<html>
<body>
<font size=3>
<a href="http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia273.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia273.htm<br>
</a>March 3, 2008<br><br>
Uribe’s Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America: A Response to the
Murder of FARC Commander Raúl Reyes in Ecuador <br><br>
by James J. Brittain and R. James Sacouman<br><br>
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-People’s Army (FARC-EP), the
administration of President Álvaro Uribe Vélez supported an extensive
armed air and land assault against the insurgency movementnot within
Colombia’s 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 state’s open
negation of international codes of conduct, law and social
justice.<br><br>
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 Uribe’s 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. <br><br>
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 <i>El Tiempo</i>which has long-standing
ties to the Santos familyhave been parading photographs of the
bullet-ridden and mutilated corpse of Raúl Reyes throughout the country’s
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.<br><br>
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, Ecuador’s 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: <br>
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.<br><br>
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-EP’s domestic and geo-political stance.
Disturbingly, in the face of this evidence and the FARC-EP’s 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.<br><br>
Over the past several years, different aspects of the FARC-EP’s 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
Colombia’s long and tragic domestic conflict.”<br><br>
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:<br>
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.<br><br>
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-EP’s activities “are targeted inward, not outward,” hence,
“applying the terrorism concept to these groups negates their political
projects.”<br><br>
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.”<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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 Uribe’s 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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
<i>James J. Brittain is an assistant professor of sociology and James
Sacouman a professor of sociology at Acadia University in Nova Scotia,
Canada. <br><br>
<br><br>
</i></font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#008000">415 863-9977<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#0000FF">
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.Freedomarchives.org</a></font><font size=3> </font></body>
</html>