Flowers decorate the statue of Simon Bolivar In Bogota’s main square on Friday, Oct. 7, 2016 – the day Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, won the Nobel Peace Prize. Fernando Vergara/Press Association. All rights reserved.The
shock registered everywhere.
On
October 2, Colombians rejected the government’s peace deal with the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). To say it caught the government
by surprise would be an understatement: foreign minister María Ángela Holguín
said in the aftermath of the plebiscite result that ‘there is no Plan B’.
With
President Juan Manuel Santos’ eggs all in the basket of the Colombian people
ratifying the peace process – to the extent that a lavish signing ceremony had
already taken place – a return to war now constitutes a real possibility.
But
what, exactly, would peace have signified in a country which continued
to suffer extreme levels of inequality and political violence throughout the
peace process? On whose terms was peace being negotiated? How did peace for
millions of conflict victims correlate with the state’s vision for the new era?
Questions were asked over
who was actually intended to be the main beneficiary of the agreement.
In short, does the rejection of the accords actually make a large
difference to those social sectors long abandoned or repressed by the state and
other armed actors in the world’s longest-running armed conflict?
Ending paramilitarism?
At
least thirteen social leaders were murdered within three weeks of the Colombian
government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announcing the
agreement in late August 2016. These deaths were not attributed to the war but
followed a model of targeted assassinations of community leaders that
characterises the conflict.
For the Colombian politician Piedad Córdoba, the killings brought back
painful memories of an earlier attempt to incorporate Colombia’s guerrilla
insurgency into the political mainstream. ‘Since last week we’ve been asking the government to
take the necessary actions because it was this way, with selective murders,
that the extermination of the Patriotic Union began,’ she told Semana magazine in September.
Córdoba
was referring to the political party founded by members of the FARC following
the 1982 peace process under president Belisario Betancur. After mild success
at the polls, the Patriotic Union (UP) was subjected to a mass extermination
campaign that saw thousands of its members and supporters killed by right-wing
paramilitaries and state security forces.
‘We
are too worried,’ said Córdoba. ‘Supposedly the government has made a very
important effort to end paramilitarism, but what we are seeing is all to the
contrary.’
Piedad Córdoba
Córdoba
was one of the most prominent figures within the peace negotiations in Havana,
Cuba, where she mediated between the state and the insurgency. A long-time ally
of progressive movements in Colombia and a long-term critic of successive
governments, Córdoba is equally admired and reviled by opposing sides of the
political spectrum.
The
murders took place between August 26 and September 13, the majority in the
southern departments of Nariño and Cauca, two of the regions most affected by
the civil war. Other killings occurred in Antioquia and Cesar.
The
victims shared several traits. They were advocates of the peace process. They
opposed extraction projects that harmed local populations and the environment.
They were known as social organisers within their communities.
The
deaths increased to at least 51 the number of social leaders killed in Colombia
in 2016. Peace may have been on the table, but the spectre of political terror
remained, regardless of the plebiscite. For many groups within the country,
violence is still the standard decision-maker in territorial, environmental and
political disputes.
Overconfidence
Prior
to the vote, however, the government had been telling another story.
Hindsight reveals the folly of the Santos administration’s
overconfidence.
Throughout
the peace negotiations the war economy continued to boom.
‘The
end of the war is felt throughout the national territory,’ said Santos on
September 5. ‘One week ago, at midnight on Monday August 29, I decreed the
bilateral and definitive ceasefire against the FARC. The guerrillas reiterated
on this day the same order to all their members. Since then, there has not been
a single death, nor an injury, and no confrontation.’
While
the road to peace had been a fraught and delicate process, polls suggested the
country would approve an end to conflict and allow the FARC formally to enter
the political arena. Yet the prominent ‘No’ campaign headed by former president
Álvaro Uribe clearly gathered greater traction than the government expected.
