[News] Where Ecocide Turns Into Genocide -The War in Colombia and Why It Continues

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Weekend Edition June 12-14, 2015
*http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/12/the-war-in-colombia-and-why-it-continues/*

*Where Ecocide Turns Into Genocide*


  The War in Colombia and Why It Continues

by W.T. WHITNEY Jr.

In Havana, representatives of the Colombian government and the 
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been negotiating 
peace for 30 months. The war they are trying to end has killed or 
disappeared 250,000 Colombians over 25 years. The future of the talks is 
uncertain.

“Today the mountains and forests of Colombia are the heart of Latin 
America.” At an international forum on Colombia on June 8, former 
Uruguayan President Jose Mujica was saying that developments in 
Colombia, including the peace process, are “the most important in Latin 
America.”

Interviewed on May 30, head FARC negotiator Iván Márquez, asserted that 
“confidence at the negotiating table is badly impaired and that only a 
bilateral ceasefire can help the process advance 
<http://www.elespectador.com/noticias/politica/el-tema-de-justicia-una-mula-muerta-el-camino-de-paz-iv-articulo-563635>.” 
He said deaths of “human rights defenders [including] over 100 members 
of the Patriotic March coalition” and “persecution of leaders of the 
social movements” were poisoning the atmosphere.

Since March in Cúcuta, thugs have killed four labor leaders, including 
on June 2 Alex Fabián Espinosa 
<http://www.pacocol.org/index.php/comite-regional/n-santander/14053-asesinan-a-un-lider-sindical-y-defensor-de-derechos-humanos-en-cucuta>, 
a member of the MOVICE human rights group. In May assassins killed 
community leader Juan David Quintana and professor and social activist 
Luis Fernando Wolff 
<http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=199565&titular=asesinados-en-las-%9Cltimas-horas-dos-l%92deres-comunitarios->, 
both in Medellin. Analyst Azalea Robles 
<http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=198655> says that “a total of 19 
human rights defenders were murdered in Columbia during the first four 
months of 2015.”

On April 15, FARC guerrillas killed 11 Colombian soldiers in Buenos 
Aires (Cauca). According to Márquez, “They were defending themselves 
following the disembarkation of troops [from aircraft] who were 
advancing on them.” In apparent retaliation, the Colombian military, 
bombing from the air, killed 27 guerrillas on May 21 in Guapi (Cauca).   
The FARC immediately ended the unilateral, indefinite ceasefire it 
declared in December, 2014. Within days, government 
<http://www.elespectador.com/noticias/judicial/alias-roman-ruiz-ya-son-mas-de-40-los-miembros-de-farc-articulo-562664> 
forces killed 10 guerrillas in Antioquia and five more in Choco 
Department. The dead included two FARC peace negotiators who were in 
Colombia updating guerrillas on the talks.

Negotiators have reached preliminary agreements on three agenda 
categories: land, narco-trafficking, and political participation. But 
now they’ve have spent a year on the “victims” agenda item; reparations 
and assignment of blame were prime topics. On completion recently of 
their 37th round of talks, they did agree to form a truth commission as 
“part of the integral system of truth, justice, reparation, and 
non-repetition 
<http://farc-epeace.org/index.php/communiques/communiques-peace-delegation/item/761-joint-report-on-commission-for-clarification-of-truth,-coexistence-and-non-repetition.html>.” 
Work on that project may divert government negotiators from their steady 
focus on “transitional justice” which entails punishment and jail time 
for FARC leaders.

A pilot project on removing landmines and discussions by military 
leaders on both sides about ceasefire mechanisms are other markers of 
progress. Márquez insists on “reconciliation on the basis of actual 
history, far-reaching justice, comprehensive reparation, and no 
repetition [and] all of this is tied to structural transformations.” 
This last promises to be a sticking point.

Azalea Robles explains why 
<http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=198655>: Emphasizing Colombian 
government dependency on powerful economic interests, she implies that 
the hands of government negotiators are tied. “The Colombian reality,” 
she says,” is shaped by dispossession and territorial re-accommodation 
destined for all areas … that are of economic interest. It’s a 
capitalist logic that allows no scruples and constitutes ecocide turned 
into genocide. In Colombia strategies of terror are promoted and they 
relate to capitalist plunder.”

For example, “80 percent of human rights violations and 87 percent of 
population displacements take place in regions where multinationals 
pursue mining exploitation, [and] 78 percent of attacks against 
unionists were against those working in the mining and energy areas.” 
Some “40 percent of Colombian land is under concession by multinational 
corporations.” She counts 25 environmentalists killed in 2014.

