[The most significant aspect of the February 26 parliamentary and municipal elections in Colombia was the selection of the Liberal Party's candidate for president. Julio César Turbay roundly defeated his Liberal rival in this "primary," former president Carlos Lleras. Turbay is now being given a good chance at winning the June presidential election.
[The February voting was also marked by a high degree of abstention-on the order of 70 percent—and a low score for the electoral coalitions supported by the workers parties, which received only 5 percent of the votes cast.
[Of course, these elections reflected the evolution of the relationship of class forces in Colombia only in a very distorted way. One significant point, among others, is that the revolutionary campaign headed by Socorro Ramirez attracted more workers to its meetings than the number of votes it received.
[This article analyzes the development of the workers movement since the 1920s. It provides an understanding of the real situation in Colombia and clears up a number of paradoxes.]
The outstanding feature of the Colombian workers movement has undoubtedly been its participation in social struggles under the leadership of bourgeois personalities, currents, or political parties.
The roots of this lack of working-class independence can be found in the early 1930s, when the trade unions gave up their autonomy in contract negotiations. The traditional and permanent presence of the government as the arbiter of conflicts between workers and bosses dates from that long-past period. The way the state is set up allows the government sufficient power to impose its own solutions on the contending parties. This often led to victories for the workers in the early period. But those days have long since ended.
In December 1934—just six years after the great struggle that marked the beginning of the Colombian workers' fight against capitalism—a strike broke out in the imperialist enclave of the United Fruit Company. The president sent his minister of war to intervene, and this resulted in a 50 percent wage increase for the workers.
Such policies were to determine for decades the development of the Colombian trade-union movement. This situation not only prevailed in the unions, but arose also in politics. Around that time the Communist Party adopted the Stalinist policy of popular-frontism, becoming a fervent advocate of working-class collaboration with the bourgeois Liberal Party.
This policy was consummated at the May Day demonstration in 1936. Addressing from the balcony of the presidential palace the huge crowd assembled by the unions for that purpose, the reformist Liberal President López Pumarejo did not fail to praise the Stalinists for their role. The Communist Party then began sharing control with the Liberals over the young trade unions and social organizations that the working class was building.
Liberal historians have noted this with knowing appreciation. In their eyes, such an attitude on the part of the working class has been quite "beneficial" for the country. But they also note some drawbacks: ". . . this led to the loss of the workers movement's independence, to its alienation from the government, and to the linking of its fate to that of the Liberal Party. The latter of course did not hesitate to utilize the vast labor contingents as ingredients in its electoral cookery, engaging in a whole series of tactical maneuvers of a strictly routine character.
The result, quite simply, was an alliance between the national bourgeoisie and the working class behind López Pumarejo's economic development program. The slogan of "defense of national industry" first appeared at the 1936 May Day demonstration, and then three months later at a trade-union congress in Medellin. This congress was particularly important for its demonstration of the unity-however fleeting-of the workers movement. The first union federation arose out of that congress; it soon took the name Confederación de Trabajadores de Colombia (CTC- Confederation of Colombian Workers).
At the 1938 trade-union congress—during a period when the workers and their organizations were coming under the blows of bourgeois reaction-the thesis of "defense of national industry" was adopted as part of the program of the working class.
The Liberal bourgeoisie had originally used this collaboration to blunt the workers and popular movement against the Conservative government in 1930. As a quid pro quo for working-class support, the Liberals adopted social legislation. Although decreed from above, this recognized victories won in a series of strikes that began in the 1920s and continued throughout the period. Neither the popular front nor Liberal control over the workers organizations was able to block that working-class offensive.
The Liberals' policy changed in the late 1930s. They were divided into two wings. The reformists wanted to bring the workers movement-under their control—into politics. The conservative wing of the party, on the other hand, was trying to keep union activity limited to a strict kind of corporatism. There was, of course, no disagreement on the need to keep the union movement under the state's thumb; the differences turned only around a choice of methods.
The CP's Counterrevolutionary Policy
Thus the workers movement was deprived of any class independence in its organizations and activity when a political and revolutionary crisis broke out in 1948. The defeat then suffered by the workers vanguard-the result of the Stalinists' policy-only deepened the central problem of the Colombian workers movement: the lack of a mass workers party such as the ones existing elsewhere on the continent.
