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Title: Habemus pacem? Author: José Antonio Gutiérrez D. Date: September 8, 2016 Language: en Topics: Colombia, peacebuilding Source: Retrieved on 22nd December 2021 from http://www.anarkismo.net/article/29590 Notes: Translated by Supriyo Chatterjee (সুপ্রিয় চট্টোপাধ্যায়) of Tlaxcala-int.org
After three years of negotiations, a peace accord was signed in Havana,
Cuba, between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC-EP,
while the process with ELN is bogged down and that with the EPL is not
even on the political agenda. The forecasts that had feared the
possibility of a breakdown in the negotiations have been proved
groundless, and it completes the cycle of a struggle that should
necessarily open new scenarios and possibilities. The decision of this
insurgent movement to abandon arms seems irreversible and, whatever
happens, it will keep on the path of what has been called its
“reincorporation into civilian life”. Even while this accord does not
generate structural changes, it undoubtedly represents a significant
advance for the rural population which, though invisibilised, is a
not-insignificant 34% of the country’s population and provides an
opportunity for the popular movement to potentially articulate the big
tasks that remain ahead. None of this is set in stone. It will all
depend on the clarity and the organisational and mobilising capacity of
the popular movement.
It (the agreement) is yet to be ratified by the Congress as also the
final signing in Colombia, which will be towards the end of September.
No great surprises are expected at the tenth conference of the FARC-EP,
which should ratify the accord on September 19. The referendum, through
which the agreements will be submitted for endorsement by the people,
has been agreed upon for October 2. In the referendum, these will have
to obtain 4.5 million votes for a “yes” so that the agreements are
ratified and it is for this that it is so important to motivate the
people and close the doors to a return to total war between the state
and the FARC-EP [1]. Despite the discursive poverty of the retrogrades
who are campaigning for a “no”, it would be foolish to scoff at its
appeal among many urban sectors still under the authoritarian spell of
Uribism [2]. Even so, the biggest challenge is to reach the required
target for the approval of this referendum.
Even though the agreement is an historic occurrence, the little
enthusiasm that it generated with the announcement of the final signing,
as well as during the entire process, does not cease to surprise. Though
there is no lack of reasons to celebrate, there is hardly any
celebratory mood. There hasn’t been a general party atmosphere that
accompanied other peace processes as in Northern Ireland or in El
Salvador, to name a few, and it hasn’t even come close to approaching
the democratising effervescence that was felt in 1990 for the peace
process with M-19, the EPL, the MAQL and the PRT. It is painful to admit
that, at least in the urban centre, there has been more enthusiasm in
the marches against the FARC-EP than now that peace has been signed with
it, which shows that the establishment’s media war against the rebels
has had a toxic effect in great measure and has isolated it considerably
from a large segment of the population which still thinks that the
insurgents are responsible for all that is bad in Colombia.
The predominant attitude of those calling to vote “yes” in the lead-up
to the referendum seems to be a lukewarm “war is worse” or a sour “we’ll
have to swallow some bitter pills”. Other voices calling to vote “yes”
are not doing it so much in support of the contents of the agreements
but to explicitly vote for the disappearance and disarming of the
FARC-EP [3], as a final coup de grace, a corollary to the mobilisations
of February 2008 against the FARC-EP stimulated by the government of
Alvaro Uribe. Very few sectors – the Left predictably – are calling for
a vote in clear support for the contents of the agreement, though many
sense that a triumph of “no” would be truly catastrophic. It is a
disagreeable reality but one that we will have to understand to change
it.
Various factors would seem to explain this phenomenon. First, before
everything else, it is a peace process that the majority of the
Colombian population perceives as something that is happening in a
distant country to resolve an equally distant conflict that is being
played out in the pathways of a rural world unknown to this urban
majority. To this has to be added the fact that during the process, the
media did it no favour with its permanent attack on the insurgents.
Neither has the tardy work of the so-called pedagogy of peace helped.
