Colombian Politics, by 1982, were characterized by stagnation, increased levels of violence, and diminished regime legitimacy. In the face of an active, though limited, guerrilla insurgency as well as nascent labor unrest and popular protest, the successive governments of the National Front had come to depend on the coercive powers of the state to preserve public order and political stability. Colombia's peace process, initiated during the government of Conservative President Belisario Betancur (1982- 1986), was a recognition of the limits, indeed the failure, of the military solution to the maintenance of public order.