Independence Day

Today Colombia celebrates the first of the two annual festivities related to its Independence Day. This year the celebrations include yet another massive manifestation against FARC and kidnapping. This was done in each Colombian municipality as well as in a number of major cities in the world. I find this remarkable as the fragile unity of Colombian society was demonstrated around the world. Even if I could have joined the celebration in Milano, work and money reasons prevented me to do so, even if the idea of tasting Colombian food was very tempting ;-) Instead of travelling four hours in train and spending some money, I decided to celebrate this day by doing a small contribution in tracing back the origins of the fragility of Colombian society. Indeed, in this post I will give you a super summarized account of Colombian history.

As I mentioned before, to discuss the independence of what now is known as Colombia it is indispensable to mention two dates in history: the 20th of July 1810 and the 7th of August 1819. Let me start with the first one. As you might know, the Spanish empire had ruled America after 1492. Around 1810, the political instability in Spain, and of a number of social, economic and political factors in America were the trigger to a number of separatist movements. Back then, what we now today as Colombia was only a part of "The New Granada", a huge country that --more or less-- compressed today's Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia and Panama. The already mentioned problems in Spain made an Independence declaration rather easy and peaceful. This took place the 20th of July 1810 in SantaFe (what is known today as Bogota).

After this declaration, the perspectives were everything but clear. The society of the time was divided between people loyal to the Spanish crown and people wishing to cut every link with Spain. The second group prevailed, but then a new division arose, this time concerning the structure of the new government (federal vs. central). This caused a civil war, after which a guy called Simon Bolivar entered into the game. He had commanded the separatist movement in Venezuela in a rather short war. He then went to Santa Fe to try to organize the mess there was there.

Shortly after, there's a new king in Spain who orders to conquer again all the territories in which Spanish troops had been defeated. The mission sent by the king (leaded by a guy called Pablo Morillo) put some order and returned things as they were in 1810; this was around 1816 (more or less). The leaders of the separatist movements and armies were executed. This wasn't the case for Bolivar who escaped to Jamaica. It took little time for new separatist armies to reorganize; key in this process were Francisco de Paula Santander in Colombia and Jose Antonio Paez in Venezuela. Bolivar managed to return in 1817, assuming the leadership of the armies. Together with Santander, Bolivar fought against the last Spanish troops in a very famous battle, the Battle of Boyacá. This battle took place the 7th of August 1819, and consolidated the rather weak independence an incipient group of people had achieved back in 1810. The freed country was then called "The Great Colombia."

As you may imagine, both dates are important and meaningful. Unfortunately, few people in Colombia understand the history and politics behind them. Colombia's independence was a long, hard process that had to overcome external and internal disputes, in which political and military actions were crucial for the final outcome. In case you are wondering what happened after the 7th of August, here's a mini story. Yet another division took place on how to order the free countries. Now the sources of division were Santander and Bolivar, and they formed their respective political factions. The Great Colombia itself was very fragile and the leaders of the army in Ecuador and Venezuela started a division process to the countries we know nowadays. Several other interesting events occurred in Colombia, including: yet another war, the independence of Panama (technically Colombia sold it to the US in 1902), and the political violence that arose after that (around 1930-1960), and that in the last 30 years has evolved into the war against drugs Colombia still suffers today.

Colombia has only seen very short periods of peace. In this sense, we are independent in theory, but in practice this is not quite true. On the one hand, the myriad of cultures and social groups in Colombia have made difficult a real independence from ourselves. On the other hand, today we have a strong dependency on the current empire (USA , that stimulates our war), and --oddly enough-- also a rather implicit dependency on the old empire (Spain, that owns pretty much the whole financial and media systems in Colombia.)

To conclude, the recent euphoria of the "almost won" war against FARC should not confuse us: there are a lot of divisions and inequalities in Colombian society. They come pretty much since the very moment in which we started to exist as a country. I think it's a good idea to keep in mind our past to understand the lame present and to be prepared for a (hopefully not) also sad future.