Justicia y Paz (ISSN 1090-719X) is published quarterly by the Colombia Support Network - Wisconsin Interfaith Committee on Latin America.
Reproduction of Articles: Permission is granted, provided Justicia y Paz is cited as followws: "Reproduced from Justicia y Paz, A Magazine of Human Rights for Colombia, published by CSN, P.O. Box 1505, Madison WI 53701 USA."
Hard Copy Subscriptions: 4 issues: US$25 for individuals and non-profits, US$50 for institutions, US$12.50 for student/low income. For outside the U.S. and Canada, add US$10 (airmail). Electronic versions are free, but please consider a contribution to cover the costs of both versions.
Send to: Justicia y Paz c/o CSN P.O. Box 1505, Madison, WI 53701 USA. Phone (608)257-8753, fax (608)255-6621, e-mail: csn@igc.apc.org
Submissions: (material preferred on IBM discs Send to: Michael Lopez, A.A. 31861 Santafe de Bogota DC, Colombia. E-mail: michael.lopez@lbbs.com or 105046.3333@compuserve.com
Despite the fact that political violence in Colombia is much greater than in Chile under Pinochet, Colombia and its people are haunted by a number a very negative stereotypes that ignore that reality. The mainstream media portays Colombia as a nation of drug traffickers intent on pushing their products on helpless North America and Europe. Violence in Colombia, we are told, is mostly drug related, with "narco guerrillas" as key players. One of the biggest myths about Colombia is that the millions of dollars of military aid from the US and Europe to the Colombian armed forces are used to impede the flow of illegal drugs while fighting powerful cartels.
Justicia y Paz (Justice and Peace) magazine has been started with the understanding that the real problems faced by Colombians are much deeper and the violence much greater than most of the world comprehends. More than 70% the nearly 10 (documented) political murders per day find responsibility with the state. Added to this is the outright slaughter of the political oppositon, the "social cleansing," and complicity in such atrocities by the western "democracies" who value foriegn trade more than human life.
We seek to bring international attention to the realities of Colombia by reporting the attacks on human dignity by state agents, the responses of various human rights groups, by creating a free flowing communications network between grassroots groups in Colombia, North America Europe and elsewhere, and by encouraging activists to assist in the struggle for respect for human rights in Colombia. Justicia y Paz will include regional reports, analysis of statistics on political violence, and commentary on the roots of the human rights crisis in Colombia. In future issues we will include updates on actions by Colombia human rights activists around the world, upcoming events, as well as suggested actions such as form letters to send to government leaders.
Funding the magazine is the most difficult part of the publishing process. We hope that many of you receiving this first issue will support this ambitious attempt at publishing a globally distributed English language magazine reporting on the current situation in Colombia.
Subscriptions for one year (4 issues) for individuals and non profit activist groups are US$25 in the U.S. and Canada, US$35 elsewhere (airmail delivery). Economic conditions being as they are, we also offer a student and low income rate of US$12.50.
In addition, for individuals and groups unable to pay this reduced rate we offer "scholarships:" In exchange for a pledge to send letters to government officials regarding Colombian human rights or to put Colombian human rights on their respective groups agenda, we will send "free subscriptions" and find donors willing to cover the costs. Advertising space is also available for progressive organizations.
Please keep us informed of any activities supporting Colombian human rights. Send to our Bogota address summaries of your or your group's past 3 4 months activities Submission deadlines are the 15th of March, June, September and December. We all need to be better informed, to better coordinate our efforts.
It is our sincere hope that these efforts will dispel some of the myths surrounding Colombia as well as forge new avenues for human rights activism.
As one of the main goals of this magazine is to break through the veil of misinformation about Colombia, it is vital that we begin by providing background information to understand the context of human rights violence. In this issue we begin with some of Colombia's vital information. With each following issue, we will include more historical background.
Economic
Colombia has recorded uninterrupted positive GDP growth since 1948,
averaging 4% annually since 1982. During the 1980's, the country's
cumulative economic growth (33.4%) was the highest in Latin America,
where
the average was 14.2%.
In 1991, the administration of former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria initiated a comprehensive policy of internationalization of the country's economy. The Senate is presently debating a bill which will permit the sale and privatization of 28 government run interests, including banks, airports and hydro electric projects. Last year, the government estimated that 440,000 jobs would be lost along the way, calling this the short term "hardships" that would result in long term benefits for the economy.
Conservative estimates put the percentage of Colombians living in poverty at 36%. When the definition of poor is taken as someone whose income is insufficient to ensure that his nutritional and other basic needs are met, the figure jumps to 49% or 17,000,000 people.
Only about 20% of the population is covered by social security, compared to a 45% average throughout Latin America. Officially, the unemployment rate continues to hover around 10%, fourth highest in Latin America. This figure is greatly misleading because it includes both the temporarily employed, who receive no employment benefits and are out of work for significant periods each year (21.2% of the population in 1992) and the underemployed, 25% of the economically active population.
In the countryside, 1.3% of rural, often absentee landowners own 48% of the land; 63% of campesinos own less than 5%. Income distribution in Colombia remains very skewed with the poorest 50% receiving 17% and the wealthiest 20%, 55% of the income. Significantly, drug traffickers now own more than 5 million hectares, more than half of the country's best and most productive land.
Political
In 1991, hopes were raised in many quarters by the drafting of a
new Constitution by a popularly elected Constituent Assembly. A multitude
of economic, social and human rights were entrenched in the document and a
number of offices and bodies created specifically to promote and protect
them.
In spite of claims to have "opened up" the system, there is still no genuine legal political opposition in the country. Opposition political forces attempting to work through the system have either been co opted (former guerrilla group M 19) or murdered. The small left wing party Patriotic Union, or UP, is the best example; over 3,000 of their members and candidates have been murdered since 1986.
In the 22 months since he took office, Colombian President Ernest Samper has resorted on three occasions to declaring a state of emergency (called "state of internal commotion") during which individual and collective rights and guarantees can be suspended and the Executive can legislate without the approval of Congress. One of these "emergency" measures, decreed on April 18, permits the creation of special "public order" zones in the country within which civilian and military authorities can restrict and/or prohibit individuals, vehicles and foodstuffs from entering or leaving and freely circulating. By mid May, two municipalities in Antioquia, Remedios, and Segovia, and five eastern departments, Meta, Caqueta, Vaupes, Guaviare and Vichada, had been declared such zones. In June, four municipalities, Apartado, Turbo, Chigordo, and Carepa, were made Public Order zones in the department of Uraba. Like his predecessors, Samper has moved to convert many of these "temporary" emergency measures into permanent law by incorporating them into congressional bills.
Between 1990 and 1994, peace agreements were signed with 3 factions of the Coordinadora Guerrillera Simon Bolivar, the M 19, the Popular Army of Liberation (EPL) and, in April of last year, a dissident faction of the National Liberation Army (ELN), which demobilized its 450 members and was awarded two seats in the Congress. An estimated 10,000 12,000 guerrillas remain active in the country.
Soon after he took office in August 1990, former President Gaviria began tightening the screws on the country's popular organizations and movement, by institutionalizing dozens of emergency measures severely limiting individual rights and freedoms. They have combined with the country's infamous public order or secret justice system. Although now with the more sanitized name Regional Justice Courts, defendents are tried by secret prosecutors, secret judges, convicted with secret or paid informants and evidence, and often cannot criticize evidence or cross examine witnesses until after they have been convicted.
Unsurprisingly, the insistance upon the creation of these courts of inquisition came from a northerly direction. Colombia, like Peru, is the recipient of a large U.S. assistance package for "judicial reform." The U.S. program in Colombia is part of the Administration of Justice Program (AOJ), run by the Agency for International Developement (USAID), and is funded pursuant to a counternarcotics National Security Directive. Under this program, Colombia received US$36 million. Despite the problems raised concerning severe restrictions on defendents rights, the Public Order Courts are the primary beneficiaries of the AOJ program in Colombia. Legitimized nationally and internationally in the late 80`s under the pretext of combating drug traffickers and terrorists, the effect of these courts has been the conversion of important elements of the Colombian judicial system into instruments of political persecution.