The 1948 defeat occurred in a particular set of circumstances. While the Liberal bourgeoisie was casting aside its reformist policies, the Conservative Party had been evolving toward positions that were clearly bonapartist and in some cases openly fascist. The Conservatives launched a campaign of "direct action"—paramilitary bands carried out a selective repression against the Communists and the leaders of the populist wing of the Liberal Party.
Beginning in 1946, the Liberal bourgeoisie not only abandoned its reform program but also, frightened by the workers and popular mobilizations, openly passed over to the camp of bonapartist reaction. They resorted to a pact with the Conservative reactionaries to block the way to Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. Gaitán had gained a majority in the Liberal Party and his victory in the 1950 elections appeared to be inevitable.
In this situation, the Communist Party supported the right-wing Liberals against Gaitán. The Stalinists had already backed the candidate of the reactionary Liberal bourgeoisie, Gabriel Turbay, against Gaitán in the 1946 elections.
The division among the Liberals led to a victory for the Conservative Party in 1946. Once in the government, the Conservatives intensified the repression against the workers and popular vanguard and the peasantry in particular.
The suicidal policy of the Stalinists lost them the support of the masses who followed Gaitán, of all the Liberal-controlled unions, and even of some organizations controlled by the CP itself. The populist illusions of the working class were reinforced, and it was left without any leadership when the populist movement disintegrated. The workers could provide only very weak support to the peasant guerrilla movement that broke out after April 9, 1948. The murder of Gaitán-which the workers were unable to avenge-exhausted the last of their strength.
Peasant Guerrillas—Obstacle to the Counterrevolutionary Wave
The Bogotá uprising-the "Bogotazo"- marked the high point of Gaitanism, but also brought on its demise. The right wing regained control over the Liberal Party. The final efforts of the masses to wage a struggle were paralyzed from above. The Liberal bourgeoisie had more fear of these masses than of the uncontrolled semifascist government of Laureano Gómez, even though it attacked some right-wing Liberal leaders.
Shaken by the mass struggles, the republic could no longer be governed through bourgeois nationalism, however timid the form this took in Colombia. A change in the political regime was needed to achieve what the "democratic reaction" of the 1930s had failed to accomplish. But any political transition in the mold of capitalist society divides the bourgeoisie and opens a breach for the mass movement.
In Colombia, such a division between Liberals and Conservatives, bonapartists and semifascists, led to a civil war in which the Conservatives fought the Liberals. This in turn gave rise to a peasant revolt.
After a preventive coup on June 13, 1953, General Rojas Pinilla sought to resolve at the negotiating table what the army had failed to halt on the battlefield. This defeat of the workers and peasants movement put an end to the first period of political and social struggles in modern Colombia.
A new period opened with the formation of the National Front government and the birth of what revolutionary socialists have called a bourgeois-democratic regime marked by reactionary bonapartism.
The development of widespread peasant guerrilla warfare kept the Colombian ruling class from resorting to a Pinochet-type solution. But the defeat of the guerrillas allowed the installation of the antidemocratic National Front government for a sixteen-year period.
The workers movement recovered slowly. This was preceded by a quite radical student movement and by renewed land struggles on the part of the peasantry. Both of these suffered from lack of centralization; new and better organizations did not arise in these social sectors.
The situation was aggravated in the case of the peasantry by the repression unleashed by the government under the pretext of the rise in banditry that occurred after the defeat of the guerrilla war. The peasant sectors that had preserved their armed self-defense organizations and certain forms of direct democracy suffered from constant punitive attacks by the army, such as the expeditions against the "independent republics" of Marquetalia and Guayabero.
Peasant resistance in the face of this official violence led to creation of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC-Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). The principal leaders of the FARC are members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
For their part, the Castroist and Maoist currents ten years later organized guerrilla columns based on marginal peasant struggles in the mountainous areas of the country. But neither the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN—National Liberation Army) nor the Ejército Popular de Liberación (EPL-People's Liberation Army) have been truly integrated into the peasant struggles. The EPL is practically extinct at present, along with the radical Maoist current as a whole.
