Rojas Pinilla’s dictatorship (1953-1957) and the construction of the "internal enemy" in Colombia: the case of students and farmers

Abstract

Framed as a historical review considering both written and oral sources, this article seeks to account for the construction of the "internal enemy" under General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla’s dictatorship (June 13, 1953-May 10, 1957), focusing on two events that exemplify this policy: on the one hand, the killing of nine students at the hands of Colombian Battalion troops on June 9, 1954, as they protested on the streets of Bogotá against their classmate’s murder, Uriel Gutiérrez, a fourth grade Medicine student at the Universidad Nacional, the previous day at the university campus; on the other, the military operations against eastern regions of the Tolima department, particularly between Mars and June 1955 in the municipality of Villarrica, where the Colombian air force took extreme punishing measures such as napalm bombs and the establishment of “concentration camps” in order to put an end to the farmers’ resistance. Both situations may be described as forms of state terrorism, which has since been systematically applied in Colombia. Some significant examples may be: the military aggression by the Colombian State against peaceful farming regions, as it had happened in the south of Tolima and Marquetalia (1964); the disproportionate use of the military to silence any expression of political or social opposition; the profoundly anti-communist discourse of the bipartisan elites and the church hierarchy; the application of counterinsurgency tactics against the civil population; the design of a sophisticated intelligence apparatus which resorted to illegal practices and saw the legal system merely as an instrument of war by means of court proceedings with no legal guarantees and the criminalization and persecution of anyone belonging to the popular movement.