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Guzmán: Land Reform and the latifundia in Colombia
HISAL, 2013, Vol. 8, article No 3 –www.isal.org
Journal
HISTORIES of Latin America
Vol. 8 (2013)
Land Reform and latifundia in Colombia during
the period of the National Front
(1958-1974)
Alejandro GUZMÁN
www.hisal.org | mach 2013
URI: http://www.hisal.org/revue/article/Guzman2013-8

Land Reform and latifundia in Colombia during the period of
The National Front (1958-1974)
The cases of Tequendama, North of Cauca and the South Atlantic
Alejandro Guzmán 1
In this article we analyze three different trajectories of the Colombian
latifundia into three sub-regions, as well as the economic consequences of
ownership of agrarian reforms undertaken after the coup of General Gustavo
Rojas Pinilla (1953-1957) just before the National Front (Berry, 2003, 2009), a
political coalition between the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, the
two political parties that have identified contemporary Colombian politics. For
16 years (between 1958 and 1974), they were supposed to switch the
Government to ensure political stability.
Introduction
The National Front regime is an important period in the history of the
concentration, de - concentration and the re-concentration of land ownership
in Colombia, for at least five reasons. First, because this period marked a
difference between the reforms of agricultural property as they were
implemented in the nineteenth and twentieth century. In the first case, the
reform was accomplished without much political disagreements, passing state
property to the private sector, either to individuals or to groups of interest
1
Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia - alegmbg@gmail.com

(Legrand, 1988). In the second case, the reform distributed a quantity of
private property to benefit farmers with little or no land. The study of this
period is also justified by the fact that during these 16 years, land reform was
followed by a contra land reform. Both reforms show two different
conceptions on the role of the State as to the intervention and the promotion
of economic growth and development (Berry, 2003). This period as well allows
to better understand the peculiarity of the Colombian political tradition,
characterized by a monopoly of the two parties mentioned above. The fourth
reason relates to population growth and structural change of Colombian
economy and society during the period. Finally, our analysis shows how the
National Front has determined the Colombian public policy during the second
half of the twentieth century. In this article, we will argue that land reform and
the evolution of latifundia in Colombia have led to negative effects in terms of
socio-economic equality and rural democracy in the country. We will try to
demonstrate the argument through several steps: first we will talk about
geography, soil type and ownership of the territory, from the sixteenth century
until today, for each of the three study sub-regions, ex. The Tequendama
province, northern Cauca department and South of the Atlantic department.
Second, we will explain what land reform is in practice; we will discuss the
political and economic context of the National Front and present the
objectives of the promulgated laws. Third, we analyze the types of latifundia,
their trajectories and their socio-economic effects in three selected sub
regions. Finally, we propose partial conclusions. An Iconographic dossier is
presented at the end of this article to provide a picture of the facts and
discussed developments.

I. Space and the settlement of the three sub regions
We begin with a description of each of the three sub-regions according to their
geographical characteristics, their historical and cultural formation, the
predominant agricultural activity and politico - administrative divisions of
Colombian State.
1) The Tequendama
This Colombian sub region corresponds to the Tequendama province at the
Cundinamarca department. It is located in the central area of the country, in
the heart of the Andean natural region on the eastern mountain, 40 kilometers
from the city of Bogotá, the capital of Colombian. On the western flank of the
capital, there is a depression formed by the discontinuity of the Bogotá River
that leads to the Magdalena River. The region has a tropical rainforest and has
an average climate - with temperatures that range between 14 and 25 degrees
Celsius. The land has slopes of 25 to 50 degrees, between 1600 m and 2600 m
above sea level (Figure 1 and 2).
Before the Spanish conquest, the region was a place of passage of the Chibcha
Indian people. In the nineteenth century, thanks to the state policy for
colonization of public lands, this area was settled by waves of mestizos and
Spanish descendants who wished to cultivate the land and create a market of
agricultural products (Rivas, 1946). During the second half of the nineteenth
century, a number of coffee farms was established there. The urban center of
the region is the village of La Mesa (Machado, 1997 Palacios, 1983).

