mortars, sniper rifles, and explosives, as they were not considered strong enough to engage police units directly. This followed the trend of the 1990s during the strengthening of Colombian government forces. In June 2016, the FARC signed a ceasefire accord with the President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos in Havana. This accord was seen as an historic step to ending the war that has gone on for fifty years. On 25 August 2016, the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, announced that four years of negotiation had secured a peace deal with FARC and that a national referendum would take place on 2 October. The referendum failed with 50.24% voting against. On November 24, 2016, the Colombian government and the FARC signed a revised peace deal, which the Colombian Congress approved on 30 November. On 27 June 2017, FARC ceased to be an armed group, disarming itself and handing over its weapons to the United Nations. One month later, FARC announced its reformation as a legal political party, in accordance with the terms of the peace deal. However, about 2,000 to 2,500 FARC dissidents still take on FARC's original doctrine and continue with drug trafficking, though far smaller than the group at its peak. A small faction of FARC leaders announced a return to armed activity on 29 August 2019, stating that the Colombian government did not respect peace agreements, a position Colombian officials disagreed with. The Colombian government responded with preemptive strikes, killing FARC members planning to lead rearmament activities. Background La Violencia and the National Front In 1948, in the aftermath of the assassination of the populist politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, there occurred a decade of large-scale political violence throughout Colombia, which was a Conservative – Liberal civil war that killed more than 200,000 people. In Colombian history and culture, the killings are known as La Violencia (The Violence, 1948–58); most of the people killed were peasants and laborers in rural Colombia. In 1957–1958, the political leadership of the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party agreed to establish a bipartisan political system known as the National Front (Frente Nacional, 1958–74). The Liberal and the Conservative parties agreed to alternate in the exercise of government power by presenting a joint National Front candidate to each election and restricting the participation of other political movements. The pact was ratified as a constitutional amendment by a national plebiscite on 1 December 1957