Constitutional History of the Colombian Paradox (1886–2016)

Abstract

Abstract Analysts believe that down the thorny path of its history, Colombia suffered from a number of ‘geological faults’: institutional weakness, the agrarian question, the fateful mixture of politics and war, drug-trafficking, uncontrolled mining, economic, social, political, and cultural inequities, which have left a deep scar in the physical distribution of the territory with hostile geography. All of them are factors which are frequently invoked. However, if all that is true, how can Colombia be one of the most stable democracies in the region? The existence of these pronounced contrasts of different kinds; the asymmetry that divides Colombian society into centre and periphery; the geography which is the setting of the armed conflict, drug-trafficking, clientelism, and the forgotten rural areas—all of them come together to make what has been called the ‘Colombian Paradox’. This chapter aims to help explain the paradox. Its framework combines historical reference points with constitutional parameters, to find out why it exists and persists, and how a course could be plotted to be rid of it.