State of a Nation

Colombia's President Laureano Gomez buried his head in a glistening sand pile of rhetoric. Said he to his people at the end of his first year in office: the state of the nation is an almost unblemished "panorama of felicity." His administration has contained the cost of living, encouraged foreign capital, sent forces to fight in Korea. "The people's happiness would be perfect, their progress would have increased indescribably . . . if there had not existed disorder which perturbed the picture."

This description could hardly be further from reality. Colombia is not a panorama of felicity, but a spectacle of violence unmatched in the Western Hemisphere. For two years, a brutal civil war, pitting the Conservative government against Liberal opponents, has ravaged great portions of the country. Upwards of 20,000 people have been killed. Farmers dispossessed by the police have formed guerrilla gangs out for vengeance and supplies (see below). Meanwhile, under a "state of siege" now 21 months old, aging (62) authoritarian Laureano Gomez rules highhandedly.

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