[News] Uribes Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Mar 4 18:33:49 EST 2008
http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia273.htm
March 3, 2008
Uribes Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin
America: A Response to the Murder of FARC Commander Raúl Reyes in Ecuador
by James J. Brittain and R. James Sacouman
A few weeks after the Ecuadorian and Venezuelan
state called on the Colombian government to
respect the need for peace and negotiation with
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia-Peoples Army (FARC-EP), the
administration of President Álvaro Uribe Vélez
supported an extensive armed air and land assault
against the insurgency movementnot within
Colombias borders, but rather on the sovereign
territory of Ecuadorian soil. On March 1, 2008,
the Colombian state, under the leadership of
Uribe, Vice-President Francisco Santos Calderón,
and his cousin Defence Minister Juan Manuel
Santos, illegally deployed a military campaign
within Ecuador, which resulted in the deaths of
Raúl Reyes, Julian Conrado, and fifteen other
combatants associated with the FARC-EP. Such
actions are a clear display of the
US-backed-Colombian states open negation of
international codes of conduct, law and social justice.
The actions of March 1 took place days before a
major international demonstration scheduled for
March 6. Promoted by The National Movement of
Victims of State-Sponsored Crimes (MOVICE), the
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC),
and countless social justice-based organizations,
March 6 has been set as an international day of
protest against those tortured, murdered and
disappeared by the Colombian state, their allies
within the paramilitary United Self-Defence
Forces of Colombia (AUC) and the newly-reformed
Black Eagles. Recently, President Uribes top
political adviser, José Obdulio Gaviria,
proclaimed that the protest and protesters should
be criminalized. In addition, paramilitaries in
the southwestern department of Nariñonot far
from where the illegal incursions were carried
out in Ecuadorhave threatened to attack any
organization or person associated with the protest activities.
It is believed that the Uribe and Santos
administration is utilizing the slaughter of
Commander Raúl Reyes and others as a method to
deter activists and socially conscious peoples
within and outside Colombia from participating in
the March 6 events. Numerous state-controlled or
connected media outlets, such as El Tiempowhich
has long-standing ties to the Santos familyhave
been parading photographs of the bullet-ridden
and mutilated corpse of Raúl Reyes throughout the
countrys communications mediums. Such propaganda
is clearly a tool to psychologically intimidate
those preparing to demonstrate against the
atrocities perpetrated by the state over the past seven years.
Over the past two months, numerous researchers,
scholars and lawyers have supported the call to
declare the FARC-EP a legitimate force fighting
against the corrupt Colombian state. In January
2008, Ecuadors Foreign Minister Maria Isabel
Salvador argued that the FARC-EP should no longer
be depicted as a terrorist organization.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez also announced
that the FARC-EP are far from a terrorist force,
but are rather a real army, which occupies
Colombian territory and shares in a Bolivarian
vision for a new Latin America. Mexican deputy
Ricardo Cantu Garza also has promoted the
recognition of the FARC-EP as a belligerent force
legitimately fighting against a corrupt and
unequal socio-political system. As prominent US attorney Paul Wolf argued:
The FARC-EP are a belligerent army of national
liberation, as evidenced by their sustained
military campaign and sovereignty over a large
part of Colombian territory, and their conduct of
hostilities by organized troops kept under
military discipline and complying with the laws
and customs of war, at least to the same extent
as other parties to the conflict. Members of the
FARC-EP are therefore entitled to the rights of
belligerents under international law
there is
no rule of international law prohibiting
revolution, and, if a revolution succeeds, there
is nothing in international law prohibiting the
acceptance of the outcome, even though it was achieved by force.
From Copenhagen to Caracas, numerous state
officials have denounced the description of the
FARC-EP as a terrorist organization. Progressive
officials and administrations in Mexico, Ecuador
and Venezuela have rather opted for the status of
belligerent or irregular forces to more
accurately depict the FARC-EPs domestic and
geo-political stance. Disturbingly, in the face
of this evidence and the FARC-EPs consistent
promotion of a humanitarian prisoner exchange and
peace negotiations with the state in a
demilitarized zone in southwestern Colombia, the
Uribe and Santos administration has moved ever
farther away from supporting an end to the civil
war within Colombia by opting for systemic violence.
