

Coming of the New International, New York: The World Publishing

Company, 1971, pp. 502-03.

86. Maullin, Soldiers, Guerrillas, and Politics in Colombia, pp. 14,

30, 40.

87. See, for instance, “Marquetalia: Simbolo de la Resistencia del

Pueblo en Armas,” www.contrast.org/mirrors/ farc/marque.htm.

88. Ernesto Ché Guevara as quoted in Régis Debray, trans., Bobbye

Ortiz, Revolution in the Revolution? Armed Struggle and Political

Struggle in Latin America, New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1967, pp. 31-32.

89. Ibid., pp. 32-33.

90. Bruce Michael Bagley in discussions with author.

91. Violence in Colombia: A Case Study, LBJL, p. 19.

92. Gonzalo Sánchez, “La Violencia in Colombia: New Research,

New Question,” Peter Bakewell, trans., The Hispanic American

Historical Review, No. 65, April 1985, p. 789.

93. Max Manwaring, “Lessons from Vietnam: How Not to Lose the

War in Colombia,” draft copy of Miami Herald op-ed, no page numbers,

August 15, 2001.

44
94. Army Roles, Missions, and Doctrine in Low-Intensity Conflict

(ARMLIC): Preconflict Case Study 2-Colombia, File HRC 319.1,

Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, from Carlisle

Barracks, PA: Operations Research, Inc. under contract No. DAAG

25-67-C-0702 for U.S. Army Combat Development Command,

December 15, 1969, pp. xii, 9-10.

95. Violence in Colombia: A Case Study, LBJL, p. 25.

96. Bruce Michael Bagley, “The State and the Peasantry in

Contemporary Colombia,” Latin American Issues, No. 6, 1988, p. 3.

97. Gonzalo Sánchez, “The Violence: An Interpretative Synthesis,”

Violence in Colombia: The Contemporary Crisis in Historical

Perspective, p. 113.

98. Thomas A. Marks, Maoist Insurgency Since Vietnam, London,

UK: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd, 1996, p. 263.

99. U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Anne Patterson as quoted by Juan

O. Tamayo, “Training for war on drugs to go on,” Miami Herald, July 26,

2001, p. 1.

100. Bruce M. Bagley and Juan G. Tokatlian, “Dope and Dogma:

Explaining the Failure of U.S.-Latin American Drug Policies” in

Jonathan Hartlyn, Lars Schoultz, and Augusto Varas, eds., The United

States and Latin America in the 1990s: Beyond the Cold War, Chapel

Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992, p. 228-233.

101. Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation” as quoted in Alfred Stepan,

Rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone, Princeton,

NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988, p. ix.

102. Jack A. Goldstone, “Theories of Revolution: The Third

Generation,” World Politics, Vol. 32, No. 3, April 1980, p. 429. Charles

Tilly first posited the concept of “multiple sovereignty.”

103. Ibid.

104. Daniel W. Tomlinson, “Civil Defense in Colombia During

Internal Conflict,” MA Thesis, San Diego: University of California at

San Diego, 2001, p. 47 (as per final draft copy provided by Tomlinson to

author).

105. Cathryn L. Thorup, “Refashioning a National Security Agenda

for the 1990s: The Dilemmas of Redefinition” in Bruce Michael Bagley

45
and Sergio Aguayo Quezada, eds., Mexico: In Search of Security, Coral

Gables, FL: University of Miami North-South Center, 1993, p. 92.

106. For articles that address issues of national interest,

sovereignty, and human security from a new perspective, see, for

instance, Richard C. Rockwell and Richard H. Moss, “Reconceptualizing

Security: A Note About Research,” pp. 31-61; Javier A. Elguea,

“International Security and National Development,” pp. 63-78; Gene

Sharp, “Commentary: On the Definition of National Security,” pp.

79-86; and Thorup, “Refashioning a National Security Agenda for the

1990s: The Dilemmas of Redefinition,” pp. 87-93, all in Bruce Michael

Bagley and Sergio Aguayo Quezada, eds., Mexico: In Search of Security.

46
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General Robert R. Ivany

Commandant

*****

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

Director

Professor Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr.

Director of Research

Dr. Steven Metz

Author

Mr. Dennis M. Rempe

Director of Publications

Ms. Marianne P. Cowling

Publications Assistant

Ms. Rita A. Rummel

*****

Composition

Ms. Kimberly A. Rockwell