What is going on in Colombia today?

Text by Clemencia Rodriguez,
Assistant Professor of Communication
University of Texas at San Antonio

The current situation in Colombia is, overall, complex. It doesn't help that the media tend to simplify things so that they can maintain their traditional binary format, where there are good guys and bad guys, and things are crystal clear. Also, the media, in their obsession to cover stories of conflict have neglected those other millions of Colombians who dedicate their lives and their work to the construction of a culture of peace and democracy. According to the media, Colombia is a place plagued by violent subjects. This type of coverage has overlooked the other Colombia, a country of citizens dedicated to peace and democracy. Parallel to a well publicized history of violence, there are many Colombians accomplishing great strides toward the construction of a democratic, plural, and peaceful society.

For example in 1991 Colombians convened around an exceptional new Constitution, a foundational document prioritizing pluralism and inclusion (specific items insist on the inclusion of indigenous communities as well as Afro-Colombians); also, in 1997 an unprecedented ten million Colombians voted for peace. Maria Emma Wills, a political scientist affiliated with IEPRI, a prestigious research institute in Bogotá says: "very frequently you hear ordinary Colombians voicing very complex articulations of what implies to accept the other in everyday life; Colombians are trying to figure out issues of tolerance, of respecting difference; Colombians are reflecting on how we should interact with one another, from very intimate relationships to the public sphere, from relationships in the classroom to relationships in the street. There is, if you will, an exploration of what democracy means, on the part of all those Colombians who refuse to be a part of the polarization of war. I think the war has been in a way an incentive that has pushed Colombians toward a reflection about the real meaning of democracy."

On the other side, the United States government seems to be blind to the plight of Colombian civil society and is rapidly increasing its military involvement in Colombia. According to Frank Smyth, a free-lance American journalist, "Colombia is already the fourth-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the world after Israel, Egypt and Jordan. The U.S. military and intelligence presence in Colombia is larger now than it was in El Salvador a decade ago, making it the largest U.S.-backed counterinsurgency effort since Vietnam."

Colombia has been recognized as one of the most violent contemporary societies. While in 1995 the homicide rate was 12.4 violent murders per 100,000 inhabitants in the U.S. and 1.2 in Germany, in Colombia this same figure reached 77.5; in 1993 only, more than 40,000 violent murders were counted in the country. However, violence in Colombia is not a recent phenomenon. Since the beginning of the XX century, Colombia has experienced different phases of violence and different types of violence.

During the 1950s Colombia's political violence reached its climax with a conflict that escalated into a civil war between the Liberal and the Conservative parties. This phase, known as La Violencia (The Violent Time, from 1948 to 1960), devastated the countryside and, as a result, thousands of terrified Colombians migrated from rural areas towards urban centers. The cities never welcomed these newcomers; the basic infrastructure could not satisfy this sudden increase in the demand for public services; also, the labor market was too narrow to offer employment to the massive numbers of unskilled labor. In their new urban environment, these migrants founded crowded barrios pushed against the city's margins. These new urban environments that combined extreme conditions of marginality, poverty and displacement would become the perfect catalyst for the new, more contemporary forms of violence that followed, such as guerrilla organizations, self-defense militias, and armies of paid killers hired by drug lords.

While the 1950s violence was lead by the traditional political parties, new social subjects became the main characters in the violent conflicts of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. During the 1960s three important guerrilla organizations emerged in the country: the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia -Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces), the ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional - National Liberation Army), and the EPL (Ejército Popular de Liberación - Army for Popular Liberation). Other guerrilla groups emerged during the 1970s such as the M-19 and the ADO. The FARC and the ELN have approximately 20,000 combatants combined. According to Francisco Leal Buitrago, a leading Colombian historian, these new political forces were a direct result legitimacy crisis of the Colombian state and the traditional parties. Not believing that traditional politics and the state offered a real option for political participation, many Colombians found in these armed movements their only hope. Today, guerrilla organizations have lost much of their grounding on political principles. Guerrillas have become major violators of human rights and of international humanitarian rights. Also, some (although not all) guerrilla groups do business with drug traffickers in order to finance their operations.

The emergence of a guerrilla warfare initiates a new phase of violence in Colombia. Clandestine paramilitary organizations emerged in the countryside to defend wealthy farmers from guerrilla attacks. At least 18 known paramilitary organizations with approximately 5,000 members operate in different areas of the country. Like guerrilla organizations, paramilitary groups are financing their operation with drug moneys. Again Wills says: "The war in Colombia is expensive. This is not Mexico, it's not a war of rifles and stones. It is war of automatic weapons and state of the art military resources." Today, paramilitary groups are responsible for more than 70% of human rights violations in Colombia. Also, the Colombian army has one of the worst human rights records in the hemisphere, largely due to their ongoing collaboration with paramilitary violence.

