404 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956 



THE SOGAMOSO-AGUA AZUL HIGHWAY 



It should always be kept in mind that a highway is built and is 

 used for two-way traffic. If, for example, a road is built from a densely 

 populated sector, X, to a frontier zone, Y, in which a sparse population 

 is precariously established, the road can be a boon to the people of 

 Y, for they can now send produce to, and import goods from, X. 

 However, if an epidemic should break out, or if the political situation 

 should become menacing, or if other physical or man-made catastro- 

 phes should arise, then the role of the road is reversed, as it were. 

 That is, people will use it to flee from Y in order to achieve the relative 

 safety of X, and Y will be drained of its inhabitants. A case in point 

 is the area south and east of Sogamoso, a prosperous urban center set in 

 a valley worked by thousands of industrious small-plot agriculturalists. 

 The highway connecting this mountain center to the llanos crossed 

 the high, cold paramo country around Lago de Tota, where the inhabi- 

 tants earn the barest of livings by grazing sheep on the bleak mountain 

 sides or by growing tiny patches of potatoes. Only very gradually 

 had this hard-working population begun to seep over the mountains 

 to the llanos, along the precipitous trail used for walking rangy steers 

 from the great plains to market. The road was a boon to the area; 

 settlers came in in greater numbers, army posts were established in 

 Pajarito and in Agua Azua, and what had formerly been almost ex- 

 clusively a cattle trail became a busy highway with thriving two-way 

 traffic. Then came the civil disturbances — the years of la violencia, 

 as the internecine strife is referred to locally. Rival factions engaged 

 in indiscriminate killing. Many people on both sides lost their lives, 

 many more took to the wilder, more rugged terrain and waited for 

 the storm to blow over, but an even greater number very early in the 

 struggle reached the comparative security of the large cities by simply 

 using the highway. Thus the area was effectively drained of a great 

 number of its hard-working, peace-loving inhabitants. Only in 1953 

 and especially during 1954 were they beginning to come back. 



To be sure, many of the settlers left the mountains for the eastern 

 frontier zone for social and political rather than purely economic 

 reasons. They sought a new world in which to enjoy freedom from 

 societal restraints rather than a geographic frontier in which to work 

 out their economic freedom. But their very cultural heritage militated 

 against their being able to take full advantage of the resources offered 

 by virgin, unsettled territory. A reflection of this situation was the 

 revolutionary movement in the eastern llanos during the years 1950-53, 

 one of the most significant sociological phenomena in the Western 

 Hemisphere during recent times. 