Both the security measures and the Regional Justice courts have been used in practice to criminalize social protest and punish members of grass roots labor, campesino, and human rights organizations. According to one study, only 6% of the over 2,600 individuals arrested and jailed under this public order jurisdiction since its creation have had anything whatsoever to do with drugs or crimes of terrorism.
Social and Human
Colombia is a country with absolutely staggering indices of
criminality and political violence. The 31,000 murders in Colombia in 1995
translate into a per capita murder rate of 85 per 100,000, the highest in
the world for any country not at war and almost four times that of second
place Brazil. Political violence claimed almost 3,000 victims which is more
than the total number of cases of disappearances and murders (2,666)
denounced to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Chile as having
taken place during 17 years of brutal military dictatorship. Sixty five
percent of these (in cases where it was possible to identify an individual
or individuals responsible) were attributable to the government, either
directly (army, police and state security organisms) or indirectly
(paramilitary groups and death squads).
Since 1990, more than 10 people have been killed daily for political reasons and there are now more than 800,000 people who have been displaced by political violence in the countryside. Last year there were 65 massacres (the simultaneous killing of 4 or more individuals), 122 documented cases of torture, and every three days a person was disappeared. Not surprisingly, military spending in Colombia increased 250% between 1990 and 1993 and today as a percentage of the country's GDP is, along with Cuba, the highest in Latin America. Since 1988, the United States has provided over $691 million for various military and counter narcotics purposes, 74 percent of which was provided between 1990 and 1993. In spite of, or rather because of, such law enforcement initiatives, the Colombian government's own figures show that 97% of the country's crimes go unsolved and the perpatrators unpunished.
In August 1994, during the 46th session of the U.N. Subcommission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, Colombia was the second most criticized country in the world after Iran. Unless they look beyond the headlines and read between the lines in what they hear about the country, observers outside Colombia run a distinct risk of not seeing the forest for the trees. No sector escapes the violence. Between 1990 and 1995, there were more union activists murdered in Colombia than in any other country in the world. Since 1992, an annual average of 25 judges and lawyers have been murdered or the victims or murder attempts. According to Colombia's national statistics bureau, DANE, there were 2,190 children murdered in 1993, an average of six per day, with the State directly responsible for a significant percentage of them.
Grappling withColombian Violence
On an average day, 24 bodies are brought to the Bogota morgue 10
murder victims, 6 accident fatalities and 8 others of undetermined violent
causes. Last year in Bogota, violence claimed more than 8,700 victims.
Ask a foreigner what's behind so much violence and the answer will probably be "drugs." Ask Dr. Gloria Suarez the same question, though, and she'll single out intolerance and impunity. Take the case of 24 year old Bertha Concha. After finishing Christmas shopping on December 11, Mrs. Concha and her husband stopped a taxi on a downtown Bogota street in rush hour. As they loaded their parcels into the cab, another taxi began honking impatiently. When Mrs. Concha told him to "hold his horses", the driver responded by getting out of his car and, in front of a dozen or so witnesses, shooting her twice in the head. Mrs. Concha died instantly, the killer drove off and, after a week or so, public outrage gave way to resignation.
Dr. Suarez works at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, a modern 7 story building just behind the Bogota morgue. She coordinates the National Documentation Centre on Violence, the country's most comprehensive data and research centre on violence. The Centre receives monthly reports and statistics of violence from 133 checkpoints around the country. Dr. Suarez an epidemiologist who headed the Institute's clininal forensic unit for two years before joining the Centre and her staff are involved not only in documenting cases and analyzing trends but in designing strategies to try and halt the violence. Early last year, she was one of two Colombian doctors invited to a month long specialization course in violence prevention at the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta.
She returned with a renewed sense of purpose, she says, and today is convinced that only drastic changes in the laws and the behaviour of Colombians will have any real effect on the levels of violence. Among her recommendations are that school curricula include classes introducing mechanisms to resolve conflicts peacefully and on the futility of violence; that illegal handguns (there are an estimated 3 5 million of them in circulation) be controlled; that the willy nilly sale of alcohol "on almost every street corner in the city" be stopped (Dr. Suarez says that between 30% and 40% of the bodies admitted to the morgue show elevated blood alcohol levels) and that campaigns to promote civic solidarity be initiated in cities throughout the country. The first step, though, she insists, is an acknowledgment of the real magnitude of the problem. "There is no question that violence and the scars it leaves on families and in communities is the country's number one problem. We simply cannot deny it any longer."
Statistics of the social costs of violence in Colombia bear out Dr. Suarez's analysis. Health Minister Augusto Galan whose politican brother was assassinated in 1989 calls it the country's "number one public health problem." Bogota's largest hospital, San Juan de Dios, devotes more than 65% of its already scanty operating budget to treating victims of violence and trauma. Last year, a study by the Health Ministry found that the total amount Colombian hospitals spend annually on victims of violence is enough to provide basic health care to 4 million of the estimated 15 million poor Colombians who have no access to health care.
But the violence is only half the story with nationwide impunity at 97%. For the over 3,600 murders last year in the city, for example, Bogota police arrested less than 100 people. Presently, there are over a million criminal cases backlogged in the judicial system. "So much abuse and so very little punishment," says Dr. Suarez, "results in a feeling of powerlessness and resignation." "Out there," she continues, motioning to the streets below her office, "there's a murder every couple of hours. No one 'sees' or 'hears' anything and the killer is not apprehended. What's worse, there's simply no deterrent for him not to kill again." In spite of the fact that drug related violence has never been responsible for more than 2% of the country's overall violence, recent attempts to reform the judicial system have focussed almost exclusively on high profile drug and terrorist crimes, leaving the average Colombian as vulnerable as ever in the face of violent street crime. Street crime, muggings, robberies and the like account for over 80% of the country's murders each year. Five years ago, the Colombian government responded to attacks and violence against lawyers and judges involved in drug cases by setting up a parallel justice system. In practice, this "faceless" justice system as it is known here has been used much more to crack down on the country's legal political opposition than to combat the drug traffickers and terrorists it was originally designed for. That fact, combined with several of the system's most infamous characteristics judges' identities are kept secret, witnesses and evidence against the accused are reserved and testimony from paid informants is legally admissible has prompted national and international legal experts and human rights groups to call for its abolition.
So what is being done and what can be done to curb the violence? Nationally, the government has instituted a program of paying for T.V. commercials showing photos of "criminals" and offering rewards for information leading to their capture. But the money for information campaign is not without its critics. One of the most eloquent of them is Jesuit Father Javier Giraldo who heads the Catholic Church's Justice and Peace human rights commission. "By replacing ethical motives with economic and monetary ones, the government has turned justice into a commodity which is being bought and sold to the highest bidder throughout the country." Over time, says Father Giraldo, the system "will have devastating consequences on society's moral conscience." In Bogota, Mayor Antanas Mockus has prohibited the sale of alcohol after 1 a.m. and promoted dozens of barrio security associations. City police have installed a battery of closed circuit cameras in strategic points throughout the city and decentralized its 14,000 man police force, dividing it into three urban "commandos," each responsible for a third of the city. Since September, the 1,000 strong Bloque de Busqueda, the elite police unit which successfully hunted down some of the Cali cartel kingpins last summer, has been operating in the city's southern slums.
Results, however, have been slow in coming and so far, as Dr. Suarez is first to admit, authorities have been more successful in analyzing the violence than in controlling it. In Bogota, for example, they know what days of the week, time of day and parts of the city murders are most likely to occur, that men between 18 and 34 are ten times more likely to be murdered than anyone else, and that 9 of 10 killers get away. That is something Dr. Suarez, a doctor who sees more death in one day than most people see in a lifetime, wants desperately to change.
