Colombia: The Real FARC-EP Inside & Out
Posted by Mike E on July 29, 2010
We have not had enough discussion about the political forces and the ongoing war in Colombia. Nicholas submitted the following piece to Kasama — and we post it to stimulate that discussion. Presenting it here is not an endorsement of its views, but an acknowlegement of its substance and the importance of this whole experience.
By Nicholas DeFilippis
In the jungles of Colombia, hidden from the eyes of the first world, the class struggle rages on a scale unknown to many 21st Century political activists. It is a struggle of the disenfranchised and downtrodden against the ruling elites of their native land and the United States. I’m talking, of course, about the old, hardened, and ongoing guerrilla struggle of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army, or FARC-EP (sometimes they’re simply called FARC).
Formed on May 27, 1964, the FARC-EP succeeded the rural self-defense groups originally formed by the Colombian Communist Party (PCC) to protect peasant communities from attacks by liberal and conservative government forces. Since then, the USA has backed military operations against the communist forces and continues to do so today (Brittain, 8). The mainstream media attacks on the FARC-EP are well known. We have all heard the stories about how they are a “narco-terrorist” organization void of any political and ideological content. In recent years we have even heard that the guerrillas are on the verge of defeat. We must wonder, as any informed citizen should, if these claims are true. Starting with the accusations of being big, bad drug dealers, moving on to accusations of terrorism, popular support, supposed military weakening, and finally politics and culture I will examine whether or not what we have been told about the FARC-EP is true.
Donnie Marshall, a former Administrator of the American Drug Enforcement Agency, and James Milford, a former Deputy Administrator, both said that there is no evidence that the FARC guerrillas are taking part in the drug trade through selling, producing, or smuggling (Brittain, 94). Marshall himself testified to the US House Committee that no conclusion could be made regarding the claim that the guerrillas take part in the narcotics industry. He also testified that there is no proof that FARC is laundering, smuggling, or trafficking drug money. Former US Ambassador to Colombia Myles Frechette also said that there is no clear evidence of FARC being involved in the drug trade. According to known writer Robin Kirk, both Frechette and Rosso Jose Serrano would say that the tales of FARC being highly involved with narcotics is a lie used by the military in order to get more money from the US for counter-insurgency operations (Brittain, 95).
Former US Special Forces officer Stan Goff said:
“My own personal experience as a military advisor in Colombia in 1992 leads me to conclude that the ‘war on drugs’ is simply a propaganda ploy, a legitimizing story for the American public. We were briefed by Public Affairs Officers that counter-narcotics was a cover story…” (ibid).
Andres Pastrana Arango, former Colombian president and ambassador to the US, said that the state couldn’t find “any evidence that they’re [the FARC] involved directly in drugs.” It has been widely noted that FARC has worked to prevent coca from completely taking over entire rural sectors of the country. They began to work with the United Nations in the 1980’s on projects involving crop substitution, replacing coca, in areas they controlled (ibid).
Klaus Nyholm, former director of the UN International Drug Control Programme in Colombia, said:
“The guerrillas are something different than the traffickers, the local fronts are quite autonomous. But in some areas, they’re not involved at all. And in others, they actively tell farmers not to grow coca” (Brittain, 96).
During the 1990’s and 2000’s the FARC successfully supported the transition from coca to legitimate crops in the mayoralty of Micoahumado in the Morales municipality of the Bolivar department. The guerrillas implemented similar programs in the Casanare department of the central northeast (ibid). FARC-EP independently started a program of replacing illegal crops with normal ones in Caqueta during 2000. This program had the full support of the European Union and United Nations. After several months, the guerrillas held a conference open to the international community and Colombian peasants regarding this program (Brittain, 97).
However, many farmers in FARC territory have to grow illegal crops because it is hard for them to make a living from normal crops and subsistence farming due to the land centralization programs that were carried out by the Colombian state and the neo-liberal foreign trade policies for food that Colombia and the US take part in. Understanding the economic hardships faced by farm workers, FARC allows them to grow coca, but a class-based tax system is used for those involved with coca. FARC has similar tax systems in place for other things such as coffee and oil. Landless and subsistence peasant farmers aren’t taxed, but drug merchants and multi-national corporations (MNC’s) are. The tax money is then forwarded to a local democratic body and used for local schools, health services, and other infrastructure (Brittain, 98-101, 109 also see Dudley, 52). Basically, FARC only taxes coca but doesn’t involve itself in the growing, selling, or transportation of it.
FARC also protected the civilians from aggressive drug traffickers and didn’t allow the use of dangerously addictive coca derivatives (Dudley, 52). Drug traffickers once planned an attack against the FARC’s Casa Verde (headquarters) involving paramilitaries led by British and South African mercenaries, but the attack never happened. As a matter of fact, late FARC leader Jacobo Arenas was afraid drug traffickers were out to assassinate him (Dudley, 57).
Guerrillas don’t get paid and receive three meals a day and medical treatment if they need it, but sometimes even those are scarce. They live in camps in the forest, sleep on wooden planks, bathe in rivers, and fight with diseases. It isn’t a life of luxury, which lead journalist Garry Leech, who once spent time in a FARC camp, to say:
“And if guerrilla leaders like Reyes are little more than the heads of a criminal organization, then they must be considered miserable failures. After all, other Colombian criminals live in luxury. The leader of the former Medellín cocaine cartel, Pablo Escobar, lived lavishly in magnificent mansions, as have many other Colombian drug traffickers over the past thirty years. Paramilitary leaders have also lived well on their vast cattle ranches in northern Colombia, enjoying the riches wrought from their criminal activities” (Leech).
Colombia’s first paramilitary group was formed by drug traffickers (Dudley, 73). The Colombian government would disproportionately target coca areas by exterminating coca in the FARC regions but seldom target areas under AUC (paramilitary) control. Antioquia, an area long under AUC control, saw coca increase by 71 percent, but FARC-controlled Putumayo saw a decrease in the plant by 68 percent between 2002 and 2004 (Brittain, 147).
In the 1980’s, the FARC-EP sought to join the political process and build support and change peacefully after decades of fighting. This came in the form of the political party called the Patriotic Union, or UP going by its Spanish acronym. In less than two years, the UP became a major player in Colombian politics (Dudley, 88). As UP support grew, so did the number of FARC recruits. When this began to happen in areas under the influence of drug lords, their interests conflicted with each other. And so the drug cartels had serious issues with the FARC that they’d take out by killing UP members (Dudley, 98). In 1986, Jaime Pardo Leal, a UP candidate, got more votes than any leftist candidate in the election (Dudley, 91). The number of UP members killed in 1987 is 111. In 1988, it was 276. The real estimates are thought to be much higher (Dudley, 130).
The FARC-EP practices something called “retention,” but the media calls this kidnapping. What FARC does is study an individual’s political activity and class background to decide if this person is worth capturing. FARC most often retains prominent right-wing ideologues, military personnel, and rich politicians. These people are held as prisoners of war until a humane exchange is worked out or a fee is paid (Brittain, 118-9). Retention is also aimed at multi-national corporations because some small merchants support FARC, but MNC’s pay paramilitaries to attack and scare off small businesses in order to hold a monopoly (Brittain, 264). FARC arresting politicians, in the author’s opinion, is no different than when the British arrested Rudolf Hess. Politicians work within the Colombian state to make it better, including in its attacks on FARC and the poor. It’s war, it’s necessary to retain such people.
As far as abuse of prisoners goes, FARC doesn’t do that. For example, former detainee Ingrid Betancourt was reported to be in good health after leaving the custody of the guerrillas. She was even in good mental health. If she was abused, then she wouldn’t have talked about writing a play about her detention only one day after being released. Any talk from her about abuse is propaganda from the mouth of a bourgeois princess. In fact, 80 percent of attributable atrocities, such as extrajudicial executions, were committed by government forces (Whitney). In 1980, Amnesty International said that the Colombian state had over 33 torture centers (Dudley, 25).
Out of all abuses against non-combatants from 1993-2007, abuses from all guerrilla groups in Colombia combined (not just the FARC) don’t even reach 40% at any time. In 2007, guerrillas committed less than 10% of the violations. This information comes from a chart in the book by James Brittain that is being used as one of the sources. He gets the information from many Colombian sources such as the Colombian Coalition Against Torture (Brittain, 133).
Often the government and media carry out attacks and blame them on the FARC. In 1998, Maria O’Grady once wrote a news article about how the FARC-EP had booby trapped a truck to explode and kill state forces, but it went off early and killed civilians. Luis Alberto Galvis Mujica, a survivor and witness from said attack, wrote a letter to her and the Wall Street Journal saying he saw the attack being carried out by state and paramilitary forces, not the FARC-EP. In another incident, a bomb went off in Bogota and killed one civilian and 26 soldiers. It was immediately blamed on the FARC, but then an army commander came out and said the army had planted the bombs (Brittain, 172-3). Unlike the guerrillas, the government encourages the killing of civilians. The Uribe administration would encourage the military to kill civilians without strong family connections, such as drug addicts and homeless people, then dress the dead in guerrilla uniforms to create fake military victories (Brittain, 244).
It’s important to keep in mind that during any war, both reactionary and revolutionary forces will make mistakes and civilians will get caught in the crossfire and sometimes innocent people will suffer. This can’t be helped, only minimized. The important thing to keep in mind is that things will be significantly better in Colombia after the revolutionary victory. If we on the revolutionary left stop supporting groups and individuals because of a few bad things they did, without even looking at their reasoning and the situation, then we will run out of allies and become isolated and weak politically.
Despite it’s mistakes, the FARC has tons of support. During the peace negotiations of 1998-2002, tens of thousands of peasants, small and medium producers, Afro-Colombians, and indigenous Colombians migrated to FARC-EP territory, especially San Vicente del Caguan. Before the negotiations, that region only had 100,000 residents, but after the negotiations ended it was discovered that roughly 740,000 people had migrated to that part of FARC-EP territory. Known journalist Gary Leech said that many peasants like living in rebel territory because it provides security and the chance to build new, community-based projects (Brittain, 31).
Meredith Aby, an American who traveled through Colombia, had this to say about life in FARC territory:
“At FARC checkpoints, I was welcomed and never threatened. …average Colombian people openly welcome the FARC fighters. Talking politics with campesinos and FARC soldiers, I experienced freedom of speech at a level I don’t even feel in my own country. In addition, campesinos reported that they felt safer in rebel-held territory” (Brittain, 32).
A 43-year old campesino from Caqueta once told James J. Brittain, an author who spent time in FARC-EP territory, that, “The guerrillas are a necessity. The insurgency lives with the people and has allowed the community to sustain its way of life” (Brittain, 33).
A banana worker in Uraba once told the Washington Post, “In meeting with us, the FARC presents itself cordially, discusses things, and is willing to compromise” (Dudley, 81).
Although there was a major anti-FARC protest in 2008, it first began organizing on the internet. However, less than 5% of Colombians have internet access. The protest was also promoted by pro-government media. Bosses pressured their employees to take part, and schools did the same with students. At the head of the marching protest were leaders of paramilitary death-squads and right-wing politicians. This protest was mostly urban-based as well. We must call into question how many people actually wanted to take part, and also how representative the protesters are of Colombian society as a whole. Clearly this was a protest of middle and upper class people and not representative of all Colombians, and anyone who has taken a statistics class will agree (Brittain, 38).
Polls are also taken to see how many Colombians support the state. However, these polls are mostly done by phone via landline. Most Colombians don’t have landlines because they are either too poor or can’t use them due to geographical reasons. Another problem with these polls is that almost all participants called are from specific sections of the major cities. Finally, interviewees can be easily located if someone traced the call through the landline. So the polls aren’t truly anonymous and may intimidate many (Brittain, 41). Therefore, they don’t represent all of Colombian. They don’t represent the poor in the urban areas and especially not in the rural areas.
Unlike government psywar statistics, the FARC-EP is truly representative of the masses. This is proven by the diversity of those that make up the FARC guerrillas. 65 percent of its members are from the countryside (of which 13 percent are from indigenous groups) and 35 percent is from urban areas. 50 percent of FARC-EP members are women, and anywhere from 30 to 55 percent of the women are comandantes. Subsistence peasants and small producers make up the majority of these guerrillas, but FARC-EP has grown to include people from the urban workforce, indigenous people, Afro-Colombians, intellectuals, doctors, lawyers, priests, teachers, and unionists (Brittain, 28).
FARC-EP recruitment expanded in the mid to late 2000’s. For every 100 subversives that were killed or deserted, the guerrillas were able to recruit 84 new combatants from 2002-2007. The number of guerrillas in Colombia is over 42,500, and FARC-EP makes up the vast majority of that number. In the mid 2000s, FARC-EP had between 40,000 and 50,000 soldiers according to research carried out by scholarly author James J. Brittain. Ecuadorian intelligence has stated that insurgent encampments doubled by 2008. Alan Jara, former governor of Meta, said in 2009 that the FARC rebels’ ability to obtain immediate material solidarity from local populations hasn’t been weakened. The state claims the FARC-EP has been severely weakened due to its decrease in guerrilla fronts, but in reality the FARC has only reconsolidated and relocated its members from weaker fronts into stronger ones in order to better maintain its positions. Other “proof” of the demise of the FARC is the fact that some of its top leaders have been killed (Raul Reyes, for example). However, the majority of these leaders were members of the political wing of the rebels. The military wing is still intact (Brittain, 19-21). As a matter of fact, the Colombian government manipulates statistics regarding guerrillas in order to make Colombia seem safer in order to encourage foreign investment and discourage support for the rebels, and former director of Colombia’s National Administrative Department of Statistics, Cesar Caballero, even said so himself (Brittain, 24).
The mid-2000’s saw the FARC increase in strength to the point that is was able to launch assaults on Bogota (the capital of Colombia) through support networks. In 2008, General Oscar Naranjo and Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said that very little had changed since the latest operations against FARC and that the guerrillas still had the ability to target the capital. FARC had an estimated 12,000 members in urban areas around the year 2005 (Brittain, 29). In 2008, FARC was able to destabilize the most important oil infrastructure facility in Colombia, destroy major oil and military transportation routes, and eliminate an entire battalion of the Colombian military, and that is just one example (Brittain, 23).
While in a FARC-EP camp, Garry Leech discovered how the guerrillas put their philosophy of equality into practice. He was told that everyone in the camp must take turns cooking, both men and women. He noted how the male guerrillas would treat their female counterparts with respect and had a lack of machismo. The gender equality in the camp was so deep that the men and women trusted each other enough to bathe together. Leech also witnessed a mock beauty pageant while in the camp, which he found to be very funny and described it as “a parody on the sexist nature of beauty pageants and the objectification of the female body” (Leech).
“Culture occupies a very large space and plays an important role in the life of each guerrillero in the FARC-EP,” late rebel leader Jacobo Arenas once said. Leech stated that guerrillas would read poetry inspired by revolutionary Marxist beliefs during the camp “cultural hour” (Leech). The cultural hours are also open to the public so that all may learn about the revolutionary struggle (Brittain, 200).
The FARC also has a solidarity and support structure that involves the Clandestine Colombian Communist Party and Bolivarian Cells which carry out underground political work for the FARC-EP in urban areas (Brittain, 35).
In communities across Colombia, FARC-EP has also set up communalized judicial bodies. FARC has called for the transformation of the legal apparatus and stated that “inequalities between humans” must be eradicated if crime is to stop (Brittain, 215). FARC-EP also builds schools and provides medical services to poor people in their territory (Brittain, 103).
If we are to believe that the FARC-EP has lost all of its political ambitions and has been corrupted by the drug trade, then one must wonder why they would feel the need to take care of the people, promote revolutionary culture, and practice gender equality. Nor would they pay so much attention to various crops and international organizations. This essay has shown that government claims about FARC-EP and its strength are quite shady, and that the rebels must be stronger than is claimed. With the continued and long-standing support of the working masses, guided by revolutionary Marxist ideology, the FARC-EP will eventually illuminate the path towards revolutionary society in 21st Century Latin America.
Works Cited:
Brittain, James. Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia: The Origin and Direction of the FARC-EP. London: Pluto Press, 2010. Print.
Dudley, Steven. Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print.
Leech, Garry. “Life in a FARC Camp.” Dissident Voice (2007): n. pag. Web. 15 Jul 2010. <http://dissidentvoice.org/2007/09/life-in-a-farc-camp/>.
Whitney, Mike. “A Few Words from the FARC.” Information Clearing House (2008): n. pag. Web. 15 Jul 2010. <http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20256.htm>.
