Colombia and the United States

The Making of an Inter-American Alliance, 1939-1960

Bradley Lynn Coleman

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781631010361
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

This book will also be available in the following formats: e-book, audio book, and large-print paperback. Visit www.caravanbooks.org for details.

A valuable addition to the New Studies in U.S. Foreign Relations Series

World War II and the Cold War transformed U.S.-Colombian security relations. The republics first partnered to defend the Western Hemisphere during World War II, a wartime affiliation that promoted hemispheric solidarity, inter-American military readiness, and regional stability. After the war, Colombian and U.S. combat units fought together in Korea. A Colombian infantry battalion and frigate joined the U.S.-led United Nations Command in 1951; Colombian soldiers later served with the United Nations Emergency Force during the Suez Conflict (1956–1958). Soon thereafter, Colombian and American authorities began focusing on Colombian internal security problems, particularly issues associated with the domestic political, social, and religious convulsion known as la Violencia (1946–1958). In doing so, the two countries had formed the basis of the modern Colombian-American partnership.

Placing the bilateral relationship in a global context, this military and diplomatic history examines the importance of ideology, material interests, and power in U.S.-Latin American relations. Historian Bradley Coleman demonstrates how the making of the Colombian-American alliance exemplified hemispheric interconnectedness, a condition of ever-growing importance in the twenty-first century.

Employing available Colombian and U.S. archival sources, this book fills a gap in the literature on U.S. relations with less developed countries and provides new research on the origins an development of the U.S–Colombian alliance that will serve as an invaluable resource for scholars of U.S. and Latin American diplomacy.

1

Solidarity and Cooperation, 1939–1945

In 1938 U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered three U.S. Army bombers to Colombia. The airplanes and crew, a U.S. government spokesman said, symbolized “the solidarity and community of interest between the two republics” during the inauguration of Colombian president Eduardo Santos.¹ The B-17s landed at Techo Airport outside Bogotá around 11:00 A.M. on 5 August. They taxied across the field before parking near the airport terminal. A huge crowd of spectators cheered when the flight commander, Major Vincent J. Maloy, and his men jumped down from the “flying fortresses.” Over the days that followed, the aviators mixed with hundreds of Colombian citizens, servicemen, and elected officials. They attended formal and informal events, including a bullfight with the mayor of Bogotá. The uniformed Americans inspired “great popular enthusiasm” at cocktail parties and state socials.² On 7 August, after the inauguration, President Santos thanked the U.S. flyers for coming to the ceremony. The president then delivered a proposal to special U.S. envoy Jefferson Caffery, also in Bogotá for the inauguration. Impressed by the airmen, Santos asked if the United States would send military advisers to Colombia. American training missions, Santos reasoned, would improve Colombian military capabilities and promote bilateral cooperation during a time of international insecurity. Delighted by the proposition, Ambassador Caffery relayed the invitation to Washington that night.³ The first U.S. advisers arrived in Colombia just five months later.

The Santos overture launched the Colombian-American security partnership. During World War II, Colombia and the United States designed and implemented a program of bilateral cooperation that included conventional security and counterespionage measures. The republics also collaborated on a variety of pressing diplomatic and economic matters. Together, these activities promoted regional tranquility, secured the Panama Canal, stabilized Colombia, and encouraged Colombian state-building. The country’s wartime contribution, combined with the efforts of the other Latin American republics, allowed the United States to focus on overseas operations. Latin Americans advanced the Allied cause by protecting Washington’s southern flank. Within this larger hemispheric effort, shared values, geographic proximity, and Colombian internal affairs shaped the U.S.-Colombian alliance. World War II, in turn, promoted the integration of U.S. and Colombian institutions with important long-term political, economic, and military consequences. Opening an era of concentrated bilateral cooperation, the global conflict produced a system of Colombian-American cooperation that made future undertakings feasible. It likewise represented a major departure from the years of controversy preceding the war.

The Republics before World War II

The Colombian-American relationship began before World War II and produced a burst of conflict, but it also revealed the possibility for successful collaboration. U.S. political and social philosophers inspired Latin American revolutionaries during the early 1800s. American merchants smuggled military equipment to armies fighting Spanish rule. In 1822 U.S. diplomats formally recognized Gran Colombia (now Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela), the first Latin American state acknowledged by the United States. Although Britain then dominated Latin American markets, Colombia and the United States signed their first trade agreement in 1826. The volume of Colombian-American commerce thereafter exceeded expectations in both countries. Around the same time, Colombian officials accepted U.S. opposition to the recolonization of the Americas as an expression of hemispheric sovereignty. The U.S. government generally appreciated Colombian president Simón Bolívar’s effort to form an inter-American confederation, even though major cultural, economic, and political differences still separated the countries. In any case, more than foreign affairs, Colombia’s internal compartmentalization concerned Bogotá during the early national period. The rough landscape divided the population, weakened the federal government, and limited internal communications; tremendous internal diversities precluded the spread of national sentiment. Venezuela and Ecuador left the union by 1830. A new constitution in Bogotá created the Republic of New Granada in 1833.⁴

