The Internal Armed Conflict in Colombia since 1948
by Stephen J. Dillon
El Bogotazo and La Violencia
On April 9, 1948, Jorge Eliecer Gaitán was assassinated in Bogotá, Colombia, and nothing would ever be the same. Gaitán was the leader of the Liberal Party, nicknamed “The People’s Leader” for his social-populist stance, and had been highly influential for nearly twenty years, having successfully mobilized public opinion against the United Fruit Company in 1929, while representing the interests of the oppressed workers of the Banana Zone. He had meetings scheduled for that afternoon with Fidel Castro, then a student activist, and Rómulo Betancourt, former president of Venezuela, but when he went out for lunch, he was killed by Juan Roa Sierra, a young shoeshiner with delusions of grandeur. The circumstances of his assassination remain ambiguous, but a conspiracy is suspected.
The public reaction was immediate and devastating: the assassin was lynched by a mob, and his body dragged through the city streets. Thousands of buildings and cars were burned, the streetcar system was destroyed, and looting and violence reigned throughout Bogotá for three days. Many police officers joined the protests, but others, along with soldiers, fired on the crowds of protestors, and today it is estimated that between 500 and 3,000 people died as a direct result of what would come to be known as the Bogotazo. That said, the true death toll that has resulted from the assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitán is immeasurable. In the wake of his death, tensions between Liberals and Conservatives escalated rapidly, and the period known as La Violencia (The Violence) began. Some historians consider La Violencia as having begun in the mid-1920s, but there is still a consensus that it worsened considerably after Gaitán’s assassination. Between 1948 and 1958, during La Violencia (The Violence) and the military dictatorship of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953-58), between 50,000 and 300,000 people died, according to different estimates, and millions of Colombians were displaced from conflict zones to the cities. In 1958, with the return to democracy, the Frente Nacional was established, a pact between Liberals and Conservatives to rebuild the country’s political foundations after the Rojas Pinilla dictatorship, and with it came a considerable de-escalation of La Violencia.
Las Guerras Verdes (Green Wars)
The story of the Guerras Verdes (a series of territorial conflicts between emerald miners, hence “green”) began in 1958, the year the Frente Nacional was established, when a young man called Efraín González, alias “Siete Colores (Seven Colors)”, deserted the Colombian Army. He joined “Pájaros (Birds),” a conservative paramilitary group from the era of La Violencia, and when it disbanded, he became something of a free agent. As a bandit and hitman in the service of the large landowners and emerald miners of the Santander and Boyacá departments, he became a living legend; his incredible ability to escape any predicament gave rise to all sorts of speculation about his possible magical powers. Some said he could transform himself into stone, a tree, the wind, a butterfly, even a rainbow (hence his nickname “Siete Colores”). Around this time, he founded “La Pesada,” a criminal gang dedicated to bank and emerald robberies, responsible for hundreds of deaths in the region. His escapades not only increased his notoriety but also helped him amass a fortune. In exchange for his services, he was granted control of the Peñas Blancas emerald mines in Boyacá, and soon became one of the most powerful emerald barons in the country. His crimes, however, did not go unnoticed by Colombian authorities. In 1965, Colombian intelligence located him in southern Bogotá, but everyone knew that any action against him would be a logistical nightmare; he single-handedly waged a formidable battle against more than 1,000 soldiers. Even so, on June 9, 1965, Bogotá saw no rainbows; Siete Colores died a man.
His death marks a turning point in the history of crime in Colombia: Efraín González was the last of the great bandits of La Violencia, but the power vacuum he left in Boyacá upon his death triggered the First Guerra Verde (1965-1975). Isauro Murcia, one of the leaders of “La Pesada,” inherited his operations, but the region was already destabilized, and the war began as a result of territorial tensions between former members of La Pesada and other landowners in the region. Around this time, Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, “El Mexicano” (The Mexican, named for his interest in Mexican culture), began to accumulate power and wealth in the emerald trade. He would later become second-in-command of the Medellín Cartel. In 1971, the government of Misael Pastrana killed Humberto Ariza “El Ganso (The Goose)” and founded Esmeracol, a regulatory body for the emerald trade—two essential steps to (temporarily) pacify the region. The First Green War claimed the lives of at least 1,200 people, and no lasting solution was reached.
The murder of the brothers of emerald miner Francisco Vargas caused the Second Guerra Verde (1975-1978). It ended with a peace treaty between the combatants and the legal formalization of their illicit fortunes. By 1980, there were around 35,000 guaqueros (grave robbers of indigenous tombs) in the Boyacá region, and tensions among the emerald miners also began to escalate, leading to the Third Guerra Verde (1984-1990). The men who
already had everything—Gilberto Molina, “The Emerald King,” Victor Carranza, “The Emerald Czar,” and Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, “El Mexicano”—wanted what the others had, and to get it, they divided and manipulated the people of Boyacá. Much blood was spilled for the benefit of the local oligarchy, a near-universal story, and therefore all the more tragic. It is estimated that up to 6,000 people died in the Third Emerald War, almost all of them ordinary people from Boyacá, innocent of the sins of their masters. (It should be noted that by then, the three men—Molina, Carranza, and Rodríguez Gacha—were not only profiting from the emerald trade but were also involved in cocaine trafficking.) In 1989, Molina was murdered, allegedly on the orders of Rodríguez Gacha, who, a few months later, was killed by the Colombian government. (But that story will be told later.) In 1990, the war’s survivors negotiated a peace treaty, ending the Green Wars.
