ABSTRACT
Belisario Betancur Cuartas went to his inauguration in a business suit rather than the customary cutaway, and after the ceremonies opened the doors of the palace to greet the people. At the close of 1982 Betancur had announced a fifty-day economic emergency, accompanied by measures to curb the excesses of the financial system and control the growth of the money supply. The rise in systemic repression and official violence under President Turbay had epitomized the orthodoxy of Colombian political traditionalists. During the 1984 sessions President Betancur placed particular emphasis on those political reforms he identified with an apertura democratica. Drawing upon numerous sources, including the Colombian attorney-general, official military data, and reports of the human rights organization, it detailed disappearances and kidnappings, political killings, and torture. By the close of the Betancur period, basic crime rates and occurrences of nonpolitical violence were higher than four years earlier.