The government’s efforts to popularise the contents of the agreements in
Havana, or to stimulate debate around it, have been exceedingly poor
when non-existent. In turn, the insurgency’s efforts to “involve the
people” in the peace process have been unable to, or not known how to,
extend beyond its traditional areas of influence or those political
sectors who have always asked for a political solution to the conflict.
What does this peace process signify for a transvestite in the marginal
slums of Bogota? What does peace signify for an indigenous woman migrant
in a provincial capital? What does it signify for the sub-contracted and
precarious workers? What does it signify for the multitude that survives
on under-employment? For those who sniff glue because they can’t afford
bread? To have to remind the people that “the peace is with you”, as the
Left’s referendum campaign states, simply makes it evident that the
links of peace with the common citizen are not evident, that the peace
process is seen as something unconnected to them.
current correlation of forces
It was known that Socialism would not be achieved through negotiations.
Some basic reforms have been sought that help overcome the structural
causes that gave rise to the conflict, but the agreement is not peace
with social justice that the popular sectors engaged with the
negotiations to the conflict sought. There is no peace either because
the conflict with the ELN and the EPL continues, as also with possible
dissidents, because paramilitarism goes on throughout the country,
because the repressive structure that criminalises political dissent and
social protest still exists, because the structural violence that kills
with hunger and preventable illnesses persists – there is no social
justice. But this does not mean either that the agreement isn’t a
significant step or that there is no room for “moderate optimism” to use
the jargon during the process. There should not be room here from the
Left to shout “treachery”, but neither should there be hallucinatory
triumphalism. The agreement is what it is: all that the FARC-EP could
sign up to with the existing correlation of forces, clearly favourable
to existing bloc in power.
The verdict of history could be very harsh on the constituent parts [4].
A glance at what has been agreed to automatically leads us to question
if, in reality, so much blood should have been spilled to achieve
agreements that, in the bulk, mean that the government must comply with
constitutional mandates that it already has beforehand, combined with
the expansion of the existing political system, not to its
transformation [5]. There have been some important achievements awhile,
above all relating to the modernising of the countryside, but the
agrarian programme of the guerrillas of Marquetalia, together with the
minimum programme that inspired the FARC uprising for decades, remain an
aspiration: the problem of the concentration of land is very much alive.
Now it has been complicated even more with the boost that
agro-industries will receive through the Zones of Interest for Rural,
Economic and Social Development (Zidres). Perhaps this process could
have had an agreement with greater transformative potential and could
have generated greater popular enthusiasm. Perhaps.
The government promised not to touch the model and kept its word with
the oligarchy. The ELN’s opinion of the Havana agreement, according to a
communiqué dated August 5, is compelling: it does not change the reality
of the country and keeps “intact the ignominious regime of violence,
exclusion, inequality, injustice and pillage” [6]. A communiqué of a
dissident sector of Front 1 of the FARC-EP that opened up with the
process refers to the agreement in similar terms [7]. But what has been
agreed upon should not be judged excessively hard: achieving a different
scenario or an agreement that would really exemplify this desire for
peace with social justice was not something that would depend,
naturally, only on the FARC-EP. It would necessarily have had to be
supported by a broad popular mobilisation in support of these
transformations and to develop the transformative potential of some
points on the agenda as also the political proposals presented by the
insurgents in each of these. But the possibility of generating a big
alignment between this peace process with the wave of growing popular
protest of 2008–2013 did not materialise. The government, through
co-option, division and segmentation, halted this wave at the same time
that it successfully isolated the peace process from the daily life of
the population. The agrarian strike of 2013 was the key moment in
unshackling this discussion and generating a massive public sympathy
between the themes discussed in Havana and the daily reality of the
country, a moment that generated a bridge between the countryside and
the city where the interests of the popular sectors were sketched out in
contradiction to the bloc in power.
