[News] Colombia, Venezuela and Nuestra America: A Conversation with Jesus Santrich of the FARC‐EP

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14799


  Colombia, Venezuela and Nuestra America: A Conversation with Jesus
  Santrich of the FARC‐EP

By Cira Pascual Marquina – Venezuelanalysis.com - February 27, 2020
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/The peace process between the FARC-EP guerrilla and the Colombian 
government has had a profound impact on the region and especially in 
Venezuela. Venezuela – joined to Colombia by more than 200 years of 
history, culture, and politics – promoted and sponsored the peace 
process in its early stages. The post-accord situation in Colombia, in 
which numerous social leaders have been murdered and the causes of the 
conflict remain unresolved, led a group of FARC dissidents to break with 
the FARC party last year./

/Here we talk with Seuxis Pausias Hernández Solarte, better known as 
Jesus Santrich. Santrich is an important FARC‐EP commander who, together 
with Ivan Marquez, is a key leader of the rupture group. This interview 
is dated February 4, 2020./

*It’s obvious that the Colombian government does not intend to respect 
the Peace Agreements: it has breached the six points of the agreement 
signed by the parties in 2016 and many social leaders are being 
assassinated. What does this mean for the region and specifically for 
Venezuela?*

Through various means and even before the signing of the agreements, 
several of the insurgency’s representatives in Havana, including myself, 
warned about the government’s inconsistent position regarding 
reconciliation, as it didn’t show any willingness to find solutions to 
our society’s economic, political and social problems. In the early days 
of the peace process implementation, when we returned to Colombia, we 
pointed to the sluggishness in implementing the agreement. This began 
with a failure to prepare the spaces where the gathering of the 
guerrilla units would take place. Our people began to gather in places 
where, in some cases, there wasn’t even protection from inclement 
weather, and some of the facilities to house former /guerrilleros/ were 
never finished.

In the first year after signing the agreements, the verification 
institution determined that the implementation of the process was poor 
and that the establishment had broken the peace agreement very early on. 
Juan Manuel Santos took the first step towards what became a “crime of 
perfidy.” His successor Ivan Duque deepened the betrayal with blood and 
fire, creating growing economic insecurity for ex-combatants and 
abandoning the Peace Process policies that were supposed to be 
implemented in the more impoverished communities. The government was 
particularly remiss in the areas of agrarian reform, substitution of 
illicit crops, and political reform, to name just a few.

It is obvious that the establishment is responsible for what is going on 
– either directly or by omission – for the broken commitments made to 
poor communities and for the number of social leaders assassinated since 
the signing of the agreements. More than 500 social leaders have been 
killed since then, and some 200 ex-combatants have been assassinated in 
the same period. However, when we denounce this situation, we run up 
against bald denial on the part of the institutions, complemented by all 
sorts of judicial prosecutions launched against the revolutionary 
movement, including against me.

When the state broke the agreement – despite our efforts to keep it 
alive – we had no choice but to resume armed struggle. We had given up 
arms as part of a mutual commitment to overcome the causes of the 
conflict. The step was not conceived as demobilization and even less so 
as a unilateral process of demobilization on the insurgency’s part. In 
the end, with the establishment’s betrayal, its breaking good faith and 
trampling our dignity, and with all paths closed off to us, we were 
forced to look for a path out of defeatism and claudication.

The process of stigmatization, slander, framing, judicial persecution, 
extradition attempts, and the growing number of assassinations all 
pointed to the fact that reconciliation was a farce and peace was 
nothing more than a web of lies. That made it clear that our duty was to 
seek a coherent way out – to not submit to a felonious and petty 
political caste.

This wound to Colombia’s peace damages continental peace. Although there 
are Latin American and Caribbean governments promoting all sorts of 
initiatives to make the continent a territory of peace, Colombia’s 
dominant power bloc lends itself to turning our country into a 
battleground abjectly subjected to the United States’ whims – to 
imperialism’s voracity and shameless looting of common assets. 
Meanwhile, the country becomes a platform for interventionism against 
countries that do not align with Washington’s interests, as is the case 
with Venezuela and Cuba.

