ABSTRACT
Laura Camila Ramírez Bonilla provides key elements to analyse the origins and transformations of the right in Colombia from a historical perspective. She offers historical context and explains sources and tensions that have shaped the power struggle within this ideological syndrome; from the creation of the Colombian Conservative Party (Partido Conservador Colombiano) by the mid-nineteenth century until the electoral triumph of the Democratic Centre Party (Partido Centro Democrático) by the first decades of the twenty-first century. Ramírez Bonilla provides a panoramic view, which highlights the diversity, internal fractures, complex alliances, and confrontations within Colombia's right-wing movement. This chapter claims that conservatism, both as a value system and as a partisan option, and the Catholic religion, as a belief system and network of sociocultural institutions, are constant elements of the Colombian right. This does not mean that these elements are static components, always seeking the same objectives. It rather means that the conservative and religious roots, planted since the nineteenth century, have produced varied identities, contrasting political agendas, and different results.