Walter Lippmann said
The FARC has been demonized in the international media, and KASAMA has provided a detailed and supportive alternative to what most people have heard about their struggle.
After more than half a century (really, the armed struggle in Colombia goes back to the reaction there to the assassination of Eliecer Gaitan in 1948). Some facts should be clear to all.
First, the Colombian government has not been able to defeat the FARC or the ELN militarily.
Second, the FARC and the ELN have also not been able to defeat the government of Colombia militarily.
Something needs to be done to change this political equation to one which can promote a more just and less militarized society in Colombia. Sitting here in the comfort of Los Angeles, California, with my laptop computer and DSL connection to the Internet, I’m not about to advise revolutionaries or anyone else in Colombia as to what they should do.
However, I do think that the advice given to the FARC by Fidel Castro, that they should immediately and unconditionally release their hostages, BUT NOT DISARM, should be worth considering seriously.
Fidel has some experience in these matters, and has written an entire book on the topic, PEACE IN COLOMBIA. Alas, it still hasn’t been translated into English. Por ahora (for now).
Thanks to your posting of this article, I ordered James J. Brittain’s book on the FARC and look forward to reading it.
Previously I wrote a long comment and posted it here to KASAMA, but no one took up the political points which I raised there. Perhaps someone else will now?
Not to repeat what I wrote previously, here it is:
http://kasamaproject.org/2010/04/07/colombias-farc-ep-a-peoples-army/#comment-22482
Nicholas DeFilippis said
Thank you Mike E. and Kasama for publishing my essay. I noticed in the second paragraph from the bottom that the html is screwed up, so a normal paragraph looks like a big quotation. But such things happen. Thanks again.
[[moderator note: correction made.]]
Otto said
I’ve followed the FARC as a movement since the 1980s. Regardless of their ideology, they, the ELN and most of the other fragments of leftist organizations, both legal and illegal are in a tight spot, with a government that is the most pro-US anti-left and anti-progressive in South America to this day. Their president Álvaro Uribe Vélez is completely out of step with the other leaders in the region.
It is my opinion that annihilation is the only alternative the leftist parties have if they don’t fight the present government, militarily.
OF course the US lies about the FARK. They lie about the drug issues as well. I can tell they are lying when their lips move.
Greg McDonald said
I’m glad Walter wrote in. I agree with his assessment, and think this is an important article which should be circulated and read widely.
worker antagonism said
in what substantive sense is the FARC guided by “revolutionary Marxist ideology”?
they seem to be part of the national populist Latin American Left which can hardly be characterized as revolutionary, look at Morales and Chavez and their pro-imperialist policies.
of course US intervention and counter-insurgency should be opposed, but that hardly entails glorifying every vaguely leftist political force which comes into conflict with US imperialism.
in a broader sense i think this is emblematic of a basic dispute over what “revolutionary socialism” even means, however even if you restrict your aspirations to a guaranteed job and social services, states like Cuba and Venezuela fail to deliver on that as well.
( ) said
Worker Antagonism your attitude is defeatist. A movement becomes revolutionary when all other methods of struggle have been exhausted. The workers of a given nation can’t in practice be convinced of the necessity of revolution until they have experienced the futility of reformism with their own eyes. Having a nation lean towards the left allows it to build up left-leaning organizations without repression and prepare for another assault. Also, how is a left-leaning South American anti-imperialist front not conductive towards the struggle of the workers? Is it better to stay ideologically ‘pure’ and have uncle Sam crush your struggle in the cradle? How does Cuba fail to deliver on social services, especially compared with other nations in its vicinity? How can you berate Venezuela on failing to deliver the fruits of socialism when the battle has barely begun?
worker antagonism said
“The workers of a given nation can’t in practice be convinced of the necessity of revolution until they have experienced the futility of reformism with their own eyes. Having a nation lean towards the left allows it to build up left-leaning organizations without repression and prepare for another assault.”
I would agree to an extent that observation of the futility of reformism in practice can provide a radicalizing impetus, however that tends to occur only when a uncompromisingly revolutionary vanguard element is prepared to take advantage of such a situation and employ it as a “teaching moment” at the same time as presenting a practical alternative, if revolutionary elements renounce their responsibilities in order to avoid being “divisive”, whether in the context of “Obamamania” or the Chavista “revolution”, the long term result will tend not to be masses convinced of the “necessity of revolution” but the growth of cynicism and apathy.
as for Cuba there are many things i could say, but first of all read this:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iR1P8M_Iz3bJQfrVSH8Q-FPSiovAD9H1M9180
“Without people feeling the need to work to make a living, sheltered by state regulations that are excessively paternalistic and irrational, we will never stimulate a love for work,”, the words of a anti-proletarian slave driver, if ever there was one, perhaps the Cuban people would feel more “love for work” if they had real control over the direction of their own society…
incidentally i can guarantee that autonomous left groups attempting to organize workers in Cuba have faced and will face repression, maybe not as bloody as in Mexico or Colombia but repression none the less.
“Also, how is a left-leaning South American anti-imperialist front not conductive towards the struggle of the workers?”
I think careful examination will show the “South American anti-imperialist front” is an ideological phantasm and not a reality, the regimes in Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia have all engaged in violent anti-popular repression while aligning themselves to a greater or lesser degree with Chinese and Russian imperialism, maybe “South American front of inter-imperialist competition” would be a more appropriate moniker…
( ) said
I agree with all your points.
Walter Lippmann said
Chinese and Russian IMPERIALISM?
Puhleeze, gimme a break. There are no Chinese soldiers outside of Chinese national territory. Then WORKER ANTAGONISM (his own self-description) writes of “look at Morales and Chavez and their pro-imperialist policies,” but he doesn’t tell is what these supposedly “pro-imperialist” policies might possibly be.
Cuba is a blockaded country. The United States budgets tens of MILLIONS of dollars in an attempt to destabilize Cuba from within. If you have any doubts about this, check the very latest US request for proposals for groups and to go to Cuba for such activities: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/p/127829.htm
If Cuba is firm in dealing with such activites, can they be blamed?
worker antagonism said
“Chinese and Russian IMPERIALISM?”
are you seriously arguing an imperialist policy cannot be carried out through capital export, development aid,trade agreements, propaganda initiatives, arms sales and so on?
the primary reason the United states deploys so many troops everywhere is because its global hegemonic role is increasingly out of balance with its shrinking economic significance, if we follow this argument to its conclusion then the cold war FRG and Japan were not imperialist countries.
““look at Morales and Chavez and their pro-imperialist policies,” but he doesn’t tell is what these supposedly “pro-imperialist” policies might possibly be.”
perhaps consistently collaborating with transnational capital, do nothing to move away from dependency on the world market, and adapting a violently repressive posture towards autonomous popular movements fits the bill.
“Cuba is a blockaded country. The United States budgets tens of MILLIONS of dollars in an attempt to destabilize Cuba from within. If you have any doubts about this, check the very latest US request for proposals for groups and to go to Cuba for such activities”
I know the US pays right wing propagandists to mouth off about Cuba, that is however besides the point.
there is US imperialism, there is the Cuban Bureaucrat bourgeoisie, but there are also the exploited people of Cuba who are getting left out of the “either/or” way you are framing the question.
Walter Lippmann said
“WORKER ANTAGONISM” (what a great pen-name of anonymity” writes:
the Cuban Bureaucrat bourgeoisie,
but there are also the exploited
people of Cuba who are getting
left out of the “either/or” way
you are framing the question.
So I guess you favor a proletarian revolution in Cuba to overthrow what you call the “bureaucrat bourgeoise”?
I remember this kind of thinking, it’s “left in form, right in essence”.
Washington has been working overtime for decades to overthrow the Cuban government and the revolution and social system it defends. Now a voice is raised here at Kasama in tandem with that. Left in form, right in essence.
worker antagonism said
““WORKER ANTAGONISM” (what a great pen-name of anonymity” writes:”
I am a little confused by your distaste for my pen name.
“I remember this kind of thinking, it’s “left in form, right in essence”.
Washington has been working overtime for decades to overthrow the Cuban government and the revolution and social system it defends. Now a voice is raised here at Kasama in tandem with that. Left in form, right in essence.”
Washington has also been working for years against the Islamic Republic of Iran and against right wing militant Sunni fundamentalism, the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend.
How is a call for proletarian power in Cuba, acting in tandem with US interest in imposing a new regime which would more swiftly implement the sort of vicious restructuring measures the current government is already considering?
Walter Lippmann said
Just as Cuba should be defended against Washington’s efforts to overthrow it and restore capitalism, so likewise should Iran be defended against Washington’s efforts to overthrow the Islamic republic and bring back a regime such as that of the Shah.
You don’t have to like Ahmadinejad to know which side seriously revolutionary people must be when there is a real struggle going on.
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Your supposed call for “proletarian power” in Cuba is completely in tandem with Washington, which also wants to overthrow the Cuban government. Cuba and its government have any number of faults and problems, but they are blockaded as no other country in history has ever been, for half a century.
Evidently, WORKER ANTAGONISM wants to overthrow the Cuban government just like Washington does, only WA proposes it be done by the “proletariat”, but the main thing is to overthrow the Cuban government.
Walter Lippmann said
Regarding Iran and the struggle going on right now today, serious people should read the essays of Fidel Castro published since the first of June of this year, 2010. They are available here:
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/reflexiones.html
Maz said
Cuba is not blockaded. The United States has a trade embargo with Cuba, which is not the same thing. Gaza, on the other hand, is blockaded. This is a fequent claim by pro-Cuba activists and is somewhat dishonest. While I agree that the embargo is cruel, reactionary and wrong, I still think it’s important to be clear with the facts.
Walter Lippmann said
Cuba IS blockaded. It is the only country on the entire planet on which an enemy nation which is publicly committed (Helms-Burton, Torricelli) to the overthrow of the Cuban system
Maz said
Um, no, it is not. A blockade is more than refusal to trade or a public commitment to see regime change: it is the use of force to prevent goods from entering into a designated area. Cuba trades with plenty of countries around the world, including most of the US’s allies. The US does not make a habit of torpedoing these commercial ships going to and from Cuba.
Tell No Lies said
On February 24, 1965, following travels to the Soviet Union and China, Ché Guevara spoke at the Second Economic Seminar of the Afro-Asian Conference in Algeria. In the speech he sharply criticized the socialist countries and suggested that their trade policies towards Cuba made them “accomplices of imperialist exploitation.” The speech infuriated Soviet leaders and shortly afterward Ché disappeared from public view. The text of the speech was only recently made available.
“Left in form, right in essence”?
Tell No Lies said
The full text of the Guevara speech is here:
http://marxists.org/archive/guevara/1965/02/24.htm
Tom Burke said
This essay is helpful in understanding the FARC-EP. The author references James Brittain’s book which is the best thing one can read in English. James Brittain’s book is a problem for the U.S. imperialists and the Colombian oligarchy.
The Dudley book is written by a supposed pacifist who knowingly or unknowingly supports the CIA view of Colombia. I read it a few years ago with high hopes that it would explain the history of the Patriotic Union, but it does the opposite. The author’s analysis is confusing and distorts reality by blaming everything on the FARC, instead of blaming the Colombian oligarchy and the U.S. imperialists for murdering the UP. 4000, some say 5000 leaders and members of the Patriotic Union were murdered by the Colombian military for their attempt to bring peace, justice, and equality to society through electoral means. Colombian revolutionary Ricardo Palmera, now a Supermax prisoner of the U.S. Empire joined the FARC-EP after the UP was obliterated.
Dudley’s claim is that if the FARC had only laid down their weapons, then the UP would have been allowed to change society through legal political processes. One only has to look at Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela to understand that U.S. imperialism will never take a “let it take its course” approach to revolution in other countries. The Venezuelan Bolivarian revolution is still in its bourgeois democratic stage, but U.S. imperialism tried to strangle it in its crib through kidnapping, violence, and murder. The Venezuelan socialist revolution is yet to come, but the U.S. is already intervening to prevent it.
I have a question about one sentence in the article? Does it need correction or am I reading it wrong? It says “For every 100 subversives that were killed or deserted, the guerrillas were able to recruit 84 new combatants from 2002-2007.”
Last point. I think the views of Castro are interesting on many topics, but he does not understand the people’s war strategy of the FARC, informed more by Vietnam and China in terms of strategy than by Cuba. The FARC could have seized power militarily around 1998, but thought it better to break back down into smaller formations so as to work more on the political preparation for the seizure of power.
Walter Lippmann said
TOM BURKE writes:
I think the views of Castro are interesting on many topics, but he does not understand the people’s war strategy of the FARC, informed more by Vietnam and China in terms of strategy than by Cuba. The FARC could have seized power militarily around 1998, but thought it better to break back down into smaller formations so as to work more on the political preparation for the seizure of power.
====================================
Fidel doesn’t understand the FARC? Really? He wrote a whole book about it just two years ago. It’s not yet out in English and it’s unclear when it will come out, but he has studied the subject with considerable care including interviewing various leaders of the FARC and ELN. With the resources available to him, I believe we can trust – not in his judgement, that’s a political matter – but that he has done his home work.
You say Fidel doesn’t understand, but you provide not one single example of how it is he doesn’t understand.
The idea that the FARC “could have militarily siezed power around 1998″ is new information, which I had not heard before reading it here in August 2010. Any documentation of that assertion?
The political situation in the two countries is radically different. Cuba’s armed struggle lasted a relatively short time: two years, while Colombia’s has been going on since 1948. Colombia’s population is four times larger than Cuba’s.
While Fidel recommends that the FARC release all of their hostages unconditionally, he demonstratively does NOT call on the FARC to put down their weapons. After all, when supporters of the FARC did put down their weapons and tried to function legally, they were massacred (Patriotic Union.)
Cuba’s media continues to follow developments in Colombia. Cuba supports the struggle against the seven US bases which the Uribe government has permitted to enter into Colombia. Cuba has publicized calls by the FARC to negotiate with the Colombian government. Here’s an item which appeared in Granma four days ago:
FARC leader asks Santos to open a dialogue process
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs3067.html
Tell No Lies said
Tom,
I have a couple questions.
The first is on what basis do you claim that “the FARC could have seized power militarily around 1998″? Is this a claim that they make? And if so is there any other reason to believe it to be the case?
The second concerns the tactic of kidnapping as a means of raising money and what the effect of that is on building the broadest base of popular support for an eventual seizure of power. My perception is that this is used very effectively to drive a wedge between them and many Colombians and I wonder if they offer any sort of public rational for the practice beyond the charges against the people they kidnap.
Otto said
AS for why the FARC is kidnapping people?/ I don’t know where Tell No Lie lives, but we in the US do not get to choose how political a military struggle takes place in someone els’s country. No Colombian revolutionary has come here to tell those of us at Kasama how to run a revolutionary movement in the US. It is real easy to critisize others from the comfort of our easy chairs, after a hard days work and a drive home to the sub-burbs. I realize I’m stereo typing the US workers, but at the same time, it is stereotyping the people of Colombia to tell them how to run their revolution.
Walter Lippmann said
Fidel Castro’s differences with the FARC (excerpt):
Raúl Reyes and Manuel Marulanda are no longer alive. They died in the struggle. One, in a direct attack using new technology developed by the Yankees; the other from natural causes.
I disagreed with the head of the FARC over the pace he assigned to the revolutionary process in Colombia. Over his idea of excessively prolonged war. Over his conception of first creating an army of more than 30,000 men; from my point of view this was neither correct nor economically feasible as the means to defeat enemy ground forces in an irregular war. He did extraordinary things with guerrilla units that, under his personal direction, penetrated deep into enemy territory. When someone failed to complete a similar mission, he was always ready to show it was possible. He once spent two years traveling over half of Colombia with a unit of 40 men.
The FARC, because of its operational conceptions, never surrounded or forced the surrender of a full battalion backed by artillery, armored units and air power. This is an experience we did have, thus defeating even larger units of elite troops. This is not what happened with the FARC, despite the tremendous quality of its fighters.
My opposition to holding prisoners of war, to applying policies that humiliate them or subject them to extremely harsh jungle conditions, is well known. With these policies troops will never lay down their arms, even if the battle is lost. Nor was I in agreement with capturing and holding civilians who have nothing to do with the war. I must add that prisoners and hostages make maneuvering more difficult for the combatants. I admire, however, the revolutionary firmness that Marulanda showed and his willingness to fight to the last drop of blood.
The idea of surrendering never passed through the minds of any of us in the guerrilla struggle in our country. That is why I said in one of my Reflections that truly revolutionary fighters should never lay down their arms. That is what I thought 55 years ago. That is what I think today.