With the help of the United States, Juan Manuel Santos and Ivan Duque’s 
treacherous administrations have destroyed the agreements in general – 
an essential foundation for dialogue – and have broken good faith and 
the /pacta sunt servanda/ [Latin for "agreements must be kept"] 
principle. They have disrespected the mediating role of important 
international organizations such as the United Nations and the countries 
that participated as guarantors and accompaniment. Thus, the rupture of 
the agreements comes with simultaneous sabotage of international human 
rights and international law, including sovereignty and the people’s 
right to self-determination.[*]

I would add that the government's betrayal of the Peace Agreement fuels 
distrust within Colombia while destabilizing the region as a whole. When 
we look at Venezuela, we can see how Bogota's (and Washington’s) 
breaking of the agreements is not accidental: Venezuela is one of their 
targets. In addition to the impact of our internal war causes along the 
extensive and permeable border between Colombia and Venezuela, the 
Colombian conflict is taken as an excuse to unleash and maintain a 
situation of permanent hostility and aggression against Venezuela.

In fact, this hostility has become Colombia’s business card. Duque’s 
government is committed to the methods of Uribe’s mafia [followers of 
Albaro Uribe, Colombia’s ultra-right former president]. That mafia 
engages conspiracy, destabilization, and aggression against Venezuela, 
while Colombia is suffering from its neoliberal policies that result in 
a terrible humanitarian crisis expressing itself in the daily deaths of 
social leaders and ex-combatants.

*Did the dogmas of the “Pink Tide” (the progressive processes that began 
around the turn of the century in Latin America) impact Colombia's peace 
process? I ask because many progressive governments made a fetish of 
elections. They sometimes overlooked the fact that, for example, the 
changes in Venezuela were supported by a patriotic army. The progressive 
governments had many limitations and their civic-military unions could 
not easily be reproduced elsewhere.*

I don’t think that the evident structural crisis of the former FARC-EP 
as a revolutionary organization was directly affected by that: by what 
you call the “dogmas of the Pink Tide” or of the progressive processes 
of the first decades of the 21st century. Our crisis was rooted, on the 
one hand, in the erosion caused by the prolongation of war; on the other 
hand, it was due to a double betrayal by the regime and internal actors 
within our movement’s political-military leadership.

I am not inclined to question the achievements (be they many or a few, 
durable or not) of progressivism. In times when the decline of the 
empire and its loss of world control are evident (and this is made clear 
by the imposition of fascism as a desperate reaction), any form of 
resistance to tyranny is valid. However, this shouldn't be done without 
forgetting that the goals of a revolutionary movement must go beyond 
those of progressivism.

Of course, I believe that no process of profound change – much less a 
true social revolution of popular redemption – can survive if it is 
unarmed. If we think about Colombia’s struggle for radical change aimed 
at overcoming inequalities, misery, and political exclusion, we can see 
that giving up arms is now a chimera. It would be a path filled with 
martyrdom and uncertainties.

In Colombia, the popular movement faces a power bloc that is extremely 
sordid and bloodthirsty. It flatters and submits to its gringo masters. 
This means that the Colombian government has a confirmed criminal, 
terrorist, vindictive and treacherous character and it cannot engage in 
fair democratic play. The fact is that extremely powerful guarantees 
would be needed to enter into any new agreement with it.

With this in mind, and understanding that both neoliberalism and 
progressivism are in crisis, we came to the conclusion that the only 
coherent proposal is the path towards structural changes with the idea 
of constructing socialism on the horizon. It is not an exaggeration to 
say that, in the midst of the crisis of progressivism and agonizing 
neoliberalism in Latin America, we need a final push towards socialism.

As the new FARC, we have already said this: the promises of milk and 
honey from “advanced capitalist” countries – with their gangster 
institutions (such as the IMF and the World Bank – are collapsing and 
nobody can stop that. This is best seen in the Chilean crisis, which 
shows the system’s broken machinery. The farce was demolished by massive 
demonstrations, unprecedented in Chile’s history and in/Nuestra 
America/. They have unmasked not only Sebastian Piñera but also the 
false paradise of consumerist capitalism disguised in false democracy 
that actually was “stick-up democracy.” Of course, all that was packaged 
with a media machinery that projected a non-existing bonanza and was 
organized by the Washington Consensus’ most advanced students.