In many ways, the civil population is trapped in this political conflict; first, any expression of discontent is interpreted by military and paramilitary groups as a sign of subversive activity; therefore, many grassroots organizations and community associations have become targets of this social conflict. A new era of collective murders-many against "subversive groups"-have intensified the climate of violence in the country; 1,228 massacres were documented between January 1, 1980 and December 31, 1993. Of a total of 7,500 victims, 36% were peasants, farmers, fishermen, and miners; 11% were members and leaders of community organizations. Second, civilians-and especially rural populations and indigenous communities-find themselves trapped between two fires; if they do not support local guerrillas, they are accused by guerrilleros of alliances with the military and/or paramilitary; and if they do not support the military, they are accused of being guerrilleros. The displaced population in Colombia has increased to more than one million people.

During the 1980s Colombia became one of the main world scenarios of drug trade. Between 1979 and 1992 the amount of drug money entering Colombia increased from US$2.5 billions to US$3.7 billions. The accumulation of power and money in the hands of the Medellín and Cali drug cartels originated a different type of social violence. In order to defend and strengthen their business, drug traffickers eliminated any social force that attempted to oppose them; corrupted thousands of judges, policemen, government officials, and even senators; murdered political candidates that supported a law of extradition; and finally, imposed a climate of terror among the general population through all kinds of indiscriminate terrorist actions (in only three weeks, more than forty bombs exploded in Bogotá in 1989).

The war in Colombia is played out by many conflicting parties. But the war is only part of the story. The other side is that other Colombia, where citizens are dedicating their creativity and their strength to building a strong culture of peace and democracy. Colombia needs international support. But it needs the type of support that understands the complexity of the situation, that acknowledges local initiatives, and that contributes to strengthen local resources, more than imposing foreign solutions.

RESOURCES

Washington Office on Latin America
202/797-2171
wola@wola.org
http://www.wola.org

"U.S. International Drug Control Policy: A Guide to Citizen Action"
http://www.wola.org/drugsguide.htm

Latin America Working Group
202/546-7010
lawg@lawg.org
http://www.lawg.org

US/Colombia Coordinating Office
Phone: 202/232-8090 Fax: 202-232-8092
agiffen@igc.org

COLOMBIAN LABOR MONITOR
http://www.prairienet.org/clm
Email CLM at clm@prairienet.org or
Dennis Grammenos at dgrammen@prairienet.org
To subscribe send request to listproc@prairienet.org
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Colombia's civil society proposes the following steps:

In Colombia, the civil society is organizing a massive march of the Colombians in favor of peace. This march aims not only at mobilizing millions of Colombians in the streets of the cities and villages if the country, but also in the most important cities throughout the world.

Therefore we need urgently the help of all of you to mobilize people and organize such a march in your city so that newspapers and news programs around the world mention these marches.

Why do we want peace? On Sunday October 24, we Colombians, as a civil society, we will demand that all the actors in the Colombian conflict accept that:
a) The solution to the conflict has to be negotiated.
b) The civil population has to be kept outside the war-no more kidnappings, massacres, forced displacements, forced disappearances, and destruction of villages.
c) Immediate cease-fire.

We request that all actors in the armed conflict respond to these three demands. After the march, pressure will continue on a daily basis until we have received responses to our demands. We want that day after day, the news programs announce that so many days have passed without a response from the actors in the conflict. We want that the newspapers print one column with our demands, and another one-void-- for the actors' responses.

No doubt, the same organizations and individuals who have been able to mobilize about 1,500,000 Colombians during the last three months will be able to do the same on October 24. For this reason, we Colombians are committed to make this march a success, and we will work on four fronts:
a) Media: TV, newspapers, print, web pages, radio, decalcomania, banners, pennons on buildings. We are also going to ask people to write letters to the participants in the conflict demanding the end of the war, which will be carried to them in tractors from the Red Cross.
b) Groups of Interest: Artists, professionals, union and labor leaders, contractors, business people, etc., who will coordinate actions, meetings, and commitment of people, public declarations in the sphere of influence, etc.
c) Coordination of the mobilization.
d) Internationalization: our goal is to help to form international committees of Colombians organizing similar marches in the most important cities in the world and to incite Colombians in international organizations such as the World Bank, the International Bank of Development, the OAS, the UNO, in famous universities or research centers to testify on the crisis and to make public declaration in support of peace.