Opponents of the agreement claimed it granted impunity to ‘narco-terrorists’
and set the foundations for a future ‘Castro-Chavista’ government. This
hard-line stance was supported by many Colombians and issued in the surprise
plebiscite result.
The
ideological battle was waged with media campaigns and political propaganda
rather than bullets and aeroplanes, but the potential repercussions could be as
grave. The ‘No’ success threatens to plunge the country back into the maelstrom
from which it worked so hard to emerge.
But the peace process was not a simple case of ending hostilities and
advancing into a new era of cooperation and resolution. It contained many
flaws. Framing
the treaty as a bilateral agreement between two opposing forces failed to
reflect the multilateral lines along which the war had developed. Nonaligned
guerrilla groups, paramilitary organisations, foreign multinationals and diverse
social movements all needed to be considered. Questions were asked over
who was actually intended to be the main beneficiary of the agreement.
Exclusion
As
we travelled around Colombia interviewing people whose lives had been affected
by conflict, we encountered optimism but also met many who felt excluded from
the peace process. Some felt that economic considerations were prioritised over
social ones. Others felt the state was doing little to resolve the ongoing
issue of displacement that has forcibly removed millions of people from their
homes. The role of indigenous groups, African-descendants and women was also
prominent, as these groups have been disproportionately affected by the
war.
Throughout
the peace negotiations the war economy continued to boom. In 2015, Colombia
spent 3.5 percent of its GDP on the military, comfortably the highest in South
America and more than double any country other than Ecuador (2.7 percent) and
Chile (1.9 percent). Although the global fall in oil prices had squeezed state
finances, the government was committed to maintaining the armed forces at
conflict levels. ‘I don’t think we will see a big reduction in the defence
budget,’ said Finance Minister Mauricio Cardenas in 2015. ‘But with time, an
economy in peace can dedicate fewer resources to security.’ Reducing that
spending now seems a distant prospect. Members of Colombia's peace negotiation teams and observers embrace after signing an agreement in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, August 24, 2016. Ramon Espinosa/Press Association. All rights reserved.
Fighting for peace
The
supposed transition to a democratic and secure post-conflict scenario had been
predicated on six key accords. Post-plebiscite analysis is now looking at some
of these to determine why they were narrowly rejected by voters. Attention has
focused on the amnesties awarded to guerrilla leaders as a principal factor in
the No vote’s triumph. Yet the same amnesties would also have applied to
high-ranking figures in the armed forces who oversaw atrocities such as the
False Positives scandal in which civilians were murdered and dressed in
guerrilla fatigues to suggest army successes in combatting the insurgency.
It
took four years of negotiations to reach a consensus on the six accords. Even
if talks are resumed, nobody can predict how long it will take to establish a
new agreement, particularly with the political right now vindicated in its
opposition to the agreements by the plebiscite.
The
initial accords were to be constructed on multiple platforms that would not
only create the political space for a legalised FARC-formed party to operate,
but also to tackle the social and economic conditions which have fuelled
insurgency. This included the issue of agricultural reform, with major
investment in infrastructure, transport links, public services, technical
assistance, health, education and communications. This national plan pledged to
reduce poverty by 50 percent in ten years. Diversifying the political arena is vital to
improving democratic conditions in Colombia.
Guaranteed political participation
The
issue of the FARC’s guaranteed political participation for at least eight years
is another factor being cited as a factor in the plebiscite result. Under the
deal, the FARC would have formally entered national politics in 2018 with a
minimum number of senate seats for two terms, at which point it was to become
subject to standard electoral procedure. Although Santos had initially argued
that the FARC should be elected like any other party, subsequent negotiations
conceded the impracticality of a peace process without guaranteeing political
involvement.
From
an insurgency perspective, this inclusion had to incorporate greater political
representation for marginalised regions and populations. It argued that Colombia’s
diversity must be represented at institutional level, a radical shift from the
domination of urban liberals and landowning conservatives that has charted the
country’s political development.
