Cardona
MPSA 2004
24
At the national level, things were going no better. In the two years following the
assassination of Gaitán, relationships among elites at the national level deteriorated to the
point where Congress was closed and the Liberals abstained completely from the 1949
presidential election. This tactic, frequently employed during the 19
th
century as part of
the struggles over constitutional governance in a context where peaceful alternation of
power was difficult if not impossible to achieve, signaled a return to antiquated practices
of political contestation that attempted to circumvent or delegitimize electoral means of
gaining access to national office.
In this context of partisan breakdown, the struggles at the local level took on
added fervor:
Now the Liberal resistance tried to organize itself better in guerrillas. At times, from 1950 to 1953,
the violence seemed to lose its character of semi-anarchic wars of family vengeance within
localities, becoming more of a generalized civil war. But this character of a violence more public
than private, more national than local, was endorsed neither by the Conservative government nor
by Liberal leaders. None of them wanted the conflict to be thought of as a civil war. (Palacios and
Safford 2002: 348-49)
Had civil war been declared, perhaps the Conservative government would have employed
the tactics of its predecessors in 1895 and 1899 and moved the Police to the Ministry of
War. As it was, the Police remained under the control of civilian politicians at the
national and local levels.
After April 9, [1948] it is indubitable that the Departmental Police, through the [Departmental]
Assemblies in which the conservative party was in the majority, began to be supplied [dotadas]
and to energize themselves to act strongly in the repression of what they called subversión. So we
have political chiefs, we have mayors, we have police, and we have guerrillas, these are the main
Convention