In this context, money from the drug trade has played an important role in stabilizing reserves and stopping the waves of devaluations which have caused chaos in the other countries of the region. In the midst of the sad panorama provided by the other countries of the area, Colombia has been able to stay afloat. Today, the drug trade continues to be an important source of revenues and the drug traffickers are the biggest financial group in the country
(see IV 170, October 2, 1989).
The battle between the traditional bourgeoisie and the drug traffickers is directly linked to a conflict of interests between the banking, commercial and industrial sectors (who wish to maintain their domination and have no desire to share it with the newcomers) and the big landowners enriched by the cocaine trade.
Despite its repeated intentions, the government has no firm line of march as far as the cocaine trade is concerned. First, it allowed two years to lapse without extraditing any of the arrested drugs traffick-
LIBARDO GONZALES ers, except Ledher. Then, at the beginning of 1990, it suspended extraditions in exchange for the liberation of certain members of bourgeois families kidnapped by the Medellín cartel. The revelation of this "agreement" by the former Minister of the Interior, who has now resigned, provoked the biggest scandal of recent times and has thrown doubt on the reputation for unceasing struggle against the drug trade that the government had acquired.
Barco has played the same game as his predecessors, Betancourt and Turbay Ayala. Successive presidents have never been more than the arbiters and agents of the conflict between the White House and the drugs mafia. The brunt of the repression has been borne essentially by the peasants, the workers and other sectors of the masses. Today, the demobilization of the armed insurrection (with, for example, the accord made on March 9 between the Barco government and the Movement of April 19, M-19), through pacts like those of Betancourt and Barco, is not totally excluded by the government. But these agreements in the final analysis, contain no serious proposals for peace or for dismantling the repression.
The elections of March 11 decided the fate of the two traditional parties, the Liberals and the Social Conservative Party (PSC). The Liberals organized a conference to choose their candidate for the presidential election which will take place at the end of May. The final choice was César Gaviria, a former minister in the Barco government, who defeated Hernando Duran Dussan, faithful representative of the right and of the landowners of mid- :19 Magdalena, and Hernesto Samper, linked April 23, 1990 • #183 International Viewpoint
COLOMBIA to the financial sector and to international social democracy. Gaviria represents the landowners of the big coffee plantations, traditional agrarian capital and sectors of medium capital.
The candidate of the PSC will be Rodrigo Lloreda, representing small and medium industry. His candidacy is marked by two factors which will work to the disadvantage of the PSC; industry is experiencing the worst period in its history (its share of gross national product has fallen from 22% to 19% over the last few years) and the PSC has lost the dynamism which characterized it in other times to the point where it now represents only 30% of the electorate.
A Colombian equivalent of
Mexican ruling party
Thus the PL seems ready to convert itself into an equivalent of the Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a party that, at least until the presidential elections of 1988, returned to power each Despite its internal conflicts - which reflect some very powerful contradictions - the PL is strongly united around the bureaucratic control which it holds over the key posts of power.
So far as the left is concerned, it is represented electorally by the Patriotic Union (UP), which lost several of the parliamentary seats and seven of the sixteen municipalities that it won in 1988. Moreover, a wing inclined to social democracy has split from the Communist Party of Colombia (PCC) — Bernardo Jaramillo, the recently assassinated presidential candidate of the UP was linked to this wing.
The Movement of April 19 (M-19) has openly declared its sympathies for social democracy. Sectors of the PL linked to Samper Pizano (defeated challenger for the candidacy of his party) and even the official candidate, César Gaviria, have done the same, as well as the president of the United Federation of Workers (CUT), Jorge Carillo.
In these conditions, the left is divided between the social democracy and the traditional currents which seek to unite around the proposals of the CUT and around a program of government. It is precisely this latter possibility which is being discussed today by the PCC, the Communist Party of Colombia-Marxist-Leninist (PCC-ML) and A Luchar.
The Colombian situation is changing and there could be some surprises. Today, unlike at other times, the cards are on the table. Without hiding behind the pretext of combatting the drugs traffic, the military organize "disappearances", the assassination of targets and blind massacres outside and inside the barracks; on the other hand, the drugs traffickers have indicated that they do not want to continue to
20 Phay the wole of assasines of oh the leade
International Viewpoint #183 • April 23, 1990 ers of the left.
The traditional left finds itself faced with a dilemma — either to take the road offered by the social democracy and move towards liberalism, or to stay within its traditional framework, which has led it to its current political stagnation.
But there is another alternative; the unification of the forces which continue to struggle around the demands of the workers and peasants and which are still ready o challenge the regime, the bourgeoisie and imperialism. This road is opened today by the generalized conviction that it is impossible for the organizations to continue to function in isolation from each other. This must be rapidly concretized, before the social democratic option takes root and leads to the creation of a Colombian version of the Venezuelan Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), with the pretence of going beyond the guerilla movement and the traditional bourgeois
Nearly two thirds abstain in elections
The abstention rate at the March 11 elections remained at its traditional level - between 60 and 65% of the electorate. This percentage encompasses those who have not been integrated into the clientelist system of the regional bosses and those for whom the candidates on offer represented no political future. But it also includes those who decided not to vote in order to reject an electoral process that took place during a state of emergency, as well as the corruption of the liberals and conservatives and the parliamentary inefficiency of the UP which, with the Popular Front (FP) and the M-19, represents the traditional left. These three groups have ended up by throwing themselves into the arms of the electoral "barons" thus removing all credibility from their
To denounce this and the absence of any serious popular alternative at the next election, A Luchar has launched a campaign for a boycott of the vote. This campaign has received a certain echo in the popular neighbourhoods of the big cities and in the villages. It has also provoked an important reaction from the military which is reflected by the imprisonment, torture and trial of ten of its militants in Cali, by the preventive detention for four days in a military fort of Daniel Libreros, and by the recent assassination of bank employee Léon Dario Jimenez.
The circumstances of the death of Jaramillo (the candidate of the UP) are fairly confused, and have even gone so far as to provoke a ministerial crisis with replacement of Carlos Lemos as Minister of the Interior by Horacio Serpa.
Some days before the assassination, Lemos had accused the UP of being the political arm of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Moreover, he made this accusation at a time when several members and candidates belonging to this organization had just been assassinated. Thus Diego Montana, president of the UP, and Jaramillo himself, had accused Lemos of drawing the vengeance of the paramilitaries down on them. The assassination represented a kind of confirmation of this whilst Lemos attributed it to an unhappy coincidence. Political opinion, however, has attributed this action to
Faced with this situation, Barco has had to break with his minister and declare that the UP was not the political arm of the FARC. For his part, Lemos presented his resignation with an angry letter in which he accused the government of negotiating an agreement with the drug traffickers so that they would cease kidnaping and other outrages directed against notables. In this way, he has revealed in broad daylight what had until then remained hidden and has still not been clarified by the President Responsibility of government for murders
Finally, everything that has been said by and the general Miguel Haza, director of the Administrative Department of Security (DAS), according to whom the Medellín cartel was responsible for the murder of Jaramillo cover up numerous doubts about the true responsibility of the government. Immediately, Pablo Escobar, the principal leader of the cartel, denied the accusation, and with him all the key figures in the drugs trade who had no wish to be implicated in this crime.
Besides, Barco has also withdrawn his support for Lemos because his replacement Serpa could accomplish something that Lemos could not; the participation of a large sector of the left, including the leadership of the UP, the FP, the M-19 and other groups which define themselves as civil and democratic, in the agreement which they have just signed in support of the presidential Pizarro, the leader of M-19. *