Colombia
"Duque is not in charge in Colombia, Trump is"
In an interview with LPO, Pedro Valenzuela, profesor at Javeriana University and expert in armed conflicts, analyzes the Colombian stage.

Profesor Pedro Valenzuela patiently guides a group of students from Javeriana University through the streets of the center of Bogotá. The excursion begins at the San Francisco church -the oldest church in this capital city- and focuses on the political violence that thrashed and continues to thrash Colombia.

A few meters from the church, the group passes by the place where, in 1948, the presidential candidate Jorge Gaitán was assassinated. It was an act that led to episodes of violent protests, disorder, and suppression known as "The Bogotazo."

A few blocks to the north, Valenzuela -a specialist in the Colombian armed conflict- shows the colonial house where the "Florero de Llorente" revolt began, an episode which gave rise to Colombian independence. In that house, which maintains its colonial style, the Spanish merchant José Llorente refused to lend a flower vase for a Creole regale. They were enraged, and the crisis broke loose.

A few meters away, on the outskirts of the Capital, a plaque indicates where the senator Rafael Uribe Uribe -en 1914- was assassinated by two carpenters attacking him with axes. The figure of that soldier would years later inspire Gabriel García Marquez in shaping the character of Colonel Aureliano Buendía.

The episodes continue. Before conversing with LPO, Valenzuela guides the students towards a photography exhibit which shows the violence of the war against the guerrillas in the most remote places of the country. The excursion concludes in a memorial where the floor is a large surface made of the molten metal from the weapons that were handed over by the FARC.

What changes begin to loom since the signing of the Peace Accords between the government and the FARC?

Well, that's one of the big dilemmas. I see the land situation as a big danger for peacebuilding. If you look at the reforms proposed in the Peace Accords, they're not very radical reforms. A process of democratization in the land exists, but not a direct threat. The possibility of expropriating the big landowners is not included; that wouldn't have been possible to agree upon.

It's about an attempt at an agrarian reform and modernization that's quite liberal, but that has to give land access to farmers that don't have it. But even with those reforms, timid as they are, there is a strong reaction and fear from national and international interests, both legal and illegal.

Colombia is still a country where multiple sovereignties exist which is of course a serious shortcoming of the government's ability to impose its policies.

For example?

What the Colombian government in a schizophrenic state did with the extractive industries as a big engine for growth clashes with the agreements made in the Peace Accords in terms of the farming sectors. On one side there's the perspective of the Colombian elite that want to insert the country in the international circuit which goes against the democratizing dynamics agreed upon in the accords.

What effect will this have in practice?

I believe that there are several threats: on one hand the reluctance I just mentioned. On the other hand the farming sectors and the sectors compromised by the implementation of the accords are very stigmatized. But also, there are armed illegal sectors that are turning the sectors most compromised by the accords white.

You have to think that Colombia is still a country where multiple sovereignties exist which is of course a serious shortcoming of the government's ability to impose its policies.

What impact did the accords have on the political class? I see that there's a lot of tension and differences between Santos, Uribe y Duque because of the accords.

A lot, especially because Uribe's stance is strongly against the Peace Accords, and he is curiously a person that maintains a high level of acceptance. Because the country is very polarized. It was during the war and it is now in the Post-Accords. So then we have a consolidated political power which is Uribism, which has as one of its political projects preventing a good part of the agreements in the Peace Accords from being put in practice.

"Duque is not in charge in Colombia, Trump is"

What role does Duque have within Uribism?

Some got excited by having Duque as the friendly face of Uribism, but Duque has no political capital. The political capital of the party is Uribe's, and he is a hardliner. Colombia is a tremendously polarized country. The Accords should have achieved reducing that polarization, but without a doubt they ended up expanding it.

Do the reforms proposed by Duque to the transitional justice system presuppose a risk for the Peace Accords?

I believe they do because the transitional justice system is precisely one of the big pillars for the Peace Accords, which is a very different justice system from the justice system that they had in Argentina after the dictatorship.

The difference is that the transition in Argentina was in the context of a discredited military dictatorship that had just lost the Falklands War. The dictatorship collapsed, but here the transition with the FARC is with a guerrilla that had the ability to survive and with whom we had to negotiate, and to whom we couldn't demand their surrender, which is what Uribe aimed for.

So then there we began to negotiate some conditions about how they'd be judged, and the tool is the transitional justice system. What ended up happening is that many people felt resentful because of it. But, curiously, many victims didn't feel that way. They are people that see the Accords as a possibility of ending this war and starting over.

