The Cold War Roots of Colombia’s Paramilitary Death Squads
Pentagon Scraps $300 Million Lithium Tender for Defense Stockpile As Oilprice’s South America correspondent, I cover Colombia (where I currently live), Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Guyana, Suriname and Uruguay.
I… The emergence of bloodthirsty right-wing paramilitary death squads in Colombia is often attributed to the rise of powerful vertically integrated cocaine cartels during the early 1980s.
That interpretation, however, overlooks the deeper forces behind their emergence in a country shaped by decades of conflict and the world's longest-running multi-party low-intensity asymmetric war.
Colombia's right-wing death squads, responsible for the majority of the modern conflict’s victims, predate Pablo Escobar, the Medellin Cartel and the cocaine boom.
Their roots lie in earlier struggles for political power andcontrol of Colombia’s resources.
Informal armed groups were responsible for much of the violence that has torn Colombia asunder since the country’s 1814 independence from Spain.
Constant clashes driven by politics, class and a desperate desire to control rich agricultural land and minerals fueled the bloodshed.
The two main ideologically opposed political parties, the Liberals and Conservatives, were locked in conflict for most of the 19th and 20th centuries as they jockeyed for control of Colombia’s vast natural resources.
According to conservative politician Jorge Holguín, asquoted by Colombia’s central bank, between 1830 and 1903 there were nine major general wars, 14 local conflicts and two international wars.
The worst conflagration was theThousand-Day Warfought from October 17, 1899, to November 21, 1902.
Here Colombia’s Liberal Party initially battled the authoritarian National Party-led government, and then the Conservative Party after its leader José Manuel Marroquín overthrew authoritarian President Manuel Antonio Sanclemente on July 31, 1900.
The civil war, fought on land and at sea, was extremely costly for Colombia.
| Product | Price | Change |
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| WTI Crude | $96.90/bbl | +0.21% |
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| Nat Gas TTF | $15.42/MMBtu | +0.92% |
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