Politics and Democracy
Women and the Struggle for Social Change in Colombia
Many Colombian women on the political left see their daily participation in community and peasant organizations, social movements, and armed revolutionary groups as intimately bound up with the society they seek to build in Colombia. A lot of these women feel the need to confront inequality and implement a more redistributive political and economic agenda, suggesting that political economy is as important to gender politics as identity. In fact, a significant number of these women did not come to their politics from a gender or feminist perspective, but rather they began their engagement from a sense of injustice at the broader socio-economic conditions in which a majority of Colombians live. As a result, women struggle to organize in the context of a dirty war in which they are threatened, harassed and killed for being “subversives.” 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»
The Prospects for Peace in Colombia
While some are holding out hope for success in the peace talks currently being conducted between the Uribe administration and the National Liberation Army (ELN), there is virtually no possibility of the current government achieving peace with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). However, there is reason to be cautiously optimistic regarding the possibility that a post-Uribe government and the FARC could reach a negotiated peace. Read more»
How the EU and Canada Could Work for Peace in Colombia
For the most part, the United States has established the terms of the international debate on Colombia’s civil conflict. Consequently, the language of war has dominated the discourse, a fact most apparent in Washington’s labeling of US intervention in Colombia as a “war on drugs” and more recently a “war on terror.” Prior to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States, the European Union and Canada maintained a certain degree of independence with regard to their approaches to Colombia. In fact, both the EU and Canada refused to directly participate in the Clinton administration’s counter-narcotics initiative known as Plan Colombia or to consider the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) a terrorist organization. However, following 9/11, the latter situation changed when the EU and Canada placed the FARC on their terrorist lists, adding legitimacy to the Bush administration’s efforts to seek a military solution in Colombia. But given the current regional political context in South America and the evident military shortcomings of the US global war on terror, the EU and Canada are perfectly situated to begin contributing to a negotiated solution to Colombia’s long-running conflict by re-visiting their decisions to list the FARC as a terrorist organization. Read more»
Abandoning a Negotiated Prisoner Exchange for a Militant Rescue Attempt? Uribe Further Alienates Colombia’s Elite
At a time when the Colombian government is experiencing growing urban and rural opposition to state-induced political and economic policies such the VAT tax reform, new inequitable bilateral-trade agreements with the United States, and a significant reduction in socio-economic aid to regions most affected by the civil war, one would think that the Uribe administration would seek to mend the frayed relations with his remaining allies within the traditional dominant class. However, with the recent announcement that the Colombian government seeks to replace a negotiated prisoner exchange with the FARC-EP for a military-based rescue attempt, it looks as though this rationalism has failed to enter the president’s thinking. Read more»