There are countless analyses of the “long historical cycle of bourgeois 
civilization,” and also of twenty-first-century capitalism and its 
irreversible crisis. However, it is not necessary to discuss that 
theoretical universe now, since the spiral of militarization is in 
itself evidence of the inexorable decline of the system. The task of 
revolutionaries is to accelerate the collapse with organization, 
mobilization, and ideas that allow us to fight together against the 
imperialist system’s gigantic alienation machine.

The US military-industrial complex (which also incorporates the United 
States’ NATO partners) contributes to the US’ fiscal deficit. That, in 
turn, fosters financial capital’s prosperity. It follows that 
imperialist military efficacy is declining. The bureaucracy grows in a 
context of general decline that exacerbates the warlike aggressiveness 
of imperialism. [...]

Imperialism has done its work well: if any success can be attributed to 
neoliberalism, it is in undermining the revolutionary consciousness of 
the most exploited peoples in the world. The generalized demobilization 
of the working class and the inability of communist, socialist or 
leftist alternatives to mobilize the peoples battered by the system is 
evidence of this.

Capital has become so powerful that nobody dares to propose, even as a 
strategic goal, a socialist alternative that would eliminate the world 
market pressure and its influence. In this regard, the processes that 
came to power in the first decade concerned themselves more with 
survival, and they moved too carefully, privileging democratic and 
social policies over solving the economic trauma resulting from a 
frontal clash with capital.

Nonetheless, there is no doubt that capitalism will perish as people 
struggle and fight. However, the fight against the system will be longer 
than we used to think. The ideological, political, and organizational 
work demanded by revolutionaries is much greater now, more intense and 
more necessary than ever.

This challenge is an urgent one and there are growing efforts taking 
place all over the world. These struggles show that people don’t accept 
the consequences of neoliberal capitalism. They are heroic struggles 
that begin with small victories, but they are not yet articulated within 
or with other countries immersed in struggles. The dispersion and the 
lack of clearly revolutionary political purposes – which is the deficit 
at the core of progressivism – constitutes a great obstacle that we must 
overcome with unitary national, regional and global projects.

*The Peruvian Marxist Jose Carlos Mariategui said: “To the capitalist, 
plutocratic, and imperialist North America we can only effectively 
oppose an emancipated and socialist Latin America." In this way, 
Mariategui linked the socialist project to continental integration. How 
do you understand the integration of Latin America’s peoples, 
particularly the people of Colombia and Venezuela, in these tumultuous 
times? What is the role of socialism in the project of integration?*

The common historical and cultural roots of the peoples of South America 
– the territory that the Cuban Apostle Jose Marti called “Nuestra 
America” [Our America] – have a common destiny, which is that of the 
“second and definitive independence.” In other words, the forming of a 
single great nation of sister republics as dreamed by Simon Bolivar, 
champion of continental integration, came out of the realization that 
only unity and integration can free us from the US’ voracity.

The United States considers Latin America to be key to its political and 
military control of the globe. We are talking about the Monroe 
Doctrine’s tragic heritage, which has led to the installation of 
military bases with US troops and mercenary contractors, the design and 
implementation of the FOL [Forward Operation Location], a military 
scheme that allows strategic mobility, the capacity to trigger sudden 
wars from the US bases, rapidly-deployed airborne troops, and the 
proliferation of security agreements with various countries, including 
Colombia, which partners with the US in its recolonization initiative.

If we were to accept this, Latin America would be condemned to remain 
aligned with US imperialism and become the main arena for the expansion 
of its transnationals. Of course, this means that any post-capitalist 
process, any project that challenges Washington's hegemonic strategy, 
will be subject to attempts to destabilize or destroy it from the beginning.

The processes that bloomed in the first decade of the 21st century – 
particularly Venezuela, but also, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, 
Uruguay, Nicaragua, and El Salvador – have a common origin in the 
capitalist crisis. That crisis expressed itself in the exhaustion of 
restricted representative (plutocratic) forms of democracy. All of it 
coincided with the delegitimation of the neoliberal model, which had 
deepened misery and inequality in the region in a visible manner.

The continental wave of revolutionary and progressive changes, which 
began with Hugo Chavez Frias’ election in 1998, reached its highest 
level in radicality perhaps around November 2005, in the Mar Del Plata 
declaration against the FTAA 
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/1461> [Free Trade Area for the 
Americas]. This gave an impulse to ALBA 
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/alba>, which Cuba and Venezuela 
founded in 2004 with a continental project. At the core of the ALBA 
initiative was the fight against poverty and social exclusion.

