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<h1 class="reader-title">Colombia, Venezuela and Nuestra
America: A Conversation with Jesus Santrich of the FARC‐EP</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">By Cira Pascual Marquina –
Venezuelanalysis.com - February 27, 2020<br>
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<p><em>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.</em></p>
<p><em>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.</em></p>
<p><strong>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?</strong></p>
<p>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 <em>guerrilleros</em> were never
finished.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <em>pacta sunt servanda</em>
[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.[*]</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>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.</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<em> Nuestra
America</em>. 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.
[...]</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>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?</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/1461">Mar
Del Plata declaration against the FTAA</a> [Free
Trade Area for the Americas]. This gave an impulse to
<a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/alba">ALBA</a>,
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Can we look at the particularities of each
country that participated in the“Pink Tide,” which
began around 1998?</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Another characteristic of these processes is that, in
most cases, they placed the legacies of <em>Nuestra
America</em> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/tiar">Inter-American
Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance</a> [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.</p>
<p>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 <em>Nuestra America</em>, which
means that US interventionism has been harsher there.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
<em>Nuestra America</em>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/guarimbas">guarimbas</a>
or other disturbances in the cities, or with
collaboration with figures such as Juan Guaido who
lend themselves to imperialist sabotage.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>What can you tell us about the Venezuelan
commune as a proposal for the reorganization of
society both politically and economically?</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>Footnote</h2>
<p>[*] 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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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