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<div style="text-align: center;"><b><a
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30px;color:#404040;font-family: 'Times', 'Times
New Roman',serif;" valign="top"><a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/ean-land-reform-and-end-hunger/k6f1xq/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"><b>Peace
in Colombia Should Mean Land Reform and an
End to Hunger</b></a></td>
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style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(242, 242,
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valign="top"><b>By Vijay Prashad and Zoe
Alexandra</b>
<div><br>
Since the end of April, Colombia’s streets
have <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/f-national-strike-in-colombia-/k6f1xs/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">smelled</a> of tear
gas. The government of Colombian President
Iván Duque imposed <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/n-and-militarization-continue-/k6f1xv/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">policies</a> that put
the costs of the pandemic on the working class
and the peasantry and <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/he-blood-of-the-working-class-/k6f1xx/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">tried</a> to <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/ek-of-anti-government-protests/k6f1xz/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">suffocate</a> any
advancement of the <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/iva-Paginas-Acuerdo-Final-aspx/k6f1y2/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">Havana peace accords</a>
of 2016. Discontent led to street protests,
which were repressed harshly by the
government. These protests, Rodrigo Granda of
Colombia’s <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/farc-/k6f1y4/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">Comunes</a> party
told us in an interview, “are defined by the
wide participation of youth, women, artists,
religious people, the Indigenous,
Afro-Colombians, unions and organizations from
neighborhoods of the poor and the working
class. Practically the whole of Colombia is
part of the struggle.” A range of concrete <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/-against-neoliberal-onslaught-/k6f1y6/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">demands</a> defines
the protest: running
water and schools, the disbandment of the riot
police (ESMAD), and the expansion of
democratic possibilities.<br>
<br>
The Comunes party was formed in 2017 by
members of the FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia-People’s Army). Granda, who
is known internationally for his former role
as the foreign minister of the FARC, is now in
the national board of the Comunes party. As a
legal political party, Comunes is a direct
product of the 2016 <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/iva-Paginas-Acuerdo-Final-aspx/k6f1y2/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">Havana peace accords</a>
signed by the Colombian government and the
FARC. Over the past two years, members of the
Comunes have been on the streets alongside
their fellow Colombians who are fighting to
bring democracy to the country’s economy and
politics. Granda spoke to us about the ongoing
protests and helped to put these protests in
the context of the long history of struggle in
Colombia.<br>
<br>
<b>Colombia’s Violent Oligarchy</b><br>
<br>
The current protests remind Granda of the 1977
national civic <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/34s80kY/k6f1y8/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">strike</a> that he
participated in, with one difference: then, he
says, there was “no international solidarity,”
while now the global media attention to
Colombia’s struggle allows the people in his
country “not to lose heart” during a difficult
fight. The 1977 strike emerged out of a long
struggle against the country’s oligarchy.<br>
<br>
Years before the strike, Granda looked forward
to the Colombian elections of April 1970. He
hoped that the former president and general
Gustavo Rojas Pinilla of the National Popular
Alliance (ANAPO) would win. Rojas Pinilla was
not a leftist, but he offered the country a
way out of the grip of Colombia’s oligarchy.
Young people like Granda hoped that an ANAPO
victory in Colombia and then, later in the
year, the victory of Salvador Allende’s
Popular Unity in Chile would help change the
character of South America’s politics. But
Rojas Pinilla’s victory was embroiled in <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/3uBoCBG/k6f1yb/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">fraud</a>, and while
Allende won the election, he was ejected from
<a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/en-articulo-208813/k6f1yd/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">power</a> in
1973 in a coup. Looking back over these 50
years, Granda told us that he feels an
“internal frustration” with the theft of that
election in 1970 and the tortuous path his
country has had to take since then.<br>
<br>
The fight has been difficult because the
ruling bloc of Colombia, including Duque, is
unwilling to honestly participate in a
democratic agenda. None of the major political
parties that have controlled the state since
1948 have been eager for any kind of change.