But what is peace for Boyacá? As could be imagined, the emerald business remains problematic. Tensions and occasional killings still exist in the region, and Colombian miners throughout the country are being exploited by international companies. These are primarily American and Chinese, and their advanced technology, far from improving the miners’ quality of life, threatens their livelihoods. Colombian miners advocate for traditional extraction methods, and local artisans are highly capable, but big business threatens their continued presence in the market.
Bonanza Marimbera
By the 1950s, the cultivation of marijuana had already begun its march through the Sierra Nevada region of northern Colombia, but in the 1970s, the combination of low cotton prices on the international market and the dubious training provided by the U.S. Peace Corps led most farmers in the Sierra Nevada to switch to marijuana as their primary crop. Clans emerged, Colombian drug trafficking families formed, and American businessmen jumped on the opportunity.
Traffickers and businessmen shared almost all the wealth generated by marijuana trafficking to the United States, while the farmers who cultivated it were left with very little. Under the government of Alfonso López Michelsen (1974-1978), the free exchange of dollars was permitted without requiring justification of their origin, which facilitated the Bonanza Marimbera (Marijuana boom) by making drug trafficking highly lucrative. By 1978, marijuana cultivation contributed more to the national GDP than Colombia’s flagship product, coffee.
Under the presidency of Julio César Turbay (1978-1982), Colombian authorities cooperated with their US counterparts under President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) to eradicate marijuana cultivation and exports. The United States contributed detectives from the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) and carried out raids on ships loaded with marijuana, while the Colombian government created an anti-narcotics police force and signed an extradition treaty stipulating that drug bosses could be sentenced in US prisons. Said bosses reacted by declaring war on the Colombian state. Also around this time, in 1979, Luis Carlos Galán and Rodrigo Lara Bonilla founded the Nuevo Liberalismo party, which in the years to come would play a crucial role in the fight against crime in the country. In 1982, the Colombian government began a campaign to fumigate marijuana fields, and by 1985 most marijuana production had shifted to other countries, especially to the state of California in the United States, where the technical infrastructure for cannabis production was already in place. However, the fight against drug trafficking in Colombia had only just begun.
Cocaine and Paramilitarism
In the mid-1970s, the U.S. drug market, the largest in the world, began to favor cocaine over marijuana, and Andean countries (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia) possessed an abundance of land suitable for its cultivation. In 1976, what would later be known as the Cartel de Medellín was formed. The founding members of the Cartel were:
- Pablo Escobar, the undisputed boss. He was a born businessman and knew how to use his power.
- Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, nicknamed “El Mexicano”. Second in command of the Cartel and commander of its military wing, with more than 1,000 deaths attributed to him. Mentioned in connection with the Guerras Verdes.
- Carlos Lehder, leader of operations in the region of the city of Armenia, with access to the United States and the Bahamas. Crucial for the development of drug trafficking routes. In 1985, he claimed that “cocaine was the atomic bomb of Latin America” in its fight against U.S. imperialism.
- Fabio Ochoa Vázquez, Juan David Ochoa Vázquez, and Jorge Luis Ochoa Vázquez (the Ochoa brothers), heirs to a prosperous cattle ranch in Antioquia. Their father, Fabio Ochoa Restrepo, was also involved in some of the Cartel’s criminal activities. ● Gustavo Gaviria, Escobar’s cousin, was in charge of finances and
second-in-command of the Cartel after the death of Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha.
Pablo Escobar Carlos Lehder Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha
The Cartel de Medellín originally brought coca base cultivated in Ecuador and Peru to Medellín to be processed and shipped to the United States via their installations on an island in the Bahamas. Although he was the most famous and wealthiest drug lord of his time, Escobar was not the only one, and criminal organizations soon formed throughout the country, dedicated to expanding the national cultivation of cocaine and its shipment to the United States and Europe, such as the Cartel de Cali, the second most famous in Colombia, which would later become the most powerful in the country.
Around the same time, several paramilitary groups were founded, then primarily political, such as the ELN, the EPL, the FARC-EP, and the M-19, all leftist groups rebelling against the sociopolitical order of the time. The M-19 (April 19 Movement, commemorating the date of the fraudulent 1970 elections as a form of protest) began its operations in 1974 with an advertising campaign in newspapers, and grabbed headlines with its audacious theft of the sword of Simón Bolívar, a hero of the independence of several countries in South America. In the following years they carried out several operations, including kidnappings, murders, the theft of weapons from the Ejército Nacional de Colombia (National Army) in 1978, the takeover of the Dominican Republic´s embassy in 1980, and the deadly
occupation of the country’s Palacio de Justicia (Palace of Justice) in 1985. The subsequent battle with the public forces would claim the lives of at least 94 people.
