ACH: Make Colombia a Regional Power

The challenge: make Colombia a regional economic and/or political power by the year 2012 with a POD no later then 1900, bonus points for having the country at Argentina levels of development by 1950 and/or not diminishing Brazil's development.Total elimination of the drug trade is not necessary but NO NARCO STATES please.
I think the country has always had the potential (but I might be biased considering my Colombian heritage)to be a small power, its a country with plenty of natural resources, a good sized well-educated middle class and a unique location with access to both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that could potential grant it great strategic and economic power, but as we all know this has been stifled by the drug trade and long running civil war.
I think one major POD would be to somehow prevent the pointless and obscene butchery of La Violencia (seriously, the country saw sub-Saharan Africa levels of brutality (my grandfather ,a liberal had to flee to Venezuela)) by preventing the assasination of Gaitan in '48, but I feel like the classic South American Liberal v Conservative dynamic was to deeply implanted by then to completely avoid a clash.
 
Isn't it a regional power already? FARC's not what it used to be and I doubt Ecuador or Venezuela could go toe toe against Colombia.
 
It will help if Colombia can hold on to Panama while the Canal there is still built.

The Columbian Senate ratifys the first treaty. The issue that defeated it was a ten mile canal zone where US citizens would enjoy extra teritorality but Colombia would otherwise still be in control.
 
Isn't it a regional power already? FARC's not what it used to be and I doubt Ecuador or Venezuela could go toe toe against Colombia.

This is true, I guess what I meant was "Make Colombia more prosperous and stable than it is OTL".
 
I believe Colombia's landscape (marked by jungles and mountains) made it difficult for the federal government to affirm its control of the national territory. Chile did so in the 1840ies, Argentina in the 1860ies, but geography favoured them: it's easier to build railways along Argentinean plains and in Chile (as long as they are built paralel to the sea, and not in the Andes) than in Colombia. Colombian territory makes it very hard for any central government to repress any form of armed resistance movement.

Also, the clash between Liberals and Conservatives, that existed to an extent in almost all Spanish-American Countries in the XIX century, was particularly violent in Colombia (and lasted way longer than in other countries, that is, at least till mid XX century). I don't know enough of Colombian history to know why this was so.
 
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