I invested more than 400 hours of intense labor in this effort. I revised it carefully following the two hurricanes that hit Cuba with such extreme violence. I am satisfied having done it. I learned much. I have kept my promise.
Fidel Castro Ruz
16 September 2008
http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7302/730250.html
Tell No Lies said
I’m not telling the FARC how to do anything. I’m not even criticizing them, though I understand how any question about kidnapping might seem like a criticism. I’m asking an honest question. Actually two. What are the effects of kidnapping on popular support? And have they presented in any form a political rationale for the tactic?
The answers “I don’t know” and “no” would not upset me.
My working presumption, of course, is that kidnapping is bad for popular support. But maybe its not. Maybe all the victims are so hated by the masses that it doesn’t really hurt the FARC. Or maybe the kidnappings only raise the anxieties of members of the upper classes and even if they aren’t popular, the effect on their propspective supporters in the larger context of war is minimal.
My knowledge of the history of the armed movement in Mexico suggests to me that in general kidnapping is counter-productive, but I know that there have been some kidnappings/hostage takings that have worked to the advantage of the revolutionary movement. The most famous probably being the Sandinista’s capture of the Nicaraguan Congress in 1978. I think these are exceptional cases though and that generally people regard kidnapping badly.
I presume there is some sort of political rationale for the kidnappings, whether stated explicitly or not, and I’d like to hear what it is. The FARC is not some new rinky-dink outfit making careless mistakes in the course of finding their way. I’m genuinely interested in the calculus or reasoning behind a tactic that would seem likely to damage their moral standing in the eyes of the people.
Finally, while I don’t presume to know how revs in Colombia should organize themselves, I’m all ears if they or anybody else have suggestions for us in the US, because we ain’t doing so hot.
Tell No Lies said
These have to be questions that the FARC-EP get from Colombians and they have to be questions that people doing solidarity work with them get as well. They are questions that sincere people who are interested in supporting a revolutionary struggle would want to know the answers to. Or maybe I’ll just read Fidel’s book to find out.
Walter Lippmann said
Spanish-speakers who would like to read Fidel Castro’s book LA PAZ EN COLOMBIA can download the entire book for free from many websites, among them
the CUBADEBATE site on the island:
http://www.cubadebate.cu/reflexiones-fidel/2008/11/13/la-paz-en-colombia/
Tell No Lies said
Walter,
Until I clicked on your name and checked out your website, I had assumed (as I’m sure others have as well) that you were writing under a very wryly conceived pseudonym. Thats quite a cross to bear. You do it with great aplomb.
Walter Lippmann said
Thanks for your kind words.
Well, I’ve been asked about the name since before I knew what it meant. Nowadays asking that question tells me that the person asking knows something about the history of journalism in this country since the other Walter Lippmann died in 1974 and is today more or less forgotten outside of a few specialized circles. Chomsky got the concept of “manufacturing consent” from the other Walter Lippmann.
In order to help answer the question, and to avoid having to answer it over and over again, I’ve created a separate web-page to answer inquiries:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/about-the-other-wl.html
Oh, and since I do put my photo on my website, people who compare images can see there’s a noticeable difference. I don’t wear suits and ties, either…I see I’m the only one on these lists who posts my photo. Perhaps I
My personal background is, I sense, quite different from many others participating in these discussions. I belonged to the US Socialist Workers Party and its youth group, the Young Socialist Alliance, from 1962 to 1983, and a small offshoot from 1983 to 1988l I’ve been unaffilated since then. Work on Cuba is my principal arena of activity, and above all since the start of the CubaNews list ten years ago.
Readers interested in Cuba and things related to Cuba, including Colombia are welcome to check out my website and the CubaNews Yahoo news group.
Here’s a short note I wrote and posted earlier today. There are others:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/116565
I appreciate being able to participate in Kasama’s discussions, which have opened new topics which I try to understand and think about. When I was twenty and thirty, I thought I had all the answers. Nowadays I don’t even have all of the questions.
Thanks again for your kind note.
Walter Lippmann
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
Otto said
Maybe I was hasty in my conclusion that Tell No Lies was just another nay sayer who are quick to criticize these movements that may not have the best strategies, but have endured years of warfare to defend themselves. There is nothing wrong with asking them questions. They have a site. At http://www.farcejercitodelpueblo.org/ and that may answer your questions better than I can.
Green Red said
One more thing. I am so proud of their having so many women commandantes and, giving lessons to men to cook, etc. and, people being treated equally.
And hopefully, occasional mistakes don’t happen like, mistakenly killing a pro indegenous activists from the US, etc. that seemed to have happened in the past.
But who dare to deny lots of people support them and, union activists who are not even directly connected with FARC/EC or ELN get killed for their basic labor activities.
Tell No Lies said
Walter,
Thanks. Out of my perverse curiousity about such thing, what was the “small offshoot” of the SWP that you were a part of?
I actually think there are people who participate on Kasama from a lot of different radical histories as well as none at all. While Mike and some others came out of the RCP or, actually more commonly, out of its periphery, there are definitely “representatives” of many other groups and trends here — other Trotskyist and Maoist groups, anarchists and autonomists, radical ecologists and feminists, and I presume the lurker readership is somewhat more diverse than the regular posters.
My history, as I’ve noted elsewhere, is in the anarchist movement of the 1980s and 90s.
I know for certain that current members of both FRSO’s, WWP, and Solidarity post here with some regularity, and that fomer members of Love and Rage and now the SWP do. I’d be very interested in knowing what other groups (or former groups) are represented in these discussions by members or former members.
Walter Lippmann said
Following my involuntary departure from the Socialist Workers Party (doesn’t that sound so much nicer than “expulsion”?), I was a founding member of Socialist Action, the San Francisco grouping led then by Jeff Mackler and Nat Weinstein.
Today SA is noted for its role in building anti-war coalitions, but also, alas, for campaigning against Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, and it strident hostility toward the Iranian government.
After one meeting I left SA when it became obvious that the leaders of Socialist Action had no intention of learning anything from our experience in the SWP. To Socialist Action, all the world’s political problems had been solved when Trotsky wrote the Transitional Program in 1938. All that was needed after that was to apply the Transitional Program to all struggles everywhere. To them, the Russian Revolution of 1917 was and remains a model, indeed THE model, against which all subsequent revolutions are to be judged, and found wanting.
For the next five years I belonged to the Fourth Internationalist Tendency, led by Frank Lovell and George Breitman. It’s distinguishing feature was an attempt to reform the Socialist Workers Party, which had gravitated away from Trotskyism, or so we thought.
Eventually I came to believe that reforming the SWP was not a practical possibility. My political thinking had by then evolved. I no longer felt that Trotskyism was a useful framework for political activity. You cannot build a new revolutionary movement on the basis of opposition to the degeneration of a revolution (the Russian of 1919), which had long since ceased to exist.
Beyond that, I’ve observed that Trotskyist groupings in general are relentlessly hostile to the Cuban Revolution, and, especially, to its leadership (some express this in a more strident manner, like the Spartacists, others in a more indirect manner, like the International Marxist Tendency. Given what I perceive as the Cuban leadership’s continued political vitality, I’ve chosen to focus my political work on trying to understand, and to solidarize, first of all, with Cuba.
The idea of building a new revolutionary party or movement or whatever is a good one, but I’m simply prioritizing the work on Cuba. I don’t sneer at what others do or attempt to do. I judge existing groupings by their attitudes toward Cuba, and share materials from a broad cross section of left and other sources at part of my work regarding Cuba.
Anyone here who would like to learn a bit more about my experience in the SWP, and even more my involuntary departure from it, you can read the speech at my five-and-a-half hour political trial in Los Angeles in 1983:
Walter Lippmann’s trial speech:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/trial.html
Thanks to those who ask questions and read these postings. I hope and trust they are of interest to some of the readership here at Kasama.
NOTE TO TOM BURKE:
Surely I’m not the only one who wonders where the idea came from that the FARC could have won militarily over a decade ago, but chose not to do so for POLITICAL REASONS? That really seems a bit fanciful, to put it mildly.
Readers here would probably like to know more about that. For example, if they had taken power then, the US would not be able to be building seven new military bases in Colombia.
Fidel called them seven daggers:
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2009/ing/f050809i.html
Walter Lippmann said
Readers of this discussion thread would, I’m sure, like to know what evidence TOM BURKE or anyone else who agrees that the FARC could have taken power in 1998 but decided not to do so for POLITICAL REASONS might have. Tom’s comment came as a complete surprise to me when he raised it here.
However, despite being asked twice, he hasn’t responded. I hope that he will respond.
Thanks,
Walter Lippmann
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
Tell No Lies said
Walter,
I don’t know if Tom checks this site regularly, so I wouldn’t assume he is deliberately ignoring you ar anybody.
I’d be interested in what you mean by the “continued political vitality of the Cuban leadership.” I have my criticisms of the course of the Cuban Revolution, but this is something I’ve percieved as well. There seems to be a very different relationship with the project of socialism than say in Viet Nam or the DPRK, though I wonder to what degree that perception is just a reflection of geographical and cultural distance. In any event, I’d like to hear your thoughts.
Walter Lippmann said
Hopefully someone will contact Tom Burke and ask him to take up these questions. He raised the idea that the FARC could have taken over but chose not to do so.
The continued vitality of Cuba’s revolutionary leadership, in my view, is that they don’t stick to old formulas repeated by rote, and expect that those who look to them for leadership, at home or elsewhere, just on the basis of their (well-earned) past political authority.
Many expected Cuba to collapse when the USSR imploded, since the island was so heavily dependent on it for 85% of its foreign trade. But the Cubans made a surprising decision: to allow the population to possess hard foreign currencies, principally the dollar, to encourage joint ventures with foreign private companies, to upgrade tourism, and the country survived.
On November 17, 2005, Fidel gave an extraordinary five-hour speech at the University of Havana. One of the most striking points were these two paragraphs:
Here is a conclusion I’ve come to after many years: among all the
errors we may have committed, the greatest of them all was that we
believed that someone really knew something about socialism, or that
someone actually knew how to build socialism. It seemed to be a sure
fact, as well-known as the electrical system conceived by those who
thought they were experts in electrical systems. Whenever they said:
“That’s the formula”, we thought they knew. Just as if someone is a
physician. You are not going to debate anemia, or intestinal
problems, or any other condition with a physician; nobody argues with
the physician. You can think that he is a good doctor or a bad one,
you can follow his advice or not, but you won’t argue with him. Which
of us would argue with a doctor, or a mathematician, or a historian,
or an expert in literature or in any other subject? But we must be
idiots if we think, for example, that economy is an exact and eternal
science and that it existed since the days of Adam and Eve, and I
offer my apologies to the thousands of economists in our country.
All sense of dialectics is lost when someone believes that today’s
economy is identical to the economy 50 or 100 or 150 years ago, or
that it is identical to the one in Lenin’s day or to the time when
Karl Marx lived. Revisionism is a thousand miles away from my mind
and I truly revere Marx, Engels and Lenin.
FULL: http://www.walterlippmann.com/fc-11-17-2005.html
The Russian Revolution was a wonderful thing. I was trained politically
in the Trotskyist movement to see the Russian Revolution of 1917 as the
model for all socialist revolutions. To such people, all subsequent
revolutions had to be judged by comparison with the revolution of 1917.
They invariably found the others wanting in various ways.
I do not believe there is or can be a one-size-fits-all model of how
socialism should come about. That is one lesson confirmed for me by the
success of the Cuban Revolution.
So what are your criticism of the course of the Cuban Revolution?
And if you care to, what’s your political background?
Thanks,
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann said
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is meeting today with Colombian President Santos. Their Foreign Ministers laid the basis for this meeting in a meeting held after Santos’s inauguration in Bogota.
Here are a few excerpts from the longer look at this by the independent but Bolivarian-oriented website Venezuelanalysis, posted yesterday:
August 9, 2010
Chavez to Meet with Santos to Renew Venezuela-Colombia Relations
———————
Potential Peace Accord with Insurgents
Also during his Sunday talk show, Chavez reiterated his call for the armed insurgent groups in Colombia to free all of their hostages and pursue a peace accord with the government. He had previously called for this in 2008.
“The Colombian guerrillas do not have a future by way of arms… moreover, they have become an excuse for the [US] empire to intervene in Colombia and threaten Venezuela from there,” Chavez declared on Sunday. He demanded that the guerrillas show their commitment to a peace accord through “decisive demonstrations, for example, that they liberate all those they have kidnapped.”
Santos also indicated an openness to talk with the insurgents. “To the illegally armed groups… I say to them that my government will be open to any talks that seek the end of violence and the building of a more prosperous, equal and just society,” he said.
These declarations followed a pledge on August 4th by the National Liberation Army, one of the principal Colombian rebel groups, to hold multilateral peace talks. “We are willing to talk with the Venezuelan government and other governments on the continent to explore the pathways that may make peace in Colombia and our America possible,” said a statement published on the internet and signed by the group’s first and second in command.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, more than 20,000 people attended a “peace chain” demonstration convoked by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela in Caracas (PSUV). The activists linked arms in a line across western and central Caracas. They called for a peaceful solution to the Colombian civil war and expressed their rejection of US-Colombian military collaboration, which they said is being used as a form of aggression against Venezuela, motivated by Venezuela’s rejection of US militarism and free trade policies in the region.
FULL:
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5557
Walter Lippmann said
Given the considerable interest in Colombia and the FARC on this blog, there have been some significant developments as recently as today which readers of this discussion may find of interest.
First, there was a big bomb attack in the business district of Bogota. No one has claimed responsibility for it.
Second, Colombian Liberal Party leader Piedad Cordoba, who has been involved in the release of some Colombian hostages, met with Fidel Castro in Havana today. She will meet with him again in a few more days.
Some of the details may be found here:
Car Bomb Shakes Bogota Financial Center:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/116878
Latin America Condemns Bomb Attack in Bogota, Colombia:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/116893
Car Bomb Attack A Pressure on New Colombian Government:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/116896
http://lchirino.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/fidel-castro-and-piedad-cordoba-held-talks-in-havana/
Walter Lippmann said
Castro condemns Uribe’s appointment to flotilla probe panel
(Xinhua)
13:17, August 17, 2010
Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe smiles before casting his vote during legislative elections in Bogota March 14, 2010. (Xinhua/Reuters File Photo)
Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro Monday criticized the appointment of ex-Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to a UN panel probing Israel’s attack on a humanitarian flotilla bound for Gaza in May.
“That decision gave Uribe — accused of war crimes — total impunity, as if a country full of mass graves containing the corpses of murdered people, some with as many as 2,000 victims, and seven Yankee military bases, plus the rest of the Colombian military bases at its service, had nothing to do with terrorism and genocide,” Castro said in his article entitled “The UN, Impunity and War,” published Monday by official media.
At least nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed in the Israeli attack on a fleet carrying aid supplies to besieged Gaza on May 31.
The attack “occurred in international waters and at some considerable distance from the coast,” Castro said in the article for his column “Reflections of Fidel.”
Uribe, however, rebuffed Castro’s accusation by saying that the former Cuban leader was offering political protection for the “terrorist guerrillas.”
Under Uribe’s 2002-2010 presidency, the Colombian government forces had a series of military victories over the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Uribe took office on Aug. 10 as a member of the UN committee to investigate the flotilla attack. Other members of the committee include former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer, Israeli representative Yosef Ciejanover and Turkish representative Ozden Sanberk.
The appointment has drawn international criticism although UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has defended his decision.
Castro said the UN secretary-general was “fulfilling orders from above,” which international media say apparently alludes to the United States.
Human rights organizations have also criticized the appointment of Uribe, urging Ban to reconsider the decision.
Castro, who turned 84 on Friday, returned to public life about a month ago, saying that he has now completely recovered from a serious illness that forced him to hand over power to his brother Raul Castro in 2006.
Mike E said
The National Committee to Free Ricardo Palmera has recreated its facebook page. This page was suppressed before, and its authors were punished by having their own pages suppressed.
Stay tuned.
Tom Burke said
Hello,
So a friend told me yous were looking for me. Sorry, I forgot all about this discussion. Here is something to chew on:
A group of us Latin America solidarity types went to El Salvador for a conference on Peace For Colombia with about 5000 Latin Americans, hosted by the FMLN, with the biggest delegation coming from the Sandinistas. The big Friday night speech was given by the FARC-EP. The US Embassy labor attache also decided she should come and hear the big speech–our folks gave her what for! Here is the address for the article about it:
http://www.fightbacknews.org/2001fall/elsalvconf.htm
A big crew, about 40 US Americans met with Rodrigo Granda of the FARC-EP to find out what was happening. Granda is the FARC commander that the Venezuelan intelligence agents kidnapped on Dec. 13, 2003, and they let him out of the trunk at the Colombian border, got paid, and the Colombian army claimed to have captured him. Chavez raised a big stink and after a while Uribe had to send Granda to Cuba.
