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Title: When Colombia bled: A history of the violencia in Tolima by James D Henderson ISBN: 0-8173-0212-3 Publisher: University of Alabama Press Pub. Date: 1985 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $34.50

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: A disciplined study of the breakdown of the political system
Comment: "When Colombia Bled: A History of the Violencia in Tolima," by James D. Henderson is a comprehensive, disciplined study of the breakdown of the political system in Colombia. The author starts his text by explaining that next to the Mexican Revolution of 1910, Colombia's tragic conflict called "La Violencia" (1946-1956)is the longest, most destructive civil war to befall any nation in the Western Hemisphere during the twentieth century.

Henderson is a careful historian who explains that, "because Colombia's violence grew out of a long sociopolitical process it must be approached with sensitivity to the historical factors underlying it." To this end, the author details how citizens were so thoroughly polarized and set against one another that many people thought the monolithic political corporations inside Colombia's two-party system fostered "hereditary hatreds." Still and all, the special feature of this text is that is presents a microcosm of a violent macrocosm. In order to do this the author places the enormous violence in Tolima under a glaring spotlight.

The text is balanced. Henderson explains how Liberals advanced the view that a reactionary "neo-Fascist group" headed by Laureano Gomez used both the army and police to commit the "crime of genocide" against political opposition inside the countryside. He also shows how Conservatives circulated their own version of events in official government documents and in independently published monographic studies that "La Violencia" was part of a plot hatched by the communists to destroy Colombian civilization and that Liberals were their accomplices, or at best dupes in the scheme.

The Tolima spotlight exposes how joining a revolution to defend liberty or religion, doggedly supporting a discredited and powerless political party, or defending one's honor with machete and firearm were all consistent with values suffused in them by the Catholic Church, Colombia's traditional political parties, and a broader culture that encouraged exreme individualism within a context of hierarchy. Moreover, political elites encouraged the violence for control of the national government and its lucrative patronage, according to the author.

This book is also filled with exhausting records about many of the guerrillas. In particular, one guerrilla/bandit named "Chispas" who was know as the "Price of the Violentos" because he killed 592, wounded 81, disappeared two and kidnapped four. Henderson's narrative is complete. He documents the start and finish of the violence right up to the return of civilian rule with the era coined, "The National Front." This is a worthy text. Highly recommended.

Bert Ruiz