A competitive two-party political system soon developed in New Granada, the legacies of which brought disastrous consequences in the 1940s and 1950s. At first, clear ideological differences separated the political groups. The Liberal Party campaigned for free trade, a decentralized government, and the separation of church and state. The Conservative Party embraced the Spanish colonial legacy, authoritarianism, and the Catholic Church. While the parties differed on some important issues, they had much in common. Elites endlessly debated political philosophy but refused to disrupt the prevailing economic and social order. Controlled by affluent citizens, parties enlisted Colombians of all classes and occupations. Family affiliations usually determined an individual’s membership. Peasants typically followed their landlords to the ballot box. Accounting for persistent regional differences, political arrangements sometimes varied from one region to the next. But in most areas, more complex than a simple ideological contest, heated personal disputes quickly dominated Liberal-Conservative relations.

Like its political parties, Colombia’s modern structure of government originated in the nineteenth century. The Constitution of 1886, drafted by a bipartisan national council, created a unitary republic, renamed the Republic of Colombia. A strong executive, selected by popular vote, introduced legislation, issued decrees, maintained public order, and commanded the armed forces. The president appointed department (state) governors, who then selected municipal officials such as city mayors. The sitting president, therefore, controlled—directly or indirectly—political and administrative offices throughout the country; the constitution did prohibit any individual from serving two consecutive terms as chief executive. The document gave legislative duties to a bicameral congress. Elected to serve four-year terms, senators and representatives passed laws; appointed judges; and selected a president designate, or vice president, to act as executive in extraordinary situations. The third branch of government, the judiciary, included a supreme court and council of state. The court administered the republic’s legal system, while the council reviewed the constitutionality of the congressional legislation and presidential decrees. A durable document, the 1886 Constitution nurtured Colombian democratic institutions and provided for relative internal stability. Attaching a vast spoils system to the office of the presidency, it simultaneously fueled the Liberal-Conservative competition.⁵

As Colombia’s reputation as Latin America’s leading democracy grew, so too did its relationship with the United States. Bilateral trade and investment built stronger commercial ties, and Bogotá happily dispatched a delegation to the First International Conference of American States in Washington (1889–90). The conference created the International Bureau of the American Republics, later called the Pan American Union, to disseminate information and organize future inter-American consultations. Most often, Colombian and American interests converged in the Department of Panama. The Bidlack-Mallarino Treaty, negotiated in 1846, guaranteed U.S. transit across Colombia’s strategic isthmus. American involvement in the region swelled following the Mexican-American War (1846–48), which expanded U.S. territory in the west. U.S. citizens who were headed to California often crossed the isthmus. American entrepreneurs built a railroad in Panama during the 1850s; others eyed the area as a possible site for an inter-oceanic canal. For Bogotá, the U.S. presence on the isthmus became a tremendous source of revenue, and joint Colombian-American development projects turned the region into showcase of inter-American cooperation. But at the same time, meeting place became a source of some tension. Many Americans thought Bogotá too weak to properly control the region. Some Colombians believed Americans threatened Colombian cultural and administrative power in the Department of Panama. Recurring lawlessness and political disarray reinforced apprehensions on both sides.⁶

Panama remained at the center of the Colombian-American relationship through the early twentieth century. As the United States became a formidable international force with global interests, the construction of an inter-oceanic canal surfaced as a key American objective in Latin America. Most Colombians, realizing the project would become a national treasure, also wanted to cut a waterway across the isthmus. Still, in 1869 the Colombian Congress, fearing a loss of sovereignty in the department, rejected a treaty that would have allowed the United States to build the passageway. The following year, a second agreement faltered in the U.S. Senate, which was busy investigating allegations of corruption surrounding the Ulysses S. Grant administration. When Americans turned their attention to Nicaragua as a possible site for the inter-oceanic route, Colombians took their aspiration for a canal to Europe. In 1879 Bogotá brought famed French canal-builder Ferdinand de Lesseps to Panama. When construction began in 1881, the U.S. government reactivated its dormant mission in Bogotá to monitor the work. In the face of uncompromising terrain, ravaging diseases, and Colombian instability, the canal project collapsed by the end of the decade, a failure that reopened the possibility of U.S.-Colombian collaboration.⁷

Colombia’s civil disorder complicated the canal enterprise. The Thousand Days War began as a local Liberal uprising in Santander in 1899. A countrywide conflict between Liberals and Conservatives erupted soon thereafter. As pitched battles unfolded in central Colombia, Panamanian secessionists launched a vicious campaign against Colombian rule. To the separatists, Bogotá was a distant and unresponsive entity. The federal government collected heavy taxes from Panama without returning basic services. Panama, they asserted, would be stronger as an independent country. Losing its control over the region, Bogotá urged Washington to intervene on its behalf. In 1901 the United States landed troops, as it had on several occasions during the nineteenth century, to defend Colombian rule and protect American citizens and property. In November 1902 Liberal and Conservative leaders boarded a U.S. Navy battleship, the USS Wisconsin, to sign a peace agreement. Many assumed a U.S.-Colombian canal accord would soon follow. During the war, U.S. and Colombian diplomats had negotiated an agreement to build a canal in Panama. The U.S. Senate ratified the Hay-Herran Treaty in March 1903, but Colombian reservations quickly surfaced. Amid a swirl of political bickering, the Colombian Senate killed the treaty in August.

