Archive for 2007

Projecting La Memoria in Southwest Colombia

It is Friday in Trujillo, Valle de Cauca and a collection of youths are finishing a week’s work of repairs to the sculptures of their Memorial Garden. More than 350 residents of this small town have been assassinated or forcefully disappeared in a plague of paramilitary and State violence. Two more disappeared the night before I arrived in Trujillo. There are believed to be many more victims that have not been reported due to fear of reprisals. One relative described it as the “law of silence.” But the victims of Trujillo refuse to let the memory die. Their hillside memorial shouts loudly across the town below. The psychology behind it is as audacious as it is ambitious. Read more»

Interview with FARC Commander Raul Reyes

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a peasant-based guerrilla army with an estimated 18,000 fighters, has been waging war against the Colombian government for more than 40 years. In recent years, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and US President George W. Bush have both intensified their efforts to defeat the FARC as part of the so-called war on terror. However, despite receiving more than $4.5 billion in US aid over the past six years, the Colombian government has yet to achieve a military victory. In June, I travelled to a remote jungle camp to meet with FARC Commander Raúl Reyes. During a two hour interview, Reyes discussed the para-politics scandal, the revolutionary struggle, the dirty war, child soldiers, the FARC’s controversial use of home-made mortars and landmines, Plan Colombia, Plan Patriota, neoliberalism and the prospects for peace in Colombia. Read more»

Two Perspectives from the Colombian Left

In the context of the ongoing para-politics scandal in Colombia, which has undermined the legitimacy of the right-wing government, the left is rapidly emerging as the new political force in the country. Colombia’s largest leftist guerrilla insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has been waging a war against the State for more than 40 years. But for the first time since the 1980s, a left-of-center political party is gaining prominence on both the local and national level, illustrating that Colombia is not immune to the electoral shift to the left that is occurring throughout the region. The presence of both the armed left and an electoral left in Colombia has made the leftward shift in this South American country particularly intriguing. In June, I met with Senator Gustavo Petro of the Democratic Pole in his office in Bogotá to obtain his perspective on the para-politics scandal, the armed left, the dirty war, neoliberalism and the country’s prospects for peace. Six days after meeting with Petro, I interviewed FARC Commander Raúl Reyes in a remote jungle camp and asked him about the same issues. Petro and Reyes provide two perspectives from the Colombian left. Read more»

The Best-Laid Plans of Presidents and War Criminals: The Unintended Outcome of Colombia’s Demobilization Process

It was supposed to be simple, a straightforward process of re-inserting the leaders of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) into Colombian society, thereby allowing them to enter the political arena. The original plan involved paramilitary leaders revealing the locations of mass graves and naming a few dead or jailed “rogue” politicians and military officers who had collaborated with them. Such “revelations” would be passed off as confessions and with the years spent on a farm in northern Colombia during negotiations considered as “time-served,” the AUC leaders would spend less than two years in prison, most likely at a semi-luxurious country estate. But from the perspective of the Uribe administration, the much-heralded demobilization of Colombia’s largest paramilitary organization has gone terribly wrong. In fact, the entire process now threatens to provide Colombia with its most far-reaching political cleansing ever and offers the possibility of making a serious dent in the impunity traditionally enjoyed by the country’s political and military elites. Read more»

Colombia’s “Watergate” Scandal

Almost weekly new evidence emerged revealing the names of high-level government officials engaged in illegal activities including the wiretapping of political opponents, maintaining links to an illegal group and issuing lists containing the names of the president’s political enemies. While Senate hearings and widespread media coverage initially failed to directly link the president to the escalating scandal, they did begin to undermine the government’s credibility. Less than a year after the scandal erupted onto the political scene, the president was forced to fire two of his political allies for their role in the illegal wiretaps. Meanwhile, supporters of the president repeatedly pointed out that, while many high-ranking government officials had been charged with wrongdoing, the president himself had not been directly implicated in any illegal acts. While the aforementioned scenario sounds eerily similar to the current “para-politics” scandal in Colombia, it is actually a description of the first year of the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s that eventually brought down US President Richard Nixon. Read more»

Washington Post is Way Out of Line on Colombia’s “Supposed” Human Rights Crisis

According to a May 6 editorial by the Washington Post, Colombia does not have a serious human rights problem. In the editorial, titled “Assault on an Ally,” the Post ridiculed the recent claim by Human Rights Watch that “today Colombia presents the worst human rights and humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere,” suggesting instead that Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti deserve that label. The editorial later ludicrously and irresponsibly referred to the human rights situation in Colombia as a “supposed human rights ‘crisis’,” insinuating that it is merely a fabrication of House Democrats and the left. But how can the killing of more labor leaders in Colombia than in the rest of the world not constitute a human rights crisis? How can the massacre of five Awá indigenous leaders last year not constitute a human rights crisis? And how can having the second largest internally displaced population in the world, behind only the Sudan, not constitute a human rights crisis? Read more»

Gore’s Hypocritical Human Rights Stance Towards Colombia

Former Vice-President Al Gore has again exhibited a degree of political hypocrisy that is simply astounding. Last week, he continued his personal quest to re-cast himself as the leading spokesperson for the mainstream left in the United States when he cancelled a scheduled appearance as the keynote speaker at a conference on the environment because Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe was also on the program. The problem, according to a statement issued by Gore, is that he finds accusations that Uribe is linked to right-wing paramilitary death squads “deeply troubling” and doesn’t want to appear with the Colombian president until “this very serious chapter in history is brought to a close.” However, when Gore was vice-president he apparently had no interest in bringing “this very serious chapter in history” to a close. Read more»