With the 2008 global capitalist crisis, the decline of some of these 
processes begins, as is evidenced by the decline of the World Social 
Forum, together with a shift towards the right in Brazil and Argentina – 
countries on a “center-left” path – while Bolivia, Ecuador, and 
Venezuela were under pressure by the oligarchic-imperialist bloc. All 
this brought about, little by little, the reorganization and 
repositioning of conservative forces on the continent.

*Can we look at the particularities of each country that participated in 
the“Pink Tide,” which began around 1998?*

The progressive processes in the continent were quite diverse, but they 
have one thing in common: they don’t emerge from a popular armed 
uprising. However, at the core of these processes, was the spark of 
dissent and mass protests against inequality.

All these processes were intimately linked to mass struggles, popular 
mobilization, the centrality of social movements and the appearance of 
new political subjects clearly differentiated from the old vanguardist 
parties. Of course, this does not exclude the participation of parties 
such as the MAS in Bolivia, the PSUV in Venezuela, and Alianza Pais in 
Ecuador in such processes of change. Some of these processes were also 
characterized by legitimate dissent towards friendly governments, such 
as the MST in Brazil, Quispe in Bolivia, and the CONAIE in Ecuador.

Another characteristic of these processes is that, in most cases, they 
placed the legacies of /Nuestra America/ rebels and patriots (Bolivar, 
Marti, Artigas, Sandino, etc.) in the foreground, while championing the 
struggles of native peoples and grassroots communities. Also, women and 
young people became the main protagonists.

But these processes were very diverse in character. Some, such as the 
process in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, advanced in social and 
economic development within the capitalist framework. Others such as 
those that took place in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia proposed the 
construction of socialism.

However, their socialist proposal differed from the hypotheses of the 
historical communist camp: avant-garde parties, massive expropriations, 
or the elimination of the bourgeoisie as a class. Twenty-First Century 
Socialism... continues to be a reference for revolutionaries in our 
continent. In fact, in the FARC-EP these ideas were welcome, and they 
were important for creating the context of the peace talks.

These governments fostered changes to overcome unfair property and power 
relations in some cases and sometimes worked to overcome the historical 
shortcomings of participation, expanding spaces of democracy. In doing 
so, they became test cases for the relevance of their ideological 
contributions and the viability of Twenty-First Century Socialism.

Now, for the new FARC-EP, it is the time to analyze, with a broad, 
open-minded vision, the democratic and progressive processes of the 
region. We have to understand their achievements and failures without 
losing sight of our own failures, which have their root in the naive 
(and unjustifiable) credulity in the word of a miserable government and 
a defeatist internal clique that abandoned our original revolutionary 
principles.

Without a doubt, the one who set the tone in this struggle was President 
Chavez with the proclamation of a Bolivarian Revolution, making 
constitutional and social changes accordingly. The Bolivarian Revolution 
was the trigger for the continental process.

For his part, President Correa of Ecuador, with a similar perspective, 
closed the US’ Manta Base and took other measures such as auditing 
foreign debt and removing support from the Inter-American Treaty of 
Reciprocal Assistance <https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/tiar> [Rio 
Treaty]. Bolivia’s Evo Morales took similar steps, expelling US 
ambassadors for interference in internal affairs, the United States 
Agency for International Development [USAID], and the Drug Enforcement 
Administration [DEA]. Additionally, Morales renegotiated unfavorable gas 
concessions, thus recuperating Bolivian assets. US Imperialism never 
forgave those steps.

In all these countries – and in Nicaragua and El Salvador too – 
interesting popular empowerment emerged, just as hostile and 
interventionist US actions followed. Of course, the main target was 
Venezuela, the epicenter of the processes of change and independence in 
/Nuestra America/, which means that US interventionism has been harsher 
there.

That is why the United States declared the government of Nicolas Maduro 
a threat to their national security, placing Venezuela in the eye of the 
hurricane with constant Yankee hostility, seconded by lackey 
governments. Of course, some governments, world organizations, and 
individuals have demanded the end of aggression which has, by the way, 
turned Colombia into the main staging ground for attacks against Venezuela.

