The two parties alternate in power all other political actors are excluded. This arrangement is called the National Front and lasts for 16 years. The Liberal and Conservative Parties agree to share power as a way to pacify the nation. This alliance leads to the creation of the “Independent Republics.” Liberal guerrillas, known as “common liberals” (as opposed to party-led liberals) ally with Communist guerrillas who had emerged in the 1920s as self-defense groups. Rojas Pinilla rules as a dictator, brutally suppressing all opposition. With the backing of the two parties, General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, head of the armed forces, leads a coup to oust President Laureano Gómez. One of the leaders is Pedro Antonio Marín, who changes his name to Manuel Marulanda Velez, and is more commonly known as “Tirofijo” (Sure Shot). Liberal peasants organize self-defense groups against the conservative “pajaros,” who massacre them to steal land. Over 300,000 people are killed and many more are forcibly displaced. La Violencia lasts for 10 years as Liberal and Conservative armies and guerrillas fight each other. The partisan civil war between the Conservatives and Liberals intensifies as a consequence of the assassination of Gaitán.

This unleashes a violent riot known as “El Bogotazo” in which 1,500 people die and 20,000 are injured.

Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a populist leader of the Liberal Party, is assassinated in Bogotá. Violence erupts in the countryside between followers of a Conservative Party oligarchy seeking to reclaim ancestral lands and followers of the reformist Liberal Party, seeking to defend its land reforms of the previous two decades.

Colombian armed conflict timeline