In face of the National Front, the workers movement is not only disarmed ideologically and politically but also is divided on the trade-union level. In addition to the CTC, the Unión de Trabajadores de Colombia (UTC—Union of Colombian Workers) was created as an organization with a clearly confessional inspiration. Founded under the Conservative Ospina Pérez government in 1946, the UTC is controlled by the Catholic church and the Conservative Party. Today it is the most powerful union federation.
On the other hand, the CTC split during the same period. This was provoked by the expulsion of Communist militants at the initiative of the Liberals and the government, and gave rise to the Confederación Sindical de Trabajadores de Colombia (CSTC-General Trade-Union Federation of Colombian Workers).
In addition, there are the anarchosyndicalist current influenced by the Maoists, and some centrist-led unions. These reject the three federations in a sectarian fashion and from what are known as the independent trade unions. These sectors have never been organized on a national scale.
Renewal of Workers Struggles and Evolution of the 'Strong' State
The "new left," which arose after the Cuban revolution and developed in the student struggles of the 1960s, isolated itself by engaging in single combat against the state outside the real struggles of the masses. The Communist Party, meanwhile, dedicated itself to the patient organization of the vanguard union militants in the CSTC. At the same time, the CP continued to offer its services to the nationalist bourgeoisie.
Reduced to clandestinity under the National Front, the Stalinists hitched themselves to the wagon of the Movimiento Revolucionario Liberal (MRL- Revolutionary Liberal Movement), a splitoff from the Liberal Party. Led by now- President López Michelsen, the MRL represented for a whole period the "democratic" opposition to the National Front and based itself on popular discontent. But it later rejoined the ranks of the official Liberals and the government.
The CP then moved into the orbit of the Alianza Nacional Popular (ANAPO- National People's Alliance). This movement had clearly right-wing populist origins. In a few years it was able to regroup the opposition inside the Liberal Party and the sectarian wing of the Conservatives.
ANAPO succeeded in defeating the official candidate in the 1970 elections, the Conservative Pastrana Borrero. Tumultuous demonstrations broke out on April 19, 1970, when the government refused to recognize ANAPO's electoral victory. But this spontaneous mass mobilization was halted by violent government repression and by betrayal on the part of former dictator Rojas Pinilla, ANAPO's principal leader.
Denouncing ANAPO as "fascist," just as it had denounced Gaitan in the 1940s, the CP refused to seek unity in action with this movement that had a large mass base, thus isolating itself. Today, however, now that ANAPO is little more than an empty shell, divided, and well on the way to extinction, the CP seeks electoral pacts from above with some of its marginal leaders. The Stalinists prefer to support the candidacy of an ANAPO leader with no prestige rather than present one of their own recognized workers leaders as the revolutionary socialists have proposed.
But facts are stubborn things-even though the CP persists in its search for progressive bosses of good will for an alliance against the imperialist bosses and their servants in the country; even though it puts large sectors of the workers movement at the service of this policy; and even though the two bourgeois parties have kept their control over large sectors of the population.
The barbarous superexploitation of the workers during the whole period of the National Front and during more recent governments that ended that arrangement-including a drop in real wages of 60 percent-is beginning to bear fruit. Exploitation calls forth rebellion, and oppression, resistance. Large numbers of workers reject the Liberal-Conservative system, but remain skeptical about joining any of the existing workers parties.
Much of the vanguard seeks a socialist alternative, but is held back by the CP and to a lesser degree by the Maoist MOIR (Movimiento Obrero Independiente y Revolucionario—Independent Revolutionary Workers Movement). One sector is beginning to break with centrism and the different variants of radical Maoism, and is moving toward the Fourth International.
The results of the recent elections in some ways reflect this evolution. The number of abstentions on February 26 reached 72 percent. The candidates of the left received 5 percent of the votes cast.
On this occasion, as they did two years ago, the revolutionary socialists campaigned by addressing themselves to the masses, in opposition to the various popular-front schemes and the two bourgeois parties.
The campaign was waged under very special conditions—a big rise in workingclass struggles. After less than four years of strikes, and despite its division, the workers movement played the leading role in the citizens' national general strike last September 14. This marked a quantitative and qualitative transformation of the class struggle in the country, a slow but sustained upsurge that gained the support of all sectors of the populace. Now, as the slogans say, "the hour of the workers movement has arrived."
