On the 21st of April as he reached his house paramilitaries murdered Narciso Beleño, the leader in Southern Bolívar, Colombia, just two years after the murder of two other leaders Teo Acuña and Jorge Tafur.
I knew Narciso Beleño. Our paths crossed many times, on occasion on literal paths in the countryside as Narciso travelled the country in his struggle to defend rural communities in Colombia.
But I don’t want to talk too much about Narciso, the person, as there are others who can pay greater tribute to him in that regard, though his name always made me curious: Narciso (Narcissus).
Narcissus was a figure in Greek/Roman mythology who as a punishment from the gods fell in love with his own reflection. It is where we get the word narcissist from. But unlike the Greek/Roman figure, our Narciso was kind, caring, generous and selfless.
There are thousands of people, whole communities that can testify to his qualities as a person, a fighter and a leader.
When he was murdered the President, Gustavo Petro tweeted that “we failed Narciso”. But who failed Narciso? The communities? His comrades in Fedeagromisbol? Or were they the youths from the Front Line who are still in jail? Tell us who! A generic “We doesn’t do it, it is a lie.”
He should explain who failed him, how and why and Petro should also tell us what he intends to do prevent there being more murders of leaders.
Once upon a time we never doubted to putting a name and surname to the matter. We didn’t hesitate in naming the company, the board of directors, the landlord, the local politician. Sometimes we even ran the risk of putting a name and military rank to the affair.
A long time ago a gradual process began whereby some stopped naming them. And now under the Petro government it is not thought well to name them. Once upon a time we all named Fedegan, the cattle ranchers’ association, as backing the paramilitaries.
The Fedegan functionaries even acknowledged this. Now one of the representatives of that association, which is currently involved in refounding paramilitary structures, represents the State in the dialogues with the ELN.
Once upon a time we named the mining companies that have been trying for decades to take control of the gold in Southern Bolivar and other regions. It is worth remembering that Narciso travelled the country. More than one mining company had it in for him.
In Science Fiction and Fantasy novels, evil and magic lose their power over mortals when they are named by their real name and so the best kept secret is their real name. In real life something similar happens. Paramilitaries as something dark, shadowy and hidden defeats us.
When we name those behind this black magic with their real names, it begins to lose its power over us. They are not unknown to us. We withdraw cash from their ATMs every day, we purchase their services, we drink their products, we work in their companies and the odd eejit votes for them.
No company will say, “buy my product we are the murderers of social leaders” or “vote for me, I have murdered thousands.” They hide this for a reason and for that same reason we should expose their dark souls to the light of day.
The best tribute Petro can pay is to explain who failed and name the murderers just like he used to do before he was President. They are the usual suspects. Petro likes to say he governs but does not have power.
Well, tell us who holds that power that he don’t have, with names and surnames, economic group, foreign company. If we all failed, then nobody failed, if he was murdered by those who cannot be named, then nobody murdered him.
We usen’t to hesitate in talking about paramilitaries, the economic and political interests and reasons behind their actions. We named the business associations, the megaprojects in each region, we proved it.
Some sought justice in international tribunals, others in Russell style tribunals of opinion. We have to pay tribute to Narciso and other victims of the paramilitaries and name the murderers. Uribe tried to fool us with the Bacrim (Criminal Gang) euphemism. Neither Gulf Clan or anything else.
The same ones who disappeared Edgar Quiroga and Gildardo Fuentes in 1999 (in Southern Bolívar) murdered Narciso 25 years later. Say it loud and clear, Mr. President.
News & Views No.9: Chile Coup – Twin Towers – the Legacy Bill
Diarmuid Breatnach (Reading time: 5 mins.)
September 11th is the anniversary of the al Qaeda attack on the new World Trade Center in the USA known as “the Twin Towers” and also of the Pinochet Coup in Chile. The former caused the deaths of 2,996 people and the latter of over 40,000.
These are not happy anniversaries and US Imperialism bears a major portion of the blame for both events.
How so, one might ask? The coup in Chile, probably with CIA help, sure. But the Twin Towers? That was a Muslim jihadist attack AGAINST the USA! Surely we’re not expected to believe that stupid conspiracy theory that the USA ruling class actually staged the attack?
US proxy soldiers, Special forces Afghan National Army, 2021 (Photo sourced: Internet)Osama Bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011), Saudi-born founder and first general emir of Al Qaeda from 1988 until his assassination. (Photo sourced: Internet)
That is truly a crazy conspiracy theory but the historical truth does indeed involve a conspiracy. In 1997 the government of Afghanistan was socialist which was worrying for the USA, so in partnership with Saudi elements, they funded and even founded Muslim jihadist groups there.
These groups were to be encouraged to overthrow the socialist regime and when the USSR sent troops to support the government, to defeat the Russians too. Which they did.
But forget about fantasy stories of traditional tribesmen with ancient muskets fighting a world power’s army – these were jihadists, fundamentalists, armed with modern automatic weapons and mobile missile launchers including SAMs (Surface to Air Missiles).
Forget too about Rambo-led simple hill people – since the US achieved the overthrow of the socialist regime and invaded Afghanistan alongside their British allies, those jihadist groups have been squabbling over their share of the spoils, often murderously.
In fact, US imperialism is largely responsible for the world pestilence of not only jihadism of the Al Qaeda type, but the even more virulent Islamic State variety (which indicates Mary Wollstonecraft’s story of Frankenstein’s monster to be more prediction than fiction).
Explosion in one of the Twin Towers on 11th September 2001 in Al Qaeda attack. (Photo: Sean Adair/ Reuters)Frankenstein’s monster in Mary Wollstonecraft’s famous story; he returns to attack his creator (Image sourced: Internet)
Although US Imperialism had created Al Qaeda and although Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was totally opposed to the jihadist group (and vice versa), US politicians used the attack on the Twin Towers to ‘justify’ the US military invasion of Iraq.
“Sweet are the uses of adversity” indeed when manipulated by US Imperialism for domestic consumption and for world public opinion, also when assisted by British Imperialism’s Labour Government, in particular by lying-through-his-teeth Tony Blair.
The US-led campaign against Iraq resulted in about 1.5 million deaths through economic sanctions alone followed by over 300,000 civilians in the Western military campaign. These figures do not include deaths and injuries of Iraqi military and of the invading allies under the USA and UK.
Nor do those figures include the many deaths, military and civilian, in internal conflicts since the invasion of Iraq which continue to mount.
The deaths resulting from the coup in Chile were overwhelmingly of civilians as the coup was carried out by the Army with little opposition within the military and the civilian population were mostly unarmed.
Most of the deaths occurred in succeeding days and years as the regime rounded up communists, trade union militants and others suspected of having supported Allende’s party, to torture and execute them, including most famously the renowned musician and singer-songwriter Victor Jara.
The anniversaries of both the Pinochet coup and the Twin Towers have been commemorated in various parts of the world with, it appears, the coup being remembered in most of them, not only in Latin America but also in many countries in Europe where Chilean political exiles found refuge.
In the USA, of course, the attack on the Twin Towers was officially commemorated and probably communally too much more so than the coup in Chile.
Another imperialist-generated disaster, the anniversary of which falls only a couple of days after those two, is that of the Oslo Accords, signed on 13th September 1993 and often also known as a stage in “the Palestinian Peace Process”.
At the White House, supervised by Bill Clinton, elected chief of US Imperialism at the time, Yitzak Rabin for the Israeli Zionist state and Yasser Arafat, for the Palestine Liberation Organisation, signed an agreement, as a result of which the PLO would be permitted to run their own statelet.
Oslo Accords, 13 September 1993, Washington: Yasser Arafat of the PLO shakes hands with Yitzak Rabin of the Zionist State under the stewardship of (then) US President Bill Clinton, representing US Imperialism. (Photo: Gary Hershom/ Reuters)
Hailed as a great breakthrough by most media at the time, the PLO, dominated by Arafat’s Al Fatah, got to have limited self-government within the Zionist State, with the borders of any future Palestinian state undefined and no mention of the millions of Palestinian exiles around the world.
Although the increasing encroachment on Palestinian lands by Zionist settlers was temporarily halted, the land already taken and built upon remained in Zionist hands, that issue and others ‘to be discussed later’ but the Palestinians were to give up the armed resistance immediately.