The
No vote also pulls the rug from under agreements regarding political protest,
social movements, women, LGBTI communities, free expression and citizen
participation in the media. Diversifying the political arena is vital to
improving democratic conditions in Colombia. The No vote has reassigned these
groups, at least for the time being, to the political margins.
Rather
than begin the six-month disarmament process in 28 concentration zones, FARC
guerrillas have been urged by high command to take up secure positions. Following
the government’s announcement that the ceasefire only lasts until October 31,
the issue of timing has become imperative to salvage the deal. Until that
happens, FARC units will prepare for any eventuality.
As
part of the agreement, in addition to hostilities ceasing between the
guerrillas and the state, the FARC had also agreed to end any illicit practices
used to finance military operations. It had also promised to work with the
government to eradicate coca production. Although the conservative right has
long claimed the FARC to be the country’s largest narco-trafficking
organisation, arguably the greatest factor in the growth of the drugs trade have
been neoliberal trade policies which made coca production more economically
viable than other forms of cultivation. The No vote has reassigned these
groups, at least for the time being, to the political margins.
Yet
it is the controversy over the FARC’s post-conflict status that has been cited
as the major sticking point with Colombian voters (of whom only 36 percent went
to the polls). While the FARC insisted it should be treated as a victim of the
conflict, having been forced into armed struggle by historic repression of
rural communities, the state faced strong criticism that the deal allowed
senior guerrillas to avoid prison. This now seems to have rankled highly with
the population.
Other
factors attributed to the failure of the plebiscite range from the severe weather
which struck the Caribbean coast – where polls predicted a majority Yes vote –
to the unwise decision to stage the signing ceremony, which now appears
arrogant and suggests complacency on the part of both government and citizenry
that peace was a formality.
However,
a Yes vote would not have solved the nation’s litany of problems. The process
failed to account for many within Colombian society who have been most affected
by the war. We found a country that was deeply divided over the issue of peace,
and not for the issues outlined in the post-plebiscite breakdown of what went
wrong. For many people, the peace deal was further evidence of Colombia’s
centralised institutionalism yet again abandoning those on the peripheries.
Peace was worth fighting for – under any terms – but it lacked the scope to
implement the radical social transformation that was vital to establishing a
true democratic era of stability.
That
simmering sense of frustration reached boiling point in June.
Rural
uprising
The
agrarian strike of June 2016 emphasised Colombia’s need for agricultural reform
as parts of the country, including highways, ports and factories, were brought
to a standstill. The double impact of conflict and resource extraction has had
a devastating impact on rural Colombia, with indigenous and African-descendant
populations most affected.
The
strike – or the ‘Minga’, an Andean term for communal labour – was rooted in
government failure to fulfil agreements made following another national strike
in 2013. That led to the formation of the Agrarian, Peasant, Ethnic and Popular
Summit (Cumbre Agraria), a popular coalition of rural organisations and social
movements which had created a list of collective demands.
Existing
trade policies, the cause of 2013’s protest, have ruined agricultural
communities in Colombia, as reduced import tariffs and rising inflation leave
small-scale farmers unable to compete in the market economy. Authorised and
illegal mineral extraction pollute rivers and soil, destroying crops and forcing
people from their homes. Social protest is repressed by the army or by
paramilitaries.
Minga graffiti in Cauca, October 2013.Wikicommons/ Geya Garcia. Some rights reserved.
In
Cauca, where the strike was particularly intense, indigenous and campesino communities had concentrated
at La María, the traditional meeting point for collective mobilisation and
political struggle. La María served as the command nucleus for the strike’s
regional front. Two kilometres to the north, a blockade closed the nearby
Pan-American highway and rendered Cauca inaccessible by road for thirteen days.
On
day four of the strike, Colombia’s militarised Mobile Anti-Disturbance Unit
(ESMAD) shot dead two indigenous guardsmen, Gersain Ceron and Marco Diaz Ulcue,
at the Cauca blockade. Hundreds of protesters were arrested. Police helicopters
regularly buzzed La María, where elderly people and children had joined the
strike. Another young indigenous man had been killed in Valle de Cauca on the
eve of the strike. While the state was promising dialogue, it was also
utilising force to counter the protests.
