Colombia not Columbia
Both of Colombia's guerilla movements are preparing for a new phase of struggle.
* Colombia
"The problem is to
stop the war" Interview with Olga Lucia Marin and Rafael Vargas of the International Commission of the FARC -Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Does the FARC think that the new Conservative government offers a better chance for peace than another Liberal Party government Both the Conservative party and the Liberal Party are of the right. Governments of both parties have perpetrated massacres and been equally militaristic. The Conservative candidate, Andres Pastrana, said he would meet with the guerrillas, visit the FARC's camps, and take the peace process in hand personally, not delegate responsibility to subordinates. He said he would make the peace project the project of his government, and not the other way round, as previous presidents had done.
We thought the proposal was interesting, not because we thought Pastrana was better then the Liberal candidate, Horacio Serpa, or that he would do better, but because if Pastrana went to our camps that would be a big political victory for us.
What is more, Serpa was the continuation of a government that had lost a lot of credibility, and which had many problems with the gringos. Serpa wasn't going to be able to solve those problems.
The Conservative candidate had a cleaner image and more strength, because he's a typical representative of the bourgeoisie.' We thought it was better to have a strong government capable of pushing the process forward.
And as president-elect his attitude was quite audacious. He visited our camps in a war zone, and spent more than three hours in the hands of the guerrillas. It was a very important meeting, not least because the president himself was quite surprised to see how big, how well organised and how well equipped militarily the guerrilla camps were.
At that meeting Manuel Marulanda (known as Tirofijo, or "Sure-shot") the historic leader of the FARC, laid out the FARCs views on peace and the five conditions we see as necessary to create an atmosphere in which we can begin to talk. 8 International Viewpoint #306 December 1998
We put forward the need to demilitarise five municipalities, in order to ensure a physical space under our control where the different sectors of Colombian society can meet - both the popular organisations and the political parties -and with sufficient guarantees that we won't be assassinated by the paramilitary
We put forward the need to dismantle the paramilitary groups, because we insist this is a state policy - the paramilitaries are trained, financed and armed by the state, and they're organised by the armed forces and the mafia bosses. They know who is responsible, so why not dismantle the groups and remove the civilian figures they use as a front, people like the Castano family, who are a bunch of mafioso.
We also raised with the government the need to decriminalise social protest. In Colombia leaders of the trade unions and social movements are treated as terrorists and guerrillas. They are submitted to anti-terrorist laws and special courts where the identity of the judges and the witnesses remains secret. Judgment is passed with no need for proof.
We asked the government to stop using terms like "narco-terrorist" and "narco-guerrilla" in the media and in official pronouncements. Because as we've long insisted, there is no proof - it is not true that the guerrilla force is involved in drug trafficking
In fact we believe that drugs degrade the human being and human relations.
Within the FARC, use of drugs is an offence punishable by expulsion from the movement. What is more the big drug barons have financed the death squads so we cannot have any kind of pact or agreement with them.
And there's the question of the soldiers. We have more than 250 government soldiers who we've taken as prisoners of war? And since this is a situation where one army confronts another, we are proposing an exchange of these soldiers for the guerrillas who are also prisoners of war. We know it won't be easy, but we think we will get the prisoners released. Your demands have caused quite a stir in Colombia's ruling circles.
We now know that there are big differences at the top. The government is just a part of the picture.
The dominant political class in Colombia is divided between more and less reactionary sectors. There's the militarist sector, both inside and outside the armed forces, which doesn't agree with the peace process, much less with the demilitarisation of territory which we have demanded. This is a delicate area for them, because it is the home of their most important elite counter-insurgency battalion, which is based in San Vicente del Caguan.?
