Colombia

Three years of mismanagement by an increasingly corrupt military dictatorship has brought the Republic of Colombia to the brink of economic chaos. Despite good coffee prices and a bumper crop, Colombia is in debt by over 350 million dollars, more than its entire income from coffee exports for the first eight months of 1956. Her currency has depreciated, her credit has been seriously damaged, and her foreign exchange reserves reduced to a dangerously low level.

Colombia's plight becomes all the more surprising when we remember that only three years ago, Colombians were hopeful that the newly established Rojas government would create a stable democracy which would finally enable the country to develop its vast natural resources. They hailed Rojas' ouster of arch-conservative President Laureano Gomez, who had fought to retain power despite lack of popular support, and supported his attempts to end the six-year-old civil war that was ravaging the thinly populated western plains. Immediately after seizing power, Rojas removed restraints on the press, and promised free elections and restoration of democratic government by 1958.

Despite early hopes that Rojas would resist the temptation to set himself up as military dictator, however, the President soon decided not to surrender his newly won power. The "state of seige" he had declared upon taking office was continued indefinitely. Free elections were postponed until the country had become "politically civilized," despite Colombia's 36 years under a working democracy prior to 1946.

Gradually, the government came to resemble the typical Latin American autocracy. One of South America's greatest newspapers, El Tiempo, was closed in August, 1955, after bloody street-fighting in Bogota. Six months later, many of Rojas' political opponents were killed or maimed by government thugs for having booed his daughters at the bullfights. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights found vast "zones of military operation" where military courts were empowered to try civilians for treason with none of the usual Constitutional safeguards. 50,000 peasants had already been "exiled" from their homes, many of them for having protested against the extortion rackets of corrupt local officials.

Preoccupied with efforts to keep his Army happy and stay in power, Rojas paid less and less attention to efficient government. He bolstered his own position by placing inexperienced Army officers in high government posts instead of financial and commercial experts. Scandals were frequent, and Bogota rang with stories of corruption in high places. Nevertheless, coffee prices were at a record high, the country was enjoying an unprecedented buying spree, and prosperous coffee growers and textile merchants agreed that the Rojas government was "better than before."

Not until prices had fallen to normal levels did the real state of the Colombian economy become apparent. The profits of the 1954 coffee bonanza were not invested in the modern communication system and farm machinery the country needs to make it agriculturally self-sufficient; instead, Rojas had spent uncounted millions on military equipment--heavy weapons, jet planes, beer, and television sets for the soldiers on whose support he depended. His few sound investments were mostly expensive industrial installations, which the country's capital-short economy could ill afford. Moreover political interference with the operation of government-owned projects further hindered the country's industrial development. Belated attempts to limit imports of "luxuries" failed to stem the tide of rising debt and ebbing reserves.

If President Rojas is permanently to solve Colombia's critical problems, he must first develop a long-range policy for freeing the economy from its exclusive dependence on coffee. Because of this pernicious one-crop system, Colombia has been forced to import chocolate for home consumption, despite the fact that she was once the world's leading producer of cacao. Though she has at Medellin one of the world's most efficient textile mills, Colombia does not raise enough cotton for her own needs. Despite a 95 million dollar loan from the World Bank for highway and railroad construction, she still lacks efficient transportation.

Properly governed, Columbia could develop in a relatively short time into one of the richest nations in South America. Irrigation and cheap electric power are all that would be needed to enable the marvelously fertile Cauca valley to supply food for at least the entire country. Then, once mechanization of agriculture has been achieved, largely untapped sources of oil, coal, and iron are sufficient to support the conversion of Colombia into a modern industrial state. Her greatest tragedy is that the capital she desperately needs for economic development is instead being used to support an oppressive dictatorship.