Cuba, which faces enormous difficulties due to the criminal US blockade, 
remains the most solid revolution in the region, constantly evaluating, 
rectifying and advancing. Cuba remains a beacon of dignity and an 
example of revolutionary leadership in /Nuestra America/.

It is time to reflect and evaluate the main political continental events 
and challenges, including the impact of external factors, with the 
future of the region in view. We must also learn from the processes 
themselves and incorporate those elements that are useful to our own 
strategy.

In doing so, we can say that today Latin America and the Caribbean are 
going through a slowdown in popular movement activity while the 
aforementioned processes are in crisis... Nonetheless, as this rollback 
happens, class struggle is growing in many countries. This expresses 
itself in the organization of the most diverse forms of mass movement 
mobilization resisting dispossession practices advanced by 
transnationals, mining, and energy exploitation, the devastation brought 
about by agribusinesses, and neoliberal ransacking in general.

In this context, Washington has encouraged several traditional coup 
attempts which have almost always been frustrated by mass mobilization. 
They have been more successful with the implementation of “institutional 
coups” such as the ones in Honduras and Paraguay, and more recently in 
Bolivia. The fact is that imperialism is not resigned to losing what it 
considers its “strategic rearguard.” That is why it sponsors the most 
retrograde local actors, pushing for a conservative restoration either 
through institutional strategies (such as promoting right-wing parties 
that abide by the laws and by electoral rules), or through conspiracy 
and seditious strategies, as is the case in Venezuela, where they 
encouraged guarimbas <https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/guarimbas> or 
other disturbances in the cities, or with collaboration with figures 
such as Juan Guaido who lend themselves to imperialist sabotage.

This situation means that the local leadership (both governmental and 
grassroots) where progressive processes are taking place needs to engage 
in reflection. Yielding to the demands of hegemonic capitalist forces or 
their local agents is not the solution. The defeat of a popular project 
can only be prevented by consolidating its victories, widening its 
scope, incorporating and preparing social organizations and political 
movements that identify with the processes of change with education and 
ideological formation.

We must promote a socialist project with an endogenous identity based on 
the classics’ contributions and the experiences of struggle among 
peoples that have developed anti-capitalist projects. We must seek 
identity in our own cultural roots, and it is here that people play 
their key role, with their ancestral solidarious, communal, and 
collective practices.

*What can you tell us about the Venezuelan commune as a proposal for the 
reorganization of society both politically and economically?*

While I don’t know well the experiences of organizational, political and 
productive work in Venezuela, I have learned about the strength of the 
social fabric woven by Chavez, especially in communal construction. The 
commune is the seed for that which is new and good: an alternative to 
capitalism’s social and environmental plundering. In fact, we identify 
ourselves with the communal project, which has demonstrated its 
potential, in agrarian areas where campesinos of indigenous or African 
descent have organized themselves.

The communal experience is an alternative to the destructive nature of 
capitalist practices, abetted by the dominant technology and the 
inability of the world economy to continue growing. The current 
conditions accelerate the concentration of wealth in very few hands and 
the marginalization of billions of human beings who are, from the 
perspective of the reproduction of the system, surplus population.


    Footnote

[*] The November 7, 2016 agreement was signed as a “special agreement” 
following the terms of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. 
Following that, the Colombian state had to make a “Unilateral 
Declaration” before the UN secretary general. Through this process, the 
entire Peace Agreement became a “United Nations Security Council Document.”

The “Unilateral Declaration” to the secretary general, dated March 13, 
2017, and, together with a communication dated March 29, 2017, with the 
“Final Agreement for the End of the Conflict and the Construction of a 
Stable and Lasting Peace,” the documents were sent to the Security 
Council (Document S / 2017/272, dated April 21, 2017). All this means 
that the Colombian state’s acquired obligations must be fulfilled in 
accordance with the Pacta Sunt Servanda principle and International Law.

According to the good practices of peaceful coexistence, the state’s 
responsibilities will remain notwithstanding a change of government. 
This is to guarantee both internal legal security and to ensure 
international stability, which are unavoidable factors of concord. 
Unless there is a determination to act as a rogue state proceeding 
against the agreement and against the international order, the state 
must continue the process. However, a rupture is evident in regards to 
the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, for example. This also became 
visible when Duque’s government disregarded the role of Cuba and Norway 
as international guarantors, or when they ignored the protocols in the 
ELN conversations in Havana.

-- 
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