We are developing talks with other sections of Colombian society in connection with this process. We want to discuss the ten points we put forward back in 1993; a platform for a government of national reconstruction which addresses the political, economic and social aspects which we think represent the the various interests of Colombian society. We've presented this platform to the employers associations, to the bishops, and to members of parliament. This has been an interesting process. It has allowed us to know what each of these sectors is thinking. They've been receptive, but that doesn't mean the job The peace processes in some other countries has led to the guerrilla struggle being abandoned and armed organisations being reabsorbed into civilian life
Nothing we have said means that we are going to demobilise and hand over our weapons. We are looking for a way to end the war, but our weapons will not be surrendered. It has cost us a great deal of sweat and blood to get to where we
are. If the situation really changed, it might be time to put the weapons away, but not to hand them over.
In any case, history has shown that popular movements are always betrayed after they give up their weapons. This is something we've made absolutely clear to the government, the different organisations we've been speaking to, and to the international community.
In fact the top ranks of the oligarchy are less interested in the peace process than the smaller bosses organisations which are more severely affected. What the Colombian oligarchy wants from this process is not to carry out the reforms we are asking for. For them, the peace process is based on the Central American model of demobilisation.
We've told them that we are not going to disarm, because we are not going to convert ourselves into a political current. What we are planning to do is to organise a Bolivar Movement for a New Colombia, as a sort of clandestine version of Patriotic Union (UP), because UP itself was exterminated.*
The FARC will not get involved in anything like the Central American peace processes, where the agreements are not respected and the peoples high hopes are dashed. The United States have kept very quiet throughout this process. Could they really put their weight behind a peace process as they did in El Salvador or Guatemala ?
They are deeply involved in the war, and they intend to remain so. They've always been supporting the war, because they have a lot of interests at stake. All the fuss about the fight against drugs has only served to conceal the extent of their involvement in the war. And if it is war they want, we are perfectly able to give
We will see if they are really in a position to cope with a Vietnam in Latin America. Because Colombia is not El Salvador or Guatemala. The guerrilla movement here is one of the strongest seen in Latin America. The strength of Colombia's guerrillas depends on the degree of unity between the different organisations. But it seems that each group is going in its own direction.
The ELN and ourselves are involved in different processes. We don't want to make judgments, because we think its good that each organisation should have its own space and we should allow the work of each time to mature
For the same reason we will not take part in the coming National Convention for Peace. Maybe we will in the future. if the process continues.
The Co-ordination isn't working.°
We are waiting for a meeting of the
National Leadership. Relations are friendly, but there's no joint activity, neither political nor military. There are some internal questions we haven't been this meeting. What about the civilian movement in favour of peace ?
Well, we are a little bit worried about the orientation that has been given to this movement. Intentionally or not, it has adopted the analysis that the country is facing a conflict between the extreme right and the extreme left, between guerrillas and paramilitariess, with the state as the victim in the background
Our argument is that this just isn't true. The paramilitaries are a state policy. What is developed in Colombia is state terrorism. We ourselves are a consequence of this war imposed by the
We have argued that the problem is not to humanise the war, as some suggest, but to stop it. We have to convince these social groups that it is not enough to stop the shooting. Stopping the shooting won't stop the violence. because the violence is economic, social, political; criminal violence will increase, because we can see throughout the world that conditions will continue to get worse. So we need to try and bring together this whole movement to put pressure on the government to change the conditions, and not fall into the trap of depicting the state as the victim. How far has the movement in Colombia been affected by the collapse of "really existing socialism" and the difficulties in Cuba?
It really hasn't affected us much, because we were expecting it. We knew that Gorbachev was in the process of dismantling the social system in the Soviet Union. But we had never been dependent on the Soviet Union or Cuba, so we didn't have problems on that score.
We were also critical of some of the things done there. We do not have any external model of society we want to copy in Colombia; we press on with our own practice, in accordance with our own conditions. What we are convinced of is that the struggle for socialism continues, that this has not lost its validity, and that we have to go on working for the revolution. * (This interview was carried out by lon Arregi at the end of September for the October issue of the Basque magazine Hika..) 1. The Pastranas are one of a handful of families which have dominated Colombian politics for most of this century. Andres father Misael Pastrana Borrero was president for the Conservative party from 1970 to
1974, and was noted for his offensive against the peasantry. Andres Pastrana himself was formerly in charge of one of the country's main TV news programmes, Noticiero TV Hoy.