In any case, back to the Colombia Conference in El Salvador, 2001: Rodrigo Granda explained about the FARC’s military capability. He said the FARC could militarily seize power. He said the problem was that it would be difficult to hold power because the peoples’ organizations were not prepared to rule. So in this scenario, with the FARC leading a weak government, with weak peoples’ structures, Granda said they thought that the US would invade directly and in a big way (this is a month before September 11, 2001). He said they were ending their big battles where 500 to 800 fighters were seizing military bases–they were breaking back down into small units. He said there were so many volunteers for the FARC that they could not take them all, so they were setting up political cadre schools and training people to become unarmed insurgents who organized the masses.
So the question is: When is it appropriate to seize power? When the conditions are ripe of course! The FARC determined the conditions were not ripe. The mass support was not there. The military might capability was. There is a contradiction between the military and the political. The political has to rule. Clearly all revolutions impose themselves upon society, but at what cost? This is where I think Fidel does not understand protracted people’s war (prolonged is an incorrect translation into English). It could be that Walter is correct too and Fidel just thinks people’s war is the wrong approach.
This seems likely, that Fidel and Chavez want a negotiated peace in Colombia like the one in El Salvador. Collapse the FARC-EP and replace it with a Left electoral party, like in Nepal. Only Nepal has a huge neighbor called socialist China next door that limits what the US, Britain, and their lapdog India can do in Nepal–otherwise there would be death squads haunting the revolutionaries. Call me orthodox, but the peaceful Left electoral party approach in Colombia sounds like the peace of the graveyard to me.
Marulanda believed in the people’s war approach to seizing power in Colombia. As I said, the FARC study Vietnam and other revolutions a lot. They have libraries full of books on revolution. James Brittain’s book lays out pretty clearly where the FARC are orthodox and where they adapted and developed in ways that built the people’s war and struggle in Colombia. The FARC-EP rejected the Khrushchev line, but not Marxism-Leninism.
Last thing is this, Marulanda predicted back in the late-1990′s that the US was going to militarily intervene more and more in Colombia. Marulanda said it was inevitable because the FARC strategy was working. The U.S. base are primarily being built to fight the FARC-EP. Chavez and Correa and Morales should all be worried, but the reason for the US bases is the failure of Plan Colombia to defeat the FARC-EP.
I am glad to discuss other questions that appeared, but maybe folks could just read James Brittain’s book to get good answers with documentation!
Please write to Ricardo Palmera too!
Walter Lippmann said
Thanks to Tom for his response. I’ve sent away for the Brittain book and look forward to reading it when it arrives. My principal observation was one which hasn’t been addressed yet. It’s this simple reality:
The FARC and ELN aren’t strong enough to win (even by their own criteria, as Tom described them here. At the same time, the Colombian government hasn’t been able to eliminate the FARC. (I know far less about the ELN’s current status than my limited knowledge of what the FARC has.
This is a political stalemate between two forces. My comment was that something needs to be done to break out of this stalemate. Northern Ireland and South Africa experienced similar situations and settlements were made which brought an end to the armed struggles going on in those countries. At the same time, the social problems which existed brought the armed struggles into being remain to be resolved, and in some cases remain to be resolved.
Sitting from the comfort of my home here in Los Angeles, it does not occur to me to give political advice to Colombian fighters. Fidel, who did lead a successful armed struggle, is in a more informed position to make comments and observations about the Colombian situation. Colombia’s situation and struggle are far different from the situation which Cuba faced, and continues to face.
This can be a useful discussion. Again, I’m grateful to Tom Burke for his response.
Walter Lippmann said
Ten-minute long video interview with historian Forrest Hylton on the change in relations between Venezuela and Colombia. Hylton was interviewed from Colombia where he teaches.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5510
Marcos H said
I just love the fact that some of you are so uncritical of FARC to the point of swallowing up, among other things, empty rhetoric about “diversity” in guerrilla ranks as a sign of popular support when there is no lack of the same in the ranks of their enemies or, for that matter, among popular organizations that do not side with FARC and who choose to oppose the Colombian state through other means (and are thus, in my opinion, more deserving of respect at least on a moral level since it takes true bravery to be a revolutionary or at least a progressive without the protection of a gun or rifle).
Popular support cannot be realistically measured by this “diversity” factor and, in fact, is it interesting to see that even Rodrigo Granda himself was aware of the fact that FARC’s military strength doesn’t automatically make them politically strong in terms of overall mass support.
A revolution that can supposedly win militarily (assuming that they could have, in practice, and not just that they were being optimistic about their own chances and underestimating their opposition) is not the same thing as a revolution that can stay firmly power. The levels of support required are very different for each of those tasks and there is a very real concern that if FARC actually took power in the current political context they would inevitably have to resort to mass terror in order to strengthen their own position internally even at the cost of losing their moral high ground (as precarious at it is).
Or how about the claim that FARC doesn’t abuse prisoners just because those who have been liberated are in “good” health (as if torture and abuse are limited to those forms that leave behind lasting physical marks…are we ignoring the entire psychological angle here? Even the damned Pentagon knows how to torture people while still leaving them in “good” health afterwards), or the claim that only oligarchs and rich politicians are kidnapped when there have been reports of indigenous, among others, who have been taken away and sometimes executed by FARC after being accused of “collaboration” with the enemy (which, while it may or may not be true, does nothing to help FARC’s image among those communities that aren’t already at their side, which in turn leads us to the continuing limitations of the mass support as previously discussed).
Or how about little details, such as Mr. Brittain’s estimate about only “5%” of Colombians having Internet access, which is misleading and based on outdated data as a moderate amount of research would show, which doesn’t affect the substance of his point about those protests being primarily by the upper classes but it does prove that he isn’t exactly incapable of error or of twisting facts whenever convenient.
As for the conclusion that things will naturally be “better” after a revolutionary victory if only we forget or forgive all of FARC’s “mistakes” as if they were nothing, or simply obscure them among quotes from people who are already FARC supporters (which is far from a realistic representation of the complex situation of the Colombian countryside, where there are surely guerrilla supporters but others who are less…enthusiastic, to say the least, who Mr. Brittain might not have interviewed as he was more interested in analyzing FARC as a movement and its existing support base, which evidently leads to having an incomplete sample)…then perhaps FARC’s political weakness will potentially continue forever, as long as it is “explained” and “understood” through sympathetic views such as these that refuse to admit that revolutionaries must be open to criticism and to discussion, not just to blind loyalty and devotion.
Walter Lippmann said
James Brittain’s book on the FARC is an all-out political defense of the organization. It’s evidently based on extensive research including first-hand contact with both members and non-members of the FARC in areas that the FARC controls. He also provides a wealth of historical background and context which helps give the reader a deeper understanding that what we get in the corporate capitalist news media. I’m reading it now and hope to finish it soon. I’ve only a few short initial notes to share here.
In the second paragraph of the first chapter, Professor Brittain describes the former foreign minister of Mexico, whose authority Brittain cites, as a “renowned Latin Americanist”. In fact, Jorge Castaneda is a former member of the Central Committee of the Mexican Communist Party and an intransigent opponent of Marxism and socialist revolution everywhere whose writings include a steady stream of condemnations of the Cuban Revolution, including a book-length politic against Che Guevara. But to Brittain, Castenada is a “renowned Latin Americanist”…
Professor Brittain deliberately does NOT address the critical comments made about the FARC by Fidel Castro. Fidel’s 2008 book LA PAZ EN COLOMBIA is not mentioned in the bibliography, nor does his name appear in the index.
Special note may be made regarding James Petras, whose preface also omits any mention of the leader of the Cuban revolution. This is significant because Petras wrote an extended polemic against Fidel Castro over two years ago which was circulated all over via the Internet.
Here are two excerpts:
JAMES PETRAS: EIGHT ERRONEOUS THESIS OF FIDEL CASTRO
Fidel Castro’s articles and commentaries on the recent events in Colombia, namely his discussion of the Colombian regime’s freeing of several FARC prisoners (including three CIA operatives and Ingrid Betancourt) and his critical comments on the politics, structure, practices, tactics and strategy of the FARC and its world-renowned leader, Manuel Marulanda, merit serious consideration.
Castro’s remarks demand analysis and refutation, not only because his opinions are widely read and influence millions of militants and admirers in the world, especially in Cuba and Latin America, but because he purports to provide a ‘moral’ basis for opposition to imperialism today. Equally important Castro’s unfortunate diatribe and critique against the FARC, Marulanda and the entire peasant-based guerrilla movement, has been welcomed, published and broadcast by the entire pro-imperialist mass media on five continents. Fidel Castro, with few caveats, has uncritically joined the chorus condemning the FARC and, as I will demonstrate, without reason or logic.
————————
Conclusion
Has Castro clearly thought through the disastrous consequences for millions of impoverished Colombians or is he thinking only of Cuba’s possible improvement of relations with Colombia once the FARC is liquidated? The effect of Castro’s anti-FARC articles has been to provide ammunition for the imperial mass media to discredit the FARC and armed resistance to tyranny and to bolster the image of death squad President Uribe. When the world’s premier revolutionary leader denies the revolutionary history and practice of an ongoing popular movement and its brilliant leader who built that movement, he is denying the movements of the future a rich heritage of successful resistance and construction. History will not absolve him.
July 2008
FULL: http://petras.lahaine.org/articulo.php?p=1742
================================================
Walter concludes:
In time I’ll make some additional comments. I hope that Tom Burke and others will continue to participate in this discussion.
Walter Lippmann said
Petras’s title was Eight Mistaken Thesis of Fidel Castro. Not erroneous. My mistake relying on memory and not looking back for the correct word.
Marcos H said
“James Brittain’s book on the FARC is an all-out political defense of the organization.”
Which is a bit of a pity, because an “all-out political defense” seems to preemptively dismiss the possibility of criticism, constructive and otherwise, or at least of a more open-minded analysis. The goal has already been set from the beginning and it affects the results of his research.
“It’s evidently based on extensive research including first-hand contact with both members and non-members of the FARC in areas that the FARC controls.”
In other words, as I’ve mentioned before…his main sources on the ground are FARC militants and their supporters who live in FARC-controlled or influenced areas.
That is enough to gain a better understanding of how FARC works from the “inside” but it’s definitely not a good view from the “outside” as the sample is obviously going to be pro-FARC almost by definition.
In other words, peasants and social organizations who do not support FARC or who do not live in their zones of operation or control are going to be underrepresented (or who live far enough from actual FARC encampments as to make that distinction moot).
“He also provides a wealth of historical background and context which helps give the reader a deeper understanding that what we get in the corporate capitalist news media.”
Certainly…it is deeper in some ways, but apparently shallower in others.
Have you noticed, for example, the inaccurate description of FARC-indigenous relationships in Brittain’s book?
This was pointed out here, on this same website, by Rowlandkeshena:
http://kasamaproject.org/2010/04/12/colombia-farc-eps-contradictions-with-the-indigenous/
I believe that Mr. Brittain’s source is valuable but it is also not free from factual errors and limitations arising from its self-proclaimed intentions and objectives. As readers, we must be critical thinkers and not dogmatists.
“Professor Brittain deliberately does NOT address the critical comments made about the FARC by Fidel Castro. Fidel’s 2008 book LA PAZ EN COLOMBIA is not mentioned in the bibliography, nor does his name appear in the index.”
That book, which I’ve read myself, is interesting in that it shows that Fidel Castro respects FARC’s struggle but isn’t afraid to be critical or to be in disagreement, which is something that all good revolutionaries should hope for since the open exchange of ideas and dynamic thought processes is a necessity for mental and physical progress as opposed to stagnation. Leaving out Castro’s views on the matter is a disservice, even if one may or may not agree with his conclusions.
Walter Lippmann said
James Brittain’s book defending the FARC makes for fascinating reading. I’m now about half-way through the book. He often provides testimonial evidence of various assertions, including many references to people he says he interviewed personally, but whom he neither identifies nor describes in any manner. Since these are presumably all people operating in clandestinity, that’s quite understandable.
Brittain makes many politically powerful assertions which would need some documentation or verification, but which would be difficult for someone unfamiliar with life in the FARC-EP-controlled areas of Colombia to engage in.
Most of this is in chapter 7, beginning on p. 154.
Some interesting material about prostitution appears in that chapter starting on p. 179, with this:
——————
“Prostitution has become a vivid reality in rural Colombia. The guerrillas have established agreements to conduct free weekly physical checks for those involved in the sex trade. After each examination, physicians provide health sex workers with ‘formal passes’ to continue their occupation for another seven days.”
——————
When I read this I began to wonder which prospective prostitution client would be asking the woman he was about to pay for sex to see her certification of clean health provided by a FARC-EP-approved doctor before engaging in an assignation. The section – too long to copy here by hand – also speaks of a prohibition against pimping, but provides no indication of what experience there might have been enforcing this FARC-EP provision.
Perhaps I’ll provide some additional page references in a subsequent contribution. One which struck me particularly was his assertion that the FARC-EP has succeeded in taking over some institutions which the government had created to co-opt people in the rural areas.
Walter Lippmann
Los Angeles, California
Walter Lippmann said
The following was posted today by the Cuban AIN news agency, in English:
From: Cuban News Agency
To: acn-english List Member
Subject: ACN Juan Manuel Santos: Tough Inheritance
Date: Aug 23, 2010 11:43 AM
Juan Manuel Santos: Tough Inheritance
By Marcos Alfonso
Only a few days after becoming president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos begins to “enjoy” the terrible inheritance of his predecessor.
After the animosity of relations with Venezuela over the border issue and friendly and honest dialog with President Hugo Chavez, the Colombian head of state is facing his second test of fire: the Constitutional Court terminated the “complementary agreement for the cooperation and technical assistance in defense and security between the governments of Colombia and the United States of America”, signed in Bogota on October 30th, 2009.
Such agreement was intended to place 7 military bases in Colombia for US troops and contractors which provoked rejection among several nations in the region among them: Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Bolivia. Looking at it politically, former president Alvaro Uribe turned the country over to the US army.
Now the new government considers that the legislative body should analyze the issue –not the Constitutional Court—through a bill in order to facilitate the situation.
The Interior and Justice Minister, German Vargas was quoted by EFE news agency, saying that a “decision must be taken quickly”.
The court concluded that the agreement became in complex obligations for the country in such important and controversial issues like troop transportation, vehicles, vessels and aircrafts through the territory in addition to the immunity of the US military personnel.
According to EFE news agency the issue is within the framework of an international treaty and as such, should have been previously approved by Congress as a draft bill, something that Uribe did not know.
Rejection from a large part of Latin American nations regarding the US bases in Colombia was also condemned within Colombia.
Now the Santos administration will probably renegotiate the agreement with the United States.
AFP news agency on its part, quoted Colombian authorities saying that the Uribe government evaded Congress knowingly that any international treaty must be negotiated with that legislative body first.
The new Colombian head of state, who swore in as president on August 7th, said that he respects the Constitutional Court’s decision and will study it carefully, but he has been cautious in what will be his next step regarding the situation.
The US State Department quickly declared that they will maintain “close cooperation” with Colombia.
Colombian political analyst Fernando Giraldo, was quoted by saying that this will be a very “difficult” situation for Santos due to his commitment to the agreement because he was Defense Minister during the Uribe administration when the agreement was signed.
“Santos will be very careful in how he will manage the issue. He must meet with Parliament to obtain a political agreement and at the same time approach Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez”, he said.
Juan Manuel Santos and Hugo Chavez agreed to resume diplomatic relations between both nations last August 10th during a meeting in Santa Marta, northern Colombia.
The Venezuelan President recognized Colombia’s sovereign right to sign any accord with “any country in the world, but it must not affect the sovereignty of any neighboring nations or threaten the region”.
Deputies from the opposition government party say that the new president will take time to adopt any decision on the issue and agree that the start of the new head of state could not have been more embarrassing. (By Marcos Alfonso, AIN)
Otherarticles/igp/10.45 AM/aga
Cuban News Agency
http://www.cubanews.ain.cu
ainnews@ain.cu
Walter Lippmann said
Today I didn’t make much progress with the Brittain book, but I will continue and finish it as soon as I’m able. I’m sorry that it seems there’s not much interest in this topic. I hope that others will take an interest in and discuss some of the issues involved.
