Civil War In Colombia
by Mary Cuevas
Overview
The forty million people living in Colombia have endured
four decades of conflict that shows no signs of abating in what is the longest
conflict in Latin America involving leftist guerillas, far-right paramilitary
death squads and the army, which critics accuse of being linked to paramilitaries
or turning a blind eye to their activities. The fighting continues claiming
40,000 lives and displacing nearly two million people in the last decade alone.
Ana Carrigan reported in her article “A Cry for Help” in The Irish
Times (November 13, 1999):
“At least 20 civilians were being slaughtered daily in paramilitary
massacres
in the villages while the army stood aside and looked the other way; at
200
seizures a month, guerilla kidnappings, carried out at random roadblocks,
were up 20 per cent since 1998; each month, 25,000 peasants were abandoning
their homes and their crops to join the population of 1.5 million displaced
persons (seven times greater than the numbers driven out of East Timor,
almost twice the refugee population of Kosovo) thus intensifying the worst
humanitarian crisis in South America this century.”
Not only has the conflict turned this coffee, oil,
and coal producing nation into the most violent in the world, it is further
complicated by the war on drugs. The rebel groups and right-wing paramilitary
death squads profit in the cultivation of coca crops. It is reported that
the drug cartels pay a “tax” to the rebel groups and paramilitary
for protection of their coca crops. To help Colombia fight the war on
drugs, former President Clinton signed an aid package in July 2000 for $1.3
billion. Some critics feel this will only fuel the fire of the forty-year
old conflict and produce more human rights violations. On the other hand,
some Colombians welcomed the aid package and are hopeful that it will improve
the situation in their country.
El Bogotazo - 1948
“I am not a man, I am a people!”
was Jorge Eliecer Gaitán’s slogan. Liberal presidential candidate
Gaitán was of mixed blood, with the education and manner of the country’s
white elite but with the dark skin, broad face, and coarse black hair of Colombia’s
lower Indian castes. No matter how educated or powerful he became, he
was tied to the people who worked the mines or fields at subsistence wages with
absolutely no chance for education or a better life.
The cities were plagued by inflation and sky-rocketing
unemployment. For the people in the mountains and jungle villages it meant
no work, hunger and starvation. Against this backdrop, the skillful lawyer
and socialist, Gaitán, was able to rally support and was projected to
win the elections in 1950.
All hope for a peaceful Colombia ended in 1948 when a lone gunman
with grandiose delusions open fired on Gaitán as he left his office in
Bogotá. Despite desperate attempts to save him by doctors, Gaitán
died of several gunshot wounds within hours. The vision of the future
died with Gaitán.
Gaitán’s assassination exploded into El
Bogotazo; days of rioting so intense it left large parts of the city in flames
before spreading to other cities. The mobs evolved into random destruction,
drunkenness, and looting.
El Bogotazo eventually ended in the big cities but
lived on in the countryside. A nightmarish period began in the countryside.
Bloodletting so empty of meaning it is simply called La Violencia. (Killing
Pablo, Mark Bowden)
La Violencia
The estimates are as high as two hundred thousand people
killed during La Violencia. Outlaws and bandidos roamed the countryside,
robbing, pillaging and raping, and killing in the villages and towns they passed
through. They would steal from the rich landowners in a Robin Hood-like
manner. However, in the end they were viewed as brutal outlaws by the
people.
It is against this backdrop in the 1960s that the Marxist
guerillas formed as successors to the bandido tradition. The Armed Revolutionary
Forces of Colombia (FARC) are now about 18,000 strong and the smaller Cuban
inspired National Liberation Army (ELN) are about 5,000 strong. Many in
the countryside welcomed the ideology of change in the disparity between rich
and poor the FARC and ELN promised. However, by the 1980s it seemed
to many that the ideology that began in the jungles was being lost by acts of
terror against the people in the villages. Although posters and bumper
stickers of Che Guevara still adorn walls and the back of buses, the people
were simply tired of all the blood shed.
When the FARC killed yet another wealthy landowner
in the early1980s in a most brutal fashion by tying him to a post and torturing
him for hours before killing him, the birth of the right-wing paramilitary death
squads was on the horizon. The son of this wealthy landowner was Carlos
Castano. After finding his father’s body, Carlos Castano’s
rage and sorrow was the fuel for the fire that led to his organization of the
paramilitary death squads. Tired of the inept attempts by the government to
stop the violence perpetrated by the FARC and ELN, Castano began and is now
head of the AUC known in Colombia as the Auto Defensas or paras. The AUC
are about 11,000 strong.
In the countryside the violence already deeply rooted in
the culture culminated into a twisted psychological warfare of terror by all
armed groups. It was not enough just to kill your enemy. The ritual
of torture and rape in front of family members became an art. Severed
heads were left on pikes along the road. Women had their breasts cut off.
Men had their genitals cut off and stuffed in their mouths. The right-wing
paramilitary death squads are responsible for 80 percent of the human rights
violations in the country at the present time.
Cocaine Wars
When the appetite for marijuana waned and cocaine became
the drug of choice in the United States, the cartels in Colombia took on a new
face. The reign of terror during the Pablo Escobar years was unprecedented.
Escobar brought the country to its knees. He hijacked and blew planes
up in mid air. With the growing demand for cocaine and his ability to
supply the drug there seemed no end to his power. When he was caught and
murdered after escaping a prison he built in 1992 other cartels in Medellin,
Cali, and Barranquilla took his place.
Eighty percent of the cocaine coming out of Colombia
is headed for the inner cities and yuppie urban centers in the United States.
U.S. consumption of cocaine financially supports the cartels. Furthermore,
the rebel groups and paramilitary death squads are also supported in their on
going war by U.S. consumption of cocaine. The “tax” they charge
the cartels for protection of their coca crops pays for the weapons and bombs
used on innocent civilians. Yet Clinton signed an aid package for $1.3
billion to fight the war on drugs. The result has been spraying campaigns
that are devastating to the environment. The primary focus of the aid
package is on the supply side of the problem rather than the demand.
By ignoring the demand side of the problem, some politicians and scholars feel
the billions of dollars in aid to be an exercise in futility. Not only
are farmers in neighboring countries cultivating coca crops, but the demand
has only increased with a reduction in the price of cocaine.
Mary Cuevas
marycuevas@earthlink.net