In 1948, the popular presidential candidate Jorge Eliecer Gaitan was assassinated. His candidacy had been supported primarily by marginalized sectors of the country, notably labor and others who had been shut out of Colombiašs democratic process in the past.
In response to Gaitan's assassination, there was a spontaneous uprising throughout the city, now referred to as the Bogotazo. Members of the lower classes, labor, the lower middle class and other Gaitan supporters destroyed buildings, primarily around the Plaza de Bolivar, which housed the institutions that oppressed them. These rioters found their political identity in liberalism.
The violence of the Bogotazo soon spread to the countryside, where unequal land distribution made the masses ready for revolt.
The first stage of La Violencia was the most violent. Between 1949 and 1953, an estimated 150,000 people were killed. Party affiliation provided the rationale for the violence during this period, but the violence soon took on a life of it's own.
In 1972 the Conservative and Liberal parties reached an agreement where they shared the governmental power for the next 16 years, and the official stage of the violence ended, although violence in some areas has continued in other forms.
It is estimated that more than 200,000 people died as a result of La Violencia. Many people, particularly from regions where violence was the worst, migrated to the cities. Some regions lost more than half their populations to migration and violence before the Frente Nacional took over. An estimated one million people migrated to escape the violence, 150,000 of these to Venezuela, and most of the rest to Bogota.
La Violencia/Geography, Macalester/jbruland@macalester.edu
