Territorial Rule in Colombia and the Transformation of the Llanos Orientales ‐ by Rausch, Jane M.

Abstract

Rausch, Jane M. (2013) Territorial Rule in Colombia and the Transformation of the Llanos Orientales, University Press of Florida ( Gainesville, FL), x + 186 pp. £69.95 hbk. The Llanos Orientales, Colombia's vast tropical grasslands east of the Andes, have long been a frontier region. Isolated and environmentally challenging, Hispanic colonisation and control was minimal there, and a distinctive society, shaped by missions and extensive ranching, developed on those cultural borderlands. Despite Bogotá's ambivalence about the llanero, it was certain that these scarcely settled plains were crucial to the country's future. While the dreams of unlocking their riches went unfulfilled for centuries, since the 1950s this perennial ‘future of Colombia’ has finally become central to ‘the country's “present” expectations for prosperity’ (p. viii). In this book, Jane Rausch, dean of historians of the Llanos, synthesises the story of this recent transformation. Her chronological narrative is organised by national political periods. After setting the stage in chapter 1, the next two chapters examine the Violencia (1946–1953) and its partial containment under the dictatorship of Rojas Pinilla (1953–1957). Rausch suggests that the difficulties of territorial control, as well as evenly divided political sympathies, a sense of abandonment and long-standing tensions between ranchers and peasants, help explain why the Llanos became an important theatre in this ostensibly partisan civil war. She also identifies the Violencia as a watershed in the region's history. The widespread social upheaval in which nineteen Liberal guerrilla groups were formed demonstrated the urgency of investing in the future of the Llanos. The migrants who started pouring into these plains during the 1950s – up to 300 families per month in Villavicencio, the region's most important city – further catalysed their transformation. During the National Front (1957–1978), Colombia's bipartisan power-sharing arrangement, the state made significant strides in incorporating the Llanos within the nation. Despite limited budgets and scant personnel, it built more schools (and health centres), finally relieving the Church of its educational mandate in the 1970s. The extension of telephone and postal services, as well as the diffusion of cheap transistor radios, brought the dispersed population increasingly within the national orbit. The key, however, was extending the region's transportation infrastructure. Widening the Bogotá-Villavicencio road to accommodate two-way traffic, and other improvements, encouraged mostly spontaneous migration – the region grew over 11 per cent annually during the 1950s and 1960s – and stimulated agricultural (especially mechanised rice) production and the (still rudimentary) ranching economy. The penultimate chapter addresses the key transformative period (1978–2010), during which time the Llanos passed ‘from frontier to region’ (p. 108). The turning point was 1986, when oil began to flow from wells at Caño Limón, making the Llanos a key source of Colombian exports. Oil revenues financed further improvements to the region's infrastructure, encouraging the expansion, especially in Meta, of oil-palm plantations and fattening pastures. Drawn by job prospects and the old dreams of cheap land – or pushed by displacement – immigration has continued unabated. Currently, only one in four residents were born in the Llanos. As these llaneros have exchanged their cowboy hats for hard helmets, an identity crisis has pervaded the region. The growing population has, nonetheless, been critical to the political transformation of the Llanos as territories, formally managed in Bogotá, became independent departments. Unfortunately, autonomy came at a difficult moment, as rents from oil and drug production led to a resurgence of guerrilla activity, which had never been completely suppressed, and to violent conflicts with paramilitary groups. The new departments, however, also suffered from ‘their own inefficiency, corruption, and financial weakness’ (p. 111), exacerbating the environmental contamination of oil drilling and limiting the effectiveness of efforts to safeguard the region's remaining indigenous groups. With this book, Rausch completes her four-volume saga of the history of the Colombian Llanos since the Spanish conquest. Her prose is crisp and the narrative is well organised, although it sometimes feels encyclopaedic. She also does an admirable job in contextualising her story within the broader trends of Colombian history, making the text accessible to a wide audience. For some, the narrative might be overly traditional, with a focus on political history and economic development. There are no people beyond the key players: the waves of migrants who have helped transform the Llanos remain faceless. Additionally, cultural questions get minimal attention and even the region's main economic activities are cursorily described. The best chapters are those on La Violencia; with 50 pages, or one-third of the total, dedicated to this decade, the text has room to breathe. By contrast, the past 30 years are dispatched in twenty pages. The final chapter, which examines recent conceptualisations of the Llanos as frontier, region and borderlands, is the least satisfying. Overall, however, Rausch has delivered a remarkably succinct and readable synthesis of an increasingly dynamic region central to Colombia's future.