Sociocultural Changes
The strength of leftist guerrillas was due in part to disillusion with the social and economic achievements of the National Front; yet these were hardly negligible. Alberto Lleras Camargo (president, 1945–46, 1958–62) was the first president elected under its terms. In 1945–46 Lleras Camargo had filled out the term of Alfonso López on the latter’s resignation, and he then gained international prestige as the first head of the Organization of American States (OAS). Lleras Camargo now pushed hard for a new agrarian reform law, which passed in 1961.
The purpose of the measure was to defuse social tensions in the countryside, and although its main aim was to resettle the landless—or those whose plots were simply too small to support a family—on public land rather than break up existing estates, there was provision for the latter as a last resort. The main implementation, combined with some co-optation of campesino organizations, came during the presidency of Carlos Lleras Restrepo (president, 1966–70), a cousin of Lleras Camargo and easily the most vigorous of all National Front executives, who surrounded himself with eager young technocrats. If subsequent administrations had shown the same interest in the problems of the peasantry, it might have been harder for the new wave of leftist guerrillas to gain a foothold; unfortunately, such was not the case.
Progress in education was more striking. The plebiscite creating the National Front specified that henceforth at least 10 percent of the national budget should be devoted to education, and the target was regularly exceeded. One result was that the illiteracy rate, which had been almost 40 percent, fell in two decades to around 15 percent. Secondary enrollments doubled, admittedly from a very low level, during the 1960s alone. Such quantitative improvements were all the more notable in light of the rapid increase of population numbers and thus of those needing schooling. The annual rate of population increase reached a record 3.2 percent in the 1960s, and the figure would have been higher except for legal and illegal emigration to oil-rich Venezuela. Colombian officials were perfectly aware of the problem this posed for adequate provision of public services. They accordingly adopted family-planning programs, which were necessarily low-key because of disapproval both from Roman Catholic traditionalists and from leftists who claimed to see a U.S. plot to limit the number of proletarian antiimperialists. But the programs were successful—by 1980 the rate of increase was roughly 2 percent, one of the sharpest declines registered in any country.
Official promotion of family planning was one sign of the declining influence of what had once seemed an all-powerful Roman Catholic Church. Another was the return of legalized divorce, even if only for persons married in a civil, not a religious, ceremony. However, the church itself was changing. As in other Latin American countries, there was a segment of the priesthood that not only responded to the Second Vatican Council’s call for renewal but also embraced the new tenets of liberation theology (see Glossary). In a few cases, this element carried disenchantment with the existing order to the point of joining hands with Marxist revolutionaries.
One such priest was the charismatic Camilo Torres Restrepo, who after enlisting in the ELN died in combat in 1966. As a whole, the Colombian clergy was probably more conservative than the continental average. But it was lower-case “conservative,” for the automatic identification of Roman Catholic clergy with the Conservative Party was a thing of the past. Also gone was the rabid anti-Protestantism that led a good many priests during La Violencia to urge on the faithful in attacks against the country’s small Protestant minority, considered beyond the pale as both religiously heretical and politically Liberal. Now it even happened that Roman Catholic priests and Protestant pastors might amicably take part in the same civic events.
In economic policy, the National Front indulged in no lavish spending to court popular support and reward followers, as under Latin American populist regimes, but neither did it set off runaway inflation. Net growth was most of the time unspectacular, but it was at least uninterrupted. Governments did continue to promote import-substitution industrialization, of which one result was the definitive establishment of a Colombian automobile industry during the 1960s. But export promotion was not neglected, with tax rebates favoring the emergence of Colombia as the world’s second-ranking (after the Netherlands) exporter of cut flowers. The flower industry was based primarily in the area around Bogotá, which offered both a favorable temperate climate and easy access to international air transport as well as a significant increase in employment opportunities for women. Other aspects of economic growth, along with the spread of education, likewise helped more women to find work outside the home, and there was even one more legal change in women’s status when mothers were finally placed on the same footing as fathers in authority over their own children.
The slow but steady economic growth and the sociocultural changes that accompanied it did not meet everyone’s expectations, of course, particularly given that the National Front had been launched amid quite unrealistic hopes and promises of all kinds. The contrast with neighboring Venezuela and with the developed-world scenes in movies or in the ever-more-widespread medium of television also contributed to disappointment, and certainly much remained to be done. Educational coverage expanded, but the quality was too often poor. Infrastructure was sorely inadequate. A railroad from Bogotá to the Caribbean was finally completed in 1961, but there was no integrated rail network, and that which the country had was soon deteriorating as officials concentrated on building highways, which still were far from meeting its needs. Per capita income increased, and inequality in income distribution tended to diminish, thanks in part to the greater educational opportunities and the effect on the labor market of slower population growth. Yet in absolute terms, income inequality remained high, with far too many Colombians living well below the poverty line. Poverty was less extreme in urban areas, where an ever-greater proportion of Colombians lived, than in the countryside, but in the cities it was also more visible.
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