The South African pacification process had begun earlier and, though enfranchisement of non-white South Africans was not to come until 1994, it was clearly on the way. The ANC promoted pacification processes to Al Fatah and both parties promoted them to Provisional Sinn Féin.1
The Palestinian ‘Process’ was controversial among their people from the start and grew more so as it became clear how little the Palestinian cause had gained and how much had been set aside, along with the growing official corruption and nepotism growing among the Al Fatah organisation.
Though the pacification process was widely rejected in Palestine and failed to install a widely-recognised ‘official’ collusive leadership, it did achieve the fragmentation of the Palestinian leadership and helped to ‘justify’ the demonisation of Hamas, winner of the 2006 elections.
ALTERNATIVES
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (sic) is quoted in the media as saying that there is no alternative to the UK’s legacy legislation, which proposes to prevent recourse in law for any crimes committed by its soldiers, colonial police, proxies or Government Ministers.
Secretary of State for the Northern Ireland (sic) colony, Chris Heaton Harris (Photo cred: PA)
The legislation in question is titled The Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill.
All political parties in Ireland on both sides of the British Border have vigorously opposed this legislation and THERE CLEARLY IS AN ALTERNATIVE, which is to abandon it. What the UK’s ‘colonial governor’ of the Six Counties means is: no alternative acceptable to the ruling class.
While we’re on alternatives, all liberation movements had and have the alternatives to embracing pacification processes, which is to maintain the path of resistance upon which they embarked until the day they win that for which their people and fighters have sacrificed their liberty and lives.
Allende and the communists in Chile had the alternative of arming the people and purging the Army but instead chose to put their faith in the ‘loyalty’ of Pinochet, ‘democracy’ and the opinion of the Western powers.
“The people armed cannot be harmed”, perhaps, rather than “The people united can never be defeated”.2 Allende’s error cost him his life but also the lives of hundreds of thousands of others.
Women on 11th September hold a candlelit commemoration at La Moneda, Santiago, Chile for the victims – in particular of sexual violence – of the Pinochet coup and dictatorship. (Photo: Adriana Thomasa / EFE)
Imperialists have the alternative of respecting the right to self-determination of the peoples of the world and to cease from exploiting, oppressing and repressing them.
But if they did that, they wouldn’t be imperialists, would they? And since they cannot change their nature, they have to be overthrown.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Provisional Sinn Féin signed up to the Irish Pacification Process in 1998 and they and the ANC then moved on to promote a pacification process to the leadership of the Basque movement for independence, which also finally signed up to it without even obtaining release of the political prisoners. By that time the Palestinian Process had shown its empty promise and the Second Intifada (2000-2005) demonstrated its rejection by most Palestinian youth and the elections to the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council were won convincingly by Hamas.
2An alternative slogan to “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido” was even then being promoted by a smaller communist group: “El pueblo armado jamás será aplastado!”, i.e ‘The armed people will never be crushed’.
The Petro government has reached the end of its first year in which it promised a lot, came through on some things and changed a lot of other things, particularly its position on certain issues.
Before taking a look at it, it should be pointed out that the Historic Pact (PH) is not the first left-wing government in Colombia. The country is still waiting for that. It is a remould of liberalism in the style of Ernesto Samper.
Even so, it is worth looking at its proposals and what it did in this year, as unlike Samper, it did give a lot of hope to the people.
It is generally accepted that Petro would not have been elected President if it were not for the big popular revolt that began on April 28th 2021, an uprising that cost the life of over 80 youths.
We don’t know the exact number of dead and disappeared and less still of the number of young women who were raped and sexually abused by the Police as part of the repression. Even the number of political prisoners is a matter of dispute.
Not due to the absence of the number of people detained but because the amongst Prosecutor’s Office, the press and sections of the PH there are those who seek to divest the detained youths of any political motivations.
They simply paint them as criminals and vandals, the last of these words having been covered in glory during those protests.1
The heroic ‘vandals’:Demonstrators clash with riot police during a protest against a tax reform bill launched by Colombian President Ivan Duque, in Bogota, on April 28, 2021. (Photo cred: Juan Barreto/ AFP). (Photo choice and caption by Rebel Breeze)
So, it comes as no surprise that Petro, like Boric in Chile, did not free the political prisoners from the revolt. He made a few lukewarm attempts to get a handful of them out, but a long way from all of them.
They are still in prison, despite his electoral victory being thanks to their struggle and actions that led them to prison.
It is perhaps the most symbolic transgression as it says sacrifice yourselves but don’t expect anything from me, not even when I owe you everything. Petro has defended himself by saying that it is not his decision to free or imprison anyone.
Recently he stated:
There are still many youths in prison and I get blamed, as if it were up to me to imprison or free them. State bodies and people inside them have decided that these youths should not be freed.
Not because they are terrorists, who would think protesting is terrorism? If not a dictator or Fascist. No, but because they want to punish the youths who rebel.2
Some may feel that he is right in a technical sense, i.e. that it is the Prosecution and the judges who imprison them. But that is to ignore reality.
He himself denigrated them when he referred to them as ‘vandals’ during the protests and since taking office, neither Petro nor the PH have been the visible heads of any initiative to free the prisoners. They washed their hands of the issue.
He didn’t even disband the specialised riot squad, the ESMAD. Unlike other proposals he didn’t even try to.
He changed its name and promised a couple of human rights courses for its members, as if the problem was their lack of attendance at a course or two given by some NGO and not a deep-rooted problem. The ESMAD is a unit that murdered many youths.
It is a body whose name is synonymous with violence, torture, sexual abuse and murder. A name change won’t wash away the blood.
… the promise to put an end to the ESMD was just lip service during the presidential campaign.It wasn’t carried out and the government will fail to carry through on its commitment to the youths who brought the president to power, through the existence of a repressive violent force like this one.
The temptations to infiltrate the marches in order to justify confrontations with the kids will continue to be part of the landscape.3
Petro gives his voters a clenched fist on his inauguration as President in August last year but many remain in jail and the rest get little or nothing. (Photo sourced: Internet) (Photo choice and caption by Rebel Breeze)
In economic terms the government promised a lot during the campaign, but once in power, it quickly softened its proposals and in some other cases they didn’t get a majority of votes in Congress.
The lack of votes in Congress is not a simple one of not coming through, nor is it due to betrayals by the PH nor manoeuvres by other forces that Petro can’t control.
The PH is a coalition of sectors of the right with sectors of what passes for social democracy in Colombia. It was not inevitable, but rather Petro actively advocated that it be like that.
It is worth recalling that at first, he wasn’t going to choose Francia Márquez as his vice-president but rather a right winger like Roy Barreras.
However there are economic aspects that are under his control, but for the moment they remain as just proposals, rather than real policies that have gone through Congress. On the land question, Petro proposes monocultures and agribusiness.
This was clearly to be seen in the proposal to buy three million hectares from the cattle ranchers.
Petro’s vision of the countryside is one of it being at the service of big money and the promotion of cash crops, despite some references to the production of foodstuffs for internal consumption and the so-called bio-economy.
Something similar can be seen with his proposals for clean energy. He spoke a great deal about it during the electoral campaign and some of his proposals, or outlines as they stand, look good.
That Colombia no longer depend on oil and coal is not a bad idea and that it be replaced with alternative energy sources such as solar and wind power looks good, until we actually examine the details.
One of his first stumbles, in that sense, was with the Indigenous people, as La Guajira is a poor area that has suffered the consequences of coal mining.
He did not take them into account and they reminded him that what is proposed for their territory should have their support, though legally it is not quite the case, and that it should also benefit them.
He partially rectified the case, but the big question is, if he wants an energy transition why does he have to seek out French and other foreign capital to finance it. Does he want to hand over the wind and solar power as they are still doing with oil and coal?
It would seem so. According to Petro:
We need investments that help us carry this out: we would have a matrix of foreign investment centred on the construction of clean energies in South America, with a guaranteed market, if we have direct link to the United States and by sea with the rest of the world.4
If you substitute oil and coal for clean energy, you begin to see the problem: the resources of Colombia in the service of big money and the countries of the North.
If we are to have a real change and energy transition, we must end the idea of Northern energy consumption regardless of where it comes from as sustainable and that countries such as Colombia must supply energy for a planet-destroying consumption model.
Neither have there been great advances on the issue of peace. He did reactivate the dialogue with the ELN, but stumbled with something that is still an integral part of his policy, the so-called Total Peace.
In his proposal he compared the insurgent group, the ELN to the drug gangs and paramilitary groups such as the Clan de Golfo. It was not a mistake, Petro really does see the ELN as a criminal gang.