2. About 45 more prisoners were taken when the FARC overran the southeastern border town of Mitu in the first days of November. Casualty figures have been disputed, but the FARC may have killed as many as
120 government troops when they destroyed the local garrison and then ambushed reinforcements as they tried to make their way to the remote capital of the
Amazonian province of Vaupes. This was certainly one of the biggest military defeats inflicted on government forces during the entire guerrilla war. 3. In the first week after 9 November, when demilitarisation of the five municipalities was due to be complete, President Pastrana insisted that 130 soldiers would remain at the headquarters of the Cazadores Battalion in San Vicente, to provide "logistical" support to the government negotiators based there. The Armed Forces Chief General Fernando Tapias insisted that their weapons would be kept in storage. 4. Union Patriotica (UP) was launched by the FARC and the Communist Party in 1985 as a broad electoral front, following a peace plan presented by the Conservative president Belisario Betancur three years earlier. It was hoped it would become the country's third political force and main opposition party, while providing a vehicle for FARC members to return to civilian In fact they were the first to be killed in what became full-scale terror directed against UP by the security forces and their paramilitary substitutes. About 3,000 UP members, including most of the leadership and hundreds of mayors, local government counsellors and electoral candidates died in the slaughter which 5.See the Introduction to this section and the interview with Pablo Beltran of the ELN for an account of the ELNs proposal for a National Convention 6. The Co-ordinadora Guerrillera Simon Bolivar (Simon Bolivar Guerrilla Co-ordination) was set up in the mid 1980s by the ELN and other guerrilla groups which refused to accept President Betancurs peace proposals. After the failure of Patriotic Union (UP) and the resumption of armed struggle by the FARC, it too joined the CGSB. In the previous round of peace talks, held in 1991 and 1992 in Caracas and Tlaxcala. Mexico with the government of Cesar Gaviria, the guerrillas were represented jointly by the CGSB.
The logic of
annihilation must change
Interview with Pablo Beltran of the Central Command of the ELN (National Liberation Army) Who wants peace in Colombia?
The conflict in Colombia is complicated. It is more than just an armed conflict. It is a situation of very serious and growing poverty, of unemployment, political oppression and repression, of dirty war and state terrorism.
So, in that sense, it's the majority of the people who have most interest in
On the other hand, in as much as the ruling classes invest many millions of dollars in a war which they aren't winning, they too begin to realise that this is a bad investment, and begin to understand that a political solution might be better. Although there still is not a consensus amongst the ruling elite on
There seems to have been a growing sentiment in favour of peace in
Colombian society in recent years
Yes. There have been more and more voices across society demanding peace.
This has a positive aspect. It indicates people are becoming more active, participating more.
In other words these are the seeds of a long-term process of organising a legal opposition, so that this role is not limited
International Viewpoint #306 December 1998 9
* Colombia to that of the armed insurgency. What's the weak point? Well, the paramilitary strategy is to push the war to extremes of barbarity and indiscriminate violence, attacking unarmed civilians so that, firstly, they stop supporting any movements for social change in Colombia, and secondly that they call for peace at any price.
Fortunately, we've been able to counter this tendency and we've already had some success in persuading people that peace is not just an end to the fighting, but the achievement of justice too. What are the ELN's aims with this National Convention?'
The National Convention is intended to allow those who have no voice to express their opinions about the crisis through which the Colombian nation is passing, and the solutions which are needed. That's the spirit of the National Convention.
The country needs to be given a new lead; we can play our part in giving that lead, letting people know our proposals. We want society to know what the ELN thinks. And with the emergence of a social movement demanding peace, the best thing is to come together in dialogue with these sectors, to develop ideas together with them, but also to debate out the differences we do have. For us it's very important that they should know more about us and what we are proposing, but also that they should have this opportunity to criticise us and push for corrections and improvements in our positions. We think everybody can gain from this. Assuming it does happen, what organisational shape will the Convention take?
