Building under construction in downtown Bogota, Colombia. April 2016. Francesc Badia i Dalmases. All rights reserved.
The power of Colombia's elites is founded upon one of the most unequal divisions of land in the world. As of the early 21st century, one percent of landowners own more than half the country's agricultural land. Under Spanish rule, Colombia's agriculture was organized on the hacienda system, in which "landless peasants" worked, often as sharecroppers or indentured labor, for the landowners. The fight for land redistribution began with the struggle for independence and continues to this day.
Bolstered by a relatively stable economy, Colombia's elites have been able to repeatedly block attempts to redistribute land or carry out significant political reform. The country largely avoided the military coups and economic crises that beset its neighbors in the 20th century, but this very stability helped store up a legacy of social problems that remain unresolved. Colombia is, "the only Latin American country in which the traditional parties and elites neutralized all political reform efforts," Francisco Thoumi argues. "There were never reforms that challenged the power structure and weakened its control over society."2
