Grim Legacy
Haunts Peace Negotiations
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Members of the indigenous guard attend a
Colombian indigenous assembly in Piendamo, Cauca. They are seeking the
departure of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the
Colombian army and drug traffickers from their territory Photo: EPA
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| by W. T. Whitney
(October 21,
2012, Maine , Sri Lanka Guardian) October 11 marked the 25th anniversary of the
assassination of Jaime Pardo Leal, presidential candidate of the Patriotic
Union (UP) electoral coalition formed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) and Colombian communists. The toll of murdered UP activists
would eventually exceed 4000. This year,
also on October 11, the Colombian government announced that current members of
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and Communist Party, always
endangered, would be protected.
There was a
catch, however. Protection must await a successful outcome of peace
negotiations set to begin in Norway on October 17 between the Colombian
government and the FARC.
Likely as not, other
inconsistencies will be coming out of these negotiations, unless, of course,
they break down beforehand. That’s because old divisions on both sides have
left both sets of negotiators with limited bargaining powers.
The government,
for instance, must cope with an old-guard of big landowners, agribusiness
interests, narco-traffickers, and military chieftains. Ex- President Alvaro
Uribe, a strident critic of negotiations, speaks for them. They’re used to free rein in rural Colombia
where civilian authority is weak and government services are in short supply.
Now,
conservative President Juan Manuel Santos would end authoritarian rule and
military repression in the countryside, also “gigantic scandals,” corruption,
drug money in politics, and police violence.
Prominent human rights leader and Congressional Representative Ivan
Cepeda says the Santos government is looking to restore Colombia’s
international credibility and profit-making potential by reassuring foreign
investors that criminal behavior won’t be tolerated. Toward that end, the
government would abandon civil war.
No wonder
investors are to be courted: the Colombian economy grew at an annual 4.9
percent rate from April through June 2012 thanks mainly to an 18.4 percent
expansion in construction and 8.6 percent growth in the mining and energy
sectors, the latter fueled by 46 percent direct foreign investment.
Nevertheless, powerbroker heirs to a tradition of rough and ready autonomy have
other priorities.
Nor will FARC
negotiators work in isolation. Their cause is peace with social justice. For
that the FARC requires collaboration from those with broader experience in
popular struggle than theirs. From its start, the Marxist insurgency has
focused on land use injustices stemming from concentrated land ownership left
over from Spanish colonists and continued under large scale agricultural
operators and drug traffickers. Early FARC recruits belonged to the sector
known as “colonos,” those small farmers scratching out a living in areas far
removed from state authority, or dispossessed.
On the day of
its formation, July 20, 1964, the FARC issued its “Agrarian Program” calling
“for a fundamentally changed social structure of the Colombian countryside
[and] delivering land completely free to small farmers working or wanting to
work the land.” Continuing that theme in February 2012, FARC Secretariat member
Iván Márquez wrote that land “belongs to us, because we were born on it…Our own
country has been converted into a treasure coveted by transnational piracy
[and] land investment is a strategic pursuit today.”
British
historian Eric Hobsbawm’s opinion on FARC revolutionary potential in 1986 may
still hold. The recently deceased Hobsbawm had visited FARC encampments. He seconded the insurgency’s goal of creating
a “peasant – labor radical party” to exert pressure on urban liberals.
Conditioned by the “wild west” aspects of its environs and by real power being
lodged in cities, the FARC was ill prepared to take on independent political
leadership within an entire society.
Recent social
data are dismal enough to suggest that, indeed, all hands are required. Under
Gini coefficient reckonings, Colombia is the third most unequal country in the
world. Some 54 percent of Colombians live in poverty with higher rates in rural
areas. Half of all Colombians lack “basic necessities,” including 60 percent of
indigenous people and 68 percent of Afro Colombians. United Nations figures
show that, annually, 20,000 Colombian children under five die of malnutrition
and that 12 percent are undernourished.
FARC
negotiators, therefore, require far – removed allies for help in settling
crucial issues. A recently staged
nationwide “Week of Indignation,” for example, featured demonstrations, academic
forums, encampments, and cultural events.
On October 12, its last day, 300,000 protesters demonstrated throughout
the country on behalf of health care, quality education, better housing,
bi-lateral ceasefire, and basic structural reforms.
Contradictions,
however, persist. Peaceful protest triggered armed repression on the eve of
peace negotiations: “Illegal arrests of peasants and stigmatization by military
commanders were flaring up in time for the October 12 date when city and
country people alike march for peace and to reclaim social, economic, and
environmental rights for the excluded.” News reports on the October 12
outpouring highlighted multiple arrests and photos of bloodied demonstrators.
Not least among
factors leading to potential ambiguities contained within any accord is U. S.
government maneuvering. Relying upon cold war strategies and ownership
inclinations over an entire continent, that government saddled Colombia with
military and intelligence aid directed in large measure at beating up on the
FARC. In 1964, for example, the United States contributed helicopters, military
advisers, and $17 million toward “Operation Marquetalia,” an attempt to destroy
a hundred or so armed peasants who then quickly established themselves as the
FARC.
W. T. Whitney
Jr. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.
