Thousands of Colombians march for war in state-backed demonstration

bristol | globalisation | news report Thursday February 07, 2008 02:00 by Guayusa Andina and Guayabo Pastuso - Espacio Bristol-Colombia

A report from Bristolians in Bogota

‘I am Colombia’ were the words stamped across the rather artificially large chest of the woman who nearly ran us over in her four-by-four on Monday morning. No doubt she was on her way to the government-sponsored mobilization against the FARC guerrilla that took place in cities across the world today, despite condemnation from Colombian social movements, the left-leaning opposition and the mother of Ingrid Betancourt - the former Green Party senator who has been a hostage of the FARC since 2002.

Soldiers take the stage behind demonstrators

‘I am Colombia’ were the words stamped across the rather artificially large chest of the woman who nearly ran us over in her four-by-four on Monday morning. No doubt she was on her way to the government-sponsored mobilization against the FARC guerrilla that took place in cities across the world today, despite condemnation from Colombian social movements, the left-leaning opposition and the mother of Ingrid Betancourt - the former Green Party senator who has been a hostage of the FARC since 2002.

Despite the uniform of white T-shirts claiming to embody Colombia and demanding ‘no more kidnaps’, ‘no more lies’, ‘no more deaths’ and ‘no more FARC’, the idea that the FARC are at the root of Colombia’s humanitarian crisis is almost as daft as blaming Joseph Stalin for World War Two. However, in a country where the media is a vehicle for government spin to a degree that makes even the BBC look subversive, and where critical journalists have a disturbing pre-disposition for ending up exiled or killed, historical and political analysis has been replaced by the nationalistic slogans currently gushing from the botoxed lips of television presenters.

The demonstrators had little to say about the far deeper issue underlying the conflict in Colombia - that of state terrorism and a ‘democracy’ that has claimed more lives than all the Latin American dictatorships put together. However, as the marchers drew a border around themselves and declared themselves to ‘be’ Colombia, they delineated the boundaries of another space, outside that border, a ‘non-Colombia’ populated by the thousands of non-citizens who every day face the possibility of being victims of state-sponsored violence.

These non-citizens are not armed outlaws but members of social organizations who oppose the policy of privatization of just about everything, the destruction caused by multinational corporations or the violence with which the state’s neoliberal development policies are imposed on poor communities. People like our friend Luis Eduardo García who just before Christmas had three consecutive death threats from paramilitaries (whose links with the state are extensively documented) because of his work with the Colombian food-workers’ union.

Also inhabiting this non-Colombia are the surplus populations who have no value to the government except as corpses who can be dressed in military garb to show that the army are meeting their macabre targets of guerrillas killed in combat. Dulcelina, who sent her two sons off to buy cheese from a neighbouring farm at midday on 30 March last year and was later presented with an army video showing their corpses wearing military boots, is one of many people we’ve spoken to who’ve told us of the how their loved-ones’ corpses have been manipulated in this way.

The recent testimony of an army whistle-blower has revealed that extra-judicial executions and the passing-off of civilian corpses as those of guerrilla is a policy that extends to the heart of the Colombian army, which recent years have given carte blanche to combat the guerrilla under President Uribe’s curiously-named policy of ‘Democratic Security’. Last month, Sergeant Alexander Rodríguez spoke out on the murder of civilians by the 15th Brigade of the Army, who subsequently presented the corpses as those of guerrillas killed in combat. To make their story credible, the soldiers changed their victims clothes and put a gun next to them. But in a world in which everything has a price and those with the least resources must pay for them, the soldiers’ were asked to pay 20,000 pesos (approx £5) each to the cover the cost of the gun. ‘If you want to pay, that’s fine - if not, it’s ok too, but think about the five-day leave you’ll get if you do’ the soldiers were told by their superiors.

The Commander of the Colombian Army, General Mario Montoya, as the head of a special commission into the accusations, responded by withdrawing Sergeant Rodriguez from active service - on the basis of his supposed lack of discipline - and by promoting the commander of the offending 15th Brigade. The strategy of accusing the accusers is a standard response of the Colombian state to charges against it.

It has become a mantra of the government and its supporters that human rights groups are ‘auxiliaries of the guerrilla’, a charge that is little short of a death sentence for human rights defenders in Colombia. The European network that Espacio Bristol is part of - the Red de Hermandad y Solidaridad con Colombia - was, along with Peace Brigades International and several prominent Colombian human rights NGOs, itself declared part of the ‘juridical wing of the FARC’ in an article in the national newspaper El Espectador on 15 December, despite the fact that some of the social organizations we accompany have themselves been declared military targets of the FARC as a result of their different views on how to respond to state terror and multinational capitalism.

In oil-rich Arauca, a region of eastern Colombia, social organizations have for decades been implementing their own alternative social and economic models but in recent years have suffered violence at the hands of the army and paramilitaries defending the interests of oil multinationals (see Amnesty International’s report at http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR23/004/2004). In January, they issued a call for international solidarity in which they stated that they were now being attacked by Fronts 10 and 45 of the FARC as well as by the state forces.

Despite the outrage inspired by the FARC’s policies, the question of what to do in the face of a state that thrives on a strategy of terror against non-violent opposition remains unanswered, indeed ignored, by today’s march. The Colombian state is responsible for many millions more murders and illegal imprisonments than the FARC but continues to consolidate its position in international public opinion as the ‘legitimate’ bearer of arms. As peasants and social activists face on-going extermination and stigmatization with little support from those who find it a more convenient option to focus only on the FARC, it is hardly surprising that a significant minority of people in Colombia see little option other than to take up arms in order to defend themselves and their communities.

The Colombian trade union federation - la CUT, Colombia’s left-leaning political coalition - the Polo Democrático Alternativo, and members of various social and human rights organizations also marched on Monday in a counter-demonstration that was all but invisible to the eyes of the mainstream media. They, too, were protesting against kidnapping but demanded that the government enter into a humanitarian agreement with the FARC and negotiate a political, rather than military, solution to the conflict in Colombia.

Three of us from Espacio Bristol-Colombia are currently doing human rights accompaniment and volunteering with social organizations in Colombia. Guayusa Andina and another member of the European Red de Hermandad will be running a training session for people interested in doing accompaniment work with us at Kebele on the weekend of 16th and 17th Sept. For more details see www.espacio.org.uk .

(The views expressed in this article are those of the authors who have sporadic internet access and haven’t had a chance to discuss all of them with the rest of Espacio Bristol-Colombia. For info on what Espacio stands for see www.espacio.org.uk/aboutus.htm ).