José
Ildo Pete, a senior counsellor of the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca
(CRIC), one of the main organisational bodies within the Cumbre Agraria, spoke to us inside La
María’s main hall. ‘The principal theme of this Minga is the defence of
territory,’ he said. ‘For indigenous peoples and social sectors in this
country, the defence of territory is fundamental to the survival of the people,
their culture, spirituality. If we don’t have territory, where are indigenous
groups going to live?’
Demands
included official recognition of the Cumbre Agraria as a political body; legal
rights and participation regarding land entitlement and resource extraction;
investment in infrastructure and improved access to services; and the assured
autonomy of indigenous groups whose ancestral permanence in the region predated
the formation of the Colombian state.
Joining the peace process
Also
central to the demands was a role within the peace process, especially around
issues of human rights, militarisation and social justice. Many people were
sceptical of the state’s assurances. For them, the establishment of peace
depended on addressing structural issues which fuel conflict: poverty,
exclusion, repression, and so on. Regional populations find themselves in the
eye of the conflict as they attempt to balance diverse armed groups fighting
for supremacy. [Santos] has the will to engage in dialogue, but he doesn’t
meet his commitments.
José
Ildo Pete was wary of empty rhetoric. ‘In the national development plan,
Santos’ government has signed 194 agreements, but it has only fulfilled 30
percent,’ he told us. ‘He has the will to engage in dialogue, but he doesn’t
meet his commitments. Indigenous groups have signed 1,200 agreements with the
Santos government, and in his first mandate – he’s now in his second – it
complied with 7 percent of these.’
The Minga ended after the government agreed to the
involvement of rural communities in the social and economic reforms. Despite
its reservations, the Cumbre Agraria remained committed to the ‘Yes’ campaign. It
saw the consolidation of peace in rural Colombia as the first step in instigating
political inclusion and improved social conditions for the millions of people
left behind by the current system. Where these war-ravaged communities go from
here is hard to say.
Farmers, truckers, and health workers in protest march along the Pan American Highway in Piendamo, southern Colombia, Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2013. Juan Bautista Diaz/Press Association. All rights reserved.
Extermination of a people
As
war depopulates territories, it clears the way for multinational corporations
to extract mineral resources or develop agro-industry, with profits reinvested
in the expansionary motors of conflict capitalism: militarisation and
paramilitarisation. The state’s absence in some regions means health, education
and access to clean water are inadequate. Thousands of indigenous and
African-descendant children have died in recent years from preventable
diseases, malnutrition and thirst.
At
the northern tip of Colombia lies the arid and isolated Guajira peninsula,
which borders Venuezela and is home to the Wayuu, Colombia’s largest indigenous
group. Also located in the Guajira is the huge Cerrejón mine, which extracts
over thirty million tonnes of coal per year. Owned by the multinationals BHP
Billiton, Anglo American and Xstrata, the mine has had a catastrophic impact on
the Wayuu.
Manaure in Colombia, September, 2015. Hunger exacerbated by a two-year-old drought is one of the biggest problems facing the Wayuu in La Guajira peninsula. Fernando Vergara/Press Association. All rights reserved.
4,151 Wayuu children died between 2008 and
2013.
The
Cerrejón exemplifies how foreign capital drives resource extraction at the expense
of local populations. In the early 1980s, the US and Canadian export banks
provided loans to develop the mine. Due to the Wayuus’ lack of legal ownership
of their ancestral homelands, they were expelled from these zones with only
minimal compensation for any properties confiscated by the state. The Wayuu
have since been routinely subjected to forced relocation and increased
militarisation of the Guajira.
