By Julio César Londoño, EL ESPECTADOR, October 5, 2024
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
People in America know very well who Iván Velásquez is, but in Colombia, they don’t, so here is a brief profile of him.
As the departmental Inspector General in Antioquia, Velásquez visited “The Cathedral” in 1992, and filed a complaint about the serious irregularities he had observed at that resort that Pablo Escobar had built with the coquettish complicity of César Gaviria, the Turbay of Pereira. That was why Gaviria had to take over that “prison” and Escobar lost the bunker that the government had constructed for him with measures allowing him to manage his exportation business, execute his enemies, be snorting with Higuita, and frolic with beautiful prostitutes, some of them very distinguished, all of that undisturbed.
As Regional Director in the Attorney General’s Office in Antioquia in 1998, he led the search of the Padilla Parking Establishment, the heaviest blow that the paramilitary financial organization had yet received in Colombia. Unfortunately, the Attorney General of Colombia filed the case away in a drawer.
As Auxiliary Justice in the Criminal Branch of the Supreme Court of Justice, he led the “parapolitica” investigation between 2006 and 2012, the case that connected more than 100 Members of Congress to the paramilitaries, and he convicted seventy of them. That irritated the paramilitary caucus, the Black Robe Cartel—especially Justice Leonidas Bustos, who forced Velásquez to resign—and President Uribe, who was annoyed because it took down his brother, the para-Senator Mario Uribe, and because the “reestablishment of the fatherland” was precarious. Then the DAS–the department attached to the President’s Office and controlled by the paramilitaries—wiretapped Velásquez and Uribe put together a frame-up with false testimony from a real true paramilitary, “Tasmania”. But those manipulations failed and the justice system convicted the government of the wiretaps, and held that Velásquez was not guilty of “Tasmania’s” accusations. He ended up retracting them.
Velásquez prudently took the path of exile, and the UN (The world already knew of his courage and probity.) appointed him to be the chief of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala between 2013 and 2019. With his heroic, multinational, and dangerous work (After Mexico and Colombia, Guatemala is the most important connection for world drug trafficking.) the Commission took down Otto Pérez, the mafioso President of Guatemala. He was replaced by Jimmy Morales, another jewel. The Commission was able to get Morales’ immunity lifted, but the man came back to life, closed down the Commission, and expelled Velásquez from Guatemala, an event that was received with jubilation by Colombia’s extreme right.
Velásquez is the Minister of Defense in Colombia since August 17, 2022. Since his appointment, he has led the law that returned monthly pay to retired members of the military, doubled the salary of professional soldiers, raised housing allowances, and eliminated the requirement to pay to take the courses required for promotion, which only rich officers would be able to pay.
But most important is the recovery of the honor of the Armed Forces. I would swear that Velásquez wrote the list, along with the upright generals, of the 52 generals whom President Petro called on to defend their service during the first week of his administration. (Fifty of them face serious criminal or disciplinary charges, as the Armed Forces Retired Officers Association, Acore, has admitted. Now the children of the guerrillas are not called “war machines”, the Police don’t receive orders to tear out the eyes of demonstrators, and social protest has returned to being a right belonging to the trade associations and the citizens.
Minister Velásquez doesn’t put make-up on his management reports; he doesn’t hesitate to admit that the mere demotion of those who have killed social leaders is not a satisfactory statistic, and that the kidnappings, the homicides, and the hectares planted in illegal crops have increased. With all of that, the United States government has just recognized Colombia’s struggle with drug trafficking, the historic statistics on seizures of drugs and the chemicals used to produce drugs, and the blows struck against the drug traffickers’ financial structures.
As Attorney and business owner Ricardo Mejía Jaramillo says, “Iván Velásqez is the first Minister for peace and not for war in this position. I hope the ELN, organized crime, and the extreme right will understand that some day.”