The Many Returns of José Dolores: State and Rural Society in the Making of Colombia’s Creole Peace, 1957-66

The late 1950s and early ‘60s in Colombia have traditionally been understood through the binary of oligarchical retrenchment in high politics and the onset of particular forms of banditry in central coffee zones. This paper contests that view by arguing that Colombia’s 1957-58 post-authoritarian transition opened new channels for the establishment of rural peace. Encouraged by rhetorical and substantive moves toward a more participatory politics, as well as specific government programs to “rehabilitate” the countryside, tens of thousands of rural Colombians displaced by earlier civil conflict returned home. While the precise results varied from locality to locality, the cumulative effect in central Colombia was a creole peace that has been almost entirely forgotten in Colombian history and historiography.

This paper employs popular petitions and government records held in state archives, together with judicial and press sources from the central department of Tolima, to illuminate the promise and ultimate disillusionment that accompanied the peacemaking process. In particular, the paper concentrates on rural expectations toward the state, including how popular understandings of law conditioned responses to government overtures. These expectations demonstrate that current discourses about reconciliation, restitution, and reparations in Colombia have a deeper history. They also suggest how Colombians responded to a variety of state reform and development initiatives in the post-1945 era.