On September 26, 1994, for the first time in the country's history, the Colombian government agreed to participate in an international commission to investigate human rights violations. The object of the commission's investigation was the Trujillo massacre. Trujillo, a town of 25,000 nestled in the foothills of the western Andes in the department of Valle de Cauca, was the scene of one of the bloodiest episodes in Colombia history. In April, 1990 over 100 people were tortured and murdered by police, army and hired killers (sicarios) working for locally based drug traffickers.
Two days after a skirmish between the Colombian Army and guerrillas from the Ejercito de Liberation Nacional, a 17 year old youth was fingered by an informant as one of the guerrillas. Under torture, the youth admitted to belonging to the ELN. Under more torture, he told the soldiers where the guerrillas trained and named several locals as having helped them at one time or another. Then the nightmare began.
Later that night, 30 men some of them in military uniforms, others in civilian clothes acting under the orders of army Maj. Alirio Uruena and a paramilitary leader known as el Tio, made a sweep through a nearby town called La Sonora. Eleven people were dragged out of their homes, tied up and taken to the hacienda of a well known drug trafficker. What followed reads like a horror novel.
Just after 7 a.m., Maj. Uruena and 'el Tio' arrived. First, they had breakfast. Then, the Major and several members of the armed group demanded each person's identification papers and belongings. Then they were blindfolded and taken out one by one the first was a 59 year old women to another part of the hacienda called 'la peladora.'
Coffee sacks were tied over the heads of the victims who were then thrown to the ground. Maj. Uruena took a water hose, turned it on full force on the face of each victim the mouth and nose and began to interrogate them. When he finished, the victims were piled one on top of the other and someone called for the blow torch and chainsaw. Each victim was decapitated, cut into pieces with the chainsaw and left to bleed. The heads and torsos were put into different sacks and, later that night, loaded onto a truck, driven to the Cauca River, and dumped into the water.
This narrative is part of testimony given to Colombian judicial authorities by Daniel Arcila, a civilian auxiliary to Uruena and eyewitness to the tortures. It was taken from a 186 page report known as the Investigative Commission into the Violent Events of Trujillo. The slaughter in Trujillo continued throughout April. When the headless body of the Rev. Tiberio Fernandez, the town's parish priest was fished out of the water on April 23, he was the 27th victim of a three week killing spree. It would continue. In a frightening scenario which continues to be played out in much of the Colombian countryside today, individuals involved in any kind of grassroots work farm cooperatives, small communal enterprises, church groups are pegged by the army as guerrilla sympathizers and targeted for elimination. The Trujillo Commission tallied 107 victims in and around Trujillo in that year of terror. Decapitated bodies washed up on the banks of the Cauca River almost weekly. By the end of the first week, Arcila could stand it no longer and fled to Bogota where he told the Colombian Attorney Generals Office of the horrors he had witnessed.
In spite of his testimony, justice was not served. By December 1992, investigations into the alleged authors of the massacre had concluded and all were acquitted.
Months later, during a visit back to Trujillo, Arcila was disappeared in the town's central square by a group of armed men. With the perpetrators of the atrocities unpunished and all national channels exhausted, the director of Justicia y Paz, Jesuit Father Javier Giraldo decided to take the case to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, DC.
Continued international cooperation and pressure, resulted in a September, 1994 meeting in Washington during which the Colombian government, represented by its Presidential Counselor for Human Rights, and Justice and Peace, representing 63 victims of the Trujillo massacre, signed an agreement to set up a joint commission to investigate the murders.
This 19 member commission, included representatives from the Ministries of Foreign Relations and the Interior, the Senate and House of Representatives, the Ministry of Defense, the national Police, the Attorney General's office, the Catholic Church, five of the country's most prominent Human Rights NGOs, and was chaired by the Colombian Human Rights ombudsman. Operating under the auspices of the Inter American Commission, it had until December 31, 1995 to conclude its investigation and generate its conclusions and recommendations.
The commission's conclusion that the macabre series of torture and murders between 1988 and 1990 was carried out by members of the Colombian army, police and drug traffickers, and that members of the government and the justice system covered it up, attracted considerable international attention. On January 31, 1995, after receiving the commission's final report, Colombian President Ernesto Samper was applauded nationally and internationally for finally and publicly acknowledging government responsibility for the atrocities of Trujillo.
The next day, Uruena, (who was trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas and who was promoted to colonel after Trujillo) was removed from active service by the defense minister. Predictably, the Colombian Army rallied around him, characterizing him as an officer with an exemplary military career.
Despite President Samper's public acceptance of responsibility for the massacre and his promise to honor an international commission's recommendations to sanction the guilty and compensate the victims, he has done almost nothing. In April, 1995, the Colombian Attorney General overturned the ruling which absolved Uruena and he was officially sacked. This move, however, did little more than make Uruena ineligible for any future military benefits or pension. A slap on the wrist considering the magnitude of his crimes.
Now out of the international spotlight, the Colombian government has made no effort to move on the investigative commission's recommendations. What has it done? In addition to Uruena, the Trujillo police chief who turned a blind eye to the atrocities going on around him was removed from active service. No criminal charges have been laid against them or anyone else named in the report as having participated in the killings. As for the social and cultural programs promised residents of Trujillo, the money to compensate victims, the resettlement program for families forced out of the town during the two year reign of terror, and the job creation and training schemes for the children of victims, all of them remain "under discussion." Not one penny of the US$8.5 million program of social spending and compensation promised by the government to the people of Trujillo has reached the town or the victims. Only the list of victims has lengthened. Further investigation has turned up over 140 more and the list now holds 250 names.
Rev. Giraldo calls the Government's admission of responsibility a single drop in an ocean of impunity and is not optimistic about there ever being justice for the victims of the Trujillo massacre. The witnesses have simply been through too much and are too intimidated and afraid now. You know, some of the individuals who participated in the massacre are still there in Trujillo, in broad daylight, armed, and driving around in their Jeeps just blocks away. I just don't think that Colombian government measures will change any of that now and bring them to justice.
Tragic, but not really surprising, the atrocities of Trujillo will almost certainly remain in absolute impunity.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Noam Chomsky was in Bogota on May 22 for the Amnesty International Conference on the Protection of Human Rights Workers in Colombia. Michael Lopez, Danilo Rueda, and David Suarez of the Intercongregational Commission of Justice and Peace had an opportunity to discuss a variety of issues with Professor Chomsky during his visit.
QUESTION: Much of the paramilitary action in Colombia has been in the regions of Uraba and Choco, (the Darien Gap), which is right next to the border with Panama. This region has great strategic importance because the terrain provides for easy passage between the Atlantic and Pacific, there is a tremendous amount of drug and arms trafficking through there, the agricultural interest, bananas, etc. There have been at least 10 massacres in the last year at the hands of paramilitary groups and bodies turn up every day. This has caused a huge internal refugee problem that continues to grow. Also, there is open complicity between the paramilitary groups, the police, and the military. Recently, in the news, there have been reports that Panama has "agreed" to allow U.S. troops to patrol the Panama Colombia border supposedly to counter drug trafficking. What sort of U.S. military activity, if any, can we expect from the United States?
ANSWER: I personally don't expect that U.S. military forces will actually enter Colombia. It wouldn't make any sense since the Colombian military is basically a surrogate of the U.S. Army. It's like a domestic force that works closely with the U.S. military forces and the U.S. would much rather have the Colombian Military do the work than have U.S. forces do the work. That's the traditional imperial pattern, you have local forces do the dirty work and you only bring in the imperial forces if things get out of hand. But the Colombian Army is a very powerful institution and I am sure the U.S. would rather delegate the work to them than enter themselves.
As far as Panama is concerned, I think there is another factor and that is that over the next few years the Panama Canal is supposed to be handed over to Panamanian authority and the idea has always been that that should be done in a way which guarantees that the U.S. will basically continue to control it. I am sure that was part of the reason for the invasion of Panama in 1989, to ensure that there would not be an independent government, it would be one that's basically subordinate to U.S. interests. Over the next few years I suspect there will be lots of pretexts developed for sending U.S. troops to Panama for all sorts of pretended reasons with the main purpose being to maintain a justification for a military presence so that after the canal is formally put into Panamanian hands it will still effectively be maintained the same way it has been throughout the century. I wouldn't be surprised if this action is part of that.
