La masacre de La Cantarrana: tensiones políticas y bandolerismo 

Abstract

This monograph is the result of a social research work concentrated in the municipality of Puente Nacional Santander, which seeks to understand the beginning and development of bipartisan political violence in that place. Since the beginning of the formation of the Colombian Nation-State process in the mid-19th century, political violence has been, as Orlado Fals Borda would point out, “a structuring character of Colombian political life”, which, in other words, points out the predominant and influential role that this phenomenon has had in the country. Almost all the contests and contradictions between the different local, regional and national social groups have been solved through physical violence. During the 19th century alone, there are at least 50 regional civil wars and more than 13 national wars, all motivated by the control of the territories by local, regional and national power groups, control of also local, regional and national bureaucracies, conflicts over land, conflicts specific to each local space, but all covered by the figure of the bipartisan liberal-conservative system.