Epilogue

Resumen

This concluding chapter explains how La Violencia came into being as Colombia was witnessing far less violence. The period beginning in the late 1960s was dissimilar to the peace that had come a decade earlier, lacking the trust or optimism of 1958. The fight against banditry and the independent republics between 1962 and 1965 had left Gran Tolima and other regions of central and southern Colombia traumatized and militarized. Nonetheless, the particular forms of state, partisan, and bandit violence seen in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s came to an end, as the overall incidence of homicide also fell. Recourse to the technique of violence in public life, though not banished, had been greatly reduced from midcentury.