Advertisement of the M-19 (parasites… worms? wait)
In 1981, the parallel worlds of drug trafficking and paramilitarism intersected when the M-19 kidnapped Martha Nieves Ochoa, sister of the Ochoa brothers, founding members of the Cartel de Medellín. A week later, they tried to kidnap Carlos Lehder, another prominent associate of the Cartel. These actions led to the creation of the MAS (Death to Kidnappers) organization, whose objective was to protect drug traffickers, their families, and their corrupt associates (businessmen, military personnel, politicians) from the actions of leftist guerrillas. Instead of paying the $12 million ransom demanded by the M-19 for Martha Nieves Ochoa, they unleashed a bloody campaign to free her without paying, which they achieved, but at the cost of more than 200 lives.
Despite the escalating drug-related violence of this era, Pablo Escobar enjoyed considerable popularity. His criminal activities were a well-kept secret, but his wealth was notorious. He organized and funded several social projects in the city of Medellín, including the construction of sixty soccer fields and an entire neighborhood to house the city’s poor. His image as a respectable businessman even led him to the Colombian House of Representatives in 1982, and the following year Semana magazine dubbed him the “Robin Hood Paisa.” (Paisa refers to the inhabitants of much of Antioquia, among other departments of Colombia; Escobar grew up in Medellín, in Antioquia) However, the US Government was already investigating his financial activities, and Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, previously mentioned as a founding member of the New Liberalism movement and then-Minister of Justice, denounced Escobar’s criminal activities, which led to his expulsion from the Colombian Congress in 1983. Escobar, with his “Plata o Plomo” (Money or Lead) mantra, to be generous to his friends and lethal to his enemies—arranged for a motorcycle hitman to assassinate Bonilla on April 30, 1984, riddling his Mercedes Benz with bullets in northern Bogotá. Additionally, a couple of years later, Escobar ordered the assassination of Guillermo Cano, director of the newspaper El Espectador, which had divulged the news about the investigations against him.
Rodrigo Lara Bonilla
Even so, the damage Escobar suffered as a result of Bonilla’s accusations drove the leaders of the Cartel de Medellín underground, and that same year, 1984, the Colombian police dismantled Tranquilandia, a vast jungle property containing 19 cocaine processing laboratories and eight airstrips for small airplanes. The Cartel de Medellín had initially been interested in the area because of its airstrips, which had been dubiously legalized by Álvaro Uribe Vélez, then-director of Aerocivil, the state agency in charge of regulating civil aviation in Colombia. When the police raided Tranquilandia, one of the confiscated aircraft was a helicopter belonging to Uribe’s father, the landowner Alberto Uribe Sierra. Despite this suspicious relationship with the Cartel de Medellín, Álvaro Uribe Vélez would go on to become President of Colombia, a position he held from 2002 to 2010, and remains a controversial, high-profile figure in Colombian conservatism.
Álvaro Uribe Vélez
The Breaking Point
By the mid-1980s, the Cartel de Cali, led by brothers Gilberto and Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela, operated a complex network of drug trafficking and money laundering in the United States, Europe, and even Japan. Despite being competitors, they coexisted with the Cartel de Medellín, which at that time was much larger and more prosperous, but preoccupied with its struggle against the Colombian government. In 1986, several drug bosses, with arrest and extradition warrants against them, founded the terrorist group “Los Extraditables,” (The Extraditables) with Pablo Escobar as its leader. They would soon amass approximately 3,000 hitmen in their service, with the infamous motto, “We prefer a grave in Colombia to a prison in the United States.” In 1987, Forbes magazine included Escobar on its list of the world’s richest people, and various estimates place his peak net worth between eight and thirty billion dollars, but the tides were already turning. A year earlier, the Bloque de Búsqueda (Search Bloc), a military unit dedicated to tracking down and capturing Escobar, had been formed, and in 1987, Carlos Lehder was captured by the Colombian police. He was extradited to the United States, a major blow to the Cartel de Medellín, and a few months later, Jorge Luis Ochoa was also captured, but the lack of a legal arrest warrant allowed him to be released from prison after only 27 days.
In 1988, however, the balance of power between the Cartel de Cali and the Cartel de Medellín shattered, supposedly over a love triangle, and an extremely bloody gang war erupted, claiming around 20,000 lives. Civilians, soldiers, criminals, city council members, mayors- nearly anyone who publicly opposed one or both of the cartels ended up dead. The 1990 presidential elections were not immune to this trend. Luis Carlos Galán, the frontrunner in the polls for the Liberal Party’s presidential nomination, an emblem of the fight against
drug trafficking, and previously mentioned as a founding member of the New Liberalism movement, survived an assassination attempt in Medellín on August 4, 1989. Upon learning of the plot, Valdemar Franklin Quintero, the Antioquia police commander and a hero of the fight against drug trafficking, quickly evacuated Galán, driving him to the airport. Two weeks later, on August 18, both men were assassinated on the orders of Pablo Escobar. Galán remains an icon of the struggle for justice and security in Colombia. Last year, a friend of the author, from Bogotá, claimed that Galán was the last good politician in the country.
