¹ An excellent discussion of the present state of our ignorance and the most urgent needs for concepts and research is Harry Eckstein's introduction to Eckstein, Harry, (ed.), Internal War (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964)Google Scholar.

² Mons. Campos, German Guzmán, Borda, Orlando Fals, and Luna, Eduardo Umaña, La Violencia en Colombia, Ediciones Mundo, Tercer, Bogotá, , 1963, Vol. I, pp. 287–293Google Scholar.

³ In the late 1950's when the questionnaires were distributed, 36% of the sample had resided there less than seven years. See Giraldo, Roberto PinedaEl Impacto de la Violencia en el Tolima: El Caso de El Líbano, Monografía Sociológica No. 6, Departamento de Sociología, Universidad Nacional, Bogotá, 1960, pp. 14, 16–17, 18, 25Google Scholar.

⁴ See Guzmán, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 29.

⁵ The speech is contained in Las Mejores Oraciones de Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, Editorial Jorvi, Bogotá, 1958, pp. 434–436Google Scholar.

⁶ Sahagún in 1951, for example, contained 37,000 people. I t is composed of 12 hamlets in addition to the town.

⁷ Guzmán, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 139.

⁸ See Bendix, Reinhard, Nation-Building and Citizenship (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1964), pp. 40–48Google Scholar. This characteristic will receive receive further attention below.

⁹ It may be noted that there were some cases of class-motivated violence. The Communist Party organized a campaign of “mass self-defence” through which several autonomous “republics” were established. See Partido Comunista de Colombia, Treinta Años de Lucha del Partido Comunista de Colombia, Ediciones Paz y Socialismo, Bogotá, 1960, pp. 93 ff.Google Scholar These were very isolated and limited in scale, however, and do not alter the analysis of the modal pattern of violence presented in the text.

¹⁰ Quoted in Guzmán, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 94.

¹¹ Quoted in Ibid., p. 84.

¹² Ibid., p. 62.

¹³ Prologue to Caicedo, Daniel, Viento Seco, Editorial Nuestra América, Buenos Aires, 1954, p. 17Google Scholar. See also his Gaitán y El Problema de la Revolution Colombiana, Bogoá, 1955, pp. 294, ff.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Partido Comunista de Colombia, op. cit., p. 93. For a similar view from another leftist author, see Restrepo, Camilo Torres, “La Violencia y Los Cambios Socio-Culturales en Las Areas Rurales Colombianas” in Memoria del Primer Congreso National de Sociologia, Asociación Colombiana de Sociologia, Bogotá, 1963, pp. 147–148Google Scholar.

¹⁵ The best account of this is contained in Anzola, Jorge Enrique Gutiérrez, Violencia y Justicia, Ediciones Tercer Mundo, Bogotá, 1962, pp. 21–25Google Scholar.

¹⁶ See Lizarazo, J. A. Osorio, Gaitán, Ediciones Negri, Lopez, Aires, Buenos, 1952, p. 149Google Scholar.

¹⁷ From speech published in El Siglo (Bogotá), 08 8, 1950Google Scholar.

¹⁸ ECLA, Analyses and Projections of Economic Growth, Vol. III, The Economic Development of Colombia, United Nations, New York, 1957, p. 17Google Scholar.

¹⁹ See Guzman, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 381–417, especially 410–417.

²⁰ “Toward a Theory of Political Violence: The Case of Rural Colombia,” Western Political Quarterly (03 1965), 35–44Google Scholar. A related view is suggested by Orlando Pals Borda in an unpublished paper presented to the Fifth World Congress of Sociology, 1962, “The Role of Violence in the Break with Traditionalism: The Colombian Case.”

²¹ Op. cit., p. 36.

²² Ibid., p. 41.

²³ FAO, The World Coffee Economy, Commodity Bulletin Series No. 33, United Nations, Rome, 1961, p. 73Google Scholar.

²⁴ Taken from ECLA, op. cit., p. 16.

²⁵ The Politics of Mass Society (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1959), p. 157Google Scholar. For a full discussion of the effects of urbanization and industralization, see ibid., pp. 142–158.

²⁶ For a similar stress, see Martínez, Fernando Guillén, Raíz y Futuro de la Revolución, Ediciones Mundo, Tercer, Bogotá, , 1963, pp. 188Google Scholar and passim: Fluharty, Vernon L., Dance of the Millions (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1957), pp. 110–211Google Scholar; and Martz, John D., Colombia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962), pp. 117–118Google Scholar.