He made it clear in his speech to the military and he reaffirmed it when he named the blood thirsty Mafia boss and former Murderer-in-Chief of the paramilitaries, Salvatore Mancuso as a Peace Promoter.
With that he placed the ELN leadership on the same plane as the paramilitaries. And they have implicitly accepted it for the moment.
In Petro’s discourse Colombia is a violent country and there is no way to understand it and peace has to be made with everyone as they are all the same, the insurgency and the narcos. Not even Santos was that creative in delegitimising the guerrillas.
Mancuso took on his role and once again spoke of the land they had stolen, the disappeared etc. He has been telling us for two decades now that tomorrow he will reveal all, but tomorrow never comes.
When Uribe invited Mancuso to the Congress of the Republic, Petro had a different attitude.
His response was blunt and he described Uribe as a president that was captured by the paramilitaries and that Mancuso manipulated the Congress stating that “if under this flag of peace, dirtied by cocaine what is essentially being proposed is an alliance with genocidal drug traffickers and political leaders… then we are not contributing to any sort of peace.”5
And we end the year with a scandal. I have on many occasions compared Petro and the PH to Samper and the Liberal Party of the 90s. But not in my most fertile delirium could I imagine that Petro and his son would give us another Process 8000.
Samper managed to reinvent himself as a statesman and human rights defender, despite his government’s dreadful record, following the outcry over drug money in his election campaign. He has publicly supported Petro and the PH.
Now he can advise them on how to deny what is as plain as day. Illicit funds went into the PH’s campaign as has happened with all election campaigns.
Petro finds himself in the eye of the storm due to the manoeuvres of his son in asking for and receiving money. His ambassador in Caracas has boasted about obtaining 15,000 million pesos [3.3 million euros] that were not reported to the authorities.
Those on the “left” who gave Petro unconditional support defend him, saying that it all happened behind his back.
The only thing left to say about that is, a little bit of respect for Samper please! He established his copyright, authorship of that expression in relation to dirty money. They will have to come up with another one.
For the moment Petro says, I didn’t raise him, which is true. But his son is the beneficiary of a type of political nepotism. As was the case with Samper, the only doubt is whether Petro knew or not.
That a government which is supposedly progressive has found itself entangled in such a storm is revealing of a government in which politics is a family business.
Something similar happened to the FARC commander Iván Márquez with his nephew who turned out to be a DEA informant.
On the drugs issue it is clear that the discourse and reality do not match at any point. Petro went to the UN to announce a new drugs policy. He put forward various aims for his government and criticised the war on drugs.6
It seems like a bad joke that the said policy has not yet been published. What we have seen is that the fumigations continue, the Yanks smile on and occasionally there is talk of going after the big fish, without saying who they are.
We know that he is not talking about the banks, and less still of the European companies that supply the precursor chemicals. The big fish will turn out to be middle ranking thugs in the cities of Colombia, at best.
So, it has been a year that wasn’t that different to others. Yes, there were changes, some proposal or other that was half interesting, but even the right wing does that occasionally.
The vote of confidence cast in the ballot box is still waiting to see the promised changes. But we increasingly see a government without a clear aim and reinventing old policies as new ones, with the same results as before.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1 See Ó Loingsigh’s article Long Live the Vandals – R.B.
Gearóid Ó Loingsigh (with kind donation of photos)
(Reading time: 7 mins.)
08 March 2023
Photo Coca Plants Northern Colombia: G.O.L.
The drugs issue in Colombia supposedly occupies the time of and is a concern to the government.
It has been an important issue for all the governments and as was to be expected it is one that has come up again in the dialogues with the ELN, despite this organisation denying any links to the drugs trade.
The author (left) and Pablo Beltran, the ELN negotiator (centre) and representative of social movement in Ecuador (right) in 2017 conference in University of Simon Bolivar, Quito, Ecuador. (Photo: GOL)
In the peace process with the FARC, agreement was reached on the issue. What was agreed to in Point 4 of the Havana Accord was abysmal and showed that the FARC did not understand the problem nor the possible solutions.
Of course, there could be a difference between what the FARC understood and what it agreed to, as at the end of the day the state won the war and imposed the greater part of what the FARC signed up to.
Following the agreement in the declarations of the main FARC commanders there is nothing to be seen that indicates that they really understood the problem. Will it be any different with the ELN?
One of the main concerns of the ELN has been to put a distance between themselves and the drugs trade.
Whilst it is true that the ELN is not the FARC, it is also true that in their areas of influence or those contiguous there are coca and poppy crops and the USA is not going to believe them that they have nothing to with it, whether they like it or not. The ELN accepts that it places taxes on economic activities and for the USA that is drug trafficking.
So, some time ago, the ELN issued a statement where they restated that they have nothing to do with drugs and invited an international commission to visit the country to see the reality for itself.(1) They ask that a UN delegate take part in the delegation. They also make a series of proposals in relation to the issue as such.
On the first point, the ELN feels sure of itself regarding its ability to show in practice that they are not drug traffickers. The ELN correctly states that:
When the Colombian government and the USA accuse the ELN of having an active role in the trade, they are lying, but above all they are covering up for those really responsible and the deep-seated problems, which indicate their unwillingness to take real and effective measures.(2)
ELN guerrilla camp, Colombia (Photo: GOL)
But for the USA, it is not about whether they are guilty or not, it is a political tool and weapon and to give them a voice and vote in the affair is extremely dangerous. When the USA accuses the ELN of being drug traffickers, it is not making a mistake.
A mistake on their part would be to say something they believe and be wrong about it, but they accuse the ELN for political reasons on the basis of their strategic needs and the legal basis to their accusations is the least of it: it is just propaganda. By inviting them into the country, the ELN falls into their trap.
The UN participated in the commissions of investigation for supposed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The lack of evidence of such weapons wasn’t of much use.
The USA played around with supposed or real non-compliance by Saddam and did what they always wanted to do: invade Iraq. In this they counted on the explicit support of Great Britain and the tacit support of others.
There is a myth in Colombia that the only baddies are the USA and that other imperialist powers such as Canada (a country that is not seen as imperialist by many sections of the “Colombian left”), and other countries of the European Union are good, or at least not really that bad to the point they are friends of the Colombian people.
In the case of Colombia, the EU competes with the US in almost everything. The EU is Colombia’s second commercial partner and its companies are dominant in sectors such as mining, health and oil, amongst others.
The ELN also asks for the legalization of drugs. The demand is justified and quite opportune, but their counterparts i.e. the Colombian state is not sovereign in the matter and furthermore there is a need to clarify what is understood by legalization.
If by legalization they mean legalizing production for medical purposes, the bad news is that medical production is already legal. The thing is, that it is controlled. In fact, in many jurisdictions they don’t talk of illegal drugs but rather controlled substances.
Cocaine is a controlled substance. Its production for medical reasons is authorized by the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) and production is almost exclusively carried out in Peru. And the market is quite small, not even reaching 400 kilos per year as I pointed out in an earlier article.(3) It solves nothing in relation to Colombia.
If on the other hand, they are talking about legalizing recreational use, something which could positively impact the Colombian countryside, then it is a matter of international jurisdiction. Colombia cannot legalise it on its own.
Colombia is a signatory to the Single Convention of 1961 that holds sway in the matter and in addition there are power relationships at play.
It doesn’t matter whether it legalises production for recreational use, it will never be able to legally export it, not only without the consent of the other country, but also the whole setup of the UN and its bodies such as the INCB i.e. at the end of the day, the USA.
Even if it is legalized for internal consumption, there are other problems that have already arisen in countries such as Uruguay which legalised recreational use of marijuana or some of the states in the USA.
The banking system dare not receive funds from those legalised markets and the producers resort to old methods more akin to money laundering to deposit legal funds in legal accounts in a legal banking system.
Even in the hypothetical case of the USA and the EU agreeing, the legalisation of cocaine would go far beyond Colombian cocaine and would include other drugs such as opium and its derivatives such as heroin. It is worth looking at the drugs market and its production.
According to the UN, cocaine is produced directly or indirectly in eight Latin American countries (Colombia, Peru and Bolivia account for almost all of it), whilst 57 countries produce opium, the Asian countries being the largest producers (Afghanistan, Myanmar and Mexico dominate the market).
A bucket of opium poppy seed (Photo: GOL)
Cannabis, which is the most widely consumed drug in the world is produced in 154 countries.
For 2020, the UN calculated that there were 246,800 hectares of opium and 234,000 of coca.(4) They also calculate a production of 7,930 tonnes in 2021(5) and 1,982 tonnes of cocaine in 2020.(6) We are not talking about small quantities of production or land. Almost half a million hectares between these two drugs and 64 countries.
Any proposal of legalisation has to include these countries and their peasantry.
The number of drug users is also large. The UN calculates that in 2020 there were 209 million cannabis consumers, 61 million people who had consumed opiates, 24 million amphetamine users, 21 million cocaine consumers and 20 million users of ecstasy.(7)
They say that in 2020, they had calculated that 284 million people between the ages of 15-64 years used drugs, i.e. one in every 18 people in this cohort.(8)
There are consequences to this, in economic but also cultural terms regarding the use and abuse of substances. But there also consequences in terms of health. Some 600,000 people received some treatment for drug problems.(9)
So when the ELN says that “Drug addicts are ill and should be cared for by the states and not pursued as delinquents”(10) their idea is correct, however, the size of the problem is greater than the real capacity of the health systems in the countries that have large numbers of users.
Photo Opium Poppy Nariño Colombia: G.O.L.
The total number of people injecting drugs is 5,190,000 in Asia, 2,600,000 in Europe and 2,350,000 in the Americas (almost 75% of which is in north America).(11)
Of those who inject, 5.5 million have Hepatitis C, 1.4 million are HIV positive and 1.2 million are HIV positive and also have Hepatitis C.(12) These are not minor problems and are high-cost illnesses.
Of course, these figures do not include the unlawful abuse of legal pharmaceuticals. In the USA almost 80% of the overdoses are from the consumption of legal opiates such as fentanyl, which caused 78,238 deaths in 2021 in that country.
But the issue does require legalisation and not other means that the FARC aimed for. The peasants of Colombia did not make a mistake in choice of crop when they planted coca. Coca was and continues to be a very profitable crop, despite all the difficulties that it generates.
There is no need to substitute it with another crop such as cocoa or African palm etc. It is not about the crop but rather the production model and the political and economic context.
The increase in coca production in Colombia, is not due to subjective factors such as the decisions of peasants, not even of the drug barons and less still of the insurgencies but rather objective economic factors.
This is a key point. It was the decisions of northern countries that impacted the countryside and pushed thousands of peasants around the world to grow opium poppy and coca. The neoliberal cutback policies in the north also contributed to the dramatic rise in problem drug use due to the increase in misery in those countries.
Bedding, equipment and reading material in an ELN guerrilla camp, Colombia (Photo: GOL)
In any discussion we should distance ourselves from the idea that the drugs problem can be solved in a negotiation with the ELN, although they could negotiate some points that would contribute positively to a solution.
But the problem is political and the free trade agreements and other measures that had a negative impact on the countryside have to be looked at again.
Also, they have to reach an agreement with the Colombian government, not for some perks for peasants nor corrupt projects and budgets such as those the FARC agreed to, but rather a political agreement where the government argues and campaigns for the derogation of the Single Convention of 1961.
Gearóid Ó Loingsigh looks at the new government in Colombia and how it talks of peace while increasing militarisation. English language version first published in Redline, 24th November, reprinted with kind permission of author.
(Reading time: 8 mins.)
The Petro–Márquez government is one which proposes to bring us to what they term Total Peace.
The term and the proposal as such have been subjected to justifiable criticism, not least because it places the insurgency of the ELN on the same footing as armed drug trafficking groups.
But there is another aspect of their government that calls upon us to reflect on what Petro – Márquez understand as peace and a demilitarized society that breaks with the past and the present of a repressive state where the answer to everything is a military response.
A first step would be to remove the military from civilian settings. But Petro has already made statements that indicate that neither he nor Márquez think that.
Shortly after taking on the presidency, he declared that the answer to deforestation of the Amazon was not only military, but Yankee.
In their electoral campaign their proposal was different, they did not talk about the military anywhere, but rather of democracy, autonomy, measures against drug trafficking and money laundering.
We will stop the deforestation and the burning of the jungle. We will dismantle the engines of deforestation, amongst them: displacement of the unemployed and landless peasants from the interior of the country towards the Amazon; land grabbers and promoters of extensive cattle ranching and other monocultures; corruption in public bodies; laundering of foreign currency through the purchase of deforested land, a by-product of drug trafficking and corruption; the uncontrolled extraction of wood etc.[1]
And he also said that the pacts to protect the jungle would be with the communities and not national or foreign militaries.
We will build a broad national pact of regional and global importance for the environmental defence of the Amazon, Orinoco and the biogeographic corridor of the Pacific. We will set up community agreements for the regeneration and ecological restoration of these eco-systems based on organisational processes, proposing to increase the size of collective territories, registry of plots and the strengthening of traditional and ancestral authorities. We will recognise the rural communities’ own lifestyle in strategic eco-systems and their own ecological and economic forms of production in these habitats, as well as their own environmental management.[2]
It all sounds very nice, but it goes hand in hand with militarisation. He proposed a sort of military alliance with the USA to avoid the burning of the jungle, copying the already existing model in Brazil where the USA has a base from which to put out fires.
Of course, in Brazil the mining and logging companies, etc. invade the territory with the approval of the government. The presence of north American troops never prevented any of the extractionist policies and less still poverty under the governments of Lula, Dilma and Bolsonaro.
As others have pointed out, it is nothing more than the militarisation of environmentalism and it is an old slogan of the imperialists that they should be in charge wherever they want and that includes the Amazon.
They used to brandish the anti-narcotics struggle as an excuse and now it is global warming. Al Gore once said that “The Amazon is not their property, it belongs to us all”. Of course, by us, this miscreant means Yankee imperialism: the USA.
It is the same discourse they have in relation to oil; it does not belong to the countries that have it but rather to all of us i.e. the US and European companies. Al Gore’s fame as an environmentalist is undeserved but his reputation as an old imperialist is completely justified.
Other governments have come out with similar feelings, Gore’s was not an individual outburst. Macron, NATO as such and the influential magazine Foreign Policy have argued for a military intervention in the region with the aim of protecting the planet.[3]
For the moment, Petro is not in favour of Colombia becoming a member of NATO, rather he proposes a regional military alliance.[4] Against whom would this alliance fight is not at all clear, or whether it would simply be an unofficial appendage to NATO.
We should be concerned and not just a little bit. In November he met with representatives of the US Embassy and the Subsecretary of Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland. Following the meeting Nuland tweeted.
Thank you, Gustavo Petro President of Colombia for our productive meeting reaffirming the importance of our continued partnership on security, peace, progress for Venezuela and protecting our planet.[5]
Bearing in mind the murky past of Nuland in Ukraine in 2014, we should be very careful with her, but there are those who believe that Petro is charge.
It is not the only issue where he proposes military rather than civilian solutions. Faced with the lack of access to healthcare in the territories of the Pacific, he also proposed to militarise the response. The Pacific is one of the regions with the worst indicators in the area of healthcare.
Nobody doubts about the need for an urgent and comprehensive response for the region. The military boat USNS Comfort visited Colombia to provide medical assistance.
It was not the first time, the said boat has visited the country four times as part of the Continuing Promise[6] mission, a medical and public relations initiative of the US, deploying its Soft Power.
This boat also took part in the two wars in Iraq as a military hospital, and in the invasion of Haití in 1994. Petro’s response on Twitter was:
I am grateful for this support in healthcare from the US government to the people of the Caribbean. It is important that we think about the Pacific. A mission for the National Navy, along with the building of the first frigate “made in Colombia” will be the building of a hospital ship.[7]
In a non-militarised state healthcare should be under the remit of the Ministry of Health and not the Ministry of Defence, but Petro – Márquez want to bring healthcare to the Pacific through military rather than civilian institutions.
Such incoherence with his public discourse!
In previous governments the military has used its economic power and civic-military days as part of its military and armed operations.
The mobilisation of troops and the demand for collaboration from the civilian population is justified on the basis of access to medical services that are provided for by civilians in Bogotá and other parts of the country without the need to explain themselves to military institution in the midst of a war.
The Petro – Márquez government is also going to continue with the proposal of the Santos government to build a military base on the Gorgona Island. It is worth remembering that Santos was one of these other men of peace that are in abundance in Colombia: hawks dressed as doves.
The Gorgona Island was, for many years, a penal colony, the Colombian version of the infamous Devil’s Island immortalised in Papillon film with Steve McQueen. In 1982 it was declared a world heritage site by UNESCO due to it high ecological value.