His replacement, César Gaviria, and eventual winner of the elections, narrowly escaped assassination as well. On November 11, 1989, Avianca Flight 203 exploded over Soacha, en route from Bogotá to Cali, killing 110 people. It is believed that this terrorist attack was directed at Gaviria by the Cartel de Medellín, but he survived by canceling his ticket due to death threats.
Toward Peace
In that era, the history of the M-19 as a paramilitary group came to an end. After more than a decade of bloody clashes with the security forces, many of its members had been tortured or killed by the government. The first three commanders of the M-19 were killed in combat, and the fourth, Carlos Pizarro Leongómez, devised a plan to facilitate their permanent demobilization: on May 29, 1988, they kidnapped Álvaro Gómez Hurtado, a conservative leader who enjoyed great popularity in the country. In exchange for his release, Pizarro presented a list of eleven proposals, including a ceasefire and a National Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution. Negotiations soon began with the liberal Government of President Virgilio Barco, who announced a ¨Peace Initiative¨ on September 1, 1988. The Peace Accords were signed on March 9, 1990, and the M-19 publicly surrendered its weapons. The new constitution was drafted and signed in 1991.
The M-19 became a political party, the M-19 Alianza Democrática (Democratic Alliance), in preparation for the 1990 presidential elections, with Carlos Pizarro Leongómez as its presidential candidate. However, on April 26, a hitman working with the DAS (Administrative Department of Security, Colombia’s top intelligence agency at the time) assassinated Pizarro on a plane traveling from Bogotá to Barranquilla. The 1990 elections
claimed another victim. Despite the progress represented by the M-19’s disarmament, the country remained at war with other paramilitary groups and drug traffickers. It was the first step on the long road to reconciliation, which the country is still on.
In 1991, 95% of the members of the Marxist-Leninist group Popular Liberation Army (EPL) demobilized. Approximately 200 men resisted this demobilization, and the group remains active today, although greatly weakened after its conflict with the Colombian state and the ELN.
The Colombian government was also making progress in the fight against drug traffickers, especially those of the Cartel de Medellín. Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, “El Mexicano,” the cartel’s second-in-command and leader of its military wing, had unleashed a full-scale terrorist war against the Colombian state in 1989. After a bus bombing targeting the DAS (Administrative Department of Security) that killed 63 people, the Colombian government focused on finding Rodríguez Gacha, and, thanks to an informant, they were able to locate and kill him on December 15, 1989. The cartel’s new second-in-command, Gustavo Gaviria, Escobar’s cousin, died in a confrontation with the government just eight months later. That said, the more desperate Pablo Escobar became, the more people he took with him. In 1990, Los Extraditables announced they would offer two million pesos (around US$10,000 in 2025) for every police officer killed by hitmen, and the city of Medellín went to war with itself. In retaliation for the deaths of more than 200 police officers at the hands of hitmen, members of public security forces went underground, hiding their identities with hoods and masks, and carried out social cleansing operations in the most problematic neighborhoods of Medellín, killing working class teenagers, generally innocent of the chaos engulfing the city.
On July 7, 1991, the new Constitution of Colombia was approved, which outlawed the extradition of Colombian criminals to other countries. The following day, Pablo Escobar decided to negotiate his surrender to the Colombian authorities. He accepted imprisonment, but on the condition that he be allowed to build his own correctional facility, arguing that in a normal prison, he would run the risk of being killed. He ordered the construction of “La Catedral,” a sumptuous mansion atop a hill in the municipality of Envigado, overlooking the city of Medellín. His prison included two soccer fields, a party room, and even a torture chamber. Once installed in La Catedral, with a retinue of his employees, also technically confined, Escobar remained in charge of the Cartel de Medellín, dedicating himself primarily to extortion. Although he was under government custody, the truth is that many of La Catedral’s guards had been bribed by the drug lord, which facilitated meetings with his friends, businessmen, and rivals.
Just a year later, Escobar became embroiled in a dispute with two members of his cartel, Fernando Galeano and Gerardo Moncada. When he increased the weekly fee they owed him to $500,000 USD, they refused to pay, claiming they couldn’t. However, Escobar’s hitmen discovered a hidden house containing $23,000,000 USD, owned by Galeano and Moncada. Enraged, Escobar summoned Galeano and Moncada to La Catedral, where he executed and dismembered them. That same night, Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, of the Cartel de Cali, leaked this information to the media, and this report, along with other news about Escobar’s criminal activities, forced the government of César Gaviria to move him to a better-guarded location. But by the time the military contingent arrived at La Catedral, Escobar and several of his allies had already escaped.
