Throughout the 19th century, utopian socialism emerged in Colombia as part of the artisans' movement against free trade.
[1] Anarchism didn't surface as an organized movement until 1910, when Colombian students, artists and workers began to take up the ideas themselves.
The first public expression of anarchism was made during the Barranquilla strike of 1910, in which militant anarchist workers participated.
However, after the Banana Massacre of 1928, any anarchist activities or apolitical unionist struggles in Colombia largely ceased, due in part to the state's repression and the rise of Bolshevism.
As a counter-cultural movement which drew from the philosophies of existentialism and nihilism, it came as a reaction to the La Violencia, a civil war between Colombian liberals and conservatives, as well as the military dictatorship of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla.