A multiple and pluralistic reading of history

A multiple and pluralistic reading of history
Commission on History of the conflict and their victims
Eduardo Pizarro Leongomez
Trials1
1 in the appointments of footer along the rapporteurship we will limit ourselves
to mentioning the name of the author of the aforementioned essay
and the page that shows the comment or the phrase we have used.
1. Gustavo Duncan,
Exclusion, insurgency and crime
2. Jairo Estrada, capitalist accumulation, class domination and subversion.
Elements for a historical interpretation of the social and armed conflict
3. Dario Fajardo, Study on the origins of the social conflict armed, reasons for
its persistence
and its most profound effects in Colombian society
4. Javier Giraldo,
its persistence
and its impacts
5. Jorge Giraldo,
contributions on the origin of the armed conflict in Colombia,
politics and war without compassion
6. Francisco Gutiérrez,
7. Alfredo Molano,
does a simple story?
fragments of the history of armed conflict (1920-2010)
8. Daniel Pecaut,
litical
a armed conflict at the service of the social status quo and po
9. Vicente Torrijos, Cartography of the conflict: interpretive guidelines on the
evolution of the
Colombian conflict irregular
10. Renan Vega,
State
interference of the United States, insurgency and terrorism of
11. Mary Emma Wills,
The three knots of the Colombian war
12. Sergio de Zubiria, "cultural and political dimensions in the Colombian confl
ict"
Summary
Introduction
I. The origins and the multiple causes of internal armed conflict
1. Temporary Origin
(A)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
long time, average time
continuities and ruptures
The modern armed conflict
The National Front or the appeasement of the blood feuds
of the appeasement to the widespread violence
2. Specification 3
. Actors in the conflict
4. Factors, actors, joints, and dynamics of the conflict
II. Major factors and conditions that have facilitated or contributed to the per
sistence of
conflict
1. The drug trafficking
2. Patterns of violence against civilians: the role of the kidnapping and extort
ion
3. Institutional Precariousness
4. The private provision of coercion/security
5. Weapons and ballot box
6. Political System ingratiating-parochial
7. Inequity, property rights and agricultural issue
8. The vicious circle of violence
III. The effects and impacts of the most notorious conflict on population
1. Definition of victim
2. Typology of victimization, number of victims and agents responsible
3. The impacts of violence in the economy, equity, politics and culture
Conclusions Introduction In
May of 1958, the Military Junta Government convened the National Commission
investigating the causes and current situations of violence in the National Terr
itory
in order to carry out a diagnosis of the causes of the violence and to propose
measures to overcome it through plans of pacification, social assistance and
rehabilitation. The researcher
, as it was known in his time, led by the
former minister and liberal writer, Otto Morales Benitez, had a very short life,
from May 1958
to January 1959, that is to say, mere nine months, and its results were not sati
sfactory
.
According to the analysis provided by the professor Jefferson Jaramillo, a very
knowledgeable of the subject, since then it has been
at least twelve similar commissions2 designed as
tools to help overcome the chronic violence the country has endured
, including the National Commission on Violence3 and the National Center for Mem
ory
Historica4.
2 Jefferson Jaramillo, past and present of the violence in Colombia. Study on th
e commissions of inquiry
(1958-2011), Bogota, Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2014, p. 34 ET
seq.
3 Commission of Studies on Violence, Colombia: violence and democracy, Bogotá, Nat
ional University of
Colombia, 1987.
4 National Center of Historical Memory, Enough is Enough! Colombia: memory of wa
r and dignity, Bogotá,
National Printing Press, 2013.
5 The CHCV is not and should not be confused with a Truth Commission. The CHCV w
as not itself a
channel of expression of the victims. However, these tests, as says the agreemen
t signed between the government
and the FARC, you must serve the future Commission of Truth as a useful input an
d indispensable
.
The vast majority of Colombians expected, however, that we are dealing with now
will be the last commission of these characteristics, before the closure of the
symbolic already long
armed conflict, through a Truth Commission, which we can encourage in some
appropriate time in the futuro5.
The Commission on History of the conflict and their victims (CHCV), installed in
Havana on 21 August
2014, was created by the peace table in the framework of the general agreement fo
r the completion of the
conflict and the construction of a stable and lasting peace , signed by the
national government and the FARC on 26 August 2012. This Commission has, however
,
a special feature when compared with those of the past: its members were not app
ointed by the
national government, but, through an agreement between the two parties involved
in the peace negotiations
in Cuba6, with the objective to contribute to the understanding of the complexity
of the
historical context of the internal conflict7 and for providing inputs for the
delegations in the discussion of different points of general agreement that are
pending
, in particular the point 5 of the agenda, the issue of the victims.
6 Jefferson Jaramillo, The Historical Commission of Havana: background and challe
nges , in Public Reason
http://www.razonpublica.com/index.php/conflicto-drogas-y-paz-temas-30.html..
7 Given the enormous diversity of terms used by the various essayists to charact
erize the
armed confrontation, which the country has suffered since the inception of the N
ational Front (war,
armed conflict social, asymmetric warfare, among others), along the rapporteursh
ip we are going to use the more generic notion of
internal armed conflict
, that is to say, which is used in the documents themselve
s to the peace table in Havana
.
The Commission was composed of twelve experts, each of which should develop
with total autonomy and intellectual rigor, a report in relation to three key po
ints
defined by the Bureau of Peace: (a) The origins and the multiple causes of the c
onflict; (b)
major factors and conditions that have facilitated or contributed to the persist
ence of the conflict
and (c) the effects and impacts more notorious of the conflict on the population
. On the basis of these reports
from the twelve experts, the two rapporteurs were required to prepare a
synthesis report, reflecting with greater objectivity consensus-building, and th
e disagreements and the plurality of views
of the experts. Finally, as we explained in a joint introduction,
we have decided to give two rapporteurs to deepen the spirit plural which has gu
ided the
work of the CHCV.
According to the communiqué No. 40 Of the peace table in which it was announced th
e
creation of CHCV, the final report (which includes the twelve tests and two rapp
orteurships),
must be a vital input for the understanding of the complexity of the conflict and
the responsibilities of those who have participated in or had an effect on the s
ame, and
to determine the truth . But, in any case, the CHCV had the power to determine
individual responsibilities nor of prosecuting those responsible.
The text of Daniel Pecaut begins by stating that even when it comes to
events that are considered historical ruptures on the scale of the great revolut
ions
or the great wars, that oblige us to consider without a shadow of doubt that the
re is a
before and after a
, the debate on the origins or on the multiplicity of causes
never closes 8. This same conviction mood to the peace table from Havana to
ask twelve scholars an individual trial, not looking for a unique vision - which
is impossible,
at least in the field of history and the social sciences-, but a multiplicity of
viewpoints. The outcome of this exercise demonstrated the existence of consensus
, but
, equally, of dissension on the three themes chosen: origin, factors of
persistence and victims and the impact of the conflict. These dissents can spark
a debate
much more productive, to delve into a democratic culture founded in the
recognition of the other and in the right to dissent and difference, that a so-c
alled
unanimous narrative.
8 Daniel Pecaut, p. 1. We could add an additional fact that it is virtually impo
ssible to have a single story: the absence of sufficient
historical perspective, therefore, to a large extent we are referring to a histo
ry of the present
, given that there is still the political violence in the country. If you are sti
ll vivid discussions on the
significance, for example, of the wars of independence, how to think that there
might be
consensus on total historical processes in course?
9 For the sake of integrating under a common name the many terms used in the tes
ts to refer to
the
factors (Molano, p. 1), knots (Wills, p. 1),
trigger factor (Fajardo, p. 3),
multiplicity of causes (Zubiria, p. 4) Or others who have contributed to the viole
nce that has hit the country,
The Rapporteurship has as main objective to carry out a map and more balanced an
d rigorous as possible
of the thesis and the arguments contained in the twelve tests; and, through a br
eakdown of
the three thematic topics, highlight both consensus and disagreements
multiagency of these readings. We are far short of a impossible and undesirable
o
fficial history or
an equally impossible and undesirable single truth . On the contrary, these tests
should serve to the peace table and Colombians in general open a wide-ranging di
scussion about
what happened to us, why we are step and as overcome it. That is to say that the
Rapporteurship
is an invitation to the pluralistic and democratic dialog and, we must emphasize
this point, it is only
a tight synthesis of the thesis contained in the twelve tests. His reading does
not replace
nor is it intended to replace the great wealth that analytical contain the vario
us texts presented
by the commissioners. It is therefore a general guide for your reading.
On the other hand, it is interesting to note that, despite the profound differen
ces of approach in the
tests, many agree highlight certain
9 geological faults in the construction of
we have chosen the metaphor more neutral of the geological faults (ECLAC-UNDP-IDBFLACSO, Latin America
and the crisis, Santiago de Chile, 1999) or
geological fractures (Raul Urzúa and Fe
lipe Aguero (eds. ), fractures
of democratic governance, Santiago de Chile, 1998). In no way this metaphor
can lead us to think in objective causes permanent and unchangeable. In fact, one
of the main factors
of violence in the fifties, the sectarian culture
bipartisan, disappeared under t
he National Front
.
10 The nation of presence
throughout his prolific
intellectual work.
traumatic State was coined by Professor Pierre Gilhodes,
11 Sergio de Zubiria, speaks of the failure or indefinite postponement of social
reforms , p. 17, As one of the evils of
the Colombian society.
the Colombian nation that, in certain circumstances and under various strategies
from different
political and armed actors, have served as a substrate for the unleashing of
acts of violence. For example: the agrarian question, the institutional weakness
, the Honda
income inequality, the trend to the simultaneous use of the weapons and the poll
s or the
presence precarious or, in some occasions, traumatic of the State in many region
s of the
Congress.10 territory. The history of Colombia is, from this perspective the his
tory of the
indefinite postponement of necessary changes, both in state institutions and soc
ial structures
, such as in the conduct of the actores11.
The emphasis in these tasks always postponed, these trials may contribute to the
design of a
post-conflict in peace, solid and durable. That is to say, the analysis presente
d by
the Commissioners can have not only a analytical value, but that could contribut
e
to the design of public policies necessary and urgent in order to consolidate th
e peace.
Given the great diversity of perspectives on tests, it is important that both th
e peace table
as the readers of the special rapporteur and the twelve tests know in advance wh
ich
have been the thematic axs object greater controversy and, in the same way, in t
hat land there has been
consensus and in which dissent. As you can see the reader, these themes
have been precisely the framework on which has been structured is rapporteurship
:
- The determination of historical time
- the continuities and ruptures between the period of the violence and the curre
nt conflict the characterization of the internal armed conflict
- the determination of the responsible agents
- the factors that have influenced the emergence of the guerrilla in the sixties
and the paramilitaries in the eighties
- The evaluation of the National Front
- The explanatory factors of the new wave of violence from the eighties
- The factors that have an effect on the continuation of the armed conflict in C
olombia
to contrast with the rest of Latin America
- The universe of victims, the suffering and the responsibilities of the various
actors
- Impacts Violence in the culture, democracy, equity, and
citizen protest
- the characterization of the armed rebellion in Colombia, either is characteriz
ed
as legitimate or, on the contrary, as an unjust war.
Enrique Santos Calderón has pointed out with regard to the motives that led him to
assume an important role
in the early stages of the current peace negotiations, which
felt a combination of political duty, personal obligation, moral commitment 12.
These are also my own motivations. A political responsibility, as I am aware
of the need to contribute to overcoming the armed conflict that affects
our country. A personal and intellectual responsibility, given that I've been li
nked most of my professional life
chores to the university, to research and
teaching. AND a moral responsibility, because I agree with the majority of Colom
bians
the urgency to build a peace process by taking as a vertex the values of respect
for
human life, democracy and social justice.
12 Enrique Santos Calderón, how it all began. The first face-to-face between the F
ARC and the government in Havana
, Bogotá, Intermediate Publishers, 2014, p. 35.
I. The origins and the multiple causes of internal armed conflict
1. Temporary Origin
In general, to discuss the origins of the armed conflict the various essayists a
re in turn
raise their hypotheses about the reasons that influenced their outbreak. For thi
s reason
, the discussion that follows is not only temporary but entails
differing positions about causal factors or triggers, in which we find
both convergences as substantive differences.
(A) long time, half time
In the essays submitted there are those who consider necessary to go back to the
remote past
to clarify the factors that have influenced the various periods of violence
that has hit the country, including, the reciente13. Others believe that, while
the current violence
reflects distant echoes of the past, its actors and their dynamics can be studie
d
only by taking into consideration a historical period more restricted. This was
the case of Francisco
Gutiérrez, Gustavo Duncan, Jorge Giraldo and Vicente Torrijos who, without
ignoring the value of a wide historical look -which references to menudoprefirie
ron
focus their interpretations in the period subsequent to the National Front. Dani
el Pecaut
chose a middle path, as you begin your analysis through the study of the
factors that, in his view, impacted during the Liberal Republic in the violence
of the fifties and its subsequent impact on the contemporary history of the coun
try. Dario
Fajardo, Alfredo Molano, Sergio de Zubiria and Javier Giraldo begin their storie
s with the emergence of
the agrarian conflicts in the twenties.
13 This is the case of Renan Vega, whose essay primarily focuses on the relation
s between Colombia and
the United States. Vega from the early nineteenth century and divides his essay
in five major periods:
Phase I: from the birth of the Republic (1821) until the end of conservative heg
emony (1930); Phase II:
the Liberal Republic (1930-1946); Phase III: from the Inter-american Treaty of R
eciprocal Assistance (RIO TREATY
) from 1947 until the US military mission of William P. Yarborough in 1962; Phas
e IV: from the beginnings of the
modern counterinsurgency (1962) until the Plan Colombia (1999); and, Phase V: Pl
an Colombia 2014. This essayist, one of the factors that could explain the violence in Colom
bia is
chronic the subordination of the elites in Washington.
14 Mary Emma Wills, p. 4.
15 The only exception was, according to the author, Uruguay (p. 4, Appointment,
11), a country which was affected both or more than Colombia
by harsh civil wars between whites and the colorados in the nineteenth century,
but that, after the last
confrontation in 1904, was opened to a bipartisan model Civilist, secular, under
the baton of José Batlle y Ordóñez
.
Mary Emma Wills followed, as Renan Vega, the first approach and I believe that i
t is essential
a gaze of long duration to understand in depth the present, studying the particu
larities
of the formation of the nation state (which can be distinguished from other count
ries
of the continent by its sequence and articulation historical 14. From their point
of view,
the particularity of Colombia arises from a key fact: the Liberal and Conservati
ve parties
were forged prior to the consolidation of the State and became central actors in
the
process of imagination and inculcation of a nacional15 community, with its
multi-sector networks type of clientele, its role of articulating angles between
the regions and the center,
and their mobilization based both on the ballot as arms.
This political model-partisan was given in a country characterized by multiple r
egions
relatively autonomous, a little integrated domestic market, a peasantry in the
margins of the agricultural frontier weakly represented and a very
fragile state construction. According to Maria Emma Wills, the State had very li
mited fiscal resources, a
precarious army and a non-professional bureaucracy, which renewed kept pace with
the changes in
partidista16 hegemony. In this context, the armed clashes were
recurrent. In fact, throughout the nineteenth century there were eight civil war
s of national character
and fourteen in the regional level.
16 Mary Emma Wills, p. 7.
17 Steven Pinker, the better angels of our nature. Why violence has declined, Ne
w York, Viking Penguin,
2011, pp. 86-87.
According to several tests, probably the most characteristic feature of Colombia
during the nineteenth century
and the first half of the twentieth century, was the confrontation between a rel
igious vision
and a liberal vision of the world, without that other aspects have a significanc
e
in determining the political division. This could explain the weight of the
ideol
ogies in Colombian politics
and the ease with which they have been given a sacred character to the end,
allowing the use of questionable means.
However, after the last civil war traditional, the so-called war of a Thousand D
ays
(1899-1902), the country experienced an extended period of relative calm, almost
half a century, dotted
here and there by episodic acts of violence (such as the massacre of the banana
plantations or victims of
sectarian violence following the end of conservative hegemony). In open
contrast with almost all the rest of Latin America, Colombia is succeeding elect
ions
and civil governments. It is more. In the thirties of the last century homicide
rates
in Colombia, between 5 and 8 homicides per hundred thousand population per year,
were similar and,
in some cases, lower than those of some nations europeas17. However, in the late
forties
Colombia expiring immersed in a new period of violence, the
violence (in uppercase). According to data from the Police and the Ministry of
Justice, one can say with
some certainty that in 1946 the homicide rate had risen in the country
to ten per hundred thousand habitantes18.
18 Mario Chacon and Fabio Sánchez, violence and political polarization during the v
iolence, 1948-1965 ,
Documents CEDE, Universidad de Los Andes, 2004.
19 Daniel Pecaut, p. 3.
20 On the meaning and implications of this sectarian
culture , it is interesting t
o read the now classic work of
Malcolm deas and its exciting compared with Northern Ireland: violent exchanges.
Reflections on
the political violence in Colombia, Bogota, Taurus, 1999.
What happened to make this happen?
Daniel Pecaut argues that, in the years prior to the violence, two specific trai
ts that
distinguish the history of Colombia of the other nations in Latin America
still stood out with clarity. On the one hand, the
tyrannic regime , i.e. the predo
minance of the civilian elite
on the military institution; and, on the other hand, the precariousness of the s
ymbology national 19.
But in those same years two new features to be added: on the one hand, a widenin
g of
the accession of the population to the two traditional parties which, more than
simple
machines politico-electoral, shape as two genuine warring political subcultures
and, on the other hand, the adoption by the elites of a liberal model of develop
ment
in open contrast with the mobilizations national-populist or nacionalautoritaria
s
that dominated the latin american outlook of the time.
That is to say, while in Colombia were dominated by a model of joint political-p
artisan
of the population based on a sectarian
culture 20, exclusive, in many other countr
ies of the continent are
articulated to the emerging urban classes through a speech of
national integration. The two sharp changes in the political hegemony that occur
red in 1930
and 1946 are going to accentuate the deep commitment that partisan, in fact, rep
lace the
references to a common citizenship. On both dates a division of the dominant par
ty
provided the electoral triumph of the opposite party and, equally, on the same d
ates were unleashed
interpartidistas episodes of violence. In 1930, the division of the ruling party
between two candidates, Guillermo Valencia and Alfredo Vasquez Cobo, you facilit
ated to Enrique
Olaya Herrera access to power with meager 369,934 votes, that is to say, being a
minority force. In this change of the political hegemony there were many acts of
sectarian violence against the followers of the defeated party, especially in th
e departments of
Boyacá, Santander and Norte de Santander. According to some historians, the memory
of
these events will serve as an incentive for the acts of violence that will live
the country
two decades more tarde21. Something similar to what happened in 1930 took place
in 1946 with the
division of the Liberal Party between Gabriel Turbay and Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, which
opened the doors
of the presidency to Mariano Ospina Perez with a 40.5 % of the votes. From that
year
they returned to live episodes of sectarian violence, in particular in the same
departments
of 1930 (Boyaca and the two¡ and Santanderes destination routes), which, after the
assassination of Gaitan, were aggravated
and spread to other regions of the country.
21 Cf., Javier Guerrero, the years of oblivion. Boyacá and the origins of violence
, in Third World
Editors/IEPRI, 1991.
22 Daniel Pecaut, p. 7.
A fact that facilitated the gestation of a climate of bipolar confrontation in t
hese years was the weakness
(PCC) and, in some cases, the failure of the
third parties (such as, bread, and
the UNITE), since the bipartisanship had no strong challenges. The Communist Par
ty,
whose birth coincided with the change of political hegemony in 1930, after a sho
rt time
by applying the ultra radical theses of the Communist International of class aga
inst class ,
joined the spirit of the popular fronts approved in the VII Congress of the Comi
ntern
(Moscow, 1935) and ended up being an appendix to the Liberal Party for more than
a decada22.
With few exceptions (Honduras, Paraguay and Uruguay), the bipartisanship in Colo
mbia remained
intact, while in the majority of nations in Latin America arose
other parties at the beginning of the twentieth century that defied with success
that bipolar model:
parties communists, socialists, radicals or other that reflected the interests o
f the
emerging urban classes. In Colombia, the Liberal Party became in the thirties in
the
spokesperson of the middle classes and, above all, of the nascent working class.
During these years, an external event had a profound impact in the country: the
Spanish Civil War
(1936-1939). For Daniel Pecaut, Mary Emma Wills, Renan Vega and
Alfredo Molano the echoes of this civil war gave the traditional sectarianism pa
rtisan
ideological connotation a more pronounced and, infinitely more polarizing. Pecau
t
emphasizes that, in this respect,
that have nourished the
the mixture of the old partisan cultures, those
violence (
), with the modern ideological content is revealed
explosives 23. The liberalism ended up being assimilated, in certain speeches of
the
time, communism and one and one contrary to the values of Occidente24. It was th
e same
speech that was used by the opponents of the Second Spanish Republic (19311939). Probably the abstention of the Conservative Party, citing a lack of
guarantees, in the presidential elections of 1934, 1938 and 1942 was the most un
settling
expression of this climate of disqualification of the adversary liberal25. In 19
34, the liberal candidate
triumphant, Alfonso Lopez Pumarejo, had only a symbolic opponent, the indigenous
leader
and candidate of the Communist Party, Timote Eutiquio, who obtained 3,401 votes.
In 1938 only is presented Eduardo Santos and in 1942 there were two liberal cand
idates,
Alfonso Lopez, as official candidate and Carlos Arango Velez, as dissident candi
date.
The other expression of this alarming climate full of tension was the predominan
ce of a
current illiberal pronounced in the Catholic Church, which, according to Fernán Go
nzález,
contributed to the political polarization and paved the way for the violence 26.
23 Daniel Pecaut, p. 5.
24 Renan Vega, p. 8.
25 Alfredo Molano, pp. 7 and 8.
26 Quoted by Alfredo Molano, p. 12.
This climate of pugnacity would have to combine with the consolidation of a libe
ral model of development
that obstructed the potentialities of the reformist Revolution Underway of
Alfonso Lopez Pumarejo. These had been not a few, according to Daniel Pecaut and
Mary Emma Wills
: removed the reference to God in the preamble of the Constitution, established
the
universal male suffrage, were introduced innovative educational reforms, recogni
zed
important trade union rights, established property rights and access to
higher education of women, and there were some measures of agrarian reform.
The latter sought to make more transparent and clear capitalist relations
through, on the one hand, the safety of the titles of the major nuclear-weapon S
tates land if used
properly (by eliminating the requirement to prove the original title of
assignment of the State, the so-called devil's test ) and, on the other hand, by st
imulating the wage labor
, through the abolition of sharecropping.
The reaction to these measures led by factions of both parties did not wait long
. In fact, many of the measures of the reformist timidly revolution underway
were arrested, and even reversed. The large landowners liberals and conservative
s
, organised around the Union of Agricultural owners and entrepreneurs
that later led to the patriotic action National Economic (Appendix), were the sp
earhead of
a counter agrarian that it would be particularly damaging for the future of the
country and it would be in using the Law 100 of 194427. As a prominent
colombianista , Albert Berry: Colombia has been characterized by extreme inequality
in
the distribution of access to agricultural land and a serious ambiguity around t
he rights of
property. These problems have contributed to many other economic and social ills
, among them the waves of violence that regularly toured
the country during the twentieth century and part of the nineteenth century 28. Da
rio Fajardo, whose analysis focuses on
the agrarian question as
trigger factor of social conflict and assemble
pais29, poses that had existed since the early decades of the twentieth century
a variety of
tensions in the agro, potentially explosive: an excessive concentration of rural
property
, a hondo disorder in the forms of appropriation of badlands, a
weak legitimacy of titles and persistence of
archaic forms of authority within the property without any attachment to the sta
ndards laborales30.
27 Dario Fajardo, pp. 20-21. It is important to emphasize that this law was issu
ed under a climate of fear due to the food crisis,
the fall in production and the rise in agricultural prices as a result of the Se
cond
World War and the low internal productivity.
28 Albert Berry, does Colombia finally found an agrarian reform that works?
nstitutional economics,
V. 4, No. 6, Bogotá, 2002, p. 33, Quoted by Dario Fajardo, p. 6.
, in i
29 Dario Fajardo, p. 3.
30 Dario Fajardo, p. 8.
This reverse reformist, in a climate of acute confrontation political-ideologica
l, combined
with the persistence of a weak State and military institutions with some very
precarious, which had not been able to achieve a real autonomy vis-à-vis the parti
san bickering
and that were not able to guarantee a real control of the territory and
even the monopoly of legitimate violence. Added to this is the
partisan high politicization of the National Police, which both reflected and re
produced in his inside the
sectarian struggles of the two traditional political parties.
In this environment, the triumph of the Conservative Party in 1946 sparked anew
the
blind sectarianism in many rural areas. Between 1946 and 1948 there were already
thousands of
victims. But it was after the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán that violence ov
erflowed and
state institutions suffered what Paul Oquist termed a partial collapse of the
State 31. Since then, the death of Gaitan has been perceived in the collective ima
ginary
national radical as a watershed, a before and an despues32.
31 Paul Oquist, violence, conflict and policy in Colombia, Bogota, Banco Popular
Library, 1978, quoted by
Sergio de Zubiria, p. 4.
32 Cf., Jorge Orlando Melo,
edential History, Bogotá,
No. April 96 1988.
Gaitan: the impact and the syndrome of the April 9 , Cr
33 Dario Fajardo calculates that the displacement of the rural population reache
d in these years 10% of the
population of the country (p. 26), which sum both forced displacement product o
f violence, such as the
voluntary mobility of many families in the quest for better living conditions.
34 DAMAGE, permanent Seminar of colombian problems,
1970 1950-1970 1950-1970 1950-1970 , Bogotá
, 1978. Cited by Javier Giraldo, p. 11.
agriculture in Colombia 1950-
35 Gonzalo Sánchez, Rehabilitation and violence under the National Front , in Politic
al Analysis, No. 4, Mayoagosto
1988, p. 21.
Various essayists reconstructed in its analysis this complex historical period t
hat left
deep scars in the country. On the one hand, the massive displacement of the popu
lation in rural areas
had increased the concentration of the earth and created immense misery belts
in the ciudades33. Colombia went in a few decades of being a predominantly rural
country
to become an urban country. In the census of 1938, the rural population
stood at 70.9 % of the total population; in the census of 1951 had risen to 61.1
% and
in 1964 was already minority: a 47.2 %34. On the other hand, Violence had destabi
lized
the property in some areas, had been paralyzed production in other and had upset
the
marketing channels in many, i.e. had altered in various ways the
economic and social order. The task, the challenge of the National Front, in bot
h political project
of pacification, was to create the conditions for reset 35.
However, several essayists agree that the measures taken to tackle the most harm
ful effects of the
violence were very insufficient. The government of Alberto
Lleras created the Special Commission of Rehabilitation that placed the emphasis
on construction of
schools and good roads, attention to displaced persons and distribution of waste
lands, but
that was extinguished quickly by absence of support indicators36. In fact had on
ly
a life of two years, between September 1958 and december 1960.
36 Alfredo Molano, p. 32.
37 The National Association of Peasant Farmers was driven by Carlos Lleras Restr
epo in 1967 through
a group of promoters linked to the Ministry of Agriculture and the INCORA. In th
e three years
following reached nearly a million members and 450 associations. Cf., Alfredo Mo
lano, pp. 34 et seq.
38 Alfredo Molano, p. 33.
39 Dario Fajardo, p. 28.
In turn, the National Commission investigating the causes and current situations
of violence
in the national territory, created in May of 1958, also had, as we saw,
a short existence: was dissolved nine months later. And the Law 135 of 1961 of
agrarian reform, inspired by the Alliance for Progress and supported internally
by
reformist sectors of the Liberal Party (rather than by a peasant movement existe
nt
and it will take a decade to be organized around the ANUC)37, did not have great
er results
. This law, whose aim it was to expropriate the properties improperly
exploited , did not have the resources to carry out the task and almost everything
that
could be retrieved was extinction through the domain of the latifundios not exploi
ted.
Which was, however, a significant impact on the formation of a sector of
rural entrepreneurs who sought promote a development model based on the great
modern property: sugar, cotton, soybeans, bananas, etc. However, according to th
e perspective of
Alfredo Molano, the balance sheet of the agrarian reform was very poor. The conce
ntration of land
intensified; the medium properties are not strengthened; the sharecroppers and t
enant farmers
declined; advanced the colonization of the piedemonte amazon, Magdalena Medio,
Uraba, Catatumbo and Pacific Coast . Ultimately, the agrarian reform
only benefit to the 8% of the families without tierra38. This failure was, in la
rge part, the result of
the hostility of conservative sectors, especially in the current laureanista,
to the reformist policies of the two Lleras (Alberto and Carlos). Opposition th
at with the backing
of intellectual Lauchlin Currie and the so-called Operation Colombia , that
thought it best that the peasants will be moved into cities, where they could
be more productive and live in better condiciones39. That is to say, the same ar
gument that would welcome
Misael Pastrana Borrero a decade later, in 1971.
(B) continuities and ruptures
In addition to the diversity in the management of the times (long or medium) tha
t the essayists
considered necessary to find the key explanatory of the current armed conflict,
the tests
are another important difference. On the one hand, between those who advocate
the continuities between periods (for example, between the violence and the curr
ent conflict) and
those who, without ignoring the continuities, also highlights the ruptures betwe
en the various historical periods
.
In fact, one of the more complex topics of the Colombian historiography and that
has been reflected
clearly in the various essays for CHCV, has been to determine
when he began as the armed conflict that the country has endured in
the last few decades. Do in 1930? Do in 1946? Do in 1948? Do in 1958? In the
eighties of the
twentieth century?
In this regard there are, among the commissioners, two main glances. On the one
hand, those who believe that
the current armed conflict broke out in the period of violence,
as is the case of Alfredo Molano who begins his essay with a lapidary phrase: arm
ed conflict
begins with violence 40, or even before that is41; and those who consider that,
while there was continuity between this period and the modern armed conflict
, the differences in both historical moments are so profound that one and
another should be clearly differentiated. In trials such as those of Dario Fajar
do,
Sergio de Zubiria and Javier Giraldo argues that there is a line of basic contin
uity from
the twenties of the last century up to today - in particular, due to the agraria
n conflicts
would have been the source of the causal violence both current and those of the
past, while other
authors, such as Daniel Pecaut and Francisco Gutiérrez, for example,
prefer to show both the continuities and the discontinuities and ruptures. Accor
ding to the latter
, one thing is that there is continuity in the historical factors and it is quit
e another
40 Alfredo Molano, p. 1.
41 For others, such as Javier Giraldo, Dario Fajardo and other even more back in
the twenties of the last century
, with the first social conflicts in rural areas, given that the substrate of th
e historic
national conflict has been, according to these essayists, the agrarian question .
the determination of a date on which can be analytically fix the beginning of th
e
contemporary conflict are two different exercises. Nothing prevents a conflict
started in the sixties, after the impact of the Cuban revolution in Latin Americ
a and
Colombia and the birth of the guerrillas in the region as a whole, may have root
s or processes initiated
long time ago.
Therefore, the diversity in the management of the times (long or medium) is one
of the keys
to understand the different approaches: those who argue the thesis of the
continuity, chose the long-term; on the contrary, those who opted for a more foc
used analysis
temporarily, they felt that a thing was the violence and quite another
confrontation between the insurgency and counterinsurgency. The only thing that
moved away from these two approaches
was Daniel Pecaut, who analyzed what happened from the thirties to put
in evidence that there were two historic moments with their own characteristics.
Continuity
The shaft of Dario Fajardo to explain the middle weight of the land issue in the
violence that the country has experienced in recent decades is based, according
to their perspective,
in the antagonism between two tracks of agricultural development in the formatio
n of capitalism, which
have been confronted in Colombia since the twenties: on the one hand, the
Prussian track, founded in the large property, and, on the other hand, the track
of the small property, which were
both t hey were theorized by Karl Kaustsky42. According to Fajardo, these two tr
acks were the
expression of two
society projects that have confronted since the last century
shaping a common thread, a basic continuity, between violence and the contempora
ry conflict.
Similar arguments can be found in the testing of Javier Giraldo, who
believes that the main detonating for armed conflicts in the country throughout th
e twentieth century
and until today have been recurrent struggles to access the tierra43. In that
same line, Mary Emma Wills argues that the policy of settlement and exploitation
of
the barren land gave rise to a independent peasantry that was not prepared to
42 Karl Kaustsky, the agrarian question. Study of the trends of modern agricultu
re and the agricultural policy
of the social-democracy , Mexico, twenty-first century Publishers, 2002.
43 Javier Giraldo, p. 10.
The public scene disappear reconverted in farm worker or displaced
urbano44. This is also the shaft's storyline Alfredo Molano, who argues that Law
200
(1936) - which in reality was an extension of the advanced Law 83 of 1931is the axis around which revolve since then the agrarian conflicts on the miss
roots armed struggle 45.
44 Mary Emma Wills, p. 37.
45 Alfredo Molano, p. 9.
46 Charles Bergquist, work in Latin America: Comparative Essays on Chile, Argent
ina, Venezuela, and
Colombia, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986, p. 11. The deep concentrati
on of the earth today in Colombia
is linked, first and foremost, with the processes of dispossession and displacem
ent of the peasant population
to live the country in successive waves from the fifties, the agrarian counter-r
eform through
the covenant of Rural Areas
of Misael Pastrana Borrero in 1971 and to the models
of large farms linked to export
that will be promoted by Alfonso Lopez Michelsen and Alvaro Gomez Hurtado in the
seventies of the
last century.
Reading around the interrelationship between the agrarian conflict and violence
is the subject of
many controversies within the CHCV. Before the Act 83 of 1931 was enacted Law 74
of
1926 which ordered partition the estates of more than 500 hectares that have
tenants. This law, accompanied by the judgment of the Supreme Court of Justice o
f the
same year, which put the burden of proof of property titles in the landowners demanding the original title colonial, that is to say, the so-called diabolical p
roof -, added to the mobilization of
the agrarian leagues - which had been legalized by the law itself 83-,
may explain the active agitation in the field between 1931 and 1934. Charles Ber
gquist
argues that in Colombia there was no agrarian revolution because in the decade o
f the twenties and
thirties of the last century, the farmers achieved fragment the property and cre
ate a country, unlike
Peru, Brazil, Venezuela or Argentina, where the majority of the farmers were
small or mid propietarios46. The central argument of Bergquist is that, as
in Colombia, the great wealth was the coffee and had many peasants, there was no
actual agricultural movement, because farmers had resources and expanded strongl
y
with the allotment arising from the Act 83. This absence of peasant organization
provided that they were dragged into the political conflicts of policlasista bas
e that led to violence
. That is to say, there was violence because there was not a real peasant moveme
nt, not the other way around
.
Break
Other essayists, on the contrary, they believe that if there were continuities,
but, equally,
pronounced changes in the actors, in the contexts and the dynamics that compel u
s to
differentiate the period of the violence of the armed conflict later. Jorge Gira
ldo, for example
, locates the germs of the current armed conflict at the beginning of the Nation
al Front, with the emergence
of the so-called Cuban guerrillas postrevolucion. This is also the
position of Vicente Torrijos, who says that this conflict has its origin in 1964
, when the commanders of the
FARC and the ELN take the decision to defy the State.47
47 Vicente Torrijos, pp. 1 and 2.
48 Francisco Gutiérrez, p. 1.
Daniel Pecaut and Francisco Gutierrez, who also share the need to differentiate
between these two
periods, consider that the violence that shook the country in the late forties a
nd
the following decade, had traits, actors, dynamics and motivations
of the profoundly different that there was after the birth, a few years later, t
he marxist guerrillas
carriers of a revolutionary agenda. In this regard, said Gutierrez, although
both waves are organically connected (that is to say, the violence and the period
of the
war against-insurgent) and show many continuities (
), are different in their
actors, main motives and underlying logical 48.
Daniel Pecaut, likewise, recognizes that there are some continuities (and, there
fore, that it is essential to consider
the period of violence as a necessary antecedent to understand what
would have to happen later); but, at the same time, maintains that there are
particular features in this new stage in our history. One was the time of the so
-called
Violence, which more than a civil war bipartisan -as there were numerous in the
nineteenth century and during the
War of a Thousand Days - there was a war of a thousand faces where the
culture sectarian liberal and conservative, after the change of political hegemony
, unleashed a
local confrontation in the rural areas and led to the emergence of all sorts of
violence overlapping (policies, obviously, but, equally, violence linked by the
dispossession of land, the theft of the coffee, etc. ). And something very diff
erent is the insurgent violence and
insurgency, whose germs are found in the early attempts to create and
consolidate
guerrilla groups in the beginnings of the National Front. It was no l
onger
organizations struggling for limited objectives, as was the case in the
bipartisan conflict, but by absolute targets (the overthrow and the replacement
of the
dominant political elites), having a organizational strategy and a coherent disc
ourse
designed for that purpose.
For the essayists argue that the thesis of the differentiation of the two histor
ical periods
there was a multiplicity of factors that, in certain circumstances both national
and international
and under the impetus of old or new players, equipped with different interests
and different strategies for access to power, will generate more or less lengthy
periods
of violence. If we stick to their analysis, since the end of the war of a Thousa
nd
Days, we had basically two periods of violence: from 1946 to 1964 and from 1964
until
today.
In general the historians agree distinguish three distinct phases during the per
iod 1946
-196449. Initially, from 1946 the outbreak of the sectarian violence following t
he change of
political hegemony, especially in regions that had also undergone a
similar violence after the start of the Liberal Republic in 1930 (Boyaca and¡ and
Santanderes destination routes).
A second phase, after the murder of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan on April 9, 1948, in wh
ich
mixed sectarian confrontations and the social and political banditry. This phase
and the last
, whose intermediate deadlines are difficult to establish, are closed during the
so-called
late
violence with the dismantling of the decomposed remnants
of banditry in the mid-years sesenta50.
49 Sven Schuster, Colombia: country without memory? Past and present of a war wit
hout name , in Journal of
Colombian Studies, v. 36, 2010, p. 31. Although in general the historians secure
the date of 1946 as the start of the
violence, in reality still in that year, and in the following year, homicide rat
es are relatively low
, 8 homicides per 100 thousand inhabitants. The widespread violence began
itself from 1948 but, first and foremost, from the following year.
50 See the classic work of Gonzalo Sánchez and Donny Meertens, bandits, "whitened
and peasants,
Bogotá, Salva Liarte Publishers, 1983.
However, according to the arguments put forward by these essayists in the contem
porary period
of violence (1964-65 until today) can be distinguished in its turn two distinct
phases
. On the one hand, a germinal stage in which emerge, as in all of Latin America
, guerrilla groups inspired by various revolutionary projects
Social51 change. On the other hand, a second phase that, after a sharp decline i
n homicide rates
and a weakening of the guerrilla groups of first generation
, you will live a
true climbing from the eighties up to today, with the slow recomposition of the
FARC, the ELN and the EPL, the emergence of the guerrillas of second generation
(M-19, Quintín Lame and PRT), the expansion of drug trafficking and the birth of t
he
paramilitary groups.
51 According to the preliminary inventory of Jorge Giraldo there was in the cont
inent around 102 guerrilla groups
frustrated or consolidated from 1956 (p. 7, Event No. 8).
52 Gabriel Silva, The origin of the National Front and the government of the Mili
tary Junta , New History of
Colombia, v. II, Bogotá, Editorial Planeta, 1989.
In the differentiation of the periods of violence the country has experienced in
recent decades
(1946-1964 and 1964 until today), these essayists consider that it is necessary
to mention
two basic facts: the bipartisan escalation of sectarianism and the impact of
the Cuban Revolution. In relation to the first factor, argue that the
National Front was a successful institutional design in this crucial aspect: ach
ieving the cooling of the
sectarianism polarizing, whose overflow had played a central role
in previous cycles of violence. For this it was necessary to overcome the
mere exclusive hegemony, although scattered in moments of acute crisis of fragil
e
bipartisan coalitions, to ensure a prolonged coexistence without bipartisan
background in the history nacional52.
In relation to the second factor, they argue that during the National Front emer
ged,
as in the rest of Latin America, the guerrillas postrevolucion cuban and, theref
ore, the logic of
the new armed confrontation would have a new symbolism: the struggle between two
models of society
perceived as antagonistic, in the framework of the bipolar world order
own of the
cold war (1947-1991), which has bought all its force after the arrival
of the
26th of July Movement to power in Havana and its subsequent breakdown in relatio
ns with
Washington. Without doubt, the cold war
will impact so deep in the forms, ideolog
ies
and motivations for political action in the world, in Latin America and in Colom
bia itself
, during these four decades. The term cold war
was first used by
the adviser to the President Harry Truman, Bernard Baruch, the April 16
1947, in a speech in the Congress, in which raised: Let us not deceive ourselves:
we are immersed in a
cold war 53. The end of this period is generally placed around three
historical events: the start of perestroika (1985), the fall of the Berlin Wall
(1989) and
the dissolution of the USSR (1991)54.
53 The term, however, was popularized by the columnist Walter Lippmann in a book
published the
same year and precisely titled Cold War. Some authors argue, however, that this
new
world order was itself defined in the famous speech of Wilson Churchill at the U
niversity of
Missouri (Fulton County), on 5 March 1946, in which said that from Stettin in the
Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic
, has fallen on the continent (European) an iron curtain , cf., Rafael Pardo, betw
een two powers.
How the cold war molding to Latin America, Editorial Taurus, Bogotá, 2014.
54 John Lewis Gaddis, new history of the cold war, Fondo de Cultura Economica, M
exico, 2011.
55 The only exception in Latin America was Costa Rica. See, in this regard, the
classic work by Richard Gott, guerrilla
movements in Latin America, New York, Doubleday & Company, 1971.
56 Cf., Jeff Goodwin, no other way out. States and revolutionary movements, 1945
-1991, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
, 2001.
57 On 1 January 1959, in the wee hours of the night, had already entered Havana
the troops commanded
by commander Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo of the Second National Front of Escambray, an
d, hours later
, enter two of the top commanders of the 26th of July Movement, Camilo Cienfuego
s and
Ernesto Guevara. At the other end of the island, the same day, Fidel Castro had
entered victorious to Santiago de Cuba
, had declared the town such as the provisional capital of Cuba and appointed ju
dge
Manuel Urrutia Lleó as president of the country. For these reasons, this is consid
ered the date date
(c) The modern armed conflict
Jorge Giraldo illustrates the emergency in these years of guerrilla groups in La
tin America
55 and emphasizes that this spread of cores guerrillas on the continent was due m
ainly to
revolutionary voluntarism , powered by the revolutionary wave
that
awoke the triumph of the 26th of July Movement, to see that it was possible to a
ccess the
power through armed even a few miles from Miami.
Latin America, from those years, he has lived two great waves of guerrilla movem
ents
. A, in 1959, with the triumph of the Cuban revolution and another, less extensi
ve
but probably more intense, after the triumph of the Nicaraguan revolution twenty
years later
, in 197956. As we shall see later, in the two phases of contemporary violence
that some analysts have considered the impact of these two revolutions
(1959 and 1979) is critical to understanding the evolution of the guerrilla move
ment in the
country.
On 7 January 1959 makes its triumphal arrival in Havana on maximum commander of
the
26th of July Movement, Fidel Castro57. That same day in Bogota various organizat
ions
of the symbolic start of the Cuban revolution. But, in fact, it is not until Jan
uary 7 that Fidel Castro makes its
arrival in Havana, after traveling all over the island, more than a thousand kil
ometers away, in a triumphant parade.
58 Cf., the thesis for a master's degree in history at the National University o
f José Abelardo Diaz
Jaramillo, the Workers' Movement Student January 7 peasant and the origins of the
new left in Colombia
1959-1969 .
59 The own Diaz Jaramillo suggests that the date chosen by the ELN to announce p
ublicly the start of
their military actions, on 7 January 1965 by the decision of Simacota (Santander
), would have been in
tribute to the pioneer group, the MOEC January 7. See, also, José Abelardo Diaz, t
he Workers' Movement
Peasant Student January 7 and the origins of the new left in Colombia 1959-1969,
doctoral thesis
, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2010, p. 130 Et seq.
60 Even when all the communist parties of guidance pro-china in the sixties in L
atin America
adopted the thesis of the protracted people's war , very few gave you that step. O
ne of the few was the
PCML of Colombia to impetus the EPL. Cf., Marisela Connelly, Influence of the tho
ught of Mao in
Latin America , in studies in Asia and Africa, V. 18, No. April 2 - June 1983: pol
icies and
social, including the student movement, is throwing to the streets of Bogota
to protest the rise of urban transport approved by the first agent of the
National Front, Alberto Lleras Camargo. Relate these two events is not arbitrary
if we know that the first political movement in Colombia to be attempting to rep
licate
the experience in guerrilla warfare triumphantly in Cuba would be initially the
Workers' Movement and Student January 7, in homage to this day of social protest
s,
the largest since the August 7 1958 when it ranked Lleras Camargo58.
You will later add the peasantry to the initial name.
The MOEC is not only historically important for having been the first group
that sought replicate the experience of the Cuban revolution (create a Sierra Mae
stra in the Andes
), but because of that, in one way or another, had an impact on the origin of ot
her guerrilla experiences
frustrated at the same time (Fuar, the FUL-FAL) and even in two of the guerrilla
groups that
succeeded take root and survive: the EPL and ELN59. With the single
exception of the FARC, whose origins date back to the peasant self-defense force
s and guerrillas
of the communist mobile years fifties, the rest had a
predominantly urban composition and a leadership from middle layers student and
professional
.
This revolutionary effervescence not only would take place in Colombia. In all o
f Latin America
, as we have said, emerge in this time armed groups under the impact of
the events in Cuba and, in some few cases, as a result of the
rupture sino-soviet60 or, on the initiative of the communist parties pro-sovieti
cos61.
61 Few communist parties guidance of pro-soviet took the option of the weapons i
n these years, given
that the XX Congress of the CPSU had adopted the policy of peaceful coexistence.
The only ones who took up arms
in the sixties were the Party of Labor of Guatemala, the PC of Venezuela and the
Colombian PC, even when in the latter case only as a strategic reserve
in case of
a military coup
and not as the dominant form of struggle.
62 Francisco Gutiérrez, pp. 6-7.
Initially under the modality of guerrillas located in rural areas, especially in
Central America
and the Andean region and, later, after the death of
Che Guevara in Bolivia
, in the modality of urban guerrillas in the Southern Cone and Brazil.
For Francisco Gutiérrez, one of the factors that explains the prolongation of the
armed conflict
in Colombia has been the assimilation of skills or the recruitment of experience
d individuals from
the previous cycles of violence, by new or renewed
armed actors. At the beginning of the National Front, these were people or rural
communities
that had been acquired skill in war or organizational capacity for the resistanc
e
against armed adversaries, thanks to experiences in the field and not through ma
nuals
from the Soviet Union, China or Vietnam62. This dynamic
took place both in the sixties when the guerrillas emerged first generation
, as in the eighties when years have been reassembled the FARC, EPL and the
ELN guerrillas and were born of second generation . Later, when we look at
the reasons that can explain the prolonged the conflict, the assimilation of ski
lls acquired
by men in arms at different times, it will be decisive to unravel
as the violence produces own dynamics that perpetuate it. Even, as we shall see
, leaders of criminal gangs as the Clan Úsuga acquired their skills
before being members of the guerrilla groups.
In fact, one of the specificities of the history of the guerrillas in Colombia w
as its
early emergence, in the modality of liberal guerrillas and, to a lesser extent,
of
communist guerrillas many years before the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. Due
to this fact
, all the guerrillas without exception, that emerged in the sixties were support
ed by
experiences, characters, codes of violence and regions of the previous years
.
As Alfredo Molano reminds us, the initial nucleus of the ELN, i.e. , the group o
f
Colombian students who received military training in Cuba and formed the Brigade
Jose Antonio trouser, led by the former leader of the youth of the MRL, Fabio Va
squez
Chestnut, took the decision to start their preparatory actions in August of 1964
in the Middle Magdalena, in
where he had risen up in arms, after the April 9, 1948, Rafael
Rangel63. To do this, with the support of former members of the guerrilla libera
l
as Heliodorus Ochoa and Nicolas Rodriguez, the father of the current military co
mmander of the
ELN64, as well as Hernán Moreno Sanchez65.
Reading 63 a more nuanced view of the origins of the ELN, above all in relation
to the role played by radical currents
of the MRLS and, above all, the youth of the Movimiento Revolucionario Liberal (
JMRL),
is located in Marco Palacios, op. cit. , p. 78 ET seq.
64 Alfredo Molano, pp. 42-45. The takes of Simacota (Santander) took place on 7
January 1965, which constitutes
the foundation date of the ELN.
65 Jorge Giraldo, p. 9.
66 Alfredo Molano, p. 53. In documents of the EPL, is taken as the foundation da
te of December 17
1967, when it creates the first guerrilla detachment led by Pedro Vasquez Rendon
and Francisco
Caraballo (cf., http://www.cedema. org/view.php?id= 2449).
67 Alfredo Molano, pp. 35-41. In turn, Javier Giraldo, pick up a phrase of Jacob
o Arenas who believes that
if they had not happened the military sieges against the evil calls independent r
epublics , perhaps
not would be born the FARC (p. 16).
68 Alvaro Delgado, The experiment of the Colombian communist party , in Mauritius A
rchila and others, an unfinished story
: left-wing political and social in Colombia, Bogota, CINEP, 2009, p. 97. Quoted
by
Jorge Giraldo, p. 10.
The EPL was born, under the impulse of the marxist-leninist Communist Party -a d
issent of
Maoist orientation of the PCC-, in December 1967 in the south of the department
of Cordoba, in the
regions of the Alto Sinu and the High San Jorge, where took advantage of the
leadership and descent in the population of old guerrilla liberal, July Guerra66
.
With regard to the FARC, Alfredo Molano
rom the eruption of
the first cores of defense and guerilla
n
the Tolima, cradle of the FARC , until
in Marquetalia in 1964 and the birth of
6667.
makes an extensive historical overview f
animated mobile by the Communist Party i
the military sieges against
this armed group, two years later, in 19
Already in IX Congress of the Colombian Communist Party, held in 1960, had been
approved
the thesis of combining all forms of struggle , as the track to access the
power, which had been ratified in the X Congress, shortly before fence
in Marquetalia, and in which the PCC believed that the armed struggle is unavoida
ble and necessary
as a factor of the colombian revolution 68. In the case of the FARC, is no doubt t
he
continuity between the Communist guerrillas, their leaders and their areas of in
fluence between the
years 50 and the next decade.
(D) The National Front or the appeasement of the blood feuds
Now well, for Francisco Gutiérrez, Daniel Pecaut, Jorge Giraldo and Vicente Torrij
os, the
contemporary armed conflict, though she had their initial germs in the sixties,
suffered soon and quickly a deep decline, before returning to take flight in the
eighties
in its current phase.
One of the roots of this sharp decline in violence in general, and of the politi
cal violence
in particular was, according to Jorge Giraldo, the relative success of the Natio
nal Front to carry out
a double transition: from dictatorship to democracy and the war to paz69.
In regard to the first, the transition from dictatorship to democracy, Giraldo a
rgues that
is filled to fully aware of how many years after, the theories of democratic tra
nsition, they would have
to devote as the virtuous path for this purpose: the appeasement of the
political confrontation, the opening of a more open competition and plural and t
he access of
minorities to the political bodies of political representation. For Mary Emma Wi
lls, even
in the Congress there were heated debates on crucial issues such as raised by th
e
agrarian reform; and demonstrate how, in spite of the millimetre-sharing in the
bodies of
political representation and in the bureaucracy in general, and the alternation
in power
, the National Front did not close the discussions or erased completely ideologi
cal borders
between the two traditional parties. Further, he argues, the public sphere becam
e
more plural, lived an educational revolution unprecedented dissident newspapers
were founded
and social mobilization (student, worker and peasant) reached very high levels
.
69 Gustavo Duncan, it also feels that the covenant consocionalista the National
Front, in which elites
are divided control of the government to pacify the political competition that,
in the case of Colombia, had gotten out of control
during the violence of mid-century ( ), was a considerable success . And he adds
that
this is a historical evidence that the violence of the late twentieth century di
d not respond
properly to the enclosure of the political system, but to reasons and circumstanc
es different (p. 1, Note 1).
Other essayists, on the contrary, they emphasize the negative aspects of this
political experience. Renan Vega, for example, has a totally different valuation
of the National Front.
He claims that during the National Front pact establishes a bipartisan
exclusionary and undemocratic that to fend off the popular dissidence resorts to
the repression, the State of siege and the counterinsurgency 70. Sergio de Zubiria
, in turn,
argues that by track and constitutional plebiscite, the privileges given to
bipartisanship van becoming the State in mediator and representative of the part
icular interests
and associations. At this stage the consolidation of a State captured ,
or particula
rist
privatized
71.
70 Renan Vega, p. 22.
71 Sergio de Zubiria, p. 29.
72 Daniel Pecaut,
1991, p. 37.
Colombia: violence and democracy , in Political Analysis, No. 13,
Without a doubt, the assessment of the National Front is one of the points of
controversy more acute in the CHCV.
It is difficult to question that there were significant limitations for the poli
tical participation of the
different parties to the National Front between 1958 and 1974, due to the pinpoi
nt sharing
in the bodies of political representation, the civil service and in the high cou
rts and the
presidential towers. But, in spite of these limitations, it was not itself,
according to Daniel Pecaut, of a closed system
. Pecaut believes that from a comp
arative perspective
with the rest of the continent, where they dominated the military governments, t
he
Colombian regime was one of the most open and participativos72. Several facts
indicate, such as maintain individual commissioners.
First, the Communist Party regained the legality loss. In fact, on 10 June
1954 the Council of Ministers of the government civil-military of Rojas Pinilla
had
taken the decision to outlaw the Communist Party, for which sent a request to th
e
National Constituent Assembly. By a majority of votes, this entity adopted
at the beginning of the month of September of that year a text whose first artic
le said: is prohibited
political activity of international communism . The plebiscite of 1 December
1957, which gave rise to the institutions of the National Front, annulled all th
e
decisions taken by the National Constituent Assembly, including the banning of t
he
CCP.
Secondly, in spite of limitations for the participation of third parties in the
charges
of popular representation, members of the left were elected during this
period in public corporations in partisan coalition opposing fractions with the
National Front
; they were also integrated in the public or the judicial institutions
, including the high courts. The most notable example was the case of the leader
of the agricultural region of the Sumapaz, Juan de la Cruz Varela, first elected
to the Departmental Assembly
of Cundinamarca in 1958 and two years later, the House of Representatives for
the same department, as an alternate of the leader of the MRLS and future
president Alfonso Lopez Michelsen73.
73 Mary Emma Wills, p. 12.
74 Mary Emma Wills, p. 21 ET seq.
75 A data enough. Women were allowed to vote for the first time in the plebiscit
e of December 1 of 1957
reaching in the country, finally, the universal suffrage. Although the female vo
te was approved by the National Constituent Assembly
during the period of Rojas Pinilla -a move typical of a
conservative authoritarian regime that wants to expand your audience, as was the
case in other countries of Latin America-, there were no
elections.
Thirdly, the National Front was very far from being homogeneous. Fractions such
as
the MRL or the ANAPO played a prominent role in the channelling of social discon
tent
and scored a major political representation. This diversity of fractions
in partisan game broke the get annoyed that could contain the seeds of the
bureaucratic frentenacionalista coexistence. As the shows Mary Emma Wills, there
were debates
treble, for example with regard to the agricultural issues in 1961 and 196874.
Fourthly, during these years there was an extension of the civiles75 freedoms, a
s well as
in the right to organization and to social mobilization, as can be seen
in the Graph 1. In fact, after a vertical drop of the strikes and work stoppages
during the conservative government, the government civilian-military Rojas Pinil
la and the Military Junta
Government (1946-1958), there was a rise of the worker mobilization on the domes
tic front,
period that presents the highest levels of participation in the last seven
decades.
Figure 1: strikes and stoppages in Colombia (1946-2013)
Source: The data for the years 1946 to 1958 were taken from Mauritius Archila, So
cial Protest in Colombia,
1946-1958 , in Critical History magazine, No. 11, 1995, p. 72; From 1958 to 1990
of Mauritius
Archila, comings and goings, twists and turns. Social Protest in Colombia 1958-1
990, Bogota,
ICANH/CINEP, 2003, p. 202; From 1991 to 2009 of Archila et al. , research projec
t.
Incidence of violence against the unionized workers and evolution of their prote
st. Bogota, CINEP,
2010, pp. 30-31; and, finally, those of the years 2010 to 2013, the system of
labor and union Information, SISLAB reports, 29 October 2014.
Finally, in these years there were also notable social and cultural transformati
ons
. The country experienced a process of accelerated urbanization, an educational
revolution
and profound cultural change thanks to an explosion of dissidence and
contestatory cultural currents and avant-garde, between them, the Nadaismo76. Th
e press is
diversified, and even the Communist Party, which was banned a few years back, wa
s able to publish
with a license from the Ministry of Justice his weekly Voice of Democracy, his m
agazine
political documents and, later, his magazine Marxistas77 theoretical studies. In
addition,
as has been shown Mary Emma Wills, is produced in these years a educational revol
ution
, at least in quantitative terms, with the entrance of thousands and thousands of
students the school system of primary and secondary universitario78 and the syst
em.
0
50
100
150 200
250 300
195 1946 1949 1952
1958
1961
1964
1967
1970
1973
1976
1979 1982
1985
198
191
194
197
20
203
206
209
2012
76 Alvaro Tirado Mejia, the sixties. A revolution in culture, Bogotá, Penguin Rand
om House
Publishing Group, 2014.
77 Jorge Giraldo, p. 5.
78 Mary Emma Wills, p. 15.
But not only at the level of political participation, social mobilization, cultu
re and education
there was relevant results. In the field of the transition from war to
peace it also achieved significant successes.
First, as can be seen in the Chart No. 2 On homicide rates
(1958-2013), Colombia had succeeded in reducing violence notoria79 manner. One o
f the factors that explain the
drop in homicide rates was the dismantling of the last vestiges of
banditry in the mid sixties. Giraldo according the
achievements in this plane were so damning that the historian James
Henderson was able to say, thinking obviously in violence that in 1966, the confl
ict
had indeed finished 80. As you can see in the graphic, the years 1969
and 1970 remain the two years with lower rates of homicide from 1947 until today
.
0
5000000
10000000
EUR 30000000 15000000 20000000 25000000
35000000
40000000
45000000
50000000
0
10 20
30
40
50
60 70 80
90
1958
1961
1964
1967
1970
1973
1976
1979 1982
1985
1988
1991
1994
1997
2000
2003
2006
2009
2012
homicide rate per 100,000
inhabitants
total population
79 The broad historical series that carries out the historian, Jorge Orlando Mel
o, in its article fifty years
of homicides: trends and prospects , is key to differentiate a stage in which rate
s drop
sharply homicide (between 1958 and 1980 approximately), another stage in the nex
t decade in which there is
an exponential increase in those fees, up to that in this new century the trend
Begins
to descend again (http://www.razonpublica.com/index.php/conflicto-drogas-y-paz-t
emas-30/217fifty-ade-homicides-trends-and-prospects.html).
80 James D. Henderson, victim of globalization: the story of how the drug traffi
cking destroyed the peace in Colombia
, Bogota, the century of Man Publishers, 2012, p. 35.
Figure 2: homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants in Colombia (1958-2013)
Source: Data for 1958-1961 were taken from the work of Paul Oquist, violence, co
nflict and Policy in Colombia
; the data for 1962-2006 are from the National Police, Central Directorate Judic
ial Police; the
population data come from the DANE. The figures were calculated for interannual
periods each
year by applying to the geometric mean rate between censuses.
Another factor explaining the decline of violence was the notorious weakening of
the
guerrilla groups. Although, as we have mentioned, during the initial years of th
e National Front
both guerrilla groups emerged as other frustrated that, after deep
setbacks, they would have to be consolidated years later (FARC, ELN and EPL), al
l were, however
, relatively marginal, with a number of very small member and with little
national presence. As it was able to verify Maria Alejandra Vélez, the guerrillas
in these years had its main radio station in action in remote regions and sparse
ly populated
, already were the areas of armed colonization 81 of the FARC, the southeastern
Antioquia in terms of the EPL, or the municipalities of Santander in which attem
pt
to root the ELN82, up to the point that the biographer of Camilo Torres, Joe Bro
derick, dared to
qualify the armed conflict in the sixties, as a fantasy war
83. Without going any further, the three guerrilla groups were near collapse.
81 William Ramirez, rural guerrilla in Colombia: a path to the colonization? armed
in
rural Latin American Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, Bogota, May-August 1981. According
to Ramirez,
colonization the
navy is a historical concept to interpret, from a certain kind of displacement o
f the population, the
genesis and development of the FARC ( armed Colonization, local power and private
territorialisation ,
in Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, V. 7, No. 2, 2001).
82 Maria Alejandra Vélez, FARC and ELN. Evolution and territorial expansion, degre
e thesis at the Faculty of Economics
, University of the Andes, 1999.
83 Quoted by Francisco Gutiérrez, p. 5.
84 Milton Hernández, Red and Black: An approach to the history of the ELN, 1998.
With respect to the ELN, after the tragic operation Anorí (1973) only survived in
the ranks of the organization
from that historic guerrilla column thirteen members,
of which only one remained in the organization for some time. It was a
doctor, who, after returning to the urban networks, are also
excluded, according to Milton Hernández. And he adds that, at the urban level remai
ned for several networks in Bogota
, Medellin and Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, isolated from one another, without bet
ter knowledge of what
was happening at the national level, without resources and plans or guidelines 84.
Many years required the ELN to replenish their ranks.
The EPL, for its part, according to the story of his old commander, general Erne
sto Rojas, after
the three military sieges that suffered their armed cores in the Alto Sinu and t
he High San
Jorge between 1968 and 1970, he came out completely weakened and only could not
restart your slow reconstruction
in the late years setenta85.
85 Ernesto Rojas,
on the history of the EPL , http://www.pcdecml.org/
86 Alfredo Molano, p. 40.
87 Jacobo Arenas, ceasefire. A political history of the FARC, Bogotá, Editorial Th
e Black Sheep, 1985,
p. 90.
The same thing happened to the FARC when second-in-command of the guerrilla, Cir
o
Trujillo, took a wrong decision to concentrate in 1966 almost all the detachment
s
in Quindio to act on the coffee area and the Valle del Cauca, but it was
miserably defeated 86. According to Jacobo Arenas, we lost many men and 70% of
the weapons. It is recalled that up to the Fifth Conference could say Manuel
Marulanda: finally we have spare of evil that almost annihilates us 87. In summary
, the
process of Colombia guerrilla was not very different in this period of the rest
of Latin America
. In the seventies the latin american guerrillas as a whole had virtually disapp
eared
, except for some isolated and marginal cores, without further
incident.
In Colombia, even after the dismantling of National Front since 1974 for the Pre
sidency of the Republic and the
bodies of popular representation (Senate and House of Representatives
, Departmental Assemblies and Municipal Councils), the different political parti
es
to the two traditional parties enjoyed legal guarantees for its electoral partic
ipation
. In 1974, the National Opposition Union (UNO), formed by the PCC
, the Moir and factions anapistas, launched the candidacy of Hernando Echeverry
Mejia.
In 1978 there were three nominations from left: Julio Cesar Pernia (ONE), Jaime
Piedrahita
Cardona (MOIR) and relief Ramirez (PST). Even in the difficult situation of pub
lic order
in the early eighties, firm and one had supported the candidacy of
Gerardo Molina.
Using the broad base of comparative data of Freedom in the world (Figure No. 3),
Jorge Giraldo shows that between the sixties and the seventies, the democratic p
erformance
of Colombia was better than most of the rest of countries in Latin America (wehe
re
military governments), but would be plummeting later, in the nineties
, with the escalation of violence and corruption that would suffer the situation
.88 In this graph,
as in all that we have submitted or are we going to include along the Special Ra
pporteur, it is shocking
that the worsening negative of all the indicators from eighties
and, in particular, of the nineties. Without doubt, it is not possible equate th
e National Front period
and, in general, the seventies with what would have to happen later
, in the next three decades.
C: \Users\username\Documents\Commission\Data\freedomhouse2.png
88 Jorge Giraldo, p. 6.
Chart 3. Indicator of democracy, Colombia, Central America, South America 19722013
Source: Freedom in the World, 2014.
What happened then? Why is it that if Colombia appeared to be diverted toward a
more democratic and pluralistic society
term again wrapped in a cycle of violence that, in many respects,
even surpassed the worst years of the period of violence? Why in
Latin America were completed and the armed conflict in Colombia would last until
today? Why we were the only exception?
For some essayists, in spite of the positive legacy that leaves the National Fro
nt in
different levels, as well himself has left it without solution and many other is
sues resolved in a way other
inadequate or insufficient. Of the three tasks that the National Front had been
proposed,
according to Francisco Gutiérrez, agree peace, promote the democratic transition a
nd
promote programs are concerned.89 there were satisfactory results in the first t
wo
but many shortcomings in the last. In the words of Marco Palacios,
bipartisan the experiment had been worn; had failed the initiative of promised re
forms
(the agrarian, administrative, tax, labor) who were halfway
90.
89 Francisco Gutiérrez, what the wind? The political parties and democracy in Colo
mbia, 19582002, Bogota, Editorial Norma, 2007.
Framework 90 palaces, public violence in Colombia, 1958-2010, Bogota, Fondo de C
ultura Economica, 2012,
p. 69.
Without doubt, in relation to the principal motivation for the National Front, i
.e. the
overcoming of sectarian clashes and the culture of the blood feuds , this instituti
onal arrangement
was a great success. But, in turn, some essayists
argue that this positive development also had many limitations. Perhaps the most
notable
was the increasing depoliticization and detachment not only toward the parties,
but
toward the organs of popular representation. In effect, the electoral abstention
, which has been
a constant in the political history of the country, was aggravated. It is likely
that this cooling
toward the parties and the electoral system is related to a palpable disappointm
ent toward
the results of the National Front, whose high expectations in the social field w
ere not
fully satisfied.
In effect, while the National Front was able to attain peace and keep the democr
atic system
, was unable to move forward with a solid program of social reforms, by which he
lost
the support of broad popular sectors sprinted to the abstention or
toward the populist vote, and the political system derived toward the patronage
as a mechanism
of political co-optation. According to Jorge Orlando Melo, reformism failure pri
marily in
relation to the changes in land ownership and the decrease in inequality
of income, although he had some success when the resources came from the
state budget: education, public management and services. If you look at the Tabl
e No. 1
We can see the important social progress that has been in Colombia in recent
decadas91. This view is shared by Mary Emma Wills, who shows that there was in
these years significant increases in social spending and the expansion of the sc
hool places
on all levels (primary, secondary and university) 92.
91 Jorge Orlando Melo, half a century of changes in Colombia , shows how a slow eco
nomic growth
but stable, helped increase public spending (http://www.jorgeorlandomelo.com/med
io_siglo.htm)
92 Mary Emma Wills, p. 15.
93 Alfredo Molano, pp. 34-35.
Box No. 1. Changes in social
indicators Colombia 1951-2004
1951
2004
children per woman
7.0
2.6 (2000)
birth rate
4.7
2.6
Mortality Rate
1.7
0.5
Infant mortality rate
12.3
2.5 (2000)
life expectancy
40.0 (1945)
71.6 (2000)
Height of the population of 21 to 25 years
164.7 (1950)
169.7 (2000)
houses with electric power
houses with 25.8 94.0
28.8 aqueduct
94 houses
with sewerage
>25.0
73
health services coverage
>20.0
54 (1999)
primary education coverage
40
94
Coverage of secondary education
30
76
Coverage of higher education
2
18
inhabitants (thousands)
12,961
44,584 (2003)
z
29.2
70.7 (1995)
Source: Jorge Orlando Melo,
half a century of changes in Colombia
Probably the greatest frustration of the National Front came from the failed att
empt to
transform the field. As well as had already happened in the thirties, the effort
s to promote
an agrarian reform encountered the resistance of the sectors landowners, who
imposed a genuine reformation: the so-called Pact
93 rural areas. This failure
resulted in a strengthening of the waves of colonization, which is described fro
m crude way
by Alfredo Molano: The settler is a worker stripped of all resource; faces a
jungle very powerful in very adverse conditions. In reality, it is a estate
with basis in debts acquired with the merchants. Sooner or later their
improvemen
ts
will hand it over to the creditors, the concentrated as haciendas. Colonization
is a process of enlarging landowner of the agricultural frontier. The settlers a
re converted to
professionals of the opening of improvements each time more distant 94. It will be
serious, such as
adds the own Molano, cocalizacion of colonization areas and the impact that
these illegal crops will have in these regions, probably the ones that will suff
er most acutely
the intersection of multiple violence in the dispute over control of the resourc
es from the
cultivation, processing and marketing of the coca leaf and cocaine.
94 Alfredo Molano, p. 46.
95 Alfredo Molano, p. 33.
96 Mary Emma Wills, pp. 24 and 25.
97 Alfredo Molano, p. 34.
In fact, before the shipwreck of the reforms and the pressure on land derived of
the increase in population,
this attempt be channelled through the expansion of the agricultural frontier
. This policy of colonization without a real accompaniment of the State, the onl
y thing
that was led to the configuration of regions with very weak institutional presen
ce and, later
, to the rise of illicit crops due to its high profitability along with a very h
igh
environmental cost. During these years was deforested the Caquetá and the Magdalen
a Medio,
areas that were planned for the agrarian reform, generating what describes Alfre
do Molano:
earth is assigned to the peasant, dismount or by distribution, but it allows the
sale
to those who are able to build large haciendas95.
It is important to emphasize that, for Mary Emma Wills, the failure of attempts
to agrarian reform
not only came from the reaction landowner, supported by the Congress, and the
persecution they suffered leaders of the peasant movement. It was also the produ
ct of
struggles, of intransigence and sectarian strife between the various left-wing m
ovements, which
went bankrupt campesino96 internally to the movement. According to Alfredo Molan
o, the
peasant movement, very influenced by different and irreconcilable groups from le
ft
, was divided into two trends whose slogans summing up their programs: the
land to the tiller and land without 97 patterns, which made a irreconcilable
and another.
Another factor of frustration with the National Front was the persistence, in sp
ite of many advances in the
social field, from the deep income inequality and poverty.
Gustavo Duncan shows how, according to the 1973 census, the poverty as measured
by the
unmet basic needs, was 70.5 %; while the GINI coefficient was higher than
the 0.598 . Colombia continued to occupy, in this latter indicator, one of the
most painful posts in the world.
98 Gustavo Duncan, p. 4. See, also, it provides data which Javier Giraldo, p. 14
ET seq.
99 Colombia appeared in the famous The Failed States Index of failed States) tha
t publishes the magazine Foreign
Policy in the red zone (failed States), in the October 2005 issue. Vicente Torri
jos
questioned, however, that Colombia has been a precarious state (prefuncional), fa
iled, or collapsed
(nonfunctional) , recognizing if that has been a State subject to constant challe
nges that have tested their
institutional architecture (p. 19).
100 Along this rapporteurship we have raised, according to several essayists, th
at one of the
geological cracks of the national construction of Colombia has been the state weak
ness. A weak State can be
defined, according to Jorge Giraldo, the one who possesses a limited ability to
bring the
institutional decisions, related to their basic functions, are met in their terr
itory (p. 2, 2).
101 This reaffirmation of the futility of electoral participation for access to
power is going to be one of the sources of the
new wave guerrilla warfare in Latin America. Even in Chile, with little background
in the field of
armed struggle, the Communist Party decided to create their own armed wing, the
Manuel
Rodriguez Patriotic Front, which began operations on 14 December 1983.
In addition to these pronounced gaps in the social field, it is equally importan
t to note
the continuity of the trend, dominant throughout the twentieth century, to maint
ain very low
the resources of the Armed Forces and Police, which, once again unleash
the dynamics of the armed confrontation will be to Colombia in the map of the
failed States99 and, what is even more serious, will open the doors for a
privatization of security as an alternative to the shortcomings of the
publica100 security.
In this way, in spite of successful policies in different scenarios, the breedin
g ground for
the conflict remained alive and various factors, both internal and international
,
contributed to this conflict, own and normal in any democratic system, to be tra
nsformed into a
new wave of violence that we still suffer from.
(A) of the appeasement to the widespread violence
three external events were crucial. On the one hand, the overthrow of Salvador
Allende in Chile. The military coup against the government of the Unidad Popular
in
1973 was read out in the field of the left as a continental new confirmation of
the unfeasibility of
access and retain power by tracks democraticas101. On the other hand, the triump
hant revolution
in Nicaragua, which would have to awaken a new
revolutionary wave in Latin America, in particular in Guatemala, El Salvador, Co
lombia,
Ecuador and Peru. And, finally, the new military doctrine of the United States,
and that went from
the old doctrine of containment to the doctrine of the renewed roll back, i.e. ,
the attempt to
revert to the western camp the countries that had fallen, according to the perce
ption of
Washington, in the orbit sovietica102. The government of Ronald Reagan ended the
era of peaceful coexistence
and détente and gave way to an era of international confrontation
that would culminate with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of
the cold war.
102 In particular, Angola, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, where armed group
s were formed
to destabilize their governments, such as the Nicaraguan Contras.
103 Sergio de Zubiria, p. 41.
104 Dario Fajardo, p. 35 ET seq.
105 Juan Guillermo Ferro and Gabriela Uribe, the order of the war: the FARC/EP b
etween the organization and
policy, Bogotá Xaverian Publishing Center, 2002, p. 29.
In Colombia is not only revived guerrilleros103 movements, but, that was the
intense irruption of the powerful drug cartels and, at the same time, the emerge
nce
of self-defense groups and paramilitares104.
One of the most striking features of this period was the reconstruction of the g
uerrilla groups in
the first generation
. A few years after the operation, a small group of
activists led by a Spanish priest, Manuel Perez Martinez,
momentum the call National Meeting of 1983, which was in fact the starting point
for
the refoundation of the guerrilla group. In 1980, the Communist Party MarxistLeninist (PCML) at its 11th National Congress, was able to overcome its many fra
ctures and
internal dissent and promote the reorganization of the EPL. The FARC, for its pa
rt, had been moved from the
purely vegetative stage, as a strategic reserve of the PCC to the case in which
a military coup, offensive to a stage that was reflected in their new acronyms,
COLOMBIA-EJÉRCITO
(FARC-People's Army). If in 1974 the FARC had only four
guerrilla fronts and in 1978 had eight, in 1982, using the tactics of the format
ion of
fronts, had reached the figure of 24 fronts and about a thousand
men in armas105.
Without doubt, the climate relatively peaceful country in the years after the Na
tional Front had changed
radical106 manner. Perhaps the clearest expression of this transformation was th
e
national strike on 14 September 1977, the president of the time,
Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, described as a small April 9 . This strike was an express
ion of
deep disenchantment with the frustrated expectations of the National Front.
Among the elections that gave rise to the covenant frentenacionalista -that coun
ted with greater political participation
in the history of the country - and the Civic Strike two decades later, you can
measure the
degree of disillusionment that lived the country during this period.
106 Relatively calm in terms of violence and armed conflict, because in these ye
ars there were significant
social protests. It was one of the periods of greater student mobilization, a pe
asant and worker throughout the history of
Colombia, showing how political violence and social mobilization occur in a para
llel manner and
without that there are many communicating vessels between one and another. See t
he essay by Daniel
Pecaut, in this regard.
107 Jorge Giraldo, p. 18.
108 Mary Emma Wills, p. 28.
109 Medofilo Medina says, in an interview with Juanita León ( "Think that tested t
he peasants
was a revolution would be very wrong", the empty chair, 15 September 2013), that
the immediate consequences of
this strike were satisfactory for workers: the minimum wage, which was stalled,
rose three times in the eight months following (
); the wages in the industry in
creased in 16 % .
As said Jorge Giraldo, is surprising lack of foresight on the ruling elites arou
nd
the dark clouds that already appeared on the horizon. An example was the percept
ion that
the economy of the drug was not a greater risk, but that, you could even use in
a pragmatic way
to obtain the currency required by the country. The sinister
window
was an expression of the lack of understanding of the risks in ciernes107. Anoth
er expression of
wrong decisions was the approval, under the rules of the State of Siege,
the Security Status in 1978, which led to a greater autonomy in the management o
f
public order by part of the Military Forces and, therefore, to a very negative
militarization of conflicts sociales108. This fact was the key for the resurgenc
e of
the guerrilla groups: the repressive response caused a shift in perception of th
e
guerrillas, especially of the M-19, which acquired the image of a handful of rom
antic heroes
being persecuted by a repressive State and torturer.
The National Civic Strike of 14 September 1977 he had, according to Medofilo Med
ina,
positive effects109 but, equally, two very negative consequences. On one hand, t
he guerrilla movement
read the strike as a prelude to revolution and this reading wrong
deeply affected in the new wave guerrilla. On the other hand, the government and
the Military Forces
interpreted this social mobilization and association as a prelude to an urban in
surrection
. Therefore, during the first few days of work stoppage, Alfonso Lopez Michelsen
received a draft of the measures intensity of public order from the military hig
h command
that, a few months to complete its mandate, did not take into consideration. How
ever, the
new government of Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala if the took into account and ordered
the security regulations
.
In the decade of the eighties many of the positive trends that were observed in
the
previous years began to revert and violence once again reared its terrible face.
In fact
, if you look at the graph again No. 2 Can be seen as the homicide rate
begins to grow and grow in these years to make Colombia the most violent country
in Latin America and one of the most violent of the world at the end of the twen
tieth century
However, homicide rates is not the only indicator of the exponential increase in
the
violence. On the one hand, if we consider the graphic that includes Jorge Girald
o in his essay,
based on the studies carried out by the National Observatory of memory and confl
ict of the
CNMH and the Program of the Uppsala University on armed conflicts in the
world (Figure No. 4) There was a marked increase of members of the armed organiz
ations,
both legal and illegal, killed in combat, as well as the civilian population
caught in the cross-fire, beginning in the eighties and, above all,
in the nineties pasado110.
110 Jorge Giraldo, p. 28.
Figure No. 4. Deaths in combat and civilian casualties 1958-2012
Source: National Observatory of memory and conflict of the CNMH and Uppsala Conf
lict Data Program
On the other hand, it is shocking observe in Table No. 2 As beginning in the eig
hties
are triggered the murders of members of all political parties. In the first term
,
members of the Patriotic Union, founded in 1985, killed by networks of drug traf
ficking and
paramilitary groups emerging with support, in many occasions, state agents. Seco
ndly
, members of the Liberal and Conservative parties, killed by guerrilla groups
in their desire to seek the local political control or by local leaders of the
traditional parties themselves, their factions or dissent with the aim of elimin
ating their opponents
in the political field-election (i.e. , what will be known as the
parapolitics later). And, finally, in the next decade, activists of the politic
al movement,
Hope, Peace and Freedom, in the region of Uraba111.
111 Gustavo Duncan, p. 22. We have simplified the table presented by Gustavo Dun
can, to mention
only members and representatives of political parties.
Box No. 2. Political assassinations 1986-2002.
Political activity
without
party affiliation registered
UP Liberal
Conservative Party
Other affiliation
Hope,
Peace and Freedom
M-19
Mayor
100
31
8
16
4
0 0
Councillors
277
208
50 120
22 7 5
20 militants and
6
159
3 77
114
13
activists
local political leaders
144
87
53
38
9 4 2
Police Inspector
258
19
1
4
3
0 0
other officials
of the State
199
11
4
6 2
0 0
Council candidates to
52
18
5
9
6 0
2
political leaders
departmental
32 34
10 10
3 0
1
mayoral
38
14
5
11
7
0
1
Members,
councillors
7
19
8 8
4 0 0
1 8 7 Congressmen
7
0 0 0
national political leaders
2
6 6 6
0 0
1
Other
5
8
1
2
0 0 0
Total
1135
469
317
240
137
125
25
percentages
38.0 %
15.7 %
10.5
%
8.0 %
4.5 %
4.1 %
0.8
%
Source: Rodolfo Escobedo, Office of Peace of the Presidency of the Republic, 201
4.
How can you explain that violence had declined significantly
during the period of validity of the restrictive institutions of the National Fr
ont and, on the other hand, it would have
slowly increased after their dismount and be triggered after the democratic open
ing
that generated the new Constitution of 1991? That is to say, all the opposite o
f what should have happened
if the political violence is associated with the enclosure of a political system
;
and, its absence, with the opening of possibilities for the opposition politica1
12.
112 Cf., Sergio de Zubiria and the use of the concept of closed society
(Mario La
torre) to characterize
the National Front and explain the reasons for their levels of conflict and viol
ence (p. 31). A plausible explanation is
the existence of two sources of violence that do not depend on the democratic sy
stem: the
drug trafficking, whose surge is linked to the global demand for cocaine and its
high profitability, and the guerrillas,
founded in a political decision to achieve power by force of arms.
The lack of synchrony between political violence and closing or opening of a pol
itical system
is not strange, in accordance with the international experience. In Peru, the wa
r did not begin
under the military governments of Juan Velasco Alvarado and Francisco Morales Be
rmudez
in the so-called military docenio (1968-1980), but during the democratic transitio
n
. The symbolic date of birth of Shining Path is on 17 May 1980
, when a unit of this nascent group burned the ballot boxes Chuschi
(province of Ayacucho). A similar situation can be seen in Spain. The rise of t
he
terrorist organization ETA did not take place under the Franco dictatorship but
under the democratic institutions that are
created after the death of Francisco Franco on 20 November 1975
. In Colombia it was the same: the worst of the war, it is not given under the
National Front, which was defined as a closed system
by sectors of the left-,
but from his dismount progressive from 1974 and, above all, after the advanced
institutions created in the National Constituent Assembly of 1991113.
113 Daniel Pecaut, pp. 26 and 27.
114 IEPRI, our war without name. Transformations of the conflict in Colombia, Bo
gota, Editorial Norma
/Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2005.
115 Dario Fajardo, p. 3, Jairo Estrada, p. 1, Javier Giraldo, p. 13, Sergio de Z
ubiria, p. 50, Renan Vega, p. 1, The discussion regarding the
degree of occlusion or opening of the political system and its impact on
the violence that we have suffered is one of the central axs of the debate betwe
en the members of the
CHCV.
2. Characterization
The characterization of the armed conflict that Colombia has lived in the last f
ew decades has been the subject of
a lengthy debate in the country, both in the law and in the
academic and not there is still a minimum consensus in this regard. To the exten
t that a book
that has a well-deserved intellectual prestige was entitled, not without a certa
in irony, our war
without nombre114.
Sergio de Zubiria, the same as Dario Fajardo, Alfredo Molano, Javier Giraldo, Re
nan
Vega and Jairo Estrada115, used in its text the notion of social conflict armed ,
to refer to
armed clashes that have occurred since the forties
until today. The underlying idea of these commissioners is that there is an inti
mate interrelationship between
social conflict, first and foremost, in the rural areas and the political violen
ce.
Francisco Gutierrez uses the concept of civil war, but in their case difference
two great waves
: that of the actual violence and that starts in the sixties and continues until
today (which it calls counterinsurgency war ), which has in turn
two times: one, initial in which the guerrillas were fairly marginal
rent
, which begins at the end of the years setenta116.
; and the cur
116 Francisco Gutiérrez, pp. 1-2.
117 Jorge Giraldo, p. 1.
118 Mary Emma Wills, p. 1.
119 Vicente Torrijos, p. 4.
120 Concern about the war has been driven in large part by the magnitudes of huma
n victims
produced but have also received attention around the confrontations of the
society projects associated with the conflict, they are involved in deep disagre
ements on access and land use
, said Darius Fajardo, and adds: is a subject on which there is consensus among
those who have investigated the process, as
trigger factor of social conflict and
armed (p. 3).
121 Daniel Pecaut, p. 2.
Jorge Giraldo defines it briefly as a war 117. According to their argument, we are
not
in the presence of a phenomenon of criminal violence widespread (as occurs, for
example
, currently in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador), nor of a
unilateral violence of the State (a vertical violence itself sustaining a regime
in
the terrorism of State). Mary Emma Wills uses the same expresion118. Vicente
Torrijos, for its part, would prefer characterize our internal conflict as an
irregular conflict, i.e. a confrontation that is not present in conventional mode
between
several States but that occurs in an asymmetrical manner between actors (the Col
ombian State and
the guerrilla groups) 119, which jostle for access to the control of the resource
s
related to political power.
In these definitions is one of the more serious differences in the essays submit
ted
. While, for example, Dario Fajardo considers the subject of the earth as
trigger factor of social conflict and armed , arguing that there is an intimate rel
ationship
between both variables120, other authors such as Daniel Pecaut pose that this as
sociation is not
so clear. According to him, it is necessary not assimilate input the actors
actual political guidance to the social actors. The guerrillas claimed without p
lace
to doubts of the social movements. Although sometimes there is a relationship be
tween the two
, not missing elements of tension between the two phenomena. Otherwise, the phas
es in
which the armed conflict has a greater resonance, barely if it matches with thos
e in which
social movements become a foreground 121. In turn, for Mary Emma Wills
, the guerrillas, more that represent and unite the social movements, were a maj
or factor in
internal ruptures and their sectarian clashes.
Reading about the relationships between the peasant movement and the guerrilla g
roups
, constitutes another of the points of divergence in the pronounced CHCV.
Given the diversity of notions used in this report we chose, as we had already s
aid
, the most common in literature and in the documents of the own Peace Table
in Havana, internal armed conflict 122, whose main characteristics
are, according to Jorge Giraldo, the following:
122 even, the ELN defines the conflict in Colombia as a armed conflict of politic
al nature .
Central Command, acclimate to Colombia Peace , Editorial, Magazine insurrection, 8
December 2014.
123 Cf., special issue of the magazine New Routes (No. 4, V. 5, 2010) dedicated
to the prolonged conflict
in the world and, in particular, the article by Marcus Nilsson and Joakim Kreutz
, Protracted conflicts: Issues or
dynamics at stake? .
124 Vicente Torrijos, p. 1.
125 Daniel Pecaut, p. 41.
First is a protracted conflict, either to boot from the
violence (or before), since the emergence of the guerrillas post-revolution cuba
n or from
the eighties of the last century. In any of the three cases, the armed confronta
tion in
Colombia is one of the oldest in the mundo123.
Secondly, it is a complex conflict, due to the number of actors involved
: the State, not always lumped around the same policies and in
many occasions fractured between institutions and their central, regional and lo
cal levels; guerrilla groups
with different orientation political-strategic; and paramilitary gangs.
Vicente Torrijos adds that the armed conflict is not complex irregular exclusive
ly on the basis of the number
of actors involved, but also by its multidimensional nature
and multifactorial 124, i.e. , due to the overlap and the articulation of conflict
s of
different nature. In turn, Daniel Pecaut adds that one of the main features of t
he
armed conflict in Colombia has been a tremendous territorial dispersion and the
extreme fragmentation of
the own conflicting groups. Paramilitary groups have not ever been
truly unified and BACRIM, much less 125. In the case of the
guerrilla groups there were never any nor a true unity. The Guerrilla Coordinati
ng
National Coordinator or the Simon Bolivar Guerilla were more a source of
releases that a real nucleus of articulation with a guerrilla joint chiefs
, as was the case of Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala126. Even, in the
interior of some guerrilla groups, as is the case of the ELN-, has primacy over
the
regional autonomy that centralizing political-military. Pecaut believed necessar
y to take into consideration
, in addition, called as opportunistic actors 127, which we are going to
define with greater precision later.
126 The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) achievement merged at the he
ight of the
war against the Somoza regime, through the articulation of their historical thre
e fractions: the FSLN protracted People's War
, the FSLN and the FSLN proletarian insurrection. The Frente Farabundo Martí para
la Liberación Nacional
(FMLN) was established on 10 October 1980 by five politico-military organization
s:
the Popular Liberation Forces "Farabundo Martí" (FPL), the People's Revolutionary
Army
(ERP), the National Resistance (RN), the Revolutionary Workers' Party Central Am
erican
(PRTC) and the Salvadoran Communist Party (PCS). Finally, the Guatemalan Nation
al Revolutionary Unity
(URNG) founded on 7 February 1982, through the coordination of the four guerrill
a groups
more important: the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), the Organization of the Pe
ople in Arms
(ORPA), the rebel armed forces (FAR), and Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo (TMP)
.
127 Daniel Pecaut, p. 41. An example of this was, without doubt, the organizatio
n's emergency Death to
Kidnappers created by the main leaders of the drug trafficking after the abductio
n of Blanca Nieves Ochoa
by part of the M-19 or the assassination of the Minister of Justice, Rodrigo Lar
a Bonilla.
Third, it has been in essence a conflict discontinuous, because even though the
calls
of guerrillas first generation declined, beginning in the eighties
but not only were rekindled that coincided with an overflow of the armed groups
on the extreme right
.
Fourthly, it has been a conflict with huge regional differences. As have shown
different investigations, the heterogeneous forms of settlement and occupation o
f
the land, relationship of the local population with the national authorities, in
addition to
other factors, have generated a multiplicity of dynamics in the armed conflict.
They are not equal,
for example, the modalities of confrontation in the former areas of
armed colonization of the Communist Party and the FARC, the conflict in the regio
n
coffee maker. This regional diversity is intimately linked, in addition, the eno
rmous complexity
of geographical Colombia, one of the five largest in the world. This variable is
crucial for understanding
the prolongation of the armed conflict in our country. As
says Santiago Montenegro, since its foundation in the sixties, the FARC and the E
LN, and
then the M-19 and the paramilitaries, were exceptionally fortunate because Colom
bia
has one of the complexity of geographical indicators highest in the world. As
argument Mancur Olson, the geographical complexity not only favors the persisten
ce of
illegal armed groups, but in general more expensive the provision of public good
s, such as defense and
security 128.
128 Santiago Montenegro, Lessons of the past , in the spectator, 6 July 2008.
129 Daniel Pecaut, War against society, Bogotá, Editorial Planeta, 2001.
130 Jorge Giraldo, p. 30.
131 Mary Emma Wills, p. 1.
Fifthly, it has been a dreadful conflict, because the civilian population has be
en that
result in the most affected confrontacion129. According to the calculations of J
orge Giraldo, the relationship between
the deaths as a result of confrontations between the various armed groups
and the civilian victims was about 80 civilian casualties by each member of an a
rmed group
killed in fighting between 1985 and 2000, and 380 civilian casualties by each
one of the killed in battle in the years siguientes130.
And, finally, it is a conflict with political roots, in the measure that involve
s
projects of society which the actors were perceived as antagonistic, and, theref
ore, based on a
absolute enmity . Mary Emma Wills doesn't hesitate to call the Colombian conflict
as national dimensions and nature politica131. Other essayists
prefer to enter a hue, given that the armed conflict has involved both players c
learly
political, such as guerrilla groups (in spite of the use of resources
criminals as a means of financing, such as a kidnapping and trafficking of illic
it drugs);
other countries in which the varnish is more superficial political and criminal
dimension more pronounced
, as the paramilitary groups; and other openly criminals but that have contribut
ed to the weakening of the
State, such as organized crime groups.
If we observe today the situation living national as Mexico, Guatemala, El Salva
dor
or Honduras, is evidence that criminal organizations motivated by private intere
sts
can have a profound political impact, by undermining the legitimacy of public in
stitutions
through the control of local authorities, the entrenched
corruption networks and the implementation of acts of terror paralyzing. The sam
e thing has happened in
Colombia in the last few decades. Hence the expression conflict with political ro
ots
enjoyment of greater consensus.
Some of these traits, but in particular the regional fragmentation and diversity
itself and
segmentation of the actors, allow you to conclude that Pecaut leads nowhere (thin
king about)
the political opposition between two fields faced. We have not been nor are we
currently in the presence of a bipolar conflict with two fields clearly defined,
but, compared to a multipolar conflict and highly fragmented, whether taken in
consideration the organizations involved and the affected regions. Pecaut
believes that the current conflict has been worse, in terms of the suffering of
the population, which at the time
of the violence, not only because the effects of the latter were located
in certain specific regions (for example, the Coast, not lived the
violence with the same intensity as the coffee areas) or due to the dynamic of t
he
sectarianism partisan was also quite focused. In contrast, the current conflict
certainly has
regional dynamics but accompanied by strategic projects, whether
political or economic, nacional132 order. Even a department
particularly Pacific in the recent past, today occupies the first flat: Nariño.
132 Daniel Pecaut, p. 41. Dario Fajardo and Sergio de Zubiria think, on the cont
rary, that if it is clear the
antagonism, either between two projects the first society (p. 3), or between the
dominant bloc
and the popular sectors
and opposition, the second (p. 29).
133 Renan Vega, in his essay, believes that should be added another actor in the
conflict: the United States. When analyzing the causes
of the social and armed conflict, as well as the variables which have prolonged
and the impact on
the civilian population, the United States is not a mere external influence, but
a direct participant of the conflict
, due to prolonged involvement during much of the twentieth century (p. 1). Oth
er authors,
like Darius Fajardo, support this vision.
3. Actors in the conflict
in the internal armed conflict that has plagued the country since the inception
of the National Front
have involved two main actors involved in the first phase (1964-1980) and three
major players in
the second phase (1980-2015)133. Obviously behind these principal actors
- that is to say, on which rests the shaft of the armed confrontation-, there ar
e
other social or political actors that play different roles in the context of the
conflict.
1964-1980 Phase
As we pointed out earlier, in Latin America there were two waves of revolution
clearly differentiated: one after the Cuban revolution and other after the Nicar
aguan revolution
, in 1959 and 1979 respectively.
In the initial phase of the armed conflict in Colombia, whose
ry small if a conflict of very low-intensity confrontation had two key
: on the one hand, the guerrillas
first-generation and the
, not to mention the banditry semi-social and semi-political,
he
violence, affected the rural life until mid-year sesenta134.
dimensions were ve
players
Military Forces
such as a lag of t
134 Daniel Pecaut, p. 11.
135 Dario Fajardo, p. 44.
This first phase was characterized by the weakening of the guerrilla groups at t
he end of the 60s and
beginning of the next decade, during which Colombia had homicide rates
lowest in the last 70 years.
The 1980-2014 phase current phase and its deep aggravation are intimately relate
d to the emergence of
a new actor, the paramilitaries and the presence of some financial resources wit
hout
background from drug trafficking, kidnapping and extortion. As a result,
Colombia became a confrontation between insurgent movements
and the state apparatus of counterinsurgency, toward a conflict more complex
due to the eruption of the paramilitary groups and the opportunistic third
that w
ere introduced
in the political game affecting their course and their dynamics.
Daniel Pecaut called opportunistic third
to those criminal organizations or
political actors that have participated in the dynamics of conflict for their pa
rticular benefit
. For example, local political leaders who made alliances with the paramilitary
groups
to obtain political support and, in many occasions, to accumulate land and prope
rty
of the displaced population. Also, fit this category national or multinational c
ompanies
who allied themselves with paramilitary fronts in order to generate a
population displacement, occupying their lands illegally or buy below its
value comercial135.
In terms of the paramilitary groups have these disparate sources, depending on
the objectives of its promoters, their level of organization, their modes of act
ion and its internal discipline
. In spite of the attempts to create a national organization from
1996, through the so-called Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), it is certain
that
the predominance of a regional logic and the AUC, rather than a unified applianc
e, was an unstable coalition
whose internal confrontations you generated problems of collective action and
political support and social136. The mixture of a political discourse
about counterinsurgency and criminal actions in particular made benefit of param
ilitary groups a
strange mixture of political actor and actor criminal, with probable predominanc
e of the latter
connotation.
136 Francisco Gutiérrez, pp. 20-23.
137 Mary Emma Wills takes as the primary reference for his criticism of the stru
ctural causes of
starring Theda Skocpol, bringing the State Back (p. 3, Note 10).
4. Factors, actors, joints, and dynamics of the conflict
The discussion of the factors that have influenced the violence that has suffere
d the country has been subjected
, since many years ago, a great deal of debate. While some analysts
defend the existence of objective causes
, other considered to have greater releva
nce the
subjective causes , i.e. the political decision of some political and social actor
s taking up arms.
Several essayists argue, however, that a debate in these terms
leads to a blind alley
. As sustained by Mary Emma Wills, the structural approach
( ) has serious difficulties to explain the outcome between countries that share
similar economic structures and the dynamism and complexity of the political wor
ld
137. The explanations subjective paradigms attempt to explain the social practice
s as
determined by the social structure. The subjects do not play a role because they
are a
passive expression. The subjective explanations on the other hand, tend to expla
in the social actions
as simply the sum of individual actions. What is true is that no
provides a satisfactory answer. The first cannot explain why in similar conditio
ns
the social actors develop strategies for action. The latter cannot
explain why there are social regularities.
It is not, of course, ignore the structural factors or the motivations and strat
egies
of the actors. Both the objective dimension of the socio-political problems or
socio-economic are relevant. Equally, are relevant the subjective decisions of
the social and political actors. It is a question of finding an explanation
based on how, why and when these factors are converted into efficient causes of
the
violencia138.
138 An interesting discussion about this can be found in the article by Paul Cha
mbers, in search of the causes of the
Colombian armed conflict: analyzing the beginning of a trend social-scientific , i
n
philosophical discussions, No. 23, 2013.
The explanatory model is, if you like, simple: there are factors that help creat
e opportunities to
the armed actors to obtain support and recruit members. These are the so-called o
bjective causes
, such as income inequality and heritage, the high rural unemployment
, the absence of employment opportunities for young people, the persecution agai
nst
union leaders or popular, the criminalisation of peasants linked to illicit crop
s
, etc. ; all of which generates a
availability in some sectors of society to ente
r
the armed groups. Likewise, there are subjective causes
, such as the
political theories that justify the use of violence to achieve social progress (
or
to prevent them), the influence of the revolutionary examples (as was the case o
f Cuba and
Nicaragua), an apologia for the armed struggle on the part of urban intellectual
s of right or
left, the characterization of the system as undemocratic or the promotion of non
-participation
in the institutions through, for example, the voter turnout, etc. Some and
other causes must be present in a given historical context, for they arise and,
above all, for that is to consolidate and expand the armed groups. The complex d
ebate
in the social sciences is to determine which of these factors are really signifi
cant
and, in the case of Colombia in particular, which have demonstrated relevance an
d why.
In any case, this multiplicity of objective and subjective factors demonstrates
the inadequacy of
the into monocausal explanations.
In this regard, for example, Francisco Gutierrez said that may be given to the ne
oliberalism the connotation
and meaning that you want, but with each one of them is one that
there were a lot of countries that suffered radical neoliberal transformations w
ithout falling or
persist in the war 139. The same can be said of the military interference of the U
nited States
, of the inequality and social exclusion, of the limitations on political partic
ipation
or of the agrarian question.
139 Francisco Gutiérrez, p. 3.
140 Vicente Torrijos, p. 13. As we have mentioned before, the center of the argu
ment of Renan Vega was the role that
it has complied with the United States interference in Colombia, both in the def
inition of the counterinsurgency model
as to the configuration of a state terrorism (pp. 39 and 40).
141 Gustavo Duncan, p. 1.
With regard to the military intervention of the United States, Vicente Torrijos
argues that the
armed conflict in Colombia cannot be qualified as a war of national liberation
because there is no colonial domination, no foreign occupation ( ), nor the popu
lation
has appealed to the right to self-determination 140. Without doubt, have existed i
n
Colombia sectors opposed to the military missions: syndication feeds by the Unit
ed States,
but has not been in the country a national mobilization against a foreign occupi
er as
happened in the Vietnam war, and even in the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions. T
he anti-imperialism
in Colombia has been a discourse of political minorities and not a factor in
massive social mobilization, as if it happened in the liberation movements of th
e
second world war.
The same can be argued with respect to poverty or social inequality. Gustavo
Duncan, for example, doubts that social exclusion per se can be considered
a sufficient cause to explain the emergence of armed groups. Without doubt, both
income inequality
and inequality in land tenure are very high in Colombia
, as evidenced by all the studies in this regard. Even at the level of income in
equality,
the rates of Colombia are some of the highest in the world. However
, inequality does not necessarily cause insubordination, much less a
violent insubordination. There is no need to go to look for other cases of count
ries where there is great inequality
and there is no greater social conflict (
) 141. Brazil is a clear example of dee
p
social differences and, in turn, high levels of pipeline and plural democratic s
ocial conflicts
.
Another of the so-called
objective factors of the conflict would come from, for e
ssayists as
Renan Vega, of the existence of a State terrorism . Daniel Pecaut doubt the relev
ance of
this characterization to define the Colombian political system. Pecaut
asserts that, without doubt, many agents of the State, government officials, mem
bers of the Armed Forces
or elected officials through the popular vote have been engaged in
heinous crimes, as evidenced by
false positives or the parapolitics. But the
Colombian regime was far from be likened to the military dictatorships of the co
ne Sur142.
As it drew Mary Emma Wills, even during the period in which governed the status
of security,
there was political currents that were expressed in against this legislation in
the Congress and
then, in the eighties, the Procuraduría General de la Nación ruled and carried out i
nvestigations
against the paramilitary groups. In turn, many judges and politicians
gave his life to defend the rule of law and democratic institutions.
It is enough to mention Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, and Luis Carlos Galan.
142 Daniel Pecaut, p. 37.
143 Daniel Pecaut, p. 34.
Finally, the agrarian question is recognized by almost all of the Commissioners
as
a key variable to explain the social conflict in our country. However
, some question that tensions may explain agricultural per se, the violence
of a political nature or the complexity of the violence in the country and their
joints. Without
doubt, income inequality and the huge rural poverty are a breeding ground for
on which underlie the armed actors, for example, to carry out the
recruitment in their ranks. One of the paradoxes of the armed conflict in Colomb
ia, as
drew Daniel Pecaut, is that the recruitment base of all armed groups (
guerrillas, paramilitaries, and even the regular army) are very similar in their
social and racial composition, and come from different regions. In the vast majo
rity
are recruited in the most depressed sectors of the population campesina143. Howe
ver, the peasantry
is far from being a homogeneous social class. As maintains Pecaut,
speak of the peasantry as a uniform sector is contrary to the evidence. You cann
ot
assimilate the peasantry smallholder of Boyacá, owners of small coffee farms
in Quindio or Risaralda or workers of flower companies on the savannah of
Bogota, to the farmers in the areas of colonization. Hence the need to take into
consideration
for the analysis of the huge regional diversity, fragmentation of the peasant po
pulation in
multiple forms of appropriation of the land and of the labor force, the
numerous means of channelling their interests and, equally, the Honda
stratification socio-economic. The peasantry was far from supporting the armed g
roups
and was, on the contrary, the main victim of the fighting and the crossfire
for territorial control.
Thus, the approaches into monocausal, if we take a comparative perspective, are
not robust to explain complex social phenomena as is the case of violence
politica144. In particular it is difficult to explain why having similar situati
ons in
many nations of Latin America there are social dynamics so different. How do you
explain
, for example, the persistence of the internal armed conflict in Colombia, while
began to disappear in the rest of the continent having objective causes common?
The particularity of Colombia were neither poverty nor the income inequality, or
the presence of
the United States, all traits common to Latin America in the eighties
. It was a combination of factors and actors with various interests and strategi
es, in
a certain situation, that would be to promote this new explosion of multiple vio
lence
.
144 A critical approach to these visions into monocausal is located in the synth
esis of the labor group of Historical Memory
, Basta ya!, in which they are studying a multiplicity of factors and their inte
rrelationships to explain the
armed conflict, such as, the persistence of the agrarian question, the spread of
drug trafficking, the influence
and pressure from the international context, the institutional fragmentation and
territorial of Colombia
(National Center of Historical Memory, "Enough is Enough already!, Colombia: mem
ories of war and dignity. General Report
, Bogotá, President of the Republic, 2013, p. 111).
II. Major factors and conditions that have facilitated or contributed to the per
sistence of
conflict
Given the endless debate that leads to the analysis around the factors and dynam
ics that may
explain the emergence of armed actors of a political nature, in my view
have the greatest interest and relevance in the reflection on the factors that a
llow us to understand its extension.
First of all, because if we arrived at a basic consensus in the country around
a few key factors and, above all, to the way how they interrelate and affect the
persistence of
armed conflict, their removal will be important and even crucial to
achieving a durable and sustainable peace, i.e. a peaceful post-conflict.
Recapitulating the thesis that have proposed various essayists the main conditio
ns that
have contributed to the persistence of the conflict would be, in particular, the
following:145
145 We must clarify that the order of factors does not alter the product. It is
not proposing any
hierarchy. It is, simply, to highlight the many factors considered by the variou
s authors,
which should be, in my view, in the heart of an agenda for peace for the post-co
nflict period.
146 Daniel Pecaut considers, however, inappropriate to apply the thesis of Paul
Collier, in the case of Colombia
. According to Collier, in most of today's armed conflicts more prevalent greed
( greed ) that the tort ( grievance ), i.e. that the private appropriation of resourc
es would be been the key driver of
the war more than the ideological motivations (p. 24). This vision is not, acc
ording to Pecaut,
compatible with the experience of Colombia, in which the motivations politico-id
eological have been
predominant, at least in terms of two key players: the guerrillas and the State.
But, it is likely that
if is the case of the paramilitary groups (which combined political and criminal
motivations) and, above all, with the
opportunistic third , whose participation in the conflict if was motivated almost
exclusively
by the private accumulation of capital.
147 Gustavo Duncan, p. 5.
148 Alfredo Molano, p. 47.
1. Drug trafficking and
war economy
Daniel Pecaut believes that the major factor of the mutation was ( ) drug traffick
ing
146, whose resources would have to have an affect on both the potentiation of the
guerrilla movements
, as the groups of organized crime and the paramilitaries
from the eighties. Much more when, after the death of Pablo
Escobar in 1993, the drug barons were progressively taking control of
the groups paramilitares147. In turn, Alfredo Molano recognizes the impact that
had the illegal drug economy
, since the eighties, in the strengthening of the guerrilla groups
: guerrillas benefited from the exceptional economic situation by the
track of the extortion (drug traffickers). The armed movement, which until then
was purely agricultural, was transformed into a huge military force 148.
Even though the production, marketing and sale of marijuana had its heyday in th
e seventies
, the financial resources of this boom a marimba player
only impacted
regions producing and exporting, particularly along the Atlantic Coast. Another
very different phenomenon was the emergence of mafia organizations and business
dedicated to the production and trafficking of cocaine. The drug cartels produce
d
profound changes in the structure of the Colombian society to exert a profound i
nfluence on
the policy through a combination of threats, corruption and violence,
that they have opened up a prominent place in the local governments and even, at
the national level.
The illegal drug economy also had an impact on the finances of the
guerrilleros149 groups. As stresses Alfredo Molano, to principle the guerrillas d
oggedly opposed
on the grounds that it was a strategy to take away the insurgency its social bas
e,
but soon realized that he could participate in the new bonanza gaining taxes
war 150.
149 Jorge Giraldo, pp. 20-22.
150 Alfredo Molano, p. 47.
151 Gustavo Duncan, p. 2.
It is interesting the approach of Gustavo Duncan for whom the massification of d
rug trafficking and
kidnapping largely determined the course of the modern armed conflict in Colombi
a
, especially in three aspects: first, because it had an impact on the war strate
gies
of both the guerrillas and the various modalities of counterinsurgency
private, since both had adapt its action to dominate the resources criminals or
prevent it from falling into the hands of their opponents. Second, the illegal e
conomy influenced in
the prolongation of the conflict, therefore, despite the pervasive dislocation p
roduced in regional economies
(for example, in the agricultural production or livestock due to absenteeism of
local entrepreneurs before the kidnapping and extortion), in turn, gleaner did
resources that enabled it to maintain alive the local economic life as well were
these capitals of
illegal origin. And third, these forms of criminality not only served to define
the interactions between the
actors insurgents and counterinsurgents private, but also to establish the linka
ges between the
national elites and the elites of the periphery, whose accumulation of
economic resources allowed them to win a high autonomy vis-à-vis the
central powers and allowed them to accumulate some resources of power that would
impact the
national political dynamics as a whole. The parapolitics was, without doubt, a cle
ar expression of this
fenomeno151.
Since the eighties of the last century until today, the modalities for the finan
cing of
the armed groups were, in addition to the drug trafficking, kidnapping, extortio
n, black markets
parallel (gold, emeralds and the theft and the marketing of fuels), the
money laundering and armed patronage 152 on royalties, transfers and other resource
s
municipales153. These resources generated a
opportunity structure for the
exponential growth of the guerrilla and paramilitary groups in the eighties and
nineties.
The FARC, for example, rose from a thousand men under arms in 1982 to around
18,000 when it dissolved the
area for relaxation in the Caguan. The
demobilized paramilitary groups around 32,000 members in the framework of the La
w 975 of Justice and Peace in
the year 2005.
152 The concept of armed patronage
was coined by Andrés Peñate The strategic path of t
he ELN: the
idealism the Guevarist armed patronage , in Malcolm deas and Maria Victoria Lloren
te (eds. ), recognize
the war to build peace, Bogotá, CEREC, Editions Uniandes, Editorial Norma, 1999.
153 United Nations Development Program, conflict, blind alley. National human de
velopment report
for Colombia -2013, Bogota, UNDP, 2003, p. 285.
154 Mauricio Uribe López, the nation vetoed. State, development and civil war in C
olombia, Bogota, Universidad Externado de
Colombia, 2013.
155 Jorge Giraldo, p. 34.
As has been shown Mauricio Uribe Lopez founded on comparative data at the intern
ational level
, when an armed group has significant and acts under certain
social conditions such as income inequality, poverty or the high rural
unemployment its recruitment capability is facilita154. To this must be added th
at, in the war against illegal drugs
the coca farmers faced with policies to eradicate
ended up finding in armed groups a channel of resistance. As
Jorge Giraldo, one of the political effects that have had the illicit crops on
the war has been that, when the economic activity of the coca was buoyant, resour
ces for
the illegal armed groups grew; when the State attacked the coca-producing areas,
the main alternative to
the workers of coca was integrated into the illegal armed groups
155.
The control of drug lords on local and regional authorities deepened, according
to Francisco
Gutiérrez, the centrifugal tendencies of the partisan system. With the rise of the
financial resources of
the cocaine, the political leadership in these two levels were transferred from
the
national political directories for your financing. The narco-politics became
, in this context, a shaft of the local and regional power. Weapons and polls be
gan to
supplement the two poles of the political spectrum: both to the left and right.
The so-called parapolitics , that is to say, the marriage between the political eli
te
regional and paramilitary groups, constituted the clearest expression of this co
mbination of weapons
and polls in segments of the right-wing parties. As well as the thesis of the
combining all forms of struggle , legal and illegal, the Communist Party,
formed the greater expression in the left.
On the other hand, the Andean world, with high population density, was populatin
g its periphery through a constant
expansion of the agricultural frontier, but with limited access to
State services and, therefore, minimal regulation and institutionalization. Unde
r these conditions
, the inhabitants of these territories, without major alternatives, entered eith
er
in governance schemes rebel , or either in local political dynamics of
fractions of the government parties, but looking for distant evade the regulator
y control
of the central State.
This had both social consequences - as was the emergence of a
illicit peasantry 156-, as consequences of war. The coca economy allowed the FARC
not only militarily but develop, become the regulatory authority in some
territorial spaces in which the State was absent and, by this track expand their
capacity to
representation and reclutamiento157.
156 William Ramirez, do a peasantry illicit? , in Political Analysis, No. 29, 1996
. According to Ramirez that qualification
was the result of a mistaken policy aimed to the criminalisation of the small gr
ower
and processor of coca leaf.
157 Francisco Gutiérrez, pp. 15-18.
Duncan says that the drug trafficking generated a political economy that influen
ced the
peaking, but especially in the prolongation of the conflict. Both communities on
the periphery
as guerrillas and paramilitaries constructed orders and projects of government,
the margin of the central State, which were founded on the surplus of the illega
l activity.
These projects of government [ ] were [ ] forms of government able to operate inde
finitely
and consistent with the possibilities of access to global markets given the cons
traints of
capital in the periphery 158.
158 Gustavo Duncan, p. 34.
159 Kidnapping, without a doubt, is one of the most plausible explanations of the
birth and
proliferation of paramilitarism , Francisco Gutiérrez, p. 23. Probably the best desc
ription of the
impact of the kidnapping and extortion in the emergence of the paramilitary grou
ps are found in the book of
Carlos Medina Gallego, Self-defense forces, paramilitary and drug trafficking in
Colombia. Origin, development and consolidation.
The case of Puerto Boyaca, Bogotá, Editorial Newspaper Documents, 1990.
160 Francisco Gutiérrez, pp. 18-19.
2. Patterns of violence against civilians: the role of the kidnapping and extort
ion
The exponential growth of the kidnapping and extortion in the eighties and ninet
ies of the last century
were, in a double sense, two other important
fuels the
armed conflict. On the one hand, served as a financial source for the rapid expa
nsion of the guerrilla groups, which
have increased their income, and therefore its ability to
recruitment. But, on the other hand, unleashed the reaction of the victims, whic
h stimulated
the formation of the paramilitarismo159. As Francis says Gutiérrez, the sharp incr
ease
of kidnapping in these same years gave him a grating to the armed conflict to
link the general reasons for the insurgency with the staff of the survival
of the involved 160. We must not forget that the creation, in 1981, the network, D
eath to
Kidnappers (more), was the first major operation of organized crime to deal with
the abduction, in this case, one of the sisters of the clan Ochoa by part of the
M-19.
Figure No. 5. Kidnapping ( (1970-2010)
Source: The years from 1970 to 2010 were taken from the Center's database of His
torical Memory and for the years
2011 to 2013 from the Victims Unit with cut-off date to October 1 of 2014.
For Gustavo Duncan, one of whose axs analytical is the effect of the use of kidn
apping in the trajectory of the
conflict, this criminal practice defined the political alliances between
certain social sectors of the periphery against the guerrillas and the legal lef
t that in one way or another
was linked to the armed struggle 161. The Patriotic Union was, according to Duncan
, one of the main victims of this reaction, even if not the only one. Thousands
of popular leaders
and community were also slaughtered.
0 500
1000 1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
1970
1971
1974 1976
1978
1980 1982
1984 1986
198
190
192
194 196
198
20
202
204
206
208
2010
161 Gustavo Duncan, pp. 16-17.
3. The precariousness of institutions
Jorge Giraldo argues that, in general, the States of Latin America fit into the
definition of
weak States
-as well as with varying degrees of weakness-, being the case of Colo
mbia
particularly serious. This fact helps to explain, as Giraldo, the persistence
of the guerrilla war in our country, as the trend toward the privatization of se
curity and
contrainsurgencia162.
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162 equally, Francisco Gutierrez (pp. 15-18), Daniel Pecaut (p. 32) And Vicente
Torrijos (p. 19), refer to the
institutional weakness without, in any way, the Colombian State can be regarded
as a failed state
.
163 Jorge Giraldo, p. 11.
According to the chart No. 6, Developed by the prestigious coadministration of W
ar Project
(COW) of the University of Michigan, Colombia always remained below
Center and South America in the indicator of national capacities until the end o
f the last century
163 and even during the eighties of the last century fell below the levels reach
ed during the
National Front.
Figure No. 6. National capacities. Colombia, South America, Central America,
1960-2013.
Jorge Giraldo asserts that the chronic weakness of the Colombian State has had t
hree
interrelated components that have limited their ability to comply with their
legal and constitutional responsibilities at the level of the guarantees of publ
ic order,
the delivery of services and public safety: (a) the effectiveness to obtain the
resources
necessary for the proper functioning of public institutions; (b) the size and qu
ality of the
public force; and, (c) the effective integration of the territory through a
adecuada164 infrastructure.
164 For other essayists, more than these variables, are the empty of the justice
and the high levels of impunity
in Colombia, which generate a perverse incentive for the private justice and con
stitute the main factor
of institutional weakness in our country.
165 Santiago Montenegro, op. cit. ,
while there are no major discrepancies in relation to the low capacity of the St
ate in order to obtain
resources and carry out their multiple responsibilities (education, health, just
ice, etc.
), nor with the backwardness in the road infrastructure in the country, the issu
e of military spending if is an important subject for
discussions and disagreements.
According to Jorge Giraldo, as can be seen in the Chart No. 7, The military spen
ding in Colombia
was far below the same expenditure in the rest of Latin America until recent yea
rs, in which
Colombia began to occupy the highest levels of the continent.
According to Santiago Montenegro, since the beginning of the National Front and o
f the Cuban revolution
public policy was mainly defined by the speech of
Alberto Lleras before the Armed Forces in the Theater Homeland, on 23 May 1958,
in which
, basically, it was determined that civilians are not getting into the defense a
nd security issues and
the military is not getting into government affairs. Such a policy maintained, i
n practice
, a budget for the Armed Forces ( ) well below what was required
conditions of the country 165.
It is very likely, according to Giraldo, that this low level of military spendin
g will serve to explain to a large extent
the privatization of security and counter-insurgency by paramilitary groups
allied to regional and local elites and, in many occasions, with the support of
members of the Armed Forces. To which she would have to add the weak capacity of
the judiciary
in Colombia, which resulted in the blossoming of various forms of private justic
e
.
C: \Users\Eduardo\Documents\CHCV\milex_colvslatam (2) .png
Graph No. 7. Military spending from Colombia, South America and Central America
(1960-
Despite the sharp increase in military spending and police in Colombia in the la
st two decades
and, therefore, of the State's ability to make presence in the national territor
y
, Mary Emma Wills argues that one of the main knots unresolved in Colombia
, are the limitations to promote internal penalties in the Armed Forces with res
pect
to those responsible for actions that affect human rights.
4. The private provision of coercion and security and the paramilitary phenomeno
n
The chronic weakness of the Colombian State has been, particularly at critical j
unctures,
compensated with the private provision legal166 and, in many cases, illegal coerc
ion
and security.
The 166 private security agencies that abound in both Colombia and the rest of L
atin America are the
best expression of this
privatization of the public safety. Cf., Renan Vega, p. 3
1.
167 By Decree 1814 of June 13 1953, Rojas Pinilla renamed the General Command of
the Military Forces by the current designation, General Command of the Armed For
ces. The object was
to incorporate the National Police on the Ministry of Defense (which is part sin
ce then), next to the
Army, Navy and Air Force, but with budget and organization of their own. Later,
through the
Law 193 of 30 December 1959, the nation took over the payment of the entire body
of National Police, which
completed the process of its nationalization.
168 Francisco Gutiérrez, pp. 11-12.
169 Renan Vega, p. 14 ET seq.
Although the general Rojas Pinilla, through the Decree 1814 of June 13 of 1953 t
ransferred the
National Police to the Ministry of Defense starting your process of nationalizat
ion167 and,
therefore, ending with the figure of the subnational policemen who had acted as
coordinators and legitimators of civic networks radicalised 168 in many regions
during the period of violence, such progress was hampered by the decrees issued
during the governments of
Valencia and Lleras which allowed the formation of self-defense groups
composed of civiles169. Although there is little evidence that these armed netwo
rks have been
really formed, in the eighties, with the emergence of drug trafficking and param
ilitarism,
those decrees if would serve to justify its creation. This is one of the
germs, according to Francisco Gutierrez, of the paramilitary expansion.
In fact, in 1965, faced with the phenomenon of banditry and the formation of the
cuban postrevolucion guerrillas, the national government enacted under the state
of emergency, the
Decree 3398 that stated in its article 25 that ( ) all Colombians, men and
women, not included in the appeal to the compulsory military service, may be use
d by the Government
in activities and work with which will contribute to the restoration of
normalcy . And, in the article. 33, Paragraph 2, the Decree added that the
Ministry of National Defense, through the commands authorized, may cover,
when it sees fit, such as private property, weapons that are considered
for the exclusive use of the Armed Forces . This Decree was converted into perman
ent legislation
in 1968.
The paramilitaries and the consequent privatization of the use of violence is, a
ccording to Gutierrez
, a key element in understanding the prolongation of the conflict in Colombia. T
he rise of
the paramilitary groups said thanks to the support of four types of agents: (a)
the insubordination of legal rural elites, who felt they were unprotected by par
t of the
State vis-à-vis the kidnapping and extortion; (b) the role of elites illegal, in p
articular
the mafia of the illicit drugs; (c) the participation of broad sectors of the po
litical class
and (d) the participation of members of the security agencies of the State.
In the final months of the administration of César Gaviria was took a further step
toward
private provision of security with the signing of the Decree Law 356 of 1994, wh
ich established
the conditions to regulate new "special services private security" that
operate in regions in which had disruption of public order. This Decree was issu
ed
in great measure due to the fact that the country was already living a overflow
of
private security groups, outside of the legal framework. On 19 April 1989 the Na
tional Government
, concerned about this growing importance of self-defense groups and paramilitar
y, had issued
the Decree 0815 through which was suspended the application of articles
25 and 33 (3) the Decree 3398 in order to prevent their being interpreted as a
legal authorization to organize armed civilian groups outside of the Constitutio
n and the
laws. The goal of the new Decree Law 356 was, therefore, attempt to submit to th
e already existing organizations
to control and surveillance of the State, which turned out to be in this context
an explosive naive optimism and in fact would have been to produce
unintended consequences nor desired.
In effect, the 27 of April of 1995, already under the government of Ernesto Samp
er, a resolution of
the Superintendence of Surveillance and Private Security granted to such new ser
vices on
behalf of Convivir170. Many of these rural cooperatives were quickly
opted by paramilitary commanders in boom, aggravating the privatization of secur
ity
rural171.
170 Javier Giraldo, p. 38.
171 Jorge Giraldo, p. 25.
5. Weapons and polls
In 1986, through a constitutional reform was approved the popular election of
mayors and, five years later, through the Constitution of 1991, the popular elec
tion of
governors. These reforms were considered a step forward in the democratization o
f the
political system in Colombia, since the municipal and departmental decentralizat
ion should
produce a greater autonomy for these territorial entities, thanks to the local a
nd regional participation
in the election of their representatives. However, paradoxically, these
local and regional elections in the midst of a deepening extreme of the armed co
nfrontation
, were also negative consequences in many regions because of the systematic murd
er
of political leaders identified to support the enemy" (whether
pro or opposition) or become hindrance for the project of territorial control
of a actor ilegal172 armed. The relationship between political and armed groups
are made
more complex because, also, to the fact that many regional leaders began to agre
e
pragmatic or ideological alliances with the armed actors, either for that would
allow them
to carry out political activities in a given region or whether to harass and eve
n
liquidate their adversaries politicos173.
172 Mary Emma Wills, pp. 31-32.
173 Francisco Gutiérrez, pp. 24-25.
174 Francisco Gutiérrez, pp. 24-25.
In this context, networks were created illegal that they combined to the right a
nd left
polls and votes, through which were harassed citizens that voted against the
political and armed group dominant in a given region. This meant, in terms of
persistence of the conflict, the war that was creating -track violence
opportunist - incentives for its own perpetuation 174. Probably the biggest impact
of decentralization was the transfer of national resources to the municipalities
. As
the resources were not the result of local taxation, became a
unexpected treasure
that he arrived from the center. Local politics influenced in many regions by ne
tworks of drug trafficking
, paramilitary groups and, to a lesser scale, guerrillas, became an effort to
control, such as a large booty, the municipal resources that grew without local
effort.
This produced new resources as fuel for the violence.
In this context, the assassination of political leaders, government officials an
d elected authorities
such as local councillors, members of parliament, mayors and congressmen became
a frequent occurrence
. In this regard, Jorge Giraldo said that war also affected the democratic order
not only by the dysfunctions generated in the institutions, but also
by the violation of the life and freedom of the local representatives. Between 1
986 and March
2003 were killed 162 mayors, councillors and 420 529 staff members, 53% of whom
were
police inspectors; in addition, were killed 108 candidates for
mayor and 94 candidates for municipal councils. In turn, between 1970 and 2010 w
ere abducted
318 mayors, 332 councillors, 52 deputies and 54 congressmen, most of them
at the top of the war between 1996 and 2002 175.
175 Jorge Giraldo, p. 33.
176 Alfredo Molano, p. 33.
6. Inequity, property rights and agrarian question
in general, all the essayists agree on the negative effects it has had on the
country the recurring failure in the various attempts to promote a strong agrari
an reform.
Both the Law 200 of 1936 on the status of land as the 1961 one on social reform
agrarian suffered a similar fate: a strong reaction in favor of the status quo,
and even
various measures to liquidate the few achievements reformers achieved. As said
Alfredo Molano in relation to the Law 135 of 1961, the balance sheet of the agrar
ian reform was
very poor. The concentration of land intensified; the medium properties are not
strengthened; the sharecroppers and tenant farmers declined; advanced the coloni
zation of the
piedemonte amazon, Magdalena Medio, Uraba, Catatumbo and Pacific Coast 176.
This failure of the agrarian reform in the regions where the settlement has been
more intense in
Colombia, the Andean region and the Atlantic Coast, led to make
colonization through the expansion of the agricultural frontier exhaust valve of
the peasant population
surplus, i.e. no land and no rural employment. Alfredo Molano the
sintered in a phrase: in two words, the main action of INCORA
colonization was the 177, even when it would be just add that there were signific
ant investments in
irrigation districts in various departments (Tolima, Valle del Cauca, Atlantic,
and Bolívar).
177 Alfredo Molano, p. 34. Molano adds that the weakness of the agrarian reform w
as coupled with the strengthening of
the peasant organizations and armed movements (p. 34). Other authors, such as
Daniel Pecaut, on the contrary, they view the "social mobilizations and armed st
ruggles tend to evolve
in the opposite direction" (p. 21). This is one of the issues that generated t
he most controversy between the
Commissioners.
178 The Gini coefficient to measure inequality in land tenure shows that Latin A
merica has the
highest rates in the world, 85% of the countries exceed the 0.6 and, in the case
of Brazil and Argentina 0.7
, being the two most extreme cases of the continent (Organization of American St
ates, land tenure:
sharing information and experiences for the sustainability , in series of policies
, No. April 10
2006). While Columbia has a million agricultural landowners, Argentina has only
300
thousand, in a territory two times greater in size.
179 Francisco Gutiérrez, pp. 7-9. In addition, it would be necessary to add the pr
edominance of a model of development
favorable to the cities and, therefore, largely indifferent toward the rural sec
tor since the early
seventies.
180 Organization of American States, op. cit.
land inequality has had an impact on the conflict in Colombia not due both to th
e
inequality in itself178 but, according to Francisco Gutiérrez, for three main reas
ons: (a)
the political allocation of property rights to land not only on the part of
large owners
(concentration), but also by specialists of violence ; (b)
the ongoing expansion of the agricultural frontier
, articulated with various type
s of economy
, which generates a
quantum of violence due to the conflict over property rights
through
the occupation; (c) the articulation between the political power and
the large property agraria179.
Many of the problems that must be solved to achieve changes in the agrarian stru
cture in
Latin America, as evidenced by the studies of the Organization of States
Americanos180, shares Colombia: a.
High levels of insecurity of land tenure (b
. Large number of informal owners.
Lack of security for the property rights of women, indigenous peoples and popula
tions of African descent
.
Land administration systems complex and not very accessible.
Lack of information and/or disorder in the databases on property records
.
f. Over-centralization of political and administrative g.
Absence of mechanisms for access to credit using the land as collateral.
h. Land conflicts and lack of mechanisms for alternative dispute resolution
.
i. Resistance on the part of political and economic groups.
j. Absence of a legal framework and compliance with standards.
This confluence of factors becomes very prone to serious social conflicts that,
in a
context of crossfire between armed organizations, ends up feeding the
violence, as shown by the experience of our country.
7. Political System ingratiating/parochial
One of the greatest successes of the National Front was the reduction of the
bipartisan sectarian culture. However, some essayists considered that this modal
ity of
sectarian mobilization with a deep emotional content was replaced by
clientelist networks and parochial. This fracture between the national dimension
and the local and regional dimension
181 was provided thanks to the irrigation of resources from the illegal drug tra
fficking
and the misappropriation of public property and had led to a growing autonomy of
the political elites and local versus regional directories to national politicia
ns.
181 In this regard, it is interesting to rescue the reflection of Philip Mauceri
to compare the dynamics of violence
in Peru and Colombia. In both cases, the weakening of the partisan mediation was
cornered by
armed organizations that sought dominate the local scope (Jo Marie Burt and Phil
ip Mauceri (eds. ),
Politics in the Andes, University of Pittsburgh, 2004).
In a nutshell, the Honda fragmentation of parties and the total autonomy of the
local and regional elites have affected the capacity of political representation
and pipeline of social interests
through institutional channels, which was seized by illegal armed actors
to try - sometimes with some success - channel these frustrated expectations
. An example, according to several tests, it was the case of coca farmers
.
8. The vicious circle of violence
the persistence of violent acts in protracted conflicts generated deep impacts a
nd
disruptions in the affected society. As stresses Jorge Giraldo, the
unforeseen and unfortunate consequences of this accumulation of violence and vic
timization, is the
feedback of the war. The dynamic war creates the conditions for its own growth
182. In fact, one of the characteristics of the protracted conflicts is that
worsen the socio-economic conditions of the population and, in turn, deepening t
he
institutional precariousness and weakening the citizen support to the ethics and
the law.
That is to say, the violence creates new conditions for more and more violence.
182 Jorge Giraldo, p. 32.
183 Jorge Giraldo, p. 34.
184 Gustavo Duncan also refers to this point (pp. 5, 8 and 9), when it refers to
the existence of
certain criminal subcultures
among young people in urban areas.
Several authors have evidence of this fact. Gustavo Duncan, for example, shows h
ow
the massification of the kidnapping and extortion on the part of the guerrillas
was one of the main
triggers for the paramilitary groups, a true Frankenstein whose crimes
over nearly three decades fired all the levels of violence in the country.
Jorge Giraldo, for its part, raised in its text as the armed groups
closed the possibilities of development and democracy in the local scenario, the
only chance of survival
and recognition for the younger segments of the population
was the link to the private armies 183. One of the consequences of the breakdown o
f
local economies and the forced displacement of the population is
the generation of both a
reserve army for the urban business sectors,
such as for the massive recruitment by illegal armed groups and criminal network
s.
Young people uprooted in the urban centers or living in the middle of the armed
confrontation
and disruption of social and economic networks in rural areas, have
been the main basis of the recruitment of all armed groups ilegales184. And as
shows Daniel Pecaut, there are few social and racial differences in the combatan
ts from all
the armed actors: Armed Forces, guerrillas and paramilitaries.
III. The effects and impacts of the most notorious conflict on population
In the third section of this report we will focus on the most pronounced impacts
of the conflict in the population, both from the perspective of the victims, suc
h as in a broader sense
, in the many aspects that have an impact on the lives of the citizens: social c
apital
, political participation, social mobilization, the economy and equity.
According to the National Register of victims, when you add the direct victims a
nd
indirectas185, these can achieve the impressive figure of 6.8 million people, th
at is to say
, around 8% of the total population of the country.
185 The first are those victims that have suffered directly the aggression (for
example, a kidnapped),
while the latter are primarily but not exclusively, the relatives who have been
affected by
this crime.
186 Jorge Giraldo, pp. 30-31.
187 Javier Giraldo, pp. 1-7.
In this regard, Jorge Giraldo, stresses that this quantification of horror gives
sense to the
assertion that the US has been a unjust war , due to the fact that hostilities have
been
conducted in a systematic way (violating) the precepts of humanitarian law and
without any consideration toward the civilian population 186.
Unlike Jorge Giraldo, Javier Giraldo, believes that because of the failure of th
e
State of their essential duties (under a legal duty to provide for the basic nee
ds of the population
and the ability to guarantee the civil and political rights elementary), guerril
la struggle
has been legitimate by that has been founded on the right to rebelion187. This i
s another
marked disagreements on the essays submitted.
Looking at the dimensions of the humanitarian catastrophe that has been lived Co
lombia in the last three decades
, it is worth asking whether the means used and the suffering caused
were proportional to the desired ends and the results achieved.
In any case, as is the case of way growing in all armed conflicts in the world
, the civilian non-combatant population has been the main victims in violent con
frontations
. According to a study conducted by CINEP, in the last decade of the
twentieth century, there were 21,355 violent actions of which a 60.7 per cent wer
e violations of international humanitarian law
, or actions against the civilian population 188. And in this
universe of the victims, the rural population has been he has paid the highest p
rice,
given that the field has been the theater of the fundamental operations of the g
uerrillas, paramilitary groups and
the campaigns of the counterinsurgency forces Armadas189. Suffice it to mention
that
the forced displacement has been the main source of victimization in the
country. According to the Director of the Victims Unit, Paula Gaviria, represent
s 88% of the population
victimizada190.
188 Fernan Gonzales, Ingrid Bolivar and Teófilo Vázquez, political violence in Colom
bia. In the fragmented nation
to the construction of the State, Bogotá, CINEP, 2002, pp. 100-101.
189 Daniel Pecaut, p. 34.
190 As Well is the implementation of the Law of Victims , in the spectator, 11 Dece
mber 2014.
191 ( ) the Constitutional Court has hosted a broad concept of victim or harmed,
by defining it as
the person has suffered any real damage, specific and concrete, whatever the nat
ure of this and the crime that
it caused. The damage does not necessarily have to have patrimonial nature, but
it is required to be
real, concrete and specific, and from this finding originates the legitimacy to
participate in the
criminal process to search for truth and justice and be the owner of reparation
measures. Also that it has been understood that
does not conform to the Constitution regulations which restrict excessively the
status of victim and that
excluding categories of harmed without basis in
constitutionally legitimate criteria (Constitutional Court, Judgment C-250 in 201
2).
Art 192. 1, Law 1448 of 2011.
1. Definition of victim
As a result of the armed conflict and of the modalities of victimization that ha
ve characterized,
the Congress of the Republic felt it was necessary to establish a legal definiti
on of the
concept of victim, not limited to its meaning more general191, but including the
ir specific forms
to be able to respond effectively to the transitional justice programs
referred to in the Law 1448 of 2011.
In this way, the Law of victims and restitution of lands was issued with the moo
d of
establish a set of judicial, administrative, economic and social,
individual and collective, for the benefit of the victims of the violations refe
rred to in
article 3 of this law, within a framework of transitional justice, which will al
low
the effective enjoyment of their rights to truth, justice and the compensation f
or warranty
of non-repetition, so that the recognition of their status as victims and dignif
ying through
the realization of all their constitutional rights 192.
For this purpose, this Law, in its third article, defines to the victims of arme
d conflict, such as
those people who, individually or collectively have suffered damage by
events from 1 January 1985, as a result of breaches of international humanitaria
n law
or serious violations and gross to international standards
of human rights, which occurred on the occasion of the internal armed conflict
.
According to Vicente Torrijos, this definition of victim and the judgments of th
e Constitutional Court
in this regard (370/06, C-578/02, C-OR52/12, C-250/12, C-253A/12, C-781/12
and C-462/13) are fully consistent with the points 8 and 9 of the Resolution 60/
147 of
the United Nations General Assembly (December 16 2005), referring to the
basic principles and guidelines on the rights of victims of systematic violations
of
international human rights standards and serious violations of
international humanitarian law 193.
193 Vicente Torrijos, p. 31.
2. Typology of victimization, number of victims and agents responsible
If we consider both analysis and the databases of the two institutions that have
been used by various essayists as a frame of reference, i.e. the Victims Unit
and the Commission on Historical Memory, we can differentiate between thirteen m
ain patterns of
victimization in Colombia in the framework of the internal armed conflict:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
Displacement of population
land dispossession
kidnapping
extortion
illegal recruitment of children and adolescents
Torture
(7) Homicide in protected person, targeted assassinations and massacres (
8) threats
(9) crimes against freedom and sexual integrity
(10) forced disappearance
(11) anti-personnel mines, unexploded ordnance and explosive devices non-convent
ional
(12) attacks and losses of civilian property
(13) attacks against public goods
In this multiplicity of forms of victimization, the responsible actors with sign
ificant differences
. According to data collected by the Group of Historical Memory and the data bas
e of the Unit of
victims, state agents have been responsible
especially selective assassinations, torture, extrajudicial executions and enfor
ced disappearances
. The guerrillas, in turn, have been responsible, in particular, the use of anti
-personnel mines
and explosive devices non-conventional, attacks on civilian property and
public, forced displacement, kidnapping, extortion, illegal recruitment and envi
ronmental damage
. Finally, the paramilitary groups have an enormous responsibility in crimes suc
h as
selective killings, threats, massacres, forced displacement and dispossession of
land
, torture and crimes sexuales194.
194 Vicente Torrijos, p. 36. Daniel Pecaut, pp. 33-34.
195 Daniel Pecaut, p. 40.
This set of offenses are framed, either in the dynamics of the internal armed co
nflict,
either, in the case of paramilitary organizations or the opportunistic third
, in
the process of accumulation
of property and land for private use. As stresses Daniel Pecaut,
most actions have a predetermined objective
: the protagonists do not have projects
of
cleansing of a global population as in the cases of BosniaHerzegovina or Rwanda, but that they acted on the basis of precise objectives bo
th political and economic
195. In the last three decades, to the actual political dimensions
of armed conflict overlapped other violence seeking fish in troubled waters.
In good measure the dimensions of the humanitarian tragedy that the country has
been living in these
years is explained not only by the confrontation between the insurgency and the
state agencies
, but by the intrusion of these opportunistic
actors in the dynamics of the
confrontation. Thousands and thousands of victims of displacement and dispossess
ion were the subject of a
private ownership of their property by local economic elites, political leaders
and public officials who, in alliance with illegal armed groups, appropriated
land illegally, movable and immovable property, relying on many occasions
with the permission of notaries corrupt. Even, it is likely that these processes
of
displacement and land abandonment have participated some companies
multinacionales196.
196 Dario Fajardo, p. 41.
197 Jorge Giraldo, pp. 31-32.
198 Mary Emma Wills, p. 37.
199 Francisco Gutiérrez, p. 35.
The effects of armed conflict in the country has been very uneven. According to
Jorge Giraldo
the 48% of the episodes of victimization took place in seven departments (Antioq
uia,
Cauca, Valle del Cauca, Nariño, Cesar, Norte de Santander and Meta), being particu
larly
dramatic case of Antioquia, where 1 out of 5 cases of victimisation took place i
n
its jurisdiccion197.
Mary Emma Wills poses that the victims, in addition to the physical and emotiona
l damage that
have endured, suffer a new re-victimization due to the triviality or minimizatio
n of
suffering caused by part of the armed groups themselves
responsible and, sometimes, by the own sociedad198. In fact, in the own CHCV onl
y
some essayists addressed the issue and showed with data based, above all, in the
National Register of victims, the figures of horror.
Picking up the so-called that makes Francisco Gutierrez to be very prudent (s) at
the time in which you make
estimates on proportions to different perpetrators 199 and bearing in mind that th
is will be
a task for the future Commission of the truth, then we will refer
to the main ideas expressed by the members of the CHCV.
(1) Displacement of population
The Law 1448 of 2008 defines the victim of forced displacement as any person who
has been forced to migrate within the national territory, abandoning their town
of
residence or normal economic activities, because their life, physical integrity,
safety, or
personal freedom have been hacked or are directly threatened
[ ... ] 200. According to UNHCR, Colombia ranks second in the world
by the number of internally displaced persons and the eighth place by the number
of
refugees in the exterior201, including both those who have taken these options f
or economic reasons
as by factors of survival and security.
200 Law 1448 of 2011, art. 60, Paragraph 2.
201 Today, the list is headed by Syria (6,520,000 people) and Colombia (5,368,10
0 ). In when
the number of refugees on the outside of the affected nation, Colombia is in eig
hth place, after Afghanistan
, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar and Iraq.
Cf.,
http://www.acnur.org/t3/recursos/estadisticas/
202 Francisco Gutiérrez, p. 37.
The consequences can be tragic for the affected population. First, it generates
in the victims a hondo uprooting due to the sharp break with the ties of
community solidarity and cultural environment. Secondly, it leads to those who h
ave been dispossessed of their land
and property, to a sudden and drastic impoverishment. Thirdly
, the displacement of the field to the city means to the person or family
affected face a strange environment for which does not have the job skills
necessary and, usually, only found occupation in the informal sector of the econ
omy.
Francisco Gutierrez epitomizes this drama: literally millions of
peasants suffered the theft and/or destruction of your belongings, their househo
ld and
their farm animals. These millions who had to leave abruptly removed from their
lands
and/or people arrived to the cities to live in areas in which they lacked
skills and safety nets to ensure their survival 202.
(2) land dispossession
The Law of victims and restitution of lands defines the dispossession as action w
hereby
, taking advantage of the situation of violence, arbitrarily stripped to a perso
n of his
ownership, possession or occupation, either in fact, through business
legal, administrative act, judgment, or through the commission of crimes associa
ted with the situation of
violence . And it then defines the forced abandonment the situation as
temporary or permanent to the that is skewed toward a person who was forced to m
ove, why
is hampered to exert the administration, operation and direct contact with
the land that he had overlooked in its displacement 203.
203 Law 1448 of 2011, art. 74.
204 Daniel Pecaut, p. 37.
205 Law 599 of 2000, art. 168.
206 Idem., art. 169.
According to Daniel Pecaut, although initially the paramilitary groups had a mil
itary dimension
oriented to the containment of the guerrilla expansion, with the time were
mixing this guidance with economic objectives (in particular the accumulation of
property and land) and political objectives (the control of local power and acce
ss to the Congress of the Republic
). Both actions were turned into the main responsible for the dispossession of
land
in the country. However, it also must be added to the opportunistic third
, i.e.
local elites that also benefited from their contacts and alliances with illegal
armed groups
to accumulate bienes204, and guerrilla groups, who have appropriated
illegally of numerous properties in different regions of the country.
(3) Kidnapping
In the Colombian legal system defines the crime of kidnapping as
snatch, removes, retain or hide a person 205. In addition, it recognizes a
modality extortion when performing with the purpose to require for their freedom
a benefit or
any utility, or to click or skip something, or for advertising purposes or
of a political nature 206.
According to Francisco Gutiérrez, kidnapping came to acquire ( ) industrial dimensio
ns
(37,000 cases according to the RUV). Although the principle mainly affected eco
nomic elites
, political and other preferred targets of the guerrillas - which of course make
s it no more
excusable-, term hitting many other sectors of the population through
mechanisms such as the so-called miraculous catches
207. The kidnappings, the main
culprits are
the common crime, and the guerrilla groups, had a devastating effect on
victims and their families, and had an impact in a direct manner and front in th
e
impoverishment of the field due to a multitude of factors: first, in many
cases the victims were forced to sell their properties and their companies to be
able to pay the
ransom; second, in many occasions the businesses went bankrupt by the absence of
an efficient administration, especially when the abductions involved months and
even years
for the victims. Third, the damage to the productive capacity of local economies
by
the abduction also affected sectors excluded from the periphery 208, due to the ma
ssive loss of
sources of employment.
207 Francisco Gutiérrez, p. 35.
208 Liked Duncan, p. 17.
209 Law 599 of 2000, art. 244.
The abduction (that is, to obtain money) it is necessary to add the
kidnapping for political purposes (that is, to obtain local or national influenc
e), either through the
support of a number of petitions a strike or association - as was very common in
the area of Urabá banana in the eighties-, either to reinforce the control of loca
l political life
or to press an exchange of persons held with the central State.
(4) Extortion
Our criminal law defines it as a constraint to another to compel him to
do, tolerate or ignore any thing, with the purpose of obtaining illicit benefits
for himself or for a
third 209. To highlight the importance of the victims of armed conflict, the
Penal Code includes within its grounds for increasing the penalty extortion comm
itted
in protected person.
Extortion has been a common practice both of the guerrilla groups and paramilita
ry groups
. Their effects are similar to those generated by the kidnapping in the economic
sphere
to the affected regions: reduction of productive capital, capital flight
, transaction costs increased due to the disproportionate increase in the fixed
costs
in security and protection, etc. , that is, both the kidnapping and extortion ha
ve
affected the growth rates of the regions affected by these crimes and, therefore
,
have contributed to the displacement of the affected population, which includes
both the peasant population
of low resources as to empresariales210 sectors.
210 Gustavo Duncan, p. 17.
211 Center of Historical Memory, op. cit. , p. 84. See also Law 599 of 2000, art
icle 162.
212 Natalia Springer, lambs among wolves. The use and recruitment of children an
d adolescents in the framework of the
armed conflict and crime in Colombia, Bogota, Springer Consulting Services, 2012
, pp. 26-30.
Quoted by Jorge Giraldo, p. 35.
(5) illegal recruitment of children and adolescents
According to the center of historical memory, illicit recruitment constitutes a c
rime in which
the armed actors, on the occasion and in development of the armed conflict, recr
uit civilians
age of eighteen years forcing them to participate directly or indirectly in host
ilities or
in armed actions 211. This crime is analyzed, in particular, by Jorge Giraldo, who
, based on
the data in the center of historical memory, could establish that of the 4,490
demobilized children under age at the time of the report is enough, 60% came fro
m
the FARC, the 20% of the AUC and the 15 per cent of the ELN. According to a stud
y, conducted by Natalia
Springer, 50% of the demobilized guerrillas and 40% of the demobilized paramilit
aries
entered these groups still minors edad212.
The Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF) account with a specialized program
of Care for Children and Adolescents who have been detached from armed groups
operating outside the law. Between November 10 1999 and on 31 March 2013
this program reported 5,156 children and adolescents treated. The 83% of these
minors surrendered voluntarily to the justice and the remaining 17% was rescued
by the
Public Force. Also, 28% are girls and female adolescents and 72% children
and male adolescents. In the same way it was possible to identify the armed grou
ps who
belonged these minors before his untying: 1,054 came from the paramilitary group
s
, 3,060 of the FARC and the ELN 766.
(6) Torture
The Convention against Torture was passed by Law 70 of 1986 defines this crime a
s
any act by which is inflicted intentionally to cause severe pain or suffering,
whether physical or mental, in order to obtain it, or of a third party informati
on
or a confession, punishing him for an act that has committed or is suspected of
having
committed, or to intimidate or coerce a person or other, or for any type of
discrimination (
) 213, which is enshrined in article 178 of the Penal Code. Howe
ver
, in the same Code was determined specialize a criminal type for those who are
protected by international humanitarian law and within the
development of an armed conflict are victims of torture: which, on the occasion a
nd in
development of armed conflict, is intentionally inflicted on a person suffering
pain or severe physical
or psychological, with the purpose of obtaining from him or a third party inform
ation or a confession, punishing him for an act
committed by it or that is suspected of having committed, or to
intimidate or coerce for any reason that behave any type of
discrimination 214.
213 Idem., event No. 53, P. 56.
Act No. 599 214 200, art. 137.
215 Law 599 of 2000, art. 135.
(7) Homicide in protected person, targeted assassinations and massacre
As a result of armed conflict, Congress decided to add a special type of crimina
l homicide
for those people who are protected by international humanitarian law. In this re
gard, the Law
1257 of 2008 added to the Penal Code article 135, which describes the
murder in protected person as: which, on the occasion and in development of armed
conflict
, caused the death of a protected person under the International Conventions
on Humanitarian Law ratified by Colombia 215. However,
people are protected in accordance with the art. 136 Of the same Code: persons w
ho are not involved in
hostilities; the civilians in the power of the adverse party; the wounded, sick
or shipwrecked
posts outside of combat, the medical personnel or religious; journalists in miss
ion
or war correspondents accredited; the fighters that have laid down their arms by
capture,
accountability or other similar cause; those who before the beginning of hostili
ties
may be considered as stateless persons or refugees, and any other person with
that condition under the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Additional Protocols
I and II of 1977.
One of the modalities of victimization that has most impacted the colombian soci
ety
have been the so-called false positives
, which are by their features, a special t
ype of
aggravated homicide. According to Francisco Gutiérrez, one of the highest
expressions of the degradation of the conflict are the evil called
false positives
, i.e. ,
the murder of innocent villagers for submission as members of the guerrilla move
ment.
Often, these murders were the product of the interaction between members of the
security forces and paramilitary groups
216. In other cases, due to a wrong policy of incentives and
evaluation of results of the Armed Forces in the management of public order.
216 Francisco Gutiérrez, p. 36.
As can be seen in the Chart No. 8, The paramilitary groups are the main
responsible for the massacres perpetrated and its raison d'être has been twofold:
on the one hand, in the struggle for
territorial control and the displacement of the guerrillas in their areas of
influence, to intimidate the civilian population; on the other hand, to generate
a
massive displacement of the population and take possession of movable and immova
ble property
abandoned.
Figure No. 8. Evolution of cases of massacre by the armed conflict in Colombia,
alleged to be responsible, 1980-2012.
Source: CNMH, database of massacre of the armed conflict in Colombia (1980-2012)
(8) Threats
In accordance with the Penal Code, the threat is a crime against the public safe
ty
, committed by which by any means suitable to impart ideas
frighten them or threatens a person, family, community or institution, with the
intent to cause
alarm, anxiety or terror in the population, or in a sector of it (
) 217.
Screen Shot 2014-10-10 at 16.25.54 .png
217 Act No. 599 of 2000, art. 347.
The threat is a technique for generation of fear that it may or may not have a f
atal outcome.
This crime has been used in a systematic fashion by paramilitary groups
to intimidate communities, social organizations, political parties or trade unio
ns
accused of supporting their adversaries in the armed conflict and, in many occas
ions, to induce the
displacement of the population either for political reasons (
perceived communities that are under the influence of the guerrilla), or for eco
nomic reasons (the
appropriation of land and property for the usufruct staff). The threats have be
en,
equally, a tool of the guerrillas to obtain similar results.
(9) crimes against freedom and sexual integrity
The national rules of the legal property of the sexual freedom and integrity are
set out in Title IV of the Criminal Code (article 204 and following) and in the
Law 1719 of
2014, which makes reference to the sexual violence in the context of the armed c
onflict
(articles 138 and following).
This is a heinous crime that is currently found in the focus of world interest.
The National Center for Historical Memory believes that, in accordance with the
current advances
, should be included as a component of this crime, rape; sexual harassment; the
sexual humiliation; the marriage or cohabitation forced; the forced marriage
of children; the forced prostitution and marketing of women; the sexual slavery;
the
forced nudity; the forced abortion; the forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization
; the denial of the right to make use of contraception or to adopt measures of
protection against sexually transmitted diseases or, on the contrary, the imposi
tion of
contraceptive methods; the threat of sexual violence; sexual blackmail; acts of
violence that affect the sexual integrity of women, such as female genital mutil
ation
, and The inspections to check the virginity 218.
218 General Report National Center of Historical Memory, "Enough is Enough!, Col
ombia: Memories of war and
dignity, Bogotá, p. 77, No. 77.
219 Francisco Gutiérrez, p. 36. Renan Vega refers in its text to sex crimes commit
ted by
American soldiers and contractors in Colombia (pp. 33-34) and considers that must
investigate ( ) to punish
the guilty (p. 40).
There is a huge underreporting with respect to this crime by many factors not ju
st
in Colombia but at international level. However, as Francisco Gutierrez, but not
be
no reliable figure minimally on sexual violence, ( )
case studies and other qualitative evidence suggest that specific actors during
certain periods
and in specific regions used war as a tool or simply
allowed to sexually attack its members to the civilian population, especially in
the context of
punitive operations 219. The paramilitary groups have been most responsible for
this criminal practice, even when the guerrillas through abortion and
forced sex, has also had its share of responsibility.
(10) forced disappearance
the offense of enforced disappearance is defined in article 165 of the Penal Cod
e
, as follows: The particular that belong to an illegal armed group
of the law submitted to another person to deprivation of liberty whatever the fo
rm,
followed by his concealment and the refusal to recognize such deprivation or giv
e information about his whereabouts
, away from the protection of the law (
) 220.
220 Law 599 of 2000, art. 165 Et seq.
In turn, the article recognizes over 166 circumstances of aggravation of the pen
alty when the
conduct is committed: (i) the person who has authority or jurisdiction; (ii) aga
inst a person with a disability who
cannot fend for itself; (iii) is run in less than eighteen years,
more than sixty or pregnant woman; (iv) by reason of their qualities, against pu
blic servants
, journalists, human rights defenders, candidates or candidates for elective off
ice
, trade union leaders, political or religious against those who have
been witnesses of punishable behaviors or disciplinary; against justices of the
peace or against
any other person for their beliefs or political opinions or on the grounds that
involves
some form of discrimination or intolerance; (v) it is committed by Reason and ag
ainst the relatives of
the people mentioned above; (vi) are committed using assets of the State; (vii)
if it is submitted to the
victim to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment during the time that remains
missing, provided that it is not set up another crime; viii) when caused by or o
n the occasion of the
forced disappearance you occurs to the victim death or physical injury or
psychological or commits any action on the victim's corpse to prevent its
subsequent identification, or to cause harm to third parties.
(11) anti-personnel mines, unexploded ordnance and explosive devices non-convent
ional
Anti-personnel mines are explosive devices designed to be triggered by the prese
nce, proximity
or contact of a person. These can injure, maim or kill one or more persons
. For its part, the improvised explosive devices are devices manufactured
a rudimentary way, designed with the intent to cause physical damage and/or deat
h
using the power of a detonation. Produced using materials such as
plastic, wood, PVC pipes or sheets. These can be camouflaged in a jar, a pot
, a canteen, a ball, a radio, a can, bottle or a bottle, among other objects, an
d
their shape, size and color may vary in accordance with their development. Final
ly, the
unexploded ordnance is an explosive device exploded not after being launched, or
that was abandoned after a battle. The unexploded ordnance include
grenades, mortars, ammunition (bullets, vanillas) and pumps, among others, which
were
used but did not explode due to either their malfunction, the type of design or
any other reason. This type of munition can be in the grass, the weeds, in the t
runks and branches of
the arboles221.
221 Information taken from: http://www.accioncontraminas.gov.co/accion/Paginas/E
ducacionenelRiesgo.aspx.
In terms of the population affected by this type of weapon, the victims have bee
n both
civilians and members of the Public Force, with 3,885 and 6,304 respectively, an
d the
guerrilla groups the main responsible for this crime.
Although this strategy has, first and foremost, the intention of preventing atta
cks from adverse forces,
has become an obstacle for rural communities to carry out their lives in a
normal way; the communities have been forced to move or isolated, the
usage patterns of the territory have faced major changes and return movements
have been hampered.
(12) attacks and losses of civilian property
With respect to the affected property in an armed conflict, international humani
tarian law
through the Protocol II of 1977 builds on and complements the Article 3
common to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949. There is established the pro
tection of
objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, the cultural p
roperty
and places of worship, as well as works and installations containing dangerous f
orces
(dams, dykes, nuclear power plants). Colombia, through the Sentence
of 1995 C-225 of the Constitutional Court, declared enforceable Additional Proto
col II of the
conventions of Ginebra222.
222 Idem., event No. 158, P. 98.
223 Law 599 of 2000, art. 164.
224 Jorge Giraldo, p. 33.
In accordance with the earlier emphasis, it is worth noting the criminal type th
at especially has been responsible for the protection of the
environment in armed conflict, describing it as follows
: Article 164. Destruction of the environment. The time and in
development of armed conflict, use methods or media designed to cause severe dam
age to the
natural environment (
) 223.
These attacks have intentions different according to the armed group that has be
en perpetrated. The
paramilitary groups, for example, have been carried out looking for an economic
blockade on the
region and the isolation of communities; of the guerrilla groups have been in th
e siege of
the elites and local and regional outlets in the populations. While the FARC
sabotaged electrical towers and roads with the intention to isolate populations,
the ELN has
used their attacks against oil infrastructure to oppose the exploitation of
resources by foreign corporations.
(13) attacks against public goods
According to Jorge Giraldo, since the eighties the guerrillas began to use the bl
asting
of the infrastructure as a source of extortion to the oil companies and electric
al, then
used as a form of political pressure to the State and as a military tactic to di
stract
the operations of the public force 224, as can be seen in the Chart
No. 9.
Chart 9. Attacks on infrastructure, 1985-2014
Sources: Isa and Ecopetrol.
The sabotage them has generated huge economic costs to private and public compan
ies, and also
has affected in many ways to the civilian population and the environment.
3. The impacts of violence in the economy, equity, politics and culture
The effects of violence can be perceived through the study of the tragedy suffer
ed by the victims
whether individual or collective, direct or indirect. But, also, society as a wh
ole
also suffers from a negative impact, on various levels, as well as for culture,
in the degrees of interpersonal and institutional confidence in the political sy
stem, economic growth
. Much more if it is a protracted conflict for several decades
whose aftermath end up altering the whole fabric of a nation.
Roots and cultural practices and social capital
According to Francisco Gutiérrez, the conflict destroyed on a massive scale social
fabric,
positive traditions and networks of trust ( ) (and) had a deleterious effect on t
he confidence of
Colombians in their fellow citizens and institutions 225.
225 Francisco Gutiérrez, p. 36.
As has been widely studied in the current economic literature, the decline of so
cial capital
increases the transaction costs to the economy, weakens the bonds of community
and the accession to the institutions and rules.
Political System
The negative impact of armed conflict on the political system has been very deep
if analyzed,
according to Francisco Gutiérrez, three main dimensions: first, the costs
that gives rise to a democratic system, the assassination of political and socia
l leaders civic;
second, the massive influx of illegal dynamic agents and the political system; a
nd third, the
perverse combination of weapons and ballot boxes.
In connection with the murder of thousands of political leaders, civic and socia
l think the
reader not only in the human tragedy, but in the huge potential civic, skills, a
bilities and
energies of participation in the public, that were abruptly mutilated
in the course of these decades 226. It is both the erosion of the social and polit
ical leadership, such as
the impact on the construction of partisan and social organizations who were
devastated the whole or, at least, severely weakened.
226 Francisco Gutiérrez, p. 37.
227 Sergio de Zubiria, p. 15.
228 Gustavo Duncan, p. 22.
In this regard, it is not possible to forget the systematic murder of hundreds o
f activists and leaders
of the Communist Party and the Union Patriotica227.
OR the bloodiest suffered by the Liberal and Conservative parties or their facti
onal or dissent at the hands of
various guerrilla groups in order to consolidate its local power and prevent
any political competition local228.
OR the murder in the womb of the traditional parties, political opponents by mem
bers of the same
party, fraction or dissent in order to win elections
without adversaries to the view, using on many occasions to paramilitary groups
as
allies for this purpose.
OR the mass murder against the demobilized EPL in Urabá, who had formed a
political group legal, Hope, Peace and Freedom, by a dissident faction
of the EPL and the fronts of the FARC that acted in that region229.
Alvaro Villarraga 229 squares and Nelson, to rebuild the dreams. A history of th
e EPL, Bogotá,
Democratic Culture Foundation, 1994, quoted by Francisco Gutiérrez, p. 39.
230 Steven Dudley, weapons and polls: history of a political genocide, Bogotá, Edi
torial Planeta, 2008.
All this without the murder of hundreds of trade union leaders, popular and memb
ers of NGOS
by illegal armed groups, especially, of the paramilitary groups and State offici
als
. This breakdown, and even dismantling of social organizations
and trade unions, as well as many non-governmental organizations, has been one o
f the
most detrimental consequences of armed conflict.
These reprehensible experiences constitute a clear example of the terrible effec
ts of the
violence in our society: it generates a deep mistrust between citizens, and the
adversaries
are beginning to be qualified and absolute perceived as enemies and, in this con
text
, there are theories and social practices that justify the destruction of anothe
r.
Another negative dimension of the prolonged conflict has been, according to Fran
cisco Gutiérrez, the massification of
the entry of illegal dynamic agents and the political system. There are many
expressions of this phenomenon in the country in recent years, being one of the
most telling
the trial advance by the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice agains
t those
responsible for the so-called parapolitics .
Another fact that is negative in the political dynamic of the country has been a
mix of
weapons and perverse urnas230, practiced equally by sectors of the left and righ
t. This
explosive mixture is expressed in many ways, such as the use of armed apparatus
to settle political wrangling or in order to win elections by the physical remov
al of the
local or regional adversaries, which has been generated in the country profound
distortions in the field of
representation politica231.
0
10 20
30
40
50
60 70 80
90
1980 1984
1988
1992
1996
2000
2004
2008
2012
Councillors
Mayors
231 Francisco Gutiérrez, p. 38.
If you look at the Chart No. 10, There are two
cycles of violence against local p
oliticians
, one at the end of the eighties and another at the end of the nineties. The fir
st,
directed, first and foremost, toward councillors coincides with the beginning of
the local elections. The second
, taking as the main target to the mayors, took place toward the end of the nine
ties
. These years coincided with the dispute to
blood and fire between the guerrillas
and the
paramilitary groups for control of the local power, both to dispose of their eco
nomic resources and
to consolidate a regional leadership. Match, equally, with the
perverse alliances between politicians and paramilitary groups to eliminate thei
r opponents in
the electoral disputes.
Figure No. 10. Murder of popular election authorities of local in Colombia
(1980-2014)
Source: Ana Arjona and Mario Chacon,
f Local Governance ,
Northwestern University, 2015.
The Long Term Impact of War on the quality o
Economic Growth
As has been widely studied in the contemporary literature on the relationship be
tween
civil wars, armed conflicts and economy, violence inevitably affects
the rates of economic growth of a nation. Obviously, the incidence
varies in each particular case in accordance with the intensity of the conflict,
the economic weight of
the affected regions, the modalities of the affectation, etc.
In the case of Colombia, there is enough evidence to calculate the costs of the
war.
According to the most conservative figures, the conflict has meaning to the coun
try between 1 and 2 points
of GDP growth by ano232. If, as is the case of protracted conflicts such as ours
,
the loss of accumulated potential growth for years, it is not difficult to concl
ude
that the armed conflict has been a source of collective impoverishment.
232 Even when the figures around the economic impact of armed conflict vary cons
iderably from author to author
due to the deep methodological differences that are used, the UNDP calculation t
hat Colombia has lost 1.92 %
of its potential growth in the year 2002. United Nations Development Program, co
nflict,
impasse: national human development report for Colombia - 2013, Bogota, UNDP, p.
107.
The armed conflict affect the growth of the country by a multiplicity of factors
:
generate capital flight, impede investment in the affected regions, horrify the
tourism, increase in transaction costs, increase the costs of the health system,
generate losses of human life in full productive capacity and other factors, amo
ng which
we must not forget the increase in military spending. The military budget, which
has been growing steadily since the year 1992, has contributed to the decline of
the country's growth rate, since a portion of this spending - which we have cons
umed
in the fratricidal war-, could have been better targeted at education, health, s
cience, or
to the fight against poverty.
Another form of negative impact on economic growth originates in the sabotage of
private and public property, through the destruction of electricity pylons,
pipelines and oil wells, roads and bridges.
Equity and poverty
The last section of the text of Daniel Pecaut is called Toward a reinforcement of
inequalities
. Probably the increase in economic inequality, and the aggravation of poverty
of the people most affected by this factor historically, the peasant population
, to be one of the most pernicious consequences of armed conflict.
According to Darius Fajardo, one of the biggest impacts of population displaceme
nt have
been the enormous losses that have suffered the families affected, which can be
calculated
based on the number of affected households. The Commission of Follow-up to the
Public Policy estimates that 91.3 % of the displaced families abandoned land,
real estate is not rural, animals, home furnishings, etc. ; and 52.2 % were stri
pped of
land in an estimated amount of 5.5 million hectares, equivalent to 10.8 % of the
surface current agricultural pais233. These equity losses aggravated the figures
of poverty in the country and, to the extent that it is accompanied by an even g
reater concentration of
the land and the rural property impacted, equally, in the rural GINI which is ab
ove the
0.6 .
233 Follow-up Commission to public policy on forced displacement, the challenge
to the humanitarian tragedy
of forced displacement, Bogotá, 2009, pp. 57 and 161. Quoted by Dario Fajardo, pp.
37-38.
234 Dario Fajardo, p. 45.
According to the National Human Development Report, the population affected by c
onditions of poverty
in rural areas was, in 2008, the 49 %, while in the cities was less than
half, 22 %. According to sources consulted by the Rural Mission, 77% of the emp
loyed population
in rural areas had a monthly income below the statutory minimum wage
, compared to 41% in the areas urbanas234.
In conclusion.
As we have arisen in the course of the Rapporteurship, although there are deep d
ivisions over the
explanatory factors of contemporary violence in the country, there are greater c
onsensus
with regard to the factors that have contributed to its extension.
Our country must, if current peace negotiations with the FARC and, as we all wis
h
, with the ELN, are successful, coping with the complex tasks of the aftermath
. It is not always successful at this level. Both El Salvador and Guatemala
had relative success in the peace process with the FMLN and the URNG, but in bot
h countries
there were errors bulging in the later stage of the post-conflict began to suffe
r and
levels of violence and crime ends, until the point of overcoming even the figure
s
of murder that he had during the respective civil wars.
For this reason, the discussion on the factors that have contributed to the pers
istence of armed conflict
in Colombia - the last one which still subsists in Latin America235-, has a fund
amental value
, because it may depend on the construction of a post-conflict and
sustainable peace in. If we stick to the main geological
cracks which have been an
alyzed in
the trials, a successful project to achieve a post-conflict should be considered
virtuous
actions in the following topics:
235 except
rmy of the
(EPP) that
ast of the
pockets of
some outbreaks here and there absolutely insignificant, such as the A
people of Paraguay
opera, first and foremost, in the department of design, to the northe
country or some
the so-called Communist Party of Peru (PCP-SL), Shining Path.
To. Profound changes in the prototypes that guide the development of agriculture
in the country.
B. A more inclusive economic model, a more equitable distribution of wealth
and the design of new and more efficient policies aimed at the eradication of po
verty.
C. A strengthening of the State, its judicial apparatus and Police and a greater
and
better presence throughout the national territory.
D. A greater commitment of all the organs of the State and, in particular, of th
e Military and Police Forces
, with full respect for human rights.
E. A renewed public policy against illicit drugs.
F. A relentless struggle against any form of privatization and replacement of th
e State in
its functions of legal and constitutional guarantor in the operation and mainten
ance
of public order.
G. A strengthening of the mechanisms of democratic participation.
H. A serious collective undertaking aimed to promote the reconstruction of the
projects of life of the victims of armed conflict.
I. A clear and forceful collective decision to renounce definitively to the
combination of weapons and polls, both the right and the left.
J. And, finally, a collective repudiation of violence as a resource to achieve
goals of any kind.
As has arisen in the course of his intellectual work Daniel Pécaut, one of the mos
t impressive features
of Colombia has been the coexistence of violence and democracy or, in the words
of
Francisco Gutiérrez, the inability of our liberal institutions to ensure
universally a minimum of political civilization 236. The violence has been by far
the
most destructive factor of Colombian society. If we look at the cost that has be
en so
in relation to the number of victims in other dimensions of national life
(economic growth, social capital, political participation, social mobilization a
nd union
, poverty and equity) the balance stuns.
236 Francisco Gutiérrez, p. 40.
The violence has left an immense red balance. Far from improving the living cond
itions of
the population, it has worsened. For this reason, the first and most important t
ask today in Colombia
is to end the violence itself. No more excuses or justifications spurious.
As i would say Antanas Mockus, life is sacred .
EXCLUSION, INSURRECCIÓN AND CRIME
Gustavo Duncan Universidad EAFIT and Universidad de Los Andes -
Colombia is a country extremely exclusionary. It is sufficient to look unprepare
d to listings
of inequality to realize that in the matter of income, land, state services and
many
other social statistics the gaps between the population are enormous. The Gini c
oefficient, a measure of the unevenness of
the wealth of a nation, is among the ten worst in the world and
while departments such as the Chocó have income averages equivalent to those of su
b-saharan nations
in cities like Bogota revenues are similar to those of the countries of the form
er
iron curtain which are now part of Western Europe. It is not surprising therefor
e that the
exclusion has been one of the causes of the conflict most cited. If in addition
it is believed that
during the sixties, a period of formation of the main guerrilla groups, the Nati
onal Front
1 imposed restrictions on the democratic competition, economic exclusion was com
pounded by the
political exclusion as justification of the insurgent violence as the only
alternative to require social changes.
1 The National Front is a typical case of covenant consocionalista (Hartlyn 1993
), in which the elites are divided
control of the government to pacify the political competition in the colombian c
ase had gotten out of control
during the violence of mid-century, purpose in which was a considerable success.
It is also the proof that the
violence of the late twentieth century responded to different reasons and circum
stances.
2 The scientific literature in general rejects the hypothesis that inequality as
sociated with internal conflicts.
See Collier and Hoeffler (2004) for a quantitative analysis of the cases.
3 Hong Kong, Panama and Chile are countries with Gini coefficients above 0.5 wit
hout major problems of violent internal conflict
.
But the reality is much more complex than that. Inequality does not necessarily
cause
insubordination, much less a insubordination violenta2. There is no need to go t
o look for other cases
of countries where there is great inequality3 and there is no greater social con
flict. In the same
Colombia proliferate unequal societies that have withstood the test of time with
out major
disagreements, even very little violence. Nor is it true that the democratic com
petition
has been too exclusionary. Even during the National Front the Communist Party, w
hich openly
combined legal political activity with the organization of a guerrilla group,
participating electorally through alliances with the traditional parties. In fac
t, a
political practice associated with exclusion as political patronage has been use
d on a massive scale
by marginalized sectors to solve their material problems. It took then
other causes and other variables for which arose in Colombia an armed conflict,
the single
exclusion was not enough.
This essay focuses on the way in which the exclusion interacted with one of thes
e other variables
, the crime, and gave great part of the form that you purchased the current conf
lict. The interest
is in particular by two criminal practices for mass use in Colombia, kidnapping
and drug trafficking
. These practices are important because they contributed to three key attributes
of the conflict. Firstly, outlined much of the strategy of war both of the
insurgency and the various forms of private counterinsurgency, from vigilante gr
oups
farmers organized by the security forces of the state to the private armies of d
rug traffickers
. The parties had to organize their coercive apparatus and plan their
actions in the conflict for access to resources from the crime
and/or to prevent their opponents from gaining access to them. Secondly, the dru
g trafficking
led to a situation of permanent war instead of destroying the economy, given the
frequency
of the kidnapping, extortion, and attacks against the productive infrastructure,
became
a means of access to markets, especially for peripheral communities
where the availability of capital was quite limited. The conflict, as a means of
protecting a criminal activity that channelled massive capital flows toward the
periphery,
at the same time that exacerbated the exclusion of many social sectors became a
means of
inclusion for many others. If for some reason the conflict has had such long dur
ation
has been precisely because it has provisions for a political economy consistent
with the
production conditions in those regions where the clashes have been more intense.
Finally, the effects of crime not only they were sent to the pulse of force betw
een
the insurgency and counterinsurgency private. Also redefined the power relations
between
elites from the city center and the periphery as a result of the decisions that
have been taken to meet the challenge of
the guerrillas. The kidnapping was not a threat uniform. Landowners, political b
osses
and notable of the periphery, as well as drug traffickers as new economic elites
,
were the main victims. By what the paramilitaries, as private strategy of
counterinsurgency war, was a regional phenomenon mainly. At the same time, the p
olitical compromises
between the elites of the center and the periphery were marked by the claim from
the regions
to use the paramilitaries and the drug trade as legitimate resources against the
abduction
as the central state was unable to offer effective protection. However, these re
sources
eventually became means of accumulating power.
Regional political elites now had resources as never before to compete with thei
r counterparts of the center.
The conflict had as well, through the resources that provided the criminality, a
ltered the balance of power
between the center and the periphery and between legal and illegal elites.
The test consists of four parts. The first is a review of those situations of ex
clusion that
could have influenced the creation of armed organizations. The analysis includes
the identification of communities where it arose the young people who opted for
armed struggle and the type of communities that supported the armed organization
s as a solution to
their problems of exclusion. The second analyzes the abduction as a strategy of
war
of the insurgency for accumulating resources from the margins of the integrated
areas of the country. While
the guerrillas did not put at risk of state control in the populated centers, ha
d the
impact sufficient to destroy the foundations of the existing order in the periph
ery. As a result there was
an armed response by the regional elites, who were the main victims of
the territorial gains of the guerrillas. The third discusses the drug traffickin
g as an alternative to
financing of the war for the insurgency and counter-insurgency that private in a
given time
became an end in itself. It was difficult to discern when accumulated wealth to
make the
war when the war to accumulate wealth. The last part proposes a
different vision of the conflict to the big confrontation by defining the global
nature of the state and society
between two contradictory visions, liberal democracy versus communism. It is pro
posed
rather its interpretation as a pulse of force to impose a partial and
fragmented certain institutions for social regulation throughout the territory:
the
central state, the armed of the elites of the periphery and the of the insurgenc
ies.
Excluded and violent
In the mid seventies when cooked the violence that is going to shake in the last
decades in
Colombia, the problems of exclusion were present throughout the country. The 197
3 Census
yielded results of poverty, as measured by unmet basic needs),
70.5 % and the GINI coefficient was on the 0.5 , a magnitude of extreme desigual
dad4. In other words
, exclusion had more than enough to generate a generalized insurrection.
But the bulk of the situations of exclusion is not gender violent conflict, at l
east not to a
large-scale violent insurrection. The majority of the poor and excluded from Col
ombia, and
they were very unhappy, they were not within their plans to be dragged into a sp
iral of violence
. Poverty data from the censuses of 1973 and 1985 do not coincide with the regio
ns
where the conflict would be more intense in its initial stages in the early eigh
ties. Even more,
Rubio (1999) and Gaitan (1995) found that was not necessarily in the poorest reg
ions
that the violence erupted when the guerrillas were subsequently expanded from th
e periphery
toward the integrated areas of the country. Their statistical analysis showed th
at, on the contrary, it was in
relatively rich regions and/or where new booms arose, in addition there was
a strong development of state institutions, where the conflict is concentrated.
4 Information obtained from the portal of the National Planning Department (DNP)
.
5 The relationship is in reality an inverted U-shape. When there is authoritaria
n control of an irregular armed group
violence is low, when there is dispute violence increases and when the state con
trols returns to
be reduced. See Duncan (2004).
Although research as the Rubio (1999) Gaitan (1995) were important to demystify
the design so simplistic that poverty and exclusion is necessarily translated in
to
violent conflict in the society, its outcome was certain methodological and
interpretative problems. First and foremost, the indicator used in the statistic
al work to identify conflict areas
only captured the violence, not territorial control by guerrillas and
paramilitaries. Regions under the absolute control of guerrillas in the peripher
y more poor and excluded from the
country could be quite peaceful, its indicators of homicide rate were minimos5 b
ut they were in
the axis of conflict because from there it was precisely from where it is radiat
ing the advance of
the insurgency. Similarly, the statistical analysis were hiding another reality,
the
greater part of the insurgent and paramilitary troops came from the excluded sec
tors of society
regardless of where the war, they were rich or poor areas.
If they were a few the excluded who initially became involved in the conflict, i
f the violence
was indicative of the location where the clashes occurred, not necessarily where
territorial control is exercised, and if the excluded constituted the bulk of th
e troops rasa that toward the
war several questions arise obvious. Where do these excluded emerged who were in
volved in the
conflict? Under what logic and motivations were recruited by guerrillas, paramil
itaries, and
mafia to make war? What was only a decision of excluded young people to solve
their individual situation or had a belief in the cause armed? To what extent do
the
communities were committed ideologically with the insurgency and counter-insurge
ncy
, in the sense that collaborated with the cause of the armed groups as a
mechanism for solving the problems of exclusion of a social group and not as a r
esult of
imposition or by pure expediency individual?
The evidence shows that in the mid-eighties the conflict in the country was focu
sed on two
types of confrontations. On the one hand between the guerrillas and the state se
curity forces
in conjunction with various paramilitary groups. It was the result of the progre
ss of the guerrilla movement toward
the integrated areas after almost two decades of hatching enough force on remote
geographies
(Aguilera 2013, Rangel 1998). While the ultimate goal was the decision of the n
ational power, for which it was
necessary to enter in Bogotá, the forward in the territory was limited by the mili
tary capability
of the guerrillas. Were the rural areas surrounding towns and medium-sized munic
ipalities
and small where took place the greater part of this war. On the other side was t
he
conflict of the drug traffickers against the state, in particular of Pablo Escob
ar. The case of the drug traffickers
is important because, while Escobar was discharged in 1993, the
drug traffickers were gradually taking control of the paramilitary groups and
becoming a key actor in the conflict and the national policy. These confrontatio
ns
were located in a principle in the large cities, mainly Medellin, but
then expanded into rural areas and municipalities intermediate where drug traffi
ckers
found shelter and should face the guerrillas who are spreading toward the integr
ated areas
of the country.
The margin of the geographical location specific where occurred these confrontat
ions it is possible to classify
in two major categories, the social origin of the combatants, as well as the rol
e played by the
exclusion as a cause of its linkage to the conflict. In the areas of land coloni
zation
, from the llanos and the jungles of Southeast until the Urabá, some guerrillas di
rected or
formed by left-wing parties urban became an alternative to the discontent
of young farmers. The misery, the resentment, abuse in their homes, the desire t
o know
other places, the need to protect yourself and other personal reasons were more
compelling
than any ideological conviction. If a witness gives an idea of this
resentment are the narrations of the abducted on the way as the guerrillas ranks
they blame them when they complain of their situation. In the ripper testimony o
f Guillermo
La Chiva cuts during his kidnapping, for example, a guerrilla answered him well wh
en he complained
that he would have to sleep in the mud: how do you think that my mom gave us, me
and my
brother? Thus between the mud, old bitch. On the other hand you give birth at a
clinic in the
bourgeoisie spat the words with the hatred deepest and most sincere 6.
6 Malpensante Magazine. The kidnapping of the Chiva. A testimony about the 205 d
ays of the abduction of Guillermo cuts.
By Alexandra Samper. July 2013 available at:
Http://elmalpensante.com/articulo/3117/el_secuestro_de_la_chiva.
7 Pizarro (1996: 24) notes that the bulk of the guerrilla leadership, from the f
oquistas groups, came from
the middle strata of the population.
8 The influence of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the formation and
organization of the left-wing movements
in Colombia is very well documented in the texts of Meschkat and Rojas (2009) an
d thin (2007).
However, the guerrilla leadership for the most part not entered the conflict as
a result of the
exclusion. Their origin and training were not precisely of marginal sectors
. Sectors were rather media, or not particularly poor, the origin of most
of the guerrilla leadership. Taking into account that the guerrillas had their o
rigin in the
leadership of left-wing political parties and movements in university (Pizarro,
1996), a minimum of
training and education were necessary to enter in the body of the
organizacion7 leader. There were of course variation according to each case. The
FARC had a
sector leader of peasant origin in its beginnings by having a link closest to th
e
wars of rural violence classic. The ELN, for its part, had a strong influence of
the church
and the EPL was Maoist. But regardless of the guerrilla group in question, in ge
neral is
imposed a logic dictated by the great revolutionary project of the Soviet Union
that
Hobsbawm pointed out as one of the three-pronged ideological in that it discusse
d the short twentieth century
8. To outline the logic of the soviet revolution injected him three fundamental a
spects to
the trajectory of the guerrillas. In the first place, in the imposition of a van
guard and
an elite that was responsible for organizing and directing the seizure of power
through a revolution
. The guerrillas as a political organization should be formed by professional
revolutionaries who specialize in this task. The population and the less well-ed
ucated cadres
were welcomed to the guidelines of the revolutionary elite. It was assumed that
the communities
settlers did not have the capacity to organize themselves and the revolution sho
uld rely to the
revolutionary vanguard political transformation. This was therefore
control organizations with a highly centralized and hierarchical in that the ord
ers
emanated from top to bottom without major cuestionamientos9.
9 An exception was perhaps the ELN in its principles through the jealousy of the
internal organization (Rangel 1998).
10 In brief biographical outline on the commander Jacobo Arenas. By: Bernardo Peña
losa. Commission Member
Relations policies FARC-EP. August 10, 1999. See: http://mbsuroccidentedecolombi
a.org/inicio/jacobo.html
in second place, in a lot of mistrust toward the moderates. Like the
Soviet leadership in its time, the FARC and the other guerrillas were the trends
in
social democrats of the left the worst enemies of the revolution. In fact it was
not possible to divide
the leaders of the guerrillas in hard and soft lines. There could be differences
in many
aspects but all revolved in quite extreme positions. Anyone who will show nuance
s in
their positions more radical was considered revisionist
. And thirdly, in the imp
osition of
a political realist doctrine. The ideological conviction was taken for granted,
what was important
was to obtain the material means military and organizational to make the revolut
ion.
Any concession or the enemy was seen as a sign of weakness that had to be
taken advantage of in the achievement of the strategic objectives. A biographica
l sketch on Jacobo
Arenas written by members of the FARC in Internet shines through the previous el
ements:
It is in this Congress is where Communist formula for the first time the tactica
l line of combination of
the various forms of mass action and the fundamental role of the track in the ar
med struggle for a new
power in Colombia, of which the Commander Arenas would never leave and from whic
h it makes
the ideological struggle against the trends that sought to undermine the real vo
cation of power of all
communist party really. This tenacious work of James will be extended in time an
d space, not only
in the ideological fight against the social democrat line apoltronada for a long
time ago in a
sector of the Colombian Communist Party, but against the trends and eurocomunist
as perestroikas
that much influenced the fatal demobilization of the guerrillas in El Salvador a
nd Guatemala in
Central America and the M-19, the EPL and a sector of the ELN in our patria10.
In fact, more than the exclusion was the ideal of a political change which is wh
y many young people in
middle and lower-middle classes to do part of the insurgent groups during the si
xties and seventies
. It was also part of a process that was taking place to throughout Latin Americ
a.
As referenced other authors in their essays in this same report of the Historica
l Commission
of the conflict and their victims (Jorge Giraldo and Daniel Pecaut), in almost a
ll the countries in the region of the
new wave of left and the Cuban revolution captivate many young people to
military in the different strands of the left, including of course to the left
armada11. In the common public universities was the presence of strong movements
of
radical left12 and forming networks of recruitment to the guerrillas. In practic
al terms
the availability of the given forms of organization and ideological frameworks,
i.e.
of a communist insurgency based on the idea of foquismo or Cuban
revolutionary in the conceptions of the Soviet communist party, meant a strategi
c advantage to mobilize
the truly excluded sectors. The cost of inventing an insurgent organization
and a ideology to give form to the political struggle that farmers and settlers
excluded were going to adopt already were internalized in the whole process of e
xpansion of
the ideological left during that era. But at the same time the adoption of a def
ault of insurgency and
political objectives maximalist, neither more nor less than a revolution,
meant that the solution to the problems of poverty, exclusion and marginalizatio
n of those who
made up the troop rasa should wait for a military triumph of the insurgency will
materialize
. Accordingly, priority issues for the excluded as an agrarian reform,
a relief of their material situation and general access to the services of the s
tate were subordinate
to the political objectives of the guerrilla leadership.
11 For a compilation of the various insurgencies see Wickham-Crowley (1992).
12 Tirado Mejia (2014) offers an interesting description of the dissemination of
marxism in Colombia during the sixties
.
For its part, in a few cities and municipalities in some other type of motivatio
n
seduced excluded young people. It was not the misery that is experienced in the
more remote
isolation. It was, on the contrary, the misery that is felt when I lived near th
e opulence.
Many young people enthusiastically embraced the crime just to relieve their frus
tration of be so little
thing . There was not a sophisticated speech behind, enough the motto of if there
are no opportunities
for the good we managed by the bad . Thus appeared in many cities
subcultures criminals among young people in popular neighborhoods and marginal c
ommunities that barely
made the transit to urban life. The subcultures criminals (Cloward and Ohlin 196
0) are
a system of norms, values and behaviors of young people belonging to
excluded communities in that any type of crime becomes a means of
social achievement. These subcultures are a challenge to the institutions of the
state because they are
seen as illegitimate by the young people already marginal input that represent a
denial to
their chances of success in the society. As a result, some criminal practices ar
e
taken as alternative mechanisms of realization and relief to the situation of ex
clusion.
But the reaction in the form of criminal subcultures that abounded in the Colomb
ian cities
had not course biggest problem in terms of the conflict if it had not been for t
he role played by
drug trafficking in the channelling of the discontent of some young people towar
d a situation of
violence more complex. If it had been the problem of the subculture had been con
fined to the
issue of gangs and bands dedicated to robbery, vandalism and theft of less sophi
stication, not to the level of
armed organizations that at a given time were confronted with the state under th
e leadership of
Pablo Escobar and which later became an important resource for the control of dr
ug trafficking
and the organization of the counterinsurgency private. These young people were t
he apparatus of
war of the Medellín Cartel and the paramilitaries of chestnut, which were nothing
other than a
dissident faction of the Medellín Cartel that afflicted Escobar. The major drug tr
afficking organizations
and provided to the paramilitary criminal subcultures with sufficient discipline
,
resources, skills, and organizational learning to access huge flows of wealth an
d the
exercise of power over many communities. With the drug trafficking was then open
ed to
excluded sectors a new perspective that has molded their behaviors in the follow
ing
decades. He described it as a drug trafficker interviewed by Guillen (2003: 159)
:
and i think i can say all Colombia was p
In the early seventies the city of Cali
redisposed to
become the paradise of the cocaine, the best business of the world. At first gla
nce
it is not easy to understand why, but it is [sic]. The urban lower class, to wh
ich I belong, had not only
school education but that was much stronger than in any other part of
Latin America. The poor Colombians we fight to the death to cease to be so; do n
ot expect
the opportunities of life but that we seek, including the us invented, to the go
od or the
bad. Do not believe that I have seen, anywhere in the world, people more worker
and imaginative to
earn a living. In Colombia there are no opportunities for advancement for those
in need, that we are the majority
.
Unlike the guerrillas, drug trafficking organizations control offered opportunit
ies
to individuals from excluded sectors, in particular if these individuals
controlled the organization of the violence. They were not needed university stu
dies or
preparation in any ideological rhetoric. Sufficient the skills acquired in the o
wn
criminal career to lead an organization that is imposed as a regulator of the pr
oduction and
drug trafficking in some territory and, more important for the purpose of the co
nflict, in the
organization that regulated the social order of the said territory. Eventually i
f other criminal organizations
or the guerrillas sought to contest its territorial control the conflict
involved the population. A war that in principle should be strictly between
criminals to control an illegal market had become a war to control
societies.
However, until the beginning of the eighties the involvement of members of socie
ties
excluded in the guerrillas and the private armies of the drug trafficking was ve
ry small. The guerrillas
controlled a few areas of peasant colonization and except some marginal neighbor
hoods
in the Antiochian region and other rural areas of the country, the mafia was lit
tle
controlled. It was only when the guerrillas raided the integrated areas of the c
ountry that the
conflict involved to a large number of excluded in many regions of Colombia. New
guerrillas ceilings were recruited as the insurgency ventured toward more integr
ated regions
. The army and the police grew several times their initial number and drug traff
ickers
gradually increased the size of their own private armies. He had to defend itsel
f against
the risk of kidnapping and expropriation which meant the arrival of the guerrill
as to
the walls of the integrated areas of the country.
The territorial encroachment of the guerrillas was not in any case a process of
raising awareness of
excluded as a social class. Those excluded were recruited as rasa all ranks of t
he various organizations
, guerrillas and paramilitary, for reasons for the most part other than the
claim of a sector of society or the belief in the ideals of the organization,
whatever they were. The desires of vengeance, a living wage with the armed group
in relation
to the employment opportunities available in the legality, forced recruitment, t
he
lack of other opportunities and, above all, the need to protect yourself and pur
chase status
pushed to many young people to to be a part of any group in dispute. The results
of the
surveys made by demobilized the IFJ shows that the ideological reasons do not pa
ss
the 8% (see figure 1). Economic deprivation and the quest for power and protect
ion, i.e.
individual motivations, are much more 13 implications. Just as happened with man
y
13 revenge as a motive is contained in the response power/protection and is high
as the reason in both men and women
.
7% 8%
7% 8%
8% 8%
42% 30
% 50%
38% 30%
20% 16%
23%
14%
21%
18%
27%
15% 17%
13%
14% 19%
20% 8%
9%
5%
7% 12%
9%
11%
13%
10% 12%
13%
15%
0% 10%
20% 30%
40% 50%
Man Man Woman Man Urban Rural Women Urban Rural Women
Economic ideological Power / Force Protection taste/Deception other
communities that ended up working with some of the parties, outside state, param
ilitary or
guerilla groups. They did not do so out of a belief in their potential for solvi
ng their problems of exclusion, but
for access to some kind of protection in a context highly violent.
Figure 1
Survey FIP to demobilized: Reasons to enter the armed group?
Source: Taken from Rubio (2013).
In fact, as guerrillas and paramilitary artform took up the peripheral areas of
the country, and even
the marginal areas of the cities, the exclusion of the security services became
the
form of exclusion more pressing. The problem of resolving the situation material
he had to give in to the need to preserve life and property by little that is ou
tside.
The communities were trapped under the logic of supporting the guerrilla or para
military groups
as a decision to ensure their survival. If any of them as suspected
collaborators of the enemy were to be slaughtered. Had that bet on the collabora
tion with the
faction that would provide the most reliable protection. The logic of violence i
n the civil wars
by Kalyvas argued (2006) expressed in its classic version of confrontations betw
een the state
, paramilitaries and guerrillas, but also between criminal organizations compete
d
to control territories.
Outlines what previous notes that the exclusion material, due to the role played
by
other variables, it was only important as motivation for violent insurrection ag
ainst the state
in very specific circumstances and among very few social sectors. It was a
condition to the most necessary but not sufficient for guerrillas, paramilitarie
s and drug traffickers
to recruit a sector of his troop rasa. Then, when the violence spread
to numerous geographic spaces, the exclusion as a motivation for the conflict
was overshadowed by other variables. The need to make part of an armed group to
defend itself and
to their community or to gain access to some kind of order, were
more powerful reasons for the conflict from spreading along the Colombian geogra
phy. At that time
if any type of exclusion was important as a cause of the conflict was the exclus
ion of the security services and
justice of the state. Excluded Many ended up in the war as a means
to ensure protection and exact revenge for wrongs suffered previously.
Guerrillas and paramilitaries alike took advantage of the inability in that aspe
ct of the institutions of the state
.
The foregoing also aims to get another type of variables were most important for
shaping
the way that took the conflict that the exclusion material. Between these variab
les were two
criminal practices, kidnapping and drug trafficking, that impacted both in the g
eneration of
specific resources for making war as in the creation of an environment of insecu
rity that
the demands for protection and order became motivations pressing to collaborate
with the various parties to the conflict. This was the way in which the irregula
r armed groups took advantage of the opportunity offered by the
crime and adjusted their means of warfare and social control
to promote their situation. Further, they found that with the income of the crim
e could be kept
in the conflict indefinitely.
The abduction
For more than a decade the guerrillas remained in a state of quasi-hibernation i
n the periphery
, during which the accumulated men and resources to be projected
toward areas militarily more integrated into the political and economic center o
f the country. Progress, however,
were quite limited. Or the foot of force nor the available weaponry allowed the
various
guerrilla groups face in open fighting and wars of movement to the security appa
ratus
of the establishment. Throughout the decade of the eighties the maximum they cou
ld aspire
was to carry out own shares of guerrilla warfare. The ambushes,
municipalities and remote paths, the concentration of troops to launch an attack
and then their dispersion,
the acts of sabotage and eventually some bold action, as taken from the
embassy of Dominican Republic and the Palace of Justice carried out by the M-19,
formed the bulk
of the repertoire of the guerrilla military.
It might seem that with so many limitations to escalate the war, the insurgent t
hreat in
Colombia was a matter rather symbolic, especially when compared with the capacit
y he had
during those same years, the Medellin cartel to terrorize the national elites an
d
rethinking the political agenda around the non-extradition (Lemaitre, 2011). Ho
wever, another
type of real threat to the established order is incubaba around the processes of
territorial expansion
of the guerrillas. Although they could not crush the regular army in fighting an
d questioning his
territorial control on the header of the cities and municipalities
of the country most important, its strategy allowed you to accumulate resources
in areas more rich than those where
had originally formed his army. In passing, the accumulation of resources in the
se new areas
became a specific threat against the elites of periphery.
The guerrilla strategy consisted of packing in the rural areas surrounding to in
termediate cities
and the largest municipalities in the country. Little by little they were creati
ng networks of
collaborators among rural communities in the area. Any dissatisfaction was used
in
a principle to enter the area. Then, through a militia or guerrilla dressed in c
ivilian clothing,
controlled the community from there to launch operations against the urban heade
rs.
In the municipalities and areas of low concentration of troops and police these
operations
included eventually thomas and fighting against the public forces. The police po
sts were
blown to shreds, the headquarters of the agrarian bank was sacked and the office
s of the state destroyed.
But the type of operations that greater reaction and damage caused between the p
opulation of the peripheral areas
that were besieged by the guerrillas was the systematic exploitation of the enti
re productive structure
.
If in the remote areas of strategic rearguard the guerrillas used extortion to
rational levels, in a way that does not risk the local production, in the
intermediate cities and municipalities that constituted the limits of their terr
itorial expansion exploitation was irrational.
The logic of the guerrilla incursion was not subject to the formation of a
temporary system of government. Not only the resource extraction was unreasonabl
e, destroying the productive base
available in the town, but that did not offer other services such as protection
and justice that
legalizing its domination. While in some of its areas of rearguard ranchers and
landowners
could find profitable the periodic payment of extortion even if the guerrillas m
aintained
the free zone of cattle rustlers and cattle rustlers (Aguilera 2013), in the are
as of expansion the goal was to accumulate
resources quickly to escalate the war in its purpose of takes of national power.
From the rural areas kidnap and extorting without considering that the exploitat
ion of the
local production will reach prohibitive levels for economic agents. The immediat
e objective
was not govern these societies but accumulate resources to carry out a revolutio
n
. In the internal debates is notorious the discussion between the whips meet the
demands of the
local government and the demands of the national revolution (see Aguilera 2013 a
nd interviews with
Mario Agudelo by Jaramillo Panesso 2005).
Of all forms of exploitation that the guerrillas were used in the forward strate
gy
toward populated areas and integrated with the national economy, the abduction w
ould have the greatest impact on
the definition and evolution of the conflict. It was not a criminal practice new
.
Rubio (2003) and the Observatory for Human Rights and International Humanitarian
Law (2009) documented its beginnings
long before the current conflict, even dating back to the classical violence. Li
kewise, it is quite likely that
Pablo Escobar and the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers had made inroads in
this practice. The difference was in the operational advantages that had guerril
la armies
to carry out kidnappings along the national geography. By have networks of partn
ers
the guerrillas had more information on potential victims that do not offer
lower risks in the retention process. Had extensive places of refuge
where maintain abducted by minimizing the risk of the rescue operations and
retaliation of the public force. Statistics reveal that in the mid eighties beca
me
a widespread practice throughout the national territory (see Figure 2). Of 278
kidnappings per year in 1984 to 1717 was passed in 1991. Later the situation was
even more critical
when the Farc adopted the miraculous catches as funding strategy.
Anyone who was at the wrong place, a road, or somewhere close to the
278
258
171 249
709
781
1282
1717
1320
1014
1293
1158
1038
1624
2860
3204
3572
2917
2882
2121
1440
800
687
521
0 500
1000 1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
1984
1985 1986
1987 1988
1989 1990 1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
territorial presence of the guerrillas, was in danger of being kidnapped in a se
al of the insurgency.
The kidnappings reached 3572 in 2000.
Figure 2
kidnappings annual 1984 - 2007
Source: Police Nacional-Fondelibertad . Processed by the Observatory of the Pres
idential Program for DH and IHL.
Although the most dramatic effects of the kidnapping were entry the decade of th
e eighties and
in the following two decades, the decision on the massive use of this practice w
as much earlier
. Since the mid-seventies in the Communist Party (PC) the discussion was not onl
y on whether
host the combination of the forms of struggle. The discussion was also if within
the
repertoire of the armed struggle and of financing mechanisms of the insurgency h
ad place for
practices such as the kidnapping. The debate won the hard line of the party. At
that time the
communist leadership did not imagine the reaction that would generate. The need
to finance the construction of
a revolutionary army was imposed on any humanitarian considerations
or on any fears regarding the retaliation that would arise from their massive us
e. Just as
happened with other guerrilla groups that adopted the abduction as a funding mec
hanism
(see, for example, the autobiography of Valencia León 2008).
The kidnapping was definitive in shaping the course of the conflict by their con
sequences in
two central issues. In the first place, it was supposed to be only a medium of a
ccumulation of
resources so as to provide sufficient troops and weapons to defeat the establish
ment. In practice
, as has been mentioned, the likelihood of challenge militarily to the state wer
e
spoiled by what the abduction became if in a permanent resource that could appea
l to the guerrillas
to stay in the conflict and to ensure its territorial conquests. At some point
became a result of the war by the damage caused between certain social sectors
of the periphery, in particular to elite legal and illegal. In the urban and sem
i-urban areas
more vulnerable the central question was how did the elites and middle classes t
o
avoid being abducted. There, as well the guerrillas did not have as threaten the
superiority of the state security forces
, had altered the capacity of the establishment to maintain the
local order. Unlike the economic and political elites of the center, that only o
n a much smaller scale
suffered the kidnapping in the flesh, their sources of material wealth were
progressively becoming extinct by the guerrilla threat. That is to say, while th
e center for the purpose of the war
was how to avoid that the guerrillas will escalate the war to a point that the
control of the situation by the state was at stake - something that security for
ces succeeded
for over three decades of conflict-, to the periphery the issue was how to avoid
that the
kidnapping would destroy the foundations of the established order, - something t
hat change was a
viable military objective for the guerrillas through the kidnapping and other pr
actices.
The kidnapping was different to the extortion because more affected to the prope
rty to the
income. While that extortion meant a reduction of profits of the business of
the entrepreneurs and owners of land, or in some cases an increase in consumer p
rices,
to pay the demands of the guerrilla, the kidnapping involved amounts much higher
.
The victims were forced to sell their properties and their companies to be able
to pay the
ransom. In many cases the business is going to chop because the kidnapped was in
dispensable for the
efficient administration. The duration of the kidnappings sometimes amounted
to more than a year. In the case of the kidnapped
aberrant political situations occurred more than a decade of captivity. Many pro
fessionals, managers of companies and
farmers saw as the companies of a lifetime were liquidated because the security
conditions
made them unviable.
The damage to the productive capacity of local economies by the abduction also a
ffected sectors
excluded from the periphery. Could be that the main victims were entrepreneurs i
n segments
quite behind, based on the many cases in agricultural activities of low producti
vity
and low demand for labor as the cattle-ranching, but precisely because of its la
g
any unforeseen economic threatened the basic levels of subsistence farmers
. If the owners of the farms and crops were leaving the place just the few sourc
es of
existing capital. Instead of helping to relieve the physical exclusion of the pe
asants on
massive use of abduction worsened their conditions of life. As well some guerril
las
would worry about claim to landowners and farmers the right to land and wages
righteous of the peasants, these claims do not compensate for the deterioration
of economic conditions in
the agricultural producers periferia14.
14 Various studies referred to as the progress of the guerrillas destroyed the r
egional economies that relied on
livestock and agriculture. See Bernal (2004) and Bejarano and others (1997).
Secondly, the kidnapping defined the political alliances between certain social
sectors of
the periphery against the guerrillas and the legal left that in one way or anoth
er was
linked to the armed struggle. The kidnapping was not a practice that hit evenly
to the elites. The military capability of the guerrilla was concentrated in the
outlying areas, so
that agricultural elites and livestock were the most affected. The economic and
political elites of
Bogota never suffered with the same intensity the threat of abduction as the
experienced their regional counterparts. Similarly the drug traffickers as a new
economic power of the regions became a natural prey. It wouldn't be a surprise t
hat
landowners, politicians and narco-traffickers unite around the paramilitarism in
a
bloody vendetta against anyone suspected of collaborating with the guerrillas. H
ad additional reasons to
the economic to the retaliation to reach ends of cruelty.
Kidnapping in addition to ruining the fragile and poorly developed legal economi
es in the regions
, it was a humiliating way of stripping the elites and media sectors of its prop
erty.
The abductees were kept in precarious conditions, under the constant threat of b
eing
killed if state authorities carried out a rescue plan. The negotiations of the
amount of ransom was carried out in a situation of absolute powerlessness. The f
amily should
withstand the indolence of the negotiators of the guerrillas. On many occasions,
especially after
that is popularized the miraculous catches , the negotiators of the guerrillas were
asking
absurd figures and abandoned channels of communication for long periods of time
leaving the families of the victims in the most absolute uncertainty about if we
re still alive
. The newspaper accounts of the cases are heart wrenching.
As well as many employers, landlords, traders and ranchers malvendieron what the
y had
and migrated to the cities were startled by the risks to your property and to th
eir own
physical safety, others chose to organize private armies to defend themselves. I
n the Colombian regions
, despite the long democratic experience, there was a strong tradition of the us
e of violence
to impose both private property rights as to ensure the political control
of the area (Gutierrez Sanin 2014). Pecaut (2001) refers to a period of
latent violence during the almost two decades after the violence classical in th
e sense that the
violence was a private mechanism for regulating the social life in many communit
ies.
It was not difficult for this tradition of violence will be reactivated when the
guerrillas were expanded to new areas.
Many legal elites were recruited to former members of the security forces and
local peasants to address the threats of kidnapping and expropriation by the gue
rrillas
. The army and the police, for their part, helped with the task of organizing a
private counterinsurgency. Those were the days of the cold war and on his should
ers rested the counterinsurgency fight
. At that time it was lawful for the Colombian army arm-defense groups
among the civilian population15 to counter the communist threat. In reality, it
was the
application of counterinsurgency war strategies developed by the military doctri
ne
of the United States in a context of proliferation of guerrilla warfare througho
ut Latin America
(Ramsey 1981). The basic components of this doctrine quickly became obsolete wh
en
the Colombian conflict introduced new elements such as the kidnapping and drug t
rafficking
and the guerrilla groups demonstrated a unique ability to expansion and resistan
ce among the countries of South America
.
15 The Decree 3398 of 1965 protects the organization of civil self-defense force
s by the military forces.
The counterinsurgency private was not only a matter of sectors of the elite and
wealthy classes
in conjunction with the security apparatus of the state. Many rural communities,
including sectors quite excluded from the population, took sides against the gue
rrillas.
Although in his case was not the kidnapping that reason its participation in the
conflict, there are other
powerful reasons to take up arms. On the one hand, the guerrillas required resou
rces to support
the logistics of the war and demanded the recruitment of a son to the cause. And
on the other hand
, when the war spread throughout the territory it was necessary to work with som
e
side. There was no room for neutrality. Due to its geographical situation, their
economic dependence
, their distrust with the guerrillas or simply by the sheer imposition of force,
many communities worked with the local domain of private armies counterinsurgenc
y.
One interesting case is that of Adam Rojas a peasant to which Tirofijo killed by h
is father during the
classical violence by not giving a panela when he was a teenager APENA. To escap
e the violence
migrated to the Sierra Nevada to cultivate coffee. At the end of the seventies t
he Farc
took Palmor, its people. Tired of paying extortion and reluctant to relinquish t
heir children to the guerrilla army
was assembled. I think a paramilitary group with its consequent legacy of killin
gs, massacres
and desplazamientos16.
16 In the Portal of Truth Open (www.verdadabierta.com) is fairly documented this
case with interviews to
own Adam Rojas.
17 Garcia Villegas (2008) demonstrated empirically throughout the municipalities
in Colombia that the cases dealt with by the
state courts were the most insignificant, while the irregular armed groups were
responsible for
defining the hard cases of property rights and issues in legal terms that would
be part of the criminal justice.
In fact, when the conflict spread throughout the country and involved with the m
ost diverse
communities, which are forced to appeal one side or the other to protect themsel
ves from abduction
and other consequences of violence, was that it became clear one of the forms of
exclusion more
criticism in Colombia, the security services and justice by the institutions of
the state.
As long as certain social sectors have enjoyed the protection of the public forc
e and could appeal to
the courts of the state to resolve their legal problems other, on the contrary,
these services should be filled with armed organizations contralaban territory.1
7 the. While the organization of
private counterinsurgency was motivated by a principle by the need
to defend itself against the progress of the guerrillas, in particular to neutra
lize the risk of kidnapping,
at a later stage these organizations took its coercive capacity to
impose conditions of protection and justice tailored to their interests. In prac
tice, the
organization of the private coercion became in itself means of power, now not on
ly
to confront the threats of the insurgency but also to claim the imposition of a
particular form of authority in the periphery. The matter then passed to another
threshold, the ownership of the
functions of local authority.
And of all the sectors that were organized private the insurgency in the earlyto mideighties, those most took advantage of the new situation to impose its
domination in means of the local were drug traffickers. It was just normal for d
rug traffickers
as the new regional magnates became the main victims
of the guerrillas. If one sector had with money in the areas where the guerrilla
s had
sufficient territorial power were precisely to hijack them. The difference was t
hat the
drug traffickers as seasoned criminals were willing to give the fight like no ot
her
elite and had the resources to give it. His reaction was so strong and so bloody
that
at the end of the nineties went from being a mechanism of containment of the gue
rrillas to become a force in
expansion with aspirations of territorial authority.
It is usually attributed the origin of the confrontation between drug trafficker
s and the guerrillas to the creation of the
group Death to Kidnappers (MORE) by the Medellin cartel then that a
sister of the Ochoa was kidnapped in November 1981. In fact since before
she hijacked to the guerrillas already kidnapped and extort money from them to d
rug traffickers and their families.
The most emblematic case by their implications for the future, the father of the
Castaño brothers,
occurred just before the formation of the more. According to Ronderos (2014) Jes
us Castaño was plagiarized
on their farm in september of 1981. Since then the Chestnut had begun a string
of retaliations and targeted killings in the region. Even more, the more dissolv
ed as soon as
it was returned the sister of the Ochoa. After the episode Escobar sealed an agr
eement with
the M-19 in that drug traffickers do not kidnap or vied for control of the
city in exchange for recurring payments. A test of the agreement was that when t
he children of drug trafficker
Jader Alvarez were abducted in Bogotá, the Escobar himself launched flyers
in Bogota by clarifying that the MORE had nothing to do with the disappearance o
f a teacher and
several students from the National University of secuestro18 suspects. It was a
message so as not to ruin
the agreements made with the guerrillas.
18 At the time (September 2 1982) was referencing the event. MORE denies murder
of professor Alberto
Alava from leaflets dropped from a plane in Bogota. P. 2 A.
The confrontation between the guerrillas and drug traffickers was a result of th
e clash between
two projects of antagonistic social control that could reach agreements always a
nd when there was no
territorial jurisdiction. So much so that in the beginning there were no problem
s to negotiate
in the most remote areas of the country controlled by the FARC the establishment
of large complexes of
cocaine production as Villa Tranquilandia Coca and. There the Medellin Cartel
had no interests in regard to the exercise of some kind of social domination, so
there were no problems
in pay to the guerrillas to provide protection against the authorities. Between
drug traffickers
operating in the laboratory was Fidel Castano, who in the north of the country
carried out a war to the death with the FARC and other guerrilla groups. The pro
blem arose only then
when the guerrillas raided in the regions where drug traffickers dwelled and
began to kidnap a skillful and sinister. Assemble powerful private armies and al
ly itself with
the elites and other legal forms of insurgency in the periphery was just a
natural reaction to survive in the middle of a scene of extreme insecurity.
The organization of the paramilitarism responded to the particularities of the m
ilitary challenge that
the guerrillas represented to the legal and illegal sectors threatened by its ex
pansion. These challenges
were not given by the development of an apparatus of war able to neutralize them
in
regular fighting. The guerrillas did not have the capacity to carry out a war of
movement
in areas close to the headers urban inhabited those who organize the
private counterinsurgency. It was necessary, on the contrary, the development of
small armies that
will destroy the militia, the logistics networks, partners and supporters that
allowed the guerrillas the systematic use of the kidnapping, extortion and the i
nfiltration of
institutions such as political parties, trade unions, universities and public ad
ministrations. The
aim was to have a group of men armed with enough capacity for monitoring of the
communities and
retaliation against any member or sector of the community that
will collaborate with the insurgency. Until before the Chestnut brothers decide
to raise the bets and
form large armies counterinsurgency sufficient a few men
strategically deployed in the territory so that any abnormal behavior
was monitored and punished. For special operations such as the assassination of
a leader or
the execution of a massacre were used professional hitmen and muerte19 squads.
19 The case Better Corner narrated by Sanchez Jr. (2003) it is revealing how the
massacres were carried out by special groups
recruited for this purpose. Well same own description Carlos Castaño makes the
murder of Carlos Pizarro shows how worked the hired killers within the paramilit
arism.
From there the organizational nature of paramilitary armies and the sense of the
ir practices,
from extermination until political massacres. The extermination of UP, for examp
le, was more related
to the local chain of retaliations between insurgency and counter-insurgency
that private to a great plan from Bogota by the economic and political elites. T
here is no greater
evidence that any president or the leaders of the traditional parties20 of the e
ra would have been
after the murder of the activists of the legal left. It is true that the elites
of Bogota were
indolent with the massacre that was carried out, in spite of being a fact widely
publicized by
the media, and that some assassinations were counted with the
collaboration of radical sectors in the state security forces21 and that under t
he doctrine of
police and army was tolerance and the joint work with paramilitary groups.
However, those who took the decision to murder the officials, candidates and act
ivists
of the UP were elites and sectors of regional power those who feared that an ele
ctoral advance of
this party would lead to a deterioration in their position of power in the perip
hery, as well as to an increase in
the levels of expropriation of the guerrillas.
POLITICAL ACTIVITY
without affiliation
Registered
Liberal Saved UP. Union
Org.
Another popular
Filiation
Hope, Peace, and
Freedom
M-19 Other
Mayor 100 31 8 16 0 0 4 0 0 0
Councillors 277 208 50 120 0 2 22 7 5 0
militants / activists 20 6 159 3 31 11 77 114 13 0
local political leaders 144 87 53 38 0 2 9 4 2 0
police inspector 258 19 1 4 0 0 3 0 0 0
popular leaders 58 5 8 2 2 136 11 0 1 3
other officials of the State
199 11 4 6 0 0 2 0 0 0
union leaders 15 183 0 7 0 2 2 2 0 0
Council candidates 52 18 5 9 0 0 6 0 2 1
Political leaders
Departmental 32 34 10 10 0 0 3 0 1 0
mayoral candidates 38 14 5 11 0 0 7 0 1 0
Members - Trustees 7 19 8 8 0 0 4 0 0 0
Journalists 27 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Parliamentary 1 8 7 7 1 0 0 0 0 0
national political leader 2 6 6 6 1 0 0 0 1 0
supporters 0 2 3 0 0 0 0 13 2 0 Other
5 8 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
TOTAL 1235 476 335 242 218 153 150 140 28 4 rates
41.4 % 16.0 % 11.2 % 8.1 % 7.3 % 5.1 % 5.0 % 4.7 % 0.9 % 0.1 %
20 An exception Perhaps could be Could Be Hernando Duran, who apparently activel
y participated in the
organization of paramilitarism in Los Llanos Orientales (see Dudley 2008 and Gut
ierrez Sanin 2014).
21 Is often quoted, for example, the role played by the Department of Administra
tive Security (DAS) in the murder not only
of leftist leaders but also of Luis Carlos Galan.
Table 1.
Political murders 1986 - 2002
Source: DAS, processing of Escobedo Rodolfo.
The violence against the political figures of the enemy, especially if these asp
ired to elective office
, was very effective to ensure the power in the regional dynamics of the
conflict. The responsibilities of state guaranteed resources and institutional d
ecisions that were important
to determine the results of the fighting between the insurgency and counterinsur
gency
private in a given region. The victimization of the political class as a strateg
y of war
happened as well with the traditional parties. You can which the activists of th
e
liberal and conservative parties have not been exterminated as it was the UP but
the number of dead
that have been made in the last decades of conflict can easily overcome to those
on the left
by sheer number of potential victims. Table 1, in spite of the problems of
underreporting, shows that the number of victims of the traditional parties in a
ddition to the
exaggerated was higher than those of the UP.
The reasons for the extermination of the UP were in that, despite being a initia
tive of
reintegration to civilian life in the framework of the peace process of the gove
rnment Betancur, became part of the
strategy of territorial expansion of the FARC, in particular on the political fr
ont with
this purpose. Braulio Herrera and Ivan Marquez, a current member of the secretar
iat, were
congressmen by the PU. And although many of its militants were guerrilla fighter
s, even
some were not supporters of the armed struggle, for the regional elites its entr
y into the
electoral competition meant that allies of those they killed, abducted and
expropriated the went to divest of the control of the local institutions of the
state. The own
Senator UP, Alberto Rojas Puyo, warned him to Jacobo Arenas, maximum Farc comman
der
that if they continued with the kidnapping were going to butcher the party. Howe
ver, in the internal debates
in the Communist Party, where it came from the bulk of the militants of up22, we
re defeated
the moderate. The radical line of the party supported the use of kidnapping as p
art of
the revolutionary strategy of taking power.
22 Aguilera (2013) asserts that UP was seen as the political front complementary
to the strategy of the party and the guerrillas.
The response of the legal and illegal elites of the regions, needless to say, wa
s unrelenting. More than
3000 activists from the UP were killed. But the extermination is not a conspirac
y of
state, nor of the defense of blood and fire of wealth by the large economic elit
es
. Nor was the product of an ideological intolerance by traditional sectors.
The truth was more mundane and more bloody than that, it was the local response
to the risk of losing
elections which increased the likelihood of guerrilla control and therefore
suffer kidnappings, extortion and other practices expropiativas. Carroll (2011),
for example,
explains the murders of the social movements of left as the result of retaliatio
ns
of local elites, supported in many cases in national authorities, where
there was a risk of losing its electoral descent.
Figure 3
massacres and killings by massacres 1980
Source: GMH.
Another example of how the organization of the private counterinsurgency was mar
ked by the strategic need to
ensure that the insurgency was not able to carry out abductions
in the regions were the massacres. Within the logic of the massacres was destroy
social media
of the guerrilla war that could serve as a platform in the surrounding areas of
intermediate cities from which to launch operations of secuestro23. On the sidew
alks and
0
200 400
600
800
1000 1200
1400 1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985 1986
1987 1988
1989 1990 1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
massacres homicides in massacres
23 operations of abduction from rural areas reached even to affect large cities
such as Cali where
kidnapped more than a hundred people in the Church the Maria on 30 May 1999 and
the Farc 12 deputies
in another operation on 11 April 2002. In Neiva the Farc also raided the buildin
g Miraflores and abducted 15 people
on 26 July 2001.
24 An example of the brutal that could be the shortcomings for information was t
he massacre of Barrancabermeja, where the AUC
kidnapped a about thirty people at a party and the massacred despite that then t
hey realized that
only a belonged to the ELN (Ronderos 2014).
neighboring municipalities are organized by the abduction and then kept the host
ages. In extreme cases, the
operations and management of the kidnapped are toward the view of the entire com
munity.
Even the civilians were responsible for the care of victims (Castle, 2014). The
perverse consequence of involvement of the population in the exercise of the kid
napping in particular
and of the territorial domination of the guerrilla war in general was that it be
came object
of retaliations of paramilitary groups. The statistics of massacres are chiling
as seen in Figure 3.
At the end the massive and indiscriminate attacks against the civilian populatio
n became
a frequent resource within the repertoire of war of all armed groups, any time t
hat your
collaboration came to be definitive for exercise territorial control, as well as
for information on
the potential kidnap victims. Given that there was no precise information on
the exact degree of involvement with the insurgency of the members of the
communities controlled by the guerrillas, the paramilitary strategy was to lay s
iege to the entire
community and kill any member on the fall that the slightest suspicion of collab
orator.
Many innocent people fell in the masacres24. In peripheral communities, where th
e presence of the army and
the police was precarious or non-existent, the guerrillas also used the
strategy of indiscriminate killings when did not have any precise information on
the loyalties
and preferences of the population in order to avoid possible defections to the p
aramilitaries. In other words
, while the conflict is expressed on the one hand in fighting between the army a
nd the guerrillas
, on the other, it is expressed in retaliation of any kind against the civilian
population to ensure
its collaboration. And given that the strictly military confrontation has never
had a
character decision-making, i.e. the guerrillas was not a rival that threatened t
he supremacy of the state in
the field of battle but the state was not able to delete it definitively, the
retaliation against the civilian population became a real thermometer of the res
ults of
the war. If the insurgency could prevent the abductions and other actions
against its social base i wanted to say that was winning the war and, vice versa
, if the insurgency
managed to avoid that the massacres reduced its capacity of territorial expansio
n.
However, the analysis of the local configuration of the war around the kidnappin
g, the massacres
and other retaliation against the civilian population is incomplete if it is not
considered the effects
of the drug trafficking in the dynamics of the conflict. At some point, much of
the
initial goals and motivations of the actors involved were changed as replanteaba
n their
possibilities according to the results of the war. Drug trafficking was crucial
in shaping
these changes because it had generated a political economy that allowed to susta
in the conflict indefinitely
. The war instead of destroy the wealth in the periphery was instrumental in gen
erating capital flows to
the regions to offer protection to a illegal business. But it was another fact w
hich
led to yet another level crime in conflict: the organization by drug traffickers
of enormous
private armies to become de facto authorities in vast regions and territories. T
he
goal was not only protect the capital of the aspirations of the guerrilla exprop
iativas but also
produce capital from the accumulation of power, in particular the power it meant
to be the
government of a significant portion of the country's periphery.
The drug trafficking
Drug trafficking has had profound repercussions on the Colombian conflict by a b
asic attribute
of its production process: the added value is generated, more than in the produc
tion of the drug
as a commodity, in the production of power as a means to reduce the risks involv
ed in
the business. That is to say, the bulk of the final value of the product is give
n by the risks that are assumed
to bring it up to consumers and expenses that are incurred to minimize them. The
risks are
different but their more usual sources are two: the state and the criminal organ
izations
that control or aspire to control the business. What is ironic is that these two
sources of risk
are to turn the main means of protection with the drug traffickers. It is
so: the private army of a mobster that protects a corridor for drugs has the mean
s to
expropriate the goods and to murder those who transport. The politician who rece
ives bribes to avoid
that the authorities to persecute a hood has the ability to influence the author
ities
to produce his capture. (Duncan, 2014)
why politicians and criminals can provide protection is because they have the
sufficient power in a society to ensure that effectively
decrease risks of the business. Without social power guarantees are much smaller
and, therefore, the risks
increase. It is well that a drug trafficker achieves that a given authority not
expropriate or capture
only if a politician who has influence on the state because it receives the vote
s of a
community, influencing the decision to suppress of the authority. Similarly, thi
s
drug trafficker can receive protection of a paramilitary because this dominates
the society of an entire region
to the margin of the intervention of the state authorities. In both cases is the
organization of the
domain of a sector of society, either by means of an electoral machinery
or of a private army, which allows you to convert the capital of drug trafficker
s in a
effective means of protection. It is no coincidence that in the markets of the f
irst world, where the
social domination is not associated with the offer of protection of the narco-tr
affickers, produce the greatest growth in the
value added of the drug. There the risks are greater because the
rejection of society to be ruled by corrupt authorities is so high, so in a marg
inal community
, that the provision of security that the political class can offer to the
drug traffickers is quite limited (Duncan 2014).
The Colombian drug traffickers, as well as traffickers from other parts of the w
orld
, had to develop mechanisms for the reduction of risks around the two
main sources of protection and threat available, the state and the other crimina
ls. But
unlike other drug traffickers Colombians had to have a additional actor:
the guerrillas. As an organization that exercised a strong social domination in
many areas of the country,
especially in areas of recent peasant colonization, the guerrillas were like thr
eatening
but also how to protect the drug traffickers. In the initial stages of the curre
nt conflict
hoods of the Medellín cartel as Pablo Escobar, the brothers Ochoa and the
Mexican
Rodriguez Gacha placed their laboratories and clandestine airstrips in ar
eas dominated by
guerrillas as the FARC and the EPL25. In exchange for a portion of the income of
the business were protected
against the state for their manufacturing centers for cocaine and tracks the arr
ival and departure
of the goods.
25 Cases of the famous laboratories Tranquilandia Coca and Villa in Los Llanos O
rientales and tracks output of drugs such as
White Horse in Cordoba are the demonstration that drug traffickers were able to
work hand in hand with
the guerrillas while there was no territorial jurisdiction.
Do not take much time for that the guerrillas will show the other facet of the o
rganizations that offer
protection to drug traffickers. At a given moment became a threat of the first o
rder
. The same capacity to impose itself as the power in many
regions at the periphery of the more secluded country allowed you to claim by fo
rce a top portion
of the proceeds from the entrepreneurs of the drug. Occurred then the theft of
goods, the extortion, kidnapping and other expropiativas practices documented in
the previous section
. As a result drug traffickers had to create more sophisticated coercive apparat
us
to resolve the threat of the insurgent expansion. The new armies
involved speeding up the processes of social domination that the drug traffickin
g was encouraging in many rural areas and
intermediate level of development in Colombia. In those geographical areas,
given the lower presence of state authorities, it was only possible to neutralis
e the risks of
guerrillas exert some control over the population. That implied that some
organizations of purely criminal origin should assume basic functions of a state
such as surveillance,
the administration of justice and, in certain circumstances, the organization of
the provision
of material communities.
Without the need to develop larger ideological speeches the drug traffickers hav
e assumed a
political role in exercising as authority and to establish a series of alliances
with other sectors of the elites
, mainly in the peripheral areas where the insurgent threat was greater. The est
ablishment of
alliances did not happen only by the subject matter of the counterinsurgency fig
ht. The
drug traffickers had to also ensure the support of the political class and the p
ublic authorities
to prevent that State institutions would jeopardize your business and its physic
al integrity
. At the regional level these agreements were provided by the need and the oppor
tunity to access
resources on the part of political and economic sectors that saw how their produ
ctive activities
are rezagaban before the capital accumulation that was taking place in the cente
r. The development of the
industrial and service sector in urban areas, as well as the abandonment of econ
omic protectionism
, had left the rural elites that depended on the agricultural production
in a political position even further disadvantaged with regard to national elite
s. The
various economic studies show a strong tendency toward the intensification of th
e
productive gaps between rich and poor areas (Galvis and Meisel 2012). The openi
ng marked a
region, i.e. regional elites
crisis for what (Reveiz 1997) called the guilds
specializing in any agricultural product.
For the professional politicians of the periphery the alliances with drug traffi
ckers were definitive
in the competition for an important position within the democratic system. Not o
nly
the old chiefs and traditional voters that had a resource base itself
had an opportunity to increase its votes and claim a greater share in the
government. Many regional politicians without increased resources, recognition a
nd trajectory
could also be more competitive with funding from the entrepreneurs of the drug.
Even the lieutenants neighborhoods and lower links could catapultarse system to
national positions as major constituents (Velasco 2014). But not only the polit
icians in the periphery
took advantage of the new resources available. There is documentation about the
reception of drug money by several presidential campaigns (Duncan 2014).
The drug traffickers had a strong incentive to finance the policy as a means of
protecting
a business that they ran several billions of dollars per year and that
was becoming progressively more risky. As increased their power, or intended to
increase it, retaliation by the state was higher. Pablo Escobar was discharged
in 1993 after having raised a tough war against the state. For more than a decad
e
committed assassinations, kidnapping family members of the ruling class of Bogotá,
full of pumps the
cities and pay million for every police officer murdered up to bend the will of
society.
In 1991 achievement that the extradition was abolished in the new Constitution.
The Cali Cartel, for its part
, used a more subtle strategy. Literally bought the bulk of the political class
of the country
to the point that it was impossible to continue keeping the structure of corrupt
ion on the that are
borne by the system. Less than a year after the elimination of Escobar the scand
al erupted over
the financing of the presidential campaign of Ernesto Samper, who was compelled
to
capture them.
But in the corruption of the political class and the public authorities by the d
rug trafficking had
a component less apparent, but more significant in the setting of the conflict
that the simple demand for protection of an illegal business. The payment to the
institutions of the
country had an additional meaning to the immunity of the pure drug companies. Ce
rtain
criminal organizations who controlled the drug trafficking in a given territory
paid
bribes to the state not prevented them from exercising as authority on a part of
the
population, and sometimes the entire population, of that territory. In fact, the
paramilitarism derived
as one of the main problems of Colombia at the end of the decade of the nineties
and the beginning of the new
century by the more progressive autonomy that won the drug traffickers in
the exercise of the local government that by the organization of counterinsurgen
cy by private agents
. The violence against the civilian population and the violations of the rights
of all kinds
grew to amazing rhythms as a result of their local practices of domination. In t
urn
, agents of the state of all kinds, - civil, military, judicial and soldiersvill
age-, established strong
partnerships with these drug traffickers by the political power that had been ac
cumulated from the periphery.
The political and economic support of some paramilitary leader to be elected to
Congress or a
governor or to be promoted in the army or the judicial career could make the dif
ference
between success and fracaso26.
26 The scandals on senior positions in the organizational chart of the state who
have been elected thanks to support from
drug traffickers and paramilitary abound. Santoyo, general of the Police, was ex
tradited by links with
paramilitary and drug traffickers. On the prosecutor Mario Iguarán enough testimon
ial evidence that owed its
election to the bribes of the AUC.
27 Corridors and centers of production as the knot of the Paramillo, the Serrani
a del Perija, the hills of San Lucas,
the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the Canon of the ticks and the platform pacifi
c Nariño sooner rather than later
became war scenarios between paramilitaries and guerrillas.
What had begun as a defense of the drug traffickers against the territorial expa
nsion
of the guerrillas and the risk of kidnapping had finished in an autonomous proje
ct of
government in the periphery by private armies. This project began in 1994 immedi
ately after
Pablo Escobar was discharged. It was in reality the only
paramilitary national project. The paramilitary groups above, such as the Magdal
ena Medio and the Fidel
Castano in Cordoba, were on another level. Their ability to exercise
independent authority as other power actors was very restricted. The political c
lass, military commanders
and the drug traffickers that the financed to the distance still had sufficient
interference
on their performances and at the same time was limited in their ability to comba
t and territorial control
. The inroads toward new territories previously controlled by the guerrillas, su
ch as the one carried out
by the Mexican to the Putumayo or Fidel Castano toward Urabá in the eighties
ended in two defeats. The new army, organized by Carlos and Vicente
Castaño, was a project much more complex than local reactions against the
guerrilla threat. A troop was formed and navy as part of an expansion project na
tional
counterinsurgent, capable of engaging in new territories, to expel the guerrilla
s and exert a
stranglehold on the population.
The agenda of the United Self-defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the term was cho
sen in 1996
to appoint paramilitary armies affiliated to the project of the Castaño brothers w
as subject
of course to the control of the major corridors and production centers of
drug use.27 Its war strategy could become even more brutal and bloody than that
of the
former paramilitary groups. Massacres were committed, displacement and countless
human rights violations
to expel the guerrillas in their territories. The purpose was to become
the political authority of the territory so that the protection and control of t
he
business were secured. However, the issue of pure greed as motivation to do
the war hiding another reality. Power became an end in itself. The paramilitary
leaders
not only wanted to be immensely rich through the control of the income of
the drugs and other extractive economies of the periphery but also immensely pow
erful
to govern entire regions with their own institutions. In this regard were a genu
ine vocation
counterinsurgency because only by defeating the guerrillas could accumulate enou
gh power to
govern the peripheral areas of the country and check the income of the drug.
The offensive of the guerrillas in that time did not became atras28, which deepe
ned the
regional support to the project of the paramilitary AUC by other elites and
subordinate by sectors of the periphery. The kidnappings they broke down all the
brands and previous records. In particular, the
massification of the kidnappings caused that any member of the
community where he was at risk of being kidnapped will support the AUC, even in
spite of knowing
the brutality that could arrive to commit. As always, the exclusion of services
of
protection and justice was formed in the most pressing need of the communities.
Therefore
, any actor irregular that offer these services, as well outside of so
shameful, earned an enormous legitimacy among the population. If something legit
imate the advance of the AUC
in the Colombian regions in the second half of the nineties was the insecurity c
aused by
the offensive of the FARC. But in addition to the provision of services of prote
ction and
justice another factor strengthened the acceptance of paramilitary control. The
conflict had resulted in a
process of urbanization and urban concentration. If we compare the 1993 census w
ith the
2005 is that Bogota and Medellin have increased its population by at least
19 %, and Cartagena in 19.4 %. Smaller towns belonging to the metropolitan area
s of
the major urban centers of the country, such as loneliness, Soacha, Envigado and
pigs, grew at a rate of
79.3 %, 59 %, 40.5 % and 56.4 %. While intermediate cities such as Santa Marta,
Villavicencio, Paragraph and Yopal grew to 32.6 %, 39.7 %, 68.4 % and 86.5 %.
In reality the 28 guerrilla offensive was part of their plan of military seizure
of power established in conferences and
internal discussions prior to the counteroffensive of the AUC.
If we compare the growth rates of the previous cities with the municipalities of
less than 100,000 inhabitants, it is that its growth has been less dynamic in av
erage.
Graph 1 shows us the behavior of these municipalities between the censuses of 19
93 and
2005. The municipalities of between 40,000 and 100,000 inhabitants, showed a gen
eral trend in
the growth similar to the big cities (a margin around 10% and 30 % ), although
there are many more cases of negative growth (left margin of the arrow
indicates the 0% of Figure 4). While that when it comes to municipalities with
less than 40,000
inhabitants is a quite striking concentration in areas of negative growth 10% or
less
(points to the inside of the circle), despite the cases of municipalities with
absurd growth rates above 100 %. These cases are generally due to
booms criminal products like coca or extractive economies (coal, wood,
etc. ). An illustrative example of municipalities that grow by the bonanza of a
n extractive sector is
Mapiripán, who, in spite of the shocking facts of the massacre of 1996, the rural
population
grew by 144% between the two censuses due to the boom of the coca crops.
Figure 4:
Population versus intercensal growth rate (2005
ess than
100,000 inhabitants.
Source: DANE.
1993) in the municipalities of l
What is ironic is that the same conflict to protect the income of drug trafficki
ng has provided the financial means to
the inclusion in the market of marginal sectors that until then had no
means of payments sufficient to participate in the mass consumption. Capital flo
ws of the
drugs together to the agglomeration of population led to many communities on the
periphery
develop the tertiary sector of the economy. Abundant shops and services
that met the new ability to pay of the settlers. Development could be a precario
us,
only emerging, young peasants who converted in mototaxistas or sellers of
cellular minutes, but it was a social change of enormous proportions. To live in
the field under isolation conditions
became part of communities that had contact with global media
such as cable television, internet and cell phones. The expectations of
work and socialization were now other. They were no longer access a piece of lan
d or a Jornal
just but find any informal occupation or be a beneficiary of any state subsidy.
The inclusion in the market
and in the state was evident.
The legitimization of the drug trafficking as a source of resources to access th
e markets between
the population of the periphery was not exclusively to the paramilitaries. The m
anufacturing companies
of coca leaf, in fact the most peripheral societies of the country, demanded a
actor to protect their sources of income. The guerrillas who were already the st
ate in areas of
peasant colonization where crops were specialized in the government of these soc
ieties (
Molana 1987, Jansson 2008). As authority from the coca-producing regions in
protecting the settlers growers in the fumigation of the state and the incursion
s of paramilitary groups
. The protection of all ways was costly. Growers should pay a significant portio
n
of their profits to the FARC. There were imposed by cultivated hectares, grams o
f coca base
sold and other economic transactions that take place in the area. Even more,
on the settlers rested most of the risk of the company drug trafficker in its pr
imary stage
. If their crops were sprayed or eradicated by the state the losses should
assume them. But little thought about the risks and the exploitation of the guer
rillas. It was the only way
available to access global markets from remote regions with such low
accumulation of capital.
The consequence of the legitimacy of a social order based on the surplus of drug
trafficking in
peripheral societies was a conflict based on a political economy capable of supp
orting
its indefinite duration. Both the communities on the periphery as guerrillas and
paramilitaries constructed orders and projects of government, the margin of the
central state, which
were founded on the surplus of the illegal activity. These projects of governmen
t were not
an anomaly in times of war that would last until one of the sides should overtak
e them
militarily to the other. They were, on the contrary, forms of government able to
operate indefinitely
and consistent with the possibilities of access to global markets given the cons
traints of
capital in the periferia29.
29 Duffield (1998) has referred to this type of war as wars post-modern in the s
ense that certain wars
after the end of the Soviet Union instead of wars as such are political projects
of permanent government
in isolated areas but connected to global markets.
A war by the imposition of partial social control institutions
The story narrated in the previous sections shows a different version to that of
an insurrection of
excluded segments of society which, through marxist guerrillas, raised
a war against the state and for the elites to solve their material shortages and
policies. Displays, rather
, a conflict crossed by various motivations and actors, in that it is not need t
o divide the warring parties in
an insurgency that represents the interests of class of the excluded groups
and a state that represents the interests of
oligarchies and economic policies. N
or are the majority
of the excluded took party or felt that their interests were represented by the
insurgency, nor can it speak of a homogeneous block of elite sectors that have b
een faced with the
insurgency to avoid redistributive processes of wealth and power. Quite the cont
rary
. Many sectors subordinates in the social order chose go to war and collaborate
the opposite side of the guerrillas because they were more likely to solve their
problems
of exclusion on that side, or at least it was a much more attractive option for
their immediate problems
of security.
In fact, the dynamics of war transformed the that could be the motivations
of the original combatants ceilings and the communities that supported them when
it became clear that the
project to take power by force of guerrillas was impracticable. The guerrillas i
mposed
enormous sacrifices that were not offset by improvements in the short and medium
term of their living conditions
. The combatants enlisted in addition to the personal costs that meant making
the war did not receive wages (Gutierrez Sanin 2003). The communities that were
under the control of the territory
of the guerrillas should load with large part of the costs of the war
and were insurgent attacks by objects part of the state security forces and para
military groups
. Many massacres and disappearances of innocent civilians were the result of
having been identified as guerrilla collaborators. It didn't matter that his col
laboration with
the guerrillas, in terms of the payment of a surplus of its production and to be
have according to
the rules imposed by the insurgency, was the result of a relationship imposed by
force
. At the time these reasons were sidelined in view of the priority given to dest
roy the social base of
insurgency. Just as happened with associated population as the social basis of t
he paramilitaries
who experienced the retaliation of the guerrillas.
For the elites the conflict also meant changes in regard to their aspirations an
d interests
outside the great pulse of force between the defense of capitalist democracy, th
e communist revolution
proposed by the guerrillas. The case of the kidnapping and drug trafficking show
that
other reasons were then more important than the great goals and
strategies of war. In practice hijack and check the income of the primary stage
of the
drug trafficking has been to the guerrillas a more important matter that leading
an army to take
power in Bogotá, a goal that was always out of reach. In the same order
of ideas, for the regional elites the concern was how to avoid that the guerrill
as
kidnap and destroy the established order and would have to incur the organizatio
n of
private violence and, subsequently, to alliances with drug traffickers. His inqu
iries were not in
the major address of the internal war from Bogota to patrons a final defeat to t
he insurgency but
in the provision of security against the kidnapping, extortion, attacks, and oth
er
practices expropiativas in each of the regions where they lived.
These differences in objectives in the conflict is expressed to its time in deep
divisions
and tensions between the elites of the city center and the periphery, but also i
n political arrangements
explicit and tacit on how each one of them would have to face the threat of the
guerrilla in the circumstances. The matter in question was at that point the sta
te was central
to assume the costs entailed by the provision of security on the periphery and w
hat are going to be the
concessions in the area of the exercise of coercion that private would have been
by not being able to offer effective protection
against the guerrillas. In the mid-eighties, when the hijacking was
shot, it was clear that the State was not how to avoid it. There was no determin
ation among the political elites
of the center to increase the expenditure and the foot of force of the state so
that the regional elites
had certainty that the situation could be reversed in the short term of the hand
of the authorities. Either because they were not willing to finance the security
of a regional elite
little competitive and that little tributaba30, preferring to let the drug traff
ickers
pay for the security of the regions or because they were more concerned about th
e war against
Pablo Escobar, the fact was that the central state delegated in large part the i
ssue of the protection
in the periphery to the counterinsurgency private.
30 Among many sectors of elite political and technocratic were being blamed for
the lack of an agrarian reform and the low productivity and
generation capacity of domestic markets of extensive breeding of the economic ba
ckwardness of the
regions. The case of the president Lleras Restrepo and the ANUC is very well doc
umented in Zamocs (1985).
The agreement was that the central level of the state while not invested in the
production of
security against the regional threat of the guerrillas to the levels needed to m
aintain the
tranquility of the local elites, did not interfere in a meaningful way in the fo
rmation of paramilitary groups
. Even more, the tolerance was up to allow the security forces
of the state had complicity with the counterinsurgency deprived of all kinds, fr
om peasant farmers to
drug traffickers. The result was a dramatic change in the responsibility for the
violations of human rights
. In the report of the Group of Historical Memory (2013) is
known as the percentage of human rights violations (massacres, killings, disappe
arances, etc.
) rests mainly on paramilitary and not on the state's security forces.
But the political agreement was not limited to the elites of the city center and
the periphery. The agreements
also involved sectors to subordinates. The provision of protection and some kind
of justice
in societies where state institutions were inoperative, as well as the
conformation of clientelist networks who benefited from the flows of resources o
f the drug trafficking were enough for
that many communities on the periphery will collaborate with the domination of
the paramilitary groups. The paramilitary imposition in a principle was given by
initiatives of
nature very parochial, in that the purpose was to expel the guerrillas of the ar
ea or avoid that
will enter the territory. Therefore, the involvement of sectors subordinates was
given
by the process of expansion of the guerrillas. If some guerrilla group came to t
he area should
choose up to that point were collaborating in their claim to control the communi
ty or if preferred
leaving the place. The risks were enormous, because if a paramilitary group vent
ured was going to
take retaliation against the civilian population.
In 1994 the situation became even more critical because, as mentioned in the pre
vious section
arose a paramilitary group with a project of national expansion. The Castaño broth
ers
created an organization that absorbed the regional paramilitary groups with the
aim to expand
territorially, check the drug trafficking routes and, eventually, negotiate its
legalization as
political part of the conflict. The conflict had now with another actor capable
of interacting
strategically beyond the local. There was also an actor either. This was
powerful criminals with the control of the main income of the country's drug who
demanded a
political role by exercise as authority in extensive territories. Its expansion
meant a change of loyalties of many communities previously dominated by the guer
rillas,
after a violent process of displacement, massacres, assassinations and
disappearances. But those who remained in the area or the repoblaban became subj
ects of their
institutions for social regulation.
So it was that the ability to control societies and to expel the guerrillas of l
arge territories
allowed a group of drug traffickers increase your ability to interact with
the state and other actors to power. When you have to take some kind of decision
policy these
past should consider their impact on societies that depended on the drug traffic
king to
obtain protection from insurgency and to resolve its inclusion in the markets. T
he social costs
of repressing the paramilitaries reached to be so high in a certain point
it became a deterrent to potential enforcement capacity of the state against the
drug trafficking. For example:
Communities not necessarily corrupt policies could promote a lax regulations wit
h the
informal work linked to Mafia of the drugs to prevent greater social conflicts.
OR the economic elites
that concentrated the bulk of the legal capital could push for a relaxation of t
he
persecution against the paramilitaries to avoid the costs of provision of social
demands
were charged to your account with new taxes. The absence of political decisions
was, in fact, a
delegation of power to the rest of powerful players had done to the
coercive apparatus of drug trafficking by its capacity for regulating social (Du
ncan 2014: 105).
The Colombian internal conflict has been then a more complicated matter than two
parties
who took up arms to defend two projects of antagonistic society. It was not a fu
ll-scale war between
a State which, together with paramilitary organizations defending the privileges
of certain
elites against some guerrillas who aspired to claim excluded sectors through a
communist revolution. Rather, it was a war in which the grand strategy of the st
ate and
the insurgency by beat their opponent had succumbed to motivations minors for ot
her
actors who aren't necessarily came from traditional sectors of elite nor is
framed in the great transformations of the state and society. The matter was on
how to govern
peripheral communities for an indefinite period of time, no matter how long the
war, to remove a whole series of resources, from economics to political, through
criminal practices. Many drug traffickers could well have shrines of immunity
from where accumulate wealth and claim the state political treatment different f
rom that of
common criminals. The guerrillas also could build up resources and cause enough
damage
to demand that the state some kind of negotiating favorable given its zero abili
ty to obtain a
military victory and its poor representation of the political preferences of the
population.
For its part, the state was facing a war that go beyond the military. It was
build and adapt their institutions to regulate and meet the demands of enormous
social
strata of the population that lived in the periphery of the country and that bef
ore were not the focus of
attention. The fact that if not intervened to claim their authority over them ot
her
armed organizations they were going to do it gradually became a difficult challe
nge to ignore.
The reaction was in a first instance delegating the regulation of the periphery
to private armies
, including those of the drug traffickers, which did not threaten to overwhelm i
ts power toward
the interests of the elites of the central level. However, the crime generated a
process
of accumulation of power among the armed actors other than the state that, altho
ugh not threatened to
bring the war in full until the center of the country, if threatened to put in d
oubt the authority of the
state in extensive areas of the territory and granting too much power to the
drug trafficking that fought the insurgency in the periphery. The State was obli
ged, in
consequence, to assume the costs of carrying their regulatory institutions until
those spaces.
It has been a progressive process, sometimes elephantine, the results are plain
to see
in two crucial aspects. On the one hand, the state has invested enormous amounts
of
resources in the creation of an infrastructure that enables them to lead their i
nstitutions to the periphery.
A review of the changes in basic indicators such as the foot of strength of the
army and the
police, the quotas in education, the miles of paths, the number of judges, etc.
, show that
the means for the population to adopt the norms, behaviors, and other legal stan
dards set by the
state have increased dramatically over the past few decades. On the other hand
, the state even in regions where guerrillas, paramilitary mafias and exert a br
oad
control over the population has expanded the spaces and transactions that fall u
nder the umbrella of
regulation of its institutions. People increasingly using the state as the regul
atory institution
of social life. The test of the institutional penetration of the state is that u
ntil the guerrillas themselves
used to guarantee the rights of ownership of the land expropriated.
After clearing the area of the Caguán in 2002, a rather peripheral region under th
e control of
the FARC, it was discovered that the guerrillas had used notary of the state in
order to ensure their
ownership of numerous stolen land. This is not to say that the threat of guerril
la and
paramilitary groups are new to the despicable today but that is progressively
reduce their margins of territorial control as institutions that govern the live
s of the
communities.
At last, if one wants to understand the Colombian conflict as a big confrontatio
n
around the claims by inclusion of various social sectors is necessary to make tw
o
readings. A first reading that some marxist guerrillas rebelled against the stat
e and the elite
by the conditions of exclusion of the population. The objective of these guerril
las was that at the end of the
confrontation, then to defeat militarily to the state, you would place a social
revolution
, or in the worst cases, then that the costs of making the war were so high for
the national elites
forcing them to agree on a series of reforms that will alleviate the problems of
exclusion, as is happening today in Havana. In practice the guerrillas were neve
r close to winning
the war. Only in special circumstances were unable to carry out wars of
movement, never at war of positions. In consequence, their maximum achievements
have been
obtain concessions from the state and elites through peace accords. These conces
sions have been centered
mainly on the assimilation of the insurgent leadership within the political inst
itutions of the
State.31 it comprises.
Some 31 cases have been extremely successful as Gustavo Petro, Antonio Navarro W
olf, who reached to win the
mayor of Bogotá and the governorate of Nariño. This is the typical result of the pol
itical struggles of the
poor movements described by Piven and Cloward (1979), in which the elites are as
similated to the state institutions
to changes in minimum changes in the social order.
A second reading is to understand the conflict itself as an opportunity for
inclusion at the margin of the great political purposes of the parties and the r
esults of the
war. Opportunities for inclusion were given to communities and individuals
by effect of the redistribution of resources toward the periphery through crime.
Already in the previous section
mentioned the role that plays the conflict as a means of protection from drug tr
afficking, which
, in turn, works as a means of inclusion in the global markets of
peripheral communities. But the conflict is also a means for inclusion in the po
wer of
individuals of popular origin and marginal. Many criminals without greater prosp
ects of power
were eventually converted, as leaders of paramilitary armies, in the de facto au
thority of
vast regions of the country. For these communities and individuals the purpose o
f the war has not
gone through any great transformation of the state and the national society to a
lleviate their problems
of exclusion. War is the institutional form as they have been able to solve the
problems of
exclusion on a daily basis, and have had to assume enormous costs in terms of
expectations of life, loss of freedom, violations of basic rights,
disgraceful situations of social control and, above all, the risk of a permanent
violence.
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Politics and war without compassion
Jorge Giraldo Ramirez.
. Doctor of Philosophy and Dean of the School of Sciences and Humanities of the
EAFIT University.
I am grateful for the contributions of José Antonio Fortou, Felipe Lopera, Wilmar
Martínez, Nathalie Mendez and the National Center for
Historical Memory (Cnmh). Also the comments of readers who preferred to maintai
n the
anonymity and the institutional support of the EAFIT University. The responsibil
ity for the text is only of the
author.
1 Tony Judt, the weight of responsibility, Madrid: Taurus, 2014, Kindle edition,
pos. 252-387.
EAFIT University
historical Commission of the conflict and their victims
There is no policy on the life issues more serious than that of war and peace; t
herefore,
none of the other demand so much responsibility. In that sense, this essay deals
with with
attention to three types of liability. The intellectual responsibility that must
give an account of
the rules of the social studies; the political responsibility that links the
individual reflection with the goals that the Colombian society has been fixed o
n the occasion of
a new attempt to end the military conflict between the State and groupings that
rose in arms
half a century ago; and the moral responsibility that forces you to include the
reference to
a few values, both for the reading of the past and to the implication of
our future as politica1 community.
* * * * * The
Colombian political violence of the last five decades must be characterized as
war. This is not the emergence of large-scale criminal phenomena or common
banditry, or expressions of unilateral violence carried out by insurgent groups
or by the armed forces of the State, nor of any type of spontaneous violence
. That in the course of this time there have been no firm consensus about its ch
aracterization
in both the State that used categories such as disruption of public order
, subversion, armed conflict, terrorism, among other as between the national acad
emics
that we used notions such as violence, insurgency, irregular war,
armed conflict, civil war is evidence of the limits of one another and, above all
,
of the complexity and variability that has had. International observers,
States, newspapers and academies, however, have maintained a greater consensus a
bout what
the Colombian situation this is a war.
The Colombian war has been a long, complex, discontinuous and, above all politic
al. If we take
the parameters of the main international databases on wars, ours
would cover the three decades at since the mid-1980s, which is already
a long duration. It has been difficult since their oldest
presented concerning the configuration of three guerrilla groups, independent an
d unfriendly between
if, and the armed forces of the State, which was compounded by the emergence of
new
guerrillas in the 1970s and of self-defense groups, paramilitary and armed gangs
of drug trafficking in the 1980s. Its discontinuity has been temporary since fro
m
1965 until the beginning of the 1980s was more of a formal declaration of war
, a marginal phenomenon, and virtually symbolic, until he managed to scale witho
ut
interruption since then until the beginning of the twenty-first century. It also
shows a clear
regional differentiation according to the activity of illegal armed groups and
the intensity of the clashes between them, between the State and all the illegal
groups,
and in regard to the suffering of the civilian population. Finally, this has bee
n a
political phenomenon of nature by the enmity expressed by the contenders and the
ir
war position, for the reasons, objectives and speeches expressed, and the consta
nt appeal
to the repertories of strategy and diplomacy.
The Colombian war also has been atrocious in treatment between the combatants, a
nd very cruel
in regard to the conduct of combatants against the civilian population. It has b
een since its inception
, maintaining the tradition with regard to the bloodthirsty unarmed people estab
lished
during the violence (1946-1957), and it was even more when they increased the co
ntingent of
armed men and the military confrontation intensified between the end of the twen
tieth century and the beginning of the
century. He could have given the impression of having been degraded, but more th
at
degradation that he gave was an exponential increase in the magnitude of the arm
ed actions
that ended by scandalizing a society that had already been accustomed to
a high threshold of pain.
The war could not be sustained and enhanced thanks to the characteristics of the
ir key players, and
of society. The sectors of the country leaders were unable to build
a strong State2 until the political and social institutions were questioned
existentially by illegal armed groups; the revolutionary guerrillas
2 The expression "strong State" is used in the sense of a State with sufficient
capacity to ensure that
the institutional decisions, related to their basic functions are fulfilled, in
the territory of the country. They grew up
to the margin of the main concerns of the population and are concentrated in
strengthened as war machines; paramilitary groups emerged as a reaction
against the illegal guerrilla oppression and specializing in unilateral violence
against the
civilian population; colombian society lived, at the same time, processes of urb
anization,
social fragmentation and collapse Of the traditional rules ensured the coexisten
ce.
This contribution to the interpretation of the war in Colombia is divided into s
ix sections that attempt to answer
the issues agreed on in the table of negotiations between the national governmen
t
and the FARC, this is the origin and causes of the war, the explanations of its
extension
and the ways in which it affected society. The first raises that the origin of t
he
agents of this war dates back to the revolutionary wave of the 1960s that
challenge in the entire continent "weak states latin american". The second hypo
thesis asserts that
the National Front possible to standardize the country and make functional the i
nstitutions of
government, though was unable to overcome the backlog in the construction and la
cked state of
willingness and means to understand and meet the new challenges violent. The thi
rd section
shows how in three decades (1983-1998 1983-1998 1983-1998 1983-1998 1983-1998 19
83-1998) in Colombia were accumulated different kinds of violence
and is organized around the exuberant activity of the drug traffickers and their
violent attack
against the institutions of the State. The fourth he recused himself that the es
calation of the war
, the bureaucratization instrumentalist of the militant groups and the
state ineffectiveness led a humanitarian calamity, concentrated in some areas of
the country. The fifth
will show that as long as the war have been episodes of negotiation and
that changes in the terms of the confrontation produced so far of the twenty-fir
st century
opened a possibility hopeful but realistic of a general agreement
for the completion of the war. In the last will be a brief recap.
1. REVOLUTIONARY CHALLENGE IN THE TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY AND PEACE In
1958 Colombia sizeing to launch what beforehand was defined as a new stage
of the political life of the country dubbed National Front. The National Front a
rose from
an agreement between the Liberal and Conservative parties to put an end to the p
olitical violence
that had been incubated in the twenty years preceding and had resulted in a civi
l war
since 1946. The covenant that gave rise to the National Front established guidel
ines for the restoration of democracy
, detailing the conditions of good governance for the next four
periods were compared. In 1958, colombians elected their representatives in
free and competitive elections between the parties, which they did not do since
for eleven years;
women elected president for the first time in history. Taking into account these
background it can be argued that the National Front was instituted as a dual tra
nsition
: from war to peace and from dictatorship to democracy, with achievements that h
ave been the subject of
intense discussion and academic policy.
At the end of the first half of the bipartisan pact, the vestiges of the previou
s war had already been
off thanks to the conciliation between the liberal and conservative leaders, the
foster care of the agreement on the part of many armed factions and the
gradual subjugation and constricting of other bands on the part of the State. Ja
mes Henderson is felt very safe
to say that "in 1966, the conflict had indeed finished"3.
0
10 20
30
40
50
60 70 80
1958
1960
1962
1964
1966
1968
1970 1972
1974 1976
1978
1980 1982
1984 1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010 2012
homicide rate, 1958-2013
3 James D. Henderson, victim of globalization: the story of how the drug traffic
king destroyed the peace in Colombia
, Bogotá: Man of the Century Publishers, 2012, p. 35.
This pacification process was also reflected in the overall behavior of the
homicides that maintained a steady decline from 1958 to 1979, during which time
homicide rates were reduced by half. Between 1969 and 1979 Colombia had homicide
rates
lowest in the past 55 years (Figure 1). In this way it can be argued that
the National Front had already advanced in its purpose peacemaker after the stip
ulated time
for its duration.
Chart 1. Homicide Rate, 1958-2013
Source: Jorge Orlando Melo on data of National Police, Forensic Medicine, Fabio
Sánchez
The formula of the National Front was an experiment that is advancement to the n
eeds of the
transitions from war to peace that were identified after four decades: limited t
he
political competition, calm the waters between the former warring parties and li
mo party differences
until almost made them disappear in fact, recommendations that were made after
the experience of various post-conflict that occurred in the last decade of the
century XX4.
4 Based on 11 cases of post-conflict that occurred in the 1990s. Roland Paris, a
t War s End Building Peace
after civil conflict, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2004.
5 Eduardo Posada Carbo, the nation of dreams; violence, liberalism and democracy
in Colombia, Bogotá:
Standard, 2006, pp. 190, 193, 194.
Even within the constraints that this type of democracy requires the political c
ompetition
, the electoral mechanisms established enabled the participation of dissidence
of bipartisanship and third forces authentic. Beyond the rules limiting the
electoral competition to the Conservative and Liberal parties, during the Nation
al Front
had prominence other groupings such as the Movimiento Revolucionario Liberal
(MRL), the Popular National Alliance (Anapo) and the Communist Party, in the fou
r
presidential elections there were opposition candidates and the Communist Party
won
seats in different bodies colegiados5.
Apart from the electoral conditions crucial element of any definition of
democracy , the National Front restored the constitutional frameworks, recovered t
he
civility in political competition and allowed a considerable scope for civil lib
erties
. To own and strange they may be surprised to know that, in the midst of the Col
d War,
while the FARC were behind them, and to punishment they survived, the Colombian
Communist Party was legal
since 1958, owned a weekly traveling under license from the Ministry of Justice
and other periodical publications endorsed, as political documents (and since 19
74, studies
marxists), were not only legal but also reproduced official documents of the com
munist guerrilla
. According to Freedom House, in that period there were more civil liberties in
Colombia than in
Central or South America.
With regard to the situation described at the beginning of this section, which c
orresponds to a country at war
and without democracy for more than a decade, the National Front was a key facto
r for improving
the situation of the country. However, if compared to the status of the other
countries of Latin America the achievements need to be qualified. Our best perfo
rmance in the
heading of homicidal violence continued to be worse with regard to the inland pa
rameters
of the same era. With regard to the democratic performance, the process frentena
cionalista left the country in
a better situation than that which existed in most Latin American countries
; later, this condition is strengthened with the constitutional moment of
1991 and then declined due to the escalation of violence and corruption in the d
rug trafficking that affected the
democracy at the local and national levels (Figure 2)6.
C: \Users\username\Documents\Commission\Data\freedomhouse2.png
6 The index Freedom in the world has two major components: political rights and
civil liberties.
As a measure of democracy using the component of political rights that qualifies
the electoral process, political pluralism
and participation, and the operation of the government.
Chart 2. Indicator of democracy, Colombia, Central America, South America 1972-2
013
Democracy index according to the rights of political freedom in the World 2014.
This favorable development of the dual process of transition from war to peace a
nd from a dictatorship to a
democracy was truncated by various factors: the stagnation in the
state construction, lack of foresight on the political leadership and the brutal
emergency of the
drug trafficking. In addition to these, another, more early manifestation was th
e emergence of
new armed organizations that defied the power of the Colombian State. It is an i
rony of history that
while the traditional political leadership was removing weapons from
the political sphere, rectifying their old practices, the insurgency began to op
en the way for
a new violent politics.
In effect. In 1965 emerged the National Liberation Army (ELN), in 1966 it was of
ficially created
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and in 1967 emerged the
People's Liberation Army (PLA). The emergence of these guerrillas was framed in
the global conflict emerged after the Second World War (1949) between the libera
l west
middle and a socialist, and encouraged by the impact of the triumph of the Cuban
revolution
in 1959. In fact, in the first months after the triumph of the Cuban revolution
there were five attempts of guerrilla warfare in Panama, Nicaragua,
Dominican Republic, Haiti and Paraguay7.
7 Daniel Castro, The endless war: guerrillas in Latin America History, Daniel Cas
tro (ed. ),
Revolution and revolutionaries: Guerrilla movements in Latin America, Lanham: SR
Books, 2006. Kindle
edition, Pos. 287.
8 For this job was made an inventory of 102 guerrilla groups in Latin America fr
om 1956 to date
, excluding some fleeting adventures. It is an exercise more indicative than exh
austive.
Far from being a peculiarity colombian, because during the ten years that have p
assed since the
triumph of the Cuban revolution, similar groups sprang up in all the countries o
f
Latin America, with the exception of Costa Rica. AND fractionation in the contin
ent
corresponded to the competition between various tendencies within the communist
spectrum, namely
the aligned with the Guevarism or any consciousness, the line of soviet communis
m and communism of
china line. After the Tricontinental Conference in Havana in 1966
and the deaths of Camilo Torres in Colombia in the same year and Ernesto
Guevara in Bolivia in 1967, the guerrilla initiatives have multiplied and no Lat
in American country
that speaks spanish or portuguese escaped to the phenomenon, including Costa Ric
a
(Figure 3)8.
1956
1966
1976
1986
1996
2006
guerrilla movements in Latin America, the year of foundation
17 guerrillas,
8 countries
4 guerrillas,
3 countries 1
guerrillas,
1 country
54 guerrillas,
10 countries
26 guerrillas,
19 countries
Figure 3. Guerrilla broadcast in Latin America, 1956-2006
This propagation of cores guerrillas on the continent was due mainly to
revolutionary voluntarism. Large and small countries, with placid geographies or
abrupt, poor and less poor, more equitable and very unequal,
democratic and dictatorial, with diplomatic relations with the socialist bloc or
without them, all
had guerrillas in these years. The intellectual hegemony of Marxism, the optimis
m generated by
the victory of Fidel Castro in Cuba and the belligerent enthusiasm of small grou
ps of
activists explain well the emergence of this wave of armed organizations.
In the continent as a whole, the situation of States in the process of building s
ome weaker than
other constituted a genuine "structure of opportunity" for the international defi
nition of
the political rivalry known as the cold war would serve as a catalyst for
these guerrillas that arise and medraran during some time, waiting for
a crisis of the social system or to a revolutionary situation.
Unlike the previous civil wars, the sides that emerged in this decade
did not purport to partial objectives with regard to the political and social or
der and even the
simple change of government. The manifests through the which made its public app
earance
posited the ultimate goal of achieving a triumphant revolution that would totall
y change the
political, economic and social structures. For this reason, these groups were pr
oposed
the task of creating political organizations and modern military, following the
models of Leninist party and Maoist guerrilla Castro or the model of armed party
, which
will enable start at some point a strategic offensive.
A non-negligible factor for incubation navy was the intellectual climate that
justified the use of violence. The leadership of the traditional parties did not
make a
serious criticism of the political violence nor sought to form an opinion of cit
izens reluctant to the
use of violent means. On the contrary, some political leaders and intellectuals
were subordinated to
the sermons justifying that had become fashionable some european thinkers
, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, for example. The catholic church was focused in the
curious
situation of a silent hierarchy with regard to the incendiary role of some of it
s members
during the war and bipartisan priestly groups that supported
the unscrupulous revolutionary violence. The enlistment of the Father Camilo Tor
res in the ELN, was only the
most famous episode of this trend.
The university academy was dominated by Marxism and consider violence a
valid resource, until there was a swing and institutional Civilist significant a
t the beginning of the
eighties. Since then, the university debate declined by the impact of
the violencia9. However, ideological companies such as the national media
and the catholic church maintained a posture complacent,
when not alone, of the existence of the guerrillas. However, minority groups
, politicians and intellectuals, in the continent and in Colombia that condemned
the
violence and tested other alternatives.
9 Miguel Ángel Urrego, intellectuals, State and nation in Colombia: the War of a T
housand Days to the Constitution
of 1991, Bogotá: Central University
Century of Man Editors, 2002, pp. 29-32.
10 Milton Hernández, red and black: approximation to the history of the ELN, mount
ains of Colombia: National Liberation Army
, 1998, pp. 65-72.
In particular, these guerrillas in Colombia have appropriated the previous exper
ience
of violence to be located in areas of irregular military tradition, and linked
with the practices and the trajectories of warriors previous liberal. After trai
ning
in Cuba, the members of the Brigade Jose Antonio Trouser is enmontaron in the Ma
gdalena Medio
Santander in 1964 and engaged to Hernán Moreno Sánchez, a former member of
the liberal guerrillas of Rafael Rangel, to appear in public through an outlet
armed the people of Simacota on 7 January 196510. The Farc appeared a few months
after that the 10th congress of the Communist Party considered that "armed strug
gle is unavoidable and necessary
as a factor of the colombian revolution" and be sent to two leaders
endorsed to sponsor the second conference of a grouping called
Block existing Sur11. The EPL is born in February 1967 in the south of Córdoba, re
gions of the Alto Sinu and
high San Jorge, linked to the experience of guerrilla war liberals like July and
by
decision of a fraction divided of the Maoist Party Comunista12.
11 The information on the congress is communist in Álvaro Delgado Guzmán, The experim
ent of the Colombian communist party
, in Mauritius Archila et al. , an unfinished story: left-wing political and soci
al
in Colombia, Bogota, CINEP, 2009, p. 97. On Farc, Jesus Santrich (ed. ), Manuel
Marulanda Vélez: the hero
of the insurgent Colombia of Bolivar, mountains of Our America, FARC-EP, s.f , p
. 251.
Alvaro Villarraga 12 squares and Nelson, to reconstruct the dreams: a history of
the EPL, Bogotá:
Progress Foundation, 1994, pp. 31-41.
In the period 1965-1980 the revolutionary guerrillas maintained a precarious exi
stence and residual
: the Farc went through a crisis notorious, after which had a vegetative growth;
the EPL was barely able to meet its internal divisions; the ELN had
in fact disappeared after 1973 and the Movement April 19 (M19) emerged in
1974 was engaged in operations of armed propaganda.
How was it possible that some guerrillas feeble grow after the National Front an
d
eventually become a national threat at the end of the century?
2. A STATE WITH A weakened LEADERSHIP seized
the approach proposed here is that the current Colombian war is radically differ
ent from
the violence and is linked with the declarations of war by the ELN, FARC and
the EPL in the mid sixties. However, when the National Front ended in 1974
these groups were in a situation very similar to that of their
foundational moments and lacked any significant power.
The National Front laid the foundations for consolidating peace and democracy in
Colombia.
In addition, increases in a significant way the social spending by the governmen
t, improving slowly
but steadily the main indicators of quality of life and strengthened institution
s
responsible for these functions. Adopted a pro-active approach in promoting
the social organization of urban residents in seals of communal action and of th
e
peasants of associations of users of the agricultural programs. In 1965 he prese
nted the
labor reform more important and progressive as a result of a negotiation between
the government
and trade unions. What could be described as a "huge political effort on the par
t
of the State to establish institutional mechanisms of regulation of the social r
elations in the
context of the global social structure"13.
Uricoechea 13 Fernando, State and bureaucracy in Colombia: history and organizat
ion, Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia
, 1986, p. 74. On the economic and social development at the time, ibid. , p. 91
.
14 The Composite Index of National Capabilities is an index that combines popula
tion, size of the army, military spending
, energy consumption and production of iron and steel. For all the cases in this
text,
includes Central America to Mexico.
However, the main liabilities of this joint project between the two major
parties had to view all with the construction of the State: the National Front w
as kept in a
precarious situation to the military forces, I do not progress in the integratio
n of the country
or territorial adapted its judicial system and was unable to create an imaginary
of national belonging
that will replace the fracture caused by partisan identities.
In general, it is accepted that the Latin American States fit with differences of
degree in the category of "weak States". The weakness of the State in Latin Amer
ica
can be explained, in part, the widespread guerrilla and the differences in
the temporary prolongation of the guerrillas could be due to the different paths
that followed the countries of the continent. As can be seen in Figure 4, and
according to "coadministration of War Project", Colombia not only always remaine
d below
Central and South America in the indicator of national capacities until the end
of the last century
, but during the 1970s and until entered the eighties fell below
the levels of the precarious domestic legislation.14 Front.
Chart 4. National capacities, Colombia, South America, Central America, 1960-201
3
Calculated by the database National Material Capabilities (NMC) v 4.0 .
The duration of the projects guerrillas in Latin America until today has been, o
n average
, 7.25 years, excluding Eln, Farc and EPL. The average life span of the Colombia
n groups
than these was 10.115 . It seems that the greater relative weakness of the
Colombian State could explain the extraordinary longevity of the guerrillas creo
le,
but the contrast between the ELN and the FARC and other Colombian guerrillas sug
gests that
there has to be some additional explanation.
C: \Users\Administrator\Documents\Commission\Data\cinc_colvslatam.png
15 according to own calculations derived from the inventory of guerrillas pointe
d out before.
The weakness of the Colombian State has three components related to the low prob
ability
of success in respect to the aim of obtaining the monopoly of force, which
depends on the compliance of the constitutional mandates to maintain the securit
y and
defend life, liberty, and property of citizens. The first is the size and the qu
ality of
the public force, in particular of the armed forces; the second is the effective
integration
of the territory through a suitable infrastructure; the third component is the e
ffectiveness
for the resources required for the proper functioning of the institutions.
From 1958 until the end of the century, Colombia had a weak military forces. Thi
s
feature was the result of a deliberate orientation already that, both during the
National Front
as during the four following governments of the period 1974-1990, national leade
rs
with everything and their partisan differences and ideological maintained
in a profound weakness, both absolute and relative to the military forces. In ac
cordance
with Fernan Gonzalez: "Colombian society had been evading, until very recently
, the task of building a strong national army and national police effective"16.
16 Fernán González, power and violence in Colombia, Bogotá: Odecofi
CINEP
Colciencias,
2014, p. 54.
They also claim the thesis of the weakness of the armed forces, among others: An
dres Davila Ladrón de Guevara
, "regular army, irregular conflicts: the military institution in the last fifte
en years", p. 285;
Henderson, op. cit. , p. 196.
Camilo Granada 17, "The evolution of the spending on security and defense in Col
ombia, 1950-1994 1950-1994 1950-1994 ", in Mary
Victoria Llorente and Malcolm deas (comp. ), recognize the war to build peace, B
ogotá: Cerec
Uniandes
Standard Editions, 1999, pp. 540-564.
18 Armando Borrero, "The military: the growing pains," in Francisco Leal Buitrag
o (ed. ), at the crossroads
: Colombia in the twenty-first century, Bogotá: Standard, 2006, pp. 118-119.
The impairment of the armed forces is demonstrated by the low involvement of the
military spending
as a share of total expenditure of the government. Spending on security and defe
nse, as
portion of the total public expenditure, from an average of 27% in the decade of
the 50 to 23% in
the years 60, 15 per cent in the 70, and 16% in the 80, a trend which continued
until the mid
90. As a percentage of the gross domestic product, in the same four
and a half decades, the military spending ranged from less than 1% and 1.5 %17.
The same can be said from the qualitative point of view. Just in the last
of the
twentieth century the army could increase the involvement of professional
rs up to one-third of
its foot of force, achieving autonomy in the production of rifles and the
forces
, as a whole, could recover from the great backlog had in armament and
equipo18. The comparison of military spending per capita between Colombia
e rest of
Latin America makes it even more resounding the anti-bias policies
Colombian public (Figure 5).
decade
soldie
armed
and th
Chart 5. Military spending per capita, Colombia, Central America, South America
1960-2013
Database National Material Capabilities (NMC) v 4.0
In practice the term civil power by imposing a condition of institutional fragil
ity
on the armed forces, while compensating the high-ranking officers with prebends
labor. This feature corresponds to the regularities found in the literature for
the
situations immediately subsequent to the dictatorships. In these cases, "the eli
te is
reluctant to build a strong army" and prefers appeased with a rebellion armed
viewed as safe before that generate the conditions for that will be reissued a c
oup d'état or
claims of excessive militar19 establishment. This decision was provided because
the armed rebellion is always perceived as less of a danger, a social phenomenon
that did not affect
the main political and social circuits of the country neither increased transact
ion costs
of the national economy. As well, performing a political challenge as
social protest and minimizing their demonstrations, the ruling elite is autoinhi
bio
to deal with the guerrilla insurgency.
C: \Users\Administrator\Documents\Commission\Data\milex_colvslatam.png
19 Daron Acemoglu, Davide and AndreaVindigni Ticchi, "Persistence of Civil Wars"
, NBER Working Paper
15378, September, 2009, p. 11-12.
With the National Front was inaugurated the doctrine of the reciprocal of the au
tonomies civil power
and military power, preached by president Alberto Lleras Camargo in the famous s
peech
of the Theater Homeland (May 9 1958). Since then were delimited and separated
the powers of the civil and military authorities, a decision that was contrary t
o
all the foundations of the modern State and that, even it breached in practice t
he
constitutional requirement that the head of State is also the supreme chief of t
he armed forces
. The Colombian State abstained as well to establish a security policy until 200
3
, when integrated security responsibilities, in what was an effort
"almost unprecedented in the history of the country. "20.
20 Francisco Leal Buitrago, the insecurity of security: Colombia 1958-2005, Bogo
tá: Planet, 2006, p.
241.
The consequences of this measure were all very negative for the Colombian societ
y.
The political leadership forgot the reality of the war and the country has maint
ained the premise
established after the War of a Thousand Days (1899-1902) to treat all dissent
navy as disruption of public order. They are delegated to the military full resp
onsibility
to deal with a phenomenon of a strictly political nature,
as is the revolutionary civil war. The State lacked strategic conception,
while the military forces are drowning in a spiral of trial and error on operati
onal matters.
Under the aegis of the state of siege and by delegation from the governments, th
e military
assumed often tasks law enforcement, judicial and administrative,
while the police established with civilian character tended to militarise without
pause until
today. Civil and military were discussed during the decades between prioritize c
ivilian-military actions
to alleviate the microcontextos that stimulated the violence and win the favor o
f the
settlers or focus on an approach of criminalization of the rebels and their
civilian environments, as well as ranged between the terms of the false dichotom
y of favoring peace initiatives
or strengthen the military action. As if that were not enough, over the course o
f half a century
the episodes of clashes between the political leadership and the military leader
ship became
common in the country, up to the point it became traditional that each President
dismissal at least one member of the military high command in its period; someti
mes, as in 1965 or
1996, clashes came to critical levels. The worst of all the consequences in
humanitarian perspective, was the absence of a clear criterion for that force th
e public
distinguish between civilians and combatants, because the leading concept of "pu
blic order
" tends to sheltering under the criminal law actions that, under another look, t
hey are part
of the right of guerra21.
21 During the twentieth century, Colombia experienced a process of domain of cri
minal law on the law of armed conflict
, according to Ivan Orozco Abad, fighters, rebels and terrorists. War and law in
Colombia
, Bogotá: Témis, 2006, p. 4.
22 Alvaro Pachón and Maria Teresa Ramirez, the transport infrastructure in Colombi
a during the twentieth century, Bogotá,
Fondo de Cultura Economica, 2006, pp. 58, 334, 338.
23 Mauricio Uribe López, vetoed the nation: State, development and civil war in Co
lombia, Bogotá:
Universidad Externado de Colombia, 2013, p. 205. Quoting William Perry.
The second characteristic component of the weakness of the Colombian State, rela
ted to
the ability to provide security to the population and contain any armed challeng
e
to public institutions, refers to the "infrastructural power of the State". To
analyze
this aspect are useful data on the infrastructure of roads already that,
after the decline of the railroads from 1970 onwards, were the only mass medium
of territorial integration, and until the end of the twentieth century represent
ed the best alternative access
to the institutions and the public force to the regions. In 1960, the Colombian
rate of
paved roads per 100 square kilometers was 0.23 what i wanted to say that
in Latin America only us was above to Paraguay and Bolivia, and Peru and Chile w
e exceeded
50 %. If the comparison is carried out by the rate of paved roads per thousand
inhabitants,
the differences in Colombia with Paraguay and Bolivia would disappear, while
Peru and Chile we would double. For this year our torque in the continent was Ec
uador;
relation to countries such as Argentina and Venezuela did not make sense to make
any comparison, let us not talk about
Mexico. Between 1971 and 1994, the national network grew to half the pace as
the transport of carga22.
The low investment in security and roads reflects a deeper problem of the proces
s
of state-building in Colombia: the low probability of implementing a scheme of
taxation acceptable and appropriate to comply with the constitutional missions w
ith respect to the
basic goods of the population and the needs of the public administration. In Lat
in America
, "Colombia is the country largest deficit collection has in the region after
Argentina and Guatemala"23.
As can be seen in Figure 6, after 1970 the extraction of resources by the Colomb
ian State
took a similar behavior to that of the central American countries and lower than
the
suramericanos24. This is the result of the resistance of the economic elites
both traditional and modern to pay taxes and its deeply rooted
behavior to use its influence to prevent any attempt to establish a
equitable taxation and appropriate to the needs of the country.
C: \Users\Administrator\Documents\Commission\Data\rpeag_colvslatam.png
24 removal policy indicates the ability of the government to obtain resources fr
om the national production
(taxes, royalties, tariffs) to comply with public goals.
Figure 6. Capacity of taxation and redistribution, Colombia, Central America,
South America 1960-2013
Relative Political Performance Dataset (RPC) v 2.1
If the common denominator of Latin American States in the sixties was the
weakness, Colombia since 1970 lagged behind with regard to our neighbors in the
continent. The representatives of the
National Front were unable to show achievements with regard to the pacification
of the country, the
standardization of competition policy, the priority in social spending. The coun
try
more quiet and in conditions of economic growth could not have made progress in
the construction of State in the direction indicated before but did not make them
until 1991.
A weak State is not capable of organizing the appropriation and legal use of the
land or to provide
basic goods to the population as a whole or to eliminate the obstacles
paternalism that preserved the traditional privileges and aggravate the social i
nequality.
Social conditions and economic disadvantage that they sought to overcome in the
country
with the reformist efforts of the National Front derive from the failure of the
State, and
the guerrilla uprisings were erected as a fracture over the society and an addit
ional burden
on the scramble of public institutions to comply with the mission of the State
.
In this way, it is reasonable to suppose that this stagnation is due to a quad
lock that prevented various attempts to strengthen the State succeed: the reluct
ance of
the economic elites to the creation of a modern fiscal contract; the veto of
agrarian elites a modification, so shy, land; the
disagreements regarding the centralization of political power; the brake of the
political class to the strengthening of
the forces militares25.
25 On the veto prosecutor, in Uribe López, op. cit. , 211; the government indirect
ly as a result of the difficulties
for the centralization, James A. Robinson, "Another 100 Years of Solitude," Curr
ent History, February
2013.
26 Malcolm deas, "Security and insecurity in the last quarter of the twentieth c
entury", in Alvaro Tirado Mejia (ed. ),
new history of Colombia, vol. 7, 1998, pp. 249-250.
At the end of his administration, in 1978, the president Alfonso Lopez Michelsen
presented a review of
its management. Lopez said that his Government had seized 216 tons of marijuana
and 1.13 tons of cocaine. As their successors, Julio Cesar Turbay and Belisario
Betancur, Lopez treatment the problem of drug trafficking as an issue irrelevant
to public safety
and rather tried to the government to obtain the foreign exchange profits
of the drug business, extracting some resources for the state's coffers. Also
"admitted 324 kidnappings, and 417 cases of extortion, but assured his listeners
that these crimes
were nothing out of the ordinary, and they had nothing to do with terrorist acti
vities
or guerrilla"26. When Lopez made that speech Colombia was already enshrined
as the main exporter of marijuana in the world and some of its most notorious
smugglers of cocaine were beginning to protrude; did not meet its first year the
formidable and
violent social protest convened as national civic strike in 1977; the homicide r
ate
, which increased from 1975, it was going to lifting brewskies in 1979; and the
Sandinista National Liberation Front
is dressed to show the second example of triumphant revolution
in Latin America.
Turbay, the successor of López Michelsen, broad delegations to the military at the
head of the
defense minister Luis Carlos Camacho but apart from the increase in repression,
their actions
have had little effect. Not yet touched the drug traffickers, nor to the guerril
las and deteriorated
the legitimacy of the military forces without strengthening them: during his gov
ernment, spending on security and
defense as part of the total expenditure, reached "its lowest point since 1950
, with a 12.15 % "27. The visibility of the repression in the administrations Lo
pez and
Turbay debunked quite to the executive branch.
27 Granada, op. cit. , p. 575.
In this way, the liberal governments of Lopez and Turbay and the conservative of
Betancur
until at least 1984 maintained not only stalled the process of construction of
State but that showed an amazing foresight, in retrospect, with regard to
the new dangers that hung on the Colombians.
3. LMOST, FACTOR REACTING TO VIOLENCE AND POLITICAL CRISIS
IN the late 1970s, Colombia was twenty years continuously consolidate the dual t
ransition
from dictatorship to democracy and from war to peace. In addition, recovered
the "partial collapse of the State" that had occurred between 1949 and 1957:
public institutions were functional, the State was more legitimate and had
international recognition, the force was a national public and more professional
.
However, the remaining tasks that left the National Front were many. There is a
need for a
reform that will expand and improve the political competition, the judiciary was
still waiting for
its time, the growing supply of basic goods was insufficient given the rapid
urbanization of the country, while the territorial fragmentation remained almost
unchanged.
During the three subsequent governments to 1974 the only significant contributio
n in these areas
was made in 1986, when it adopted the popular election of mayors, and the respec
tive presidents
were unsuspecting to the growing threat of drug trafficking and its potential ef
fects on the
peace.
What was happening during the twelve years of these governments that was not per
ceived by
the Colombian leadership?
A few years after the operation Anorí in 1973, which left decimated the ELN, a sma
ll group of
activists led by the Spanish priest Manuel Perez Martinez reorganized this
guerrilla group by revitalizing the Camilo Torres in the Magdalena Medio
Santander and initiating the coordination of cores scattered in Antioquia, Bolívar
,
Santander and the center of the country, work that would bear fruit in the so-ca
lled National Meeting of
1983 which was, in fact, a moment of refounding of the grouping. Toward 1974, th
e FARC
were in a process of "reconstruction" since for that then "had been lost 70%
of human strength and 70% of the weapons", as he recalled Jacobo Arenas. In 1974
the Farc had 4 fronts, in 1978 more than doubled and in 1982 had 24 guerrilla fr
onts and
more than a thousand combatants. From the 11th congress, carried out in 1980, th
e party
could marxistaleninista reassembles its numerous fractures and impetus the recom
position of the
EPL, thanks in good measure to the income of a dissidence of the FARC in Uraba28
.
28 For the ELN, Hernandez, op. cit. , pp. 322-324; for the EPL, Villarraga and s
quares, op. cit. , pp. 138-142, 157160; the appointment of Arenas in Fidel Castro Ruz, peace in Colombia, Havana: p
olitical editor, 2008, p. 88; The
growth of the FARC in Juan Guillermo Ferro and Graciela Uribe, the order of the
war: the Farc-Ep between the organization and
policy, Bogotá, Xaverian Publishing Center, 2002, p. 29.
In the second half of the seventies emerged two urban guerrillas, the M19 and Se
lf-defense
Obrera (ADO), inspired by the models of the Montoneros Argentine and
Uruguayan Tupamaros. Dedicated in its beginnings to the propaganda, had his bapt
ism of blood
with two amazing crimes: the M19 abducting and killing the union leader
José Raquel Market in 1976, who was preparing a national strike, and the assassina
tion of
government minister Rafael Pardo Buelvas by the ADO in 1978. In the first half o
f
the eighties other four guerrillas emerged independent: a
dissent from the Farc call against Ricardo Franco, the Mir-Patria free, the Revo
lutionary Workers' Party
(PRT) and the defense Quintín Lame indigenous movement
. Colombia contributed as well a third of the guerrilla wave that was given in L
atin America
after the triumph of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua in 1979.
While behind the armed revolutionary groups in the mid sixties,
another source of illegality Emergia driven by the
traditional skills of smugglers and the international demand: the bonanza of the
marijuana in the slopes of the
Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. These stockists little "rational and computers" we
re soon
overwhelmed by mafia-type organizations and business dedicated to the production
and trafficking of cocaine
, which achieved become the suppliers of the vast
majority of the world market. The dimensions that you purchased the drug traffic
king, and their related activities
, helped to "shaping a new country's face in the fields of social
, economic and cultural". Transformed the structure of society,
fragmentandola illegal and creating channels of social mobility, established new
forms of
local domination, was a colossal source of corruption of the civil authorities a
nd
the public force, and insert the country on the global map with more depth than
any other
actividad29. The drug trafficking has modified the behavior of the Colombian peo
ple and their
imaginary, aggravated the anomie in everyday behavior and undermined the idea of
that hard work
and education were the best means to social advancement.
29 Have been followed up to this point, the interpretative lines on drug traffic
king proposals in Alvaro Camacho
Guizado, "narcos, paracracias and mafia", in Leal Buitrago, op. cit. , pp. 387-4
19.
30 Ibid. , p. 398.
31 Henderson, op. cit. , p. 68.
32 Ferro and Uribe, op. cit. , pp. 96-104; Delgado, op. cit. , p. 109; Henderson
, op. cit. , p. 123.
As niche of social power, the drug cartels took their influence to the policy
through the money and violence. Occupied prominent place in local governments
, and during its heyday, raided the national policy: Pablo Escobar was represent
ative
to the House and the Cali cartel funded "one-third of the Colombian congressmen"
in
199430. Although it was always said in the cafes that the narcos had contributed
to the financing of the
presidential campaigns from Lopez Michelsen in forward, the test queen of
this interference just arrived with the presidential oath of Ernesto Samper.
Drug trafficking is not only related to the hegemonic power. Since the seventies
began to profiting from the poor to be able to alternate guerrilleros31 groups.
The relations of the
M19 with Pablo Escobar was documented by the "Commission on the truth about the
facts of the
Palace of Justice"; the linkages of Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha with the FARC were r
eported
in 1984 by the U.S. ambassador Lewis Tambs so unfriendly
although accurate, and its relationship with the business as a whole have been e
xplained by
different academicos32. It is not only that the guerrillas will be casually
with the coca crops, as documented during the clearance of the area of the Caguán;
also stimulated the expansion of the crops in their areas of influence and carri
ed the
coca to other regions of the country, as happened with the introduction of the f
ront 47 of the FARC in the
southeast antioqueno33. How they conceived the Farc their relationship with drug
trafficking?
In front of a former comandante explains with clarity:
33 The "encounter" of the Farc coca in Jaime Jaramillo, Leonidas Mora and Fernan
do Cubides, colonization,
coca and guerrillas, Bogotá: National University of Colombia, 1986, p. 172; The ex
pansion
led to the crops in Ferro and Uribe, op. cit. , p. 97; The income of the coca of
the hand of the FARC by
southeastern antioquia comes from an oral testimony.
34 Juanita León, "Interview with Carlos Alberto Plotter", Bogotá: mimeo, 2003, p. 7.
35 On "the withering guerrilla in Colombia in the seventies," Eduardo Pizarro Le
ongomez, insurgency
without revolution: the guerrillas in Colombia in a comparative perspective, Bog
otá: Third World Editors
IEPRI, 1996, pp. 95-101; Henderson, op. cit. , pp. 185-187. The growth of the gu
errillas in Camilo
Echandía, "territorial expansion of the Colombian guerrillas: geography, economy a
nd violence", in AEDS and Llorente
, op. cit. , pp. 102-103.
36 Mauritius Rubio, "The rapture to the miraculous catch of fish: Brief history
of kidnapping in Colombia", document
Cede, 2003, p. 21.
"I spoke again with the comrade frameworks that i not conceived of as we were go
ing to
lucrarnos the drug business. Then he was telling me that I was very puritanical.
I thought about it, and
look at Mao in the Grand March, England wanted to opium, Mao gave them opium, an
d with that received
talk and when it came to the seizure of power, is condemned to death the produce
rs, consumers
of the opium. There is also a tactical side, non-strategic"34.
Drug lords and guerrillas were found in the circuits of the logistics
and international arms also converged in violent operations. The take-over of th
e Palace of
Justice was the most conspicuous example, but not the only one. But the most imp
ortant aspect of this relationship was
that the "defeat guerrilla" of the seventies was followed by a golden era
thanks to the narcodollars, which combined with the income by kidnapping and ext
ortion to multinational companies,
allowed them to all the guerrilla groups modernize their weaponry,
increase the number of combatants and spread rapidly throughout the country. Bet
ween
1978 and 1995 the number of fronts of the FARC, ELN and EPL "step 15 to 102. The
first
increased their fronts of around 8 to 65, and the ELN from 3 to 35 "35.
This symbiotic relationship was fraught with contradictions political, ethical a
nd also
practices. The guerrillas were extracted money through kidnapping, and drug traf
fickers
represented a new class of people extremely rich. It is now usual place the
origin of paramilitarism in the abduction by the M19 of a sister of the clan
Ochoa of the Medellín cartel (1981), which gave rise to a mafia company that sough
t his release
, the same as the father of Pablo Escobar (1984), "Death to hijackers".
The More, by its acronym, served as a trigger of the coordination between drug t
raffickers and
example to the paramilitaries that would emerge more adelante36. They also demon
strated the need for
a military apparatus itself.
The kidnapping is without doubt one of the most plausible explanations of the bi
rth
and proliferation of paramilitarism. Emerged as a sporadic activity in common cr
ime
, was adopted as financial method by the guerrillas from the sixties
and then as a form of propaganda and political coercion. Of anecdotal became
systematic, to the extent that for 1985 were piling up 2,233 cases, according to
the database of the
Unified Registration of victims. But the kidnapping is only a lead from the
lack of state control over the territory and the precariousness of the legal pro
vision of
security.
Shortly after, the paramilitaries would find the three veins that inspired the o
rientation and the
appropriate organization for the war that was incubating: the model of lordship
violent on an economy of enclave as the esmeraldera, the
anticommunist agitation policy and the resources of the drug trafficking. In eff
ect, the lords of the emeralds
in the west of Boyacá had introduced since the mid-twentieth century a
private domination, extractive and with high degrees of coercion, which was able
to be amalgamated with the
regional political power, the church, the force public and politicians in Bogota
. On the other hand,
the regional elites and policies of the Magdalena Medio reacted to the levy of t
he
front 4 of the FARC in the region through promoting a communist movement with it
s epicenter
in Puerto Boyaca. This explanation was given in date very close to the events th
e
, supported by farmers and
FARC commander Jacobo Arenas. "The Army wrote
large landowners carry out their criminal activity facilitated by a bogus policy
implementation by some of the fronts in those areas"37. One of the biggest
drug traffickers in the country, neighbor of the area, called Gonzalo Rodriguez
Gacha and
nicknamed "the mexican", was added to the experience by providing the necessary
funding
to make that venture prosperara38 violent. As if that weren t enough, from that
moment on
, members of the public force participated in the logistics networks and operati
onal
private of these cores counterinsurgency.
37 Jacobo Arenas, cease-fire; a political history of the FARC, Bogotá, Black Sheep
, 1985, p. 126.
38 TO the linking of Rodriguez Gacha to the anticommunist struggle, which is als
o expressed as dirty war
against the militants of the Patriotic Union, you will have awarded vindictive m
otives: that the FARC
would steal coca, Dudley in Henderson, op. cit. , 101; who had kidnapped him, ac
cording to Strong in Rubio,
op. cit. , p. 21.
This is a closed circle macabre fabric of alliances and clashes between mafias,
guerrillas and
paramilitaries, who remained until the beginning of the twenty-first century. Wi
th the start of the 1980s
began a new phase bloody in Colombia, as a result of a mixture of
conflictivity political, economic and social, that overlapped between if, exhaus
ted the ability
of containment of the public force and justice, and led to an environment conduc
ive
to violence and common crime will increase. Table 1, which excludes
the wars between the State and private groups, shows some facts that illustrate
this
accumulation of violence.
Table 1. Accumulation of violence, 1980-2005
Guerrilla
Paramilitary Drug Traffickers
Guerrillas
1982-1987. Farc against
Ricardo Franco.
1980-90. Farc against
EPL in Urabá.
1985.
Tacueyo massacre by the
Ricardo Franco.
1998-09. Farc against
Eln in Antioquia, Arauca
and Nariño.
1982-85. Attempt to
resume the Magdalena Medio
by FARC.
Expulsion of the paramilitaries
of
Rodriguez Gacha in
Putumayo.
1999-05. Farc against
ACCU in the Paramillo.
Drug traffickers
1981-82. MORE against
M19.
1982-83 Jader Alvarez
against M-19.
1985-90. Rodriguez
Gacha against FARC.
1988-1991. Fidel
Castano against EPL and
FARC in Cordoba and
Urabá.
1989-90. Norte del Valle cartel
against
the M19 and the ELN.
1987-1993. Cali Cartel
against Medellin cartel
.
1989-91. Rodriguez
Gacha against the mafia
of the Esmeraldas
1992-1993. Pepes
against Pablo Escobar
2003-05. Internal dispute
of the Norte del Valle cartel
.
Northern Block against
Jorge Gnecco.
Paramilitaries
1982-86. Acdegam
against FARC.
1990-1998. Accu
against Farc in Urabá.
1997-00
Central Bolivar bloc against
Eln in southern Bolívar and
Barrancabermeja.
1997-99.
Catatumbo block against FARC
and ELN in Catatumbo
1997-00. Northern Block
against Farc in
Magdalena and Cesar.
1997-04. Block Élmer
Chains against Farc in Urabá
Chocoano
2000-02. Cacique Nutibara Bloc
1999-02. Cacique Nutibara Bloc
against Metro Block
in Antioch.
2001-04. Block
Centaurs against
Autodefensas Campesinas de
Casanare in goal and
Casanare.
2002. Northern Block
against against
resistance Tayrona.
against Farc in
Medellin.
2000-02.
Calima block against ELN and the FARC
in the Valley.
Since Lopez Michelsen until Belisario Betancur, the national government had trie
d to
capture part of the income of the cocaine, but in this task as in other illegal
organizations
were more effective and thus, in addition to the mafia, the guerrillas and the p
aramilitaries
were able to increase their ability to challenge the State while this, as demons
trated,
remained meager. When drug traffickers killed the Minister of Justice
Rodrigo Lara Bonilla in 1984, the government of Belisario Betancur they declared
war, but
it was unclear what could win it.
Between 1984 and 1998, the two large posters of the cocaine raised with him to t
he Colombian State
two enormous challenges and unpublished, consistent with the two different strat
egies
that were used: the violence and corruption.
Pablo Escobar and his organization have unleashed an urban warfare that deployed
the repertoire
applied by terrorism in Europe and the Southern Cone, attacking everywhere white
state and
civilian population, to represent "the most serious challenge faced by the Colom
bian State
as guarantor of law and order"39. This war ended with the death of Escobar in De
cember
of 1993, thanks to a triple alliance between the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA),
the Colombian police and a drug trafficking organization and paramilitary call
"persecuted by Pablo Escobar" (Pepes). This alliance had a demonstrative effect
on how these agreements, more or less implicit, might be effective in the fight
against
common enemies and powerful. The following year, and as if that weren't enough,
the government
of president Cesar Gaviria has authorized the creation of private security group
s, who were promoted
with enthusiasm for the next administration. Since then, we began to
gestate a national federation of paramilitary groups that met over a decade
a genra activity counterinsurgency and unilateral violence against the civilian
population
.
39 Fernán González, op. cit. , p. 396.
The survivor Cali cartel that always preferred corruption to contain the state co
ntrol
played a definitive role in the liberal candidate Ernesto Samper could become
president of the republic in 1994. The losing candidate presented evidence of
mafia funding of the winner, major involved including the minister of
defense accepted the fact and on June 20, 1995 the Attorney General himself
for the Nation public testing. The main institutions of the State and the civil
society
they departed in two in the dilemma of supporting or not the president. A genera
l of the
national army resigned and the Commander of the Armed Forces was dismissed by
arguing that the government was illegitimate; the vice president of the republic
and dozens of
officials, including ministers and ambassadors, resigned their positions. Busine
ss associations
are torn by defining its position vis-à-vis the government. The unique voice and
critical of the National Trade Union Council appeared to him, at the front, the
dissident voice and ruling
of a brand new Inter-organizational Union, and large economic groups were moved
within
a spectrum that went from the gobiernismo the Santodomingo Group until the civil
insurgency that
incited the Corona Group. Drug traffickers of the Norte del Valle cartel murdere
d one of
the staunchest enemies of the government, Alvaro Gomez Hurtado (November 2
1995)40; another, the retired general Fernando Landazabal Kings, was later murde
red
(May 12 1998). The panorama, according to an analyst of the time, was "a
government that has no control of anything, except a few resources to buy access
ions, and does not have the capability
of convocation, or legitimacy, not political room for maneuver"41.
40 The unit of analysis and contexts of the Attorney General's Office stated tha
t "the murder of Alvaro Gomez
is not the nodal point of the criminal phenomenon, but that can be understood as
one more victim of the
extermination of people who criticized the Samper government for his alleged lin
ks with drug trafficking, those who wanted to
collaborate with the research and those who knew of the infiltration of the mone
y from the
campaign posters in the Samper President". In Maria Isabel Wheel,
"Godo good, which is slowly dying ... ", the time, 9 November 2014.
41 Jesus Antonio Bejarano Avila, Labor selecta, vol. 2, Bogotá: Universidad Nacion
al de Colombia, 2011, p.
153.
The worst crisis of legitimacy of the country's history and its main
beneficiaries were the agents of the indomitable illegality. The guerrilla front
s that had not
agreed to a negotiated peace of 1990 and the paramilitary groups and self-defens
e
were found in the disorder, the mistrust and the weakening of the institutions t
he
enabling environment to grow, using the fuel of the narcodollars and abusing a
peasantry with few social opportunities and lots of memory of the old wars.
Dissolved the large of the cocaine cartels with their media barons, new anonymou
s figures
in medium-sized organizations were found to their wide before a scene without
control. Small and anonymous criminal enterprises bought not few mayors,
governors, congressmen.
The final balance was a paralysis of the neuralgic activities of the State, incl
uding justice,
consolidation and growth of the various guerrilla and paramilitary projects
and the international isolation of the country, due to the descertificaciones of
the
United States government to the Colombian State for drug trafficking and human r
ights violations
.
The State was prostrate and helpless by their own contradictions and, above all,
because
the president decided that his personal pride and fate were more important than
the country and
that, because he could not govern, the best i could do was to organize the ranks
to defend
his position and sobreaguar the remainder of the term. An army without moral par
ty and was the subject of
humiliating defeats and unpublished in two centuries of creole civil wars, and i
n this way
a geography names unknown escurrieron in history: The Delights
(August 96), Patascoy (December 97), Billiards (March 98) or Miraflores (August
98). Hundreds of unprotected population saw its inhabitants massacred in a horr
ific manner
: The Aro (October 97), Macayepo (October 2000), El Salado (February 2000
), Bojayá (May 2002). Public figures such as Jaime Garzon (August
1999), Consuelo Araujo (September 2001), archbishop Isaias Duarte Cancino (March
2002), Guillermo Gaviria and Gilberto Echeverri (May 2003), were killed. And
many more hundreds, thousands were the anonymous, killed in massacres and attacks
with explosives in the cities, a few underground in mass graves, others on the p
avement
blown apart by the pumps. Without counting the crowd mutilated of peasants, sold
iers, and
soldiers-peasants.
4. ESCALATION OF THE WAR AND HUMANITARIAN CALAMITY
The political crises caused by the violent offensive and corrupting of drug traf
ficking, constituted another
"structure of opportunity" for the illegal armed groups
guerrillas and paramilitary grow rapidly since the early eighties
until the beginning of the twenty-first century. In that period, the number of t
roops of the Farc step in a
thousand to little more than 20 thousand when i have just the demilitarized zone
in 2002, the ELN step of
its founding to more than 4 thousand men; the demobilized paramilitary groups mo
re than 30 thousand men
between 2003 and 2006. The presence of the guerrillas was multiplied by four,
surpassing the half of the total number of municipalities; in 1993 the paramilit
aries they were already present
in 138 municipios42. Less intuitive to use, and more accurate with respect to th
e magnitude of
the war through the time the data are available on the number of people killed
in combat (Graph 7).
Camilo Echandía 42, two decades of escalation of the armed conflict in Colombia (1
986-2006), Bogotá:
Universidad Externado de Colombia, 2006, p. 28.
43 United Nations Development Program, conflict, alley with output: national hum
an development report
for Colombia
2013, Bogotá: UNDP, 2003, p. 285.
Figure 7 below. Combat Deaths in 1958-2012
Source: National Observatory of memory and Conflict
ta
Program (Ucdp)
Cnmh and Uppsala Conflict Da
The drug trafficking also enabled the increase in the levels of recruitment and
the
armament of the illegal armed groups. According to the United Nations Developmen
t Program
(UNDP) 60% of the financing of the Farc came from the narcotrafico43.
It was also a crucial source of resources, of course, to paramilitary groups.
Among the more traditional financial sources of the guerrillas are, in addition,
the kidnapping and extortion, which
could make the 21.8 % and 31.8 % of their finances, respectively. The
kidnapping has a behavior identical to that of the fighting, which demonstrates
the
feedback dynamics between resources and war. Following the report of the UNDP, o
ther income
of all the illegal armed groups would be: the parallel black markets, such as go
ld
, emeralds, and theft of fuels; the money laundering; and armed patronage
on royalties, transfers and other municipal resources, a mechanism that was an u
ndesired effect
of administrative decentralization initiated in the presidency of Betancur and e
xpanded
in the of Gaviria44. In 1995 the per capita income of the guerrillas was estimat
ed at
70 thousand dollars, while the military forces was 90045.
44 Ibid. , pp. 285-301.
45 Bejarano Avila, op. cit. , p. 145.
46 Uribe López, op. cit. , pp. 115-123.
47 Jose Antonio Ocampo, "a century of development paused and inequitable", Maria
Teresa Calderon and Isabela
Restrepo (eds. ), Colombia 1910-2010, Bogotá: Taurus, 2010, p. 188.
48 Hernández, op. cit. , pp. 432-651.
49 The first appointment is Jacobo Arenas in Arenas, op. cit. , pp. 21, 95; the
second is of Manuel Marulanda
cited in Bejarano Avila, op. cit. , p. 298.
When the illegal armed groups are well-funded, certain social conditions
facilitate the recruitment and explain the persistence of armed strife. Of
very straightforward way, rural poverty, high unemployment among men, the high i
ncome inequality
, are variables that resemble Colombia and other countries with largas46 wars. T
he
economic crisis at the end of the century (1997-2003), that "gender the stronges
t increase in unemployment in the
country's history and a significant deterioration in the quality of jobs
"47, momentum more even the foot of the irregular force.
As well as the war requires a willingness to organized groups, the increase in t
he intensity
or scaling also requires the decision to establish objectives, strategies, plans
and goals
of growth on the part of those groups. The escalation of the war was linked
with making offensive of the ELN, FARC and the AUC, despite the fact that from 1
982
different governments offered at least three amnesties (1982, 1983, 1992), gave
way to
several negotiation processes (1984, 1989, 1992, 1999), and that the society acq
uired a new
constitution in which discussion participated four guerrilla organizations
, some social organizations and new party groups. From
its peculiar analysis of the context, the ELN raised in 1989 "the inevitability
of a process
armed with a outcome also armed" and in 1997 considered that the government was
in
crisis and the insurgency in ascent"48. The Farc, for his part, believed in 1985
that had
"began a revolutionary situation" and in 1991 that "the power is near"49. A
fraction of the EPL minority rejected the peace agreement between the band and t
he government in 1990
. For its part, in 1994 there were the Autodefensas Unidas de Córdoba y Urabá and th
ree
years after the United Self-defense Forces of Colombia, with a counterinsurgency
guidance
with what was marked a notable increase in the violence that were capable of pro
ducing
with respect to its immediate past, fragmented and multipurpose.
This combination of resources, economic crisis and willingness to intensify the
war was reflected in
an increased recruitment of all armed groups, which has remained constant until
2002
. The forced recruitment of minors became a visible phenomenon, as well as linki
ng of
labor according to reports
could have been paid up to
more than two statutory minimum monthly wage by combatant.
In this way, the ability to do harm is multiplied. Let's take a look at this beh
avior according to the
single register of victims: from 1985 to 2008 was presented a growing trend
of victimization; if we divide this period by halves we find that in the first t
welve
years, there were 673,477 victims to an average of 56 thousand per year, in the
twelve years
following the number of victims was multiplied by almost eight times, reaching a
total of
5,220,035 . The relationship between the low directly derived from the fighting
between the different
organizations and armed civilian victims ranges from little more than 80 civilia
n casualties for each
low in combat, for the first period, and 380 civilian casualties for each low in
combat, for the second
period.
The repertories of victimization (Graph 8) did not change much over the years. T
he only
novelty at the end of the century it was the massive use of anti-personnel landm
ines and other explosive devices non-conventional
, which are the responsibility as fundamental to the FARC, the "illegal armed gr
oup that
used the most in the world. "50. When the armed forces succeeded in consolidatin
g the
military offensive in 2002, the use of these devices has been extended to the po
int that only one of the
years that have passed since then introduced more events with mines that
accumulated all the years of 2000 backwards. The acts of cruelty, documented ext
ensively in
the reports of the National Center of Historical Memory, multiplied as the war
intensified.
Bejarano 50 Eduardo Hernandez, "anti-personnel mines, its relationship with the
armed conflict and the production of narcotics
", Opera, 10, p. 264.
51 UNDP, op. cit. , pp. 118-137.
This quantification of horror gives sense to the assertion that the US has been
an "unjust war
"51, due to the hostilities have been conducted in a systematic way that has vio
lated
the precepts of humanitarian law and without any consideration toward the
civilian population. As unforgiving were the illegal armed groups that did not c
ease even
before major natural disasters, such as the avalanche of the Paez River occurred
in
traditional zone of the FARC or, according to the criticism of Fidel Castro, the
1999 earthquake in the
shaft cafetero52.
Sexual Offenses
1%
land dispossession
1%
recruitment of minors
2%
Torture
2%
anti-personnel Mines
2%
6% Abduction
forced disappearance
8%
military actions
14%
loss of
goods
16%
homicide
victims 48% (non-possessory or threats), 1985-2014
52 Castro Ruz, op. cit. , p. 123.
53 Used the two parameters, with and without displacement and threats, because t
hey are are the modalities
of victimization that have more difficulties in their measurement. Also because
their numbers are so large that
, in the aggregate, lead to underestimate more serious damage such as loss of li
fe and liberty.
Chart 8. Victims (without displacement or threats), 1985-2014.
Single Register of victims, own calculations.
Although it can be argued that the direct effects of
try's geography,
territorial distribution has been very uneven. Seven
Cauca, Valle del Cauca, Nariño, Cesar, Santander and
ions
, contributed 48% of the total victimization and the
forced displacement and the threats (Graph 9)53.
war covered the entire coun
departments Antioch,
Norte Goal located in four reg
52 %, excluding the
Graph 9, victims by department (without displacement or threats) 1958-2014
Antioch
27%
Cauca
Valley 7%
6%
6% Nariño
Cesar
North 4%
4%
4%
Other Target
42%
Victims 1958-2014
(without displacement or threats)
Single Register of victims, own calculations.
By far, Antioch has been the most victimized department of Colombia. One of ever
y five
victims total lived in Antioch; excluding displaced and threatened, the proporti
on rises to
nearly one in three victims. The difference between Antioch and second
department, Cauca in the two cases, is four to one. Whatever the modality
of victimization is taken, Antioch has always been the first place, with two or
three times
more victims than the department that follows (Table 2).
Table 2. Participation of victimization by department, 1958-2014
killed in
massacres
Antioch 30%
Santander
7.2 %
6.4 % Northern
Cauca
Cesar 5.9 % 5.8 %
selective assassination
Antioch 22.8 %
North Santander 8.9 % 7.6 %
Cesar 5.8 %
5.3 % Bolivar
mine victims
Antioquia 22.2 %
Target 9.8 %
7.7 %
North Caquetá 7.1 %
6.7 % Nariño
Kidnapping
Antioquia
Valley 18.5 % 7.3 %
Cesar 7%
Bogota 6.9 %
Santander
Antioquia displaced 5.4 % 19.2 %
Bolivar
Magdalena 8.3 % 7.6 %
Choco
Nariño 5.4 % 5.3 %
Fighting
Antioquia
Santander 21.8 %
6.9 %
6.2 % Northern
Cauca
Goal 5.5 % 5.1 %
Single Register of victims, own calculations.
The war also affected the democratic order not only by the dysfunctions generate
d
in the institutions, but also by the violation of the life and freedom of the
local representatives. Between 1986 and March 2003 were killed 162 mayors,
councillors and 420 529 staff members, 53% of whom were police inspectors; in ad
dition,
were killed 108 candidates for mayor and 94 candidates to
municipales54 councils. In turn, between 1970 and 2010 were abducted 318 mayors,
332
councillors, 52 deputies and 54 congressmen, most of them at the top of the war
between
1996 and 200255.
54 Borman R. Ballesteros and Alberto Maldonado, violence and municipal managemen
t, Bogotá: Colombian Federation of Municipalities
GTZ, 2003, pp. 29-34.
55 National Center of Historical Memory, Enough is Enough! Colombia: memories of
war and dignity, Bogotá:
Cnmh, 2013, p. 68.
56 The figure of Rubio, which includes spending on security, Bejarano Avila, op.
cit. , p. 144; UNDP, op. cit. , p.
107.
The measurement of the effects of war on development is quite elusive. While
Mauritius Rubio felt, for 1994, an economic impact of the war equivalent to 15%
of the gross domestic product, the UNDP proposed a 1.92 per cent to 200256. When
UNDP calculated the loss
produced by violent deaths in the human development for 2001,
Colombia was the most affected country between 65 countries for which informatio
n was available,
losing 14 jobs in the world. The departmental estimates showed
to Antioquia and Valle del Cauca as departments with the highest reverse. Antioc
h
was going to be among the six departments with the highest human development ind
ex to
occupy the last place, behind only of Norte de Santander.
A sample of the damage to the development is in the economic sabotage. Since the
eighties
the guerrillas began to use the blowing up of the infrastructure as a source of
extortion to the oil companies and electrical, then used as a form of political
pressure
to the State and as a military tactic to distract the operations of the
public force (Graph 10). Apart from the enormous economic costs of this tactic,
the
harm to the population and the environment have not been appreciated in its prop
er magnitude. Just imagine
what they mean for the population of a municipality is one or more days without
power
or for our precious ecosystems continued the spill of oil, to form an
idea of the daily sufferings of the civilian population during the
confrontation and the irreparable damage to our biodiversity. Sometimes the comb
ination of
effects was monstrous as when killing 84 people burned in 1998 in the hamlet
of Antioquia Machuca, after a bombing of the pipeline by the ELN.
Figure 10. Attacks on infrastructure, 1985-2014
Sources: Isa and Ecopetrol.
An unintended consequence of this unhappy and accumulation of violence and
victimization, is the feedback of the war. The dynamic war creates the condition
s for
its own growth. To the extent that the illegal armed groups
closed the possibilities of development and democracy in the local scenario, the
only chance of survival
and recognition for the younger segments of the population is the link
to the private armies. A sample of this phenomenon can be seen in the effects
that the illicit crops have had on the war: when the economic activity
of the coca was buoyant, resources for the illegal armed groups grew; when the
State attacked the coca-producing areas, the main alternative to the workers of
coca was
integrated into the armed groups ilegales57.
57 Ferro and Uribe, op. cit. , p. 100.
The war in their phase more burning and painful, book in good measure by means o
f
fighters recruited so forced. The most dramatic case is the forced conscription
of
minors. The Cnmh quantified this infringement on the basis of the analysis of th
e profiles of people
unrelated to the illegal armed groups and established that
4,490 were minors, the 60% of the FARC, the 20% of the AUC and the 15% of the EL
N. This data is the
lowest among the various sources that have studied the phenomenon. A
more complex study estimated that, of the adult combatants of the illegal armed
groups, 52.3
% of the ELN, the 50.1 % of the FARC and the 38.1 % of the AUC entered rows stil
l minors
; and that by 2012 the foot of force of the FARC was integrated in a 42%
by minors and the ELN by a 44 %58. If we apply the first figures to the
irregular troops supposed to the year 2000, the result would be that close to 28
thousand
combatants were incorporated as minors. These data contradict any
clear statement that the linking of the Colombians to the war has been essential
ly
voluntary or motivated by belief; the best description seems to be that
active minorities equipped with money and weapons created military aircraft by c
oercion
. At its zenith, the war was carried out to a large extent with combatants enlis
ted
that under any perspective, legal or moral (for example, in John
Rawls), must be regarded as victims.
58 Natalia Springer, lambs among wolves. The use and recruitment of children and
adolescents in the framework of the
armed conflict and crime in Colombia, Bogotá: Springer Consulting Services, 2012,
pp. 26, 30.
59 Ibid. , p. 27.
The forced recruitment is just a glimpse of the multiplicity of tragic events th
at occurred within their
warring armies, either as balance of fighting or as
victimization produced internally by decision of its controls. In the first case
, mention should be made of the
7,172 members of the army killed in armed actions since 1994
until today, and also the irregular warriors, whose amount is indeterminable bec
ause their bodies
do not appeared, and unspeakable them since less than half of the
retrieved can be identificar59. In terms of victimization, there is considerable
internal
reports on the application of the death penalty during the first years of the li
fe of the guerrillas,
in particular of the ELN, but regulations of the FARC and various testimonies
suggest that this practice has been very common. Perhaps the Tacueyo massacre, i
n which
were killed 164 guerrillas executed by the heads of a dissidence of the FARC in
1985,
is the best indication of this form of violence.
On the other hand, historical experience shows that the persistence of the war c
reates vicious circles
of lawlessness and violence that amplify the effect of the armed actors
organized. Regulatory gaps and sovereign of the State, and the insurgent actions
and counter-insurgency operations,
generate an enabling environment that gives rise to "the antagonisms
parish, social hatred, revenge, and religious rivalries of
interests"60. The war ended to blow up the weak regulatory framework of the
communities and exacerbated a proclivity toward the illegal and violent resource
s on the part of
individuals and organizations with security, they would act differently in other
conditions
.
60 Greg Grandin, "Living in a Revolutionary Time: Coming to Terms with the viole
nce of Latin America s
long Cold War", in Greg Grandin and Gilbert M. Joseph (eds. ), A Century of Revo
lution: Insurgent and
Contrainsurgent Violence during Latin America s long Cold War, Durham & London: Du
ke University Press
, 2010, Kindle edition, pos. 414-427.
61 Ballesteros and Maldonado, op. cit. , pp. 37, 40.
62 Alexandra Samper, "a witness on the 205 days of the abduction of Guillermo cu
ts", The malpensante,
2014.
A sample of the extent of damage to community-based structures, and violation of
the human needs of the rootedness of the sociability and stable are the attacks
on the
populations and headboards, usually in small municipalities, peripheral and rura
l. Between
1993 and the first half of 2003 there were 806 such attacks in 284 municipalitie
s in the country
, i.e. one every five days. The 71% of them were attributed to the Farc61.
We might also mention the damage to the morality of millions of Colombians, perh
aps
all of us. What residue of moral sensitivity could be in the thousands of people
who ran these violent actions, in most cases, against unarmed people?
Without doubt, one of the factors explaining the persistence of the war, of the
persistence
with which the protagonists have persisted in it, it is the moral numbness of th
e commanders of the
warring groups. On the back, the Colombian society faces
in the future to the consequences of both moral wear. This problem is well refle
cted
in the statements of a kidnapped: the kidnapping "i removed almost everything, b
ut gave me
a feeling I had ever seen: the hatred hatred debases degrades and i
hate even more by this"62.
One of the main explanations of the excessive prolongation of the war and its re
sultant
humanitarian calamity lies in the fact that for the guerrilla groups that defied
the State and civil society in Colombia the most important objective has been it
s own self-preservation
and growth before that any political or humanitarian consideration,
while that for the paramilitary groups that faced was more important
to crush their enemies and protect their private interests to protect the settle
rs. In the case of
the FARC, the priority of the organization on its revolutionary objectives you c
an
narrate as well: before the need to be financed resorted to drug trafficking, in
order to preserve the security
of the organization decided to murder civilians under suspicion of being informe
rs
and probable deserters, before the military exigencies left side of the politica
l work,
wasted several opportunities of negotiation rather than confront to the dissolut
ion of the
grupo63.
Here are 63 ideas in Ferro and Uribe, op. cit. , p. 171.
Following this logic, concentrated in the interests of group, the revolutionary
organizations
played a critical role in the discrediting of the ideals of equality and
solidarity invoked by Marxism, and severely affected the legitimacy of the
social movements and political protesters that have proposed alternatives to the
institutional arrangements prevailing in the country. Paramilitarism, for its pa
rt,
discredit the universal right to self-defense and it became a vehicle of economi
c and political interests
that run counter to the public interest and the construction of a social and dem
ocratic State
of law. As is characteristic of a weak State, public institutions
have failed in the protection of life, liberty, and property of
citizens and, on the contrary, the major state agencies responsible for the safe
ty and
justice flagrantly violated the human rights of all Colombians.
5. IN THE DIALOGS AS TACTICAL TO AN AGREEMENT TO END THE WAR
's escalation of the war and the mass victimization that produced can give the i
mpression that
Colombia suffered an ongoing process of political polarization and military,
and that the parties resisted to establish relationships or never tried to open
doors to
a possible negotiation of their differences. What happened was the opposite: the
increase in the intensity of the
war was always accompanied by dialogs and negotiations.
If Colombia is characterized by the pactismo political, the guerrilla groups bec
ame part of the
select club of pressure groups, political factions and economic sectors
trained in the struggle to remove avante their partisan interests. In fact, duri
ng the three decades
at between 1984 and 2014, Colombia has had at least 18
"episodes of negotiation"64, i.e. one every year and a half. A very high frequen
cy if one takes into account
that, in the investigation of Pinfari framework and of the Ucdp armed conflicts
with at least a negotiating range between 36% and 39 %, or is that more than hal
f of
the war pass without episodes of negociacion65. Of these 18 negotiations
between illegal armed groups and the State, 11 ended with an agreement, 6 failed
all of them with the FARC and the ELN
of 2014.
and remained a work in progress at the end
64 Is a episode of negotiation is a instance that goes from that presents a prop
osal for an agreement until it
is signed or rejected, and that is inclusive, demanding and incremental, accordi
ng to Marco Pinfari, "Time to
agree: Is Time Pressure Good for Peace Negotiations," Journal of Conflict Resolu
tion, 55 (5), 2011.
Pinfari 65 framework, Peace Negotiations and Time: Deadline Diplomacy in territo
rial disputes, New York:
Routledge, 2013, p. 54.
During the same period of time (1984-2014), the episodes of negotiation with the
FARC
have dashed had a duration of 122 months, which far outpaces the longest negotia
tion
of the world (Ivory Coast, 50 months) and, as is obvious, the
average of the observed by Peace Accords Matrix (Kroc Institute for Internationa
l Peace Studies
, University of Notre Dame); it also exceeds the average of the other negotiatio
ns
colombian (table 3). Over 30 calendar years, only 7 years not
witnessed any episode of ongoing negotiations in Colombia. In plain language, th
is country has done
both war and peace, even when, as can be seen, with varying effectiveness.
Table 3. Average duration of episodes of negotiation 1984-2014
place
Description
Average Duration
Peace Accords Matrix
33 episodes in 15 countries on four
continents
18.15 months
Colombia 1989-1991
4 episodes with M19, EPL, PRT,
Maql
9 months
Colombia 1984-1997
3 episodes with CRS, popular militias,
Mir-Coar
10 months
Colombia 2002-2006 2
episodes with Auc
13 months
Colombia Farc 19842002
2010-?
3 Episodes
current episode
29.3 months
34 months (incl. 2014)
Source: Peace Accords Matrix, own calculations.
Many of the likely explanations for the failure of some of the negotiations in C
olombia
, it is far from being a peculiarity creole. Whether the influence of electoral
calendars
, expiration of truces, partial or total failure of the peace accords, the
intervention of third parties, the activism of sectors opposed to the agreements
, Colombian conditions
are very similar to those of other countries in civil war. The permanent divisio
n
between the insurgency and its acute civil strife may explain in
part the failure to achieve its military objectives and the partial configuratio
n and prolonged
of the agreements with guerrillas and paramilitaries in the country. However, th
e glaring contrast
between these partial agreements but successful in the country and the successiv
e failures of
the episodes of negotiation between the national government, on the one hand, an
d the FARC and the ELN, on the other hand,
suggest that there are peculiarities in processes with these groups and their or
ganizational characteristics
. Why, if the political and socio-economic conditions
of the country were the same, some guerrillas agreed to peace and not others?
In these negotiations there was always a mixture of improvisation, bad design an
d
volunteerism on the part of the respective governments, but perhaps the main mis
take of
approach has been the dominant idea in the ideological and political elites of t
he option
by the state political solution was incompatible with the strengthening of the m
ilitary strategy
. The resultant asymmetry derived from where it was acceptable that the guerrill
as will combine
military strategy and diplomacy, but not to do so the State.66
66 Jorge Orlando Melo, "are the processes of negotiation: a strategy against the
peace? ", Medellin, 30 July
2001, p. 9. In: http://jorgeorlandomelo.com/procesosnegociacion.htm
67 Lion, op. cit. , p. 4; In the same sense, Mauricio García Durán, Uribe to Tlaxcal
a: peace processes, Bogotá,
Anthropos, 1992, p. 45, 49, 89.
68 Explanation of Jacobo Arenas on the conclusions of the enlarged Plenum of the
Central Command of the
Farc of October 1983, in Arenas, op. cit. , 103-106; on the offensive end in Gar
cía Durán, op. cit. , p. 185.
But the decisive factor was that in any case the ELN and the Farc came to the ne
gotiating table
with a willingness to reach agreement. On the contrary as is well documented
in the case of the Farc negotiations were used as tools
to improve their position and military policy, and trampolines to intensify the
war
. As stated by one of its commanders, "the peace process was a tactical process
The demilitarized zone helped generate, paradoxically, the strategic plan. He ap
proached the
rear to the center of strategic deployment"67. Before you begin the truce of 198
4, the FARC
had decided to "enlist to the disappointment with the policy permits betancurian
a
will lead through the paths of real change that will be the revolution" and had
been plotting a
"military plan to 8 years". Before the National Constituent Assembly and the di
alogs of
Caracas and Tlaxcala in 1991 and 1992, the FARC had already set the goal of laun
ching a
final offensive in 199768. In conclusion, "the dialogs of the Caguán were but a
tactical moment of the FARC, which formed coherently in the strategic goals
of the military growth through new methods of war"69.
69 González, op. cit. , p. 443.
70 Lion, op. cit. , p. 8.
71 Juliet Lemaitre, peace in question. War and peace in the Constituent Assembly
in 1991, Bogotá:
University of the Andes, 2011, pp. 63-68, 101-125.
Another explanation, linked to this, is that over the course of the various stor
ies of the ELN
and the FARC can be identified a common element: the priority of the livelihood
of the organization on any
other political purpose, and above any type of
strategic arguments, moral or authority. The initial impetus, derived from the g
ravitational force of the
revolutionary ideology and the Cuban example, whole affair became
political-military organizations with an identity constructed from myths and
stories unique, almost alien to the rest of society, and that over the
years is silted up as absolute beliefs and survived without any
external confirmation or popular support. Blind faith in their own truths and in
the
possibility of realization of the utopia group reinforced the idea that the pres
ervation of the organization
, compliance with its rules and plans were more important than any
chance of negotiation, with offers that are more or less generous, and social ac
ceptance more or
less extensive. No less important are the daily adjustments that lead to be
warrior becomes a way of life, because when "go the people with the sack of silv
er
to the side, then it is another vision"70.
The event which would serve as acid test to check the connection of the guerrill
a groups with
society and calibrate their purposes was the constituent process that began in 1
990,
gave way to the Constitution of 1991 and opened a phase of initiatives to make o
perational
the new constitutional provisions. Among other things, the constitution was a do
uble
covenant of peace with four guerrilla organizations and, in a tangential manner
but
decisive, with the two large posters of the cocaine that were opposed to the ext
radition of nationals
to Unidos71 states.
The constitution dissolved the blockages which since 1976 had prevented reform t
he political regime;
in a tacit manner but forceful, responded to the demands of "democratic opening
" that some political and social sectors, and as the FARC guerrillas, the EPL an
d
the M19 had made; institutionalized human rights and set up mechanisms for
assurance of the same; changed the exercise of justice in the country and reform
ed the
judicial branch; and allowed the political spectrum will become so vast, diverse
and dispersed
as few in the world. Between the transitional measures, are "granted extraordina
ry powers
to the government for three more years to negotiate peace with the guerrillas"
remnants. Guerrilla warfare was the response of rejection and their amazing requ
irements: the Farc,
according to the former president César Gaviria, "they wanted to have the half of
the constituents, without
disarm and without even acquire any commitment in this regard"72. In Tlaxcala, t
he commander of the Farc
Alfonso Cano demanded the delivery to the guerrillas of 198 municipios73, which
amounted to
almost half of the national territory and the extension of Spain. More than a
calculation error with regard to the correlation of forces, it was a way to reje
ct the outstretched hand
.
72 Ibid. , pp. 12 and 69.
73 García Durán, op. cit. , p. 229.
74 Gallup Poll, September 102 of 2014. Comparing the Farc with institutions more
and less valued
by the Colombians, the military and the congress, respectively.
75 Dinorah Azpuru, "Democracy and Governance in Conflict and postwar Latin Ameri
ca: a quantitative
assessment", Cynthia Arson (ed. ), in the wake of War: Democratization and Inter
nal Armed Conflict in
Latin America, Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2012, pp. 41-65.
The result of this process and previous government initiatives such as the popula
r election of
mayors was that while the public institutions and the society were modernized
, the guerrillas were anachronistic. The State constantly increase the supply of
public goods,
constitucionalizo human rights and broad political participation
. Colombia began the construction of an imaginary inclusive and multicultural. A
nd
this was expressed in all the imaginable indicators of legitimacy: for example,
in the
twenty-first century, the favorable opinion toward the Farc ranged between 1% an
d 5 %, while the favorableness of
the military forces was moved between 64% and 90% and the support to the
congress was between 14% and 54 %74. In 2010 Colombia ranked fifth in support of
democratic institutions and law enforcement, between 17 Latin American countries
; the negative side of this evaluation is that the country only exceeded
in Haiti in the indexes of state fragility and also in terms of validity of the
freedoms
between 7 latin american countries considered in posconflicto75.
As you know, the opportunity opened in 1991 coincided with global developments t
hat
have disturbed the ideological underpinnings of the left in the entire world: th
e Berlin wall
fell in 1989 and the Nicaraguan revolution came to an end the same year, in 1990
the Salvadoran guerrilla forces
agreed to a negotiation after the failure of its final offensive, in 1991 the So
viet Union disintegrated
. If the Colombian guerrillas was framed some time in
the global ideological struggle, for these years those concerning no longer impo
rted.
Devoid of significant support in the population, followed by relying on their re
lative wealth
and military might become in a fundamental way on war machines.
When it reached the crisis of legitimacy of the Samper government, the military
forces
began a restructuring, the United States didn't unlock the military cooperation
and
launched Plan Colombia, were already laying the foundations for the State
will recover the initiative and is hereby amended dramatically the theater of wa
r. The administration of
Alvaro Uribe won the backing of the population, has mobilized the
public institutions and developing a security strategy from the civil power, for
the first time
in the history of the country. Thus were created the conditions for that in 2010
the administration of
Juan Manuel Santos will take the initiative to bring about a new
diplomatic output, which led to the national government and the FARC leadership
will sign an
"Agreement for the completion of the conflict", low-budget other than the ones w
ho carried
the past experiences of failure and low credible manifestations of the parties t
hat
seek to comply with the committed published.
6. SUMMARY
Any exercise of comparative politics shows that there was no in Colombia or in an
other country
any feature that can be called "structural" or "objective" that
determine fatally the occurrence of the war. In general, in the wars there are n
o different causes
to the decisions of the political units and in Colombia, the war was initiated b
y the will of
revolutionary groups that challenged by force of arms to the government and soci
ety
, and after that were imitated by drug traffickers.
Different matter is the unusual extension of the Colombian war. To explain it, h
ere
it has been proposed a confluence of factors that were the "structures of opport
unity" for
the persistence of the contest:
" the weakness of the State, the difficulty of achieving agreements between elit
es to overcome and the
inefficiency of several governments to identify and act on critical junctures;
two of the greatest political crisis in the history of the country, generated bo
th by the drug cartels
, and facilitated by the fragility of the institutions of security and justice
, and by the high degree of corruption of the political class;
" the existence of armed revolutionary organizations of predatory nature,
insensitive to the demands and conditions of the population, and converted into
the single valuable purpose
for them Same;
the flowering of the drug trafficking that served as a source of funding for the
aircraft
armed, and the livelihood of social conditions that provided motivation and stim
ulus
for that many Colombians swell the ranks of the private armies;
" the multiplicity of fronts from the race, in addition to the conflict between
State and insurgency
, covered clashes of guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug traffickers, and
each one of them with their similar;
the repeated use of the negotiations on the part of the insurgency as tactics
to escalate the war.
The result was a ferocious civil war that raged across much of the national terr
itory, he became
calculations in the 10% of the population in direct victims and affe
conservative
cted the
democratic indicators and human development of the country, as well as civil lib
erties.
This essay attempted to respond the accountability requirements posed at the beg
inning. Of
them, the political and moral responsibilities take on greater significance when
it comes to the
actors and protagonists of this story, on the understanding that any agreement f
or the completion of
the war will be more robust while better try to understand our
drama from a collective perspective and while more respect save for those who ha
ve suffered
.
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Pachón, Alvaro and Maria Teresa RAMIREZ, the transport infrastructure in Colombia
during the twentieth century, Bogotá: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 2006.
PARIS, Roland, At War s End Building Peace after civil conflict, New York: Cambrid
ge University Press
, 2004.
PINFARI, Marco, "Time to agree: Is Time Pressure Good for Peace Negotiations," J
ournal of
Conflict Resolution, 55 (5), 2011.
PINFARI, Marco, Peace Negotiations and Time: Deadline Diplomacy in territorial
disputes, New York: Routledge, 2013.
PIZARRO LEONGÓMEZ, Eduardo, insurgency without revolution: the guerrillas in Colom
bia in
a comparative perspective, Bogotá, Third World Editors
IEPRI, 1996.
POSADA CARBÓ, Eduardo, the nation of dreams; violence, liberalism and democracy in
Colombia
, Bogotá: Standard, 2006.
UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM, conflict, alley with output:
national human development report for Colombia 2013, Bogotá: UNDP,
2003.
ROBINSON, James A. , "Another 100 Years of Solitude," Current History, February
2013.
RUBIO, Mauritius, "The rapture to the miraculous catch of fish: Brief history of
kidnapping in
Colombia", document Cede, 2003.
WHEEL, Maria Isabel, "Godo good, which is slowly dying ... ", the time, 9 Novemb
er 2014
.
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", The
malpensante. Retrieved 10.19.14 . In:
http://elmalpensante.com/articulo/3117/el_secuestro_de_la_chiva.
SANTRICH, Jesus (ed. ), Manuel Marulanda Vélez: the hero of the insurgent Colombia
of
Bolivar, mountains of Our America, FARC-EP, n.d.
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DATABASES
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National Observatory of memory and Conflict
.
National Center of Historical Memory
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.
Single Register of victims, Drive for the victims.
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Uppsala Conflict Data Program (Ucdp), Department of Peace and Conflict Research,
Uppsala Universitet.
What is a simple story?
Francisco Gutierrez Sanin1
1 Researcher at the Institute of Political Studies and International Relations a
t the National University of
Colombia. Director of the Observatory of refund and land property rights,
http://www.observatoriodetierras.org/. Thank you for the valuable comments of El
isabeth Wood, as well as the
inputs and contributions of Fabian Acuña, Rocío Penalty and Margarita Marin. It is c
lear that all errors and
inadvertent that may contain this text responsibility are mine alone.
2 See for example Francisco Gutierrez and Juan Carlos Guataqui, The Colombian ca
se. Peace-making and power
sharing. The National Front and New Constitution Experiences", 2009 available at
:
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTCONFLICT/Resources/ColombiaFinal.pdf
1. INTRODUCTION
before you study the causes of the origin and persistence of the Colombian confl
ict, we need to define
what they are talking about. I shall confine myself to the periodization which i
proposed in
efficient2 texts. Colombia has experienced two major waves of civil war: the kno
wn as
The Violence, and which I will call here war [against]insurgent. The first lasts
roughly from
the late 1940s to early 1960s. The second
begins by then, and continues until today. I will concentrate on the second. Bot
h
waves are organically connected (see section 2) and show many continuities,
but are different in their actors, main reasons underlying and logical.
The counterinsurgent war, in turn, has two key moments. The first is,
obviously, the creation of the marxist guerrillas of inspiration. But in order t
o form a
non-state armed group enough, in fact, with the act of the will of a handful of
people
. Several guerrilla groups emerged in Latin America in the 1960 'S; very few
sobrevivieron3. Among them are the Colombian. Why is that? This is my question o
f the origins
. However, the Colombian guerrillas were in the 60s in general fairly marginal
. The second key moment takes place in the late 1970s. It is
then when Colombia falls, since any reasonable indicator that is used, in a
state of civil war. And it lasts until today, becoming the national conflict mor
e
prolonged of the world. Why entered the country at war? Why is it extended this
so
extraordinary? And how did it do that? These are my questions by persistence.
3 Including those countries that have experienced wars themselves. See for examp
le the case of Peru,
in which the first insurgencies of the 1960s were quickly chased.
Any text on the origins, persistence, and victimisation of a conflict
as complex as the Colombian has to be surrounded by early warnings.
There are many things about our war that we do not know. There are many others o
n the that there are important
open debates. These are problems that are not easy to resolve. The
experience of other countries suggests that such discussions can be extend for d
ecades,
and occupy whole volumes of scholarly literature. This, of course, is not to sug
gest that
anything goes: to measure that is emerging more and more evidence, less proposit
ions are
able to give an account of it. But if it involves remembering that every asserti
on of
our conflict is necessarily partial and is set forth from an on-going debate
. In addition, this particular text was written within extreme constraints of
time and space. None of them can serve as an alibi for the error or negligence,
but both are reflected in the number of items that I omitted, or subsumi, in the
general argument. The Colombian conflict has developed in the midst of a vigorou
s modernization
both in society and in the state. Gave origin to a whole number of peace process
es
, with rich experiences and varied. It was transformed in the heat of a spectacu
lar
democratic opening (the Constitution of 1991). Occurred in the midst of a
changing international environment, that was the cold war in the post-Washington
consensus,
through multiple intermediate stages. Involved in various ways to the catholic c
hurch
. Gender terrible social and human tragedies. None of this appears, or does so
only marginally, in the presentation that follows. Except for the last section,
I focus on the
factors that considered immediately relevant to the explanation of the origin an
d
persistence of our war.
In this work of thematic exclusion has helped me the conviction that any
explanation would be of our tragedy has to be able to survive some
basic comparative tests. For example, may be given to the neoliberalism the conn
otation and
meaning that you want, but with each one of them is one that there were many
countries that suffered radical neoliberal transformations without falling or pe
rsist in the war.4
Something similar can be said for the theory of national security and policies a
gainst
insurgent-promoted by the United States. I believe that this proven beyond
any reasonable doubt that played a very negative role in Latina5 America. But th
ey were applied in
many countries, with radically different outcomes. Treatment of concentrate
here on the factors that define the specificity Colombian, and that therefore
could sustain a plausible explanation in front of a comparative perspective. It
also sought to
find the reasons that allow you to understand the way in which development is ou
r
war, i.e. the as. For example, any explanation that focus solely on
the level of the political regime can help you understand why we live as
long a coexistence between democracy and conflict, or that we are witnessing a s
ubnational
so marked variation in the dynamics of this.
4 Francisco Gutiérrez, Gerd Schönwalder, Economic Liberalization and Political Viole
nce: Utopia or
Dystopia Manifesto By?, London: Pluto Press, 2010. In fact, many countries had t
ransited through toward the peace to
neoliberal horse designs. The interactions between these openings and the mobili
zation from below have been studied by
Elisabeth Wood, Forging democracy from below. Insurgent transitions in South Afr
ica and El Salvador,
Cambridge University Press, 2000, 5
There are already many work on the topic. See for example J. Patrice McSherry, P
redatory states. Operation
Condor and covert war in Latin America, Rowman & Littlefield, 2012
Therefore, presented a narrative that does not come from strictly sequential way
, for instance, by considering events year by year or
consecutive presidential terms. Simply, i discuss in two large blocks the condit
ions
associated with the differentiating phenomena which i shall explain. Beginning b
y the origins, highlighting
five factors (inheritances from the violence, land inequality created through th
e
political allocation of property rights, institutional exclusions of the peasant
ry by
below the level of the political regime, and
beleaguered centrifugal dynamics within the political system, and the reopening
of the access to the private provision of
security). After, i concentrated on the persistence; there i choose five other
key factors
, which developed that allowed the origins (or overlap them), and analyzed their
mutual interactions. These factors are: drug trafficking, patterns of guerrilla
violence
against civilians, massive private provision of security, articulation of this t
o
strategic directions of national agencies, and dense articulation between legal
and illegal actors
within the political system. The consequences for the country are devastating, t
hing
that illustrated in the section on victimization. But at the same time important
meeting exit doors
.
Paolo Rossi said in his book extraordinary6 that the researchers were divided be
tween
"spiders", who looked at the overview and the major trends, and the "ants", who
worked
on the floor with all the details of the material at hand. I imagine that it wou
ld be best
to try to combine the virtues of both styles. Regardless of that
achieve such an ideal is possible, given the design of this exercise is inevitab
le here "talk
as spider" and skip the empirical support of many assertions, and intermediate s
teps
in the reasoning. That is why I refer with some frequency to my work that deal w
ith
similar problems, and where they are empirical references and the more detailed
analyzes
related to some of the propositions that underpin the narrative: not by
vanity of author, which is one of the most abhorrent, but from a sense of respon
sibility for
ant. But of course I support also continuously in the already wide and rich pano
rama
that offer the Colombian social sciences.
6 Paolo Rossi, the philosophers and the machines, 1400-1700. Barcelona: New Coll
ection Work, 1966
Well not notice that I have not wanted to here simply to make amanuensis of a su
ccession of
horrors. This text is written as a bid for peace. This implies
to criticize all the actors in the conflict, but with the expectation to help se
arch for civilized ways
to exit the. Even if you are right, this can be very painful. One of the founder
s of
the science policy, Ostrogorsky, said in his classic study on the parties that
he hoped that all the actors on who he was talking about will be a little
insatisfechos7: that was the key symptom that he would be quiet. Saved all the
proportions, i have the same expectations.
Ostrogorski 7 Moisei, Democracy and the organization of political parties, trans
actions Publishers, 1981
8 To visualize this is sufficient to read the diaries of Che Guevara. See "The d
iaries of Che in Bolivia", editions
The Cave, 1966, s.l.
9 Dew Londono Botero, trade unionism and Economic Policy, Bogotá D. C: Fedesarroll
o, 1986.
10 Maria Alejandra Vélez, FARC and ELN. Evolution and territorial expansion, degre
e thesis at the Faculty of Economics
at the University of the Andes, 1999. This confirms an intuition a pioneer of Le
grand: see
Catherine Legrand, Frontier Expansion and Peasant Protest in Colombia, 1850 1936,
Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 1986
11 Walter Joe Broderick, the guerrilla fighter invisible, Bogotá: Intermediate, 20
00, p. 156
12 Another version of this thesis is that the origin of our conflict is associat
ed with the "absence of
populism". For a critique, see Francisco Gutiérrez, the orangutan with sacoleva.
One hundred years of democracy and
repression in Colombia (1910-2010), Bogotá: IEPRI-Penguin Random House Publishing
Group, 2014.
13 Daniel Pecaut, " Colombia: violence and democracy ", Political Analysis, 13,
Bogotá: IEPRI, 1991 p. 37
2. ON THE ORIGINS OF THE CONFLICT
The Colombian guerrillas of marxist inspiration were created in the early years
of the 1960s
. In that sense, there is not much difference between Colombia and the rest of
Latin America, where appeared by then many insurgencies motivated
and revolutionary speeches from the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam and
Cuba. In this early period, the majority of the Latin American guerrillas acted
in the midst of
a great aislamiento8. In Colombia was presented a similar phenomenon. Except
episodes as in Marquetalia, the guerrillas were developed outside of the main de
bates
of a country that is modernized and urbanized rapidly and whose levels of
social mobilization increased so visible9. As has been shown Velez, the bulk of
the guerrilla activity are development early in the peripheries demographic and
territorial
the country10. This led to that in many cases will be brought forward in Colombi
a that has
called Broderick "a fantasy war"11.
However, and in contrast with our neighbors, in Colombia the guerrillas
survived in a manner not imaginary, but fairly tangible. Tap understand why.
A first explanation that is now routinely offered is the closure of the
country.12 Front regime. But it, as it has noticed Pecaut, does not pass any com
parative examination
serio13. In relationship to the whole of the continent, the Colombian political
regime was without a doubt
among the most open. The country had a strong tradition of construction and
development of liberal institutions, and although the closures of the Face were
not insignificant,
were much lower than those of most of the neighboring countries. The Colombian g
uerrillas
were able to survive and become challenges not imaginary but real not because of
the
close of the regime, but thanks to five major factors:
2.1 STAFF SKILLS AND
contrary to our neighbors, here the experience in guerrilla warfare had an impor
tant
tradition. The country was just emerging from a period of murderous dictatorship
s, which extends from the end of
1949 until well into the 1950s. Exterminator during this cycle,
the respective governments launched massive attacks against the civilian populat
ion, often with
territorial objectives (populations or regions that they belonged to the wrong d
emographic), and built
, it fueled violent networks or promoted in the attended by political leaders
, civil, and members of security agencies to attack, expropriating and humiliate
people who were considered adversaries or that they were simply in the wrong pla
ce at the
wrong time. It is true that the liberal guerrillas that were developed more or
less spontaneously to resist this onslaught would eventually develop similar pra
ctices
14; but at the same time were also made to a multitude of skills of
survival.
14 Carlos Miguel Ortiz, State and subversion in Colombia. Violence in 50 years t
he Quindio, Bogotá: Cerec Cider, 1985; Carlos Miguel Ortiz, " The liberal guerrillas in the years 50 and 6
0 in Quindio", in
Yearbook of Colombian Social History and Culture, Bogotá, National University of C
olombia ed,
1985.
15 See the reflection of Carlos Lleras Restrepo in full National Front: after th
e violence "has never
been able to speak that there is a general peace, complete and solid". Carlos L
leras Restrepo, toward the restoration of democracy
and social change, Bogotá: Planet, 1999, p. 451. The phrase is still
tragically force.
16 Gutiérrez, op. cit. , 2014
The exterminator cycle leaves a mortgage that has not yet been evaluated
apropiadamente15. The mortgage is also institutional, crystallised in issues suc
h as the literally
thousands of decrees issued under a state of emergency, which were finally
absorbed as part of the daily operation of the apparatus of the estado16. But wh
ere it is most visible
is in the creation of social conditions favorable to armed activity
contrary to the rule, or simply unfamiliar to him. For example, generated numero
us blood debts
, which have developed a dynamic of its own. As ever affirm very
general Rojas Pinilla, the Violence in Colombia can also be seen as a combinatio
n of
"great hatred and petty squabbles"17. Add to this the mass destruction
of lives and properties, which led to hundreds of thousands of Colombians irrepa
rable damage
, arousing among many victims feelings that could go from humiliation
to the hatred and the desire for revenge. In different regions we are
with social bases peasant ravaged by violence, and at the same time willing to p
rovide
--as a matter of pure survival18-- illegal support to forces opposed to the stat
e. Had been forged in the
field networks of sociability articulated to projects of armed resistance, which
ultimately
were fundamental to the takeoff of the guerrilla projects of the
decade of 196019. No less important is that during the cycle will be forged a la
rge staff
of specialists in violence, which operated under the protection of both the trad
itional parties
of the nuevos20. It is from experiences like these that the affirmation of
Sánchez --according to which the combination of all forms of struggle was not, in
the Colombian context,
an invention of the communists, but the adoption of a practice already extended
21-- acquire meaning. Those specialists not only burdened with long
paths that the involved in unspeakable horrors --often in quality of both victim
s and
victimizers--, but had acquired skills during years of confrontation
. They had learned of the guerrilla war in manuals not soviet,
Chinese or Vietnamese, but in the field experience. Even more, they knew how to
interact with
the local authorities to ensure out a mantle of benevolent neutrality, outside
protection more or less open, to its activity.
17 Quoted in James Henderson, when Colombia he bled. A study of violence in the
metropolis and the
province, Bogotá: Salva Liarte Publishers, 1984, p. 247
18 Ortiz quotes a liberal saying that is "ashamed of the guerrillas", but who be
lieved that "if
we were absent corpses". Ortiz, Op cit. , 1985, p. 211.
19 On the crucial importance of these, see Paul Staniland, Networks of rebellion
. Explaining insurgent
cohesion and collapse, Cornell University Press, 2014.
20 Gonzalo Sánchez and Donny Meertens, bandits, "whitened and peasants: The case o
f the violence in Colombia
, Bogotá: Ancora Publishers, 1983.
21 Gonzalo Sánchez. La Guerre et politique in Kenjara, Paris: L'Harmattan, 1998
2.2 INEQUITY BUILT THROUGH THE ALLOCATION POLICY OF
THE RIGHTS OF PROPERTY
The second factor was the existence of a great land inequality created and proce
ssed through
the political allocation of property rights on the land. This is "the
atomic bomb of institutional designs" in the country. The key players responsibl
e for allocating
and specification of property rights (the canonical example are notaries)
have been linked directly and without mediations at partisan politics
competitive. Even more, in the institutional landscape prior to the National Fro
nt, those same politicians
that put to notaries and mayors also had a crucial role in the appointment of ju
dges and
policemen subnational, so they could operate on the set of local life
to ensure access to land protected by coercion and impunity. This fired two
conflicting trends, in the still caught the country: on the one hand, the steady
accumulation
of land by large landowners through a combination of
political contacts, sophisticated lawyers, and violence22; and on the other hand
, the creation of
very strong incentives for the specialists in violence will
be enriched in exactly the same manera23. That is to say, on the one hand and co
ncentration by
another upward social mobility, both tied to the land, the use of violence, and
to the competitive politics
. You cannot give an account of the colombian oscillation in the 20th century
between "hot peace" (with high levels of violence and murderous brawls local) an
d open conflict
without fully understand the implications of this design.
22 In the case of the Bellacruz Ranch, an official of Incora finds the next expr
ession fortunate:
"usurper mania" of the landowners through legal quibbling and force. But of cour
se this kind of
proclivities are fixed institutionally. See Camilo Gomez Duran, a lawyer of wast
elands, Report on
the situation in the municipalities of La Gloria and Tamalameque in relation to
the sites which seeks to
Alberto Marulanda Grillo. Commission ordered by resolution 0371 of 1960. Incora,
General Services Division, Microfilm File.
23 It should be noted that the technology required for this pattern of allocatio
n of rights is relatively simple,
and that the barriers to entry are low with such that the agent be prone to the
risk. Francisco Gutiérrez, the orangutan
with sacoleva. One hundred years of democracy and repression in Colombia (1910-2
010), Bogotá: IEPRIPenguin
Random House Publishing Group, 2014.
24 Catherine Legrand, op. cit.
There are two other tracks that linked the issue of the land to the origins of t
he conflict. On the one hand
, the ongoing expansion of the agrarian frontier through successive waves of occ
upation by
settlers, who gradually were expelled, through a combination of strength,
political manipulation and chicanery legal, by landowners who
had both the ability and the incentive to hacerlo24. This expansion is article w
ith
various types of economy throughout the 20th century --coffee, livestock, coca25
--, but the
basic mechanism exhibits a surprising amount of continuity. As has been argued L
egrand,
Molano and Fajardo26 this necessarily produces a quantum of violence, especially
if one bears in mind
that the main point of reference for legal access to the rights of property was
the presence fisica27. On the other hand, the link between political power and g
reat land ownership
, which produced --and continues to produce--brutal regional closures and locale
s28. It is not true that
the traditional parties have been ventriloquists dolls of the landowners,
and when you are reviewing the files that they talk about these parties is that
their
directories were populated more by lawyers, professors and lawyers that by rich
rural.
However, for long periods and in many regions the landowners were unable to make
their service to those politicians and bureaucrats to the few civilians of their
areas of
influence, as well as to the police and security agencies.
25 Alfredo Molano, Forest Inside: an oral history of the colonization of the Gua
viare, Bogotá: Salva Liarte
Publishers, 1987
26 Dario Fajardo, to spread peace, Bogotá: Unibiblios, 2002
27 In the case of the wastelands, occupation. Gutiérrez, op. cit. , 2014
28 Alejandro Reyes, landlordism and political power, history of the cattle ranch
es of Sucre, Bogotá:
CINEP 1976; Alejandro Reyes, warriors and peasants: the dispossession of the lan
d in Colombia, Bogotá: Ed.
Standard 2009
29 Fernan Gonzalez; Ingrid Bolivar and Teófilo Vasquez, political violence in Colo
mbia. In the fragmented nation
to the construction of the State, Bogotá: CINEP, 2002. Fernan Gonzalez presents a
general framework
for understanding construction of the state and territory in Gonzalez F. , power
and violence in Colombia, Bogotá:
Odecofi, 2014.
30 Paul Oquist, violence, conflict and policy in Colombia, Bogotá: Institute of Co
lombian studies/Banco Popular
, 1978
The attentive reader will no doubt noticed that we need from the three factors t
o understand why
the earth has been so central to the Colombian conflict. The spontaneous reactio
n
opposite to this is to think that has been developed in the middle of the instit
utional vacuum:
where there is no state. And, in effect, there is much in favor of this hypothes
is. As we shall see in the
next section, one cannot understand the persistence of our conflict without mete
r in the
explanation the institutional gaps generated by the type of territorial occupati
on that was developed
in the pais29. However, the bulk of the lethal activity during the violence
took place in the coffee axis (as you will see Oquist30), and the cycle of the c
ounter-insurgent in the departments of Antioquia
, above all, or Santander and the Valley: in the heart of the
economic and institutional development of the country. In other words, our confl
icts seem to
have been due to two logical institutional, one related to the proverbial
"absence of the state"31 and another with the specific form that you purchased y
our presencia32. The three
factors outlined here --concentration through the political allocation of proper
ty rights,
inherently violent expansion of the agricultural frontier, and articulation betw
een
local authorities and large agrarian property -- can give an account of this dua
lism.
31 Doesn't really matter much to the exposure that this graphical expression qui
te a bit inaccurate, as
had been mentioned by several authors see for example González, Bolivar and Vasque
z, op. Cit 2002.
32 For the case of violence, this is clearly seen in Mary Roldán, blood and fire.
The violence in
Antioquia 1946-1953, Bogotá: ICANH, 2002
33 and in the developing world. In fact, remained well during fifteen years.
34 Cannot be regarded as a is of limited, etc. ; but in any case inclusion. The
fact that a social reform in the long run
does not have significant economic impacts or sustainable does not mean that the
ir
political effects specifically are irrelevant. In the other direction it could b
e argued that the voltage reappeared
periodically even though so much more problematic after the front, and i think s
ome, but that does not weaken
the proposition that presented here.
2.3 CLOSURES POLITICAL: A RECONSIDERATION
I argued above that in terms of political regime and liberal institutions, Colom
bia
was during the National Front in the category of the most open countries of Amer
ica
Latina33. However, during the same Front were inherited, and/or built various fo
rms of
representation below the level of definition of the regime were remarkably
exclusive, and that in particular were installed in the country a bias anti-farm
er
of large proportions. It should be noted that during the National Front that
bias was in dynamic tension with forces favorable to the inclusion34.
The obvious example is the development of the fiction that the Colombian peasant
s
--in both social sector defined by a certain place in the world of production-was adequately represented by forms of vertical integration as the guilds
of the economic field. Some of these were created during the Front; others were
reaffirmed
then as key partners of the economic policy. It was assumed that
represented as a whole to the inhabitants of the field, and they have spoken for
decades on behalf of
them; but the interests of the peasants were completely out of the picture.
In fact, the public activity of such guilds, including the period
of the same face, has had as one of its basic components the opposition to any
policy of redistribution of assets by the state. The model of vertical integrati
on
of agrarian economies could have come from the National Federation of Coffee Gro
wers,
but with all the limits and problems that the original could have had one has to
admit that it
supported in tenure patterns and forms of production very different to the other
guilds
of the field. Already at the beginning of the face, when a parliamentary commiss
ion to
discuss what would be the agrarian reform of 196135 invited the voices
of the relevant country to express themselves, it would have been able to notice
a serious vacuum of representation: marched
spokespersons of the parties, the national and regional guilds, and some unions
(UTC and CTC). There was no change in who will speak on behalf of the peasants
themselves
. The creation of the National Association of Peasant Farmers during the agraria
n reform
of 1968 created some important dynamics of mobilization in interaction with
the estado36, but after the Pact of rural areas in 1972 were exhausted them than
ks to a systematic combination of
violence and exclusion. The result is that in the late 1970s, the
state no longer had an interface to interact with the peasants.
After, the ministry of agriculture established significant relationships almost
exclusively
with the guilds, which otherwise would take over the years, the
bulk of its staff leader. The processing of social demands of the peasantry --by
far the
social sector hardest hit by the violence, and then who would suffer most
during the war against-insurgent -- was blocked during fifteen years. This lock
is
overlaying the inequity that material already in the 1960s was very high, and th
e
categorical differences imposed via policy and enforcement in different regions
through
the mechanisms discussed in the previous point. It is this juxtaposition of ineq
uities what
Stewart has called "horizontal inequality"37, guiding plausibly as one of the
factors that could help explain the origin of the wars civiles38. In Colombia
, the horizontal inequality that suffered the peasants was a breeding ground for
35 to the effect, see in the annals of the Congress of 1959 and 1960, the creati
on of the National Agrarian
Committee Committee to advise the government on the study of the legislative and
executive measures
related to the reform of the social structure agrarian , Decree 2061 of 1960. Offi
cial Journal, number
30318, on August 31 of 1960. p. 1-2.
36 Leon Zamosc, the agrarian question and the peasant movement in Colombia. Stru
ggles of the National Association of Peasant Farmers
(ANUC), Bogotá: United Nations Institute for social development
-CINEP, 1987
37 French Stewart, Horizontal inequalities and Conflict: Understanding Group Vio
lence in multiethnic
societies, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008
38 for a brilliant operationalization of this intuition, see, Lars-Erik CEDERMAN
and Gleditsch,
Kristian Skrede, Halvard Buhaug. Inequality, grievances, and civil war. Cambridg
e University Press, 2013
not necessarily a mass resistance but if of various forms of disconnect with
the world of the institutions, as well as rebellion39; and how
much will be worsened during the conflict.
39 That include, critically, the income to illegal groups. People relatively sat
isfied with their situation
develop levels of risk aversion that prevent them from seeking alternatives such
as this.
40 This assertion, correctly i believe, does not imply the wrong proposition acc
ording to which any form of
subnational police has to result in violence and indiscipline. Op. cit. , Gutier
rez 2014, the orangutan with sacoleva
41 to thank Eduardo Pizarro me pointed out the exact date of this medida11111111
11111111111.
See for example 42 Gustavo Gallon, the Republic of the weapons. Relations betwee
n state and armed forces in Colombia
1960-1980, Bogotá: CINEP, 1983
2.4 PROVISION OF THE PRIVATE COERCIÓN/SECURITY
during most of the 20th century, a good part of the provision of security and th
e supply
of state coercion step by the hands of policemen subnational, that in many regio
ns
were articulated in a straightforward manner, as an instrument of private agents
, to partisan struggles
, heavy factional fighting and social. This form of provision of security/coerci
on was to
the violent and porosa40. The horror of the violence had as protagonist
subnational to the policemen that acted as coordinators and legitimators of
radicalized civil networks.
The National Front ended with the subnational policemen with the major reform of
195941, but instead recreation the private provision of security through decrees
issued during the governments of Valencia and Lleras42 that established the figu
re
of self-defense. In them, the army was responsible for receiving the demands of
private security of the population, which would lend the counterinsurgent war of
its specific institutional framework
, and in the long run would unleash dynamics similar to those of the Violence
(attacks against the civilian population coordinated or enabled by state securit
y agencies
, but with broad participation of private agents). The Front had already assimi
lated,
estatizandolas, other forms of private provision of security --the rural DAS is
an important example
--, but with the creation of the figure of the autodefensas unidas de left the c
onditions under which the state
would respond to the challenge through guerrilla networks civilians -
state, as it had done yesterday. The consequences will be discussed in the next
section
.
2.5 SYSTEM political cronyism/PAROCHIAL
Finally, the Colombian political system evolved from a moderately
statist program, which was intended to ensure that the traditional parties act a
s transmission belt between
the central state and the regions through the articulation of various
micro-covenants by the development, orientation toward a more parochial and orie
nted to express
the territorial demands of elites. The enloquecedoramente complex game of factio
ns within the
Front led to what became known as the contemporary "immobility": the scope
modest, or the failure as they lived many contemporaries, of the great
social reforms that were in the center of the Front's program, and which are not
limited to,
but always passed by, the agrarian reform. This in turn is expressed in a rapid
loss of
credibility and support to the front and their leaders, of which the emblematic
example
are the dramatic elections in 197043. Much more than the rural guerrillas,
was the M19 which expressed by armed route that dislocation between political sy
stem and society.
43 For the details and analysis of the implications i refer to Francisco Gutiérrez
, what the wind?
The political parties and democracy in Colombia 1958-2006. Bogota: Editorial Nor
ma, 2007
These five factors --inheritance cycle of an exterminator, land inequality built
through
the political allocation of property rights, horizontal exclusions of peasants,
the
have kept the door open for the private provision of security
, and the powerful parochial tendencies of the Colombian political system that l
ed to
a dislocation between society and politics -- not only were important factors
pro-conflict, but that were combined to generate a historical sequence that woul
d be directly
associated with our fall into a civil war itself. The
sequence begins with the start of the two major processes of agrarian reform (19
61 and
1968), which produce a re-alignment of forces both within the political system a
s
within the economic elites. In essence, the country faces the problem of choosin
g
between agrarian reform in the country village, which is basically what proposes
a sector of the political elites,
and colonisation, the counter of some guild spokespersons and
factions of the traditional parties. With the defeat of the reforms, it imposes
de facto -and also institutionally--colonizing the alternative. This in turn leads to a
settlement of new regions in which there are neither market nor state. A simple
illustration
of this demographic dynamism "weatherproof" is as follows. While that
between the censuses of 1973 and 2005 the population of the country almost doubl
ed, the of the eight departments
of the south that prior to 1991 were commissaries or police stations more than t
ripled
(Arauca, Casanare, Putumayo, Amazonas, Guainia, Guaviare, Vaupes and Vichada).
Even more,
to the extent that the population density in these areas remains very low, the c
enters of the
political system have no incentive to make them public goods. And
the regional coalitions that are built there will be the proclivities, the prece
dents and
the incentives that will be provided to themselves of such property, starting wi
th the
security.
There are, of course, an element of contingency here; in reality, the confluence
between the random and the need to collect the successful formula of Jacques Mon
od44. Because it is precisely
when this is happening, the country is articulating the global market for
illicit substances. This colossal impact power to regional coalitions that are
giving their cry for independence, because now they also count with funding and
specialists in violence without having to go through the center of the system po
litico45. All
this brings us to the next section.
44 Jacques Monod, chance and necessity, Barcelona: Tusquets, 1981
45 an interesting insight of the implications of this shock is located in James
Henderson: Victim of globalization
. The story of how the drug trafficking destroyed the peace in Colombia, Bogotá: M
an of the century,
2012
3. PERSISTENCE
3.1 . BASIC QUESTIONS
, therefore, between the late 1970s and early 1980s, Colombia was
, since any reasonable standard, in a state of civil war. They were also
placed all the conditions for which scaling will continue. The dynamic forces th
at
gave rise to the conflict, and which I described in the previous paragraph, were
still present. The
chain of fear and hatred generated by the cross-violence has been lengthened and
strengthened. The productive structure of the country, and the rules for the occ
upation of the territory by the
society and the state, had been profoundly transformed with the articulation of
the
country to the global economy of the drug trafficking. The political system was
in
full centrifugal drift, which moved the centers of power to regional coalitions
insurgency increasingly formed by a combination of legal and
ilegales46 agents.
46 Gutiérrez, Op. Cit. , 2007
It is clear that these factors operated in favor of the development and escalati
on of conflict
. And with all this, the persistence of the Colombian civil war continues to rai
se questions
easy to articulate but difficult to answer. Why have we had a
war so long? Societies with regimes much more closed, more exclusive, or with
fractures more visible - in the political and symbolic--, gained access to the p
eace, or
witnessed a military victory by one of the parties involved. Colombia, a country
development of medium-low, without large chasms ethnic, linguistic or religious,
and with
liberal institutions that evil that operate well, has not escaped the scope of t
he
confrontation. Where is the answer? There is another deceptively simple question
that relates to the previous: why was the war in the way in which? Why
, for example, not undermined democracy (in fact we are witnessing a spectacular
opening in 1991), but instead support so massively in the private provision of
coercion and security?
I shall raise here that there were five major factors that in a whole contribute
d substantially
to the conflict persists and further developed, without producing a final winner
, without allowing the peace, and at the same time without destabilizing the cou
ntry's democratic arrangements
: drug trafficking, the repertoires of violence against civilians used by the gu
errillas -in particular the abduction--, development increasingly broad and powerful patte
rns of
private provision of security, the confluence between them and the strategic dir
ection of
various state agencies, and the evolution of the political system. It considers
each of the
dimensions separately, and then I will concentrate on the interaction between th
em.
3.2 . THE BIG FIVE FACTORS OF THE Persistence
3.2.1 LMOST
As you know, the economy of the illicit substances had already become relevant i
n the country
since the 1970s, giving rise to the "bonanza marimbera" and the massive influx o
f
illegal capital through mechanisms such as the "one-stop shop sinister"47. Howev
er, it was only in
the first half of the 1980s that the country became a
first line player in the world market for coca.
47 Daniel Pecaut, Chronicle of four decades of Colombian politics, Bogotá: ed. Nor
ma.2006, p 236
48 See for example Fernan Gonzalez "Peopling and social conflict in Colombian hi
story", in To read
the Policy, Tomo1, Bogotá: CINEP, 1997, p. 71-94. Of course, with large difference
s within the "center"
and "periphery", both regional (Adolfo Meisel Rock, why do we need a regional ec
onomic policy
in Colombia", working papers on regional economy, No. 100 Bogotá: Bank of the Repu
blic,
December 2007) and social (José Antonio Ocampo, between the reforms and the confli
ct: Economy,
governance and conflict in Colombia, Bogotá: Editorial Norma, 2004)
49 This is further reinforced with the mining boom.
50 To the extent that the populations were migratory flows from various parts of
the country.
This had several fundamental implications. Deepened the centrifugal tendencies
of the political system, since the regional coalitions no longer in need of the
political center
to access funding or specialists in violence. In terms of
state presence, increase the dualism Colombian territorial. The geographical cen
ter -whose core was the Andean world -- had high population density and at least
partial access to state services, but he was surrounded by a periphery with
inversas48 features. With the rise of the coca economy, the periphery was popula
ting and won in
relevance economica49. But on the other hand continued without having access to
the state, nor to markets
with a minimum of regulation and institutionalization, nor even to basic forms o
f capital
50 as. That is to say, this expansion of the agricultural frontier generated a n
ew fracture in terms of
"right to state," to use the eloquent expression of Garcia and Espinosa51.
In effect, the territories in which it was initially installed the coca economy
were sufficiently
populated to have significant demands, but at the same time sufficiently
uninhabited as to the political system had no incentive
to provide public goods. In these conditions, the inhabitants of these territori
es often
entered, without major alternatives, the diagrams of governance rebel52 or to th
e dynamics of
classes predatory policies that could escape without problems on any
regulatory control.
51 Mauricio Garcia and Jose Rafael Villegas Espinosa, the right to state. The le
gal effects of the apartheid
colombian institutional, Bogotá: justicedepartment, 2013.
52 Cherian Zachariah Mampilly, Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian L
ife during war, Cornell University Press
, 2011.
53 William Ramirez Tobon (1996): "a peasantry illicit? ", Political Analysis doe
s not. 29 (SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER, pp.
54-62
54 Maria Clemencia Ramírez, between the State and the guerrillas. Identity and cit
izenship in the movement of the coca farmers of
Putumayo, Bogotá: ICANH, 2001
55 Maria Clara Torres Bustamante, State and coca in the Colombian border. The ca
se of Putumayo, Bogotá:
CINEP, 2011
56 Juan Guillermo Ferro Medina and Graciela Uribe Ramon, the order of the war, t
he FARC-EP: between the organization and
policy, Bogotá: EYEBROW 2003
57 a good way to visualize this is by making a comparison between their structur
es and of the armed forces
, made by the FARC members in International Commission of the FARC EP/Colombia :
"FARC EP
are a belligerent force"
The social consequences of the progress of the cultivation of coca were not
despicable. The basic point of departure is that the coca created a "peasantry i
llicit"53 which by definition
had no possibility of processing legally their demands on the state. The outlawi
ng
of broad sectors of society, as well as whole territories, gender complex
social dynamics54 and institucionales55, which blocked the circuit of informatio
n and
goods between the central state and those regions and social sectors, and deepen
ed the locks
already dramatic representation --as I explained in the section 2-- that suffere
d from the
peasants.
No less important, the coca economy had great consequences of war.
The FARC took the decision to be linked to it at the end of the decade of 197056
. This
with the time would give it access to enormous resources to develop the highly
militaristic model on which it built this Organization, especially from its 7th
Congress in 1982. The FARC wanted to build as a ejercito57, and this had not bee
n
https://www.google.com.co/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=
8&ved=0CCY
QFjAC&url=http% 3A% 2F%2Fwww.abpnoticias.com%2Fboletin_temporal%2Fcontenido%2Fli
bros%2Fbeli
gerancia_FARCEP.
doc&ei=ZWBuVNlewqSDBJrhgdgG&usg=AFQjCNGv5UwhfSVhtTNav2jEic9OnNKZKg&sig2 = 9CFC
XUBfo3eICIywRiZrQ&BVM=bv.80185997,d.exy, consulted on 19 November 2014. The nonstate armed groups
can be classified in a continuum between army and network, and the FARC are loca
ted at the left end of
this spectrum. See Francisco Gutierrez and Antonio Giustozzi (2010): Networks and
hangout: Structuring rebellion in Colombia and Afghanistan , Studies in conflict a
nd terrorism vol. 33 Do not. 9
2010 Pp. 815-835. For a comparison between the FARC and other armed groups in Co
lombia's conflict,
see Francisco Gutiérrez, 2008: telling the difference: guerrillas and paramilitarie
s in the Colombian war ,
politics and society vol. 36 Did not. 1, pp. 3-34
58 cited in: Report submitted by the social foundation to the inter-american comm
ission on human rights
in its 100th regular session , available at:
http://www.google.com.co/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBsQFjAA&
url=http%3
A% 2F%2Fwww.proyectossocialesdirectos.org%2Findex.php%2Fes%2Fpublicaciones%2Fcat
egory%2F7construction-of-the-peace% 3Fdownload% 3D25 % 3Aalgo-todaviaocurrira&
ei=s55vVPGSL8qVNsiCgNAB&usg=AFQjCNFmruXNV2EMAGt967X4cEPToNoR0w&sig2 =GV
8on3E2VAoCl0aOiFXSFQ, September 1998. Apparently, the figure does not discrimina
te by organization.
59 See below.
60 Mario Aguilera
Random House
Publishing Group,
sciplinary regime
. No. 78, 2013 cp
Penalty, counterpower, justice guerrilla, Bogotá: IEPRI-Penguin
2014; Mario Aguilera Sentence " Keys and distortions of the di
guerrilla", Political Analysis
45/62
been able to achieve without access to major funding sources. The phenomenon is,
by its very nature
, difficult to estimate. In accordance with the Inter-agency Committee on combat
ing
the finances of the subversion, in 1994 the guerrillas were receiving 219 billio
n pesos for
drug trafficking, and 685 in 199658. Such estimates should be taken with a lot m
ore than a
grain of salt, but the orders of magnitude are basically those. There is a
discussion on the modalities of insertion of the FARC in the coca economy,
but regardless of its outcome we know that he had a triple effect in the develop
ment of the
militaristic model adopted by the FARC and that explains a good part of its abil
ity to
supervivencia59. First and foremost, gave him enormous resources to weapons, ran
ch, logistics and
process of expansion. To the extent that the fronts and blocks transferred finan
cial contributions to the
secretariat, the monies of the coca served relatively evenly
to this escalation of the organization. Immediately, allowed him to become the
regulatory authority of economies for which by definition could not operate the
state.
Therefore, the FARC could act as a local authority, in some cases
regional, which provided various forms of order and rudimentary forms of justici
a60.
In the end, both the enormous income as the regulatory role allowed him to the F
ARC
increase their recruitment capability, a critical variable to which I shall retu
rn below.
3.2.2 PATTERNS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST civilians, the
phase of transit to the civil war itself was characterized by a sharp increase i
n the
kidnapping. The most important database of abduction, the figures and
Conceptos61, contains information about the social characteristics of the victim
s.
According to her, abductions attributed to the FARC 51% were against state offic
ials
, 39% against people who were in the agricultural sector, and 33% against
people who were in the comercio62. Similarly, both preliminary quantitative evid
ence63
as qualitative evidence strongly suggest that among the main victims of the
increase in activity abductor were farmers, some other
rural economic elites, officials, and politicians of the regions. Given the plac
e of the white man in the
world of production and the policy, it is not surprising that the abduction issu
e has been
politicized in the act, mobilizing guilds of the production, spokespersons for t
he
security agencies, and representatives of the parties, about proposals such as t
he death penalty
for kidnappers.
61 CNMH. A truth kidnapped: forty years of abduction statistics 1970-2010. Bogot
a: Imprimerie Nationale
, 20 June 2013. Investigation by figures and concepts: Cesar Caballero. Accordin
g to this research
, were abducted at least once 39058 people between 1970 and 2010
62 These variables have a lot more than 50% of missing data, so the figures ment
ioned here should be treated
purely indicative.
63 I think that these and many other figures contain substantive underestimates.
CNMH 64: a society kidnapped. Bogota: National Printing Press, 2013. Investigati
on by figures and
concepts: Cesar Caballero
65 This is a version that wield with any frequency different people, among other
the paramilitaries
themselves.
The increase in the industry call the kidnapping64 gave him a character
extremely ruthless to the armed conflict, by linking the general reasons for the
insurgency with the heritage and personal safety of those involved. The
threat of abduction catapulted him into a set of proclivities already pre-existi
ng in a specific sector of the
rural elites, which resulted in a homicidal violence crystallised in
the paramilitarism. Of course, it is not certain the version according to which
the paramilitary violence
outside only defensive, or oriented toward only against the
secuestradores65. All the evidences are going in the opposite direction. What ha
ppened was
roughly as follows. Some sectors of the rural elites acted on
economies highly coercive66and given the characteristics of their production wer
e
exposed to attacks against their property67 and properties. In addition, did not
have access to many
public goods, given the specific features of the nature of the occupation of the
territory by the
Colombian state. Elites were vulnerables68. Had to change the proclivities,
traditions and resources to respond to the challenges faced by way of an
extremely violent and punitive. As soon as they are presented the stimulus "adeq
uate", came
the reply that it was to be expected; and directed not only against the guerrill
as, but
against a whole amount of targets including the legal left, social leaders and
human rights defenders, to leaders of the traditional parties who did not accept
the
drift punitive, but also to victims of their violence oportunista69.
66 Barrington Moore Jr, social origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and p
easant in the making of
the Modern World, Beacon Press, 1993; Jeffrey Paige, Agrarian Revolution. Social
Movements and Export
Agriculture in the underdeveloped world, New York: The Free Press, 1975
67 Think of mobile assets, which can therefore be stolen, destroyed, etc.
68 Gutiérrez, Op. Cit. , 2014.
69 Already spearheading a coercive apparatus these leaders could promote or allo
w the sexual violence, the
theft of land, etc.
3.2.3 PERFORMACE OF THE PRIVATE COERCIÓN/SECURITY Colombia has
a long tradition in terms of private provision of coercion/security.
The subnational policemen who served until 1962 expressed persistently
private interests, both political (partisan and heavy factional fighting) as wel
l as economic, and were
one of the protagonists of the violence. The paramilitaries of the period [again
st]insurgent
has, in connection with that experience, of both continuity and change. It was -as
that--a phenomenon anchored in demands of local and regional, but enabled
nationally. Obvious examples of local and regional demand: the founders and lead
ers
of the paramilitary units were especially vulnerable to the elites that I talked
about
above. Enabled nationally: throughout its bloody saga, the
Colombian paramilitarism was totally illegal only during a period of up to eight
years. Until 1989 was covered by the set of instruments that allowed the creatio
n
of legal self-defense forces, and from 1994 until 1999 by the security operative
s
known to the public under the name of CONVIVIR.
3.2.4 Convergences: THE PARAMILITARY PHENOMENON
growth of paramilitary support in four large players. In the first place, the in
subordination of
rural elites legal --for example landowners ranchers--, who acted
in a position of hostility and helplessness and
custom faced threats from armed conflict. Secondly, the insubordination of
illegal elites, particularly but not only the narcotraficantes70. In a similar m
anner to
the laws, but for very different reasons, the elites could not access illegal, a
t least
in theory, to the systematic protection which required the State. It should be r
emembered that Colombia was
formally in a global war against the narco. Naturally, this influenced
, or captured, various sectors of the political system as well as state agencies
,
but that is another problem. The issue of background here is the ability of a so
cial actor to require
the state provision of security in an open, legal and stable; and the narcos
by definition could not do so. Therefore, the accrued through the market of prot
ection or
privados71 agents. Thirdly, large sectors of the political system
promoted the paramilitarism, for ideological reasons, in order to expel the guer
rillas to
protect personally, to be linked with initiatives of national agencies, or
simply to harass their rivals within the system. The majority of the agents invo
lved in
this kind of process seems to have acted from a combination of the above
motivos72.
70 See cases like Victor Carranza http://www.verdadabierta.com/component/content
/article/36heads/note 4524-victor-Carranza-pattern-that-never-touched-the-justice and http:
//www.verdadabierta.com/lasvictimas/
3906, consulted on November 19 of 2014.
71 In both cases, there was an overlap with state agents.
72 For a good example of this, see Francisco Leal and Andres Davila, patronage:
the political system and its
regional expression, Bogotá: Third World Editors-IEPRI,1990
The common feature of all three previous forms of agency is that are
solidly rooted in the world of the local. But they were national entities of the
State that
provided both the vertebral column as the ideology to the entire experiencia73.
Paramilitarism
was not a phenomenon that simply "le step the country". But neither was it
a result arranged via some kind of master plan where they will participate in
all the elites or the "system". It was the product of dynamic and
political traditions of the staff, who made that centrist coalitions at the nati
onal level to permit or encourage
the designs that enabled the interaction between local actors violent and nation
al agencies
. For example, although the demands by the creation of a figure similar to what
the dessert were the Convivir came from extremists in the regions, the world of
the
large livestock and security circles, its adoption at the national level corresp
onded to
political forces that perfectly conventional, in moments of acute political comp
etition
, chose to adopt it as a strategy of supervivencia74.
73 AND in many cases also documented the organizational initiative, giving stren
gth to resentments and
scattered forces.
74 For details, Op cit. , Gutierrez, 2014, the orang utan with sacoleva.
75 Mauricio Romero, and paramilitary Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia 1982-2003,
Bogotá: Editorial Planet Colombia, 2003
already 76 There are many evidences of this, from both the judicial sector and t
he academic world.
See for example Aldo Civico, not to disclose until the persons concerned are dea
d. The wars of Doblecero,
Bogotá: Intermediate Publishers, 2009; also William Ramirez Tobon, Uraba, the unce
rtain confines of a
crisis, Bogotá: Planet, 1997
In particular, the state security agencies were articulated increasingly to the
action of the
paramilitaries, creating in many regions of cooperation relations increasingly d
ense
, that had elements of both inertia and active promotion by
important actors. As has been demonstrated Romero75, orientation strategically
insurgency leaders of sectors in the public force married very well with the dem
ands of
security of various local and rural elites. But this was given in a context
in which it --the public force -- was under a system of checks and balances that
was
spreading and, that, of course, made a qualitative leap with the Constitution of
1991.
The solution to the dilemma was the development of a coercive apparatus that was
private to its expansion
with a de facto complicity for years, and that in several regions are expressed
in terms of coordinated action more or less explicit and permanente76. Of course
,
this only could occur in the hand of a weakening, or of adulteration, democratic
mechanisms of
control of the public forces of the civiles77.
77 AND led to a steady flow of institutional initiatives geared toward weakening
the
civil system of controls. See for example Francisco Leal Buitrago, the national
security to the drift.
The National Front, on a cold-war era", Bogota, Uniandes Editions, 2002.
78 For the evidence and the underlying reasons, see Gutiérrez 2014, chapter 4
79 See, Juan David Velasco, parapolitics revised: coalitions of class, weapons a
nd business in the Colombian province
(2002
2006). Thesis for the Master's Degree in Political Studies at the Institu
te of
Political Studies and International Relations IEPRI - Universidad Nacional de Co
lombia, 2014
80 Leah Carroll, Violent Democratization: Social Movements, elites, and Politics
in rural Colombia s War
Zones, 1984-2008. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011
Saying this does not mean take the thesis completely unsustainable according to
which
all the decision-makers state, members of the security agencies,
political or operators have buoyed the paramilitarism. No one can deny that the
relationship between the state
, the political and paramilitary activity has been compleja78. Several political
leaders, national
and regional, opposed, or at least tacitly resisted, penetration and influence
paramilitar79. Vast sections of the judicial system, even in the moments of grea
test
influence and power of paramilitarism, fought. Thousands of
soldiers, policemen and officers continued to be adhere to basic rules of legali
ty and honor.
It is not true either that the paramilitaries has captured the whole of a comple
x state
that substantially increased its capacity to develop public policies, which
in the 1990s grew steadily, and that with the 1991 Constitution provided for
instruments to combat illegal agents and to resist penetration. Nor is it holds
the idea that
the state has managed paramilitary activity in the whole of the puppeteer to the
Guignol. But the paramilitary activity if he could act during its existence as a
strategic ally of the
state, on the basis of designs, corporate policies and strategies that they enab
led.
This has allowed for the mass deployment of various forms of private use of viol
ence proestatal.
Such confluence between national and local interests in the development of param
ilitary activity
led to the mass destruction of human lives and properties.
The tragic annihilation of the Patriotic Union80 cannot be explained without und
erstanding it. But she
also had several additional effects very important and that have not been highli
ghted
as deserved, if one wants to understand properly the persistence of our conflict
.
By their very complexity, the forms of punitive action and violent lined up
around the paramilitarism expressed very unstable coalitions. Very soon, so they
began to
fight among themselves. See, for example, the Table 1, where it lists
some of the major clashes inter-paramilitaries. Even more, although a few
paramilitary units embraced81 the project to build a private army
antisubversivo, with levels of discipline and formalization of the chain of comm
and
relatively altos82, in most cases formed flat structures and lax,
with low division of labor, in which the deployment of everyday violence opportu
nist -from the theft of land until the sexual attacks--were more the norm than the exc
eption.
In addition to batter the population, the very frequent violence opportunistic -that is to say, not
ordered by the organization but advanced to fill individual goals of its members
83 serious gender problems of collective action between the paramilitaries and t
heir
political supporters and/or social.
81 In general without success, given the social characteristics of these busines
ses.
82 A good example of this is found in civic, op. cit. , 2009
83 Elisabeth Jean Wood, "Variation of sexual violence during war", Politics & So
ciety vol. 34 Do not. 3, 2006, pp.
307-341.
84 War between paramilitary groups for the Tolima , Portal VerdadAbierta, http://ww
w.verdadabierta.com/justiciaypeace/accusations/ 555-block-Tolima/ 5193-war-between-paramilitary-by-the-Tolima
, consulted on 24 November
2014
TABLE 1 - EXAMPLES OF CONFRONTATIONS INTER-PARAMILITARY
YEARS
WHERE?
WHO COMPETE?
BASIC CHARACTERISTICS
between
19992001
North Tolima
in front of Omar Isaza of the Autodefensas Unidas de
Magdalena Medio
(ACMM) Group of Ramon
Isaza, against the block Tolima
(AUC)84
competition by territorial dominion
19992002
Magdalena
Hernan Giraldo Vs, The Clan of
the Rojas- Carlos Castaño and Jorge 40
85
Control of the Sierra Nevada,
drug trafficking routes,
relationship with agencies of
national and international security
20022004
Valle de Aburrá
Don Berna Office of Envigado Cacique Nutibara Bloc and Double Zero
, Metro Block86
Control of municipalities in Antioquia
, and communes of
Medellin, presence of the narcos
in the paramilitary coalition
20032004
Eastern Plains
Miguel Arroyabe
Llanos 87
and
Martin
territorial dominion and
competition for resources
19922004
Magdalena Medio
El Aguila And Sain Sotelo88
dispute by the command of the
Cundinamarca Block
85 Ariel Ávila, Hot border between Colombia and Venezuela. Bogota: Debate-Fundacio
n Rainbow. 2012;
Also, battles of Hernán Giraldo, and how it ended subjected to Jorge 40
, Portal Verd
adAbierta,
http://www.verdadabierta.com/la-historia/244-la-historia/auc/2803-las-batallas-d
e-hernan-giraldo-y-comotermino-
subject-to-Jorge-40, viewed 20 November 2014
86 Civic, op. cit. , 2009
87 so was the war between Martin and Miguel Llanos Arroyave . Portal VerdadAbierta
,
http://www.verdadabierta.com/component/content/article/2052 , consulted November
20 2014
88 Judgment against Luis Eduardo Cifuentes, alias El Aguila
and others. Superior
Court of Bogotá, Hall of Justice
and Peace.
http://www.profis.com.co/anexos/documentos/JusticiayPaz/jurisprudencia/SaladeJus
ticiaPaz/2014.09.01%20
Judgment% 20Luis% 20Eduardo% 20Cifuentes% 20and% 20other% 20 % 28Block% 20Cundin
amarca%29.pdf, accessed
20 november 2014
3.2.5 POLITICAL SYSTEM
with the full development of the centrifugal tendencies, mainly affecting the ma
in
advantage of the system, the liberal, the center of the political action moved t
o the municipalities.
This was more or less in parallel to a municipal decentralization, which increas
e the
efficiency, legitimacy and capabilities of the municipalities that had with tech
nocracy, development and
public opinion, but that instead presented to territorial units more
weak and located in the periphery to a number of risks and dangers. To have own
resources
and higher margins of decision, the mayors became booties appetizing. Various
primero89 guerrillas and the paramilitaries after, poured its action on the cont
rol of the
municipalities. The most dramatic result of this was the murder of an entire amo
unt
of the burgomaster, councillors and members of parliament, accused of serving th
e enemy or to oppose the
construction project of the illegal territorial shift.
89 See for example the statements on the "withholding" of mayors and their objec
tives in: Marta Haernecker,
ELN. Drive that multiplies, 1988., available at: http://www.rebelion.org/docs/90
192.pdf
90 still do not know the reasons behind this differential behavior. An interesti
ng hypothesis is in
op. cit, Velasco, 2014.
91 Op. cit. , Gutierrez, 2007
92 I Do Not Know some work to make a systematic evaluation and general of the mu
tual relations between
armed and electoral dynamics. A first interesting approach is located in Miguel
Garcia and Gary
Hoskin, political participation and war in Colombia. An analysis of the 2002 ele
ctions, Crisis States Program
, Working Paper No. 38, 2003, available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/28229/1/wp3
8.pdf.
But the capture of the village was not only through the force. Many of the
local political actors served as a good degree, and not by any threat, the
dominant actor illegal. Once again, we find numerous examples of opposition,
active or passive, to this, paying enormous costs (that were from the tranquilit
y staff
until the life)90. For these reasons and others, the relationships between polit
ical and non-state armed groups
also became extremely complex. In some cases, politicians
used the armed actor to brutalize and restrict --sometimes delete of all--to his
opponent
or faccional partisan. In others, they formed complex networks but fragile
political-armed, which the unravel produced hatchings of violence. As such netwo
rks
had electoral support, came to swell the capital of the national parties, given
the logic of
capturing the vote feature colombiano91 political system. In some regions of the
country, this and the actors in the conflict were articulated through very dense
networks
of interaction. Perhaps the best example of this is the paramilitaries of the At
lantic coast.
Something similar --but much more unstable and more limited -- is seen in the so
uthern part of the country, with
the guerrillas. This is not to say that the elections have become a simple funct
ion of
the armed struggle. Certainly, that kind of direct relationship is observed in s
ome
tragic cases. But in many others gave the opposite: the people voted against the
dominant armed group in the region92. If you want to say, however, that policy,
violence and
assignment of property rights returned to take part of a single complex.
In other words, one of the fundamental promises of the Constitution of 1991 -ensure that the policy as a whole re-fit inside the legality -- were never able
to
put into practice. And what name in the section on the origins "the atomic bomb"
of Colombia's institutions are active in a striking way, generating the same
class of structures and balances that had done formerly. In many regions, actors
with simultaneous access to specialists in violence, sophisticated lawyers and n
otaries,
acquired preponderance, and managed to build territorial domains that during som
e time
guaranteed them the impunity. It is no coincidence that the dynamics of disposse
ssion have had
massive impacts that are on the north coast and in the Urabá region, where the par
amilitaries, along
with rural elites and politicians who were part of the coalition,
corresponded to this profile basico93. In terms of persistence, this means that
the war was
creating --track violence opportunist -- incentives for its own perpetuation.
See for example 93 Center of Historical Memory, justice and peace. Land and terr
itories in the versions of the
paramilitaries, Bogotá, Imprimerie Nationale, 2012
94 See for example Center of Historical Memory, our life has been our struggle.
Resistance and memory
in the indigenous Cauca, Bogotá, Imprimerie Nationale, 2012
3.3 INTERACTIONS, BALANCES AND contexts in
the previous subsections present the "staging": the constituent elements
that help to explain the persistence of the Colombian conflict. Now step to the
dynamics,
i.e. to the interaction between them and their consequences. The articulation of
the FARC with
the drug economy and its promotion of the industry of kidnapping for ransom allo
wed him to
finance a highly militaristic model of occupation of the territory, through
ideological distinctly separate units of the population, disciplined, and with a
firm and clear chain of command. The other side of the coin of the model was the
growing
disjunction between the military effectiveness and legitimacy, which was already
evident in the early 1990s
in all the opinion polls, but that in the new century has acquired the character
istics of
a political catastrophe. Once more, the militaristic orientation cost
tears of blood to broad sectors of the civilian population: social organizations
too autonomas94, religious sectors, to forms of political agency which in its
time will be uncomfortable. A look at the data about local politicians
murdered by the FARC, or to the massacres and/or abductions by that organizacion
95.
Obviously, these attacks on various sectors of the population could justify
from a violent speech and authoritarian, which often led to a double victimizati
on
(the de facto, followed by a discursive disqualification). But the turning poin
t in terms of
persistence was that such gender organizational solution at the same time the ab
ility to survive
, and the need --track military actions of territorial control--to carry out
actions that brutally victimized to the population and produced rejection and ha
tred between
broad sectors of it.
95 See for example the report of the National Center of Historical Memory, "Enou
gh is Enough!: memories of war and
dignity, Bogotá: Imprimerie Nationale, 2013
96 See for example Steven Dudley, weapons and polls: history of a political geno
cide, Bogotá: Planet, 2008
97 The other guerrillas could also be extremely violent, and be inspired by a mo
re
authoritarian model. But its ability to fire and operational, as well as their d
iscipline, were much lower than those of the FARC
.
Another indirect consequence of the manner in which the models of subarctic
war in Colombia was the destruction of the partisan political tissue associated
with the FARC.
In its origins, the FARC appeared as part of the communist family pro-soviet.
The precise form of such a partnership has generated some debate, but this is no
t important
for this exposure. What matters is that in the various strands of
marxist orthodoxy guerrilla warfare was an instrument of the party. The homicida
l destruction of
the political and social organizations of the communist family --including those
which
resulted from peace agreements-- was autonomizando to the FARC turning them into
a
political apparatus-self-contained and subtracting military authority to the mil
itants in that (the
family) who remained in the legalidad96, reinforcing the logical militarists
had well unrestricted development since the 1990s.
With the advance of the paramilitary movement, the pure and harsh rules of the w
ar tended to favor
the FARC over the other guerrillas, and therefore prize within
the challenges to the state to militarista97 model. Paramilitarism was a form of
private violence and punitive that was "take away the water from the fish". Thi
s strategy was a severe blow to
various guerrillas who had opted for other deployment models in the
territory. Although the FARC were also beaten, PDP. and could survive
much better on the offensive paramilitar98. Is that the FARC were not a "fish",
and therefore
they could survive with very little water. With this I do not imply in the least
that the FARC has not had significant social bases. Despite its extreme isolatio
n
in the polls, in the cultivation world local networks and various forms of
participation. What I mean is that their relationship with such media was mediat
ed by
the authority and strength. In the logic raised by Weinstein99, the group had ac
cess to
so many financial and military resources that did not depend on, in the apparatu
s, of large
civil media. Therefore, the "option "paramilitary" term by selecting to turn
a guerrilla development that took the form-army, making it increasingly
apparatus in a significant and highly structured, with its own ideology and a de
nse internal culture
, but with growing links with the weak logical from the outside world.
98 Would come to be beaten after, but by the action of the public force, after w
hich it will pass by a significant
strengthening and technological escalation. But the FARC grew steadily
until at least 1999-2000.
99 Valid within certain limits. Jeremy Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics
of insurgent violence,
Cambridge University Press, 2006.
100 Except in special operations. For a systematic description of the full pictu
re and the analysis of their implications
, see Gutiérrez , telling the difference op. cit.
101 Maria Eugenia Pinto Borrego, Andres Vergara Ballen, Yilberto The Huerta Perc
ipiano, Diagnosis of the reintegration program
in Colombia: mechanisms for encouraging the voluntary individual reintegration,
files of macroeconomics,National Planning Department 211, 2002.
102 See: José Fernando Isaza and Diogenes Fields, "dynamic models of war: the Colo
mbian conflict", Magazine of
the Colombian Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences. 29 (2005), 133-14
8. As
notice Isaza and fields, this result holds even if is deducted by the severe pol
lution that
Something similar can be seen with respect to the dynamics of the recruitment by
the FARC. These have some organizational features that make it
extraordinarily demanding: militancy for life, daily activity highly structured
, non-payment of their miembros100, etc. . In addition, they have traditionally
been the
most irregular force that has fought in the conflict colombiano101. Well, lose m
embers
regularly by death, abandonment, or capture. If one incorporates the theme of th
e rotation of
staff observable in the FARC can understand the magnitude of the social problem
on which
has been developed the Colombian war. This guerrilla group had over the years a
very significant number of dropouts, catches and low. Therefore, the reader shou
ld keep in mind
the following simple but fundamental fact: with these rates of rotation, the FAR
C
had not had the slightest ability to survive if they had not had simultaneously
a very high ability to reclutamiento102. This, of course, they could also have
the official figures, for example, including numerous instances of "false positi
ves", etc. , the reader
should note that, as well as there are sources of over-estimation of the amount
of staff turnover, there are other of
underestimation (for example, people who leave the organization but aren't repor
ted to a state agency
, abandonment by wounds, etc. ).
103 Beginning with the pioneering work of Alejandro Reyes, the purchase of land
by drug traffickers, illicit drugs
in Colombia. Bogota, Ministry of Justice-UNDP-planet, 1997
depends on the militaristic model adopted by the FARC -- that means developing s
kills related to
high levels of division of labor, such as organization and method--, but
such characteristics would not have been able to operate if the Colombian countr
yside had not lived through
a deep crisis and a terrible destruction of its social fabric during the period
of the
war. The brutal concentration of ownership of dynamic product of massive
displacement and dispossession, the institutional fractures in those regions wit
h large illicit crops
, the lack of an institutional order minimum for the field, they allowed her to
produce the proverbial breeding ground favorable for recruitment.
The poor distribution and assignment of property rights on the land
also was, in fact, at the center of the perpetuation of the conflict. As they ad
vanced
, it generated three phenomena. In the first place, the illegal investment in la
nd. By its
very nature is difficult to quantify, but it is not credible that has been margi
nal.
All the systematic qualitative description that we have at hand suggests that it
was of great
magnitud103. The reasons are simple. The conflict decreased the price of land in
many regions
. The state has lacked instruments to observe the earth, and the property taxes
until well into the 1990s was extremely low, even by Latin American standards
. Not to mention the weakness of the cadastre. All these factors
have made the earth an ideal investment for the illegal money. A inexpensive lan
d
, which was paid very little in taxes, and that was beyond the weak observation
instruments
with the available to the state, was an ideal way to launder money.
Illegal buyers that lacked open access to the security of the state had to resor
t to
various forms of private protection, and therefore were articulated in a natural
way
to territorial the logic of the armed actors. The fact that the paramilitaries
outside a private network of local actors with a long-standing tradition of
land grabbing, and that your little cohesion, weak chain of command and
punitive orientation you accommodate massive forms of violence, opportunist made
the dispossession became
an offense in large-scale in Colombia104. Symptomatically, we also
proper quantification of the phenomenon, but it is likely that this
severely underestimated. The punitive violence of paramilitarism not only genera
ted a
massive accumulation of the earth--generally, although not always,
opportunistic violence--, but that resulted in the mass destruction of the
agricultural social organizations --violence strategic, but articulated by the l
ogic of parochial rural elites--,
deepening the maximum representation of the locks of the peasants and the state
s isolation
in the field. Symptomatically, when some decision-makers
and technocrats played with the idea of importing to Colombia the model of the
peruvian rondas campesinas, ended up driving the Convivir, with its implications
of
privatization without control of the coercion, illegality, homicidal violence an
d articulation with the
narcotrafico105. Already at this time, the state simply did not have many legal
agents
with which interact in the field.
104 Not all wars generate the same patterns of violence against civilians. Elisa
beth Jean Wood,
Armed Groups and Sexual Violence: When Is Wartime Monkfish Rare? politics and soci
ety 37, no.
1 (March 2009): 131 61. In Latin America it appears that there are few conflicts
with a magnitude of dispossession
that is approaching so far in the Colombian. Gutierrez (accepted for publication
in Political Analysis
): organizational structure of the paramilitaries and property rights in the fie
ld (1982-2007)
105 examples of the original terms of the debate are set out in the time, securit
y operatives in
black and white , published on 11 December 1994, available at:
http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/MAM-262391, consulted November 15 2014
do not propose here, of course, a hagiography of the rondas campesinas. There is
an extensive literature on
their negative consequences. Simply found that constituted a form of action enti
rely distinct from the
that we see here. On the rounds, see Orin Starn, Reflections on rondas campesina
s,
rural protest and new social movements. Lima: IEP, 1991; Carlos Degregori, José Co
ronel, Ponciano del Pino and
Orin Starn, the rondas campesinas and the defeat of Sendero Luminoso, Lima: IEP/National University of
San Cristobal de Huamanga, 1996
106 Rincon John Jairo Garcia, "What about
paramilitaries on earth-territory and the
for repair of victims in the framework of
bia (2007- 2009
) ". Revista Colombiana of Sociology, 33
the earth where this? Versions of the
delivery of goods
the Justice and Peace Process in Colom
(1), (2010) 125-174
107 An evaluation of these uses can be found at: Francisco Gutierrez, "Property,
security, and dispossession. The
case of paramilitary""Magazine Socio-Jur remedies Studies 16 (1) (2014) pp. 43-7
4.
Secondly, the great agrarian property became a military resource
clave106. She, for example, he had a great centrality in the endeavors paramilit
aries
of the decades of 1980, 1990 and 2000; invest in land often was the step prior t
o the
installation in a territory. The land served as caleta for weapons, illegal coca
and tracks.
Was formed in place of training, center of torture and comun107 fossa. It was a
point of
convergence for the political power, and in particular for the development of al
liances, treaties were signed
, meeting place semi-legal, etc. ; thus returned the scenario in which the actor
was linked to armed parties, elected officials and various state bureaucracies.
Thirdly, became to be a focal point for continued disputes and reconfigurations
of the
local power. To those who criticize prophylactically the institutional arrangeme
nts that can
leave the peace agreement we must remind that it is difficult to imagine a more
antipropiedad design
that which has been introduced to the rural land in Colombia. Access to land can
be obtained through mechanisms universalist, as the market or rules of the game
established publicly by the state. But the allocation can be reached also by mea
ns of
particularist mechanisms. The inherently unstable nature, pro-violence and quote
unquote
from the latter is widely established in the literatura108. To the extent that i
t
could acquire land by means of a combination of networks of friends, political i
nfluences
, sophisticated teams of lawyers and coercion --the weight of each component
varied depending on the time and the region--all of these actors were exposed to
various forms of expropriation.
108 Douglass North, John Joseph Wallis, Barry Weingast, violence and social orde
rs. A conceptual framework
for interpreting recorded human history, Cambridge University Press. 2009. Also:
Yoram Amnon Barzel,
Economic analysis of property rights, Cambridge University Press. 1997. For the
specific issue of property rights on
the ground in developing countries: Daniel Fitzpatrick, 'Evolution and chaos in
Property Rights Systems:
The Third World Tragedy of contested Access", the Yale Law Journal. 115 Pp. 9461046 2006 for a
study of relevant case, Stephen Haber, Noel Maurer, Armando Razo, The politics o
f property rights,
Cambridge University Press, 2003.
109 See Rodrigo Garcia alias Double Zero, http://doblecero.blogspirit.com/archiv
e/2006/06/index.html,
consulted on 16 June 2014. This is the description of a terrible murderer, privi
leged observer and in the long run
victim of these dynamics, Double Zero, on the way in which their colleagues dist
ributed the territorial power
. It is the own Double Zero who offers the characterization of "feudal".
And this brings me to a final comment. All these forms of violence were
permeated with false by very severe problems of collective action and
territorial fractures. They were supported in fragile coalitions in which agents
interacted
legal and illegal, with interests that often conflictual and wearing to continue
d clashes,
some of which, as I pointed out above, tomboy in armed conflict
. The paramilitaries served to many actors --in technical jargon, were the agent
s of
different main--whose interests were not always compatible. The territorial coor
dination for
the actors involved in the violence pro-state was extremely difficult,
among other things by their weakness and the organizational way "feudal" --that
married very well
with the economies on the acting-- in that distributed the territorio109. Conseq
uently, that
--the private violence pro-state--suffered endemically of co-ordination problems
, fragility of the coalitions, principal-agent, and
vertical integration, which made it to the time extremely murderer and
extremely inefficient. To clear any ambiguity that we want to create,
rejection without loopholes any repression murderer, disproportionate and illega
l, is effective or not
. But anarchy generated by the paramilitary groups and the massive privatization
of the use of force
is a key variable in understanding the nature very prolonged of the Colombian co
nflict,
why was the demobilization of paramilitary groups, and some of the processes of
institutional reconfiguration that followed this.
3.4 SUMMARY AND OUTPUTS
as it attempts to respond to the question of why the Colombian conflict has been
so long,
highlight five fundamental factors: drug trafficking, specific patterns of viole
nce against civilians
by the guerrillas (in particular the abduction), the massive development
of private forms of security provision related to a certain type of elites, the
articulation of
such modalities with government bureaucracies (especially but not
only armed), and the outlawing of the political system in the course of armed co
nflict
. After I discussed some of the main ways in which interacted,
showing how generated stable emergent properties that overlapped with the
reasons originating in and became additional factors favorable to the persistenc
e.
Note that this step helps to explain two key aspects of the Colombian conflict.
First of all, the fact that he was able to develop without resorting to a brutal
and authoritarian centralization of power (what happened was quite the opposite)
. The Colombian war was not associated with
the closure, but to clashes between the elites110 endemic. And
second, that the regional variation of conflict in all its expressions has been
so
brusca111: it was by design because the violent action was conceived, constructe
d and
110 See Philip Mauceri, "State, elites and counterinsurgency: a preliminary comp
arison between Colombia and
Peru", Colombia not International. 52 (2001) pp. 46-64. In that sense, there is
perhaps inaccurate draw a
contrast between the net too much violence and war (against)insurgent.
111 For a thorough analysis of the specificities of our regional context, see Teóf
ilo Vasquez,
Andres Vargas, Jorge A. Restrepo (editors), an old war in a new context. Conflic
t and territory in the south
of Colombia, Bogotá: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2011. For an anal
ysis of the differences
inter- and intra-group of patterns of violence against civilians, see Francisco
Gutierrez and Elizabeth
Wood, The Puzzle of Patchy Convergence: Violence in Colombia's Civil War,
presented at the Conference on Paramilitaries, AUC, and Civil Defense Forces in
civil wars, Yale University
, October 19th, 2013.
112 These serious problems of integration of coalitions will reveal in the publi
c and private statement
late of Carlos Castaño: "Drug trafficking we divided and sank ". Cited in Javier M
ontañez,
Julian Bolivar, Paul Sevillano, Ernesto Baez, social and political thought of th
e Bolivar Central Block
developed from the interaction between a set of local actors and national agenci
es
.
The result in terms of human costs is devastating. As has been pointed out
several observers, the democratic Colombia experienced a human tragedy that can
only be
equated in its dimensions to the terrorist of the dictatorships in the style of
Argentina or Guatemalan. I hope that while I am well aware of the underlying log
ical to the phenomenon,
the reader will not stop surprising to remember that this was in parallel with a
vigorous
democratic opening in 1991 --imperfect, as are all, but no less
genuine--, a modest economic growth but continuous, growth of the
state, and the modernization of many of their agencies. As well as large demogra
phic and social changes
, starting with the accelerated urbanization --and tragic, in the extent to whic
h
was catalyzed by a aggression al rojo vivo directed especially against the
peasants, indigenous and afro--.
And precisely all this led to the routes that have been allowed to a
credible peace process. The massive privatization of the use of force has disrup
ted the state
in many fundamental ways. Launched contradiction their forms of occupation of th
e
territory --supported insurgency in coalitions that tended to include drug deale
rs and other
illegal actors-- with its international legitimacy, which required dissociated f
rom the narcos:
i.e. dislocated the two basic dimensions of sovereignty. Also undermined the int
ernational legitimacy of the
country through the generation of unsustainable levels of violence.
Building the outlawing of the political system. By the problems generated in ter
ms of
coalitions, collective action, principal-agent and vertical integration, also op
ened
windows of opportunity to challenges that were able to develop organizational fo
rms
systematic and efficient. All of the above explains in large part by the demobil
ization
paramilitar112, and twice attempted to modernize the state and demarcation of th
e
AUC, Santa Fe de Ralito: 2005. Obviously, the coexistence of chestnut with drug
trafficking came from long-standing
, as in other part sibilinamente suggest the authors of the printed above.
113 Among other things because the irregular force did not have the slightest op
portunity to climb technologically its
activity at the same step that the state.
114 Between 1958 and 2012, the conflict has caused 218,094 violent deaths, CMH,
Enough is Enough!, 2012 Op. Cit
private provision of security that occurs in parallel to it. That, in principle,
was endowed with
an important positive potential. However, this attempt could not succeed
as long as it was associated with a political project with strong violent procli
vities
and antidemocratic, that is supported in exactly the same coalitions and in the
same
world that had generated the massive privatization of security and the proscript
ion,
equally massive, of the political system.
At the same time, the incarnation of the challenge to the rule that ended up bei
ng the illegal force that
managed to stay in better conditions and more time due to the hard laws of the
war, ran aground in a contradiction which cannot be resolved due to two factors.
On the one hand, the
militarist solution led to a catastrophic deficit, getting worse all the time, o
f legitimacy to confront
an increasingly urban population and away from the foundational reasons in which
was inspired by
this challenge. And on the other hand, given the asymmetries inherent to the irr
egular warfare, it was not easy
to face a more integrated response, less dependent on private forms of
coercion and therefore less longeth for their instability and
desorganizacion113.
All of this draws a clear path of output: an output that can be extremely benefi
cial to
the country. The simple question is whether the factors will prevail of persiste
nce,
still present, or the logic of civilization.
4 THE CONFLICT AND ITS VICTIMS
This brief section is not intended to, nor could I claim, provide a description
of the entire set of
violence suffered by the population during our war. The National Center for
Historical Memory has already done interesantes114 approximations, that are a mu
st for
any consistent progress that is made from now. Here you simply
presented some of the most eloquent data, and emphasized very
important outcomes that have escaped the attention of the majority of the commen
tators.
Tap warn, however, that the quantifications of the Colombian society
are still imperfect and are based on samples of convenience, so that
have circulated in the country many assertions that cannot be, nor should be don
e.
For example, based on samples of convenience very imperfect and with the charact
eristics of the database
with the data that we have, it is necessary to be very cautious in
making estimates on proportions attributable to different perpetradores115.
Anything you say in this section: a. This in essence based on the single registe
r of
victims (RUV), which for the majority of offenses is probably the best source in
the country
116; and b. it is marked by this spirit of caution.
115 I am preparing a report on the subject. For example, the variable
that has the Presunto_Victimizante RUV contains 1128881 homicides, of which 70.5
5 % are missing values
; 166591 disappearances, of which 80.83 % are missing values; and 6292497, of wh
ich
39.63 % are missing values (own calculations on the RUV the court September 30 2
014). Conclusion:
with the percentages of missing values, and the manner in which they are categor
ized the alleged
victimizantes, is neither wise nor correct make pronouncements on proportions of
crimes
attributable to each armed actor.
116 Not always. For example, in the case of abduction, see the work of the CNMH
on kidnapping, op. cit. .
117 Http://www.observatoriodetierras.org/
The displacement punishment to no less than 6 million people according to the RU
V (see
Table 2). However, the category of "displacement" is still very wide, and inclu
des
various forms of involvement, ranging from the economic disruption in the region
that
he lived in the shifted until the dispossession coercive, passing by intimidatio
n. With respect to
many of these categories, such as the peasants who lost their land
(nots), it is very possible that the few attempts and figures that we have are a
gross
underestimation. It is worth noting that many of the dispossessed have been revi
ctimizados
numerous times. What is probably the only poll
reported between them, in effect, high levels of fear when confronted with a pot
ential revictimizacion117. The RUV
account more than 1 million victims of lethal because of the conflict. Apparentl
y, the RUV
includes only killed civilians, so this figure you shortfall the killed in comba
t. Perhaps the person who
can be called the great "crime underground" of the Colombian conflict, the disap
pearance
forzada118, also has staggering proportions. We have already suffered more than
150 000
disappearances. Once again, i have powerful reasons to believe that this constit
utes a
severe understatement. One of the highest expressions of the degradation of the
conflict are
the misnamed "false positives", i.e. the killing of innocent villagers for submi
ssion as
members of the guerrilla movement. Often, these murders were the product of
the interaction between members of the security forces and paramilitary groups.
118 Carlos Miguel Ortiz, Rules and dimensions of the forced disappearance in Col
ombia, Bogotá: National Center for
Historical Memory, 2014, available at:
http://www.centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/descargas/informes2014/desaparicion-f
orzada/Tomo-I.pdf
119 did not include events that are so obvious dramatic underestimates, as offen
ses against sexual integrity
.
The abduction came to acquire in the context of our war, as he noticed the press
in due time, industrial dimensions (37,000 cases according to the RUV). Althoug
h the
principle mainly affected economic elites, political and other preferred targets
of
the guerrillas --which of course makes it no more excusable--, term beating many
other sectors of the population through mechanisms such as the so-called "miracu
lous catches"
. We have no reliable figure minimally on sexual violence, but
case studies and other qualitative evidence suggest that specific actors during
certain periods
and in specific regions used war as a tool, or simply
allowed to sexually attack its members to the civilian population, especially in
the context of
punitive operations.
TABLE 2 - SOME FORMS OF VICTIMIZACIÓN IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE RUV (Court September
30,
2014)
119
FACT
PEOPLE
forced disappearance
152,455
6,044,151 Displacement
murder
931,720
antipersonnel mines/unexploded ordnance/explosive device
11,777
Loss of movable or immovable property
88,567
37,464 Kidnapping
Linking Children and Adolescents
7,722
Literally millions of peasants suffered the theft and/or destruction of your bel
ongings
, their household and their animals granja120. These millions who had to leave
abruptly removed from their lands and/or people arrived to the cities to live in
areas
that lacked skills and safety nets to ensure their survival
. Many territorial units that were receiving massive it took many years to
develop policies with respect to the displaced population, or did not do so at a
ll.
Tens or hundreds of thousands of people were completely outside the
consideration of public policy, even in positive law and important (holders
with respect to restitution in the Act 1448, for example)121. By the way: the fi
gures suggest that
there was a large territorial concentration of the victimization of civilians; t
his
holds if you make the analysis year to year or for different periods, and using
different units
of analisis122. This gives the country a voice of hope, but another alarm. The h
ope
is that a good work of the agencies of the state could operate on the critical c
ases
with great effects. The alarm is that many of the horrors that occurred could ha
ve been avoided if
someone with the ability to decide had unwilling or unable to
act in time.
Some 120 of these losses are referenced in the RUPTA; see also Luis Jorge Garay
(Director) measurement and valuation
of the land and property abandoned or stripped to the displaced population
in Colombia", Bogotá: Follow-up Commission to public policy on forced displacement
, 2011,
available at: http://www.coljuristas.org/documentos/adicionales/inf_tierras_2010
-2011_01_06.pdf
121 despite advances such as for example the have included victims of the agents
of the state.
122 This is: the graphic of victimization that have the municipality as the unit
of analysis have long queues to the right
, and many values to zero. Francisco Gutierrez Sanin and Elisabeth Jean Wood, 20
14. Variation
in violence by paramilitary groups in Colombia. Paper presented at the annual mee
ting of the American
Political Science Association, Washington, D.C. , 29 August 2014
The conflict destroyed on a massive scale social fabric, positive traditions, an
d networks of trust.
To the extent that was associated with a sharp increase in the criminalization o
f
public life and the property on the land, also had a deleterious effect
on the confidence of Colombians in their fellow citizens and in institutions
.
One of the problems less analyzed our conflict is the impact that had on
the political system. Gender great tragedies and numerous distortions. Here I wi
ll confine myself to
highlight the possibly the three fundamental. First, the simple
brutal bloodletting of thousands and thousands of political leaders, civic and s
ocial. The destruction of the Patriotic Union
must be first on the list of any enumeration of damage
by this concept of rubro123. That this politicide has been able to commit to eye
s, without
major impediments to the perpetrators, interrogates so severe the existing prote
ction mechanisms
in our country to various forms of political opposition and
social activism. Something similar could be said about the thousands of deaths t
hat have124
the National Association of Peasant Farmers and other social organizations in th
e field,
the organized indigenous, afro-Colombians, and sindicatos125. There is much more
clear.
The murder of MEPS and councillors uncomfortable for the FARC, the paramilitary
forces and other guerrilla movements
, through various forms of "gun plan", has not been quantified, but
seems to have been significant. The destruction of Hope, Peace and Freedom at th
e hands of
a coalition of various guerrilla forces prominente126 is another example. Not to
mention
the hundreds, or thousands, of mayors and local authorities who have been killed
, abducted or missing,
threatened by armed actors in different directions. Think about the reader not o
nly
in the human tragedy, but in the huge potential civic, skills, abilities and
energies of participation in the public, that were abruptly mutilated
in the course of these decades.
123 Op cit Carroll 2011; Op cit, Dudley 2008
124 and continue.
125 See for example Carlos Miguel Ortiz, acknowledging the past. Build the futur
e. Report on violence against
trade unionists and unionized workers, UNDP Colombia, 2011, available at:
http://www.pnud.org.co/2012/informe_sindicalismo.pdf
126 Alvaro Villarraga Sarmiento and Nelson Places Child, to rebuild the dreams.
A history of the EPL,
Bogotá: Foundation democratic culture. 1994.
and have claimed the homeland how poli
See, for example 127 Claudia Lopez (ed. ),
tical mafia and
reconfigured the Colombian State, Bogotá: CNAI-Random House Mondadori, Bogotá, 2010;
Mauritius
Romero,2007. Parapolitics: the path of the expansion and the paramilitary politi
cal agreements
, Bogota, Corporation New Rainbow; Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson and Rafael
Santos-Villagran , the
monopoly of violence: evidence from Colombia , Working Paper, Harvard University,
2009
Secondly, the massification of the entry of illegal dynamic agents and the
political system to which I referred in section 3. The two most spectacular exam
ples of
this --and on which there is already strong in judicial decisions--are the proce
ss and the
parapolitica127 8000. But the banning of public activity goes far beyond, and in
volves
the transfer of powers to territorial coalitions that have access to the
private coercion. To the extent that the skills of our centrism is
traditionally based on the coordination of coalitions and territorial networks,
the massive entry
of illegal agents and very violent to them networks neutralized the civilising e
ffects of
that (the centrism). In third place, and in relation to the foregoing, it is de
velopment
of an interaction term between weapons and votes. There are many examples of thi
s. One of
them is the struggle for the mayors, referenced above. Parapolitics is another n
otable case
, covering different territorios128. Many disputes between different groups in t
he course of the armed conflict
will be developed through the selective assassination of political leaders
or social of a side or otro129. Sometimes, such murders were promoted by a
political faction against its competitor, but implemented by the armed group of
shift. That is to say, the armed struggle term revolve to the endemic conflicts
heavy factional fighting in Colombian Politics. All this has generated a profoun
d and persistent
distortion of the mechanisms of representation.
128 In the web page of the Electoral Observation Mission there are some excellen
t papers on
electoral risk. http://issuu.com/misionobservacionelectoralmoe
129 In fact, this also affected to religious leaders, but there is very little s
ystematic work on the subject
as to be able to include it here.
Dew 130 penalty, Monica Stop, Santiago Zuleta, agricultural rules in Colombia or
the eternal déjà vu toward concentration
and dispossession: an analysis of the legal rules on the Colombian Agro (1991-20
10) is expected ),
Revista de Estudios Socio-Jur remedies vol. 16 Do not. 1 2014, pp. 122-166
131 Francisco Gutiérrez, " Extreme inequality: A Political consideration. Rural Po
licies in Colombia, 2002- 2009
" in Morten Bergsmo, César Rodríguez-Garavito, Paul Kalmanovitz and Maria Paula Saff
on (editors),
distributive justice in transitions, FICHL, 2010, available at:
http://www.fichl.org/fileadmin/fichl/documents/FICHL_6_web.pdf, pp. 215-257
132 It should be noted that since 2010 there began a process of recovery limited
but real.
By definition, the conflict undermines the sovereignty of the state. The shatter
the
unified framework that requires any public interaction, the weakening of the sov
ereignty
generates, or reinforces, large social exclusions. In Colombia, the war deepened
the
horizontal inequality anti-peasant. The obvious example is the confluence betwee
n the security demands
of rural elites and the strategic directions of the state security forces
, which gave origin or reinforced a strategic alliance between the two parties.
Joined to this new type of legal biases that they were accumulating on
persistently excluyentes130 designs. With the serious mutilation of what remaine
d of
agrarian institutions in the country in the early years of the decade of 2000131
, closed the
circulo132.
According to estimates from various sources, Colombia could be sacrificing sever
al
percentage points of GDP by being at war. These assertions are not necessarily s
olid, but
constitute a first reference point. Highlighted in change here three economic co
nsequences of the war
. In the first place, for the purposes set out in the previous subsections, to m
ake
stable presence in certain regions, the agents they have to obtain access to
forms of private security, political contacts, and sophisticated lawyers: that i
s to say, they have
to incur transaction costs prohibitive. The incentives for them to do so they ar
e there:
a very poor infra-structure and staffing of public goods, great lack of human ca
pital
, chronic violence and threats, and institutional arrangements for allocation of
property rights that
pass directly by the political system. This is not only
a dynamic that tends to self-reproduce, but that weighs as a slab on
the prospects for economic growth of the country. Secondly, it has deepened the
dualism and territorial economic model that affects the Colombian development, a
s well as
the other paises133. But perhaps the fundamental negative effect is that it has
brought in many
regions, a concentration of the earth to blood and fuego134. In doing so, seems
to have been
strongly associated with increased inequity agrarian, which has reached levels
implausible (with the indicator of the Gini already approaching dangerously clos
e to 0.9135 ), reinforcing
the juxtaposition of exclusions that have drawn the Colombian peasants -too frequently through the simple physical destruction--the game of the
representation. All of this has created the conditions for that will continue to
be able to these
regional coalitions that have played one of the leading roles in these decades o
f
destruction.
133 Alexander Gerschenkron, economic backwardness in historical perspective, Bel
knap Press, 1962. Once
more, for an early observation about the relationship between tenure patterns an
d backwardness in Colombia
and Latin America, see Legrand, op. cit. ,
134 for the case of the Catatumbo, see Sonia Uribe, " Transformations of land te
nure and land use in rural areas
affected by the Colombian armed conflict. The case in Tibú, Norte de Santander (20
002010) ", Revista de Estudios Socio-Jur remedies vol. 16 Do not. 1 (2014) pp. 243
-283.
135 Studies in this match and specialists. See for example: Several, "Atlas of t
he distribution of property
in rural Colombia", IGAC, 2012; Ibanez Ana Maria, Juan Carlos Muñoz, the persisten
ce of the concentration of land
in Colombia: What happened between 2000 and 2009 ", available at:
http://jcmunozmora.webuda.com/papers/ Ibanez-Munoz _2010.pdf
5. CONCLUSIONS
Note that many common explanations on the origin and development of the Colombia
n conflict
are unable to give an account of basic factors and package, such as the large
democratic openings that lived the country during the period, the numerous proce
sses of
modernisation they went through various state agencies, the stability of our
liberal institutions etc. ; and much less of the regional variation of the confl
ict, or the severe
problems of collective action that have suffered all their actors, beginning wit
h
the economic and political elites. We find along this story with many
social outcasts, but never, or very rarely, with a "system" guided by a
unitary logic and able to devise a master plan of inflexible compliance.
The narrative that presented here if you can explain these apparent anomalies an
d pass
some basic comparative tests. Why is no less alarming. From the point of view of
the civilian population, the worst contrast in that collection of contrasts that
define to
Colombia is perhaps the inability of our liberal institutions to ensure
universally a minimum of political civilization. As long as the link between
weapons and the policy that brutal anomaly will continue. A central task for fut
ure generations
of Colombians will be systematically removed.
Is it feasible that task? I believe that if. Throughout this text, analyze socia
l and institutional factors
relevant associated with the origin and persistence of the Colombian conflict
. When evaluating the critical aspects of them, we find ourselves with many
improvements (just think of the Constitution of 1991), but also in many cases
with continuity, and also with worsening radical (for example, land inequality).
This is not to say that our conflict constitutes a balance or a immovable
closed dynamic and perfectly self-contained. As is so vividly illustrated the
ongoing peace process, there are exit doors. That the solutions to the problems
which have accumulated over the years are complex and difficult to implement sho
uld not
in misleading to anyone of your purpose pacifist. It is currently the worst enem
y of
transit to a viable society, democratic, inclusive and with strong economic grow
th
is the continuation of the conflict. This is not an accident: the section on
persistence asserting that many of the features that made our war a
phenomenon at the same time so tremendously stable and so destructive came from
emergent properties that
were the result of the interaction between structures and socio-economic pattern
s of violence.
And these properties acted after on the structures, empeorandolas.
A simple example is the activation of private violence punitive, that leads to t
he
accumulation of violent land.
The general framework that will allow the country directed toward overcoming of
the active
factors of origin and persistence --and in that context the term "transition" ca
n
be filled with content--only one will be able to build and use it properly throu
gh the
weapon of criticism, because the criticism of weapons has already had time to de
monstrate the full measure of its
ability to produce horrors and at the same time all his impotence to generate so
cial change
(in fact: the ability to lock it). True: nobody with a minimum of
intellectual honesty can ensure the success of this operation, given the right c
onditions
so that we can begin to implement it. But what if is guaranteed
, on the other hand, is that to persist in the path of war will continue
accumulating horrors, humiliation, destruction and locks.
An armed struggle at the service of the social status quo and political1
1 Translation Alberto Valencia Gutierrez, professor at the Universidad del Valle
, Cali.
Daniel Pecaut
Preliminary comments
even when it comes to events that are considered historical ruptures of
scale, such as the great revolutions or the great wars, that oblige us to consid
er
without a shadow of a doubt that there is a "before" and "after", the debate on
the origins or on the multiplicity of
causes never closes. Conversely, there are major mutations such as
the advent of modernity, or, more recently the of globalization, which
do not refer to a specific event but transformed social relations and the percep
tion of the world
.
For the rest, make reference to the issue of "causes" and the "origin" refers mo
st often
to attribute to the "context" or "structures" a direct responsibility for
the events as if it were possible to think the latter regardless of
the social actors who through his intervention interpreted and transformed the c
ontext.
In the recent history of Colombia is without doubt can evoke some breaks. This i
s the
case of events as the assassination of Gaitan or "violence". In the collective
memory
it is considered that these developments have given rise to a "before" and an "a
fter". However
, while it has foundation talk about events in the first case, the same is not t
rue
in what you have to do with the phenomena of violence because it is not known wh
en
begin or when they end and behave in an obvious way a multiplicity of
heterogeneous dimensions, are being carried out in areas isolated from each othe
r in many
aspects and have an uncertain drive. Moreover, it is very strong and the sense o
f
rupture, a sense of continuity is not least as regards the modes of domination o
r
the operation of the institutions. The same factors can be invoked
to explain both the breakdowns as the continuities.
The bet is even greater when it comes to account for the phenomena of violence a
nd armed conflict of
the last few decades. It is not by chance that you used the terms "
violence" and "armed conflict": both terms coexist permanently and establish
resonances between if. The "causes" are without place to doubts multiple and mul
tiply
over time. What is the cause in a phase can be converted to
result in another. Once the fighting is generalizing are converted into
context. In reality it is becoming less possible to analyze this last
regardless of the actors: when it comes to organizations that seek objectives
by appealing to the use of force, the exclusive reference to a situation "object
ive" is prior
very insufficient. The dynamics of their interactions becomes a foreground.
In many ways i think it is desirable to avoid a reading which favors uniquely
the continuities, regardless of whether they come in relation to the context
or with the actors. The metamorphosis of the Colombian society during the
previous decades are evident. While social inequalities do not diminish, its imp
lications
if they are modified. The agrarian problem remains, of course, a background of
violence, but its characteristics have undergone many changes. In terms of the a
ctors
, their transformations are not less significant: the guerrillas of today do not
have
many things in common with those of yesterday. The expediency, as is often the c
ase, it is yielding to a
teleological vision according to which the current situation is the inevitable o
utcome
of the past, leaving aside the inflections unpredictable and the uncertainties t
hat accompany
the decisions of all the protagonists.
In the same way it seems to me necessary input does not assimilate the actors
actual political guidance to the social actors. The guerrillas claimed without p
lace to doubts of
the social movements. Although sometimes there is a relationship between the two
, no shortage of examples of
tension between the two phenomena. Otherwise, the phases in which the armed conf
lict
has a greater resonance barely if coincides with those in which social movements
coming to the fore.
In summary, would pose an unreasonable risk to try to offer from now a
indisputable interpretation on the armed conflict. Not only because it is still
in force and do not have the
necessary distance, but because it is inevitable that is subject to a variety of
decrypts, even of decrypts contradictory: this is the condition for the
pnp major conflict in the logic of democratic deliberation.
In accordance with the plan that has been agreed for the completion of these rep
orts, I am going to refer to
the origins of the conflict, to the reasons of its extension and the effects on
the civilian population. Also agree with this plan i will put the emphasis on th
e contexts and the interactions between
the protagonists, rather than on the characteristics and evolution of these char
acters.
I. Partisan Identities, liberal model of development and violence
1. The agrarian question, continuities and discontinuities
It is inevitable you start by the agrarian questions since they form the backdro
p to the
social tensions more intense since the 1920s - even from before - until today; t
hey are converted
in several important moments in peasant mobilizations, feed the
protest movements of the 1920-1936, are found in the heart of
the violence of the 1950s, cause mobilizations in the years 1960-1975, underlie
the emergence of the various guerrilla groups at the same time, and have
subsequently been invoked constantly by these guerrillas as the justification fo
r their actions
. Even before its official foundation, the FARC were constructed in 1964 its pro
gram with
reference to injustices of agricultural structures. That is to say the
land issues seem to have, as a result of its continuity, a "structural
".
The factors of continuity are well known and we will limit ourselves here to sum
marize the main
. The struggles for the appropriation of the land have been constant and revolve
mainly around
the appropriation of the wasteland: the large domains is appropriated from the
principle of the lion's share at the expense of the indigenous protected areas b
ut, more generally
, at the expense of the farmer property. The legal regulations were
constantly violated; political influences contributed to this but also the use o
f
force to expel the various categories of rural workers. The concentration of lan
d
has always been particularly strong, under the form, in particular
, of vast domains of cattle-ranching, and the phenomenon has remained until
now: as we will see, the armed conflict has been allowed to the paramilitary gro
ups and their
allies seize of millions of hectares, which has led the concentration to
paroxismo2.
2 In 2002, 0.4 % of the properties of more than 500 has occupy 46.5 % of the lan
d while 67.6 % of the
properties with less than 5 has been dealing with the 4.2 % (cf. Juan Camilo Re
strepo and Andres Bernal Morales, the agrarian question
. Earth and post-conflict situations in Colombia, Bogota, Penguin Random House,
2014).
3 Cf. the various works of Alfredo Molano.
4 Cf. Juan Camilo Restrepo and Andres Bernal Morales, ibid. It should be noted t
hat this affects, even, areas such as the
coffee, where the titles could have existed at the beginning, but the divisions
among the heirs
have resulted in the loss of its validity.
Another constant has to do with the phenomena of the migratory flows
toward peasant regions even little occupied. Unlike the at the beginning of the
twentieth century
presided over the colonization of areas of coffee production, that without being
peaceful, gave rise to the formation of
a peasantry small and medium relatively stable, the flows of
colonization that were submitted since 1950, were often accompanied by violent c
onflict.
While the State through the INCORA tried to develop some
few programs for distribution of land, in most cases the settlers were
abandoned to their fate. The pressure of the holders of capital economic and
political, with recourse to force many times3, causes its shift toward
regions increasingly remote, isolated by the general of the commercial circuits
and
where, with the exception of the networks of the traditional parties, official i
nstitutions were characterized by their
absence. It is not surprising, therefore, that these settlers have accepted
many times the protection of the core guerrillas. Violence and colonization go h
and in hand
with much frequency in this manner.
Another factor that contributes to this is the frequent absence of property titl
es. This absence, which
has not been immune to the agrarian conflicts since the 1930s, has never been
surpassed since then. According to recent studies, 47% of the sites lack titles
in good and due forma4. The cadastral records do not exist in all the
departments and in many places are dubious -notaries often have ratified the
illegal expropriations-. This situation is not only source of violence but that
involves
access to citizenship to the extent that this happens in large part by the
recognition of the possession of the goods, as already stated Locke5. The peasan
try
is thus doomed to a dual condition of neglect: a poverty much more
pronounced than that of the urban population and a citizenship uncertain.
Framework 5 Palaces has shown very well to the 1930s in the book of who is the e
arth? Property,
politicization and peasant protest in the 1930s, Bogotá, Universidad de Los Andes,
2012.
However, the discontinuities are no less significant. From one stage to another
, the modalities of agrarian mobilization evolve and the links between
them are not evident in any way. Make agrarian movements of 1925 1936 the origin of the mobilizations of the 1960s, and of these the source of th
e armed struggle
, it is questionable to say the least.
One cannot speak of a real movement in the years 1925-1960 in the Sumapaz and
certain parts of the Tolima, which combines social demands and the reference to
communist political identities or Gaitanistas; however this only has to do with
a
region and, in essence, with a period. The phase of upheaval in the violence rep
resents
a break more than a continuity. Under the National Front, the differentiations w
ithin the
peasant world become increasingly net: agricultural wage workers
permanent or seasonal, small landowners, landless peasants, settlers stable or
unstable: the conjunction cannot be more fragile. The experience of the ANUC in
19711975, which we shall refer later, constitutes a test: multiple factors
undoubtedly contribute to its division but one of them is precisely the heteroge
neity of
the participants. Otherwise, the movement reached the highest amplitude in the
departments that Atlantic, little touched by the violence, are on the other hand
those
where the issue of the earth are posed by the far greater acuity and the large t
racts
dedicated to livestock occupy the greater surface area.
Moreover, the problem comes from the reinforcement of a capitalist agriculture m
uch more
productive than the peasant agriculture. The recent progress of crops such as
palm oil increasingly accentuate the pressures on the land. On the contrary, the
peasant agriculture is confronted with the trade liberalization measures, especi
ally
when it comes to food crops. This applies equally to the cultivation of coffee
due to the varieties and methods much more expensive than those used before, as
well as a link to a
international competition increasing -since 1980, the part of the coffee in Colo
mbian exports
has declined sharply, by what other -. The employment of wage-labor
may even be affected as is the case with the production of cotton.
In the 1980s, the expansion of coca crops introduces a new
differentiation, even taking into account that a tiny portion of the proceeds of
this
production - subject to sudden changes-, remains in the hands of the growers
- which are not all peasants -, its amount is higher than the previously perceiv
ed. The question of the allocation of
the land passed to a second level provisionally for them: the
problem of security is the most predominant. And in effect sooner or later find
themselves trapped
in the conflict, even more so in the contested areas by the various armed factio
ns
.
In fact, the manner in which they are posed by the agrarian problems has been tr
ansformed almost everywhere by
the expansion of the armed conflict. In this field, more than in any other
, the data "structural" cannot be separated from the interactions between the or
ganizations.
This will be one of the central themes of the last parts of the report.
However, an observation is imposed. Or the agricultural problems of the phenomen
a of
violence or derivatives of the armed conflict are sufficient to explain by thems
elves
other specificity of Colombia: the place that the rural country has remained in
the political life
. The fact deserves special attention: the part of the rural population has been
steadily decreasing
in relation to the urban population: of the 2/3 that Colombia was in 1920,
fell to less than 30% in recent years. One of the reasons for this is probably t
he impact of
the partisan tradition. Although this has helped to make more fragile the symbol
ic
of the national unity, also have the effect of making widely relax mechanisms of
power
in the control networks of rural society. Despite the
recent collapse of the two parties, continues to prevail a high level of
"ruralisation" of political life. This is valid in what it has to do with the me
chanisms
of power, but is no less valid for the mechanisms of "countervailing power" that
arise
regularly, especially when new peripheries are added to the above. All this
obviously taking into account that what constitutes the "Peripheries" is not the
geographic remoteness
but the fact that the institutions are particularly deficient in this area
. Between the agrarian problems must also be taken into account the permanence o
f
the mechanisms of power in the rural world.
2. The creation of forms of social and political domination in the years 1930-19
40
Many of the traits that singularize Colombian history, in relation to that of ma
ny
very important countries of Latin America, they are present without place to dou
bts since before 1930
. Among these, the most notable are the "tyrannic regime", i.e. , the prevalence
of the civilian elite
on the military institution, and the precariousness of the symbolic national. Ho
wever, you can
consider that in the years 1930 -1940 accentuates the differences in the extent
to which
consolidate these two traits through the incorporation of a population to the tr
aditional parties and
the accession of the elites to a liberal model of development. Charge
entry to these two traits the phenomena of violence that marked the following ye
ars
would be a little hasty. The less you can consider that contribute to the buildi
ng of a
context that makes them possible.
The period of the Great Depression and World War II is marked in many
Latin American countries by the crisis of the schema agro-exporter and the polic
ies of
industrialization, the transformation of the role of the State, the rise of
nationalist claims. The Armed Forces or a technocracy public are often the actor
s involved
. The rotation can be authoritarian aspect; and in some cases also,
very quickly or with a lag, you can take a populist tone,. The principle of
legitimacy that is invoked at that time itself is not the political liberalism,
accused of having its basis in a substrate individualistic, but the access of th
e masses of people to
a social citizenship or, in any case, national.
Occurs in a totally different way in Colombia. Instead of weakening, the
framework of the population by the two traditional parties are becoming increasi
ngly important
to acquire the appearance of two opposing political cultures; the conservatives
are
calling on the proximity with the Catholic Church, both presidents of the consti
tution of individual and collective identities
. In both organizations, are far from presenting
a cohesion without failure: at its base, rest in networks manipulated by local l
ords; at the top
, both the Conservative Party as the Liberal Party are
constantly traversed by deep divisions related to the policy measures that
they advocate. But this is not an obstacle: the accessions partisan are robust e
nough to
replace the reference to a common citizenship.
However, on the eve of the crisis of 1929, there was reason to believe that thes
e accessions
were susceptible of partisan weaken, especially by the liberal side. The agraria
n conflicts
, the emergence of formations dissidents as the JOIN of Gaitan or the Communist
Party
, the impatience of certain intellectual elites, seemed to be its premonitory si
gns
. But the coming to power of the Liberal Party in 1930 produces the accession of
the
most progressive sectors of this party to the illusion that under his leadership
is going to be operated a modernization similar to that of the neighboring count
ries. The hopes
are increased even more with the arrival of the presidency in 1934 by Alfonso
Lopez Pumarejo with its slogan of the "Revolution in progress". In fact the pol
itical transformations that
his government conducts are impressive in many ways
: deletion of the reference to God in the preamble of the Constitution, establis
hment of the
universal male suffrage, educational reforms. But the social reforms have even
greater impact among the popular classes. The government is not content to recog
nize the
trade union rights but that it gives the impression that supports their claims.
Moreover,
in 1936 an agrarian reform aimed at offering a solution to the ongoing conflicts
: to put in the foreground the "social function of property", this reform
favors in particular, the division of some large extensions devoted to the coffe
e, commits
a change of status of certain categories of apareceros. These
measures achieve decrease momentarily the intensity of the conflicts but
quickly collide with the opposition of the large landowners and are revised some
time
after until the point that only have a symbolic significance. Moreover,
since the end of 1937, the government refuses to continue with its reforms.
This does not mean that the whole of these reforms will be sufficient for the po
pular sectors
of the Liberal Party did have the impression that this is a
transformation of a whole. Since its accession to this party is becoming increas
ingly important
. The young Communist Party, officially formed in 1930, after having been forced
to
implement in a first moment the line of "class against class", the price of many
internal convulsions, is not left behind to hold the "revolution" in
which it perceives a "popular Front" to the Colombian: for a decade, preaches th
e
"class collaboration" and behaves almost as a simple fraction of the Liberal Par
ty
.
The strengthening of the partisan identification is also delivered by the side o
f the
Conservative Party. On the other hand, the alternation of power in 1930 had been
translated into many
departments in the phenomena of violence as the liberals were the
posts that had the conservatives: for nearly three years these confrontations
resulted in several thousands of dead and fed the conviction of the conservative
s
that the new power is only based on the force. But the inflection
is toward decisive 1936 due to the echoes of the Spanish Civil War. The majority
of the
Conservative Party, led by Laureano Gómez, is not content to invoke the defense of
the sacred foundations of social order in front of the reform of López
Pumarejo, but sympathizes with the Franco field, picks up on its own account the
diatribes of
the extreme right in Europe against the liberal democracy and puts into question
the legitimacy of governments
that it claimed. While the complaints take as a priority an
ideological shift, are in spite of everything less brutal than those
developed in many European countries. But the mix between old cultures partisan,
which
had been fed the violence mentioned a little further up, with
modern ideological content, you can become explosive.
As is well known the other trait that characterizes this period in Colombia is t
he consolidation of
a liberal model of development. The schema agro exporter, in which the coffee is
the main part
, is not in question; the economic intervention of the State is still very limit
ed
and very inferior to that which prevails in countries of similar level of develo
pment
; the private economic elites take widely economic management
and give it a very orthodox orientation. That's not all: even the management of
social
remains largely in the hands of these elites. The government of López
Pumarejo not carried out a true institutionalization of social relationships: th
e measures in
this field will only appear in 1944-1945 and they are going to be swept away by
the storm that
follows. The main industrial pole, the pole Antioquia, makes the paternalism his
doctrine
and the National Federation of Coffee Growers takes in charge of the adequacy of
the production areas
.
The stability of a model for the development of this nature would have had littl
e chance to
be maintained without the framework of the traditional parties. They are two sid
es of the same
reality. Economic elites are divided between the two parties in such a way that
they
differ very little or nothing in regard to their economic guidelines
. The resistance against the reforms lopistas comes from both the privileged
liberals and their conservative counterparts. The division of the parties only i
f you have
an immediate impact on the economy and allows you to channel the passions of the
masses of people
by a different road to social claims.
The two elements combine to serve as a basis for a precariousness of the State t
hat is manifested in
many other planes and not only in the economy. The "tyrannic regime" isn't trans
lated
only by the little prestige and by the lack of military forces; it affects
a lot more to the police, reduced in its conformation to local police, often
improvised and at the mercy of small political bosses. It is clear that the Stat
e in these conditions
is far from being able to exercise any authority whatever on the
greater part of the territory and, even, that they will be able to maintain the
monopoly of violence
legitima6.
6 On the fragmentation of the powers, the question of State and the phenomena of
violence, cf. Fernan Gonzalez
Gonzalez, power and violence in Colombia, Bogota, ODECOFI-CINEP, 2014.
The weak institutionalization of social relations has numerous lasting consequen
ces
. We will mention only four: the appeal of the elites to various forms of
privatized violence remains a possibility in the case of social disputes; develo
pment
conducive to the maintenance of social inequalities, or rather the contrary, it
presupposes
7; the relationship of all sectors with the State, but on all of the popular cla
sses
, remains ambivalent: all were addressed to the State when they are in high dema
nd
meet but at the same time all denounce their inability to answer them. The
doubt about the legitimacy of the institutions makes it possible the invocation
of the right to
rebellion, in line with the previous guerrillas.
7 Wages rather decreased during the period of liberal governments.
8 Cf. In particular the comments from Malcolm deas to this purpose in violent ex
changes, Bogotá, Taurus,
1999.
In sum, contrary to what happens in many other countries, the global crisis lead
s
rather to a strengthening of liberal democracy and liberal model of development.
At no time did the
State as such aims to establish a domain on the society. But the
political and social divisions that traverse the State opens up the possibility
that come to light
the vulnerabilities of this operation.
3. The Gaitanismo and Violence 1945-1964
Now let's look at the stage of "violence". Without doubt, this can be interpret
ed partially from
two contexts mentioned above: the agrarian structures that favor the emergence o
f
chronic clashes and the political and economic model based on the
partisan passions and the maintenance of inequalities. However violence
introduces a break higher. It is often done in the phenomena of violence
a colombian frame continues that part of the civil wars of the nineteenth centur
y and the
War of a Thousand Days, encompasses the agrarian conflicts of the 1920-1930, and
leads to the episode of
violence. With just title the historians have emphasized the enormous
differences: civil wars come into play on all forces directed by members of the
elite, the
agrarian conflicts had only a limited number of deaths,
not partisan passions prevented Colombia known after 1903 several decades of rel
ative
paz8. The "violence" means a break. The 200.000 deaths attributed to it
are themselves an expression of its magnitude, but are even more so the atrociti
es
and the forced displacement of the accompanying. The "violence" is also characte
rized by the
heterogeneity of the phenomena that combines geographical fragmentation
of the confrontations to which it gives rise to the fact that largely escapes
the control of the elites.
The term of "violence" that designates this period does not cease to be ambiguou
s as it
makes us understand that it is unleashing forces that obey only to the passions
and interests of the moment and in this way allows you to hide its instigators,
and
acknowledge exclusively to the masses, especially in rural areas, which were dri
ven by the
confrontation and to which incriminates them for their ignorance, as well as by
its barbarity.
What is certain is that the episode disorder a large part of society, leaving ma
rks
real and imaginary that still survive, as well as the conviction of broad sector
s of
the violence and not the rule of law governs the social relations. From there to
make of
this phenomenon, the origin of the recent armed conflict would be to carry out a
simplification
that sidestepping many nuances, even considering that it is true that a guerrill
a warfare as
the FARC comes directly from there.
The violence began in 1946 after the election of the conservative Mariano Ospina
Perez
. In 1947 had already produced about 14,000 dead. But as the violence
precedent of 1930 had shown, any type of carrier was alternation of bloody clash
es
and the most affected departments were the same that had
been affected fifteen years before. You might think, therefore, that it is only
traditional forms of violence
. But this alternation occurs at a particular juncture: the rise of a
populist mobilization unprecedented, behind Jorge Eliécer Gaitán; and a
against mobilization that complains of a Catholic fundamentalism, behind Laurean
o
Gomez. Since then, the violence is exacerbated: in 1948 reaches close to 43,000
dead,
in 1950 more than 50.0009 .
9 The figures are taken from the book by Paul Oquist, violence, conflict and pol
icy in Colombia, Bogota, Banco Popular
, 1978.
The populism Gaitanista has many similarities with the populism of the neighbori
ng countries:
called the people against the oligarchy, the rejection of the liberal democracy,
the reference to
State intervention, the extreme customization of the relationship with the
leader. But differs from these in some important points. Gaitán during a time, it
tries to
be above the partisan division, but in 1947 is part of new in
it and to assume the leadership of the Liberal Party ends to give more intensity
than ever.
It is not surprising that the nationalist dimension of their speeches is rather
shy
since this division continues to make problematic the symbolic national. This is
, incidentally, of populism that can be called second-generation: appears
after the Revolution of López, and whatever may have been the disappointments
that this is no longer, a large part of the popular sectors have the
feeling of having already acceded to the citizenship. This is the case for the m
ajority of the
trade unions and urban Gaitan does not cease to call into question its link with
the
traditional liberal leaders and even the "privileges" that would have been able
to achieve. In
concordance with the suppression of the strikes on the part of the government, t
he campaign Gaitan
contributes in this manner from 1947 to the weakening of the trade unions. It is
not by chance that
Gaitan is almost always directed to the people as if this, left to their own for
ces, could not
become a political subject.
The Communist Party is also affected by the crisis. It remains faithful to Lopez
,
achieves consolidate its presence in the media workers and artisans, and deals w
ith key positions in the
CTC, the only confederation recognized. But the Gaitanismo is in their eyes a fo
rm of
fascism, in the manner of the peronists. And in this way a large part of their s
upporters,
that accompany with fervor the Gaitanistas campaigns, leave. In the name
of marxist orthodoxy, the communists are being marginalized in this way the most
powerful
movement of the urban masses that has been known in Colombia.
The assassination of Gaitan on April 9 1948 is followed by the Bogotazo and othe
r
local insurrections. The Gaitanismo movement as he never had an organization and
did not survive to their leader
, even if most of the popular sectors of the Liberal Party, especially those who
had
been hostile, demanding of their ranks from that moment and believe that his
disappearance is a "revolution frustrated". However these events
cause panic in all the elites regardless of their party affiliation, relive the
mass spectrum of the dangerous and the conscience of a social abyss. Powered by
the
climate of the Cold War, communism becomes a central component of the
policy. All these factors contribute to the official repression that destroys wh
at remained
of trade unionism and other urban organizations. The Communist Party for its par
t
is declared illegal until 1958.
These events precipitated on all the fall in a widespread violence. The neutrali
zation of
the urban organizations is precisely one of their conditions. The phenomena of
violence spread quickly in the rural areas to the extent that
institutions are there more deficient. Nearly three quarters of the
population remain rural. However, the paradox, as we have said
previously, is that the displacement of the political scene toward the rural Col
ombia is carried out
at the time that begins to accelerate the urbanization and industrialization
. This offset is maintained and endures despite the fact that Colombia is
now an urban country.
In 1948 and 1949 the violence reached a level such that one could say that the r
ule of law
is collapsing. The closing of the Congress in 1949 and, shortly after, the decis
ion of the
Liberal Party not to participate in the presidential elections, leaving the fiel
d open to
Laureano Gómez, represent the milestones of this drift. The process of the latter
can be considered
without a doubt in the category of the authoritarian projects. With the assimila
tion
of liberalism and communism and with the aspiration to return to the Church its
role of
guarantor of social order, seek to establish a corporate system. This purpose
quickly loses its strength: at no time can consolidate their own authority over
the Conservative Party, which is crossed by many divisions, and even less,
strengthen the authority of the central State on the various de facto powers. Th
e best illustration of this
is the semiprivatizacion Police for the benefit of conservative activists
, the famous "chulavitas . This certainly does not mean that the government does
not engage in
the practices of violence, directly or through the
governors and mayors; but it is a fact that the dynamics of violence outside of
their hands to a large extent. Before this, the liberals and communist guerrilla
s earn increasing force
and begin to worry more and more to the own liberal elites, to the extent that
the resigned to their fate.
The loss of control over the situation explains the feeling of relief almost una
nimous that
it welcomes the coup d'état of general Rojas Pinilla in June of 1953, a character
very close
to the conservatives. In the months that followed by almost all the liberal guer
rillas will demobilize
, even some communist guerrillas. However, its aura of peacemaker
does not survive to the fact that in 1955, motivated by his anti-communism and b
y the United States
, decided to launch major and bloody military operations on peasant zones
controlled by the communists. The honeymoon with the elites reaches its end,
when Rojas Pinilla tries to create its own political organization with a view to
a new
mandate, and with the support of former Gaitanistas even. Its peaceful overthrow
in
May of 1957 is as celebrated as what had been its access to power four years bef
ore.
The phenomena of violence are not interrupted by this completely, but that are p
rolonged
, in particular in the regions, in the form of a gangsterism, half way
between the social and the political.
Would it be possible, despite their fragmentation and the diversity of its manif
estations,
define a reference that is common to all these phenomena? It seems to me that, e
specially at the beginning
, you can only consider the reference to the two partisan identities that make i
t possible for
an imaginary "friend-enemy", click presence in almost the whole of society.
In this direction, the violence assumes the aspect of a civil war; but from ther
e you can not
conclude that do not become part of the phenomena that other dimensions refer to
realities as diverse as the agrarian conflicts, old or recent; strategies of
appropriation of resources in the coffee regions at the time that benefit from t
he
rise of prices of production; the clashes between migratory flows, as is
the case of Tolima and boyacenses among Antiochians, etc.
At the places where they are had been able to consolidate a prior process of org
anization in the framework of the
struggle promoted by the rural population, the latter can more easily
cope with the violence of the authorities: this is what happens for example in t
he
Sumapaz where the agrarian movements, influenced by the Communist Party, interve
nes to
prevent the outbreak of conservative police, and is willing to accept arrangemen
ts with
the landowners. This is also what is produced in the south of the Tolima where i
ndigenous peoples have a
long tradition of resistance. But these situations are
rather exceptional: in most regions, populations can build
forms of solidarity elementary, as the neighborhood councils, but did not manage
to be a
means of autonomous collective intervention. Partisan networks, manipulated by t
he
"whitened or by local lords, establish a control to which the inhabitants hardly
escape. A fortiori that is what happens in the juncture of the violence, in whic
h the
improvised leaders add to the already existing ones in order to impose its disci
pline. The
constant movement of colonization translates into a large number of disputes, no
t only
with those who have political influence, but among the settlers themselves. Wher
e the
prosperity is relatively defined, as in the coffee regions, individualism
tend easily to prevail at the expense of collective action.
The violence has finally two complementary effects: accentuates on behalf of the
ids
partisan accessions voluntary or forced to all kinds of
privatized networks; it causes a fractionation, even a dislocation of the popula
tion, which tends to
prevent more than ever its transformation into actor.
However, the violence leads simultaneously to the constitution of a
liberal and communist resistance to a considerable extent, which is reflected in
particular in the emergence of
numerous guerrillas. The phenomenon is often part of the tradition of
revolt against an illegitimate regime, but in other cases it refers to ability t
o take charge of
social demands.
However, it is astonishing that the guerrillas do not escape the fragmentation t
hat characterizes the
set of the phenomena of violence. Attempts at coordination made, especially
by the guerrillas under the influence of the Communist Party, only achieve succe
ss
precarious, at least until the end of the 1950s. The guerrillas more important i
s
called the Liberal Party. Among the latter, the guerrillas of the Eastern plains
have the troops more numerous and not hesitate when it comes to attack the milit
ary forces
. Its prestige also comes from the fact that had been emancipated
from the large landowners progressively liberal and liberal political elites unt
il the point of proclaiming
in 1953 some "laws" that implied agrarian transformations. This does not preclud
e
these guerrillas have also been for a long time prisoner of
"localism" and internal rivalries.
Among the liberal guerrillas and the Communist guerrillas hostilities are freque
nt. However
, a number of communist guerrilla, starting by Manuel Marulanda Vélez
, began his career in the liberal groups. But since 1951 the relationship betwee
n
"clean" and "common", to resume the terms that they themselves use, and the disp
utes over control of
the territories, harden. With the coming to power of Rojas Pinilla, political di
fferences
are evident: the vast majority of the liberal guerrillas demobilizing
but the communist guerrilla refuse to do so. The military offensive launched
in 1955 by the government against the latter reinforces for a long time their
option to keep a defense capability. Further, during the years following the old
liberal guerrillas, with the support of local politicians, are endeavoring to ta
ke advantage of
their positions and kill some of his paintings. The consequence of this is that
when ringing the hour of the National Front, the communists rural are forced to
retreat back to
certain areas. In some of them, as in the Sumapaz, the reticence with regard to
the
continuation of armed struggle are explicit in addition. Not to mention that the
leadership of the Party is still interested in recovering, in time, its influenc
e
on the working class and does not want his future is exclusively in the hands of
the autodefensas campesinas.
In general the violence represented a large part of the country a vast dislocati
on of the
rural world. Camilo Torres wrote a famous article in which he argues that the
peasantry had managed to conquer greater autonomy and a greater awareness of the
ir rights in relation to
the elites10. The result at that time I seem to be much different. The
insertion in the party affiliations was consolidated more than ever before and,
by this same track, the
social domination of the ruling classes. The liberal model of development has no
t stopped
but that, on the contrary, was consolidated. The high prices of coffee between 1
949 and 1954
ensured the "guilds" and to the elites of the two parties, which assumed by comm
on
10 " The violence and social change," critical thinking, no. February 1 1967.
According to his direction, a unprecedented influence. In summary, the society m
et in a
shock but extreme power structures remained intact and without the possibility o
f splintering.
The popular rural sectors suffered a deep trauma whose traces emerge at all time
s
. As in most of the massacres of masses, had the feeling that they had
been mobilized on everything by the desire to defend itself from the other field
, before they could
realize that had been fighting between similar -already that nothing could
differentiate a socially conservative peasant farmer of a liberal-, and
that they had done to the account of "other", that is to say, the political lead
ers denounced by
Gaitan.
In this way the memory becomes very often in the memory of humiliation and
gives rise to a feeling of rage that produces the temptation to take revenge for
the
arms. The lesson of the violence is also to know that the institutions are
based on relations of force and, therefore, that it is legitimate to use force t
o
combat them.
5. Does the National Front: a closed system?
In 1958, after the interim of the Military Junta, the formula of the National Fr
ont.
Approved by an overwhelming majority, anxious to turn the page of the violence a
nd the
dictatorship, this covenant established by 16 years the rotating presidency of t
he two traditional parties
and sharing it among them of the public posts, and attaches to them the monopoly
of political representation. In fact, the formula presented in many ways, the as
pect of
a restoration that refers to three decades ago. The same political leaders,
even the most involved in the violence (Laureano Gomez in the first place), orch
estrate
its implementation. To seat more solidly his authority cover of heaping criticis
m on the
"dictatorship" of Rojas Pinilla, and to renew the tradition of "Civilist", highl
ights the ineptitude of
the military to mix into the political thing. In return they care to evoke its r
esponsibility for the tragedy
of violence and its reconciliation produces the feeling that
this is a covenant of oblivion. Nothing or almost nothing is done in favor of th
e countless victims
. The fight against the "gangsterism", this degraded mode of violence which unti
l 2004
sowing terror in certain regions, allows them even abanderarse the role as defen
ders of the
common values. The few rehabilitation plans for areas that
the peasants are particularly numerous for having lost their lands and
other property, are not comparable in any way to the expected agrarian reform. U
nder the auspices of
the Alliance for Progress a timid agrarian reform outlined in 1961, but
the resistors that it finds, and the lack of firmness on the part of the governm
ent, the reduce from
very soon, and in the best of cases, to a modest accompaniment of some
movements of colonization. In summary, the National Front firmed before all the
social status quo
and the laissez-faire in the world of agriculture.
However the limitations inherent in the political formula are above all raise th
e
protest of many sectors, which do not take too long to see there a variant of an
authoritarian regime
, and even a mentiz of the regime's claim to stand as a
rule of law. The fact that the proclamation of the "state of siege" in your join
ts more
various, either to rule by decree until 1967 the laws represent a majority of
2/3 which is a challenge - to deal with strikes and other social protests or
, even, to resolve the economic problems regular, is rapidly becoming the
symbol of the recourse to the arbitrary: the exception becomes the rule. The
violent repression by the Public Force, or by private agents, of the vindictive
actions
occurs with great frequency.
Finally, the theoretical impossibility of that third parties will participate in
elections is not
more than the complement more visible in this table.
All these aspects suggest, from the creation of the National Front, many radical
ized sectors
to proclaim that to transform the situation there is no way other than the armed
struggle.
Only a minority is linked to it, although in the late 1960's this conviction is
shared
by a large part of the view. The representation of the
National Front as a closed system and purely repressive becomes a
vulgate which repeats indefinitely.
However, it is desirable qualifying it. And to begin not to confuse the 14 years
from 1958 to
1972, during which the formula is in full force, with the 18 years
following. In this second phase, although the formula is attenuates partially, t
he collapse of the
system and the rule of law is self-evident. The situation is even more
explosive because, in fact and not in law, prolonging the monopoly of the two
parties, and third parties are reduced to the minimum. The Vulgate projected
easily all the defects of the second stage on the first; but also in this case t
he discontinuities
are significant.
During the first phase the formula can boast at least some exitos11. The most im
portant
is to have put an end to the violence of the previous years, which translates in
to
a progressive reduction in the rates of homicides that, in 1971-1972,
reaching its lowest level. The partisan passions are appeases, sharing "pinpoint
" of jobs
decreases litigation. The counterpart of this is certainly a
patronage that penetrates by all parties and the abstention that reaches many ti
mes
very high proportions, 60% and even more. However, we must not forget that that
abstention
was always very important, even during the rise of Gaitanismo, and cannot always
be
equated with a rejection of the system. The most remarkable, on the contrary, is
that even
devoid of passion, the accessions partisan persist and remain in force
during the second fase12. Another success lies in a certain economic modernizati
on
, particularly present during the mandate of Llera Carlos Restrepo:
influenced by the theories of the ECLAC, decided to escape the pressures of the
parties on the basis of
the so-called a technocracy very qualified, do not hesitate to back up the liber
al model of development
and to give the State a role in the industrialization engine; it is about
even, (on this aspect will be back later), the relaunch of the problematic of th
e
agrarian reform.
11 Francisco Gutiérrez, what the wind? The political parties and democracy in Colo
mbia (19582002), Bogota, Rule, 2007.
12 Patricia Finch of Lewin, towns, regions and parties, Bogotá, CEREC, 1989.
No less significant are the cultural changes that occur. Despite its commitments
with the Conservative Party and with Rojas Pinilla, the Catholic Church at the b
eginning
as one of the pillars of the National Front; however, fails to put brake to
the societal changes that accompany the practice of birth control, to the
educational advances, deprovincialization intellectual and artistic. Careful esp
ecially
to preserve the discipline in the ranges of a clergy shocked by the Second Vatic
an Council
, it proves to be increasingly unable to frame the new earths urbanas13.
13 Contrary to the Church in Brazil and other countries, the Church does not fav
or the creation of
"base communities", that would make possible the maintenance of the relationship
with the popular classes.
14 In the left-wing currents the contrast between the participating in the elect
ions, as the Communist Party
, and the abstainers, is very virulent.
While the Vulgate is debatable, the reason is that the National Front does not m
ean the disappearance
of the opposition parties, nor for the autonomous social movements
. In addition to the two traditional parties were constantly engaged
to divisions that had deep historical roots, the National Front for more than te
n
years he was confronted with powerful opposition parties, the first and the MRL
ANAPO
subsequently.
Dissent of the Liberal Party, formed in 1958 by Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, the
son of the leader of the Revolution in progress", the MRL rejects the principle
of alternation
presidential, denounces the immobility of the social regime and applauds the Cub
an Revolution
in its infancy. In 1962, in violation of the rule of alternation which stated th
at the
shift was a conservative, Alfonso Lopez Michelsen is launched as a candidate and
gets in spite of everything a third of the votes. The MRL offers you a means of
expression
to rebellious sectors, in the first rank of which are many of the
former members of the liberal guerrillas or communists, and the inhabitants of t
he areas where these
latter were implanted. Under the label of the MRL, the Communist Party
also participates in the elections and achieves that elected some
local candidates; in this way you can leave the exclusion who had beaten him and
, far from considering
how secondary the electoral work, gives you the greatest importancia14. The adve
nture of the
MRL ended around 1966 when Alfonso Lopez Michelsen returns to the ranks of the
liberal party. The MRL label remains however the coverage of many
opposition sectors.
Since the beginning of the 1960s, another opposition party claimed the conservat
ive party
begins to make progress, the ANAPO, led by General Rojas Pinilla. With the use o
f
a speech at the same time conservative and populist, which associates the defens
e of the interests
most backward with the demagogic promises, manages to attract from 1966
to the urban poor, some of them liberal demographics. Rojas Pinilla assumes
the candidate in the presidential elections of 1970. The result causes a real tu
rmoil
: achieves equated with the candidate of the National Front and many believe tha
t
only thanks to the fraud is achievement tip the balance in favor of the latter.
The abstention
under significantly and, in a city like Bogota, the vote is the expression of
a polarization as had not been produced ever since Gaitan. The ANAPO barely if y
ou are able
to survive this medium success but, as was the case during the mobilization Gait
anista,
a large part of the elites discovers with panic the anger of the masses. The Com
munist Party
unknown, once again, a mass phenomenon; although it is true that it is difficult
to adhere to the one who had banned and had attacked their
rural strongholds.
Also the social movements are extremely intense. At the exit of years of destruc
tion and repression
, the trade union organizations emerge and multiply their actions: strikes
often very long and hard (in the Valle del Cauca, region that hosted many of the
refugees
, these strikes exploited since 1959), general strike threats, hunger strikes,
movements of homeless people. The regime makes it many efforts to retain control
of the
two confederations that grouped to the greater part of the trade unions, but
other groups are vying for the field, including a confederation linked to the Co
mmunist Party
that, without being officially recognized, is very present in core activities.
Vindictive pressures are so strong that the government often is forced to make c
oncessions
as in 1965, giving new social rights. But very often resort to
the repression.
Social strife are permanent, as is to be expected in rural regions.
The multiple streams of colonization make the disputes around the wasteland and
the conditions
of agricultural workers are recurrent. The occupation of Urabá in the late
1960s, favored by the rise of the banana plantations is an illustration
: fifteen years after the region is going to be one of the worst scenarios
of the armed conflict. But the peasant mobilisation is the more impressive that
develops
from 1972 to 1975, primarily in the departments of the Caribbean zone who suffer
ed
relatively little violence. This mobilization comprised of peasant farmers that
the government of President Carlos
Lleras Restrepo organized with the name of Farmers Association of Users, to rela
unch
the agrarian reform. The movement quickly escapes into the hands of its initiato
rs and
embarks on an unprecedented campaign of occupation of the land of
livestock: estimated at close to 100,000 the number of participants and in more
than 500 the number of
occupied land in 197115. However, in 1993-1994, the movement
begins to dislocated. The brutal repression -tens of dead - it has the greatest
responsibility
. But the heterogeneity of the farmers involved, and the rivalries between the
Maoist vanguards, Trotskyites, etc. that is disputing the address, also have the
ir
part in an outcome that allows the government abandon any type of
draft a true agrarian reform. It should be noted that once more the Communist Pa
rty
did not want to be linked to a mass movement: rejecting the "adventurism"
of other avant-garde, you prefer separated from radical currents of the ANUC and
support
a moderate line.
15 CF. Leon Zamosc, "peasant struggles in Colombia", political analysis, No. 15,
Bogotá, 1992.
6. The Cuban revolution and the birth of the guerrilla
If the Vulgate on the National Front is widely is imposed because the establishm
ent of
the formula virtually coincides with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. In man
y places
of Latin American social movements arise from left, and shortly after, cores
of guerrilla warfare that sooner or later deliver the pretext for the organizati
on of
authoritarian regimes. The experience of violence and guerrilla struggle seems t
o
designate to Colombia as a scenario particularly favorable for the formation of
new
guerrillas, this time revolutionary resolutely.
The American administration, determined to put a stripe by all means the
Cuban influences, and the leaders of the National Front, more aligned than ever
in their
recommendations, share the apprehension that this must be as well. Although the
Colombian Armed Forces
remain particularly weak despite the involvement of
one of its units in the Korean war, you have all the freedom to act against the
"subversion": another phase of the "tyrannic regime" is that in effect the civil
ian power does not interfere with the "maintenance
of law and order", such as Alberto Lleras Camargo had proclaimed at the beginnin
g of the
National Front.
From 1959-1960 appears between the university youth, in particular, an effervesc
ence
of radical ideas. All that there are involved does not come from the popular cla
sses.
From one day to other young people from many times of traditional media are link
ed
with various ideologies of rupture, the Guevarism first, and then the maoism, Tr
otskyism
or other "isms". In many ways, this radicalisation gives the feeling of a
religious conversion with all the sectarianism that it is: the children of famil
ies
laureanistas are not the last to join all the currents in vogue.
Some do not take too long, in application of the theories of the Guevarist foci,
in effectively creating
core guerrillas waiting to link former guerrilla fighters of the
violence. One of the earliest examples is the MOEC (Student Worker
Peasant Movement) that launches several makeshift initiatives that fail almost i
mmediately: the
murder in 1961 of the leader of the MOEC, Antonio Larrota, by a guerrilla of the
previous era,
symbolizes the fact that there is no continuity between the two moments of the g
uerrillas.
Other installed kernels in the distant suburbs do not have better luck.
In the mid 1960s are formed in counterpart that guerrilla organizations in the f
ollowing decades
confer to the armed struggle a central role: the FARC, faithful to the
Orthodox Communist Party; the ELN that claimed the Guevarism; the EPL that claim
ed
Maoist thesis. A little later, after the 1970 elections, the M-19 appears with a
rejection of dogmatism and a called on all to a bolivarian nationalism.
All these organizations, with the exception of the M-19, are implanted in rural
areas and make the effort to
build on its recent past of resistance and in some of their former leaders
. However, only the FARC have strong farmer bases
formed in several years in the strategies of self-defense.
The brutal attack launched in 1964 by the Army against the database in Marquetal
ia and, subsequently, against
other colonies peasant framed by the communists,
stigmatized as "independent republics", marks an important shift. While the vict
ims
of these attacks are little numerous, the event strengthens the strategies of se
lf-defense and
its application on the part of the settler populations forced to
desplazarse16. It is also the starting point of the story that heroic Manuel Mar
ulanda and
Jacobo Arenas, both leaders, are going to write and to be converted to the brevi
ary of their recruits
. Officially the FARC are constituted as such in 1966; however, it imposes
the story of the FARC according to which the armed conflict began in 1964. This
story becomes
quasi-official and is the one that lets you say in 2014 that Colombia is experie
ncing a
conflict in fifty years.
16 The expression "colonization navy" is often used to evoke the displacements t
hat occur in the context of the
FARC in its early stages.
However, the FARC preserved for a long time its strategy of self-defense.
During ten years only carry out rare offensive actions against the army and
remain subordinate to a Communist Party devoted to follow the guidelines of the
Soviet party
. Mistrustful with regard to all the "aventurerismos", the Party also
wary of the proclamations of the Tricontinental Conference in Havana in
1967: the cool reception given there to his envoys shows that the Party is consi
dered
"revisionist". Certainly, is proud of having taken since 1961, the thesis of th
e
"combination of all forms of struggle". But still considers the cores
peasants in arms on everything as a political support and as a protection in cas
e of
need. What is essential to your party continues to be extending its presence in
the world of workers
and improve the results you get in the elections.
Moreover, radical currents and the new guerrilla organizations often shared the
same criticism with regard to the Communist Party. One of the points of disagree
ment
refers to the electoral participation of the Party. The rupture sino-soviet
contributes to add more than a factor to these antagonisms. Trained at its incep
tion in
Cuba, the ELN is formed especially with the model of the "focus". The linking o
f
Camilo Torres and many other priests, some Spaniards, guarantees you a prestige
insurance. Although gets support in the urban world, this does not detract from
favoring local action
between the peasants and shows much more offensive than the FARC. The
sectarianism of its leader leads however to multiple internal executions and, fi
nally,
to their isolation. In 1973, a military operation almost achieves its disappeara
nce, and only forty of
their fighters escape. Wanting to follow the model of the Long March of
Mao, the EPL concentrates its efforts in the peasantry of areas of San Jorge and
the
Unis, which encourages them to renounce the mercantile exchanges. This group ver
y soon gives
reverse due to the military repression, but also to the crisis of the ANUC and t
o the reticence
is among the peasantry.
The balance of the armed struggle at the end of the 1970s, both military and pol
itical, it is therefore not
flattering in this date. The FARC have only a little more than 900
combatants, fitted with a rudimentary weapons. In contradiction with what the
supporters of the armed struggle had planned, the aftermath of the violence had
not been
sufficient to cause mass linking among rural populations of the region
where the guerrillas had been established. Contrary to what it is supposed, the
experience of violence does not predispose the peasant population to adhere to t
he prospect of another
experience of armed struggle, except in a few cases. It is no coincidence that
at the end of the 1970s the only guerrilla group that reaches out to impact the
public opinion
is the M-19, in the moments in which launches urban operations.
However, this is the time to open the second phase of the National Front
characterized by the growing discredit of the system. The disappointments that m
anifest themselves
during the mandate of Alfonso Lopez Michelsen are as intense as the hopes which
had
awakened his election in 1974. In spite of certain measures to respond to
popular expectations, such as the recognition of the CSTC, the
communist liberal confederation, the dismantling of the Agrarian Reform Institut
e, the appropriation of the sharp rise
in the price of coffee by the largest growers, the acceleration of inflation
, help to create a deep social malaise. To all this we must
add the increasing flow of capital "doubtful" that irrigate the legal economy wi
th the blessing of the
government. Strikes and urban movements (civic strikes that require
an improvement of services) multiplican17. This upset leads to the September 14
1977 in a general strike protegé of all the major unions
and that, in some neighborhoods, took the appearance of an insurrection, repress
ed in
blood and fire. Described as "small April 9" by López Michelsen, the event is
interpreted by a part of the elites as a symptom of the progress of the
"subversion". The hardening of the emergency measures, initiated by López
Michelsen is continued by his successor Julio Cesar Turbay: the "Statute of secu
rity"
adopted in 1978 allows the detention of the suspects of rebellion, and opens the
way to the trivialization of
the arbitrariness. The measure hits particularly those suspected of
sympathy with the M-19.
17 The number of strikes reaches its highest point in 1975, with 246. Drops to l
ess than 70 in the late 1970s, under the
effect of repression. If raise again during the period of Belisario Betancur (16
8 in 1985),
this is mainly due to the protests against the violence in the name of the "righ
t to life".
In parallel, the traditional parties lose the little cohesion that preserved. Th
e
abstention reached record figures many times, such as in Bogota in the elections
for Congress
in 1976, which comes to 80 8 %. In place of the historical leaders and signific
ant
long-standing regional potentates are imposed, called "barons",
that make up huge clientele on the basis of multiple bonuses and sometimes
of the intimidation. National elections are now conducted on the basis of the
transactions with these barons and the availability of financial resources is ce
ntral
. This is not more than one of the aspects of institutional breakdown associated
drug trafficking in particular.
Of all forms is important to note that social mobilizations and armed struggles
tend to evolve in the opposite direction. The first does not cease to progress w
hile the latter
tend to decrease. At least this proves that not necessarily leave
agreement and that the armed struggle is not a continuous process: in 1975 his f
uture strengthening
is not easily predictable.
II. Drug Trafficking, commotion and institutional expansion of the armed conflic
t
1. The irruption of the drug trafficking as a new context
The main factor of the mutation is, to our eyes, the expansion of drug trafficki
ng. The
greater part of the analysis mentioned this factor but as one among others and w
ithout putting it in
the heart of the problem, as if there was a risk to mitigate the political chara
cter of the
armed conflict, even to support the vision of Alvaro Uribe according to which th
e conflict
is reduced to a mass phenomenon of crime. OR as if this will mean justify the "w
ar on drugs
" of the known failure and the disastrous consequences.
However it is difficult to deny that drug trafficking has a major responsibility
in
the strengthening of all actors involved in the armed conflict, the
drug traffickers in the first place, but also the guerrillas, the paramilitaries
, the gangs
of organized crime. Without doubt, the drug trafficking is not the only element
to
consider: the rise of other resources, such as oil and mining also ensures
the strengthening of these actors, as is shown by the example of the ELN. This
can also be extended to the consolidation of an agriculture that relies on
domestic and international capital and that is determined to eliminate all the o
bstacles.
This proliferation of new resources is inseparable from a spatial transformation
: the
Colombian economy develops from new peripheries that correspond to the poles of
production that appear, and these suburbs beyond now more than ever to the influ
ence of the
central State.
Why not subscribe the reasoning of Paul Collier for which the internal armed con
flict
would be referred to the recent benefits linked to the appropriation of primary
goods
rather than social purposes, political or ideological. This reductionism misses
the complexity of
the situations. It seems to us essential to make a detour via
institutional shocks caused first and foremost by the drug economy.
The first signs of this economy appear, as I have already stated, since the mid1970s
, when it begins to form; at that time it is on all of the
marijuana that goes relatively unnoticed. However at the same time corruption
progresses, the porosity between what is legal and what is illegal is incremente
d, the provisions
that undermine the rule of law will accumulate. Gradually the dirty money
affects all sectors and irrigates entire portions of the official economy. The u
niverse of the
consumption extends beyond their regular participants. A character like Pablo Es
cobar
comes at a given time to embody a model of success and to stimulate a kind of
illusion populist and nationalist. While this money helps to Colombia to avoid t
he effects of
the "lost decade" of the neighboring countries, the political cost is exorbitant
shows.
However, this is nothing compared to what is produced in the 1980s. Terrorism
, blind or selective, promoted by the Medellin cartel on all
measures to block the extradition, he managed to shake the regime. The strategy
of corruption
promoted by his counterpart in Cali has no less perverse effects. The institutio
nal breakdown
resulting in the paralysis of whole sectors of the judiciary under the effects o
f
terror and corruption; in the collusion of members of the political class, of th
e secret services
(DAS etc. ) and of the forces of order with the traffickers; and multiplication
of
paramilitary organizations. Take shape in this way
an archipelago of powers of fact in which intersect forces legal and illegal
.
In the mid-1980s, this set of players begins to beat the human rights defenders
and political figures in the foreground. In only two years, between
1989 and 1990, three candidates in the presidential elections are killed includi
ng Luis
Carlos Galan, the favorite.
The trafficking causes at the same time sociological disorders on an unprecedent
ed scale
in the urban world; is spreading among young people in deprived neighborhoods
a culture of violence in everyday life, stimulated by Pablo Escobar, which distr
ibutes
premiums between the hitmen and rewards for the murder of a policeman. In 19901991 the homicide rate in Medellin reaches a world record. The political content
of this
culture is not self-evident. The gangs of Medellín appear, according to the
times, such as simple gangs and combos that are waging war against those of the
neighboring districts
, such as militias linked to the guerrillas and, later, as auxiliary to the
paramilitaries.
The impact of drug trafficking is added at the end of the 1970s the M-19. The in
ternational situation
is no stranger to this fact. The Sandinista victory and the conflicts in Central
America
give a new impetus to the revolutionary movements. In contrast with the guerrill
as
which preceded it, the M-19 is intended to not only act in the cities, but also
carry out spectacular initiatives, in the style of the Tupamaros, for in this wa
y
face militarily the public force. With the rejection of any type of
sectarianism, the M-19 has success in a work of seduction of the sectors most mo
tley,
from those belonging to the urban peripheries until the middle classes and the f
ractions of the
intellectual elite. In a better way than other guerrilla movements, achieves spr
ead the vision of a
National Front as local version of the authoritarian regimes, which leave no oth
er exit
that the armed struggle. The practices which inaugurates, incidentally, as the f
requent recourse to the
kidnappings, are going almost unnoticed as their occasional collaborations with
drug traffickers
. In coincidence with the terror produced by the latter, the spectacular hits
that the M-19 carried out in fact contribute to undermine the little legitimacy
to the regime retains. The disaster of the operation in November of 1985 at the
Palace of Justice
certainly mark the end of its popularity, but how the armed forces intervene
further obscure the image of the regime and the military.
The shock institutional leaves the field open to all the sectors that have
military capabilities. The drug traffickers, obviously, to inaugurate repertoire
s of violent practices
that had not been returned to present from the violence, and that the used not o
nly against
their "adversaries" but also to settle accounts among them; the paramilitaries
that, dispersed groups formed by the narcos, become very quickly in
forces more or less coordinated that they serve as an instrument or a prolongati
on of the narcos;
sectors of the security forces and the local political class whose members are i
n collusion
with the paramilitaries the way to cope with anything they consider a sign of th
e
subversion, as is the case of the area of Puerto Boyaca, that allows one to see
the alliances
that weave; but without forgetting The guerrillas, that extend its territorial p
resence and its
military capacity.
All this certainly mark the beginning of a new era. The elements of continuity n
ot
obviously missing. Those who come from the traces of the violence or are a conse
quence of
the precariousness of the State are still present; which are the result of socia
l inequality and
the concentration of the earth are becoming more and more, as well as the
social disorganization, which touches not only to the new peripheries but also r
ural to
the urban peripheries. In this sense, the discontinuities are patents. The most
obvious
is that the division of the traditional parties now plays a very secondary role
and, in
consequence, the conflict does not compromise of entry to the majority of the po
pulation. In this way
does not make sense to speak of "civil war": it may be that, according to intern
ational standards,
the number of people killed between the combatants justifies the use of this des
ignation
, a fortiori, when one considers the enormous number of civilian casualties. How
ever
, it is not a conflict that is based on religious motivations, ethnic or
regional. And when it is possible the civilian population strives rather by be l
eft out of the
conflict. Another element of discontinuity is that the "objective factors" alrea
dy only
have an indirect impact: are constituted as such through the strategies of the
actors that they claim, and incorporate to their arguments and their objectives.
Moreover,
various work established that violence protean art, called "regular",
such as the one that appears on the homicide rates, is widely correlated with th
e
deployment of armed organizations.
Anyway, the increase in the power of the FARC is inseparable from the rise of th
e coca economy
during the years 1980-1990. Its deployment in the south and west of the country
contributes, in fact, the development of the crops, because the protects against
incursions by
armed force.
In addition, thanks to this activity, the guerrilla is DOTA a social basis much
broader than the one that
had until that time. Protects and encompassed thousands of people, attracted by
the
mirage of income in the economy, they avoid in this way be subjected,
as had happened in the beginning, to a situation of anomie or abuses of traffick
ers
. The JAC (Community Action Boards) allow very frequently to the FARC
take the demands of the inhabitants. It should be noted that the FARC derived fr
om
this activity substantial financial resources, because they are no longer satisf
ied with taxes to
the growers. The "war on drugs", promoted by the United States, has the effect
of decreased production in Bolivia and Peru, and allows you to become Colombia,
toward 1974, the largest producer of cocaine, while serving as an intermediary i
n the
traffic. The FARC, which controlled secondarily poppy plantations much more
modest tend to increasingly called upon to intervene in all the stages of format
ion and the
commercialization of the cocaine, with the exception of the routes of access to
consumer markets
.
By doing this the FARC entering into competition with the drug traffickers who,
by his side, control the activity
until the end. During a time, not lack of cooperation between them.
The laboratories and the tracks of the narcos installed very often in the areas
of the FARC
, requiring the payment of commissions. The sale of local producers associated w
ith
the guerrillas is carried out in the municipal capitals, controlled by the traff
ickers.
But this cooperation ends by attenuated from the moment that the paramilitaries
undertake an open war against the guerrillas.
The income of the FARC from drugs become significant, especially if you add
those who obtained by extortion and kidnapping, converted into routine practice
and that, in certain years, reported both as coca. Its expansion, thus, is not
surprising. We know that during his VII Conference in 1982 added the letters
EP (People's Army) to its acronym and adopted a strategic plan aimed to take
power in eight years.
Although the ELN refuses during this period to become involved in drugs and stri
ves in many places
for organizing the population, benefit from many times of the sympathies of the
local clergy, the resources extracted from the extortion to mining companies all
ow you to perform
by their side numerous armed actions. Even in the late 1980s the latter are more
frequent than those of the FARC. By the side of the EPL it should be noted that
its implantation in the banana plantation zone of Urabá also translates into an in
crease in their power.
The progress of the guerrillas they are tied to your diagnosis of the state of s
pirit of the
"masses" and the political system. Do not hesitate to say that the masses are cl
ose to a
general insurrection and the political system is so perverted that his only chan
ce is the collapse
.
2. The blockade of political life: the extermination of the UP and the offensive
of the paramilitaries
These perspectives explain why the FARC decide commit simultaneously in the
political field itself.
In the framework of the "peace process" launched by the government of Belisario
Betancur in 1982,
signing a ceasefire in 1984 with the main guerrillas, with the exception of the
ELN. While
the M-19 and the EPL the break very soon, the FARC is adhering to it officially
until 1987
.
With the creation in 1985 of the new party of the Patriotic Union (UP), in colla
boration with
the Communist Party, FARC clearly manifest their willingness to create a politic
al force
. Various commanders of the FARC take part in this new party and various sectors
of
the left stick also. In a short time the UP gets major successes
. In alliance with the Communist Party achieved five seats in the senate and nin
e
representatives to the House. In the local elections of 1988, the first to be ca
rried out under
the modality of universal suffrage, win 23 mayors and removed many
municipal councillors, in particular in the Urabá region and in the south of the c
ountry, and even several
seats in Congress. These achievements are sufficient to cause the concern of muc
h of
the political class.
The experience turns from that time in an unprecedented tragedy. The
paramilitary groups, assisted by members of the forces of order and by politicia
ns at all levels
, undertake the systematic extermination of the tables and the militants of the
UP. Estimates regarding the number of victims range from around 2,500 , which in
cluded
the greater part of the elect, including those elected to Congress, the presiden
ts of the
organization, countless trade union leaders and peasant leaders,
an entire generation of young activists. Through the UP, the Communist Party is
also severely weakened.
The massacre ends up convincing to the FARC that have no other option that the m
ilitary path
, because they have realized the magnitude of the army's opposition to the cease
-fire
. The government, by authorizing an operation against the headquarters of the FA
RC Secretariat
on 9 December 1990, the day of the election to the Constituent Assembly, does no
t make another thing
that would harden them in this conviction.
In addition, the ambiguities of the Party and of the FARC contribute to these se
rial murders
do not evoke a very large indignation in the view. The Party had
continually reiterated the thesis of the "combination of all forms of struggle".
The FARC are taking advantage of the cease-fire period to multiply their fronts.
Its ideologist Jacobo
Arenas publicly affirmed that political intervention is subordinated to the mili
tary plan. The
growth in the number of kidnappings, in spite of the commitments made by Manuel
Marulanda, provokes strong reactions. Moreover, some distance is an increasingly
noticeable
between the FARC and some sectors of the Party and the UP. The option of the FAR
C
to give priority to a military strategy, which no longer has anything to do with
self-defense, and to take into
their own hands the definition of their political orientation, in fact mark the
break with the lead role that previously attributed to the Party.
3. The sobering consequences of the political reforms of 1991
However, around the year 1990 the juncture seems favorable to a termination of t
he armed struggle
. In the first place, due to the international situation. The fall of the Berlin
wall
means the collapse of the communist orthodoxy. Maoism, become
simple mode of authoritarian management, already produces no enthusiasm. The Sal
vadoran war
is in the process of completion, and the Guatemalan guerrilla gives signs of exh
austion.
To continue their struggle, the Colombian guerrillas are at risk of
isolation, given that their battle does not have the same echo in the outside wo
rld that these movements
.
Secondly, due to the national economy. With the convening of a Constituent Assem
bly
in 1990, the governments of Virgilio Barco and César Gaviria, they
realize the demobilization of the M-19, the greater part of the EPL and organiza
tions
as a minor influence the Quintín Lame and small groups. A sector of the ELN, the
current Socialist, does the same thing in 1994. The facts do not cease to be ama
zing. The regime's response
to the multiple threats that surround is not a new
hardening authoritarian but the adoption of a new letter, not content with clear
features of the Constitution of 1886 and the National Front, favors a broad demo
cratic opening
and laid the foundations for a 'social state of law", which guarantees the right
s of the individual
, acknowledges the cultural minorities, reorganized the judiciary, stimulates th
e
political pluralism in the promotion of new parties, creates mechanisms of parti
cipatory democracy
, reinforces the decentralization measures, up to make Colombia one of the
nations where the latter has gone further. In many ways this
constitutional mutation is similar to that found in the countries of South Ameri
ca, which had
come out of the authoritarian regimes. The hope is even larger as the M-19, newl
y
demobilized, morphs into a political party that plays an important role in the C
onstituent Assembly
and it has the potential to become a third party influential. Many
of the reasons for the guerrilla struggles seem to be fading.
The armed struggle, on the contrary, set out anew from way more intense. In spit
e of the two meetings of the
government with the FARC to return to launch a peace process, in Caracas
in 1991 and in Tlaxcala, Mexico) in 1992, the conflict knows a continued escalat
ion and increasingly
dire.
The guerrillas may argue about various reasons. The political reforms had not be
en accompanied by
significant social reforms. The strong increase in public spending
has few visible effects: decentralization makes this expense will be shared betw
een
multiple territorial entities that are concerned about primarily by their client
eles.
Favored by the multiplication of the micro games, the cronyism flourishes more t
han ever
. The political reforms coincide with measures of openness of the economy that l
ead to the
impoverishment of sections of the peasantry small and medium, and favor at the s
ame time
the conversion of the haciendas in extensive livestock farming. Although the lib
eral model of development
, in agony from the 1970s, is well buried, the "neoliberal turn
" ensures the most powerful companies expansion conditions and represents
by itself a threat of accentuation of inequalities: the complaint of "neoliberal
ism
" becomes one of the leitmotif of the left. Corruption does not reverse,
on the contrary, during four years Colombia survives with a president Ernesto
Samper, accused of having been elected thanks to funding from the Cali cartel.
Once more the institutions seem to be point of collapse.
4. The intensification of the conflict from 1990 to 2005
From 1990 onwards the escalation of the conflict becomes ever more intense. We w
ill not go into details here
, but to summarize the different phases. The most important thing is to show the
strategies
of its protagonists and the role of the State.
In 1993, during the eighth Conference, the FARC ratify the military option, whic
h is being acted upon
by an offensive by a impressive scale, which is composed of actions
to strengthen its territorial presence in the north of the country, the plan of
closing
the main metropolis, the attack against the military or police premises with the
use of
gas cylinders and all the damage "collateral", that there are
massive operations that undertake hundreds of guerrillas against military units,
the capture of hundreds of "prisoners" military.
In addition, from 1997 to 2002, the FARC are endeavoring in shaping "liberated t
erritories
" in the south of the country, that are conceived as the starting point of a "du
al power
", based on the elimination or the expulsion of the legal authorities and member
s of the
parties linked to the regime. The number of murders in
this perspective is echoed by the committed shortly before in other regions agai
nst the militants of the
up18. The success is such that large segments of the opinion that they believe t
he
guerrillas can effectively reach, sooner or later, to power.
18 Cf. the volume published by the CNMH and IEPRI guerrilla forces and civilian
population. Trajectory of the FARC
1949 -2013, Bogota, 2013, p. 256: In Caquetá "between 1985 and 2005, the Liberal P
arty had three times more victims than
the UP". Mario Aguilera sentence can be read also guerrilla countervailing powe
r and justice.
Political fragmentation and order insurgent in Colombia (1952 -2003), Bogota, IE
PRI, 2014.
The opening of negotiations by the government of Andrés Pastrana is not surprising
:
meet the demands of the FARC to demilitarize an area of 42,000 km² in the Caguán
is something that seems to be inscribed on the order of things and at the beginn
ing only produces a
modest indignation.
The Armed Forces give proof in this period of a unpreparedness to deal with
shares of these dimensions; poorly trained, devoid of modern weapons and strateg
ic vision
, seem to be constantly on the defensive. It is therefore not surprising that
establish a collusion with the paramilitary groups, closing the eyes on their
charges or taking part in them.
The strengthening of the paramilitaries is also another feature of the conflict.
From the beginning
the drug traffickers are in the foreground as its promoters. This influence
is growing. In the early 1990s are at the head of the forces that,
after having evicted the guerrillas of Urabá, launched raids against
the fiefs of the FARC in the south, as well as against the fiefs of the ELN in t
he Magdalena Medio
. A step forward is also gives when Carlos Castano, a former member of the Medel
lín cartel
, begins to coordinate the various groups with the aim of
reconquered a large part of the territory, based on the creation in 1996 of the
ACU
(Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba United), and then, in 1997, the AUC
(United Self-defense Forces of Colombia). The methods employed are everywhere t
he same
: not so much a direct confrontation with the guerrillas, but the terror against
the population,
the massacres, forced disappearances, massive displacement.
The negotiations of the Caguán are prolonged for more than three years. Except in
this region,
the negotiations did not impede the continuation of military actions nor the
guerrilla operations. In fact, the real change has to do with the armed forces
: the adoption by the United States of the Plan Colombia goes hand in hand with
a
financial aid -exceeded only by the aid given to Israel and Egypt, and by the
growth of the budget of defense of Colombia. In principle intended solely to the
fight against drug trafficking
, the US aid is quickly placed at the service of the
fight against the guerrillas. The Armed Forces were equipped with little time fo
r
aerial means and a capacity of new mobility.
The military effects of all this will make you feel quickly. At a time when the
guerrillas
considered the possibility of moving to a phase of war of movement, are forced t
o return to
the methods of guerrilla warfare.
However, the failure of the negotiations of Caguan has to the FARC a very high p
olitical cost
. At any time knew capitalize a speech that seduce me the
opinion and, as during the ceasefire of 1984, left the impression that they were
looking
first and foremost the continuation of the war. Since its estrangement with the
Communist Party
and the destruction of the UP, it became increasingly evident bypassing any type
of work
of political persuasion: although from 1993 tried to promote
organizations such as the Bolivarian Movement, the clandestine Communist Party (
PC 3)
or the Bolivarian Militia, the same hiding in which were kept they were prevente
d from
widen its influence far beyond the circle of the same guerrilla19. The vast majo
rity of
the opinion attributed to the FARC the responsibility for the failure of the Cag
uan. However
, this is not anything with respect to the anger that provoked the kidnappings,
as a result of their
actions: their number reaches a record between 2000 and 2002, and many are carri
ed out
at random from the roadblocks cynically calls "
miraculous catches" -; others are of the implementation of a "law" of the guerri
lla warfare against the privileged
; others are finally own a new category, the "political kidnappings
", aimed at facilitating, now is the time, the international recognition of the
FARC as
"belligerent party". No other practice contributes both to the rejection of the
guerrilla movement, to the extent that achieves even hide the horror of the coun
tless crimes
19 reference " Bolivarian " constitutes an attempt to develop a nationalist lang
uage.
perpetrated in that same time by the narco paramilitaries, which are even approv
ed
silently. The paramilitaries extended increasingly, and with total impunity, the
ir
intervention in almost the entire country.
In this way explains both the easy choice of Alvaro Uribe in 2002, consistently
critical of
the negotiations of the Caguán, as his re-election, under questionable conditions,
in 2006
. With the momentum of the so-called "democratic security policy," Uribe asserts
that it is possible to conclude with the guerrillas by appealing to the exclusiv
e use of military force.
By treating them as mere criminals or terrorists refuses to recognize the most m
inimum
political character.
During his two terms, Alvaro Uribe enjoys an unprecedented popularity, that
comes from without doubts of their ability to produce the appearance of a direct
democracy:
in the "community councils", which meets every week in the municipalities
of Colombia more marginal, deals with the problems of the "people" without passi
ng through any political intermediary.
The popularity comes mainly from the fact constantly refer to a dual
adversary, the guerrillas and the Venezuela Chã¡vez, accused of being his accomplice
, and put in
scene the opposition "friend-enemy". To do this combines two elements of populi
sm:
the relationship between the leader and his audience and the nationalist fiber.
However, the measures of
social equality are absent, because its management favors deliberately to the mo
st privileged and the
more conservative values. But the guerrillas are obviously in
difficulty: in internal conflicts, the correlation of political forces counts as
much as
the military correlation of forces.
In spite of the modernization of the Armed Forces, the guerrillas continue with
their
actions and only around 2008 are starting to suffer from notable setbacks: its h
istoric leader,
Manuel Marulanda, dies a natural death, several commanders are given low, and th
e
black series continues until 2011. In particular the "Mono Jojoy", one of the co
mmanders of
war in the eastern region, Alfonso Cano, the successor of Marulanda, fall one af
ter another.
In this way the FARC must retreat into areas that exercise greater control
and focus their efforts on the more recent areas of cultivation of drugs and in
the
"strategic corridors", by the transporting cocaine and weapons. Drug trafficking
, which
has already been implicated equally the ELN, continues to play a key role
and is one of the elements involved in the struggle with the paramilitaries or
with the bands who take their relay. In many places the conflict knows, however,
a
process of degradation. Guerrillas, drug traffickers, paramilitary bands alterna
ted between
cooperation and confrontation in certain routes of marketing. FARC and the ELN a
re delivered
on several fronts in a real war with hundreds dead
. To fill the gaps left by the many retirements and the defections the strength of the FARC spend of 19,000 combatants in the peak of its
offensive to 8,000 or 9,000 - still rely, and more than before, the recruitment
of
menores20.
20 This is not a novelty. Already in the past, had recruited children of less th
an 10 years in their camps.
21 The Justice and Peace Law, which is chaired by the demobilization, establishe
s penalties of six to eight years in prison, even
to the leaders who admitted to having committed hundreds of murders. In 2008, Al
varo Uribe
decides to extradite to the United States several of the paramilitary more known
, and in this way the subtracted to the
Colombian justice.
At that time begin to appear many scandals that undertake to
Alvaro Uribe and its immediate surroundings. Criticized by the abuse of judicial
institutions,
Uribe is suspect on everything that they had left the field open to the paramili
tary groups,
even to have contributed to its expansion. The revelation of the "parapolitics"
- a
high percentage of the members of the Congress and of the elected regional that
owed their
election on an exclusive basis to the contribution of the paramilitaries -, and
the support without
flaws that attaches to the military paintings more committed, affect their image
. Appointed
as director of DAS to someone that shortly after it is discovered that is direct
ly linked to
one of the worst paramilitary organizations; and as the person responsible for
presidential security to two generals appear related shortly after with the para
militaries
and drug trafficking. However, Uribe officially undertaken between 2003 and
2005 the demobilization of paramilitary organizations and takes as its point of
reference this initiative to deny the accusations. But the conditions in which
these demobilizations incurred are widely denounced by human rights defenders
21; various organizations remain in activity or are converted to bands
that are now considered criminals -Bacrim" , which continues to cause significant
forced displacement and murdering social leaders. A new scandal, known as the "
false positives", broke out in 2008 when it is discovered that military, to prov
ide better results
, killed hundreds of marginal social masquerading as
guerrillas.
The question of the responsibility of the State during the conflict was clearly
raised from this time.
5. About the responsibilities of the State
The guerrillas are not the only ones to put the accent on the responsibilities o
f the State and in this way in
the political causes of the conflict. There are many actors from left and
human rights organizations that share this point of view.
In this framework refers often to the "State terrorism". The word appears, as h
as been said,
very questionable for the years of the National Front, and it seems to me that
it simplifies things for the next period.
The fact that agents of the State, military, police or civilian staff are
involved in a large number of crimes is out of discussion. Governments, for the
rest,
have admitted the responsibility of the State in several cases and have accepted
the
sentences that are derived from there. President Juan Manuel Santos has gone fur
ther,
recently, to recognize, in a general way, the numerous crimes attributable to th
e
agents of the State. The links between the security forces and the paramilitary
narco are one of
the most obvious manifestations. From a legal point of view, the lifting of
an indictment against the State is thus inevitable.
From a historical point of view, what we cannot endorse the notion of "State ter
rorism"? If
the concept refers to a plan decided from above, formulated at least implicitly,
and implemented in a systematic way in order to exterminate, not only the gueril
las, but
the civil opposition, many facts make it necessary to flesh it out. The Colombia
n regime does not have
at any time the aspect of a totalitarian regime and even the authoritarian regim
e of a
comparable to those who have wrought havoc in the Southern Cone countries. As ev
idenced by the
institutional changes made by the Constituent Assembly of 1991, the adherence to
democratic procedures remains in force. By frequent and severe that have been th
e attacks
against the judiciary has never have led to a complete subordination
with regard to the executive: the research and the decisions of the Supreme Cour
t of Justice
during the mandates of Alvaro Uribe we offer the test, like many of the
decisions of the Constitutional Court, including the decision to reject the poss
ibility of a
third term of Alvaro Uribe. In the same way, although the crimes perpetrated by
the Security Forces remain unpunished, the fact that more than 5,000
of the members of this force are the subject of investigations and, in some case
s of convictions,
including general known, even with an armed conflict vigente22, shows
a huge difference in what happened in authoritarian regimes, even after the retu
rn to democracy
.
22 According to a report of the Attorney General, published in November 2014, th
e exact number of members of the public force
under investigation is 5,749 . From 2002 to 2014, 817 have been sentenced.
What characterized in many ways government policies against the armed conflict
are the ups and downs of each presidential term. Attempts at negotiation
with the guerrillas, accompanied by a cease fire for at least partial, have a co
nsiderable duration
. Some were crowned with success, among others, as we have seen, the case of the
M-19 and a majority group of the EPL. It is true that the negotiations
with the FARC and the ELN have clashed with strong oppositions by the Army or
civilians of various elites, but these competitions are not sufficient to explai
n the
failures: the FARC and the ELN have given the impression that they want to maint
ain their goals
of expansion, and, on the other hand, the narco paramilitary groups removed pret
exts for the hesitations of the
governments to move to a new stadium, which they presented as a "counter-insurge
ncy warfare
".
In the background is a feature of the Colombian State in long duration:
his authority questioned and the fact that there has never been achieved hold a
monopoly of legitimate violence
. As we have said, the institutional regulations only had
a limited validity, the violence had accentuated the trend to the territorial fr
agmentation;
the agreement of the National Front led to the civil power to leave their hands
free to
the military for the defense of public order, the rise of drug trafficking
policy precipitated the collapse, the armed conflict ratified the framework of a
part
of the population by the armed actors. In summary, the power of the State had to
accommodate a privatization of the violence.
In spite of everything, the State is not an actor as the other. Even if some tim
es had been
on the verge of collapse, at no time can be considered a failed state.
However, governments, local or non-local, have allowed some of their own agents
take part in the terror and have sometimes stimulated. Certainly the terror
is not unique to their actions but their responsibility is clearly committed. Ho
wever
, the adjective "terrorist State" obviously cannot cover all aspects
of government policy, that beyond its swings, continue to operate
in a plurality of records, one of which is precisely the reference to
democratic procedures.
For a long time to this precarious state has been asked of all. Not having the c
apacity to
respond to the demands of reason has been accusation, even when the armed actors
have attempted to block their initiatives and sabotage their achievements. Assum
ing the language of lawyers
, in a situation of this nature the responsibility for their
"actions" is easy to establish, but it is more difficult to identify the part th
at comes from their
"omissions": the past and the present are equally committed.
III. The civilian population between several fires
1. Some data
The Group of Historical Memory and a Single Registry of victims (RUV) has provid
ed
reliable data on the various categories of victims, but it is not necessary to n
ame them
here. It is sufficient to evoke their total number:23 near 7. The list of atroci
ties committed
includes massacres, selective killings, enforced disappearances, kidnappings, to
rture, rape,
but this list is not exhaustive.
23 The concept of victim was defined by the Law of victims and restitution of la
nds.
However, we may cite the data on the perpetrators of the massacres and the selec
tive assassinations
provided by these sources. In the 1982 massacres that took place between 1982 an
d
1912, with a total of 11,751 victims, the perpetrators are, in a 58. 9 %, parami
litary groups
; in a 17. 3 %, the guerrillas; in a 14. 8 %, unidentified groups; in a
7.9 %, the Public Force; in a 12 %, groups that include members of the security
forces and
the paramilitaries. In the selective attacks that occurred between 1981 and 2012
, with a total of
22,161 victims, its players are, in a 34 %, paramilitaries; in a 27 %, non-ident
ified perpetrators
; in a 16. 8 %, guerrillas; in a 10. 1% Members of the public force; in
a 6.15 %, unknown. From these figures you can clearly conclude that the paramili
tary groups
charged, and by far, the greatest responsibility in the massacres and
assassinations. And the same is true in the case of enforced disappearances. On
the other hand, the
part of the guerrillas is much higher in what it has to do with the
kidnapping, the attacks on the populations and infrastructures, the planting of
mines.
Two other figures are particularly impressive: the forcibly displaced persons ar
e six
million - only the Sudan has known population displacement so considerable -and
the
land area that has changed hands, or that has been abandoned, reaches nearly fiv
e
million hectares. Also in this case the role of the paramilitaries predominates,
and by a lot, especially in the second item24.
24 A recent study by
ty of the guerrillas
forced displacement,
of the paramilitary
the Social Action Foundation suggests that the responsibili
in the
at least in certain stages, is equal to or superior to that
groups.
25 The number of the killed of the public force evolves from 699 in 2002 to 488
in 2011 (with a peak of
717 in 2005); the guerrillas of the given low ranges from 1,114 in 2022 and 507
in 2011 with peaks between
2005, 2006 and 2007 of 1,487 , 1,789 and 1,648 respectively. It should be noted
that the anti-personnel mines
have done 2,200 deaths between 2004 and 2014 (50% civilians and 50% members of t
he public force).
It should be noted that the "specialization" of armed groups in each category of
atrocities is quite relative. All have in common the fact that the confrontation
is carried out by civilian population filed. The number of fighters killed
importante25 certainly is, but the territorial strategies are mainly through the
use of means against
the civilian population, still the terror and the forced displacement the most c
ommon.
Although it is true that most of the wars, not only the civil wars,
have the greatest number of casualties among civilians, in the colombian case se
veral
special notes should be emphasized from the beginning.
Most of the actions is "selective": the protagonists do not have projects of
"cleansing" of a global population as in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina or o
f
Rwanda, but that they acted on the basis of precise objectives, both political a
nd economic
. The social profile of the combatants on basis of the various fields is not ver
y different
for the rest: recruit often in different regions but come from
similar way of social media more miserable. Some have careers winding
that have led to be linked to different groups.
The armed conflict playing mainly certain regions, in the essential rural or
outlying regions. It is true that the selective attacks and kidnappings are also
presented in
the cities and that the heads narcos have operated for a long time from cities l
ike Medellín
. The cities must be met on all with the flow of refugees that translates into
growth of exorbitant neighborhoods of invasion and people without housing,
sources of multiple problems and tensions. However, the armed conflict itself
is now more than ever in the rural areas or strategic importance.
This explains why a significant fraction of the urban population does not take c
onscience of
the dimension of the drama.
The territorial fragmentation remains an essential fact. What happens in Choco o
r in
Nariño is often perceived as occurring in another country. Armed organizations
do not have a cohesion without fail: certainly the guerrillas are relatively cen
tralized
, but their fronts can have different behaviors, the paramilitaries
have never been truly unified and Bacrim, even less.
All this cannot be reduced to a political opposition between two fields. Numerou
s acts of violence
have to do with actors "opportunistic", that do not have a political orientation
,
or that have very accessory, such as the large-scale organized crime or the narc
os that
have not been linked to the paramilitary groups. Other facts refer to the
social disorganization, certainly favored by the conflict, but relatively indepe
ndent
. Although the paramilitaries continue to be presented as a counter-insurgency f
orce
, increasingly tend to give priority to the accumulation of economic capital
and access to public-sector jobs.
The global data are there, in spite of all to show that the conflict has even mo
re devastating effects
that the violence, on much of the country. Not resting in dynamic
mainly local and/or associated with the partisan identities, but combines
local dynamics with strategies on a national scale, with claims both political a
nd economic
.
2. Civilians in the conflict
It is desirable in spite of all establish some nuances with respect to the asser
tion that
only civilians would be swept away by the conflict in self-defense. It is true
that in areas of conflict a part of the civilians were inclined to sympathize wi
th a
field or the other, either by political conviction, by interest, or by a search
for
protection. Useless return on cores from long time ago socialized into the
culture of guerrillas, or on the participants of movements of colonization, to w
hich
the guerrillas provide standards of organization. On the contrary, there is no l
ack of examples of civilian populations
, feeling threatened by the guerrillas, are willing to accept
the guardianship of paramilitary groups and politicians linked to ellos26. Numer
ous
are also the circumstances in which prevails the need to accommodate the
protagonist which controls the town, either by caution or either to ensure their
survival
. Without forgetting that, as in all the moments of shock, the occasion
can be harnessed to fix personal accounts, allying themselves if it is necessary
to the cause of
any of the parties.
26 Well it seems that the protests of the inhabitants of the Middle Magdalena Re
gion against the project of the Pastrana administration to provide
a zone of clearance from the ELN was not only the effect of a manipulation.
However it cannot be argued that the deliberate participation of civilians in th
e conflict
is a very common scenario or that, when it occurs, that tends to perpetuate itse
lf without
difficulty. Everything changes in effect from the moment that the armed actors a
re
changing in a war in the territories that are vying for previously without havin
g the support of
the inhabitants. The use of fear, even terror, against the population, then beco
mes the
rule. Massacres and killings accompany the irruption of the paramilitaries
. The guerrillas are sometimes in the same way and, in any case,
reinforce the intimidation on the inhabitants. Some and others are struggling wi
th the civilians suspected of
having been in contact with the opponent. In the municipalities that are still
in dispute are invisible set boundaries, at the same time physical and mental, w
hose transit
exposes itself to retaliation. The inhabitants do not can they rely on none of t
he armed actors.
The experience with the guerrillas may be particularly bitter. During the massac
res committed by
the paramilitaries, guerrillas do not bother to defend the
population they are supposed to protect, but to ensure their own safety. It also
happens that
people recognize in a paramilitary to a former guerrilla fighter. The phenomenon
of "
toads" is no mere anecdote: in many ways, it is the concrete figure of terror. I
n such a context
, the mistrust ends by also affect all social relations
ordinary: everyone has reasons to feel fear of the indiscretions of
the neighbors or family. The law of silence that is installed is the
manifestation of the dislocation of the solidarity, since each folds into the ne
ed
to survive.
The municipalities, as the scene of massacres perpetrated by some and others, an
d subjected to
a permanent terror, are abandoned by their inhabitants. San Carlos, municipality
of 24,000
inhabitants in eastern Antioquia, is an example: it was initially under control
of the FARC, a
control disputed with the ELN, but then went to the domination of the paramilita
ries
: 20,000 of its inhabitants were forced, at least temporarily, to seek refuge
in Medellin. The neighboring municipality of Granada has not had a lot more favo
rable,
stronghold of the ELN, the center of the village was destroyed during a car-bomb
attack
committed by the FARC, and shortly after, the paramilitaries resumed their
control to blood and fire.
However, the attempts of collective resistance have not been lacking. In the lat
e 1990s
, the Church took the initiative in the "communities of peace" but these hardly
have succeeded in slowing
the atrocities. The agenda of the "Magdalena Medio" is an effort to
associate development and pacification, but has not succeeded in preventing the
paramilitaries' advances.
Women's Organizations are now in many places to rebuild the social ties
.
The populations of the Cauca nasa are probably those that present the most drama
tic example of
collective resistance: by relying on the rights that the Constitution of
1991 recognized them on their territories, have organized "systems of indigenous
guard" non-violent
to protect themselves from the intrusion of the armed actors. This has not been
obstacle to
the intrusion of military and paramilitary narco, and not least to the FARC
. The region has always been one of the coveted territories by the guerrillas, e
specially
the M-19 and the FARC, not without violent clashes; and even more so since
there are crops of coca and "corridors" of traffic of first importance. The prob
lem raised
overflows however the scope of the geographical location and has to do with the
provision
of the guerrillas to tolerate forms of autonomous action. Because
not only the FARC have multiplied the criticism against the CRIC, which covers
most of the local indigenous communities, but have continued to conduct
operations and attacks against the latter, even today. It is as if the very idea
of
an autonomous social movement outside them unbearable.
Here is another consequence of the exacerbation of the armed conflict since 1980
.
Social protest movements have become increasingly scarce. Without doubt the demo
nstrations and strikes
are still common in the 1980s and 1990s, but
many of them are motivated by the protest against the killings of personalities
or militant members of
the forces of opposition to the regimen27. It is also true that important
farmer marches took place between 1988 and 1989 as a response to the advances of
the paramilitaries, and
that other gears were developed between 1995 and 1996 in the regions
affected by the fumigation and the coca crops. But rare are the
protest mobilizations comparable to those of the 1970s and no movement on a nati
onal scale
, such as the September 14 1977, has produced a draft general strike
in 1981 was thwarted quickly -. The proportion of workers in unions has fallen
to the lowest level
. It is clear that the main reason of this weakening of the 27
Cf. Luis Alberto Restrepo, "civic movements in the decade of the 80 ", in Franci
sco Leal Buitrago and
Leon Zamosc (editors), at the edge of chaos, Bogotá, IEPRI, 1990.
vindictive actions is the intervention of the paramilitary force and of the publ
ic: the
social organizations have been completely decapitated. Any kind of initiative ca
n
end in a brutal response. The guerrillas, for their part, have been mistrusted b
y the
general social organizations when they have tried retain their
autonomia28. The FARC have contributed to the farmer marches mentioned above
, but also have treaty of manipulating with the risk of making them
appear as manipulated and expose them to all forms of repression.
28 Various works published by the Group of Historical Memory provided examples o
f these situations such as
occurs with the removal order, dedicated to the resistance of the society of the
workers of Carare
(ATCC).
29 On the confrontations in mining regions, especially in the Chocó, you can see t
he report by Frédéric
Masse "illegal actors and extractive sector in Colombia", ILC Pax, Colombia, 201
2.
Armed conflict and social movements, such as we have said in the introduction, d
o not combine
easily. There may be moments of concert but they tend to be separated
when the first takes the lead. And the neutralization of the social movements se
rves above all
to the objectives of the narco paramilitaries and their allies.
3. Toward the strengthening of inequalities
While the progress of the paramilitaries respond in a first phase of a strategy
on
all military, to recover the ground of the guerrillas, in a second time
they also economic and political objectives.
The massive population movements allow them to accumulate land abandoned by
the peasants or buy them at low cost to the landowners tired of kidnapping and e
xtortion
. Drug traffickers launder in this way their capitals. National entrepreneurs an
d
foreign companies take advantage of the situation in order to invest in
modern plantations, such as Palma, they reach a quick boom. Large multinational
companies
are no longer obstacles to develop the mining activities
since, with the pretext of the presence of the guerrillas, can resort to the ser
vices of the
paramilitary or thugs to subdue the resistance of the nativos29. The
agrarian reform programs belong rather to the past. The concentration of land
reached an unprecedented level for the benefit of the large tracts of livestock
or of
capitalist agriculture.
To promote this economic transformation, the old or the new drug traffickers
are also secured to have the control of the local authorities. The "para-politic
s" has been
, certainly, in particular during the mandates of Alvaro Uribe, a project
on a national scale: analysts have made reference to this effect to a process of
"State capture"30. Although the judicial apparatus has been achieved in dismantl
ing some of their
most spectacular national expressions, is still unable to do so at the local lev
el
, where corruption and threats continue to be presented. Decentralization has no
t
done more to provide there the means of pressure of the illegal groups on the ad
ministrations.
The guerrillas are involved in a more modest scale, with the pretext of controll
ing
the management of the elect; the paramilitary groups and Bacrim operate in a
more systematic manner to the extent that, strengthened by their access to the i
nstitutions, they can
"formalize" their interventions, such as occurs in the social security institute
s
where this "new class" has assumed the leadership in the departments of the Atla
ntic Coast
.
30 Numerous works have been devoted to this topic. Among the more recent, we ref
er to the book, edited by
Claudia Lopez Hernandez, and have claimed the homeland how political mafia and co
nfigured the Colombian State
, Bogota, new Iris Corporation, 2010.
Far from decreasing, the context of inequality evoked at the beginning of this r
eport has not
been exacerbated, both in the rural areas and in cities. Is this the
reason why the armed conflict continues? In fact, in the poorest departments
the conflict continues to show the features more acute: Choco, Nariño, Cauca and
many others. However, these departments do not all have a past agrarian struggle
s
. In this regard, the most notable example is the Nariño, the department with a la
rge
proportion of small peasant owners, where there was no violence
for a long time. More than the old inequalities, include new, which are linked
many times to the fall in the price, as in the coffee growing areas in
the years 1980 -homicide rates have increased and all armed groups have made
inroads there - or as in the areas of crops and buildings where small farmers
have been unable to cope with the economic opening. But while the inequalities a
nd poverty
often favor a social disorganization conducive to violence, as is seen
in the cities, this disorganization does not necessarily lead to armed conflict
. We need to emphasize it once more: the strategic calculations of the armed act
ors are
those who finally decide the conversion of border areas or mining areas
in central places of confrontation. The exacerbation of inequalities is
sooner or later the consequence, and the beneficiaries are the elites always or
the new rich.
In addition to positions of political and economic power acquired by these two
categories, also take advantage of the growing rejection of the view against the
guerrillas.
The rhetoric of Alvaro Uribe and the influence of the media are not the only fac
tors.
Although the paramilitaries and their allies are much more involved in the crime
s of
war, the tiredness of the population with respect to the armed conflict has been
particularly expressed
in complaints against the actions of the FARC and the ELN. The crimes of the par
amilitaries
have particularly affected the rural regions and, as we have seen, have not alwa
ys
aroused the indignation; abductions and the exactions of the seconds have given
the impression that
this affects potentially to the entire world and have attracted an anger which
has been translated in several mass demonstrations. The guerrillas put in the fo
reground
the political objectives and this lends itself to a clear rejection; the paramil
itaries,
once demobilized, can be viewed as mere criminals, and a certain
indulgence can be granted them.
The change in attitude is noticeable even in the controlled areas for a long tim
e
by the guerrillas. During the legislative and presidential elections of 2014 wer
e
numerous municipalities that, still doing part of their fiefdoms, voted in favor
of the
guidance "Uribista". Many testimonies also suggest that in the municipalities
disputed for years by guerrillas and paramilitary, the people manifest a grudge
even greater with respect to the first.
These are all signs of the rightward shift of the society as a result of
decades of conflict. The guerrillas have lost the correlation of political force
s much more than
the military correlation of forces. A test, and not the least is the scepticism
of the opinion in the face of the negotiations of the Havana.
Conclusion
In this report, the emphasis has been placed in the discontinuities: discontinui
ties between the agrarian conflicts
of the 1930s and the violence, discontinuities between the guerrilla warfare of
the 1960s and the guerrillas in the 1980s.
If there is continuity, this has to do with the institutional context. The
precariousness of the State, the weakness of the social security regulations, th
e fragmentation of the
territorial networks are maintained throughout these decades. The rise of drug t
rafficking
, however, has played an essential role in the deterioration of institutions, be
cause that is the context in which an
armed conflict, particularly more complex and intense, takes over from
the old phenomena of violence. The challenge has to do now also with
the management of mineral resources, that is, the capacity of the State to exerc
ise its
sovereignty over the new peripheries.
The paradox is that this armed conflict, as well as the violence has ended up by
finally accentuate inequalities and social policies. As we have seen,
are several historic opportunities in which neither the Communist Party nor the
guerrillas
have successfully capitalized the mobilizations of the masses in spite of always
be ringing
with the uprising of the masses. To close the space of social movements
the conflict has favored a aggravation of the injustices. But not only this:
has also contributed to deprive the rural population the sense of having rights,
or to be citizens.
The same sectors of the left, despite its relative weight in some cities
, have not achieved very much influence on the events due to their divisions, in
part related to
his attitude to armed struggle.
On this point can be set at least one parallel with the violence: the result of
both phenomena is a return to a social status quo. In this sense the two episode
s, despite
their differences, can appear as "functional" in relation to the consolidation o
f the
power of the ruling classes, old and new.
The fear experienced by many sectors with regard to a peace agreement comes
in many ways from that smell that this type of agreement will leave the field fr
ee to
social and political demands, which had not been able to speak until now. The
debt in the social field is vast and affects both the rural and urban world:
refers not only to the damages resulting from the conflict, but unresolved probl
ems
for nearly a century. If the armed conflict comes to an end, Colombia would be
confronted with challenges that would require a much more political will and con
stant
shared, that the manifested until now to deal with the conflict of the past few
years
. We can no longer appeal to a formula of the type National Front . It imposes a
democratization that put an end to the clientelistic networks or armed power of
the last few decades.
MAPPING OF THE CONFLICT:
interpretive GUIDELINES ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE
COLOMBIAN CONFLICT IRREGULAR
Vicente Torrijos R. * **
* Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the Un
iversidad del Rosario.
** The author gratefully acknowledges the collaboration of both the direct profe
ssors Walter Arevalo, Andres Lopez Narvaez,
Andres Perez Carvajal, and Juan David Otálora Sechague, of the Universidad del Ros
ario, as professor
Mauricio Reyes Betancur, of the National University of Colombia.
He also expressed his gratitude for the comments on the manuscript made teachers
Carlos Murillo
Zamora at the National University of Costa Rica; Louis Kriesberg, Syracuse Unive
rsity; Ely Karmon
of the Institute for Policy and Strategy, Herzliya, Israel, and Johan Galtung, T
ranscend Peace University
, Norway.
1- INTRODUCTION
This is a analytical and interpretive study on the nature of the conflict in Col
ombia erratic
. It is not interpretive because looking for collecting data, figures, listings
or bibliographic citations
on the case [already sufficiently referred to in previous work] but, through
a relationship [analysis] of phenomena and variables, aims to offer a
comprehensive vision and genuine on the evolution of the conflict.
When speaking of this evolutionary dynamics what you want to show, mainly, it is
the
multidimensional nature of the multifactorial and conflict between the State and
the two
longest guerrillas and prominent, both defined as neo-marxist: the Revolutionary
Armed Forces
[Farc], and the National Liberation Army (ELN].
That means that this analysis is limited to the object of self-study of the Hist
orical Commission
of the conflict and their victims, which was installed in Havana, Cuba, on 21 Au
gust
2014 [cf. Joint Communiqué # 40 of the negotiation between the Colombian governmen
t
and the Farc] and, therefore, is not a study on
violence in Colombia.
It is therefore a dissertation on the irregular conflict1 with the idea to highl
ight the main
strategic trends that have identified the conduct of both the State and
subversion, with special attention toward the latter since it is the actor that
breaks into the political system appreciably affecting its stability and functio
nality.
Jolle 1 Demmers, Theories of violent conflict, London: Routledge, 2012.
In that sense, when we talk about irregular conflict, there was talk of a confro
ntation that is not present
in conventional mode between several States but that occurs in an asymmetrical m
anner
between actors [the Colombian State and the guerrilla groups].
This means that the capabilities of one and another are completely different but
, also,
that to be exploited conveniently, they reported, either the State or to the ins
urgentes2,
outstanding operational benefits, thereby reaching a conflict polimetrico: that
in which
the parties use creative part-and, always in accordance with the circumstances a
nd the environment
, the largest number of possibilities to achieve victory.
2 Max Manwaring and John Fischel, "insurgency and counter-insurgency: Toward a n
ew analytical approach",
Small Wars and insurgencies, 3:3 (1992), pp. 272-310.
3 John Keane, violence and democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 200
4.
4 Aparna Rao, Michael Bollig and Monika Böck (Editors), the practice of War: Produ
ction, reproduction and communication
of armed violence, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2007.
In other words, the subversive forces have not necessarily been weaker than the
forces state because, in spite of not having combat aircraft or heavy artillery,
can, for example, tactical assault that have strategic implications, especially
if
one takes into account that its structure politico-military, especially flexible
adaptive [replaced by healthy competition, or fighting spirit very adjustable],
empowers them to develop tasks of
sociological nature [organization of the masses, international relations and
articulated social networks to local and global scale] that can be much more pro
fitable than
the strictly military actions.
Conversely, the state forces are adapted to this type of threat and develop, wit
h the
intermittent support of allied powers, insurgency initiatives [traditional and e
xperimental
] that, having its origin in a democratic system [western, liberal,
founded in the judeo-christian tradition], are geared to protect the citizen fro
m the
terroristas3 actions.
Terrorist actions that, generally, they are often designed so that the insurgent
s gain influence
local, regional or cross-border at any cost, or affecting the civilian populatio
n as a whole
[the another , i.e. to those social sectors or individuals who do not agree
with their views or with the political violence as political methodology4].
Of course, in the task of defending the democratic system, some members of the
state forces were committing abuses that affect the legitimacy of the counterins
urgency operations,
excesses that coupled with the dysfunction induced by some state agents [
officials] or congressmen not only weaken the confidence of the citizens in thei
r
institutions, but that pushing many dissidents and naive to be incorporated in a
n indirect manner
[not armed insurgency] or [direct] by taking up arms to the subversive project.
So, unlike the illegal armed organizations [OAI] that, by its very nature
airtight only impose internal discipline and corrective measures intended to imp
rove its effectiveness, the
democratic political system autoajusta and, at the time that extends its capabil
ities to administer justice
, debugging their structures and try to improve their channels representative, p
articipatory,
entrepreneurs and globalizers.
In this sense, the history of the conflict is based on the interests of a subver
sive organizations
that, in seeking to strengthen their positions and the lucrative illegal exploit
ation of
scarce resources, it was founded [with clear criteria of rationality 5 ]
leveraging organizational expressions of gamonalismo, patrimonialism and voracit
y of some
national and regional elites, as well as the microvacios state power in a countr
y which
by its geocultural structure implies at least five different regional realities.
5 Brian Jackson, John Baker, Peter Chalk, Kim Future Las Vegas Mayor Ernie Cragi
n, John Parachini and Horacio Trujillo, aptitude for destruction
: Organizational learning and its implications for combating terrorism, Santa Mo
nica: Rand Corporation
, 2005.
6 Derek Gregory and Allan Pred (Editors), Violent geographies: Fear, terror, and
political violence, London:
Routledege, 2006.
In any case, some illegal organizations that have tried, with all this, undermin
e democracy and
lead it toward an institutional framework of the authoritarianism itself marxist
, which
, as a whole, constitutes a true model of conflict centrifugal-centripetal,
this is, from the local to the regions for fed back from the new scenarios
microlocales passing by the complacent revolutionary regimes of the neighborhood
,
as well sucesivamente6.
This means that the mentioned state microvacios are made even more visible in
the extent to which, by trial and error, some circles and opinion leaders have
promoted, cyclically [in a kind of historical movement oscillatory], the idea th
at it is possible
a
negotiated solution with the guerrillas, some guerrillas that
sufficiently powerful on both the use of force and in the management of their in
come,
lucid in the narrative and the renewal of the ideological discourse, and endowed
with a
remarkable strategic intelligence, have known how to convert the different exper
iences of
negotiation in the accumulation of knowledge and multiplication of requirements
aimed at
cogobernar the country.7.
7 Kristine Höglund, peace negotiations in the shadows of violence, Leiden: Brill,
2011.
8 Enrique Desmond and Daniel Goldstein, Violent democracies in Latin America, No
rth Carolina: Duke
University Press, 2010.
As a result, such subversive groups have managed to bring the State to a kind of
strategic immunodeficiency syndrome, that is, its acceptance as a political part
ner
valid cogobernar capacity in the country through the penetration of
the centers of decision-making, the eventual convocation of a Constituent Assemb
ly
and the progressive spread, between the population and some elites, and a worldv
iew based on the class struggle
as the engine of history.
In any case, and as previously noted, this document is based on the study parame
ters
defined by the Historical Commission of the conflict and their victims, starting
with
the causes and origins of the conflict [genesis and context], the factors that e
xplain
its evolutionary persistence [parameters], and the impacts and effects that this
conflict
has caused among the population.
In short, this is the problem of the growing tension between a democracy
perfectible [that, even, lived episodes own a Delegative democracy or illiberal
in the ' 50s and
at the end of the 708] and a subversive authoritarianism that defies the
profound values on which has been consolidating the Colombian State.
A voltage fed constantly by both externalities such as appetites
of power [internal political and economic] that have plunged to society, since 1
964, in a
violent conflict between the forces of the State and the subversive groups whose
main characteristic
is that they have privileged the rapacity and terrorism as a method of revolutio
nary struggle
and political interaction.
Thus, it is the dynamics of the efforts both political and military undertaken
against the subversion by part of a diverse society and plural interested in ref
ining the
climate of democratic governance that identifies this is, a climate in which con
flicts can
be solved through non-violent formulas, based on public and individual freedoms
, and promote social development [Figure 1].
I - ORIGINS AND CAUSES :
A CONFLICT POLIMÉTRICO
1- THE CONFLICT 2- A REPLY 3- DIMENSIONAL CONFLICT,
> Long and armed with a variable intensity, ANTISISTÉMICA MULTIMODAL
Complex MULTIFACTORIAL > > deprivation, dissatisfaction, > armed Authoritarianis
m vrs.
> Chronic, rooted, interleaved. impediment own. reformism democratic
> ¿ irresolvable, intractable ? > Resentment, megalomania > narcissism politico-mi
litary
> beyond the asymmetry : Polimetria.
> > Political Participation phases : ( 1 ) 1964-90 / ( 2 ) 1990-02 / not orthodo
x. Violence
( 3 ) 2002-10 / ( 4 ) 2010-14 multiple. Imitation.
> And > arbitrary Accumulation stigmas and stereotypes
parasitic subversion
4- A CONFLICT
CENTRIFUGAL-CENTRÍPETA
II - EVOLUTION AND Persistence
THE CONFLICT
5- FERTILITY REVOLUTIONARY 6- TERRORISM SIMBIÓTICO 7- THE COMPREHENSIVE ACTION OF
THE STATE
AND SPREAD INDUCED TRANSVERSE AND RESILIENCE AND THE SYNDROME OF THE
Culminating POINT OF VICTORY
> Heuristics and homeostasis
> Negotiating oscillatory Cycles
8- THE
STRATEGIC IMMUNODEFICIENCY SYNDROME
III- IMPACT AND EFFECTS
THE CONFLICT
9- SYNDROME 10- BELIEF SYSTEM 11- PERCEPTION OF VICTIMIZACIÓN CROSS.
UNGOVERNABLE ACQUIRED, subversive AND SYNDROME RELATIONSHIP OF AN INCLUSIVE
AND DISPOSALS AND BEHAVIORS OF Robin Hood. VICTIMIZACIÓN AND ITS TRANSFORMATION.
DIVERTED.
12- THE EXTENSION
IN PERSPECTIVE
TO > ADHERENCE TO DEMOCRACY [
] democratic Success
B > OPPOSITION TO UNFAIR SYSTEM AND rapaciousness
insurgent Success [ ]
Figure 1 : mapping of the conflict between the State and the OAI.
2- A CONFLICT POLIMÉTRICO: GENESIS AND CONTEXT OF THE CONFLICT
Since its inception, the Colombian irregular conflict can be defined as a
complex social situation in which the antagonists have simultaneously fought to
gain control
on the same set of scarce resources related to political power.
It is a complex social situation because the adversaries do not respond, in the
strict sense, to
individual particularities of genetic type or atavistic, in such a way that cann
ot be ruled out
the tendency to associate the problem with a kind of cult of the force or to the
death, as if
the conflict was simply one more link in the long chain of structural violence
that characterized to the Colombian political culture even before the proclamati
on
of the sovereign State.
This means that the fact that it is a conflict that has been spread both in term
s of time
and space, the civilian population has been directly involved, either as
the passive victim that absorbs the blows, as belligerent victim, this
is shaping insurgency groups that, relegated to the State, or by using its ineff
ectiveness,
have tried to take justice into their own hands and have engaged in criminal beh
avior
.
In other words, it is a conflict that from the first time has been called into q
uestion
the democratic governance, thus forcing the authorities to strengthen the contro
l methods
on the geographical areas where resources have been identified economically attr
active
.
However, these resources are not only tangible resources and understanding goes
beyond
the economic practices extractivas9.
9 Karen Ballentine and Jake Sherman (Editors), the political economy of armed co
nflict, Boulder: Lynne
Rienner, 2003.
To be in game governance, not necessarily of the system as a whole, but of
select areas of the national territory [in a State that, as noted above, has a
geocultural structure which, far beyond the dramatic topography, makes you think
, at least, in five macro-regions, or countries five different , that is, many
centers, many suburbs], what springs to mind is that control resources and terri
tories
has been used by the OAI as a platform for daring to challenge the political pow
er, or
the channels and circuits of decision making that affects the society in the bro
adest possible sense
.
In summary, this is a multiparameter conflict [which had to be interpreted by th
e simultaneous consideration of
multiple parameters, always changing] and can be better understood
if observed through three well-defined components in terms of power: the
attitudes and assumptions, the initiatives, and the interests, i.e. the antagoni
sms
as such.
2.1 . ATTITUDES, habits, INTERESTS AND FACTORS BELÍGENOS
From its origins, the insurgents have always assumed attitudes get tough as
they assume that the State, such as a homogenous block [and not as regional elit
es
relatively connected but not inextricably articulated], has been controlled by
a caste leader associated with the American imperialism and whose purpose has no
t been
another than to keep some privileges on the basis of oppress the population of a
greement
with the evolutionary parameters of financial capital on a global scale.
This is deterministic vision of the disputes which has led them to adopt
armed initiatives, also sustained and proportional. In particular, the guerrilla
s have
found that the violence, rhythmic with a political discourse documentary evidenc
e, it has proved extremely
useful in attracting certain minority sectors of the population but also to inti
midate
the vast majority that, by nature, the rejects, relegating the
perpetradores10.
10 Charles Tilly, The politics of collective violence, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ
ersity Press, 2003.
11 David Kilcullen, Accidental guerrilla: Fighting small wars in the midst of a
big one, Oxford: Oxford University Press
, 2009 - David Kilcullen, counterinsurgency, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 20
10 - David
Kilcullen, out of the mountains: the coming age of the urban guerrilla, Oxford:
Oxford University Press,
2013 - David Petraeus, "How we won in Iraq and why all the hard-won gains of the
stems are in grave danger
of being lost today", Foreign Policy October 29 2013.
In fact, this rational decision to appeal to the use of force to protect in poli
tical ideas
frightening practices, has been the real source of the problem as it is
as well as the FARC and the ELN have been designed, expanded and consolidated, i
n such a way
that it is not possible to identify a guerrilla originally caring, committed to
the suffering of
the marginal sectors of the population, and then to another, completely differen
t
and that in recent times would have evolved in a simple band
associated with the terrorist drogas11.
In other words, the aggressive behavior of the guerrilla has been erected, from
the moment of
its foundation, on that mythical structures, promoted and structured
intellectually by the Communist Party [as inspiring true agent that guided
the transformation of the armed cells of the years 40 and 50 in permanent struct
ures],
seek to justify and defend the decision to resort to indiscriminate violence aga
inst society
and the Estado12.
12 Matthew Silberman, violence and society, Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2002.
13 Hew Strachan and Sibylle Scheipers, The changing character of war, Oxford: Ox
ford University Press, 2011.
To develop this behavior, the sedition has been valid for a whole narrative alon
e
in the protruding the alleged oppressive practices of the State, persecution and
classist
interpartidistas [conservative-and-liberal] and intentions of subjection, as if
the
Colombian society as a whole had been divided between two armed bands and
lived into the heat of a civil war that, of course, has never existido13.
In such a way, the insurgency was being achieved economic structure form a formi
dable
nourished by hyperlinks in consistent reproduction that bind equally the
informal and formal sectors, legal and illegal, national and transnational.
For this reason, the indiscriminate violence is widespread and was rapidly becom
ing
the best method to defend and strengthen those economic interests, but also
tangible organizational interests.
These interests led to an entire structure based on both operational practices i
ncreasingly
refined of bullying against the socio-political opponent as in catalogs and poli
tical agendas
geared to access the power local, regional and national, always consistent
[although not always in harmony] with their external referents and allies decisi
ve: the Cuban revolution and the
Bolivarian Continental Movement.
For its part, the State, animated by perfecting a system of democratic governanc
e
to ensure the balance between governmental and non-governmental sectors, assumed
,
during the Cold War, some contradictory attitudes that facilitated the tasks of
the
subversion described above.
Stimulated by the American political discourse that distorted the original purpo
ses of
the theory of containment outlined by George Kennan as soon as it ended the
Second World War, the Colombian leadership associated hastily this theory of the
containment with the prescription of contain communism , thereby falling into the f
allacy to perceive
as a threat to anyone that profesase marxism.
This trend, which was then becoming blurred by complete to the extent that the
governance was maturing and the political pluralism was introduced definitely, l
et us see
from the beginning its usefulness to the guerrillas warranted better their preda
tory practices
and destructive.
However, that trend also served as a pretext for that then give
criminal behavior as the executed by agents of the State, dams of severe
mental disorders and individually embargoed by the fallacy of the containment of
communism
, have aggressed on political collectives from left, such as the Patriotic Union
,
even to associate with terrorist organizations that, under the pretext of counte
ract
unilaterally expansionism guerrilla, not only profited from the raced with the i
nsurgents
scarce resources, but that hurt significantly the authority and integrity of the
State
.
In that sense, the relationship between governmental and non-governmental sector
s of the
society was also put to the test.
By ideological affinity, many interest groups and organizations of citizens' ini
tiative
fell in the polarization and began to be identified in some degree with the viol
ent actors
, some sharply antisistemicos [the guerrillas], and the other [bands
] criminals wrongly labelled as prosistemicos by the simple fact of resorting to
all the criminal methods possible to confront the
subversive project.
This phenomenon of empathy toward some ideological dysfunctional or other illega
l armed actors
could have been and seen in political leaders, entrepreneurs, parishioners, jour
nalists,
etc. , but to a strictly individual level therefore, progressively, the leadersh
ip
of such social sectors [guilds or interest groups] were taking behaviors
completely contrary to those of recognition, acceptance and promotion of violent
extremism
so that the State could strengthen its capacity to administer justice and,
in particular, submitting to those bands that, relying on insurgency actions,
only aspired to strengthen their economic interests deteriorating
ostensibly estatales14 capabilities.
14 Jon Elster, closing the books: Transitional justice in historical perspective
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
, 2004.
In this whole process of debugging and systemic improvement, the conductor of th
e
democratic governance was, and has been, in any case, the role of the Armed Forc
es.
Completely detached from everything redentorismo coup after the frustrating irru
ption of
general Rojas Pinilla in the 50s, the Armed Forces in general, and the military
in particular
, clearly understood the difference between containment of communism and
containment of terrorism , so that protecting the citizen and strengthening the val
ues
of liberal democracy, them were bill in an interesting exercise in
homeostasis operational, strategic transformation and anticipation.
In other words, the influence that all liberal democracy in the military,
duly obedient but share responsibility in the decision-making of the High Govern
ment,
was developed under a model of active subordination which resulted in the
maintenance of the legitimate monopoly of force, the strengthening of the public
trust
, the civic empowerment of the problems of security and deterrence in the
international context, all of this, mainly, in development of the so-called Demo
cratic Security Policy
[2002 -2010] that dispel the strategic advances achieved by
the FARC and the ELN following negotiations undertaken at the beginning of the e
ighties and at the end of
the nineties.
3. EVOLUTION AND PERSISTENCE OF THE CONFLICT
Then arises the question of what have been the [evolutionary] indicators which a
llow us to understand the
persistence of the conflict, to what can be answered through several models
and dimensions.
3.1 . THE MODEL OF immaturity OF THE CONFLICT AND THE SYNDROME OF THE
culminating point of VICTORY
3.1.1 . THE immaturity OF THE CONFLICT
As stated before, the terrorism has been established as a powerful factor that h
as led
to certain elites fearful or hesitant to enter into negotiations with the insurg
ents but the
assessment that such elites have made relations of force [assessment that, by it
s
nature, it is in first grade to the Military Forces] has been skewed by cause of
a phenomenon that could be called pragmatic opportunism in that each
government has wanted to exceed to their unprecedented in the long career by déten
te [the
administrative effort to reach agreements of any kind].
In this race, each government has tried to
compared to its predecessors in such a way
aspirations
of the rebels by transforming the conflict
d desires of
the statesmen for arriving a step above in
peacemaker].
meet a kind of differential marker
that, often, have been connected the
in accordance with their interests an
history [mirage
In accordance with this trend, the conflict, far from being resolved, persists a
nd strengthens its position each
time more since they are not taken into account the specific factors that might
indicate at what time the
confrontation is mature enough to develop
a negotiation predictably successful, sustainable and irreversible.
In fact, one of the additional factors that has aggravated the situation is the
deterioration of the
channels and apparatus of mediation, or the intervention of third parties intere
sted in the conflict, as
:
[a] has been used in a manner unrelated or rambling to brokering, facilitation o
r
approximation counting for such tasks with individuals or non-governmental organ
izations
that, on the one hand, have been biased toward the subversion or, on the other h
and,
have not had reception among the rebels [case of the United Nations
, in 2003], or whose potential mediator of impartial nature, constructive and
serena has not been fully realized and, therefore, has not been fully used [case
of the Catholic Church].
[B] has been resorted to governments [in particular, the bolivariano, of Venezue
la, during the 2007]
with the hope that, by ideological affinity and logistics, could stimulate a con
trolled change
in the attitude of the insurgents, characterizing an, on the contrary, their
bias and interest in the spread revolutionary [committed] mediation restocked a
paradoxical effect.
What happens is, which is generally considered that a conflict is ripe only when
the parties are mired in a manner burdensome; or envisioned for the future a
worst-case scenario than the one in which are; or are aware that they find thems
elves trapped
, so that, in any case, some beatifull rewards to justify the
war effort.
However, when the parties engage in a negotiation in the knowledge that the conf
lict
is not mature enough, as has happened in the case of Colombia, the only thing
that can achieve is ad hoc institutions like and make it even more robust, with
which, it is not surprising that, in general,
have been the FARC and the ELN have gained greater profit from such
experiments since their political and military coordinates coincide fully with e
ach
other, while the initiatives undertaken by the bureaucratic apparatus responsibl
e for the dialogs
and negotiations are often in conflict with the empirical evidence
gathered by the defense sector and by the population itself.
3.1.2 . MITOMANÍA AND FABULACIÓN ON THE culminating point of
VICTORY
With another concept, the culminating point of victory, something similar to wha
t happens when
it comes to assessing whether it is plausible negotiate because, usually, the po
litical leaders in Colombia
have come to the conclusion part of hasty and that, after some
successful military campaigns, any additional effort is weakened because the reb
el groups
are already irreversibly decimated, so, in time to engage in the continuation of
armed actions, they conclude, superficially, which is viable a
negotiation leading to its demobilization, submitting to justice, disarmament an
d
reintegration to civilian life.
Ignoring, once more, the military assessments that tend to be
prudent carefully in such a delicate matter [one's own of its technical field],
the rulers have been quick
to think that when there is greater emphasis on the part of the insurgent leader
s
in the need to find a negotiated solution to the conflict, this insistence is du
e to its
weakening final, in such a way that, believing be found in what the
strategic theory classical considers as the culminating point of victory [Clausewi
tz], indulge in
expensive and usually talks with the subversive forewarn that,
in the words of H. Kissinger,
n't win
.
earn if you do not lose
whereas armies lose if you do
3.1.3 . THE MODEL OF THE REVOLUTIONARY FERTILITY
One of the main tactics the subversives has been handling the costs of anti-terr
orist
making the population spending confuse
with
investment in security and defense
.
In such a way, they have managed to have assume as some the fallacy that the bud
gets
are unsustainable, that the surplus of peace, per se, is the reward that any neg
otiation
guarantees, and that to not be in imminent danger the stability of the system, i
t is sufficient to
contain and tolerate the insurgency because, sooner or later, it will end consol
e to civilian life
.
In the background, which has pursued this vision is to break the will of the Mil
itary Forces
[ARMED FORCES] thus related sectors to the insurgency have failed to generate,
repeatedly, a certain popular pressure oriented to put an end to the war on the un
derstanding
that if the spirit to combat the threat is weakened, any military capability
state, however strong, ends up being safe.
This means that the insurgents have been developing a model of high strategic co
mpetitiveness
, the fertility of the revolutionary, whose main variables would be:
[to] intense ideological rationale and dissemination, or the intellectual capaci
ty to adapt
classic eclectically speech marxist-leninist and update it using a fusion
[intellectual narrative, advertising, pedagogical and media] with the heroes of
the independence
of the Latin American and Caribbean [Bolivar, Marti, Sandino] thus bestowing it
[and syncretistically] a high capacity of collective rooting and spread.
[B] cyclical upturn of popular support for the revolutionary cause, i.e. the ren
ewed
recognition that any insurgent action can only prosper and endure if account wit
h
the effective support [spontaneous or controlled] in certain sectors of the popu
lation, well-timed
[through coercive methods, economic incentives, the use of new technologies
of the information or empathy ideological], may supplement the overwhelming reje
ction
of society, the little electoral flow or low acceptance in the opinion polls.
[C] relative technological parity compared to the power of the armed forces, tha
t is, without obsessing over
mechanically to move from one stage to another in the rigid Maoist scheme of pro
tracted people's war
[war of guerrilla war
movements
war of positions]
insurgents have implemented an operational schema hybrid to exploit the advantag
es that
your condition is asymmetric in such a way that they have been
weapons handling simultaneously artisanal and advanced but, in any case, enough
to be considered as
an adversary with high destructive potential.
[D] and lasting profitable diversification of funding sources, or obtaining
continuing and ever increasing dividends from all sorts of licit and illicit bus
iness
to overcome the notion of self-sufficiency and move on to be regarded as authent
ic multinationals
illegal.
[E] social exploitation of complex emergencies, suffice it to say, the utilizati
on
of obtained popular discontent, the dysfunctions and state political crises that
at sectoral and regional level
have been unleashed by the cause of all this bureaucratic incompetence in order
to
channel the demands toward a climate of good governance challenged in that the
subversion appears, occasionally, as a champion of the development alternatives.
[F] capitalization of the despotism of the pathologies or democratic, that is, t
he deft
trend [one's own policy of lying and fabrication designed the fantastic] to inte
rpret and make people see
as if they were a State policy those demonstrations and
isolated dysfunctional of despotism, or unhealthy excesses of certain individual
s or cores to the power of the armed forces
, by operating outside of the guidelines drawn up by the High Command, looking f
or
affect the opposition or dissent.
[G] The refraction to deterrent pressures, that is, the resistance [bad call retr
eat ]
before the counterinsurgency offensives of the power of the armed forces, in suc
h a way that instead of undeterred
in the face of adversity, the rebels have developed behaviors of self and of int
ernational cooperation
which have allowed them not only cope with and overcome the beatings he endured
but
display a new revolutionary scenarios of entrepreneurship.
[H] the versatility to generate transnational relationships as non-state actor15
which translates into
direct and indirect support of powers or regional authorities, i.e. in
15 Michael Haack, "Requirements for the terrorist organizations with internation
al capacity," Air & Space
Power Journal, 26:33 (2014), pp. 41-50.
aid flows [economic and media, diplomatic and political] from wealthy government
s
and influential of the area that do not respect integrally the overall strategy
of the United Nations
against terrorism [UN, 2006], needless to say, Cuba and Venezuela,
mainly, but in harmony with Nicaragua, Ecuador and Bolivia.
With the versatility is that is achieved, in addition, a long chain of terrorism
franchisee [or based on a branch as, for example, in Bolivia, Chile and Paraguay
],
but also the implicit understanding of international organizations such as the
Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, Celac, or the Union of South A
merican Nations - UNASUR
, more or less tolerant to the revolutionary activities to the extent that
their agendas are subtle and significantly influenced by the external services o
f the
aforementioned countries: Cuba and Venezuela.
[I] The asylum seekers, refuge and oxygenation for the combatants offered by sym
pathetic governments
or promoters of the revolutionary cause, this is the logistical support and the
physical protection [medical, food, territorial] necessary to handle a very broa
d concept
both as rearguard of transnational mobility thus easing the pressures exerted
by the offensive state.
[J] trend to innovation politico-estrategica16, or the ongoing reflection on the
scope and
limits of the use of force, in such a way that, from its origins, the IABS have
been sufficiently flexible and elastic takes shape as real complex adaptive syst
ems
17 in order to not drown exclusively in its malleability and
develop tactical, rather, generating multiple initiatives of stress on the polit
ical and social system
dodging with the clearance gap between the terrorism [its] destructive potential
and the political status
[your creativity to generate among the population illusions of peace and
democratization].
16 Adam Dolnik, Understanding terrorist innovation: Technology, tactics and glob
al trends, London:
Routledge, 2007.
17 John Holland, signals and boundaries: Building blocks for complex adaptive sy
stems. Cambridge: MIT Press
Ltd, 2012.
Designed, therefore, as complex adaptive system, the FARC and the ELN agents wou
ld be
interacting and hipervinculados that:
[to] have been allowed to develop, learn, correct, adapt and reoriented fast and
innovative way to keep up with changes and the opportunities offered by the envi
ronment.
[B] have been remarkably resistant to the rejection of the majorities and citize
ns know
absorb, digest, resist and overcome the military coups received.
[C] have cooperated with each other and are reproduced, specializing in specific
functions in accordance with
the requirements and levels of training of the associated units, and
[d] have prepared different mechanisms and resources [tangible and intangible] t
o generate
shock on the political system even to bring this change
their patterns of behavior.
In summary, the FARC and the ELN have managed to get the conflict not only conti
nues but
has come at certain times a high degree of escalation because they have been abl
e
to implement a methodology of reinvention adjustable consistent in the assembly
of dynamic variables, mainly:
[to] the role of ideology and strategy.
[B] The dynamics of struggle.
[C] countermeasures in the fight.
[D] The logic of the objective.
[E] The refinement in the use of the weaponry available.
[F] The dynamic intraorganizacionales.
[G] levels of interaction with other organizations [odd], social groups and
governments.
[H] The diversified management of resources.
[I] The openness to new ideas useful in the implementation of multiple tasks.
[J] sustainability policy, military, paradiplomatica, and
[k] the timely transfer of relevant technology.
This means that in spite of the fact that the Colombian State and its armed forc
es have developed
comprehensive successful strategic initiatives, such as the policy of Democratic
Security
[PSD], based on the transformation chain-anticipation-prevencionconjuncioninteragencialidad-citizen empowerment 18 , the longevity of the
illegal groupings is an obvious fact as:
18 Henry Willis, Andrew Morral, Terrence Kelly and Jamison Medby, estimating ter
rorism risk, Santa Monica:
Rand Corporation, 2005.
[To] The political class as a whole has not understood the strategic concept of
the
insurgency, or what is the same, the pretensions of the subversion and their dyn
amics of
entrepreneurship through which hopes to achieve its objectives, and
[b] the main center of gravity of the insurgency has become, at least since the
end of the
Cold War, but, above all, from the access of the bolivarian revolution to power
a whole tapestry of transnational networks that adds sufficient room for maneuve
r
prosper and influence the Colombian political future.
3.1.4 . THE MODEL OF TERRORISM SIMBIÓTICO CROSS
This is one of the factors that best explain the persistence
nflict in its
present the ability of the FARC and the ELN to interact with
their differences or traditional rivalries] and to establish
of association with satellites, pairs, allies, sympathizers,
f
cooperating.
of the Colombian co
each other [beyond
complex platforms
or any other type o
This means that the two groups have succeeded in establishing a true network of
networks
in such a way that not only lead a very wide mesh of actors sympathetic but they
themselves
are part of a well-defined complex reticular, the
Bolivarian Continental movement, thus creating an amalgam intensely interactive
and
productive.
In fact, what the rebels have succeeded in implementing and maintaining it is a
bushy
associative engineering [nodes, barbecue grills, shafts, radios and swarms] betw
een different partners
19 that, without losing their own identity, they get the greatest possible advan
tage of their common life
[symbiosis]:
19 David Gompert, Irving Lachow and Justin Perkins, Battle-wise: Seeking time-in
formation superiority in
networked warfare. Washington: National Defense University Press, 2006.
[A] using different methodologies that traverse all levels of action
both on the domestic level and hemispheric [transversality].
[B] by marking with their distinctive stamp all of the activities that you under
take, from investments in
the circuits of the formal economy of some States to mobility
in the borders, and
[c] articulating behaviors that, in appearance, are diametrically opposed as,
for example, advance dialogs and negotiations at the time that installed camps i
n different countries
of the neighborhood is negotiated, weapons, formed coalitions with
criminal gangs, are controlled illicit crops, is an assault on the population an
d traffic drugs
.
3.1.5 . THE MODEL OF THE STRATEGIC RESILIENCE SUBVERSIÓN
Another important factor of persistence is the remarkable insurgent resiliencial
idad [Figure 2], i.e.
its elasticity to absorb the stakes and blunt injuries inflicted by the State
and may resist, recover and repotenciarse quickly through mechanisms of
reinvention creative based on tissue complex social networks [mutual].
Stressors on
the insurgent system
( offensive of society and the State
)
Processes of possible worlds and
transnational revolutionary reinvention protection ( polimetrica )
( Transversality )
Networked Interaction Reintegration
Strategic
( Resilient )
Self-control and reintegration processes
politico-military
protection of functional solidarity revolutionary ( adaptation
continental revolutionary Reintegration and complex cooperation )
on the web ( Movement and operational tactics
Bolivariano )
Serious fault reintegration
in the dysfunctional system
( Inadequacy and
Detaching from model
processes of continental )
Reinforcement and
Representation
Policy and
Diplomatic
Bewilderment dissolution as
strategic armed band
And renunciation of violence
( Frustration asymmetric
Widespread )
Processes of support processes intra and
Logistical and operational extrahemisfericos
( Military capabilities ) of reconfiguration
Of the network of networks
( Symbiosis )
Figure 2 : The Farc resiliencialidad
ELN as a factor in prolonging the conflict
In fact, during the years that ran the PSD, the FARC were subjected to a
combination of military efforts and civic, state and non-state, internal and ext
ernal,
that shook noticeably, lose their leaders but also main
leadership, influence, mobility and agility to use the economic resources
disponibles20.
20 Douglas Ollivant and Eric Chewning, "Producing victory: Rethinking convention
al forces in
cointerinsurgency operations," Military Review, 86:4 (2006), pp. 50.
21 Christopher Paul, Colin Clarke and Beth Grill, Victory has a thousand fathers
: Sources of success in
counterinsurgency, Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 2010.
22 Kristian, Harpviken troubled regions and failing states: The clustering and c
ontagion of armed conflicts,
Bingley: Emerald, 2010 - Graham Brown and Arnim Langer, Elgar handbook of civil
war and fragile states, Cheltenham
: Edward Alger, 2012.
However, the armed organization knew exploit the sophisticated international con
nectivity
that you have enjoyed following the triumph of the bolivarian revolution and cou
ld not
invent progressively as multipurpose grouping, or as a true system of
armed political initiatives and/or non-armed broad in coverage and in ability to
absorb impacts and reconfigured without losing sight of their main distinguishin
g features
in terms of ideological structure, political identity and clarity operacional21.
3.1.6 . THE MYTH OF THE FAILED STATE SYNDROME THE
ungovernability ACQUIRED
As complex and dynamic society [based on high degrees of heterogeneity and
alteration] Colombia has not been a precarious state [prefuncional], fallido22,
or collapsed
[nonfunctional].
However, if a State has been subjected to constant stress, trauma and evidence o
n his
architecture antifallos [a hyperactive State]. Since the middle of the last cen
tury, the principal promoters
of these traumas that have become constant
conflict stimulators have been five:
[to] the corrupt, that is to say, the predators of the State officials and their
accomplices of the
private company, as well as politicians that, failing also in corruption, they h
ave wanted to keep
their fiefdoms regional [clienteles marginalized and impoverished] or
subnational authoritarianism23 by encouraging the emergence of PCBS and partneri
ng with them
[parapolitics], or allying with the own subversion [farcpolitica], in both cases
to change
to assure such illegal organizations certain levels of influence in the decision
-making
in public administrations more fragile state of the chain.
23 Edward Gibson, "subnational Authoritarianism: territorial strategies of polit
ical control in democratic regimes
", Challenges, 14 (2006), 204-237.
[B] The mercantilist, or entrepreneurs that prohijan capitalism a precarious and
generated with
this high degrees of citizen dissatisfaction [mainly in connection with
health services, public transport, public works, telecommunications and educatio
n of
], so that profit at the expense of a citizen who, dissatisfied with the pr
garage
oductive system
, ends forming a climate of opinion favorable to the insurgents
justify their violent acts.
[C] The national authorities that negligent, vegetatively propagated, have been
considered as a cultural center
of the dominant society, despising the peasant life in general
and, in particular, the arc Orinoco geocultural-amazon-pacific.
This arrogance of the dominant cultural core that has underestimated the reality
and the
potential for regional focus on the privileges politico-economic of the Andean r
egion
, and the capital, in particular, has set up a rural landscape very marked by:
- The handouts and subsidies, rather than competitiveness.
- A large majority of the peasant population that does not own any asset.
- The precarious technical assistance and the negligible access to credit [both
to vulnerable sectors such as
wealthy] for the implementation of productive projects [more or less
induced and identified as prosperous by the State or by international cooperatio
n agencies
].
- A little formalization of property with high percentage of farmers without
titles.
- A limited provision of public services.
- A progressive dispossession of land by all illegal armed actors with low
and little significant indicators of refund.
- The stereotype of the landowner and farmer miser before that with the actual pic
ture of
rural entrepreneurship promoter of productive development.
- The destination of the superfluous resources which were not spent on essential
aspects such as technical assistance
, infrastructure, education, health and social protection.
[D] agents disposed of, i.e. military or police that moving away from the standa
rds and guidelines
of the Public Force, incurred by your account 24 in abuse of authority or
extrajudicial executions, impelled, already by deviant behavior and mental disor
ders,
already by a paroxysm insurgency that, usually, has led them to interact with
the bands of counterinsurgency [private] BCP and criminal gangs [Bacrim], that i
s to say,
the emerging bands, or heirs, of the aforementioned BCP.
24 Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding how good people turn evil,
New York: Random House,
2007.
25 Marshall Clinard and Robert Meier, Sociology of behavior in England, Nashvill
e: Broadman & Holman
Publishers, 2010.
In other words, it has been treated of aberrant behavior and extreme that societ
y in general
, and the institutions [the Armed Forces, ARMED FORCES] in particular, are offen
sive
and abominable, which is the reason why the disapproved and condenan25, arriving
to the point that not only
has been punished to the criminals, but publicly, has asked forgiveness for such
acts
outside and deviant with the material rewards and spiritual that this implies
both in the Las Palmeras case, or Santo Domingo, passing by Mapiripán,
Colombian Caballero-Santana , traders of the border, Gutierrez Soler, Pueblo Bel
lo, La Rochelle,
Escué Zapata, Cepeda, Ituango, and Valle Jaramillo.
In short, this is a injurious behavior which, under the pretext of:
- reduce the threat insurgent,
- abort the possibility that the rebel consolidate its political pretensions,
- strengthen the concentration of private property,
- to prevent the revolutionary mood spread,
ends up serving as a fuel for the pendency and argument from the guerrillas to
delegitimize the democratic initiatives and promote their aspirations for power.
[E] the extremists, or insurgents, privileging the terrorist methods [as
rational behavior, deliberate, calculated and concerted] disrupt the operation o
f the
system, preventing the development of capitalism and kept subject to certain pop
ulation centers that
, therefore, are disabled to develop their productive potential and community
.
As a result, these promoters are causing damage and direct impact on segments of
the population whose
degree of cohesion or conduct assumed before the political system becomes to
be characterized in three levels:
[to] Population slightly decomposed, or that which, by indifference, is permeabl
e,
sympathetic and ductile to terrorism because it believes that such a threat does
not exist, or that
is being oversized as they believe that in reality is insignificant and not requ
ire
greater efforts of explicit control.
[B] Population moderately decomposed, that is to say, one that behaves
stand idly in the face of terrorism and seeks aproximarsele by as soon as it is
sufficiently frightened and predisposed to reward the offender in typical search
of appeasement; and
[c] population severely decomposed, or what is the same, that, that not only is
prey
of fear but because of a lack of belief in democratic values, feel helpless
and paralyzed in the face the threat, with which, he prefers doing all kinds of
concessions
[a p
[territorial, political and criminal] to the terrorism in exchange for peace
eace whose
indicators do not match the that handles the insurgent].
All of which also has a reflection or a correlate both regional and local, in su
ch a way
that can be seen three different spatial scenarios:
[to] Territories slightly disconnected.
[B] Territories fairly disconnected, and
[c] territories severely disconnected.
Which means that if you cross the condition of a few and other territories with
:
- The behaviors of the violent actors, and
- the levels of cohesion of the affected population, it is
as a result an environment of greater or lesser destructive potential26 that ser
ves to explain the phenomenon of
seudosoberania, i.e. the set of maneuvers by which
the FARC and the ELN, and even other existing groupings, or budding,
consolidating their ability to exercise some kind of parallel justice and microl
ocal [local]
based on terror and generate occasional instability ; a instability, which in an
y case,
has its origin in the bureaucratic anomias specific that end up being used by th
e rebels
as Fuel of extremism and radicalisation.
26 Paul Bracken, "Net assessment: A practical guide", Parameters, (2006), pp. 90
-100 - Thomas Skypek,
"Evaluating military balance sheets through the lens of net assessment: History
and application," Journal of
military and strategic studies, 12:2 (2010), pp. 1-25.
In summary, throughout the conflict, Colombia has maintained a democratic system
regenerative [a] visibly active democracy capable of reforming, modernize, and
expand but, at the same time, has allowed to persist and to proliferate hotbeds
of
dysfunctional that, coupled with the disturbances arising out of the
insurgent terrorism, tend to endure [in a kind of vicious circle], in such a way
that are converted into
nutrients for the revolutionary idolatry [Figure 3].
Promoters SETTLEMENTS
AFFECTED AREAS OF THE TRAUMA AFFECTED
Corrupt Officials Population slightly decomposed Territories slightly disconnect
ed
Mercanitilistas
Moderately fragmented population fairly disconnected Territories
Authorities negligent
Agents disposed Population severely fragmented territories severely disconnected
Extremists ( insurgents )
The State gives in to the destabilizing :
Ungovernable acquired syndrome
Figure 3 : The myth of the failed State and the ungovernable acquired syndrome.
Here just one example of how they operate the myth and the
syndrome from the multiple relationships that can be set between the promoters o
f the instability, the affected population and
geographic areas impacted ( in fact, the reader can experiment with the differen
t graphical plotting routes in accordance with their
analytical purposes ). In the particular case shown in the figure, the FARC, as
sociated with regional political leaders ( farcpolitica )
impact through direct and indirect violence to a settlement, which for that reas
on, it has become highly
fragmented population in a territory which, in turn, passes to be regarded as ex
tremely disconnected. With this methodology stressful of the
system, the armed organization feeds the myth that the State is not able to meet
the minimum needs of
certain cores of population ( State dysfunctional ) while consolidating the idea
that it is imperative to reach a negotiated solution
. Negotiated settlement that is, therefore, based on the idea that the rebels ar
e the only ones who can ensure governability
. In that sense, society as a whole becomes victim of the syndrome of ungovernab
ility acquired : being the insurgents
who so flagrantly violated the governance, manage to appear, at the same time, a
s the agents of the revitalising
democracy.
3.1.7 . THE MODEL OF CONTEMPT TOWARD THE loyal opposition TO THE SYSTEM AND
THE DIVIDE BETWEEN THE ELITES
Political elites in Colombia have not been homogeneous, so the notion of
establishment exists but is relatively diffuse and decomposes at regional and lo
cal level
significantly.
Aware of this phenomenon, the FARC and the ELN have not only known exploit it bu
t that
also have caused rifts between the elites to exercise the role of faithful of th
e balance between
them in such a way that its influence [through promises of dialog, campaign cont
ributions,
contributions and media illusions of peace] has come to define, even, the presid
ential elections
in at least two occasions [1998 and 2014].
As the above complejizandose influence has gone, the insurgency has become
a desired electoral partner [national and subnational levels] in such a way
that their behavior has been determined in large part the horizons of government
, the
national macroagendas and the orientation of sensitive areas of foreign policy.
To serve as reliable partner temporarily of the governments which has made
approximations or engaged in dialog, which has led the insurgency is,
precisely, the rift between the executive and some political sectors which opera
te
legitimately within the system and that they respect the democratic rules of the
game
[loyal opposition to the system27] but who do not agree with the contents and gu
idelines of the negotiations.
Juan Linz 27, the bankruptcy of the democracies, Madrid: Editorial Alliance, 198
7.
Estrangement has been translated, frequently, hostility and pugnacity, with whic
h
, the loyal opposition has been weakened because it is dwarfed, diminished and e
ven persecuted in
inverse proportion to the level of approval and acceptance obtained by the
subversion as a political partner.
In short, apart from get rid of your profile as terrorist organizations that thr
eaten democracy
, subversive groups have become treated as agents
of reconstituyentes system, in such a way that the society he assimilates the te
rrorism while
, paradoxically, genuinely democratic movements are the ones who end up
facing each other, breaking down the very foundations of the system.
The pugnacity, and the fractures that entails, ended up undermining the
representative channels, polarizing society and generating new triggers for conf
lict,
amen to all what it means in terms of social pedagogy that the population does n
ot know
establish with certainty if there is a threat or not; whether to exercise the vi
olence is to be condemned or
not, and if the crime will be punished or, on the contrary, rewarded, all of whi
ch can
lead to long-term, in the creation of new armed groups or in the commissioning
of violent experiments based precisely on the idea that the threat or use of
violence is something relatively admissible, laudable and until profitable.
3.1.8 . THE MODEL OF contagion spread INDUCED OR
REVOLUTIONARY
Another interesting factor that has contributed to the persistence of the Colomb
ian conflict is related to
the export of the Cuban revolution - bolivarian revolution, a
cooperative that has been in the country with the FARC and the ELN as allies and
prosperous entrepreneurs to propagate the rebellion and the practices of dominat
ion.
In particular, the propagation model induced posed here is useful to understand
28 as the direct or indirect involvement of a country like Cuba in the armed con
flict
, has increased and facilitated the responsibility of others, such as Venezuela
or Ecuador, precisely because there are
:
28 Stuart Bremer, "The contagiousness of coercion: The spread of serious interna
tional disputes, 1900-1976 ", International
interactions, 9 (1982), pp. 29-55 - Harvey Starr, "Democratic dominoes: Diffusio
n approaches to
the spread of democracy in international system", Journal of Conflict Resolution
, 35:2 (1991), pp. 356-381.
[A] deeply rooted ideological affinities.
[B] geographic proximity.
[C] interdependent resources and capabilities.
[D] found mood contributory and remuneration.
[E] propagation conditions [strengths integrated, tasks and experiences sustaine
d
decisive] and, most importantly,
[f] expectations of power-sharing, or likely [in some moments more
confirmed and hopeful that in other] that the local organization receiving the
external impulse [the Farc] you will be able to access [even though] will be gra
dually in order to
become entrenched in the and, later, horizontalise the benefits being realized t
he idea that the revolution in
America are not whole commodification but extends and strengthens.
In sum, the Colombian society has certainly been a porous and permeable 29 to th
ese exercises
influence and intervention of revolutionary whose strength lies in
the analogy with the electrical circuits that at the time raised Rosenau: "the f
irst member
provides and amplifies the power of the second, and so on throughout the series,
so that each stage of the cascade is modified by its predecessor and, in the sam
e manner as
this happens, transforms his successor"30.
29 Alan Dershowitz, Preemption: A knife that cuts both ways. New York: W. W. Nor
ton & Co, 2006.
30 James Rosenau, turbulence in world politics: a theory of change and continuit
y, New Jersey: Princeton University Press
, 1990.
31 Johan Galtung, "Transarmament: from offensive to defensive defense", Journal
of Peace Research, 9:2 PM
(1984), pp. 127-139.
Paul T. V. 32, Patrick M. Morgan and James J. rue Wirtz (Editors), Complex deter
rence: Strategy in the global age, Chicago
: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
3.1.9 . THE MODEL OF THE SECURITY DILEMMA
On the one hand, it is clear that Colombia has led its foreign and defense polic
y in both
the first cold war [or, since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, until the
attack of September 11, 2001 in the US] as in the second cold war
[since the September 11 until today] based on its own criteria of defensive defe
nse31
properly mixed with doses of deterrence32 complex in such a way that the country
has
been perceived as threatening by the Marxist regimes of the neighborhood.
On the other hand, this situation, coupled with the rigors of armed conflict, ha
s led the State to
be perceived himself as threatened [not only by the insurgent forces that
operate internally but also by the governments associated with that project subv
ersive].
In other words, Colombia has been debated for 50 years in the dual status of cou
ntry
threatening-and-threatened, a toxic mixture for its structural performance [both
internal and external
] that contributes to the sustainability and intractability of the conflict.
That is precisely what constitutes a security dilemma in the long term, and is w
hat
Herz, the creator of the figure, defined in 1950 as a structural situation in wh
ich "the
attempts of self-protection of the States to take care of your security needs
tend to give place, regardless of his intentions, a growing sense of insecurity
among
the others, in that each one of them interprets the measures it takes
as defensive in both that considers that measures taken by the other as a potent
ial threat
"33.
33 John Herz, "idealist internationalism and the security dilemma", World Politi
cs, 2:2 (1950), pp. 157-180.
In any case, the Colombian political security and defense has been well understo
od that this is
a stressful situation of which society could not be gleaned since the
dilemma " is not produced by his will but by the situation in that he is ", in s
uch a way
that " the force cannot be eliminated [and the] countries are in a better positio
n
when the weapons available to them to face the dilemma of security are those tha
t make
war is unlikely".
1.3.10 . THE MODEL OF ASYMMETRY irresponsible
Finally, a factor that has enabled not only stay but the escalation of the confl
ict
is the asymmetry irresponsible with that operate the rebels, that is, its shamel
essly
in front of the international humanitarian law that enables them to employ all t
he violent means
at its disposal against the civilian population and the regular forces, unlike t
he
growing requirement that is imposed on the armed forces in the performance of th
eir work
[counterinsurgency something only natural in any democracy that shines, is being
tested and
debugged].
In fact, when members unfit and disturbed to the power of the armed forces have
transgressed the law,
they have been prosecuted and punished, while the guerrillas were stubbornly per
sist
in ignoring the international humanitarian order and when appealing to the, usua
lly do so
to ventilate the above violations and argue that, through a state-sponsored terr
orism
of which there is no evidence, that State would be the sole responsibility of th
e origin and
persistence of the conflict, with its corresponding burden victimization discour
se, without understanding that the
State of which they speak is, in reality, a conglomerate of actors, currents, mo
vements
and trends of more dissimilar and changing nature.
As it is, what is certain is that while the military forces deployed its powers
in accordance with the law
and ensuring the healthy social coexistence through exercises for integral actio
n
that generate a fruitful climate of harmony, understanding and collaboration wit
h the population and particularly
with the groups of citizens' initiative, the guerrillas feel
authorized to attack the ones and to the other under the false belief that the i
ntensive use
and indiscriminate violence is productive [when, in truth, is no more than a ref
lection of
simple revolutionary adventurism].
In other words, the conflict is extended because the rebel forces do not respect
the
humanitarian legislation under the presumption that the governments that have fr
iends with
secundandolas will continue and that, at the end of the day, they have not been
involved in the
construction of this humanitarian order nor are obliged to respect the Constitut
ion and the law
to which, in fact, they face as insurgent [Figure 4].
Control variable degree of compliance
Of the Farc
ELN
1- Exposure to scrutiny by other governments or
international organizations means
2- Daily Exposure to the media's scrutiny of
Average communication
3- Internal monitoring and control
( revolutionary ethic ) High
4- Accountability to society Null
5- Subordinate to civilian authority Null
6- Social Control objective Null
Figure 4 : The asymmetric model of irresponsibility. While the providers of secu
rity of the State are subject to the Constitution, law and
international humanitarian law, the guerrillas used the force indiscriminately,
without any kind of
responsibility beyond their narrow and hijacked revolutionary ethic .
4. IMPACT AND EFFECT: THE VICTIMS
Traditionally, the issue of victims has been treated in Colombia as if it were a
n epiphenomenon
of the conflict, so that the attention during the negotiation process
with the subversive has focused on the role of the murderer that Redemptorist, i
n that scenario
, it becomes, paradoxically, as a catalyst for the paz34.
34 Antonio Beristain, victims of terrorism: New justice, punishment and ethics.
Valencia: Tyrol Blanch,
2007.
As a result, such negotiations have only been seudorreconciliacion processes tha
t
have caused new manifestations of violence as they have sown among certain secto
rs of
the population the idea that to take justice into their own hands, run revenge o
r to undertake the
simple application of the lex talionis, shall enjoy sooner or later the
corresponding forgiveness and forgetting, as well as state of complacency based
on the already
mentioned oversize of the figure of the political offense [see the judgment of t
he Constitutional Court
C-579 öko-spray 2013 that while empowers the State to prioritize and implement mea
sures
transitional justice, part of the state's obligation to trial for the heinous cr
imes
].
This figure of the political offense which, by the elongation to the extreme tha
t it has been subjected to,
ends up hiding multiple heinous crimes that become covered by the
citizens as if they were simple adaptive behaviors to a medium, discursively
plotted as hostile and structurally unjust, justify the exercise [of] compulsive
violence
and terrorism. Terrorism that, seen in this way, not only is mellows but that
becomes for many core social something desirable, plausible and even necessary t
o regulate
the disputes, differences or asymmetries that any society means.
In the same sense, the issue of victims has been managed by the subversion of su
ch
luck that, forcing the maximum the notion of conflict [roots identity, genetic,
structural, and
atavistic], all Colombians have been converted from one form or another in both
victims and victimizers, ever poorer as well the actual condition of the affecte
d and, at the same time
, by diluting responsibilities in a hyperbole Nonmasking Interrupt.
Therefore, this generalization has been repeatedly deliberate tool to evade
specific commitments on specific victims, with which the society has assisted, p
hase
after phase of the conflict, to a true absolutism exculpatory consistent in that
each
social sector more or less organized, or pressure group, you will instead sticks
the label of
perpetrator and to every citizen you are catalogs at the same time as victim [co
llective
]
of a regime that, by historical nature, it would have been [at least since the 3
0],
oppressive, inoperable and injusto35.
Rianne Letschert 35 and Jan Van Dijk (Editors), the new faces of victimhood: Glo
balization, transnational
crimes and victim rights. Dordrecht: Springer, 2011.
36 Allison Morris, "critiquing the critics: A brief response to critics of resto
rative justice", The British Journal
of Criminology, 42 (2002), pp. 596-615.
Also, it is not surprising that the penal system is weakened and increasingly re
sorting to
methods that extend the notion of pardon or amnesty, as well while appealing to
their own
paralysis [in a prison system primitive] and, in the guise of criticism to the s
o-called
populism
punitive , he ends up distorting any attempt of transitional justice or
restorative36 that end up serving as a pretext for the negotiations to lead to
the self-destructive exercise of the foregoing forgiveness and forgetfulness, or
the end point.
In other words, if the trends victimizantes from the insurgents and the agents
disposed and diverted from the State will evaluate from, [to] the environment ma
king
[parameters of conduct established], and [b] the admission of responsibility
[recognition and acceptance of the consequences of those acts executed and degre
e of commitment to the
same], it could better understand the general problem in the
enrolls a speech as the president of the J. M. Santos before the Constitutional
Court, the
25 of july 2013, when he said in a transparent manner that, "
The Colombian Stat
e has
been responsible, in some cases by omission, in other cases by the direct action
of some agents of the State, for serious violations To human rights and breaches
of
international humanitarian law [law] which occurred during these 50
years of internal armed conflict " [Figure 5].
IN THE CASE OF THE TO THE CASE OF THE
AGENTS DISPOSED ORGANIZATIONS
AND DIVERTED THE ILLEGAL ARMED STATE ( Farc
ELN)
ENVIRONMENT The violations have been committed the violations are the result of
making decisions in reason of the dissonances and assumed rationally and with cr
iteria
Mental disorders in the systematic and sustainable organizational
Involved or omission of the State
In their duties of protection
On human rights
INTAKE of responsibility has been taken has not been assumed no responsibility.
Full responsibility for a State that only up to 2014 are socialized a partial re
flection.
Dismisses, penalizing and contribute more to the restricted and restrictive that
, in any case,
Perpetrator masks the reality through exercises
Exculpatory without tangible commitments
institutions tend to be debugged
Through strategic homeostasis
( self-regulation and maintenance of the constancy
)
Figure 5 : Trends and victimizantes response schema of the actors in the conflic
t.
4.1 . THE INVENTORY OF VICTIMIZACIÓN
Both the catalog of suffering such as the branching of the victimization are qui
te extensive in
the Colombian conflict, with which, it is hardly understandable that an increase
in the
concern of the international community, more and more interested in honoring
the victims and eradicate the pragmatism which tends to protect the
impunidad37.
37 Ron Dudai, "Closing the gap: symbolic reparations and armed groups", Internat
ional Review of the Red Cross
, 883 (2011), pp. 783-808 - Kristina Hook, "The cost of conflict: Understanding
the ramifications of internal
warfare", in Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess (Editors), Beyond intractability, Col
orado: University of Colorado
, 2013.
In this regard, and if it is taken to the most recent cycle of victimization in
Colombia as a synthesis
of the historical conflict, could be identified, grosso modo, two types of victi
ms:
[to] the victims conformists, that is, those that simplify your reality around a
n individual's capacity to
forgive their persecutors and forget or ignore both the suffering endured
as the who are still suffering from the society, and
[b] the victims restoratives, suffice it to say, those in a responsible manner w
ith themselves
and with others, are concerned about actively by:
- Repair, rebuild and renew the social tissue affected by terrorism; social fabr
ic which
feel integral part and active,
- protect the founding values of democracy in the face of the Different devices
of
disloyal opposition and violent that have existed, and even more, which could go
appearing as current
OAI mute, for example, toward:
> Farcrim type 1 , or criminal gangs created by the FARC members to continue
running -commissioned - terrorist operations in order to avoid them to be single
d out as
the agents perpetrators, or
> Farcrim type 2 , i.e. formal partnerships and long-lasting between the Farcrim t
ype 1 and
Bacrim, what would result in a threat even more traumatic than all of the above
by as soon as the bands could be formally as parties to the conflict by virtue o
f its
growing organizational complexity and longevity.
It is the same reason why the best approximation to the phenomenon of responsibi
lity toward
the victims [the consequences on the social fabric, the destruction of civilian
property
, or the damage widespread economic] is the one that can be done from the Rome S
tatute of
the International Criminal Court because it is the most significant advance of t
he
international system with respect to the need to prevent and eradicate impunity.
It is worth recalling that the concept of non-international armed conflict that
handles the paragraph
2-d of the Statute explicitly refers to the wording of article 3 common to the G
eneva Conventions
.
And as this concept is nourished by the time criterion which appears in paragrap
h 2-f in both
there is argues that an armed conflict such as the Colombian, that does not have
international character
, is characterized by prolonged be
, is clear that it will be possible criminalizi
ng
[in the specific context of the International Criminal Court, of course] all tho
se
additional violations of international humanitarian law, as, for example, that a
ppear in the additional Protocol
II of 197738 and so closely related that are systematically with the violence
practiced by the FARC and the ELN.
38 Sylvain Vite, "Typology & of armed conflicts in international humanitarian la
w: legal concepts and current
situations", International Review of the Red Cross, 873 (2009), pp. 69-94.
4.2 . THE BASIC CONCEPT OF VICTIM
A widespread and frequent vision defines the victim
s 8 and 9 of
the Resolution 60/147 of the United Nations General
2005 concerning the basic principles and guidelines
oss violations
of international human rights standards and serious
international humanitarian law".
in accordance with the point
Assembly on 16 December
of the law for victims of gr
violations of
In accordance with this definition, fully matching in Colombia with the article
3 of Law
1448 of 2011 [of victims and restitution of lands] and the judgments of the Cons
titutional Court
[370 of 2006, C-578 2002, C-052 2012, C-250/12, C-253A/12, C781/12, C-462/13], victim is " a person who has suffered damage, individually or
collectively
, including physical or mental injury, emotional suffering, economic loss
or substantial impairment of their fundamental rights, as a result of
actions or omissions which constitute a flagrant violation of international huma
n rights standards
or a serious violation of international humanitarian law
", to the definition that is integrated " the immediate family or dependants of
the direct victim
And the people who have suffered damage to intervene to assist victims in
danger or to prevent victimization ".
This means that the agents of the armed forces and their families, as well as me
mbers of the
OAI and their families, are regarded as victims to the extent that they have suf
fered such
damage in the event of violations of humanitarian law.
In this respect, it could be said that the basic mapping of victimization may be
given in the following
terms [Figure 6].
1- Direct victims
( individual and his family
)
2- Victims intermediate
( dependants
)
3- Indirect victims
( affected depending on
their relations with the previous
)
Looks like ((((relations among the victims are also expressed in a manner throug
h conflicting groups comprised of
agreement with the perception of the victimizer )))
Victims features of the linkages between effects
caused by victimizer victimizers
1- Actors 1.1 . Agents of the State between 1.1 and 1.2 . : The State agents hav
e been punished
Prosistemicos ( acting on their own, or were close links in accordance with the
law.
Affected by disorders of regions or localities has not existed, nor is there, a
State policy
Mental ) that promotes the specific violations.
1.2 . Non-state Actors: between 1.1 and 2.2 . :
BCP -formally dissolved - have been occasionally links
( Organized and narrow in regions or localities
Specific strategic intention but their relations
Human rights violations have been antagonistic
[HR] and IHL )
2- Actors 2.1 . Marxist subversives: between 2.1 and 2.2 . : The subversives mar
xists have been punished
antisistemicos Farc
ELN has been links in accordance with the law.
( Effectively organized occasionally close them some governments have recognized
a
Both politically and in regions or localities political status.
Militarily, and with specific intention but their relations has existed, and the
re is a deliberate trend
Strategic of violating have frequently been of the OAI that promotes the violati
ons.
HR and IHL ) antagonistic
2.2 . Bandits heirs The bandits have been punished
The BCP or in accordance with the law.
bandits emerging : The State debate between them or not
Bacrim as political partners.
( Effectively organized
and with intention tactic of
Violating human rights and international humanitarian law
Although with
intuitive guidance policies and
destructured )
Revictimization
Figure 6: Basic Mapping of victimization in Colombia.
4.3 . THE CONCEPT OF COMPREHENSIVE VICTIM
But beyond the previous assessments of the victimization, there is a broader vis
ion
and comprehensive on the issue.
This is the phenomenon that could be called perception of victimization transver
sal, that is to say
, the social climate in which they live the majority of citizens of a country th
at is characterized
by the conviction that have suffered from intentional damage, undeserved, unjust
,
immoral and with painful consequences 39 caused by some illegal armed groups
, that is to say, the FARC and the ELN, occasionally associated with the old BCP
and
Bacrim to the current.
39 Daniel Bar-Tal , Lily Chernyak-hai, Noa Schori and Ayelet Gondar, "A sense of
self-perceived collective
victimhood in intractable conflicts", International Review of the Red Cross, 874
(2009), pp 229-258.
This perception, which is not related to those agents of the State which have ca
used
violations of human rights and international humanitarian law as their aberrant
behavior [i.e. , abnormal
and/or atypical] have been systematically investigated and the perpetrators have
been penalized
in accordance with the law [as expected of a democratic society], is a
perception that is directly linked to the insurgents not only because it
shows the successive opinion polls but the multitudinous
citizens concentrations in rejection of terrorism and in favor of the peaceful r
esolution of disputes.
In fact, this comprehensive notion of victimization and victim of the
Colombian conflict irregular part of the basis of that:
[to] the OAI continually have inflicted severe damage to the society [see, in th
is regard, the
already mentioned characterization that the Rome Statute of the International Cr
iminal Court
for war crimes and crimes against humanity].
[B] The victimization is a tangible fact that is measured as a function of the r
ecurrent violations of
rights [attacks against property, physical injury, kidnapping, murder], but
it is also an intangible event whose definition is given by subjective experienc
es
[affectation of national identity, psychological trauma, and the violation of pa
triotism and
breaking of ties of solidarity or the tissues of social cohesion that shape the
confidence in the democratic system].
[C] There is a widespread feeling that the population is threatened by terrorism
marxist-leninist. This perception is not a static phenomenon but one that is spr
ead through
the ties of identity that have been weaving the citizens throughout the
time in such a way that even those who do not feel that they are victims in the
first degree of the
direct violence assume as own the affronts of terrorism, which, it is gradually
forming
a historical aggregate whose main reference point is the need to feel that
citizen to protect themselves from the terrorist aggression and, simultaneously,
to preserve and perfect democracy
that you have worked so build.
In fact, this widespread perception of victimization is a citizen development
[that moves horizontally all the social sectors and vertically all regions
] or, what is the same, an act socially cooperative and collaborative in virtue
of which
the simple not enough individual self-definition of victim since the damage, the
whole
population is increasingly aware from the political point of view, will be incor
porated into
the whole of society as a true disaster that because it was based on the illegit
imacy raises
the general rejection.
In any case, the collective perception [national] of such victimization is stren
gthens
[Figure 7]:
- Even if some actors in the international community do not consider the Farc
N
as terrorist groups,
EL
- Even if some of the actors - even if some actors in the international communit
y
international community support and harbor them believe that the sponsor of terr
orism is
The Farc
ELN the Colombian State
Figure 7 : The triangle of conflict defined by the perception of victimization C
ross.
For these reasons, it is not by chance that the Colombian conflict is insufficie
nt multiple modalities
of direct and indirect violence, physical and psychological40 that have impacted
with
greater or lesser severity on sectors of the population according to regional or
ders
[geo] specific, appreciating well Que41:
40 Johan Galtung, Theory of peace: Building direct structural cultural peace, re
sponsible for batch release : Transcend
University Press, 2013.
41 Barry Hart (Editor), Peacebuilding in traumatized societies. Lanham: Universi
ty Press of America, 2008.
42 Paul Robbins, Political ecology: A critical introduction, Chichester: Blackwe
ll Publishing, 2004 - Polly
Higgins, eradicating ecocide: Laws and governance to stop the destruction of the
planet, London:
safer havens), Shepheard-Walwyn , 2010 - United Nations Interregional Crime and
Justice Research Institute, Action plan on combating
environmental crime, International Conference Environmental Crime
current and em
erging threats
, Rome, 29 and 30 October 2012.
[To] The insurgents are highly responsible for selective assassinations, massacr
es,
forced dispossession of land, forced displacement, and locking of the population
, the use of anti-personnel mines
and explosive devices, attacks on civilian property, kidnapping, extortion,
illegal recruitment, torture, religious persecution, intimidation [
particularly on journalists, who are forced to engage in self-censorship],
ecocidio42, massacres, kidnappings, hostage-taking, sexual assault, i.e. a whole
catalog
related in one way or another with the widespread terrorism and selective, so mu
ch so that,
[b] the state agents disposed and alienated have been highly responsible for
selective assassinations, torture, brutality, executions and forced disappearanc
es [Figure 8].
Gravity ( highest )
3
+ Looks like ((((+ looks like ((((Point Point of
Location of the agents of the State insane ))) 2 publication of the Farc
Occasional cases of torture. Genocide. Patterns of crimes
Individuals of crimes against humanity 1.
Crimes against humanity. Policy of extermination.
Frequency : occasional 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 Frequency : overwhelmed
ELN )))
Individual cases of generalized policy of detention detention
Arbitrary, selective repression or 1 arbitrary, kidnapping, extortion,
Impairment of freedom of expression and tendency to the annulment of the
Freedom of expression.
2
3
Gravity ( on )
Figure 8 : Responsibilities and trends of the damage caused by the violators of
human rights and international humanitarian law. The intensity of the damage is
qualified
on a scale of 1 ( smaller ) to 3 ( more ) in each of the quadrants variables def
ined by the frequency ( recurrence ) and
gravity ( impact ).
Developing own inspired in Parmentier & Weitekamp ( 2007 ).
4.4 . A RATIO OF THE INCLUSIVE VICTIMIZACIÓN AND ITS
TRANSFORMATION
However, the real effect of all these methodologies of violence on the
population could only be properly assessed if one interprets the victimization43
and their
transformation over time using the following key components:
43 Patrick Bracken and Celia Petty (Editors), Rethinking the trauma of war: Save
the Children. London: Free
Association Books, 1998.
[To] The war crimes and crimes against humanity as set out in the
Statute of the International Criminal Court and the administration of justice ha
s to continue
further penalising agreement with specific responsibilities.
[B] The damage [multidimensional], that is to say, the impact physical, or spiri
tual heritage, both the immediate and
long-term caused on individuals and groups by the various criminal practices
mentioned above [all of them stimulated by lust for power, even
in the case of the state agents disposed], and
[c] the trends of the conflict itself, which can take on the track the intensifi
cation
of violence [transform] or the negative regulation of tensions
[positive transformation].
Positive Transformation understood as that which occurs when
the balanced articulated four principles [or] areas of action universally accept
ed for
reconstruction in the aftermath of the violations of human rights and humanitari
an law: right to truth, justice
, reparation, and guarantees of non-repetition, this for the sake of achieving t
wo types of
objetivos44:
44 Paul de Greiff, First report to the Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur o
n the promotion of
truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition. Human Rights Counci
l, 9 August
2012.
- Different goals: to offer recognition to the victims and encourage confidence,
and
- final objectives: contribute to reconciliation and strengthen the rule of law.
In concordance, the social majorities in Colombia have gone:
[a] by strengthening the collective feeling [national] that the victimization is
the product of the
insurgent terrorism.
[B] justifying's own targets [the search for mechanisms that enhance the
liberal democracy and protect], and
[c] legitimizing different antagonists that resort to the destructiveness to str
engthen
its political pretensions [Figure 9].
Context threat to the system
> A circuit Experiences of victimization :
Tension, fear, inhibition
Uncertainty, damages, losses,
Suffering.
> A recovery circuit :
solidarity,
Commonwealth strategic,
Security consortia
Communal empowerment ( )
Challenges and demands meet Coping and Defense
Needs the sources of tension and defensive
( Prioritizing ( trauma management, deterrence
Violence prevention security, ( in the dimensions
And collective social mediations and internal and external )
Investment in self-regulation and control
Defense ) deviant behavior )
Repertoires socially links social shield : systems of values, democratic
shared incorporated ( pluralism, freedoms, public and individual, social cohesio
n and competitiveness )
Dissemination Dissemination institutionalized and non-formal transmission : poli
tical and military leadership,
mass media and new technologies, formal education and on-line,
global cultural referents.
Infrastructure
psychological Ethos collective memory of the
( Rejection to the conflict
Violations of ( and awareness
HR and IHL ) democratic )
Collective emotional Guidelines
Social Identity ( democratic )
New information and new wealth of experience
Figure 9 : The structural identification of the threat, the circuit of victimiza
tion and the shield of social links.
Developing own inspired in Bar-Tal ( 2007 ).
In the final analysis, all this perception of victimization cross endured by the
bulk of society helps to
explain why the Colombian conflict is irregular significantly prolonged
and resistant to change positive but it is also useful to understand that, in sp
ite of the damage
inflicted in isolation and individual citizens by agents alienated from the Stat
e
[which have been duly processed by the justice], the insurgent groups are the ma
in
responsible for the humanitarian tragedy that has lived the country, so it is
hardly understandable that the citizenship of these claim that their eventual OA
I readaptation to the
democratic system suppose, at least:
[to] that will dissolve as armed organizations.
[B] that definitively to renounce violence as political methodology.
[C] which dilute the victimisation exculpatory and brought to justice in a mode
that
is punitive enough as to not be seen as an affront to the victims and
an evasion of responsibility.
[D] that reparation to victims using their vast economic resources
circulating in the legal and illegal channels to scale both national and transna
tional, and
[e] to be committed in a verifiable manner and responsible not to repeat its ter
rorist conduct
as to strengthen the social and institutional fabric collaborating with the soci
ety to dismantle
all the actors and factors promoters of organized crime.
5. CONCLUSION
Up to here, we have a version of the interpretative Colombian irregular conflict
between a democratic society
and its military forces against two political-military organizations illegal, th
e FARC and the
ELN, progressively between if allied, animated by the resentment and
agonal system with a flexible and thieving based in multiple capacities both let
hal and non
lethal, articulated evolutionarily both to internal and transnational scale.
Armed groups which in 1964 took a rational decision, collective, structured
and expansive gave, not under subjective criteria, but in the framework of
organizational parameters [motivations, risks and rewards] and in a context hist
oricogeografico
conducive, or revolutionary processes expansionist in Latin America and
five macro Colombian regions of high physical and cultural complexity in the whi
ch has not always been
given a presence of the integral State.
Historical Context and geocultural whose constant and changing elements have bee
n
skillfully exploited by the subversive groups through violent behavior [and terr
orism as
predominant method] to fill as well, intermittently, and rotary,
the microvacios of power left by the State, always attractive as a function of t
he
valuable resources available.
Of course, the subversive presence has not been limited to such spaces because i
ts economic capacity
increasing has helped the rebels exercise different types of violence
[directly] or symbolic as both selective indiscriminately reification [terrorism
]
to expand through transnational networks of support.
For this purpose, the groupings have been valid, in addition, three trends:
systematic violation of the international humanitarian order [and of the provisi
ons in the Rome Statute
], the disloyal opposition system [also applied by supporters, or by a
non-armed insurgency], and neoinjerencismo [or, the sustained support and stagge
red
several revolutionary processes hemispheric: the Cuban people, the Sandinistas a
nd the bolivariano].
In sum, a conflict of power between authoritarianism [with] high egotism subvers
ive and
democracy in constant improvement; democracy that, through the
strategic self-regulation, has overcome deficits and dysfunctions such as those
caused by state agents
, the insane, alienated and seized by aberrant behavior and diverted, have
incurred [wrapped in a paroxysm in counterinsurgency] violations of human rights
away from the legitimate security and defense policies that, based on the
prevention, transformation, anticipation and interactive coordination, have been
developing
the Armed Forces.
In other words, a democracy whose repeated attempts to achieve a negotiated solu
tion
have been frustrated by the political ambitions-economic of the
illegal armed groups and their partners, committed to maintaining its well-known
active
ritualized violence based on the class struggle as the engine of history.
In short, a democracy that certainly innovative and creative, he has honored the
victims, and it has
become the subversive threat one more reason to be coherent,
modernized and globalized.
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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BALLENTINE, and Karen SHERMAN, Jake (Editors), the political economy of armed co
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, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2003.
BAR-TAL, Daniel; CHERNYAK-HAI, Lily; SCHORI, Noa; and Gondar, Ayelet, "A sense o
f
self-perceived collective victimhood in intractable conflicts", International Re
view of the Red Cross
, 874 (2009), pp 229-258.
BERISTAIN, Antonio, victims of terrorism: New justice, punishment and ethics. Va
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Tyrol Blanch, 2007.
Bracken, Patrick and petty, Celia (eds. ), Rethinking the trauma of war: Save th
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THE INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION OF THE SOCIAL AND ARMED CONFLICT IN COLOMBIA
INTERFERENCE OF THE UNITED STATES, insurgency AND
TERRORISM OF STATE
Renan Vega Singer
Professor Department of Social Sciences, National Pedagogical University, Bogota
Acknowledgments: For the preparation of this report we have the invaluable inves
tigative advice of José
Antonio Gutierrez, the assistance from Emilce Garzón Penalty and Luisa Natalia Car
uso and collaboration in the documental search
of Ana Maria Young. In the United States, Michael Evans, an analyst at the Natio
nal Security Archive in
Washington, we provided more than five hundred declassified documents about the
relations between that country
and Colombia. The current administration of the National Pedagogical University,
under the stewardship of Professor
Adolfo Atehortua, gave me a download academic to dedicate myself full time to de
velop
this writing. My wife Angie and historian Light Núñez Espinel, gave me advice and so
lidarity in the
crucial moment in which they were born our two daughters, Marisol and Lucia, i'v
e removed company paternal
in the early days of his early childhood, for preparing this text. To them, I de
dicate this writing, with the
hope that they can live in a decent country, which does not kill anyone for thin
king, defend their rights and
fight to build a just society.
" [ ] we live in an atmosphere of lies, obfuscation and falsehood without paralle
l [ ]. There is no danger to the
historical research of the truth, and this we abochorne and lacere".
Germán Guzmán C. , the violence in Colombia. Descriptive part, Progress Editions, Ca
li, 1968, p. 12.
This
report examines the impact that has had the United States interference in
the social and armed conflict in the last sixty years. Given the length and comp
lexity of the
subject outlines a historical perspective from the nineteenth century, divided i
nto five major
periods, until the present time: Phase I: From the birth of the Republic
(1821) until the end of conservative hegemony (1930); Phase II: coincides with t
he Liberal Republic
(1930-1946); Phase III: From the Inter-american Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance
(RIO TREATY
) from 1947 until the US military mission of William P. Yarborough in 1962;
Phase IV: From the beginnings of the modern counterinsurgency (1962) until the P
lan Colombia
(1999); and Phase V: Plan Colombia-2014. In each of the phases analyzed are ente
red
both the strategic interests of the United States as some internal factors that
explain
the consolidation of a relationship of subordination and dependence which is ben
eficial to the ruling classes
of Colombia and adversely affects the majority of the population.
Examines the linkages between the imperialist interference, the insurgency and t
errorism of State, but also
the way as in Colombia is very unsettled and develops a
counterinsurgency native, since the 1920s. By space limits, we use only
the bibliographic references and textual strictly necessary to footer.
Each assertion in this report is a comprehensive documentary support, as require
d by the
historical research, whose record appears in the general bibliography.
INTRODUCTION: THE subordination WHAT HAS EMERGED UNDER STRATEGIC OF COLOMBIA
"We've got everything we asked for in this country [
]. Colombia has not slacke
ned but that with all my heart
has come out in support of our policy [ ] and there is no country in South Americ
a that has been played
in more cooperative".
Spruille Braden, (Ambassador of the United States) March 6 1942, cited in David
Bushnell, Eduardo Santos
and the Good Neighbor policy, Bogotá: The Ancora Editors, p. 45.
"We believe that [ ] there should be a concerted effort by the entire team of the
country [Colombia] in order to
select civilian and military personnel with a view to a clandestine training in
resistance operations
, [ ] and, to the extent necessary, execute paramilitary activities, sabotage and
/or
terrorists, against known supporters of communism. The United States should supp
ort this".
John F. Kennedy Library. National Security Files. Box 319. Special Group; Fort B
ragg Team; visit to
Colombia, 3/1962, "Secret Supplement, Colombian Survey Report".
"If Pastrana was itself against Americanisation of the Colombian security policy
, to the extent that the
strategy that was looking for a negotiated settlement to the conflict and the in
itial formulation of the Plan Colombia as a comprehensive strategy
for the development was completed by adapting to the agenda and the interests of
the American government
, Uribe is the "Colombianize" of the American security strategy in the country,
i.e.
the internalization of the opinions of Washington, it is no longer an adaptation
of an own-initiative, but
a translation of the diagnosis, policies and us demands".
"This is commander of the South", Magazine Week, No. 1080, Digital version.
When analyzing the causes of the social and armed conflict, as well as the varia
bles which
have prolonged and the impact on the civilian population, the United States is n
ot a mere
external influence, but a direct participant of the conflict, due to prolonged
involvement during much of the twentieth century The participation of the United
States has been deliberately
minimized by their clandestine nature, since their actions "are planned and exec
uted
in such a way that can be hidden, or at least, allow a
plausible denial of who sponsors these actions"1. These actions are part of a
relationship of subordination, understood as a relationship of dependency in whi
ch the
particular interest of Colombia is considered represented in the services to a t
hird party (United States
), which is conceived as having a superiority political, economic, cultural and
moral. It is a skewed and unequal relationship assumes that a strategic characte
r, because the very existence
of the republic is intended as inseparable from the subordinate status
, so that one should speak of a strategic subordination rather than pragmatic.
As a defender of the subordination, the most efficient way to ensure our
national sovereignty, is to stay as strong ally under the protective umbrella of
the
1 Dennis Rempe, "The Origin of Internal Security in Colombia: Part I-A CIA Speci
al Team surveys the
violence, 1959-60, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 10:3 (1999), p. 41.
United States 2. What such a misinterpretation of claim to reconcile the imperiali
st dependency
with national sovereignty!
2 Alfredo Rangel, " !Viva Plan Colombia! ", Week, March 21 2009. (Always the emp
hasis is ours).
3 Arlene Tickner, "intervention by invitation. Keys of Colombia's foreign policy
and its main shortcomings
", Colombia International, 65 (2007), pp. 98-99.
Framework 4 Palaces, public violence in Colombia. 1958-2010, Bogotá: F. C. E. , 20
12, pp. 35-36.
The relationship colombia-united States understood as "subordination by invitati
on" involves considering
the active role of the power block in play, due to the fact that there is "from
over a hundred years ago
a covenant among national elites, for whom the subordination has
reported profits and economic policies"3. These benefits are administered throug
h
clientelistic practices, which cross the whole of the institutions and political
and social structures
in Colombia. The use of clientele international networks run by account
of sectors of the State, the Army and the police, for whom the assistance and th
e military budget
are a private booty that gives them power and has created a military caste is co
nsidered
untouchable.
This system of international networks that underlies the subordination
strategic, have as a correlative a limited level of autonomy and independence to
make decisions
not only in the international arena, but in the home, where the United States
, in general, said the last word. Since then, also play an important role
other countries such as England and Israel, in the momentum of political counter
insurgency, but due to space considerations
are not considered in this report.
A subordination strategic and a restricted autonomy are key to understand
the persistence of a conflict, because "it is impossible not to notice the absol
ute centrality of the United States
in the definition of political lines that adopted the power elite in Colombia
, the anti-communism of the Cold War to the drug war and the global war on
terrorism , Washington provides you the arguments and the agenda"4.
PHASE I: BACKGROUND TO THE POLICY OF subordination WHAT HAS EMERGED UNDER WASHIN
GTON to
Colombia's relations with the United States have a long history, dating back to
the
independence, since the Gran Colombia is the first Latin American country to hav
e a diplomatic mission in
Washington. In the case of Colombia, this relationship becomes relative autonomy
during the greater part of the nineteenth century, when the United States has a
commercial importance similar to that of other powers such as France and England
and then
Germany, despite a certain acceptance tactic and pragmatic of the Monroe Doctrin
e. Since the mid-nineteenth century
, the relationship with United States is marked by conflict around the
Isthmus of Panama and the payment of compensation, which shape the subordinate c
haracter of
the ruling classes of Colombia.
The main mechanism of American intervention in Colombian affairs is based on
the Treaty Mallarino-Bidlack 1846, by which are conferred extensive privileges t
o the United States to
use the Isthmus of Panama, as well as power to suppress social conflicts
in the region - then integral part of the Colombian territory. Between 1850
and 1902, the United States landed troops and invades the Isthmus on fourteen oc
casions, to defend
their trade interests, as shown in Table No. 1.
Box No. 1
UNITED STATES INTERVENTIONS IN PANAMA
1850-1902.
1850: The May 22 to root for a riot that killed two Americans, at the request of
the Consul of the United States
, intervened a ship of war in England to suppress the riot.
1856: From 19 to 22 September to protect American interests during an insurrecti
on.
1860: From September 27 to October 8, to protect American interests during a rev
olution.
1861: (May) Following the outbreak of a civil war in Colombia, the Governor of t
he Isthmus request, after
consultations with the consuls of the United States, England and France, protect
ion to maintain order. United States
is the only country that respond positively to this request.
1862: (June) Colombia requested assistance from the United States in order to qu
ell internal disturbances and Americans send
naval and air forces.
1865: On 9 March 1865 a detachment of the United States took the city of Panama
at a time when
you wanted to overthrow the President of the sovereign State of Panama.
1868: The April 7, to protect the passengers and bags under the absence of local
troops due to the death of the
president of Colombia.
1873: From 7 to May 22 and September 23 to October 9, to protect United States p
roperties
due to hostilities motivated by the possession of a new government in Panama.
1885: From January to May, because of the civil war and the fire in Colon.
1891: Following a cholera epidemic the Colombian government was forced to close
the port of Colon. The government
of the United States, in contravention of the rules of most elementary health, o
bliges us to reopen the port,
using as intimidating as one of its warships.
1895: The 8 and the March 9, during a revolution.
1901: From November 20 to December 4 in order to keep the rail service.
1902: From 16 to 23 April, during a civil war to protect United States propertie
s.
1902: From September 17 to November 18, to prevent the transport of troops - bot
h the government and
the revolutionaries - by rail.
.. Preserves the terms employed by the United States to justify interventions.
SOURCES: Diplomatic Archives of France and Gregorio Selser, abduction of Panama,
educates, San Jose,
1984. Taken by Renan Vega et al. , The Panama colombian sharing in the imperiali
st Editions,
critical thinking, Bogotá, 2003, pp. 96-97.
After failed attempts by French companies to build a canal linking the two ocean
s,
Theodore Roosevelt supports independence a adventure in Panama (November
1903) and sends it to the USS Nashville to Panamanian waters to prevent a landin
g of national troops
, with which it is taken away from this part of the territory of Colombia. Years
later,
Roosevelt highlights their "feelings of friendship" with our country: Speaking
of Colombia as a responsible power [ ], it is simply absurd. The analogy it must
be established
with a group of bandits Sicilians and Calabrians [
]. If it had not risen up
[the people of Panama
], i intend to recommend to the Congress the inauguration o
f the isthmus
by the force of the armas5.
5 Washington Post, May 8 1914.
6 Chicago Tribune, April 13, 1921.
The case of Panama generates a feeling of outrage against the United States,
passenger between the ruling classes, which is appeased by the $25 million to
receive after the signing of the Treaty Urrutia-Thompson in 1921, and that the U
nited States
approves to access our oil. As it says without any fuss the Senator Lodge
of the United States: "The pact with Colombia is rich in petroleum"6.
Strategic The subordination to the United States goes hand in hand with the poli
tical modernization
, economic and military in Colombia, and a growing economic influence of the
companies in that country. Their capitals enjoyed a significant presence, with a
favorable balance of trade, and transport, infrastructure and communications sin
ce the end of the nineteenth century
, mainly concentrated in the Isthmus of Panama. In the 1920s is incremented
such investment, especially in the enclave economies and banana oil and in
the financial sector, through loans linked to the financing of public works and
infrastructure
. United States, for its part, in the early 1920s consumes 72 percent of
Colombian exports. In few words, the ruling classes of
Colombia are beginning to look toward the "Pole Star", as had been recommended b
y the
conservative president Marco Fidel Suarez (1918-1921), in whose administration i
s moving in the
delivery of the Colombian oil to American investors.
1918-1929: THE ORIGINS OF THE insurgency
as NATIVE doctrine and practice, the nickname of counterinsurgency is used since
the 1950s
by French soldiers facing the independence movements in Vietnam
first and then in Algeria. Subsequently, is recycled by the United States during
the presidency of
John F. Kennedy, in 1962, when it becomes the official doctrine of that power.
However, in Colombia since the first decades of the twentieth century
native generates a counterinsurgency, in order to repress the social protests an
d destroy the
emerging left-wing political movements, which in principle had no influence
abroad or systematization doctrinaire.
In the counterinsurgency is the fundamental construction of the enemy, which is
made from the
1920s when larva the idea of communism as supreme adversary of the
"sacred values" of the Colombian nationality. With the generic name of
communism is represented to a patchwork of social sectors, including
trade unions, peasant associations and, in general, to those who require
claims to improve their living conditions, for which reason it must be combated
. In Colombia, the anti-communism is prior to the emergence of any movement that
will be called communist in identical form and the insurgency arises
before there are guerrilla movements.
The constitution of a long-term insurgency State originates in several
complementary fears of the ruling classes: fear the people, fear of democracy an
d fear of
revolution. These fears are nourished with the stereotypes of the communists as
evil
, barbaric, savage and enemies of God, the Homeland and the Law, which are the f
erment of the
hatred that counterinsurgency justifying the violence that is directed against t
hose
"enemies", by both the State and individuals, that hatred is geste insurgency in
the 1920s and is powered by the terror that arouse the social protests that are
triggered
in the country since 1918.
At the beginning of 1918 triggered a wave of strikes in the Atlantic coast by
the workers in the ports, railways and factories. The protests started
in Barranquilla and extend to Santa Marta and Cartagena. In the first city occur
s a
"encounter between a Police picket and some drunken mob incidents that made
resistance, what forced the police to make some shots in the air in order to int
imidate them,
but unfortunately at a great distance and caused the death of a citizen pacific"
.
After, in Cartagena, the police killed five workers on strike and is implanted f
or the first time
the State of Siege to counteract a protest obrera7.
7 Report of the Minister of Government to the Congress in 1918, Bogotá: Imprimerie
Nationale, 1918, pp., ix and ss.
Something similar happens on 16 March 1919 in the downtown streets of Bogotá when
they are murdered by
the Army and Presidential Guard ten humble workers in a peaceful march organized
to demand that the first agent, Marco Fidel Suárez, that you will not buy
military uniforms in the United States and be responsible their clothing to nati
onal artisans.
To justify the crime, the government placed the responsibility of the episode to
"groups of
anarchists and socialists" who "tried to take the Palacio de la Carrera and the
Palace guard
to contain the rioters shot into the air, resulting from there one dead and one
injured
"8.
massacre1
8 Marcellin Arango (Minister of War), "Circular extraordinary", in documents rel
ated to the events of
16 March 1919 in the city of Bogota, Bogotá: Imprimerie Nationale, 1920, p. 7.
Sarcastic criticism to the implausible official version on the events of March 1
6, according to which the troops shot into the air to contain the riots, and
not against the crowd. Bogota comedian. No. March 82 22 1919.
During the 1920s, the indigenous people, peasants, settlers, workers of the encl
aves and
other social sectors who are mobilized as active subjects in order to improve th
eir working and living conditions
are fought from the State with counterinsurgency policy,
justified in the anti-communism. Thus, in 1928 issued the Law 69 on Social Defen
se
of the October 30, known as the "heroic act", which prohibits the existence of
organizations that attack the right of property and the family, punishes those w
ho
promote strikes "in violation of the laws that regulate", restricts the right of
opinion
, censorship publications and is confined to penal colonies to every individual
that promotes
the publication of the printed prohibidos9.
9 Annals of Camera, 3 November 1928, pp. 1064-1066.
10 The appointment is in Jorge Orlando Melo,
s, Editorial The Cart
, Medellín, 1979, p. 151.
Act heroic , in on history and politic
11 "Decree of 4 December 18 1928 ", in Carlos Cortés Vargas, the events of the Ban
ana, Bogotá:
Printing of the Light, 1929, pp. 89-90.
After the adoption of the law, in premonitory form a liberal representative, sur
name of
Bolivar, points out that in the banana plantation zone, where it operated the Un
ited Fruit Company, "are these thousands
of proletarians waiting for action by the State for the benefit of its modest
interests ... What if this action does not arrive? What does it tell you when th
e workers claim their rights
, tired of waiting, that starts a communist movement, and will send his troops,
to
debelarlo, Mr Rengifo? '10. That is what actually happens, because in the first
few weeks
after the Act was adopted was brutally repressed the workers' strike of bananas,
which
according to a spokesperson for the United Fruit Company in Bogota, produced mor
e than a thousand dead, as
officially informed Jefferson Caffery, Representative of the United States in Co
lombia
, to Washington. Days after promulgation of the decree of 4 December 18 1928,
by which is declared "gang of criminals" to the banana workers who had participa
ted in
the strike, the aim is to "leaders, azuzadores, accomplices,
collaborators and concealers", and they are considered "rioters, arson and murde
r" that
demonstrate "a horrible mood, very consistent with the doctrines communists and
anarchists", and is applicable to them the death penalty which does not exist leg
ally stipulates
: "The members of the public force are empowered to punish with the arms to thos
e who
are surprised in flagrante delicto crime of arson, looting and armed assault"11.
DEAD IN THE BANANA PLANTATIONS INCLUDE MORE THAN ONE THOUSAND ENSURES UNITED STA
TES DIPLOMATIC
Bogota, January 16 1929
Honorable Secretary of State, Washington
Mr:
With reference to the previous reports in relation to the strike of Santa Marta,
and with special reference to my desk
No. December 55 29, I have the honor to report that the representative of the Un
ited Fruit Company
in Bogota, told me yesterday that the number of strikers killed by the Colombian
military forces passes of thousand.
Jefferson Caffery, representative in Bogota of the United States.
Source: Allen S. Vall-Spinoza ,
ator, 11 June 1972, pp
., 5-6.
rifles and banana , in Magazin Dominical, the spect
The repression was previously legitimate by various spokespersons of the conserv
ative regime, between the
protruding from his Minister of War, Ignacio Rengifo, who has said that Colombia
faces
a "new danger and terrible, perhaps the biggest ever had its existence [ ] This i
s the
danger Bolshevik" that "has been hitting the beaches colombian threatening [ ]
watering the seed of communism that fateful, unfortunately, already begins to ge
rminate in
our soil and to produce fruits of decomposition and revolt"12. And that danger
is imaginary begins to combat fire and blood. [Document (DOC) 1]
Description: E: \Photos\fonteches VERY REBEL-1X. tif
Description: E: \Photos\VERY rebellious puppet- 2.tif
12 Memory of the Minister of War, Bogotá: Imprimerie Nationale, 1928, pp. vi - vii
.
13 Archivo General de la Nación, Ministry of Government Fund, Section 1, T. 982, f
. 89.
Cartoons alluding to the links between the Colombian government and the US compa
ny the United Fruit Company. Sources:
puppet, November 24, 1928; puppet, December 7 1928.
The massacre of the banana plantations has all the trimmings of State terrorism,
since the weapons
of the Army are used with premeditation to assassinate Colombians involved in
a strike. A few hours before the massacre, the general Carlos Vargas cuts the mil
itary
orders that shoot unarmed against the workers on the night of December 5 of 1928
poses: "inescapable dilemma: or measures are taken painful, cruel, or compromise
was reached and [
communist] triumph, which bring us the immediate foreign intervention"13. The
order to assassinate is taught to satisfy an American company, the United Fruit
Company
, a disastrous history of what he is prepared to do the Colombian State to defen
d the interests
of foreign capital, as notes Jorge Eliecer Gaitan in 1929: "The aim was to solve
a problem of wages through the bullet of the machine guns of the
government", because the workers were
Colombians and the company was american and painfully we know that in this count
ry the government
has for the Colombians shrapnel murderer and a shaky knee on the ground before t
he
American gold. [ ] The soil of Colombia was taken of blood to please the coffers
of the ambitious americano14 gold. [Doc. 2]
C: \Users\Renan\Documents\cartoons REPORT\Olaya.jpg
14 Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, meeting of September 6, 1929 in the House of Representative
s, reproduced in the debate on
the banana plantations, Bogotá: Center Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, 1988, pp. 81, 84 and 92.
15 "Telegram from the News Agency Aeronews", New York, the voice of Caldas, Sept
ember 9, 1933.
PHASE II: BEGINS DURING THE STRATEGIC subordination WHAT HAS EMERGED UNDER LIBER
AL REPUBLIC
with the presidency of the liberal Enrique Olaya Herrera (1930-1934), a long-sta
nding imperialist
that he served as Ambassador to the United States between 1922 and 1930, is acce
ntuated
the subordination to the United States in the economic field, with the adoption
of a petroleum legislation
absolutely favorable to foreign capital, which benefits the american companies
settled in the territories of the concession Boat (area of the Catatumbo).
Such is the level of dependency of this government with regard to those companie
s that certain
organs of the press of the time commonly referred to as "the government of the o
il" and its links
with Andrew Mellon, an American billionaire, that enable the company to the latt
er
get several million dollars by the above-mentioned concession. As a result of as
murky
business, the Senate of the United States explores the subject and to know the d
etails of the
prostration of the regime of Olaya, the investigator appointed, Hiram Hobson, de
clares with
alarm that "if the Colombian people would realize what i had around these negoti
ations
happen an armed uprising in that Republic"15.
Enrique Olaya Herrera, president of Colombia, is negotiating the Concession boat
with Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury of the
United States
Source: Colombia Nationalist, June 22 1935.
Eduardo Santos (1938-1942) accentuates the subordination and paves the way for a
military unit, at the time that the United States reaffirmed as the main destina
tion of the Colombian products
, which in 1938 absorbs 80 percent of the exports of coffee. The
naval and air missions in the United States shifted to the British and the Germa
ns and started the frequent visits of
delegations to Colombian databases that country, to participate in military cour
ses
, where are made familiar with the official military techniques and organization
American war. At the behest of the foreign advisers in 1940 begins the compulsor
y military service
in Colombia. Two years later, lasts for four years, the mission of the
United States air force and in 1946 the same thing happens with the naval missio
n, both with
geostrategic importance in defense of the Canal, and in that same year is offici
ally a
military mission for the Army, which up until that moment I had been guided by F
rench advisors
. This relationship has a political component key, such as Eduardo Santos reveal
s it
to Spruille Braden, Ambassador of the United States: "he had already hired two
American military missions, not only to obtain the benefits of your higher educa
tion
, but first and foremost to demonstrate the absolute confidence of Colombia in t
he United States
"16. And indeed, so great is the "confidence" that the government of Eduardo San
tos threw the
national sovereignty to allow the military forces of the United States operate "
without prior
special permission" in all the Colombian territory and in their territorial wate
rs, as
he says with glee the War Department in Washington when referring to this "gentl
eman's agreement
", between the governments of Saints and of Roosevelt. In secret, in addition, t
he President authorizes
us to photographers, disguised as technical advisers to take aerial photographs
of strategic points of Colombia17.
16 Spruille Braden, "Interview with Eduardo Santos", May 3 1939, appears as anne
x in David
Bushnell, Eduardo Santos and the Good Neighbor Policy, Bogotá: The Salva Liarte, 1
984, p. 155.
17 Henry Stimson, Secretary of War of the United States, June 9, 1942, in Silvia
Galvis and Alberto Donadio,
Nazi Colombia, Bogotá: Editorial Planeta, 1986, pp. 341-342. On the photographs, p
. 27.
GOVERNMENT OF EDUARDO SANTOS THREW THE NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY TO THE UNITED STATES
SECRET
War Department,
Washington, June 9, 1942
Honorable
Secretary of State
I have noted with interest your letter of May 28, related to the following talks
between
the United States ambassador in Bogota and the President of Colombia and his Min
ister of
War. The review of its charter and the series of paraphrase of the telegrams exc
hanged between his Department and the
ambassador to Colombia, I gather that his Department is satisfied that there was
now a
gentleman's agreement between the United States and Colombia. The meaning of thi
s agreement is that the land, naval, and air forces
of the Army and the Navy of the United States have broad authority to operate in
or on Colombian territory and territorial waters or on Colombian without prior s
pecial permission
, in case of urgent need for this, and always and when notification of such acti
on
on the part of the General Andrews General López in Panama.
This agreement is deemed entirely satisfactory as formula to facilitate a prompt
action on the part of the
General Andrews when the need arises. To this effect shall be notified to the Ge
neral Andrews.
Compliments
Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War.
SOURCE: Record Groupe 59, National Archives. Washington. Transcription and trans
lation in Silvia Galvis and
Alberto Donadio, Nazi Colombia 1939-1945, Editorial Planeta Bogota, 1986, pp. 34
1-342. (Our italics).
Similarly, moves to the entrepreneurs in Germany of the Colombian market since 1
938,
as a result of pressure from Washington for not to renew the staff of that count
ry
in Society Colombo-Alemana de Transportes Aereos (Scadta), which becomes in
Avianca, a Colombian company mostly, although Pan American Airways
maintains the financial domain. Well, the United States controls the aires de Co
lombia, a
sought-after goal since the First World War. As a corollary to this policy, in 1
943
Colombia granted exclusive privileges to the United States to exploit and import
strategic resources
as a contribution to the "hemispheric defense", which include rubber
and some minerals.
Anticommunism LAUNCHED
The persecution of the popular sectors, covered in the anticommunism, continues
during the first years
of the Liberal Republic (1930-1946), as exemplified by the massacre
of 18 peasants in indigenous Coyaima during the celebration of the first of May
in 1931,
while members of the Liberal Party will set fire to some houses in the village a
nd hurling accusations
of that fact to the communists. In that same year, in Llano Grande (Municipality
of Ortega),
are massacred 17 indigenous people who follow the guidance of Manuel Quintín Lame,
who in
allusion to this massacre says: "Until 1930 the conservatives had been pursued i
n ordinary form
, while later, the liberals did so dramatically"18.
18 Manuel Quintín Lame, in defense of my race, Bogotá: Thread of Research, 1971, p.
xxvi.
In the following years, the anti-communism is part of the revival of the
bipartisan conflict within the framework of the timid and thwarted attempts to ach
ieve social reforms
in the field of capitalist modernization. During the following fifteen years of
the Republic
Liberal anticommunism is hoisted from the pulpits of the ecclesiastical hierarch
ies
, the bulk of the conservative party as way to express their opposition to the
Liberal Republic, and in particular the first government of Alfonso Lopez Pumare
jo (19341938) and by the more traditional sectors of the liberal party, dissatisfied with
the timid reforms
that are advertised from the Executive.
The Spanish civil war is the pretext of the conservatives to demonize the commun
ism,
name that also applies to the reformist wing of the liberal party, with the argu
ment that in Spain
was waging a struggle between Catholicism and the atheistic communism, which is
replicated in Colombia
with the confrontation between the Revolution is under way and the Church. At th
e time is
frequently read comments of this style: "The triumph of the liberal party became
a
communist victory and this is noticed by the excessive state intervention in the
lives of individuals
, in the legislation on the ground, in the control of the school, in the credit
crunch
, in the self-management of the industries. By all parties, looks, feels the cla
w
marxist"19.
19 The Colombian, September 22 1936.
In the mid 1940s, this anti-communism ceases to be an exclusive conception
of the conservative party and the Catholic hierarchy to become the State doctrin
e
that justified the persecution of the popular insurgency, the establishment of t
he State terrorism
and the alliance with the United States in the context of the Cold War.
PHASE III: WAR AND COLD " subordination WHAT HAS EMERGED UNDER BY INVITATION"
at the end of the Second World War United States decreed that the aggression out
side Asia
is embodied in the USSR, that it would sponsor the communist infiltration and th
e
insurgent threat. In the context of the post-war period, the United States integ
rates to Latin America and
Colombia in their particular vision of hemispheric security, understood as the
strategic domain of the Western Hemisphere and the rejection of the region to po
tential adversaries, including
the governments of the continent that does not comply with the dictates of
Washington, intending to act independently in the management of their internatio
nal relations
and foster autonomous democratic processes, as it does Guatemala between
1944 and 1954. In this perspective, it is signing the Inter-american Treaty of R
eciprocal Assistance (RIO TREATY
), adopted in Rio de Janeiro in 1947, drafted by the Colombian Alberto Lleras
Camargo, the first document articulator of the hemisphere in function of the old
Monroe doctrine
of defense against aggression extra-continental. So the paradox lies in the fact
that the
worst damage that suffers from Latin America during the twentieth century always
come from the United States
!
The formation of the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1948 is another ke
y fact
in the articulation of Latin America with the geo-strategic interests, political
, military and economic
of American imperialism. In the following decades, the OAS is the primary tool
of anti-communist in the continent, or, in ironic terms is "the
Department of colonies of the United States". The OAS was founded during the Ni
nth
Pan-american Conference, in the middle of the Bogotazo, when the delegation of t
he United States
emphasizes that a political agreement anti-communist is the support of any econo
mic assistance
.
KOREA AND THE BATALLÓN COLOMBIA
The regime of Laureano Gómez reinforces the military link with the signing of the
Pact of
Military Assistance (1952), [Doc. 3] With the argument that Colombia faces a
communist conspiracy, embodied in the liberalism, as assured in 1952, the
Minister of War, José Maria Bernal: "communism operates to its wide under the bann
er of liberalism
. AND liberalism, consciously or unconsciously, serves the plans of the
international soviet domain"20. These positions are intended to justify the invo
lvement of Colombia in
the Korean War (1950-1953), as he says without hesitation Eduardo Zuleta Angel,
Ambassador to the United States: "Colombia is a country that is essentially anti
-communist,
fundamentally friend of the United States [ ] and if you are communist, they must
be fought
against communism in all fields, as in the case of Colombia [ ] in Korea"21. To p
articipate
in the Korean war creates the Battalion Colombia, advised by the Military Missio
n
in the United States and its troops from the Panama Canal, which represents a tu
rning point in
the itself against Americanisation of the Colombian army, which sent 4,300 soldi
ers and the frigate
Almirante Padilla ARC, with 180 sailors and 10 officers. Alberto Ruiz Novoa, com
mander of
the Battalion Colombia in the Asian country, highlights several lessons of parti
cipation in
Korea: use of small combat units, direct knowledge of guerrilla warfare
, familiarization with central elements of the military organization of the Unit
ed States
, improvements in communications and transport through the use of helicopters,
20 Ministry of War, lecture given by the Minister of War José Maria Bernal, 29 Aug
ust
1952, Bogotá: National Printing Press, 1952.
21 Colombian Embassy, Washington, 14 June 1954, File Presidency of the Republic,
General Secretariat
, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Box 284, folder 43, fs. 113-114.
F: \DCIM\ 122_PANA\P1220202.JPG
use of light weaponry (rocket launchers, mortars, bazookas] instead of
conventional artillery. It is interesting to note the emphasis on the psychologi
cal warfare (propaganda, rumors, and
lies in order to demoralize the enemy) that is applied in Colombia since the beg
inning of
the 1950s, as can be seen with the propaganda that is copied from the
United States that used in Korea.
SOURCE: 1, origin unknown; 2, 3 and 4 Alberto Ruiz Novoa, military Lessons of th
e campaign of Korea applicable to the Army of
Colombia, Bogotá: Editorial Antares, 1956, annexs and Alberto Ruiz Novoa, memories
of the Minister of War, Bogotá: Imprimerie Nationale,
1964, p. 84. Taken from Saul Mauricio Rodriguez, the influence of the United Sta
tes in the Colombian Army 1951-1959, Medellin:
Editorial The Cart, 2006, p. 115. The report provides information on the first f
igure is wrong to ascribe it to the book The battalion Colombia in Korea
, where is not. Note the symbolic allusion to the skulls.
As immediate effects of the Korean War, the Army founded the School of Lanceros
in
Cundinamarca in 1955, which is shaped by the Rangers of the United States, such
as small
units of anti-guerrilla; organizes the Military Police to deal with protests; es
tablishes mechanisms for
dissemination of the US military doctrine, through the publication of
the Military Journal (1955), the magazine of the Armed Forces (1960) and the
Army Magazine (1961), in whose pages proliferate articles anti-communists, own o
r
translated, because "our armed forces have a frankly
american orientation"22.
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22 Joseph Bestene, "Books and readings of the official", in Military Journal, Vo
lume II, No. December 7 1956, p. 105.
Psychological warfare: COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA OF THE COLOMBIAN ARMY COPIED FROM TH
E
KOREAN WAR
Propaganda in the United States in Korea and propaganda of the Colombian Army in
the 1960s. Note the similarity of the symbols used
, especially of the skulls.
SOURCE: Alberto Ruiz Novoa, military Lessons of the campaign of Korea applicable
to the Army of Colombia, Bogotá: Editorial
Antares, 1956, annexs and Alberto Ruiz Novoa, memories of the Minister of War, B
ogotá: Imprimerie Nationale, 1964, p. 84.
COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY OF COUNTER-insurgency
The President Eisenhower Dwigh determined in 1953 that the economic assistance t
o
Latin America depends on your behavior in the crusade anti-communist, what in Co
lombia
is expressed in the increase of military assistance, financial and direct invest
ment in the United States, which
is concentrated in the enclave economies (oil, banana), in public works and
manufacturing enterprises. Already in 1952, a CIA report alert to the
possibility of losing hegemony in the country and offers an explanation of the o
rigins of violence and
of the guerrilla struggle, which recognizes the existence of objective condition
s: "This repressive tendency
hinders any change, even the more moderate, and makes it more likely that
at the end breaks out the revolutionary violence. In Colombia is already widespr
ead
guerrilla resistance against the regime"23.
23 Quoted in Stephen J. Randall, Allies and distant, Bogotá: Third World Publisher
s, 1992. p. 237.
24 Report of the NSC Team 1290d, February 18, 1955 [NSC Staff Papers, OCB Centra
l File Series, Box 16, OCB
014.12 Internal Security File #1 (3)]
in December 1954 created a working group consisting of the Department of State a
nd
Defense, as well as by the United States Agency for International Development (I
CA, today
), USAID, and the CIA, which composes reports from 22 countries in which "commun
ist threat" is considered to be of
a certain magnitude, between the which do not include Colombia, and is mentioned
only
four Latin American countries: Bolivia, Guatemala, Chile and Brazil.
An internal document of the National Security Council of the United States, Febr
uary
1955, linked the military assistance from the United States for the development
of national military forces
whose main objective is the fight against the "communist subversion", which
include intellectuals, trade unions and social movements, that must be addressed
with actions
"preventive", such as: " (a) to detect the communist agents, their supporters, t
heir
front organizations and other components of the communist apparatus; b) detentio
n of the personalities or
communist groups; (c) implementation of legal measures against these
people or groups"24. In March 1957 establishing the Program of Internal Security
Foreign
(Overseas Internal Security Program, OISP), with a greater emphasis on safety as
pects
, to defeat the communist subversion.
The Cuban revolution modifies the scenario, because of what in the United States
is perceived as
the failure of the OISP in identify the communist threat. Consequently,
disappears scruple that prevented interfere in matters of internal security in t
he countries of the region
or provide direct support for repressive regimes and dictatorships bloody.
The counterinsurgency veers toward a comprehensive strategy, with emphasis on th
e action civic-military,
that acquires a more concrete form with the signature of the Act of Bogota, in S
eptember 1960
, in which the allied governments in Washington are committed to attack the sour
ces of
political turmoil and the underdevelopment. In Colombia, INCORA creates and prom
otes a
agrarian reform and economic modernization, in order to eliminate the objective
conditions
that give rise to the revolutionary movements and zoom in the Army, and the
peasantry, although the assistance of United States prioritizes the expansion of
their markets.
At the same time, the army pushed for lands that are awarded to farmers in regio
ns of high
guerrilla activity, known as "red zones". The civilian-military brigades
are advised in their training by Gabriel Kaplan, a CIA agent. In 1960,
are created 14 brigades in the areas affected by violence: Tolima, Huila, Cauca,
Valle del Cauca
and Caldas.
However, from the perspective fighting insurgents imposes the point of view that
privileges the
military on any economic and social transformation. For example, the United Stat
es Agency for International Development
(Agency for International Development (USAID) funded the construction of
roads in regions of guerrilla presence or of agrarian movements,
because we are looking for a better access to conflict areas. Between 1961-1965
1961-1965 1961-1965 Colombia receives
$833 million in aid and loans from the United States and multilateral agencies
in the framework of the cooperation of the Alliance for Progress, a
counterinsurgency initiative based in social projects. The commitment to the All
iance for Progress
deflates as you scale the aggression against Vietnam, as recognized by the
USAID in 1969, when it defines the programs of the Alliance in Colombia as a res
ounding failure.
1959: Visit MILITARY "BY INVITATION"
The first president of the National Front, Alberto Lleras Camargo, meets on 18 J
une
1959 with a group of military advisers in the United States in Bogota, in order
to activate and
form units against-guerrilla, with a force of 1,500 foot men and 24
fully equipped helicopters. Get this type of aid is difficult due to restriction
s on
military assistance programs, because its use in the recipient countries can gen
erate
political contestations. Lleras Camargo insists that these restrictions should b
e lifted
in virtue of the Cuban experience and the alleged threat that the
Colombian guerrillas groups without any at that time none consolidated represent
for the stability of his government and of the hemisphere, after which was born
the idea of forming a
group to evaluate the violence and get military assistance from the United State
s. Lleras
Camargo receives the support of Ambassador Moors Cabot, who shares your concern
about
"the destabilizing effects of communist penetration" and requests to the Colombi
an authorities
consider the counterinsurgency experience in Malaysia and the Philippines.
In October 1959 is organized a special team of the CIA, of secrecy, to investiga
te
the violence and evaluate internal security in Colombia, under the leadership of
the Secretariat
of State and, at the request of Alberto Lleras Camargo, with the participation o
f the United States Secretary of Defense
. The members of this team have practical experience
in counterinsurgency in the Philippines and Korea and include troops who had
participated in the US military mission, 1952-1956. The mission, under the direc
t supervision of the
ambassador in Colombia, aims to study, within a period of eight weeks, the
political factors, psychological, economic, military and intelligence that contr
ibute to violence
, as well as to suggest recommendations with immediate effect. The members of th
e mission
visit 100 military barracks around the country and have unrestricted access to t
he
security files. The preliminary document is ready in February 1960, which
sends a copy "smoothed" to Lleras Camargo a month later. In this document it is
recommended that you
establish a fighting force counter-guerrilla specialized, from units
of Lanceros; establish a public information service with ability to deploy
covert psychological warfare; start a program of "attraction", coordinated throu
gh a
civil affairs section of the armed forces (G-5), to rehabilitate before the
Colombian public opinion to the security forces; rearrange, train, equip and
deploy the national police and improve its public image; give preponderance to n
ational development programs
, particularly on the issue of land.
In the report it is recommended to provide military assistance to Colombia of cl
andestine nature,
according to the models of South Vietnam and the Philippines, and strengthen the
activity of the agencies
of the United States in the country. Such assistance seeks to "establish a
influence on the officers" of the Colombian army and it is advisable to convert
Colombian Intelligence Service (SIC) "in a source virtually led by the United St
ates
for psychological warfare operations of overt and covert"25. The Lleras Camargo
meets immediately, since the SIC dislocates and founded the Department of Admini
strative Security
(DAS), depending on the model of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) of the United States. In April 1960, Lleras Camargo she traveled to the Un
ited States
, meets with Eisenhower and requested military aid to eliminate the "
guerrilla problem". A month after the final report, which consists of three
25 D. Rempe, op. cit. , p. 41 Parties,
the last of which, concerning recommendations for the United States, is not taug
ht
to Lleras Camargo. Recommended political, economic and military measures to tack
le the "
violence" and design a program anti-subversive "wholly or partly
underground, in order to discredit or delete by legal means to those democratic
forces
that are looking for, for my own benefit, or for the benefit of a foreign power,
stop or prevent the establishment of a democratic government, stable and popular
"26.
26 Ibid. , pp. 44-46.
Finally, it provides that the military aid is semi-covert and with the direct co
ntrol
of the Embassy, in the form of military equipment (no logos of United States and
supplied by third countries) and counseling in intelligence, psychological warfa
re, joint civilian action
and counter-guerrilla. To avoid accusations of interventionism, it is preferred
to hire
foreign advisors who are not nationals of the United States, but which are under
their control.
According to this document, the military assistance to Latin American leaders
reorient the armies of their countries toward the insurgency, that is to say, to
fight against their own
population.
The counterinsurgency NATIVE MIXES WITH THE anticommunism IN THE UNITED STATES
The speech and the communist insurgency linked to the same acquire a renewed str
ength
in the mid 1940s, the repression of trade unions on the part of the government o
f
Alberto Lleras which had benefited from the support of previous liberal governme
nts and by
the emergence of the popular insurgency represented by the Gaitanista movement,
which
appals Plebian roots to the whole of the ruling classes and bipartisanship. The
repressive policy
of the last government of the Liberal Republic marks the beginning of contempora
ry violence in
Colombia, which starts in the cities with the attack on the workers and
in the ports of the Magdalena with the destruction of the Fedenal (National Fede
ration of Transport Workers
river, sea and air). With this attack opens way trade unionism
clerical (personified by the Colombian Workers' Union, UTC) and
the legitimate trade union parallelism, as a condition required by the capitalis
t entrepreneurs to maintain
their high levels of gain during a golden age of accelerated capital accumulatio
n
that occurs in the country in this period, in full violence partisan.
After 1944 enters the local political scene Gaitanismo, as a mass movement, whic
h brings together the
poorest sectors of the country at national level and involves
members of the two parties. This mobilization shuddering at the "country politic
al" and
"oligarchy", especially when Gaitan has emerged as the undisputed leader of the
liberal party.
The fear that inspires the Gaitanismo evidenced by the liberal press, where it i
s said that this
movement represents an "attempt mass revolutionary liberals and the conservative
s against
the historic games, against the big industrial, against the bourgeois tradition"
27.
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27. The Spectator, publishers of the 8 and 9 April 1946, cited in W. John Green,
Gaitanismo, left liberalism
and popular mobilization, Banco de la República-EDAFIT, Medellín, 2013, p. 267.
The Gaitanismo proves to be a challenge to block unbearable in power because it
mobilizes in
directly to the population and raises a democratization of the political, in the
involved
sectors commoners, always marginalized from public life. The power bloc, compose
d
equally of liberals and conservatives, does not accept this challenge and resort
to violence.
Since the State is organized the repression against the Gaitanistas through the
National Police, the Army,
the birds and the chulavitas, i.e. bands of killers fans and clerical. Such repr
ession
becomes more bloody after the April 9, as the responsibility for the events of t
hat day
falls on the "international communism", and the Gaitanismo is seen as one of
their lead, as are some caricatures of the century.
CARICATURES OF THE CENTURY ON anticommunism AS ANTIGAITANISMO
SOURCE: The Century, March 11 April 1948 10 1949 and January 11 of 1948.
In a caricature of Stalin that appears right driving to his "puppet" Gaitan, who
pushes the "Oso communist".
The persecution of the nueveabrilenos becomes systematic and formal, both in the
cities and towns
what produces an internal exile in major regions of the country , as in agricultura
l areas,
what motivates organize autodefensas campesinas in weapons, first by
sectors of the liberal party and then the communist party. The word communism co
nceals the
fear the people and of democracy, expressed at that time at the followers of the
Gaitanismo, catalogd as "blacks, Indians, mestizos and mulattoes, spiteful, vind
ictive,
men of palo and knives, disappointed, frustrated and ambitious"28.
28. Pedro Nel Giraldo, Don Fernando. Judgment on a man and a time, Editorial Gra
namerica, Medellín,
1963, p. 217.
In the wake of the events of April 9 in Bogota occurs strategic a confluence bet
ween the conservatives and
the United States, since both blame the "international communism
" operating directly from Moscow of murdering Gaitan. He who invents
this fanciful version is the delegation of the United States that participates i
n the Ninth
Pan-american Conference in Bogotá, more exactly their main figure, the Secretary o
f State
, General George Marshall. And after that this accuses the communists, without e
vidence
of any kind, the conservative government of Mariano Ospina Pérez gives valid by th
e accusation,
the bulk of the conservative party accepts such a theory, as well as certain
liberal journalists of the extreme right as Caliban (synonymous with Enrique San
tos Montejo).
Symbolically, in the ashes of Bogota and over the corpses of several thousand de
aths
is sealed the alliance between the insurgency and the native anti-communism, as
international politics
, sponsored by the United States, which becomes the ideological underpinnings
and doctrine of the State terrorism that since then is imposed in the country.
APPRECIATION OF AN OFFICIAL OF THE UNITED STATES ON ASSASSINATION OF GAITAN
Many people, even liberal left, seem to have reached agreement on the meaning of
that Colombia went well
waged in comparison with what Gaitan alive would have been [ ] all over the world
, with the exception of the
Gaitanistas rabid, seems to feel happy that Gaitan is gone. Conservatives believ
e that
a major threat has been eradicated; moderate liberals they considered it so thre
atening for them as it was for
the conservatives; the current directives of the liberal party and members of th
e cabinet have kept their
new charges only due to Gaitán ceased to be an obstacle.
SOURCE: Colonel W. F. Hausman, May 18 1948, cited in Douglas speaks fluent Sofer
, The
american gaze , at Gonzalo Sánchez (Editor), great powers, the April 9 and the viole
nce, Planet: Bogota,
2000, p. 125.
And in that direction was moving rapidly, because the United States undertakes a
ctivities which aim to support
the liberals in opposition to the communist leaders within the
Confederation of Colombian Workers (CTC). In 1948, when discussing a new Labor
Code
, the Colombian ministers meet with the embassy of the United States and
with oil of that country, who want to restrict the right to strike and obstruct
trade union action
. In parallel, organized through its agents, intrigues within the trade unionism
to promote both to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
(ICFTU) and the trade unionism "free" in Colombia. In addition to justify the ar
rest and prosecution
of so-called communists within the unions, in the years following the United Sta
tes
financed the communist propaganda of the oil workers grouped in
the UTC and support, in a disguised form, from the Embassy to a plethora of anti
-communist groups.
CIA documents show some aspects of the implementation of the
doctrinal program of the United States: to promote propaganda material, through
forums and conferences favorable to its doctrine without that are attributed to
the United States government
, appearing as well as independent without being; interfere with the promotion a
nd distribution of
materials from other doctrines as qualified hostile , as well as exploit the differ
ences and
disagreements of the opposition.
Draw the communists as the responsible of the Bogotazo becomes the scapegoat
that justifies the persecution to the liberals, in particular to the Gaitanistas
, who were
exterminated in blood and fire. (See figure crypto- liberal) This wave of violen
ce reaches
its worst moment during the regime of Laureano Gómez, when the birds, the politica
l police
and the Army, as an expression of a clear State terrorism, you are pursuing
all the squiggles that considered as the "international communism", among which
are located at the
liberal ranks who had not voted in the elections of 1950, something easy to
detect, as they do not a hallmark that had been placed on the ballot at the time
of
cover. As an example of this persecution, official and ruthless, it may be recal
led
the prevention to the citizenship of the FF. AA that says:
As of the date (October 20, 1950) are regarded as bandits and against them will
be used
the weapons of the army, without contemplation:
The individuals older than 16 years that they hide or flee in the presence of th
e military forces
in any place;
the people of any age or sex to transit by land or by water between the 11 in th
e evening and
5 in the morning or leaving or transiting through the population or its surround
ing area,
during the hours of the curfew; the civilians
who gave orders to the various orders of the normal work to any person,
without a written authorization, signed and sealed by any military authority
civilians in Any site at any time and carrying firearms, without being fitted wi
th their
ballot presentation, ballot identification or another letter of safe conduct, is
sued by a
military authority during the past five months , etc. ), 29.
29. Quoted by German Arciniegas, between freedom and fear, Editorial Planeta, Bo
gotá, 1996, [ 1952], p. 257.
The violence that is triggered after 1945 are masked with a bipartisan dye, and
in
the State has a direct responsibility. Between 1946 and 1957 are killed, so
C: \Users\Renan\Documents\cartoons REPORT\crypto communist.jpg
THE ANTI-communism AGAINST THE NUEVEABRILEÑOS
SOURCE: Juan Manuel Saldarriaga Betancur, the regime of terror or 16 years in he
ll, Medellin:
departmental printing, 1951, the first page. Typical laureanista expression of t
he anti-communism of the 1950s
, as shown in the text accompanying the illustration
less, 170,000 Colombians, which must be added the expropriation of 394 thousand
plots,
that represent millions of hectares of land in small and medium-sized farmers, t
he expulsion of
several million peasants to capital cities and intermediate, the prevalence of t
orture
in various forms and bloody and barbaric to kill
opponents, on the part of the crews and chulavitas30 birds. And the carnage
employ the military means provided by the United States of America, as a counter
part to the Battalion's participation
Colombia in the Korean War.
30. Paul Oquist, violence, politics and conflict in Colombia, Banco Popular Edit
ions, Bogotá, 1978; German
Guzmán Campos, the violence in Colombia. Descriptive part, Progress Editions, Cali
, 1968.
31. Pedro Luis Belmonte, historical background of the 8 and 9 June 1954, Bogotá: I
mprimerie Nationale, 1954, pp.
106, 107, 109 and 112.
For example, the 8 and 9 June 1954 ten young students are being killed in Bogota
by troops of the
Battalion Colombia, which will be prepared as contingent of replacing those who
have
participated in the Korean War. The spokesmen of the regime say that "the manife
station of the
June 9 was a vile machination and communist who had the consequences that their
authors were seeking
. It is clear that the students were launched into a crazy adventure [ ] blood of
Uriel
Gutierrez eagerly sought by the communists, gave an immediate fruit". Those res
ponsible for the crime
they argue, without much imagination, that the army had fired in self-defense
because it had been attacked to bullet by agents provocateurs, who intended to
"improve the procedures employed on 9 April 1948 ", as the "international commun
ism
prepared the coup d'état and outlined with the objective of overthrowing the gover
nment of the Armed Forces
"31.
Although the dictatorship of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953-1957) blunts the bipart
isan violence
through the demobilization and amnesty of the liberal guerrillas of the Eastern
Plains and
in other regions of the national territory, raises the anticommunism to official
doctrine of the State
with the legal prohibition of communism in 1955 and the attack to Villarrica. [D
oc. 4] In addition,
after the amnesty is initiated the persecution and systematic murder and planned
for the
former guerrilla commanders, in a procession of blood that lasted until the 1960
s,
under the National Front.
Rojas Pinilla anticommunist embodies a vision which is already dominant in the A
rmed Forces and since then has
characterized. In this perspective, a colonel in the Army considers in 1952
that the liberal guerrillas show that "communism is doing a subversion
organised and has its history from the subversive movement of nine april",
when communism lost "because there was no prepared the peasantry, because he had
not
corrupted" [
], but "today has achieved this aspiration in some sectors such as
in the Llanos Orientales
"32. That communism is reinforced during the dictatorship, [Doc. 5] In which
both Red as their relatives persecute those who are considered as communists and
with
such an approach is attacking the guerrillas of the Tolima which is not from det
ention in 1953, the number
is exaggerated in imaginary form, as described in the colonel Robert Turner, hea
d of the Military Mission
in that country: "The total of guerrillas and bandits operating in Colombia, acc
ording to Colonel
Navas, is 15,000 , of which, he believes, 3,000 are communists and many of the r
emaining
are under their control. Colonel Navas believes that the middle of the Tolima th
ere are between
3,000 and 4,000 guerrillas. A disproportionately large number of communists"33.
With
such overstatement is intended to achieve a military aid of $150 million on the
part of
the United States, a figure that at the time exceeds the total of military assis
tance of that power
to all of Latin America.
32. Colonel Gustavo Sierra Ochoa, the guerrillas of the Llanos Orientales, depar
tmental printing, Manizales,
1954, pp. 5-7.
33. Quoted in S. Galvis and A. Donadio, op. cit. , p. 427.
34. S. Galvis and A. Donadio, op. cit. , p. 444.
35. Communication of May 27 of 1955, National Archives, Washington, quoted in S.
Galvis and A. Donadio, op. cit. p.
431.
Rojas Pinilla argues that you can liquidate the guerrillas from the Tolima in ei
ght days if he could acquire
3,000 napalm bombs in the United States. This country denied these supplies,
but their mission's technical military if you advise on its use in aircraft of t
he
Colombian Air Force (FAC). "Well, the bombing campaign against the Colombian ci
vilians was
multiple invoice: counseling north american, european raw-material, because the
substances for
napalm were imported from various countries in the old continent, and
Colombian labor"34. The government of Rojas achieved part of napalm in Europe an
d, for the first time, it uses
against Colombian peasants between seven and ten in June of 1955, when war was d
eclared
of Villarrica. According to a report in the United States diplomatic, "through v
arious forms of
terrorism and counter-terrorism throughout the area [of the Tolima] has been
troubled new"35, which was related to the return of 3,200 men of the
battalion that Colombia to combat the asian communist passed to integrate the fo
rces
antiguerrilleras faced by those who were considered as the "columbian communist
". (DOC 6].
In the 1950s, as a laboratory practical Colombia is a history of the
insurgency, which at that time is reduced to being a guerrilla campaign. This is
the first country in the
Latin American continent where they founded a school of Lanceros, by Colombian s
oldiers
who had been trained in the United States and were part of the
Battalion Colombia that attended to Korea, and also begin to attend official of
our country
to the courses in the School of the Americas in Panama.
However, before the official arrival of the doctrines of the insurgency and the
national security in the early 1960s, Colombia is deployed in a macabre
background: the formation of paramilitary groups. These were the birds, the apla
nchadores
and contrachusmeros of conservative governments, together with the police chulav
ita, that was
a force vigilantism. To the extent this counterinsurgency enthroned this techniq
ue that in 1955
some sectors of the Army give the order to organize paramilitary groups. For exa
mple
, the commander of the Third Brigade, with headquarters in Cali, recommends that
you create
in the civic guards areas bandoliers, under the command of civilian and military
authorities, equipped with weapons
supplied by the command of the brigada36. In this sense, when general
William Yarbourgh suggests organizing paramilitary groups in 1962 found a fertil
e ground
for the counterinsurgency native.
36. Commander Alberto Gomez Arenas, Commander of the Third Brigade, Circular on
public order provisions
, may 17 1955, Cali, APR, 1955, box 895.
PHASE IV: ON MODERN counterinsurgency PLAN COLOMBIA (1962-1999)
the doctrine of counterinsurgency appeared in France, such as designing "theoret
ical" which systematizes
the repression that support the peoples of Vietnam and Algeria by parting with t
he
colonial tutelage. French imperialism pound an irregular warfare and confronts t
he
peasant guerrilla war (Vietnam) and urban (Algeria) with non-conventional method
s: permanent state of emergency
, psychological warfare, the torture as a systematic practice, sabotage carried
out and
false propaganda to discredit the opponents, use of paramilitary groups, and
confinement of the population in restricted areas, by controlling their movement
s, their supplies
and their contacts using the enumeration, all with the purpose of cut the links
between the guerrillas and the local population. The main theoretical of the cou
nterinsurgency is the
military Roger Trinquier, who justifies terrorism from the State to suppress to
the
national liberation movements that are fighting against the French colonialism,
and systematize
their experiences in a manual that becomes a worldwide reference for counterinsu
rgency
, The Modern War, edited by the army in Colombia in 1963.
Trinquier defends the use of torture, to point out that the "terrorist", a name
which he attributed to the
revolutionary fighter, anticolonial nationalist or, "in this interview will not
be assisted by a lawyer
" and
if da without difficulty the information requested, immediately will be complete
d the interrogation; if
not, specialists must by all means plucking the secret. He must then as a soldie
r
, face suffering and surely the death that was able to avoid until now. []
interrogators must always strive to achieve in not to injure the physical and mo
ral integrity
of the individuals. Science can, of course, make very well to the army
means to alcanzarlo37.
37. Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare, Bogotá: Library of the Army, Bogotá, 1963, pp.
28-29 and 30.
38. VIII Brigade, from violence to peace, Manizales: departmental printing, n.d.
, p. 75.
39. Charles Maecheling Jr. , "counter-insurgency: the first trial by fire", in M
ichael T. stopped at Klare and Peter
Kornbluh (Coordinators), counterinsurgency, proinsurgencia and counter-terrorism
in the 80s. The art of low-intensity war
, Mexico: Editorial Grijalbo, 1990, p. 40; Tim Weiner, Legacy of ashes. The hist
ory of the CIA
, Bogotá: Editorial Debate, 2008, p. 198.
The Colombian Army does not doubt in edit and bind to read to their official a boo
k where there is a
open advocacy of torture and quickly learns this precept of the
counterinsurgency doctrine, because in a book published shortly after by the VII
I Brigade stated:
"In irregular warfare, one of the best sources of information are prisoners, whe
n given
the proper treatment and are questioned by specialized personnel"38.
The methods of Roger Trinquier are replicated in the United States in 1962, when
President John
F. Kennedy created the Ad Hoc Group dedicated to the insurgency, whose main obje
ctive
is stifle subversive insurgency in the countries and regions in their
"specific competence". This last point is crucial for understanding the applica
tion of the doctrine of
counterinsurgency in our country, because in the first meeting of the Ad Hoc Gro
up
includes three countries: Laos, Thailand and South Vietnam, and in its second me
eting will
incorporate three more, all from South America, Bolivia, Venezuela and Colombia3
9.
According to the Panel "the most urgent problem of our national security is the
threat posed by
the existence of an insurgent movement inspired, supported, or
the communist-led", and accordingly, "our task is to develop an effective plan o
f action
to combat this serious communist danger". From this time, the
insurgency has emerged as a doctrine of total war, that goes beyond military act
ions
guerrilla warfare, and involves the psychological warfare, the training of local
forces
to deal with the native insurgents, the creation of paramilitary groups, the mom
entum of
terrorist actions, the realization of covert actions by the CIA and other agenci
es of the United States
, the sophistication in espionage operations and the promotion of the betrayal b
y the local settlers
, support for trade unions and organizations sympathetic to the "free world"
, the impetus to the action civil-military to bring the army of the barracks and
insert it into
the everyday life, the economic aid of military type, the promotion of Publicati
ons on
counterinsurgency by the local armies in few words, it seeks to provide "support
diplomatic, political, economic, psychological and military for nations where th
e communists
made indirect attacks". In the design of the new military strategy does not men
tion human rights
, nor international rules of war, nor the Geneva conventions on the treatment of
prisoners, all of which was considered by the Special Commission as
"superfluous". Insurgency is also called special warfare which, according to th
e
definition of Elvis Stahr, Secretary of Defense of the United States in 1962, co
vers "all
the military and paramilitary action linked the non-conventional war, the war
and the war contrainsurreccional psychological"40. OR to paraphrase the General
Maxwell Taylor, one of
the members of the Panel, it is that the native combat to the natives.
40. Cited in Marie-Monique Robin, Escadrons de la mort, the Ecole française, Paris
: La Découverte, 2008, p.
245
When in the United States decides to confront the social protest in those countr
ies regarded as
hotbeds of communism, there is a transformation of the armed forces
that assume the doctrine of counterinsurgency. This happens in Colombia, a count
ry
mentioned as one of the epicentres of attention of the Ad Hoc Group of insurgenc
y
in 1962. Not by chance, in the same year the country above the general William Y
arborough,
Director of Research at the School of Special Warfare of Fort Bragg, North Carol
ina.
THE MISSION OF THE GENERAL YARBOROUGH
between 2 and 13 February 1962 the equipment of the Center of the United States
Army at War
Special, from Fort Bragg and with the leadership of general William
Yarborough, visit to four of the eight teams in the country, with the objective
of evaluating the effectiveness of
the counterinsurgency operations in Colombia and review the amount and type
of assistance required. The Mission concludes that it is necessary to develop, s
upport and train
counterinsurgency forces, for the shortcomings of the Army, such as lack of plan
ning,
coordination, technical problems and intelligence, poor mobility, and little kno
wledge
of the psychological warfare and action of the civic-military.
The Mission recommends increasing the technical assistance, equipment and traini
ng for the armed forces
of Colombia; use helicopters and light aircraft in
counterinsurgency tasks; improve the material conditions of the soldiers as well
as the transport and communications
; encourage attendance at military schools taught in Fort Bragg
, the United States; intensify propaganda and the mobility of troops; streamline
its ability to react and
perform night operations; involve the National Police in
counterinsurgency work; and take a joint plan of intelligence on the part of the
Army and the DAS.
The Supplement Secret that accompanies the report proposes, without euphemisms,
which the State to organize
paramilitary groups for "run paramilitary activities, sabotage and/or
terrorists, against known supporters of communism", and it is emphasized that "T
he United States
should support this". Also it is recommended to use interrogation techniques to
"soften
" prisoners in which include the use of "sodium pentothal and use of
poligrafos
[] to extract each piece of information"41. Similarly, intends to car
ry out
military sieges and blockades against the peasant communities where they are hou
sed
insurgents. DOC [ 7].
41. John F. Kennedy Library. National Security Files. Box 319. Special Group; Fo
rt Bragg Team; visit to
Colombia, 3/1962, "Secret Supplement, Colombian Survey Report".
OPERATION IN MARQUETALIA
between May and August of 1962, after getting to know the recommendations of the
team of General
Yarborough, the military advisers, the Embassy of the United States and official
s of the government of
Kennedy, develop a plan of Defense Colombian Internal, which is
submitted to the president Valencia and to the ministry of war, laying the groun
dwork for a comprehensive
intervention program counter-insurgent. In its design involved some Colombian of
ficials
, who, with the advice of a military equipment of the United States, prepare
a counterinsurgency plan in July 1962, which assimilates recommendations of
Yarborough, such as greater coordination between the various instruments of repr
ession,
create units tactics able to undertake irregular warfare, give a special attenti
on to the propaganda,
public relations and press, psychological warfare, flyers, posters, radio, telev
ision)
and develop actions civic-military. This plan also features extend the
compulsory military service, deepen the courses of counter-insurgency directed t
o all the officers and
sub-officers, improve coordination of the Army with the Air Force, develop
mobile bases of patrolling, in order to destroy the "Independent Republics", the
guerrillas
and bandits who remained of the violence. Until that time, the rural stronghold
of defense are in relative calm, so that it is no exaggeration to say that in
Colombia, from the military point of view, the State itself invents the enemy.
At the same time, in September of 1962 the plan is designed for the integrated a
ction civic-military,
while increasing the number of brigades, and in June 1963 was founded the Nation
al Committee of
military civic action to give coherence and consistency to these programs, throu
gh infrastructure works
and health centers, schools and literacy campaigns, in the framework of the Alli
ance for Progress
. At the same time, attacks to the gangs of bandits, with
methods learned in Korea, as evidenced by the drawees operating against the Band
olero
liberal Jose Aranguren William Angel, retribution, since for him the Army "use
a system that was put into practice during the Korean war and that involves thro
wing
flames on the mountain with special weapons. With this special weapon for the ca
ves will be achieved
that the bandits out of the tunnels when they are". With realism and a touch of
irony, El Desquite believes is unfair to "president Kennedy of the United States
, in exchange for
sending money to the poor, would have commanded the buchonas (helicopters) and
the weapons to kill people"42.
42. The Time, March 28 1963 and the time, August 23, 1963.
In the areas that "they pacify" form units of self-defense, with farmers who are
selected by the police, the parish priest and the landowners, in order to accomp
lish the tasks of
order police and military, in rural and urban areas, under the direct control an
d in communication
with the Army troops. These self-defense groups, as well as alert networks
that inform the radiotelephonic Army guerrilla movements inspired by the
experience of Vietnam , receive the enthusiastic support of Colombian coffee growe
rs in the Valley, Caldas and
Tolima, as well as weapons of landowners of Magdalena Medio and Bolivar, of Azuc
areros del
Cauca and Magdalena cotton, oil tankers from Santander to Huila, supplied
through the Committees civic-military. These guidelines are strengthened with th
e creation in 1962
of "commands locators", that is, military units and paramilitary groups responsi
ble for
locating guerrilla commanders and murder, in which participating civil "heavily
armed".
In 1962, these commands kill, without trial, to 388 rural guerrillas. In the sam
e year
creates a Military Intelligence Battalion to identify and destroy the "communist
s"
through a clandestine network of informants. In the early 1960s
establishing the delation as institutionalized practice, paying up to one hundre
d thousand
pesos per information that can be traced to heads of crew.
In May of 1964 develops the operation in Marquetalia against one of the enclaves
of
communists in the self-defense forces south of Tolima, where it is put into prac
tice the recommendations
of Yarborough, which already include psychological operations, are blocked
areas peasant, clandestine agents are used and Guambiano indigenous as guides. T
hese
groups of farmers are attacked with great power of firearms by the Army, used
helicopters and bombings, in the largest insurgency that had been done up to
that time in Latin America. As has been found in the archives of the United Stat
es, in the form
direct military units involved in that country, such as coaching staff
and advisers, and are delivered $500,000 as a contribution to the campaign of pa
cification
of the government of Valencia43. The peasants-guerrilla fighters that are found
in
in Marquetalia flout the military siege and retreat into Riochiquito, where toge
ther make up
the other guerrillas South block, which years later gives rise to the Revolution
ary Armed Forces of
Colombia, FARC.
43. "In Marquetalia view by the gringos", Magazine Week, June 28, 1999.
The counterinsurgency was still in progress, as evidenced by the fact that in th
e period 19501970, 4,629 Colombians receive military training foreign military
taught by the United States, whose School of the Americas in Fort Gulick, Panama
, is the main focus
of indoctrination, which is taught to torture and disappear communists and
opponents and strengthens the conservatism and anti-communism of the Colombian a
rmy.
[Doc. 8]. In this "School of assassins" is available in manuals produced by th
e United States Central Intelligence
(CIA), as the Kubark 1963, where it is instructed to the
Latin American military in physical and psychological torture.
KUBARK, THE MANUAL OF THE CIA THAT SCULPT for torturing detainees
in 1997 and thanks to the Baltimore Sun, were able to obtain the two CIA manuals
, entitled "KUBARK
titled KUBARK" (July, 1963) and the subsequent Human Resource exploitation Train
ing Manual
(1983). KUBARK are not an acronym, but the name in the key of the CIA during th
e Vietnam War, so it is
clear the authorship of both manuals, written with the experiences collected in
secret experiments, sometimes
against innocent Americans. Thus, for example, the CIA was using LSD in the sear
ch for
a "truth serum", according to unveiled the New York Times. It also showed the us
e of the electric current
to inflict pain, such as wakefulness and The Boston Globe and carried out studie
s to investigate the effects of sensory deprivation,
according to the Washington Post.
The psychological torture in
both manuals the CIA defends that the best methods to extract information from d
etainees not
passing through the imposition of corporal punishment, but through the psycholog
ical torture. The KUBARK manual, the methods proposed
to break the resistance of the detainees are generally based on the psychologica
l torture
. Create a sense of familiarity, disorientation and isolation seem to be hallmar
ks to undermine
psychologically to a detainee in the scope of the manual. Practice how to make t
hem go hungry, keeping prisoners in
small cells, without windows and with artificial light always illuminated, forci
ng prisoners to sit or stand
in awkward positions (stress positions) for long periods of time, are among the
best practices.
Although not mentioned in the text directly to the application of electric shock
s, the so-called manuals for
interrogators recommend ensure a safe house that has access to electricity.
The physical pain, however, is felt to be counterproductive in the manual. What
concludes the text
is that, for a prisoner, is an experience much worse fear the pain that can come
to actually
experience it. The old adage that the anticipation is worse than the experience
seems to also have a place
in the dark field of torture.
With the name of cynical Human Resource exploitation Training Manual, the CIA ha
s updated their experiences in
interrogation and torture, coming to the conclusion that the psychological torme
nt is essential for the physical abuse.
Source:http://www.teinteresa.es/mundo/CIA-defiende-manuales-psicologica detenido
s_0_1264075091.html
To evaluate the impact of that school of terror in the doctrinara and ideologica
l training of
the Armed Forces of this country, it is sufficient to point out that since its f
ounding in 1946, up to the
2004 graduating a total of 60,751 Latin American military, of which 10,446 are f
rom Colombia
, the country that has a greater amount of military personnel in the school. In
the period
1999 and 2012 train 14,325 military and police forces in Latin America,
5239 of them are from Colombia. And only in 2013 receive training in the School
of the Americas
1,556 military personnel, including 705 Colombians, i.e. almost 50 percent of th
e total44.
44. Notes from the School of Americas, available in http://www.soawlatina.org/pr
ensa.html; Movement of
Reconciliation [FOR] and Coordinación Colombia-Europa -Estados Unidos [ESTADOS UNI
DOS - CCEEU], "false positives" in Colombia
and the role of the military assistance of the United States, 2000-July 2010 201
4.
OF IN MARQUETALIA TO THE STATUS OF SECURITY
during the National Front pact establishes a bipartisan exclusionary and undemoc
ratic
that to fend off the popular dissidence resorts to the repression, the State of
siege and the
insurgency, which explains the growth of the military apparatus of the State, si
nce
the troops in the Armed Forces passed from 10,820 in 1945 to 64,000 in 1969, tha
nks to the
decisive role on the assistance of the United States. Despite the repression, th
is is a time of
social turmoil and political, which is closed with the national strike of 1977,
whose
radicalism terrifies the the power block, which reaffirms its repressive policie
s and grass roots
during the governments of Alfonso Lopez Michelsen (1974-1978) and Julio Cesar Tu
rbay Ayala
(1978-1982). In 1978 it adopted a Statute of Security of clear counterinsurgenc
y invoice
that mimics the doctrine of national security of the dictatorships in the Southe
rn Cone. The Statute imposes
measures which combined a normativity of preventive nature together with repress
ive actions against
the popular legal organizations, peasant, labor and student,
up to the point that the widespread implementation of the torture of political p
risoners and the
social activists, as part of the logic of counterinsurgency fight the "enemy wit
hin".
In addition, this statute legalizes the Military Criminal Justice System and the
verbal Councils of War, which
generalizes the impunity.
At the same time, in the United States Ronald Reagan aims to recover the
world hegemony through a terrorist policy that supported throughout the world to
repressive regimes
. The hardening anti-communist practical has its correlate in Colombia: in 1981
break relations with Cuba due to alleged support for the M-19 and closer ties
with regimes against insurgent-central America (El Salvador, Honduras,
Guatemala, Costa Rica). In 1981, Colombia participates together with troops fro
m NATO, the United States
, Argentina, Venezuela and Uruguay in the Operation Ocean Venture, a rehearsal f
or the
later US invasion of Grenada in 1983. According to the tradition begun in
Korea, Turbay Ayala sends a contingent of 500 soldiers (Battalion Colombia No. 3
) At the instigation of the United States
to the Sinai, Egypt, in April 1982, presence is maintained until
our days. Turbay puts emphasis on the anti-narcotics, signing the Treaty of
Extradition of 1979 and the Mutual Assistance Treaty of 1980 to receive funding
and
training for the fight against drugs. Turbay seeks commercial and financial adva
ntages,
through a dogmatic subordination to the United States that isolates the country
of the regional scenario
(for example, by failing to support Argentina in the Falklands War). Despite re
ceiving
assistance in the fight against drug trafficking, credit and financial aid, the
government appeared to be insufficient
, as it allows us to glimpse the chancellor, Carlos Lemos, recognizing with bitt
erness that
"United States we have been relegated to the background [ ] and this situation we
agonize over"45.
45 Quoted in Mauritius Queen, relations between Colombia and the United States (
1978-1986), Bogotá:
Occasional Papers of the CIS, University of the Andes, 1990, pp. 35-36.
"NARCOTIZACIÓN insurgency"
even though it had marijuana plantations in the 1960s and the AID teaches course
s
anti-narcotics police since 1967, the drug business begins to grow in Colombia
in the mid 1970s with the cultivation of marijuana in the Caribbean coast, which
cover 70 percent of the demand from the United States and at the end of that dec
ade
appear coca crops in the south of the country. The government of Julio Cesar Tur
bay Ayala
explores the fumigations and militarizes the Coast, in particular the Guajira, w
ith the intention of
eradicating and preventing the output of the marimba, which increases the help o
f the United States
by concept of anti-narcotics. In 1984, Betancur gives the coup de grâce to the "ma
rimba players"
with spraying with glyphosate in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, but in that y
ear in Colombia
is already produced 70 percent of the cocaine entering the United States.
In the 1980s Ronald Reagan decreed that the drug-trafficking is a threat
to the national security of the United States, and imposes in 1986, certificatio
n as a
mechanism of control and pressure on the countries where drugs are produced for
illicit use, according to what the
United States Senate dictating how your contribution or not in the war against d
rugs
. It is an instrument of colonial nature, because an external power
decides to at his own discretion which country you are provides economic aid, te
chnical assistance and account
with the blessing of the United States. This orientation based military line
assumed then by George Bush in 1989, through the Andean Initiative, to fight the
production of
cocaine in the producing countries of South America, a project that arises from
the pressures
of the Southern Command. These are the times in which it is imposed by the Washi
ngton Consensus
that requires the opening of the neoliberal market, an order that in Colombia me
ets
in way obedient to the government of César Gaviria (1990-1994), with the abrupt ec
onomic opening that
destroys the national industry and that goes hand in hand with the militarizatio
n
disguised under the cloak of the counter-narcotics effort.
The CIA AND DRUG LORDS IN COLOMBIA
We knew perfectly well as knew it too the commanders of the host nation, that nar
cotics
were a ridiculous excuse to strengthen the capacities of troops that had lost th
e confidence of the
population, after years of oppression [ ] but i had grown accustomed to the lies.
These were the
currency of our foreign policy [ ] There is also a turbulent history of the Unite
d States government that
struggle with
not against drug traffickers. In fact the CIA seems to have an irre
sistible trend
toward the drug barons .
Words of Stan Goff, an officer of the American army, which was in the basis of T
olemaida (Colombia) in 1992
.
SOURCE: Movement for Reconciliation and Coordinación Colombia-Europa -Estados Unid
os, "false positives
" in Colombia and the role of the military assistance of the United States, 2000
-July 2010 2014, p. 53.
Colombia is participating in the struggle against the transnational economy of n
arcotics in the terms proposed by
Washington, which accesses credits and becomes the main
recipient of military assistance in the region, which would cement his position
dependent and
subordinate. The narcotics issue becomes a key mechanism of intervention and int
erference in
Colombia. For example, in 1984, Lewis Tambs, ambassador of the United States
in Colombia, qualifies to the insurgencies of Colombian "narco-guerrillas" shoul
d be
treated as common criminals and resisted with all the weight of the US military
assistance
, an affirmation that points directly to destroy the peace talks initiated
in that year during the administration of Belisario Betancur. In those moments t
he
thesis not burned, but in the context post-cold war, in which the anti-communist
lost
today, the denomination is dust and returns to have an audience.
The anti-narcotics used opportunistically by political considerations
, because the United States tolerates and promotes networks of drug traffickers,
if these are
functional to their interests, and also guarantees the existence of transnationa
l economy of
narcotics. Thus, between 1989-1993 United States performed the operation Heavy S
hadow (heavy Shadow Cast
), coordinated by the Embassy in Colombia and with the participation of the CIA,
DEA, FBI,
National Security Agency and special forces to kill Pablo Escobar. These agencie
s and
security apparatus foreigners act with the Army, the police and the Los Pepes
(persecuted by Pablo Escobar), paramilitary group linked to the Cali Cartel. The
government of
the United States knows of the links of the armed forces with narcoparamilitares
and one of them, Don Berna, maintains a close relationship with the DEA, the
agency overseeing the drug trafficking.
Ernesto Samper (1994-1998), despite its conflictual relations with the United St
ates, the
aggression scale anti-narcotics against communities in the south of the country
in 1997, through an aggressive program
of spraying and restrictions on multiple essential products that
also serve for the development of coca paste, such as gasoline and the cement, c
ausing
protests in the Putumayo, Caqueta and Guaviare. The government of the United Sta
tes avoids contact
with the president and works directly with the Armed Forces, a fact that extends
its autonomy within the State.
DARK ALLIANCE BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND THE KILLERS NARCOPARAMILITARES
The ex-ambassador of the United States in Colombia, Morris D. Busby wrote the ac
tions of his country with the support of
agents of the CIA, the FBI, the DEA and the National Security Agency, for which
not only counted with contributions from
the United States in equipment, personnel and cash, but that the own president G
. H. W.
Bush authorized the deployment of a counter-terrorism unit top secret Delta Forc
e, the Army of the United States
, in conjunction with the group NavySeal Navy squadron and a clandestine electro
nic surveillance
of the American army were detected the movement of Escobar and his associates an
d helped me to plan raids
against him.
These forces provided the Search Block of the National Police intelligence, anal
ysis, training and
operational assistance. [ ] research of Bowden concludes that the testimony of the
witnesses indicates that
not only had some members of the Search Block carrying out joint operations with
Los Pepes
; but also the head of Los Pepes was giving the orders, rather than the police .
In addition, Lt. Gen. Jack Sheehan, the offices of the Joint Command, who was in
charge of
all the United States military operations throughout the world, said that CIA an
alysts reported that
noted that the tactics used by the Los Pepes were similar to those that Delta For
ce i was showing
the Search Block; that the intelligence gathered by the American forces was bein
g shared with
the death squads and that some of Delta Force operators were transgressing
their orders of deployment to accompany members of the Search Block in raids .
The narcoparamilitares allies in this campaign (Los Pepes) began to assassinate
methodically to lawyers, bankers
, money launderers, assassins, friends and relatives of Escobar, for which both
Los Pepes as the
Search Block acted based on information obtained by the American embassy and the
Colombian Army and Police
. At the same time, the paramilitary Chestnut continued killing, under other acr
onyms, to
dozens of leftist leaders and opposition movements. Under the protection that ga
ve them the be allies of the strategy by the
elimination of Pablo Escobar led by agents of the United States and the Search B
lock
, told with enough coverage to deepen its onslaught against left-wing organizati
ons
, the UP and the trade union movement.
SOURCE: Movement of reconciliation and the Coordinación Colombia-Europa -Estados U
nidos, "false positives
" in Colombia and the role of the military assistance of the United States, 2000
-2010, Bogota, 2014, pp. 59-63.
PHASE V: PLAN COLOMBIA, unconditional subordination WHAT HAS EMERGED UNDER
after end of the Cold War, the United States, without abandoning the anti-commun
ism that reappears
in the figure of XXI century socialism in Latin America builds new enemies, which
are ubiquitous
and diffuse, represented in the drug trafficker, the mafia, the faker that after
the
September 11 lead in the figure of the international terrorist, mainly
Islamic, as the embodiment of the supreme and universal "evil" that is faced to
the United States,
as a representative of the "good" and "freedom". The counterinsurgency strategy
of the United States
at the beginning of the twenty-first century includes the use of unmanned aircra
ft (drones), the
targeted killings and the recruitment of mercenaries through private companies.
The
new counterinsurgency develops a strategy in which they operate in an integrated
manner the
Department of Defense, USAID and the various intelligence agencies. In Colombia,
this
old new paradigm of civil-military cooperation is implemented through USAID sinc
e
2010.
In the period intensifies an aggressive foreign policy on the part of the United
States, which
revitalizes the counterinsurgency theories. The policy of the United States it i
s redirected to the root
military disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, with an emphasis on military assista
nce to
tackle the other wars of the empire, although this keep the direction and contro
l of operations.
Between 2001 and 2012 the military assistance of the United States extends to 18
6 countries
and raises from five billion dollars to twenty-five thousand. In the "new dirty
wars
" of the empire, Colombia is a pilot case because during half a century United S
tates
has supported you.
PLAN COLOMBIA
in the presidency of Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002) strengthened ties with the United
States
after their relative deterioration during the government of Ernesto Samper, by t
he need to rebuild
the weakened diplomatic ties with the scandal of "narcodemocracia
", situation that reinforces the repressive apparatus of the State, both the off
icial and
parallel. In 1998, the candidate Andrés Pastrana announces in Puerto Wilches a
Colombia Plan for Peace, aimed at resolving the structural problems of the that
is derived from
drug trafficking and whose shaft are the peace negotiations with the FARC-EP, wh
ich
begin to develop once that assumes the presidency; there is even to raise that t
he
guerrillas could participate in the development, design and implementation of th
e programs contained in
this Plan. The United States nominally supported the peace negotiations, and the
y meet in
Costa Rica with the secretariat of the FARC-EP, an organization that had declare
d
terrorist in 1997, while in practice increase military assistance to
Colombia, which in 1999 became the third recipient country in the world of such
"selfless" cooperation war, after Israel and Egypt.
That same year is created the first anti-narcotics battalion of the Colombian Ar
my, a force
of 2,300 men, with the mission of act in Putumayo and Caqueta in which
"coincidentally", have their bastions the FARC-EP, while the territories in the
hands of paramilitary activity
(from which cocaine is exported) are not touched. In the "diplomacy
for peace" of Pastrana drug trafficking is considered as the "fuel of the confli
ct", which
allows you to capture economic and military aid from the United States.
The original version of Plan Colombia is written in English and their Spanish ve
rsion is available
months after. The social affairs, in the tradition civic-military, are placed at
the service
of a militarist strategy articulated under the notion of the "war against drugs"
,
which explains that between 75 and 80 percent of the program is middle to milita
ry spending and
security.
First phase (1999-2006): The Plan Colombia maintains that the State is weak
and supposedly has no national presence, as an explanation of the problems of th
e country. The Plan includes the
support for the peace process, economic reform and structural adjustment in the
vein
of the Washington Consensus, modernization of the Armed Forces, intensification
of the
anti-narcotics and judicial reform. The action of the United States is crucial t
o break down the process of
peace, because at the time that there is the demilitarized zone in the Caguán
is devoted to reset to the Armed Forces and intervenes in the form directly to t
orpedo
the process as exemplified by the opening of the Military Base of three corners,
in the
Caqueta, at the end of November 2001, a fact which is frequented by Andres Pastr
ana, the military leadership
and the Ambassador of the United States Anne Patterson. This database has the mo
st modern
system of air navigation and meteorology from South America, which is indicative
of its purpose, is located only half an hour away from the demilitarized zone. W
ith a
cost of $35 million, is being built in eight months. Operates 24 hours a day
and is home to more than three thousand men of the Army, Navy and Air Force, and
has a runway of 1,400 meters. It is the epicenter of the Joint Task Force
of the South.
Aerial fumigation SPONSORED BY THE UNITED STATES
since 1994, this program has operated in Colombia with strong support from the U
nited States. The aircraft,
piloted by mostly crew hired, flying over the areas where coca spraying
Ultra Roun
d-Up ,
a herbicide containing the active ingredient glyphosate, on 100,000 hectares of
Colombian territory
each year. Between 1996 and 2012, these aircraft have been spraying herbicides o
n 1.6 million hectares in Colombia
an area equivalent to a square of almost 130 kilometers per side. [ ] is equivale
nt to a hectare sprayed
every 5 minutes and 29 seconds since January 1 1996. [ ] and almost all the resid
ents of the affected areas can
cite cases of legal food crops destroyed by fumigation, that force families to
tackle hunger.
SOURCE: Adam Isacson points out, time to abandon the fumigation of coca in Colom
bia, available in
http://www.wola.org/es/comentario/hora_de_abandonar_la_fumigacion_de_cocales_en_
colombia). (Emphasis ours
).
After the collapse of the peace process in February 2002, is added as the centra
l objective of the
Plan Colombia the territorial occupation of the entire national airspace by part
of the military forces of the State
, with what the anti-narcotics is reconfigured as fight against terrorism.
As a result of Plan Colombia increases the size of the Armed Forces,
whose strength of 249,833 in 1998 to 380,069 in 2005 and the GDP in "defense"
increases of 3.5 % in 1999 to 4.23 % in 2005. This militarization the sponsors a
nd, to a great extent, the
United States finances. As part of the modernisation of the warfighting capabili
ty
of the State creates the Rapid Deployment Force (HE MAY APPOINT), that amalgamat
es three mobile brigades
, one of special forces and aviation support. The first act of this Plan is the
offensive in Putumayo in 2000, with the participation of the Army and the parami
litaries.
In 2001 are sprayed thousands of hectares of coca in the Putumayo and 37 thousan
d families affected
sign agreements for crop substitution, but the aid promised never arrives. Secre
t Documents
of USAID in 2001 reveal that it is impossible to give assistance to all the fami
lies
affected by the spraying, and the forced displacement appears as an unstated int
ention
of this offensive "anti-narcotics", because, according to officials of the Depar
tment of
State, the inhabitants of the region "will have to relocate, although this will
ultimately
depends on them"46.
46 Fellowship of Reconciliation, [for], Military Assistance and Human Rights: Co
lombia, US Accountability,
and Global Implications, 2010.
47 Ingrid Vaivius, & Adam Isacson points out, "The War on Drugs
error ", International Policy Report
(Center for International Policy), February 2003.
meets the War on T
At the end of 2003, the "Plan Patriota" mobilized 18,000 troops through the Task
Force
Omega, who heads a military offensive in Putumayo, Meta, Caqueta and Guaviare, t
o compete for
this territory to the FARC-EP. The distinction between anti-narcotics and anti"terrorist" fades, because, according to George Tenet, CIA Director: "The terror
ist threat
goes beyond the Islamic extremists and the Muslim world. The Revolutionary Armed
Forces of
Colombia are a serious threat to us interests in Latin America
because we are associated with us with the government with which
they fight"47. The Southern Command is involved in the design and implementation
of the Plan Patriota, the United States
provides a billion dollars a year for three years and passes to direct the
management of radars and satellites in Colombian territory, that is, it controls
the information and intelligence
. In 2004, Bush extends the foot of force present in Colombia of 800 (400 troops
and 400 private mercenaries) to 1,400 (800 and 600). In fact, in 2003 are 4,500
US officials in Colombia and 1,000 soldiers operate in one of the
US military structures in Colombia, the Special command of joint operations.
Between 1999 and 2002 is delivered one million two hundred thousand dollars per
day to the Armed Forces,
and in that same period equipping them with 84 helicopters, you create new briga
des and military units
, and provide intelligence teams (including assistance in interceptions), unifor
ms
, patrol boats and small arms. Fifteen thousand Colombian soldiers are being tra
ined by the
United States, and American mercenaries fumigate thousands of
hectares in the south of the country.
This first phase of the Plan Colombia it costs $10,732 million and its result is
disastrous for peasant communities in the south of the country. This United Stat
es involvement
in the internal conflict leads to one of the moments of greatest
subordination by Colombia and, according to its ambassador, William Wood (2003-2
007):
"there is no country, including Afghanistan, in which we had more activity"48.
48 Dana Priest, "covert action in Colombia. U. S. intelligence, GPS bomb kits he
lp Latin American nation cripple
rebel forces", The Washington Post, December 21 2013.
Second Phase (2007-2013): presents as the consolidation phase of the Plan Colomb
ia I and its
political expression, the "democratic security", which implies the international
ization of the conflict, which
is redefined as a "terrorist threat". Covered topics such as the
demobilization, disarmament and reintegration of armed groups and eliminates any
reference to the political negotiations with the insurgents. It is an agenda in
keeping with the interests of
the United States that insists on signing a Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and
conceived to Colombia as a "strategic partner" in oil, coal and natural gas.
As market forces need iron seatback of the repressive forces, between
1998 and 2008, 72 thousand military personnel are being trained by us instructor
s in Colombia and
seven thousand receive instruction in the United States, which ranks Colombia in
second place in
the world in that range, after South Korea. Increases the foot of force, until y
ou reach
in 2008 to 427,847 soldiers and policemen. It rearranges the military mission in
the United States
attached to the embassy of that country, which depends on the Southern Command,
which directs the
operations against insurgent-and anti-narcotics in Colombia. And in general incr
eases the
investment from the United States military in Colombia, to turn this country int
o one of the main destinations for
the aid of the powerful war machine of death of American imperialism
. [Doc. 9].
The "help" in the United States there was an increase from that was set in motio
n the Plan Colombia
, which amounts to almost 5 billion pesos, i.e. a third of the total of "help"
that received the country since 1946 (16 billion) and more than half of the
exclusively military aid received during the period 1946-2007. This indicates, i
n
concrete terms http://www.scielo.org.co/img/revistas/anpol/v23n70/v23n70a06image
007.gif, how it operates the "aguerra against drugs" and the "fight against terr
orism
" of the United States in the Colombian territory.
There is clearly a way as it triggers the "military aid" since the late 1990s
, to convert to Colombia in one of the first five countries of the world to rece
ive
assistance from the United States, as shown in the chart below:
Post of Colombia in the external aid from the United States at the global level
(1946-2006)
Taken from: Diana Marcela Rojas,
Analysis, No. September 70
- December 2010, p. 122.
The Alliance for Progress of Colombia , Political
As part of the military intervention, the regime of Álvaro Uribe Vélez "invites" to
the United States
to lead the bombing and take control of the intelligence in the
war, a clear mortgage of the Colombian sovereignty. Although officially the cost
of these operations is
nine thousand million dollars since 2000, a recent article in the
Washington Post reveals that this is just the tip of the iceberg, because the fi
nancing is part of
hidden agendas with secret funds much higher than the official figures, such as
those recommended by the
report of 1959, led by the CIA, although with great
participation of the National Security Agency. This program starts in 2003 with
George Bush
II and continues with Barack Obama and includes: intelligence: with which antici
pates
the "Plan bubble" a euphemism of the targeted killing of commands of the FARC-EP
interceptions, tracking systems and tactics of interrogation that the CIA develo
ps in the Middle East and
that teaches the Colombian Army, including the torture; use of precision munitio
ns
"smart" directed by GPS, which are used in the first phase in the
bombing, after which comes to massive bombing and to finish off the survivors
practice in open violation of international humanitarian law with
gunships AC-47 aircraft used in Vietnam, to conclude with the landing of troops.
These air strikes reported a big advantage for an army could not defeat the insu
rgency
by land.
The military personnel who operate in a clandestine manner in the special comman
d for joint operations
are more than a thousand. As part of military operations which bombards
the Ecuadorian territory, where they massacred 26 people, including the commande
r of
the FARC-EP Raul Reyes. Today it is known that this attack is a direct result
of the intelligence and operational forces of the United States from its own
covert agenda: the plane was piloted by an American and the pump was directed by
the CIA
. [Doc. 10].
MANUAL OF THE CIA secret (2009) APPLAUDS CRIME OF SUCUMBIOS
Secret a Manual of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the year 2009, in th
e government of Barack Obama,
with the title best practices in counterinsurgency: how to make the operations o
f attack on high-level goals
an effective tool, designed to assess the work of counterinsurgency in various p
laces in the world
, classifying it as a "success story" to the crime of Sucumbios, when killed obj
ectives of
"high value" what "seriously damaged the morale and discipline" of the FARC, acc
ording to "comments field" of
the CIA.
The CIA in the Manual mentioned makes recommendations to the governments of the
world that face to face with
insurgent movements in which advises the assassination of leaders and high-level
leaders. This document of
the CIA, " [ ] has the virtue of documenting and give substance to a fact that he
had been an open secret
for decades: that a government formally established, as is the United States, us
es,
recommends and systematizes the murder of insurgents as a common practice, antit
hetical to the
most elementary humanitarian notions".
SOURCES: Central Intelligence Agency, Intelligence Directorate, Best Practices i
n counterinsurgency. Making
High-Value Targeting operations an effective counterinsurgency Tool, July 7 2009
, pp. 2, 6 and 9;
Counterinsurgency to the extent , Publisher of the Day, December 19 2014.
The regime of Álvaro Uribe Vélez reaches the highest levels of submission with respe
ct to the United States
, as is evident in the case of the military bases. When the Ecuadorian president
Rafael Correa does not renew the permit to the United States to use the Manta ba
se
, Uribe Vélez gives them seven military bases, through an "agreement" of 30 Octobe
r
2009: Palanquero, Apiay, Malambo, Cartagena, Tolemaida, Larandia and Málaga Bay
. (See: Map No. 1).
Map No. 1
Military Bases in Colombia under agreement between the United States and Colombi
a 2009
In addition, it allows access to the sea and air space to ships and aircraft of
the United States
; they are exempted from payment of taxes and customs duties; it is granted abso
lute impunity
to American personnel even before crimes committed outside the service and leaves
open the agreement to the United States to carry out the activities that they de
em appropriate
. According to a document of the Department of Defense of that country, "Palanqu
ero
guaranteed the opportunity to lead operations within a full spectrum throughout
South America [ ] subregion critical in our hemisphere, where the security and st
ability
are under constant threat"49. Such is its importance in the annual budget
of the United States from the 2010 are allocated $50 million to modernize and ad
apt to
Palanquero according to the operations of the imperial army. [Doc. 11]. Althou
gh
constitutionally has refused the agreement of 2009, in practice, the presence of
troops
and mercenaries of the United States extends throughout the national territory,
beyond
even that the places ready for the seven bases of the above-mentioned agreement.
(See: Map No.
2).
http://www.contrainfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/bases_usa_colombia.jpg
49 Department of Air Force, Military Construction Program, Fiscal Year, 2010. Tr
anslated at http:
//www.cronicon.net/paginas/pais-ocupado/Documento%20Fuerza%20Aerea%20EU.pdf
Description: F: \DCIM\ 122_PANA\P1220193.JPG
Map No. 2
United States military presence in Colombia
SOURCE: http:www.tercerainformacion.es/spip/ .php?articles53325
PRIVATIZATION OF THE WAR AND MERCENARIES MADE IN USA
The Colombia Plan involves directly to United States military and mercenaries an
d
private companies in activities of multinational security for narcotics and acti
ons,
in concordance with the trends to the subcontracting inherent to neoliberalism.
These mercenaries
enjoy impunity under the laws of that country and the agreements with Colombia.
The
first group of mercenaries arrive in 2000. Although no exact figures are known a
bout the involvement of mercenaries
in the service of the United States in Colombia, it is estimated that in 2004
had 600, but the amount is greater because these companies hire personnel from o
ther countries and
Colombia.
Among the work being carried out the mercenaries are aerial spraying of glyphosa
te, transport of personnel
anti-narcotics and support to certain military operations, and management of
telecommunications, espionage and intelligence on the internet, training
Colombian military personnel in piloting, control sea and river transport of war
materials and
logistics are multiple companies involved in these mercenary activities that
absorb a significant percentage of the business of us military aid, because in 2
006
represent 50 percent of the budget for the area of security. One of the 16 compa
nies in
the United States operating in Plan Colombia in 2004, the
Lokheed-Martin gets 34,500 millions of dollars in profit. This indicates that it
is very
profitable in the business of the privatized war in Colombia, as was said by a
peruvian mercenary in the service of imperial master: "With DynCorp i went merce
nary in Colombia because it
was a job to pay, to fight a war that is not mine. [ ] It was a
typical operation military [ ]. When we work for the Colombian Army thing
"50. [Doc. 12].
50 The Spectator, 19 July 2001.
51 Adam Isacson points out et al. , time to listen: Trends in security assistanc
e from the US to Latin America
and the Caribbean, Washington: IPF, LAWGEF, WOLA, 2013, pp. 21-22.
IT IS EXPORTED AND IS OUTSOURCED MILITARIZACIÓN counterinsurgency INSTRUCTION
although there seems to be a decreasing trend in the direct military assistance
in recent years
, this is apparent because it compensates by "clandestine funds" and subcontract
ing activities
of the Colombian Army to train third countries at a cost cheaper
in relation to the United States: "Less assistance does not necessarily mean les
s
involvement of the United States with the armed forces and police in Latin Ameri
ca
. But the nature of this participation is changing. [ ] is becoming more agile
and flexible, but even less transparent"51. Will prioritize the special forces,
more intelligence,
use of drones and robotics and cyber operations.
Due to the increased military assistance from the United States to Colombia, and
the consequent
militarization of the country, security is a line of export, following the tradi
tion
inaugurated in Suez and Korea: Colombians are hired mercenaries, originally thro
ugh
the contractor Blackwater paramilitary, since 2010 by the United Arab Emirates
for military operations internal and external security to oil infrastructure and
crush
possible rebellions pro-democracy or labor, using the facade of contracts for
construction workers. They are trained, recruited and led by retired officers of
the United States
, and have by advantage, apart from having been properly trained in the doctrine
s of the
insurgency and the internal enemy, who are not Muslims by which
will have less of a problem in killing people of this religion. There are curren
tly 1500
mercenaries Colombians in the United Arab Emirates, in Central America, Mexico,
African countries
and Central Asia.
This military training to a third party does not mean that Colombia is, in itsel
f, a military power in
own right, but it is a strawman "delegate" of the United States, which, in its q
uest to
be the policeman of the world, finances and trains and military mercenaries thro
ugh Colombia
, as in "times of budget cuts in the United States, the
coaches Colombians cost a fraction of what it would cost coaches of the United S
tates
"52. Well, after a pilot program with the police of Afghanistan in 2007
, has trained 22,000 police and military personnel from 47 countries, in topics
of counter-insurgency,
counter-narcotics, psychological operations and the greater part of this trainin
g is done with
funds from the United States. The School of Lanceros, founded in the aftermath o
f the Korean war,
also dictates today courses in counterinsurgency to military personnel from seve
ral countries.
52. Ibid. , p.24.
MILITARIZACIÓN AND IMPACTS ON THE POPULATION
The implementation of Plan Colombia increases civilian victims of the conflict,
a pattern of violence
that is related to the model of "democratic security": the military resumes
territories controlled by the insurgency through the use of a huge force,
moving the population and then the paramilitaries ensure the control, as happene
d in the
operations Thanatos walk, Orion, Aragua, Tsunami, Merry Christmas and Marshal am
ong others. The
beginning of the military offensive in the south of Colombia joined at the end o
f the negotiations
of Caguan, produced a humanitarian crisis of enormous proportions, with
412,000 displaced in 2002 alone.
The violence of the American mercenaries is exacerbated due to the impunity that
the
blanket and the colonial attitude that disdains the humanity of the subject. An
example is provided by the
three mercenaries working for AirScan International Inc. , in the service of
the oil company Occidental Petroleum Corp, who coordinate the aerial attack by S
anto Domingo
Arauca on December 16 1998, in which are massacred 18 people, 6 of them minors,
when helicopters donated by the United States (Huey UH-1H) show by indication
of the American mercenaries cluster bombs AN-M1A2 on the victims. Never
have had to respond by this crime. [Doc. 13].
Mercenaries OF THE UNITED STATES RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MASSACRE OF SANTO DOMINGO
, Arauca
who coordinated the bombing and pointed to the white of the launches of a bunch
of grenades
called Cluster, were American mercenaries aboard an aircraft Sky Master at the s
ervice of the
Occidental Petroleum Company. The director of Air Scan, John Manser speaking fro
m the company's parent
, stated that the aircraft Sky Master and the American aircrew were originally r
ecruited by Occidental
and Ecopetrol in 1997. [ ]
The identity of americans corresponds to Dan McClintock, born on 4 July 1947, id
290439 aliens, passport 700785913, son of Joseph and Allie. Barbaric José Orta, a
Cuban, and naturalized in the United States
, passport 043827521, and Charles Denny, on whom neither the Colombian authoriti
es
have immigration records, or Western, or the embassy of the United States have p
rovided some
information. The three were hired by a private company of aerial surveillance ba
sed on Rckledgef,
call Air Scan International. [ ]
According to the statement of the captain of the helicopter before the military
judge, the morning of the fight
the Colombian military pilots were concentrated in the Classroom of the camp of
G in Western Cano Limon
. There the Americans gave them instructions around the launch of the devices Cl
uster on
two matas of Monte distant to the village, in which had been located part of the
guerrillas.
The helicopter bombing in the points determined by the Americans. The Sky Master
recorded in video communications between
the mercenaries and the ship and took continuous pictures of the launch of the b
unches
Cluster far from the village. The video was the test queen who could clarify som
e of the confusion that exists in the official investigations
. [ ] The video done in the American aircraft was stored in facilities of the
Oxidental Petroleum Company, in its complex of the Caño Limón.
The magazine asked change on 18 June 2001: -who authorized the intervention of f
oreign nationals in a
Colombian military mission and on Colombian soil? Why he was given autonomy to t
hose aliens
to commanding the operation? [ ]
SOURCE: German Castro Caycedo, shadows of Santo Domingo , Time, January 19, 2003.
UNITED STATES AND THE paramilitarism
despite substantiated allegations of collusion of the Army and Police with param
ilitary bands
throughout the 1990s, the military aid from the United States increases
significantly, up to the financing of the Plan Colombia, whose arms are used in
massacres of civilians and included thousands of anti-personnel mines Claymore.
In this regard, it is time to
move aside the curtain of smoke of official denials and identify the association
militarparamilitares
as what it is: a sophisticated mechanism supported in part by the years of
counseling, training, weapons, and official silence in the United States; that a
llows the Armed Forces
of Colombia combat a dirty war and the Colombian
Kyrgyzstanâ s bureaucracy. The price: thousands of Colombians dead, missing, wound
ed, and aterrorizados53.
53 Human Rights Watch, the networks of assassins in Colombia. Links between the
military and paramilitary groups and the United States
, Bogotá: copy to machine, 1996.
According to the Institute of Political Studies in the United States, "all evide
nce shows that the support of the CIA or
the Special Forces of the United States to the paramilitary groups, was the
tool that allowed them to be consolidated in a way that would not have been poss
ible before"54.
In a more detailed manner, a quantitative survey conducted in municipalities
where they operate Colombian military bases that receive military assistance, in
dicates that between 1988 and 2005
the increase in military aid to Colombia increases in a 138 percent annual param
ilitary attacks
. According to this study, the cooperation to the Colombian Army strengthens the
paramilitarism, through the provision of arms of tip (and the sale in some cases
),
logistical support, intelligence and even mobilizations of these criminals in he
licopters or aircraft
of the Army purchased via United States. It is also the case of the Mapiripán Mass
acre
(1997), when the paramilitaries across half of the country, landing at a militar
y airport in
San José del Guaviare, which operates a narcotics unit of the United States
, without being stopped in his career killer. (DOC. 14). The report also notes
the influence of
such assistance in voting behavior in the municipalities with military bases, in
relation to the increase
in attacks and murders of public officials and mayors at the hands of paramilita
ry activity
, all elements of great weight to explain the "rightward shift" of the
political spectrum induced in those years. On Contravia, foreign military assist
ance does not reduce coca cultivation
and in the municipalities where there are military bases that are benefiting fro
m this
military assistance operations descend the anti-narcotics, at a rate of 7 percen
t for every
1 percent increase in assistance, which is consistent with the nature
of counterinsurgency Plan Colombia and with the participation of paramilitaries
in the production and trafficking
of drogas55. In addition, we cannot forget the sponsorship that foreign companie
s, including
American capital, have made of paramilitary groups, and their responsibility for
the murder of thousands of peasants and workers, as happens with the Chiquita Br
ands in Urabá
. [Doc. 15].
54. FOR and ESTADOS UNIDOS - CCEEU, op. cit. , p. 36.
55 Oeindrila Dube & Suresh Naidu, Bases, bullets and ballots: The Effect of US m
ilitary aid on political
conflict in Colombia, Washington: Center for Global Development, 2010.
SEXUAL IMPERIALISM
There is abundant information on sexual violence, in total impunity thanks to bi
lateral agreements and
the diplomatic immunity of officials of the United States, which
is part of a sexist and discriminatory behavior known as "
sexual imperialism", similar to the effects that occur in all the places where t
here are
military of the United States, as in the Philippines, Japan or South Korea. In o
ne of the most high-profile cases
, in Melgar and in neighboring Girardot, 53 minors were sexually abused
by mercenaries, who are also filmed and sold the tapes as pornographic material
. Also in Melgar, a contractor and a sergeant in the United States violated a 12
-year-old girl in
2007. Both by the activities they perform, as to their status as
immunity, contribute to the insecurity of the people in areas of conflict, but a
lso
in other areas in which they are concentrated and are in contact with the civili
an population. [Doc. 16].
Beyond the direct sexual attacks of mercenaries, are frequent rape and sexual as
sault by
the Colombian Army, as reflected in an interview to an intelligence officer
of the navy, who asserts with triumphalist tone: "I infiltrate a peeled
[in the guerrillas] with a GPS that big [pointing to the mouse of a computer] in
your vagina
"56. Other serious cases involving soldiers and mercenaries, including homicide,
drug trafficking and sale of arms to paramilitaries.
56 Douglas Porch & Jorge Delgado, " Masters of today : military intelligence and co
unterinsurgency in
Colombia, 1990 2009 ", Small Wars & Insurgencies, 9:2 PM (2010), p. 283.
US MILITARY ASSISTANCE AND MURDERS OF STATE (
FALSE POSITIVES )
The participation of the United States in murders has been known for several yea
rs. For example
, in the Heavy Shadow operation against Pablo Escobar (1989-1993) are carried ou
t
executions from intelligence agencies that provide the United States
. In addition, trade unionists have been murdered social leaders, militants of t
he left,
taking advantage of the coverage given by the notion of "narco-terrorism". In t
his regard, are
infamous crimes perpetrated by the Navy in Barrancabermeja, between 1991 and
1993, that killed over a hundred people. Everything originates in the order of t
he Ministry of
Defense of Colombia in May of 1991, "on the basis of the recommendations made by
the
committee of advisers of the Military Forces of the United States", which design
s a plan to fight
"the escalation of terrorism on the part of the armed subversion", from which cr
eates
the intelligence networks throughout the country, one of which, 07, has its head
quarters in Barrancabermeja
, camouflaged in false front companies. It hires hitmen who have no
direct link with the network, with the obvious intent of not involving the armed
forces
with the crimes and the members of the network they are commanded not to "attend
to military installations
" and their contacts and exchanges are to be kept secret and "always led by
the Brigade Commanders".
The priority objectives of the criminal actions of the Network, planned from the
Central Intelligence
of the Navy in Bogotá, are murdering union leaders and social and
generate terror among the population. "The assassins to orders of the intelligen
ce network had it clear that
the trade union activity was a sufficient reason to kill, so much so that there
was a fee for
each member of the USO murdered," because, according to the testimony given by
Carlos Alberto Vergara, one of the assassins by the Network, "each murder ranged
between one hundred or two hundred thousand
pesos in accordance to the victim, each member of the USO was paid with
two hundred thousand pesos, each guerrilla to one hundred thousand pesos, why we
re the number of
massacres that today are from public view"57. [Doc. 17].
57. Cited in Collective Corporation Lawyers Jose Alvear Restrepo-CREDHOS, today,
as yesterday, persisting for
life. Intelligence Networks and extermination in Barrancabermeja, Bogotá: 1999, p.
33.
Camilo Ospina 58, Ministry of National Defense, Standing Ministerial Directive,
November 17, 2005.
These networks, between legal and illegal, are expanded in the regime of Uribe Vél
ez to reach
the two million salary and informants to play a role in the nefarious murders
baptized with the euphemism of "false positives" through accusations, and recruit
ment
of people who are then killed in cold blood by an Army eager to demonstrate resu
lts in
the fight against-insurgent. Of these crimes are directly responsible the senior
civilian and military hierarchy of the State, including the President of the Rep
ublic and the
Ministers of Defense of the period 2002-2010, during which time increased expone
ntially
the cases of "false positives", especially after the adoption of the
Ministerial Directive No. 029 Of the November 17 of 2005, signed by the Minister
of Defense
, Camilo Ospina Bernal, "that develops criteria for the payment of rewards for t
he
capture or dejection in
combat leaders of armed organizations outside the law
" and even the precise amounts to the publicly traded the murder of Colombian, a
ccording to the
vulgar commercial logic to put a price on life humana58. [Doc. 18].
INTELLIGENCE NETWORKS SUGGESTED BY THE UNITED STATES RESPONSIBLE FOR MURDER
In May of 1991 the Ministry of Defense had issued the order 200-05 -91 "contains
the recommendations made by the
Committee of advisers of the Military Forces of the USA" to better combat "the e
scalation of terrorism
on the part of the armed subversion". It empowers the Army, Navy and Air Force
to establish
intelligence networks that provide information and receive orders of the joint C
hiefs of Staff, corresponding
the task of overseeing the organization of these to the General Command of the M
ilitary Forces. This directive
also authorized the creation of mobile brigades. To integrate the "boxes" networ
ks is prioritized
the participation of retired military or civilian "with preparation, influence a
nd trustworthy", which
will be covered and compartmentalized, avoid attend military installations and t
he exchanges
shall be secret. The intelligence officers shall have such means as "facade, fic
tional story, vehicles and
a communications system. Between the years 2002-2008, these intelligence network
s played a key role in many of the cases of
"false positives" in recruiting individuals who are selected to be executed by m
ilitary units,
or by pointing and linking as criminals to future victims of this crime.
SOURCE: Movement of reconciliation and the Coordinación Colombia-Europa -Estados U
nidos, "false positives
" in Colombia and the role of the military assistance of the United States, 2000
-2010, Bogota, 2014, p. 9.
According to one commentator of the press: "The anxiety and the delirium triumph
alist led them to convert
donation to an endless number of their soldiers and police officers of t
with this
he Homeland not in heroes, but in
simple war criminals whetted by the money and entranced in front of the metal ri
ng and
the brightness of the squinting medallerias"59. As indicated by the Gambian Fato
u Bensouda,
Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court: "There are reasonable grounds to
believe that the false positives
have been a State policy; these murders, committed to increase the
rates of military success, they could be considered as crimes against humanity;
such acts
can also be classified as war crimes"60. They are currently
in the Public Prosecutor about 5,000 cases of victims of these "false positives"
. The agency Fellowship of Reconciliation
[FOR] [in Spanish] Movement of Reconciliation analyzes a sample of
3,014 cases of these murders since 2002, and the contrasts with information on 5
00
military units that received American assistance. The results indicate that 23 o
f 25
jurisdictions military show "false positives" and an increase or decrease of the
military assistance mark an increase or a proportional fall by 56 percent in the
murders
of civilians. Despite this, in 2008, 79 percent of the Colombian military units
to which they were checked participation in these crimes, are once again receivi
ng
assistance militar61. In the words of one officer of the Colombian Army, there w
as never greater
interest of the United States to inquire about the dead that they were presented
as success in the fight against
-insurgent:
59 German Uribe, "Uribe, the ICC and the false positives," available in http://w
ww.semana.com/opinion/articulo/
Uribe-ICC-false-positive/330353-3
60. Cited in Diana Carolina Duran, "Report of the International Criminal Court.
False positives have been if
State policy ", The Spectator, 27 November 2012.
61 FOR and ESTADOS UNIDOS - CCEEU, op. cit. , p. 11.
It turns out that we are killing if guerrillas , of course, but also we are killing
innocent people
to show you the cash that was their support. I went to the tables of the chamber
s of
war and he was in combat casualties, killed in combat AND if i quoted a gringo,
how goes the war?
well, 20 casualties, 3 low. i showed everything good because i am
selling my results for you give me more silver. The gringo don't ask me, what ar
e guerrilla fighters
? Hello, are militia? Hello, are civilians? The gringo does not know, the gringo
needs to know
what he is investing is exitoso62.
62. Ibid. , p. 73.
In this study demonstrates that military units commanded by officers trained
by the United States are involved in massacres and murders, which increases duri
ng the
regime of Uribe Vélez.
THE DAS AND THE "GRAY ROOMS": MACHINES TO SPY ON AND KILL
The DAS was born in 1960 to replace the SIC, since the military mission of 1959
proposed
turning it into a body controlled by the United States to rid counterinsurgency
operations
(see: page 18 of this Report), until you have your agents infiltrated into
all areas of Colombian society, as it reveals a 1964 document sent from
the Embassy of the United States and the aid to the president Guillermo León Valen
cia.
Hundreds of declassified documents from the CIA, USAID and the Embassy of the Un
ited States
, show that they follow very closely the evolution of the DAS, he is trained and
supplied equipment. In fact, the monthly reports of the CIA since the 1960s
brought a chapter of evaluation on the activities of the DAS.
The DAS organizes a criminal gear in times of Uribe Vélez to kill trade unionists
as a result of the partnership between the Director, Jorge Noguera, and paramili
tary groups. This
entity provides a list of 23 trade unionists to be killed by the paramilitary gr
oup
that directs Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias George 40, in exchange for 50 million pes
os for each
dead. From that list are killed seven people, among them the sociologists Alfred
o
Correa de Andreis and Fernando Pisciotti Van Strahlen, and journalist Zully Codi
na. The
counterinsurgent logic of these killings are evidence with the language used by
the DAS, which catalogs
to the victims as belonging to the "opposite socio-labor" the "enemy within".
Likewise, it is sweeping across the "chuzadas", a euphemism for the illegal inte
rceptions
to members of the opposition, of NGOS and of the Supreme Court, which, in the wo
rds of Juan
Gossain, constitutes "the espionage more horrific and disgusting and repulsive o
f the world,
with terrorist attacks. [ ] This is a plan for a State agency in order to put an
end to the
country". Given the seriousness of the matter:
the Colombians we have the right to know who it was that turned the country into
a state of
police and state terrorists, who tried to convert this into a nation of spies, w
ho was the
macabre who devised the plan to convert to real or imagined opponents as if they
were criminals
, who is behind this. What three detectives of DAS? I do not reir63.
[Doc. 19].
63 Juan Gossain, Editorial in RCN. Available in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
oLucvgmXVNI ( 1st part)
and in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6yeCGc-o8c ( 2nd part).
64 Dora Montero, "The behind-the-scenes of the story of the Washington Post on t
he DAS and the Embassy gringa",
in the empty chair, September 8 2011.
65. "Case
chuzadas: the mystery of the gray room
", Magazine Week, March 2, 2014.
Some lights with respect to who is behind these criminal attacks against the Col
ombian people
, a former agent of the DAS, William Romero, trained by the CIA and involved in
intimidation and espionage to members of the Supreme Court. He claims that his
activities of infiltration are organized through the Embassy of the United State
s to which
reports on a regular basis. The Embassy provides you with computers, technology
of
interceptions, cameras, money to rent safe houses and up to buy
petrol. A unit of the DAS responsible for monitoring and prosecuting trade union
ists receives thousands of dollars
and equipment of the Embassy, under the strict supervision of an official of the
United States
. Not surprising, that in the course of the investigations, we discover the exis
tence of
a special intelligence group called GAME ,
belonged to the best men of the DAS and that had been created by the Embassy of
the United States
. These men were yielding their work to the Embassy and monthly received
extra payments of $300. [ ] 90 percent of the training you received were
paid by the United States, the computers were manufactured in the United States
and details,
even, as that in 2004, the DAS intercepted avanteles, when the only team that ex
isted in the country
for that role belonged to the Embassy Unidos64 States.
At the beginning of 2014 unleashed a new scandal with the so-called Operation An
dromeda,
through which the Army spy through internet cafes of facade the Government's negot
iations with
the FARC-EP in Cuba, and even "periscopes" to the first agent, which
shows the extent to which the Army operates as a State within the State. In this
regard,
it is discovered that in the Central Military Intelligence and Counterintelligen
ce (CIME),
operates a "gray room" from which it is carrying out illegal interceptions, whos
e information can be used
to intimidate or even killing people. According to a military unit,
the CIA "provided financial and technical support for the chamber could operate.
Everything, absolutely
everything that occurs here is aware of them. They know that, to whom and for wh
at
it is intercepted in the room. In practical terms, they were the real heads of t
his room
." 65.
These sensitive facts, that very quickly fall into oblivion, are just a sample o
f the
flawed relationship between the United States with Colombia, as well as the dang
er of the control that
their services have on the intelligence and the Colombian security institutions.
This is not to say that the
DAS in the way it twists and involves in dubious activities and illegal, but tha
t
was founded as an instrument designed for the "psychological warfare open and di
sguised", according to the
document of the military mission of 1959. This "psychological warfare" against t
he
population translates directly into terrorist practices on the part of the State
until today
, that have left thousands of victims. [Doc. 20].
CONCLUSIONS
here are a few conclusions of this report: (1
) During much of the twentieth century among the ruling classes and the States o
f Colombia and the United States
has been generated a strategic alliance that mutual benefit to both parties,
but that hurts the social majorities in our country. The first is by profiting f
rom the
loans and military aid, and have established a
unconditional subordination and dependence. The seconds because they control var
ious aspects of the
Colombian society and policy, as well as the most important lines of the economi
c activity, by the predominance of
their businesses and investments in strategic lines.
2). In Colombia there is a counterinsurgency native that is nourished by the ant
i-communism that is
prior to the emergence of the doctrine of counterinsurgency, but that is renewed
and mixed with
the latter as a result of the geopolitical interests of the United States during
the Cold War.
3). The interference of the United States in the social conflict and assemble o
ur country has been
constant and direct from the late 1940s, which is expressed in both the military
aid to the
State, as in the promotion of policies of counterinsurgency.
4). The successive governments of the United States the last seven decades are
directly responsible
for the perpetuation of the armed conflict in Colombia, to the extent that they
have promoted
the counterinsurgency in all its manifestations, stimulated and trained to the A
rmed Forces
with their methods of torture and elimination of those who are considered as "in
ternal enemy" and
blocking the way of non-military solution to the structural causes of social con
flict and
armed.
5). The mission of general Yarborough 1962 is directly responsible for the cons
olidation of paramilitarism
in Colombia, since recommended that they be organized groups of civilians and
military, promoted by the State, with the explicit purpose to pursue and kill th
ose
considered as communists.
6). United States has contributed to the militarization of the Colombian societ
y for their funding and support
to the Colombian State and its armed forces on behalf of various crusades agains
t communism
, drug trafficking or terrorism.
7). United States direct is jointly responsible in thousands of murders committ
ed by the Armed Forces
and the paramilitaries, for their sponsorship to military brigades engaged in th
at type of
crimes and for his support for private groups of killers.
8) The direct control of the DAS on the part of United States since the time of i
ts foundation in 1960, until
its recent dissolution makes them responsible for the numerous crimes and crimes
against the people that were committed from the security agency, including
murders of trade unionists and social leaders and the monitoring and harassment
to sectors of the political opposition
.
9). To promote the so-called "war on drugs" United States is involved directly
in the
destruction of indigenous and peasant economies in various places of Colombia,
who are victims of fumigation, bombing and official persecution and official.
10). The privatization of war which drives the Plan Colombia and the new counte
rinsurgency
promotes the use of mercenaries in the internal conflict in our country, who com
mit
many crimes (rape, murder, torture, disappearances), that have enjoyed complete
impunity
, in virtue of the agreements between Colombia and the United States. This reinf
orces the
"culture of impunity" that characterizes the Armed Forces of Colombia.
11) The State terrorism that is perpetuated in Colombia since the late 1940s, it
was
fed both the military and financial support of the United States, as in the inte
rests of the ruling classes
creole, to preserve their power and wealth and refusing to perform basic
economic and social reforms of redistributive type.
12). Some companies of us capital as Chiquita Brands , which have been funded and
sponsored
paramilitary groups, are directly responsible for hundreds of crimes committed i
n
various places in Colombia, but have never been processed in our country, where
they enjoyed full impunity
.
Recommendations of this report are
derived from two kinds of recommendations, some on the files,
dissemination and access to information and other general type, presented in sum
mary form:
FILES, ACCESS AND DISSEMINATION OF INFORMATION:
1) for the knowledge, reconstruction and search for the truth about the responsi
bility of the United States in
the Colombian conflict, as well as its multiple leads and links with the
Colombian State, its armed forces, security agencies and private entrepreneurs,
it is essential that
the declassified documents relating to Colombia that lie in the
us files.
2) Such documentation should be regarded as the country's documentary heritage a
nd should be brought to
our territory, be deposited in the General Archive of the Nation and be translat
ed and
disseminated publicly.
3). The archives of the DAS, Armed Forces, Ministry of Defense and the State se
curity organizations
should be preserved by independent entities, and without any links with the Arme
d Forces
and revealed both the information related to the actions of the United States
as with the internal repression. [Doc. 21].
4) The Colombian State should open virtual portals of easy access in the store a
nd you can query the
documentary information about the role of the United States in the Colombian con
flict
.
GENERAL TYPE:
1). To build a society at peace and democratic is essential rethink the relatio
ns between
Colombia and the United States, in such a way that will retrieve the national so
vereignty with the
objective to manage autonomously our affairs and that the internal policies not
be guided not
by the interests of Washington or from any foreign power, but to respond to the
interests of
the Colombian population.
2). The Colombian State you must disclose to society all the covenants and agre
ements military
secrets that exist with the United States and with any other State (like Israel)
and must
commit to that never will be to establish agreements of this nature.
3). In order to contribute to justice for the victims, the government of the Un
ited States should be facilitated to
the citizens of that country involved in serious crimes against the Colombian pe
ople
, in particular murders, disappearances, and cases of rape, respond to independe
nt courts and
put an end to the impunity that protects them. At the same time, that the remova
l of
privileges and protection enjoyed by the military of the United States and the
mercenaries to your service.
4) It is essential that cease the participation of the United States in the mana
gement of the security agencies
, such as happened with the DAS.
5). It should investigate cases of sexual violence by the military and mercenar
ies of the United States
throughout the territory of Colombia and punish the guilty.
6). The Armed Forces in Colombia must abandon their conceptions of counterinsur
gency, anti-communism
and internal enemy, go back to their barracks, reducing its size and budget and
dedicate themselves to safeguard national borders. This implies a demilitarizati
on of the Colombian society
, which would enable new social forces and political organizing and expressing t
hemselves freely
without the fear of being victims of the persecution and stigmatization from
counterinsurgency doctrines and/or national security.
7). The treatment should be abandoned and repressive military that has been imp
osed in Colombia in the last six decades
and consider new ways of addressing complex problems of our society
, as the agreement relating to the use of illicit crops.
8). Given the unilateral nature and arbitrary as opera extradition (that is awa
re, no citizen
of the United States has been extradited to Colombia), it is essential to put an
end to the
extradition of Colombian nationals to the United States or any other country.
9) The government of the United States must accept its responsibility, in an una
mbiguous manner, before the victims
by their direct and indirect participation in our conflict, in the same manner a
s
the guerrillas of the FARC-EP has accepted its share of responsibility and as al
so the State should be doing
. The victims of the paramilitary groups, of the bombing, fumigation, murders
(such as the evil called "false positives" ), as well as military policies, soci
al, economic and commercial
imposed by Washington that have had a detrimental impact on
millions of Colombians, need to know the truth about the participation of the Un
ited States in their suffering
. There is a need for a public apology unconditional and unequivocal on the part
of the government
of the United States, as well as redress to the victims and a guarantee of non-r
epetition of this
pernicious interference in the future.
10) MUST be removed the evil programs called "military assistance", through whic
h occurs
a illegitimate political interference in our domestic affairs, as well as it has
promoted the idea in the Armed Forces that the Colombians, or some of them, are
an "internal enemy
" to the efforts to combat and annihilates. This is a central aspect of the demo
cratization of society
and of the purification of the Armed Forces.
11). There must be a hearing and in-depth investigation of the activities of th
e USAID
, which, operating from a
counterinsurgency primarily array and belligerent, has been involved right from
the first time in attendance at
activities and institutions that have promoted massively the violation of human
rights,
such as DAS and the actions civic-military. This is demilitarize the cooperation
in such a way
that does not represent an affront to our sovereignty.
13). Taking into account the direct complicity of the major media in Colombia
in the legitimization of the intervention of the United States and their crimes , a
long with
the State terrorism and insurgency, must be held accountable as victimizers by
be generators of the "culture of impunity", of the lies and disinformation.
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ATEHORTÚA, Adolfo and Humberto Velez, State and armed forces in Colombia, Bogotá: Th
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, 1994.
ATEHORTÚA, Adolfo, López Pumarejo Rojas Pinilla: Parties, violence and Army (19341957), Bogotá: Universidad Militar Nueva Granada, 2010.
ATEHORTÚA, Adolfo, The presence of the United States in the formation of the Colomb
ian military
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te. Bureau of
Inter-American Affairs.
Summary of meeting re The Alliance for Progress, January 25 and 28, 1963 [Robert
Anderson Papers, Box
233, Committee to strengthen the security of the Free World FEB 1-15, 1963 (1)]
First Progress Report on the Department of Administrative Security (DAS), United
States Embassy.
Colombia. Agency for International Development Section. Public Safety Division,
April 1964
[National Archives. Record Group 286. Records of the Agency for International De
velopment. Office of Public
Safety. Latin America Branch. Country File--Colombia. Box 30. IPS 2/Changes in t
he
Administrative Department of Security/Colombia, June 1963].
Monthly Report of Public Safety Division, Colombia, Confidential airgram 1778, M
ay 26 1964, US
Embassy [National Archives. Record Group 286. Records of the Agency for Internat
ional Development
. Office of Public Safety. Latin America Branch. Country File--Colombia. Box 29.
IPS
1/File Material/Colombia, 7/1/ 1964-12/ 31/1964].
Weekly Summary, Colombian Anti-Communist Campaign, September 25 1964, Central In
telligence Agency
, Office of Current Intelligence [National Archives. CIA Records Search Tool. CI
A-RDP79TO004600060001-7 00927].
Tab E: Planning and Objectives, Colombia Survey Team Recommendations for U.S. Ac
tion, 1965,
Secret Report, Department of Defense.
Possible Need for Communications for National Police detachments in Santander de
partment
Confidential Cable 000667, January 19 1965, Department of State [National Archiv
es. Record Group
286. Records of the Agency for International Development. Office of Public Safet
y. Latin America
Branch. Country File--Colombia. Box 29. IPS 1/Program/Cables Colombia,: 6/29/ 19
646/24/ 1966]
Confidential Memorandum for Record, Briefing for DOD and ARA Officials on Vietna
m Village
Radio System, February 17 1965, Agency for International Development. Office of
Public Safety.
Operations Division [National Archives. Record Group 286. Records of the Agency
for International Development
. Office of Public Safety. Latin America Branch. Country File--Colombia. Box 29.
IPS
1/General Policy/Colombia, 1964 (1 of 2)]
Colombian Internal Defense Situation Secret airgram 2, July 3 1965, US Embassy.
Monthly Report--Public Safety Division, June 1965, July 16 1965, US Embassy [Nat
ional Archives.
Record Group 286. Records of the Agency for International Development. Office of
Public Safety.
Latin America Branch. Country File--Colombia. Box 32. IPS 2-2/Monthly Reports/Co
lombia, 1/19652/1966] End
of Tour Report: Charles Redlin, Public Safety, Communications [Includes Attachme
nt]
Unclassified Data airgram 1069, May 16 1966, US Embassy [National Archives. Reco
rd Group 286.
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Branch. Country File--Colombia. Box 32. IPS 2-1/COARS and End of Tour Report/Col
ombia, 1968- 1972
]
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onal Archives.
Record Group 286. Records of the Agency for International Development. Office of
Public Safety.
Latin America Branch. Country File--Colombia. Box 32. IPS 2-2/Monthly Reports/Co
lombia, 1967]
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http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/declassified/fy_201
0/1957_09_11.pd
f
The three knots of the Colombian war:
a peasantry without political representation,
social polarization in the framework of an institutional fractured,
and joints between regions and perverse center1
1 I appreciate very much the work wise advance by those who assisted me in the r
eview of primary sources
with a huge dedication: Laura Rojas, Edinso Culma, Silvia Pabon, Carlos Singer,
Julio E. cuts and Carlos Mejia
Walker. Without them, many of the ideas expressed here had not succeeded. I woul
d also like to thank
Monica Pachón for having shared your database on the electoral Congress of the Rep
ublic, as well as to
all the colleagues that with enormous generosity assumed the tasks that i belong
ed in the National Center of
Historical Memory, in particular to Mary Andrea Rocha, Maria Luisa Moreno, Andre
s Suarez and Maria Isabel Houses.
Gonzalo Sanchez by respecting my isolation followed by days. Diana Gil, Edisson
Calderon, Carlos Julio
Ramirez for his discreet support. To my friends by his infinite patience and con
tribute their ideas and thoughts.
AND Camila, by undertaking a journey of acceptance and solidarity not foreseen.
The text is, however, of my own responsibility.
Mary Emma Wills Oregon
National Center of Historical Memory
INTRODUCTION ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
... ... 1 1
. THE SINGULARITY COLOMBIAN ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . 4
1.1 . STRONG PARTIES, NATION DIVIDED, FRACTURED AND WEAK STATUS ................
........ 4
1.2 . OF THE TWENTY YEARS THE NATIONAL FRONT: DECOMPOSITION AND RECOMPOSICIÓN SOCI
AL ORDER
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . 8
2. THE CONTEMPORARY WAR ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . 12
2.1 . TRIGGERING CONDITIONS OF WAR .............................................
12
The interstices pluralistic .... 12
The armed struggle, the restrictive option and the military response ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 17
The knot of the representation and the peasant authoritarian gradual degradation
... ... 22
2.2 . A TIME CRITICAL: THE TRANSITION TO THE TOTAL WAR (1977 TO 1982) ..........
.......................... 26
2.3 . THE EXPANSION OF THE WAR AND THE FRACTURES STATE (1982-2014) .............
...
The 30 regional trajectories ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . 32
3. WHAT THE VICTIMS WE ENSEÑAN: A WAR WITH A PAST BUT
WITHOUT FUTURE ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .
.. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .
.. ... ... 37
BIBLIOGRAPHY ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
... ... 41
INTRODUCTION
Of the 11 to May 25, 1900, at a mountain of the Andes, thousands of men lashed o
ut
against each other to be destroyed. From dawn to midnight, liberals and conserva
tives
were withdrawn to make their inventories of agonies and tried to rest to return
with the dawn to find, once again, the face of his own death. Each day [ ] libera
ls and conservatives
are mauled in defense of the honor of his party. [ ] On 26, in the early morning,
(the liberals) left the forests, the houses, around their camp, leaving it
watered of corpses unburied
[] by all parties the desolation and death . [ ] gener
al
Prosperous Pinzón told the May 26 (the Archbishop of Bogota) that, after long and b
loody
battle God has granted the victory to the army of the Republic defender Christia
n.
My votes are that this triumph is conducive in property to the Church and the Ho
meland2 .
2 Hermes Tovar, Following in the footsteps of the soldier Paul , at Gonzalo Sánchez a
nd Mario Aguilera (editors),
Memory of a country at war. The Thousand Days 1899-1902, Bogotá: IEPRI, UNIJUS, Pl
anet, 2001, p. 143.
3 To organize the information thrown by the contemporary war and infer its natio
nal character and its political nature
, the following theoretical texts were illuminators: Stathis Kalyvas, The ontolog
y of the
political violence: action and identity in the civil wars , Political Analysis, 52
, (2004), pp. 51-76; Doug
McAdam, Sydney and Charles Tilly Tarrow, Dynamics of contention, Cambridge: Camb
ridge University Press,
2003; and Edward Gibson subnational Authoritarianism: territorial strategies of p
olitical control in democratic regimes
, Bogotá: Challenges, not. 14, (2006) ,pp. 204-237.
The above quote refers to the battle of Palonegro that accompanied the demise of
the old nineteenth century
and the dawn of the new, and to seal the final defeat of the liberal party in th
e War of a Thousand
Days.
Fifty years later, after interpartidistas sporadic violence, the country plunged
again in the underworld. However, the war, its codes, its actors, were, and at t
he same time
were no longer the same. In contrast to the War of a Thousand Days, the testimon
y of the surviving victims of
the violence reported no battles between armies but
dense descriptions of a daily horror that surprised in the privacy of their home
s to
peasants, men, women and children alike.
Today, 60 years later, the country is plunged into another war driven by differe
nt actors
that conjoin old and new claims, and innovate and to reactivate the time codes o
f
violence reminiscent of the previous armed confrontation. As in other eras, the
frames are
confusing: the private motivations are interwoven with the political, the
personal humiliation or greed with the claims of justice, in a war that continue
s to be
, however these overlapping, of national character and the policy.3 nature.
To read carefully this new-old war, it is necessary to draw near to the
interbreeding of claims and political frustrations, greed and private grievances
, regional strife and
national conflict, seeking both the knots that are repeated and do not allow
resolving it, as the large ruptures and transformations that cross.
Here it is worth mentioning that this work, to refer to these recurring problems
, opts for
naming them as
4 knots. In its most common sense, a knot is a loop that is close
and closed so that it is difficult to release alone, and that the more you strip
of
any of the two ends, more tightening5 . Use it in the context of a war
then aims to point out that the problems are due to relationships and interactio
ns that are woven
between actors and tangled, sometimes in a premeditated way but other times not.
It also suggests that, although the tangles have not always been foreseen and pl
anned
solutions if they require a conscious effort and set, because the knots are not
sparked
by pulling a single out .
4See in annexs, Paper 1: conceptual delimitation.
5 Royal Academy of the language, http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=Nudo, consulted on
1 November 2014.
6See in annexs, Paper 1: conceptual delimitation.
It should also be an explicit warning about the meaning of the continuities.
When referred to knots that are repeated, it is not you unravel patterns that wo
uld constitute
a culture of violence nor the existence of some geological faults impossible to re
solve
that we are condemned to the Colombians, as in one hundred years of solitude, a
few
cycles of razing mutual mechanisms with their own self-perpetuation. Rather than
assuming
a violent national essence, this work explores the continuities and ruptures
from the political contexts, and the interpretive frameworks, the crucial decisi
ons, strategies and
interactions of the central actors, both the national and regional level
(and sometimes international6). Looking For, in addition, show how in these int
eractions,
actors and institutions that are supposed are expressed in monolithic
reality of heterogeneous manner and harbor and respond to different political an
d ideological currents
that fracture internally. As well, more to see for example a few elites
cohesive agglutinated around projects consensual domination, the job stops
in the antagonisms between conservatives and liberals; the politicisation of the
police and the Army;
the tensions between different streams in the military ranks; the open
disagreements between congressmen, and congressmen, Executive and Military and P
olice Forces
at critical junctures, and tensions between the authorities and regional elites
and the national level.
In these contradictions do not only play differing economic interests
but also some interpretative frameworks that lead to the actors, from both the l
eft and
right, to make crucial decisions that lead to violent dynamic.
The reconstruction of these interactions between actors will be organised around
three
central knots a peasantry resistant without political representation; a polarizat
ion reiterated in
the framework of a State with a few Military Forces and Police confronted with e
normous challenges
to achieve a democratic professional autonomy; and some disruptions and
perverse joints between regions and center that fracture the internamente7 State
.
See in annexs 7, Paper 1: conceptual delimitation.
8 The question of the uniqueness of the colombian trajectory is important becaus
e it incorporates a gaze
compared and wonders because Colombia unlike its neighbors was plunged into war
for more than
fifty years.
To illustrate how historically operate these knots, the narrative revolves aroun
d two
major periods, one focused on the singularities of the Colombian context8 and th
e other in contemporary warfare
. In the first, very succinctly, include two moments
in which the three knots mentioned are combined and leave lasting legacies. The
first
time reconstructs the singularities of the formation of the parties and the nati
on State
in Colombia, while the second covers the decades of transition from
agrarian to industrial society, and a bipartisan political system to the emergen
ce of the left, passing
by the years of violence and the transit by the military government of General R
ojas
Pinilla and his subsequent fall.
In the second section, the narrative becomes more thorough since it relates to t
he contemporary war
. It speaks of a period of trigger conditions in which
the knots are narrowed, both those of the peasant as the representation that the
y allude to the
challenges that confront the Armed Forces (ARMED FORCES) and the police to be co
nsolidated as institutions with
a democratic professional autonomy (1958-1976); it was followed a few years ago
that constitute a critical juncture (1978-1982) during which the
central armed actors, both the legal and illegal, laying down a series of allian
ces, take
crucial decisions and deploy a set of directories that will mark the violent
way as the war was fought later. The latter period (1983-2012) recognizes
that in the decade of the eighties the armed conflict was reorganised, not only
in terms of
territorial expansion, magnitudes and sources of funding, but especially of
alliances, interpretative frameworks, military strategies and violent repertoire
s. In this
period there is a particular emphasis on the knot of the articulation between ce
nter and regions and the
state that fractures become dramatic.
In the third and final section, the text stops in the legacies of the war on soc
iety and
the Colombian democracy, and in their effects on the victims of the conflict. Th
ere
emphasis is on the way like so many years of programming perverse, not only of t
he
armed actors in the conflict, but also of the society as a whole, have left lega
cies
of anti-democratic and lasting impact on the victims that the actors in the
first armed conflict, and the society and the institutions as a whole have a res
ponsibility to
repair. Understand the suffering of the victims and palpate the
authoritarian heritage to be normalizing are that lead to the conclusion that, a
t this time
, the navy is a conflagration war with past but without future 9.
9 Gonzalo Sánchez Gómez, a war with a past but without future , Week Magazine, Special
Edition 30
years August 25 2012, consulted in http://www.semana.com/edicion-30-anos/articul
o/una-guerra-pasadoperofuture/263446-3 on 3 December 2014.
10 See in annexs, Paper 1: conceptual delimitation.
11 Bejarano also continues this argument. See Ana Maria Bejarano, precarious dem
ocracies.
Divergent political trajectories in Colombia and Venezuela, Bogotá: Uniandes, Facu
lty of Social Sciences, Political Science
Center for Social Studies, 2011.
12 Except, of course, the case of Uruguay. See Ruth Berins Collier and David Col
lier, shaping the political
arena. Critical junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin Amer
ica, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1991.
1. THE SINGULARITY COLOMBIAN
1.1 . STRONG PARTIES, NATION DIVIDED,
FRACTURED AND WEAK status
in Colombia, the formation of the nation-state is distinguished from the other c
ountries of the continent
by its sequence historicas1110 and articulation. In contrast to its Latin Americ
an neighbors
, Colombia was characterized by their political parties were forged before
solidifying its status and because they were the main actors of the process of
imagination and inculcation of a country.12 community.
In the country, for 1850 was already possible to speak of a liberal party and on
e conservative, each
articulated as network multi-class composition of type ingratiating that tended
bridges between the regions
, and between the regions and the center. In addition to this articulation, the
political networks
incorporated into the political debate both the elites and the sectors populares
13, and the
mobilized in clientelistic exchanges in times of both votes as of armas14.
13 AEDS, Malcolm: The presence of the national policy in the provincial town, feu
ds and rural Colombia
in the first century of the Republic in from the same author: The power and the g
rammar and other essays on
history, politics, and Colombian literature. Bogota: Third World publishers, 199
3, p. 175-206.
14 González, Fernán: electoral legislation and behaviors: historical evolution
the same author:
To read the policy, took 1, Bogotá: CINEP, 1997, p. 95-164.
in from
15 According to Santiago Montenegro, Colombia has one of the most uneven geograph
ies planet with a very high rate of
dispersion in the absence of a clear policy of delimitation of the border inside
. See
Santiago Montenegro, territory, governance and economy in Santiago Montenegro, ope
n society,
geography and development, testing of political economy, Bogotá: Editorial Norma,
2006.
16 See Marco Palacios, State and social classes in Colombia, Bogota, new library
of Colombian
culture (PRICULTURA), 1986 and David Bushnell, Colombia: a nation despite hersel
f, Bogotá:
Planet, 1999.
17 Gonzalo Sánchez, studies on violence. Review and prospects
icardo
Peñaranda (compilers), Op. Cit. , 1986.
at Gonzalo Sánchez and R
18 Malcolm deas, fiscal problems in Colombia during the nineteenth century , in the
power and the grammar. And
other essays on history, politics, and Colombian literature. Bogota: Third world
publishers, (1993), pp. 63
107.
19 Product under the framework of the Constitution of 1863, For its part, the Uni
on Army was reduced to a meager
armed group called Colombian Guard , whose primary mission is to intervene at the t
ime
that were ignited hostilities between the states. In reality, the interference o
f the Guard was
limited, since it had a foot of force of 600 men on average, a figure lower, whe
n compared with that of the
army of the sovereign State of Santander that was attended by budget to enlist a
nd put at your service a
These networks policies rooted in a territory characterized by its diversity and
complejidad15, fact that economic framework different vocations and gave rise to
regional particulares16 orders, within the framework of a weakly integrated dome
stic market.
But in terms of economic policies there seemed to be consensus among elites, the
institutional design
that would have to regulate the relations center-regions and collect and distrib
ute the treasury
, and the place of the Catholic Church in the social order were the reason for r
ecurring
armed confrontations, with the exception of the wars of half of the century asso
ciated to
democratizing reforms linked to the fate of the craftsmen.
Thus, in the nineteenth century, there were eight wars of national character and
fourteen regionales17. Each
one of them strengthened the party membership and deepened the notion that the p
olitical adversary
was in reality an enemy. By the end of the century, the members of each network
is
identified with the symbolic matrix of his own party, identification that deepen
ed
with each spiral of violent polarization.
These dynamics were deployed in addition in a context of institutional weakness
and low
economic exchange. By the same narrowness of the market, the central State handl
ed
fiscales18 restricted resources, did not have an army propio19, and faced an
average of one thousand men in time of peace and that necessary in time of war.
Thus, the operational capacity of
the guard in front of an armed confrontation between two or more states was mini
mal . Mayra
Fernanda King Stephen, military education in Colombia between 1886 and 1907 in Cri
tical History No. 35, Bogotá,
January-June 2008, pp. 151-152.
20 Montenegro, ibid.
21 González, Fernán: Settlement and social conflict in Colombian history in from the s
ame author: To read
the policy. Tests of Colombian political history. Bogota, CINEP, 1997, p. 71-94:
74-77.
22 Pecaut, Daniel. Order and violence. Colombia 1930-1954. Bogota: Cerec and twe
nty-first century publishers, 1987 and Fernán
González, Op. Cit.
23 Catherine Legrand, Frontier Expansion and Peasant Protest in Colombia, 1830-1
936, Albuquerque,
University of New Mexico Press, 1986, pp. 119 and following.
24 The emphasis is mine. See Catherine Legrand, agricultural background of violen
ce: the social conflict
in the Colombian border, 1850-1936 at Gonzalo Sánchez and Ricardo Peñaranda, Op. Cit.
, 1991, pp.
135-136.
25 Paul Oquist, violence, conflict and policy in Colombia, Bogotá: Banco Popular L
ibrary, 1978.
geography that imposed challenges to the gobernabilidad20, an issue that was rei
nforced by the
resistance of the regions to let ourselves be governed from a center. On the oth
er hand, the state bureaucracies
, rather than being caused by a few impartial institutions, assumed the color of
his party and
should be in your network.
There were, however, some regions, the empty spaces
or
hot land 21, that
were on the outside of the clientelist networks, as well as their inhabitants we
re excluded.
In this way, while a portion of the country came into the games of power and par
tisan
bickering in the bureaucratic, another, very sparsely populated, it was excluded
or excluyo22. These
spaces were associated with the agricultural frontier where the migration of set
tlers resulted in the formation of
a sector of small independent farmers oriented toward a market economy
23 . In order to stimulate the economy, the State issued at the end of
nineteenth century24 a law that provided for the titling of free sites on the bo
rder, but
is confronted in its practical application with specific barriers high prices for
measurement
and demarcation and with regional powers. These powers were agitating to the deci
sions taken by
the officials for example notaries
the favored so that
the frames of the political and economic power at the local level were mutually
reinforcing
. The political control of the local power thus became a part of the scaffolding
in the
order in general that was reflected in the expression that lasted up until today
have
lever 25, such an interaction between a person and a political contact ensures th
at you get to a
particular a decision in its favor at the head of the State.
The nineteenth century closed with the issuance of the 1886 Constitution led by
a coalition of
liberals and conservatives, the regeneration, which provided an institutional de
sign
and presidential centralist26 based on a conservative look and organic of
the sociedad27. This gaze crystallized in the predominance accorded to the Catho
lic Church on the
education and the private life and by this track on the projects of life and ide
ntities of the
women, and sealed with the signing of the Concordat between the Vatican and the
Colombian government.
The project also ordered the adoption of a scaffolding centralist in fiscal term
s and
was accompanied in addition to the intended to be a professional army of
nacional28 character. These institutional designs and exclusion from the politic
al power of some streams
of liberalism would trigger the War of a Thousand Days in the late nineteenth ce
ntury
and the dawn of the XX century, which culminated in the rowdy liberal defeat of
Palonegro described in
the quotation at the beginning of this document.
26 Appointment of governors in the hands of the Executive who rested, in turn, t
he appointment of
the mayors of the newly created departments; and nomination at the head of the P
resident of the judges of the
Supreme Court and the courts.
27 This is the settlement of the regeneration that Colombia and Uruguay, the oth
er Latin American country with two strong parties
, a nation divided and weak institutions, branch off. Uruguay enters the twentie
th century
from the hand of a liberal reformist project inclusive in contrast with Colombia
. Ruth Berins Collier and
David Colier, shaping the political arena, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University P
ress, 1991.
28 Mayra Fernanda King Stephen, military education in Colombia between 1886 and 1
907 in Critical History
No. 35, Bogotá, January-June 2008, pp. 151-152.
In retrospect, the uniqueness of the construction of the nation-state in Colombi
a lies in
the combination of several processes. The inculcation of a sense of belonging to
a shared destiny
came from the hand, not a State with claims or inclusive
networks of autonomous cultural, but political parties of their twisted around e
ach other in
rivalries which, in the context of a weak state, resulted in enmity between two
communities
that are self-claimed each as a carrier of the true nation.
For the economic elites in training, maintain control over the local power by th
e track
of party loyalties became crucial. Simultaneously, in the borders, there emerged
a
independent peasantry that, combined with the gradual politicization, and inculc
ation of
absolute enmities between liberals and conservatives and a fractured and weak St
ate,
led, through interactions do not always premeditated, in a complex scenario
where the political game was arranged in such a way that could easily
lead to war.
1.2 . OF THE TWENTY YEARS THE NATIONAL FRONT:
DECOMPOSITION AND RECOMPOSICIÓN OF SOCIAL ORDER
IN spite of the fact that the project of the regeneration provided an institutio
nal design centralist, the
State continued face enormous limitations to regulate social relationships and
policies that irrigaban the life of the region level29. The purpose of forming a
professional army
disassociated itself from partisan affections start in 190730, with the constitu
tion of
Escuela Superior de Guerra, but only give important steps in this direction at t
he end of
the decade of the cuarenta31.
29 I have this annotation to Theophilus Vasquez, whom I thank for his contributi
on.
30 Eduardo Pizarro, military professionalization in Colombia (1907 - 1944) in poli
tical analysis, not. 1,
Bogotá: IEPRI, No. 1, (1987), pp. 28-55; Elsa Blair Trujillo, the Armed Forces. A
gaze civil,
Bogotá: CINEP, 1993.
31 Blair, Ibid. , and Francisco Leal Buitrago, relations between civilian and mil
itary during the National Front
in Carlos Caballero A. , Monica Pachón Buitrago and Eduardo Posada Carbo (compiler
s), fifty years of
return to democracy. New looks to the historical significance of the National Fr
ont, Bogotá: University of
The Andes, 2012, p. 163-185
32 Aguilera and Vega, op.cit. and Sanchez, Gonzalo: Essays in social and politic
al history of the twentieth century, Bogotá: the
Salva Liarte Editors, 1985 and Sanchez, Gonzalo: the imaginary of the Colombian p
olitical Magazin
Dominical in the spectator, not. March 359 11 1990, p. 17-20.
In the midst of these institutional weaknesses, the country experienced a series
of social and economic transformations that
, by not having unleashed the knots of the first period,
led again in the explosion of violence in the middle of the century.
The twenties of the last century were distinguished from the earlier because the
y broke out during
a cycle of social mobilizations and founded the first parties of the left.
Peasant leagues also appeared and workers' organizations around a political pole
of the left, transformations that were reflected in the emergence of
newspapers and in the realization of rallies, national meetings, Thomas street a
nd invasion
of tierras32.
It was also the decade in which, in the words of Catherine Legrand, settlers
took the initiative and appealing to the law of wastelands, claimed land and req
uests were sent to Bogota
, encouraged by decrees and laws that established the rule that, in certain terr
itories,
the land could be considered public and be entitled to those who
were working. Unlike the previous cycles of agrarian struggles, the settlers
on this occasion been able to resist better to the onslaughts of the landowners
thanks to the
alliances built with leftist political forces and liberales33 flows.
33 Catherine Legrand, Frontier Expansion and Peasant Protest in Colombia, 1830-1
936, Albuquerque,
University of New Mexico Press, 1986, pp. 119 and following.
34His politicization remained so obvious in 1924 that the Swiss Mission hired by
President Ospina
argued that garrison of Bogota account with 1200 men but gave 2500 votes , Elsa Bla
ir, Op. Cit. , p.
41.
35 Under the Act, at the end of 1928, banana plantation workers declared the stri
ke and on December 5, the
army fired on the crowd gathered in the plaza de La Ciénaga . In Jorge Orlando Melo
, The heroic act of 1928 in Colombia
is a topic in http://www.jorgeorlandomelo.com/leyheroica.htm, consulted on 15 No
vember 104 36
Bless you infinitely to the Lord for the victory achieved by party of social orde
r against subversive elements and
strangers who want to be imposed with sophisticated arguments. Peter Adam, Archb
ishop of Cartagena . I thank
telegram comunicanme final approval project on social defense, that was life or
death for
institutions and party. I am pleased with you and senators who approved. Bishop
of Manizales , Without author, social defense
. Against communism. Bogota: Imprimerie Nationale, 1929 cited in Blair, ibid.
In the midst of these transformations or more precisely by their cause, at the n
ational level, the
enmity between liberals and conservatives was reactivated, but this time includi
ng the
left in training. This polarization is disseminated via the pulpit and the preac
hing of
some dignitaries of the Church and strengthened through the army that, for the t
hirties
, was still under the control of the Party Conservador34.
Since those years, currents of political elites, especially conservative,
interpreted social mobilization as a result of the intrusion of actors outside t
he
national destiny. To cope with such interference, sued the adoption of
extraordinary measures ensuring that Congress to approve the law or of heroic soc
ial defense
. This act by the other received the applause of unconditional some prelates of
the
catholic church35 because, according to them, provided the tools to succeed mili
tarily
on the subversive elements [ ] who want to be imposed with sophisticated arguments
36 .
With the return of liberalism to the Presidency in 1930, the interpretative fram
eworks with which
the more radical conservative leaderships read events acquired
tones Banzer's increasingly. While in Europe, on the eve of the Second World War
, flared up the Spanish Civil War and in France he ascended to power a coalition
of
left call Popular Front (1936-1938), in Colombia president Alfonso Lopez
Pumarejo was trying to push some on land reforms, higher education and
heritage of women, civil marriage and divorce, extension of the franchise to all
the
male population and trade union rights, which, however its restraint, were read
by
the intellectuals most radical conservatives as attempts to subvert the
foundations most sacred society 37.
37 The awful shows that [communists] and freemasons gave of himself in Spain, and
the abyss of lawlessness,
immorality and servility to have yielded to Mexico, comparable only to the chaos
in Russia, let see what
awaits us if the plans and submitting counterspiritual of these two monsters are
left prosper in The II
Eucharistic Congress , speech of Francisco Cristobal, Bishop of Antioch, quoted in
Ricardo Arias
Trujillo, Contemporary History of Colombia (1920-2010), Bogotá: University of The
Andes, 2011, p. 80.
38 Blair, ibid.
39 Mary Roldán, blood and fire. The violence in Antioquia, Colombia. 1946-1953, Bo
gotá: ICANH and
Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Technology, 2003.
40 Ibid.
41 Donny Meertens, "Women and violence in rural conflicts", political analysis,
24, (1995), pp. 36 49.
42 Vertical in the sense of an enormous asymmetry of power between the victims o
f the dispossession and their beneficiaries,
i.e. between settlers, peasants, indigenous communities and large landowners wit
h connections in the
local and regional orders.
43 Horizontal because the dispossessed and who robs tend to come from the same s
ocial class.
44 Cesar Augusto Ayala Diago, the closing of the Congress of 1949 , in Magazine hi
story credential, Bogotá: Bank
of the Republic, June 162 edition of 2003, digital publication in the web page o
f the Biblioteca Luis
Angel Arango del Banco de la República, http://www.banrepcultural.org/revista-60,
search carried out on 20 November
2014.
As in the past, this ideological confrontation, increasingly virulent, unfolding
in the framework of institutions unable by their own partisan affiliation, to co
ntain
the antagonism and steer it toward more democratic way. The assassination on Apr
il 9, 1948
by Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the leader who represented for many sectors, the hope
of a change, precipitated, on the one hand, a great explosion of rebellion and f
rustration, and, on the other hand,
a policy of conservatizacion of the police. In spite of the fact that the govern
ment had
tried to renationalize-that Lopez in 1935 and 1936, the police were directly lin
ked to the departmental authorities
and local authorities, heavily involved in the
confrontation38 who used her as political police.
Behind this political persecution, were largely routed through various conflicts
. Below the
large national frameworks that ordered the confrontation in absolute enmities be
tween liberals and conservatives
, was moving a country in ferment where mixed small
everyday grievances with the ambition of power between factions, as well they we
re of the same
party39; the racial and ethnic discrimination40; the transformations in the
female roles and representations41; the uprisings against the hierarchies and
social scorn, and dispossession 42 vertical and horizontal 43 of the earth.
After going through the murder of a liberal Congress in full, the declaration of
a
pulse of power between legislative and executive, the closing of the Congress in
194944, the election of a
conservative president, Laureano Gomez as the single candidate, the conservatiza
cion of the police and the training
of liberal guerrillas in the plain, the country was plunged
into the worst definitely cycle of violence that is unleashed with greater inten
sity in certain regions, along
several frames simultaneously confusing: the legacy of hatred; the story of a
social insubordination diffuse command without a national able to articulate it,
and the
greed for land and for the charges and their patronage at the local level and re
gional45.
45 Gonzalo Sánchez G. , Violence, guerrillas and farm structures , Alvaro Tirado Meji
a (ed. ), New
History of Colombia, Bogota, Planet, 1989, Vol. II, pp. 127-152.
46 Meertens, ibid.
47 Nelly Mendivelso R. and Maria Claudia Rojas R. one general lesson , a newspaper,
No. June 59 20, 2004
, available online: http://historico.unperiodico.unal.edu.co/ediciones/59/10.htm
.
The repertoires of violence perpetrated against women and their participation in
the armed groups
carrying out tasks associated with the female domesticity dan just account of
the changes and continuities that occurred in the country since the War of a Tho
usand
Days. On the one hand, the majority of those that were involved in armed groups
do not compact would violate
the domestic roles that traditionally had been assigned, but on the other hand
during violence were attacked in greater measure to the civilian population, and
for the first time
the victims were distributed systematically in both sexes46 . The aggression aga
inst women
and markings as the armed left on female bodies tortured
had not only an instrumental sense but also symbolic: it was not to stop or the
seed of the
enemy.
The military, with the General Rojas to his head, were called to occupy the gove
rnment as an impartial force
to contain the horror that was deployed by the fields. But that image
of pacification in head of the Army was becoming blurred with repressive respons
es, first against the
students in June 195447, the declaration of the illegality of the Communist Part
y
, the closure of the liberal newspapers The Time and the viewer, to culminate in
a
agreed transition between the former enemies liberals and conservatives that gav
e rise
to the National Front, an agreement that sought to seal definitely the
armed confrontations between parties and strengthen the field of resolution of s
ocial and political conflict
in other ways.
2. THE CONTEMPORARY WAR
2.1 . TRIGGERING CONDITIONS OF WAR
violence, with the rituals of horror, and the derivation of the military governm
ent in authoritarian regime
, forced the bipartisan elites to promote a covenant of coexistence. After
talks in Spain, the liberal and conservative leaders came to a settlement that
in retrospect has been seen by some as a dictatorship disguised as
elections; and by others as the regime that allowed definitely leave behind the
hatreds and enmities
absolute between liberals and conservatives.
In terms of its institutional design, the Front National (FN) was effectively ri
gid and
exclusionary. Applied a millimetre parity between liberals and conservatives in
all elected bodies
, that is to say to Congress, Councils and assemblies; used the same rule
for public service and the high courts; stipulated that only would be approved b
ills
with 2/3 of the votes, a requirement that toward impossible, in practice a appro
val;
and defined that the presidencies alternate between liberals and conservatives e
very four years
, first until 1970 but then extended this arrangement until the presidential ele
ctions in
1974. Although not declared illegal expressions from left, if the
excluded formally of electoral competition by limiting the contest exclusively t
o
liberal candidate demographics or conservadora48.
48 Bejarano, Op. Cit.
Without denying these features exclusive and others that we will discuss later,
this section focuses on
demonstrating how this period that comprises the FN (1958-1974) and extends for
two years
(1976), was more than a disguised dictatorship but less than a democracy
guarantees.
The interstices pluralistic
In general it has been argued that, given the electoral rules stipulating the pa
rity to
legislative bodies and state institutions and the alternation in the Presidency,
the covenant
was able to overcome the deep enmity between liberals and conservatives but led
in turn to the
parties appear indistinguishable in ideological terms and programmatic. In the e
lections,
no significant matter would indeed game what would explain the growing rate
of abstention.
Without denying the validity of these assessments, they all need to be qualified
. In the first place, in the elections
for Congress were involved not only current pro-National Front. To them
also attended critical forces of the Covenant. On the one hand, the Movimiento R
evolucionario Liberal
(MRL), was presented from 1958 until 1968 by getting up to 18% of the seats in t
he
House and 9 per cent of the Senate49; and on the other hand, the General Rojas f
ounded the
Popular National Alliance (ANAPO) registered as a conservative, that as the MRL,
obtained each time more
seats, achieving in 1970 33% of the camera and 21.36 % in the Senado50. Although
the left did not participate, the MRL in its beginnings hosted under their lists
to
prominent members of the Colombian Communist Party (CCP)51 and expressed their p
ositions in the
Congress at least until 1968, at which time Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, your
maximum leader, decided to rejoin the ranks of the government liberal.
49 In 1960, obtained 18 seats that accounted for 11.84 %; in 1962, had increased
to 33 seats (17.93 % ); in 1964
it dropped to 31 by adding its hard-line and its soft line (16.85 % ); and 20 in
1966 (10.58 %) decreased in
1968 to 2 and return to liberalism at that time). (See annexs, Document 2: elec
toral figures)
50 in camera, in 1962 he won 2 seats; in 1964, 26 (14.13 % ); in 1966, 37 (19.58
% ); in 1968, 34 between its two factions
(16.64 %) and in 1970, 73 seats (34.76 %) and then dropped to 15 seats that acco
unted for
7.61 %. (See annexs, Document 2: electoral figures)
51 Juan de la Cruz Varela, a peasant leader of the resistance of the Sumapaz, ar
rived at the House of
Representatives as an alternate for Alfonso Lopez Michelsen in elections for col
legial bodies of
1960. Laura Varela Mora and Yuri Romero Picon, the vicissitudes of peace. On the
paths of life by Juan de
la Cruz Varela in Tabula rasa no. 4 Bogota, January. /June 2006, available online
:
http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?pid=S1794-24892006000100013&script=sci_artte
xt, consulted on 19 November
2014.
52 This government would arouse great resistance in the United States itself bec
ause it supported the civil rights movement
that polarize American society during those years. He was assassinated in 1963.
What became homogeneous both the political class liberal-conservative as to that
there was no
debate in Congress? Were the critical forces of the Covenant a role of simple
fill in the legislative arena? To respond to these questions, it is rebuilt the
discussions raised by the agrarian reform project that the government of Preside
nt
Alberto Lleras proposed in 1961 and then resumed in 1968 under the presidency of
Carlos
Lleras Restrepo.
This project was part of a package of reforms envisaged in the Alliance for Prog
ress
, a program designed by the government led by the Democrat John F.
Kennedy52 after braving the Cuban Revolution (1959). The majority of initiative
s
aimed at reforming the economic structures of Latin American societies with
proposals of liberal cut-democratizing to prevent social uprisings which will le
ad to countries considered
of
its orbit to be offloaded to the field
communist enemy. In this context
, in 1961 the Government of Alberto Lleras proposed to the Congress of the Repub
lic, the
agrarian reform project.
Although the initiative was endorsed by the US, conservative counter-currents th
at were against
the reform have argued in the parliamentary debates that the initiative had
sovietizantes implications for proposing the abolition of private property53 and
argued that when that law was adopted, the communists [went] to exit to appropria
ting the
land54 . For these conservatives, the covenant of the National Front was not pre
vent
expressed opposition
of principle on the project that is being debated in Congres
s, with
arguments reminiscent of those put forward in the thirties by his party.
Between the 46 postures of opposition to the draft that were recorded, all with
the exception of
few four, came from conservative spokesmen. Of the four liberales55, highlights
the
of Pedro Castro Monsalve, representative elected by the Magdalena who arrived at
the end of
suffrage send a threatening the rapporteur, Senator Carlos Lleras Restrepo, invi
ting him to
his funeral and to those of the National Front and to his premature demise of the
party56 . In general
, in these debates, more that dissolution of ideological borders between parties
, what
is expressed is an updating of the traditional borders between liberals and cons
ervatives
.
53 Alfonso Uribe Masses, Senator, Conservative, elected for the constituency of
Antioquia, Annals IV, May
17 1961. (See annexs, Document 3: Discussions Agrarian Reform)
54 Mario Ortiz de La Roche, Conservative, elected for the constituency of Antioq
uia, Annals IV, December
16 1961.
55 Peter Castro Monsalvo (Magdalena); Jorge Escallón (Bolivar); Hernan Toro Agudel
o (Antioquia) and
Victor Mosquera Chaux (Cauca).
56 The liberal senator by the department of Magdalena, Pedro Castro Monsalvo, ra
dically opposed,
claiming that the land redistribution was not indispensable another detractors was
the representative in the Chamber
by the department of Magdalena, José Ignacio Vives Echeverría. Both Vives, a member
of the MRL,
as Castro Monsalvo and LAFAURIE, rejected the interference of Lleras in your dep
artment (which by then
also grouped the departments of Cesar and Guajira). Tatiana Acevedo, Don't mess
with the earth
, The Spectator, April 20 2011, available online:
http://www.elespectador.com/noticias/nacional/no-te-metas-tierra-articulo-264519
. (See annexs,
Document 9: Photo suffrage).
In addition to the pugnacity of the debates between opponents in his majority an
d
defenders predominantly conservative liberals, the counter-movements to reform r
esorted to
all kinds of gadgets to paralyze the argument to the point that the President ha
d to send
a message of urgency and the congressmen were impelled to sign a covenant
between knights57 .
57 Due to the difficulty of putting according to the different factions in the c
ongress, in August of
1961 was signed a pact between the factions in order to be able to discuss the a
grarian reform. In the gentleman's agreement
,
as it was called, it was agreed that the project would be discussed by topics ea
ch with a maximum of 4 sessions and
each faction should designate a spokesperson. In addition, before the slow discu
ssion and difficulty to reach agreements, the
President made several emergency calls to set time limits to the discussions. Fi
nally,
within the Congress it was established that the act could be adopted by an absol
ute majority, half plus one, instead of
the 2/3 parties.
58 See annexs, Document 3: discussions of the agro.
59 Earth deb[ia] perform a social function and the project does not resolve[track
] the problem of the latifúndio [ ] only promotes
[ed] colonizations and oblige without touching the field structure . See in annex
s, Document 3:
Discussions Agrarian Reform.
The project suffered changes as they progressed through the discussions. The art
icle on
expropriation of social interest was deleted and replaced by one that dealt with
the
acquisition of privately-owned land provided they were not being
cultivadas58.
During the discussions, the majority of liberals and conservatives who publicly
expressed
their positions if they were on opposite shores and tended to align programmatic
manner.
As well as the conservatives were bitter opponents of the reform on the ground t
hat it infringed upon
the right to property, the majority of liberals were aligned and
defended the reform for reasons of social equity, and the MRL59 shouting
views pro-reformers more criticism and hosted in their lists of leaders such as
Juan de La
Cruz Varela, recognized peasant leader in the region of Sumapaz.
Why, without denying the restrictions imposed by the FN, it is necessary to reco
gnize
in retrospect that there were possibilities, as well were limited, they reached
dissenting voices
to the Congress of the Republic and that in this space will be triggered discuss
ions in
where there were positions that accounted for a opposition. The laws adopted wer
e not
as radical as they would have liked the MRLS and communists, nor as safe
as they wanted the conservatives and some liberals clustered around a defense of
the
land ownership that brooked no exceptions.
Other public scenarios were also producing
transformations. In the sixties was triggered a
educational revolution unpreceden
ted
in Colombia. The number of enrolled increased exponentially from 1960 to
1980 and the university became accessible to an expanding middle class, includin
g the
mujeres60.
60 Leal Buitrago, Francisco, The political frustration of a generation. The Colom
bian university and the formation of a
student movement 1958-1967 , in Camilo Torres and the Universidad Nacional de Col
ombia
, Bogotá, Unibiblos, 2002.
61 See in annexs, document 4: Press and Alternative Literary
62 at the public university should operate the shared monopoly of liberals and co
nservatives, as well as parity
between them for management positions, and professorial
[] on several occasions,
the public university
was conceived as the spoils in the bureaucratic game [bipartisan ] In: Alvaro Tir
ado Mejia, the sixties
. A revolution in culture, Bogotá, debate, 2014, p. 336
63 in 1958, was published the Manifesto Nadaista that would give rise to an irre
verent movement of
cultural subversion ; in 1959 the "millennial Student Workers' Movement in 1960, i
t had been converted into
Student Workers' Movement and peasant, the National University Federation (FUN)
that collects the experiences of
student mobilization and achieves articulate them in 1963. See in annexs, docume
nt 4: Literary and
alternative press.
64 Mary Emma Wills, does Inclusion without representation? The irruption of poli
tical women in Colombia,
Bogotá: Standard, 2007, p. 170.
65 Mauritius Archila Neira, The National Front: a history of enmity social Yearboo
k in Colombia's
Social History and Culture, not. 24, 1997, p189-215.
In this revolution not only had the numbers. The university environment to the e
ntering
these youths already had nothing to do with the sanctimonious and traditional so
ciety in previous decades.
New careers, especially in the social sciences, competed with the
traditional engineering, law and medicine. In addition, the young people arrived
after
the student movements that had been taken to the streets to overthrow the Genera
l Rojas
in 1954 and the adoption of the universal female suffrage, and joined to a cultu
ral environment that
had already been inspired by the myth and magazine that was immersed in the disr
uptions
caused by the paint of Débora Arango and Alejandro Obregón, and revolution in the ma
king
of the generation of the boom in the field literario61. Thus, notwithstanding th
e restrictions
of institutional design Frentenacionalista that also left their mark on the
universidades62, the country, especially the urban, there lived a cultural trans
formation that without
doubt favored the emergence of new social movements and identities
innovadoras63. Women, for example, would save its place
, it would take the
streets and underpinning in the different cities of the country magazines with n
ames so irreverent and
transgressors as Bruges, the apple of discord or Femina Sapiens64.
In numerical terms, the action of troublesome students, trade unionists, peasant
s and indigenous peoples
, including in all of these expressions to women, reached during the years of
FN (1958-1974), the not inconsiderable sum of 3031 with an average of 178 per an
o65.
These data indicate that during these years the public sphere began to deploy hi
gher levels of
pluralism associated with degrees of autonomy important compared to the traditio
nal parties and
the Church. Unfortunately, your democratization potential crashed
against the desire for control of the traditional parties and the new currents o
f left,
and the restrictive measures adopted by successive governments.
The armed struggle, the restrictive option and the military response
all these transformations of the national order occurred within the framework of
a bipolar world.
If in the twenty the war in Spain and then the antagonism between the fascisms a
nd the block
of the allies had made its mark in the interpretations which guided the national
actors
in their readings of our conflicts, in the sixties the
confrontation East/West is transformed, both to the left as to the traditional p
arties,
in a frame of reference and interpretation to decrypt the reality.
Polarising the prospects that they read in the key of friends and enemies the po
litical reality, both developed
by the communist camp such as those coming from west side
, aired
through their respective militants and the realization of meetings and congresse
s,
exchange visits, and the circulation of books and revistas66.
66 See in annexs, document 4: Literary and alternative press.
67 Mauritius Archila and Jorge Cote, Boom, crisis and reconstruction of the Colo
mbian left (1958-2006) in
several authors, an unfinished story. Left-wing political and social in Colombia
, Bogotá: CINEP,
COLCIENCIAS and Agenda for Peace, 2009.
As well as the United States was the pin that it affected everything in liberali
sm, the lefts
were inspired from several experiences. For some streams, the Soviet Union, from
his
triumphant revolution at the beginning of the twentieth century, the model repre
sented
to follow; other
groups looked toward China after Mao, in 1949, led the Long March
of triumph and peasant will trigger a few years the Cultural Revolution. And sti
ll other forces
they thought that the path taken by the foquista guerrillas in Cuba was the way
to tomar67.
In the decade of the sixties, while in Europe he walked toward a moment of relax
ation
between the Soviet Union and the United States appointed as peaceful coexistence
and supported by the communist parties in Latin America, in the
interpretive continent flows arose that they read the reality as conducive to th
e revolutionary armed struggles
and who adhered to the Chinese models or Cubans, in frank rebellion with the
patterns drawn from the URSS68.
68 Ibid.
69 By restrictive positions in this job are positions that are willing to sacrif
ice and guarantees
civil and political rights in the name of security.
70 In the revision of debates on public order (1961-1976),
ns were
restrictive type, 20 of them liberals, 22 conservatives, 1
tion that recorded as of other
movements
. In contrast, 28 of these interventions were
l and
conservative 8 and 2 of anapistas. See in annexs, Document
urity.
44 of the interventio
and 1 without informa
cut wardenship, 18 libera
5: discussions on sec
GMH 71, 2013, Op. Cit. and see in annexs, Document 6: Registration persecution,
murder, torture
Colombia would not be the exception: In 1962, after a trip to Cuba, a group of y
oung people
would settle the Brigade pro-liberation José Antonio trouser, seed of what would l
ater be
autodenominaria the National Liberation Army (ELN) that was born on July 4
of 1964 with the first Guerrilla Gear and would be publicly released with
the socket and the Manifest Simacota on 7 January 1965; and in February 1967, wi
th the
break sino-soviet and harsh criticisms of the Colombian Communist Party, was fou
nded the
People's Liberation Army (PLA) of inspiration marxist-leninist -Maoist.
By contrast with these origins inspired in interpretative frameworks developed i
n other latitudes
, the Autodefensas Campesinas communists decided to promote a organizational pro
cess
motivated armed in national events --the military operation
in Marquetalia-- that culminated in the founding of the Revolutionary Armed Forc
es of
Colombia (FARC).
If in the field of the left emerged armed these flows, how politicians reacted
and what happened to the Army? In contrast with the partisan divisions
expressed around the agrarian reform, issues of public order
the majority of
congressmen, both liberal and conservative, expressed converging positions of
restrictivas69 nature, both of the rights of the securities constitucionales70.
For its part, from the early years of the FN, various executives approved legisl
ative decrees
issued under the figure of the states of exception that responded to the challen
ge
with guerrilla cuts of rights and guarantees of due process. Some of the measure
s taken
in this period retook figures such as the military criminal justice system to tr
y civilians
with the aggravating circumstance that the offenses are tried as related expande
d so far as to incorporate
the strikes and the jacks71; also adopted the authorization to create
lists of suspected of subversive activities and the detention of persons suspect
ed of links with
the guerrillas judicial72 without order. In general, as can be seen in the
annexs, these measures were used not only in the framework of a guerrilla campai
gn
but that were deployed to harass manifestations of social discontent
and to regulate freedom of expresion73. The protests and lawsuits by participati
on
and redistribution handled then as matters of public order.
72 In 1961, with the approval of the Law 141 of 1961, the Military Penal Code ad
opted by the Military Junta in
1958, he became substantive law applicable in contexts of normality , group of Hist
orical Memory
, Enough is Enough! Colombia: Memories of war and dignity, CNMH-DPS, 2013, p. 20
0. As legislative decrees
, in 1959 it was authorized to the power of the armed forces to perform capture
of civilians suspects without a warrant; in 1960
the figure was abolished parole for offenses that would disrupt the public order
; the following year
, it was decreed the arrest of suspects without a warrant; in 1965 the decree 12
90 granted
powers to the military criminal justice system to try civilians allegedly respon
sible of rebellion, kidnapping,
extortion, sabotage, conspiracy and crimes against property; and in that same ye
ar the decree 3398
empowered the Government to permit citizens to take up arms in defense of the na
tional security and the military to
arm civilian groups with high-caliber weapons. In 1966 the legislative decree en
try 2686 authorized the DAS to create
lists of suspected of subversive activities and empowered to the agency to monit
or to these people, in
Manuel Iturralde, punishment, liberalism and authoritarian criminal justice of e
xception, Bogotá: Century of Man
Editors, Uniandes, Institute Think, 2010.
73 See in annexs, Document 6: Registration persecution, murder, torture. The cen
sorship for example was deployed
in 1973 when "Das denied visa to singer Piero [because] the Government considers
it
dangerous and subversive element by singing songs anti-imperialists" and a year
after the authorities
"Prohibition[Eron] and withdrew[Aron] the film 'The Blood of the Condor' at the
Cinemateca Distrital, because the film
complaint to a group of Peace Corps (USA) that applies the birth control and ste
rilization of a community of indigenous
Bolivians. Closed the Cinemateca Distrital". See Annexs, document 6.
74 The Decree 256 of 1960 reorganized the Higher Council of National Defense wit
h the participation of ministers of
Government, Finance and Foreign Affairs, and the general commander of the Armed
Forces,
chaired by the Minister of War. But the Council was not used as an advisory body w
hich leads to the affirmation
to Francisco Leal B. that the country faced those years without a military polic
y articulated but from
piecemeal and reactive responses. Francisco Leal B. , civil-military relations du
ring the
National Front in Carlos Caballero A. , Monica Pachón Buitrago and Eduardo Posada C
arbo (compilers), fifty years
of return to democracy. New looks to the historical significance of the National
Front,
Bogotá: University of The Andes, 2012, p. 163-185.
75 Francisco Leal Buitrago, Ibid. ; Andres Davila, the power game. History, weap
ons and votes, Bogotá:
CEREC Uniandes Editions, 1998; Philippe Dufort, Critical Strategic Studies: Learn
ing from
practitioners in counterinsurgent Contemporary Colombia, Dissertation submitted
to qualify for the title of Doctor of Philosophy (
PhD), Homerton College, University of Cambridge, August 2013.
However this profusion of legislative decrees adopted under states of emergency,
the various governments did not produce a security policy articulated still
existed since 1960 when the instance for elaborarla74 institutional. The only co
mprehensive response came from
the Colombian armed forces between 1960 and 1964.
During those years, the military institution was living the rise of a reformist
current
inspired in a gaze, anti-communist certainly, but cutting and integral
desarrollista75 type. This current, formed in the Korean war, his temper by read
ings
of the most comprehensive security assessments included in their social aspects,
political, economic
and psychological in marked contrast with the balances that the Army
being undertaken in previous decades, focused on the dimensions and
coercitivas76 strictly military. In their intelligence reports are appreciated a
gaze not apprehensive of the
communities, a greater understanding of their needs, a critique of the State by
not providing
education, roads and judges, and a change of attitude in the face of the land is
sue
:
76 Leal, Dávila Dufort and agree on this assessment, Ibid.
77 Lieutenant Colonel Jaime Rodriguez Rodriguez, Commander, Infantry Battalion,
not. 9 Boyaca,
Lanceros, Operation in Marquetalia, appreciation of civil affairs BR6 011400, Ib
agué: May 1964.
78 Paul Grandson Andres Ortiz, reformism doctrinaire in the Colombian Army: a new
approach to cope with
the violence, 1960-1965, Critical History, No. May 53 2014, pp. 155-176
79 Nieto, 2013, op. cit.
In financial matters it is desirable that the Caja Agraria has a greater
amplitude to provide loans to rural people of simple condition by providing
facilities for the processing of documents and provide timely advice [ ] regardin
g
the control of the property, the majority of the settlers of this area do not ha
ve
title to their plots or farms. It is necessary that the National Institute of Ag
rarian Reform
appropriate to holder these lands and to exercise strict control over his tenure
to avoid
the large landowners blackmail the small farmer and worker, as
is happening with the signature LARA Brothers in the region of the Pato77.
This gaze of the security driven by General Ruiz Novoa in the armed forces would
generate
tensions both within the institution itself with more conservative officers, as
with
political elites in disagreement with its reformism desarrollista78.
After that at a dinner hosted by the Society of farmers in Colombia, the
General Ruiz Novoa will deliver a keynote address openly critical to social stru
ctures
prevailing in Colombia, inequality and the brake that the influential sectors imp
osed on him to
government , and that the little time refused to declare an illegal strike, conser
vative president
Guillermo León Valencia, inspired by the request of other senior officers
, i would ask the renuncia79. With it, will be closed that period in which a cur
rent
official sought to disclose in the armed forces a vision of security as a proble
m
also for inclusion in the development that the State, such as institutional set,
should
ensure.
With the dismissal of General Ruiz Novoa, official estimated that advocated a
explicit subordination to the civil government to the pair that defended a jurisd
iction in matters of public order
, in which Andres Davila has been called as repressive
autonomy (1965-
1977)80. With these flows by directing the military institution, measures such a
s the
verbal councils of war, the development of lists of suspects or raids, would bec
ome increasingly
frecuentes81.
80 Davila, 1998, Dufort, 2013 and fair, 2012.
Fair 81, Op. Cit.
82 AND he continues: preserve the public order within the jurisdiction, to protec
t all persons residing
in the jurisdiction in his life, honor and property; destroy the cores that offe
r armed resistance and attract the
affection of the civilian population through appropriate actions , ibid.
83 "The Government has not known how to respond to the principle of authority, o
r the exercise of the sovereignty [ ] There are in
this country a series of independent republics that they do not recognize the so
vereignty of the Colombian State, where
the Colombian army cannot enter, scares off people, or to the inhabitants [ ] The
re is the independent republic of
Sumapaz [ ], the independent republic of Planadas, the Rio chiquito, of this
bandit that is called Richard [ ... ] The army has lost initiative in defense an
d attack has been
surprised". In subpoena to the Minister of War, Annals of Congress do not. Octo
ber 265 26 1961.
84 Cyrus Trujillo, Riochiquito Report of June 9 to the Second Conference of the A
utodefensas Unidas de Colombia, September 15
1965 , quoted in Mario Aguilera, guerrilla forces and civilian population. Trajec
tory of the FARC (1949-2013), Bogotá
: CNMH, 2014, p. 53 And 54
85 Ibid.
Before you plunge a reading of
ssary to dwell on
the implementation of the plan
and
Guayabero in 1964 by the army,
the Revolutionary Armed Forces
that period of restrictions magnified, it is nece
unfold in LOOP in Marquetalia, Riochiquito, Duck
because this situation led to the constitution of
of Colombia (FARC).
The plan was designed to loop defend national independence and the
homelands82 institutions in response to the debate promoted by Alvaro Gomez Hurta
do in 1961 in the
Senate of the Republic. In this debate, Senator accused the government of being
incapable of ensuring the sovereignty
of the State in all the national territory and incompetent to contain
communist agitation and the revolutionary ferment83 .
This plan was appropriate and implemented very differently in in Marquetalia
Riochiquito and in. In the first, the Army was accused by the survivors themselv
es of excessive force
, torture, indiscriminate bombings that included virus and bacteria 84,
whereas in the second, according to witnesses to the own peasant organizations, n
ot
bloody clashes with the troops [and] under the command of Colonel Alvaro
Valencia Tovar sought to establish a relationship with the Autodefensas Unidas d
e through actions
civic-military85 .
However these contradictory answers that put in evidence the tensions and
divisions that existed in the Army between the hard line and reformist, the FARC
were developed a memory that put emphasis on the military excesses and that rein
forced the image of a
monolithic FFAA absolute enemy of the communists and the
peasants, and an instrument of American interests while the hard line of the
Army emphasized the communist danger abandoning any attempt at
understanding the social and political context surrounding the claims of the pea
sant communities
and the distinction between armed groups and inhabitants of a
region or citizens taking the streets to shout out their disagreement. Both memo
ries
, just as sketchy, would instill glances that, in each institution, it
would become interpretive frameworks that atizarian war.
The knot of the representation and the peasant
authoritarian gradual degradation
while the farming communities of in Marquetalia Riochiquito and moved toward the
south, were anchored to the FARC and opted for the track armed, other political
expressions
of the claims representative farmers were emerging in the country.
Carlos Lleras Restrepo, then to defend the Agrarian Reform as a Senator, he soug
ht
likelihood against the resistance of their opponents once elected President of t
he Republic
(1966-1970), boosting the constitution of the National Association of Peasant Fa
rmers
of Colombia (ANUC) with the issue of Law 1ª. 1968.
Under this new legislative framework, from the Ministry of Agriculture advanceme
nt a
campaign of peasant organization throughout the country [ ] The process began wit
h the
establishment of committees even specific streets where necessary, then the muni
cipal associations, followed by the
departmental associations 86. On 7 July 1970 the President Lleras installed, in th
e presence
of four hundred and eighty representatives from all corners of the pais87, the f
irst National Congress
of Users peasants in Colombia in the National Capitol. A year later,
in Villa del Rosario, ANUC would adopt its own platform of struggle and in the f
ollowing months
would tierras88 384 outlets. Without a doubt, the initiatives taken since
the State by President Lleras and by staff pro-reformists in the
86
87 http://anuc.co/dynamicdata/historia.php Cundinamarca, Sucre, Quindio, Nariño, V
alley, Boyacá, Guajira, Magdalena, Meta, Bolívar, Tolima, Cauca and
Huila, Risaralda, Norte de Santander, Cesar, Atlantic, Antioquia, Córdoba, Choco,
Santander del Sur, Caldas
and Intendancy of Caquetá and Putumayo, ibid.
Archila 88, 1997, p. 195
Institutions created to give life to the agrarian reform89 were read by the
organization as signals of state support to the claims farmers dammed by
many years.
89 Group of Historical Memory, the disputed land, Op. Cit.
90 At the start of the National Front, there was a reaction on the part of lando
wners in certain regions, which were opposed by
the violently to any attempt of occupation of the land by farmers and settlers t
hrough
armed groups and that has been suppressed, in some cases up to order the assassi
nation of leaders, and count on the support of
private armed groups, a legacy of violence, or of members of the Police or the A
rmy. See
in annexs, Document 6: Registration persecution, murder, torture.
91 Bill does not. 4 OF 1972, "By the which changes were made to the 200 Laws of
1936, 135 of
1961 and 1 of 1968, provisions are made for presumptive income creates the Agric
ultural Hall in the Council of State
and other provisions."
92 reminiscent of the glances that in the nineteenth century saw certain groups
unable to reason and therefore
dependent
leaderships of the illustrated only that now made the border between th
ose who could
participate and decide on discussions on relevant matters because
know and those
who do not, from a technical discourse
-economic.
93 See in annexs, Document 7: peasant demands.
The thomas lands organized by the ANUC accompanied by slogans such as earth
pa l who works the , unleashed a reaction on the ground legislativo90. In January 19
72, in
rural areas, representatives of the traditional parties, including members of th
e MRL and
leaders of guilds of owners, agreed to a Pact that would take an interpretive fr
amework
other than to read the conflict over the land. The draft law 4 of 1972 argued
in his justification of the grounds:
The reform seeks to strengthen the spirit of enterprise with social sense and st
imulate the real value of the
work. The Agrarian Reform in Colombia has reduced the terms of the agrarian prob
lem
the only and unique aspect of the land tenure within a criterion that the princi
ples of
the modern agricultural economy estimated obsolete [] In this context, altering
the
previous laws improving the action of the Institute, [ ] and, finally, avoiding t
he formation of
exaggerated expectations and concerns without foundation capable of
compromising the social balance and the development of the produccion91.
Since that time, the law, their assumptions and the interpretative framework tha
t inspired it became the
central array discussions of the proposals by officials and technicians
of the State on public policies for the Colombian countryside. Above all, it was
maintained that spirit that
it was considered that the discussion of the land tenure was obsolete and the92
expectations [farmers] of exaggerated , and that defined the challenge of the Colom
bian countryside
productive in terms of driving investment capital and agribusiness.
While the ideological platform of the ANUC formulated in key the right of farmer
s
to organize themselves, and therefore to have a voice and vote in the decisions
on the agro93, the
response of the traditional parties and the guilds was first punish a covenant i
n a unique space
and exclusionary, and then pass a law in a Congress that met with his back to
that voice and against their expectations. In April 1972 the government also
suspended the legal personality of the Asociacion94. With these decisions, the c
ovenant between the State and
farmers that resulted in the agrarian reform and the constitution of the ANUC br
oke
leaving to drift the peasant organization.
94 See in view in annexs, Document 6: Registration persecution, killings, tortur
e.
95 At the time, in the debates, the majority of defenders explicit of the Covena
nt of rural areas were
conservative demographics (24) and four liberal which included Wheel Alvaro Urib
e, the old MRL.
Meanwhile, those who have spoken against the Covenant came mostly from the ANAPO
(16),
accompanied by three conservatives (J. Emilio Valderrama, Juan Pablo Uribe and R
afael Aponte) and two liberals
, including Apolinar Díaz Callejas.
96 Annals of Congress. December of 1972.
In addition to the various streams of the left who opposed through its organs of
expression
to these new legislative frameworks, the only ones, since the Congress95
protested against these talks with your back to the farmers and their organizati
ons,
were the congressmen anapistas who insisted on the radio transmission of the dis
cussions for
that the people know what is happening and that they left records signed both by
them as by leaders in the ANUC expressing inconformidad96.
The ANUC, how much force was in the early years, not only had to contend with th
e
ignorance of his voice and representation by the political leaderships and the
guilds of the agro. Paradoxically, its ability to call and peasant coordination
expressed in more than 360 images taken in 1971 turned it into a
object of desire
of all the different parties and left-wing forces, both of the armed and the
unarmed. The Association, divided between a sector that I wanted to continue to
adhere to the
policies promoted by the State and another who was looking for his radicalizatio
n, became weaker
not only because of the persecution they suffered their leaders, but also by feu
ds
, but intransigence and sectarianism among left. Otherwise, the breakdown of the
bridge between State, public policy and peasants would have long-term effects on
the Colombian countryside
: radicalized a sector of peasants who would opt for the armed struggle and
launched many to a border where the cultivation of coca a few years later was to
become the
only option of market integration.
On the other hand, as it is disassembling the electoral restrictions and limitat
ions
to the partisan competition provided for in the National Front, the polarization
was progressing in
a context in which the military response was aimed exclusively for the series of
decrees fragmentary already cited, enrolled in a gaze limited, technical and ant
i-liberal97
of the security that had little or nothing in account the damages caused to the
institutional legitimacy
that the repressive measures could acarrear98.
97 Anti-liberal in the sense of a liberal thought that alludes to the protection
and guarantees afforded to rights such as
freedom of expression and association, and that protects the political rights of
citizens
because they are considered the foundation of a democratic order.
Fair 98, 2012, p. 175 Et seq.
Not 99 triggers more explanatory. For more arguments about this distinction see
Annex 1:
conceptual delimitation.
The challenges grew. In the seventies he appeared a new guerrilla of origin and
cut more urban,
more nationalist discourse and irreverent language: the M-19, whose founders
argued as a reason for taking up arms the theft of the presidential elections of
1970 that gave the victory to secure General Rojas Pinilla as head of the ANAPO.
Around the same time, became more recurrent complaints of torture and by trials
in
councils of war persons who were allegedly members of the guerrilla. As a result
of this
situation, was established in 1973 the Foundation Committee for Solidarity with
Political Prisoners, who
at the time attracted the support of such prominent figures as the Gabriel Garci
a Marquez
.
In this context rarified, in 1976, the M-19 kidnapping to Jose Raquel Market, Pr
esident of the
Confederation of Colombian Workers (CTC), to whom the guerrilla group
was tried in a court of the people
, found guilty of treason and murderer. His bod
y was found in
a polyethylene bag in a park in Bogota. This modality, which the group
assumed as a tool for proclaiming himself as upholder of the people, it would be
come
, as we will see later, in one of the reasons most invoked that individuals
will react to the threat of kidnappings by the track of the weapons.
Recapitulating, triggering conditions99 of this period relate to several process
es that
allude especially to two of the knots that are in the background of the war: the
first, the representation in the political field of the aspirations and claims
farmers; and second, the polarization in the absence of strong institutions,
capable of implementing policies which channel the conflict through democratic m
eans.
In the sixties and seventies, the interpretative frameworks of elites and
rebellious groups were inspired in polarizing readings product of a world by tha
t
then bipolar. Since these visions, it was difficult to recognize the different n
uances and
find points of agreement to negotiate. To the left, the agrarian reform of
Carlos Lleras Restrepo not deserved support and was the product of the American
interference.
For its part, with the exception of the MRL and the Anapo, the majority of polit
ical movements have not
been able to identify in the action of troublesome students, women, peasants, in
digenous people
and trade unionists on the expressions of a plural society in full transformatio
n
but saw in them the signals communist danger . From the other shore, the
armed left ot the context as one of complete closure of democracy, would opt for
the
weapons and look represent social protest from exclusive positions that did not
admit
the presence of other affiliations, as well they were also the own field on the
left.
The ANUC, the movement with a huge potential representative of the
peasant aspirations, would be the great sacrificed in this spiral of mutual pola
rization and
stigmatization. The other big loser of the time, little recognized in his time,
was the
military that reformist current however its anti-communism, he tore it up with t
he reading prostatu
quo that had prevailed in the armed forces. His main contribution lies in the di
stinction
between civilians and armed group, and its explicit intention to build bridges w
ith
this population. His defeat he opened the way for the controls of the hard-line 1
00 appropriated the
devices anti-liberal approved by the governments of shift in the various
legislative decrees and they stigmatised as guerrilla collaborators to all
the members of the movements that shouted new and old claims, and that under thi
s assumption
were then judged in summary proceedings by the criminal justice militar101.
100 Dufort, Op. Cit.
101 Military criminal jurisdiction was extended to have competence to judge , at
the end of the seventies
, around 30% of the types defined in the criminal Penal Code , in GMH, 2013, Op. C
it. , p.
200.
In the middle of the mutual ignorance and stigmatization, the projects
were shipwrecked and reformist devices more authoritarian became the primary way
to respond to
the disgruntled armed in the left and in the more traditional political currents
.
2.2 . A TIME CRITICAL: THE TRANSITION TO THE TOTAL WAR
(1977 TO 1982)
in the middle of a galloping inflation, in 1977, the four central united trade u
nion, the CTC,
UTC, CSTC and the CGT, organized a strike to protest against unemployment,
famine, and the government's refusal to negotiate a number of petitions. Its suc
cess was such that the President himself
, Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, appointed him as a small April 9 .
Compared to the imminence of the strike, the government banned the demonstration
s and denounced the radio.
Although the figures are uncertain and vary according to the sources, according
to the Black Book of the
repression, a publication of the Committee of Solidarity with Political Prisoner
s, in that day
there were only twenty dead, more than a hundred injured and five thousand detain
ees102 .
Committee of 102 political prisoners, the black book of repression (1958-1980),
Bogotá: Foundation for research and
culture (FICA), 1980, p. 210 And 213.
103 Of the 24 records that could be checked at the Annals, 13 came from conserva
tives; 7 were
liberal, 1 of the Anapo and 2 of the National Union Obrera. Participated in two
records the same representative,
Gilberto Viera. See in annexs, Document 5: discussions security.
104 Annals of Congress do not. October 72 5 1977.
105 See in annexs, document 8: abductions.
A few days after the strike, various congressmen made citations to Government Mi
nisters
(Rafael Pardo Buelvas), Defense (Abraham Male Valencia) and Work (Oscar
Montoya). All the seekers and those who spoke during the debates assumed, regar
dless of their political affiliation
, positions based on the protection of derechos103.
Some, such as Comfort Salgar de Montejo, liberal representative and director of
the newspaper
The Bosa, expressed in a peremptory manner that "Colombia ha[d] ceased to be a s
tate
of law to become a State of High Police" and stated his understanding that
"the army of Colombia us[e] in the streets weapons of war and far-reaching, as i
f they were
pitched battles to stop battalions ... why not use[ron] short-range weapons
, less harmful, for what they call riots of city? 104 ". Despite the criticism
expressed by members of the congress, the President and the military were held i
n the same line
showing with this attitude that the security policy you corresponded exclusively
to
executive and the armed forces.
The sense of threat that this popular outburst caused then deepened the 12 of Se
ptember
of 1978, when armed men of self defense Obrera (ADO) entered the home
of Rafael Pardo Buelvas, former minister of Agriculture and former Minister of G
overnment during the strike
of 1977, and killed him. Joined to this murder, kidnappings they grew up in the
sombra105. A few days later, on 21 September of that year, the newly elected Pre
sident
Julio Cesar Turbay adopted, under state of siege, the decree 1923 or Safety Stat
ute
that reflected the legislative decrees dispersed, and attributed to the military
criminal justice ability to judge
a series of crimes charged to civilians through verbal Councils
of War106 in an international context where repressive responses and even
dictatorial were the order of the dia107.
106 As the of kidnapping, armed uprising, integration of armed groups, or those
who assail invade or
populations, farms, ranches, roads or public roads , or which participate in distur
bances of public order
LEGISLATIVE DECREE 1923 of 1978 (September 6) Official Journal No. 35,101 On 21
September
1978.
107 The following countries were under dictatorship: Uruguay (1973-1985); Argent
ina (1976-1983), Chile (19731990); Bolivia (1971-1982), Ecuador (1972-1979). These dictatorships regimes co
nsidered inspired in the
National Security Doctrine developed in the US and released in the early seventi
es in Latin America.
Brazil (1964
1985) and Paraguay (1954-1989) were the first countries where the d
ictatorship was established. The Peruvian case is
considered a populist-authoritarian regime ruled by military.
108 Before the visit of a delegation of the Inter-american Commission on Human R
ights, the response of the Colombian State
clarified for example that in 1980 the Military Criminal Justice made three hundr
ed and thirty
four (334) Tips of War by different verbal offenses and that, as a result of the
theft of the Canton North began in
the November 16 1979 and was installed on 21 of the same month to try 176 person
s in a single
trial. See http://www.cidh.org/countryrep/Colombia81sp/Capitulo5.htm#_ftn1
109 Without author, raids and arrests. Praying to God and with the harness giving ,
Alternative Magazine, not.
196, 22 to 29 January 1979, p. 5. Sexual violence toward part of the repertoires
violent.
110 Of these 42 interventions, 5 came from conservative members of congress, 3 o
f the United People's Front; 13 of
one and 19 liberals. See in annexs, Document 5: Discussions security.
Ibid. , 111.
With the spectacular robbery of 5000 arms of the Canton North of M-19 on 31 Dece
mber
1978, the armed forces made use of all the devices listed in the Statute108 and
article
28 of the Constitution that allowed the retention and incommunicado detention of
a person
for ten days by simple presumption.
Since the first arrests were raining down accusations of torture and excesses, a
nd there were cases
as dramatic as the Olga's Roldan, daughter of Ivan Lopez Botero, liberal congres
sman,
who, as a result of the sufferings and smiter inflicted during their retention,
treatment of
suicidarse109.
What position assumed Congress due to the Statute and its application? Between N
ovember 1978
and May 1980, were carried out at the Congress of the Republic citations, record
s and
discussions on the status. In contrast with the previous period in which the
majority of interventions were in favor of the restriction, during this time, 40
of
them, the vast majority, were committed to the defense of positions
elements110 and criticized so vehement actions taken by the Executive and
the actions of the armed forces. The remaining twelve relate to motions that the
y approve of the
Statute and the restrictions of rights; all of them were made by representatives
conservadores111.
In a citation to the Minister of Defense, several senators and representatives c
omplained of the
intervention "aggressive and threatening of General Camacho Leyva [and thought]
a
aggression [ ] its assertion that in the current situation, the military does not
need written order
of a competent authority to make the scans and raids . Two years later,
in 1981, Jaime Castro, Liberal Senator, it summed up the crux of the matter when
he said that the Statute had
given way to a "system of justice executive112" where "everyone, absolutely ever
yone,
the officials [ ] are chosen by the national government: the judges of the
superior court, brigade commanders, that for some crimes
make the times of the judges of first instance, the judges of military criminal
investigation ... 113 .
Despite these radically opposed positions to the Statute, Congress is not transf
ormed into the
stage of deliberation and construction of a security policy alternative more in
keeping with the principles of
due process and separation of powers that underlie the
democratic state of law.
Ibid. , 112.
Ibid. , 113.
114 This decision weakened the Congress that took up the role of refrendador of
crucial decisions on
economic planning and became the arena where transactions were arguing minutiae
of political favoritism.
Ana Maria Bejarano and Renata Safe, targeted strengthening of the State during th
e National Front in
dispute, not. 169, Bogota, CINEP, November 1996.
Due to the flagrant and massive violations and the fact that many occurred in th
e cities
under our own eyes, the repertories of protest began to transform themselves and
the right to life
and the defense of human rights became to occupy a central place. It is no coinc
idence
then that on 1 April 1979, to unite people of all political persuasions
-- liberal, conservative, socialist and communist-- is constituted the Permanent
Committee for the Defense of
Human Rights, that I am looking for exposing and counterweight
to the authoritarianism institutionalized in the Statute.
Without devalue the importance of these social initiatives, it is necessary to r
ecognize that they
did not have the strength to stop the spiral that the authoritarian status trigg
ered. This failure
in responded to the fact that these civilian efforts were enrolled in a context
in which
the weakness of the response of the institutions to make calls
counterweight for example Congress and Attorney was notorious. This weakness
was in part an outcome of the efforts of the Lleras Restrepo government to prote
ct the decisions
techniques for political debates in the strange Congreso114,
joined to the logical political favoritism that fragmented the coordinated actio
n of the
congress and the calcining depend on, for the reproduction of their clientele, o
f aid and favors
negotiated with the Ejecutivo115. As well, it was ready the ground for the field
of
security was seen by the military as its own exclusive jurisdiction,
without accountability to other institutions.
Ronald P. 115 Archer and Matthew Soberg Shugart, The unrealized potential of Pres
idential dominance in
Colombia in Scott Mainwaring and Matthew Soberg Shugart (editors), Presidentialis
m and Democracy in
Latin America, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 110-159.
116 Bejarano, Ana María (1990): what strategies of peace and democratic opening: a
balance sheet of the
Betancur administrations and Boat in Leal Buitrago, Francisco and Zamosc, Leon ed
itors: At the edge of chaos.
Political Crisis in Colombia in the years 80, Bogotá, IEPRI-A and Third World Publ
ishers, p. 57-124.
117 Juan Guillermo Ferro and Graciela Uribe, the order of the war. The FARC-EP:
between the organization and
policy, Bogotá: Publishing Center Xaverian, eyebrow, 2002.
When the siege was lifted, the Statute does not entered into the ordinary legisl
ation and
expired. However, the experience of four years of military criminal justice and
the feeling that the
conservation of the security and order were sole responsibility of the military
was already embedded in the institution. This would have consequences for the fu
ture.
2.3 . THE EXPANSION OF THE WAR AND THE FRACTURES STATE
(1982-2014)
Belisario Betancur came to the Presidency of the Republic in August of 1982 with
a speech
in part reagent to the years of authoritarianism backed in the Security Status.
In the
months of campaign proposed that the country a new understanding of the conflict
; he spoke of the objective conditions
(injustice and inequality) that served as a backdrop for the armed rebellion
and, recognizing the guerrillas a level of political representation, could then
propose a dialog with them. This speech was reminiscent of the one who will be i
n the
sixties, the reformist line of the armed forces but to the eighties the
dominant interpretative framework in the Army was no longer the same and rather
the military institution looked with suspicion
the language used by the President. For its part, the Congress, at that time rel
ated
to the proposals for dialog, adopted an amnesty for its members116 and with this
guarantee
legislative, his government initiated discussions in first place with the FARC t
hat
culminated in the Uribe Agreements signed in January 1984117, and shortly after
with
the M-19 and the EPL.
Unfortunately, while the Big National Dialog between representatives of the
guerrilla movement and social and political sectors are being undertaken in the
Congress with great deployment in the press
, in the regions social and political forces were involved in the dynamics
that were fuelling the war. The opponents, open or secret, argued that the peace
agreement was
a blunder in the middle of the increase in the number of kidnappings and extorti
on that
carried out the guerrillas; and for its part, the guerrillas, even in the midst
of the dialogs,
increased their foot of fuerza118.
118 The FARC for example from your VI Conference (1978) raised the leap from a re
gional to
a guerrilla guerrilla with a national presence that was really a
revolutionary arm
y and the VII
Conference (1982) were defined as the goal of transforming to FARC in an offensi
ve move. Aguilera, 2014,
p. 80. For its part, Eric Lair presents the following figures for the FARC and t
he ELN: the FARC have evolved from
32 fronts and 3500 soldiers in 1986, to have more than 60 fronts and 7500 combat
ants in 1995; for its part
, the ELN went from having 11 fronts to 32 and 3200 soldiers of 800 above. Today
[ 2000] it is estimated that
the strength of the FARC reach at least 15,000 guerrillas and the ELN a few 5000
. Eric
Lair, Colombia: a war against civilians International in Colombia, not. 49/50, Bog
otá: Department of Political Science
- Faculty of Social Sciences, Universidad de Los Andes, May - December 2000.
119 Ana Maria Bejarano (Director), discussions on the reform of the State in Col
ombia: the fragmentation of the State
and functioning of the Congress, Bogotá: Occasional studies, CIJUS, Universidad de
Los Andes
, 2001, p. 181.
120 Andrés Dávila, 1998.
Of the 121 http://www.verdadabierta.com/victimarios/244-la-historia/auc/3556-mue
rte-a-secuestradores-mas-losorigenes--paramilitaries
under these tensions, the State is fractured or even more: while a sector special
ized[or] in the negotiation and
to open the doors of entry [the guerrillas], another sector implores[ed] the nee
d for
emergency legislation, greater emergency powers and
restrictions119 . A part of that sector of opposition to the peace process resul
ted in the formation
of a current in the army that would propel a autonomy [military]
120 clandestine which operated under the adage that the enemies of my enemies are m
y
friends .
At the national level, there were moments where the fracture was more palpable a
s when, in February
1983, the Attorney Carlos Jimenez Gomez paid public report on the structure of
death to Kidnappers (more), an organization created to defeat the guerrillas.
According to this report, in the light of the evidence collected so far there wer
e
sufficient charges to link procedurally to 163 people; of them, 59 in active ser
vice in the Armed Forces
121 .
In the shadow of these dislocations, the turnover of the illicit drugs grew up a
nd
ended up feeding, differently but feeding at the end of the day, both to the
actors antiguerrilleros as to the guerrilla groups themselves, in particular to
the FARC-EP whose
expansion was in the eighties especially in areas where coca.
In the middle of conflicting signals and of the growing polarization, both those
from the shore
institutional were opposed to the mafias proceeds of drug trafficking and the
clandestine alliances, such as those who came from the field of the left and cri
ticized the
combination of all forms of struggle, ended up murdered or exiliados122. As well
as
in the early seventies, reformist currents were the great defeated, for the eigh
ties, the
great sacrificed was that generation of prominent politicians that you within ea
rshot to the
deepening democratic as output to the spiral of violence in which the country sa
nk deeper
.
122 The assassinations were numerous in the eighties. Of the Patriotic Union, Le
onardo Posada, Jaime Pardo Leal
, Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa, José Antequera; the new liberalism, Rodrigo Lara Bonill
a, Minister of Justice
; Luis Carlos Galan, presidential candidate in 1989; Carlos Pizarro Leongomez, p
residential candidate for the
newly formed AD-M-19; of the Liberal Party, Carlos Mauro Hoyos, Attorney. At the
regional level
, fell by human rights defenders such as Hector Abad Gómez.
123 The whole project of ODECOFI which brought together several centers of thoug
ht and universities led by
Father Fernan Gonzalez Gonzalez departed from that premise that already had guid
ed the work that the own González
had published with Ingrid Bolivar and Teófilo Vasquez in 2002, and that is part of
a long tradition among which are
the work of Guzmán, Fals Borda and Umana Moon (1962) and had been taken up by Oqui
st
(1978), Ortiz (1985), Uribe (1992), to mention a few, to be added recently that'
s Mary
Roldán (2003). For a theoretical approach see Kalyvas, Op. Cit. and Gibson, Op. C
it.
The fractures were of two kinds: between different national institutions directe
d by
divergent projects, and between actors, agendas, debates, alliances and commitme
nts that are
hired at the national level and those that remember and be performed at the regi
onal level.
The trajectories regional
war in Colombia has not been deployed or with the same intensity or at the same
time
by the national territory, showing how a conflict of national order refracts and
acquires
a dynamic of its own at the regional level depending on the actors, the power st
ruggles
and the alliances that there is producen123.
In addition to the tensions of the national level already described horizontal fr
actures between
institutions or to the inside of the same institution collapses between the dynami
c and the
agendas of national order and the regional deepened. A new institutional design,
the Popular election of mayors (EPA), accompanied by the administrative and fisc
al decentralization
, produced this deepening and resulted in the opposite effect to that its design
ers
had hoped. In principle, they imagined that their managers for this track, with
new channels
of expression for the demands for social and political, violence would subside.
Unfortunately it was not so. From a first time, in 1988, the EPA was engulfed fo
rever
in the dynamic that armed not ceased but increased with its approval:
during that year were murdered or disappeared for political reasons or
presumably policies 3011 colombians, many more people than the killed in combat
(1083). Of these 3011, 327 were activists, political leaders, candidates for
mayors and municipal councils or had been elected mayors and councilors. The 49.
85 %
were demographics UP; 23.55 % liberal demographics; 10.40 % and 16.21 % conserva
tives without
political affiliation established124 . These killings showed how none of the pla
yers on
weapons was willing to relinquish control of the local power.
124 Mary Emma Wills, a balance in red
. March 5 (1989), p. 68.
in Bogotá: One Hundred Days seen by CINEP, not
125 Op. Cit.
126 Without Author, Death to kidnappers MORE: The origins of the paramilitarism tr
uly open,
http://www.verdadabierta.com/victimarios/244-la-historia/auc/3556-muerte-a-secue
stradores-mas-losorigenes-paramilitarism, consulted on December 3 2014.
But, what was happening at the local level to a tool designed to
democratize politics fed rather the war?
To understand this outcome, it is necessary to take into account that the mafia
launder sought their fortunes by buying land. Through these acquisitions, also wan
ted
exercise control over the local and regional power. In 1989, according to figure
s from the Institute BE, in 49% of the
municipalities and violent in the 70% of the extremely violent detects the presen
ce
of the narcotrafico125. Well now, why does the drug trafficking, in addition to
ensure the control of local power, directed its violence against the guerrillas
and against
people in a state of helplessness belonging to left-wing movements and of the ne
w liberalism
to national and local levels, and to a lesser extent at the local level against
conservatives?
To understand this selectivity, it is necessary to go back to 1981 when the M-19
kidnapped Martha Nieves Ochoa, daughter and sister of drug traffickers of Medell
in. This
kidnapping unleashed the wrath of the mafia families of the country that decided
to form
Death TO kidnappers, MAS, an organization that collected funds from
drug traffickers and entrepreneurs and that allegedly had in its foundation with
the presence of
some militares126. At this juncture that brought together various sectors around
a
same purpose defeat the guerrillas you join then other critical moments
that would eventually weaving those same alliances but at the regional level.
For example, in the Magdalena Medio, when the FARC-EP left its defensive nature
and proposed
its territorial expansion, relatively friendly coexistence between boys
127 and ranchers and landowners in the region, change. As the Front XI of
the FARC increasingly resorted to kidnapping and extorsiones128, the exasperated
reaction of finqueros and
mobsters who had invested in land, crecia129. To these three actors
guerrillas, farmers and mafias was added three more, old landowners of the area,
some political and military power that he felt betrayed by the dialogs
undertaken by the various governments of that decade. That military officers who
read the
talks as a way to deliver the country to the guerrillas, he decided to wage war
in a clandestine manner and, making use of the legal framework existente130, acc
ompanied
the formation of self-defense groups. The combination of this interpretative fra
mework with
these institutional designs was therefore led to the explosive expansion of para
militarism
even within the framework of a new constitucion131.
127 Maria Teresa Ronderos recycled wars. A story of paramilitarism in Colombia,
Bogotá: Aguilar, 2014.
128 As well tells Ronderos, harassment by money from the FARC to the population r
ose from tone and low stratum.
The XI was particularly abusive. No longer only vaccinates [] to a few farmers r
ich,
but also to small farmers, such as Gonzalo Pérez , Ronderos, 2014, Op. Cit. , 32
129 Ibid. ,P. 39.
130 The legislative decree 3398 allowed military forces to provide weapons of it
s exclusive use to individuals
. In 1987, the regulation of counterinsurgency combat ordering organize militaril
y to the civilian population to
protect against the action of the guerrillas and
recommends that you use the Civil
Defense
in the military tasks providing these bodies with weapons. Decree 815 on April 19
, 1989 suspended
these provisions. However, the February 11 through decree law 356 of 1994, was a
gain authorized the
use of firearms restricted to individuals who provide special services that gave
rise to the famous
LIVE, rural security cooperatives, under whose umbrella the paramilitaries will
expand. Gustavo
Gallon, Harvey Rodriguez and Diego Fernando Abonia, defying the intransigence, B
ogota, the Colombian Commission
of Jurists, CNMH, 2013.
131 In 1990, in the framework of dialogs with the M-19, the EPL, the MRQL, conve
ned a National Constituent Assembly
with a charter of rights expanded. However, its potential is democratisation was
blurred to the extent that the FARC-EP and the ELN did not enter into the agreem
ent and the paramilitaries were expanded
by more regions of the Pai.s
this same story, with minor variations, would be deployed for example in the dep
artment of Magdalena
, where Hernán Giraldo and Adam Rojas, two settlers of the Sierra
that had arrived in the region fleeing from the previous violence, would decide
resist through armed
to the extortion of the guerrillas, to form two groups that, as
the kidnapping and blackmail increased armed, would be backed by the great
businessmen and politicians of the region. Among the organizations of the Magdal
ena and the Magdalena Medio
were weaving links in such a way that in 1986, Adam sent his son
Rigoberto to school of self-defense forces Magdalena Medio, where he received
training militar132. For 1989, there was talk of the existence of paramilitary g
roups in Urabá
, Meta, Pacho (Cundinamarca), Scimitar (Magdalena Medio Santandereano), Puerto B
errio
, Doradal, tapir, the Mercedes and Puerto Triunfo (Antioquia) and Puerto Boyaca,
ivory
and Port Pinzon (Boyaca)133.
132 50 pupils [one of] the schools were recruited as well: 20 of the Middle Magda
lena Region, chosen by Henry Perez
; 20 of Pacho, chosen by "The Mexican"; 5 de los Llanos, chosen by Victor Carran
za, and 5 of
Medellin, chosen by Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa. Instructors [from Israel] tol
d him to
their students that once completed teaching this course, to travel to farms in C
osta Rica and
Honduras, to train groups of Nicaraguan contras . In the
dossier paramilitary , in Bo
gotá: Semana magazine
, May 8 1989, consulted on 27 November 2014 in
http://www.semana.com/especiales/articulo/el-dossier-paramilitar/11674-3
Ibid. , 133.
134 Group of Historical Memory, 2011.
Each of the actors in this network provided not only resources, connections and
knowledge
but who added their own interests. Some people wanted protect themselves from th
e extortion; the
others stop communism and win the war; the beyond protect their tracks,
laboratories and business; politicians, their fiefdoms and their votes. In Magda
lena, for example,
the group of Rojas, among its services , term offering the persecution, threat, ba
nishment
and murder of sindicalistas134. The thread that term aglutinandolos, despite the
ir differences
, was no longer a rivalry, but a visceral hatred against the guerrillas, the com
munists
and the people and movements that they they stigmatised as allies
disguised as civil .
These networks, fluid, and that have been reconstructed, preserved, however a fe
w features.
Articulate sectors of the military and police, elected politicians, judges and m
afias around no longer
in the land dispute, but first the territorial control to lead, as
the actors pass from contest a region to govern it, to a war
by the constitution of the social order at the local level, in some cases region
al, arriving at times
up to the national.
As well we notice that, for example, in the campaign between 1995 and 1997 for t
he
reconquista Urabá where the strategy was driven by regional political and military
that coordinated to paramilitary groups and later joined
regional entrepreneurs to promote a re-engineering social, political and territo
rial that came from the hand
with the extension of a model of agro-exporter. With this campaign not only were
expelled
to the guerrillas in the region, but which became the social geographies and the
peopling of the territorios135.
135 In interview, General Bedoya said: Uribe Vélez, Rito Alejo, Ivan Ramirez, three
major general joined
there. If they do not unite, Uraba had been lost , Dufort, 2013, p. 109.
136 See in Annexs, Document 9: The figures of the conflict.
137 General Rito Alejo del Rio Rojas, condemned by their alliances with paramili
taries. See The history of the
general 'peacemaker' condemned by links with paras in time, drafting Justice, 26
August
2012, available online: http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-12164151,
consulted on 20 November
2014.
However the imposition of this project in the recomposition of the social order
at the regional level, their
transit toward a model of State and society at the national level does not bore
fruit.
This claim was not successful due to the opposition that the initiative has conf
ronted, however
its enormous power. In contrary to those who think that all the scaffolding
institutional succumbed to the onslaught of these networks, should be relieved t
he existence of an opposition
constituted by politicians, and military sectors of the Police, members of the j
udiciary
, journalists, civil organizations, which have been demarcated by the legacy net
work
, have its share of victims136 and have become barriers for these networks
is not despotic consolidate as absolute authorities. The new institutional desig
ns
, in particular the prohibition to organize groups of armed civilians, the
court judgments against politicians and officials involved with the paramilitari
smo137, the
directives issued by the Ministry of Defense and the various efforts to inculcat
e a culture of
human rights and IHL, the political currents with voice and vote in
instances such as those of the Congress of the Republic are those that have prev
ented this consolidation
.
However these barriers, the foundation of despotic orders at the local level and
years of
arbitrary constraints imposed by the guerrillas, they leave legacies, victims wh
o are calling for the
recognition of the suffering inflicted and the systematic violation of their rig
hts.
3. WHAT THE VICTIMS WE ENSEÑAN: A WAR WITH A PAST
BUT WITHOUT FUTURE
In addition to more than 220,000 victims who have lost their lives in this war;
of the more than
five million seven hundred thousand displaced who are forced to leave
their life projects and their homes; of the more than one thousand seven hundred
women138 that
have suffered harassment, humiliation and sexual violence; of the more than six
hundred men that
have also been outraged sexually139; boys and girls that have been forced to wit
ness
outrages or have been forced to join one of the groups in
weapons; of indigenous peoples and communities of African descent who have lost
their ancestral territories
and Have seen their forms of coexistence razed; whole families
living in suspense about any news of the more than twenty-five thousand
necessarily missing; of the relatives of one of the more than twenty thousand
abducted uncertain waiting for news of survival of their loved ones; of the more
than
ten thousand people who have died or have been disabled by stepping on a mine
140; in addition to them, men and women who have experienced first hand the horr
ors of war,
all the Colombian men and women we have also lost in these years of conflict.
138 In terms of sexual violence, there is a huge underreporting and so the women
who have suffered sexual violence
in the context of armed conflict are many more. See GMH, Women and war, Op. Cit.
139 Although the Victims Unit recorded 650 cases since 1985, the subject is tabo
o. See Tatiana Escarraga, the
drama of the men in the war violated , at the time, published on 16 September 2014
,
http://www.eltiempo.com/politica/justicia/el-silencio-de-los-hombres-violados-en
-el-conflicto/14496395,
consulted on 1 December 2014.
140 Annexs, Document 9: The figures of the conflict.
To understand the dimensions of the damage caused by the war, we will stop first
in the victims of the conflict. When we listen attentively to the story of their
sufferings,
we recognize that the balance sheet that leaving these years of weapons and conf
rontations is
ripper. For them, there is no heroic speeches but a painful experience that in m
any
cases leaves footprints traumatic that survive in their bodies and spirit for a
long time
. These trauma is widening when their suffering is trivialised with
euphemisms or appointed by the alleged perpetrators. For example, the young peop
le who have been victims
of sexual violence and hear by the media or in the mouth of paramilitaries, who
sought us them , can no longer feel that they are helpless and enmudecidas by versi
ons
that deny them a voice and are unaware of their suffering. The same is true with
the victims of kidnapping
that you hear appointed by the guerrillas as retained , an adjective that hides the
disgraceful conditions in which they are maintained and the unassailable fact th
at
their lives are, sometimes for months and years, in the hands of armed persons w
ho treated
with utter contempt; or the families of a loved one missing necessarily
that they have to cope with the stratagems of the concealment of the institution
s allegedly
responsible for the disappearance; or the groups of exiles from their lands or t
erritories
that then to deal with the pain of having lost everything, even the hope of a
better future, must be addressed to the indifference in the large cities and fou
nd that
The majority of their fellow human beings do not understand that the exile had t
aken from them, not merely a
material resource, but a way of being and being in the world with dignity. The s
peeches
no justification for the actors in weapons, legal or illegal, are challenged by
the victims themselves
that, as living files containing the suffering and resistance, question the
commonplace or minimization of what they have suffered.
But not only have suffered these people. Society as a whole has also lost. If
democracy is the meeting place for dealing with the conflicts and to find, howev
er the differences
, a common space of debate between adversaries to discuss, without arrasamientos
physical or symbolic, the possible routes of solution of inequalities and differ
ences,
then in these years of war this path of deepening democratic has been
weakened. This decline has been the outcome not expected so many years of war an
d
tangling and reinforcements of the knots of the that we have been talking about
and that ,both
current generations as the previous, we have not known trigger.
On the one hand we see the knot of the political representation of a peasantry,
which,
thanks to an ingenious colonization of the agricultural frontier, has developed
ways of life
that have allowed him to successfully resist his conversion as forced
agricultural workers, urban wage earners or displaced from the war. This peasant
ry has always hoped that
their demands and aspirations of a good living are taken into account by those w
ho
make decisions about public policy in this country. After a
failed opportunity for inclusion under the model Llerista of the National Front,
its
political ignorance left to drift the organization that represented him, and for
ced him into new areas
where coca colonization was the product link to market economies.
The first knot which fed the war and that is still unresolved then alludes to th
e conflict over land
in Colombia that has as background a problem of
political representation and recognition of an actor, the peasants, which, thank
s to its appropriation
of a recursive geography in the edges of the domestic social order, development
along the
decades own forms of associative life. Those peasants and those farmers who have
been able to
recreate worlds-in-common in the midst of adverse circumstances, claim
a place and a listener in the area where the decisions are made that affect thei
r future
.
This political ignorance is combined with the second knot, a polarization that,
in the absence of a professionalization of the democratic public force, easily d
rift
into war. Despite efforts to develop good practice in terms of respect for
human rights, the Public Force is still trapped, by one side in a few
little garantistas141 institutional designs, and on the other in interpretative
frameworks that encode
many conflicting aspects of life in society as absolute enmity.
This combination is explosive because the institutional designs little elements,
to be
filtered by these interpretative frameworks, are converted into a fertile field
for that responses to the challenges
guerrillas are prone to violations of human rights and IHL of
the population in a state of helplessness. To the extent that the own institutio
nal designs
do not promote exemplary penalties on those who transgress the rules
registered in our Constitution, nor encourage a culture of accountability
agency, its own members receive confused signals that end up exploring
the problem.
141 In particular referred to the military justice system.
Finally, the fractures between the policies at the national level and those adop
ted at regional level
make many efforts should presuppose does not translate into more democracy at th
e local level
. On the contrary, below a democratic norms and regular elections
, carving perverse networks that link to different sectors and regional authorit
ies
to despotic projects and domains. Faced with this paradox, the alliance of force
s that are in favor of
a social and institutional democratization must resolve as defeat in an institut
ional manner,
within the existing norms, to criminal networks and despotism that
survive because they have so many feet in the legality, and know how to use and
abuse of
the clientelistic patterns strongly rooted in certain territories for his accomp
lices
are, by electoral means,
democratically elected and to establish as
legitimate authorities, with a degree of immunity and in not a few times, too mu
ch power.
The victims and society who aspire to live in a democracy, they want to not only
hear and
engage with the empathic listening to the voice of the victims and the validatio
n of your
counts by officials and media. Looking for that in a cooperative effort on the p
art of
institutional and social forces we can undo the knots
that have accompanied the war and strengthen, as country, democratic interpretat
ive frameworks
that recognize in the long i have stretched a adversary and not an enemy that mu
st be eliminated.
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