This
continued throughout the peace negotiations. For example, 2015 saw 32 armoured
personnel carriers deployed to the Guajira at a cost of $84 million. The
Canadian-made vehicles reflect how foreign arms are paid for by Colombian
taxpayers to protect the interests of foreign corporations.
In
recent years the humanitarian situation has deteriorated following the damming
of the Ranchería River, ostensibly to create reserves for times of drought. The
reality is that water is diverted from upper Guajira towards the Cerrejón,
which uses 2,700 cubic metres of water per day. Promised infrastructure, such as
water pipelines, has failed to materialised.
Arelys
Uriana is a Wayuu counsellor for women and families at the National Indigenous
Organisation of Colombia (ONIC). ‘There is a method and strategy to exterminate
our communities,’ she told us at her office in Bogota. ‘A national plan of
development opposes indigenous communities with the presence of multinationals
and large mines in indigenous territories. This provokes violence, prostitution
and drug addiction among the young people who are our future. There is a
campaign of physical and cultural extermination of the indigenous peoples.’ Her
organisation says that 44 percent of the Guajiran population is malnourished.
Other
official statistics paint a shocking picture. According to Colombia’s
Department of National statistics, 4,151 Wayuu children died between 2008 and
2013. This is probably a conservative figure, due to the tendency not to
register births or deaths. Wayuu officials put the figure at between 12,000 and
14,000 child deaths since 2008. In 2012, the mortality rate for under-fives,
according to the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), was a
scarcely-credible 38.9 percent (compared to a 0.15 percent national average).
In a country which in 2015 spent almost $13 billion on its military, these
figures imply absolute abandonment of the regional population.
All the coal produced at Cerrejon, the world's biggest open-pit export coal mine, is shipped by train to a seaport, where it is loaded onto freighters bound for Europe and America. RICARDO MAZALAN /Press Association. All rights reserved.
Uriana
said: ‘The Cerrejón has brought misery, abandonment and territorial
displacement of our communities. Children have died. For those of us who defend
the rights of indigenous peoples, we are very worried about this situation. We
have been the most affected, but the impact has been very strong, not only in
Guajira, but in Chocó, in the Orinoco. These are situations linked to the armed
conflict.’
Like indigenous leaders in Cauca, Uriana believed indigenous society was excluded from the government’s vision for
post-war Colombia. ‘At the moment the FARC and the government are sat together,
but they are not joined by civil society or ethnic groups,’ she said. ‘We are
not part of the peace process. It has not taken into account nor consulted with
indigenous groups, the principal victims of the conflict. I think it will be a
total failure.’
Her implication was that the post-conflict scenario
would fail, rather than that it wouldn’t even get off the ground. The
humanitarian catastrophe in Guajira emphasises how resource extraction can be
as damaging as conflict. The incompatibility between capitalist growth and
social justice is most apparent in the Guajira, yet it affects all Colombia.
March of the displaced
In
Bogota, hundreds of forced displacement victims were marching along Seventh
Street (la septima) towards the central Plaza Bolívar. Having been
displaced from elsewhere in the country, most lived in shantytowns on the
peripheries of the capital. They were angry over unfulfilled government
promises and were calling for greater focus on the plight of more than six
million other people in similar situations. The diverse place names on the
banners held aloft – from the Guajira in the extreme north to Putumayo on the
southern border with Ecuador – reflect a conflict which has left few parts of
Colombia untouched.
People displaced from years of internal conflict in Colombia's provinces set up a makeshift camp in a city park in downtown Bogota in March, 2009. William Fernando Martinez/Press Association. All rights reserved.
'We
are protesting to Santos because we do not feel represented as victims in the
so-called post-peace agreement.’
'We
are protesting to Santos because we do not feel represented as victims in the
so-called post-peace agreement,’ said Orlando Burgos of the National
Strengthening Committee for Organisations of Displaced Populations. ‘The
principal demands of this movement are, first, comprehensive compensation for
victims. Not one victim has received reparations. Second, these reparations must
be accompanied by plans for housing, education, healthcare, political
inclusion.’
