Growth Amid Mayhem
Death and destruction dominated news from Colombia during the years of La Violencia, but other things were happening, including steady economic growth—in 1945–55 the GDP increased at an annual rate of 5 percent. This growth was fueled in part by favorable world prices for coffee, still by far the leading export, which in the early 1950s for the first time pierced the dollar-a-pound barrier (and, of course, a dollar then was worth much more). The Conservatives’ generally probusiness stance encouraged domestic and foreign investment, although the Conservatives were willing for government to take a hand in the development process when they considered it in the national interest. When the Tropical Oil Company’s concession expired in 1951, a state corporation, the Colombian Petroleum Enterprise (Ecopetrol), took over production from its wells, but Tropical still shared in marketing.
At roughly the same time, the government established a Colombian steel industry in the mining town of Paz de Río in Boyacá Department; private enterprise had not yet shown sufficient interest even though steel was deemed a necessary aspect of modernization. There was also a further increase in protective tariffs, representing a more explicit commitment to import-substitution industrialization than had been shown by the Liberals in the Great Depression years. During 1945–55, industrial output grew at 9 percent a year.
Among the obvious winners from higher import duties were owners of the Medellín textile factories, who were generally good Conservatives. The interest of workers in those same factories was a chief concern of the Union of Colombian Workers (UTC), which was founded in 1946 with government support and Jesuit advisers and grew rapidly in the industrial sector. The older Liberal and communist unions, whose main strength had been in transportation and services, suffered harassment if not outright repression. But governments of the period also introduced a few innovations in social policy intended to benefit the working class. The Conservatives produced a scheme of industrial profit-sharing as well as the first social security legislation, albeit initially with very limited coverage.
For his part, Rojas established a state welfare agency, part of whose mission was to offer relief to victims of La Violencia; it bore some resemblance to the Eva Perón Foundation in Argentina, a similarity that became more pronounced when Rojas placed his daughter in charge of it. His flirtation with the model of Peronist Argentina was likewise evident in his sponsoring of a new labor confederation that ostensibly rejected Colombia’s traditional partisan feuding in favor of a populist ideology similar to Perón’s Justicialismo (Fairness). However, this last effort was not very successful, and by angering not only the existing unions but also the church, which had ties with the UTC, it contributed to his overthrow. More lasting achievements of Rojas were the introduction of television, in 1954, and the final adoption of suffrage for women, by vote of a largely handpicked assembly. Rojas named the first woman to a cabinet post, but he held no election in which women could exercise their vote—that happened only after he left office.
Another development of La Violencia was increased urbanization, reflecting not just the pull of industrial employment and other urban opportunities but also the flight of campesinos from strife-torn rural areas. By the end of the 1950s, Bogotá had finally surpassed 1 million in population, and secondary cities grew rapidly as well, so that Colombia continued to be an exception to the common Latin American pattern of a single primate city vastly overshadowing the rest. Altogether the urban population was now close to equaling that of the countryside. This shift meant that a greater percentage of Colombians would have access to education and social benefits and also that the pace of all sorts of change was likely to accelerate, with consequences difficult to foresee.
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