Between his escape from La Catedral and his death, Escobar ordered several terrorist attacks throughout the country, but without clear targets; he simply sowed destruction. His wife and children were already in government custody in Bogotá, and the Bloque de Búsqueda had received training and technology from the United States. In October 1993, Escobar’s head of security, León Puerta Muñoz, was killed by the Bloque de
Búsqueda in Medellín, leaving him in the care of low-level hitmen. Escobar tried to negotiate his surrender again, but after the humiliation suffered by the Gaviria administration the first time, there was no one left to negotiate with. Finally, on December 1, 1993, the Bloque de Búsqueda managed to locate Escobar by tracing phone calls he made to his son. The next day, December 2, Bloque de Búsqueda agents arrived at his residence in a relatively tranquil residential neighborhood of Medellín, killing the only hitman guarding him, and then killed Escobar as he tried to escape. There are several hypotheses about his death: it is not known for certain who killed him, nor can it be stated with certainty that he did not commit suicide.
Pablo Escobar remains a highly controversial figure in Colombia and around the world. For some, he is a type of idol. Through his philanthropy, he helped improve the quality of life for many people; the myth of the Robin Hood Paisa persists in some sectors of Colombian society, mainly in certain neighborhoods of Medellín, that received the bulk of his philanthropic gifts. Likewise, there are those who admire him for his macho and anarchistic philosophy; for years, he imposed his version of the law on much of Colombia and enriched his collaborators. His hyper-masculine code of honor (“Plata o Plomo”) and his open rejection of government authorities make him an exceptionally pure example of rebellion and personal freedom, and there is no shortage of men who aspire to be like him. Also, for many people of his time, he was ¨El Patrón¨ (boss, patron) who offered them exceptional opportunities and unimaginable sums of money for becoming hitmen or for accepting bribes. There was a cult of personality surrounding Escobar, and these things don’t disappear overnight. However, the vast majority of Colombian society unequivocally rejects what he did and what he represents. He is still often associated with the country’s international image, which in no way reflects its contemporary culture or the ambitions of the Colombian people in 2025.
In any case, within a year of Escobar’s death, the Cartel de Cali took advantage of the power vacuum to control around 80% of the international cocaine trade. Likewise, through bribery and threats, they amassed increasing political power in Colombia. The Rodríguez Orejuela brothers, the top leaders of the Cartel de Cali, made donations to Ernesto Samper’s presidential campaign in the 1994 elections, without his knowledge, and this led to what would become known as Proceso 8000, an anti-corruption investigation into President Samper. Despite the efforts of his political rivals, all charges against Samper were dropped after the investigation’s findings were released, and the attacks against him are now considered an example of lawfare. In fact, under Samper, the pursuit of the Cartel de Cali reached unprecedented levels and quickly yielded results. On June 9, 1995, the reactivated Bloque de Búsqueda captured Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, who was hidden behind a wall, when an agent heard him breathing; he surrendered without resistance. He was released in 2002 but recaptured four months later on charges he had not previously confessed to and extradited to the United States. He died in North Carolina, in a U.S. federal prison in 2022. His brother, Miguel, was seen getting out of a taxi in Cali a couple of months later, and his former head of security, turned informant, provided the Bloque de Búsqueda with the crucial information that facilitated his capture: Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela was very devoted to the Virgen del Carmen (Our Lady of Mount Carmel), and every night he lit a candle in her honor. They soon located the candle, in a window, and captured him. He too was eventually extradited to the United States and is currently in a federal prison in South Carolina.
Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela
The New Century
The challenges to peace did not end with the dismantling of the Cartel de Cali. In 1997, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a far-right paramilitary group, were founded with the objective of combating left-wing paramilitary groups and protecting the interests of the Colombian aristocracy, while simultaneously exploiting the power vacuum surrounding cocaine cultivation and export to enrich themselves through drug trafficking. According to the Colombian Observatory of Conflict Memory, between 1997 and 2006, the roughly 30,000 members of the AUC committed approximately 4,000 massacres that are estimated to have claimed the lives of 95,000 to 260,000 people. Mass graves of AUC victims continue to be discovered today. The three leaders of the AUC, Carlos Castaño, his brother Vicente Castaño, and Salvatore Mancuso, wound up taking very different paths:
- Carlos Castaño was killed in 2004, possibly on his brother’s orders. ● Vicente Castaño disappeared in 2006, after the peace process between the AUC and the Colombian government. Several hypotheses exist regarding his death, but none can be corroborated.
- Salvatore Mancuso surrendered to Colombian authorities in 2006 and was extradited to the United States in 2008 with a 15-year sentence for drug trafficking. He is currently on parole in Colombia, collaborating with the Petro administration as a peace facilitator.
After the dissolution of the AUC, the Clan del Golfo was formed, also known as the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC). The Clan del Golfo, despite its gaitanist pretensions, is not a politically motivated group; It is involved in drug trafficking, extortion, and illegal mining, and today controls more than half of the country’s cocaine production and exports. It is not as bloody as the AUC, whose focus was largely terrorist, but, with approximately 7,000 members, it is exceptionally powerful. It remains a serious security threat, especially in Colombia’s Caribbean region, even though the Colombian armed forces have killed and captured many of its leaders over the past 15 years. Its current leader, Jobanis de Jesús Ávila Villadiego, alias “Chiquito Malo,” is the organization’s fifth, with all previous ones having been killed or captured.
