Institutions, Military Policy, and Human Rights in Colombia

In the past 20 years the people of Colombia have experienced increasing social and political violence. This political violence reached extreme levels during the administration of President Ernesto Samper (1994-1998), as 15,000 Colombians became victims of political killings (Bland, 1998:10). A central part of this violence has been the counterinsurgency war being waged by the government against well-armed guerrilla armies, with noncombat killings related to this war generally exceeding killings in combat. Throughout this war, the Colombian government has been able to maintain its system of competitive elections and relative control over the armed forces and actually broadened its democracy with a new constitution in 1991. How are we to explain this apparent contradiction? How has the civilian leadership' maintained its control over the state in the face of increasing social instability and violence? Why has the military been content with the power that it wields within this system? In order to answer these questions I examine military policy2 over the past 15 years, arguing that understanding Colombia's power structure and its relationship with the United States are central to understanding that policy. The distribution of power within a political system and the institutions that operate to regularize and maintain this distribution define the opportunities and constraints that guide, limit, and trigger individual or class action (Barrow, 1993: 14).