2) The Northern Cauca
The space of this sub region is at the north of the current department of Cauca.
It is geographically located on an inter-Andean valley at 1000 m of altitude. It
is surrounded by Western and Central Andean mountains and crossed north-
south by the Cauca River that leads to the Magdalena. The annual average
temperature of the area is 25 degrees.
Before the Spanish conquest, this area was inhabited by the Chibcha Indians.
During Spanish rule, between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, the
region received a group livestock farms (Figure 3), sugar cane plantations for
Panela - unrefined sugar – in a context of a salve society composed of African
and Indian people and based mainly on gold mining, having as central city
Popayan (Colmenares, 1999). The urban center of the sub-region, was the
colonial town of Caloto. Later, after independence and during the period of
the republican State, new creole and brown-slaves arrived and the sub-
regional center of Northern Cauca, Santander Quilichao became known as
"village of the free men" (Aprile 1994).
3) The South Atlantic
The area of the southern Atlantic region today the Colombian department of
Atlantic is characterized by its alluvial plain made up of a series of wetlands. It
has a large water wealth, because of the presence of wetlands dampening the
flow of Magdalena River. It is rich in aquatic vegetation and, over much of its
area, a variety of terrestrial and fish species. The average temperature is 28
degrees with annual average humidity of 82% (Aguilera, 2006).

Before the Spanish conquest, the occupation of the region encompassed
a diversity of Indian peoples belonging to the Caribbean ethnic groups. In this
region of the Atlantic department, peoples moved south to fish or to cultivate
land, following the rhythm of the Magdalena river floods (Angulo, 1992;
Barros, 2010). Between the sixteenth and nineteenth century, conquerors and
colons settled in the city of Santa Marta, to take advantage of its natural harbor
conditions. Later, when they were able to link the city with the Magdalena
River through the construction of the Dique Canal (Posada Carbó, 1998); they
created the city of Cartagena.
The channel was completed in 1650, constituting a water
communication path of 113 km long. During the sixteenth, seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, extensive estates were assigned. These were located in
the northern part - inhabited indigenous peoples - producing livestock to feed
the population of Cartagena. Before the abolition of slavery (1851), from north
to south of the Dique Canal, palenques of peoples or free maroons from the
slave society were also settled there. At the end of the nineteenth century, the
port of Puerto Colombia was built and later, in 1936, the port of Barranquilla,
about 22 kilometers from the exit of the Magdalena River, on the Caribbean
Sea.
With the rise of the coffee economy in the center of the country, the city
of Barranquilla became the heart of the Colombian Caribbean region and the
first port in the country until Buenaventura – at the Pacific Ocean - , competes
and takes its place becoming the first port in the country: in 1914, after the
inauguration of the Panama Canal (Posada Carbó, 1998), and a railway from
the coast to the Cauca Valley was built.

II. Land reforms during the period of The National Front (1958-1974)
The concept of land reform is used to evoke property rights on land. It
therefore refers to the changes in property rights and responsibilities, use,
transfer and inheritance rights. Our notion will also consider the availability of
credit and technical assistance to owners (Berry, 2003).
The first reform initiative was undertaken during the period of President
Carlos Lleras Restrepo (1966-1970). As integral part of the Alliance for
Progress, it was proposed and directly supported by the United States and
President JF Kennedy. The program aimed to prevent and stop the expansion
of reforms or movements that could lead to the formation of leftist
governments, in favor of planned economies - or communist - in Latin America.
The reform was conducted with the intent to change pre-modern
agrarian structures; to produce surpluses in agriculture and stimulate the
growth and development of the country to move towards a healthy, modern
market economy, urban and industrial (Berry, 2003). Reform of Carlos Lleras
Restrepo lasted four years until land contra-reform, initiated by the regime of
President Misael Pastrana Borrero (1970-1974).
We now discuss the character of each of these reforms and the
underlying theories for promoting rural development implemented by the
State during the period of the National Front. Overall - and following the
chronology of events - it is possible to distinguish two types of laws. On one
side are those stimulating a peasant way (chaired by Lleras) and on the other,
those simulating an entrepreneurship path (under the presidency of Pastrana).

The first type of laws tried to put pressure on the latifundist owners to
modernize their estates in order to encourage them to a more appropriate and
productive land use (Act 135 of 1961). They aimed expropriation of
undeveloped property to benefit sharecroppers who worked the land (1st law
of 1968). But they wished stimulate also peasant organization and peasant
mobilization to support the ongoing reform (Zamosc, 1987; Hirschman, 1962).
The second type of laws aimed mainly improving land productivity and
accepted land possession by sharecropping. These laws also proposed
property acquisition by the Colombian Institute of Agrarian Reform (INCORA),
land redistribution to peasants and regularization of existing settlements (Act
6 of 1975) (ILSA, 2002).
III. The evolution of the latifundia in the three sub-regions during the
National Front
1) latifundia and the coffee farm at the Tequendama
The case of the latifundia at the Tequendama, the first sub – region we will
study is known for two major reasons. First, because this area was the scene
of a conflict that transformed the structures of latifundist coffee landowners
into small properties at a family level (Machado, 1997). The conflict confronted
sharecroppers and landowner’s, who wanted to ban peasants for growing
coffee on their land and because latifundist were not providing them adequate
salaries.
The Tequendama is also known for having large states production
marketing exclusively for international markets (Palacios, 1983). This form of
production and marketing is clearly distinguished from that which had been