There should be some preparatory meetings, to draw in representatives of the different mass social movements. We don't want the Convention to be filled just with personalities. It has to involve people from the grass-roots, from the communities and social movements. They must first have the chance to debate the issues, so that their representatives can bring their proposals.
The minority will be observers from the government and other branches of the state, from NGOs and various international observers.
In other words there will be a majority which discusses and decides, and a minority which just observes. What repercussions have the talks in Mainz had in Colombian society?
The whole Mainz process raised huge expectations in all social sectors in Colombia. This reflects how badly people want peace. Any step forward in this critical situation generates immense illusions. This is positive in so far as it shows the growing intensity of people's 10 International Viewpoint #306 December 1998 demands. But it also indicates a weakness. because the media have really been building the whole thing up. When the results people want are not forthcoming, there will be a feeling of despair. And then the elite can step back in and say "You see, you have to follow us, because change is impossible"
It has also provoked a dispute within the ruling classes, over who should or shouldn't have been talking to us.
Because we gave priority to civil society, the central state is getting jealous. Talks with the government haven't begun. This doesn't fit into their framework, which assumes that talks will be between the state and the insurgents, and that everyone else's job is to listen and nod in approval. They want to conduct the music from a single score - but we don't want just one
We have traditionally underestimated the political struggle in Colombia. And, even more so, we have underestimated the importance of the international arena for conducting this struggle.
We've found people very receptive, very supportive, but very ill-informed. We've made a huge number of contacts in these last three months, with governments, parliaments, parties, NGOs,
Unfortunately, everything in Colombia depends on the US government. The only possible counterbalance to a pressure as great as that of the US is the pressure of European opinion.
For us, it is very important to expose at the international level things like the use of the paramilitaries, and to weaken and defeat the Doctrine of National
This-is very important for us. because the whole US intervention in Colombia rests on this strategy. They could easily dismantle the paramilitaries, but they don't do so. Because they know that the paramilitaries compensate for the inefficiency of the army.
The peace processes in Central America were a lesson for Europe in this sense, because Europe had a decisive impact in some aspects and this was a completely new phenomenon right in the US' backyard.
It showed that when the public opinion of the peoples of Europe really puts pressure on their governments, they
Any action of this kind which serves to de-legitimise the paramilitary strategy is absolutely basic to cut short the suffering in Colombia.
In the last two sessions of the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva, in 1997 and 1998, strong condemnations have been heard from a number of countries. Some others have not taken such a clear position, or have kept quiet. It's not a problem of lack of information; all the countries have their information services, so the silence of the minority is not by chance. What are the US objectives in Colombia?
At the moment the US is doing two things in Colombia. It continues to facilitate the development of the paramilitary strategy, and it is trying to strengthen the army, which is demoralised.
Most of the millions of dollars of aid the US government sends to Colombia goes to finance the war. The US has important interests in the area, like the Panama Canal and the Venezuelan oil fields. What is more, they don't like the example the Colombian guerrilla movement sets. Isn't the US irritated by Pastrana's declarations about peace and his trip to meet with Marulanda in the jungle? 3
No, it is all part of the propaganda show. They all pretend to be for peace. But in reality their actions in Colombia serve to encourage war. Why is Pastrana making this offer of peace? What does it mean?
He is doing the same as all newly-elected presidents in Colombia - talk about peace. Now he has to turn the words into deeds, but he's got serious difficulties. He said he'd purge the military hierarchy; he hasn't. The same generals with their long records of abuse are still there
This leads us to ask two questions: is it that Pastrana doesn't want to do it, or that he can't do it? I think it's the latter.
I think he's going to go for the release of prisoners. But there are other things - like decriminalising social protest - which they won't do unless they're pushed.
And if we do push them, then they'll
say "OK, but what are you going to give us in return?"
In other words, the democratic changes will really be kept back as bargaining counters with the guerrilla movement. The only thing Pastrana is really interested in is demobilising the guerrillas. Are the ELN and the FARC following separate paths, with no possibility of convergence?
