The Social War in Colombia Colombia has been torn apart by conflicts throughout its history. In the last two or three decades of that century up to today, the social war has been between the state and capitalism on the one hand and leftist guerillas on the other. Like most Marxist organisations, the leftist M19 group flirted with legalistic, liberal democracy and stood candidates for election in the 1980s only to see their candidates butchered at the polls. Since then, the leftist guerillas have returned to violent methods and now control considerable areas of territory, particularly FARC in the South. Class warfare in Colombia is a dirty business involving a great deal of violence and intimidation.
Drug barons maintain private armies, often manned by government soldiers out of uniform.
The right wing paramilitaries regularly carry out massacres of peasants and suspected leftists, spreading terror throughout the countryside. Peasants are deserting the land for the safety of the cities and the result has been a sharp fall in land prices. This land is then snapped up and sold cheaply to foreign investors. Fuelled by drug profits both sides in the civil war, the army and guerillas, are embarking on an arms race. At the moment there is a stand off, the army cannot defeat the guerillas in their enclaves and the guerillas aren't strong enough to capture state power.