One of the challenges facing activists in Colombia is that so many of them are murdered by the ultra-right elements which are evidently in cahoots with the government. We nearly never hear about such things in the US media. Imagine if someone assassinated Elizardo Sanchez, Oswaldo Paya or, goddess forbid, Yoani Sanchez? The US media would drown us all in denunciations of the Cuban government.
=======================================
Rights Activist Murdered in Colombia
BOGOTA – Colombian human rights activist Norma Irene Perez was found shot to death in the central province of Meta, the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights said Monday.
The mother of four went missing Aug. 7 after leaving a community assembly in La Union, an outlying hamlet in the municipality of La Macarena, where Perez lived.
A body found six days later near La Union was subsequently identified as Perez, the committee said.
The slain woman was a member of the Regional Human Rights Committee of the Upper Guayabero river basin and was among the activists who spoke at a July 22 congressional hearing held in the La Macarena area.
Perez and other speakers used the occasion to present evidence of the existence of a clandestine cemetery holding the bodies of several hundred people, including civilians murdered by soldiers and then presented to their superiors as rebels killed in combat.
With the investigation of the “false positives” – as such killings are known – still in progress, the number of documented victims has already topped 2,000.
During a visit to La Macarena three days after the congressional hearing, then-President Alvaro Uribe referred to the recent presence in the area of “spokespeople … of terrorism” who sought to discredit the security forces with accusations of rights abuses.
Uribe’s comments, according to the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, “put in grave danger” the participants in the hearing, including the now-dead Norma Irene Perez.
Uribe stepped down Aug. 7 after two four-year terms. He was succeeded by his former defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos. EFE
Walter Lippmann said
My area of focused study and knowledge is Cuba, but these postings are compelling me to get some additional knowledge about Colombia and the situation unfolding in that country. I’m just a beginning beginner in this area of interest. I claim no particular expertise whatsoever…
The reasons for the FARC leading an armed struggle are palpable.
Here is a SMALL excerpt from a broad social history of Colombia published on the website of the LATIN AMERICAN HERALD TRIBUNE in Caracas. Most of its sources are EFE translations to English.
This one isn’t credited other than to the paper itself. I don’t know and don’t imagine that it’s also a print newspaper, but it’s a very informative site.
Here’s the excerpt from their portrait of Colombia:
La Violencia (The Violence) and the National Front
The assassination of Liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan in 1948 sparked the bloody conflict known as La Violencia. Conservative Party leader Laureano Gomez came to power in 1950, but was ousted by a military coup led by General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla in 1953. When Rojas failed to restore democratic rule and became implicated in corrupt schemes, he was overthrown by the military with the support of the Liberal and Conservative Parties.
In July 1957, an alliance between former Conservative President Laureano Gomez (1950-53) and former Liberal President Alberto Lleras Camargo (1945-46) led to the creation of the National Front. It established a power-sharing agreement between the two parties and brought an end to “La Violencia.” The presidency would be determined by regular elections every 4 years and the two parties would have parity in all other elective and appointive offices. This system was phased out in 1978.
Post-National Front Years
During the post-National Front years, the Colombian Government made efforts to negotiate a peace with the persistent guerrilla organizations that flourished in Colombia’s remote and undeveloped rural areas. In 1984, President Belisario Betancur, a Conservative, negotiated a cease-fire with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Democratic Alliance (M-19) that included the release of many imprisoned guerrillas. The National Liberation Army (ELN) rejected the government’s cease fire proposal at that time. The M-19 pulled out of the cease-fire when it resumed fighting in 1985. The army suppressed an M-19 attack on the Palace of Justice in Bogota in November 1985, during which 115 people were killed, including 11 Supreme Court justices. The government and the M-19 renewed their truce in March 1989, which led to a peace agreement and the M-19′s reintegration into society and political life. The M-19 was one of the parties that participated in the process to enact a new constitution (see below), which took effect in 1991. The FARC ended the truce in 1990 after some 2,000-3,000 of its members who had demobilized had been murdered.
A new constitution in 1991 brought about major reforms to Colombia’s political institutions. While the new constitution preserved a presidential, three-branch system of government, it created new institutions such as the Inspector General, a Human Rights Ombudsman, a Constitutional Court and a Superior Judicial Council. The new constitution also reestablished the position of Vice President. Other significant constitutional reforms provide for civil divorce, dual nationality and the establishment of a legal mechanism (“Tutela”) that allows individuals to appeal government decisions affecting their constitutional rights. The constitution also authorized the introduction of an accusatory system of criminal justice that is gradually being instituted throughout the country, replacing the previous written inquisitorial system. A constitutional amendment approved in 2005 allows the president to hold office for two consecutive 4-year terms.
Colombian governments have had to contend with the combined terrorist activities of left-wing guerrillas, the rise of paramilitary self-defense forces in the 1990s, and the drug cartels. Narco-terrorists assassinated three presidential candidates during the election campaign of 1990. After Colombian security forces killed Medellin cartel leader Pablo Escobar in December 1993, indiscriminate acts of violence associated with his organization abated as the “cartels” were broken into multiple and smaller trafficking organizations that competed against each other in the drug trade. Guerrillas and paramilitary groups also entered into drug trafficking as a way to finance their military operations.
Pastrana Administration
The administration of Andres Pastrana (1998-2002), a Conservative, faced increased countrywide attacks by the FARC and ELN, widespread drug production and the expansion of paramilitary groups. The Pastrana administration unveiled its “Plan Colombia” in 1999 as a strategy to deal with these longstanding problems, and sought support from the international community. Plan Colombia is a comprehensive program to combat narco-terrorism; spur economic recovery; strengthen democratic institutions and respect for human rights; and provide humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons.
In November 1998, Pastrana ceded a sparsely populated area the size of Switzerland in south-central Colombia to the FARC’s control to serve as a neutral zone where peace negotiations could take place. The FARC negotiated with the government only fitfully while continuing to mount attacks and expand coca production, seriously undermining the government’s efforts to reach an agreement. Negotiations with the rebels in 2000 and 2001 were marred by rebel attacks, kidnappings and fighting between rebels and paramilitaries for control of coca-growing areas in Colombia. In February 2002, after the FARC hijacked a commercial aircraft and kidnapped a senator, Pastrana ordered the military to attack rebel positions and reassert control over the neutral zone. The FARC withdrew into the jungle and increased attacks against Colombia’s infrastructure, while avoiding large-scale direct conflicts with the military.
FULL:
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=359504&CategoryId=13305
WALTER WRITES:
What is the climate in Colombia today? Here’s one example, posted today and credited to EFE. You’ll note that the government ombudsperson blames paramilitaries AND leftist guerrillas for these death treats being posted on FACEBOOK. I think one would have to be pretty gullible to imagine that leftist guerrillas would make death-threat lists like this at all. Even more absurd that FACEBOOK would publish such lists. The whole thing seems absurd, but uninformed people are liable to believe just about anything. But you can also easily see why the people described in this article would be scared shitless when they hear such things reported on their local radio station, as this says:
Death Threats on Facebook Spur Panic in Colombian Town
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=364267&CategoryId=12393
BOGOTA – The appearance on Facebook of death threats against some 90 teens and young adults in the southwestern Colombian town of Puerto Asis has prompted several families to flee, the Putumayo provincial government said Tuesday.
The first death list appeared after the Aug. 15 murders of two of the young people threatened, provincial official Andres Gerardo Verdugo told RCN radio.
Two more lists have followed, he said, with the latest appearing Monday.
“The worried parents have begun to take their children out of the municipality,” he said, adding that authorities have boosted security in Puerto Asis and are investigating the threats.
Besides the deaths lists posted on Facebook, flyers threatening members of the municipal police force began circulating last Saturday, Verdugo said.
Colombia’s national ombud, Volmar Perez, spoke out last weekend against the death lists and speculated the threats could be coming from the Los Rastrojos drug gang, made up largely of former rightist militiamen, or from leftist rebels.
The national police have launched “a great operation to give protection” to the targets of the threats, Gen. Oscar Naranjo said Tuesday.
A special police unit is also probing threats against some 60 other people in Putumayo, the neighboring province of Nariño, the northwestern region of Antioquia and in Cundinamarca, the province surrounding Bogota, the general said.
Those threats have prompted some residents to leave Arbelaez, Cundinamarca, and Pasto, the capital of Nariño, El Tiempo newspaper said Tuesday in a story based on information from prosecutors.
The threats are part of a strategy by new drug trafficking to gain control of key territories, the unnamed prosecutors told El Tiempo.
“It’s the same pattern” used by right-wing militias in the 1990s, one source said. “A social cleansing to justify their presence in the urban areas and capture the economy.” EFE
Walter Lippmann said
Ecuadorian Chancellor Ricardo Patiño is scheduled to meet with his Colombian counterpart, Maria Angela Holguin next Thursday.
“The only thing Ecuador can do in its role as temporary chairman of UNASUR is to convene the government of that country (Colombia) to see what it makes of the communiqué” from the FARC, adding that it would respect the decision from Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos administration.
At the Thursday meeting which is to be held on the Colombian side of the common border, Patiño and Holguín expect to discuss a full normalization of relations that remain strained since March 2008 when Colombian troops stormed a FARC camp in Ecuador killing the guerrillas’ movement number two leader.
The meeting is also seen as an opportunity for the officials to discuss the FARC message which was posted Monday in the news agency Agenica de Noticias de Nueva Colombia which normally releases messages from the guerrillas.
“Unasur is a space created for the integration of regional governments”, said Patiño.
In the proposal FARC points out that even when the Colombian government keeps the door to dialogue shut, prodded by the illusion of a military victory and the intrusion of Washington, “we want to reiterate to UNASUR our irreducible willingness to find a political solution to the conflict”.
The communiqué was signed by the seven FARC top commanders.
MERCO PRESS
Thursday, August 26th 2010 – 00:47 UTC
http://en.mercopress.com/2010/08/26/political-dialogue-with-colombian-guerrillas-on-unasur-table
“Political dialogue” with Colombian guerrillas on UNASUR table
Ecuador said it would be contacting Colombian officials regarding the Colombian guerrillas FARC proposal for a “political dialogue” in the framework of the Union of South American Nations, UNASUR.
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro who are known to favour “revolutionary struggles” for the liberation of “exploited peoples” have warned FARC that it’s time to end with kidnappings and killings, and find a political solution to the ongoing conflict.
President Santos who took office August 7 has repeatedly stated, beginning with his inauguration speech that his administration is willing to dialogue with the insurgents but only after clear evidence of commitment to peace which means an end to armed attacks, kidnappings and extortion, as well as a clear determination to hand over their weapons.
Walter Lippmann said
Recent events continue to bring these questions about Colombia, the FARC, and its political and military strategies, to the fore.
According to news reports, the FARC has just suffered a major defeat:
http://en.mercopress.com/2010/09/24/colombian-forces-kill-farc-top-military-commander-and-capture-main-camp
Walter Lippmann said
Colombian President Confirms Rebel Leader’s Death
Escrito por Dayami Interián García
jueves, 23 de septiembre de 2010
http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=222891&Itemid=1
23 de septiembre de 2010, 12:44Bogota, Sep 23 (Prensa Latina) Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos confirmed Thursday in New York that FARC military chief Victor Julio Suarez Rojas, alias Jorge Briceño or Mono Jojoy, was killed in a bombing.
The guerrilla chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was actually killed in Meta department during an operation by army special forces with air force support, Santos said.
The anti-rebel operation was planned at the Larandia military base in Caqueta department, and was carried out about 16 miles from the municipality of La Julia, Meta.
“The operation occurred very early on Monday and Tuesday, and involved over 30 planes and 27 choppers,” Santos said.
According to military and intelligence sources, Mono Jojoy’s body has been identified, but could not be evacuated due to continuing clashes.
hr/dig/acl
Modificado el ( jueves, 23 de septiembre de 2010 )
Walter Lippmann said
Colombian Lawmaker Unseated for Alleged Rebel Ties
September 27, 2010
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=368651&CategoryId=12393
BOGOTA – The Colombian Inspector General’s Office announced Monday that opposition Sen. Piedad Cordoba is being removed from Congress for “collaborating” with leftist FARC rebels.
Cordoba, who helped broker the unilateral release of 14 prisoners held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, is also barred from public office for 18 years.
Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez decided to sanction the senator for having “promoted and collaborated with the outlaw group FARC,” his office said in a statement.
The investigation of Cordoba, an Afro-Colombian representing the impoverished northwestern province of Choco, was based on data Colombian officials said they found on laptop computers belonging to FARC No. 2 Raul Reyes, killed in a March 2008 raid.
The probe also drew on testimony from informants and information gleaned from wiretaps, the IG’s office said.
The senator overstepped the bounds of mediation by offering advice to the FARC, according to Ordoñez.
Cordoba has steadfastly denied any improprieties in her contacts with the FARC to arrange the release of some of the politicians, police and soldiers the rebels were holding in the hope of trading them for jailed guerrillas.
Leader of a group called Colombians for Peace, the senator was a frequent critic of President Alvaro Uribe, who left office last month after two four-year terms.
Cordoba’s attorney, Ciro Quiroz, said after the announcement from the IG’s office that he would pursue all legal avenues to overturn the “cruel” and “unprecedented” decision.
“There will be appropriate judicial actions with an eye toward rendering this null and void,” the lawyer told Caracol Radio. EFE
Walter Lippmann said
Fidel Castro posted another extended commentary on Colombia this week taking up again his views on the FARC. It’s much too long to post here in full, but please note the final few paragraphs:
11:36 a.m.
FULL:
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2010/ing/c300910i.html
Walter Lippmann said
(“any hopes that the Santos government might use its political
capital to negotiate with the FARC are dim, given the government’s
current offensive against the FARC and President Santos’s refusal
of Brazilian president Lula’s offers to mediate. The Obama admin-
istration shows no interest in a negotiated solution, which would
require at least tacit U.S. support. U.S. military assistance and
presence, then, will continue to help perpetuate the armed conflict.
Accusations of Venezuelan support for the FARC serve to rationalize
the U.S. military involvement in Colombia, as well as the
destabilization of Venezuela.
——————
(“The Colombian court’s rejection of the base deal
points the way for the region as a whole.”)
=====================================================
U.S. Base Deal for Colombia: Back to the Status Quo
By John Lindsay-Poland and Susana Pimiento
Foreign Policy in focus
October 8, 2010
As the dust settles on the August 10 Colombian Constitutional Court ruling declaring invalid the U.S.- Colombia military bases agreement, politicians and analysts are saying that the decision was for the better. Most of those voices come from former supporters of the deal -including Liberal Party presidential candidate, Rafael Pardo.
FULL comment, much longer:
http://www.fpif.org/articles/us_base_deal_for_colombia_back_to_the_status_quo
Walter Lippmann said
Below my comments you’ll find a MERCO PRESS report posted today about the situation in Colombia as of this conjuncture.
I suppose this is the Colombian government’s response to the FARC’s releases of prisoners held by the FARC through the participation of former senator Piedad Cordoba and with the participation of the Brazilian military.
Colombia’s rulers succeeded in booting Cordoba from the Colombian parliament, but they haven’t been able to remove her from the political scene. Indeed, when for some logistical reasons the FARC weren’t able to release one if the prisoners it had promised, they released an ADDITIONAL one as a way of apologizing to Cordoba for the screw-up. She’s quite popular among left circles, but is also virulently hated by supporters of the Colombian government.
It’s clear that the FARC still has some cards to play politically, and a non-military solution to the Colombian conflicts would certainly be in the interests of that country if it could ever actually be brought about.
Fidel Castro wrote an entire book about this and I’ve made a small study of the Colombian situation from which my sense of the rightness of Fidel’s political conclusions were only reinforced. He advised them to release all of their prisoners, but, at the same time, not to put down their weapons. The report below from MERCO PRESS would seem to confirm Fidel’s assessment.
The FARC has suffered substantial blows in recent years, beginning with Marulanda’s death – of natural causes – but what capitalist government has ever NOT claimed that it knows where the revolutionary opposition is and that it has them in its sights? Cubans certainly know something about that, after all.
The current Colombian president has shown himself to be far more astute politically than his predecessor, Alvaro Uribe. Colombia’s decades-long struggle has experienced its ups and downs, but its prospects for a military victory seem quite remote, at best.
Santos has reduced tensions with Venezuela, where Chavez told the FARC that the days of their form of armed struggle were over quite awhile ago. The economies of Venezuela and Colombia are closely tied, and a reduction of conflicts between the two countries is clearly in the interests of both.