Vivian
Castiblanco was from the Nuevo Amanecer (New Dawn) women’s organisation for
conflict victims in the department of Meta. ‘In Havana they haven’t taken
us into account,’ she told us. ‘There are many mothers here who have lost
everything. They don’t have a home or health. If they have a meal one day, they
don’t have breakfast the next. The government doesn’t want to support or
contribute.’
Much
frustration centred in Law 1448 for Victims and Land Restitution, which the
Santos administration created in 2011 to begin the process of returning
displaced citizens to their homes. Now halfway through its ten-year
implementation span, only about 200,000 of several million hectares have been
returned to their former inhabitants.
A
2012 report by Amnesty International found Law 1448 to be severely flawed. The
state’s denial of paramilitary activity in Colombia means communities displaced
by such groups are classed as victims of ‘criminal’ rather than ‘conflict’
displacement and therefore do not qualify for state assistance. There is also
wide disparity between the official quantity of appropriated land (two million
hectares) and that of external analysis (cited in the report as between four
and six million hectares). Further, for ‘agro-industrial and other economic
projects’ which obtained land through illegal means, the law could actually
provide them legitimate ownership or compensation for relinquishing lands.
One
of the organisers of the Bogota march was Alfonso Castillo, director of the
National Association of Solidarity Help (ANDAS), which supports displacement
victims. The organisation’s offices in downtown Bogota were behind reinforced
metal doors, standard security for human rights defenders in Colombia. When we
arrived, a group of displaced women were receiving food and clothing parcels
donated by another agency.
According
to Castillo, there was little prospect of Law 1448 being implemented. ‘It is a
failure,’ he told us. ‘There is no interest on the part of the state to return
lands to campesinos. Here, there is large interest in maintaining
illegally-appropriated lands for the development of agro-industry and energy
mining projects.’
He
believed this to be the true motive behind the peace agreement. ‘The peace
process is part of a policy by the dominant classes to generate investor
confidence,’ he said. ‘International companies will no longer face the pressure
of guerrillas burning their tankers or kidnapping their officials for ransom.
They’ll now be able to reach regions they couldn’t before, like the Eastern
Plains, or departments like Caqueta, Guainía, Guaviare, where there is immense
mineral and energy wealth.’
The anti-peace brigade: just say ‘No’
The
peace process encountered intense opposition from the conservative right. In 2012 former president Álvaro Uribe formed the
Democratic Centre (CD) political party, which advocates a military solution to
the armed conflict despite that strategy’s clear failure. According to the CD’s
political declaration, the party ‘rejects that President Santos endorses a
unilateral cessation of hostilities with the FARC’ while asserting that
‘terrorism is the result of the abandonment of democratic security and the
promise of security within the legal framework for peace’. The peace
process encountered intense opposition from the conservative right.
On
June 22 2016, Colombians awoke to news of a ceasefire between the FARC and the
state. This advance in the negotiations suggested a formal peace agreement was
close, representing a blow to the hawks in the CD. Having obtained 45 percent
of the vote in the 2014 presidential election on a militaristic platform, the
establishment of peace would have rendered obsolete the CD’s major selling
point: that it alone possesses the mettle to liquidate the insurgency.
Political factors therefore played a major role in the successful No
campaign.
The
CD’s party headquarters in midtown Bogota had sprung into action at news of the
ceasefire. While Uribe is constitutionally barred from running for a third
presidential term, other, younger party members hope to pick up the mantle. One
of them, 32-year-old Samuel Hoyos, was elected to the national congress in
2014. We asked him how peace could be perceived as anything other than
progress. ‘The warnings we have given is because we want to achieve peace,’ he
said. ‘Signing an accord with terms that don’t benefit the state is not going
to deliver peace to us. That’s why we have given these warnings. It could even be
the source of new violence.’
