Colombia’s political history has been marked by a persistent paradox: While the country maintained relatively regular elections and stable formal institutions throughout much of its republican history, broad sectors of society remained excluded from real power.
Behind the image of one of Latin America’s oldest democracies, Colombia experienced civil wars, oligarchic pacts, bipartisan violence, and political restrictions that for decades limited the participation of new social and political forces.
The arrival of Gustavo Petro to the presidency in 2022 represented the culmination of a slow and conflict-ridden transformation. For the first time in the country’s contemporary history, a left-wing leader reached power through democratic and electoral means, something that for decades seemed impossible in Colombia, even as much of Latin America alternated between conservative, liberal, populist, and progressive governments.
To understand how that change occurred, it is necessary to examine more than a century and a half of Colombian political history, with its achievements and shortcomings and, above all, the contradictions of any living society in constant evolution.
From civil wars to the 1991 Constitution: The history of democracy in Colombia
During the 19th century, Colombia was a country marked by constant civil wars between liberals and conservatives. The two parties not only represented different political projects but also opposing visions regarding the role of the Church, the economic model, and the territorial organization of the state.
Liberals defended federalism, the separation of Church and state, and certain economic freedoms. Conservatives supported a centralized model, deeply rooted in Catholicism and based on strengthening institutional order. The disputes between the two blocs led to a chain of armed conflicts that shaped the formation of the Colombian state.
The Thousand Days’ War, between 1899 and 1902, was the most devastating episode of that cycle. The conflict left tens of thousands dead, destroyed the national economy, and profoundly weakened the country. Shortly afterward, in 1903, Colombia lost Panama, an event that further reinforced the sense of institutional failure at the end of the 19th century.
Amid this context of civil wars, the 1886 Constitution marked a decisive shift toward political centralism. Promoted by President Rafael Nuñez and conservative sectors, the new constitution dismantled liberal federalism and established a strong centralized state, with broad influence from the Catholic Church in education and public life.
The 1886 Constitution became Colombia’s institutional foundation for more than a century. Although it provided a degree of stability after decades of conflict, it also consolidated a deeply exclusionary political system. Power remained concentrated in the traditional elites, and access to political participation was limited.
In its early decades, Colombia’s electoral system was restricted by economic and educational criteria. Only a small portion of the population could vote — in an indirect and exclusionary electoral system — while peasants, workers, and popular sectors remained excluded from national decision-making.
The 1910 reform and universal male suffrage
The constitutional reform of 1910 introduced significant changes to Colombia’s political system. Among them were the expansion of male suffrage and the prohibition of immediate presidential reelection. Although multiple social and economic limitations still persisted, voting gradually began to expand to broader sectors of the population.
That process coincided with the country’s economic modernization and urban growth. However, the Liberal-Conservative bipartisan system continued to monopolize virtually all national political life. Electoral disputes remained organized around the two historic parties, while any alternative faced enormous obstacles to development.
For much of the 20th century, liberals and conservatives alternated in power, often amid strong social tensions and episodes of regional violence.
The assassination of Liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan on April 9, 1948, triggered one of the most traumatic periods in Colombian history. The Bogotazo sparked an explosion of political violence that quickly spread throughout the country.
During the following years, thousands of Liberal and Conservative peasants died in armed clashes, partisan persecution, and local reprisals. The period known simply as “La Violencia” left a profound mark on Colombian society and later contributed to the emergence of several guerrilla groups.
In 1953, amid political chaos, General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla seized power through a coup d’état. Although he initially received support from Liberal and Conservative sectors tired of the violence, his government gradually evolved into a military dictatorship.
Rojas Pinilla promoted public works, infrastructure modernization, and social measures, but he also persecuted opponents and restricted political freedoms. However, one of the most significant developments of his government was the approval of women’s suffrage in 1954. For the first time, Colombian women obtained the right to vote, which they fully exercised in the 1957 plebiscite.