carried out during the next phase of the coffee colonization in Colombia2
,
where production at a family level had prevailed while developing the internal
market and having surpluses destined to growth and economic development
(Legrand, 1988; Machado, 1997).
Analyze in the medium term, a coffee hacienda at the Tequendama during
the period of the National Front tells us about the characteristics of the
evolution of the latifundia and the socio-economic consequences over the sub-
region (Figure 4). First, taking advantage of scale economies, the latifundia
oriented towards the external market does not diversified production and
does not favored internal market development. Then the limited and unequal
distribution of property (observed from the peasant world) led to weak
investments for the development of new technologies (illustrations 5, 6, 7).
Finally, in a context where the elites concentrated much power, fragmentation
of latifundia, which opens the way for minifundia or small property at a family
level, did not lead to better income distribution or improving the productivity.
The infrastructure problems, lack of technical assistance, the shortcomings of
public health and education policies put in evidence adverse consequences on
the efficiency and productivity of the small family farmer, which works out of
any scale economy. It was followed, in effect, a de concentration of land
ownership and a great poverty of population (Guzmán, 2003).
2
We discuss here the coffee expansion of the Colombian region of Antioquia, 1900. At that time, the peasantry
was operating production at a family level, diversifying its production and selling their own products. Only a
portion of its land was destined to coffee production for the market; it was not a monoculture. Preparation -
marketing - and marketing of coffee was supported by the National Federation of coffee operators (a public
and private institution).

2) The latifundia and the agriculture at a family level at the Northern Cauca
sub-region
At the northern Cauca department, a contra land reform land was
implemented. During the entire period analyzed, farms landowners, who had
semiféodales socioeconomic structures - their labor was not completely free -
were transformed into agro-industrial companies.
The arrival of the Communist Party to power in Cuba in 1959 and its
consequences on the Cuban sugar exports had opened the international
market of sugar cane for the Cauca Valley (Figure 8). The rapid growth in
exports of sugar, transformed an economy based on a latifundist farming of
livestock and panela into an agro-industrial economy based on the intensive
cultivation of sugar cane, destined to meet international demand. Latifundist
structures are held in a large number of cases and are also extended in some
others (Rojas, 1983).
Peasants producing at the sub-region, usually descendants of former
African slaves, had previously grown cacao, coffee and fruit trees while
operating at a family level. They had to sell their land to sugar cane farmers to
voluntarily or under duress, and transformed into a working class in sugar
refineries. In other cases, in order face the fall in income and resources caused
by the transformation of the hacienda and the expansion of sugar production
for export (Guzmán, 2005) (Figures 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15), they had to
associate in cooperatives, in productive operating conditions that could not
compete with the economies of scale, even if they sometimes benefited from
a high agricultural productivity.

On the other hand, the evolution of livestock latifundia in northern
Cauca led to different socio-economic consequences. It first had adverse
effects on the productivity of land; although relatively low risk, such
transformation is reflected also on labor time compared to agricultural
production and also on the productive opportunities for improvement.
Then, such development discouraged savings for investment and
improvement of operations. Therefore, capital investment was heavily
devoted to a productive transformation of the farm towards sugar cane in
order to take advantage of scale economies and international markets (Figure
16). This substitutes other crops and livestock, this evolution stops expansion
of the internal market.
Finally, because of the productive mechanization, the production of
sugar cane creates a layer of owners living of rent and a low demand of labor,
which has consequences on unemployment. The combination of all these
factors contributed to the concentration of income to the largest owners and
significantly consolidated the socioeconomic inequalities (Rojas, 1983).
3) The case of latifundia and public lands at the South Atlantic sub region
The South Atlantic sub-region, dominated by livestock production, presents
a case where the latifundia was consolidated from public lands or fallow land,
which increased the arable land through wetland drainage, made possible by
the construction, before 1960, of a wall preventing floods of the Magdalena
river and the Dique Canal. The characteristics of the concentration of land in
the sub-region, observed throughout their evolution and complexity, are of
great interest.