A deserted beach in Gorgona National Park, an island 21 miles off Colombia’s Pacific coast and a UNESCO World Heritage ecological site — Petro plans to put a military base there. (Image sourced: Internet)
Now they want to go ahead with the plan to place a military base there. What is new in the Petro – Márquez government is that there is a rumour that the USA will have access to the base.
It is not an absurd idea, as the project has anti-narcotic aims and is financed by the US Embassy in the country.[8] With absolute certainty, the DEA will at least have access to it.
There are alternatives, such as a warship as a centre of operations. Petro wants the Navy to build a hospital ship but is not up to telling them to build a ship for what does fall within its remit.
He says he wants peace but he wants to promote the military at every turn, even turning up every time he can wearing military caps.
So far, he hasn’t acted ridiculous like Iván Duque dressing up as a police officer in the midst of the National Strike of 2021, but as his supporters point out he has only been president for a little more than 100 days and we have to give him time.
In every circus you have to wait for the clowns to come in. We can’t always see the lion-tamer but clowns and clownish antics are always there.
Some social climbers from social and human rights organisations ran to take up posts in the ministries of Defence and also the Interior.
They used to be critics of the armed forces and police of the state, now they look out for its good name in the area of human rights and international humanitarian law. They also promote the military at each turn.
The recently appointed Alexandra González, a former functionary of the Committee for Solidarity with Political Prisoners, who is now the Cabinet Secretary of the Ministry of National Defence published an effusive tweet full of praise of the Ministry of Defence that stated “Military engineers will build tertiary road to benefit the peasant population.”[9]
She doesn’t understand that the armed forces are never for anything other than war, even in peace time they are preparing for war. It is their only function. In any case, no one can explain why the military have to the ones that are building those roads.
But as a good political opportunist she claims as her own that which does not belong to her. On twitter they replied to her, pointing out that those projects were old ones.
A retired military officer and former advisor to the High Commissioner for Peace pointed her in the direction of an article in the regional newspaper El Quindiano written by himself, speaking of the beginning of these civic – military projects in the 1960s.[10]
All governments have carried out infrastructural projects through the Ministry of Defence and in all governments, they were referred to as peace projects.
Perhaps the fugitives from the human rights organisations feel the need to say that it is new in order not to make evident that there is a continuity between this government and all of the previous ones.
I don’t understand why they signed up to the non-binding declaration on safe schools, if they are promoting the military presence in all other aspects of civilian life.
The ideal situation would be to not permit the military to use schools as bases or human shields in the midst of fighting nor use the military to build infrastructural projects.
If the government was really progressive (an imprecise term) it would remove the civilian contracts from the military, healthcare would be the exclusive responsibility of health bodies and not the military, it would not propose a military alliance in a world with an excess of them.
And the symbols that Peto would put on a pedestal would be civilian ones, from the people, the communities, even from some trade union, even if it were just out of pure nostalgia, as when he was Mayor of Bogotá he didn’t think much of unions.
1) What do you think the elections of May 29th will mean for the future of Colombia? What are the stakes of these elections?
The elections are not as key as some commentators would like to make out in terms of profound changes in Colombia. Though, the reaction in some sectors and fears about the transparency of the elections are well founded and even some fears of a violent reaction from some sectors of the bourgeoisie and the army. So, on one level the elections are about the degree to which the bourgeoisie, including the narco-bourgeoisie are willing to accept electoral defeat. This election is likely to bring about a long period of uncertainty in the country as Petro tries to manage the expectations and demands of the bourgeoisie and contain the hopes of his own supporters.
People displaced in the north of Santander by ongoing violence try to get by as best they can (Photo cred: GÓ Loingsigh)
2) What is the political scenery like, one week before the elections? These elections take place midst what kind of atmosphere?
The atmosphere oscillates between one of hope that Petro will be elected and bring an end to a long conflict that has been going on for almost 60 years and one of fear. No one knows what the far right are capable of doing and thinking at the moment. General Zapateiro intervened in the election campaign, which is unconstitutional as the military don’t even have the right to vote in Colombia. There are other fears about electoral fraud, a portal has been set up to report electoral fraud. Already it has tallied 3,500 incidents and no one has cast a vote yet. Leading businesses have stated they will sack any workers who vote for Petro and have demanded that their employees take photos of the electoral card that they mark and send it to them. It is expected that Petro has the ability to win in the first round, sufficient electoral fraud to force a second round run off with any candidate other than Fico would make matters more complicated for Petro as people may vote against him out of fear were it to come to a second round against one of the other candidates other than the reincarnation of Uribe that is Fico.
The Colombian military are not permitted to vote but there is always the possibility that they will intervene militarily (Photo cred: GÓ Loingsigh)
3) In the surveys, we see that Gustavo Petrois is ahead. How do you interpret this? What are the social alliances he has created? What are people’s expectations from him?
Petro has been around for a long time and this is not his first but third outing as a presidential candidate. After 20 years of Uribe as the leading figure in Colombian politics, there is a growing tiredness coupled with really serious levels of poverty, whilst kleptocrats openly steal the resources of the state. However, he hasn’t built social alliances as such. There has been a confluence of various social organisations and sectors more out of a hope that there might be some change. Petro for example opposed the wave of protests that erupted in the country last year. At a moment when Duque looked very weak, Petro came out to say that he didn’t want Duque to fall through the protests and demanded that the protests be called off. He more than anyone was responsible for the defeat. Petro is building an electoral alliance not a social force and his electoral alliance includes the bourgeoisie. He has long called for a programmatic agreement with the bourgeoisie and his alliance includes people from various previous governments, including Uribe’s governments. Leading functionaries from the Santos government play lead roles in his campaign, such as Alfonso Prada, who is also a close friend of Santos. Former president Samper, the man who implemented the decree that gave us the Convivir, the legal façade for the paramilitaries in the 1990s is also involved in his campaign. This is not a minor point, Samper managed to reinvent himself as a man of peace, even though he more than any president bears responsibility for the blood bath of the mid 1990s to the early years of the 21st century. He also tried to include the former president Cesar Gaviria, the man who gave us the economic aperture of the neoliberal period. It was opposition from his electoral base which forced him to rethink that one. These people play a greater role than any social movement.
Marchers on the annual Victims’ Day in March with placards of murdered trade union and human rights activists (Photo cred: GO’Loingsigh)
4) If Gustavo Petro wins the elections, what possibilities/room does he have to implement a progressive/social democratic policy for the people΄s classes, the workers, the poor, the precarious, etc?
This goes back to the last question and his programmatic alliance with the bourgeoisie. So, there are two elements, to what degree does he actually want to implement a progressive policy? He has spoken about reforms in health and education, some of which sound almost Keynesian, but Petro is not Keynesian. His programme does not contemplate a break with neoliberalism but to work within it, controlling deficits etc, subsidies for industry etc.. His economic policies are a continuation of the last 30 years, with one difference, he wants to move away from mining and oil exploitation, the former coming to an end in any case with various coal mining companies announcing their withdrawal from the country, though some gold mining companies are staying and these companies have legal guarantees on continuing with mining prospecting and exploitation that Petro will not and cannot legally bring to an end. He has however, said that he will promote agribusiness and continue with the policies that are in place, again with some minor tweaking.
Gustavos Petro campaigning (Photo cred: Financial Times)
5) How do you see the next day, after the disaster that the four years of Duque’s neoliberal policy has brought? What are the most important problems that the new government will face? What are the difficulties?
The next day, the one problem Petro will have is how the right will react to destabilise his government. A situation similar to that of Allende of a long drawn-out phase of destabilisation from some sectors is a possibility, though unlike Allende, Petro’s campaign is electoral, he does not believe in organising people and is in fact opposed to it. Part of his base has been bought off with the promise of jobs for the leaders of organisations and access to the public purse, which is normal for Colombian elections. Offers of jobs and government contracts in communities is the normal way elections are bought in Colombia.
Colombian military looks towards a protest demonstration (Photo cred: GO’Loingsigh)
Petro also does not have a majority in Congress, in fact he is very far from it. And will have to negotiate many things, which will push his programme further to the right as he will not use popular mobilisation to counter any blocking of policies by Congress. In the long term, this presents a problem for him and we will almost certainly see another wave of protests like those of last year, but this time against the Petro government. I also predict that his Vice President, Francia Márquez will not complete her term of office and will resign at some point in the face of the reality of Petro’s government as opposed to the expectations.