The workers today are the motor of the class struggle in a country where for more than thirty years their protests have been ignored. This new situation is having its repercussions among the bourgeoisie. The two-party system is in crisis, and tendentious bickering has become the order of the day. A number of bourgeois politicians are discussing the necessity to reinvigorate the Liberal Party along Social Democratic lines. The first fissures have begun to appear in the stranglehold of the Liberal- Conservative oligarchy on political power.
Two Liberal Party candidates confronted each other in these elections: Lleras Restrepo, representing the interests of the old Liberal bourgeoisie; and Turbay Ayala, who reflected the needs of a new bourgeoisie nourished on government contracts, contraband, financial and commercial speculation, and other such sources of wealth.
Turbay also enjoyed the support of a multitude of intermediate sectors of the political bureaucracy whose social and economic privileges bring them into conflict with the closed circle of the traditional bourgeoisie and the rising technocrats.
The election also reflected the rise of the agricultural exporting sector, and the crisis of the older industrial branches that rely on the internal market.
Consequently, the problem faced by the candidates of the two-party system was one of presenting solutions that could accommodate the interests of both the old and the new rich, of the political bosses as well as the technocrats.
If the citizens' national general strike marked the renewal of workers and popular struggles, the November 18 mobilization opened a new phase in this process. It was held under the unified leadership of the union federations, which had already had a big impact in the citizens' national strike. The two bureaucracies directly linked to the ruling class-those of the CTC and the UTC-came under pressure from their ranks and reached an agreement with the Communist and Christian- Democratic federations. All appealed for a work stoppage that had some of the characteristics of a general strike.
Strike after strike was held, some lasting for more than a month. The coordinating committee of the four union federations has presented a list of joint demands that includes, most importantly, a wage increase of 60 percent. If the capitalists and the government fail to satisfy this demand, the workers will again take to the streets.
Meanwhile, inflation continues to mount. It reached 30 percent during the past year according to official statistics, despite repeated assurances from the government that it was under control. As for the present administration, five finance ministers have succeeded one another and none have been able to solve the problem of inflation. This is made still more serious by the fact that Colombia has the sharpest social inequalities in all of Latin America.
The ruling class is taking precautions to prevent a popular explosion. As President López Michelsen has said, within ten years the dividing line between Liberal and Conservative will be totally erased; the struggle will no longer be between them but rather between a national party and the revolutionary left. All the necessary repressive emergency legislation has been prepared in recent years and is written into the constitution.
A bloody repression is being carried out against revolutionary and mass-movement leaders-sixty CP municipal councillors have been murdered in the past year in various parts of the country. The bourgeoisie and its government responds with selective but systematic repression to the still embryonic and dispersed struggle of the masses. To land occupations, demonstrations, and strikes, the successive goverments have answered in accord with the Biblical maxim: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
In the context of such an evolution of the state, the government is preparing to hold elections to a constituent assembly. This will be made up of notables from the two traditional parties, the goal being a constitutional reform of the judicial system and public administration. What is really involved is an open offensive on the democratic rights of the workers movement and its organizations. The "reforms" will create state institutions more adapted to the winds of rebellion and revolt now blowing in Colombia.
Revolutionary socialists have condemned this move and are appealing for unity of the workers and people's movement to defeat it. However, they are also taking advantage of the situation to struggle for a democratic and representative constituent assembly that could accomplish genuine reforms in the interests of the broad masses.
One often hears it said that in Colombia the bourgeoisie only really engages in politics on the occasion of an election. There is some truth to this, especially regarding the present contest. The government has suffered growing discredit and the abstentionist current is growing. For an entire year the traditional parties have been using their enormous electoral machines to mobilize the voters.
In this situation, one sector of the left chose to seek an electoral front. Others, adopting an ostrich-like policy, buried their heads in the sand and declared that nothing was happening. They made abstention into a principle and rejected participation in the elections on the grounds that this would only reinforce the ruling class's domination of the proletariat. Unfortunately, even some revolutionary-socialist currents held such a position. They judged that in the concrete political conditions of Colombia today electoral activity is inopportune since other more important tasks demand the attention of revolutionists.
