La Violencia
Civil war in Colombia from 1948 to 1958 / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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La Violencia (Spanish pronunciation: [la βjoˈlensja], The Violence) was a ten-year civil war in Colombia from 1948 to 1958, between the Colombian Conservative Party and the Colombian Liberal Party, fought mainly in the countryside.[1][2][3]
La Violencia | |||
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Part of the Colombian Civil Wars | |||
Date | 9 April 1948 – 1958 | ||
Location | |||
Resulted in | Stalemate
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Parties | |||
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Lead figures | |||
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Casualties and losses | |||
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200,000 civilians killed (1947–60) |
La Violencia is considered to have begun with the assassination on 9 April 1948 of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a Liberal Party presidential candidate and frontrunner for the 1949 November election.[4] His murder provoked the Bogotazo rioting, which lasted ten hours and resulted in around 5,000 casualties.[4] An alternative historiography proposes the Conservative Party's return to power following the election of 1946 to be the cause.[4] Rural town police and political leaders encouraged Conservative-supporting peasants to seize the agricultural lands of Liberal-supporting peasants, which provoked peasant-to-peasant violence throughout Colombia.[4]
La Violencia is estimated to have cost the lives of at least 200,000 people, almost 2% of the population of the country at the time; or 1 out of every 50 Colombians.[5][6][7]