If the United States wants to stop drugs going through Panama, instead of putting troops on the border, they could go right to Panama City, where all their friends who they put in power are up to their necks in narco trafficking. Panama City's where the drugs are, so what's happening at the Colombian border can't have anything to do with drugs.
Colombia is a very dramatic case. For example, in the late 1980's, Colombia asked the Reagan Administration for aid to set up a radar station to monitor airplanes coming from the Andes with drugs into Colombia. That was a Colombian government proposal. The United States agreed, but they put the radar station on San Andres island, which is as far as you can get from the drug traffic, but it's for surveillance of Nicaragua. The drug war is always the pretext for something else.
QUESTION: Now they have radar stations, Colombians run them with U.S. advisors, scattered around the country at strategic locations, for example in Leticia, which is the southern most part of Colombia as well as Juanchaco.
ANSWER: At the same time, U.S. economic policies are causing an increase in the production of coca in Bolivia and Peru. The major effect of the U.S. World Bank IMF structural adjustment economic programs in Bolivia was an increase in coca production. The reason being, if you force peasants into export agriculture and then import subsidized American foods into the country which undermines their production, what are the peasants going to do? Well, what they did was turn to coca production as a means of subsistence. Producing coca is the only method many of the peasants have for survival, and that is how the Bolivian economy now lives.
In a sense the same is true in Colombia. When the United States forced Colombia to stop marijuana production, Colombia, of course, turned to cocaine. When the U.S. broke up the coffee cartel and reduced the price of coffee, they turned to some other crop, namely coca leaves. The whole range of U.S. economic policies almost induces drug production.
QUESTION: There have been comparisons between Colombia and El Salvador and Guatemala in terms of what is happening here in Colombia and what has happened in Central America in terms of deaths at genocidal proportions. On the one hand, comparisons seem inappropriate because Colombia is a huge country, with incredibly diverse terrain, many groups of people that are different, and indigenous groups that are different, guerrilla groups that are different. On the other hand, the situation has seemed very much the same because It seems that Colombia is not just a Guatemala or just an El Salvador, it is several. You have a Guatemala in Uraba, an El Salvador in Meta, a Honduras in Santander, while different paramilitary groups operate in each region. There are several happening at the same time.
ANSWER: I think that's exactly true, in fact the Central American countries are small countries, and even within them, policies were different. So the policies in San Salvador were different from the ones in Chalatenango, Morazan even in El Salvador. It's the goal of the policies that's the same in all these countries. The goal of the policy is to maintain a certain socio economic system. The tactics differ in different places but it's the same socio economic system throughout the hemisphere. The question is, how do you maintain it?
Colombia is a well established country and has an organized society with long standing military forces. It's a rich country, by Latin American standards, and doing quite well. Of course the United States is happy to let the Colombian military control the affairs in Colombia as they see fit, with plenty of U.S. aid. For example, Colombia, gets about half of U.S. military aid and training for the entire hemisphere. That's just from the United States, and then it gets it from all over the place. All the U.S. client states are involved: Israel, Britain, Taiwan is probably involved, and Brazil.
There is basically an international terror network run by the United States that sends military aid where it's needed. In Colombia the U.S. has taken the primary role, but its accessories are also involved. Guatemala was a bit different. Public opinion in the United States, operating through Congress compelled the U.S. government to stand back during the period of the worst atrocities in Guatemala, so the U.S. just brought in its client states. They brought in Israeli trainers, and Taiwanese trainers, and British intelligence and that sort of thing. The Argentine neo nazis were used until the Argentine government was overthrown.
In other countries it was different. In Nicaragua, the United States had to attack the country with their terrorist army. In Haiti, it was still different. Haiti's been a U.S. dependency right through the century. When the election took place in 1990, the U.S. government was very upset by the outcome; they hadn't expected that. They immediately moved to undermine the Aristide government. When the military coup came seven months later, the United States basically stood by, and refused to support the embargo. It continued to permit oil to flow.
QUESTION: Didn't arms continue to go to the coup leaders?
ANSWER: Arms continued, but the most important thing was oil, the key element of any embargo is oil. Oil continued to flow right to the junta and the wealthy supporters right through the coup and it is now known that the Justice Department leaked the facts that both the Bush and the Clinton Administrations had informed the Texaco Oil Company that they wouldn't prosecute them for illegal shipments of oil to the junta right up until the end. Then when there had been enough terror the U.S. moved in and essentially restored the situation to how it was before the 1990 election. That's a different approach.
Honduras is another case in point. In Honduras throughout the 1980's the U.S. followed different policies. It allowed the Honduran military to carry out the atrocities. There is a CIA set up battalion, Battalion 3 16, which is now being exposed, which was carrying out brutal atrocities in Honduras right through the 1980's. It was their job, they probably had some American advisors, but they could control the situation.
Costa Rica was different. In Costa Rica, the U.S. essentially wanted to terminate the social democratic policies. They did it in various ways and now Costa Rica has a military force that is not all that different from other Latin American countries. It's not called an army, it's called a Rural Guard or something but it's got uniforms, and officers, and arms and behaves like everyone else.
QUESTION: Despite its reputation as a vacation paradise.
ANSWER: Well, that's the reputation, and it's changed. Furthermore, the social programs are being cut back, social spending is being cut back, and Costa Rica is being turned more into the Latin American Paradigm. Tactics are simply tailored to specific situations. I'm sure what you said is exactly right. In a big country like Colombia, you'll do different things in different places. So there will be a Nicaragua in one place, and a Honduras in another place and so on.
QUESTION: There is an article written by you published here about Colombia, in which you used the phrase "Colombia is a Latin American Bosnia."
ANSWER: That was put in by the translator. I didn't say that and I don't think it's true. It's only true in the sense that there is a lot of killing, but the situations are very different. Bosnia is quite a different situation from Colombia. Terrible situation but a different one. There's no comparison. First of all, in Bosnia, the atrocities were mostly carried out by Serbian forces internal to Bosnia or Croatian forces or, to a lesser extent Bosnian Muslims. They were mostly carried out by internal forces, not supported from the outside.
In Colombia, it's quite different. Colombia has been part of the U.S. empire. The atrocities that are carried out here partly have roots inside Colombia, doubtless from way back, but it's all expanded by the ways the country has been integrated into the U.S. system. The Kennedy administration was when things really changed. During the Kennedy administration, the U.S. essentially took over the internal terror throughout the hemisphere in an integrated fashion. They changed the mission of the Latin American military to internal security and U.S. support for the military throughout Latin America expanded very rapidly. It was part of the Alliance for Progress and the purpose was very clear. Though it might lead to development, the Alliance for Progress was clearly was going to lead to severe inequality and a lot of suffering for a lot of people. That meant that there would be a reaction and therefore you have to control it by force by supporting the elements who will control it by force.
The first great achievement was the coup in Brazil, extremely important, because Brazil is an important country. The basis for that was laid in the Kennedy administration. Brazil was one, then like a row of dominoes, it went through the whole hemisphere. A huge plague of repression, and Colombia was just part of it. U.S. direct involvement in Colombia repression begins in that period and it changed its character. It's been different since the 1960's. There's nothing like that in Bosnia.
QUESTION: Turning to another subject, what do you think about the role of the intelligentsia in a political social situation in a country like Colombia?
ANSWER: First of all, what does intellectuals mean? It means people who are privileged and have opportunities to work with their minds. They may not be anymore intellectual than taxi cab drivers. They are people who have certain positions of privilege and power and freedom, and so on. They have choices, if you have privilege you have choices, more choices. The question is, what you do with those choices. Throughout history, most intellectuals have chosen to be servants of power. The ones who have not picked that path have often suffered for it.