He has proposed renegotiating the free trade agreements, a task that is just not possible. He will also face problems in reforming the health sector as many international health companies have invested heavily in the sector and will most like sue the government for any changes that affect their profits, something he will be forced to back down on. In fact, within his campaign there have already been retreats on this point, as he no longer proposes to abolish the role of these companies, just to change how much of the public purse they have access to.
end.
People fishing in Cesar Department, Colombia (Photo cred: G.Ó Loingsigh)Coal miner in Colombia (Photo cred: G.Ó Loingsigh)
There is a long tradition amongst NGOs, sectors of the reformist left, trade unionists and others in Colombia that someone outside the country will save us. The saviours are the North Americans (despite their role in the conflict), the European Union (despite their role as well and that of their companies), and international institutions such as the International Criminal Court, or the mechanisms set up in the peace accord (national ones but financed internationally). So, the decision by the ICC to shut down its preliminary investigation of Colombia was like a bucket of cold water to them. But it was to be expected.
Banner carrying faces and names of youth from Soacha and Bogotá murdered by the Colombian National Army. The banner was displayed in a march in Bogatá on the 6th March, the Day of Victims of State Violence. (Photo credit: GOL)
When Obama was elected as US president, various journalists and representatives of the left and NGOs announced that he would solve Colombia’s problems and now they have come back to say the same about Biden. A constant feature of this discourse of seeking a foreign saviour is the possibility of taking Uribe (not his Defence Minister, Juan Manuel Santos) to the ICC. They sold a false hope to the victims of the state that there they could obtain justice. They knew it was unlikely, as they knew what the ICC was like and its not very encouraging record in the matter.
To date the ICC has only convicted African leaders. It is not the case that these African leaders are saints or innocent, but rather that the ICC does not go after other criminals. It has procrastinated for many years on its case against Israel and has no authority to investigate the USA. The Court’s website currently indicates that it has 15 ongoing preliminary investigations, ten of them in African countries and five others in Georgia, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Bangladesh and the State of Palestine. This last case will not succeed, of that we can be certain. It has pursued a total of 30 individuals, resulting in 4 convictions.1 The ICC is the opium of the people, it has a soporific effect on people in the midst of their struggles and the NGOs promise Heaven and Divine Justice in a coming future.
A boy carries photos of victims in a march in Bogatá on the 6th March, the Day of Victims of State Violence. (Photo credit: GOL)
There were diverse reactions to the decision to shut down the preliminary investigation. Whilst the victims of the False Positives2 criticised the decision, others such as Senator Iván Cepeda and Eamon Gilmore, the EU envoy to the peace process celebrated it. The Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE) lamented the decision, though in a very confusing manner. It continued to praise the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), when it is precisely the existence of the JEP that the ICC used as an excuse to shut down the case.3
Iván Cepeda stated that:
A direct consequence of the agreement signed by Duque’s government with the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor is that once and for all the possibility of reforming the JEP has been discarded. It puts an end to that obsessive aim of the Uribistas. A victory for the peace process.4
A few years ago, he would have denounced the closure of the case as an act of impunity and now he claims it is a victory. As the Greek philosopher Plutarch put it, Another victory like this and all will be lost. Many of us denounced the impunity of the JEP, little did we think that not only would it guarantee impunity in the trials it deals with or excludes from its remit, but that its very existence would be the perfect excuse to shut down international cases against the regime. But the peace acolytes are determined to announce their defeat as a victory.
Protestors holding aloft photos of those murdered and disappeared in a march in Bogatá on the 6th March, the Day of Victims of State Violence. (Photo credit: GOL).
It seems that Senator Gustavo Petro didn’t have much to say about the matter and neither did Senator Alexander López. Piedad Córdoba, however, echoed the statements of Iván Cepeda and said:
They took issue with the JEP and tried to cut its budget, discredit it, dirty propaganda and all in order to cover their own backs. Today the ICC forced the government to strengthen it.5
A young woman carries photos of victims in a march in Bogatá on the 6th March, the Day of Victims of State Violence. (Photo credit: GOL)
It is clear that there are those who in the name of peace would justify any defeat, including a defeat of a proposal they themselves promoted. So, the ICC will not proceed against Colombia, but relax, we have the JEP where the military who, unlike the guerrillas, do not have to tell the whole truth about their crimes and where the businesspeople are excluded.
Of course, the president of the JEP, who once upon a time was the NGOs’ favourite said that he was very pleased with the ICC decision. According to Cifuentes the closure of the investigation against Colombia is a victory won by the JEP,6 i.e. those who for many years talked about how the ICC was going to put the Colombian State in its place, now tell us that the fact the ICC will not proceed against Colombia is a victory.
I really find it difficult to understand their logic, or better still I can’t understand their shamelessness. In the name of their pathetic peace accord, they justify everything and describe it as a victory. Poor Plutarch. If he had to deal with the leaders of the supposed left in Colombia today he would have been more vulgar, but he died many centuries ago, so allow me Plutarch: Another victory like this and the turncoats will be making money like never before.
So, to answer the question posed by this article, who will save us? The answer is no one, or rather, the Colombian people will save themselves, there are no international institutions, nor presidents in other countries who are going to fix the crisis that country has suffered for decades. The only ones who will put Uribe, Santos, Pastrana, Samper and the others in jail are the Colombian people.
“Forget them? That would be a crime against conscience” with images and names of the “disappeared” since 1998. The banner was carried on a march in Bogatá on the 6th March, the Day of Victims of State Violence. (Photo credit: GOL)
Next year is an electoral one and some of those who told us the ICC would do miracles and now celebrate the slap in the face it gave to the victims, will be candidates. They will promise a thousand miracles and when some foreign institution or president says no, they will celebrate it and try to convince us that the defeat was a victory. Changing the saying by Mao, they go from victory to victory to final defeat. Plutarch is as relevant today as ever.
End.
“NOT FORGOTTEN” banner carried on a march in Bogatá on the 6th March, the Day of Victims of State Violence. (Photo credit: GOL)
For months the Duque government in Colombia has been unleashing violent repression on its people, in particular those who organise or participate in protests. The statistics are frightening, which is what they are intended to be: 40 dead, hundreds injured (some with loss of an eye), nearly 170 “disappeared”. Yet the people continue to protest.
What all this has exposed is that Colombia, despite its support by western states, has no democracy and that its vaunted “peace process”, like all others elsewhere before it or since, has had nothing to do with peace but everything to do with pacification. Unlike many in other parts of the world however, its acceptance by the FARC was the prelude to intensified State repression, with assassinations of leaders and activists of popular democratic movements. Also exposed is the lie that Colombia and the USA are truly involved in a “War on Drugs”, a commodity the sale of in which most of the political class of Colombia are involved and the profits in which the financial institutions in Colombia and much of the world are active in laundering.
Meanwhile, the people are subjected to economic squeeze, they protest, they are shot, beaten, tortured, raped, disappear ….
This police victim survived but many did not (Photo source: Gearóid Ó Loingsigh)
In two weeks of protests, statistics from the Defensoria del Pueblo (a kind of Ombudsman), listed 42 dead and 168 reported “disappeared”; of the dead, 41 were civilians and one was a member of the State security forces. A 17-year-old female demonstrator was reportedly sexually abused by four police officers and took her own life afterwards. Protesters burned the station where it happened but the officers themselves remain at large.
Protestors burning the station where police officers sexually violated a 17-year-old demonstrator who took her own life afterwards.
WHO KILLED VILLA?
Lucas Villa Vasquez, an iconic figure in the peaceful demonstrations, dancing and carrying out acrobatic acts, was shot during the General Strike, was declared brain dead in hospital and had his life-support system turned off, his heart stopping finally on 11th of May. Andrés Felipe Castaño, a 17-year-old youth shot on the same day underwent two operations before he could come off the critical list.
Who killed Villa? Not Duque, the President wanted people to believe as he sent a message of condolence to Villa’s family, the first personal condolence he has offered since the demonstrations – and the killing – began, except for the one police officer killed so far. Not the Police, their Director General, Major General Jorge Luis Vargas Valencia insisted, insisting his force is working hard to find the culprits and that a reward for information has risen to 100 million pesos1 for information. But people who know how these things work are only in doubt about one question: was it the police themselves who killed Villa and nearly killed Andrés Felipe, or was it one of the State-sponsored fascist gangs (which have strong links with the police and army)?