In this context, a peaceful resolution to the Colombian conflict, if it could be achieved, would provide both satisfactions and frustrations to many, but would seem to be the best thing which could happen, IF IT COULD HAPPEN.
Millions of Colombians are living in Venezuela, and many seem to be strongly supportive of Chavez who has welcomed them into his country. Here in Havana I met – just last night – one of these Colombians who lives in Venezuela who gave me something of a sense of this.
We are living indeed in very interesting times.
Walter Lippmann
La Habana, Cuba
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
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MERCO PRESS
Friday, February 18th 2011 – 14:19 UTC
http://en.mercopress.com/2011/02/18/colombian-president-says-he-has-farc-leader-and-his-command-on-target?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily
Colombian president says he has FARC leader and his command on target
Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos said this week that military forces know the exact hiding place and movements of the FARC guerrilla maximum leader, Alfonso Cano, and brushed aside any chance that he might escape.
“The military forces and the government know exactly in which area Cano is hiding”, said Santos during a speech countering doubts that the top rebel leader of the armed organization might have taken advantage of a “cleared area” (free of military operations) for the agreed release of hostages, to flee from where he was holed in.
“We know exactly where he and his command are moving; we would be stupid to cease operations in an area where he is, thus facilitating a possible escape”, added the Colombian president.
“We like to dialogue, but we are not stupid. We’re going to continue chasing him; we’ll be on his back, as we are now. That bandit will eventually fall into our nets as happened with Mono Jojoy”, said Santos.
Since Santos took office six months ago he has managed several significant coups against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the most recent the death during an air bombing in September 2010 of Mono Jojoy (Jorge Briceño) who was then number two and military commander of the terrorist organization.
In March 2008 when Santos was Defence minister of former President Alvaro Uribe, Raul Reyes, then number two of the organization was killed during a bombing and attack on FARC enclave in Ecuador, just across the Colombian border.
FARC originally a Marxist oriented political group that took to the mountains and guerrilla fighting, has in the last two decades turned into a military organization funded by the Colombian and Mexican narcotics barons.
Walter Lippmann said
Wikileaks Questions Veracity of Colombian Army “Betancourt Hostage Rescue” Operation [Prensa Latina]
Bogota, Feb 21 (Prensa Latina)
Revelations released by Wikileaks question the truthfulness of Operation Jaque (Check), presented by the Colombian Government as a perfect military maneuver in 2008 that led to the rescue of 15 people held by the guerrillas.
Wikileaks made public that on June 24, 2008, the US Embassy in Bogota issued a diplomatic cable about an alleged attempt of agreement between the government and Antonio Aguilar, alias Cesar, then commander of the first front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
According to the information released, the purpose of the agreement would be the release of presidential candidate, French Colombian Ingrid Betancourt.
Many people sustain that, according to the cable, the operation’s success (15 people were rescued, including Betancourt, three US people and 11 uniformed ones) was the result of direct negotiations with Cesar rather than of an intrepid Army action.
In this regard, editor of Voz weekly Carlos Lozano, who is a member of Colombians for Peace, said that the cable shows that there were lies surrounding Operation Jaque, which was not so perfect as the Government presented it, but rather the result of an agreement with the guerrillas who were holding the prisoners.
It is also surprising that the said diplomatic note was issued a week before Operation Jaque.
The cable protects its source and says that Cesar, currently serving prison in the United States, was allegedly seeking protection for himself and his family by then President Alvaro Uribe and Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, who is currently the country’s president, in exchange for Betancourt’s release.
Many versions and press reports published in the wake of the operation seem to have been right in questioning its success, given the contradictions and incongruities surrounding the event, which can be verified in video footage of the much-trumpeted maneuver.
dissent said
I’d echo the criticisms previously voiced about the shallow propagandistic nature of this piece. The section on “bourgeois princess” Betancourt and the hostages was particuarly galling—the author of the piece ought to sit down and read her book-length account of the imprisonment. In any case, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where prisoners constantly on the move through an Amazon jungle are “well-treated”. The situation of captor (particuarly teenage captors) and captives tends to bring out cruel and dominant instincts on both sides of the equation, and no amount of Farc ideology is going to erase that.
There’s also an embarrassing reliance on Brittian’s text as ‘fact’ when anyone who has browsed the book would be aware that, however valuable it is as a source, it’s also a transparently one-sided ideological account.
Apparently it’s true that government polls cannot be trusted for reliable statistics on Farc popularity in Colombia. But every serious account I’ve read on Farc support indicates the that the vast majority of the public does not support the FARC.. Farc supports itself via drug taxes and by recruiting minors (eg 15 year olds) who are generally illererate and don’t understand the gravity of the desicion to join a criminalized militant communist movement. It’s a human rights catastrophe, but in this case leftists look the other way because its a communist movement, and they employ the inhumane logic of war (the other side is doing it, war requires sacrfice and cruelty, etc.).
Some of the commentators suggest that we in the USA shouldn’t judge how the Colombians go about their revolution. Lol, if that sort of reasoning were valid, then we leftists would have no basis for criticizing the paramilitaries and their displacements! We may not have the power to enforce human rights in other nations. But human rights are universal or they are nothing. When you say that kidnapping and child soldiers,and civilian terror is ok simply because the other side does it and/or the revolutionary situation requires it…..then you are entering a universe of relativism and barbarism.
Eventually what was previously a means (violence) has become and end and a lifestyle, and nowhere does the evil consequnces of this lifestyle appear more evident than in Colombia.
Stefan said
A lot of assumptions in this essay. There is proof that the FARC-EP have raped their woman “comrades” and that rape is common in the FARC-EP. Think about it, a guerrilla force, meaning they are fairly independent groups, without strict discipline and using girls as young as 13.
Reference: http://books.google.ca/books?id=CcNDy_IY12MC&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=FARC-EP+ep+abortions&source=bl&ots=CNc0Zel_SA&sig=7Na4HD1X7YL6TiUAJi0dPFGlGDk&hl=en&ei=jaC0TrPMJabY0QGA2-TRBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=FARC-EP%20ep%20abor
Tom Burke said
Stefan, you are using Human Rights Watch, the barking dog of U.S. imperialism to make your argument. Human Rights Watch exists to distort, tell half truths, or outright lie when the U.S. rulers need to go to war to further the Empire. But hey if you are going to lie, tell a big lie.
Over 1/3 of the FARC-EP fighters are women, and their fierceness scares Colombian soldiers more than the men. The FARC-EP is bringing many peasants, and some workers, students, and religious people into its ranks to fight for a New Colombia. Those people bring the problems of Colombian society with them into the FARC-EP. For most peasant women, it is the first step towards liberation. It is a pathway to freedom for them, both personal and political. Go read James Brittain’s book to actually educate yourself.
Likewise, the argument from “Dissent” is just laughable to anyone who has any familiarity with the FARC-EP. It just repeats the White House and Pentagon propaganda. Nothing original there. The oppressed peoples of the world want liberation and have every right to fight for it. Stop supporting the U.S. Empire.
Stefan said
If the FARC-EP is the pathway to personal and political freedom why have they not been able to achieve, in 30 years, what Egypt did in less than 1 year? Surely the “U.S Empire” couldn’t hold back the whole country in Colombia in their native land. However, I will agree with you that the Americans are very imperialistic and in many rights unjustly so but there is compelling evidence to suggest grievous faults have been committed by the FARC-EP.
Tom Burke said
Thank you for replying Stefan, I think there is a big difference between repeating the lies of the White House, the Pentagon, and Wall Street on the one hand, and having criticism of revolutionaries, especially insurgents, in countries where the U.S. is conducting a war. If the U.S. were to stop funding, arming, and commanding the Colombian military and its death squads, I think, without the U.S. military intervention, it would still take the Colombian people some years, but probably not a decade, to overthrow the corrupt, criminal capitalist class and landlords that rule their country and exploit their people. The people need to be organized and garner experience in the national liberation struggle, to be able to rule the new society. With the U.S. intervention, it will take some time. A New Colombia will only come about with the overthrow of the U.S. backed oligarchic state and not through negotiations that continue the old order. The FARC-EP is fighting now for 47 years. That is a short time for a revolutionary struggle as compared to say the Vietnamese or Irish people, and many others around the world. For our part, we have to take the long view, while awaking every day to go out and organize Americans to oppose U.S. war and occupation, to demand an end to the political repression we face at home, to struggle for the liberation of oppressed people, and to end capitalism–the exploitation of workers. OWS.
I celebrate too what the Egyptian people and the Arab Spring uprisings achieved. To say it took “less than a year” in Egypt or anywhere else is an unbelievable statement though. 30 years is more like it. Egyptian men my age, many Muslim Brotherhood types, just spent the majority of their lives in prison for this struggle. The Communist Party of Egypt lead a demonstration a few years ago with 500,000 workers. Who ever heard about that in U.S. newspapers? Not me. The Tunisian uprising was led by religious forces and communists, more than allies, whose groups were illegal for decades and their leaders spent years under arrest. The religious forces just won the Tunisian elections, while the communists did not do so well, but it appears the winners are giving the communists roles in the new government. So there is certainly spontaneity, but revolutionary and reformist groups were working for decades to overthrow the despots.
I also think it is important to note that while it is popular to call what happened in the Arab world “revolutions”, it is accurate to describe them as rebellions. Rebellions are good, at least when they cause the imperialists to run around in a panic. Rebellions, repeated again and again, can even lead to revolutions. However, in Egypt those who rule are still the mega-rich and the Military with some concessions to other political forces in society. The Egyptian working class and peasants do not rule. They have gained more freedom, so it is clearly an advance. The next decade will be very interesting in terms of how the Arab movements in each individual country advance, or are beaten back by the U.S. and other imperialists, as well as by the Saudi and other monarchies. Let us hope we can do our part here in the U.S. by contributing to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Ok friends.
Stefan said
Tom, you have given no proof for your arguments. Do you have anything I can reference other than Dudley and Brittain used in the essay? It’s easy to take two ideological biased books and support an argument.
Your attack on Human Rights Watch if a use of “ad hominem”. Your attacking the organization, not the material or interviews which they provide. I can claim anyone is the barking dog of imperialism, that’s my personal opinion but where is the proof of the failure to report correct information in Colombia? Your argument on this is futile without evidence. The HRW it seems has done much better research than yourself giving names, ages, organizations and personal testimonies.
Wow good job, FARC-EP women scare Colombian men. Ya guess what I scare FARC-EP women. This is not a valid argument. What step towards liberation do they have? Fighting in the jungle for an eternity? Constantly on the run? This is guerrilla warfare. You are not free in guerrilla warfare, you are part of a military organization, they own you. But politically yes, they may be free.
Tom Burke said
Ha! Thanks for writing back Stefan. Human Rights Watch is a tool of the imperialists, funded by rich guys like George Soros. It is not a good source of information, facts or analysis on the FARC-EP. To satisfy you, now I will attack the material and interviews they provide. What HRW has to say about the FARC is lies and slander, not facts. Their material and interviews are taken from lying liars who are paid by the Colombian government with U.S. tax payer dollars to quit the insurgency and enter “reintegration programs”. Free housing, food, and cash money. You bet lots of poor Colombian peasant people take that deal and say whatever it is they think HRW and the Colombian and U.S. governments want to here. I doubt the New York Times is going to do an investigative report on that though, so you are going to just have to trust me.
Just to be clear, I said that the FARC women fighters scare Colombian soldiers more than the FARC men fighters do. Maybe it is a myth, but Colombian people repeat that again and again so I assume it has some basis in reality.
I sort of agree with your last three sentences. Life as a guerrillera is certainly a difficult path, but also a shining glorious one for many compared to scraping a living in the farm fields or selling your body in the brothels. Just think, the FARC-EP are starting to recruit their fourth generation of women fighters. When you are part of a Marxist-Leninist political-military organization there is leadership and discipline certainly, but it is not “they own you”, it is “we own us”. It is commitment to revolutionary ideas. It is life and death for the hope of a new society without oppression and exploitation. It takes decades to build towards, otherwise we would live in a much different country ourselves here in the U.S.
Tom Burke said
Sorry Stefan, One more thing is that I think James Brittain’s book is the best thing written in English. There are also things I do not agree with his take on, but I bow to his field work and interviews. I have none of those.
I would like to say that there are three or five or ten other books on the FARC-EP that are out there, but with the war on terror, an English speaking academic has to be very brave to write about the FARC-EP in an objective way. The last time I know of that a Spanish speaking journalist, Botero, wrote a book about the FARC-EP, he was charged as a terrorist in Colombia.
As for Dudley’s book, I asked him for an advance copy that I read. I told Dudley if I liked it that I would promote his book. Dudley’s book is terrible. It could be written by a CIA analyst. Dudley blames the FARC-EP for everything. The U.S. gets off easy.
The problem in Colombia is U.S. military intervention and U.S. corporations ripping off all the natural resources. Check out the production and profits of Drummond Coal. How does that benefit Colombia? It is the same as Iraq and Afghanistan and the Philippines and many other places where U.S. imperialism sends it money, weapons, advisers, troops, and mercenaries. Another guy to read on this is from North Carolina–Stan Goff. Now he is interesting and has lots of first hand experience.
Stefan said
I wouldn’t mix Iraq and Afghanistan together. They are two different scenarios with two different outcomes. The FARC-EP have reached some troubling times with the deaths of many of their leaders. How do you know that the reintegration program of the Colombian govt simply uses free food, cash and housing in an attempt to lure the rural poor or FARC-EP in? What this is is a war of both sides accusing the other of being the enemy, you must be wary about both sides providing propaganda.
Drummond Coal and many other MNCs operating in developing countries, what are the benefits of these corporations? There are pros and cons to MNCS. One of the pros is the spillover effect: the spillover of technology, knowledge, capital, etc. That will be your biggest benefit but it is true that MNCs have many negative effects on LDCs. Often they are known for taking advantage of poor countries and exploiting their workers. As far as Drummond Coals profits and production goes, look at any mining company. Massively capital intensive in nature, your balance sheet or cash-flows won`t tell you anything about what`s really going on behind the scenes in Colombia. Not only American MNCs operate in Colombia but also Brazilian, Indian, etc. It isn`t necessarily a picture of American imperialism, everyone is doing it. This is called globalization.
Democracy is the way to go my friend, look at a country like Canada. Culturally diverse, wealthy, and free. Many countries are like this. Look at communist countries around the world, or what`s left. Countries like China which are continually becoming more democratic have seen decreases in poverty. The FARC-EP are fighting a war in the woods and haven`t been able to come out to see how the world has developed in the past 40 years. it`s no longer the place that it used to be.
Walter Lippmann said
Colombian Guerrilla Confirms Release of Six Prisoners
Bogota, Dec 27, 2011 (Prensa Latina) The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) confirmed on Tuesday that they will release six prisoners as soon as the necessary protocols are agreed.
In a long message to the Colombian people to mark the new year, the FARC said they would hand over the prisoners to former senator Piedad Cordoba and a group of women of international relevance that are working for peace in the country.
The guerrilla said that among the prisoners to be released are the superintendents of the National Police Jorge Trujillo and Humberto Romero, and the corporal of the same institution, Jose Libardo Forero. The identity of the other three prisoners will be announced shortly.
The insurgent group said it hoped that the national government and the military leadership will not repeat what happened on November 26 in a rural area of Caqueta.
On that day four prisoners held by the guerrillas were killed, after military action between the insurgents and the military, sparking harsh criticism of the government for its attempted rescue operation, given the danger it posed to the hostages.
In the message the FARC also talk about aspects of national and international life, express their views on them and invite reflection.
hr/as/cgm/acl
Modificado el ( martes, 27 de diciembre de 2011 )
http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=463255&Itemid=1
walterlx said
This is a step along the lines Fidel has been advocating for years:
FIDEL CASTRO: PIEDAD CORDOBA AND HER FIGHT FOR PEACE (excerpt)
I have criticized the FARC. In a Reflection I publicly expressed my disagreement with the holding of prisoners of war and the sacrifices meant for them by the tough conditions of life in the jungle. I explained the reasons and the experience we acquired in our struggle.
I was critical of the strategic concepts of the Colombian guerrilla movement. But I never denied the revolutionary nature of the FARC.
I believed, and I believe, that Marulanda was one of the most distinguished of the Colombian and Latin American guerrilla fighters. When many of the names of the mediocre politicians are forgotten, Marulanda will be acknowledged as one of the most honorable and firm fighters for the well-being of peasants, workers and the poor of Latin America.
The prestige and moral authority of Piedad Córdoba has multiplied.