Suffocation of politics since then and the
routine assassination of political leaders
moved the left—through the FARC and other
groups—into <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/af91d139ae41a2abd06fdcdf86a7da/k6f1yg/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">armed struggle</a> in
1964. The FARC regularly called upon the
ruling bloc to open negotiations, but with
little success. However, talks with President
Belisario Betancur in 1982 opened the way to
the 1984 <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/28-Acuerdos20De20La20Uribe-pdf/k6f1yj/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">La Uribe
Agreement</a>, which resulted in a ceasefire
from 1984 to 1987. Members of the FARC joined
with others on the left to <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/acaso-mas-sangriento-colombia-/k6f1yl/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">create</a> Union
Patriótica (UP) as a legal political party.
Attempts to move a reform agenda by the UP
came alongside a policy of assassinations by
the state against the left. No genuine liberal
sentiment pervades the Colombian ruling bloc,
which refuses to share even a modicum of power
with other groups.<br>
<br>
The situation deteriorated under President
Andrés Pastrana—who was in power from 1998 to
2002—and U.S. President Bill Clinton, who both
<a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/statements-2000-000115b-html/k6f1yn/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">signed</a> Plan
Colombia, which proved to be the beginning of
a policy to define the FARC as “<a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/tablas-r25967-pdf/k6f1yq/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">narco-terrorists</a>”
and conduct a war of extermination against the
rebels. Incidentally, it was Pastrana’s father
who stole the election of 1970 from Rojas
Pinilla. Brutality characterized the Colombian
state’s approach toward the FARC and toward
anyone else who questioned its policies.
Gradually, the ruling bloc was led by more and
more ruthless men, none more so than President
Álvaro Uribe
(2002-2010). Uribe, Granda told us, “promised
to exterminate us [the FARC] in four years,
but he could not.”<br>
<br>
<b>Peace Accords</b><br>
<br>
Granda understands why peace had to define the
agenda a decade ago. “After the failure of
Plan Colombia and a stalemate in the war,” he
told us, “we could not defeat the Colombian
army in a short time, and the Colombian army
could not defeat the guerrillas in a short
time either. Therefore, a political solution
through dialogue was necessary.” President
Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) wrote a letter
to the FARC saying that he recognized the
internal problems in Colombia and also
recognized that the FARC was a political
organization and not a narco-terrorist
organization. This set in motion the
negotiation in Havana that resulted in the
accords.<br>
<br>
The accords put in place a plan for integrated
agrarian reform and democracy, as well as
restitution for the victims of the long war.
“We put down our arms,” Granda said, “but we
did not disarm ourselves from an ideological
point of view.” The signing of the accords is
only one part of the FARC’s plan toward peace,
since their implementation is key before other
kinds of meaningful change can be made. But
the Colombian oligarchy, Granda said, has an
entirely different view of what peace would
mean. For the oligarchy, peace means that the
guns of the FARC are silent. “For us,” he
says, “peace means an attack on the factors
that generate the violence in the first
place.” These include factors like hunger,
dispossession and the frustration with the
oligarchy and the harsh violence by the state
against which the people of Colombia continue
to protest.<br>
<br>
<em><b>Vijay Prashad</b> is an Indian
historian, editor and journalist. He is a
writing fellow and chief correspondent at <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/globetrotter-/k6f1ys/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">Globetrotter</a>, a
project of the Independent Media Institute.
He is the chief editor of <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/2021-06-04/k6f1yv/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">LeftWord Books</a>
and the director of <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/2021-06-04/k6f1yx/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">Tricontinental:
Institute for Social Research</a>. He is a
senior non-resident fellow at <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/y2hdjcpo/k6f1yz/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">Chongyang Institute
for Financial Studies</a>, Renmin
University of China. He has written more
than 20 books, including</em> <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/1595583424--tag-alternorg08-20/k6f1z2/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">The Darker Nations</a>
<em>and</em> <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/1781681589--tag-alternorg08-20/k6f1z4/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">The Poorer Nations</a>.
<em>His latest book is</em> <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/catalog-product-view-id-21820/k6f1z6/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">Washington Bullets</a><em>,
with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.<br>
<br>
<b>Zoe Alexandra</b> is a journalist with <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/2021-06-04/k6f1z8/850184853?h=REVeajBg_0wR9YFDM4a8yV4Q1V9bkOQdAa8TSb6sK88"
moz-do-not-send="true">Peoples Dispatch</a>
and reports on people’s movements in Latin
America.</em></div>
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