That goes back through all of history and it's true today too. Take the bible, the oldest historical record. There were intellectuals, they didn't call them intellectuals, they called them prophets, but they were intellectuals. The prophets who were honored, were the ones we call the false prophets. They were the ones who told King Ahab "everything you're doing is fine, you're wonderful" and so on. They were the people who were honored and respected and became rich and so on and so forth. The people who many centuries later were called the prophets were put in prison or driven into the desert or tortured and so on.
That pattern hasn't changed a lot over the last century. You make your choices. It's not a matter of whether you're officially an intellectual, like some of the prophets were not intellectuals. Some were farmers, carpenters, working people and so on. These are simply choices that people make. If you are an intellectual that simply means that you have more choices because you are part of the privileged sector of society. It doesn't mean you work with you mind any more than anyone else does. I know plenty of people in universities who are very respected professors and do mostly clerical work.
QUESTION: Michele Foucault said that intellectuals exercise power.
ANSWER: Not of themselves. The only power that intellectuals have is by associating themselves with others. Now the overwhelming majority of intellectuals associate themselves with the centers of power within their own society. The state and private corporations. There are other intellectuals who work with popular forces. They can help.
QUESTION: They must exert the power of truth?
ANSWER: Foucault didn't even believe that there was such a thing as truth. He thought that there was only power. People can try to tell the truth, but to stand on a mountain top and tell the truth, that doesn't help anybody. If you're working with a group of people who are struggling for their rights, and you help them, then yes it makes sense to tell the truth.
I should say that one of the best groups in the West are the Quakers. I have worked with them for years, and I am very close to them and agree with them about a lot of things. I've been in jail with them and everything else. But I don't agree with them in their fundamental principle. Their fundamental principle is that their role is to speak the truth to power. I don't think that that makes any sense. It doesn't make any difference. You can meet with Henry Kissinger or the head of the armed forces in Colombia and you can tell them the truth and they don't care. They already know the truth, they don't need to hear it from you. What makes sense is to tell the truth to people who need that truth to help them in their own struggles. That's where you should be telling the truth. If intellectuals are serious, that's where they should be.
QUESTION: Could you comment on the U.S. decertification of Colombia? It seems like a justification for the continued military spending, but what is your opinion of it? What interests does it serve, the oil companies etc.
ANSWER: I think you should have a close look. My strong suspicion is that nothing substantive will change much because of the decertification. Wait a year and see if military aid continued, has military training continued, do foreign investors still come in exactly as they did before? I suppose nothing much will change. I think that the decertification is partly related, maybe mostly related to things internal to the United States.
The whole war against drugs in the United States is mostly a technique of social control. There is a form of structural adjustment program going on in the United States. It's sort of like structural adjustment in the third world. Policies are being carried out which direct wealth and resources towards the more wealthy sectors of society which harm a good deal of the general population. Probably over half of the population has actually declined over the last fifteen years and they don't like it. The policies that are being carried out are turning the United States into something more like a typical third world society.
In a typical third world society, like Colombia, or India or Egypt, they are all more or less the same, there is a sector of great wealth, enormous wealth, there is a large number of people who live somewhere between suffering and misery, and there's a sector who are just superfluous, they're of no use, they don't contribute to profit so you just have to get rid of them somehow. In Colombia it's "social cleansing." In other countries it's something different.
Every third world society has the same structure, and that structure is being imposed on the United States. Inequality is growing, a large part of the population, probably a majority is declining, wealth is enormous and very concentrated, profits are going through the ceiling, they have never had such profits before and there's a large part of the population which is useless. Unskilled labor in urban slums, which happens to be mostly Black and Hispanic, the superfluous people.
In these circumstances, what do you do? Well, you have to do the same thing you do in the Third World. You have to get rid of the superfluous people, and you have to control the ones who are suffering. How do you control them? One of the best ways of controlling them is by increasing fear, and hatred, and making them hate each other and fear the superfluous people. That's the way it's done everywhere and it's happening in the United States. That's where the drug war fits in.
In the United States the drug war is basically a technique for controlling dangerous populations internal to the country and doesn't have much to do with drugs. That's always been true. It goes back to England in the 19th Century when they made gin illegal and kept whiskey legal. There was a simple class reason for it. Gin was the drink of the working class and whiskey was the drink of the upper class. This is a way of controlling the working class people. When prohibition was instituted in the United States, alcohol prohibition, the purpose was to close the saloons in New York City where immigrants and working class people came, but nobody stopped anyone from drinking in the rich suburbs. In the case of marijuana, the marijuana legislation introduced right after prohibition ended had started in the states but it was aimed at Mexicans. Nobody even knew what marijuana was, it was just something the Mexican immigrants used and therefore it had to be criminalized so you could control the Mexican immigrant population.
If you are middle class, white, and so on, nothing matters. Marijuana was technically illegal but it wasn't enforced. The so called drug war was started in the 1980's and it was aimed directly at the black population. It more or less avoids the white population and it's directed precisely at the kinds of drugt populations. It's kind of like the counter part in the United States to "social cleansing" in Colombia. They're not trying to stop the drug flow.
Black males are criminalized the most by the drug war. The number of Black men in the criminal justice system is enormous. Well, that criminalizes a dangerous population. What about the population which is declining? Well, they're frightened. The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime and welfare mothers and immigrants and aliens an all sorts of things, the more you control people. Make them hate each other, be frightened of each other and think that the other is stealing from them. If you do that you can control people. And that's just what the drug war does. Colombia plays a role in this because Colombia is a symbol of where drugs come from. Therefore, if you can seem to be imposing sanctions against Colombia it contributes to this program of social control within the United States. It has nothing to do with preventing drugs from coming out of Colombia. That's going to go on no matter what they do and they know there is no way to stop it.
If they want to stop drug use in the United States, there's an easy way to do it: educational programs. They work very efficiently, and they have made a big difference. Among say more privileged sectors, my children, probably you, the use of drugs has been declining for a long time and so has the use of every other substance. For example, my students, they don't smoke, don't use drugs, consumption of coffee is going down. In the United States, cigarettes is a class issue now. Students at a university, almost none of them would smoke cigarettes. If you go to a poor section of a town, and you see teenage kids there, they're all smoking cigarettes. It's a class issue, just like the use of drugs, just like the use of alcohol. This comes through changes in perception and understanding.
To give you one example, a few years ago there was a college basketball player named Len Bias who died from an overdose of cocaine. Within about a year, the use of cocaine dropped by about fifty percent. This rapid decline in the use of drugs is due to education, basically. This happened to be an ugly way to do it, but it can be done intelligently too.
Today the programs for educating people are declining, they're cutting them down. The circumstances under which people are driven to drugs are intensifying. There's more poverty and fewer jobs, lower wages, and less support systems. That's driving people to drugs. That's where the problem lies. When people in Colombia say "The problem is in the United States," they're exactly right. As long as there is a demand for drugs, there will be a supply. There is no way to stop it. The problem is internal to the United States and it's not being approached because they use the drug problem as a means of social control.
It's like when you turn on the television today, you hear all sorts of attacks on welfare mothers. The idea is to get working people against them. The salaries of working people are going down, their wages ore going down, their lives are getting worse, their children are not going to have even the opportunities that they had. So what do you do, do you tell them "We are trying to harm you?" Or do you tell them "Welfare mothers are stealing from you?" Well, of course, you tell them welfare mothers are stealing from you. Thus, if some teenage girl was raped and has a child, she's stealing from you, so hate her. That's why they're making the welfare system harsh and cruel. Increasing cruelty and fear, these are all standard methods of social control, they're used everywhere.
In a country like the United States, where you can't really send out the paramilitary forces to murder people, you rely more heavily on techniques of social control. That's basically what the drug war is about.
Gaining ground in Colombia judicial institutions is the idea that Human Rights is a banal concept. Traditionally the governments that have pushed hardest for such banality are the very ones which commit human rights abuses. Such pressure is applied to the very inter governmental institutions created for the purpose of protecting Human Rights, as well as the few non governmental organizations working towards this objective.
