Editorial, EL COLOMBIANO, October 17, 2024
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CNN Volunteer Translator)
The traditional (and emerging) political élites don’t usually scruple to make deals with other élites, and this can lead to the commission of crimes in exchange for supporting them and helping them to win elections.
Never before have we had a winner of the Nobel Prize for economics who is as familiar with Colombia, in as much detail, as the one who just won it: the United States professor James Robinson. Not only in his book, “Why Nations Fail”, where he mentions this country, but also, in 2013, in a specific essay that he titled “Colombia, another 100 years of solitude?”, published on the Harvard University web site.
This essay is a kind of assessment of the two Álvaro Uribe administrations (2002-2010), seen from the perspective of the history of this country. In it he talks about how the guerrillas and the paramilitaries were becoming one half of the Armed Forces of the government, and how the guerrillas also had a plan to take over Bogotá. And how, thanks to a sustained military offensive, the Uribe administration hauled the FARC out of half of the municipalities where it had been and achieved a drastic reduction in the number of homicides and kidnappings, as well as the demobilization of 30,000 paramilitaries.
Nevertheless, says Robinson, in spite of all those advances, Uribe was unable to transform the country definitively, because he didn’t break with the way this country has been governed since 1819. “For all the good it did (Uribe’s plan for national consolidation), its structure didn’t sufficiently recognize the Colombian government’s political incapability of governing the countryside,” concluded the Nobel Laureate in his essay of ten years ago.
The fact that Robinson has received the Nobel Prize creates a good opportunity to recall his reflections about our country with a mind to understanding ourselves and being able to build on his analysis. The most revealing thesis of his essay, for example, is when he says that Colombia’s greatest encumbrance, which has kept it from advancing, contrary to what everybody believes, has not been the guerrillas or the paramilitaries, or the drug traffickers; rather, those problems are the result of another structure that we could call the toxic relationship between the élites of the cities (he mentions Bogotá) and the élites of the countryside.
When he speaks of the élites of the countryside, he mentions the corrupt clans, or the paramilitary groups, or the guerrillas who, on not a few occasions, have ended up as allies of the élites in the cities.
Robinson furnished several examples to illustrate his thesis, and one of them is the now-deceased Senator Victor Renán Barco, whose coalition governed Caldas for 30 years. According to the Nobel Laureate, Barco, when in Bogotá, went around reading The Economist Magazine, wrote a column in Portafolio, and was the greatest contradictor of the Treasury Minister, requiring him to maintain a prudent macroeconomic policy; but in Caldas he was the complete opposite. “He had the reputation of being the boss of one of the most severe and intransigent patronage machineries for vote-buying in the country. He decided whom this machinery would investigate, as in what happened to the journalist from La Patria, Orlando Sierra; typically, it was a bullet in the head.”
Even so, the responsibility of Victor Renán Barco for Sierra’s death was never proven, which Robinson argues is the generalized system that operates in Colombian politics. “In general, the political élites basically delegate control of large parts of the country to other groups in exchange for their support and their votes. In the process of delegating, they create a vacuum of authority, and that vacuum permits the coca culture, for example, to move in.” That means the traditional political élite (and the emerging élite) don’t usually have any scruples when it comes to making deals with other élites who can then commit crimes in exchange for giving them support and helping them win elections.
Although the strongest expression of that relationship of the élites with the countryside was the paras’ visit to the Congress, this is nothing new. Unfortunately, it’s taken place in nearly every administration. The alliances of Juan Manuel Santos with the machinery of patronage and corruption of Ñoño Elías and Musa Besalle came after Robinson wrote his essay; then came Iván Duque’s initial resistance to the scheme they called “the marmalade”, but they still ended up making concessions, and up to now, Gustavo Petro’s administration has shown how to make deals with some of the least commendable élites of the countryside.
In spite of that outlook, Robinson is not completely pessimistic about the future of Colombia. He highlights the democratic reforms and the Constitution of 1991, which broadened rights and strengthened our institutional framework. According to him, Colombia’s real challenge is based on its capacity to consolidate inclusive institutions that are capable of distributing political power and economic resources in a more equitable manner, so that citizens can participate fully in the decisions that affect their lives.