In the wake of the Colombian decision, President Theodore Roosevelt (1901–9) accused Bogotá of blocking the forward progress of civilization. He promptly revised American policy toward Colombia. If another revolt erupted in Panama, the United States would act in the interest of regional stability, not Colombian sovereignty. American power had long supported Colombian control over the isthmus. Indeed, without U.S. assistance Bogotá might have lost Panama years before. When news of the new policy reached Panama, a Conservative minority, concerned that the United States would take the canal to Nicaragua, figured the opportunity for independence had arrived. While disappointed by the lack of explicit U.S. assistance, separatist Manuel Amador Guerrero and his followers rose against the government in Bogotá in November 1903. Unable to negotiate the dense jungle between Bogotá and Panama, Colombian government troops moving overland never reached the isthmus. American warships fettered the movement of Colombian seaborne forces, and when a Colombian commander in Panama threatened to kill American citizens, U.S. Marines moved ashore. Washington quickly recognized Panamanian independence, signed a treaty with the new government, and began building the Panama Canal.⁸

Colombia and the United States needed the next thirty years to undo the damage inflicted in 1903. At first, American collusion with Panamanian separatists spawned widespread anti-American sentiment in Colombia, precluding an early settlement of Colombian-American differences. Colombian citizens railed against Yankee gunboat diplomacy and commercial penetration. Some even attacked U.S. businessmen and missionaries working in the republic. Elected officials regularly denounced the United States in public settings. But Colombians could not sustain the intensity of their dissatisfaction. The country’s history of compartmentalization, after all, partially explained the separation of Panama. In a move toward reconciliation, U.S. and Colombian diplomats negotiated the Thomson-Urrutia Treaty in 1914 that settled the Colombian-Panamanian border and transferred $25 million to Bogotá for its territorial loss. Colombia recognized Panama’s independence as part of the agreement. A short time later, President Marco Fidel Suárez (1918–21) theorized that since Colombia could not escape contact with the United States, Colombia should use the relationship to its advantage. The Suárez Doctrine helped Colombians discard the Panamanian controversy and capitalize on the inter-American commercial boom of the 1920s; the Suárez mindset guided Colombian foreign policy through World War II and the cold war. Also in the 1920s, U.S. policymakers adopted a new attitude toward Latin America. President Herbert Hoover (1929–33) embraced a program of noninterference, began pulling U.S. troops out of Nicaragua and Haiti, and calmly arbitrated a 1927 oil dispute with Mexico. These and other actions began the Good Neighbor Policy, a phrase Hoover coined during his 1929 goodwill tour of Latin America.⁹

Colombian-American friendship broadened during the decade before World War II. A 1930 Conservative Party split allowed the Liberal Party to capture the Colombian presidency. Liberal presidents Enrique Olaya Herrera (1930–34) and Alfonso López Pumarejo (1934–38) launched state-sponsored development programs, not unlike those under Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, that accelerated Colombian modernization. Colombian Liberals and American Democrats quickly established warm personal relationships based on philosophical compatibilities. Simultaneously, the Good Neighbor Policy flourished under President Roosevelt. At the Montevideo Conference in 1933, Secretary of State Cordell Hull renounced intervention as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. President Roosevelt visited Cartagena in 1934 and revised U.S. tariff laws to expand inter-American commerce. In December 1936 hemispheric officials at the Buenos Aires Conference accepted the principle of inter-American consultations to maintain regional peace and security. The delegates also adopted a general statement of inter-American solidarity.¹⁰ Cumulatively, Colombian president López observed, these changes in American policy “helped to create an atmosphere of active friendship” that permitted hemispheric collaboration during World War II.¹¹ In other words, by 1938 Colombia and the United States were ready to cooperate in the defense of the Americas.

The Colombian destroyer ARC Antioquia passes through the Panama Canal, June 1934. The separation of Panama temporarily damaged U.S.-Colombian relations. Opened in 1914, the canal nevertheless benefited both countries. The defense of the Panama Canal figured prominently in the minds of U.S. and Colombian authorities during World War II. (Source: Department of the Navy, NARA)

The Inter-American Coalition

Nestled near the center of the Americas, adjacent to Panama Canal, Colombia emerged as an impor...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: A Global History
• Maps and Illustrations
• 1. Solidarity and Cooperation, 1939–1945
• 2. Old Problems, New Possibilities, 1945–1950
• 3. The Korean War and the Americas, 1950–1951
• 4. The Fighting Alliance, 1951–1953
• 5. Continuity and Change, 1953–1957
• 6. The Partnership Transformed, 1958–1960
• Epilogue
• Essay on Archival Research
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index