But the Democratic Center wants to take away the ability of the people to decide who goes before the transitional justice tribunal. What they want to do is overload the justice system so that nothing can be done. Who's going to judge some 20,000 combatants from just the FARC? Plus the 2,000 from the army that want to take shelter in that justice system? What they want to do is overload the system so that they can't advance. A little like what happened in Rwanda where they placed 130,000 people in jail without being able to judge them.

Some got excited by having Duque as the friendly face of Uribism, but Duque has no political capital. The political capital of the party is Uribe's, and he is a hardliner.

And what would be the objective of braking the peace process?

I get the impression that they are very scared, especially that the military go before the transitional justice tribunal. Because if there's someone that knows where the orders were coming from, it's the military. They are demanding to be tried under the transitional justice system to have alternative penalties, but alternative penalties imply telling everything. And there is a lot of fear in a good part of the Colombian politicians that the truth be brought to light.

I was surprised by what you just said about the victims and their support of the peace process. Does the transitional justice system guarantee the rights of the victims of the guerrilla?

Totally. The victims are the axis of the whole transition process. There are many surveys done with victims, and for them the main thing is not whether the guilty go to prison. The main thing is that they can return to their lives. They want to return to their lands. For many, the condemnation of the FARC is secondary.

"Duque is not in charge in Colombia, Trump is"

How did the integration process of the FARC into democratic life work?

In Congress there aren't too many problems. The rejection of some powers in the sessions are noticeable, with insults and those things. The problem is with the majority of the FARC, where what was promised wasn't fulfilled. It's the same problem that the Colombian government has had for a long time: they agree, sign, and don't fulfill.

From a political perspective, are the FARC already integrated as a new democratic political player?

Yes, and that's why they move in political contexts that aren't necessarily left-wing. The Green Party is not left-wing, and together with the FARC they often maintain a sort of opposition block against the government. But the truth is that it did not go well for them politically. In electoral terms it did not go well for them. In the election they garnered about 50,000 votes, and in the small time I was able to talk with them, they told me that they were hoping for about 200,000 votes.

In some ways they are paying their dues for being novices in the democratic political arena, which calls for different qualities than being a successful military like they were. That is a price that several demobilized groups from the guerrilla had to pay. They understand that their project can't be radical. It has to be a more open project.

FARC are paying their dues for being novices in the democratic political arena, which calls for different qualities than being a successful military like they were. That is a price that several demobilized groups from the guerrilla had to pay. 

A conflict exists about the Victim and Land Restitution Law approved during Santos' tenure. Duque wants to modify it, and there is resistance to the changes. How severe can this be for the peace process?

It's a very fragile situation. What was agreed upon is very important, but the ability to implement it is very questionable. And so everything is fragile, and it's combined with exclusion that's being produced, but also with the fact that there are a lot of armed people. That could result in an increase in armed people, which would be unnerving.

Even more so if Duque starts to get himself into regional adventures. Because we already know who's in charge: Trump is in charge, not Duque. And the scolding that they just gave Duque from Washington isn't free.

The government is trying to give off an image of being a super ally of the United States without understanding that one can't be their ally regarding these issues. On the contrary, one is in submission to the United States.

You talk about the criticisms from Trump to Duque, and there enters the debate about the fumigation of illicit crops with glyphosate. Is it true that since the fumigation stopped, the area of illegal crops grew?

Yes. That is an objective fact, but the solution isn't to fumigate again. You have to comply with what was agreed upon with the communities, which is the substitution of crops with the heavy presence and big help from the government to help look for an alternative.

Fumigation can allow for greater control of the cultivated areas, but you'd be generating another very serious problem, which would be the continuing deforestation of the country because the crops relocate, deforesting jungles and forests. And if they eliminate all of the Colombian crops, these can just relocate to Ecuador or Venezuela. So that isn't the solution.

Even worse is that it's easier to act with war logic and install the idea of fumigations again without caring if the U.N. says that there are carcinogenic elements, or that they just punished Bayer because of that.

Do you agree with the Peace Accords? Do you think that more could have been done? Do you think that what could be done was done?

I agree with what they accorded. I believe that they contain important reforms, and they are reforms that will contribute to peacebuilding in the country. As far as the FARC, perhaps more should've been done, but given the practical issues and the correlation of powers, I don't think more could've been done. It's not a small thing what was accomplished, and I believe that the Accords are enough to begin building a lasting peace.

"Duque is not in charge in Colombia, Trump is"

I know it's an ambitious and very broad question, but how can the complexity be summarized so as to find a solution to the armed conflict in Colombia?