We agreed at the beginning of the year that each group would pursue peace following in some ways a similar logic, but at different times and in different areas, and that later on these would converge. We stand by that, and we believe it will be positive to develop the two processes simultaneously. What I don't think would work would be to try and roll the two processes into one. Will there be demobilisation and disarmament?
One of the differences between this process and those in Central America is that here the guerrilla is not going to disarm, and not going to disappear. Because the guerrilla here is, in effect, a state. It has to carry out its duties in terms of regulating the economy, administering justice, providing security and defence for its zones and the communities living there. So if we are in effect a state, we cannot give up using arms for the purposes of that state which we
So we have to find a political formula that will make such cohabitation possible. The idea that the guerrilla movement is going to disappear needs to be got rid for once and for all.
In so far as confidence builds up, agreements are implemented, and the need for weapons grows less, then the time may come to discuss this again, but for the moment experience has taught us that the experience of Patriotic Union (UP) turned into a genocide. Three thousand of its members were murdered and the party disappeared. Many other guerrillas who laid down their arms were co-opted by the state. As part of a peace process, could the army and the guerrillas be combined into a single army?
Given how long and bitter the conflict has been, it would be better if each side remained separate and held its own ground.
We also have to think about this peace process, not only in terms of the future, but also of the past, in terms of justice. Our view is that no-one should serve in the country's armed forces if they have been guilty of crimes against humanity.
These problems need to be dealt with if we are to think clearly about the armed forces of the future.
It seems strange to talks about a 3. See introductory note for details of the 8th July meeting. peace agreement where each side holds onto its own territory. This is certainly different from peace processes in other parts of the world. You'd expect the state to want full control over the army, the police and so torth...
Of course. but the fact is that in Colombia a state based on the rule of law does not exist. They do not have a monopoly on the use of force, they do not have control over all the population or all the territory, they do not control many basic functions ot a state.
So we have to try and see what form of state there could be. Let's show a bit of imagination! Let's think about some sort of confederation. People say this is very difficult, that it would deny part of the state. We reply that whilst preserving the territorial unity of the nation, we should try to find a political formula. Would this be better or worse than just going on fighting? So what does the future hold?
Peace will come when the ruling elite in Colombia changes its logic. At the moment their logic is one of intolerance: the insurgency and any other opposition must simply disappear.
When they reverse this and recognise that we are a legitimate force and they can't make us disappear, then we can begin to work out some form of cohabitation and mutual recognition.
But so long as all their peace plans are aimed at eliminating the insurgents and forcing them to capitulate, then it's not even worth sitting down to talk.
The war has been going on for forty years. The discussions must focus on the structural changes that are needed. Not just about a few political reforms. Beginning this political journey is a tortuous business, but it is worth it. We will make progress. But people should not be impatient, or expect very rapid (This interview was carried out by lon Arregi at the end of September for the October issue of Hika. It has 1. The proposal for a National Convention, bringing the ELN together with representatives of different sectors of civil society, and with government delegates in attendance, to discuss an agreed agenda of national issues, was the main outcome of the preliminary meetings held in Mainz, Germany in July this year. At a subsequent meeting held at an ELN camp in the south east of Antiochia province on 11-12th October (a meeting which the government allowed two jailed ELN leaders, Francisco Galan and Felipe Torres, to attend), agreement was reached on a concrete timetable and proccuures. The National Convention is set to be inaugurated on the 13th February 1999. It will then hold five meetings on different themes, before presenting its conclusions at a final meeting on 12th October 1999. 2. The Doctrine of National Security is the cold-war philosophy which informed US policy towards Latin America though most of the post 2nd World war period. In the 1960s and 70s it provided the framework for promoting and training military dictatorships in much of the continent. In the 1980s it gave birth to the strategy of Low Intensity Warfare applied in Central America. The Colombian guerrilla movements would argue that it continues to inform US covert support for the war against them, often under the guise of
International Viewpoint #306 December 1998