The CD claims to favour the concept of peace, but its
actions do not support this. From June, the party promoted the No vote by
collecting signatures from Colombian citizens, claiming to have gathered over
one million. The CD’s strong performance in the last election showed this to be
a party with large support. That has been reconfirmed in the plebiscite – which
many are interpreting as a popular referendum on Santos and Uribe themselves. Victory
in the 2018 presidential elections for a rejuvenated Democratic Centre would likely
signal renewed conflict. If it hasn’t already occurred by then.
The No campaign argued that the accords allowed
guerrillas guilty of human rights violations to walk free. ‘There is a statute
of Rome which impedes the Colombian state from granting impunity to those
responsible for atrocities and crimes of lesser humanity,’ Hoyos told us. ‘This
is a fundamental aspect of why we ask for punishments of deprivation of liberty
which are proportional to the crimes committed by the FARC.’
The flipside to Hoyos’ claims is that the CD has been
decidedly less vocal over other armed groups linked to senior figures within
the party. As president, Uribe signed a 2003 demobilisation agreement with
Colombia’s largest paramilitary organisation, the United Self-Defence Forces of
Colombia (AUC). The AUC committed massacres, displaced communities and was
involved in the drugs trade. The demobilisation process enacted under Uribe saw
thousands of men return to civil society unpunished for crimes they had
committed.
Former President Alvaro Uribe sits surrounded by fellow Senators of the Democratic Center in the Colombian Senate the day after Colombians rejected a peace deal. Fernando Vergara/Press Association. All rights reserved.
The AUC committed massacres, displaced communities and was
involved in the drugs trade.
Yet the extent to which paramilitary organisations did
actually disband is disputed. Many observers believe these groups reformed
under different guises. This situates them outside the political sphere and
gives credence to claims that the paramilitary issue had been resolved.
Violence committed by those groups – rebranded as Bacrim (criminal bands) –
could now be classified as ‘criminal’ rather than ‘political’, suggesting state
progress towards conflict resolution.
The Santos administration has tended to sidestep
questions relating to the continued presence of paramilitaries in Colombia. Yet
political violence remains prevalent in the country. Between 2011 and 2015,
over 500 community and social leaders, activists, unionists and journalists
were murdered. Groups such as the Black Eagles and the Urabeños have
orchestrated terror campaigns in regions rich in natural resources or prone to
guerrilla activity. These killings continued throughout the peace negotiations.
From
a FARC perspective, the disbandment of paramilitaries had been one of the major
requirements for peace. Many guerrillas feared demobilisation would leave them
vulnerable. The paramilitaries have benefited from instability and violence and
their presence would severely undermine any peace agreement. If peace were ever
to be implemented, paramilitary activity would have to be fully eradicated, an
extremely challenging task.
Work in unity
In the hillside barrios overlooking Medellín, a
peace congress was taking place. We had come to the Comuna 3, which once
swarmed with sicarios carrying out
the dirty work of drugs cartels, but who are now fighting for a different objective: to
carve out its own space within the post-conflict scenario and help local
residents move beyond the violence that once dominated their communities.
The tone was one of
reconciliation. ‘I believe we are taking a good path,’ said one displacement victim
from Belen de Bajira in north Antioquia. She was 39, but looked older from
prolonged malnutrition. ‘Although we are victims, we have to move ahead
learning and to live with many of these people,’ she told us. ‘It’s work in
unity. If I don’t have forgiveness in my heart, I can’t contribute to
peace.’
Violence
in Medellín has fallen dramatically since the Pablo Escobar era, when the
murder rate soared to an astonishing 380 per 100,000 people (by way of
comparison, today’s most globally murderous city, Caracas, has around 119
murders per 100,000 people). Repression of social organisers was continuing,
however. It was near Medellín that community leader María Fabiola Jiménez was
shot dead while travelling by bus in September. It was near Medellín that community leader María Fabiola Jiménez was
shot dead while travelling by bus in September.
