El frente nacional: Legitimidad institucional y continuismo bipartidista en Colombia (1958-1974) / The national front: institutional legitimacy and bipartisan continuism in colombia (1958-1974)

Abstract

Through a contextual historical analysis, an approach that allows the reconstruction of the main social, political, cultural and economic characteristics of a period of time; this paper has its focus on the elements that made possible the emergence of the National Front as a two-party agreement, and analyzes the actions that contributed to the emergence of new obstacles for the development of democracy in Colombia. While the violence in the 1950s and the dictatorship of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla were identified as causes of the emergence of the new political structure of the country, the political exclusion of unprecedented social actors such as the peasant movement, or more recent ones such as the labor movement and the student movement, was perceived as its main consequence. As a result of the analysis, this study allowed the configuration of a new hypothesis on the historical meaning of the National Front, concluding that, however the National Front helped to strengthen the politi- cal and economic institutions of the country, when legalizing the discrimination of any other social force that intended to represent civic interests the agreement favored the appearance of a new historical problem for Colombian democracy: the exclusion of opposition political ac- tors, a facet that is still in force in this democracy.

http://dx.doi.org/10.17981/econcuc.36.1.2015.22