passing yet again
another aspiring Colombian moment
Tragedy strikes around the globe hourly, manifested in multiple ways, whether Russian aggression against Ukraine or the accidental shooting by a child whose friend somehow gets hold of an unsecured weapon. Death remains final, erasing hopes and dreams.
Colombia has had more than its share of bloodshed, often motivated by irreconcilable political differences. La Violencia, between 1948 and roughly 1963, cost an estimated quarter million deaths, yet few in this country or Europe were aware of its occurrence. The subsequent upheaval created twenty years later by narcotraficantes and guerrillas similarly included a substantial flavor of political violence as various regions of the country confronted armed groups on the left and right seeking to disrupt the elected government through armed resistance.
We in the United States despaired over the cocaine the narcos imported yet our money paid for their weapons to deploy against fellow countrymen and women. As disorder and armed assault proliferated through the country, Colombians fled in the thousands for a better life, if they had money. Those left behind suffered as the Leftist guerrilleros fought the Rightist paramilitaries, often with the state apparatus seeming helpless to stop anyone. Questions arose about how involved the divided political elite was in perpetuating this system, with human rights a repeated sacrifice to the hatreds.
By the end of the 1990s, many in the Republic and abroad hoped that the U.S.-assistance provided under Plan Colombia, in parallel with negotiations orchestrated by Colombia’s leadership, would end the scourge once and for all. The U.S. forces tried unsuccessfully to eradicate coca but did solve the problem. The U.S. armed forces made the Colombians a more effective fighting force as well but the military is an instrument within the country, not a political force to bridge the deeply-ingrained differences in political orientation plaguing the nation for its entire history.
Narco trafficking is now more often identified with Venezuela’s authoritarian regime or Mexico’s internal challenges than with Colombia, yet violence is rearing its ugly head again in this beautiful country of 53 million.
In mid-June, a hired 15 year old gunman pumped three bullets into a senator and heir to the mantel of one of the country’s political families. Miguel Uribe Turbay, a conservative, campaigned in the capital eleven months before the presidential vote.
The candidate’s immediate family already knew about Colombia’s violence. When he was four, narcotraficantes seized his mother, Diana, in 1990, likely because she was a journalist, human rights lawyer, as well as daughter of former head of state Julio César Uribe Torbay. He ruled Colombian between 1978 and 1982. Sra. Turbay died in a rescue attempt by Colombian government forces after a year in captivity.
Uribe Turbay actually had one extraordinarily hopeful attribute: while the Torbay lineage was Conservative, his father Rodrigo Uribe Echavarría was associated with the Liberals. Too often political lines were immutable in twentieth century Colombia.
Political tension has been rising across the South American nation over the past few months. President Gustavo Petro, a leftist, favors better relations with neighboring Venezuela’s authoritarian ruler Nicolás Maduro, not the least because the porous border between the two countries results in thousands of refugees fleeing Venezuela’s poor conditions for a better life in Colombia. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made clear his frustration with Petro’s tolerance for Maduro earlier this year. Petro has also declared a preference for better balance in treating the guerrillas who laid down their arms if they continue eschewing political violence.
Twelve days ago, Colombian prosecutors indicted former president (but not relative) Álvaro Uribe Vélez on corruption charges. The charges brought against Uribe Vélez included bribing a leader of one of the autodefensas to retract testimony citing the former president instigating such paramilitaries to undermine the Colombian state. Uribe Vélez decries the conviction as political harassment rather than a valid action by elected officials. Secretary of State Marco Rubio similarly protested any implication of Uribe Vélez’s corruption, but the judgment from late July stands. Various groups argue for and against the former president, occasionally justifying violence on his behalf or as a response to his injustices.
A larger-than-life figure who advocated harsh treatment amounting human rights abuse in the eyes of some while avowing distrust of the guerrillas’s trustworthiness, Uribe Vélez has become polarizing for his statements about his former Defense Minister and successor, Juan Manuel Santos, sitting down with rebels who seized, then murdered Uribe Vélez’s father almost forty-five years ago. He is wearying for many of his fellow citizens.