²⁷ Williamson's theory may, however, go quite far in explaining the urban explosion in 1948 known as the Bogotazo. High inflation in the first part of 1948 heightened deprivation, and the violence did have a class basis; objects of attack were typically symbols of social power: public buildings, churches, hotels, businesses, newspapers, etc. See Michelsen, Alfonso López, Cuestiones Colombianas, Impresiones Modernas, México, 1955, pp. 73–74Google Scholar.

²⁸ Reinhard Bendix, op. cit., pp. 42–43.

²⁹ Michelsen, Alfonso López, Los Elegidos, Editorial Guarania, México, 1953, p. 313Google Scholar. This explication is also based on conversations with the Colombian historian Fernando Guillén Martínez, but it is only a hypothesis. It would require for its verification detailed anthropological work in several communities and an attempt to see whether strong correlations are indeed absent between party identification and sociological variables in rural areas. A cursory glance at regional party strength did not suggest any correlations to the author, but this is clearly a fruitful area for research. The view suggested here is also contained in Santa, Eduardo, Sociología Política de Colombia, Ediciones Mundo, Tercer, Bogotá, , pp. 74–76 and passimGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ See Santa, op. cit., pp. 81–82; and Martz, op. cit., p. 12.

³¹ This has been treated widely in the literature on African states. See for example Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Politics of Independence (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), pp. 29–43Google Scholar.

³² It has perhaps been developed most fully by Germani, Gino in Política y Sociedad en Una Epoca de Transición, Editorial Paidos Buenos Aires, 1962, pp. 69–126Google Scholar.

³³ Hobsbawm, E. J., Primitive Rebels. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1959), pp. 118–119Google Scholar. See also Bendix, op. cit., pp. 45–47 for a discussion of populist legitimism and its relation to political life in pre-modern Europe.

³⁴ See, for example, Villegas, Silvio, No Hay Enemigos a la Derecha, Manizales, 1937Google Scholar; and Avendaño, Gilberto Alzate, Sus Mejores Páginas, Editorial Renacimiento, Manizales, 1961Google Scholar. The latter is a collection of newspaper articles and speeches from the late 1930's.

³⁵ Gomez later passed to world history, seeing the crisis of Western civilization as emanating from the French Revolution. The speech was printed in El Siglo (Bogotá), 05 21, 1953Google Scholar.

³⁶ One Liberal Senator is reported to have exhorted Liberals to “break even social and family relations with Conservatives.” See El Siglo (Bogotá), 07 30, 1952Google Scholar.

³⁷ An article by Orlando Fals Borda which came to the author's attention after the completion of the manuscript hints at a view similar to that presented. Pals refers to “the hypothesis that the appearance of violence in the countryside in Colombia since the late 1940's has been an irrational but effective political response to efforts to preserve essential aspects of the same old ‘sacred’ order ….” He does not, however, follow out this suggestion to account for the duration or intensity of the violence; he refers only to the fact that “the use of violence could not be held within reasonable bounds and it got out of the control of the political leaders who had sought to use it and became a monster of malfunctioning based on unanticipated structural faults and cleavages,” and leaves that phenomenon unanalyzed. He also asserts that the peasants “were unable to take the next step toward the social revolution that they unconsciously desired,” indicating his implicit agreement with the Williamson thesis which he had articulated in “The Role of Violence …” op. cit. See Borda, Orlando Fals, “Violence and the Break-Up of Tradition in Colombia” in Veliz, Claudio, ed., Obstacles to Change in Latin America. (London: Oxford University Press, 1965)Google Scholar. Quotes are from pp. 189, 197 and 198 respectively.

³⁸ Biographies of four leading outlaws of the late 1950's and 1960's suggest the killing or violation of a close relative as the catalyst which induced them to begin looting and killing. See Moynaham, Brian, “La Violencia,” Cromos (Bogotá), 10 18, 1965Google Scholar.

³⁹ One common practice in some areas for instance was to hire bandits to terrorize a finca, whose owners would then be forced to sell at a low price. Theft of coffee crops was also common. See Guzmán, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 130, and Vol. II, p. 276.

⁴⁰ Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 267–279. Colombians generally speak of the evolution as having occurred.

⁴¹ These and related points are brought together by Camilo Torres Restrepo, op. cit. Also see Fals Borda, “Violence and the Break-Up of Tradition …” op. cit., pp. 199–201, Pineda, op. cit., passim, Gutierrez, op. cit., pp. 15–50 and Guzmán, op. cit., Vol. I pp. 154–156 and 412.

⁴² See Goodsell, James Nelson, “Colombia's ‘la violencia’,” The Christian Science Monitor, January 14, 1966Google Scholar, in which the rise of fidelista activity is discussed. A statement to the same effect by Colombia's Minister of War, General Pizarro, Reibeiz, may be found in El Tiempo (Bogotá), 11 6, 1965Google Scholar.