In 2008, shortly after the end of the war with the AUC, the “false positives” scandal broke. The scandal began with the disappearance and subsequent murder of 19 teens and young men from Bogotá and Soacha, and many similar cases soon came to light. It turned out that, under the government of Álvaro Uribe Vélez, Colombian military personnel had formed informal combat units with the objective of eliminating guerrillas and drug traffickers. And they had an additional incentive: then-Senator Gustavo Petro accused the federal
government of responsibility in the killings, because, in 2005, it had offered roughly $1,900 USD (in 2005 dollars) for each paramilitary or drug trafficker killed. This turned indiscriminate killing into a lucrative business for unscrupulous military personnel, and in 2024 the Special Jurisdiction for Peace revealed the names of 1,934 victims of extrajudicial killings, although it is speculated that there could have been many more. The Mothers of Soacha, an organization of mothers of victims of the attacks from this period, continues to share their story and protest the impunity of many of the soldiers implicated in the scandal.
The FARC-EP, one of the country’s largest, longest-lasting, and most bloody paramilitary groups, entered into negotiations with the government of Juan Manuel Santos in 2012. These negotiations took place in La Habana, Cuba, and Oslo, Norway, with the Cuban and Norwegian governments acting as mediators. After years of progress and setbacks, during which the conflict continued in Colombian territory, an indefinite ceasefire was announced in La Habana on June 23, 2016, which entailed the end of the FARC as a military organization. Unfortunately, several FARC leaders did not accept the demobilization conditions and founded FARC dissident groups, which remain active today, although not as numerous as before.
Over the course of this century, there have been several improvements in security in Colombia, and there are ample reasons to be optimistic: the homicide rate in Colombia in 1991 reached 79 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, and that figure remained above 50 until 2004. In 2024, it stood at 25 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, still a fairly high figure globally, but the progress is undeniable. The recovery of the city of Medellín has been astonishing: in 1991, there were 381 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, while in 2024 it was approximately 11 per 100,000 inhabitants.
The last twenty years have also witnessed considerable improvements in the country’s infrastructure, average purchasing power, and poverty levels. In 2025, the minimum wage is set at COP 1,423,500 (USD 381, November 11, 2025), or COP 1,623,500 (USD 434, November 11, 2025) with the transportation subsidy, applicable to most workers earning this wage. Compared to the cost of living, it is one of the strongest minimum wages in Latin America; its increasing purchasing power is also due to the Colombian peso’s strong performance against the dollar over the past three years. The major challenge now facing the country is reducing the relatively high rate of informal employment, especially in rural areas whose development has been limited by insecurity, corruption, and geographical factors.
However, the improvement in national security in Colombian territory has not been as positive for its neighbor, Ecuador. Progress in the fight against drug trafficking in Colombia this century has encouraged the relocation of many drug trafficking operations, especially cocaine exports, to Ecuadorian ports. This has led to a dramatic increase in the homicide rate in that country, now one of Ecuador’s main political issues. Similarly, the establishment of the socialist dictatorship in Venezuela facilitated the expansion of drug trafficking routes from Venezuelan coasts to the United States. Meanwhile, the socioeconomic crisis in Venezuela has led almost three million Venezuelans to move to Colombia, bringing with it many challenges in supporting this additional population, which is frequently found in informal settlements with informal jobs.
Likewise, one cannot forget the immense number of displaced people left by the Colombian internal conflict over the last 80 years: it is estimated to be around 8.5 million people, and it has been an enormous logistical challenge for the country. Thanks to forced displacement, the country’s major cities have grown at incredible rates over the last 80 years, and their physical infrastructure and public services have had to cope with this unprecedented expansion. Many displaced people have built informal settlements in cities like Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali, and although many of these settlements have been
legalized, they frequently struggle with the provision of essential services, and some are notorious for their insecurity. Internal displacement has also kept informal employment levels quite high, as the massive influx of rural workers into the cities creates an alternative subsistence labor market. Fortunately, the number of internally displaced people is not as high as during the bloodiest periods of Colombian history (although there is no shortage of displaced Venezuelans to replace them), so in recent years, many Colombians have been able to regularize their housing and access formal employment, thus escaping cyclical poverty.
The Current Situation
Colombia is at a crossroads. It elected President Gustavo Petro in 2022, its most left-leaning president since 1945, or possibly since the country’s founding, as such an assessment is partly subjective. Petro was born in 1960 in Ciénaga del Oro, a municipality in Colombia’s Caribbean region, and grew up in Bogotá and Zipaquirá, a municipality in the Bogotá metropolitan area. By the age of 17, he was already convinced that guerrilla warfare was the best path to progress in Colombia, and he joined the M-19. In 1984, as a councilman in Zipaquirá, he publicly declared his membership and led the seizure of land to build housing for 400 displaced families. He also became close to the M-19 leader at that time, Carlos Pizarro Leongómez. He was captured by the Colombian Army in 1985 for illegal possession of firearms and subsequently tortured for ten days. He was convicted of conspiracy and spent 16 months in La Picota Prison in Bogotá. The Palacio de Justicia siege occurred while he was imprisoned, so he was not involved. In 1991, he was elected to the Colombian House of Representatives, a position he held until 1994, and in 2006, after several political and personal setbacks, he became a Senator. That same year, he exposed the parapolitics scandal, revealing ties between politicians and paramilitary groups, and was chosen as the political figure of the year by Semana magazine. In 2012, he became mayor of Bogotá, and in 2022, on his third attempt, he won the presidency of Colombia.