Dilan Cruz, murdered by police two years ago, is remembered on demonstrations where people are still being killed. (Photo source: Gearóid Ó Loingsigh)
Villa has joined over 40 martyrs known to have been killed by the forces of the State; since their names are known only to their families or smaller political and social circles, Villa’s name stands for them all. As did Dilan Cruz before him, shot at close range to the head by a “non-lethal” beanbag in October 2019. And what of the nearly 170 disappeared? Are some of them already dumped into pits or rivers? Others in prison cells, awaiting their next session with the torturers? Or in the case of female prisoners, awaiting their next incident of violation?
Man in blue top and white trousers dancing in some clips was Lucas Villa Vasquez
Two Latin American league soccer matches in Colombia were affected on Wednesday: Visitors from Argentina’s River Plate team had their warm-up in Barranquilla abandoned for awhile due to the volume of police tear gas drifting in from outside and loud bangs could be heard also. That was a Copa Libertadores game and another, between Atletico Nacional and Nacional of Uruguay in Pereira was delayed by an hour due to protests there.
The South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) moved matches from Colombia to Paraguay and Ecuador last week to ensure the protests did not affect games but the Copa America is due to be held in Colombia and Argentina next month with Colombia hosting 15 games including the final of the world’s oldest international tournament. The title match is due to be held in Barranquilla on July 10.
“SUSTAINABLE SOLIDARITY” WITH WHOM?
Part of the reason for the protests in the first place was the proposed tax reform by another name: Sustainable Solidarity Law. The Duque Government plans by this system to collect 23 billions in Colombian pesos (US$ 6,300 millions) by extending its tax base, to avoid any further increase in the country’s international risk qualification, to institutionalise the basic income level and build a fund to comply with its environmental protection targets.
Well, ok, but who is going to pay this tax-by-another name? According to the Minister of Finance himself, Alberto Carrasquilla, 73% is to be contributed by ordinary citizens and the rest by the companies.
Art in active resistance
In addition, the law proposes to apply the collection of Value Added Tax, which in Colombia is up to 19%, to basic consumer products such as public services (water, electricity and gas), funeral services, electronic items such as computers and other services that have been exempt until now.
Add to that ongoing State repression in the countryside, the number of unemployed nationally rising to 4.1 million as a result of the pandemic and the country was ready to take to the streets. But not ready for the repression of the demonstrators that followed.
Riot Policeman aims weapon at point-blank range at unarmed demonstrators in Colombia. Whether tear-gas canister or stun grenade launcher, at this range it would almost certainly kill but if not, partial or full blindness would be likely along with permanent brain damage. (Photo source: Internet)
President Duque asked the Colombian Parliament to withdraw the new tax reform which they did but the people are on their feet now, as they say there; now they have martyrs too on top of the issues they already had.
WHAT CAN BE DONE?
It is up to the people of Colombia, the workers, civil servants, small business people, indigenous – to free themselves. None else can do it. But we owe them solidarity, just as we in turn have claimed solidarity (and will claim again) from others. It is difficult at the moment to see how our solidarity can express itself in much more than symbolic form, such as pickets, demonstrations, articles and memes on social media. But even those have more than a moral effect, for the Colombian Embassy staff here have as part of their duties to collect information on how the regime in Colombia is viewed in Ireland and to report that to their bosses at home. And since the Colombian ruling class needs to do business around the world ….
Recent small Colombian solidarity picket protest outside the Colombian Embassy in Dublin.
The Colombian masses also need to know that they do not stand alone, that others are watching, applauding them, cursing their enemies, mourning their martyrs.
We can also assist by continuing our efforts against another faraway enemy of democracy, the main instigator and protector of reaction, repression and oppression around the world, and main external supporter of the Colombian regime, trainer of its repressive forces – the ruling class of the United States of America.
Solidaridad con el pueblo Colombiano! Dlúthpháirtíocht le poball na Colóime!
Banner slogan: “The Tax Reform means Hunger and Misery for the people.” (Photo source: Gearóid Ó Loingsigh)
TV news report on the general strike, general protests against killing by government forces; mothers and grandmothers of murdered protesters demonstrate against “Public Order” forces; Duque tries to present concern and gives a concession to students at a certain level: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz8ed0hS6OQ
Iván Ramírez was the last of those arrested for the Andino Case to be freed by the Colombian authorities after spending almost four years arrested as part of the legal frame up. I spoke to him a number of weeks after his release.
Ivan Ramirez, managing to smile after his ordeal (Photo: G.Ó.Loingsigh).
Iván graduated from the National University as a sociologist and before his arrest he worked for the National Centre for Historical Memory (CNMH) as part of an accord with the official German international aid agency GIZ. His work consisted of carrying out workshops to collate information on the murders and massacres committed against members of the Unión Patriótica in the department (administrative area) of Meta in order to build a Memory Centre in the city of Villavicencio. This centre was never built and when his house was raided the Police took various files collected as part of his work. He also worked on the issue of the infamous Massacre of Trujillo, carried out by the Third Division of the Army whose boss, not to say capo, Manuel Bonnet Locarno would become the highest commander of the State’s armed forces. There was a chance of continuing to work with this body, but his arrest put paid to any hope of a new job with them and he went on to be part of another nefarious chapter in the Colombian State’s war on its own people.
“At that time, I didn’t think about it, but neither was I unaware that the activity I was engaged in — e.g. academic or professional life — could have certain consequences. Well, looking at our national history and context, you realise no one is immune from ending up in prison or being murdered for political reasons. So I never thought I would end up being part of a judicial frame up. Obviously in the context that one looks at the background and cases of other people that were also sociologists who had been victims of frame ups, well it was always possible, but it wasn’t on my mind.“
Prior to his arrest, two of the people he had known in Meta in the context of his work with the CNMH were murdered. Little did he know that in a short time he would go on to be part of the sad story of the dirty war against social fighters and the judicial frame ups. Neither did he know that documents related to his legal work with a state body would be presented in court as evidence against him. Almost every researcher of the Colombian conflict has a copy of the report ¡Basta Ya! (Enough!) published by the CNMH.
It was not the only document that they took from his house as evidence.
“There were also texts on the history of the insurgencies that are also academic works in Colombia and in the hearing they were introduced, as propaganda texts when when they were really academic documents and there was one on the Quintin Lame armed movement which was also published by the National Centre for Historic Memory. They are publicly available documents and as a professional you have to study them.“
A prosecutor has to be really stupid or desperate in the face of the weakness of his case to introduce such documents in a trial. Amongst the credits for these documents are the name of ministers and high-ranking politicians such as Germán Vargas Lleras, Angelino Garzón the former Vice-President of the country and the publication was financed by the European Union, the Spanish Embassy and the official wing of the US government USAID. It would seem that the Prosecutor saw subversives everywhere. Though it should be pointed out that this type of manoeuvre is common and there are many cases where the prosecutors introduced widely published books as evidence. It would seem, on occasions that the prosecutors have not even read the Penal Code, less still would they read literature or sociological texts.
The evidence against him was not the only farce, his arrest seemed like an episode of Key Stone Cops.
“I was arrested four times. The first time was in Bogotá on public transport. I was going to meet my partner at some workshops she was doing to start working at Compensar. I was in a public transport bus at about four in the evening, I was going towards the centre. I was in the bus and some motorised cops stopped the bus. They took three people off it. They asked for our I.D. and they gave the I.D. back to the two others and let them go. They detained me under the pretext that I was supposedly a burglar. There was a white van behind the bus and one of the cops told me to get into it and that my accomplice was in it. When they opened the van, there was a very suspicious looking guy inside and the first thought that went through my head, was that they are going to do something to me, kill me or disappear me.“
He didn’t want to get in the van and told the police that he didn’t trust them, but even so, they took him to the Police Station as a suspected burglar and moved him from one place to another at all times as a suspected burglar. At last they took him in handcuffs to his apartment, whilst they interrogated him about his family. When he got there two secret police officers turned up to search his home.
“They went into the house and went through absolutely everything. It began at 7.30 P.M. and lasted till 2 A.M. It was an irregular procedure, when house searches are carried out after 7 P.M. there must be a representative of a supervisory body present and there wasn’t. In the preliminary hearings, I was freed due to the illegal nature of my arrest.“
THE “TALIBAN”
He went to Sasaima, a county in Cundinamarca, near Bogotá, seeking some peace and quiet, but the nightmare followed him there and he noticed the presence of plain clothes police following him and hanging around the town, which made him anxious as the difference between a plain clothes police officer and a paramilitary is one of opportunity and convenience. In this second arrest he was presented to the media as the worst terrorist. He was called alias The Taliban (1), perhaps a reference to his physical appearance or a play on words with his name, but as they later acknowledged this nickname was invented by the police themselves, but it was not the only stupidity in the case. When he shaved, this was presented as evidence of his presumed guilt by trying to change his appearance. The process against him is a complete farce from start to finish. But as a result of it he spent almost four years in prison and during his imprisonment his daughter was born and he could only see her during normal visits, once a fortnight. The searches and treatment were the usual ones, a Colombian prisoner receives no special treatment for being the father of a newly born child, “to them, even if the person is blind or is paralysed in 90% of their body, they are just another prisoner”.