How are the left forces participating in the election battle? To understand this, it is necessary to review the experiences of the past few years.
Workers and Socialist Candidates—The Fight for Class Independence
On September 22, 1972, the Communist Party signed an electoral agreement with three groups: the Movimiento Amplio Colombiano (MAC-Broad Colombian Movement, a split-off from ANAPO); a group calling itself Christian Democratic; and the Maoists of the MOIR. This alliance took on the pompous title Unión Nacional de Oposición (UNO-National Opposition Union). It adopted a minimum program with an anti-imperialist tone, seeking to remove the "obstacles" to the full development of Colombian capitalism.
A caricature of the Chilean Unidad Popular, UNO presented as its presidential candidate an old parliamentary Liberal who, thrown out of his own party, had joined ANAPO. Only a few months after the 1974 elections this personage, then- Senator Hernándo Echeverry Mejía, rejoined the ranks of the Liberals along with five other members of parliament who had earlier quit that party.
Two years afterward, a relatively new revolutionary-socialist organization, the Bloque Socialista (Socialist Bloc, now the Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores), rose above this old Stalinist policy and called on the workers to participate in the elections with complete independence. The Socialist Bloc put forward a policy of workers and socialist candidates.
This was based on an analysis of the national political situation which showed that all the grave defeats of the workers struggles resulted from their lack of political independence-either from the Liberals or from other sectors of the bourgeoisie. Thus it would not be possible to speak of socialism, let alone revolution, as long as the Colombian working-class vanguard had not attained political maturity. That is to say, as long as the workers were unable, whatever their forms of struggle, to maintain their independence from the bosses—however progressive the latter might pretend to be.
For the first time, the CP found itself answered and denounced for its criminal policy in the context of an active campaign. In the elections for the municipal councils in the summer of 1976, slates made up of socialist militants, workers leaders, students, and peasants recognized for their role in struggles opposed the UNO slates, which were supported by the CP.
The workers and socialist candidates received only 3,000 votes throughout the country, just 1 percent of the number attained by the UNO. But they gave a platform to the leaders of strikes, demonstrations, and land occupations; not to those who behind a leftist mask in fact supported the ones who were combating those very struggles.
The current elections opened with the February 26 vote and will close with the presidential election in June. The PST was certain that the Stalinists and their Maoist counterparts in the MOIR would stick to their popular front approach and present another Echeverry Mejía.
Recognizing that the CP is the largest workers party in the country, the PST proposed unity of all the working-class political forces behind the candidacy of Pastor Pérez, who is president of the CSTC and a CP militant. The CP preferred to revive its popular-front coalition, the UNO, while the MOIR ran the risks and perils of creating the Frente para la Unidad del Pueblo (FUP-Front for People's Unity).
Both coalitions rejected a candidacy by Pastor Pérez, instead presenting old wornout figures from ANAPO: Julio César Pernía for UNO and Jaime Piedrahíta Cardona (a member by marriage of the top Colombian oligarchy) for the FUP.
The PST then appealed to the Liga Comunista Revolucionaria (LCR- Revolutionary Communist League, also a sympathizing organization of the Fourth International) and to two centrist organizations, the Unión Revolucionaria Socialista (URS-Revolutionary Socialist Union) and the Organización Comunista Ruptura (OCR-Breakaway Communist Organization).
All four groups united behind the candidacy of Socorro Ramirez, general secretary of the Federación Colombiano de Educadores (FECODE-Colombian Teachers Federation) and an internationalist, socialist militant. The electoral bloc thus formed is called the Unidad Obrero y Socialista (UNIOS-Workers and Socialist Unity).
This campaign was greeted with enthusiasm throughout the country. More than 1,000 workers candidates were announced, and support committees for Socorro Ramirez sprang up throughout the country. More than 60,000 persons attended meetings to hear her speak. Such success can be explained in several ways. In the first place, Socorro Ramirez is recognized as a mass leader among the teachers, one of the most combative sectors of the Colombian working class. In addition, while still fairly new, the two organizations of the Fourth International have taken an initiative in showing the workers and all the exploited that politics is not an exclusive pastime for "professors," but is something that the workers themselves can engage in directly, since in their hands alone is the solution to their problems. What is more, the confidence the UNIOS candidates have inspired has given rise to longdormant energies.