In mid 1993, Colombia's Prosecutor General (an enforcement office specifically charged with monitoring government activities), Carlos Gustavo Arrieta, submitted a human rights report to the President. In his report, agents of the state are held responsible for human rights violations. However, the report qualified its recognition by claiming that:
"This report is presented with a relatively tranquil conscience, knowing that among the multiple acts of private violence afflicting Colombian Society, the State, in spite of its military strength, is among all armed actors, the only one whose legitimacy remains incontestable because it is the actor which least violates human rights."
Later, the same report noted that:
"The information herein should be regarded from a perspective which
compares the crime rate with the rate of human rights violations wherein
state agents have been implicated."
Such comparisons between the crime rate and the rate of human rights
violations by state agents is an enormous distortion and serves to distract
attention from and trivialize fundamental concepts of human rights.
The assertion is misleading and troubling primarily because it is quite evident that the percentage of violations committed by state agents used by the Procuradoria is far too low. More over, the same report recognized that less than 10% of all complaints filed with that office resulted in a legal case. Of those which did, only 21% percent resulted in an indictment, 56% of which resulted in acquittals. Nonetheless, the comparison between the crime rates and the human rights abuse rate, assumes that all types of delinquent or criminal behavior can be categorized as a violation of human rights.
Related to this is the more blatant generalization that insurgent organizations also violate human rights. Since these groups are armed insurgents, the government characterizes them as a kind of coercive power and attempts to include them within a state like structure. Despite such a "recognition," the government refuses to recognize any level of political legitimacy or actual popular support for such movements, thereby creating even more confusion about who is charged with protecting human rights.
Universally recognized norms, known as the Rights of People, obligate the governments to respect certain principles of humanity. Such norms may never be violated in any instance of war or conflict. Codified in International Humanitarian Law, these norms are enforceable against any armed group regardless of whether it has signed any treaty or international pact.
Thus it is necessary to distinguish between International Humanitarian Law, obliging the adherence of all belligerent entities, and the International Law of Human Rights. International Human Rights Law, to which only governments subscribe, regulates relations between citizens and the State and is primary authority over the domestic or internal law of each state.
Failure to recognize the relationship between a government and its citizenry as the source of meaning and value for human rights would risks the grave consequence of ignoring the fundamental and legitimate basis for the existence of the State and its power structure: which is that its purpose is to guard the equal rights of all its citizenry. To ignore this framework legitimizes private justice and facilitates the attempts of any capable minority group to dominate the rest of the population by whatever means they desire.
To assert that human rights can be violated by anyone serves to confuse the ethical demand upon all of civilized humanity to respect life, integrity, dignity, and liberty with the demand that judicial institutions of the same populations do the same. To create such confusion, has grave consequences. The generalizations made by the Procuradoria allegedly seek to forcefully emphasize ethical duties that all humanity shares. Yet, practically speaking, it only serves to dilute the responsibility that falls upon protective judicial institutions. Consequently, those institutions are allowed to operate solely within their own spontaneity and ambiguity with a total lack of government protection for the majority of the citizenry.
Every attempt against the life, the integrity, the dignity, or the liberty essential to a human being is a transgression of fundamental ethical norms. But the concept of "rights" implies something more than this. It implies that judicial institutions like the Procuradoria General's office, are bound to the idea of protecting the people and must actively use their power to protect and ensure such rights.
The concept of rights embraces a philosophy or morality which transcends its practical conventions and codifications. The concept fixes to governments and their judiciaries a duty to ensure the eligibility, enjoyment and efficacy of rights. To speak of codification and conventionality requires speaking of peace treaties, conventions, statutes, and protective institutions like the judiciary. Thus to redefine human rights, as the Procuradoria has attempted, as something that can be violated by individuals or private groups, is equivalent to the sanction and reinforcement of huge inequalities, not just philosophically or morally speaking, but rather in terms of the operative reality of every day life. The coercive power of the state is much more able to oversee and ensure the protection of human rights than individuals acting alone. It is equivalent to making respect for essential values, the protection of the Rights of People, dependent on the social, economic and political strength of private individuals against far more powerful forces. It is tantamount to denying them the vigilance the State owes them in practice. It is for these reasons that only the State, governments, can violate human rights for it is only States which can protect them.
This thesis can be substantiated:
1. Historically
The word "right" and the formulas which calculate the "rights of
man," the "the rights of citizens," the "rights of human beings." and their
conceptualizations, originate from abuses of power such as feudalism,
monarchic absolutism, conquest and colonialism, and the world wars. They
all attempt to express the rights of the vassal, the subject, the plebeian,
the colony, the exploited, the dominated people, against the arbitrary
exercise of power and always attempt to limit such power.
The progressive formulations of human rights have rocked the foundations of political philosophy and defined as a fundamental principle the legitimate use of power by the State to guarantee equality of rights for everyone.
2. Theoretically
All foundations, declarations, and conventions on human rights have
as their objective, defended the subject (the vassal, servant, citizen
etc.) from structures of power. Such an objective has inspired, oriented
and governed all formulations and codifications of human rights.
3. Philosophically
The primary legitimating principle of the State, as a structure of
power, is to establish itself as the protector of the fundamental rights of
all, without any discrimination whatsoever. This makes the State
responsible for protecting rights from the aggression of any citizen
against any other. For this reason, and for only this reason, the state is
endowed with the authority to institute measures of social control such as
penal codes, administrative and judicial institutions, security organs of
the State, the police, etc. Generally, institutions not under the direction
or control of private individuals or groups.
4. Philo politically
If the concept of rights is set within its original and legitimate
framework of relations between the citizen and the state, and if within
that context the relations between the citizens are included and the
protection and guarantees of certain rights are privatized, then this "new"
situation would demand that the instruments necessary for the defense of
rights be placed in the hands of private individuals. If this begins to be
the case, then a different justice system operates, namely a private
justice system, which inherently robs the state of its only legitimate
reason for existence.
5. Legally
Political states sign conventions and international human rights
pacts which oblige them to honor the human rights of their own citizens and
those of the international community, regardless and beyond the dictates of
their domestic laws.
6. Juris politically
It is not logical to separate the concept of obligation, derived
from a primary function, from the concept of violation. In a strict sense,
it is like overstepping or skipping the basic, founding and required
principle. If the common citizen transgresses the essential norms of co
existence, against the fundamental rights of people, the one who has to
defend the victim is the State. With only that duty as a given, the State
is granted instruments of power never granted to private citizens or
organizations. In this sense, the notion of violations is correlated with
guarantees.
7. Politically
When the agents of a criminal act are multiplied or increased,
responsibility is diluted. As perpetrators are forever multiplied,
responsibility disappears completely. It is common that when the
responsibility for crimes against human rights, falls upon the state, the
state tends to attempt to evade its responsibility by multiplying to the
extreme the number of actors that are violating those rights. It is part of
their attempt to create the belief that in a world where everyone is
guilty, no one is guilty.
8. Pragmatically
A principle of logic says: the broadest approach results in the
least comprehension, or rather, as long as a concept refers to a greater
number of things, its content is progressively vague, ambiguous,
imprecis
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is instantly regarded as an act of war.
Despite its relatively short history, El Meta has endured multiple manifestations of violence. This history began with partisan political violence of the 50's and 60's, then continued with the harassment of poor settlers causing them to organize self defense groups. The cultivation of drugs in the region began in the 70's with marijuana and the 80's with coca. Today the violence is in the form of political persecution of Union Patriotica (Patriotic Union or UP) and anyone else who shows the slightest sign of civil dissent.
The Colonization of Meta
Part Andean, part western plain, and located in the east central
region of Colombia, Meta continues to be a frontier settlement zone.
According to Alfredo Molano, two forms of colonization or settlements can
be found. The first began next to the riverbed of the Guayabero and was
composed of poor peasants who formed agricultural syndicates and leagues.
Traditional supporters of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan and of the Communist Party,
their communities became known as "farming colonies." The settlements
had the organizational characteristics of work cooperatives with a single
social order which also acted as a local government, supplying the basic
services that the national government could not or would not provide. The
settlements also maintained an armed structure which presided over and
mediated social conflicts. The second kind of settlement arose in the
1950's as peasants fled the partisan political violence in the departments
of Cundinamarca, Tolima, Valle, and Boyaca. Peasants arrived individually
which contributed to the creation of small, independent and anarchical
societies.