Presidential Portrait of Gustavo Petro
His presidency has been highly controversial and marked by both achievements and obstacles. On the one hand, the country has experienced a macroeconomic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic, whose socioeconomic effects led to nationwide protests and
unrest in 2021. It has also implemented a gradual reduction of the workweek from 48 to 40 hours, with significant improvements to the minimum wage.
On the other hand, informal employment remains as prevalent as before, and many of the reforms proposed by Petro have been stalled in the legislature. Petro arrived at the Casa de Nariño (the presidential palace) with an ambitious plan for “Total Peace,” and under his administration, dialogues began with the ELN, FARC dissidents, and the Clan del Golfo. No progress was made with the ELN, and similarly, most of the FARC dissident negotiators have already abandoned the peace process. That said, the details of the recent negotiations with the Clan del Golfo in Qatar, which are still ongoing, remain unknown.
In January 2025, a week after the suspension of peace talks between the ELN and the Colombian government, the ELN unleashed a wave of attacks in the Catatumbo, a Colombian region rich in natural resources. In recent decades, the Catatumbo has been severely affected by the expansion of coca cultivation, but this escalation resulted in the deaths of up to 80 people and the displacement of approximately 50,000 more.
On March 28, 2025, Carlos Lehder arrived unexpectedly at El Dorado Airport in Bogotá on a flight from Frankfurt. He had been living freely in Germany since 2020, with a temporary German passport, thanks to his father’s German citizenship. Upon arriving in Bogotá, Lehder was detained by airport authorities but released three days later due to the absence of any pending charges against him in Colombia. He returned to Armenia, his hometown, from where he has dedicated himself to promoting his autobiography. His presence in the country, after 38 years abroad, has been controversial, as it raises several moral questions. Has he already served his sentence (34 years in the US)? What should his role be in Colombia today? He is 76 years old and says he regrets his actions, but can one truly forgive a human being who was intimately involved with the machinery of violence and terror that was the Cartel de Medellín?
In June, Senator and presidential pre-candidate for the 2026 elections, Miguel Uribe Turbay, was shot at a rally in Bogotá. He died two months later, without ever regaining consciousness. His father, Miguel Uribe Londoño, assumed his position as pre-candidate. This year also saw four terrorist attacks in Cali. The deadliest of these occurred on August 21, with the explosion of a truck bomb near the Marco Fidel Suarez Military Aviation School, which claimed the lives of seven people and injured 78 others.
One of the most relevant issues regarding the current security situation in Colombia is impunity. The assassination of Miguel Uribe Turbay is a telling example. The killer was a 15-year-old boy, and he wasn’t the mastermind behind the crime (five other people have been arrested in connection with the murder), but his seven-year prison sentence seems frankly insulting, compromising of the safety of any political candidate in the country. And he’s not alone. Peace processes with guerrilla groups over the years have resulted in the release or lenient sentences of many murderers, extortionists, hitmen, and drug traffickers. A prime example of this relative impunity is the case of Salvatore Mancuso, leader of the AUC. In 2006, he pleaded guilty to 87 crimes, including massacres and assassinations, and was eventually extradited to the United States. There, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for drug trafficking and deported to Colombia in 2024. Despite his extensive list of crimes and responsibility for the deaths of thousands of innocent people, he was released on parole last year and now works for the government as a peace facilitator. While his intentions are genuine, he spent less than two decades behind bars, a laughable sentence compared to those faced by most murderers, whose crimes are nowhere near comparable in scale to his. Similarly, institutional corruption in Colombia, despite being a constant and considerable challenge to good governance and the country’s development, is frequently impossible to punish. Between 2010 and 2023, only 6% of corruption accusations nationwide resulted in legal convictions.
In 2025, diplomatic relations between Colombia and the United States have deteriorated dramatically. In January, when Donald Trump assumed the US presidency, he launched a massive deportation campaign. Upon learning of the dehumanizing treatment of deported Colombians at the hands of US authorities, President Petro refused to cooperate
with the US government’s deportation program, triggering an unprecedented escalation of political and trade threats between the two countries. The following day, however, the dispute was resolved.
Unfortunately, in recent months, diplomatic tensions between the two countries have flared up again. In August, the United States deployed three US Navy destroyers, with 4,000 troops on board, to the Caribbean near Venezuela. On September 2, US forces bombed a Venezuelan vessel, sinking it and killing its eleven crew members. This brings the number of attacks on vessels in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific to 17 (as of November 8, 2025), with no public evidence that these vessels were actually involved in drug trafficking. President Petro has described these attacks as “murders” and rightly claims they violate International Maritime Law.