As a sociologist Iván well understands the problems of the country and the rampant inequality. His experience in the prison confirmed that. He saw the luxuries enjoyed by some and the poverty of others depending on the wing they were held on. When he was in the Modelo Prison, for reasons unknown to him, he was transferred to Wing 3. There he saw another prison world.
“You see how people with money live inside the prison with lots of privileges whilst there were other prisoners who had nowhere to sleep, they had to make do with cardboard, no food. On Wing 3 there was a lot more space and a library, it was impressive, a very good coffee shop and very good workshops. There was a good gym, it was big with gym machines, not just free weights and ovens to cook with.“
Ivan Ramirez in a serious moment (Photo: G.Ó.Loingsigh).
CAPITALISM WITHIN THE JAIL
Of course, on Wing 3 there were various high level prisoners, from the Odebrecht case (2) and also from Interbolsa (3). It could also be seen in that some of the cells cost up to 12 million pesos (3000 euros), in addition to the monthly rent. Property speculation takes place inside the walls, especially where there are prisoners of that ilk. Capitalism doesn’t stop at the gate, but rather it reproduces itself within the prison system.
Iván was the last one to be freed. As happened with the others the Prosecutors sought out judges in their pockets to justify the unjustifiable, and between those manoeuvres and the lethargy of the prison service in obeying orders, he was imprisoned over and again without ever really stepping out into freedom. In one of his rearrests a Prosecutor from Popayán legalised his arrest in a court in Medellín when the criminal case is in Bogotá and then they applied a law passed after his first arrest and the events. Although he did hold on to some hope, he knew that in Colombia many judges are not objective and don’t always make findings in law, causing him to despair, as happens with many prisoners in the country, who are unjustly imprisoned, at the mercy of the whim of the judge on duty, or as happens with many, they lack the money to hire a good lawyer.
After his last rearrest Iván did not go back to prison, instead he was held for various months in a Police Station, a place of detention which is supposedly temporary, although there are people held in them for up to a year or more, in places like that where the conditions of imprisonment are worse than in the jails, if that were possible.
“In that Station, overcrowding was at 100%. For example, in the cell I was in, it was very small, about 3 x 8 metres, or something like that and there were more than 100 people held in difficult sanitary conditions, you had sleep on top of each other and you couldn’t stretch. You spent the day sitting down, there was no way to walk or exercise. The food was also rancid and you had to eat it.“
His view of a certain class of prisoner changed having seen how some of them also fought for their dignity. “The kid who sells drugs, the bloke who robs buses and others, are sometimes classed as worthless people, but it is simply the circumstances that bring people along a different path and that shouldn’t be judged but rather understood in all its complexity.”
Iván, the sociologist lived through a field work on the injustices of the legal system, the dirty war in Colombia, poverty, inequality that no one wants to go through. His passage through the halls of injustice have not quenched his thirst for knowledge and like his fellow accused in the Andino Case he continues to be committed to a better future for this country.
end.
FOOTNOTES
In Colombian Spanish, “that guy Ivan”, el tal Ivan, pronounced the same as “the Taliban”.
Two soldiers, Jhony Andrés Castillo Ospino, and Jesús Alberto Muñoz Segovia, fell into the hands of the ELN (Army of National Liberation in Colombia — Translator). Their capture produced the same reactions as always, they were referred to as ‘kidnapped’ when in reality they were prisoners of war. When the ELN gave proof of the soldiers’ survival, the criticisms did not end. When they were released, one would have expected everyone to be happy. But it turns out not to be so, it seems that the worst act of the ELN is to release soldiers safe and sound and also with a friendly attitude.
In this case, the press was upset at the release. It seems that a tragic outcome was preferable, that two dead soldiers would have been a better option than two soldiers released alive. But of course, as in the case of witnesses and false positives, the living speak and what they say can be uncomfortable.
The survival video has elements that could seem like a setup, in the sense of the soldiers’ statements, since they say favourable things about the ELN regarding their treatment of prisoners, etc. Well, the captured soldiers are not used to speaking in front of a camera so formally, although the truth be told if we are honest, the most objectionable thing about that video is the music that the ELN plays in the background. It is well known that the quality of the ELN’s videos depends on the group that produces them and the producer in charge and, although there are good productions, they are not always the best, but in the end they are a guerrilla group, not an audiovisual production franchise.
But when the soldiers were released, they were able to speak freely, and production depended on those who earn their daily bread by producing news. However, it backfired. The soldier Jhony Andrés spoke to the media and said that he was happy to be able to see his family, something that incidentally is worth noting in that as a professional low-ranking soldier, that is something he does not do very often even when he is free, because they give them just a month to see their families. The other 11 months of the year are spent kidnapped by the death machine called the Colombian National Army.
But if they had stayed with his comments about his desire to see his relatives, everything would have been fine. But no, because Segovia said that “I feel happy about the time I spent with those people, when we talked, we chatted and also the good treatment that those people gave us”. [1]
But as reported by the press, Jhony Andrés Castillo Ospino went beyond referring to simple good treatment.
“The truth is that they treated me well from the beginning, so that I felt like being close to them. The truth is that I have nothing to say, like something bad, that they treated me badly, “said the soldier.
Later, when asked how he felt about seeing his relatives again, he replied: “The truth is, happy, happy, but at the same time sad because I was already getting to like them,” he said (referring to his captors — Trans). [2]
And the cited article points out, “It is possible that the soldier was presenting Stockholm syndrome that generates affectivity with the captor in defenceless situations.” [3] Of course, the only explanation for his (Ospino’s) statements is that he fell into Stockholm syndrome, there could be nothing else. First of all, we must clarify that this syndrome is contested among mental health professionals. It doesn’t really exist, it is a fiction. The psychiatrist, Nils Bejerot, who invented the condition is a promoter of many reactionary theories of crime and jail such as zero tolerance for drug use, that is, the mass incarceration we have seen of poor blacks and Latinos in the US. He stresses the individual’s responsibility for any crime. When in 1973 three women and a man were taken hostage inside a bank, he went to work with the police in negotiations. As the hostages showed some sympathy towards the assailants, he explained it as a medical syndrome, the Stockholm Syndrome, as it cannot be explained otherwise. How could they understand the kidnappers at the bank!
Bejerot discards any concept of empathy, recognition of a shared humanity, and of course that even a person attacked by another, can recognise that his main real enemy is yet another and would not be in the situation in which he is if it were not for greed of capitalism and that a person, even suffering the violence of a criminal, can see in his aggressor his peer and not his enemy. Bejerot, more than a mental health professional, is an apologist for the reigning individualism of capitalism, where there is no society only individuals.
Now the young soldier is another sick person because he found that the ELN do not eat new-born babies, they do not torture captured soldiers and that he received better treatment as a prisoner of the ELN than in the Army where he participated “voluntarily”. He saw his fellow men, and received good treatment.
Where one received the worst treatment is when one is presented as a false positive by the Colombian National Army, or where they are tortured or disappear. But that did not happen to the two soldiers. That does not happen with the soldiers who fall into the hands of the ELN, that only happens with those who fall into the hands of the National Army. If there is the misnamed Stockholm Syndrome, it is with the millions who vote for Uribe, those who voluntarily enter the Colombian armed forces and not those soldiers who, after seeing the reality of the country, come out with statements in favour of the insurgency, the ELN, which does not propose to torture or disappear anyone.
Leave your dubious syndromes behind and recognize in that soldier the reality of those who fight on one side and on the other. But at the same time, we must say clearly that the future of that soldier is not good. Either they force him to recant, or they kill him themselves in “combat” to be able to tell the country “look what the ELN is doing.” In any case, the life of that soldier is already in danger, not because of those who captured him but because of his supposed friends from the Colombian armed forces and the press. If I were him I would looking at retirement and even exile in another country, perhaps among those other demons and monsters of Venezuela.
End
USA Green Beret receives Lancero designation badge from Colombian Army General in Colombia.
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