The polarization of lives
While production in Colombia during the first trimester of 2003 increased by 3% in comparison to last year, the consumption of FOOD dropped by 8%. The industry that grew the most in this period was construction, but the number of licenses given for low-income housing diminished by 50%. These are statistics that summarize the drama lived by the two poles in Colombia – the wealthy, for which the government “works and works” and the poor, who face greater impoverishment due to the labour reform that drastically reduced their salaries, the increase in consumer taxes on items that satisfy basic needs, and the daily reduction in social investment.
Colombia is receiving a downpour of loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, after accepting the conditions of the Adjustment Plan and the increase in retirement age as imposed by the IMF. The government is also emitting debt titles as quickly as possible within the country and around the world.
A mortgaged “economic reactivation” has occurred as a result of the increase in State debt – the external debt has increased in 80% plus an increase of the internal debt with high interest rates – and as a result of the extraordinary war tax. There are constant announcements of a quick victory in the war “with the support of the international community.”
President Uribe, like the former governments, wants to resolve the armed conflict without attending to its principle cause: the agrarian problem. Complementary to prioritizing military methods, he has eliminated any possibility for agrarian reform. The subsidies that the recently closed Institute for Agrarian Reform – INCORA used to give to campesinos are now only handed over to “income-generating projects within larger business production systems.” The land “abandoned” by campesinos can be given over to any “producer.”
At the same time that support for independent campesinos is eliminated, the government is filling out the paperwork to provide large plantation owners with tax exemptions. The campesinos can only receive help through credits from the World Bank if they link up with the large landowners or business leaders. In other words, they would have to work for the large landowners, yet without labour rights because they would be “partners” in this exploitation. Six of the eight rural regions prioritized by the Bank for these kinds of projects are owned by or under the influence of paramilitaries.
Which Peace can Work
Coherent with this level of polarization in life, the “peace process” with the paramilitary groups arises, in contrast to the “hard hand” approach towards the guerrillas and accusations against dissidents, charging them of associating with the insurgents. While Bishop José Luis Serna, who supported the coffee-growing campesinos’ struggle to have their debt cancelled, is investigated by the Investigation Bureau for supposedly “collaborating with the guerrillas”, the Bishop of Chiquinquirá presides a “meeting for peace” with 13 emerald mine owners, who repressed thousands of small miners with blood and fire. The principle owner was just declared innocent in response to the charge of promoting paramilitary groups; he owns large extensions of land beside the Meta River – a river projected to be privatized.
The government then dialogues with the paramilitaries, or the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, with the intervention of other bishops. It offers conditional freedom to these illegal groups that have committed criminal atrocities or “unpardonable” crimes if the paramilitaries hand themselves in voluntarily. This is the key to the paramilitaries’ step towards legality. The government insists that this policy also applies to guerrillas that desert their groups and says that it hopes to divide the insurgent forces.
Meanwhile, the armed conflict intensifies and the majority of the victims come from the civilian population. The denouncements against guerrillas and paramilitaries multiply. There are also denouncements against the State Army, as in the case of the massacre against the Betoyes indigenous people and the attacks against the Wiwa indigenous people, the Afro-Colombians in Cacarica and the campesinos from Cimitarra.
Since the war has not ended quickly, and faced with a fiscal deficit that will become unmanageable when its time to pay the debts, President Uribe places his hopes on President Bush’s troops. In the Forum in Davos, President Uribe called them to travel “to the Amazons once they return from Iraq.”
Colombia as a Pretext
The government’s efforts to promote foreign military intervention in Colombia during the Río Group meetings in Cuzco (Perú) became pathetic. President Uribe wanted the group to ask United Nations to push the guerrillas to declare a cease-fire in order to begin negotiating, and to send the guerrillas an ultimatum stating that if the insurgents do not accept this proposal, international military forces will enter the country to impose peace.
The Río Group wrote the proposal as a call to the guerrillas to peace negotiations and not so much as a dictated ultimatum. It opted to not refer to external military intervention but rather mentioned “other alternatives”, a euphemism that led Venezuelan President Chávez to manifest his dissent with the declaration because it did not clearly reject military solutions “that would open the door to a chain of foreign military interventions in South America.”
For months, the Colombian press has daily attacked the Chávez government, trying to create a psychological climate favourable for conflict with Venezuela. The Colombian paramilitaries attacked an area in Venezuelan territory on March 18th of this year, killed nine people, and remained there until they were driven back on March 24th. The press and the Colombian Investigation Bureau have given credibility to the paramilitary version of the story stating that it was the Venezuelans who attacked Colombia on March 24th. Repeatedly, pretexts are fabricated in order to attack Venezuela from Colombia.
President Uribe offers himself as an “alternative” in response to the failed coup d’etat and other methods used to try to knock Chávez out of power. Moreover, by calling for foreign intervention, he desperately offers the United States the key they need to intervene against the growing inconformity that shakes all of Latin America against neo-liberalism and the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement – FTAA.
While Peru’s President Toledo embraced his Colombian colleague, a multitude of Peruvians rose up against him. A million campesinos blocked Perú’s highways and labour union marches extended throughout the country. Toledo declared a state of emergency, but the massive protests did not stop.
The grassroots rejection towards the Bolivian government is greater than that in Perú. The indigenous people in Ecuador get ready to march against the government’s failure to carry out the program that they elected him for. Large mobilizations in Argentina and Paraguay, and the Brazilian people’s strong social organization, reject the FTAA. All of these grassroots processes would be threatened by a multinational military intervention based on the pretext of the Colombian conflict.
The Colombian government knows that time is running out. If the internal war stretches out longer, the fiscal crisis will devour the country. So, the government does not hesitate to serve the United States a pretext laid out on a silver platter to “return law and order” to Latin America.
Another Path
Only non-violent mobilizations by social sectors in Colombia affected by President Uribe’s policies can open up another path. On September 16th last year, the Uribe government had to face the first national protest strike. On May 1st, nearly a million people paraded through the country against the government. The government tries in different ways to reform the Constitution, to cut back civil rights and close any possibility other than the paths prescribed by the IMF and military plans. Now, grassroots movements come together to defeat the Referendum that would impose these Constitutional reforms. If the nonviolent social mobilizations in defense of the interests of the poor in Colombia can open the door, our destiny will change.
Hector Mondragón
Translated by Bonnie Klassen
MCC Peace Office Publication
October - December 2003
Volume 33, Number 4