Cardona
MPSA 2004
20
the graduation of the first class of officers from the Escuela General Santander in Bogotá
(Echeverri Ossa 1993: 155-163).
How do we understand this disconnect between the professionalization of the
army and the police, and what impact did it have on the configuration of the public
forces? The most effective lens for viewing the disjuncture is that of partisan competition.
The army was professionalized under a Conservative administration that was concerned
with Colombia’s geopolitical vulnerability in the wake of the loss of Panamá. The
interests of these policy-makers in ensuring external defense led to a prioritization of the
army over the police, guarantor of internal security.
As reflected in Figure 1, the Police did not receive significant increases in levels
of agents during the period of institutional design of the public forces, while the army
maintained a default peacetime level of around 6,000 troops. The figure does show a
modest increase in the number of National Police agents beginning in 1911. Based on an
examination of police payroll records housed at the Museo Histórico de la Policía, it
appears that this increase corresponds to the first real effort to post National Police agents
outside Bogotá. Despite the nominally “National” nature of the institution, in reality,
budget limitations prevented agents from being posted outside the capital city for the first
20 years of the institution’s existence. As the resources committed to the police were
reallocated to allow for greater regional presence, the numbers of troops began to rise
modestly. What is notable about these figures is the commitment to funding relatively
small numbers of army troops and police agents, even as the former were being
professionalized.
Convention