After the strike, and faced with the breach of contract by the
government, the popular mobilisation in the street was disincentivised,
which some sectors considered “inopportune”, with the surprising excuse
that “destabilising” Santos was to weaken the peace process (and
strengthen Uribism), aimed at an electoral strategy that was disastrous
for the Left. In this context, the peace process ended up fettering
itself to the figure of Santos, one of the most unpopular Presidents in
history, who used it to be re-elected at the same time that he redefined
the terms of peace and could pass on to the offensive. After insisting
so much that the keys to peace belonged to the people, it was handed
over to Santos on a silver platter. Such “recognition of the will for
peace” of Santos, a President who started governing with the mandate to
perpetuate “democratic security”, disfigured the reality that the peace
process was achieved in a large part owing to the popular mobilisation,
which had its climax in 2012–2013 [8]. The peace process in the
collective imagination was not only indissolubly linked to the figure of
Santos but also moreover with the launching of the referendum by
personalities of the old politics was associated with national
politicking. Is there anything surprising then about the lack of
enthusiasm?
political opposition
The chief government negotiator, Humberto de la Calle, claimed that this
agreement was the “best possible” [9], an ambiguous affirmation which
shows that though they might have been able to impose many of the terms
of the pact, neither were they able to impose everything. The agreements
are like an open door, which the oligarchy as well as the popular sector
can take advantage of. The oligarchy will look at accelerating the
penetration of inversion capital in agro-industry and mineral
extraction. It will depend on the popular sectors, on their struggles
and their organisation, whether this scenario materialises or not. It
will also depend on the popular sectors if the government complies with
the agreement since – as the communities of Putumayo of Catatumbo and
the country itself can vouch for – it specialises in laying snares and
defaulting on those below, and those who think that international
oversight of the U.N. or the guarantees is a guarantee that the
government will comply are guilty of excessive naivety.
Unfortunately, there is still too much disorganisation and segmentation
of the struggles. A new Left will have to be reconfigured and so too the
creation of new collective leadership and a broad process of
organisation and popular mobilisation. Despite the great insistence on
Left unity, what is certain is that a great constructive effort is
necessary before everything else to reach all the oppressed sectors, the
excluded, and the hungry who need a new model. It needs audacity,
vision, decisiveness, plenty of dialogue, listening to others and much
organisation. Only basing on a broad organisation and the active search
to create spaces in which the discontent can be expressed
constructively, it will be possible to speak of a unity that is much
more than the mere sum total of the same old leaders. A unity has to
form organically around the minimum axes of common action and from the
proposals of the thousand and one struggles that the people develop
daily. It also requires a new form of understanding and doing politics,
truly from below, from the popular world, escaping the old vices of
traditional politics like from pests, in place of accepting them little
by little as if these were signs of maturity. For all this, it is
necessary to dissociate from the figure of Santos and reclaim the
vocation of the Left (grabbing this political space of Uribism which it
occupies fraudulently) is a fundamental step that could lead to seducing
the people once again with the idea of constructing peace with social
justice, linked to a process of mobilisation and social transformation.
For now, the dice is loaded in favour of the dominant bloc. The
triumphalism of these sectors is evident in the declarations of the
Colombian army commander, General Alberto Mejia, who said the army was
ready to guarantee the safety of the ex-guerrillas: “For us it is not a
humiliation, for us it an honour because those who safeguard them are
those that won the war, because those who safeguard them are those who
remained with the arms, those who safeguard them are those dressed in
the uniforms of the Republic” [10]. Clearly, there could be a debate if
FARC-EP is defeated or not, something that is open for discussion, or
the pyrrhic nature (in the best of cases) of this supposed victory of
the army, but it is necessary to recognise that, whatever this insurgent
group thinks, the dominant bloc has the hegemony today, not the popular
sectors. The “monopoly of force” that the oligarchic state claims has to
be opposed with an even bigger force than its army and its arms: that of
an organised people. Though much is said that politics will not be done
without arms, as the African revolutionary Amilcar Cabral used to say,
in capitalism all struggles are armed: the state always has the arms and
uses it against the people when its interests and domination are
threatened [11]. When the people exercise their right to do politics on
the streets, ESMAD, the police or the army will repress them
politically, with force and with arms, supported in the restructuration
that the USA (who else?) is implementing for the public security forces
post-conflict and with the new police code and the law of citizens’
security.