Over the past several years, different aspects of
the FARC-EPs real social, political and cultural
activities for progressive social change have
been censored or marginalized by the private
press or governments in support of the Colombian
state. Nevertheless, after researching the
FARC-EP and the country of Colombia for years,
independent journalist Garry Leech argued that,
while there is little doubt regarding the global
reach of terrorist organizations such as
al-Qaeda, there is no evidence that the FARC is
anything but one of the armed actors in
Colombias long and tragic domestic conflict.
In actuality, the FARC-EP is an actor within the
strategic confines of Colombian society that aims
its directives at domestic social change. In
light of such realities, how can this insurgency
be a terrorist threat to external nation-states?
Coletta A. Youngers, of the Washington Office on
Latin America (WOLA), responds to this question by describing how:
The U.S. government now views the Latin American
region almost exclusively through the
counterterrorist lens, though the region poses no
serious national security threat to the United
States
little evidence has been put forward to
substantiate such claims, and whatever activity
is taking place there appears to be minimal.
While Youngers does not trivialize its
revolutionary tactics, she clearly argues that
the FARC-EP cannot be correctly framed within the
concept and rhetoric of global terrorism.
Youngers argues that the insurgency is not a
direct political threat to administrations within
the United States, Canada, the European Union and
any other foreign nation-state in the fact that
the FARC-EPs activities are targeted inward,
not outward, hence, applying the terrorism
concept to these groups negates their political projects.
Characterizing the FARC-EP as a foreign terrorist
organization dramatically alters the dynamics of
the peace process in favour of a killer state.
Stipulating that the FARC-EP is terrorist results
in the inability for legal peace negotiations to
take place between the FARC-EP and any government
that subscribes to the categorization. According
to James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, promoting
the FARC-EPand its supportersas terrorists
puts them on the list of targets to be assaulted
by the US military machine and thus subject to total war.
The terminology of terrorism is perfect for
imperialist ideology and expansionism. It is a
very open-ended reference that allows maximum
intervention in all regions against any
opposition and that any group engaged in
opposing militarism, imperialism (so-called
globalization) or local authoritarian regimes
could be labelled terrorist and targeted, thus
legitimizing external invasion or attack, say Petras and Veltmeyer.
Internal and external condemnation of the
Colombian state has fallen upon the deaf ears of
the Uribe and Santos administration. After years
of increased violations of civilian human rights,
the ongoing suppression of trade-unionism,
assassinations of left-of-centre activists and
politicians, and a political reality that has
witnessed 75 governors, mayors and Congressional
politicians alleged or found guilty of having
direct links to the paramilitariesincluding
Vice-President Francisco Santos Calderón and his
cousin Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos and
President Uribes brother Santiago and their
cousin Senator Mario Uribenow the Colombian
state has deemed it necessary to illegally
encroach upon those nations that deviate from
their ideological model of political and economic centralization.
Not only has the Uribe administration criticized
its neighbours, but after the actions realized on
March 1 it is clear that the Colombian state,
with the full backing of the United States, will
impose its own ideological goals and values
through force, regardless of the democratic
rights and privileges of conventional electoral
law and procedure. While the neighbouring states
of Ecuador and Venezuela struggle for peace and
try to assist the people of Colombia in the quest
for an end to the civil war, the Uribe and Santos
administration has bypassed judicial realities
and governance to impose its own objectives.
Careful analysts of the Colombian situation
continue to debate whether the Colombian state is
pre-fascist or actually fascist. It is certainly
neither humane nor actually democratic. The
current Colombian state must be transformed,
sooner rather than later. Those fighting for
peace must condemn the action of this regime. In
solidarity, we must protest the policies of the
Colombian state and raise our voices in support
for a New Colombia that stands for peace with social justice.
James J. Brittain is an assistant professor of
sociology and James Sacouman a professor of
sociology at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Freedom Archives
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San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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