At
the offices of the Patriotic March (MP), citizens were also seeking an active
role in consolidating peace. The March has become one of Colombia’s largest
progressive social movements since emerging from anti-government demonstrations
in 2010. It occupies a building off the city’s main Plaza Botero, where it
supports peace initiatives, agrarian reform and citizen sovereignty projects.
We
sat down with a group of veterans from the Patriotic Union, the doomed
political party formed from the 1982 peace process. Among its thousands of
murdered members were mayors, councillors and presidential candidates. The
lesson of the UP influenced FARC dialogue with the state, with the guerrillas
understandably determined to avoid the fate of their predecessors.
Beatriz
Acevedo’s husband was among those killed. ‘They displaced
us in 1997 and killed him the same year,’ she said. ‘I was 23 and he was 26.
They displaced us because we were members of the Patriotic Union and we
belonged to the Communist Party.’
She continued: ‘When I went to the
police, they acted as if he hadn’t been murdered. They said “you’re not
displaced. You’re from the guerrilla”.’ Her experiences reflected how war has
benefited Colombian elites: labelling those demanding greater economic and
social justice as subversives has encouraged repression of social movements and
collective organization.
Like Acevedo, Camilo Vargas was from Apartadó,
one of the most violent zones in the entire country. ‘The
only crime we committed as the Patriotic Union was being a party of the left
and of the opposition,’ he said. ‘And they massacred us.’
For Vargas, the peace process
represented a continuation of the UP’s social agenda. ‘Now we are fighting for
true change in Colombia, rather than for those who are against the peace
process, like Mr. Álvaro Uribe,’ he said. ‘The far right is trying to rid
Colombia of what little remains of the left. The Patriotic Union, we were
always trying to help people, trying to follow a democratic path. So they said
we were guerrillas.’
April, 2013.Members of the Colombian Patriotic March Party at a massive show of support for the peace negotiations under way. Fernando Vergara/Press Association. All rights reserved.
The new beginning?
While most
Colombians we spoke to were broadly supportive of the peace process, nobody was
under any illusions of the size of the task ahead. International media painted
a picture of a nation about to enter a new era of prosperity and stability. It
wasn’t hard to imagine the president sizing up how that Nobel Prize would look
on his mantelpiece. The impact of the No vote’s success will only become known
in the fullness of time.
Yet for
peace to truly arrive, now or in the future, a massive shift in how the country
deals in politics would have to take place. Regardless of whether the accords can
be redrafted to be more palatable to the electorate, the state will have to
address structural issues of inequality and poverty in order to truly move the
country forward.
The
commodity of violence that trains many young people in the act of killing – available
to the highest bidder – already threatened to continue bloodletting in the new
era. What would have been the relevance of peace to communities whose children
are dying of the most basic and preventable causes? A social restructuring from
misery to dignified living conditions was of the utmost urgency even before the
No vote. That has not changed if anything is to be salvaged from the plebiscite
disaster.
With the
United States overseeing the peace transition of its informal client state, how
did Washington’s future vision for Colombia’s untapped natural riches sit with
the need to bridge the social chasm? Peace depended on humans taking precedence
over capital, perhaps for the first time in national history. Peace depended on humans taking precedence
over capital, perhaps for the first time in national history.Based on modern
trends, this was always an unlikely proposition.
From the
beginning, the odds were stacked against the peace process. The Colombians we
spoke to knew this. Yet it was dynamics of capital and power that most
concerned them, with nobody believing that the people themselves would sabotage
the deal. The No vote represents a crisis not just on a national level, but on
a regional one as well, in which populist right-wing rhetoric has once again
dominated political discourse and found a receptive audience.
But for the
children dying in the Guajira, or the indigenous communities being torn apart
by resource extraction in Cauca, peace was unlikely to herald the new dawn
promised by Santos. The rest of the country now accompanies them into an
uncertain future. Colombia’s long conflict rumbles on.
Travel support for this article was
provided by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