Capitalism in Colombia, Robles insists, rests on “state terrorism.” She 
cites “physical elimination” of the Patriotic Union party, “6.3 million 
dispossessed and displaced from their lands for the benefit of big 
capital,” and “60 percent of assassinations of unionists worldwide” 
having taken place in Colombia.

The fate of Wayuu Indians in La Guajira 
<http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=199205> Department epitomizes 
the terror of extreme poverty and powerlessness. Some 600,000 of them 
occupy northern borderlands in Colombia and Venezuela. In 2012, 14 000 
Wayuu children died of starvation and 36,000 survivors were 
malnourished; 38.8 percent of Wayuu children under age five died. La 
Guajira’s El Cerrejón, owned by the BHP Billiton and Anglo America 
corporations, is the world’s largest open-pit coal mine. Mine operators 
have destroyed Wayuu villages and poisoned soil and water. They pump 
35,000 liters of water out of the Rancheria River each day thus 
depriving the Wayuu of water they need for survival

While ongoing violence and terror serve as backdrop for the peace 
process, that reality, ironically enough, originally prompted President 
Juan Manuel Santos to initiate the talks. He and his political and 
business allies worried that for civil war to continue might frighten 
off multinational corporations and international investors. To protect 
Colombia’s capitalist economy and its integration within the U. S. – led 
globalized system, they wanted it to end.

But, one asks, where is the common ground shared by a capitalist regime 
habituated to criminal brutality and Marxist insurgents still in the 
field after 50 years?

Maybe compromise is not to be, and civil war will continue. Writing for 
rebelion.org, Colombian political exile José Antonio Gutiérrez D. 
<http://rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=199433> accuses the Santos 
government of using negotiations exclusively to create space for 
strengthening its military power, while beating up on its political 
opposition and the FARC. Peace, he implies, is not the government‘s 
objective.

In fact, the government anticipates a “neo-liberal peace.” Were that to 
occur, the FARC would be giving up on its basic objective of securing 
justice through political action. FARC negotiators have long called for 
a peace with mechanisms in place allowing for social justice and 
structural transformations to flourish. A constituent assembly is a 
prime example.

Commentator Fernando Dorado 
<http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=199587&titular=es-preferible-una-> 
gives voice to the government’s line. Fearing that the FARC itself might 
use a bilateral truce to restore military capabilities, he specifies 
that, “The only solution is to de-escalate confrontation voluntarily and 
speed up the talks.” He regards ex-President Uribe’s recent switch to 
supporting peace on neo-liberal terms as facilitating this approach 
<http://www.diarionacional.co/index.php/politica/174-principales/5875-el-expresidente-uribe-es-un-patriota-y-quiere-la-paz-dice-el-ministro-de-la-presidencia-rectificando-al-presidente-santos>. 
Until now Uribe has masterminded obstruction to the peace process. 
Dorado claims the U.S. government is insisting that “the bloc of 
hegemonic power [in Colombia]’ unify itself in order to achieve its 
objective: ‘neo-liberal peace’ with tiny ‘democratic’ concessions.”

The spilt among conservative forces stems from the Santos-led group’s 
face-off against right wingers – ones Uribe speaks for – who are loyal 
to traditional forms of oligarchical power, among them: large 
landholdings, ranching, military force, paramilitaries, and more 
recently narco-trafficking.

The government now is riding high in the negotiations on account of its 
power, which is military in nature but rests also on its command of the 
economy and its U.S. alliance. To both achieve peace and rescue its 
goals, the FARC must, by any logic, also project power; good ideas are 
not enough. Indeed, ever such since negotiations began in 2012, FARC 
strategists have been clear on how to do that. They’ve called for 
popular mobilization in Colombia for peace with justice – for a people’s 
uprising.

In a recent interview 
<http://prensarural.org/spip/spip.php?article17038> FARC commander 
Carlos Antonio Lozada, a delegate to the Havana peace talks, explains: 
“What with vacillations by Santos and growing pressures from militarism 
against the peace process, the only guarantee of its continuing and its 
definitive consolidation is that the majority sectors who believe in a 
political solution to the conflict mobilize in its defense. Peace with 
social justice for our people will not come as a present from the 
oligarchy.” He regrets that, “Still there is no success in structuring a 
broad front that brings together and decisively mobilizes all the social 
and political forces that crave a peace with democratic changes.”

In the end, the outcome of negotiations probably will depend on what 
happens in Colombia. Jaime Caycedo, secretary – general of the Communist 
Party, announced on June 4 that “social and political organizations will 
be preparing a national mobilization in favour of peace and the demand 
for a bilateral cease fire 
<http://www.prensa-latina.cu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&idioma=1&id=3860191&Itemid=1>.” 
It takes place in late July.

/*W.T. Whitney Jr.* is a retired pediatrician and political journalist 
living in Maine./

-- 
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