Picture Colombia in the 1940s. Two political parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, have shared power for a century, but ordinary Colombians are tired of waiting for change.
A charismatic Liberal politician named Jorge Eliécer Gaitán promises land reform and a fairer deal for the poor. He is the kind of leader historians call a populist — someone who bypasses parties and institutions to connect directly with the masses.
Why populism grows in Latin America: Populism thrived across the region because ordinary people felt shut out. Voters were ready to trust a single strong personality who promised to fix everything fast.
What made voters ready
- Huge gaps between rich and poor
- Weak or corrupt parties
- Economies dependent on a few exports (coffee, oil, minerals)
Not just Colombia: Colombia's Gaitán is one example among many — Perón in Argentina and Vargas in Brazil followed the same pattern.
On 9 April 1948, Gaitán was assassinated on a Bogotá street. Riots exploded within hours — this single event is known as the Bogotazo.
It triggered a much longer, bloodier period: La Violencia (1948–1958), a brutal civil conflict between Liberal and Conservative supporters that killed roughly 200,000 Colombians in the countryside.
- Party loyalty turned deadly — in rural areas, being a Liberal or a Conservative was treated like a tribal identity, and neighbours attacked neighbours over it.
- The state lost control of the countryside — the army could not protect remote villages, so peasants formed self-defence groups just to survive.
- A power-sharing deal ended the worst violence but not the causes — in 1958 the two parties agreed to the National Front, alternating the presidency between them and locking out any other party for 16 years.
- The National Front 'solved' elite conflict but not popular grievances — land stayed unequal, rural poverty persisted, and anyone outside the two traditional parties had no legal route into power.
This is the crisis of democracy the exam wants you to explain: Colombia's democracy was formally intact — elections still happened — but it had failed most Colombians. When a political system closes off peaceful change, some people conclude that only violence will bring reform. That reasoning is exactly why some of the self-defence groups born out of La Violencia later turned into permanent guerrilla armies.
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In 1964, the Colombian army attacked a peasant community called Marquetalia, one of the old communist-influenced self-defence zones left over from La Violencia.
The birth of the FARC: Survivors, led by a farmer named Manuel Marulanda (nicknamed 'Tirofijo', or 'Sureshot'), did not disband — they regrouped as a guerrilla army: the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia).
1964 — Marquetalia
State attack on a peasant self-defence zone pushes survivors to form a permanent guerrilla force instead of surrendering.
1960s–70s — Rural insurgency
The FARC grows slowly in remote areas, presenting itself as defender of poor farmers against landlords and the state.
1980s — Cocaine economy
The FARC starts taxing (and later trafficking) cocaine production, turning a small rebel band into a well-funded army.
1990s–2000s — Peak strength
FARC numbers reach roughly 15,000–20,000 fighters, controlling large areas of rural Colombia.
Marquetalia to millions of dollars: land grievance grew into a drug-funded army.
Guerrilla warfare, defined: guerrilla warfare suited the FARC perfectly. Colombia's jungles and mountains let small units strike government patrols, then vanish before the army could respond — a much cheaper strategy than facing the state head-on.
The FARC framed itself as a Marxist-inspired peasant army fighting inequality, not just a criminal gang. That framing mattered enormously — it is exactly the kind of claim a Paper 3 essay expects you to interrogate rather than accept at face value.
The FARC's own justification
- Born from a state attack on unarmed peasants, not from choice
- Fighting for land reform the government never delivered
- Protecting rural communities the state had abandoned
- Taxing coca as 'revolutionary tax', not personal profit
The counter-argument
- By the 1990s the FARC had become a major drug-trafficking operation
- Kidnapping for ransom targeted ordinary civilians, not just the state
- Forced recruitment (including of children) contradicted its 'liberation' claim
- Decades of fighting achieved no land reform for most peasants
Use this comparison in your essay: A strong Paper 3 answer does not just narrate the FARC's history — it weighs whether the movement stayed true to its founding cause or became something else. Both sides of that debate are gettable marks.
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By the time the FARC signed a peace deal with the government in 2016, the conflict had lasted over 50 years. Its impact touched almost every part of Colombian life.
| Type of impact | What happened |
|---|---|
| Social | An estimated 220,000+ people killed and around 7-8 million internally displaced — one of the largest displacement crises in the world outside a formal war. |
| Political | Governments built their entire platforms around the conflict; hardline president Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) weakened the FARC militarily, while Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) negotiated the 2016 peace accord — Colombians split bitterly over which approach was right. |
| Economic | Rural regions lost decades of investment and infrastructure; but the conflict also entangled Colombia's economy with cocaine production, since FARC-taxed coca fields became a major, if illegal, source of rural income. |
| Women's experiences | Women made up an estimated 30-40% of FARC fighters, often gaining more equality and command roles inside the movement than in wider Colombian society — but many also faced forced contraception, forced abortion, and sexual violence within FARC ranks. |
Women in the FARC — a genuine historical debate: This is not a simple story. A good essay presents both experiences rather than picking the comfortable one.
A place of authority
- Some female ex-combatants describe the FARC as the first place they held real authority
- They escaped rigid gender roles in their home villages
A place of coercion
- Others describe strict FARC rules that forced them to give up children born in the camps
- Or to undergo abortions against their will
- Displacement reshaped Colombia's cities — millions of rural families fled to Bogotá, Medellín, and other cities, swelling urban slums.
- Kidnapping became a national trauma — the FARC held hostages, including politician Ingrid Betancourt (2002-2008), for ransom or political leverage, keeping the conflict constantly in the news.
- The economy adapted around the war — some regions never received roads, schools, or state services precisely because the state could not safely operate there.
- Peace was possible but incomplete — the 2016 accord ended FARC as an armed force, yet smaller dissident factions and other groups (like the ELN) continued fighting, showing how hard it is to fully end a 50-year conflict.
Don't treat 2016 as a clean ending: It is tempting to write '2016 peace deal, conflict over' — but Paper 3 rewards nuance. Dissident FARC groups, the ELN guerrilla movement, and drug-trafficking gangs continued violence well past 2016, so the deeper causes of the crisis were only partly resolved.