FULL:
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2010/ing/c300910i.html
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Colombian rebels free captives held for over a decade
8:50pm EDT
By Helen Murphy and Brian Ellsworth
BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombia’s FARC rebels freed 10 members of the armed forces held hostage in jungle prison camps for more than a decade on Monday, the last of a group the drug-funded group had used as bargaining chips to pressure the government.
The four soldiers and six policemen were released to a humanitarian mission led by the International Committee of the Red Cross in what the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia called a gesture of peace.
Wearing olive fatigues and seeming well fed and relatively healthy, the 10 men stepped off a helicopter provided by Brazil after the Marxist rebels freed them in a remote area of southern Colombia.
Smiling and joking with a medic, one soldier left the aircraft draped in the Colombian flag and skipping with joy. Each carried a plastic bag of belongings and one was accompanied by what appeared to be a small pig that had been his pet in the jungle. Another had what looked like a monkey on his shoulder.
“To these victims of the intolerance and cruelty of the guerrillas, soldiers and policemen of Colombia, welcome to freedom,” President Juan Manuel Santos said from the presidential palace. “Freedom has been long delayed, but now it’s yours.”
The release could signal that the FARC is taking tentative steps toward a bid for talks that may end Latin America’s oldest insurgency after five decades of killing and destroying economic infrastructure.
But many Colombians remain skeptical that the guerrilla group, which is still believed to be holding as many as 700 civilian hostages for ransom, will lay down its weapons after having used previous peace talks to strengthen their forces.
Santos, who is under pressure to end the conflict, has demanded the FARC free all its prisoners and cease attacks on civilian and military targets before any talks can take place.
“As soon as the government considers there are sufficient conditions to initiate a process that would end the conflict, the country will know,” Santos said, in an apparent response to rumors of secret peace talks.
“In the meantime, everything else that has been said about this is no more than speculation.”
The 10 men were seized at the end of the 1990s when the FARC was at its strongest. They formed part of a group known as “canjeables,” or exchangeables, used to pressure the government for political concessions rather than for ransom payments.
Their release followed a series of messages from the FARC’s leadership, including a promise in February to stop kidnapping for ransom, that hints at a desire for peace.
“This is a gesture that shouldn’t be underestimated,” said local conflict analyst Juan Carlos Palou.
“The promise that they will no longer kidnap for ransom implies to me that the government really should take it as a sign that the FARC really is interested in talks and move ahead with a process to end the conflict,” he said.
Some analysts have called the FARC’s promise to halt kidnappings for ransom a ploy to garner international support and shed their image as terrorists, while raising funds for war through other means such as extortion.
COLOMBIA CELEBRATES
The FARC, which has kidnapped thousands of civilians over the decades to help pay for weapons, food and uniforms, is classified as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union. It is suspected of being behind about a third of all kidnappings in Colombia.
“There are still hundreds of hostages that the FARC should free if they really want Colombian society to believe their announcement that they will not continue kidnapping,” Olga Gomez, director non-profit group Free Country, told reporters.
For decades, the FARC has seized business leaders, oil workers and cattle ranchers as they drove on remote highways, or dragged them from their beds, sometimes posing as police.
Chained in mountain hideouts and urban slums, some captives languish for months or years while families try to muster ransoms running into the thousands, or occasionally millions, of dollars. Some are killed if negotiations fail.
“It makes me so happy. I hope they’ll be celebrating with their families tonight,” said Jhonny Castiblanco, 24, a waiter watching the release on television in an empty restaurant in the capital. In the 93rd Street Park of well-heeled northern Bogota, the unfolding events were displayed a large screen.
Unlike high-profile captives such as French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt – whose kidnapping prompted global condemnation, prayers by the Pope and direct involvement by French President Nicolas Sarkozy – most FARC victims have received little attention.
Last year, three Chinese oil workers and 23 oil industry contractors were seized in incidents blamed on the rebels. The Chinese workers are still in captivity, but troops freed the contractors.
The logistics of feeding and moving hostages has become more difficult for the FARC as an increasingly effective U.S.-backed military offensive has killed its leaders and driven the guerrillas back into ever more remote regions.
As a result, the police say, cases of kidnapping for ransom have fallen 90 percent since 2000 to 208 incidents last year, while the number of extortion cases surged 33 percent in 2011 from the previous year.
(Additional reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb and Nelson Bocanegra. Editing by Daniel Wallis andChristopher Wilson)
walterlx said
FARC Urges Summit to Address Regional Topics PDF Imprimir E-Mail
Imagen activaCartagena de Indias, Apr 14, 2012 (Prensa Latina) The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) urged on Saturday heads of state and government participating at the Sixth Summit of the Americas to discuss the main concerns of the region at the summit.
In an open letter to which Prensa Latina had access, the Secretariat of the Central High Command of FARC expresses that issues like the end of the U.S. blockade against Cuba and Argentina legitimate claim of sovereignty over the Falklands can not be absent at the meeting this weekend.
Also urged participants in the summit to respect the sovereignty and independence of the countries of the region, to search for an alternative model of development, and a political solution to the Colombian conflict and as a way of dealing with differences.
“In a full global crisis, a successful Summit of the Americas should deal not only with economic growth related to the rules of the market “, FARC said.
Regarding drug trafficking, one of the issues present in the hemispheric forum, FARC called to analyze it as a social problem that “can not be dealt with by military means and that requires commitment from the major powers as main sources of global demand for drugs”.
The open letter also mentions the conflict in Colombia, and in that sense the rebels accuse the government to insist on the military option to solve it.
According to FARC, the Colombian government responds to United States interests and to the impositions of the multilateral lending agencies, “which generates privatization, damages working conditions and cuts social guarantees”.
sgl/Jsr/leg/wmr
Modificado el ( sábado, 14 de abril de 2012 )
walterlx said
From: Alliance for Global Justice [Add to Address Book]
To: walterlx@earthlink.net
Subject: Colombia’s Marcha Patriótica Calls for International Solidarity, Not Interference
Date: May 7, 2012 7:46 PM
Colombia’s Marcha Patriótica Calls for
International Solidarity, Not Interference
by James Jordan,
National Co-Coordinator
for the Alliance for Global Justice
The Summit of the Americas in Cartegena, Colombia turned out to be an embarrassing fiasco for Pres. Obama and the US delegation. It was mainly marked by the Secret Service prostitution scandal, denouncements of the War on Drugs at every turn, three heads of state in the region not even showing up and Argentina’s Pres. Kirchner storming out, and the utter isolation of the US and Canada in regards to Cuba.
There was one pernicious dog and pony show, however, that was a “success” for both the US and Colombian delegations–and for the same 1% they both serve. This was Pres. Obama’s announcement of Colombia’s compliance with the Labor Action Plan upon which the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is contingent. The FTA is now on course to go in effect on May 15th–and with it an acceleration of more hard times and displacement for Colombia’s small, family farmers. Pres. Obama’s announcement is especially cynical given that there have been several recent murders and arrests of unionists. In fact, threats and attacks against Human Rights defenders in Colombia are at a ten year high, according to Somos Defensores (We Are Defenders).
The Marcha Patriótica converges at the Parque Nacional
But there was another meeting, also in April, that was of a very different character. This was the convening of the Marcha Patritica (Patriotic March) and its launching of the Consejo Patriotico Nacional (National Patriotic Council), made up of representatives from more than 1,500 grassroots organizations. Several observers, both in and out of Colombia, have said this may well have been the most important event in the Colombian Left since the mid-1990s. The Marcha Patriótica and launch of the Consejo Patriótico Nacional represents the next stage and the coalescing of the movement into a powerful and independent political block.
According to former Senator and former Mayor of the San Jose de Apartado Peace Community, and member of the Marcha Patriotica’s National Directorate, Gloria Cuartas, “The people have converted their pain into political power.” She called the Marcha Patriótica “…the most interesting reconfiguration of the Left in Colombia since the genocide of the Union Patriótica (Patriotic Union), which was literally eliminated. The Marcha opens a new route of hope for the various sectors found within it….We are very much in tune with what is occurring in Latin America.”
Recently released Political Prisoner, Human Rights Defender and labor activist Liliany Obando told me that,
“The MP [Marcha Patriótica] is like the Phoenix that was reborn from the ashes of previous failed processes…such as was the case with the genocide against the Union Patriótica and many other social and political processes…. With the MP, we find all those who…feel that there is no true space in the Colombian political system for dissidence, for critical opinion, for political opposition….We hope to be able to continue our search for…a just and durable peace, without social iniquities and with truly inclusive politics, so that they no longer incarcerate, torture, displace and kill you for thinking and dreaming of a different kind of country.”
I was one of five US delegates representing the Alliance for Global Justice, the National Lawyers Guild, the video collective Pan Left, and the pro-immigrant, anti-border militarization Coalición de Derechos Humanos (Coalition for Human Rights). We witnessed more than 400 delegates from all over Colombia coming together to organize a new political platform on April 21 and 22. And on April 23, we saw some 100,000 persons march to the Parque Nacional (National Park)to demand peace with justice, negotiations toward a political solution, full, open and secure political participation and meaningful land reform.
Reported widely in Colombian press of all kinds, international corporate media completely ignored the event and, indeed, much of the international progressive media also ignored it. Cuba’s Prensa Latina, Telesur and a variety of Leftist media supplied coverage, but other voices were conspicuously absent, especially in the US. This is a shame for a couple of reasons. First, it betrays a general ignorance or neglect for Colombia solidarity. The Marcha Patriotica brought together under one banner the Left wing of the Liberal Party as well as Colombianas y Colombianos por la Paz (Colombians for Peace), both led by Piedad Córdoba (who is part of the Marcha’s National Directorate), the Colombian Communist Party, FENSUAGRO—the largest organization of peasant unions and associations, the indigenous Minga movement, a former mayor of the San Jose de Apartado Peace Community and hundreds of other organizations and popular representatives.
Piedad Córdoba and Gloria Cuartas at the Marcha Patriótica
However, the second reason the silence is so deafening is because violence and repression are already underway against the Marcha and the rest of the Colombian Left and labor movement. Even before delegates had arrived in Bogotá, the disappearance of FENSUAGRO delegate Henry Díaz dampened the event. Then, on the Friday after the Marcha, SINALTRAINAL unionist Daniel Aguirre Piedrahita and Coordinator of Body Guards for Carlos Lozano, Mao Enrique Rodríguez, were both assassinated in separate events. Lozano is the Editor of Voz, Colombia’s largest circulation Left newspaper, and is part of the National Directorate for the Marcha.
Numerous threats continue against members of the Marcha, many directed at FENSUAGRO. Jimmy Sneith Ortiz Gutierrez is a young leader of the SINPREAGRICUN union, a FENSUAGRO affiliate. He has been contacted numerous times by members of the Armed Forces who have cajoled and, finally, threatened him, wanting him to go on record identifying unionists as members of the FARC-EP. On May 1st, he received a note full of run-on sentences and bad grammar…but all too easily understood:
“Guerrilla dog, don’t believe that you can save yourself, don’t believe that we don’t know where you are ….the cleansing begins….you cannot shield yourself with a simple union because we go there to begin to take heads….and don’t believe that everything is going to end with you leaving your sector, there will not be an alert that saves you, we have already seen you in Bogotá and we do not lack gall, we are waiting to see if you yourself….take this decision, respond to our message within 20 days.”
This is, incidentally, a classic example of how people are pressured and forced to turn into informers to give false, usually paid testimony to frame union and popular movement leaders as guerrillas. In fact, former Defense Minister Freddy Padilla de Leon once bragged that one out of twenty Colombians acted as agents and informers for the Colombian state. Padilla was the General Commander of the Colombian Armed Forces from 2006 to 2010, including the time when the False Positive scandal was first uncovered, for which he urged an “attitude of tolerance” in investigations and prosecution of these crimes. The False Positive scandal stems from a process wherein young persons are rounded up and executed, then dressed up as guerrillas and claimed as enemy combatants. So far some 3,000 victims have been officially identified, and perpetrators have been implicated up to the highest levels of the Colombian military.
International awareness and accompaniment are considered absolutely key to the success of any peace process and to the safety of the Marcha. In fact, in my travels to Colombia, never have I heard so many requests for the presence of internationals.
Sen. Cuartas called to both the national and international communities that “…you might accompany us, protect us and attach yourselves to this Marcha.”
Human Rights lawyer, Luis Carlos Dominguez Prada, writing a few months before in the magazine Taller, writes that for a successful political solution and land reform to occur in Colombia, “It constitutes an imperative….that it can count on ample solidarity and international accompaniment.”
Liliany Obando, with her family, has endured repeated threats and harassment since her release in March, 2012, including being followed and photographed by unknown men. For her, the issue of accompaniment is very personal, saying,
“International accompaniment always will be fundamental….Your presence in some form prevents them from committing so many human rights abuses. Equally, it is of great importance that you might serve as direct witnesses to these processes….This is just as important for the positive aspects, such as the case of constructing new initiatives of social and political organization and participation, as well as for the negative that takes place in Colombia such as the systematic violation of human rights, the theft of our natural resources on the part of the multinationals, the support of foreign governments for war in Colombia and the nefarious role of the Free Trade Agreements.”
It is important to note that the Marcha Patriótica is not a second phase of the Union Patriótica (UP), which included the open and legal participation of the FARC-EP. Nevertheless, the memory of the UP’s experience is seared in the minds of the Marcha Patriótica. The UP was created as part of an effort toward a political solution to the armed and social conflict in Colombia. Over ten years of existence, from 1985 to 1995, military and paramilitary attacks killed 5,000 of its candidates and elected officials, including two presidential candidates.
Nevertheless, Sen. Cuartas adds that, “You can’t compare them. The UP was born out of the negotiations between an insurgent group and the government. The Marcha Patriótica, in contrast, emerges from the social movements.” Cuartas added, “We’re not going to get tangled up in responding to the government….Whatever person who in this country speaks against the system or defends human rights, they are going to be labeled as a son of the FARC.”
Leader of the Organización Campesina del Valle del Río Cimitarra (ACVC) and Marcha National Directorate member Andres Gil adds, “The FARC are not our political leaders.”
But there is ample reason to believe that both the government and corporate media in Colombia will try to paint the Marcha as a front for the FARC-EP. There are more than 9,000 political prisoners in Colombia and only 800 of them are known to be members of the FARC-EP. The vast majority are prisoners of conscience or of judicial set-ups, more often than not behind bars for the vague charge of “Rebellion”. Many of these, after several years of incarceration (as in the case of Liliany Obando) will be later freed for lack of evidence and/or violation of conditions. Yet the government still claims that most these prisoners are members of or sympathizers with guerrillas.
Even worse is the long-standing practice of political, business and media leaders and outlets who accuse dissidents, without supporting evidence, of being members of the FARC. These kinds of accusations are often followed by acts of violence against those so maligned. Similar accusations have already been leveled against the Marcha, both by government officials and corporate media, and there is no basis for thinking they will stop.
Still, it was clear throughout the event that the vast majority of Marcha delegates rejected the demonization of the FARC-EP as completely counter productive to any hope or possibility of a political solution and a legitimate process toward peace with justice. This stage of the Marcha Patriótica–the launching of the Consejo Patriótico Nacional–grew out of was National Encounter for the Land and Peace that took place in Barancabermeja in August, 2010. At this meeting some 27,000 delegates from indigenous, Afro-Colombian and campesino communities met with members of the Colombian Left, elements of the Catholic Church, student and labor movements to demand land reform and a peace process based on negotiations and a political solution to the armed and social conflicts.
It was also clear at both the National Encounter and at the Marcha Patriotica that, whatever approval or disapproval participants had regarding insurgent groups, that their good faith efforts toward a political solution were recognized. The FARC-EP has repeatedly declared its willingness to enter into negotiations and work toward a legitimate peace, and these declarations have been backed up by numerous unilateral releases of prisoners, culminating in the release of all remaining prisoners of war held at the time (military and police captives), and the renunciation of taking political prisoners for ransom purposes.
In a joint statement released in August, 2011, the Marcha Política and FENSUAGRO called for, “dialogue among the rural communities, the unions, the government and the Colombian insurgency…for all the political and social actors to sit down to think and construct from the hopes of the country, proposals for peace, and not for war.”
Marcha Patriotica member organization, ACVC, were clear about where they felt the obstacles were coming from. An August 14, 2011 statement declared that,
“…It is necessary to interpret as positive the…recent messages of the guerrillas…expressing their availability for dialogue…such as their call…for citizens to mobilize for peace as a fundamental method to achieve it. On the other hand, it is very positive that those who make up the model of the Mafioso State are losing political space before those who opt for a conventional state under ‘Rule of Law’.”