The support for “yes” in the referendum should not obviate that this in
neither the end of the process nor the start of the construction of a
new society but another step in a long history of resistance, in the
long road towards the conformation of a new popular bloc capable of
imposing on the oligarchic sectors an alternative mode, radically
democratic, egalitarian and libertarian. It is also necessary to
recognise that beyond the debate about the nature of the peace or the
intrinsic structural violence of the system, without the ELN or the EPL
it is not possible to speak of the construction of peace, for which
enclosing the political solution around these other insurgent
expressions becomes a political, ethical and moral imperative. It is
important to think critically today in the social forces and the
political currents, the complicated territorial, national, regional and
international context in which they have to operate [12] and to apply
self-criticism to correct the mistakes and this way reverse this
unfavourable correlation of forces for the popular sectors. Today,
rather than being immersed in easy formulae, replacing the slogans for
or against, it is more suitable to apply Gramsci’s maxim of pessimism of
the intellect – the objective difficulties are so immense – but optimism
of the will; we are conscious of the enormous potential of the struggles
of the Colombian people as also the valuable experience accumulated in
almost a century of resistance. Only this way can a project that
actually enthuses the ensemble of the Colombian people and gain their
confidence be developed. And with an enthused people, the transformative
forces will be unstoppable.
[1] Sadly in the preceding months, sectors of the Left wasted too much
ink and saliva attacking the idea of a referendum, which they saw as an
option excluding their call for a constituent assembly, a constituent
assembly which, in the current situation, would probably be unfavourable
to the popular sectors and could even signify a step back from the 1991
Constitution. Good ideas aren’t enough, the context and circumstances in
which they have to be carried out need to be understood.
[2] The media, once again, in its task of fabricating perceptions, bandy
polls that at times give “yes” the victory and, at times to “no”,
depending on the political agenda of the moment.
[3] Viewed in this sense, the editorial in the Espectador of August 25,
“peace understood as disarmament and the end of conflict with the
different guerrillas has been the agenda of all the Presidents (…) [but]
we have never before had a proposal so close to disarming the FARC.
Whatever it is, the country for the first time has the opportunity of
thinking without the existence of this guerrilla group”.
[4] For a war to be considered “just”, according to Jus and Bellum, one
of the parts should demonstrate that it could not obtain what it
obtained without recourse to arms. This will be the raging dispute for
decades to come in Colombia, just as it continues to be in Ireland two
decades after the peace process in the country.
[5] Look up the complete agreement here
[6]
-
[7]
The FARC-EP communiqué that accuses these dissidents of having
“economic” motivations (mining, narcotrafficking) is unfortunate because
it ignores the reasons – mistaken or not – which are eminently political
and these types of accusations hurled at a group that left from within
it could easily come around to hurt it and perpetuate the dominant
stereotypes about the Colombian insurgency which, like all stereotypes,
tend to be mistaken.
[8] We have written extensively on these themes at its time. Some of
these articles are: “¿Tiene Santos las llaves de la paz?”, “Sólo la
lucha decide”, “El proceso de paz ¿secuestrado por el miedo?” and
Habemus presidente: mandato por la paz con injusticia social.
[9]
[10]
[11]
It is important not to fall for an idealistic, liberal and bourgeois
vision of the state as an embodiment of “social contract”or “common
good”. The state is an apparatus of domination, of class, designed to
serve the oligarchic sectors and exercise violence when the subaltern
sectors rebel. Any conquest favouring the interests of the popular
sectors is despite the state, not thanks to it.
[12] Before initiating the peace process, there was controversy with a
letter that Medófilo Medina had sent to then leader of FARC-EP Alfonso
Cano, who was assassinated in a few months in an absolutely defenceless
condition by the express order of Santos, at a time in which both were
discussing about negotiating peace. On that occasion, it was said that
one of the reasons for which the FARC-EP would demobilise was the
regional context, in which the Left had come to power through elections.
From that viewpoint, would the current scenario, marked by the
destitution of Rouseff and the deepening of the Venezuelan crisis change
the evaluation of these sectors regarding the political possibilities of
the FARC-EP? To read the controversy,