With regards to the causes, I think that one of the axes is the issue of the land and access to it. In Colombia the continuing confrontations had to do with the possession of the land. In fact, one of the main points of the FARC's agenda is an integral rural reform.

Another axis has to do with the political participation. A system that, even though it kept some of the characteristics of a liberal democracy, was ultimately very excluding and where there prevailed a political culture very intolerant of criticism and dissension. Colombia has a closed system. In terms of bipartisan subsistence, it's one of the longest in Latin America.

So that bipartisanship didn't leave space for the expression of other sectors?

When the country was rural, perhaps those two powers captured a good part of the political tendencies. But when it stopped being rural and became 75% urban, growing powers arose in the cities, mostly from the left, with different nuances. And there they didn't find a niche where they could participate within the political institution.

You can see there still exists a large reluctance to permit that participation. It's worth it to remember the effort the FARC made in the 80's to create a political party through an institutional movement. It was called "the genocide of the Patriotic Union." We hope that won't happen again because it would mean condemning the country to another wave of violence.

In Rwanda they killed 800,000 people in two and a half months, and that to reach that figure in Colombia, we'd have to extend the violence for 150 or 200 years. It's not to minimize the tragedy of the victims in Colombia, but to put things in perspective.

There exists a tendency in Latin America to assert that the armed conflict in Colombia is impossible to resolve, and I understand that you refute that phrase.

When I returned to Colombia after being abroad for a long time, I found a view that was too self-absorbed. They asserted that this was the worst conflict in the world; the bloodiest and thus the most difficult to resolve.

I pointed out, then, that in Rwanda they killed 800,000 people in two and a half months, and that to reach that figure in Colombia, we'd have to extend the violence for 150 or 200 years.

It's not to minimize the tragedy of the victims in Colombia, but to put things in perspective. It's not the most difficult conflict to resolve. We just showed that by reaching an agreement with the FARC after a conflict of 50 years, and it certainly isn't the bloodiest.

We also need to recognize that the conflict in Colombia has a very complex dynamic and a financial source that makes it so that this could last as long as drug trafficking exists.

Would that be a third cause to the conflict?

I would say that it's what allows the war to continue. I don't know if it's a cause. But it is a financial source for all the sectors, and for some of the players it's the main cause. 

Publicar un comentario
Para enviar su comentario debe confirmar que ha leido y aceptado el reglamento de terminos y condiciones de LPO
Comentarios
Los comentarios publicados son de exclusiva responsabilidad de sus autores y las consecuencias derivadas de ellas pueden ser pasibles de las sanciones legales que correspondan. Aquel usuario que incluya en sus mensajes algun comentario violatorio del reglamento de terminos y condiciones será eliminado e inhabilitado para volver a comentar.
Más de English

The Centrao has already won‎

Por Marco Bastos
The Centrão is the bloc of conservative parties that has dominated Brazilian politics since the return to democracy in 1989. That bloc has been the hinge of the Brazilian political system, supporting all the Presidents of the young Brazilian democracy - both those on the left and on the right.‎
The LIBRE Initiative Believes Latinos will Define the Future of US Politics

The LIBRE Initiative Believes Latinos will Define the Future of US Politics

Por Lila Abed (Washington DC)
"I think that Governor DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio will be reelected in 2022,", says Director of Public Affairs at The LIBRE Initiative, César Grajales.
Democrats should 'tell authentic stories' to reach Latinos, says former Bernie Sanders advisor

Democrats should 'tell authentic stories' to reach Latinos, says former Bernie Sanders advisor

Por B. Debusmann (Washington DC)
Junelle Cavero Harnal, a former advisor to Bernie Sanders and Head of Political at H Code, believes that an effort to explain why policies matter to Latino households will help the Democrats gain their support in upcoming elections.
"Latinos were undercounted in the Census," says expert.

"Latinos were undercounted in the Census," says expert.

Por Lila Abed (Washington DC)
"The Arizona legislature is trying to suppress the Latino vote because they see the trends that Latinos continue to gain more numbers and therefore more political clout," Joseph Garcia, Director of Public Affairs and International Relations at Chicanos Por La Causa (CPLC) .
Time to end 'dynastic politics' in the Bronx, council candidate says

Time to end 'dynastic politics' in the Bronx, council candidate says

Por B. Debusmann (Washington DC)
Marcos Sierra says that ending political dynasties from affluent areas of the borough will help attract new Latino and African American voters.
Meet Baltimore's first - and only - Latina city councilperson

Meet Baltimore's first - and only - Latina city councilperson

Por B. Debusmann (Washington DC)
Councilwoman Odette Ramos believes that the city's growing Latino population will become increasingly active in local politics.