On September 15, 2025, the US government decertified Colombia as a partner in the fight against drugs, citing the increase in coca cultivation and cocaine production in recent years—undeniable facts—but the decertification also has a political dimension. Colombian authorities have continued to collaborate with their US counterparts, and the Colombian government remains committed to peace, but the two countries’ strategies in this regard are increasingly diverging. In response, President Petro stated that his government has seized more cocaine than any other in the country’s history, which is true if only refined cocaine is considered. The following day, September 16, US missiles killed a Colombian fisherman and father, Alejandro Carranza, in Colombian waters. At the UN General Assembly on September 23, President Petro harshly criticized US foreign policy, alleging that “they need violence to dominate Colombia and Latin America.” He also asserted that “Trump’s foreign policy toward Colombia, Venezuela, and the Caribbean is advised by political allies of the cocaine mafia.” That same day, at a pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square, Petro called on US military personnel “not to obey certain orders” from Trump—inflammatory rhetoric, at the least.
In retaliation, the U.S. State Department revoked his U.S. visa. On October 19, President Trump published an article on Truth Social calling Petro an “illegal drug leader,” threatened to conduct unauthorized operations within Colombia, and announced the suspension of U.S. financial aid to Colombia. In 2023, this aid had reached $740 million, allocated in part to combating drug trafficking, but also to social, environmental, and economic development programs. Petro responded in X, stating that he himself is the main political enemy of drug trafficking, and that in Colombian politics, it is the Conservatives who side with drug traffickers. On October 24, the Trump administration added Petro and several of his relatives to the Clinton List, a list of individuals and organizations that pose a threat to U.S. national security and foreign policy. And the fight didn’t end there: on November 6, Petro said that Trump is “against humanity,” and called Trump and Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, “liars.”
So, who is right? Which side is the truth on? However subjective this debate may be, there are some facts that must be taken into account:
- Neither Trump nor Petro are drug traffickers. Even though this should seem obvious, it’s worth mentioning given the fact that both accuse the other of colluding with mafiosos.
- Trump is not interested in the well-being of Colombians or Venezuelans; a fact demonstrated by his attitude toward them in the United States.
- Nor is he on the side of democracy in Venezuela, which can be inferred from his attack on US democracy in 2021, and his indifferent attitude toward the Venezuelan opposition; rather, he is interested in the commercial opportunities that the creation of a satellite state in Venezuela would entail.
- Therefore, his threats of territorial incursion are inherently imperialist. ● Bilateral cooperation between the United States and Colombia has been key to getting to this point. If we consider Colombia’s domestic situation at the end of the 20th century, the progress is evident.
- Gustavo Petro, as Senator, did denounce the so-called parapolitics, which mainly involved conservative/aristocratic politicians; he does believe that the Colombian left has the potential to combat drug trafficking.
- The responsibility for drug trafficking does not fall solely on Colombia, nor on its neighboring countries, since the market was created and is maintained in the United States; it is a domestic security problem, as well as a reflection of our society.
- Drug trafficking is being used to justify imperialist aggression; the only goal reached by attacking Colombian fishermen is the escalation of tensions.
- When politics takes precedence over security cooperation, it harms both countries. Drug traffickers are the only winners of personal disputes between presidents.
Conclusion
When North Americans visit Colombia, they are amazed by the idyllic landscapes, ubiquitous throughout its territory. These are lands of unparalleled wealth, extremely versatile in terms of the crops they can sustain, where the growing season never ends. One feels, intuits, the mystical side of these lands, home for millennia to the indigenous people of the region. The mountains give the impression of hiding an ancient magic in their depths, which permeates the country’s collective consciousness and literature.
This wealth also lends itself to exploitation; the commercial possibilities this territory offered captivated the Spaniards when they arrived in 1499, and a history of domination and slavery began, which would lead to a long and bloody war of independence, and countless civil wars since then.
Nowadays, when those North Americans manage to take their eyes off the mountains, they find themselves in the midst of a country full of vitality, music, and dance, where the present moment acquires a hierto unknown importance. In this parallel world, the other American dream exists; it is a daily struggle to live fully, to feel, and to grow.
What will happen now? It seems that with the current governments of the United States, Colombia, and Venezuela, the tensions are only going to get worse. However, for the future to be better than the present, we must envision the world in which we would like to live. If we want to end drug trafficking, it is absolutely essential that our generation cultivate its own worldview, one that weakens nationalism and imperialism, and that can begin to heal the sociopolitical divisions that threaten to halt humanity’s progress. From the Southern Cone of South America to Alaska, we are all Americans, shaped by the same processes of colonialism and immigration, and we have more in common than we might like to admit. We must not allow drug trafficking to reinforce our national and ethnic divisions, because criminal groups profit when communication and mutual understanding between cultures are hindered. The future can be more democratic, productive, and safe. But we must start constructing it today.