Finally, what UNIOS presents is an honest proposal—it does not promise the impossible but instead offers a perspective of struggle and the program of revolutionary socialism. The support committees that developed in the campaign were first centralized in regional conventions and then in the big national convention that took place in December. These show the possibilities for applying forms of direct democracy in the most varied situations.
In a recent speech, Comrade Socorro Ramírez expressed herself quite clearly on this subject:
"What we are doing with this campaign is speaking to all the deceived workers, seeking to turn their discontent into an alternative of their own class. We are turning the vote into an instrument of protest, because we know that the parliamentary bodies and councils are not going to solve the problems of the workers. We are appealing for reliance only on the forces of the exploited, so as to build a big revolutionary and socialist current in the working class.
To ensure that the true leaders of the workers-the leaders of strikes, workers and socialist militant—will be chosen, it is necessary to follow this road. We are not interested in agreements at the top, behind the backs of the workers, or in secret diplomatic deals. That is why, from the beginning, our party initiated the conventions where the leaders recognized by the workers themselves could be chosen as candidates, and that is what has occurred."
To conclude, the revolutionary socialists' electoral campaign has not put the direct mobilization of the masses on the back burner. The campaign has provided a platform for denouncing the conditions working people face and for taking up their concrete problems; it has supported the strikes and struggles under way. From General Electric in Bogotá to Cartons de Colombia in Cali, Socorro Ramírez has untiringly toured the four corners of the country in support of the workers in struggle.
Notes
1. Reference to the great "banana strike" of 1928, an uprising throughout almost the entire region of Cienega in northern Colombia. The Conservative government declared a state of war and launched violent repression. Deaths have been put at 1,000, out of 6,000 persons who rose up on the side of the plantation workers. The massacre provoked great indignation throughout the country and contributed largely to the loss of the Conservative Party's prestige. The Conservatives had dominated political life in Colombia since the end of the nineteenth century.
2. Gerardo Molina, ed., Las Ideas Liberales en Colombia (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo, 1977), volume 3.
3. On April 9, 1948, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was shot down as he left his office on a Bogotá street. The crime provoked an uprising by his supporters and the presidential palace nearly fell into the hands of the insurgents. In three days, the capital was practically destroyed and put to the torch. Several thousand corpses lay in the streets. The rest of the country experienced comparable uprisings, and in some towns revolutionary committees were formed, flying the red flag with a hammer and sickle. To put a stop to the insurrection, the government had to resort to regular troops stationed in the provinces, since during those magnificent days entire detachments of the national police went over to the insurgents.
4. The National Front was an agreement on a system of government-approved by a wide margin in a 1958 plebiscite-that followed the overthrow of the dictator Rojas Pinilla on May 10, - 1958. A general strike jointly organized by the Liberals and the Conservatives put an end to the bonapartist military dictatorship that threatened to eliminate the two-party system. The accord stipulated that the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party would alternate in power every four years and divide the posts in public administration equally. The pact ended in 1974 after the term of Conservative President Pastrana Borrera.
5. Results made publie are as follows: of 12.5 million registered, 3.7 million voted. The Liberals recieved 2 million votes for their three candidates, against 1.5 million for the Conservatives. The three left slates (UNO, FUP, and UNIOS) received 175,000 votes, or not quite 5 percent of the votes cast. In these elections, votes were cast for bloc slates presented by the various parties or coalitions. Four elections took place simultaneously: Senate, Chamber of Representatives, departmental councils, and municipal councils. The elections also served as "primaries" for the Liberal Party.
6. See Inprecor No. 17 (November 24, 1977): "After the General Strike: a New Period Opens."
7. An example was the strike at Cartons de Colombia, a U.S. trust employing 3,000 workers. Despite labor legislation banning strikes longer than forty days, some strikes in the last four years have lasted from two to three months, and the big strike at Rio Paila last year lasted four months.
8. Socialist Workers Party, a sympathizing organization of the Fourth International.
9. For an English translation of the election platform of the UNIOS, see Intercontinental Press/Inprecor, February 20, 1978, p. 208.