These settlement zones are now a permanent source of social friction. Armed uprisings are intimately linked with land conflicts, but it is the savagery of unrestricted capitalism that has assumed a far more ruthless role. The settlers cleared the mountain forests, planted corn, and then grass, in order to transform uncultivated land into goods they could sell. Meanwhile, greedy traders sold goods to the settlers at high prices and bought the harvests at prices that eventually bankrupted the settlers. Once the settler was economically ruined, the traders would buy the land. In this way the trader/landowner won not only the land and fruits of the settlers' labor and struggle, but social capital as well, such as schools and roads constructed by the settler communities. Without land or livelihood, the settlers are forced to leave, often to the edge of the frontier, where the whole process begins again.
The settlement process lacks any form of state regulation, resulting in the alienation of the poor settlers and is very costly with the destruction of the rain forests, and neglect of the local infrastructure. In the La Macarena highlands, for example, nine thousand settlers are waiting for the state to grant them titles to the land they have settled. Their already precarious situation worsened when all the lands in question were turned into a national park. The laws governing such lands are highly restrictive and do not take into account the needs of the poor farmers who live there.
The domination of the region by narco traffickers also plays an intricate role in the lives of the settlers. The drug trade has virtually destroyed the traditional ranching culture and forced settlers to choose between selling their land under the threats and pressure of the traffickers or converting the land to marijuana or coca cultivation. Poor campesinos and settlers are forced into illicit production for survival, out of necessity. Meanwhile, the narco traffickers only utilized the land to further their profits and regional power. Added to the equation is the role of the guerrilla. Guerrilla groups charge the traffickers a tax called a "gramaje" for "protection," and tries to force the traffickers to pay the farmers a higher price for coca leaf.
This whole process occurs under the permissive eyes of the government. Agricultural reforms such as crop substitution programs are basically considered things of the past and are pushed only by those few who insist on the impossible. Those who persist are quickly discredited. Anyone serious about attempting to resolve the violent conflicts and curb drug cultivation, knows that the solution lies in reforming land ownership.
To this day, the only solutions to these conflicts have been the continued use of armed violence. The situation has grown yet worse in the last decade with the insurgence of paramilitary groups who have been responsible for the great majority of human rights violations in the region. Among these abuses are 37 massacres, a frightening example of the endurance of social and political intolerance in Meta.
Paramilitary structures
Under the guise of creating "counterinsurgency movements," the
national government has transformed some of the small armed security
forces of the narco traffickers and landowners into paramilitary
organizations.
The arisal of the paramilitary network is also intimately linked to the
illegal dealings of armed forces personnel, local political leaders,
landowners, and narco traffickers. The true function of such death squads
has quite plainly revealed itself to be an outright campaign of physical
elimination of any and all opposition.
With the help of testimony given by Camillo Zamora Guzman, alias
"Travolta," and William Gongora, active members of the paramilitaries in
Meta, it can easily be concluded that such armed organizations exist under
a single unified command structure. Operating in Meta as well as in
bordering regions, this paramilitary network has links with others in the
Magdalena Medio region, and enjoys the direct acquiescence and
collaboration of the Colombian armed forces.
The thorough investigations of these two men began in "Process 019" after 17 peasants were massacred on July 3, 1988 in Cano Sibao. Much of the evidence surrounding the massacre indicates that the powerful cattlerancher, emerald dealer, and narcotrafficker Victor Caranza organized, finances, and directs the paramilitary structure in Meta. In conjunction with at least 13 active members of the Colombian armed forces and 28 others, Caranza's paramilitary group was found responsible for numerous counts of crimes against humanity.
The testimony of Zamora Guzman, who was detained in Villavicencio for possession of a 9mm pistol and two cartridges without a permit, was crucial. He gave testimony that at the Ginebra ranch, owned by Caranza, he was never paid a traditional salary. Instead, when Caranza visited the ranch, he would give out 100 to 200 thousand pesos (US$100 to 200) depending on his mood. When there was an important assassination, he would give a bonus by taking them to the Quipama emerald mine. Zamora Guzman's testimony further confirmed that on December 23, 1988, Caranza ordered a meeting at the Ginebra ranch with Rafael Novao, Alnulfo Castillo (alias "Rasguno") and Vergara (alias "Saraviado"). These three were to be the body guards for Caranza, Zamora Guzman and Hector Saavedra, who was a DAS [Department of Administrative Security] agent. On December 28 they went to Puerto Gaitan and met with an informant named Jairo Torres, with the intention of giving him a list of names which included a local Councilman of Union Patiotica.
Zamora Guzman stated: "They traveled in two Toyotas: one white, the other yellow. The next day, Vergara, Saavedra and Castillo brought a man in the white Toyota, and we all went to La Sesenta ranch. There we met Antonio Guzman, Dumar (an informant) and a man called "Gorranegra." We took the man from the truck, he was wearing blue pants and black shoes. Rasguno interrogated him then tortured him. He tied him to a post, slapped him twice, and demanded the information that he was supposed to have given the guerrilla. The man started to cry, saying that he knew nothing. Rasguno then took out his machete, a very big one to be sure, but Vergara released the man from the post and shot him twice in the head. Rasguno protested saying the man was his to kill. Hector Saavedra and Gorranegra then carried the body. Rasguno and Huevoduro hacked at his head and knees, then they cut his chest open with the machete and threw him in a hole. No one ever knew what the dead man's name was."
Zamora Guzman gave similar testimony in a later investigation. There he said that he only actually participated in the murder of Luis A. Bonilla, a Union Patriotica leader from Cumoral. The reason that Bonilla was targeted was because his membership in that party and because he was suspected to have tried to recruit local youth for "subversion." He also implicated Corporal Mosquera of the F 2 (a police intelligence organization), Sergeant Martinez of B 2 (the intelligence body of the army), and two others from Villavicencio as materially involved in the assassination. He further testified that the police captain from Cumoral called in the police officers under his command moments before the murder took place. One of the weapons used, by "Billete Largo" was a 9mm pistol owned by Sergeant Martinez.
Upon returning to Villavicencio, the assassins were picked up by police as suspects in the murder. Corporal Masquera explained to them that he was merely acting under orders of Major Forero. He was then released after the police confirmed what he said. In the final part of his testimony, Zamora Guzman said that the murder was organized by Major Forero and Victor Caranza and that they direct and finance the paramilitary groups in Meta.
These testimonies make plain the tight cooperation between the paramilitary groups and various parts of the armed forces. Such a relationship allows the state to continue it's dirty war against political opposition without soiling the "good name of the institutions" constitutionally charged with the defense of life and human rights. The dirty war is an expression of the progressive consolidation of power through the creation of private, armed, right wing paramilitary institutions that serve the special interests of landowners, Mafia, and many sectors of the Colombian Armed Forces and state security agencies. It is undeniable that the paramilitary structure in Meta operates under the unified command and financing of the armed forces. In Meta alone, paramilitary groups have been responsible for at least 37 massacres, 40 murders, and 100 disappearances. They have contributed most to the utter degradation of human rights in the region.
In graph number one we can see the disproportionate responsibility of paramilitaries for violations of human rights in Meta. If we add to this the number those acts committed by the armed forces, DAS, the police, etc., we see that nearly all of the abuses are perpetrated by agents of the state.
The Appearance of Union Patriotica
In 1985, peace agreements between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) and the government of Belisario Betancur, resulted in the
creation of the Union Patriotica as a legal political alternative to the
traditional liberal and conservative parties. In Meta, the UP flourished,
expanding more rapidly than in any other part of Colombia.
In 1986, the UP won Senate and House of Representative positions as well as various local deputy and council positions. In the same year, the UP won 7 mayorships in Meta alone. The UP achieved 25 percent of the total Assembly votes, majority votes in seven municipalities and second place in five other voting populations.