Or as FENSUAGRO President Eberto Díaz told me,
“The military aid of the United States and Plan Colombia constitute one of the greatest obstacles to peace…The US must not continue intervening in this conflict and maintaining that peace is not possible. It must stop calling the armed insurgency terrorists because this blocks dialogue and it also shows a double standard regarding political violence in the country….”
The Colombian popular movement wants international support. One thing that they clearly are not asking for, however, is interference or judgment. Yet to our extreme discredit, many US based solidarity activists and organizations, in the name of “peace”, repeat and spread around lies, distortions and misinformation emanating directly from sources such as the US State Department, the Pentagon and the very transnational corporations that are currently plundering Colombia.
Such actions show a profound lack of understanding of the Solidarity Model. As my colleague and National Co-Coordinator for the Alliance for Global Justice Chuck Kaufman explains,
“The Solidarity Model to which we ascribe mandates that we create relationships based on self-respect and interdependency in order to moderate power differentials. We view our role to be to amplify the articulated priorities of our Southern partners rather than one in which we tell them what we think is best for them. One aspect of this is that we do not criticize the strategies and tactics of authentic organizations of the oppressed. We trust that they know the realities of their lives and culture better than we do. In nearly every matter we believe that our partners have the right to walk their own path to peace and justice; a path on which we accompany them. In our own country, our responsibility is to change our own government, and we welcome our international partners to walk our path with us. “
Because the problem of disinformation is all too widespread in the US-based Colombia solidarity movement, it is necessary to identify and at least partially rebut some of the more common of these false or distorted assertions. In broadcasting the call our partners have made for international accompaniment, it is all the more pressing upon us that we address these myths and insist that US based solidarity activist be informed and refrain from distortions and interference in the internal affairs of our Colombian allies. Let me address some of these myths one by one.
Myth Number One:
The FARC-EP is a terrorist organization that refuses to enter into a political process, preferring indiscriminate violence against local communities to a path toward peace.
The FARC-EP was founded in response to campaigns of violence and displacement against rural communities by the government and the hired guns of big landowners. FARC-EP membership is mostly made up of members of rural populations, rather than outsiders. The majority of casualties from FARC-EP attacks have been members of the Colombian Armed Forces and Paramilitaries. Whatever excesses and atrocities may have been committed by members of the FARC-EP , the ELN (National Liberation Army) and other guerrilla groups, it should be noted that throughout the course of the history of the FARC-EP (dating from May 27, 1964), 70 to 80% of all political violence has been committed by either members of the Colombian Armed Forces or by “private”, paramilitary death squads.
As far as entering into the political process goes, there are many, many examples of the FARC-EP’s willingness to negotiate and take up political organization, and we have already discussed the main example of the Union Patriótica. The lesson learned from this history is that minus an end to the impunity of political criminals and a secure and open political process, the FARC-EP has no guarantees that good faith entry into the electoral arena will be met by good faith efforts on the part of the government, corporate leaders and big landowners and their paramilitary hirelings.
In fact, this last November, at the 2011 protests to close the School of the Americas, I took part in a workshop in which a woman from the Justicia y Paz movement in Colombia, brought to this event by Witness for Peace, was asked point blank if she thought that the FARC-EP should be required to disarm as a prerequisite for negotiations. She responded with an emphatic, “no”. She was most definitely neither supporter nor friend of the FARC-EP, but still seemed incredulous that the question was even asked, given the experience of the UP.
Recent history has also not been encouraging regarding government and corporate commitment to peace. For instance, on the opening day of the National Encounter for the Land and Peace, Pres. Santos ordered the indiscriminate and unprovoked bombing of a villages in the municipality of Chaparral, Tolima, alluding to the alleged presence of FARC-EP troops in the area. That same day, Pres. Santos declared that the door to peace was “…closed with a key, and I have the key in my pocket.” A few days before, Santos had commented that “There are many people who do not want peace and many people who want to play a leading role, and the advocacy for peace is very harmful.”This was both preceded and followed by the arrests of several FENSUAGRO members in the Department of Putumayo. The timing of these attacks, arrests and statements seemed designed to undermine the Colombian movement for peace.
So far, the Colombian government, the US government that funds and advises war and repression in Colombia, and the transnational corporate interests they serve have not shown a genuinely strong interest in negotiations. Having displaced more than 5 million mostly rural Colombians from as much as 12 to 16 million acres of land, their interest is not in peace, but in the consolidation of illegal corporate land-grabs and access to oil, water, energy, agricultural and mining resources.
For the US government to list the FARC-EP as a terrorist organization, and for US “solidarity” activists to repeat this assertion does nothing to advance the cause of peace but, rather, justifies ongoing war.
Myth Number Two:
The FARC-EP and other guerrilla groups are too fragmented to negotiate meaningfully. With only 9,000 members or less left; with no clear, well-functioning centralized command; and with a lack of regular, viable communication among the various fronts, there is no one who can truly speak for the guerrillas.
First of all, where exactly does this “9,000” number come from but from the previous administration of Pres. Uribe–a man who was listed in 1991 by the US Defense Intelligence Agency as one of the 100 most “important narco-traffickers” in Colombia? This number was being quoted before revelations showed that at least 3,000 young people-the false positives-had been murdered and used to inflate the numbers of killed insurgents.
The figure of only 9,000 soldiers left in the FARC-EP also comes from the Uribe administration in its employment of Luis Carlos Restrepo as a “peace commissioner”. Restrepo has since been found to have concocted another kind of “false positive” scandal in which he claimed to have overseen the demobilization of an entirely fictitious front of the FARC-EP.
This 9,000 figure comes from an administration that employed the services of Cesar Caballero, former director of Colombia’s National Administrative Department of Statistics. Caballero admitted that the government had manipulated and continues to manipulate ‘statistics to make Colombia appear safer than it is. Caballero adds that , “…the president’s policy is…to maintain the perception that security has improved, no matter what the case.”
In other words, there is absolutely no reason for US-based Colombia solidarity activists to accept this number as credible, much less to repeat it. Doing so is a service to the propaganda efforts of Empire.
Almost all credible sources will admit that it is impossible to get an exact count on the numbers of FARC-EP insurgents. Canadian scholar James Brittain has suggested the number of FARC-EP combatants may be well over 40,000, citing several carefully documented sources and his own experience conducting first hand research among a number of FARC-EP fronts.
Scholar James Petras says that the FARC-EP is “…the dominant political force in over 50 percent of the country’s municipalities, fielding a guerilla army of approximately 18,000 mostly peasant fighters.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross affirms that there has been no significant loss of capacity for the FARC-EP, despite the high-profile deaths of several FARC leaders. In a press conference launching a report by the ICRC, Christophe Beney noted that, “What we see today, perhaps between the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010, is that…the FARC adapts itself dynamically….to continue being an important actor in the armed conflict.”
The Colombian government-funded think-tank Nuevo Arco Iris notes that there have been steady increases in 2010 and 2011 in military actions by the FARC-EP, although it attributes them to restructuring and new strategies, rather than the failure of the government’s “Democratic Security” strategy. Nevertheless, it does recognize the failure of the predicted “end of the FARC-EP” and a subsequent demoralization among the armed forces. According to a 2011 Nuevo Arco Iris report,
“There was an overvaluation of the successes of democratic security in 2008…[and] the country was said to be at the “end of the end” [of the war]…Then General Padilla de Leon declared that in no more than one year the FARC would be practically liquidated….The research showed that there is a wear or fatigue in some structures of the Military Forces. This is due to the fact that the so-called “end of the end” is not so near for the guerrilla group….”
When US-based Colombia solidarity activists repeat as fact that the FARC-EP is fragmented and down to only 9,000 combatants, they are relying on outright liars and manipulators of statistics for their numbers. I once even heard one such oft-cited activist remark, “Who would the government negotiate with? The FARC are so weakened and the communications between fronts so disrupted, that even if the government reached agreements with FARC Commanders, how could they be enforced?” In other words, he was repeating exactly what the Empire wants us to believe.
Myth Number Three:
The FARC-EP no longer need popular support or the backing of local communities because they have forsaken their ideological principles and have converted into nothing more than a narco-trafficking organization.
This is a myth that is repeated ad nauseum by many alleged proponents of peace.
Oliver Villar and Drew Cottle note in their new book, Cocaine, Death Squads and the War on Terror, that,
“From the late 1980s the Colombian state commenced efforts to manufacture its image as a defender of democracy at war with narco-terrorists. The state employed the services of the Sawyer/Miller Group, a leading public relations company in the United States to wage PSYWAR on Colombia’s narco-terrorists, the FARC….By the 1990s, the Sawyer/Miller Group had regularly used the American press to disseminate Colombian government propaganda….
Despite the propaganda about the FARC as narco-terrorists, in 2001 Colombian intelligence estimated that FARC controlled less than 2.5 percent of Colombia’s cocaine exports, while the AUC controlled 40 percent, not counting the narco-bourgeoise as a whole…
The guerrillas provide the security and enforce a drug tax, as they do with all products under their control. By protecting its campesino base, the FARC accepts the cash crop as a supplementary income for the campesinos’ subsistence…When territory is captured by the FARC insurgents the narco-bourgeoisie is driven out…
…If the FARC dominated the multibillion-dollar cocaine trade in any way, it could not be in conflict with needed contacts within the Colombian establishment and the United States.”
Donnie Marshall, the head of the Drug Enforcement Agency under Pres. George W. Bush has gone on record saying, “…there is no evidence that any FARC or ELN units have established international transportation, wholesale distribution or drug money-laundering networks in the United States or Europe.”
According to Rafael Suarez, who was a military advisor to the Uribe administration, “if you reduce the FARC to just a drug cartel, you make the possibility of negotiating a political settlement more difficult.” Of course, if the goal is not peace, but the consolidation of stolen lands, then the strategy works well of branding the FARC-EP as major drug traffickers and carrying out a “War on Drugs” that is really a War of Displacement and a War against Farmers.
James Brittain explains that,
“Guerrillas don’t get paid and receive three meals a day and medical treatment if they need it, but sometimes even those are scarce. They live in camps in the forest, sleep on wooden planks, bathe in rivers, and fight with diseases. It isn’t a life of luxury, which led journalist Garry Leech, who once spent time in a FARC camp, to say:
‘And if guerrilla leaders…are little more than the heads of a criminal organization, then they must be considered miserable failures. After all, other Colombian criminals live in luxury. The leader of the former Medellín cocaine cartel, Pablo Escobar, lived lavishly in magnificent mansions, as have many other Colombian drug traffickers over the past thirty years. Paramilitary leaders have also lived well on their vast cattle ranches in northern Colombia, enjoying the riches wrought from their criminal activities’”
Regarding measuring the popular support of the FARC-EP, again, when Colombia “solidarity” activists claim that there is none, and that the FARC-EP is isolated from the populace, they are once again mouthing the words of the Colombian oligarchy and the US-Corporate Empire.
The FARC-EP is strongest in areas abandoned by the government. In these areas, the FARC-EP has built roads, set up schools and health clinics, acted as a legal system for the settlement of disputes and protected the populace against paramilitary and military attacks. James Brittain notes that, “Alongside the creation of education centers, the guerrillas have shaped grassroots medical facilities…Medical and dental services have been provided by the FARC-EP directly or through allies….When someone is ill, remedial treatment is offered at no cost. I experienced this at first hand when I became severely ill in the jungle.”
Brittain also notes that,
“the FARC-EP has been involved in much simpler excise practices in some rural communities. These levy systems saw the guerrillas collect a tax on amenities such as toothpaste, soap, and in some cases, beer, which was reciprocally repaid in full to a community-based body. The taxes were collected but not spent by the FARC-EP. They are forwarded to ‘an elected committee from the locality’called Juntas Acción Comunal (JAC) – a locally elected neighborhood council – which implements social programs and infrastructure with the collected funds.”
Polls are often cited as proof positive that the FARC-EP does not enjoy any popular support. However, these polls are generally done via landline telephones. Most Colombians don’t own land lines for economic or geographic reasons. Furthermore, those polled can easily be identified using landlines, therefore the polls are not truly anonymous.
Perhaps the peace negotiations of 1998-2002 give some clue, though, to how rural communities regard the FARC-EP. For instance, before negotiations, the region of San Vicente del Caguan had around 100,000 residents. After negotiations, roughly 740,000 peasants migrated to the area under the control of the FARC-EP.
Myth Number Four:
The lack of concern or consideration for human rights and life is proven by the FARC-EP’s recruitment of child soldiers.
No one who cares about peace can approve of the use of child soldiers. But I also have heard repeated testimonies from Colombian rural villagers as well as students about killings of Colombian young people by the military and paramilitaries. Young people are killed as false positives, they are killed for their political activities, they are killed because they refuse to become informers, they are killed for a variety of reasons. In fact, I heard one story about a young 13 year old girl who wanted to join a contingent of the FARC-EP, but the brigade commander refused. A year later the commander was in the area again, only to find that the girl had been killed by paramilitaries.
When I was visiting in a village of the municipality of Corinto, Cauca, in 2008, we saw a video that graphically illustrated the dangers of being a young person in a rural zone of conflict. The video showed two teenagers who had been murdered by members of the Armed Forces while they were sitting on the floor eating supper. The villagers refused to let the soldiers leave–and refused to allow these young people to be dressed up to become yet two more false positives. A subsequent investigation confirmed that this was indeed a murder committed by the military–but no one was jailed for this crime.
The Alliance for Global Justice condemns the use of child soldiers. And we condemn the killing and maiming of children by the Colombian Armed Forces and paramilitary death squads, and we recognize that part of the reason some children are compelled to take up arms is for their own safety.
Because AfGJ refused to either endorse or condemn Colombian guerrilla groups, I have been asked several times what is the attitude of the Alliance for Global Justice toward the FARC-EP, the ELN and other groups. AFGJ and myself, personally, emphatically do not meet with any clandestine groups nor do we know nor can we identify any members of such groups. We have no reason and no desire to talk with such organizations or their membership. We do not in any way give our support to insurgent groups in Colombia. Besides, if they needed the paltry resources of the AfGJ, then they would be pitifully bad off indeed.
However, we also refuse to condemn insurgencies or spread false information about them. As a solidarity organization based in the US, our job is to oppose US policies of war and repression, not to choose sides in the internal affairs of other countries.
All our allies in Colombia have chosen the road of popular mobilization and political organization rather than violence. Indeed, all our closest allies have hitched their horses to the wagon of the Marcha Patriotica. Our solidarity takes the form of efforts to change US policies toward Colombia and to give our support for a legitimate peace process. Our solidarity takes the form of a positive answer to our partners’ calls for accompaniment. As internationalists, we also join in worldwide efforts to bring to bear the pressure of international opinion on the Santos administration to pursue negotiations for a political solution because peace in Colombia is of vital importance to the stability of the continent, the hemisphere and the entire planet.
I would be remiss to suggest that Santos is no different than his predecessor, Álvaro Uribe. In Santos’ dealings with Cuba and Venezuela and in his criticisms of the War on Drugs and openness to the prospect of legalization, he shows some level of independence, however small, from the dictates of Washington, DC.
In regards to the armed conflict, unlike his predecessor, Santos at least admits the armed conflict exists and has even said that he and others could be found guilty of crimes against humanity in a context other than the war. Most important has been the reality that the Santos administration has already engaged in backdoor, unofficial and low level talks with guerrilla forces. Thus it is all the more important that we bring international pressure to bear on this administration that it might enter fully and in good faith into a legitimate peace process.
With the advent of the Marcha Patriotica and a history of growing mobilizations for peace in Colombia, the role of the US solidarity movement is to stand squarely with these mobilizations. Several times in the past, the US government and Pentagon, and US corporations like Drummond Coal, Chiquita Banana, Coca-Cola and others have interfered to sabotage movements toward peace. We must demand that the US support the goal of a political solution by not interfering. A good start would be for the US government to return to Colombia extradited guerrilla Prisoners of War such as Ricardo Palmera, so that they may participate in a peace process. The US should also return extradited paramilitary prisoners so they can participate in truth-telling commissions. And the US government should take the FARC-EP off its list of terrorist organizations.
The Colombian popular movement is insisting that international awareness and accompaniment will be necessary components for any kind of social transformation and peace. We in the US must step up to the plate and do what we can to answer this call in the affirmative. But what is not needed, and not welcome, are those who in the name of peace repeat the lies and distortions of the Empire. For “solidarity” activists such as these, it is best that you stay at home.