First, public lands were monopolized by the most powerful owners, with
the complicity of bureaucrats of the public service who, for their part, also took
advantage (Villamil, 2011). Then the latifundia of this sub region remained
essentially for livestock (Figure 17) it was a good business because it had low
economic risks compare to agriculture (Aguilera, 2006; Posada Carbó, 1998).
Finally, if land reform distributed lands that the latifundia absorbed from
the drying of the land during the first period of the National Front regime, the
phenomenon did not affect the property devoted to breeding. The Colombian
Institute for Agrarian Reform (INCORA) attributed these surfaces (between 5
and 10 ha each) to farmers in Southern Atlantic. Farming families beneficiaries
of agrarian reform cultivated, among others, sorghum and tomato, while also
taking advantage of irrigation, credit and technical assistance. Later, however,
during the term of President Pastrana, in the second phase of the National
Front, the small peasant producer was abandoned reversing land reform
effects.
The first socio-economic consequences of this type of latifundia resided in
lower productivity of the land, even if the quality of soils and their location
played an important role. It is also certain that the extension of livestock
disincentives agricultural production at a family level. The monopoly and
socio-political combinations favored the extraction of rents, in order to
perpetuate the agrarian property. All these factors consolidated the
socioeconomic inequalities.
In this regard, the story of the deputy head of the Colombian Institute of
Agrarian Reform (INCORA), Carlos Villamil Chaux, during the government of

Carlos Lleras Restrepo, is eloquent (Villamil, 2011). Villamil was then 29 years
old and belonged to the oligarchy of Popayan. Unaware of the needs of
farmers before reform, he said that his experience in the South Atlantic
changed his life. The peasant movement, organized and supported by the
regime of President Lleras - as we already mentioned - had managed to
neutralize the reaction of landowners. Later, especially with the arrival of the
government of President Pastrana, however, it lost its impetus and vigor. We
reproduce here some excerpts from the testimony of the director Villamil:
The day after I took job, I found myself in a situation I had not contemplated
and that I was absolutely not prepared. In the morning, when I arrived, I got
questioned by a noisy crowd who claimed to INCORA a quick solution to their
land problems. These problems were caused by the construction, during the
previous decade, two parallel embankments of the river Magdalena and the
Dique Canal. They were used to prevent flooding will flood the land South of
the department at the end of each year; they also make it possible to maintain
the draining of wetlands that covered a significant part. The dykes were built
by the government to prevent the floods that resulted in yearly exodus of
thousands of people - about 15,000 people while leaving the South Atlantic to
seek refuge in Barranquilla. When the waters rose, they could long remain in
exile until the decline. Then they settled with their children and all their
belongings - including their rudimentary kitchen equipment - in city parks or
public spaces, which caused all sorts of health problems. These farmers had
gradually drained the swamps that had always existed, which allowed the
appearance of "new land" that did not exist before. The possession of these
new lands had then resulted in a struggle between the landowners and

peasants. The first moved their fences with their livestock occupying areas that
had been drained. The latter defended the principle that these lands were
public and tried to take them in turn by installing their own cultures.
The struggle between these two factions resulted in violent situations:
landowners, backed by the authorities, accused the peasants of being invaders
and were expelled by force, were imprisoned or mistreated. For their part,
farmers organized into "unions" supported by the FANAL from Barranquilla
(Federación Agraria Nacional) - a subsidiary of UTC (Unitary Workers Central)
- and the Catholic Church, have rejected the occupation of lands by landowners
and continued to establish themselves with their crops on new land, as drying
lagoons were incorporated into farmland.
Formulated well after the period of the National Front, the testimony of
one of the official protagonists of the implementation of land reform can help
us to understand the extent of social conflict and the stress of climate and
geographical conditions in this sub - region. Many times during the second half
of the twentieth century, the river Magdalena has reasserted itself (Figure 18).
Conclusion
In all three sub-regions, we observed how the reform of land ownership
contributed to the concentration, de concentration and re-concentration of
land and income. The reform of land ownership and its re-distributive effects
of wealth remain low when the concentration of power is high. The latifundia,
linked to international trade and long-cycle crops, contributes to economic
growth and concentration of land ownership, but is an obstacle to a more
egalitarian distribution of income, contributing to an increase in socio-

economic differences at the expense of rural democracy. This results in an
ineffective modernization affecting also cultural and ecological diversity.
D. References
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economía riqueza hídrica "Documentos de Economía Regional sobre trabajo,
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ANGULO V, Carlos, 1992 "Modos de vida in the prehistoria of llanura Atlantica
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the undergraduate research - not publish. Los Andes University. Santa Fe de
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