Such unprecedented success and rapid expansion of opposition political power did not go unnoticed by the traditional political ruling classes. The violent assault against the UP and its support base was a combined effort of economic interests, landowners, narco traffickers and the anti Communist sectors of the armed forces. The "extermination," took the lives of Senator Pedro Nel Jimenez, members of the House of Representatives, local deputies, city councilors, hundreds of activists and sympathizers, as well simple peasants who became military objectives simply by living in a zone politically influenced by the UP.
The violence had an immediate impact on UP electoral success. In the next elections, 1988, the percentage of UP votes dropped by 28 percent in the Assembly, and won only 2 mayorships. In the 1990 elections, the UP share of the vote dropped another 50 percent. Mayorships were retained in only Mesetas and El Castillo. By 1992, the UP received only 5% of the Assembly vote that they had won in 1986. The last elections, 1994, the UP again won only two mayorships, while victories for deputy or council positions dropped to only a handful.
The drastic reduction of UP votes in Meta can be explained in large part by the political violence unleashed against the UP's most activist members and by harassment of the poor peasant population, UP's base of support. The paramilitary strategy combined the resources of the landowners, narco traffickers and traditional political elite with the intelligence capabilities and military support of the armed forces and police to undermine or eliminate the UP and its supporters.
It is no coincidence that peaks of violence have coincided with local election years. As seen in Graph 2, 1986, 1988 and 1992 were especially violent. The majority of the assassinations and almost all of the massacres have been committed against peasants whose way of life is most influenced by the left. Such a blatant attempt to eliminate the political opposition by means of outright violence constitute a form of political genocide. UP election successes have been met with the actual elimination of candidates as well as voters. Political violence in Meta has replaced what was a growing possibility of improving living conditions with a form of collective terror, death, despair and injustice. Unrelenting paramilitary military violence has all but assured that not a single germ of social inconformity can survive. Meta's merchants of death seek to control the collective memory of the people and assure that the status quo is their own manifest destiny. In essence, they own the future.
Impunity and the Human Rights Crisis
The Colombian government is obligated constitutionally and by
International Law to investigate human rights violations, punish those
responsible, and pay reparations to the victims. But we are far from
obtaining a state which complies with such mandates, or even one which
serves to guarantee a minimum amount of vigilance for civil coexistence.
Instead we must witness a sordid spectacle of a state which is the
criminal, one that incites others to violate human rights, and has totally
abandoned fundamental principles of the rule of law.
Except in the Pedro Nel Jimenez case, of the more than 1200 denunciations of human rights violations (written requests to the government for investigation and prosecution of people "denounced" for various human rights violations), there is not one judicial decision which punishes those responsible. What is even more significant, however, is that this practice of impunity for crimes against humanity has left firmly in tact a criminal structure of dark motives which operate for special interests.
Impunity is a product of the fear of denouncing or being a witness. Potential witnesses know full well that the accused will not stand trial. They know that what is far more likely to occur is that the witness will become the suspect, and must endure death threats that have been carried out on more than a few occasions. Thus, most such cases go unsolved. In the cases where concrete responsibility was actually established, where there was sufficient evidence to investigate, try, convict, and sentence, judges have avoided their duties to uncover the truth and instead continued the administration of injustice.
A clear example of such blatant impunity is revealed in the proceedings for "Process 019" cited above. As mentioned, the process began following the massacre of 17 peasants in Cano Siboa in July of 1988. One would have thought that the testimony of Zamora Guzman, which clearly implicated leaders and members of the paramilitary structure, would have lead to actual trials and convictions. Rather, his testimony and the testimony of another paramilitary group member were used to paralyze the criminal proceedings.
These key witnesses confessed to a series of crimes and told where common graves were located. Raids were conducted at various private ranches which discovered bodies, military issue weapons of different types and calibers, as well as military communications equipment. At the Ginebra farm, more of the same was confiscated as well as a list of the names of the paramilitary members and their aliases. Yet another ranch called Los Cambulos functioned as a paramilitary school. In addition to the 17 massacre victims, the Process 019 investigation uncovered the murder or dissappearance of 26 others including elected officials and candidates from the UP, activists, and trade unionists.
In charge of the investigation was "Faceless" Public Order Judge number 4 of Villavicencio, Marcela Fernandez. She heard and reviewed reliable evidence and testimony of torture, murder, disappearance, illegal arms trade, and the creation of the paramilitary network used to carry out these tasks. In spite of the mountains of evidence in front of her, Fernandez absolved all 40 suspects indicted. Among those absolved was Zamora Guzman, who actually confessed to directly participating in at least two assassinations, and who knew exactly where to find the communal graves of paramilitary victims. She explained that his testimony lacked probative value and that it "did not deserve merit because such testimony is typical of a pathological liar (mitomanos)." Fernandez arrived at this conclusion without a medical or psychiatric examination of Zamora Guzman. Fernandez also had political reasons to disbelieve and discount his testimony. Because of his testimony, suspicions were raised that he admitted and in fact was a participating member of the UP. Thus, his testimony had to be ignored because of "his position as an active member of the political party Union Patriotica, which everybody knows is unquestionably the political arm of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia."
As a result of her decision, Judge Fernandez was "punished" by being "fired." A short time later she received further "sanction" when she was named Secretary to the Director General of DAS and later as Legal Council for the Department of Administration in Yopal.
To make matters worse, of the official record of the investigation, some thirty books long, only eleven books remain. The rest, strangely, have disappeared. Along with those 19 books went the possibility of the reconstructing a truthful historical record of paramilitary violence and structure. The only justice to be found in this case lives in the unknown spaces of history and in the blushes of the few who are honest.
In recent years, the crisis of human rights in Meta has grown much worse. Political violence has intensified with increased armed confrontations between the armed forces and the FARC. The civilian population suffers the worst. For this reason, in 1990 several civic and social organizations attempted to create the Civic Community for Human Rights. Although officially received well, the groups organizers have been subject to regular harrassment and persecution when they were accused of being allied with subversive groups. Its founders have been threatened, detained, disappeared and assassinated. As a practical move to protect the lives of the workers and clients, the decision was made to close the Civic Community.
Los Ayes Palpitantes Del Presente
The inexorable repetition of death has become ritual in Meta. When
the government plainly observes threats that occur regularly and openly and
does nothing, the obvious conclusion is that they support such activity.
The most recent example was the assassination of a delegate named Pedro
Malagon. Pedro accompanied us several times before regional and local
authorities seeking protection for Meta's terrorized population, the break
up of paramilitary organizations, and governmental compliance with their
constitutional obligations. His only mistake was to work for his people, to
defend the people's rights, and to show a possible path to justice. He
committed himself to work endlessly for human rights, until protection for
the lives of all was gained. Of all those who have struggled to work as
Pedro did, only one remains alive. Then, President Samper came to
Villavicencio to propose a national death penalty when extrajudicial
executions have been in practice in the region for years!
There is vicious war being waged in Meta against the civilian population. With political dissenters and defenders of human rights as its objective, this war has specifically undermined any possibility of popular organization. In an atmosphere were dignity is an affront and ideals are held in suspicion, the violence has taken the lives of many valuable leaders and has submerged the population in despair. An absurd war without winners has left many defeated.
Although El Meta was declared a Public Order Zone, all that has happened is further restrictions on civilians and even less government protection. What a paradox: To protect human rights, the state violates them. To combat subversion, the state terrorizes the citizenry.
If all the statistical totals seem to indicate an overall improvement of political violence in the recent years, think again. It is not that there have been substantial advances in the protection of human rights. Rather, they illustrate the sad fact that there are simply very few people left to kill. Anybody who has disagreed, does not conform, has been murdered. More lamentable is that the guerrilla groups have vacillated from a legitimate armed opposition to acts of criminal authoritarianism.
Meta's future does not look encouraging. But life refuses to perish at the hands of tyranny. With an absolute commitment to the defense of life, we understand that we have the right to live as we determine, not as they tell us to live and the right to die naturally, not to be killed.