War of the Thousand Days
| date | October 20, 1899 to November 21, 1902 |
|---|---|
| place |
 Colombia
|
| output | Conservative government victory |
| consequences | Province of Panama was a separate state |
| Peace treaty | Neerlandia Peace Treaty, "Wisconsin" Peace Treaty |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
|
Rafael Uribe Uribe |
Próspero Pinzón |
| losses | |
| approx. 100,000–120,000 people | |
The War of the Thousand Days (Spanish: Guerra de los Mil Días ) was a civil war that devastated the Republic of Colombia and its then Panama Province between 1899 and 1902 . In today's historiography of the conflict is usually as a dispute between the Conservative Party Colombian Conservative Party and the Liberal Party Colombian Liberal Party viewed with its various factions.
The Conservatives retained power in 1899 through fraudulent elections. The situation was exacerbated by an economic crisis caused by falling international coffee prices , which mainly affected the liberals, who had lost their power. Antioquia's coffee industry has been massively weakened. Then the war broke out between the Conservatives and the Liberals.
Political and economic conditions of the war
In 1886 the federal constitution , which had not been passed by a liberal government until 1863 , was abolished in favor of a new centralized constitution. The conservative president Rafael Núñez (1884-1894) wanted to the unitary state and the supremacy of the Catholic Church in particular in the field of education and training to restore. The liberals in Colombia saw themselves as federalists , while the conservatives sought a centralized state. In addition, the liberals saw the power of the Catholic Church as an obstacle to modernizing the country, while the conservatives saw in it the guarantor of moral order.
The constitutional amendment in 1886 exacerbated the political conflict between the central regime and the provinces.
An extensive struggle for control of the country broke out between liberals and conservatives. Added to this was the weakness of the old President Manuel Antonio Sanclemente , who was too sick to rule. There were revolts against him and the precarious economic situation that threatened by the extreme and chronic deficit .
The liberal uprising at the beginning of the war
The exact beginning of the civil war is controversial. Usually it is dated October 20, 1899 or the turn of the year 1900 . The rebellion began in Socorro and was awaiting military support from Venezuela .
The Conservative government sent troops to Bucaramanga . Over time, the war spread across the country.
The battles of Peralonso and Palonegro
The liberal side suffered its first defeat a few days after the start of the war with the battle of the Río Magdalena on October 24, 1899. The conservatives split into Históricos and Nacionales . The former managed to overthrow President Sanclemente to replace him with his successor, José Manuel Marroquín . For their part, the Liberals named Gabriel Vargas Santos President of the country.
As the war progressed and escalated, neither party was able to achieve a victory.
Without a doubt, the battles of Peralonso and Palonegro ( Santander ) brought the culmination of the damage caused by the war. With the Battle of Peralonso, the Liberals under Rafael Uribe Uribe achieved their last victory. The Conservatives triumphed in the Battle of Palonegro.
The end of the war
With Palonegro, the war turned significantly for the parties. Despite their initial victory, the Liberals had to come to terms with poor support from other countries. The liberal party split in Pacifistas and Belicistas . The Conservatives Nacionales gathered in what is now Panama and on the Caribbean coast .
With this decision they avoided the internationalization of the war, with which Venezuela would see itself provoked into an open conflict by its president Cipriano Castro , who supported Uribe Uribe in his struggle for power. Marroquín's troops managed to cut off Venezuelan aid to the Liberals on July 29, 1901, who were defeated by the conservative General Juan B. Tovar . General Uribe Uribe then felt obliged to surrender, albeit under certain conditions.
The peace treaties
The peace treaties were signed at the Hacienda Neerlandia on October 24, 1902, although the fighting in Panama from the end of 1901 between the ships Almirante Padilla (on the liberal side) and Lautaro (originally Chilean property, confiscated by the Conservatives) until November of In 1902.
Later came the constant threat to the US Navy , dispatched by President Theodore Roosevelt to protect future interests in the construction of the Panama Canal . The Liberals, under the command of General Benjamin Herrera , were then forced to lay down their arms.
The definitive signing of the peace treaty took place on the US battleship USS Wisconsin on November 21, 1902, with General Lucas Caballero Barrera as Chief of Staff of the combined Army of Cauca and Panama together with Colonel Eusebio A. Morales , Treasury Secretary of Cauca and Panama, representing General Benjamin Herrera and the Liberal Party and, on the other hand, General Víctor M. Salazar as Governor of the Province of Panama together with General Alfredo Vázquez Cobo as Chief of Staff of the Conservative Army on the Atlantic coast, the Pacific coast and in Panama signed the end of the war .
The consequences of the war
100,000 people lost their lives in the Thousand Days' War. In 1903 , the province of Panama became a state of its own due to concerns about the non-recognition of foreign debts and the interests in the Panama Canal under US pressure.
With the support of the Jesuits who had returned to Colombia, trade unions were formed from 1909 , which soon became the third force in the country's later bloody conflicts.
Literary reception
This civil war forms part of the historical background against which the Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez unfolds his epic “ A Hundred Years of Solitude ”.
literature
- Antology: la guerra de los mil días en las letras Santanderanas, Colección: Payacuá, Spanish, ISBN 958-8108-60-8