The National Front and political exclusion
After the fall of Rojas Pinilla, liberals and conservatives reached an agreement to share power and avoid a new cycle of violence. Thus, the National Front was born, remaining in effect from 1958 to 1974.
The pact established that both parties would alternate the presidency and divide public offices equally. Formally, the agreement sought to stabilize the country. In practice, it ended up consolidating a closed system that excluded any political force other than the traditional parties.
During those years, Colombia maintained periodic elections, but the actual distribution of power was predetermined by the bipartisan agreement. Many social sectors began to perceive that Colombian democracy functioned as a restricted mechanism in which real political options were limited.
That exclusion contributed to the emergence of new left-wing guerrilla movements during the 1960s and 1970s, including FARC, ELN, and later M-19. Many of these movements argued that Colombia’s political system prevented genuine democratic participation.
These movements, initially marginal and with limited military capacity, grew exponentially thanks to the enormous profits that drug trafficking provided them beginning in the 1980s, a scourge that the country has still not managed to overcome definitively.
Curiously, the growth of their military capacity was inversely proportional to the social support they garnered during a terrible period that brought a complicated 20th century to a close for the country.
The 1991 Constitution and democratic opening
Institutional deterioration, drug trafficking, guerrilla violence, and the state’s legitimacy crisis led Colombia to a profound political transformation at the end of the 20th century.
The demobilization of M-19 was a key turning point in that process. After laying down its arms, former members of the guerrilla movement actively participated in convening a Constituent Assembly that drafted the 1991 Constitution.
The new constitution represented a historic break with the old 1886 model. Colombia was defined as a social state governed by the rule of law, mechanisms for citizen participation were expanded, and new fundamental, collective, and ethnic rights were recognized.
The 1991 Constitution also opened the political system to new movements and parties, progressively weakening the Liberal-Conservative monopoly that had dominated the country for more than a century.
Although liberals and conservatives remained important players during the following decades, their ability to monopolize the presidency began to erode rapidly.
The government of Andres Pastrana, between 1998 and 2002, was the last clearly led by one of the traditional parties within the old bipartisan logic. After his administration, Colombia’s political landscape changed radically.
Alvaro Uribe came to power in 2002 on an independent platform, although he came from the Liberal Party. His personalist leadership further displaced the historical structures of the traditional parties and ushered in a period of intense confrontation with illegal armed groups.
Since then, Colombia has experienced growing political fragmentation. New movements, coalitions, and regional leaders began replacing the old bipartisan order. Liberalism and conservatism ceased to be the only forces capable of competing for presidential power.
Exactly a decade ago, the historic peace agreement with FARC — the main Colombian guerrilla group — confirmed, as in other countries, the possibility of the left winning elections, something that occurred only six years later.
The rise of the left to power
The election of Gustavo Petro in 2022 symbolized the most profound political change in Colombia’s recent history. A former member of M-19 and a central figure of the democratic left, Petro won the presidential election in a country where, for decades, any possibility of a left-wing victory had been associated with violence, subversion, or institutional threat.
While countries such as Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, and Venezuela had elected left-wing governments for decades, Colombia remained a regional exception. The persistence of the internal armed conflict, the influence of the Cold War, and the historical weight of anti-communism had turned the country into a political anomaly in Latin America.
Petro’s victory partially corrected that historical singularity. His arrival in power did not mean the end of political tensions or national polarization, but it did confirm that Colombia’s political system had ultimately undergone a profound transformation compared to the closed order of the National Front and traditional bipartisan politics.
Today, the country is divided between continuing along the reformist path opened — with great difficulty — by the governing left or returning to conservative, traditional, or their current populist versions.
What is certain is that Colombia’s political history, marked by civil wars, exclusionary pacts, and incomplete democratic reforms, remains a story still being written. The country that for more than a century was dominated by two traditional parties now faces a far more plural, uncertain, and open political landscape than at any other point in its republican history.