La Violencia in the context of "Colombian Liberal Party"

The Colombian conflict (Spanish: Conflicto armado interno de Colombia, lit. 'Colombian internal armed conflict') began on May 27, 1964, and is a low-intensity asymmetric war between the government of Colombia, far-right paramilitary groups, crime syndicates and far-left guerrilla groups fighting each other to increase their influence in Colombian territory. Some of the most important international contributors to the Colombian conflict include multinational corporations, the United States, Cuba, and the drug trafficking industry.

The conflict is historically rooted in the conflict known as La Violencia, which was triggered by the 1948 assassination of liberal political leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán and in the aftermath of the anti-communist repression in rural Colombia in the 1960s that led Liberal and Communist militants to re-organize into the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban politician and revolutionary who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as prime minister from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 2008. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1965 until 2011. Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party communist state; industry and business were nationalized, and socialist reforms were implemented throughout society.

Born in Birán, the son of a wealthy Spanish farmer, Castro adopted leftist and anti-imperialist ideas while studying law at the University of Havana. After participating in rebellions against right-wing governments in the Dominican Republic and Colombia, he planned the overthrow of Cuban president Fulgencio Batista, launching a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953. After a year's imprisonment, Castro travelled to Mexico where he formed a revolutionary group, the 26th of July Movement, with his brother, Raúl Castro, and Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Returning to Cuba, Castro took a key role in the Cuban Revolution by leading the Movement in a guerrilla war against Batista's forces from the Sierra Maestra. After Batista's overthrow in 1959, Castro assumed military and political power as Cuba's prime minister. The United States came to oppose Castro's government and unsuccessfully attempted to remove him by assassination, economic embargo, and counter-revolution, including the Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961. Countering these threats, Castro aligned with the Soviet Union and allowed the Soviets to place nuclear weapons in Cuba, resulting in the Cuban Missile Crisis—a defining incident of the Cold War—in 1962.

Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala Spanish pronunciation: ['xoɾxe eʎ'eθeɾ gai'tan aʝala] (23 January 1903 – 9 April 1948) was a Colombian politician and statesman who was the leader of the Liberal Party. A nationalist, he served as the mayor of Bogotá from 1936–37, the national Education Minister from 1940–41, and the Labor Minister from 1943–44.

He was assassinated during his second presidential campaign in 1948, setting off the Bogotazo  and leading to the outbreak of a brutal ten-year civil war in Colombia known as La Violencia (1948–1958). His ideas, known as Gaitanismo, are considered a form of liberal socialism in Colombia.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People's Army (Spanish: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo, FARC–EP or FARC) was a far-left Marxist–Leninist guerrilla group involved in the continuing Colombian conflict starting in 1964. The FARC-EP was officially founded in 1966 from peasant self-defense groups formed from 1948 during La Violencia as a peasant force promoting a political line of agrarianism and anti-imperialism. They were known to employ a variety of military tactics, in addition to more unconventional methods, including terrorism.

The operations of the FARC–EP were funded by kidnap and ransom, mining, extortion, and taxation of various forms of economic activity, and the production and distribution of drugs. They are only one actor in a complex conflict where atrocities have been committed by the state, right-wing paramilitaries, and left-wing guerrillas not limited to FARC, such as ELN, M-19, and others. Colombia's National Centre for Historical Memory, a government agency, has estimated that between 1981 and 2012 paramilitary groups have caused 38.4% of the civilian deaths, while the Guerillas are responsible for 16.8%, the Colombian Security Forces for 10.1%, and other non-identified armed groups for 27.7%. The National Centre for Historical Memory has also concluded that of the 27,023 kidnappings carried out between 1970 and 2010, the Guerillas were responsible for 90.6% of them.