ABSTRACT
Population growth, especially after World War II, brought increased conflict over land and migration to the major cities. The election of Olaya led to violence between the two parties and to clashes between police and peasants attempting to improve their land-tenure situations that proved a harbinger of things to come. The National Front did bring to an end the traditional partisan violence, and many feared that the end of it would lead to new outbreaks of Liberal Conservative violence. The Liberal hegemony and especially the Lopez reforms had strengthened the state apparatus, and in the context of this enlarged state and sectarianism, winning the presidency became a zero-sum game. The Caribbean coast was little involved; politics was taken less seriously in that part of the country, and the Liberal party had an overwhelming majority. In the beginning, La Violencia followed party lines; Conservatives attacked Liberals and vice versa.