According to a Colombian journalist, this year’s 45% increase in political violence in the country results from the decade-long peace agreement increasingly falling into tatters. The divisive agreement negotiated under President Juan Manuel Santos’s presidency failed narrowly when put before the voters in late 2016. The leader of the primary guerrilla group, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias Colombianas (FARC), supported implementing the accord in conjunction with the Colombian government despite the unexpected electoral outcome.
For many citizens, however, the idea of negotiating with the barbaric FARC (as if the autodefensas and associated narcotraficantes had been blameless victims) was unsupportable. In particular, Uribe Vélez (constitutionally prohibited from any further terms in office) continued to galvanize his supporters to eradicate the guerrilleros rather than bring them back into the body politic. The resulting violence, by 2025, illustrated the twin challenges of some authorities haphazardly administering full provisions of the peace agreement and hundreds of guerrilleros, especially in groups that never accepted the whole of the negotiations, resuming armed struggle.
Colombian history is replete with this pattern as far back as the 1860s, where inadequate governance in remote areas prevents the implementation of agreed-upon settlements. That is no “pass” to either side: Colombian violence, when underway, devastating for millions of families in rural communities, yet the government in Bogotá too often is sporadic in its effectiveness to assure any complete implementation of anything.
Miguel Uribe Turbay passed away, aged 39 with a wife and young children, this morning as a result of three wounds inflicted in June. (On a bizarre personal note, the neurosurgeon who is receiving praise for treating him was an elementary school classmate of mine from decades long past.) Uribe Turbay never left the hospital once he was shot on 7 June. He was yet another victim of the seemingly endless cycle of murder, intimidation, and self-proclaimed “justice” apparently without appreciation of the meaning of the concept.
What is so interesting, in a perverse way, about Colombia’s problems is that rarely does anyone truly see them as anything other than Colombian rather than accusing outsiders of being the cause. Of course, narcotics consumption is a global, especially gringo, problem, but the voices demanding change are invariably voices colombianas rather than Russian, Chinese, or Egyptian.
Neither side is blameless nor is it sure how to proceed in conjunction with rather than en lieu of the opposition.
Actions create consequences. Colombia seems far away, yet it’s not that far from the southern United States. We invested more than a billion dollars under “Plan Colombia” as the 21st century dawned. We encouraged peace negotiations but left implementation, appropriately, to Colombians. As true too often, they were insufficiently able to carry out what the agreement hammered out by Juan Manuel Santos and FARC head Timoleón Jiménez, as too many others rejected the concept of sincere negotiations or trust between the two sides, each seeing the opposite side as illegitimate. That rarely goes well, even when a country gives it a go.
Maybe the failure of the pact was the correct answer for the country but political violence certainly has not ended because the fundamental distrust of people with a different set of assumptions still pervades the society. That seems irreconcilable, no matter how many times one side seems to get the upper hand. Colombia remains a society with a chasm in its political landscape.
It’s hard to imagine that Colombia’s hopes for peace did not suffer a dip this morning as the news spread. The habit of relying on violence rather than negotiation to resolve differences has a message for others around the world: bad habits are bloody hard to break, whether national or personal. Where else did hopes for peaceful resolution suffer, even if indirectly?
I welcome your queries, analyses, or anything else. I aspire to expand conversation about actions and consequences in our contemporary era so please offer yours. I appreciate your time and thank the subscribers who put resources forward to support me.
Be well and be safe.
Juliana Gil, “Colombia’s surge in armed violence: How did we get here?”, TheNewHumanitarian.com, 31 July 2025, retrieved at https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/2025/07/31/colombias-surge-armed-violence-how-did-we-get-here
Genevieve Glatzsky and Julie Turkewitz, “Ex-President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia is Convicted of Bribery”, NewYorkTimes.com, 31 July 2025, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/world/americas/colombia-uribe-trial-bribery-verdict.html
“‘Nunca te olvidare’: el neurocirujano Fernando Hakim, tras muerte de Miguel Uribe”, ElUniversal.com, 11 August 2025, retrieved at https://www.eluniversal.com.co/colombia/2025/08/11/nunca-te-olvidare-el-neurocirujano-fernando-hakim-tras-muerte-de-miguel-uribe/